Since this July’s assassination attempt against Donald Trump, the former president has been compromised by the deep state, moreso than he was already. Not in the sense that he’s now the favored candidate of monopoly capital; the neocons and big tech have been working hard to assist Harris. Trump is compromised in that he’s responded to the things which have happened to him, and to the incentives which have been presented to him, by acting as exactly the kind of opponent the Harris campaign would want. He’s been shifting away from the type of anti-monopoly rhetoric that gained him a following, and embracing more of the xenophobic culture war tropes which keep our discourse controlled by the deep state.
The narrative managers who back Harris want Trump to avoid telling the kinds of truths that could gain him support from independents, and instead merely focus on what the hard right cares about. Which is what he’s done, attacking Harris as “Marxist” and “soft on crime” while focusing less on antiwar issues or economic populism. This makes him a weaker candidate, and directs our cultural conversation away from anti-imperialism or class struggle.
The decision by Trump to lean more heavily into anti-wokeness, where he’s stirred up the repetitive old culture war battles and promoted more paranoid ideas about immigrants, means that progress for the anti-imperialist cause won’t come from within the existing state. It can only come from an effort by our anti-monopoly united front to shift the balance of forces. And the goal of this effort needs to be the overthrow of the bourgeois state, because though changing the balance of forces can influence how presidents act, for as long as this state exists we’ll continue to be fighting a circular battle. We’re getting closer to workers revolution; the imperial structure is growing weaker, and the USA’s people are gaining a proto-revolutionary consciousness. To gain victory, though, we have to approach this task without the expectation that any wing of the state will save us from repression.
We should make alliances with the parts of the bourgeoisie that are compatible with our anti-imperialist goals; but it’s crucial to recognize that such elements only exist within capital’s lower levels, and therefore can’t gain control over the state. These are the relatively small entrepreneurs who lack a material interest in monopoly capital’s geo-strategic games, and who are getting squeezed out by the monopolists. Many within this capitalist faction have embraced MAGA in the hope that it will defeat the super-rich. But that’s not the direction MAGA has been going in since the pivotal moment of the July assassination attempt, when certain parts of the deep state revealed their desire to eliminate Trump. Trump and his circle were then faced with a choice: become more Bonapartist, and lead a revolt of small capital against the monopolies, or do what the deep state wants and inflame the culture wars. They chose the latter, and willingly let the deep state steer MAGA in a more imperialism-compatible direction.
There are still some ways in which Trump’s stances differ from that of the neocon/intelligence alliance. He’s talking about negotiating to end the war in Ukraine, and he’s advocating for a restart of diplomacy with the DPRK. Yet within the Trump wing of the ruling class, this desire for peace is selective. This wing wants to continue the genocide against Gaza and encourage the Zionist war provocations, as well as escalate with China.
How to respond to these realities? We should take advantage of the ruling class divisions which MAGA is creating, bring in the MAGA supporters who care about the antiwar cause, and also build an organizational structure that’s independent from MAGA. That can protect our cadres as the imperial state intensifies its crackdown, which MAGA plays an important narrative role within.
If MAGA is already being successfully steered in a more culture war-focused, pro-imperialist direction prior to when the election has happened, then we know that the primary forces driving MAGA are not going to be our allies throughout the post-election repression. Both the Harris and Trump wings of monopoly capital intend to expand political persecution; the Harris wing is doing this right now, while the Trump wing has vowed to purge communists and everyone it views as communists. We should take these threats seriously, because they’re consistent with the things the deep state wants to do. The Harris and Trump wings are able to unite on waging war against organized labor, like how they both want to escalate with China and advance the war on Palestine.
These two forces aren’t fully united, and there are ways we can take advantage of this ruling class infighting; the right wing’s antagonism with big tech, for instance, is part of why online platforms are still as free as they are. And as a rule, it’s a good thing when your enemies get caught up in fighting each other. The problem we’re now encountering is that the Harris wing, the dominant wing of the ruling class, has been able to turn the Trump wing into an asset for crucial parts of its schemes. MAGA has taken the path of even more heavily promoting the anti-woke psyop, which makes it a useful tool for the deep state’s counterinsurgency. The effect it’s having is to divert the discourse towards polarizing wedge issues; as well as to give the Harris wing more helpers within its most significant tasks.
The Democratic Party’s goal of purging anti-imperialists is aided by Trump’s calls to root out Marxist “vermin”; this anti-communist derangement works to convince conservatives that they shouldn’t unite with anti-imperialists, because supposedly the persecution of dissidents is something patriotic and anti-establishment. That’s the insidious psyop which this rhetoric advances. That narrative manipulation, where monopoly capital’s most important goals get presented as beneficial to the USA’s people, will also be used to sell the next provocations against China.
That’s how U.S. imperialism is going to react to the collapse of Zionism: by trying to instigate a new big war in east Asia, which both the Harris and Trump wings support in respect to Taiwan. The Harris wing also aims to carry out a massive wave of color revolutions, destabilizing numerous countries in an attempt to destroy BRICS. As these plans go forward, and we see the next repressive efforts within the USA, we can expect the MAGA wing to act as an obstacle towards effective resistance. With the MAGA leadership’s full embrace of the anti-woke psyop, the Harris wing is in a better place to fulfill its schemes. Our only option is to construct an organizational force for the popular masses. A force that stands on its own, and can keep itself in operation regardless of how severe the crackdown gets.
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