A future where the USA’s people unite against our monopolist system, and build a new society that works for the collective, is becoming easier to see. During 2016 and 2020, the ruling class was still quite successful in dividing the masses; but today, there’s a much greater willingness to come together against our capitalist dictatorship. And a major sign of this is the collapse of the Democratic Party. I’m not just talking about the electoral devastation the Democrats have experienced; I’m talking about the decline in their ability to steer the discourse. Less Americans are interested in the culture wars than they used to be; the national consciousness has become much more focused on our declining living standards, and how our government has engineered this decline.
The Gaza genocide has caused disillusionment among many people who used to be in the Democrat camp; and the inflation crisis has provoked a reaction from people all across the ideological spectrum. This growth in mass awareness has ultimately doomed not just the Democrats, but also MAGA, as Trump will most certainly betray his base’s wishes for change. He won’t end the wars, nor re-industrialize the country; monopoly capital’s degrowth schemes will continue, and the new administration will appease the new cold warriors like how Trump did in his first term.
Yet the prospects for building a mass anti-imperialist movement are greater than ever, because with the Democratic Party’s collapse has come a massive growth in proto-revolutionary consciousness. So many of Obama’s voters went to Trump because they saw that the Democrats weren’t willing to end our ongoing depression, nor take on the big banks, nor end the neocon foreign policy paradigm. And today, there’s more concern about these things than ever. As Trump repeats his pro-imperialist behaviors from last time around, MAGA is going to lose momentum. Which will create new opportunities for an authentic anti-imperialist movement to gain a presence among the masses.
How many of the younger MAGA voters we’ll bring in depends on how well we can combat the anti-woke or “red pill” influencers, who’ve won over a great number of young men especially. Another major opponent of ours within this arena will be the far right, who sell more extreme ideas like the “Jewish question.” These actors, which are heavily backed by the algorithms, represent an obstacle to be taken seriously; but they can’t stop the construction of a strong revolutionary institutional force. If communists do actual work for their own communities, as they increasingly have been doing, then we’ll win a kind of mass support that stands apart from online politics. If we build cadres that are well-disciplined, and trained both theoretically and physically, we’ll be prepared for whatever attacks come to us. If we master secret work, the state’s repression will fail to halt our operations.
This is the great strength that communists, and the other anti-imperialists who communists ally with, are able to gain if we work for it. And during this moment, we have the additional advantage of being in a society where the old hegemony is unraveling. If liberals can no longer funnel as many people into Trump Derangement Syndrome, then more will be willing to focus on the class struggle. And since this liberal weakening is part of a larger decline in the relevance of the culture wars, then the far right is also going to encounter a problem.
The far right have been trying to substitute the stale old conservative culture war battles with other, edgier ways to divide people; they’ve been promoting the white genocide narrative, and the Jewish conspiracy narrative, and violent misogyny. But with Trump’s election, they’ve lost momentum. Had Harris won, the neo-Nazis would have exploited a massive surge in right-wing resentment; instead, they’re now trying to find their role within a landscape that gives their enemies many advantages. The trajectory of where things are going is for the communists and anti-imperialists to rise; and we will rise, if we navigate our conditions correctly.
The radical liberals in the PSL will gain something out of this too, but their progress will have major limitations. Trump winning was the best thing that could have happened to these actors who claim the “communist” label, while promoting Trump Derangement Syndrome and rejecting the masses. The PSL will grow, yet it won’t grow beyond the niche of alienated leftists. Its ideology is an extension of the Democratic Party’s ideology, which has been decisively rejected by the bulk of the masses.
Because the PSL can’t grow beyond the leftist niche, it’s not a threat in the way that the anti-woke grifters or the far right are; whereas the right is actually capable of drawing large mass energy away from the revolutionary cause, the PSL can only win over those already within the liberal bubble. However, PSL does pose a threat in that it can undermine the pro-Palestine movement. It represents a fifth column within this movement, created by the NGO-industrial complex, that’s capable of isolating the pro-Palestine struggle from the masses; as well as diluting this struggle by shifting the focus away from Palestine, and towards simply opposing Trump.
This is the thing PSL has done by planning its day of action on January 20th, which amounts to an Antifa LARP rally; the thing that makes it a detriment to the pro-Palestine movement is how it doesn’t center Palestine, but rather a general sense of outrage against Trump. PSL believes holding a rally about Trump on January 20th is more important than holding a rally about Palestine on the same day; which reinforces the Democrat narrative that Trump represents an exceptional evil. The message conveyed by this is that Trump, and the MAGA base by extension, are a bigger problem than the genocide in Gaza. This diverts precious resources and attention away from the genocide, as well as distracts from how our enemy is a system; not any one politician.
It’s a shallow attempt to appeal to the liberals who have an unhealthy fixation on Trump. And if PSL and its associated orgs get to define where the pro-Palestine movement goes, it will render this movement largely nonexistent, its energy turned towards shallow “ResistanceTM ” sloganeering. But most Americans reject this rhetoric, because they’re increasingly seeing through the psyops designed to keep them polarized. If we can build a movement whose goal is genuinely to do what’s best for the anti-imperialist cause, and for the class struggle which encompasses it, then we’ll reach these disillusioned masses. The NGO forces will then be left behind, and the state’s counterinsurgency will be rendered truly ineffectual.
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