The imperial hegemon’s present global offensive is not something that will prevent its demise; not in the long term. Rather it’s an indication of where the resistance still needs to be strengthened. Of which parts of the globe haven’t yet gained the fortitude that Russia, China, the DPRK, Venezuela, and the other anti-imperialist fortresses have. The only way the forces of capital can succeed in their aggressive efforts, or even attempt such efforts in the first place, is if their targets are vulnerable enough. The imperialists are cowards, only attacking those who they feel can’t defend themselves.
That’s what our government intends to keep doing within Palestine, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and elsewhere, with the incoming Trump administration planning to use this violence as a deal-making tool; Trump wants to strong-arm Russia into accepting a “frozen conflict” agreement where Russia hasn’t achieved its war aims. But this effort will fail, because Russia is one of the countries which has gained too much strength. So the empire will expand its extermination campaign, and continue to use Trump as a distraction from this.
This project to de-center Palestine has a left-wing aspect, found within the activist groups which have redirected their focus towards anti-Trump rallies. There’s also the narrative manipulation that’s being directed towards the Trump movement itself. The empire seeks to placate the Americans who want an end to the wars, the censorship, the deep state control, and the degrowth policies. And right now, its main strategy for this is to portray wokeness as the source of all these problems, meaning Trump can supposedly defeat monopoly capital by fighting a purely cultural battle.
This narrative is an essential part of the empire’s next war plans, which are going to involve a massive amount of new atrocities that need to be hidden. And the best way to do this is by staging a pseudo-revolution, led by an “anti-establishment” group of tech monopolists and hardline Zionists. The Trump White House’s role will be to advance the chaos and inhumanity, while portraying itself as antiwar.
That was what Trump did today, when he said “Do not get involved!” while talking about the crisis in Syria. This quote was what most people would take away from Trump’s statement, which has led many to believe Trump holds antiwar intentions. But the opposite is true. Trump was exclusively talking about avoiding direct military intervention in Syria; elsewhere within the statement, he showed he intends to continue all the aspects of Washington’s hybrid warfare within the region, which don’t require an Iraq-style invasion. They only require manufactured chaos. Trump’s team seeks to keep up the CIA’s dirty war against Syria, which has now brought full victory for the Salafi terrorists.
Trump said about Syria that “all hell broke out, with Russia stepping in. But now they are, like possibly Assad himself, being forced out, and it may actually be the best thing that can happen to them. There was never much of a benefit in Syria for Russia, other than to make Obama look really stupid.” This was a green light for the neocons in Trump’s cabinet to keep supporting the terrorists, and to keep coordinating Turkey’s part in the insurgency. Trump voiced approval for regime change, showing that any future efforts by actors like Marco Rubio to support the jihadists won’t be seriously challenged; the momentum is in favor of the neocons, and of their allies in Al Qaeda and ISIS. Their goals are to intensify the assaults upon the region’s other anti-imperialist forces, to terrorize Syria’s population into submission, and to destroy as much infrastructure as possible before Zionism meets its end.
The other goal Trump revealed was that of bringing Russia back into Washington’s sphere of influence. There is a section of the deep state that thinks this is possible, and Trump’s team is aligned with this element. What they’re now trying to do is sway the MAGA base, which has become largely pro-Russian for antiwar reasons, towards supporting this mission. And this entails separating Russia from the other fronts within the anti-imperialist struggle. The psyop machine seeks to take advantage of unprincipled support for Russia, using it to incite anti-China, anti-Palestine, and now anti-Syria sentiment. It’s notable how Trump says that Syria is “not our friend,” yet he talks about Russia in a pseudo-friendly manner; he’s trying to come across as someone who has Russia’s best interests in mind, and just wants to give it some practical advice.
Another telling part is where Trump spreads demoralizing misinformation about Russia’s performance in the Ukraine war. He asserts that “Russia, because they are so tied up in Ukraine, and with the loss there of over 600,000 soldiers, seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years.” We know that the “600,000” figure is fake, because it’s been contradicted by the empire’s own psyop managers.
This October, The Guardian reported that “Using official reports, online obituaries on social media and images of tombstones, the BBC Russian service with the independent website Mediazona have identified the names of 74,014 dead Russians. They estimate the real tally to be between 113,000 to 160,000 deaths.” It also said that “According to western assessments, Russian casualties in the war so far tally up to 115,000 killed and 500,000 wounded.” This goes against the 600,000 number that Ukraine has recently produced. The lower numbers from the other parts of NATO’s propaganda apparatus shouldn’t be uncritically believed, but the fact that there’s such a discrepancy between them and Kiev’s estimate shows Trump has presented a false picture of the strategic reality. A picture where NATO has been far more successful in fighting Russia than it actually has, meaning Russia’s best option is supposedly to capitulate to Washington.
This narrative that the Trump team is selling, wherein Palestine and its allies are seen as enemies of Russia, is about manufacturing consent for the new horrors our government will now inflict upon west Asia. As Syria’s people fall under the rule of 21st century barbarian forces; as the “Israeli” Nazi entity uses this opportunity to expand its genocide; as Turkey works to carve up Syria like it has with Libya; as the U.S. continues to steal Syria’s oil with the help of the YPG terrorists; the narrative managers will try to get Americans to look somewhere else. To make Syria “memory holed” in the way that Libya was, with the people of the Arab world being blamed for the hell Washington has brought upon them. This is the upside-down worldview that Zionists put forth; they say that all the suffering and death we’ve witnessed in the last fourteen months has been the fault of Hamas, and that all the chaos throughout the region is due to Muslims being backwards.
Many or even most Americans have already learned to reject this worldview, as evidenced by how the majority of them are against the genocidal “Israeli” Gaza action. But if the psyop machine can keep Washington’s past, present, and future crimes against Syria hidden from the public, then Turkey and “Israel” will be able to advance their assaults upon Syria without such scrutiny. And the atrocities of the Salafists will be on the periphery of the American consciousness, even though it’s our government that’s behind the terrorists. Much of the world knows about these horrific realities, but as long as the USA’s people are kept cut off from this information, the imperial state will have a crucial advantage: internal stability. We can and must take this advantage away from it.
With the Assad government’s demise, the only option of west Asia’s resistance forces is to regroup and rebuild, in the way that past revolutionaries have done after great defeats. It is possible for them to turn the strategic situation around, and to do so in ways which may surprise many. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis have shown everyone what the right practice is; “Israel” remains economically crippled by the resistance, to the effect that its demise is inevitable; and the China-Russia partnership continues to economically weaken the hegemon. For we in the core, the path forward is to build a mass movement which brings in all proto-revolutionary elements, with the MAGA base being a group we must prioritize. Otherwise, the empire’s psyops will direct MAGA supporters towards apathy, or towards “pro-Russian” Zionism.
All the while, we must apply the most crucial lesson from this defeat, which is that you can’t negotiate towards peace with the enemy. The imperial state will intensify its crackdown against internal dissent, and we must make our organizations ready to keep operating amid these attacks. If we can continue making gains within the class struggle, we’ll disable the empire from within, and then become in place to overthrow it.
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