What happens when a society’s ruling institutions have embraced the same lies that they tell, to the extent that this makes them act with a fatal amount of hubris? When they’ve convinced themselves that they can carry out tasks which any serious look at reality shows they can’t? When a situation like this appears, not only does that society see a catastrophe; not only do that society’s people turn against their system of governance; but these ruling institutions also start to encounter threats from within. A growing number of the individuals who the centers of power have trained in the workings of the state, given credibility as public commentators, and given access to official authority become disillusioned with the overwhelming madness of the institutions they’ve inhabited. Which is a phenomenon that the revolutionaries can then use to their advantage; that they can use to take away the state’s monopoly over violence, winning key figures from within the power centers towards the revolutionary cause.
This is how many revolutionaries throughout history have come to victory: by gaining the assistance of influential figures who’ve chosen to break from the old system. As I’ve studied the history of anti-communist violence, and the extreme capacity which our capitalist state has for inflicting such violence, I’ve in the past gravitated towards arms as the thing which can save the revolutionary struggle. And though arms are absolutely an aspect of what communists should be focusing on, I’ve discovered that our own physicality isn’t the only thing we can rely on; getting mass support for our efforts also isn’t our only source of hope. We’ll have the greatest potential to defeat the state if we combine these two great sources of strength, with a third thing that could prove equally important: a project to win certain elements within our ruling institutions over towards the revolutionary side. Which is becoming more possible with every new failed war that the leadership in Washington pursues.
This decade, the empire has so far seen such blowback from its efforts in Ukraine, in Israel, and perhaps soon in Mexico should the most unhinged of the warmongers get their way. From the perspective of a growing amount of people not only in the broad population, but in the military leadership, it’s becoming apparent how detached from reality the schemes of the war-obsessed elites are. And we could use this contradiction; as well as the economic collapse and destruction of constitutional liberties which these wars interrelate with; to further the cleavages within our institutions. To bring about revolt among the elements of the military that lack loyalty to the dominant wing of the elites, using the empire’s own tools to realize its undoing.
Whereas reformists seek to ally with influential people so that they can join these people in fortifying the existing state, we seek to ally with the influential people who prove themselves to share our interest in destroying the existing state. This is the practice that’s brought victory to the revolutionaries in Russia, in Cuba, and in many other places; because when you get enough of those in the armed forces on your side, these low-level members of the ruling institutions can not just shift the power balance on their own, but give those who rank higher an incentive to join them. This was the cumulative change within the allegiances of a country’s armed forces which prompted Lenin to write: “You have heard about the series of the brilliant victories won by the Red Army. There are tens of thousands of old colonels and other officers in its ranks. If we had not taken them into service and them work for us, we could not have created the Army.…only with their help was the Red Army able to win the victories that it did.”
I may not be able to make a pitch to any military commanders for them to join with the communist cadres and the anti-imperialist united front, but I can encourage anti-imperialists to build as many relationships with active or former armed service members as possible. At this stage in the struggle, that’s how we can best take advantage of an extremely important contradiction within the U.S. empire: the contradiction between what the imperialists say America’s military does, and what it truly does. We’ve so far been able to use this contradiction to build a counter-hegemonic alliance between communists, libertarians, and other antiwar elements; the members of this alliance now need to establish connections with large numbers of armed service members.
With how Washington’s recent wars have been exposing the hypocrisy of the American imperial project, this task gets easier every month. Each time the hegemon does something self-destructive, and then reacts to the blowback by putting the costs onto America’s own people, our argument gets stronger. The imperialists say that their armed forces are bringing freedom to the world, helping the vulnerable, and keeping innocent people safe; in reality, they’re consistently commanded to do exactly the opposite of these things. When it comes to the U.S. military, the contrast between the story and the truth is so total that we’re able to argue for revolt not only on a moral basis, but on the basis of the American people’s material self-interest; which is the type of argument that’s most likely to be effective. The overwhelmingly working-class people who join the military, and working-class Americans more broadly, are in an increasingly poor situation precisely because of the socioeconomic order that our military is instrumental in maintaining.
The monopolies are able to exploit us ever-more severely; and the government which the monopolies control is incentivized to keep engineering ever-more intense austerity; because these institutions exist to advance imperialism. Which in its modern form is nothing more than a type of capitalism that exists on a global scale, giving its exploitation a level of vastness that’s proportional to the vastness of capitalism itself. The primary material interest of the workers in the core is to defeat imperialism, making these workers share a common cause with the Palestinians, the Donbass Russian speakers, and the other victims of imperialism abroad. That idea is so powerful, it has the ability to mobilize tens of millions of people towards fighting against our centers of power, and to profoundly change the thinking of hundreds of millions more across this continent.
Should we bring enough of the workers into this cause, we’ll bring the class struggle to a stage where the state is seriously threatened; which is going to provoke the state into waging war against the people without restraint, making our primary task into defeating the state’s violent campaign. When that moment of greatest intensity in the struggle comes, we’ll need to bring key elements in the state’s military onto our side; and history has shown this to be possible. What Biden’s Gaza genocide has revealed, though, is that we’ll need to overcome a certain obstacle towards this: the tendency for many partially antiwar conservatives to nevertheless remain loyal to Zionism.
It’s unfortunate that so many of the same conservative-leaning figures who’ve opposed aid to Ukraine are now reaffirming their support for aid to Israel; and that these obstinately Zionist figures include armed forces members like Tulsi Gabbard. This doesn’t mean there are no elements of these institutions with potential to come to the right side of history, though; and if we act strategically, we’ll take advantage of this enough for the revolutionary side to prevail.
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To understand why so many Americans who’ve chosen the right side of history on Ukraine have chosen the wrong side on Israel, look at the ongoing colonization of the North American continent. It’s logical that the presence of the USA’s colonial project would create an obstacle for the anti-Zionist movement; as these obstinately pro-Zionist right-wing figures are the ones with the most direct investment in this local version of colonial extractivism. They represent the lower levels of capital; which means that though they’re not part of the “club” of highest-caliber elites, they have a material interest in the extraction from indigenous lands domestically. That they’re not in the club even makes them more inclined to defend this most open and crude form of colonialism, because it’s what their capital depends on; whereas the highest levels of capital can rely on the international monopolies, the element of capital which Trumpism represents is based within the primitive accumulation of raw materials inside U.S. borders.
This means that though these lower-level capitalists have no reason to support the efforts of those in the “club” to destabilize Eurasia, they do have a reason to support the imperial projects that give them opportunities for expanding their primitive accumulation efforts. The theft of Palestinian land and resources is an extension of these efforts, so they have an allegiance to the Zionist state; and when Mexico becomes a prime target for warfare, they’ll support the idea of invading it, because they would also be able to benefit from a project to occupy and steal from Mexican territories. This is one of the effects we’re still seeing from the genocide of the indigenous people of this continent: the existence of elements with a deeply entrenched interest in colonialism, which act to strengthen the empire.
The poison of colonialism has a stubborn and insidious influence; this doesn’t make colonialism immune, though, from the dynamic that Hegel observed is innate to all historical forces which depend on something finite: “Finite things are, but their relation to themselves is that they are negatively self-related and this very relation drives them beyond their being. They are, but the truth of this being is their destruction. The finite not only alters, as anything does, but it ceases to be, and it is not merely a possibility that it ceases to be, as though it could be that it might not cease. No, the nature of the being of finite things is that they have within them the seeds of their own destruction; the hour of their birth is the hour of their death.”
Why is colonialism finite? Because it’s built upon the same model of exploitation and subjugation that all of history’s fallen empires were based off of; for colonialism to have come into being, it had to create subjugated peoples, and those peoples are going to be instrumental in its undoing.
The great advantage which these peoples have is that the enemies the U.S. empire has created for itself don’t only exist on the peripheries of the imperial structure; they also exist, or have the potential to appear, within the imperial institutions themselves. And these internal threats towards the empire have become as strong as they are because many of the potential rogue elements within these institutions actually originated from the peripheries. What do I mean by this? I mean that the modern U.S. military is dominated by people who joined the armed forces because the system made them be born into poverty, and they were desperate for a way to improve their situation.
After their communities were pushed to the margins of colonialism’s economy, they turned towards the imperial military with hope that it would rescue them from their conditions; but more and more, it’s becoming clear that the war machine is the thing we must fight against in order to bring about progress. To bring prosperity to the communities that have been left behind, and free the people both in the core and the neo-colonies from international capital.
The decline in perceived credibility for U.S. military efforts, along with the public health crisis that our corporatized food paradigm has created, are the reasons behind why the empire is now struggling to keep up enough armed service personnel. The ruling class only has itself to blame for how military recruitment efforts are consistently failing to get the desired numbers; as well as for how most young Americans are now unfit to serve due to obesity, mental illness, or drug addiction. It was the policies of the elites that created the conditions for all of these developments, as these policies created economic conditions that make people miserable, made trash food the only available food for the poor, propagated harmful narcotics, and undermined trust in the imperial institutions.
Recent recruitment ads have presented service as a way for young people to find their way out of the suffering that their conditions have created for them; but this pitch can’t succeed when young people have lost faith in our ruling institutions, and in the military especially. The only thing that can improve the conditions of these struggling people is workers revolution, and they’ll join the effort towards achieving that revolution should we do enough to take our movement to the masses. An unprecedented amount of the people are coming to understand that helping the war machine isn’t worthwhile, so the military will continue to see its recruitment numbers go down; and more of those who the military has managed to assimilate are going to join with the antiwar veterans, rejecting the imperialist ideology and coming to fight for the system’s downfall.
That the USA’s armed forces personnel numbers are decreasing will give these types of rogue elements within the military more influence, because armed service members are more and more precious for the functioning of the state; what happens if enough of them defect to the revolutionary side?
In accordance with Hegel’s reasoning about how every historical force has the capacity to produce an equal counter-force towards it, the blowback that the U.S. empire will get from these latest wars is going to be proportional to the amount of harm the empire has inflicted throughout its history. There was no way the empire could avoid this; the genocide against First Nations peoples that the U.S. and Canadian colonists carried out was a preemptive attempt to avoid it, but this decision only made the inevitable collapse of this colonial project all the more severe. By reducing the Native population by nine-tenths, the U.S. and Canada delayed revolution on this continent; which let the American empire become as big of a global threat towards peace, economic stability, and ecological wellbeing as it is now.
The ecological aspect of this imperialist-engineered crisis has yet to be fully recognized by our society, simply because of its incomprehensible scale; but the economic aspect is absolutely bringing about mass discontent, and giving the revolution-compatible elements within the military more of a reason to defect.
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By nearly making indigenous people extinct, the original U.S. imperialists thought they had found a permanent way to mitigate the blowback which comes with building a society off of stealing from other civilizations; they assumed that if they simply shrunk these other civilizations enough, their extractive project would be able to continue indefinitely. This is what the advocates of “Greater Israel” within Netanyahu’s camp think will happen if they expand the Zionist state in the model of Manifest Destiny, and destroy Palestine to the same extent that the Americans and Canadians have destroyed the First Nations. History doesn’t let its villains escape consequences, though; at least not on a macro level, or on a long timeline.
Now that the U.S. empire has reached its unavoidable moment of decline, it’s not like the empire can simply retreat from its global operations without a cost, and continue its internal extractive efforts like nothing has happened. The economic effects of the empire’s global decline are vastly growing the proportion of the internal U.S. population that has revolutionary potential; this means that the surviving indigenous people are in the process of gaining enough allies to be able to defeat the empire, in partnership with all the other elements of modern America which share an interest in that goal.
We’re seeing a combination of crises that have the potential to bring about an unprecedented consciousness shift; that could shake the pro-imperialist indoctrination of many, and break down the social order which American capitalism depends on. This change in mass sentiment is already halfway complete; fatigue over the Ukraine proxy war had made the majority of Americans opposed to Ukraine aid by the end of this summer, and partly because of that, Canada’s honoring a World War II Nazi fighter in September provoked great public backlash. The narrative managers wish they could use Israel as a replacement for Ukraine, but this can’t work when the developments of the last month weren’t planned by the empire. The empire and its Zionist proxies have been relating to these events in a totally reactive way; their story about Israel being a victim can’t dominate the discourse, not only because it’s incorrect but because the Zionists are having to scramble for any kind of control. The Palestinian rebels are the ones driving the situation.
This crisis for the empire has the potential to undermine its next plans, especially the one to market an invasion of Mexico. If opposition towards the Israel proxy war were coming exclusively from the left, the empire would know it’s going to be able to sell a war on Mexico; because the left has been protesting against Israel for decades, and throughout those decades the Zionist project (as well as the wider U.S. war machine) has been able to continue as if these protests were nothing. Now, though, the opposition towards the empire’s operations is becoming wider; partly because of the mass disillusionment in the war machine that Ukraine created, and partly because of the economic conditions that produced this disillusionment.
2023 was already the best year for the antiwar movement in decades, and the hypocritical decisions of the anti-Ukraine rightists who back Israel hasn’t stopped this success from continuing throughout the last month. We’re seeing hostility towards Zionism, or at least wariness towards Israel’s policy of escalation, from a majority of the population; this is shown by how the majority of Americans, including a little over half of Republicans, want a ceasefire. And though Democrats support a ceasefire by the highest percentage, the Republicans who support a ceasefire are more conscious about anti-imperialism. This is because most Democrats still support aid to Ukraine, which means there are more MAGA voters than liberals who support peace in both Ukraine and Gaza.
Why is an element that leans to the right the biggest demographic which has lately been acting consistent in opposing the war machine? Because a failing system is capable of producing opposition towards it, even in places that seem unlikely places for progressive sentiments to appear; and due to MAGA’s being based within alienation from our institutions, as opposed to the Democratic Party’s being based in a desire to defend these institutions, there’s emerging an anti-imperialist element among conservatives. The American right is not unified; there are parts of it that are aiding the empire out of desire to defend colonial interests, and parts of it that are coming to understand that colonialism isn’t worth defending. Most Americans lack a primary material interest in maintaining both the global system of international capital, and the local system of colonial extraction; and most Americans, including elements of the better-off ones, could come to support a revolt against the imperial state.
This is because when it becomes apparent that the system one lives within has no future, one’s reaction is usually to want a new system, even if one enjoys some benefits from the old one. The majority of Americans don’t own any land, and don’t have enough economic security to be able to go in between jobs without having their lives fall apart. Which means that when they see their government keep funding futile war after futile war, while doing nothing to improve their conditions, they have a reason to lose faith in the state. The decline of support for Ukraine, and the decline of support for Israel that’s in the process of occurring, both illustrate this unprecedented disappearance of mass support for the imperial project. The aristocracy of labor—the upper level of workers who get bribed with imperial superprofits—has been declining for decades, so the war machine’s narrative dominance has long been waiting to get destroyed.
When we overthrow our old system of governance, what follows is going to need to be a system which avoids perpetuating the power imbalances that the old one was built off of. There’s going to have to be an ability for the First Nations to self-govern and regain as much territory as they wish, or the new system will be neither just nor sustainable. This is a crucial idea for us to convey while we campaign for the replacement of the imperial state, as colonialism is what produced our crises and these crises can’t be ended until the colonial contradiction is taken into account. The great source of hope I’m seeing for this is that with each new war the empire enters into, the more the American people come to unlearn their society’s ideology of colonization.
Ukraine, and the series of forever wars that had already long been happening prior to February 2022, taught the people the American empire doesn’t deserve our support; Israel’s genocide against Palestine, and Washington’s willingness to risk World War III for the sake of backing Israel, are teaching the people how vile and destructive colonization is. The attempt to invade Mexico will outrage even more of our society, and thereby further develop mass anti-imperialist consciousness. This is because in an extremely direct way, this war is going to be based around colonial occupation and extraction; when our elites are trying to seize and steal from Mexican land, it’s going to show that the fight by oppressed and exploited peoples against colonial domination is instrumental to the fight of the antiwar movement within U.S. borders.
It’s this growing sense of solidarity that has the potential to end the U.S. and Canadian colonial projects; these genocidal states will be undone by an effort to unify all the people across this continent who have a reason to resist Washington’s hegemony, which can easily translate into desire for systemic change within the core. Where we see opposition towards U.S. interventionism; towards the intelligence agencies and their war against civil liberties; towards the domination by monopolies; we should be looking for allies in the fight against colonialism and capitalism.
A system in decline inevitably produces great masses of people who, out of practical necessity, choose the right side of history. Which means that though the U.S. empire prolonged its life by committing the genocide against the Natives; and by imposing an ongoing Jim Crow policy on the New Africans; the empire can’t escape the repercussions for these crimes against humanity. Not anymore than the Zionists can escape the repercussions for their own campaign of ethnic cleansing, which are coming to affect Israel with unprecedented intensity. A successful revolt against the empire was going to appear one way or another, and a crucial part of this revolt is going to come from the same armed forces the empire has cultivated.
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