Every action that the U.S. empire’s ruling class is able to take at this moment—expanding the Palestinian genocide, persecuting the Uhuru 3, arresting or raiding numerous new political targets—represents an attempt to make up for the ways it’s become limited. In global terms, the balance of power has shifted in the favor of the forces that oppose the hegemon, so much that they’ve in effect already won. We’re seeing the hegemon’s options become exhausted, and seeing the empire managers find they can’t win the century’s great geopolitical conflict. That’s the context behind this crackdown, and behind the West Bank invasion which relates to it; the empire is only able to do so much damage, so it’s trying to crush the most vulnerable people in the hope that this will let its operations continue.
Expanding the genocide against Palestine is not enough to save the unipolar order, and ultimately it produces even more severe blowback for the empire. Washington is letting its “Israeli” settler proxy carry out a holocaust with impunity because this is seen as the best strategy for holding onto the Zionist strategic outpost. Pretending there’s no genocide is a desperate ploy to maintain an existing geopolitical influence tool; the only way the hegemon can actually gain something new, and reverse its decline, is by bringing enough global destruction for China to be subdued. So the dominant wing of our ruling class is working to engineer a new wave of color revolutions, and to instigate a new war in East Asia.
All parts of this scheme need to work in order for it to be effective. The empire’s plan to use Ukraine as a tool for destabilizing China’s biggest partner has already backfired, so it must successively pivot towards a wider hybrid war against BRICS. And because the anti-imperialist camp has gained so much strength, a vital part of this scheme is being ruined.
In response to the multipolar shift, south Korea has refused to fully go along with Washington’s plans for escalating on the Korean Peninsula. As the CIA’s propaganda outlets have admitted, Seoul’s decision this year to attend Putin’s inauguration meant the Republic of Korea is willing to improve its relations with Russia. For this to come right after Ukraine made relations between the two countries somewhat tenser in 2022 shows the limits of Washington’s diplomatic influence. Even when the U.S. instigates a conflict that furthers global polarization, ultimately some of its own closest allies decide that it’s best to become friendlier towards Russia, and towards Russia’s partners by extension. The ROK knows where its best long-term interests are, and they’re not in uncritically following the whims of a superpower that’s obsessed with war.
Washington sees how the ROK is failing to be consistent as a proxy, so it’s turned the ROK into one of its targets for McCarthyism. The Department of Justice has arrested former CIA officer Sue Mi Terry for getting too close with the ROK’s government; which is a retaliation against the ROK that’s both indirect, and in service of the domestic counterinsurgency. The empire knows it can’t act too aggressively against the ROK, nor against most of the other countries where it wishes for regime change in. If the hegemon could get its way, it would overthrow the governments of Brazil, South Africa, and all other countries that have been getting closer to China.
Given that the Palestinian Authority is now seeking to join BRICS, no doubt the hegemon wishes it could do this in Palestine as well. But it can’t, because the peoples of Palestine and these other countries are too united in opposition to the empire. To win this war, the hegemon would need to defeat the vast majority of humanity, so it has no choice but to be selective in who it goes after. And the people who it aims to target next are the masses inside the United States itself.
Tomorrow’s trial for the Uhuru 3 is intended to be the moment when a precedent gets set for indicting every other pro-Palestine organization. We’ve known this for a long time, since these events got scheduled months ago. But during just the last month, the empire has gone after many more targets, ones who are being persecuted for other purposes. Last week’s arrest and indictment of Telegram founder Pave Durov, carried out by Washington’s satellite state France, is about trying to take away the informational power which the Global South has gained. Telegram has become the big social networking and news-sharing platform not just for Russians, but for the peoples in the countries the imperialists exploit, and in the countries which have broken free from neo-colonialism. France, and by extension the United States, are in imminent danger of fully losing their African extractive sources; now that the Sahel has had its revolution against the international monopolies, the completion of the continent’s liberation is going to happen much faster.
There’s no stopping this transition. So the European imperialist bureaucrats have turned Durov into another Assange, hoping this will at least help the imperial sphere maintain its global propaganda dominance. How can it, though, when the Palestinian genocide has made the globe more united against this sphere than ever? When the Global South, which had already shown its feelings towards Washington by not joining with the war against Russia, has been presented with the ultimate evidence that NATO’s “human rights” marketing is a lie?
The other repressive actions we’ve recently seen the empire take, from arresting anti-Zionist reporter Richard Medhurst to raiding the home of Soviet-born commentator Dimitry Simes, are about this same impossible goal of undoing history. The liberal technocrats hope that by criminalizing all truly transgressive journalism, or by going after every tech entrepreneur who doesn’t serve the CIA, they’ll make up for how the imperialist war plans have failed. For the monopolists to turn capital’s cycle of crises in their favor, they need to be able to expand into new markets. Because they’ve hit a block in this mission, with their goal of subduing China proving to be impractical, the best they can hope for is a new big war; one that alleviates the U.S. economy’s unprecedented crisis of overproduction. This would be a hollow achievement, because it’s not possible for Washington to defeat Russia, China, and Iran all at once. Either the empire’s drive towards war with these countries will be successfully thwarted, or the empire will get this conflict and then be devastated by the blowback.
Our enemy is on a path to making itself weak enough for its foundational economic structures to no longer exist, leaving the USA’s people with nothing to lose. We can keep our operations going amid the purge, using a combination of front organizations and clandestine efforts to continue making gains. Then we’ll be able to lead the people towards overthrowing our dying dictatorship.
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