We know that at this moment, the U.S. empire wants to carry out false flags against at least two targets. These are mainly Palestine and China, though many more places could become the focus of these kinds of psyops as Washington keeps reacting to the rise of multipolarity. In the month after October 7 last year, the FBI started warning about a supposed danger of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil that are connected to the Palestinian resistance. And more recently, the security state has been engineering media alarm about China planning to destroy the U.S. electrical grid through hacking. Which anybody who knows about the history of American false flags can see is a sign of our government trying to prime us for a new deception.
Just because the empire wants to carry out these maneuvers, though, doesn’t mean it can. Aside from the growing impracticality of committing to huge conflicts when Washington’s opponents are gaining so much strength, there’s the big obstacle the war architects have within the USA itself: a public which can’t be relied on to respond to false flags in the way the government wants them to.
In 2013, the empire had the bitter experience of carrying out a false flag, and then needing to halt its war plans because the psyops weren’t effective enough. Obama admitted the lack of mass support for striking Syria, which he encountered even though Washington’s destabilization operatives had carried out a false flag chemical attack. It wasn’t until 2017 that the Syria psyop became strong enough for the U.S. to feel comfortable with executing a Syria strike only a fraction as large as the one Obama had planned. And even though the 2017 Syria strike was able to gain the support of the majority of Americans, the narratives behind the war on Syria were soon able to be undermined.
The majority of Trump’s own supporters weren’t supportive of more serious U.S. involvement in Syria, with the bulk of antiwar sentiment on Syria ironically coming from MAGA types. And when WikiLeaks exposed the coverup of the evidence disproving U.S. accounts of the 2018 Douma incident, the Syria narrative managers had to go on the defense, with dubious effectiveness. The preexisting skepticism towards the Syria narratives among the MAGA base crippled the psyop, forcing the liberal technocrats to invest their cognitive warfare efforts in the Democrat base while intensifying the deep state’s war against MAGA.
This history shows that combating the U.S. empire’s narrative dominance can have the effect of frustrating Washington’s foreign policy designs. As well as that opposition towards these designs can come from elements across the ideological spectrum, not just the left. Around half the U.S. public has come to believe that the U.S./Israeli military effort in Gaza has “gone too far,” representing a downward trend in support for Israel. We’re already nearly at the point where backing Israel has become something which goes against the views of the majority of the public. In order to make this consciousness shift have an actual effect on the conflict; as well as make the USA’s pro-Palestine public shift translate into a pro-China shift; we must expand the anti-imperialist movement beyond liberal circles. We must work to build an alliance against the empire throughout all social elements that are revolution-compatible, which includes the elements of the MAGA base that are hostile towards neoconservatism.
The problem with cultivating an antiwar movement which exclusively seeks to appeal to liberals is that this will necessarily lead to that movement becoming captured by liberal NGOs. Which will lead the parts of the Democrat base that are compatible with antiwar goals to assisting these NGOs in their pinkwashed imperialist efforts. The bulk of support for Palestine comes from Democrat voters, yet this support gets wasted when you simply lead these voters into efforts at tailing the Democratic Party. The pro-Palestine movement—and by extension the effort to prevent the coming China false flags from starting World War III—can only become effective when it’s no longer defined by our hyper-partisan culture. When it’s no longer being monopolized by orgs that refuse to expand their reach beyond left-liberal circles, and blankedly view the MAGA base as enemies.
What must we do when we have two major bourgeois parties that both have large amounts of people who oppose imperialist wars, but oppose different wars depending on which camp they’re in? It’s apparent that the problem is polarization, created by the psyops which our ruling class has used to prevent successful revolutionary efforts throughout capitalism’s decline. This is why most Trump supporters at present don’t want U.S. involvement in Syria, yet are susceptible to the propaganda against China and Iran. As well as why most Democrats support Palestine, yet are susceptible to the propaganda against Russia and Syria.
Those left groups that have been holding back the struggle believe the solution is to fully invest ourselves in appealing towards the liberal camp. But all that does is make us inclined to disavow Russia, while perpetuating the partisan discourse psyops. This is true even if we within the communist movement have been able to come to the correct stance on China and multipolarity. As long as we’re acting to assist the Democratic Party in its vilification of all who vote against it, whatever we say we stand for is meaningless. All that matters is the effects our choices have.
If we choose to build an iteration of the anti-imperialist movement that’s not constrained by liberal tailism, and instead exists on the basis of reaching all elements with revolutionary potential, then the war machine’s next psyops are going to be rendered ineffective. Look at what’s happened to the Ukraine psyop due to the pro-Russian consciousness shift among conservatives. If not for this political reorientation, the empire would at least be in a relatively more comfortable place amid Russia’s economic victory over the U.S. bloc, and the ongoing decline in Ukraine’s fight capabilities. Because the base of the former party of Bush has proven to be unreliable, the imperial state is now at a much greater risk of losing domestic control.
Should communists respond to this political reorientation properly, the state will become unable to pursue its repressive goals without provoking unmanageable mass backlash. The illiberal elements will be able to unite against this repression; we already know this because the biggest commentator who’s spoken against the Uhuru indictments is Tucker Carlson. A crucial factor that’s put the liberation forces in such a good strategic situation is the turn by illiberal Americans against the new cold war. We have to take advantage of this development, not ignore it in favor of copying Democrat elitism.
The next thing we must do is bring as many of the pro-Russian conservatives as we can towards also being pro-China. That we can’t get all of them to this point shouldn’t discourage us in the least; the important thing is that we cease to act like our knowledge about China’s positive historical role should be shared exclusively within left-liberal circles. We must spread awareness of how the PRC is a crucial strategic partner of Russia. How Russia’s efforts to weaken international monopoly capital—which illiberal Americans increasingly recognize as their enemy—are connected to the actions of China’s ruling communist party. More U.S. Americans are coming to realize that their interests are in the defeat of the liberal order. It’s on this basis that they can come to unite with China, and thereby render the liberal order more vulnerable than ever.
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