The anti-imperialist movement, and all other elements of radical politics, are in urgent need of help. This is ironically because of how successful these forces have been getting lately; in reaction to our movement’s recent victories in the fight against the Ukraine narrative, the state is seeking to criminalize our efforts; a repressive campaign that’s started with the Uhuru indictments. The attempt to prosecute Uhuru on the basis of its international anti-imperialist solidarity outreach represents an existential threat towards every other org which does the same thing; if successful, it’s going to force our movement to go underground.
The outcome we’re trending towards is one where our own government declares war against us, and tries to crush all resistance to the efforts by our ruling elites to degrow the economy. Russia’s victory in Ukraine represents the point where U.S. imperialism collapses much faster than we could have thought; at this point, the empire has gotten desperate enough that it’s likely to pursue a war against Mexico next. Which would bring an even greater acceleration of the system’s decline, forcing the elites to speed up their austerity measures. This unprecedented attack upon our living standards is going to be sold as a way to save the planet, with all the costs being foisted onto those seen as economically expendable. Which is going to require a total mobilization against all who are resisting the war machine, the national security state, and our corporate dictatorship.
Amid the public’s growing fatigue over the Ukraine war effort, and the recent outrage over Canada’s honoring of a Nazi, the media is acting cautiously about the issue of Uhuru. The legacy media outlets haven’t talked about the case since the indictments happened half a year ago, and it’s likely that whenever they talk about the case again, it will be in a discrete way. The goal of the narrative managers is to distract from this injustice that’s being committed upon the Black community, the working class movement, the peace movement, and everyone who simply has an interest in the preservation of democratic freedoms. They don’t want an increasingly disillusioned public to find out about just how despicable our government is getting.
This effort to bury the Uhuru case is essential for preventing the majority of the people, who share a desire to defend civil liberties, from uniting against the state. At this point, it’s a progressive stance to be in favor of keeping the 18th century U.S. Constitution; that’s been a progressive stance perhaps ever since the Bush administration began the ongoing War on Terror, with its anti-constitutional standards for who deserves rights. The national security state has become so reactionary that it would prefer to take us back to a time earlier than 1776, when the state had the power to eliminate anyone who so much as made forbidden knowledge available to the people.
By the time the war with Mexico (or whatever the next big target is) has failed like Ukraine, the ruling class will have sufficient incentive to cease having all respect for the constitution. They’ll use whatever means necessary in order to wage their war against Americans, including breaking the social contract between government and people that’s let the U.S. survive so long as a republic. As soon as this contract ends, the people will no longer have reason to respect their government; which is a reason why it’s quite possible that what follows the coming war on the American people is going to be a civil war. Our liberal ruling elites could unintentionally bring about the same breakdown in order that they seek so much to prevent.
If we want a workers revolution to come out of this, we communists are going to need to learn how to unite with all the other forces which oppose liberal fascism. To learn how to work with these forces on the goals we share, rather than continuing to isolate ourselves from them. That’s the only way we’ll build a relationship with the people more broadly, because such a practice by definition goes against insularity and elitism. It’s no coincidence that the elements of the left which reject that effective practice have been either totally ignoring the Uhuru case, or only talking about it as much as the media has; these elements are infected with an ailment, an ailment that’s hindering the most important tasks we need to pursue at this moment.
If we want the crises of our time to produce socialism instead of barbarism, we must bring together the opponents of NATO and the three-letter agencies; then mobilize these forces against the state. The great problem with the default “left” circles at this moment is that they have no intention of doing these things. Their prevailing attitude is to be outright hostile towards such a strategy, because they see the majority of the anti-NATO movement (and all who work with the “bad” antiwar people) as untouchable. This is part of why these leftists have been apathetic about defending Uhuru, since Uhuru has allied with Caleb Maupin’s CPI and Maupin is one of the people on this blacklist. Uhuru’s support for the anti-fascist resistance actions of Russia has also helped make these leftists alienated from it; since leftists support Palestine when it’s fighting off imperialist violence, but don’t share such solidarity with Russia.
A bigger reason for their silence on Uhuru, though, is that supporting it is simply not trendy. The established leftist orgs don’t prioritize what’s strategically best for the movement, they prioritize what gives them influence within the “left” niche. Many of the leftists who say they support Palestine are going to join the reactionaries in demonizing Palestine when Israel is defeated, and Palestinians have to build an anti-imperialist state in its place. (Think of Parenti’s observation about how the “pure” socialists support every revolution besides the ones that succeed.)
It’s not just the anarchists, the social democrats, and the other left anti-communists who are the problem, though. These last couple years have shown that many of the self-described Marxist-Leninists who say they support China will oppose another anti-imperialist country (in this case Russia) when it goes too far in defying the hegemon. And if a war on Mexico happens, most of the leftists who come out against it are going to be perpetuating the infighting within the antiwar movement that they started off this year in reaction to Rage Against the War Machine. Any effort to resist the war effort that doesn’t follow their insular practice is going to come under attack both from the neocons, and from the leftists whose role is to enable the neocons.
The actors who are supposed to be leading a resistance against the imperial state have fundamentally backward priorities, and that’s why they’re detached from the Uhuru case. If voicing solidarity with Palestine weren’t expedient for them to do, they would be showing a lack of concern for it, like they’re showing a lack of concern for Russia’s anti-fascist struggle or for Uhuru. This is shown by how the actors on the “left” with the closest ties to the Democratic Party are acting in such an unprincipled way on Palestine, with “democratic socialist” politicians condemning both sides. If we want to survive, we need to be consistent in our support for the empire’s victims; if we fail to generate sufficient mobilization against Uhuru’s repression, the left’s lack of such consistency will enable the empire to launch a war upon its own people.
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