We who’ve been working to resist Biden’s Ukraine proxy war have a new task, one which can only get more urgent as time passes: to resist the drive towards war with Mexico. This war campaign is an act of destruction that’s increasingly seen by our ruling class as logical to carry out amid Washington’s defeat in Ukraine, and broader defeat in the economic war with BRICS. And because it’s a war propaganda effort that’s being led by the right, it has a danger of being more effective than the Ukraine narrative; not because it won’t be met with a huge backlash, as it certainly will, but because this backlash will be neutralized should the antiwar movement be led by the conventional “left.”
Whereas the Ukraine narrative has come to be especially opposed by conservatives, making Marxists able to bring many of these conservatives into the anti-imperialist movement, war on Mexico is something that’s being sold specifically to the right. Which means that unless we can bring down support for the war among conservative-leaning Americans, and build an antiwar movement which brings in apolitical people, the main opposition to the war is going to be the left; an element that’s proven itself unwilling to practice anti-imperialism in a serious way.
There still is great hope for breaking the state’s social control once the war campaign against Mexico starts; the imperial structure has gotten weaker than ever, and this absolutely could bring an unprecedented weakening of the war machine. For the anti-Mexico psyop to backfire, though, we’ll need to do the work required for building an effective anti-imperialist movement. Which means uniting the parts of the left-leaning political elements that are serious about resisting the war machine; with the types of libertarians and other non-leftists who are also serious about this cause.
The established left orgs can’t be relied upon to lead the resistance against the coming war on Mexico—or against the domestic repressive campaign and possible military draft it will entail—because these orgs reject anti-imperialist unity. Which means they aren’t concerned with trying to bring any of the anti-Mexico psyop’s primary targets (conservative-leaning Americans) towards the anti-imperialist perspective. They isolate themselves both from the demographic that’s recently shown itself most willing to oppose NATO; and from the demographic of apolitical people, who can only be reached if we reject the New Left’s insular mode of practice.
Their reaction to this year’s joint antiwar efforts by pro-Russian communists and non-leftists has shown they aren’t interested in investigating the perspectives of these organizers; that they prefer to stay within their insulated activism niche, while classifying all outside this niche as threats. That’s not the way of operating which can bring the people to victory against their government’s upcoming schemes for warfare, austerity, and repression. Whereas the state is never going to be subdued by an antiwar movement that willfully handicaps itself via sectarianism and anti-solidarity thinking, a movement that’s able to unify all who are compatible with the anti-imperialist agenda is a real threat.
If the political forces that pro-Russian communists have built this anti-imperialist coalition with were entirely untrustworthy, as the anti-coalition leftists assert, then none of them would be willing to stay unified with us. In a project to build multi-tendency resistance towards the imperial state, the untrustworthy elements ultimately take themselves out of the formation on their own; this is what I’ve learned from witnessing what it looks like when bad actors come up against orgs which are too strong to be destroyed by drama. As long as a core of people with integrity are in charge of a formation, that formation will be able to continue functioning. And such a core absolutely exists in the recently formed anti-NATO organizing coalition; not all its members are communists, but somebody can not call themselves a communist while still proving themselves to be a reliable servant of the anti-imperialist struggle.
The trait these organizers share is a dedication towards fighting the pro-war forces that are backed by the highest levels of capital, and that represent the clearest threat towards peace, prosperity, and liberty. Throughout the Ukraine proxy war, NATO has been the primary one of these destructive forces that we’ve needed to combat; NATO is destroying itself, though. When the empire is forced to further retreat, and shift its main war operations towards the Americas, this primary threat will become the CIA. This is because even though the Cold War model of using the CIA to install military dictatorships is no longer viable; and the new strategy for regime change is to use the State Department for orchestrating “progressive” color revolutions; the CIA is now doing something else: manufacturing a drug cartel crisis within Mexico to create justification for a U.S. invasion.
As soon as we bring this simple reality to the people; and back it up with the sources about the CIA’s historical and recent efforts to nurture the continental drug trade; the people become unable to accept the story the warmongers tell about Mexico. Their disillusionment with the Ukraine narrative has made most Americans better able to become immune to the war machine’s manipulations; we only need to make the real story about Mexico accessible to them, and they’ll join us. The only way the war on Mexico can be sold is by keeping the CIA’s criminal activities hidden, while making those who talk about these activities seen as untrustworthy. As Douglas Valentine has observed in an interview about the CIA’s criminal operations, these crimes depend on a constant effort to manage mass consciousness:
What FOX and MSNBC have in common is that, in a free-wheeling capitalist society, news is a commodity. News outlets target demographic audience to sell a product. It’s all fake news, in so far as each media outlet skews its presentation of the news to satisfy its customers. But when it comes to the CIA, it’s not just fake, it’s poison. It subverts democratic institutions. Any domestic Phoenix-style organization or operation depends on double-speak and deniability, as well as official secrecy and media self-censorship. The CIA’s overarching need for total control of information requires media complicity. This was one of the great lesson defeat in Vietnam taught our leaders. The highly indoctrinated and well rewarded managers who run the government and media will never again allow the public to see the carnage they inflict upon foreign civilians. Americans never will see the mutilated Iraqi, Afghani, Libyan, and Syrian children killed by marauding US mercenary forces and cluster bombs. On the other hand, falsified portrayals of CIA kidnappings, torture, and assassinations are glorified on TV and in movies. Telling the proper story is the key. Thanks to media complicity, Phoenix has already become the template for providing internal political security for America’s leaders.
In The CIA as Organized Crime, Valentine concludes that fascism is the practice which comes from this systemically inherent corruption and enforced ignorance. “Only five percent of the people need to be organized in this fashion to install a fascist dictator in the United States,” he writes. “That is the ultimate objective of the greatest covert operation ever, the one in which the oligarchs steal everything you own.” These oligarchs, through their servants in the intelligence apparatus, the media, and the imperialist intelligentsia, have already carried out a coup by the national security state; we’re only waiting for when they get enough incentive to use all their tools for waging war against our popular movements.
All who are committed to working with myself and other communists on combating this coup are welcome to join us in struggle. That’s the big idea which Marxists need to convey at the moment, because it’s how we can make the anti-imperialist movement equipped to overcome the menaces that we’ll have to confront next.
Whether somebody is a good person to work with isn’t necessarily dependent on how they ideologically label themselves; it depends on whether they take the right stances on the issues. The major political actors who call themselves communists, yet (for one example) ignore or barely talk about the Uhuru case, have not adopted the right practice; the ones who don’t call themselves communists, yet have been doing the right thing when it comes to Uhuru and the other key issues, are worth making into allies. That’s the lesson which can bring the anti-imperialist struggle to success when the anti-Mexico psyop intensifies, and the strength of our movement is tested.
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