Malians demonstrate against France, and in favor of Russia, during September 2020
There’s a reason why throughout the war that the U.S. empire has been waging against Africa, the Pentagon has done all it can to keep this war hidden: the USA can’t have its claim to global moral leadership taken seriously when the world knows it’s continuing the old colonial atrocities. Liberals are perpetually trying to pursue two contradictory goals: maintain the violent subjugation of the formerly colonized world, and maintain their self-concept as representatives of what’s supposedly the most humane social system. When this social system is revealed to be no better than the incomprehensibly cruel empires of the 19th century, a contradiction appears, and this contradiction can only be responded to with denial.
The moral crusade the liberals are waging against Russia, China, and the other supposed global villains is continuously undermined by the crimes of the leaders the liberals support. AFRICOM, with its dozens of initially secret bases which represent a new occupation of historically colonized countries; the drone strikes and bombings that have been carried out in these countries by powers like the USA and France, and that have in so many instances been found to amount to war crimes; the broader crime against the biosphere that these militaries operations represent, in which the American war machine has long been acting as the world’s biggest institutional polluter. These destructive policies, along with the ever-intensifying looting that the imperial powers have been carrying out within their neo-colonies, have been leaving the Global South with a terrifying lack of resources to survive the climate crisis.
A grouping of countries that are not only built on slavery and genocide, but keeping up these practices in modern forms, can’t successfully make the argument that they deserve to be viewed as the definitive global authorities. The only reason the Global South has allowed U.S. hegemony to exist is because the hegemon has been coercing them into it through debt entrapment, and through perpetual efforts to brutally end any government that defies Washington’s will. Last month, when this coercion became less easy, a number of African countries began refusing to comply.
The peoples of the Global South have had an extremely substantial material incentive to act against the U.S. and its allies ever since the looting of their homelands began generations ago; it’s only now that they’re seeing unprecedented opportunities for getting rid of their old neo-colonial regimes. As soon as the next opening for revolt appears, another chunk of these countries will repeat what Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have done.
Within the liberal framework of understanding, the acts of defiance by these three countries can’t be recognized as a valid reaction to centuries of exploitation and violence; if that reality becomes seen, the liberals lose their basis for supporting the NATO-centered international order. These countries have to be portrayed as doing the work of Washington’s rivals, the implication being that the peoples supporting Africa’s revolutions have been manipulated into embracing supposedly false solutions. The reality of global inequality can be talked about, but the responsibility for this inequality’s perpetuation can’t be assigned towards the NATO powers. The pro-NATO media needs to pretend like this wealth imbalance simply exists on its own, with there being no need to discuss the economic crimes of the IMF or the World Bank.
And if the NATO countries don’t need to be blamed, then the African liberation movements must be scapegoating those countries for their problems; we don’t need to take their accusations of exploitation and oppression seriously, these people have been manipulated into misplaced anger by the Russians and the Chinese.
Our ruling institutions will use any rationale they can think of to maintain the narrative that the NATO bloc is in the right. Even when multiple formerly colonized countries are carrying out epic feats in order to demonstrate how much this bloc is harming them, the partisans of global monopoly capital continue to act like it’s China and Russia we should be upset at. The only ones who are guaranteed to keep believing this are the minority which have a class interest in defending monopoly capital: the capitalist, the petty-bourgeoisie, the labor aristocrats who live comfortably because of the super-profits which neo-colonialism produces.
The majority of the people in the USA, and in the other imperialist countries, share a primary material interest with the Global South’s workers in ending monopoly capitalism. Our ruling elites are making the same argument to the core’s workers that they’re making to the Global South: the liberal order is the best possible system, so you must accept our leadership. And like the Global South, the core’s workers simply can’t embrace this idea, because what they materially see isn’t consistent with the story the exploiters are telling them. How can these workers agree that liberalism’s wars are in their interests, when they’re experiencing an ever-rising cost of living as a consequence of these wars? How can they believe their own class interests align with those of their ruling class, when their rulers have done nothing but wage war against them for decades? The majority can see that their government is working in the interests of the corporations, which is why most Americans now oppose sending more aid to Ukraine.
We American Marxist anti-imperialists bring attention to the hypocrisy of the liberals not with the hope of changing the minds of the liberals, because they’ve made clear a thousand times over that they don’t care about hypocrisy. We do this to confirm the suspicions that working class people in this country have been having; the suspicions that our government is involved in Ukraine not to “defend democracy,” but to maintain an exploitative economic system.
This is how we begin to educationally lift the ordinary workers up to the level of trained cadre members; how we get out of the movement and into the masses. The workers in the core can win by learning from the victories of the Global South; by internalizing their lesson of uniting with all the forces which are compatible with the anti-imperialist cause. And by gaining victory over their capitalist states, the core’s workers can repay this favor by eliminating the imperial forces that menace the Global South. These two sections of the world’s revolutionary movements have a symbiotic relationship, both able to fulfill crucial needs which the other one has.
When our ruling institutions try to discredit the anti-imperialist actions of Russia, China, Iran, BRICS, or other counter-hegemonic global players, they’re trying to prevent the core’s workers from attaining this cohesion with the forces which share their interests. They seek to cut off the domestic labor movement from the increasingly powerful institutions that are challenging the old, colonial institutions, leaving radicals here isolated and demoralized. For generations, they’ve mainly used psyops to do this; namely the ones that seek to discredit existing socialist states in the view of American Marxists. Or more recently the psyops that seek to make these Marxists opposed to Russia’s special military operation, the challenge to dollar dominance by BRICS, and multipolarity.
The elements of the communist movement which do support all these things are gaining more influence though, using the anti-NATO coalition that’s emerged to get more control over our discourse. Therefore, the next thing the elites do is going to be to try to suppress the anti-imperialist movement. As we work to survive this retaliation from the state, may Africa’s recent victorious give us assurance that our own success is possible.
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