Trump and Musk have revealed their compatibility with the liberal order; this is exemplified by their support for the H-1B high-income immigration work visa. And because of this, I predict we’ll see the amplification of a certain psyop: the “Jewish question” psyop. This is the narrative which seeks to convince the anti-establishment right that the driving force behind monopoly capital is not a socioeconomic system, but rather a Jewish conspiracy. As more of the MAGA base becomes alienated from Trump, Musk, and those within their Reaganist conservative camp, this is the idea that we’ll increasingly see the far right push. Those who propagate the “JQ,” and frame the class struggle as a fundamentally racial conflict, will attack these conservative leaders as Jewish agents.
The JQers will be boosted by the deep state, with Musk’s own platform ironically being the main tool the feds use for this. The goal is to steer disillusioned conservatives away from class consciousness, and towards a racial ideology that prevents worker unity. These days, a major part of the JQ psyop is co-optation of the Palestinian cause, which JQ voices frequently talk about in a shallow way. When JQer Dan Bilzerian has denounced the actions of the Zionist entity, he’s only partially focused on the genocide itself, using it as a vehicle for advancing his core argument: that Jewish supremacy is the source behind all of today’s systemic wrongs, rather than merely being a tool imperialism uses to oppress Palestinians. And the empire likes to see these perspectives put forth, because though it can’t totally eliminate anti-Zionist sentiments, it at least prefers that JQers represent the face of the pro-Palestine stance.
JQers discourage people from thinking in economic terms; from seeing how capital’s exploitation transcends racial and national barriers. They reduce everything to a racial conflict, where Jews have supposedly hijacked the system to subjugate whites. These modern JQers are only talking about Palestine because this captures attention; they’re not trying to build any actual anti-imperialist solidarity movement. Their goal is to advance a race-baiting grift, and the feds are assisting them in this.
These are the ideological forces that seek to pick up support from those who’ve invested themselves in MAGA, but are now seeing that Trump doesn’t truly represent MAGA. The anger over how our ruling class draws upon labor from around the globe, rather than prioritizing the workers here, relates to a larger outrage about our imperial system. The parts of the MAGA base which hate H-1B are the same Trump voters who tend to hate NATO, and the war on Syria, and the financial monopolies that the war machine fuels.
The pro-imperialist left characterizes them as simply motivated by racism because within the left imperialist worldview, anything that goes against global financial interests must necessarily be hateful and backwards. It’s because of this leftist reaction to MAGA that these days, most committed pro-imperialists are left-wing. There are still people on the right who support imperialism from the pro-Zionist position, but they’re increasingly in conflict with the conservative currents which view Zionism as an enemy. And as it gets harder to reconcile opposing NATO with supporting Zionism, more among them are gaining the potential to break from this position.
There are still figures like Ben Shapiro, who’s tried to sell his followers on supporting both Zionism and Ukraine; but Shapiro has alienated many on the right by doing this. The trend is in favor of anti-establishment thinking, so the system’s best option is to steer this thinking away from class conscious ideas. To substitute the proletarian struggle with a struggle against “the Jews,” where the historical processes we’re experiencing get portrayed as the product of a racialized conspiracy.
JQ rhetoric represents the inverse to the other kind of race reductionism we see in the modern day; that being the “decolonial” New Left’s view of race, in which class struggle gets simplified as a conflict between whites and nonwhites. In this framework, class is not at the core of the power struggle that’s taking place, because class is seen as secondary to identity. The phenomena we see in capitalism’s modern age, where a new financial imperialism has worked to disenfranchise workers of all colors, is interpreted as being centrally racial in character. This defeats the potential for multi-racial worker solidarity. And when the actors who push it claim to be communists, it turns “communism” into a vehicle for liberal intersectionality rhetoric. Neither the JQ, nor intersectional and “decolonial” theory, can explain our situation; only genuine dialectical materialism can. That’s why authentic communists—the ones who represent not “decoloniality” but real class analysis— have an essential role to play in our new political era.
We’re now at a stage where the proto-conscious mass elements which have embraced MAGA are realizing the liberal nature of the leaders they once believed in. Myself and other communists anticipated that the MAGA base would react to Trump’s second term in this way, but the disillusionment is happening even faster than I expected. There’s come to be widespread awareness that voting for Trump could neither get the neocons out of the White House; nor end the project to use immigration for creating an American caste system. Our job is to point towards class struggle as the solution, guiding all mass elements with revolutionary potential towards joining with the proletarian cause. Our class enemies are trying to divert these elements away from the cause, but if we do our duty, they won’t be successful enough in this to save their system.
More opportunities are appearing for us to expose the contradictions within MAGA. Trump’s next failures are going to involve capitulations to the war machine; it’s apparent from his record of anti-Russian provocations, and his unwillingness to present a peace proposal Russia would accept, that the new cold warriors are going to get their next wishes. They won’t win in Ukraine, but they’re already won the domestic power struggle; the White House will remain committed to the neocon agenda. The differences will be that Trump’s cold war maneuvers are going to manifest in more chaotic ways; and that the MAGA coalition will experience unprecedented splits.
These disruptions will produce a series of different reactions. Some in the coalition will react by doubling down, and insisting that Trump or his successor must be trusted. But this won’t be as popular of an opinion as it was in the past, and the deep state’s abandonment of the QAnon psyop has shown this. Many more will become alienated from the MAGA leadership, and where these disaffected elements go will determine which role anti-establishment conservatives are going to have next. If the deep state gets its way, the JQ will fill the vacuum left by MAGA; we must prevent this by propagating worker solidarity, and building a mass movement against imperialism.
The New Left can’t stop us from doing this; the thing that threatens to derail our efforts is state repression, which will greatly intensify during Trump’s second term. Our rulers see the limitations of their narrative management efforts, and even something as insidious as the JQ can’t stop a serious proletarian movement. So the counterinsurgency is going to shift more towards direct crackdowns. If we can prepare our organizations to absorb this, we’ll get to change where the country goes next.
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