This month Hillary Clinton, the figure who catalyzed the Russiagate psyop and its related censorship policies, advocated for a measure that the highest levels of capital view as essential for stabilizing the liberal order: “deprogramming” the illiberal elements of society. Clinton specifically called for Trump supporters to be given this ideological re-training, which concealed the true nature of what Clinton and the others in the most powerful wing of our ruling class seek to do; supposedly this “deprogram” idea is about getting closed-minded people to unlearn racial prejudice, but really it’s about suppressing opposition towards war, austerity, and the national security state. That’s because the MAGA people have been the biggest demographic in which skepticism towards NATO’s Ukraine proxy war has existed; and whenever the liberal technocrats act to “fight MAGA,” they use this as a pretext for assailing the socialist and anti-imperialist movement.
Clinton’s comment has confirmed the idea that in the era after Biden’s Ukraine gamble has failed, the highest levels of capital seek to purge anti-imperialists, and to do so under the guise of countering reactionary politics. The opportunistic elements that dominate the modern “left” are ready to provide narrative reinforcement for this war on dissent; because these leftists operate according to the perception that liberals are the most advanced parts of the masses, and that therefore we should copy the rhetoric and aesthetics of the Democratic Party’s “ResistanceTM” color revolution. The truth is that the liberals represent the strongest wing of reactionary politics; the wing which has institutional support from the highest levels of government, and from international monopoly capital.
With the Zionist state and its supporters having been forced this month to try to fight off a formidable anti-colonial revolt, the elements of the right that are obstinately pro-Israel have mobilized to Zionism’s defense; but they’re not the ones with the greatest ability to aid Israel, and to waging war upon Israel’s opponents. Those powers instead exist within finance capital, and within its main tools the Democratic Party, the legacy media, big tech, and the intelligence agencies.
The two rival wings of our ruling class may be able to unite behind Israel and its genocide against Gaza, which has let the two factions become better able to work together after their Ukraine dispute. But with the unprecedented institutional dominance that the new cold war has given to the “progressive” wing of capital over the last decade, it’s this element which at the moment shares most of the real responsibility for ensuring Israel defeats the rebels. And if the Zionist state can’t stabilize itself—which looks increasingly likely—then the Clinton wing of the elites will experience a crisis of legitimacy in the view of those invested within the colonial project. Which will further intensify the infighting within the ruling class, among all the other ways that a war can bring about the conditions for a revolution.
These developments in Israel haven’t ended the era in which wokeness is the primary cultural influence tool of the ruling elites, but they have accelerated the process where that narrative control project unravels. When Ukraine was the main narrative—and this narrative wasn’t yet undermined by widespread awareness of Ukraine’s Nazistic nature—the liberals could so easily portray their war operations as righteous efforts to defend a smaller country from a bigger one. Now that the liberals are being forced to market aid to Israel, they have to explain why it’s righteous to back an effort by a bigger country to invade an open-air concentration camp; take away the camp’s electricity and water; then send in death squads to deliberately murder non-combatants (including children).
It’s not that Israel could become a disaster for the U.S. empire of the kind that Ukraine has become; it’s that Israel has already been turning into such a disaster at a stunning pace. Netanyahu is making himself into the next Zelensky, experiencing the same blowback from trying to fight a better-prepared adversary which Zelensky has; Netanyahu’s armed forces have immediately come to have poor morale, and have come to have rage towards him that’s at times uncontainable. For instance, recently an officer exploded at Netanyahu with the proclamation: “You are a liar! You are nothing!” Israel’s fighters know that their task is absurd, that this isn’t just another manageable disruption.
A society that’s built off of endless war can’t sustain itself, and this is as true for the USA as it is for Israel. This collapse of the Euro-American colonial project within the Arab world would be happening regardless of which faction of the U.S. ruling class is in power; but the industrial capital wing is going to exploit the crisis to attack the finance capital wing, and that will further destabilize the imperial center.
Finance capital is still going to attempt its purge of the illiberal forces, and will feel an even more urgent need to do so because of its dual failure in Ukraine and Israel. This purge is going to be made harder, though, by these latest losses for U.S. hegemony. As well as by whatever additional losses for it that have happened by the 2024 election, which will be the most opportune moment for the intelligence agencies to propagate a Russiagate 2.0. These are precarious conditions for carrying out a psyop, especially one like Russiagate. The original Russiagate psyop—which itself represented an instance where the ruling elites needed to scramble amid unexpected developments—succeeded only partially. It let big tech intensify censorship, and let Biden sell the Ukraine proxy war for a time; but the range of its impact on mass consciousness was limited to the Democratic Party’s base.
A majority of Americans have ultimately come to oppose aid to Ukraine, which means that if they manage to organize against imperialism, no psyop will be enough to neutralize the threat of revolution. The Ukraine conflict has already led to the emergence of a united front between communists and other sections of the antiwar movement; and the unraveling of NATO’s narrative dominance in the USA has created an opportunity for the front’s members to greatly expand their connections with the people.
The elites are trying to prevent this front from succeeding by turning the conservatives who’ve opposed Ukraine aid towards supporting aid to Israel. And this tactic is indeed getting many people who’ve taken the correct stance on Ukraine to act inconsistently. It’s not succeeded at creating a split within the Rage Against the War Machine organizing coalition, though, because this coalition is naturally incompatible with Zionism and is set up to avoid fatal divisions regardless. This coalition; with the help of the Center for Political Innovation, and those assisting in CPI’s efforts to put on the upcoming December 2nd anti-imperialist convention; has potential to reach far deeper into the people.
We can turn the chaos the imperial order is creating for itself into a scenario where the people gain access to an avenue for advancing their material interests. Many Americans can be won to the anti-Zionist cause, and the minority among them who are obstinately pro-Zionist can’t hold back the progression of history; the social system they’re loyal to is falling apart, and the people will back us in our project to replace it with a new one.
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