We Need a Union-Centred Militia to Defend the Workers Movement and Democratic Rights!
Chief steward Chris Nineham arrested at 18th January 2025 Palestine Demo
On 18th January, Keir Starmer’s Zionist ‘Labour’ government launched an all-out attack on the right to protest the genocide of the Palestinian people. Two days previously, the agreed route of the national Palestine Demonstration, which was scheduled to begin at the BBC Headquarters at Portland Place, Central London, which has been a regular starting point for the dozens of marches against the genocide that have taken place over the last 15 months, was declared a forbidden zone. On the day, protesters were instead directed to gather in Whitehall. They were in fact blocked in Whitehall and prevented from marching anywhere else by police lines and a large cohort of police vans. Paramilitary cops were mobilised from around Britain – some were spotted from as far away as Wales.
As political pressure built up against this abuse of those who had travelled from around Britain to demonstrate against the genocide, the cops actively allowed marchers to allow a contingent to pass through police lines to march northward to place flowers and children’s clothes at the BBC. Having left Whitehall, that contingent was stopped again in the North-West corner of Trafalgar Square, which is only yards away from the top of Whitehall. They agreed to lay their flowers at that point in Trafalgar Square, but were then attacked by the police, and the chief steward of the march, Chris Nineham, vice-chair of the Stop the War Coalition, was arrested in a outrageously physical manner by these thugs. He was kept in Walworth Police Station overnight and eventually charged under ‘Public Order’ legislation with leading an illegal march.
He has been given outrageous bail conditions that amount to a apartheid South African style ‘banning order’ in effect – he is not allowed to attend any kind of protest whatsoever. Now it appears that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, Labour left MP’s, are to be ‘interviewed under caution’ by the police for their participation in the march out of Whitehall, which the cops agreed to. It appears that orders then came from above, perhaps from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, or Starmer himself, to set this trap with the police lines and then smash the march up. This after the cops tore up the route of the march from Portland Place, which was agreed with them by the organisers weeks ago, on the obviously politically motivated say-so of Zionist politicians, and their far-right Rabbi friend. What Corbyn and McDonnell may or may not be charged with is anyone’s guess, but this is clearly an attempted extension of the Zionist witchhunt in the Labour Party to the sphere of the state and so-called ‘law and order’. Its completely fraudulent, desperate stuff, necessarily so because in the face of a holocaust committed by Zionists, the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear has little traction outside the circles of true believers in the Zionist cult within the ruling class. So they resort to crude lying, thuggery and frame ups instead
Their fraudulent story is that supposedly a synagogue in Great Portland Street, which is not even on the route of the banned march, would allegedly be ‘disrupted’ on a Saturday afternoon (the Jewish Sabbath) by a Palestinian event in the vicinity. This is clearly a politically motivated fraud, as apart from the Synagogue being a third of a mile away from the BBC HQ, on a different road entirely, the Rabbi in charge, Barry Lerer, is a far-right extremist who travels to Jerusalem for the annual ‘March of Flags’ though the Muslim Quarter of the Old City in East Jerusalem. According to Wikipedia:
“The event, which passes through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter in East Jerusalem, is regularly attended by far-right Jewish Israelis, including the far-right Lehava organisation, and is often accompanied by violence, especially against the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. Attendees have been regularly seen chanting racist and anti-Arab slogans such as “death to Arabs,” “A Jew is a soul, an Arab is the son of a whore,” and “may your villages burn”…. Palestinian residents frequently shutter their businesses and homes on the day of the march for fear of being subjected to violence from Israeli marchers, or after being ordered to do so by the Israel Police, who also institute closures and checkpoints in and around the Old City.” ?(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Day_march)
Under the incitement of Keir Starmer, whose support for Zionism “without qualification” is a matter of public record, the Metropolitan Police behaved toward Palestine Solidarity Protesters rather like the Zionist cops described above.
The ceasefire in Gaza marks a serious political defeat for the Zionists, and that has driven some of these people into a frenzy. The attacks on democratic rights come from a position of weakness, not strength. The Zionist cult, which appears to have Western politics sewn up, is in deep trouble and could implode. Knowledge of Israel’s holocaust has not been possible to suppress – it is the best known genocide in history thanks to social media.
Crude police thuggery and racism, 1970s style, has made an overt comeback in Britain over the Gaza protests. Video went viral of the cops brutally and repeatedly punching an Asian man, Waseem Yusuf, who was carrying a Palestinian flag at a protest event in Tower Hamlets in July. He was released without charge at the time, though he was injured and subject to medical treatment ever since. Now he has been charged with resisting arrest and ‘assaulting’ the thugs who are clearly visible brutally beating him.
Zionism is as potently anti-democratic and genocidal as Nazism, as millions are learning. And the working class movement does have the means to defend itself against such threats. It comes from the tradition of the Bolsheviks, not British social-democracy. As Leon Trotsky noted in the 1938 Transitional Programme, which crystallised that experience:
“In connection with every strike and street demonstration, it is imperative to propagate the necessity of creating workers’ groups for self-defence. It is necessary to write this slogan into the program of the revolutionary wing of the trade unions. It is imperative wherever possible, beginning with the youth groups, to organize groups for self-defence, to drill and acquaint them with the use of arms.
“It is necessary to advance the slogan of a workers’ militia as the one serious guarantee for the inviolability of workers’ organizations, meetings and press.”
The fascistic nature of Zionism, and the permeation of bourgeois politics by the cult of Zionism, means that the working-class movement must re-discover the revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism in combatting fascism. The future depends on it.
Donald Trump is ensconced in the White House, and it is an open question what will be the impact of this in several major conflicts around the world. Regarding the second Trump presidency and Ukraine: it is an open question what will happen now. Despite some challenges from leftists alleging that he has said nothing about this, he has attacked the firing of US ATACMS missiles into Russia, nominally under the aegis of Ukraine, but really fired by US military staff and using targeting data from US satellites and called it very dangerous – embodying the potential to trigger WWIII. He has also stated, since the election, that the expansion of NATO to Ukraine was what caused the Ukraine war. A justified response to this might be “No Shit, Sherlock”, but this has been unsayable in bourgeois politics for years. But not anymore.
What will happen now is anyone’s guess. Trump wants to negotiate a deal to ‘freeze’ the Ukraine conflict. That would be a Minsk III, in effect, or perhaps another Astana – the 2020 deal that supposedly ‘froze’ the Syrian conflict and allowed the jihadist enclave of Idlib to remain untouched so it could later run amok. There is no chance Russia will go for that, and nor should it. Russia is winning, and from the point of view of the international working class, is fighting a progressive war against imperialist-backed genocidal Nazi attacks on the Russian/Russophone people of Donbass and Crimea. Just recently in Ukraine, Russian forces have liberated Kurahkovo, a major fortified stronghold in what was the Donetsk Peoples Republic (now acceded to Russia), comparable to Artyomovsk, which gives Russia a virtual open door to liberate larger spaces in the North West of the DPR, and further protects Donetsk city which has been a major target of Nazi attacks on DPR civilians using petal mines, cluster bombs and depleted uranium.
Some Russian commentators, for instance those who are vocal on the Russia Today TV channel, think that when such initiatives fail, Trump will re-escalate the war, to give himself cover so he doesn’t get accused to handing Ukraine to Putin. But that may also be difficult for him, as the US has limited means these days, and he evidently has other things in mind in his US-nationalist project. Such as stealing the Panama Canal for the US, potentially forcing Denmark to sell Greenland, and even a proposal for unification of the US with Canada. He refuses to rule out force regarding Panama and Greenland.
What he is looking for regarding Canada is Hitler-like and recalls the creation of the Greater German Reich in 1938 through unification or Anschluss with Austria. That might appear at first glance to be an absurd, comic-book policy, but it could have coherence as the expression of Trump’s programme of MAGA (Make America Great Again) in the context of his mooted US retreat from NATO and interfering in Europe. His calls for European NATO countries to spend more on ‘defence’ to make up for a US defeat make logical sense as part of this programme. This could be a coherent, Hitler-like programme to rearm the US for a future assertion of US power – at first locally in the Americas.
Is Trump really going to coerce Denmark to cede – or sell – Greenland to the US? Greenland is a Danish colony, albeit with ‘home-rule’. It is a large expanse of snow and ice and has a very small population, partly of indigenous Inuits (Eskimos), partly of long-time inhabitants of Scandinavian ancestry, when Norse voyagers settled there over the last 1100 years or so. This relationship therefore long predates capitalism and Greenland stayed with Denmark when it separated from Norway in the early 19th Century. Its total population is small, only around 52,000 people.
Greenland is wealthy in minerals. And the seas around it that might become important sea routes as the Arctic unfreezes because of global heating. Trump of course is totally hostile to any programme of preserving the natural environment from global heating, and his programme of capitalist expansion banks on such warming preceding apace. This is an insane policy from the point of view of medium-term human survival, but that is what his MAGA project is all about – grabbing what the US oligarchs can today to fortify them against the working masses who will inevitably revolt against the destruction of their habitat. Trump says obtaining Greenland, and even Canada is a ‘national security issue’. And some elements of this claim to Greenland have even seeped into popular consciousness in the US. The 2020 Hollywood sci-fi movie Greenland, where Greenland is used as a shelter for part of the US population in the face of human extinction from a collision of Earth with a comet, shows how the Trumpian demand for Greenland has entered popular consciousness and culture. Anschluss with Canada and buying Greenland the way the US bought Alaska from Russia in the 19th Century might be feasible as a policy of US retrenchment. This has echoes of the way Hitler rearmed Germany in the 1930s, though it may not be identical in the sense of actual terrorist dictatorship. Whether the US bourgeois will allow Trump to go as far as that is not clear yet. And how the US working class will respond either way is not clear either.
Trump alleges that the Panama Canal is now controlled by the Chinese Army and supposedly rips off the US. This is self-pitying nonsense in factual terms, and the way that the US has often justified its aggression, echoing Zionism with a fake ‘victim’ narrative. But aggression in Central America and the Caribbean has been normal behaviour for US presidents since the 19th Century at least. There is also the potential threat to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, which could be a major issue if Trump’s policy really is an Anschluss with Canada and regional retrenchment of the US in the Americas as a preparation for more expansion later. Trump is 78 years old and may not achieve such an imperialist retrenchment during this presidency. He may want a legacy that points this way though, for his upcoming Vice-President James. D. Vance to continue with in the future.
In terms of the conflicts and genocide in the West Asia/Middle East region, this also interacts with Trump coming to power. Netanyahu is keen on Israel being provided with enhanced opportunities to attack Iran now that Syria has fallen to the pro-Israel/Türkiye jihadists. But some in Israel are even talking of war with Türkiye and predicting that the rise to power of the ISIS/Al Qaeda-derived Hay’at al-Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa (Julani) in Syria will not end well for Israel. This may be just paranoia and Islamophobia, as HTS are ferocious in their sectarian terror against non-Sunni Syrians, but servile to Israel. But Israel has already taken unprecedented, drastic military action against the ‘new’ Syria, while its government was in collapse and flux, including destroying much of its army, navy and air force, occupying an expanded chunk of the South Syrian Golan Heights, Mount Hermon, and even Syria’s most important dam, the Al Mantara – amounting to 40% of Syria’s water facilities. This potential collapse of Syria into a failed state for a period makes Türkiye, a powerful and mainly Muslim country, appear nearer to Israel in geopolitical terms, and the Zionists regard any such coherent state as a threat to them. The complication is that unlike Syria, Iraq and Libya, Türkiye is a NATO member.
Meanwhile, among the sectarian brutality and massacres in Syria carried out by HTS and co, a resistance movement operating has emerged in Syria, which is secular. It is operating and may gain traction. ISIS, and the Syrian and Iraq conflicts, have effectively demolished the Sykes Picot line between Syria and Iraq, drawn by British and French imperialism in WWI. This could lead to a broadening of conflict across the Sykes-Picot line and potentially redraw the map. If there is an insurgency by secular/Shia/Alawite/Christian forces they could get help from Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon. These are possibilities. And Trump was earlier threatening not only Iran, but possible military intervention in support of Israel against the genocide victims in Gaza. The current ceasefire, however, looks suspiciously like a recognition of Israel’s parlous state and an attempt by Trump to save Netanyahu from defeat and oblivion. And Trump is also threatening US sanctions a against the International Criminal Court because of its arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.
Indonesia joining BRICS as a full member is a significant step forward. BRICS is a very limited anti-imperialist economic bloc and has proven open to infiltration. Saudi Arabia, around the edges of BRICS played an important role in undermining Syria. Idlib should have been crushed, but instead by Russian, Chinese and Syrian agreement an illusory deal, at Astana, was done in 2020 to ‘freeze’ the Syrian conflict, allowing the imperialist-backed jihadists to rearm. And Syria compromised with Saudi and the UAE for re-admission to the Arab League. That did not stop Assad being overthrown by forces allied to those countries. This was a similar mistake to the Minsk agreements earlier in the Ukraine conflict, but much more costly.
But the function of BRICS is to negate US-Western sanctions against ‘disobedient’ global South countries. ‘No sanctions’ against members is a basic rule of BRICS. This is its progressive aspect. Cuba and Bolivia are now associate members of BRICS, Brazil BRICS chair this year, as Russia was last year. But Brazil vetoed the admission of Venezuela: a capitulation to the current Yankee campaign of threats and aggression against BRICS. Though they didn’t veto Cuba, which is still a workers’ state, and still more hated by the US. This shows inconsistency and an empirical, cowardly response to US bullying and threats. Such things won’t endear Lula and co to Trump.
Then we have the various travails of Elon Musk, the far-right oligarch and world’s richest man, and Trump. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Facebook, Instagram and Threads are abandoning fact checkers and Facebook is supposedly opening to political postings again. Facebook will apparently recommend political posts again, which is contrary to its practice in the past few years. This appears like grovelling to Trump and his ally Musk, who owns X/Twitter, though the left may benefit from it for a while. What happens in the US on social media is likely to spread here. For now, these right-wing populists feel secure and that they have popular backing.
However, with the discredit of liberalism, when the right-wing screw up – they will – they are likely to face class-anger, not liberalism. Luigi Mangione’s shooting dead of the grotesque, profiteering CEO of United Healthcare in the US, and the popular Robin Hood type celebration of him are a sign that class sentiment is building. Quite a few of those who sympathized with that attack are Trump supporters. Though obviously Trump is not too keen, and neither is Musk. Such sentiment is an implicit threat to the entire elite of neoliberal oligarchs.
Musk conflicts with many in the Trump camp over immigration policy. Musk wants skilled IT workers to get visas and be able to work for employers such as himself. Trump’s other far-right ideologue/bedfellow, Steve Bannon, denounced him in bilious terms as a ‘racist’ for mooting that idea. Musk’s activities abroad are those of a dangerous far right provocateur. That is also true of his attacks on political figures in the UK, including Starmer and Jess Philips, over so called ‘grooming gangs’. Not that we sympathise with them, but we denounce Musk’s filth about grooming gangs, as he is trying to incite the far right against the Muslim communities in the UK of South Asian descent. He is even intervening to promote the imprisoned fascist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) against Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform. In Germany, Musk is promoting the AfD (Alternative for Germany) far right party – and not primarily because of its widely known and popular hostility to German support for Zelensky in Ukraine. This is just as much about the AfD’s general reaction and Islamophobia. The AfD is similar to Trump and Victor Orban in Hungary: hostile to the Ukraine war, but very pro-Zionist. That’s why Musk likes them, evidently. Musk is a dangerous fascist oligarch. We live in interesting times, to put it mildly.
The ceasefire in Gaza, after 15 months of Zionist genocide, was forced on Israel by the resistance of the Palestinians. However, the form it is taking, with the very-Zionist incoming Trump administration apparently dictating events to Netanyahu and his cabinet, is choreographed to try to save Netanyahu’s regime and limit the damage to the Zionist settler project overall. Trump wants to use this situation, as well as the very convenient, orchestrated overthrow of the Assad government in Syria, overrun by US/Israeli/Turkish backed jihadists, to try to salvage the so-called Abraham Accords – the ‘normalisation’ of Israeli rule over the Palestinians with the US’s historical Arab collaborators: Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. The Syrian collapse is being used to counterbalance Israel’s failures in Gaza and Lebanon and try to get the Zionist show back on the road. But that would not even be necessary if Israel had not visibly failed in Gaza.
All of Israel’s objectives in Gaza – the defeat and destruction of Hamas, the depopulation of Gaza, or the extermination of its population, and the settlement of the enclave, have not happened – so far at least. Many have been killed, but the population refused to flee – and forced Israel to take responsibility and be seen to murder them. This has demoralised and discredited Zionism worldwide.
Hamas’s objective on October 7th, 2023, was the seizure of many Israeli captives to exchange for Palestinian hostages, and to survive Israel’s brutal onslaught, which they knew would come on the heels of any serious revolt against the Zionist occupation. On the table now is a major hostage exchange, with many Palestinians exchanged for each Israeli, and a complete, though phased, Israeli withdrawal. Though Israel routinely breaks ceasefires and will break this one, it is the Israelis who were desperate for it, as was the case in Lebanon.
Ther appears to be a collapse of IDF morale, refusals to fight by, to the Zionist ruling class, a worrying number of troops. The Israeli army is said to be collapsing, with mental breakdowns widespread. Hamas’ tunnel network still works well despite the massacres. Israeli troops are ambushed, booby trapped, and taking multiple causalities. But what that is really driving the problems with the IDF is something the Nazis were aware of, tried hard to avoid, and found partial ways round.
If troops are ordered to commit terrible atrocities, they will fall victim to mental illness. The Nazis’ way of avoiding this was SS Einsatzkommandos – getting other forces in occupied countries to carry out the worst crimes. Israel tried this in the 1980s in Lebanon with the Falange, and the so-called South Lebanon Army, but it didn’t work very well. Partly because, though the Israelis were brutal, they had not then reached the threshold of genocide – and their clients not trustworthy. In Gaza they have no such clients. They were not able to get anyone to fight for them, except for some help with arial reconnaissance from Western countries. They had all the arms they needed from external imperialist backers, courtesy of the Zionist lobby. But that’s no shield. They failed to defeat Hamas.
Israel could not recapture those taken. And now they are going to exchange them. That was Hamas’ aim all along. Netanyahu knew retrieving them without a deal was not possible, but it was an opportunity for genocide, for massively reducing if not eliminating the Gaza population. The regime may have killed half a million Gaza Palestinians. The Lancet, last summer, estimated at least 186,000 dead: Susan Abulhawa, the Palestinian scientist who debated Gaza for the Palestinians at the Oxford Union, estimates up to 500,000. No one believes the figures of approaching 50,000 from the civilian Gaza health ministry. They had no chance of keeping count of those buried under rubble, starved to death, or died of thirst, or of injuries that could not be treated because the medical systems were destroyed, or from diseases that were likewise untreatable.
Why now? Trump’s coming has made it possible, but not in the sense that Trump would have it, that his threats of ‘hell’ if the hostages were not released caused Hamas to capitulate. Hamas have not capitulated. They held out for a hostage exchange and got one. That is the achievement of their main war aim. It appears the advent of Trump has given Netanyahu the chance to finally to capitulate. With the Democrats in power, even though they did not dare to cross Netanyahu and the lobby during an armed conflict, part of them might go after Netanyahu in the aftermath. The Democrats have a wing that does not like Zionism very much, though they are too cowardly to do anything about it during armed conflict. If the Israeli genocidal ‘war’ had ended with the Democrats still in power, they might have found their voice and stuck the knife in. The deal now is unchanged from one that was on offer from Hamas since May 2024, but was rejected by Israel as Netanyahu feared being ousted in the aftermath. But things had reached the point where the Israeli assault on Gaza had to end one way or another, because the IDF faced disintegration otherwise.
But the US Republicans led by Trump are as close to Likud as you can get. They will try to protect Netanyahu, and to protect Israel from genocide charges, which for all the Zionist hysteria and witch hunting in bourgeois politics, are an explosive question. It is precisely because the Zionists are so morally tarnished that the Zionist hysteria has risen to a crescendo. The GOP have already driven sanctions against the ICC. So, Netanyahu waiting until Trump was about to take power to do the necessary deal has a certain logic, in terms of attempted damage limitation. Though it is likely to put Netanyahu into deep trouble now from the corruption charges he faces in Israeli bourgeois politics. The far-right Jewish Power party minister Ben Gvir walked out of the government as the ceasefire came into force. The clerical-fascist Smotrich is likely to do the same. Both are hoping for an opportunity to rejoin and restart the assault on Gaza. Netanyahu tried to spin Lebanon as some kind of victory. He was only able to do that because of Syria and the confusion that the collapse of Assad caused.
But he won’t easily be able to spin this as victory, as there is going to be a hostage exchange, which presupposes that Hamas will still be the decisive power in Gaza. Israel’s US cohorts have had to admit that Hamas has gained many more recruits than it has lost volunteers fighting the genocidal attacks. That also makes the two-state sop, the extension of the collaborationist Palestinian Authority to Gaza an incredibly difficult objective. Hamas has undoubtedly far greater authority than Abbas’s collaborators. Victory in formal terms for Israel would be the crushing of Hamas and the recapture of the captives without an exchange. The ethnic cleansing of Gaza of its population and the murder of as many as possible was its key war aim, as it realised it had no chance of victory over Hamas. But it has had to concede that Northern Gaza, which it tried to empty with the exterminationist “General’s Plan” in the later part of 2024, will be repopulated. It has also agreed to vacate the Philadelphi Corridor between Southern Gaza and Sinai, which it took from Egypt by force when the genocide was in full swing. It has had to agree to fully withdraw from Gaza.
There are perhaps other domestic benefits for Trump to have the ceasefire declared literally the day before he assumes the Presidency again. By being able to claim credit for the Gaza ceasefire, no matter how temporary, and by planning to negotiate an end to the Ukraine War, Trump aims to wrap up these “forever wars” and under the false banner of being a “peacemaker”, Trump aims to actually prepare for world war. Trump and his faction are seeking to resolve the crisis of US hegemony by re orientating US imperialist strategy to refocus on pressurizing China economically and militarily in the most aggressive way possible. This requires full mobilization of resources for a world war. It requires fascist repression at home to regiment the public to accept a manifestly crazy orientation.
Israel, built on land entirely taken by forced from the Palestinian people, is now the ultimate pariah state in the world. That cannot be sustained for long, even though a Jewish-Zionist caste loyal to Israel exists within the bourgeoisie in the West and is an object of cult-like veneration from the imperialist ruling classes. Cults can face a shock that causes them to internally disintegrate. Zionism is in deep crisis and undermining of its authority provides potential conditions for Israel’s collapse though emigration of many settlers and demoralization of those remaining. The demand for the Palestinian right to return and the creation of a multi-ethnic workers state of Palestine becomes feasible. Documentation of this livestreamed genocide only just began. It has exposed the barbaric nature of capitalist imperialism to billions around the world, and we communists must ram home the lessons of that to build a new, worldwide revolutionary movement.
The notes for this presentation (5th January) are now available to read, and the presentation and discussion are also available to listen to as a podcast.
The political crisis is exhausting the options available to the vassal bourgeois regime. President Yoon Seok Yeol tried to save himself by imposing a military coup (3/12) and hastened his downfall. Acting Prime Minister Han Duck-soo protected Yeol and was impeached. Now, the finance minister, committed to Yeol’s economic policy, is the hot topic. The role of the US on 3 December, to harden the regime against its own people and against North Korea, China and Russia.
We reproduce below the Second Declaration on the Struggle to Overthrow the December 3 Coup, published by the Bolshevik Group of South Korea on December 27, 2024
The December 3 military coup orchestrated by Yoon Seok-yeol, which abruptly froze our normal lives, has been thwarted for now. This was due to the swift actions of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) on the front line, together with the courageous workers and citizens who rushed to the National Assembly to confront the martial law forces. They stopped heavily armored vehicles equipped with machine guns with their bare hands and engaged in physical confrontation with special forces armed with firearms and various lethal equipment. These heroic actions eventually created a situation of overwhelming resistance, leading to the National Assembly’s resolution to lift the emergency martial law.
Sweeping away the embers of conspiracy and the forces that support it
Page of the South Korean Bolshevik Group, with the original article. In the titles: Punish Yoon Seok-yeol’s conspiracy Eradicate the civil war against! The United States must clearly indicate whether it intervened in advance of the conspiracy!
However, the flames of the conspiracy have not been fully extinguished. Although some of the main perpetrators of the coup have been arrested, its leader, Yoon Seok-yeol, still formally retains his position in the presidential office. Many of the plot’s masterminds, participants, and accomplices remain in their positions in the military leadership, the cabinet, the prosecutor’s office, the police, and the Corruption Investigation Office. Furthermore, reports (MBC, December 24) indicate that dozens of special agents mobilized for the coup have not been disarmed and have not yet returned to their bases.
To prevent a recurrence of the coup and ensure peace in our society, those who participated in the conspiracy using brutal weapons must be severely punished. Even Cho Gab-je, former editor-in-chief of Monthly Chosun and a mentor of the far right, stated, “The highest leader must receive the maximum punishment to prevent this from happening again.” This task is clear.
However, some are resisting the effort to fully reveal and punish the details of the coup. Some are passively delaying the process and trying to complicate matters in a critical manner. Others are actively obstructing the punishment of the coup participants, claiming that the legalist coup was a “legitimate act for governability.” A prime example is the People’s Power Party, a far-right party rooted in extreme regional disputes that has been exploited as an instrument of governance since the Park Chung-hee regime.
The strength of pro-democracy protesters
This is why we cannot be optimistic about the current situation. This is why we must go to the protest sites. In the 20 days since the coup, the number of protesters demanding punishment for the perpetrators of the plot has already exceeded several million. Protesters are braving the bitter cold, with temperatures dropping to minus 10 degrees Celsius, to participate in demonstrations. On the 22nd, they even stayed up all night in Namtaeryeong, where freezing winds bit their skin, to show solidarity with the farmer protesters who came on tractors.
Yoon Seok-yeol, the former president (centre), was removed from office after the attempted military coup.
The political atmosphere is tense and solemn, but the protesters are bright and energetic. The protests, dominated by teenagers and people in their thirties, are full of energy. Sometimes solemn, but usually upbeat. K-pop, protest songs, candles and glow sticks of fandom come together in harmony, uniting as one. Most of the protesters were ordinary workers who lived their daily lives before the coup. Participants who enjoyed work, leisure, hobbies of “idol revival, games, etc.” and socializing were shocked by the crazy coup. They were outraged by how martial law suppressed their daily lives colored with dull steel gray. They gathered in the streets to protect their way of life. Ordinary people temporarily reserved their leisure time to courageously face the brutal violence that threatens social peace.
This force will not be broken. When the overwhelming majority of society comes together with this determination, the fight will never be lost. Even the most foolish will understand this.
Those who seek to tame the current of democracy
They seek to slow down the social ascension of the population against the coup and the regime that engineered it. Their aim is to tame the political current. A strong current could destroy the surface and reveal the true causes of social suffering. It could even reach the heart of power and wealth, long considered untouchable. Their mission, therefore, is to tame the current, slow it down and drain its energy. Their aim is to extend the course of the current and channel it into a path of their choosing in order to control it. This is how the massive candlelight protests of 2016-17 were finally controlled by the impeachment of March.
“We cannot oppose the direction of punishing treacherous criminals, including Yoon Suk-yeol, but we will minimize and restrict the scope and severity of punishment, to prepare for the future and protect our power and wealth intact.” This reflects the mindset of the coup plotters, accomplices and sympathizers.
Currently, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo appears to be at the forefront of this process of trying to control the current. After the impeachment of Yoon Suk-yeol was approved by the National Assembly, Han, who is serving as acting president, has been delaying proceedings to hold the coup leaders accountable. Yeongnam’s far-right People’s Power Party (PPP) is protecting him.
Protesters hold a banner showing images of impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol, right, and then-acting (now impeached) President Han Duck-soo during a rally demanding Yoon’s arrest in Seoul, South Korea. (Source: Associated Press)
The role of the United States
It is not just the People’s Power Party that is seeking to tame the current using Han Duck-soo. The United States is also involved. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said at an Asia-Pacific press conference in Washington, DC, on the 19th, “We support the transitional role of Acting President and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.” US President Joe Biden also reportedly told Acting President Han in a phone call on the 15th, “I know you very well and I trust you completely.” (Chosun Ilbo, December 21, 2024)
This intention was soon communicated to the Korean political sphere. U.S. Ambassador Goldberg met with Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung and People Power Party leader Kweon Seong-dong on the 23rd to convey the message. Ambassador Goldberg stated, “The common goals of the United States and South Korea will be prioritized in collaboration with Acting President and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and the Korean government.” This statement came at a time when efforts to impeach the sitting president were underway. Sitting humbly like a classroom monitor summoned to the teacher’s office, Lee Jae-myung bowed his head, stating:
“Not only South Korea-U.S. relations continue, but also cooperation between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan.”
Thus the human current slowed as if the brakes had been applied. On the 24th, the Democratic Party, which declared:
“The investigation into the coup cannot be compromised. Acting President Han’s remarks are aimed at prolonging the coup. We will immediately initiate impeachment proceedings against him,”
changed his position, stating:
“We have decided to be patient and see if the appointment of the Constitutional Court judges on the 26th and our demands are met, taking into account the feelings of the people.”
What sentiments did the Democratic Party consider? Although it is not clear whose heart they had in mind, it is certain that the US and the People Power Party intend to slow down the current.
Where is the Democratic Party headed?
The Democratic Party is caught between two opposing forces in the aftermath of the December 3 coup. On the left, there is pressure from tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens and workers who are demanding the punishment of Yoon Suk-yeol and other coup participants, while also advocating the National Assembly resolution to lift martial law. On the right, there is pressure from US imperialism, which holds hegemony over the capitalist system in South Korea, together with local capital and its far-right proxy, the People’s Power Party (PPP).
On December 16, the Democratic Party balked, stating:
“We will not proceed with the impeachment of Premier Han. We will establish a National Stability Advisory Body.”
However, so far it has been driven largely by strong pressure from the left to move towards “repelling the coup and defending democracy”.
However, the expansion of democracy ultimately threatens the dictatorship of capital. Thus, the Democratic Party will ultimately stop the democratic struggle. This will betray the cause of democracy.
On December 27, at 4:30 p.m., the Democratic Party voted to impeach incumbent President Han Duck-soo. This was the result of giving in to pressure from millions of protesters. With this, the fight to repel the December 3 coup has advanced one step further.
At the Top of the Food Chain: US Imperialism
The relationship between South Korea and the United States is not one of equals; it is hierarchical. The United States defeated Japan during World War II, a war of imperialist rivalry, and became the ruler of South Korea. With its role and influence in South Korea’s economy, establishment and control of the military, networks of political elites, and British-centered cultural dominance, imperialist America sits at the apex of the food chain in South Korean society.
The US extracts huge surplus profits from South Korea, as was clearly demonstrated during the 1997 IMF crisis. In addition, South Korea serves as a front line against Russia (the former Soviet Union), North Korea, and China. Along with Japan and Taiwan, it is a strategic stronghold of US imperialism. Pyeongtaek hosts the largest US military base in the world, and the commander of US Forces Korea also serves as the commander of the Korea-US Combined Forces Command, which has military operational authority. Through various channels such as the embassy, the CIA, and NGOs, the US maintains a dense network of relationships, gathering information in real time. With this power, it exerts decisive influence not only on the economy and the military, but also on politics, education, the media, and culture.
Pyeongtaek, South Korea: The largest US military base in the world. The commander of US Forces in South Korea is also the commander of the South Korean Armed Forces, which makes it unbelievable that any military mobilization, especially for a military coup, could occur without the US being aware of it.
Didn’t the US know about the conspiracy and execution of martial law?
President Donald Trump poses for a group photo at the Eighth Army Operational Command Center at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017. Andrew Harnik/AP
The US claims to have had no involvement in the December 3 martial law declared by Yoon Seok-yeol and his faction, saying that they only became aware of the incident after it occurred. This is a claim that is hard to believe. The highest command of the South Korean military is the Combined Forces Command, and the US holds wartime operational command through it, overseeing the Army, Navy and Air Force. Through its embassy and the CIA, the US also collects information from South Korean intelligence agencies and political circles. It is even said that the US is conducting surveillance on key institutions, including the Presidential Office. Furthermore, this martial law was planned a year in advance, with the plotters lining up their intentions. At least four months before, there were warnings about the coup plot in the political sphere. Furthermore, this coup was not limited to a few units – known participants included the Defense Security Command, the National Intelligence Service, the Defense Security Command, the Special Warfare Command, along with their subordinate units such as the 707th Special Mission Group, airborne units, and tank units, all of which were extensively involved.
US military bases in South Korea. The US has almost 30,000 military and intelligence officers to control not only South Korea, but also spy on all countries in the region, China, Russia, North Korea and also allies such as Japan. However, with all this intelligence and military apparatus, the US says it was not behind and knew nothing about the military coup d’état staged by the South Korean government.
But didn’t the US know? Are we to believe that this plan was hidden for almost a year, avoiding detection by the extensive US networks and information channels? And that it was done by ignorant fools relying on superstition? We find this hard to accept.
We believe that the relationship with the US should be included in the investigation of the coup and uprising. Did the US really not know? How could it not know? If it knew in advance, why did it not prevent it? Could it have been involved in the conspiracy, or perhaps knowing the plans, it simply let everything happen, turning a blind eye? This must be clarified. This is a crucial task to identify the origins of the current situation and prevent future recurrences. After all, the US has historically been involved in military coups in colonies, including those of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, ever since the US gained global hegemonic power.
– The working class must take the lead and immediately remove and punish the coup leader Yoon Seok-yeol and his entire faction!
– Even if we have to make the same mistake again, we will force Yoon Seok-yeol to resign!
– Politicians, including those from the Democratic Party, are not the solution to the problem, but just another set of figures responsible for changing roles. We must reject any illusions about capitalist politicians!
– Let us be careful with the brakes that the Democratic Party is putting on the flow of the fight for democracy!
– The US must clearly clarify whether it knew in advance about the December 3 coup!
– The root of the problem is ultimately capitalism. Let’s establish a workers’ government!
One of our basic documents, the 2014 Draft Theses on the Jews and Modern Imperialism, has now been translated into Russian and is available on this site here.
The biggest problem of a dumbed-down populace is their willingness to “memory-hole” the past in order to keep up with the twisted narratives our ruling class keep peddling.
The US government is run by a unaparty, so is the UK, most of Europe, but especially the EU, and the proxies and colonies of the European and American Empires. We have the illusion of democracy but in reality we have none, and no freedom, only censorship.
And why has that become ever more strident over the past 75 years? Because Russia and China are recovering from the blows the Axis powers, with the financial help of the Square Mile and Wall Street dealt them, and threaten the hegemon of the ruling class.
Why has October 7th 2023 been so pivotal in that? Because it presents us with a paradox. We blithely swallow the crap we are fed, Russia’s a dictatorship, China’s a dictatorship, in fact everyone the Empire hates is an evil dictator…. and we have to support terrorists to dislodge them because “desperate times require desperate measures”. In reality Gaza shows us that the reality of imperialism is genocide. It has been for centuries, whether it’s fast, with bombs, snipers, cutting off food, water, medical aid and energy, or slow with toxic loans, corporate looting, debt-slavery and austerity measures leading to long-term starvation, systematic impoverishment and early mortality.
And it’s all one big globalist strategy by the globalists, albeity the neo-cons and neo-libs squabble over the best strategy to win the grand chess game.
If we want to be truly free of this diabolical plan, we have to stop believing the lies, the big lies, the little lies, the “white lies” and above all the economic lies.
We are not poor because we don’t work hard enough, but because we cannot feed the greed of the ruling class. We are not unhealthy because we make “bad life choices” but because we work too long and hard for too little pay and public services. We are not stupid, ignorant or dumb because we cannot be bothered to learn but because we are force-fed propaganda, hate and lies through our media, our entertainment and our information sources, and increasingly we are censored, monitored and excluded from any independent voices and sources even when we search them out.
WW3 will destroy 90% of the population of the world, but the 1% don’t care, they have convinced themselves they will be masters of the universe. What they cannot bear is that we should choose governments without a ruling class, turn our backs on imperialism, on colonialism, on supremacists and apartheid, on ethno-fascism and privilege. And that’s what we need to focus on. We need to focus on being the grit in the cog-wheels of the machine they are building, the log-jam in their stream of misinformation, and the boy shouting loud and long that “the Emperor has no clothes”.
More importantly, that the “for profit not purpose military industrial complex is churning out weapons of mass destruction for aggression on civilians not defence. That their armies are only good for killing civilians on behalf of corporate interests, and that the legal system protects property not the people. We live in a fascist state, not a democracy, where life under military dictatorship is often only a matter of presidential decree, not existential threat of invasion.
Al Jolani’s makeover from ISIS/Al Qaeda terrorist killer to ‘moderate rebel’ by Western/Zionist media
Below is a presentation given by a Consistent Democrats speaker at a Zoom forum on 15th December 2024. The whole discussion is available as a podcast here.
The fall of Syria’s government is the most important event geopolitical even since 7th October 2023- the Gaza breakout led by Hamas. It is a defeat for the Axis of Resistance, the Iranian led anti-imperialist bloc that has been the only body that has delivered real physical solidarity with the Palestinians in the past year of genocide in Gaza, and its spread by degrees to the West Bank. Three different forces have taken military action against Israel, to varying degrees, to challenge Israel’s proclaimed ‘right’ to slaughter the Palestinians. They are: the Amanullah movement in Yemen (Houthis), Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Islamic Republic in Iran.
All three of these components of the Axis of Resistance are groups of Islamist origin, based on the Shi’a, the smaller of the two major confessional groups in Islam. Obviously as Marxists and atheists, we do not endorse the ideology of these movements – they do not represent our politics. However, we do support the resistance of the Palestinian people against genocide, and any movement that resists genocide is given credit where due by Marxists. The ideologies of these movements are not ours, but if they take actions against oppression, the basis exists for communists to work alongside their supporters in struggles to resist oppression and genocide.
We do not regard such bourgeois-religious movements as monolithic – we give credit where due in terms of any progressive evolution among them. And it should be noted that they have actively opposed religious sectarianism over the past period. The breakout from the Gaza concentration camp, which is now an extermination camp that rivals Auschwitz, was led by Hamas, a Sunni Islamic movement, albeit one with a de-facto bourgeois national-liberationist programme. We do not share the politics of Hamas either, of course. But we do support the Palestinian people’s right to resist genocidal incarceration in a giant murder camp. This is a progressive struggle notwithstanding the religious illusions of the cadres and masses involved.
Not all the Palestinians fighting for their rights are Muslims. A large minority are orthodox Christians, and Zionism has massacred them also. All acts of resistance against ethnic persecution by Zionists on the part of Arab Muslims, Christians, or people of no religion, are progressive, and Marxists seek to fight alongside them against oppression by the method of the united front. So, we applaud and embrace the anti-sectarian impulse of the Axis of Resistance, where Shi’a Iranians, Lebanese and Yemenis stood up to the Zionists and championed the cause of mainly Sunni and Christian Palestinians. In that sense, Marxists regard themselves as critical supporters of this as an aspect of the anti-imperialist united front. This is support for anti-imperialism, not religious ‘radicalism’. The non-sectarianism is a progressive move away from the logic of religious ‘radicalism’ into the realm of secularism, which is a key part of the communist, genuinely anti-imperialist worldview. Other religious ‘radicals’ particularly among the Sunni confessional group appear very much into anti-Shi’a, anti-Christian sectarianism, as we can see from the actions of HTS, as supported by Türkiye, the US and Israel. More on that later.
We also note that a lesser, but still very important role, was played in this de-facto anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist united front by the Syrian government under Assad. It may not have been obvious, as there were no spectacular military actions by Syria against Israel. But the repeated armed attacks by Israel on Iranian military people and diplomatic premises in Syria indicate the role Syria was playing in helping the supply of Iranian military and other support to Hezbollah. The Assad regime was, in a low-key manner, allowing its territory to be used as a bridge between Iran and those in Lebanon who wanted to act to defend the Palestinians. This was and is very important. It is now under threat from the rise to power of sectarian, imperialist-backed jihadists in Syria.
Like Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – or Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant, who have said that their only enemies are Iran and Hezbollah, not Israel. In the context of the genocide against the Palestinians, that is treasonous. Since HTS have seized power in Syria, there have been bans on the celebration of Christmas by the numerous Syrian Christians, and massacres of Alwites, the smaller Shi’a grouping that the Assad family also belonged to. Druze also are now living in fear of reprisal. And the Kurdish population in the North and East of Syria, who have often in the past sought Western support for their struggles for separation, or at least autonomy, are under attack, not from Assad, but from the sectarian Sunni elements. The Assad Ba’athist regime in the past, for all its austere repressive aspects, prided itself on its secularism and refusal to persecute communities on religious grounds. It gained popular support from this.
It did not tolerate Kurdish separatism, and Kurds were oppressed and discriminated against as in all the national states that include significant Kurdish populations in the region. But even Kurds at times regarded Assad as a lesser evil to jihadist Sunni sectarians. That is a national question, and though we are for the right to self-determination of the Kurds, that does not derogate from the right to self-determination of the Arab peoples of the Middle East, which is particularly at stake in questions related to the genocidal colonial project of Zionism.
Whose entire basis is the forcible confiscation of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing, and indeed destruction of the Palestinian people. And because of the similarity of the Palestinian people to the other Arab populations of the region, Israel has an intrinsic tendency to seek to destroy every strong Arab or even sympathetic Muslim country in the West Asia/Middle East region. This is because they know full well that they are guilty of genocidal crimes against Arabs, and completely naturally, Arabs and other sympathetic Muslim peoples will seek to overturn this oppression and destroy the Jewish-supremacist, Zionist project.
Zionism has a disproportionate power and influence among the imperialist countries of the West. This is simply based on the disproportionate numerical preponderance of Jews in the Western ruling classes, compared to the number of Jews in the population. This is a legacy of many centuries before capitalism when Jews played an economic role as a commodity-trading middleman class within the feudal, natural economy. This made Jews particularly suited culturally for particular roles in the capitalist ruling classes that succeeded feudalism. What it also provides is a material basis for the disproportionate role of the Israel lobby today. Israel as a state was created to benefit that very sizeable Jewish layer of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Even if they do not live there, they tend to regard it as their state. It is a transplanted imperialist enclave with its own imperialist interests. All of Israel was taken from the Arab people by genocidal means.
In a way, this sums up the main issues in the Middle East: – the film Wall Street was the epitome of neoliberalism from the 1980s, with its character Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, remembered for the notorious soundbite that “Greed is Good”. When imperialist politicians, such as Starmer, Biden, Blinken, Trump, etc., say that Israel is only ‘defending itself’ when it commits some outrageous massacre or act of aggression against neighbouring Arab peoples, they are solidarising with a state founded on genocide. What they are actually saying is “Genocide is Good”.
There is a coalition of interests here. That of the Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie, both in Israel and the wider imperialist countries, who have a direct interest in Israel’s land theft and genocidal practices. Gaza was only the culmination of this (so far). And also, the more general colonialist interests of the imperialist powers, and their desire to possess, and where they do possess, to hang on to, the natural resources of the West Asia/Middle East region, notably oil, which in many cases they seized in the 20th or even the 19th centuries. The two cross-fertilise, so you see hybrid forms, like virulent evangelical Christian Zionists in the US, as virulent in their genocidal anti-Arab views as Netanyahu. Fellow travellers of Zionism. Or you see European imperialist Zionists such as Starmer, arising from the pro-imperialist social democracy, well-bribed by the Zionist lobby. That is the context of the wars and genocides in the Middle East, and it is also the context of what has happened in Syria.
The social basis of some forms of religious ‘radicalism’ in Muslim countries has frequently come from two sources – the older, conservative landlord type classes, often rooted in the remains of pre-capitalist modes of production. While these may be socially backward and obsolete, they still wield considerable social power, because imperialist capitalism in the West, in its colonising activities, seeks to suppress native capitalist development in the colonial and former colonial countries. They are still able to do this in many places that are formally decolonised, by their control of the mainsprings of finance, or their ownership, either direct or indirect, of important economic resources in former colonial countries.
Afghanistan was a case in point – when a reformist, pro-USSR government came to power in 1978, the West were able to initiate a jihad against it using reactionary Islamic forces that had their starting point in the pre-capitalist landlord class. The question of women’s rights, and the bride price, was basic and what started the war. This was the starting point of the Mujahedin, who waged a holy war against the PDPA and then the USSR which backed them with military force between 1979 and 1988.
There are also layers of the educated middle class who can be drawn to such ‘radicalism’ as for all their education, there are few outlets for their employment. So, jihadism has become a movement of an ostensibly modernist middle class, who seek to update these religious concepts and make a modern movement out of them. Such movements can veer to the left, often in contradictory ways, such as the Mujahedin E-Khalq in Iran, who defined themselves as ‘Islamic Marxists’ in the period of the 1978-9 Iranian Revolution. But they subsequently sold themselves to just about any enemy of Khomeini’s regime, first to Saddam Hussein, and later to the CIA. It is arguable that there have been elements of left populism, mixed with conservative Islamic sentiment, in the Iranian regime as well as Hezbollah and the Houthi. Others, particularly among the Sunni radicals, have tended to be more uniformly right-wing and sectarian, starting with Al Qaeda, which grew out of the Afghan jihad against the USSR, and had a peculiar love-hate relationship with both US imperialism and the Zionists. Bin Laden and his followers were trained by the CIA particularly for war against the USSR. But they turned against the US, seemingly in the most dramatic ways. They also sometimes expressed antipathy for Israel, yet they were evidently, and knowingly, used by Zionists.
With the bombings of US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in the late 1990s, bloody attacks that mainly killed black Africans. And then 9-11, the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon in 2001. And yet there was the cover-up of US foreknowledge of these attacks. And valid grounds to suspect Israeli foreknowledge and involvement. The political, Islamophobic hysteria in the imperialist countries was self-evidently manipulated by imperialism, and gave the opportunity for the US to use this to not only invade Afghanistan (where Al Qaeda and Bin Laden were based) but also to invade Iraq. Afghanistan did not really matter to Zionists. But Iraq certainly did. The 9-11 attacks provided the opportunity for pro-Israel US neocons to enlist US imperialism more generally to destroy Iraq.
And out of the destruction of Iraq, and particularly the US destruction of Fallujah with chemical and radiological weapons, you saw the further mutation of an Al Qaeda movement that had emerged after the invasion and killing of Saddam, into something even worse. Islamic State is an Islamic version of the Khmer Rouge, a product of collective psychological derangement, which was prepared to slaughter anyone and anything that got in their way. But like the original Khmer Rouge, they were still capable and willing to be bribed by imperialism. All these forces were mobilised by imperialism in Syria since the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011.
The Arab Spring was a spontaneous, many-country upsurge of democratic protest at the repressive and anti-democratic nature of most of the bourgeois regimes in the Arab world. It briefly convulsed many countries, with ‘radical’ and conservative Arab regimes. It was a naïve upheaval, and easy for the imperialists to co-opt. In countries with pro-Western regimes, such as Egypt, it was indulged for a while, and then crushed. The Egyptian masses were allowed to elect as President Mohammad Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, who then as soon as the movement had been demobilised, was overthrown and executed in a bloody coup led by General Sisi. In Libya, the movement was rapidly co-opted into an imperialist intervention that destroyed the most prosperous country in Africa, murdered its ‘radical’ bourgeois leader Qaddafi – who the Zionists hated for his support for Palestinian causes — and collapsed the society, which ended up ridden with slave markets. They attempted to do the same to Syria, but failed, because of the intervention of Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, who put a stop to these attacks.
So that is what the Syrian civil war that has raged since 2011, was about. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which had engaged in bloody armed conflict with the Assads earlier, under Bashir Assad’s father Hafez, was co-opted by the pro-Turkish, pro-Western campaign that included Al Qaeda. The Erdogan government’s antipathy to Assad was in part because of their rejection of the project of an oil pipeline from Qatar, through Türkiye into Europe, which would enrich Türkiye. The demonisation of Assad is bullshit. Assad’s regime was no worse than most other bourgeois nationalist governments in the Global South. Why don’t the Zionists and neocons who rant on about the supposed evil of Assad have anything to say about the monstrous terror of the Sisi regime in Egypt, which executed the only elected president in Egyptian history, Morsi? Because Sisi is an ally of Israel. The Assad regime rejected such alliances with Israel. The war against it was not waged because of its alleged barbaric, repressive features, but because it resisted cooperation with imperialism and Zionism. When these people start talking about morality and freedom, look at their bottom line – profit from imperialism.
So, what is the outcome of this? Syria has collapsed into chaos. Sectarian murder stalks the land. The Assad regime eventually succumbed to sanctions, which since Syria had no significant oil reserves of its own, it was not able to counter indefinitely. Eventually it could not pay its troops, so its army would not fight. Its defenders, such as Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, were tied up in military conflicts, in Ukraine and with Israel, and were unable to do much to aid it. So, it collapsed in the face of the HTS offensive from its enclave in Idlib. And Israel has launched the most incredible, piratical armed campaign to wipe out Syria’s armed capacity, its weaponry, its military bases, its navy, etc. Suddenly, the HTS, led by Al-Jolani, (who actually wears clothes branded as ‘made in Israel’, which is why in his rebranded attire he appears to resemble Zelensky, another imperialist stooge) is complaining to the UN that Israel’s attacks are against ‘international law’. No shit, Sherlock!
The HTS is said to be a split from Al Nusra, the Syrian Al Qaeda group, but in fact is really a reshuffle of names and a re-branding. Just a few days earlier, they proclaimed that their only enemies were Iran and Hezbollah, and Israel was no problem for them – they sought friendly relations with it. They also talked about democracy and a new constitution. Cynical talk, when they are slaughtering adherents of the ‘wrong’ religion. They announced that Syria would henceforth be run on free market principles, as opposed to the (at least) nominal adherence to planning by the Syrian Ba’athists. They then decreed that no woman can be a judge, which was commonplace under the supposedly evil Assad regime. Any court case with a women judge would have to change to a male judge. They decreed that 400,000 Shi’a, who gained Syrian citizenship under the last 50 years under the rule of the Ba’ath Socialist Party, would be deprived of citizenship and expelled. Thousands of such people are fleeing Syria as we speak. Meanwhile the West has begun sending back Syrian refugees, as Syria is supposedly ‘safe’ now it is ruled by ISIS types. The persecuted of today, victims of Western proxies, will be refused asylum in the West, whereas those who supported the proxies were given asylum. HTS also decree that journalists who reported for the Assad regime will be punished – i.e. slaughtered. So, this is democracy: economics for the wealthy, legally mandated oppression of women, persecution of minorities, murder of press people.
Calling this ‘democracy’ is complete nonsense. But the Syrian population may well have other ideas. A fight around democracy against the CIA/Zionist jihadi stooges is quite likely in due course. And if there is one thing that Zionism fears above all in the Arab world it is democracy. They fear it because the Arab peoples of the region regard the Zionist regime as their most dangerous enemy. All their allies in the region are the most brutal dictatorships, with Sisi’s Egypt, and the Royal dictatorships in Jordan and Saudi Arabia in pride of place. In places where there is even a modicum of democratic space, such as Lebanon, militant opponents of Zionism, such as Hezbollah, rapidly become dominant. In an environment where dictatorships are dominant, Assad as one of these who was hostile to Zionism was an anomaly. And the Sunni Islamists with their sectarian brutality and their aspiration to be clients of imperialism, are likely the source of another brutal dictatorship. In the post-Assad context, opposing these dictatorial trends and demanding the popular election of a government to stand up to Zionism and its genocidal Greater Israel aspirations, are crucial. We need the further elaboration of democratic demands, such as for a constituent assembly, not least to bury such pro-Zionist, dictatorial trends. The revolution against Zionism is inseparable from a permanent revolution of the Arab masses against their ruling classes, that has the potential to crack the Zionist fortress itself.
Uniting the oppressed and overcoming the limits of the Axis of Resistance
Joint statement of LCFI and ClassConscious.org
(Left) US Ukrainian Stooge Zelensky, (right) US Syrian stooge Al-Jolani, still a wanted Al Qaeda/ISIS terrorist (by the US) with a $10 million price on his head. Identikit makeovers.
The fall of the Syrian government is the most important geopolitical event since the Palestinian resistance attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. In the immediate term, it is a tactical victory for imperialism, and above all for Israel, for weakening the routes of weapons and financial resources destined for the guerrillas in Lebanon and Palestine and allowing the destruction of a political force that, after Iran, had the best arsenal to confront the Zionist entity.
Israel has effectively removed a potential entire front in the ongoing war against the resistance. Iran has already demonstrated its capacity to hit Israel powerfully and directly but it has temporarily lost the ability to threaten Israel on its borders via its allies. Whilst Assad was not actively opening up the Golan Heights front in the last 14 months, the complete destruction of the Syrian Army, navy and air-force removes this potential for the for-seeable future.
It has greatly strengthened the government of Netanyahu and the “Greater Israel” fanatics in his government., who will be currently drunk with power and their hubristic supremacist ambitions will also become more emboldened with the coming to power to power of Trump. This could hasten the long term imperialist plans for war with Iran to “finish” their goals of “reshaping” West Asia.
However a dialectal examination of this immediate victory for imperialism reveals that it could be more fragile and temporary than first appears. The competing interests of regional powers such as Turkey, the forces of chaos unleashed and the unreliable nature of the jihadhist HTS forces might sow the seeds of blowback against imperialism in the long run. Facing mounting contradictions, every victory of imperialism in the current context creates potentially more contradictions and problems in the long term.
Which side do Erdogan and HTS play on?
But this victory seems likely to be short-lived. One of the players most benefited by the fall of Assad in the region is Turkey. Turkey, ruled by Tayyip Recep Erdogan, is part of NATO, but does not enjoy the confidence of the imperialist federation, which attempted a military coup to overthrow it in 2016. Having survived the coup attempt, Erdogan has sought to carve out an autonomous space since the beginning of this cold war and even more so now in the first conflicts of World War III, to regain the influence he had until World War I, when the country ruled the Ottoman Empire.
Erdogan and Assad
Turkey knows that it can only play this autonomous role through winning mass support in the region by opposing the other players, especially the hated State of Israel. Not by chance, on the same day December 7, when Damascus fell, Iran, Russia and Turkey held a trilateral forum in Doha, when:
“Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that he and the foreign ministers of Turkey and Iran agreed at a meeting in Doha that there should be an immediate end to “hostilities” in Syria, Reuters reports. Lavrov said Moscow wanted to see a dialogue between the Syrian government and what he called the “legitimate opposition” in Syria.” (https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241207-russias-lavrov-says-moscow-tehran-and-ankara-want-immediate-end-to-fighting-in-syria/)
The legitimate opposition to which the Russian minister refers is the one influenced by Turkey, which already after the fall of Assad clashed with the Syrian Democratic Forces, linked to the Kurds and supported by the US.
It would be a mistake to believe that the process is controlled by the US and Israel. It is the decadence of the imperialist system that feeds antagonistic aspirations in the bourgeoisie and governments of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which find themselves with the status of aspirants of the BRICS plus.
The mercenary group that took over Damascus, for example, the Sunni jihadist and Salafist Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS or Levant Liberation Organization), led by the Saudi national Abu Mohammed al-Jolani (who has returned to using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa), is in dispute. HTS continues to be designated by the U.N., U.S., U.K., and other countries as a terrorist organization, and the U.S. has retained a $10 million bounty for information on Jolani’s whereabouts.
The British government exhibits tensions about the HTS, and also reveals the hesitation of imperialism:
“Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said no decision had yet been made on whether the UK government could remove Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from a list of banned terrorist groups after rebels led the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
‘We’ve all seen in other parts of history where we think there was a turning point, but that didn’t necessarily become the better future we hoped for,’ Sir Keir added.
(Too early to remove Syrian rebels from terror list – Starmer, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7qenxy8r2o)
For this reason, Iran and Hamas itself nurture expectations that the process as a whole may favor the Axis of Resistance in the medium term.
By the same expectation, even after the surrender without combat by the Syrian army, the Zionist IDF has bombed almost 500 times against strategic military positions in Syria under the justification of “preventing weapons from falling into the hands of terrorist elements”. Compared to Hezbollah, for example, the military apparatus of the Syrian army is far superior. Therefore, Israel, which has no reason to feel secure about the future of Syria, has been bombing fighter jets, helicopters, surface-to-air missile launchers and weapons manufacturing sites in Syria.
According to the US and Israeli agenda, the fall of the Syrian regime would allow the suppression of the presence of Russia, where it maintains two naval bases (Tartus and Latakia), cut off the arms and financial routes to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, contain the advance of China’s New Silk Road, isolate Iran, abort the growth of the BRICS in the region, while favoring Israel’s “new Middle East” plan and the oil and trade routes controlled by the imperialist system.
This is not the same agenda as Turkey, which took advantage of the disintegration of Syria to project its autonomous power in the midst of the crisis of the imperialist system and the new cold war to reestablish Turkish influence in the region, lost since the first world war. Ankara’s second objective is to suffocate the Kurdish communities, which are strongly opposed to it within Turkey and which have in the north and northeast of Syria a fertile ground to found Kurdistan. For this reason, pro-Turkish mercenaries are driving the Kurds out of the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor. At the same time, Russian military bases have not been attacked so far by what Lavrov called the Syrian “legitimate opposition.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), feared by Israel as “the largest terrorist organization in the world,” has launched an appeal to the future Syrian government:
“There are some fundamental basic points on which any possible Iranian cooperation with the new Syrian government must be based:
– Agree on the prohibition of normalization between Syria and the Israeli enemy.
– Reject the Israeli incursion into Syrian territory and confront it by all means, including military means.
– Protect Syria’s religious minorities, not attack neighboring countries, prohibit terrorist activities, and cancel support for such activities.
Iran and the Axis of Resistance will support any non-sectarian Syrian government that rejects the Zionist regime, stands with the Palestinian people, and puts the issue of Palestine and its people among its priorities.’
Blowback is an expression of the lexicon of international intelligence since the beginning of the first Cold War (1949-1991) that refers to collateral effects that turn against secret operations of imperialism, such as, for example, the Iranian revolution (1979) resulting from a process of maturation of the struggle against the coup d’état promoted by the CIA in Iran, in 1953.
The attack by fundamentalist guerrillas, used by the US against the USSR in Afghanistan in the 1980s, against the WTC in 2001 and the emergence of Al Qaeda would be another example of blowback. The current operation to overthrow the Assad regime, although quick and successful, also seems to be rapidly generating its blowback, due to the fact that immediately after the fall of Damascus, the same forces that united in the uprising, already began to fight each other for the booty.
Osama Bin Laden lauded by Western media for his anti-Soviet jihad
The internal contradictions of the collapse of the government favored a broad united front of antagonistic interests and this anti-Assad unity took a leap in quality when it concentrated a great tension against which there was no resistance. With the disappearance of the antagonist Assad, new contradictions are created within the ultra-heterogeneous front, disputing the booty.
The IDF, HTS, Free Syrian Army, Kurds, have already started to clash with each other. The first victors repressed have been the Kurds. Pro-Turkish mercenaries are driving the Kurds out of Deir ez-Zor through the ‘Syrian National Army’, aiming for control of Syrian oil. This process will directly or contradictorily feed the resurgence of the axis of resistance in Syria.
The Turkish and Saudi governments, as well as the militias they support in Syria, do not deserve the slightest trust on the part of the oppressed. But neither are they reliable agents for imperialism itself. The greatest proof of this is Israel’s intention to annihilate all the repressive apparatus that would be inherited from the Assad government by a future government of militias supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia. These contradictions can and should be taken advantage of by the Axis of Resistance as part of the policy of weakening imperialist control over the region. At the same time, the basic points presented by the IRGC to politically dispute the new Syrian government are reasonable.
How can a country that bravely resisted the onslaught of imperialism for 50 years fall like a house of cards in 10 days?
Neither the US, nor Israeli, nor Turkish armies, nor any guerrilla militia defeated the Syrian army; it was the economic war of imperialism that strangled the Arab state of Syria and its backbone, the army.
There was no defence. Damascus surrendered. Assad fled to Russia. Hundreds of military and leaders of the former government who were unable to flee to Iraq have been massacred. Now, the Syrian Arab State is being torn apart.
Syria is a West Asian country whose main natural resource is its own geostrategic location. Compared to its neighbors, Syria has almost no oil. The country’s location is essential for all geopolitical movements between the three continents of the old world, especially between Europe and the Arabian Peninsula, bordering both Turkey and Iraq. Syria was the main supply route for the Axis of Resistance that connects Iran to Lebanon.
Syria has been an oppressed and rebellious country for more than half a century, when Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar al-Assad, of the Ba’ath party, representative of Arab nationalism and ally of the USSR, opposed the integration of the country into the imperialist system led by the US, as happened to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
Syria and the Soviet Union established a mutual protection agreement in 1971 that resulted in the installation of a Soviet naval base at Tartus during the Cold War, with the aim of supporting the Soviet Navy‘s 5th Operational Squadron in the Mediterranean, which the Soviets saw as a counterweight to the U.S. Sixth Fleet based in Italy.
Since then, imperialism has been trying to subjugate the country with sanctions. Syria was weakened in the 1990s with the end of the USSR and the imperialist offensive was increased during the “war on terror” (from 2001) of the USA, with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. This pressure has forced the political regime to become increasingly repressive against the insurgency sponsored by the US, Israel and Turkey, which culminated in the constitution of an opposition front, supported by the West, the Syrian National Council and the Syrian National Army (formerly known as the Free Syrian Army), which feeds on disaffection with, and defectors from, the Assad regime itself.
The Pentagon has established a strategic military base since 2016 in the country, the Al Tanf base, which today can count on a thousand soldiers. This insurgent movement will be boosted by bombings and military interventions camouflaged as a “civil war” that lasts from 2011 to 2018.
Unlike other oppressed countries that suffer from imperialism’s economic wars, Syria has suffered, cumulatively, sanctions, military intervention and more sanctions, such as the Caesar Law, imposed in 2020 by the US. Unlike other sanctioned countries, Syria, which was the third most sanctioned country in the world until 2022, does not have energy reserves like Venezuela, Russia or Iran that could remedy the expensive economic, social and human price of the blockade imposed by the imperialist system. Syria has an estimated reserve of approximately 2.4 billion barrels of oil. Saudi Arabia has about 297 billion, Iran 157 billion and Iraq 145 billion. And even with small energy reserves, these were already controlled by the enemy, directly by occupation troops of the US army or mercenary organizations that associated with the US, such as Kurds, the Islamic State, which in 2014 had managed to dominate most of the camps in eastern Syria, including the largest, Al Omar, also in Deir ez Zor. Oil sales have become one of the biggest sources of income for the Islamic State, generating about $40 million a month in 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. In 2017, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, also funded and armed by the U.S., took control of major oil fields in northeastern Syria and along the Euphrates River. In 2019, Donald Trump, then in his first presidential term, said that the United States expects to obtain millions in revenue from Syrian oil, at least $45 million per month. (https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-50514276).
Syria’s GDP fell from $68 billion in 2011 to $8 billion in 2020 (World Bank). 90% of the Syrian population is below the poverty line (UN). The average salary of Syrian soldiers was $7 a month and commanders were no more than $40 a month. And these were the best average salaries in the country. This misery was the result of a devastating economic war of sanctions that imposed the Cesar Law in 2020, against the country and third-party companies that traded with Syria. Until March 2022, Syria was the third most sanctioned country in the world (Statista). All of this has engendered the bankruptcy of the Syrian Arab state:
“According to the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC headquarters ‘Khatam al-Anbiyaa’: ‘Bashar al-Assad did not request Iranian help – in fact, he actively prevented us from going and helping’
“Bashar al-Assad said to one of our (Iranian) officials at a meeting: ‘My soldiers have become real smugglers or thieves, they only defend those who offer them bribes and privileges. They couldn’t defend me, and when I wanted to protect Damascus at least, I realized that they weren’t capable of protecting Damascus either.’
“Bashar al-Assad did not allow us (the IRGC) to go to help the Syrian Arab Army, although he had asked us for help in the past, but this time he not only did not ask, but was worried about our arrival, and said that ‘if you come, Israel will probably attack us’. (Middle East Spectator).
The demoralization and political backlash of the Assad government itself paved the way for the unhindered triumphal march of the pack of hostile forces to seize the Syrian state.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei
Syria’s victory against imperialism in 2018 was a victory for the world working class
The imperialist international and national military offensive has been contained by the military support of Iran and Russia. This containment of imperialism’s expansionist policy in Syria in 2018 was a milestone of the current Cold War, revealing the decline of the imperialist system’s military hegemony over the globe. It was a progressive process for the oppressed peoples and therefore should have been supported by all genuine communists and anti-imperialists. Syria’s victory against the “Arab Spring” and the “civil war” manipulated by imperialism between 2011 and 2018 was a victory for the world working class.
Between 2011 and 2024, Russia and Iran shielded the Assad government. In 2015, Russia made a new deal with Syria and built the Khmeimim airbase in Latakia to serve as “the strategic center of Russian military intervention on behalf of the Syrian government.” Russian military advisors, as well as those of Iran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah were essential in defeating the NATO forces’ plan to overthrow the “dictator Assad”, as they had done with Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi.
But, as of 2022, Assad’s two allied countries have been deeply involved in the two arenas where the cold war between NATO and the Eurasian bloc has already become hot and where the first outbreaks of a third world war have already broken out.
In this process, the weakened Assad government itself began to pursue a policy of reconciliation with the US, Israel and Turkey, taking a certain distance from Russia and Iran, reducing cooperation with the latter two.
“It is now widely known that Iran, Hezbollah and other Shi’ite factions asked Assad for permission to open a front in the Golan Heights after October 7 to support resistance in Gaza and Lebanon. However, Assad refused, reportedly saying that he did not want to drag Syria into a possible open confrontation with Israel and that he did not want to risk jeopardizing his normalization progress with the Gulf states. (Middle East Spectator).
In the past two years, Assad has come to believe that he can pacify his relations with the West, to take an increasingly neutral stance as the third world war escalates. This left the country more vulnerable to the action of all anti-Assad forces operating in Syrian territory and led to the demoralization of part of the armed forces themselves. Several commanders were bribed and co-opted by the West. State institutions were dissolving while the pro-imperialist opposition, defeated in 2018, was regaining strength.
Even so, both Russia and Iran have offered to support a Syrian counteroffensive. Assad was in Russia on November 29 to talk to Putin in person. But Assad and his government seemed to no longer want to play a leading role in defending the state against the pack of opponents.
Who is to blame for the fall of Damascus?
There are several disputes about who to blame for the fall of Syria: Russia, Iran or China, why did they not help the Assad government economically and militarily, or Assad, because it was not more democratic with the people or did not accept help from a foreign intervention to save it? We believe that the answer is none of the previous alternatives. Looking for culprits is a symptom of crisis on the losing side.
Many question whether wealthy China could not have prevented Syria’s economic collapse and prevented the situation from reaching this point.
In 2022, Syria joined China’s Belt and Silk Road project. In September 2023, Assad made his first official visit to China. At that time, the two countries announced a policy of strategic cooperation.
In 2024, China donated the equivalent of $10 million in communications equipment to Syria, as well as medical aid and assistance to Damascus. However, the strengthening of these relations seems not to have been enough to save the Syrian economy and state from multiple bankruptcy and the siege that resulted in its destruction.
Now China tends to lose a lot because with the end of the state of Syria as we know it, the US is getting closer to the realization of its strategic objective in the region, gaining a breathing space and delaying its decline by containing its loss of control in the Middle East, the core of the disputes for oil, the main energy matrix on the planet.
For months, Iran had been offering to bolster the Syrian defence forces. According to journalist Pepe Escobar, Iran said: we have two brigades. if you give the okay, it will take two weeks, for them to position themselves in Syrian territory, but they are available.
Another Iranian source presents the following picture of defection:
“Iran expected Assad to ask for military assistance, and we were prepared to respond…But such a request did not come. It became clear after Aleppo fell that Assad had no real intentions of staying in power.”
The fall of Aleppo marked a turning point. Iranian officials claim that Assad’s reluctance to act signalled his willingness to step down, a decision influenced by diplomatic efforts led by Russia and the United Arab Emirates. This development has left Iran with limited options, leading to a strategic pivot. (Iranian officials reveal Assad ignored warnings, https://slguardian.org/iranian-officials-reveal-assad-ignored-warnings/)
Apparently, the exhaustion of the country, its state, its armed forces and its social fabric was already too deep to resist a new military intervention like the one we are seeing now and Assad renounced the defense of the country, clearing the way for an easy conquest of Aleppo, Homes and Damascus for the dissolution of the state.
Demonstrating that if the Syrians were not in a position to defend themselves, nor did they demand external aid, offered until the eve of the fall by the Russians and Iran, he did not want to pass himself off as an “armed missionary”.
Russian bases in Syria
Discussing the occupation of eastern Poland by the Red Army at Stalin’s behest, Trotsky makes the following observation:
“Robespierre once said that the people do not like missionaries with bayonets. By this, I meant that it is impossible to impose revolutionary ideas and institutions on other peoples by means of military violence. Logically, this idea, which is correct, does not mean that military intervention in other countries is inadmissible for the purpose of cooperating with a revolution.
“But such an intervention – as part of a revolutionary international policy – must be understood by the international proletariat, it must correspond to the wishes of the revolutionary masses into whose territory the revolutionary troops will enter. The theory of socialism in one country cannot, of course, create this active international solidarity, which alone is capable of preparing and justifying armed intervention. The Kremlin poses and solves the problem of military intervention, like all other questions of its policy, i.e., absolutely independently of the ideas and sentiments of the international working class. That is why the Kremlin’s recent diplomatic “successes” are monstrously compromising the USSR and introducing great confusion into the ranks of the world proletariat.” (L. Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism, p. 43)
A military intervention in other countries by a workers’ state with the aim of cooperating with a revolution must correspond to the wishes of the revolutionary masses into whose territory the revolutionary troops are to enter. Even more confusion can be created by the intervention of a well-armed capitalist state, as part of a conflict with imperialism, on the territory of another oppressed capitalist country in the process of a pro-imperialist counter-revolution based on the deep erosion of the ruling capitalist dynasty, incapable of defending itself even militarily.
It is a good thing that Putin has no illusions in himself for being an armed missionary. Otherwise, it would favor imperialist war propaganda against Russia and the Axis of Resistance much more. Putin can offer resistance to the advance of imperialism on his borders, as he has been doing in Ukraine. It can, very progressively, help in the struggle against imperialist intervention as it did in Syria or in the new national liberation struggles agaisnt imperialist finance capital, as it did in Central Africa, but, by the bourgeois determinations of its own government, it does not go beyond that.
China seems to be waging an economic struggle with imperialism at the same time as it is arming itself for an eventual attack, defensively, against itself or for a final assault by imperialism on Taiwan. It merely develops its productive capacities as quickly as possible in order not only to meet the needs of its people, but also so that it can compete militarily but defensively with the West. China wants to win as well. It is interested in avoiding open confrontation with the West for as long as possible (perhaps they are under the illusion that they can avoid such confrontation indefinitely). While building up its armed forces, it wants to avoid the fate of the Soviet Union, which was partially exhausted from the incessant arms race with the West.
This means that it conducts its foreign policy in a very conservative way, pursuing its own national interest and trying not to antagonize the US. Of course, it does not want to develop an internationalist communist foreign policy, but through the BRICS and the belt and road, it is promoting an illusion of “multipolar” coexistence.
We can see that this plan has worked to help China achieve huge gains in recent decades, however, as the US and its allies become increasingly desperate in the face of China’s growing economic and military power, contradictions are coming to light. The U.S. will stop at nothing to prevent the emergence of this multipolar world that China is trying to build. We can see the existence of the brutality they are using to “reshape” West Asia to maintain their rule at the expense of China, where they are crushing states and committing genocide. What response does China have to this? Obviously, they stayed away from Syria and Libya to avoid antagonizing the West, but for how long can they continue the policy of avoiding conflict as the U.S. uses all its tools to maintain control of key regions and resources.
Iran is responsible for articulating a powerful international defensive system of resistance, but not of offensive to definitively defeat imperialism in the region and its Zionist puppet.
But the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves. This is the limit of the Anti-Imperialist United Front and the most formidable of the Axes of Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Zionist Resistance. The events in Syria are a warning to that Marxists cannot rely on the rise of “multi-polar” world organically to occur. The imperialists will stop at nothing in their “crash or crash through” approach and their “old” weapons of military violence and sanctions still have the potential to deliver gains even if they are contradictory and fluid. The economic powerhouse of China and BRICS and the Belt and Road initiative and the ongoing military power of Russia are significant boosts to the power of the international working class but the desperate dragon of imperialism is far from slain.
No capitalist government in the world can meet the need for the construction of a New Communist International with sections in every country of the globe, to orchestrate from the inside out and from the outside the permanent socialist revolution, beyond the limitations established by each oppressed and cowardly bourgeoisie, to convert the defensive anti-imperialist struggle into an offensive socialist struggle that liberates the oppressed peoples and the working population of the planet from tragedies such as the that is taking place in Syria and that will be repeated in less or more tragic ways in the midst of the entry of the geopolitical situation into World War III.
More than anything, the public response to the result of the US Presidential Election has exposed how the Democrat-supporting wing of its media has learnt nothing from Trump’s first term. Many among their blue-collar audience, however, have finally begun to realise how they were being played; and, this time, they aren’t MAGA.
Kamala Harris’s godawful campaign highlighted her middle-class roots, thus overlooking that very audience. Too often she reverted to it as if, somehow, it might be a vote winner, assuming her party already had all of it on-side. Consequently, the justifiable contempt of the majority of the electorate – of both main parties – was assured; appointed by her party as sole candidate with no challenger; actually boasting about gaining the support of fellow warmonger (and Bush Republican) Dick Cheney; talking down to the black male community, (horribly doubled-down on by Obama, on camera, visiting a white collar office); the horrific Imperialist / anti-Gaza speech by Bill Clinton, again, speaking only to their middle-class; the parade of Hollywood elite supporters; Harris’s endless word salad answers to interviewers; the refusal to discuss policy; still live memories of Harris as a State Prosecutor who had no problem jailing working-class mothers, whatever the consequences to the children; the inappropriate, humourless cackling; all left the field open for Trump. In fact, all this would’ve left the field open for any political challenger. Meanwhile, television pundits made claims on inflated voting projection, which markedly contrasted with the results of the more (comparatively) independent pollsters. With no subtlety whatsoever, the electorate were being told what to think; only this time around, a much larger number realised it.
Last month, post-result, Brianna-Joy Gray of the Bad Faith podcast, pointed out that the Democratic Party ‘never call out Donald Trump’s inconsistencies that would actually matter to his base. Liberals consistently criticise Trump for things that Liberals care about. (e.g.) “Oh, he’s so orange . . . oh, he’s a racist . . . oh, he’s impolitic.” Guest Katie Halper added; “the way he treats the working-class, is the way they should be going.” Correct, but that would entail saying the quiet part out loud, so exposing the true aligned interests of both main parties. Something liberals, here in the UK, also conveniently avoid. Anya Parampil of The Grayzone neatly summed-up why the Dems lost: “They crafted a lie that no-one else believed. They mistook the reality they’d created for the actual reality Americans are living in.”
Why should this matter to Communists? Because unless this cross-party voter disenfranchisement with the status quo can be encouraged and somehow harnessed, a crucial opportunity for class politics and consequent radical change will have been missed. For it is the case that sections of the working-class American public have finally been waking-up. Identity Politics has become widely discredited (thanks, most recently, to the Kamala Harris campaign relying upon it), while, inevitably, the right has taken advantage; however, the disenchanted non-party aligned who weren’t already in Trump’s MAGA fan club, prior to 2020, will, I suspect, ultimately be reminded, during his second term, why he was never the antidote.
Independent US journalists have pointed out that, aside from the activists, Socialism – let alone Communism – is dead in America. As here in the UK, capitulating unions have ensured that. The state brainwashing has certainly done its job when Republicans can call fellow corporate imperialist Harris “Far” and “Hard Left” and have their voters parroting this. Reactionary authoritarianism is the new go-to as opposition. This might be funny if the implications weren’t so sinister. Yet, the conditions in which Communism can thrive is now revealed before their eyes, even if – so far – it daren’t be articulated. With a discredited, gloves-off Imperialism, so goes fake centrism and liberalism, once citizens start to make the connections; ones that may, finally, discredit the MSM and so enable a strong third-party, bottom-up movement to thrive.
In mid-November, Jon Stewart sat down with Biden’s Deputy Attorney General, Lisa Monaco. It may be a surprise to Ms. Monaco that it shed light, to everyone else who watched the interview, on her department’s $850 billion budget and how Government funds are so casually mismanaged. In response to Stewart’s question on accountability, she asked for clarity. He added; “there’s a lot of waste, fraud and abuse within a system . . .
MONACO: “Audits and waste, fraud and abuse are not the same things. So let’s decompose (sic) these pieces.”
STEWART: “So, please educate me on what the differences are.”
MONACO: “Sure, so an audit is exactly what you just described, which is, ‘do I know what was delivered to each place?’ The fact that the GOP has not passed an audit is not suggestive of waste, fraud and abuse. That is completely false.”
STEWART: “So, what is it suggestive of?”
MONACO: “It’s suggestive that we don’t have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have, where. That’s not the same as saying that we cannot do that because waste, fraud and abuse has occurred.”
STEWART: (Ironically). “So,…in my world, that’s waste.”
MONACO: “How is that waste?”
STEWART: “If I give you a billion dollars, and you can’t tell me what happened to it, that to me is wasteful and that means that you are not responsible . . . If you can’t tell me where it went, then what am I supposed to think?”
Stewart then contrasted her the dismissive view to those being given so little for basic services, when the State Department seems so lax with such a large military budget. Remember Monaco’s admission. “It’s suggestive we don’t have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have, where.” I re-quote the above not because the content will be any surprise, but, the casual Governmental attitude accompanying it.
Subsequently, Max Blumenthal, during a debate with fiscal conservative Republican and former Trump speech-writer Darren Beattie of Revolver News, commented: “The Pentagon has failed its seventh audit in a row. One-trillion dollars is missing. Everything else pails in comparison to that. So, if you’re not going to go in there and force an audit of the Pentagon and then cut all of the waste, and all of the money going to the ‘beltway bandits’ – that are just corporate welfare for the upper-class in Northern Virginia – all of these corrupt programmes that do nothing (then what’s the point?) It’s all there. If Pete Hegseth (Trump’s proposed pick for United States Secretary of Defence) is actually willing to take that on, then I will cheer. Everybody supports that – except for Congress.”
I’d like to believe that the funding of the Gaza genocide had a major bearing on the anti-Harris vote, but, there was so much else out-of-touch in the Democratic Party’s re-election campaign, the extent of its effect is somewhat buried. The Democratic Party’s silence on it, however, only emphasised the working-class’s correct perception of their irrelevance.
Many of us have, like myself, been ‘friend requested’ by US Trump supporters simply because of our critiques of Biden and the Dems. Where once I may have mocked such requesters, today, I realise it is also a symptom of something far wider than racism alone, since an additional number of posters encompass all shades of US ethnicity, equally powerless from decades of neoliberalism and the lack of leverage to replace it. The next step must be to remorselessly discredit the demonising of the solution – in public – by articulating it in a way that links to those problems they recognise and experience on a daily basis.
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