On Tuesday, Illinois held its statewide primary elections, featuring the much-anticipated 9th Congressional District race for Jan Schakowsky’s seat, which leans heavily Democratic. The electorialist left in America fell into hysteria after Kat Abughazaleh lost this race to Daniel Biss by roughly 3.5 percent. The frustration came from the so-called ‘vote-splitting’ by other ‘progressive’ candidates with platforms similar to hers. Under Illinois’s plurality voting system, 15 candidates were on the ballot, and the expectation was that candidates who polled poorly would drop out to endorse the others. But even assuming this race went the way it was supposed to, the left urgently needs to realize that ‘getting the right person in office’ to pass reforms that will convince and galvanize the working class is the reverse of how power actually functions. Hanging our hopes on the perfect politician, no matter how honest, is a doomed strategy. As we’ve seen with Zohran Mamdani’s failures, refusing to fire Jessica Tisch and then senselessly endorsing Kathy Hochul, even the most promising ‘progressives’ betray their own standards, let alone ours.

Just a week out from election day, Bushra Amiwala released a video saying “I’m not going anywhere,” citing a lack of independent polling as her reason for staying in the race. Noticing this divide, a Zionist group paid for a ‘support’ ad for Amiwala without her permission, hoping to help split the vote, prompting her to make a rather awkward response video condemning it. Despite many calls for her to drop out, she stayed in, hoping for an impossible upset. Being the closest ‘progressive’ candidate in the race, she naturally took the brunt of the blame for Abughazaleh’s loss. However, it must be noted that Amiwala only received 5.0% of the total, an amount that certainly doesn’t guarantee those votes would automatically go to Abughazaleh. In the 8th Congressional District race, a very similar vote-splitting situation occurred, though with less drama, where ‘progressive’ Junaid Ahmed lost to Melissa Bean, who was backed by millions of AIPAC and billionaire dollars.

Abughazaleh’s campaign relied on a few primary selling points. First, she is presented as a young 26-year-old ‘Gen-Z’ woman who contrasts sharply with the increasingly geriatric 57-year-old average congressperson. Second, she is half-Palestinian and refuses to take AIPAC funding, especially key to a race against Laura Fine, who received nearly $5 million in help from the largest American-Zionist lobby this cycle. A pro-Palestinian position (at least at surface level) is quickly becoming a prerequisite in a political party that has shifted 180° on its approval of Israel. Simultaneously, the association with Israel and Zionist donors is becoming increasingly toxic to voters because of the ongoing genocide. Thirdly, Abughazaleh was presented as a potential ‘squad’ member, an ally of ‘progressives’ like AOC and Bernie Sanders who support efforts like universal healthcare and the Green New Deal. Despite posturing as anti-establishment, this faction has frequently toed the party line on life-or-death issues like imperialism, backed the establishment Presidential candidate, and has rarely fought to threaten their control.

Before this run, Abughazaleh worked as a journalist for the Democrat front group Media Matters, which gave her inside connections to the liberal establishment nationwide. There, she gained prominence in the party and experience while gaining traction as an influencer on TikTok and social media. We ought to keep this in mind because many commentators, such as the Majority Report, Kyle Kulinski, Hasan Piker, Mike Figueredo, etc., kept lauding her as a ‘fighter’ and an ‘outsider’ even though she couldn’t be more tied to the establishment; she literally worked for them. Naturally, it was these same commentators, holding her up as the next generation’s progressive squad member, who refused to acknowledge her many flaws as a candidate and potential politician.

Up until a day before the election, Abughazaleh’s website featured an aggressive stance toward China in support of and entrusted the US State Department to handle Gaza’s future. It read, “There is no acceptable scenario that leaves Hamas in charge of the Gaza Strip,” implying that Gaza’s only resistance force has no right to defend Palestinians.

Users on social media, whom she seems to regard as more important than the people of her own district, pointed this out, prompting journalists to look further. Reporters at Drop Site News presented a leaked email that described her as “firmly interventionist” and outlined many of her hawkish foreign policy positions. This mini-scandal prompted her to fire her foreign policy advisor and revise the website. Though this particular discrepancy likely had a marginal impact on the race, it reveals one of two things: her lack of control over her campaign or her total ignorance of foreign policy. When ‘advisors’ are dictating your opinions, voters can see right through it; you don’t believe in anything yourself. And when you don’t believe in anything, how are you supposed to fight for something voters want? Either Abughazaleh believes in the imperialist policies she had on her website and was responding to the criticism, or she is too incompetent to be able to look over the policies on her own website.

But even in her video clarifying her statement, she says she still advocates expanding USAID, an organization that has been blatantly used for imperialism, helping carry out undemocratic coups and foreign meddling for decades. She said she supports funding Ukrainian proxy forces against Russia rather than “leading with diplomacy,” which she advocated seconds earlier. I don’t think you could come up with a more contradictory stance for an “anti-war” politician— saying the US should lead with diplomacy while continuing to feed the imperial meatgrinder that is slaughtering the working people of Ukraine and Russia over a battleline that has hardly moved in years. She goes on to state that Taiwan has a right to ‘self-determination’ and that she will uphold the ‘One China Policy,’ a softer way of saying she supports the American imperialist status quo. Rather than recognizing the PRC’s control over Taiwan to make peace, she wants to continue the ceaseless saber-rattling toward China like every other warmonger in Washington. What an amazing way to make your entire campaign fraudulent for leftists who could be advocating for you.

My advice for electoralists is to either stay out of these debates or be an uncompromising maximalist to push back against the acceptable frame of discourse. Admittedly, foreign policy will not determine the outcome of elections. However, they are a great litmus test of whether politicians think of themselves as cosmopolitan humans or as chauvinistic Americans. The entire world sees America for what it is: a self-interested bully that exploits and pillages for profit— aligning with that to seem more ‘electable’ signals that your idea of human rights is conditional. The strategy should be to reorient foreign policy back to the domestic, sort of like how Zohran Mamdani said in a debate that he wouldn’t visit any other country; he would stay in New York to run the city.

More broadly, if Abughazaleh wanted to win this race, she should’ve presented herself as the radical fighter people want to see instead of copy-pasting an Elizabeth Warren-type platform. Market solutions like a Green New Deal, single payer healthcare, and taxing the wealthy are just not practical in this bloated, greed-striken economy. This country needs to think bigger, and the way to start that conversation is with things like nationalizing the energy industry to slow climate change, abolishing all health insurance to fully socialize medicine, and expropriating wealth from the capitalists that rob the working class.

For anyone running for office, candidates need to stop trying to be celebrities and focus on local endorsements instead. Contrast this with Daniel Biss who, despite being a Zionist freak who received at least $460,357 in funding from pro-Israel lobbies, has actually made inroads with the political infrastructure of the area over his career. Abughazaleh appearing on CNN panels to argue in circles with conservative freaks like Scott Jennings clearly did not win the election; putting in the work on the ground level did. National fundraising needs to stop, too. Someone in New York or California shouldn’t be getting ads for a prospective congresswoman in Illinois.

This election feels like a repeat of Adelita Grijalva versus Dejja Foxx last year. Grijalva was a person with real connections to the district, trying to take her late father’s seat against Foxx, a 25-year-old plant who was a national activist-celebrity being pushed by David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve PAC. The presentation of ideas matters; no one who gets help from astroturf organizations like Justice Democrats or Leaders We Deserve should expect to win when their policy platform comes straight from establishment advisors. Anyone worth their salt needs to actually win over support on the ground using their own words.

To reiterate the idea behind my previous article, this is why left electoralism looks so inauthentic: you’re trying to change a capitalist system that fundamentally is not designed to give the working class concessions through the electoral process. As a politician in Congress, especially in this archaic two-party system, you can’t make forward promises because, without a doubt, there will be right-wingers, centrists, corporate shills, and establishment cranks to block the policies you put forward. Any promise you make is purely theoretical, which is just not very convincing.

So how does political power actually work? In short, all progressive change— meaning changes that benefit the working class— comes from the people first, and it is only by force (or threat of force) that the state allows it to happen, so long as it doesn’t fundamentally threaten the rule of capitalists.

*My selective use of the quotes in ‘progressive’ distinguishes this misnomer. Politicians are only ‘progressive’ by the policies they falsely promise, whereas real progress can only come from the people. Even when reform succeeds, it rehabilitates the capitalist system, allowing it to continue. Thus, a real progressive is someone who knows that progress can only come by force, through ending the capitalist system and, with it, all its exploitation.*

Concessions only happen once there is enough working-class leverage to force them through. Why? Because even if there are dozens of ‘progressives’ in office, there will always be enough centrists paid by the health insurance industry ready to be the rotating villain and block it. With some of them, like John Fetterman, Kyrsten Sinema, and Joe Manchin, they aren’t even rotating villains; they’re just villains whose sole purpose is to block change. However, if there is a general strike shutting down the economy or a nationwide protest sending the country into a tailspin, they don’t have a choice.

Progressive policy has never been fulfilled without the working class posing a threat to the system. Generally, the major concessions to the working class in American history have occurred during periods characterized by mass movements. We especially need to pay attention to the growing strength of labor unions and the threat posed by Socialist Parties in the early 1930s. The election of FDR was a response to the devastating crisis capitalism faced at the time, but he was also elected to compromise with workers who were rapidly gaining class consciousness. The Rainbow Coalition and the Black Panthers brought us the Civil Rights Era reforms. The Anti-Vietnam War movement was a major factor in ending the war and in expanding social programs such as food stamps, Social Security, and labor protections in the 1970s. To some extent, Occupy Wall Street forced politicians to institute a national healthcare plan and to rein in the worst of the consumer exploitation in the banking industry. Black Lives Matter had the potential to be a threat to the status quo and force change, but it died out due to poor leadership and unclear goals, resulting in some local changes to use-of-force policy. The caveat is that none of these reforms achieves everything the working class needs because what we need is socialism.

Why have we developed such a backward way of viewing how power works? Electoralist ‘progressives’ in the West have been shaped by the society around them, by their education system, by their elders, and by the false proof of the democratic system’s effectiveness in producing change. In the preceding decades of ‘prosperity’ under liberal democracy, it may seem as though peace has been established by this system since political parties live in harmony and struggle for power non-violently. This contrasts with the rest of the world, which is marked by authoritarianism and militaristic power struggles, might I add, something over-amplified by our media. But that is only because in these democracies, ruled by capitalists, the political struggle has been neutered. In exchange for your political angst, you get to choose every couple of years which group of capitalists, red or blue, will manage the class relations. As long as you receive your breadcrumbs and get to watch the circus, you will not revolt against the system.

The lives of people in the West have been shaped by the false perception that democracy is the ultimate form of human freedom. However, democracy as a theory constantly comes into conflict with reality. Is it a flaw in the system that billionaires effectively get to buy politicians? Is it just a loophole that the government can be bribed into doing what multinational corporations want all the time? Is it a small bug that fascists who don’t actually respect or believe in democracy are allowed to have an equal voice in government? Or is it part of the system? But even those who are honest enough to acknowledge that societies like China are clearly doing better, they must always caveat that such a society would be better if it just had ‘democracy,’ or maybe the US can do what China is doing, but we have to do it by working within our democratic system. That’s the whole idea behind the Democratic Socialists, who think that we will be able to simply overthrow fascism and then pass these big reforms just by voting. Did they ever consider that the system is rigged to begin with? Do they expect us to waste our time and energy running on this hamster wheel?

Many of these people uphold the ‘Scandinavian countries’ as the shining example of a ‘good’ democracy, since they score highest on ‘democracy’ metrics designed by NGOs. Even if we were to live in the fantasy world that America can magically transform itself into a social democracy, what then? Are we to assume that Norway is the spearhead of socialism? No, of course not. Look at it materially. In the real world, those countries are the way they are because of a massive sovereign wealth fund built on oil revenue, not because of the political struggle for social democracy. Norway can protect capitalism by conceding some of these enormous profits, so that people have no material reason to overthrow the system. Even then, they still support American imperialist wars, are a massive contributor to the climate crisis, and benefit from the Global South being so deeply impoverished.

In discussing the state, Lenin says that, “A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell, it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.” The purpose of democracy is not freedom but to better manage the inter and intra class struggle. The intra-class struggle is managed by mediating competing capitalists and by ensuring that no single firm or industry disrupts the capitalist system as a whole. The inter-class struggle is managed by ensuring workers have the bare minimum rights and concessions to prevent them from revolting against the capitalists. Sometimes, the state may intervene to ensure that capitalists do not overexploit workers to the point that it triggers open class struggle. This is why workers get the Affordable Care Act and not universal healthcare, a minimum wage increase but not a federal jobs guarantee, a stimulus check but no universal basic income, and the ability to unionize but not the right to unionize.

If this isn’t the case, it still begs the question. With the entire country still subscribing to this worldview that elections are the only way to change things, what have electoralists accomplished? Trump was elected with no working-class party on the horizon, and the half-decent mayor elected in the largest city just endorsed Kathy Hochul against a ‘progressive’ challenger. A genocide was carried out with US tax dollars in Gaza, and what were the consequences for politicians? Opinion on Israel moved a meager 15 points, the credibility of one PAC was killed, and we were told to fill out the uncommitted line on the ballot.

While that is reducing things a bit, what we need to take away is that elections need to be completely deprioritized in our political consciousness. That comes after we organize, show up at protests, talk to our neighbors, and learn about class struggle. We desperately need to normalize radicalism and wake up the working class because we’re running out of time.

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

America and Israel have struck Iran in a cowardly, unprovoked act of aggression.

This came after a massive weeks-long military buildup where dozens of American warships, hundreds of fighter jets, and thousands of personnel flowed into the Gulf region. Trump administration officials conducted fake negotiations to try to distract the Iranian diplomats, who were notably willing to make concessions. Since the previous 12-day episode in June of last year, Iranian officials certainly knew that Trump was full of shit and was just distracting from the fact that they were obviously getting ready to launch an offensive. It should be well known by now that the imperialist American military doesn’t move billions of dollars in assets to the other side of the world just to make peace deals. Even if a deal were somehow struck, using gunboat diplomacy to force concessions is a classic tool of the imperialist dogs in the White House, regardless of the administration.

On the morning of February 28th, 2025, missiles pierced through the skies of Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj, and Kermanshah, destroying government facilities, military bases, airbases, and civilian areas. Iran has every right to defend itself from this illegal and barbaric ambush. As Lenin said in 1915, “Every socialist would sympathize with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slave-owning, predatory ‘Great’ Powers.”

This is the consequence of imperialism. A sadistic massacre of children at a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, has killed 148 people, including at least 85 students. The American-Israeli regime has no regard for diplomacy, life, or the most innocent. These children have no value to the imperialist war machine; they are simply tools for terrorizing the Iranian people, hoping they are too afraid to resist. They were children with dreams and bright futures, just like any other child in Europe, the Americas, Asia, or Africa. Imagine the horror that is felt across America when a disturbed school shooter senselessly murders dozens of children in cold blood for no reason. Think of the families that have a hole torn through them in an instant. And to grasp the gravity of this attack, this single missile attack was more deadly than any school shooting in American history. This is what America does to the world.

A teacher standing just outside the school heard the missile blast. Running into the school, she describes, “I felt like I had gone mute. I couldn’t speak. You could hear the sound of children crying and screaming.”

A report quoted Mohammed Shariatmadar, a man whose 6-year-old daughter was killed in the attack, saying, “I cannot understand how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this. We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics or wars. And yet they are the ones paying the highest price.” In this town, there are two elementary schools, one for girls, one for boys, and now almost all the girls have been traumatized, severely injured, or killed.

In the afternoon, images showed rescuers and community members digging through the rubble, with waning hope of finding survivors. In one video, a man is holding torn-up notebooks and the severed hand of a little girl covered in dust from the collapse. He says, “If the Zionist regime thinks that with these crimes it can distance us from Islam, from our faith, from God, and from our Prophet— it is gravely mistaken. We have seen many such crimes before.” Crying now, he says, “My feeling is that she was faithful. Look at her hand, just look at it. I doubt she was more than six or seven years old. Look at this hand. Look at this child. My dear people, look closely. Now the Zionist regime has proven— it has proven itself. Let the world see. Let the world witness this crime. The world must see this crime. Look carefully, those who claim to stand for freedom, look at this child of ours who came this morning simply to study.”

Out of the rubble, rescuers piled up the backpacks of students, many still soaked in blood. A video from the scene shows papers and school supplies lying across the ground, covered in dust and debris. The people helping, doing what little they can, appear shocked, unable to comprehend what they just witnessed.

In a separate incident, the American-Israeli regime struck a children’s sports center in the town of Lamerd later in the day. This attack killed 18 civilians and wounded over 100 in this building where innocent children were playing. Being just two of many incidents, America and Israel are deliberately waging a war of terror. These are highly targeted strikes aimed at civilians to create chaos; they have nothing to do with ‘defending Americans’ or the delusional notion that the strikes were ‘preemptive.’ This is nothing short of terrorism— a term that the fascist American government gracelessly lobs at anyone who opposes it, even American citizens.

Trump and Netanyahu want nothing short of ‘regime change,’ precisely the disastrous goal of the Iraq War, which resulted in a brutal war that devastated the country, destabilized the region, and killed millions of innocent civilians. Contrary to some ‘progressive’ commentators, no one is being ‘dragged into this war.’ There is a subsection of ‘anti-war’ journalists and politicians who want to portray the situation as if Israel is the only party at the wheel, or that ‘Israel controls America.’ It must be reiterated that Israel didn’t ‘push’ America into war; this was planned months ago. Whether intentional or not, that chauvinistic framing only serves to obfuscate the American death cult where politicians of both parties celebrate bombs dropping on the heads of children. The Washington Post put out a report trying to add water to this false sentiment that Israel and Saudi Arabia lobbied to push Trump into striking Iran, even saying the Saudi Prince had multiple phone calls beforehand. This is completely discredited by the fact that billions in equipment were already moved into the Middle East while Trump and the Republicans casually escalated rhetoric about regime change. The overwhelming majority of the US government wants and has wanted this for decades, you don’t need to ask them twice. This is what America does— genocidal imperialism.

With the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an airstrike today, the reality of regime change seems more and more likely. While his death does not mean the total collapse of Iran, it could only be a matter of time. There is still a robust command structure that will allow Iran to continue to counterattack, but with the loss of more and more commanders, they may struggle to maintain civility. As it stands, there seems to be no end more than there seems to be a possible end.

The only expedient end is if Iran can inflict enough pain on Israel with missiles to force a ceasefire. However, it’s not clear if Iran has recovered its supply from last year enough to carry out prolonged strikes. The conflict last June ended only because Iran sent enough material to Israel for its Iron Dome defense system to run out of interceptors, allowing them to potentially pummel them at will, prompting the US to get involved. This time, things are different. There is a far greater military threat posed by the US Navy and the number of targets it has to strike. Already, Iran has made good on its promise to strike the Gulf states that have aided the United States and Israel by stationing military bases and docking warships. At this point, it is a war to disrupt commerce in the Strait of Hormuz, try to impact oil prices, and disrupt tourism, so more countries put pressure on the US to stop the war.

It must be said that Ali Khamenei’s incompetence in not acquiring a nuclear weapon for almost four decades led directly to this moment. The only other way Iran could’ve stopped this onslaught was if they established deterrence last June, to which they backed off rather than continuing their attacks to force better peace terms. By acquiring a nuclear weapon, either by rapidly speeding up development or getting one from Russia or Pakistan, Iran would create guaranteed deterrence from direct attacks, and the only other threat would be from internal sabotage.

Khamenei is no one to celebrate; however, he at least deserves praise for fighting zionism and American imperialism. Against the campist position, it’s wrong to celebrate the life of a fervent anti-communist who helped defeat the real revolution in Iran. When the 1979 workers’ revolution was set to free the people of Iran from both capitalist exploitation and religious fundamentalism, Islamists led by Ayatollah Khomeini and his lieutenant Khamenei hijacked the momentum and centralized power. By 1981, there was a nationwide crackdown on leftists, including arrests, executions, and forced confessions, targeting the Tudeh Party and Fedayeen. Despite being the driving force behind the revolution in factories, universities, and the middle class, organized communist influence was effectively dismantled in Iran by 1983.

We must have unflinching solidarity with the people of Iran. As leftists, we need to be resolute that anti-America is not an ideology. Blind campism is not enough. This does not at all diminish the fact that America is nothing less than a malignant cancer on this beautiful Earth, but if you have no theory of change, you will never achieve liberation. Pursuing Communism, based on the theories of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other incredible thinkers, is the only way we can put power in the hands of the people and free ourselves from the exploitation of capital and religious authority. We must fight to free the workers of the world, not the lesser-evil heads of state. With that said— All power to the workers! We have nothing to lose but our chains!

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

In an abrupt and confusing decision, Mayor Zohran Mamdani sent the reformist left spiraling for answers when he announced his endorsement of the billionaire henchman Kathy Hochul for governor of New York. Such an early decision was met with bewilderment from those who saw Zohran as the spearhead that would break the Democratic establishment and use his power to make waves for the progressive cause.

Many democratic socialists who idolize Zohran rushed to his defense, saying it was actually a calculated compromise. But for others, this was a confirmation or an ‘I told you so’ that Zohran would inevitably amalgamate with the Democrat establishment. This divisive issue reveals the gash within DSA, forming between the New York City members who are more reformist and the more radical national membership. Regardless of how members are justifying it, no one is particularly happy with the choice, with one member from the Queens chapter saying, “leadership and the chapter was incredibly upset on the decision.”

The timing of the endorsement is also suspiciously one day after Hochul’s challenger, Antonio Delgado, chose activist India Walton as his running mate, offering a serious progressive challenge to her centrist-at-best administration. In 2024, when the then-Mayor Eric Adams was federally charged with bribery, conspiracy, and soliciting illegal foreign donations, Delgado publicly called for his resignation, against the opinion of Hochul, who defended the corrupt mayor. Delgado is technically still Hochul’s lieutenant governor, but since the incident, Hochul has effectively revoked his responsibilities, to which he announced he will run against her. Though Delgado is not particularly radical, he has consistently based his platform on grassroots and anti-corporate principles. The addition of India Walton made for a possible revenge story. Walton won a major upset in the 2021 Buffalo Mayoral primary against the corrupt Byron Brown administration, backed by Andrew Cuomo and Hochul. When she won the nomination, Hochul, out of pettiness, ego, and probably racism, refused to shake her hand. The Democratic convention then rigged the general election against Walton by bribing the Republican candidate to drop out, changing the election rules to get Byron Brown a special ballot line, and using public resources to support his campaign.

Despite a decent start, Delgado’s campaign failed to reach the requirement of 15,000 petition signatures or the 25% of delegate support to get an automatic placement on the ballot. Alternatively, Delgado could’ve got an endorsement from the Working Families Party, but it did not materialize. Zohran’s choice put a knife right through the heart of Delgado’s challenge, which could’ve gained a massive boost with his support. At the very least, Zohran could’ve cynically used the challenger as leverage against Hochul to extract concessions. On February 10th, with no options left, Delgado dropped out of the race.

In another laughable moment, it was announced on February 12th that Zohran would go back on his promise to expand rental assistance. The program called CityFHEPS was supposed to increase its current number of 65,000 households by 47,000. The plan was already passed by the City Council and upheld in court before his reversal. The new version of the program was estimated to cost $3.4 billion annually, but critics say that is an extreme overestimate.

On February 13th, in even more outrageous fashion, it was reported that Zohran would not be attending a fairly large ‘Tax the Rich’ rally in Albany happening later this month. The organizers of the event were told directly by Zohran that he won’t attend because “he wants to maintain a strong relationship with Governor Kathy Hochul.” In a moment when the ultra-wealthy are ransacking the working-class by forcing dirt wages and inflating the cost of essential goods, this balk is a damning indictment of Zohran’s priorities. For Zohran, a charismatic and popular leader, to so easily give in to Hochul, a lying corporate snake, displays just how pathetic the reformist path to socialism is.

Last November, when Zohran won a massive victory against the repulsive creep Andrew Cuomo for the second time, I framed the first quarter of my article as triumphant, that a grassroots candidate had finally beaten a dynasty politician backed by millions in corporate bribes. However, I hedged that optimism in the latter three-quarters, being skeptical that one, Zohran would even be able to deliver on his agenda, and two, that he was even dedicated to challenging the establishment. I still think this was fair to express some degree of hope. But more importantly, doubt, especially since all Zohran gave us at the time was promises and rhetoric.

Right after the election, though, Zohran was already revealing where his true sympathies lie. The most damning sign was when Zohran reappointed Jessica Tisch, daughter of the multi-billionaire ultra-Zionist James Tisch, who implemented over $3 billion of surveillance technology in the city, helped brutalize pro-Palestine student protestors, and whose family funded Cuomo’s campaign against him with $1.3 million.

Zohran also downplayed an incident in January of this year when the NYPD shot Jabez Chakraborty, a young man who was having a mental health crisis, bureaucratically calling it an “officer-involved shooting” and parroting the police’s narrative that the officer had no other choice but to shoot to kill. Zohran went so far as to say he is “grateful to the first responders who put themselves on the line to keep our communities safe,” even though they were the sole reason for the outburst and escalation. Since Zohran has at least advocated that Chakraborty should not be charged for attempted assault, but has not recanted that cops should not have even been at the call in the first place.

So it’s fair to say that, despite my deferred judgement for Zohran and the more than generous benefit of the doubt I gave to look past the disgusting support for the NYPD… I was still far too bullish. By endorsing Hochul, Zohran has abandoned any hope of ‘building a movement’ as he proclaimed in both his victory speeches last year.

Let’s recall who we’re talking about. It should absolutely not be a secret that Hochul has been bought by mountains of billionaire donations. In 2023, she received over $9.1 million from real estate interests, $3.9 million from Wall Street and finance interests, and $2.5 million in direct donations from 51 individual billionaires, including many Republicans like fossil fuel baron John Catsimatidis. Hochul also enthusiastically supports Israel, its illegal settlements, and its genocide that has killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. She has gone out of her way to prevent Hunter College from hiring a Palestinian studies professor. She randomly paused the surprisingly positive congestion pricing that would help fund the metro system to appease the cries of the wealthy. In 2024, she killed an anti–money-laundering bill targeted at corrupt landlords. In her first budget in 2023, which was deemed her ‘austerity budget,’ she refused dozens of progressive compromises, increased private over public school funding, rolled back bail reform, and rejected tenant protections. In that same budget, she tried to push a change to gut climate regulations, but luckily failed.

Ironically, one of the few good things Hochul did was break a strike. She crushed the prison guard strike last year and fired 2,000 pigs who walked off the job to defend their colleagues who ruthlessly beat a man named Robert Brooks to death. But let’s not forget her abysmal record on labor. Hochul refused to support LIRR rail workers last September and blamed the union for being ‘unrealistic.’ In 2023, she sided with Wall Street to veto a bill that would ban non-compete clauses. In January of this year, over 15,000 nurses went on strike in New York State, and instead of supporting them, Hochul sided with the hospitals, quite literally leaving them out in the cold.

And why not wait? Why the rush to endorse now? Surely he knew that doing this at the same time as a major nurses’ strike was a horrible look.

It is not hyperbole at all to say that Zohran’s endorsement spat in the face of those nurses. But not only them; he has also left behind everyone across the state who is in desperate need of a universal healthcare program. He’s saying that it is fine that our minimum wage won’t increase. He’s saying that taxing the hell out of the rich and punishing greed doesn’t matter. He’s saying that it’s fine that our governor allows fascist ICE gangs to terrorize people. He’s saying that it’s fine, our governor is letting fossil fuel companies and crypto data centers destroy the planet. Most of all, he’s indicating that he will be operating firmly within the establishment, with us on the outside. Zohran is saying it is not our movement.

In November, I said that Zohran had two choices: “relentlessly fight the establishment and risk failing your agenda, or align with the establishment and make compromises, only to pass a watered-down version of your plan.” In the most obvious fashion, Zohran has chosen the latter without a second thought. I think the Liberation Caucus described it even better, saying Zohran is “being bent into the shape of bourgeois governance.”

That’s exactly what is happening. There is no such thing as changing the capitalist system from the inside. Structurally, it is not designed to change; it is designed to protect profit. That is the clear reason why trying to make changes counter to that, like making food cheaper, making healthcare more accessible, or raising wages, takes monumental effort or painful compromises. When you have a government that gives you the illusion of choice between two capitalist parties, that is a system you need to destroy, not pretend you can reform. Regardless, we don’t have time to spend the next 50 years desperately trying to fix the unfixable; fascism is rising, and there is no one coming to save us.

The second Zohran decided not to disturb the status quo in the police department, he officially gave up. Precisely because, where does power come from in politics? It’s the mayor who wields the power, but who enforces it? The police. By allowing them to operate as they want, Zohran is severely limiting his options. Outright saying you are going to initiate police reform is dangerous; the last thing you’d want is a strike, which is why dismantling the police must be covert. First, gradually apply pressure, creatively negotiate, use the worst cops as scapegoats, and leverage public discontent to wear down the department’s power structure. Then, by simultaneously using your resources to build an alternative, community-based defense force, a radical mayor could address this problem. Assuming that can be implemented, it opens up tons of possibilities, like dumping fines on abusive corporations, arresting slumlords, and just stopping evictions to force rents down.

Many are in denial, saying this endorsement is a ‘strategic compromise,’ which completely falls apart because Zohran is not getting anything out of it; in fact, he is giving up all his political leverage. Even Hasan Piker, with only an elementary understanding of political analysis, admits this is a strategic disaster. Though he says “there is no guarantee,” I would correct and say we can be certain that Kathy Hochul will completely cease pretending to be progressive the second she wins in June.

The only reason she aligned herself with Zohran (something she did at the very last minute) is that he was going to be mayor and she was up for reelection. Hochul was extremely unpopular. The only reason she is at a meager 49% approval rating today in a 60-40 blue state is because Zohran naively believed she wasn’t a corporate snake and allowed her to share in his victory. The only person to thank for this revival is Zohran, who, on October 27th, watched as his crowd booed and heckled “Tax the rich!” at Hochul as she bumbled through an uncharismatic, tiresome speech. It isn’t an accident.

Zohran is not even hiding this betrayal. Defending the Democratic Party in a moment when they are actively enabling fascism is vile. Hopelessly trying to remold a party that deployed all its resources against you, battered you with racist attacks, labeled you a terrorist, and berated you for months straight for the crime of opposing Israel’s genocide is a strategy so unbelievably moronic that it has to be on purpose.

Why would you want this system to work in the first place? When capitalism ‘works’ like it’s supposed to, it produces nothing but oppression for the working class and misery for the innocent people across the world subjected to imperialist domination. Is that success to Zohran Mamdani?

Seriously? What transformation? What change? Kathy Hochul does not believe in transformation or change. She believes in austerity. And she has governed that way for the past four fucking years.

Even if Hochul, who has all the leverage, is willing to make compromises and help Zohran after she wins, those compromises will mean he will have to water down his already modest plans. Zohran and his team can’t seriously be ignorant enough not to realize that allowing a progressive challenger to apply pressure on Hochul would benefit him?

It’s important to ask yourself if this was inevitable. Were all of his promises completely empty? Based on his very limited vision of ‘municipal socialism’ that the Social Democrat writers at Jacobin flatter so much, all he advocated was clawing back certain basic social services; it was never remotely radical in the first place. Certainly, it was nothing that could confidently bear the name ‘socialist.’ What other conclusion can we come to then? Was it all pandering to the left to leverage the kinetic energy of their political frustration in the wake of Trump’s fascist regime? We should see the obvious pattern developing: just as the Democrats use the left as a scapegoat, ‘progressives’ use them as a doormat. The difference is that the left should know better by now after how many opportunists have delivered us failure and betrayal.

This situation is especially embarrassing for New York City DSA. In this one moment, DSA’s prime success story has just endorsed a horrible politician who has fought tooth and nail against every working-class policy the organization has been fighting for. To think about all those who spend combined tens of thousands of man-hours canvassing and organizing for better healthcare, labor, anti-corruption, police reform, and better democracy, all to get spat in the face. It’s a colossal embarrassment. The New York City chapter makes up the bulk of the reformists in the DSA and has been the bloc holding back radical change in the national committee for some time. No question that they are the exact people defending this endorsement to justify their focus on getting Democrats in office.

With all the effort expended to pull off such an upset, one would think DSA would have some strings attached to their generous and unflinching support? Zohran was a DSA member, he was ‘their’ candidate that ‘they ran’ after all. Nope. The organization that put all its eggs in one basket to get Zohran elected is guaranteed nothing from him now that he is in office. He doesn’t even have to come to meetings! There are no binding post-endorsement conditions for ongoing accountability, just the expectation, but not the obligation, of elected members to align with the organization’s principles and strategy. Ideally, a ‘democratic’ socialist in power would consult the socialist organization’s general body to vote on important decisions. Based on discussions with the involved DSA members, they confirmed that Zohran did not contact the organization for its opinion, ask the steering committee to vote, or seek input on the decision to endorse Hochul.

Should there be any lesson to be learned, it’s that any rational left organization absolutely must have binding agreements should they endorse and give resources to a candidate. Then, there must be mechanisms to hold elected members accountable once they are in office. What is the point of spending all this time and effort building a grassroots organization if an opportunist can use you? Again, Liberation Caucus perfectly phrased it, “Do you want DSA to be a lobbying group within the decaying Democratic Party? Or do you want the DSA to forge a new system entirely?” I’d go even further to say that DSA is less than a lobbying group; they aren’t even getting anything out of the deal. In fact, this might be pushing the organization closer to fracturing. Now that this campaign has brought more reformists into the party, which has recently driven membership past 100,000, a resolution to break with the Democratic Party, along with other urgent tasks, will only be harder to pass.

We need to stop putting our faith in politicians. We need to stop celebrating when they clear the lowest bar. We need to stop the hero worship and look inward at the working class for inspiration. We need to realize that this system will not be reformed from the inside when even the most promising people get swallowed by the establishment machine. From Bernie’s conceding to Biden, to AOC lying to our face, to now Zohran backtracking, it’s time for a new, far more radical strategy. I will restate what I said in November:

We will not achieve victory over the establishment, the corrupt lobbyists, the fascist thugs, the MAGA freaks, and the capitalist leeches by voting in opportunists who immediately abandon the fight and compromise with the class enemy. If Zohran does not have the spine to build a movement, we have to. Our task is to awaken the sleeping giant— the working masses— to wage the class struggle, to wield power, and finally to defeat the capitalist parasites.

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

In the early hours of January 3rd, 2026, the American imperialist machine carried out an assault on the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, first eliminating air defenses, then a wave of attack helicopters and special forces troops. Military installations, airports, and air bases were the main targets, as the strike was oddly limited, not characteristic of a full invasion. The Venezuelan military put up very little resistance, suggesting the chain of command was inoperative, the military was completely caught off guard, or this was potentially a planned spectacle. The invaders successfully captured President Maduro and his wife at Fort Tiuna after his protection unit was overrun before they could reach a saferoom. Maduro was kidnapped to a Navy vessel in the Caribbean and transported to New York, where he was paraded around the city before being indicted on fabricated charges alleging he conspired to traffic drugs to the United States.

The stark difference in this regime change operation was that the administration isn’t even bothering to hide its real intentions. Trump outright announced the real reason for the ‘intervention’ was to control and exploit Venezuelan oil, spouting the bewildering lie that the oil was “stolen.” A few days after the attack, Trump extorted the interim government for 30 to 50 million barrels, equivalent to $2 billion. Later that week, Trump was already holding a public meeting with oil billionaires on how best to divide up the spoils. As if this round of imperial war did not echo Bush’s Iraq War enough, Trump even declared fentanyl to be a ‘weapon of mass destruction,’ to pile on this obviously false narrative. One does have to wonder who this lie is even being crafted for, as their actions are quite literally self-contradictory. It’s possibly for the MAGA base, but it turns out they fully support the “Donroe Doctrine” regardless.

In the weeks after the invasion, the interim government has been working behind the scenes with the CIA and Trump issue reforms on their state-run oil policy, essentially opening the door for foreign investment against the Venezuelan constitution. It’s clear to everyone now that the new government has abandoned defending the principles of the Bolivarian Revolution and is now a puppet of US oil companies. This episode is among the dozens of coups the American regime has imposed on Latin America. As nations like Vietnam have proven, an organized and disciplined workers’ revolution is the only thing that can cease imperialist aggression.

Military Provocation & Sanctions

This invasion comes after a four-month-long taunting campaign where the American military carried out dozens of airstrikes on civilian boats off the coast of Venezuela and the surrounding Caribbean. A blockade was established, cutting off Venezuela from world trade and seizing seven oil tankers. Meanwhile, satellite images and statements from the President’s own mouth showed the American military building up a massive fleet of warships with over 10,000 troops in Puerto Rico and bases in the Caribbean, making it obvious that an invasion was imminent. Accompanying the buildup were occasional intimidation missions with bombers flying near Venezuelan airspace, likely to provoke a preemptive counter-attack.

During the January 3rd assault on Caracas, the Defense Department stated that Delta Force operators were the unit that carried out the abduction in accordance with a DOJ bounty. This bounty was established by Trump in 2020 at $15 million, increased by the Biden administration to $25 million, and then doubled to $50 million by Trump in August of last year. Using this DOJ warrant, the Trump administration was able to sell the very flimsy justification that Maduro was a ‘narcoterrorist’ and therefore didn’t need congressional approval to attack another sovereign nation. The only evidence the government is using linking Maduro to a long-defunct drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles, which was revealed to be a 1990s CIA asset. Inexplicably, on January 6th, the DOJ revised its claim that it was even a real group, debasing their own fabricated charge against the Venezuelan President.

The outcry from Democratic leadership in the wake of this illegal invasion was that Trump needed to get congressional approval before using military force; however, such a basic Constitutional concept taught to every social studies student has been long dead for decades, especially after the AUMF under Bush.

Kamala Harris, who is somehow not politically ostracized for opening the door to fascism, chimed in by robotically reciting the party line that Maduro is a ‘brutal dictator’ but also that this was ‘unlawful and unwise.’ Harris says that “Wars for regime change or oil that are sold as strength but turn into chaos,” yet she participated in just this; watching as Biden increased Maduro’s bounty and kept sanctions in place with the exact same goal of regime change. It was Harris who, when asked whether there is anything she would have done differently than Biden over the past four years, famously said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of… and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.” The Democratic Party is a party with the same imperialist goals as Trump, but takes a far less aggressive approach.

The analogy ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ could not ring more true as sanctioning, a precedent started by Obama in 2015, expanded by Trump and continued by Biden-Harris, has provably caused the displacement of at least 7.7 million and the excess death of at least 40,000 people— dozens of times more than even the propagandist number of deaths Maduro is responsible for. Sanctions as a policy are collective punishment, not ‘democracy’ promotion.

Even if Trump cared about the minor legal speed bump of consulting Congress, this outcry especially fell on deaf ears since plenty of Democrats actually support overthrowing Maduro and have been rallying for the destruction of Venezuela for decades, through war or sanctions. On top of that, Democrats voted unanimously to approve Marco Rubio for State Secretary last year, the loudest and most tactful war monger in the cabinet. If we may recall, Rubio is the cowardly rat who grew up fantasizing about overthrowing Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s revolution that freed the Cuban people from tyranny. Rather than becoming a fighter, Rubio used his inherited wealth and prestige to be a lawyer and became the best ass-kisser in Washington, fully living up to his sobriquet “Little Marco.”

The Real Narcoterrorists

The irony in all of this is that Delta Force is the same group, along with other Special Forces units, that has been involved in countless drug trafficking schemes throughout the past decade, uncovered by investigative journalist Seth Harp in his latest book. This group has been guarded behind layers of qualified immunity and local corruption in Fort Bragg that has seen multiple drug crimes, rapes, and even murders get completely swept under the rug, leaving victims’ families completely in the dark.

In one instance, two Special Forces soldiers were caught trying to load 40kg of cocaine onto a military flight from Colombia, a shipment worth millions of dollars. In another, “Staff Sergeant Tonya Long, a customs inspector attached to 7th Group who got caught smuggling more than $1 million in cash back to Fort Bragg in hollowed-out electronics.”

A decent portion of the book centers on Billy Lavigne, who was one of the many drug dealers in Fort Bragg who killed another soldier in front of his daughter in a suspicious ‘self-defense’ shooting. There was also the Raeford Drop Zone, a Delta Force training ground that was used as “a base for a long-running international drug-smuggling conspiracy,” which flooded North Carolina with methamphetamine for years.

With known rapist Pete Hegseth, who vows to restore the military’s “warrior ethos” running the Defense Department, the unaccountable frat behavior will only get worse going forward.

The Media Manufactures War

Despite a majority of the American public opposing an invasion of Venezuela, the press ramped up its propaganda assault in the past month by flooding pro-intervention op-eds and gutless ‘neutral’ news coverage that doesn’t frame these attacks as war crimes. One article from ABC even described that US invaders returned fire “in self-defense” and lauded the intelligence agencies that illegally stalked Maduro beforehand. Similarly, a Semafor report showed that the plans for the illegal invasion were leaked to the New York Times and the Washington Post beforehand. Both outlets refused to publish them to “protect US troops,” even though they may have had the power to delay or even halt the invasion. This indicates just how little the lives of the hundred or so Venezuelans killed in the attack are worth to the American press. Meanwhile, writers like Eric Levitz from Vox feebly pushed the lie that somehow Trump’s motivations for the invasion were not connected to oil, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Venezuela notably has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, at over 303 billion barrels. Some uninformed commentators have noted that Venezuelan crude oil is particularly heavy, arguing that it is less profitable than lighter reserves and therefore not a motive for invasion. However, it’s quite the opposite: this heavy crude is perfectly suitable for the US market, as roughly 70% of US refineries, mostly located in Texas, run most efficiently on heavier crude, while almost all require a mix of heavy and light.

The other motivation is the trade war with China that elites across their narrow political spectrum have been dreading. The largest importer of Venezuelan oil has been China, which has been challenging the hegemony of the US dollar as the ‘world’s reserve currency,’ providing non-aligned nations with far more equitable trade terms. Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, leader of the American ICE gestapo, said this to a CNN interview, essentially saying ‘how dare they sell to China.’ As nations fear becoming captured by US economic policy and the capitalist crises compound, this trend will only accelerate.

The most embarrassing rumor that the media helped spread is headlining an offhand comment that Trump made that Maduro copied his dance, and that was the real reason for the invasion. Whether it had a kernel of truth or not, the story is a complete distraction— as if the invasion that had been building for months, with weeks of coordination, was not inevitable, but because the President got offended at a dance. Here, liberal media shows how they’re just as fantastical as the conservative media, suggesting that politics is just the work of one crazed madman who makes irrational decisions rather than the very calculated system of imperialist war for profit that it is.

While most of those liberal outlets are making the obvious parallels to Bush’s Iraq War, they are effectively still covering for Trump since they’ve been advocating Maduro’s overthrow for years at this point. Now that it has finally happened, they are suddenly sending mixed signals about whether the invasion was a positive. The New York Times issued soft criticism of how Trump’s justifications were questionable in pieces like “Rubio Helped Oust Maduro Running Venezuela May Prove Trickier,” then outright lied to defend the invasion with pieces like “Majority of Latin Americans Endorsed Trump’s Raid in Venezuela,” conveniently only citing three countries in Latin America with dubious polls. Rags like CBS, now owned by failed journalist Bari Weiss, doubled down, publishing obviously fake polls like “90% of Venezuelans inside the country say they feel grateful to President Donald Trump for removing Nicolás Maduro from power” which is far more than Americans or the Venezuelan diaspora and “78% said they would vote for María Corina Machado” which is a practical impossibility given her 11% approval rating.

Realistically, illegally waging war on another country and kidnapping their President should be outside the bounds of liberal democratic norms and should be working against Trump. However, liberal publications only bolster Trump’s rally-around-the-flag effect by posing no rhetorical opposition. The primary problem is that these liberal media institutions support the end, just not the means, and have been manufacturing consent for that end for over a decade.

History Repeats

While the images coming out of Caracas were nothing short of shocking, they were, historically, almost one-to-one reenactments of the past. For one, the initial air bombardment showed much visual resemblance to Iraq in 2003, with the city at night being lit with explosions and US helicopters firing missiles into buildings. It’s also impossible not to compare the kidnapping of Maduro to the invasion of Panama, which ended in the capture of President Manuel Noriega on this day, January 31st, 1990, after five weeks of brutal fighting. Some residents compare the resulting destruction of Panama City and El Chorillo to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.

Noriega was an intelligence asset for the CIA to combat Soviet influence, backed by the US in the 1984 election. Shortly thereafter, Noriega broke off that relationship, instead gaining connections to drug cartels and accepting support from the Soviet Union. Being one of the most important passageways for US ships, this sour relationship was untenable. After cancelling elections and refusing to step down, the US saw an opportunity to replace Noriega by rapidly ramping up pressure and then launching its full-scale invasion. If the myth of the ‘Rules Based Order’ was not shattered in the mind of the American public in that moment, certainly the half of a dozen interventions and invasions including Venezuela since then, ought to.

María Machado’s Hubris

With Maduro gone, the Trump administration has agreed to work with the interim government led by the acting President Delcy Rodríguez. In an astonishing bit of irony, Trump refused to support the opposition party’s bid to lead the country after the Western press put in an immense effort to peddle their leader, María Corina Machado.

The Nobel Committee essentially handpicked Machado to win the Peace Prize in 2025 over many more deserving nominees, such as Francesca Albanese, Hind Rajab, Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, and the Children of Gaza. The selection prompted a wave of praise, further manufacturing the justification for war on Maduro’s ‘dictatorship.’

In a press conference, Trump flat-out denied her as a possible leader, saying, “It’d be very tough for her to be the leader,” and that she “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.” Later, it was reported that part of the reason for Trump’s refusal was that she had accepted the Nobel Peace Prize rather than declining it. But this is also after Machado went out of her way to heap flattery on Trump at every chance she got, even dedicating the award to him in her acceptance speech.

On January 15th, Machado visited Trump at the White House and gifted the award to him, even though it was technically non-transferable. All of this just for Trump to give a careless thanks on social media, saying it was “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect” before never mentioning her again. Machado proves yet again the famous quote (from Henry Kissinger of all people):

Though she didn’t die per se, her career is surely dead. It’s her audacious naivety to think that just because the US would overthrow your government for you, that they would also have the grace of installing you in power as well.

The Next American Puppet State

Despite Trump’s and then Rubio’s offhand claim that the US would “run Venezuela,” it seems that interim President Rodríguez is willing to support American ambitions rather than oppose them. This suggests either that the interim government is too afraid to oppose the US after the invasion or that Rodríguez and others were conspiring against Maduro and arranging his kidnapping. Refusing to go along with the American exploiters means certain death for the current government, not even talking about the untold numbers of civilian deaths such a takeover would cause; they likely see cooperation as the lesser of two bad choices. However, the lack of resistance to the US military on the ground and the seeming disconnect of the defense command structure at a time when the country should’ve been on high alert seem to point to either a “negotiated exit” or a conspiracy.

The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) seems to agree with the latter, lambasting the “subordinate and tutelary government” that accepted visitation from CIA director John Ratcliffe and is now making deals with the Trump administration to align with US interests. On January 16th, Anadolu reported that Rodríguez submitted a proposal to reform the country’s hydrocarbons law to enable foreign investment in untapped oil fields without infrastructure. In a statement, PVC denounced this as a clear violation of the constitution and of Venezuela’s sovereignty. They continued saying that this puts Venezuela’s oil industry in “a profound crisis that is not only a consequence of the criminal unilateral coercive measures imposed by imperialism, but also of the failure of government policy, characterized by corruption, improvisation, and the progressive dismantling of institutions.” It appears that Rodríguez is trying to use the the false pretense of “modernization and economic efficiency” in order to obfuscate the fact that this capitulation is directly against the interests of the Venezuelan people.

There’s less legitimacy to claim that Maduro gave himself up since now it appears the heaviest fighting of the invasion was in Fort Tiuna, where about 75 were killed. The only evidence of this was that Maduro himself, in the weeks leading up to the invasion, was offering concessions to Trump in October, and fairly big ones at that. According to a Times report, Maduro was ready to open oil and gold projects to US companies through preferential contracts and even redirect oil exports from Iran, Russia, and China to the US. By removing Maduro and flexing America’s imperialist muscle, Trump can claim to have ‘restored peace’ by removing a ‘dictator’ while still achieving the same ends.

Reshaping the Imperialist World Order

In the broader picture, the US is exerting its new method of control, restating the terms of global trade: give the US concessions or face punishment. While other administrations used sanctions and ‘free trade’ to gain hegemony, the US is past that point now. This invasion is part of the policy of tariffs: threaten a country and then force it to give up resources or accept better trade terms. Often, the bully does not have to exert force. As we’ve seen with allied countries in the EU, Korea, and Japan, Trump is pressuring with massive tariffs that are effectively embargoes, then extorts them with ‘trade deals’ to lift the pressure. As with threats toward Greenland, the Trump administration may have already calculated that an invasion is unwise, but it will likely use them to extract concessions from the EU instead.

The unfortunate reality is that countries like Mexico and Brazil have to back down and stay silent, since they could be next. That’s even though they should act in the interests of all other nations and oppose US hegemony. Eventually, history shows that the fascist Lebensraum policy comes to an end when the empire extends itself so far and creates so many enemies that it collapses under its own weight.

Some have even cried that this illegal invasion goes against US interests, is bad for the US, and is not what America does. But this is the most American thing Trump can do on the world stage. America is the world’s representative of capitalism, and aggressive, murderous foreign policy is what it has been doing for the past century or more. There’s a reason Trump lauds the Roosevelt Corollary and the Monroe Doctrine: they are embedded in American political identity. Imperialism is not chaos as liberals frame it. It is part of capitalism’s design: the system needs war to keep states in line and uses military force to support dollar hegemony. The US Dollar, since it is no longer backed by gold, is effectively backed by military force because it literally cannot fail unless the government falls, which only happens when the military is defeated or overthrown internally.

Conclusion

The media has been successful in presenting the pseudo-left narrative, framing public discontent, largely from the middle-class Venezuelan diaspora who had the luxury to leave, as inspiring and progressive. The media does this across the Global South, showing spontaneous demonstrations and framing them as rising against the ‘dictatorial’ government, bound to liberate the country from tyranny. Besides the fact that Western media only highlights right-wing demonstrations, it’s a disguised right-wing frame made in bad faith— that somehow disorganized protestors, that the American pillagers will inevitably co-opt, will bring freedom. But in the Venezuelan context, this is contradicted by the groundswell of protests against the American empire in the days following the invasion. There is clearly a sizable constituency, uncoincidentally the poor, who still support Maduro for the progress that PSUV made since 1999.

Even many on the left get this wrong. It is not a binary choice between American imperialism and Maduro. But there is certainly no symmetry between the two. It’s impossible to deny the immense pressure placed on Venezuelan leadership by outside forces, whether it be sanctions, election meddling, or assassination attempts. That doesn’t absolve the handful of tyrannical crimes Maduro is responsible for, but that pales in comparison to the silent murder of having your country controlled by an American puppet regime and exploited for profit.

Criticism only makes sense from the left— that the Bolivarian Revolution did not actually institute socialism— since it clearly explains the downfall happening today. If Chavez had been guided by Marxism and prepared for the inevitable day that the US military would come knocking, this could have been avoided. That includes becoming self-sufficient, building up defenses, diversifying the economy, and running a command-economy structure.

The only way to end this is by defeating capitalism. And you cannot just vote it out. As this instance has shown, even when a leader like Chavez radically reforms the country and makes a serious effort to protect the country’s sovereignty, freedom is not achieved by handing over the reins of capital to the state. The means of production must be placed in the hands of the working class, the capitalists must be suppressed, and their power eliminated.

Again, it is not imperialism or Maduro. It’s not a matter of throwing your hands up because neither will bring liberation; all that does is serve the imperialist line by equating the two and pushing people into a campist defense of Maduro. The liberation of the Venezuelan people will only come through a serious communist revolution that refuses to concede to the exploiters.

Only where citizens organize to rise up against imperialism, aim to break oil dependency, and build a state run by the workers can freedom be achieved. We are in an age when the declining rate of profit will ravage the capitalist world, and workers of all nations will have an opportunity to throw off their chains once and for all.

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

In my early teenage years, I was raised by the internet. Historically speaking, it is a completely novel cultural space, one that moves at the speed of light and is insulated from those not in the know. Internet culture is rapidly evolving, pulling all sorts of social niches into the mainstream and developing a new language alien to our parents and elders. Like every technological advancement in history, there was plenty of caution about the more evident ill effects of social media culture, like social isolation and cyberbullying, but also about others we couldn’t predict, like the phenomenon of incels or fascist echo chambers.

As someone who was indoctrinated into misogyny and the right-wing content pipeline around age 13 to 16, I’m happy to say I’m now a well-adjusted adult with a fully functioning frontal lobe that went through immense political and social discovery and change to get where I am today. For some of my peers and (now former) friends, I can’t say they were as lucky. Hearing similar stories from converted leftists and combining my own experience has allowed me to reflect on casual red pill culture broadly. For myself, getting to where I am has taken a significant amount of unlearning, self-reflection, and growth to reach a place where I can fairly confidently call myself a feminist and a queer ally. If not for this effort, I can’t say for sure what kind of person I would be, but I can say for sure that going from misogynist to not-a-misogynist to feminist is a continuous process, and I still have a lot to learn. I would say the friends I chose were the most pivotal in this change. During this right-wing phase, my politics, which were cultivated from my online content consumption, were reinforced by the bigoted friends I had. Only once I shed these toxic people was I able to find a social circle that was far more comfortable and, uncoincidentally, not bigoted. But I would like to emphasize agency; ultimately, it is a person’s choice to adopt these beliefs and remain with bigoted friends, especially as a person becomes an adult.

On an individual level, I firmly believe that taking the time to develop and learn empathy while optimistically trying to find a supportive social circle is the only real broad solution to young men’s problems. Personal struggles with masculinity cannot be solved by hiding or justifying patriarchal norms, it can only solved by breaking them down.

In the media today, there is a frenzied attempt to figure out this apparently new phenomenon of young men ‘moving right’ politically. It’s particularly a liberal problem that has to do with elections, and on some level is the wrong way to approach it, but data and the eye test at least support it. This extends to a few subsidiary problems as well, which I will cover in more depth in another essay. First, the right has systematically taken over social media and now dominates semi-political discourse, which has an outsized effect on men with the likes of Joe Rogan, the NELK Boys, Barstool Sports, Theo Von, and others. However, I do have a problem with the widely circulated Media Matters graphic, which fails to examine how women receive political priming not through prominent podcasters but through smaller creators on TikTok or Instagram. Second, there is the larger issue of the so-called ‘male loneliness epidemic’ or ‘masculinity crisis’, which, in reality, has always been a problem but has renewed attention in the media discourse.

The common solution for both issues, offered by out-of-touch opinion columnists and know-nothing commentators, has been some form of pandering to men in different ways. Having politicians dress and act ‘more manly,’ stop messaging to queer people, bring back slurs, stop being inclusive, or just straight up tolerate misogyny. All horrible ideas. The other solution from well-meaning liberals or leftists is to try to give better life advice to young men to counter the right. The advice they provide, even if it is better, usually comes off pretty vacuous to a confused and socially terrified teenage boy seeking quick, non-existential fixes to problems of finding meaning, friends, and romantic partners. Even for someone like Hasan Piker, the poster-boy for the ‘Joe Rogan of the Left’ recruiters, he and many men on the left scratch their heads at solutions to these larger social problems afflicting men. Generally, these responses to this issue are simply exhausting to see play out, and I could imagine for the average young man, it’s just easier to go with the cultural current that’s steadily shifting right.

It’s precisely this attitude of singling out young men as a unique victim position that is so irritating. The media, which is particularly liberal in its orientation, is obsessed with this lowest-common-denominator approach that ignores power dynamics in society. Ironically, it ends up just reinforcing the gendered hierarchy, which is the central problem in the first place. It’s just like them, they focus on injured veterans rather than war refugees, the focus on disillusioned Republicans rather than the grassroots left, the focus on socially isolated CEOs rather than the exploited worker, the focus on October 7th over the Gaza Genocide, and the focus on young men’s struggles rather than the women and queer folks that suffer under patriarchy. How can we possibly waste so much ink wallowing in the difficulties of young men’s lives without connecting it to patriarchy? The brutal, unescapable reality is that for every young man who struggled in some way, whether they ended up an incel or worked through their issues, a woman or queer person has struggled just as much or far more. Real solutions align to dismantle patriarchy and capitalism.

This naked fact that women often have it worse is something that can even push men further into the ‘manosphere’ pipeline. Male influencers can indoctrinate impressionable boys into misogyny by making feminism out to be anti-men rather than egalitarian. The notion that men broadly are under attack or are victims of reverse-sexism is a central narrative to modern misogyny, especially as boys’ personal struggles don’t align with a patriarchy that doesn’t seem to reward them as they expect. In other words, “how can there be a patriarchy if I’m not doing so great,” blind to the fact that a woman in their exact position would experience equal difficulties, along with the added pressure of sexism.

To make sure to touch all bases, there is a kernel of truth in the red pill and manosphere. It’s that life is getting worse for men under capitalism. It’s just that it has nothing to do with queer people or women. To some extent, there’s no wonder Gen Z is experiencing this surge in right-wing reaction; Democrats are too preoccupied with suffocating the left, and Republicans seem like the only option. We are the generation that was born into a hopeless ecological crisis, crushing college debt, horrible job prospects, and a housing market that suggests we will rent until we die. The surge of the reactionary right can be explained materially by this hopelessness. Deteriorating economic conditions have always been a central driver toward fascist ideology; to restore the tradition that ‘worked so well in the past.’ This is why aligning feminism with the struggle to overthrow capitalism is so essential to both movements.

The renewed fight for women’s emancipation in 2017, as Donald Trump took the White House and serial rapist Harvey Weinstein was outed, was a critical cultural moment to help erode the most vile of patriarchal evils. At the same time, there was a silent backlash to this, as misogynistic men felt as though an attack on even the most degenerate of men was an attack on them as well. And this is what happens when a privileged person, or someone who is promised privilege, feels that their privilege is slipping or under attack. It feels like a transgression against them to be brought down to the level of everyone else. A quote by Franklin Leonard gets at this: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” This is the key distinction that makes the patriarchal culture not just innocent ignorance but a conscious, reactionary expression of power that seeks domination over the feminine and the non-heteronormative.

At least for boys, their age, incomplete brain development, and limited social experience can partially excuse this behavior; the same cannot be said for men in their 20s. This is precisely my thesis— men know better. Patriarchal misogyny, while exacerbated by declining material conditions, is a man’s conscious choice to refuse emotional growth, empathy, or seeing the world differently.

These men know right from wrong; that’s why they don’t express their opinions to people in public. So many women are caught off guard when dating seemingly nice guys who end up having horrible beliefs or demanding a traditional patriarchal relationship. It’s similar to how racists know it’s social suicide to display their beliefs in public, and that’s why they hide behind frog profile pictures, screen names, irony, and dogwhistles. While men may not have the words to describe it, they know what they believe is an expression of power, even if they lie to themselves, saying it’s harmless. Especially in the past few years, influencers like Fresh & Fit, Andrew Tate, and the Whatever Podcast don’t even wear masks; it’s just hating women for clicks. While it is still systematic misogyny that reproduces itself, that doesn’t mean the people who make up that system don’t have agency.

With that said, the societal treatment of misogynistic men should be no different than any other social transgression. We do not excuse assault, hate crimes, sexual violence, or any other crime of domination because of someone’s alleged naivety. Even the term “red pilled” suggests that something outside of the man’s control is acting on him as if it isn’t a choice to adopt an abhorrent worldview. They aren’t being hypnotized.

So to coddle these men and take their justifications for misogyny seriously is not only a futile act but one that reinforces patriarchy. As well-adjusted people, we should know that those at the top of this established hierarchy should not receive empathetic priority over those at the bottom. Any political solution is not making compromises just because it might offend ‘the good men’ out there; it’s about fighting and winning.

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

As the shadow of the pandemic recedes in the rearview mirror, a recurring theme is the feeling that things aren’t quite like they used to be. In some form or another, humans have been saying this for hundreds of years; as we reminisce, our minds naturally tend to view the past with more romanticism than the present and future. But especially over the last five to ten years, it seems as if everything we consume has taken a noticeable drop in quality. It feels like every aspect of our lives that we enjoy, whether it be social media, television, video games, or our food, has experienced a significant decline in quality, uniqueness, or an increase in price.

Writer Cory Doctorow recently coined the phrase “enshittification” in a book by the same title to describe this decay of commodities and services. At first, companies create novel, high-quality products, build a consumer base and a brand, and then degrade those products to generate more profit and please their shareholders. Initially, the phrase was used to describe online platforms such as Amazon, Dating apps, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Airbnb, Netflix, Reddit, and Uber, which have noticeably stagnated or declined in quality.

This phenomenon is not random, and it’s not a novel concept either. It’s actually to be expected. The 19th-century political economist Karl Marx proved this concept over 150 years ago, calling it the ‘Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall.’ While he didn’t exactly say “nothing will ever beat 2017 Fortnite,” what he did say is that, because of the profit motive, capitalist companies must constantly increase their rate of profit and thus efficiency. The need to improve efficiency leads to all sorts of cost-cutting measures, leaving us, the consumer, with a diminished product.

In simple terms, capitalist companies exist to make profit. Marx was aware of this and took the next logical step. He realized that companies don’t just make a profit; there is an inherent incentive structure in capitalism that makes profit necessary. Capitalist owners need to reinvest some of their revenue back into the company so it runs more efficiently, generating more profit than they initially invested. On top of that, they’re competing with other companies to capture a larger share of the total profit. In order to beat everyone else, they have to find creative ways to reduce production costs or get away with charging more for their products. And on top of that, they have an obligation to their shareholders to pay dividends and deliver increasing profits, so their stock value goes up. For capitalists, the game of profit is zero-sum; if their company becomes less efficient— meaning their workers are paid too well, they’re charging too little for products, or they’re not getting returns on development— then their investors sell their shares, and the company starts to die off.

With this in mind, Marx’s law states that investors not only demand profit, but also a higher rate of profit, because it’s only worth an investor’s time to invest in the most efficient and thus most profitable companies. On the scale of the entire market, companies that make the ‘wrong’ decisions in this profit game die off, get acquired by a larger firm, or are eaten up by private equity. The big companies we know today– Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Amazon– are the companies that have survived this ruthless process. Marx concluded that this system is untenable because it is impossible to infinitely increase profit on an Earth of finite resources. That’s precisely why we experience stock market crashes or collapses every 5 to 10 years: the system cannot sustain the rate of profit growth.

Liberal economists and capitalism apologists say that competition between corporations forces them to produce better products, like a race between two athletes that produces the fastest times. However, they neglect that, unlike athletes, the loser in the business world dies or gets acquired by the winning firms. This is how monopolies are created. The longer this process of monopolization goes on unchecked, and the more the economy becomes centralized in the hands of a few massive multinational corporations, the less competition there is and the worse the products get.

There’s also the problem that producing a better product isn’t the only way to increase profits. In fact, creating a better product is one of the most difficult tasks of a business, and takes the most investment. Especially under monopoly-like conditions, which is to say the current-day American economy, it is far cheaper to advertise, cut production costs, cut product quality, and lobby the government than do the hard work of researching and development. Especially when many of these monopoly companies, like Facebook, have expanded so widely and have achieved complete market dominance, improving their service won’t attract any more customers… because there’s no one without a Facebook account left!

The Labor Theory of Value:

Before Marx synthesized the concept, Adam Smith and David Ricardo helped develop the idea that labor– the output of human workers– is the most basic unit of economic value. In other words, the creation of every commodity depends on labor; the one universal thing about everything in the economy is that humans must do work to make things. This means that new commodities (new value) cannot be created without labor. The only way value can be added to a product is through labor. This also means that the machines that help make products are not creating ‘new value.’ Machines are made by humans; when they are used to make other products, they are just giving a small bit of their own value to the creation process. Plus, machines cannot repair themselves or give themselves instructions on how to function; labor has to be involved somewhere in the productive process. Thus, human labor is the only universal factor common to all economic activity.

Though it is only the tip of the iceberg of this theory, it is already a more nuanced method for understanding value than the subjective value theory taught by liberal economists, which explains value only through supply-and-demand market forces.

From his examination of how capitalism operates, he found that companies are forced to keep investing in better machines and automation to boost efficiency, beat competitors, and survive. This investment increases efficiency but replaces the workers. At the same time, the better machines are not creating new value; they’re just using up the value given to them when they were made. Keeping all other factors constant, the long-term trend would be that profit rates fall because labor, the only thing that can produce new value, is becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of the production process. To combat this trend, the only choice for corporations is to double down by reducing wages, expanding to new markets, exploiting the resources and labor of the third world, increasing prices, and finding creative ways to charge more for less.

The concept of ‘charging more for less’ is something we encounter frequently in our day-to-day lives as consumers. We saw it especially with ‘shrinkflation’ after the pandemic. Food companies and restaurants have decided to start charging more for the same thing or package their products differently to give you less for the same price. The cost of a Chipotle bowl, for example, went from an average of less than $7.50 to over $10.50 in about 5 years. Add in chips and a drink, and you’re looking at close to $20. Less than a decade ago, finding a meal for under $10 was a fair deal; now, that same meal is a good deal if you can find it for under $20. Tech companies like Apple and Samsung have seemed to slow the speed at which new features are added to their devices. Smartphones have reached a limit where each yearly iteration hardly improves over the previous year’s model, while the price remains the same or increases.

Recently, we’ve seen a wave of nostalgia-baiting movies and shows rather than brand-new, unique titles. Take remade movies like the live-action Lion King, which adds very little while removing all the animated charm of the original. When Disney acquired the IP rights to Star Wars, it immediately began milking the franchise for five more movies and a number of television series, with mixed results (except for the excellent Andor series). Speaking of milking, this year’s Minecraft Movie was such an unapologetic cash grab that became a success purely because Gen-Z ironically celebrated it in TikTok trends. The entire industry, whether it’s the few monopoly studios or Netflix, has completely prioritized sequels and adaptations of other media over original stories. Without a comprehensive list of examples, we can trace much of the laziness and lack of risk-taking in the film industry to the need to increase profit. Why risk a creative flop when you have existing mass appeal cash cows?

This also applies to video games. The AAA studios also realized that once they have a core fanbase that consistently buys their games every year, innovation and creativity can take a back seat. This is most obvious in sports games (Madden, NBA 2K, FIFA, etc.), which see hardly any new content year after year, yet they continue to be re-released for $70 rather than being updated like every other game. Activision perfected this with its household-name franchise, Call of Duty, which is entering its 22^nd consecutive release and utilizes three entire development studios each year. This franchise is infamous for nostalgia baiting, making marginal changes, and recycling its fan base to the point where it now has multiple games with the exact same name (Modern Warfare 2007, 2016 & 2019, Modern Warfare II 2009 & 2022, Modern Warfare III 2011 & 2023).

When microtransactions began to be implemented in the mid-2010s, the industry realized that designing a game around digital items, which requires far less effort to develop than the core game, generates dramatically more profit. Practically no major online multiplayer title today ships without purchasable cosmetic items. This led to the rise of ‘season passes,’ a model that has permeated every game genre, where players can pay $10-$20 a couple of times per year to unlock better limited-time cosmetic items as they level up. For companies, the outright purchase model was limited, as only a small number of ‘whales’ accounted for most of the purchases. Players, however, actually prefer to earn cosmetic items rather than buy them with money. In contrast, season passes lowered the purchase barrier to entry while giving them something to work for. It’s the sweet spot that generates the most profit and ensures you’re spending more than you would’ve otherwise. Commodifying something that doesn’t need to be commodified is an evergreen tactic capitalists use to squeeze consumers.

In terms of innovation, social media has a low ceiling. There are only so many different ways to design a platform. Thus, companies resort to squeezing more profit by ramping up advertising and filling our feeds with slop and AI-generated content. We’re probably well aware by now how companies farm our attention, intentionally keeping us engaged with content to better serve us ads. Through its intense algorithm, TikTok is infamous for locking users into a ‘doomscroll’ where short-form videos in an easily scrollable format become addictive. Despite countless studies being performed on the ill effects of addictive social media, companies have only ramped up the content farm. Simultaneously, they’ve also neutered the content on their platforms to please advertisers who are worried that their content appears alongside harmful or controversial content. Though this has positively reduced the amount of overt bigotry we see online, it’s also led to an overall drop in monetization for all creators across the board and more or less forced them to self-censor context-neutral words like ‘kill’ or ‘suicide.’

In all parts of our lives, we’ve seen a universal shift towards ‘subscription-based’ services, particularly for things that shouldn’t require a subscription, such as laundry detergent, car radios, printer ink, and basic groceries. Depending on the product, this model may save some people money, but companies know that, for the majority of users, a subscription generates more money long term because people forget to cancel or don’t utilize the service to its fullest potential.

Inevitably, all this merciless profit-seeking culminates in market crashes where the balancing act collapses. Eventually, the entire capitalist system runs out of ways to extract more profit; it quite literally runs into the boundaries of reality. That is exactly what we’re seeing today: the world is on a collision course with climate collapse, and companies are only accelerating their reliance on AI, which consumes massive amounts of energy with very little return on productivity. The only way to escape this vicious cycle is to tear down the capitalist system and build a socialist economy in its place, where workers are paid the actual value of their labor, and where the things we enjoy are created for us, not for profit. We cannot reform capitalism; so long as there is a structure that supports the profit motive, it will continue to degrade not just our entertainment but the entire Earth.

The Matchbox Zine 🔥

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

Zohran’s victory wasn’t just an upset—it was a fracture in a failing establishment. The old political order that arrogantly believed it had the right to impose its will with impunity is beginning to lose its grip. Millions of working people in the heart of capitalist America got their first glimpse of what it looks like when they believe in a better future. But we must take this small victory not as an end but a beginning in raising class consciousness and fighting for socialism beyond the ballot.

On November 4th, the humble Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani won the election for New York City Mayor 50% to 41% over former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent. According to polls, the result was all but a formality, since the real surprise came in the June primary when Zohran beat Cuomo in a landslide 56% to 43%, even though 31 of 32 polls had him losing.

While there are many stories to talk about, like the groundswell of youth support, the massive grassroots fundraising, and the salience of his simple affordability agenda, the star of the show goes to the over 90,000 canvassers who knocked on doors to get out the vote. The scale of such a campaign was seemingly unprecedented, yet the media refuses to acknowledge the importance of this very rudimentary strategy. For soulless corporate politicians, they can typically muster only a handful of people to door-knock, who are primarily there for the money, whereas Zohran’s campaign actually inspired people and gave them something to believe in.

Zohran’s message isn’t difficult to get out there either, when people are already sick and tired of corporations, billionaires, and landlords getting tax breaks while they struggle to pay rent. Contrast this with Cuomo’s campaign, which had to bend over backwards to bark at voters that Zohran is some evil person with skeletons in his closet. They failed.

This army of supporters, putting in countless hours of work, has resulted in an astonishing 1.03 million votes for Mamdani as of the time of writing this. To compare, the previous 2021, 2017, and 2013 elections had a total turnout of 1.14 million, 1.16 million, and 1.1 million, respectively. The last time someone received over a million votes in New York was all the way back in 1969, when John Lindsay received 1.01 million.

Most surprising of all was how Zohran completely flipped the Bronx and majority black areas. One of the things detractors would point to is his weak performance with the black community, cynically painting his campaign as ‘for the upper-middle class’ and out of touch with marginalized voters. Compared to the primary, Zohran dominated majority-black precincts by 26 points, and the Bronx went from his worst-performing borough to his second-best, going from -18 to +11. This may have been because he was the Democratic nominee, where people voted down the ballot line, but some suggest it was through diligent campaigning and canvassing. The contrast between the two became even more distinct as Cuomo could not shake his association with Trump and the establishment, as he was +42 in precincts that voted for Trump last year.

The Centrist Coup de Grâce

Still, despite this being the biggest electoral mandate in over 56 years, right-wing Democrats and conservatives insist on downplaying this moment. Ross Douthat, the conservative clown at the New York Times, scrambled to post his opinion article titled, “Zohran’s Victory Is Less Significant Than You Think,” reciting the tired, dead-end strategy of ‘just move to the center and win over Republicans!’ His argument? That just because Zohran won in ‘liberal’ New York, it doesn’t mean it will translate to the rest of the country. But it’s exactly this elite arrogance that causes Democrats to lose or barely inch over the finish line every single election; the idea that people don’t know what they’re voting for and need to be pandered to. It turns out, polls show the exact opposite of Douthat’s theory. Nationwide, 83% support building more affordable housing, 82% support penalizing landlords for rent gouging, 72% support taxing the top 1% more, 72% support raising corporate taxes, and 65% support funding free child care.

And didn’t Democrats try this last year? Kamala Harris, someone believed to be a progressive, completely capitulated to this insurgent centrism and decided to strip her campaign of every moderately populist policy. By the end, she was shouting down her left flank while campaigning alongside Republicans to make the case that she was the pragmatic consensus choice, and she lost miserably. Here we are, less than a year away from the midterms, and the Democrats have no positive message besides not being Trump.

Though the liberal establishment’s job is to co-opt left-wing energy and water it down enough to please billionaires, it would at least be smart for them to listen to this grassroots energy. The problem for us, of course, is making our left movement radical enough to fight the establishment, not reform it. But it seems the Democrats might be too dull even to notice the incredible opportunity in front of them, to adopt progressive populism and defeat fascism, which is driving this country into authoritarian chaos. Only a minority of the party actually backed Zohran, often on the basis that Democratic members should stick together, while party leader Chuck Schumer refused to endorse in the race.

Instead, the party insists on losing. Just when we thought the New York Times op-eds couldn’t get any worse, they published Binyamin Appelbaum’s article, “Mamdani Isn’t the Future of the Democrats. This Guy Is,” referring to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. The short of it is the same as Douthat’s excuse; this agenda won’t work outside of the ‘liberal’ cities. But these opinion writers are too lazy even to use objective evidence and reasoning; the best they can do is cite that XYZ centrist won XYZ election without examining how and why. Shapiro ran unopposed in the primary and then faced an incredibly weak Republican candidate, Doug Mastriano, whom the GOP wasn’t even enthusiastically supporting. Mastriano had major problems fundraising, hardly did public appearances, and was a radical MAGA guy when Trump was almost unanimously hated after the January 6th riots. Shapiro is also completely bought by multi-national corporations, AIPAC, and the fossil fuel lobby, so it’s no wonder that billionaire elites got behind him rather than some nutcase outsider who believes in QAnon.

The article is predominantly just a puff piece for Shapiro, but the most confusing part is how Appelbaum describes what “Mr. Shapiro’s version of the Democratic Party” is. He says it’s “more patriotic than the GOP and, in some sense, more conservative,” citing how Shapiro wants to improve public institutions rather than dismantle them, along with this vague notion of ‘democracy’ that liberals obsessively cling to in their messaging. First off, if Democrats are trying to be the more ‘conservative’ party, they’ve already lost. And trying to be the more ‘patriotic’ party while the other side is rallying racist nationalism to throw immigrants in concentration camps is, at best, a strategy for failure, and at worst, is saying Democrats should try to out-fascist the fascists. That’s the literal reading of what he’s saying. Still, Appelbaum is doing this weird thing, trying to redefine political terms, making it seem like defending institutions is somehow the ‘conservative,’ ‘patriotic’ position. It’s not; protecting liberal institutions is liberalism. You’re not going to trick conservatives who think they want ‘small government’ into thinking they actually want a fairer society regulated by institutions just because you say you’re a patriot.

The next part is even more strange. Appelbaum says that people will trade ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’ for safety and stability. He’s right. People need safety and stability; it’s a pretty basic human need. It makes sense that they would take risks to protect that. But then he bewilderingly writes that “Shapiro recognizes the urgency of convincing people that democracy is still the better bet.” What’s missing is why people have to choose in the first place. Why is this even framed as a two-way decision? Why can’t Democrats provide both?

These couple of sentences really get at why Democrats fail so embarrassingly. They think that people are static points on a graph or numbers in a poll rather than human beings shaped by their present reality. They conclude that the only way to gain more voters is to tailor their messaging to ‘moderate voters,’ or even hopelessly to try to win over Republicans. They think that platitudes like ‘democracy’ and ‘make government work better’ win people over. But, as Marxists who understand that people are shaped most by their material conditions rather than abstract ideas, we know this is a fool’s errand. The one thing people always respond to is politicians running on directly improving their lives through government, which is exactly what Zohran’s campaign focused on. Democrats have a derogatory name for this: “kitchen table issues,” because they know that actually improving people’s lives means disrupting the capitalist status quo of companies extorting people, and with it, upsetting their corporate donors.

Needless to say, Democrats will let the country die if they refuse to change, and we can expect that, given the way things are going. Populist progressivism has proved itself once again to be a winning strategy while the billionaire-backed Democrats cope with excuses for how people could possibly vote to make their lives easier.

Reality Check

The biggest question of all for Zohran is whether he can deliver on his promises. The short answer is: partially.

As an article in Dissent Magazine explains, “Despite an inspiring history of municipal socialism, city government is not the best platform for an ambitious program to expand the public sector.” But there are many specific things Zohran can definitely achieve. Most importantly, freezing rent on stabilized housing units falls within the mayor’s office’s purview and can be implemented without resistance, especially since previous mayors have done so. Having control over zoning allows him to better allocate resources toward public housing and away from commercial real estate development. Regulations on housing and labor are also well within his authority, and he can use city agencies to enforce them. The mayor can improve the employment terms of city workers and increase their wages. Important for all workers, the mayor can emphasize wage‐theft enforcement, protect underserved workers, contractor compliance, and gig-economy regulations. Though this is a non-exhaustive list, these are certainly victories for the working class.

For us, it’s important that just being in office, Zohran is a bulwark against the establishment and will be able to block the relentless corporate capture that has defined the city under bagmen like Eric Adams. For example, in 2019, Amazon planned to build a massive corporate campus in the city with $3 billion in government incentives, which was eventually cancelled. As mayor, he could certainly throw a wrench in these disgusting corporate welfare projects.

The unfortunate dilemma is the choice he faces: relentlessly fight the establishment and risk failing your agenda, or align with the establishment and make compromises, only to pass a watered-down version of your plan. If we remember, in 2020 Bernie was polling better than Biden against Trump in the general, but decided to surrender to the establishment, only receiving some marginal influence in return, when he could’ve channelled the movement into something that would challenge the status quo long term. Already, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is being extremely difficult about Zohran’s agenda. She has already come out against his free bus fare plan and, regarding his plan to increase taxes on elites and corporations, said, “I’m not raising taxes on high net-worth people right now, because we cannot have them leave the state.”

This is the limit of reformism. Zohran has given people immense hope, but he will not achieve what we need to actually make a better society. It’s the difference between freezing rent and abolishing rent. We cannot just vote out capitalism; we must build a revolutionary movement beginning with the project of unionizing and raising class consciousness.

This choice is most exemplified by how a progressive mayor handles the police. Zohran, in the past, has met the moment with a fairly compelling public statement on police reform, saying in one 2020 comment, “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.” Now, as mayor, he is confronted with both the need to use the police and the desire to reform it against their will. If Zohran tries to implement too drastic reforms, it could push the NYPD to walk off the job, creating a political mess that could unravel quickly. There’s also the added threat that such a scenario could provoke Trump into sending the National Guard or punishing the city in other ways. The only other option is to make some marginal changes at the discretion of the police while allowing all the excesses of police violence and brutality to continue. Take the scenario in which a cop brutalizes someone, and Zohran uses his office to charge them and discipline the police: they will do everything in their power to make his life hell. This exact scenario happened when cops in Buffalo walked off the job to support their colleague who cracked the skull of a 75-year-old man. Zohran will also be responsible for deciding whether or not to sic the police on protestors when conflict inevitably arises.

There is no easy answer, but there is a correct answer. Zohran needs to recognize that the police will fight him regardless of what he does. He needs to be prepared for the day these cops put their power fantasy egos above the safety of everyone in the community. That’s why he should be using his office and his influence to build alternatives for non-emergency calls, as well as a community defense force, as dual power. Though it isn’t a perfect analogy, we ought to look to the 1960s when Black Panthers formed a civilian defense force to protect their community when the racist police were either directly attacking them or plainly refused to help black communities. But the problem is, Zohran is not nearly that radical.

Compromises or Capitulation?

Worse is that Zohran has already conceded. On the campaign trail, he decided to drop police reform from his agenda. In June, he said, “I am not defunding the police. I am not running to defund the police.” Then, a few days after the election, he made the stomach-churning statement that he is keeping New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

This is a crushing blow to any hope that Zohran would be fighting the establishment. Jessica Tisch is the daughter of elite billionaire James Tisch, deeply dedicated to supporting the Israeli ethnostate project. Her family even spent an unbelievable $1.3 million supporting a Cuomo super PAC dedicated to attacking Zohran. Jessica herself is also a rabid genocide-supporting Zionist who had her officers train with Israeli police and directed them to identify the watermelon as a symbol of ‘anti-semitic hate.’ As described in a WIRED article, “Tisch was a main architect of the NYPD’s Domain Awareness System, an enormous, $3 billion, Microsoft-based surveillance network of tens of thousands of private and public surveillance cameras, license plate readers, gunshot detectors, social media feeds, biometric data, cryptocurrency analysis, location data, bodyworn and dashcam livestreams, and other technology.” It goes on to say, “[Tisch] got her start in the department’s controversial intelligence division during the height of its ‘mosque-raking’ mass surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers.” In an article by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, he writes, “At a press briefing last month, Tisch called a proposed $80 million federal cut to the NYPD’s counterterrorism budget a ‘betrayal’ and demanded that the matter be placed above politics.” Some other parts of her record include defending killer cops, frequent Islamophobia, supporting the IDF, laundering the fascist Israeli race-war narrative, and labeling anti-genocide Palestine protestors as ‘terrorists.’

A lot of progressives are refusing to acknowledge this obvious duplicity, retreating to say that this is somehow a ‘strategic compromise’ to prevent police resistance. But it should be clear that this puts him at odds with the people he is supposed to represent. So many of his supporters, people who canvassed for him, and DSA members who endorsed him did so because he would fight Zionism, not capitulate to its most ardent custodians. This makes his promise of arresting Netanyahu if he comes to New York virtually impossible. Though he could still fire her if conflict comes up, it doesn’t even make sense to put himself in that position in the first place. Why would you risk a big mess when you could fix it now? It’s not strategic; it’s surrendering.

To get to the bottom of whether we can expect Zohran to challenge the status quo or not, we should track the trajectory of these ‘compromises.’ Remember that Zohran initially strongly opposed Zionism but gradually softened his rhetoric. The first problem was his deliberately taking hostile interviews from establishment and centrist programs that demanded he answer back-handed questions. The grossest of which was when he went on right-wing stooge Tim Miller’s podcast, where he forced Zohran to take a stance on the phrase ‘globalize the intifada,’ leading to months of disingenuous attacks and Islamophobia after he gave a very reasonable and nuanced answer. After that instance, Zohran retreated and then said he “discourage[s] the use of intifada,” essentially saying that he doesn’t think Palestinians are allowed to use the language of resistance when talking about their struggle against a literal genocide.

In another instance, when asked about his views on Cuba and Venezuela, he described those countries as ‘dictatorships,’ the kind of rhetoric that war-mongering politicians use to justify military intervention against them. Though Zohran apologized and retracted after DSA’s International Committee strongly condemned his statement, our representatives need to do far better than remain completely ignorant of international issues. In fact, internationalism is something the left should be resolute about, since building socialism is impossible without the working class of the entire world.

Zohran obviously should’ve been harsher in these interviews or not taken them in the first place. Publicly, he needs to counterattack because they will keep exploiting his half-hearted answers. This approach isn’t an accident; it’s indicative of a person who either doesn’t believe in these life-or-death issues enough to be unflinching or thinks it’s politically expedient to say what the media wants to hear.

During the primary campaign, Zohran already began to bend on his anti-Israel stance to try to get the most rabid of Zionists off his back to no avail. That should’ve been his first lesson: stop trying to compromise with people who hate you no matter what you say. As late as October, you still had radical Zionist freaks like Bret Stephens writing hit pieces like “Why Mamdani Frightens Jews Like Me,” to slander him. As time went on, when the campaign prepared for the general, the more his campaign relied on experienced liberal Zionist campaign managers who played a part in convincing him to water down his rhetoric. To maintain the image that he would be a mayor for all New Yorkers (apparently including Zionists), he began adopting rhetoric that appeals to liberal Zionism, particularly supporting the idea that ‘anti-semitism is rising,’ which is an extreme bastardization of a real problem that is being used to crack down on Palestinian activists. Zohran’s rhetoric on the October 7th uprising has always been very muddled; granted, it would be obtuse for us not to acknowledge that a brown Muslim man like Zohran is in a much more difficult position to speak on this issue than a white person in such a racist country. Still, he has completely conceded the position to Zionists by describing it as a ‘horrific war crime,’ thus making no distinction between himself and those who use that false narrative to carry out the genocide. He doesn’t even support the right of Palestinians to resist, saying “of course Hamas should lay down their arms.”

While it could be said around a year ago that Zohran was at least anti-Zionist, that’s no longer the case, as he said he would allow Zionists in his administration. Mind you that no politician, even Republicans, would ever say that they would allow a white supremacist in their administration, so why would this be any different? Zohran has also retreated from his position on arresting internationally wanted war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, just a year ago giving a firm ‘yes,’ then this year giving a rambling 2-minute non-answer. Not only is this backstabbing his supporters, as mentioned previously, but it also sets the precedent that his administration will not uphold international human rights law.

The most recent submission was Zohran’s endorsement of Hakeem Jeffries during a Meet the Press interview. When asked if Jeffries should be Speaker of the House if Democrats win the midterms, he answered with an emphatic “Yes!” This comes a few days after he urged New York City DSA not to endorse progressive Chi Ossé’s primary challenge to Jeffries, saying that “The choice before us is not whether to vote for Chi or Hakeem at the ballot box. The choice is how to spend the next year. Do we want to spend it defending caricatures of our movement, or do we want to spend it fulfilling the agenda at the heart of that very same movement?” While Zohran’s message to DSA reflected how many DSA members felt, especially the left caucuses— that Ossé seems like an opportunist rather than a committed socialist— his endorsement of Jeffries reflects someone who is bending the knee to the establishment rather than someone building a movement to fight it.

Winning is Not the Point

It should be said that all these compromises will result in more of the status quo, not less, should this continue. What the left needs is more leaders who do not compromise but instead roll with the punches in order to advocate for the correct and moral position. Why are we allowing the Zionists, the perpetrators of the hundred-year oppression of the Palestinians and the genocide that played out for the world to see through our screens, to write this chapter of history? Do we not deserve someone who won’t let that happen?

And what do we get out of this compromise? While it would be reductionist to say that nothing positive will come of this administration— certainly, millions having their rent frozen is nothing to scoff at— this doesn’t bring us any closer to dismantling capitalism. Unfortunately, these compromises indicate he will likely dilute, capitulate, and bargain away his vision while entrenching himself with the establishment. The reason to be concerned is not pessimism; Democrats have a long history of co-opting progressive energy and channeling it to produce more exploitation. Take the anti-war movement in the late 2000s when Obama used that energy to win the election, then proceeded to expand the War on Terror while covering the DoD’s tracks with illegal drone strikes and covert assassinations. Zohran seems more like someone who shakes hands than someone prepared to risk burning bridges for what’s right. Already, Trump has joked about straight-up deporting him, and he can’t let fear of something like that guide his decisions.

Something we need to be very wary about is the progressive Democrat strategy firm that Zohran worked with called ‘Fight Agency.’ This firm helped Bernie Sanders, Ruben Gallego, and John Fetterman, all of whom have been absorbed into the establishment after presenting themselves as change-makers. They are exceptionally effective with young people and know how to push all the right buttons when it comes to anti-billionaire messaging. However, this group has almost no principles, seeing that they helped install one of the most pro-war and pro-Israel politicians in the Democratic Party in Fetterman, and are now helping former Blackwater contractor Graham Platner run for Senate in Maine. Though they lean ‘anti-establishment’ right now, once they gain more influence in the Democratic Party, we should expect this group to become malicious toward the left, both by co-opting left energy by channeling our optimism into dead-end candidates and by running against left radicals.

More importantly, winning elections is not the point. This is actually the same error that Democrats make and why they lose so much. Their idea is that if they win enough close seats with centrists, they can get a majority coalition. But the problem is— now what? Every time this happens, those centrists don’t want to pass anything, people lose faith in them and then they get voted out. Similar for the left— does it matter if you won if all you did was water down your actual position and debase what socialism is? Socialism will not be built in a day, and it certainly won’t be built with a social democrat running in a capitalist party.

So far as principled leftists should even be running in elections right now, they need to be people who aren’t there to make friends, and it could even help them win more. A quirk that social science discovered is that people are more swayed by those who stand by their convictions and fight for them rather than by those who say what they want to hear. People are more convinced when people make social sacrifices and take risks for something they believe in, rather than when they make a good argument for it. And this makes sense; you’d trust someone more who demonstrates they’ve incurred costs for what they believe in than someone who says what you should believe. The most obvious example is how Trump dominated the 2016 primary as an outsider just from his blind arrogance and conviction. It was in part because he said everything with conviction and incurred media attacks for it, so people believed in him despite having disagreements with him. This worked so well that Trump supporters began saying things like “we know Trump lies, but he lies for us.” The left seriously needs to use this sort of attitude against the establishment.

Someone we should look back to in history is the way Malcolm X, a true radical in every sense, would speak with such conviction to the hostile white media. It was the one trait that made him so inspiring as a figure; he never compromised on the right of black people to resist their oppression by any means necessary. So we must be unafraid to express our radicalism and present it with confidence. As capitalism deteriorates, it time will only prove us correct.

The Urgent Tasks of the Left

A few things must be clear from now on for the American left, namely, the DSA, the largest leftist coalition right now. Delegates in DSA must continue moving left, rejecting opportunism. At the very least, DSA needs to adopt the positions set forth by Marxist Unity Group and other left caucuses; to “free [DSA] from the Democratic Party and all other capitalist influences,” adopt a guiding program to achieve communism, electoral discipline, a strong line against imperialism, to abolish the Constitution, and to establish a new union that completes the project of Reconstruction.

The DSA and all left parties must immediately stop running candidates in the Democratic Party. We need to stop making this elementary error based on the belief that somehow we can change a capitalist party from the inside— as we know it doesn’t have internal democracy, it’s owned by the 1%, and its members do not want to actually change in a progressive direction. In fact, on November 21st, House Republicans brought to the floor a resolution called “Denouncing the horrors of socialism and opposing the implementation of socialist policies in the United States,” where 86 Democrats voted in favor and only 98 voted against it. If nearly half (46%) of your party is siding with conservatives to reject your policies outright, you don’t belong in that party.

Capitalism cannot be voted out. Continuing to do this hopeless routine only drags us to the right, rehabilitates the Democratic Party, and wastes our precious time. On the path to dismantling capitalism is dismantling capitalist parties; there is no getting around that. It is our immediate task to secure a new ballot line for the working class or run candidates as independents. The Democratic Party is possibly at its weakest in history, it’s time that socialists show the working class that we are their true representatives even if it means risking Republicans winning. We cannot stay trapped in this two-party nightmare forever. It’s time to rip the band-aid off.

The left equally needs to stop being distracted by identities, labeling, purity testing, and finger-pointing. Materially, the reason reformism doesn’t work has nothing to do with individuals— it has to do with the structures that make it impossible without revolution. So when we criticize a figure like Zohran, we must aim to show that these are structural inevitabilities, not necessarily moral failings. Our task is not to raise a panic every time Zohran ‘betrays’ us; it’s to educate the masses that the capitalist political structure forces this to happen.

Because our vision needs to be set not merely on reforming capitalism but on seeing through a revolution that destroys it. As Lenin wrote in 1920 after achieving the first successful proletarian revolution in history,

“The fundamental law of revolution, which has been confirmed by all revolutions and especially by all three Russian revolutions in the twentieth century, is as follows: for a revolution to take place it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realize the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the ‘lower classes’ do not want to live in the old way and the ‘upper classes’ cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. This truth can be expressed in other words: revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters). It follows that, for a revolution to take place, it is essential, first, that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking, and politically active workers) should fully realize that revolution is necessary, and that they should be prepared to die for it; second, that the ruling classes should be going through a governmental crisis, which draws even the most backward masses into politics (symptomatic of any genuine revolution is a rapid, tenfold and even hundredfold increase in the size of the working and oppressed masses—hitherto apathetic—who are capable of waging the political struggle), weakens the government, and makes it possible for the revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it.”

That is our blueprint. We need to build unions and the class consciousness of the working-class people so that when the moment comes when neither the upper nor the lower class can carry on in the old way, we can establish socialism.

Zohran’s win may not be the answer, but it is a symptom of capitalist decay, the establishment losing legitimacy, and the rising consciousness among the masses. It is our job to channel that energy into revolutionary optimism and hope. The real pessimism is the belief that only marginal change is possible, when, in reality, the revolutionaries of the past have proven that a better world beyond capitalist greed and misery is possible.

Join the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) 🌹

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

The American regime is now openly launching an illegal war to take over Venezuela, Latin America’s most resource-rich nation, under no pretext at all. This is the beginning of yet another imperialist war and another chapter in America’s evil legacy of war profiteering.

In the past two months, the United States has attacked at least ten fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela, murdering a total of 43 people. Trump moved warships into aggressive positions in the Caribbean, including an aircraft carrier, guided missile destroyers, and amphibious assault ships. A massive 10,000 extra troops join the buildup of naval hardware in Puerto Rico. Satellite images revealed newly stationed F-35s, an AC-130 gunship, and an MQ-9 Reaper drone at Puerto Rico’s military bases. On October 15th, an American B-52 bomber took off from Louisiana, illegally entered Venezuela’s airspace, flew around for a few hours, and landed at a Caribbean base. A recent cellphone video in Trinidad also captured an American surveillance drone flying off its coast. On another occasion, a B-1 bomber took off from Texas, inexplicably flew near Venezuelan airspace, and returned.

Trump has been openly agitating for a coup to overthrow Maduro since his first term, with neocons like Marco Rubio in his ear. Since orchestrating brutal sanctions has failed at removing President Maduro, Trump has expanded this plan from just ‘regime change’ to a full-scale ground invasion. It’s no longer a secret what is about to happen: the US is going to war.

War Mongering

The most overt proof of America’s intentions comes straight from President Trump’s mouth when he openly said he is considering a ground invasion. In a press conference, he said to the media, “We’re certainly looking at land now, because we got the sea very well under control.” Trump, that same day, also authorized the CIA to carry out covert lethal operations in Venezuela. Let us remember that this CIA is headed by John Ratcliffe, who, at the beginning of his term, said he would make the CIA less risk-averse, calling it “going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”

As for the imperialist motivations of Trump and his bloodthirsty neocon cabinet, the motivation was always oil. Venezuela is by far the most oil-rich nation in the world, with an estimated 303 billion barrels of oil, double Iraq’s reserves. It’s hardly a secret either; when Trump met with Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó in June of 2023, he boasted that he would help ‘take over’ Venezuela’s oil. “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over; we would have gotten to all that oil; it would have been right next door.” Since the US has levied massive sanctions on Venezuela and essentially cut it off from the export market, it only produces the 12th most oil in the world currently. The other strategic objective of the US is to politically cut Venezuela off from the BRICS coalition, which it sought to join in 2023. Despite being quite fractured, this coalition is the strongest counter to American hegemony, suggesting the US may be urgently trying to disrupt the partnership before it becomes official.

To describe the intensity of this drive for war, the Admiral of the Southern Command, Alvin Holsey, who is in charge of the Latin America and the Caribbean region, suddenly resigned on October 16th. Holsey left his position quietly, issuing a very brief public statement. Rep Adam Smith of the House Armed Services Committee said of his abrupt departure, “Prior to Trump, I can’t think of a combatant commander who left his or her post early, ever.” It’s extremely hard to believe the timing of this is just a coincidence, suggesting there was an internal disagreement over the Venezuela question. The velocity of these moves makes war seem more imminent than ever before in the last two decades.

Boat Strikes

On September 2nd, the US military began air striking civilian boats in the Caribbean, claiming them to be smuggling drugs. The first of these boats was struck coming from the port of San Juan de Unare, headed for Trinidad, which is less than 70 miles away. For reference, this peñero boat was about 540 miles from Puerto Rico and 1550 miles from Florida, nowhere remotely close to the United States. President Trump baselessly labeled the victims “narcoterrorists” part of a “violent drug trafficking cartel.” The attack that murdered 11 people was flaunted in a social media post and was internationally condemned as a blatant extrajudicial killing, let alone the fact that there was no proof that it even had drugs or weapons on board. No attempt to intercept the boat was made either.

Trinidad’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar praised the war crime, saying, “I have no sympathy for traffickers; the U.S. military should kill them all violently.” Brazil’s President Lula da Silva had a much more commendable response, saying to the UN Assembly, “The most effective way to combat drug trafficking is to cooperate to suppress money laundering and limit arms trades,” then adding, “using lethal force in situations that do not constitute armed conflict is like executing people without trial.”

The second boat was a small fishing vessel attacked on September 15th, murdering 3 people. On the ground, reporting found one of the now widows of one of the victims, who confirmed that her husband was a fisherman. The Trump administration openly shared the video of the incident as they gloated in killing those they deem ‘violent terrorists,’ ominously threatening “WE ARE HUNTING YOU.” Trump also falsely asserted that the boat was “headed to the US,” which had no basis; no outlet could obtain proof that it was even in international waters (let alone US waters), which is exceedingly unlikely given the boat’s small size.

The third was attacked on September 19th, also killing three people, this time aided by the Dominican Republic, which claimed but did not definitively prove that their navy recovered cocaine from the speedboat. It was destroyed 90 miles from the southern-most point of Hispaniola, three-quarters of the distance from Venezuela.

The fourth attack occurred on October 3rd, murdering 4 people. Secretary of Defense Hegseth adamantly claimed that intelligence had confirmed drugs were onboard, but also refused to provide that intelligence.

A fifth attack was carried out on October 14th, which murdered 6 people on a fishing boat off the coast of Venezuela. Two of the men were from Trinidad, ironic given that Trinidad’s Prime Minister has been encouraging the strikes. Columbia’s President Gustavo Petro, in response to a citizen of his country being killed in the attack, said, “This means that officials from the US and the Dominican Republic would be guilty of the murder of Colombian citizens.” Petro has also called for investigations into Trump and other officials from other countries involved in the strike.

A sixth attack on October 16th murdered 2 people, and the survivors were allegedly returned to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.

More strikes have happened since, with increasing frequency. Reporters are struggling to get concrete evidence, as the only information released about the attacks has been coming from the White House and Pentagon, openly flaunting these murderous attacks. In one of these admissions, known rapist and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted, “If you are a narcoterrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat [Al-Qaeda]. Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.” The New York Times reported that a total of ten illegal strikes have occurred so far, eight in the Caribbean and two in the Pacific. There could be more strikes that have gone unreported. The one thing that is clear is that this will be a ramp to increase aggression against Venezuela.

Lies & Double Standards

These attacks come after the Trump administration designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization, the same group which Trump falsely blamed for ‘taking over an apartment complex’ in Aurora, Colorado, to stir up anti-immigrant hatred during the election season. Despite the intelligence community reporting earlier this year that the Maduro government has no ties to this criminal organization, the Trump administration has worked to associate the two together to justify further aggression. According to the AP in March, “Trump also declared the group an invading force, invoking an 18th-century wartime law that allows the US to deport noncitizens without any legal recourse. Under the Alien Enemies Act, the administration sent more than 250 Venezuelan men to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, where they remained incommunicado and without access to an attorney until their July deportation to Venezuela.” The dual assault on immigrants and the country of Venezuela is by design.

Meanwhile, the United States’ own intelligence has shown that there is no link between Venezuela and drug trafficking. In fact, according to a leak from a US official, no fentanyl is produced in the country. A now disbanded group known as Cartel de los Soles, a CIA asset from the 1990s, is being used by the State Department as evidence for trafficking. It was a few Venezuelan national guardsmen who used to oversee cocaine shipments to America, which used to flood inner cities, but it dissolved a long time ago. Overall, less than 8% of drugs like cocaine that make it into the US come from the Caribbean area.

The concerted effort to antagonize and provoke the Venezuelan government to retaliate in some way that would justify a massive escalation, much like how Israel manufactured a justification to attack Iran in June of this year. A strong parallel can also be drawn to the over 35 years of war on Iraq, where the US wanted to disrupt or take over the country’s oil supply on behalf of oil baron capitalists. The US essentially invented a reason to invade, went through with it, and leveled the country in the process. An even eerier similarity to today is when Saddam Hussein invited independent weapons inspectors to search for the WMDs and put to bed the conspiracy. Maduro is now offering Trump mineral rights, oil rights, and other concessions, such as quotas on oil sales to China, in an effort to de-escalate the situation. In both cases, the leaders’ efforts at diplomacy failed since the US was already dead set on war. Immediately after the offer was made, the Trump administration denied all offers to come to the table.

State Secretary Marco Rubio is the spearhead of this imperial policy of forcing ‘regime change’ in Venezuela. Rubio, while foaming at the mouth for blood, labeled Maduro an “illegitimate” leader and indicted him for drug trafficking to the US. Rubio also describes Maduro as a “fugitive from American justice,” and has a bounty reward of $50 million for his arrest. A White House official said Trump would use “every element of American power” to stop drugs from entering the US.

Rubio also has a major stake in this. Rubio is financially backed by billionaire Paul Singer, who owns hedge fund Elliot Capital Management, which controls CITGO, the foreign wing of Venezuela’s state oil company. Since 2019, CITGO has been in legal limbo since US sanctions effectively seized the company from Venezuelan control. One of the first things that will happen if the US can install a puppet government is that control over oil companies will be sold to US oligarchs like Singer.

On the issue of ‘democracy’, the saber-rattling is entirely unique to Maduro since Trump and the US is perfectly willing to work with other, often worse dictators around the world such as President Erdoğan of Turkey, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvator, the Saudi family, and, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Though the uniquely strong connection between Israel, a fascist apartheid state, and the US government is well-known by now, the admiration that Trump has for the Gulf monarchies is particularly ironic.

The UAE and the Saudi dictatorships have had an abysmal human rights record for decades, including slavery and genocide, to name a few, while not even trying to claim to have any democracy or equal rights. It’s especially telling how embedded this aggression toward Venezuela is that the establishment liberal media does not pick up on this blatant hypocrisy. Liberals, especially when given the financial incentive of being part of a corporate media apparatus, will always choose to defend overt far-right authoritarianism before even the vaguest of socialist experiments.

The grossest double standard is Trump’s relationship with Argentina, led by far-right libertarian freak Javier Milei, whom he calls his ‘favorite president.’ Milei’s policies have crashed the economy, and inflation has obliterated the peso’s value, leading to a poverty crisis. The country is also now on its twenty-third IMF loan, raising its total international debt to $41.8 billion. In the wake of this, Trump has announced a $20 billion bailout for Argentina, which was later raised to $40 billion. The plan aims to maintain a right-wing ally, reorient the country away from China, and dollarize the Argentinian economy. What’s going on here is that America is willing to both dump tens of billions of dollars onto a failed leader who is aligned with the US, but refuses to allow another leader in Venezuela to exist in opposition to US interests, even if it takes another imperial war and hundreds of billions of dollars to remove him.

History of the Bolivarian Movement

Chávez

For our purposes, it’s worth telling how this relationship developed. In 1992, Hugo Chávez, a military leader, attempted a coup against Carlos Andrés Pérez’s corrupt government, gaining popular support from the masses. At the time, Venezuela was suffering from a poverty crisis and deep inequality due to IMF-mandated austerity measures and lavish overspending by the government, which brought no benefits to the people. For 35 years, the country was ruled by a two-party oligarchy that resembled democracy but kept the same ruling class firmly in charge. After the failed coup, the country rallied around the reform candidate Rafael Caldera, who finally broke the two-party system. Caldera pardoned Chávez after serving two years in prison, but the country was still in an economic crisis, desperate for revitalization. Chávez returned to the political stage, rallying popular support and winning a monumental landslide victory in the 1998 Presidential election. This major victory became known as the Bolivarian Revolution, in which average Venezuelans finally exercised political autonomy in a country that had always been ruled by oligarchs.

The movement was somewhat socialist in character, aiming to nationalize large parts of the economy and to use the wealth generated to fund universal social programs that would benefit the people directly. In his own words, he called it ‘21st Century Socialism,’ which was essentially just social democracy. This was also part of the Latin American Pink Tide in the early 2000s, where popular left-leaning leaders won power and united to fight against American imperialism. Though the project was certainly not of the Marxist tradition and ultimately maintained capitalism, Chávez still faced strong opposition from the elites (the former oligarchy) and international capitalists looking to slice up his country.

In 2002, a CIA-backed coup organized by reactionary conservatives, the business federations, and a few high-ranking military officers ousted Chávez for 47 hours. Loyalist military officers, backed by a massive pro-Chávez mobilization of poor and working people, took back the Presidential Palace by force and restored Chávez to the presidency.

Chávez would hold his popular mandate until he died in 2013, amid a deteriorating economic and political situation. Chávez, during his presidency, maintained a very strained relationship with the United States, as the country was falsely blamed for being a potential source of drug trafficking and terrorism.

Maduro

It was then that Maduro took power, rising from Vice President to President, a move that was technically unconstitutional. Maduro made it clear he was a successor to the Bolivarian Revolution and would carry on Chávez’s legacy.

Due to a failing economic system, driven by lower oil revenues and the previous administration’s failure to offset them with savings, the people turned to mass protests in 2014. At the same time, crime was spiraling out of control as Maduro’s government responded with harsh media crackdowns, use of tear gas on protestors, mass arrests, and covert ‘security operations’ which were likely extrajudicial killings. The police and the military shot at protestors with 43 being killed by the end of this period.

Following the turmoil, America and international NGOs cited democratic backsliding, human rights abuses, and erosion of institutional checks to place targeted sanctions on Venezuela’s government. Despite these struggles and abuses, many people still upheld Maduro as a protector of the Revolution, while others understandably were shocked by the oppression.

Economic Terrorism

In 2017, during Trump’s first term, the US used the Kingpin Act to impose additional economic sanctions, tried to force capital flight, and ramped up political pressure. This round restricted Venezuela’s access to US financial markets and prohibited new purchases of Venezuelan debt, with immediate effects. In 2018, more sanctions targeted Maduro and many governing officials.

Then, in January of 2019, the Trump administration’s Treasury and State Department collaborated to impose savage trade restrictions on Venezuela’s oil sector. As the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, its reliance on oil rents made the economy particularly vulnerable to a complete embargo. The US froze $7 billion in PDVSA (the state oil company) assets, blocked payments to PDVSA, and prevented American firms from selling naphtha, a key chemical used in drilling for crude oil, to Venezuela. In April 2019, the US sanctioned the Central Bank of Venezuela, making it nearly impossible for the country to operate internationally or access financial markets. Later in 2019, additional sanctions expanded to other sectors, including gold mining, mineral mining, banking, and major food distribution companies. Even shipping companies that transported Venezuelan oil to Cuba were targeted in this sweeping attack on the economy.

Though these measures would be slowly rolled back after Trump left office, the damage was already done, and the country fell into a brutal crisis as inflation crushed the economy and the Venezuelan people with it. The country’s production tanked since the export demand disappeared. Inflation was already on the rise in the 2010s as the country became more politically isolated from the world, but reached a peak in January of 2019 at an estimated 2.7 million percent yearly increase. The effects were immediately devastating: real wages plummeted, and food and medical imports fell by 71% and 61%, respectively, leading to a massive shortage of life essentials. Scarcity led to rationing and blackouts across the country, and entire industries shut down; infrastructure would slowly deteriorate. It was documented that malnutrition, especially among children and vulnerable groups, rose sharply. Dollarization took hold as citizens switched to US Dollars for local transactions as a stable medium of exchange, putting the government in more of a political dilemma. Unemployment peaked at 47.9% during this time, roughly equivalent to wartime levels in other countries. As a result, a mass emigration followed. About 6.7 million Venezuelans were forced to leave their home and resettle thanks to the barbaric American interference.

Uncoincidentally, five years later, this mass migration was scapegoated by American politicians, most notably, Donald Trump, who used it to justify a fascistic immigration crackdown. Not only did the US implode the Venezuelan economy and deliberately starve its people, but it also blamed its own domestic economic stagnation on the refugees of that implosion. Though the country was in a difficult situation before the sanctions, to call it throwing gasoline on the fire would be putting it lightly. The United States knowingly exploited the situation to force regime change, and when it didn’t get what it wanted, it destroyed the country, just like it did in Iraq in 2003.

‘Democracy’

It is generally believed that the 2024 election had widespread election fraud backing Maduro’s win. At the same time, there was also significant interference from the imperialist West, where the American government directly funded and trained the opposition party. At the same time, the US was supporting social media campaigns to sow further discontent in the country.

Though it is understandable for anti-imperialists and supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution to overcorrect and to deny the fraud outright, we shouldn’t be dogmatic in our understanding of what is going on. The left should be able to acknowledge the fact that ‘democracy,’ as we know it, is not real democracy since capitalists do everything in their power to rig elections for themselves.

To refer to a group in the country, the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), a Marxist-Leninist party, was firm in stating that Maduro’s government had defrauded the electoral process and had turned the worst of the economic crisis on the people rather than the capitalist class. They also acknowledge that, though it is a complex situation, the attempts by the US to overthrow Maduro and install a puppet regime electorally or with military force are unacceptable. From the materialist perspective, it is not difficult to walk and chew gum: the fact that Maduro has taken an authoritarian turn to cling to power should be expected, but by no means justifies the interference of the American imperialists. This is a conflict between two bourgeois powers; a conflict that is extremely lopsided and ends in the decimation and immiseration of Venezuela, should America get what it wants.

Manufacturing Consent For War

The key to these inhumane interventions in a particular country is manufacturing consent. That’s precisely the reason that Venezuela’s opposition party leader, María Corina Machado, won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her alleged “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” In an impressive act of irony, Machado, a puppet of American corporations, immediately dedicated her award to Donald Trump, the person who helped destroy Venezuela and tried to overturn a democratic election in his own country. This dedication of the “peace” award also comes right after Trump supported the genocide and starvation of Palestine, along with bombing Iran and Yemen, which constitute blatant war crimes. Machado also supports Trump’s strikes on Venezuelan boats, which killed the very people she claims to represent. Not to say the Nobel Peace Prize has much credibility in the first place, since other notoriously horrible people have won it, including Henry Kissinger, who is responsible for a dizzying list of war crimes, along with overseeing the genocides in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and East Timor.

Machado’s Presidential run brought together a coalition in favor of tearing down the government built by the Bolivarian Revolution and reconstructing a right-wing ‘democratic’ government that would completely bend the knee to American capital. Machado campaigned on the oxymoron of ‘popular capitalism,’ which would “make citizens shareholders in industries through the market.” What this means in practice is the complete privatization of state-owned industry and the sale of oil and mineral rights to multinational corporations.

It’s no wonder Machado is known as Venezuela’s Margaret Thatcher, whom she says strongly influenced her. Machado’s politics boils down to just that: selling the country to American billionaires to enrich the right-wing Venezuelan oligarchs. She is also known for saying “being rich is good,” in trying to criticize Hugo Chávez for being “the president of the poor—yes, the very poor, who loved him—because there’s no more effective way to control a society than to subject it to dependency. To die with one’s hand outstretched.” That’s even though the poverty to begin with was caused by neoliberals, who allowed American imperialists to ransack the country’s resources. Despite fronting someone who would restore democracy, it’s clear that economic democracy— that is, the right of every person to a basic standard of living and education— was not part of her plan. The ‘democracy’ that America cares about is just whoever is willing to fill the pockets of oil barons.

Comparatively, Guyana, the small nation East of Venezuela, has an even more corrupt government, led by the People’s Progressive Party. The PPP has held near-unanimous power for just as long as the Chávez-Maduro administration and has an undeniable record of rigging the electoral process. Though it began as a far-left revolutionary party, the PPP transformed in the 1990s, liberalizing and privatizing the economy, encouraging foreign capital, and cutting deals with corporations. Currently, oil revenues are funneled disproportionately to insiders like PPP officials, there’s little to no oversight on corruption, and almost none of the resource wealth is spent on the people of Guyana. The ruling party openly showers favors on supporters, leverages bureaucracy, and uses state resources to maintain political loyalty. Many argue that the Guyanese government is creating a highly authoritarian police state that has been impeding on free speech rights. The government has a record of abusing the judiciary to punish and suppress the independent press. There are documented cases of arbitrary arrest and unlawful detention, especially of protestors. Unsurprisingly, there is zero pushback from the US on this front. In fact, relations between America and Guyana could not be stronger as oil production has rapidly surpassed a record 770,000 barrels per day, which goes straight to Exxon’s coffers; meanwhile, an astonishing 48% of the population lives in poverty.

At the center of this is the corporate news justifying intervention. Take the opinion writers at the New York Times, like Bret Stephens, who celebrate Machado as some guardian angel of democracy while lying about the country’s recent history and the obvious reason for Venezuela’s struggles. Stephens is no stranger to getting blood on his hands, but in this piece, he flat-out says that Trump has no other option than to do ‘regime change.’ Stephens literally says Trump is right about his plan of murdering fishermen to “Induce enough fear, and the bad guys might run.” As if that wasn’t fucking insane enough, next, Stephens explains how he hopes Trump has the willingness to perform a ground invasion, acknowledges that it will kill an untold number of people, thus putting Trump out of contention for a Nobel Peace Prize, and compares the situation to reclaiming Nazi occupied Europe. Yes, that is how hard the corporate media is selling this war.

Conclusion

What we absolutely cannot allow is for corporate media and the fascist American government to convince us that war on Venezuela, or any imperial war, is justified under any circumstances. We must realize that war is not just some natural thing that arises out of nowhere; capitalists manufacture it in their pursuit of infinite growth and expansion. Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. Back in 1916, Lenin wrote about exactly this:

“Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries. And this [wealth] is shared between two or three powerful world plunderers armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, Japan), who are drawing the whole world into their war over the division of their [wealth].”

Today, we are still living in that same world Lenin wrote about over a hundred years ago. Capitalism continues to dominate and cause brutal crisis after brutal crisis. Humans have not escaped this stage of development. It is only when the working class joins together to overthrow the capitalist class that we can advance toward a more equal and just society where imperial war becomes obsolete.

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

“If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, would that end racism?” Hillary Clinton’s infamous remark from the 2016 primary race exemplifies the most vulgar expressions of liberal identity politics. Putting aside the shamelessness a politician must have to say something so blatantly wrong, it perfectly shows the inherent need for liberal politicians to debase every political issue down to interpersonal conflict. Clinton was desperately trying to maintain a political coalition of billionaire capitalist bankers and people of color who are disproportionately harmed by those capitalists. Her answer is to please her ultra-wealthy donors and walk the tight rope; cynically imply that her opponent isn’t fighting racism, and also imply that racism does not have a systematic component.

But it’s not only that liberals, at least those zealously loyal to liberalism, refuse to see politics beyond the interpersonal; it’s that they stand between serious change to protect the failing capitalist system. It is precisely their refusal to acknowledge capitalism’s failures, the refusal to critique the superstructure of our society, and the refusal to find solutions outside the box we are placed in, which makes liberalism so dangerous. When we refuse to fight systemic problems, those problems only worsen.

But let’s be clear about what the problem with identity politics is. There is the more prominent conservative critique of identity politics– that racism just does not exist today– which we should vehemently condemn as ignorant. However, the socialist critique of identity politics is that racism clearly has a material, historical, and economic basis. Racism in America is more than just interpersonal bias and hate. Racism, on the broad scale, manifests so insidiously despite such strong laws against discrimination, meaning that small changes and policy tweaks cannot fix this inherently racist system; it must be uprooted. It’s this critique where liberals will disingenuously conflate the left-wing argument with the conservative argument, which is exactly what Hillary Clinton was doing in the quote.

We know that it is not random that African Americans are disadvantaged today; it cannot be explained by ‘a few bad apples’ in our society who are racist. There is a massive wealth gap where African Americans only own about 4% of the total household wealth, which is linked to current and past housing discrimination, workplace discrimination, academic discrimination, redlining, mass incarceration, and the broken promise of reparations. These factors are far larger than interpersonal bias.

As for one of the most devastating factors, it was only 17 years ago, in 2008, that mass incarceration reached its peak after the brutally punitive crime policies of the 80s and 90s, which were fully endorsed by Hillary Clinton and signed into law by Bill Clinton. They still affect black communities today as police escalation targeted cities and poorer neighborhoods, which were disproportionately black, racial profiling made ‘driving while black’ a de facto crime, and extreme sentencing made sure petty offenses ruined a person’s life. This cascades into the next generation as families are pushed further into poverty, as communities struggle to develop. Just 24 years ago, in 2001, over 16% of black adults were involved in the prison system compared to 2.7% of the total. Today, there is still systematically racist policing, courts, and juries where, nationwide, black people account for 53% of all exonerations and 69% of drug-related exonerations, meaning they are disproportionately falsely arrested and imprisoned.

Clinton was responding directly to Bernie Sanders’ proposed policy of breaking up the banking monopolies that have enormous, unchecked power over our lives. It is these banks that gambled the nation’s future away on mortgage-backed securities in 2008, just for Barack Obama’s government to bail them out while millions of Americans were suffering under unemployment, bankruptcy, and home foreclosure. A policy of breaking up or nationalizing these banks would have dramatically shifted the balance of power in our country, diminishing the power of the elite bankers who suck the blood of American workers.

We know that banks are a central part of this racist system. Banks are the institution that functions on private property ownership, something that, as we know, African Americans were denied equal rights to until 1968. Today, only 45% of black households own their home, compared to 75% of white households, while black households under 35 own at less than half the rate of white households at 17% and 45% respectively. Since black people more often rent, it is much harder or impossible to build wealth. When the value of homes increases, as it has done rapidly in the last five years, so does rent, meaning African Americans cannot take advantage of increasing housing wealth while being disproportionately harmed by higher rent. A report covering the period from 2012 to 2022 found that the increase in home values was not proportional; majority-black neighborhoods saw their homes grow by an average of $122,500, which is about half the rate of white neighborhoods, which grew by an average of $223,000. Even within the rental market, black people on average pay about 25% more for security deposits and 30% more for application fees compared to white people, despite paying 8% less in rent. At the same time, a sociological study in 2022 concluded that black renters disproportionately suffer from rent exploitation, where landlords charge more in rent than what’s proportional to the property’s value. Banks are at the center of this, profiting immensely from their own housing assets increasing in value, collecting more mortgage interest, higher fees on property sales, higher refinancing costs, and higher collateral values.

The worst part about this is that the quality of a child’s education in America is directly tied to where they live. Since public schools are funded based on property taxes, richer areas receive a far better education, which, as expected, leads to better higher education opportunities and, subsequently, better career opportunities. The gap in property value leads to a gap in education, which leads to a gap in employment, which leads back to the gap in property. The black academic Harold Cruse in the 1960s described the position of African Americans in society as one of domestic colonialization, not in the literal sense but in terms of forced cultural degradation and racialized exploitation, a description that remains true today.

Even if we put aside for a moment the historical racism that African Americans suffer, we can see that racism is, and always has been, a tool of the capitalists to divide the working class. We see precisely this happening to Latinos right now as they are being targeted as scapegoats. Politicians of both parties who represent corporations tell Americans that immigrants, specifically Latino immigrants, are ‘taking jobs’ and are inherently criminals to justify immigration crackdowns. Corporate media ferociously fear-monger lies that immigrants are draining public resources and are bringing drugs into the country. Unsurprisingly, in those earlier cited statistics, Latinos fall much closer to the black community in terms of the wealth gap and housing discrimination.

So far as ‘ending racism’ is even a coherent policy position, breaking up banking monopolies and suppressing capital would have absolutely struck at the heart of the system that produces racism in the first place. Bernie’s policy set, while not radical in the socialist sense, at least aimed to cure us of the parasite that is capital, not just its symptoms. Ironically, Clinton’s policy proposals on racial justice and criminal justice were essentially indistinguishable from the standard Democratic Party platform, while also having no serious answers for people economically. It is certainly this impotent platform that alienated her from the American people, leading her to lose to Donald Trump, who offered quite literally nothing but platitudes and false promises. The idea that racism can be solved on an individual basis and not as an intersectional struggle is a liberal fantasy; fighting capitalism and fighting racism is the same struggle, you cannot have one without the other.

It is critical to understand the difference between the liberal half-baked solutions and the socialist solutions that not only serve to combat racism, but also capitalism, which harms people of all races and people of color disproportionately. There is no more perfect example of this than how we address the issue of gentrification.

Gentrification, in short, is the slow process where the personality of a neighborhood changes over time when wealthier people move in, thereby displacing poorer, often lifelong residents and business owners. This phenomenon happens everywhere throughout the capitalist world, but in America specifically, the wealthier people who move in are usually (but not always) white and are displacing black and brown people. In New York City, this is especially a problem where communities that once had a unique cultural character, whether it be Chinese, Dominican, Guyanese, Haitian, Jamaican, Bangladeshi, Indian, or African American, are being replaced with more white upper-middle-class businesses. These new businesses contribute most to the process; they are corporate-styled, investor-friendly establishments such as upscale restaurants, clubs, trendy cafés, art galleries, curated thrift stores, and boutiques. These are sometimes oriented towards tourists and are generally too expensive or undesirable for the original residents. The more stores like this that open, the more property values increase as banks and investors see the area as ‘on the rise.’

Let’s identify why this happens. Upper-middle-class people are priced out of the richer areas of a city and relocate to places with lower rent. Then, they outbid or take over vacancies from people who are already from that community. This is often due to real estate speculation in the wealthier areas, where landlords set exorbitantly high rents and leave their properties vacant to decrease the housing stock. This can also happen in ‘undervalued’ neighborhoods with vacancies, where banks, developers, and city governments neglect a neighborhood, leading to rents falling below market value.

The social reason is that young people without kids often seek to live in neighborhoods that are more ‘authentic’ and ‘culturally vibrant’, compared to the corporate-dominated downtown areas, for example. In the case of neglected neighborhoods, young people tolerate worse housing conditions more than older individuals. These people, who are not from the neighborhood, then establish businesses that do not fit in with the area’s culture, slowly transforming it.

On the receiving end, the original residents experience rising rents parallel with rising property values as demand increases. Slowly, the original residents decide that moving away is more affordable, or they are just priced out entirely. The issue we must solve is– how do we prevent the loss of cultural character and displacement in these neighborhoods?

Representing the centrist liberal perspective on this issue is this video from stand-up comedian Duval Culpepper, who calls Zohran Mamdani the “gentrifier’s candidate” for New York City mayor. Culpepper critiques Zohran’s platform on the basis that his housing policy is not genuine because he does not discuss gentrification. Culpepper speculates that it could be “because his entire fucking electorate and voting base are gentrifiers.” He continues his tirade, saying, “They’re rich white liberals from Ohio who love lip-service-liberalism.”

To be clear, it is spelled out in Zohran’s policy brief that, “Prior to becoming an assembly member, Zohran worked directly with these New Yorkers to keep them in their homes, serving as a Foreclosure Prevention Housing Counselor. He knows how the city’s property tax system favors wealthier homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods, has seen how the tax lien sale system leads to families losing their homes, recognizes how deed theft is displacing entire communities, and understands how the city lets speculators and slumlords box working class New Yorkers out of homes. And he has a plan to fix it as Mayor.” Also, it later mentions, “This planning will allow NYC to address the legacy of racially discriminatory zoning, increase density near transit hubs, end the requirement to build parking lots, and proactively chart our future.” The word gentrification also shows up two other times in the same document, but it’s certainly not as though Zohran is not opposed to gentrification. In fact, he has a far more coherent strategy for combating it than Culpepper, who says, “I don’t have the solutions, I just ask the questions.”

Zohran’s housing policies begin with freezing the rent in rent-stabilized apartments. This would stop any landlords with these apartments from increasing rents on their tenants. Next is the plan to triple the construction of rent-stabilized housing to over 200,000 new units in 10 years. Though this relies partially on the private sector, more units mean lower rent across the board in the city as demand is relieved. Then, the plan is to crack down on bad landlords by using the Mayor’s Office to aggressively enforce building code and maintenance violations. This undoubtedly would make the lives of tenants better and healthier, especially as “One in ten renter households reported a lack of adequate heat last winter and one in four reported mice or rats in their homes.” In addition to this, the platform mentions that his administration will fix the tax system, which favors the wealthy and gentrifiers while protecting residents who lose their homes due to the tax lien sale system. Reforming the tax code is a significant step to favor the average residents of New York over parasitic landlords while addressing the relatively uncommon but serious issue of deed theft. Lastly, Zohran is running on affordability; starting municipal grocery stores to provide a cheaper alternative to corporate supermarkets, making the bus fares free, and fighting corporate greed. Whether these can actually be accomplished depends on many legal factors, just like any administration, but it is absolutely within the purview of the Mayor’s Office.

Ironically, these policies accomplish the task of stopping gentrification. Culpepper’s understanding of gentrification boils down to race, which is why he cannot fathom this issue being solved materially. The cause of gentrification is inherently economic– not racial. The core reason gentrification happens in the first place is that a person is priced out of their apartment and cannot afford to live there. The difference in understanding this problem is: on the one hand, seeing it as an identity issue, white people displacing people of color, and on the other, seeing it as an economic issue, knowing that this problem is centered on people not being able to afford something so basic as housing because it is commodified. Efforts like freezing rent can slow the spread of gentrification overnight, and protecting tenants over landlords and speculators can absolutely slow this process. The problem is inequality, not identity.

If you were to think of it as purely an identity issue, you’d have to assume that people of color cannot be gentrifiers, which is obviously not the case. So what non-economic policy would specifically stop gentrification, though? Should we do affirmative action to ensure that only people of color can move in? But what happens when those same people end up being rich liberals who bring with them their corporate businesses? Did you solve the problem of displacement? What about if rents are just increasing in general throughout the city? This is the dead end. Identity politics tries to fix racial divisions, which are inherently rooted in inequality, while maintaining the capitalist structures that cause and reinforce inequality.

Culpepper goes on to say that Zohran supporters vote for things “which sound nice in practice, which won’t ever happen or they don’t ever have to suffer the consequences of,” using the examples of “defunding the police,” which Zohran unfortunately does not support, and confusingly, “buses. These rich fuckin’ white people don’t take god damn buses, okay. They Uber everywhere or they take their little basket bike to the farmers market when they want to pretend to be a poor person.” The policy is to make bus fares free for everyone – rich and poor – so why would it matter if supposedly rich voters voted for a service they don’t use? His logic is completely incoherent. Why does it matter if the voters are genuine or not? Isn’t the point of making the buses free and the routes faster supposed to increase ridership? How bizarre of a statement to say that people ride bikes to ‘pretend to be poor.’ People don’t have cars for many reasons, none of which have to do with pretending, and the overwhelming odds are that they are just poor.

But this is an extremely disingenuous claim peddled by the center and right-wing that Zohran’s base is secretly rich people. That’s not the case at all; in fact, the demographics he pulled from were all across the income spectrum, but the one category that he won decisively was renters.

For someone who has a lot of words for ‘rich white liberals,’ Culpepper seems to have a lot more in common with them than the victims of gentrification whom he claims to identify with. On his page is a video of him wearing Patagonia, discussing how he used to model for J. Crew, two stereotypically preppy and upper-middle-class brands. In another video, Culpepper is frustrated at an incident where a food worker allegedly assumed he was an UberEats driver and says, “I pull up in a Lexus, with an $800 watch, what does a black man gotta do to get some respect!” His reaction suggests he was more offended by being mistaken for being poor than by the racial implication of being associated with a delivery driver. In fact, that association of black people with delivery drivers was something that he came to entirely on his own. It’s no surprise then that he casually uses very racist stereotypes outside of his ‘comedy’ videos. In one monologue, he talks about how both Democrats and Republicans can’t solve homelessness, saying that Democrats build “crack mansions,” a dated racist stereotype referring to black people living in public housing, and “[let’s] let them send flaming shopping carts filled with AIDS feces rolling down Sunset Boulevard.” Culpepper also doesn’t shy away from supporting brutally repressive immigration policies, which stem from racist assumptions about people who look like immigrants. After making the somewhat understandable point that another white president won’t change the lives of black people, he said, “I also don’t hate Donald Trump, I just think the execution of his policies are entirely bad,” then leaps from that suspicious statement to, “For me, I think immigration is out of control. As a native New Yorker, my city is un-fucking-reconizeable.” And this is supposed to be someone who cares about the culture of the melting pot city being gentrified away?

This is only one of the two conclusions from the dead end of identity politics. The first is to double down, focusing exclusively on rectifying differences between identity groups while ignoring the economic basis of those differences. The second is to focus on the economic basis of class, where everyone in the working class can be freed together. As we can see, the former will only divide the people, making change impossible, while playing into the cynical mindset of centrists like Culpepper. The latter is a strategy of solidarity where we are united by the same struggle.

To conclude the rest of the clip, Culpepper makes such an embarrassingly ignorant point that one would have to think the whole video is ironic, if not for the consistency of his entire page. He says, “We don’t need fuckin’ rent stabilization for the few people that it does affect.” At least 2.4 million people, well over a quarter of the city’s population, live in rent-stabilized housing. Even if it were a fraction of that number, do people not deserve to be protected from the savage housing market dominated by private equity firms and billionaires who couldn’t care less how many people live on the street?

He continues, “We don’t need to get mad at these boogey-men billionaires who are holding you down, no, it’s these everyday boring fuckin’ white people from Ohio who are gentrifying your neighborhood and pricing you out. Those are the people you need to worry about.” This is perfectly analogous to the Hillary Clinton quote: dying on the hill of identity while not facing the economic problem. It’s a frankly bizarre mentality; why are the white billionaire landlords who literally set the rent prices innocent, but the upper-middle-class people are the ones we need to worry about? When that ‘white person from Ohio’ moves into their gentrified apartment, they still have to pay rent, of course. They have the same problem as everyone else in the city! If personal responsibility lies with the person for moving into a gentrified home, where is the personal responsibility of the landlord, the investor, the developer, or the bank speculators? Why do they get a pass? Shouldn’t we build our system to work for everyone and not just rely on the moral choices of ‘rich white liberals from Ohio?’ You can’t fix gentrification without changing the system that produces it in the first place!

At least Culpepper is consistent in their activism. They have posts on their page of them publicly shaming gentrifiers, which isn’t even bad in and of itself– it’s shameful that people move in and dilute the neighborhood’s culture– it’s just a completely aimless strategy of self-congratulatory activism as opposed to something that would challenge the system that causes gentrification in the first place. Although much of this is policy-based, which is where Zohran comes in, activists in other cities have organized tenant unions to make collective demands or established community land trusts to reclaim ownership of their communities. These are economic solutions, because the base of politics is economic, not cultural.

The Rainbow Coalition of the 1960s already proved the vital lesson of solidarity. Only when we unite the poor and working class across racial lines against our common capitalist enemy, while never compromising on bigotry, can we confront oppression at its roots. To move forward beyond the dead end of identity politics, we must fight to cure the disease of capitalism, not just manage its symptoms.

★ Video: How Identity Became A Weapon Against the Left w/ Briahna Joy Gray 🎬

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

Beginning with a student-led protest on the parliament building in Jakarta on August 21st, the nation of Indonesia was thrown into a popular uprising against not only the oligarchs in power but also against capitalist exploitation that is tightening its grip everywhere around the world. Popular revolt is a direct result of deteriorating conditions under a global system that must naturally extract infinite profit to stay alive. The only way to escape this cycle of deterioration and revolt is to join the international community in solidarity against the ruling class, which we also struggle against in America.

Indonesia has felt the knife of austerity sharpen in recent years as spending on authoritarian surveillance, police, and military has taken priority over social spending. This fits into the global mold of right-wing governments taking power after the failure of the liberal to social liberal wave following the global financial crisis of 2008. This particular spark was ignited by a plan to issue an Rp50 million ($3,003 USD) housing allowance for all parliamentarians. For reference, that sum is ten times the monthly minimum wage of those in Jakarta and in poorer regions of the country, upwards of twenty times. After government housing was decommissioned, this measure was instituted as compensation to lawmakers, but it ultimately served as an alarm bell, signaling to the people just how disconnected and corrupt these elites were.

Combine this with the effects of inflation, rising living costs, mass layoffs, and falling real wages, and anger boiled over for young Indonesians. Much like people experiencing declining living standards throughout the world, young people in Indonesia face a bleak future ahead in the face of climate disaster and economic stagnation. These protests come after decades of capitalist influence effectively owning the state, while the military encroaches further and further into the people’s lives.

State repression in Indonesia begins with the right-wing military coup in 1965 when Indonesia’s President Sukarno distanced himself from the military and sides with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The United States during this time is covertly using the CIA to financially back, arm, and train the Indonesian military against the will of the President. On September 30th, the communist militias strike first in anticipation of a coup and are quickly crushed by the military who seize power under General Suharto. Over the next year, the military launched a violent purge against suspected communists across the country. An estimated 500,000 to 1 million people were murdered, and many more imprisoned in a mass killing that many academics consider to be a genocide.

Since the Reformasi Movement toppled the Suharto dictatorship in 1998, some civil liberties have been restored, elections have been instituted, and new parties have been legalized. However, the wealth and influence of oligarchs from the old regime remained, and no serious redistribution occurred. All the previous methods of control were repackaged into neoliberal institutions, parallel with the global trend. The military elites became nationalist figures, including the origin of the current President Prabowo Subianto, who was a general during the dictatorship and son-in-law of Suharto. Though reform has been promised over the last three decades, authoritarianism has only been entrenched and extraction normalized under a new neoliberal mask.

Protests emerged across the country throughout the week after the Jakarta protest. On August 27th in Sorong City, riots broke out, and 12 people were arrested as the temperature began rising in the country. The following day, on August 28th in Jakarta, clashes between the military and protesters erupted with tear gas and water cannons. The fight spilled over into the night as the military increased its force. A viral video was captured of an armored paramilitary vehicle running over and killing Affan Kurniawan, a 21-year-old taxi driver. Outrage exploded into Makassar, Surabaya, Bandung, Bali, Medan, and more the next day as people fearlessly fought police with firecrackers, molotovs, rocks, and sticks. Government buildings and police facilities were burned, most notably the West Java provincial government building, the regional congress building in Kediri, and the Makassar City parliament building, which killed three people. With riots continuing in the following days, the houses of MPs were looted, along with Finance Minister Sri Mulyani’s home being raided.

The response from the state was to increase police and military presence, crack down by arresting individual protestors, and front like they would grant concessions. The first among them was to cancel overseas trips and roll back housing allowances, but protestors stood firm while the rupiah fell and investors recoiled.

Characteristically, this movement was a popular response to state overreach and began at the grassroots level with student groups, labor unions, and specifically motorcycle taxi and delivery drivers leading the way. The movement coalesced around the “17+8 Demands,” a list of seventeen immediate demands and eight more long-term measures to implement in government, published by social media influencer Jerome Poline Sijabat and civil society groups. The demands were a unifying framework to address the pay raises, which started the uprising, the cost of living crisis, police brutality, corruption, oligarchy, and state repression. Many of these measures came out of the banners calling to “Dissolve DPR,” and chants at the protests. A notable unifying force throughout the anti-government movement has been the jolly roger flag from the Japanese anime One Piece, which represents popular resistance against corrupt elites. The flag has been used both as a symbol of defiance and as a scapegoat for politicians to justify crackdowns, with some local municipalities even banning it or using police to intimidate those who fly it.

Thus far, the government has agreed to create a Labor Welfare Council and a Layoff Prevention Task Force to address the economic demands of workers. Then, on September 5th, the parliament issued a 6-point plan to address the unrest. The parliamentarians agreed to roll back all their housing allowances, stop all overseas vacations, reduce all transportation and service allowances, stop all benefits for expelled MPs, enhance financial transparency, and ‘increase meaningful public participation in the legislative process.’ That statement also said that five MPs will be ‘inactivated’ for ‘causing controversy’ and that they will not recieve benefits while an ethics council investigates their actions. The most significant reform is a stimulus package worth Rp 16.23 trillion ($989 million USD), which includes a “food assistance and an infrastructure building programme that could provide temporary work for more than 600,000 people.” Despite these moves, the government’s strategy is clearly to prioritize economic growth over creating a more equitable workforce. They believe that if they just increase the size of the pie, they can satisfy the people rather than cutting it up more evenly.

Most damning is how the government has taken almost no responsibility for the violence it committed on its own people. Human Rights Watch reported that over 3,000 protestors have been jailed, while no accountability has been handed to the violent officers and soldiers. As of September 16th, at least 400 people remain in jail while thousands were injured in the state crackdowns. According to The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), they “identified 33 people who were victims of alleged enforced disappearances.” The people disappeared are not legally detained; they are held with no access to the outside world that a normal arrest would grant a person. The police hide where the detainees are being held from the public, while their extralegal detainment means they can be tortured with no recourse. One man named Didik, who was released after being disappeared, had “injuries including a puncture wound to the head, a wound on the forehead, a wound on the temple, wounds on his right and left knees, and his back.” The government has yet to address any of the demands related to repression.

While the state has promised some reforms, ultimately, most of the demands have gone unanswered. But this isn’t for no reason. As Indonesian socialists like Surya Antain have articulated, the increasing militarism is directly connected to imperialism. It is not just domestic mismanagement; it’s connected to the global capitalist system, where Indonesia, along with the rest of the global south, is subservient to the West through debt payments, foreign investment, cheap labor exploitation, and resource extraction. Oppressive ‘liberal’ governments like the one in Indonesia are not random; they are a product of a system where Western nations force the worst symptoms of economic crises onto the global south. Thus, these governments, rather than redistributing wealth and power, naturally squeeze their populations to maintain the infinite growth trajectory of capital. When Samsung, mining multinationals, Nike, and Adidas experience slowing productivity, cost-cutting begins with the garment factories in Surabaya, miners in Sulawesi, and manufacturing plants in Jakarta. When capitalist elites see the writing on the wall, they don’t hand over power willingly; they increase militarism, increase police presence, and tighten control on their populations through surveillance, which is exactly what we see happening in Indonesia.

As Indonesians strive for concessions and a more equitable society, history has proven that only a complete system change, that is, handing the means of production to the people through revolution, is the only way to overcome the crisis of capitalism. To delay this historical process of transition from capitalism to socialism is, unfortunately, only going to lead to more misery. Reform in the past has proven insufficient; state crackdowns have reemerged, wealth inequality has only widened, and climate disasters have only grown closer. As Rosa Luxemburg said over a hundred years ago, it is ‘socialism or barbarism.’ But in today’s age, of mega data centers, car dependency, and mass deforestation cooking our planet alive, we cannot survive anymore barbarism; we ought to say ‘socialism or extinction.’ There is no other option than revolution to reclaim the state for the people, abolish economic classes, and build a world that works for the benefit of all and not the few.

As people of the working class, we must stand in solidarity with Indonesians and amplify their struggle. American capitalism is not just barbaric domestically; its imperial abuses span across every corner of the globe.

★ Support Indonesian Media: IndoLeft, Arah Juang, Asian Pacific Solidarity Network 🇮🇩

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

It’s no secret for anyone remotely paying attention to the ‘war’ in Gaza what is really going on. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds to find videos of starving children, mutilated people from bombs, horrific injuries, bullet wounds, and bodies. Hundreds and thousands of bodies come across our screens every day because this is the most documented genocide in human history.

Despite that, the Western media is scrambling to close Pandora’s box. They can’t. The American media establishment does not have the power it once held, and people don’t trust their government like they once had. The Zionist narrative coming from the American media is so flimsy and transparently false that it falls apart as soon as someone sees a video of a mother holding her dead child.

For people who really do believe in equality, there’s nothing that the Palestinians can do or have done to justify the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians and domicide; the destruction of 92% of homes meant to make life impossible. All the ‘complexity’ and ‘nuance’ can’t explain away what we saw happen over 22 months because it isn’t complicated when you watch so much senseless horror. Words alone will never be able to portray the immense scale of suffering and tragedy being forced on Gaza with any sense of accuracy, let alone the unthinkable pain endured by each individual person desperately starving, knowing a bomb could kill them at any moment. For all who have even remotely followed the events of this genocide, it is unconscionable for them to see video of emaciated infants, skeletal bodies, people carrying neighbors soaked in blood, mothers crying in agony, clinging to lifeless bodies, digging children out of rubble, patients burning alive in bombed hospitals, and entertain that these people somehow deserve this.

Contorting all these videos and images into a narrative that somehow makes Israel the less evil party is impossible without two ingredients: racist double standards and a morally bankrupt media apparatus. It begins by relying on an American paradigm that is still poisoned by 9/11-era racism toward Arabs and does not fully comprehend the lessons of desegregation. It expects that Americans will associate Arabs with terrorism without reflecting on their shared humanity. It relies on Americans thinking that Israel must be an exclusively Jewish state because Arabs are so barbaric and subhuman that they must be segregated out of society. It needs to portray this genocide as a holy war that evangelicals can construct a prophecy around. It necessitates that Americans not question what the State Department and corporate media tell them. It requires that the media at the top of the information hierarchy water down, pre-justify, obfuscate, prevaricate, ignore, or lie about what is happening. Without these ingredients, the genocide would not have been possible because there would have been no debate. Instead, those who are outraged at this crime against humanity have to play rhetorical games with these lies from Zionists defending the indefensible.

“Do you condemn Hamas?” “What about October 7th?” “This is a war! Civilians always die in war!” “Does Israel have the right to defend itself?” “Hamas uses human shields!” “Hamas should just release the hostages!” “We cannot trust the ‘Hamas-run’ Health Ministry!” “If you were gay in Gaza, they would throw you off a roof!” “They have tunnels under the hospitals.” These lies and maliciously loaded questions have been repeated ad nauseam to contaminate discourse. Now that Israel is executing a forced starvation campaign, it has generated yet another lie in the media’s arsenal. “Hamas is stealing food from civilians.”

This lie is now a staple of Zionist op-ed writers and pundits who can no longer straight-up deny what is happening but need to operate on half-truths to hold the line. In March, Israel started a complete blockade of all aid to Gaza, which is a deliberate action to exterminate all Palestinian life. Since the beginning of the siege, the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza was already far below what would be required to keep the population healthy. The UN calculates that a minimum of 600 trucks per day is needed to prevent starvation. Since January, just 1388 trucks of aid have been allowed to enter Gaza, an average of less than 7 per day.

So far, a documented 227 people, including 103 children in Gaza, have starved to death, while about a quarter of civilians are facing an imminent risk of starvation, according to the Red Cross. Those numbers also don’t include deaths where starvation was a contributing factor like when a person is severely malnourished but succumbs to disease. One American international aid worker reported losing a significant amount of weight after their short mission to Gaza. They also echoed the reports from other workers of witnessing civilians being randomly shot at aid distribution points. A recent IPC report from July 29th stated that at least 39% of the population is now going days at a time without food. It goes on saying that, “Most households (86 percent) reported regularly not having food to eat of any kind, and nearly all (96 percent) reported that they went to bed hungry multiple times in the last month. Nearly nine out of ten households resorted to extremely severe coping mechanisms to feed themselves, such as taking significant safety risks to obtain food, and scavenging from the garbage.”

Amid this catastrophic human-made crisis, The New York Times, along with other liberal publications that won’t be mentioned here but are equally as guilty, has finally started to report some of the situation accurately. Nonetheless, the Times still uses plenty of tactics to protect the Zionist position by hiding key details, using the least damning statistics, inserting loaded language, subtle finger-pointing, and burying critical caveats toward the end of the piece. Headlines primarily serve to completely flatten the power dynamic and deliver human slaughter with cold, almost bureaucratic language. On July 25th, the Times briefly suspended its cowardice to publish a front page image of a Palestinian mother holding her emaciated 18-month-old baby with their bones showing through their skin. The caption read, “Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months, with his mother, Hedaya al-Mutawaq, who said he was born healthy but was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition. A doctor said the number of children dying of malnutrition in Gaza had risen sharply.”

In the article, a section reads, “Hollow-eyed, skeletal children languish on hospital beds or are cared for by parents, who gaze helplessly at protruding ribs and shoulder blades, and emaciated limbs resembling brittle sticks. The haunting scenes are a stark contrast to the plenty that exists just a few miles away, across the borders with Israel and Egypt.” The full article also includes images of people crowded around food charities with pots, families grieving dead loved ones, and preparing pitiful amounts of food, struggling with the effects of this man-made famine.

Despite the undeniable implications of the article, Zionists and right-wing media ruthlessly attacked the Times for publishing the photo, claiming that the baby had preexisting health conditions to craft the larger narrative that the starvation is fake.

A week later, rather than pushing back against this obviously disingenuous claim, the editors at the Times put out a correction to the article, saying that they “learned from his doctor that Mohammed also had preexisting health problems. Had the Times known the information before publication, it would have been included in the article and the picture caption.” Nowhere in the correction statement do they mention that the child’s birth abnormalities played a trivial role in their condition. Neither does the Times note that proper postnatal care has been made all but impossible by Israel’s targeting of medical facilities and hospitals.

It’s also critical to mention that the effects of the siege have certainly contributed to more pregnancy complications, as water, rest, food, and especially balanced nutrition necessary for a developing fetus have been hard to come by. The insignificant detail that this one child has some existing complication, likely caused by these same horrific conditions in the first place, shouldn’t even need to be mentioned, let alone corrected for. It’s the capitulation to Zionist lies that implicates liberal media as complicit in this genocide.

For the same reason we would treat a Holocaust denier with disregard and animosity, we should treat Zionists who knowingly spew genocide denial with the same energy. The New York Times would surely not make a correction for someone disputing the Rwandan genocide, or trying to revise Holocaust statistics, or try to question if the gas chambers existed, or deny any other genocide, so why would they capitulate to the idea that this child and all of Gaza aren’t actually starving?

But it’s not even a lie that makes sense to hide for Zionists. There are plenty of videos of Israeli citizens trashing aid on trucks and sitting in front of trucks to slow or prevent food from reaching Gaza. This moral depravity has been going on since the siege started; some trucks were even set on fire last year. Much of this comes with complete apathy from the Israeli military, as it is likely government policy to allow citizens to damage aid. It makes no sense for Zionists to both see the intention of Israelis to starve Gaza while also denying that Gaza is starving. On top of it, at Israel’s own distribution points, food received from it has been deliberately damaged, poisoned, moldy, covered in bacteria, or contaminated with mycotoxins. It isn’t an accident.

A few weeks later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called out The New York Times, directly threatening to sue them over their coverage of the starvation in an exclusive interview. “It’s such clear defamation,” he says regarding the images published on the front page.

Notice how Netanyahu, as someone with world-class American media training, flips so quickly between building a false narrative and finger-pointing. He knows that few people watching actually read the article, and therefore, he can get away with saying anything to this Fox News audience. He vaguely mentions three examples of children who represent “supposedly starving children,” emphasizing their conditions, cerebral palsy, and cystic fibrosis. “It’s nothing to do with starvation.” It does. People with cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis do not look like they are starving to death.

When given the slightest push back by the ‘journalist,’ Netanyahu defensively claims starvation is “because Hamas is interdicting aid.” Even Netanyahu can’t deny there is suffering; he admits that much. It’s a disgrace that this ‘journalist’ sitting across from this war criminal does not insist on how that’s even possible if trucks aren’t entering Gaza. And that is how lies begin to dictate reality: journalists like this refusing to do their ethical duty to pressure for the truth.

Rather than fighting back, The New York Times put out a post on their communications account, timidly correcting Netanyahu’s lie. They reminded readers that they did issue a correction after the post and that people in Gaza are in fact malnourished. They went on to say, “Attempts to threaten independent media providing vital information and accountability to the public are unfortunately an increasingly common playbook, but journalists continue to report from Gaza for the Times, bravely, sensitively, and at personal risk, so that readers can see firsthand the consequences of the war.” Besides the laughable claim that the Times is ‘independent’ and not a private for-profit corporation, they at least allude that Netanyahu is lying. But how, in the face of a lawsuit threat, does such an organization not use stronger language? The Times writers are describing a systematic propaganda campaign to cover genocide as just a part of a ‘playbook?’ It’s blatant cowardice.

Once again, the Times ignored the overtly false claim made by Netanyahu that Hamas is stealing aid. The Israeli publication Haaretz published an article discussing how the IDF tried to debunk starvation claims but ended up proving the existence of forced starvation policies. The subtitle reads, “In an attempt to debunk Hamas’ claims of Israel-induced starvation in the Gaza Strip, the IDF pointed out that some who died of malnutrition had preexisting medical conditions. Experts say the information provided by the military actually proves that the population is indeed suffering from hunger.” The article points out that it is no surprise that children with preexisting conditions would die first, but that only proves how dire the situation is.

The New York Times even ignored its own reporting in failing to debunk Netanyahu’s claim. On July 26th, a Times piece was published titled, “No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say.” From the article, it reads,

“But the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war, according to two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter.

In fact, the Israeli military officials said, the U.N. aid delivery system, which Israel derided and undermined, was largely effective in providing food to Gaza’s desperate and hungry population.”

“An internal U.S. government analysis came to a similar conclusion, Reuters reported on Friday. It found no evidence of systematic Hamas theft of U.S.-funded humanitarian supplies, the report said.”

So Hamas, according to Israel’s own military, is not stealing food. It’s bizarre even to have to clarify that, as common sense could explain that an entire population of 2 million people does not starve due to isolated incidents of militants taking aid for themselves.

While we watch as liberals, technocrats, and organizations slowly cover their ass in the coming months, don’t forget their silence because they knew what was going on all along. How many pieces have been denied from being published in The New York Times because the author didn’t condemn Hamas enough or mention October 7th? How many different writers were silenced for trying to portray the reality of the genocide as Biden’s State Department spewed non-answers at unprincipled journalists who sat there uncritically? How many harsh words were corrected in the name of both-sides-ism?

In the face of pleas from thousands of aid workers, doctors, and international scholars, the Times refused to publish the word ‘genocide’ for 647 days. It wasn’t an accident either. A leaked internal document obtained by The Intercept showed that journalists were restricted from using the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ in their articles. Finally, on July 15th, they allowed Omer Bartov, a former IDF member and Brown University genocide scholar, to publish an opinion piece declaring that Israel is committing a genocide. But that piece was really just a correction to Bartov’s previous opinion piece from November 10th, 2023, where he said Israel was not committing a genocide even though, by that point, it should’ve been obvious based on statements by Israeli leaders and the carpet bombing of civilian buildings.

That claim couldn’t stand on its own for more than a week, however, as staff columnist Bret Stephens, a zealous defender of Israel, wrote a sloppy, rambling response article. It was titled, “No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza,” which vomits all of the same lies already told, not necessarily to debunk Bartov’s claims, but to justify Israel’s actions. To paraphrase, it features delusional arguments such as, “it’s not deadly enough to be a genocide,” “Israel could commit genocide if they want to but chose not to,” “the IDF didn’t shoot that many people,” “it’s just a war, don’t be dramatic,” “but Palestinians want to genocide Israelis,” “a lot of civilians died in WWII so therefore it’s just a war,” “I’ve personally never heard of Israeli leaders explicitly say they will target civilians,” “just a few bad apples shot dozens of kids in the head with sniper rifle bullets,” “Hamas uses civilians as human shields,” “civilians died when America fought ISIS and nobody protested,” and the most disingenuous one of all, “you’re anti-semitic if you call this genocide.”

So even now, they don’t care about the objective truth when their own op-ed writers are spewing blatant lies that contradict their own reporting. It isn’t an accident. A dossier compiled by the activist media publication The New York War Crimes shows how deep the ideological Zionist roots of the writing staff go. Many writers are former Israeli military or defense members or dual citizens of Israel, while rarely will they feature a Palestinian writer. Bret Stephens is employed by a Zionist advocacy group, and he serves as the editor-in-chief at SAPIR, a Zionist journal, which is in direct conflict with the Times’ ethical guidelines that require disclosure of such affiliations.

It is a conscious choice that this publication, like many others, does a slow rollout of coverage critical of Israel. It’s a choice that serves to protect Zionism by portraying it as a noble cause with some radical actors rather than a morally rotten ethnosupremacist ideology aimed at instituting settler colonialism. The only logical conclusion of any such ideology is to ethnically cleanse and genocide the native population, should they refuse to accept the conditions imposed on them. The more liberal or pragmatic supporter watching a genocide happen in the name of that ideology may decide that it is more suitable for the long term to condemn the starvation, which is horrible optics for the international community. They might calculate that the genocide can continue just fine without starvation, that bombing is easier to defend rhetorically, and provides more detached suffering to prevent outrage. But even that thought process is being pushed to the brink, forcing many Democrats to come out and condemn Israel even though they were complicit in their 22-month silence. On July 28th, two Israeli human rights groups, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, both announced their conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. The dam is beginning to crack, and lies will not work anymore.

I will close with the beautifully heart-crushing words from Anas Jamal Al-Sharif, one of five Al-Jazeera journalists who were murdered in an Israeli drone strike last week. The attack was unquestionably targeted to silence reporters showing the reality of this genocide on the ground. Anas wrote this message in June as a last goodbye, knowing that he was at extreme risk doing his essential work of reporting on the ground in Gaza.

★ Donate to Help Palestinians: Doctors Without Borders, Care For Gaza, UNWRA 🇵🇸 💕

★ Support Activist Organizations: Writers Against the War on Gaza, BDS 🇵🇸 🕊️

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

On August 7th, sweeping tariffs went into effect on about 90 countries after Trump paused enforcement to allow countries to ‘negotiate’ a better deal. The baseline 10% rate remains for the negligible trade partners. Revised rates for 62 countries are also being introduced, which for most countries is a reduction from the rate initially threatened. Most are set at 15% while some are set at upwards of 50%.

When Trump first announced these rates in February, the initial percentages were calculated by taking “half of the rate of tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers imposed by other countries.” These were propagated to be ‘reciprocal’ because of the alleged trade barriers placed on the US. In reality, “the formula for the tariff placed on the United States by another country is equal to the trade deficit divided by imports.” This means the administration’s gripe is based on the trade deficit with countries, even though a deficit is not inherently bad. The US has been functioning in a trade deficit since the 1970s, which is to be expected when a country develops past its manufacturing phase.

While many countries have made some small concessions to ease the double-edged pain, America’s three biggest importers, China, Canada, and Mexico, which account for 40% of total imports, have resisted. Negotiations have stalled and don’t seem to be moving forward, especially since they know that blanket tariffs harm the US economy significantly.

Specific countries have been targeted with much higher rates after negotiations failed. India is now being hit with a 50% tariff as punishment for buying Russian oil, but it’s being delayed until August 27th. Canada, which makes up 12.4% of US imports, is also being punished with a 35% tariff for their recent decision to recognize a Palestinian state. Mexico, the biggest trade partner of the US, has refused to make any concessions to Trump in the face of a 25% tariff threat, which has now been delayed another 90 days. For Canada and Mexico, goods that fall under the USMCA, Trump’s replacement for NAFTA in his first term, are protected from these new rates. Brazil is being punished with a 50% ‘free-speech tariff’ because its former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of abuse of power and fraud while facing investigations for embezzlement, defrauding public records, and inciting a coup.

Trump has displayed his stupidity in many ways, more so this term than the last. His agenda has been executed with crude vitriol and no regard for respectability found with the emotionally sterile neoliberals of the past. However, despite the popular liberal belief, the Trump administration is not incompetent; this is conscious policy. Since Trump has displayed obvious signs of dementia, we don’t know to what degree the final decisions come from Trump’s brain or the administration around him. Regardless, the resulting policy has a clear strategy. We saw this with the Iran conflict— calculated moves being made to pursue the neocon Zionist agenda. Similarly, the trade policy has an ideological backing, with various players guiding it along. I want to set aside the ‘Trump is stupid’ thought process for a moment to analyze what is really going on.

What is important is that the Trump administration never intended to allow these tariffs to be imposed long-term. Essentially, every economist and first-year undergrad agrees that broad tariffs would be disastrous for the US economy. It’s not even difficult to understand why: more taxation on imports raises the cost of goods, which decreases demand and slows the economy, while inflating the price of domestic products, which require raw materials. Look at this as an embargo. That’s the only accurate way to describe blanket tariffs in their effect.

There is no feasible way that the tariff strategy was going to work the way Trump initially said. The stock market in March already began to crater at the mere fear of them going into place. It prompted businesses to purchase as much stock as possible before being charged upwards of 145% extra to import goods. In just that one week, starting on April 2nd, when the extreme tariffs were in place, some small businesses were slapped with a bill in the tens of thousands of dollars. On a nationwide scale, commerce would come to a screeching halt, and the stock market would have begun to plummet, followed by skyrocketing inflation as there would be no new supply coming in.

Maybe Trump is diluted enough to believe he knew better than every economist on Earth. He certainly wouldn’t be the first nepo baby to narcissistically believe they’re smarter than everyone. Or maybe this was his plan all along. Either way, at some point, the billionaire elites had to step in, have a meeting, and explain to Trump the consequences of his actions. According to the Wall Street Journal, on April 9th, Peter Navarro, the tariff czar, was in a meeting away from Trump, so Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnik rushed into the Oval Office to persuade Trump to pause the tariffs, which he subsequently agreed to. Two days later, the market rebounded, and Trump invited billionaires Charles Schwab and Roger Penske to the White House, where they bragged about how much money they made from the tariff pause announcement.

Even if we take seriously the flawed goal of the tariffs, which is to bring manufacturing back to the US, this country doesn’t have the capacity to start up factories overnight, and there is hardly a desire among the highly developed workforce to take on manufacturing labor again. It’s an attempt at moving backwards to achieve something the country doesn’t need. What the country actually needs is to move into the next stage of development, which involves large-scale infrastructure projects like mass renewable energy and mass transport networks. These are things that American market capitalism is unable to provide due to the profit motive. Private companies lack the ability to build high-speed rail lines because there is next to no profit incentive, even though it would help society tremendously, and the whole system would gain from it a thousand times over. For as much as Trump is hailed as a master of business and capitalism, it seems he doesn’t understand the basic mechanisms which make such a system function.

Still, I prefer not to simplify it to ‘Trump is so stupid he doesn’t know how tariffs work,’ because it’s not just about the tariffs themselves. These are being used as tools for extortion.

The Trump administration is testing how much economic might the US can exert on other countries. Turns out, it’s still quite a lot. Much of the world just rolled over rather than banding together and fighting back. Japan did threaten to sell off US bonds and try to manipulate the dollar, but that was short-lived. For most countries, capitulating causes less short-term pain even if their populations want to resist. Some notable concessions that were extracted from the tariffs include:

🇪🇺  European Union (13.7% of US Imports)

• 20% tariff threat → 15% tariff imposed

• Carveouts of raw materials with no restrictions

• EU buys $750 billion of energy products

• Investment of $600 billion in US infrastructure and industrial facilities

🇯🇵  Japan (4.5% of US Imports)

• 25% tariff threat → 15% tariff imposed (most goods and vehicles)

• Japan pledges to invest $550 billion in US energy exports, semiconductors, and agriculture

• Japan’s rice exports are now automated and on a mandatory quota

• Japan will purchase 100 Boeing planes and $3 billion in US military equipment

🇻🇳 Vietnam (4.2% of US Imports)

• 46% tariff threat → 20% tariff imposed

• 84% tariff threat on trans-shipped products from China → 40% imposed tariff on trans-shipments

• Removal of all tariffs on US imports

• Vietnam will institute stronger customs enforcement, prevent trans-shipment via digital certification systems, and drop anti-dumping penalty enforcement

🇰🇷 South Korea (4.0% of US Imports)

• 25 % tariff threat (vehicles, electronics, others) → 15% imposed, elimination of duties on US imports

• Investment of $350 billion in US industries (ships, semiconductors, batteries, biotech)

• Japan buys $100 billion in US natural gas and crude oil

• Reduced restrictions on vehicle and agricultural trade

🇵🇭 Philippines (2.4% of US Imports)

• 20% tariff threatened → 19% tariff imposed

• Removal of all tariffs on US imports

• Philippines pledges to open up to US markets (no exact investment outlined)

🇬🇧 United Kingdom (2.1% of US Imports)

• 25% tariff threat (50% on steel and aluminum) → 10% tariff imposed

• Carveouts for US steel with no restrictions

• UK removes quota restrictions on $5 billion of ethanol and beef exports

🇲🇾 Malaysia (1.6% of US Imports)

• 25% tariff threat → 18% tariff imposed

• Removal of all tariffs on most US imports and some non-tariff barriers

• Malaysia buys $150 billion in US semiconductors, aerospace, and server hardware

• Malaysia buys $3.4 billion per year in US energy exports

• Malaysia invests $70 billion in US agriculture

🇮🇩 Indonesia (1.1% of US Imports)

• 32% tariff threat → 19% tariff imposed

• Indonesia drops duty fees on most US goods and removes all non-tariff barriers

• Investment of $4.5 billion in US agriculture

• Indonesia buys $15 billion in US energy exports and at least 50 Boeing jets

• Indonesia will accept the US vehicle and drug safety standards

🇮🇱 Israel (0.7% of US Imports)

• 17% tariff threat → 15% tariff imposed

• Removal of all tariffs on US imports

🇿🇼 Zimbabwe (0.002% of US Imports)

• 18% tariff threat → 15% tariff imposed

• Removal of all tariffs on US imports, the first country to ask for a deal

What we see happening is that these countries are being muscled into more favorable trade relations, effectively deepening control over them.

The European Union, the UK, Japan, South Korea, and others are all subservient to the US both militarily and with their monetary policy. They don’t have a choice unless they dare to finally oppose American global hegemony. Thus, Trump has been able to squeeze them for investment, free trade agreements, and direct purchasing of goods. These countries chose the lesser of two bad options, one short-term and one long-term: accept the bad trade terms but make profitability more difficult domestically, or rip the band-aid off and cut ties with America, which dominates their financial markets, debt, monetary reserves, and can sanction them in a variety of ways. All they can do now is hope Trump doesn’t come back to them in a few years with an open palm.

The same goes for African and Latin American countries that have endured decades of subjugation under global neoliberal institutions, namely the IMF and World Bank. Far worse than Europe, these nations have been forcefully underdeveloped by the imposition of austerity and dollarization, which benefits the American and European corporations. The effects of forced privatization have devastated their countries, and many still hardly receive any of the profits made from the extraction of their minerals, crude oil, and natural resources. Some nations, like Argentina, are still suffering under crippling debt, while others, like Brazil and Mexico, have begun to resist Western institutions that seek to exploit them for cheap labor and exports.

Trump has escalated this extortion to a new level, making it far more obvious what is happening. If before, America was stealing lunch money subtly, now America is beating these countries up for it. Syria, after the overthrow of the Assad regime, has a shattered economy and multiple ongoing crises. Now led by leader Amed al-Shara, he traded oil fields to US firms and privatized parts of the economy in exchange for lifting sanctions.

When Rwanda-backed M23 rebels attacked the Democratic Republic of the Congo in January, about 7,000 people were killed and half a million were displaced. A humanitarian crisis was triggered, and fighting didn’t cease until an agreement was reached in July. The US is brokering a deal later this month between Rwanda and the Congo to outline a permanent peace accord. Trump has already offered security aid to help the Congolese military, but in exchange for access to cobalt, lithium, copper, and other minerals.

The worst of which was Ukraine. Trump has made it no secret that he wanted to end the war by cutting aid to Ukraine on the campaign trail. Now in office, Trump did exactly that, abruptly cutting aid in February. Trump forced President Zelenskyy to come to the White House to essentially be humiliated while he held the future of his country over his head to get concessions. Though the continuation of the war is very much in the US imperial interest as a proxy against Russia, Trump made sure to extract as much as possible from Ukraine’s current crisis. Zelenskyy reluctantly agreed after some back and forth. Trump then resumed military aid and also approved a new package of Ukraine spending through the defense appropriations bill. In exchange, the US will receive 50% of all future revenues from Ukrainian state-owned natural resources, including minerals, oil, and natural gas. This is the forced trade of sovereignty for raw materials, which is to say extortion.

Trump attempted this strategy on China by imposing a massive 145% tariff to which they responded with an equal levy. The CCP has no reason to abandon their ambitious growth project to satisfy the US, which relies on them to maintain the 80-year hyper-consumerist American culture. In fact, China’s exports exploded in April as countries turned to them as a trade partner to cut ties with the erratic US leadership. China knows the US is entirely dependent on it for cheap products; its exports are what prop up American capitalism. Much to the confusion of conservatives like Trump, America is not a manufacturing country anymore; it is a service economy based on consumption, and it cannot simply overturn this fact overnight. So Trump had to back down; a trade embargo with them would be suicide. The stock market would crater, and China rightfully called his bluff.

The war on China was not entirely Trump’s idea. Many neoliberal types like Biden have been ramping up this fear-mongering in recent years to protect the little manufacturing left in America, but not like this. The ideological underpinning comes from Trump’s Senior Trade Counselor Peter Navarro, who has spent the past 25 years zealously proclaiming that China is a grave threat to America with near-biblical conviction. Navarro’s magnum opus was a book and film called ‘Death By China,’ which paints China as a hyperbolic evil military and economic threat that is hell-bent on destroying America. The irony is, of course, that China has not attacked another country in 45 years, whereas the US has been at war for almost that entire period, most of which has been offensive and imperialist.

The truest embarrassment of Navarro’s philosophy is that China has been playing the game of capitalism far better than America ever could. After the communist revolution was diluted down to reformist capitalism in the Deng Xiaoping era starting in 1978, China’s economy has grown at an unprecedented 9.03% per year on average. Although China today is far from resembling a socialist economy where workers rule, its state-planned capitalist model is beating America’s neoliberal market capitalism at its own game. The CCP is not afraid to work against the interests of the capital owners to pursue long-term growth, whereas the American state must bend to the will of the billionaire elites who only care about their stock price.

This strategy was no secret either. CCP leaders openly announce the country’s economic plan every five years at the CCP Congress. Their model proved that export-oriented development is the ideal path to sustainability for a developing nation. China seized the opportunity when the United States was deindustrializing and becoming a service economy, where it oriented itself toward manufacturing mass consumer goods. This paid off immensely as China’s prosperity today was funded by millions of credit cards in the wallets of Americans. Contrary to Navarro’s conclusion, no exploitation happened here; China had the means to provide tons of cheap labor and responded to market demand. Now, the challenge they’re facing is how to transition from a manufacturing powerhouse to a service economy with a rapidly growing middle class.

We get the impression that American leaders feel defeated and know that, the way their economy is structured, they will not be able to exploit the world to combat the declining rate of profit much longer. Neoliberal China hawks are solemnly admitting this, exemplified by headlines like Max Boot’s opinion piece in the Washington Post titled, “China is Winning the Trade War Trump Started.” America will soon have no choice but to accept China’s dominance in the world economy. Eventually, American elites will have to turn inward to extract more profit, setting off an authoritarian cycle. Either that or capitalists will have to find more creative ways to exploit the rest of the world because China is not going anywhere; they are the alternative to American imperialism.

As mentioned earlier, this is all a direct result of the falling rate of profit. American capitalism necessitates new markets, cheaper resources, and new ways to charge more for less. If they can’t make more profits infinitely, the whole system falls apart, and that’s precisely the slow process we’re watching unfold. You can only subdivide and automate labor so much before the elites own almost everything and the poor own almost nothing. America will never be ‘great again,’ and we know this because of the structure of the system. Compared to 50 years ago, there will never be rent as cheap as it was then, college will not cost the same as it did, there will never be real wages as high as then, there will never be cheaper groceries or gas cheaper than back then—because in order to undo the dramatic increases in capital to return those better conditions to the workers, you have slow the rate of profit. What happens when profit slows down? A recession. Economic pain. Implosion.

Capitalism is a system that necessitates infinite growth on a planet with finite resources. Capitalism cannot grow forever; eventually, it bumps up against the limits of reality. Either this endless consumption burns the planet alive, or the workers are forced to break their chains and resist. The only solution is to unapologetically pursue a socialist revolution— defeating capitalists in the class struggle, abolishing profit, abolishing private property, and sharing in the fruits of our labor.

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

“There comes a time when silence is betrayal” is a Dr. King quote I used to describe how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned her back on Palestinians during last year’s Democratic National Convention. It’s now abundantly clear that was an understatement.

In the House of Representatives last week, the Defense Appropriations Act, H.R. 4016, passed with a vote of 221 to 209, allocating funds to the Defense Department for fiscal year 2026. One of the amendments to that bill was proposed by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to remove the $500 million in missile defense funding for Israel’s Iron Dome. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez controversially voted against the proposal in the bill, arguing that she only supported ‘defensive’ military equipment. Only 6 of 428 representatives voted in favor of that amendment.

While Ocasio-Cortez did vote with the Democrats to oppose the final bill, voting for that amendment was an obvious choice for anyone purporting to oppose the genocide in Gaza and war with Iran, but she stood against it. Not only that, but voting in favor of any funding to Israel is a moral failure in and of itself. How can someone genuinely believe that a state is committing genocide and yet still vote to give that state any money, let alone funding used for military purposes?

The difference between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ military equipment is a red herring. To vividly illustrate this, imagine if Congress in 1994 brought a vote to the floor to give Hutu militias helmets and body armor during the Rwanda genocide. Imagine if Congress in 2003 wanted to give the Sudanese Government forces armored vehicles and shields during the Darfur genocide. Imagine if Congress in 1939 wanted to give anti-air munitions to the Nazi Wehrmacht during WWII, or send money to help defend the Nazi SS. Why should we treat the genocide in Gaza any differently? Why should we help defend a state that is carrying out genocide?

It’s not even about protecting civilians, though. The basic logic of war is that an aggressor, in this case Israel, will not stop attacking unless there is adequate deterrence working against its aggression. The Iron Dome defense system in Israel is key to its functioning as a regional hegemonic military force that can start offensive wars with impunity. Without it, Israel would not be able to wage war on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran all within 21 months. It is this state-of-the-art defensive capability that allows Israel to carry out so much destruction.

In fact, to the contrary of the idea that defensive equipment is used to protect civilians, Israel frequently exposes its own citizens to harm or directly harms them. In this regard, Israel and its military treat civilians like human shields. That is, let alone them literally using Palestinian hostages as human shields in their siege of Gaza to search buildings and tunnels. Before the October 7th Uprising, Israel’s military was grossly negligent in pulling personnel away from the Gaza border to execute more illegal raids in the West Bank. During the Uprising, Israel admitted to executing its ‘Hannibal Directive,’ where their military was ordered to kill Israeli hostages so that Hamas could not use them to negotiate. In leaked drone footage, the IDF is seen firing at people who were suspected, but not confirmed, to be militants, killing at least 14 Israelis. In Israel’s capital city, Tel Aviv, the IDF headquarters is deliberately stationed in the center of downtown, which unnecessarily puts thousands of civilians at risk of missile fire. Israel also puts its entire population at extreme risk by pursuing an offensive war with Iran, which incites missile attacks that killed 28 people in the latest 12-day conflict. All of this is used as a rhetorical justification for escalation when there are civilian casualties, even though, due to mandatory conscription, 80% of non-orthodox Israeli adults are current or former military members.

Ocasio-Cortez faced a mountain of criticism for her vote, especially from her loyal supporters, since she was supposed to represent ‘the left’ of the Democratic party. Leftists who don’t affiliate themselves with Democrats have already been strongly criticizing her apathy on the issue of Palestine for a while now.

At the Democratic National Convention last year, she used her influence just to elevate her status in the party despite the thousands marching outside to liberate Palestine from genocide. That week, Ocasio-Cortez didn’t attend any protests, didn’t speak one word to protestors, didn’t attend any of the Palestine panels, didn’t attend the sit-in outside, and (in the words of Cornel West) didn’t say a mumbling word about the genocide in her speech. People were begging her to say anything or at least use her influence to help get a Palestinian speaker on the main stage. Those pleas were met with silence. This is clearly not someone who genuinely thinks this is a genocide, something that should be treated with urgency and the harshest condemnation.

For many, this vote is unsurprising, as she has made it clear that her ambitions are to put her career first. But whenever this happens with a politician, no matter how humble their beginnings, the lies they tell themselves to ignore the glaring moral contradictions of their role as an American lawmaker end up becoming a part of who they are. The only way one can maintain their dignity and morality is to take the risks necessary to stand against the depravity of the American empire.

Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are among the few national politicians who adequately speak against the genocide, and they pay a high price for it, enduring brutal harassment, racism, and death threats, which much of the Democratic Party refuses to defend. While taking on much more risk, these brave women do far more than Ocasio-Cortez, who prioritized capitulating to the establishment over fighting it. Ilhan Omar even took an apparent jab at her on social media for her vote, saying, “The genocide of the people of Gaza continues as members of Congress vote to fund Israel’s defensive and offensive military capabilities. This is immoral, and no amount of excuses will ever make it ok.”

Facing all this criticism, Ocasio-Cortez pushed back. She posted a defense of her vote by separating defensive and offensive weapons into two different categories. She says that anti-missile defenses would serve to prevent “adding to the death count of innocent victims to this war.” As we stated before, that is bullshit. We know that Israel will restock its Iron Dome and then start the next phase of the war on Iran. Under the current reality, there is no difference between offensive and defensive weapons. Israel does not want peace.

And one more thing, this is not a ‘war’ in Gaza. This is a genocide.

When Ocasio-Cortez received even more indignant replies for this, her justification was completely outrageous and wrong. Even just a half-hearted apology may have sufficed. The following night, her campaign office in New York City was vandalized with red paint and a sign that says “AOC FUNDS GENOCIDE IN GAZA.” This form of non-violent protest is common across Europe, with the red representing the blood on their hands.

Instead of recanting, she posted another defense a few days later, throwing more fuel on the fire. In a snarky tone, she writes, “Google is free. If you’re saying I voted for military funding, you are lying. Receipts attached.” But practically no one was saying she voted for the finished bill; everyone was upset about the amendment. The ‘receipts’ she provided were only screenshots of the final vote, not the amendment, which was the actual problem. This is gaslighting.

She continues in the post saying, “Drag me for my positions all you want, but lying about them doesn’t make you part of the ‘left.’ If you believe neo-nazis are welcome and operating in good faith, you can have them!” In her coinciding Instagram caption, she writes, “If you really believe that Marjorie Taylor Greene is an ally to Palestinians and a welcome part of your coalition, and that voting against her amendment that was designed exactly for this chaos is constructive and to be supported, then you can have her. Thanks.” Greene, who authored the amendment, is a racist anti-establishment Republican who won her election off of MAGA extremism and conspiracy peddling. So a grain of the statement is true, Greene opposes Israel because she is anti-semitic, not because she cares about Palestinians. But voting in Congress is not picking who your friends are. It’s voting to make changes in the government. Plenty of people in her ‘coalition’ are Democrats who vote with Republicans on abhorrent legislation all the time. Many of them are vicious transphobes, support mass deportation, and Joe Biden, otherwise known as Genocide Joe, whom she supported for reelection.

The most disgusting part of the comment is how Ocasio-Cortez is lashing out against her biggest supporters, affiliating them with the fascist Trump cult. She is not stupid; she knows that they hate Greene more than anyone, yet she chooses to obfuscate rather than own it.

If Ocasio-Cortez was genuinely concerned with the optics of voting for an amendment written by a neo-nazi, she should’ve just voted present or no-voted. If there was something in the amendment that was nefarious, she should’ve explained that in more detail rather than irrationally blaming everyone criticizing her. An honest person in that situation would not lash out; they would acknowledge where the frustration is coming from but earnestly explain why the amendment wasn’t achieving its purpose. But the amendment is very clear; it cuts Iron Dome funding from the bill. Instead, Ocasio-Cortez defends the purpose of the Iron Dome and blames people for being on the ‘side’ of Greene. By framing it like this, she is cynically implying that Democrats Summer Lee, Al Green, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib are coalescing with a neo-nazi. So again, it’s gaslighting.

Her tone suggests a contemptuous loathing for people to the left of her, that they just don’t understand or can’t see what’s going on. It’s this persistent underestimation of the left that the Democratic Party is failing to grapple with right now. The entire party arrogantly disregards the left, who are their most loyal supporters, and often blames them for their election losses. It’s that conceit which caused the establishment to lose a landslide to Zohran Mamdani. If Ocasio-Cortez continues with this mentality, she will be indistinguishable from the Chuck Schumer types who think the centrist establishment will rule indefinitely. There is anger built up in people, not just about the Gaza genocide and Trump’s fascism, but the entire system as a whole, and they will not accept a return to the status quo.

In the broader picture, why wasn’t Ocasio-Cortez the one who wrote this amendment? If she wants this identity of standing up to Israel’s genocide, why doesn’t she work harder to stop it? To go back to the earlier analogy, would it matter who wrote the amendment to prevent Congress from sending body armor to the Nazis? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a fraud.

None of this so far has acknowledged the fact that Israel does not have the right to defend itself under international law. The United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948 states that all countries have a duty to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. Through the years, jurisprudence on the matter has made it clear that countries have an obligation to intervene when a state is committing genocide. The Rome Statute, which established the ICC, explains that claiming self-defense does not absolve war crimes.

“The fact that the person was involved in a defensive operation conducted by forces shall not in itself constitute a ground for excluding criminal responsibility” — Article 31(1)(c)

The UN Charter outlines a legal responsibility of the Security Council to collectively act to restore international peace and security, which would obviously include the crime of genocide. This implies that a country forfeits its right to self-defense when it is violating peace by committing genocide. The fatal flaw of this principle is that any Security Council member, in this case the United States, can veto any collective intervention against it or an allied country. Considering all international obligations and the fact that Israel has been occupying and oppressing Palestinians for decades— people who have the right to resist to pursue self-determination— Israel has no legal right to defend itself.

Even broader still, Israel does not have the right to exist in the first place. It is a state founded on, and still pursues, Zionism. By definition, Zionism is an ethnosupremacist ideology. It is the idea of establishing an ethnically pure Jewish nation, something that can only be achieved by ethnic cleansing. This has been reiterated countless times by Israeli leaders who claim that a Jewish majority is a necessity for the functioning of Israel, and who reflexively use the term ‘Jewish State,’ implying the exclusion of other races. That is precisely reflected in Israel’s public policy; the exclusion of Palestinians politically with suppression, physically with a wall, and economically by controlling all transportation, water, and electricity. Israel has maintained this apartheid for decades because it is necessary for its ethnosupremacist project. It should go without saying that apartheid is irrefutably illegal under international law.

We are now multiple layers removed from the question of voting in favor of giving Israel more funding. It’s an outrage for just one representative to support an apartheid state, let alone the overwhelming majority of them. This is a reflection of just how far from basic morality America and its ruling class are. I hesitate even to say just America because the entire capitalist world has supported this genocide and watched apathetically as Israel brutally oppressed Palestinians for decades.

Here, we find the limits of these so-called progressive politicians who proclaim to oppose capitalism domestically yet ignore its most cruel feature: the murder and pillage abroad that builds everything at home. It’s about time we have politicians who are adequate on all issues, because everything is connected. The line between domestic and foreign policy becomes blurred because the United States is the global hegemon that dominates the international community both politically and economically. The Middle East and Northern Africa are subjugated for oil, Central and Southern Africa for minerals, Southeast Asia for manufacturing and clothing, Latin America for agriculture, South America for lumber and fossil fuels, and Palestine for surveillance and military technology. The exploitation of the rest of the world is inseparable from the exploitation we experience at home.

Last year, DSA withdrew its endorsement of her after she voted in favor of a bill that falsely conflated anti-Zionism with anti-semitism. The withdrawal came with conditions, most importantly, opposing all funds to Israel, including Iron Dome funding. That condition has now been broken. Last week, the DSA already rebuked her in a public statement, and a petition is pending to censure or expel her from the party. I fully support this measure as every good organization needs resilient accountability.

Last year, I wrote that “AOC is not the enemy, but she is a bad ally.” Some of my hesitation came from the fact that she has sincerely achieved a list of (domestic) progressive accomplishments. I’d like to correct that to say AOC is not an ally of the left and hasn’t been for some time. On the issue of Palestine, her support has always been performative, and she has almost always chosen her career trajectory over taking moral risks. How can we trust she doesn’t throw the left under the bus again or lash out harder the next time?

It bites at a deeper question— are we not bound to put the lives of others in the world on the same level as our own? What kind of people are we to defend a politician who votes to defend a genocide?

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

The American-Israeli empire is proceeding to devour its next victim in its multi-decade pursuit of dominating the Middle East, subjecting its people to neocolonial rule, and completing the project of Zionist fascism.

Iran has been the chosen prey of America for decades, ever since it became a stronghold of resistance against imperialism. America initially installed the Shah monarchy in a 1953 coup to de facto control the country. In 1979, the Shah was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution, which elevated the Ayatollah to power, founding the modern-day hostility. Iran has bravely dared to oppose the hegemony of the American-Israeli empire and has paid for it severely over the past four decades.

Starting with the revolution, America lost one of its most loyal allies in the region, and it immediately went to work supporting its proxy, Saddam Hussein, with Iraq invading Iran the following year. After eight brutal years of fighting, Iran survived at the devastating cost of about half a million dead, a 40% GDP shrink, and a 92% currency devaluation. This destroyed Iraq’s economy and set off a series of events leading to the Iraq invasion in 2003, regime change, and the exploitation of the country for oil and military hegemony today. Iran resiliently staved off this aggression, established its sovereignty, and legitimized itself as an enduring resistance to American imperialism. Both America and Israel have since conducted many covert and overt attacks on Iran through cross-border raids, assassinations, cyberwarfare, and crippling sanctions. The US has also gone so far as to support designated terrorist groups to help attack Iran, such as Jundallah from 2005 to 2010, Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi separatist groups in 2007, and the MEK from 2010 to 2012, along with other less significant opposition factions like the Kurds.

As the primary oppositional force to American-Israeli hegemony in the region, Iran has established direct military allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis government of Yemen, the PMF in Iraq, the Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade, and supported the Assad regime in Syria until it was toppled last year. As for soft economic allies, Iran has joined the BRICS coalition and OPEC to oppose the American imperial bloc. During the past four decades of crushing sanctions from the US, nations like Russia and China have slowly aligned closer with Iran as trade partners to hedge against America.

Despite being predominantly self-sufficient, Iran has emerged as the most powerful nation in the region, boasting a significant military presence and a strong economy. Their position threatens the American-Israel empire’s ambition of holding complete military and economic domination over the Middle East. For decades, the US has desperately coveted ‘regime change’ in Iran, just like they did in Iraq, achieved in 2003 by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. American neocon warhawks aggressively lobbied this policy in parallel with the Israeli strategic interest of ridding all factions that prevent their insatiable expansion.

Now that Iran’s most consistent ally, Assad, has been overthrown and that Syria is now a shell ready to bow down to the West, that presented the perfect opportunity for Israel and America to attack. But the pretext for this attack is not new; it was generated decades ago.

Decades of False Pretext

In 1991, a piece was published in the Los Angeles Times called ‘Iran’s Nuclear Plans Worry US Officials’ where they suggest that Iran was rapidly advancing toward acquiring a nuclear weapon, being just a few years away. In it, they quote, “‘It looks like there’s a really active program in Iran,’ said Leonard S. Spector, a nuclear specialist… ‘It picked up over the past eight or 10 months, after they saw and read about what was going on in Iraq.’” They contrasted those who feared Iran could develop a nuke in a few years and those who believed their program is a decade away.

According to a Global Security report, they outline how the CIA intelligence keeps changing the timescale for Iran’s capability. They write, “In 1992, the CIA estimated that Iran would have the bomb by the year 2000. In 1995, John Holum testified that Iran could have the bomb by 2003. In 1997, after two years in which Iran might have made progress, he testified that Iran could have the bomb by 2005- 2007. In 1999, the NIE on proliferation estimated that Iran could test a missile that could reach the US by 2010, but did not change the 1997 estimate or when Iran might acquire a bomb.”

In 2000, the CIA carried out Operation Merlin, where they attempted to fake a leak to Iran containing a flawed version of nuclear bomb blueprints to set back their program. The New York Times acquired the details of this covert operation in 2003 but was barred from publishing the story by the US government, which was later revealed in the author’s book. The source for the information, CIA officer Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, was brazenly convicted of espionage in 2015 and sentenced to three years in prison for leaking that.

In 2001, American and Israeli intelligence spread rumors to the press that Iran was “only three to five years away from having launchable warheads.”

Around this time, neocon warhawks and liberals alike began a campaign of writing countless op-eds calling for all-out war with Iran over their alleged pursuit of nuclear capabilities.

In 2006, Bill Kristol, Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, wrote an article in the Weekly Standard magazine saying, “We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?” Kristol outright refused the possibility that Iran would negotiate, even though they ended up coming to a nuclear agreement less than a decade later.

In 2007, Norman Podhoretz published ‘The Case for Bombing Iran,’ fear-mongering about the coming ‘Islamofascism’ if America didn’t initiate what he calls ‘World War IV.’

In 2008, America Magazine put out an editorial titled, ‘Iran and the Bomb,’ where they invoked the idea of brinksmanship with Iran, citing their missile and enrichment activities as evidence of a nuclear arms trajectory, thus justifying preemptive attacks.

In 2009, in a New York Times op-ed, Alan J. Kuperman wrote an article ‘There’s Only One Way to Stop Iran’ which concludes that diplomacy is impossible and the US must preemptively bomb Iran.

In 2010, the Washington Times released an editorial titled ‘Nuclear Iran’ where they ominously declared, “The United States should begin planning for the inevitable. Conflict is coming; it won’t be managed away.”

In 2010, Daniel Pipes wrote a piece called ‘How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran’, citing “the apocalyptic-minded leaders in Tehran” and opinion polls showing Americans’ supposed support for preemptively attacking Iran.

In 2013, again, Podhoretz wrote in the Wall Street Journal, ‘Strike Iran Now to Avert Disaster Later’ saying, “If Israel fails to strike now, Iran will get the bomb.”

In 2015, the American Foreign Policy Magazine put out a piece titled ‘Iran Already Has Nuclear Weapons Capability,’ suggesting Iran was just months away from developing a nuclear fission bomb.

That same year, John Bolton, who was Bush’s former UN ambassador, published an op-ed in the New York Times titled ‘To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran’ where he dismisses diplomatic solutions and demands aggressive action.

In 2019, it was reported that “US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made comments on Thursday, after Iran stepped up activity at its underground Fordow nuclear plant. He warned against Tehran’s ‘violence and terror’ and urged the international community to take immediate action.”

With countless more comments and pieces written, it would be impossible to compile all of them. For the US, this is a consistent and systematic effort to initiate imperial war with another sovereign nation to protect the Israeli colony in the region. The motivation underlying it all is economic, as the more control the US has over other resource-rich countries, the slower capitalism disintegrates. This is also in line with efforts to help fight their primary world opponent, China, which is the leading importer of Iranian oil.

Israel and ideological Zionism are also a central component of this aggression. For Israel, it does not want peace; it wants complete hegemony to protect its project of creating an ethnically pure society. As a nation that has descended into fascism, Israel must keep rapidly expanding and fighting wars to justify its existence. Once Israel has decided to carry out its long-awaited genocide to ethnically cleanse Palestine, it has reached a point where its only option is to fight indefinitely. Israel, now more than ever, necessitates that every state surrounding it is either an unambiguous ally or a weak, fractured country that cannot serve as a resistance to its ethnic cleansing.

Iran’s Pacifism

Iran has, to its own detriment, never concretely pursued a nuclear weapon in its 46-year history. It has endured crippling sanctions and proxy attacks because of it, yet it still cannot create a nuclear weapon. Nowhere in the rhetoric of Iranian leaders have they seriously suggested they will not follow the concept of mutually assured destruction; quite the opposite.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has been known to be a moderate, especially when it comes to the subject of nuclear weapons, saying, “We consider the use of such weapons as haraam and believe that it is everyone’s duty to make efforts to secure humanity against this great disaster.” As the spiritual leader of Iran, it is his belief that obtaining nuclear weapons is fundamentally immoral, and this belief is shared by much of the Muslim population. Khamenei also said outright the regime’s intentions in 2015, saying in a speech, “We are not after nuclear weapons… we do not need a nuclear weapon either in the present time or in the future. A nuclear weapon is a source of trouble for a country like ours.”

Statements like these have prompted frustration from others in the regime who rightly believe that nuclear capabilities are the only thing that will rebalance power in the Middle East. Some also question Khamenei’s reasoning since refusing to pursue and failing to achieve nuclear weapons has led to more conflict. Nuclear weapons for a country like North Korea have prevented all aggression toward it from the US, besides occasional flare-ups. Iran had about six months to nuclearize after Hamas’ October 7th attack, which disrupted the confidence of the Israeli military, but no such effort was made.

With Khamenei now 86 years old, a new Ayatollah in Iran could mean a more pragmatic pursuit of nuclear capabilities to stave off American-Israeli aggression just for their own survival. One could venture to guess that Israel has refrained from assassinating Khamenei to make sure a more radical Ayatollah doesn’t take his place, something Israel has been exploiting with the Palestinian leadership for decades. However, recent reporting states that Israel drew up plans to assassinate Khamenei, but the US didn’t let them carry it out, suggesting that it wasn’t part of their calculation.

The current regime has been historically very weak when it comes to proportional counterattacks against Israel. They have failed to take out any significant figures in Israel, yet have lost tens of important leaders to targeted assassinations. Khamenei has deliberately chosen the path of ‘strategic patience,’ which has only led to a weaker position and invited more Israeli aggression.

Deterrence Theory

Internet commentator who goes by the name Zei Squirrel, whose analysis helped form the basis of this essay, wrote extensively about the desperate need for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon for their own survival. Through their analyses using a materialist framework, they have accurately predicted many of the current events months in advance. Their conclusions outline a grim future for Iran if they do not achieve deterrence. Ultimately, if Iran is not able to serve consequences to Israel and the US while failing to honor their red lines, conflict will continue and escalate dramatically. The next stage of escalation, if not prevented, could possibly result in Israel’s ultimate goal of regime change and the fracturing of Iran into weak, conflicting factions, like what happened in Syria.

An honest understanding of political science and material analysis can settle the case for a nuclear Iran. The theory of deterrence posits that an aggressor, such as the state of Israel, can only be stopped when there is a credible and severe threat of retaliation. The highest form of deterrent is achieving nuclear capabilities. Only once that is achieved will Israel be forced to stop attacking Iran directly, and then it must rely on flimsy proxy wars. So long as the United States, the hegemonic world power, and Israel, its ethnostate colony, keep their nuclear weapons, acquiring nuclear weapons is the only reliable path to sovereignty. Peace through nuclear de-proliferation can only happen when the US gives up its nukes, something that will never happen.

The contrasting cases of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya and Kim Jong Il’s North Korea give insight into the validity of this theory. As opponents of the US, both these nations were not secure in their sovereignty and were targets of a forced overthrow. For Gaddafi, his country’s nationalized control over oil and rejection of foreign direct investment threatened the West’s control over the oil market. For various reasons, Libya under Gaddafi was not able to achieve nuclear weapons and gave up its nuclear ambitions in 2003. This eventually resulted in his overthrow by a NATO-backed rebellion in 2011, where he was raped to death and shot. Libya has still not recovered after that civil war.

North Korea, however, had the explicit goal of achieving a nuclear weapon going back decades to resist attempts by South Korea and the West to invade and reignite the Korean War. In the 90s, North Korea exploited nuclear treaties while still developing its nuclear program until it withdrew from the NPT in 2002. Just three years later, in 2005, they announced they had nuclear weapons and conducted their first test in 2006. Despite tensions flaring up occasionally, it’s nothing but empty threats. South Korea and the US have maintained sanctions but have taken no military action against North Korea.

Deterrence can be established in multiple ways, and the mere presence of a threat is not enough to deter. Red lines must be drawn and consequences must be served when crossed. Iran has relied on deterrence through its many proxies in the region, which are protecting it by directing any counterattacks away from the core. Since Iran has not sufficiently retaliated when Israel has brazenly violated its red lines, that only convinced Israel to take a mile when given an inch. Now that Israel has eroded those proxies, it seems that war is becoming increasingly more imminent.

Escalating Proxy War

The Israel-Iran conflict has many episodes; however, the recurring theme is the disproportionate aggression by the Israeli military and intelligence. The justification, of course, is the false notion of ‘preemptive’ strikes against threats that are manufactured, grossly exaggerated, or outright lies. Notable events include:

• June 2010 — A covert American-Israeli worm cyberattack called Stuxnet is discovered, which would be used to sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities for many years following. The program cost an estimated $1 billion to develop and is regarded as one of the most infamous cyberattacks in history.

• July 2015 — Iran agrees to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), abandoning its capability to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for lifting international sanctions.

• January 2017 — Israel, after four years of covert operations and occasional precision airstrikes against Iranian proxies in Syria, was by now openly engaged in near daily airstrikes throughout 2017 and 2018 as Iran attempted to prop up the Assad regime, Iranian proxies sometimes successfully shot down drones and aircraft, in one instance the Quads Force in the Golan Heights fired rockets at the Israeli occupied territory prompting a significant overreaction.

• May 2018 — After Israeli PM Netanyahu claimed undercover Mossad agents obtained an Iranian 100,000 document secret nuclear archive, which allegedly proved that Iran ‘lied’ about their nuclear capabilities in the past. Although the documents were reported to contain no new information unknown to the IAEA, this prompted President Donald Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA deal.

• January 2020 — The US asked Iraq’s PM to mediate a deal with Iran’s Major General Qasem Soleimani after the nuclear withdrawal, which was really a setup for President Donald Trump to order a covert drone strike assassination on Soleimani in Baghdad while he was traveling. Iran responded with an ineffective attack on the American Al-Asad airbase.

• June 2020 — A series of sabotage explosions and cyberattacks on eleven Iranian nuclear sites, unconfirmed but likely by Israel.

• November 2020 — A covert attack with a remote-controlled machine gun in Tehran assassinates Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian military nuclear scientist.

• April 2021 — A new iteration of the Stuxnet worm strikes the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility, damaging centrifuges and the local electrical grid.

• March 2022 — Iran’s IRGC launches twelve ballistic missiles at Mossad undercover intelligence centers in Erbil, Iraq.

Throughout the late 2010s and 2020s, both Iran and Israel engaged in tit-for-tat drone strikes, attacks on cargo vessels, and proxy attacks. Since 2010, Israel has successfully carried out at least 26 confirmed assassinations on Iranian political leaders, military leaders, engineers, and nuclear scientists. Besides plotting and a few foiled attempts, Iran has never successfully carried out an assassination of an Israeli leader to this day.

Iran’s Collapsing Deterrence

The year 2024, in particular, set the stage for the events unfolding now. Zei specifically cites Hezbollah taking losses throughout the year, then suffering a final major defeat in November, along with Assad’s regime falling in December, as a loss of Iran’s deterrence.

Other moves by the US and Israel signaled their preparations to initiate war with Iran. The US attack on Yemen in early 2025 is connected to this. It allowed the US to test how Yemen would respond while damaging major ports to put pressure on a government that is loyal to Iran. Even in Iraq, America has also recently been pressuring its government to crack down on Iran-connected Shia militias within its borders.

Iran Loses Hezbollah

While Israel carried out its genocide in Gaza, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah supported the Palestinian resistance via rocket attacks starting in October 2023 and continuing into 2024 until Hezbollah was forced to a ceasefire in November 2024.

The rockets were too weak without the support of Iran, which has the missile capability to break through Israel’s Iron Dome. Rather than supporting their ally, Iran decided not to escalate the situation beyond a regional proxy conflict. Iran is so afraid to escalate conflict that it has been known to downplay and even cover up assassinations of their leaders. The results have been devastating, and Hezbollah paid the price:

• April 1st, 2024 — Israel bombed Iran’s embassy in Baghdad, killing tens of people, prompting Iran to respond with a show of force called “Operation True Promise,” which was merely a show of force that killed no one in retaliation.

• May 19th, 2024 — Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Abdollahian were killed in a helicopter crash under suspicious circumstances. Iran claims it was due to poor weather conditions.

• July 30th, 2024 — Israel assassinates Hezbollah’s military leader, Fuad Shukr, in Lebanon.

• July 31st, 2024 — Israeli Mossad agents assassinate Hamas’ Political Leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was the leading ceasefire negotiator at the time, with a bomb planted in his guesthouse. Iran vowed retaliation but never carried out any attack.

• September 17th, 2024 — Israel carries out a massive two-day terrorist attack using thousands of sabotaged pagers and walkie-talkies used by politicians and military members of Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing 42 and injuring more than 3,500 people, including civilians and children, many of whom sustained life-altering injuries.

• September 20th, 2024 — Israel initiates ‘rampage of airstrikes’ on Lebanon, consisting of over 1,600 strikes in just three days, which killed 558 people, injuring 1,835, the majority of whom were civilians.

Iran did not retaliate to this attack, even though it made verbal threats that an attack on Hezbollah would result in significant punishment. It was undoubtedly at this point that Iran’s deterrence was shattered entirely. Iran had no credibility left by this point; their red lines were exposed, and their vulnerability invited the genocidal Israeli military to continue their onslaught in Lebanon. Zei notes that “Israel saw all this as confirmation that there would be no retaliation by Iran and Hezbollah of the same kind,” which meant that they could target Iranian leaders with impunity. They go on to say, “This was the green light to go ahead with the assassination of Nasrallah.”

• September 27th, 2024 — Israel assassinates Shia religious cleric and leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, in a massive air bombardment on the underground Hezbollah headquarters in Dahieh, the strike also assassinated two other top commanders, two Iranian commanders, and 33 civilians.

• October 1st, 2024 — Iran responded in support of Hezbollah with “Operation True Promise II,” where over 200 ballistic missiles were launched at Israel, though most were intercepted, two airbases were damaged, and some missiles hit around the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. No Israelis were killed in the attack.

• October 1st, 2024 — The same day, Israel launches a ground invasion of Lebanon and begins a ruthless bombing campaign across the South and the capital, Beirut. Hezbollah was unable to fend off the IDF’s air superiority but inflicted over a thousand casualties, causing Israel to lose momentum. In the end, 2,720 Lebanese civilians were killed and thousands more injured, mostly due to airstrikes.

• November 27th, 2024 — A ceasefire agreement is reached and the IDF retreats from Southern Lebanon.

Iran’s retaliation for their best ally suffering a fatal decapitation strike, one that killed two of their top commanders, was pitiful. The response was limited and was merely a show of force. Hezbollah and the Lebanese people ultimately paid the consequences for this ‘strategic’ weakness. Though the group is very much alive, the invasion was a crushing blow to the leadership structure and killed at least 500 fighters. The airstrikes on Lebanon cost an estimated $2.8 billion in damages, an estimated 100,000 housing units were destroyed or damaged, over 886,000 people were displaced, and Hezbollah was dramatically weakened.

For Israel, the casualties being taken at such a high rate were likely enough to force them to the negotiating table. The calculation was made that Hezbollah was set back enough not to be a serious threat if Israel were to attack Iran directly. They were just one more fallen domino, leading to the all-out destruction of Iran.

Iran Loses Syria

In December of 2024, in a rapid development, the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel force in Syria toppled the Assad regime in a blitz offensive. It lasted just eleven days, spreading to major cities held by the government and taking all of Assad’s territory, forcing him to flee to Russia. This new interim government, led by the rebel Ahmed al-Sharaa, has called for a democracy that incorporates all minorities within Syria, although significant hurdles and questions lie ahead. Al-Sharaa has already met with Western leaders and the Gulf states, signaling which side of the alliance this New Syria will be on. President Trump was quick to express his optimism for al-Sharaa as a leader, calling him a “young, tough, attractive guy.” It’s too early to tell whether this government will fulfill its promises, but as past examples have shown, a ‘democratic’ Western-allied government doesn’t guarantee peace. The new government has already made the unilateral decision to privatize parts of the economy, with the worst aspect being the oil sector, which would only make the country more dependent on foreign support.

The downfall of the Bashar Al-Assad government was a major blow to Iran, as Syria acted as a land corridor between Iran and its proxy Lebanon. Additionally, it served as a political buffer. Iran and Assad’s Syria have maintained friendly economic relations for some time, an essential partnership for two countries that were opposed to the West. With Assad’s oppressive regime in shambles for the past fourteen years, its ability to support Iran was already waning, but it at least provided refuge for paramilitary groups, the land for transferring weapons, and intel.

This one-two punch of Hezbollah admitting defeat and Assad’s fall has left Iran in its most vulnerable position in decades.

War Planning and Deception

In early 2025, when Trump took the Presidency, plans were already drawn up alongside Israel to attack Iran. This was confirmed by an Axios report stating that Israel’s plan to strike Iran was eight months in the making. A different report in The Washington Post stated that, based on accounts from Israeli government officials, the decision to proceed with this plan was already made in March of this year. Reporting from The Times of Israel also stated that the US and Israel carried out joint drills for an offensive strike on Iran in spring of last year under the Biden administration. This attack was indeed a cross-administration effort and was only carried out when the timing was optimal. On the campaign trail, Kamala Harris clearly signaled that she would not be diverting from the then-Biden administration’s foreign policy, and even made sure to say in an interview that Iran was America’s “greatest adversary.” Whether the optimal time fell under Biden, Harris, or Trump, an American attack on Iran was inevitable regardless of who was in charge.

Fake Negotiations

Before Trump was even President, he met with Netanyahu to discuss an end to the ‘war’ in Gaza, a meeting that should’ve been considered illegal according to existing US law. On January 19th, that came true, just hours before Trump would be inaugurated, Israel suddenly agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas. Initially, this appeared to be a way for Trump to be seen as the ‘pro-peace’ President, which was probably a desirable effect, but it was simply a strategic move.

At the time, it was reported that on Saturday, January 11th, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, met with Netanyahu to pressure him to agree to an immediate ceasefire. Netanyahu initially declined due to it being the Jewish Sabbath, but Trump’s team, in a ‘power move,’ forced him to come to the table. That reporting is something Zei suggests was just a show for the media, and that they were on the same page the whole time.

One doesn’t need to look far to see how Witkoff is the bridge that connects Netanyahu with Trump. As a long-time real estate friend of Trump, Witkoff is known as the real Secretary of State who leads negotiations, while Rubio is sidelined to a subservient mouthpiece role. Witkoff is also very good friends with Netanyahu and received a pager gift from him after a meeting this year, engraved with the inscription ‘OTJ,’ meaning ‘One Tough Jew.’ Witkoff is undoubtedly a rabid Zionist who last year helped Trump collect a seven-figure sum of donations from genocide-supporting voters after Biden temporarily paused a shipment of bombs to Israel.

Zei explains that there were no long-term plans for a ceasefire and that it was essentially a strategic pause. For Israel, this would release some hostages, relieving some domestic pressure, which was the only internal threat. Half or so of the Israeli public is only opposed to the ‘war’ because the hostages aren’t the focus. In contrast, almost all of the Israeli public is indifferent to the genocide of Palestinians. Another reason is that Israel would be able to track Hamas fighters and gain a greater intelligence advantage. It was reported that Israel tried to do this by setting up secret cameras and using drone surveillance to find out more about how Hamas keeps hostages and where their hiding places are. Ironically, through this effort, the Palestinian resistance has gained, not lost, the advantage, as many of the cameras were destroyed or manipulated, and fighters staged their movements to give Israel false intelligence.

This ceasefire was never meant to be permanent; no material pressure was applied to Israel to force it to stop. Israel’s goal has already been clear: to ethnically cleanse Gaza and claim the territory for its ethnostate. Ultimately, the only real pressure that can stop this would come from within Israel itself, through serious protest or economic collapse, serious military intervention by another country, or the United States withholding military aid, none of which seems likely in the near future.

The overarching reason for this ceasefire was also to craft the false narrative that Netanyahu and Trump had fundamental disagreements that they were keeping from the press. The goal was to spin the idea that Trump actually wants to be an isolationist (even though his first term was anything but).

In February, Trump and Netanyahu met in the White House to discuss the ceasefire and the future of Gaza. Trump openly called for the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza and their expulsion to surrounding Arab countries as refugees. Trump followed up on this open support for ethnic cleansing with an AI-generated video depicting the ‘Gaza Rivera,’ a rebuilt, westernized version of the Gaza Strip. This sort of rhetoric lent to the idea that Trump was expressing a ‘power move’ over Netanyahu.

As mentioned prior, Trump threw out the JCPOA in 2018 and then, on last year’s campaign trail, used forceful rhetoric, sometimes promising the annihilation of Iran if it were to get nuclear weapons. Many times he tried to frame dealing with Iran in ‘peace through strength’ terms and then days after the election a Trump official told the Wall Street Journal, “I think you are going to see the sanctions go back on.” Despite this stance, Trump sent a personal letter to Ayatollah Khamenei on March 7th, expressing a desire to restart nuclear negotiations. Though Western media presented this as a hypocritical rehashing of the JCPOA, it really was just a stern threat with impossible terms, especially as the US and Trump had little credibility left.

Iranian diplomats still heard the offer out by meeting with the US in Oman on April 12th. A second round of talks was held on April 19th, and a third round of ‘high-level’ talks was held on April 26th. These were bilateral talks without Israel involved at all, which was on purpose to sell the diversion. These negotiations were completely fake, really being the backbone of the whole scheme for Iran to let its guard down. It’s unknown what every word shared at these meetings was, but certainly Steve Witkoff’s envoy manipulated them enough to create a false sense of security for Iran.

The paradox is why these fake negotiations worked. Israeli leaders talked openly for months about regime change and killing Khamenei, which should’ve set off red alarms for Iranian leadership never to trust the American-Israeli imperialist regime. The assassination of Qasem Soleimani, which was carried out at Trump’s order in 2020, should have made any talks this year a complete non-starter, especially after he bragged about it multiple times. The lethal misunderstanding for the Iranians was trusting Witkoff (a rabid Zionist), saying that Trump (who was elected with the help of millions of AIPAC dollars) was falling out of favor with Israel.

Gaza Genocide Resumes

After nine hostage exchanges spanning over two months, Israel ended the ceasefire agreement on March 18th, carrying out a massive bombing campaign while reinvading Gaza. Analysts counted that Israel violated the ceasefire 265 times during the two months with airstrikes, drone strikes, shooting civilians, blocking medical aid, and blocking food shipments.

Since then, Israel has executed what has been described as the ‘final solution’ as the genocide has reached a new level of depravity. All the feeble humanitarian demands from the Biden administration are gone; Israel has prevented all food shipments from entering, causing dozens of documented cases of children who have starved to death, while the overwhelming majority of the Gaza population is malnourished. Let alone all the instances that go unreported, a conservative estimate reported that 15% of the children in Gaza are now considered severely malnourished. While that is going on, the only aid allowed to enter is no longer through trucks, but a fenced-off site where Palestinians have to travel on foot and wait in long lines in the hot sun for pitiful amounts of food. At these sites (concentration camps), the IDF and US troops have fired into crowds and killed these aid seekers, so many that the UN reported at least 798 such killings in just 6 weeks, an average of 19 per day. This is a deliberate campaign of starvation and murder that has only accelerated under Trump.

Trump and his administration, since the ceasefire has resumed, have provided no sympathy for Palestinians or made any statement that would pressure Israel to stop in any way. The only pressure from the right wing on the issue has been from libertarians who complain about the money being sent to support the IDF. The Trump administration is and always has been ideologically committed to Zionism. Along with that, the administration’s geopolitical interests are perfectly aligned with Israel, so there is no material or ideological reason for Trump to be against the continuation of the genocide. In fact, the US contractors have provided support to the IDF at the aid distribution points, and an Associated Press video reported two whistleblowers who provided proof that American soldiers were shooting Palestinians and celebrating it.

The ceasefire had nothing to do with ‘peace’ or humanitarian concerns; it was purely part of the deception ploy.

Failed Attempt to Crush Yemen

In response to Israel ramping up to resume the genocide in Gaza, Yemen, which was not party to but abided by the ceasefire anyway, threatened to resume its blockade of the Red Sea. The Yemeni government, also known as the Houthis, is an ally of Iran and the Palestinian resistance but is limited in its ability to attack Israel, being so far away and not having a robust arsenal of ballistic missiles. The blockade of the Red Sea certainly concerned the US, as it was a significant burden on global trade in 2024. This prompted the US to attack Yemen with sweeping airstrikes on March 14th, four days before Israel’s big reinvasion of Gaza. When that happened, Yemen retaliated by firing a missile at Israel the day the ceasefire was broken, a series of drone strikes days later, and then a few days after that, their first successful strike that hit Ben-Gurion airport.

As mentioned in a previous essay, American “air attacks on Yemen recurred every single day since March 14th on factories, military installations, government facilities, airports, and residential areas.” For 53 days straight, there were relentless strikes on the country, killing at least 224 civilians, crippling a major civilian port, and even precision bombing a religious ceremony. The offensive blew through a reported $1 billion in military equipment in the first three weeks. On May 6th, President Trump announced a ceasefire with the condition that Yemen stop attacking American ships, but didn’t say not to strike Israel or ships going to Israel. Ending it in this way made it seem as though the US made ‘peace’ on their terms; however, it was planned specifically to play into the ‘break with Netanyahu’ narrative.

Deception Campaign

Around this time, Trump made efforts internally to distance himself rhetorically from hardline neocons like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz. On May 1st, Trump even fired Waltz from his position as National Security Advisor and moved him to a UN ambassador role. It was reported throughout May that Trump wanted to pursue a ‘peace through strength’ policy as the Trump loyalists scolded neocons for their hawkishness.

There were also no in-person meetings between Trump and Netanyahu after that February visit, which was notable because Trump took a trip to the Middle East in May, meeting with the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, but not Israel. Zei concludes that the primary purpose of this trip to the Middle East was to shore up support from the subservient Gulf countries before initiating war with Iran.

A fourth round of the fake ‘high-level’ negotiations took place on May 11th, again mediated by Oman, which lasted for three hours. Both sides described the talks as difficult but constructive. In the days that followed, the US would impose new sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program and defense industry.

On May 12th, the US conducted unilateral talks with Hamas to release the one last remaining American hostage, adding to the fake portrayal that Trump and Netanyahu were having a falling out.

A fifth round took place on May 23rd, and this is where the reporting on the Trump-Netanyahu ‘rift’ really began taking off. It was said that Netanyahu was not happy with being shut out of the negotiations. The idea that Trump was ideologically shifting and was annoyed dealing with Israel became more and more prevalent, even though there was no evidence backing it. Left-wing anti-Zionist media were especially prone to this, with the effect of wishful thinking overpowering fair reasoning. At this time, Netanyahu was making statements that subtly criticized the US for its negotiations. The media ate up all of this. Reporting in May frequently referenced their shifting ‘alignment’ that wasn’t really happening. Reporters were going as far back as the 2020 election, where Netanyahu congratulated Biden, to find examples of Netanyahu being disloyal to Trump.

Much of this information is conveyed semi-publicly, a combination of subtle public statements to reporters, controlled private statements to the press, and false leaks to present a certain image to the press. This sort of strategy is targeted at those conducting in-depth analysis, such as Iranian foreign policy strategists who want to understand the US administration’s goals.

For example, one major lie that Zei points out is the idea disseminated by Israeli media, and by extension American media; the claim “that Israel actually managed to destroy most if not all of Iran’s air defenses and rocket building capacities in its pathetic irrelevant attack that in reality had zero effect on anything,” referring to the October 26th 2024 strikes. This narrative was used to convince people like Trump that Iran was actually far weaker than it really was. The constant downplaying of Iran’s strength is key to this, as, although their resolve is weak, their actual defense capabilities are among the best in the world. Taking down Iran would be absolutely nothing like Iraq; it’s a country that is over 3.5 times the population size, far more developed, and has much more difficult terrain. Fighting a united Iran in a ground invasion would be near impossible.

On June 9th, an attempt by the US to initiate a sixth round was made, but Iran, understandably frustrated with the process of being handed threats disguised as ‘deals,’ rejected the offer outright. The next day, in an interview, Donald Trump described Iran as ‘hostile’ in the negotiations.

It was also reported that after every negotiation with Iran, envoy Steve Witkoff was meeting with Israeli Mossad agents. That blatantly suggests they were coordinating how to keep pushing the goalposts to prevent a deal from being reached. Witkoff changed his demands in every negotiation, at first requesting Iran go from 60% to 3% enrichment, then requesting 0% enrichment, then requesting the entire program be dismantled, and finally requesting that Iran give up all its ballistic missiles.

As Zei puts it, all of these events— the fake feud with Netanyahu, the fake ceasefire, and the fake negotiations—were just deliberate efforts to establish the element of surprise on Iran. Zei said in May that “there is no ‘Trump turn on Netanyahu,’ just like there wasn’t a real permanent ceasefire in January. This is all bullshit pretense ahead of the joint US-Israeli war on Iran that is now imminent, and will be done at the latest by the end of the year.” It turns out that entire prediction would be proven true.

As we know now, on June 11th, Israel and the United States started making open military arrangements to prepare for an offensive attack by restricting ambassador movement, initiating evacuations, and repositioning troops. Zei wrote a lengthy ‘I told you so’ post, restating the events that clearly demonstrated the US and Israel were never diverting strategically.

The next day, on June 12th, the global nuclear watchdog IAEA, in coordination with the US and Israel, reported that Iran had fallen out of compliance. To release that resolution, a majority of countries in the agency had to vote in favor of it, which they did obediently, as the Western bloc holds a majority, revealing the gross double standard of international law. In the past, the IAEA has been known to give critical information directly to Israel about Iran’s nuclear program by, at best, doxxing the locations and details of secret sites, and at worst, acting as a coordinated spy network for Israel. This was by no means an organic conclusion; it was a coordinated, deliberate cover for an offensive attack.

Israel Attacks Iran

After midnight on June 13th, Israel would launch a massive multi-pronged surprise strike on Iran. This consisted of spike missiles fired from inside Iran, car bombs, drones, along with F-16s and F-35s firing long-range standoff missiles. This was not possible without dozens of infiltrated Mossad spy agents planted within Iran who set up these assassinations. Following the surprise attack, Iran briefly cut the internet. It launched a massive campaign to find Mossad agents, where they found entire storage facilities and make-shift factories for these drones. These covert attacks were not spontaneous; they were extensively planned and required significant resources to execute.

In a rather wicked act of taunting, The Times of Israel immediately published a piece titled, “How an Israeli-American deception campaign lulled Iran into a false sense of security,” outright revealing that all of this was acting, just as Zei had predicted. Zei also made the point to implicate the American media apparatus that, in many ways, is extremely pro-Zionist and was either knowingly lying to put out this false information or too uncritical to care that this was contributing to an illegal war with Iran. Many prominent war correspondents in liberal and right-wing media are either Israeli citizens, former Israeli intelligence agents, or have served in the IDF. Recently, the anti-Zionist media project known as ‘The New York War Crimes’ published a scathing dossier exposing the extreme bias of New York Times journalists and how they lie to benefit the fascist Israeli government.

In the surprise attack, seven top Iranian generals and twenty-three commanders were assassinated along with nine nuclear scientists in their homes, also killing dozens of civilians. Israel targeted nuclear facilities, missile sites, and military bases as well. The damage was initially overestimated by the media when, in reality, Iran still had the full capability to respond. In the afternoon, Israel struck again, targeting an airbase and nuclear facilities.

Iran promised “harsh punishment” and then responded the next night with ‘Operation True Promise III.’ Under international law outlined in the UN charter, a country in Iran’s position has the full right to defend itself and retaliate. The counterattack began with over a hundred drones, likely as a distraction to drain the Iron Dome’s defenses, and then a wave of dozens of ballistic missiles, at least seven of which hit their target in Tel Aviv and one that hit the Kirya military headquarters. As video of the strikes came out, Zei posted advising that Iran must deal enough damage to prevent ongoing Israeli aggression, “deterrence must be re-established now.”

Another note was that the Western media was ignoring Israel’s blatant war crimes of not only assassinating leaders of another country, but also doing so in a civilian building where civilians were killed. Simultaneously, Zei points out how the media will amplify Israeli civilian deaths even though the Israeli government deliberately put its major military and intelligence facilities in the middle of its crowded capital city. The infuriating irony, of course, is how Western media constantly used the excuse of Hamas using the Palestinian population as ‘human shields’ for operating in civilian areas to justify blatant indiscriminate bombing.

The conflict escalated in the following week, with Iran suffering more damage as their air defense capabilities were less advanced, and since Israel had missile defense support from the US. Iran was able to break through this defense on multiple occasions, especially with a hypersonic missile that struck Haifa’s power station, causing blackouts. In one attack, Israel falsely alleged there were military members inside the Iranian news studio and struck it while it was broadcasting live.

Iran Fights Back & Israel’s Mission Fails

Around the seventh and eighth day of the conflict, the tide began to turn in favor of Iran. The Iron Dome, meant to protect Israeli cities and military facilities, was drained, and they started having less success at intercepting missiles. Iran also decreased the number of missiles they were firing to anticipate a much longer, drawn-out conflict and preserve their stockpile. With pressure mounting and more successful strikes hitting within Israel, the US was ‘forced’ to step in. Even if the US didn’t want to get involved, it was now in a position where it was either the decimation of Israel or to strike Iran.

As we know, this was all planned. Israel planned for two outcomes: one where their surprise attack worked and Iran was unable to respond, and the other where Iran would be able to strike them continuously, necessitating help from the US. It was later confirmed that Israel only planned for this conflict to last about 14 days, after which their anti-air defenses would be depleted or Iran would run out of missiles.

This was never just an Israeli war; it was a joint American-Israeli effort to do regime change. As the attack was being carried out, Netanyahu sent out a video in English telling the Iranian people to rise up against the regime. At the same time, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the overthrown Iranian Shah dynasty, also put out a video essentially urging Iranians to overthrow the Ayatollah and reinstall him as monarch. It’s almost satirical to tell another people to reinstall the monarchy they liberated themselves from 45 years ago. In this aspect, Israel completely failed embarrassingly. Despite Netanyahu declaring the regime “the weakest it’s ever been,” the Iranian citizens held rallies across the country in support of their country being attacked. The leadership that was decapitated was replaced quickly, and regular citizens even helped capture people suspected of being Mossad agents. The video of the television studio being attacked live was seen as a symbol of bravery, and people mourned the civilians killed as martyrs. Arguably, this had the opposite effect, supporting the government’s legitimacy.

Iran’s parliament on June 22nd approved a resolution to close the Strait of Hormuz, which would affect oil shipping from southern Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and eastern Saudi Arabia. This measure, if implemented, would block 20% of global oil shipments, having a catastrophic impact on oil prices and, consequently, the rest of the global stock market. The possibility of Iran taking this measure alone is a significant deterrent that Iran can use.

It is unclear yet whether these unprecedented assassinations, among the worst in history, will convince Khamenei to seriously pursue nuclear weapons or continue taking worse and worse losses. One thing is for sure: Israel failed in this aspect, only increasing pressure to achieve a nuke, with one parliament advisor famously saying, “you cannot bomb knowledge.”

America Bombs Iran

The Trump administration completely fumbled the pretense for the attack. The media began running coverage questioning if Trump would get involved to which he gave Iran a ‘two week timeline’ to agree to a deal. Back in March, Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress that the intelligence community, “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” When reporters pressed Trump about this testimony, he said bluntly, “She’s wrong.” Then the next day, Gabbard changed her statement, saying that Iran was now only ‘weeks away’ from acquiring a nuke. This new statement is despite the overwhelming consensus among the open-source intelligence community that Iran is not a nuclear threat.

Despite that embarrassment, the Trump administration pushed forward with the attacks on June 22nd. Sightings were reported of B-2 stealth bombers leaving their airbase in Missouri, the only aircraft capable of carrying 30,000lb bunker-buster bombs without radar detection. After the fact, we now know that there were two convoys: one traveling over the Pacific Ocean as a diversion and a second crossing the Atlantic Ocean across Europe, which was the real operation. After a continuous 18-hour flight, seven B-2s bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites, Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, with the help of submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles. In total, that single attack alone cost the US military approximately $132 million, and the entire country’s economy upwards of $2 billion due to the resulting market shock.

Assessments made afterward from the ISW reasonably estimated that the centrifuge halls have been completely destroyed but that the enriched uranium was moved out of the facility before the attack. The Defense Department certainly exaggerated the effects of the attacks with unqualified sex pest Pete Hegseth clownishly describing, “you better go there and get a big shovel, because no one’s under there right now.” Real intelligence assessments explain that the facilities were still intact and merely set back the Iranian nuclear program by months.

Insider reporting from Michael Wolff explained that Trump was very anxious about the attack and was worried about an extended conflict. Wolff explained how Trump wanted to enter the war quickly and exit as fast as possible with a big headline proclaiming victory.

According to satellite images, trucks moved the remaining fissile material from the facilities, and Iranian leadership said they stopped work in March in preparation for war. Later on, Iran confirmed that the sites suffered severe damage, though less damage than anticipated. The attack was a success for the United States in the short term, but it provided a significant incentive for Iran to develop nukes. Iran has already abandoned all pretense in their ambitions, “The Iranian parliament moved to stop further cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as reportedly banning surveillance cameras required by international monitoring agreements from its existing facilities.”

Another Weak Iranian Response

Counterattacks against the US were launched the next day, on June 23rd. Iran targeted US military bases in the region, which are essentially unprotected, especially those in Iraq and Syria, though they already underwent troop evacuation in preparation. In the event of an attack on these bases, they would have no protection against ballistic missiles.

Instead of targeting these exposed bases, Iran instead opted for an intentionally ineffective option of targeting Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Iran even notified Qatar before the attack. The base was protected by Qatari anti-air defenses, which are similar to Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. This resulted in minimal damage, as most of the missiles were intercepted, and the ones that did get through missed their intended target. No one was killed or injured. Only one piece of equipment was destroyed, a radar worth $15 million.

In the event any US troops were killed, though, Trump would’ve been forced to escalate dramatically, and Iran knows this. The problem is that Iran’s sovereignty has already been completely violated in this war, and they’ve only deterred Israel so far; they aren’t treating this as a joint war where the US is simply using Israel as a colonial proxy. Zei comments that the retaliation “doesn’t fall in the category of establishing deterrence.” Iran was looking for an easy out even as they were gaining the advantage in the back-and-forth strikes with Israel.

The next day at 6:02pm, President Trump declared on social media that a ceasefire ‘agreement’ had been reached and that the conflict was over. Immediately, Iran disputed that they had not agreed to a ceasefire, displaying Trump’s skittishness in getting out of the conflict. In that statement, Iran also said that if Israel were not to bomb after 4:00am on June 24th, they too would stop firing. One more exchange of missiles from Israel and Iran happened early in the morning before that deadline. Israel violated the agreement by firing missiles at 9am to which Iran responded with just two missiles which were both intercepted, thus officially ending the conflict.

In total, Iran suffered 1,054 deaths and 4,476 injuries compared to Israel suffering 28 deaths and 3,238 injuries.

This War Is Not Over

As commentators Zei, John Mearsheimer, Propaganda & Co., and others have discussed, this war is not over. There is nothing that has materially changed between the two sides; neither side has been permanently deterred. The American-Israeli empire just tried to force ‘regime change,’ also known as decimating a nation and its people, while lambasting the whole time that Iran is an evil nation that cannot be reasoned with. Leaders of the empire have said they wanted the people of Iran to rise up against their government while openly saying they would assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei. Intentions do not get any clearer than that. The empire is dead set on destroying the Iranian state, its culture, and its people.

The only silver lining could be forming a nuclear alliance with Russia, China, or Pakistan by extending their nuclear umbrella over Iran. Already, weapons deals are being made with China and Russia. Something strange is how China is so apathetic to react, especially since if Iran is allowed to be destroyed, China would then become the next target of the American empire.

A possible path to disrupt, but not completely derail, the next phase of the Iran war is a domestic political battle in Israel. Netanyahu almost suffered a catastrophe the day before this war started on June 12th, with a no-confidence motion failing by one vote. The far-right bloc was then broken up on July 16th when the Shas ultra-orthodox party left the coalition, suggesting that there’s a possibility of elections happening before the scheduled October 2026. For now, the expiration date on the Netanyahu reign of terror remains far in the future, not that a different government would necessarily conduct the genocide any differently, as 82% of the Israeli public supports it, but it could lead to more internal political turmoil and less focus on constant war.

America, too, has to be concerned with its public as well. The fascist Trump administration is juggling its ethnic cleansing project, one that, unlike Israel, is very unpopular domestically. America is already going through many ongoing crises of affordability and housing, which make the political situation a tight rope that cannot be easily fixed by violently expelling thousands of innocent people or starting a senseless war with Iran. Trump does not currently have the immense mandate that Bush had with Iraq to carry out an adventurist war, so it must be carried out incrementally or until a mandate (false or real) arises.

Unfortunately, Iran’s only guaranteed option is to achieve a nuclear weapon for deterrence. Due to some of the pacifist instincts found in Iran’s Islamic culture, most of the public does not support the government having nuclear weapons. As mentioned earlier, the Ayatollah has the final say on whether nuclear weapons can be pursued, as it is considered a religious and moral matter. Many Iranians find pride in their society, which rejects owning such a cruel and barbaric weapon. The caveat is that the Ayatollah has said a nuke will only be pursued if there is an existential threat made against Iran, something one would think has already unmistakably happened.

How It Ends

Though Iran has stood up to the strongest hegemonic force on Earth, they have only bought time for itself. Israel needed the US to support them as they faced down some of the worst military punishment in its history, which wasn’t much, I might add. The project of destroying Iran will inevitably resume once Israel can restock its defense capacity and formulate a new plan of attack with a new false pretense. Israel is in far too deep with its genocide in Gaza to stop now, and it will destroy itself if it means continuing the offensive war.

Chris Hedges published a beautifully written piece that describes the horrifying but sober reality that what we’re seeing is Israel’s barbaric end. Hedges writes,

Israel has been committing a genocide for 652 days, and it cannot go back now. Once the world finds out this obvious truth, when it can no longer be suppressed in Western liberal media, the justification for the Jewish ethnostate will be impossible to uphold. This truth cannot be suppressed forever, and that’s what necessitates the constant war; the need to destroy and silence everyone who demands accountability and peace. Domestically, Israel is built on internal press suppression, aggressive propaganda, war, and a robust intertwining with its colonial metropole— the United States. Fascism cannot sustain itself without an enemy, without something to attack outward against to justify its authoritarianism. Israel has spent all its political capital; it’s clear to the world that Zionism is a fascist ethnosupremacist ideology. The only way that such a state ends is in a violent implosion: a murder-suicide.

★ Follow Zei Squirrel

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

On Tuesday night, the humble Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani pulled off an astonishing upset, smashing the corrupt Andrew Cuomo to clinch the Democratic nomination for New York City Mayor. In the later weeks of the campaign, polling showed Mamdani’s support gaining on Cuomo, yet still showed him behind by a few points. Since January, thirty-one of thirty-two polls predicted a Cuomo win. Many put Cuomo 30 or more points ahead, with no other challenger close. Polls in June began showing Mamdani gaining on his lead, but still showed Cuomo winning the first round with about 38% to 42% and then added to his lead in the final round of ranked-choice selection. Only one poll released by Emerson on June 20th put Mamdani ahead in the final round, predicting he would achieve 32% in the first round and narrowly win the final with 52%.

Who he was up against was not only Cuomo, who had five decades of name recognition behind him, but also sixteen billionaires, including Bill Ackman, Barry Diller, Reed Hastings, and Ken Langone, who had funded him. A massive amount came from plutocrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who dumped an outrageous $8.3 million into the campaign. Corporate giants like Michael Kors, DoorDash, and Lyft contributed enormous sums, along with other ultra-wealthy elites who helped raise over $26 million to get Cuomo elected. Although some unions supported him due to his experience in governance, it was no secret that this campaign was primarily financed by landlords and greedy capitalists, who were hedging against policies that threatened their stranglehold over the city’s working poor.

The path to victory for Zohran was strong turnout, which dramatically overdelivered, showing upwards of 40% more turnout in his strongest areas compared to the 2021 election. This was a promising sign, but confidence was still shaken by the uncertainty of whether Zohran’s unapologetic left campaign was too divisive for a city that experienced a right-wing surge last November. Polling analysts stipulated that Zohran would need to stay within 3% of Cuomo, with about 35% in the first round, to have a chance in the final. Many didn’t expect the results to come out until July 1st, when all the ranked selections would be accounted for.

Zohran’s campaign focuses on three main policies: making the buses fast and free, freezing the rent for thousands of rent-stabilized tenants, and delivering universal childcare to every family. Among other things, he advocated for more community-friendly policing, publicizing grocery stores, aggressively combating corporate greed, and taxing the 1%. The platform is bold and specifically aimed at making the city more affordable for residents facing a severe affordability crisis. Over 350,000 residents have been forced to leave in just the past two years alone due to rising costs. With this platform, he earned an unheard-of $8 million in matching funds in March, making him the first ever candidate to reach the maximum. This was achieved thanks to over 20,000 individual donors contributing an average of $80 per donation, by far the lowest of any candidate in the race.

The question was whether a grassroots populist campaign that speaks directly to people’s material needs would excite young people and galvanize popular support. The answer was a resounding yes.

What happened Tuesday night was magic. When polls closed at 9pm and the first batch of ballots were released, Zohran was ahead 43.1% to 34.0% and hardly looked back. By the end of the night, that lead held. Just before 10:30pm, Cuomo announced he would concede the race. It was over; Zohran was victorious.

Cuomo respectfully praised Zohran’s grassroots campaign hoping he will bring the city together. Currently, the first round stands at 43.5% to 36.4% which won’t be finalized for a few more days. Later in the night, New York’s Attorney General Letitia James, who was a late but essential supporter, gave a rousing introduction to Zohran’s victory speech. On the stage, the 33-year-old assemblyman, with his famous genuine smile, declared,

Zohran outlined his vision for a more affordable city, declaring himself a representative of the people, not a tool for the rich. He thanked the over 50,000 volunteers who made the win possible, attributing his broad support to the one and a half million doors they knocked on. Along with that, he demanded that his successful campaign serve as a model for the Democratic Party, where politicians actually fight for working people. Zohran promised to use his power to reject Donald Trump’s fascist agenda to fiery applause.

Zohran also gave immense thanks to co-endorsed candidate Brad Lander, who came in third place in this election and was essential in defeating Cuomo. The pair came together in mid-June with the shared goal of taking down the corrupt former Governor. As a progressive democrat, Lander was the consensus pick for liberals who loathed Cuomo but felt Zohran was too inexperienced and his platform too ambitious. The New York Times controversially declined to endorse a candidate, but in their editorial, the panel members gave Lander their highest praise. As a Jewish man, Lander also helped deflect racist attacks against Zohran. The media and Cuomo tried to claim he was anti-semitic for advocating for Palestinian liberation. Lander frequently responded to this smear, saying that Jewish and Muslim neighbors will not be divided.

Lander was perfectly happy with losing this election because, for him, this was personal. In the debates, Lander assertively attacked Cuomo, condemning his decision as Governor to send COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, which was estimated to have killed thousands of elderly, and then his covering up of the situation afterward. Lander pointed out a man in the crowd, Peter Arbeeny, whose father was one of those people who died of coronavirus in a nursing home, and is demanding at the very least an apology for the disastrous policy. Lander sternly confronted Cuomo to his face, looking him in the eye and lambasting him about the fact that he had sexually harassed at least thirteen women, refusing to let it go unaccounted for. Lander reminded the audience that Cuomo had admitted to this and had to settle lawsuits over it after resigning from the governorship because of it. After the race was over, in a speech to his supports after Cuomo conceded, Lander triumphantly remarked, “Good fucking riddance.”

Now standing hand in hand on the stage, Zohran proclaimed for both of them, “Together we have shown the power of the politics of the future, one of partnership and of sincerity.” As a veteran politician in the city, Lander is expected to play an essential role within the administration.

Zohran wrapped up his speech, asserting that his campaign and the vast grassroots support were a fulfillment of democracy. He reasoned that people throughout history have supported authoritarians like Trump out of desperation. He cited when FDR said that democracy disappears not because the people dislike democracy, but because they grew tired of insecurity and their children going hungry. They sacrificed liberty, hoping to gain something better, but Zohran affirmed that New Yorkers no longer had to choose between freedom and a good, stable life. “Together, New York, we have renewed our democracy.”

This electoral victory is monumental, likely the greatest grassroots progressive accomplishment since Andrea Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in 2018, taking down veteran establishment figure Joe Crowley. AOC also endorsed Zohran along with fellow progressive veteran Bernie Sanders, which gave him a boost. This campaign proved to a confused Democratic Party that bumbling careerists are not what the people want. It demonstrated how getting people engaged in the political process through a campaign that advocates for policies that actually benefit them, rather than the wealthy, will win races. It represented more than just the city of New York; it was the whole country watching as a young underdog took down a political dynasty because the people believed in him. The path forward is focusing on class politics, taking power from the rich while not compromising on critical cultural issues; it’s not one or the other. The people saw Zohran in their community, speaking their language, participating in their celebrations, and making a difference for them.

It wasn’t easy either, as a mixed-race Indian and Muslim, Zohran endured barbaric attacks against his identity from the media. Commentators disingenuously labeled him a ‘Muslim Socialist’ with great emphasis to scaremonger, even going so far as to call him a terrorist. The battle over Palestinian liberation was also central to this disgusting attack, as he refused to back away from his conviction that Israel is undeniably an apartheid state that is committing genocide. Often noted was the fact that New York has the largest Jewish population in any city in the world, yet the question was always about his stance on Israel, a country that has nothing to do with the mayorship.

In interviews, Zohran was able to perfectly articulate a stance of international law and human rights on the issue of Israel-Palestine, that no state has the right to brutally oppress people. In the most disgusting attack, Zohran graciously went on an interview with Tim Miller of the Bulwark, a faux-centrist podcast that launders right-wing politics for Democrats. In it, Miller embarrassingly tried to throw passive-aggressive jabs at Zohran and then forced him to answer his opinion on the phrase ‘globalize the intifada,’ which in earnest means globalize the uprising against the Israeli apartheid. Rather than conceding the underhanded framing, Zohran stood firm, agreeing that anti-semitism is a real issue on the rise, but also acknowledging that the phrase comes from a desperate place of desire for human rights to be respected. On Thursday, Miller released a video on the Bulwark decrying racist Republicans who are now calling for Zohran to be deported while citing that interview of him allegedly defending the phrase. Attacks like these will only get worse going into a general election, where the establishment will try every vile strategy to stop him.

While this is an inspiring first step, the real challenge has just started. The Democratic nomination will put Zohran in the driver’s seat against the deeply unpopular sitting Mayor Eric Adams, Republican freak Curtis Sliwa, and, again, Andrew Cuomo, who declared he will run as an independent. The establishment will likely have to choose which candidate to support, as a three-way split among corporate candidates will surely leave a massive flank open to Zohran. None are outstanding options for them: the loser of the primary, a corruption-ridden incumbent who performed an obvious quid pro quo with Trump to get out of federal charges, or a delusional MAGA propagandist. With still four months until election day, the billionaire class still has time to decide who will be their candidate, unless they would rather throw their weight behind a different option or perhaps try to rig the outcome one way or another.

That’s precisely what happened to India Walton in the 2021 Buffalo mayoral primary election, and it taught a valuable lesson. As a lifelong activist, Walton set out to organize a progressive grassroots base of support, much like Zohran’s campaign. She pulled off an inspiring upset against the corrupt Byron Brown administration, which had been in power for nearly 16 years of unchecked, uniparty rule. In the general election, however, Walton was ruthlessly attacked, smeared, and dragged by the local media while corporations and landlords dumped funds into her opponent’s campaign. In a desperate act, the Republican candidate was convinced to withdraw, and the corrupt city government amended the election laws to allow Brown to appear on a special ballot line. The rest was history. Walton was able to pull together an impressive 25,806 votes, but the establishment machine prevailed. However tragic the defeat, it proved that cracks can be made and people can take back their government.

We can forecast that the elite establishment will want to consolidate around one candidate for the best chance against Zohran. Although the establishment is rational and holds all the power, it’s not infallible; it’s made up of humans, after all. What is likely to happen is that Eric Adams will slowly fade into irrelevance after polling at single digits. Curtis Sliwa will retain registered Republican voters, reaching a maximum of 20-25%, while Cuomo should have about 25-33%. The question is whether the three of them are willing to set aside their gargantuan egos to defeat Zohran, whom they and their elite backers view as an existential threat. If Adams drops out relatively early and Cuomo begins consolidating donors, it could be up to Sliwa to drop out to endorse Cuomo. Sliwa is a grifting performer at heart. It wouldn’t be a surprise if he were offered a lucrative entertainment job in exchange for his dropping out. For this reason, it would be wise for Zohran to go all in attacking Cuomo, the strongest of the three. Even in a head-to-head with Cuomo, it’s very winnable; his army of 50,000 volunteers will only grow, and millions more doors will be knocked.

The ironic dichotomy between the grassroots campaign versus the elitist shell campaign is why the rich are spending so aggressively in the first place. The calculation for these billionaires is that they can save on taxes by dumping money into Cuomo’s campaign and preventing Zohran from implementing a tax increase on them. So, rather than all those millions being used to help the city improve its parks, transit, roads, and schools, they are needlessly burned on attack ads. All the value that they extracted from their workers and tenants goes to waste in an effort to prevent those same people from having a better life. These billionaires are people who operate on ‘If I can’t have it, no one can.’

A win for Zohran would send a colossal ‘fuck you’ to Donald Trump. It would tell the entire Democratic Party that unapologetic progressivism is an utter necessity for the party’s survival. It would prove wrong all the pathetic centrists who cynically advocate moving to the right on difficult issues. It would make space for progressive congressional candidates like Jamaal Bowman and Michael Blake, whom the corporate establishment snubbed. It would mean the first immigrant mayor, someone who reflects 4 in 10 New Yorkers. It could even mean that his policies, which are targeted directly at helping the working poor, could be implemented, thereby improving the lives of millions. Above all, it could mean that people gain political optimism, that the government can work for them, and that solidarity works.

Join the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) 🌹

Donate to Zohran Mamdani’s General Election Campaign 💛💙

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

Now that all the facts have been examined, it seems appropriate to consider the situation in its entirety. Eventually, when this goes to trial, more information will come out on both parts of this story. This did not get the airtime that it deserved, and that’s not an accident. As we mentioned in the previous piece, the media likes to portray perfect victims and evil monsters, rather than complex individuals with valid experiences.

Therefore, we must look at this without the preconceived bias that police are automatically benevolent and truthful. Instead, we begin at the so-called radical starting point that the police, as an institution, are fundamentally unjust. There is no lack of commentary reiterating the police department’s opinion; the exact perspective that serves to benefit the most from a docile public that doesn’t scrutinize its behavior. The argument for police abolition has already been made, the scholarship has been illustrated, and the premise revised; the solutions are clear. Deconstructing this inherently racist and violent arm of the state begins in the minds of people who are willing to break the cycle of indoctrination.

On May 2nd, 2025, Rodney Hinton Jr. and his family were called to a meeting with the Cincinnati Police at 9:33am. The purpose of the meeting was to explain that Rodney’s son, Ryan, had been shot to death by police the day prior. Cincinnati Police showed Rodney the footage of Ryan being chased and shot in the back and side by police. The footage was obviously distressing and infuriating, as the body cam video doesn’t clearly show Ryan as a threat to either officer. The police argue that Ryan was running and pointed a gun at the officer, a claim that the video doesn’t support. Less than 20 minutes into the meeting, Rodney abruptly left, upset. The rest of the family stayed about another hour, and then they all left the station. Rodney was too upset to eat with the family and instead took a nap at home for a bit. At 12:41pm, the family goes with Rodney to the station to pick up his car. Rodney, now in his vehicle, leaves the station at 12:44pm, drives around for 5 minutes, returns to the station, and then drives away again at 12:50pm. About 15 minutes later, Rodney sees Sheriff’s Deputy Larry Henderson directing traffic, he pulls into a turning lane, waits for oncoming traffic to clear, floors the accelerator, and fatally hits Henderson. The car then crashes head-on into the base of a light pole.

An attempt to save Officer Henderson was made, but he died shortly after. Hinton suffered a laceration on his head, and he was brought to the hospital before being placed into police custody.

Henderson was not involved in the murder of Hinton’s son. Henderson had just recently retired but was working on special duty that day. Hinton has since been indicted on two counts of aggravated murder, one count of felony murder, and two counts of felony assault. The prosecutors are also brazenly seeking the death penalty, something only made possible because the victim was a police officer. In Ohio, capital punishment has been rarely pursued in recent years, highlighting the state’s aggressive prosecution of this case. Only 0.2% of all homicides committed in the United States result in capital punishment, showing the elevated status police officers have as victims.

During his arraignment on May 3rd, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department showed up to intimidate Hinton. About thirty-seven officers stood in a line in the courtroom with menacing looks, watching over the hearing. They weren’t there for security because they weren’t bailiffs, as most courts only use one or two. They were there for spite and nothing else.

In the face of this, Hinton did not accept this ridiculous performance. When he was being led out of the court, Hinton kept his chin up, giving the same look back to the officers. “He gonna be gone forever,” Hinton said to one of them.

On May 6th, for Hinton’s bond hearing, at least fifty-three cops showed up in uniform again for no other reason than to occupy the gallery as a show of force. Hinton’s family, who hadn’t seen him since before the incident, thus had to sit four rows back as officers took up most of the seats.

The cops made sure to bully his family as well. Rodney’s brother walked up to the glass in the gallery and knocked on it to get his attention. The cops made a scene, all standing up as a few officers pushed him out of the courtroom. With emotion in his voice, he yelled, “That’s my brother, man!” In the hallway, in tears, he said, “I just want my brother to see me. My brother can’t see me?”

The police department now faces a lawsuit for this intimidation attempt, along with alleged abuse, though it is unlikely to succeed. Despite providing so little footage regarding the killing of Ryan, the department had plenty of body camera footage to share of Rodney in custody in response to the lawsuit. The video provided by Law&Crime Network shows police moving Hinton in and out of cop cars and interrogation rooms. Hinton stays silent the entire time and cooperates. So far, there doesn’t appear to be any abuse done to him in custody.

Of all the cops who showed up, only three were black, excluding the bailiff. Cincinnati’s police force already fails to represent the city’s racial makeup, being 66% white in a city that is only 48% white. The Sheriff’s Department, who was at this hearing, doesn’t publish the racial representation of its officers. Still, Head Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey has even championed improving diversity over the past few years.

Assuming the Sheriff wasn’t lying and the department is somewhat diverse, it’s statistically absurd to call it a mistake. This dramatic racial disparity in the officers who showed up for this stunt is not an accident. This was a deliberate display of white supremacy.

What happened with Hinton was a case of spontaneous revenge. Hinton had to watch the murder of his own son on video and know that the person responsible almost certainly would not face any repercussions for it. The next three hours went by with him in a volatile state of mind, and Hinton happened to encounter a cop to take revenge on.

Hinton’s lawyer, Clyde Bennett, argues that his mental state was one of temporary insanity caused by extreme grief made worse by existing mental health conditions. Bennett says, “This case, in my mind, is a clear-cut, classic case of a person being mentally ill at the time they committed the offenses.” The condition he mentioned, he believes, triggered the episode.

The aggravated murder charge is the highest homicide charge in Ohio, and the prosecution must prove the act was premeditated. So far, it seems very clear that this was a sudden act of aggression, not something that Hinton thought about for more than a moment.

Even if Hinton’s mental state was clear, bringing the death penalty for a single isolated murder is a flagrant overreach by the state. Not only do cops get qualified immunity from prosecution when they kill people, but when cops are victims, they get a special privileged status. It’s a double standard. The death penalty is already fundamentally immoral and an abuse of the Constitution, but the state also uses it to elevate itself. The asymmetrical application of the death penalty shows our country’s unequal bedrock, where the murders of politicians, cops, and CEOs are worth more than the average citizen. There would, by definition, be no such thing as an assassination if everyone were equal.

It’s easy to think of this in binary terms, whether Hinton was right to take revenge against the cops or not. For the sake of this essay, that question is more or less irrelevant. What matters is that this is the consequence of an unjust system. This is what happens when police can kill with impunity. Ryan could have escaped, and none of this would have happened. It only took the police less than 48 hours to find and bring the other three boys into custody. If Ryan escaped, he would’ve been brought into custody, and he would’ve received a trial, and justice would’ve been served. Ryan had no prior convictions, so depending on the circumstances, he may have received a reduced sentence, perhaps he would have been proven innocent. In the likely scenario Ryan Hinton was guilty however, he would not have received the death penalty for auto theft, but that’s exactly what the officer sentenced him to in that moment: death with no possibility of appeal.

Rodney had to watch his son be chased down and shot five times in the back by cops. A video where his son poses no clear threat to the officer. He watches as his son runs away in fear. He watched as the cop chases him down and shoots him five times, as his son poses no threat to them. He watches this in a police station, surrounded by cops who make no apologies for his son’s murder. The department wasn’t sorry, and Rodney knew it. Rodney watched during his whole life as black boys and men across America kept getting murdered by police with next to no consequences or systematic change. He saw the murder of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd, Patrick Lyoya, and now, Ryan Hinton. Rodney knew that there wouldn’t be justice for his son, and it sent him into a spiral.

So imagine if that were your son. They’re the one person you’ll always give the benefit of the doubt to, the one you’ll always protect, the one you’d kill for. If you, for a moment, put yourself in his place, experiencing what he experienced, thinking what he thought, you’ll confront that maybe you would’ve done the same.

In instances like this, empathy becomes dangerous. Once people can empathize with someone labeled a pariah, the state’s legitimacy is invalidated. And once that happens in enough minds, then the state’s supremacy can finally be uprooted. That’s why this story is too dangerous to talk about, why the establishment media renounced it and avoided critical discussions about it.

The lesson here is not that Ryan or Rodney are good or perfect, because in real life, there’s no such thing; good and evil doesn’t exist. It’s that tragedies like this will keep happening until the system that causes it is dismantled or significantly changed. It’s a system where justice is systematically not being served because the police can protect themselves with qualified immunity and feel no restraint when using a gun that can end someone’s life.

Speaking at the family’s press conference, grandfather Rodney Hinton Sr. asked us all to have empathy, “I want to give condolences out to the officer that got killed. I’m going to ask for forgiveness, and I’ve been praying hard for the officer that killed my grandson, I’ve been praying hard for him and his family… Please, everybody, just try to forgive everyone.” Two families wouldn’t have to be grieving right now if not for our barbaric criminal justice system. So we ought to fight for a better world, one that respects the dignity and life of all people, not uphold the status quo that continues to cause so much misery.

★ Donate to Ryan Hinton’s Justice Fundraiser

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

The Trump-Musk pair has now been irreparably broken. But how did we get here?

Trump’s goals since taking office have never been particularly grounded. Often, he flips on issues, follows the noise, and adopts any populist stance that sticks with his rabid MAGA base. The one consistent thread, however, is his ceaseless pursuit of gaining and centralizing power. This term in particular, his strategy is not very calculated; it’s to create chaos, force opponents to run in circles, and test what he can get away with. Trump was certainly using Musk as a criticism sponge as he was an easy fall guy; an embarrassing, socially inept plutocrat who did a Nazi salute on national television. In December of last year, billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy decided to withdraw from the Efficiency Department bid, likely to avoid a similar situation following an intra-MAGA argument over whether H-1B visa holders should be allowed into the country.

Musk, leading the Efficiency Department, had promised an impossible $2 trillion in government spending cuts pre-election, which was revised to $1 trillion post-election and then revised again to $160 billion in April of this year. The cuts focused on government contracts, removing DEIA policies, and targeted specific federal agencies. A report issued by the BBC found only $32.5 billion in cuts with some form of verifiable receipts, suggesting that the plan failed even by its own metric and just inflated its own numbers. An NPR report reviewing the contract cuts found that the initial claim of $55 billion was actually only $2 billion. The most damage was done to various federal agencies, where 59,000 federal workers were laid off under Trump. The Efficiency Department fronted most of the negative press surrounding its efforts to dismantle essential agencies, including USAID, the Department of Health & Human Services, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Housing & Urban Development, among others. Layoffs and cuts are still being made to smaller federal offices, and the Efficiency Department workers are still embedded in various agencies.

Conflicting Camps

As a libertarian extremist, Musk is the most ideologically opposed to ‘big government,’ becoming a mouthpiece for traditional conservatives who were disenfranchised with Trump’s gigantic $7.8 trillion budget deficit during his first term. The obvious contradiction is how all of Musk’s companies, especially Tesla and SpaceX, cannot function without government contracts, funding, and infrastructure. Getting involved in government is in his direct interest, just as all corporations manipulate and bend government to their will. At the same time, it is also in his interest to maintain a stable global economy, which supports the supply chain of materials, parts, and skilled labor.

The relationship between the two was always on shaky ground. Leading MAGA voice, Steve Bannon, has expressed vitriolic contempt for Musk, calling him a ‘parasite’ for his alleged pro-immigrant views. Much of the MAGA base was already showing signs of skepticism for Musk ever since the debate over HB-1 visas, though the base’s ideology seems to ebb and flow with Trump’s opinion being final.

Many pointed to the look of disgust on Trump’s face at a campaign rally as evidence that he secretly loathes Musk. The childish antics of jumping around the stage and being unable to form a coherent joke were so obviously embarrassing, it’s hard to believe Trump didn’t feel the same.

Another incident in March was reported when Trump denied Musk entry to a secret meeting in the Pentagon briefing with cabinet members about the possibility of war with China. According to Bannon, this incident ‘changed everything’ for Musk as this snub was a move to restrain his ambition for a more involved role in the administration.

Looking back to December, Trump originally appeased Musk’s demands at the expense of the Republican establishment by siding with him over the budget resolution. Speaker Johnson’s budget was negotiated and set to pass, but Musk abruptly demanded that Republicans vote against it, to which Trump concurred. The proverbial can was kicked down the road a few months when a new budget resolution passed in February. Then the reconciliation spending bill would become the next battleground. Ultimately, Musk’s anti-protectionist beliefs contributed to another rift between him and the rest of the oligarchs in the Trump cabinet.

Collapse Into Irrelevance

Throughout March 2025, an unassuming election was coming up for the elected Supreme Court position in the swing state of Wisconsin. Such a race would usually receive little attention from national media; however, this was no ordinary race. Following the tumultuous 2024 Presidential election, where Democrats failed to conjure much resistance to the outwardly fascist Trump campaign, this would be the first election to put a barometer on the country’s political mood. This would tip the court in either party’s favor as the Democrats endorsed Susan Crawford and the Republicans endorsed Brad Schimel, who was supported aggressively by Elon Musk’s over $25 million contribution. Musk was deeply involved in this campaign, putting himself at the epicenter of media coverage, proudly holding an event where he offered $1 million checks to two Republican voters at a rally in Green Bay. For Musk, this was an important opportunity to put weight behind his threat that he would aggressively fund the primary challenger of any Republican congressperson who stepped out of line.

On election day, April 1st, this opportunity was obliterated by Crawford’s overwhelming victory thanks to the incredible Democrat turnout to counter this blatant corruption. In mid-March, some polls showed the race tied, and by late March, polls began to reveal the negative impact of Musk, with Crawford leading by about 5 points. The result was an astounding 10.2-point win for Crawford, a complete reversal of the Presidential election’s 0.8-point gap in favor of Republicans. Some of the largest swings were in the rural southwest of the state, with double-digit swings toward Democrats by 17 and 18 points in Grant, Lafayette, Richland, and Jackson counties. The election was a disaster for the prospect of Musk-backed challengers taking down Republican incumbents.

There’s nothing Trump hates more than a loser. Not only did this prove that the threat was utterly baseless, but it showed that Musk would have a net-negative effect on candidates he supports, thus triggering a subsurface crack to form between the two.

The Brawl That Broke the Camel’s Back

In April, it was reported that in a cabinet meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Musk got into a shouting match over the role of the IRS. The two have strong disagreements going back to the control over the Treasury, as Musk preferred Howard Lutnick as secretary. Bessent believes in a more reserved approach to reducing government, hence the conflict with Musk, who has haphazardly ransacked agencies, something Bessent thinks is ineffective. It was later reported by The Washington Post that, according to Steve Bannon, the feud boiled over in the hallway after that meeting. Bessent said to Musk, “You’re a fraud. You’re a total fraud,” to which Musk “thrust his shoulder into Bessent’s rib cage like a rugby player,” then, “Bessent started to hit Musk back, and the fight had to be broken up by several bystanders.” The brawl likely led to the announcement shortly after that Musk would be taking a step back from the Efficiency Department to support Tesla, which experienced a 52% drop in stock price from its high in December.

After Musk accumulated so much negative public sentiment, Trump likely decided it was time to discard him, as he has done with many other advisors and appointees. The combination of Musk’s ravenous drug addiction, the increasing disdain for him coming from the rest of the cabinet, his disheveled appearance, and his refusal to dress appropriately all added up to this inevitable moment.

On May 30th, Trump held a formal sendoff event in the Oval Office for Elon Musk, marking the end of his time in the administration. Everything at the event was cordial. Trump praised him for his service and gave him a golden key. The elephant in the room was Musk’s black eye, which he apparently refused to cover with makeup. Musk said that his five-year-old son punched him, something that pretty much no one believed. Still, no answers have emerged on the source of the injury besides speculation that drugs were involved.

The Inevitable Clash of Egos

On June 3rd, Musk posted a message scolding the congress members who voted for the ‘Big Beautiful’ spending bill. With no influence left in the cabinet and unable to weaponize his cash pile, Musk had nothing left but to throw a tantrum online.

The spending bill set to pass the Senate sometime next month will raise the debt ceiling and is expected to add approximately $240 billion to the annual spending deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this bill would cut Medicare coverage for an estimated 10.9 million people over a decade. Cuts to SNAP benefits (food stamps) are estimated to be in the range of $29.4 billion per year, with the expectation of increasing work requirements, reducing benefit payouts, and pushing people out of eligibility, thereby taking food out of the mouths of poor families and children. The bill spends big, allocating $350 billion for border security and adding another $150 billion to the already bloated defense budget. To compensate, it will make the 2017 tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy permanent, which has cost the federal government between $1 and $2 trillion in lost revenue. According to the Institute on Tax Policy, “From 2018 to 2021, the top corporations in the US saved a combined $240 billion in taxes after the cuts.” Important to Musk is the rolling back of clean-energy tax credits, slashing solar tax credits, and the $7,500 consumer credit for EVs, which Tesla built its company on.

On June 4th, Musk fired off a series of tweets and replies complaining about the new spending bill and the deficit. Musk quote-tweeted and replied, agreeing with Libertarian Senator Rand Paul, Congressman Thomas Massie, as well as John Rose and Mike Lee. Others in his cohort were accounts associated with the rather childish WallStreetBets Reddit community and tech accounts that echo chamber ideas he puts out. Musk insisted that raising the ceiling was going to put the country into ‘debt slavery.’

On June 5th, Trump had a meeting with the German chancellor. Musk was already online litigating some decade-old tweets from Trump.

Trump took a question about Musk’s recent comments on the spending bill. Trump claimed they had a good relationship and a good sendoff. Then said;

“Elon’s upset because we took away the EV mandate which was a lot of money for electric vehicles. They’re having a hard time, those electric vehicles. They want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidies. Elon knew this from the beginning, he knew it a long time ago. That’s been— I’d say, JD— that hasn’t changed, that’s been right from the beginning.”

“We’ve done a great job— Elon knew that. Elon endorsed me very strongly. He actually went up and campaigned for me. I think I would’ve won— Susie said I would’ve won Pennsylvania easily anyway.”

“He became a little bit different, and I can understand that. But— he knew every aspect of this bill, he knew it better than almost anybody. He never had a problem until right after he left. If you saw the statements he made about me… He said the most beautiful things about me. And he hasn’t said bad about me personally, but I’m sure that’ll be next. I’m very disappointed in Elon, I’ve helped Elon a lot.”

Musk was watching this presser and posted some live reactions. The reply affirmed that he felt hurt that the spending bill had overridden the ‘cuts’ he had made.

Trump, using his own social media site, TruthSocial, responded with a statement that initiated the online clash, reiterating that Musk was aware of the EV subsidy cuts. Musk called it a lie then ‘revealed’ that water was wet, saying, “Trump is in the Epstein files,” something that was well known for years. Trump’s relationship with Epstein is well documented, going back over thirty years, which includes six flight logs on his plane. The White House did a performative ‘declassification’ in February, but the entire thing was filled with redactions, and even previously released parts were blacked out.

Musk would continue tweeting throughout the night, suggesting that Trump should be impeached and that JD Vance should take over as President. Musk continued to retweet posts that agreed with his position.

Fallout

Steve Bannon, who leads the current of MAGA thought, viciously attacked Musk on Thursday, stating on his podcast that Musk should have his immigration status checked, his drug use, and links to China investigated. Bannon called Musk an illegal alien and said he should be deported. Musk replied to this on Twitter, saying that Bannon was ‘peak r-tard,’ a ‘communist r-tard’ and a criminal. Journalist Michael Wolff, who’s familiar with intra-White House drama, suggested that Bannon was using this opportunity to get closer to Trump. Bannon went so far as to say that Musk’s businesses should be seized with an executive order, claiming that he “doesn’t know anything about the real world.”

In the days after, Musk seemed to cool down and ended up deleting some of the tweets he made. It was reported that on June 9th, Musk called Trump to apologize for the public meltdown. On Wednesday, the 11th, Musk publicly posted that he regretted his previous comments. Trump didn’t show much sympathy, stating to reporters that he had no interest in talking to Musk. It seems that Trump, with all the leverage, has no interest in keeping him around, and the ball is in Musk’s court to make the apologies. Later in the week, Musk was aligning himself with the Trump administration’s handling of the Los Angeles Uprising, praising the brazen deployment of the military.

Something to pay attention to going forward is their alignment and whether Musk really meant it when he suggested starting a new political party to counter establishment Republicans in favor of libertarian types. Centrist Democrats made the bizarre move to lean on the side of Musk to oppose Trump and even went as far as to suggest recruiting him. Congressman Ro Khanna said that Democrats should “be in a dialogue” with Musk and try “to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with.” Congressman Ritchie Torres echoed this, saying, “I’m a believer in redemption, and he is telling the truth about the legislation.” Such a move would undoubtedly alienate the entire base of liberal voters who have been holding demonstrations against his work gutting the federal government. More progressives in the Democratic Party, rallying around the ‘Fighting Oligarchy Tour,’ have been even more successful in mobilizing, yet they are still aggressively rejected by the establishment.

Ultimately, this represents yet another instance of someone allowing themselves to be betrayed by Trump. It has been clear throughout the last decade that Trump operates on pure loyalty and the ‘what have you done for me recently’ principle. Musk believed that by buying Trump’s presidency, he would be rewarded with equivalent power and influence. He was proven wrong in humiliating fashion, just like every other person who doesn’t bend the knee and devote absolute loyalty. Musk could’ve followed Marco Rubio, a neocon who has always hated Trump but made the conscious decision to get in line for his own survival. Unlike others in the administration who push back, Musk’s erratic drug use and revolting behavior put himself on the fast track for disposal from an administration that had little use for him going forward.

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

The coverage of this story has been sorely lacking regarding the murder of Ryan Hinton by Cincinnati police. So far, the unedited bodycam footage has not been released yet, which has somehow raised no eyebrows among local media. Cincinnati news channels have primarily taken the side of the police department without question and have only done a surface-level investigation.

On the it’s face, it’s a hazy case made even more messy by the subsequent actions of the victim’s father, Rodney Hinton Jr, hence why the story came and went so quickly. It’s not something that the media cares to scrutinize; they prefer perfect victims and evil agitators.

Contrary to the police narrative, this was, at the very least, manslaughter due to gross negligence by both officers. As we will analyze here, we can certainly call this intentional murder by the officers involved. We will look at this without the biased idea that police should be held to any different standard when it comes to killing. When analyzing any such incident, police should be held to a higher standard, not a lower standard, where they are afforded qualified immunity and infinite plausible deniability.

On May 1st, 2025, the Cincinnati Police Department tracked a vehicle stolen from northern Kentucky the previous day. Undercover officers found the Kia SUV parked in an apartment complex at 2500 Warsaw Avenue. After spotting the suspects in the car, they moved out and proceeded to initiate a confrontation using marked police vehicles. Upon seeing the police pull in, all four boys fled the car, and the two officers tried to chase them. Three got away, but one of the boys, Ryan Hinton, seemed to fall briefly, and the first officer caught up. After getting up and running between two dumpsters, the first officer was waiting on the other side, shooting him five times in the side and back, killing him.

Many problems with this case stem from the details that are not being shown and the questions that are not being asked. No additional footage was provided, except for the roughly 10 seconds of each officer’s body camera footage. The Cincinnati Police Department claims that more information will be released after the investigation, and the officer’s name will not be released due to Marsy’s Law.

This is a common tactic by Police Departments to dissipate anger over a police involved shooting: only give enough information to create a forgiving narrative, people forget over time, so when the case is dealt with and everything comes out, there’s far less outrage. This has happened multiple times before, where departments have withheld the extended video, which ultimately reveals them saying disgusting or incriminating things. Since departments have the sole authority over recordings and are given the benefit of the doubt by default in court, they can manipulate public perception at their discretion. States and municipalities have different laws regarding the recording, storage, and release of footage. Some cities, like Chicago, have more robust independent oversight along with laws to improve transparency. However, the majority of cities and towns do not adhere to these standards. Even if cities do have certain transparency laws, departments often find ways to delay, ignore, push the limits, side-step, or fight against them.

⚠️ Trigger Warning: Graphic footage

The department hangs their defense on the excuse that even though Hinton was running away, he was still a threat since he allegedly had a gun. It should go without saying that suspects of crimes under almost all circumstances should not be shot and killed for running away, something that happens far too frequently. In 2022, a research group found that an astonishing 1 in 3 suspects that are fatally shot by police were fleeing. A Supreme Court case called Tennessee v. Garner covered this forty years ago, which only limited the use of lethal force on fleeing suspects to when the officer feels threatened or perceives the suspect to be armed. The arbitrary meaning of ‘threatened’ and ‘perceived’ is precisely what protects police from any repercussions of shooting unarmed and non-threatening people. This then informally embedded itself into police culture as the law used against police concerns their subjective experience, which is already biased by judicial deference.

A cop knows that their word is worth more than an average citizen’s; that’s why you’ll always lose a traffic ticket when it’s the cop’s word against yours. You see this phenomenon when cops accuse or insistently ask people if they’re intoxicated, they gaslight and if people respond with irritation, they take it as admission. This allows them to absolve themselves of just about anything in court. This manufactured immunity enables them to abuse their power in various ways. If someone isn’t intimidated by you, say you smell alcohol on their breath or that they’re slurring their words. If someone knows their rights at a traffic stop and demands reasonable suspicion, say something subjective like you thought you saw their seatbelt off, or you smelled weed. This abuse is even more effective when cops deal with people who are on the autism spectrum, neurodiverse, or are afraid of police.

A cop also knows that when it comes to stopping a suspect, shouting “Gun!” before killing them is, in many cases, enough to clear them of wrongdoing in the eyes of the court. You notice this in body camera footage when cops fake being the victim to create the pretense that they felt danger. After all, in court, when a cop’s word is worth more, sometimes all it takes is explaining that they felt in danger. Sometimes, this may earnestly be the case as toxic police norms, especially in cities, train cops to be constantly on edge, ready to react to threats at every second. In a broader sense, it’s used as a tool to protect them from whatever bullying or abuse they may inflict.

The claim that Hinton had a gun based on the body camera alone is simply inconclusive. In both segments of the encounter, there’s no clear frame with a gun.

When Hinton fell, the footage does not clearly show a gun; he appears to push off the ground to get back up. There is a single frame that the department cherry-picked, where one could vaguely argue that a gun seems to be on the ground. In the frames before and after the one the department used, there doesn’t appear to be any object standing out against the concrete pavement.

Conveniently, the department did not release dash cam footage from the other cars at the scene or any other angle that may have shown a better view of Hinton falling. That would be able to prove definitively whether Hinton picked up the gun, if the gun stayed on the pavement, or that no gun hit the ground in the first place.

When Hinton ran out between the dumpsters, he was facing perpendicular to the officer and maintained his head in the same direction, facing toward the trees. Going frame by frame, there isn’t a single moment where Hinton even makes eye contact with the officer; he’s solely focused on getting away. The way the department describes it, Hinton, if he intended to aim at the officer, he would be shooting across his body while running full speed, shooting at a target he’s not looking at. It’s plainly ridiculous. Additionally, none of the frames show anything that resembles a gun. The blurry brown spot on the frame, which the department cited as the gun, looks much more like his hand.

This isn’t to completely discount the cop’s perspective entirely, humans can see things that aren’t actually there or even trick themselves into believing they saw something they didn’t. However, we shouldn’t base our analysis on the word of the person who has the most significant stake in saying they saw a weapon.

We see here how the two cops manufacture each other’s plausible deniability. As the lead officer (Officer 1) passes the black SUV, he gets a visual of Hinton while at the same moment, the cop lagging behind (Officer 2) begins to yell:

“He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun! On your right! On your right!”

The timestamps of both POVs are lined up so that when he starts to yell, we can see he has no visual of Hinton, not even a glimpse. How would he know that Hinton had a gun if the only time the department cites that Hinton is seen with one is in the view of Officer 1? He didn’t.

There is certainly a chance that Officer 2 saw a gun in the moment prior, but that footage hasn’t been released. It makes you wonder why such a short clip was the only evidence provided.

We also see that Officer 1 quickly says “Gun!” between the time he unholsters and when he shoots the first shot.

In court, a defense attorney can now more easily argue that because they yelled this, it indicated they perceived a gun, thus absolving them, even if one officer had no way of knowing this, and the other likely didn’t see one at all. The problem is that cops can reflexively say ‘gun’ in any stressful situation to protect themselves legally, but that ends up putting others in a dangerous situation where their death is pre-justified.

Another small detail that the department falsified is the claim that the officers were chasing other suspects. That may have been the officer’s initial objective, but according to the body cam, there are no other suspects in the vicinity.

A strange detail worth mentioning is the decision-making by Officer 1 (even though it’s functionally useless in our current police and justice system). Officer 2 is able to yell out 14 words in the approximately 6 seconds between the time Officer 1 sees Hinton on the ground and when he meets him on the other side of the dumpsters. If Officer 1 did indeed believe that the suspect had a deadly weapon, wouldn’t common sense say to be more cautious? Officer 1 watches Hinton (whom he thinks is armed) get up and start running toward the dumpster, yet he runs out in the open anyway. Why not stay behind cover?

In taking a more qualitative look at this, these are clearly aggressive cops who have enough experience not to be afraid of running out in front of an armed suspect. They are also part of a particularly violent police force with a long history of police brutality. They know that yelling ‘gun’ will help clear them in court. They trust each other enough; Officer 1 was already drawing his gun before Hinton reemerged behind the dumpster. From the moment he reached for his gun, there was no restraint demonstrated by the officer as the situation evolved second by second. It looks like the officer had already decided to shoot Hinton before he even saw him. Maybe it’s easier for him to shoot first and answer questions later.

Using only still images doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Watching the shooting in real-time shows just how quickly Officer 1 decided to shoot; there was no other thought process. If a gun cannot be seen in Hinton’s hands by examining the video frame by frame, can we trust that the cop saw one in real-time? No, obviously not. He didn’t have to see a gun; he had already made up his mind to kill.

At the very least, that puts the blame on Officer 2 for negligence in giving out potentially false information, which led Officer 1 to shoot Hinton. In any other scenario that didn’t involve a cop, this would comfortably meet the definition of manslaughter.

The argument is not that officers should be expected to make perfectly rational decisions at all times. But, if the result time after time is a police involved killing when they were not threatened, you have a systematic problem. The officer’s automatic decision to shoot to kill is not a single mistake; it’s indicative of an inherently hostile policing culture.

An indictment of the cops involved is a necessity for justice. This situation should not conclude without a proper trial. A crucial detail that must be reconciled is whether evidence was properly handled. Both the gun and the extra magazine were moved from their original resting place at the scene. Any officer who moves evidence for any reason must document the action; failure to do so can be grounds for evidence tampering. There’s a very real possibility that Hinton was shot without a gun in his hands, whether it was concealed in his pocket or left on the pavement. It would’ve been very easy for the officer to move the gun from Hinton’s pocket, supporting their narrative. Alternatively, if it was actually left on the pavement, they could’ve just moved it to his body. The extended footage will hopefully clear this up if they indeed kept recording. It wouldn’t be the first time cops have planted or tampered with evidence.

The problem with completely absolving the officer without a proper trial is treating these incidents as if they were pure accidents, which they’re not. Outside of this case, there’s a system behind it that leads to these outcomes. These cases must go through the court system to create the side effect of accountability. If police cannot hold themselves to a standard where taking the life of a non-threatening suspect is unacceptable, the courts and the community must do so for them.

In many cases like these, all the agency is taken from the person killed. Are there other things Hinton could’ve done to keep himself alive? Maybe. But at a point, there’s only so much someone can do when a cop has already decided to use lethal force. No one expects to be shot and killed in an instant. Hinton wasn’t trying to harm the officers; he was trying to escape a regrettable situation. Even if Ryan Hinton had a gun on his person, does that mean the punishment for running away is death? There won’t be a trial to prove Hinton’s guilt or innocence, the officer already decided his fate. About 3 in 10 Americans own firearms in America; are they allowed to be killed anytime a cop decides, because they are suspected of committing a crime? Giving cops the power to shoot suspects makes that person guilty until proven innocent.

When a system of laws and institutions gives cops a special status above everyone else and absolves them of abuses because of plausible deniability, you get an American police force that kills at 5 to 22 times the rate of other developed nations. Those numbers cannot be produced by ‘bad apples.’

I often think back to the lesser-known case of the ‘Simon-Says Cop’ who shot and killed Daniel Shaver. In January 2016, hotel guests called about a man pointing a rifle (ended up being an airsoft gun) out a window. Police arrived and prepared a raid on Shaver’s room. Shavers had one friend in the room, and they were both drinking. Police yelled for them to exit the room, but they didn’t hear it. Then, police called the room’s phone for them to exit, so they complied. After walking into the hallway, the police were standing away from them with multiple guns trained on them, and gave them a series of complicated commands. In his intoxication, Shavers struggled to follow them as the officer contradicted himself numerous times while yelling with increasing aggression. Shavers pleaded for his life while crying. Finally, the officer commanded him to crawl toward them and then opened fire, killing him. The horrific body camera footage wasn’t released for 1 year and 11 months later. The officer, Philip Brailsford, was acquitted. That is just one example of disgusting injustice on a systematic level that calls every other case into question.

These are murders, not accidents. None of these people will get the justice they deserve until the entire system is dramatically changed, reformed, and abolished for something better.

Rest in power Ryan Hinton. 🕊️

★ Donate to Ryan Hinton’s Justice Fundraiser

Help Support My Work ♥

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

The Democratic Party is slowly dying a slow, painful death. By painful, we mean more that it is a pitiful event, even though by their incompetence they’ve caused plenty of pain to us by allowing the far-right to gain power and unleash havoc on our civil rights. As discussed in a previous article, we’ve declared the Democrats dead, at least for the moment, and hopefully for good if the alleged anti-establishment Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have the spine to overthrow them with a new party or in some meaningful way.

The only answer that Democrats have offered the American people in the past year is to move further to the right. The Harris campaign was an embarrassment compared to what people expected, which was a robust progressive agenda to get the country out of this inequality crisis. Harris was trying to offer meager tax credits to a country begging for universal healthcare and job guarantees. Instead of fighting to change the narrative, leaders in the party have deemed it easier to throw immigrants, trans people, and Palestinians under the bus. Meanwhile, the far-right is controlling the Overton Window, and Democrats are letting them.

All of this is an indictment of the party’s centrist wing that holds the seats of power. They have no choice but to move right because admitting they failed means allowing the left to progress the party forward. But centrist Democrats will always fight the left harder than they fight Republicans. This is to be expected. We saw this in 2016 when Hillary blamed Bernie despite him polling better than her against Trump. We saw this in 2020 when the establishment candidates gave up everything to beat Bernie, who was pulling in voters from across the political spectrum, just for Biden to limp over the finish line in November. We saw this in 2024 when centrists got everything they wanted: no primary, a chance to double down on toothless centrist policy, an easy opponent, near-endless campaign funds, and then lost. Despite having no one to blame but themselves, they blamed the left, minorities, and students protesting the genocide in Palestine.

In the larger scope, this represents American capitalism as a whole. Both parties are beholden to corporations, so they must manage the system in their own way. The Democrats historically have been practical about this: give citizens just enough concessions so they won’t rebel. Republicans, in pursuit of greater profit, accept some of that uncertainty, relying on more authoritarian measures to quell any unrest caused by their lack of concessions to the people— two different strategies for upholding the status quo, two sides of the same coin. Since American capitalism and its global hegemony have experienced a steady decline in power since the late 80s, the strategy is now more about managing the decline. There’s only so much a single nation can brutally oppress the globe and dominate global trade before cracks begin to form. Both the party establishments are running out of ideas. This is when we get a far-right anti-establishment figure, Trump, who is willing to pursue even greater profit and power expansion for corporations while accepting the uncertainty of implementing more authoritarianism. The effort will be futile, though; the decline of capitalism is inevitable. America cannot exert unilateral force over even the weakest country anymore, and China is rapidly becoming the most powerful country in trade. It doesn’t have to be this way. This country could model left traditions by embracing labor unions, ruthlessly monopoly busting, taxing the exorbitant wealth of the 1%, and demilitarizing to invest in domestic growth. Instead, Democrats are pandering to the right.

At the epicenter of this rot is the New York Times Opinion section that has consistently laundered right-wing narratives with a pretentious liberal dialect. It is here we find an article that best represents this right-wing pandering titled, “How Four Democrats Who Saved the Party Before Would Do It Again.” It’s a discussion between Al From, William A. Galston, Elaine Kamarck, and Will Marshall, all prominent Democratic figures from the Clinton administration, part of the New Democrat and Third Way faction. The framing of the article is the idea that what the country really needs in this time of rising fascism is an opposition party that acts as a footstool for the people dismantling the government. We will be dissecting this piece as follows.

Patrick Healy, who leads the discussion, is the deputy Opinion section editor for the New York Times. Right off the bat in his introduction, he misanalyses the current political situation as comparable to the 1970s and 80s, when Democrats kept losing elections, then finally winning with Clinton. Healy makes the unsubstantiated claim that, “many Americans saw the party as too liberal, untrustworthy on inflation and spending, and out of touch — culturally and economically — with middle-class and working-class Americans.” This will be a running thread throughout the discussion, and it’s a false premise. Politics then were so narrow and unremarkable simply because there was nothing to debate; there were no crises like there are now. Politics were so boring in 1992 that Ross Perot, an independent who ran a single-issue campaign on balancing the budget, led the Presidential polls for over a month. Such a thing is unheard of today, especially as critical issues like the climate crisis, genocide, and stagnant wages bring our politics close to a boil.

It’s astonishing that Healy doesn’t acknowledge why Democrats were perceived as ‘too liberal,’ assuming there’s even evidence to back that up. The country was going through a far-right reactionary moment during the Cold War, and the party was ineffective in fighting against these narratives while presenting a better alternative. Losing Democrats Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis hardly presented progressive liberal ideas, even for the time. If anything, it was their lack of progressivism and disconnect with the labor movement that lost them these elections. Notoriously, the Reagan Democrats were working-class people co-opted into supporting harmful right-wing economic policies because Democrats politically abandoned them. Why else would someone vote against their material interests to give more power to corporations with the fringe hope of wealth ‘trickling down’ if there was no rhetorical opposition to that idea from Democrats?

Already, we see how geriatric their political views are, which will become a recurring thread of their discussion. When they talk about the ‘culture issues’ hanging over us, remember that one of those is abortion rights, which is somehow still an issue thanks to the failures of Democrats to codify it into permanent law. If things like abortion and passing the Equal Rights Amendment were the most challenging cultural issues of their time, it’s shameful that the centrists in power with Clinton weren’t able (or willing) to end that debate. It’s really an indictment of centrist politicians that they cower from any confrontation with ‘culture issues,’ which are actually just about human rights.

To be charitable, we can acknowledge that the country was in an unnaturally conservative era in the 80s, but placing the blame squarely on mild liberal policy is totally misplaced. The four of them mischaracterize many of the blatant policy, corruption, and messaging failures at this time as core issues with the party’s policy platform and not simply failures in and of themselves. The three losses were infamously boring campaigns with no sense of aggression or urgency to fight Reagan’s charisma. If anything, what this period needed was a revitalization of the labor movement and an unrelenting assault on the corrupt war mongers in the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations. You don’t win by not playing.

Another thread we will regrettably keep returning to is their disgust for trans rights. These fossilized baby boomers spend a baffling amount of energy blaming this one small group of people for this election loss. The worst part is: the criticism doesn’t even make sense. Kamala Harris quite literally avoided trans issues like the plague. Pretty much nowhere can you find references to trans people in any of her speeches, messaging, or debates. They bizarrely say she was ‘pushed to the extreme’ on this issue, but by who? The Democratic Party never touched this issue, especially this cycle. This entire narrative was fabricated by the disgusting far-right, who go after any minority group they see as vulnerable. Again, it’s an indictment of the Democrats’ spinelessness to not stand up to these dehumanizing attacks. When the ghouls in the Trump campaign see a weakness like this, they lambast and attack a vulnerable group if there’s no opposition, then paint it on the entire party. The crazy thing is— that the right has far worse delusional QAnon freaks and radical evangelicals that could be exploited in the same way, but the Democrats refuse to play hardball. What happens is they’re chasing the culture, instead of fighting it.

Ironically, the five centrists sitting at this table are bemoaning ‘special pleadings’ and having to serve all the parts of your coalition. It’s a shame that America wasn’t parliamentary because imagine how pathetic it would be if the center democratic party were whining, blaming their own failures on the left party for daring to advocate for the rights of a marginalized group. Everyone would see this exactly for what it is. Unfortunately, the legitimate left and right-wing Democrats are forced into this Frankenstein party of billionaire boot lickers and grassroots progressives that demand change. It’s an untenable arrangement that needs to change fast. Either way, it’s laughable that these aging centrists believe they can win this breakup by default when they’d find a safer home with Republicans, where at least then it’d be obvious what side they’re really on.

Kamarck makes absolutely no secret that she is a devout conservative. The first thing she was waiting to bring up— as if she’s proud of it— is Clinton’s “End welfare as we know it” bumper sticker. Yes, welfare: the thing that keeps tens of millions of people out of abject poverty. The thing that every sane and moral society offers to its citizens is to protect them from being homeless between jobs. The thing that keeps us from returning to the time of Hoovervilles. I’m not sure why she’s not a Republican; she’s plainly spouting right-wing propaganda talking points. It’s precisely the “welfare rewards people for staying home” narrative that has soaked deep into the bones of every modern conservative and most people alive during that time. It’s not only a completely false premise but its intentionally decisive to make people feel deep shame for committing the social crime of losing your job or being disabled. It’s a pretentious contempt that politicians like her have for the poor, which has been weaponized into a national political project.

The second half of that sentence gets even more sick. She says, in reference to what a right-wing voter would say, “[welfare] rewards people for having more children when they don’t have any support for the children,” in other words, the racist welfare queen myth. What that refers to is the racist conspiracy popularized by Reagan that single black women were having children to get extra welfare benefits.

Kamarck then says something bizarre where she tries to reframe the whole thing by saying that the term “ending welfare as we know it” doesn’t actually mean ‘to cease’, ‘to abolish’, ‘to annihilate’, but is supposed to mean reform. Sorry if American English has changed in 33 years, but ending something “as we know it” obviously means getting rid of that thing. So, to be clear, Kamarck is celebrating the fact that her Clinton campaign pandered to racists to cut welfare benefits rather than fighting against that narrative and actually making people’s lives better.

Yes, Galston was Walter Mondale’s policy director. The same Walter Mondale who lost 49 of 50 states to Ronald Reagan in 1984, the biggest Presidential election landslide in American history. Though Mondale himself was a very weak, uncompelling person, an infamous part of his loss was the decision to run on raising taxes. The other part of that was a failure to communicate the many social programs proposed, like funding education, job-training, healthcare cost reduction, day care, and child/spousal abuse programs.

First, it’s strange that Galston blames the policy, not the messaging, which was the overwhelming consensus on why they lost so badly. It’s nonsense anyway because the New Deal policies were precisely the reason why Reagan got an economic free ride during his first term. The New Deal policy worked; it wasn’t exhausted, and Galston should know this as someone who worked on this campaign. It’s as if in that moment he became a Reagan Democrat because that’s exactly who became part of the Clinton campaign, forcing more deregulation and more austerity.

For this first issue, Kamarck discusses why reform was difficult in the Clinton campaign. She mentions that welfare ‘reform,’ otherwise known as cuts, was tough and blames a “hypersensitivity” among black Americans to the issue. I could only imagine what it feels like for older black readers seeing these racist narratives being regurgitated decades later. Kamarck’s association of welfare with African Americans indicates she is very aware of this racist right-wing narrative. Instead of acknowledging that it is a false narrative, she doesn’t regret Clinton campaigning on it. It’s clear she loathes the fact that black Americans were rightfully outraged at this association. She even acknowledges that she and the white Democrats of the Clinton administration deliberately chose to ignore this sentiment.

History seems to repeat itself. Instead of fighting back against the racist narrative, Democrats abandon it and allow black Americans to be the scapegoat for the perceived ‘big government.’ Today, Democrats have abandoned people of color again, blaming black men for not voting for Harris, something the numbers don’t support.

It’s wild that old Democrats are still laundering this false ‘big’ versus ‘small’ government framing. The government has consistently grown larger over the years, regardless of the party in charge. It’s simply a rhetorical spear the opposition party uses to promote austerity. Reality would tell us that Reagan and Bush increased federal debts during that time, but despite this, Democrats are still seen as the economically irresponsible party. So why continue this false narrative if it doesn’t work? Kamarck says that ‘big government’ was deep in Democrats’ DNA, so why not reshape that? Due to their failure as an opposition party during this time, much of the older generations still harbor this sentiment. The real burden of proof should be on Republicans to explain why the government should be ‘smaller’ when it was the New Deal that provided this incredible prosperity in the first place. It’s strange to run away from a policy set that materially benefits voters simply because of right-wing austerity propaganda.

What Glaston implies here is really fascinating. The assumption is that he is talking about what he would perceive to be the ‘woke left’ wanting to be the minority in the majority party. But the ironic thing is that centrists fail almost every time. There has never been a center-left blow out election in this country’s history, they only win when its convenient or Republicans disastrously fail. The most successful cross-partisan wins for Democrats were from populist progressive campaigns— Obama’s first term and FDR’s. You could even include Sanders if you consider the polling that showed him polling first among all primary candidates for both general elections. This proved itself again in this recent election, where Harris’ cross-partisan effort failed, predictably. American voters will only accept Democrats when they’re forced to or when they’re actually offered material benefits. Otherwise, they chose right-wing fearmongering.

Not to keep going into the trivialities, but it’s interesting to reflect on how boring these people’s understanding of politics is from when the American empire was at its peak of global power and the biggest worry was vaguely if ‘the government worked.’ I’m not even sure what they mean by ‘worked.’ Do American citizens really give a damn if government ‘works’ or do they care about their material conditions? Seriously, how diluted is it to think citizens care more about the abstract notions of GDP and federal debt than about being able to pay for medical treatment, their retirement, their child’s preschool, and feeding their family?

There’s a lot to unpack in this short quote. First is the much-needed context of the alternative to the ‘brain dead’ left and right, Marshall is talking about: the Third Way. This group comprised most of the Clinton administration, whose political goals consist of being bagmen for corporations. It’s an entirely inorganic project that filters corporate interests into centrist policy proposals that reach a wide range of both right and left liberals. They have almost no natural constituency; it’s utterly devoid of human authenticity, so their public face becomes whatever popular narrative exists at the time. This is not a vessel for generational change, it’s a club for out of touch corporate lobbyists.

Marshall claims the party needs something ‘fresh’ by which he means ‘national service.’ You would be forgiven not to know what he’s talking about since surely no one living in the twenty-first century would advocate mandatory military service… right? Luckily, he’s talking about AmeriCorps, a small agency that gets people involved with non-profit organizations and offers grants for college. So far, it’s only hired an average of 38,000 people annually, known for sub-minimum wage pay, no benefits, and exhausting work. However, Marshall has not entirely written off the idea of military conscription, as he once critiqued the program for not having a ‘military ethos.’ If this is really what Marshall wants, I couldn’t think of a more disastrous policy proposal for the party whose strongest demographic is younger people. If we look to the Vietnam era, it went over totally fine… besides the 570,000 young men who dodged the draft and 8,750 who were charged for refusing to fight an imperial war for no good reason.

Marshall also advocates for school choice, otherwise known as defunding public schools to subsidize private schools, which already work fine without leeching tax dollars.

Needless to say, these are absolutely the opposite of new ideas. Marshall might be correct in saying they’re imaginative… imaginative in how they disguise corporate right-wing policies as novel.

They go back to welfare reform again. Realize that for these people, welfare was a massive issue during the peak of their careers, and you can feel their elitist disdain for people who claim government assistance. They are incapable of realizing just how much politics and culture have changed since then. We know definitively that welfare programs raise the floor of poverty, support children’s development, and bring people back into the economy from destitution. Fighting against it won for Clinton not because he offered a better alternative but because he was charismatic and catered to the public’s existing dogmatic beliefs. Good leaders create change, not accept the status quo.

It’s bizarre to even cite an earned income tax credit as welfare reform because it isn’t: it’s a concession to soften the crush of austerity. The tax credit was a way to cut taxes for people who shouldn’t have been taxed in the first place. Though the tax system was better then than it is now, Clinton did a pitiful job of reversing the downward trend of taxation against the wealthy and corporations, which had begun under Republicans in the previous years.

Anyone with conviction would see growing inequality and reverse it by cutting taxes to zero for the poor, keeping them as low as possible for the working class, and drastically raising taxes for the rich and corporations who parasitically feed off the workers’ labor.

Marshall also connects to his point about national service, saying that such a policy promotes “the idea that you should serve something larger than yourself.” Why? So that more people can be indoctrinated into a military hierarchy and degraded into pawns for the government’s disposal? I don’t quite have the words to describe how embarrassing this is to hear in the current year. Marshall even goes so far as to say it will solve “the politics of entitlement.” Entitlement of what? Existing in this country without being the government’s slave? Why not support a federal jobs guarantee where one can get a dignified job without having to swear allegiance to the country first?

As mentioned before, they can’t help but bring trans people up again. For some reason, they revere this Trump ad as if they had no control over it. The exact reason it was successful was that it was a weak issue for the whole party, precisely because centrists like these four don’t support trans people. The old Democrat establishment doesn’t care to protect this community, so the far-right exploit it. What is just as disgusting as the right-wing are the Democrats like Kamarck, who advocate abandoning trans people just like they did with welfare. But the comparison is even more strange because people are not a policy set, they’re people. So unlike welfare, which no doubt has human implications of their own, she’s literally saying that trans people are too “strange” and “frightening” to be worth fighting for.

To their credit, early in the Harris campaign, they were at least correctly combating this. Walz began calling the far-right attacks on people “weird,” and it was a jab at the core of conservatism: it is fundamentally weird to be vicious to a group of people for no reason. Unfortunately, the campaign must’ve listened to people like Kamarck and fallen for the reaction the far-right wants.

Kamarck suggests people could be “hurt” by trans rights. If the public legitimately thinks that people and children could be hurt by allowing trans people to exist just like the rest of us, then that indicates Democrats, as the party that is supposed to protect the marginalized, have utterly failed.

We can tell that Kamarck doesn’t even care to understand trans people; she talks about them like a disease, saying, “There are people out there who are really hurting because they’re born gender dysphoric.” But the hurt is coming from the part of society that refuses to accept them: the part of society Kamarck thinks should be coddled.

There is one part of this that I can mostly get behind: the sentiment that Democrats have lost touch with the working class. It’s even a total understatement to say they’ve ‘lost touch’ because Democrats haven’t actually cared about the working class for decades. They also don’t look at the power dynamic involved, the immense wealth and power stripped from working people over the past fifty years. The party has abandoned unions, something that empowers people and gives them that sense they’re ‘a part of something bigger’ that he mentioned earlier. Average real wages hit their lowest at any point between the 60s and today during the Clinton years and are still not above the peak in 1973. The answer is giving the working class power, which means clawing it back from the corporations and the wealthy that stole it, and reengineering the government that allowed it to happen. This also means abandoning the centrist dinosaurs like these four and embracing the class struggle.

Marshall says we need to ‘address economic aspirations’, which is code for ‘do nothing while making it seem like something changed.’ How do we know this? Because immediately after, he framed concessions to the working class as “throwing government benefits at them.” People wouldn’t need food stamps if their jobs paid them enough to afford to live. That’s the core contradiction that these centrists, who are committed to the predatory system of capitalism, cannot reckon with.

Here’s where the stupidity hits its climax. Al From is a multi-millionaire who used to work in the highest office in the country, if not the world. He is an elite with immense power, making it absurd to place himself on the same level as the average “three-fifths of the country that doesn’t have a college degree.” Watch how he manipulates us: he pits non-college-educated and educated people against each other. In reality, nine in ten parents want their kids to go to college, and surely none want their kids to be burdened with debt. So why would any of them be so against subsidizing higher education? In other words, the people who don’t have a college degree typically want their kids to get one. But From doesn’t care about that, he’s an elitist conservative Democrat.

It’s not only that, but it’s the idea of people “paying for the tuition” of college students, which does an immense amount of rhetorical work in this individualistic country. We know that if all college debt were wiped out tomorrow, there would be an economic boom overnight as people are freed from the weight of their debt. It’s also a fact that college-educated people earn on average $40,500 more per year, meaning that throughout their career, they would more than pay back their education in taxes. The other obvious thing is facilitating a more equal and educated population where people aren’t burdened by growing up poor. It’s not understood well enough that investment in a country’s people pays for itself many times over, and that’s what Democrats need to embrace.

Instead of just allowing people to be free and get the support they need to build their life, From goes back to this weird national service policy that I’m willing to bet most people don’t know exists. It’s the archaic notion that a person should have to do this strange ritual of ‘serving your country’ rather than just getting the education necessary to contribute meaningfully to that country with no strings attached. It’s like he thinks a working-class person is born into slavery and has to earn their freedom before joining society. Of course, From’s kids don’t have to do this; they were lucky enough not to be born poor. This proposal is much like forced conscription in the sense that it is a program only for the poor who need it to escape poverty. This is what the right-wing (which includes From) does; it’s not about getting people out of poverty for the sake of eliminating poverty, it’s about maintaining the borders of class, where at least if someone is going to take from society, they should feel shame.

It comes right down to his following sentence about “free lunch.” It’s an outdated term, but the irony is that the phrase originates from the early 1900s when bars, saloons, and taverns would give out free food to incentivize them to keep spending money on drinks. Applied to this scenario, it would actually make sense if the government gave a ‘free lunch’ in the form of college tuition to incentivize them to get better-paying jobs and give more back in taxes. The term has also meant free school lunches in the past, which is somehow a controversial topic and one that conservatives more often reject. From is using the word pejoratively to describe a policy like free school lunches that supports a person through state spending. Much like we’ve just shown, school lunches also have this same effect, where studies constantly show kids have much better education outcomes when given the dreaded free lunch.

To be a bit charitable, Kamarck at least sees some of the problem, that the Democrats are an elitist party. The inflation issue was overlooked entirely, and it’s not difficult to see why; it doesn’t affect them, and the primary voices in the party are. They’ve systematically pushed out union leaders and regular working-class voices that used to be staples of the party over 75 years ago. It’s no wonder that liberals die for the ‘egg prices’ meme, because they don’t see inflation as a real issue that materially affects the nearly half of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. Of course, Trump didn’t have any solution to inflation, but Harris having no solution either meant that millions didn’t show up in November.

Here’s the primary thesis: Democrats think that people cannot change, that they can’t influence or change people’s minds, Republicans know they can, and they do, so much so that Trump, in his deranged rhetoric, literally changed American culture to fit his agenda. That’s why Galston says the party needs to follow the public blindly. Galston is a loser. He was a big part of the losing Walter Mondale and Al Gore campaigns. This is a person who is not good at politics.

Initially, the Democratic message was correct in 2024, price gouging undeniably caused massive inflation; the stock market made record profits during the pandemic while prices increased dramatically. Instead of messaging that correctly, the Harris campaign backed off to avoid tarnishing Biden’s legacy. A Republican in a similar situation facing the headwinds of public opinion would find someone to blame and ruthlessly attack. The thing is, for this issue, the Democrats have the culprit built in: greedy monopolistic corporations. What makes it even more unbelievable is that they have the truth on their side too, Republicans never do, that’s why they rely on scapegoats and gaslighting. So now Democrats are backpedaling on an issue that they should be winning by virtue of the facts, and think they have to fight to be to the right of Republicans to win. It’s exactly what Clinton did; instead of fighting to reshape the narrative around welfare, he just moved to the right of Bush.

There it is, From proves my point for me. They think that the party has to listen to what people already believe, even if that belief has been twisted and manipulated by decades of right-wing propaganda and a modern onslaught of far-right indoctrination.

Close to the end of this interview, Kamarck can’t help but rant about trans people. Everything alluded to comes out. Listen to the disdain in “I’ve never heard of pregnant people” because apparently, the extremely specific case of doctors using inclusive language is so unfathomable to her fragile mind. I’d love to ask her for a single example of a Democratic politician policing the use of ‘pregnant people.’ I guess maybe when you spend your time shoulder to shoulder with far-right wingers at the Federalist Society, you embrace a lot of Fox News scare-mongering.

Don’t mistake this as an actual point. This is a person from another era reacting with disdain that they might be bothered with advocating for a new issue, one that takes effort. “If only these trans people just didn’t ask for basic respect, Democrats could win every election” is the sentiment she gives here. To be clear, this is no disrespect to older people; many late into their 70s and 80s are perfectly capable of finding the morally correct stance on the issues of today, but too many like Kamarck refuse to change after their time has passed. The entire party is going through a leadership crisis where the older generation refuses to step aside and accept younger, more in-touch members.

Kamarck goes so far as to say that trans rights is the single most productive interparty fight Democrats should have. Think about what that means, though. Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned gay marriage. How can we trust Kamarck’s cultural politics ever again? We can’t. This is the same core issue, just thirty years later. Are we willing to accept a group of people even if it’s not politically convenient?

So if she wants to have a party civil war, I say fine; keep purging the progressives, trans people, minorities, and immigrants out of the party, maybe enough people will leave to start a real working class party.

As a treat, Al From cites Gavin Newsom as someone doing a good job. Yes, the same Gavin Newsom who started a podcast to host far-right racist pundit Charlie Kirk, being extra nice to the guy who proudly believes black people can’t be pilots. Newsom is doing such a good job that he also hosted Steve Bannon, the overt neo-Nazi in the Trump campaign who spearheaded the effort use white nationalism as a policy platform. Don’t be fooled, conservative liberals love it when there is ‘debate’ with these people because they don’t disagree that much. It’s why he likes Democrat Elissa Slotkin, a literal CIA agent and a racist Zionist. These are not ideological non-starters for him; he’s just a racist, and I say that because when you have ten people at the table and one’s a racist, you don’t have nine normal people and a racist, you have ten racists.

This is how a good political party is run: zero tolerance for right-wing apologists. Democrats need to stop accepting centrists just because they aren’t overt with their bigotry and sloppy with their policy prescriptions. This is how the working class died: it was slowly eroded by corporate politicians like these four. Shame on the New York Times for not firing Patrick Healy, who let these freaks spout 90s-era racism openly. We must bury Third Way politics six feet under and ruthlessly pursue a progressive future.

★ Source Archive

★ Social Media: Twitter — BlueSky — Instagram

On Thursday, in hundreds of cities in America, thousands of people took to the streets to rally for May Day, an international celebration of workers. Many make the connection that this is just Labor Day in May, and that would be correct. Internationally, most countries celebrate workers on May 1st, and this included America until 1886, when, that year, violence broke out in Chicago as police tried to suppress a protest for the 8-hour work day violently. Since then, the government has not recognized the holiday, instead, it moving it to September to decouple the American workers’ struggle for labor rights from the rest of the world. This has not stopped American workers and students from celebrating it and holding strikes against the corporations that leech off us for profit.

Shawn Fain, President of the UAW Union, has taken the initiative to revitalize American labor power. Fain announced in 2023 a plan to organize as many unions as possible to end their contracts on May 1st, 2028, leading to a general strike. Such a mass strike could threaten to bring the economy to a halt, thus forcing corporations and the government to make massive concessions to the working class. It’s an ambitious plan, but one with deep history, as workers worldwide have allied to withhold their labor to force change in society.

During the German Revolution of 1918, a general strike was called by sailors revolting against the German Empire, as winning the First World War proved hopeless. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, railway workers began a general strike to resist the Tsar in solidarity with the revolutionaries. The largest general strike in world history was five years ago in India when 250 million workers took to the streets, organized by the Communist Party alongside ten major unions, shutting down the country’s economy to resist Prime Minister Modi’s anti-worker policies and privatization plans.

In 1945 and 1946, a massive strike wave in America rocked the corporate establishment to its core. Over 4.5 million workers across the country in the oil, automotive, film, electric, meatpacking, steel, coal, railroad, mining, and other industries joined in solidarity to gain concessions. Unions banded together by striking simultaneously to increase pressure on companies, something unprecedented on this scale in America. This was a historic moment in American history, and it was met with brutal resistance by police and legislation to stomp out the hot embers of worker power. This led to the passing of the Taft-Hartley Act the following year, which outlawed certain kinds of strikes and outright banned general strikes. President Truman vetoed the bill, stating that it was a “dangerous intrusion on free speech,” but Congress overrode it with the help of Democrats. The law has hung over the labor movement as a sort of big red button to shut down mass labor action that Presidents have used 37 times since its passing.

This year’s May Day was marked by a monumental three-day strike by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Los Angeles that demanded the county respect fair labor laws. Negotiations between the union and the city have stalled as the city refuses to come to the table and has opted for retaliatory measures instead. Half the city’s workers, representing about 55,000 employees, walked off the job on May Day, and over 10,000 marched downtown.

The SEIU also proved that they would not simply march but disrupt the status quo. Not only did their march temporarily shut down the city by depriving the government of their labor, but they physically took up space marching through the streets and disrupting business as usual. They deliberately engaged in civil disobedience, going beyond the planned boundaries of the strike by blocking traffic, where 14 strikers were arrested. This action, though small, represents the power dynamic between the city and its workers, the police and the workers. In its current arrangement, the government is not on the side of workers, and the police, doing the city’s bidding, are not on the side of the workers.

Something that Shawn Fain and the UAW have thoroughly maintained over the years is that this is not left versus right, it’s the rich versus the poor. And that isn’t a statement about being ‘independent’ either, it’s about standing in solidarity with the bottom-up struggles that affect our brothers, sisters, and siblings in this country and the world. This is a thread of the progressive Stop Oligarchy Tour led by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, calling for independent candidates and grassroots working-class people to challenge establishment politicians. The pair held a rally in Philadelphia on May Day, bringing together 5,000 people to symbolically pass the torch to the next generation of grassroots leaders. However, rallies like that are not enough at the national level; there has to be a mass coalition, a new Workers Party to uproot the establishment of both corporate wings.

A labor struggle to reclaim our government, our rights, and our leisure time cannot rely on fallible politicians and leaders; it must be a community effort. That community cannot exclude people and struggles, or else it’s doomed to fail by division. On that same day in Philly, thousands more were taking to the streets to celebrate May Day as an international struggle that included Palestinians who are subject to genocide in Gaza. On this issue, Sanders has been wholly inadequate, staying silent on the issue for months after it began, and still refuses to call it a genocide recognized by multiple human rights organizations. Refusing to combine labor with the most intense anti-war movement since the Iraq War is an utter failure on the part of Sanders and AOC. These are deeply interconnected struggles and there’s a serious problem if Sean Fain and the UAW, a bipartisan union, is willing to call a genocide a genocide, but not the most progressive Senator. We cannot build a working class in America with the bombs used to murder the working class in Palestine, Yemen, Sudan, or anywhere else.

If workers want to win over the capitalist greed that rots the core of this country, we need to make demands as a united working class, which includes us and all the workers of the world. This means that no politician or leader in any political position should be beholden to corporations or shy away from difficult issues. Never again can we elect a person to office who doesn’t serve us. As workers, we have far more power; we just have to use it.

★ Source Archive

★ Twitter