The Impending Ruling Class Mental Breakdown and Riot

“When the ruling class believes it is faced with existential threats, they throw bourgeois democracy out the window.”

The catastrophic defeat of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in last week’s elections does, indeed, foreshadow what’s in store for Bernie Sanders if the U.S. ruling class believes the self-styled socialist has a real chance of winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Although the Brexit dispute added deep and unique layers of complexity to the British electoral contest, the sheer magnitude of Labour’s loss to a discredited Conservative Party headed by the Trump-class clown Boris Johnson, is the result of a full-court, every-dirty-trick-and-lie-in-the-book campaign by British corporate media, working hand-in-glove with intelligence circles, the trans-Atlantic military industrial complex, and the pro-corporate wing of the Labour Party (“Blairites”), itself. Sanders faces the same demonic alignment of corporate/media-national security forces in 2020, against an identical “Russiagate” backdrop that has, over the past three years, revealed the fascist face of late stage capitalism on both sides of the Atlantic. 

If anything, Sanders is even more vulnerable than Corbyn, whose grassroots supporters controlled the Labour Party machinery. The Democratic Party is firmly in the hands of corporate servants who are dishonor-bound to bring down the self-styled socialist by any means necessary, to blunt the momentum of the super-majority issues he champions: Medicare for All, Green New Deal, living wage, free higher education, and a steep wealth tax. Together, these measures would spell the death of the austerity “Race to the Bottom” regime that has been imposed over the course of two generations with the collaboration of both corporate parties. The corporate Democrats are, therefore, fully invested in Sanders’ demise, since it is their base that presents the greatest threat to the austerity regime -- not Donald Trump’s race-obsessed deplorables, who threaten only Black, brown and Arab-looking Americans. 

“The corporate Democrats are fully invested in Sanders’ demise.”

The popular anti-corporate groundswell must be strangled in its cradle, the Democratic Party base. Corporate Democrats are, therefore, the first line of the oligarch’s defense – along with Democrat-friendly media, who play defense for corporate and imperial interests 24/7, and the intelligence/national security services, which have been embraced by Russiagate-era Democrats. The Fading Corporate Hope, Joe Biden, stumbled onto a stage, warning: “Look what happens when the Labour Party moves so, so far to the left.” 

Yes, look at the spectacle – in Britain and its most successful white settler colony. When the ruling class believes it is faced with existential threats, they throw bourgeois democracy out the window. The corporate media abandon all pretense of “objectivity” and non-partisanship (UK-US) and jump feet-and-mouth into the New Cold War to create a general hysteria (UK-US). Generals threaten mutiny if the left is elected (UK) and corporate-promulgated blacklists slander leftists as dupes of foreign powers (US-UK). Super-secret security agency operatives burst into glaring public view to spread alarm at foreign influence within the sacred imperial polity (UK-US) and are hailed as great defenders of “democracy,” even as their colleagues plot coups and proxy jihads around the globe. Anti-semitism becomes an all-purpose, silver bullet silencer of dissent (UK-US). 

“Corporate Democrats are the first line of the oligarch’s defense – along with Democrat-friendly media.”

Up to now, the Democrat-friendly corporate media have been content to ignore Bernie Sanders, as if the man who only two years ago was the most popular politician in the country, doesn’t exist. But all hell will break loose among the ruling class and its servants if Sanders wins or places very well in the New Hampshire primary (February 11) and Iowa caucuses (February 3) – especially if Joe Biden does poorly, as expected, and leaves defense of the oligarchy in the untested, Black-unfriendly hands of Pete Buttigieg. Biden’s strength among Black voters – his ace in the South Carolina hole – will quickly dissipate if the Old Incarcerator loses his “electability” luster in the early contests. Most Black Biden supporters are not “centrists” in the white sense of the word, and favor Sanders or Warren as their second choice – and Sanders and Warren are winning big among Black voters under 40. Blacks make up a quarter of Democratic voters, and virtually none want Buttigieg as the nominee.

That’s why billionaire Michael Bloomberg has saturated the airwaves with his noxious face and voice, money-muscling into what has been shaping up as a four-person race (Sanders, Warren, Biden, Buttigieg) that could very well end with Sanders and Warren amassing enough combined delegates to put together a presidential ticket, thus frustrating a super-delegate dictation of the lineup. Bloomberg’s money is unlikely to alter this dynamic, as should be evident from polling early in the new year. The data will plunge the ruling class, its media and the whole servile entourage into a panic not experienced in the United States since at least the Great Depression. All “democratic” bets will be off, and the ensuing corporate cyclone of propaganda, mayhem and dirty tricks will make the preceding years of Russiagate look as wholesome and pristine as a grade school civics class. Bernie Sanders could wind up more vilified than Jeremy Corbyn. Or it could be much worse. A ruling class mental breakdown – an oligarchs’ riot, in which real institutions and people get broken -- under threat of a Sanders/Warren nomination is a much more dangerous prospect than four more years of Trump, an outcome that is also much preferred by the Lords of Capital and their corporate Democrat servants.

“The corporate cyclone of propaganda, mayhem and dirty tricks will make the preceding years of Russiagate look as wholesome and pristine as a grade school civics class.”

It is impossible to predict what the ruling class will do to keep the Race to the Bottom on track, since austerity is their only strategy for capitalism in decline. But it is absolutely clear – both here in the belly of the global superpower beast, and in the old empire on the Thames – that every bourgeois liberty is “on the table” for elimination when the oligarchs feel existentially threatened. If you think they went crazy over the election of Trump, an impulsive and undependable member of their own class, imagine what they will countenance when an austerity buster threatens to take leadership of the other half of the electoral duopoly, and then contest for the presidency.

For the record, and as every conscientious reader of BAR should know, none of the editors at Black Agenda Report are Sandernistas. Our job is political analysis, and our fight is for socialism and Black self-determination. If you read any pro-Democratic or other corporate party bias in our work, then you are reading wrong. The Democratic Party is a hopeless trap from which Black America must escape if it is to cast off its own misleadership class and exercise any real political agency. But fear of the GOP White Man’s Party's brand of Dixie-born fascism locks African Americans in an alliance with the modern corporate fascist Democrats and their national security and mass incarceration, oligarch-serving state. The same goes for millions of progressive white folks and other Americans.

It is clear that such a separation will not occur, except in extreme crisis. The crisis may soon be upon us.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

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