The Return of Donald Trump: The DEATH of Legacy Media.

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Femi Akomolafe

Pan African Digest


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“If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely,” the executive said. “A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form. And the question is, what does it look like after.” - https://conservativeinstitute.org/conservative-news/media-executives-trump-victory-death-mainstream-influence.htm

“Giant Electoral Asteroid Strikes America's Intellectual Class, Which Fails to Notice.” - Matt Taibbi.

These are probably the two most critically discerning verdicts on Donald Trump's reelection, the man that Woke legacy media and scholars have all written off.

As Americans conclude and celebrate the charade that pantomimes a democratic election, let us attempt to shed some light on why we think the election went the way it did.

First, listen to HL Mencken: “The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” H.L. Mencken.

As we often say in this column, we do not have a dog in any fight in foreign (read non-African) lands. We are committed only to the cause of Pan-Africanism. When discussing non-African issues, we do so solely to enlighten and shed light on how such events or issues impact our lives and affairs in Africa.

With that declaration under our belt, let us examine why a man like Donald Trump overcame all obstacles (including assassination attempts) to stage a comeback to the White House.

Anyone who has read George Orwell’s prophetic classic 1984 and follows contemporary affairs will be baffled by the author’s prescience. The book’s theme rhymes nicely with contemporary happenings.

Donald Trump's first term was as chaotic as it was devoid of coherence. It was characterized by relentless scandals, chaotic policy shifts, frequent clashes with traditional media and political elites, an abrasive approach to critical voting blocs (women especially), inflammatory rhetoric on issues of race, policing, and public health, and unprecedented impeachment trials.

In 2020, American voters decided they had enough of their erratic leader. They opted for the elderly, almost senile Joe Biden, a virtuoso Establishment Figure.

Trump did not take his loss kindly. With his encouragement, his supporters stormed the Congress, paving the way for more scandals and legal battles. Out of office, he continues to face court battles over business practices, alleged misuse of classified information, and multiple indictments connected to his supporters' alleged insurrection.

Some of these are still ongoing. We look forward to seeing how American political scientists will rationalize having a convicted felon occupy their White House—even as they gallivant around Africa to teach, lecture, exhort, and cajole.

Despite his loss and all the scandals and lawsuits, Trump maintained his grip on the Republican Party. He used it to craft his comeback masterfully.

A populist by nature, rather than relying on legacy media like CNN, NBC, Fox, etc., Trump chose the alternative media as his sanctuary and used them to appeal to his reverential supporters as a persecuted Messiah, stoically carrying the Cross of the Downtrodden, the Discontented, the Oppressed, the Unemployed, the Marginalized, and other adherents who will buy into his BS.

Platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and podcasters like Tuckson and Joe Rogan joined forces to craft a narrative of institutional distrust, freedom of speech, and anti-establishment rhetoric that mirrored Trump’s own abrasive, brash, and facts-be-damned messaging.

It was a marriage made in Paradise. These platforms provided Trump with a direct line to his adoring supporters.

Legacy media did not help matters as they increasingly became totalitarian and mercilessly and relentlessly pushed their very narrow-view ideological views and attempted to shove them down the throat of humanity.

In a manner that would have pleased Orwellian Thought Police (Thinkpol in Newspeak), they banned and deplatformed everyone who disagreed with them.

No one told us why some faceless coders at Google and Facebook suddenly invested themselves with the power to tell us how to think, but they did and abused it.

I abandoned Facebook the very first time it sent me a warning. A reptilian-looking character like Zuckerberg does not have the qualifications to instruct me on how to think.

The tragedy, unacknowledged by the Fascist wannabees like Google and Facebook and the lying pundits on the BBC, CNN, and the rest of the legacy media, is that the train has left the station.

We would never know why the delusional talking heads and the insufferable stenographers who masquerade as journalists at the BBC and CNN and the entire Western media ecosystem never realize that most rational human beings have abandoned their lying platforms and are getting their news and information from reasonable and intelligent people who proved themselves reliable.

In my case, I search for Alastair Crooke and Dr. Gilbert Doctorow on geopolitical matters. I collaborate their analyses with official statements from direct sources - websites of the governments of Iran, China, and Russia. On Military matters, I defer to the inimitable Andrei Martyanov every time. On economic issues, I look up to the redeemed Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

Unlike his opponent, who enjoyed uncritical, even fawning adoration from the legacy media, Trump was helped by high-profile endorsements from figures like Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson.

This is clever because, unlike mainstream outlets such as CNN, ABC, and NBC, which struggled to maintain viewership, those platforms experienced exponential growth.

For example, Joe Rogan’s podcast regularly pulled in millions of listeners per episode, easily dwarfing the viewership of legacy news networks. Carlson’s news show on X boasted audience figures that often reached beyond 10 million views per episode. No legacy media even come close.

It remains a wonder how the Establishment could be so blind as not to notice in 2024 that Alternative Media, reaching millions, has become many people's only trusted source of information.

Unlike Kamala Harris, who is encumbered by the burden of the establishment and did not dare stray too far from his boss's disastrous policies (endless wars), Trump appeals directly to his supporters with his flamboyant and often outlandish bombasts. His raw, emotive grandstanding reached an almost mythical level among his supporters, many of whom view him with near-religious reverence.

We will never know how a billionaire pulled it off, but Trump’s fans see him as one lone ranger fighting for them and their cause. They view him as a protector of “traditional” America, a symbolic force fighting against a liberal agenda by Woke Ideologists who know no boundary as they relentlessly push their distorted version of biological and cultural realities.

Trump’s rallies, live-streamed and shared by millions online, feel more like revival meetings than political events. Supporters chant, “Trump! Trump! Trump!” and hold signs that read, “God Sent Trump.”

Trump speaks brashly, even profanely, which certainly resonates with voters who feel overlooked by Washington elites who speak down to them and cannot articulate anything beyond one-liners.

It helped Trump that his cackling opponent had an IQ not high enough to light a Christmas tree bulb. What the managers of the Legacy media asked of us is to suspend our memory, shut down all our thinking facilities, and pretend that we never see how abysmally Kamala Harris performed during her initial presidential run in the 2020 Democratic primary when she was underwhelming, and was marked by inconsistent messaging and lackluster polling numbers. She quickly faltered as she failed to maintain a cohesive platform that resonated with a broad base of voters. Her support peaked at around 15% in mid-2019 and quickly dropped to around 3-4%. She folded her tent before the primaries.

Trump’s cause was certainly not hurt when, on the eve of the election, Joe Rogan, the nation’s most-listened-to podcaster, announced that he was endorsing the former President, “Rogan, in a post on X promoting his interview with Trump supporter Elon Musk, made a compelling case for the Republican presidential nominee and said, “I agree with him every step of the way.”

“For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump,” he added.” - https://time.com/7172132/joe-rogan-trump-endorsement/

One of today’s wonders is how anyone with a brain could fail to notice how far from reality the leaders and the media in the West have become.

Visiting Europe and watching the news there these days is quite an experience. Europeans chose to create and live in their parallel universe, millions of miles from reality. It does not help matter that unelected EU bureaucrats have hijacked almost every aspect of life. These EUcrats banned Europeans from watching alternative news media.

It baffles greatly that Europeans sheepishly went along.

America mercifully did not descend into the levels of Europe before they decided to act.

As we said at the onset, we have no horse in American presidential races.

However, the country's importance will continue to affect our lives deeply.

Let us conclude this piece with two observations: one American, “End of Empire? Trump’s Return and the Mirage of Peace,”: “Trump’s don't call it a comeback, coupled with GOP control over the Senate and House, is being hailed as a “people’s revolution.” The headlines scream it’s a rejection of woke ideology, an overturning of the malignant neoliberal order. But here’s the real question lurking beneath the confetti: could this seismic shift mean an end to America’s forever wars, or will it be just another chapter in the empire’s well-rehearsed script?

Visiting Europe and watching the news there these days is quite an experience. Europeans chose to create and live in their parallel universe, millions of miles from reality. It does not help matter that unelected EU bureaucrats have hijacked almost every aspect of life...

Let’s remember, during his first term, Trump flirted with the idea of scaling down America’s military footprint, inciting the Deep State’s ire at every turn. He talked about “America First” while the war machine, entrenched in its addiction to foreign intervention, clawed at his ambitions. Now, he’s back. The Republican sweep is a mandate, but is it a mandate for peace? Or merely a permission slip for the military-industrial complex to pivot toward new, more profitable theaters of conflict?

Consider the stakes. America’s multi-trillion-dollar adventures across the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia haven’t spread democracy or freedom, they’ve cultivated proxy wars, shattered economies, and filled the coffers of defense giants. Under Biden-Harris, the empire doubled down on NATO expansion, funneled billions into Ukraine, and heightened tensions with Beijing and Moscow what feels like milliseconds to doomdsday midnight. The military behemoth stayed fed, while America’s own infrastructure crumbled. And yet, here we are, being asked to believe that the empire will voluntarily shrink?

The real test lies not in Trump’s rhetoric but in his willingness to dismantle Washington’s holy grails: the CIA, the Pentagon, and a State Department dripping with interventionist zeal. If he’s serious, he’ll have to untangle America from the web of alliances and proxy wars that have propped up its global reach for decades. But the GOP’s hawkish underbelly looms, and history tells us that even the loudest calls for “peace” can be diluted into controlled populism.

Meanwhile, the world is no longer waiting for the U.S. to grow tired of its own empire. From BRICS nations championing multipolarity to regional blocs asserting autonomy, the Global Majority is already building a new architecture, one where Washington’s veto power is waning. They’ve seen the puppet show before, presidents promising “peace” while signing defense contracts behind closed doors. If this era is truly different, America would need to turn inward, choosing roads and bridges over drone strikes, diplomacy over dominance.

And so, as Trump prepares to reclaim the Oval Office, the stakes are existential - not just for his legacy but for America’s very identity. Is this the twilight of empire? Or is it yet another flickering illusion in the theater of endless war?” - Gerry Nolan @TheIslanderNews

The second is by the astute Russian economist Sergei Glazyev:

“The ostriches are running away, Pax Americana is ending. The Leo Strauss sect, which ruled the USA and planned to establish a world dictatorship of the chosen few, is losing the election. The US deep state has no choice either - a repeat of the falsification will lead to a civil war and the collapse of the country. Pragmatists who recognize the fact of the transition to a new world economic order are coming to power in the USA. Brzezinski’s strategy of defeating Russia, destroying Iran and isolating China, as expected, only strengthened China, which has become a global leader. Together with India, it will form a new bipolar center of the new world economic system. The USA can integrate into it as another center of the world economy if it abandons imperialism and stops the global hybrid war. It is in the US national interest that Trump liberate the US from the ostrich [Straussian] sect that has saddled it. Bringing Washington’s policies in line with the US national interest will entail poisoning Europe and the fall of the anti-human traitorous regimes in Germany and France. As we predicted, the world hybrid war, started by the US power-financial elite for world domination in 2001 with the attack of the US intelligence services on the Twin Towers in New York, will end next year with the universal recognition of its defeat and the completion of the transition to a new world economic order. The world will become polycentric and polycurrency, the significance of national sovereignty and international law will be restored.

©️ Fẹ́mi Akọ́mọ‌láfẹ́

(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, and Social Commentator.)

My latest book, From Stamp to Click (it’s still a hello), is published and is available online at:

https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/from-stamp-to-click-its-still-hello

How to order it: https://www.africanbookscollective.com/how-to-order

My book, “Africa: A Continent on Bended Knees,” is available on:

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Betting the Farm on the Imaginary War

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William Schryver

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The Highway of Death, Iraq War, 1991

It has now been ten years since I first turned my attention to the necessity of prudent financial investments in order to both preserve and hopefully enlarge the modest amount of wealth I had accumulated up to that time. I began by attempting to identify the wisest and most discerning “experts” in the field. This was no easy trick.

Fortunately, in the ten years preceding my late-2014 awakening to the importance of financial and macroeconomic matters, I had spent several years discovering that most of western academia is a sham dominated by highly credentialled ignoramuses. Therefore I was alerted to the likelihood that the so-called “experts” in other fields of study were similarly intellectually impaired, regardless of their seemingly impressive curricula vitae, how many framed certificates hung on their wall, and the size of their “assets under management”.

That said, it became apparent over time that even those I initially identified as reliable “experts” could be well-informed most of the time, and yet still be subject to blind spots that rendered them susceptible to fatal errors which could often nullify their seemingly correct judgment of everything else.

In the context of financial matters, it must be understood that the “Quantitative Easing” and near-zero interest rates that followed on the heels of the so-called “Great Financial Crisis” of 2007-2009 was a tide that floated a great many boats captained by fools whose folly would not be recognized until the consequences of central bank profligacy were revealed several years further down the road.

Even so, most of the investment “gurus” whose analysis I had come to respect managed to successfully navigate the hurricane of price inflation that roared ashore in the wake of the Covid hysteria – a storm that was then followed by the Federal Reserve’s subsequent raising of interest rates in a frantic attempt to stem the inflationary tide.

Then World War Three began.

Of course, even at this point, almost three years into that war, few people recognize it for what it is. Even fewer recognize the degree to which the geopolitical and military parameters of war itself have been radically altered in comparison to what they were during the “American Unipolar Interregnum” that commenced with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Americans believe the “unipolar moment” continues essentially intact and unthreatened. In the highly insulated environs of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, faith in the overwhelming supremacy of American high-tech and military prowess remains almost entirely unshaken, notwithstanding the ever-increasing indications to the contrary – things about which I have been writing for several years now.

Most of the gods of American high-tech and finance, and those who worship them, simply cannot discern the degree to which American power in all its forms has steadily eroded over the course of the 21st century, and that this erosion has accelerated dramatically in recent years.

For most of the western elite and their acolytes, it is still early 1991, and Norman Schwarzkopf is leading a million-man army against the hapless Iraqis in a demonstration of military might that would finally expunge the bitter humiliation of Vietnam from the American psyche.

Such people have religiously embraced the Hollywood fantasies of unassailable American superpower dominance. And given the reality that Ukraine and Israel are considered merely appendages of this assumed American military supremacy, the eastern European and Levantine theaters of World War Three have given rise to extreme examples of an unprecedented tsunami of propaganda I have been wont to call “The Imaginary War”.

This phrase I coined in the early stages of the war in Ukraine has its origins in something allegedly said by an unnamed Israeli general in the aftermath of the 2006 war in southern Lebanon – a war whose ultimate outcome was a decisive strategic defeat for Israel, but which the Israelis subsequently attempted to spin into a great victory. It was in this context that the Israeli general reportedly said, “If you can’t win a real war, win an imaginary one.”

This is precisely the narrative-building approach we have seen in Ukraine over the past two-plus years.

The same types of things are believed about China, its culture, and its military capabilities.

And, of course, even greater derision is directed towards the Iranians and the North Koreans.

Just today I read a short article from a fairly prominent Wall Street hedge fund CIO, in which he wrote the following paragraph of utterly fictitious (and yet widely believed) nonsense:

Israel sent 100 aircraft for a 2000km flight to attack Tehran. Zero were shot down. First, the IDF took out Iran’s air defenses. Those Russian S-300 anti-aircraft systems can now be found disassembled in large craters through the region (Russia’s newer S-400 system underperformed expectations in Ukraine and the S-500 is in test phase). With Iran’s air defenses offline, Israeli aircraft had their way with whatever targets they chose in Tehran. They skipped over the mullahs this time. Next time who knows. Such is the nature of warfare for those with superior tech. 

Never mind that literally ALL of his assertions are demonstrably false – this would-be titan of American finance intends to bet the farm on the fallacious assumptions of the imaginary wars he has convinced himself are actually taking place.

Of course, both the major party candidates for President, almost the entirety of the United States Congress, and much of the sprawling swamp of American government bureaucracy in Washington are similarly convinced of the indomitability of American imperial military might, and they are anxious to teach the current “axis of evil” in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran a lesson they will not soon forget.

In the end – and it will come sooner than later – the only thing that will not be soon forgotten is how briefly the American unipolar moment endured, and how shockingly and suddenly it all came crashing down.

Tip Jar FYI: Over the life of this blog, a few generous people have pledged some money to support it. But I have never required a paid subscription to read my stuff. And I still won’t. However, I have now “enabled” subscriptions purely as a means by which, if people are so inclined, they may support me with whatever amount they so choose. I also include a “Tip Jar” link in every post, if you’d like to go that route. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s purely voluntary. Everyone will still be able to read everything I write. For all of you who have previously pledged to support this blog, I express my genuine gratitude. I hope my writing has been informative in some small manner and aided you in your quest to understand our crazy world a little better. — Will Schryver

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  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

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Multipolarity, Iran’s coming retaliation, & how these next escalations will impact the class struggle

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Rainear Shea
RAINER'S NEWSLETTER

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The era of multipolarity has come; there’s no undoing this, that’s simply the historical stage we’ve entered into. And the emergence of this geopolitical age has contributed to a broader trend within the evolution of class struggle: the trend where revolutions have transitioned away from the form they mainly existed in during the Russian revolution, and civil wars have taken on a larger role. Today, civil wars are more likely to start prior to the overthrow of a given state. As policing has grown more technologically advanced, and surveillance has invaded all aspects of life, the most successful rebellion method which subjugated people have recently utilized is a military one. A practice of exploiting the weaknesses within the oppressor’s panoptic spying systems, as Operation Al Aqsa Flood did.  [This is assuming the Hamas attack was indeed a surprise, and not a false flag, with the Netanyahu regime simply allowing it to happen to justify its genocide.—Ed]

Revolts like this one have been happening since the slave uprisings of ancient times, but in today’s era, the tactics from these types of actions are more widely applicable than ever. When the same policing and surveillance tools that the “Israeli” Nazi state uses have been exported across the globe, class struggle needs to evolve accordingly. As the capitalist world becomes “Israelified,” the global proletariat is prompted to fight back in ways which resemble how the Palestinians have fought back. This is the type of confrontation that imperialism’s crises are bringing us towards.

The more our third world war escalates, the more the class struggle is going to include elements of this new paradigm, because the growth in contradictions always reveals things about the class struggle’s nature. For us in the empire’s core to win our class war, we must acclimate to this strategic reality. We need to take example from anti-imperialists like Khamenei, who reject the arguments of those that seek a false “peace” with the imperialist enemy. They know that a future can only be built if they defeat the enemy by any means necessary. This is why Khamenei has called for a retaliation that will truly establish deterrence, repudiating Iran’s U.S.-friendly political faction.

but in the sense that reactionary ultraviolent actors will increasingly bring chaos to our society. The bourgeois state is taking advantage of the poverty it’s engineered, cultivating criminal gangs that act to destabilize our social structure. It’s perpetuating shootings, assaults, and the other anti-social acts that are common in modern America, while creating violent political “counter-gangs” on both the left and the right. After this election, these counter-gangs will be mobilized, creating spectacles of unrest that justify new repressive measures. 

fortify our organizations, the state will subdue us, and fascism will pursue its next destructive schemes without internal opposition. There’s a limit to what imperialism and fascism can do, since Eurasia has become so strong and many countries are under anti-imperialist control; but the forces of reaction maintain the ability to wipe out much of humanity. They’re exterminating hundreds of thousands in Gaza right now, and they’ll expand this extermination campaign into as many places as they can. 

report from last summer by the neocon think tank the Eurasia Group listed these countries as among the geopolitical “swing states,” the players that have potential to come into China’s orbit. After the work that Modi and Lula just did to assist in the hybrid war against BRICS, it’s less likely that Washington will try to overthrow them, because they’ve shown themselves to be valuable assets.

attacked a Turkish defense company at the same moment when Turkey was closest to joining BRICS. This operation was about sending a message: whoever tries to build an economy that’s separate from the United States won’t be allowed to live in peace. This was a threat towards countries like India, one which likely helped push India to betray Turkey.

For now, Washington and its proxies have managed to delay Turkey’s transition away from U.S. dependence, while keeping Venezuela and Pakistan limited in their ability to circumvent Washington’s sanctions. But this is not the end of the story, and the actions Iran will soon take are going to give everyone else more openings to defy the hegemon.

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And because the empire has blocked Turkey’s people from accessing the benefits of BRICS, Turkey’s anti-imperialist mass momentum can only grow.

Over 80% of Turks feel that the country is in an economic crisis, and that’s made the government try to make up for its past errors; raided the port where goods to “Israel” were being shipped. In Iran, there’s another mass effort to pressure the government into resisting imperialism. Its focus is not on combating the government as a whole, but on empowering one political element: Khamenei’s faction. It’s only the reformer faction, represented by Iran’s president Pezeshkian, that Iran’s anti-imperialist masses are angry at. The thing which provoked their wrath was when Nasrallah got assassinated, and then much attention came upon Pezeshkian over his stance that Iran shouldn’t retaliate. It was now undeniable that the “peace deal” which Pezeshkian had made with Netanyahu in July—where Netanyahu promised a ceasefire in Lebanon if Iran didn’t retaliate for Haniyah’s assassination—was totally fake.

The way that Russia has beaten the United States is by understanding economics better than its enemy. As Michael Hudson concluded last year, the U.S. ruling class is illiterate about some of the most basic laws of economics. And this has made it unable to manage the Ukraine war’s blowback, like how Russia has.

Iran’s internal power struggle isn’t over yet, though. The imperialists want to assassinate Khamenei next, as is apparent from the kinds of psyops that they’ve been putting forth about Iran. The empire’s propagandists have been codedly calling for Khamenei’s death, and this is a direct reaction to his statement that a major retaliation must come. As was explained last week by Ruslan, the Iranian communist who’s been working to repudiate the reformer faction’s arguments:

Ayatollah Khamenei's speech calling for retaliation has left all the Pezeshkian-Ghalibaf "National Consensus" coalition and foreign-backed Opposition people completely dumb-founded. I'll explain why and what all of this means…Khamenei clearly outlined in his speech that indeed Israel is greatly exaggerating the impact of their attack, but we must not underestimate the Israelis either. He is correct as passing this off & not retaliating allows Israel to cross yet another red line…Some politicians began scrambling and echoing Khamenei's tune, like the Head of the Judiciary, Ejei. However, the entire "National Consensus" Pezeshkian-Ghalibaf alliance began changing his words and presenting them as a call not to retaliate or to retaliate at a later date…

The foreign-backed Opposition and channels like BBC Persian and Iran International are now shocked as well, saying that this must be a sign that Ayatollah Khamenei is suffering from “ill health” and has “lost his mind.” Immediately after the speech, New York Times published an article saying Khamenei is “about to die”, giving his enemies (both implicit & explicit) in Iran an excuse to kill him and get away with it. Aka Westophiles implement a similar action as to what likely happened to Raisi. Opposition channels are even analysing his speech saying “you can hear impending death in Khamenei's voice”. They're essentially calling for his assassination now.

Ruslan’s conclusion was that in order to truly ensure the imperial collaborators lose, Iran must undergo significant socialistic economic reforms. This is partly because such policies would disempower the Pezeshkian-aligned bourgeois actors who’ve been working to undo Iran’s proletarian gains. It’s also because in order to have an economy that could handle a full confrontation with the Zionists and the imperialists, Iran will need to get rid of its economy’s neoliberal aspects. To attain a war economy, Iran must do what Russia has done, and implement major nationalizations. 

For everyone who seeks to defeat the hegemon, this lesson is crucial to internalize, because economics must be considered while waging any war. As our allies abroad bring the imperial state closer to collapse, and our class war gets closer to its most intense phase, we must account for this strategic reality. We must prepare to outmaneuver our adversary in the economic realm, which will also get us in place to build the post-revolution society.

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The way that Russia has beaten the United States is by understanding economics better than its enemy. As Michael Hudson concluded last year, the U.S. ruling class is illiterate about some of the most basic laws of economics. And this has made it unable to manage the Ukraine war’s blowback, like how Russia has:

They had never dreamed that Russia would have an alternative or China would have an alternative as to what to do. And that’s because they don’t think of economics in the United States as a system. For them, a market exists without government playing any role at all, without policy playing any role at all…this free enterprise market idea that governments should not play any role at all, any subsidy, and certainly shouldn’t tax, this anti-government idea has put blinders on American foreign policy, so they have no imagination that Russia could do exactly what [Alex] is talking about, that, of course, they’ve done, as any reasonable person would have done, as China has done. That’s the irony of all this.

The outcome is that while Washington’s enemies have continued to grow stronger—and have done so in part because of the sanctions—Washington has come to oversee a country whose collapse is accelerating. Hudson has concluded that as long as the U.S. remains tied into the imperialist system, its only trajectory can be downward:

There is no right thing that the United States can do. It’s in a trap. It’s in what economists call the optimum position. Mathematicians say it’s optimum because whatever you do is going to make things worse. And the United States has painted itself into a corner. And the only way it could get out of the corner would be to be a different kind of a country, a different kind of an economy. For instance, as long as the United States has the enormous military spending throughout the rest of the world, that’s going to be pumping dollars into the world economy. And if other countries do not relend this money to the United States Treasury or the US economy, then the dollar is going to go down and down. The United States can’t really compete given the way in which it’s structured, its medical care and its housing and its finance.

As I’ve written about in the past, the imperial state has great hubris when it comes to the military aspect of its warfare, and this overconfidence could be its undoing. The strategists behind the domestic counterinsurgency have created their plans based on how they’ve waged wars abroad, meaning they’ll repeat their past mistakes: underestimating the local population, not anticipating the blowback from their aggressions, embarking on grand impractical schemes. The war with Russia has revealed another kind of self-defeating arrogance among these actors: the belief that no system could ever be more effective than the “free market” monopolist order. 

Will Iran take the same path that Russia has, and commit to a resistance war while sidelining the neoliberal elements? It’s looking more likely each day, but we can’t be complacent. We must help ensure the anti-imperialist camp’s victory, and work to ruin our own government’s plans for war. We must increase our mobilizations against the imperial project, while building cadres and networks which have the material basis for winning. These are the strategic lessons to take from Khamenei’s recent struggles: reject the notions of peace through appeasement, and account for the economic question. If we let these ideas guide our next actions, we’ll be able to take advantage of the opportunities before us.

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Support for Jill Stein Triggers Democrats Meltdown! w/ Kshama Sawant

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The Jimmy Dore Show

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"We will cost Kamala the race!"

Support for Jill Stein Triggers Democrats Meltdown! w/ Kshama Sawant
Jimmy Dore Show

Nov 2, 2024 #TheJimmyDoreShow
The Michigan vote in 2024 may prove a major turning point for political strategy in US elections.

Socialist activist Kshama Sawant lays out a new, better formulated strategy for third parties seeking to demolish the reigning and stunningly corrupt duopoly: Not to act simply as "alternative parties," but as "oppositional parties" at all times. The 2024 election, with its horrific historical backdrop of two major wars (one an indisputable and revolting genocide in Palestine supported by the US political and media establishment), imploding governance in the US and much of vassal Europe, and an incurable economic crisis detonated by imperialism's inability to resolve the overproduction crisis, offers third parties like Jill Stein's Green Party a unique opportunity to test this approach by helping defeat the candidacy of Democrat party nominee Kamala Harris, says Kshama Sawant. And we think she is absolutely right.  People who regard themselves as on "the left" must completely abandon the duopoly, and avoid the Democrat Party curse, the proven historical graveyard of all progressive movements. 

"You wanna call us a spoiler, fine. We're here to ruin your party (as you deserve)."


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The Revolution Examined—Portugal: The Unfinished Revolution

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An armored vehicle practically covered with jubilant people demonstrate the Portuguese masses' support for the army coup against the Salazar dictatorship in April 1974. The military takeover did not involve bloodshed.

Portugal: The Unfinished Revolution
By Rosemary Elizabeth Galli (Posted Jun 26, 2010)

Ronald H. Chilcote.  The Portuguese Revolution: State and Class in the Transition to Democracy.  Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010.  xix + 316 pp.  $79.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7425-6792-4.

The Portuguese Revolution that brought regime change on April 25, 1974, did not bring about a revolution: the popular revolutionary elements that tried to move the events of 1974-75 toward Socialism only challenged the capitalist mode of production.  This is the thrust of Ronald H. Chilcote’s important new work.  Chilcote’s previous work has spanned the Lusophone world, beginning with discussions of Portugal and Portuguese Africa, to publication of documents of the Luso-African national liberation movements and later commentary on Amilcar Cabral to studies of the Brazilian Communist Party and northeastern elites to his best-known works on comparative political economy.  This new work continues an exploration of the themes of authoritarianism and resistance and applies the conceptual apparatus prominent in his later texts.  What Chilcote clearly shows is that historical forces favored dismantling the Portuguese world economy based on African exploitation in order to facilitate Portugal’s integration into the European Community.  Prominent among these forces was the state bureaucracy in alliance with the modernizing, internationally connected segment of Portuguese capital.  Nonetheless, the revolutionary moment of resistance had import and impact far beyond 1974-75 and Portugal.

The fall of Fascism, subsequent nationalizations, the entrance of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) into government, the rise of workers’ commissions, the mobilization of urban and rural protest, and land occupations held the world in thrall, if only for a short time.  In the end, the corporatist bureaucratic state apparatus and its economic partners emerged renewed, chastened, and not unscathed.  Chilcote singles out the durability and continuity of the state apparatus as a major factor in the prevailing hegemonic bloc and blames the fractiousness of the Left for failing to replace it.  Nevertheless, in the final analysis, the attempts to create a counter-hegemonic bloc paved the way for democratic, pluralistic politics in Portugal.

This review focuses on those aspects of Chilcote’s research and analysis that this reviewer considers relevant for scholars of Luso-Africa, leaving others to examine it from different perspectives.  In the introduction to part 1, Chilcote outlines the theoretical concepts that frame his investigation.  He draws primary inspiration from such political thinkers as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Antonio Gramsci, and Nicos Poulantzas, who have also pondered other historical transitions.  Central to his analysis are such issues as the relationship of state power to class relations, ruling class hegemony, and counter-hegemony posed by revolutionary struggle.  In chapter 1, he traces the emergence of capitalism in Portugal against the backdrop of European history by delineating the major debates among Portuguese historians around the timing, motivations, and principal factors in the transition from feudalism to capitalism.  In later chapters, he repeats this exercise as he assesses the possibilities for a transition from capitalism to Socialism during1974-75 and after.

In the center, Captain Salgueiro Maia, one of the officers who led the revolutionary forces on April 25, 1974. (Photo: Alfredo Cunha)

Throughout part 1, Chilcote focuses on the dominant role of the state across Portuguese history.  He finds a remarkable continuity of authoritarian structures even at the turbulent end of the twentieth century.  Drawing largely on the works of Manuel de Lucena (1967-91), he shows how Salazarian corporatist forms survived the 1974-75 revolution.  Students of Lusophone Africa will be familiar with the durability of the authoritarian model of governance in postindependent Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique, described in the case of the latter two countries by this reviewer among other scholars.1  Just as Portugal, in the mid-1970s, Lusophone Africans experienced a kind of Socialism without a solid Socialist movement and still, in the era of liberalization and structural adjustment, their governments retain corporatist features.  For example, a recent compendium documents how, in post-Socialist Mozambique, the FRELIMO (Liberation Front of Mozambique) government maintained its monopoly position through tight control over civil society by limiting political space and, consequently, political participation.  One of the essays reveals how, even after the abandonment of mass organizations, the government still subordinates newly formed youth groups.2

Whatever may be said of the "Carnation Revolution", the Portuguese revolution of 1974 remains an encouraging example of an attempt at serious social change without internecine bloodshed and pathological hatreds. Or maybe the lesson is that real social change cannot be wrought without a great deal of fierce struggle.

Another area of particular interest for Luso-African scholars is Chilcote’s description of the prominent economic groupings linked to Salazar’s New State (1926-74) as many of them dominated colonial economies over nearly five decades.  Some, especially in the banking sector, reappear not only in postrevolution Portugal but also in post-Socialist Lusophone Africa.  Some examples are the Grupo Entreposto, Banco Português do Atlântico, Seguros Mundial-Confiança, Marconi, Grupo Champalimaud, and Grupo Espírito Santo.  Several of the largest groupings represent international as well as national capital.  From Chilcote’s perspective, the corporatist state has provided the order and stability necessary for the rise and development of capitalism and its endurance even in times of “revolution.”

Part 2 is an examination of the failure of the Portuguese Revolution to lead to Socialism and opens an enquiry into the latest political-economic configuration.   Chapter 5 describes the April 25 coup led by the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA) in 1974, but Chilcote disclaims trying to write a definitive account.  Two MFA officers of my acquaintance attributed the movement’s origins to a clandestine meeting of middle-level officers in the military headquarters in Bissau during the war for national liberation.  Yet Chilcote makes clear that there were a number of meetings among different dissident groups in the military in different places beginning in 1973.  Without a doubt, the battles for independence and the realization that the war in Guinea-Bissau, where most of the fighting took place, was being lost were important factors in the officers’ decision to try to transform Portugal.  The change they sought was made explicit in the MFA’s political program: it “aimed at democracy, decolonization and development” (p. 93).  By 1975, one of these goals was accomplished, decolonization.  The MFA split over the issue of support for radical popular movements ready to go forward toward Socialism.  Chilcote sees the November 25, 1975, countercoup as a reaffirmation of the Portuguese state over the economy and society, including the military.

In the chapters that follow, 6 through 8, Chilcote deepens the analysis by looking in detail at the MFA, the political parties, the popular movements, and their struggle with the older order.  Chapter 8 is particularly interesting as it dissects the class origins of the state apparatus and the various elements of Portuguese capital in battle to maintain power and influence.  The discussion also examines the complex class relations in rural society and the labor movement.  In chapter 9, Chilcote tackles the intriguing question of whether Socialism could have provided the structures and strategies to balance these class relations.  He notes the many forms of Socialism that have been tried historically and concludes that, even during the most revolutionary moments of 1974-75, there was little advance toward a Socialist mode of production.  The “islands of Socialism” favored by the PCP underestimated the strength of capitalist control over markets.  The Left, in general, was too focused on nationalization as the primary road to Socialism.

Chapter 10 looks at the period of parliamentary democracy since November 25, 1975.  It shows the gradual return of moderate and conservative forces that eliminated any vestiges of a Socialist future.  What, then, are the lessons of the Portuguese “revolution”?  In his final chapter, Chilcote draws these lessons, some of which are pertinent to the Socialist experiences of Lusophone Africa.  First of all, a revolution cannot proceed from the top-down unless the leadership is fully committed to popular aspirations.  In the case of Portugal, maneuvering rather than unity among the Communist and Socialist parties led to popular distrust.  Moreover, the parties chose to work through existing state structures rather than to transform them.  Their leadership was unprepared for revolutionary practices and propagated “ideological mystification,” which undermined popular initiative (p. 262).  Finally, the experiments with socialized forms of production within rural and industrial cooperatives, including self-management, led to super-exploitation of producers.  In closing his book, Chilcote gives the last word to Maurice Brinton, as quoted by Charles Reeve (pseudonym Jorge Valadas), on these so-called islands of Socialism: “In Portugal the price paid for the enhanced internal democracy of certain workshops or farms was often a lengthening of the working day, or an intensification of the labour process to ‘allow’ the self-managed unit to remain economically viable.  In this sense islands of self-management became islands of capitalist recuperation” (p. 262).3

In The Portuguese Revolution, Chilcote has presented not only a wealth of information including the debates inside and outside of Portugal on the events of 1974-75 and its impact but also a model of how to analyze the dynamics of revolutionary struggle in the context of an enduring yet changing political economy.

Notes

Peoples’ Spaces and State Spaces: Land and Governance in Mozambique (Lanham and Oxford: Lexington Press, 2003).

2  Luis de Brito, Carlos Castel Branco, Sergio Chichava, and Antonio Francisco, eds., Cidadania e Governação em Moçambique (Maputo: IESE, 2009).  The essay referred to is by Adriano Biza on youth associations and the state in Mozambique.

3  Charles Reeve, L’experience portugaise: la conception putschiste de la revolution sociale(Paris: Spartacus, 1976), 21.

Rosemary Elizabeth Galli.  This article was first published in H-Luso-Africa (June 2010) under a Creative Commons license.
SOURCE (in MRONLINE): https://mronline.org/2010/06/26/portugal-the-unfinished-revolution/


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  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
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