Was the forced resignation of Trump’s National Security Advisor, General Mike Flynn, evidence of an attempted “coup” by the Deep State, as many anti-imperialists claim?[1]
According to the “coup” conspiracy theory, the intelligence community wants to put the US and Russia on a collision course leading to WWIII, but thankfully world peace will be saved by collaboration between Trump and Putin, the heroes of this fable. This imaginary scenario was obviously concocted by experienced Russian propaganda services under the orders of former KGB operative Putin, and it is being propagated by Western Leftists nostalgic for Stalin’s Soviet Union. Their justifiable hatred of ‘our own’ U.S. imperialism turns them into ‘one-way anti-imperialists,’ victims of the Cold War fallacy that “the enemies of our enemies are friends.”
The reality is that within today’s U.S. government there is an internal conflict between two of our enemies: 1) an incompetent, far-right, ideology-driven Trump White House (Flynn was known as an off-the-wall Islamophobe) and 2) an “intelligence community” made up of sophisticated professional imperialist spies, assassins and coup-makers. The Trump gang represents nationalist crony capitalism, and it is ready to make ‘deals’ with similar regimes from Putin to the murderous Duterte (Trump’s personal favorite). The CIA represents the established Washington consensus based on neo-liberal globalization (capitalist internationalism). The “coup” theory is based on warmed-up, leftover Cold-War propaganda depicting Russia as the party of “peaceful coexistence.”
During the Cold War, Russia at least pretended to be “Communist,” and many Leftists courageously but naively rose to defend it against U.S. imperialism. But today, under Putin, Russia is a reactionary, nationalist (anti-Semitic), mafia-capitalist dictatorship which has abolished all the social benefits once provided by the Soviet regime — retaining only the Stalinist repressive apparatus (the Deep State). Those who defend it are best described as ‘Zombie Stalinists.’
In case you have any doubts, consider this. Putin has long demonstrated his support for the election of LePen’s National Front in France and of proto-fascist parties in Austria, the Netherlands and elsewhere. It is normal that Putin’s Russia did its best to get Trump elected (just as the U.S. interferes with elections, e.g. Ukraine) and that together they will try to make ‘deals.’ Birds of a feather flock together. Obviously, all these birds are vultures.
Today, we live in a multi-imperialist world, where the rivalries (and opportunistic alliances) between nationalist crony-capitalist states are superseding the domination of international capital regulated by the IMF, WTF, World Bank and various multinational treaties like NAFTA. This post-1989 New World Order, once known on the Left as “Empire,” is crumbling. In today’s New World Disorder, it is ‘every many for himself.’ War is no longer a “threat.” Permanent world war is a daily reality in places like the Middle East and Ukraine, where multiple rival imperialisms, regional and supranational intervene in local conflicts.
All these capitalist-imperialist states (ans proto-states like Isis) are our enemies. They are the enemies of the global 99%, they are the enemies of women and of human rights. They are all racists who repress their internal minority groups. They are all state terrorists who massacre civilians. They can never be our “friends!”
Misguided Leftist who propagate self-contradictory conspiracy theories to support Russia and her allies are what the Stalinists used to call “useful idiots.” In the name of one-sided anti-imperialism, they defend bloody dictatorships and ignore the simple truths of human rights and solidarity among the 99%. The ideology of one-way anti-imperialism provoked splits in the movements against the Vietnam and later the war in Iraq. Let us not allow this ideology to divert our anti-Trump resistance at a crucial and promising moment when previously-divided social movements are spontaneously uniting: for example in defense of Muslim immigrants, the most vulnerable among us.
***
Now for the good news. The internal struggle between Trump and the “intelligence community” is not evidence of a coup but the sign of a much-welcome split within the ruling classes, a disunity which reveals their weaknesses and reflects the growing strength of the popular anti-Trump movement. This split offers us new opportunities: for example we can now be seen and heard in the media. A similar split among the rulers opened up back in the Sixties, under the pressure of our Civil Rights/Black Liberation, anti-Vietnam-war, and student movements which magnified our strength.
More good news. Today’s self-organized resistance movement has at long last succeeded in uniting women, blacks, minorities, low-wage workers, lgbt folks on the old Wobblie principle that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all.’ This ‘not our president’ network also has allies within the federal bureaucracy and among local Democrats (but not in the neo-liberal party leadership). Wherever it may lead (or fall apart, or be repressed) it is already historical.
So let’s keep our eyes on the prize and not get caught up paranoid plots. It is not our job to defend one right-wing dictator against another but to unite with the global 99% against them all.
[1]https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/16/greenwald_empowering_the_deep_state_to
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8 Comments
Just finished reading Mike Lofgren’s THE DEEP STATE: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government (NY: Penguin, 2016, paper). Highly recommended for insights into this subject by a Capital Hill staffer of some three decades.
This diatribe reads like a Trump speech.
Where is the evidence that President Putin supports the French National Front and European proto-fascist parties? Only on CNN. Trump, on the other hand, gets his facts from Fox News. And where is the evidence that President Putin supported Trump? The answer, here too, is CNN and the rest of the establishment media.
Russia is a dictatorship! Please define. The Russian government is antisemitic? Evidence please. Were not those social benefits abolished under President Yeltsin as prescribed by Washington? And was it not also that prescription that led directly to the Russian state being taken over by the mafia. And is it not true that under President Putin’s leadership the Russian state has been slowly wresting control back from the mafia? In what way is Russia ‘reactionary’? Is it that they have reacted to NATO threats? Is it that Russia has intervened in Syria in accordance with international law and in an attempt to uphold that law?
Please tell me what genuine criticism I am defending Russia against and I will put my zombie Stalinist hat on (having first researched what the hell a Stalinist may or not be).
good questions here – do you think you will get answers??
No answers.
no surprise.
The fact is Putins’s , ‘ regime’ is just as capitalist as the US is, because we made it so. But Putin’s use of military force has been completely defensive and responsive to the will of the Russian people. Whereas, NATO, under US leadership has been completely aggressive , imperialistic and provocative – responsible to no one but the military industrial complex. The mainstream media has cooperated by weaving a web of lies that has attempted to foment Russophobia in all who consume their trash.
There is absolutely no threat to peace coming from Russia. They no to well what it cost their people to save the ungrateful world from the Nazis.
And much of the now-estalblished, non-mainstream media have become mere appendages of the mainstream media. They squirm to effect a semblance of non-mainstreamness while adopting both the language and the tropes of the mainstream. Where is the non-mainstream-media-sourced evidence to back the opinion in Greeman’s article?
those who argue against the msnbc, cnn etc, russia bashing are not all “useful idiots.” do you see no middle ground between those who seem to want war with russiai and your idiots?