There is no shortage of lamentations, disbelief, and outrage in the Western media over the madness of the US government under Trump, its gangster-style politics, and the threat it poses to “our democracies,” both in the US and in allied countries.

Countless “pillars” of moral integrity and intellectual depth are concerned about “the collapse of the world order.” The Swedish Foreign Minister whines, “I do not want to live in a world where there are great powers that do as they please.” The Archbishop of the US Military Services is concerned that military personnel “could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to do something that’s morally questionable,” if the US tries to take control of Greenland by force. 

Yes, the kidnapping of President Maduro of Venezuela was illegal, illegitimate, and gangster-like. Yes, the prospects of an American occupation of Greenland would be in violation of international law. Yes, the current US administration supports illegitimate violence, domestically and internationally. Yes, it is also devoted to increasing corporate profits, without any signs of being interested in democracy, wellbeing of the general population, either domestically or internationally.

But, hey, what is new about this? Why so many people seem surprised? Why are we hearing so many complaints now? The US government has been kidnapping, torturing, and killing people as it pleases for decades, across the world. The US has been invading other countries, overthrowing regimes, setting up military bases, committing (or supporting the commission of) the worst atrocities, against any and every legal and moral principle, under both Democrats and Republicans. 

In many of these aggressive wars, the US was given support (direct or indirect) by its faithful lapdogs – most EU and NATO countries. The US (with its political system, which was designed to prevent a meaningful democracy), and the NATO alliance (arguably the largest terrorist organization in human history), have been terrorizing the world for decades, bringing suffering and death to hundreds of millions of people. None of that seems to have troubled most Western politicians, ecclesiastical figures, the mainstream media, or their loyal intellectuals. There were not many crocodile tears about great powers doing as they please, nor much pointing to the deep immorality (monstrosity sound a far more apt word) of those actions.

This is common knowledge for everyone who wants to know something about (real) history. So why so many lamentations these days? What has changed?

The difference is that the devil has come (back) home. After its incalculable massacres around the globe, the riders of the apocalypse are knocking on the doors of Western countries. Many Danes are shocked at the prospect of Greenland being taken away from them. However, not many voiced their shock when Denmark participated in the illegal NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, or when it recognized the independence of Kosovo, which was put under the effective US control as a result of the bombing. There is, of course, a huge difference – that was happening to “them,” but this is happening to “us.” All the stooges understand this high moral principle.

Most Europeans have followed, for decades, the dictates of the Empire as it has been destroying every principle of justice, legality, democracy, and human rights. All those who supported those criminal actions, and justified imperial aspirations, provided Putin (and everyone else) with a pretext of legitimacy for their own imperial goals. If the US took Kosovo from Serbia (with, among others, Danish approval), why can’t it take Greenland? The only argument Denmark can possibly advance for its right over Greenland is the same one the US is using – imperial expansion and occupation, and the traditional Western imperial imposition of racist and even genocidal policies against native populations.

However, it would not be fair to single out Denmark when virtually every major Western state has practiced extreme forms of racism and policies that often amounted to genocide, throughout modernity, against ethnic, racial and religious “others.” Various kinds of repressive measures (arguably much less brutal) have also been imposed against domestic population – the poor, as class “others.” In more recent times, those countries that supported illegal violence, or recognized the “independence” of new states (that are, in reality colonies or US military bases), as a result of imperial wars, signed a blank check – they have no moral right to protest if the same or some other imperial force decides to take over part of their territories. They agreed to that, they justified it in advance. 

Mainstream Western liberals are shocked by Trump, but all those who have not suffered permanent moral and intellectual damage know that liberal elites were doing or justifying the same kind of imperialism – just elsewhere and less honestly – masking oppression and monstrosities with nice words and fake pretenses. Western liberal political and intellectual elites have not been triggered by the murder of millions of people across the world through gangster-style invasions, criminal appropriations, and occupations of territories; on the contrary, many of them actively participated in or supported those monstrosities. They have been committed to imperial plunder, to the extermination of whoever stood in the way of their political and economic interests, to the suppression of democracy, free thought, and speech whenever these did not fit their agenda – all for the advancement of elite interests and higher corporate profits. Mainstream liberals like to occupy, overthrow democratically elected governments, plunder, repress, kidnap, torture, or kill, as long as it is done in a “civilized” manner, in the name of “freedom,” “democracy,” and “human rights.” When you slaughter – use gloves. 

The (corporate) liberal mainstream is not an alternative, and it never has been. It is simply a more “classy” way of implementing the same arrogant, violent, anti-democratic policies, both domestically and globally. What they are mostly worried is that Trump is giving greed and aggressive politics a bad name. Mainstream Western politics has never been about freedom, justice, or democracy; it has always been about ruthless imperial control, control over resources, and enriching the super-wealthy (the corporate sector) at the expense of the poor, and the rest of living beings on this planet. 

As a result, the (political) West has become a symbol of injustice, hypocrisy, and oppression. Treachery, ruthless capitalist exploitation, lawlessness, and racism are now returning like a boomerang. Trump and his regime are only open about all of that, their brutalities are easy to spot. The evil is unmasked. 

“But why criticize only the West?,” some will cry out. “Does this mean that Russia or China are alternatives?” No, they are not. However, they never pretended to be safe havens of democracy or strongholds of human rights, and neither does anyone seriously take them to stand for that. That is a major difference. A fake alternative (in this case, corporate-capitalist liberalism) is often, in the long-run, worse than the evil it claims to fight (old-fashioned authoritarianism or open corporate fascism), as it first mobilizes people, than wastes the energy, as it works toward the preservation of one corrupt and inhuman system, producing a sense of hopelessness. It sells poison as medicine, working, in the meantime, with the main evil to destroy real alternatives.

Democratic, progressive, and freedom-oriented people, movements, and ideas in the West have largely been defeated (for now, at least), and expelled from mainstream politics, culture, and media. They have been defeated by corporate fascism. 

What we need is a mobilization of all freedom- and democracy-oriented forces around the globe that will support one another. Those in the US or Europe fighting for justice, freedom, democracy – often simply for basic human dignity and a sense of reason – need support, just as those fighting for the same values in China, Australia, Iran, or any other place on the Earth. Those without privilege face an enormously powerful enemy, which is why they have to rely on their knowledge, solidarity, joint initiatives, and readiness for a long-term struggle in order to create conditions under which the destruction of the global capitalist system and imperial grasp will become realistic.

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