Cultural Blinders and the Wussy Worldwide Liberal
One of the mistakes which some political analysts make is to think that their enemies should be our enemies. … We have our own struggle, which we are conducting. We are grateful to the world for supporting our struggle, but nevertheless, we are an independent organization with its own policy - our attitude towards any country is determined by the attitude of that country to our struggle.
Nelson Mandela, New York City Town Hall, 1990.
Cultural Anti-Manifesto:
A few months ago, I participated online in a weekly game of Cards Against Humanity with family and family friends. To be inflammatory, I brought up some vaguely positive comment about Xi Jinping, and everyone united to gush upon the horrors of China’s actions in Xinjiang. Those 5 seconds of family drama have resurfaced again and again in my mind as we now watch Western & West associates turning thousands of Muslims into bloody paste yet again, an atom bomb of daily atrocities outshining any disingenuous State-Department-Backed “advocacy” for Uyghur interests. In an unrelated manner, the China issue simmered in some of their minds too. The next time they were in town, one of them brought up China’s social conservatism, specifically their views of transgender people. (If you haven’t paid attention, there’s been a bit of crackdown on LGBT expressions within China as Xi pinches out the influence of urbanized liberalism).
I am a transgender woman, the faggiest kind of fag, thus, to my friend, obviously, I should oppose China because I would not live the very fun and very gay life I pursue if I had been born in China. This caused me to lose my temper, and the conversation was pinned before anything more could be explained. She thought she had insulted me on a personal level, like an insult to the inherent womanhood of my soul or whatever, y’know, whatever idealist liberal clap trap is passing itself off as gender theory today. But it had nothing to do with a personal slight. Let me explain why I lost my temper:
When we invaded Afghanistan, this was often defended in the name of Women’s Rights. Americans are here to liberate the women from the Niqab and the beatings, the Taliban are here to enslave them, this is why you should be rooting for our military. When the occupation collapsed, and the Taliban retook the urban centers e.g. Kabul, the stories that have dripped out have centered on the experiences of urban women seeing their rights stripped away - this is why you should root for us seizing Afghanistan’s bank reserves, imposing sanctions, and tipping the country into famine, by the way. But as should have always been obvious, this way of thinking by Americans did not reflect an honest or sustainable intervention on behalf of Afghani Women - all that has really been accomplished, in Afghanistan, is associating feminist values with being a rat-faced Yankee-suckling traitor who was willing to enable the slaughter of their fellow Afghanis.
If you haven’t read Anand Gopal's interview of Afghani Women after the US occupation, you simply must.
In Sangin, whenever I brought up the question of gender, village women reacted with derision. “They are giving rights to Kabul women, and they are killing women here,” Pazaro said. “Is this justice?” Marzia, from Pan Killay, told me, “This is not ‘women’s rights’ when you are killing us, killing our brothers, killing our fathers.” Khalida, from a nearby village, said, “The Americans did not bring us any rights. They just came, fought, killed, and left.
But cutting against the facts, back to the point, I interpreted the rhetoric regarding Chinese culture as this: a form of political opium that allows Americans to gloat on how much better and more civilized we are, it’s an ideological affirmation for why we must hold dominion over the planet while other peoples of the world are reduced to feeding our wasteful, lazy economies. It is a shame we lost control of Afghanistan, the Taliban won’t run it as well as we could. It is a shame that Tiananmen was crushed, China would be much happier as a westernized vassal. And we are seeing it again in much more pressing current affairs - the westernized values of Israel is deployed to justify their dominion over the land and the expulsion of “unwoke” Palestinians. This is how a cosmopolitan outlook turns into an imperialist outlook, universal human rights becomes a universal excuse to push our military, dollars, sanctions, and spies into every nook and cranny of the planet. We must reject this.
Our cultural values should not dictate how we - as a nation - relate to other nations and the internal social matters of those other nations. Our cultural values as Americans and Westerners within this imperialist ship of state is our own problem. In the international arena, dismantling imperialist relations is thus primary, and judging cultures is secondary. Case in point: look to Israel v. Palestine, if you have to choose between Tel Aviv’s Rainbow-Adorned Settler Colonialism and the decisively Unwoke Palestinian Anti-Imperialism, there’s only one sane, human response. Same as with the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Many socialists and progressives in America understand this implicitly (even those who find the choice of words here distasteful), and thus, cries of Imperial-Liberal-Cuckolds falls on deaf ears. Who among us has not heard such liberals ridicule queer youth, who are among the most consistent advocates for Palestine, because we show out day after day on this issue despite the conservative views Palestinians hold? “Queers for a Free Palestine? More like Sheep for Free Wolves!” - 🙄 - Because the Imperial-Liberal-Cuckolds put culture first and imperialism second, it makes sense for them to emphasize cultural differences in an attempt to dissolve our solidarity with Palestine. It falls on deaf ears because imperialism is primary and culture is secondary, because ending National Oppression is very much the opposite of nations telling each other how to live and what to value and how to structure one another’s morality.
Imperialism is central:
In laying out the live-and-let-live Cultural Anti-Manifesto, we must go one step further. First, we establish that the American relation to imperialism is primary over international disputes of culture. But from this, it naturally follows that our struggle against imperialism is also primary over our own internal cultural struggle. If we say something is primary and another thing is secondary, does that mean the secondary issue is unimportant? No. Addressing imperialism requires us to unite the American worker class, and it is impossible to unite the American worker class without an honest reckoning on our nation’s cultural issues. But why then say imperialism is central, if all the struggles are but interlinked? A passage from a Very Good Cosmonaut article will lead the way:
The logic of revolutionary defeatism flows from the basic Marxist premise that the proletariat is an international class, and that in order to triumph on a global scale it needs to coordinate its political struggle internationally. This means that when workers in one country are faced with actions by “their” state that pose a threat to the working class of another country, they must be loyal to their comrades abroad rather than their masters at home. Rather than be content with simple condemnations, they must also pursue an active policy against their state’s ability to victimize the members of their class in the other country. This means strike actions in strategic industries, dissemination of defeatist propaganda in the armed forces, and organizing enlisted soldiers against their officers. In the case of a particularly unpopular or difficult war, all politics tends to be reoriented around the war question, and, if the state has been destabilized by the demands of the war and the ongoing defeatist activity of the workers’ movement, this can lead to an immediate struggle for power and the possibility of proletarian victory.
And what is America? Look at the economy. We have big global dollars and those big global dollars obviously come alongside a big global navy. Why do we have those? How do we use them? When we have financial trouble, we print a ton of dollars and shit the problem onto countries abroad. Dollars go abroad and goods are imported, so other countries make our stuff for us. And for that global economy, the big global navy secures the water of free trade. But it’s not just “free trade” — America has over 800 military bases abroad (For comparison: China has 1). We have destroyed nation after nation after nation, strangling any attempts at independent development and independent sovereignty. And why do we do it? To ensure that profits flow to a globalized financial class, conducted in dollars which thus centers our control of world economy. This requires the violent suppression of anyone who dares fight for another kind of world economic order, perhaps one where control of production is not so centralized. Perhaps the kind of economy that most human beings on this planet would prefer.
Class. Rule.
Class. Rule.
America is the largest and most powerful empire in human history. Larger still when you collect together our international coalition - NATO, the G7, so on. It is a Nazi Battle Ship and a Terrorist. Ship elections are around the corner. You want to focus in on the Nazi ship party promising for how gays and migrants can be crew members? You think you can do harm reduction in the ship elections by voting for a Nazi Ship Commander who merely advocates more oblique and less obvious forms of naval warfare? What the fuck. This is a ship that must be brought down, by mutiny and nothing less than a mutiny, and that is what should occupy every waking moment of our soul. We are watching these people, the real ones, close the ranks around a genocide. This state is the central, violent consciousness of Capitalist Class Rule. This power is what allows Israel to skirt International Law. This power turns entire nations into shitholes, and displaces those workers abroad into penny per hour slaves on American plantations. The mass confluence of such predatory behavior is, to top it all off, a fundamental driver of the planetary climate crisis.
But the game is up.
For all of these abuses, because of all of these abuses, imperialism is ever more incapable of providing a plausible future to Americans. In theory, imperialism is supposed to buy off and thus recruit Americans so that we join the imperialist system as willing accomplices. That worked for quite a while. But now? Especially for our youth? Housing balloons out of reach, Trump throws hand grenades into Washington DC, and old means of ideological control fail as our generation watches the first ever Live-Streamed Genocide against Palestine. Abroad? No stronger luck. Ukraine has no ability to reclaim their territory, China becomes ever more assertive, Hamas drags Israel into an unwinnable war that shattered U.S. plans for the Middle East, and the Sahel Trio kick out France. On all fronts: we are watching death by a million cuts. But, while our imperial abomination dies a slow and painful death, it is determined to drag everyone else down with it - no human cost could be too high to give our bosses just one more second longer to stay as King of the Hill on their empire of decomposing shit.
This weakness is so often felt as pure despair by Americans. We universally recognize ourselves as “on the wrong track” - Stop despairing. This is really a great opportunity. Anger? Yes. Grief? Yes. But Despair? No. Our international struggle against empire is a sacred task, and the cracks widen before us. Call it whatever you want - I call it Communism with American Characteristics - but a revolutionary anti-imperialist program is the only mission through which Americans have any chance to raise a new future, a more human future, one where we treat other nations and ourselves with more respect. There is no alternative.
But China is just as bad as us!
“But China is a rival imperialist!” - Shut up. On this pursuit, State Department Enemies are not your enemies. China is an enemy of America? China is on the rise? Good, our own Government is an enemy of our own people, and the rise of China is part of how our imperialist bloc is disintegrating.
First, from the international perspective, let us assess these two nations - America has hundreds of military bases abroad. China has one. America has been at war nearly every year since our founding. China has not been at war in decades. China adopts a No-First-Strike Nuclear program, America recklessly holds that we may perform a First Strike, perhaps even a Decapitation Strike where we could win a Nuclear war. (Did these people never watch Dr. Strangelove? Have we forgotten ourselves?). China builds bridges and trains. We build bombs and fighter jets. China wants regional hegemony, but as a global actor they seek an international reserve currency and see Hegemony as the suicide pill of both American and Soviet power. Meanwhile - America sees the world as fit for our direct dominion, our dollar as the holy planetary dollar, our regime as the vanguard of liberty thus justified to impose imperial Hegemonic rule, a delusional scheme that is now failing us as Americans. China’s interests align with the rights of the Palestinians. This week, America just sent Israel another shipment of bombs.
Now, second: let us ditch this judgement. Let’s assume all of that was wrong. Let’s assume that China is a rival imperialist just like America, and they want to replace us, and they Hate Freedom, and they secretly want to turn the Yuan into a World Reserve Currency, blah blah blah, let’s just accept whatever it is that Yankee-First Beltway Belchers say about China. Let us assume this all to be true in blatant violation of any facts. I don’t give a shit. Your enemy is still at home. America is the imperialist boot on your head. If you’re rooting for Team America in an inter-imperialist conflict, you’re rooting for the exact same kind of cannibalism that killed millions of people in World War 1. Socialists all over Europe proclaimed the brotherhood of humanity. Then the war started, and they all participated in killing their brothers on the call of their nation. It was the Communists, Lenin, Bolshevism, that used the tactic of Revolutionary Defeatism to use this cannibalism against itself, and from it they made revolution in Russia, turning the soldiers against those who had once commanded them to kill their European brothers. That’s how you should think about Israel, NATO, Ukraine, China, and the incessant call to treat our government’s enemies as your enemies.
If you want to topple Wall Street, if you want to seize the banks, if you want money out of politics, if you want a solution to the housing crisis, if you want a rational migration policy, if you want real change in Climate policy, if you want your tax dollars to stop funding genocides, if you are fed up with Mass Incarceration, if you want to House the Homeless, if you want the World to become rich for all instead of for the World to remain poor for the riches of our bosses, if you want to drive out batshit Christian Nationalists and all their nonsense about gays, abortion, and science - then we need Worker Class Power that can challenge the Owner Class Rule of our own government.
Nothing could be more contemptible than to line up, rank and file, behind our own imperialist machine. In doing so, you reduce yourself as a cannibal against fellow humans abroad, a crime not just against foreigners, but a betrayal of the interests of our own people, our own nations, a crime against the singular international working class who lives both here and abroad. We need our American worker class, our masses, our people, in unity with all the peoples who call America their home, to take the reigns and fix this shit-show. And to do that, we need our Imperialist State’s plans for world domination to fail.
A Conclusion
Imperialism is the fundamental fact of our era. It is the foundation of American Economy. You can work against it or you can embrace it. Your cultural outlook inescapably sprouts from this reality.
That is why I was so upset in the debate about China and my Transgender identity. It wasn’t a debate about what kinds of culture are more or less grounded in fact. It wasn’t a debate about Chinese policies or the value of the freedom of speech. Under the surface of all of that, it was about the most pure volcanic emotions, emotions that erupt from the calling of human liberation, emotions that bedevil composure when this task is confronted with the masturbatory, delusional, imperialist fart-huffing of American Chauvinism. With each day, more wake up from this delirium, and embrace the new era. But many will never understand how or why the world continues to slip from their fingers. The opium is all they have.
Post Script:
So it goes. I’m all out of steam now. Perhaps this international and cultural appraisal says something more about our domestic struggle. A rough draft? A quick jab? I’m very skeptical of Marxism debased as TurboLiberalism, the belief that a Culturally-Liberal partisan domination of the Culture War is the road to worker class power.
Always looking to be of Service,
Kay