By Alexander Rubinstein – Mar 16, 2021
With Trump-style nationalism out the door, a new era of imperial ideology is upon us. This mutation of the empire’s dominant dogma is manifesting throughout global institutions of economic, political and social control and is materializing in a myriad of conflict theatres.
In order to identify where woke imperialism exists, we have to define it first. So what is it? It’s certainly not the first iteration of hegemonic domination buttressed by moralism.
The doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was officialized by the United Nations in 2005, but its roots really trace back to the NATO bombing campaign of Yugoslavia. During the Obama years, the term “humanitarian intervention” caught on as the main moniker for such actions.
Woke imperialism should be understood as a maturation of these concepts. As corporations have increasingly embraced “rainbow capitalism” to keep up with the sensibilities of an increasingly liberal US public, so too have institutions of United States imperialism refined their pitches to reflect the increasing popularity of identity politics.
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This phenomenon has not gone unnoticed. As with everything on the internet, it has become the subject of memes, with an image of two US B-52 Stratofortress bombers having gone particularly viral. The image shows one B-52, labelled “Republicans,” dropping bombs. Another B-52, labelled “Democrats,” is also dropping bombs, but this time with a giant Black Lives Matter sticker and a rainbow flag emblazoned on its exterior.
What both of the above memes can’t express, given their limited format, is the variety of methods of exerting imperial control, as it takes many forms beyond bombings. And not all of this can be chalked up to the presidential transition. We know that the State Department and three-letter agencies were hardly on-board with President Trump’s approach to foreign policy, nor his cultural proclivities.
.@SecBlinken: When we design our foreign policy with the rights and needs of women and girls in mind, our policy is more effective, more humane, and more likely to make a lasting difference in people’s lives. pic.twitter.com/ssAyW9mNEq
— Department of State (@StateDept) March 9, 2021
So while a lot of the trends identified in this article existed during the Trump administration, they are undeniably being ramped up by Biden’s. For example, in the first 10 days of this March, Women’s History Month, the State Department tweeted 26 times about “women,” compared to 10 times during the same period of the 2020.
The Noble Anti-Triggering Organization (NATO)
Earlier this month, NATO tweeted a flashy video claiming “diversity is our strength.”
In light of NATO’s virtue signalling, it’s important to remember that many of the early leaders of NATO were Nazis who dreamed of a Germany that was anything but diverse and inclusive. To this day, NATO has continued to support neo-Nazis in countries like Ukraine, while NATO states that hold permitted rallies honoring Nazi collaborators are only just now cancelling the marches because of the coronavirus, rather than stopping the glorification of Nazism.
https://twitter.com/NATO/status/1366355680681209859
As I reported following the launch of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, as he railed against neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, Biden worked with neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tahnybok, with the man who is now White House National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, serving as their go-between. Leaked audio from 2014 has Victoria Nuland, Biden’s nominee for Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Blinken, admitting as much.
A photo of the Azov Battalion – a regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine
In terms of NATO’s championing of inclusion for people of color, its crowning achievement in this regard came following its bombing of Libya, which gave cover for jihadist militias to sodomize Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to death with a bayonet and paved the way for the reintroduction of slavery on the African continent.
Outside of its halls of power in Brussels, this is what NATO-sponsored opportunity initiatives for people of color looks like.
As the kids say, “big yikes.”
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The State Department becomes an HR department
The slogan used by NATO, “Diversity is our strength,” reproduces, verbatim, a major campaign theme from Kamala Harris and Joe Biden himself. The talking point was also used last year by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Perhaps the one to make the most use out of the theme is Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who has said the following:
• “Diversity and inclusion make us stronger, smarter, more creative, and more innovative. And our diversity gives us a significant competitive advantage on the world stage.
• Diversity makes any organization stronger—and for the State Department, it’s mission-critical.
• We’ve invested in diversity and inclusion to have a diplomatic workforce that reflects the diversity of our country.”
Recently, the State Department promoted Blinken’s appearance on Hillary Clinton’s podcast, advertising that the two discussed “diversity and inclusion at the Department, American engagement, Russia, China and more.”
The State Department, under Blinken, is so married to the concept that he created at the department a Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer position which “will report directly to him,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said, adding, you guessed it, “Diversity and inclusion make us stronger, smarter, more creative, and more innovative.”
.@StateDeptSpox Price: "Today, @SecBlinken announced the creation of a new Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer position, which will report directly to him. Diversity and inclusion make us stronger, smarter, more creative, and more innovative." For more: https://t.co/bXsvL7uMkp. pic.twitter.com/qN5A92TIx2
— Department of State (@StateDept) February 24, 2021
The DoD seeks “force multipliers”
The Department of Defense is another leading institution in this trend.
Last week, conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked the Pentagon. It started with Joe Biden announcing that, under his and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s leadership, the military would be taking steps towards making itself more inclusive to women with policies including an overhaul of hair style restrictions and “maternity flight suits for women.”
While pregnant women are generally banned from riding roller coasters, a policy of allowing them to fly fighter jets does not seem to me to have their best interests in mind, nor those of their children.
Strength through diversity. These Marines broke barriers and exhibited courage on the battlefield. #KnowYourMil #BlackHistoryMonth pic.twitter.com/KTvuMkhoeT
— Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) February 9, 2021
While Carlson blasted these policies, his criticism missed the crux of the issue as he argued that they made the US military weaker. The real goal of these policies, however, is to freshen the military’s face for a liberal citizenry. As the Airforce put it in January, “diversity” is a “force multiplier.”
In response to the Fox segment, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby—formerly the spokesperson for the State Department under Obama—clapped back at Carlson in a press release entitled “Press Secretary Smites Fox Host That Dissed Diversity in U.S. Military.”
“The United States military is the greatest the world has ever seen because of its diversity,” the press release began.
Kirby went on to note that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (a black man whom the media celebrated for breaking a “brass ceiling,”) had said earlier in the week that the “lived experience” of a diverse fighting force factors “into our decision making.”
I want every child to know that this is what vice presidents and generals in the United States Armed Forces look like. pic.twitter.com/y2OFL1z29r
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 9, 2021
That same speech was featured on the Defense Department’s website under the headline “Biden Showcases the Strength, Excellence of American Military Diversity.”
In other news on Secretary Austin, according to another Pentagon press release, he “welcomed the expanded role for NATO Mission Iraq” last month. That “expanded role” means beefing up the number of NATO troops occupying the country from 500 to “4,000 or 5,000,” according to Reuters.
The Central Idpol Agency
Not to be outdone by the State Department or Defense Department, following the inauguration of Joe Biden, the CIA has begun conducting a “digital facelift” to appeal to Generation Z in light of their politics leaning more towards radical liberalism than previous generations.
“We had to go where the talent is,” Sheronda Dorsey, the CIA’s deputy associate director for talent, told the Wall Street Journal. She added that the CIA is looking to “increase racial, cultural, disability, sexual orientation and gender diversity so that its workforce is ‘reflective of America.’”
The Wall Street Journal goes on to write that “Today, the CIA’s digital face-lift coincides with a new presidential administration. [John] Brennan, whose directorship ended in 2017, says the Biden administration has sent out a ‘very strong signal on diversity’ with its intelligence appointees, including the first-ever female director of national intelligence, Avril Haines.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan says that he is "increasingly embarrassed to be a white male these days." pic.twitter.com/vuVrO3uLu4
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 1, 2021
Brennan, who was CIA director under Obama, with Haines sitting under him at number two at the agency, has more recently told MSNBC that he is “increasingly embarrassed to be a white male these days, when I see what other white males are saying.”
Brennan’s comments came in a discussion of congressional Republicans’ handling of the protests at the capitol in January. “They’ll continue to gaslight the country,” Brennan said.
While heading up the agency, Brennan oversaw the CIA as it illegally spied on Congress through hacking as they were investigating torture by the agency—and lied about it. Now he’s complaining about “gaslighting” by Congress. The whole episode has been largely forgotten by the US public as media were “stanning” the agency throughout the Trump era. Trump enemy number one, Nancy Pelosi, recently established a “diversity office” in the House of Representatives. Years ago, she helped the CIA coverup torture in addition to heavily backing the war in Iraq.
Finance feminism
While technically “independent,” globally muscular financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are functionally a part of the US government, and like other institutions referenced in this article, are adopting identity politics as a means of whitewashing their anti-human agenda.
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Stephanie von Friedeburg as @IFC_org Senior VP of Operations. @SvonFriedeburg is an advocate for the advancement of women and a champion of diversity and inclusion. Her career spans almost three decades in the @WorldBank Group. pic.twitter.com/zCjYvhJdju
— World Bank (@WorldBank) February 18, 2021
The DC-based World Bank’s president is chosen by the President of the US, with even their own website admitting “Traditionally, the World Bank President has always been been [sic] a U.S. citizen nominated by the United States.”
The U.S. is also the largest shareholder at both the World Bank and IMF, which is also based in DC. One leaked manual published by Wikileaks entitled “Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare” cites the World Bank and IMF as US “weapons in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general war.”
“Army Special Operation Forces understand that properly integrated manipulation of economic power can and should be a component of unconventional warfare,” the document continues.
“As major decisions require an 85 percent super majority, the United States can block any major changes” at the World Bank, according to the Army document.
For International Women’s Day, the IMF hosted a discussion with Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen entitled “The Age of Womenomics.”
“We have chosen this theme ‘the age of womenomics’ consciously,” Kristalina Georgieva, IMF Managing Director, said.
“Never in my life I have seen so many women in key positions where core economics and finance matter: you, as the minister of finance of the United States; Chrystia Freeland in Canada; Christine Lagarde my predecessor at the [European Central Bank]; Ngozi [Okonjo-Iweala] at the World Trade Organization; the very first woman president of a multilateral development bank, Odile [Renaud-Basso] at the [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development]…”
Wokeism goes global
Beyond promoting themselves as bastions of tolerance, imperialist institutions are also using wokeness to justify foreign resource extraction, violations of sovereignty and international law, military occupation and even coup d’etats.
In Syria, where the United States, European governments, Gulf state patriarchal petromonarchies and NATO ally Turkey have waged 10 years of proxy warfare via al-Qaeda-type sectarian insurgents, a champion of distinctly American identity politics has arisen: the YPG. For years, you’d have been hard pressed to find a leftist in the United States that did not give unquestioning support for the “Rojava women’s revolution.” The ostensible political project of Kurdish fighters in Northeastern Syria was even dubbed by Vice News the “Most Feminist Revolution the World Has Ever Witnessed.”
American anarchists, propagandized with pro-YPG literature and the ideology of “democratic confederalism” popularized by the late Zionist academic Murray Bookchin, and promoted by his daughter, Debbie Bookchin of the New York City-based “Emergency Committee For Rojava,” made names for themselves in leftist circles and on Twitter by joining up with the Kurdish fighting force called the People’s Protection Units (YPG).
While the Kurdish fighters in Syria were first backed by Obama, Trump continued to support them to “protect the oil.” In other words, so that the United States could profit from the extraction of assets rightfully belonging to the sovereign government of Syria. Now that Biden is in office, Kurdish fighters are once again becoming the subject of renewed media attention and adoration by the Western left.
Glorification of the conquests by Kurdish forces in Syria reached a fever pitch during the Raqqa campaign. One group was established, which now has its own Wikipedia page despite its actual existence being dubious, by foreign queer anarchists called the “The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army.” While the historic city of Raqqa was being destroyed to the tune of 70 percent, these feel-good headlines about a supposedly revolutionary and inclusive alternative to statism that the Kurdish fighters and their allies represented dominated the narrative on the left.
Before we move away from Syria, it would be irresponsible not to mention the story of Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, the “Gay Girl in Damascus.” The fake persona was created in order to stir up anti-Assad sentiment from Western LGBTQ communities, but it was exposed as the charade of a white American man named Tom MacMaster by Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah after the “gay girl” was “kidnapped.”
Now that Biden is in office, these kinds of dirty tricks to promote the dirty war on Syria are making a comeback. Based on an article in Jacobin, a new movie is in the works entitled “Stefan Vs. ISIS.” It is billed as a “Story Of Non-Binary Millennial Who Joined The Kurdish Freedom Fighters” by Deadline in a March 5 article. While the Jacobin writer of the original story, Connor Kilpatrick, has co-writing credits, Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara is set to co-executive produce the film.
One Middle East-based reporter complained to me that these journalists are now poised to profit from a war they helped sell in the first place, and are placing the identity issues of a Westerner at the center of the conversation around the battle against ISIS rather than the scores of Syrians and Iraqis who lost their lives fighting them. “The Syrian war,” they said, isn’t for a bunch of foreign leftists “to turn into a romantic ballad to identity issues. Kurds are super traditional, no way is even the YPG into this gender fluidity stuff.”
In a similar vein, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s production company was reported in late January to be working on a TV series adapting the book “The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice” by Gayle Lemmon for the screen. Following an intense bidding war over the rights to adapt the book, Deadline reported that “For the Clintons, the property feels like the perfect IP to help launch their banner given the subject matter and strong women that helped Lemmon write it.”
Last week, Lemmon joined Meghan McCain on The View to talk about her book. McCain’s father, the late John McCain, was the most militaristic senator in modern US history and a major promoter of the proxy war in Syria. The Senator even met with so-called “moderate rebels” with the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Army who turned out to be responsible for the kidnapping of 11 Shia Muslims.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, where the United States maintains its longest-running regime change fail, or “L,” I recently noted how Biden plans to keep “residual forces” there to continue occupying the country despite the agreement reached between the Taliban and the Trump administration to have a full withdrawal.
German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle is warning that “Afghan women risk losing their rights in a new political setup.” Now, the Biden administration is looking to negotiate the deal wherein “all options remain on the table.”
Earlier this month, Vox News reported on “internal debates” within the White House over a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Reportedly, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley made the “impassioned—and at times ‘emotional’” argument—that should US forces withdraw, women’s rights in the country “will go back to the Stone Age.”
Yet, while there is no doubt that the Taliban has little respect for the rights of women, that was hardly a concern of Joe Biden when he promised in October 2012 that “We are leaving in 2014. Period.”
But speaking of the Stone Age, the US has dropped around 25,500 bombs on Afghanistan since Biden’s promise if you add up the monthly figures published by the US Airforce.
And those bombs don’t come cheap, so it should come as no surprise that Milley went on to argue that since the US has spent so much “blood and treasure” in the country in the past decades, it is not worth it to leave.
To put it in the parlance of Zoomers, General Milley wants America to “secure that bag.”
Somebody should tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman that “this ain’t it, chief.”
Wokeism isn’t just a useful tool of empire in the ostensible fight against terrorism, but also in the fight against socialism. In Ecuador, where the US is backing a faux left candidate as an alternative to the socialist frontrunner in the country’s presidential elections, identity politics have been deployed to drum up support for a neo-liberal.
Journalist Ben Norton exposed Yaku Pérez, billed as an indigenous eco-socialist, for his ties to the US government. After Pérez came in third place in the first round of Ecuador’s presidential election, disqualifying him from the runoff, the US embassy called him to reassure that he would be a part of it. Since then, Pérez has called for a military coup and for his socialist opponent, Andrés Arauz, to be criminally prosecuted.
Norton also points out that Pérez’s wife Manuela Picq, is an adviser to him and is helping to manage his campaign. Picq’s background is as an academic focused on sexuality and gender studies.
As we proceed into the Biden years, identity politics, intersectionality—in a word, wokeness—will be increasingly used to justify the exploits of a racist empire. That is, unless the left is able to adopt a doctrine to counter the empire’s dogma instead of continuing to play into its hands.
The Roman historian Tacitus said “Great empires are not maintained by timidity.” This may be true, but today, the maintenance of empire is justified by its inclusivity. The ability of the US to “flex” on the world stage is contingent on its ability to reference the diversity of its ruling class.
There’s the tea.
Featured image: My suggested cover image for Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s TV series (Alex Rubinstein)
OT/OH
Alexander Rubinstein
Alexander Rubinstein is a staff writer for MintPress News based in Washington, DC. He reports on police, prisons and protests in the United States and the United States' policing of the world. He previously reported for RT and Sputnik News.
