Secretary Blinken meets with Brazilian President Lula da Silva. Photo: US Embassy in Brazil.
By Rainer Shea – Oct 28, 2024
As imperialism and fascism self-destruct, they’re going on a rampage that’s soon to become even more aggressive than it already is. And there are actors, like Brazil’s president Lula, who assist in this assault while portraying themselves as allies of justice. This week, the Brazilian government blocked Venezuela from joining the BRICS economic grouping, going against the wishes of Russia and the other genuinely anti-imperialist states. The betrayal hasn’t just let Washington keep economically strangling Venezuela’s people; it’s also extended the lifespan of the Zionist industrial slaughter machine within Palestine. The lesson to take from this is that BRICS, though absolutely worthy of support, is not alone capable of defeating the imperial beast; the economic aspect is only one front within this struggle, which also requires military resistance. This is what forces like Russia understand.
Now that Lula’s faction within BRICS has revealed its capitulationist and obstructionist agenda, we need to adopt a posture that goes against the pacifism which this faction represents. There are plenty of people who’ve been successfully tricked into believing Lula is a source of hope, but the contradictions within such thinking are now being exposed. The anti-imperialist forces cannot triumph while putting their faith in leaders who’ve shown themselves to be compromised; the logic that figures like Lula operate by, wherein supposedly one can build a separate economy from the USA while appeasing the USA, falls apart in practice. BRICS will continue growing stronger, but that will be in spite of Brazil’s capitulationism, not because of it; committed anti-U.S. members like China, Russia, and Iran are the ones carrying it forward.
Those countries are also the ones which have been materially aiding the Palestinian struggle; they’ve been hosting unity negotiations for Palestine, and militarily backing the resistance. There are many actors in the empire-aligned camp that say that they support Palestine, but their “support” is utterly hollow. The Democrats, the Saudis, Erdogan, and the king of Jordan have all been claiming they’re against the genocide. Yet like them, Lula and his political faction provide crucial assistance to the mass murder. No matter how strong his words are while he denounces the extermination of the Palestinians, he’s acted to sabotage the struggle against Washington’s domination, which equates to prolonging Gaza’s slaughter.
The longer the empire lives, the longer Zionism lives, which is what makes Brazil’s betrayal all the more heinous. The price of this setback is the loss of more souls, in Palestine and in elsewhere. We must keep this reality in mind as the hegemon tries to expand the destruction into a new big war, with the empire’s preferred next opponent being China.
The dominant wing of our ruling class in the USA aims to install its favored candidate, Kamala Harris, and then advance the same destabilization project that Hillary Clinton pursued. If the election goes the other way, our deep state will implement a plan for pushing Trump in the same direction; the most important factor is the balance of forces, which isn’t yet enough in our favor. Not enough to prevent things like the genocides that “Israel” is carrying out, or to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice.
Washington’s proxy wars have failed, and China continues to weaken its economic grip, but this week has shown that the empire maintains important assets. In addition to Lula, it has Modi, who vetoed the entry of Pakistan and Turkey into BRICS. Russia and China remain the more powerful forces inside BRICS, we can’t forget that; the significance of Washington having Brazil and India on its side, though, is that this makes the hegemon better positioned to do more damage.
This damage won’t be enough to defeat China, nor the empire’s other next big opponent Iran; the coming war maneuvers will certainly backfire on the imperialists, like how it backfired when they picked a fight with Russia. The danger is in how many lives the hegemon may take during its collapse. There’s no doubt that the anti-imperialist united front will be able to subdue the hegemon, but in their desperate attempts to survive, the aggressors hope to bring a catastrophe larger than World War II. They’re already in place to take hundreds of thousands of more lives in Palestine, though Hamas has ensured that the plan for settling Gaza won’t be fulfilled.
The main factor that could increase the death count is the actions of traitors. Not just Lula, who’s been easy to recognize as a false ally; but also the numerous political actors around the globe who promote an imperialism-compatible version of “communism.”
These actors include the many communist parties that have opposed Russia’s operation to rescue the Donbass from ethnic cleansing. The dogmatic opportunists in Greece’s KKE; the pan-leftists in America’s PSL; the European CPs that functionally act as social democratic parties; the CPs throughout the broader globe that adhere to a hardline Trotskyist view of geopolitics; all of them have abandoned the Donbass people by vilifying Russia’s action. These forces remain a problem, since they have potential to lead Palestine supporters in a fundamentally imperialism-compatible direction. They’re being challenged, though, by the communist parties which are principled on anti-imperialism. And ultimately the principled elements will win against the opportunist parties, like how the Bolsheviks defeated the opportunists in the Second International.
To prevail, though, we must avoid the underlying error that’s been behind all of this recent opportunism and idealism; this is the error of mechanistic thinking, where it’s assumed that the struggle must unfold only according to one fixed formula. When leftists have believed Lula to be trustworthy, despite his record of militarily occupying Haiti on Washington’s behalf, that unwarranted trust has come from a mindset of viewing this struggle as a straight line. Surely BRICS couldn’t include actors that will fold to U.S. pressure; surely we can rely on the multipolar transition process to complete itself without taking any further action. That’s the kind of passive attitude which is far too prevalent in our age of social media fandom consumption. The imperial enemy is not going to stop its violence due to the actions of BRICS alone; physical resistance is indispensable, so countries like Russia and Iran have committed to such resistance.
Will the empire get its new big war by the end of this year? If it does, Iran will be in place to severely cripple the U.S. war machine. China and the DPRK will also be ready to subdue the hegemon, which Russia and the Axis of Resistance have already greatly weakened. So monopoly finance capital will intensify its war against the USA’s own people, using the election as an opportunity for creating more January 6 events and suppressing dissent.
None of this can reverse the decline of the dollar. Despite Brazil and India’s sabotage, BRICS is going to keep building on its progress; Cuba and Bolivia have just joined it, and BRICS has launched a blockchain currency that weakens U.S. sanctions. That’s the extent of what our global allies can do: weaken the empire outside its borders. We in the empire’s core can’t expect BRICS or any other external force to rescue us; not even the great Eurasian military powers can negate the power of the USA’s violent domestic counterinsurgency. We also won’t be shielded by pseudo anti-establishment domestic figures like Trump, who’s likely to put the neocon deep state agent Mike Pompeo in his cabinet again.
The only thing that can let us survive the state’s next assaults, and then overthrow this state, is a project for mass mobilization which has actual strength behind it. We need to build substantial connections with the unions, and with the other revolution-compatible mass elements. We need to expand our united front with the forces inside the existing structure, from military personnel to lower-level capitalists, which have reasons for turning against monopoly capital. We need to master secret work, and train our cadres for defense against whatever attacks our enemies direct at us. Only a practice as broad and diligent as this can let our organizations stay operational amid extreme repression, and to fulfill our part in imperialism’s downfall.
(Substack)
Rainer Shea
Rainer Shea exposes the lies of capitalism and imperialism while encouraging people to fight for a socialist revolution. Go to my Patreon here: patreon.com
