imperialism
Trumpism: A Morbid Symptom of Declining Empire
The second Trump administration exposes the deepening crisis of US imperialism and deterioration of its preeminence within the global capitalist system. While still the dominant global economic and military power, the US is seeing fracture and decline in the “world order” that it has constructed and maintained through bipartisan commitment and execution since the end of World War II. It is facing counter-hegemonic challenges by Russia and its emergent allies in Central Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as by political division and political fragmentation among its allies in Europe and Asia; by Chinese economic influence across Asia and Africa and its subsequent burgeoning military buildup; and from Iran and its aligned forces across the Middle East.
The American Way of Fascism
We are living through a period of reemergence, rise, and surge of far right and fascist forces internationally. This includes reconstructed fascist political parties and movements from the past, alongside novel and neo-fascist formations taking shape inside capitalist states and electoral systems in the present.
The miasma of fascist regeneration emanates from within the cascading crises of the capitalist system, increasing in both depth and frequency over the last two decades. This crises include recurring episodes of recession and stagnation; imperialist and inter-imperial conflict and war; distress, weakening, and collapse of traditional bourgeois political parties; and the rising frequency and intensity of class struggle, authoritarianism, culminating in both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements.
The Making of a System in Crisis: the ungovernability of 21st century capitalism
As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels explained in their foundational exposition of historical materialism and the dialectics of social transformation, a mode of production in crisis does not collapse under the weight of its own malfunction; it has to dismantled and replaced through the self-conscious action of a rising revolutionary class.
The multiplying crises of capitalism have led to internal dysfunction and debilitations that render its operations increasingly out of sync with the needs and basic sustenance of the vast majority of humanity and the rest of the natural world. It is rapidly reaching the limits of its own capacity for self-reproduction, and cannot seem to persist without inducing even greater calamity and instability. As the capitalist system trudges on in this linear trajectory, a cumulative transformation is well underway: where more will have to be sacrificed so that capitalism may live on.
Empire at Ground Zero in Ukraine
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the quickening of a regionwide war assemblage presents itself in classical Euro-Atlantic form as the dress rehearsal for the next world war. The incessant building up of the stage and setting that counters the rival imperial houses, the alignment or realignments of supporting actors and bit players, and the clichéd tonalities of righteousness and evil; all giving way to the thunderous violence of death and destruction in an enlarging war theater.
The U.S. Far-Right: poised to extend its reach and scale of violence
The January 6th storming of the U.S. Capitol by elements of the far-right—amateurish and pursued by a coalition of activists that grossly overestimated the extent of their power and support—constituted a breakthrough by far-right political forces. As conceived, it was destined to be easily repelled from the outset, and contrary to corporate and social media hyperbole, it fell profoundly short of constituting a viable coup attempt. Yet, it is in the reverberations of its political symbolism that it amounts to a victory for the far-right, for it constitutes a “proof of concept.”
Biden’s immigration proposal: a path to nowhere
The election of Joe Biden and the return of Democratic Party control of Congress has raised hope that Trump’s disastrous immigration policies could be undone. Separated and incarcerated families long to be reunited and freed, refugees blocked into deadly camps at the border wait for legal channels to be reopened, undocumented workers cut out of pandemic relief efforts endure dangerous working conditions and economic devastation, and all Trump’s other orders designed to be cruel and inhumane urgently need to be reversed.
They came for us
Recent revelations by whistleblower Dawn Wooten, exposed that at ICE detention centers, doctors have been performing hysterectomies on unsuspecting patients. Her revelations, while appalling and detestable, are not surprising to me. I’ve seen this before. I know this movie well. It’s like The Ten Commandments playing on television during Good Friday, I know what happens next. I can quote this story line for line.
As a Latin American History scholar, I’ve spent many years familiarizing myself with people like Cornelius Rhoads, a former US Army doctor and hospital administrator who was oversaw racist and barbaric human experimentation projects. I have learned about forced sterilizations on colonial islands through documentaries like La Operación. I’ve combed through the published studies of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment on African American males who were injected with syphilis. I am well aware of the medical community’s penchant for using people in Africa to conduct clinical trials for prescription drugs.
Assimilate This! Is it possible or desirable to assimilate into a white supremacist, colonial settler, and imperialist nation?
Assimilation is this political plasticine that is frequently at the core of newspaper editorials, scapegoating by politicians, and ideological constructs of what it is to be a citizen of the United States of America (U.S.). As such, it refers to a myth-soaked narrative of the history of the U.S. as a nation; who is assumed to belong to it, or who can be allowed to earn a spot in that ark of glorified passengers known as “Americans.”
The term “American” sits at the center of this chauvinistic and exaggerated conception of who is a “red-blooded” inhabitant, and therefore a bona fide “citizen” of the U.S. It is a misguided and vainglorious term that robs the rest of the inhabitants of the Americas of such self-designation. For everyone born or naturalized in Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean
