I am very impressed by your writing, you remind me of a friend of mine, Ted Reese. He wrote Socialism or Extinction. You have the same eye for exemplary detail, which I always find quite pleasant. The best way to leave a written work is with new things to investigate.
Although I don't share your perspective about resistance in the US. In my experience with Antifa and Occupy and similar groups, they still have a mentality of America Uber Alles. They hope for some magical resolution that bails out the US public with little to no regard for the rest of the world.
I did a lot of organising with Antifascists in the US during the Trump era, mostly in a supportive capacity but nevertheless it gave me a lot of exposure. I spoke to dozens of people who were out in the streets facing the goon squads.
And what got me was how there is no antifascism in the US. Instead there is counter-fascism. There is a mutation of progressive and conservative hypernationalism.
Because I've also known a lot of war refugees. I've heard stories about how the NATO-backed death squads in Kosovo would force sons to rape their mothers at gunpoint.
And that was Clinton's war. Just like Libya. Just like so many others. Clinton's wars, Biden's camps, Obama's torture, it all gets a free pass. Because apparently you can sanction a million people to death with famines, or topple a democracy or two, just so long as you give gays visitation rights at hospitals, or give people discount on their medical insurance. Social democrats are easily bribed.
Because I do sympathise with the needs of working class people, but I got no sympathise with people who turn a blind eye to the genocidal inhumanities of the third world in an effort to solve what is --comparatively speaking-- inconveniences.
Being barred from hospital visits is a very cruel thing to do, but having a hospital to visit in the first place is a blessing to count when Clinton is dropping uranium tipped missiles on hospitals in Sarajevo.
And I don't think it's because people are nefarious, but I do think we live in an age of aesthetics. Trump's biggest flaw from a purely political perspective appears to be his honesty.
He was a self-serving and deeply racist man, sure, but he had one virtue: Which is that he made it obvious to the public. He didn't lie about who he was. Only difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is that Joe Biden offers the voter some plausible deniability.
I think that until the US public stops believing that words speak louder than actions, then the empire can thrive in some kind of media trained and politically correct veneer that simply paints over the rust.
And I speak from a lot of personal history when I say that, because I grew up in Sweden. A place where the now fastest growing political party was founded by a Waffen SS officer who never saw a day in prison, who was even allowed to keep his citizenship.
Where women, homosexuals and gypsies were rounded up and sterilised well into the 70s. Where transsexuals were sterilised up until the 2000s. A place where politicians even to this day say things such as "the Jews are not true Swedes", and still get entire counties to vote for them. (Proportionally speaking a county in Sweden is like a state in the US)
Where fascism thrived decades following the death of Hitler, and where thousands of people volunteered to work at Hitler's death camps in the east, facing no prosecution for the murder of at least 800,000 Jews at the Treblinka camp.
Because the Swedish government understands the value of aesthetics. It is one of the least democratic and one of the most criminally corrupt Baltic states in our times, but no one besides journalists know about it. And those journalists would never be published in English.
This new aesthetic of empire, that makes superficial concessions to mask deep problems is a very dangerous controlled opposition.
But nevertheless, I don't say this to criticise, I simply offer a differing point of view. Regardless of this response, I did greatly enjoy your writing and found it very informative. 5/5.
