Ghost Stories of Capitalism: Racism is REAL, and it's a Class Struggle

By Danny Haiphong

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

In today’s political climate, the word racism has become taboo. Some on the “Left” take issue with the term because of how it has been co-opted by the neoliberal elite. This is understandable, since the neoliberal Democratic Party has indeed exploited race relations in the United States to forward a “lesser evil” but no less dangerous brand of U.S. imperialism. Racism is thus increasingly viewed as an ideological weapon of liberalism rather than a material force of oppression. So-called “conservatives” have pounced on the limitations of neoliberal racial politics to strengthen their own brand as crusaders against the “woke” politics of the Democrats.

The problem with all of this is that racism is a very real manifestation of class struggle. Racism isn’t merely the hateful words and behaviors acted out by individuals. It isn’t simply a set of “institutional” problems that can be reformed away at the workplace or the criminal justice system, either. Some on the liberal “left” say that racism is “systemic,” but even this is misleading. Failing to name the system, U.S. imperialism, decontextualizes racism from its roots in class and power.

Understanding racism as an expression of class power is not merely a thought exercise. U.S. race relations permeate every aspect of material life for working people. Racist ideology has a clear psychological impact and disparities in policing, incarceration, healthcare, unemployment, and wages have life and death consequences. The purpose of the “Ghost Stories of Capitalism” series is to strengthen a leftist analysis of political economy and exploitation through the personal experience of this author. By telling our stories, we strengthen our capacity to move others to participate a class struggle for genuine liberation from the imperialist system at the root of oppression.

My earliest encounters with racism were marked by the pernicious Yellow Peril ideology which has flourished under the U.S.’s New Cold War regime against China. Many of these encounters happened outside of the home as my Vietnamese mother and white father navigated their own racial contradictions. They also happened outside of the formal education system since U.S. schools are notorious for whitewashing history and valorizing slave owners and their capitalist project. My race consciousness, so to speak, was planted by peers. Race was an unavoidable fact of life.

The words “chink” and “gook” were frequently employed by peers on the playground and in the streets. Many would cackle at me with stretched eyes to demonstrate that they looked more “Asian.” I was frequently reminded of racist stereotypes about the lack of sexual prowess possessed by “Asians.” Some took my perceived Chinese or “Asian” identity as an excuse to steal my belongings or enact some other kind of violence. Many years would pass before I understood these experiences as an outgrowth of U.S. imperialist policy. Anti-Asian racism manufactured consent for immigration laws banning Chinese laborers beginning the mid-to-late 19th century and the U.S.’s wars of aggression against China, the Philippines, Korea, and Vietnam later in the 20th century.

Mistreatment from peers, while infuriating, was not the primary force that awakened me to the interconnection between race and class. Witnessing struggle and oppression was the main catalyst. Once I entered adulthood, I realized that we were all children being force-fed reactionary and divisive ideology. Racism was not just about my suffering  but the suffering of masses of people.  Such revolutionary empathy is rooted in a number of experiences that reflect the inner workings of a capitalist system reliant on dehumanization to reproduce relations of exploitation.

I remember a seventh-grade social studies teacher who reinforced my school’s racist school tracking system by asking me to transfer classes so I would stop “hanging with the knuckleheads,” a euphemism for poor Black youth. I remember being stopped and frisked in my first year of high school by a city cop and watching my Black peers swiftly rush ahead of the scene to avoid the same, if not worse, treatment. I remember the white woman who ran clutching her purse when she spotted my Haitian friend speaking to me at the gate of my building. By the time I turned 21, I had attended the funerals of three Black youth very dear to my heart who died prematurely of suicide, preventable illness, and homicide. One doesn’t easily forget the screams of pain coming from their loved ones.

I came to understand racism as a mechanism of class warfare in my college years. There was nothing like being surrounded by rich, white elites for the first time in my life to cultivate rage at the system. During my sophomore year, an Afro-Dominican student and friend at the college was arrested and charged with a hate crime for getting into a fight with a white person in town and allegedly calling him the “n-word.” The school immediately suspended him and his entire future at the university was placed at risk. This seemingly absurd yet unjust turn of events spurred me into activism.

I quickly wrote an op-ed in the school newspaper which caused such a stir among residents and students alike that anonymous death threats came in my direction. I made contact with likeminded students and we began organizing around issues of race on campus. Our efforts helped create an environment where the charges against the student were dropped and he was allowed back on campus to finish his education. But we didn’t stop here. We continued our activism to tackle other issues such as the lack of an ethnic studies or Black studies program on campus. Burnout mounted as liberal identity reductionism and “dialogue” were favored by administrators and student activists over significant changes in policy, placing insurmountable barriers in front of change.

My frustrations ended up being a blessing in disguise. They led me to a semester-long trip to New York City and a foray as an intern in the labor movement. Occupy Wall Street had just begun, and activists were having intense conversations about race and class. These conversations were often fraught with tension. People spun in circles arguing about whether race or class were more important to movement politics.

The arguments felt worse than fruitless; they felt out of touch with reality. I knew racism and class warfare were interconnected, but I didn’t have the language to explain why or how. I began to develop such a language after several friends introduced me to the science of Marxism at the end of my New York semester. Huey P. Newton, Claudia Jones, Fidel Castro, Vladimir Lenin, and a host of revolutionary socialist leaders of the 20th century taught me that U.S. imperialism requires racism to reproduce class relations of exploitation. Capitalists accumulate profit from the exploitation of workers and their system of race-based benefits places a critical in front of the solidarity necessary to wrestle off the shackles of such a class arrangement.

This is no abstraction. Black workers in the U.S. are paid as low as half the wages of white workers for the same employment and are twice as likely to be unemployed. Incarceration and police brutality are experienced at far higher rates by Black workers than white workers. Life expectancy is falling for all U.S.-based workers but it is falling fastest in Black American and Indigenous communities. Any class struggle that fails to give these disparities their proper attention is bound to fail.

Furthermore, racism is a key pillar of the American Empire. All U.S. wars, whether on Indigenous peoples in North America or the people of Iraq, have been sanitized by a psychological campaign of dehumanization. American exceptionalism itself is a racist ideology. The U.S. is said to spread “democracy” and “freedom” around the world despite the innumerable war crimes that it has committed. In the last decade alone, the nations of Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Russia, China, Cuba, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the DPRK, and many more have been subject to some act of U.S. warfare. Racist propaganda against each one of these nations has rendered U.S. war crimes that much more effective by creating an endless list of “enemies” from which to fear.

Propaganda is one of the biggest fronts of the American empire’s endless war regime. Those who are genuinely interested in winning the class war at hand must seek truth from facts. The fact is that racism is a very real phenomenon that shapes every facet of U.S. imperialism. Solidarity with and among the oppressed is only possible if the scourge of racism is defeated, materially and ideologically. This doesn’t mean we conduct a witch hunt for individual “racists” but rather that our efforts to win political power possess a built-in and organized intention to develop new human beings. It also means that we deeply study the ways in which racism divides humanity for capitalist profit and domination as we search for the correct methods to wage class struggle and restore the needs of humanity.

Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the book entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News—From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Skyhorse Publishing).He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990 [at] gmail.com or @SpiritofHo.

Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh Remind Us of the Roots of White Supremacy in the Aftermath of the Buffalo Shooting

By Danny Haiphong

Republished from Substack.

On May 15th, a white supremacist named Payton Gendron opened fire on a Tops supermarket in Buffalo’s Black district of Kingsley, killing ten people. The massacre was immediately labeled a hate crime and liberal mainstream corporate media went to work finding easy explanations that would absolve them and their elite handlers of any wrongdoing. Democrats placed blame on the GOP for normalizing racism. GOP-aligned Fox News host Tucker Carlson was given special attention for mainstreaming the “Great Replacement Theory” that filled the pages of Gendron’s manifesto.

Indeed, white supremacy has been the GOP’s organizing principle for more than a half century. The “Great Replacement Theory” is the 21st century version of a historic trend. The Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy” successfully mobilized white Americans fearful of the Black movement for social justice into a formidable political bloc. Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy transformed the racist rhetoric within the Republican political establishment into a coded war on “welfare queens” and “crime.” The “Great Replacement Theory” is another iteration of white supremacist ideology which posits that Black Americans, immigrants, Muslims, and non-whites generally are invading the Anglo world in a bid to eradicate whites.

There is no doubt that the influence of far right and white supremacist ideology has played a role in the more than one hundred mass shootings that have occurred in the United States over the past several decades. A society organized to dehumanize and wage war on the masses is ultimately a society at war with itself. However, it is too simplistic to view white supremacy as a purely ideological phenomenon. White supremacy is not merely a set of ideas that, once spread, sets the stage for racist violence. This idealist conception of history strips white supremacy of its roots in the system of U.S. imperialism and simplifies its existence to a matter of moralistic virtue.

Such idealism presents only one solution to white supremacy; the marginalization or eradication of a few bad apples in Tucker Carlson and the GOP.  On May 19th, the world will celebrate the birthdays of Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, two deceased revolutionaries who commented extensively on the roots of white supremacy. Ho Chi Minh was the first president of an independent and socialist Vietnam and arguably the most important force in that country’s struggle for liberation from colonialism. Malcolm X was one of the most important leaders of the Black liberation movement that the United States has ever known, and his influence on the political development of the global struggle for peace and self-determination remains immense.

Though Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh spent much of their lives on different hemispheres, both charted a course for liberation that was influenced by the rising prestige of Black nationalist, anti-colonial, and socialist politics. Both were internationalists who traveled the world learning and seeking solidarity from movements abroad. Ho Chi Minh traveled to New York City and worked as a dish washer while attending United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) meetings held by Marcus Garvey. Shortly before his assassination in 1965, Malcolm X made his third trip to the African continent and paid visits to Ghana, Egypt, Kenya, Algeria, and Tanzania. He would go on to form the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) upon his return, stating in his first public address for the new organization that the success of African nations in uniting against colonialism directly inspired his determination to organize and unite Black people in a global struggle for freedom, peace, and dignity.

Ho Chi Minh wrote several articles on racism and the Black condition in the United States. In his 1924 article on lynching, the Vietnamese revolutionary declared:

It is well known that the black race is the most oppressed and most exploited of the human family. It is well known that the spread of capitalism and the discovery of the New World had the immediate result the rebirth of slavery which was, for centuries, a scourge for the Negroes and a bitter disgrace of mankind. What everyone perhaps does not know, is that after sixty-five years of so-called emancipation, American Negroes still endure atrocious moral and material sufferings, of which the most cruel and horrible is the custom of lynching.

Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X believed that racist violence could not be understood outside of the global struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor. Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution inspired Ho Chi Minh to embrace socialism in the liberation of Vietnam from colonialism and imperialism. It was African revolutions which motivated Malcolm X to adopt an internationalist vision for Black liberation in the United States. For each, racism was not about bad apples. The entire system of imperialism was rotten and both sought to uproot it through the positive means of winning the power of the oppressed to control and manage their own societies.

This doesn’t mean that Ho Chi Minh or Malcolm X ignored ideology. Ho Chi Minh struggled intensely with the socialist parties of the Second International, opposing their chauvinistic support of “fatherland” Western governments in the First World War to the detriment of colonized people. Malcolm X outlined the key tenets of what is now called the “Great Replacement Theory” nearly sixty years ago in 1964 when he said,

During recent years there has been much talk about a population explosion. Whenever they are speaking of the population explosion, in my opinion, they are referring to the people primarily in Asia or in Africa— the black, brown, red, and yellow people. It is seen by people of the West that, as soon as the standard of living is raised in Africa and Asia, automatically the people begin to reproduce abundantly. And there has been a great deal of fear engendered by this in the minds of the people of the West, who happen to be, on this earth, a very small minority.

In fact, in most of the thinking and planning of whites in the West today, it’s easy to see that fear in their minds, conscious minds and subconscious minds, that the masses of dark people in the East, who already outnumber them, will continue to increase and multiply and grow until they eventually overrun the people of the West like a human sea, a human tide, a human flood. And the fear of this can be seen in the minds, and in the actions, of most of the people here in the West in practically everything that they do. It governs their political views, it governs their economic views and it governs most of their attitudes toward the present society.

But even here Malcolm X related white fears of replacement not to some unexplainable hatred but to the material reality that white Americans and Westerners were quickly losing their ability to control the destinies of oppressed peoples of the world. Malcolm X’s words have only become more relevant in the current period. The rise of socialist China has precipitated a Cold War response from imperialism that has poured gasoline on the fire of anti-Asian racism and violence. The Black struggle for self-determination has faced a severe backlash from the U.S. mass incarceration state, opening the floodgates of racist reaction. And the fact that Payton Gendron was wearing a white supremacist Black Sun symbol so commonly seen on the uniforms Nazi Azov fighters in Ukraine is no coincidence. White supremacy is a global system of social control that is directed at any person, government, or movement (Russian, Chinese, Black American, Muslim, Arab, etc.) that is perceived to threaten the domination of Euro-American imperialism.

The entire system of U.S. imperialism is thus implicated in racist violence. This includes the Democratic Party, which has for decades been wedded to a neoliberal model of governance reliant upon austerity, state repression, and war. The Republican Party is but the loudest and most ideologically influential political branch of the U.S.’s racist and imperialist system. The more that the U.S. finds itself bogged down in its own contradictions, the stronger the tide of racist reaction becomes. A true fight against white supremacy involves popular organization against the forces that gave it birth: the U.S. military state waging wars fueled by dehumanization, the two-party duopoly enacting policies that deprive oppressed people of their needs, and the economic system of capitalism robbing the earth of public wealth and ecological sustainability to enrich its corporate masters.

Danny Haiphong’s work can be followed on Twitter @SpiritofHo and on YouTube as co-host with Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report Present's: The Left Lens. You can support Danny on Patreon by clicking this link.   He is co-author of the book “American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News- From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror.” You can contact him at haiphongpress@protonmail.com. 

Anti-Asian Racism Never Stopped Being an Outgrowth of U.S. Imperialism

By Danny Haiphong

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

“Gimme that ball, gook.” 

“Can you see with those eyes, chink?” 

“Did your Dad get your Mom in Vietnam?” 

These were just some of the references to anti-Asian racism heard frequently throughout my childhood which were often accompanied by social humiliation and threats of violence, whether in the form of robbery (many times) or a puzzling curiosity about the size of my genitals. More politically correct adults would throw praise at my perceived “model minority” status. This sent an early message that the best means of surviving within a racist society was to focus on individual uplift and avoid conflict with those in power.

The U.S. mainstream has caught up with the existence of racism toward Asians in America, mainly because it has become harder to ignore. Violence directed at Asian Americans has skyrocketed since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Asian American Bar Association of New York, more than 2,500 cases of anti-Asian “hate incidents”  have been reported across the country between the months of March and September of 2020. Notable cases include the January assault of an elder Thai man  in San Francisco and the stabbing of a Chinese man  in New York’s Chinatown last month.

The wave of violence has caught the attention of the Biden administration, the corporate media, and prominent celebrities. Former NBA and current G-League player Jeremy Lin took a strong stance against anti-Asian racism in late February. Lin’s post on Facebook came in response to being called “coronavirus”  on the basketball court. His statement ended with a question: “Is anyone listening?” While more has been said in recent weeks about the rise of anti-Asian racism and the urgency to address it, scant attention has been placed on the context of anti-Asian racism and its roots in the history of U.S. imperialism. 

The United States was a willing participant in China’s “Century of Humiliation” following the Opium Wars of the early to mid-19th century. Prominent capitalists such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s maternal grandfather Warren Delano  enriched themselves from the sale of opium, an industry imposed on China by way of treaties that massively displaced and impoverished the population. American gunboats sailed along the Yangtze protecting U.S. interests for nearly a century  prior to the Chinese Revolution of 1949. Migrant Chinese workers in the United States were dehumanized as “coolies” to justify the white supremacist violence leveled against them, even by a large section of organized labor .

The dehumanization of peoples of Asian descent is often isolated and disconnected from the white supremacist violence experienced by Black and indigenous peoples in the United States. Yet the U.S.’s original sins of racialized slavery and settler colonialism helped form the material basis for the rise of anti-Asian racism. During the decade and a half-long U.S. occupation of the Philippines, U.S. soldiers justified mass slaughter and plunder by routinely equating the Filipino people with the same racist tropes  used to describe Black Americans and Indigenous nations. Eventually, a unique language of racism  was deployed to normalize not only the destruction of the Philippines but also the internment of Japanese residents and the brutal wars of aggression waged in Korea , Vietnam , Laos , and Cambodia . As Black Americans faced the violence and exploitation of Jim Crow, the scope of white supremacy was widening in service of the U.S. project of imperialist domination.

However, U.S. imperialism has also required white supremacy to constantly shape shift to fit the interests of its ruling class. State violence and economic dislocation has unevenly affected the various nationalities that make up the “Asian American” umbrella. A concerted effort to “diversify” the U.S. mainstream with popular movies and programs highlighting of “Asian” riches has intensified the identification of Asian America as a privileged stratum far closer to white America on the class ladder than the U.S.’s oppressed and super exploited Black and Indigenous populations. The U.S. corporate media and political establishment has reinforced this generalization by paying close attention to forces in Asian American communities calling for more law enforcement protection against racist violence. 

All of this combined has divorced anti-Asian racism from its roots in the development of U.S. imperialism. The separation of anti-Asian racism from U.S. imperialism has both encouraged a potential reliance on the state to resolve the very racist violence it commits with regularity and the systematic erasure of the real reasons behind the rise in anti-Asian racism in the United States. Just as the United States deployed racism to justify its empire-building in the Asia Pacific during the 20th century, so too has the U.S. ruling class intensified a deep skepticism of China amid the devastating spread of COVID-19 on the U.S. mainland. While the corporate media has acknowledged the role of Trump’s scapegoating of China for the spread of COVID-19, it hasn’t explained why the U.S. is so hostile toward China in the first place.

The truth is that “Kung Flu” and other racist tropes peddled by Trump and his legions are only one aspect of a larger U.S. campaign to contain the rise of China. China is set to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy within a decade  and has garnered favorable international attention for its containment of COVID-19 and its efforts to curb extreme poverty  and climate breakdown . The rise of China has placed the hegemony of U.S. imperialism into question on the highest stage possible: that of the fundamental relations between nations and economies. This has spurred a U.S.-led New Cold War against China led by all sections of Washington’s establishment, including its most left-leaning elements.

The New Cold War on China is first and foremost a military campaign  comprised of four hundred U.S. military bases, hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, and over sixty percent of all U.S. naval assets stationed in the Asia Pacific. But the U.S. strategy to contain China includes political and economic sabotage. Sanctions have been placed on Chinese officials and tech corporations and the U.S. has waged an endless campaign of interference in China’s internal affairs relating to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the city of Hong Kong. Both corporate and so-called progressive media such as Democracy Now  have obsessively focused on the reproduction of negative stories that mirror the U.S. Department of State’s official posture toward China. The endless stream of anti-China propaganda has been effective; eighty percent of all Americans currently view China unfavorably, according to recent polls. 

The only difference between the recent wave of intense anti-Asian racism and that which has endured over the course of U.S. history is the stage of the imperialist system. The U.S is no longer a rising empire. Rather, U.S. imperialism has entered a state of decay decades in the making and can only speak the language of military, political, and economic violence. The struggle against anti-Asian racism thus cannot be left to the militarized police forces terrorizing Black American communities or to the larger U.S. political apparatus that honed anti-Asian racism as a weapon of imperialist expansionism. Instead, U.S. hostility toward China and the peoples of the East should be seen as an opportunity to develop the broadest popular front possible toward the cause of peace, self-determination, and liberation from the oppressive rule of imperialism.

Danny Haiphong is a contributing editor to Black Agenda Report and co-author of the book “American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News- From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror.” Follow his work on Twitter @SpiritofHo and on YouTube as co-host with Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report Present's: The Left Lens. You can support Danny at www.patreon.com/dannyhaiphong

Joe Biden’s Victory is Still a Loss For Humanity

By Danny Haiphong

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

The Biden-Harris administration is good news for corporations, cops, war profiteers and banks too big to fail, but offers nothing to save the people and planet from multiple crises.

Biden managed to defeat Donald Trump by a razor thin margin in yet another quadrennial contest over which section of the ruling class will exploit the people and the planet. But the results burst asunder the two most popular assumptions among Democrats about the 2020 election. Polls predicted that Biden would defeat Trump by a large margin in the electoral college. The opposite was true. Biden’s near defeat proved that no set of conditions exist where the Democratic Party can mount a resounding defeat of their duopoly counterpart.

More importantly, a Biden victory was always assumed by Democrats to be a victory for humanity. Think again. Biden and the Democrats did nothing to shake the halls of Congress in their favor. Nor did the Democratic Party offer anything to the masses to secure what should have been an easy victory over Donald Trump. With over 200,000 people dead from COVID-19 and tens of millions more left unemployed, Biden’s lackluster performance is more of an indictment of the Democratic Party’s legitimacy than it is a victory for humanity.

Humanity will suffer many losses under a Biden administration. Black America will likely suffer the worst. While Trump and his GOP allies waged open war with Black Lives Matter activists, Biden has promised to provide more than $300 million in federal funding for police departments to put down Black uprisings in a manner more palatable to the Black misleadership class and its white corporate masters. Black wealth plummeted rapidly under Obama and Biden’s administration. The current economic crisis, compounded with Biden’s lack of any plan to relieve the prolonged suffering of the working class, has already worsened the living standards of millions of Black American workers who never recovered from the 2007-2008 crisis.

There are many on the leftish wing of the Democratic Party that have argued Trump’s ouster will alleviate the suffering of humanity in several key areas. Some cite Biden’s willingness to enter back into the Paris Climate Accords, the JPCOA agreement with Iran, and the World Health Organization (WHO). This makes Biden more progressive than Trump. The argument has one fatal flaw. Biden is much more likely to use his institutional backing to change the form, not the scale of the suffering that the U.S. imposes worldwide.

Biden’s possible re-entrance into the Paris Climate Accords will be canceled out by his commitment to fracking. The possibility of eased sanctions with Iran, while extremely important, is not guaranteed and will be offset by Biden’s own commitment to imperialist plunder in the region. One cannot forget that Biden helped the Obama administration increase U.S. wars from two to seven. In eight years, Biden assisted in the coup of Honduras, the overthrow of Libya, and the ongoing proxy war in Syria. Biden’s commitment to the WHO should not negate his firm opposition to any single-payer model of healthcare and the large sums of money he receives from the very healthcare industry which has ensured the U.S. is without a public health system all together.

Biden and the Democratic Party are joint partners with the GOP in the facilitation of the ongoing Race to the Bottom for the working class. Wall Street donated heavily to Biden with full knowledge that his administration will continue to support the right of corporations to drive down wages, increase productivity (exploitation), and concentrate capital in fewer and fewer hands. Boeing’s CEO stated clearly clear that his business prospects would be served regardless of who won the election. Prison stocks rose after Biden announced Kamala Harris as his vice president. On November 4th, Reuters  announced that the lords of capital were quite pleased that no major policy changes were likely under the new political regime elected to Congress and the Oval Office.

Biden will inevitably rule as a rightwing neoconservative in all areas of policy. His big tent of Republicans and national security state apparatchiks is at least as large as Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. Over 100 former GOP war hawks of the national security state endorsed Biden in the closing weeks of the election. Larry Summers, a chief architect of the 2007-2008 economic crisis, advised his campaign. Susan Rice and Michele Flournoy are likely to join Biden’s foreign policy team—a key indication that trillions will continue to be spent on murderous wars abroad.

The question remains whether Biden can effectively govern like prior Democratic Party administrations. American exceptionalism is the Democratic Party’s ideological base, but this ideology is entangled in the general crisis of legitimacy afflicting the U.S. state. Biden’s ability to forward a project of “decency” that restores the “soul of the nation” is hampered by his attitude that “nothing will fundamentally change” for the rich. Biden also lacks charisma and talent. While millions were ready to vote for anyone and anything not named Donald Trump, four years of austerity and war under a president with obvious signs of cognitive decline is guaranteed to sharpen the contradictions of the rule of the rich and open the potential for further unrest on both the left and the right of the political spectrum.

To maintain social peace, Biden will use the Oval Office to consolidate its corporate forces to suffocate left wing forces inside and outside of the Democratic Party. The graveyard of social movements will expand to occupy the largest plot of political territory as possible. A “moderate” revolution will be declared for the forces of progress in the ruling class. Perhaps the best that can be summoned from a Biden administration is the advancement of consciousness that the Democratic Party is just as opposed to social democracy and the interests of the working classes as Republicans. Plenty of opportunities exist to challenge the intransigence of the Democrats but just as many obstacles will be thrown in the way of any true exercise of people’s power.

The 2020 election is yet another reminder that social movements must become the focus of politics, not the electoral process. This is where an internationalist vision of politics is especially important. Social movements in Bolivia returned their socialist party to power after a year living under a U.S.-backed coup. Massive grassroots mobilizations in Cuba, Vietnam, and China contained the COVID-19 pandemic in a matter of months. Ethiopia and Eritrea have agreed to forge peace rather than wage war. The winds of progress have been blowing toward the Global South for more than a century. The most progressive changes that have ever occurred in the U.S. have been a combined product of the mass organization of the U.S.’ so-called internal colonies such as Black America and the external pressures placed on the U.S. empire by movements for self-determination abroad.

The 2020 election has come and gone. What we know is that Biden is a repudiation of revolutionary change. Humanity will suffer many losses even if more of the oppressed and working masses become aware of Biden and the DNC’s hostile class interests. Trump was rejected by a corporate-owned electoral process just as Clinton was rejected in 2016. Politics in the U.S. remain confined to the narrow ideological possibilities offered by neoliberalism and imperial decay. Oppressed people must create and embrace a politics that take aim at the forces of reaction currently pushing humanity to the brink of total destruction. The only way this can happen is if Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party become the primary target of the people’s fight for a new world.

American Exceptionalism, American Innocence, and What Comes Next: An Interview with Danny Haiphong

By Colin Jenkins

The following is an email interview with author and activist, Danny Haiphong, regarding the current state of capitalism, US politics, and his new book, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News-From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, which is co-authored with Roberto Sirvent. Danny is a regular contributor to Black Agenda Report. His book may be purchased directly from Skyhorse Publishing .

"The failure of the Western left in general and the U.S. left in particular to understand the inextricable, structural connection between empire, colonization, capitalism, and white supremacy-and that all elements of that oppressive structure must be confronted, dismantled, and defeated-continues to give lifeblood to a system that is ready to sweep into the dustbins of history. This is why American Exceptionalism and American Innocence is nothing more than an abject subversion. It destabilizes the hegemonic assumptions and imposed conceptual frameworks of bourgeois liberalism and points the reader toward the inevitable conclusion that U.S. society in its present form poses an existential threat to global humanity."

- Ajamu Baraka

I've been a personal fan of your writing on Black Agenda Report for many years, so I was excited to hear of this book when it was in the works. Can you let everyone know how it came to fruition? And how it materialized into a co-authoring project with Roberto Sirvent?

Thank you. I certainly have so much gratitude for The Hampton Institute, which I believe is one of the few truly socialist resources available for both new and veteran activists interested in the science of Marxism. As for the book, the project began when Roberto Sirvent reached out to me in the summer of 2017 with the idea of a book of essays on American exceptionalism. Roberto believed that Black Agenda Report's voice needed to be included in any analysis of the subject. We engaged in a series of discussions over the course of the next several months. The conversations centered on issues such as the U.S.' legacy in World War II, the significance of Colin Kaepernick's demonstration against the national anthem, and the framework of humanitarian imperialism.

We realized that American exceptionalism was a thread that linked these issues to a common struggle, the struggle against imperialism. American exceptionalism protects the system of imperialism by linking the interests of the oppressed with those of the ruling class under the banner of the (white) nation-state. Our purpose in writing the book was to ensure that activists and scholars possessed a tool for challenging American exceptionalism from the left. The left really has no use for American exceptionalism because it is based on myth and white supremacy. American exceptionalism presumes that the U.S. is the principle force for good in the world and that U.S. superiority gives the oligarchy the right to determine the destinies of those deemed inferior, whether in Syria, Venezuela, or for Black Americans right here in the United States. We agreed to make internationalism and anti-war politics a central focus of the book from the introduction to the final chapter.

Can you tell us a little about your personal journey through politicizing? Do you identify with any particular ideology?

Sure. I grew up in a working-class community in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My father was a white union worker for the federal government and my mother was a Vietnamese woman who has consistently struggled with mental health issues and has thus struggled with employment. After the elimination of Glass Steagall, banks and creditors sold my mother the dream of owning land and great wealth. Her pursuit of these endeavors nearly left our family bankrupt and her massive credit card debt (upwards of a quarter million dollars by the 2000 economic crisis) forced my father to work sixty to seventy hours per week for several years to make up the difference. Even then he was forced to refinance the house that we lived in twice in order to pay a small portion of the tuition that my sister and I incurred from undergraduate school.

It was in college that I was exposed to the one percent. Unlike many of my Black, brown, and white peers, I was able to attend an elite college and graduate. During this time, I frolicked in the same institution as our class enemy in the one percent. It drove me into depression. I thought about dropping out more than once. Then an Afro-Dominican friend of mine was racially profiled by the police and community in the town outside of my school and my depression turned to anger. I had lost several Black peers to premature death and was already privy to racism from my experiences with being called a "gook" and a "model minority" throughout my childhood. My organizing efforts around his case led to broader efforts to fight against racism on campus. These efforts were severely limited due to the class orientation of many of the students I was organizing with. It became clear that careerism trumped their principles.

I was lucky enough to have a professor who facilitated my transfer to New York City for the fall semester of 2011. While there, I interned for a labor union and participated in Occupy Wall Street. Both the labor movement and Occupy Wall Street, for different reasons, seemed unable to confront the fundamental contradictions of U.S. society. Labor leadership appeared indifferent to militant action out of opportunism and fear of capitalist reprisal. Occupy Wall Street appeared too disorganized to solidify an ideological and strategic direction and thus was vulnerable to state repression. As I participated in these struggles, I began reading corporate mainstream news on the U.S.-NATO invasion of Libya. I questioned why the so-called Black president who I voted for in 2008 would lead an invasion of an African country on what seemed like an Iraq-like pretext. No one in Occupy or the labor movement mentioned Libya.

The invasion of Libya and my frustrations with the struggle on the ground led me to read Black Agenda Report and Huey P. Newton's To Die for the People simultaneously. Each source of information introduced me to the concepts of socialism, anti-imperialism, and internationalism. It was clear from reading Newton and studying Black Agenda Report that I needed a stronger understanding of Marxism and socialist theory. Political education became my new objective. In the years since 2011, I have focused mainly on political education through participation in various mass-based and socialist organizations. I have been writing weekly for Black Agenda Report for the last five years. My ideology is socialist. Not to be confused with democratic socialism or social democracy, I ascribe to Marxism-Leninism as described by Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Fred Hampton.

In the Introduction, you explain one of the goals in writing this book: (xix) "we want to equip our readers with the tools to locate, critique, and dismantle the twin ideologies of American exceptionalism and American innocence." Can you expand on this statement a little?

This book is not just meant to tell activists what to think, but how to think. By revealing the central contradictions of American exceptionalism, we believe that this book contributes to the broader struggle for social justice and transformation at the point of ideology. In 7th Congress of the Youth Communist League, Fidel Castro said that

"We must use solid arguments to talk to members and non-members, to speak to those who may be confused or even to discuss and debate with those holding positions contrary to those of the Revolution or who are influenced by imperialist ideology in this great battle of ideas we have been waging for years now, precisely in order to carry out the heroic deed of resisting against the most politically, militarily, economically, technologically and culturally powerful empire that has ever existed. Young cadres must be well prepared for this task."

We feel similarly to Comandante Fidel. American exceptionalism and innocence have shaped the political orientation of every single working class and oppressed person in the United States. While this doesn't mean everyone aligns with the tenets of innocence and exceptionalism, it does mean that their influence surely has an impact on the development of resistance movements against capitalism, white supremacy, and empire. The left in the United States rarely raises the question of war and when the struggle against white supremacy is raised, we find that it is not linked to the questions of power and oppression but rather of representation. This allows U.S. imperialism to render itself innocent of wrongdoing through the division of our struggles into easily containable parts. We believe that if we can identify and demystify American exceptionalism (the belief that the U.S. is a force for good), and American innocence (the belief that the U.S. is "above" the crimes it commits), then we can advance the battle of ideas that is currently being waged in the here and now. For example, instead of arguing that socialism is a project of reform, the rejection of American exceptionalism and innocence helps us realize that socialism requires nothing short of a complete transformation of society. We hope that our book will help others come to this realization through a study of history, ideology, and the reality behind imperialist rhetoric.

A paragraph that struck me as especially important reads, (xxiii) "Many avoid being labeled "un-American" by remaining silent about war, poverty, racism and the many ills that U.S. imperialism inflicts upon the world. Some activists have even suggested that approaching people from "where they are" by appealing to American exceptionalism will help recruit more Americans to the cause of social justice and transformation. If Americans believe "democracy" and "freedom" are worthwhile goals, we are told, then these sentiments should be utilized in service of the development of a more just social order. We believe that this is a monumental error in political thought and action. It not only assumes that the American population, especially the oppressed, primarily identify as "American" and will identify as such for the foreseeable future, but it also assumes that the American nation-state is in fact capable of ever bringing about true freedom, justice, or peace."

Can you talk about why this approach is a "monumental error" and why the underlying assumptions to it are wrongheaded?

The U.S. was never a democracy in the first place. This is difficult to swallow for many, including Bernie Sanders, who still believes that the West is the beacon and standard bearer of "democracy." In this era of neoliberalism, we find that pandering to the so-called values of the U.S. is very common, even among those who claim to be progressive or on the left. Take the example of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. In speech after speech on climate change, Ocasio Cortez continues to insist that the best way to mobilize a fight against tide of environmental catastrophe is to rise to occasion like the U.S. did in World War II. This reinforces the myth that the U.S. saved the world in World War II and that the U.S. is going to save the world again.

Our struggles for liberation and revolution will fail if they intend to make U.S. imperialism a more perfect system. We can't improve upon what doesn't exist. We can't rise to the occasion like in World War II. Real socialists should not whitewash a legacy rife with criminality including the use of two nuclear bombs on Japan, the firebombing a defenseless Dresden at the expense of over thirty thousand civilians, and the corporate financing of Hitler and fascism prior to the U.S. entrance in the war. We discuss the U.S.' participation in WWII in Chapter 4.

We should also remember that American exceptionalism is a white exceptionalism. If we are attempting to reform or perfect the architectures of the U.S. imperial state, then we are perfecting a racist regime whose primary interest is in the mass incarceration, elimination, and erasure of native people and Black people in the United States. Our conceptions of liberty, freedom, and democracy will have to be based on a different model all together, if they are to be useful at all.

Chapter 1 sets the tone for the entire book, dissecting the underlying psychology that stems from dominant culture (culture from above). In it, you hit on the events of 9/11/01 and its aftermath, illustrating how the capitalist ruling class took advantage of this to perpetuate a backs-against-the-wall mythology that continues to prop up the empire. You write, (p 3) "The idea of the United States as a perpetual "victim" of enemy aggression that is compelled to "play defense" on the international stage is a quintessential example of American exceptionalism and American innocence working together."

Can you talk about what you mean here, especially in terms of how exceptionalism and innocence interplay in this scenario?

The Bush administration declared after 9/11 that terrorists hated the United States for its "freedoms." By invoking American exceptionalism and the myth that people all over the world fawn over the achievements of the U.S., the U.S. imperial state was able to simultaneously present itself as a victim of foreign aggression. This aggression was stateless and thus anyone could be blamed for its occurrence. The lies kept coming and coming. First came the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 based on the false allegation that the Taliban were behind the attacks. Then there was the Weapons of Mass Destruction debacle that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Throughout it all, the U.S. justified the destruction of far weaker nations by playing the innocent victim.

Innocence and exceptionalism often go hand in hand. Innocence requires an aggressor, a rapist, a subject devoid of humanity. The cruelty of the beast allows the U.S. ruling class to do whatever it wants in the name of profit. Enslaved Africans and displaced natives were depicted as savage creatures who were blessed by the civilized settler colonialist. In the War on Terror, the terrorist became synonymous with Muslim or Arab. Ironically, plenty of actual terrorists, or who are more appropriately named mercenaries, are created by U.S. foreign policy and its staunch ally, Saudi Arabia. But the War on Terror has always been less a crusade against these forces than it was a war to justify endless war abroad and state repression at home.

In Chapter 3 you address the interconnectedness of American imperialism, Black oppression (from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration), and the genocide of Native Americans at the hand of European colonizers. Can you tell readers why this is such an important connection to understand?

In this era of Trump, there appears to be an ever-growing awareness of the race-based foundations of the United States. Missing from this awareness is how the U.S. never grew out of its white supremacist roots. We hear a lot that Trump "isn't what the U.S. is all about." We are often told, especially by white liberals, that the U.S. is proud of diversity and inclusion. Yet the plight of indigenous people and Black people in the United States tell a different story. Not many people know that indigenous people face higher rates of police homicide than Black Americans. Or that Black wealth in the U.S. is set to be zero by year 2053 if current trends persist. Inclusion and diversity ignore these realities. Even more disturbing is how anti-Russian racism fuels much of the white liberal resistance to Trump.

Without the enslavement of Africans and colonization of indigenous peoples, the U.S. would not have been able to develop the capitalist infrastructure necessary to become a global imperial terror in the world. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, who we cite extensively in Chapter 2, explains that the U.S. military's very formation lies in the hiring of mercenaries by the War Department to rob and loot indigenous communities. There is a deep misconception that the struggle for Black liberation or against settler colonialism is a domestic dispute. Nothing could be further from the truth. If we don't internationalize the struggle against racism at home, then we can't follow in the footsteps of Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party, both of whom sought redress and recognition from the United Nations. American exceptionalism helps us forget these struggles and keeps us interested only in making the U.S. a more "diverse" society at the expense of any real struggle for power.

As someone who has gone from once being restrained by the thought parameters of dominant culture to now being deeply involved in revolutionary thought, I've noticed that one of the most difficult tasks when dealing with folks who are stuck in that former stage is reorienting their thought from individualistic to systemic. Angela Davis talked about this type of individualistic worldview being solidified in the neoliberal era, to the point where it even negatively affects activism and organizing. One of the reasons I've always loved your writing, as well as most content on Black Agenda Report, is because it is firmly embedded in a structural/systemic understanding. Not surprisingly, this book carries that analysis forward. For example, in talking about the systemic effects of white supremacy in the United States, you write, (p 54) "If American society itself is a monument to white supremacy, then the economic, cultural, and legal manifestations of white supremacy must take precedence over individual attitudes." Can you explain to our readers why it is so crucial that systemic effects must take precedence over individual attitudes?

Individualism is a bedrock ideology of American capitalism and imperialism. It is a powerful force that has a wide array of effects on the consciousness of the masses. Our book centers individualism not only in the neoliberal stage of capitalism but also in the formation of the United States as an empire that privileges the god-like image of the white citizen. The U.S. ruling class has been comprised of these whte citizens from the very beginning. White citizens of the ruling elite have attempted to instill the same values, principles, and behaviors in the entire white American population with great success. Citizenship here is key. Citizenship gives white America something to mobilize around. That was the basis of the entire Jim Crow period. The end of slavery was depicted as the end of white citizenship and organizations such as the KKK emerged to ensure that freedom for Black Americans would be nominal rather than universal in character.

Individualism not only mobilizes the political right but also infects the so-called left as well. We saw this inn the recent struggles against Confederate monuments in the United States. We also saw this in the confrontations of figures such as Richard Spencer. The focus tends to be on individual symbols and leaders rather than on the material conditions that allow people like Spencer or monuments of the Confederacy to exist at all. Such a focus allows real monuments to white supremacy such as the prison-state and finance capital to remain undisturbed and unchallenged. Individualism thus inevitably leads us toward projects to improve the image of the U.S. rather than the conditions of the masses. While some may see this as a defense of the political right, it is really a call for us to move our energies toward the structures of power that give the political right a foundation to stand on. If we cut that foundation, we cut out their existence as well.

An ongoing topic of importance is how white folks fit into modern revolutionary politics. This is especially important in the United States because of our long history of racial divide, both within the working class itself and as used as an effective tool by the capitalist class. It continues to be a crucial question. One product of liberalism and "white guilt" has been this manifestation of white saviorism.

You touch on this phenomenon in the book, writing on page 161, "The White Savior Industrial Complex is a modernized expression of American individualism and thus a direct product of the United States' racist and capitalist roots. In an article in the Atlantic, Teju Cole describes the White Savior Industrial Complex as "a valve for releasing the unbearable pressures that build in a system built on pillage." White saviorism recruits Americans-and white Americans in particular-to resolve the guilt inevitably produced by the unbearable conditions that U.S. imperialism has wrought on the world with individual acts of charity funded and sponsored by the very agents responsible for the destruction. Acts of "charity" not only focus on individualized action over collective response but also tend to reinforce the United States' obsessive fear of racialized "others." The White Savior Industrial Complex uses charity to absolve the U.S. of responsibility for the conditions produced by this obsession. White guilt is the escape valve. "We can participate in the economic destruction of Haiti over long years," Cole writes, 'but when the earthquake strikes it feels good to send $10 each to the rescue fund.'"

White saviorism is usually reserved for liberal circles; however, like most products of whiteness, it can certainly infect radical and revolutionary circles as well. That being said, what are your thoughts on more recent notions like "allies" and "accomplices?" How do such roles square up within a proletarian movement in the vein of Fred Hampton's Rainbow Coalition? How do you see the divides working out between so-called "class reductionists" (who are often white, and thus more likely to underestimate other forms of oppression) and hyper-marginalized members of the working class (Black, Brown, Women, etc) who experience these compounded forms of oppression every day?

Those are great questions. The United States is an imperialist nightmare with no shortage of internal contradictions that pose serious problems in developing a class-conscious revolutionary movement. White leftists in the United States are divided into two general categories (although they are far from exhaustive). These categories are the New Left, which emerged from anti-war and other political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and a new generation of younger leftists who were inspired by Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and now the Sanders phenomenon. What is interesting is that while the New Left is often thought of as class reductionist, the politics of white saviorism often instills feelings of guilt about their white privileges and render them attracted to liberal discourses on race and identity largely emanating from the bourgeois academy and university system. I find that class analysis is what is reduced when class analysis is ignored, while class reductionists in the white left are reacting to this development in a negative way. Both often lead to irreconcilable issues and weak movements.

The younger white leftists are more amenable to radical interpretations of society. What is lacking is political organization, a real vehicle that can drive younger activists toward revolutionary politics and strategies. Occupy Wall Street was unable to become an organized, discipline force capable of developing long-term alliances and fending off state repression. Right now, everything is confined within the Democratic Party and Bernie Sanders. On the surface, it appears that Sanders supporters tend to take a class reductionist point of view. Many of the demands of Sanders supporters revolve around economic necessity. Corporate Democrats have taken such a surface level analysis very seriously and have attempted to make what is a pretty diverse group of people who are aligned to Sanders look like a bunch of angry white men.

It is important to realize, however, is that the only effective way that class reductionism or white saviorism have ever been countered is through the self-determined political organization of Black Americans and the racially oppressed. Your example of the Rainbow Coalition is a good one. Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party were able to forge alliances with white radical organizations such as the Young Patriots because there was a significant Black left-leaning presence in the struggle of that time. Even if the Black Panther Party was numerically small, Black Americans in large numbers opposed wars, favored economic transformation, and (especially young Black Americans of the period) were attracted to political demands that sought to rectify the failures of integration and Civil Rights. Furthermore, there was a large global socialist movement led by a bloc of nations such as China and the USSR which helped challenge U.S. imperial domination worldwide. In the absence of these conditions, we have seen white saviorism and class reductionism battle for the hearts and minds of the white left.

In summary, Black workers and working people of oppressed nationalities must be the ones to lead the conversation and organization around their self-determination. This is the best antidote to the contradictions white left, which has always needed direction. But the answer for white leftists is not to sit on their hands or give up demands for economic and political change. It also isn't to become "white allies" with the oppressed in the way that it has been defined by the academy. White American leftists need to be challenging the ideologies of exceptionalism and saviorism, as well as the far-right political trend occurring throughout the Western world. They must ask: when has being an "ally" transformed the material conditions of anyone? No movement has ever been based on elitist grand-standing, which is what I believe the politics of diversity and inclusion promotes in the final analysis. White leftists must bring an anti-imperialist, anti-war orientation into their communities and find ways to promote solidarity with their comrades in Black communities and other oppressed communities. That is the only way forward.

In Chapter 21, you tackle the question, "who exactly does the military serve?" As a military veteran who has written about such questions, this spoke to me. In answering, you write (page 239), "Consciousness of who and what is behind the dominant narratives of American exceptionalism and American innocence is a prerequisite for the development of an alternative narrative that can be popularized widely." Can you elaborate on what you mean here?

We must know the enemy. American exceptionalism and innocence make us believe that the enemy is ourselves. Or, that the enemy is the "other"-a racialized threat created to justify the original sin of slavery through the dehumanization of the African or Black person. Alternative political narratives emerge only when the veil has been lifted off those who cause the suffering. The Black Lives Matter movement initially pointed to the police and prison-state as the enemy that was not only killing Black Americans but also reinforcing narratives of criminality so important to the conditions of premature death that plague Black communities across the country. We believe that lifting the veil from the peddlers of American exceptionalism and innocence gives us an even broader understanding of who and what is behind the oppression and exploitation of Black America and the working class more broadly. Corporate media outlets, education systems, corporate executives, military officials, and politicians; these are the stakeholders of the ideologies of American exceptionalism and innocence. Being able to identify them and begin an investigation into their interconnectedness helps us realize how power in the form of the profit-motive is at the heart of U.S. imperialism. Perhaps even more critical is that we can then see that this system is not an amorphous or abstract project. It is a product of class rule in a specific historical epoch and thus a temporary condition which can be destroyed and replaced by a new system with the help of a peoples' revolution. This is no easy feat, and I don't pretend have the answers as to how this will happen but getting more struggling people in the U.S. to realize this is an important step.

That is what our book is all about. And we feel that ending on the note of the U.S. military is appropriate since there is perhaps no institution more destructive and obviously controlled by the capitalist class. The U.S. military is also one of the most venerated institution in U.S. society for this exact reason. Few people, except the ruling class themselves, would support wars if they believed the only reason for them was to expand the profits of a small number of capitalist oligarchs. Thus, the military has been depicted as an engine of democracy, freedom, and an opportunity to get an education and a job in a society that provides neither as a human right. Prior to that, the U.S. military was heralded as an engine of white prosperity and employment. Its targets on the other hand have been turned into sub-human creatures worthy of annihilation. Who can forget when, in 2011, the U.S. military-state and its media accomplices claimed that the Gaddafi government was using Viagra in the U.S.-NATO invasion of Libya to rape women and children? Or when the U.S. military trained its soldiers to view Koreans as wild savages and "gooks" during the Korean War? Unfortunately, many Americans have, and that's because American exceptionalism has infected the political discourse from top to bottom.

As a society, we seem to be on a precipice of sorts. Or at least find ourselves in a significant moment in history, with neoliberalism intensifying inequality, environmental disaster looming, extreme wealth taking ownership of our public agenda, never-ending militarism, creeping fascism, etc. Where do you see things heading in the next five years? And how should we as radicals respond from within the belly of the beast?

In the next five years, I see three developments of significance that will have a profound impact on the trajectory of the U.S. left.

First, the ruling class will continue its assault on the social democratic tendencies of the Democratic Party base. This will exacerbate the political crisis of legitimacy occurring in the United States generally, strengthen the figures such as Trump, and lead hopefully to new opportunities to develop a viable independent left political party.

Second, the U.S. is due for a capitalist economic crisis. This crisis is likely to be even more devastating than the 2007-08 crisis. The proletarianization of U.S. society will reach a breaking point. Where workers and oppressed people in the U.S. go from here is anyone's guess, but we can expect that they won't take the suffering quietly.

Third, Russia and China are eclipsing the United States on the world stage. U.S. imperialism wants nothing more than to weaken its rivals to the East. This means that in the next five years, the threat of war with Syria, Iran, Russia, and China will escalate. The threat will increase amid political and economic crisis.

We must respond through political organization and education. There is a progressive tide occurring in the United States. But the tide is not organized outside of the Democratic Party and there is no Black liberation movement to lead it. Thus, we must be vigilant in creating the conditions for the organization of the working class and popularizing the politics of solidarity and anti-imperialism.

The conditions for organizing on a socialist and communist basis are becoming more favorable. Large portions of the United States want universal healthcare and are more amenable to the term socialism. Of course, many still think socialism is the New Deal and a reform project. But the sentiment against unfettered capitalism and imperialism is there and it will be up to us to harness it and push the contradictions forward to their logical conclusion: social revolution.