How Unequal Exchange Shapes Our World

By Jason Hickel

Republished from Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

This article is based on a presentation given at the symposium “Socialist Perspectives on Global Governance in a Multipolar World”, held by the Fudan University School of Marxism and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Beijing Office in April 2025.

We live in a capitalist world economy in which production is controlled overwhelmingly by capital (the major financial firms, large corporations, and the 1 percent who own the majority of investible assets). For capital, the purpose of production is explicitly not to meet human needs or achieve social progress. Its main purpose is to maximize and accumulate profit–that is the overriding objective.

To sustain a process of perpetual accumulation, capital must obtain an ever-rising quantity of inputs at the lowest possible price, meaning cheap labour and cheap nature. The problem for capital, however, is that obtaining these inputs sooner or later entails very severe contradictions. During the rise of capitalism in the West, capitalists discovered that if they intensified the exploitation of their domestic working classes too much, they would eventually face a revolution. By the same coin, as they intensified the exploitation of domestic natural resources, they successively undermined the ecological basis of production itself. Capital therefore required some kind of “outside”–an external frontier where it can exploit labour and nature with impunity, and where it can externalize social and ecological costs.

In other words, capitalism requires an imperial arrangement in order to stabilize accumulation. Imperialism is thus a structurally necessary feature of capitalism. Even today, some 60 years after the formal end of colonialism, our world-system continues to be structured by a fundamental imbalance between North and South and the economic domination of the latter by the former. Transforming this arrangement is the key political challenge of our time.

Colonial and Neo-Colonial Domination

The unequal nature of the world-system was glaringly obvious during the colonial period. The industrialization of the West relied heavily on the mass-scale appropriation of resources from the colonies, as well as the use of enslaved and indentured labour. To achieve this, colonizers systematically destroyed indigenous industries and reorganized the Global South’s production away from servicing local human needs and development towards servicing consumption and accumulation in the core. Indeed, doing so constituted the central objective of the colonial project. There are countless examples of this process. In southern Africa, subsistence economies were ripped up so people were forced to get wages by working on colonial mines and plantations. In India, the British physically smashed the country’s textile industry to make it dependent on imports of British goods.

Colonial domination was forcefully challenged during the twentieth century. Radical anti-colonial movements across Asia, Africa, and Latin America overthrew their colonizers and immediately set about pursuing strategies of economic sovereignty. Most of these movements were inspired in some way by socialist and Communist ideas, which provided a blueprint for reclaiming domestic control over production and organizing it around human needs and development. They used land reform to reclaim territory from foreign firms, nationalized key resources like oil and minerals, used subsidies and protective tariffs to develop their national industries, and used planning to build public services and develop industrial capacity.

All of this posed an extraordinary threat to the states of the capitalist core, as it jeopardized their access to cheap labour and resources. Sovereign development in the South meant that Southern countries were producing and consuming more for themselves, which in turn meant that those resources were no longer cheaply available for the core. That manifested as rising supply prices, destabilizing the imperial arrangement and making capital accumulation in the core increasingly difficult to sustain.

The governments of the core faced a fork in the road: they could either accept economic sovereignty in the South, abandon capital accumulation, and shift to a post-capitalist economy–or they could try to maintain capital accumulation by somehow restoring the imperial arrangement. They opted hard for the latter, intervening militarily to destroy radical Southern governments, but also by using the IMF and World Bank to impose structural adjustment programmes that forced governments to privatize public industries and cut public services, tariffs, subsidies, and labour and environmental protections, thereby reversing the policies of the anti-colonial era.

Structural adjustment restored the imperial arrangement, re-establishing the South as suppliers of cheap raw materials, but this time also as manufacturers of light industrial goods in subordinate positions within global supply chains dominated by Northern firms. Structural adjustment also depressed wages and prices in the Global South, including through currency devaluation. Meanwhile, the North monopolized technology and capital goods, and set high prices.

In- and Outflows

The results of structural adjustment had very severe implications for international trade, as all imports need to be paid for with exports. Systematic price inequalities mean that for every unit of embodied labour and resources the South imports from the North, it has to export many more units to pay for it. This leads to what the Egyptian economist Samir Amin called a “hidden transfer of value” from South to North–“hidden” because there is a monetary balance of trade, but in reality, the South is sending a net-transfer of real value to the North. This enriches the core, but drains the periphery of resources necessary for development. Global South economists like Amin and others described this as “unequal exchange”, arguing that it enabled a continuation of imperialist appropriation from the periphery even in the absence of formal colonial rule.

Today, we can observe this unequal exchange in empirical data, using multi-regional input-output models. For every unit of labour embodied in traded goods that the South imports from the North, for example, the South has to export at least ten times more to pay for it. However, this is not primarily because Southern labour is less productive. On the contrary, Southern labour in export industries tends to be highly productive. Rather, it is because Southern wages are cheapened compared to Northern wages. Southern workers earn about 90 percent less than Northern workers for labour of the same skill level in the same sector. In fact, the inequalities are so extreme that highly skilled workers in the Global South such as engineers and scientists are paid 68 percent less than low-skilled workers in the Global North. We also see similar systematic trade imbalances when it comes to materials, land, and energy embodied in traded goods.

This unequal exchange leads to truly massive net-transfers from South to North. In the final year of data, we see the following:

• A net South-North flow of 12 billion tons of embodied materials, and 21 exajoules of embodied energy. According to recent research, this quantity of materials and energy would be enough to provide infrastructure and supplies to provision decent living standards–universal healthcare, education, modern housing, sanitation, electricity, heating and cooling, induction stoves, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, public transit, computers, and mobile phones–for the entire population of the Global South, but instead it is siphoned off for accumulation and consumption in the core.

• A net flow of 820 million hectares of embodied land–twice the size of India. That land could be used to provide nutritious food for up to 6 billion people, but instead is used to produce goods consumed in the North like sugar for Coca-Cola and beef for McDonald´s.

• A net flow of 826 billion hours of embodied labour–more than the total labour rendered annually by the entire U.S. and EU workforces combined. That labour could be used to staff hospitals and schools in the Global South or produce food and goods for local needs, but instead is used to churn out tech gadgets and fast fashion for Northern corporations.

These figures suggest that the high levels of consumption and growth in the core rely heavily on net appropriation from the South, today just as much as during the colonial era. In the case of materials and labour, around half of total consumption in the core is net-appropriated from the South. Moreover, while the North benefits from the extra consumption, the social and ecological costs are effectively externalized to the Global South. That is where the damage happens–not primarily in England or Finland, but in the Congo, Indonesia, or Brazil.

Furthermore, the data on unequal exchange helps us understand the persistence of inequality between core and periphery in the world economy. The mainstream development narrative holds that, if given enough time, the South will gradually “catch up” to the Global North. Yet no such catching up is happening. In fact, the income gap is getting bigger every year. The reason why is self-evident: because catch-up development cannot happen within a system predicated on imperialist appropriation and net South—North flows.

Finally, this data helps us understand the persistence of mass poverty and underdevelopment in the Global South. The South is impoverished not because it is somehow “naturally poor”, but because its income is compressed and its productive capacities drained to support development in the core.

The Chinese Model and the Second Stage of Decolonization

Unequal exchange also affects China, despite it being the most dynamic and fastest growing economy in the Global South, if not the world. China has historically suffered a substantial net drain of materials, energy, and labour to the core, although it recently has become a net-importer of land. Even today, drain from China comprises about 20 percent of the North’s total net appropriation from the Global South.

However, China’s exchange ratio with the core has improved over time. During the 1990s, the exchange ratio averaged 34 to one. In other words, for every unit of embodied labour, materials, land, or energy that China imported from the core, it had to export 34 units to pay for it. By 2015, that ratio had declined to four to one.

This improvement occurred mostly because China experienced an increase in wages and prices. These represent positive changes for China–and specifically for Chinese workers–but pose a very severe problem for Western capital, as higher prices in China reduce the core’s ability to appropriate value, and thus place a constraint on Northern profits. That is one of the reasons why the core states are now trying so hard to push Chinese wages back down and restore access to cheap labour. It is also what Trump is trying to do with his tariffs: he wants to force countries to concede by cutting export prices.

So, what is to be done? The fundamental point is that Southern governments need to find ways to escape the imperial arrangement. They need to achieve the second stage of decolonization: reclaim control over their national productive capacities, and reorganize them around meeting human needs and achieving national development.

Remember, the South is not poor–it is rich. It is endowed with vast tracts of fertile land, abundant labour, extraordinary resources, and productive power. The problem is that the nations of the Global South do not have sovereign control over their capacities. How can such control be achieved? Do everything possible to reduce dependence on imports from the core in order to reduce exposure to drain through unequal exchange. Also, implement industrial policy to develop sovereign industrial capacity, and deploy public finance and credit policy to mobilize labour and production for national development, rather than for foreign capital.

China shows how it can be done, but China can still improve its position. China currently suffers a net-drain to the core of 100 billion hours of labour per year. That can be resolved by reducing unnecessary imports from the core such as luxury goods and goods that can be substituted with domestic production, therefore reducing export pressure and thus retaining billions of hours of labour power that can be redirected towards things like social reproduction, ecological regeneration, and human development. China can also play an important role in helping the rest of the Global South by providing an alternative source for finance, technologies, and capital goods, thus enabling Southern nations to reduce their import dependencies on the core and develop their own industrial base.

We are at a juncture in history. The existing arrangement is not working for the vast majority of humanity. The capitalist world economy cannot deliver meaningful development in the periphery. This system can and must be overcome. In that regard, the Southern struggle for liberation is the true agent of world-historical transformation today.

Jason Hickel is an ICREA Professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is the author of several books, including The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (Penguin, 2017), and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (Penguin, 2020).

The Congo as a Site of Capital Accumulation: Erik Prince and the Privatization of War

[Pictured: Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). © Zach D Roberts / NurPhoto via AFP]

By Kribsoo Diallo

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

A lot of news has circulated across various global media platforms following reports that militias affiliated with Erik Prince—the U.S. billionaire and founder of the infamous military contractor Blackwater, which has a track record of abuses and killings in several Global South countries—suffered significant field losses in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. This followed an ambush that resulted in the death and injury of at least 20 people, including Tim Kennedy, a famous UFC athlete and former US Army Special Forces soldier.

Erik Prince is a U.S. businessman and former US Navy SEAL who founded Blackwater in 1997, transforming it into one of the world's most notorious military mercenary companies. He capitalized on the U.S. military's growing reliance on private military and security firms to provide paid combat and security services. Educated at Hillsdale College, a conservative religious institution, he later served in the US Navy SEALs. His career illustrates the intersection of private capitalist interests and U.S. military expansion, where wars and military interventions become profit-making ventures. After selling Blackwater in 2010, Prince continued his operations through other companies and networks, including Frontier Services Group, which expanded into providing logistical and security services for commercial and mining projects in Africa. In recent years, he branched out through Vectus Global, whose activities in the DRC expanded from collecting mineral resource revenues to providing operational support to the Congolese army.

Under President Felix Tshisekedi, a documented attempt to enlist foreign military contractors (mercenaries) dates back to 2023. At the time, the Rwanda-backed M23 militia was making field advances in North Kivu province, and the government was looking for ways to bolster its military capabilities and secure mining areas in the east. In this context, a plan was revived to bring in about 2,500 military contractors from Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina to halt the rebel advance and secure mineral-rich regions. Preparations included establishing barracks in Mubambiro, near Sake and adjacent to a Congo Protection training camp, to host the first batch in late July 2023. Containers of equipment arrived at the site that same month. Erik Prince spearheaded the negotiations to deploy these foreign contractors, part of a plan heavily promoted by Kahumbu Bula Mandungu, known as "Kao," an advisor to President Tshisekedi, amid reports linking the scheme to arrangements between Kinshasa and Abu Dhabi. Ultimately, the project stalled, and the Latin American contractors never arrived in the DRC.

Prince returned to the Congolese scene through a seemingly different avenue in late 2024, striking an agreement with the Congolese government to improve public revenue collection from the mining sector and combat mineral smuggling in copper- and cobalt-rich areas. The government signed a five-year deal with Prince through a network of commercial shell entities. In June 2025, Quantum Global Consulting, a UAE-based firm linked to Prince, registered a subsidiary in the DRC, Quantum Global Consulting Africa, to act as its legal representative. This subsidiary then registered Vectus Global as a local legal entity. The contract with the Congolese Ministry of Finance included a financial mandate to increase government revenues from extractive industries while curbing smuggling, corruption, and tax evasion. However, it also contained a secret military component: advising the Congolese Armed Forces, providing aerial capabilities, and recruiting foreign military personnel. The contract was valued at approximately $700 million over five years.

The initial plan involved dispatching about 100 advisors and technical experts to monitor mining operations and revenues, starting with major mines before gradually expanding. The goal was to improve the oversight of production and exports and ensure compliance with the Congolese mining code. The priority was the Katanga region, particularly around the city of Kolwezi, the hub of the copper and cobalt industry. This area was far from the main combat zones where the M23 militia operated in North Kivu.

A major turning point occurred in late 2025 and early 2026 as the war in eastern Congo escalated, spreading to strategic areas in South Kivu. This was especially pronounced after the M23 militia seized Uvira, a key city on the Burundian border along the shores of Lake Tanganyika. This posed a severe threat to the Kinshasa government. In response, Erik Prince, through Vectus Global, deployed a team to support the Congolese army in the region. The mission involved operating drones and providing operational support to government forces, marking the first known participation of Prince’s forces in frontline combat operations within the DRC.

The military activity of foreign contractors in Congo was not limited to Americans. Israeli military advisors worked in coordination with Prince, participating in training two Congolese Special Forces battalions for day and night operations. Contractors from El Salvador, mostly former military and police personnel, were also recruited. A July 2026 report by the Critical Threats Project noted that in April of that year, the Congolese government announced the UAE's commitment to help fund the training of a paramilitary force exceeding 20,000 personnel, ostensibly to protect mines in the south. Two months earlier, the UAE had dispatched a government and trade delegation to Lualaba province, holding meetings in Kolwezi with officials from the mining, energy, and infrastructure sectors, culminating in the announcement of 16 memorandums of understanding across multiple fields.

Prince is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, and his company's activities in Congo intersect closely with Washington's economic and security objectives. His forces were deployed at a time when the Trump administration sought to link economic and security cooperation with Kinshasa to securing broader access for American companies in the critical minerals sector. This was framed as an effort to counter Chinese influence, rather than a genuine push to defeat M23 or contain the ambitions of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. On March 2, 2026, the US Treasury Department sanctioned the Rwandan Defense Forces and four of its senior officials. On June 25 of the same year, it sanctioned a Rwandan gold refinery and a network accused of smuggling minerals from Congolese territory controlled by M23. Yet, these measures failed to dismantle the smuggling networks, resolve the conflict, stop the militia's atrocities, or cut off the crucial Rwandan support driving M23's expansion. A March 8, 2026, Washington Post investigation cited a US official stating that Paul Kagame successfully delayed the sanctions for several months by reaching out to Senator Lindsey Graham, who intervened with the White House. The report noted that Graham served as an advisor to Trump—a detail previously highlighted by the Wall Street Journal—illustrating the limits of American pressure. According to the official's account, these high-level political channels allowed Kagame to buy time.

The US-Congolese agreement established a mechanism called the Strategic Asset Reserve. Under this framework, American investors receive the right of first refusal on listed projects and preferential access to specific investment opportunities in the Congolese resource sector. In April 2026, Reuters published an investigation detailing how Virtus Minerals, an American company, acquired Chemaf's mining assets for $30 million. In February 2026, a proposed deal emerged to sell a 40% stake in the Mutanda and Kamoto Copper Company mines to the Orion Critical Mineral Consortium, backed by the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and the UAE's ADQ fund. These deals positioned American and Emirati investors prominently within Congolese copper and cobalt assets. The clearest indicator of US objectives is the Lobito Corridor project, which links mining zones in Congo and Zambia to the Atlantic port of Lobito via Angola. The US supports this project through development financing and infrastructure investments, aiming to create an alternative export route for Congolese copper and cobalt to Western markets, bypassing trade networks linked to East and Southern Africa or those dominated by Chinese firms.

Erik Prince and his state backers are not the saviors the Congolese people are waiting for to end militia violence and Rwandan interference. The man the Congolese government has hired for security and military services is neither a neutral mediator nor someone operating outside the very interests that fuel and profit from these conflicts. He is a criminal who embodies the nexus between capitalist economic interests, the privatization of warfare, and the defense of US imperial hegemony. This is not just an assumption; in an episode of his podcast Off Leash, Prince explicitly called for the US to resume a direct imperial role, stating it was time to "put the imperial hat back on" and govern countries he claimed are incapable of governing themselves. He made sweeping racist generalizations about Africa, asserting that most of its nations cannot manage their own affairs. When his co-host, Mark Serrano, pointed out that this sounded like a call for a return to colonialism, Prince replied bluntly: "Absolutely, yes!"

Kribsoo Diallo is a Cairo-based Pan-Africanist researcher in political science related to African affairs. He has written for many African magazines and newspapers, and Diallo has contributed to translated editions of papers and articles in Arabic and English for several research centers within the African continent.

European Vassal States' Self-Destruction Endangers the Entire World

By Margaret Kimberley

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

“Washington will move to crush, or at least seriously disrupt, Russia under its ‘sanctions as war by other means’ machine, by targeting its energy exports, while simultaneously boosting the foreign markets for U.S. natural gas.” - Glen Ford, 2014

Always prescient, the late Glen Ford got to the heart of the beginnings of the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia that has played out in Ukraine ever since the U.S. backed coup committed there in 2014. Barack Obama was in office when right wing Ukrainians overthrew the elected government in Kiev. He then dragged his feet on implementing the Minsk Agreements, which were meant to bring about a peaceful resolution to that Western-instigated crisis when Russia came to the aid of the Donbas region. Since that time, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that the agreement was never meant to be enacted because NATO members wanted to give Ukraine a chance to arm itself against Russia.

Obama was president then, but as with all other foreign policy initiatives, there is continuity of agenda from administration to administration. The anti-Russia project didn’t begin with him. It began with NATO expansion spearheaded by Bill Clinton in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Every president since that time has gone down the same path of chipping away at Russia’s influence covertly and overtly, withdrawing from nuclear treaties, and undermining Russian-allied states such as Syria, which fell to Western-backed jihadists in 2024 after a 13-year-long effort.

Despite claims of being a Russian dupe, the first Donald Trump administration vigorously backed the Ukraine project and while Obama would not directly send weapons, Trump did just that in 2017. Joe Biden claimed that the 2022 U.S. sanctions he imposed would destroy Russia’s economy when he said, “. . . the ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble.” Not only is the ruble not “rubble,” but U.S. puppet states have paid an economic price and now threaten international war because of their slavish devotion to Washington.

President Emmanuel Macron in France endlessly warns about Russian threats against all of Europe, and German chancellor Friedrich Merz, and others do as well. Interestingly, both Macron and Merz have approval ratings below 20%. Macron will not be running in the French presidential elections to be held in 2027 and Merz may soon be out of office himself.

The explanation for their unpopularity is not complicated. European states are in dire straits economically in part because Joe Biden succeeded in cutting off their supply of Russian gas. In 2022, Biden joined Germany’s then chancellor Olaf Scholz at a Washington press conference and pledged to stop the Nord Stream II pipeline, which was under construction and which would have sent gas from Russia to Germany. Scholz said nothing when Biden emphasized that there would be no Nord Stream II. "I promise you, we'll be able to do it."  

Europe and Germany especially have deindustrialized after the NordStream II pipeline was blown up in 2022. There will soon be a show trial in Germany where a Ukrainian is charged with that crime. Of course, the words of Biden and other officials in his administration and common sense point to the U.S. being the culprit in the attack. In spite of a convincing report from Seymour Hersh, which showed how that deed was done, the corporate media in the U.S. and European governments have been silent about how countries thought to be allies were sabotaged along with the Russians.

Germany is rearming and preparing to reinstitute a military draft. Donald Trump has insisted that NATO members spend 5% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on military spending. The only way to meet that figure is to impose austerity on their people and the result is protest in France and other countries.

Of course, the ruling classes are not standing by silently. The appeals to worsen austerity are constant, with the Wall Street Journal falsely proclaiming, “The Welfare State is Crushing Britain.” Britain’s welfare state was crushed long ago but is still being whittled away little by little in order to justify military expenditures.

Europeans are joined at the hip with the U.S. and no one should be fooled by the occasional public spat as with protests over Trump’s agreement to temporarily ease sanctions and allow Russian diesel fuel to be sold in the U.S. Trump is desperate to ease the markets, even a little, before the November mid-term elections. Voters who supported him in the past may not do so again because his attack on Iran has increased fuel prices. His domestic concerns have not altered relationships with the rest of NATO, nor should they fool anyone into thinking that he is in any way “Putin’s puppet.”

While Trump comes up with a deal to allow small amounts of diesel to the U.S., the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) works closely with the Ukrainians to determine where and how their drone strikes against Russia will be carried out. European nations, occupied by the U.S. since 1945, are engaging in dangerous rhetoric as Russia’s defeat of Ukrainian forces draws near. Their leaders try to outdo one another in calling for war against Russia by threatening its outpost in Kaliningrad, which, despite being wedged between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, far from the rest of Russia, is as much a part of that country as Alaska and Hawaii are to the United States. There are nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, but that has not stopped NATO members from making very public threats against that territory. 

NATO’s top commander, U.S. general Alexus Grynkewish, claims that the rest of NATO can fight Russia without U.S. help. No one who is knowledgeable about military capabilities believes that assertion to be true, but it is meant to escalate tensions, and such claims have indeed done that. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of his country’s resolve after a United Nations meeting with his German counterpart. 

"It is Europe that is preparing for war with us. They constantly reiterate that, by 2030 at the latest, we, the Europeans, must be ready for war. You know, this could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, because they are currently investing huge amounts of money in the production of weapons. And at some point, some adventurer, and there are many of them in these elites, will say, 'Guys, we've accumulated so much, what do we do with it?.... Oh, we promised to attack Russia.' In that case, if they attack us, because we are not going to....stand idly by...." 

For good measure, Lavrov added. "It will be a completely different war, and it will be short."  

It is no exaggeration to say that the entire world is on the brink of a catastrophic war because of the U.S. desire for hegemony. Europe never recovered from World War II, as it has been occupied by the United States for more than 80 years. Even those originally in the Soviet sphere are now U.S. puppets with troops deployed in Poland and other Eastern European countries.

Europeans have given up economic and military security to the United States and now engage in reckless behavior in order to please the man whom the NATO Secretary General referred to as “daddy.” That person could be named Obama or Biden or Trump or a player to be named later, but the U.S. has hollowed out Europe into a shell of poverty, subservience, and belligerence. If their people claim to believe in democracy, they must act and keep dangerous people out of power. Although the same can be said of the people in this country too.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and find it on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.

Managing the Crisis of Violence: Public Safety vs Market Logic

By Jerome Louison

“We gotta put our heads together, and stop the violence.” - KRS One, Stop the Violence

Safety. That’s how Black boys in New York say farewell when they respect you. When they appreciate your presence. When they hope to see you again, knowing they might not. Like most slang, it wasn’t constructed or focus-grouped. It emerged. Emerged from the conditions they face, and a deeply internalized hope for a better environment. A safer environment. For generations, that environment has not come, despite ever-increasing budgets for the United States’s main public safety tool: policing.

For the nation’s largest police force, the New York City Police Department (NYPD), annual costs exceeded $11 billion USD (including almost $700 million in overtime pay) as of 2020. This goes primarily to the hiring of over 51,000 employees, one for every 161 residents. The main alternative to policing is community-based violence intervention (CVI). In NYC, this manifests primarily through the Crisis Management System (CMS), an umbrella formation started in 2012 to coordinate the city’s violence prevention and intervention organizations (including founding orgs like Brooklyn’s ManUp Inc. and Queens’ Life Camp), providing services from mental health support to job readiness to legal advocacy. In contrast to the NYPD, CMS funding approximates $100 million annually, just short of the $130 million recommended by the CVI Ecosystem website. Despite this disparity, given the recent rise in funding and the fact that CMS predominantly consists of working-class Black people, CMS must continue to prove its worth. Most recently, the eyes of the Comptroller’s Office1 took notice.

The Comptroller’s 2025 report, The Cure for Crisis: The Power and Potential of Community Violence Intervention, begins in 2013 when the first CMS budget was approved, totaling less than $5 million. The Cure for Crisis (building on methodologies used by the New York City Council Data team and John Jay College researchers) shows that the impact of CMS was immediate, calculating a 21% reduction in shootings between 2012 and 2014. In absolute terms, this amounts to 1,567 fewer shootings. As has been consistently shown, the work of CMS orgs on the ground has a demonstrable impact in keeping community residents safer. And yet, that same analysis highlights an unresolved question: what happens when a system doesn’t behave like a system?

The report’s recommendations revolve around the deliberate construction of an ecosystem (a favorite buzzword in the field). This includes:

• regular coordination meetings among CMS organizations

• a “centralized, real-time data-sharing dashboard for coordinating violence intervention efforts.”

• enhanced technical assistance and training

From the perspective of the New York City government, this makes sense. City agencies, ideally under the (soon-to-be) constructed Department of Community Safety, will be the centralizing hub for CMS, determining what the practice of community-based public safety looks like moving forward. Informed by public health research, the future of CMS would be simply a beefed-up version of the current CMS. But nowhere in the report does it mention “salary” or “employee benefits.” The future of CMS, then, doesn’t seem to involve better-paying jobs2. By contrast, according to the NYPD recruitment webpage, the starting salary is $60,884, increasing to $126,410 after over five years of experience (not including health insurance, retirement, etc.).

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR WORK BY MAKING A DONATION TODAY!

But one city, no matter how rich, is not indicative of an entire movement. Is it different at the national level?

The largest national effort to build the CVI ecosystem involves the CVI Action Plan. It is the collective brainchild of several organizations, including the Urban Peace Institute, Health Alliance for Violence Intervention (HAVI), and the Community Based Public Safety Collective (CBPS). Through conferences, working groups, and policy proposals, they have maintained the national mission of the CVI ecosystem, ensuring that their vision cannot be easily co-opted. The Action Plan starts with capacity-building, highlighting the need for “guidelines for pay and benefits” and wellness support for front-line workers.

The Action Plan also centers on the importance of independence for CVI. For instance, take the relationship to traditional law enforcement. CVI organizations have explicitly articulated the need for separation, as one Action Plan document makes clear:

“Adopting the shared language of ‘professional understanding’ with law enforcement can act as a firewall to clarify boundaries…People discussed how CVI differs greatly from law enforcement, as CVI focuses on love, healing, and redemption and law enforcement focuses on investigations, arrest, and incarceration.”3

Similar sentiments hold for the relationship between CVI organizations. Folks doing this work want more collaboration, not competition. Dozens of CVI groups across the United States have signed on to the Action Plan, showing that there is grassroots support for a new paradigm that seeks to reduce, and potentially eliminate, the role of law enforcement in keeping communities safe. And while support is necessary, it is not sufficient.

How to Plan for a Crisis

All sectors within a capitalist system adhere to a particular division of labor, devised by the capitalist class. CVI is no different. Despite efforts like the CVI Action Plan, community violence intervention groups are becoming the soft arm of law enforcement, whose main purpose is to reduce gun-related violence in urban settings. The current funding structure—consisting of grants, RFPs, and government contracts—incentivizes this, creating distortionary effects across the ecosystem. For one, CVI organizations must contort themselves to show funders that everything they do reduces shootings in their locality, or “catchment area.” Additionally, other modes of physical violence (including stabbings and general assaults), gender-based or intimate partner violence, as well as non-physical violence (emotional, financial, etc.) are by default de-prioritized. And conceptually, the connections between gun violence and these other modes are lost, where shootings are taken as a unique and distinct case.

Current funding also incentivizes competition. Instead of organizations providing complementary roles, thinking of their group as one piece of a larger puzzle, CVIs plan to gain ground over “rival” agencies. Of course, the idea of CVI organizations competing with police departments for funding is a non-starter. As critics of the capitalist system have long argued, contrary to economic orthodoxy, monopoly rules. And no monopoly is stronger than the police, undergirded by the state’s complete ownership of the use of force.

As mentioned earlier, community-based public safety is by nature a non-violent practice. Its philosophy is one of restorative justice, healing both the victim and perpetrator. It is based on public health research, treating the spread of (gun) violence as akin to the spread of disease, not simply the maladaptive behavior of individuals. As has been demonstrated in NYC (and other cities), these approaches do work in reducing violence. They are also cost-effective, a common argument for those seeking more investment. But questions remain. How will these organizations scale their work? How does a collection of 501(c)(3)s (by definition non-partisan) become a recognizable political and public safety force in the daily lives of working-class people?

It is worth challenging whether an ecosystem of CVI professionals and grassroots workers can develop using market-based incentives. In fact, an active removal of market logic from relations between CVI organizations might be the best way to work together. Otherwise, community-based public safety risks going the way of other Black-led institutions within the capitalist order, plagued by infighting and HNIC-syndrome, ultimately capping at a fraction of their potential.

Restorative instead of punitive justice. Public health instead of police. But what replaces the market? Some suggest that the organic impulse to help thy neighbor can stifle the worst effects of individualism and greed. In the CVI space, this plays out as mutual aid, the exchange of goods and services, or simply donating to those in need; core tenets of the non-profit sector. But the capitalist system has already accounted for this. According to the UK-based Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), the United States ranked sixth among nations in its 2024 World Giving Index, a measure of the amount of money, time, and effort given to helping others (most notably strangers). The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation Inc., built to coordinate efforts to end police brutality and support alternatives (including CVI), received over $90 million in donations in 2020 alone. And yet the ravages of monopoly capitalism, including lack of effective police oversight, continue unabated. Considering that the U.S. was in the top five as late as 2023, it is doubtful that more altruism will have any meaningful effect.

Without a force to confront and constrain capitalist machinations, violence prevention and intervention work will remain in its current state, regardless of how much money is poured into it. That force must be built as the antithesis of market logic. And the antithesis of the market is not charity; it is economic planning, driven by modern technology and democratic principles. One particularly interesting model of planning, albeit outside the CVI ecosystem, is the dual power strategy of Cooperation Jackson, a cooperative movement based in Jackson, Mississippi. Known as the Jackson-Kush Plan, it would,

“…employ the tools and techniques of the solidarity economy to radically transform the local and regional economy by socializing the means of production, democratizing productive decision-making and resource mobilization, centering the needs of the Black working-class majority of Jackson, and serving as means toward the transition to ecosocialism.” [bold emphasis mine]

Similarly, what is needed is a CVI ecosystem that socializes the means of public safety, including (but not limited to) the following: open and crowd-sourced (i.e., non-proprietary) surveillance technology, which will exist only where it is democratically determined to be useful and non-intrusive; participatory fundraising and budgeting; rigorous, scientifically determined plans for violence reduction and social service provision (inspired by the economic plans currently put forth in China, Vietnam, and other dynamic regions). These mechanisms, in tandem, would provide a viable, sustainable socio-economic foundation for policing alternatives to flourish.

Those Black boys who say “Safety” hold a wisdom worth learning from. They recognize that public safety isn’t top-down; it’s the responsibility of everyone, even if all one has to offer is a single word of hope. We must build a system that properly reflects that wisdom.

The Curious Case of Western Denialism

Pictured: Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, meets US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger in Zurich amid tight security for a summit meeting. (Photo by James Andanson/Sygma via Getty Images)

By Yalda Slivo

There is a section in Washington Bullets where Vijay Prashad delves into the foundations of the Western self-image. Since reading the book two years ago, I haven’t stopped thinking about this particular passage, where Prashad traces the modern use of the concept “conspiracy theory” to Karl Popper’s highly influential work The Open Society and Its Enemies. But Prashad does not see Popper’s text as an honorable defence of truth, but rather as a sophisticated class attack. In his reading, this categorization was never really a principled objection to hidden political intrigues, but a highly developed method of invalidating criticism of imperialism and capitalism in advance, dismissing it as irrational or conspiratorial.

Although Prashad wrote this short, incisive book in just two weeks, in the aftermath of a coup attempt against Evo Morales in Bolivia, the text was clearly written from a point of great frustration: Why did the Western left refuse to support Morales? He ticked all the boxes of identity politics, but as soon as he challenged imperial power structures, he was left alone. The truth, of course, is that Prashad understands this better than most of us. He knows that what we are witnessing is not random hesitation; it is one of the pillars that has sustained Western global dominance for over a century: denialism.

Here we find ourselves at the heart of what for decades has been dismissed as conspiracy theories, but which in fact is one of the most well-documented political machineries in history. It is the unique case of Western denialism – the same machinery that makes it possible to talk about human rights while turning a blind eye to the most extreme violations of them, as long as they serve a geopolitical purpose, whether those involved are aware of it or not.

Now, my aim with this text is not to resolve the whole idea surrounding denialism – because there are many issues involved. For me, it operates in different ways across structures, particularly within civil society through what the Marxian tradition understands as the superstructure, from Antonio Gramsci to Louis Althusser’s idea of state apparatuses. Even though I will separate denialism into a three-part structure – institutional, bureaucratic and popular – in order to frame a historical narrative, my goal is not to waste time creating strict definitions for these categories or a blueprint for everyone to follow. Rather, the aim is to show how Western denialism has functioned as a geopolitical tool within the colonial powers of the West, from the beginning of the 20th century until today.

It is without doubt not an easy task, and it will remain complicated even after the reader finishes this text. It is also worth noting that I am working from what has been historically documented, meaning that just because institutional denialism is treated as a subject for the early 20th century in this text does not mean that popular denialism did not occur at the time.

However, to understand how we ended up with today’s media and political silence surrounding the popular denialism of the Gaza genocide, we must go back to the moments when this machinery was calibrated through institutions and bureaucracies. We must go back to the darkest hours of WWII – when British intelligence received a telegram that should never have been dismissed.

INSTITUTIONAL DENIALISM

It is August 10, 1942. A coded message, later known as the Riegner Telegram, arrives at the British Foreign Office in London. The text of the telegram is brief but terrifying:

“Received alarming report stating that, in the Fuehrer’s Headquarters, a plan has been discussed, and is under consideration, according to which all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany numbering 3 1/2 to 4 millions should, after deportation and concentration in the East, be at one blow exterminated, in order to resolve, once and for all the Jewish question in Europe. Action is reported to be planned for the autumn.

Ways of execution are still being discussed including the use of prussic acid. We transmit this information with all the necessary reservation, as exactitude cannot be confirmed by us. Our informant is reported to have close connexions with the highest German authorities, and his reports are generally reliable.”[1]

The message, based on information smuggled out of Nazi Germany via a German industrialist, is as inconceivable as it is nightmarish. Adolf Hitler had ordered the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jewish population. However, despite this terrifying detail, the report was met with cynical skepticism.

At the time, British officials initially dismissed the information, warning colleagues that circulating such claims might “provoke embarrassing repercussions”[2] – a rather cynical excuse revealing that the primary concern was not the fate of Europe’s Jewish people, but the political consequences of acknowledging atrocities that could raise difficult questions about refugees and Allied responsibilities, not least in Palestine – where the Zionist movement had already been growing for decades and immigration was tightly controlled by the British authorities.[3]

But reality told a different story – the struggle against fascism had deep ideological roots stretching back to the victory of the October Revolution 25 years earlier, a spark that had ignited hope among Europe's radical movements. For these movements, there was no doubt about the nature of the enemy: fascism was the brutal face of capitalism, a movement that cloaked itself in revolutionary rhetoric but shook hands with big finance.

This was apparent in the way Hitler’s war machine was lubricated by companies such as the chemical giant IG Farben, whose economic muscle and technical expertise helped lay the foundations for the apparatus of extermination – it was the same company that would later supply the prussic acid that filled the gas chambers of the concentration camps. A true textbook example of how monopoly capital integrated itself with fascist violence.

While the European labor movements recognized the threat early on, the colonial powers allowed their geopolitical interests and policies to be guided by cold realpolitik. Rather than confronting the rising Nazi regime, Britain and the United States were more interested in preserving their empires and exploiting labor in their respective colonies. The potential collapse of the Soviet Union at the hands of Hitler’s Germany was of no concern to Britain and the United States, as they had already attempted to undermine it – given that it was the only force challenging the global financial system in the first place. In the case of the Soviet Union, there was no geopolitical denial of the massacres, as the Soviet state was confronting the very regime it had predicted would rise to power if finance capital continued to metastasize. But for the survivors who managed to escape, the biggest challenge, apart from the trauma itself, was to be believed.

However, in Washington, the reports were once again met with suspicion of these “Jewish sources.” Despite the clear warning in the Riegner Telegram from August 1942, officials at the U.S. State Department refused for weeks to pass on the information. It would take 18 months, until January 1944, before then U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt finally bowed to political pressure and established the War Refugee Board. By then, however, millions of people – Jewish, Soviet POWs, Roma, and resistance fighters had already been murdered. This pattern of ignorance was systematic: even the U.S. Army’s own magazine, Yank, requested a “less Jewish story” so as not to provoke the home front.[4]

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR WORK BY MAKING A DONATION TODAY!

This inability to act had been going on before. In what has become known as “the first modern genocide,” the Ottoman killing of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in 1915 shows one of the earliest examples of how colonial powers used human tragedies as pawns in a geopolitical game. Here, we see a systematic policy of denial on full display – where the recognition of genocide is instrumentalized: highlighted when it damages an enemy, but silenced when it threatens one’s own alliances.

In the Ottoman case, their economy had been taken over by European creditors in 1881 via the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, meaning that instability in the region could disrupt the payment of loans.

Initially, British intelligence openly condemned the Ottoman massacres of Christian minorities. But this moral stance proved empty, as Yusuf Malek would later describe in his eyewitness account and testimony, The British Betrayal of the Assyrians, how the British exploited the Assyrian population for their military purposes as long as it served the interests of empire. Malek, who himself worked as an interpreter for British military intelligence, provides detailed insight into how the colonial power navigated between empty promises and cynical denial of human tragedies. When strategy required change, Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire were left to deal with their own fate – sometimes forced to live in militarized zones under British mandate while the empire prioritized diplomatic relations with newly emerging powers in the region.

This form of systematic denial became evident in how Britain dealt with human tragedies throughout the 20th century – a pattern that culminated in the institutional structures of denial surrounding the Holocaust as it was carried out.

BUREAUCRATIC DENIALISM

After WWII, the United States took over the imperial baton but transformed colonial arrogance into an impenetrable bureaucratic apparatus. Henry Kissinger would later infamously emerge as the architect of this new order ­– in which imperialist goals hid behind layers of secrecy and technocracy.

One of the most effective tools in this apparatus was its ability to control narratives – often by labeling critics of U.S. involvement in coups and the destabilization of socialist movements as “conspiracy theorists.” This was not accidental: in 1967, the CIA famously issued Dispatch 1035-960 to its stations around the world, explicitly instructing agents to counter critics of the Warren Commission by deploying this very label – making visible the machinery that would go on to pre-emptively discredit anyone who dared question the official version of events.[5] In this way, the CIA effectively neutralized the truth.

As Marxist movements gained ground globally, bureaucratic attempts to stifle them intensified. One conveniently forgotten example is Korea: a country the U.S. first divided in two along an arbitrarily drawn line in 1945, then literally razed to the ground during a war that killed one million people – a tragedy erased from Western consciousness. This imperialist machine operated beyond any democratic scrutiny, imposing a form of capitalist dictatorship on the world whenever and wherever it wanted. Agencies such as the U.S. State Department bureaucratically erased all traces of human suffering wherever the U.S. and its allies had left their fingerprints.

The U.S. has consistently denied any involvement in coups globally – only to declassify documents decades later that confirm exactly what the conspiracy theorists had been claiming all along. This form of systematic denial is not merely a theoretical construct but has manifested in concrete covert operations, where the bureaucratic apparatus has been used to cover up the traces of U.S. imperialist interventions for decades. One could view the unsealing and declassifying of documents as a show of force: by denying the act itself for geopolitical reasons, only to later make it public, the bureaucratic message is clear – “So what if we did it, what are you going to do about it?” And the answer is indeed – absolutely nothing.

One of the most striking examples of this denialist mechanism is Iran in 1953, through Operation Ajax. When democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized the country’s oil resources to benefit the people of Iran, the U.S. responded by organizing a coup d’état to protect Western capital interests. For six decades, the U.S. officially denied any involvement, describing the event as an internal Iranian affair. It wasn’t until 2013 that the CIA officially acknowledged its role and methods in the coup, demonstrating how bureaucratic secrecy managed to conceal the theft of Iran’s sovereignty for over half a century.[6]

The pattern was repeated with even more devastating consequences in Indonesia in 1965 through the operation known as the Jakarta Method. This strategy stemmed from the U.S. belief that it could befriend neutral countries in the so-called “Third World,” as long as it could keep communists out of power. However, in Indonesia, a growing communist movement represented by the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) faced a military purge supported by the U.S., resulting in at least 1,000,000 deaths ­– some sources even claim 3,000,000. Behind the scenes, the U.S. worked tirelessly to provide the Indonesian army with lists of communist leaders to target for murder, while outwardly maintaining diplomatic distance. This genocide was labeled an “internal security operation,” yet documents released in 2017 ultimately proved that U.S. support for the mass murders had been kept hidden in the archives.[7]

POPULAR DENIALISM

The pattern of denialism established during the 20th century has reached a critical point in our time in the handling of Gaza’s total demise. Here, denial is no longer just a matter of secret archives but a living synthesis of all three parts of the structure: institutional, bureaucratic and popular denialism. What distinguishes Gaza from every case examined in this text is not the scale of the atrocity or the cynicism of those enabling it – these have been constant across the century we have traced. What is different this time is the nature of the denial as it is happening in real time. With Korea, Iran and Indonesia, the state machine worked to conceal in retrospect by burying evidence in classified archives for decades before the truth surfaced. Gaza is the first case in this tradition where denial is not lagging behind the atrocity. The historical pattern has flipped: institutions that dedicated their existence to preventing genocide have named it as such in real time – and have been ignored in real time.

Despite the fact that international bodies such as Amnesty International had already established in February 2024 that Israel had failed to meet the International Court of Justice (ICJ) requirement to prevent genocide, the Western media instead decided to apply a surgical and seemingly “objective” lens to the daily horrors faced by Palestinians.[8] Even though the institutions had done more than enough careful work analyzing the facts, the media took it upon itself by reporting from a distance without journalists on the ground – resulting in rhetoric that systematically minimized the suffering. The media, therefore, acted as an extension of bureaucratic denial for Israel and its institutions, which for decades, have enjoyed the privilege of priority in the realm of genocide studies. Even though the media itself is not part of the state bureaucracy, it has utilized the same vocabulary that has been part of its tradition for decades in relation to human tragedies, while failing to recognize its own role as a denialist entity – only this time for the U.S.’s greatest ally. In addition, Human Rights Watch has repeatedly observed how Israel has defied court rulings, a defiance made possible by the diplomatic safety net provided by the U.S. – a contemporary continuation of its imperialist tradition of protecting geopolitical strategic allies at all costs, even when committing genocide.

However, the response to the ICJ findings was not to refute them. No one presented any counter-evidence or legal arguments. Instead, we were reminded of CIA Dispatch 1035-960 – the idea of pre-emptively discrediting any source. All of a sudden, methodology was questioned: how the dead were counted and how numbers were framed. But this was not because the evidence itself was weak, but because it would require governments, editorial boards and political establishments to reckon with their self-image surrounding “Never Again,” as they chose to look away while it was happening.

Here, popular denialism becomes more than just ignorance – it becomes labor for the state, which now recruits millions of people to dispute established facts in real time instead of burying evidence in classified archives for decades. The “Hamas-run” label, the “Pallywood” myth, the human shields argument, and debates over how many deaths were “historically acceptable” all constitute a form of denial – reducing the entire population of Gaza to either human shields or combatants by framing it as a “conflict.” In just the last two years, the arguments shifted constantly: first the death toll was disputed, then methodology, then the very definition of genocide itself – and none of this was due to a search for truth, but rather a perpetual moving of the goalposts.

These are all popular expressions of bureaucratic and institutional sentiment. To keep arms flowing, for European governments to maintain diplomatic relationships, and for the media to continue gaining special access, someone has to do the actual work of making the population comfortable with it – the work of popular denialism. And just as Gramsci understood the role of the superstructure 100 years ago, it’s not by forcing consent, but by making it feel like common sense.

This would all continue as the genocide moved toward a “final solution,” where starvation became policy and Hamas was being blamed for stealing food and aid – somehow accounting for mass hunger in a place where Israel had destroyed all infrastructure, schools and hospitals. This can only be seen as the “common sense” of a lie.

The circle that began with British officials dismissing “Jewish sources” in 1942 is now closing in an era where voices from Gaza are dismissed with the same cold logic – a logic that favors the interests of the empire and its superstructure over testimonies of human destruction.

Notes

[1] The National Archives (n.d.) Riegner Telegram, FO 371/30917. Available at: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2_FO-371-30917-Riegner.jpg (Accessed: 12 March 2026).

[2] World Jewish Congress (2020) 'This week in Jewish history: Riegner Telegram alerts world of Holocaust', World Jewish Congress. Available at: https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/this-week-in-jewish-history--riegner-telegram-alerts-world-of-holocaust-8-2-2020 (Accessed: 12 March 2026).

[3] His Majesty's Government (1939) British White Paper of 1939. Avalon Project, Yale Law School. Available at: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1939.asp (Accessed: 13 March 2026).

[4] EBSCO (n.d.) 'Holocaust revisionism and censorship', EBSCO Research Starters: Communication and Mass Media. Available at: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/communication-and-mass-media/holocaust-revisionism-and-censorship (Accessed: 12 March 2026).

[5] Central Intelligence Agency (1967) Dispatch 1035-960, declassified document. Available via Mary Ferrell Foundation at: https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=49975#relPageId=2 (Accessed: 12 March 2026).

[6] US Department of State (2017) Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951–1954: Iran. Available at: https://static.history.state.gov/frus/frus1951-54Iran/pdf/frus1951-54Iran.pdf (Accessed: 12 March 2026).

[7] Human Rights Watch (2017) 'Indonesia: US documents released on 1965–66 massacres', Human Rights Watch, 18 October. Available at: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/10/18/indonesia-us-documents-released-1965-66-massacres (Accessed: 12 March 2026).

[8] Amnesty International (2024) 'Israel defying ICJ ruling to prevent genocide by failing to allow adequate humanitarian aid to reach Gaza', Amnesty International, February. Available at: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/israel-defying-icj-ruling-to-prevent-genocide-by-failing-to-allow-adequate-humanitarian-aid-to-reach-gaza/ (Accessed: 12 March 2026).

From Racism and Anti-Communism to Global Dominance: On the Use of ICE’s Foreign Policy Provision

By Brian Rome

Republished from Liberation School.

A foreign national spoke out against a country he accused of killing his family. After fleeing that country to escape persecution, the U.S. government arrested him and tried to deport him. The U.S. government was protective of its relationship with the foreign country he criticized and wanted to silence him through deportation.

It used a little-known provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that says the Secretary of State can claim their presence could have adverse consequences for foreign policy. A judge called his case “Kafkaesque,” meaning nightmarish, bizarre, and illogical, but the government was allowed to proceed with his deportation. The story is familiar but not new: it’s what happened to Mario Ruiz Massieu, whom the U.S. government tried to deport in 1993.

This is also similar to the story of Mahmoud Khalil, whom ICE detained on March 8, 2025, under the pretext of the INA’s same foreign policy provision. The U.S. government targeted Khalil because of his principled advocacy for Palestinians and his role as a lead negotiator for Columbia students protesting their university’s investments in Israel. All people in the U.S., including non-citizen immigrants, have the right to free speech through the First Amendment. Khalil, however, is a legal permanent resident. The government is pursuing his unconstitutional deportation to drive fear into the heart of the movement for Palestine. Khalil’s story is not an anomaly but shows how U.S. immigration law is actually a weapon against the people both inside and outside the country.

The country’s first immigration laws were developed in 1790. These laws codified white supremacy and set hard limits on the types of people who could enter and enjoy full privileges of citizenship. In 1952 the original Immigration and Nationalities Act shifted the focus to preventing undesirables who held communist and pro-worker beliefs. The foreign policy provision was enacted in 1990 as an extreme show of force given to the state to target and isolate individuals.

From white supremacy to anti-communism to global dominance, each successive period subsumes what came before, rooted in the interests of the capitalist ruling class: preserving and expanding capital’s dominance over working people and oppressed nations in the U.S. and abroad.

To the roots: White supremacy and the class function of immigration law

Immigration law serves two complementary functions: external exclusion and internal discipline.

Exclusion operates through borders and legal barriers to entry. The government uses race, nationality, and economic class as gatekeeping criteria for particular working-class populations deemed as threats. Pro-communist immigrants, whether from Cuba, China, or Italy, are not allowed to become citizens. Banning entire peoples means that the government can entrench racial demographics and prevent the development of solidarity. If the only Venezuelans one meets are anti-socialist, it is hard to perceive the mass support of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Discipline, on the other hand, works against people who are here. Immigrants fear deportation. To avoid that, they may accept lower wages and keep quiet about violations of their rights as workers. Even when immigrants have legal status, their status is often tethered to their employer or their school. This effectively gives their boss or university the power to deport them. For non-immigrants, employers use the threat of replacement by immigrant workers to accept less and pit workers against each other.

The first such law, the 1790 Naturalization Act, set up an explicit class and racial barrier for citizenship. Only free white persons could become citizens. Free white persons excluded Indigenous peoples, slaves, indentured servants, and anyone not European or their descendants.

Less than 10 years later, Congress enacted its first deportation law, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. This was the first legal connection drawn between U.S. foreign policy and immigration. The U.S. at the time was at war with Revolutionary France. Under this law, the President could arrest and deport French revolutionaries and others deemed “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” The law is still in force today and has been invoked by President Trump to deport Venezuelan immigrants.

The 19th century was marked by European and American colonization and attacks on China in what would be known in China as the Century of Humiliation. China, the country that invented silk, tea, paper, and gunpowder, had been a trading partner with Europe for nearly 300 years. The European market was in high demand for Chinese goods but had little to offer in return. They were forced to pay the Chinese in precious metals, running up a trade deficit. Over time the British began importing opium–the base ingredient of heroin–and began addicting the population.

When the Chinese imperial government attempted to ban opium sales, the colonial powers found their solution: the Opium Wars [1]. They pried open China’s internal markets and flooded the country with opium, overruling China’s attempts to ban opium sales [2]. Ten percent of China’s population became addicted to opium. China was subjugated to Western capital. Many Chinese workers were forced into super-exploitative overseas labor as a result.

Many of these workers ended up in the U.S., where slavery had ended and the construction of the transcontinental railroad demanded massive amounts of cheap labor. Nine in 10 workers on the strategic infrastructure were Chinese [3]. Capitalists not only ruthlessly exploited Chinese workers (many died of overwork before the end of their labor contracts) but also stoked racial prejudices and played off white workers against Chinese workers. When white workers went on strike, capitalists hired Chinese workers as underpaid replacements. Some white workers–aspiring to be capitalists or not seeing themselves as members of the international working class–lashed out against Chinese workers and blamed them for being paid less and working more. In the 1870s, white workers violently expelled and even lynched Chinese workers in their communities [4].

In the wake of this racist hatred the government enacted the Chinese Exclusion in 1882, codifying the “Yellow Peril” myth–the idea that the immigration of Chinese workers constituted an invasion that threatened white society and its values [5]. Building on decades of anti-Chinese laws at the state and local level, the law banned (though did not prevent) the immigration of Chinese workers and made them ineligible to become U.S. citizens.

It remained in force until 1943, when China and the U.S. were both fighting Japan in World War II. Through the law, U.S. capitalists cemented the divide between Chinese workers and white workers, to the detriment of all workers. Expressly based on their race, Chinese workers were banned from legally immigrating to the U.S. and would be subject to deportation if they came anyway. Chinese workers in the U.S. were made permanent non-citizens. The fundamental purpose of this immigration law was not to protect “American” labor but to prevent unity with Chinese workers and cement racial hierarchies.

20th century immigration law: Crushing dissent

By the 1920s, much had changed in the world. Revolution had swept over Russia and for the first time peasants and poor working people ran their own government. Fearing this radical shift, the U.S. unleashed the Palmer Raids—violent mass arrests, beatings, and deportations targeting communists, anarchists, and labor activists. The top priority of the U.S. was to prevent the spread of communist ideas and communists themselves.

The 1924 Immigration Act was written to do just that. Designed by open eugenicists, the law racialized Eastern and Southern Europeans, imposed highly restrictive quotas on their immigration, and all but banned the immigration of Asians. The quotas were pegged to U.S. demographics in 1890–roughly coinciding with the closure of the frontier in the western U.S.–attempting to entrench the dominant position of white people of Northern European descent.

The law racialized Eastern Europeans, who previously were viewed as their own separate nationalities. The U.S. ruling class responded to the Russian revolution through antisemitic and anticommunist tropes like Judeo-Bolshevism. Most Jewish working people at that time were communist. The law’s racialization of Eastern Europeans built on the reaction to the world’s first successful socialist revolution, including antisemitic tropes like “Judeo-Bolshevism” that conflated Jews and Communists, and mass arrests and deportations of suspected socialists [6]. In essence, the law defined who should be considered “American” on racial terms. President Coolidge’s signing statement for the law was that “America must remain American,” and the U.S. State Department describes the law’s “most basic purpose” as “to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity” [7].

Beyond the external exclusionary aspect of the 1924 Immigration Act, it also increased internal repression: for the first time, it authorized deportation of any immigrant who had overstayed or entered without a visa, expanding the class of workers made especially vulnerable in a way that “American” workers were not.

After World War II, the U.S. updated explicit racial quotas with a new focus: ideological control. The 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, also known as the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), modernized the U.S. immigration system while entrenching its racist and ideological foundations. Though it eliminated the outright ban on Asian immigration—a concession made during World War II to align with Asian allies—it maintained strict racial quotas designed to preserve the demographic dominance of whiteness (expanded to include non-Communist Italians, Poles, and Jews). Immigration restrictionists still hoped to achieve “the preservation of whiteness” through the system, reflecting the enduring legacy of the 1924 Immigration Act [8]. But the INA also introduced a new dimension of repression: ideological exclusion. In the context of anti-communist hysteria—fueled by the Soviet Union’s nuclear advancements, the Chinese Revolution and the Communists’ victory, the Korean War, and the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—the law barred entry to anyone affiliated with communist or “subversive” organizations. This provision was not merely about keeping communism at bay abroad; it was a tool for policing thought domestically.

SUPPORT OUR WORK BY MAKING A DONATION TODAY!

The law’s ideological exclusions mirrored the McCarthy-era purges that targeted communists in government, universities, and Hollywood. Leaders of the Communist Party were prosecuted and imprisoned under the Smith Act, while the INA ensured that foreign-born radicals—or even those merely suspected of socialist sympathies—could be denied entry or deported. This created a chilling effect, reinforcing the internal disciplinary function of immigration law: it discouraged dissent among immigrants already in the U.S., who feared deportation if they expressed views deemed threatening to the state. Even President Truman, despite his Cold War anti-communism, recognized the law’s blatant racism and vetoed it, only to be overridden by a Congress gripped by reactionary fervor.

The INA thus exemplified the dual role of U.S. immigration law: external exclusion (filtering entrants by race and ideology) and internal discipline (suppressing radical thought and labor organizing). Like the Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 Immigration Act before it, the law served capital’s interests—this time, by aligning immigration policy with the Cold War imperative of crushing socialist movements at home and abroad.

The 1990 amendment: Suppressing free speech

By 1990, the decline and imminent collapse of the Soviet Union and the rapprochement between the U.S. and China had rendered overt anti-communism obsolete as a justification for repression. At the same time, the U.S. was close to achieving global unipolar dominance. It had weakened the Soviet Union, had overthrown left-leaning governments in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and was preparing to jealously guard its status as the world’s sole superpower. The U.S. ruling class needed a new pretext for domestic discipline, and an amendment to the INA adding a foreign policy provision fit the bill. The amendment passed with bipartisan support and little debate, reflecting ruling class agreement on foreign policy. The provision allows deportation whenever the Secretary of State declares that a noncitizen’s presence may have adverse consequences on U.S. foreign policy—a term left deliberately vague. A mirror provision also prohibits the entry of any person the Secretary of State deems adverse to foreign policy. In practice, this means the Secretary of State has full discretion to say that anyone’s presence in the country could affect “foreign policy.”

Congress anticipated that the Secretary of State could use the foreign policy provision to punish speech protected by the First Amendment, which has long been understood to apply to citizens and legal residents alike [9]. On paper, the provision includes a “safe harbor” for protected speech, prohibiting deportation based on lawful beliefs or associations. In practice, this protection is meaningless. The Secretary of State can override it simply by declaring a “compelling foreign policy interest,” a standard so elastic it can be met with a rote recitation of the standard in a two-page letter, as in Mahmoud Khalil’s case. This creates a legal black hole: noncitizens can be deported for speech that is perfectly lawful, based on secret determinations they cannot challenge.

The foreign policy provision was further strengthened by the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which stripped lower courts of the power to review most deportations. Instead, immigrants facing deportation must defend themselves before immigration judges, who are part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch, and cannot rule on the constitutionality of the laws they are tasked to enforce. The result is a system where the executive branch acts as prosecutor, judge, and executor of deportation—a system designed to evade accountability.

“Massieu v. Reno:” Foreign policy provision scrutinized

The first major test of the foreign policy provision came in the 1990s, when the Clinton administration sought to deport Mario Ruiz Massieu. Massieu was a former Mexican official who had charged Mexican government officials with responsibility for the assassination of his brother and covering up the investigation. He faced retaliatory criminal charges and death threats in Mexico, so he fled the country and legally entered the U.S. where his family had a home. He was quickly detained by immigration officials. Mexico tried to extradite him but failed in U.S. courts on four separate attempts due to lack of evidence The U.S., close to the right-wing Mexican government at the time, instead invoked the new foreign policy provision and started deportation proceedings.

Massieu fought back and in 1996, in a bizarre irony of history, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, the sister of Donald Trump, delivered a rare but fleeting victory for civil liberties. She ruled the foreign policy provision unconstitutional on three grounds:

1. Its vagueness made it impossible for anyone to know when the Secretary of State could invoke it;

2. It denied targets due process–a meaningful opportunity to challenge the Secretary of State’s determination of adversity to foreign policy; and

3. it improperly delegated legislative power to the executive branch because it provided no standards for courts to assess the Secretary of State’s determination.

Her opinion exposed the provision as a tool of arbitrary repression: it gave the Secretary of State “unfettered and unreviewable discretion to deport any alien lawfully within the United States…because that person’s mere presence here would impact in some unexplained way on the foreign policy interests of the United States,” while “no one outside the Department of State and, perhaps, the President ever knows what our nation’s frequently covert foreign policy is at any given time.”

This victory was short-lived. On appeal, a Third Circuit panel including future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reversed the decision on a technicality. The Third Circuit ruled that Massieu had to first exhaust his arguments in immigration courts before appealing back to the Third Circuit, which only then could decide the constitutionality of the foreign policy provision. The decision forced Massieu into a dead end. Immigration judges lack the power to decide whether a law is unconstitutional. Back in immigration court, an immigration judge rubber-stamped the Secretary of State’s determination that Massieu’s presence posed adverse consequences to U.S. foreign policy and ordered him deported to Mexico, despite death threats he had received there. After a years of protracted litigation, he died under house arrest in New Jersey in 1999.

The prosecution of Mahmoud Khalil: Imperialism on the domestic front

In March 2025, ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University and prominent critic of Israel’s ongoing–and U.S.-supported–genocide of Palestinians, under the same foreign policy provision. Khalil, a lawful permanent resident married to a U.S. citizen, had committed no crime—his only offense was organizing protests against genocide [10]. The case against Khalil reflects the internal function of the foreign policy provision–and U.S. immigration law in general– as a repressive tool of the ruling class to defend imperialism.

ICE arrested Khalil in New York, moved him to New Jersey, and moved him again to an immigrant jail in Louisiana, where the government chose to prosecute his deportation [11]. While in New Jersey, Khalil filed a habeas corpus case to challenge his detention in federal district court, arguing that his detention violated his rights to free speech and due process under the First and Fifth Amendments. After Khalil had endured 104 days of detention, the federal district court judge granted his request for release on bail. Still, the government is withholding Khalil’s passport, and both of his cases are proceeding in parallel.

The government’s justifications and evidence for prosecuting Khalil are even weaker than those it invoked against Massieu. No foreign country has requested Khalil’s extradition or has accused him of any crimes. The government is relying on fake tabloids and Zionist doxxing groups like Betar [12], who identified Khalil on January 29 as a target for deportation [13], claimed credit for his arrest, and said it has “already submitted names of hundreds of terror supporters to the Trump administration” [14]. The only connection to U.S. foreign policy is the targets of Khalil’s critical speech: Zionism and U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians. U.S. foreign policy falsely brands people resisting imperialism, Zionism, and genocide as antisemitic and terrorists.

The initial charging document the government issued against Khalil contained only a naked assertion that Khalil’s “presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” [15]. When the immigration judge required the government to submit all evidence that Khalil could be deported, the government submitted only an undated, two-page letter asserting that the foreign policy interest in Khalil’s deportation is “compelling,” along with backwards and unfounded accusations of antisemitism [16]. The letter recognizes that the foreign policy provision’s safe harbor applies, as it tacitly acknowledges that the case against Khalil is based on his “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations that are otherwise lawful.” Based on the letter alone, the immigration judge ruled that she had no room to question the Secretary of State’s determination and ordered the deportation of Khalil.

Khalil is likely appealing the immigration judge’s ruling to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which will almost certainly affirm the ruling. After that, Khalil can appeal to the Fifth Circuit–known as the most conservative federal appellate court–and the constitutional infirmities of the foreign policy provision can be considered in an appellate court for the first time. Though the government cannot legally deport Khalil until his case is resolved, the government has recently shown a brazen disregard of court orders on deportations [17].

At the same time, Khalil is pursuing his habeas corpus claims in federal district court in New Jersey–the same court that decided Massieu v. Reno and whose rulings are appealable to the Third Circuit. The district court rejected the government’s arguments that Khalil’s case belongs in immigration court alone, in large part because Khalil’s constitutional claims cannot be considered in immigration court [18]. The Third Circuit may need to reconsider the application of the exhaustion requirement it previously articulated in Massieu, given the abundant clarity that it is futile to challenge the constitutionality of the foreign policy provision and the Secretary of State’s determinations in immigration court.

If Khalil were to prevail and win a decision that the foreign policy provision is unconstitutional, the government’s efforts to deport immigrants whose speech it does not like will become more difficult as courts impede deportations under the provision. But even failed deportation cases can serve as repressive weapons–to a large extent, the process is the punishment. It would be cold comfort for detained immigrants to know that after years of litigation, they will not be deported. The only way to deny imperialism that repressive victory is for anti-imperialists–immigrants and non-immigrants alike–to rise up and speak out.

Khalil’s case is not an anomaly. The Trump administration has already used the foreign policy provision against other outspoken students, like Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts University and Yunseo Chung from Columbia University. While some have been released, many others have not. The threat is not limited to immigrants or legal residents; the government has reportedly considered deporting U.S. citizens to prison camps in El Salvador [19]. The escalation is a deliberate attempt to silence dissent. Already, the government’s use of the foreign policy provision against Khalil and others is blowing back, as thousands have taken to the streets in protest [20]. For every voice the government silences or removes, thousands must emerge in resistance.

The limits of the law and the necessity of resistance

The foreign policy provision is not an aberration but the latest iteration of a bipartisan system designed to serve empire and capital. From the beginnings of U.S. immigration law, the powers to exclude and deport have served to maintain racial hierarchy, advance the exploitation of labor, protect capital, and punish dissent. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to today’s deportations, immigration law has always been a weapon of class war—one that divides workers, shields capital, and silences critics of U.S. imperialism.

Legal challenges, while necessary, cannot defeat this system. The ruling class can count on courts to yield to their executive power, from the Third Circuit’s procedural dodging in Massieu to the Louisiana immigration judge’s rubber-stamping of Khalil’s deportation. Even when judges like Judge Barry rule against the government, the process alone is repressive and the government finds ways to sidestep adverse rulings.

Nor can mere awareness blunt weapons like the foreign policy provision. The only effective counter to this repression is mass resistance. Khalil’s detention has already sparked nationwide protests. Every attempt at deportation must be met with collective action. The struggle cannot be confined to courtrooms or narrowly defined targets of the day—it is inextricably linked to global movements of workers, students, and all people against U.S. imperialism at home and abroad.

As the labor slogan goes, an injury to one is an injury to all. The more the state wields immigration law as a weapon, the more the people must wield solidarity as a shield. Free Palestine and free us all.

References

[1] Ken Hammond,China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future(New York: 1804 Books, 2023), 7-8.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Lakshmi Gandhi, “A History of Indentured Labor Gives ‘Coolie’ Its Sting,”NPR, 25 November 2013. Availablehere.
[4] Katie Dowd, “140 years ago, San Francisco was set ablaze during the city’s deadliest race riots,”SFGATE, 23 July 2017, availablehere; “This Day in History: Oct. 24, 1871: Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre,”Zinn Education Project, availablehere.
[5] Sheila Xiao, “The Legacy of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882,”Liberation School, 6 May 2018. Availablehere.
[6] Jarrod Grammel, “The Palmer Raids and the First Red Scare: The Roots of Liberal Anticommunism in the United States,”Peace, Land, & Bread, 25 February 2021. Availablehere.
[7] “The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act),”U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Availablehere.
[8] Andrew M. Baxter and Alex Nowrasteh, “A Brief History of U.S. Immigration Policy from the Colonial Period to the Present Day,”CATO Institute, 3 August 2021. Availablehere.
[9]See Shaughnessy v. U.S. ex rel. Mezei, 345 U.S. 206 (1953);Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135 (1945).
[10] Khalil’s activity can be seen inThe Encampments, a documentary film released a few weeks after he was detained. Michael T. Workman and Kei Pritsker, directors, The Encampments, Watermelon Pictures, 2025.
[11] Devorah Levy-Pearlman, “Fight to Free Mahmoud Khalil exposes the black hole of Louisiana’s ICE jails,”Liberation News, 3 April 2025. Availablehere.
[12] Chloe Atkins, “Government’s Case against Mahmoud Khalil is Reliant on Tabloid Accounts, Review of Evidence Shows,”NBC News, 15 April 2025. Availablehere.
[13] Will Oremus, “Meet the Militant Jewish Group backing Trump’s Deportation Push,”The Spokesman-Review, 29 March 2025. Availablehere.
[14] Joshua Mitts and David Pozen, “In Defense of our Shared Values,”Columbia Daily Spectator, 13 February 2025. Availablehere.
[15] “Notice to Appear,”U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 9 March 2025. Availablehere.
[16] “Submission of Documents,”U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 9 April 2025. Availablehere.
[17] Teresa Paez, “ICE Deports Legally Protected Maryland Father to El Salvador’s ‘Mega Prison’,”Liberation News, 8 April 2025, availablehere; Nicholas Riccardi and Regina Garcia Cano, “Trump Administration Deports Hundreds of Immigrants even as Judge Orders their Removals be Stopped,”Associated Press, 17 March 2025, availablehere.
[18]Khalil v. Joyce, Opinion, No. 25-cv-01963 (D.N.J. April 29, 2025). Availablehere.
[19] Chris Walker, “White House Press Sec Says Trump’s Seriously Considering Deporting US Citizens,”Truthout, 9 April 2025. Availablehere.
[20] Brian Becker, “‘First They Came for the Palestinian’: Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil Sparks Nationwide Movement,”BreakThrough News, 12 March 2025. Availablehere.

The Empire’s Strategic Failure: How the US-Israeli Assault on Iran Accelerated Imperial Decline

[Pictured: Iran’s Abu Mahdi naval cruise missiles are displayed in a ceremony to mark their delivery to the navy and the Revolutionary Guard navy, in Iran, July 25, 2023 (Iranian Defense Ministry photo.]

By Taha Zeinali and Sara Larijani

Republished from Monthly Review.

The June 2025 US-Israeli military assault on Iran—featuring Israel’s Operation Rising Lion and the US Operation Midnight Hammer confronted by Iran’s defensive Operation True Promise 3—despite achieving short-term tactical victories, represents a profound strategic failure that has accelerated the US-led imperial decline and strengthened global anti-imperialist forces. Rather than cementing Western hegemony, this illegal act of aggression has exposed the terminal contradictions of a declining empire desperate to maintain unipolar control through increasingly aggressive military adventures.

The Unmasking of the ‘Rules-Based Order’

The weaponization of diplomacy as cover for military aggression represents a fundamental breach in the international order’s trust architecture. By launching the aggression after announcing the sixth round of US-Iran talks in Muscat—with full prior coordination between Trump and Netanyahu—the West transformed diplomatic engagement from a tool of conflict resolution into a tactical deception for pre-planned strikes. As one statement argues, “the timing and scale of this attack only underscores the fact that this was a long-planned orchestrated campaign of military aggression, diplomatic maneuver, intelligence warfare, sabotage, and media manipulation, executed with the full complicity and material support of the US and its vassals.” This calculated betrayal, mirroring the WMD fabrications that enabled Iraq’s destruction, has irrevocably shattered the credibility of Western diplomatic initiatives. The strategic use of negotiations as operational cover not only violates basic principles of good faith engagement but also establishes a precedent where any future Western diplomatic overture must be viewed as potential military subterfuge, fundamentally undermining the possibility of genuine dialogue between the West and nations of the global South.

Furthermore, the fraudulent nature of the Western “rules-based order” stands fully exposed in the diplomatic theater that followed the attacks. In a spectacle of Orwellian inversion, European powers rushed to blame the victim while exonerating the aggressor. France’s Foreign Ministry condemned “Iran’s ongoing nuclear program” and reaffirmed “Israel’s right to defend itself,” while the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary called on “all parties, especially Iran, to exercise restraint”—conspicuously omitting any criticism of Israel’s illegal strikes. Germany’s response proved most revealing: the foreign minister “strongly condemned the Iranian attack on Israeli territory” even before Iran’s initial retaliation, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz later declared, “This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us…. I can only say, I have the greatest respect for the fact that the Israeli army had the courage to do this.”

This diplomatic reversal—where victims become perpetrators—exemplifies Edward Said’s concept of Orientalist logic in Western discourse: Muslims must always appear as irrational aggressors, even when defending themselves from unprovoked attacks. The United Nations Secretary-General’s weak call for “all sides to avoid escalation” without condemning the aggression and attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is striking, showing how international institutions serve as what Noam Chomsky calls “instruments of the powerful,” using false neutrality to legitimize imperial violence. Notably, in 1981, UN Security Council Resolution 487 “condemned the military attack by Israel on the Iraqi nuclear installation as a clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations” and demanded Israel “refrain from such acts or threats of aggression in the future.”

This blatant double standard crystallized a permanent rupture in Iranian consciousness. Western powers reflexively defending unprovoked aggression while condemning Iran’s defensive response shattered all illusions about their commitment to international law. This betrayal transcended diplomatic disappointment—it exposed Western values as mere rhetorical weapons serving imperial interests. The depth of this shift emerged in Mohsen Chavoshi’s song “Alaj,” released the day of the US bombings, with lyrics declaring, “People! The remedy is in the homeland. The world is mere lip service; this battle is shield against shield. Free souls of the world, settle the matter with the slave masters!”

Nuclear Proliferation: The Empire’s Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The weaponization of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s technical assessments represents a masterclass in imperial manipulation. The IAEA director’s June report became a strategic weapon for Israeli and Western aggression. One day after the IAEA’s politically motivated comprehensive report accusing “Iran of failing to meet obligations,” the United States and Israel launched their long-planned assault. In this regard, Grossi’s biased verification became stage-setting for military treachery, as Israel and the US used IAEA processes to justify pre-planned aggression, demonstrating how UN institutional and technical bodies become complicit when US-led imperialism weaponizes their “findings.”

Consequently, by allowing its reports to trigger violence instead of preventing it, the IAEA demonstrated that its assessments serve hegemonic interests rather than non-proliferation, which undermines its perceived neutrality in the global South. As nuclear proliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis warned, the attacks “will send shockwaves throughout the world” as nations conclude that “without nuclear deterrence, no nation is safe from Western aggression.”

SUPPORT OUR WORK BY MAKING A DONATION TODAY!

The US-Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, while achieving short-term tactical gains, paradoxically accelerate the very proliferation they claim to prevent through three reinforcing mechanisms. First, by targeting peaceful facilities under IAEA monitoring, the attacks transform a transparent, internationally supervised program into an opaque one beyond Western control, as Iran moves operations underground and ceases cooperation with inspectors—creating the intelligence blind spot the attackers feared. When a peaceful program under international oversight is attacked by the US and Israeli regimes without any consequences for the aggressors, it creates powerful incentives to move facilities underground and disperse them, cease or limit cooperation with international monitors, and accelerate clandestine development. Notably, Iran’s parliament immediately ratified suspension of IAEA cooperation, while other nations watched and learned. Second, external aggression generates unprecedented domestic unity and popular demand for nuclear deterrence in Iran, transforming what was once a debated policy into a matter of national survival across all political factions. Third, military action against a nation complying with international agreements destroys any remaining diplomatic credibility, sending an unmistakable message that compliance does not guarantee security and makes maximum deterrence the only rational strategy. This creates a regional cascade effect where other nations, observing that NPT adherence and IAEA cooperation provide no protection from attack, conclude that nuclear weapons serve “not as a threat, but as a shield”—potentially doubling the number of nuclear-armed states within decades. Thus, strikes intended to prevent Iran’s nuclear weaponization may have “more or less guaranteed that Iran will be a nuclear weapons state in five to 10 years,” according to a former IAEA inspector—transforming prevention into acceleration through a self-fulfilling prophecy of proliferation.

Normalizing Catastrophe: The West’s Moral Numbness

The Western public’s complicity in normalizing attacks on nuclear facilities—acts explicitly prohibited under international law—represents a catastrophic moral failure that will inevitably boomerang against Western interests. This ethical numbness, which is already evident in the silence regarding Gaza’s genocide, has set precedents that fundamentally compromise global nuclear security. By legitimizing strikes on safeguarded nuclear infrastructure, Western states have created a playbook that any actor can invoke, transforming their own nuclear facilities into legitimate targets under the logic they themselves have normalized. The sophisticated drone and quadcopter assassination campaigns celebrated in Western media as technological triumphs have democratized precision strike capabilities in ways that fundamentally disadvantage established powers. The proliferation of small FPV quadcopters capable of penetrating urban areas and infrastructure for terrorist operations—tactics perfected through the Zionist regime’s operations deep within Iranian territory—provides asymmetric actors with cost-effective templates for targeting Western interests. These lethal autonomous systems, applauded when deployed against Iranian scientists, officials, and civilians, will inevitably be replicated by groups planning attacks on Western soil. The technology cannot be contained; once normalized as legitimate warfare, these methods become universally available tools that favor weaker actors against technologically superior adversaries.

This boomerang effect extends beyond tactics to fundamental security vulnerabilities. Western support for indiscriminate quadcopter attacks that kill civilians alongside intended targets has legitimized a form of warfare where the distinction between combatants and non-combatants dissolves. The precedent of attacking nuclear facilities—once considered the ultimate taboo—means Western nuclear infrastructure now operates under the constant threat of similar strikes, justified by the very logic Western states championed. The complicity of Western publics in endorsing these violations of international law has not merely eroded moral authority but created tangible security risks that will haunt their societies for generations.

Manufacturing Consent for Aggression

The systematic media campaign followed the propaganda model Herman and Chomsky documented decades ago. Western outlets consistently framed unprovoked Israeli strikes as “defensive” while Iran was actively negotiating; amplified false claims about imminent nuclear threats despite IAEA contradictions; minimized Iranian civilian casualties (over 600 dead) while emphasizing Israeli military targets; and transformed Iran’s restrained response into “escalation.”

This transparent operation, reminiscent of Iraq WMD deceptions, has accelerated the collapse of Western media credibility across the Global South, driving audiences toward alternative information sources. For the Iranian public, this media blitz definitively unmasked Western journalism’s claimed neutrality as manufactured consent in service of imperial narratives. The brazen distortion of reality—portraying clear aggression as self-defense while casting legitimate retaliation as terrorism—has altered how Iranians view Western information sources. This represents more than media skepticism; it has ignited the emergence of an epistemological break where populations reject not just Western conclusions, but the very frameworks through which the West interprets global events.

The Boomerang of Regime Change Strategy

Beyond targeting Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Israel and the US pursued regime change through targeted assassinations of military commanders and systematic attacks on civilian infrastructure. This strategy fatally misread both the Islamic Republic’s military resilience and Iranian society’s response to external aggression.

The assassination campaign aimed to neutralize IRGC’s retaliatory capabilities through shock and decapitation. Despite successfully martyring numerous top commanders, Iranian missiles struck Tel Aviv less than 24 hours with devastating impact—shattering Israeli and US expectations of a paralyzed command structure.

Israel then deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, particularly IRIB’s television studios, seeking to create chaos that would trigger popular uprising. This calculated terrorism altogether killed over 600 civilians but produced the opposite effect: unprecedented national unity transcending political divisions. The iconic image of an Iranian presenter continuing her broadcast as bombs fell became a symbol of defiance. Even government critics rallied to defend sovereignty against foreign aggression. As one Tehran professor noted: “They united us in ways our government never could.” The stark choice between opposing one’s government and defending one’s nation dissolved when faced with external assault. Ultimately, the regime-change opposition watched their hopes collapse as the Islamic Republic demonstrated unexpected resilience and Iranians rallied behind the military defenders despite the surprise terrorist assault.

Political Suicide of the Opposition

The opposition’s support for foreign military attacks ultimately proved to be politically fatal. Pro–regime change figures who backed the US-Israeli assault—explicitly or implicitly—found themselves utterly isolated from Iranian public opinion. Their alignment with forces bombing Iranian civilians was widely viewed as treason. Opposition figures who had cultivated international profiles through Western media and funding, Nobel prizes, and cultural awards saw decades of credibility vanish overnight. By calling for regime overthrow while foreign bombs fell on their countrymen, they committed what analysts termed “political suicide,” permanently destroying their viability as political alternatives.

Iran Transformed

The civilian casualties and infrastructure damage also intensified anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment across Iranian society, gaining renewed emotional resonance as direct responses to military aggression. This emotional shift strengthened pro-resistance elements within Iran while discrediting those who had advocated for diplomatic engagement with the West with the hope of normalization of relations.

The regime change strategy thus achieved the inverse of its intended effects: rather than weakening the Islamic Republic of Iran, it consolidated domestic support around resistance to foreign intervention, eliminated viable opposition alternatives, and provided the government with renewed legitimacy as defenders of national sovereignty against foreign aggression.

Despite tactical military losses, Iran emerged politically stronger with enhanced national cohesion. The attacks against a nation actively engaged in negotiations generated widespread domestic support for resistance, strengthening defense forces and the IRGC’s legitimacy as a defender of national sovereignty. Supreme Leader Khamenei’s warning that Iran “will not surrender” to foreign aggression resonated across Iranian society, while the systematic targeting of nuclear scientists and military commanders was perceived as an attack on Iranian civilization itself. The aggression vindicated decades of Iranian warnings about Western imperial intentions.

The Illusion of Air Supremacy

Israel and the United States’ achievement of temporary air superiority through terrorist attacks from within Iran failed to accomplish strategic objectives. As military historians note, translating tactical success into strategic success requires more than what air power can deliver. Despite over 1,000 Israeli sorties, Iran’s nuclear program suffered only temporary degradation. US intelligence assessments concluded the strikes “only set back” capabilities “by months.” Furthermore, the US intelligence apparatus is unable to confirm with certainty how successful the bombing of Fordow was and whether the stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strike.

This uncertain outcome validates the historical lesson no imperial power seems capable of learning: air power alone cannot achieve political objectives. From Vietnam to Afghanistan, the delusion that technological superiority translates into political control has repeatedly proven false.

The Myth of Israel’s Impenetrable Air Defense

Iran’s unprecedented missile offensive during Operation True Promise III delivered a decisive strategic blow to Israeli deterrence by exposing critical vulnerabilities in its air defense architecture. Launching over 550 ballistic missiles alongside 1,000+ drones in coordinated waves, Iran demonstrated an ability to conduct saturation attacks that overwhelmed defensive systems despite high interception rates.

The US-Israeli war on Iran exposed the economic unsustainability of imperial military dominance. Israel expended interceptor missiles faster than production capacity, forcing reliance on increasingly expensive US munitions. Iran’s asymmetric response using relatively cheap drones and missiles demonstrated how “the cost-benefit curve is upside down” when “$10,000 one-way drones” threaten “$2 million missiles.” The economic arithmetic of imperial decline manifested starkly in the conflict’s cost dynamics. Israel expended interceptor missiles faster than production capacity, each $3 million Arrow interceptor defeating a $10,000 Iranian drone—what one analyst called an “upside-down cost curve” that guarantees bankruptcy through victory. This mirrors historical patterns of empires exhausting themselves through military overextension, from Rome to Britain.

Iran’s missile offensive revealed three critical realities: sophisticated tactics penetrated Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow systems, proving that even the most advanced and expensive air defense systems leave critical infrastructure exposed to residual strikes. Iran has weaponized cost asymmetry, as Iran’s inexpensive drones and missiles forced Israel to expend multimillion-dollar interceptors at unsustainable rates. Deterrence erosion occurred as Iran proved it could launch precision strikes from its territory directly at Israeli soil—shattering the myth of Israel’s invulnerability. Iran’s missile offensive shattered Israeli deterrence mythology by demonstrating that sophisticated tactics could penetrate even the most advanced air defense systems. The psychological impact—proving Israel vulnerable to direct attack from Iranian territory—fundamentally altered regional power calculations.

Catalyst of Multipolarity

While providing limited direct military support, China and Russia’s diplomatic solidarity signaled hardening geopolitical divisions. China’s condemnation of “violations of Iran’s sovereignty” and Russia’s denunciation of “absolutely unprovoked aggression” marked the consolidation of alternative power structures. Even traditional US allies called for restraint, revealing cracks in imperial architecture.

The war of aggression represents what critical analysts identify as the “desperate phase” of imperial decline, when dominant powers resort to increasingly reckless military adventures to maintain control. The inability to secure broad international support, domestic American opposition, and the ultimate necessity for hasty ceasefire negotiations revealed the limits of unipolar power projection.

The aggression definitively confirmed that the West seeks Iran’s destruction, not accommodation. No diplomatic engagement or restraint could shield Iran from US-led imperial violence. This brutal clarity accelerates Iran’s pivot toward comprehensive integration with China, Russia, and North Korea—forging an Eastern bloc united against US hegemony. Beyond economic ties, Iran now leans toward full-spectrum military coordination with these powers as an existential necessity, not a policy preference. The defense minister’s immediate post-ceasefire trip to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) defense ministers’ meeting signaled this strategic realignment. The war catalyzed stark global polarization: the multipolar order emerges not through gradual transition but through hardening opposing camps—a dynamic Western firepower cannot reverse.

Iran as Vanguard of Global Resistance

Rather than isolating Iran, the attacks enhanced its credibility as the primary force resisting Western domination. The act of aggression validated Iran’s consistent argument that accommodation with imperial powers remains impossible, strengthening anti-imperialist factions throughout the region. Iran’s missile strikes resonated far beyond military calculations, igniting support by peoples across the world horrified by Western complicity in Gaza’s genocide. For millions watching international institutions fail to address the atrocities by the Zionist regime, Iran’s missiles represented the most powerful resistance to Zionist aggression in decades.

This moment shattered decades of Orientalist caricature that painted Iran as a “rogue” and “reactionary” state. Instead, Iran emerged as the most consequential and principled power in West Asia, embodying the aspirations of those who demand justice, dignity, and a genuine end to impunity. Iran’s defiance redefined regional possibilities and exposed the moral bankruptcy of states complicit in ongoing genocide.

Iran’s direct confrontation with both Israel and the US simultaneously—previously considered suicidal—demonstrated a confidence that resonated across the Global South. As one Arab commentator noted, “They did what our governments only dream of.”

Strategic Implications for Forces

The June 2025 aggression, like previous imperial adventures, has accelerated rather than arrested processes of imperial decline. By choosing military confrontation over diplomatic engagement, the US and Israel validated arguments that Western imperialism respects only strength. The attacks have proven nuclear deterrence remains the ultimate sovereignty guarantee; air supremacy cannot achieve political transformation; high-tech militarism has inherent limitations; and imperial violence represents weakness, not strength.

For anti-imperialist forces globally, Iranian resistance provides both tactical lessons and strategic inspiration. The failure of overwhelming military superiority to achieve political objectives demonstrates that sustained resistance remains possible. As historians observe, “Every empire believes itself eternal until the moment it falls.”

The US-Israeli aggression against Iran marks not the restoration of imperial authority but its terminal crisis—a violent spasm of declining empire that has strengthened rather than weakened global resistance to Western domination. In this light, the empire’s tactical victory becomes history’s verdict: a pyrrhic triumph accelerating the very multipolar transition it sought to prevent.

Ghassan Kanafani: A Legacy of Giving and Resistance

[Pictured: A Palestinian girl passes by a mural of Ghassan Kanafani in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, West Bank, May 12, 2018. (Credit: Anne Paq/Activestills)]

By Mohamad Kadan

"In truth, the only way out of this murky spiral is to believe that giving is acceptable, only for civilized humans... and that taking is undesirable... that living is about offering oneself, with no expectation of return... I am trying now to reach this belief in one way or another, or life becomes, without this belief, something absolutely unbearable..." [1]

— Ghassan Kanafani

I decided to write a text about Ghassan Kanafani to learn about one of his human characteristics: not just being a writer, an intellectual, a thinker, or a revolutionary. Recently, I have delved into the writings of several people who knew Kanafani, and they all agreed that he gave his life for Palestine through continuous giving, not only in the literary field but also by using his literature to provide us with the value of perseverance and endurance. The above quote is from Kanafani’s diary on January 4, 1960, written in haste, but as he describes it, it is as necessary as life. The question I pose in this text is: How does Kanafani want us to know him? What signs did he leave, from his comrades, newspapers, archives, letters, studies, stories, novels, and plays?

In 1952, Kanafani received approval to be appointed as a teacher at the UNRWA schools. His brother, Adnan Kanafani, tells us how Kanafani became a model teacher, spreading enthusiasm and overcoming oppression and defeat inside Palestinian camps. There, he met Mahmoud Falahah, an Arabic language teacher, who attended one of Kanafani’s classes due to his admiration for Kanafani’s exceptional ability to awaken the students’ potential [2].

Kanafani wrote a short story titled "A New Sun," published in the Lebanese literary magazine Al-Adab, the magazine most associated with Kanafani’s legacy. In it, he tells us in his extraordinary language about the decision to leave Damascus for Kuwait, through a letter to his friend Mustafa, who was studying in Sacramento: "The Kuwaiti Ministry of Education signed a contract with you last year, excluding me entirely. While I was going through a period of deep hardship, you occasionally sent me small sums, which you now want to be considered a debt, perhaps out of fear that I might feel diminished. Yet you knew very well my family’s circumstances: that my modest salary from the UNRWA schools was barely enough to support my elderly mother, my brother’s widow, and her four children." He then tells us about Israel's attack on Gaza, his follow-up on it, and whether it affected his daily routine, asking what he could do when they bombard "our Gaza" with fire and bombs. His decision to leave Damascus and teach refugee children made him regretful, directly affecting his writing and the question of giving—how, where, and why. He answered this in his short life by saying that we can give to Palestine from every position, region, and space. In late 1955, he traveled to Kuwait after accepting a job as a teacher in drawing and sports, where he felt an intense sense of loneliness and pain [3].

Kanafani did not flatter people "right and left." On the contrary, you might sometimes consider him self-absorbed, not caring about others' feelings and thoughts, as Fadl al-Naqeeb told us. Kanafani had many layers and was a flexible person. You had to wait and be patient to see him, observe him, and focus on his movements, writing, words, and conversations. Al-Naqeeb adds that he and his "Literature and Life" friends realized Kanafani’s value. Al-Naqeeb went on to study in the United States and received a copy of the story "The Cat" from his first collection, Death of Bed No. 12, which was published in 1957. He greatly admired it, and while exchanging letters, Kanafani told him that only a few had admired this story. As a result, Al-Naqeeb translated it and presented it in one of the English literature courses, where the professor allowed him to read it to the entire class. After the publication of Men in the Sun, Ghassan Kanafani asked al-Naqeeb to write a critical article about the novel. After publishing the masterpiece “Men in the Sun,” Kanafani asked al-Naqeeb to write a critical article about the story. Al-Naqeeb apologized, explaining that he could not fully grasp the essence of the novel, as the gap between reality and fiction was too narrow: “He told me how they had to move from their old home there, and the emotional sadness that accompanied this process, and how they found the letters F.K. engraved on the walls. His father’s name was Faiz Kanafani.” Al-Naqeeb felt that the story Kanafani wrote reflected his past, and that whatever he could write would not do it justice [4].

Kanafani’s wife, Anna Kanafani, also wrote about their first meeting in Beirut in 1961. She had said that she did not understand what had happened with the Palestinians and wanted to visit the camps. He yelled at her, "Do you think our people are animals in a zoo?" He told her that no one would take her there unless she understood the political background, and he explained the history of the Palestinian cause. Two weeks later, Kanafani told her, "Why don’t you stay longer?" She indeed stayed, worked at a kindergarten, was deeply influenced by his ideas, got to know his family, and they married. She recalls his ability to give even under the most challenging conditions, especially in 1967. His mother passed away a week before the June defeat in Damascus, and he was focused on standing strong beside his father and family. Upon returning to Beirut, she saw him for the first time breaking down in tears—was it because of the defeat, or for his mother? This was followed by the death of his friend, the novelist Samira Azzam from Acre, for whom he wrote a eulogy titled "The Promise," to inspire hope for his eternal city, Akka [5].

SUPPORT OUR WORK BY MAKING A DONATION TODAY!

Ghassan Kanafani gave a lot through his teaching career, literary work, criticism, political thought, and revolutionary activity. As we have seen, Kanafani’s fundamental role was in his relationship with his community, building and strengthening abilities, and providing opportunities. Mahmoud Darwish wrote in a eulogy titled "A Gazelle Foretelling an Earthquake": "My friend Ghassan! How many friends have I said goodbye to, but never bid farewell to a phase of my life, except in your final goodbye? The last thing I expected from nightmares was to announce your previous declaration about my existence ten years ago. I was born before that, but you announced my birth. I didn’t tell you: Thank you, I thought life was longer." Here, we see Kanafani’s generosity—he gave birth to resistance poets, directly contributing to creating a concept, practice, and framework for resistance art. Darwish and his companions, such as Samih al-Qasim, Hanna Abu Hanna, Rashid Hussein, Jamal Qawwar, and Hanna Ibrahim, poets from the occupied land in 1948, became part of the Arab intellectual and cultural scene after Kanafani’s writings. Their celebration was "stunningly embarrassing," as Darwish said about the neglect and denial before their birth announcement [6].

Generosity is a defining trait in Kanafani’s biography, and his ability to care for others matured through his relationship with his father, the lawyer and activist from the 1930s, whose legal work was connected to the oppressed and deprived. Anna quotes Kanafani as saying: "When I grow up, I want to be like my father, and I will fight to return to Palestine: my father's homeland, the land that he and Umm S’ad (أم سعد) told me so much about." "My father was a good man. He would buy me anything I wanted, and I still love him, even though he passed away." Kanafani’s concern with class struggle is related to his childhood, and its collapse before his eyes [7].

Kanfani: The Revolutionary

Kanfani's legacy is about his generosity in recruiting and attracting people to the revolution, as he was interested in the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Through poetry and culture, he also covered struggles, dispossession, and their organization. He did publish part of the memorandum of Arab citizens of Israel sent by the Al Ard movement, as Sabri Jiryis was their leader. I interviewed him, talking about his time under military rule, his struggles, and how he got involved with the Al-Ard movement. Later in 1970, he left and joined the PLO in Beirut through Fatah. Toward the end of the interview, I asked if he had ever met Kanafani. He said he did, and a few times, they spoke and had conversations.

He came to me with anger in his face and said, “Someone like you should be with us—the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” I told him, “My brother Ghassan, you’re thinking differently—big ideas, heavy theory, complex stuff. I’m a simple man. Fatah fits me better. It’s not left, not right—it sits in the middle, and that works for me.” I told him, “My comrade Ghassan, I can’t be part of the PFLP. I’m not in tune with the group. I can’t speak about the proletariat, class struggle, or internationalism. I respect Che Guevara and Castro, but I don’t think that model works for us here in Palestine.” Then I shared a story with him—about when I first arrived in Beirut. Naji Alloush, the Arab thinker, handed me his book and asked for my thoughts. Two days later, he returned and said, “Well, what do you think of discussions on the Palestinian Revolution?” I told him, “You made a grave mistake—like many Palestinian leftists—when you wrote that if there had been a Palestinian Lenin, none of this would have happened. That’s a flawed idea to open a book with. [8]

This story tells us about Kanfani's ambition and organization and how he always aims to recruit people for the organization and the revolution. Sabri Jiryis chose another path in the PLO, but they stayed in contact.

It seems that Kanafani regretted his time in Kuwait—or at least, did not find it fulfilling. He once told director Qasim Hawal not to go to the Gulf, especially not to Abu Dhabi, but to settle instead in Beirut. He told him, quite literally: “We just came out of Jordan and founded a magazine. Come with us—starve when we starve, feast when we feast.” This was shortly after the PLO departed from Amman, and it reflected Kanafani’s deep spirit of mobilization and commitment to collective national work. Hawal was one of Kanafani’s comrades from the late 1960s, during the final years of his life and his political engagement with Al-Hadaf magazine. Their meeting in Beirut wasn’t planned—it was one of those fateful encounters. Years later, during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut, Hawal directed a film adaptation of Kanafani’s most famous novella, Return to Haifa. It became the first feature film based on a Palestinian revolutionary novel. Even earlier, after Kanafani’s assassination, Hawal directed a short film titled The Word and the Rifle, which is a tribute to his life and legacy. [9]

Kanafani was a leading political thinker and an active educator of the Palestinian revolution. The 2024 publication Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings offers a glimpse into the depth of his political analysis—limited to what has been translated into English. In Arabic, his output was far more expansive. He wrote prolifically on socialism, revolutionary theory, the Palestinian cause, and anti-imperialist struggles across the region. His writings were rigorous, his arguments tightly constructed, and his intellectual influence extended far beyond Palestine. As Sabri Jiryis once remarked, Kanafani was doing the heavy thinking. One of the most formative moments in his political life came in 1970, during the Jordanian regime’s campaign—coordinated with other Arab governments—to crush the Palestinian revolutionary movement, its groups, and guerrilla forces. This period sharpened Kanafani’s political praxis and deepened his theoretical commitments [10]. 

Kanafani gave an important lecture at the Beirut conference in March 1968, during a crucial transition in PLO leadership, as armed guerrilla groups were emerging as the dominant force, especially in the wake of the Battle of Karameh against a Zionist invasion in Jordan, by February 3, 1969, Yasser Arafat assumed the presidency of the Executive Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization, at a meeting of the Palestinian National Council held in Cairo. His voice, theoretical framing, and revolutionary thought shaped these changes and fueled the people's will to overcome the 1967 Naksa [11].

His central thesis was to frame the failures of the Arab world and to answer the pressing question: why did Palestinian Arabs lose again in 1967? He introduced the concept of the “language of the blind,” which he defined as: “In the past ten years, what we might call a blind language has emerged in the region. And there is nothing more commonly used in our daily lives today than this blind language. Words have come to mean nothing unless framed vaguely, offering no protection or precision. Every writer now has their private dictionary, using words based on their understanding—an understanding that is not commonly agreed upon. As a result, the words mean nothing.” Kanafani shows how Arab discourse—on democracy, revolution, and change—became saturated with vague language, which paralyzed the power of the people. It silenced youth and barred them from offering new paths to liberation. He emphasized: “The problem was not that we did not know, but that we did not allow those who did know to speak or to act.” From this, he proposed a return to the idea of the party as an organization of the modern world. This reflects Antonio Gramsci’s notion of the “new prince” in Machiavelli’s terms: the party as the structure capable of organizing, mobilizing, and recruiting the revolutionary spirit of youth [12].

Abu Ali Mustafa, the military leader in the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine], said he first came to know of Ghassan through the “Mulhaq Falstin” Supplement of Al-Muharrir newspaper, which reached them in Jenin, in the West Bank, through smuggling. He met him for the first time after the launch of the Palestinian armed struggle following the defeat of 1967. He said:

"In that period, 1967 had arrived, and I met Ghassan face to face for the first time during his first visit to the military bases in the Jordan Valley. He asked me a lot about the interior [Palestinian territories] and the beginnings of the armed struggle... He asked me about the people and the geography and took notes. He asked me what was right and wrong in those beginnings. He asked me about the resources we started with, the organization, the popular mood... about the scenes." [13]

There, in the Jordan Valley, an ethnic cleansing campaign is now underway. Ghassan then told him about his study of the 1936 revolt, comparing it to the Palestine Liberation Organization-led revolution. This time, he said, the people are dispersed and displaced, the land is occupied, and on top of that, the Arab states are conspiring against the revolution—a radical difference. Kanafani was always deeply invested in the question of liberation. He understood how difficult that task was, especially under the conditions we continue to face. But his life—his ideas, his relationships, his roles—offers ways to think about persistence, about resisting through every act and position one takes. In my piece, I wanted to show how the lesser-known, often overlooked fragments of his life reveal so much about what it means to live as a Palestinian and a revolutionary.

Bibilography

[1] Romman Cultural Magazine. Ghassan Kanafani’s Diaries... (1959-1965) (1/2). Link here https://rommanmag.com/archives/18633

[2] Kanafani, Adnan. Ghassan Kanafani: Folded Pages. Kuwait: Nashri Electronic Publishing House, 2003. eBook. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12378936

[3] Ghassan Kanafani. “Shams Jadida [A New Sun].” Al-Adab, no. 2 (February 1, 1957).  https://archive.alsharekh.org/Articles/255/18587/420406

[4] Al-Naqeeb, Fadl. Hakadha Tantahi al-Qisas... Hakadha Tabdaʾ [Thus Stories End... Thus They Begin. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Abhath al-ʿArabiyya, 1983.

[5] Kanafani, Anni. "Interview with Anni Kanafani: I Imagine Ghassan Sitting with Us." Interview by Ayham al-Sahli and Taghrid Abdelal. Institute for Palestine Studies, Arts & Culture Blog, July 20, 2022. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1652961 & "Ghassan Kanafani fi Dhikrahu al-‘Ishrīn" [Ghassan Kanafani on His Twentieth Memorial]. Al-Ādāb, no. 7–8 (July 1, 1992).

[6] Darwish, Mahmoud. A Gazelle Heralding an Earthquake: In Memory of the Martyr Ghassan Kanafani. Register of the Immortals, Vol. 2, Central Media Office of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, pp. 200–205. https://palestine-memory.org/ & Kanafani, Ghassan. “al-Adab al-Filastini al-Muqawim taḥta al-Iḥtilāl 1948–1968” Palestinian Resistance Literature under Occupation, 1948–1968. Cyprus: Rimal Publications, 2015. (Published Originally in 1968)

[7] Interview with Anni Kanafani In"Ghassan Kanafani fi Dhikrahu al-‘Ishrīn" [Ghassan Kanafani on His Twentieth Memorial]. Al-Ādāb, no. 7–8 (July 1, 1992).

[8] Sabri Jiryis - Fassuta. Interview Conducted by the Author on 18 April 2025, through Zoom.

[9] Bdeir, Ahmad Naim. “Qasem Hawal Tells Al-Hadaf: ‘This Is How I Lived with Ghassan Kanafani and Knew Him!’” Al-Hadaf, July 8, 2025, link here

[10] Kanafani, Ghassan. Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings. Edited by Louis Brehony and Tahrir Hamdi. Paperback ed. October 20, 2024. 

[11]  “An Important Document: From the Thought of Ghassan Kanafani – Reflections on Change and the ‘Language of the Blind’.” Originally presented at the “Beirut Seminar” in March 1968. Published in Al-Hadaf Magazine, Special Issue on the 16th Anniversary of His Martyrdom, July 1988.

[12] Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Translated by Quintin Hoare. New York: International Publishers, 1971. "The Modern Prince."

[13] Al-Hadaf Magazine, Year 1, Issue No. 1320, July 2001. https://fada.birzeit.edu/handle/20.500.11889/6552

The Age of Supraliberalism: A Requiem for Neoliberalism, Capitalist Democracy, and the American Unipolar World

By Joshua Lew McDermott

The Death of Neoliberalism, The Birth of the Supraliberal Age

The present political moment is often only fully understood in hindsight. Analysts will one day look back on the Trump era, especially his second term, as marking a point of departure, the world’s entrance into a brave new world. But we don’t have to wait. To change the world, we must understand events as they unfold or, better yet, we must anticipate them given what came before. And the neoliberal age has given way to something new: the supraliberal age. 

Yet contemporary thinkers remain shackled by the norms, concepts, and logics of the past, namely the unipolar world dominated by neoliberal policy and American Empire. 

But the neoliberal age is dead. It had been dying since 2008. Yet the concept still looms large in the intellectual zeitgeist. Neoliberal fascism, authoritarian neoliberalism, post-neoliberalism, late neoliberalism, late-stage capitalism; these are just a few of the proposed concepts for understanding this moment. But these concepts have thus far failed to adequately capture the impetus for and radical nature of the historic break.

Neoliberalism was premised on two fundamental principles: the unrestrained free-market and limited but functional liberal government defined by “good governance,” efficiency, and technocratic elitism. In the supraliberal age, alternatively, the invisible hand has choked the last breaths of life from the already frail liberal polity. A zombified liberalism remains, with government institutions simultaneously rendered impotent in the service of the working class and weaponized to new heights of power and overreach in the service of the elite classes. 

The analysts were right when, in the wake of the global economic crash that began in 2008, they predicted the end of neoliberalism was near. Many assumed, in the wake of Obama’s election, that the system was destined to turn to a multi-racial Keynesian social democracy to save the world economy, the same way the world had done in the 1930s (sans the racial pluralism, of course). On this front they were wrong; financial and industry elites were too entrenched, free-market ideology too self-assured and institutionalized, the financial and tech monopolies too big and too concentrated for reform, the courts too corrupt, the government regulatory framework too brittle after decades of neoliberal onslaught, and the bulk of the American public too virulently racist, reactionary, and anti-socialist to accept even the semblance of pro-working-class policies. What we got instead was the intensification of class warfare, an escalation of essentialist identity politics, and, ultimately, the maturation of neoliberalism’s problems.

It is not just neoliberalism as an economic policy that advocates for free trade and the invisible hand that has died. We have not just reverted to protectionism or to regulation. No, it is more complicated than that. For every restriction on trade thrown up by Trump or Biden, a different sector of the U.S. economy and the American state has been deregulated, disempowered, captured, and/or privatized. As one barrier to free trade is erected, regional integration and imperial domination elsewhere continue to undermine the possibility of national economic sovereignty, especially for the smaller nations. American industry is now more unregulated than at any time since The Great Depression.

Nor is it just that we have descended into fascism. For all its lip-service against the decadence of global finance and capitalism itself, classic fascism did, of course, depend upon the support of Europe’s barons of industry and many of its liberal elites – it decimated organized labor and the socialist movements swiftly, violently, and accordingly. Yet it is also true that the classic fascist regimes did not hold the same abiding faith in the free market as the contemporary right, nor were they demonstrably subservient and beholden to oligarchs in the way that Trump, Biden, Meloni, Macron, Starmer, and the other Western leaders are to the tech, oil, defense, and finance titans of our day. Yet our age does contain undeniable fascistic elements; idiotic nationalism, fetishized militarism, censorship, anti-intellectualism, subservient and corrupt courts, impotent and dysfunctional legislatures, and an unrestrained individual executive. Trump is, in many ways, a conglomeration of Mussolini with a billionaire, a social media celebrity, and a nepotistic CEO. And that combination – the nationalism, fundamentalism, and corruption intertwined with corporate, celebrity, libertarian logic is novel and demands a novel conceptualization of its characteristics, trajectories, and roots.

So if the neoliberal age is rubble and we have not merely reverted back to a fascist one, where are we? We are in the unknown, unchartered waters of history in the making. We are in the supraliberal age, the age where even the appearance of a compatible marriage between capitalism and liberal democracy has withered away. We are in the supraliberal age where the state has not disappeared or weakened, it has transformed into a mere enforcement mechanism for brutalizing dissent, exporting arms, enabling capital accumulation, and facilitating wealth transfer from the working class to the elites. We are in the society of the spectacle, a society where propaganda, celebrity, and self-aggrandizement become a means in and of themselves.  

And while we may just be at the start of the supraliberal age, that we are in it is undeniable.

That is also not to say that liberalism is gone or that liberalism was, fundamentally, better; supraliberalism was always the destiny and true character of the neoliberal era. It is just that the hypocritical and contradictory nature of liberalism is now explicit and manifest in the heart of the imperial homeland, has finally and totally supplanted the remnants of the postwar order that It gave birth to, its free-market fundamentalism finally having displaced any guardrails, even if meager ones, it ever had to reign in the monopolies and oligarchs of the neoliberal age.  

So like the vestigial wings of a flightless bird, the liberal institutions and the rule of law they represent remain merely as ornamental and ceremonial formalities in contemporary America and Europe.

SUPPORT OUR WORK BY MAKING A DONATION TODAY!

The most jarring policies, ideological extremities, material logics, and novel institutions of the neoliberal age that undergirded its inherent contradictions and violent episodes now persist and become the defining features of the supraliberal order of today.

The authoritarian violence imposed by Pinochet and the neoliberal logic of the Chicago Boys in Chile, once thought by analysts to represent only an unfortunate but necessary far-off occurrence in the hinterlands of a U.S.-led world-order, today define the ruling class regimes in the metropole. The oligarchs imposed upon Eastern Europe by neoliberal shock therapy and animated by ethnic and nationalist sentiments enflamed by American interference were not exotic anomalies; they were a foretelling of what was to come in the West. The violent religious fundamentalism nurtured, trained, and armed in the Middle East to displace leftist movements and topple non-compliant regimes has emerged in the American heartland as violent paramilitary, white supremacist, and Christian nationalist actors turn to intimidation, violence, terrorism, and suppression to impose their extremist worldviews on their neighbors.

The embarrassing contradictions of the liberal capitalist system are no longer able to be exported abroad or glossed over with ideology; in the supraliberal age, the brutality comes home and intensifies. In the process, the entire geopolitical economic order is transformed, starting with America.

The Neoliberal Age

The foundations upon which the neoliberal era was erected can be traced to the U.S.’s emergence from World War Two as the world’s clear economic and military leader, a position the U.S. used to give itself, and its vassal states in Europe, commanding control in the new international governance and financial institutions such as the U.N. Security Council and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Apart from U.S. domination of the international institutional system, the postwar era was defined by robust welfare states in the West that were erected thanks to class struggle and assented to by elites to head off the attractiveness of socialism to workers. The era also saw successful anticolonial movements throughout the Third World (led often by socialist and communist parties), rising competition for Western industry due to an industrializing world, and the entrenchment of powerful trade union movements in the Western democracies.

Throughout this period, the U.S. (and its allies) attempted to assert its dominance, undermining radical elements in the anticolonial movements and using all means necessary to prevent the emergence of an economically independent third world that would challenge the existing order. However, given countervailing dynamics, and along with the oil shocks of the day, the contradictions of the postwar Keynesian order came to a head; the economic boom years devolved into crisis. In response, the U.S. ruling class leapt at the chance to again remake the world order even more to its liking. The new system it constructed was built in response to the power of labor domestically and socialist and anti-imperial resistance internationally, e.g. neoliberalism.

Neoclassical economic theory, tied to a contradictory ideological commitment to liberal governance, would become the justification for U.S. economic policy and imperial dominance of this new era. The birth of neoliberalism was cemented with the transformation of the Breton Woods Institutions into technocratic neoliberal machines as the new Washington Consensus imposed free trade and austerity policies around most of the globe (often in return for predatory loans or political support for corrupt regimes) to bolster U.S. dominance and transnational capitalist class power (a transnational capitalist class that was, nonetheless, always beholden to the mighty dollar and the U.S. banking system).

The U.S. also abandoned the gold standard in the shift from the postwar to the neoliberal era, giving it the ability to use the dollar, the global reserve currency, to fund an immense and meaningless national deficit in the face of deindustrialization and impose brutal unilateral sanctions on adversarial nations. In the new era it also doubled down on its training of paramilitaries, funding of proxy wars, and destabilization efforts around the globe in the name of combatting socialism (and subsequently drugs and terrorism). It financialized its economy to procure a fictitious economic growth in the face of the decline of American manufacturing, working class living standards, and declining economic dominance. The rest of this history of this era is more-or-less well known today: the Chilean Coup and the larger Dirty Wars in Latin America, the Wars on Terror, the deregulation of industry, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the crushing of the labor movement, the passage of NAFTA, the intensification of globalization, the explosion of consumer debt, the opioid epidemic, the rise of inequality, declining living standards in the West, etc. etc.

The Eleven Features of Supraliberalism

The past does not disappear, it echoes. But as it echoes, it is transformed and molded to fit the realities of the present moment. Accumulative quantitative change eventually reaches an inflection point, and qualitative ruptures occur.

Despite the obvious democratic deficiencies and hypocrisy of U.S. claims to upholding liberal values like human rights, equality, transparency, democracy, a free press, etc. in the neoliberal era, the claims could nonetheless be made with an air of plausible deniability and sincerity that, at the very least, provided a semblance of ideological cover. In the supraliberal age, not only are such claims objectively absurd, but such values are actively maligned – if not in rhetoric then cynically in practice.

Supraliberalism is defined by eleven features, all of them emergent from the trends and ruins of neoliberalism and all of them intertwined, inseparable, and mutually reinforcing: First, the return of multipolarity in the global sphere. Second, the implementation of pragmatic hodgepodge of free-trade and protectionist policies enacted by, and for, the benefit of the oligarchy of the various multipolar blocs. Third, the rule of economic elites and the end of any form semblance of legitimate democratic government. Fourth, the private sphere and the state become indistinguishable, the capture of the regulatory state finalized and total. Fifth, postmodern, post-truth identity essentialism (of both supposed progressive and reactionary varieties) becomes the defining inter-and-intrapersonal worldview of the age. Sixth, the total militarization and securitization of society. Seventh, the commodification of all aspects of life and nature as they become subject to market dynamics. Eighth, a blowback of the violence once reserved for the hinterland of empire deep within its metropoles. Ninth, the dominance of tech/platform capitalism and the normalization of its social engineering and surveillance appetites. Tenth, the intensification and leveraging of the climate catastrophe for the benefit of elites. And eleventh, a fundamental anti-communist, anti-socialist, and anti-humanist ideology that underlies and justifies it all.

1. Multipolarity: It is not just that we have entered a new multipolar world, but that is certainly an important piece of the puzzle. For all the superficial similarities to the interwar period or to the imperial competition and arms race of the early 20th century, 2025 is not 1910. Nor does the New Cold War promise to be a meaningful battle of ideologies, socialism vs. capitalism, like the Old Cold War. No, the supraliberal age will be defined, first and foremost, by neo-imperialist global blocs competing for the loot of a permanent global periphery defined by urbanization-without-industrialization. It remains an open question if the class struggle within China can and will revitalize an actual socialist character that could, hypothetically, give meaning and direction to the New Cold War. The first real hope for a socialist resistance to the American supraliberal bloc lies in a new non-aligned movement and whether the leftist governments of Latin America can solidify their positions and overcome the contradictions of their present part-way socialism. The second real hope lies in new anti-capitalist struggles emerging victorious across Africa, Asia, and even within the metropole itself.

2. Cynical Free Trade: To an extent, the free trade of neoliberalism was always free-trade for me, not for thee; free trade for the working class and small nations, protectionism for elites and for the critical industries of the metropole. In the supraliberal age this is truer than ever: protectionism becomes widespread and celebrated as a backlash to neoliberal free trade agreements that decimated the working classes of the world. But the question becomes: protectionism for who and to what end? Protectionism for the oligarchs, of course. Protectionism for the entrenchment of nationalist, anti-working-class elites like Trump, Musk, and their ilk. Now that behemoth America cannot compete on the unfair grounds with the developing world like it once did, thanks to the rise of China, it turns its back on the ideolog of Free trade; Chinese technology and EVs must be stopped at all costs in the name of national security. But make no mistake: free trade continue to be forced down the throats of countries in Latin America and Africa and American workers will be expected to compete with the working classes of the international order as their meager unions and welfare protections are finally stripped away.

3. Oligarchy: The supraliberal age is oligarchy manifest. The supposed genius and merit of oligarchic influencers like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, and Sundar Pichai become the animating logic of popular culture and popular politics. Citizens United is just the tip of the iceberg in the role of moneyed interests will play, both publicly/proudly and clandestinely/nefariously, in the supraliberal age; any semblance of republican elections free of the corrupting influence of money are a thing of the past. Democracy, in any meaningful sense, is dead.

4. Regulatory Captured: The supraliberal age is also defined by the total capture of the regulatory state by industry. Not only that, but the dividing line between private industry and the state disappears; in its place, a Frankenstein emerges, an abomination comprised of corporate and public mixture of arms, legs, eyes. The Chevron Environmental Protection Agency is legitimized, the Department of Labor is managed like the Chamber of Commerce, the courts and justice itself becomes the subject of power and ideology. Every function of government is run as a business for the profit of private stakeholders. 

5. Identity and Cultural Essentialism: The postmodern displacement of universality, humanism, and truth becomes absolute in the supraliberal age; identity essentialism and the death of truth reach their apex, with one’s nation, culture, and race/ethnicity becoming the undisputed measure of morality, truth, and individual character. This aspect has supposed progressive and reactionary wings, but the underlying logic remains the same: identity is everything. Anti-intellectualism, identity politics, cultural literalism, fundamentalism, outrage, and puritanism reign. 

6. Militarization and Securitization: In the supraliberal age, all aspects of social and political life become militarized and securitized. Economic policy is a matter of national security; the border is a matter of national security; education policy is a matter of national security. Municipal police are armed and trained in the logic and practice of occupying militaries, consumer culture and capital accumulation themselves become the end goal of military conflict. Everything is war, and war is about making money.

7. Commodification: The trend of the commodification of all aspects of life, human, social, natural, becomes intensified to previously unimagine levels in the supraliberal age. Animal life, nature, human intellect, love, empathy, spirituality; all become subject to the profitizing logic of the market. A mother holds her child after giving birth – a fee is charged. You send your love a poem which is then shared to social media and monetized. You attend church and your tithing is used to invest in real estate ventures. You call your father on Father’s Day and your call data is recorded, leveraged, and sold to an advertising firm. The ecosystem itself is given a dollar amount, human and animal life measured in terms of dollars. Alienation, isolation, and objectification become the beating hearts of our social existence.

8. Blowback: A defining feature of the supraliberal age in the United States is the boomerang of America’s previously exported wars, war crimes, austerity, genocide, authoritarianism into its own living room. America itself becomes the criminal narco-state, the kleptocracy, the military dictatorship, the religious fundamentalist regime it once used to control Mexico, Colombia, Indonesia, Afghanistan. Protestors are treated as enemy combatants, environmental activists as terrorists, labor unions as violent heretics.

9. Social Engineering, Ubiquitous Surveillance, and the Worship of Tech: In the supraliberal age, the tech industry and technology generally, especially information and communications technology, become the saviors of the world, the panacea to all social problems, the utopian horizon. The world will become unlivable? Technology will take us to distant stars. People can’t afford to eat? Technology will devise a pill to give us all necessary nutrition. Under supraliberalism, the power of technology begats more powerful technology; our social interactions, our sense of self, our political sensibilities become filtered through the algorithms of communications technology. Our thoughts and dreams are anticipated and summarized with Artificial Intelligence programs before we even express them. Technology is used to commodify us and to train us: buy this now, buy this then, here is a news headline for you, here is your favorite genre of music. Our personalities are no so much born of our volition as given to us from on high, from the Gods in the Cloud.

10. The Monetization and Leveraging of the Climate Catastrophe: In the supraliberal age, the climate crisis becomes the climate catastrophe. The warnings of disastrous ecological future become the present reality. Why was this not avoided? Because it was profitable, and it because it could be leveraged by the ruling class to cement and entrench their rule. Los Angeles burns and the real estate private equity firms descend; New Orleans sinks and the French Quarter gentrifiers circle like sharks. Mark Zuckerburg is safe in his bunker in the cool mountains. The segregation and securitization of elite life is completed. The rich watch the last forests burn from their golden helicopter.

11. Anti-communism: The supraliberal age is defined by an ideological madness which is, first and foremost, anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-Marxist. In the supraliberal age, all kinds of dissent, protest, and personal eccentricities are acceptable in the name of personal and market freedom: the freedom to shop, the freedom to discriminate, the freedom to worship God, the freedom to kill anyone deemed a threat to your property. What cannot be abided, though, is an organized, radical, and effective movement of the people against the logic of capital accumulation and the rule by elites. Thus, a rabid anti-communism abides. And not just anti-communism in the sense of the vilification of any and all real-world attempts to supplant or even just to reform capitalism, whether domestically or internationally, but an anti-communism which reviles, crushes, and mobilizes against communism as an idea and an ideal; communism as a rationally planned democratic society wherein social class has been eliminated – this is the true enemy and only sustained bogeyman of the supraliberal age. Any violation of elite sensibilities – be it religious heresy, gender nonconformity, feminism, racial justice, etc., is but a manifestation of the deeper and more nefarious sin of Marxism.

Only the Working Class 

The only force on Earth capable of challenging the dystopia of the superaliberal age is a united and broadly defined working-class (aka all those not aligned to profit or benefit from the ongoing and coming destruction). United, only they have the power to overthrow the supraliberal ruling class and the society they have built for their benefit. Only they have the power to arrest the climate crisis with rational, eco-responsive policies and technologies. Only they have the power to end inequality and immiseration forever with humanist, universal policies that equitably share the abundant resources produced by the cumulative history of human labor, knowledge, and sacrifice. Only they, as a class, can provide the vision and the practice for achieving a new kind of society – one that is not a utopia, but an actual and concrete effort that learns, develops, and evolves over time. Only they can imagine and implement a society wherein not just human beings but all living beings, even nature itself, is afforded value. A society driven by rationality, cooperation, and equality. In short: working class revolution is our only hope.

It remains to be seen, of course, if the ravages of supraliberalism will give way to such an attempt and vision. But that we have no other choice if we are to save the planet, our own humanity, and civilization is clear.

Alligator Alcatraz Was Already Here

By Aaron Kirshenbaum and Grace Siegelman

In the middle of the Big Cypress National Preserve in Ochopee, Florida, and almost dead center of the Florida Everglades, surrounded by alligators and pythons, is the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. For years, plans to expand the airport’s infrastructure have been stalled in an attempt to preserve the surrounding marshlands and a critical freshwater source. On July 3, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, per the request of President Donald Trump and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Kristi Noem, used emergency powers to seize the abandoned airport and open Alligator Alcatraz, named for Trump’s twisted fantasy to reopen the deadly Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. The makeshift prison is currently capable of detaining up to 5,000 migrants (with capacity expected to double) and celebrated for being inexpensive due to its ‘natural’ barriers.

Recent news reports have documented the horrific conditions: tents that provide no protection from rising summer temperatures, maggot-infested food, little access to clean drinking water, flooding near electrical cables, and bedding. Prominent environmental organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity have sued Noem for the environmental impacts the detention center will have on the surrounding marshlands, water sources, and sacred land of the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes. Five Florida state lawmakers have also sued Governor DeSantis over being denied entry into the detention facility.

We must break down the divisions between movements to fight against Alligator Alcatraz and to prevent similar facilities from opening in the future. This facility is the natural culmination of decades of build-up of the war economy, of the prison system, and of policy prioritizing money above human needs. Its opening is activating environmentalists, anti-war advocates, and immigration organizers alike. Alligator Alcatraz is a catalyst for us to stand together to call for the destruction of detention centers in the US and the divestment from militarism here and everywhere.

SUPPORT OUR WORK BY MAKING A DONATION TODAY!

The funding sources for this detention center are absurdly symbolic. In a statement to the Associated Press, Noem stated that the facility was projected to cost $450 million. Yet leaked documents reveal that the total grant awarded to the project is worth $608 million —  all from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

FEMA is the same organization responsible for providing emergency relief after natural disasters, like the recent catastrophic flooding in Texas — and like the type that could emerge from this facility, contaminating the drinking water of the eight million people served by the aquifer adjacent to Alligator Alcatraz. Recent cuts have resulted in an inadequate early warning system in states like Texas, which left residents helpless during the catastrophic and deadly flooding. This prioritization of a war-economy budget over a people’s economy turns all areas impacted by the militarism-induced climate crisis into sacrifice zones of human and ecological life.

The timing of the opening coincides with President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which gives tax breaks to the U.S.’s wealthiest five percent and $150 billion to further militarization here and abroad, all while cutting social programs like Medicaid, SNAP benefits, and student loan assistance.

This sacrifice of life is the function of prisons, the build-up of which emerged through disinvestment in the public sector as a catch-all solution to social issues. Instead of investing in schools, housing, education, or jobs, local and federal governments elected to build prisons as a way to contain poverty and extract people from their communities — in turn extracting their time, their autonomy, and the money that otherwise could have gone toward their lives, instead throwing it into brutality, confinement, and militarization of the police to enforce this financial arrangement.

The same answer rings true whether you are talking about Alligator Alcatraz. U.S. funds and intelligence aiding the Israeli bombing of Palestinian hospitals, homes of doctors and lawyers, or U.S. taxpayer dollars being stripped from education, housing, and healthcare. The United States government is not in the business of sustaining life, but rather sustaining profits, control, and more profits. Our money is being used to illegally detain thousands of people every day for existing, and Alligator Alcatraz is a jarring example of what is already here. Thirteen thousand people have died in U.S. prisons due to summer heat waves in the past twenty years. Nearly half of the drinking water in U.S. prisons is contaminated with forever chemicals; like Alligator Alcatraz, most prisons and jails are built on abandoned industrial sites linked to disease, cancers, and death. Prisons are especially vulnerable during natural disasters. Last October, for instance, several prisons were not evacuated in Hurricane Milton’s Zone A Evacuation Center. Additionally, during Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of incarcerated folks were left locked in prison for four days without food and water while their cells flooded with water and other elements.

Whether it be prisons, FEMA-funded ICE detention facilities, or increased funding for the Pentagon, the extractive motivation is always the same. We need to approach prisons as a form of militarization at home — taking people out of their communities, not to extract their labor in the prison in most cases, but so that the State can extract their lives and “save” resources outside of the prison. This facility is funded for a PR campaign, and condemns those incarcerated to an early death. This murder is accelerated by the climate crisis, which has been accelerated by our warmaking, all for the sake of continuing to extract labor and resources across the world.

Whether it’s the over 800 U.S. military bases leaking toxic chemicals and jet fuel, prisons and cop cities, or ICE detention facilities, our targets are the same, and the reasons for their funding are a common thread. These deadly facilities are being built on sacred indigenous land, decimating the health and water sources of local communities, and extracting the lives of people who our economic and political systems have discarded.

Alligator Alcatraz, Alligator Auschwitz, is a brutal reminder of the daily happenings here in the belly of the beast. Trump and Congress continue to find pay cuts in government spending for life-affirming resources while piling money into starving and incarcerating its own people and funding the ecocide and genocide of people outside its borders. Our money is being filtered away from the things we need most and toward systems that will kill us and the planet. We cannot allow our struggle against all forms of domestic and international militarism to be siloed.  We must push forward and never look away.

If we want an end to ICE detention centers and deportations, if we want our money invested in things that matter to our survival, we must cut the one trillion-dollar war budget today. Find out how to get started in your local community now.

Aaron Kirshenbaum is CODEPINK's War is Not Green campaigner and East Coast regional organizer. Based in and originally from Brooklyn, New York, Aaron holds an M.A. in Community Development and Planning from Clark University. They also have a B.A. in Human-Environmental and Urban-Economic Geography from Clark. During their time in school, Aaron worked on internationalist climate justice organizing, educational program development, and Palestine, tenant, and abolitionist organizing.

Grace Siegelman is CODEPINK's Engagement Manager. Grace completed her Master's Degree in Women and Gender Studies and Bachelor's Degree in Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies at DePaul University. She has been organizing for over 6 years in Chicago. Her organizing and research focus on prison and police abolition, queer theory, gendered violence and anti-war efforts. She has led youth campaigns on Ban the Box, a national movement to remove the question of criminal history from college applications and led letter writing and education initiatives to incarcerated survivors of domestic violence. Her writing can be found in Common Dreams, CounterPunch, LA Progressive and more.