You’re listening to Back in the USSR on 93.3 FM CFRU, we’re still in pandemic mode comrades, but we’re still forging ahead and I’d like to thank you all for listening. Last week on the show I had a chance to get into some good news for a change, really good news, namely how the Bolivian people managed to defeat a brutal, unelected US-backed coup regime after a year of fighting against all the odds, and electing a new socialist government by a landslide…and millions of downtrodden Bolivians can now breathe again. This has to be the best news I’ve heard all year, but it was to be followed up by more good news. On October 25th, Chilean voters went to the polls to decide whether or not to scrap the undemocratic constitution that military dictator Augusto Pinochet imposed on Chile in the 1980s, and, just like in Bolivia, the results were unequivocal: nearly 80% of voters wanted a new constitution, democratically drafted via consultation with the people.
Last week I mentioned this vote and how important it was in the context of the struggle for democracy in South America, and the landslide result of this referendum is another blow against the neo-liberal capitalist order that the US has long sought to impose on the entire region. After all, Augusto Pinochet came to power in a US-backed coup in 1973 and reigned as dictator for the next twenty years, imposing economic austerity on his people at gunpoint and leaving a bitter legacy that persists to this day. It’s still going to be a long struggle by left-wing forces before that legacy of capitalist dictatorship, which made Chile one of the most unequal countries on the planet, is undone. And that’s not even getting into the legacy of colonialism and genocide against which the Mapuche indigenous nation in Chile is still fighting. The open wounds of Latin America go back five hundred years to the Spanish conquest and, as the struggle the indigenous majority in Bolivia against a white supremacist coup attests, healing those wounds is not going to be an easy task. There is a reason why Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of any country in the western hemisphere, invoked the name of Tupac Katari, an indigenous leader who fought against the Spanish colonizers centuries ago, because that anti-colonial struggle is still ongoing…only this time the colonizer is based in Washington D.C.
Which, of course, brings us to the topic of tonight’s show: the current situation in the US of A, the heartland of a global empire with more than seven hundred military bases spread across every continent and with an armed presence in every corner of the globe. What happens in Washington has global repercussions and that is why US elections are major events from a geo-political standpoint, not just a domestic one. And from a geo-political standpoint the two contenders in this election appear especially unappealing.
I say this because, as a non-American who lives outside the US, I’m more concerned about US foreign policy than anything else. I’m more concerned about what the US is going to do to other countries, especially those in close proximity to its borders.
To start with, it’s very telling that the CEOs are American arms manufacturers and their investors are confident in their prospects regardless of who wins the election. My friend Greg Shupak wrote a really great piece in The Nation on this very subject last Friday and he quotes Dave Calhoun, the CEO of Boeing, who said “I think both candidates, at least in my view, appear globally oriented and interested in the defense of our country and I believe they’ll support the industries…I don’t think we’re going to take a position on one being better than the other.” And Greg rightly points out that it was Boeing’s Apache helicopters that were responsible for killing civilians in the infamous “Collateral Murder” video that Chelsea Manning brought to public attention. Arms giants like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed-Martin are directly and indirectly funding both Trump and Biden’s campaigns, confident that both of them can be counted on to pursue policies favorable to them, which, in short means more aggression and belligerent actions around the globe and a policy of military brinkmanship with regard to Russia and China. Pushing the world to the brink of World War III is good for business if you are Boeing.
There’s a lot of continuity in American elections. You’ll likely have noticed that if you’ve been around long enough. The overall policy direction of successive American administrations doesn’t shift a whole hell of a lot. Everyone thought there was going to be a big sweeping change when Obama took over from George W. Bush at the beginning of 2009, but Obama kept troops in Iraq, supported Israel in its murderous assault on Gaza, maintained Guantanamo Bay, didn’t punish anyone for torture, kept up the War on Terror, and later expanded military operations into Libya and Syria. There were migrant kids held in cages under Obama just as there are migrant kids held in cages under Donald Trump, who mainly just expanded on racist anti-immigrant policies already in place or made official what was already being done in practice. The military-industrial complex keeps on rolling, the prison-industrial complex keeps on rolling.
While things like Obama’s deal with Iran are notable exceptions, American foreign policy has been remarkably consistent and just as remarkably belligerent. And this is because these policies serve certain very powerful interests. Beyond arms contractors, just about every sector of the American capitalist class, from the bankers to Silicon Valley, is geared toward empire and global dominance. Even if they don’t have direct dealings with the Pentagon, they rely on a steady flow of cheap resources from the Global South and the exploitation of cheap labor, both of which are guaranteed by American military power and the military power of America’s allies and vassals around the world. I mentioned Elon Musk last week and his role in the 2019 Bolivian coup, which he openly supported out of his desire for cheap lithium to fuel his electric car empire. Canadian mining companies like Barrett Gold exploiting natural resources in countries like Honduras and Indonesia likewise benefit from American imperial dominance and its ability to put puppet rulers into place who will serve the interests of global capital and the Fortune 500 over and above the needs of their own citizenry.
Honduras is notable for having suffered an American-backed coup back in 2007 which ousted progressive President Manuel Zelaya and led to a series of right-wing governments that basically handed the country to multi-national corporations on a silver platter while unleashing death squads against indigenous land defenders and environmental activists like Berta Caceres. This coup, like the 2019 coup in Bolivia, was also supported by the Government of Canada. It should come as no surprise that large percentages of the Latin American migrants arriving at the southern border of the US in recent years are fleeing from Honduras in a refugee crisis of America’s own making, and now we have all these desperate kids locked up in concentration camps after being forcibly separated from their parents.
This is empire, brothers and sisters, and it rarely enters into American political discourse. Even Bernie Sanders and AOC rarely talk about it and, when they do, they rarely make the necessary connections between things like the migrant crisis and the imperialist policies of successive administrations going back decades now. There is so much that goes unstated, even on the left. When you have a country based on plunder, firstly of stolen indigenous lands and then of other countries throughout the world, there are many illusions that must be maintained if the status quo is to be maintained. I think it was Stokely Carmichael who said that America is the most successfully repressed country in the world, because so many of its people believe its omnipresent propaganda with all their hearts. Even progressives are lulled into saying that propaganda is only something that America’s supposed “enemies” do and that America is a free country with some problems that can be worked out and set straight – even settler-colonialism and systemic racism are misrepresented as the “attitude problems” of certain “bad apples” rather than the foundational features of the American state going back to the very beginning, even as black and brown people are regularly killed by the cops.
Of course, it’s becoming harder and harder to maintain these illusions amidst a pandemic with a death toll of 225,000 and growing, the highest death toll of any country in the world. And the idea that Joe Biden, who has said again and again that he rejects every single policy proposal that Bernie Sanders ever advanced, is going to come in and fix everything is just unbelievable. It won’t happen. As much as people want Trump gone, they know that Biden really isn’t going to ease their pain…and so they hold their noses while voting for the “lesser of two evils”.
Fundamentally, brothers and sisters, there is never going to be a “socialist America”. The idea that the stars and stripes can be redeemed is patently ridiculous at this point. If socialism really triumphed, if a socialist revolution really succeeded in this part of the world, America would effectively cease to exist and a new nation would have to emerge in its place. The same goes for Canada. You cannot build a new society on such rotten foundations of empire, colonial violence and genocide, you’ll have to demolish the old house and put down new foundations, it’s the only way. Maybe I’m out of step with a lot of white leftists when I say this, but I don’t really care seeing that I try to take my cue from the indigenous land defenders who do not recognize the authority of the capitalist settler-state. If there is going to be justice in this land, if systemic oppression is going to be overcome and broken down, we’re going to have to start building from a new foundation. This time we’re not going to start from white supremacy, but from the principles of internationalism and solidarity. This is the only path to a livable future.
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