Straws In The Wind, New Year Edition
I watched the New Year celebrations with a strange lack of enthusiasm, as it seemed more like welcoming in a year that may be worse than the one that we just experienced. Below I have listed some of the straws that lead me to such a lack of enthusiasm for the New Year.
The Collapse of the “Liberal” Narrative?
I place “liberal” in quotes, because it is really the narrative of the currently dominant part of the US ruling class; one that is highly illiberal. In some ways it is a throwback to the 1950s when the Democratic Party was as much in love with the security state as the Republicans; with JFK in the 1960 election admonishing his competitor Nixon for being too soft on the Soviets. Doesn’t that ring parallels with the “Russia, Russia, Russia” attacks of the Democrats and “liberal” media upon Trump?
No matter how much the mainstream media has tried to ignore the Twitter files, the reality of a deep relationship between the security state and social media can no longer be attacked as an unfounded “conspiracy theory”. With the Republicans gaining control of the House of Representatives, we can look forward to the intra-elite spats throwing lots of dirty laundry into the open; especially with the recent release of the Trump tax filings turning out to be yet another dud for the Democrats. As the year progresses, the increasing success of the Russian forces in Ukraine will also put paid to the “plucky Ukraine” message. With an economy travelling into a deep recession, there will also be more resistance to sending money to help Ukrainians get themselves killed. The identity politics of the Democrats, as a replacement for any support for the real issues facing most non-elite Americans, also seems to be waning.
This year, and then full on in 2024, the intra-elite conflict in the US will burst into a paroxysm of ruling class squabble; with more cracks opened up for the average citizen to look inside ruling class realities. The refusal of Trump to politically die no matter how many Democratic (and RINO) stakes are thrust at his heart, will increase the heat of the conflict the nearer the 2024 elections become. In such a hard to control environment, the outcomes are hard to identify. Will the neocons double down with official “boots on the ground” in Ukraine and intensify attempts to take out Trump for good, or will cooler elite heads prevail to limit the destructiveness of the intra-elite fighting? This will of course have nothing to do with the will of the American people as a whole, that has never been the case, but be about which subsets of the ruling class will come to rule America after at least a century of internationalist and financial bourgeoisie dominance.
The choice may be between a liberal fascism (Wolin’s “Inverted Totalitarianism”) or a lesser version of the Israeli combination of the bourgeoisie, religious extremists and the security services.
Israeli Religious Fundamentalist Extremism and Supremacy Goes All In
Ever since the 1995 assassination by a “lone gunman” of the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the last Israeli leader open to any real settlement with the Arab population of Palestine, the extremist Zionist right wing has grown in ascendance. Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, was narrowly defeated by Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party in 1996. In the first decade of the new century, Ariel Sharon (the new Likud Prime Minister, Netanyahu had declined to stand as leader) did implement a settler and military disengagement with Gaza, but this was more driven by a fear of Palestinian demographics increasing the Arab share of the Israeli-controlled population than any real drive for a lasting peace. When Sharon heft Likud to form his own party (Kadima) he took the centrist wing of the party with him, leaving the more extreme tight wing.
Netanyahu succeeded Sharon as leader but lost heavily in the 2006 elections. In 2009, Likud recovered enough to be able to form a government lead by Netanyahu, and he remained the Prime Minister of the country until 2021. After managing to dodge criminal convictions for what many see as widespread corruption, in 2022 he reclaimed the Prime Ministerial position, in a coalition with far-right Religious Zionism groups; the most far-right Israeli government in its history. Likud, especially the post-Sharon Likud, represents an alliance between the neoliberal bourgeoisie and the extreme Jewish supremacist right wing – a classic fascist alliance. Islamophobic messages, beliefs and actions have gained great ground recently, and as stated by the Anadolu Agency:
Pro-peace voices are easily marginalized, and as a result, society is rapidly moving away from the prospect of peace. In these circumstances, where racism and Islamophobia are normalized, the media, as we have previously stated, provokes society by employing populist and extremist language. As a result of systematic dehumanization, Palestinians have been reduced to a horde of enemies who only deserve to be annihilated.
Abby Martin interviewed Israeli Jewish citizens on the street and found a very worrying level of extreme Islamophobic, ethnic cleansing and even genocidal views:
Earlier in 2022, the Israeli government put back in place a law that bans Palestinians married to Israeli citizens from gaining Israeli residency or citizenship. As the Washington Post states:
They are already pursuing plans to restrict the rights of minorities, alter the system of governmental checks and balances, hollow out the Israeli judiciary, exert influence over the army and security forces, and allow harsher treatment of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories.
In addition, Netanyahu has already stepped back from his support for LGBTQ rights by supporting measures to allow medical staff to not serve members of that community. At the very time that the US position in the Middle East is starting to wane, and the younger Jewish generations outside Israel are becoming less supportive of the Zionist settler project, Israel is doubling down on Jewish supremacy and the cleansing of Arabs from the lands of Palestine. One day after the swearing in of the extremist Israeli government, the UN General Assembly passed a vote asking the International Court of Justice to provide an opinion on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. As per usual with such votes, the US and UK voted against the resolution, as did Germany, but it was passed overwhelmingly 87 to 26 (with 53 abstentions). Also, as per usual, the Israeli government vowed to resist any outside pressure against its illegal ongoing occupation and plans for new illegal settlements. Israel also answered by bombing Syria’s Damascus airport, an explicit act of aggressive war.
2022 may go down as the beginning of the end for Israel, as its support in the West wanes and the position of the US in the region fades. There will be no peace for Israel until it accepts the right of the Palestinians to live in their lands and that Israel must be a multi-denominational state. With such an acceptance becoming less and less achievable, we may once more see Jews leaving a nation in large numbers; this time from a crumbling Israel. It may not be this decade, but the journey has begun.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/29/israel-government-netanyahu-religious-zionism/
The Never Ending Latin American Recurring Pink Tide
In Peru, after over a year of making sure the progressive President could not govern, the elites have at last had their way and Castillo is now in custody. In Brazil, Lula has become President but with a right-wing dominated National Congress and judiciary. His room for manoeuvre will be extremely restricted, even more than in his “neoliberalism with crumbs” days. In Colombia the progressive President Arce struggles on against a right-wing dominated body politique. As with previous pink tides, the US and Latin American elites will work to limit and destroy it. The same for President Castro in Honduras and Obrador in Mexico.
In Venezuela, the opposition finally removed the laughable Juan Guaido who was touted as the “real” leader of the country in the US big lie. The opposition remains in control of Venezuela’s foreign assets, illegally seized by Western powers but is now committed to taking part in the 2024 elections. What will the US do if the Venezuelans once again vote “the wrong way”, as the Nicaraguans keep doing? And then we have Bolivia, where the majority rose up to overthrow the US-backed elite coup and regained power. The elites are not resting though and have already begun new protests.
The tide may be slowly turning against the US, but it will fight tooth and nail to maintain its Monroe Doctrine of Western Hemispheric dominance.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/31/venezuela-opposition-removes-interim-president-guaido
The Growth of Truly Chinese International Corporations to Replace US ones?
In November, the best-selling electric vehicle in China was from a Chinese owned corporation, BYD, unseating Tesla. With EVs taking a 35% share of the Chinese car market, BYD also unseated the German VW as the best-selling car manufacturer in China.
Sean Starrs and a few others write about what few will touch, the actual ownership of the means of production. His research points to the overwhelming domestic ownership of US corporations, and the heavy US ownership of foreign corporations – including many who are responsible for Chinese exports. In addition, through the legal, marketing and financial control of Global Value Chains, companies such as Apple can retain ownership of the vast amount of profits made from their sales (as against the pitiful amounts earned by the manufacturer Foxconn). As Starrs notes, the combinations of US ruling class ownership and US ruling class control of GVCs leads to the US being able to accrue to itself a significant proportion of the value added produced in China. Only when China owned corporations and China controlled Global Value Chains gain prominence will China stop being so exploited by the US.
The move to electric vehicles seems to promise the generation of a significant number of China-owned corporations and China-controlled GVCs in what is the largest industrial sector in the world and has major impacts on other areas such as electronics, software and battery technology. By keeping control of the “commanding heights” of their economy, such as the financial sector, China has been able to develop its own world-class corporations and perhaps start the process of removing US claims upon its domestic value added. This is one of the reasons for my focus upon the EV industry.
The next two to three years promise to be a period when domestic Chinese EV producers gain overwhelming dominance in their own market (vastly reducing the market shares of European, Japanese, European and Western producers) and gain a significant share of the European and rest of the world markets. They may even start to construct final assembly plants in North America to gain access to the Us market. The fate of Tesla, the only major US EV producer that holds market share outside the US, is very interesting in this respect. It may very well be overwhelmed by the domestic competition in China and find itself seriously challenged outside the US. If it also becomes challenged in the US what will the US response be, further protectionism?
With its exit from much of the manufacturing sector, the US is heavily dependent upon the flows of profits from its ownership of foreign corporations and its control of GVCs. Without those flows, the US would be a much poorer country, and one much less able to fund its existence foreign military presence. This was the real reason for the attack on Huawei, which threatened the GVC control of Apple and other major US corporations, and also for the recent controls over high-tech exports to China. As we travel through the 2020s, the Chinese attack on these sources of foreign value-added for the US ruling class will gain in strength and cause an increasing level of desperation in those classes. Combined with a continuing move away from the usage of the US$, and therefore the support of its price against other currencies, the ability of the US to maintain its large foreign military presence and to bully foreign nations may become significantly diminished. The reaction of the US ruling class to this diminishment, and the ability of China/Russia/Iran etc. to contain that response, will decide much of our future.