​The Make America Great Again movement has been the single most important development in modern American politics. For its traditional leftist critics, its significance is rooted in its ability to be a unique and modernized version of fascism with American characteristics. Prominent liberal/leftist authors such as Gerald Horne, aligned, with the defunct Communist Party USA, have argued that “the specter of which still looms large today, evinced, most palpably, in the Trump-MAGA movement” is that of “U.S. fascism… the system of U.S. apartheid, aka Jim Crow, or the legacy of anti-Black terror perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan.” 
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This depicts the epistemic arrogance of the cosmopolitan elite academic writing on the MAGA phenomenon from outside, basing themselves not on going deep into MAGA country, but on abstract clippings from the mainstream liberal press, whose disgust at Trump’s lack of propriety and hegemonic formalism offends their liberal eyes. Their position, which can be classified as Trump derangement syndrome, is the valid conclusion of those who accept the hysterical premises of mainstream hegemonic liberalism. It only sees one dimension of Trump, that of the elites which do lean toward Nazism, not the other dimension, the heart of the MAGA base, which is the discontented working class – traditionally the heart of any sort of communist organizing.

As someone who experienced the initial rise of MAGA in the cosmopolitan ambiance of my former Miami home, I understand where this “leftist” position emerges from. Its foundational understanding of this modern social phenomenon is not the actual MAGA movement, but the caricature of it that is spun by the mainstream liberal media. This media paints the average MAGA supporter as a zealot bigot who supports Trump because of their hate for minorities. The MAGA movement is treated as a “Trump Cult,” and the extreme exceptions of fanatical individuals are painted as the mainstream. For anyone that is outside of the regions where the working class MAGA base is located, the mainstream media narrative will certainly leave you worrisome about this group.

For me, it took living deep in MAGA country, first in Iowa and then in a pro-MAGA part of Southern Illinois, to actually grasp what this political development represents. Far from being simply reducible to a “fascist threat” rooted in the legacies of American white supremacism and bigotry, MAGA represents and organic and spontaneous manifestation of a forgotten working class anger, taking for the first time since the civil rights movement the form of political partisanship. As Haz Al-Din has argued:

In the United States, the MAGA Movement has come to be defined by being the exclusive American form of partisanship. As is well known, the distinction between the Republicans and Democrats, in nearly every election cycle, has never amounted to any real political distinction on the basis of Clauswitzean absolute enmity. Partisanship, that is impassioned political partiality, has made its definite return in the United States solely in the MAGA movement, which has again reintroduced real political enmity and distinction to the belly of the globalist beast itself. Having its origins in a rather accidental confluence of circumstances, in Donald Trump’s presidential election in 2016, the movement has become the host of every possible real counter-hegemonic ideological tendency within the United States.

This movement is not pure. It does not exhibit the advanced form of class consciousness that the working class and socialist movements of the 20th century held. Nonetheless, it should never be that purity of form that we search for. As I have argued in my work on The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism, to expect purity as a pre-condition for work is to resign yourself to paralysis, to make the task of organizing the class struggle impossible. MAGA therefore is not pure and cannot be. Instead, it is the first manifestation, since at least the black freedom movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, of dissident working class and popular power.

The discontent of the MAGA working class base is rooted in the simple fact that the security, stability, and economic wellbeing of the American working class in the era of their parents and grandparents, the era that afforded at least a semblance of reality to the American dream, exists no longer. The American working class, which at one point became what Engels would have called a “bourgeois proletariat,” has lost the economic privileges that came with that uplifting. It has been, as Noah Khrachvik calls it, “reproletarianized.” This was an uplifting that was rooted in three central factors:

1) there was a strong communist and labor movement that won significant concessions from the ruling capitalist class in the lead up and after math of the Second World War;

2) there existed in the Soviet Union a prosperous and viable alternative world order whom the world, for at least a brief period of time, thanked for the defeat of the scourge of Nazism; and

3) the United States had emerged, in the aftermath of the Second World War, as the global imperial hegemon, replacing a role previously occupied by Britain. This afforded it the ability to use the super-exploitation of the Global South, and the super profits that were produced, to give greater economic stability to the national working class and hence pacify its revolutionary potential. 

As the United States entered the decades of the 1970s, the process of reversing these gains for the working class was underway. This marks the era where neoliberalism develops. Neoliberalism is often simply reduced to the policies of privatization, liberalization, austerity, and deregulation that the US imposed on countries of the Global South through structural adjustment programs and the institutions of global finance capital (IMF and World Bank). But these policies, representing a new stage of U.S. imperialism (or super-imperialism), was not simply exported abroad, it was also imposed at home. What came to characterize the existence of the American working class was a condition which tended more and more towards drowning them in debt and making it harder than ever to make ends meet. The neoliberal agenda was not simply something the U.S. imposed, as imperial hegemon, on the rest of the world – it was something it imposed on its own people too.

This was not a simple accident or a wrongful choice of policy, it was structurally necessary to deal and cope with the general crisis of capitalism that emerges in the 1970s. Faced with the effects of the long-term tendency of the rate of profit falling, in the 1970s the American capitalist class was faced with two options, two routes afforded to it to revitalize its rates of profit:

1) continue the growing tendency of financial parasitism and usury through the reinvestment of capital in the FIRE sector, deriving more and more profits from interest rates, land rents, stock buy backs, and financial speculation; or

2) if one sought to continue making profits from productive capital, such capital had to be exported abroad to the Global South where the cost of doing business was much lower, i.e., where buying labor power, land, resources, and technology could be much more affordable. Here the rate of profit is rejuvenated through significantly diminishing the cost of production.

The citadels of American capital took both routes, each of which was conjoined with a loss of opportunity and economic stability for the American working class. These changes have produced modern America, one of the most economically unequal societies in all of human history. It is a society where 80 percent of the people are struggling to make ends meet, living paycheck to paycheck, and drowning in unpayable debts, while the wealthiest few have accumulated their wealth at unprecedented rates.

Today we live in an America where the three richest Americans own more wealth than the poorest half of the population. To put it in starker terms, in America the three wealthiest individuals have more wealth than the 170 million poorest Americans combined. The trajectory we are on suggests that this will only get worse. Today, for the first time in American history, the youngest generations are guaranteed a worse living standard than that of their parents. It is a society in an undeniable sharp decline.

The material stability that working class Americans once had allowed for ideological stability, that is, for a smoother acquiescence to the ruling ideas. If the ruling class demanded zealot anti-communism, the working class provided it. It was a dark time for our class, where the trinkets of comfort we were afforded made many forget about the fundamental antagonism in society – that between the workers and the big owners of capital.

Today, as material conditions have deteriorated, ideological stability has also faltered. Americans are, as we say, “rocking the boat.” The ruling ideas, as well as their corresponding material institutions, are more and more coming under scrutiny. What I have previously called a “crisis of legitimacy” is profoundly with us today. Americans, from all sides of the political spectrum (but especially in the MAGA movement), are not consenting to the agendas of the Deep State (intelligence agencies), big pharma (the pharmaceutical industrial complex), big agro (the masters of the sickening, chemical-filled food we are fed), the legacy media (those who spin the narratives to get the populace to think what the elites need them to think), the educational institutions (those who seek to promote division and factionalism of the poor and working class under the banner of promoting “diversity,”), and the political class (those who represent not the American people, but the banking cartels, investment firms, and big corporations that make up the oligarchs of this country).

No country, irrespective of how fascistic it might be, can survive without a basic degree of consent from the populace. Without hegemony the ruling order quickly collapses. Coercion on its own is insufficient, a baseline degree of consent is always necessary.

Today we are in an America where that baseline of consent is hardly reached. If a crisis of legitimacy this deep had occurred in any society of the early 20th century, a revolution would’ve surely ensued. Such an uprising has been prevented (for now), by the simple fact that although the U.S. ruling elite might appear as idiots, the sheer instinct of class survival has made them smart enough to develop new ways of sustaining stability and hegemony through the collapse of stability and hegemony itself. As I have previously argued, today hegemony is defended precisely through the feigning of being counterhegemonic:

The rulers must, at all times, manipulate the public into seeing them as subaltern, as powerless and waging a crusade against the elites themselves. From conservatives, to liberals, to the various Trotskyite “leftists” and “democratic socialists,” all American politics is coming more and more to take the form of dissidence. It is an aristocracy of capital that survives through the conceit of continuously struggling against itself for power. Like in Kafka’s The Trial, where the court bureaucracy is reproduced precisely by presenting itself as powerless subjects subjugated by the system, the dialectic of American political authority today also takes the form of this feigning of impotence to sustain their systemic omnipotence. Power sustains itself through the pretense of powerlessness.

The institutions and individuals that most explicitly defend the status quo are not the once primarily responsible for the stability of the status quo – it is those who present themselves as dissenters (of a left and right variety) who are coming to play more and more an indispensable role for the status quo. Today all of the American political spectrum has to present itself as politically defeated and fighting an uphill battle for power.

It is this material and ideological predicament – this endless cycle of crisis that is sustained through the structural incorporation of “dissent” into the status quo itself – that produced two significant movements of popular dissent in 2015: MAGA and the Bernie Movement. While some might have now forgotten, in 2015 the class basis for both of these movements were largely the same. Many of the individuals that would have voted for Bernie in the presidential race decided to vote for Trump after the Democratic Party cheated Bernie in the primaries. Both Bernie and Trump had developed movements that could’ve radically transformed American politics, both critiquing the ruling institutions of power, the two-party duopoly, the war machine, and the economic standing of working class America.

So, what made the MAGA movement survive and the Bernie one fade away into various disparate groups? The answer is quite simple: Bernie ended up folding completely into the same Democratic Party establishment that cheated him in 2016 and 2020. Bernie’s pretensions at a “political revolution” were not even symbolically upheld after his defeats. He placed himself in the long tradition of social democracy, where the talk is nice and radical, but the actions always align you with the dominant imperial centers of power. As a young Marxist, this apparent “betrayal” taught be the lesson of how social democrats have always betrayed the working class to side with the powerful – in time showing me that I was duped by the old social democratic trick, not “betrayed.” Today we have a Bernie that only has mean words for the Republican Party and Trump, and ignores almost completely the bipartisan responsibility of the crisis working class families are in. Today we have a Bernie that argues, after almost two years of Zionist genocide of Palestinians, that “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

While Trump never fulfilled the aspirations of the MAGA base in his first term, he at least kept up the pretension of “draining the swamp” and combatting the Deep State. Even though his cabinet was filled with Warhawks like Elliot Abrams, Mike Pompeo, and others, he still signaled to his base a sense of dissidence. For many years this was enough to keep the movement alive, to keep it from dissipating like Bernie’s. His unfulfilled promises, in the eyes of his base, were rooted in the Deep State’s ability to insert a Warhawk cabinet around him. Trump was, for them, not to blame – it was the swamp monsters around him who were responsible. Trump, of course, went along with this narrative, it was what was needed so that he could have his cake and eat it too, that is, so that he can disappoint his base politically but also sustain their support.

It was the sustained vitality of the Trump base (in contrast to the dissipation of Bernie’s) that would lead to the recognition of its revolutionary potential by the new resurgent American Communist movement. In January of 2021, shortly after the famous January six storming of the capital, I mentioned in a podcast that the Trump movement was divided into two spheres:

1) those in the elite who ended up siding with Trump, a sector that also included all of the reactionary “diasporas” from China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. that were pro-Trump because of the formally anti-communist discourse, and

2) the discontented working class base, that could’ve gone to either Bernie (or a more traditional, pro-working class “left”) or to Trump in search of a candidate that represented a break from the dominant political horizon – an outsider who would break with the liberal formalism of the Obamas, Clintons, and Bushes and would actually represent a populist (i.e., pro-American people) agenda. I urged the need for communists to understand the revolutionary potential of this MAGA base, and to reject the liberal-“left” condemnation of them as “fascist.” Communists had to go to MAGA and show them that what they liked about Trump could only be realized through American socialism.

Around the same time, the philosopher and political theorist Haz Al-Din – now the Executive Chairman of the American Communist Party – would develop, in one of the most brilliant essays of modern American political theory, the notion of MAGA Communism, recognizing the objectivity of the working class MAGA base as the foundation for any communist movement in contemporary America. This, far from being a synthesis of Trump and Communism (as liberals libelously claim), is simply a restatement of the traditional communist ethos of going deep into the working class masses, serving as the agents that facilitate the advance of their imperfect spontaneous working class consciousness into socialist class consciousness proper. MAGA Communism, therefore, was always just communism attuned to the contemporary American conjuncture and to what the MAGA movement represented in American politics.

Today, as I have argued before, we are at a crossroads – not just for MAGA, but for the U.S. as a whole. The maneuver that sustained the MAGA base on the side of Trump in the first term will not work in the second. In the decade that has passed, the MAGA base has only been further disenchanted with ruling institutions. Most significantly, they have broken their long-term allegiance to the Zionist entity, who they now see as responsible for the U.S. involvement in the wars in West Asia (the so-called Middle East). While part of the rhetoric on Israel might be upside-down (in the sense that they see Israel influence the U.S. and not the U.S. use Israel as a colonial outpost in the region), it is still an objective rejection of the foreign policy that the U.S. (in their eyes under the influence of Israel) has carried out in West Asia. This term Trump will not have an opportunity to have his cake and eat it too. He will have to decide – does he follow the Deep State agenda and lose his base, or (and this is a Hail Mary) does he switch course and actually rule in a way that satisfies MAGA’s expectations?

As of last week, I was ready to bet everything I had that the former would be true, that Trump would continue to create a rift with his base rooted in supporting policies which MAGA disagreed with. After the first month of his new term, Haz Al-Din and I speculated that this rift was already in motion, that the MAGA base was starting to break from Trump and becoming up for grabs by new political forces.

The two main contenders, of course, would be the so-called Groypers (the modernized American Nazis), led by Nick Fuentes and a few other figure heads (now with the support of Kanye West, whose been for decades a cultural-fashion icon for the American youth) and the American Communists Party, the only Left-wing force in America willing to win over the MAGA base. The battle was going to be more sharply broken up into three forces: the traditional establishment devoid of any popular support, the parts of MAGA that would go with the Groypers, and the parts of MAGA that would go with the Communists.

In terms of the people, this would, in essence, be a battle between the Groypers and the Communists, between modernized American Nazism and American Communism. Each political force would have something that the other lacked: the Nazis, for whom the ruling class will always turn in periods of crisis, would have at their disposal the financial and media resources of the filo-fascists (the fascist-friendly sectors of finance capital), as Jacques Pawels calls them, the Communists, working on a vision of uniting our class and America, would have the upper hand of a unifying principle (as opposed to the Nazi’s racist, tribalist one) and disciplined organization. This would have placed the American horizon in a somewhat homologous position with Germany before Hitler’s rise, where the key players that represented a new direction where the Nazis and the Communists.

However, the last week of Trump political maneuvers has brought more confusion than clarity. In a wild turn of events, some dissident commentators are suggesting that this week Trump decided to repair the developing rift with MAGA and actually listen to the MAGA base. As George Galloway and Jackson Hinkle have noted in their recent conversation, this week Trump has seemingly broken with Netanyahu and Israel, rejecting their machinations for war with Iran, allowed the Houthis to continue targeting Israeli ships (calling the Houthis brave and honorable), cut off contact with Netanyahu publicly over disrespect, fired National Security Advisor Waltz over his close association with Netanyahu, cancelled Secretary of Defense trip to Israel, met with groups from the resistance behind Israel’s back, and, to put the cherry on top, signed an executive order to try to end the price-gauging of the criminal medico-pharmaceutical industrial complex, potentially cutting up to 80% in drug prices. I don’t think any of us had this week of political maneuvers on our bingo cards. Even the formal recognition of a Palestinian state has been floated around.

However, that is Trump, a fundamentally unpredictable X factor that could break with the course and direction of politics at any moment. That is why, even when he has served the interests of the elite, he has been such a thorn on their backs – the ruling elite like the stability of someone who is predictable, and Trump couldn’t be more unpredictable. After all, this is the individual that went from saying he would make the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) disappear, and moments after, be the first U.S. president to step foot in the country. From threatening to obliterate the DPRK to laughing with Kim Jong Un about hoping to look “nice and slim” in the picture, such unpredictability and quick turn of events are always a possibility with Trump.

This could also very well be a political machination, a feigning of a change of course to sustain a deeper continuity of political direction. After all, it is impossible not to see Israel’s genocide in full display. The ruling elite would want nothing more than to pin this catastrophe on a single individual – Bibi Netanyahu – than to admit that this is the logical manifestation of the Zionist agenda. Such a course of events is also very likely. Either way, if Trump ends up actually serving the agenda of his base, that will still deepen the split between the status quo (Democrats, the anti-MAGA “left,” and the anti-Trump Republicans) and MAGA. MAGA would still end up having a left and a right contingent: the Communists which would be pushing toward American socialism as the way to actually Make America Great, and the Nazis, who would be pushing their pseudo-radical and astro-turfed race essentialism and Hitler fetishism on the American masses.

It is essential to remind the American working class and all American patriots that their grandparents fought with the Communists to destroy the scourge of Nazism, and that if today they turn around and willingly accept that which their ancestors were willing to sacrifice their lives to destroy, they would be spitting not just on their lineage, but on America itself, whose ideals have always been much more aligned to the vision of communism than the hell of Nazism.

It will be up to us, the Communists, to present to the American people our vision of socialism. This cannot be a vision of something foreign that will be artificially implanted on our unique histories and traditions, but as the logical and practical conclusions of the values of 1776 and the notion – enunciated by Lincoln and accepted as common sense by our people – that government should be of, by, and for the people. This is, fundamentally, what MAGA’s grievances are rooted in, what their aspirations and desires (for stability and security, for peace, economic prosperity, for a return to an organic American culture not imposed from above by the NGO’s, the Academy, and the media) entail.

Such a reality, thoroughly absent in our current conjuncture, where government is of, by, and for big corporations, big banks, and investment firms, can only become actualized when the working class obtains political power. In other words, only a socialist America will be able to live up to the values of our country. If this simple message cannot be successfully communicated to MAGA and the general American working class, we will be at the mercy of a destiny shaped by Fuentes and the Nazis. Pretty soon we will be in a situation where political actors in America will be forced to choose what political vision they will align themselves with: MAGA Communism or the Nazis. 

​Amidst a world of immaculate suits and presidential mansions, José “Pepe” Mujica opted for a dilapidated Volkswagen Beetle and a humble farmhouse. Toppling conventions with the quiet audacity of someone who had faced down dictators and survived, he was a former guerrilla. The world lost more than just a former Uruguayan president when he passed away on May 13, 2025, at the age of 89. He was a leftist who put his beliefs into practice by supporting Palestine and introducing progressive reforms. Mujica demonstrated to us that the people, not the powerful, could benefit from power through a life forged in poverty, prison, and deep principle. Many people found his story in a fog of smoke and disobedience, and it serves as a reminder to redefine leadership.
 
 
From Guerrilla to Statesman: A Life Shaped by Struggle
 
Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, on May 20, 1935, José Alberto Mujica Cordano came from a modest background. His early years were difficult; after his father filed for bankruptcy when he was seven years old, the family fell into poverty and Mujica was forced to work with his mother in their flower business, a career he carried on throughout his life. Mujica's worldview was shaped by these modest beginnings, which anchored him in the realities of economic inequality and class conflict and themes that are essential to Marxist analysis.
 
Mujica joined the Tupamaros, a leftist urban guerrilla group, in the 1960s as Latin America struggled with social injustice and political repression. The Tupamaros were more than just rebels; they were an expression of class consciousness, opposing a system that put the needs of the working class last and the interests of the elite first. Mujica's participation in this movement represented a direct challenge to the military dictatorship that took control of Uruguay in 1973, ushering in a period of oppressive authoritarianism. Mujica spent 14 years in prison, subjected to torture and seclusion, for his involvement in the resistance. His perseverance and survival during this time are evidence of the unwavering spirit of justice-seekers, a trait that socialist hold in high regard as being necessary for revolutionary change.
 
The leftist idea of flexibility and pragmatism is best illustrated by Mujica's shift from guerrilla fighter to elected politician following the restoration of democracy in 1985. As a deputy, senator, and eventually Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries, he embraced democracy after realizing that armed conflict was insufficient to eliminate systemic inequality. His progressive fervor was not lessened by this change; rather, it was directed toward a new kind of resistance that aimed to change society from the inside out.
 
 
A Presidency of Principle: Socialist Principles and Progressive Policies
 
The election of Mujica as Uruguay's president in 2009 marked a turning point for progressive politics worldwide as well as for Uruguay. Policies that questioned established capitalist conventions and put the good of the group ahead of personal gain characterized his 2010–2015 term in office. From a socialist perspective, these policies were revolutionary in their intent and impact.
 
The legalization of marijuana in 2013, which made Uruguay the first nation in the world to completely legalize and regulate its production, sale, and consumption, was one of Mujica's most well-known accomplishments. This was a direct challenge to the capitalist systems that benefit from criminalization, not just a change in drug laws. In line with Marxist criticisms of capitalism's exploitative inclinations, Mujica aimed to regulate marijuana in order to curb the illegal market, lower crime, and reroute funds toward public health and education. His own statement, "What we want is to take the market from drug traffickers," reflects a desire to return economic power to the people instead of letting it stay in the hands of criminal capitalists.

Beyond drug policy, Mujica was dedicated to social justice. He challenged conservative and patriarchal power structures and increased personal freedoms by legalizing abortion in the first trimester and same-sex marriage. In addition to being progressive, these reforms were firmly leftist in their focus on equality and the overthrow of repressive structures. Mujica personified the socialist idea that genuine liberation must be collective, involving all aspects of society, by standing up for underrepresented groups.

Mujica's personal lifestyle, which contrasted sharply with the extravagance typically associated with political leadership, was perhaps the most striking. Instead of living in the presidential palace, he drove an old Volkswagen Beetle and lived on a small farm outside of Montevideo, donating 90% of his presidential salary to charity. This rejection of material wealth was a living example of Marxist principles and a potent critique of consumerism. "Why do we want so much if we don't need that much?" he famously questioned. This query strikes at the core of socialist philosophy, which opposes capitalism's fixation on accumulation and promotes a society in which necessities are satisfied without going overboard.
 
Foreign Policy and Palestine Solidarity

Mujica's foreign policy, which placed a strong emphasis on solidarity with oppressed peoples and promoted human rights internationally, was a logical progression of his Marxist beliefs. A pillar of his global agenda, his support for Palestine demonstrated his conviction that the fight against oppression is interrelated. When Mujica called the Israeli attack in Gaza "genocide" in 2014, during a time of fierce fighting, the statement sparked a great deal of controversy, including criticism from Israel (MercoPress). This audacious position was not just empty rhetoric; it was based on a profound understanding of the Palestinian people and an understanding that their struggle was a component of a larger struggle against capitalist and imperialist dominance.

Uruguay took decisive action in favour of Palestinian statehood under Mujica's direction. Luis Almagro, the minister of foreign affairs, declared in 2010 that Uruguay would join other Latin American countries such as Argentina and Brazil in recognizing the state of Palestine in 2011. This decision was noteworthy because it was made by a leader whose own history of defying an oppressive government was similar to the Palestinians' fight for independence. Mujica's support for Palestine is genuine and significant because of his background as a guerrilla fighter and political prisoner, which has given him a unique perspective on the value of standing with those defending their rights.

Beyond Palestine, a vision of Latin American cooperation and integration defined Mujica's foreign policy. He believed that addressing common issues like poverty, inequality, and outside influence could be accomplished through regional unity. He demonstrated his ability to overcome ideological differences while upholding his commitment to progressive values through his international engagements, which included meetings with world leaders such as Pope Francis and Barack Obama (EL PAÍS). Mujica's relatable persona, demonstrated in the Vice video titled "Smoking Weed with the President of Uruguay" and talked about life and policy in a way that spoke to audiences all over the world, further increased his image on a global scale.
 
An International Icon of Resistance and Humility

As a representation of integrity and humility in politics, Mujica's reputation grew on a global scale. His straightforward way of living and progressive policies struck a chord with people well beyond Uruguay's boundaries, especially with younger generations fed up with established political structures. I first learned about Mujica through this lens—not from scholarly literature or political analyses, but from the Vice video “Smoking Weed with the President of Uruguay”. Vice correspondent Krishna Andavolu visited Mujica on his farm for this documentary, where they talked about drug policy and philosophy of life while the journalist was smoking marijuana. By showing him as a relatable person who lived by his values rather than as a distant statesman, the video humanized Mujica. It was a moment that perfectly captured his progressive views on individual liberties and his capacity for human connection, which made him a world-renowned figure.

Mujica's struggle against authoritarianism was also emphasized in this video. In addition to being personal tragedies, his experiences of torture and incarceration under the military junta served as symbols of defiance against the right-wing dictatorship. Mujica's fight against the junta was a component of a larger class conflict in which the downtrodden rebelled against a structure intended to uphold elite dominance. Even in the face of overwhelming odds, his tenacity and eventual democratic victory serve as a potent reminder of the possibility of progressive change.
 
The Response of the Progressive World to His Death

Progressive leaders, organizations, and citizens around the world expressed their sorrow and admiration for José Mujica's passing on May 13, 2025. His passing marked the passing of a global icon whose life personified the values of justice, resistance, and humility in addition to the loss of a national leader.

In a heartfelt ode to Mujica, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) called him a “friend” of the Palestinian people and a “champion for Palestine” (Palestine Chronicle). They emphasized his 2014 denunciation of the Israeli attack on Gaza as "genocide" and his steadfast support of Palestinian rights, pointing out that he leveraged his political position to advance the cause of the downtrodden. Mujica was highly respected by those battling for freedom, as evidenced by the PFLP's designation of him as a "living conscience for the oppressed" and a "rare example of revolutionary integrity and purity." The PFLP and other progressive movements found great resonance in his lifelong dedication to standing with the oppressed, which was reflected in his support for Palestine.

Leaders from Latin America also paid moving homage to Mujica's legacy. "We deeply regret the passing of our beloved Pepe Mujica, an example to Latin America and the entire world for his wisdom, foresight, and simplicity," said Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in her condolence statement. Her remarks emphasized Mujica's function as a regional moral compass, representing principles that cut across national borders. "If you left us anything, it was the unquenchable hope that things can be done better," said Chilean President Gabriel Boric in reference to Mujica's unwavering optimism. The transforming spirit of Mujica's leadership, which encouraged generations to hope for a more equitable world, was encapsulated in Boric's tribute.

"Goodbye, friend," wrote Colombian President Gustavo Petro in a tribute that also served as a plea for greater unity in Latin America. One day, I hope, Latin America will have an anthem. Mujica's own idea of regional integration, in which countries could unite to tackle shared issues and create a shared future, was echoed in Petro's message. Sheinbaum, Boric, and Petro's tributes demonstrate the significant influence Mujica had on his fellow leaders and the Latin American progressive movement.

Mujica's impact was not limited to political figures. He was adored by activists, thinkers, and common people all over the world for his modest way of life, progressive policies, and profound philosophical understanding. He became a beacon of hope for people fed up with conventional politics because of his rejection of material wealth and support for social justice. The progressive community around the world lamented his passing, acknowledging that his life served as an example of the strength of moral leadership.
 
Legacy and Introspection

With José "Pepe" Mujica's death, a chapter in progressive politics in Latin America and beyond comes to an end. His legacy is one of great intellectual depth and real-world application, which is an unique blend that evokes admiration and contemplation. I am reminded as I write this obituary of how his life forces us to reconsider what leadership can entail. Mujica was a shining example of humility, integrity, and an unwavering dedication to social justice in a world too frequently dominated by materialism and self-interest.

Marxist philosophy, which places a higher priority on human flourishing than economic growth, is strongly reflected in his well-known statement, "We are too focused on wealth and not on happiness." Mujica's life served as evidence of this idea, demonstrating that genuine wealth is found in equality, community, and dignity rather than material belongings.

Mujica was more than just a political figure; he was a representation of opportunity and hope. We are reminded that a different world is possible, one in which equality, justice, and humanity triumph over oppression and greed and by his struggle against dictatorship, his progressive policies, his moral foreign policy, and his straightforward way of living.
 
We are filled with a renewed sense of purpose as well as a deep sense of loss as we say goodbye to this extraordinary man. Future generations will continue to be motivated by José "Pepe" Mujica's legacy to strive for a better world in which the socialist principles of equality and justice are not merely theoretical but are actually realized.

Naomi Klein has written a book that, by her own admission, no one wanted her to write. Least of all herself. “In my defense, it was never my intention to write this book” she confesses in the opening line, before referring to the project as “absurd” and “out of control” and listing all the more important things she could have done instead (writing about serious subjects, participating in climate summits, assisting in her husband’s parliamentary campaign, checking in on her aging parents or looking after her son). She is not wrong. Naomi Klein, author of two of the most important and memorable books you will find on state and corporate corruption, tyranny, propaganda and conspiracy--No Logo and The Shock Doctrine—has written a book about the trials and tribulations of sharing the same first name as another author she politically disagrees with.
 
The author in question is Naomi Wolf. Someone who underwent a “dramatic political and personal transformation” during Covid. An experience that was “destabilising” and “reality warping”. Not for Wolf—but for Klein. Rather than being utterly inconsequential, mildly amusing or, at most, a minor irritant—the prospect that anyone might confuse them “created a crisis” in Klein’s “personal brand” leaving her “no choice” but to “reassert myself as the owner of my ideas, my identity, my name”. If you think this is--an epically frivolous and narcissistic waste of someone’s time—you are not alone. Klein agrees with you. This is her own description of the book. In the introduction!
 
Why would I want to read and then review a book likely to be an epically frivolous waste of my time? To be clear, my reasons are distinct. I am writing this review because I think the book perfectly encapsulates the spiritual and intellectual rot of the Western left. A rot that has been setting in for some years but became obvious and undeniable once the left collectively jettisoned any pretence of scepticism towards the establishment and morphed into its ideological foot soldiers for the Covid Event. This was not my reason for reading the book. Failing to heed Klein’s advice, I naively assumed that the theme of the Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World was a device Klein had employed to engage seriously (albeit aggressively) with opinions that differed markedly from her own. While making room for government corruption and corporate opportunism, Klein’s interpretation of Covid was in line with the mainstream narrative. Wolf (like myself), has departed radically from the mainstream narrative. Klein was a writer I respected, and I was keen to have my interpretation challenged.
 
Alas, no such challenge was forthcoming. And by that I don’t mean that the challenge she raised was merely feeble. I mean that Klein omitted to provide a single challenge to any documented claim made by Wolf or any other Covid dissident in the entire book. This failure is totally bizarre even on its own terms. In the conclusion Klein actually argues that the lesson of her book is that one must properly engage with alternative opinions. Indeed, Klein argues that the doppelganger phenomenon arises (and specifically Klein’s “doppelganger trouble” began) precisely when…

…we are not seeing one another clearly (because we are so busy projecting what we cannot bear to see about ourselves onto others) and not seeing the world and the connections among us clearly (because we have partitioned ourselves and blocked our vision.)

This revelation only occurs to Klein in the final pages—and then only fleetingly because she is then quick to clarify that whatever political or moral injunction there might be to “reach out” in the spirit of “kinship” with one’s doppelganger, Klein has no plans” to “embrace” Wolf as a “long lost relative”. This means that the whole book consists of her projecting what she cannot bear to see about herself onto Wolf. I wish I was exaggerating. The projection is so severe that Klein lost the ability “to do basic identity maintenance” became “a spectator in [her] own life” and felt herself “fading away”. Having accused Wolf of descending into a mirror world of paranoia, it was Klein that began to feel her enemies “deep inside her… in her mind, in her very cells” to the point that “nothing could be trusted, least of all one another.” The Mirror World turns out to be Klein’s unconscious.
 
Klein makes little effort to hide her unconscious urges. Turning to the world of literature to understand the meaning of her obsession, she proceeds to discuss several examples of characters who kill their doppelgangers, and in doing so kill themselves. In Doppelganger Klein brings this fictional trope to reality. And I don’t just mean that in attempting to destroy Wolf’s reputation Klein has unwittingly destroyed her own. I mean that she has wittingly done so. On almost every page Klein is rebelling against herself; laying charges and insults that brazenly apply to herself. When she isn’t doing that, she is offering caveats and disclaimers so vast that she winds up hoisting herself by her own petard. It’s as if Klein realises how bad her book is and is attempting to outflank her would be opponents by getting her own objections in first.
 
Klein’s confused stream of consciousness, this bizarre exercise in autocritique, is never more painfully exposed than when she is discussing the spectre of the “conspiracy theorist”. Faithfully regurgitating liberalism’s arme du jour, she describes a conspiracy theorist as someone who believes that the world is run by a “cabal of nefarious individuals”. Lacking a structural analysis, conspiracy theorists such as Wolf are inclined to “hop from one conspiracy to the next” (In Wolf’s case “Ebola, Snowden, 5G, ISIS” but “never staying with one subject for long enough to actually prove anything.” Thus, Wolf has aligned herself with a “network of pseudo-experts, celebrities and influencers” that “impersonate investigative journalism”. This provides the basis for Klein’s refusal to engage with Wolf and her unsubstantiated claims. The trouble is that Wolf isn’t just on Twitter. During the time that Klein was writing Doppelganger, Wolf published two books (The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, Covid-19 and The War against the Human and Pfizer Documents Analysis Volunteers’ Reports eBook: Find Out What Pfizer, FDA Tried to Conceal) each with concrete verifiable and sourced claims. Neither book is mentioned in Doppelganger. Klein spent at least two years hanging off of Wolf’s every word but could not manage to level a single objection to either book in her critique. In other words, Klein wants us to believe that the absence of any serious discussion of Covid in Doppelganger was because it was Wolf, not Klein, who spent all her time on Twitter. If Klein’s research was largely confined to hours of, in her words, “doomscrolling through Twitter”, this was merely because she was following Wolf’s descent into the Mirror World. The projection here is mind blowing.
 
A better justification for Klein’s non-engagement with Wolf would be to argue that one’s status as a “conspiracy theorist” is, in itself, disqualifying. If the conspiracist premise (that “the world is run by a cabal of individuals”) is provably untrue then, logically, all charges or conclusions following from it can be dismissed. Klein appears to plug for this strategy when citing the work of a colleague of hers at Rutgers (Jack Bratich). Although curiously both the colleague and Klein suggest that conspiracies about secret elites is a peculiarly liberal fallacy:

Liberal investments in individuals result in thinking of power as residing in individuals and groups rather than structures. Without an analysis of capital or class they end up defaulting to the stories the West tells itself about the power of the individual to change the world.

This is a reversal of the traditional liberal objection to conspiracy theory (that individuals act in their own self-interest and thus cannot coalesce to plan or pull off conspiracies) but contains at least two very obvious flaws. Conspiracies are, by definition, collective endeavours and so are specifically not about the power of the individual to change the world. Presumably this is why Bratich chose to include the qualifier “and groups”. But then one wonders what a class analysis is if it isn’t analysing the actions and machinations of groups. In the Shock Doctrine Klein analysed conspiracies of various groups, including those behind the CIA’s MK Ultra programme and the plots to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and Salvador Allende in Chile. Clearly not wishing to disavow her previous work, she is forced to concede in Doppelganger that conspiracies are, indeed, a fact of our political existence: 

Understanding how capitalism in its latest stage shapes and distorts our world [does not] preclude the presence of real-world conspiracies. If we define “conspiracy” as an agreement among members of a group to pull off some kind of nefarious plot in the shadows, then representatives of capital—in government and the corporate sector—engage in conspiracies as a matter of course.

Quite. Klein then reminds us, that the charge of being a “conspiracy theorist” is, indeed what liberals accuse leftists of:

When radical and anti-establishment writers attempt to analyse the underlying systems that built and uphold power in our world, including the existence of covert operations, it is common for them to be dismissed as conspiracy theorists. In truth, it is one of the most battle worn tactics used to bury and marginalize ideas that are inconvenient to those who wield economic and political power… Every serious left-wing analyst of power has faced this smear, from Marx onwards.

How then to distinguish the “real investigative journalists” from the irresponsible “conspiracy theorists who “impersonate” them? Distinguishing her own scholarly approach to that of Wolf’s, Klein writes:

From the researcher’s perspective, the difference between [our approaches] could not be more glaring. Responsible investigators follow a set of shared standards: double and triple source, verify leaked documents, cite peer review studies, come clean about uncertainties, share sections of texts with recognised experts… have fact checkers comb through it all prepublication, then hand it all over to a libel lawyer (or in my case, multiple lawyers). It’s a slow, expensive, careful process, but it gets as close as we know how to something we used to agree was proof that something was true.

Putting aside the fact that Doppelganger contains not a shred of the research described above, Klein has at least conceded that the question of whether a conspiracy is real or not is an empirical one. They stand or fall based on the weight of evidence. Klein must, by her own standards, engage with the evidence. If Wolf is an “imposter” and thus not worth engaging, there are plenty of Covid dissidents that do have the requisite training. The Covid period oversaw an unprecedented number of scientists and doctors speak out—including, but certainly not limited to, Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, Christopher Shaw, Harvey Risch, Asim Malhotra, Pierre Kory and Meryl Nass. Steven Pelech, author of this book on Covid, is a professor in the Department of Medicine at Klein’s own university. Klein, for her part, is a veteran investigative journalist who should be able to either scrutinise these claims herself or call upon the judgment and/or evaluation of relevant experts. Apparently not. Doppelganger cites not a single scientific source for either side! Having repeatedly mocked people for “doing their own research”, perhaps Klein didn’t feel qualified to engage with the scientific literature herself. But what does that leave us with? A book of endless “hot take” rebuttals to something someone (usually Wolf) wrote on Twitter and an occasional link to press releases by the CDC, the NIH and the WHO. Parroting the exact same language as the now notorious intelligence linked Integrity Initiative, Klein wants to dismiss any and every challenge to the mainstream narrative as “misinformation” or “disinformation” or as having been “debunked”.
 
The trouble with this strategy was that as time went on more and more ‘mis’, ‘dis’ or ‘debunked’ information turned out to be true. Most notoriously, the vaccines exhaustively described as “safe and effective” by health officials, politicians and journalists turned out to be neither safe nor effective. News of this inconveniently started to break into the mainstream just as Klein was preparing to publish Doppelganger. Without the time or the inclination to properly investigate a scandal that would pull the rug from underneath her entire book, Klein morphed into a crisis PR manager for the CDC:

[There have been some] adverse reactions to Covid vaccines, whether rare cases of heart inflammation among teenage boys and young men after receiving the original mRNA shots, a phenomenon being monitored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, or a possible small uptick in strokes among seniors, a concern being flagged by the CDC in early 2023. There are risks to every vaccine (and indeed any medical procedure or medication) and these reports of harmful reactions, even if confirmed, in no way negate the value or importance of getting vaccinated: Covid itself still represented a far more significant health risk for the population at large.

Her sources confirming the “rarity” of myocarditis and the “small uptick” in strokes? Press releases from the CDC. Source that Covid represented a “significant health risk for the population at large”? None. Klein goes on to cite research claiming that 234,000 Covid deaths in the US “could have been prevented with primary series vaccination.” But who carried out this research? The Peter G. Peterson Foundation founded and funded by the eponymous investment banker, Reaganite Commerce Secretary and co-founder of the Blackstone Group. In 2021 The Peter G Peterson Foundation sponsored an event with the Rockefeller Foundation to honour the work of Chairman and CEO of Pfizer Albert Bourla. In 2022 Bourla received the Peter G. Peterson Business Statesmanship award for his work during Covid. Nonetheless, Naomi Klein wants us to believe that she is sceptical of “concentrated power” and “monopoly capital”.
 
Klein claims to regret the “lack of debate and allowable questioning of the vaccines in progressive spaces”. People had “good reasons”, she writes, “not to trust Big Pharma and Big Government, let alone the two acting in coordination” and they should not have been left to “do their own research” where could encounter Wolf’s “wild claims”. Why wasn’t “ample room” made in “public debates” and “reliable media” for “medical experts skilled in helping the public weigh the pros and cons of health decisions” Klein asks exasperatedly. Indeed. Let me venture an answer. The reason the media and medical experts did not deign to provide “reliable, in-depth information” about the vaccines was presumably the same reason why Klein opted not to do so either. They would have been forced to explain to the public that these weren’t actually vaccines at all, but novel “gene therapies”; that the safety testing had been limited and expedited; that there was no long-term safety data; and after all that the vaccines did not stop transmission or infection. And this just what the CDC said—never mind its critics!
 
Another “debunked conspiracy theory” that turned out to be possibly true, was the ‘lab leak’ origin of Covid. This prompted Klein to make the following self-criticism:

I don’t know where the Covid-19 virus originated […] I do realize, in retrospect, that I was too quick to take the official story—that it came from a wet market where wild animals were sold—at face value. If I’m honest, I accepted it because it served my own motivated reasoning and reinforced my worldview: the pandemic was a little less frightening to me if it was yet another example of humans overstressing nature and getting bitten on the ass for it. Then as time went on, and the “lab leak theory” became a key talking point from people like Wolf in the Mirror World, where it was mixed with baseless claims about bioweapons […] Even though more and more facts and documents were piling up that supported a serious consideration of the lab leak hypothesis, most liberals and leftists didn’t bother looking for months because we didn’t want to be like them, in the same way that I didn’t want to be like her. In an odd way, their over-the-top conspiracies fed our overcredulity; their “question everything” led to many of us not questioning enough.

Klein presents this extract as if it was the result of some honest soul-searching on her part. I wish she had such integrity. The timeline here is quite clear. Emails were leaked very early on that revealed that senior health officials had lied, and that they themselves believed the virus originated from the laboratory in Wuhan. This was initially covered up but when it became impossible to deny, liberal gatekeepers in the mainstream media began sanctioning the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis. There is no evidence (no articles, comments etc) that Klein herself gave any “serious consideration” to the lab leak hypothesis until it became acceptable to the mainstream.
 
If Klein’s revelation regarding her motivated reasoning and narcissistic attachments were genuine, why didn’t she treat it as a chastening lesson not to reflexively dismiss new information based purely on the grounds of who is presenting it? Instead, what we get is a snide attempt to blame Wolf for Klein’s own error. If Wolf hadn’t paired her support for a lab origin of the virus with “baseless claims about bioweapons” Klein might have taken her more seriously. If Klein had done any reading on the subject she would have come across innumerable references in official documentation to the “dual use” of gain of function research. It isn’t a baseless claim, still less a conspiracy theory. It’s official US policy!
 
Another so called “baseless claim” Klein is keen to debunk is that the Green New Deal is "a nefarious plan by bankers and venture capitalists to grab power under cover of the climate emergency.” Read the small print of the Green New Deal however, and what do we find? That the pesky details of how the US economy would be overhauled would be left to a House Select Committee appointed by the Speaker of the House. The committee, in partnership with “business”, “finance” and “industry”, would ensure that any measures taken promote "economic security, labor market flexibility and entrepreneurism.” The financing of the Green New Deal will be provided by the “Federal Reserve” (a cartel of private banks beholden to Wall Street) and “public venture funds”. No close reading of the small print is required to expose the heavy financial bent to the “green solutions” put forward by the UN and the WEF. They are front and centre. The Great Reset is very clearly concerned with sealing the sustainability of the financial system rather than the planet. Why would this be surprising?  Again, no conspiracy. Just policy. Confronted with evidence hiding in plain sight, Klein simply pivots:

[When] conspiracy theories about the Great Reset [started] showing up at the early anti-lockdown protests, they were presented as if a great secret was being revealed. What was strange though, was that the Great Reset wasn’t hidden—it was a branding campaign that the World Economic Forum had kicked off to repackage many of the ideas it has long advanced: biometric IDs, 3D printing, corporate green energy… it was standard issue Davos fare—arrogant to be sure and actively dangerous. But there was nothing hidden about it.

I find this passage baffling not simply because of the way Klein causally lists WEF agenda items she admits are “actively dangerous” as a way to mock those concerned about them. I know of not a single example of any critic of the Great Reset claiming this was a secret. Neither can I fathom why a critic would want to claim it was. It would be totally self-defeating. Keen to find out who she might have meant, I searched through articles of hers over the past few years. The only relevant one I found was in The Intercept:

Search for the term “global reset” and you will be bombarded with breathless “exposés” of a secret globalist cabal, headed by Schwab and Bill Gates, that is [planning] to turn the world into a high-tech dictatorship that will take away your freedom forever: a green/socialist/Venezuela/Soros/forced vaccine dictatorship if the Reset exposé is coming from the far right, and a Big Pharma/GMO/biometric implants/5G/robot dog/forced vaccine dictatorship if the exposé hails from the far left. Confused? That’s not on you.

No Naomi, it’s on you. Because you haven’t specified who you are referring to, nor provided any references or links to what they are arguing. Whoever these “far-left and far-right conspiracists” are, Klein assures us they are…

…sitting down over a tray of information-shit sandwiches to talk about how the Great Reset is Gates’s plan to use the DNA from our Covid-19 tests to turn the United States into Venezuela.

When she isn’t wielding an axe to nameless conspiracy theorists on the far left, she is delivering heart rending sermons on how the left should be more caring and inclusive (???)

Left movements often behave in ways that are neither inclusive or caring. [And we] also don’t put enough thought into how to build alliances… Sure we pay lip service to reaching out, but in practice most of us (even many who claim to be staunchly anti-police) spend a lot of time policing our movements’ borders, turning on people who see themselves as on our side, making our ranks smaller not larger.

Very moving.
 
Klein wasn’t always so blasé about the role of global elites at the heart of the climate justice movement. Back in 2013 Klein had taken the green movement to task for trusting billionaires— and the “Big Green” groups they funded—to put the planet before profits. The denialism among the environmental activists eager to receive billionaire funding “has been more damaging than the right-wing denialism” of climate change, she wrote. Strong words. This followed on from her denunciations of the Ford and the Rockefeller foundations in The Shock Doctrine that funded regime change operations on behalf of the CIA. And yet fast forward to 2020 and the same criticisms that Klein had levelled at the green movement a decade before were drawing widespread condemnation—not least from Klein herself! Jeff Gibbs’ Planet of the Humans, was a documentary that took aim at the green movement’s partnership with billionaires, Wall Street investor corporations, and wealthy family foundations, to promote renewable energy technology as the solution to climate change. Klein joined a campaign to suppress the film, urging executive producers of the film against its release. She would later sign an open letter demanding the film be retracted and promoted a “fact check” of the film by Ketan Joshi, a former communications officer for the wind farm company Infigen Energy.
 
In Doppelganger, Klein still makes references to the excesses of billionaires. Elon Musk, bête noire of liberal establishment, for instance receives many scathing rebukes, as does Peter Thiel. But when it comes to the aforementioned Big Green billionaires, those who also fund the NGOs, charities and foundations that comprise the compatible left Klein belongs to, she is silent. Bill Gates and George Soros do get a mention but only to chastise the likes of Wolf for daring to mention their name. Any focus on these billionaires, we find out, belies “hyper-individualism” and “antisemitism”. We should be “hard and critical on structures” but “soft on people” Klein opines at the end of the book, apparently forgetting that she had devoted the previous three hundred pages projecting liquid vitriol at Naomi Wolf. What changed?
 
What changed was that Klein began getting her hands on some of the Big Green billionaire dollars herself. If you can’t beat them, join them. In truth even while Klein was insisting that "unless we go after the 'money pollution" in politics, "no campaign against real pollution stands a chance” she was working with organisations tied to the Rockefeller Foundation. By 2015, Klein was calling on the support of a string of family foundations including the Schmidt Family Foundation, the Park Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund to support the launch of her book and documentary “This Changes Everything”. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund contributed several grants to the documentary—enough to buy Susan Rockefeller a role as an executive producer. Pittance in comparison to the Ford Foundation that donated a whopping $250,000 to Klein’s project.
 
Far from being embarrassed by these lucrative connections to intelligence connected billionaires, Klein’s actions since have only served to deepen these ties. In 2017 she took on a role as a regular columnist at The Intercept owned by the tech billionaire and US intelligence operative Pierre Omidiyar (the salaries at The Intercept alone are well-known to be exorbitant). In 2018 Klein became the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University—a position created with a total $3 million from a dozen foundations. Gloria Steinem, lest we forget, was an agent of the CIA.
 
To be clear, I don’t think Klein is a CIA agent (although she doesn’t seem to care very much about being associated with them). I just think she has just internalised the values and discretion of the company she now enjoys. As a possessor of three sinecures and a tenured professorship at the University of British Columbia, Klein now moves in very elite circles—and she isn’t shy about admitting it. Doppelganger is so filled with references to the work of her haute intellectual friends that it felt like I was following her round a soirée at Martha’s Vinyard. Suffice to say, Klein abides by the code and steers clear from the taboos of her class. Most conspicuously, she now shares in their peculiar hang ups.
 
It isn’t quite true that liberals don’t engage in conspiracy theorising. It’s more that they refrain from conspiracising about “elite groups”. This is because they are the elite. Historically then, it has been outsiders that are subjects of their paranoia; designated foreign enemies or domestic extremists. Without question, the most notorious and baseless conspiracy theory of the last ten years is the ‘Russiagate’ or ‘BlueAnon’ conspiracy—the theory that Trump won the 2016 election because of Russian election interference. The theory did not emerge from the bowels of the dark web or far right extremist cults, but from the heart of the liberal establishment; contrived by a collaboration between the Clinton family, Richard Steele and Mi6, and then faithfully repeated ad nauseum during the entirety of Trump’s first term by the liberal media. By the time Covid hit, liberals were blaming Russian disinformation operations bots for any and every challenge to the liberal establishment. Critics called attention to the baselessness of the allegations right away. Klein could hardly have been unaware of this. One of the principal journalist responsible for exposing the fraud was her former colleague and researcher for her Shock Doctrine book, Aaron Maté. By 2022, the details of the fraud were widely known and widely reported. No matter. Liberal conspiracy theories don’t carry the same degree of ridicule or threat of cancellation—so Klein was perfectly happy to repeat the lie that Russia interfered in US elections. Later without specifying who she is referring to or even any accompanying sources or evidence, she alleges that “online leaders” (Wolf?) had been “egged on” by “Russian bots”.
 
Neither Russia nor its president Vladimir Putin has anything to do with the supposed subject of Doppelganger but Klein evidently cannot help herself:

Vladimir Putin, too, is a master at mirroring, and has been since the early days of his career in politics. Throughout Russia’s illegal invasion and occupation of Ukraine, Putin would accuse the Ukrainian government of the precise crimes he was busily committing, or considering committing himself.

Klein’s source for this? Ned Price—spokesperson of the State Department. A chapter later Klein is railing against Putin “casting himself as a global truth-teller about the crimes of Western colonialism and an upholder of the anti-imperialist, anti-fascist traditions”. I have scoured Doppelganger for any of the salient facts pertaining to the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The fact that there was a full-blown civil war happening. That the civil war was sparked by a US sponsored Maidan Coup in 2014 that overthrew a democratically elected government deemed to be too close to its Russian neighbour. That the coup government immediately banned the Russian language. That they integrated Nazis into the heart of the Ukrainian state and began massacring ethnic Russians with US weapons. That the West sabotaged peace negotiations for eight years and then promised to incorporate Ukraine into NATO. These omissions cannot have been born of a lack of concern about the growing threat of fascism. Klein devotes an entire chapter to the “Nazi in the Mirror”. And yet she did not see fit to mention that her own parliament gave two standing ovations to an SS Nazi for his part in fighting the Russians in the World War 2.
 
Equally worthy of “our urgent reckoning” are the domestic extremists: the “ridiculous movements Other Naomi helps lead”. Back in 2008 I recall watching a talk by Klein at the University of Chicago about the banking crisis and what she foresaw as the imminent collapse of neoliberalism. During the talk she implored students and academics to formulate new and better ideas than the ones Milton Friedman and his “Chicago Boys” had formulated at the university three decades previously. After all, “ideas have consequences” she enthused. At the time I was surprised by her idealist faith that the capitalist system could be entirely re-oriented apparently on the basis of better ideas found “lying around”. Or that her job as an activist was to appeal to the wisdom of Brahmin elites to finally see sense. And yet 12 years on Klein was pinning her hopes on something far more fanciful; a full on collective, spiritual conversion of our political class:

This was a crisis that could only be met if we chose to truly see one another, even those laboring and living in the shadows, a crisis that could only be addressed with collective action and willingness to make some individual sacrifices for the greater good. Who can forget those first tender weeks when everything froze. When so many of us [were] alive with connections. [The] illusion of our separateness fell away. We were not, and never were, self-made, and unmade, by one another. [The] period when many governments paid people to stay at home, and offered Covid testing and vaccination for free, represented an extreme and historic deviation from every major public policy trend of the last half century, which has been a headlong flight from the very notion that we owe one another anything by right of our shared humanity […] With no warning, the message from much of our political and corporate classes changed diametrically. It turned out we were a society after all, that the young and healthy should make sacrifices for the old and ill; that we should wear masks as an act of solidarity with them, if not for ourselves; and that we all should applaud and thank the very people whose lives and labor had been most systematically devalued, discounted, and demeaned before the pandemic. Those expressions of solidarity were the real vertigo, the real upside-down world, since they bore no resemblance to the ways capitalism had taught us to unsee and neglect one another for so very long.

The same Klein that prides herself on going beyond the malevolent schemes of nefarious individuals to the deeper material structures of capitalism, nonetheless invests these same individuals with the power to overcome these structures in a moment of transcendent revelation. Unfortunately, Covid did not turn out to be the “portal for change” Klein hoped it would be. To be sure, some blame lies with governments who “didn’t do nearly as much as they could have and should have to build a true infrastructure of care and solidarity during the pandemic”. But the principal fault of “centrist politicians” was believing that the public was capable of the solidarity and care that they, the centrist politicians, had just discovered in themselves. What Klein calls a form of “magical thinking”:

Looking back now, it seems entirely unsurprising that a subset of the population said, Fuck you: we won’t mask or jab or stay home to protect people we have already chosen not to see […] None of this should have come as a shock. What is surprising, and frankly heartening, is that, after decades of frontal attacks on the idea that we live in a society, a critical mass of us had held on to enough of a civic and community spirit that we went along with these new rules for the better part of two years, and, moreover, that so many of us rejoiced at the sudden apparition of a social state. Yes, when our governments abandoned their Covid policies, we lapsed back to the crisis called “normal”—but for a time, we glimpsed another world.

To summarise: in the early months of the pandemic “the message from our political and corporate classes changed diametrically”. This “was the real vertigo, the real-upside down world”. An historic opportunity to break from half a century of neoliberal policy making was, however, undone by a “conglomeration of atomized individuals who saw anything collective as the enemy”. Anyone who questioned the socialist credentials of the likes of Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau, Emanual Macron, not to mention Donald Trump, were “revolting against connectedness”. At the very time our newly awakened political and corporate classes were forcing through the greatest upward transfer of wealth in human history, Klein’s hopes for a socialist future were “systematically” squandered “by people like my doppelganger.” Klein is clearly so desperate to pin as much blame on Wolf as possible she, ironically, resorts to inventing conspiracy theories about “conspiracy theorists”.
 
Needless to say this is not the much vaunted “structural critique of capitalism” Klein promised. A structural critique of the Covid Event would seek to understand why government health industries became adjuncts of the military industrial complex in the wake of 9/11. It would lay out the parallel histories of ‘gain of function’ and MRNA “vaccine” research funded by the US Defense Department. It would examine critically the pandemic preparation simulations carried out by the US military and the CIA. It would seek to understand why the simulations were so focused on the suspension of democratic procedures and radical longer-term changes that move us towards control societies. Klein would have sought to understand why Operation Warp Speed and the entire US pandemic response was organised by the US military. She would have interrogated the astronomically expensive and risky ‘vaccine or bust’ strategy employed by all Western governments while systematically suppressing the use of provably safe and effective off-patent therapeutics that come at a fraction of the cost. Finally, a structural critique would have situated all of this in the context of the perilous condition of the financial system and the global shift towards a multipolar world.
 
Klein did none of this. What we got instead was a children’s story about good people who stayed home, wore masks and followed the science and bad people who didn’t. A morality tale contrasting the “pseudo-experts, celebrities and influencers” churning out “debunked claims” to their “fickle” audiences with the “serious” and “reliable” reportage of the corporate media. We got a fable about good billionaires allied to the Democratic Party who donate to causes Klein approves of, and bad billionaires allied to the Republican Party who donate to causes Klein does not approve of.
 
Doppelganger is a shockingly bad book and I find it difficult to imagine how a once serious writer could have fallen so far. By focusing on the book’s substantial failures, I think I have, frankly, given the misleading impression that the book is at least largely concerned with substantive issues. It isn’t. When she isn’t discussing viral limericks comparing herself favourably to Wolf she is fretting upon the latter’s increase in Twitter followers. As if signposting her charlatanism, Klein laments her failure to properly "pepper my prose” with “weighty and serious literary references to add depth to wacky anecdotes.” This is someone whose idea of critiquing the “culture of narcissism” consists of a laborious examination of how such a culture makes her feel, how it changes the way she relates to herself and how it “alienates” her from her “true self”. Klein is hopelessly lost.
 
Fame, undoubtedly, has taken its toll. After years in the public eye, Klein is now someone in constant need of reassurance:

Covid had cancelled so many of the things that had for years, told me who I was in the world. A planned book tour. A series of lectures. Places where people would come up to me and share what my work meant to them… The world was disappearing and so was I.

Elsewhere she states her preference for truths and ways of understanding the world that are “stabilizing”. This is not an attack on Klein’s character. Only to point out that she is clearly not cut out for a profession (investigative journalism) that entails the wherewithal to reveal uncomfortable, destabilising, facts and the courage to take unpopular stances. She hasn’t, by her own admission, got the stomach for it. Not any more. There is no shame in this. However, evidently Klein does feel shame, which is why she has been reduced to writing 350 page hit pieces against those that do. It is pathetic.
 
But this is bigger than Naomi Klein. To be sure somebody less conflicted could have done a better job ‘left-washing’ the Covid Event. But not much better. The wretchedness of Doppelganger owes most to the fact that Klein set herself the task of defending the indefensible. A few years ago, it seemed that the political right was facing an existential crisis as young people overwhelmingly tacked towards the progressive left. For anyone paying attention—the shift to the left seemed inevitable and inexorable. Today it is the left facing an existential crisis having needlessly and gratuitously thrown their weight behind the biggest scandal in the history of Western medicine. For three whole years health officials, politicians, and their stenographers in the media did nothing but lie to us. They lied about the origin of the virus, they lied about its lethality, they lied about masking and they lied about treatments and therapeutics. They lied about the safety and effectiveness of the so-called vaccines. Anyone who had the temerity to point this out was smeared as a “conspiracy theorist” or a “grifter” by a left hellbent on hurling a generation of dissidents to the political right. The scale of this betrayal is every bit as great as the Second International’s support for World War One. My only hope is that the self-destruction of this iteration of the left will—as it did a hundred years ago—clear the space for something revolutionary in its place. A left that won’t morph into sclerotic liberalism. A left genuinely relevant to a post-Covid, multipolar world.

Author
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Samuel Grove is a political activist in the UK. His previous writing has been published in Philosophy Now, Tribune, Salvage, Monthly Review, Alborada, and Red Pepper. His monograph on Charles Darwin, The Reluctant Radical, was published by Lexington Books in 2021.

Photo credit: Vera de Kok (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Author
Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism. You can contact him at [email protected].

Author
Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism. You can contact him at [email protected].

In March, Batya Ungar-Sargon — deputy opinion editor of Newsweek — went on Real Time with Bill Maher. During the show’s panel discussion, Ungar-Sargon described herself as “a MAGA leftist.” She then launched into a lengthy pitch for why Donald Trump is the true progressive in American politics. Ungar-Sargon touted his supposedly “socially moderate, anti-war, and… protectionist… leftist agenda.”
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In reality, Trump’s agenda is nothing of the sort. He is not socially moderate. During his first term, Trump appointed the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade (and might come for contraception next). He also opposes gay marriage and weed legalization, and made demonizing transgender people a focal point of his 2024 campaign. While Trump — a twice divorcee — hardly embodies traditionalist values himself, his political impact squarely pushes in that direction. The Republican policy blueprint Project 2025 even suggests banning pornography despite Trump appearing in the softcore film Video Centerfold.

On foreign policy, there is little daylight between Trump and the neoconservative old guard he claims to have buried. In his first term, Trump increased drone strikes and shredded the Iran nuclear deal. He radically expanded American troop presence in Afghanistan. Rather than end the most unpopular war in American history, he intensified it. Following October 7th, Trump has consistently been among the biggest cheerleaders of Israel’s war of elimination in Gaza. On the campaign trail, Trump made clear his biggest problem with the genocide is that it hasn’t been bloody enough. When Trump issued his 90-day foreign aid pause, he took care to exempt the Zionist entity. 

As for trade, Trump’s protectionism is neither here nor there. Barriers to trade are not inherently leftist. Joe Biden erected, maintained, and heightened plenty of them. So did George W. Bush, whose infamous steel tariffs destroyed nearly 200,000 jobs. This blunder did not make Bush, the posterboy of neoconservative rot, economically progressive. For that, look to the Communist Party of China. Its open trade policies spurred unprecedented development that lifted over 850 million people from poverty in just 50 years. Meanwhile, unambiguously rightist governments throughout history like fascist Italy and Nazi Germany collapsed living standards via autarky. Despite what Ungar-Sargon suggests, trade openness does not neatly map onto a left-right political spectrum. 

What truly determines the political orientation of a trade regime is whose interests it serves. A progressive one must primarily serve the working class, which Trump’s does not. His indiscriminate and unnecessarily high blanket tariffs will only exacerbate the inflation crisis already squeezing American wallets. The pretext for this policy was helping domestic businesses by making foreign producers uncompetitive. But countries have predictably responded by imposing their own tariffs, constricting the market for American goods. To make matters worse, this economic battle crashed the stock market — spelling doom for workers with investment retirement plans.

In short, MAGA leftism is not a thing. Even Maher, in a rare moment of lucidity, recognized this. When Ungar-Sargon identified herself as “a MAGA leftist,” he immediately replied with, “That makes no sense.”

For those familiar with Midwestern Marx’s work, MAGA leftism will probably remind them of MAGA communism. While the wording is strikingly similar, the two phrases have totally different definitions. Unlike MAGA leftism, MAGA communism does not claim that Trump’s agenda is progressive. Indeed, MAGA communism’s biggest proponents — like Jackson Hinkle of the American Communist Party — regularly criticize Trump’s conservative policies.

Rather, MAGA communism is simply a mode of outreach to the disaffected and irreverent workers in Trump’s base. It is about harnessing conservative aesthetics to successfully sell them leftist ideas like ending “globalist” imperialism and nationalizing Big Tech. MAGA communism does not presume that Trump himself is a communist. It merely acknowledges that his working-class base can and should be part of the transition to a socialist future. To that end, MAGA communists like Hinkle meet American workers where they are, using patriotic imagery/rhetoric to pitch communism.

It is a good strategy, and an authentically Marxist one. Karl Marx famously called upon all workers of the world to unite. He did not divide the working class along partisan or even cultural lines. Rather, Marx recognized that — whatever differences exist between workers — their material interests align. Every worker has an interest in overthrowing capitalism: the corporatist labyrinth that keeps their wages low and lives brutish.

American politics, in recent years, has experienced massive class dealignment. Earnings no longer predict voting patterns. The evidence is staggering. Cornell University separated voters in the 2024 election into three income brackets: <$50,000, $50,000-$99,999, and ≥$100,000. All of them split roughly 50-50 between Trump and Kamala Harris.

This suggests American workers on the whole do not see their class interests as clearly aligning with either major party. And that means there is an opening for communists to make their case. The American Communist Party is seizing this opportunity by entering working-class communities and showing them who has their back. Party members conduct food drives and neighborhood cleanups to meet people’s immediate needs — regardless of their partisan affiliation. They also politically educate communities, fitting the case for communism to the American context and cultural mores. 

In other words, members of the American Communist Party practice MAGA communism. The strategy is alive and well. And it should remain so, as long as we believe in the working class’s ability to change its conditions.

Author
Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism. You can contact him at [email protected].

Muslims are not a threat to you.

Russia is not a threat to you.

China is not a threat to you.

Trans people are not a threat to you.

Immigrants are not a threat to you.

If you find yourself resisting anything I just said, that’s where they hooked you. That’s where your rulers duped you into blaming your problems on something other than them.

You will notice that I am not saying there are no enemies and nobody poses a threat to us; there absolutely are, and they absolutely do. It’s just that people are tricked and manipulated away from seeing the real enemies and the real threats where they are.

What poses a threat to you is the political status quo which robs your country of riches and resources to inflict military violence on innocent people overseas while strangling your civil rights and poisoning your planet. What poses a threat to you are the oligarchs and empire managers who uphold this status quo which is driving our species to authoritarian dystopia and extinction via environmental disaster or nuclear annihilation.

They want you blaming your problems on anyone else besides the actual source of your problems. They prefer to get you freaking out about their primary targets — the disobedient groups and nations they want to destroy to advance the interests of the empire — but if they can’t accomplish that then they’re happy to get you hating powerless groups who pose no real threat to you. Anything they can do to keep your eyes off your real oppressors: the billionaires, bankers, media barons, intelligence agencies, warmongers, ecocidal capitalists, military-industrial complex plutocrats, and all the empire lackeys in your official elected government.

They want us fighting each other, but we only pose a threat to each other if we buy into their bogus narratives of hostility and division. An immigrant is only threatened by a right winger because the right winger has been successfully duped into blaming his problems on the immigrant, and therefore elects empire lackeys who will make the immigrant’s life more difficult. But without that artificially manufactured enmity, it’s just two people being abused by the same pricks at the top.

Whenever I say stuff like this I’ll get people voicing objections like “No no Caitlin you don’t understand, we really truly ARE seriously dangerously threatened by The Trans Agenda” or whatever. But you’re not. That’s just you doing the thing I’m describing here. You’re just buying into the exact scam I’m talking about. You’re allowing your crosshairs to be moved from your oppressors to some irrelevant diversion in order to protect your oppressors.

At some point we need to stop falling for the scam. We need to wake up to the fact that we’re all just a bunch of normal people living in a highly abusive society, and that our abusers are benefiting immensely from our inability to see through their divide-and-conquer manipulations and unite against them.

Muslims are not a threat to you.

Russia is not a threat to you.

China is not a threat to you.

Trans people are not a threat to you.

Immigrants are not a threat to you.

The US empire is a threat to you.

Your own government is a threat to you.

Oligarchs are a threat to you.

Nuclear brinkmanship is a threat to you.

Ecocide is a threat to you.

War and militarism are a threat to you.

Tyranny is a threat to you.

Propaganda is a threat to you.

Your enemies are not in Moscow, Beijing and Tehran. Your enemies are in Washington, Virginia, New York and Los Angeles. Your enemies are in London, Paris, Brussels and Tel Aviv. Your abusers are not some far away nation your own government doesn’t like, nor are they some marginalized group your government doesn’t care about. Your abusers are your government itself, and all its allies and assets around the world, and the network of oligarchs and empire managers who call the shots in this globe-spanning power structure from behind the scenes.
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The sooner we get this straight, the sooner we can sort out all these problems we’re currently being duped into blaming on the wrong people.

Author
​
Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism. You can contact him at [email protected]. 

Much maligned are the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in South Africa. Their leader, Malema, was branded “the most dangerous man in South Africa.” [1] Afriforum, which boasts of its connection to the State Department, [2] has called the EFF an “organised crime enterprise,” and all mainstream political actors, from those who call themselves “leftists” to the right, have slandered & condemned the EFF. [3][4] From the Breadtube streamer Vaush hurling the same attacks he hurls against working-class Americans toward Malema, calling him a racist and fascist, [5] to the right-wing, such as the outlet Fox News, falsely claiming that Julius Malema sung a “genocidal” song and called for “violence” against White citizens when in reality the “Kill the Boer” song is no more a call for genocide than the various American patriotic songs against the British; it was an Apartheid-era song calling for liberation from Apartheid and for a free South Africa. [6] Even U.S. President Donald Trump has attacked them, posting a strong condemnation of land reform in South Africa. [7] This is despite the fact that the “Government of National Unity” in South Africa merely proposed a superficial bill, which is not, in fact, an instrument of land reform and is not at all close to EFF policy. Nonetheless, all these attacks serve to shut down the land reform efforts in South Africa.
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However, rather than being criminals, the EFF's movement is much more similar to the American struggle for land. Primary to the EFF’s movement is the struggle for land; they attack the elites’ stranglehold on property in South Africa. This is something Americans can relate to. Over 200 million acres in the United States are prevented from serving a social purpose due to the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) management and control of them; instead of serving American interests, they serve private interests. Furthermore, billionaires such as Bill Gates are swallowing up all agricultural property, despite the fact that they have no intention of using it for any social purpose that benefits the communities that reside near the land. Billionaire and CNN founder Ted Turner is also among the largest private landowners in the US. [8] While the media celebrates America becoming a nation of renters, this matter couldn’t be any more serious for average Americans with real estate prices on the rise. [9] In China, the CPC owns the land and leases it to its citizens with the social end (benefitting the local communities) in mind, whereas under BLM rule the “public” ownership of the land is not utilized to actually help uplift the people and the communities. Similarly, in South Africa, rather than the land serving a common good, the vast majority of the land is owned by the same wealthy landowning families and companies that have owned the land for decades, if not longer, leaving no hope for the dispossessed and landless masses to own a home or keep land of their own. [10] Instead, the same wealthy families and businesses continue to acquire more land.

This is why the EFF proposes a land reform that would see, under the governance of a popular regime, all land transferred to the ownership and custodianship of the state. This would not be under the purview of a bureaucratic parasitic entity like the BLM, nor would it serve to prevent land from serving a social benefit to the communities and people residing there. Instead, as the EFF states, “private ownership of land will be discontinued, and the State will be entrusted with the responsibility of managing and administering land on behalf of the people.” [11] This means that the leasing of land will serve a social end, that being the benefit of, in the case of South Africa, the people of South Africa and the communities that reside on the land. It is not, as the opponents of the EFF may characterize it, a move at “seizing your house.” The EFF makes it clear that “no one” will lose their house as a result of this land reform. [12] Instead of the BLM’s hostility to small farmers and opposition to the development of land, the EFF’s proposed custodianship of agricultural land will be pursued in a developmental manner, seeking innovation in productivity and which will be carried out in coordination to benefit small farmers. [13]
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What are the models we can look at to see current success? In China, their system forbids private land ownership altogether, using a “public ownership” framework. The EFF cites the Chinese model of land ownership as one of the examples to look to in this regard and has stated that it is inspired by the CPC, seeing it as a torchbearer for all parties like theirs. [14] [15] Urban land is owned by the state, while rural and suburban land is collectively owned by rural residents (with certain parcels explicitly designated as state land by law). [16] In 1992, China introduced a paid land-use system: commercial and residential plots are auctioned off to the highest bidder—funds that then go toward infrastructure and public investments—while industrial sites are often provided cheaply or at no cost. [17] This arrangement keeps overall costs low, drives large-scale infrastructure projects, and spurs economic growth. [18] Studies indicate that, under a purely private land regime, China’s industrial output, investment, and resident welfare would have dropped, with marginal production costs rising by about 6% accompanied by a 36% fall in GDP. [19] Public ownership also prevents monopolistic land speculation and guarantees that revenue from land (through auctions and leases) is reinvested in infrastructure, rather than going into private hands. [20] This ensures that the land serves a social end in benefitting the communities adjacent to these lands.

Beyond this, China’s government has taken steps to address real estate by effectively nationalizing portions of the property sector. State-owned developers gained a growing share of land purchases—nearing 90% in 2023—while struggling private firms were allowed to default. [21] By 2024, authorities made clear that safeguarding homebuyers and completing housing projects took priority over saving indebted private developers. [22] This intensified the state’s role in the real estate market, reflecting China’s broader commitment to keeping land in public hands and channeling its use toward social and economic development rather than private gain.
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So while in China, their popular government [23] has pursued a model of public ownership in which the use of land is oriented to serve a social end rather than serve powerful private interests and speculators, in the US and South Africa, attacking the existing stranglehold on the land is dismissed as conspiracy theory and extremist. In the US, criticizing the now-largest private farmland owners in America, the Gates family, is dismissed as conspiratorial, and Bill Gates’ purchases are simply said to be a “rich guy doing rich guy things.” Bill Gates, Ted Turner, [24] and Jeff Bezos have bought up large swathes of farmland and, through their influence and through foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates’ Foundation, have dominated the global conversation surrounding food production (i.e., the Great Reset) [25] and attacked small farmers by promoting the World Economic Forum narratives surrounding “sustainability.” [26] Small farmers are increasingly being pushed aside as 13 percent of operations rent or own 75 percent of U.S. farmed cropland [27] and in some counties, 80 percent of agricultural land is held by non-operators (non-farmers). [28]

In regards to the BLM, the only way to force them to end their abusive practices has been through confrontation, as shown by the 2014 standoff (in Bunkerville, Nevada) between ranchers and BLM officers, leading them to cease the roundup of these small ranchers' cattle. [29] In fact, this standoff led to some participants in this land struggle coming to realize the broader injustices imposed by the current ruling class; they saw the oppression imposed by the BLM and saw government oppression in other aspects of life in the U.S. as well. This was the case with second-generation rancher Ammon Bundy (currently considered a fugitive by the government), who participated in and helped organize the 2014 standoff as well as also leading a small uprising that seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon for around six weeks in protest of the BLM and other government agencies for what they perceived as unjust federal land policies, encouraging ranchers to tear up their government grazing contracts. [30] [31]

​Ammon Bundy, while condemning “Black Lives Matter” organizations which align with the ruling class: e.g., like the organizations founded or led by people such as Shaun King or Opal Tometi (who has been criticized for being a Democrat operative), [32] has spoke out against the view that people genuinely protesting police brutality are more of a threat than the police, because for him, whether it's ranchers hit with exorbitant federal fines for “land mismanagement” or Black Americans facing abuse by the police over unpaid fines for minor infractions, these are all examples of injustice, as he put it himself: “We are standing up for people’s rights, no matter their color . . . I think it’s rooted in a similar problem: injustice.” [33] The experience of engaging in this land struggle will open one’s eyes to all of the rotten activities of our ruling class.

The BLM’s regulatory rules, such as the Public Lands Rule, [34] under the rhetoric of shifting the focus toward conservation, have reduced the land available for productive uses such as livestock grazing, making it even more difficult for small farmers to secure grazing permits and maintain access to public lands, especially in tandem with the bureaucratic and complex process involved in being a permittee. [35] The BLM has billions of dollars allocated to it for maintenance yet without producing any noticeable improvement for the land under its authority or for the communities that reside around those areas. [36] [37] The resource extraction and produce from BLM-managed land do not trickle down to the rural masses living near their land; the social end is not met. [38] The government’s administration of the land is not in the benefit of the communities that reside there. The federal government violated a promise (made in 2023) to the local communities and authorized a foreign corporation to open a potentially toxic uranium mine near the Grand Canyon and directly above a freshwater aquifer, the source of all of the Havasupai Tribe’s drinking water. The local Havasupai community has noticed livestock dying and people getting sick. [39] Furthermore, in places like California, forest management has been botched so much that now the part of national forests protected from timber harvesting is a net contributor to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to fires and trees killed by disease and insects. The government’s management of the forests was not at all in the benefit of the community; the fuel load was not kept in check and it allowed for millions of acres in the state to be scorched by wildfire, with over 130 dead due to this. [40]
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In the 2025 California fire, costs caused by the fire likely exceeded $20 billion, with over 16,000 structures destroyed, over 57,000 acres burned, and at least 29 people dead. [41] [42] This translates to thousands of people's lives and livelihoods being destroyed. Not only does the current government land administration favor corporations over the communities or tribes that live there, enabling the abuse of small ranchers, but they also are fully incompetent in terms of managing the land itself and keeping it maintained.

In South Africa, powerful wealthy families dominate the land and use their power to prevent land reform. The Rupert family in South Africa holds significant land in regions like the Western Cape, Mpumalanga, and Eastern Cape, alongside direct control of wildlife reserves and national parks. Meanwhile, estimates from 2020 show that over 60 percent of South Africa’s population does not have any secure tenure rights. [43] The Rupert family’s influence extends into the financial sector via their holding company of REMGRO, which holds shares of major banks like FNB, RMB, WesBank, Grindrod, and Discovery Bank. In the insurance industry, companies such as Discovery, Momentum, and Outsurance fall under their umbrella. They also have substantial stakes in healthcare via entities like Mediclinic. Lastly, they have their hands in the petroleum industry (Total South Africa) and e-Media (eNCA and e-Tv). The landless masses are kept in their squalor imposed by parasitic giants such as the Rupert family. The Rupert-controlled media, such as the eNCA, silences the EFF and opposes any media presenters who voice an independent perspective about South African politics. [44] The eNCA serving this role is favored by the South African presidency and rewarded with media access. [45]
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What are the real opportunities for the common folk to challenge this oppression? The elections in South Africa are heavily influenced by these ultra-wealthy and powerful families, with the media in both the USA and South Africa used to prop up "choices,” which by and large serve to continue the ruling class’ agenda despite whatever aesthetic differences they may have. In South Africa, the Oppenheimer family is one of South Africa’s richest and most politically influential families. [46] It is by far one of the leading powers of the entrenched families in South Africa. During the Apartheid period in South Africa, the ‘Oppenheimer empire’ exploited resources not only in South Africa but also in Tanganyika and Swaziland; while acting in this role, they also financed the sham opposition in Parliament such as the United Party as well as white nationalist formations such as the Torch Commando. [47] The Oppenheimer family exerts its influence in South Africa through a number of means. Firstly by directly promoting the Democratic Alliance (DA) and ActionSA as part of the so-called “Multi-Party Charter,” and secondly by indirectly promoting the tribalist Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) (which basically supported apartheid in line with the Bantustan policy) through their ties dating back to the 1970s. Harry Oppenheimer also donated to the IFP President Mangosuthu Buthelezi to establish what is now Mangosuthu University of Technology, and the Oppenheimer family’s visible presence at his funeral solidified their clear alignment on opposition to land reform. [48] 

Furthermore, they also extensively involved themselves in local elections through their political puppets. [49] Their influence doesn’t stop there; the current President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, is an Oppenheimer protégé. He was a representative of the Urban Foundation, which was a “brainchild of the business sector following the 1976 uprising in black communities, was formed with the inspiration of Harry Oppenheimer and Anton Rupert and Jan van der Horst from the Anglo American, Rembrandt and Old Mutual stables respectively.” [50] Cyril Ramaphosa, in the post-apartheid period, was director at the Anglo-American Corporation. [51] Thus, it should’ve been no great surprise when we saw the ANC under Ramaphosa’s leadership form a coalition government with the DA, the Patriotic Alliance (PA), Freedom Front Plus (this neo-apartheid party has the Ministry of Correctional Services) and the IFP. [52] [53] The coalition is called the Government of National Unity; except rather than uniting the country under a popular government, it places far more control in the hands of the powerful elite families of South Africa.
Not only does Ramaphosa have ties going back decades with the Oppenheimers, but as a puppet of the real power in South Africa, the entrenched families such as the Rupterts, the Bekkers, and yes, the Oppenheimers too, it is not in their interest to see land reform and redistribution occur, so they use all their assets and puppets to prevent this from occurring, This then neutralizes any elements that may have previously existed in the ANC by bringing it into a coalition government with it’s direct puppet, the DA, and the parties under its indirect control, such as the IFP and other collaborative interests like the PA. In modern South Africa, the Oppenheimer family still holds this same role as the entrenched wealthy families in America, doing the bidding of the deep state and the intelligence apparatus. We see in the US how the very same families mentioned in Ferdinand Lundberg’s America's 60 Families, which discussed how the powerful families, through their various foundations and funded NGOs, formed a plutocratic circle in the government, carrying out one of the State Department’s key functions: fomenting color revolutions and promoting the U.S. State Department's narrative. We see the activities of the Ford Foundation and of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in promoting the U.S. ruling class’ agenda. [54]
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In South Africa, also not yet sovereign and free from the slavery of financial capital, the families that own the natural resources and land, like the Ruperts, Oppenheimers, and Guptas. Despite whatever disputes you may see in the media between them, when it comes to what is in the critical interest of finance capital, all unite to attack the threat posed by the EFF and Julius Malema. A perfect example of this is with the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK Party), formed by ex-president Jacob Zuma, who’s connected to the Gupta family. [55] The MK Party puts on a progressive veneer, but in reality, their purpose was to attack the EFF and attempt to bring about its collapse. [56] As EFF Central Command Team member Matumba Anthony said, “The EFF is the only opposition party in South Africa with a proper foot print in all provinces.” [57] This is true. The MK Party is a party that practices what is called “Home Boy” politics (in other terms, tribalism), much like the IFP before them. The EFF receives more votes than the MK Party in all provinces except KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga. [58] This is because Zulu-speaking voters reside in KwaZulu-Natal, southern regions of Mpumalanga, and Gauteng (where EFF still got more votes). Furthermore, the MK Party had people in the EFF sabotaging its campaign from the inside (Floyd, Dali, Jimmy Manyi, Mkhwebane). [59] With the political forces of the Guptas, Oppenheimer, and Ruperts all mobilized against the EFF, it is remarkable that they survived this effort at initiating a total collapse of the party. The EFF survived because they have a solid popular base of support among the landless South Africans across all provinces with no reliance on tribalism.

The EFF has reached out to all South Africans of good character in all provinces. And contrary to what the Western slander of the EFF says, this includes working-class South Africans who are White. Despite what the media attempts to portray, the EFF does not actually tolerate racism; in 2015 they expelled race identitarian and Gupta family apologist Andile Mngxitama and his associates from the party as his stances contradicted the EFF’s platform while also engaging in slander of the party’s chairman Julius Malema. [60] Mngxitama then took similarly minded people to his new split-off party, Black First Land First (BLF), which rejects Marxist analysis in favor of racial identitarianism, banning White members from joining. [61] The EFF never had a policy like this in place. In fact, it has thousands of supporters [62] who are South Africans of White ancestry, and Julius Malema has encouraged White EFF members to run as candidates, [63] saying the EFF is home to everyone, “a fighter is a fighter.” [64] The EFF supports inclusive recruitment campaigns across racial lines; [65] consequently, we’ve seen a rise in prominent student EFF activists [66] as well as South Africans of White ancestry, such as anti-apartheid veteran Carl Niehaus, who was elected to an EFF seat in the National Assembly and occupies a very visible role as an EFF activist. [67] Of course, the BLF allied with those who sought to sabotage the EFF, forming an electoral pact with the MK Party. [68] The EFF is not even close to the identitarianism of the BLF. The EFF has gone out to the neglected and impoverished settlements of South Africa, some of which have both Black and White inhabitants, helping to restore buildings and clean up the area. 

One White South African from a mini-shantytown helped by the EFF, stated that the ‘White-led party’ (DA) governing the area had just used them for votes and discarded them like garbage, saying the following: “When the DA took over Ekurhuleni, we never heard from them again. My next vote, and the vast majority of everyone living here, will be for the EFF next time. They see us, they hear us, and they do not care about race. Just about poor people.” Yet people will still believe, based on coordinated media efforts, that the EFF is who we should be scared of; the EFF, not the elites and defense contractors shipping weapons to bomb children in Gaza, not the Silicon Valley billionaires itching to take more of our rights away, and not the duopoly in America that seeks to stifle independent thought supplemented by censorship. Working-class Americans (including those of White ancestry) have infinitely more in common with the folks supporting the EFF and the South Africans struggling for land ownership than the wealthy landholding families and massive corporations.

To argue that the material interests of any working-class American are the same as the latter's would be the equivalent of saying that a working-class American has the same material interests as the Gates’, Elon Musk (who is currently attempting to increase imported foreign labor into the US), [69] or Larry Fink. This is an obviously laughable and easily debunked claim. So why is it that many people who are aware of the political actors in South Africa continue to fall into this line of thinking? As mentioned earlier, there is an extensive propaganda campaign designed to funnel criticism against the EFF. AfriForum is dedicated to shaping public opinion against both land reform and Julius Malema (going as far as organizing a “Stop Malema” campaign) [70] under the guise of minority rights, much like how other “minority rights” organizations, such as Uyghur international organizations abroad, serve reactionary goals and the US ruling class’ soft power, though now hampered with the recent US budget cuts. [71] [72]

AfriForum has ties to the US State Department. As stated earlier, AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel met and talked with US National Security Advisor John Bolton in 2018, [73] who was simultaneously planning the Venezuelan coup d'état. [74] Furthermore, the presence of multiple emigrant South African tech elites [75] seems to play the role of a Gusano-like pressure group [76] advocating for specific and targeted negative coercive policies toward their country of origin without real regard for the well-being or sovereignty of the vast majority of the populations of these countries. [77] [78] The difference between South Africa and Cuba is that the latter underwent comprehensive land reform, levelling the Gusano landholding elite and expelling them to the US, whereas in South Africa, the land of these elite families was not seized, nor were their holdings touched, and they (like what Errol Musk admitted about Elon Musk’s shares of apartheid-era industries in African mines) did not form their respective companies in South Africa; instead, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and David Sacks seek to prevent a real land reform (like the EFF proposes) from occurring. These people are not looking out at all for the interests of the American people in their actions here; no foreign lobby ever does.
​
While that explains the particularities of the current administration's relationship to the situation, why would people like John Bolton, who have strong ties with the Deep State apparatus, involve themselves with AfriForum and promote an agenda against Julius Malema? The answer is simple: Malema threatens the American ruling class's interests in South Africa; he threatens the powerful bankers and their interests in looting the nation, and he threatens the large landowners who oppose any effort at land reform. The EFF and Malema threaten American imperialism in Africa; they oppose all efforts of the US to change or coerce the policies of African nations. [79] Furthermore, they oppose the lucrative Western-driven extraction of Africa’s natural resources away from the people they belong to. For example, the EFF has taken a vocal stance against the Kagame government in Rwanda, which has served as a launchpad for American influence in the region since Kagame came to power in 1994, which occurred after he was trained by the US at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. [80] [81] Kagame’s regime not only fills a valuable security role [82] for the US but also a financial role, utilizing their occupation of Eastern DRC to exploit more natural resources, which are in turn sold to the Western nations. [83] This and the other reasons stated earlier are why Silicon Valley billionaire and now-government official Elon Musk (whose family is tied to the apartheid period in South Africa, with Musk’s grandfather being a vocal supporter of apartheid and his father, Errol Musk, stating they owned shares in a mine) [84] [85] has called for Julius Malema to be sanctioned and declared an international criminal. [86] Musk has gone further and posited that President Cyril Ramaphosa should ‘disallow’ the EFF. [87] In a controversy that figures like Musk, Trump, and others claim is fueled by the Expropriation Act—a legislative measure on land reform opposed by the EFF—it appears the act will not function as a genuine instrument of land reform. Given the way it is stirring debate, it seems more likely aimed at pressuring South Africa to reject the EFF and take action against it.

In light of all this, it is clear that the fight of the EFF is the same fight of the American working class. The concentration of land and resources in the hands of a few perpetuates despair and hopelessness among the American people. Rather than dismissing movements like the EFF based on prevailing narratives that are peddled by dubious personalities and media, Americans should find inspiration in the EFF’s resolve to confront entrenched power in South Africa.

The current political landscape in the U.S. is currently seen as limited to a binary choice between Republican and Democrat; they are ultimately the same and neither will change anything concretely for the better. Americans must look to the EFF for inspiration to unite under a collective movement—a universal army of Americans committed to advocating for a real change in America to end this inhuman system operating here and to build a new one focused on social ends. Instead of the Gates, [88] the Morgans, [89] the Rockefellers, [90] the Fords, [91] [92] [93] or powerful corporate powers like BlackRock and Vanguard which dominate the Federal Reserve, [94] who are buying up houses, making it harder for the average American to own a home through large stakes in real estate companies [95] and deciding policy in the US and pushing the American people toward landlessness. Instead of the entrenched ruling class and intelligence agencies using our nation’s resources for their foreign wars and efforts, what if the American people were in charge? If you agree the American people should lead this nation and not unaccountable deep state interests, then you in effect have the same mission as the EFF in South Africa, who are struggling for their country to be free from the domination of monopoly capital and from the current ruling class apparatus.
​
Drawing on Jameson’s notion of the universal army, in An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army, as a vehicle for dual power, we can view the EFF in South Africa as embodying a similar transformative impulse. The universal army is not merely a fighting force but a mass mobilization apparatus—a re-nationalized institution that provides essential services and stands as a counterweight to an unrepresentative state. As Jameson puts it, the project calls for a “popular mass force capable of coexisting successfully with an increasingly unrepresentative ‘representative government’ and transforming it into a vehicle for mass democracy rather than the representative kind.” [96] 

The EFF operates on a similar principle. Since its formation in 2013—born out of a rejection of neoliberal policies, rampant corruption, and lack of land reform—the EFF has mobilized a broad base, with chapters in every province, and reaching out directly to the neglected masses. This mass mobilization is the universal army, which transcends traditional party politics by directly engaging with the people, providing daily services, and reconfiguring power.

For instance, in informal settlements like Lulu’s Place in Bredell, EFF members have not only campaigned for votes but have actively cleaned up, repaired, and supported local residents. One resident, Charon Uys, noted, “While other parties just pass through during voter registration and election campaigns, the EFF decided to include us in their efforts—and they never left.” [97] While the government allows illegal dumpings in places like Bredell, the EFF takes on the work to keep these places livable. [98] Such initiatives illustrate the formation of dual power: a parallel structure that steps in where traditional state and party apparatuses have failed to serve the basic needs of the people.

Moreover, by addressing issues like land reform and nationalization, the EFF shifts the political discourse—forcing mainstream parties like the ANC, DA, and others, as shown earlier linked to entrenched oligarchies and corrupt networks, to contend with demands that originate from the grassroots, exposing these parties’ lack of will to carry out change to the public. Dual power emerges when alternative institutions provide tangible services that directly contest the monopoly of state power. During the floods in KwaZulu-Natal, the EFF’s rapid deployment of food parcels and blankets not only provided immediate relief but also symbolically asserted their capacity to govern and care for the people in ways that conventional political structures have neglected. [99] [100]
The EFF’s broad national presence, its consistent engagement with the neglected sectors of society, and its commitment to issues of economic justice and land reform, collectively construct a form of dual power. The EFF represents the will of the landless masses. They operate within the existing state framework while simultaneously carving out an alternative sphere of social and political organization. It is through this popular mobilization that the stranglehold on the land can be challenged.

Just as the EFF seeks to empower the landless and dispossessed in South Africa, acting as a universal army, a similar movement in America could work toward breaking the stranglehold of powerful interests and bringing about justice for Americans. In fact, in America we do see the beginning of this, with the formation of the American Communist Party (ACP). While still a burgeoning young party, the ACP has pushed forward to fill the gaps left by the American government. In the aftermath of the 2024 hurricane season that hit the southern states, the ACP spent weeks delivering generators, distributing children's diabetes supplies, mobilizing thousands of dollars worth of essential supplies, and cleaning up debris. [101] [102] [103] [104] Furthermore, the ACP has provided food to the hungry in their communities, restored homes, and they have helped their communities in other ways, such as building a public library box to promote access to educational materials. [105] [106] [107] [108] [109] While the ACP has not reached the mobilization levels of the more than one million-strong EFF, they are pushing forward to develop an American universal army to uphold the sovereignty of the American people and to foster working-class power.
​

Though the media will try to tell you that the EFF are racists or fascist extremists who have nothing in common with Americans, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is through analysis of their approach to the South African land struggle and their development of a popular base for mobilization that we can seek to free ourselves from the tyrannical oligarchy in our own country.
​
Like Jackson Hinkle, a member of the Executive Board of the ACP, said in a conversation with EFF host Titus Tshungu: “A lot of people say that the biggest enemy of America is Russia or they’ll say America’s biggest enemy is China. . . . Now Elon Musk is saying our enemy is Julius Malema. But the truth is the biggest enemy of the US government is the American people.” [110]

Author

Louie of RTSG, edited by Seraph. RTSG is an international research collective that brings reality to a world of Fake News. We prize our independency, reliability, and discipline. We will only post the truth, and nothing but the truth.

References
​

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4. Yet they spend an exorbitant amount of time attacking Communists and attacking the most successful Communist movements, such as that of the Communist Party of China, as well as supporting Western efforts against countries such Russia (Reuters Fact Check. “CNN Did Not Tweet a Story about ‘the Kharkiv Kid Finder.’” Reuters, 8 Mar. 2022, https://archive.ph/PCwht. “Kochinski is a self-described ‘libertarian socialist’ and ‘anti-fascist’, and he has posted a wealth of content expressing disapproval of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”).
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11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
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17. Liu, pp. 228-230.
18. Liu, pp. 228-230.
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30. Was tased multiple times by BLM officers during the struggle. Ammon Bundy was the one who made the call for protesters to gather to rally against the BLM. He commented on the 2014 struggle, stating, “We the people got together and made something right.“ He said public figures who don’t agree with this struggle should “be kicked out of office,” regardless of their position, he added. https://web.archive.org/web/20150320232543/http://insider.foxnews.com/2014/04/14/%E2%80%98we-people-have-spoken%E2%80%99-bundy-family-responds-nevada-standoff-over-grazing-fees
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49. Ibid.
50. Esterhuyse, 2011
51. Nsehe, Mfonobong. “Rich and Powerful Africans: Cyril Ramaphosa.” Forbes, 9 Aug. 2011, https://archive.ph/g8nm5.
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57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. Quintal, Genevieve. “Expelled EFF Members Removed as MPs.” News24, 16 Apr. 2015, www.news24.com/News24/expelled-eff-members-removed-as-mps-20150416.
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68. Ntsaluba, Gcina. “BLF Signs ‘Historic Agreement’ with Jacob Zuma’s MK.” The South African, 18 Jan. 2024, https://archive.ph/tyagq.
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    "It is Kagame who killed our soldiers. The support he gave to M23 and the M23 acting in a disrespectful manner to South African soldiers, they knew they got the backing of Rwanda. Why do you want to treat Rwanda like it’s a friend and progressive? Kagame has the blood of South Africans on his hands. Nothing is going to change."
81. Maj. Paul Kagame Withdraws from Fort Leavenworth to Join the Front, https://archive.ph/YDHNc.
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87. Ibid.
88. Blumenthal, Max, and Kit Klarenberg. "How a Gates Foundation Trustee Directed a Plot to Overthrow Zimbabwean Leader Alongside US and UK Gov't." The Grayzone, 31 Jan. 2022, https://archive.ph/yM0Qu.
89. "About Those Who are Against Peace." CIA Reading Room, 16 Dec. 1959, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP65-00756R000300270001-9.pdf. p. 364.
    “An influx of American exploiters arrived in South Korea, including agents, representatives of powerful U.S. monopolies, and confidential operatives. Previously, a Japanese colonial monopoly, known as The Eastern Colonization Society, had operated in Korea, later rebranded as New Korea. Through this entity, large portions of land, as well as South Korean mining and other enterprises, fell into the hands of American monopolies. The Morgans and Rockefellers became the real powers behind South Korea’s economy, controlling over 60 percent of its industry.”
90. Roy, Arundhati. Capitalism: A Ghost Story. Haymarket Books, 2014, pp. 27–28. ISBN 9781608463855."By the 1950s, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, funding several NGOs and international educational institutions, began to operate as quasi-extensions of the U.S. government, which at the time was toppling democratically elected governments in Latin America, Iran, and Indonesia. (That was also around the time it made its entry into India, then non-aligned but leaning toward the Soviet Union.) The Ford Foundation established a U.S.-style economics course at the University of Indonesia. Elite Indonesian students, trained in counterinsurgency by U.S. Army officers, played a crucial role in the 1965 CIA-backed coup in Indonesia that brought General Suharto to power. He repaid his mentors by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of communist rebels."
91. Ibid.
92. Papert, Tony. "Moscow Conference Exposes 'Color Revolutions' as Warfare." Executive Intelligence Review, vol. 41, no. 24, EIR News Service Inc., 13 June 2014, p. 22, https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2014/eirv41n24-20140613/07-25_4124.pdf.
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94. Massa, Annie, and Caleb Melby. “In Fink We Trust: BlackRock Is Now ‘Fourth Branch of Government.’” Bloomberg, 21 May 2020, https://archive.ph/DzWON.
95. Fijalkowski, Tanja. “Vanguard and Wall Street Are Pumping Global Housing Markets.” Upside Chronicles, 28 Apr. 2022, https://archive.ph/1PqAi.
96. Jameson, Fredric. An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army. Edited by Slavoj Žižek, Verso, 2016, p. 28.
97. Kaiser, Hein. "‘The EFF cares for us whites,’ Bredell residents put their faith in red berets." The Citizen, 15 May, 2023, https://archive.ph/kvBD5.
98. Tshabalala, Nobukhosi. "EFF and locals clean up illegal dumping in Bredell." The Citizen, 1 May, 2023, https://archive.ph/G4iQD.
99. Economic Freedom Fighters. “EFF Member of Parliament, Commissar Mama Khawula donating food to the community of Ward 54 eNhlungwane, in KZN.” X, 18 Apr. 2022, https://archive.ph/oOBRd.
100. Economic Freedom Fighters. “EFF Member of Parliament, Commissar Mama Khawula visiting the affected families in KZN, donating food and blankets.” X, 18 Apr. 2022, https://archive.ph/IuHgL.
101. ACP North Carolina. “We have been working hard to provide Hurricane Helene relief in NC.” X, 5 Nov. 2024, https://archive.ph/FQbuI.
102. ACP North Carolina. “Hurricane relief continues!” X, 5 Nov. 2024, https://archive.ph/ZXtMf.
103. ACP Main. “Amidst the Federal government’s woeful negligence of its own citizens, our comrades at ACP North Carolina have mobilized to provide thousands of dollars of essential supplies to hard-hit communities.” X, 5 Oct. 2024, https://archive.ph/ptNMR.
104. ACP Florida. “The American Communist Party Florida Chapter, worked in a rural section of East Collier county, in response to hurricane Helene.” X, 22 Oct. 2024, https://archive.ph/12NND.
105. ACP Maryland. “We prepared and donated meals for 50 people to Annapolis Light House.” X, 28 Jan. 2025, https://archive.ph/aPiLa.
106. ACP Texas. “The ACP Texas chapter met up in Austin to restore the home of Florence, an 81-year-old cancer survivor and life-long local community volunteer.” X, 4 Oct. 2024, https://archive.ph/d0wFe.
107. ACP Texas. “A few weeks ago, a violent storm swept through Austin causing a MASSIVE tree to fall on the home of a great friend of our chapter, Florence.” X, 22 Dec. 2024, https://archive.ph/5mvvk
108. ACP Minnesota. “In December, ACP MN worked with a couple struggling with bills to renew a collapsed and neglected roof before winter.” X, 6 Jan. 2025, https://archive.ph/ztc1O.
109. ACP New York. “Buffalo, NY: Our comrades took action by building a mini public library box on a community member's lawn near a park and school.” X, 23 Sept. 2025, https://archive.ph/WiHoG.
110. EFF Podcast Episode 58. Economic Freedom Fighters, featuring Titus Tshungu and Jackson Hinkle, 14 Feb. 2025, YouTube, (11:42 / 34:10)

Domenico Losurdo's Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend (2020), translated by David Ferreira, shines as a paradigmatic contribution in Joseph Stalin historiography, restructuring the Soviet leader's legacy through a perspective of Marxist historical materialism.

​This review goes beyond the conventional bounds of a historiographical review, acting as an epistemological rupture that questions the reified narratives of Stalin as a hellish aberration. Losurdo uses a dialectical technique to examine Stalin's "black legend," which he claims is an intellectual machinery favoring bourgeois hegemony and intra-communist factionalism. This essay uses Losurdo's work as a cognitive catalyst, employing Marxist concepts such as class struggle, contradiction, and ideological mystification to prompt a shift in historical awareness. It seeks to rethink the reader's epistemic assumptions by emphasizing the intricate interaction of material conditions, geopolitical imperatives, and revolutionary practice that defined the Soviet experiment under Stalin's leadership.
 
Epistemological Deconstruction: Illuminating the Black Legend

Losurdo's approach is basically an exercise in dialectical critique, razing the ontologized portrayal of Stalin as a pathological dictator, which was culminated in Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 Secret Report. From a Marxist standpoint, this article illustrates ideological mystification by abstracting Stalin from the historical context and reducing him to a willing agent of horror. Losurdo claims that Khrushchev's speech, rather than unveiling the truth, was a performative activity of legitimation, consolidating the post-Stalin leadership's authority while agreeing with Western anti-communist propaganda as the Cold War intensified. This maneuver, Losurdo argues, effaces the collective agency of the Soviet proletariat and obfuscates the structural imperatives which is imperialist encirclement, economic backwardness, and intra-party contradictions that conditioned Stalin’s policies.
 
The black legend, as an epistemological construct, functions inside what Althusser (1970) refers to as the "ideological state apparatus," perpetuating bourgeois rule by condemning socialism's historical manifestations. Losurdo's dialectical technique addresses this by situating Stalin within the lengthy history of Russian socioeconomic development and the worldwide context of the "Second Thirty Years' War" (1914-1945). This time, marked by imperialist rivalry and revolutionary upheavals, was a condition of exception that required exceptional measures to ensure the Soviet state's existence. By emphasizing the material conditions, semi-feudal agrarian structures, external aggression, and internal sabotage, Losurdo reorients the historiographical gaze from moralist individualism to the dialectics of class struggle, in line with Marx's dictum that "men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please" (Marx, 1852).
  
Contradictions of Socialist Construction: A Political-Economic Analysis

Losurdo's argument is particularly compelling in its examination of the difficulties inherent in socialist creation under conditions of underdevelopment and imperialist antagonism. Drawing on Marxist political economy, he demonstrates the need of fast industrialization and collectivization as processes of primitive socialist accumulation. The Soviet Union, inheriting a semi-feudal economy, had the challenge of changing its production forces in order to resist fascist assault and solidify proletariat rule. Losurdo's explanation is consistent with Lenin's (1917) idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," which holds that the state, as an instrument of class rule, must destroy counter-revolutionary elements in order to establish socialist production relations.
 
The purges of the 1930s, a cornerstone of the black mythology, are similarly reframed. Losurdo contends that these repressions, while extreme and rife with bureaucratic distortions, were reactions to actual and perceived challenges inside the Bolshevik Party and society. To negotiate the interwar period's existential problems, party unity was required due to the factionalism of Trotsky's Left Opposition and Bukharin's Right Deviation, as well as foreign spying and sabotage. This viewpoint is consistent with Gramsci's (1971) concept of "hegemony armoured by coercion," in which revolutionary nations must use coercive means to maintain intellectual and political unity against counter-hegemonic forces. Losurdo does not exonerate the purges' excesses, but rather emphasizes their dialectical context, contradicting idealist history that assigns them entirely to Stalin's libido dominandi.
  
Dismantling the Totalitarian Paradigm: An Analysis of Ideological Convergence

Losurdo's critique of the Stalin-Hitler equivalency, a cornerstone of Cold War sovietology, is a masterful work of Marxist intellectual analysis. Losurdo sees the liberal and Trotskyist amalgamation of Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Third Reich under the label of "totalitarianism" as a type of intellectual convergence that erases the class antagonisms that divide the two regimes. Despite its bureaucratic flaws, the Soviet Union was a proletariat state dedicated to eradicating private property and promoting internationalist liberation. In contrast, Nazi Germany was a regressive imperialist agenda centered on racial supremacy and capitalist restoration. Losurdo's deconstruction of this equivalency draws on Marx's technique in Capital, which reveals ideological formations as representations of underlying class relations.
 
This critique extends to Western intellectuals' role in the development of the totalitarian worldview. Losurdo examines how people such as Hannah Arendt and Harold Laski, who were initially sympathetic to the Soviet project's anti-colonial and egalitarian goals, shifted to anti-communism as the Cold War intensified. This move, he claims, shows the bourgeoisie's desire to negate socialism's revolutionary potential by linking it with fascism, thereby legitimizing imperialist incursions against socialist governments. Losurdo's interpretation here is consistent with Lukács' (1923) idea of "reification," in which historical processes are abstracted into static categories, hiding their class meaning and aiding bourgeois ideological rule.
  
Stalin and the Global Conjuncture: Anti-Imperialist Praxis

Losurdo's internationalist stance places Stalin within the worldwide anti-imperialist fight, emphasizing the Soviet Union's role in opposing fascist aggression and assisting national liberation movements. The Great Patriotic War is depicted as a massive class battle that brought together the Soviet proletariat and peasantry against the Nazi objective of colonial servitude in Eastern Europe, rather than a failure due to Stalin's ineptitude. Losurdo draws similarities with Mao Zedong's theory of the Chinese resistance against Japanese imperialism, highlighting the dialectical unity of national and class conflicts on the global periphery. This framework questions Eurocentric historiographies that separate Stalin's policies from the larger processes of imperialist dominance.
 
Losurdo contends that the Soviet Union's existence and victory in World War II were critical in breaking down the colonial system and igniting decolonization in Asia and Africa. This is consistent with Lenin's concept in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, that imperialist problems produce revolutionary chances in the periphery. Losurdo reclaims Stalin as a world-historical person rather than just a Russian ruler by emphasizing the Soviet Union's anti-imperialist legacy, rejecting the historiographical provincialism that separates Soviet socialism from worldwide emancipatory battles. 
 
Epistemic Tensions and Praxis-Oriented Reflections
 
Losurdo's book, while a magisterial addition to Marxist historiography, has epistemological conflicts that warrant examination. The focus on the possible subjection of Soviet working-class initiative to structural and geopolitical limits risks idealizing proletarian spontaneity, which Leninists would oppose. The proletarian dictatorship, as manifested in the Soviet state, required a vanguardist centralization to discipline and lead class forces in the face of counter-revolutionary challenges. The notion that more proletariat democracy could have alleviated bureaucratic deformations is a petit-bourgeois dream that undervalues the imperatives of socialist building in a hostile imperialist environment. Drawing on Lenin's State and Revolution, the state's enforced machinery must stay prevailing until socialism's universal victory, making calls for wider democracy premature and potentially disruptive.
 
The book's acceptance of Losurdo's polemical tone as a shortcoming that may exclude dialogic participation would also enrage Leninists. From a Leninist standpoint, the need of doctrinal fight against bourgeois and revisionist misconceptions demands a confrontational stance. Losurdo's critiques of Trotskyist and liberal narratives are more than academic mistakes; they are actual challenges to the proletariat cause, needing a polemical zeal that favors clarity above compromise. This perspective is shown by Stalin's own publications, such as Foundations of Leninism, which saw intellectual battle as an extension of class conflict. A Leninist criticism would thus defend Losurdo's tone as an essential tool in the armory of Marxist historiography, dismissing pleas for dialogic pluralism as a capitulation to bourgeois eclecticism. 
 
Conclusion: Toward Dialectical Historiography.

Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend is an epistemological watershed moment, prompting readers to examine the difficulties of socialist formation through a Marxist lens. Losurdo's dialectical method exposes the ideological errors that have reified Stalin as a terrible Other, providing a nuanced understanding of his role in negotiating the contradictions of revolutionary practice. Losurdo confronts both bourgeois and ultra-left orthodoxies by locating Stalin in the global class struggle and the imperatives of anti-imperialist resistance, advocating for the reappropriation of historical materialism as a weapon for cognitive liberation.
 
For Marxist thinkers and activists, this essay is a wake-up call to view history as a dialectical process rather than a moralist tableau. It emphasizes that revolutions are evaluated not on their adherence to abstract principles, but on their ability to overcome actual tensions in the furnace of class struggle. Losurdo's essay, dedicated to David Ferreira, demonstrates the lasting power of Marxist theory in deciphering the past and guiding the present toward revolutionary possibilities.
 
References
Althusser, L. (1970). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. [online] Marxists.org. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm.
Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers.
Lenin, V.I. (1917) 'The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution', in State and Revolution, ch. 1. [Online]. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm (Accessed: 29 April 2025).
Lukács, G. (1923) 'Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat', in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Translated by R. Livingstone. London: Merlin Press, pp. 83–222.
Marx, K. (1852). 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx 1852. [online] Marxists.org. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm.

Author
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Harsh Yadav is a student of International Relations at South Asian University, New Delhi. He possesses a diverse academic background which includes a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry (Hons) from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. His interdisciplinary inquisitiveness lies in Chinese Studies, International Political Economy, Political Philosophy, and Critical Theory. Harsh’s academic pursuits gravitate towards the labyrinthine global power dynamics which is economically and politically shaped by modern imperialism. He is interested in engaging with the contemporary systems of domination which have transcended national boundaries, evolving into decentralised networks of influence and control that are exercised through international financial institutions and multilateral corporations. Harsh is riveted by the cultural, economic, and political forces that operate in tandem to uphold the global hierarchical setup. His interest lies in analysing the critical rapport between capitalism and urbanisation by acknowledging the exploitation perpetuated by not just direct domination but by subtle methods involved in our daily lives. In synthesizing these intricate ideas, Harsh wants to offer a nuanced perspective on global hegemony and the ideological underpinnings of modern imperial structures, constantly seeking to uncover the intersections of power, economy, and philosophy.