How Unanswered Domestic Problems Accelerate Anti-Capitalism & Emboldens Our Adversaries

Neoliberalism, in addition to being a highly flawed economic system, accelerates wealth/income inequality to undesirable levels. Why is this a problem? Extreme wealth/income/opportunity inequality threatens our domestic security and opens the United States to a potential revolutionary challenge from anti-capitalist forces (possibly backed up by China and Russia). Nothing raises a spirited debate with my more libertarian or conservative colleagues than this point. Why? Because many of my anticommunist colleagues and friends are generally hardcore disciples of neoliberalism and advocates of a near complete market absolutist economic policy. After reviewing the historical data, lived experiences of most Americans, and the assertions of extremists and our foreign adversaries, it is imperative for authentic, nonideological anticommunists and antifascists to “face up” to the hard truths of neoliberalism (a.k.a. market fundamentalism). We can no longer be apologists for wide open “free markets” without any serious checks and balances. How have our institutions have been compromised by market absolutists?

1) The Federalist Society owns the majority of the Supreme Court.

2) The Senate and House Republicans are mostly advocates of supply side Reaganomics.

3) The Trump “populist” and “nationalist” revolution has been betrayed (in his first term and now before his second term starts on January 20, 2025).

4) Our military-industrial complex is compromised by financialization (where major private defense contractors channel disproportionate amounts of profits for stock buybacks as opposed to weapons production and development).

5) Now, one single corporate executive Elon Musk (who is in bed with China and Russia) is dictating Congressional budgets and overall policy of the incoming Trump Administration.

6) Economics departments are dominated by market fundamentalists as opposed to radical centrist types.

7) While the political left reaches into academia (especially the social sciences), parts of the Democratic Party, labor leadership, and a portion of religious institutions, market absolutists “own the rest of the store.”

The negative consequences of market absolutism (a.k.a. neoliberalism) have been felt in the American economy, culture, and national security. My Hard Truth of Capitalism essay series on Substack meticulously outlined these details. This essay will discuss how neoliberalism (financialization, free trade, union busting, etc.) encourages alienation from the established political and economic order in the United States. What does this alienation lead to? Crimes, deaths of despair, drug use, and stoking the flames of anti-capitalism and revolutionary anger. I will be focusing on the latter, since it is directly tied to national security. (And most of my subscribers are individuals concerned with the national security of the United States).

Worsening conditions in the US is accelerating class polarization and setting the stage for a potential socialist or “populist” fascist revolution in the US. At least some elements within the plutocracy realize this (even though they refuse to undertake the necessary reforms to halt this process). A Citibank secret report admitted that the US devolved into what it termed a “plutonomy” where “economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few.” This situation has the potential for sparking a violent anti-capitalist counter-response. In a section titled “What Could Go Wrong,” the authors of this secret report argued that “Beyond war, inflation, the end of the technology/productivity wave, and financial collapse, we think the most potent and short-term threat would be societies demanding a more ‘equitable’ share of wealth.”^[1] Robert H. Dugger, a financial industry lobbyist and a partner in the global hedge fund firm Tudor Investment Corporation, warned “Anyone who’s in this community knows people who are worried that America is heading toward something like the Russian Revolution.”^[2] Statistics and polls confirm this. In 2021, only 11% of Americans say they are satisfied with the course of our nation. Sixty six percent of American adults were polled as being “very dissatisfied.”^[3] According to a poll from NORC at the University of Chicago, nearly a quarter of Americans find the American Dream “out of reach,” rising from 18% in 2022 to 24%.^[4] The 2024 World Happiness Report listed the US as the 23^rd happiest country in the world (which fell from being one of the top 20 happiest countries). Significantly, the US ranked in the top 10 for the happiest for people 60 years and older while ranking 63 for citizens aged 30 or younger. The rankings were based on social support, GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perception of corruption.[5] Alienation amongst the young in the US is very real. In response to negative reactions of voters aged 18-30 years old, Evan Roth Smith of Blueprint pollsters stated: “I think these statements blow me away, the scale of these numbers with young voters. Young voters do not look at our politics and see any good guys. They see a dying empire led by bad people.”^[6] Even the opportunity for a longer life span is increasingly confined to the rich and powerful. In 2016, two MIT economics PhD students Michael Stepner and Sarah Abraham authored a study which revealed that in the “U.S., the richest 1 percent of men lives 14.6 years longer on average than the poorest 1 percent of men, while among women in those wealth percentiles, the difference is 10.1 years on average…Over roughly the last 15 years, life expectancy increased by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 years for women who are among the top 5 percent of income earners in America, but by just 0.32 and 0.04 years for men and women in the bottom 5 percent of the income tables.”[7]According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the population experiencing homelessness increased by 18.1% in 2024 (totaling 770,000). This was due to a lack of affordable housing, highly destructive natural disasters, and a heavy influx of foreign refugees into the US.[8] According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the top 10% of wealthy Americans control 60% of the nation’s wealth, while the poorer half of the country holds 6%.[9] According to a 2020 study by Oxfam, the world’s 2,153 billionaires held 60% of the global wealth.[10] According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index (dated from December 30, 2024), eleven American billionaires and one billionaire family gained nearly $1 trillion in wealth.[11] Anyone who justifies such arrangements are clearly part of the problem and accessories in the anti-capitalism and populism of a growing number of average citizens.

Even worse, our geopolitical enemies are taking note of our decline and growing polarization. Russian state media eagerly await the coming civil war in the US. According to the state-owned Novosti news service, “The next presidential election could lead to a definitive split in American society and a new civil war.” A headline on another Russian media source Gazeta.ru claimed, “In Harvard they’re predicting war within the United States.”^[12] In an interview (2023), Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary of Russia’s Security Council and the former head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), predicted, “Ordinary citizens won’t lift a finger to preserve America’s unity, knowing they mean nothing to their own government. The U.S. authorities, without understanding the consequences, are destroying themselves step by step.”^[13] Dissident (often leftist), understandably disenchanted American voices are used by China and Russia to further accelerate our internal demoralization. In a guest editorial for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) publication Global Times, former US Marine Corps soldier and analyst Brian Berletic (correctly) noted how our “leaders with poor performances have sent Americans to fight and die overseas in pursuit of unsustainable global dominance, which has had negative repercussions on America’s economy, education system, and society at home. The decline in these areas produces the conditions in which crime, disease and ignorance thrive, depriving the military and the rest of American society of the qualified human resources necessary for survival and growth. Unless the fundamental problems of US foreign and domestic policy are solved, the decline will persist, affecting not only the military but also eroding the trust the American people have in it.”^[14] Berletic’s last statement is no doubt correct, although his CCP interlocutors undoubtedly prefer socialist tyranny to correct the deep institutional problems in the US. Instead, Radical Civic Nationalism (radical centrism of the Michael Lind or Senator Scoop Jackson school of thought) is the path forward, avoiding the extremes of collectivist authoritarianism and oligarch friendly laissez faire economics. Our demoralization has extended into an embrace of sedition and class-based murder by elements of our citizenry. A former member of the communist think tank/activist group the Center for Political Innovation (CPI) Joey Schantz (a.k.a. the Yankee Tankie) stated on Twitter/X (March 23, 2024): “…my message to the American government, if you ever dare to draft me to go off to war the fight these people I promise you one of two things will happen. A: I allow you to draft me for me to be sent to Russia so I can wave a white flag and go to the Russian side B: I burn my draft card and serve in prison for draft dodging One way or another, I will never fight Russian unless they invade my land (which literally will never happen). You think I’m fighting dudes that are gonna capture me and force eat my ear? For a government that refuses to even build clean water infrastructure for my own people? You are fucking joking.”[15] After the assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson, many American citizens took to social media and either explained away or justified his murder. Why? Because Thompson’s defenders (often “conservatives” and a handful of corporate Democrats) justified the most predatory aspects of the health insurance industry. Perhaps this passage sums up how predatory forms of financialized capitalism drives the populist left and right into a united front: “As a conservative, I’m sick of rich elitist destroying the family unit. Quite literally. I’m proud the left and right have united. I may not vote the same way but damn it I can agree we are tired of being pushed around.”[16] Forty one percent of American voters between the ages of 18 and 29 were more likely than their elders to accept the recent assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.[17] This is a dangerous phenomenon that could be exploited by toxic populists and demagogues who would flip callous plutocracy with outright collectivist totalitarianism. And this is all largely homegrown. Perhaps Karl Marx was indeed correct when he wrote “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”^[18] Our people are clearly demoralized, and it has nothing to do with college Marxists, feminists, video games, LGBTQ+ folks, etc. Blame should fall squarely on failed neoliberal economic policies and an unresponsive plutocracy. Average Americans expect more from our institutions and in response they get frozen/falling salaries/wages, increases in the cost of goods/services, and elite condescension. Our demoralization is largely homegrown. As the wealthy investor (and reform capitalist) Nick Hanauer warned back in 2014, “…Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution. And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.”[19]

Let’s puzzle out a scenario and consider the following hypotheses:

1) Market absolutism and austerity economics pave the way towards the collapse of free enterprise through its own internal contradictions (increased profits for the superwealthy and falling wages and declining purchasing power for the average citizenry). Is this true? Yes, because that is the lived reality of a growing number of Americans for the past forty plus years. This was discussed in my Hard Truth of Capitalism series here on Substack. And people are increasingly radicalized and amenable to anti-capitalism.

2) Could the proponents of free market absolutism be active or unconscious agents of communist revolution? Possibly. What would the Communists gain from Reaganomics?

1) Depletion of our industrial base, which impairs our country’s ability to sustain a war (God forbid) with Russia and China. This would pave the way for an American defeat.

2) Extreme class polarization, which enhances the credibility of anti-capitalist arguments. This in turn would make recruitment by socialist, communist, and neofascist extremists easier.

3) The unresponsive, increasingly plutocratic arrangements within our government create the (often accurate) impression that our institutions are tone deaf, corrupt, and out of touch. Why would people fight a war to protect the US if our institutions abandoned the average American?

4) Considering frozen wages and increased cost of living (through massive corporate price gouging and predatory business practices), why should people believe in the American Dream, as propounded by our most esteemed institutions? Such disillusionment (which is occurring as I write this essay) is a petri dish of anti-capitalism, which could be exploited in the event the radical left coalesces together into a cohesive organization (potentially backed by hostile foreign powers).

5) Dismantling of the idea of a “whole of government” strategy, which could effectively neutralize domestic radicals and hostile geopolitical adversaries. The incoming Trump Administration, in the thrall of libertarian plutocrats Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, appears to be embarking on this path. And our adversaries seem to be gleeful about this. In November 2024, Vladimir Solovyov (who is the host of the Russian state TV show The Evening) proclaimed with such joy: “What an excellent team is coming along with Trump! Not with respect to Ukraine, but as far as everything else goes. If they are allowed to get in, they will quickly dismantle America, brick by brick. They are so great!” In 2023, Andrey Sidorov, Dean of World Politics at the Moscow State University stated on The Evening with Vladimir Solovyov: “Trump is coming, think of him as you will. I always saw him and still see him as a destroyer of America.”[20] In other words, the anti-government, privatization agenda of Trump and much of the Republican Party entails the dismantling of the remaining New Deal era structures which incentivize social mobility and restrain some of the abuses of unvarnished capitalism.

When we examine the statements of the most diehard pro-corporate, “free market” absolutists, one could reasonably conclude that their statements confirmed the worst stereotypes of capitalism and the wealthy. This provided the grist for anti-capitalist propaganda mills, thus enhancing their credibility. The “stakeholder” idea of mutual loyalty and commitments between business and labor become dismantled by the “free market” zealots, thus destroying class collaboration. The shared destiny of the post-World War II capital-labor arrangement was destroyed in large part by the free-market fundamentalists aligned with President Reagan. Milton Friedman wrote how the concept of the “social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system” was “pure and unadulterated socialism.”^[21] In other words, the idea of “people’s capitalism” and “Shared but Earned Prosperity” which contributed to the realization of the American Dream by the masses, was dismantled by people like Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan. Instead, an anti-social, slash and burn form of capitalism as advocated by the likes of Friedman and Reagan became the accepted norm. In turn, capitalism became associated with declining quality of life, falling wages/salaries, and the impossibility of achieving the American Dream. Again, this kind of discontent bred radical anti-capitalism. A study of the CPUSA and its recruitment patterns confirmed this. An American respondent to a survey of Western Communist party members stated: “…To the extent that Communist propaganda emphasizes the defects of the status quo they can win over people with all types of real grievances. They are against something, not for something.”^[22] In today’s world, the most ardent defenders of capitalism are confirming the worst stereotypes of the system. In the recent firestorm over the exploitation of H-1B tech workers and their displacement of American workers, libertarian free marketeers have literally turned against their countrymen. They have become just as anti-American as SDS and the Weather Underground during the 1960s and early 1970s. Richard Hanania, a plutocrat-financed libertarian commentator, responded in his typically snide fashion to a tech worker who posted a Wall Street Journal article criticizing the poor tech job market. Hanania responded to the tech worker, “Maybe you should take an economics class and learn something about the world.”[23] In another post, Hanania claimed that right populists are resentful “losers.”[24] Vivek Ramaswamy (a Putin appeaser by the way) claimed that corporations cannot locate talent to fill tech jobs because “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer).”[25] In response to a staunch critic of libertarian individualism, Austin Peterson wrote “This is a man who will never sign the front of a paycheck in his life.”[26] SpaceX/Tesla CEO Elon Musk (who is now a top Trump adviser and incoming head of the Department of Governmental Efficiency or DOGE) posted, “Investing in Americans is actually hard. Really hard. It costs money and time and effort to make a person productive. It's a short term net loss. It’s much easier to bring in skilled workers who might not do quite a good a job, but will work for a fraction of the cost and be happy just to be here.”[27] The class arrogance, denial of the realities of financialized capitalism, and the callousness of large swathes of the corporate Right and wealthy oligarchs are stoking the embers of revolution in the US. There is indeed both a class and ideological war here in America. Again, this is self-inflicted and now exploited by the enemies of free enterprise and limited government. Radical Civic Nationalists seek to implement policies which neutralizes revolution through decades long overdue reforms.

Communists are at work utilizing liberal economic policies to their long-term benefit. For example, Marx’s sugar daddy and fellow communist Friedrich Engels wrote that “Free Trade is the natural, the normal atmosphere for this historical evolution, the economic medium in which the conditions for the inevitable social revolution will be the soonest.”[28] Free trade is an important pillar of Reaganomics (which remains the norm today, despite certain tweaks here and there). The Soviets realized that the post-World War II “Shared But Earned Prosperity” was an impediment to their revolutionary plans targeted at the US. In 1954, Soviet Defense Minister Nikolai Bulganin stated, “The American working man is too well fed; we cannot appeal to him, but when through inflation America has priced herself out of the world market and unemployment follows-then we will settle our debt with the United States.”^[29] And what happened as a result of the inflation of the 1970s? (Which was brought about by refusing to pay for the Vietnam War through taxes and the Soviet-encouraged Arab oil embargo of 1973/1974, not social spending).[30] This ushered in market absolutist policies starting with Presidents Carter and Reagan. This resulted in accelerated deindustrialization, increasing trade (ultimately) with Russia and especially China, and the triumph of a type of capitalism which prioritizes short term, slash and burn profiteering (e.g. private equity) at the expense of a free enterprise economy which balanced the various stakeholders within our Nation. The fundamentals which stabilized capitalism and enhanced our Nation’s capacity to defend itself has been significantly eroded thanks to neoliberalism/free market absolutism.

Are there historical precedents of extremists exploiting austerity policies and other laissez faire policies to the detriment of free enterprise? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Extremists from the populist right and communist sides exploited the uneven “prosperity” during the Roaring 1920s and the Great Depression (1929 to 1937). The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) organized eviction resistance in major cities during the height of the Great Depression. Whenever marshals and police placed the furniture in the street, CPUSA members would organize the local community to place the furniture back. When the police/marshals returned, CPUSA members stood in front of the buildings and impeded their access. By 1932, rent strikes popped up all over the United States, which forced landlords to lower rents so residents could afford to stay in their apartments. Landlords were mortified that they couldn’t profitably own housing because they were unable to pay their mortgages.[31] In an exercise of accelerationism, CPUSA leaders told their members to vote for the Republican, Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential election, and even, if they could, to disguise themselves as Republicans and volunteer to reelect Hoover. The CPUSA leadership were convinced (correctly) that a reelected Hoover’s policies of austerity for the poor and middle class would result in either a pro-fascist or communist revolution in the United States.^[32] In the interests of hastening revolution in the United States, Lincoln Steffens (an admirer of Lenin and Mussolini) urged Americans to vote for Herbert Hoover and not FDR.^[33] Even normally anticommunist, conservative, or populist Americans and their leaders were being nudged towards anti-capitalism. Racial populist Mississippi Governor Theodore Bilbo observed: “Folks are restless, Communism is gaining a foothold…In fact, I’m getting a little pink myself.”^[34] A.N. Young, the president of the Farmers Union of Wisconsin stated: “The farmer is a naturally conservative individual, but you cannot find a conservative farmer today…I am as conservative as any man could be, but any economic system that has in its power to set me and my wife in the street, at my age-what can I see but red?”^[35] The worse the inequalities and hunger, the better for revolution. And it was financialization and other hallmarks of liberalism which set the stage (in part) for the Great Depression. As Erik Gerding wrote: “…the 1920s witnessed a relaxation of antitrust laws, deregulation of the banking industry, and a laissez faire attitude towards securities markets, including burgeoning margin loans for stock speculation.”^[36] Even during the Great Depression, predatory capitalist behavior continued and select Americans continued to profit off their countrymen’s misery. Oilman Joseph Pointer asked in respect to short selling speculation: “How is it that a practice so contrary to public policy can be permitted in this country? In whose possession are the twenty billions that disappeared from the pockets of the carpenter, the actor, the small executive, and the chorus girl?” William Buck, a Philadelphia salesman, observed that short sellers were “people who put profits before patriotism” and “foreigners who wish no good to the United States.” The Kansas Republican Charles Scott advised President Herbert Hoover that “if you can succeed in suppressing short selling in stocks and bonds and food products it will win you the vote of every Republican farmer in the country.” Hoover wrote in early 1932: “Men are not justified in deliberately making a profit from the losses of other people.”^[37] He (perhaps correctly) even observed to columnist Mark Sullivan: “The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists. They’re too damned greedy.”^[38] Ultimately, Hoover was unwilling to undertake the radical centrist reforms to save capitalism from its ultimate collapse. Fortunately, revolution and communism experienced a setback when FDR implemented the New Deal.

It is important to note that even during the 1920s, the supposedly “roaring” prosperity was disproportionately distributed to the upper classes in the US. As Jonathan Levy wrote: “Initially, at the birth of mass production, industrial corporate profits ran far ahead of wages. Working people did not participate in the 1920s speculative investment boom. Increasing economic inequality put more money in the hands of the wealthy, who kept bidding up stock prices-increasing their incomes from asset price appreciation, leveraged by credit, while labor incomes at the bottom of the distribution stagnated.”^[39] And this extreme wealth disparity during the “Roaring 20s” bred extremism and widespread alienation. Hiram Evans, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1922 to 1939, admitted “There has been a widespread feeling among Klansmen that in the last few years the operation of the National Government has shown weakness indicating a possible need of rather fundamental reform.” A 1923 letter written by a Klan opponent to the editor of leftwing The New Republic claimed: “First: Throughout all classes there is a growing skepticism of democracy, especially of the current American brand. Many Americans believe there is little even-handed justice administered in the courts; that a poor man has little chance against a rich one; that many judges practically buy their places on the bench or are put there by powerful interests. The strong, able young man comes out of college ready to do his part in politics, but with the settled conviction that unless he can give full time there is no use ‘bucking up against the machine.’ Furthermore he believes the machines to be equally corrupt. The miner in West Virginia sees the power of the state enlisted on the side of the mine owner.”[40]

However, other countries which experienced the scourge of extreme inequality and austerity were not as lucky as the United States under FDR. Others like Germany and Japan chose collectivist dictatorship. The stage was set by the Social Democrats (SPD), which supported the extreme budget cuts imposed by the government of Chancellor Heinrich Bruning (of the Centre Party). The SPD’s support for austerity policies undermined their support amongst the German working classes. The National Socialists (Nazis) were then able to pick up mass support from their opposition to SPD-supported austerity policies. In the 1930 election, the Nazis won 18.3% of the vote, making them the second largest party in Germany. According to Mark Blyth and Sheri Berman, the SPD during this period were “intellectually Marxist but programmatically Ricardian: classical liberals in socialist clothing.” According to Blyth, the SPD viewed an economic meltdown as a pathway to socialism. As SPD member and one-time vice president of the Reichstag Wilhelm Dittmann stated: “We want the current situation (the crisis) to develop further and can only follow in the general direction that these tendencies show us.” (In other words, the SPD were accelerationists. Let capitalism collapse and be replaced by socialism). On the other hand, the German trade unions sensibly demanded immediate action in the form of mass Keynesian style spending, which was opposed by the SPD leadership and Chancellor Bruning. The Nazis opposed the rigid thinking of both the liberal capitalists and SPD, arguing that immediate state action against the Depression was the best course of action to ameliorate economic conditions arising from the Great Depression. Their July 1932 election propaganda, the Wirstchaftliches Sofortprogramm (the Immediate Economic Program) was directly opposed to austerity. It argued four points:

1) “Unemployment causes poverty, employment creates prosperity.”

2) “Capital does not create jobs, jobs create capital.”

3) “Unemployment benefits burden the economy, but job creation simulates the economy.”

4) Germany should immediately get off the gold standard.

Not unsurprisingly, the Nazis received 37.3% of the vote. In 1933, they received 43.9% of the German vote.^[41] Mark Blyth wrote, “In 1932, unemployment accounted for 30 percent of the workforce. By 1936, full employment was restored…once the Nazis ended austerity and abandoned gold (even if they did this more through exchange controls than through devaluation), growth returned. That this turn against austerity took a particularly murderous direction in Germany does not invalidate the basic point that austerity didn’t work. In fact, the point that really needs to be recognized is that repeated rounds of austerity policy, plus the ideological intransigence of the Social Democrats, helped to bring Hitler to power far more than any memory of inflation a decade earlier. By 1933 the lesson should have been clear. You can’t run a gold standard in a democracy. Eventually people will vote against it. They did so in Sweden and they did so in Germany. Austerity gave interwar Europe both social democracy and genocidal fascism.”^[42]

When Japan re-adopted the gold standard in 1930, the country was immediately plunged into the Showa Depression, “the greatest peacetime collapse in economic activity in Japan’s history. Japan’s growth rate fell to–9.7 percent in 1930 and–9.5 percent in 1931, while the Yen rose approximately 7 percent against the dollar.” Trade in manufactured goods collapsed, along with Japanese household incomes (1,326 yen to 650 yen). State spending was cut, which included deep cuts to the military budget. Japanese financial elites refused to shift policy. In 1931, a new government took over in Tokyo, which resulted in the abandonment of the gold standard, increases in the money supply, a massive increase in government spending, and institution of capital controls. As Blyth wrote, “Austerity not only didn’t work in Japan. It created the worst depression in Japanese history, provoked an assassination campaign against bankers, and empowered ‘the wonderful folks that brought you Pearl Harbor.’”^[43]

Moving to Austria, free market economist (and adviser to the Hapsburgs) Ludwig von Mises advised the otherwise fascist corporative dictatorship of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss to eliminate unemployment benefits, disempower labor unions, cut taxes, and slash government spending. (This was the exact opposite of Dollfuss’ own ideology). Later, von Mises also provided economic advice to the government of Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg. The libertarian austerity reforms alienated most Austrians. One third of Austrians were unemployed and many others took home smaller paychecks on the eve of the Anschluss. Unemployment ranged from 20% to 26% of the Austrian workforce. It was no small wonder that free market fundamentalism paved the way for Austrians to accept a Nazi takeover in March 1938.^[44] A blogger with the nome de plume Lord Keynes wrote: “In reality, it was the vicious austerity and deflationary economics imposed on Austria that led to some measure of public support for the Nazi takeover.”^[45]

In other parts of the world, oligarchic forms of capitalism and bungled policies undertaken by neoliberal-friendly governments opened up opportunities for the advancement of communism. According to the First Secretary of the American Embassy in Romania (1946 to 1948) Robert G, Cleveland, “Prewar Romania had some of the trappings of democracy; it had a king, but also a constitution, a parliament, political parties etc., But it was politically oligarchic and economically capitalist but monopolistic. There was an enormous gap between the haves and the have-nots. The Communists had fertile ground.”[46] In 2003, Venezuelan communist dictator Hugo Chavez and Citizens Energy Corporation President Joseph P. Kennedy (who was also a former liberal Democratic Congressman) signed an agreement which provided discounted oil to low-income families in twenty-three states. Douglas Schoen and Michael Rowan pointed out that “Ironically, the US government-sponsored subsidy of low-income American households for oil heating was cut by the Bush Administration just as the Chavez subsidy was coming online, which gave Chavez’s program political potency.”^[47] In other words, the Bush Administration was heartless while the communist enemy was magnanimous. Again, the bungling and greed of much of the “anti-communist” Right and capitalism makes revolution attractive. Not a good situation. More like a collision course.

During the 1980s, the rot of Reaganomics spread throughout the Midwest, South, and Rocky Mountain states. While the computers and tickers went clickity clack on Wall Street and lobbyist wallets fattened in Washington DC, the rest of the country decayed. Even establishment friendly and conservative Americans were angry as hell. For example, an unemployed steelworker Paul Trout (who worked for Mesta for 26 years in Pennsylvania and whose wife Maureen worked for and then laid off from US Steel’s Homestead works) stated on the 1983 documentary The Business of America: “I’m a middle-aged man. No, I’m over, I’m past middle age and I’m mad. You could call me a conservative, but when a conservative like myself is ready to get pretty violent towards upsetting the system as it is, you could see that I’ve I really believe that the government better do something.”^[48] Various extremist groups such as the National Caucus of Labor Committees (the LaRouchians), anti-Jewish and racialist Nazi groups (such as the Order, which was a violent neo-Nazi terrorist group), and Marxist organizations sought to exploit such justified anger in order to promote revolution. In his “Declaration of War on the Jewish Occupied US Government” the leader of the Order Robert Matthews angrily lamented, “All about us the land is dying. Our cities swarm with dusky hordes. The water is rancid and the air is rank. Our farms are being seized by usurious leeches and our people are being forced off the land. The capitalists and communists pick gleefully at our bones while the vile, hook-nosed masters of usury orchestrate our destruction.”[49] Despite the toxic racialism and anti-capitalism, Matthews provided an otherwise accurate description of Reagan’s America. Meanwhile, the communist bloc leaders observed how Reaganomics slowly sapped America’s economic strength. And their critiques were often on point, despite the pernicious problems of the countries shackled by Marxist-Leninist command economies. In a 1986 meeting with East German leader Erich Honecker, Fidel Castro asserted, “Imperialism is in a profound crisis. The future of the US is not assured. The US escalated the arms race, its debt is growing and is currently $250 billion. Its budget deficit continues to grow and has reached $350 billion.”^[50] During a meeting of the Warsaw Pact leaders (December 11, 1989) regarding the results of the Malta Summit between Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush, Valentin Falin (the head of the International Department of the CPSU) observed: “The US has had considerable internal economic difficulties, the national debt is huge, and it is starting to fall behind in some areas of technological and scientific advancement too…The national debt of an astronomical size is the price of America’s world power ambitions, because they want to be the hegemons of the world.”^[51] Meanwhile, the aggregate military and industrial power (along with the social cohesion) of the United States declined since the 1980s. Austerity, free trade, deregulation, and hyper-individualism coupled with our collective denial of the continuation of the Cold War led to the slow rot of our economy, spiritual fiber, and national defense readiness. The fruits of Reaganism led to this situation. In a speech, radical leftist academic and psychoanalyst Joel Kovel observed at a conference devoted to anticommunism at Harvard University (1988): “the US is weakening and has less capacity to enforce a megalomaniacal ideology like anticommunism.”^[52] Simon Sanchez Montero (a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain) wrote in World Marxist Review (November 1989): “US imperialism is ever more rapidly entering a period of decline, in spite of its military, economic, technological and political power. The USA is the world’s most indebted country, its budget and trade deficits having reached unsustainable proportions. Economically, the USA is finding it increasingly difficult to withstand the competition from other states, the main reason for this being its colossal military budget.”^[53] Even our purported “partners” in Communist China took note of our weaknesses (no doubt to their long-term benefit). In his book America Against America (1991), top Chinese Communist Party theorist Wang Huning wrote: “How are Americans lonely? This is a question that is difficult to answer in one sentence. We can say that the American economic system has created human loneliness, and the prominence and importance of money in society has monetized human relationships, while human feelings are forced down in money relationships. A little warmth may mean money. We can say that the dominant value of America-individualism-leads to the isolation of the individual.”[54] This was quite a penetrating analysis of the hyper-individualism that sunk back into the American psyche. It has not gotten any better. The “fall” of Communism in the USSR did not stem the tide of popular (though not well-organized) discontent with Reaganomics. Instead, economic conditions worsened for average working, poor, and even middle-income Americans. The Young Communist League (YCL) coordinator Terrie Albano noted in an interview during the 1990s: “In one weekend the YCL and CPUSA signed up over 100 new members. These ‘Communism is Dead’ headlines can’t cover up the crisis we face under capitalism. Young people face it in their daily lives, insecurity, anger, frustration, no future. Headlines should read ‘Capitalism is a Dead-End Future for Young People.’ Young people are responding to our message of struggle for jobs, peace, equality, and socialism.”^[55] Despite severe setbacks in Russia and much of Eastern Europe, communism was never extinguished. Why? The discontent from financialization and free trade helped keep it alive.

During the Great Recession (2008-2009), it appeared that the enemies of capitalism and laissez faire liberalism were vindicated. The consequences of financialization, labor arbitrage, and corporate globalism became apparent to all honest observers not stuck in the mire of worshipping “free markets.” Our foreign enemies sensed heightened American decline. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) stated in a foreign policy speech, “Washington technocrats backed austerity, deregulation, and privatization around the world. As one crisis after another hit, the economic security of working people around the globe was destroyed, reducing public faith in both capitalism and democracy.” [56] Occupy Wall Street demonstrations-which consisted of a mélange of Communists, neo-Nazis, anticorporate forces, and leftists of all stripes (including supporters of reformed capitalism) took to the streets to protest the real callousness and corruption of the Wall Street-Washington nexus of power. Our international adversaries welcomed these demonstrations as a vindication of anticapitalism and totalitarian collectivism. China^[57], Russia^[58], North Korea, Venezuela^[59], and Iran^[60] all hailed Occupy Wall Street as evidence of a collapsing America. Not only did Russia hail Occupy, but it actively used its agents to stoke unrest in the US by capitalizing on our homegrown injustices which often went unaddressed by our Federal government. One of the co-creators of Occupy Wall Street Micah White recalled that the Russians manipulated that movement for its own benefit. He wrote, “…Russia’s efforts are part of a larger shift in the nature of war in which activists are becoming the pawns of superpowers. We are witnessing the advent of social movement warfare: the deployment of social protest as an effective alternative to conventional military conflict. Russia’s attempts to foment, stage and manage social protest in Western democracies is a strategic response to allegedly American-funded ‘color revolutions’…”[61] Russian hackers utilized economic, racial, political, and social themes on social media posts (including on Facebook) to polarize Americans in an already deeply divided country. For example, some Russian ads promoted Black Lives Matter, while others warned that these groups posed a threat to society.[62] The Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the financialization of the US economy was viewed by the Chinese as evidence of the degeneration of capitalism and the superiority of public ownership of the means of production. Beijing believed that the subprime crisis would spark “profound social change”^[63] The Chinese also asserted that neoliberalism (free market fundamentalism) led to “social anxiety” and widespread dissatisfaction with capitalism. Beijing observed with satisfaction the growth of protests, political extremism, and the increasing potential for global unrest. The Chinese also were pleased with the growth of Marxism’s worldwide appeal. Another Chinese document asserted that the financial crisis of 2008 was a “heavy blow to the capitalist world…It exploded the myth advocated by some Western theorists that this is the end of history and capitalism will last forever…This will undoubtedly help the world socialist movement, currently at a low ebb, to march forward…”^[64] Beijing seemed to support global communist revolution when one publication urged that the Party should “courageously shoulder our necessary international responsibilities and obligations.”^[65] Perhaps in the wake of an economic collapse and subsequent depression in the US, Chinese forces would invade America under the guise of “restoring order,” “securing nuclear weapons from hostile militarists,” or “aiding progressive revolutionary forces.” Other dictatorships-supposed “friends” and foes hailed the collapse of neoliberalism as a blow to free enterprise and American hegemony. In a meeting with Russian Communists, Vladimir Putin happily noted to the assembled communists that “Confidence in the United States as the leader of the free world and the free market... has been undermined–for good–I think.” Hugo Chavez hailed the 2008 crisis as the “sinking of neoliberalism.”[66] In October 2008, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez commented, “This crash of capitalism and of neoliberalism will be worse than that of 1929. The world will never be the same after this crisis. A new world has to emerge, and it’s a multipolar world. We are decoupling from the wagon of death.”[67] The 20th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (IMCWP) viewed the “crisis of capitalism” as leading to “conflicts within the capitalist society itself and between the proletariat and bourgeoisie.”[68] An article in Challenge (the publication of the hardline Maoist-Communist Progressive Labor Party or PLP) noted: “Chinese capitalists are growing stronger while U.S. capitalists are starting to lose their grip. Ultimately, imperialism leads to war.”^[69] In October 2008, the Saudi Arabian writer Husayn Shubakshi noted that Milton Friedman’s theories are the “biggest loser” since “capitalism ‘becomes a beast’ if it is left without control and supervision…The world is watching the rebirth of the economic system and the end of the barbaric capitalist and stupid management era.”^[70] Hence, our adversaries and even opponents of capitalism in supposedly “friendly” authoritarian countries view neoliberalism as a weakness destroying American power. They welcomed our decline. Would this have happened during the Golden Age of American Capitalism (from the 1940s to the 1970s)? I think not. Again, the core of these economic problems is homegrown and self-inflicted by an economic and political elite afflicted by sociopathic greed, hubris, and ideology. As Joseph Shaanan wrote: “The lessons from the deregulation of the 1920s were lost or ignored. Forgotten was the role of financial laissez faire in promoting speculation and leverage with little protection for small investors.”^[71]

Meanwhile, the discontent with our economic and political system has increased tremendously since the 1970s. This is a threat for two reasons:

1) Seeds are already being planted for an eventual revolution in the US, especially if there is another cataclysmic collapse of the economy or/and war (with Russia and/or China).

2) Citizens will become so demoralized and disconnected from our established order and elites that they could potentially refuse to fight in a war for the survival of the US.

While the points made above may seem alarmist, there is historical precedent that we must take heed of. During the last years of World War I, the Russian people become disenchanted with the incompetence and corruption within the Czarist government and economic elites. Soldiers were refusing to fight and deserting the front, average citizens were hungry, and morale was collapsing. Lenin promised “Peace, Land, and Bread.”[72] How could he not win against the Czarist autocracy, the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky, and an out-of-touch elite? Detractors could point out that the membership numbers of extremist groups are small relative to the total American population. While that may be true, one must remember that the number of Bolsheviks relative to the Russian population was small. It was 200,000 Bolsheviks who took over the geographically large nation of Russia during a time of political, economic, and social chaos. (Russia at that time had a population of 91 million people.)^[73] Lenin correctly remarked, “Give us a handful of revolutionaries and we will overturn Russia.”^[74] In the case of the US, this could occur on the backdrop of an incompetent, plutocratic, and out-of-touch elite engaged in a war with Russia/China and attempting to manage an economic collapse. The polls and studies point to a latent anti-capitalist trend in all ideological segments of the American populace. Furthermore, polls and studies indicated a complete disconnect between the attitudes and mores of the wealthy versus the working classes. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in early October 2012, 57% of lower-income Republican and Republican-leaning voters said the government did too little for poor people. Just 18% said government did too much. By contrast, higher-income Republicans took the opposite view; by roughly two-to-one (44% to 21%) Republicans with incomes of $75,000 or more said the government does too much, not too little, for poor people.^[75] In a December 2011 poll, lower-income Republicans expressed a decidedly different view about the fairness of the economic system than did those with higher incomes. Republicans and GOP leaners with family incomes of less than $30,000 were much more likely than those with incomes of $75,000 or more to say the economic system unfairly favors the wealthy, that Wall Street does more harm than good, and that a few rich people and corporations have too much power.^[76] According to Zingales, sixty one percent of Americans believed that the “economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy.” Seventy seven percent believe that “a few rich people and corporations have too much power in this country.”^[77] According to a Fox News survey of 1,200 people, fifty three percent of Democrats believed that socialism was a “good thing.” Fifty-four people surveyed believed that the US was moving away from capitalism and towards socialism. Fourteen percent of Republicans surveyed believed that socialism was a “good thing.”^[78]

Americans join radical socialist and communist organizations largely due to the failed, false promises and lies of neoliberalism (Reaganomics). It’s pretty much that simple and confirmed by interviews with activists of the very same radical anti-capitalist groups. Unchecked neoliberal capitalism is the gasoline feeding the fires of anti-capitalism and socialism.

Mikayla Damon, the vice chairwoman of the Maine chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) noted, “A lot of us were told go to college, get a degree, and so many of us then got into horrible debt and now they can’t get a job in their field…The whole American dream promise they were sold has kind of died.”[79] Mounting college debt radicalized people like Ian Gunther, who accumulated $40,000 to $50,000 for an electrical engineering degree. As a result, he joined the DSA. Derek Beyer, an Air Force veteran who completed two tours each in Afghanistan and Iraq, became radicalized as a result of the “do-nothing” approach from the Obama Administration and poor decision making from the military leadership. When Beyer attended the People’s Summit in Chicago, he met with DSA members and the substance of their arguments made sense to him. After Trump became president, Beyer formed a DSA chapter in Milwaukee, which soon had 250 members. Mary Steffenhagen joined DSA when she realized that it was difficult for her to attain the American Dream (“get a degree, a salaried job with good benefits and own a home in a good neighborhood.”).[80] Spencer Potts, who started a chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists at the college he attended first became radicalized when his father was laid off from his unionized truck driver’s job. According to Potts, funds were tight, and the family had to subsist from his mother’s position as a hairdresser. This emotionally impacted Potts’ father. His father then became hopeful about Obama, but then became disillusioned over the Administration’s bailout of Wall Street. Philadelphia DSA co-chair Scott Jenkins recalled that his family was “decisively proletarianized” during the Great Recession of 2008. Natalie Midiri, an elected member of the national DSA’s political committee whose mother was laid off from the Recession, graduated from college in 2013 “without any clear job prospects, like most people at that time.” Melissa Naschek, a co-chair of the Philadelphia DSA, recalled, “Suddenly everything is just harder—keeping track of my money, constantly stressing about whether I can pay my bills.” According to Midri, the majority of DSA members in Philadelphia “have graduated in the last 10 or 15 years or so and are just really, really struggling.” Potts expressed his skepticism of the Democrats when he stated, “They have to represent their donors’ interests and their donors are the same people who laid off my father.” Dustin Guastella, who is a writer for Jacobin and a DSA member, grew up in a conservative family where he absorbed their ideas which blamed unions and high taxes for everything wrong in America. He was won over by his Marxist professor “especially the idea that workers are in a position of constant war with their employers.” Guastella argued, “I actually think it’s much easier to win working-class conservatives over to socialism than to win liberals over.”[81] As Joe Sims (now the Chairman of the CPUSA) reflected in the People’s World, “…it was Big Business’s maximum profit imperative, in a word, capitalism, that has precipitated the collapse of basic industry all across the country. It’s NAFTA, not socialism, that has held down wages and kicked U.S. workers in the gut.”[82] Austin D., who was a worker at Starbucks, joined the Red Guards in Pittsburgh. As Austin reflected, “I was feeling a little depressed and hopeless. I’d got out of undergrad with a lot of debt. I felt like the opportunities that I’d been taught were available, were not really available. I was still working the same minimum-wage job. My headspace was primed for someone who appeared to have all the answers.” This provided fertile ground for Austin to be recruited by the Red Guards. (Austin later left the Red Guards and claimed that it was a totalitarian cult which dictated where members could work, whom they could date, where they could live, and how they should behave, while administering harsh punishments to those who couldn’t conform.)[83] Timothy Faye, a leftist who attended the 2019 CPUSA convention in Chicago, observed “There’s a leftward shift among young people…It’s a reflection of the economic environment people are in.”^[84] Joe Sims of the CPUSA reflected, “Thoughts that I had made a bad choice after the fall of the Berlin Wall were tempered by the recurring economic downturns, the unrelenting attacks on labor, the heartless shredding of the social safety net and, to top it off, the wholesale robbery inflicted on Blacks, Latinos, and senior citizens during the banks’ subprime rip-off. Nothing like Wall Street barons stealing billions to revive your revolutionary vigor! That I made the right choice was recently reinforced once again by General Motors’ closing of its Lordstown assembly plant, yet another blow to the Youngstown area’s finest workers. Want to produce more communists? Keep it coming, GM!”^[85] The missteps and greed of Reaganite capitalism and globalism pushed a doubting Sims back into the communist camp. Nice work neoliberal capitalism! According to Aidan Lewis of the BBC, the CPUSA claimed “a small uptick in membership and payment of dues of late, attributing a surge in interest to the financial crisis of 2008 and-paradoxically-to right-wing attacks against ‘socialist’ Democrats for piquing the interest of some on the left.”^[86] Former Workers World Party (WWP) activist and ideological head of the Center for Political Innovation (CPI) Caleb Maupin argued that the communist movements today are “absolutely wrong” insofar that they cannot win workers to communism in America. He said: “…Working class families are more open to a socialist message than ever before. That labor aristocracy that kind of made the New Communist Movement impossible has been eroded…living standards have gone down. They have gone down. And with living standards going down, there is now more potential to win average American workers…white, black, Arab, Asian, Latino to a revolutionary class struggle message. And wherever you go in the United States, people feel that the government is run by a bunch of rich people who don’t care about them…people feel our freedoms are taken away and our civil liberties are under attack…the police state is out of control.”^[87] Danny Haiphong (who wrote for the Workers World Party newspaper Workers World^[88] and is affiliated with Democratic Socialists of America or DSA^[89]) is a self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist who praised contemporary Communist China. He is staunchly aligned with all of the geopolitical adversaries of the US.^[90] How did this come about? Haiphong was pushed (in part) towards communism through the real world effects of neoliberal economics on his family. In an interview, Haiphong recalled: “I grew up in a working-class community in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My father was a white union worker for the federal government and my mother was a Vietnamese woman who has consistently struggled with mental health issues and has thus struggled with employment. After the elimination of Glass Steagall, banks and creditors sold my mother the dream of owning land and great wealth. Her pursuit of these endeavors nearly left our family bankrupt and her massive credit card debt (upwards of a quarter million dollars by the 2000 economic crisis) forced my father to work sixty to seventy hours per week for several years to make up the difference. Even then he was forced to refinance the house that we lived in twice in order to pay a small portion of the tuition that my sister and I incurred from undergraduate school. It was in college that I was exposed to the one percent. Unlike many of my Black, brown, and white peers, I was able to attend an elite college and graduate. During this time, I frolicked in the same institution as our class enemy in the one percent. It drove me into depression. I thought about dropping out more than once.”^[91]

As I mentioned earlier in this essay, hostile foreign powers exploited the understandable disillusionment and anger for their own advantage. The goals of Moscow and Beijing is to ultimately collapse the US through (in part) the exploitation of all sorts of contradictions, fissures, and divisions-whether by class, race, or politics. While traveling to Russia (and after interviewing Putin) in February 2024, Tucker Carlson stated “Coming to a Russian grocery store, the ‘heart of evil,’ and seeing what things cost and how they live, it will radicalize you against our leaders. That’s how I feel, anyway, radicalized. We’re not making any of this up, by the way. At all.” After finding out that the cost of groceries in Russia were lower than that of the US, Carlson commented “And that’s when you start to realize that ideology doesn’t matter as much as you thought. If you take people’s standard of living and you tank it through filth and crime and inflation, and they literally can’t buy the groceries they want, at that point maybe maybe it matters less what you say or whether you’re a ‘good person’ or a ‘bad person,’ you’re wrecking people’s lives and their country. And that’s what our leaders have done to us.”[92] Whether this was a Potemkin Village tour or not is irrelevant. More and more Americans (including ones wielding considerable influence) are being swayed towards embracing foreign authoritarian systems as a panacea for our deep-seated problems resulting from neoliberalism (Reaganism). In an interview with a Chinese commentator for Wave Media, Jackson Hinkle (who is a leader affiliated with the American Communist Party) observed that average Americans “…are focused on real bread and butter issues…they are fearful about the fact that America is not tapping into our valuable resources like our oil and stuff because of that basic goods are so expensive…they’re very fearful about high housing prices and the lack of a basic social welfare state.” Hinkle contrasts the craphole of neoliberalism in America with the alleged superiority of totalitarian China. He stated, “I was talking to some people here in China about what does it look like for young people in terms of accessibility, to health care, schooling, housing, when you get older Social Security, once you retire and they explained it to me and I was like wow…it’s all encompassing like they’ve got you guys covered for the most part…maybe not housing but all the other things are pretty covered in America.” Towards the end of the interview, Hinkle stated, “when I go out and I see China, all I see is people working. I see development. I see a level of development in production that is unparalleled to the US…” Hinkle then ticked off all of the real problems plaguing average Americans: “…we have nothing…we have 80 million people who have no insurance or virtually no insurance and if you have to go to the hospital you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars housing…in cities, it’s getting crazy now…Social Security is not enough to really sustain life for most people once they retire and when it comes to education, we just talked about it, it’s very expensive and it’s not really educating anyone it’s propagandizing people so I think that Americans are focused on those issues…we’d have such a beautiful country, but the interests of the ruling class are so far out of step with the interests of the average people, so we have seen a lot about the classic US middle class life, in movies, and in TV shows like how you get a decent huge urban house and with dogs and cats and you send your kids to private schools…it used to be true. I always describe it our economy now is like when my grandparents were alive you could work one job at a factory and you’d have everything you needed and money to go take a vacation once a year, put your kids through school…you don’t have to worry about anything.” While I detest Hinkle’s political loyalties and foreign alliances, he is not wrong in the description of life for an increasing number of Americans. Hinkle also accurately described the employment dynamics of Americans: “Now you know we live in this Byzantine Labyrinth of an economy…it’s all speculation, debt, hedging your bets on stock…it’s not real…we don’t produce anything anymore, so those who are not at the skill level to participate in that section of the economy are delegated to work jobs like driving people around like Uber or delivering food for people Uber Eats. They’ll work those sorts of jobs, then they got to work a job as a waitress or a chef on top of that…It’s like you got to work two three jobs and then you have tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. The idea of even one day marrying someone buying an engagement ring buying a home having kids…it is just so crazy to even think about that because everyone’s just drowning in debt…healthcare debt, student loan debt, auto loan debt, those were lucky enough to get a home loan debt so I think um it’s really, really bad…”[93] While Hinkle and the CCP are clearly united in their common goal of destroying the US, we also have to be honest as anticommunists: he spoke the truth about the American reality. It pains me to point this out as a committed anti-totalitarian. However, the truth is the truth, and anticommunists need to forsake ideological rigidities of the Right and Left. Instead, we must examine the world based on how it exists. Another example is the case of the World Youth Festival (comprised of foreign communists) facilitated by the Russians. Noah Schenk from the Center for Political Innovation (CPI) provided some very interesting commentary on what he witnessed at the World Youth Festival. Schenk observed at a Festival Q&A with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin: “…there was a moment where we were all joining hands and uh there was a woman in front of me and uh there was a man in a wheelchair and he was sort of closed off and I watched her reach her hand down and grab his hand and they joined hands and I felt the warmth of humanity. I felt the human spirit and then and I see that all over all over this Festival. I see so many people join together, celebrating humanity. I see so much optimism I see so much hope. I see so many young people ready to unleash their potential and push humanity forward and then I thought back home and I thought about all the people who at home who can’t afford to get an education who ruined their lives with drugs because they live in a society that doesn’t care for them and I started to tear up because there’s these two sides and the more I thought about it the more I realized that this is the difference between a collapsing society in the West and the rising society that is in the BRICS nations in the new emerging economy today.”[94] Schenk contrasted the social atomism and selfish hyper-individualism rife in post-Reagan American society versus the cohesion and comradeship present at the Festival. Furthermore, Schenk witnessed the seeming love and camaraderie present in Putin’s authoritarian state and believed that it represented the wave of the future. Schenk “tearing up” is a further illustration of the failure by the elites in America to improve our society, especially for our most vulnerable. It points to our failure in the war for the “hearts and minds” and soul of average Americans. Putin responded to Schenk, “…our common goal is to provide the level playing field for everybody equal conditions for all but I’m convinced that if we are capable to establish a multi-polar world where we all are interdependent and mutually reinforcing social matters and welfare matters including health care and education will be resolved easier and more efficiently because joining hands we can attain more and do better. Thank you.”[95] Instead of being called names (like lazy, spoiled, weak, not manly, etc.) Putin was intelligent enough to respond with a message of (socialist sounding) brotherhood and pragmatic sounding problem solving. And meanwhile, the “anti-communists” such as James Lindsay and Austin Peterson will double down on deflections, callous Social Darwinism, and name-calling to those loyal Americans who question neoliberalism and hyper-individualism. Very few of these “anti-communists” ever point to the dangers emanating from Russia and China. Why? Well, Austin Peterson admitted to me on X/Twitter that his business inked deals with Communist China. Some “anti-communist!” Ignoring their palpably real differences, James Lindsay busily lumps in national conservatives, Nazis, non-toxic populists, and nationalists of all stripes as the “Woke Right.” To any student of even elementary political science, this is dishonest and does not merit further comment. He hardly brings up the mortal threat posed by the CCP or Putin’s Russia to the US. Nothing on the actual subversion of the US by Russian and Chinese assets. “Woke rightists” with few (if any) plutocratic donors and purple haired college students are the easy, preferred targets of the ideological bully James Lindsay. He lacks the bravery to take on the powerful and well-protected CCP and Russian state (or the wealthy plutocrats who, with a few exceptions, sold out the US for profit and prestige). Plutocrats and the pro-Gilded Age, Social Darwinist Right have empowered China and Russia through trade and policies which exacerbated class differences. Calling American workers, middle class, and the poor lazy, stupid, entitled, spoiled, etc. only serves to drive our citizenry into extremism-whether neo-Nazism, communism, socialism, or (toxic) populism. This essay is not meant to endorse China, Russia, the CPI, or Jackson Hinkle. Instead, it represents my tireless and seemingly thankless appeal to our ruling political/economic elites and for American citizens to militantly push for a vastly improved United States. My whole political project is to checkmate the domestic radicals and hostile geopolitical powers through nonideological means. This is why I cannot completely align myself with the “conservatives” let alone the radical anti-capitalists. If I were running for political office, I would open with a slogan to the 99% percent of Americans: “It’s not your fault!” Is this collision course of class antagonisms, decline in national morale, and rising power of Russia and especially China reversible? I would say “possibly yes!” Solutions would include the following steps:

1) Instead of doubling down on a form of capitalism which devalues labor, a Radical Civic Nationalist government will actively incentivize union membership when warranted. The pre-1980s countervailing power of labor needs to be restored. As John T. Harvey wrote in Forbes, “One way or another, however, the bottom line is that the workers have become increasingly weak opponents to management and ownership. Labor’s ability to negotiate has been systematically diminished while decreasing levels of competition have made it easier for businesses to stand firm. The consequence has been that the lion’s share of productivity increases has gone to high-wage earners and owners. This is an unsustainable model. If you want today’s youth to stop calling for socialism, then you need to fix capitalism. It wasn’t supposed to work like this.”[96] Or as FDR stated in an address to Congress on January 11, 1944, “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”^[97]

2) Our elites (both economic, academic-especially economists, and political) need to re-adopt long range thinking and planning. We need to proactively anticipate and fix problems before they careen out of control. However, Americans take a largely punitive (and not an institutional) approach to dealing with domestic challenges. This concerns me greatly. Perhaps Winston Churchill was at least partially correct when he stated, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.”[98]

3) No matter the injustices, Radical Civic Nationalist must continue to uphold free forms of government and private, competitive enterprise as a core value. Churchill was correct when he asserted on November 11, 1947: “Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”[99]

4) Quashing racial populism and xenophobia through counterpropaganda, national unity, and the restoration of “good government by the people and for the people,” “shared but earned prosperity,” and a multiracial populism. Several prominent personalities-liberal, conservative, and far leftist all endorsed my point of view. Multimillionaire investor and reform capitalist Nick Hanauer wrote, “Prosperity does not eliminate racism—but it is one hell of a distraction. When most citizens feel like they are winning and that their future is secure, it’s not so important to them that others lose.”[100] In addressing white working class hesitance in supporting the Reverand Jesse Jackson for President, UAW local (for Kenosha Wisconsin) President Ed Steagall commented back in 1988: “Jesse Jackson might be black, but Lee Iacocca’s white and he’s taking our jobs away.”[101] Race does not necessarily bind people together. Sometimes, economic differences are more profound and meaningful than racial, sexual, and religious differences. A multiracial, healthy populism is an answer to parochial prejudices and ignorance.

5) One of the tasks of a national patriotic education program is to develop a sense of kinship between Americans, irrespective of class, race, religion, and gender. Tools deployed in this effort will be curriculum and a mandatory national service component. Why the latter? Because our country and its people are so divided and isolated from each other, especially by class. National service will allow Americans from all different backgrounds to interact and truly appreciate each other as fellow citizens. Barriers will be broken. We need to deconstruct the “gated community” mindset in this country without resorting to Communism or National Socialism. Lastly, the curriculum will focus on America’s strengths, our positive traditions, and the machinations of our enemies. It should be pointed out that our curriculum will celebrate America’s positive social reforms and progressive changes and address our black spots. Why? Because Radical Civic Nationalism is based on truth and continuous improvement of country. As Maryland Governor Wes Moore noted at the Democratic National Convention (August 2024): “Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”[102]

6) Our shared, celebrated culture should be based on shared citizenship, a healthy individualism which doesn’t undermine our national interests, physical strength & health, intellectual growth, and entrepreneurship balanced with fealty to the public interest. However, ambition, strength, and nationalism should be balanced with an overall kindness and empathy as a shared national value. As FDR stated in a radio address on October 13, 1940: “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel in order to be tough. The vigorous expression of our American community spirit is truly important. The ancient injunction to love thy neighbor as thyself is still the force that animates our faith—a faith that we are determined shall live and conquer in a world poisoned by hatred and ravaged by war.”^[103]

7) Automation and labor-saving technology should not be used as a tool to simply fire workers in otherwise highly profitable corporations. Instead, we agree that the welfare of the workforce should be balanced with such innovation. As Theodore Roosevelt correctly recommended “When labor-saving machinery is introduced, special care should be taken—by the Government if necessary—to see that the wage-worker gets his share of the benefit, and that it is not all absorbed by the employer or capitalist.”[104] President Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz noted in a speech that “capitalism with a conscience and a government that says its business is people can meet the challenge of technology.”[105] What could happen if all of the gains are absorbed by majority shareholders, investors, and CEOs? Well, it could spark potentially revolutionary conditions. This was predicted by the Soviets during the height of the Cold War. According to defecting Czechoslovak Major General Jan Sejna, Konstantin Katushev, the Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, believed that the automation of our economy “was a de-stabilizing influence because it led to unemployment among unskilled workers and widened the social gap between the technocracy and the masses.” Katushev believed that the US was unable to deal with these issues, which would in turn lead to an economic collapse and the ascension of a transitional “progressive regime.”^[106]

8) In order to deradicalize a growing number of citizens (and members of extremist groups), our government needs to take leadership in seriously undertaking reforms in order to address popular grievances and improve our lived experiences. What is even more serious is the Russian and Chinese involvement in racial discord in the US. Gregory R. Copley, the editor of the Defense and Foreign Special Analysis reported that “local communist parties and well-funded ultra-left groups” that were “penetrated by the Communist Party of China’s (CPC’s) Ministry of State Security” were engaged in instances of “street violence.” This publication reported how MSS and CCP assets egged on the street violence, which empowered the overall anti-Trump activism. Furthermore, numerous Chinese nationals (“students and academics”-probable agents) “in the US have had visible and recorded contacts with some of the groups which sent out mobile strike teams to capitalize on the peaceful protests over the unlawful killing of George Floyd.”[107] Domestic communist extremists and their foreign sponsors are capitalizing on homegrown, very real injustices. As a country, we used to understand this. In its submission to the Supreme Court during the Brown vs. the Board of Education case, the Eisenhower Justice Department argued: “It is in the context of the present world struggle between freedom and tyranny that the problem of racial discrimination must be viewed. The United States is trying to prove to the people of the world, of every nationality, race, and color, that a free democracy is the most civilized and most secure form of government yet devised by man. We must set an example for others by showing firm determination to remove existing flaws in our democracy.”^[108] Forty-six years later, Zach Dorfman of the Aspen Institute wrote, “Our thought bubble: Racism and police violence in America are a national moral crisis. That crisis also creates fractures that have—and will continue to be—exploited by hostile foreign states. In that sense, the moral crisis is also a national security problem. The most effective way to end that vulnerability is to remedy the underlying injustice. The bottom line: We can count on Russian operatives to fill social media with deceptive, divisive messages. But it was American police officers who shot Tamir Rice while he played in a park, killed Breonna Taylor in her own home and asphyxiated George Floyd outside a convenience store. The wounds Russia keeps pouring salt on are American-made.”^[109]

9) Another way to combat neo-Nazi and other forms of anti-democratic, anti-capitalist extremism is through social reforms, such as massive infrastructure investments, re-industrialization, de-financialization, and restoration of government “of, for, and by the People” as opposed to plutocrats. According to Burley, in the wake of the East Palestine (Ohio) railroad accident (resulting from deregulatory policies), neofascist groups such as the Patriot Front, the National Justice Party, and the Patriotic Socialist Party “are exploiting the very real consequences of deindustrialization, deregulation and the lack of social services to make a case for their own fascist solutions, the same way they are trying to exploit cracks in the liberal consensus around U.S. foreign policy.”^[110] In a video, former neo-Nazi Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP) founder/leader Matt Heimbach elaborated as to why he embraced a very radical form of National Socialism: “I understand what brought me into the Movement was really seeing economic, social, and political alienation and abandonment of my community…”^[111] Despite my complete rejection of neo-Nazi ideology, Heimbach accurately implicated the role played by our economic elites (with many politicians in their pocket) in radicalizing at least some white working class and rural Americans. Tom Metzger of the neo-Nazi White Aryan Resistance (WAR) predicted, “As the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the massive influx of people from other nations, mostly nonwhite, and the exporting of more and more jobs from this country, you know, the chemistry is there, it’s like a bomb, waiting for someone to light the fuse.”[112] Dawud Salahuddin (born David Theodore Belfield) became militantly anti-American on the account of how he felt as an African American child where the “most damage done” to him was the feeling he had that it was “an indecency, an insufficiency, certainly a shame not to be white.” He was radicalized further when he viewed news footage of Birmingham (Alabama) Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor using violence to suppress civil rights demonstrators in 1963. Belfield recalled that this caused him to develop “an implacable hatred toward all symbols of American authority.” His biggest aspiration in his words was to “bring America to its knees, but I didn’t know how.” He linked up with the Iranians shortly after its Islamic Revolution in February 1979, becoming a security guard at its Washington DC-based Interests Section. He was then ordered (and paid $5,000) to assassinate Ali Akbar Tabatabai (in July 1980), who was a former press attaché at the Iranian Embassy in Washington DC (under the Shah). He then shortly thereafter fled to the Islamic Republic and later became a propagandist on Press TV.^[113] Again, homemade injustices made an American born citizen into a terrorist murderer working at the behest of one of our foreign enemies. Ironically, it was some neo-Nazis who provided the solutions to ultimately neutralize their cause. We should pay close attention to their points. Career Holocaust denier (and neo-Nazi) Ernst Zundel recollected that he told Canadian police (who interrogated Zundel often) and the media: “Don’t hound those kids of the Heritage Front (a Canadian neo-Nazi group). Don’t demonize them. Don’t marginalize them. Integrate them into society because they are also our children. Spend the same kind of care…loving care and money on funding projects…Don’t demonize them. Give them something to live for in this state or you are going to pay much more in manpower and money somewhere down the road. Because these kids are not going to just die to do you a favor.”^[114] In a video, Matt Heimbach believed that effective deradicalization: “…starts from a process of listening and humanizing people and trying to address root problems and actually treat violence as a symptom not something that just needs to be stamped out with a boot but you have to address things like mental health care, economic stability, housing, people not feeling like they are being listened to in a political system that forces them at least in their own mind to lash out in violent ways. That if you don’t start out in a from a point of compassion and understanding and humanizing people then all you’re ever going to do is see more tragic incidents of violence, more people throwing their lives away, and the problem is going to get worse…” Heimbach summed it up by “addressing the symptoms by addressing the causes…By addressing the roots causes of violent extremism, then the symptoms will resolve themselves.”^[115] In other words, dump Reaganomics, adopt Radical Civic Nationalism (radical centrism of the Michael Lind variety), and neo-Nazi and socialist/communist agitation will become largely irrelevant. It was President John F. Kennedy who warned back in 1962, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”^[116] Financial/geopolitical commentator Gerald Celente noted, “When people have nothing left to lose, and they’ve lost everything, they lose it.”^[117] Former CIA director Leon Panetta (who is no right winger by any stretch) stated in an interview (October 17, 2020): “We’ve got to be able to reach out to people who are angry and frustrated and who want to strike out. If we aren’t doing that. If we’re making some people feel like they can make it in this country and others not make it, then all we’re doing is planting the seeds for future Timothy McVeigh’s to do the kinds of things we saw in Oklahoma City. This is a real test. It’s a wake-up call for our country. It’s not just Russia. It’s not just China. It’s not just Iran. The reality is our country can collapse not just from foreign adversaries. We can collapse from within, and Oklahoma City is a reminder of that fact.”^[118] I’m not saying anything original. Democrats, liberals, antiestablishment types, neo-Nazis, leftists, and even intelligence officials are all repeating the same thoughts regarding the necessity of social reforms and responsive government. Yet, America remains what I term an “oligarchy with democratic trappings.” And a growing number of our citizenry are angry. This is a recipe for a potential disaster.

10) Our education program should include a curricular component which highlights the evils, crimes, and machinations of extremist ideologies and totalitarian collectivist foreign powers. Radical Civic Nationalists agree with Republican Governors such as Ron DeSantis on this count. Unlike Governor DeSantis and most of the other Republicans, Radical Civic Nationalists will not praise pre-New Deal free market fundamentalism or any form of neoliberalism as a road to what we term “Shared But Earned Prosperity.” One anticommunist textbook used in high schools back in the 1950s and 1960s was Democracy Versus Communism by Professor Kenneth Colegrove published in 1957. I first encountered this book back at my high school library. It (rightfully) bragged about all of the real achievements of the US and informed its readers of the terrible truth about Marxism-Leninism. I’d like to give the reader some samples of what Colegrove wrote. When addressing what I term “Shared But Earned Prosperity” (within a free enterprise framework), Colegrove wrote, “The wages of workmen in all countries of Western Europe and in the United States increased. Hours of work grew shorter. Workers were living more comfortably and had more social security. More of them owned their own homes and, in the United States, their own cars. Some were buying stocks and bonds of the business corporations for which they worked, becoming capitalists themselves. Company pension plans and government social security systems, to which employees and employers alike made payments, guaranteed funds to retired and unemployed workers. Men who worked on farms owned by other men were acquiring their own farms. Labor unions in Western Europe and in the United States grew strong. Democratic governments recognized the right of workers to form unions whose representatives could meet with employers to bargain over working conditions and wage rates.”^[119] Imagine that! Anti-communists praising unions, defined benefit pension plans, Social Security, and widespread home ownership. Unthinkable in today’s neoliberal United States. It gets even better! Colegrove wrote how, “Some Rules for Free Enterprise Are Necessary. We have traffic laws to regulate automobile and truck travel. We also have some rules and regulations concerning business and employment practices. To guard public health, doctors, dentists, registered nurses, and druggists have to meet certain educational requirements set by our state governments. Business and industry must observe regulations such as the Pure Food and Drug laws. These laws protect the great majority of fair minded businessmen and manufacturers from the few who try to sell shoddy, impure, or dangerous goods to the public. There are also laws that apply to hours of work, minimum wage rates, and other matters concerning working conditions, thus giving workers more protection. Other national and state laws regulate banking, insurance, and the buying and selling of stocks and bonds. All these laws aim to protect the many from a few ‘sharp operators.’”^[120] Wow! An anticommunist book praising regulations, including laws against “sharp operators” and worker protections. Since the triumph of neoliberalism, all of the economic reforms praised in books such as Democracy Versus Communism are now damned as “socialism” and unneeded interventionism. A free enterprise system will be harnessed to achieve the goals of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights.[121] Would the goals be guaranteed by law? Not necessarily, but it will be fairly simple to achieve as long as employees work diligently and reliably for their employers. Non-communist/non-fascist unions, very strict anti-lobbying laws, public campaign finance programs, and public regulations (many of which were slowly eviscerated since the late 1970s) will be reinstated or incentivized (when appropriate) to achieve the goals as outlined by FDR back in 1944. What were FDR’s goals? See them below (with my additional comments).

A) The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation. This will give men and women a sense of pride, accomplishment, and reinforce the work ethic. A job allows the citizen the opportunity for social mobility through promotions at their workplace, etc. (which leads the employee to attain a higher income, which in turn leads to property ownership, etc.)

B) The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation. Through strong unions and minimum wage laws (preferably the latter). Public laws will incentivize business to reward higher wages and solid benefits for their workers.

C) The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living. This will keep our critical food production within our own borders, preserve/encourage a sense of community, encourage generational wealth, and diffuse private property ownership. This is a far better solution than fascist and communist collectivist slavery and the financialized private monopolies which have no regard to the Nation and its community.

D) The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom. from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad. This plank preserves economic sovereignty of American firms, especially in the face of dumping by state-subsidized and government-owned enterprises by our “allies” and especially our geopolitical adversaries.

E) The right of every family to a decent home. This will create a sense of community, incentivize generational wealth, reduce homelessness, and help preserve the family unit.

F) The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. This is just as pro-life of a position as opposition to abortion. Perhaps it is even more of a pro-life position than the anti-abortion groups and leaders.

G) The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment. In addition to the obvious benefits, this will prove to our citizenry that our government is truly committed to their welfare. In turn, the loyalty of our population will be secured, which is vital especially if our Nation is involved in a war for its survival. Existing, strengthened public laws and our Social Security program are tools to accomplish this mission. The retirement age for citizens to collect full Social Security payments will be lowered back to 65 years of age. Our Federal government will implement a Medicare for All program or reintroduce a private health insurance system based on a largely nonprofit business model.

H) The right to a good education. This will enhance our capacity to innovate and encourage the “best and brightest” minds. In turn, this education program will modernize and further expand our industrial, scientific, and defense capacity as much as any tariff or investment policies.[122]

11) Radical Civic Nationalism seeks to achieve an equilibrium of power between all classes. Our system seeks to empower the working and middle classes, protect them against exploitation by private sector oligarchs, and safeguard the wealthy against anti-capitalist revolutionary challenges. FDR stated in an October 31, 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden: “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”^[123] Teddy Roosevelt wrote in a letter that “I do not believe that it is wise or safe for us as a party to take refuge in mere negation and to say that there are no evils to be corrected. It seems to me that our attitude should be one of correcting the evils and thereby showing that, whereas the Populists, Socialists, and others really do not correct the evils at all , or else only do so at the expense of producing others in aggravated form, on the contrary we Republicans hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other. I understand perfectly that such an attitude of moderation is apt to be misunderstood when passions are greatly excited and when victory is apt to rest with the extremists on one side or the other; yet I think it is in the long run the only wise attitude.”^[124] Anti-communist social democrat Carl Gershman wrote in 1980: “...Surely it is not beyond our capacity as a society to order our affairs in a less self-defeating way: to keep the economy in proper balance, to steer investment to areas of critical national need, to achieve wage and price stabilization through, agreements based on common restraint and enlightened self-interest, to sustain employment, and to protect individuals from economic misfortune without discouraging the ethic of work.”^[125]

12) Ultimately, public law and its police power will be deployed to force private sector oligarchs to comply with our social reforms. (Which ultimately stabilizes their power and still enhances/preserves their wealth!) Unfortunately, the private sector oligarchs are so entranced in their power that they refuse to collaborate with unions or even care about the horrendous working conditions at their stores, warehouses, and factories. When referring to Jeff Bezos and his exploitative labor practices at Amazon, multimillionaire investor Nick Hanauer (who knew Bezos personally) stated, “They’re super exploitive—just unacceptable…What I can guarantee you is that Jeff Bezos is not going to change those things in the absence of somebody putting essentially a gun to his head and forcing him to do it.”[126] Just as we eschew an economy dominated and dictated by unions, we equally oppose the current hyper-capitalist system where virtually all of the power is concentrated in a clique of sociopathic oligarchs.

13) “Conservatives” and libertarians need to stop their reverse class warfare and condescension against the working, middle, and poorer classes. Let’s face it, a vast number of commentators, politicians, and businesspeople on the so-called “Right” are literal adversaries of everyday Americans. Their own statements and class prejudices confirm this. A video produced by Turning Point USA (TPUSA) stupidly asserted: “Socialism Is For The Lazy & Unmotivated...Capitalism Is For Hard Workers & The People Who Want To Contribute To Society!”^[127] Ayn Rand disciple and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noted, “Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”^[128] Richard Hanania posted, “White nationalists talk about the Faustian spirit of European man, then favor fat people who don’t even have the ambition to leave their decaying post industrial towns over those who pick up and start a new life on the other side of the world.”[129] Self-styled “anticommunist” James Lindsay wrote in the wake of the H-1B visa firestorm this month (December 2024): “It’s ‘right-wing’ people with ‘traditionalist’ values who act like Leftists: victim mentality, identity politics, poor me, need government power to force people to behave, etc.”[130] Elon Musk believes that Americans who disagree with him on the H-1B visa program are “retarded.”[131] The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire posted on X: “There’s a cheap, affordable way to reduce the homeless population to zero.” [132] While attending a private dinner party, historian Rick Perlstein met with billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. According to Perlstein, “I knew from The New Yorker that Andreessen had grown up in an impoverished agricultural small town in Wisconsin, and despised it. But I certainly was not prepared for his vituperation on the subject. He made it clear that people who chose not to leave such places deserved whatever impoverishment, cultural and political neglect, and alienation they suffered.” Perlstein then recalled, “I brought up the ordinary comforts of kinship, friendship, craft, memory, legend, lore, skills passed down across generations, and other benefits that small towns provide: things that make human beings human beings. I pointed out that there must be something in the kind of places he grew up in worth preserving. I dared venture that it is always worth mourning when a venerable human community passes from the Earth; that maybe people are more than just figures finding their proper price on the balance sheet of life.” Andreessen then responded, “I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.”[133] There are national security challenges behind this class-based condescension. Communists have sought to exploit these real-world prejudices and tone-deaf comments to their advantage. As a former Florida youth leader of the CPUSA and Central Committee member of the Party of Communists, USA (PCUSA) Kenneth Stoltman recalled to me: “…they (PCUSA leadership) told me to recruit people associated with worker groups, unions, and people fighting for union representation. Once again, they explained that due to Florida being a ‘Right to Work’ state, many people in unions or who could not get union representation were very sympathetic to causes that would fight for them to have more representation vis a vis their employers. With active union busting taking place in Florida and much of our state government being anti-union and consisting of politicians who believe in total laissez faire economics, many workers would be disenfranchised and open to propaganda. I recall the exact words spoken by the national chair when he said these things about Floridian politicians and laissez faire types: ‘The propaganda writes itself.’ This was the last major project I worked on in the communist party with moderate success bringing in four people before I broke the cardinal rule of the party I read so called ‘Counter-revolutionary’ writings. I finally came to my senses about the Party, where we spent a great amount of time discussing our methods, brushing off our mistakes, and all together justifying murder. However, I cannot help but watch the politics in our nation unfolding, listening to the supposed anti-communists and reading their economic policies and thinking back on the words spoken to me by the national chair of the Politburo of the PCUSA ‘the propaganda writes itself.’”^[134] Former Communist James Burnham noted “In the struggle against internal communism, these negative qualities of the American businessmen are discouragingly apparent. Some of the businessmen, plain and simple reactionaries, are absolutely anti-union. They would like literally to smash the trade unions. Since their likes become known, they too help to alienate the proletariat and to heap up grist for the communist propaganda mill…Others, from ignorance or greed or both, act toward to unions in such a way as to aid communist led unions against anti-communist unions.”^[135] Our understanding of a functioning economy is twofold: the wealthy risk their assets and diligently work (often at all hours) to ensure that their firms are run profitably and efficiently. On the other hand, the wealthy need to appreciate how they became even richer (or rich): through the toil (and sacrifices) of their employees.

14) While Radical Civic Nationalists should expose Russian and Chinese efforts to accelerate and capitalize on demoralization within the American populace, our government needs to take the lead in SOLVING our domestic problems in a systematic fashion. This will in turn neutralize any headway made by Russian/Chinese demoralization operations. Again, our problems are mostly homegrown and self-inflicted. A Radical Civic Nationalist government will proactively tackle these problems as best as possible without having any utopian illusions. Unfortunately, many within our elites double down on American Exceptionalism without indicating any desire to improve conditions for the vast majority of our citizenry. In response to Tucker Carlson’s encomiums while in Putin’s Russia, Jon Stewart stated “The difference between our urinal-caked subways and your candelabra beautiful subways is the literal price of freedom.”[136] What was missing in this exchange is one can have political freedom and first-rate infrastructure. One can have both! Ardent pro-China, pro-Russia activist and writer Danny Haiphong (who wrote for Workers World) noted in a June 11, 2024 article in Beijing Review: “Blaming China won’t address any self-inflicted wounds. It is U.S. policy, or rather the lack thereof, that is responsible for making American society an attractive market for the illicit drug trade. Despair, stress, poverty and racial discrimination make for a toxic mix that continues to fester and grow in the heart of American society. Political leaders and their elite sponsors are the ones who need to be held accountable. Not China.”^[137] Haiphong is correct in implicating corporate capitalism/Big Pharma in the opioid epidemic. It is psychopathic greed. Anti-CCP (Chinese Communist Party) politicians are also correct in pointing their fingers at Communist China. Beijing seeks to undermine the US in part to demoralize and addict the youth, thereby sabotaging our abilities to create a healthy population capable of working, serving as a new elite to lead the nation, and serve in the military as able-bodied soldiers.

15) While retaining our staunch anti-communism and anti-fascism, we also have to tell the truth about the failings of capitalism and recognize that some of the arguments posed by anti-capitalists have some merit. This will serve to outflank communists and neo-fascists, thus neutralizing their appeal on points where they are correct (for the wrong reasons and deployed for the wrong goals). Soviet dictator Stalin noted in an interview dated March 1, 1936: “It is difficult for me to imagine what ‘personal liberty’ is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.”^[138] Was this a correct statement unto itself? I’m afraid it is “yes.” An unemployed (or underemployed) person cannot enjoy the same freedoms as those who have jobs paying solid salaries and benefits. Since the latter has access to resources which keep them healthy, well fed, and protected from the elements outside, the gainfully employed have the mental and physical energy to survive, exercise, travel, procreate, and make intellectual judgements (such as determining the best candidates in elections). How is a starving or even underemployed person free? Free to die? We as Americans need to do better! Oswald Mosley of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) noted in Fascist Voices: Essays from the Fascist Quarterly 1936-1940 Volume 1 “The only effective struggle against Bolshevism is the elimination of Capitalism.”[139] Does that mean we should abolish capitalism? No! However, the best way to neutralize the appeal of communism (or fascism) is to undertake social reforms to outlaw the most predatory and exploitative aspects of neoliberal capitalism. In other words, no more Gilded Age economics! On other occasions, some Marxist economists and academics had more of a truthful understanding of neoliberalism as it exists, as opposed to “free market” advocates who officially live in a utopian fairyland of how Reaganomics/Thatcherism works. British Marxist professor David Harvey correctly stated that the sharp and volatile contradictions in neo-liberal capitalism contained nine stages of ultimate rot and collapse: the power of labor is broken and wages suppressed while corporate profits increased; the increase in consumer credit (mortgages and credit cards) to make up for lost wages and maintain demand; an eventual avalanche of debt defaults; a resultant failure of large financial institutions; and the crisis spreading in other parts of the world.^[140] Harvey’s analysis was closer to the truth on how neoliberalism (Reaganomics/Thatcherism) operated. The S&L crisis, Great Recession of 2008/2009, the economic depression resulting from deindustrialization, and the inflation (brought about by globalized supply chain issues and corporate price gouging) all point to the accuracy of Harvey’s analysis. Even aspects of Marxist and Leninist analysis of capitalism have grains of truth. Karl Marx differentiated what he termed “fictitious capital” (fiktives Kapital) from “real capital,” which represent physical economy and labor, and “money capital,” which are funds held. Fictitious capital represents “accumulated claims, legal titles, to future production.”[141] Well, this exists today! Think private equity versus your local factory, neighborhood store, or tech startup. Lenin wrote, “…imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries…Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by ‘clipping coupons,’ who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness. The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies.”^[142] Well, Lenin was correct in respect to the dynamics and trends within capitalism. Shareholder supremacy and other byproducts of the economic policy of financialization and monopolization confirms the relevance of Lenin’s points. Financial extraction (or rent-seeking) trumped industrial production in the modern era of neoliberal capitalism. Does this mean that we support Marxism and Leninism as a blueprint for governance or economic policy? “Hell no!” Marx and Lenin were knaves and authoritarian-minded to the extreme. Soviet propaganda during the 1980s also contained grains of truth in respect to the American economy under President Reagan. Soviet economist Nikolai Shmelev observed for an article in Kommunist (March 1985) that the proliferation of credit/over-financialization of the global capitalist economy would result in its ultimate collapse. He wrote “…Today, when the economic interdependence of all capitalist countries has grown so greatly, the potential explosion of the financial chain is becoming not just a national, but a serious international danger…”^[143] The collapse of the S&L market during the late 1980s and the 2008/2009 Great Recession are examples of Shmelov’s point. In a May 1, 1987 article in Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), Lyndon LaRouche (a former communist turned fascist) noted in an interview, “…we who adhere to the American System place the emphasis on technological progress in production of physical goods, whereas today’s ‘free enterprise’ ideologues mean a kind of pre-capitalist rentier-finance system of usury, a system at least as old as the Philistines, the system best known in feudal Europe as the Lombard system.”[144] Like Marx and Lenin, LaRouche was correct on the existence of this dichotomy within the free enterprise system. As Radical Civic Nationalists, we prioritize production as opposed to extreme forms of financial rent-seeking/extraction. Lastly, commentators like Hanania and Lindsay should be extra mindful of the potential consequences of their often callous and Social Darwinist rhetoric deployed against much of the American working and middle classes. Why? Well, a clever propagandist for the neo-Nazi cause could juxtapose the statements of Hanania/Lindsay with the Volksgemeinschaft (or comradeship) of all the social classes in National Socialist Germany. An activist in a neo-Nazi group could portray the stoutest advocates of liberalism as enemies of the white working classes and poor versus the Third Reich which treated Germany’s lower classes as equals to the aristocrats and industrialists. This could then turn white citizens against elitist forms of liberalism. Believe me, there are political activists out there who are smarter and cleverer than I am. And possessed with a hatred of non-white citizens/immigrants, free economies, and governments based on checks and balances. Despite their incredibly cruel totalitarianism and corruption, the Nazis did institute at least an atmosphere of class solidarity within the Volksgemeinschaft (People’s Community). One German recalled to Milton Mayer (who was an anti-Nazi, Jewish progressive journalist), “For the first time in my life I was really the peer of men who, in the Kaiser time and in the Weimar time, had always belonged to classes lower or higher than my own, men whom one had always looked down on or up to, but never at. In the Labor Front-I represented the teachers’ association-I came to know such people at first hand, to know their lives and to have them know mine…National Socialism broke down that separation, that class distinction. Democracy-such democracy as we had had-didn’t do it and is not doing it now.” Wedekind, a baker told Milton Mayer that “we simple working class men stood side by side with learned men, in the Labor Front.”[145] Juxtapose this class solidarity versus Hanania/Lindsay and you will quickly conclude that elitist liberalism has a severe image problem. To defeat the forces of radical anti-capitalism, America needs to return to the basics of social reform in order to neutralize the plausible points made by and the effective demagoguery of the totalitarian camp. Again, the dysfunctions of unrestrained capitalism and unvarnished liberalism are homegrown. How? They do not take into the account the aggregation of extreme, unaccountable power of plutocrats and its encouragement of extreme wealth/income inequality. As I have pointed out throughout this essay, this is a recipe for radicalism and overall disaster.

16) Many within the private sector oligarch class are enemies of ordinary Americans and national security. The latter is true and was pointed out in my essay The Hard Truth of Capitalism: Clashes with National Security. Both our geopolitical enemies and many billionaires admitted this truth in one form or another. Soviet spy and member of the National Minorities Commission of the CPUSA Sandor Goldberger (a.k.a. J. Peters) wryly remarked to former Daily Worker editor Louis Budenz, “Some of these monopoly capitalists too, these Big Business men, will undoubtedly sell out the ‘Four Freedoms’ for Soviet trade just as some others sold out to Hitler.”[146] More than eighty years later, this trend continued. While at a dinner party hosted by tech billionaire Marc Andreessen, historian Rick Perlstein recalled how another wealthy investor “fervently defended the CCP. I was gently mocked for arguing that the Chinese people deserved freedom instead.”[147] Many “conservatives” and libertarians allied to the private sector oligarchs are often the staunchest advocates for accommodations in one form or another with communist and other anti-US geopolitical actors. While responding to a Nixon critic on X/Twitter, Richard Hanania posted, “I agree with you on all except we should have normalized relations with the CCP.”[148] We are living in a world governed as plutocracies (increasingly masquerading as democracies, such as the US), authentic liberal democracies, and authoritarian dictatorships of all flavors. Corporate titan Arthur Jensen (played by Ned Beatty) stated on the movie The Network (1976): “There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon.”[149] Truth is even stranger than fiction.

So, where do we go from here? A good first step is to provide copies (paper or electronic) of this essay to friends and family who are politically engaged. Focus on distributing this essay to those who are open minded and/or politically influential (in any form). Admittedly, Radical Civic Nationalists have an extremely heavy task of providing an alternative story to the dominant neo-liberal, hyper-corporate narrative on economics and history. We are placed in a position to compete against those who have oversized megaphones and microphones. However, conditions favor popular opposition to neoliberalism. Radical Civic Nationalists need to unify with those elements of the Right and Left who oppose Reaganomics (neoliberalism) and collectivist totalitarianism. Personally, I have been engaged in such efforts on X/Twitter and my podcast (called New Ideas-formerly The Politically Homeless Podcast) with mixed success. While my setbacks are deeply discouraging at times, my commitment to the cause of a strengthened, improved United States keeps me in the fight. Authentic American antifascists and anticommunists must reject punitive solutions, political tribalism, and embrace proactive, nonideological solutions to neutralize the very real appeals of various forms of toxic populism and authoritarian collectivism. Our Nation and its citizens depend on the implementation of long-term, strategic thinking amongst our policy-making elites (and the swathe of influential economic and academic elites). Let us all pray that our country does not descent into a corrupt authoritarian “populism” or a private sector dominated oligarchy masquerading as a “limited government” (on the model of the US as portrayed in the film/series 2073[150] and Incorporated.[151])

---

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[124] Joseph Bucklin Bishop Theodore Roosevelt and His Time Shown in His Own Letters: Ancestry, childhood and youth University of Georgia Libraries 1920 Accessed From: https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QacTRoWGwsPrVVXQ-2SCAQPVeJm50ghHxz4aabsg-0RDTlgokiapmzEbUshQPrvEwPXbfVVdCIcmw4Ew3GBRINt6ATny3egqOZfodwnRL0GOT4_1DcKlKjbcNMdWrpwjmYHHdx0wtnyfo49syFw4dny9uWz0864J0y8YYN50t950PZkYMgjySDY4ADQehERyI0zihr2yQj5MwJx7vNIpd2OXizj9HLrJhfXHSmEFBDnLfyD31F3ypQElDIomdZoOVhzxA-_X2Fa75C6CLTqv1RGPwDYi4A

[125] Carl Gershman “Why the Right Is Dead Wrong” New America Volume 17 Number 7 July/August 1980 page 6.

[126] Rick Wartzman “Battling Income Inequality With Second Avenue Partners’ Nick Hanauer” May 17, 2018 Accessed From: https://capitalandmain.com/battling-income-inequality-with-second-avenue-partners-nick-hanauer-0517

[127] Accessed From: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1416083865230739

[128] Justin Martin Greenspan: The Man Behind Money (Basic Books 2001) page 47.

[129] Accessed From: https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1873181150044406121

[130] Accessed From: https://x.com/ConceptualJames/status/1873578342731194483

[131] Accessed From: https://x.com/NakshePad/status/1872466288435728746/photo/1 AND https://x.com/NakshePad/status/1872466288435728746/photo/2

[132] Accessed From:

https://twitter.com/LPNH/status/1873780796341051861

[133] Rick Perlstein “My Dinner With Andreessen” The American Prospect April 24, 2024 Accessed From: https://prospect.org/power/2024-04-24-my-dinner-with-andreessen/

[134] Personal Correspondence Kenneth Stoltman Party of Communists USA and CPUSA 10/29/2017 7:05 pm Facebook Private Message

[135] Burnham, James The Coming Defeat of Communism (Lightning Source Incorporated 1950, 2008) pages 248-271.

[136] Sophie Lloyd “Jon Stewart Tears Apart Tucker Carlson” Newsweek February 20, 2024 Accessed From: https://www.newsweek.com/jon-stewart-tucker-carlson-daily-show-moscow-russia-vladimir-putin-1871395

[137] Danny Haiphong “Pointing fingers, missing solutions” Beijing Review June 11, 2024 Accessed From: https://www.bjreview.com/Opinion/Pacific_Dialogue/202406/t20240611_800368447.html

[138] Interview Between J. Stalin and Roy Howard March 1, 1936 Accessed From: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/03/01.htm

^[139] Quoted from Oswald Mosley, Fascist Voices: Essays from the Fascist Quarterly 1936-1940 Volume 1 Accessed From: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1351817.Oswald_Mosley#:~:text=The%20only%20effective%20struggle%20against%20Bolshevism%20is%20the%20elimination%20of%20Capitalism.&text=It%20is%20the%20principal%20paradox,State%20is%20now%20effectively%20inhibited

[140] “Internal contradictions of capital accumulation” Accessed From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_contradictions_of_capital_accumulation AND RSA ANIMATE: Crises of Capitalism Accessed From:

[141] Karl Marx Capital: Volume 3 (Pelican Edition) page 599.

[142] Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism Accessed From: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch08.htm

[143] Nikolai Shmelev “World of Capitalism Under the Burden of Debts” Kommunist Number 4 March 1985 Accessed From: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA373336.pdf

[144] “LaRouche views capitalism’s future after the 1987 crash” Executive Intelligence Review Volume 14 Number 18 May 1, 1987 Accessed From: https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1987/eirv14n18-19870501/eirv14n18-19870501_040-larouche_views_capitalisms_futur.pdf

[145] Milton Mayer They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 (University of Chicago Press 1966) page 105.

[146] Budenz, Louis. This Is My Story (Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill book Company, Incorporated, 1947) page 340.

[147] Accessed From:

https://twitter.com/rickperlstein/status/1874247034217390500

[148] Accessed From: https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1854285307417653607

[149] Ned Beatty: Arthur Jensen Accessed From: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/characters/nm0000885

[150] 2073-Official Trailer Accessed From:

[151] “Incorporated TV Series” Accessed From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series)