By HASMAESTRI RIVER*
Donald Trump's current initiative has as its central objective a distancing, albeit relative, from Russia of the People's Republic of China in favor of the United States, in a reversal of the early 1970s pact between Mao Tsé-Tung and Nixon
There was no improvisation. It was a deliberate declaration of war. JD Vance arrived at the 61st meeting of the Munich Conference on European Security to throw a bucket of water on the fire of the fierce defenders of the fight against the Russian Federation in Ukraine, to the last Ukrainian, as is tradition. This was expected. The enormous perplexity was the general disapproval of the governments of the European Union for the new Trumpist leadership of the United States, which presented itself as a defender of the violated democratic rights of the population of the Old World.
The historic statement of February 4 was not an extravagant media message from Donald Trump, in the style of his fanciful promise to conquer Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and to demand 500 billion dollars from the defeated Ukraine. It was made by the vice president of the United States, flanked by high-ranking officials of the new administration, including Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, at the major public-private global event on military affairs, a traditional moment for discussing security issues in Europe and the world, with an Atlanticist bias.
In 2024, the Conference had around a thousand participants, from a hundred countries, and around sixty heads of state were expected this year. [DW, 11/02/2025.] The meeting began under dark clouds for the representatives of the warmongering European nations who remained fixated on continuing the fighting in Ukraine, with the hope of being able to drag the United States into the conflict, even against the will of its current presidency.
Without warning their historic post-World War II allies, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had unexpectedly spoken by telephone for an hour and a half the previous Wednesday, the 12th, about peace in Ukraine and several other global and continental issues, which further alarmed the European Union. At a trot and gallop, Washington and Moscow arranged a meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to be held on Tuesday, February 18, to open the substantive discussions. At the meeting, it was agreed to restore Russian and US diplomatic representations, decimated by the Biden administration as part of the siege of the Russian Federation.
The world turned upside down
Donald Trump, after his conversation with Vladimir Putin, formally communicated his conversation to Volodymyr Zelensky, who had not even been invited to his inauguration, despite having expressed interest in attending on several occasions. Volodymyr Zelensky's term in office ended months ago, and he himself pushed through a Ukrainian constitutional provision that makes anyone who discusses concessions to the country's territory a traitor.
Volodymyr Zelensky understands that his sell-by date has passed. The end of the war worries the former comedian, who was elected on the basis of a proposal to move closer to the Russian Federation. He rightly fears that he will be held responsible for Ukraine’s total defeat and the loss of part of its territories. New Russia, for hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians, for compromising the country's destiny for at least decades.
With his presidential term having expired months ago, the now bionic president will find it difficult to live in Ukraine after elections, which, according to leaks from discussions in Riyadh, are expected to take place shortly after the fighting has been suspended, so that final discussions can be concluded and peace can be signed by a legitimate Ukrainian government.
Donald Trump has reiterated Vladimir Putin's proposal that Volodymyr Zelensky should not sign any peace treaty due to his lack of representation. And now he has literally accused him of being a dictator for resisting calling elections. In response, Donald Trump's media account was taken offline on Zelensky's orders.
Volodymyr Zelensky is unlikely to run in the elections due to his current lack of prestige, which is likely to become more severe as the fighting approaches and presidential candidates are launched. It is believed that after or even before the elections, he will leave to live comfortably abroad, since his stay in Ukraine would be impossible for political reasons and for reasons related to his personal, physical and legal security.
Trump, Xi and Putin in PraRed Dog
The current leaders of the European Union are terrified by the possibility that Donald Trump, together with Xi Jinping, will appear alongside Vladimir Putin on May 9th in Red Square to celebrate the XNUMXth anniversary of the victory over Nazism in World War II. The celebrations of the end of that conflict, which claimed the lives of twenty-five million Soviets, and the victory that freed Europe from fascism, will be fueled by the success in the fight against the NATO offensive in Ukraine.
Xi Jinping has already confirmed his presence and Vladimir Putin has reportedly declared the Russian Federation's pleasure in welcoming Donald Trump to the celebration. If this scenario comes to fruition, it will allow for an iconic photo of the three world leaders, just like the one of Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in 1945. It would be a coup. to rengue a cusco, in the Russophobia of the European Union, exacerbated in the last three years, and still in full swing.
As for the former European allies of the US Democratic government of Joe Biden, who are trying to continue fighting the Russian Federation a little further, Donald Trump did not even communicate, beforehand, the decision to speak by telephone with Vladimir Putin, or the content of the conversation, after its conclusion.
In a poisoned opening, Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, proposed that European nations that are still on the warpath will be incorporated into the discussions later, especially since only they can suspend the sanctions they approved against the Russian Federation.
Starting at the end
On Wednesday the 19th, a new package of sanctions against Moscow was approved, to be ratified on February 24th, the third anniversary of the beginning of the conflict, by the foreign ministers of the Bloc, among them the unreliable ministers of Hungary and Slovakia. This is a kind of slight, a bitter bitterness, for the European Union, for having been abandoned by its love of the day, the United States.
In the context of the opening of negotiations, the Trump government recalled that the return of the Russian side to Ukraine is “illusory”. New Russia lost and “impractical” its entry, today or tomorrow, into NATO. And now, it would be agreeing to the withdrawal of US troops deployed by Joe Biden in the Baltic countries, tiny nations that drool blood against the Russian Federation.
This would be a first response to Vladimir Putin’s demand for an even more significant withdrawal of NATO from the Federation’s borders. Moscow’s unavoidable demands to end the conflict, which warmongering Europe and the Joe Biden administration intended to deny, in whole or in part, to a Russian Federation drained of blood by the continuation and intensification of the fighting. All of this would be financed and guaranteed by US resources that would continue to arrive with the victory of Kamala Harris, who would replace the senile Joe Biden as the showcase of the globalist US government.
By opening direct talks with the Russian Federation, ignoring Euro-Atlantic governance, Donald Trump reminds us that Russia won the conflict and that it was Biden's globalist Democrats who invented and sustained it. Donald Trump is simply blaming the war and Volodymyr Zelensky on the Democratic administration's past, which he refuses to pay for. And, after clearing the ground, he proposes to reset in depth US international policy. Whether it will be able to do so is another question.
To gwar ccontinuous
The current confusion and disintegration of European Atlanticism, responsible for the advanced construction of supranational governance in the Old World at the service of globalized capital, is enormous. The European Parliament and the bureaucracy of the European Union, personified by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, literally govern European national governments. They have been sanctified as instances of democratic management, especially after the ouster of JD Vance.
In obedience to globalized big capital, they police national budgets, impose cuts in social spending, order repression of family farming, increase the population's debt, impose rules and laws in an infinite number of domains, castrating national autonomy and repressing the will and opposition of the population and workers. And they force, through seduction and slaps, the inclusion of peripheral nations in the European Union and NATO, to extend the radius of their hegemony.
It was part of the globalist project, led for decades by US imperialism, especially by the Democrats of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, to disorganize and destroy the Russian Federation and China, in favor of the US and, secondarily, of the associated European imperialist nations. The instruments chosen were sanctions, economic combat, diplomatic siege, etc., followed by indirect military conflicts.
The coup of Independence Square [euromaidan], in Ukraine in 2014, followed by the military siege of the people's republics of Donbass, was the first ambitious materialization of this offensive. It was intended to lead to the encirclement and surrender of the Russian Federation, which would precede the attack on China. But it turned out as it did. And now, the USA, the ball-carrying nation in the war in Ukraine, has abandoned its traditional team and is beginning to embrace the opposing players.
And now Joseé?
For the European Union, the current events are tectonic upheavals. They threaten to radicalize the downward slide of what remains of the old European power. The dependence and submission of European imperialism to the United States was not a mistake foreseen by Charles De Gaulle, to be corrected, as European commentators claim, feigning surprise and indignation at the current situation. It was voluntary servitude, then profitable, for lack of alternatives.
England, which reigned over the world, is now struggling not to lose Scotland and Northern Ireland. The powerful and proud France, which dominated a large part of Black Africa, has just been kicked out of there, without even being able to raise a frown. Trumpism is taking advantage of and promoting the loss of content, and not the destruction of NATO and the European Union, to create a more productive and profitable bilateral relationship with the nations of the Old World and to weaken the European allies of its American enemies.
The roots of the current situation are deep. In 2024, Donald Trump was elected in the context of a violent confrontation between two American capitalist blocs, with opposing proposals for solving the serious crisis, not just of hegemony, in which the country finds itself immersed.
Trumpism, which won the elections, is trying to improve the position of sectors of big capital that it represents and that are similar to it. And it exposes those who are against it and who fight it to the open air and the rain. And, as time is pressing and roaring, it does so with a voracity that is astonishing, denounced as foreign to traditional diplomatic practices and mannerisms.
A final in 2028
The Trumpist Bloc knows that it cannot lose the initiative in the game, which has a knockout match scheduled for 2028. And the voracity of the conflict is so great that the losers will not only be left with the potato peels, but will have them as a permanent meal. Donald Trump knows that, during these short four years, the opposition to him by the State apparatus, in the economic world and in American society, by big globalized capital, with roots deep in the establishment and politically organized in the Democratic Party.
The anti-Trump US forces have powerful international allies, especially Euro-Atlanticism, which Trumpism attacks to defend itself and survive, not out of malice. By hitting hard at the European Union, denying it space in discussions with Vladimir Putin, which are much broader and more ambitious than simply peace in Ukraine, Trumpism seeks to weaken its opponents, consolidate its allies, and establish new partnerships, especially with the populist right, very strong in Germany and France, two of the three pillars, along with England, of Euro-Atlantic globalism.
The extent of the general breakdown of dishes that began in Munich can be assessed with the continuation of the talks that began in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They point to a substantial shift in imperialism in its confrontation with Russia and perhaps even with China, which seems more difficult, but not impossible.
In his first administration, Topetudo was threatened with impeachment by the Democratic Party and the aforementioned Deep State, trying to advance their project of rapprochement with Russia, to distance it, as far as possible, from China. In a diametrically opposite direction, the globalist democrats wanted to start the massacre precisely in the Russian Federation.
An old love
Today, a strengthened Donald Trump, the undisputed winner of the elections, with control of Congress and the Senate, is striving to dismantle the mammoth globalist bureaucracy scrutinized in the state apparatus, which shapes the US governments, whatever they may be. He is doing so in order to be able to reorient foreign policy, putting the trade war at the forefront, instead of the endless military confrontations of recent decades, building a new international composition, in which Europe would be the big loser.
European imperialism would have burned its caravels by throwing itself headlong into the conflict in Ukraine since 2014, and confidently radicalizing military aggression in February 2022 to achieve its strategic objective, the expansion towards Eurasia and its raw materials. All this following and supported by the USA, as is traditional, under the globalist Democratic administration.
The governments of big European capital promised their populations a total and rapid victory over the Russian Federation, which was presented as being riddled with corruption and with an industry in “rags”. The media presented Putin as withdrawing chips of refrigerators to arm missiles and Russian soldiers fighting with trench shovels, for lack of weapons. Wild apologies endorsed by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. [CNN Brazil, 14.09.22.]
barbaros of our brothers
All that was needed was to sanction and isolate the Russian Federation, economically and diplomatically, so that it would melt like a popsicle in the sun. And if it were not destroyed very soon, the Slavic barbarians of the bloodthirsty Putin would spread across Europe, all the way to the cliffs of Sagres, in the extreme south of Portugal, where they would satisfy their atavistic hunger by eating delicious custard tarts, without paying. Russophobia proposes without blushing a Russia that is at once in pieces and capable of conquering the European Union.
The narrative of the imminent Russian threat dominates the mainstream media today and is verbalized daily by the main European leaders, who reaffirm the need for Ukraine to face, from a “position of strength”, a weakened Russian Federation, during the peace talks, which, therefore, could not take place now, while the Russians advance along the line of combat. Even if this effort to subdue the Russian Federation borders on a general war in Europe, unthinkable without the support of the United States.
The struggle to defeat and destroy the Russian Federation into fragile nations that cannibalize its infinite resources is a historical project of colonialism and, today, of European imperialism, which has attempted several invasions of current Russian territories in recent centuries. This conquest-colonization of Eurasia would reverse the current downward spiral in which capital and imperialism in the Old World live.
Given the current situation, European imperialism will have to shelve, among other things, the project of domination of Eurasia, which was already well underway, with no prospect of resuming it. The European Union is in a state of extreme fragility, with its leading economy, Germany, having been plunged into depression for two years, while it faces a major political crisis with France and England. Not to mention the military weakness of European imperialism.
Today, the most powerful European land army is not the English, French or Polish. It is the Ukrainian, which continues to retreat under the blows of the Russian Federation, which it should have destroyed.
Parasites and hosts
Since World War II, with some occasional dissent, big European capital has advanced its objectives supported by the US imperialist bloc, which it integrates as client allies, since they corresponded fully or partially to those of the Americans, the leader of the globalist orchestra. European capitalism and imperialism have parasitized the great imperialist nation, submitting to it politically, diplomatically, and economically. They have profited from the explosion of the USSR, the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe, the destruction of Yugoslavia, the end of Libya as a nation, etc.
Now, horrified European globalism is being told to fend for itself, with its meager resources, if it wants to advance its offensives, since the objectives of the Trumpian United States are different and largely antagonistic to its own. At least for now. At this moment, European imperialism finds itself forced to swallow, dry, a historic defeat against the Russian Federation, in Ukraine, of which Trump washes his hands, saying that it was a war by Biden and the Democrats. Using what remains of Volodymyr Zelensky, the war-mongering Europeans continue to try to sugarcoat the bitter pill by posing in the negotiators' photo.
European imperialism, especially England, Germany, France and Poland, hoped to obtain some concessions and positive visibility, even if minimal, by sending their soldiers to guarantor the dividing line between the Ukrainian and Russian armies after the end of the conflict. And they dreamed of participating in the reconstruction of Ukraine, financed by the Russian Federation.
Those aggressive states are now in danger of being invaded, not by the Russians, but by huge waves of Ukrainian immigrants who will leave bankrupt Ukraine as soon as the martial law banning the expatriation of Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 is lifted. And Moscow has already declared that it is Ukraine’s right to join the European Union or not…
Frills for the fans
Wanting to show false vitality, French President Emmanuel Macron, always on the lookout for a hot seat, urgently called a meeting of the heads of the European Union and the main European warmongering nations for Monday, February 17. The meeting was intended to rehearse a prompt response to the blows they received in Munich. The outcome of the meeting materialized the impotence of the once arrogant warlords of the Old World.
At the meeting, the governments of England, France and Sweden [absent] agreed to send troops to Ukraine as guarantors of peace. But even in this regard, those present at the meeting showed no unity. Germany, which was scorched in World War II, does not want to be close to Russian troops. Poland wants to continue posing as the new great European military power, without running the risk of having to put its Russian neighbor to the test.
The Russian Federation has already stated that it considers any troops that cross the border of Ukraine during a war to be a legitimate target. It has also made it clear that, in the event of peacekeeping troops, it will not accept soldiers from nations that were at the forefront of the offensive waged against it in Ukraine, particularly England, France, Germany, and Poland. There are already plans to send troops from China, India, Pakistan, and Brazil to perform such duties.
The statements made at the Paris meeting were a bit of a gimmick for the fans in the closing stages of the game, as the team tried to hide the defeat it had suffered. A second meeting has already been scheduled, open to all EU members, and some have already announced that they will participate virtually, underscoring the importance they attach to the event.
The victory of the Russian Federation deeply hurts the prestige of European imperialism, precisely when the media, political, institutional and repressive floodgates with which it has subjected and continues to subject the working and popular classes in the Old Continent are beginning to collapse. In other words, the king is beginning to parade around knowing that he is naked, as are a large part of his subjects.
The smeaning of the speechdog
JD Vance began his speech by saying that he understood that he would not be applauded by those present, who were full of high-ranking military officers and dignitaries from NATO and the European Union. He then added, without mercy: “The threat that I am most concerned about in relation to Europe is not Russia, or China, or any other external actor. What worries me is the internal threat, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”
JD Vance's harsh challenge to the European imperialist narrative about an upcoming Russian attack on the Old World, which they announce, like astrologers when they predict the end of the world, for different dates: 2028, 2030, 2035... The Trumpist vice-president is disrupting the current main campaign in the European Union for its militarization, with the increase in national military spending to 5% of GDP, an enormous amount.
To support Europe's mega-indebtedness, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, who is so tough on controlling the accounts of the marginal nations of the European Union, proposes suspending the community determination that prohibits member nations from exceeding budget deficits above 3% and debt above 60% of GDP. [UOL, 14/02/2025.]
Therefore, it is possible for military spending; it is not possible for pensions, health, education, etc. The national debt, which is said to be worth billions of euros, paid by the entire European Union, would water the military and related industries of the central European nations that have them and, logically, the US. The policy is supported and encouraged by Trumpism, which demands it in order to maintain some presence in NATO, since it will mainly feed the US military complex.
The river debt would be placed on the account of current and future generations of the continent, already bearing heavy commitments that they did not undertake. They will demand more cuts, already reaching the bones, in spending and in depressed social investments. Also proposed are the return of compulsory military service, a continental army, millionaire investments in weapons research and so on. In order to implement these measures, it is necessary for the European population to plunge into the hysteria of a Russian invasion just around the corner.
The pope of the counterrevolution
In his speech in Munich, the US vice president mercilessly attacked the common political and ideological platform of Euro-American globalism, which had been dealt a very severe, but by no means fatal, blow with the loss of the US presidency. As proposed, Trumpism landed its troops in Munich to fight, in Europe, the same forces it faces in the US, in this struggle of antagonists who fight with sharp scythes in the dark night.
JD Vance's speech, with its masterful and authoritarian intonation, in the style of an arrogant and overbearing father, dissatisfied with his wayward children, massaged the self-esteem of anti-abortion conservatism, Islamophobic racism, and fundamentalist Christianity. He won over the masses horrified by the terrifying proposals of the wokism. But all of this, of not insignificant significance, was confetti thrown into the air at the opening of the carnival. The right-wing and ultramontane rancor of Trump's discourse – there was even praise for John Paul II, according to him, “one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other” – should not obliterate its historical meaning, should it materialize.
JD Vance's intervention was a political-ideological lecture, in defense of broad democratic rights, trampled mercilessly in Europe, so that the European supranational government could maintain the program of Euro-Atlantic globalism - the right to information, to opinion, to the real exercise of electing representatives, among others, were violated. A campaign of disinformation and disrespect for civil and democratic rights that Joe Biden's United States inspired and financed prominently.
JD Vance criticized censorship, disguised as a fight against “disinformation,” which is used when one wants to silence “someone with a different point of view” or “opinion.” In Europe, in a security paroxysm, especially after the start of the conflict in Ukraine, newspapers, radio stations, and magazines that did not parrot the official militarist apology were silenced. Dostoevsky’s novels disappeared from libraries, and restaurants stopped offering the dangerous “Russian salad.”
Don't forget Romania
JD Vance has struck a blow against a regime that claims to be democratic but disregards, ignores and represses, as “invalid and unworthy” and not worthy of being “considered”, the “concerns”, “opinions”, “aspirations” and “calls for relief” of millions of voters who oppose or dissociate themselves from official policies and actions. This is a palpable and glaring reality in Europe, which is true and cannot be ignored, even when said by a dirty and lying mouth.
En passant, the vice president complained, also with reason, that the organizers of the Munich meeting had prohibited the participation of representatives of “populist” movements, whether “left or right,” in another instance of antidemocratic action. At that moment, the enormous hall, filled with high-ranking diplomats and uniformed officers, was plunged into deep annoyance, providing only skeletal applause for the speaker, as he had predicted.
But JD Vance killed the snake and showed the stick. When referring to the practice of European leaders of suffocating dissenting populations and voters with institutional violence, he pointed firmly to Romania, where, supported by a fabricated complaint by government intelligence services, and “under enormous pressure” from European leaders, a higher court in the country annulled the elections, two days before the second round.
Calin Georgescu, the expected winner of the elections, was opposed to the country becoming the first trench in the conflict that NATO claims to be preparing against the Russian Federation. New elections are scheduled, starting from scratch, for the distant 4th of May, when it is expected to dismantle the contested candidacy and elect a Euro-Atlanticist.
Lame excuse
During World War II, the Romanian population suffered greatly because its fascist government allied itself with Nazi Germany and participated, with thirteen divisions and eight brigades, perhaps three hundred thousand soldiers, in the invasion of the USSR. Today, the majority of the population, of various political leanings, wants to get along with everyone, with the West and the East, with NATO far from its borders.
Without consulting the country's population, NATO is building the largest air base on the border with the Russian Federation. With a perimeter of 30 km, it will house thousands of military personnel, turning Romania into the spearhead of the warmongering against the Russian Federation. Romanians are rightly afraid of being the first to turn into coal in the outbreak of a general confrontation.
JD Vance recalled that any possible financing by the Russian Federation of some “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for the anti-NATO candidate, presented as a reason for challenging the victory already practically achieved by Calin Georgescu, who was opposed to the military base and in favor of Romania’s neutrality, would never justify the true constitutional coup d’état promoted in that country by the European Union.
In Europe and its periphery, there are no elections, movements, color revolutions, or coup attempts that are not supported by rich financing, under the radar and even in broad daylight, through NGOs and various associations, by the European Union and the United States, and in the latter case, often through USAID, as is currently being revealed by Trumpism.
Nobodyém speaks of Romania
So far, in the responses rehearsed to JD Vince by European leaders who are offended by accusations of being anti-democratic, there has been no support for the annulment of the Romanian elections and the measures being taken to prevent the victory of a candidate who opposes the militarization of the country. On this thorny and serious issue, they prefer to remain completely silent.
JD Vance urged European governments not to fear “their […] voters” and to live with the possibility that opposition candidates might win the elections. And he expressed his great dismay at hearing the European Commissioner celebrating the coup in Romania and promising that it would be repeated in Germany if the next elections, on Sunday, February 23, do not go as Brussels, NATO and big German, European and transnational capital wish.
When criticizing the threat of ignoring the opposition's electoral victory in the country where the meeting was taking place, as in Romania, JD Vance was thinking of the constantly growing "Alternative for Germany" party. The AfD is a right-wing populist movement that has taken up most of the demands against the government and supranational Euro-Atlanticism of the working and popular classes, who have been neglected and abandoned by the traditional parties of the right, center and left.
The “Alternative for Germany” is the leading party in the territories of the former Democratic Republic, which continues to function as a sort of semi-colony of the Federal Republic of Germany, which absorbed it. The AfD opposes European governance and seeks to restore the country’s autonomy. It is in favor of the return of the framework and, above all, opposes the recent savage immigration, proposing to put an end to and reverse a migratory flow that is strongly subject to the determinations and instructions of the European Commission and other bodies of the European supranational government.
Immigrationthe planned
JD Vance focused on “mass immigration”, recalling that in Germany, one in five inhabitants arrived from “abroad”. This situation, which more or less affects the whole of Europe, was “the result of a series of conscious decisions taken by politicians from all over the continent” over more than a decade. And he recalled that “no voter” in Europe “went to the polls to open the floodgates to millions of uncontrolled immigrants”. This was a hit, not only for the AfD and the “Rally National”, France’s leading right-wing populist party, which in the past was neo-fascist.
In 2023, there would be 14 million foreigners living in Germany, with the borders opened by big capital to lower wages and hinder the country's trade union movement. The AfD proposes closing the country's borders and expatriating illegal immigrants, a policy that is being embraced by the so-called constitutional right, not only in Germany. Donald Trump defends and is implementing the same policy in the United States, also with broad support among the country's population, with an emphasis on workers and documented immigrants.
The German nationalist and populist party supports an end to the war in Ukraine and the resumption of relations with the Russian Federation. It demands an explanation for the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, promoted by the Biden administration, which cost Germany and Russia a fortune. The terrorist act was part of the efforts to replace cheap Russian gas with more expensive American gas. The current German government played dead while they torpedoed the country's economy.
In Europe, Germany is known for its restrictive regime of the rights of the population, many of whom prefer not to reveal their opinions, fearing reprisals. The country has a “Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution”, which, according to one of its members, monitors “individuals, groups and political parties” that it considers “unconstitutional” or “threats to security”, without knowing that they are being spied on and therefore have the right to defend themselves. The control is carried out by monitoring “correspondence and telephone calls”, “online surveillance”, etc. [German report, 23/04/2024.[1]]
authoritarian state
The “Alternative for Germany” lives under surveillance and the possibility of impeachment and other actions against its members of parliament, activists and supporters, due to its political views. JD Vance met with an AfD leader, giving prestige to the organization, just a few days before the elections, thus making it difficult to administratively repress it. And he refused to meet with the current Chancellor of Germany, who, after the USA, was the major financier of weapons and resources for the offensive against the Russian Federation in Ukraine.
In France, the “Régroupement Nationale”, also with a right-wing populist bias, is already the country’s leading party, with a platform similar to the “Alternative for Germany”, but more restrained, as it has sought to win over the traditional conservative vote in recent years. Marine Le Pen’s party also receives electoral support from a huge portion of the national popular and workers’ vote, previously directed towards the communist, socialist and far-left parties.
A large part of the European and non-European left is obsessively focused on denouncing the far-right character of the “Alternative for Germany”, the “National Rally” and other similar parties and movements, even accusing them, along with leaders and spokespeople of the European Union and traditional parties, of being semi-fascists and fascists. Such approximate assessments constitute, at least at present, in many cases an analytical and categorical impertinence.
The anathematization of right-wing populism as fascist and neo-fascist serves as a justification for huge factions that claim to be left-wing to support big capital and its so-called democratic governments, while failing to assume their responsibilities. Rather than condemning right-wing populism, it is important to understand why tens of millions of European workers and people vote for it, having abandoned parties that claim to be left-wing. And to act accordingly.
O capitalsmo is the enemy
Above all, it is necessary to find the reasons that lead popular voters to trust right-wing populism, to advance their most heartfelt and just demands, even when poorly formulated. Demands that populist right-wing parties embrace and reformat according to their political, ideological and economic orientations, even if they tend to be determined by their new electorate.
Above all, it is essential that left-wing parties overcome their distance from the anti-capitalist struggle, which they ignore today, and therefore return to popular demands, abandoned in favor of the defense of identity politics, wokists, supposedly ecological, and so on, aimed at globalized sectors of the middle classes, in which they have taken root.
In Europe, we must fight against the supranational government of big capital and for a Europe of the world of work. We must fight for the dissolution of NATO, for an end to the war in Ukraine, for an end to the siege of the Russian Federation. We must fight against military spending and the militarization of society. We must defend the protection of the world of work and society from the waves of planned savage immigration.
Fight for policies, initiatives and legislation for the general integration of non-national communities, fought by opportunistic defense of the “wonders” of multiculturalism, where populations live, in the same country, in the same city and on the same street, in their niches, speaking their native languages, without understanding each other with the natives and with many other immigrants.
It is essential to fight for the maintenance and expansion of social rights for all; the fight against wokism and identity politics as a new standard of social integration; the defense of the population from the assault of pharmaceutical and hospital capital, are some of the many demands that clash with the interests of big capital. But they would allow the working and popular classes to return and rebuild the parties that today claim to be left-wing.
what awaits us
It is still difficult to predict the ultimate outcome of the talks that began in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There is already talk of a future meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, with no set date, which would speed up and conclude, albeit partially, the negotiations. The end of the war in Palestine and Ukraine is undoubtedly a huge step forward for the working classes and the world’s population. It lessens, but does not put an end to, the enormous suffering of the Palestinian population. It also eliminates the possibility of imperialist colonization of Eurasia and of wider wars, as a result of the fighting in Ukraine. And it should be celebrated.
Donald Trump's current initiative has as its central objective a relative separation of the Russian Federation from the People's Republic of China in favor of the United States, in a reversal of the pact of the early 1970s between Mao Zedong and Nixon, to the detriment of the USSR. Some analysts suggest that the US is considering a compromised restructuring of power between China, Russia, and Washington, leaving Europe in the lurch.
This possibility would be based on the impossibility of the United States confronting China militarily, even if isolated from Moscow, without the support of Europe, that is, NATO, which the Democratic Party and Joe Biden thought, on the contrary, would strengthen and expand. A conflict that the Euro-American bloc intended to advance, after the defeat of the Russian Federation, possibly using Taiwan's declaration of independence as a trigger for a regional conflict, as it used Ukraine to launch the attack on Russia, in which it failed. Taiwan's declaration of independence is a red line set by Beijing.
National-imperialism
The Trump administration, inclined towards economic and trade confrontation, seems interested in renegotiating its trade relations with all nations, squeezing them, without exception. This could also be a step back, towards a later, tougher confrontation with China, with the United States becoming “great againn". If it is possible. The truth is that new and multiple possibilities are opening up, only more or less frightening, for the destinies of the world's populations.
Trumpism is currently, despite its rhetorical threats to Greenland, Canada, Panama, etc., a new, non-war-mongering imperialist global activism that has put an end to the open conflict in Palestine and intends to end the war in Ukraine. This is relatively and temporarily very positive. Politically and ideologically, it is a pre-modern right-wing proposal, an autistic national-imperialism, with an irrationalist, obscurantist and anti-democratic bias, little friendly to the rights of workers and the population.
The ugly and brutal face of Trumpism has served, even on the left, as an excuse to lament the retreat and loss of global prominence of cordial international institutions, such as the UN, the European Union, the International Criminal Court, and, above all, of the even more gentle democratic globalist imperialism, defender of wokism, of multiple identities, of a poisoned green transition, of postmodernity that buries, in every sense, the popular and working classes.
Widows of liberalism
It is quickly forgotten and left aside that globalist democratic (or republican) imperialism was largely responsible for the genocide in Palestine and the massacres in Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, to say the least, often supported, excused or left to its own devices by the so-called international institutions. It is pathetic to cry over the mistakes of imperialist liberalism in its formal democratic version.
What further confuses the cards currently on the table is that, paradoxically, Trumpism is a political expression of factions of non-hegemonic big capital at a global level, where globalized transnational capital still dominates, having lost the reins, hopefully momentarily, of the powerful Western nation, in relative decline, but still with sharp claws and atomic teeth.
This is a new chapter in an old soap opera, with a surprising opening, which we must follow with extreme attention, because the current incredible successes affect, involve and hurt society as a whole, with emphasis on the working and popular classes. Working and popular classes that need to invade the scenes and write the scripts to dominate and put on track a global train that is constantly and increasingly dangerously derailing.[2]
* Mario Maestri is a historian. Author, among other books, of Sons of Ham, sons of the dog. The enslaved worker in Brazilian historiography (FCM Editora).
Notes
[1] Interview: Josef Christ, judge of the German Constitutional Court. Crumbs, April 23, 2024. Available here.
[2] We appreciate the reading by linguist Florence Carboni, from UFRGS.
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