As the American empire begins to crash, capitalism becomes desperate and takes off its gloves. We see its fist; all of the characteristics of the culture of war carried to extreme. In fact, that is the simple nature of fascism, the culture of war carried to extreme.
Trump in the USA, Erdogan in Turkey, now Bolsonaro in Brazil. The capitalists finance their campaigns in a desperate effort to protect their wealth.
History is repeating. Hitler, too, was backed by big capitalists at a time when the Weimar Republic was failing. This is not generally known because the records of German industry for that period are kept secret and the unfortunate historian who tried to document this back in the 1980’s, a young graduate student at Princeton named David Abraham, was drummed out of the profession as a reward for his research.
All of the aspects of the culture of war are exaggerated now. Enemy images are used to label scapegoats (immigrants, leftists, muslims, will the scapgoating of jews be next?). Military budgets are bloated. Democracy is jettisoned in favor of authoritarian regimes. Educational systems are devoted to producing a generation of passive citizens believing in the glory of past wars. Information is controlled and whistle-blowers punished. Human rights are trampled. The earth is plundered for its resources.
And as always the case with the culture of war, women are oppressed and victimized. This was the theme of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, as the Nobel Committee joins an impressive list of organizations around the world that are working for women’s equality and an end to violence against women, in the face of increased pressures against women’s rights.
As an example, consider how Trump, Erdogan and Bolsonaro deal with the question of abortion. Trump’s oppostion to abortion has been concretized in his choice for the Suprieme Court, a man who is pledged to overthrow abortion rights in the US. Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan has described abortion as tantamount to “murder”, angering women’s rights groups and sparking an intense debate in the mainly Muslim nation. And now Brazil’s Bolsonaro is strongly opposed to abortion. Writing on Twitter on 12 October he said: “The money of Brazilians will not finance NGOs that promote that practice.”
It should be obvious that all of these policies of the culture of war are linked to each other, and hence the struggles for peace, human rights, democracy, sustainable development, education, the free flow of information and equality for women also need to be linked together in one great unified movement.
It’s too late to stop the system from crashing. Just as the Soviet Union crashed because it poured its wealth into the bottomless pit of military spending, so, too, the United States has been doing the same for decades already. There is no one in the Congress opposed to the military budget, as they are all in debt to the military-industrial complex. And Trump, of course, is making it worse. We will soon arrive at the tipping point when the dollar crashes like the ruble crashed before it.
But we can begin already to construct what will come after the crash. We need a whole new system of governance in the world that is devoted to the culture of peace! The maximum unity is needed if we are to achieve this.