Stephen Sefton, January 6th 2024
When unusually violent events occur in the United States, the only thing that is absolutely certain is the human suffering of the victims and their families. Around such sinister and dark incidents, contradictions almost always arise between one and another detail of what happened and its investigation that raise questions and uncertainty about the truth of whatever happened. Doubt may remain about the possible intellectual authors of the attacks or what the real motives behind them would have been. The respective political forces in the country are adept at exploiting these doubts to promote division and sectarianism
However, for the vast majority of the country's population, life goes on as normal. For them, the recent attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas are regrettable, but aberrant and isolated events. In two or three weeks, most of the population will have forgotten them, leaving the relatives of the victims of the attacks and the survivors to rebuild their lives. The suspicious thing about these recent attacks is how they have been exploited for political purposes by the media and on social networks, in the context of the upcoming inauguration of Mr. Donald Trump as the country's president.
In fact, the media, the Internet and social media platforms constitute a huge psychological warfare apparatus at the service of the business elites who govern the country and own or fund almost all sources of information, including NGOs and universities. For them, the violent incidents in New Orleans and Las Vegas are merely another new opportunity allowing them to exploit their totalitarian control of information sources so as to manipulate public opinion as they have always done. As Henry Wallace, Vice President of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, put it, writing in 1944, “The US fascist would prefer not to use violence. Their method is to poison the channels of public information."
So the abuse of the media and information sources for the purposes of psychological warfare is not something new in the United States and neither is the fascism of the ruling political class that Henry Wallace pointed out. The events in New Orleans and Las Vegas follow the pattern of uncertainty and suspicion that persist around the notorious cases of political assassination in recent US history, such as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. All of these murders served the political agenda of US fascism and none of the official versions of these murders fit convincingly with the information that has emerged in the months and years following those events.
Incidents of deadly violence are frequent in the United States. From political assassinations to mass murders and the abuse of lethal force against people of African descent. In 2024 there were 585 incidents of mass killings with 711 dead and 2363 injured. In 2023 there were 604 such incidents with 754 people killed and 2,443 injured. This has been a pattern for at least twenty years or more. People of African descent make up about 13% of the population, but on average they make up more than 25% of the people killed by the police per year. It is routine for information about incidents of fatal violence in the country to be manipulated in one way or another for political or ideological purposes, as happened with the promotion by the Democratic Party of the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd during the first administration of Donald Trump in 2020.
Even the official versions of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the collapse of the twin towers have been strongly questioned by leading scientists specializing in the field. So, it is difficult to take the official information about the attack on people celebrating the New Year in New Orleans and the explosion of a car outside the Trump Center in Las Vegas at face value. In both cases the apparent perpetrators were former soldiers who had served at Fort Bragg, a military base in Georgia with a psychological warfare training center and another center for the training of special forces. Fort Bragg is also notorious for being a significant entry point into the drug country as the recent news of FBI busting a ketamine smuggling operation through Fort Bragg by Africom soldiers has confirmed.
The many servicemen and women who serve abroad in cocaine or heroin producing countries transit through the base and it is not unusual for some to get involved in drug trafficking. This is a phenomenon rooted in the US armed forces since the time of the war in Vietnam. In fact, drug abuse is strongly related to the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorders that affect almost 20% of military personnel involved in combat. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that between 37% and 50% of military veterans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with psychological problems and their conditions are strongly associated with drug and alcohol abuse problems.
So, more than possible obscure political motives related to the attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas, the fact that their perpetrators had served for a while in the armed forces points to the deep wounds caused in US society by their imperialist wars overseas. Another coincidence that has been noticed in relation to these attacks is that the individual Ryan Routh, accused of having tried to assassinate Donald Trump in September last year, is also an ex-military man who was stationed for a while at Fort Bragg. The association of these three ex-servicemen with violent attacks has been yet another element in the atmosphere of tension concocted in the media around the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of his country this coming January 20th.
The attacks have occurred in the context of the hate campaign against Donald Trump which has been constant and relentless since the electoral defeat he inflicted in 2016 on Hillary Clinton, the Democrat Party candidate. Since that moment, Donald Trump has been attacked with extreme vehemence in the liberal media based on notorious manipulations and blatant lies on the part of the security services and flagrant biased abuses of the judicial system. But widespread distrust of the population in the media allowed Donald Trump to overcome the attacks and win the election last year against Kamala Harris. A 2023 survey by the Gallup company found that only 32% of the population trusts the media, while 39% completely distrust them
Among the reasons for Donald Trump's electoral triumph last year, a key moment of the electoral campaign was the assassination attempt which Mr. Trump survived only by sheer good luck when he turned his body in time to avoid a bullet that still grazed his ear. His courageous stance in the face of that attack won him a lot of sympathy among independent voters. Many people also voted for Donald Trump because he claimed that he would end the war in Ukraine against Russia which has diverted hundreds of billions of dollars for the benefit of the military-industrial sector and other corporate interests, ignoring the needs of the majority of the population.
While projecting himself as someone opposed to wars, Donald Trump also knew how to successfully manipulate the issue of migration in an unscrupulous and racist way. His insistence on the issue of individual freedom managed to convince parts of the population that had suffered economically due to the savage economic closure imposed during the period of Covid-19. He also gained sympathy among the voters who perceived as unfair the media attacks on his person and the abuses of the judicial system to persecute him. On the other hand, his electoral campaign had the advantage of the mediocre candidacy of Kamala Harris and a negative perception of the administration of President Joe Biden by more than 56% of the population.
The continuing extreme partisan polarization among the US population reflects the extraordinary psychological control of US society maintained by the ruling class. It is very difficult for people outside the country to appreciate the intricate ins and outs of corrupt US political life. A fascist oligarchy of a very few fabulously wealthy people among the multi-millionaire business elite of the country has bought the entire political class via donations to their electoral campaigns. A corollary of the political dominance of this very small, exclusive plutocracy is its iron grip on the media. They own all the traditional mainstream media as well as most of the supposedly alternative internet media and also all the giant corporate digital platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Elon Musk's X.
Donald Trump has falsely projected himself as an individual who fights for the interests of the people and who, for that reason, has been a victim of the elites. But his political agenda is just as fascist as his opponents. It is notorious that both political parties in the United States are merely different flavors of the same fascist union between the political class and the business class. As the famous plutocrat speculator Warren Buffet said, “This is a class war and we are winning." So, while it may be possible that the elite interests who have financed Donald Trump will allow measures to appease the political base of his administration, they will never allow measures responsive to the fundamental needs of the population.
There will be no universal and free health care. There will be no free public education from pre-school to university. There will be no significant investment in public works such as roads, bridges, drinking water, sewage systems or electric power. There will be no environmental protection. In short, there will be nothing that corresponds to a national human development plan which recognizes the deep needs of the economic and socio-economic life of the country. People who voted for Donald Trump thinking he will stop the wars, especially the Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people, almost certainly voted in vain. We will see after January 20th.
As for foreign policy, in his first administration Donald Trump intensified the genocidal blockade against Cuba, the coercive measures against Venezuela and, after the failed coup d'état of 2018, against Nicaragua as well. He authorized the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani of Iran when General Soleimani was in Iraq on a peacekeeping mission. The Donald Trump administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran's nuclear program. He continued to support and arm the regime of Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine. In 2017 he withdrew from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. He withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia in 2019. All of his proposals for official positions in his new government are fervent supporters of Israeli genocidal Zionism.
The administration of President Joe Biden continued the foreign policy of the Donald Trump administration and it is most likely that in this second Donald Trump administration, his foreign policy, even after the strategic defeat suffered by NATO in Ukraine, will be equally aggressive around the world, especially towards China. So it seems the only thing that explains the extreme hostility on the part of the supporters of the Democratic Party is their patent sense of superiority to what Hillary Clinton notoriously called “the deplorables”. That sense of superiority is largely based on their embrace of identity politics in favor of sexual diversity minorities, their defense of women's right to abortion and their supposed solidarity with ethnic minorities.
Much remains to be seen. For example, some comments suggest that there will be less censorship under the administration of Donald Trump who was vilely slandered as a traitor via the so-called “Russiagate” campaign engineered with complete dishonesty by the FBI and the CIA. Some suggest that the influence of Robert Kennedy Jr. may lead to the release of the dossier on the assassinations of his father and of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. Given the undoubted involvement of the Cuban terrorists in Miami in that event, the nomination of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State suggests that this is unlikely. However, it may be possible that Donald Trump's officials, for example, Kash Patel or Tulsi Gabbard, will be able to clean up some of the worst corruption in the FBI and the CIA if their nomination to the respective positions is confirmed.
All the fissures in the highly fragmented society of the US combine with the effects of a dysfunctional government system guided by economic planning dominated by the financial corporate elite. The neoliberal ideology of the ruling class makes it impossible to set free the forces of social production that has been a priority imperative for the successful development of the People's Republic of China. At the moment, the economy and society of the United States of America are incapable of confronting the Russian Federation militarily and also cannot compete with the commercial strength and solid industrial capacity of the People's Republic of China.
However, the insane false beliefs of all sectors of the US political class make them incapable of facing this reality. The coming administration of Donald Trump will not be able to heal the deep sectarian and ideological wounds that divide the society of his country. Nor will it reverse the decline of its economy relative to the majority world led by the initiative of the BRICS+ group of countries.
Indeed, the ruling elites have always acted ruthlessly in their own interests, devouring the future of their own people. Perhaps Donald Trump's new government will manage to sustain the illusion of the success of US free market capitalism through the advantages that the US still enjoys internationally. But internally, the already acute social polarization and popular disappointment with the relentless decline in their standard of living will get continually worse.