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We can focus on the political economic dynamics that lead to change at the macro level. Indeed, we must. However, we mustn’t neglect the cultural ideological side of the struggle for power or fail to recognize to which class the sides ally.

The attitude of organic intellectual serving the interests of the corporate class—academics, entertainers, mass media—is one that privileges the exotic and the foreign. The fetishes here are Islam, queer, and race. This comes with loathing of the ordinary and the traditional.

Having been established centuries ago, the ordinary and the traditional have been modernist in orientation. Correspondingly, its intellectuals are traditionalist, not merely from settling into a new epoch, but in carrying over the importance of family and community. The desire for the exotic and the foreign is a postmodernist attitude. Its proponents hate family and culture and the liberal and republican values that define the modern age.

This schism is, of course, tied to the political economic dynamic, wreaking havoc on capitalist relations and the international system of modern nation states and raising among the ruins a transnational corporate state. The postmodern attitude is thus an expression of globalism and corporate power over against the nation, state and popular power.

The situation is at once revolutionary and counterrevolutionary—revolutionary in the sense that the corporatist system is struggling to break free of the reins of the capitalist mode of production; counterrevolutionary because it opposes the Enlightenment that stymies what lies beyond it: the reestablishment of a type of feudalist mode of production, where the proletariat is returned to serfdom, its fate determined on estates governed by lords. To be sure, the estates are high tech, and the lords are corporations, but the basic arrangement is the same—it is a condition of unfreedom. The corporatist revolution is therefore counterrevolutionary in the sense that it is atavistic and regressive.

Having recognized all this (which assumes the political economic dynamic of world historical change), we need also to study the process by which the cultural-ideological program of the corporatists is established. The strategy is slick, but once you grasp it, you have another means beyond content criticism to delegitimize it.

It’s not enough to criticize ideas—though that’s necessary—we must also expose how corporate elites and their army of intellectuals inject those ideas into the bloodstream of the body politic. For example, how did woke progressives infuse public education with gender ideology and make a disruptive and destructive praxis appear normal and necessary? Gender ideology is but one tentacle of the octopus, but it serves as a useful example. so we shall begin there. 

Here’s how the process unfolds:

• First, elites colonize the governing, policymaking, and sense-making activities and institutions with progressive operatives—academic, administrative, cultural, educational, judicial, and media-based. In short, they capture the hegemonic machinery. Today, progressivism commands the machinery.
• The elites and intellectuals then spend years crafting a comprehensive ideology and a new way of speaking about reality—what we might describe as language contamination. This mirrors what George Orwell called “Newspeak” in 1984. This ideology, traceable over the past several decades, was manufactured by academics and activists. The repurposing of the concept of gender, heretofore a synonym for sex, to refer to an unfalsifiable subjective identity is the paradigm of the strategy.
• Next, they install this ideology at every level of the hegemonic machinery and normalize it—treating it as if it has always been part of our institutions or at least the result of a long social justice struggle finally won by those who stand on the right side of history. This requires, among other things, historical revisionism. A notable tactic here is the practice of rendering as false what everyone knew was true until a few decades ago, and to portray that truth as the product of an evil hegemonic system that demands deconstruction. This tactic mystifies the strategy by projecting its intent onto those who defend history and science, thus creating fake legitimacy.
• Finally, when the public pushes back, the new order labels them bigots for resisting—even questioning—what has allegedly always been normal, portray modernists as conspiracy theorists and paranoids. And, of course, bigots.

The first three steps prepare the ground for the fourth: portraying those who object to a novel and destructive ideology as narrow-minded and reactionary. It flips the burden—no longer do ideologues have to explain why gender ideology should guide our institutions. Instead, the onus falls on dissenters to justify their objections. It makes a crackpot idea appear rational while making rational people seem like crackpots.

* * *

I’ve spent years debunking the core claims of gender ideology and exposing its harmful consequences. This is a necessary task. I knew I’d be accused of bigotry when I went public with my conclusions, but gender ideology is so destructive that silence wasn’t an option.

When I decided to speak out, I asked myself a question I believe all of us are obliged to ask: could I live with my conscience if I stayed passive in the face of a campaign to disrupt ordinary, common-sense understandings of gender—and all the lies and atrocities that come with it? Puberty blockers. Cross-sex hormones. Disfiguring surgeries. Sterilization. I thought about lobotomies and other horrors once pushed by the medical establishment. I thought about the medical experiments Nazi doctors performed on Jewish children. Brave people speaking out were essential to ending those practices (war was necessary in the case of the Nazis). Who today would defend destroying an adolescent’s frontal lobe to make the boy more compliant? The Nuremberg Code spoke loudly about the crimes of the national socialists. Somebody had to speak out. The machinery of justice had to act. Today, those whistleblowers are seen as heroes. The German doctors in the dock at Nuremberg are universally recognized as villains (but not those who escaped justice).

I thought about gay kids being manipulated into believing they’re the opposite sex—setting them on a path that would destroy their lives. I thought about the girls and women losing their spaces and opportunities to boys and men, whether deceiving or deluded (there’s no objective way to tell the difference). Had I stayed silent, knowing what I now know, I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.

I know not everyone is ready to stand on the ground of truth and face the mob. The consequences for doing so can be severe. The mob is scary. But it only takes a few people to create mutual knowledge. And courage is contagious. 

Still, to delegitimize gender ideology, we must do more than critique its claims. We must show how we arrived at this moment. That requires critical historical analysis and systems thinking. Gender ideology isn’t unique. The same strategy was used to re-racialize American society after the civil rights victories of the mid-twentieth century. It’s been used to delegitimize Western civilization, elevate corporate scientism over democratic science, and install technocracy in place of republican governance.

These strategies are manifest not only in gender ideology, but also in critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and other postmodern doctrines—advanced not by grassroots radicals, but by transnational elites and corporations. The so-called grassroots radical may be a true believer, a professional activist, or suffering from a Cluster-B personality disorder, but together they form the reactionary mob, trained up by the hegemonic apparatus. In a significant extent, the counterrevolution has succeeded, which makes the resistance appear counterrevolutionary.

To save Western civilization, we must root these doctrines out of our governing and sense-making institutions. To preserve freedom, reason, science, the West, our families, our way of life, the public must understand not just that these are dangerous ideas—but how they gained legitimacy. To be sure, it is a false legitimacy, but legitimacy of any sort is necessary to elevate power to authority. Our task is to expose the process to show that what masquerades as authority is class power.

One tactic has been to portray attitudes that advance the globalist project as “leftwing”—the New Left. How did a praxis advancing neoliberal and neoconservative goals become identified as left-wing politics? How did the corporate state come to embrace “left-wing” causes?

The answer, once you’ve done the critical historical and political analysis, is simple: the New Left is not a left-wing movement. It’s anti-human, anti-liberal, anti-rational, and anti-worker—all things that are antithetical to Old Left. Indeed, it’s a corporate-state strategy designed to fracture the traditional left and reincorporate its members into an alliance with globalist technocracy. To turn prior defenders of conscience and free speech into ideological authoritarians. To transform a fraction of the masses into reactionary mobs cloaked in the garb of justice.

Transnational elites and their progressive operatives—the organic intellectuals of globalization—cleverly constructed and absorbed the ideas of the postmodern New Left. They read Antonio Gramsci, too. They hijacked his cultural strategy, not to bring about communism (which is not to say that end is desirable), but to entrench corporatism.

DEI is the most obvious program that advances this alliance. At first, it may seem strange that corporations would embrace such ideas a diversity, equity, and inclusion. But with the correct approach to grasping the truth, it becomes obvious. Like gender ideology (a component of DEI), DEI programming was installed in our institutions to make corporate power and profit appear moral and just, while disorganizing the organic politics of the proletariat and the strata of entrepreneurs.

The saw this with the debate over affirmative action (DEI 1.0). Criticizing it was labeled “racist.” We were told that privileging black applicants over white ones could not be racism, because racism = prejudice + power, and only whites have power. By constructing a formula that placed critics of affirmative action out of bounds, and establishing that formula as the only truth, no real debate could be had. In an Orwellian transformation, what was racist became antiracist.

This formula hides the truth: corporations and elites hold the real power—not average white citizens. DEI and affirmation action don’t rectify injustice—they perpetuate it. The formula strengthens bureaucracy and its liberty-negating processes.

The same applies to the claim that opposing male intrusion into female spaces represents bigotry. That assumption, too, was installed through the same strategy. Many assumptions are installed in this manner. Those of us fighting to reclaim liberal freedoms and democratic institutions must therefore stop fearing labels. “Islamophobia,” “racism,” “transphobia”—these epithets are used not to describe reality but to marginalize dissent. We must stop caring what they call us. We know why they do it. Explaining why and how they do it is thus essential to defeating them.

This critical analysis isn’t mine alone. It builds on an old tradition. The German left-Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach, in 1842, developed the “transformation method”—a way to invert the relationship between reality and illusion as framed by religion and ideology. Feuerbach argued that religious beliefs are not divine truths but projections of idealized human qualities—love, justice, power—externalized onto a supernatural being (God). By reabsorbing these divine traits back into humanity, Feuerbach demystified religion, exposing it as a reflection of human nature.

Karl Marx adopted, refined, and radicalized Feuerbach’s method. He agreed that religion expresses alienation—but rooted this alienation in material social relations, especially economic ones. At the core of alienation is the class struggle. Marx’s critique of ideology exposes how ruling class interests mask exploitative conditions in the language of morality and justice. He didn’t stop at analysis; he called for praxis to change the world. However, he left it to us to expose the strategy.

This was the worldview of the Old Left. Liberal. Democratic. Anti-elite. Popular. The Old Left fought to empower working people, preserve communities, and oppose exploitation. The New Left is its opposite. It aims to destroy families and communities for the benefit of the very elites the Old Left sought to overthrow. This explains why many liberals now join conservatives in the populist-nationalist movement. Even without deploying the transformation method, they see the truth: the enemies of freedom, sovereignty, and democracy are the same elites who fund and advance the New Left.

People like George Soros don’t bankroll protests to challenge corporate and financial power. They fund movements to preserve and entrench these oppressions. They install prosecutors and advocacy groups to thwart the popular will. This isn’t a Jewish conspiracy (another tactic to chill the air is to smear those who evoke the specter of Soros with antisemitism)—it’s class warfare waged from above.

Gender ideology is one part of a larger counterrevolutionary project: the return of the working class to serfdom under a New Feudalism. Once you understand the system, all the tentacles become visible. But knowledge is only potential power; the people must act to turn potential into outcomes. There are more of us than there are of them.

* * *

Remember the end of A Bug’s Life?

Hopper: “Let this be a lesson to all you ants! Ideas are very dangerous things! You are mindless, soil-shoveling losers put on this earth to serve us!”

Flik: “You’re wrong, Hopper. Ants are not meant to serve grasshoppers! I’ve seen these ants do great things! And year after year, they somehow managed to pick food for themselves and you. So who’s the weaker species? Ants don’t serve grasshoppers! It’s you who need us! We’re a lot stronger than you say we are… and you know it, don’t you?”

Earlier in the film, Hopper warned his lieutenants: “Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one. If they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life! It’s not about food—it’s about keeping those ants in line.”

Flik’s response to what Hopper told his subalterns behind closed doors? “Ants grow the food. Ants pick the food. And the grasshoppers leave!”

When I first watched A Bug’s Life, I wondered why Disney would distribute a film so critical of elite domination. It’s a story about exploited workers (ants) rebelling against parasitic rulers (grasshoppers) through collective action. That’s class consciousness—delivered with Pixar charm.

Directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Andrew Stanton (who later directed WALL·E, another radical allegory), the film was inspired by Aesop’s fable, The Ant and the Grasshopper. But its subtext—about labor, class, and resistance—is unmistakable. Whether intended or not, the film critiques the very system that produced it.

Perhaps corporations allow—even socialize—radical messages because they’re so supremely confident in their control over the populace. The anti-capitalist band Rage Against the Machine signed with a major label, after all. This is how the culture industry works: it manufactures a pretense of justice to co-opt and contain opposition.

I have many disagreements with critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, but he put in his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man that captures the spirit of my critique:

“If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator—the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value counts. On it centers the rationality of the status quo, and all alien rationality is bent to it.”

Rolling Stone recently framed Tom Morello’s politics like this: “Like many of his comrades in music, the artist despairs at the bizarre, daily antics from the Trump administration. Trade wars, cosying[sic]-up with the enemy, picking fights with allies. Every day, another pie thrown from the MAGA circus.”

“You can only imagine what it’s like here with the impending shadow of American fascism,” Morello told the magazine. “The almost ethnic cleansing of discourse is a very significant warning sign, where anybody who wants to apply for a grant, or if you used words like ‘inclusion,’ ‘gender,’ or ‘African-American,’ you’ll be red-flagged.”

That’s corporate framing. Morello opposes “trade wars” (neoliberal rhetoric) and repeats neoconservative talking points about Russia. All of this aligns with the goals of the corporate state. Rejecting that frame, we see that Trump policies seek to re-shore high-wage value added manufacturing to the United States, as well as rapprochement with Russia for the sake of world peace and to marginalize China. Trump and the populist movement do not represent the “shadow of fascism.” On the contrary, the peoples of Europe and North America stand in the shadow of a New Fascism.

Indeed, Trump and the populist movement is resistance to the New Fascism. This is the real threat, what Barrington Moore, Jr. called a “revolution from above.” As noted earlier, the revolution-from-above in our time represents a counterrevolution against the Enlightenment. If the globalist project succeeds, we won’t just lose our liberties. We’ll lose the Enlightenment itself—and enter a New Dark Age.

* * *

One of the most common objections I encounter when raising concerns about elite coordination in shaping the global order: the supposed lack of direct evidence—the demand for the proverbial “smoking gun.” Detractors ask: Where is the document? Where is the confession? 

But this standard of proof, while emotionally satisfying, an effective is sophistry is allowed, is intellectually naïve. Power, especially at the highest levels, rarely broadcasts its intentions. The nature of elite influence is opaque, strategic, and subtle. Elite machinations take place behind closed doors, across private conferences, and through networks inside institutions, not press releases.

Yet we are not without means to understand what is happening. Just as in a criminal trial, one does not need a confession to reach a conviction. A murderer is not obligated to explain himself under our system; he enjoys a constitutional protection against self-incrimination. Rather judge and jury infer intention and guilt from evidence—corpus delicti (the body of the crime), patterns of behavior, access, motive, and opportunity. The prosecutor builds his case from context, evidence, and the logic of the act itself. What explains the outcome? Can it be explained another way? Is there reasonable doubt?

So too with global economics and politics. We don’t need elite actors to publish their plans for hegemony, resource control, or ideological engineering. We observe policies coordinated across actors, financial systems that perpetuate inequality, wars whose beneficiaries are always the same, and technologies that centralize control. These are not accidents. There is no reasonable doubt to be had here. The consistency of outcomes and the mechanisms by which they are produced point to rational actors with converging interests. Conspiracies are real. And rational people have theories about them.

To demand a confession from the architects of global power is to misunderstand both the nature of power and the means by which we come to know anything complex and concealed. Like any good detective—or any good historian—one must work from the evidence available (and there’s plenty of it), grasp the patterns, and be willing to follow reason and facts where they leads, even if the path runs behind closed doors.

Remember what Groucho Marx said to his wife when caught in bed with another woman: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

The Supreme Court case, Mahmoud v Taylor, a dispute between parents and the Montgomery County Public School District in Maryland over the inclusion of queer-themed storybooks in the elementary school English language arts curriculum, may be a watershed moment in parental rights. I begin with a brief background of the case and then critique the position of those critical of community and parental opposition to the inclusion of queer politics in public instruction.

In 2022, the Maryland district introduced picture books to expose young children to gender nonconformity and transgender identities—among them Pride Puppy, described Publishers Weekly as an “engaging introduction to Pride parades for the youngest readers successfully [that] testifies to the warmth and power of queer community,” and Born Ready, celebrated by Kirkus Reviews as “[a] triumphant declaration of love and identity” that “shines with joy and affirmation.”

Initially, parents could opt their children out of lessons involving these books. However, in March 2023, the school board eliminated this option, citing concerns about stigmatizing students represented by the books, high absenteeism, and logistical challenges. The first two objections are odd and curious. The possibility that students represented by the books might be stigmatized is a problem created by the inclusion of these materials in instruction. That’s ironic. The second problem of high absenteeism suggests that educators are eager to make sure every child receives instruction in the doctrine (more on that in a moment). The third flies in the face of other opt-outs the district allows.

After the district moved to require all students read and reflect on these books, a coalition of Catholic, Muslim, and Ukrainian Orthodox parents sued, arguing that the mandatory exposure to these materials violated their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion by conflicting with their beliefs about gender and sexuality. The parents argued that the policy forced them to choose between the integrity of their faith and withdrawing their children from public schools. Many of them either did not have the timing and training to homeschool or the money to sent their children to private schools.

The school district countered that the books were not part of sex education, which students were allowed to opt out of, but literacy-focused, aimed at fostering respect in a pluralistic community, and that exposure to differing views did not coerce students to abandon their beliefs. (What does exposure to queer doctrine have to do with literacy I don’t know.) Critics of the parents’ position raised concerns about the practical implications of broad opt-out rights, fearing they could disrupt curricula and extend to other topics, complicating public education.

Lower courts, including the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, had previously ruled against the parents, finding no evidence that the curriculum compelled them to change their beliefs (the facts contradict this finding, as instructional materials require students to accept the doctrine). However, during oral arguments on April 22, 2025, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared sympathetic to the parents’ claims, questioning why the district could not accommodate religious objections through opt-outs, since, as noted, Maryland allows such provisions for sex education.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson engaged in pointed questioning about the parents’ options for avoiding the Montgomery County Public School District’s curriculum. She specifically probed the practical implications of the parents’ demand for an opt-out, asking whether they could simply enroll their children in private schools or homeschool if they objected to the public school’s curriculum. Jackson implied that the parents’ religious objections did not necessitate a constitutional violation if other schooling options were available.

She also challenged the parents’ claim that the lack of an opt-out forced them to violate their beliefs, emphasizing that public schools serve diverse communities and must balance competing interests.

If diverse communities matter, then what about the Catholic, Muslim, and Ukrainian Orthodox communities? We see the same privileging of the queer community with respect to women’s activities and spaces. Trans rights are paramount; the rights of girls and women are sacrificed on the alter of queer doctrine. The myriad of exclusive communities that make up Western society are all subordinated to the cult of gender ideology. Their beliefs and principles must give way to queer doctrine.

Jackson’s questioning aligned with the school district’s position that the curriculum was about fostering literacy and respect, not indoctrinating students. This line of inquiry contrasted with the conservative justices’ focus on the district’s refusal to accommodate religious objections, highlighting a divide in how the court viewed the balance between parental rights and public education’s goals. But is there really a divide here? Why are parental rights and the goals of public education necessarily in contradiction? Shouldn’t public education reflect the goals of parents and the community? Isn’t that what democracy would look like? Indeed, there is an elite assumption of the value of technocratic control over education, which is indeed at loggerheads with the interests of working families in maintaining cultural integrity.

There is an interesting paradox in Jackson’s argument—or at least the position of her ilk. Recall the Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), which involved a baker refusing to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple due to religious objections. I presume Jackson was sympathetic to the couple in that case. Jackson’s cameo in the Broadway musical & Juliet suggests an affinity. We know the crowd in question was sympathetic to the couple. That same crowd would likely agree with Jackson about the parents pulling their kids from Montgomery County Public School District.

Presume I am right about that. The point I wish to make concerns an obvious double standard: the same crowd that believes it’s a grave injustice to find another baker after the first one declines to make a cake with a message he finds objectionable at the same time believes it’s perfectly reasonable for parents to find a different school that won’t teach their five-year-old boys can be girls.

To be sure, public education is a very different animal than a cake shop, but that makes the double standard even more remarkable. There is no compulsory cake purchasing in America. A private baker cannot—or at least shouldn’t be—compelled to violate his conscience. Customers are free to take their business elsewhere. Education, in contrast, is compulsory. The children are a captive audience. This takes us into deep ethical waters. If the school is public, then it must conform to Constitutional principle. The First Amendment protects freedom of conscience and speech. Private schools may offer religious instruction; indeed, parents choose them with that expectation. Public schools shall not; they cannot compel students to accept ideas that contradict their conscience—nor should they teach ideas that deny objective reality.

Let’s pursue the matter of principle. Imagine a Muslim child being told in social studies that Christianity is the only true religion, with dissent punished by the teacher. Consider an atheist child being told that belief in God is mandatory and the denial of God’s existence will be disciplined. These scenarios seem outrageous—but they are analogous to what is occurring in the Maryland case. In Montgomery county, guidance on curriculum implementation instructs teachers to discipline students who assert that there are only two genders or who refuse to comply with pronoun policies aligned with gender ideology.

Imagine a male teacher insisting students refer to him using feminine pronouns. Are parents expected to accept that a teacher may demand their children affirm a known falsehood? There are only two genders, after all. The male teacher is a man whatever he thinks of himself. He is, of course, free to think of himself in any way he wishes; he is not, however, not free to compel children or their parents to think of him in that way. Yet school policy demands that students misgender him—and furthermore insists that refusing to misgender him is itself misgendering (it doesn’t get more Orwellian than that). This isn’t a hypothetical, for the record; it’s happening.

This is professional malpractice; it’s indoctrination, not education. Public education should not be in the business of pressing falsehoods into young minds or promoting as truth that which is controversial, disputed, or unscientific. Teaching the speed of light? That’s appropriate, even if its nuances are beyond a child’s understanding. But claiming there are more than two genders or that a mammal can change its sex takes children into the realm of fantasy. Imagine a public-school math teacher insisting that 2+2=5 and punishing students for disagreeing. Imagine a science teacher promoting geocentrism and disciplining students who assert heliocentrism. These scenarios sound absurd—but they mirror what’s happening in Maryland’s largest school district.

To return to the matter of high absenteeism, why the insistence that every child be instructed in gender ideology? There is only one reason I can see: to ensure, for the sake of a political agenda, that every child is exposed to queer doctrine. This is the very definition of ideological indoctrination. It moreover calls into question the fitness of educators for their roles, and not just on grounds of competence. Is this why they entered the classroom—to groom children into accepting a particular ideology? If one wonders whether men become priests to be around children, then one must also consider the possibility that at least some teachers choose a career path that puts them close to children. (Did you note the decline in pearl clutching on the left over pedophile? Rather conspicuous in its absence if you’re paying attention.)

To be clear, gender ideology is not always analogous to religious instruction. Religion is, by nature, unfalsifiable. Gender is falsifiable. However, the subjective concept of gender identity à la Stoller is unfalsifiable, and this is where the ideology veers into quasi-religious territory. However, whether one considers gender ideology a religion or simply an ideology that contradicts objective fact, no child should be compelled to receive such instruction—especially not when it’s falsely framed as science.

The parents in the Maryland case were not even asking to remove gender ideology from the curriculum; they merely wanted to opt out. Even this was deemed unacceptable by the school district. Opting out should be the bare minimum, but gender ideology should not be taught in public schools at all—for the same reason that creationism or Christianity as-truth should not be: whether religious or pseudoscientific, such teachings have no place in a secular, public education system.

So again, why the insistence? I have racked my brain to think of some educational imperative to teach queer doctrine and all I can come up with it is using it as an example of how to think critically about pseudoscientific claim—and this could only be an exercise for more advanced students. One can smell the protests if any school district in America were to dare to use queer doctrine as the paradigm of pseudoscience.

The danger here is very real. A parent cannot fully protect their child from indoctrination when teachers have them for hours every day on most days of the week. These are children—they can be made to believe nearly anything (see the California McMartin Preschool case if you need an eye-opener). It’s one thing for peers on the playground to talk about gender ideology—or claim to be a dinosaur or a dog. It’s something else entirely for an adult in authority to teach a child that a man can be a woman.

Frankly, to believe something so absurd to the degree that one would teach it in school is disqualifying in itself. But setting aside the question of competence, it is not the role of teachers to instruct children in such beliefs, nor is it the role of public schools to override parental authority in service of a political agenda and the fetishes of the queer community. Believe what you want on your own time. But take down the flags, cancel the curriculum, and remove the books from public schools and libraries. These should be ideological-neutral spaces. The First Amendment demands it.

The New York Times is reporting that, two decades having passed since Nascimento Blair was last in his home country Jamaica, he has finally been deported. A judge ordered Blair to be deported after he was convicted of kidnapping in 2006. He was allowed to remain in the United States after leaving prison in 2020 because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did not consider Blair a priority for deportation. Now they do. So away he went.

With the reality setting in that their poster boy, “Maryland Dad” Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is a human trafficker, The New York Times has offered Blair as the next poster boy. The Gray Lady wants its readers to know his biography (as its reporters have constructed it)—among other things, how he reformed his life, as if that has anything to do about whether he should live his reformed life in the United States or in his home country. If he is such a saint, Jamaica could use him.

“I feel if Trump met him, he would think this guy makes America great,” said Dawn Ravella, a social worker, quoted in the Times. “He was born in Jamaica, but made in America. A person who did something bad, had remorse, paid their [sic] dues and paid it forward by living a life of kindness and service.” He is reformed, The Times reports, channeling his supporters for whom his “life story was one of rehabilitation, nuanced and filled with qualities that they believe Mr. Trump’s deportation machine disregards as it flies out immigrants en masse.”

Where was the furor over Mr. Clinton’s “deportation machine,” which removed 12.3 million illegal aliens from America? Or Misters Bush and Obama’s machines that removed 10.3 million and 5.3 million respectively?

The headline of the Times article “21 Years Later, Deported Back to a ‘Home’ He Barely Knew” announces a fallacy. Why is it so awful to send a man back to his home country that he hardly knows, but desirable for a man to illegally cross into a country he hardly knows? Imagine this argument: “Yes, he lived here as a child, but he hasn’t been here for 21 years, so we shouldn’t let him in.” That’s not an argument. The issue at hand is whether there is a legitimate reason for the man to enter. 

The relevant question concerning Blair is whether there is legitimate reason for him to stay. He is an illegal alien with a felony conviction for kidnapping and scheduled for deportation. Blair’s rehabilitation is entirely beside the point. This is no reason for him to stay in a country in which he holds no citizenship. He doesn’t even enjoy a path to citizenship. He was never told when he was released from prison that he could stay in the country because had been rehabilitated. He was in America only because ICE did not act on a judge’s deportation order. Now they have. And he is home—like Garcia.

Readers will recall that the media used a similar frame to manufacture sympathy over family separation for purposes of delegitimizing Trump’s deportation efforts during his first term. The ploy becomes obvious merely by asking why, if it’s so terrible to separate families at the border, separating America families has never been a concern. Family separation in the context of crime commission is standard. The rational question is why they’re being separated, not that they’re being separated. 

What the New York Times is doing is the purist form of propaganda: irrational, emotional appeals to obscure the reality of the situation in order to thwart the removal of illegal aliens. This is a simple matter really. Not everybody in the world can be in our country. There are rules about who can and cannot be here, how they are supposed to enter, and so on. If an individual is not supposed to be here, he needs removing. All the other stuff is noise generated to cloud reason. Mass immigration is a choice. The question citizens need to answer is who makes the choice. Is this what the People want? The polling tells us the answer is no. Trump’s landslide victory in November 2024 tells us the answer is no.

In several essays on Freedom and Reason I have made it plain who is making the choice to flood the United States with foreigners and why. I can summarize those conclusions by putting it this way: If one oppose mass deportation, he is effectively stand with corporate power over against the working class. Mass immigration is a corporate strategy to drive down the wages of the American worker and change the American way of life to advance the wealth and privilege of the global corporate class and entrench elite hegemony over the populace. If you need more evidence of the grand plan look at what they’re doing to Ireland. Still need more evidence? Look at what they’ve done to England, France, and Germany. What more evidence does a person need?

The elite have weaponized the US judiciary to advance a globalist project. They’re trying to force a constitutional crisis.

We’re hearing a great deal about “due process” these days. The pro-immigrant rhetoric is typically wrapped in the Bill of Rights. But what Democrats and the media aren’t telling their audiences—and the People should expect an objective media would tell them this—is that Illegal aliens have sharply limited due process compared to citizens, rights defined by congressional statutes and judicial precedent not enshrined in the Constitution. Why would they be in the Constitution? Only the People enjoy the privileges and immunity of citizenship. It’s their country. What would be the point of citizenship otherwise?

For illegal aliens, the scope of due process is constrained and determined by other powers, particularly in immigration proceedings. The Supreme Court has held that Congress has broad plenary power over immigration allowing it to prescribe the terms of due process for non-citizens. More than this, in Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972), the Court held that “[i]n the exercise of Congress’ plenary power to exclude aliens or prescribe the conditions for their entry into this country, Congress in § 212(a)(28) of the Act has delegated conditional exercise of this power to the Executive Branch.” 

Rights like hearings, legal representation, or appeals are granted only as provided by statutes like the Immigration and Nationality Act. The president has broad powers under Article II to interpret and execute the laws Congress passes. In Mathews v. Diaz (1976), the Court clarified that non-citizens’ due process rights are subject to congressional limits. This is what democracy looks like.

While illegal aliens facing deportation may receive procedural protections (e.g., a hearing before an immigration judge), these protections are statutory, not constitutional, and can be modified by Congress and are subject to Executive discretion. Expedited removal, authorized under 8 U.S.C. § 1225, limits due process, providing only minimal review. The President can put anybody in charge of an immigration court. Given that very few of those illegally in our country have a legitimate asylum claim, with the right judges in place—i.e., those who serve the interests of the People—the President can rapidly remove millions of illegal aliens.

If the same due process enjoyed by US citizens were extended to illegal immigrants, a President would be unable to remove the ten million foreigners who illegally entered our country under the Biden regime—or the other ten million or so who came before them. How did Clinton remove more than 12 million illegal aliens from America? How did Bush and Obama remove more than 10 million and 5 million respectively? They could do this because they enjoyed the powers I described above. Where was the hysteria over due process then?

This is the goal of lawfare: hijack judicial review with the hope that the Supreme Court will hijacking congressional and executive authority by establishing a procedural framework that grinds Trump’s deportation efforts to a halt. If this happens, then the populace will know that the judiciary is working in tandem with the corporate class to begin the final stages of America’s destruction. The Trump Administration may have returned Blair home in time. But time is running out. There are millions of Blairs still in America—and the corporatocracy wants to keep them here.

In the face of The Resistance™, Trump is rising the polls. Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 52 percent of likely US voters approve of the job Trump is doing. 

The organizers of the “Hands Off” street performance might consider at some point whether want to keep going with this strategy. It seems to be producing the opposite effect. Corporatist propaganda confronts a now open media, and rational pundits like Scott Jennings make progressive pundits look like liars and lunatics. When progressives and the Democrats commanded social media they suppressed and de-platformed rational voices. When Elon Musk liberated Twitter from the censorship regime, he let progressives rant because he knew that they’re their own worst enemy.

Who are the organizers of the anemic color revolution? Among them are Open Society Foundations (created by multi-billionaire George Soros, now led by Alex Soros), which has shifted its focus toward direct political influence, organizing advocacy campaigns, legal defense funds, and protest infrastructure, and Sixteen Thirty Fund (administered by Arabella Advisors), which spends millions of dollars collected from anonymous donors. Those are two of several. These organizations provide resources for logistics and media campaigns. Thanks to the recent expansion and deepening of mutual knowledge facilitated by the more open system, the Resistance™ is becoming a money pit. At least that’s what the evidence suggests.

Now the People need the Supreme Court to do the right thing and get out of the way of the Trump agenda. But the people can’t depends on the Supreme Court. Congress must act to defund courts and impeach judges who are thwarting the popular will. Legislation is needed to restrict the tool of the universal injunction. The corporatists are getting desperate and they’re turning ever more aggressively to the machinery of government to deconstruct the American Republic. The judiciary is not the executive branch. Separation of powers is central to the republic scheme bequeathed to us by our forefathers. Government by judges is tyranny. Something must be done about this. Congress and the executive must reclaim the power given to them by the Founders.

The anti-democratic sentiment in the courts and on the left is a troubling thing. If the people don’t get a handle on it then the mob, frustrated by their increasingly inability to turn Americans against Trump, will ramp up its resort to vandalism and violence. One might think that limiting the judiciary in the corporatist project would provoke leftists to become even more terroristic. But ideologically-driven judges signal to the mob that their extreme behavior is appropriate—it encourages the elites who organize the mobs to turn to more drastic action by falsely portraying the President as an enemy of democracy. 

What lies behind this is the transnationalism agenda. Its two major pieces, namely neoliberalism and globalism, intertwined in the hands of Democrats and their Republican allies (there are still many of them), provide the economic and ideological framework driving transnationalism. Neoliberalism promotes the free flow of capital, goods, and services across borders. Globalism seeks interconnectedness and the integration of nations through trade, cultural exchange, and international institutions, e.g. the IMF and the WTO.

Neoliberal policies—trade liberalization and multinational/transnational corporate expansion—facilitate globalism by creating a borderless economic environment, prioritizing corporate interests over national sovereignty and local economies. This twin force exacerbates inequality and erodes cultural distinctions, as globalism and  neoliberalism homogenize markets and prioritize profit-driven systems over labor, environmental, and social concerns. This is the heart of the progressive agenda. It’s why progressives are protesting the removal of criminal aliens from the United States—if this hurdle is overcome, they know what follows is mass deportations. The color revolution and lawfare are part of a strategy to prevent this, which will undermine the Democrat’s electoral strategy and the corporate project to drive down wages for domestic labor. This is the politics of corporate power. And it is anti-worker.

It’s crucial for people to emphasize at every opportunity that the uprising is not organic. It’s a color revolution organized by global elites. Color revolutions have historically been a tool used by the global elite, working through government and nongovernmental organizations backed by corporate power, to change the governments of developing nations. Western organizations, such as Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy, US Agency for International Development, and Open Society Foundations provide funding, logistical support, and training to so-called pro-democracy groups in those countries. These forms of support include legal aid (lawfare) and media training (to create the illusion of grassroots resistance). While this assistance is publicly framed as “democracy promotion,” Western intelligence agencies, such as the CIA or MI6, covertly orchestrate these movements to undermine unfriendly regimes and install governments favorable to transnationalism.

More recently, the tactic of color revolution has shifted internally, to undermine and replace governments in the First World. This is a response to genuinely pro-democracy movements in the West, commonly known as populist-nationalism—the organic popular response to transnationalism. The United States witnessed the deployment of color revolution in the summer of 2020 and at other points during the first Trump presidency. With the reelection of Trump, the tactic has reappeared. The good news is that (so far) it’s not working to sway public opinion. But it’s something to worry about nonetheless because it indicates that there’s a concerted effort underway to forever alter the historical trajectory of the West and the way of life of its citizens.

The deportation figures cited in the meme below are roughly in line with the historical data, though they require context to understand exactly what they mean by deportations. The numbers I cite in this article reflect a combination of “removals” and “returns.” Removals are formal deportations, often involving court orders or expedited processes, with legal consequences like bans on re-entry. Returns are less formal, typically involving migrants apprehended at the border who are returned without a removal order. The injunction statistics a more problematic.

Bill Clinton (1993–2001) carried out approximately 12.3 million deportations. Of these, 11.4 million (93 percent) were returned primarily at the border, involving migrants apprehended and deported without formal removal proceedings. Additionally, Clinton carried out about 870,000 formal removals. George W. Bush (2001–2009) carried out approximately 10.3 million deportations, with about 8.3 million (81 percent) being returns and roughly 2 million formal removals. Barack Obama (2009–2017) carried out approximately 5.3 million deportations. Obama focused more on formal removals (around 3.2 million) than returns. Obama was so aggressive with formal removals that he was nicknamed “Deporter-in-Chief.” Obama’s policies shifted toward prioritizing criminal aliens. Trump strategy builds on Obama’s strategy.

The claim that Clinton, Bush, and Obama faced zero injunctions is inaccurate. Universal injunctions (court orders blocking federal policies) have been a feature of immigration policy disputes across the four administrations under discussion (they were rarely used before then). However, the gist of the meme—that Trump has faced more injunctions than his predecessors—is true. Indeed, the difference is stark. 

Clinton and Obama each faced around a dozen injunctions over their two terms. Bush faced around half a dozen. In contrast, Trump faced some 64 injunctions in his first term alone—with his first term seeing fewer deportations (about 1.5 million) than his predecessors in a four-year span. It would have been more, of course, if not for the barrage of injunctions leveled at Trump’s efforts to carry forward the policies of his predecessors. So far, in his second term, Trump has deported around a 50,000 illegal aliens. And the injunctions are flying. Who knows what the final count will be. 

So, while the meme isn’t entirely accurate, it is substantially true, and its implications important to consider. We might ask whether, if Biden were still president and embarked on a similar path, he would face such a massive wave of injunctions. We do know this wasn’t an issue in his only term as president because he essentially ended the policy of mass deportation and instead effectively opened the border to millions of illegal aliens. We don’t really need to guess what a second Biden term would look like.

What explains the double standard? How could Trump’s predecessors deport so many millions with so few injunctions, while Trump is hampered by injunctions at every turn? Is the simply because it’s Trump doing the deporting and corporate elites need to portray his deportation policy as some extraordinary moment in US history to delegitimize his presidency? Or did Biden’s open border policy signal the desire of corporate elites to flood the country with cheap foreign labor going forward?

The double standard may be only apparent. Globalization was kicked into a higher gear under Biden and mass immigration became even more central to the plan to immobilize and demoralize whatever remains of the labor movement. As we can see with the protests across America, the left has been turned against the working class. Mass immigration is also central to the plan to establish a one-party state with the Democratic Party and compliant Republicans serving the interests of the transnational elite. Trump and the populist movement is the resistance the oligarchy needs to put down, so stopping Trump’s immigration policy by manufacturing the perception that it’s authoritarian kills two birds with one stone.

Progressives are trying to manufacture yet another moral panic, this time over Trump’s suggestion that American citizens and residents could be held in foreign correctional facilities. They drop the new panic into the narrative about Trump’s alleged totalitarian ambitions. You’ve all heard it by now. Trump wants to be a dictator. Sending terrorists and violent offenders to facilities external to the United States confirms it. He’s a fascist. And a Nazi. It is an absurd narrative.

Extraterritorial incarceration (or cross-border incarceration) is not an extraordinary practice. Several of the most progressive European countries have arranged to house prisoners in facilities in other countries—and their crime rates, albeit on the rise, are lower than ours. Progressives have for as long as I have been alive offered up Europe as an aspirational model for the United States. Are they not aware of the practice of cross-border incarceration across the European Union? 

Denmark has leased prison cells in Kosovo to house prisoners (Kosovo isn’t even an EU member state). In 2021, an agreement was made to send hundreds of inmates to a facility in Kosovo, with the arrangement formalized in 2023. Prisoners are today being housed there. This policy was driven by overcrowding in Danish prisons. Norway has sent prisoners to a Dutch facility to manage capacity constraints. In 2015, Norway leased space in the Netherlands to house inmates due to insufficient domestic prison capacity. Belgium also leased prison space in the Netherlands, specifically in Tilburg, to accommodate 500 inmates starting in 2010. This was a response to overcrowding in Belgian prisons. 

The UK is exploring options to house prisoners abroad due to record-high prison populations. Discussions have been reported with Estonia to potentially send British prisoners to facilities there. Sweden is also in talks with Estonia to house prisoners in Estonian facilities, as part of efforts to address domestic prison overcrowding. While the Netherlands has primarily been a host country (e.g., leasing facilities to Belgium and Norway), it has also explored sending prisoners abroad.

Readers should be aware that the reason given for cross-border incarceration, namely overcrowding, begs another question: why are these countries experiencing prison overcrowding? Crime has been rising across Europe and many of these countries lack the facilities to handle the influx of convicts. It moreover makes their societies safer to house incorrigibles in other countries. This begs yet another question: why is crime rising in Europe? Over the last several decades, Europe has made residents of millions of foreigners whose cultures are incompatible with European culture and who grew up in corrupt and crime-ridden countries. People are culture-bearers. The rise in crime correlates with the influx of Africans, Arabs, and Eastern Europeans. The correlation is not spurious.

According to Eurostat data from 2022, intentional homicides in the EU increased by more than 4 percent compared to 2021. Sexual violence offenses are on the rise across Europe. Thefts rose by 18 percent, robberies by nearly 10 percent, and burglaries by over 7 percent. Organized crime, particularly drug trafficking, is a growing concern, with INTERPOL noting a significant rise in related violent crime and money laundering. 

Some countries and cities experience more crime than others. Berlin saw an 8 percent rise in violent crime from 2021 to 2023, with homicides up 15 percent, sexual assaults up 12 percent, and robberies up 10 percent, according to the German Federal Criminal Police Office. Nationwide, violent crimes hit a 15-year high. In the UK, Birmingham’s violent crime rose 13 percent from 2021 to 2023, with knife-related offenses up 10 percent. London reported a 21 percent increase in knife-related incidents between July 2022 and June 2023, and homicides spiked in 2023.

Sweden’s crime index in 2023 was 48.5, among the highest in Europe, when it used to be one of the safest countries in the world. Belgium, France, Netherlands, and Spain have all experienced rising drug-related gang violence, contributing to the increasing problem of violent crime. Belgium and France rank even higher than Sweden on crime indices (49.1 and 55.3, respectively, in 2023).

Just as many European countries are utilizing or considering extraterritorial incarceration in countries in their region, the Trump Administration is using and considering extraterritorial incarceration in foreign counties. The panic over the CECOT detention center located in Tecoluca, El Salvador, depends on concealing the fact that cross-border incarceration is a common practice. The corporate media and progressive pundits will not tell their publics this. Perhaps many of them don’t know about it. But some do. The truth is a problem for their narrative.

This is why progressives in America are not branding the governing parties of Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom “Nazis.” It’s why they aren’t warning the citizens of those and other social democratic countries that their governments are on the path to “fascism.” Wasn’t it only a few months ago progressives scolded Vice-President JD Vance for criticizing Europeans for their repressive speech policies and for corrupting democratic processes by marginalizing oppositional parties? Their gaze is selective. Their anti-fascism is fake.

Extraterritorial incarceration is not a sign of fascism. Social democratic countries across Europe have turned to or considering utilizing the practice to make their cities and communities safer in the face of growing crime caused by the globalist strategy to drive down wages by importing and securing residence for cheap foreign labor—also to disrupt Western culture. Misplaced humanitarianism among the populations there functions to cover and advance the strategy. The rise of repressive free speech law and lawfare disenfranchising those with nationalist sympathies is at its core a strategy to tamp down popular opposition to the globalist agenda. Extraterritorial incarceration would not be necessary if Europe deported those who threaten Western civilization.

For those who might want to quibble over the status of those housed in foreign prisons by noting that they are not citizens, know that the basis for citizenship in most of these countries (jus sanguinis) precludes even those born in those countries from automatically becoming citizens there. That means that residents who have lived their entire lives in these countries are subject to extraterritorial incarceration—analogous to sending US citizens to overseas detention facilities, an idea Trump is floating. These same persons are also subject to deportation, which would in the long term be the most effective way for reducing prison overcrowding and crime in Europe.

This is the advantage of citizenship law based on ancestry instead of birthright. On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship for children born in the US to parents who are illegally in the country or here on temporary visas. The order challenges over a century of legal precedent established by the 1898 Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which has been blocked by multiple federal judges in states like Maryland, New Hampshire, and Washington, who deemed it unconstitutional. I have explained in articles on Freedom and Reason why it may not be unconstitutional. Extraterritorial incarceration may not depend on whether it is.

The Supreme Court announced on Thursday that it will hear arguments on May 15, 2025, to address the Administration’s request to lift nationwide injunctions preventing the order’s enforcement. Legal scholars and critics, citing the Fourteenth Amendment’s “clear language” and “historical intent” to grant citizenship to all born on US soil, view the order as unlikely to succeed, though they admit that case’s outcome could hinge on the Court’s interpretation of jurisdictional nuances and its stance on nationwide injunctions (which also must be addressed, as I have also argued in articles recently published on this platform).

Before closing, I want to address two related arguments I routinely confront on social media. The first concerns the matter of civil rights for those who encounter the criminal justice process. I’m a civil libertarian. I have always been a strong advocate for the Bill of Rights. Leaving aside the question of whether noncitizens should have full access to those rights (I lean towards the position that they shouldn’t in any robust sense), such arguments concern principle. My record on principle in this regard is unassailable.

However, there are pragmatic considerations to be considered in making any public policy. Moreover, public safety is a human right. Due process is important, but so are the human rights of those who want to live in safe communities. The ideal approach to enhancing public safety means supporting the needs of communities. Central to this is the presence of high-wage, value-added manufacturing jobs and protection of American citizens and legal residents from cheap foreign labor by strict enforcement of immigration laws. American once enjoyed this situation. During the period between immigration restrictions in the 1920s and the globalization push following WWII, especially after the opening of the country to mass immigration again, crime was at historic lows in America. Families were largely intact. And communities were thriving.

If progressives were concerned with the situation of those who are arrested, convicted, and sentenced to prison, kept here or sent abroad, why do they oppose policies that would recapture America’s Gold Age? It’s not as if we don’t know what works. Why do progressives support social policies destructive to communities and families? The drastic rise in crime that begins in the mid-1960s and peaks in the early-1990s was only reversed by mass incarceration and interventionist police action. Had progressives not pursued such destructive policies as the Great Society and globalization, there would have been no need to take the drastic measures taken in the 1980s and 1990s to restore some modicum of public safety to our towns and cities. Expanding the criminal justice system was necessary not merely because progressives have no will to do the things that make American safer; they actively oppose policies that addresses the root causes of crime in America—deindustrialization and the replacement of American workers with foreign labor.

The second argument I routinely confront on social media is the claim that the rate of crime commission by immigrants is lower than the rate for Americans (the rightwing libertarian think tank Cato Institute distributes this claim, which has become ubiquitous). On X, in recent back-and-forth about the deportation of criminal aliens, I awaited the inevitable. I didn’t have to wait for long (I never do). “But immigrants commit crime at only half the rate of Americans.”

This claim is flawed. For one thing, it obscures the fact that those entering the United States illegally, such as crossing a border without authorization, outside a designated port of entry, are violating the criminal law. Despite what we are told, illegally entering the United States is not merely a civil violation; it’s a crime under 8 U.S.C. § 1325, which can result in fines, imprisonment for up to six months, or both for a first offense. Penalties may increase for subsequent violations or aggravating circumstances.

Being established that it is a crime to illegally enter the United States, one would have to assume that American citizens illegally enter other countries with similar immigration laws (which is a great many of them—some even stricter) at a rate much greater than foreigners illegally entering this country. Since this is a rather absurd assumption, it’s obvious that illegal aliens have a much higher crime than American citizens when comparing apples to apples—without committing any additional crimes. I’m being a tad sarcastic here; this is not what those who make this claim have in mind. But it’s still worth pointing out.

What they mean to argue is that Americans are more criminal than immigrants. Not quite. Some native-born groups have very high crime rates—black men, for example, commit homicides at 6–8 times the rate of white men. This is a consequence of deindustrialization and the ghettoization of black men in dilapidated inner-city areas with high levels of social disorganization, exacerbated by public assistance programs undermining families in these areas—thanks to the progressive transnationalist project. Thus comparing immigrants to “all Americans” obscures several distortions. The majority of Americans, despite the decline in their standard of living, are law-abiding tax-paying citizens.

The real problem is that appealing to rates obscures the real issue, namely crime volume. Presumably, nobody wants more crime (at least nobody will admit that, albeit it is functional to certain ends). Rates aside, the fact is that illegal aliens add thousands of violent crimes (even ignoring millions of border-crossing violations) on top of all the violence crime America already endures. Reducing the numbers of illegal aliens to zero would stop those crimes cold. Fewer victims, less burden. It’s that simple, really.

Removing the alien contribution to the crime problem would mean thousands of fewer assaults, homicides, or robberies each year, easing the burden on victims, law enforcement, and the justice system. Additionally, the reduction would address measurable costs: fewer resources spent on processing illegal entry cases, less strain on infrastructure, and reduced economic impacts, not only the tens of billions of dollars in net fiscal costs attributed to illegal immigration annually (the burden on taxpayers), but the half a trillion dollars in lost wages to American workers annually (money that goes into the pockets of employers). By eliminating this population’s presence, the US avoids these added crimes and costs entirely, keeping the crime volume lower than it would be otherwise.

The real point of the claim is to suggest that immigrants are better than native-born Americans. To that I say, “fuck you.” But I need to say just a bit more than that. Making immigrants appear as a more desirable lot than Americans is functional to the ends sought by progressive transnationalists—not just to the needs of the corporations who seek super-exploitable labor pools, or the needs of Democrats seeking to draw more resources to their states and groom more voters for their party, but to advance the project of deconstructing the American Republic and, more broadly, the West.

At first approximation, the left loathes strength and tradition and takes up the cause of the weak and the marginal. This is the cause of “social justice.” It’s a struggle between “oppressor” and “victim.” In this formulation, normal working class and small business men and women (depicted as exclusively white) are the oppressor. Everybody else is the victim. But a closer examination reveals something very different. Leftists rationalize Islamofascism and defend Hispanic gang culture, both deeply patriarchal and antihuman traditions. This is why they get so exercised over attempt to deal with the worst people—the anti-West protestors on our college campuses, MS-13 members Trump is deporting, men demanding access to women’s spaces, murders and rapists (as long as they’re not white). Progressives upend reason, science, and common sense in the institutions they have captured for a reason. This is motive force behind the endless manufactures of moral panic.

Why did Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen travel to El Salvador to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia in prison but not personally reach out to the mother of Rachel Morin, whose daughter was raped and murdered in 2023 by Victor Martinez-Hernandez, a fugitive from El Salvador, while exercising on a hiking trail northeast of Baltimore? Van Hollen’s priorities are clear. And he speaks for millions on the left. I discussed his visit to El Salvador in Thursday’s blog. Update: Van Hollen finally got his meeting with Garcia. It was photographed. They had drinks together. Garcia looks healthy. More Democrats are making their way to El Salvador to join in the grandstanding—despite the evidence making it clear that Garcia, an El Salvadorian citizen, is right where he should be.

What lies in back of progressive social justice rhetoric is “Europhobia,” a hatred for, loathing of, and prejudice against Europeans and European culture. This includes the United States and Canada, the progeny of European society. I am reluctant to use such a neologism in light of the propaganda constructs “Islamophobia” and “transphobia,” but perhaps such constructs resonate with those who manufacture them. I trust readers understand what I mean with this term. It’s the anti-West sentiment, the source of sympathy for Hamas and animus towards Israel and Jews more generally on the left, etc.

This is not hyperbole. The left is explicit about it. I repeat myself: today’s left loathes Western civilization and the Enlightenment. They have abandoned their historic solidarity with the working class (which has smelled a bit paternalistic, frankly). They articulate this abandonment through their condemnation of “white privilege” and other like rhetoric. This is the postmodernist project. Note the construction: postmodern. They seek a new world order that leaves behind modern society and its values: democratic republicanism, humanism, individualism, liberalism, and secularism. They want this replaced by the atavisms of tribalism and “indigenous ways of knowing.” This destructive ideology is rampant in our colleges and universities—even k-12. It has corrupted medicine and science. It has colonized our sense-making institutions. It targets the family. And the community.

Tens of millions in the West are waking up to the fact that the postmodern project represents an existential threat to everything they hold dear. They are recognizing the signs now. The dramatic cultural and political pivot we’re witnessing is driven by an awakening in the West. Hopefully, it’s not too late. And despite the consequences of impatience with civil rights and due process that protects the worst humans on earth, the impatience is understandable—and until the left quits its anti-human project, the consequences inevitable. The majority is caught between principle and pragmatics, and they have only one life to live, and there are other lives to which they are responsible. They have to secure the safety of their families, and there are times where doing so demands bold action. In light of this, extraterritorial incarceration is a rather minor matter.

Like a dog on a bone, the corporate media and progressive pundits can’t let go of the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador currently housed in the that country’s Terrorism Confinement Center (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo), or CECOT. It’s the latest in a succession of manufactured scandals that, like that dog’s bone, is gnawed to nothing over time.

The media and progressive narrative is crumbling. Garcia, who illegally entered the United States more than a decade ago, was allowed to work in Maryland, but was not granted asylum in the 2019 immigration case the Trump Administration allegedly skirted. Nor was Garcia given a green card or a path to citizenship. The “Maryland man” is now back in the country of his origin, having been transported there by the Trump Administration. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has declined to return him to the United States.

Garcia sought asylum in America because he feared Barrio 18, an El Salvadorian gang. Why would Garcia need protection from Barrio 18? Is it because Barrio 18 is the chief rival or the El Salvadorian gang MS-13 and they had it in for Garcia? Garcia claimed that Barrio 18 was extorting his family. I can find no evidence for this claim. But there is evidence that he is a MS-13 gang member.

The 2019 case was an immigration proceedings following Garcia’s detention by ICE. ICE determined he was an MS-13 gang member based on a confidential informant’s claim and a Gang Field Interview Sheet. Garcia was with Christhyan Hernandez-Romero and Jose Guillermo Dominguez, known MS-13 gang members, both members of the Sailor’s clique.

According to the field report, “During the interview officers observed he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears and mouth of the presidents on the separate denominations. Officers know such clothing to be indicative of the Hispanic gang culture. The meaning of the clothing is to represent ‘ver, oir y callar’ or ‘see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil.’ Wearing the Chicago Bulls hat represents that they are a member in good standing with the MS-13. Officers contacted past proven and reliable source of information, who advised [that Garcia] is an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique. The confidential source further advised that he is the rank of ‘Chequeo’ with the moniker of ‘Chele.’”

In April 2019, an immigration judge denied Garcia bond, citing the informant’s allegation as sufficient evidence of gang ties. In October 2019, another immigration judge denied his asylum request but granted him “withholding of removal” to El Salvador (keep in mind that immigration judges are administrative officers who often facilitate immigration agendas). Garcia was required to check in with ICE annually. His presence in our country was therefore provisional and there were questions about his associations.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a history of violence and was not the upstanding “Maryland Man” the media has portrayed him as.

According to court filings, Garcia’s wife sought a domestic violence restraining order against him, claiming he punched, scratched, and ripped off her shirt,… pic.twitter.com/FpSV0k3i90

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) April 16, 2025

But there are other troubling elements of this case. Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, on two occasions in 2021, sought a restraining order against her husband alleging domestic violence, according to a court filing posted on X by the Department of Homeland Security (see above). The affidavit alleges that Garcia punched and scratched Sura, bloodying and bruising her—all this in the presence of their baby. Sura expressed fear of being near him, citing her safety concerns. However, she did not appear in court for the hearings, and the requests for the restraining order were not pursued further. While it’s possible that Sura chose not to proceed, factors such as fear, intimidation, or external pressures could have prevented her attendance. No specific details confirm these possibilities, but that is expected in such cases.

Moreover, in 2022, Garcia was stopped by the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) illegally transporting seven immigrants from Houston to Maryland on an invalid drivers license. The officer suspected Abrego Garcia was engaged in human trafficking. The THP contacted the FBI for guidance, and within a couple of hours, the FBI requested that Garcia and his passengers be released. The THP complied with this request, and no arrests or charges were made in connection to the incident. Why would Biden’s FBI instruct the THP to release a man known to ICE as a MS-13 gang member and allow him to continue transporting illegal immigrants to Maryland on an invalid drivers license? I think readers know the answer to this question.

We are hearing very little about any of this in the legacy media and progressives defending Garcia. They aren’t asking questions about the relevant facts. You’re hearing about a “Maryland dad” with a wife and an autistic child. If you hear about the allegation against him, the spin is that the allegations are doubtful and that he was mistakenly rolled up (in an “administrative error”) in an ICE operation to deport MS-13 gang members. Why won’t the media give you the straight facts? Why won’t journalists ask the relevant questions? Why are Democratic politicians grandstanding over the case? Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland flew to El Salvador to “get answers” about the “wrongful deportation” of a “Maryland migrant.” He was rebuffed.

Did Van Hollen violate the Logan Act which prohibits US citizens from engaging in unauthorized diplomacy with foreign governments to influence disputes or undermine US policy? Border Czar Tom Homan argues that Van Hollen’s actions constituted unauthorized diplomacy, especially since Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele rejected Garcia’s release, aligning with the Trump administration’s stance.

Van Hollen defenders counter that he acted as a US senator, not a private citizen, that Senators often engage in foreign travel and discussions as part of their oversight and constituent service roles, and that his meetings with US embassy officials and Salvadoran authorities were consistent with congressional duties. Accepting all that, the question still remains: why is Van Hollen representing a deported El Salvadorian citizen who was denied asylum and a green card, is almost certainly a MS-13 gang member, assaulted his wife, and stopped for trafficking immigrants across state lines on an invalid driver’s license?

There are at least three related reasons for the corporate media spin and broad Democrat support for criminal aliens. First, the media and the Democratic Party want to keep cheap immigrant labor in America because it benefits the oligarchy they represent. The spin is a continuation of the propaganda war prosecuted against the American populace during Trump’s first term, the aim of which is to turn public opinion against the President’s policy. Second, and more deeply, these forces are attempting to delegitimize the Trump Administration because the populist movement he represents is an existential threat to the globalist project. They need to marginalize the movement in the eyes of the populace. Third, the oligarchy wants to divide the American proletariat along ideological lines in order to facilitate elite management of the population. This is the beating heart of multiculturalism project manifest in identity politics, in this case manufacturing ethnic and racial antipathies.

The spin isn’t working. Today’s Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll finds Trump at 50 percent approval, with 48 percent disapproving. Harry Enten at CNN is reporting that if the election were held today, Trump would still prevail over Harris. Democrats, on the other hand, are more unpopular than they have ever been in historic polling. The succession of manufactured scandals—Nazi-style salutes, SignalGate, pardons for January 6 rioters, to name a few—are having little effect other than to feed the confirmation bias of those who already loathe the President and MAGA.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” The first part is definitely true. The second and third parts are exaggeration. But the spirit of the quip taken in its entirety is essentially correct. It has become very difficult for the elite to control the population with lies and propaganda. This is because the Internet liberated by Musk’s lead in purchasing Twitter (at a loss), has made the sharing of information too open for falsehoods and misrepresentations to take hold in the way they used to. We are in the midst of a significant political realignment.

Americans want those who should not be in this country deported. According to the Pew Research Center, fewer than one in five Americans oppose deportation. Trump has started with criminal aliens and those associated with criminal gangs and terrorist networks, which is supported by a large majority of Americans. Democrats know that what follows this is mass deportations of everybody who crossed borders into the United States illegally. They’re trying to nip the project in the bud by manufacturing a moral panic over Garcia. He’s their poster boy. But it’s not working.

You know what else isn’t working? The moral panic over tariffs. The panic over Wall Street’s performance of late—the propaganda making it appear as an everyman peril—is designed to mask the fact that the top 10 percent of income earners hold roughly 90 percent of corporate stock value. The fact is that working-class individuals invest smaller amounts in stocks, primarily through retirement plans, while high-net-worth individuals and institutions dominate trading volume and influence market dynamics. Wall Street’s investment landscape reflects the interests of the rich. How quickly we forget that only 15 years ago there were mass protests on the left against Wall Street—and only 25 years ago mass labor and leftwing protests against globalization.

The new tack we see emerging is manufacturing panic over a possible trade embargo between the US and China. To be sure, both sides are engaged in a heated trade war, with actions like China’s reported halt on Boeing jet deliveries and US tariff carve-outs for tech companies exerting strategic economic pressure. But even if there were an embargo, it would mean that US capital would not flow to China, but rather stay here or near, which would facilitate more domestic investment in manufacturing. Even without an embargo, a reduction of capital outflows would manifest to the benefit of American workers.

There is a relevant passage by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto (1848) that needs only minor adjustments to capture the spirit of actions pursued by the transnational corporate class against the American businessman and worker, waged through the instrument of the Chinese economic power:

“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”

The passage describes how capitalism, in their day driven by the bourgeoisie, leverages cheap goods, communications, and technological advancements to impose itself on all nations, reshaping the world in its image. Today, global capitalism, driven by a transnational elite, is reshaping the United States in the way that earlier iterations of capitalism reshaped the world. In Marx’s time, the metaphor “Chinese walls” symbolized protectionism and resistance to Western influence, drawing from historical perceptions of China’s self-imposed cultural and trade barriers. The usefulness of this metaphor is not time-bounded.

Today, under Trump, it’s America protecting its industries and workers, resisting the resisting the power of globalism to reshape our republic, reconstituting the cultural and trade barriers that made the United States the industrial powerhouse of the world—a title usurped China. The “heavy artillery” is cheap commodities China uses as weapons to break into markets, overcoming resistance, and integrating nations into the global capitalist system. For Marx and Engels, “barbarian nations” referred to the non-industrialized societies that lie outside the capitalist framework. To be sure, the US does not lie outside the capitalist framework, but a new framework is being erected, the framework of transnational corporatism, and Trump means to keep America aloof from it. And in the eyes of the globalist, Trump and MAGA are the barbarians.

Cheap Chinese commodities do not in the long run improve the standards of living of American families—only relatively and marginally because of the decline in wages relative to productivity. High-wage/value added manufacturing—and jobs for Americans generally—will raise the standard of living of American families. More people working for higher wages will raise tax revenues and allow the government to pay down the debt (and lower interest rates) enabling it to continue mounting the social programs that help American families and communities. That will come by easing trade deficits, deporting illegal aliens, securing our borders, and restoring the American System. It will come by erecting walls against globalization. Trump’s America First plan is the right plan.

The Garcia case and the globalist agenda are interlinked. Garcia is not a poster boy of the tyranny of the Trump Administration. He is a poster boy of the globalist project that has offshored manufacturing and flooded the United States with cheap foreign labor—a project that has displaced American workers, sunk America into tens of trillions of dollars in debt and put nation on a path to sovereign debt crisis, the restructuring of which will be the dismantling of the republic and full incorporation into the transnational global order. We cannot let that happen.

What the legacy media is telling Americans about the situation of the “Maryland man” Kilmar Abrego Garcia, describing him as an “innocent man” “wrongly deported” by the Trump Administration, adding to the frame an accusation that the Administration is defying the Supreme Court (and thus represents an authoritarian threat to America), grossly misrepresents the facts of the case.

The Washington Post describes Garcia as a “Maryland man mistakenly deported to a mega-prison,” emphasizing his family life and disabled child, while omitting Garcia’s lack of permanent residency and the Administration’s MS-13 allegations (Garcia is seeking asylum in American to protect him from Barrio 18, the bitter rival gang of MS-13). Similarly, NPR reporting has Trump defying a direct mandate to bring him back, ignoring the Supreme Court’s distinction between “facilitate” and “effectuate,” as well as the Court’s deference to executive authority.

The Supreme Court decision in Noem v. Garcia is not in fact a rebuke of Trump’s actions, albeit there are concerns about due process, but rather affirms Presidential powers and scolds the federal judge who ordered Garcia’s return, Judge Paula Xinis, for overstepping her authority. 

The characterization of Garcia as a “Maryland man” obscures the fact that Garcia is an El Salvadorian citizen, and while a 2019 order allowed him to live and work in the US, it does not confer permanent residency or a path to citizenship. The Supreme Court did not order the Trump Administration to return Garcia to the United States. Instead, the Court ordered the Administration to facilitate Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody and to ensure his case is handled as it would have been absent deportation—thus focusing on due process rather than mandating his return to the US.

The Court ruled 9-0 that the district court’s order that Trump “effectuate” the return of Garcia exceeded its authority. Moreover, the Court did not say that Trump had to facilitate the return of Garcia to the United States. Since Garcia is not a citizen, he has no right to return to the United States. The Court sent the order back to the district court to clarify the directive. 

The Supreme Court two-page order (Noem v. Garcia) was in response to an emergency request to overturn a Maryland district court injunction. The April 4 injunction ordered the Administration to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Garcia to the US by April 7, citing the need to restore due process after his “unlawful deportation” to El Salvador.

After failing to secure a stay from the Fourth Circuit, The Administration appealed to the Supreme Court, admitting Garcia’s deportation violated an order barring his removal to El Salvador, but that Garcia, an alleged MS-13 member, which the Trump Administration has designated a terrorist organization, was lawfully removable, albeit not to El Salvador. The Trump Administration also argued that Judge Xinis exceeded her authority by directing diplomatic efforts, which are reserved for the executive branch under Article II of the US Constitution. 

The Supreme Court partially granted the Administration’s request, voiding the expired deadline but upholding the spirit of the injunction pending clarification. Crucially, the Court found the order to “facilitate” his release from prison appropriate but deemed the demand to “effectuate” his return vague and potentially beyond judicial authority. The Court ordered the district court judge to clarify the order while upholding the Executive’s foreign affairs powers.

Judge Xinis revised her order, removing “effectuate,” and directing the Administration to take “all available steps” to return Garcia. She also demanded a declaration by 11:30 am the next day detailing Garcia’s status and the Administration’s efforts to comply. The Administration, citing the order’s late issuance, missed the deadline arguing that foreign policy cannot be rushed. Unpersuaded, Judge Xinis found the government noncompliant and ordered daily declarations on Garcia’s status.

The media is making it appear as if Trump is defying the Supreme Court. But the Supreme Court did not rule that Trump was noncompliant—the district court judge whose order she was required to revise did. 

Garcia’s legal team sought further relief, requesting his immediate release from Salvadoran custody, travel arrangements to the United States, discovery of US-El Salvador detention agreements, and contempt proceedings for the missed deadline. Judge Xinis has yet to rule on the new motion but given her strict stance and the Administration’s limited compliance may grant Garcia significant relief.

The Administration continues to insist that such judicial orders infringe on the President’s Article II powers. It nonetheless responded to the court and Garcia’s legal team by confirming Garcia’s detention in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). This was in keeping with the Supreme Court’s ruling, which directed to the Administration to “be prepared to share what it can” about steps taken implies an expectation of some action.

El Salvador has made significant strides in reducing crime, particularly violent crime, transforming itself from one of the world’s most dangerous countries to a regional model for public safety. Long plagued by gang violence from groups like MS-13 and Barrio 18, El Salvador saw homicide rates peak at 103 per 100,000 people in 2015, earning it the label “murder capital of the world.” Since President Nayib Bukele took office in 2019, crime rates have plummeted.

Bukele’s response has put El Salvador at the top of the list of those countries with the highest rate of incarceration in the world. As a result, by 2024, the homicide rate dropped to 1.9 per 100,000, a 98 percent decrease from 2015 and the lowest in over 50 years. Polls show 80-90 percent approval for Bukele’s policies, driven by relief from gang terror.

Bukele’s refusal to release Garcia, citing his alleged MS-13 ties, aligns with his domestic anti-gang stance, complicating US judicial orders and highlighting the intersection of US immigration policy and El Salvador’s security model.

Readers may not recall the same hysteria during the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton administration addressed rising gang violence, including by MS-13, through a combination of domestic law enforcement and the deportation of gang members. I do (I have written about it).

The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), signed by Clinton, expanded grounds for deportation, lowered the threshold for crimes warranting removal, and mandated detention for noncitizens convicted of aggravated felonies, including gang-related offenses. The reason that these actions are largely forgotten is because Clinton is a Democrat.

The law facilitated the deportation of thousands of Central American gang members, particularly MS-13 members, to El Salvador and other countries. Many were US-raised Salvadoran immigrants who had joined MS-13 in cities like Los Angeles. These deportations fueled MS-13’s growth in Central America, as deportees, lacking reintegration support, reconstituted gangs in El Salvador, contributing to its high homicide rates by the 2000s.

Critics argue Clinton’s policies prioritized short-term US crime reduction over long-term regional stability, exacerbating violence abroad. But the result of Clinton’s actions compelled El Salvador to crack down on gang violence—rather than exporting their criminal element to America. It also sharply reduced crime in America.

Headlines calling Garcia a “Maryland man” and “wrongly deported father” who is detained in a notorious prison in a Third World country are designed to evoke sympathy and drive engagement by simplifying his status, emphasizing his family ties, and implying his mistreatment in El Salvador.

All this is for propaganda purposes. Legacy media outlets oppose Trump’s immigration policies (recall the moral panic manufactured during Trump’s first term), framing the case as evidence of executive overreach or cruelty to align with the media’s anti-Trump sentiment. We therefore must critically question whether the media’s focus on Garcia’s “innocence” ignores legitimate security concerns raised by the Administration—and obscures the President’s responsibility as chief magistrate to protect American citizens from criminal aliens.

I want to close by noting the April 7 ruling in the case J.G.G. v. Trump (April 7, 2025), where the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, lifted a DC judge’s block on Trump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members.

The district judge in question, James Boasberg, a noted anti-Trump figure, issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking deportations under the Act and, usurping Article II powers, ordering flights to return—though two planes had already landed in El Salvador. The DC Circuit upheld Boasberg’s order on March 26, prompting the Trump administration to appeal to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court overruled the DC Circuit. The ruling allows deportations to continue, with detainees sent to El Salvador’s CECOT prison under a US agreement.

Noem v. Garcia and J.G.G. v. Trump are not directly linked but are thematically related in Trump’s focus on immigration enforcement and public safety. Both cases involve Trump’s 2025 deportation push, accusations of due process violations, and detentions in El Salvador’s CECOT prison. Garcia addresses an individual’s deportation under immigration law, while J.G.G. concerns mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

Crucially, both Supreme Court rulings upheld executive power while emphasizing the importance of due process. Both cases represent victories for the Trump Administration and his efforts to deport criminal aliens. 

The media is desperate to manufacture another hysteria over immigration, but so far, the President’s responsibility to the American public and his Article II powers are being upheld by the highest court in the land.

And this just in: Judge Xinis in Abrego Garcia case says there’s no evidence Trump administration is following her orders. Why is this judge making demands on the Trump Administration after the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that demanding Trump return a citizen of El Salvador exceeds her authority and trespasses upon the President’s Article II powers?

This is a rank abuse of power. She acting as if she’s Queen of the Realm.

A few weeks ago I wrote an essay on the rise of the judicocracy (see The Judicocracy Problematic), which is a type of government where courts usurp the powers of legislatures and executives thus violating the separation of powers.

The attempt by judges to take over and thus effectively neutralize democracy has become an intolerable situation. Congress must act to reign in the judiciary. There must be legislation to curtail the use of universal injunctions and restraining orders. Congress needs to defund courts and act with haste to impeach judges that exceed their authority. This is not the rule of law, but tyranny under the cover of the law.

All this talk about a constitutional crisis? Judicial overreach is dragging the republic into one.

Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary under Biden, said over the weekend that not only will Trump not be able to re-shore and near-shore high-wage value-producing manufacturing but that the goal is not even desirable. She called it a “pipe dream.”

“I really think that’s a pipe dream and not something that is likely to be accomplished,” she said. “We could even raise questions about whether or not, in a broad-based way, that’s a desirable goal.”

Of course re-shoring is not desirable from her standpoint. Yellen is a globalist. She and her ilk want China to be the manufacturing powerhouse and control global supply chains.

After a bump in the late 1990s, after a long period of decline, annual wages for 90 percent of the American population have been flat since 2000—while the income for the top one percent soared. This is the effect of offshoring high-wage value-added manufacturing, mass immigration, and rationalization of industry.

Why would Democrats say this? Because globalization benefits Wall Street and the transnational corporate elite and advances the managed decline of the American Republic—the marginalization of the American worker central to the plan. Among other things, globalization has crushed private-sector unions, sucking the value produced by labor into the pockets of the transnational elite.

Moreover, using US pension funds, invested in broad international indexes, which includes China’s state-owned/directed enterprises, investment of American’s dollars in China not only supports the economy of a totalitarian state, but fuels the expansion of the Chinese military apparatus by tying those investments to military production.

The facts are not in question here. We need not infer from the fact pattern the intent of the policy. The policy is explicit. The fact pattern is the result.

Jacking up tariffs incentivizes re-shoring and near-shoring. But it’s not just about tariffs. It’s about curtailing China’s strategy of unrestricted warfare on the United States and the West, including kinetic warfare.

The Democratic Party, joined by elements of the Republican Party, created this situation and fight to deepen it. China not only has a vast army of cheap obedient labor, but it has an approach to population control with elements in the West envy—and many are already installing (see the UK and Germany).

We are at a pivotal moments in world history. Either we preserve the liberal world order and restore the American System or permit the transformation of the planet into a global corporatist neo-feudal system under which the world’s population will become dependents in a New Serfdom.

Populism’s goal is to make the Democrat’s desire for a new world order the pipe dream.

Among of the influences shaping my sociohistorical approach is the French Annales school. Founded in the early twentieth century by such historians as Marc Bloch, Annales school historians revolutionized the study of their subject matter by emphasizing long-term cultural, economic, and social trends over short-term political events and personalities. The Annales school captured this idea with the concept of the longue durée (“long duration”) to conceptualize, among other things, the collective mentalities that shape human history over centuries. They criticized traditional historiography, which is typically focused on events and “great men,” seeking instead to uncover the deeper dynamics of everyday life, such as agricultural cycles or trade patterns—that is, the enduring material or social forces that underpin the historical process.

In this essay, which takes the long view, I argued that the slavocracy that ruled the US South and the emergence of the corporatocracy in the aftermath of the Civil War are related instantiations of world capitalist ambition. Indeed, the latter is the former’s offspring. The fact that the Democratic Party has represented both political economic configurations is an important feature of this history, one that explains the current situation. Some will tell you that the parties flipped at points. On the contrary, the parties have been remarkably consistent over the centuries. The essay will conclude with an analysis of Trump trade strategy using the frame of dependency theory and problematize the left’s opposition to it. As I see it, the choice is not between whether we will have capitalism or socialism, but what kind of capitalism we will have. More than this, in geopolitical terms, the choice before us whether we will preserve the Westphalian system of sovereign nation states or submit to a global neofeudalism under the command of a transnational corporate elite. 

The slavocracy constituted a new quasi-feudalistic order whose intellectuals and practitioners developed racialist thinking as means of dividing the working class to render the proletariat politically inert. At its core, the slavocracy was globalist, its elites seeking integration with the world capitalist system. To this end, advocates for the slavocracy pushed to overthrow the American System (which featured tariffs for revenue generation and to protect its industries and workers), which it saw as a barrier to opening the world to free trade, desired by the Democrats and the elites the party represented to sell primary commodities to England and France and fuel European industrialization—at the expense of American businesses and workers. 

The slavocracy constituted a New Aristocracy—a continuation of the Ancien Régime in another form, the Old Aristocracy of Europe. As such, it was a moribund social formation. The rise of the populist Republican Party, reclaiming the ideas of the Founding, smashed the New Aristocracy, only to see it rise again as the corporatocracy after Reconstruction, the period the South called “Redemption.” The populist movement of today represents the second reclaiming of the Founders vision of an independent and free capitalist society based on liberal principles and governed by democratic-republican norms. 

The corporatocracy fostered the development of a new governing philosophy, that of progressivism, establishing a technocratic order and widespread dependency on government. This system, rolled out in earnest in the early twentieth century under the administration of Woodrow Wilson, was fully institutionalized during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, which normalized labor unions and integrated them in the emerging corporatist order. Both Wilson and Roosevelt were Democrats. After WWII, the Democrats effectively pursued, with great success, the world capitalist order they had sought during the slavocracy. They used globalization to smash the labor unions they had welcomed to the party only decades earlier. 

There is a French phrase I have found useful over the years: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It translates literally to “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.” What it means it that, despite apparent transformations, underlying realities often remain constant. Appearances can be rather superficial. Adopting the Annales school’s concept of the longue durée is therefore useful for showing this. 

This was my approach in my dissertation, which I never published because I had foolishly incorporated critical race theory in its analytical architecture; nonetheless, I was able to show that what persisted beneath all the apparent change over several centuries of history was the dynamic of capitalist production and racial caste—and analogous situations of unfreedom millions of American that persisted throughout. 

There are other influences that shape my thinking that bear on the present question. Dependency theory, which emerged in the mid-twentieth century as a critique of mainstream economic development models (the modernization paradigm), argues that global economic structures perpetuate the underdevelopment of certain regions rather than fostering their progress.  In this view, the poorer regions of the world are not poor because they are undeveloped but rather are underdeveloped because of their dependency on richer nations. This way of looking at the matter also helps us understand the underdevelopment of human populations within a nation who are made dependent on institutions operated by an administrative elite.

Dependency theory posits that poorer nations, referred to in the literature as the “Global South,” are kept in a state of dependency by wealthier nations in the “Global North.” The Global North exploits the Global South for resources and cheap labor while maintaining control over advanced industrial processes and profits. This dynamic, captured by the phrase “development of underdevelopment,” finds the prosperity of the core (or developed) countries directly tied to the impoverishment of the periphery (underdeveloped) countries by locking them into a cycle of exporting primary commodities without industrializing themselves. 

One of the key theorists of the way of thinking is André Gunder Frank. He emphasized the historical roots of this exploitation in colonialism and the extraction of surplus value. Raúl Prebisch is another one key theorist. Through his work with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA), Prebisch highlighted unequal trade relationships and advocated for import-substitution industrialization to break the dependency cycle. Other notable figures, such as Samir Amin and Immanuel Wallerstein, expanded the theory, integrating it with world-systems analysis to explore global capitalism’s structural inequalities.

This understanding can be applied to the period of slavocracy in the United States, which lasted from the seventieth to the mid-nineteenth centuries). The Southern US was a peripheral region within a broader transatlantic capitalist system, with England and France as major economic powers. Using enslaved labor, the South specialized in producing primary commodities—cotton, sugar, and tobacco—which it exported to fuel the textile industries of England and, to a lesser extent, France.

This analysis fits well in dependency theory’s core-periphery dynamic: the South remained underdeveloped industrially, lacking significant manufacturing capacity, while England and France reaped the benefits of processing raw cotton into finished goods, which were often sold back to the South (or elsewhere) at higher value. The South’s aristocracy grew wealthy via this arrangement, but this wealth was concentrated in that class and the strata that saw to its interests. What wealth was reinvested was sunk in the plantation system rather than towards diversification or industry and infrastructure, reinforcing its dependency on foreign industrial centers. 

Trade policies, such as Britain’s demand for cheap cotton and reluctance to support Southern industrialization, furthered this imbalance. The South’s reliance on imported manufactured goods from Europe stifled local investment and innovation, entrenching the cycle of underdevelopment in the manner dependency theorists describe in colonized regions. This relationship illustrates how the “development of underdevelopment” operated even within a domestic context, shaped by global capitalist networks.

The South’s dependent economic relationship with Britain and France lie at the core of significant tension between the Southern aristocracy and the industrializing Northern states. The situation was a major contributor to the growing antagonisms that culminated in the Civil War. The South’s heavily reliance on exporting primary commodities to Europe fueled their textile industries, which locked the South into a classic dependency pattern, producing raw materials using superexploited labor while importing manufactured goods from Europe. 

Meanwhile, the Northern states, developing their own industrial base, producing textiles, machinery, and other goods, sought to expand their domestic markets, including in the South. An internal economic rivalry was thus set in motion, as the North aimed to integrate the South into its growing industrial economy, while the South sought to maintain its lucrative, dependent ties with Europe.

The issue of tariffs became a flashpoint in this rivalry. Northern industrialists supported protective tariffs—such as the Tariff of 1828 (the “Tariff of Abominations”) and later the Morrill Tariff of 1861—to shield their nascent industries from European competition and encourage Southern consumption of Northern goods. These tariffs raised the cost of imported European manufactures, which the South relied on, and threatened its export-driven economy by risking retaliation from Britain and France, who might reduce cotton purchases. 

The South saw tariffs as a direct attack on its economic model. Moreover, the South viewed the North’s push for tariffs (and later abolition) as an existential threat to its plantation system and way of life. The North rightly grew frustrated with the South’s resistance to national integration and industrial progress. Events like the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33, where South Carolina attempted to nullify federal tariffs, underscored how deeply economic dependency on Europe sharpened sectional conflict.

That the Democratic Party played a key role in opposing tariffs to preserve these dependent relations, a history obscured by the moral calamity of slavery, is crucial to grasp. During the antebellum period, Democrats—dominated by Southern planters and their allies—championed free trade policies that aligned with the South’s interests. They argued that low tariffs kept European markets open for cotton and ensured affordable access to foreign goods, sustaining the plantation economy’s profitability. Figures like John C. Calhoun and later Jefferson Davis even framed tariffs as Northern aggression, favoring industrial interests over agrarian interests—with its quasi-feudalist way of life. 

In contrast, the Whig Party, and later Republicans, with strong Northern support, backed tariffs as part of a broader vision of economic nationalism, including infrastructure and manufacturing growth. The partisan divide over trade policy reflected and reinforced the sectional economic split: Democrats clung to a global dependency model benefiting the South, while Northern interests pushed for a self-sufficient, industrialized Union. Americans lived in a nation divided against itself.

By the 1850s, these economic disagreements—rooted in the South’s European ties—merged with the slavery debate, making compromise increasingly impossible and propelling the nation toward war, which the South triggered by attacking Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Fort Sumter was a federal installation located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The Union garrison surrendered the next day.

The attack came after months of escalating tensions following Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the secession of seven Southern states (later joined by four more) to form the Confederate States of America. Thus, the South’s dependent relationship with Europe not only strained its ties with the North but entrenched a political stance that led to a civil war that by the end had taken hundreds of thousands of lives.

In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, particularly from the late 1870s onward, that the Southern slavocracy was transformed into a form of corporatocracy, with the Democratic Party serving as its political vehicle. This shift maintained key economic and social structures of the pre-war South under a new guise, and the free trade paradigm once championed by the slavocracy found a parallel in the corporatocracy’s agenda. To be sure, the end of slavery in 1865 dismantled the plantation system’s foundation of chattel slavery, but the Southern elite—former slaveholders and their allies—adapted by leveraging sharecropping, tenant farming, and debt peonage to bind freed black laborers (and poor whites) to the land in conditions eerily reminiscent of servitude. Simultaneously, they courted foreign capital to rebuild the region’s economy, often on terms that preserved their dominance, giving rise to a corporate-influenced power structure.

This history must be recognized and emphasized: this corporatocracy, dubbed the “New South” by its boosters, e.g., Henry Grady, saw the Democratic Party as its champion. The party, having regained control of Southern state governments during Redemption, aligned with emerging corporate interests—mining, railroads, textiles, and timber—while maintaining the agrarian elite’s influence. The free trade stance of the antebellum slavocracy, which prioritized exporting cotton to Europe and importing cheap goods, was not carried over the corporatocracy but was an imperative of globalism. 

This explains why Democrats continued to oppose high tariffs, arguing they hurt agricultural exports still vital to the region’s economy and raised costs for manufactured goods supplied by foreign firms setting up in the South, as well as those from abroad. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act of 1894, passed under Democratic President Grover Cleveland, lowered tariffs significantly, reflecting the continuity of interests. This stance benefited both the agrarian elite and the new corporate players, like textile magnates, who wanted cheap inputs and access to global markets.

The parallels are striking. Just as the slavocracy relied on Europe to sustain its cotton empire, the corporatocracy sought to integrate the South into a global economy where it remained a supplier of raw materials (coal, cotton, and lumber) and a low-wage labor pool, rather than a hub of industrial innovation. Historian C. Vann Woodward argues that this reconstituted system kept the South economically dependent—now on corporate interests as much as on foreign markets—perpetuating underdevelopment akin to dependency theory’s critique.

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, industries like textiles, tobacco, and later manufacturing began to grow. Northern corporations, along with some foreign investors, saw the region as a potential source for profit. The South had a historically low rate of unionization compared to the industrialized North. This was partly due to the region’s agricultural roots and racial divisions that undermined worker solidarity by pitting white workers against black workers. State governments passed “right-to-work” laws and other anti-union legislation, making it harder for unions to organize. With fewer unions to negotiate better pay, Southern workers—both white and black—were paid significantly less than their Northern counterparts. Corporations established factories or mills in the South and keep labor costs down, maximizing surplus value. Northern companies, such as textile manufacturers, moved operations south to exploit cheap labor, as well as abundant and cheap raw materials. 

By the early twentieth century, New England textile firms began relocating to states like North Carolina and South Carolina, where they faced little resistance from organized labor. Northern investors funded mills that employed entire families, including children, at wages far below Northern standards. By the 1930s, efforts to unionize Southern workers—like the General Textile Strike of 1934—met fierce resistance from both companies and local governments, often with violent crackdowns. Moreover, foreign corporations—especially in the post-World War II era—also tapped into the South’s low-union environment. Automakers like BMW (in South Carolina) and Nissan (in Tennessee) set up plants in the region, drawn by tax incentives, cheap labor, and a business-friendly climate with minimal union presence. 

Thus, the Democratic Party’s dominance in the South, bolstered by disenfranchisement of black voters via Jim Crow laws, ensured this corporatocracy faced little political challenge, entrenching a free trade paradigm that echoed the slavocracy’s earlier goals. While early on the South industrialized to some extent (e.g., Birmingham’s steel industry), it did so unevenly, often as an appendage to foreign firms, overtime it became a production hub for the global economy. Its function as an export processing zone in an advanced industrial nation does not negate that fact but reinforces the point that the post-war power structure was less a break from the past than a reconfiguration of its dependent, extractive essence.

The connection between Southern Democrats and Northern Democrats in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly around a progressive transnationalist and culturally pluralist politics, topics I have written about extensively, represents a complex intersection of economic, ideology, and regional interests. It might strike observers as odd than such a political coalition was possible, but it is a fact of American history. While Southern Democrats were often associated with the conservative, agrarian corporatocracy that emerged post-Reconstruction, Northern Democrats—especially urban intellectuals and political machines—pushed a more progressive agenda that embraced cultural pluralism, globalist integration, and mass immigration. This unseemly coalition endured for decades, a fact that betrays the common interests: transnationalization of corporate power.

Horace Kallen, a philosopher and proponent of cultural pluralism, a man I have described in previous articles as an organic intellectual of the corporate class, exemplifies this Northern strain of thinking, advocating for a situation where diverse immigrant groups retained their identities within a unified American framework—an obvious impossibility that revealed the intent of the project: to divide the working class. Kallen’s vision aligned with a transnationalist outlook that saw the US as part of an interconnected global economy, indeed even world society, a stance that found synergy with Southern Democratic priorities despite their differing sociocultural bases.

Southern Democrats, rooted in the free trade legacy of the slavocracy and corporatocracy, supported policies that facilitated global economic ties—access to cheap labor, low tariffs, and open markets—which dovetailed with Northern Democrats’ embrace of mass immigration as a driver of industrial growth. Both sought to undermine the strength of labor. In the South, the post-war economy increasingly relied on exploiting black labor through sharecropping and later attracting foreign investment, while Northern industrial cities—Chicago and New York—depended on waves of European immigrants to fuel factories, railroads, and urban expansion. 

Kallen’s 1915 essay “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot” rejected assimilationist pressures coming from the native working class, arguing instead for a pluralist society that could absorb diverse groups—a view that resonated with Democratic urban machines (e.g., Tammany Hall) that courted immigrant votes. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Progressive transnationalism found common ground with Southern Democrats’ globalism, as both saw benefits in an open, interconnected world: the South exported raw materials produced by superexploited labor, while the North imported foreign labor and capital. The Democratic Party thus became a coalition where Southern free trade advocates and Northern pluralists coexisted. 

To be sure, there were tensions. Southern Democrats often resisted the cultural implications of immigration, clinging to white supremacy and opposing Northern-style diversity in their own region, yet they supported the broader economic framework that mass immigration enabled. But even here, there were more direct sympathies. For instance, during the late nineteenth century, Senator John Morgan of Alabama pushed for Chinese immigration to the South as a labor solution post-slavery, reflecting a pragmatic globalist streak despite racial anxieties. 

This alliance peaked in figures like Woodrow Wilson, a Southern-born Democrat who, as president, blended Southern economic priorities, e.g., lowering tariffs via the Underwood Tariff of 1913, and even embracing segregation, with Northern progressive rhetoric, including support for immigrant-heavy urban constituencies. Remember, Wilson advocated for the forerunner of the United Nations, what he envisioned as a League of Nations. This aligned with the technocratic vision of Henri de Saint-Simon, who advanced the idea of a global council or federation of nations dedicated to fostering global cooperation.

Again, the connection wasn’t seamless—Southern Democrats’ racism clashed with Northern pluralism—but their shared a commitment to a globalist integration bridged the gap. Kallen’s ideas, while more intellectual than policy-driven, influenced Democratic rhetoric about America’s role in a pluralistic, interconnected world, complementing the South’s practical push for free trade and labor mobility. 

This uneasy partnership shaped the party’s identity, advancing a transnationalist vision that balanced Southern economic dependency with Northern progressive ideals. Popular backlash, e.g., the 1924 Immigration Act, put the project, at least in part, on hold for several decades, but the 1960s would remove that barrier, in the process freeing the South of its racial commitments and prepared it for embracing the future return to populism by the Republican Party. 

The Parties did not flip because Republicans appealed white supremacy. The Democratic Party didn’t change at all in its fundamental commitment to identity politics and globalization. And the Republican Party? After decades in the wilderness, where it at times merged with the interests animating the Democratic Party (the “Uniparty,” some have called it), the Republican Party eventually reclaimed the spirit that had called it into existence in the 1850s, a spirit that was born in 1776—and it found a willing base in the South among those who desired limited government, personal freedom, and strong communities and families. 

A question Marxists like to ask is “What is to be done?” Staying with the analytical framework of this essay, dependency theorists advocate for “delinking” (think “decoupling”) as a strategy to break the cycle of underdevelopment and foster endogenous (internally driven) production. Delinking refers to reducing or severing economic dependence on the global core—wealthier, industrialized nations—by minimizing reliance on their capital, manufactured goods, and markets. The idea is that peripheral countries can redirect their resources and labor toward self-sustaining development, prioritizing domestic industries and local needs over export-oriented production of primary commodities and dependence on cheap imported goods. 

Amin stresses that delinking doesn’t mean complete autarky or isolation but rather a strategic reorientation of economic policies to build national or regional autonomy. For example, instead of exporting raw materials to be processed abroad, a delinking approach might involve investing in local manufacturing to add value domestically, retaining profits and skills within the country. Prebisch’s push for import-substitution industrialization (ISI)—where nations produce goods they previously imported—aligns with Amin’s, aiming to bolster endogenous production and reduce unequal trade relationships.

Critics note that delinking can face challenges like limited capital, technological gaps, or retaliation from core countries, but these are problems to overcome with a national economic strategy, the solutions essential for escaping the structural trap of dependency.

In the modern era of globalization, parallels to dependency theory can indeed be observed in the United States, though, as expected, they manifest differently from the classic core-periphery dynamics of the theory’s original focus on the Global South. The US is a core nation, driving global capitalism through economic and technological development, as well as via military dominance. However, certain external and internal relationships are fraught with dependency-like patterns that echo the “development of underdevelopment” and raise questions about the potential relevance of delinking—even for a superpower.

Internally, regions within the US—such as parts of the rural South or the deindustrialized Rust Belt—exhibit characteristics of peripheral economies. These areas continue to rely on exporting raw or minimally processed goods or stand ready as low-wage labor pools for transnational corporations, while advanced production and wealth accumulation are concentrated in urban coastal hubs such Silicon Valley. Globalization has amplified this, with corporations outsourcing manufacturing to countries like China or Mexico, leaving behind communities dependent on volatile commodity markets or service jobs without fostering endogenous industrial capacity—service jobs that are themselves increasingly automated and outsourced. These developments mirror dependency theory’s critique of surplus extraction, where local economies stagnate as profits flow to corporate headquarters or foreign investors rather than being reinvested locally.

Externally (admittedly, the internal and external blur amid globalization), the US itself has become dependent on global supply chains, particularly for critical resources like rare earth minerals, electronics, manufactured goods, and pharmaceuticals, much of which are controlled by countries like China, which leave the US vulnerable during military conflicts, global pandemics, and trade wars. 

This reliance parallels the periphery’s historical dependence on the core, albeit inverted in this way: the US exports capital and imports finished products, ceding industrial autonomy. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, shortages of medical supplies highlighted how decades of offshoring production left the US vulnerable, prompting calls for “delinking” strategies, such as reshoring manufacturing to bolster endogenous production. Policies like the CHIPS Act and tariffs on Chinese goods reflect this shift, aiming to reduce reliance on foreign industry and rebuild domestic capacity—echoing Prebisch’s import-substitution logic.

However, the US context diverges from classic dependency theory because its global dominance allows it to shape the rules of globalization, unlike peripheral nations—if Democrats get out of the way and let Donald Trump and his team restructure the global economy.

America’s financial power, e.g., the dollar’s reserve currency status, and consumer market (which is vast and still relatively affluent, albeit with historic levels of debt accumulation) give it leverage that weaker countries lack. Still, the parallels lie in the risks of over-reliance on external systems and the uneven development within its borders. Delinking, in the American case, means prioritizing national or regional self-sufficiency over unfettered global integration, complicated by the US’s role as a globalization architect and the interdependence of modern economies. I have been for decades calling the US to quit its globalization efforts and end its interdependence with other nations when those relations make America vulnerable. 

Although it is not a perfect fit, dependency theory offers a valuable lens to critique how globalization can undermine even a core nation’s sovereignty and equitable development. Indeed, it is a valuable lens through which to understand Trump’s restructuring of the global trade system to counteract the managed decline of the American Republic. 

In dependency theory terms, the US under Trump’s trade policies can be seen as a nation undergoing peripheralization clawing its way out of a subordinated role in the global capitalist order. To be sure, the US is still a superpower, which makes this application feel unorthodox, but taking the long view, we can see the outcome of the managed decline of the American Republic—and the American people must learn long-term thinking if they want to maintain superpower status. The reality is that the US has shifted from being the industrial core post-WWII to outsourcing manufacturing to cheaper labor pools in places like China and Mexico over decades of globalization. 

This deindustrialization mirrors the “development of underdevelopment” I have been describing, where the Global North’s prosperity (in this case, corporate profits) relied on hollowing out its own industrial base, leaving behind Rust Belt towns and a reliance on imported goods—akin to a periphery exporting raw materials (in this case, capital and demand) while losing control of production. Trump’s tariffs, especially the ten percent universal rate and the massive 125 percent rate on China, is something akin to a Prebisch-style import-substitution push: disrupt the unequal trade relationships that locked the US into buying finished goods from abroad and force a reorientation toward domestic production.

The application of the dependency model to the current situation is messy. Dependency theory assumes a clear core-periphery divide, with the Global North exploiting the South’s resources and labor. Trump’s gambit targets both the Global South (via broad tariffs) and nations in the Global North, as well as a core rival like China—while still operating from a position of economic and military dominance. The ninety-day tariff pause and negotiations with over 75 countries suggest he’s not just breaking dependency but also reasserting control over the terms of global trade. 

Amin might see as a core power flexing to maintain hegemony rather than a periphery escaping exploitation. Today, the US isn’t fully peripheral, but its deindustrialized state echoes the surplus extraction Frank and others highlighted, with wealth flowing to multinational and transnational corporations and foreign manufacturers. The market’s wild swings reveal the tension: capital wants unfettered globalization, but Trump’s restructuring risks short-term chaos to shift the US back toward self-reliance. At the very least, he seeks a less trade-dependent posture. Whether this reverses the cycle of underdevelopment depends on if those tariffs stick and spark real reindustrialization. This is why it is important to play the long game. 

A ten percent universal tariff that remains in place is not insignificant, and Trump’s announcement to temporarily drop tariff rates to that rate, while excluding China, for ninety days represents a notable shift in trade policy. The pause scales back from the steeper reciprocal tariffs he initially imposed on nearly ninety nations, ranging from eleven percent to fifty percent. The reciprocal tariffs were designed to bring those other nations to the table to negotiate a reduction on their tariff (and other) barriers to United States goods and services—and nations are coming to the table. The pause is in part a response to market turmoil, but it is also in response to pressure from over seventy-five countries reaching out to negotiate, and that pressure was an instigated response by the Trump policy.

The ninety-day window suggests Trump’s playing a strategic game—keeping pressure on while giving room for talks. Most countries get this breather, but China’s getting hammered with a 125 percent rate. The economic plan is obvious at this point and it is clearly also a foreign policy move that justifies the emergency use of the economic weapon of tariffs, doubling down on China, which has ruthlessly moved to take over global supply chains, goaded Xi into overcommitting on retaliatory tariffs. In Chinese culture, particularly the hard core of the Communist Party. Xi can’t lose face, so he is likely to push China’s already faltering economy into crisis to save face. Thus America’s chief superpower rival is weakened. It is also marginalized, as negotiations with other nations around world isolate China.

This occurs at the same time Trump seeks rapprochement with Russia, thus further separating nuclear powers on the Eurasian landmass. Trump’s belligerence towards Panama and Greenland had marginalizing China at its core. If negotiations on reciprocal tariffs falter by early July, those higher rates could return. It’s a calculated gamble, to be sure, but enough to push foreign governments to the table. The strategy so far has not cratered the US economy as the globalists predicted. Not even close. It puts the United States in the driver’s seat and the rest of the world in a defense position that requires them to lower their tariffs on American businesses, thus making the United States an attractive country for reshoring and foreign investment

Putting aside the hardcore lefties with their Maoist sympathies, to all the lefties who oppose totalitarian state socialism, particularly those who embraced dependency theory a quarter of a century ago, what happened to them? Can they not see that the agenda of the Trump administration comes as close—as messy as it is—to the agenda dependency theorists advanced decades ago as it can at this moment in the historical development of the world capitalist system—the agenda they advanced decades ago? Not even decades ago. Remember in 2015 when Bernie Sanders decried open borders as a Koch brothers scheme to undermine American workers? Open borders stand alongside offshoring as a key component of globalization. Now none other than Charles Koch himself (and all his stalworth allies) is suing the Trump administration over tariffs. Where is the left? Why aren’t they supporting Trump? 

For that matter, given that the Republican Party was formed by pro-labor and even socialist activists and intellectuals, why is the left not allied with the Republican Party? Is it because Republicans are a bourgeois party? Reality check: world socialism is not in our future. As Christopher Hitchens pointed out several years ago, capitalism has more work to do. 

Recall Karl Marx’s words from the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: “No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.” Marx’s point here is that revolutionary change, in the case the overthrow of capitalism, won’t happen until the system has fully played out its potential and contradictions ripen the conditions for a new order. Marx is not saying revolution is impossible until conditions are “perfect,” but rather that a truly lasting epochal transformation emerges organically when the status quo can no longer contain the contradictions that inhere in its developmental dynamic. 

The choice of the left now and for the foreseeable future is not between capitalism and socialism but between two capitalisms: whether we will keep the international system of market capitalist nations led by the United States, its example of democratic-republic principle manifest in the US Constitution and the liberal freedoms enshrined in its Bill of Rights shining on the world, or a global corporatist system in which a transnational elite usurp the nation state and subordinate free people to a post-capitalist dystopia where individual liberties and popular politics are canceled. 

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which occurs on the heels of capitalism’s consolidation, established a framework of international relations that is foundational to the modern nation-state and the principle of national sovereignty. The treaties signed in the peace set a precedent for a world order based on independent, sovereign states, each with the right to govern itself without outside interference.

At its core, the Westphalian system introduced these principles: sovereignty, where states have supreme authority within their own borders, free from external meddling; territorial integrity, where borders matter and states are defined by their geography, not just their rulers or religion; and equality of states, where, at least in theory, every state, big or small, gets the same legal standing (albeit power dynamics bend that in practice). Historically this arrangement marked a shift from the medieval patchwork of overlapping loyalties—feudal lords, the Church, and empires—to a cleaner map of distinct nations. To be sure, it has not been perfect. It didn’t stop wars. And colonialism later subjugated half the world. But it remains the backbone of international law. We came through wars. And we ended colonialism in its original form. The system is now under strain from globalization, in many ways a reconstituted colonialism, not by core powers, but by a transnational elite. Class struggle remains, but it is more than that. We are facing a new form of empire—one that is planetary in its character.

Globalization is eroding the Westphalian principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity by elevating a transnational elite— global financial institutions, multinational corporations, supranational bodies such as the IMF and the WTO or IMF—that effectively overrides national authority. I have (along with others) described this as a “neofeudalism” that mirrors medieval power structures, where a small, interconnected elite, hold sway over fragmented, less autonomous regions, dividing the world’s population into estates. Here is it bankers, CEOs, and technocrats instead of lords and clerics. In a Westphalian world, states determine matters within their borders and use diplomacy to defend the interests of their people; under globalization, capital flows and offshore supply chains dictate terms, in the long term breaking apart nations and reducing their regions to vassals of a borderless economic order.

The visions of the future presented by the two major parties governing the American polity could not be starker. Those who say there is no real difference between Democrats and Republicans could not be more wrong. To be sure, the parties have aligned from time to time. After all they have to represent to some extent popular opinion, even if that opinion is shaped and manipulated. But the differences between parties concerning the fate of the American Republic are fundamentally different. The ends sought are entirely incompatible. The choice is clear to those who believe in the modern nation-state and national sovereignty.

The Democratic Party is the party of transnational corporate capitalism. The push for global free trade is in their DNA. So is the desire for a technocratic form of administrative rule that sees citizens not as sovereign but as subjects to be made dependent on big intrusive government. The persistence of identity politics, especially along the lines of race, and the deconstruction of the family and the community, throughout the history of the party exposes the tactic of fracturing the working class to obtain these ends. The Republican Party at its inception, and in its reclamation in the present day, whatever its flaws and deviations, represents the vision that gave the world the American Republic. This is not a rightwing vision, but a vision that cuts across ideological lines.