Capitol’s Apocalypse

Photograph Source: Tyler Merbler – CC BY 2.0

In the context of the accelerated decline, no longer organized decay, of the US empire, comes violent fascists attacking the US capitol, spurred on by the US’ sociopathic narcissist President.

I will note that all the people I know projected serious trouble in DC on January 6th (but didn’t predict that).

Yet there was virtually no police presence even though the DC Mayor had alerted the National Guard days ago.

The National Guard arrived very late.

It is surely true that the people who breached the windows first, if they were black, would be dead.

It is no surprise that Black Live Matter was repeatedly attacked by cops and other enforcers during peaceful DC marches, that peaceful protestors were swept away and gassed by many enforcement divisions for the Messianic Trump Bible March, and the many forms of DC cops were nowhere to be seen when the American Nazis stormed the capitol today.

Theory sets up what is seen.

Fascism, as I see it, is a social structure, not merely a person, and it came to be in the US with the bailouts in 2008, a perfect merger of the corporate, finance, political world married to the promise of perpetual war.

Fascism has been emerging, world- wide, as a popular movement for years. It requires a mass, a mob, but those mobs are not leaderless.

Those mobs are now out in the open, gratis Trump, and will not go away. More than 70 million people voted for Trump, against the war criminal and best boy of the bankers, Biden. Let’s say one half of those people support the fascist direct action of January 6th. That’s a lot.

The anarcho-fascist Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3 Percenters, managed to deepen structural fascism personified in locked down D.C., seen as “25,000 uniformed civilizing forces.”

Thus, as usual, terrorism seeking to replace some kind of mass movement with an “action-faction” will rain down hell on the people they, the terrorist-fascists, claim to represent. It’s a FBI field day.

American Jihadists…..against reason itself with a new Fools’ Gold Orange God who, ultimately, betrayed them.

The jihadist/American-jihadists correspondence is remarkable.

Jihadists await the apocalypse, following the hadith (Islamic stories not in the Koran) that once arriving in Jerusalem, men with Black Banners will rise to create Khurasan, a mythical caliphate (rule by Sharia law) region around Iraq and Syria, before the end days when the real believers, and martyrs, rise to heaven.

Many jihadists are not religious, don’t ‘t live to their stated superstitious principles. For example, the Planes Plan hijackers in San Diego were occupied by drinking and whoring before their supposed martyrdom (and note bin Laden and KSM were not with them on the Planes).

Jihadists are both uneducated and desperate, and very well educated doctors, engineers, military officers, and lawyers: AQ’s Zawahiri is an M.D. Ted Cruz and Hawley (Harvard and Stanford).

Bin Laden, favored the “far enemy.”

For years he was opposed to seizing territory–US air power would guarantee destruction,

He believed he could lure the US into a hopeless series of wars in the Middle East with provocation after provocation: embassy bombings in Africa, a truck bomb at the World Trade Center, the USS Cole, and finally the Planes Operation.

This, he predicted, would cause a US financial collapse, internal strife, military overreach and exhaustion, a legitimacy crisis, and the US would finally disintegrate into warring states a la the USSR vs. the mujahedeen.

In the process, Al Quada would form the world caliphate.

The mystical caliphate rises against the real material failures of capitalism, imperialism, socialism and communism because Sharia law comes directly from Allah, is not a creation of man.

Some jihadists are plain nuts: the wackos who believed they could enrich uranium for a dirty bomb by placing some uranium in a bag and swinging the bag, really really fast, around their heads.

Still Islamic fascism, clearly a cancer within Islam, is powerful idea.

It needs to be defeated with what it that defeats that system of beliefs: better ideas, reason, and then perhaps some guns. The best idea: human equality.

The better idea, in part–people make gods, gods don’t make people. Let us restore the Enlightenment.

The American Jihadists, jelled from splintered factions by Trump’s magical Presidency, believed they would win: enter the capitol, kill and capture some political bosses , force the remainders in congress to reject the electoral vote count, and re-elect Trump.

Some of the American jihadists were psychotic: The painted howling horned fellow who must have spent hours sewing his furs. Maybe Mom did the make-up.

However, others armed with guns, sledge hammers, handcuffs, hockey sticks–it may seem like an idiot plan, but they came close.

They must have had insiders who helped.

Lt General Walter Platt finally admitted on January 20th that he raised concerns about the “optics” of uniformed troops at the Capitol, causing delays. Disgraced General Michael Flynn’s brother, Lt General Charles, was in that meeting. Michael, we remember, was calling for martial law to preserve the Trump kleptocracy.

Optics. Not a concern in the past.

Former FBI counter-terrorism agent Frank Figliuzzi, author of “The FBI Way,” clearly believes there was collusion, perhaps right up to the top of the chain of command. He asks interesting questions, like why did Attorney General Barr quit right before the attacks? Surely, he believes, there was intelligence, so why was there no security? (CSPAN, book interview with Natasha Bertrand, viewed 1/24/21).

American jihadists had practiced, had funding. Bloomberg (January 22, 2021, indicates the Trump campaign “paid over $2.7 million to individuals and firms” that signed the permit for the Capitol coup.

Many came out of the US military. Some may have fought and trained in the Ukraine wars.

They swore murder, like hanging “traitors,” on gallows just outside the Capitol. (NPR interview of anon “Joe” in the middle of the mob outside the capitol, aired 1/24/21).

Some had foolishly planned to kidnap and perhaps kill the Governor of Michigan. They await trial, reportedly taking pleas. One charge: rehearsing with improvised explosive devices (who taught us about IED’s?).

Nobody saw this coming? How did they know their way around the confusing Capitol layout?

The Trump administration courted racists (and all forms of dominant capitol) from the inception. A whistleblower, Brian Murphy, who left Homeland Security in 2020 quit on these grounds.

Months ago all of US intelligence described domestic, right wing, terrorists as the key threat–and yet this?

The Capitol was their apocalyptic “Storm.” Khurusan.

This was not an “insurrection.” I was an attempted fascist coup.

It failed.

But, Texan American jihadists want Texas to secede, as do Idahoans–following bin Laden’s scheme.

Trump, like the Naked Emperor Scott Anderson describes in “Fractured Lands,” (p24) surrounded himself with sycophants, came unmoored from reality, and may have believed, to a degree, in the Storm itself, but like bin Laden, he didn’t go to the Capitol.

Is this a trigger event?

In 2001, AQ had 400 members as former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan shows in “Black Banners Declassified”. Now, they number in the thousands. Forging opportunistic alliances with the Taliban (nationalists) and ISIS (attack the near enemy, Middle East rulers, and build the caliphate now) and Al Shabab, they may soon take control of Afghanistan and Somalia.

The American Jihadists’ numbers are murky. Even the best source, the Anti-Defamation League, can’t estimate organized and unorganized numbers, especially since the Trump accelerator election and the rise of online hate.

However, it is likely they will go to ground for a bit, sending unsubtle signals like Dylann Storm (sic) Roof of the Charlestown church mass shooting, until another soft target appears for a mass mobilization, like Charlottesville, as Kathleen Belew demonstrates in “Bring the War Home.”

The Oath Keepers, et al, can serve as reserve cannon fodder for a future Waffen SS should structural fascism deepen further still.

The real U.S. vote fraud was the electoral system itself, cleverly designed to lure people into backing their most narrow self-interests while simultaneously backing capital and empire, choosing who will oppress us best.

Where can’t we vote?

At work, the site that sets up the most important events in our lives: what we are paid, where we live, who we meet, what we can and cannot say, and more.

Yet about 150 million very passionate people cast ballots for either a relatively sane war criminal, if war crimes are normal, or the socio-pathic narcissist self dealing Trump. Some choice.

It’s nuts!

The mass hysterical conversion crisis of societal minds that typified the US before January 6th serves as a birth-nest for fascism in many popular forms.

In similar ways, this parallels the material reality of US fashioned governmental disintegration and chaos which serves as a recruiting poster for Middle Eastern jihadists.

In addition, Joseph Biden, a Catholic fanatic, appointed notorious US war criminals like Susan Rice, Samantha Power (who with Clinton, Obama and Biden, started seven wars in the Middle East, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and around 2 million people homeless and wandering Europe–propelling Euro-fascists) and Avril Haines, CIA torturer, drone strike killer, to his cabinet. The Crusaders are back.

The Democratic Party identity politics that smokescreens the reality of class war and empires’ wars blurs a critical analysis of the “sane” but soon to be murderous, Biden tyranny.

Surely, there are differences.

American jihadists don’t seem to want to die, become martyrs deflowering virgins in heaven–a distinguishing characteristic from Middle Eastern jihadists.

American jihadists are, typically, much more educated than the desperate rank and file illiterate jihadists of, say, the Taliban. How to explain an education in the US system–and masses playing the End Game with Trump?

My colleague Professor Beau Bennett says the explanation lies in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education which eradicated liberal studies, history in particular. That combined with the regulated curricula of No Child Left Behind to Race to the Top (all bipartisan projects) connected to high stakes exams (measuring mostly parental income) demolished curiosity and reasons to learn about why things are as they are in the real world.

The evangelical-Qanon coalition proves that these relatively well educated people have no code to spot lies.

Educated American jihadists. Why is it is easy to turn some people, many people, into instruments of their own oppression, while others resist?

My crystal ball fogged over with the pandemic but the acceleration of the end of the empire, the out of control plague, and mass popular fascism seems at hand.

The US empire hasn’t had a grand strategy, and thus no strategy, for 20 and more years. All that is left is nearly unintelligible aimless tactics–leaving every initiative to every imaginable enemy.

As I have argued for years, everything is in place for a social revolution: a legitimacy crisis, lost wars, collapsing economy, international communications, etc. Yet there is virtually no organized left.

Still, the core issue of our time is the reality of the promise of perpetual war, the use of the entire government as an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich, booming color coded inequality, a raging pandemic in large part let loose by government caprice and avarice, met by the potential of a broad based, integrated, internationalist movement for justice and equality.

All of the other sides are in tatters. Reason and equality can win. But justice demands organization.

 

Rich Gibson is an emeritus professor at San Diego State and a co-founder of the Rouge Forum. RG@richgibson.com