T

he politics surrounding guns in the United States is a deeply contentious issue that has long held a prominent place in the nation’s public discourse. Rooted in historical, cultural, and constitutional factors, the debate over gun rights and regulations has become an enduring hallmark of American politics. The sheer ubiquity of firearms, coupled with deeply ingrained beliefs about individual rights, self-defense, and the role of government, has created a complex landscape where passionate arguments clash and ideological battle lines are drawn.

In Merchants of the Right Jennifer Carlson delves into the multifaceted world of gun sellers, uncovering how their trade extends beyond the mere exchange of firearms. The book sheds light on a remarkable surge in gun purchases, which occurred amidst a confluence of extraordinary events: a once-in-a-century pandemic, widespread racial unrest, and a presidential election that shook the very foundations of American democracy. Carlson’s exploration of this phenomenon reveals how conservative political culture experienced a newfound spur, providing readers with a unique vantage point into the front lines of the ongoing culture war surrounding gun rights and an understanding of how guns became politicized.

Through extensive interviews with gun sellers across the United States, Carlson paints a vivid picture of the struggles faced by these merchants in navigating the complex intersection of guns and politics. The book reveals a frame breaking trend: While it is commonly assumed that the majority of gun owners lean conservative, new gun buyers are more likely to identify as liberal. The significant dilemma that gun sellers faced in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election was should they embrace these new liberal customers, potentially ushering in a new era of bipartisan engagement in the realm of guns, or should they solidify their position on gun politics as a conservative stronghold?

In January 2020, a military strike by the United States assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, then deputy head of an Iraqi paramilitary organization known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMU).

The assassination increased not only the escalation between the U.S. and Iran-linked Shiite militias, but it also enabled the Iraqi parliament to request then Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to end foreign military presence in Iraq. Correspondingly, Shiite militias carried out a total of nearly 100 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities and bases hosting  U.S.-led coalition troops in Iraq, compelling the U.S. to reconsider its combat mission in Iraq.

At first, the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic facilities and bases forced the U.S. to downsize its military mission in Iraq. Accordingly, the U.S. withdrew approximately half of its 5,000 forces from Iraq in 2020. The majority of the remaining forces serve as advisers to Iraq’s military. The U.S.-led coalition handed over eight bases to the Iraqi military last year and pulled international troops back to larger garrisons such as Camp Taji, Erbil, and Ain al-Asad airbases.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has been facing pressure from Iraqi Shia factions in the country and militias allied with Iran to implement the Iraqi parliament’s nonbinding decision to end foreign military presence in Iraq. Al-Kadhimi has strived to reduce coalition combat forces, and instead to increase NATO’s role in Iraq, where in 2018 he invited some 500 NATO personnel to raise Iraqi military and security competencies during Iraq’s strategic dialogue with the U.S.

The U.S. withdrawal of combat missions from Iraq will not stop drone and rocket attacks by the Shiite militias on U.S. diplomatic facilities and bases hosting the U.S.-led coalition troops in Iraq.

On the one hand, the strategic dialogue meetings have resulted in reducing the U.S.-led combat mission against DAESH in Iraq, the majority of whom are American soldiers, by 60 percent. On the other hand, NATO agreed to expand its military consultation mission in Iraq to roughly 4,000 troops.

Moreover, Josep Borrell, high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy and vice-president of the European Commission, announced that NATO is planning to establish a second base for training missions in Erbil. Thus, the U.S. has shared the responsibility to respond to attacks from Iran-linked Shiite militias with its allies in NATO.

The next mass shooting in America is expected to happen in less than 13 hours. That is what 457 incidents by August 29, 2021 translates into and it is horrifying.

Yet, as dramatic as it may seem, a graver threat to America comes from the mass shootings that are likely in the longer run. The momentum that these attacks are building, and have been building, has largely been ignored, but represents a much grimmer menace.

The underlying causes of mass shootings have become so saturated within the society that they cannot be distinctly identified anymore. Because they’re elusive, institutions and policies that perpetuate such proclivities are even harder to pinpoint and galvanize support against.

When the focus should be on building a better society for future generations, we don’t seem able to agree even on how to save lives today.

Gun-ownership levels set the U.S. apart

The substance of even more immediate policy gets lost, more or less, along partisan lines. Republicans, who overwhelmingly support lax gun ownership laws, tend to put the onus on mental health. Former President Trump had gone so far as to say, “Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger, not the gun.”

But consider this: the U.S. is estimated to have the largest number of firearms per person in the world. Even more remarkable is the extent to which the U.S. figure at 120.5 per 100 exceeds even the second highest country on the list, Yemen at 52.8 per 100 – a country in the midst of civil strife and war.

However, even with this grim picture of mental health and one of the highest rates of suicide among industrialized countries, the U.S. compares unfavorably to other high-income countries on the number of professionals working in mental health.

Thus, the problem is way bigger than the precious little legislation in some states on “background checks” for assault weapons manages to capture.

Which one is it?

In a world of complex interactions, a witch hunt for the absolute fundamental determinant of violence is as naive as it is useless. What is incontrovertible, nevertheless, is that gun ownership levels in the U.S. are not normal for a normal country – and that shrugging it off as a byproduct of a sacrosanct “gun culture” could turn out to be yet dearer in the future. Mental health issues, too, are at an alarmingly high level without the required infrastructure for support.

Both of these are problematic. Both need immediate redressal to bring them more in line with a level befitting a country with such massive resources as those of the United States.

Yet, it’s already quite late. Gun ownership may be restricted, but the guns people already have – including assault weapons – cannot be taken away. There can be investments in mental health, but it will be a challenge to pull society out of such pervasive challenges toward a better mental health state at large.

What’s worse, gun ownership and mental health could be interacting in far more complex ways than any research has been able to discern so far. In short, measures taken even today will take a long time to have any effect.

Where do the shootings originate?

Even such measures would be essentially dealing with only the somewhat superficial mechanics of the problem. The underlying causes of mass shootings cannot be identified without reconsidering the contours of social justice in American society today.

Why is it that well-being in one of the richest countries in the world has not kept pace with economic growth, even as corporations have thrived? While the common person struggles to survive, politicians are in a state of disconnect and are essentially hostages to the groups that enthroned them. Special interests determine who gets what from the pie, sprinkling peanuts of micro-choices here and there to delude the masses into an illusion of liberty, and even the lure of “Americanism.”

There is nothing American about settling for a mass shooting every day. There is no liberty in not being able to choose to live. If anything, there is an incentive for those who design the frame of our choices to conflate constructed, imaginary ideals with “identity.”

If the corporate world can make assault weapons a part of consumption culture, and go so far as to conflate arms ownership with national pride, elevating guns to becoming a definitive symbol of the American “identity,” undoing this formidable milieu is going to take a strong will and a perspicacious strategy.

Given the deep-seated polarization in American politics today, breaking the categories will take long. Reimagining justice seems, unfortunately, quite distant.

Meanwhile, a distressed, hate-filled mass shooter is planning his attack somewhere. He knows he is short on time.

An urgent task is awaiting us: considering the progression of events, we must quickly liberate ourselves from the limits and confines placed on the Afghanistan discourse, which have been imposed by US-centered Western propaganda for over 20 years, and counting. A first step is that we must not allow the future political discourse pertaining to this very subject to remain hostage to American priorities – successes, failures and geostrategic interests.

For this to happen, the language itself must be confronted. This is critical if we are to truly glean valuable lessons from Afghanistan and to avoid a repeat of the previous failure of comprehending the U.S. defeat in Vietnam (1955-1975), the way it should have been understood, not the way Washington wanted Americans – in fact, the whole world – to understand. Vietnam was not merely an American ‘debacle’, and did not only culminate in an American ‘defeat’. It was also a Vietnamese victory and the triumph of the will of the people over the U.S. imperialist war machine.

In U.S. mainstream media and, to a large extent, academia, the Vietnam War history was almost entirely written from an American point of view. Even the anti-Vietnam war version of that history remained American-centric.

Alas, in the case of Afghanistan, many of us, whether in journalism or academia, whether wittingly or otherwise, remain committed to the U.S.-based discourse, partly because the primary sources from which our information is gleaned are either American or pro-American. Al Akhdar al-Ibrahimi, former United Nations Peace Envoy to Afghanistan, from 1997 to 1999, and again from 2001 to 2004, had recently, in an interview with French newspaper, Le Monde, reminded us of the importance of using proper language to describe the unfolding events in Afghanistan.

The Rise and fall of the ‘Terrorists’ Discourse

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had a massive impact, not only on the geopolitical map of the world but also on relevant global political discourses. As the USSR, its Warsaw Pact and global alliances began to disintegrate, the U.S. quickly moved into action, asserting its dominance from Panama (1989) to Iraq (1991) to elsewhere. The American objective was not merely a violent declaration of its triumph in the Cold War, but a message to the rest of the world that the ‘American century’ had begun and that no form of resistance to U.S. stratagem could be tolerated.

In the Middle East, in particular, the new narrative was in full display, with clear and repeated distinctions between ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’, friends and enemies, allies and those marked for ‘regime change’. And, per this new logic, anti-colonial forces that were celebrated as liberation movements for decades fell into the category of the ‘terrorists’. This definition included Palestinian resistance groups, Lebanese and others, though these groups sought liberation from illegal foreign occupation.

Years later, the discourse on terrorism – summed up by George W. Bush’s statement in September, 2001, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” – became the yardstick in which the world, according to Washington, was to be divided: freedom-loving nations and terrorists, extremist regimes. The latter category was eventually expanded to include Iraq, Iran and Syria. On January 29, 2002, North Korea was also added to Washington’s so-called ‘axes of evil’.

Afghanistan, of course, topped the American list of terrorist states, under various pretenses: initially the harboring of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda and, later, the mistreatment of women, and so on. Eventually, the Taliban became a ‘terrorist’ group, leading an ‘insurgency’ against the ‘democratically-elected’ Afghan government in Kabul. The last 20 years were spent in the construction of this false paradigm.

In the absence of any strong voices in the media demanding an American withdrawal and defending the Afghan people’s right to resist foreign occupation, there was a near-complete absence of an alternative political discourse that even attempted to raise the possibility that the Taliban, despite all of their questionable strategies and practices, may, in fact, be a national liberation movement.

The reason we were discouraged from considering such a possibility is the same reason why U.S.-Western-Israeli propaganda insisted on removing any distinction between ISIS, Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Houthis and many other such groups. On the one hand, discussing the particularities of each movement requires real knowledge of the history and formation of these groups separately, and the political circumstances through which they continue to operate. This kind of knowledge is simply non-existent in the cliche, soundbite-driven mainstream media.

On the other hand, such understanding is inconvenient, as it complicates the deception and half-truths necessary for the U.S., Israel and others, to depict their military occupations, unlawful military interventions and repeated wars as fundamental to some imagined global ‘war on terror’ and, as some European intellectual circles prefer to dub it, a war on ‘radical Islam’.

However, unlike al-Qaeda and ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban are not trans-border militant groups fighting a global agenda, but national liberation movements which, despite their emphasis on religious discourses, are political actors with specific political objectives confined largely within the borders of their own countries – Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan, respectively.

Regarding Hamas, London-based author, Daud Abdullah wrote in his just-released volume, ‘Engaging the World: The Making of Hamas Foreign Policy’ that “Hamas sees foreign relations as an integral and important part of its political ideology and liberation strategy. Soon after the Movement emerged, foreign policies were developed to help its leaders and members navigate this tension between idealism and realism. This pragmatism is evident in the fact that Hamas was able to establish relations with the regimes of Muammar Gaddhafi in Libya and Bashar al-Assad in Syria, both of whom were fiercely opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Consequently, it was also Abdullah who became one of the first to draw the parallels between Palestine and Afghanistan as soon as the Taliban declared victory in Kabul. In a recent article in the Middle East Monitor, Abdullah wrote, “Palestine and Afghanistan are salient examples. Throughout history, their peoples have witnessed numerous invasions and occupations. After two decades the U.S. has finally run out of stamina. Similarly, they will eventually realize the futility of supporting the Zionist occupation of Palestine.”

Death to 2020, which is described as a “mockumentary,” is a critical interpretation of the most important political and social events of 2020 from the perspective of the show’s producers. It is a show, because although the events taking place in it are real events that we all experienced in 2020, the interpretation of these events is fictionalized in a way to make the whole thing a satirical and funny TV show.

In a nutshell, Death to 2020 is a cleverly written, well-executed, and well-produced TV show that reminds us of old-school satirical TV shows that mocked their own times

The plot of the show is as follows: the main political and social events of 2020 are chronologically retold and summarized for the audience while the fictional characters of the show, who are kind of “confused” in their own ways, start commenting on the events as if they were part of an absurd reality show.

The mockumentary takes the U.S. presidential election of 2020 as the most salient event in the regular schedule of a globalized world. The U.S. election is the most commented event in the show along with the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic. According to the show – and it is hard to disagree – the election was between two candidates who were too old and unqualified to be the president of the world’s last declining hegemon, and created an impossible dilemma for the voters.

The campaign process of the U.S. elections shows two different Americas according to the show. However, polarization and increasing anger between the two sides are not something unique to American society. The whole world is being divided into factions and polarized, while ordinary people are becoming increasingly radicalized. This polarization is exacerbated by social media companies, which sell their users’ private information for a profit. It is, in fact, hard to disagree with these arguments.

Covid-19, which was a shock to everyone in 2020, is dealt with in depth in Death to 2020. In general, the Western world and particularly two leaders – Donald Trump in the U.S. and Boris Johnson in the U.K. – are criticized in the mockumentary. It is true that the timing of the pandemic could not have been worse: both national countries and international institutions were going through a process of dramatic change.

Technology is speeding up everything, polarization and xenophobia have hit a peak, economic recession and trade wars threaten regular people all around the globe, authoritarian tendencies are on the rise even in democratic states, climate change has become ever more serious, and many more problems of the so-called modern age have come together – all this, when the virus hit the world.

As a result, the timing and the scale of the pandemic gained great popularity in conspiracy circles. Although, this is mocked in the show, when one wonders about the origin of the virus and conspiracy theories around it, it is not that surprising that there are suspicions about its origins and timing.

Other issues are mentioned as well such as the massive Beirut port explosion, the Harvey Weinstein legal case which sparked the #MeToo movement, Brexit, Megxit (the break of Prince Harry and his American wife Meghan Markle from the British royal family), the growing popularity of social media and particularly YouTube and Netflix, and the role of WhatsApp groups and other social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok in spreading false information, creating paranoia, and consolidating the age of the post-truth.

When one looks at all these headlines and many other shocking events around the world that are not featured in the show, it is not hard to see what a crazy and perplexing environment we live in. The only conclusion one can reach is that we are all stuck in a powerful whirlpool that resembles a black hole.

Loaded with gallows humor, Death to 2020 is an appropriate retrospective of the year. Reality has become so surreal and absurd that there is nothing left but to mock it all. In the end, Death to 2020 is worth watching in order to come face to face with our new reality.

Mercenaries have been a part of war since humans first started to coordinate and live amongst each other in societies. In the classical era, Xenophon of Athens recounted how his mercenary force, “The Ten Thousand”, helped Achaemenid prince Cyrus the Younger in his failed attempt to usurp the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes II. This extended through to the famous mercenary armies of the Renaissance period, famously criticized by writer and philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli for being a threat to their employers.

However, and despite numerous national laws forbidding mercenary activity in the militarily advanced Western world, mercenaries have continued to flourish and thrive in the battlefields and cities of Iraq and Afghanistan – the two countries who suffered the most from the American imperial footprint in the 21^st century.

With the United States now openly stating that it intends to disengage from both countries, it is likely that, rather than reduce the number of mercenaries deployed, it will instead increasingly rely on its army of private military contractors to secure its interests.

The case of Iraq

As one of the world’s most fossil fuel-rich nations, Iraq has been blessed (and cursed) with bountiful natural resources. This has obviously attracted the avarice and attention of massive international energy companies who wish to exploit Iraq’s oil stocks and also its burgeoning natural gas fields.

ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies headquartered in Texas, operates two subsidiaries in Iraq, one of which deals with the Northern Iraq Region and one of which specializes in contracts relating to the richer oil fields in the Iraqi south. ExxonMobil is currently the lead contractor at the West Qurnah oilfield in cooperation with China’s PetroChina.

ExxonMobil’s operations have been targeted several times by pro-Iran Shia jihadist groups who were seeking to make the U.S. presence in Iraq as inhospitable as possible in order to give Tehran the diplomatic leverage it needed against Washington elsewhere. The American oil giant had to evacuate its employees on several occasions, including after rocket attacks struck their compound near Basra in 2019.

This will have the effect of emboldening mercenary companies as they know they can acquire billions in contracts while operating in a murky world devoid of accountability in a corporate war environment where violence equals profit.

The Iraqi experience is largely replicated in the Afghan theatre, with mercenary companies running logistics to various American and NATO bases.

The case of Afghanistan

The Iraqi experience is largely replicated in the Afghan theatre, with mercenary companies running logistics to various American and NATO bases, providing highway security for supply routes, guarding embassies and government installations, and even providing training to the Afghan police.

However, a series of scandals involving contractors using deadly force and engaging in corruption and black market smuggling operations caused enough of an uproar to force then-President Hamid Karzai to ban several mercenary companies, including Blackwater.

However, and commensurate with Karzai’s status as a president of an occupied country, international pressure forced the Afghan government to backtrack and they decided to allow mercenaries to simply rebrand themselves not as private security but as “risk management” companies. This was after NATO countries doubted the Afghan Public Protection Force’s capabilities of providing security in the country they were apparently sovereign over.

With the Taliban currently ascendant and the U.S.-installed Afghan government facing an existential threat, it is highly doubtful that the United States will entirely cut their losses and withdraw from Afghanistan. China has recently made a number of overtures by formally hosting Taliban officials and this will raise concerns in Washington as they already face off against Beijing in other strategic theaters around the globe.

It is therefore likely that the U.S. will want to secure the Afghan government by allowing international mercenary companies to continue to operate as “advisers” who will provide training. This may have the effect of allowing the Afghan government to maintain control over Kabul and other major population centers, effectively controlling islets surrounded by a sea of Taliban control in rural Afghanistan. Naturally, Kabul will pay through the nose for the pleasure of hosting mercenaries to ensure their survival.

Across Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the U.S. Department of Defense has confirmed that, as at the fourth fiscal quarter of 2020, it had engaged the services of 27,388 contractors in these three theaters. Considering there are around 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, 2,500 in Iraq, and around 900 or so in Syria, one begins to appreciate the sheer scale of the “contractor” economy and how reliant the U.S. and its allies are on it.

While the approximately 30,000 contractors will obviously not all be combat oriented (about 10-20 percent are in combat roles while the rest offer support functions), a significant proportion of them will be armed and will be protected under U.S. federal laws that allows them to use “deadly force against enemy armed forces only in self-defense”.

This means that, with the U.S. drawing down uniformed personnel, this already extant addiction to hiring soldiers of fortune is not going to reduce, but in fact the U.S. will become ever more dependent on them to remain relevant in theaters of war they have been forced to abandon.

Jonah Goldberg and Michael Ledeen have much in common. They are both writers and also cheerleaders for military interventions and, often, for frivolous wars. Writing in the conservative rag, The National Review, months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Goldberg paraphrased a statement which he attributed to Ledeen with reference to the interventionist U.S. foreign policy.

“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,” Goldberg wrote, quoting Ledeen.

Those like Ledeen, the neoconservative intellectual henchman type, often get away with this kind of provocative rhetoric for various reasons. American intelligentsias, especially those who are close to the center of power in Washington D.C., perceive war and military intervention as the foundation and baseline of their foreign policy analysis.

The utterances of such statements are usually conveyed within friendly media and intellectual platforms, where equally hawkish, belligerent audiences cheer and laugh at the war-mongering muses. In the case of Ledeen, the receptive audience was the hardline, neoconservative, pro-Israel American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Predictably, AEI was one of the loudest voices urging for a war and invasion of Iraq prior to that calamitous decision by the George W. Bush Administration, which was enacted in March 2003.

Neoconservatism, unlike what the etymology of the name may suggest, was not necessarily confined to conservative political circles. Think tanks, newspapers and media networks that purport – or are perceived – to express liberal and even progressive thought today, like The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, have dedicated much time and space to promoting an American invasion of Iraq as the first step of a complete U.S. geostrategic military hegemony in the Middle East.

Like the National Review, these media networks also provided unhindered space to so-called neoconservative intellectuals who molded American foreign policy based on some strange mix between their twisted take on ethics and morality and the need for the U.S. to ensure its global dominance throughout the 21st century. Of course, the neocons’ love affair with Israel has served as the common denominator among all individuals affiliated with this intellectual cult.

The main – and inconsequential – difference between Ledeen, for example, and those like Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, is that the former is brazen and blunt, while the latter is delusional and manipulative. For his part, Friedman also supported the Iraq war, but only to bring ‘democracy’ to the Middle East and to fight ‘terrorism’.

Two important events have summoned up these thoughts: U.S. President Joe Biden’s ‘historic’ trip to Cornwall, U.K., in June, to attend the 47th G7 summit and, two weeks later, the death of Donald Rumsfeld, who is widely depicted as “the architect of the Iraq war”. The tone struck by Biden throughout his G7 meetings is that ‘America is back’, another American coinage similar to the earlier phrase, the ‘great reset’ – meaning that Washington is ready to reclaim its global role that had been betrayed by the chaotic policies of former President Donald Trump.

The newest phrase – ‘America is back’ – appears to suggest that the decision to restore the U.S.’ uncontested global leadership is an exclusively American decision.

The newest phrase – ‘America is back’ – appears to suggest that the decision to restore the U.S.’ uncontested global leadership is, more or less, an exclusively American decision. Moreover, the term is not entirely new. In his first speech to a global audience at the Munich Security Conference on February 19, Biden repeated the phrase several times with obvious emphasis.

“America is back. I speak today as President of the United States, at the very start of my administration and I am sending a clear message to the world: America is back,” Biden said, adding that “the transatlantic alliance is back and we are not looking backward, we are looking forward together.”

Platitudes and wishful thinking aside, the U.S. cannot possibly return to a previous geopolitical standing, simply because Biden has made an executive decision to ‘reset’ his country’s traditional relationships with Europe – or anywhere else, either. Biden’s actual mission is to merely whitewash and restore his country’s tarnished reputation, marred not only by Trump, but also by years of fruitless wars, a crisis of democracy at home and abroad and an impending financial crisis resulting from the U.S.’ mishandling of the COVID19 pandemic.

Unfortunately for Washington, while it hopes to ‘look forward’ to the future, other countries have already staked claims to parts of the world where the U.S. has been forced to retreat, following two decades of a rudderless strategy that is fueled by the belief that firepower alone is sufficient to keep America aloft forever.

Though Biden was received warmly by his European hosts, Europe is likely to proceed cautiously. The continent’s geostrategic interests do not fall entirely in the American camp, as was once the case. Other new factors and power players have emerged in recent years. China is now the European bloc’s largest trade partner and Biden’s scare tactics warning of Chinese global dominance have not, seemingly, impressed the Europeans as the Americans had hoped.

Following Britain’s unceremonious exit from the EU bloc, the latter urgently needs to keep its share of the global economy as large as possible. The limping U.S. economy will hardly make the substantial deficit felt in Europe. Namely, the China-EU relationship is here to stay – and grow.

There is something else that makes the Europeans wary of whatever murky political doctrine Biden is promoting: dangerous American military adventurism.

The U.S. and Europe are the foundation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which, since its inception in 1949, was almost exclusively used by the U.S. to assert its global dominance, first in the Korean Peninsula in 1950, then everywhere else.

Following the September 11 attacks, Washington used its hegemony over NATO to invoke Article 5 of its Charter, that of collective defense. The consequences were dire, as NATO members, along with the U.S., were embroiled in their longest wars ever, military conflicts that had no consistent strategy, let alone measurable goals. Now, as the U.S. licks its wounds as it leaves Afghanistan, NATO members, too, are leaving the devastated country without a single achievement worth celebrating. Similar scenarios are transpiring in Iraq and Syria, too.

Rumsfeld’s death on June 29, at the age of 88, should serve as a wake-up call to American allies if they truly wish to avoid the pitfalls and recklessness of the past. While much of the U.S. corporate media commemorated the death of a brutish war criminal with amiable non-committal language, some blamed him almost entirely for the Iraq fiasco. It is as if a single man had bent the will of the West-dominated international community to invade, pillage, torture and destroy entire countries. If so, then Rumsfeld’s death should usher in an exciting new dawn of collective peace, prosperity and security. This is not the case.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced last week that the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan will end by August 31. He called on the leaders of Afghanistan to come together to prevent a possible civil war after the U.S. withdrawal. The U.S. president asserted that “after 20 years of American valor and sacrifice, it’s time to bring those troops home.” In April, during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, made a similar statement, stating, “The choice that the Afghans face is between a negotiated political settlement or a long war.”

After 9/11, the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban’s regime and annihilate Al-Qaeda. With the current withdrawal of U.S. troops, have these objectives been achieved?

To examine the first objective, it is widely believed that Al-Qaeda is still present in Afghanistan. The UN Security Council report dated February 3, 2021 states that Al-Qaeda has 200 to 500 fighters in about 11 provinces of Afghanistan. According to the report, Al-Qaeda media chief Abu Muhsin al-Masri was killed in Ghazni province on October 20, 2020, and a deputy of Al-Qaeda, Mohammad Hanif, was killed in Farah province on November 10, 2020.

The Taliban commanders have also acknowledged the presence of Al-Qaeda in the country. Two Taliban commanders told NBC News that the Taliban have asked foreign militants and Al-Qaeda not to execute any terrorist attack against the United States. The U.S. and NATO forces achieved a splinter of their objective when they killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan. However, the ideology, legacy, and adherents of Al-Qaeda are still present in Afghanistan.

As far as the Taliban are concerned, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan did not lead to their defeat.

In his speech, Biden stated that Al-Qaeda has been downgraded, which is true. Nonetheless, the Taliban were also severely downgraded after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. However, the group soon remerged and now governs more than half of the country. Should Al-Qaeda expand its presence in Afghanistan, the group might consider vengeance for the killing of their leader and his immediate circle. Hence, without a proper political settlement, the withdrawal of U.S. troops will imperil the country as Al-Qaeda will be strengthened and other militant groups will possibly emerge.

As far as the Taliban are concerned, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan did not lead to their defeat. Despite the fact that the Taliban were downgraded at first, at a later stage, they made a triumphant comeback. After the September 11 terrorist attack, an international coalition force was able to topple the Taliban regime and entrench the Afghan government.

God is dead, said Nietzsche long ago. Since then the phrase has been interpreted in many different ways. One is an observation of the collapse of order, the dissolution of hierarchies of power between leaders and followers, teachers and students, parents and children, employers and employees, men and women, news producers and newsreaders—An exponential surge in student protests, and social media interactions of once-newsreaders-now-turned-news-producers, among others, substantiates the argument.

Some call this state of affairs the chaos of postmodernism, an era dominated by a loss of trust in authority, a questioning of power, followed by the belief that with no order, no right and wrong, that every value is necessarily right, every concern as equal as any other; others identify it as the phenomenon of moral and cultural relativism. But dissidents react by saying, ‘Stop! We have to draw the line somewhere! There must be standards!’

The ingenuity of Nietzsche’s statement lies in its prescience. Made at the turn of the twentieth century, it foretells the news headlines we are now privy to, more than one hundred years later. Through the mouthpiece of Zarathustra, Nietzsche warned posterity about the imminent danger of a world that found no merit in hierarchies and dividing lines. Through Zarathustra, Nietzsche reproduced the trope of the quintessential madman in literature. Thus Spake Zarathustra is the story of an unpopular prophet, castigated and excoriated for his cryptic statements, who broaches matters we now know were ahead of his time.

Nietzsche foresaw the eradication of order, systems, and hierarchies as a preliminary to nihilism; a negation of the individual rather than a longed-for affirmation of the self, which has ironically dominated the political forefront of countries with liberalist agendas. Such an agenda has sought to celebrate individualism, exalt every trait and concern of the individual, in order to allow him/her to grow to be healthy, wholesome, unique. Rather than that, these steps in the direction of caring for individualism, of pushing the liberalist agenda forward by recognizing every trait (and hence creating labels for everything) is fostering a culture of hypersensitivity, drowning the individual in a bucket of labels so that he/she is beginning to matter less and less.

African-Americans feel their identity to be threatened, especially by their White, American counterparts.

These labels do not manifest the ‘Who am I?’, but instead emphasize ‘What am I sensitive about?’ (Interestingly, and quite tellingly, as an indication of how labels are also relative, in Western and Central Europe this aspect of the liberalist agenda that exalts the individual is embraced by right-wing economic liberals and heavily criticized by left-wing radicals, whereas in the US it is resonant with what is seen as the progressive left.)

The growing trend of associating the label of ‘Ethnocide’ on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the United States has encouraged people from other cultures to wonder whether they are victims of the same phenomenon. Ethnocide it must be recalled, is the practice of destroying the soul of a people, as opposed to genocide which aims at decimating a whole genus or race. Ethnocide is the cultural assimilation of a non-dominant group by a dominant one, and the BLM movement has waved this card because African-Americans feel their identity to be threatened, especially by their White, American counterparts.

Yet, the distinction between pain and trauma slowly disintegrated. About twenty years ago, ‘trauma’ began to include experiences that were both physical and emotional, roping in a subjective element to is determination.  The label of ‘trauma’, or for that matter, ‘PTSD’ is now widely used, furthering the culture of ‘antifragility’, ‘safetysim’, or hypersensitivity that are weakening us.

One point must be stressed upon at the outset: the United States has for a long time been the ‘trend-setter’; the originator of most labels that have in no time, gained currency in other parts of the world. Raphael Lemkin for instance, knew that he had to come to the United States for his cause to gain legitimacy; for the label of ‘genocide’ to be recognized as a punishable crime.

Naturally if this country is where labels usually originate, there is a lot to say about how this process can and has gone wrong, for one of the insights one gains in a thorough study of anything, is that no system, no phenomenon, no process can be perfect.

So for example, the sensitivity we have developed to every remotely negative experience/reaction/feeling to external stimulus (of whatever form), and following that, our decision of affixing ourselves with an associative label (among the myriad of those to choose from) has made labelling—or self-labelling for that matter—rather effortless. Many of us now feel that in respecting the sensitivities of the other (to avoid the other from being ‘triggered’), we’re constantly having to walk on eggshells.

These practices of self-censure place barriers on communication, on the freedom of expressing ourselves, and while some groups may feel liberated by being given the chance to speak up, others feel threatened to express themselves in case their speech, or any part of it should encroach upon the sensitivities of an interlocutor.

The result: a constant atmosphere of tension and apprehension in which no speaker is at ease, and where one must necessarily begin with a barrage of disclaimers. (In the past few months, it has now become a requirement on several websites accepting submissions for novels, short stories, and other art work, to insert one or more disclaimers in case content may hurt the sensitivities of the reviewer/s).

Overall, a feeling of malaise seems to have crept in, especially (and ironically) in forums that are meant to foster creative thought and writing, and in the context of free speech, one of the pinnacles of liberalist constitutions, young writers, as validated by Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, seem to be intimidated and silenced.

It is justifiable that certain words should be used carefully, because of their meaning and purport, and the reactions they may stir up in marginalized groups suffering centuries of torture, oppression, and abuse, but the matter is quite another when one has to question whether it is legitimate for a writer from a dominant group to create characters in his/her novel who hail from a non-dominant one.

Questionable when one can no longer feel free to express a violent experience one has endured because it may expose a reader/listener/viewer to violence. If we don’t arm ourselves with our interior defences, or to put it a different way, develop and strengthen our immunity against external attacks, even the slightest, then all these labels, these shields, or the sources of distress they denote, would drown us, weaken us, and expose us to harsher threats later in life.

There are different societal undercurrents at play in the United States today. On the one hand, there is the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement, and on the other, the growing radicalism of white-supremacist groups, who recently invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Nihan Duran interviewed Sundiata Cha-Jua, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois on how to understand the fault lines of American society and politics given the concurrently rising movements: BLM activism and the white-supremacism.

َQHow do you evaluate the recent Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S., following the global reactions to the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020? Have the Black struggles for justice and equality re-surfaced as a political force in the 21st century?

The COINTELPRO destruction of the radical stream of the Black Power movement in the late 1970s produced a prolonged period of relative quietude in the Black Liberation Movement (BLM). Around 2010, the movement began to resurge. Activists introduced several tactical innovations, such as the initiation of the #hastag for organizing in response to the killing and murder of Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin. Cell phone footage of Grant’s killing, for example, went viral on the then four-year-old YouTube platform, as it was watched by 500,000 people in four days.

Q. What impact did such a reach-out have on the acceleration of the movement?

The national response to the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 accelerated the use of online petitions as an innovative movement organizing tactic. Martin’s murder also gave rise to #hashtag BlackLivesMatter, which has also made an impact as activists used another relatively new social media format, Twitter to mobilize protests. Consequently, new organizations sprung up and older groups were reenergized. New youth-led and oriented groups such as the Dream Defenders, the former Million Hoodies Movements (now Brighter Days for Justice), and the Black Youth Project (BYP-100) emerged.

Since Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson in 2014, a new phase of struggle in the Black Liberation movement focused on police killing and criminal justice has swept the U.S. and, in the summer of 2020, surged beyond the borders of the U.S.

Q. You mentioned that there is a “shift in emphasis.” What does that “shift” indicate when the long tradition of Black liberation movements in the U.S. is considered.

#Black Lives Matter’s slogan “we are not your grandparent’s revolution” links it to a divisive strategy more reminiscent of the Yippies, “don’t trust anyone over 30,” than the intergenerational legacy of Black liberation movement organizing. That is not to deny Frantz Fanon’s observation that “each generation must discover its mission and either fulfill or betray it.”

The point is that older more experienced activists have always played a mentoring role in the Black Liberation movement. The cutting edge of the 1960s movements, specifically the organizations, strategic visions, and political analyses still relevant come from the nationalistic Black Power wave, not the liberal integrationist Civil Rights movement.

So, the infantile divisive generational politics are doubly irresponsible, because it erases the Black Power movement. M4BL has reversed that error. It has adopted the symbolism of the Black Power movement- the fist-and centered its programmatic initiatives on a five-year plan under the slogan “Black Power Rising 2024!”

Q. What does white people’s involvement in America in the BLM movement indicate?

The involvement of such a large number of Euro-Americans evidences the Black Liberation movement’s ability to convince a broad sector of the U.S. public that systemic racism accurately describes American society. However, white engagement would be better utilized if they built solidarity, created a constituency inside white communities and civic associations that practiced the politics of the Black Panther Party’s rainbow coalition. I am also quite mindful of A. Phillip Randolph’s 1940 admonishment that “where you get your money you also get your ideas and control. We need white ‘allies’ to organize support for Black self-determination, and a pro-labor, pro-socialist movement” in white neighborhoods and social spaces.

Q. Do you think that Black politics can find its way to move from merely a critical progressive to mainstream American politics?

Why not? Since the 1830s, the Black Liberation movement has demonstrated its ability to intrude into and shape U.S. politics. The Abolitionist movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movement are examples of moments in which the Black Liberation movement seized the center stage and focused the eyes of the empire on us. C.L.R. James powerfully made this argument more than 70 years ago in the “Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Question” (1948).

Since the Ferguson Uprising and particularly this past summer, Black people reaffirmed their capacity to boldly reshape both social movement and electoral politics in the U.S. Perhaps, the best example of the power of the Black Liberation to remake U.S. politics is the rise of the African American reparations movement. Before the end of the 20th century, the Black reparations movement was virtually unknown to the U.S. public.

In the last six years, the African American reparations movement has gone from a fringe movement in U.S. politics to a strategy endorsed by all leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination, though largely through some universal policy scheme. Nonetheless, there have now been two congressional hearings and several cities have passed reparations resolutions and few, notably Evanston, Illinois, and Asheville, North Carolina have enacted legislation.

Q. You mean that politically as well, the U.S. has come to acknowledge the persistent predicament of its Black people?

Definitely. Millions of people in 200 cities, domestic and abroad took to the streets to protest the police murder of Black men, women, and children. The Black Liberation movement has forced American society to admit the existence of systemic racism, which I prefer to call racial oppression and to “commit” to its elimination from U.S. institutional life in colleges and universities, corporations, and government agencies.

Q. Despite growing awareness, what is the possibility or limitations of a “post-racial” America? Especially today, when we witness the white-supremacist undercurrent getting more and more visible both on the social and political scenery.

Sorry but the “post-racial” idea is ridiculous and odious. It is rooted in a colorblind racial ideology that denies structural racial oppression. It insidiously contrasts the success of the meager Black elite to the assumed failures of the working-class Black majority. That the election of Barack Obama sparked the rise of right-wing social movements such as the Tea Party and that his administration was followed by Trumpist fascism that used racist appeals and policies to pursue the neoliberal agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and privatization, all exposing that the postracial ideal is fallacious.

Q. What about the U.S. Capitol siege on January 6 then? What did make this possible? Was Donald Trump the chief responsible for this or only a symptom of undercurrents?

Ultimately, we can trace the rise of contemporary fascism that culminated in the January 6 assault of the U.S. Capitol building to the economic crisis caused by the transition to a financialized global racial capitalism, but it would be a grave error to underestimate the central role played by anti-Black racial oppression. The dislocations and alienation caused by the new structure of capital accumulation is the foundational cause but Donald Trump’s rhetoric, policy agenda, and explicit xenophobic and racist appeals mobilized white supremacists and nationalists. He recruited and weaponized them into an anti-democratic battering ram against egalitarian public policies.

Q. What to expect now, after the U.S. Capital Siege? How do you think this will impact the future of U.S. domestic politics?

The Trump regime rolled the rock back and unleashed fascist hordes who now control one of the two corporate parties. The fascists are here to stay. They are likely to elect dozens, if not scores of new congresspersons and continue to control more than a score of state governments.

The gun crisis in Puerto Rico is inherently different than that taking place in the United States. People in Puerto Rico and the United States behave the same way when it comes to using guns to carry out violent acts. Yet, going deep into the matter, Puerto Rico has a higher rate than the U.S. mainland when it comes to deaths and incidents caused by firearms. The United States’ biggest problem with guns is mass shootings and the “heritage” attached to owning a gun since it’s a constitutional right – a right that was given to U.S citizens at a time where guns were not automatic.

In Puerto Rico, people don’t experience events like mass shootings at schools or white supremacists entering a building and gunning down people. Here we see day-to-day gun violence and illegal guns coming to the island in many different ways. Richard Hofstadter pointed to the uniqueness of the gun crisis within the United States “as the only modern industrial urban nation that persists in maintaining a gun culture.”

American gun culture is deeply rooted in the nationwide reality of the country, the lawful possession of guns by a large percentage of the population, and viewing guns as material objects. The vast majority of U.S. citizens are allowed to buy and keep firearms without restriction.

Lobby groups in the U.S. have campaigned for owning arms, a right granted under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Federal law sets the minimum standards for firearms regulation in the United States, which is why the people of Puerto Rico demand the US federal government to adopt stricter measures when it comes to gun ownership and possession. Individual states have their own laws, such as the kinds of weapons that are allowed to be owned or carried in public.

The U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population, but up to half of the world’s civilian-owned guns. It also has the highest homicide-by-firearm rate among the world’s most developed nations.

Nevertheless, in Puerto Rico, on December 11, Puerto Rico’s Governor Wanda Vàzquez Garced of the New Progressive Party signed the Puerto Rico Weapons Act of 2020. The legislation overhauled the island’s gun laws in a manner that will make it easier for the island’s residents and visitors to exercise their “constitutional right” to keep and bear arms. We all know that this is not the whole truth/that is only part of the truth.

For the government, it’s more about benefitting from the gun crisis on the island. The legislation’s provisions pertain to firearms licensing procedures. Prior to the enactment of the Weapons Act, Puerto Ricans could apply for a possession license, or a carry license that was much harder to obtain.

The Weapons Act combines the two licenses into a single license, making it easier for citizens to own firearms. This single license of owning arms is a shall-issue, meaning it requires a license to carry a concealed handgun. Previously, Puerto Ricans were required to petition a court for the approval of a carry permit. The legislation also puts in place a flat $200 initial licensing fee, and a $100 renewal fee.

Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States, has faced a wave of armed crimes for several decades.

Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States, has faced a wave of armed crimes for several decades. According to the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, the population in Puerto Rico reached 3.2 million inhabitants in 2019. Between 2018 and 2019, the population of Puerto Rico grew by about 340,000 inhabitants, putting an end to the continuous decrease of population of the previous 15 years.

When analyzing the statistics of violent deaths, including those carried out by firearms in various jurisdictions throughout the world, we find that Puerto Rico had a rate of 22 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants three years ago. This represents almost a third of the rate of El Salvador (62 for each 100,000) which may look favorable, but is very high compared to countries like Costa Rica (12 for every 100,000), the Dominican Republic (11 for each 100,000), and the United States (5 for each 100,000).

In Puerto Rico, firearms are used in 90% of murders, a percentage that is double the world’s average for the use of weapons in homicides (41.2%). Interestingly, only 12% of the population in Puerto Rico are in illegal possession of firearms, while the number of guns that are owned under license are 422,000.

According to data from the Puerto Rico Police Bureau, the average number of murders in Puerto Rico between 2010 and 2018 was 811. A Vice News report stated that in 2011, Puerto Rico’s homicide rate increased by more than 1,100 murders in one year. In 2012, Puerto Rico topped the world in deaths caused by firearms beating countries like Sierra Leone, Guatemala, and even Honduras.

A study at the University of California Davis Health showed that there were 39,740 deaths caused by firearms in the U.S. in 2018, and that 61% of these were due to suicides. In 2018, 24,432 people in the U.S. died by firearm suicides. Firearms are used in approximately half of all suicides nationwide. In 2018, 13,958 people in the U.S. died by firearm homicide, accounting for 35.1% of the total deaths caused by firearms.

Firearms were used in approximately 74% of homicides in 2018. The other 3.6% of firearm deaths are unintentional, undetermined, due to law enforcement intervention, or due to public mass shootings (0.2% of the total firearm deaths). There are approximately 115,000 non-fatal firearm injuries in the U.S. each year. Thirty-one percent of households in the U.S. have firearms, and 22% of American adults personally own one or more firearms.

A widely-covered Gallup poll in mid-February found support for a third party at a highpoint. This was apparently fueled in substantial part by talk of a “civil war” within the Republican Party following Donald Trump’s second impeachment.

The dissatisfaction with the two establishment parties is substantial, and is hardly a new phenomena, Theodore Lowi wrote The End of the Republican Era in 1995. But it has not reached a tipping point for several reasons, particularly because any typical move toward a third party will be seen as helping one or another of the current establishment parties and is thus resisted. The Democratic and Republican parties get most of their electoral backing because people hate or fear the other.

This has been a regular theme in US politics. When Ralph Nader ran in 2000, for example, he tapped into a great deal of popular sentiment. But his campaign was widely derided as threatening to help get George W. Bush elected. And, among other factors, it may well have helped that eventuality the way his campaign was conducted. This dynamic has continued to be a major factor in hindering the prospect of any party emerging beyond the low single digits from either the left or the right and will in all probability remain so.

A solution I have put forward — never adopted by any candidate — is outlined at VotePact.org: An independent candidate can break out of this “spoiler” dynamic by drawing on support equally from disenchanted Democrats and disenchanted Republicans.

This is not as far fetched as it might first seem, evident in the realm of foreign policy, among others.

Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 with a great deal of media generated excitement largely based on his stated opposition to the invasion of Iraq, overtly backed by Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Joe Biden.

Of course, Obama himself gained national prominence by giving the Keynote address at the DNC convention in 2004 which nominated Kerry. He nominated Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, kept Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates, and escalated interventionist policies such as drone killings, war in Libya and more intervention in Syria and elsewhere.

Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 with a great deal of media generated excitement largely based on his stated opposition to the invasion of Iraq, overtly backed by Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Joe Biden.

Similarly, Trump won the presidency in 2016 largely because of massive establishment media coverage. During his campaign he generated excitement by deriding the invasion of Iraq, mocking Jeb Bush and his entire family, promising an “America First” approach and appealing to isolationist sentiments that clearly resonated with many USians. He also had parallel pseudo populist rhetoric, such as taxing hedge funds.

But when he became president, Trump’s major foreign policy accomplishments furthered the goals of the US establishment, often in ways that a more conventional president never could have.

In fairness, as with Obama, there were some shifts in foreign policy with Trump. Chris Woods of airwars.org acknowledged — the day Biden was inaugurated — that Trump had significantly reduced some aspects of US interventionism, noting that Biden would be “inheriting US military actions at a post-9/11 low. The US declared around 1,000 strikes last year across four theatres – down from 13,000 under Obama in 2016.”

But, in toto, Trump can in fact be regarded as the opposable thumb of the Empire: He appears to be opposed to it, but just helps it grab more. For example, Trump derided NATO as antiquated, echoing a sentiment of many more authentic anti-interventionists, but the net result of his “crit” was to compel European states to actually pony up more money to NATO, effectively strengthening — not weakening — the military alliance.

Trump of course brought in hyper interventionists like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliott Abrams. While he did not start a new war — a novelty for recent presidents — he facilitated the US as Empire in numerous ways.

Trump escalated devastating sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. His moves regarding Israel and Saudi Arabia, breaking various arms control treaties, making the Space Force a full military “service”, got the US establishment things it clearly wanted but decorum wouldn’t allow.

Thus, Obama, posing from the left, funneled voters toward the establishment while Trump did much the same from the right.

This became apparent at current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s confirmation hearing. Blinken credited the Trump administration’s “Abraham accords” which strengthened the ties between Israel and various Arab monarchies and delighted in using the Trump administration’s pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal as leverage over the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, Biden seems set to follow all other recent administrations in refusing to acknowledge Israel’s nuclear capacity, ignore the pleadings of Archbishop Desmond Tutu to acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons and use US law to halt funding it

The role of presumably progressive sectors in the Democratic Party are likely to be marginal. Biden’s re-entering the Paris accords and tepid stepping away from the most brazen aspects of the Saudi attack on Yemen are likely to be high points of accomplishment these factions can claim some credit for — and such moves may well have multiple motives.

The two-party system has effectively portioned out Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” world view, with much of the Republican party, at least selectively, treating Latinos and Muslims as a menace while the Democratic party has gone to great lengths to demonize Russia/Orthodoxy in recent years. Both effectively cast China as a menace.

Sen. Tom Cotton is well positioned with respect to the critical issue of our time: The origin of the pandemic. Much of establishment liberal, and indeed so-called “left wing” opinion has dismissed the possibility of lab origin of the pandemic as a “conspiracy theory” and thus ceded the issue to the xenophobic rightwing. This may well have disastrous consequences in the coming years and decades.

There seem two possible avenues to substantial change in terms of US foreign policy. One is the rise of global movements, perhaps modeled on the Feb. 15, 2003 quasi global protests shortly before the invasion of Iraq.

History is rewritten in the United States today. Even the most pessimistic about the prospects of American democracy have rarely ventured out this far while offering a bleak analysis of America’s future, whether in terms of political polarization at home or global standing abroad.

As shocking and certainly telling as the images of thousands of American protesters taking over the symbols of America’s federal, representative democracy in Washington D.C. on January 6, it was only a facet in a far more complex and devastating political trajectory that has been in the making for years.

While mainstream U.S. media has conveniently attributed all of America’s ills to the unruly character of outgoing President Donald Trump, the truth is not quite so convenient. The U.S. has been experiencing an unprecedented political influx at every level of society for years, leading us to believe that the rowdy years of Trump’s Presidency were a mere symptom, not the cause, of America’s political instability.

Even the storming of the congressional halls by angry pro-Trump crowds did not fundamentally alter the make-up of America’s political affiliations. Not only did Democrats remain firmly Democrats, but Republicans also remained entrenched in their republicanism and their allegiance to President Trump.

The House of Representatives’ vote on impeaching Trump, which was held on January 13, hardly registered a significant shift even among establishment Republicans. Only ten Republican members of Congress voted to impeach Trump. But how about ordinary people? Have they changed their views on Trump following the congressional insurrection? Hardly.

According to an Economist/YouGov poll published on January 13, 69% of all Republicans surveyed said that activists from the anti-fascist, leftist group, Antifa, are to be blamed for the takeover of the Capitol. While 22% said, they are unsure, a meager 9% agreed that Trump’s supporters instigated the violent events which, even then, should not automatically be understood to be an admission of guilt.

These results should not come as a surprise. The mistrust in the government and media in the U.S. is so widespread to the extent that the country is experiencing two parallel political realities, each committed to a fundamentally different set of aspirations. Each side perceives the other as the enemy, and while still believing in its own version of democracy, it no longer agrees to any functional definition of the term.

This has not always been the case.

In their seminal book, “Manufacturing Consent”, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman provided a comprehensive analysis of how the ‘system,’ the government/ruling classes, big business and mainstream media, has invented the most effective mechanism which allowed the U.S. to ensure two naturally contradicting realities: persistent popular consent within a seemingly democratic governance.

Years later, Chomsky contested that, underneath this facade of democracy, the U.S. is, in actuality, a plutocracy, a country that is dedicated to serving the interests of the powerful few. He also argued that, while the U.S. does operate based on formal democratic structures, these are largely dysfunctional. In an interview with Global Policy Journal in 2019, the famed linguist and historian further asserted that “the U.S. Constitution was framed to thwart the democratic aspirations of most of the public.”

While these realizations have served as the core of the U.S. Left’s ideology, it was most interesting to see American Right constituencies leading what they call the ‘revolution,’ referred to by mainstream media as ‘insurrection.’ Equally interesting, many of Trump’s supporters actually come from working-class and lower-middle-class America, itself a fascinating subject in its own right.

U.S. political polarization, the breakdown of trust between the public and the ruling elites, along with their media allies, will continue unabated.

Regardless of what may transpire in the official investigation of the Capitol’s upheaval, U.S. political polarization, the breakdown of trust between the public and the ruling elites, along with their media allies, will continue unabated. Undoubtedly, the consequences will be dire.

But there is another consequential crisis that is also brewing, ‘American exceptionalism’, a rare meeting point between Democrats and Republicans, is facing its greatest challenge since its coinage sometime in the mid-17th century.

Historically, the U.S. has defined and redefined its mission in the world based on lofty spiritual, moral and political maxims, starting with ‘Manifest Destiny’, to fighting communism, to eventually serving as the defender of human rights and democracy around the world, using violence whenever necessary. In truth, ‘protecting human rights’ or ‘restoring democracy’ were mere pretenses often used to provide a moral cover that allows the U.S. to reorder the world for the sake of expanding its market and ensuring its economic dominance.

The late American historian, Howard Zinn, explained in his essay entitled “The Power and the Glory,” the functional meaning of American exceptionalism as such: “… that the United States alone has the right, whether by divine sanction or moral obligation, to bring civilization, or democracy, or liberty to the rest of the world, by violence if necessary …”

Many examples and numerous violent images can be immediately summoned when Zinn’s definition is translated into historical precedents. From the genocide of the Native Americans, to the enslaving of millions of Africans, to the never-ending interventions in South America – starting with the Monroe doctrine of 1823 – all the way to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, American exceptionalism has always served the purpose of reinforcing the notion that America possesses a moral, divine right to do as it pleases for the betterment of mankind.

When former U.S. President George W. Bush took it upon himself to ‘restore democracy’ in Iraq as part of the U.S.-championed ‘war on terror’, his ultimatum to the United Nations reflected both American entitlement and its rooted sense of exceptionalism. “You are either with us or with the terrorists,” he said on September 21, 2001. According to that maxim, the world was divided into categories, of ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’, ‘with us’ or ‘against us’, ‘Old Europe’ and ‘New Europe”, and so on. Despite the palpable irrationality – let alone arrogance – of that logic, U.S. ‘democratic’ institutions and mainstream media cheered Bush on. The ‘war president’s’ ratings seemed to increase as his rhetoric and actions grew more violent.

But the orchestrated ‘popular consent’ is finally breaking down, raising an unprecedented challenge to the notion of American exceptionalism, a banner under which America’s ruling elites have long united. The more political chaos and societal division widen, the more the notion of exceptionalism will be exposed as bizarre, selfish and unsustainable.

Surely, the storming of the U.S. Congress will have global repercussions, not least among them the collective rejection of the outdated notion of American exceptionalism. But with that, there is also an opportunity: first for Americans to swap their ‘manufactured consent’ with real dialogue; to salvage and, eventually, renew trust in their democratic institutions and second, for the world to challenge America’s hegemonic discourse of fraudulent democracy and other self-serving fables.

The 2020 presidential election showed record number turnout from American Muslim communities. 70 percent voted for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, while 17 percent voted for Donald Trump. As American Muslim communities voted overwhelmingly Democrat in the previous years, their vehement opposition to another Trump presidency does not come as a surprise. Trump reminded American Muslims of the violence they experienced under George W. Bush. Islamophobia in its rawest form was on display in the very onset of his presidency from the announcement of the Muslim Ban on immigrants coming from Muslim-majority countries to halting assistance to Syrian refugees to valorizing the death of Muslim prisoners “dipped in pigs’ blood.”

American Muslims did not always vote Democrat, however. Prior to 2001, 80 percent of American Muslims were Republican and 70 percent of registered Muslims voted for the Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush in 2000. However, 9/11 changed the political landscape of American Muslims.

The violent policies and wars of post-9/11 America are embedded in the memories of Muslims today. Domestically, Muslims were targeted as a suspect population and government policies as well as the social climate of socio-political exclusion drastically shaped American Muslim life. Muslims faced deportation (sometimes regardless of citizenship status), interrogation, surveillance, random searches and acts of hate crime. Violence against Muslims was institutionalized. This became evidently clear with the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. The state convinced the American people they were fighting acts of violence as they destroyed Muslim-majority countries to oblivion. American Muslims watched in anxiety as the state created Islam its enemy.

By 2017, 47 percent, nearly half of American Muslims believed neither party was friendly towards the interest of American Muslims. For some, the Obama presidency revealed that the Democratic establishment did not relieve Muslims from the expansion of the War on Terror, but accelerated it.

Just as it was apparent with Obama, Joe Biden and his VP pick, Kamala Harris are not anti-Islamophobia candidates.

Just as it was apparent with Obama, Joe Biden and his VP pick, Kamala Harris are not anti-Islamophobia candidates. Just as violence against Muslims happens through various methods, including war, both Biden and Harris are vicious allies of the military. Biden was directly involved in the advancement of the Iraq war and just recently professed his intention to keep special operations in the Middle East, while Harris voted against even a moderate cut in the gargantuan military budget in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis.

Yet some American Muslims responded differently to these challenges than others. What formed was a more radical politic: a group of American Muslims who understood that in order to combat state violence, you needed to avoid collaboration and instead, actively fight against it. Other Muslims however, were satisfied with Obama’s presidency. They believed that by welcoming law enforcement into their mosques, and accepting CVE grants (which gave access to private information on congregants and community members), there would be more trust between the state and Muslim communities, emphasizing they have nothing to hide.

The election of Donald Trump however, grayed the political differences of American Muslims. For the last four years many segments of the American society, including Muslims, became occupied with getting Trump out of office. The term ‘resistance’ became mainstream and suddenly the “soul of the country was on the ballot.”

A group that took advantage of the horrors that Trump represented and Muslims’ desire to see anyone else in office was Emgage. Emgage is the American Muslim community’s first “issue advocacy organization” and refers to themselves as the “political home for Muslim Americans.” In anticipation of the 2020 election, Emgage promised the Biden campaign one million Muslim votes and stated that their aim is to get many American Muslims registered to vote before the 2020 election. Of course, there is not any concrete proof Emgage succeeded in their promise, but the bigger controversy lies with their tendency to disregard the community’s concerns with the U.S.’s foreign policy ills for a so-called ‘seat at the table.’

As Palestine has always been an important foreign policy issue for American Muslims, Emgage disregarded a serious and sensitive issue as many high ranking members, including board members, worked with Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian organizations such as the Muslim Leadership Initiative, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. Notable board member Farooq Mitha, who also served as Biden’s Muslim Engagement Advisor and now is on his Pentagon transition team, formerly helped the Obama administration “to normalize ties between Israel and Arab nations under the banner of Track II diplomacy” and boasted to former employees that he was a member of AIPAC, the largest pro-Israel lobbying group in the U.S.

Eventually, a campaign called “Drop Emgage” was formed. The group calls on Emgage to “formally end its current normalization activities” and asserts that “Farooq Mitha does not represent the views or will of our communities.” They end their claims by urging “all people of conscience to no longer tolerate unprincipled leadership threatening our community.” Subsequently Emgage was removed as a member from their umbrella organization, U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations USCMO.

The politics of American Muslim communities will see a starker divide.

It is a flaw to consider all Muslims who voted for Biden as pro-Biden. It is more appropriate to view them as anti-Trump. While Biden pleasantly shocked some by saying “Inshallah” on the debate stage, others remember humiliating White House iftars that told us who the “good” Muslims in our communities are and why they must support war overseas. As the country’s electoral process forces American Muslims to concede to establishment Democrats, they have to reconcile that their politics is not in fact unified, and more divided than ever.

The politics of American Muslim communities will see a starker divide based on the probable return of a newly-termed CVE strategy, the continuation of the Islamophobic wars under Biden and the re-emergence of gatekeepers who claim they know what is best for Muslims.

Yet, there is another theory. As we continue to see more and more organizers prioritize fighting Islamophobia in its grandeur scale, we can hope for American Muslims who will unite together and pressure a Biden presidency to confront these challenges. We can look forward to the younger generation of Muslims and the emergence of a more radical politic that pushes for universally just policies which fights against state violence on local and international levels. We will also see more Muslims running for office and calling for an end of unnecessary and unconstitutional surveillance on their communities.

The future of Muslims in America is entirely dependent on whether we are willing to set aside the convention and be innovative in ways to empower our communities.