Not understanding how U.S. war theorists of think tanks and DOD/CIA actually define war enables a false narrative that he is going to end endless war that is perpetuated by Trump, his oligarchical backers, and what has become self-identified as the New Right in the Information Domain.

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American Fascism

By Todd E. Pierce
Direct to Rise Up Times, October 24, 2024

Earlier this year I attended a Zoom event of a well-known, very effective, peace organization, on “Stopping War On Iran.” The event was quite good with its two speakers being very informative. But I was troubled at one point with the response of a guest expert to a question by the moderator of, “Do you think there would be any difference between a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency on Israel and Iran?”

The speaker had eloquently criticized both administrations and started off well in the answer, but then something “took over her mind,” and she said:

“If anything, Trump seems more antiwar than Biden at this point . . .  if you look at their foreign policy record, Trump seemed to want to avoid war more than Biden does. It’s under Biden we have Ukraine-Russia, it’s under Biden we have this war on Gaza, and it’s under Biden that Iran’s nuclear program has continued to expand, and we live in fear of a regional conflagration, so . . . prospects are not great.”

The moderator did follow up with the point that it was Trump who had set so much of the current wars in motion, which the speaker agreed with, and she made clear she wasn’t advocating for Trump. Nevertheless, it was clear that her understanding of “war” was deficient in her narrow, constricted, view of what “real” war is, leading to a false conclusion that Trump was in any way, “antiwar.”

That is, except in the way any extreme militaristic leader is, in that they want to “win” when they go to war. And Trump was flummoxed in that desire to win by the inability of the U.S. to conquer Iraq painlessly, proving it could not “win” against Iran, Russia, and China either.

But all these countries were denounced by the Trump administration as the main “strategic competitors” (enemy) to be targeted in the most relevant documents for U.S. “war fighting,” the National Security Strategy of the U.S. (2017) and the National Defense Strategy (2018), building upon the former. These strategies revealed that while the U.S. military could wreak immense harm on basically defenseless countries (as Obama did to Libya) it couldn’t hope to go up against even a mid-level relatively undeveloped country such as Iran with an invasion, or even solely by “Air,” that would predictably produce  a lot of harm to our own military, and our economy, as shown with Iraq. And such harm would include becoming the object of revulsion of at least a portion of the American people to such a “loser,” as had happened to a large degree with George W.Bush when he became something of a laughingstock to some Americans.

So Trump did what German leaders did post-WW I and accelerated and escalated in 1933, he set about “Building the Greatest Military Ever” as he declared numerous times. He carried out this vast military buildup by first demanding a huge increase in military spending. He sealed that increase into law under the National Defense Authorization Act to make it effective in perpetuity; he also tightened the encirclement of Russia and China in what would have to have been seen by both as preparation for an offensive war against them, as well as providing offensive weapons to Ukraine such as Javelin missiles, actions he now boasts of. Furthermore, as reported by The New York Times, he and Benjamin Netanyahu immediately commenced waging “clandestine war” against Iran when Trump took office!

This military buildup was reported on at the time, but it did not serve Democratic Party interests to broadcast since they were trying to portray Trump as “weak” in military aggression, and as “Putin’s Puppet.” Nor did it serve Republican/Trump interests as they were reinventing themselves, falsely, as the “Party of Restraint.”

Right-wing historical revisionists calling themselves the New Right now were working around the clock to especially take over The American Conservative (TAC) magazine that over a decade ago was “antiwar,” but no longer: Now having become Trump’s main propaganda media platform, TAC works to incite “hostile feelings” against China as their war of choice. The same with the  Responsible Statecraft/Quincy Institute when they collude with TAC, even though they can sometimes still provide some sound analysis, but not by the conservative side of Quincy, which spends much of its time promoting Trump and Trumpism and falsely presenting them as “Restrainers.” Charles Koch of Koch Industries is a major funder of both TAC and the Responsible Statecraft/Quincy Institute.

The lesson is, be very careful of who you listen to, including on the left, with some of the most vicious pro-war advocates coming from the “Left.” Medea Benjamin of Code Pink was verbally and physically assaulted when her phone was grabbed by those who would describe themselves as on the left when she was in Minneapolis to give a talk about Ukraine.

But be especially careful of those from the “Right” who promote Trumpism as non-interventionist “realism and restraint,” and as anti-NeoConservatives while they simultaneously celebrate and promote the ultra-militaristic “first generation” of conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Willmoore Kendall, and James Burnham, now celebrated as “precursors” to Trumpism, and actually, to the Conservative Movement from which NeoConservatism is a mere off-shoot.

In a classic case of right-wing historical revisionism these ultra-militarists, who were the propagandists of the Military Industrial Complex then being birthed in the 1950s – and who even called for preemptive nuclear war against the Soviet Union, China, and  Albania. They are now portrayed as the opposite of the ultra-militarists that they were by the Trumpites now calling themselves the New Right. When coupled to their ultra-authoritarian legal views of McCarthyite repression that they were the principal promoters of, they can be said to represent the origins of American fascism: they were, in fact, the precursors to the Trumpites’ New Right!

One can go on to describe how Trump waged “multi-domain war,” which is how the U.S. military recognizes war is actually waged, and explained as Land, Sea, Air, Space, and Information domains called Fifth Dimension Operations and also includes the diplomatic and economic warfare (sanctions) that Trump used to constantly wage war against and escalated in many countries.

On the diplomatic side, Trump withdrew from the remaining Arms Control Agreements with Russia after Cheney/Bush began that process with withdrawing from other agreements earlier. Only the New Start treaty remained at the end of Trump’s term, which was set to expire on its own early in 2021 unless renewed. Trump made amply clear he wasn’t renewing it. Trump withdrew as well from the JCPOA with Iran that is  commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal [to not manufacture nuclear weapons], after tirelessly denouncing it in his 2016 campaign.

But not understanding how U.S. war theorists of think tanks and DOD/CIA actually define war enables a false narrative that he is going to end endless war that is perpetuated by Trump, his oligarchical backers, and what has become self-identified as the New Right in the Information Domain.

This false narrative enables Trump to sell himself as a candidate opposing war to critical war-weary voters of both parties, in contrast to the obviously war-fevered Joe Biden, and in 2016, Hillary Clinton, and now Kamala Harris. I saw how successful his campaign was shortly after his election in 2017 when a left-wing peace activist became furious with me for my saying Trump had no intention of ending the endless wars, so invested had he become in that false narrative!

That there were and are “war-weary voters” to be tapped in 2016 was seen in the earlier Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich campaigns and was recognized by the oligarchs who supported Trump because they could see the Republican candidates they’d supported previously running war-fevered campaigns in 2008 and 2012 had lost.

So old wine had to be poured into new bottles, and a blank slate candidate was chosen by oligarchs Charles Koch, Peter Thiel, and Sheldon Adelson that called for using any narrative that any particular audience would be most receptive to using the “Six-Party Theory” of right-wing campaign manager Arthur Finkelstein, in the 2016 Trump campaign.

So in 2016, after two consecutive losing Presidential campaigns by hawkish Republicans that suggested opposition to our endless wars by one group of voters, a micro-targeted meme was created for that faction of war-weary Americans  and targeted only to those who had indicated an inclination to be opposed to U.S. Wars.  Digital scraping of Facebook to search out this special audience was accomplished by right-wing oligarchs who founded digital surveillance corporations specializing in such operations, such as Peter Thiel’s digital surveillance/Influence Operations and the specialists of Palantir Corporation (embedded in the Israeli Intelligence services, as well as U.S. intel services). That was the real election interference operation of 2016, as is well documented. To the larger body of Republicans, Trump promised to restore torture and to “Build the Greatest Military Ever,” with huge increases in military spending, as Trump always demands!

But the suggestion that Trump was and is “antiwar” has lived on  and is even unfortunately yet believed by some misinformed antiwar activists. That misconception must be corrected, when it is realized how Trump and the U.S. New Right, and National Conservative Movement (the latter founded by an Israeli settler, Yoram Hazony) are all on the same side of that “myth” they created as a deception. They are part of the same network of Kohelet Policy Forum, Tikvah Fund, the Federalist Society, Republican Party, and related Conservative organizations of both Israel and the U.S. All are joined together in support of Israeli fascism and a continued acceleration of our own descent into the genuine fascism of perpetual war and authoritarianism.

Waging genocide against Palestinians has not been interrupted in any way by Biden but the total, genuine, kind of fascism as defined by Mussolini is already upon us from one party, Trumpism, with the even greater denunciations of the campus protesters by the New Right with Trumpites the worst with their complete allegiance to Israeli fascists. This goes along with their allied Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

And Trumpites plan to take us even deeper into that fascism and authoritarianism by expanding our warfare state even more than the Republicans and right-wing Democrats already have with the “Common Plan” of Project 2025, and what Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts calls their “Third-Way Foreign Policy.” That is, “Third Way” as used in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to distinguish the party furthest to the right-wing from the mainstream parties.

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