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Gender and why Democrats are going “fascist”

January 16, 2016

[Note, November 9, 2016: This article (first of two) was written almost ten months ago and withheld from publication because there wasn’t a very suitable outlet for it in terms of audience or focus. Nobody kept this back anticipating the article would be useful if Trump won, but it is being published now for those who want to understand in more depth what happened on November 8 in the United States. None of the word choice, spelling, style, etc., has been changed. That means it differs in some ways from many of the articles published on this site recently.

If this article were to be revised, there would be changes, but nothing has been added or removed. Still, it is mostly and basically correct as a discussion of amerikan politics and some of the reasons for Trump’s victory. Right now, many in the U.$. media on both “the right” and “the left,” including so-called revolutionaries, are in damage-control mode talking about how AmeriKKKans are disgusted, embarrassed, alienated, angry, etc., and trying to protect amerikkkans’ international reputation after Trump’s election whether they know it or not. The thing that needs to be understood is that Clinton and Trump were products of various amerikans’ own making; the whole election represented their desires, demands, interests, priorities, and lies they told themselves and others about amerikan society and the world. Amerikans are inclined toward a certain kind of politics. The world must struggle against the amerikans accordingly.

Many amerikans aren’t represented in the u.$. political structure as much as others are, but struggles for fuller representation in that structure, or for revisions of that structure, can easily have reactionary results. The structure is inherently an imperialist one responsive to pressures to preserve a massive amount of international privilege in the midst of legislative and policy changes.]

Every four years, Amerikan exploiters and their representatives everywhere act like the principal contradiction is between the Democratic and Republican nominees for U.$. President. Even supposedly independent institutions and movements can take a back seat or become secondary to trying to elect the Democratic nominee or a maverick Republican candidate. As we get closer to November, reasons and rhetoric supporting one’s favorite candidate become more forceful, even if still convoluted or difficult to discern. It is common to say some words against both nominees while actually supporting one, or increase support for one candidate later or become apathetic about the anti-imperialist struggle. Anti-imperialist struggle both inside and outside the United $tates is constantly undermined by U.$. election politics and misleading ideas about how to maneuver in that arena. So, there are risks involved in talking too much about Clinton and Trump, now the presumptive nominees. But the “horse race” of 2016 is interesting in revealing how fascism can come about through liberalism. Of course, Republicans have long said Obama is a national “socialist,” and to some extent they happen to be right in that case because the fusion of repression and economic nationalization increased under Obama (the labor aristocracy refuses to acknowledge this because it is behind it), but the gender aspect of the dynamics propelling the United $tates toward more repression is notable in its own right.

Democrats downplay Donald Trump’s alleged opposition to one war, the Iraq War, while Hillary Clinton as the Senator from New York voted for it. If differences like that don’t matter, the true reason is that Democrats themselves oppose single wars (particularly when it is self-serving to criticize Republicans), but expand the same wars or launch new ones later. Obama as a Senator emself was “against” the Iraq War, but in 2016 Obama is still killing people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Mexico, African countries, and other places. No surprise there because Obama after 9/11 was already getting behind Bush and using the Amerikan Civil War as justification. That labor aristocracy and U.$. middle-income mouthpiece Clinton was a hawk on Libya, and was deeply involved in killing Libyans Clinton cared far less about than precious Amerikan spies and operatives, is common knowledge. Less discussed today is that Hillary Clinton emself, NATO and everyone including CNN used rape in Libya as an excuse to kill thousands of people, a matter that was documented and opposed even by flawed bourgeois internationalist organizations. U.$. imperialists and labor aristocrats demean claims about any actual wartime sexual violence by abusing the issue for warmongering and murderous purposes. Libyan leader and pan-Africanist Muammar Qadhafi ended up dying while suffering sadistic treatment including sexual violence. Of course, if any mob involving more than one nation attacked Clinton or Obama similarly, selectively outraged pseudo-feminists and pseudo-anti-racists would be all over that. Libyan males and Libyan females died and still die, but as many have noted accurately Clinton makes use of female identity to deflect criticism as if Amerikan females needed to be given some slack, revealing that Amerikan females seek equality only to the extent that it is in their economic, social and career interests.

For some reason, females can now be in combat roles in the U.$. military, but Muammar Qadhafi’s “Amazonian Guard,” made up of elite skilled females, was evidence to many Westerners of sexual harassment, assault, and other gender mistreatment. It was if there could have been no other explanation such as confusing attackers or sending a signal to Third World males about trusting females with defense and trusting them to be capable of understanding and practicing security, including not having sexual relationships with people who could be spies even if the attraction was there. Then there is the notion that any of the females around Qadhafi who did fight off enemies must have been brainwashed or intimidated into doing so. Because Qadhafi had sex dungeons while Qadhafi “controlled” females’ own sexuality. Meanwhile, Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib male prisoner sexual abuse fame was not a gender oppressor, because of England’s biology (the gender aristocracy derives benefit from an assumption that non-trans females can’t be patriarchal oppressors of any group of males), and was not brainwashed except maybe by Charles Graner.

Only one of those things is true. Lynndie England was a gender oppressor. U.$. gender oppressors, including the majority of the U.$. gender aristocracy, and gender aristocrats aspiring for more privilege more often think of Third World males as oppressors of First World females and have extreme difficulty imagining the inverse even when confronted with visual evidence. And England wasn’t brainwashed. England ended up in the brig, but attacking Third World males was in the interests of England’s class, gender and nation groups generally. Fighting in the military has been increasingly harmonious with beliefs held before joining the military for Amerikan females. Amerikan females’ demanding the right to participate more extensively in militarism and aggression is in their career and group interests and goes along with long-standing chauvinism toward Third World peoples and ideas about females’ needing to have and exercise the same power and sexual entitlement that males have. The Democratic Party is disproportionately females, but Amerikan females line up for militarism and killing Third World people while disdaining Third World sexuality, including alleged prudeness, in racist and chauvinistic fashion.

In the context of Donald Trump’s posturing in relation to migrants and Muslims, it is crucial to understand that sexually and lifestyle- liberal Democrats have always disliked Islam as a religion and culture, In the 1960s hippie and commune culture, Eastern-influenced sex cults were preferred, for example. And they have always had disagreements with Third World alleged gender culture and practices as being either too aggressive (or submissive in the case of females) or too family-oriented. Within U.$. borders, it is large or religious Black and Latin@ families that white liberal Amerikan females and males have problems with in addition to supposedly hypersexual, aggressive or unrefined Black and Chican@ males. White settlers have always had racist and chauvinistic attitudes toward oppressed nation people, and liberal Democrats bring their particular contributions to the sex- and gender-related portion of that. Joining them in disliking Islam are some hard-core Christians in the Democratic Party, many of whom nonetheless find gender culture, specifically, of Islam to be inferior in its restrictiveness, not just because of alleged polygamy or child molestation.

Different surveys indicate that a significant number of Democrats might vote for Donald Trump.(1) Relatedly, there is a study revealing likely desirability bias among educated Amerikans who might have decided to vote for Trump, but would be too embarrassed to tell someone in an in-person or telephone poll or survey.(2) Democratic commentators have acted like they don’t know what’s going; they have been too busy trying to win votes by embracing Muslims superficially. However, Trump at least tacitly understands some of the gender dynamics going on involving Islam and migrants, who are central in Trump’s campaign rhetoric. Trump senses that both Republican and Democratic males want to “protect” females from migrants and Muslims (domestically and internationally), and that Amerikan females want to go to spring break in Cancun and exercise the sexual freedoms that Amerikan males enjoy without hassle or hearing anything about “chastity” or commitment. In fact, many Democratic Party males have narcissistic or dating-related reasons apart to be chauvinistic toward Third World males and the aim is not just to use protection as a reason for violence. Further, Trump understands that many Republicans are closeted gay persyns, cheating website users, or are persynally or privately liberal about adultery, pornography, premarital sex, prostitution, strip clubs, and even abortion particularly when their own girlfriends are involved, making them not too strange to Democrats who could find unity with Republicans via Republicans’ “hypocrisy” and guilt. Trump realizes that atheistic Democrats have for many years worked with Christian Republicans to foment chauvinism over Muslim proletarians’ religion and culture in gender and other areas. Trump understands that liberal Democrats are two-faced about wars in Muslim countries and were deeply involved in preparing public opinion for war with Muslim female liberation and Muslim youth liberation as pretexts. Trump understands that because everyone saw that whether they want to admit it now or not. And Trump understands that lower-income Amerikans have been demanding for something to be done about migrants supposedly depressing wages and employment – whether that is granting fewer visas, assimilating them as AmeriKKKan citizens, or deporting and repressing them. As a capitalist, Trump is probably aware of even liberal Democrats in New York whining about Muslim, Arab, African and Asian visa workers and other migrants. All of this and people still think Trump is an idiot instead of realizing that Trump’s stances, vagueness and even coarseness allow liberal Democrats to approve of Trump and attract the labor and gender aristocracies present and represented in both of the two parties.

The point is not that Democrats should vote against “Hitler” Trump, but that ordinary Amerikans in various classes have a fascist tendency, because of their class and nation interests. They seek to preserve their privilege, target a small minority of imperialist country exploiters (“the 1%,” Bernie Sanders’ “the billionaire class,” or Jews, Asians or Muslims richer than them), shamelessly target Third World capitalists and workers but not richer U.$. labor aristocrats, feel victimized by the wealthy who exert disproportionate influence in the elections process, cynically want to subvert or circumvent Amerikan democracy themselves as much as they consider it superior to other countries’ systems, want the imperialist state to have more control of banks and corporations, embrace false and contradictory ideas about the economy and politics including pseudo-Marxist ones, and are prone to accepting gender-related pretexts for repression and notions of an unpolluted Amerikan or Western gender culture. Instead of consciously perceiving their gender privilege in relation to Third World people living in the same patriarchal system, which they defend, they consider Third World peoples to be especially backward. Combining two sets of concerns – one for Islam and another for migrants in general – about outsiders and gender, Trump responds to this with the focus on migrants, Muslims, and Muslim migrants specifically. Many white urban Democrats are concerned about these more than they care really about “common sense gun control,” voting rights, lessening sex differences in pay, or defending Clinton over the bathroom email server. For them, being a female with a uterus who gave birth (Clinton uses motherhood to cultivate and reiterate female identity), supporting middle-class families, being hawkish about ISIS and Syria – these things do not distinguish Clinton enough from Trump. And Trump’s having a penis and a prostate gland does not threaten liberal Democrats. Clinton’s fawning on the middle class, eir warmongering, eir focus on domestic economic issues, eir elevation of so-called “women’s issues” (U.$. female issues), pave the way for Trump to bring in migrants, Muslim and gender – explicitly and implicitly – to win over liberal Democrats, female Democrats and various self-satisfied or pseudo-feminist male Democrats. They might think Trump really could do more for Amerikan females than Clinton in addition to accomplishing some of the things Clinton promised. Meanwhile, fascist Bernie Sanders styles emself as outlaw “Robin Hood” to a tiny minority of U.$. imperialists, beats the drum the loudest for the labor aristocracy on economic issues, and appeals to many white male workers whose sense of entitlement will increase with Sanders’ every campaign stop until they end up voting for Trump in the general election. The Maid Marian of Sanders’ Robin Hood image is suggestive of Disneyfied male heterosexuality and an old girlfriend’s coming back to save a declassed outlaw, who in turn saves the female. Sanders has combined trade protectionism and opposition to “open borders” with flattering and pandering to the gender aristocracy in a way that both conforms with Clinton’s own language and ultimately draws Democrats toward Trump.

This is not to paint every single individual Democrat with the same brush exactly. A few Democrats with concerns about “globalization,” war, or labor aristocracy economic demands, want Amerikan campaigns and movements to focus on wimmin’s issues more exclusively, conflating U.$. females (mostly gender oppressors and/or aristocrats) with wimmin, who are actually oppressed overall under patriarchy. These Democrats have not grasped that Hillary Clinton, to emphasize U.$. female issues, would have had to connect them with labor aristocracy issues and “family” white demographic issues anyway to be successful, both politically and because some of the gender aristocracy’s demands are inherently connected to seeking more profit for exploiters. Many of the other demands involve repression or things that are against the interests of the majority of the world’s females overall, making such pseudo-feminism undesirable for other reasons. Obviously, a sentence like “promote women’s rights around the globe” has and could easily become twisted in practice with Amerikans. So-called radicals in or around the Democratic Party tend to be obtuse about that sort of thing and rightly earn the proletariat’s suspicion.

Amerikans’ leaders do not just lead; they principally uphold the demands and interests of Amerikan exploiters. One cannot approach Amerikan elections, let alone the presidential election, as if one were working with an intoxicated proletariat being pulled in different directions. There are many exploiters who need actual substance abuse treatment unfortunately, but there is no large revolutionary working class in the United $tates to detox and bring to consciousness. The similarities and differences of Hillary, Sanders and Trump indicate a deeply reactionary tendency at the heart of the Amerikan politics and of labor aristocracy politics in particular. Ultimately, Amerikans will go where they need to go regardless of certain individual leaders or a certain “cheerleader” as Trump has said ey wanted to be. This is unlikely to stop until the international proletariat arrives to overthrow the Amerikan imperialists and labor aristocrats in their own land, which is stolen from oppressed nations. Obama gave the labor aristocracy more border and migrant repression jobs and increased the militarization at the border. Obama has presided over expansion of state control of the economy and a massive increasing of surveillance and repression at the same time. To satisfy the U.$. labor aristocracy and Amerikan nationalists, Obama has deported hundreds of thousands of people annually and expanded an already-huge border repression apparatus that will remain even if absolute or relative deportation numbers might decrease periodically. Anything Clinton or Bernie Sanders would do would not reduce “border security.” By understanding how the imperialists and labor aristocrats use gender to justify repression and why Democratic Party liberals are complicit and receptive, anti-imperialists will be in a better position to divide Amerikan exploiters and work for unity of the oppressed to fight repression policies and contain repression in various places and settings. This will give the international proletariat and internal semi-colony people inside the United $nakes more room to maneuver. ◊

See:
• “AmeriKKKa elects its next war criminal in chief,” 2016 November. https://github.com/pinotes/pinotes.github.io/blob/master/_posts/2016-11-09-news-2016-US-election-day.md
• “AmeriKKKa unmasked: Trump in sight of victory,” 2016 November. https://github.com/pinotes/pinotes.github.io/blob/master/_posts/2016-11-09-news-AmeriKKKa-unmasked.md

Notes:
1. “That survey showing 20 percent of Democrats backing Trump? Come. On.” 2016 January 10. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/10/that-survey-showing-20-percent-of-democrats-backing-trump-come-on/
http://discussionist.com/1014227850
2. “Why polls may underestimate support for Donald Trump,” 2015 December 22. http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20151222/NEWS02/151229942/why-polls-may-underestimate-support-for-donald-trump

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