Introduction
Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen fit in geopolitics not as an aberration of history but as living history itself. Imperialism and its colonial predecessors date back to the 16th century, which was also the birth century of the capitalist mode of production and of the African Atlantic slave trade. These new phenomena required coercion of people into becoming compliant labourers. They developed features such as genocides, exterminations, slaughters, and massacres to enforce compliance. Later on, bombings were added.
The management of modern geopolitics requires a historical approach because it is interpenetrated with multiple phenomena that defy disaggregation. Different forms of violence constitute the genetic makeup of colonialism and imperialism.
Contrast between democracy and fascism
Democracy is a political system in which elected leaders manage state affairs by peaceful means. Fascism is the opposite political system in which leaders manage state affairs by violent means.
Framework of electoral politics
Western democracy offers the possibility for civil society fascists to use the framework of electoral politics to rise to state power. They exploit the legitimate disgruntlement of civil society to build a base of voters to ascend to state power (partial or whole). Their political rhetoric is crafted to appeal, emotionally, to the basic needs of the working class and peasants; rural and urban poor; oppressed races, castes and genders; and marginalized ethnicities and indigenous people. It is an amended model developed by Mussolini and Hitler with rousing appeal to ‘nationalism’ and ‘socialism’.
Fascism is systemic to the capitalist mode of production
The systemic problem of capitalism is that it takes the whole of society to produce wealth but the largest portion of wealth is appropriated by the ruling minority capitalist class and the smallest portion of the wealth is distributed to the majority labouring class through the wage system. There is always an excess of wealth that cannot be consumed by the labouring class because of the low wages. The excess has to be destroyed to maintain price, value, and profit. This creates conditions for revolutions that seek the alteration of the ownership of the means of production, distribution, and consumption in favour of the labouring class. When the contradictions cannot be managed democratically by peaceful means the ruling capitalist class resorts to violent fascist means to contain the threat to its control of state power.
Evolution of imperialism
Imperialism is the evolution of 16th-19th century European colonialism. After WWII with its large paper dollar and gold reserves, the USA rose to become a hegemonic and sole nuclear power. It had its foundation of capital accumulation in the African Atlantic slave trade (1501-1867), expropriation of indigenous land, and multiple massacres and genocides.
As part of the rapid evolution of imperialism, the USA had used two atomic bombs on Japan under President Harry Truman in 1945 that killed about 200000 civilians.
USA armments industry
President Dwight Eisenhower who succeeded Truman issued a strong warning in 1961 against the evil of building a ‘military-industrial complex’ when the USA arms industry had expanded inexorably in the 1950s during the Cold War. Although he carried the ‘prestige’ of a former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and an opponent of the use of the atomic bombs it did not help him to withstand the institutional pressures of the new military-industrial complex.
He conceded, ‘we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry’ as a new experience. The complex developed into a military-industrial-media complex as a site for the private accumulation of paper dollars by the nascent billionaire class. On the basis of paper dollars, ownership of the worldwide web by the USA army, and dollar dominance, the USA government constructed its violent global hegemony. Eisenhower had warned against ‘misplaced power’, ‘we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex.’
Threat to all civilizations
This unheeded warning is ravaging USA at home and abroad and threatening all civilizations. The crises that Mussolini and Hitler faced are now being replicated in the USA on an unimagined scale. The new billionaire class continues fighting for the largest share of wealth while the labouring class is struggling to keep wages in pace with rapid increases in the cost-of-living. Economics Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, has estimated that the wages of USA male workers in 2011 was marginally lower than the wages of 1968.
The systemic crisis that characterized colonialism continues to characterize imperialism.
The covetous nature of imperialism
Imperialism embodies a covetous intent on global wealth and labour through genocides, exterminations, slaughters, and massacres. This has its ultimate culmination in the Gaza Genocide. Imperialism which began its life as colonialism has a long chain of predecessors like Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, and Germany – all of European progeny – between 1500s and 1770s. Inserted into its modern ideological line are the White Evangelical and Christian Zionist movement.
Now that the USA and Europe face economic decline, high energy costs, and the rise of the Global South they are releasing within the framework of electoral politics the forces of fascism and regional wars to increase their shares of wealth.
Export of USA crises
The USA exports worldwide its multiple crises of cost-of-living, housing, social welfare, economic inequalities, inflation, and unemployment.
USA seeks to cause damage through trade, tariff, financial, military, diplomatic, and cyber wars. President Trump uses his multiple powers, maximally, to scare timid countries to comply with his misperception of geopolitical and geo-economic realities.
The new historical epoch is witnessing the rise of the Global South and the weakening of the Global North and its economies, industrialization, and manufacturing bases. It faces high labour costs, trade and fiscal deficits, and deferred recessions.
Constructive disruption of old order
The rapid reconfiguration in geopolitics and geo-economics is disrupting colonial and imperial order. The struggles against the old order in eruptive regions like West Asia, Ukraine-Russia, and Caribbean Sea have to be measured by the constructive disruptions of the old order and cannot be rushed into short-term transactional solutions. They have to use historical time that they control to regain control of their expropriated land, air, and sea spaces to reassert their sovereignties.
The disruption is taking place in the wider context of the fracturing global economy and its consequent geopolitical and geo-economic dislocations and spatial disorientation. USA foreign policies are now in reaction to China’s and Russia’s industrial and technological development. This context includes USA budget deficit of $2-trillion, half of which is net interest. Total government debt is $30-trillion, which is the equivalent of 100% of GDP. By 2034 the debt is expected to increase to $50-trillion. The context was shaped by the 2008 mortgage bond crisis and the ensuing Great Recession.
Eisenhower had warned that the USA’s ‘toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex.’
Rise of fascism
Trump second administration saw an ‘improvement’ on the methodology of enforcing fascism. With the misuse of technology he policed speech and ‘morality’ and punished private citizens. In addition to the constrained constitutional powers conferred on him he seized extra-constitutional powers within a short period of eight months to police and punish. He became the judge, jury, and executioner of speech and ‘morality’. He developed the imperial presidency for himself and future presidents – unforeseen by the founders of the new republic 238 years ago. He has taken control of loyalists in the elected Congress and unelected Supreme Court, FBI, ICE, media, and tech giants. He has usurped the constitutional powers of Congress. He has cultivated an atmosphere of fear in his administration to either comply or else (known as ‘consequence culture’). He is redistricting current electoral districts into new districts to ensure victory for Republicans in Congress in 14-months’ time.
Rise of fascism (continued)
Trump’s abuse of imperial power includes: issuance of 142 aggressive executive ‘emergency’ orders in the first 100 days; extraordinary powers over global trade, tariffs, immigration, mineral extraction, foreign disputes; crackdown on mainstream media freedom to enforce positive coverage of fascism; impoundment of public funds related to public health, foreign aid, university research, and more; punishment of foreign countries over disputes; risking another Great Depression; trying to take global control of the semi-conductor production and distribution market; elimination of birth-right citizenship; nullification of constitutional rights through executive orders and not through constitutional amendments or legislation; purging of ‘disloyal’ federal workers and watchdogs; eroding the independence of the judiciary and The Fed; overstretching security powers; forced for its administration a ‘golden share’ of US Steel; a share of chipmakers’ foreign sales; share in Intel; and an extraordinary type of state capitalism under democracy – a la Mussolini and Hitler.
Rise of fascism (continued further)
He forced the private sector to share with the state their extraction of equity and revenue; measure private companies on their loyalty to Trumpian ideas; punishment of private law firms that represent political opposition; conflation of peacetime and wartime rules; weaponizing state power; withholding funding for universities on pretext of pro-Palestine protests; trying to force universities to change to fascist-friendly curricula and leadership; using federal paper dollars to police academic freedom; taking control of Food and Drug Administration and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention; rewriting health and vaccine policy; slashing funding for public health research; taking powers from scientific experts and devolving them on ignorant political appointees; profiteering for the Trump family dynasty in dubious foreign cryptocurrencies and real estate; pardoning 1500 loyalists for the 2021 fascist attack on the US Capitol; and granting impunity for crimes against the state. (Acknowledgement: various USA media sources – crosschecked)
Alien Enemies Act of 1798
Of the many abuses of state power Trump conflates wartime powers with peacetime powers by the invocation of the obscure Alien Enemies Act of 1798: deporting ‘gang members’ without fair trial; ordering maritime strikes on ‘drug traffickers’ without congressional authorization; and deploying the militaristic National Guard to cities under Democratic Party control without the consent of the city authorities.
The Trump administration has stamped the pattern for fascist rule.
‘No Kings’ resistance movement
“Strength in Numbers” publication, in consultation with data from the “Crowd Counting Consortium” project of the University of Connecticut and the Harvard Kennedy School, estimated the ‘No Kings’ crowd of 18 October 2025. The median estimate is 5-million participants with an upper-end estimate of 6.5-million. There were about 2700 locations involved across fifty states. It was the largest resistance on a single day in USA history, which coincided with the government shutdown and storm-trooping National Guard.
El Commandant Fidel Castro had observed that if the struggle is the most difficult anywhere in the world it is in the USA.
In the first eight months of the second Trump administration an estimated 12-million people protested against Trumpian policy implementation in 31638 political protests, rallies, and demonstrations. Trump viewed the protesters as the ‘enemy within’.
‘No Kings’ was the tallest peak of resistance to fascism and there are many taller peaks to sprout up suddenly with renewed inner resilience of the ‘enemy within’. The peaks will grow into a new Himalaya Mountain range of ordinary people who will leave the mighty USA Army standing idle, as it often happens in history.
Conclusion
The globalized world functions as one human-like body with a network of connective tissues. The Gaza Genocide is the most rotten tissue. The Gazans have demonstrated the power of humanity to remobilize and rehumanize itself, based on compassion and eternal hope. It is the largest inter-civilizational undertaking on an international scale.
By Haroon Aziz, South Africa
