zaterdag 25 juli 2026

The State’s War on the Left Didn’t Begin With Trump — But He’s Escalating It

 




The State’s War on the Left Didn’t Begin With Trump — But He’s Escalating It

Trump’s war on the left blends “war on terror” language with Cold War McCarthyism.

By
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller shakes hands with Secretary of State Marco Rubio before addressing the audience during opening remarks at the “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism” at the U.S. State Department, on July 16, 2026, in Washington, D.C.

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The Trump administration’s drive to turn the machinery of counterterrorism against left-wing movements worldwide kicked into a higher gear this month surrounding its convening of an international “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism.”

On July 16, 2026, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau stood before representatives of over 60 nations assembled for the global summit in Washington, D.C. to introduce his boss, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. As he opened for the arch neoconservative, Landau told those assembled, “For those of us who grew up in the 1970s, the topic that we’re going to be discussing today is all too familiar.”

Landau’s invocation of the 1970s felt like an implicit admission that to many, the topic of the day — “left-wing political violence” — felt like an anachronism. While groups like the Baader-Meinhof Group in Germany or the Red Brigades in Italy in the 1970s did carry out acts of violence while proclaiming revolutionary beliefs, such groups are long defunct. Yet according to Rubio and White House adviser Stephen Miller, left-wing political violence constitutes an immediate threat; they describe the West as being in a war for civilization itself. Such rhetoric is not new for Miller.

The conference is the latest step in the Trump administration’s efforts to use mechanisms originally framed through the language of “counterterrorism” to repress left-wing movements — efforts the administration is now internationalizing. Donald Trump’s opening move was an executive order in September 2025 declaring that antifa, short for anti-fascism, was a domestic terrorism organization. Anti-fascism is an ideology, not an organization, though the bizarrely worded order dubbed antifa “a militarist, anarchist enterprise.” In addition to antifa not being an organization, there is no mechanism in U.S. law to declare a domestic organization to be domestic terrorists. These peculiarities left questions as to whether the move was mere bluster, a bit of rhetorical red meat for Trump’s MAGA base, or the start of something more serious.

NSPM-7 is essentially a blueprint for mobilizing the U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy against domestic left-wing movements.

That question was answered three days later when Trump signed the National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7). Citing the threat of left-wing political violence, NSPM-7 is essentially a blueprint for mobilizing the U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy against domestic left-wing movements. It shows a deep understanding of the machinery of repression and an ability to turn it against Trump’s domestic enemies without requiring any new laws.

Rubio, along with Miller, explicitly mentioned NSPM-7 during the July 16 ministerial. In addition to NSPM-7, the Trump administration produced a counterterrorism strategy document that names three terror threats to the U.S.: “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs,” “Legacy Islamist Terrorists,” and “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.” Rubio told the assembled nations that, “Under President Trump, for the first time, the United States is building the infrastructure, the partnership, and the strategy to defeat the scourge of far-left terror.”

While the Trump administration has made waging a civilizational war against the left under the guise of counterterrorism a key goal, Rubio has increasingly transformed the State Department into a tool for political repression. Early in the Trump administration, Rubio invoked a rarely used Cold War immigration provision to arrest, detain, and attempt to deport Palestinian solidarity activists. Citing NSPM-7, Rubio is now using the same immigration provision to deny visas to so-called “far left terrorists and associated groups.”

Rubio’s State Department has again shown itself to be an important vector of McCarthyism with its July 20 report entitled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” Rubio, whose family fled the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (the dictator who was later overthrown by Fidel Castro), has long been obsessed with overthrowing Cuba’s socialist government.

The State Department report claims that the tiny island nation, under decades of U.S. siege, constitutes a threat to the U.S. in terms of “espionage” and “subversion.” This is clearly building a pretext, albeit a preposterous one, for a regime change war against Cuba. But it also is designed to put a target on the backs of the U.S. left.

Claims of Cuba’s threat to the U.S. largely stem from the idea that Cuba supports or inspired decades of left-wing movements in the U.S. The State Department report draws on sources like the House Un-American Activities Committee and the right-wing Capital Research Center, parroting decades-old conspiracy theories about U.S. social movements being the products of foreign communists.

Like the Rubio-Miller summit on left-wing violence, the report feels at first glance like the product of a past era. But its list of “front groups and fellow travelers” includes the Democratic Socialists of America, Code Pink, and The People’s Forum – all current targets of the right.

Days before the report was released, Rubio told the ministerial, “The Cuban regime’s sprawling intelligence and ideological network helped to build the far-left in our country and in our hemisphere, and it remains inextricably linked to the far-left groups and movements across and beyond the West.” It is clear claims of Cuban support are pivotal for laying the groundwork for attacking the left.

And the tools that the Trump administration needs to repress the left are already available within the U.S. national security state.

The U.S. Has a Long History of Targeting the Left

Trump officials repeatedly claim that prior to this point, the supposed threat of the left had been ignored or downplayed. This narrative is false. Domestic political surveillance, especially when carried out by the FBI, has always disproportionately targeted the left. And much of the language employed by Trump about left-wing “terrorists” has been in consistent usage for decades by the FBI.

Since counterterrorism (as opposed to counter-subversion) became the FBI’s national security focus in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the FBI has repeatedly targeted nonviolent left-wing groups as “terrorists.”

Under the Reagan administration, the FBI carried out a massive, sprawling investigation against the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, which was justified as being an effort in collecting foreign intelligence against international terrorists.

During the Clinton administration, FBI Director Louis Freeh gave testimony to the U.S. Senate on the “Threat of Terrorism to the United States” that featured a section on “Left-wing and Puerto Rican extremist groups.” Claiming socialist, “anarchist and extremist socialist groups” posed a threat, he singled out groups involved in anti-globalization protests he claimed had an “an international presence.”

When George W. Bush’s administration expanded the scope of counterterrorism surveillance, the FBI issued bulletins encouraging preemptive monitoring of anti-Iraq War and anti-globalization protesters in the name of counterterrorism.

The Biden administration, like the Trump administration, claimed to be uniquely focused on domestic terrorism, and produced documents that repeated decades-old descriptions of “anarchist violent extremists, who violently oppose all forms of capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions, which they perceive as harmful to society” as being a terror threat. Thus, the Trump administration’s claims that the national security apparatus spared the left in the past are simply false.

The Trump administration has made clear that the FBI’s focus must exclusively be on the left, not the right.

Rhetoric about left-wing or anarchist extremists did not start with Trump. The Trump administration’s war on the left, however, should not be shrugged off as more of the same. One striking difference is that in the past when the FBI used language about anarchist or left-wing terrorism, it was often coupled with parallel language about the sovereign citizen movement, militias, or right-wing terrorists. The FBI’s own track record indicates the agency was hardly even-handed, but it at least feigned neutrality.

The Trump administration has not only omitted such language but also made clear that the FBI’s focus must exclusively be on the left, not the right. In doing so, the administration has blended together the language of the “war on terror” with that of Cold War McCarthyism. But there is greater continuity between these two periods than many realize.

The U.S. has a long history of political policing. By the end of World War I, this political policing had increasingly become federalized. The Bureau of Investigation, as the FBI was known then, formed an intelligence division dedicated to tracking down so-called radicals. This division was disbanded when its political spying aroused considerable controversy, but paradoxically, in spite of the scandal, it helped to catapult the division’s leader, J. Edgar Hoover, into national political life. Even as the division was temporarily shuttered, Hoover was promoted to run the entire Bureau.

In the run-up to World War II, Hoover was able to again restart the FBI’s intelligence division. As he edged out bureaucratic competitors to firmly establish domestic intelligence as a core part of the FBI’s fiefdom, he interpreted presidential directives to give the FBI’s reconstituted intelligence division broad power to investigate “subversives.”

The Trump counterterrorism strategy is bringing history full circle, fully exposing the McCarthyite origins of modern counterterrorism.

Unsurprisingly, Hoover’s FBI overwhelmingly used this power to spy on the left. The Cold War allowed the FBI to cement these powers, but much of what would later be described as McCarthyism was the deliberate result of the FBI leadership’s own preexisting goals. Fallout from Watergate, the discrediting of the Cold War national security establishment by the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and revelations that the FBI had spied on the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements that millions of Americans participated in all led to a serious effort to rein in this spying.

Yet, almost as soon as reforms were being proposed in the mid 1970s, defenders of the McCarthyite project desperately turned to a new rationale: counterterrorism.

Claims were made by congressional critics of FBI reform, right-wing think tanks, and private McCarthyites that restrictions on FBI surveillance, or even the abolition of the House Un-American Activities Committee, would lead the U.S. to become defenseless against terrorism.

The McCarthyites-turned-counterterrorists rallied around a theory that since terrorism was a politically motivated crime, preventing terrorism required looking at political movements before they spawned terrorists. Unsurprisingly, they singled out left-wing movements they disliked as those mandating the most scrutiny.

Critics on the right of the new restrictions argued that guidelines that restricted the FBI to surveilling only those engaged in criminal acts robbed it of the ability to prevent terrorism. These grievances percolated on the right for decades.

After al-Qaeda’s horrific murder of 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, these grievances became the starting point for the effort to hijack the tragedy and expand counterterrorism surveillance. Using intelligence to prevent and disrupt terrorism before it occurred, as opposed to prosecuting it as a law enforcement matter after the fact, became the new focus of the FBI. To be clear, preventing violent acts like 9/11 is a noble goal. But the preventive framework for counterterrorism that was adopted opened the door to political policing, as it was arguably designed to, and has seemingly had little success in foiling real violence. And NSMP-7 is rife with references to this framework. This is what makes it so dangerous.

The Trump counterterrorism strategy is bringing history full circle, fully exposing the McCarthyite origins of modern counterterrorism. The Rubio-Miller conference may seem like a comical anachronism. But the administration appears to be building toward painting larger swathes of the left as terrorists or foreign agents, while claiming the need to prevent terrorism. In doing so, Trump officials are laying the framework for targeting the left broadly.

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My Comments :

Let's not forget to mention the war on the pro-Palestinian movement, by linking that movement - by association with Hamas - to terrorism and anti-semitism

In this context, it has by no means been a co-incidence that the Jewish-Christian Ayatollah’s of the ultra-orthodox, radical extreme-right, anti-democratic (for theocratic) , whitesupremacist Heritage Foundation had published a specific policy paper called Project Esther.

A paper, that together with the Project 2025 document, does form the backbone of the effort of the neo-nazi loving regime Trump-Vance, to stem any criticism of both the socio-pathological Netanyahu genocidals and the murderous warmongering Trump-Vance monarchy.

Remember, that Miller is the descendant of Ashkenazi jews, who had been granted the status of fugitives, on the run for the Russian czar : the very same Miller now is leading the whitesupremacist cleansing operations by the ICE, to free the USA of any Trump and Netanyahu critics.

The real threat however – the extreme-right radical Trump militia, who had been instrumental, to storm the Capitol to Stop the Steal – have been collectively pardoned by the commander in chief Coupist Trump

In Holland the Trump proponents of the pro-Eretz-Israel lobbying VVD and the elk, did almost immediately follow suit, to introduce an Antifa motion in parliament.



 

Gepost door op Geen opmerkingen:

maandag 20 juli 2026

Nederland heeft nu officieel een tekort aan water: maatregelen nodig

 



Nederland heeft nu officieel een tekort aan water: maatregelen nodig

Na weken van droogte kampt Nederland met een ‘feitelijk watertekort’. Rijkswaterstaat, de waterschappen, de drinkwaterbedrijven, de provincies en de betrokken ministeries stemmen met elkaar af welke maatregelen nodig zijn om het beschikbare water zo goed mogelijk te verdelen.
Een drooggevallen stuk uiterwaard langs de Lek, een hoofdarm van de Rijn, bij Honswijk. De inzet van de stuwen (die open of dicht kunnen om het waterpeil te reguleren) wordt aangepast op alle vertakkingen van de Rijn.
Bron 
Robin van Lonkhuijsen / ANP
Dit artikel is geschreven door
is chef van de politieke redactie.
Dat liet het ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat donderdag weten op advies van de Landelijke Coördinatiecommissie Waterverdeling. Het departement benadrukt dat van een tekort aan drinkwater geen sprake is, maar dat wel problemen ontstaan voor de landbouw, de scheepvaart en de natuur.
Hoewel juni nog relatief nat was, verliep die maand ook al bovengemiddeld warm, waardoor veel regenwater verdampte. Juli begon daardoor met een officieel ‘dreigend watertekort’, waarna de situatie snel verslechterde door de aanhoudende droogte en doordat het ook weinig heeft geregend in de stroomgebieden van de rivieren die Nederland van zoet water voorzien, de Rijn en de Maas. Omdat het einde van die situatie nog niet in zicht is, wordt nu opgeschaald naar een ‘feitelijk watertekort’.

Noodpompen

In de praktijk betekent die opschaling dat de betrokken instanties het schaarse water via een landelijk vastgestelde volgorde kunnen gaan verdelen. De drinkwatervoorziening en de dijken (die bij uitdroging onbetrouwbaar kunnen worden) staan bovenaan de prioriteitenlijst. Andere belanghebbenden – zoals de industrie, de landbouw en de scheepvaart – sluiten later aan in de rij.
Vooralsnog blijven de ingrepen beperkt tot een aangepaste inzet van de stuwen (die open of dicht kunnen om het waterpeil te reguleren) op alle vertakkingen van de Rijn. Ook wordt de plaatsing van noodpompen voorbereid. Op veel plekken gaan de sluizen minder vaak open om te voorkomen dat te veel zout water het land in stroomt. Schepen moeten rekening houden met langere wachttijden.
Sinds donderdag wordt via het stelsel van stuwen en gemalen ook de maximale hoeveelheid zoet water richting het westen van Nederland gepompt. Met de aanvoer van 15 duizend liter per seconde moet worden voorkomen dat zout water vanuit zee steeds verder het land in trekt. Te veel verzilting kan zeer schadelijk zijn voor de land- en tuinbouwsector en voor de natuur.

Onttrekkingsverboden

In veel waterschappen geldt al een onttrekkingsverbod. Dat betekent dat particulieren en bedrijven geen water meer mogen halen uit sloten, beken en rivieren. Die maatregel is vooral bedoeld om planten en dieren te beschermen tegen de lage waterstanden. Veel sloten en beken zijn al drooggevallen.
Het Waterschap Limburg liet eerder deze week weten dat de situatie voor de flora en fauna ‘verontrustend is’. Door de lage waterstanden is er weinig stroming en warmt het water sneller op. Dit leidt tot minder zuurstof, meer voedingsstoffen, slechtere waterkwaliteit en meer ongedierte in het water. Dat kan ook schadelijk zijn voor mensen. Enkele waterschappen waarschuwen dat op steeds meer plekken blauwalg en botulisme, een ernstige vorm van vergiftiging, worden aangetroffen.
Het landelijke neerslagtekort (dat ontstaat als er meer water verdampt dan dat er neerslag valt) liep deze week op tot zo’n 200 millimeter. Het jaar 2026 behoort daarmee tot nu toe tot de 5 procent droogste jaren sinds het begin van de metingen.

Gepost door op Geen opmerkingen:

donderdag 16 juli 2026

Understanding Trump’s Nationalist Conservative White Christian Agenda at march 2025

 

Op-Ed

Understanding Trump’s Nationalist Conservative White Christian Agenda

A worldwide effort to develop a pole of opposition must take shape as quickly as possible

Diferentes pesquisas apontam queda da popularidade de Trump, três meses após assummir o poder | Crédito: Donald Trump. Mandel Ngan/AFP

The Trump-orchestrated blitzkrieg exposition of a Nationalist Conservative White Christian Agenda (NCWCA) has recently shocked Europe. Outside the US, natural questions emerge: What are the internal contradictions within the US ruling class that have given rise to recent developments? What are the underlying changes within the base and superstructure of the United States? What are the long-term ideological and political consequences on US Foreign Policy? How should the Global South respond?

The following is a short note to help start addressing these questions. We begin by analyzing the forces surrounding the US Presidency and the US national security apparatus. Then, we examine some possible impacts on foreign policy.

The Trump camp is conducting an exceptionally well-planned attack on significant parts of the US state apparatus (including the now explicitly fully sullied and exposed USAID) and is displaying its contempt for the European elite.
Trump now has an army of MAGA think tanks behind him. The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) and the Center for Renewing America (CRA) dominated the pre-inauguration planning and “Trump 47”, Trump’s agenda for his second presidency. Vought, Rollins, and Trump policy chief Stephen Miller all joined the Trump 2 administration. CRA and AFPI advocate far more aggressive uses of executive power to purge the bureaucracy. The new agenda is considerably to the right of the older Heritage Foundation, whose role was deprecated. Trump even distanced himself from Project 25, a dangerous plan to obliterate opponents of US foreign policy. The essence of both MAGA and Trump is nationalist with conservative white Christian characteristics.

The Trump camp (the official administration and his coterie of influencers and informal advisors) encompasses several factions, sometimes overlapping, each with its own policies and contradictions. As indicated by Vance’s speech in Munich, this is a very ideological group, with Trump as the least ideological. Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff, is an effective, long-term, right-wing, trusted Republican operator who helps ensure that Trump 2 is far more organized than Trump 1. Of the forty core members of the Trump camp we analyzed, nine have publicly expressed support for Christian Zionism. Six have affiliations or general alignment with Christian Zionist causes. All are subservient to Trump’s will at this point.

Although Trump now has control of the steering wheel, MAGA is a broader “movement” and a cacophony of voices, including anti-woke, anti-cultural elites, pro-soldier, anti-intellectual, nationalist, and anti-immigration. Some of its rhetoric is, at times, anti-US interventionist and anti-“deep state”.

The Christian Evangelical leadership members of Trump’s camp, including Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, and Charlie Kirk, are distinct but embedded in other factions rather than an entirely standalone group. Some Evangelical movement leaders, including Pence, have been excluded from Trump 2.

Trump 2’s ideological focus has shifted to the destruction of the Federal Bureaucracy or the “administrative state”. It continues to attack the intelligence and defense establishments, labelled the “deep state” in Trump 1. However, this time, it is justified ideologically using “economic waste” terms.

The core US permanent national security state cannot yet control the daily direction of the Trump administration. The ideological discordance within the Trump camp reminds one of Marx’s famous comments that the capitalist state is a band of warring brothers. Yet, with Trump at the helm, the Trump camp has managed to run a disciplined offensive and outflanked its opponents in the US ruling class, at least for now.

There is always a risk when classifying a list of individual members of a government that you miss the Weltanschauung (World View). Three sections of capital are the main forces behind the far-right movement. Silicon Valley is now charging forward to become the leader of the military-industrial complex. Amazon, Palantir, Microsoft, Google, Anduril, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic PBC are US military suppliers. Most view China as their major impediment and threat. Private equity now focuses on tech unicorns, more accurately described as tech monopolies and duopolies. They sit at the nexus of military, tech, and finance. The oil and gas section of capital needs to destroy the threat of renewables and maintain its monopoly position. Other sections of capital have, in the main, gone silent. There are 13 billionaires and some centimillionaires in the administration, many from the group of three above.

As in all fascist movements, the principal internal contradiction within the neofascists in the US is between the capitalists and the mainly lower middle-class base on the ground, which is the MAGA movement. The following outlines the factions of the Trump Camp, including some of their key figures.

There are eight sections of the Trump Camp as of mid-February 2025. They are as follows: Tech White Racialist Libertarians; US Nationalists and Paleoconservatives; MAGA & Trump Loyalists; Global Far-Right Coalition Builders; Right-wing Realists; Reaganite Pro-Business, Anti-Regulation Apostles; The fiercely anti-China and anti-Communist Brigade; Political Mavericks used to expand the Trump base and weaken the Democrats.

Tech White Racialist Libertarians: This group is attempting to seize control of core parts of the state to enhance their drive to control key technologies like AI and Crypto. Key figures are listed below. The first three are part of the Pay-Pal mafia and have apartheid-period South African/Namibian childhood experiences and connections. Key figures are:

• Peter Thiel (Technology and National Security Advisor, Chairman of Palantir): The most geo-politically strategic tech billionaire. He is now the leader of the tech-based section of the military-industrial complex. He supports surveillance-driven governance and “post-democratic” rule. He has said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” His racialist views were formed during his childhood when his father was a businessman in Apartheid Namibia.

• Elon Musk (de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE)]: His orientation is oligarchic, nationalist, Zionist, libertarian, and transhumanist. For him, the latter means an AI future where humans and AI merge. Growing up in an ultra-right family in Apartheid South Africa led him to white racialist views and Nazi sympathies. He is the grandson of actual Nazis. His Nazi salute was apologetically dismissed as exuberance.

• David Sacks (AI and Cryptocurrency Czar).

• Marc Andreessen (Self-described “unpaid intern of DOGE”): Supports techno-authoritarianism or corporate-technocratic rule. In 2016, he said, “Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?”.

US Nationalists and Paleoconservatives: Advocates for national sovereignty, economic protectionism, and a “restrained” foreign policy. Notable figures are:

• J.D. Vance (Vice President): A protégé of Peter Thiel.

• Stephen Miller (Senior Advisor).

• Tucker Carlson (Media Influencer): The leader of the anti-imperialist right, the most consistent voice against foreign interventions and sympathetic to Putin.

• Michael Anton (Deputy Secretary of State for Policy Analysis): Perhaps the smartest of the far-right intellectuals. He argues for Caesarism in the United States. He is close to Vance.

• Michael Waltz (National Security Advisor).

• Rand Paul (Advisor on Foreign Policy): A marginal figure.

MAGA & Trump Loyalists: Characterized by unwavering support for President Trump’s agenda, this faction emphasizes loyalty and alignment with his vision. Prominent members include:

• Pete Hegseth (Secretary of Defense): An extreme Christian Zionist obsessed with removing DEI from the military.

• Pam Bondi (Attorney General).

• Charlie Kirk (Founder and President of Turning Point USA (TPUSA)): TPUSA is a prominent conservative organization dedicated to engaging young people in promoting free markets and limited government.

• Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Secretary of Labor).

• Sean Duffy (Secretary of Transportation).
• Doug Collins (Secretary of Veterans Affairs).

• Kristi Noem (Secretary of Homeland Security).

• Elise Stefanik (US Ambassador to the UN).

Global Far-Right Coalition Builders: This faction seeks to develop, support, and align far-right movements globally, fostering a permanent transnational ultra-nationalist network.• Steve Bannon (Chief Strategist, unofficial Trump-world operator): The main ideological connector between Trumpism and global far-right leaders like Bolsonaro (Brazil), Milei (Argentina), Le Pen (France), and Orbán (Hungary). Brands himself as a “cultural right” advocate for the working class but is inconsistent on economic populism, sometimes calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Anti-China, but that is not his main game, which is to build a lasting global far-right movement.

• Nigel Farage (Advisor on European Affairs, leader of Reform UK): He is a key figure in transatlantic right-wing coordination, particularly in the UK and EU; however, his influence within Trump’s camp is uncertain.

Right-wing Realists: This group rejects the views of people like Bolton, whom Trump views as a hawkish nut. They are known as “restrainers” and reject over-expansionism. They believe in sanguine realism expressed in the idea that Iran should be contained, not invaded and that even a nuclear Iran is not really a threat to Israel or the US as Iran could only have a defensive ability. Members include:

• Elbridge Colby (Under Secretary of Defense for Policy): Advocates reducing U.S. military presence in the Middle East and Europe to prioritize the Indo-Pacific Theater and contain China. Son of William Colby, a former CIA director under Nixon and Ford.

• John Ratcliffe (Director CIA): Skeptical of intelligence agencies.

• Michael DiMino (Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East): He believes the Middle East is not critically important to the US. He has suggested that any effort to eradicate Hamas from Gaza is a fool’s errand.

• Steve Witkoff (Real estate billionaire close to Trump): Emissary for Gaza and Ukraine talks.

Reaganite Pro-Business, Anti-Regulation Apostles: Key figures include:

• Scott Bessent (Treasury Secretary).

• Russell Vought (Director of the Office of Management and Budget): He sounds like a traditional John Bircher (ultra far-right from the 1960s). He believes the Democrats are communists.

• Chris Wright (Secretary of Energy): CEO, Liberty Oilfield Services.

• Doug Burgum (Secretary of the Interior).

• Brooke Rollins (Secretary of Agriculture).

• Howard Lutnick (Secretary of Commerce).

• Lee Zeldin (Administrator of the EPA).

The fiercely anti-China and anti-Communist Brigade: This group exhibits conspiratorial, cult-like behaviors and is known for its extreme ideological zeal, viewing all international issues through an anti-communist lens. It sees China not just as a geopolitical rival but as an existential ideological enemy, believing it orchestrates nearly all major threats to U.S. power. They also maintain a Cold War-style hostility toward Venezuela, Cuba, and other leftist regimes but prioritize China as the central battleground.• Peter Thiel (See Group 1): He is deeply anti-communist. He has argued that U.S. tech firms cooperating with China are committing treason and have promoted extreme decoupling strategies.

• Marco Rubio (Secretary of State): Unable to assert his line, which is staunchly anti-Venezuela, Cuba, and China. Now playing a toady role within the administration. Meekly tried to protect USAID but failed.

• Landon Heid (Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration): Oversees export controls to restrict China’s access to U.S. technology.

• Peter Navarro (Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing): His book Death by China helped shape Trump 1’s anti-China stance.

• Jamieson Greer (US Trade Representative).

Political Mavericks used to expand the Trump base and weaken the Democrats:• Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence).

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Secretary of Health and Human Services).

Dangerous developments in the National Security Council and the Pentagon

The National Security Council (NSC) of the United States is the president’s council for U.S. grand strategy (geopolitical, military, and nuclear). There is no direct parallel analogy between the state functions of the United States and socialist projects. You could imprecisely call it the political bureau for national state security. The statutory members, as defined by current law, are:

• Donald Trump, President
• J.D. Vance, Vice President
• Marco Rubio, Secretary of State
• Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense
• Chris Wright, Secretary of Energy
• Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary
• Gerald Parker, Director of the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy
Others appointed under Trump include:
• Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor
• Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security
• Pam Bondi, Attorney General
• Elise Stefanik, US Ambassador to the UN
• Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff
• Doug Burgum, Secretary of Interior (close to oil billionaire Harold Hamm)

The NSC has always been a dangerous group for the rest of the world. They spearhead wars, coups, color revolutions, assassinations, sanctions and intelligence operations against other countries, progressive forces, and individuals. This group has been the center of crimes against humanity since 1947.

Of all the capitalists, Peter Thiel has the strongest grip on the NSC. Peter Thiel is one of the most dangerous people on the planet. He is a devoted white supremacist and fascist. He is perhaps the brightest anti-communist in the US. Thiel has close ties with Trump. He is directly attached either financially and or politically to the following six NSC members.

• J.D. Vance: Theil poured millions of dollars into a super PAC supporting Vance’s 2022 campaign. Thiel embraced Vance as a protégé about a decade ago.

• Pete Hegseth: His inner circle features Palantir and Anduril executives, which demonstrates his integration into Thiel’s military-tech network. An ex-adviser from Thiel’s hedge fund is also among Hegseth’s known associates​.

• Chris Wright: He is linked to Thiel through the energy startup Oklo. Wright sits on Oklo’s board, and Peter Thiel’s venture firm is a major investor in that company​.

• Susie Wiles: Wiles was on the payroll of “Saving Arizona PAC,” a Thiel-funded group for Blake Masters​ in Arizona. She has worked closely with Thiel and spoke at an event held by Rockbridge Network, a coalition of right-wing political groups backed by Thiel​.

• Pam Bondi: Thiel worked alongside her on the executive committee of Trump’s 2016 presidential transition team.

• Michael Waltz: Thiel made direct donations to his 2022 Florida campaign.

The National Conservativism Conference (NatCon), a Theil-funded project, frequently features Marco Rubio and Thiel as keynote speakers. In Trump 1, Thiel acolytes were strategically placed in key positions in national security. Kevin Harrington was named Deputy Assistant to the President for strategic planning. Significantly, there are no right-wing realists on the NSC. Neither is Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence.

Thiel’s political influence in military and intelligence circles is far beyond the US. He has attended all but two (2017-2018) of the infamous trans-Atlanticist Bilderberg annual meetings since 2007 (no meetings were held in 2020-2021). By 2016, he was a member of its powerful steering committee. No other Americans except Henry Kissinger and perhaps Marie-Josée Kravis attended more meetings in this period. Eric Schmidt from Google is the other tech regular at Bilderberg. In earlier years, David Rockefeller, George Ball (Former Undersecretary of State, U.S. Treasury Official) and Paul Volcker (Former Federal Reserve Chairman) were dominant figures.

The Bilderberg Conference is subject to conspiracy theories due to who attends it and its closely protected Chatham House secrecy in effect since its inception in 1954. Regardless of the surrounding conspiracy theories, it is attended by the highest-ranking members of capital, presidents, prime ministers, leading generals, military and intelligence directors, ministers, and rotating but highly selected and vetted Western-loyalist members of Academia, Think Tanks, and Journalism.

About 125 people attend each meeting. Its attendees are even more rarefied than those who attend the World Economic Forum in Davos. In 2024, 32 out of 131 total attendees were from the US. Eleven of these were from big business. The seven from tech were:
• Thiel Capital LLC (Two people – Peter Theil and his CEO Alex Carp)
• Google
• Microsoft Research
• Palantir Technologies Inc.
• Anduril Industries.
• Anthropic PBC


All seven are US military contractors. Also present were seven members of the US government:
• Senior Director for Strategic Planning, National Security Council
• Senior Director for Technology and National Security, National Security Council
• Deputy National Security Advisor
• Office of the Director of National Intelligence
• Director Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
• Former Deputy Secretary of State
• Deputy Secretary Department of the Treasury

David H. Petraeus, former CIA director and four-star General, attended as a representative of KKR. He is a frequent attendee. Boeing and Lockheed were not invited. Peter Thiel has spent seventeen years carefully placing himself at the center of the US military-intelligence-corporate network. Eric Schmidt has had more formal roles in US military intelligence, including chairing the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), but has not inserted himself as deeply into the political sphere. Thiel is the most dangerous non-state figure in the world today.

Another dangerous sign is that Trump did something unusual this week and fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and replaced him with right-wing Lt. General Dan Caine, whom he met in Iraq and then again at CPAC (a right-wing political conference) in 2019. This was designed, of course, to remove any military restraints on the White House, which now has its own man. He is considered an unusual pick as he has not held lower positions before being selected for this position. At CPAC, Trump recalled the general saying, “I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated he will fire the judge advocates general’s service, or JAGs. They are military lawyers who administer the military code of justice for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. It is, ipso facto, an ominous sign.

Selected aspects of the Trump impact on US foreign policy: The “Iron Dome for America” Executive Order

Trump signed an executive order titled “The Iron Dome for America” on January 27, 2025. This initiative aims to create a comprehensive shield capable of defending the United States against a range of missile threats, including ballistic, hypersonic, and advanced cruise missiles. It includes the following: 1. Deployment of Advanced Sensors and Interceptors on both land and in space 2. Development of Non-Kinetic Defense Capabilities (Lasers, EMPs, etc.) and 3. Enhancement of Supply Chain Security for all components.

Whilst clothed in the words of “defense”, this act is a sinister expansion of the US military doctrine of counterforce, which was reiterated in the 2024 Department of Defense report on the Nuclear Employment Strategy of the United States. The essence of counterforce is enabling the ability to launch a first-strike nuclear attack on an opponent’s military and nuclear capabilities. US military planning includes the first use of nuclear weapons with the aim of “winning” a nuclear war by destroying Russia and China’s ability to counterstrike the US first strike. US military strategy is amoral and poses an extreme threat to humanity.

Two factors are behind Trump’s expansionist plans to make Canada the 51st state, purchase Greenland, and claim Panama. The first is to expand the protection zone of the Iron Dome. The second is to seize control of critical minerals. The latter desire extends US interests to Ukraine. It appears, however, that Trump’s obsession with “Real Estate” is misguided in this case. The US continues to intervene in Guyana to advance US oil interests and with the added side benefit of undermining Venezuela.

Reduction of Military Budget and Re-industrialization Plans

Trump is already moving to reduce the US military budget in addition to other departments. He claimed these funds could be better used to reinvest in re-industrialization. Recent attempts to build large chip fabrication factories show that not only investment in fixed capital is needed. Rebuilding the educational system to prepare a modern, advanced workforce takes decades. It also requires massive infrastructure. It requires “patient” capital, the opposite of the current speculative financialized markets. There is no evidence that the US can learn from China how to manage a thirty-year development process.

Withering Europe

JD Vance’s attack on German and European “liberalism”, including immigration issues, has caused waves in London, Berlin, and Paris. Of course, the bigger picture is their anger at the exclusion of Europe and Ukraine from US attempts to settle the Ukraine dispute without them. Kishore Mahbubani, the distinguished Singapore public official, just proposed that Europe take three “unthinkable” paths. 1. Leave NATO. They don’t need the US if they must pay 5% of their GDP on the military.

Remaining in NATO shows they are weak: “…licking the boots that are kicking them in the face.” 2. Work out a grand new strategy with Russia where each side recognizes each other’s interests. 3. Strike a deal with China. The only reason relations between Europe and China have declined is that they blindly follow US geopolitical interests. In theory, Europe should abandon its current path and protect its own interests.

On February 20, the German newspaper BILD reported rumors that Trump would agree to remove all US troops from countries of the former Soviet Union. It is unknown if this is Western European intelligence psyops misinformation or real. Russia and the US did discuss possible joint energy projects in the Arctic.

So, the question is, will the current crop of neo-liberal cowardly sycophants continue to rule Europe and thus make Europe both irrelevant this century as well as the laughingstock of the world? The extreme far-right is growing in France (Rassemblement National, RN), the UK (Reform UK), Germany (AfD) and to a lesser degree in Italy (Fratelli d’Italia and Lega) and the Netherlands (PV). If the far-right came to power, it is conceivable that they could also dismantle some of the North Atlantic post-WW2 institutions and seek rapprochement with Russia. However, creating peace with China would immediately put them in conflict with their MAGA brethren.

Another possible, but currently improbable, outcome is that the dismantling of the North Atlantic alliance could, over time, lead to far-right-led French and German interests diverging.

There are 100 US bases scattered across Europe. Italy and Germany could be considered military colonies of the US. Meloni, the right-wing leader of Italy, slavishly panders to the US, genuflecting before Biden at the G20. However, members of her right-wing coalition have been much friendlier towards normalized relations with Russia.

Europe now feels humiliated by the U.S.; however, the likelihood of Europe asserting its political independence remains low. Europe’s core elite has been domesticated by the US, with generations of leaders groomed on American elite university campuses and their wealth invested in the US stock market. It feels impossible to see them have the desire to join the rest of the world in a joint campaign to block the rise of the reactionary right US first strategy of Trump.

They remain firmly committed to an anti-Russia position. France’s military interventions and control of the national currencies of French West Africa show they remain unrepentant imperialists.

US and Russia

Under Trump, the US hopes to pull Russia back into its orbit and thus starve China of Russia as an ally. This is based on the belief that China is an existential threat to the US, and strategy dictates not fighting both simultaneously.

The United States broke with Europe and voted against its resolution condemning Russia at the UN on February 24. Seventeen countries voted against the European proposal, and 65 countries, including China, abstained. Henry Kissinger, on February 14, 1972, in a discussion with Nixon, predicted this strategic realignment in U.S. foreign policy. “And I think in 20 years, your successor if he’s as wise as you, will wind up leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese. For the next 15 years, we must lean towards the Chinese against the Russians.” His only mistake was in the number of years it would take.

From the US historical standpoint, the US felt forced to open relations with China in 1971 because they knew they had lost the war in Vietnam and were afraid of a possible rapprochement between Russia, China, and Vietnam. It was the realist Kissinger, under a Republican administration, who was willing to ignore the anti-communist forces inside the US to visit Beijing.

It was better to accept a “temporary defeat” and focus on the strategy of weakening the Soviet Union. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 validated, in their minds, the decision to normalize relations with China. Some of the right-wing realist theorists in the US are looking fifteen years into the future as to how they could defeat China. However, the right-wing realists face a very different historical period than 1970-1990. China is now an ascending economic power, whereas the US is declining.

There are indeed reactionary white conservative Christian forces in Russia that could welcome an alliance with similarly minded US NCWCA forces; however, they are unlikely in the short term to have enough influence to offset the senior Russian political and military forces who are aware of Trump’s deceptive and erratic tactics.

At this point, it seems highly unlikely that Putin would risk betting on the West. It is true that 20 years ago, he desperately wanted to be part of the Western imperialist camp core. But he has been betrayed too many times. And now, the mood of the Russian masses is at once patriotic and anti-American. Putin understands that Trump will be replaced in four years and is unlikely to make the strategic mistake of betting all-in on being a safe member of the G8.

In the last two years, the 5th column pro-European Russians (about 10% of the population) have had to duck for cover. They remain a future risk to Russia’s sovereignty but now have no teeth. We should not ignore that Putin is relying on far-right Christian forces, some of them near fascist in ideology, which complicates the situation. A new union of white conservative Christians spanning from the US to Russia seems improbable. Russia’s future cannot be with a declining Europe (who hate them) and the US, who have historically looked down on Slavic peoples.

Trump’s offer to have the US, Russia, and China all reduce their military budgets by half is a cynical move by Trump to maintain US military advantages. The US alone represents over 50% of world military spending and controls another 25% through vassal states like Germany and Japan.If you consider historical spending and per capita factors, the deviousness of the Trump offer becomes clear. The world cannot afford to allow the US to take the mantle of peace with this offer.

Middle East Tensions and the Trump Gaza Plan

The Trump Gaza “Riviera” plan would create a huge wave of resistance in the region. Despite the ceasefire, the debauchery of the Israeli apartheid occupation forces continues. More than 160 Gazan medics are held in Israeli prisons amid reports of torture.

We have already seen that Saudi Arabia had to publicly temporarily retreat from their desire to join forces with Israel and the US. The Saudi goal is to play the US, Israel, and India against China to establish themselves as the chief economic hegemon in the region. They envision a renaissance period for the Middle East. The Trump Gaza plan throws a wrench in their plans. Currently, there are discussions by the Saudis to put forth their own rebuilding plan that does not eliminate all Palestinians. Whether they will welcome this plan is unknown.

Global South and NCWCA

The Trump Camp is extremely ideological, although it is not united and coherent. Vance’s trip shows that they will force their views onto the center stage of US foreign policy. This will shake up the internal cohesion of the imperialist camp. Trump could still easily fall out with key members of his team. The national security state will have to work overtime to prevent excess long-term damage to US relations with allies and the erosion of the 80-year rule of terror by NATO. In the short to intermediate term, the Nationalist Conservative White Christian Agenda (NCWCA), which includes the renunciation of “diversity/pluralism”, will be promulgated, focused on countries with a growing right-wing.

The rise of far-right fundamentalism in the US will unleash reactionary forces in the Global South. Upper-class forces in some key Global South countries do not have the interests of their people in their plans and will be used by the US to attack all socialist projects.

There will not be a consistent rejection of NCWCA in every country. Inside the US, the MAGA movement’s internal focus is nationalist and conservative. In Black and Muslim countries, however, its White Christian nature is a critical part of its presentation. Today, there is a growing right-wing set of leaders in the Global South, especially in Latin America, who will welcome it. In those countries that oppose NCWCA, the situation can quickly become complex. In South Africa, for example, a section of white monopoly capital led by the DA came to the defense of the now deeply weakened ANC to oppose Elon Musk’s racially motivated false attack on the government. The vast majority of the country united to defend themselves from the attack, but not to reject US overall ideological hegemony. A section of the elite (black and white) has tied themselves to the US Democratic party. Unfortunately, without a proper class and historical view, the rejection of NCWCA will not result in an increased awareness that the real issue is imperialist hegemony itself.

So, NCWCA will not necessarily hurt the US as much as it might seem. In places like Western Africa, we could see the continued gain in confidence of the people to assert their independence.

Modi ideologically shares some far-right parts of the ideology. He will be happy to see the US reduce their complaints about civil rights violations in India. Modi will attempt to use the religious fervor and right fundamentalism of the US to strengthen his long-term project. He is, however, facing a backlash from his voting base as he has failed to deliver tangible benefits to them. So, it is unclear now how much deeper he can advance his campaign of, at times, draconian violence against the Muslims and “lower” castes in India. Furthermore, he cannot escape two major facts. He still needs cheap Russian energy and cannot allow the deterioration of trade with China.

The Future of US Soft Power and ‘Human Rights’ Narratives

The leaders of many non-white, non-Christian countries are likely to ignore the provocations and assume US core interests will prevail in the long term. Some will reduce their love affair with American liberalism with its duplicitous use of “diversity and equality”. It is unknown whether this will diminish the U.S.’s role as a beacon of leadership on these issues, potentially weakening its soft power.

If progressive movements in the Global South can become more organized and effective, the appeal of the West’s deceptive portrayal of human rights should diminish. However, a closer examination of the global response to the televised genocide in Gaza reveals a troubling reality: while the initial shock was profound, the atrocity has since been normalized. 

Potential Shifts in Separatist Movements

Progressives globally must always be careful to distinguish between the genuine rights of self and national determination versus Western-influenced projects that undermine the unity of the working class. It is too hard to tell if the rise of NCWCA will have a long-term spillover effect against the concepts of “plurality” and “separatism”. The extreme consensus of proselytizing Western false Human Rights narratives will likely decline soon. Going forward, the US will rely even more on the naked fist, and the velvet glove will be seen less frequently.

A question that arises is whether the pro-western “separatist” camps, which have relied on the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International narratives, will lose influence. Examples include South Sudan, portions of the Kurds, and Uighurs. In the short term, we have already seen some in the Trump camp distance themselves from separatists. Darren Beattie, now acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, has suggested that China’s actions were not genocidal but rather objections to “Uyghur supremacy.” On February 20, the US Department of Treasury imposed sanctions on a Rwandan government minister for his role in supporting the M-23 rebels in the DRC. This is the first time Rwanda has faced sanctions since 2012.

US Border Countries

Western Canada also has a reactionary white nativist movement, albeit much weaker than the US. Canada is too dependent on US trade not to become compliant. They will likely drift to the right but will wait to see what happens post-Trump. Western-style liberal “diversity” views will likely decline but not disappear.

Trump persistently trolls Justin Trudeau, referring to him as a Governor, not a Prime Minister of a sovereign country, most recently saying, “The meeting was convened by Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada, the current chair of G7.” Trudeau’s humiliation has received hidden smirks globally.

Mexico’s crime has been being a border country with the fastest-growing and then dominant imperialist power for the last two hundred years. It also cannot economically survive without the US. However, led by Amlo and now Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (the President of Mexico), there has been a significant advancement in Mexico’s ability to have at least partial elements of a sovereign foreign policy. How far the divide widens is yet to be seen.

Some Domestic Considerations

Domestically, not only has Trump conducted a campaign to wipe out Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the government and military, but many major corporations, from Google and Walmart to Accenture, have gleefully followed suit.
The racial dimension inside the US is, however, complex. There is a small section of lower middle-class blacks and Latinos who identify with some of the conservative, Christian, and nationalist planks of MAGA.

Progress has been made to roll back the 90-year trajectory of civil rights in the US that began in 1935 with the National Labor Relations Act and included milestones such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Education Amendments of 1972. So far, this rollback is not designed to explicitly reinstate the infamous Jim Crow laws of the US to enforce segregation.

Internally, the US is likely to continue its march to isolate and intimidate the Chinese within its borders. It is hard to tell, but it seems unlikely that the US will be able to convince the Europeans to become as internally racist against the domestic Chinese population as the US. The anti-immigrant ideology in Europe is anti-black and anti-Muslim.

The lie that US Democracy is worthy of emulation, has a constitution with checks and balances, and that the Western electoral systems prevent “autocracy” is fully exposed. After all, America was never a democracy for large swaths of its own working class and certainly not for the popular classes of the Global South. The historic concentration of economic and political power by capital is consolidating further due to the rise of computing technology-related industries and billionaires. This industry began with a single transistor in 1947 and now extends to Cloud Computing, Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Crypto, drones, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite swarms, “Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence” (C4I) military operations, quantum computing, and biotechnology.

The monopolies and duopolies created by this revolution affect Business-to-Business (approximately department one), Business-to-Consumer (approximately department two), media and ideas (“hegemony”), and the military and intelligence (the state). This is the first time in history that technology has played such a pervasive role in both the base and superstructure of society simultaneously.

The tech libertarians now have their hands directly on key levers of the military and intelligence functions of the US state.
Since December 1991, with the defeat of the Soviet Union, there has been a continual disintegration in the capacity of the Western establishment public intellectuals, both liberal and conservative. They have become increasingly dangerously delusional and ahistoric.

The Trump camp is not following the practice of “generals fighting the last war”. They have adopted a new strategy for new conditions. Left and progressive countries cannot continue to fight the old battles against the duplicitous liberal wing of imperialism typified by the Democratic Party of the US and weaponized tools of “human rights”. A new terrain is upon us.
The world faces an increasingly perilous political and military environment.

A worldwide effort to develop a pole of opposition must take shape as quickly as possible. This will not emerge from within the imperialist camp. Even though, objectively, the Global South should be immediate fertile ground for the growth of this new pole, some sections of the Global South Elite are not committed to genuine patriotic national projects and have tied their economic fortunes to the West.

We will need a difficult, creative strategy to engage all those willing to recognize the extreme dangers of US imperialism in decline. The socialist countries have already begun to shoulder the responsibility of building a common moral high ground against the decadence of the West.

*This is an op-ed article and does not necessarily represent the editorial guidelines of BdF.

**Deborah Veneziale is a journalist and editor. She works as a researcher at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. She currently lives in Venice, Italy

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Edited by: Lucas Estanislau
https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2025/03/07/understanding-trumps-nationalist-conservative-white-christian-agenda/
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