Security state seeks to use Tulsi Gabbard for advancing the crackdown against Palestine supporters

In this last week, where Trump has filled his cabinet with either open neocons or Zionists who share key neocon positions, it’s become apparent which role the deep state wants for Trump’s White House. Our national security apparatus wants Trump to facilitate an unprecedented crackdown against pro-Palestine speech, wherein those who speak out against the genocide are labeled as terrorists or foreign agents; the goal is to expand the USA’s recent political raids and indictments, under the pretext of combating a woke international conspiracy. That’s the paranoid view which Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s appointee for Director of National Intelligence, has articulated without ambiguity; Gabbard has said that the Palestine campus protesters are “puppets” of a “radical Islamist organization.” This is who will soon have the jobs of ensuring that intelligence is accurate, directing coordination with foreign intelligence, and providing the president with a daily briefing.

Gabbard is not an exception among these harmful figures within Trump’s cabinet; because though Gabbard is against many war narratives, her embrace of the rationale for the Gaza genocide makes all the difference here. Even if Gabbard is a sincere person in that she believes everything she says, someone with an honest personality can still be swayed towards believing and promoting lies. And the intelligence forces which seek to target Palestine supporters could easily take advantage of Gabbard’s ideological biases.

The Mossad, which is now overseeing a collapsing state that’s desperate for retribution, has every reason to feed the United States these types of narratives; what if it tries to make pro-Palestine Americans into its next victims? What if the CIA or FBI assist the Mossad in such an effort? Gabbard’s hostile views towards Palestine supporters could lead to a failure to scrutinize intelligence, making somebody with honest intentions assist in selling a hoax to the president. 

And that’s the more charitable interpretation of what Gabbard’s role is; Gabbard has worked as a psychological operations officer for the army, so she has special training in what manipulation looks like. Will this mean Gabbard rejects the lies about Palestine supporters that the intelligence community next tries to sell? More likely she’ll participate in spreading these false claims, letting our security state purge dissent on a large scale.

These kinds of scenarios would also have come about if Trump had lost; the plan was for the repression to massively expand after this election, no matter the outcome. Because the balance of forces isn’t sufficiently in the favor of anti-imperialists, and the deep state holds dictatorial control over our government, Trump’s victory has benefited that counterinsurgency plan. Originally the security state favored Kamala; that’s evident from how essentially all the neocons endorsed her. But the Democrats lost too much support, in large part because of their advancing the genocide; so the best option became to let Trump win. This is why there’s been such an absence of post-election unrest: the next big move from our enemies is coming later. And when it comes, Gabbard and the other fanatical anti-Palestinians in Trump’s White House will be assigned to attack dissident groups. 

This is the optimal strategy for the deep state at this point, when it’s needed to give up its scheme for a left-wing imperialist White House and install an anti-woke crew instead. The anti-woke psyop that Gabbard and these other figures advance is a powerful tool, though its usefulness has limits. The unabashedly extreme nature of this new government will invigorate the pro-Palestine movement domestically, as well as help Iran’s hardliners retake control over their country. There are also real and growing divisions among the ruling class over which direction to take U.S. imperialism; the liberal technocrats want to prioritize waging war against Russia, while the MAGA wing wants to focus on this hemisphere and promptly invade Mexico. Capital’s dominant faction will likely succeed in getting Trump to continue the new cold war escalations, like it did last time he was president; and it may even get him not to pursue diplomacy in Korea. He might negotiate with the DPRK, but everything depends on the balance of forces, and right now the neocons are increasingly gaining influence over Trump.

MAGA’s leaders already align with the liberals on certain matters; most notably the effort to assail China, and the campaign of genocide against Palestine. Most of Trump’s base continues to be anti-China and pro-Zionist for the time being; but there’s an ideological conflict within this base, and the strong anti-NATO attitudes among modern U.S. conservatives could produce other consciousness shifts. 

There’s a concerted effort to create confusion among these conservatives; to depict China and communism as tools for monopoly capital, to portray Palestine as simply a “woke” issue, and to distract from foreign policy through culture war demagoguery. The prevailing sentiment among Trump’s supporters, though, is that we shouldn’t be fighting with Russia; as well as that the Ukraine war relates to our government’s efforts at de-growing our economy, and taking away our constitutional liberties. The inflation crisis has made the desire to defeat monopoly capital more intense than ever; as Trump capitulates to the establishment, disillusionment with Trump will follow.

Those among Trump’s base who are paying the closest attention have already been getting a sense that major betrayals are coming; much blacklash has come upon him for his welcoming of undeniable neocons like Brian Hook and Marco Rubio. The great danger for the establishment is that as MAGA loses its energy, Trump’s voters will be brought in by communists, antiwar Libertarians, and other genuine dissident groups. So the deep state’s best option is to present figures like Gabbard as authentic sources of hope, while having these figures wage a domestic war; a war that will be waged by propagating the most conspiratorial and incendiary kinds of anti-woke rhetoric.

There is a tactical advantage that anti-imperialists have gained from Trump’s victory. This advantage won’t come from Trump’s White House defying the deep state’s foreign policy; the geopolitical escalations will continue, and the executive branch will advance the counterinsurgency inside U.S. borders. The advantage will primarily come from how we can now expose the contradictions within MAGA; if MAGA is about freeing the country from the control of corrupt bureaucrats and monopolist interests, then Trump has betrayed MAGA and will continue to do so. Trump’s assistance to NATO will likely create splits within his coalition, leading to the different wings of imperialism intensifying their fight. Inter-elite rivalries will grow, as will anti-imperialist mass consciousness. Which will create the conditions for us to unite the pro-Palestine and pro-Russian elements, building up our existing anti-imperialist united front. Tulsi Gabbard does not need to assist our cause for us to turn Trump’s election into a win; that depends on which things we do next.

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