The "Trump is antiwar" psyop let the Gaza genocide accelerate. We can't let it kill the pro-Palestine movement too.

The errors that have been made by many alternative or "dissident" commentators in regard to Trump are now bringing about dire repercussions. Because these commentators made the “Trump is anti-establishment” narrative so prevalent, the Trump White House became free from scrutiny in the most important ways, like with its policy towards Gaza. And because of this lack of accountability, since Trump came into office the extermination of the Palestinians has been able to speed up even more.

Since the ceasefire ended, and the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” death trap was put into action, the regular death rate in Gaza has increased significantly. March was when the Zionist occupier cut off all humanitarian aid to Gaza, which made way for the GHF’s project to regularly lure and massacre starving people. On top of new escalations in the bombing campaign that have taken place since the start of this spring, these atrocities have translated to a massive rise in deaths.

The occupier does all it can to hide the exact casualty numbers and bombing rates. But just from what we do know, it’s apparent that the killing has been speeding up, and is now at least as frequent as it was during Biden’s term. The genocide’s perpetrators have been able to expand their efforts so much because within our discourse, Gaza has been successfully de-centered. And a key reason for this is that within much of “dissident” discourse, the focus has been redirected away from Gaza, in favor of an effort at rehabilitating Trump’s “anti-establishment” image.

Gaza has gotten a relatively larger role in the discourse during these last few months, but that’s only happened because of just how extreme the humanitarian crisis has gotten. As of late, Gaza has mainly come up when pro-Zionist corporate pundits (like Piers Morgan) have wanted to performatively portray themselves as being against the slaughter.

These propagandists, along with the European leaders who’ve claimed to want to hold the war criminals accountable, are only doing this to save their perceived credibility. When public opinion sufficiently changed in Palestine’s favor, they decided to hop on a trend of denouncing Netanyahu, with these denunciations coming from a fundamentally pro-occupation position. They’ve depicted Netanyahu as the core source of this evil, while defending the Zionist colonial project itself. And as soon as attention has shifted away from Gaza, they’ve stopped talking about it.

Only the ones who don’t have a vested interest in protecting the imperial system will speak on Palestine in a consistent and principled way. The problem is that many within the “alternative” sphere have shown themselves to not be too different from the legacy media figures, revealing that they too are driven by opportunism.

Because the biggest “alt” media figures set themselves up as being against the hegemonic narratives, many have trusted them to act principled; but this last year has proven just how unprincipled they are. For example, Russell Brand has changed from being pro-Palestine to pro-Zionist; which goes along with his efforts to run cover for Trump’s imperialist, deep state-aligned policies. When Brand came out as Zionist, this made it much easier for him to keep portraying Trump as anti-deep state, because now Brand doesn’t need to be held to the standards of anti-Zionism. Now he can act like Zionism is compatible with dissident politics; today his stance is that even though killing is bad, "it is possible for Israel to have a homeland that is preserved and observed in peace." Which amounts to the standard liberal Zionist position.

Tucker Carlson has sold the "Trump is antiwar" narrative in a different way, with his goal being to appeal towards the many conservative or nonpartisan people who’ve been growing increasingly appalled by the Gaza killings. Carlson has promoted the Steve Witkoff psyop, where Trump’s top diplomat Witkoff works to sell a narrative about Trump’s White House seeking “peace.” This story was easier to market several months ago, when Carlson platformed Witkoff; since then, Trump has destroyed his “antiwar” image by striking Yemen and Iran. But even though the initial narrative has been blown apart, there is now a great danger that its effects are going to do long-term damage to the pro-Palestine movement. That due to how much the effort at de-centering Palestine let “Israel” accelerate the genocide, people are going to be led towards a mindset of demoralization and apathy.

This is the mindset that’s being propagated by these same “dissident” influencers who stirred up false hope in Trump 2.0, and thereby created the conditions for things to become so bad. The only way that the growing disillusionment among the MAGA base can lead to a positive development is if this base, and the broader American masses, get shown an alternative path. If we build a movement that can seriously challenge the war machine, and establish a sustained presence of mass organization. Otherwise, what will happen is that the people become apathetic, as they’ll see no reason to stay engaged in any political project. The path of backing Trump is showing itself to be a false path, and in the absence of any clear solution, giving up seems like the only answer.

This is how many of the Americans who were sold that false hope will react. Others will respond by turning towards the answers that other controlled opposition figures have to offer; figures like Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist who’s backed Trump and then strategically shifted towards critiquing him. The Hitlerite wing of alt media is trying to do a switch-over, where the same far-right leaders who supported Trump are selling themselves as more radical versions of Trump. They’ll point to the betrayals of Trump 2.0, and argue that the root of the problem lies in the “Jewish question,” where Jews have supposedly carried out a conspiracy against the “white” race.

These are the tactics that our ruling class is employing amid the collapse of Trump’s MAGA brand: spread demoralization, and spread race ideology. Whichever of these trends somebody gravitates towards, the effect is the same: to take away the pro-Palestine movement’s momentum. Promoting anti-Jewish bigotry only assists the Zionist project; Zionists have always relied on the idea that they’re defending Jews from persecution and violence, so boosting Hitlerism online is the best way to prop up Zionism amid its present crisis. If our imperial deep state succeeds in managing the narratives, we’re going to see a large part of the MAGA base be radicalized towards the JQ, while others get simply burnt out on alt media and dissident politics.

The “Trump is anti-establishment” psyop was what created the conditions for these newer destructive developments. It came from the top-down, getting promoted by the biggest “alternative” media figures–including ones who’ve gone harder on calling out the Gaza killings, like Joe Rogan and Theo Von. The only way we’ll repair the damage from this psyop is by refusing to hop on any of these kinds of trends; by not repeating the rhetoric from opportunistic voices just because these voices have the biggest platforms. The goal of revolutionary political actors cannot be to get the biggest social media presence, and what presence we do attain cannot come from copying ruling class psyops. What we must focus on, above all else, is constructing collective organizations that can let the masses combat their imperialist dictatorship.

When you have one foot in opportunism, and another foot in dissident politics, you’ll only put yourself in a more vulnerable position when dissident politics comes under attack. We cannot effectively resist state repression while tailing one wing of the ruling class, like these Trump-aligned alt media figures have done; all that tailism does is blunt your effectiveness as a journalist or as an organizer. While speaking out against the genocide, or against repression, or against any of our government’s other schemes, the only option is to remain principled. To become unprincipled, and place faith in one wing of capital, comes with the kinds of costs that we’re now seeing in Gaza.

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