“STALINISM ARRIVING”

Why did the seed of totalitarianism germinate in America?

 

By Charles H. Slim

The result of the presidential elections in the US, will give as the winner a former vice president like Joe Biden or ratify the mandate of the "Outsider" Donald Trump but either of them is the next occupant of the White House, it will not change the agenda of the Establishment that Enter the real power in the state of the Union.

In view of the last thirty years to the present and taking into account the acts of the Trump government, to speak of "Stalinism" in the political reality of the United States, seems a provocation that offends the most conspicuous para-Americans who continue to speak of the “Lands of freedom and democracy”, but the facts are overwhelming in revealing the opposite.

Why Stalinism? The term stems from the stark personalism that characterized the Soviet Premier Iósif Vissariónovich Dzhugashvili, better known in history as Joseph Stalin, who, in the shadow of the Bolshevik Revolution, built one of the most repressive states of the 20th century. His cunning and cruelty led him to erect a gigantic repressive apparatus so extensive and ruthless that the limits between the state and the people could not be elucidated. That characterized “Stalinism”.

But this qualifier is not only attributable to the reality of Russia in the early twentieth century or even to periods after the death of Stalin. It is a way of proceeding within the framework of a personality of a particular ruler characterized by his lack of scruples and ruthless exercise of power. This certainly applies to the inescapable (if quirky) personalism of Donald Trump. There is a long contemporary history of American politics that reveals the breakdown of its presumably democratic system that has become one that monitors, catalogs, and files its citizens into hateful classifications in the name of an entelechy called "National Security."

Some claim that President Trump has been the most transparent of all the presidents who have preceded him, but I think there is an error of approach on this conclusion. Although, as we know, the blond president does not mince words to express points of view (massing it on Twitter), without prejudice to plant a journalist in the middle of a live interview and even to assert his most irreverent whims even at the cost From expert advice, it is true that it does not give and much less recognize the same freedom to its citizens. But that does not make him the insane that many believe.

Without a doubt, he can throw a stone and hide his hand very well, and the proof of this is the diffusion of an experimental virus that, long before it was reported in Wuhan, had escaped from the laboratories of Fort Detrick. A low blow against China that went wrong? If it had something to do with it, we are dealing with a little less than insane subject.

Freedom in “America” ​​has long been chained to a policy of secrecy and surveillance in which everyone -except the ruling class- is suspect (especially immigrants) and much more those who criticize or do not agree with the government's actions. That encyclical of the cowboy Bush that says “Either you are with us or with the terrorists”, opened this era of persecutory collective psychosis that undoubtedly extinguished the flame of freedom and transparency.

This is precisely where the discussion about where the US is heading with a renewed Trump mandate comes in. The Bush-Cheney era imposed the era of fear and obscurantism over which it established an omnipresent and suffocating state on personal and civil liberties, psychologically conditioning many to hide their ideological and religious preferences. Being a Muslim could be the excuse to visit Guantánamo or be transferred to any of the CIA “black sites” that it maintains around the world.

It was the beginning of policies such as the legalization of kidnapping and torture under the argument of “lesser evils” in the face of imperative threats such as terrorism. A monstrosity endorsed by almost the majority of the local political class and the western hemisphere.

When Obama came to the White House, many Americans hoped for greater transparency in government actions and the end of the policies that violated civil and inhuman rights that had been promoted with so much blatant since 2001. As could be seen, it was a great disappointment since in what it did to international security, his administration was the one that propelled the revolts in the Arab world and authorized, within the plan to sectarianly sectionalize the Middle East, the implementation of the “Islamic State” program.

Certainly, and despite the fact that at that time the inconsistencies and contradictions that were observed around that “Caliphate” and its imposed combat were denounced, it was Donald Trump who publicly denounced such a taboo. Even Obama did more to cover up the human rights violations carried out by the military and the CIA during the Bush administration, than to investigate the length of the chain of complicity and responsibility in all that.

And if that was not enough, I had the support in foreign affairs of a true “black monk” Hillary Clinton, who as Secretary of State unleashed her talents of cynicism and lack of scruples to accommodate North American interests in North Africa and of course, in the Middle East. Their role in the plot to try to overthrow the Syrian government was central and at the same time, thousands of lives were lost due to these efforts (weapons, training and financial support for the “rebels”). His entire role in those days is still in a blur and in addition to the thousands of Libyans killed, disappeared and tortured by the armed gangs that cooperated with the CIA, it was never clear what happened to the ambassador in Benghazi who died in suspects circumstances.

It is true, Trump exposed him to public opinion and denounced the corruption of the political class that according to him had plunged the United States into endless foreign wars, not caring about the casualties among his troops and much less the massacres of civilians in the United States, intervened countries, but the expense that the Federal Reserve coffers had involved in sustaining those campaigns that were only a business for certain transnationals. In view of this, the Establishment hated him and began looking for ways to sabotage and get rid of his management. But something happened along the way. What the hell happened?

Simply, many fell for the deception. Trump, despite being an outsider with no background in party politics, a scandalous upstart who only became known for a pathetic TV show, proved that he has as many faces as a “Rubik's” cube. As we saw his criticisms of the costly wars waged abroad and his preaching of “America first” was not a demonstration of the long-awaited transparency. Nor does the guarantee of a restraint in caustic policies against the civil rights of its own citizens and foreigners. Denials of access to certain public information that are unprecedented reinforce this.

In foreign policy, without a doubt, he has crossed all the lines even though nobody wants to admit it. He ordered without hesitation to attack Syria in 2017 and 2018; while announcing the end of cooperation with Turkey on the “ISIS” issue, it allowed special forces to persist in the north and at the “Al Tanf” base in south-eastern Syria; without a doubt he let go and the CIA looked the other way in the disgusting crime carried out by his colleagues from the Saudi Muthabarat against the opposition journalist Jamal Kashoggi; the order to carry out the assassination of Iranian General Qassen Soleimani and his bombastic pro-Israeli policy to support his usurpations of Palestinian territories and of the city of Jerusalem itself make it clear that he did not improve on his predecessors.

Domestically, its policies of economic reactivation for the benefit of US citizens by implementing restrictive and abusive policies against immigration to extreme degrees, labeling them terrorists (separating children from their parents), brought to light an underground force that supports these policies despite being so disgraceful to the decrepit image of the United States.

The situation created by the Coronavirus has been another reason to question the transparency of the Trump administration. A closed campaign of secrecy and misinformation about what is happening in the United States regarding the effect of the pandemic forms the framework for the suppression of the truth about how the issue was handled. The media has been as oppressive and stealthy as its predecessors, including the silencing of the Special Inspector General against the Pandemic, the deployment of undercover agents and the mounting of counterintelligence operations against civilian protesters and, of course, the refusal of a complete declassification of the Mueller report.

If Trump is re-elected or Joe Biden triumphs, there will be no apparent differences in the procedure, but without a doubt these secret delaying and suppressive measures will be aggravated, leaving aside (on behalf of National Security) the resolution on the requests for transparency in the acts of the public administration. America to come is very different from the one its founding fathers built.