- cross-posted to:
- news@hexbear.net
- cross-posted to:
- news@hexbear.net
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Do they actually know what USAID does? Or do they just hear the word “AID” there and think it must be destroyed?
Musk simply lacking understanding of how imperialism works is plausible, but could also be a purge.
Two related news, one follow-up and another in hindsight.
USAID apparently will be merged with the State Dept, which would mean a de facto mask off. That makes it less convincing for soft power but possibly more effective by not having to hide their intentions.
The news in hindsight is that Congress bipartisanly voted a bill to enable the Executive to strip non-profits “supportive of terrorism” off of their tax-exempt status. This gives the Executive legal authority to effectively kill by tax any anti-hegemonic organisation, and I believe this a helpful tool if they wish to consolidate their propaganda arms without having to deal with the pesky “battleground of ideas”.
Edit: horrible grammar.
Musk did not say what legal authority he believed the White House has to shut down a federal agency without congressional approval, or how quickly the administration planned to act.
Political power comes first from not waffling about like a Democrat and just actually doing the thing you want to do, second from the barrel of a gun.
Lmao Elon believes the lies USAID tells everyone about itself, instead of its’ true purpose
The bourgeoisie and their administrators believing their own propaganda too hard explains a lot of recent happenings. I think that Musk actually believes he’s rich by being a genius and doesn’t need all the salaried managers to develop and exercise his wealth.
Oops. The empire hurt itself in its confusion.
lol that’s precisely the vibe I’m getting here
Oh boy this is great, is this how i become a elon musk fanboy?
First the imperialists came for other imperialists while acting like they were coming for radical opposition and I said nothing because I was very confused.
(I know they’ve been gunning for more than that, let me have my dark humor joke. 😛 )
But to be more serious, could this be part of a broader attempt to restructure imperialism in different hands / consolidate personal power? Or just “I believe my own bullshit” administrators hurting themselves in confusion?
I think we need to wait and see to get an answer to this. Musk has been managed by intelligence for a long time. It’s unlikely they would be totally blindsided by him dismantling a major tool of there’s. If they were blindsided, then their will be a corrective action taken.
One possibility is that he’s still just as ignorant but they steered him towards doing this. Perhaps USAID was infiltrated and they couldn’t fix it. Or perhaps it was reaching the end of it’s usefulness. Or they needed to reallocate and they needed cover for it.
Another possibility is that there are camps and factions in the bourgeoisie that have some manifestations in the structure of the state, and USAID was an agency that was associated with one of those camps, and the Trump presidency is representative of another camp. This would just be territorial consolidation and discipline in that case.
Yet another possibility is that they intend to shift the operations of the USAID and NED back under the umbrella of the CIA and the State Department, removing the layer of separation and plausible deniability but also getting rid of any accountability or obligation for public disclosure that these orgs may have nominally had. They are foregoing soft power in favor of going back to more direct imperialist means.
Or to put it another way, the myth of liberal humanitarianism has outlived its usefulness. The majority of the world isn’t buying it anymore (except for us here in Europe, we’re the only idiots in the world who still buy that con), so you might as well just admit you are only pursuing self-interest at the expense of everyone else. In a way that is liberating if you’re the kind of imperialist that Trump and Musk are.
I think this is the most plausible theory and a good hypothesis test will be Haiti. USAID has been active there since at least the 2004 coup, but now the new dependent government was collapsed through presidential murder and the country became a non-state “ruled” by a collection of bourgeois representatives de facto appointed by US-led CARICOM, with the main US representative being the NED/USAID-funded RNDDH.
Now this council is relying less on soft-power and political influence and more on a foreign legion composed mainly of Kenyans (with other CARICOM nations joining recently) under the leadership of the 51st US state up north. If the hypothesis holds up, this same form of control should manifest itself in other “allied” dependent nations, like Argentina (though obviously in a less explicitly racist manner).
That is a very good point about Haiti. As i always like to say, we will have to wait and see. For now we can hypothesize but we need more data before we can draw a reliable conclusion.
This is my feeling on the matter. I think musk and trump are just getting rid of the obfuscation on all fronts. They see it as a waste of energy/money and that it isn’t even working anymore. They understand that america is and always has been a genocidal imperialist project and pretending it isn’t is just lowering efficiency.
Yeah, I think that’s definitely a move if we assume us intelligence is still in control, which I think is the safest best for us all to make
That’s fair, lot of potential unknowns involved, so hard to be certain.
Or just “I believe my own bullshit” administrators hurting themselves in confusion?
I think this is closet to reality – basically the internal contradictions within the Republican Party manifesting.
You preach “starve the beast” to your base for 40-50 years, eventually True Believers gain significant power in your coalition, and you get this. They don’t understand the role USAID plays in maintaining empire (and the benefits empire produces) because they are too concerned with cutting the government to really examine what it does.
Opposition to this type of spending is easy to sell to your base because while they indirectly benefit from imperialism, they often are directly harmed by it. They’re the ones getting their legs blown off and dealing with price shocks. But the money behind the party loves imperialism – they’re getting paid to do it and the result directly benefits their businesses.
Fair point, thanks for your thoughts on it.
