the return of the son of the return of the crisis

1. What Crisis?

For us, September 11th did not signal that a crisis had begun. It signaled that this world could no longer hide the effect of an ongoing crisis ([1], page 3).

The article begins by saying that maybe, when you read this, there will be a worse crisis than September 11th. The collapse of an energy company, the attack on the World Trade Center, and the Iraq War, all 'merge into one'. The massacre of tens of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis, three thousand New Yorkers, and the ruin of a bunch of suckers who invested in Enron, their own employer, are all pretty much the same thing, says Against Sleep and Nightmare. This is one of the most tasteless aspects of ultra-left ideology: the equating of quite different things. Hitler's anti-semitism is equated with president Nixon's red scare ([1], page 11). But whereas Hitler's ideology was an abomination, Nixon's was merely an exageration.

On the back of 'Against Sleep and Nightmare' no. 7 is a cartoon of the Iraq war whose point is to show that Bush, bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are all on the same side, and we, the workers of America, have the same interests as the proletariat of Iraq and those who join Islamic terrorist groups. This kind of argument has never got us anywhere. Trying to reduce the world's cultures to one simple set of interests is civilization's project. It is the height of arrogance to patronize people by calling them victims of ideology, and trying to replace their culture with the values of the enlightenment. And it doesn't work.

However, we had an explanation for the unpopularity of our ideas:

If we have said relatively little about this, it is because in the present world, the proletariat bats last ([1], page 25).

The next problem is the article's adherence to orthodox Marxist economics. It takes a while to get there, but on page 24, the article abruptly comes to the point and says what it means.

But there will also come a time for simplification. That is when the wheels stop turning.

The article does make one important economic point: credit is over-extended, and there will be a crash. But this information is useless, because, as the article admits, it can't say when this is gong to happen. The one time it tries to make a prediction, it is completely wrong: 'when you read this, there will probably be a crisis worse than September 11th'. For the inhabitants of Iraq, there has certainly been a crisis worse than September 11th, but the article doesn't mean this. It means a crisis for Americans. Even September 11th, in hindsight, doesn't look as much of a crisis as it seemed at the time.

The fourth problem in 'The Return of the Crisis' is its attempt to use the ideas of the sixties Marxist group the 'Situationist International' to understand the state of America today. Classical Marxism claimed that it is not ideas which drive society, it is material interests. But sometimes - if ideas are 'materialised' - they become 'ideology', which is a material force.

We have a system in which a trade in ideology has become the coin of the realm ([1], page 20).

In more detail:

In the 1960's or 1970's, the "age of management", a company would modify a product to make it more sellable. In the 1980's, in the age of derivatives, a company would take the image used to sell a product and spin it off as a different company. This newly formed company would plan on using its images to influence the entire population and not just consumers of its parent company's products. This spin-off would paint a future where its advertising would be a separate information product and thus the parent company could capture more investment capital ([1], page 13).

2. Women in Pink and Black Helicopters

If one grainy video with Osama bin Laden taking credit has been found, certainly an equivalent one with Charles Manson or Tupac Shapur taking credit could be found (and the Japanese Red Army did take credit) ([1], page 4).

'The Return of the Crisis' hints that the reason the ruling class allowed, or caused, September 11th to happen, is because they knew there was a massive crisis on its way, and a 'spectacular' event was needed to pull the country behind them:

All theories of practical psychology agree that a period of shock gives a persuader the opportunity to "install" ideas of the persuader's choice. It is not surprising that essentially the first word out of President Bush's mouth was the laughable falsehood "no one could have predicted this"... ([1], page 4).

What is the great crisis that was coming which necessitated the US government allowing the destruction of the World Trade Center and an attack on the Pentagon? Unlike ideology, it hasn't materialised. How many other rackets are twisting in the wind, ready to collapse? How many Enrons and space shuttles are waiting ahead? ([1], page 24). Not very many, as it turned out - unless you count the hurricane which struck New Orleans in 2005, and the perfect storm of liberal whining which accompanied it.

Contradicting the idea that Bush is clever enough to install his ideas in our heads, the article hints that maybe he isn't that smart. It says (or rather, ambiguously suggests) that we don't know if he is the imbecile he appears to be, nor whether it matters much to the US ruling class if he is (page 24). This is wrong on both counts:

1. Bush is in fact the imbecile he appears to be, and
2. It matters very much to the US ruling class.

This is obvious, because the invasion of Iraq is the worst foreign policy disaster in American history. Only the Vietnam war comes close. The USA was much better off with Saddam Hussein in power.

'The Return of the Crisis' attempts to link CIA drug-dealing, the Skull and Bones fraternity at Yale, corruption, credit, the crisis, the spectacle, and ideology. The exposition is so general, it could equally explain America's current behavior, the opposite, and anything in between. This means it is untestable in principle, and therefore meaningless.

I don't think they let September 11th happen deliberately. Big bureaucracies make big mistakes. I work in computing. In the last year, I have had uphill battles to persuade my employers of the benefits of relational databases, benefits which have been overwhelmingly clear for twenty years. They could save billions if they took notice of people like me. Clumsiness is in the nature of large rule-based organizations. It is true that an FBI agent in Phoenix contacted his boss in August 2001 to tell him he had found someone who might hijack an airplane and crash it into the World Trade Center. It is true that the CIA sent Bush a paper entitled 'Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US'. It is true that the air force did not attempt to approach the hijacked planes, as it normally does when even a small aircraft deviates from its 'flight plan'. It is true that no serious attempt seems to have been made against bin Laden. The theories which suggest the government knew about, or caused, September 11th, should not be set aside lightly, but adding up all the evidence, September 11th looks far more like a conspiracy by Islamic militants opposed to US foreign policy than a conspiracy by the US government.

Whose interests do these 'alternative' theories serve, and what consequences do they lead to?

• They overestimate the abilities of the current US administration, by several orders of magnitude.


• There has been a lot of whining that the FBI couldn't get a warrant to search al-Qaeda nut Zacarias Moussaoui's computer, which they say would have enabled them to prevent September 11th [5]. This amounts to the use of hindsight by the feds to fume at the nuisance caused by the judicial system. Cops usually need a warrant to search your property. In the case of alleged members of Islamic groups like al-Qaeda, the law has been bent to allow a secret committee called 'FISA' to issue warrants instead of federal judges. FISA normally gives warrants for searching and arresting alleged foreign spies - this procedure has always been separate from the normal criminal system. But even FISA is sometimes reluctant to issue a warrant. They want more than a vague hunch that so-and-so is a threat. Naturally, after September 11th, cops yelled 'told you so!' and argued that they need more power, and fewer constitutional restrictions. Time magazine made FBI 'whistleblowers', who complained that the system frustrated their honest hard work, its People of the Year.


• Another political implication is that it takes a lot to make Americans into warmongers - 'why do the rulers seem to need extreme measures to solve ordinary problems?' ([1], pages 4-5). The alternative explanations of September 11th claim that the regime had to allow thousands of peace-loving Americans to be killed in order to shock the survivors into supporting their plan to attack Iraq and abolish our treasured civil liberties. This assumes too great a gulf between the government and the public.


• A final consequence of these theories is their unfortunate, and unintended, reinforcement of the worst of Bush's critics, who try to use the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim atmosphere to attack the administration. Obviously, 'The Return of the Crisis' doesn't support the argument that Bush and co. were unable to prevent September 11th because they have too close links with Arabs. But it does complain that Al-Qaeda operates at the level of a gang, with the CIA as co-racketeer maintaining relations with al-Qaeda long after its bombing sprees became embarassing for the American state ([1], page 5).

This leads to another problem with 'The Return of the Crisis' - the attempt to avoid confronting the prejudices of the average Joe, in turn a consequence of a type of Marxism which tries to avoid the danger of dictatorship by flattering the workers and worshiping spontaneity. The article's conclusion is a particularly bad example. The alternative is the defence of hard truths which most people don't want to hear. September 11th was war. It's not infrequent for three thousand civilians to be killed in a war, yet we never proclaimed other recent massacres as harbingers of the collapse of civilization. We didn't say "three thousand dead - what's new?". We were no freer of the hypocritical hysteria about '9/11' than the rest of the American population. We even attempted to find something positive in America's impotent rage:

Aside from reflexes of anger, the explosion of Internet texts and public discussions have shown how many average people have felt a need to get a handle on the events.

But, as I said at the beginning, the reason I have picked on 'The Return of the Crisis' is because it is the best ultra-left response to September 11th. The 'Blowback' leaflet [6] from San Francisco was even more muddle-headed, with its claim that CIA support for the Afghan resistance somehow 'led to 9/11'. The ultra-left in general was 'spectacularly' wrong about September 11th, and a complete change of direction is needed. Ultra-left ideology, with its vacuous calls for the working class around the world to unite, has been bankrupt for decades. Equating everything we opposed, we opposed it all equally - equally ineffectively, that is. Opposing all states in general is less dangerous than opposing one state in particular.

3. The Elephant in the Room

1. America should be more aggressive in defending its interests, and
2. Lying is OK

But the irrelevance of neo-conservatism to the current state of US foreign policy can easily be demonstrated. If the Republicans are under the sway of neo-conservatism, the Democrats cannot be to quite the same extent. Yet the two parties have exactly the same policies, except that when it comes to murdering Arabs, the Democrats are a little more aggressive. What needs explaining, is not why the USA became more aggressive, but where its aggression was directed. The incredible stupidity of the particular form this aggression took cannot be explained by neo, or any other, conservatism. The current situation in the Middle East is not caused by America aggressively defending its interests. It's caused by aggressively defending another country's interests.

Even the Rolling Stones weighed in - How come you're so wrong, my sweet neo-con? Can you imagine a rock band having a hit which criticizes the Israel Lobby? Of course not. The recording would be suppressed as surely as the New York play about Rachel Corrie, a peace activist murdered by Israel. Which proves my point. It really isn't that difficult to figure it out. It takes more balls than brains.

Let's try looking at things logically. If two people are pushing a car in the same direction, it is impossible to tell which of the two is the stronger. It is only when they attempt to push in opposite directions that you can decide. When the USA's interests coincide with those of Israel (and they sometimes do), and the USA follows its interests, it is not possible to tell whose interests prevail. It is only when they differ (as they sometimes must), that you can say whose interests take precedence. When was the last time the USA acted contrary to Israel's interests?

Of course, neo-conservatives support Israel. But then, so do all other political factions in America. The degree to which a politician supports the invasion of Iraq and the defence of Israel is completely independent of the degree to which he subscribes to neo-conservatism. In other words, neo-conservatism is irrelevant to US policy in the Middle East.

Israel, a state based on an unsuccessful campaign of ethnic cleansing against some of its 300 million Arab neighbors, can only survive if Western countries support it. The most powerful Lobby in America influences the the government to benefit, not the American population, not even the American ruling class, but the Jewish State. When I argued this at an ultra-left meeting in December 2004, I got a rather cool reception [7]. When Counterpunch said it, it was described as anti-semitic by Anarchy magazine [8]. A year and a half later, two academics at Harvard caught up with Counterpunch and myself, exposing the Israel Lobby as the most powerful force in US politics [9]:

US policy in the Middle East is driven primarily by the commitment to Israel, not oil interests. If the oil companies or the oil-producing countries were driving policy, Washington would be tempted to favour the Palestinians instead of Israel. Moreover, the United States would almost certainly not have gone to war against Iraq in March 2003, and the Bush administration would not be threatening to use military force against Iran. Although many claim that the Iraq war was all about oil, there is hardly any evidence to support that supposition, and much evidence of the lobby's influence - John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, [10].

But Israel might be an even bigger loser than the USA. The latter can recover quite easily, by making peace with everyone else in the Middle East. Despite defeatist talk of the power of ideology, the ruling class has not become completely irrational, and it is possible to influence US government policy in a more self-interested direction. The Harvard paper is the first sign of a sea change. Most of America is not Israeli-occupied territory. The Iraq disaster will lead the USA to reevaluate its relationship to its 'ally' in the Middle East.

Why did Israel make the mistake of trying to use its tame superpower to turn Iraq into a giant West Bank? Israel is good at torture and murder. Israel's troops (most of its population) are highly motivated. Like the paratroop colonel in the movie 'Battle of Algiers' who tells his critics that, without torture, France will not hang on to Algeria, Israelis know that their policies are necessary for the survival of their settler state. A less aggressive approach would only encourage the oppressed. Criticizing Israel's crimes is misleading - they are a necessary consequence of its foundation. Unfortunately for Israel, however, its policies also encourage its opponents. It will take longer for Israel to go the way of Algeria, but Muslims will only take so much provocation. September 11th was a response to this provocation. This is what needs to be said. There are few who will say it. Ideology, the spectacle and the crisis are diversions from this uphill task.

The nature of Israel makes it provoke its opponents and scare its allies with false stories about powerful enemies in the Middle East and anti-semitism in Europe and America. It had to cast PLO leader Yasir Arafat, a pathetic old has-been who capitulated to Israel, as a terrorist. It had to persuade the USA that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a threat which must be overthrown. The lies took on a life of their own. Saddam was never a threat to the Zionist entity, yet George W. Bush claimed he 'sent suicide bombers into Israel'. Neither is Syria a problem for Israel, which is thousands of times more powerful, but is incapable of saying so. It is often pointed out that the only threat to Israel is the one being created by its own behavior. What is less often said is that its behavior is an inevitable consequence of its foundation. 'Poor little Israel' is a necessary lie, and those who lie eventually believe their falsehoods, and act accordingly, even unto their own destruction. I said above that Israel is good at ruling Arabs. This is because it is highly motivated. The USA is the opposite. It is hopelessly incompetent at occupying the Middle East because it doesn't have the slightest interest in doing so [11].

Thanks to successfully Lobbying the USA to do its dirty work, Israel may soon face

1. A nuclear-armed Iran
2. A new anti-Israel Shia state
3. A new anti-Israel Sunni state, and
4. A massive increase in the number of highly trained and motivated anti-Israel fighters in the world

As long as Israel can persuade Western countries to support it, by mass murder in the Middle East and repression at home [12], it will be able to survive in its current form. But its very nature leads it to gradually undermine this support. This article is dedicated to those who stood against the tide before it turned.