Multipolarity and the Gaza Genocide: Part II – Tiananmen Square and an OCGFC Framing of the Palestine Question
Thoughts on an analysis of the Chinese state’s handling of Tiananmen Square published in Real Left
Lorraine Pratley’s article on Real Left is a re-telling of the events in Tiananmen Square as a counterpoint to Western anti-Chinese propaganda. While I thought it was informative and interesting, I found it hard to swallow many of the themes running through her narrative. Here are my questions about the narrative, and then my thoughts on why addressing this narrative is relevant to ‘multipolarity’.
The student movement is painted as fractured, “lack[ing] a unified vision beyond opposition to one-party rule”, and naïve. This characterisation seems typical of a student movement, or any movement just starting out, as was the case in China. A good portion of the piece is spent carefully dismissing theories promoting the role of outside interference – what are termed “claims of Western fingerprints that are not well-supported by available evidence” [emphasis added]. So what we seem to have, by her account, is an organic, albeit inexperienced and disjointed, movement that wanted more for China than was on offer from the authorities.
Lorraine might argue that this was not her focus, but I found it strange that there was no condemnation of the CCP state for squashing the uprising. The furthest she goes in a judgement of the state’s response is to say that “a crackdown was inevitable” and that “it was not unreasonable for Party leaders to view the [student] movement as a potential existential threat.”
With a hint that the students were misguided in trying to stick it to The Man in the time-honoured tradition of long-haired youth, Lorraine states that these students, once they’d grown into mature and sensible adults, have looked back on their misdeeds and “now view their past activism as naïve and prioritise political stability over radical change.” I have to confess, I did raise an eyebrow when I saw a freedom activist expressing (albeit via quotes from other sources) what seemed to be quiet satisfaction about a bunch of students eventually learning to love Big Brother.
I was also thrown off balance by the way the 1989 Chinese “dissident intellectuals” were painted. It may well be true, as the piece claims, “that they were instrumental in laying the ideological basis for the movement and ensuring it got off the ground.” The fact that the authorities had evidence for this is neither here nor there. What is sorely missing from this account is why it was so wrong for these intellectuals to get involved in the movement and inspire it. The article goes on to reveal the existence of “sordid tales of involvement in anti-China activism in their Western host countries” after they were forced to flee China following the crackdown. But does Lorraine expect intellectuals persecuted by the Chinese state to speak well of their persecutors? Is this a tacit approval of the pressure placed on them to leave? If the intellectuals were not agents provocateurs, but rather expressing their sincere views, then where is the defence of pluralism?
A reproachful tone is adopted towards these intellectuals who, scarred by the Cultural Revolution, began embracing ideas of privatisation, market reforms and generally “shifting from a Marxist framework to an embrace of liberal and neoliberal ideas”. My readers will know that I am neither a Marxist nor a neo-liberalist. (I eschew all isms, except voluntaryism, for the reasons explained here.) That said, the question not dealt with in the article is: was it acceptable for the state to crack down on purveyors of such ideas and hound them out of China? This question is particularly relevant in light of the Chinese state’s formal policy of opening up its economy to the West, which resulted in the imposition of the Chinese state’s unique brand of authoritarian neoliberal capitalism. It is that overarching event that created the macro environment intellectuals then had to navigate. As Lorraine acknowledges, “it was difficult for authorities to reject their ideas outright given official policy was driving market reforms.”
A goodly portion of the blame for the death toll during the Tiananmen Square crisis is apportioned to a “floating population”. We are left in little doubt that “without this social class, there would have been a fraction of the deaths, if any, during the crackdown, and no ‘massacre’ myth to be trotted out at each anniversary.” And what was the make-up of this regressive social mob responsible for most of the deaths? It “consisted of unemployed rural migrants, former peasants displaced by economic reforms, small entrepreneurs (street vendors), and informal workers who lacked urban residency permits.” And just like that, society’s underdogs get unceremoniously thrown under the bus.
This is underscored by the fact that, despite providing a long list of their valid grievances, Lorraine observes that “their presence was controversial, with many seeing them as “punks” or opportunists rather than genuine activists.”
A couple of questions about that. Who are these “many” who took a dim view of the involvement of unemployed rural migrants and former peasants in protests against the CCP government? And does the absence of a counterview by Lorraine signify her endorsement of the dim view of the “many”? It seems that way to me, although I am open to any evidence to the contrary.
Again, despite an expressed intent to nuance the events, these observations look as though they were cut and paste from the CCP’s website:
“However, others, labelled as “hooligans” or “riffraff” by authorities, were clearly involved in dramatically escalating the violence. In cities like Xi’an, criminal elements took advantage of protests to loot and riot, supporting government claims that unrest was driven by lawless elements.”
I’d be shocked if the state authorities didn’t label troublemakers whose heads they want to crack as “hooligans”, “riffraff”, and “lawless elements”. That is The Party boilerplate response. When the consensus between the state and its citizens breaks down, things can get ugly. I’m not endorsing the ugliness of looting, but I expected a more even-handed apportionment of blame for the breakdown in consensus. What I want to know is why Lorraine seems to tacitly side with The Party, if I am reading the tone of the article as it was intended.
Based not on my own research, but on Lorraine’s analysis of events, I’d like to suggest that the seeming chaos of it all, and the fact that so many different sectors of society made their mark on Tiananmen, tend to support the organic nature of the uprising. Labelling Chinese society’s underdogs as “punks” and “opportunists” does not detract from that, and it certainly gets no endorsement from me.
The article’s narrative of an organic uprising, without outside interference, actually reinforces the irony of China’s opening up to the West, which was never intended to be an evolution towards democracy. The irony being that in opening up, the CCP gave false hope to its people of a more pluralistic society. Tiananmen Square was indeed an “existential threat” to authoritarian state capitalism. If the globalists’ experiment of totalitarian capitalism was to succeed, the crackdown was, in fact, “inevitable”.
While I am instinctively unsympathetic to the themes that I detected in Lorraine’s analysis, I don’t disagree with the piece’s overall conclusions – namely that there is a need to move beyond simplistic East versus West narratives. To which I must also add that while what I have said so far may look like a critique of sorts, it isn’t. As you can see, there’s no serious rebuttal on my part other than some explanations of why certain themes, as I’ve interpreted them, jar with me. So let me be clear – if I had researched the subject as diligently as the author evidently has, I might have to conclude, along with her, that a downtrodden group of unemployed rural migrants, displaced peasants, and street vendors should bear the lion’s share of the responsibility for the final death toll, and that the powerful state was virtually blameless. But that would be quite a turn-up for the books, and I just don’t think that case has been made robustly enough.
The reason why I have not made my own counter-case robustly enough is that I do not see the point in it. Why? Because, a critique of pro- or anti-Chinese sentiment is largely irrelevant under the paradigm I have painted in Part I – that of a global public-private partnership in which all governments are subordinate to a global financial mafia. I am no longer interested in whether China’s reputation as a human rights violator has been grossly exaggerated. It’s the wrong debate to have because NATO and BRICS blocs governments are now totally aligned in their atrocious human rights policies.
While I’m unclear about Lorraine’s motivation for calling out the West’s cosplay of attacking China for its human rights record, she’s right to do so. But we need to do it for the right reason. We need to understand that Chinese supremacy is not going to usher in a better world. China was built up (see Part I) to be the new model of ultimate social control that the System controllers are drooling over. It’s been beta-tested in China and it’s here. That’s why the West’s blathering on about human rights is, and always has been, theatre. Trudeau gave the game away when he said: “There is a level of admiration I actually have for China, because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime.” That puppet spoke for the Owners and Controllers of Global Financial Capital.
The entire world is hurtling in the same direction towards a dystopian bio-digital gulag, although different countries may be riding in different cultural vehicles. The railway tracks, roads and infrastructure carrying us to that destination are being designed and built by industries of the perennial unipolar monarch – global capital. There will be two, possibly even three or four, geographical prison wardens, and that is the real meaning of multipolarity. Arguing over whether the reputation of one of the prison wardens has been unfairly traduced is missing the point.
The Palestinian question
An informed moral framing of the Palestinian question is actually quite straightforward. Contrary to the mainstream propaganda spewed out for 77 years, the issue is neither complicated nor intractable. Israel is a vicious, racist, colonial-settler state which owes its existence to support from a vicious, racist colonial-settler mindset dominating the corridors of power in the US and EU. In a sane and moral world it would be dismantled and replaced by an entity that upholds the human rights and dignity of all people within its borders. That’s been done before, and it can be done again, but it would have to start with the withdrawal of US and EU support.
The Palestinian genocide is as much America’s and the EU’s genocide as it is Israel’s. The US and EU are no less guilty in the exercise of colonial power than the Israeli settlers to whom they have delegated the dirty work of enforcing apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. And remember that these colonial powers are beholden to the ultimate colonial power – the OCGFC.
While it is important to lay down a moral framing of the issue, we must now regrettably move to an amoral, indeed immoral, framework if we are to have any chance of understanding the strategic thinking of the financial powers that dictate policy to the US, the EU, and indeed the entire world. Zionism, as it has unfolded historically, is the antithesis of morality, and the financial powers — regardless of their cultural or religious background —are Zionist. They wanted a Zionist state in the Middle East and they got it. And if a Zionist genocide of Palestinians were both profitable and achievable, they would do their damnedest to get that too.
What I’m saying is that both the conditions represented by the italicised words in the previous sentence must be met in order for the OCGFC to green light the total destruction of the Palestinian people. The combination of profitability and achievability would make the whole evil scheme workable for the OCGFC. There is a third element which plays into the financial powers’ thinking but whose impact is far more difficult, by its nature, to assess. It is the element of irrationality, which we will discuss, albeit briefly, at the end. But for now let’s examine what I believe are some factors that militate against the workability of the scheme, and thus might work in favour of a dignified dispensation for Palestinians. In presenting these arguments I am painfully aware that the reality on the ground points to the genocide of Gaza being in its last stages, and seemingly irreversible.
Multipolarity is a multi-pronged global financial strategy. In the first instance, it sets out to resolve the paradox of a financialised Western economy by recognising that this non-productive area cannot service the debt it has accumulated through non-productivity. This will involve deflation of both the economy and life itself, since the former must inevitably lead to the latter.
The greater relevance of multipolarity to the Palestinian question is that it aims to carve up the world’s economy into geographical areas under separate but interoperable (the technocrats’ favourite word for commonality of control systems) technocratic fiefdoms with different specialisms. The Saudi-run Gulf Cooperation Council sees itself as the capo of the Middle East, and a rampaging Israeli state seeking to expand its borders and control the Middle East is not workable in that context.
There are signs that the Middle East’s leading players are negotiating with the OCGFC to carve out their own power centre as the US retreats. It has a lot to offer in the way of sovereign funds that will finance the burgeoning energy-hungry digital-AI economy while also helping to cushion the controlled demolition of the West’s debt ponzi scheme. Israel has very little to offer except violence, arms trafficking, and an appetite for expansion. That’s because it has specialised for 77 years as the US’s hired thug in the region and elsewhere. I suppose we shouldn’t forget that Israel has made an outsized contribution to the digital and AI technology that is about to enslave us.
Aside from the grave reluctance of Gulf Arab elites and elites in the ME region to play second fiddle to Israel, there is a greater risk of instability in those dictatorships if the Palestinian question were to be settled in Israel’s favour. Those dictatorships don’t care about the Palestinians but their populations do, and inviting uprisings is not a good survival strategy for those dictatorships. It’s probably the only reason why Egypt has thus far resisted calls to assist with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. While the Anglo-American mafia has a lot of leverage over these regimes, it will find (and probably has found) it hard to get them to put a gun to their own heads.
Then there is the question of global governance – a sine qua non for the aspiring global technocrats. Global governance is, after all, the policy delivery mechanism for technocratic global control. With the global south / BRICS bloc angling for more influence at the table of global governance, the multipolar charade could be greased with political and psychological capital if this bloc could be seen to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and usher in a Palestinian settlement that was agreeable to the global South. Total failure in this regard, which admittedly is the current trajectory of the UN and its judicial arms, would not engender continued support for existing global institutions.
In short, resolving the Palestinian question with dignity for Palestinians might be more workable for the OCGFC than a successful genocide. A dignified resolution has the potential to create a catharsis that might catalyse a revival of the international institutions that are integral to the plan for global governance. Remember, the BRICS bloc have openly declared their commitment to uphold those institutions, so they have to be seen to be working. A failure to reach a resolution of the Palestine question would undermine the multipolar charade by undermining the very institutions it depends on.
The obvious and very sobering counterview to this is that there’s no disputing that events on the ground right now are utterly dismal. But I’m attempting to take a longer view. As I’ve already mentioned, the fact that the genocide of Gaza appears to be in the final stages does mitigate against these arguments, which are really my attempts at viewing the world through the eyes of the psychopaths who have sanctioned the bloodbath. I am also well aware that the Israeli military-intelligence apparatus has effectively been funding a firm of mercenaries to deliver aid to Gaza and that this seems to be part of a strategy to entrench the dislocation of Gazans and complete the ethnic cleansing of the enclave.
90% of Gaza is uninhabitable and the majority are starving to death. Even if you could alleviate the starvation, and if Israel were to be forced to end its savage bombardment and torture of Palestinians, where would the Gazans go while Gaza was rebuilt? I can’t give an informed answer to that, but if the political will, driven by OCGFC imperatives, arose to end the savagery, one short answer to the question of where they would go is: Israel.
That would be the beginning of a one-state solution, which is the only dignified and fair solution for everyone in that land. The alternative is a replay of the last two years but for the West Bank. There are no words to describe what a repeat of that horror would mean but, returning to the psychology of the sociopaths who would be responsible for it, the question is: would that really be workable for the OCGFC?
Another factor mitigating against this prospect for a dignified resolution to the Palestinian question is that I believe there is an unhinged demonic religious agenda driving the second Nakba of Palestinians that began on October 8th 2023. To be clear, it has nothing to do with Judaism. Judaic scholars like Rabbi Dovid Feldman are unequivocal in their assertion that Zionism is the antithesis of Judaism. The demonic agenda I’m referring to is Satanism, which is a form of religion, and its most faithful adherents occupy the thrones of financial power. Zionists who claim to be Christian, in embracing a hideous contradiction between Christianity and Zionism, are under this demonic spell, whether they know it or not. It is a worship of the void, the abyss, the anti-life.
If the total destruction of millions of Palestinians is part of a demonic end in itself for them, then even psychopathic rationalising is rendered irrelevant, and my argument redundant. After all, if cutting Israel loose was part of the OCGFC’s strategic plan to advance the multipolar charade and ushering in their New World Order, you’d think there’d have to be easier ways to do it than dropping explosive power on Gaza equivalent to six Hiroshimas.
Then again, the tragic irony of the situation is that it took this much barbarism for the largely indifferent population of the West to wake up to the reality of Zionism. It speaks volumes for the moral somnambulance of the West that it needed to have a genocide livestreamed to it to accept that Israel is an apartheid state far worse than that of the old South Africa. If the strategic plan is to can Israel, the psychopaths in the OCGFC halls of power knew that a holocaust would be needed to sell it.
One thing to bear in mind is that if the financial criminocracy makes a cold strategic decision to give Palestinians statehood, whether it’s a one- or two-state solution, this would be a diabolical trade-off to grease the multipolar charade and move us further into the jaws of total technocratic control. For the sake of Palestinians and for our own sakes, we must grab the Palestinians’ survival with both hands while recognising that we would still be left with a fight on our hands, since the global financial mafia would be using it as political capital to advance the 2030 agenda.
When I see headlines emerging of a former Israeli Prime Minister calling for an end to the genocide for fear of the international repercussions, or when I see the poster girl for climate catastrophe making her way to Gaza in an aid flotilla, I think maybe, just maybe, ‘they’ are signalling that the Israeli boot may be released from the Palestinian neck. But right now, it looks like a very long shot, so don’t quote me on it.