The opportunism of the U.S. political class is so shamelessly lacking self-awareness that they let a war criminal like Clinton speak on terror. As CBS bangs the war drum with shifting the Democratic debate on how much more we will make the international working class suffer, whether from racist Islmaphobic militarism or blatant concessions to the brutality of capitalism, we continue to see the consolidation of a line of argument: stay in your lane, take lead in valuing only Western lives, and don’t question the Western empire that has terrorized those both abroad and at home with militarism, surveillance, and a police apparatus larger than other countries militaries. Their wars, but our dead, yet they continue to posture that they speak for us, that their ignorant and politically motivated stereotypes our our’s, and that no cost is too great for nationalism, yet when it comes to the ruling class to pay for it.

I understand the solidarity with the victims of all terror attacks by ISIS, from France, Rojava, Damascus, Yarmouk, Beirut, and as far as Libya, yet we should not let this solidarity with victims blind the historical context of where this backlash is coming from. Do not be fooled: ISIS does not come from religiously oriented organizational practices that outdate capitalism, but the far-right, and the political mirror of the neo-conservative and neoliberal brutality that has been unleashed into the Middle East in the modern era, and has been present with every counter intelligence operation since Operation Ajax overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh.

The answer to these issues of poverty, war, and oppression is not capitalist wars and ideals of closing borders to “protect” our interests, but to understand that the real enemy is at home. The enemy is not the working people or immigrants, but the antithesis, the political opportunists of the ruling class opportunizing on workers misery to fuel their hate fueled crusade to only benefit the only thing these people are interested in: profit.

As Democrats and the psuedo-Socialist Sanders debate whether undocumented immigrants or “Islamic Jihadists” will bring about the downfall of America, the real downfall is already happening, between two parties that are present on different sides of the same capitalist coin. These parties have allowed horror after horror to be paid for by working people, and not the sons and daughters of the rich, internationally having to deal with each intervention, coup, and airstrike destroying their communities. As police officers murder more civilians in the U.S. than have been killed in combat of our illegal wars, we continue to see pandering by both the American and international media towards the comfortable narrative of attacking those we perceive as simplistically barbarians. We must not allow this pandering, and seek a emancipatory alternative, one that doesn’t involve the suffering of working people, but the freedom of oppressed communities and ultimately the working class.

