There is ample evidence that the overlaps between corporatism, the military industrial complex, nationalism, consumerism and the technofeudalistic operations of social media platforms have created a global structure of class war, which is extremely difficult to break down.
The first test case is Palestine. Zionism, being one of the most openly racist-extremist forms of nationalism, has managed to dictate global politics without broad popular support or legal standing in international law. Despite having no popular or judicial legitimacy, the genocide in Gaza – which since the declaration that the actual plan it serves is that of establishing Greater Israel can no longer be denied – continues unhindered. The mouthpieces of Zionism brazenly continue to deceive and lie, pretending that we are all too stupid to understand what is going on. Western governments continue to aid and abet the genocide, supported by lobbyists from the military industrial complex, most notably the investment management firms that are major shareholders in the arms industry.
We here in the west have benefited from this class war from quite some time. It has enabled us to use consumption instead of revolution to solve our problems, and in the process allowing our critical cognitive capacities to rot in the swamp of debilitating advertisement and entertainment. Imperialism continues through the use of military and paramilitary violence as that enables the driving down of wages and inhibits the organization of popular resistance. At the same time, multinationals could continue to rake in gigantic profits by manipulating the needs of “worker-consumers” in the West.
Gaza marks the point where those days are over. The imperial system can no longer afford to keep the peace at home. Military spending has to be increased as the greed of the filthy rich can never be satisfied. The Endocolonization started with migrants and refugees but is now affecting everyone. Extreme nationalism may still succeed in pitching workers against workers – the USA is a prime example of this – but the coming civil war is not going to result in a new stable order providing the filthy rich with the economic and military security that they need to hoard their wealth.
Again, the USA and Israel provide clear examples. Extremely sick and incompetent political leadership investing all their energy-sources in maintaining power, but the only way to do this is radicalization and enshittification. They are increasingly relying on extremely volatile, brutally violent (para-)military support, which however is inherently unstable as hatred is not a very sustainable libidinal foundation for loyalty. As thugs of the national guard terrorize Washington DC, and as criminals of ICE terrorize Latino communities, they are merely repeating what the IDF had been doing until October 7th. The thugs of the IDF, of the National Guard and of ICE, however, are also the first to crumble when people fight back. This is because many of them are their own people. Being thugs in heavy protected armour, bravery is not necessary for them. However, this exactly means that they are also incredibly inept in dealing with crises, especially when the protective armour has been removed. It is well known that the incidence of PTSD has massively increased among members of the IDF and suicide rates are increasing as a result. It is very likely, that those working for ICE will feel less safe now, will feel the loathing and hatred of ordinary people when they wake up at night, and will feel that they are losing their souls as a result.
Members of the Izz ad-Dīn al-Qassam Brigade in Gaza do not have those traumas, simply because they cannot hide behind corporatist military superiority. They need bravery and thus they need to know what they are fighting for. Fighting to stop a genocidal enemy will always generate much higher levels of libidinal energy than conducting a genocide on unarmed civilians. Likewise in the USA, the second amendment legitimates the use of force to overthrow a tyrannical government by organized militia. When the National Guard invaded California, they were met with mass protests. These were still peaceful, but for how long?
When Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, outside a midtown Manhattan hotel on December 4th 2024, his alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione, became not just a celebrated cult hero, he was also charged with the crime of murder in furtherance of terrorism. This is hugely significant. The establishment – the government and the judiciary – understand the threat as being one not only against rich people in general but against the state itself. Killing rich people is an act of terrorism because it is also an attack on the state. Thus, the charges reflect the reality of corporatism. The accumulation of extreme wealth by the filthy rich – obviously at the expense of the vast majority of ordinary citizens – is an interest of the nation state.
The fact that the one murdered was the CEO of a major health insurance company – one that imposes misery and suffering upon millions of people while continuing to extort them to work for and pay hefty premiums because of the extreme costs of health care in the USA – is also highly significant. Here we can see risk and extortion as two sides of the same coin. Yes, you can extort populations extensively by forcing them to live in fear, but only in so far as to diffuse both the visibility and the collective nature of extortion. Yes, people who live in fear may lack the courage to resist, but only in so far as they still think they have something to lose.
The Excre-Mentalization of public life – which is primarily the work of mainstream and social media – is the final stance of corporatism to diffuse the visibility and collective nature of its practices of extortion. They try to enshittify the collective conscience so that it embraces hedonism and the fear of losing out. It may still work, but cracks seem to be growing. People who have less to lose also have less to fear. The filthy rich and their propaganda pipelines in media and politics may have no choice but to continue to shit on the rest of us, as kakistocracy now reigns supreme, but the time will come that everyone will always have been against this.
Disaffected Sociology 
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