Welcome to my Substack page, where conspiracy and Communism are natural bedfellows. The injunction to "follow the money" is, in a nutshell, the most expedient way to begin class analysis; moreover, the moment one begins to follow the money, one inevitably arrives upon, in virtually all cases, a consortium or class of persons acting largely in secret to forward a class agenda. In short, one indubitably falls upon conspiracy.

In vols 1-3 of Capital, this is essentially what Marx does—he follows if not the money, the commodity. In so doing, he discovers things hidden since the foundation of the world. Rather than extending such analysis in today’s world, what passes for journalism and critique in the West naively pits government against people, ignoring the fact that as far as class action is concerned, governments of the world simply do not control enough of the world’s capital to engage in the types of massive fraud that warrant the label of “conspiracy” in the strongest possible sense. Hence, the reasoning goes, conspiracies do not exist.

Liberal do-goody journalism placing government power at the apex of class domination has proven obsolete. “Cookie-cutter” journalism insists that governments are your greatest enemy, and only plucky, intrepid, Daniel-Ellsberg-like individuals have means, motive, and opportunity to uncover sinister plots hatched at the behest of some uber-scheming bureaucrat and carried out at the behest of his bureaucrat underlings.

This naïve view of power forwards, at best, an incomplete idea that the most significant political bond is between a population at large and its largely untrustworthy government officials; all the while, capitalist class players rig the entire game for their own benefit and to everyone else’s detriment, including the bureaucrat.

Once again, information is cast into pre-shaped cookie cutters that look like Ellsberg and Lyndon Johnson. The story these cookie cutters tell end with power chastened and the Ellsberg-character receiving lucrative book and movie deal. An American dream come true!

Such propaganda ritual allows Liberals and Conservatives alike to pat themselves on the back for sitting atop the most progressive and self-correcting state/civil-society apparatus ever invented. This naïve view of information flow was further entrenched by Woodward/Bernstein and Richard Nixon, who fit into pre-existing molds perfectly.

The same cookie-cutter scenario is what drives our outrage at the Julian Assange narrative. Rather than harbor any genuine indignation that a man is being held captive against all due process, we are instead outraged that his narrative stubbornly refuses to fit into the pre-cast molds we bring to any information harvest. Why hasn’t he yet been released and rewarded with subsequent book and movie deal?

We are left to assume then that whatever treatment Assange gets, he probably deserves it. For those sympathetic to Assange’s plight, the automatic assumption is that government dictates keep Assange locked up; but the problem may involve more class players than our imaginative cookie-cutters have ability to discern. The Marxian adage to simply follow the dictates and contours of class-analysis could not be more pertinent in the case of Assange.

Furthermore, answering the simple Ciceronian query, cui bono (“who benefits?”), should not end simply in exposing sinister government plots at the surface, thereby proving once again that “the system works.” Stop asking which bureaucrat Assange managed to piss off. Better instead to assume that if the buck stops at a bureaucrat, this has less to do with revealing the shortcomings of government than hiding the identities of those who control the purse strings.

As Lester Freamon so eloquently put in in Season 1 Episode 9 of The Wire:

You investigate government, you get government lies and overreach every time. But you start to investigate the money, and you don’t know where tha fuck it’s gonna take you.

This slogan should be translated into Latin and inscribed on baroque banderole entwining twin depictions of hammer and sickle. You are not a Comrade-journalist by manner, simply, of rehashing such catechism. You are a Comrade-journalist by actually carrying out such class-analysis no matter where it might take you.

#Commie journalism
#ComradeRFKJr!

One of the best examples, in my view, of straightforward reporting of facts that follows the money is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s 2020 monograph, The Real Anthony Fauci. Kennedy’s book is a sterling example of class analysis, and the only book you need to get up to speed on where and how power operates in the 21st century. RFK Jr. is not simply willing to go there—he cannot help but go there.

Since his narrative conforms in no way to the feel-good narratives of journalistic redemption we expect to see corroborated by Hollywood and the entire propaganda colossus that is the entertainment industry, he remains beyond the limits defined by said cookie-cutters and his work subject to common bourgeois smears (“conspiracy theory” and “misinformation”) which ought, in many respects, to be taken as badges of honor for anyone who dares indeed go there.

Thus far, people chock full of integrity like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. seem comfortable enough with such smears but would likely baulk at the appellation of Comrade. Better, that is, to be called a “conspiracy theorist” than a Communist!

However, I believe the unpalatability of both Communism and conspiracy theory to the bourgeois imagination means that Communists and conspiracy theorists have ample opportunity to open up genuine mutual dialogue.

In today’s information landscape, those derided by the mainstream media as an agglomeration of Libertarians, Trump supporters, Q-Anoners, and Putin-apologists have opportunity to mingle. Those further vilified as xenophobic, racist, and nationalist will find themselves increasingly drawn to this crowd. So why aren’t capital-C Communists invited to the party?

What a gathering of such characters can profitably do is squeeze out the Liberal fox. The greatest impediment to class analysis is fake and manufactured culture war. Socialists and the Liberal-Left want all-in on culture—but the true Communist sidesteps these fake partisan issues altogether. Conspiracy theory, therefore, is much more fertile soil in which class analysis can grow and much closer to true Communism than bourgeois-funded wokeism.

In short, the primary injunction to follow the money ought to take conspiracy theorists inexorably to class analysis; and class-analysis, in whatever fashion, ought to invite the moniker of true Commie-journalism, however unwelcome such a hashtag is to unbeknownst stalwarts of class analysis like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Many more such stalwarts exist on Substack. Perhaps a community of Commies and conspiracy theorists can begin to congeal here.