Introducing the SLCS-AFFLL

Kudos to Jeff Brown for introducing to the world a terrific neologism/acronym: BLPM, or the Big Lie Propaganda Machine. I use this succinct term often in my writing. The succession of words does a lot of work, and its meaning is self-explanatory.

I came up with my own: SLCS-AFFLL, or Silver-Lining, Chicken-Shit, Anti-False-Flag, Liberal-Left. It’s not quite as punchy.

One problem with the SLCS-AFFLL is the nauseating sense of self-assuredness in face of disaster upon disaster. I suppose you could call it “optimism.” But it was Charles De Gaulle who said “optimism is for fools.”

The SLCS-AFFLL cannot describe the world without assuming at the outset that they have the upper hand. They “philosophize” from an imaginary position of strength when all the causes they bleat for (however just) are surely in a position of weakness. Palestine is the most glaring example; signs of successive defeat (stretching back decades even) are more evidence for them, somehow, of inevitable Israeli defeat. The world has had enough, we are told, this time. While Gaza is being razed and Hamas leaders picked off one-by-one, we are to believe that Israel’s days are numbered.

The same thing happened after the 2008 financial crash. In the aftermath of the bailouts and a toothless Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Roosevelt Institute predicted we would likely see another crisis within seven years. Capitalism’s fall was only a matter of time.

(Dodd-Frank, passed during the Obama administration, was a 2000-page omnibus bill written by lobbyists, by the way. You know you are screwed when the same people who caused the crisis were the ones writing the legislation to fix it.)

Seven years later in 2015, no financial crisis took place. We had to wait another five years for a major economic catastrophe to once again ravage the planet. But this time, it was disguised as a public health emergency (i.e. Covid-19). Behind all the health protocols of social distancing and mandatory mask mandates, the world’s one-percent were given another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to steal more of the world’s wealth.

In the aftermath of 2008 came the largest transfer of wealth upwards in human history. The total cost of government bailouts and stimulus spending were conservatively estimated at 11 trillion dollars. The world had never seen anything like it. Thousands took to Zuccotti Park in NYC, and Occupy Wall Street protest movements spread like wildfire across the globe.

But if you thought 2008 was bad, it paled in comparison to the 2020 global financial crisis and heist. And if you wanted to take the street to protest, guess what? You couldn’t. This time around, governments worldwide had initiated mandatory lockdowns. Protesting was illegal while the world’s richest people again made off with the loot. In 2020, the world created the most billionaires in a single year than it ever has ever. Far from capitalism collapsing under the weight of its own corruption in the aftermath of 2008, it not only managed to regroup once, but twice.

My point is, capital keeps getting stronger. But the SLCS-AFFLL doesn’t see it this way. Instead, they see the “rise” of the BRICS countries; they see the “rise” of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); they see the rise of the Gulf Coordinating Council (GCC) and ASEAN. They see imperial overreach and runaway inflation. Most of all, they see the rise of China and the coming Belt and Road Initiative and are convinced that the fall of the current hegemonic unipolar world (with America supposedly at the apex) is on the verge of collapse.

With an undeserved and gleeful sense of optimism and foresight, the SLCS-AFFLL insists that all is generally as it should be and a new just and multi-polar world is only a matter of time. Palestine and the world’s oppressed are sure to win. America and Israel will simply vanish or be severely chastened, perhaps allowed to exist but only in extremely attenuated form.

But one thing the SLCS-AFFLL never considers is that all these gloom-and-doom possibilities are known and visible to the imperial powers themselves. And the imperialists certainly don’t believe they will be the ones consigned to history’s dustbin. Why should they believe this? Despite all of the disasters of the 21^st century alone, they are stronger and richer than ever.

Do you think poor American people and failing infrastructure is a sure sign of imperialism’s demise? Imperialism doesn’t give a fuck if it impoverishes its populations. Rather, the imperialists are busy making a play to move the world’s store of accumulated capital behind financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank exclusively, as the World Bank directly finances NATO, both of which have loyalty to no country, only capital.

In the case of an American dollar collapse, you will see SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) issued immediately as global reserve currency long before you see any international “basket of currencies” picking up the slack. Why? Because the world’s store of accumulated surplus (gold and silver) still resides in three places: the City of London, the Vatican, and to a lesser extent, Fort Knox and the New York Fed.

Unless you commandeer this wealth, the hope for a reset in global financial relations is hopeless. But no one has any idea how to do this. No one is even talking about this as a necessary precursor to real revolution.

What we are likely to see in the coming decades is the consolidation of military power within an amorphous organizational entity (NATO) beholden to no one except the one-percent ruling class. NATO becomes the de facto military arm of capital to wage war across the world indefinitely. The goal is not to “make America great again” but to keep capital in control.

America could fall apart, it’s true; in fact, this is already happening. But this has no correlation to a reset in global power dynamics. To this scenario, the SLCS-AFFLL has no answer because the only answer is to exhaust NATO militarily. And the SLCS-AFFLL will never go there. They instead believe imperialism will just magically disappear like the Soviet Union.

You think the rise of China is inevitable because of BRI? Maybe, but to that, NATO has an answer: forever war and destabilization—easy! NATO can do this because they know China will never risk all-out military escalation to protect its interests along the Eurasian landmass. How do they know this? Because of Putin’s “go-slow” approach in the Ukraine; Russia is also unwilling to risk global nuclear catastrophe!

If you are happy that China and Russia have wherewithal enough to avoid nuclear war at any cost, you may want to think again. Because the imperialists also know this and will use this to their advantage forever.

The imperialists know they can’t destroy the whole thing all at once; but forever wars along the New Silk Roads is a perfectly sustainable and practical foreign policy moving forward. You want to lead the world in global trade? Go ahead. But over time, we’ll make it not worth your while.

Moreover, we will send not-so-subtle hints to any country that cooperates with BRI. The world will tremble knowing that a spot along the BRI infrastructure highway immediately entails a spot on NATO’s hitlist. This is arguably what Ukraine is all about. Remember that the Ukraine was the terminus station for the BRI in Europe. The thought of China doing business anywhere near Western Europe scares the shit out of Europe’s economic elites; they know how to make war and do business with the USA. China is a whole different animal.

Bangladesh is now suffering the fate of any country that dares to partner with China; another shot is being fired across the bow. Ukraine and Bangladesh must become forever hellholes as a reminder to all that if you want to cooperate with China (especially if your country lies at a key geostrategic location), you too, at any time, risk NATO’s wrath.

Moving forward, there is no reason to believe this foreign policy cannot come to dominate a fractious multi-polar world where only one central power has the guts to fight. Everyone else will continue to take it in the ass in small doses forever.