2025 A Year in History w/Revolutionary Guerrilla Menace!

Adnan Husain: Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. salam hello peace to you all i'm adnan hussein and welcome to revolutionary gorilla menace an annual year-end collaboration to review and analyze key developments of the year in history and uh to uh look prospectively to the coming year for the possibilities and challenges of resistance to imperial capitalism and revolutionary transformation of our world this collaboration which i'm always so excited to have brings together the hosts of revolutionary left radio brett o'shea hello hello And Guerrilla History Podcast, which includes myself and my co-host, Henry Hakamaki. Henry, great to see you. Nice to see you, as always, Adnan. And co-host of Red Menace Podcast, Allison. Welcome. It's great to see you.

Allison: Yeah, great to see you all. This is always an exciting time of the year for us to come together. Obviously, not the greatest news right now, which we'll get into, but it's nice to be with all of you.

Adnan Husain: No, but misery loves company and we can get through it with bolstering one another with serious analysis and thinking about how we can enhance our resistance. So as the world gets crazier and more destructive, the opportunities for transformation likewise. So we're going to talk about it. And I think. you know uh the obvious topic uh is venezuela before we dive into that i just want to say to people who are listening on the youtube channel i hope we're also on it looks like we are now on revolutionary left radio's youtube channel we're streaming on mine um we're also streaming on x hopefully we'll also get gorilla history up but anyway you can find us on all these platforms and you should like the stream So that more of your comrades, friends, relatives, people who are sitting around during the, you know, kind of final throws of the holiday season, you know, can actually inform themselves and take action and get involved. ready for this year to come so please like the stream share it on your social media and send it out into the world um and um you know that'll be great for you and for your comrades friends and even some of your enemies who need to know okay so well let's get into it uh venezuela obviously this overnight raid and the kidnapping of an elected sitting president Nicolas Maduro and his wife bringing them to the U.S. to face bogus, trumped up, literally, charges. Trump announcing that the U.S. would run Venezuela indefinitely and U.S. troops would be stationed to take charge of the country's oil and oversee, essentially, its forcible privatization. We know that this is the culmination of months and months and years, frankly, of concerted U.S. subversion and imperialist intervention. I just want to throw it open to whoever would like to begin talking about what they see all of this portends and, you know, how we should really be thinking about it.

Henry Hakamaki: Well, if nobody else will say anything, I'll say something to begin with.

Allison: How about it?

Henry Hakamaki: So, it seems shocking at first glance that we would have the United States go in, kidnap a sitting president of a country, but the United States has precedence for this, and it's important to remember that. Surely many of the listeners will remember 2004 when Jean Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped and flown out of Haiti by the United States. And going back further, their former allies turned enemies like Manuel Noriega, for example, also were kidnapped and flown out of the country. Now, these two examples are extremely different. Aristide was someone who... despite many contradictions within the country was somebody who seemed to be genuinely interested in the well-being of Haitians whereas Noriega was all for Noriega and that's why the United States liked him up until the point where he decided that well you know we're not going to entirely go along with what the United States says in every single instance and that's really what this leads to is that when we're looking at what happened here in Venezuela within the last 24 hours, it's not just an event, it's continuous aggression against the Bolivarian Revolution. It extends to illegal sanctions, military threats that have gone long before the Trump administration began, but has been really escalated within the last year. And I know that we're talking about the last year primarily in this. And I know that many people have this knee-jerk reaction to say, well, Venezuela has the world's largest confirmed oil reserves, and so therefore it's all about the oil. The oil is certainly a factor, but it's not just about Venezuela's oil. This is a continued example of making an example of any nation that dares to chart an independent course away from what the imperial hegemon dictates to it. The sanctions that have been put in place on Venezuela have created a huge glut of oil outside of the United States control. Various estimates point to it being about 15% of the global oil total being outside of the United States control as a result of the sanctions that had been put in place on Venezuela. And the United States wants to ensure that the wealth of Venezuela remains accessible to its corporations, which is why when we look at the news now, we see that Trump is already fostering trips He's trying to organize trips for business leaders and particularly oil executives of United States corporations to travel to Venezuela and figure out how to integrate themselves within the economy. And the threat that Trump has then been saying is that if the authorities in Venezuela that are still existing there, including the vice president who is currently acting as president, if they don't play ball, the United States will go in with even more force than they already have. Meanwhile, it's very interesting to look at the reaction of various individuals to this. If we're talking about the reaction in the United States, of course, we have this typical reaction where when the Republicans do something, the Democrats generally will come out and say bad Republicans. And when the Democrats do something, the Republicans will come out and say bad. bad democrats it always works like that but if we look on a more global scale it's really interesting to see that the flag bearers of global liberalism and particularly within the eu uh like kaya kalas for example they are coming out and saying that this was a good thing that happened that maduro was removed from power and of course it goes against international norms but it is a good thing that this dictator was removed uh we have ursula von der leyen very much echoing the same lines that well you know some norms were violated here but you know in the grand scheme of things this is really a good thing that's happening On the other hand, we have condemnation of this action by a vast majority of the world's countries. The nations who are not condemning this and in fact are supporting this, surprise, surprise, Israel, Argentina, Ecuador, all US either vassals or allies, depending on how one views them. But really interesting. And this is one that just came out within the last couple of hours. There has been some far right figures in Europe who have come out against this action, whereas, again, the flag bearers of European liberalism have said that this was a great thing. And I'm thinking specifically of Marine Le Pen, who, of course, has no actual power in France. But she came out with a very interesting statement. This statement, of course, demonizes Maduro, demonizes Venezuela, demonizes the Bolivarian Revolution, does not paint any sort of picture, a positive picture of socialism or the left generally. however she made a very forceful statement against the action that was carried out by donald trump her erstwhile ally so it's very interesting to look at these commentaries that are coming out from various places both inside the united states as well as abroad and it will be interesting to continue to look at how these statements continue to come out whether there's going to be any actual push on the united states uh you know in terms of actual things that are being done i mean it can even be small actions for example are we going to see the united states banned from the world cup you know i i live in russia listeners i'm sure most of you are aware of that russia has been banned from international football competitions for the last four years the russian national team cannot play in any sanctioned fifa events russian club teams including the one that i support although our team is not good enough right now to play in european competition but even when the teams would normally qualify for club competition they can't play in them in the olympics russia was not able to participate meanwhile the united states not only is able to participate in all of these events, but they are hosting the next World Cup, something that we've talked about on Guerrilla History Adnan. And who received the first ever FIFA Peace Prize, which was given to him directly by the president of FIFA? Donald Trump. They created this award specifically to give to Donald Trump because Donald Trump was upset that he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize. And Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA is a bootlicker for Trump. And well, he decided that the best way to lick his boots was to create a peace prize specifically for him where Infantino, the president of FIFA would unilaterally decide who the winner was. It was not up to committee within FIFA. Now I know listeners, most of you probably are not as interested in the football side of things, but that's just one example of, you know, when a country that is operating outside of the hegemonic imperialist capitalist global world system and does not follow the dictates of the hegemon within that system if they do something that the hegemon doesn't like they find every punitive measure that they can possibly find to enact against them We're not just talking about sanctions, which is a large warlike measure. We're talking about banning athletes from playing in various events that they've been training for. The United States is certainly not going to have even the slightest pushback in these ways against them i doubt that antonio gutierrez is going to come out in the united nations and condemn the united states he may say that norms have been violated but i doubt that there's going to be any strong condemnation within the united nations So I have been ranting for too long. I'm going to step aside for a bit because I'm sure I'll find something else to rant about later. Brad, go ahead.

Brett O'Shea: Sure, yeah. No, I would love to pick up on one of your important points, which is like this simplistic narrative. You heard it around the Iraq war and you hear it around this one, which is that this is just about And on one level, that's true, right? Like it's certainly it behooves the Western corporations that have been after Venezuelan oil for so long to do this. You know, Trump's administration has been propped up and funded by big oil as a fossil fuel administration in so many ways, not only in the promotion of fossil fuels, but in the deconstruction process. of any renewable shift away from fossil fuels it's a multi sort of approach on that front so oil gold resources they're part of it henry made a great point that it's also making an example in some sense out of uh you know anyone who stands up against the you know u.s imperial hegemony but i also want to add another layer which is that in a world of rising multi-polarity it behooves U.S. imperial apparatus to consolidate regional, if they can, but even more than that, hemispheric hegemony. So in a world in which there are more great powers arising, more the end of unipolarity for the United States, what needs to happen from the point of view of the U.S. state apparatus is a complete domination of the hemisphere, which is why I think Venezuela is first, but I think Cuba genuinely is next. They're going to try to consolidate control over Latin America, a la the Monroe Doctrine, in the context of rising multipolarity. So that's one aspect of it. And another layer of analysis here, which is a little bit speculative, but I think there's enough evidence to at least articulate this point of view, which is that this is another domino that falls on the way to Iran. What they're doing in Venezuela is very much like what they're doing in Syria. They've already, through the attack and the genocide of Palestinians and the attack on what they call Iranian proxies like Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, a.k.a. the Houthis, there's an attempt to dismantle that resistance axis. Then you go over to Venezuela. It's a long stick in the mud for the U.S. I mean, the whole Bolivarian Revolution was in large part about reclaiming their oil resources from Western and U.S. corporations and nationalizing their oil so they could have control over their own resources. That was a large part of it. So this has always been in play. It's always been the wet dream of the U.S. deep state and the military industrial complex to topple Venezuela. But if you were to go to war against Iran, which is clearly the ultimate goal of Israel, which means it's the ultimate goal of the US, it will create massive destabilization in the oil markets, oil prices throughout the world. Venezuela, being a huge holder of natural oil resources, makes taking over that country and robbing it of its resources a helpful prelude to any possible future attack on Iran, wherein the global oil markets will very likely be destabilized. So I wanted to add those two layers of analysis here to point out some things. it's not just oil so when we're not just reducing it to oil we have to make an argument for a more complex analysis of the situation and that's not the end of it but i think those are those are crucial aspects to it but having said that allison i'd love to hear your thoughts

Allison: Yeah, I mean, I think I definitely sympathize with this read about regional hegemony in the face of rising multipolarity, right? This is one of the difficulties about multipolarity is that hegemonic states that were previously vying for unipolar power don't just disappear, right? They tend to shrink back and try to develop a sphere of influence more locally. And it's in that sense that I think it's not surprising. that we've seen people within the Trump administration reference the Monroe Doctrine as something that they are essentially trying to rebuild and return to. This idea of a return to focusing on the Americas generally as the United States' backyard is very clear. In addition to what we are seeing, we obviously have seen the ties that Trump has built with Bukele and the attempts to create these more subservient client states throughout South and Central America. You can see the relationship with Argentina that has developed as well and the export of capital to Argentina in particular as really crucial to this broader U.S. development in the region. So while I don't think we can dismiss the role that resources play, like oil access is part of the discussion and is part of what's going on. This shift, I think, really, really is about creating this sphere of influence that we can control in a world where we no longer are vying for that unipolar position. in such a clear way anymore. And so that's one of the kind of unfortunate things that we're seeing and that I expect we'll continue to see. Today, if you've been paying attention to Trump's statements, right, like he's already referencing Mexico and oh, well, I really like Claudia Scheinbaum, but also it's a failed country and we might have to help them next. He's already referencing you know cuba there's already this focus on what could it look like to push in this direction more strongly within this sphere of influence and so i think that's very clear telegraphing the one thing that i do kind of want to add to the conversation though is maybe just like some room for hope here which is mostly i want to you know point out that the bolivarian revolution is bigger than maduro right the capturing of maduro does not mean the end of the bolivarian revolution does not mean the capitulation and does not mean the end of resistance to U.S. imperialism. This obviously huge escalation, but what we've seen from the remnants of the state so far has been a denunciation of Maduro's capture, demanding that he come back. And on the ground, the Bolivarian revolution has decentralized in fascinating ways over the last decade with the development of the coalition. system, popular assemblies, and communal self-defense outside of just the state. And so if the U.S. thinks that this is a revolution that will just fall over once the head of state has been captured, I think the U.S. is extremely deluded and really is operating without any knowledge of what the reality of the Bolivarian revolution as this broader social transformative process that goes beyond even just the state itself looks like. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens in the coming days and how the US adapts for the fact that there are massive swaths of the Venezuelan population who are willing to fight to defend the revolution, who are willing to defend their homeland and who have built communal control over territory in a way that will not make it so simple as capturing a head of state. So to me, that's a source of hope. Honestly, I think the Bolivarian Revolution is strong. I think that it has a really pervasive social presence that is much bigger than it gets credit for. And so that's kind of the only other thing that I want to add is I do think we will see resistance and this is not the end of that story just because Maduro was captured.

Henry Hakamaki: I did want to make one quick addendum on the point of oil. So I mentioned earlier that oil is not the driving factor in this. And there's much more that I could say on that front. But since we're talking about oil specifically for a little bit, it's worth mentioning that a lot of the rhetoric that comes out regarding oil in Venezuela from the Trump administration is that the oil was the united states's and that the infrastructure built was made by american talent and american capital and therefore it's american infrastructure to process that oil and then it was stolen from us by the revolutionary government and we are just taking back what's rightfully ours so this rhetoric of you know we were there it was ours it's always forever more That is a typically imperialist rhetorical point and something that the United States says frequently whenever they find or put in any infrastructure to extract things from any place in the world. We've heard it many times. But also another rhetorical point that's coming up, again, vis-a-vis oil with Venezuela, is that there's inefficiency within the oil sector in Venezuela. The capacity for for processing the crude oil is much less now than it was when the United States was processing it. And, of course, that is in part true. The processing capacity of the United States' crude processing facilities was much higher than what's still present in Venezuela today. However, that completely ignores the fact of why... the newest technology, the newest infrastructure is not present in Venezuela because Venezuela has been choked by sanctions, by blockades, by militarist actions by the United States over decades for, again, stealing our oil, the oil that happens to be present in Venezuela and stealing our infrastructure, which was, again, built to produce capital from Venezuela. material coming from Venezuelan soil. And so the United States says that they're going in in part to stabilize the oil industry and to actually allow there to be a flourishing of wealth. Now, let me ask, When the United States decided that they would be able to stabilize the oil industry in, I don't know, Libya, Iraq, surely when the United States went in and intervened, the oil industry was stabilized overnight, right? Or maybe a couple of years, or maybe it hasn't been. The point isn't to stabilize the oil industry in that country. It's to allow for the extraction and exploitation of the resource from that place for American interests. It's not about boosting the capacity of the indigenous processing the industry in the country that it's found in. The United States is doing it for the United States' interests. And in the cases of Libya and Iraq, It hasn't worked out for the United States either, but that is still the same rhetorical point that they're taking here, again, vis-a-vis oil. And I'm not saying that oil is the absolute driving factor here, but it is worth keeping these things in mind as well.

Adnan Husain: Absolutely. Excellent points. I mean, basically, we're seeing the colonialist logic return. And that's a theme that when we talk about the revival and reassertion in a profoundly aggressive way of the Monroe Doctrine, we're talking about 19th century colonialist discourses that are being, you know, revived, recirculated. You know, these indigenous people are wasting their resources. It requires... you know, advanced Europeans to actually make the land productive. You know, it actually belongs to us, as Henry was saying. You know, it's our oil. We've owned it for 3000 years. Now we have to go back and reclaim it. I mean, you know, these are the kind of colonialist sort of figures that you're pointing out. And what it shows is I think about this kind of question of oil is that, of course, it's really fundamentally about sovereignty and sovereign development. And it's about a massive resource that could be capable of meeting the needs of Venezuelan people and of people in the entire region. And that's actually what needs to be stopped. I would add as well that while it may not be just the crude, as it were, resources that could be exploited for American corporations by the privatizing of Venezuela's oil industry, it is also however of geostrategic value and this is to pick up on a point that brett was making about the relationship between this and um you know iran and what i would say here is that it seems to me as just as this is probably a prelude to you know some kind of color revolution being launched yet again uh in cuba is that that's actually what we're seeing starting to happen again in Iran, and that because Iran has the capabilities to cut off the Straits of Hormuz and to really throw a shock into the global oil supply, You know, it's very important to kind of balance that by ramping up production or control of how the production and especially access to these energy resources, not necessarily for the United States, but say for Europe, for U.S. allies to deny it to Europe. you know if there is going to be for example a response or retaliation to further u.s israeli aggression uh on iran that the counter measures that iran might take need to already be prepared for and this is some in some ways preparing for that and it was a great point that i saw kala walsh made on twitter about this and i absolutely fundamentally agree um you know with that and um The other point that I would bring up is the response is going to be key. Henry was talking about how there's very unlikely that international institutions and norms and so on will isolate the United States and so on because those, of course, are institutions that are from the colonial and Cold War era that respond to the dictates of Western hegemony, especially the United States. However, I think it is a very important and key question. What will Russia in the multipolar world that Brett was talking about that's emerging, what will Russia and China do in response? I mean, already Venezuela was, you know, intervention was being justified, not only this ridiculous idea of the threat of so-called narco-terrorism, but also, that Venezuela was somehow an ally and a stalking horse for Chinese and Russian and even Iranian malign interest in the US's Monroe Doctrine backyard. But it is actually a real question for any kind of axis of resistance or multipolar bricks, how they will respond to this. Because if they don't, it seems to me that we are witnessing the possibilities for imperial plans to be realized without an appropriate cost of resistance against the empire. And that's why what Alison mentioned, I think, is extremely important. Those are the imperial designs. But, you know, there is a commitment to the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. We've seen protests starting already. The vice president has announced that the, you know, goal is clear, defend the nation. I mean, they've taken Maduro from us, but he left key instructions. He's legitimate president and he said, defend your nation. And what I would say is this shows that what we're dealing with is a very dynamic and complex imperial system where there are fronts of resistance all over. And it could be a real miscalculation in some ways, of the United States to get embroiled in a costly long-term struggle where the people of Venezuela defend their sovereignty and defend their country against US imperial occupation. That will also stretch imperial resources. We saw how in some ways the Bolivarian Revolution, the so-called Pink Tide, was enabled in some sense by US preoccupation and involvement in Iraq. in the Iraq war. In some analyses, they were tied up with this like, you know, in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global war on terror, and that opened up possibilities for popular sovereignty, for, you know, leftist, you know, sovereigntist kind of organizing that has had a consequence and effect materially on on Latin America. And we might see the same happen with opening up possibilities in West Asia. This is a dynamic situation, and we have to be hopeful that more lines of resistance against the empire are opening up. So they may have their plans, but if they're not challenged, they may achieve them. But it's very important, it seems to me, that Russia, China, Iran, forces that stand against US hegemony and empire take action in this in various ways that they can to try and increase the pressure and stretch the empire which is already declining is already overstretched to open up more lines of resistance and that's likewise for us domestically in the imperial core i'm wondering if anybody else had any other kind of remarks on venezuela wanted to come in brett i think you do

Brett O'Shea: Yeah, actually, there's like a little a little troll in the comments. I'd like to just directly confront the arguments. This person, Bruce, is saying, ironically and sarcastically, tell us about ordinary Iranians. Tell us what they think. You know, the proletariat. Tell us what they think. Right. Obviously trying to be childish and hostile here. Hey, what they don't think is that they want the Fourth Reich, the U.S. and Israel apparatus to come in and destroy their fucking country. to topple their regime and impose whatever sort of hellish nightmarish puppet government of extraction and plunder and oppression they can put on there what do the people of syria think what do the people of libya think they don't all think the same thing about their government but one thing we know objectively is that when the u.s imperialist apparatus the neo-colonial apparatus the fourth reich itself marches into your country it's not for sunshine and rainbows to follow It is a brutal, merciless death machine of exploitation and oppression. You think the US cares about average Iranians? You think the US or Israel care about average Venezuelans? The sanctions regimes that they've imposed on these countries have brutalized the civilian populations of those countries. Israel makes it a point to go after and murder innocent civilians what they did in syria is the exact playbook they have for iran topple the leader install former terrorists that i thought we were the bad guys a few years ago mercilessly exploit whatever resources you may have send in western corporations and in the case of israel take over increasing parts of syria itself So that's just a disingenuous argument. Does every single Venezuelan support everything about the Maduro government? No, because you won't find a single country on earth where every citizen supports their government. But does that mean the alternative of coming in by hostile force, ripping a sovereign head of state out of his home, kidnapping him, bombing another country, and seeking to exploit and take over a country's sovereign resources is a better path? Absolutely not. And then the next comment from this person is so-called narco-terrorism, so-called narco-terrorism, again, implying that narco-terrorism is a legitimate term. It is not. It's objectively true that the vast majority of drug that come into the United States has nothing to do with Venezuela. In fact, Trump just pardoned the leader of Honduras, who was an actual drug smuggler. So that just completely blows up the idea that they have any concern over drugs whatsoever. It has nothing to do with that. It's a term for dum-dums to buy in to this act of imperialist aggression. It looks like you have. The other half of that term, terrorism, What terrorism has Venezuela committed? The terrorism that I've seen watching the news over the last several years has come from an absolute genocide in Palestine, funded, armed, and protected by the United States, carried out by the United States, but also Israel, of course. And I've seen now another attack, not only on multiple sovereign countries, but another attack on a completely sovereign state, completely unprompted, using fake terms terms that are completely invented by a propaganda apparatus to trick people into supporting this violation of international law and just basic morality. So if you wanted to get some attention, you got some. I also wanted to kind of step back here and say that there was guns, like they handed out weapons to the working class. I think 250, 500K, somebody in the comments said that amount of weaponry was handed out to the working class. I just wanna make a quick point here. If a government can hand out hundreds of thousands of automatic weapons to their working class, they have democratic legitimacy. What would happen if the US, the supposed shining city atop a hill, the leading example of democracy in the world, handed out that many guns to its population? Well, you'd have a bunch of mass shootings and probably several assassination attempts. So it's a very interesting thing where the U.S. is using this pretense of democratic legitimacy or illegitimacy in the case of Venezuela. But I think where the rubber really hits the road is just that raw act of can you hand out weapons to your working class? And what do they do with those weapons? Well, in the case of Venezuela, they're picking them up and they're going to defend their homeland by any means necessary, which they have every right to do. And of course, that begs the question, what's the next move for the U.S.? Well, they've already set up this elaborate scheme to try to get the next Juan Guaido, in this case Machado, into power, giving her this false Nobel Peace Prize, completely obliterating any pretense of legitimacy for the Nobel Peace Prize now, and trying to position her into a situation where she can take over with no democratic legitimacy. Whatever the Venezuelan people think, the vast majority of them... are clearly understanding that this is a puppet imposed by their enemies and that Juan Guaido, just like Machado, have absolutely no democratic legitimacy whatsoever. And so that begs the question, I would love to hear your guys' thoughts on what do you think the U.S. is going to do next? Because it can't simply stop here, right? It can't simply stop here. The government as such is still technically in power.

Henry Hakamaki: You know, I have to say very quickly, you mentioned about Machado. I'll let Allison answer next. But you mentioned Machado. The latest thing that I saw from Trump in his press conference where he was talking about, well, the United States is going to run Venezuela until the situation stabilizes and there's a transition to a stable democratic government, which, of course, means a government that's subservient to U.S. interests. a reporter asked him do you know where machado is how is she going to be able to run the country you know how are you going to get her in there and trump goes well you know i don't think she's very popular she doesn't have support or respect in the country so i don't think that's an option she's a nice lady but she doesn't have respect in the country they're already dumping her you know the the The veneer of having a Venezuelan running Venezuela, of course, completely subservient to U.S. interests, doing the bidding for the United States at the behest of the United States. They're already dropping that and saying, well, she doesn't have support. Well, why doesn't she have support within the country? Because the Bolivarian Revolution has support within the country. So somebody who explicitly for their entire career has been predicating their political career on upending the Bolivarian Revolution's project and then being a subservient toady for the United States. Of course, that's not popular in Venezuela, but the United States does not care what's popular in Venezuela. That's not the reason that they're not going to have her there. They just figure,

Allison: why have a proxy when we can just do it ourselves if it's going to be the same either way they don't need the veneer anyway allison go in i have more to say but i know you actually want to respond here yeah well i wanted to touch on you know that same troll who i don't think deserves too much attention but has iterated a point that we are seeing as the rallying cry for liberal support for this intervention which is oh you know whatever like the far left says the people of venezuela are celebrating right this is the line that we are hearing over and over again And the response to left wing forces domestically who have gone out of their way to denounce this has been, you all are a bunch of out of touch leftists who don't know what's going on in Venezuela as you sit in the United States. And I do want to just push back on that in a very like direct, uh, anecdotal way to say that I have had the privilege over the last year of organizing very closely with comrades who have consistently taken trips to Venezuela to study the development of the Bolivarian revolution in person, to live with and work with and integrate with the commune system there and to see what is being built. And the thing that is consistently reported by those people who are not some troll on YouTube, but are actually going to Venezuela to look at what the project of socialist development looks like is that it is a transformational process In which neighborhoods are seizing control of territory through the communes, are engaging in collective production, are taking control over their own lives and building socialism in the neighborhoods that they live in. And it is improving their lives directly. And they are receiving support from the state and through the form of popular consultations that have provided funding for this process. The reality on the ground is that there is a massive movement of support for the Bolivarian Revolution. And even those on the left within Venezuela who have had tensions with the state or have had tensions with some of the PSUV politicians that, you know, there's some perception of negativity towards, have consistently insisted that that is a secondary contradiction. The primary contradiction is with U.S. imperialism and that there needs to be a united front within the Bolivarian Revolution against U.S. intervention at all costs. So the reality is that some fucking idiot in these comments does not know what they're talking about, but our people who go to Venezuela, who talk to the masses, who are taking control over their lives through the communal system, are telling us, we think US imperialism is the number one problem. Whatever other concerns we have, that would make everything worse. And so, no, actually, we're not a bunch of out of touch people who don't know what's going on. We are part of actual movements that have built connections with socialist projects globally. And this is what the people involved in them are saying. So just a little interjection there, because I think that that perception is completely out of touch with reality.

Adnan Husain: So remarks there. I did want to just kind of come in a little bit also on the Iran side of things, because as it happens, I was there for a week right before Christmas. and have been following closely the subsequent news about protests spreading in some of the western more provincial parts a little bit in the capital and so forth and seeing the repeated pattern of the way in which this sort of news is picked up as extremely hopeful and attempted to you know attempts to try and convert it into some sort of anti-islamic republic uh you know um kind of disquiet and resistance that the you know government is about to fall and collapse um in this kind of very anticipatory and hopeful sort of way twisting you know the news while ignoring You know, the reality, which is, of course, the economic situation is very difficult in a country that's been under maximum pressure sanctions, has been under sanctions since 1979. And like Venezuela, you know, its oil sector has been having to try and, you know, work without the latest techniques and developments because it's denied those opportunities to be able to work more efficiently and trade in oil. you know the global market for the needs that it has so there are legitimate kind of concerns that shopkeepers and others have but i will say that having been in tehran for a week i was remarkably impressed at the infrastructure you know as very often this is kind of characterized that um you know, the mullahs are just taking all of the money. There's so much graft and corruption. But actually, you see the investment in infrastructure everywhere. And of course, it could be even better if they were actually free to be able to use the full capacities and resources of their of their country. But they are a highly educated, highly gifted, technically advanced, you know, population that has serious aspirations. And if anything, You know, the 12 day war has really united people around Iranian nationalism. And I will tell you that a lot of the kind of consequences of earlier kind of cultural politics and religious politics that, you know, were used to, you know, create these fissures in society because many of these measures were unpopular with a certain segment of the westernized population, is you find that the Islamic Republic is no longer, at least in the streets of Tehran, enforcing this in any way remotely. I mean, at least 30 to 50 percent of women, depending on the neighborhood, were without hijab or loose, very loose hijab. And nobody said anything. Nobody did anything. There's no kind of phalanxes and cadres of religious police going around. They've basically given up on that and said it's more important to preserve the sovereignty of the country. And getting at the, what is the principal contradiction? This is in fact actually a great conversation to have a really wonderful question that if I would pivot away from the Iran situation to say the situation, the question there, just as the question in Venezuela, you know, is what is the principal contradiction in the world today that needs to be confronted? And we see, you know, very recently, this kind of a question has come up in drawing lines between those who identify themselves within the Western Marxist tradition, for example, and those who take an avowedly anti-imperialist approach to their Marxist orientation that honors the resistance against US empire as the fundamental problem facing the world and preventing global socialist revolution and a better world. And so this is a real interesting conversation and question to have. And it's come up with discussions of Gabriel Rockhill's recent book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, which is volume one of a planned three-part series, The Intellectual World War, that I think is so important and so necessary to I had a great conversation with him. You can check it out. It was called The Imperial Theory Industry. I know Brett, you're going to be having him on to talk about his book. I think this is an interesting issue to talk about a little bit, about how we make the case more clearly to people that, It's impossible really to envision a better world if we don't analyze properly and target the empire and imperialism as the fundamental first step we need. all of the obfuscations and other kinds of critiques of knee-jerk anti-US, far leftist, these are the kinds of critiques we hear constantly. And I'm wondering what you have to say to that and how present events are really in some ways confirming how important an anti-imperialist stance has to be to any future humanist politics.

Henry Hakamaki: Well, echoing the others and you, Adnan, certainly imperialism is the primary contradiction in most of the world, if not all of the world, with some minor exceptions of settler colonialism and the settler colonies. In those cases, that may be the primary contradiction. But for the rest of the world, imperialism really is the primary contradiction. And academic leftists tend to have this idea that, well, you know, if we could just theorize Marxism better or if we could implement some of the ideas of Marx himself better than the other contradictions that have been present within previous socialist experiments, we could just avoid them and we could get to this, you know, socialist reality without having to grapple with the question of imperialism because you know imperialism today is not the imperialism theorized by Lenin and you know Marx wasn't really looking at imperialism blah blah blah this is not a very productive conversation it's not a very useful conversation because what do we see is that in the vast majority of the world imperialism is what drives what is happening in those societies it is what drives the political situation of those societies it's what drives the economic situation of those societies imperialism is the the alpha here but i also want to talk about this question of resistance a little bit and how it relates to the question of imperialism so we talked about resistance a little bit earlier And I had made a point, which was a somewhat flippant point, and I meant to get back to it, but I never quite did earlier. So I'm going to take the opportunity now to. The flippant point earlier was that, you know, we can look at the statements by Kayakalas on one hand and Marine Le Pen on the other hand. We can look at what FIFA does to Russia and what FIFA is not going to do to the United States. This is not, none of these people, none of these organizations, the United Nations was another example I gave. These organizations, are not going to be the forms of resistance that actually challenge or upset imperialism in any way. Kayakalas is not going to stop imperialism because, well, she is kind of invested in it. Marine Le Pen is not going to upset imperialism because, one, she has no power, but two, even if she did, she also is an imperialist. the united nations was set up by the imperialist nations the united nations and particularly in the security council is controlled by imperialist nations those aren't going to change the situation fifa well they just need money and who has money is the imperialist so that's why johnny infantino is such a bootlicker these these individuals and these organizations are not going to challenge the primary contradiction in any way So when your question came earlier, Adnan, you mentioned Russia. Russia is, you know, and again, this is something that is a rather controversial point. And I get a lot of blowback on this. But Russia is directly confronting Western imperialism at the present moment. All of NATO is turned against Russia. Now, you may or may not disagree on that. how the special military operation began and what the origins of it were. The analyses there differ wildly. But if you look at how it has been unfolding, I think that it's fairly uncontroversial amongst those who are anti-imperialists to look and see that all of NATO is pointed directly against Russia. And at this point, the special military operation is an anti-Western imperialist struggle. Again, I get a lot of blowback for that, but there you go. Talking about China, I had a long conversation today with Ali Qadri. It'll be coming out on Guerrilla History in the next few weeks, about an hour and a half conversation on the record. But then we also talked off the record for about another hour. And this question of... China and what China can do and what China does do in order to provide some form of resistance against imperialism is a really interesting one. And Ali has a very interesting analysis of this, which is that there's a calculation that takes place. It's not just about supporting every single instance of resistance against imperialism it's finding the instances where there can be some effect from it and that requires one an idea on the ground of anti-imperialism in the locus of the struggle There needs to be a critical mass of anti-imperialist sentiment in that place, and then also a revolutionary sentiment in that place. Because if you throw money into a situation to support some small group that is fighting against imperialism, and the imperialism is really pushing down on that society, what are you doing other than immiserating yourself by sending your supplies to a struggle that is inevitably going to fail? Now, again, Ali is not saying that he agrees with this. This is his analysis of the situation, and I think that it's a rather cogent one. So when they look and they see, okay, what can we do to build an anti-revolutionary sentiment on the ground? What can we do to build a revolutionary sentiment on the ground? Those are the instances where they will act. And the question of where are those actually taking place? Now, that's where the question is. That is a much trickier question. And again, you can listen to Ali's response on that on Guerrilla History in a couple of weeks, but we'll certainly be having further discussion on that. With regard to Venezuela, though, what is the resistance going to look like in venezuela well first primarily it has to come from venezuela itself as we've talked about i know brett you mentioned that i think allison also mentioned that that the critical mass within the population of venezuela is in support of the bolivarian revolution there have been arms which have been distributed to militias across the country if there is going to be a successful defense against imperialism it is going to start and end with the venezuelan people With that being said, that does not mean that there cannot be ways for other movements globally, people globally, to support the defense of the nation against Western imperialism. I think back to a conversation that we had with Joma Sison, I know Brett, you and Adnan were both there for that one, where we asked Joma, Comrade Joma, the late founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines, What can people do who are in the West to support the struggle in the Philippines? And Comrade Joma said, speaking hypothetically, of course, OK, it wasn't that hypothetical. He says, if you have technical expertise, if you have knowledge of weapons systems, if you have knowledge of these material goods that can actually be utilized in the struggle against imperialism, find ways of transmitting those knowledge. material goods or the knowledge to the locus of national liberation struggles that is the least that you can do if you have that information if you have that knowledge transmit it also if you're in a national liberation movement globally find ways of making linkages with other national liberation movements but if you're in the global north what you can do is hypothetically, follow Comrade Joma's advice, but also you could also find ways of undermining your own national government. And I think that that's the main point here is that each of us is in a different situation. I think most of us live in different countries. I live in a very different country than you. Venezuela is a different country than what each of us live in. The situation for the listeners is inevitably going to be different as well. But you have to think what you can do in your situation to support the struggles against Western imperialism and do it.

Adnan Husain: Anybody else? Go ahead, Alison.

Allison: Yeah, I mean, I think to expand on that, this is where it also becomes necessary to center anti-imperialism in whatever other kind of works that we're doing at the same time, right? So when I mention our comrades here who have taken the time to study in Venezuela and learn about the situation, these are comrades who work within the tenant movement in the United States, right? And so the work that they are doing is very domestic in orientation and often not the kind of thing that looks like it would really like immediately relate to anti-imperialism. But the populations that we organize in the city are by and large populations which were displaced by imperialism in in the first place from Latin America generally and have come to the United States. Now we're living in precarity around issues of immigration and tenancy simultaneously. And one of the things that I think I'm very proud of this organization for doing is making sure to tie internationalism into the conversations that are had with those tenants. making sure that when we're working with the working class in the US, who again, already by and large have this first person experience of imperialism, who understand displacement, that we connect that to what is happening in Venezuela, that we connect that to US imperialism generally, that we talk about Palestine, the ability to tie all of this together and to make it clear that when we are organizing domestically, that is part of a broader struggle globally, and that the very processes that have created that domestic instability are the very processes that are playing out globally and that we need to oppose. So I do think one of the things that is a strength of Marxism, it's the thing that the postmodernists like to criticize it for, is its totalizing nature, right? It is able to show these interconnections between social phenomena that tie back to these larger contradictions. And so the work that we do organizing within our own communities has overlap with imperialism in very direct ways that we can talk about to build that critical mass of opposition to it. I often hear people talk about like, oh, well, how are you going to convince like your average American liberal who reads the New York Times to be opposed to imperialism? But also, that's not really who we're organizing. we're organizing immigrant communities at the periphery within the colonial power itself. And they already have some intuitive understanding of the harms that imperialism has done because of their experiences. And so tying that to these broader processes is key. So I do think in whatever work you're doing, if you are actually finding like the most precarious of the proletariat in the US and organizing among them, you will find fertile ground for being able to draw these connections. And that is really

Brett O'Shea: one of the necessities for those who are engaged in all kinds of work within the us so i would just point to that as well yeah i want to quickly just yeah i just want to quickly address a question because you know the earlier person might have might have been trolled but i think it's important that we wrestle with questions or maybe even um you know people disagreeing with us so this this person in the comments asked how is this imperialism if there's no actual occupation of the land And I think what's really important to remember there is that imperialism on the global stage is a function of what Lenin called the highest stage of capitalism or monopoly capital. You don't actually need to go in and take over the land to have it be an imperialist project. Imperialism is a function of monopoly capitalism going around the world, seeking resources to extract new markets to open up violently, et cetera. And in this case, especially with the With the Iraq war, there was at least an attempt to massage the message. There was congressional hearings and you had the weapons of mass destruction lie. The thing about the Trump administration is it's just all on the table. He just literally comes out and says, we're taking their oil. It's actually ours in some weird way. He has said he's going to take the land. Who knows what that actually means? But this in every regards meets the criteria of imperialism. I know most people know that. But it's worth mentioning. And the second part of the question was, why shouldn't the Monroe Doctrine be upheld? Because the Monroe Doctrine is not some international contract that everybody signed on to. It's just pure American belligerence that is basically when it originally arose, said we're not going to let any European power come over into our hemisphere. That will be that will be seen as a threat and will be met with force. Now it's kind of morphed into this idea is like, actually, you know, we kind of own all of the hemisphere. We can do whatever we want. We don't even have to pretend to abide by the rules based international order anymore. And so the Monroe Doctrine isn't something to be upheld. It is a function of U.S. imperial belligerence and this entitlement that the imperial apparatus has to the entire hemisphere. So. We reject the very foundations and basis of that argument. It is not something to be upheld nor respected. So I just wanted to make that point. And I also just wanted to kind of I wanted to dive into a little argument that I've seen kind of pop up around this this latest issue surrounding imperialism, which is some people are kind of mocking the idea that you often hear on the left. that the U.S. is an imperial apparatus in decline, right? That the U.S. empire is in decline and its actions are a function of its lashing out. Some people have criticized that and said, I don't know, the U.S. imperial apparatus looks pretty goddamn strong to me. It seems to be able to do more or less whatever the hell it wants. And so I don't know if you had another segue, Adnan, but I would be curious to, to hear all of your analysis on whether or not this is a function of imperial decline and desperate weakness, or if there is something to be said for the criticism that it actually seems that in all of these places, including Syria, and we'll see about Venezuela to some extent that the US is kind of getting its way. Now, do I think a land invasion of Venezuela is going to hold? No, it'll be met with popular resistance, but I think they've accounted for that as well. And I'm not exactly sure what their plan is there. But again, just opening that thought up for discussion.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, that's a great topic because we see more and more nefarious actions taking place and not being directly confronted and resisted by state actors, for example. This is... you know, a bit of a problem for us in analyzing, you know, the prospects and possibilities of multipolarity is if they're still invested in the system in such a way that they cannot contemplate or fear, in fact, actually to confront U.S. imperialist actions that have become more brazen, more direct, as it has less and less control over, you might say, the levers of international finance as its economic capacities have declined. And so it can't use as much of the fiscal or the soft or even the cultural power, which is also declining in some ways, because I think one thing we could say is that, for example, you know, the regime of international law the regime of global liberal institutions the kind of media power it can still cause confusion but people don't you know look to say the new york times the washington post the guardian etc for accurate analysis and understanding what's happening in the world they see it more and more obviously for what it is, which is propaganda, psychological war, disinformation. know so there is it seems to me certain kinds of retrenchment that's taking place and you have in place right now somebody like uh trump who is interested in trying to prop up the uh kind of apparatus that has proven itself to be increasingly less you know effective in the progress of the genocide and you know these kinds of kind of conditions and instead is seeking in a very short term aggressive sort of way uh to capitalize on opportunities and a moment of transition transition in the world system where there isn't a sort of clear kind of counterweight and counter force uh operating in a direct confrontation at a state level in the international sort of system and in the international economy. Instead, what we do see, however, about the limits and the weakness is that this is not the colonial era where Europe was able to control, invade, and occupy much of the world, most of the world through military control. It was capable of doing so at a certain stage. in history, the United States cannot win wars on the ground. I mean, the 12 day war with Iran showed that the costs would be extremely high. We will see if the people of Venezuela are resolute, are armed and disciplined, that this is not going to mean that the United States is uncontested in its attempts to reshape that society. It's going to have a serious confrontation on its hands. And in that sense, it cannot win these battles. What it can do is it seems prey upon by being aggressive, by being ahead of the curve, by being very proactive and taking advantage of a kind of stasis in kind of the geostrategic responses of the rest of the world that is working in a much more sort of patient, kind of laying foundations of development trying to protect sovereign you know development the belt and road initiative these kinds of things so it seems to me is that we've got different time scales operating here and we of course watch the news and we see the us doing you know you know some kind of crime after another and we think that they're actually setting the agenda but actually it seems to me If you take a broader kind of look, it is in decline, but that doesn't mean it can't do extreme damage during this phase. It's an extremely dangerous phase. And because it is not committed actually to the perpetuation of humanity, to the flourishing of human society, to sustainability of the environment and of this planet and biosphere and the very web of life, It, of course, can cause all kinds of destruction, chaos, because the people who are running this empire are, you know, imagining the kinds of things that George Bush did in 2004 already when, you know, he, you know, announced in front of the world, oh, we've had victory in Iraq. Now I want to talk about colonizing Mars. Well, that's actually what they think that they can do, which is deplete and destroy this planet and still manage to live a transhuman kind of existence. And so this is a fight to defend humanity. And it is happening because the empire is crumbling in various ways. But the resistance is a popular resistance. And we don't have organized collectivities like states that really represent humanity. the sovereign you know aspirations of humanity as a whole in a direct confrontational way

Allison: Yeah, I think that's all a good addition. I will add one thing briefly about the is this decline or not thing. And I do think for those who want to argue that it's not an era of imperial decline, part of the argument that you see pointed to is this idea that the U.S. is increasingly acting with impunity. Right. So you can see this, obviously, with U.S. action in relation to Gaza, obviously, with what has happened in the last 20, There has been this sort of attitude of impunity threatening to sanction ICC, just a total disregard for liberal institutions and the shift away from liberal institutionalism as a framework. And so what I often hear is, well, if the U.S. can be flagrantly in violation of liberal institutions and their norms, then that means that the U.S. is actually growing in power. But I think that that misses one of the key points and it misses something that I think the U.S. is also missing, which is that that institutionalism was actually key to America's position as a global hegemon. Those institutions were always subserving it to the American state. And the fact that America is gutting those and is gutting it softly. power through its gutting of USAID and other aspects of how it has really been able to project hegemony, not just militarily, but culturally does really indicate a strong decline. Liberal institutionalism was never a check on American power, it was always an extension of it. And what I think we are really seeing is the self destructive lashing out against that apparatus that it built in order to enable its power in the post-war era. And so a lot of the things that look like, oh, a state acting unilaterally with impunity, I would suggest are actually more a sign of decline than we realize, and more a sense that the US feels like those institutions are not able to be leveraged in the way they previously were. And it now needs to try to liquidate them in some form or another in order to move away from that. So I don't know. I'm pretty strongly a believer in the decline thesis on this, I think. And I think the collapse of institutionalism really does point to that. overall.

Adnan Husain: That's a great point. All I would say about that is that the part that I don't like about some people who do promote the decline thesis, which we've just been kind of ratifying and elaborating on, is that they kind of tend to frame it as inevitable. In other words, we don't really need to do anything. Oh, it's just going to collapse on its own. No, this is actually a very dangerous moment. There are hazards. There are real problems and challenges to face. But there are also opportunities once we put this into global perspective. Anybody else want to come in on this?

Henry Hakamaki: I just want to say something briefly about you mentioned, Adnan, that the United States is unable to win wars today. This is particularly true in the case where we have a country that has a fairly sizable population and people that are coalesced around their own national sovereignty. So Venezuela has over 30 million people in it. It has a very difficult geography. As we've mentioned throughout the show, there has been hundreds of thousands of arms which have been distributed to militias across the country. And the United States is now claiming that they're going to run Venezuela for some undefined, indefinite period of time until there's a transition. How exactly is the United States planning on running the country? They have no presence. Yes, did they go in? Did they capture Nicolas Maduro? Did they destroy some sites, military sites within the country? Did they bomb, it appears, Hugo Chavez's mausoleum? Yes, of course, the United States did all of this, but is this presence on the ground? Is this the grounds for an occupation? Is this the grounds for exerting actual control over the functioning of that country? No, of course not. You would have to have an actual invasion for that to take place. And we have seen how the United States military has performed in invasions in the last several decades. We just mentioned over 30 million people, hundreds of thousands of arms within the country. And the popular sentiment is that they would like to preserve the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution and oppose American imperialism. The United States is going to have a very difficult time actually achieving military goals. But that's not necessarily always the case. And I'm going again to my friend Ali Qadri to talk about you know sometimes just destruction and death is the purpose in itself this goes to ali's argument of the accumulation of waste which by the way if you haven't read ali's accumulation of waste go out and read it wherever you can The purpose of many of these imperialist actions is to create destruction, to create suffering, and to create death. And those processes in themselves not only perpetuate the imperialist logic, but also generate capital in themselves. We see this in again looking at the situation in ukraine today in the propping up of the continuation of the conflict the united states in the last year has now said oh we're not going to send arms for free it's a great business opportunity for us people can buy the arms from us and of course we'll send just enough to make sure that the conflict continues on indefinitely and we can continue to sell these arms this is something that also europe is doing europe is selling uh I know many of them have been given for free, but billions and billions of sales have been made, as well as write-offs of old military equipment. I don't know if many of the listeners are familiar with how write-offs of old military equipment go, but they're basically offloading unusable equipment for free, but it really saves them money in the long run. I'm not going to get into the technical processes of that because I'm not an expert in it, but there is a lot of articles that have been written within the last couple of years as a result of this offloading of old military materiel to Ukraine. But The logic of destruction and death produces capital in itself. And the United States government may not even fully believe that they can actually take over Venezuela and run the country from an occupied territory. But if they're able to destroy enough and kill enough people and perpetuate the destructive processes, perpetuate that waste, that in itself is something that perpetuates imperialism and allows them to continue on with that project, even if it will end in an embarrassing military defeat, as many of the United States' last few interventions have.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, yeah. Excellent roundup. I'm noticing that we have maybe about 15 plus minutes or so. And I do want to tell all of our listeners, it's been a great chat in the comments section, very lively, lots of questions. We can't get to all of the questions, but I've tried to highlight some of them and put them up on the screen. wonderful conversations taking place. Other people hopefully should have access to this. And even if they're not here now, they'll watch it later. So while you're on, if you would really kindly just like this stream, it means that it'll get onto the feeds of many more people as a result. of it being boosted on the algorithm. So please do make sure to do that. You can still share it for the balance of the conversation. You can share it so that people can watch afterwards and benefit from the discussion and the analysis. So please do take a hold of those things. So maybe there's a couple of other topics that we could kind of get into. We've covered quite a bit of ground. Through the lens of Venezuela, it's touched upon some other key questions about imperialism, about US decline, about the connections between what's taking place in West Asia and Latin America as parts of an interconnected world. We've talked a little bit about you know, response of the BRICS of Russia, China. And, you know, so we've looked at it kind of geopolitically, locally. Of course, there's lots of details to go over. This isn't a kind of news show to go into, like, you know, all the kind of details of what happened. And as more information is coming out, this is essentially breaking news. And we're trying to wrestle with how it fits into a larger kind of global picture. But a lot happened over 2025, you know, so as a year in history, pretty momentous, it began with the genocide, it continues with the genocide, except that, you know, under the cover of there being some kind of a deal, we know that the people of Palestine continue to suffer. And instead of getting the kind of attention, you know, that it was at least in kind of late summer, early fall where there was a lot of political pressure, there were flotillas, there were all kinds of things taking place, is that now it's kind of receded off of most people's feeds except for the occasional kind of posts from Palestinians themselves talking about the horrific situation that they continue to suffer with Israeli violence. blocking of life necessities to them and the terrible weather as they sit in floods caused by winter rains next to the rubble and ruins of their homes. These things continue. It's how the the the year opened how it's still closing there's a lot of domestic kind of news that we might take a look from the us or you know what's been going on in the west and so i just want to give everybody maybe a kind of a round to kind of bring up any issues that They would like to, that were important this year that they think are relevant. And then also maybe one or two things about what they expect going forward or what their hopes are going forward. And also, if possible, any way for you to get involved and engage in struggle locally, or at least recommendations about how you can take action here in the imperial core. So why don't we, you know, do a kind of, you know, quick round? Well, it doesn't have to be that quick, but I mean, around. And, you know, who'd like to go first? I don't want to put anybody on the spot since I, you know, let's go with Brett. Great.

Brett O'Shea: Yeah. So a couple of things. I'll do this pretty quickly. I should do streaming more because I like interacting with the comments and especially the people that have like criticisms or concerns and stuff. And some person said, like, you know, why is this actually beneficial? You guys are just seeming to just attack this vague concept of imperialism. But I think we've made it very clear. There's a grab for resources, including oil. There is an attack on an anti-imperialist state in the hemisphere of the United States that it's always wanted to topple. The Bolivarian Revolution was a fight to nationalize their own oil instead of letting it be siphoned and plundered by U.S. corporations. There's a need for hemispheric hegemony and the rise of multipolarity in a world in which more great powers exist and imperial decline is happening. There's a motivated reason why the U.S. would want to dominate its own hemisphere. Marco Rubio is the secretary of state. This has always been a wet dream of Marco Rubio. Trump is non-ideological and he's one of these rich guys that have known nothing but a full life of pampered comfort. And the way that these people feel strong is by exerting their bravado or trying to exert power in ways that hurt or crush other people. Trump is a lifelong rich kid. He's no nothing but being pampered. You mix that and he has this bravado and sane ego. You mix that with non-ideology and just the last person that whispered in his ears. He's the perfect vessel for neocons and the military industrial complex. And then there's also obvious incentives by monopoly capitalism writ large in the military industrial complex, as well as the possible getting ready for an attack on Iran. So I think we've covered that subject in depth, not just relying on vague concepts of imperialism. Somebody else asked about, and this goes to Henry's point of Venezuela, it suffices just to destabilize the country, right? You don't necessarily need to totally take it over. If you can, and we've seen this time and time again, just destabilize and destroy a country. It basically serves the interest of Western imperialism. And somebody in the comments said that they want civil war. The way that you would get civil war in Venezuela is by installing a puppet regime, And then funding and arming whatever tiny little marginal faction of perhaps the military or the population more broadly that would want to go against not only the Venezuelan military and the Venezuelan government as it's currently constituted, but millions and millions and millions of regular Venezuelans who know immediately who you are. And that's a tougher thing for the US to accomplish. I think a civil war implies that there's more divisions and fractures than there actually are in Venezuela. Again, while not everybody's happy with everything, they're very well educated through historical processes on what imperialism is, what a puppet government is, what the real intentions of the US are. Civil War require extra steps to be implicated. Okay, to Adnan's question, something I'm noticing, and we talked about this before we went on air, that's just worth watching. And this isn't the most important thing in the world, but it's an interesting thing that I've been keeping tabs on, which is this MAGA war split. Right. Because it seems that the base and we don't live in a democracy, so it doesn't really matter what a constituency or a base thinks. It doesn't matter what the American people think. It doesn't matter if Congress approves war anymore. It's just all out in the open. It's a corporate dictatorship. The tech oligarchs are going for A.I. so they can displace workers and not even have to worry about paying wages anymore. This is an all out acceleration is grabbed by the most reactionary factions of the billionaire class. And Trump is their vessel. So, you know, I just want to put that up front. But the MAGA civil war is this civil war between basically what Trump ran on and what Trump is doing. Trump ran on, and anybody on our side knows this was bullshit from the very beginning. We rightly mocked and laughed at anybody who fell for it. It's not even like the first Trump administration where maybe it's serious. We already saw what he did for one whole term, and now you're trying to tell us the second term he's going to become some anti-war, America first person who cares about regular people and fights against the elites? No, the best beneficiaries of the Trump administration have been Zionists, tech billionaires, and Epstein's clients. Ghislaine Maxwell got a nice little upgrade in her living situation because of Trump. Those people have benefited. Regular working Americans have not benefited whatsoever. The idea of America first, it's such a joke. The Ukraine war... The genocide against Palestinians is still going on. Israel's seven-front war in West Asia is still going on. And now we're adding a regime change war in Venezuela with the hopes of also adding one in Iran and perhaps Cuba. So that contradiction is growing. And what we call the MAGA civil war is precisely what comes next. You know, Trump... is governing in quite another what comes out he's been able to hold this insane coalition together what comes after trump now jd vance hopes it's him but the contradictions are still bursting asunder even those hopes by jd vance so that's something i think just to keep an eye on um And I think it behooves us as those on the left to understand what our opposition is doing and to understand the contradictions racking that coalition. That coalition is not long for this world. And we'll see who comes out on top. But institutionally, even though they've lost the constituent base, institutionally, the neocons have won and continue to win. And America first is just, you know, a campaign promise that was broken. And Nick Fuentes coming out on Twitter today and posting an American flag celebrating the attack on Venezuela, I just think highlights those contradictions and the absurdities of this coalition. It's going to be spun apart by its centrifugal forces, and I'm watching that.

Adnan Husain: Allison, would you like to go next?

Allison: Sure. Yeah. So I think two topics that I don't think we've talked about a ton that have been on my mind for the last year, and I think that will be very important for the next year, are climate change and immigration. I think those are two really crucial ones. And coincidentally, living in Los Angeles, these are the two that have been super on the mind of myself and people in this city. The year started with an unprecedented set of fires that took place in the middle of winter in January that burned their way into the city proper and destroyed urban neighborhoods. That's a pretty huge escalation of getting real about what climate change looks like and the types of disasters that can happen as a result of that. And so I think we will continue to see more disasters globally, not just obviously in the United States, but throughout the world where we see this exacerbation. Honestly, things look more and more dire on the question of climate change by the minute. And I also think that what we're really going to see is climate refugees becoming the new site of securitization of many Western states trying to stop immigration happening as a result of that. I know, you know, we talked about climate Leviathan at some point. And that concept, I think, is very, very meaningful and probably what we will see develop. So I would imagine we'll continue to see that. And that ties into the second topic that's been really on my mind, which is immigration enforcement in the United States. This second Trump administration is when we have seen a massive escalation in what that enforcement looks like, what the violence of it looks like, and just the extent to which the immigration enforcement apparatus is pervading the life of the country. It has become really the way through which domestic surveillance is being expanded and through which domestic repression beyond just of immigrants, but of those who are resisting this enforcement is being expanded throughout the country. And the securitization that is taking place throughout cities in the United States where there have been, I mean, in Chicago, there was like a helicopter raid on a building that was done by immigration enforcement. In Los Angeles, we've seen raids on warehouses, we've seen raids on neighborhoods. The end of my block, a business got raided and people were just hauled off the street and no one knew where they went for a while. This has expanded into a pervasive part of life within the United States and I think will continue to expand. On the flip side, I also think we are seeing immigration becoming a key issue where people are organizing in resistance. In Los Angeles, we have seen a massive development of the Community Self-Defense Coalition made up of dozens of organizations across the city patrolling, figuring out where raids are happening, watching where ICE is leaving from in Terminal Island, building this incredible network of communication and information that has linked organizations which previously focused on single issue work as a part of a broader network. And so I do think that that is a huge development and one of the ways that we will see opposition to this kind of anti-immigration fascism being a nexus point from which the left can build out, solidify itself. Truly, I have never seen the leftist organizations in the city more united and more willing to work together than I have in the face of the raids and what has happened after that. And so I think that trend will continue in 2026. I want to be hopeful about that and think that as repression goes up, we will also see organization in response to that. And so, you know, climate, immigration, these are going to be highly intertwined issues, and they are going to continue to be a hotbed for the domestic situation in the U.S., at least. And obviously, internationally, as people continue to be displaced because of U.S. imperialism and the destabilization of climate globally. So those are the two other topics on my mind right now.

Adnan Husain: Excellent. Thanks so much. Henry.

Henry Hakamaki: Yeah, I think that leaves me. So a couple of points. We've been talking about Trump and how we haven't mentioned so much, but you have to remember that Trump always touted himself as the peace president and his supporters touted him as the peace president. We've been talking about Venezuela today. We could go back about what has it been a week or two since the new U.S. national security strategy came out, which was really pivoting more towards Latin America, this Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. But it's also worth keeping in mind that Trump was never a peace candidate. He was never a peace person. I know that I'm not breaking any new ground for the listeners of this show, but it is worth keeping in mind that this is nothing new. A lot of the interventions that the United States was supporting were done by proxies before or were not started under Trump, but were massively expanded under him. For example, we mentioned about the 12-day war on Iran during this. The United States didn't directly attack Iran in the 12-day war, but He did provide cover by having these fake negotiations with Iran to lull them into a false sense of security and then provided support for Israel during that 12-day war. course talking about iran further we could also talk about the fact that he sent u.s bombers directly into iran and bombed infrastructure within the country and that three years ago what would it be three years ago yesterday no can't be my my ears are off it's almost two in the morning so i'm off but it was an anniversary of qasem soleimani what year was that 20 19, 2018, 2019, I'm losing track of time. In any case, it was during his first term, maybe 2020, two in the morning, can't think straight anymore. But in any case, assassinations of high ranking officials in sovereign countries as well. That's something that Trump directly has done before. We can talk about Yemen. I know that we've talked about the valiant defense of Palestine that Ansar Allah attempts to carry out with their limited means in Yemen. But we don't often talk about the fact that the United States directly was bombing Yemen on a daily basis. Operation Rough Rider expanded to the point where by last March, this is Trump's second term, There was daily bombings of Yemen, daily, killing hundreds of civilians across the country. can talk about somalia now i know that there's this big discussion of somali immigrants to the united states and this demonization of those communities by republicans right now but we can also talk about somalia as a country during trump's first term he authorized 219 bombings of somalia and already within the last year 118 more times if that pace is maintained Trump will have bombed Somalia more in this second term than Biden, Obama, and Bush combined. I don't think anybody calls Biden, Obama, or Bush peace candidates, but somehow Trump still can claim that he is a peace candidate. We can talk about continued US support for Kiev. We can talk about the role of the U.S. in Syria with the recent overthrow of the government there. We can talk about blatant support for Israel in the genocide against Gaza. Yes, that didn't start under Trump, but it certainly didn't get any better. We can talk about the assassinations of various figures. He is not a peace candidate, and this pivot towards Latin America does not mean as some people were quick to assume that they were going to be pulling away from intervening in other parts of the world. This is just that there is going to be an even expanded focus on the Americas, and we're already seeing that with this blatant aggression against Venezuela. Moving on to another topic that I wanted to briefly talk about is technology. I know that in our last yearly roundup, we talked about artificial intelligence a little bit because it was kind of that time where everybody was talking about it. But the developments in technology, including in AI, are continuing. And there's a couple of points that I think are worth thinking about. I'm not going to get too deep into them because this is the end of our time, but listeners should think about these things. We did talk last year about how much energy is required to run those AI servers. That is not going down. The amount of power that is being used for AI is only expanding at this point. And at the current time, That is mostly being driven by fossil fuels. Hey, surprise. It's not all renewable that is being used by AI. It is fossil fuels, which is contributing to, again, the climate crisis, which we've been talking about in our last couple of discussions as well. But that is something that is not going to change anytime soon. Why? Because you are not going to have a fundamental reorganization of the way that technology is fueled under capitalism. Capitalism has an interest in profit. It does not have an interest in the environment as such. It only has an interest in the environment to the extent that it can continue to profit from the environment. There's a lot of works that I can point you to that would get you more into the analysis of how capitalism cannot address the climate question, but I'll just point you to two very quickly. One is one that I worked on, so it's a shameless plug for this one. Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology, which was published by Iskra Books within the last year or so. Highly recommend reading that. I know that we'll have a discussion about it soon on Guerrilla History. I talked with Salvatore, my co-translator of that. And there's a couple other places that are talking about wanting to have us interview about that book. But Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology, you can download the PDF for free at iskerbooks.org. But also my frequent collaborator and friend, Salvatore Engel de Mauro, recently put out an academic text Ecosocialism, a Primer. And that book is, I think, the gold standard for understanding what ecosocialism tendencies, plural, are, what they're predicated on, the downsides of various tendencies, the strengths of various tendencies, as well as why it is impossible to address the situation without understanding adequately adopting an eco-socialist approach to the climate crisis. So thinking about technology from the eco side is very interesting, but also there's the flip side of the coin, which is digital sovereignty. Digital sovereignty is something that is becoming increasingly important as we see the ways that imperialism acts on countries take more varied ways. So in the past, there was you know, financial constraints that they would put on country, economic blockades, open military interventions, assassinations, coups, et cetera, et cetera. We knew all of those various ways, but in today's world with the globalization of the economy and globalization of technology, not having sovereignty over the infrastructure, the digital infrastructure within your country, as well as the financial infrastructure of your country. It allows you to be constantly at threat of imperialist intervention within your affairs. So living in Russia, we saw that when 2022 came, what happened? All of a sudden, Russia was cut off from all of the outside world in terms of financial systems. Those sanctions are still in place. I still can't transfer money to or from Russia from my American bank account. Not that it's a big deal. I don't have any money in it, but, you know, I couldn't even if I wanted to. But also technology is a very interesting point as well, because. I cannot tell you the percentage of websites that I frequently used for work related purposes, other purposes that are not available because either they have blocked Russians from using them or the Russian government has blocked them for having propaganda on the site or whatever other justification it is at that moment. But the majority of commonly used sites at this point are not available here without the use of a VPN and VPNs are being cracked down on these days as well. So what does that mean? If you don't have digital infrastructure indigenously produced within your own country that is controlled by your country, if you're not a Russia who has all of these mechanisms for circumventing these sorts of things that have been developed over decades, going to have a bit of a problem if you decide to go against the imperialist hegemon because if they cut you off you don't have those alternative mechanisms in place and it is difficult i can tell you even with our alternatives here it is difficult to not be able to use youtube for example without having to fire up a vpn youtube I cannot send files on most file sharing sites without a VPN. And like I said, the VPNs are getting blocked these days too. So it pretty much has to be indigenously produced if we want to have insurances that we can use this technology. And I think that I'll close for now because I've been talking for too long and I'll probably get less coherent as the night rolls on.

Adnan Husain: Thanks, Henry. You kind of stole one of my kind of under discussed on our program topics, which was, of course, tech. and the whole security surveillance architecture and apparatus that, as you're pointing out, if we don't have alternatives, you don't have sovereignty. It's very crucial in these times, but also the tech bros and, you know, what's happening in global capitalism, you know, as these kind of tech billionaires are scooping up all of the kind of uh surplus uh you know that's there and increasing the you know conditions of um you know um enforced um you know enforced impoverishment of the world as well as of course the environmental devastation which is what you were talking about in terms of the energy resources um so I think that's something of a topic as well connected with 2025 in some ways kind of being the year of AI, you know, where AI went from, you know, just kind of... curiosity of bots and asking ChatGPT to write a sonnet like Walt Whitman and then seeing whether this kind of entertainment, but this attempt to ramp up this idea that AI is the future, that whatever they are calling artificial intelligence is somehow some revolutionary change for the world. In some sense, it seems to me that this is a bubble that will also burst in various ways. Of course, there will be some applications, but in point of fact, people are not finding that, in fact, it actually really is a productive change. in many ways, it's something of a bubble. And I think as well, it's a way of funneling all kinds of research money and corporate welfare, which is what we saw at the very beginning last year when Trump made this big announcement with Larry Ellison and other tech bros, basically, that they were going to invest all of this money in AI. So 2025 started with this kind of like announcing that US would be a leader by making hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in AI. And then You know, the next day, DeepSeek launches, you know, at $5 million in cost for development and free application. And, you know, just exposed what a kind of boondoggle this whole thing really is, that it's just more corporate welfare, just like the rest of the military industrial tech surveillance. So that's something to watch how that goes and whether there are lines of resistance that can open up in that kind of digital sphere and infrastructure. And I would ask people to perhaps go check out um you know um my conversation with sayid mustafa ali a radical computing scholar who says we need a butlerian jihad right okay so if you don't know that in the backstory of dune go check it out but basically we have to think about you know what are the forms that resistance can take to the tech overlords and their imperialist designs on our life our biosphere our wealth and and our very existence. Because as I said, I alluded to earlier, I think these are extremely dangerous people with a project of transhumanism, which is essentially to turn the rest of us humans to animals while they try and escape the human condition as gods, right? This is their sort of dream. And that's a disgusting kind of perversion of humanity That we have yet to really honor the dignity of the human in this world. So we're not ready for transhumanism. I'm sorry. So the last thing that I just wanted to say is about Allison's point about refugees. We've been seeing that the whole politics of the West is organized around this rightward shift to demonizing refugees and making them the very basis for a fascistic sort of politics. They'll be driven by climate, but they've already been driven dramatically by war, you know, by these terrible wars across the world, by the terrible policies and interventions and subversions in Latin America and West Asia and so on. And so, you know, That's really a very important point. Henry mentioned the demonization of Somalis. This is basically the coin in trade. We have to find ways to circumvent this demonization and scapegoating of refugees for all of the ills and problems of the corporate consumer capitalism that we're suffering under. This is just a deflection by the right wing. And unfortunately, Because there is a populist outrage with the impoverishment of our life, of our culture, of our, you know, very well being. You know, there is, you know, we are ripe for various kinds of explanations if we don't have the correct analysis. What we see is that the right wing takes its criticism of corporations and of the elites, etc. But they do so in a way to try and deflect from working class, you know, multiracial solidarity and to try and, in fact, demonize some component of the population, you know, while ignoring racism. that the real devastating enemies that we have are our class enemies. And so that's a thing to kind of watch for. It's part of that MAGA kind of implosion that's happening that Brett talked about. And so I think those are things to think about. I just want to end my point a little bit with just asking people to support causes like Lifeline for Gaza, for the Samir Project. These are wonderful organizations that are trying to help Palestinians stay on their land and especially the Samir Project does infrastructure projects for collective mutual aid run by Palestinians. We need to support that abroad in Palestine and also look to mutual aid organizations in your communities. And I'll just highlight one charitable foundation that's close to my heart here in 2026 as we're on the cusp. I should have mentioned this, you know, if we'd done this stream a few days earlier in 2025, I would have said, hey, tax deductible donation you could do, but you can still always support and help. Rahima Foundation, you can go to rahima.org. This is a charitable organization founded in San Jose by my mom to help refugees who were coming to the Bay Area and couldn't deal with the high cost of living there, people who are coming from Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, all the kind of people subject to the global war on terrorism and its consequences coming to the Bay Area. So you can support that foundation. And of course, and I will turn it over for everybody to promote and plug there. platforms. I just want to say it's always wonderful to be with this group of people and it's wonderful to be with a community of listeners, watchers who are coming from the various shows together here with us. Absolutely phenomenal. This is a community. Let's stay connected. Let's keep working together, get involved. And if you can, you can always, of course, support the Adnan Hussain Show, patreon.com slash Adnan Hussain. I'll let Henry plug Guerrilla History and my friends, comrades, and colleagues talk about how you can get involved in supporting there. So Brett, why don't you start us off?

Brett O'Shea: Sure, yeah. As far as everything we do, Allison and I, Red Menace and Rev Left is at revleftradio.com. Easy to find us, easy to find both the shows, any way to support us, all of that. It's all very much appreciated. And I'll give a little shout out. There's so many orgs to promote, but I just met recently with the comrades here in Omaha PSL who just started a new organization. And they're all incredibly committed. They're out right now protesting aggression against Venezuela. And they've just kind of started, got on their feet recently. So I wanted to give them a shout out. But any way you can get involved in your community is important. You know, it almost becomes trite on the left to say organized. It's the only path forward. The real solution to everything we've talked about here is massive political power. And the only way you build political power is from the bottom up, on the left at least, right? We don't have corporate donations. We don't have the interests of the elite on our sides. So organizing is a way of contributing to the construction of political power. It never feels like enough. It never comes quick enough. But there really is no other option. So I would just urge you to find... some organization in your community doing good work, a tenants union, an established organization, national organization with a local chapter and get involved in any way you can. And you have the secondary benefit of meeting really fucking cool people and creating new friendships and giving your life meaning outside of work, consume, sleep, repeat. So those would be my words of advice.

Allison: Oh, yeah, I can go next. Yeah, sorry. I think my audio cut out for a second. Yeah, so I do Red Menace with Brett, which is our podcast. Again, you can find that on the RevLeft site. I think we're on Twitter. We don't really use it, but at red underscore menace underscore pod podcast. There's very rarely a tweet on there. Yeah, that's basically it in terms of social media. You can check out our show. We talk about history. We talk about theory and other topics. Sometimes we do kind of current events. Beyond that, I want to plug what Brett said. I think, you know, it does always sound right to be like, go organize, but like genuinely go organize. If you are in LA, there are countless organizations, the Community Self-Defense Coalition, I would point to. But in other major cities in the US, the same sorts of defense coalitions have been built in response to immigration and I know need people involved in them and need more in terms of just people who can be on the ground doing work. So find ways to get involved, find ways to not just be an internet socialist, but to actually go out and put it into practice and do something with it. That's kind of the biggest thing that I can pitch right now. So that's where I'm at.

Henry Hakamaki: Yeah, as for me, the ways that you can follow me are rather limited right now. Since I mentioned, basically every site is blocked from one side or the other or both. So social media is not something I'm really on right now. But if you look for me, you can find me and follow me. Maybe at some point I'll be back on it. I'm at Huck 1995 on Twitter. Guerrilla History is on Instagram. all of many social media platforms again you can follow that and if you want to listen to guerrilla history it's available on most podcast platforms to support guerrilla history you can go to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history that's g-u-e-r-r-i-l-l-a history and i also just want to shout out iskra books which I think many of the listeners are probably aware I'm involved with and have a couple of book projects that I've worked on which have already come out through Iskra Books. We didn't mention Lissero's Stalin History and Critique of a Black Legend yet, but that came out through Iskra Books. I worked on that translation. We did mention Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology, which came out through Iskra Books. Again, all of those PDFs are available for free at isforbooks.org. We have another Lucerto book coming out very soon. Spoiler alert, working on that one right now. Those PDFs are available for free, but if you do have the ability to buy the physical books, at iskrabooks.org that helps sustain iskra to continue making the work that they do and as for supporting organizations i'm just going to echo what everybody else said look for local organizations primarily my recommendations are going to be absolutely irrelevant to you because as i'm in russia i cannot send money to any uh foreign organizations and you cannot send money to any organizations that i'm involved with here in russia But the point is, is do look for organizations that are doing good and important work around you. That can be local. It can be regional. It can even be national. But find the ones that are relevant for you, that you believe that they're doing a good thing. Get involved with them and support them however that is possible for you in your situation.

Adnan Husain: Wonderful. Well, listeners, that was Revolutionary Guerrilla Menace 2025 Year in History Edition. Wow. I'm just so happy and pleased to have been part of it with my friends and comrades and with all of you. I really want to wish all of you a safe, healthy, happy 2026, where you will find spiritual and political fulfillment. Let this be the year of revolution. All right, everyone. Solidarity to you all. And see you on all these other platforms, future shows. It's been wonderful to be with you. Let's start 2026 correctly. right, not only from this conversation that we've enjoyed, learned and benefited from, but go out and make a difference in your communities. So, again, thanks, everyone. We'll see you soon. Solidarity. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.