Trump's Tariffs Aren't Economics. They're a Cultural Purge | Washington Monthly

That’s what’s behind the economic shock therapy now underway. It’s similar to the disaster economics that the U.S. used in Chile and post-Soviet Russia, and Javier Milei is inflicting on Argentina today. But it’s inflected with the fervor of a Cultural Revolution—ironically more reminiscent of Mao than Pinochet with its war on intellectuals and its bestowing glory on farms and factories. The goal is to destroy the professions that make resistance possible—this is why you start with law firms instead of HMOs—then tighten the screws once people are desperate enough to submit. When the unrest comes—and it always does—so do crackdowns.

This article fucking nails it. They don't care if they lose a lot of the talented people to Europe. The people who don't have the capacity to leave will be forced to fall in line anyway.

It's why the only way to fight it realistically is to build parallel systems outside of capitalism. Begin building a new community built on bartering labor to support one another. It will allow enough people to bail on US capitalism to send their plans into a tailspin. Of course, there will be violent pushback against this, so like the Black Panthers who first pioneered their own parallel systems because US capitalism punished the black community for existing, we must have people ready to protect the new systems that have been built. Fighting fascism is more complicated than just buying guns and taking them on. It's going to have to be a combination of building systems we can rely on other than capitalism as well as building groups who can and will do their best to protect those systems.

We will have more Fred Hamptons, and they must be willing to accept that they may be assassinated just like the original Fred Hampton.

I really don't give a shit what his motives are. Greed? Ego? Coercion? Power trip? Russian puppetry? An actual earnest desire to promote American manufacturing and self-sufficiency? It doesn't fucking matter because Trump is destroying the American economy, turning all of our allies against us, revoking civil rights, and supporting and committing ethnic cleansing and genocide. By whatever means necessary, this shit needs to stop, and soon.

But it isn’t. There’s no ideology behind it. The only purpose is to motivate countries and companies to bribe Trump to remove the tariffs. It’s just a mafia-style shakedown.

Great article. These guys have no idea what's coming. Its one thing to be born poor and remain that way. Its quite another to have wealth and status and lose all of it. The counter-reaction is what I'm more afraid of- the kind of shit that produces a Stalin or a Mao.