A schema, in definition #2 in the graphic above, can stand alone or be incorporated into a full set of such frames, an ideology.

In the century-and-a-half class struggle between big capital and labor, there have been two schema in contradiction to, at odds with, at class-war with, one another.

The schema of the finance capital (Jamie Dimon et al., the banksters), manufacturer capital (the Kochs), and rentier capital (people like Jeff Bezos) is *NATIONALISM.* The idea that one’s home country, no matter how flawed, how self-destructive and predatory, must be defended against “enemies from without.”

This schema was the basis of the whole 20th century “cold and hot” wars against socialism. In the USA and Euro-nations, it was weaponized and aimed at the workers. When the U.S. workers began to admire and form relations with the new Soviet state and its Party, the attacks on leaders of labor who leaned that way became intense, so intense that in the McCarthy period, this nationalism became the basis for splitting and wrecking the U.S. labor movement–generally from within.

INTERNATIONALISM was and is the schema of the world’s workers’ movements, and was first articulated as the program and platform of the International Workingmen’s Association, pardon the gender-specific name there. So, that was the First International. there was to follow a Second International, which was utterly destroyed during the period of the rise of Euro-fascism. A Third International arose that was under direction of the Soviet state, and took the form of the United Front Against Fascism in Europe.

Today’s internationalists would be all of us in the USA who welcome immigrants — workers from Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Indian subcontinent. Those who are anti-deportations. Those who want workers in Mexico unionized at equal status with North American workers (there goes the incentive to out-source your work, U.S. workers). In India, you could perhaps describe as Internationalist, the supporters of the autonomous status of Kashmir, where at least there was, prior to Modi’s regime seizing the region and locking it down as an Indian Nationalist project, co-existence between the Pakistani and Indian nationalities in the region.

Something to think about. The Trumpists’ Schema is simple nationalism, as it is with the Boris Johnson govt. in Britain, or the Bolsonaro fascists of Brasil, or with any South American state seeking to suppress their indigenous peoples. In contradiction to the nationalist project for South America, stands the Bolivarist revolution, which insists that the nations of South America are “plurinational” including indigenous nations within their boundaries; it further insists on the independence of all South America from the European settler economies. In general, there is a sense of solidarity between nation-states which are striving toward Bolivarist revolution, as Venezuela and Bolivia prior to the U.S.-sponsored coup d’etat which brings the Christiano-fascists to power and seeks to re-oppress the indigenous nations of the region.

The thing the prevents nationalism having any further success: It’s not possible to de-globalize a fully globalized world economy. History doesn’t go back-and-forth. It proceeds along a certain, dialectical-materialist, path, not subject to the whims of demagogue politicians.

Further, we can see that the schema of nationalism can be shared across political boundaries, across the weak ideologies which characterize current Trumpist-Republicanism and anti-Trumpist Democratic Party leadership.

In the reaction against the loss to Trump by Secretary Clinton in 2016, there was a sudden new framework, a scaffolding for a new edifice for the Democrats: Russiagate. The mission became, protecting American sovereignty from Russian interference. Opposition to Russia, in general, Russia, the nation, became the new loyalty oath for this new nationalist project.

“However,” you may object, “what about the US standing strong with our ally, Ukraine, is that not internationalism, pure, unselfish internationalism?”  Recall that the sudden American interest in Ukraine’s well-being was heavily publicized following the Russian annexation move on the Crimean peninsula, which quickly followed the well-documented (but not well-publicized in the USA) U.S.-orchestrated coup d’etat in Ukraine which had removed Yanukovych virtually overnight.

Eric Zuesse is quite explicit in naming the Ukrainian “revolution” or “Euromaidan” as a U.S.-sponsored coup in that nation:

“On March 23rd, Gallup headlined “South Sudan, Haiti and Ukraine Lead World in Suffering”, and the Ukrainian part of that can unquestionably be laid at the feet of U.S. President Barack Obama, who in February 2014 imposed upon Ukraine a very bloody coup (see above), which he and his press misrepresented (and still misrepresent) as being (and still represent as having been) a ‘democratic revolution’, but was nothing of the sort, and actually was instead the start of the Ukrainian dictatorship and the hell that has since destroyed that country, and brought the people there into such misery, it’s now by far the worst in Europe, and nearly tied with the worst in the entire world.

“America’s criminal ‘news’ media never even reported the coup, nor that in 2011 the Obama regime began planning for a coup in Ukraine. And that by 1 March 2013 they started organizing it inside the U.S. Embassy there. And that they hired members of Ukraine’s two racist-fascist, or nazi, political parties, Right Sector and Svoboda (which latter had been called the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine until the CIA advised them to change it to Freedom Party, or “Svoboda” instead). And that in February 2014 they did it (and here’s the 4 February 2014 phone call instructing the U.S. Ambassador whom to place in charge of the new regime when the coup will be completed), under the cover of authentic anti-corruption demonstrations that the Embassy organized on the Maidan Square in Kiev, demonstrations that the criminal U.S. ‘news’ media misrepresented as ‘democracy demonstrations,’ though Ukraine already had democracy (but still lots of corruption, even more than today’s U.S. does, and the pontificating Obama said he was trying to end Ukraine’s corruption — which instead actually soared after his coup there).
Photo below: In a Human Rights Watch story 14 June, 2018 (as the bi-partisan Nationalistic Unity in the USA for increased military aid to the neo-fash Ukrainian coup regime was being forged)…

“The head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor said it was “the most blatant coup in history” but he couldn’t say that to Americans, because he knows that our press is just a mouthpiece for the regime (just like it was during the lead-up to George W. Bush’s equally unprovoked invasion of Iraq — for which America’s ‘news’ media suffered likewise no penalties).

“When subsequently accused by neocons for his having said this, his response was “I told the business journal Kommersant that if the US were behind a coup in Kiev, it would have been the most blatant coup in history,” but he was lying to say this, because, as I pointed out when writing about that rejoinder of his, he had, in fact, made quite clear in his Kommersant interview, that it was, in his view “the most blatant coup in history,” no conditionals on that.”

See the whole story on “OffGuardian” here

Among Democrats today (as of this posting), you do not see the same kind of practiced outrage (around Crimea), over the continued “Annexation” of a chunk of the nation-state of Syria by U.S. troops helping Trump to “hold on to the oil” there, do you?

You would not be far off if you described the “Opposition” or #Resistance party stance towards Russia as also being under the Nationalist schema. Zuesse’s piece above highlights the fact of a growing U.S. antagonism towards Russia during the Obama era. This antagonism is not based in some half-assed notion of Internationalism. We are seeing a Cold War revival based not in the conflict between a federation of nations under Russia practicing a socialist mode of production, versus a federation of nations under the USA practicing the capitalist mode of production.

Instead, you could describe today’s Cold War as competing Caucasian nationalisms if you wanted to be snarky about it, as we are being here. -Staff.

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