When political energy is channeled into opposing an individual, that energy is diverted from the work of building the popular power needed to challenge the empire he represents.
Lenin is clear, “...the self-determination of nations means the political separation of these nations from alien national bodies, and the formation of an independent national state.” The federal occupation of U.S. cities, most recently Minneapolis just as much as the U.S. imperialist interventions in Venezuela, the Republic of Haiti, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the African continent, and Palestine via its most well equipped military installation, the zionist ethnostate of Israel, to name a few, confirms that the U.S., both globally and domestically, is the biggest impediment to the concept of self-determination as characterized by Lenin.
I recently discussed the idea that the “global south” is both a preposition and a position in the larger social order of racial capitalism, as well as the concept of domestic colonialism as a series of semi colonies interspersed throughout the U.S. The cold blooded execution of Alex Pretti in broad daylight by murderous masked men cloaked in a bloody blanket of qualified immunity, just 17 days after Renee Good experienced a similar fate, represented an assault on the self-determination of both as well as Keith Porter, Parady La, Heb Sanchaz Dominguez, Victor Manuel Diaz, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, and Geraldo Lunas Campos who were also executed by federal agents in 2026. Additionally, all of them were also subjected to a violation of their people(s)-centered human rights (PCHRs). This is not much different than the interdiction of self-determination and PCHRs we see consistently in Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities across the nation that are infested with militarized local and state law enforcement, and it’s largely rooted in the same mentality, the psychopathology of white “supremacy” that informed the colonization of the U.S. through extermination and forced relocation and isolation (i.e. “reservations”) of Indigenous peoples.
It’s unfortunate that many reactionaries, especially liberals, as well as far too many self-identified “progressives,” and so-called democratic socialists (who are essentially social democrats) are quick to attribute the current material conditions of federally occupied cities and states throughout the nation to President Trump and the acolytes that make up his administration’s federal agencies. By singling out Trump, these reactionaries actually vindicate accusations of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” (TDR) a term that is defined in a piece of recently introduced legislation, H.R. 3432, as, “a behavioral or psychological phenomenon involving intense emotional or cognitive reactions to Donald J. Trump, his actions, or his public presence, with early documented references emerging during his 2016 presidential campaign.”
H.R. 3432 was introduced by Republican congressman Warren Davidson and proposes to fund the National Institute of Health to study TDR in an effort to, “study the psychological and social factors underlying TDS, including its origins, media influences, and potential links to extreme behaviors, to inform public health strategies.” That a member of an, ostensibly, equal branch of the federal government even introduced this bill is, on the surface, egregious. Yet, deeper cogitation of the idea of TDR actually reveals a modicum of veracity that should be considered given the impulse of liberals and “progressives” to lay all that is currently afflicting the U.S. at the feet of Trump. The fact of the matter is that Trump is a profound pronouncement of what the U.S. has been since its inception - a settler colonial state that will utilize draconian imperialism, both domestically and internationally, to sustain a global order of white “supremacy” ideology, colonialism, and patriarchal violence in service to the higher order of racial capitalism.
The formation of the U.S. was contingent on systemic brutal land theft from and extermination of the Indigenous peoples of the so-called Americas - this much is incontrovertible. In doing so, the colonizers excised the ability of Indigenous nations the right to existence as separate states as Lenin describes. This same mentality informs the Monroe Doctrine, which essentially does the same thing to Latin America and the Caribbean that the original colonizers did to Indigenous peoples in what would become the U.S. What we are witnessing today in cities and states across the country is simply a continuation of the legacy and not due to the sole acts of one president - in this case Trump. In fact, there are myriad other examples of the robbery of self-determination via domestic colonialism by other presidents who have pronounced the colonial relationships of internal domination and aggressive imperialist policies globally in a larger effort to sustain an imperial order that advances the interests of U.S. capital.
How quickly the liberal reactionaries forget, or choose to forget, the occupation of college campuses when students were being accosted and beaten by local and State law enforcement for speaking out against the zionist ethnostate’s genocide against Palestine during the Biden/Harris administration. An estimated 3,100 arrests were made on nearly 73 campuses, while Biden unapologetically quipped, “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent…” And just as there has been no accountability, thus far, for those executed by federal agents under Trump, the zionist mob that attacked students at the University of California Los Angeles campus during the Biden presidency continues to enjoy immunity. And Biden increased funding for ICE by $3.4 billion while also aiding, abetting, and funding the zionist ethnostate’s genocidal machine to the tune of $26 billion in 2024 alone.
Under Obama, who was bestowed the ignominious sobriquet of “deporter in chief,” ICE funding was increased to roughly $18 billion by 2014 to assist with his fast-tracked removal of undocumented immigrants. His presidency also saw the executions of Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Philando Castille, and Freddie Gray in cities and states across the country and none of their assailants received any jail time for their wanton acts. Obama was also continued the U.S. imperial machine by continuing the occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan, killing so many people in the process that Southern Methodist University professor Ben Voth characterized it as a genocide.
Trump is simply the latest leader of the project of U.S. domestic and global imperialism. What makes his reign of terror unique is that it comes at a time when racial capitalism is in a quintessential crisis forcing it to prey on anything and anyone to facilitate its survival. And with the lies of U.S. institutions becoming more apparent, racial capitalism has signaled it has no problem using these institutions to sacrifice white people like Good and Pretti and render them disposable if necessary to maintain the status quo. And rather than use these rising revelations of the contradictions of racial capitalism, liberal institutions and non profits, that are basically arms of the Democrat Party, are choosing instead to electoralize rather than humanize this salient junction of the U.S. story.
The TDS of liberal institutions in the U.S. is complicit in conjuring the lie, smokescreen, and illusion of “American exceptionalism.” They obfuscate the masses from seeing that the only elements within U.S. empire with “self-determination” are racial capitalism and the ruling bourgeois class with the ability and the “right” to benefit from it. TDS is a tactic of the petty bourgeois, in the form of the U.S. liberal apparatus, to maintain the status quo because they believe they can benefit from it if they simply exchange the actors who are in power from Republican to Democrat. They are, afterall, also capitalists with slightly less incendiary rhetoric and to disguise their similarly draconian policies. But this myopic thinking is becoming more and more suspect as more are realizing, in the wake of Good and Pretti’s executions, that even elements of the petty bourgeois are not safe from being rendered disposable by those pulling the levers of power, regardless of the political party they represent.
Elections alone cannot deliver self-determination, only a program of People(s)-Centered Human Rights through collective organization of the oppressed masses can make this happen, as opposed to the belief that rudderless metaphysics and arbitrary laws can deliver us to liberation. Hence why we must be cognizant of TDR and disciplined enough to reject it when liberal reactionaries attempt to inundate us with it. To this end, perhaps it may not be the worst thing in the world for H.R. 3432 to be ratified as it will further expose the U.S. empire as a system, not a function of who’s president, nor which political party of the duopoly heads the U.S. government.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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