The Joe Biden administration's "limitless" military aid to Kiev and increasingly hawkish stance towards Russia have prompted a chorus of voices in the US to deplore the destructive ideology exposing the entire world to the “risk of nuclear war."
However, for anti-war sentiment to gain any traction in the country, it needs a total overhaul, Caleb Maupin, an American journalist, told Sputnik.
“It is long overdue for the face of the anti-war movement in the United States to change, and finally begin to reflect demographics and reality,” said the political analyst.
There is a massive anti-war sentiment across the United States, he insisted, yet the movement itself in the US has been plagued by infighting. Furthermore, it has essentially been hijacked by certain forces that have "stage-managed" the protest movement in Washington, DC for several decades, he added. Since the Iraq War protests of 2003-2004, rallies have shrunk in size and, in recent time, forces dominating the anti-war protest movement in the United States are tied in with the Democratic Party and its Stop Trump agenda, the analyst emphasized.
"Certain people have weaseled their way into getting the permits and controlling who sets up the stage, etc., and making sure that the protests remain their little kingdom, their little fiefdom, where they get to be in charge and they are attached to the Democratic Party and maybe they run their own candidate.”
The American journalist added that these puppet masters of the rallies make sure that those in attendance are “attached to the woke agenda,” and ensure that "no one who is a libertarian, nobody who is the wrong kind of socialist in their view or the wrong kind of leftist in their view, gets access to their gig.”
A case in point, according to Maupin, is the upcoming “Rage Against The War Machine” rally, set for Sunday, February 19, in Washington, DC at the Lincoln Memorial. The rally is expected to bring together a very broad political spectrum of those who vociferously denounce Washington’s "war lobby" and argue that “not one more penny” should be spend on Ukraine. Caleb Maupin's organization, the Center for Political Innovation, is a sponsor of the rally. However, it has found itself targeted by a "despicable" Internet smear campaign, he said, with algorithms rigged to promote the onslaught.
However, the monopoly on anti-war rallies, according to Caleb Maupin, is gradually being broken by forces that represent the broader opinion. It makes sense that people who are opposed to these wars might come to things from a more right-wing or a libertarian perspective, the analyst insisted, especially after the mainstream left “has broken with any anti-war sentiment.”
“Anti-war Americans are not woke and the woke movement is more pro-war and more pro-imperialist and more pro sending weapons to Kiev than the average Americans are,” according to the analyst.
'Woke Makeover'
The United States has been setting itself up as a bastion of human rights, progressivism, and wokeism in order to justify attacking countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Russia, and China for not being “woke and progressive” like the West, Maupin noted. In actual fact, the banner of wokeism has been brandished by the US to build a case for multiple wars, the political analyst said. The Soviet Union, and, now, Russia, have long called out Washington on this so-called "moral justification" sham, revealing its true purpose: demonizing other countries, backing anti-government militants there, launching interventions to serve Washington's own interests.
"We invaded Afghanistan, supposedly to liberate the women. You know, Libya’s leader Gaddafi was a sexist, homophobic dictator or whatever, right? This is the language that is being used to justify the wars," Caleb Maupin said.
In October 2011, decades-long Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed as a result of an intervention, leaving the once-rich North African nation torn apart by warring factions.
However, now the US generals fighting the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine are “trying to play the chess game differently.”
“This time they want to make themselves look like they're the owners of progressive values because they failed, the last time around. The Soviet Union was able to humiliate and expose the hypocrisy of the United States by pointing to the lack of progressivism and the racism and the police brutality and the horrors of US society. And so they're trying to fight the last war correctly… And so part of that is giving the USA a woke makeover as they escalate against Russia and China."
Playing Up Anti-China Hysteria
Weighing in on the escalating row with China over the shootdown of its balloon by Washington under the claims that it was a spy craft (something Beijing has vehemently denied) Caleb Maupin warned of the dangers such rhetoric was fraught with.
“I know that the US has been going all out to provoke China around the Taiwan issue. They are trying to get China to respond militarily to their provocations… Now there is the UFO scare, these unidentified flying objects and we're being told, oh, they came from China, China has come in to spy on us and attack us. And they're playing up anti-China hysteria,” he stated.
There are voices that are critical of US support for Kiev, but are "playing up the anti-China hysteria," Caleb Maupin said, adding that this is disturbing because it is "the same playbook." However, he concluded by saying:
"Politics are rapidly changing around the world and in the United States. And the anti-war movement is going to reflect that."