By Prof. Edberto M. Villegas, PhD

(The following article is the conclusion of a two-part opinion piece, the first discussing Trump’s fascistic tendencies and the ambitions of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to become a tin-pot-dictator. The author wrote “Global Finance Capital and the Philippine Financial System” and other political economy books and articles.)

If United States of America President Donald J. Trump were acquitted of his impeachment charges by the US Senate and wins in the election this coming November 2020, he will become more brazen in his fascistic tendencies like discriminating and persecuting non-whites, particularly immigrants, and strengthening the US military industrial complex or American monopoly capitalism supporting him.

In truth, fascism is the hidden face of monopoly capitalism, which aims to dominate the global economy, even at the expense of destroying the world because of its threat of war and the denial of climate change by Trump’s financial backers, a significant part of the world capitalist order. It must be noted that Hitler’s and Mussolini’s fascist parties were also funded by their respective countries’ monopoly capitalists. Like fascism, monopoly capitalism is driven by unbridled greed and ambition. The competitions of monopoly capitalists worldwide may bring down the whole of humanity into economic chaos and nuclear war.

Because of the principle of the balance of powers of the three branches of government, which is more ingrained in the US political system, Trump is having difficulty in attaining unilateral rule as were easily achieved by Hitler and Mussolini since German and Italian democracies were relatively younger than that of the US. If Trump were acquitted by the US Senate with its majority belonging to his Republican Party, he can become more ambitious in his nationalism like Hitler, who after being appointed Chancellor in 1933, forthwith suspended the civil rights provisions of the democratic Weimar constitution, allowing him to incarcerate and murder his opponents and start his conquest of Europe. Trump may also venture into a nuclear war, not primarily because of his belief in the superiority of the Nordic race, but more so to profit economically in his tie-up with the US military industrial complex. The US government grants contracts to American war manufacturers to produce weapons and other means of mass destruction for US imperialist inroads into other countries, The US military industrial complex also sells planes, ships and other war materiel, for instance, to Saudi Arabia and other US clients. Saudi Arabia is the leading buyer of jet planes and other war paraphernalia in the Middle East and is the arch-rival of Iran for political hegemony in this region.

The Iranian government is currently developing international ballistic missiles (IBM) in retaliation to Trump’s threat “to obliterate” their country. It is to be noted that Trump unilaterally decided to pull out the US from the denuclearization treaty with Iran which his predecessor President Barack Obama signed with other European countries. Trump also has imposed extensive economic sanctions on Iran, aiming to starve its population and agitate them to bring down their government, of course, with the goading of US moles in Iran for the Iranian people to hold mass rallies. The US has tried the same tactics in Venezuela, inciting its people to demonstrate, even importing some thugs from neighboring Chile, but to no avail as Venezuelan Socialist President Nicolas Maduro remains securely in power amidst all these machinations of the Trump government, which has also imposed extensive economic blockades on this country.

Trump has branded the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization and directed the US military to assassinate in the airport of Baghdad last Jan. 3 Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani who was known as the Number Two man in the Iranian government and considered a national hero by his people for his role in defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria. General Soleimani was killed with 10 other Iranian and Iraqi officials who were with him when their two cars were hit by a US airstrike. Trump with the elimination of Soleimani besides profiting with the US military industrial complex from a new war with Iran, wants to divert the American people’s attention from his pending impeachment trail and win popularity again what with his falling rate of approval as shown in latest US survey polls.

Iran’s oil reserves, which is number five in the world, is another tempting target for the US oil corporations, vital members and which fuel the war planes, tanks and ships of the US military industrial complex. Remember how US oil companies together with its partners from the UK, British Petroleum and France, Total took over the rich oilfields of Iraq and Libya after the US military succeeded in ousting President Saddam Hussein in 2004 and Chairman Moamar Khadafy in 2011 from these two countries, respectively.

With his action of ordering the execution of Soleimani, which was not even approved by the US Congress, Trump and his cabal in the US MIC have placed their countrymen in serious danger of an all-out war with Iran, which has vowed to revenge the death of its revered general. Trump even tries to justify the killing of General Soleimani as a pre-emptive strike to prevent an impending attack by Iran’s paramilitary forces in Iraq against US interest in this country. This explanation has been considered by many US public officials as another big lie of Trump as there was no evidence offered by US intelligence of such an imminent attack. It is similar to President Bush Jr.’s claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which merited the US bombing of Baghdad in 2003 and later the hanging of Saddam Husssein. Bush Jr.’s rationalization for his war in Iraq was later proven to be false by the UN itself. Trump’s assertion that the execution of Soleimani will de-escalate the potential threat from Iran against US presence in the Middle East defies logic, to say the less.

With this mixture of American imperialist ambitions, the political rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia and US arms sale to the latter in the billions of dollars, the Middle East is a tinder-box for the escalation of the US-Iran conflict into a wider war which may also involve the US allies vis-a-vis Iran’s allies.

Conclusion

Rational Americans (as well as other peoples) should be gravely concerned with the rise to unilateral power of their white bigot of a president if he wins again in the coming election of November this year. Hitler had his “A thousand years rule of the Third Reich”, Mussolini his “the re-emergence of the Roman Empire” and Trump his “Make America Great Again”. Hitler and Mussolini met ignominious ends, the former committing suicide together with his top officials and his mistress in his Berlin bunker, and Mussolini’s dead body was hanged upside down with that of his mistress at Piazzela, Loreto, in Milan to be kicked and spat upon by an enraged and deceived people. Ordinary Americans and other freedom- loving individuals may take comfort in the thought of such inglorious fates of fascistic leaders and their ilk (in the case of the US, Trump and his cabal in the US military industrial complex) in history. #