Upstream - Palestine Pt. 13: Al-Aqsa Flood and the Resistance Axis w/ Matteo Capasso

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

The Al-Aqsa Flood operation, which took place one year ago today, was perhaps one of the most important blows against U.S. imperialism that we’ve ever seen—both ideologically and materially. Nothing can ever be the same—and it shouldn’t, because what we considered normal, if we even thought about it at all, was a nightmare for the vast majority of people on the planet. The Global South and the Resistance Axis that has taken up the fight against the U.S. and Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, have shown themselves to be a leading force against U.S. imperialism, earth’s greatest enemy.  In this episode, we’re going to explore the Al-Aqsa Flood military operation from a year ago and contextualize it within the broader resistance movement against U.S. imperialism and the Zionist entity (Israel) that helps to uphold it. And we’ve brought on the perfect guest to walk us through it all. Matteo Capasso is Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Venice. His research focuses on the impact of US-led imperialism across the modern Middle East and North Africa. He is the Editor of Middle East Critique and the author of Everyday Politics in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, published by Syracuse University Press. In today’s episode we’ll take a deep dive into the history of resistance in the region and its context in broader resistance movements in the Global South. We’ll explore the history of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other parts of the resistance, talk about the overall impact that the Palestinian resistance has had, and explore how we in the imperial core can contribute to the destruction of the U.S. empire and support the resistance against it in the Global South. Further Resources Middle East Critique Everyday Politics in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, by Matteo Capasso The Thorn and the Carnation (Part I), by Yahya Al-Sinwar The urgency of anti-imperialist feminism Lessons from Palestine Walaa Alqaisiya  Palestine and the Ends of Theory, Max Ajl The Hegemony of Resistance: Hezbollah and the Forging of a National-Popular Will in Lebanon, Abed Kanaaneh The Imperialist Question: A Sociological Approach, Matteo Capasso Al-Aqsa Flood: Imperialism, Zionism and Reactionism in the 21st Century, Hassan Harb Join us in supporting Palestine at MECA, Anera, or the Palestinian Red Crescent Society Related Episodes: Palestine Pt. 11: Israel and the U.S. Empire w/ Max Ajl [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel Upstream's ongoing series on Palestine Cover art: Beesan Arafat Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Ah Ah This is a battle for humanity because Palestine and the Palestinian resistance faction have dealt a massive blow directly into the core of the US-led imperialist project. They did so by revealing the weak nature of Israel. They have thrown into complete shambles the entire project of normalization of the Zionist entity, which has an umbilical cord to the project of US-led imperialism. So the moment the Palestinians attack the Zionist

entity, they are throwing a direct blow to the imperialist project. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. The Al-Aqsa flood operation, which took place exactly one year ago today, was perhaps one of the most important blows against U.S. imperialism that we've ever seen, both ideologically and materially. Nothing can ever be the same, and it shouldn't, because what we considered normal, if we even

thought about it at all, was a nightmare for the vast majority of people on the planet. The Global South and the resistance axis that has taken up the fight against the U.S. and Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign have shown themselves to be a leading force against U.S. imperialism, Earth's greatest enemy. In this episode we're going to explore the Al-Aqsa flood military operation from a year ago and contextualize it within the broader resistance movement against U.S US imperialism. And we've brought on the perfect guest to help walk us through it all. Matteo Copasso is Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Venice. His research focuses on the impact of US-led imperialism across the modern Middle East

and North Africa. He is the editor of Middle East Critique and the author of Everyday Politics in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya published by Syracuse University Press. In today's episode we'll take a deep dive into the history of resistance in the region and its context in broader resistance movements in the global south. We'll explore the history of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other parts of the resistance, talk about the overall impact that the Palestinian resistance movement has had, and explore how we in the Imperial Corps can contribute to the destruction of the U.S. Empire and support the resistance against it in the Global South. And before we get started,

Upstream is almost entirely listener-funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways in which you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bonus episodes, at least one a month, but usually more, along with our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast. You can also make a tax deductible recurring donation or one time donation through our website at upstreampodcast.org forward slash support.

Through this support, you'll be helping keep Upstream sustainable and helping keep this whole project going. Socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Mateo Cap it is great to have you on the show. Thanks, Robert. The pleasure is mine. So our mutual friend, Henry, actually from the terrific podcast, Gorilla History, put

us in touch with you and really helped to make this conversation happen. So just like upfront, I really just want to shout out Henry and definitely direct folks to his podcast. Gorilla History has also interviewed you a couple times, a couple of excellent episodes. So if anyone wants to dive deeper or just listen to more analysis by Mateo, check out those conversations. So yeah, thank you, Henry. And yeah, Mateo, I would love to just start with a basic introduction. If you could introduce yourself for our listeners

and talk a bit about the work that you do. Sure, thanks, Robert. And a big shout out to Henry as well and his Guerrilla History podcast and to Adnan. They're always doing some great work. But it's a pleasure to be with you, Robbie, today for Upstream. You guys are doing some great work, too, and especially's a pleasure to be with you, Robbie, today for Upstream. You guys are doing some great work too, and especially in a landscape of increasing cancellation and censorship,

especially about topics like the one we're going to be talking about today. It's really nice to have you guys out there, you know, relentlessly trying to provide some sense, some common sense to people. My name is Matteo Omar Capasso. I am a research fellow, Marie Curie research fellow at the University of Venice, Italy, and Columbia University, New York. I am the chief editor of Middle East Critique, an academic journal that you can find online on Twitter as well.

We constantly produce analysis, academic articles on the modern Middle East and North Africa. And my work has been mostly based on, it started off on Libya, on which I wrote a book called Everyday Politics in the Libyan Arab Jam idea, which traced the last two decades, the everyday life of people in Libya in the last two decades before leading up to the NATO-led regime change intervention in 2011. Currently I'm working on, Libya became basically for me a way to understand much more the region. Of course it has always been there, the study of the region, you can't study something in isolation from its own regional and global dynamics, of course. And Marxism has been the theoretical path that I've taken, that I've chosen to understand

the world. And in doing so, you know, what struck me about what I call historical materialism is that the idea of change in trying to understand the events is what guides this theoretical framework, this way of thinking. And for me change is important. We study, we write about things, we talk about things because we try to find more just solutions to problems that we encounter in life. And at present I'm trying to reconstruct the impact of US-led imperialist policies across different social political formations of the region, including Libya, Syria, Iran, mostly military intervention and sanctions. So this is what I've been focusing on and the idea of our terrorism, understanding the strategies,

the toolbox of imperialism, which is, you know, can be terrorism, economic sanctions, ideological propaganda. That's now it is at the core of my research. Yeah, thank you so much for that. And yeah, those are all topics and themes that we've been exploring and diving more deeply into just this past year and very much sparked by what happened a year ago. And I think that's same for a lot of people that I know, at least here in the West on the show today to talk about the Al-Aqsa flood military operation of October 7th, 2023, one year ago today. And just to reflect back on this past year in Palestine and the resistance struggle of the Palestinian people and others in the region who are being

and have been for many decades now oppressed, attacked, and terrorized really by the United States and its client state Israel. And I think to start, I'd love to just rewind exactly a year ago. Not that that's where this story begins, right? But we'll get a bit deeper into that history, I'm sure. But just to go back to the Al-Aqsa flood military operation, can you talk about what happened that day? What was the operation setting out to achieve? What was it a response to? And what actually happened?

So October 7, 2023 can be considered as the start of what I would call the Muslim and Arab and Palestinian people's war against the US-backed colonial entity, which I refer to as the Zionist entity. And I'll explain this why I refer to it as a Zionist entity and not as Israel, as it's also known. October 7th marks the reignition of the Palestinian anti-colonial armed struggle, a right, the one to armed struggle that the colonized people even have, according to international law, against the colonizer. So what happens on October 7th? Before delving into the history and obviously having to situate this remarkable event of such a political magnitude and historical significance for our generation. I think it was around 6 a.m. on October 7, 2023, when sirens started to ring all over the Gaza envelope, the settlements, the famous kibbutzim surrounding the Gaza envelope.

They started ringing because missiles were being fired from Gaza, the strip, into the the Zionist territory. And this was just the beginning of a joint military operation beginning of a joint military operation comprising Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, its military arms, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This military joint operation was launched in the territories and it was launched to surprise and shook the Zionist army. While making sure to take a number of hostages back, which we know it was 250, but up to today only 101 remain alive, for a reason we can talk about it later. To take them back to the Gaza Strip in order to achieve a number of strategic calls. Why was this operation launched?

It was launched and Hamas published their report in January 2024, explaining even further why this operation was launched. First one, I mean, there isn't like a sort of a hierarchy. These are all interrelated goals that we must understand as a whole. The first dimension was alleviating the blockade in the Gaza Strip. You know, a blockade that basically goes back to 1991 at least, when Israeli Zionist settlements were still in the Gaza Strip, but it was then, and it consolidated later on in 2007. So it was to break free from the Israeli occupation, to restore the rights to a path of national independence

and national liberation struggle, and so to shape the Palestinian destiny and establish a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Of course, part of the goal was also to have a prisoner exchange, which was going to take place precisely through this operation and would have led to the release of the numerous Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, which is the number skyrocketed since the counterinsurgency operation of the Zionist entity after October 7th. Now, the operation saw this military operation, this anti-colonial moment of resistance, saw the military brigades of these three Palestinian factions breaking the wall, because we know that the Gaza Strip is also

surrounded by a wall, it's an enclave literally, paragliding themselves into the Zionist territory. Ammas, according to Mohammed Des, the leader of the Qassam Brigades, fired 5,000 rockets in a 20-minute initial barrage, sending up rocket projectiles and missiles up to 80 km into the Zionist territory. And at some point it was controlling areas inside the Zionist entity. So that was what happened on October 7th. That was the events that somehow shook the world and so on and so forth. But just to quickly situate them even further into a bigger global history, the idea to alleviate the blockade, to bring back the Palestinian questions onto the international arena

and into the region was also a response to the increasing normalization of the entity into the region. The so-called tracing of a new Middle East map where Israel together with the reactionary states of the Gulf would have become central for the consolidation of American power in the region and the famous logistical corridor going through India, through the Gulf, Israel and then reaching Europe, especially with the situation that had been developed in 2022 since the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. So this is what happened in October 7. Thank you for that recap of what happened. And I think it's really important whenever we talk about Al-Aqsa flood to really, for us here, right, like one of the most propagandized societies in the history of the world, perhaps.

Can you talk about some of the myths and the Hasbara that has been spread by the Western ruling classes and media classes around Al-Aqsa flood and just dispel some of those myths for us before we move along and get more into the history. Of course, of course. I mean, I can assure you, Robbie, you're not alone in terms of having to live with a barbaric mass of propagandized people. The U.S. is not alone. It has done a lot of damage around the world. But, you know, not alone. It has done a lot of damage around the world, but you know, the historical continuity comes from Europe, of course. So I can see that here as well. And speaking about the propaganda, speaking about the lies, the myths, the fabrications that we saw in the immediate aftermath of Tawafon Al-Aqsa, Al-Aqsa flood, The first one that I think I'd like to focus on is the reaction of the Western governments from Europe to the US, because that laid the ground for what we're going

to talk about later, which is, you know, the details of it. But that laid the ground, because what we saw was from the Nazi representative of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, from Lincoln, Macron, all over the world, the first reaction was to condemn, condemn and condemn. Condemn the Jewish pogrom, that's how they called it. Condemn the barbaric the barbaric attack of Hamas, condemning terrorism, showing unconditional solidarity to Israel and unconditional support for Israeli right of self-defense. So this was the very big lie put out there, and I call it lie because it's literally the base of the ideological propaganda upon which then we saw all these

details coming up and justifying then all these reactions. There was no contextual understanding of why this was happening. There was no desire to understand anything. The response was clear. Israel as our unconditional support, this is barbaric. They built on the long legacy of, of course, the Holocaust that has been completely weaponized by Israel in its creation. And so what we saw after that was the relentless campaign by Israel, the New York Times, the bourgeois

propaganda of the US, of the West, Times, the bourgeois propaganda of the west, publishing these harrowing details of what apparently had taken place on October 7th. Where do we start? We start from an interview given by one of the Zionist generals coming up in one of the houses where the resistance forces had reached once they broke the siege of Gaza, saying that they had found the baked and beheaded babies inside the houses. Then we, a few months later, we're going to find out that a commander from the Zaka, which was a response team unit of the Zionists, who had reached there immediately, completely denied that.

His name was Josielandau and this was talked about, we can find this on Al Jazeera, now it's all over the place. Another very fundamental lie and fabrication that we had to absorb and which was continuously repeated by all those, you know, revering the cult of Hillary Clinton and that being raped women. The New York Times ran a major story about a raped and now pregnant woman which then comes out from the Israeli society herself and says that the story had been weaponized

and nothing like that had happened. On this front, there is a great article by Walal Qaisiyah on radical philosophy that has just been published right now that I really invite your listeners to go and read since it literally traces the weaponization of this Western feminist Islamophobic and imperialist lies in serving obviously Zionism and imperialism and so on and so forth. But then we have the other major lie in fabrication. Because when the resistance forces paraglided into the Gaza envelope, which is full of this secular kibbutz theme and basically Zionist settlements,

it passed over an area which distances at max 20 km from Gaza. And what was happening in this area? The name of this area is Reim, no, I think I'm pronouncing it right. In this area, the settlers were having a rave party. Now, what's important to understand is that when you look at the amount of cars and bodies in this area and they use drone footage to show that all these cars and people were literally carbonized, burned, corpses, and some of these same scenes are circulated also in the case of the settlements and the houses where the resistance fighters arrived and took some people hostages. Well, what you see is that actually Hamas and the Qassam brigades and the other factions did not have the capacity to carbonize either cars or people in the manners in which it had been done.

And so what did we find out? We found out from the same Zionist sources like Haaretz, but also from some incredible investigative and principal journalistic work by electronic Intifada, Max Blumenthal, which I believe today has released a documentary on this, Blumenthal, which I believe today has released a documentary on this, which tell us what? That Israel unleashed the Annibal Doctrine on its own people. The Annibal Doctrine is basically that doctrine that says that kidnapping must be stopped by all means because it's too politically costly for us. And the price for that is also striking and harming not just our own soldiers

but our own people. Technically this was introduced in 1986 then it was abandoned after 2006 but that's not true they actually applied it right there and they carbonized they literally killed so many settlers themselves. So what we're seeing, the lies that we're seeing is babies beheaded, raped women, corpses and cars burned and carbonized. And then of course, the constant idea that Hamas targeted indiscriminately, you know, civilians and soldiers. The question that we constantly need to ask ourselves is how can we consider an armed civilian, not a soldier? This is a question that we constantly need to ask ourselves is how can we consider an armed civilian not a soldier? This is a question that we're going to have to come back to understand the nature of the

Zionist entity in the region. So this whole fabrication, despite over the course of one year, have been debunked. People are still using them. They're still talking about it, and so this is very important for us to be at the forefront and deny them and to show them that this never happened. So even the same number that says that Amaz killed 1,200 people must be questioned, because as we know Israel itself fabricated these lies, killed its own people.

But then there are also, there is another two myths that I think must be the Talaqsa flood debunked. And one is the myth of the invincible army of Israel, the most democratic and moral technological one. And the other one, more than debunkunking it has proved that the end of the idea of Israel is becoming concrete. That's what Al-Aqsa flood has done, has triggered a path to reconsider what Israel means. And you know, I'm sure we're going to talk about that more into that.

And I just want to say, you know, what puts even more poison into the lies of the West is that in so many of these cases, the lies that Israel or the Zionist entity and the United States have put out, as the saying goes, every lie is a confession, right? Every accusation is a confession. And we've seen, you know, thousands of burned and mutilated babies in the Gaza Strip. We know there's extensive evidence of systemic sexual assault and rape of Palestinian prisoners. It's kind of beyond comprehension in terms of just that hypocrisy and just turning those lies around like that. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about Hamas's social formation and history because I think that might be a good way

to get into some of that deeper history and the social context that you were referring to earlier. And I think it's worth exploring a bit too maybe maybe if you want to, because, you know, Hamas is the main faction, but as you mentioned up top, there are multiple factions. So if it's helpful, if you want to bring in any other factions as well, just to help give some context and yeah, maybe also counter some of the propaganda here in the West, particularly about Hamas, which has really been vilified and turned into like the monster for us here in the West. I want to thank you for actually mentioning what you said before because every lie that they spread, you know, it was actually a confession of what they eventually did and they used to do. So, I mean, we've seen this over and over. So when it comes to Hamas, what is important to understand about Hamas, which as I said before, it goes by Arakat al Muqawwam al Islamiyya. So the Islamic resistance movement, full name, the acronym is Hamas.

Hamas, of course, you ask the average person around, I still remember the days after October 7th when everybody was like, oh, but not all Palestinians are Hamas. They're what? They're terrorists, basically. Well, I believe that we haven't reached that point yet fully, but we certainly have seen a large group of people starting to understand that Hamas is a national liberation movement with a long history. It's a Palestinian national liberation movement with a long history in the back. Hamas was founded in 1987 during the first Intifada by Sheikh Yassin, a Sunni scholar born in Ashkelon

who was expelled to Gaza City in the 1930s and by Dr. Rantizi being another one of them that being another founder of the movement and what we've seen during the years of Hamas and we'll talk about this more now in a minute, is that Amas has been joined by individuals whose political stature and figure should never be undermined. us as seen people capable of forging paths for political and social development for a population that had literally been locked into a strip. Among them, you know, there are the martyrs, of course, that we've already mentioned, Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Rantizi, but we've seen also Yahya Abdel Latif Ayash, an engineer, who was the first one

to be able to create bombs in order to fight back the colonizer. We have another martyr, Ismail Aniyah, that we know died in Tehran recently. But we also have Muhammad Daif and Yahya Sinwar. These figures for us are important because as we know the propaganda machine labels them rather easily and quickly as terrorists, but these are actually national liberation leaders. People who have been fighting and are still fighting for a cause, the cause of undoing a colonial occupation, the cause of fighting against imperialism. Now, the political history of Hamas cannot be understood outside of history, of course. Because Hamas comes, it was born during the First Intifada, but comes to rule Gaza in 2007,

after the disengagement plan, what the design is called the disengagement plan of 2004. So basically when the Israelis withdrew from the Gaza Strip, which had been conquered in 1967, and they withdrew from that first because they wanted to isolate a piece of land in the strip, so creating discontinuity for the possibility of a Palestinian state that that time was being discussed, you know, after Oslo, but most importantly because there had been relentless resistance by Hamas in that territory and it was too costly for the army to remain there. Costly and not politically viable because the settlements were not enough and there was the

so-called what they call the demographic bomb because at the time it was 1.4 million Palestinians living across the settlements of Zionists. So the moment they withdraw, we have in 2007 the elections. Now why this is important to situate historically? Because by 2007, the Palestinian political forces had been basically dominated by the Palestinian Authority, which had sprang from Fatah and Arafat, and that already by 2007, actually by the signing of the Oslo Agreement already in the 90s, the Palestinian Authority had become the right arm of the Zionist occupation. So it had become, it was a secular movement that had fought in different areas of the region, from Lebanon to Tunis to Jordan, in order to try to bring up the Palestinian cause. But it was the same group that because of history,

it was the one that basically reduced the Palestinian question to a national question only, devoid from the regional politics. And also it had put, basically became a comprador class, a reactionary class that had decided to renounce to the project of national liberation and rather support the Zionist agenda and its occupation. So by 2007 there is, what I'm trying to say is that we are witnessing two major intifada by the time we reach 2007 and we are also seeing increasing frustration towards the so-called failed hopes of peace between Israel and Palestine to resolve the so-called conflict.

So Hamas in that moment becomes an alternative national liberation movement that Palestinians are looking at and that's why in 2007 they win the elections but guess what? The Americans do not recognize the results of the elections. So Hamas gets secluded only in the Gaza Strip and he gets to rule the Gaza Strip since that time. Now what is important about Hamas is that it also has ideologically, it has a Sunni Muslim brother of political ideological background. So there is the idea of a Shura council and a religious-based charities organizing and governing society to provide for the people. But this also means that Amaz emerges from the same contradictions

that the US and the imperialists had used to control the region. So that over-reliance on Sunni reactionary regimes, which had been very helpful, funded of course by the US, especially in the Gulf, to undo the Pan-Arabist project that in the 1950s and 60s and 70s had been tried to fight back imperialism in the region. So Amaz emerges out of these contradictions. On the one hand,

is opposing the Palestinian authority that had consolidated in Palestine, but regionally is still part of that crescent of Sunni reactionary regimes, those bringing forward a cause that does not align them fully with them either, which is the liberation of Palestine. And so we see these contradictions, I think, reaching an apex historically in March 2012. Why I say March 2012? Because this is the moment when the group pulled its headquarters out of wear of the Syrian Arab Republic of Damascus, which again, it was a secular state hosting Hamas.

So we need to understand that the realities is always full of contradictions. We can just, you know, like completely think that Hamas was just a pure Muslim Brother Sunni movement. But this is important because Hamas pulls out of Damascus and throws its support behind the so-called anti-Assad Syrian revolution, another US-led war this time on Syria.

So what happens between 2012 and 2023 when October 7 takes place is that thanks to the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah mediation as well as military support, there is an increasing call for unity and reconciliation between Hamas, Syria and of course Hezbollah and Iran. At this point I think it's worth, as you were mentioning, highlighting the role of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad also comes from a Sunni tradition, but it has never renounced to the armed resistance as a principle, as a strategy to fight back the Zionist entity. And so what happens

is that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad also had a leftist understanding and very materialist understanding of the forces at play, including the question of imperialism, to strategize for the liberation of Palestine. So the moment Hamas veers towards a united front, which the October 7th revealed and showed the importance for the colonized to have, you see that the master's world changes its political position and it starts to become much more aligned with these groups of the axis. Now if you allow me, I don't know if I have time, Robbie, if I'm getting ahead of myself, you have to tell me.

No, please. I'd love to go into as much detail as you'd like. Okay. There is a lot of what I would call gibberish or nonsense talk, if you allow me to use this word, about the class basis of Hamas, which goes back to the unfortunately diluted version of Marxism that has developed in the West.

Basically, the idea is that it's proposed is that Hamas, they're not a labor or working class oriented movement somehow. So they are disconnected. They don't have a social base. Let's clarify a little bit on that. Two more points, this one and another one. So the first one is that Hamas is the most prominent organization that has actually allowed the Gaza Strip to function. Meaning it has tried to create a path of political, material, social, economic development. It has regained a sense and space of autonomy in a place that had been blockaded for more than 16 years, and after its electoral victory, which was completely denied. So the moment we understand this, then it should become clear to everybody

that Hamas is a National Liberation Movement and its mode of social and ideological reproduction is one that breeds resistance against the Zionist entity, because resistance is the only option to survive. You can't survive in the Gaza Strip under a blockade without resisting. The other way of course, if you want to maintain a space of autonomy towards your own developmental path, otherwise the other option is treason. So it is not a question of labor movement, it's a national liberation

question that we're looking at. So to look at, you know, other issues beyond the question of national liberation movement is a typical Western Marxist attempt to dilute or to confuse the issue, attempt that we're seeing. The last point is that I want to make, it is about the role of of Yahya Sinwar, because men do not make history, but they certainly incarnate the spirit of history. And they emerge at a certain time for certain reasons. And Sinewar, as a leader, did. Why? There is a beautiful book that he wrote during the, I don't remember exactly the title, the Thorns and something else, but it will come to mind eventually.

But Sinewar basically transforms a mass into a movement, into the movement that we see today. It not only establishes a well-functioning army in the Strip, and it re-appropriates the use of armed resistance as an option for deliberation struggle, but it also puts in place a social structure that finally fights and controls all the spying, the treason, the treacherous elements inside the Gaza Strip, which of course any Western media would call authoritarianism, it's happening in the Gaza Strip. So every time we see an analysis of somebody that says mainstream media, bourgeois mainstream media, that says Gazans act in desperation

because Hamas are paying salary. Basically they're fighting just because they're getting a salary. If the Zionists and the Americans would remove the sanctions and the blockade, they would have a normal life, they wouldn't have to fight. I'm sorry, this is not true. They are fighting because there is a cause, that's the cause of the national liberation struggle, because they are under colonization and Hamas as a movement itself breeds that kind of resistance. So this attachment to life and to salary that people, that the Western analysts always want to show, it's typical commodified understanding of life that

Westerners have. You know, I'm not going to fight because I will fight only if I receive a salary. That's mercenaries. When you look at the idea of martyrdom in Islam, which we can talk about, you know, about the Shia Islam, but also in the case of Hamas, what you're seeing is, you know, about the Shia Islam, but also in the case of Hamas, what you're seeing is that you are transcending the material life in order to come close to God. That becomes the reason why you're going to fight for a cause.

Now, we don't need to be Muslims to unnecessarily appreciate the fact that as Fidel Castro used to say, you know, we underestimated the role of religion and nationalism for the fight against imperialism. And I'm sorry if I went too long. No, no, super fascinating. I really appreciate you providing that context and the granular analysis and you've referred to the Palestinian resistance movement as a battle that is not just between Palestine and Israel or the Zionist entity,

but a battle quote, that will decide the future of humanity, end quote. And I'm curious to know if you can unpack what you mean by this and then maybe share your thoughts too as well about the impact and importance of Al-Aqsa flood, you know, as part of a broader resistance coalition and what it has done not just for the Palestinian resistance struggle, which I think you've articulated pretty clearly already, but also for like, you know, liberation movements in the global south and the region more broadly. Yeah, where should we start? I mean, as I mentioned before, Al-Aqsa flood, Tawafon Al-Aqsa, as first and foremost has reignited the national liberation struggle for Palestinians.

And in the process, it has brought back to the fore several social political dynamics that history, imperialist history and time had somehow was trying to bury. But before I explain myself clear, I cannot stress enough that this is not to say that Al-Aqsa flood did all these things by itself. As historical materialists, it is our duty to situate events in history. And so, Al-Aqsa flood becomes a world stage event because it takes place in a specific historical moment. And the specific historical moment that we're talking about is one characterized at the structural level by the ongoing collapse, decline, let's call it decline of US led imperialism. Imperialism is in crisis. And so for different reasons, yet I believe bearing the same political magnitude,

Alexa flood October 7th emerges and follows on a chain of historical events that even in the last two years we've seen, for example, I have to mention again the Russian special military operation launched in February 24, 2022, or the ongoing revolutionary events happening in the Sahel. It is unthinkable that the Palestinians would have not entered this stage in a less disruptive manner because Palestine is the mother of all struggles that has been going on for 76 years. It remains the most blatant case of settler colonial expansions, which led to the creation of a racist supremacist state entity under the pretext of providing safety to the same Jewish people that were slaughtered by the Europeans in World War II.

Now, it comes without saying that in the process of creating this entity, we've seen also a transformation. And unfortunately, this is something that it's not talked about enough, but you know, when we are constantly referring them to Zionists, but they are also the ones that proudly identify themselves as Jewish. So there has been also in the process of the creation and consolidation and maintenance of this identity, Judaism has also turned into a very powerful symbolical and ideological weapon for the Zionist. This is why materially, of course, this is an anti-imperialist struggle, but we shouldn't be surprised that there is a strong religious element to this war as well, that we need to understand.

We don't need to support or reduce entirely because otherwise we would lose the material component of the struggle, but it's present there. So I think that when you asked me about the achievements of Al-Aqsa flood, I probably think of, to think of a couple, the first one is that this is a battle for humanity because Palestine and the Palestinian resistance faction have dealt a massive blow directly into the core of the US-led imperialist project. They did so by revealing what we said before, the weak nature of Israel. They have thrown into complete shambles the entire project of normalization of the Zionist entity, which has an umbilical cord to the project of US-led imperialism.

It has a function into the maintenance of imperialism in the region worldwide. It's not just a question of being a military base, it has an historical function. It is part of a mode of social reproduction. When I use the word social reproduction, I mean that it basically provides the necessary material, sociological, intellectual, theoretical, industrial basis required for imperialism to maintain political control of certain regions. In this case, Israel had a specific function in the Middle East. So the moment the Palestinians attack the Zionist entity, they are throwing a direct blow

to the imperialist project. Another important achievement has been the centrality of having what I mentioned before briefly of having revived, shown the centrality of the united political front and then the strategy of regional solidarity to fight your oppressor. Basically, we can see that this moment of October 7th builds cumulatively on all these countless other historical national liberation struggles that took place in Africa, Latin America and Asia. But most importantly, because of its, and I'm going to make a little bit of an abstract point here, but it's going to become clear, I think. When Al-Aqsa flood takes place, because of its very anti-colonial nature, an anti-imperialist nature, it is a moment, an event in history that runs against the dominant historical time. And this is very important for us to understand, because this means that when the

Palestinians preemptively attacked Israel and then retreated into the Gaza Strip, they regain a space of autonomy. They try to regain control, not just over space, but over time. They are basically dictating now what type of political demands they want, what strategies they're going to take, what kind of developmental paths they want to pursue. So time, all of a sudden, when the imperialists say, and this is where you see all this kind of conspiracy and propaganda theories coming up into the mainstream,

even from some so-called critical analysts, when they say, oh, Israel knew everything, they allowed this to happen. Because we are used to think according to the imperialist logic, to imperialist time. We can see the anti-imperialist struggle regaining, shifting the clock in the other direction and dictating what needs to be done and what's going to happen. And this has implications, major material and theoretical, for all those souls, revolutionary souls in the world that are not just supporting Palestine and revolutionary souls in the world, that are not just supporting Palestine and the south of the world, but also that they are trying to fight directly against imperialism.

So this is why, you know, I see, and I think that the moment the Palestinians regain a space of autonomy, they are basically creating space for all of us to regain that space. But we need to incarnate that time of history. And unfortunately, not many of us at this time, we are ready to do so. But space is being created.

You're listening to an Upstream Conversation with Matteo Capasso. We'll be right back. I call upon you from the heavens of the earth I am the sound of the imprisoned I call upon you from the skies of the earth Our bodies call from the prisoner of the I'm I will call on you from now on. That was From Ansar to Askelyn by George Kirmiz reissued by Majaz Project, an archival record label and alternative research platform reissuing and remixing vintage Arab vinyl and cassettes. Now back to our conversation with Mateo Capasso. So you had just referred to the Palestinian resistance movement as the mother of all movements, I think. And you also mentioned the impact that the movement has had on the US imperial project much more broadly. And you also mentioned, you know, that project is in decline. And I think a

lot of people, you know, we've been asking, why is the US so unconditionally supportive of Israel or the Zionist entities ethnic cleansing campaign? And we had Max Ailon recently who laid out clearly how the US's support of Israel is not just like, you know, some kind of begrudging support that they're being dragged into this somehow, but you know, that the US is really driving this and this ethnic cleansing campaign is a joint operation between the US and as you say the Zionist entity. And one of the reasons for that is that they need to demonstrate that resistance is futile, right? Like resist and die.

Because this is not just about one strip of land. This is a much broader project and it's upholding US imperialism and US hegemony. And so I'm wondering if you can maybe talk a little bit about that, maybe talk a little bit too, if you think that you can do it in a way that doesn't eat up the rest of our time, because I know it's such a long history,

but the history of the US's relationship to Israel and how they have played such a crucial role in the US imperial project in the region, as you mentioned up top, like the anti-pan-Arabism, the anti-communist project, and how Israel is now being deployed in the US fight to maintain geopolitical dominance as the Western Bloc begins to enter this historical phase of decline. You know, as you started talking about those things, I was going to refer to the work, of course, of Max Ail and Ali Khadri on this, because they did some really good work also. We recently published something from Max on Middle East critique and Ali as well. So definitely a worth going reading about this. The American project.

The American project, what we call, of course, American imperialism, US-led imperialism, is when we operate, when we think through an historical materialist perspective, which means we approach the world as totality, we don't pick and choose parts to accommodate the way we want to see the world, but we look at the reality as is with all its contradictions, because the reality is always full of contradictions. So when we look at the US-led imperialism as a project, we think of it as a system of worldwide control,

As a project we think of it as a system of worldwide control, which is based on the forceful exploitation, material exploitation of countries of the south by those of the north, the core and the periphery, which of course includes the collaboration of ruling segments in the south of the world. Now I don't have to repeat this, I'm sure many of your guests have said this, but it's just out of background. Imperialism, of course, relies on military domination, economic exploitation, economic warfare, because the point of imperialism is that imperialism must prevent developing countries from harnessing their internal resources for the purpose of regional or popular development. They cannot be allowed to take a developmental path which is alternative to the one imposed by imperialism. That's in a nutshell what we when we're seeing we're talking about imperialism,

that's what we're talking about. Now this takes place on different levels economically, mentally, ideologically, and so on and so forth, which I'm not going to go into that, but we can go back to it. Now, for this project to consolidate over the course of many decades, especially after the decline of the British Empire and after World War II, each continent and region of the world had to undergo certain changes. continent and region of the world had to undergo certain changes. So when imperialism integrated the European zone, it undertook certain type of strategies to do so, which were profoundly anti-communist. Talking about Italy in the case, you know, speaking as an Italian, we saw the strategy of tension, the funding of Nazi forces,

anything to counter slightly whatever resembled or seemed to support communism. So that was, for example, a strategy used in Europe. But at that time, that was just one of the ways in which this was taking place. The more resistance there was present in the region, the more and the different type of policies needed to be taken to undermine the potential resistance that was emerging. In the Arab region now, what we call otherwise West Asia or the Middle East and North Africa, we've seen a different integration of the region.

The Arab region, in fact, has occupied a unique role in the geostrategy of imperialism after the aftermath of World War II, especially due to its oil wealth, because it was a key natural resource for the economy of the imperialist countries. The best means basically we ensure guaranteed access to oil in order to secure our political control of the region. So to achieve these goals, what did the US do? The strategy changed over the course of the years. I'm going to try to be brief to go over them.

But we need to start from the cooperation, the military and economic and political cooperation that the US and the West has had with two faithful allies. The Gulf monarchies and the Zionist entity. Let's start with the Zionist entity. becomes literally if we want to incarnate, if we want to translate this into a thing rather than explain it as a social process, we could say that the Zionist entity as a thing is a US military outpost, which is not something that even Biden has said. Literally from 1943 to 2003 we know from US congressional papers that the US has provided Israel with 160 billion in aid, which can reach up to 260 with inflation adjusted.

Regular loan guarantees extended to the entity worth of billions, military packages, and so on and so forth. Ideologically, the Zionist entity and the US share a mythology of exceptionalism as well. They incarnate this missionary and colonial zeal from the genocide of the Americas. There is this religious belief that they are going to play a new, rich role in world history while other countries would follow. We continue to see this with Netanyahu showing up with new maps of the Middle East at the UN. But this is a thing. Why do I make this distinction? Because when we think in historical materialist terms, we cannot just thingify thought. In other words, we cannot just translate what we

think into commodities. We can just think of Israel as a military base. Israel is and acts in order to fulfill an historical process. The historical process is one that Ali, Dr. Ali Al-Kadri, but also Max, myself as well in my work, we refer to as waste. Now the logic of waste, which one is it? The logic of waste is that you need to clobber. You need to destroy any potential of development in the region. And Israel has that function in the mode of social reproduction

of US-led imperialism in the region and worldwide. And why this is important? Because it directly connects to what you were talking about, and I'm getting heated now because I'm getting angry, and it directly connects to the genocidal campaign that we're seeing now. Why is Israel doing this now? Because the increasing decline of the US reflects an increasing fulfillment by Israel of the

mode of social reproduction required for the maintenance of US-led imperialism. So if Israel used to bomb a nuclear reactor in Iraq in the 1980s or invade Lebanon in 1982, now Israel has reached a point where the West would have no problem if it genocides 100,000 people in Gaza, intervenes in Lebanon and kills 1,000 people in two weeks, and potentially, and he's going to do it, I am sure, will go into bomb Iran as well. This is the logic.

The peculiarity writes there. It incubates a mode of social reproduction that promotes Western interest and secures U.S. hegemonic domination in the region. It destroys Israel. And that's why it is the major force behind imperialist capital accumulation. It is the major force behind imperialist capital accumulation, and of course it's correlating, meaning Arab de-development.

So over the course of the years, this is why we're seeing this, what we started with, the unconditional solidarity with Israel. And all of a sudden, when you realize that Israel is not about Israel. And all of a sudden when you realize that Israel is not about Jewish and Muslim, it's not about simply a military outpost, because the Gulf monarchies could be another military outpost, but none of the entity in the region can fulfill the function that is so fundamental for the U.S. to maintain its control right there. So at that point you realized that the Palestinians as per history's mandate, and as you were saying before, they are facing a structure, the imperialist structure. They're not just facing Israel. By facing Israel,

you are going directly at the core of the US-led imperialist structure. Yeah, it's become so clear that the United States is really on board with, I just get so frustrated when I hear even from like left-leaning outlets, this furrowing of the brows of like, why is the United States allowing Israel to do this, et cetera, et cetera. And then it's just like, we all just heard this morning that Antony Blinken literally approved the policy

to bomb A trucks going into Gaza. You know, it's not really that confusing if you pay attention that they're saying one thing and doing a completely other thing. And yeah, yeah. So thank you for framing that, especially in a historical material context. I think it's so important to be disciplined about that

and to think about these things with that process. And I think before I'm going to ask you specifically about Lebanon, which you had just mentioned in the assassination of Nasrallah. Before that, just really quickly, I'm wondering if you can maybe just talk a little bit about the axis of resistance or the resistance axis. You know, who are they? Why are they aligned? What are their shared goals?

And what are some of the myths, I think importantly, you know, that Western propaganda around this that you'd like to dispel? Yeah. So the axis of resistance, resistance axis, or al-muqawamah, it's a social political formation of course of the region of West Asia, the Middle East, and it represents a politically major shift in the history of the region because for the first time in a long time historically, despite we've always seen different forms of resistance in the region coming up, the axis represents a regional block with a united set of goals and objectives. And at the same time, it has put the liberation of Palestine at the center.

And in doing so, as we said before, it pursues a political strategies that undermines directly the interest of imperialism. Now, as an historical background to the axis, when World War II ended and communism played, as we know, but it's, you know, we reached the point that it's denied and it's fabricated, you know, that as we know communism played a crucial role in the fight against Nazism, the major role in the fight, the Red Army against Nazism. What followed was a massive wave of decolonization from Africa and Asia and Latin America. And numerous, the formerly colonized countries were kicked out of colonial powers, declared independence, and so on and so forth, at least

on a formal level. Now in the Arab region we saw, and we mentioned that briefly, this decronization moment materialized was incarnated certainly by the revolution of the three officers in 1953 in Egypt under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser, which spearheaded the idea that the Arab region should unite to develop autonomously, the linking from the American project, and this required exactly what we're seeing today in the case of Axis of Resistance,

the liberation of Palestine and the consolidation of a project of regional solidarity. Now, we know the project of Pan-Arabism was defeated. Partly, it did not grow organically as the project of the Axis of Resistance from the social texture of the region. Partly it was history because we were at the apex of imperialism, of US-led imperialism, and so it was defeated by the West in collaboration with Israel in different wars. How did this happen? Again, as we mentioned, sanctions, military intervention, wars. But also, and this is why I am going to talk about this now because I think

it's important to understand the rise of the Axis, in order to count the Pan-Arabist secular, largely socialist project of Pan-Arabism, the West started funding opposition groups with an alternative political agenda. One of them being the central one, apart from the Zionist entity, those groups embracing a very reactionary, obscurantist vision of Islam, the Gulf monarchies, the Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia especially. So what we see then is that if on the one hand, the ruling classes of these revolutionary states were either crashed or due to the defeat vis-a-vis imperialism, they had abandoned a revolutionary agenda and become compradors

to a certain extent, obviously maintaining a range of contradictions that I can't talk about it, like in the case of Syria or others, but they never really completely compromised on all levels. On the other hand, you see the increasing rise of this Sunni obscurantist Islam in the region. Now, this is important because by the 2000, and especially in 2011, it seemed that the Arab Republic were completely destroyed. You have the intervention of NATO in Libya and the failure of destroying completely the national sovereignty of Syria, thanks to the intervention of Russia. Now, if the decline of Pan-Arabism had taken place, you had seen that another project of resistance was coming up in those years.

And it starts in 1979 with the Islamic revolution in Iran. And this is where we trace slowly the rise of this axis. We trace the axis because with the axis of resistance and Iran as a centrality through this axis, you start seeing a different project emerging from the ashes of pan-Arabism, yet, cumulatively, we should never forget this. The Axis of Resistance does not come out of the blue. It builds on a cumulative history of resistance. Even if it's not directly Pan-Arabist, it inevitably builds on that history of resistance, because that's the entire imperialist time. So what we see is that the Islamic Republic of Iran rises, becomes and

withstands, thanks also to China and Russia and many other factors, decades of sanctions, and it expands its clout in the region, allowing other actors to build their own socio-political forces as well as the military forces. And here we have the case of Hezbollah, Ansarullah, which is Yemen, the Syrian Arab Republic, Iran played a fundamental role to fight for the national sovereignty of Syria, Hamas, and the Popular Mobilization Unit in Iraq. So these are the elements of the Axis of Resistance that with time consolidate in the Axis and they all put at the center of their struggle a project of national liberation

through a strategy of regional solidarity which cannot take place without the liberation of Palestine. And that turns immediately into an anti-imperialist project. It's the material understanding, their understanding of the material reality and the obstacles that they face makes them inevitably anti-imperialist actors, whether or not they use Marxist language. This is very important for us to understand. So on two things, one, the major propaganda point is that Iran, everybody's an Iranian proxy. That doesn't make any sense, of course. Iran is a central actor, is a state, and is the one that has the most advanced technological and material capacity and provides know-how.

But each one of these actors develops from their own struggle internally in each one of their own state. I mean, we could go one by one, but just to say Yemen, 15 years of war, Hezbollah, 1982, Israel invasion, Iraq, invasion of Iraq by the US and the sanctions, Hamas, we discussed it, Syria, again a war on the country. There is no need to be an Iranian proxy to realize that America and the US structure is a problem to your developmental path and your national sovereignty. Sectarianism. That is something that has been fostered continuously

by the imperialist. There is a division, a scholarly, a by the imperialist. There is a division, a scholarly, a doctrinaire division between Shia Islam and Sunni Islam over who was the descendant of the Prophet and so on and so forth. But the ideological symbolism used to mobilize and magnetize the masses is then used by imperialism for its own purpose. It basically is a tool. It's a tool that can be used to fight imperialism

or to bow down to the diktat of imperialism. In the case of the Axis, what's interesting, and it's happening more and more in this moment, thanks to the intensification of the war as well, that this different social political formation that comprise the structure of the Axis are, that this different social political formation that comprised the structure of the axis are not all Shia. Hamas is a Sunni movement,

Syria is a secular republic. And if we talk about Hezbollah, we see also that the same Hezbollah has had a very long and transformation that, you know, it parallels the history of the axis itself. CB Yeah, let's talk about Hezbollah actually. Obviously, we're seeing a huge escalation in Lebanon right now and a couple of weeks ago, the assassination of Nasrallah. And maybe if you could, yeah, just give us some context on Hezbollah. We can maybe, you know, get a little bit more granular and look at that faction of the resistance

and yeah, maybe talk just a little bit about the assassination of Nasrallah and Hezbollah's role in the broader resistance movement. So, yeah, I think Hezbollah is important because right now we know that the Zionist forces, the imperialist backed Zionist forces have entered Lebanon, they've already committed numerous massacres, and very recently we have witnessed the martyrdom of Sayyidah San Nasrallah, which I have, and I stand by what I said, I think represented one of the most historical dialectical materialist leaders

in the south of the world in the last decades, because the capacity that Sayyidat Sanastrallah had to explain the project of resistance to the people was unique, I have to say, and I think it will be studied for long, you know as history will move forward. But let's go back to Esbollah. Esbollah is a movement that rises up during the Lebanese Civil War in 1982 and its rise, its emergence is sparked by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and it's a movement that builds its project around the idea of mukawam, which in Arabic means resistance, okay? Now I think, at least from drawing also on the amazing and really insightful amount of literature

that exists and the study that I have done, and I'd like to suggest the work of Abed Kanane, Amal Saad, Lina Kirush, Aureli Dahir, really that are really important to understand. Asbullah. Asbullah found this project on three main tenets. The first one is a revolutionary religious interpretation. The second one is the idea of an imagined community of Mukawame that does not simply relate to the Shia. It starts by being Shia, but then it spreads to the entire national Lebanon, so to the

national question, and it begins also to appeal to other resistance forces, especially the Marxist one. And finally, the material praxis of Hezbollah, the military resistance to Israel, but also the economic provision to the community to which it caters and it represents its own source. So going one by one, the first one had a lot to do with the religious revolutionary interpretation of Hezbollah. So Hezbollah emerges in the south of Lebanon.

Historically, this is an area where the Shia represented the marginalized community. So they were full of peasants which had a very disenfranchised relationship with the colonial states, especially with the financial bourgeois, which was in the hands mainly of Christian Maronite. So the Chiet families of southern Lebanon depended mostly on agriculture, and about 90% of the labor force, in fact, in the south, used to work into agriculture up until the 1950s. With the urbanization and the migration from the periphery in Lebanon, from the periphery to Beirut, things start changing, of course. There is an identity crisis,

but there is also the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which takes place just a few years before the Israeli Revolution of Lebanon. And these are decisive events because as we see, it will basically turn, we will see a gradual shift of Hezbollah from becoming an organization that is essentially an Islamic party for the Shiite sect of Lebanon, to a Lebanese nationalist party with an Islamic vision, to a party that now becomes a central element of the axis of Muqawam, the resistance axis. And this is very important. It's very important because the revolutionary vision of Islam starts from basically turning the interpretation of the Karbala, the moment in which Imam Hussain dies and so

there is the idea that we need to every day our land is Karbala and every day is Ashura, so there is the idea that the martyrdom of Hussain needs to take place constantly throughout history, so there is the idea that the martyrdom of Usain needs to take place constantly throughout history, so there is the challenging of authority that needs to take place constantly by Hezbollah. This is the first point. The second point which I already mentioned is this national transformation of Hezbollah from a Shia sect to one that starts to change also the way it explains its own goals and political strategies. If there is this article we published on Middle East critique that I remember by Abid Kanane where he refers to, he looks at two different documents. He looks at the open letter in 1985

and then to a second document that Hezbollah published, a political document that was based on this open letter but was published later on in 2007 or 2009, if I remember correctly. So by looking at these two different documents, you see a difference between the language the Tezbollah uses. Whereas the first one was much more religious in a way and very much grounded into Shia rhetoric and ideology. The second one, you start seeing a reference to US hegemony, Western imperialism, capitalist powers, monopolistic networks of multinational corporations.

So in other words, what you're seeing is a gradual shift of the national Arab-Lebanese base of Hezbollah, not renouncing, but again, widening this base. So without renouncing to the religious Islamic and Shia background and base that it always had, but opening up, widening its base, including elements that cumulatively, as we mentioned before, built on the long history of Pan-Arabism and national struggle in the region. The third element, of course, is the one of economic development of the south of Lebanon,

the provision of hospitals, the creation of schools, basically literally creating infrastructure for the people, and the military capacity, which we are now seeing right now. The military capacity are fundamental, because Hezbollah witnesses a continuous evolution, and self-revolution inside. It starts from 1985 to 2000, Hezbollah was extremely successful in using guerrilla warfare, for example, to defeat the Israeli aggressor. But in 2006, when it becomes a fundamental victory for Hezbollah,

they realized that there is a new form of wealth of warfare that they need to study, which is positional warfare. In other words, they need to become able to engage in cross-border warfare and attack strong cities, which we are now seeing clearly right now. And Hezbollah doesn't stop there from 2006, but it also again puts its military capacities, the technological production of weapons,

the know-how provided by Iran, the construction of tunnels and so on and so forth. But Hezbollah also intervenes on the side of the cause of the national sovereignty in Syria in 2013 and fights directly against the Islamist and Wahhabi forces directly sponsored by the Gulf and US imperialism in the region. So what we see is a constant self-evolution of Esbollah politically, economically, militarily and ideologically. And this force then, and this takes place under the leadership of whom? Of Sayyidah San Nasrallah. This is why he's a figure that is so fundamental to understand if we want to

understand the liberation of the region from the Zionist entity, because we don't see somebody that is abstractly devoted to certain notions, but someone who plays and understands the contradictions of reality and evolves the movement according to them. Where are we now? We are in a moment. Hezbollah is not the one of 1982, it's Hezbollah of 2024, under 32 years of guidance by Sayyeda San Nasrallah. It is a movement that has expanded, that have seen setbacks and losses, but it has also developed military, logistically and ideological capacities that, of course, scare Israel so much.

I think that the movement has all the capacities to continue to fight precisely because, as we see and as we understand history, one man is not going to be able to fight for all of us, but the creation of such a strong movement that has been able also to change internally and organically understand history globally, regionally, nationally, makes us confident absolutely and certain that the Zionist entity is facing a very strong challenger right now, resistance force. One thing I wanted to dig in with you about is this question about Marxists in the West, and this is a question that arises for me out of the work of Domenico Lacerdo, specifically his text, Western Marxism, which was just translated into English and which we

actually have an upcoming Patreon episode with the editor of that edition, Gabriel Rockhill. And I know through our email correspondence, and just obviously you're very influenced and knowledgeable about Loserdo's work, you've talked about Western Marxism as being, quote, infiltrated by the US and its ideological weight that has turned it into a book club, a bourgeois project detached from the material struggle of the masses in the South. They enjoy theorizing about Marxism with their imperialist privileges.

And so that quote, I believe it was on a Rania Khalek's podcast where I heard that quote from you. And can you talk about what you mean by this? And you know, why it is important for Western Marxists to understand that the the primary contradiction facing the world right now is not necessarily that of labor and capital, right? It's a contradiction between the global north and the global south between imperialism and national liberation. and really why it's so important for us in the West not to try to like impose our idealistic ideas about what a revolution should look like, right? And what it should represent when we think about these anti-imperialist resistance struggles that, you know, like you said, whether they call themselves Marxists or not, they are operating within that framework really, you know, like the resistance movement embodied by Hamas or Hezbollah, for example.

So yeah, I'm just wondering if you can just talk about that a little bit. Thanks, Robbie. That's a question that usually it's me up. And I'm really grateful. Big thanks to Gabriel Rocko, a comrade and a friend for having translated this book into English. The main thesis of Domenico Losurdo in this book is rather simple. Domenico Losurdo says that there was a

movement up until, of course, the 1916 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, led by Lenin, where the internationalist position was able to understand that there was no establishment of communism without a fight against imperialism. And so there is the opposition against the colonial project, the revealing of the colonial plans that the European powers, they were putting together in order to dividing up the different regions of the world for their own interest, then we have the interimperialist war exploding of course during those years and again with World War II.

Now with the rise of American hegemony and the US-led imperialist project, Marxism undergoes a shift. That shift is the idea that in a way it's correct in the sense that Marxism in the West cannot look like as Marxism and anywhere else in the world, because the contradiction of change according to the context, and they need to be developed according to reality. We cannot fight a struggle, say, in the US or in Italy, as Amass is doing, according to the same ideology, using the same ideological tools or weapons or strategies. They're going to be different. We have to confront reality.

So at that time, the idea was, we need to, and I think it was Enrico Berlinguer, although it had a lot to do with the so-called idea of the tanks entering Prague by the Soviet Union in order to quell a protest where then the war tankies comes from to define all these people that somehow do not abide to the idea of basically European Marxism. Berlinguer, Enrico Berlinguer, what he did was he believed that European countries could not develop and it was costly to develop a form of communism according to the Latin American

countries, especially at look at what happened to Allende in Chile. So he proposed a strategy of negotiation of the political power through the electoral process in the West. Berlinguer is a man of history of course. It renounced to the colonial struggle. It realized that the only way to move forward for Marxists in the West was to play the game of democracy, basically. And this is also the time where we start seeing all this work-race struggle in the West. There is, I mean, the work that Gabriel is doing, but also Immanuel Ness and many others, Roland Bohr, they're doing, it delineates really all the contradictions that emerge from Western Marxism during this time. But the central thesis, going back to the central thesis of

Losurdo, is that Marxism puts the seeds for its own debt the moment it renounces to liberate the world in cooperation, in collaboration with the struggles from the South. Western Marxism becomes a book club, a privilege, an arrogance basically, because what happens is that while Europe loses any social political formation with a communist outlook, you start seeing the mushrooming of Marxist professors in universities, but materially there is nothing. So this is very important, because what you are seeing is that that a version of Marxism is being revered and acquires its benefits within educational structures that reproduce the mode of social reproduction required by imperialism, while on the ground any

semblance of a communist movement disappears. It becomes completely sectarian, infiltrated by operations like Gladio in the West, in Italy, across all over Europe, and so on and so forth. At the same time, this now intellectual class starts theorizing about how the strategies for national liberation in the South should look like. And that's what we've been seeing exactly about Palestine in the past months. Violence? No, that's not a way to go forward.

Hamas made mistakes on October 7th. Iran is a sub-imperialist power. Venezuela and I don't know what and so on and so forth. So the moment you severe that relationship, you break that relationship with the global South, which is under the direct clobbering of imperialism, Marxism in the West becomes an exercise for mental gymnastics, not a material,

a process that where thought comes from the praxis. The praxis becomes writing books for Verso. And I'm sorry, that's a problem. Yeah, right. And of course, no hate to Verso, like half the books that- No, no, no, no. But I get your larger point, of course. And yeah, I mean, I think that's spot on.

And we do see this with so many people on the left and Marxists in the United States to this difficulty of reconciling the fact that perhaps Hamas's ideological position does not reflect the Western values that these Marxists in the West have and it creates this real big difficulty and I think for the last year a lot of us have been unlearning a lot of that bullshit, basically, and really understanding what is going on in, like you've emphasized so much, in a historical materialist analysis and an anti-imperialist analysis. And we're going to do a deep dive into Lenin's famous text

on imperialism, the high stage of capitalism. We've talked to a number of scholars and individuals about how imperialism actually works. And yeah, I just want to highlight again that this importance of recognizing the primary contradiction and that you cannot build communism or socialism in a world which is dominated by the world's most vehement anti-communist force that has ever existed, that its military budget is higher

than combined military budgets of the next 10, what's the statistic? Whatever, everybody knows the statistic. But you know what I mean? You can't focus on the worker and the capitalist contradiction until you have the boot of imperialism lifted off of your neck.

And I think that's what a lot of us have been slowly coming to realize over the last year the capitalist contradiction until you have the boot of imperialism lifted off of your neck. And I think that's what a lot of us have been slowly coming to realize over the last year. And again, for me, that is one of the most significant lessons from all ox of flood and the Palestinian resistance movement and the axis of resistance more broadly that October 7th provided for so many of us. And yeah, I guess on that note, my final question for you, I know we just have a few minutes left. One of the final questions I'd like to ask you is around invitations.

So we've had a wide variety of organizers, direct actionists as well on the show, to talk about revolutionary organizing, to talk about direct action, to talk about direct action, to talk about the importance of building class consciousness and getting our defanged and broken communist movement here in the United States revitalized. And I'm wondering, from your perspective,

and I know you're not in the United States, obviously in Italy, so please feel free to just speak to the broader West or whatever makes more sense for you. What can we do to join the fight against imperialism and to support the global South and Palestine and Lebanon in their struggles against US hegemonic control? Dr. Ibrahim El-Zahra That's a good question because we're constantly faced. When we look at Palestine, what can we do? The question arises, what can be done? Have I done enough to stop the genocide that Israel is being allowed to perpetrate? Have I done

enough to support and to make sure that people understand that Hamas is a national liberation movement? I think that when you asked me the question about October 7th and what happened on that day, one of the first things that comes back to my mind, it wasn't so much the action, the guerrilla, and so on and so forth, the lies, but it was the reaction of the Western governments as a whole, which made me realize immediately that our fight is against fascism. We have a major monster to fight internally that is growing. It's like an octopus and it's growing bigger by the day. And it goes by different colors, but it has only one class.

Fascism, I think, is the biggest enemy that we are faced now in this historical moment in the West. Because if I only could imagine how good it would have been for the Palestinians if they had a communist or a socialist party running the government of a Western country right now. If in that moment there would have been a politically capable and sympathetic social formation in the West that would have put out a statement and say, we understand this is a national liberation struggle. We don't condemn.

This is an occupying power. But that's not there. It's not there. And we have to change that. The West, and this connects to the comments you made before, which I really commend and I second, not just because I want to commend everything you say, but because it's really deep in a way what you're saying.

And it translates for me in the fact that the West is not the place where the ideas required to develop a national liberation struggle or praxis for the South of the world is going to emerge. The South of the world knows what it needs to do in order to liberate itself. Palestine, on October 7, the Palestinians told us that's what we're going to do. And they did it. They didn't ask for permission to the West. Now the issue is that our history and praxis in the West has for too long dipped in blood. So to keep pretending that Western movements can dictate or suggest how the Palestinians are supposed to fight is an absurdity. We agree on that. Because ultimately, as we saw even with ideas like different gymnastics

that are emerging now about the inter-imperialist situation, it's always trying to entertain the possibility that there are enemies challenging the primacy of the West. Even on an ideological struggle, we are facing that the West needs to understand its own contradiction. The contradiction of the West is of course imperialism must be there. But I think we need to be able to find a way to speak to our masses. We can speak to our people simply via Palestine. Palestine is revealing the moral decay of an international order that is not able to speak to the entire world, despite it believes it can.

But we need to be able to speak to our own people, to our own masses. And so, and one of the things that I really think needs to be debunked, so there is the intellectual struggle on this sense, I think it's very important to create the consciousness. One of the myths that absolutely requires debunking in the West is the idea of democracy. We do not live in a democracy. Democracy, it means the incarnation, as Lenin used to say, of the dominant hegemonic class. The ballot box, the electoral process, is not a praxis where the interests of the working

class are mediated. It only leads to an alternation of the various segments of the ruling class to power. Capitalism must be undermined, but we need to undermine all these myths that we have around. And I think democracy is fundamentally one of them, because we literally believe, we live in progressive social-political formations. We believe that we have benefits, we believe that we are not backwards like the Muslims, and so on and so forth. So I think democracy is fundamental on this stage. Materially, of course, we need to build, we need to regain the sense of collective

that capitalism has destroyed. And that can happen on so many levels. By caring, by building unions, by building collectives, it's something that the West has missed. The ruling class, I remember Michael Parenti that used to say this, and he was so clear, the ruling class is not doing a conspiracy, you know, when it puts together all these elements.

The ruling class acts according to their own interests, and they collectively manage to do what it needs to be done. You don't need to go and look up for a conspiracy or some kind of satanic illuminati order behind that. The problem is that the working classes do not have that capacity or spaces to channel their own interests, to mediate that interest. The state is just a tool through which that can be done.

Of course the state has been completely monopolized by the ruling class, so we think that dismantling the state for the anarchists, for example, that could be the way forward. But not necessarily, the state can actually be re-appropriated for the interests of the working classes. We need to build the spaces for collective action, which of course leads me to the last point, disruptive. This is not, and Palestine again and again is going to show us this, it's not going to be a peaceful struggle. It's never been. Direct action Palestine is showing that to us. There is no peaceful struggle against capitalism and against imperialism. This is why debunking the idea of the ballot box and democracy

already to me it's really fundamental to move forward and show that there are different ways, what used to be called Soviets in a way, blocks, collectives in which the interests of the working class can be brought together, mediated against capitalist power. It's a long struggle because for a long time, as we said, we benefited as well from these imperialist wars, but it's not enough to have people to talk to them and understand, oh, bombing Palestine is not in your interest.

I'm not sure people are going to understand that. Because there is this Islamophobic element, there are so many elements that we need to debunk. Palestine offers a space, but we need to also have an analysis of our own contradictions and what are the main building blocks and obstacles that we have. I don't think I have a direct answer, but you know it was a great question that you asked anyway. I'm still thinking about it. You've been listening to an Upstream Conversation with Matteo Capasso. Matteo is Marie Currie Fellow at the University of Venice. His research focuses on the impact of US-led imperialism across the modern Middle East

and North Africa. He is the editor of Middle East Critique and the author of Everyday Politics in the Libyan-Arab Jammahiria, published by Syracuse University Press. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to George Kirmiis and to Majaz Project for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. Upstream is almost entirely listener-funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support.

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