Interview with Jorge Majfud

Gerard Yong, journalist, México.

Faced with a new presidency of Donald Trump, which seems to have begun before he re-entered the Oval Office, we spoke with Jorge Majfud to understand how we got to this moment in the United States and the world, what Latin America can expect and what we can expect in the years to come.

GY: Could we say that, given the prospect of annexing Mexico and Canada to the United States, we would see a new economic model more consistent with the annexation system instead of open globalization?

JM: That would be the final stage of this new Cold War with China that has already crossed some limits of the previous Cold War, although, at that time, Vietnam was what Ukraine and Palestine are today for the Northwest, while Africa and Latin America are beginning to coincide with what they were on that chessboard: independence movements inoculated by Trojan horses. The same moves and strategy: dominating the central squares by burning a few pawns before projecting a check move.

GY: But the fantasy of an invasion is always there…

JM: Without a doubt. Not a few hawks in the US Senate would like to invade Mexico but not annex it. Mexico is a country too inhabited by “an inferior race”, “a race of corrupt hybrids”. If when the United States annexed more than half of Mexico, it did not continue beyond the Rio Grande when they had taken the capital of the country, it was precisely so as not to add millions of inferior beings to the Union. For the same reason, they did not take the entire Caribbean. Not a few are talking about Canada as “The 51st State”, in the same way that when the United States was founded with the Thirteen Anglo-Saxon colonies, they tried to annex Canada as the 14th colony. Not only to escape the curse of the number 13 but because the Canadians were white Europeans. They failed after some sabotage, and Great Britain took revenge by burning down the White House in Washington (which until then was not white, but they had to paint it that way to cover up the memory of the disgrace).

Following the imperialist style of the 19th century before changing to the strategy of military bases worldwide, these new annexations may have a revival that will produce desired crises. Still, they will not likely materialize in the medium term. In the long term (perhaps in two or three generations) the opposite is more likely: the United States will lose some states like Texas or California due to a secession or Alaska due to some Chinese annexation, for example.

GY: What prospects do you think Donald Trump’s policy towards Mexico will have in his second term?

JM: After the brutal plundering of Mexico in another invented war in 1846 with the old method of a false flag attack and the victimization of the aggressor, Mexico was left with such low morale that its leaders (with exceptions) dedicated themselves to handing over the rest to American companies. The Mexican Revolution changed many things. When Wilson bombed Veracruz, it was its inhabitants who resisted and repelled a new occupation of the city that lasted for months. The soldiers retreated. The Mexican Revolution bled Mexico dry, but it left it with an experience of armed resistance that (I suspect because of a few other similar cases on the continent) made Washington not dare to intervene as it did before, at gunpoint and with banana republic-style coups. It is likely that for this very reason (and perhaps also because of his strategic ambiguity with the European powers) Lázaro Cárdenas achieved the unthinkable: nationalizing Mexican oil.

For these historical reasons, I do not believe that Trump or his hawks will dare to directly intervene or attack Mexico. However, I think we should expect a much more aggressive presidency than the previous one for four reasons: 1. Trump will no longer run for reelection (at least not under the current constitution). 2. Like a drug, their ego needs to leave a mark on history (what they call “legacy” here), whatever it may be. 3. The new right is now openly anti-democratic, without further dissimulation, and its ideology, although elementary and primitive (that of the Alpha Male) encourages aggression – between individuals and nations. 4. The United States is an empire in economic, social, political and geopolitical decline, which makes it even more aggressive.

Mexico has always been in a very particular position that sets it apart from the rest of Latin America. It is, at the same time, vulnerable and strong. As in the times of Cárdenas, it must make economic alliances with different powers such as China (since it is far from joining the BRICS+) and regional alliances as with the rest of Latin America. Alliances and unions are the only possible formula for independence, an unavoidable development condition for countries that are not microcolonies.

GY: Some believe that Trump could negotiate with Russia a peaceful solution to the War in Ukraine, perhaps to the detriment of the latter… What do you think about this?

JM: The factor of his ego could play a positive role in ending the war in Ukraine through negotiation. Trump gets along with strong men because they are his alter egos, not because he is firm. Great leaders are not egomaniacs, but those who love power are, and Trump (like Musk and other individuals with the same pathology) fits perfectly into this psychological type. On the other hand, we must not forget that individuals, elected presidents in a liberal democracy, are not the power but its mask. Power is in those who concentrate mountains of money (this is not a metaphor or a hyperbole), and, as a direct and indirect result, they buy politicians, the media, and the public opinion of the majority who idolize their slavers. If we add to that the fact that the most lucrative industry is the death industry, we can only hope that if the great business of war in Ukraine ends, all that capital investment will move to other regions. Palestine is one case. Syria is another. The most dramatic would be (and that is the intention) to continue with Iran until reaching Taiwan, thus expanding the Ring of Fire we have been discussing for years.

GY: Would we be far from that Ring of Fire?

JM: Only from a geographical point of view. For Latin America, these will not be easy times. While imperial neo-interventionism has been through media and social media preaching over the past decade (basically still in the hands of US corporations), I think it is reasonable to foresee an aggravation of the conflict in its CIA-Mossad phase (as during the Cold War) and then towards a military phase (as during the Banana Wars).

Trump’s most recent rhetoric about his idea of ​​reclaiming the Panama Canal and annexing Canada and Greenland is an attempt to prepare the inhabitants of the United States for the naturalization of what once caused laughter.

YG: How did we get here?

JM: In a very simple way. The feudal nobles changed their masks once again. First, they became the liberals of the pirate companies, like the East India Company… They were slave owners, they were democrats (as were the pirates), and they were neoliberals to continue vampirizing their colonies and the underdogs in their own countries. More recently, with the suicide of the Soviet Union, they succeeded in making the Western left vegan, adopting the economic ideology of the right: neoliberalism. As a final blow, the left forgot about the problem of class struggle and was reduced to a simplistic politics of identity―which is also the racist and sexist politics of the right, but inverted; fair, according to us, but insufficient and a perfect distraction. Once neoliberalism systematically fails in each of the decades, leaving decadence and indebtedness everywhere, in the colonies and even in the empire itself, the right takes a leap, calls itself libertarian, and promises the frustrated and angry masses (in the face of the obscene result of the super accumulation of capital that they created) and again sells the promise of the magic solution. How? By offering more of the same but in a radical way, no longer in liberal democracies but in an undisguised fascism that, as a hundred years ago, promises to satisfy the frustrations of a brutalized people – by increasing the dose of the drug. If you add to that the internal and external collapse of an entire empire and the primitive simplicity based on basic and ancestral emotions of the extreme right (the tribe, the totem, the race, fear of the other, rage, and pride), well, it couldn’t be more precise. In fewer words, the right has managed to sell the illusion of a radical solution to the problems created by the right. At the same time, the left lost its critical and revolutionary mystique, identifying itself with the neoliberal ideology of the right.

December 2024