Approximately 60 percent of Americans have opposed the war in Iran from its very outset. Compare that to the 90 percent of Americans who supported the war in Afghanistan when it commenced in 2001, and we can see at a glance what an enormous sea change has occurred in the US in the past two decades.
Not until 1967 did the Vietnam War become as unpopular as this war was at day one. The difference is that by 1967, more than 11,000 American troops had already been killed. Today’s war has not even become a ground invasion, although, judging by troop movements, that may soon change, at which point this war will turn into an actual Vietnam.
This is the beginning of the end for the MAGA movement, which propelled Trump to power just 18 months ago as the ‘peace president’ who would bring back jobs and bring down prices. The war has no off-ramp for Trump, there is no end in sight, and $4 a gallon gas is just the beginning of higher prices.
Experience is directly drawing a connecting line between this war and the rising cost of gas, mortgages and every other commodity. But, in the minds of millions, it is also being connected with Epstein.
In the first three days that followed the commencement of US-Israeli hostilities against Iran, the phrase ‘Operation Epstein Fury’ was tweeted 100,000 times. One humorous reel on Instagram noted that the cost of the first 10 days of the US-Israeli operation, which replaced Ayatollah Khamenei with Ayatollah Khamenei, was equivalent to giving $30,000 to every homeless American or 450 Epstein islands.
The Iranian leadership themselves have understood this well and are making very effective propaganda out of it. “The fate of dear Iran, which is more precious than life,” the speaker told the Iranian parliament, “will be determined solely by the proud Iranian nation, not by Epstein’s gang.”
What has this war to do with Epstein? For starters, a majority of Americans (52 percent) believe that their president plunged the world into this utterly catastrophic war simply to distract from the Epstein scandal. Undoubtedly there’s some truth in that.
In the minds of many middle and working-class Americans, however, the connection to Epstein is much more profound. It has an explanatory power. ‘Of course Trump doesn’t care about rising oil prices. Of course he won’t fix the economy,’ many will be telling themselves, including many repentant Trump voters. ‘It’s for the same reason he won’t release all the Epstein files. Because he is part of the Epstein class.’
Millions of people are explicitly connecting the condition of the working class at home, imperialist looting and butchery abroad, and the illegitimate rule of an abusive, exploitative class – the Epstein class. These are extremely advanced and correct conclusions!
It is only one small step from here to willing the overthrow of the Epstein class and the expropriation of their property.
The Epstein class
The past few weeks of dramatic developments have been accompanied by one really astonishing accusation, if you stop to think about what it implies.
After a weekend of mutually escalating threats between Trump and Iran over the prior weekend, the price of oil rose dramatically on the morning of Monday 23 March. Then, at 6:49 am New York time, someone placed an enormous and surprising bet. They placed $580 million on the unlikely scenario that the price of oil, which is spiralling upwards, would fall.
Just 15 minutes later, Trump took to Truth Social to announce “very productive” talks with Iran. Suddenly, the price of oil fell and someone became a lot richer. These “very productive” talks were a fiction. They were a barefaced lie, the only purpose of which was to give a temporary fillip to the markets.
Obviously someone very, very close to the president could not resist the opportunity to use this information to enrich themselves fabulously. Throughout Trump’s presidency, investors have noticed a very clear trend of anomalous trading preceding many of his major announcements.
This is the crass stupidity that the American ruling class were worried they would get with Trump. Corrupt insider trading happens all the time under capitalism – there is nothing new about that.
But it has, until now, been carried out with a certain finesse, and careful regard for outward appearances. Rarely has it been conducted with such stupidity, rarely so blatantly with egotistical disregard for the general interests of the capitalist class, which are subordinated to the desire of a small clique for enrichment and aggrandisement.
Behind the curtain, the American Republic has always been what the Epstein scandal shows it to be. It is a playground where the billionaire elite may enjoy any pleasure, however depraved, without consequence, where the politicians, intellectuals, media, judiciary – all fundamentally serve the interests of this class and are fused with that class.
However, the ruling elite has skillfully drawn a ‘democratic’ curtain over this nexus. It is riven through and through with corruption, of course, but it is (usually) corruption carried out outside the view of the public eye.
The Epstein files have brought it all into the light of day. They have revealed the precise minutiae of how that corruption operates.
How does it work? There is a case of a European politician, out of office, approaching Epstein for help in getting a lucrative speaking tour down the US West Coast. Epstein obliged. Later, that politician would share diplomatic information with Epstein.
In the case of former Prince Andrew, Epstein gave him use of his private island and jet. And Andrew shared with him details of business opportunities in East Asia arising from his trip as UK trade envoy. He helped Epstein impress a rich friend by showing him round Buckingham Palace. That rich friend would have been struck by the value of a friendship with Epstein, who could even connect them to royalty. No doubt, to cultivate that friendship, they would render favours in turn for Epstein.
This corruption was rarely as direct as cash in brown envelopes. It consisted of lots of indirect favours. It is indirect corruption that is all the more thorough for its indirectness.
Epstein made himself fabulously wealthy by being an invaluable fixer who could connect politicians, diplomats, and businessmen. He could get you information, back channels to government ministers, speaking tours, access to royalty, an in with a top lawyer – or he could traffic underage girls.
The sexual abuse of young girls entered into this as just one part of this merry-go-round of corruption and decadence, as well as as a means of blackmail to glue them together. It is a product of this sense of impunity, where anything goes for this all-powerful elite.
Trump and the US capitalist class
The ruling class is permanently engaged in levels of corruption that are so thorough and so all-pervasive that they have come to believe there are no limits to their entitlement, and that they are invulnerable. Trump has just taken this and given it its crassest expression, to the alarm of the more intelligent representatives of capital.
An interesting article was published by the Financial Times in 2018 at the time of Trump’s first presidency, titled, ‘The discreet terror of the American bourgeoisie’, which summed up the thinking of the capitalist class about Trump:
“[The US] elite disliked glitzy consumption and lowbrow culture. Then, as now, Donald Trump topped the list of pariahs. His victory has strengthened and shattered their worldview. Beneath the conviction about Mr Trump’s wrongness lurks an angst that dare not speak its name. Mr Trump is a distraction from a reckoning that cannot be postponed forever. What will America’s elites see when they look inwards? The first will be the shock of self-recognition…
“Somewhere in our bourgeois subconscious is the realisation that Mr Trump is no accident. He holds up a cracked mirror to our illusions.”
The ruling class’ main complaint against Trump, the reason the majority of them united against him at the 2024 election, is precisely that he holds up a mirror to them, that he is them.
But being a maverick, he doesn’t care about carefully maintaining the interests of the ruling class as a whole. He cares only about his own personal enrichment, aggrandisement, fame, popularity, and the place he imagines he is securing himself in history.
Intelligent strategists of capital were appalled at Trump’s willingness to demagogically and irresponsibly play with the enormous anger of the middle and working class against the rotten, corrupt establishment just so he could raise himself to the White House.
They knew that he would inevitably disappoint. And once he exhausted his support, the anger he had partially channelled for a time would look for a new outlet. We’ve now reached that point. And now, Trump’s very crassness, his complete disregard for the formalities of state, is blowing a strong gust of air onto this anger.
The conditions of the working class
In January, Trump hosted a meeting of oil executives in the White House with the explicit purpose of enticing them to join in the imperialist looting of Venezuelan oil. Again, a complete absence of any pretence. The press were freely invited to attend an open imperialist carcass-stripping. Every American president hosts many such meetings – behind closed doors!
All this was done in the open, in the increasingly sparkling surroundings of the Oval Office. Today, that office is covered with gilt, stacked with gold vases and furniture with golden trimmings that emulate the Rococo style that adorned the Palace of Versailles of Louis XIV. Gone is the outwardly austere appearance of the Founding Fathers.
At a certain point, the executives lost Trump’s interest. He abruptly stood up and walked over to the window to look out at the progress of the $500 million renovation taking place on the White House’s East Wing. The President has commissioned the construction of a 1,000-person capacity ballroom. Like Versailles, the White House is being decked out with its own Hall of Mirrors.
These are not details that go unnoticed. “Every time I go to the grocery store, I’m filled with dread,” a young worker told NBC News. “Meanwhile, we’re going to build a White House ballroom? It feels like, as an American, a slap in the face.”
Even prior to this war, workers were turning to extremely desperate measures to keep their noses above water.
Since 2015, there has been a 235 percent increase in Americans selling their blood plasma to profit-making medical companies. In the US, you can sell your plasma 104 times per year, compared to 60 times a year in Germany, the second most lax country in the world in terms of donation law.
For $64, an American worker can sell 10 percent of their blood volume once every two weeks. Potential symptoms include dizziness, light-headedness, fatigue and muscle weakness. It is no coincidence that these are more or less the same symptoms as malnutrition, because selling plasma is literally selling the nutrients from your blood.
Researchers have found that where plasma centres open in neighbourhoods – and they are opening across the USA at a record pace – foot traffic increases at grocery stores. Workers are selling the nutrients in their blood, not to buy luxuries, but to buy the nutrients they cannot otherwise afford!
“I’m angry that I’m working this much, that I’m educated, that I’m articulate, that I have marketable skills, and that I’m reduced to selling my plasma,” accountant Jill Chamberlain from Phoenix, Arizona also told NBC News. “I was ashamed at first, but now I’m angry. This is not how things are supposed to be.”
This was before the Iran War. It was the type of anger Trump successfully tapped into during the election in 2024, when he promised to bring down inflation.
Now, the price of gas is up 30 percent, and that is just the beginning. It will take time, but the consequences of this war will work their way through every supply chain in the world. A massive price will be paid by the working class, including in the US.
Many workers, if they didn’t outright sympathise with Trump, at least enjoyed a bit of schadenfreude watching him pour abuse over the heads of the liberal wing of the ruling class. Now workers are crying with pain, Trump has a message for them, in the same inimitable style:
“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for the U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”
The American worker is a fool if they aren’t happy to pay the price Trump has set for them!
The future of the war
Trump thinks in politics as he thinks in real estate: using his overwhelming wealth – or, in this case, overwhelming US firepower – he can bully the competition into accepting a low-ball offer. In the real estate market, that usually works out for him.
He is unaccustomed to losing, but on the rare occasions where he has lost, he has always reacted very badly.
It is said that he and Epstein fell out because the two ended up in a bidding war over a 62,000 square foot mansion in Palm Beach. Trump won, but not before Epstein extracted a hefty price by pushing Trump’s winning bid up to $42 million.
It was this, rather than Epstein’s abuse of children, that allegedly proved to be the last straw for Trump.
Iran is another situation where he cannot come out the winner, and he is reacting very badly. He is reduced to thrashing around in desperation, from threats to absurd declarations of victory, back to threats. He has no off-ramp, and is forced to continue a war that will inevitably end in catastrophe for him, his Administration and for US capitalism.
A week into the war, he invited evangelical leaders into the Oval Office to pray over himself and his forlorn mission. It certainly couldn’t hurt to ask for divine help, because help won’t be coming from any other quarter! The ridiculous tableau vivant that was captured resembled the Last Supper.
Trump’s own Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also appealed to the divine, calling upon God to “pour out his wrath” on the wicked, and to “break the teeth” of the enemy.
Some in the US Army officer corps seem to be intoxicated with this nonsense. No less than 200 complaints have been filed against officers, who are reportedly telling their troops that this is a religious war, and even a war to fulfil prophecy and bring about Armageddon!
But among the ranks of the army and navy? Stories circulated about US soldiers sarcastically saluting with the refrain, ‘For Epstein!’ They have, apparently, been debunked. But it’s well established that t-shirts and mop heads were flushed down the toilets on the USS Gerald Ford, and the question of whether the laundry room fire that rendered that ship inoperable was arson is still under investigation.
There’s no reason to think US soldiers are any happier paying for this war with their lives than US workers are happy paying for it at the petrol pump.
The sense that emerges is one of an enormous gulf separating the Trump clique and the whole ruling class, and the rest of society.
Trump’s place in history
Apparently, a big motivating factor behind Trump’s policy is his desire to secure for himself a place in history as one of the great US presidents – the one who brought back jobs, halted US decline, and settled accounts with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, doing what no president before had done. He dreamed of consolidating US imperialism like never before.
When he was elected for his second term in 2024, many on the so-called left also seemed to think he would succeed. They sank into depression, believing that his election signalled a shift to the right in the US working class, and the onset of a long winter of reaction.
When the history books are actually written – years after the socialist revolution has been completed in America – there will surely be a very interesting chapter to write about Trump. However, it won’t bear any resemblance to the hopes expressed by Trump or the despair expressed by the ‘left’.
It will show how Trump, having attempted to reestablish the powerful base of US imperialism, in actual fact enormously exposed its weaknesses, and prepared a strategic defeat in the Middle East.
For the first time, opinion polls have shown that more Americans sympathise with Palestinians than Israel – 41 percent as against 36 percent. Even a year ago, in the middle of the genocide in Gaza, 46 percent of Americans sympathised with Israel as against 33 percent with the Palestinians. This is another complete sea change, an astonishing achievement!
Trump has given the world a remarkable demonstration of the ironic workings of dialectics in history. Having temporarily channelled the anger of millions of American workers against the establishment for his own ends, he has been converted into the very epitome of the same monstrous, corrupt elite that he claimed to rail against.
Far from having represented a shift to the right in the US, Trump merely distorted and temporarily rode a wave of enormous brewing class anger, which he actually whipped up for a time.
That anger has the potential to swing sentiment among the mass of workers sharply to the left in the coming period, without any intermediate stops along the way. In the most remarkable way, in connecting the questions of the Epstein class, imperialist war, and living conditions, the consciousness of workers is leapfrogging the liberal so-called lefts who previously wrote them off as ‘backward’ and ‘reactionary’.
