Ruling Class Violence

It's Not New but New To You

Morning Comrades.

This isn’t so much about vindication, even if there is a lot of that going around lately, and it certainly never is about winning at anything as juvenile as being “right” in any argument any yet here we are. At the end of the 90s there were a couple of insightful conversations post- Seattle with friends in regards to the militarisation of police work in response to organised anti-capitalist work and by the time we headed into Athens in response to the killing of a 15-year-old Greek student, Exarcheia was clearly a testing ground for much of what we are seeing happening in the US today. Borders were closed, “special” police units across Europe had infiltrated most organisations and people were disappearing.

What is now being coined understood as the Imperial Boomerang has indeed been happening for a while and yet, despite the 25 years of my own personal interaction with it all, facing off with the power and violence of the ruling never fails to give one chills and frankly, we are now entering a time where much of what marginalised people around the West and across the Western Empire have experienced since a bunch of greedy, genocidal Europeans got on boats, is now here. I know it’s going to be a bit of a “moment” to a lot of people you may know, white, left-leaning peeps interested in relatively supportive of a “nicer” capitalism, but the gates of crushing dissent for profit have been opened.

The reality that the violence of the ruling class is not new, it’s just new to you, encapsulates a fundamental Marxist critique of capitalist democracy: the idea that systemic violence—whether in the form of state repression, economic exploitation, or imperialist war—is not an anomaly but a feature of bourgeois rule. The only thing that changes is who experiences it most directly at any given moment. Let’s demonstrate that the violence many perceive as a sudden emergence—whether in the form of police brutality, the erosion of civil liberties, or the rise of fascist tendencies—is actually the logical extension of historical capitalist domination, both at home and abroad.

The Imperial Boomerang: Colonial Violence Comes Home

One of the most useful frameworks for understanding this phenomenon is the imperial boomerang, a concept developed by Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire. This idea describes how the methods of repression, militarisation, and control that imperialist powers develop in the colonies eventually return to the metropole to be used against domestic populations.

Aimé Césaire, in Discourse on Colonialism, argued that the horrors of European fascism were not an aberration but a continuation of colonial violence directed inward:

“They tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that it was applied exclusively to non-European peoples; they have cultivated Nazism, they are responsible for it, and before engulfing the whole edifice of Western civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.” (Discourse on Colonialism, 1950)

This is particularly relevant to modern Western democracies, where the police militarisation that disproportionately affects marginalised communities is a direct result of counterinsurgency tactics developed in colonial wars. The tactics used by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan—such as drone surveillance, no-knock raids, and mass incarceration—have since been normalised in domestic policing, particularly in Black and working-class neighbourhoods.

Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, similarly describes how colonial violence brutalises not just its immediate victims but the entire structure of society:

“The colonized man will manifest this aggressiveness which has been deposited in his bones against his own people.” (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961)

This insight helps explain how systemic police violence and mass incarceration in the U.S. disproportionately target Black and Brown communities: the domestic state has absorbed the logic of colonial counterinsurgency, treating racialised populations as internal enemies.

Fascism and the Liberal Order: The False Dichotomy

Many in the West perceive fascism as a historical aberration rather than a recurring feature of capitalist crisis. Domenico Losurdo, in Liberalism: A Counter-History, challenges this liberal distinction between democracy and fascism by demonstrating that what is called "liberal democracy" has always contained fascistic elements, particularly in its treatment of colonised and racialised people:

“Liberalism, while proclaiming liberty, never ceased to base itself on the systematic exclusion and subjugation of vast masses—women, slaves, indigenous people, and wage laborers.” (Liberalism: A Counter-History, 2011)

This applies directly to contemporary Western democracies, where right-wing authoritarianism has surged not as a contradiction of liberalism but as its inevitable response to crisis. The rise of surveillance states, aggressive policing, and anti-immigrant policies in the U.S. and Europe is not simply a reaction to external threats but a continuation of ruling-class violence against the oppressed.

Losurdo’s work also sheds light on the historical complicity between liberalism and fascism. In the 1930s, Western elites initially tolerated or even supported fascist movements because they viewed them as bulwarks against socialism. Today, we see echoes of this dynamic in how the ruling class tolerates—or even encourages—the rise of far-right movements, so long as they direct their violence at migrants, workers, and the Left.

Racism and the Role of the State

Racism is not just an ideological prejudice but a structural necessity for capitalism. Marxist theory understands racism as a tool used by the ruling class to divide workers and justify exploitation. As Karl Marx wrote in Capital, capitalism depends on the super-exploitation of racialised labor:

“Labour in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin.” (Capital, Volume 1, 1867)

This remains true today in how Western democracies justify their internal inequalities and imperialist policies. In the U.S., for example, anti-Black racism underpins the prison-industrial complex, which functions as a form of racialised social control. Globally, Islamophobia is used to justify endless wars in the Middle East, just as Sinophobia is now used to justify escalating tensions with China.

Lenin, in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, showed how racism and imperialism are linked:

“Capitalism has developed on a world scale by exploiting the majority of the globe’s population in colonial and semi-colonial conditions.” (Imperialism, 1917)

What we see today—whether in the exploitation of migrant labor in the West, the demonisation of refugees, or the endless wars against the Global South—is a continuation of this process.

Imperialism and the Illusion of Western Innocence

Imperial violence is often hidden from Western populations, creating the illusion that it is something “new” when it eventually manifests within domestic borders. This is why many in the U.S. were shocked by the police repression of the George Floyd uprisings in 2020, even though these same tactics had been used abroad for decades, if not centuries.

Lenin’s analysis of imperialism remains crucial here. He argued that imperialism is not just foreign policy but the necessary expansion of monopoly capitalism, which always requires violence to sustain itself. The recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine are not anomalies but part of a broader imperialist system that must dominate resources and labor to survive.

As Lenin put it:

“Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism, where economic power is concentrated in the hands of a few, and political power serves their interests.” (Imperialism, 1917)

The economic crises of today—rising inequality, militarisation, and political instability—are not simply the failures of capitalism but its logical outcomes. The state, rather than protecting democracy, serves as an instrument of bourgeois class rule.

Recognizing the Continuity of Violence

The forms of repression many now experience in Western democracies are not sudden deviations but extensions of long-standing patterns. The imperial boomerang ensures that the violence perfected abroad is eventually deployed at home; fascism emerges not as a contradiction of liberalism but as its fallback mechanism in times of crisis; racism remains a necessary pillar of capitalist exploitation; and imperialism continues to define global power structures.

By understanding these historical continuities, we can reject the illusion that this violence is a temporary malfunction. Instead, we must recognise it as the logical expression of a system that can only be abolished through revolutionary change.

More importantly, we have to act accordingly.

Yours, warmly,

V.