Bernie Sanders' election campaign had given rise to much hope. By daring to introduce a socialist perspective into the debate, Sanders initiated the … - Samir Amin

We are told [that the West is threatened by] the terrorist threat of Islamic jihadism. Again, opinion is perfectly manipulated on the subject. Jihadism is merely the inevitable product of the triad's continued support of reactionary political Islam inspired and financed by Gulf Wahhabism. The exercise of this so-called Islamic power is the best guarantee of the total destruction of the ability of societies in the region to resist the dictates of liberal globalization. At the same time, it offers the best pretext for giving the appearance of legitimacy to the NATO's interventions.

The project of American hegemonism fits into the liberal logic of collective triad imperialism. It entails that the ‘sovereignty of US national interests’ should be placed above all other principles framing the legitimacy of political action. To be sure, the imperialisms of the past behaved no differently, and those who seek to mitigate the responsibilities of the US establishment today, or to find excuses for its criminal conduct, frequently invoke the undeniable historical antecedents. p.122

Washington’s propaganda apparatus has been foretelling an inevitable ‘clash of civilizations’ (actually of religions) as the dominant feature of the future world. In reality, it has managed to give a real face to such a clash by a number of systematic measures: the promotion of various communalisms on the pretext of respecting difference; an offensive against ‘outdated’ secularism; praise for religious obscurantisms, which postmodernists have placed on a par with any other ‘ideology’; systematic encouragement of nauseating ethnicist regimes (in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere); various kinds of cynical manipulation (CIA support for terrorist groups against enemies of the USA, in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Algeria, among others); and a false and dishonest war on so-called ‘terrorism’ (where terror does not serve Washington’s interests). The so-called clash of civilizations is an integral part of the barbaric downhill slide of capitalism; in no way is it an obstacle to the unfurling of the US hegemonist project.