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The recent years have been especially dark for the US Empire: Trumpist fascism, disenfranchisement of the working classes, rampant inequality and access to rights and services have been exacerbated by a two-years-long (and still ongoing) pandemic, extreme climate events and now an impending recession. Any chef with these ingredients in their kitchen would tell you that this is the perfect recipe for a large-scale uprising, a popular upsurge that fights back against the cascading consequences of neoliberalism.

This happened already.

Summer 2020 saw the tides of Black Lives Matter create unrest (both violent and non-violent) across all American cities, which the federal government and every department of the police readily proceeded to oppose and quell with brute force. As is to be expected, especially from a European point of view, the ruling class was understandably concerned with any threat to the powers they hold, and use any means available to defuse the popular menace.

The threat was indeed defused eventually, and the BLM movement failed to dismantle the scaffoldings of systemic racism that shapes American society (European too, even if many will feel offended if you dare tell them). BLM has nonetheless managed to raise awareness and lay the groundwork for more organizations and direct action groups, which will be crucial in the next future.

Then, on January 6th 2021, one of the most puzzling events in contemporary history took place in the very core of the Empire. I need to stress this: it was only one place; not even close to how widespread and long-standing the BLM movement had been. Yet the bizarre gathering of alt-right trolls and Trump supporters was allowed to make its way to the Capitol Hill Congress undisturbed, and traumatize the collective consciousness far deeper than the BLM riots.

The asymmetry is infuriating and appalling, but not surprising.

However, we're forgetting something crucial in this comparison. Both events, despite the stark differences that set them at the polar ideological opposites, haven't been triggered by economic reasons alone.

A defining trait of successful (as in, they end up successfully impacting the social order, forcing the ruling class to comply) contemporary revolts is their trigger. The most effective ones seem to be those who are sparked by the impossibility for the citizens to access basic services, locked out of basic goods by economic barriers. Think about the periphery of the Empire: the Arab Springs in 2011 (caused by a raise of wheat prices), the Chilean Estallido Social from 2019 (triggered by metro tickets' skyrocketing fares), the French Gilet Jaunes (sparked by oil prices) and the 2022 Kazakh Bloody January (again, originating in energy price hikes). Italy has seen many social revolts (school structure, end-of-life rights, LGBTQ+ rights, workers' contracts), but none of them left a mark.

So we start noticing two fundamental traits: – Revolts become more decisive, long-standing and threatening when the underlying reasons are economic, rather than social – Revolts have a higher chance to put a dent in the ruling class' order when they happen far from the core

Now, I'm not a sociologist nor a historian; there's likely counterexamples and notable events I might have missed and surely I lack the knowledge and experience to draw any conclusions from these patterns. However, to make things worse, I have an additional question: why would a ruling class, on top of the existing economic recession that is depriving many citizens close and far from its core, add to it a reason to social unrest by making abortion unlawful? Why deliberately worsen a clearly approaching crisis?

It's a matter of perspective.

From our perspecive, which is broadly leftist and anticapitalist, we might see the ruling class trying to encroach on the power they have, to strengthen their hold by immiserating the working class. That is what every Empire did in proximity of their downfall. So we might infer that the Empire is finally on its knees, wounded and weak, on the verge of falling forever.

But maybe we're on the wrong side of the kneeling.

Maybe the Empire is not bowing in defeat but vowing allegiance, taking the necessary blows and sacrifices to sign a blood pact with someone that stands opposite to us, in order to be legitimated and awarded more power still.

Maybe the abortion ban is seen by the ruling class as appeasement toward the same conservative mob that stormed the media on Jan 6th. Maybe they are felt like the real threat to the veneer of “liberal democracy”, they are the ones to whom concessions are being made, in order to defuse the economic pandemonium that might trigger a serious revolt in the near future.

Which is it, we can't tell right now, and I'm mostly speculating. But if there's a moment to come together and prepare for what's next, up close or far away from the imperial core, that moment is now.