 Global capitalism is in a deep crisis, and this crisis is only exacerbated by the pandemic. Facing stagnation, the circuits of militarized accumulation coercively open up opportunities for capital accumulation worldwide. Recent years have seen an increase of military budgets of states and the growing inclusion of military technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotic soldiers, cyber weapons, drone warfare, and many more. Previous attempts to achieve a nuclear weapons free world and the disarmament of conventional weapons have so far not succeeded. We are now living in a veritable global war economy. We have to reverse this trend of militarized accumulation before it is too late. In this session we will explore the paths that need to be taken to revitalize a global movement for disarmament. Here to discuss this challenge with us is William Robinson, professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In his work, Mr. Robinson focuses on globalization, transnationalism, political economy, and the third world. He is widely published in a variety of academic journals and is the author of The Global Police State and Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity. Hello everybody, welcome to DM25's Alternative Security Conference. This session's title is Disarmament. At the end of the session, if we have enough time, there will be a Q&A round, so don't shy away to raise your questions in the chat. I'm Igor Miatovic and it's my pleasure and honor to welcome our guest speaker, Professor William I. Robinson. Professor Robinson, good morning to California. Good evening to you and thank you so much for this invitation. So you wrote the book The Global Police State, which I personally find very important and I agree with Norm Chomsky's compelling book. What I like about this book is that you give us a bird's eye view, a comprehensive description about the militarization around the world and how it is transnational intertwined. In your first chapter, you wrote about the global capitalism and its crisis. Please tell us more about that. Sure. Well, the backdrop to any discussion here has to be the crisis of global capitalism, which is absolutely acute. And we need to be clear that the pandemic did not cause this crisis. It only aggravated it many times over. Of course, the crisis is multi-dimensional. It is existential due to the ecological dimension to the renewed threat of nuclear war and to the threat of future pandemics in which the microbes may be many times more deadlier than the coronavirus. But here I want to focus on two dimensions of the global crisis and again emphasize that this crisis is the backdrop to the discussions of security and alternative security. And the first is the economic or structural dimension of chronic stagnation in the global economy. This is what we call more technically over accumulation. And what's happened here is what I call the transnational capitalist class has accumulated in the past couple of decades enormous amounts of profits. But it cannot find productive outlets to continue to reinvest those profits and make more profit. And the reason for this in simplified form here is because of unprecedented global inequalities. Many of those in the audience here will be familiar with this data that 1% of humanity now controls over 50% of the world's wealth and more significantly 20% of humanity. That portion that might be able to actually survive in global capitalism controls 95% of the world's wealth. That means that 80% of humanity has only 5% of the world's wealth. Under these conditions the global economy produces enormous amounts of wealth but the global markets cannot absorb the output of the global economy. So what we've seen between 2008 the financial collapse of 2008 and 2020 is a steady rise in underutilized capacity and a slowdown of industrial production all around the world. This takes place while the transnational capitalist class, the giant corporations have accumulated enormous amounts of cash reserves. The world's 2,000 biggest non-financial corporations was sitting on $6.6 trillion in cash reserves idle in 2010. That jumped up by 2020 by last year to $14.2 trillion. Structurally speaking this is a problem for the transnational capitalist class because if capital remains idle it ceases to be capital. So the challenge for the transnational capitalist class and the giant corporations is where to unload all of this surplus and continue to accumulate capital and make profit. Again what I call the transnational capitalist class has turned to four mechanisms that has kept the economy moving forward in the past couple of decades in the face of this chronic stagnation. Now one of those mechanisms is debt driven growth and we've seen worldwide debt now at an all time high. Consumer, state and corporate debt is now approaching $300 trillion worldwide. That is 400% of the entire gross global product. The second mechanism that's kept the global economy moving forward in the face of this chronic stagnation is wild financial speculation in the global casino. And just to give you one idea of the extent of this speculation is that the global economy that is the total global production of goods and services in a year currently is $75 trillion. But speculation just in derivatives is $1.2 quadrillion. So we have speculation in the stock markets and urban properties and currencies and land grabs all around the world. Numerous just unbridled global financial speculation and the creation of numerous bubbles. If one of them bursts we have another collapse. The third mechanism that's kept the global economy moving forward in the face of this crisis is the plunder of state and public finances. And in very simplified form, Greece, the experience of Greece in the 2010s is a model for that year. But here we want to focus on the fourth mechanism that's kept the economy moving forward, and it is expanding investments in transnational systems of warfare, social control and repression. And that of course leads us to the concept of the global police data about which I know we're going to get to later on in the interview. But here is the link between the crisis of global capitalism and this theme of security and alternative security. But the second big dimension of global crisis that I want to mention here is one of a crisis of state legitimacy and capitalist hegemony. So the system is facing a spiraling crisis of legitimacy after decades of hardship and social decay that have been wrought by neoliberalism and capitalist globalization. Now this crisis of legitimacy and capitalist hegemony doesn't mean that we're necessarily in a terminal crisis of capitalism. That depends on what social and political and class forces do all around the world. But clearly the system is moving towards a general crisis of capitalist rule. And in this context, millions and actually I would say billions of people don't see their governments and don't see the system any longer as having any legitimacy as able to secure their very survival. And so this represents a crisis of social control for the ruling groups, how to maintain control. And in fact, remember what we saw in 2019? Well, from 2008 to the present, there's been a steady escalation of the global revolt all around the world. But especially 2019 was a people's spring. The pandemic came. We had to leave the streets momentarily. But 2020 saw even more of a global revolt. More than in 2019. And that's going to continue and is continuing in 2021. But also this crisis of state legitimacy and capitalist hegemony is give fuel and fire for the rise of neo-fascism of far right nationalism. So we need to I know we'll talk about that later on in the interview. So let me conclude your first question with without let me conclude with one other quick observation. And that is that since 2008 and on there has been there's a process underway of a radical a new round of radical restructuring and transformation of global capitalism based on a much more advanced digitalization of the entire global economy and society. Now to be clear, with the launch of capitalist globalization in the 1980s and on, there was a massive restructuring of the whole global economy, the rise of a globally integrated production financial and service system into which every country has been integrated. But now in the last few years, accelerated by the pandemic, we're seeing now a new round of much more profound restructuring and transformation pushed forward by digitalization. And here's the thing, this new round of digitalization may temporarily bring about a burst of growth and expansion, especially as we emerge from the pandemic. We're not there yet. But in the midterm, this will only exacerbate existing contradictions and conflicts and aggravate the crisis of global capitalism, unless the current course is is altered radically altered. Thanks, Professor Robinson. You mentioned our accumulation, digitalization. Also, you write in the book about automation, austerity and inequality. All these points are addressed in the M25 program. We have a European New Deal. We have the Green New Deal. The audience can look for it on our official homepage, but maybe also in the chat. So let's talk about the global police states. What is the global police state? Sure. So first of all, I want to say the rise and expansion of this global police state has to be seen as a response to this crisis of global capitalism. And by global police state, I mean three things. First of all, we're seeing the tremendous expansion worldwide of systems of transnational social control and repression to contain the real, the actual and the potential rebellion of surplus humanity and the global working and popular classes in the face of this extreme inequality and the crisis of legitimacy and capitalist That's first what I mean this this this unbelievable escalation of repression and control. But I mean a second thing as well and this is critically important because this is lost on on many people that we're seeing that in the face of this accumulation crisis of this chronic stagnation, the rise of a broke global police state is incredibly profitable. It allows the economy, the corporations to continue to accumulate in capital in the face of otherwise of stagnation. And the third thing I mean by global police state is this rise and spread of far right authoritarian and neo fascist political projects. Now these three dimensions, each one individually is not specifically new to the last 10 years, but they cannot be separated from one another. And the point here is that we must see how these three dimensions are intertwined in new ways that signal this new and extremely dangerous phase in global capitalism with the severe crisis as the backdrop. So I want to emphasize here that through global police state what we are seeing is a convergence of global capitalism's need for social control and repression. And it's economic need to perpetuate capital accumulation in the face of stagnation. So let me briefly expand on these two points, starting with the transnational social control and repression. The International Labor Organization reported as far back as the late 1990s that one third of the global working class was unemployed structurally marginalized and locked out. And then more recently it reported that 2 billion people in global society have to try and scratch out a living in the informal sector, and that 1.3 billion people that is actually a majority of those who actually have employment work under precarious conditions. What we're calling the precarious, what many have called a precarious and that this precariousization is spreading like wildfires throughout all people that have employment, even cognitive layer, formerly privileged professional cognitive layers being labor is being precariousized across the board everybody's being precariousized. And so this precariousization of work is being accelerated by digitalization. The point here is that we have this two phases to humanity, the majority of humanity, one of those that are locked out marginalized make superfluous, and that's what I call surplus humanity, and those that are increasingly super exploited and unstable, but integrated as workers into the new circuits of globalized capitalism. So these unprecedented inequalities can only be sustained through extreme violence militarization and repression. And that's why we're seeing this expansion of systems of transnational social control and repression to contain the rebellion which is already underway and also the threat of dramatic intensification of this rebellion. So global police state is a preemptive strike also against surplus humanity in the global working class, and it is a strike to try and tighten the discipline over those that are employed precariously. And these conditions this repression and control that I'm talking about lend themselves to fascist projects but more importantly for the point of this purpose of this conference. They legitimate the discourse of security. How is the discourse of global police state is the mechanism for legitimating this discourse of security. So we want to emphasize here that if the imperative of social control gives impetus to global police state, it's digital technologies which make this global police state possible. And I'm going to say this very quickly because I know we're limited on time, but we're seeing, for instance, a new global social and spatial apartheid. And I speak about in my book of the global police state, green zoning and grains gray zoning are all around the world. We're seeing that in Europe, United States, but in every corner of the world. And what in you remember the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. What the US occupiers did is they established in the center of Baghdad what they called the green zone, and they created an impenetrable barrier in that green zone inside where the occupation political forces and the military commanders. But also the new Iraqi elite and high income professional straight up put into power by that invasion and outside wage wage the war and the misery misery of the Iraqi population, the gray zone and the outright war zone. So what we're seeing isn't all of the mega cities of the world now we're seeing green zoning and gray zoning and these mega cities are the new battlegrounds for global police state which are unleashed here. What are the some of the new modalities of policing and repression that we're seeing again make possible by digital technologies. And is new systems of mass incarceration, immigrant attention and deportation regimes, refugee control systems, border and containment walls, mass surveillance and tracking geo fencing and geo tracking and I know there's no time to get into some of the finer details of all of this militarized urban policing, paramilitary and private armies and security forces. We're seeing of course the direct violence but also the structural violence for instance debt collection is now becoming repressive and militarized militarized debt collection. We're seeing the blurring of military and the civilian spheres of all of this, and we're seeing that active war zones is hard to now distinguish from what's going on in our mega cities in these urban civilian theaters. It is blurring of the boundaries between the corporate capital and states in this undertaking, and also we're seeing the social cleansing through criminalization of surplus humanity through bogus wars on drugs and terror terror so called terrorism. California to give you one example locally I live in California, there's been past no less than 592 laws restricting the standing the sitting the resting the sleeping the panhandling the food sharing of homeless people and California has 130,000 people living on the streets, any one day and 171 laws now restrict what people cannot do in public spaces. So all of this is then much more than I could talk about but no time here is the face of this repressive dimension of global police state. But now here I want to make the key point is that global police state military aggression extended we expanded repression. It also has the purpose of opening up space for more transnational corporate plunder and also for containing rebellion against that plunder. So that leaves me to the second key dimension here of global police state and I'll wrap it up with with this but this is critical to understand is that it's not just repression and militarization. Also, global police state is the global war economy. The global police state is now an outlet for over accumulated capital. It global police state is an immensely profitable business enterprise for the transnational capitalist class. And that's what I mean by militarized accumulation and accumulation by repression in which we see a fusion of private accumulation with state militarization. And here's some dramatic data. We know that September 11 2001 ushered in a much more sweeping militarization of the global economy and society. The Pentagon budget increased from 1998 to 2011 by 98% almost 100%. And worldwide between 2006 and 2015 state military budgets increased by 50%. And this represents 3% of the total global global world product but this doesn't include state secret budgets police and intelligence budgets which number into the hundreds of millions, maybe even the trillions of dollars, but it also doesn't include private corporate spending. In fact, there's an proliferation of military and private security and mercenary firms. There's more private mercenaries, private soldiers and private security in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere than there are state forces. And we have a global market and homeland security now valued at $500 billion estimated to number trillions of dollars. This is all corporate profit in the face of stagnation. The annual value of global weapon sales between 2002 and 2016 surpassed $100 billion. That's annually. That's a 38% increase over previously. And this industry employs 3 million workers worldwide. But more significantly, in 2018 that's the latest data I have. Private military firms employed 15 million people worldwide and private police and security firms employed 20 million people worldwide. In over half the countries of the world, there's more private police and security than there are public forces. And there's been a rapid increase in private prisons. Again, I'm making the point that global police state is a corporate state and the expansion of corporate profits in the face of stagnation and the crisis that we spoke about. So there's already 200 private prisons on all five continents and that's the quickest prison expansion. And to talk about where you are, where the conference attendants are, in the European Union, the border security program spending increased an incredible 3,688% between 2005 and 2016. And this border security programs are run by global corporations to make profit. And I'll conclude this question, your question with one final observation, because this is so dramatic. So one global business intelligence firm, and I quoted here, states there will be a dramatic rise in civil unrest that generates demand for riot control systems. Now, the Lloyds, Lloyds of London, this giant global financial insurance conglomerate, explained very clearly this convergence of the need for social control and repression with profit making opportunities. It said, and I'm quoting here, instances of political violence contagion are becoming more frequent and headed towards PV pandemics. That's political violence pandemics. This is an actual quote. Super strains of PV include anti imperialist and independence movements, social movements, calling for removal of an occupying force, mass pro reform protests against national governments, armed insurrection inspired by Marxism and Islamism. And then it goes on to say, all of this means that this market and riot control systems will vastly expand in the coming years. And the point is this market is a good thing for transnational corporate capital. They want this market. They want so called riots. They want conflict. They want wars because it's massive profits in the face of crisis. So there's much more to say here, but I know that we're limited on time. So that in a nutshell is my concept of global police state and my analysis of it. Thank you, Professor Robinson. This really sounds very dystopian. It sounds like they want to establish a global prison, actually. In last year's Munich Security Conference with the motto Westlessness, Western leaders promoted an increase of military budgets, as you just said. Despite the pandemic, where we actually should unite in solidarity, we had 2020 worldwide a new record in military spending, which is pretty interesting. We see also a massive investment in the modernization of conventional and nuclear weapons. And there are even new doctrines, which suggest nuclear weapons to actually use them in a limited sense. The US alone has over 800 military bases in foreign countries. Many of them are in Europe. We have tensions on the Ukrainian border in the Mediterranean and elsewhere in the world. So in the view of all this, how can we understand the new Cold War? Yeah, extremely important question. But let me preface by saying, as your introduction to that next question, you mentioned the dystopian vision that I put forward. And yes, indeed it is. But we want to remember on a positive note that global police state and everything I've laid out is a response to the global rebellion from below. And this people spring in this mass subsurge of resistance worldwide. So we want to always remember that the ruling groups are reactive to our struggles. But we'll come back to that later. This new Cold War is extremely dangerous. And of course it's legitimated by the ruling groups by saying that our security, the United States and NATO and so forth, say our security is being threatened. And the new Cold War from this and this side of the Atlantic from Washington is this war against China and Russia that are supposedly threats. And most observers here, including in the mass media, but also on the left and progressive forces, focus on the geopolitical dynamics. Now they are important, but there's a bigger picture here which is largely overlooked. And it is that the crisis of global capitalism that we started this interview with is driving the new Cold War and in two ways, which I want to indicate here. And the first is that the ruling groups, especially here in Washington, you know, in Washington, must conjure up an external enemy in order to legitimate all of this rising military spending and the creation and expansion of a global police state. So it is corporate profit, not an external enemy, which is conjured up, that explains the expansion of this war machine. And I want to give three examples to hammer home the point, very recent examples. In 2018, then President Trump, Donald Trump announced with so much fanfare covered by the media all over the world that the U.S. was creating a fifth military force, a so-called space force. So all of the media parroted the official line that this was because we need, we have heightened security threats. But less reported and behind the scenes, what was taking place was there was massive lobbying by former government officials that were now tied with and representing the military industrial complex, lobbying to hype up military spending on satellites and other space systems so they could sell them. The second example of how the New Cold War is simply a legitimation of what we've been speaking about is that just in February, two months ago, in this year, the Federation of American Scientists reported, big report, that it was military industrial complex targeting that was responsible for the U.S. government announcement that it will invest at least $100 billion to beef up the U.S. nuclear arsenal. That it's lobbying by military industrial complex to expand this nuclear for profit. And then the third was just a few days ago. Biden announced again to much acclaim that it's withdrawing all his U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Here's the thing. Currently there's only 2,500 U.S. government troops in Afghanistan that pales in comparison to the private contractors that are there, 18,000 private contractors. Again, private mercenaries. And at least 5,000 of those private contractors are corporate soldiers and they're going to continue and they're linked to the U.S. state. So in some, in some profits, not external threats, drives this new Cold War. But this new Cold War must be justified by official state propaganda. And that propaganda is this is the threat to our security and China and Russia are threatening our security. But I want to make one other point. I'll make it as quick as I possibly can. But the other thing that's driving this new Cold War and these new horrible threats that we're facing is that it is also a response to the crisis of state legitimacy and social decomposition from years of neoliberalism and capitalist globalization. States are facing these internal crises of legitimacy, which I've emphasized. And they have to externalize the political fallout from this crisis. So they have to take the fear, the insecurity, the social anxiety, the unrest inside the national territory here in the United States, for instance, and it has to be channeled outwards. Well, inward towards internal scapegoats such as immigrants in the United States, Asians in the United States, blamed for the pandemic. That was Trump's strategy. Now it has to be channeled externally to new enemies. And that's Biden's strategy of whipping up even more than Trump this new Cold War. I'll point out here that the Chinese and the Russian ruling classes also face economic and political fallout from the global crisis. But China and Russia, the national economies are less dependent on militarized accumulation and their mechanisms of legitimation rest elsewhere. And not in provoking war with Washington and with the West. Finally, this is so scary. Historically, wars have pulled the capitalist system out of accumulation crises. They serve to deflect attention from political tensions and problems of legitimacy. And US presidents have achieved their highest approval ratings when they launch wars. So George W. Bush had achieved a 90% approval rating in 2001, as he was getting ready his administration to invade Afghanistan. And his father before him, George H. W. Bush, achieved an 89% approval rating after it was so low, after he invaded Iraq and Kuwait in the first Gulf War. So this is some of the things we need to be thinking about when we talk about alternative security and this new Cold War being led by the United States. You just said something about lobbying. The Munich Security Conference is the conference we are actually countering with this conference. It's largely funded by the military industry with sponsors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Airbus, Ryan Metall Group, as well as big tech corporations like Microsoft, Google, Facebook is on the board, and many, many more. Of course, all the surveillance companies. The financial institutions are also sponsoring the Munich Security Conference, big pharma and that could go on and on and on. Maybe you will see in the chat a link to all the sponsors for the Munich Security Conference. It's really interesting and revealing, I think. There are also many transatlantic think tanks supporting the event. What is actually their objective? Yeah, that again is a really great, great question, and I have to give a very brief answer, of course, because of time constraints. But again, the point you made about the Munich Security Conference is once again we see how all of this is driven by corporate profit and the need for social control, but then legitimated in the name of security. And behind the scenes, this is a corporate project and state officials and governments are simply doing the bidding of the transnational capitalist class in my own language. But let me turn to think tanks and foundations, and I want to just put this in a larger perspective is that I'm a sociologist. And in radical sociology, we have studied how policies are developed and legitimated in this complex process that you don't you only see the policy when it's announced by a president and you know it hits the global media but there's a long thing that take long process and you know chain thing that takes place before before the policies ever inaugurated by a government. It starts with transnational corporate capital. And they finance all of these foundations and all of these think tanks that do the internet intellectual and strategic thinking for the ruling groups. And then in turn, the foundations and the think tanks also fund policy studies, and they fund universities and organic intellectuals who are doing the bidding of the ruling classes. And then they write up and draft reports and policy projects, and then they deliver them to officials in our capitalist states that we're living under, then those officials make the announcements and it seems like it's some brand new initiative. That for instance is the issue of the space force that I was mentioning is developed and you know in policies and think tanks through the lobbying and the control of the military industrial complex. So this is all to say that there's a long genealogy which is not visible to us. And there's one other point before I get more hands on answer to what you're asking. And that is that currently, and I know we'll come back to this maybe at the end of the interview, the ruling groups worldwide are currently divided that's very important to see that the majority are pushing forward with global police state they're pushing forward with more neoliberalism more ruthless capitalist globalization. But there is a growing minority among the ruling elite that want to save capitalism from itself from this crisis and from the revolt from below. And they are pushing a mild reformist agenda. And so it's important to see also that how that plays out with these policy debates and with what the foundations and think tanks are doing but that maybe we can get into later. More specifically I want to say that the other thing coming out of the other thing here is the propaganda how do you the machinery of the capital estate is and and the culture industries are put fully to the service of this global police state we've seen a massive mobilization of the culture industries of Hollywood of the media. And it's important to legitimate the global police state and the challenge for the ruling groups is how do you generate the ideology and the culture which will push forward and legitimate global police state. Let me mention something about Hollywood and the entertainment industry the corporate media and social media, because they have been weaponized completely weaponized if we're fighting the new nuclear new expansion of the nuclear we're fighting the military budgets we have to see the link between culture Hollywood and how they've all been weaponized to normalize global police states. And so just to give you one example because I know we're so restricted on time US military and intelligence agencies have influenced over 800 major movies Hollywood movies and 1000 TV programs in the last decade the global public is bombarded with this and Hollywood's exported all over the world so Hollywood itself just to give this one example becomes a potent propaganda machine of war and of repression I'm going to have a list of these movies that are blockbusters around the world in which the CIA and the Pentagon for one they give funding. And secondly they advise and they work very closely, but there's something else also going on here. The corporate media, I'm not the first to point out I mean I haven't even researched specifically this, but we know that the global corporate the corporate media is global in reach. It's extremely influential and state being public opinion and our understanding of what goes on in the world. And it's a concentrated media monopoly, but what's less known and has been less research is that the giant Hollywood and global media firms and social media firms are thoroughly cross invested with the military industrial complex they're actually cross invested with the transnational financial corporations with the tech corporations so all of this is a cluster of a new ruling block of capital which brings together the the giant tech companies which are now at the core of the global economy, the military industrial complex, the global financial conglomerates and now also the so called news and entertainment industry so this is I mean a really big topic I know we were limited on time to go into more detail on it. We saw a documentary about the movie Black Hawk down the script was sent to the Pentagon and they changed like every second a scene was was amended and manipulated so that in the end it looks like heroic thing what they did back then Somalia. Yeah, and I just I just say that one is so obvious right but you wouldn't believe this list of 800 which I'm not going to rattle off now. Some of them they seem so innocuous but the ideology and the legitimate nation of global police state comes out in in films that would appear that they're not even military films. So now with the rice. This is actually my last question before we come to the questions from the audience with the rise of right wing populism. What has to be done politically and in terms of activism when it comes to disarmament. Yeah, well I mean this is a critically important question right. So, I want to talk. I want to mention something about the threat of male fascism or what I call 21st century fascism because this is a response to the also a response to the increasing breakdown of capitalist hegemony. And whether we're talking about fascism in the 20th century or now 21st century fascism, we have to see it as a particular response a far right response to the crisis of capitalism. And as I've already mentioned extreme inequalities require extreme repression they require global police states, and this creates political conditions fertile for far right and fascist projects in the 20th century. The objective the first initial objective of fascism in Germany and Italy was to crush powerful socialist and worker movements in the 21st century. It's to contain the preemptively contain the revolt of surplus humanity and also the popular revolt already underway. But here's a key thing we need to understand that this goes for the United States but it also goes for Europe and it also holds true for elsewhere around the world. And that these 21st century fascist and far right populist projects seek to organize a mass social base, but among whom among the historically privileged sectors of the global working class such as white workers that enjoyed some stability in the 20th century in the global north, urban middle layers in the global south, who are now under capitalist globalization experiencing heightened insecurity, downward mobility, socio economic destabilization and rising social anxiety. So this is the potential base that fascist projects need to organize. And of course we need to address and organize that base, because fascism has to create a mass social base and how it's doing so right now is to promise to restore stability security and we leave that mass social anxiety generated by capitalist globalization and its crisis. So the key of the fascist project is to the promise to avert or reverse this downward mobility, this social destabilization and restore a sense of stability and security. Now it is a false promise. It's an illusion. Of course it can't be done. But the flip side of these fascist projects is mass scapegoating of certain communities. So that I mentioned previously, social anxiety is channeled away from the system and so it's scapegoated communities, whether in the 20th century, Jews and others, or what and whether in the United States, immigrants and Asians in India, Muslims and lower castes, and so forth. The whole project of 21st century fascism is this psychological sublimation of tensions created by capitalist crisis. But now that you're asking about what we need to do from below, here's the thing, that the fascist response of this mass base which has been displaced, the response of coming close to fascism is not an automatic response. The role of the extreme right of Trumpism for instance in the United States is to organize a fascist response to push forward a fascist understanding of the crisis. So we, the progressive forces, the social movements, the left must put forward an alternative explanation of this crisis and where the threat to our existence is coming from. So I want to say a couple of the things as I wrap up my response. The first is that when we talk about the threat of fascism and you know I've been writing about this and warning about this for 15, 16 years and wasn't taken too seriously until really Trump came to power and these far right and fascist parties are gaining ground, you know, all around the world is that fascism is a triangulation of three things. First, reactionary and repressive political power in the States, and we're seeing that in many countries. Secondly, that has to link up with transnational corporate capital and of course we're seeing that in global police data as we've been discussing. And third, it has to link up with a fascist mobilization in civil society itself. So we're not yet seeing that triangulation there's no full blown fascist projects around the world, but the left and the progressive forces and social movements need to beat that back with an alternative project so for me. And again, this is a much larger discussion than I can summarize here. It's urgent that we have a revitalized left, and that we have an alternative message to the mass of downwardly mobile and de-style liberalized humanity a message alternative to the far right and populist message. So, and this is already happening and in Europe as well as the United States we need mass organizations and political parties, in my view, with a minimal agenda I mean a transnational agenda in which social movements and political parties transnationally agree on a minimal program and minimal agenda. I know that we have recently formed a progressive international you might know much more about it than me as one example of this coming about but what we have worldwide right now is this very disturbing disjunction between this incredible upsurge and popular revolt all around the world the people spring of 2018 19 and now 20 and 21, but that has not been linked in most cases to an organized left so the mass absurdist social movements is somewhat brotherless. And we saw that here in my country in the United States with the with the anti racist Black Lives Matter uprising of May, June and July of this past year. It was completely divorced from any left or radical critique of global capitalism and it fizzled out and in fact is being co-opted from above right now by corporate in the states. So we need to put forward here on the left a rigorous critique of capitalism and its crisis and and we need really in my view a route our own triangulation. We need a triangulation of the social movements which are bursting forth all over the world with trade unions and labor and with left political organizations parties and organizations a three way triangulation. And we have because of the crisis the possibility. And we need the strategies to create very broad alliance including with because earlier in the interview I mentioned that one sector of the elite is reformist calling for significant reforms of global capitalism to save the system from itself. So that opens the possibilities of alliances with those elites is long as the popular and working classes retain their hegemony over these alliances not turning over the hegemony to the reformist elites. We definitely need to be talking about eco socialism and I'll conclude now by what you know you were asking is that we really need to push forward a global green new deal and we should see that urgently as an interim program alongside alongside in accumulation of forces for a more radical system change. Certainly a global green new deal may help lift the world out of economic depression and simultaneously address the climate emergency and generate conditions favorable to struggle and radicalize the struggle for a post capitalist social order. So I guess that's as far as I get with the time that we have. Thanks Professor Robinson. There is actually a quote by Walter Benjamin who said behind every fascism there is a failed revolution. And I think we can really if you want to tackle all these problems you have enumerated it can only happen transnationally and it's your right to progressive international is addressing transnationally these problems and also we from the 25 acts transnationally so I think this would be a good first step in the right direction. So I think we are good in time actually Professor Robinson. We can now raise some questions from the audience. I have here a question from Hans Joachim. Is the Biden administration's newly staffed team able and willing to launch disarmament initiatives. Able yes willing no absolutely not on the contrary. The military budget is increasing under Biden. It's not increasing as much as it might have been under Trump but it's increasing and the Biden's the Biden administration's language is to intensify the the so called global the this aggression towards China again you know China's a capitalist the ruling groups are capitalist China's a system and we're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do that which workers and poor people are struggling Russia as well. They're not revolutions you know at all. But nonetheless it's not them that are the aggressors here. No Biden is very Biden might be doing a few progressive things internally inside the United States public investment in infrastructure even that's limited. But in terms of the global war machine and all of that. No Biden has been a warrior you know a warrior for global capitalism his entire career and nothing that's happened nothing in this first hundred days hundred days now in a week. Of his administration suggests that there's going to be any change of course in terms of militarization and war and global police state and I of course. You know if you ask me what are the area outside of the United States I know so well because I lived there for two decades is Central America and they just announced this giant initiative. To for Central America and when you study it is to go to do nothing but. It's going to beef up the security and the military approach to that to to Central America and in the name of bringing about development so that supposedly you will. Ameliorate the conditions that provoke this outward migration crisis in the name of that development it's simply going to push for opening up the region for more corporate plunder so so no I don't see any hope. With in this regard unless there's mass movements from below that force it to move in a different direction. There is another question from John Calp. Are you aware of the connection of a top shooting star in the CDU this is a German party called Friedrich Merz who is a chairman of BlackRock. What is the role of BlackRock in the emerging police state. Oh such an incredible question and and again that just shows that we have this transnational capital class everyone says BlackRock is you know the US. Investment and holding firm know it's totally globalized and there's transnational capitalists and elites from all over the world integrated there. It's such an important question because remember I mentioned earlier in the interview that we're seeing a new wave of. Radical restructuring and transformation of global capitalism now driven forward by this new round of incredible incredibly advanced digital technologies. And one of the things that's resulting in is that transnational finance capital is this hegemonic fraction of capital worldwide. And it's not even the banks at this point it's these investment conglomerates and BlackRock is at the very core. It's the single biggest entity in terms of the amount of trillions of dollars that it controls its tentacles are in everything its cross investment in the entire global economy is massive. And of course that includes the military industrial complex that includes Silicon Valley and includes everything we've been talking about. So no we face a dictatorship of transnational capital not in the sense that they have armies they do but in the sense that now transnational capital dictates what's going on in the world. And at the very core of that is BlackRock so it would not surprise me if this I don't know the specific name of that CDU candidate. That's a Christian Democratic Union right but if he it's a he becomes the next leader of Germany it simply means that BlackRock which already has massive influence over Biden and so many governments around the world will be really at the core of the corporate economy behind the German states and it's alarming but it's not in the least bit surprising. And finally you know say on that because it's so important to analyze BlackRock is that is that it also represents a new phase of transnational finance capital which again is hegemonic. Again it's not just the banks and they're lending it's not you know Wall Street now but it's these conglomerates which are not just finance but also control investment flows and investment decisions. All over the world so yes big big important question to follow up on that. Mohamed wants to know is there a connection between the arms industry and video games corporations that produce combat like games. I researched a little bit of that for the book the global police states and yes there's connections between yes there's connections between them but the connection is going to be in indirect one I mean I would say those video games. Video games we've seen the research and the research shows that the kids playing the video games doesn't necessarily lead them to the mass shootings that we have as a pandemic here in the United States. But what the video games do is that they culturally normalize this idea of global police state of warfare as entertainment as infotainment and militant. Absolutely but there's also an investment the video games are put forward by these global corporations that are cross invested. That's the importance and I know I don't have time. I just said it's real quickly again we've I've been analyzing and some of us are using this term transnational capitalist class where it doesn't come out of nowhere it's not rhetoric. It's because of two things one capitalist and different countries around the world are now so integrated that they're really not national they're transnational. But secondly all of the different dimensions of the global economy are cross invested with each other. So the giant companies that produce these video games are one transnational but two they are cross invested and integrated with all of the branches of the economy with again those commanding heights being the high tech companies and that includes the video games right there the financial complex and the military industrial complex that triangulation is really the new block of hegemonic capital. So yes that also is a part of the whole part of the story with no time to explore in more detail. Yeah maybe one last question we will see we have to close the session pretty shortly at at seven. Constance wants to know traditionally fascist leaders glorified state and army going as far as addressing in military uniforms. Is this still the case with fascist leaders or has DPR changed. No it absolutely it absolutely is with one caveat. We saw that with Trump for instance again Trump is both a racist and a fascist very dangerous man Biden again is pushing for a global police state. It's not that Biden but but Trump really represented the closest we've come to a fascist project grabbing hold of the state in the United States. And you remember that he created this he insisted on this first military parade in the in downtown Washington with tanks going through the streets and maybe you don't know that on your side of the Atlantic and so forth. Absolutely the face of fascism is also a face of militarization but it's also a face of militarized nationalism. Now not nationalism meaning that it's an end to the transnational capitalist class but part of the whipping up of fascism is martial martial nationalism and martial masculinity and much more. And this extreme xenophobia and that xenophobia goes together with this militarized response to so-called others. I mean I would love to go into much more detail on this but but there's no time but the simple answer is absolutely a fascist project involves absolutely this glorification of military glorification of social violence and political violence. A glorification of actually crushing so-called you know enemies and this extreme militarized nationalism and again martial masculinity as well that's another part of the story. We don't have time to go into. I wish we did have more time to explore these issues because that's so so part of the threat that we face right now. Maybe we can maybe we can even squeeze one more in just briefly please. Constance also wants to know should NATO be disbanded in favor of a pan-European security system perhaps involving Russia in some capacity. Partnerships based special status. Well absolutely you know if Russia is brought in that would that would undercut this strategy of a new Cold War which is supposedly saying you know Russia and China threaten European security and US security. But I think that any security alliance that comes from above and is driven by capitalist states and the transnational capitalist class which really ultimately controls those capitalist states. Any security strategy that comes from above like that is going to be against the vast majority of humanity and the interests of that vast majority of humanity. So I think you know the root for yes but NATO yet wouldn't great to see it disbanded absolutely disbanded absolutely great. We know that in order to legitimate the existence of NATO. We have all of these wars being launched and all of this you know threats so-called threats of security. So NATO should be dismantled dismantled but in its place security from below and what is security from below mean it means redistributing wealth and power downward to 80 percent of humanity. It means ending you know this male liberalism it means resting power for and hegemony from the transnational corporate you know corporate class. It means providing security and food and housing and good jobs to the mass of humanity that's security right. So I guess I don't have time to expand further. Thank you very much. Professor Robinson it was a pleasure to have you here. I hope we will have you next year again on our channel. We are now at the end. You can stay actually on the channel because immediately after this there will be another coordinating collective meeting. And after this our last session of the Alternative Security Conference will be streamed live with the title of woke imperialism. The guests are Katie Hopper and Aaron Mathe moderated by Arturo DeSimona. Usually a YouTuber do this and I think it's a bit pathetic but please share our videos leave us a like and subscribe to this channel. And I say thank you and good evening everybody. It's been such an honor for thank you so much for this invitation. Thank you.