Photograph Source: U.S. Army photo by Bernardo Fuller – Public Domain

Introduction

The US army and military apparatuses are divided. This division is sharpened by the political, economic, and ideological crises in US society. One of the better ways to understand its 250th birthday celebration is to grasp the objective conditions of struggle that drove 5-8 million citizens in the streets in the No Kings protests on the same day that the President organized the birthday parade for the military on June 14, 2025. The heightened divisions in society demand that the progressive forces understand and grasp the objective conditions that drive the current split over fascistic and authoritarian tendencies. What are the ideas in combat in the army and in society? Do progressives accept that General George Washington and those who founded the continental army in 1775 were revolutionaries? When will the army take full responsibility for the genocidal wars against the First Nation Peoples? What are the strategies for change? What social forces are providing leadership? Can the ideas of white supremacy and the purge of black and brown officers maintain the present military apparatus? Can a military trained to kill create conditions for real human values whether the humans are called Blacks or whites?

It became evident after the inauguration of the 47th President on 20 January 2025, that the primary goal of the new administration was to bring back an army of whites. This resegregation of the army had occurred after World War 1 when hundreds of thousands of Black and brown soldiers and sailors died to save democracy in Europe. In that period the military bases were named after Confederate generals, and the army became the principal base for white supremacy and Jim Crow. Chad Wiliams, in the book, The Wounded World: WEB Du Bois and the First World War, has elaborated on this period. In an earlier book Williams elaborated on how, even in a foreign land, “military officials attempted to replicate the practices, customs, and hierarchies of white supremacy as closely as possible in the army.” African American soldiers who fought in World War 1 in Europe were lynched when they returned home and dared to demand full citizenship rights

After World War 1 during the capitalist depression, General Smedley Butler called war a racket. This article will highlight two periods of high racketeering by the top generals who profited from war, the period of the Revolutionary War and the period of the Civil War. In the 250 years the US army was divided over the Civil War, the Vietnam war, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and presently the planning for war against the peoples of West Asia.

These plans for war in West Asia are accelerating when US imperialism has overreached in the military management of the international system to maintain the dollar as the currency of international trade. This overreach and the trillion-dollar military budget have sharpened the class and racial divisions bringing the extremist white racist forces to the center of the political stage. These extremists under the Make America Great Again (MAGA) are deploying the resources of the military for a new phase of accumulation of capital, under the guise of modernization of technology in the military.

Can there be modernization of the military when the educational system cannot produce the human, mental, and physical means to maintain an advanced industrial society? Some of the thinkers in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector are gung-ho on the new forms of warfare but progressive scholars are intervening to point to possibilities other than endless wars. Robert Gonzalez has followed the traditions of Seymour Melman in identifying the linkages between the industrial complex and the military with a view towards demilitarization. His scholarship is providing guidance inside the society on how “Big Tech and the Military are increasingly fused, brought together by finance, joint projects, research and infrastructure. Untying the knot will be key to prevent endless wars abroad and militarised policing at home. “

Young activists are deploying the tools and technologies of AI to forge new alliances and build new movements. The political initiative is no longer in the hands of the conservatives even when the liberal thinkers and universities have been bullied into submission by the genocidal pacts with those extending slaughter into Palestine. These wars are testing the army and accelerating conditions for a revolutionary confrontation in the United States.

It is my contention that the offensive from the MAGA forces has elicited a robust response with militant attitudes growing swiftly. These militant attitudes can be seen from the self-defense tactics in the streets of Los Angeles to the intense mobilization of the youths in New York City to beat back the forces aligned to the billionaire classes and war mongers. The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the primary for the mayoral race in New York City has pushed the electoral struggles to the point where the bourgeoisie and the billionaire classes are desperate. Mamdani’s campaign pointed to the multiethnic, multi racial, and multi religious realities of the society that the celebration of the military wants to reverse. The army was never composed solely of white men, even if the MAGA representation of history seeks to make this case. It is in the military where this confrontation with whiteness has crested.

Weak gestures towards diversity and inclusion cannot confront white nationalism in the military. Former Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Loyd Austin in 2021 ordered by a one-day stand-down for the more than 2 million uniformed members of the military to deal with “extremist behaviors.” General Austin was too timid to stand up to the Heritage Foundation and the Rand Corporation who opposed discussions on white supremacy........

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