GrammarPolice

How tf was he inspired by Trotsky? He fucking had the guy killed!

You're blaming the wrong person. The blame isn't on Mamdani for doing what he's doing—or rather not doing everything he should be—the blame is on the system for impending his progress.

Now there's an argument to be made against him participating in that system at all instead of trying to usurp it totally.

Attack Israel not jews

Your paragraph about fascism reads like a regurgitated book quote. Fascism is a specific ideology created by Benito Mussolini. What you're describing seems to be an umbrella concept that simply includes fascism. Pick a different term.

About the Belt and Road, what you described is just multipolarity and global south countries diversifying, not the US on its last legs. What would look like the death cry for the US Empire is: the dollar no longer being the backbone of global finance, US tech companies no longer leading the global stock market, and NATO becoming redundant. None of those things are happening yet.

Fair enough then. Though I'm not sure most tankies generally disagree on that point as Lenin himself promotes the idea to some extent. Then again, tankies generally don't follow most of Lenin's logic.

Ethnonationalism usually rises in fascism, but isn't definitional to it.

Then we're not talking about the same fascism. One can only wonder why you use the term fascism as Mussolini who invented the term includes ethnonationalism.

You can disagree with that if you wish, but that's where I think we are at right now.

It's not about the time period. It's about countries visibly shifting away from the US camp. That isn't happening yet

Any of those is a dead end, if you don't couple it with separate leftist organising.

The US Empire is also short on what it needs to keep producing arms, due to tight controls on rare Earths and other raw materials from China.

Which was part of the reason behind the whole Greenland ordeal. A problem which they've now seemed to be able to circumvent.

The US Empire has fancier tools, but cannot produce them at the same scale they once could. Quantitative buildup results in qualitative changes

That's because the fancier tools are higher quality and therefore more expensive to produce. Furthermore, since the cold war ended, thousands of small suppliers have been closing up by the decade because there's no more business. This lead to consolidation in the hands of a few big players e.g., Lockheed Martin. The US could build back up to Cold War levels of preparedness if it wanted, but it'd take at least 5 years. That's the real historical materialism here.

ideology itself has a material basis... but by treating the ongoing problems with the US Empire as a result of Trump alone you're literally ascribing to Great Man Theory.

Ideology has a material basis, but do you know that that same ideology acts upon the material base as well? This is why i mentioned Althusser because he goes into this stuff. Also, i never said the ongoing problems of the US Empire are solely due to Trump, i only said that he's accelerating its demise and acting as a baseboard from which other Western powers start to chart their own course. I am fully aware that real material conditions gave rise to Trump's reign. The next step is realising how the material realities that DO come out of Trump's presidency affect the US's downfall and i assess them to be more than substantial.

Fascism is simply capitalism defending itself from decay

And its defense somehow necessitates an ethnonationalist character? Are we talking about the same fascism?

the fall of the world's largest empire is quickly approaching and will likely happen within our lifetimes.

Once again, quickly approaching is a stretch. It will most certainly happen within our lifetimes, but not in 10 or 20 years.

When you pin the current downfall of the US Empire on Trump's actions

I did not do this. I only pointed out how Trump's actions will serve as an anchor point in the future for Western powers. World leaders themselves aren't sitting around contemplating material contradictions and dialectical movement. All they see is Trump's actions and how it's harmful to their own interests. In a sense this is dialectical as Trump's actions represent a qualitative change resulting from the accumulation of multiple quantitative factors.

Lots of it is shipped over to China, Vietnam, and other countries

That's just regular capitalism? Labour is cheaper in Asia. Even then the US still maintains a tight hold on the aerospace, armaments and tech industries and still reversed some off-shoring; most notably the semiconductor industry.

[THAAD units are being shifted over to the Middle East, which are critical for defense

The US also redeployed forces stationed in Europe deterring the USSR during the Gulf War, and yet it's still standing strong 35 years later. They also did this during the Iraq war and Vietnam war. The real question is, "Are the US going to be overextended if China, Russia or the DPRK start escalating tensions elsewhere?" Even at that point nukes enter the conversation and it stops being predictable.

You're identifying a partial link, but you need to take this further, that's how dialectics works.

That's not how dialectics works. You're going too far and into economic determinism. Austerity policies aren't always pursued for economic ends; they can also be done in pursuit of ideological ends.

active resistance to the war effort does change the war.

It changes it, but not damningly so. At best this shows contempt towards the current administration and not to the US Empire as a whole.

Trump is not the cause... As capitalism decays, fascism increases as the petite bourgeoisie faces proletarianization.

If you haven't already, I suggest you look into Louis Althusser's idea of "Relative Autonomy" in texts like For Marx and Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Trump is not the cause yes, but his actions still have real world effects that are not immediately tied to economic considerations. Similarly, fascism is a very specific thing. You can at best argue for general authoritarian outcomes due to the class conflict, but not fascism, as it is a specific ideology that can exist somewhat autonomously from the contradiction between capitalists and workers.

Europe is... dependent on the US militarily ...they are split between needing Russian LNG ...and their loyalty to the US Empire.

Your own argument just proved why the US Empire is not in its dying stages. Europe is completely dependent on the US and their influence geopolitically has only seemed to increase since their increased alliance and integration with Israel in attempts to tie down the Middle East as well. Ask yourself this question: If the US was well and truly close to its end, why didn't EU members end up selling US bonds when Trump threatened Greenland? That's because they'd end up tanking their own economies in the process. US debt is the backbone of the entire global financial system.

I can concede to you that the US isn't as dominant as it once was since the fall of the USSR and that things are more multipolar now, but the current argument is about whether the US is close to its fall, and i just don't see enough evidence supporting this claim. Don't get me wrong, the US empire will fall at some point, but you make it sound like it's imminent.

industrial capacity has decayed massively

From when to when? And in what industries?

forced to pull its forces out of countries like the ROK

What forces? The US is obligated to keep roughly 28,500 troops station in the ROK under a long-standing treaty.

austerity is being brought home

Austerity is not always an immediate indication that imperialism is declining. Neoliberalism always wants austerity, that doesn't mean imperialism is in a constant state of decline. In this particular instance, it is most due to Trump giving outlandish budget increases to the Pentagon and the DHS whilst providing many of his billionaire buddies with massive tax cuts.

the domestic support required to actually succeed.

When has domestic support ever been necessary to continue war?

I think you're just overthinking this and what you're noticing is a temporary (possibly permanent) slump in the US's dominance because Trump is a colossal fuck up of a president. Were there to be any long term consequences to US hegemony, it would most likely be as a result of other Western powers becoming more wary of reliance on the US and seeking slightly more sovereignty from the US. However, i think we're still a ways away from that outcome.

Is there materialist analysis backing this claim?

At present yes. If you read what i wrote you'll see that they can create a third