For several weeks now newscasters have admitted they don’t understand why the United States appears to be supporting groups linked to Al Qaeda,  such as the Salafists – or at the very least the Muslim Brotherhood, which is often considered little beter. To understand what is going on, we need to consider the fundamental difference between the Sunni and Shi’a versions of Islam and its relationship to the political divide.

The Sunnis – to which belong the Salafists, Wahhabis, Muslim Brotherhood, the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf monarchies – have traditionally represented the ruling classes, while relatively large segments of their populations espouse Shi’isn, the form of Islam traditionally favored by the lower classes.  (The Sunni/Shi’a divide has roots in the poitical rifts that occured after the death of Mohamed.)

But it’s more complicated than that: Iran is ruled by a Shi’a theocracy installed by a revolution whose roots go back to a socialist Prime Minister deposed in a CIA coup in 1953. As for Syria, it is ruled by Alawites, a small Shi’a sect long associated with the Ba’ath Party, an Arab socialist party which also ruled Iraq until we deposed its leader, Saddam Hussein; and Libya’s recently deposed leader Muammar Ghaddafi also considered himself a socialist. Whatever one may think of these various leaders (to the extent that we, as outsiders, are entitled to assess their validity as rulers of their respective peoples…), it should be clear that America’s determination to effect regime change in the Middle East is not only about oil.

Whatever the official doctrine may be, the ideological war between capitalism and socialism is not over, but merely confined to Third World countries which, during the Cold War, were aligned with either the Soviet Union or the United States. As the Arab Spring shows, the conflict between recognition of community responsibility toward its most vulnerable and the conviction that it’s each man for himself, is no longer limited to secular ideologies, causing the United States to no longer know who its friends are.

One thing is certain: Washington prefers the Saudi and Qatari Wahhabi regimes because they are part of Sunni Islam’s Western oriented consensus based on the supremacy of money, as opposed to the Syrian and Iranian regimes which are welfare states. (Syria continued the secular educational system it inherited from France after the Second World War, and Syrian women are the most liberated of the Arab world. Until the 1960s the Alawites were not considered true Muslims either by mainstream Shi’a or Sunnis, because their version of Islam incorporates elements of other religions and is often practiced sitting and in silence rather than prostrated and voiced.)

When it comes to countries like Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, America’s political class is ill-equipped to see beyond the fact that these are Muslim countries. They are unfamiliar with the ideological currents that have marked their recent history.

Perhaps the most glaring example of America’s ideological handicap is it’s view of Hezbollah: the Shi’a leader Nasrallah has a sophisticated knowledge of Western philosophy and ideology, and in the 2006 war with Israel he instituted the ‘flat’ systems of the Argentinian cooperative movement. Yet he is seen as a ranting representative of a benighted ideology.

Moving now to Egypt, a longtime American ally, its new President, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood supports freedom of religion, peace, democracy and the Palestinian cause, opposing American imperialism. As a recent analysis by the French journalist Thierry Meyssan pointed out, Morsi talks to both Iran and Saudi Arabia, but will not organize Egypt to suit the United States or Israel.

Although the Cold War is officially over, a United States dominated by neo-conservatism and the financial sector, is still determined to stamp out any regime that espouses a socialist ethos. It is no coincidence that besides being the homeland of the Jews to whom the U.S. refused entrance when they were being gassed by Nazi Germany, Israel is the only neo-liberal country in the region.

Less obviously, the socialist ethos partly explains why both Russia and China oppose U.S. policies: Just as our ideology harks back to our genocide of the Indians, the two former (to all intents and purposes) Communist countries are still influenced by the basic socialist ethos of solidarity and peace. And that is why both support Ahmedinejad, who expounded on these principles at the U.N. General Assembly this week.

Following the pattern I’ve been describing here, The Iranian president’s speech could only be greeted by cynical derision by Western officialdom, which cannot for a nanosecond appear to recognize his sincerity, at the risk of being expected to emulate him.

Unfortunately for these severely handi-capped politicians, Ahmedinejad’s ideals are recognized by the European 99%, from Spain, to Greece, to Italy and France, as they demonstrate ever more determinedly against IMF-inspired austerity. Washington blames the Europeans for the crisis of their common currency, passing over the world-wide penetration of crooked Wall Street financial institutions. The American public’s ignorance of other countries’ history and politics make it gullible, but your average European or Middle Easterner knows otherwise.

The January 21st issue of The Economist has a fascinating supplement on State Capitalism: everything you need to know but didn’t know it. The daily news needs to be reframed in this context.

As rebellion ramps up across the world, for the same reasons as always – the trampling of the many by the few – leaders and pundits still think in terms of the old paradigms: capitalism vs socialism.  But there’s a new system taking shape which is no better than the old one and could be worse in terms of saving the planet.

Any system that relies on continued growth contributes to the end of the planet as a human habitat. Capitalism, socialism and state capitalism all belong in that category.

According to The Economist , under state capitalism, the state holds a significant share in major economic institutions and industries, enabling it to  regulate and encourage activities it deems in the national interest.  It is being practiced in China, Russia, Brazil, India, and through sovereign funds in Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, among others. Interestingly, the British conservative journal admits that ‘the long era of state activism has left a surprisingly powerful legacy’, mentioning that France’s electric company is 85% state-owned, Japan’s tobacco company is 50% owned by the government, and Germany’s Deutsche Telekom is 32% state-owned.  What it does not mention is that this situation evolved as part of Europe’s hundred plus year old history, of ‘enlightened’ state control over valuable resources and services.

As America’s railroads were being built by private money, Europe’s were built by nations.  Nineteenth century German Chancellor Bismarck invented the welfare state, and if Russia and China are today the foremost state capitalist systems, that is not unrelated to their communist past.

Humans will eventually breed themselves out of existence, thanks to ‘growth’, ‘progress’, and modern medicine (birth control having come too late), unless the pollution considered necessary to their survival is stopped. We have a choice between seeing 10 billion inhabitants living at an early  agricultural level by mid-century, or making drastic changes to our lifestyle now. (I beg science buffs not to dispute this deliberately grand generalization. Pay attention, instead, to the gist.)

The gist is that the choice is no longer between capitalism and socialism, but between state capitalism and decentralization. Between worldwide military/industrial/fascist power that is blinded by hubris, and small, participatory communities. Increasingly, some will try to overthrow the most powerful machine man has created, and others will build new ways of relating to one another, as they wait out the machine’s inevitable demise through war and depletion of the resources which enable it.

While the U.S. and Europe worry about the fate of their market economies, with Greece, the cradle of democracy, speeding to default, the new economic giants are inventing new ways to run their economies. The question is whether state capitalism will eventually contribute to saving the planet or not. And whether worldwide protesters and Occupiers will succeed in creating a different kind of society if they do not.

Today the Indian government proposed setting up a multilateral bank exclusively funded by developing nations to finance their projects. The proposal has been circulated to the BRIC group: Brazil, Russia, India and China – as well as to South Africa, and will be discussed alongside the meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers in Mexico City this weekend.

The World marches on without the Greatest Empire ever known.

Work hard and play by the rules and you will achieve the American Dream.  This booster phrase is what makes America unique.

‘Unique’ or ‘exceptional’ implies better.

Yet people in the developed world who have not been raised on that mantra by and large lead more satisfying lives. The much maligned European com-munity has low cost health care for all, low cost universities and vacations that Americans can hardly believe (around six weeks, usually taken partly in summer and partly in winter, keeping the ski slopes busy).  Our politicians call them lazy, and they have to be cajoled into helping us fight our wars.

How to explain this?  Well, ever since the French guillotined King Louis XVI and his queen who assumed ‘the people’ lacking bread could just as well eat cake, and even though The Revolution turned into The Terror, and Napoleon briefly conquered Europe, NO COUNTRY EXCEPT HITLER’S and his short-lived Quislings has effectively banned egalitarian politics. Only the United States does so. No European country today is led by Communists, but all are alternately led by right and left-wing coalition governments. The current crisis of the Euro zone, like that of Iceland a few years ago, is largely due to European bankers buying into  America’s cowboy capitalism.

At the beginning of the financial crisis, in 2008, pundits often reminded us that Roosevelt had told his supporters to ‘make him’ enact social policies.  They wonder why Obama cannot do the same. They never mention the fact that in the nineteen thirties, the United States had a vibrant progressive movement, a legal socialist party with 40,000 members, and a Communist Party which in 1919 had 60,000 members.  In the late thirties, this militant, organized left WAS able to ‘make’ Roosevelt enact vital reforms, before being decimated by McCarthyism.

Who is going to do that now?

Socially aware political leaders in the United States use their energy to dance around two forbidden words, like moths attracted to light but wary of being burned: socialism and fascism.  They can neither warn of a Tea Party led slide into fascism, nor suggest that we emulate our allies and build a coherent welfare state (not one that distributes welfare to the corporations and the rich).

Our self-inflicted censure has created an American Nightmare that is going to have long legs.