In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
ScheerPost Staff
In a moment when the United States is waging open war in Iran, backing Israel’s devastation of Gaza, and accelerating a global arms race powered by AI, journalist Abby Martin argues that the real story isn’t geopolitical strategy — it’s the naked, unvarnished reality of empire in decline. And for once, she says, the mask isn’t just slipping. “The mask is completely ripped off,” Martin tells host Dr. Myriam François. “There’s no pretense whatsoever about a benevolent empire… It is so clearly about seizing, pillaging, plundering” . Martin, creator of The Empire Files and director of the new documentary Earth’s Greatest Enemy, joins The Tea for a sweeping conversation about U.S. militarism, media control, climate collapse, and the psychological machinery that keeps an empire running long after its moral and strategic foundations have rotted away.
Across nearly 90 minutes, Martin and host Dr. Myriam François trace the contours of what they call a late‑stage imperial order—one defined by endless war, oligarchic capture, climate destruction, and a political class increasingly detached from material reality. The backdrop is the escalating U.S. war with Iran, a conflict Martin argues was “fermented… across every administration” and long treated as the “prize” of American foreign policy elites .
But the conversation reaches far beyond geopolitics. It’s about the internal rot of a superpower that has “lost every war in the last 50 years” because, as Martin puts it, “it’s not about strategy… it’s about profit” flowing to a tiny class of corporate and political elites . It’s about a media system owned by billionaires, curating reality itself. It’s about a military that is simultaneously waging foreign wars and “singlehandedly fueling climate catastrophe at home” .
And it’s about the psychological terrain of a country where apocalyptic religious narratives, algorithmic disinformation, and political authoritarianism are converging. Martin describes active‑duty soldiers calling her husband’s organization to report commanders telling them the war in Iran is “God’s will… an apocalyptic war” and that they are “warriors of God” heading into battle .
Yet for all the bleakness, Martin insists this moment is also one of possibility. The empire is overextended. Its narratives are collapsing. Its violence is visible in real time. And ordinary people—whether in Gaza, Portland, or the Congo—are increasingly aware of their shared struggle. “There’s billions of us… they know their time’s running out,” she says. “I choose hope. I choose life. And I believe that it’s possible because I have to” .
This episode is not simply an analysis of decline. It’s a call to confront the “arteries of capital” that sustain U.S. militarism, to reject the fatalism of inevitability, and to imagine a world organized around human flourishing rather than extraction and domination.
As Martin puts it, the question isn’t whether the American empire is ending. It’s what kind of world we build in the vacuum it leaves behind.
The whole interview is below here are two clips from the program
Here is another clip
The episode opens with the U.S.–Iran war — a conflict Martin says was not a surprise, not a miscalculation, but the culmination of a bipartisan project. “Every single war has basically been getting us to this point… Iran is the last one” , she notes, referencing the long‑documented plan to remake the Middle East through force.
François lays out the stakes: Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, its push to move oil trade away from the dollar, and the broader challenge to U.S. global dominance. As she puts it, “That’s a direct hit on the petrodollar system” .
But Martin argues the deeper crisis is internal. The U.S. has “lost every war in the last 50 years,” she says, because the goal is no longer victory — it’s profit. “It’s about profit funneling to a very select few at the top” .
Empire Without Illusion
What makes this moment different, Martin says, is that the empire no longer bothers with moral cover. The soft‑power programs, the rhetoric of democracy promotion, the humanitarian gloss — all gone. What remains is extraction, coercion, and brute force.
François admits ambivalence: is a world without even the pretense of values more dangerous? Martin doesn’t hesitate. “It’s horrifying that we’re in this barbaric state,” she says. But she also argues that clarity is liberating. “I’m sick of being gaslit by the richest men in the world” .
The danger, she warns, is that collapsing empires lash out. And the U.S., armed with nuclear weapons and backed by a junior partner in Israel that has “set a new standard of barbarism in the world” , is no exception.
The U.S.–Israel Axis and the Road to Iran
The conversation turns to the U.S.–Israel relationship, where Martin pushes back against narratives suggesting Trump was “dragged” into war by Israel. That framing, she says, “absolves the U.S. military empire” and ignores decades of coordinated strategy.
Israel, she argues, has long served as Washington’s “attack dog” in the region — a force used to crush anti‑colonial movements and secure the “arteries of capital” flowing through the Middle East. But she also notes that the U.S. is not fully aligned with Israel’s maximalist ambitions. Zionism, she says, will eventually become “untenable in the U.S.”
Still, on Iran, the interests converge. “This is what they’ve always wanted,” Martin says of the political class surrounding Trump.
Terminal-Stage Empire
Martin describes the U.S. as a “late‑stage capitalist dystopia,” an overlap of Brave New World, 1984, and Idiocracy. She sees a political system captured by billionaires, a media ecosystem curated by tech oligarchs, and a public increasingly numbed by spectacle.
The result is a population detached from the reality of empire — and vulnerable to apocalyptic narratives. Martin recounts chilling reports from active‑duty soldiers calling her husband’s organization, saying commanders are telling them the war in Iran is “God’s will… an apocalyptic war” and that they are “warriors of God” .
This fusion of imperial decline and religious fatalism, she warns, is combustible.
What Comes After Empire?
Despite the bleakness, Martin refuses despair. She insists that clarity is a form of power. The empire is overextended. Its narratives are collapsing. And ordinary people — from Gaza to Caracas to Los Angeles — are increasingly aware of their shared struggle.
“There’s billions of us… they know their time’s running out,” she says. “I choose hope. I choose life. And I believe that it’s possible because I have to” .
The question, she argues, is not whether the American empire is ending. It’s what kind of world emerges in the vacuum — and whether people can organize around the “arteries of capital,” the only pressure point the empire truly understands.
This aired on Scheer Intelligence back in February
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.