FAR from being “the land of the free,” I believe the US is the most authoritarian country in the world. It is also the world’s biggest exporter of authoritarianism.

To be fair to the US, it has beaten off some pretty stiff competition for the title, but I do think it is well deserved.

I can already hear the shrill liberal voices pointing the finger at other parts of the globe from a mostly anti-communist or Islamophobic standpoint, but their voices will likely always be aimed at countries that dare to challenge the global dominance of the US.

The US is out there on its own, though, because of the way authoritarian measures that begin in the US spread like a contagious disease elsewhere.

You really have to hand it to any country that has the bare-faced cheek to claim any kind of exceptionalism after being built on the genocide of its indigenous population as well as the brutal slave labour of Africans shipped in to work the plantations and build the cities on which the wealth of the nation is based.

It is hard to know where to start to explain the authoritarian behaviour of the US, but let’s begin with the attack on women.

Last June the right-wing fundamentalist-controlled US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the landmark piece of legislation that made access to an abortion a federal right in the US.

The disgraceful decision to remove 50 years of a woman’s federal right to choose and paved the way for individual states to limit or ban abortion outright.

Right-wing states, which already had “trigger laws” in place before the decision was reached, were then able to automatically or through lawmakers vote to virtually outlaw abortion.

Not content with this, some states even have laws which allow anyone to take out a legal complaint against a woman because she decided to go to another state to have her abortion.

This is surely Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale playing out in front of our very eyes.

Some Supreme Court justices, such as Clarence Thomas, are clear that other landmark rulings, such as on contraception access, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage, should also come under scrutiny.

All this while leaving semi-automatic weapons freely available for the next mass killer to access.

The murder of George Floyd just over three years ago set off a wave of protest by black people and white supporters demanding that action finally be taken against the racism that built the country.

The demand that authorities understand that black lives do indeed matter has, to a large part, fallen on deaf ears.

Liberals marched alongside progressive forces and even fought over getting the most photogenic spot to have their image taken of them on one knee.

For all the hype and sometimes tears, hardly anything has changed for black people in the US.

Yes, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 was passed to allegedly combat police misconduct, excessive force and racial bias in policing.

But black people are still being attacked and killed by racists, including some wearing uniforms.

The then-president Donald Trump labelled the Black Lives Matter movement “thugs” and even terrorists and anarchists.

Applying these labels is never neutral. It usually means that the full resources of the authoritarian state will be unleashed against any activist involved.

Cointelpro, which ran from around 1956 to 1971, was a series of covert and sometimes illegal actions conducted mainly by the FBI, to surveil, infiltrate and discredit so-called “subversive organisations.”

It was used extensively against organisations such as the Communist Party and the Black Panthers, and on the civil rights movement and peace campaigners.

Cointelpro targeted individuals such as Angela Davis, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, showing how the US state will use its full resources against anyone it sees as a domestic threat.

The same playbook is also used daily in workplaces throughout the US.

Last weekend at the annual TUC Black Workers Conference I heard speeches from workers from the US who have successfully organised a union at tech giant Amazon.

During the pandemic, these workers had the audacity to call out poor health and safety at the trillion-dollar company.

They were sacked for their troubles and, although they secured support for the union from their workmates, the unprecedented resources available to Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in history, are being used to keep them out of the workplace.

Not content to inflict authoritarian measures on its own population, the US believes its law applies anywhere in the world it wants it to apply.

It has made no secret of its intention to support its doctrine of “full spectrum dominance” through financial, political and military means, to support the interests of US-based transnational companies, such as Amazon.

It is applying the long arm of US law through the prosecution of Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, through the Espionage Act of 1917.

The Act, among other things, outlaws false statements intended to interfere with military operations or if someone promotes the success of enemies of the US.

Any journalist, anywhere in the world, who writes something that the US believes undermines what it regards as its national security is, on this evidence, liable to prosecution under the Act.

Assange reported something that was blatantly true, that the US had committed war crimes. Yet the US has used all the powers available to it as the so-called “leader of the free world” to hunt down Assange and demand his extradition to the US.

I do not have the space to even touch on the authoritarian governments, such as Israel, propped up by the US and its willingness to use its military might to bring about regime change for its own interests.

Neither have I the space to go into a discussion about its use of unilateral economic sanctions, such as on Cuba, which it also imposes across the world.

The global South has clearly had enough of US bullying. This is why we are seeing a move away from the use of the dollar in oil and other trading markets.

Inside the US the defeat of the world's most authoritarian settler regime can’t be just wished for — it has to be organised from the ground upwards.

We should all work to support the socialist liberation forces in the US.

The liberation of the people of the US creates space for the rest of us to bring about a fundamental change in society in favour of working-class and peasant communities across the globe.

Follow Roger on Twitter at @RogerAMck.