US COMMUNICATIONS platforms dominate our social media and the most profitable parts of the entertainment industry — gaming, film and popular music.

Gaming substantially reflects the psychotic obsession with violence in US culture — which binds the figure of the heroic trigger-happy sheriff, the staggering prison population there, the proliferation of US fascist groups and serial killers and the US death squads operating in many countries and its arsenals that are targeted on China.

The integration of the US military in the creation of many of the most bloodthirsty games comes as no surprise, as aggressive imperialism is normalised in them and brought into millions of teenagers’ bedrooms throughout the world.

This is all amplified by the dominance of US news and news angles in our media and social platforms and the million-and-one versions of cops and robbers and superheroes on film and TV.

Turn on your email provider and just see what’s there — do a Google search and you get a US answer first.

People in Britain can’t help but be more familiar with the logos of US corporations filling us with junk food and junk images than they are with the national flags of our closest neighbours.

We know Hollywood, but where’s the great film industry of our nearest neighbour France actually based? Why Netflix? Why not a British equivalent supporting our own tremendous film-makers?

Murder, horror, gunfire and the heroism of the cops in all their different garb, from dishevelled Columbo to sleek Superman in his tights, are the most frequent US images we are flooded with.

The more bizarre the fictional depiction of criminality and the sociopathic gangs and villains, the better. But none of this can compare with the reality of the US’s genocidal imperialist history.

The US is an increasing and destructive investor in the British economy. It wants big remaining public-sector provision — notably the NHS. US investment here has quadrupled over the last 20 years and runs at nearly $900 billion per annum.

The United States was Britain’s largest trading partner in the four quarters to the end of Q2 2021, accounting for 16.7 per cent of total UK trade.

In 2019, the outward stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) from the UK in the United States was £379.7bn accounting for 25.3 per cent of the total UK outward FDI stock.

In 2019, the inward stock of FDI in the UK from United States was £381.6 billion accounting for 24.5 per cent of the total UK inward FDI stock.

These are colossal figures, demonstrating that the “special relationship” is grounded on filthy lucre and the mighty dollar.

This close relationship between Wall Street and the City of London, between US corporations and British-based ones, is accompanied by a new set of attempts to control our courts.

As if it was not enough to get politicians to lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and thereby precipitate the Iraq war, in 2016 the US — through Barack Obama and Wall Street — went into overdrive to campaign against Britain’s withdrawal from the EU and then fund what were in effect coup attempts by many inside Parliament and outside, in the media and the Supreme Court to overturn the referendum result.

The Tories successfully resisted these attempts and ironically benefited from the clarity of their message of getting Brexit done, and the parliamentary majority it gave them allowed them to embrace new and more sinister meddling in our political and legal affairs.

It could have been so different if Labour had respected democracy.

As the Morning Star has pointed out, Julian Assange, who has exposed so much of US barbarism, has been held at the behest of the US without charge, contrary to the fundamental rights of habeas corpus, for three years.

The US has managed to persuade the British High Court that although they were planning a CIA operation to kill Assange just four years ago, they will now care for him like doting parents if he is extradited into their loving arms.

Similarly, you can feel the icy hands of the Pentagon force Britain’s acquiescence to the blockade of Cuba, the military encirclement of China and the refusal to return a billion pounds’ worth of gold from the Bank of England’s vaults to its rightful owner — Venezuela.

The sanctions on Venezuela are killing its people unnecessarily, by denying essential medical supplies. The return of the gold can be managed through the UN, says Venezuela, so its conversion into life-giving benefits can be transparently monitored.

No, says the US, we only recognise Juan Guaido as the president of Venezuela. The money, if it goes back, should go to him — despite his criminal background.

The British Supreme Court is still deliberating on this point. But it hasn’t got to think too hard. The UN itself has just unequivocally declared the only properly elected president of Venezuela is Nicolas Maduro.

Guaido simply self-declared he was president with US backing. Even the right-wing forces that supported him participated in the recent elections and believe all sanctions should be lifted.

If our Supreme Court follows the US diktat that a villain self-declaring himself as a nation’s president is acceptable, we will enter a farcical and tragic period of worsening interference by the US in our affairs.

Perhaps one of us could self-identify as the Governor of the Bank of England and order the gold to be returned.

US piracy using Britain as its Treasure Island to bury stolen gold must end. Removing the EU’s control over our economy and Parliament by referendum was a significant first step in Britain asserting national self-determination.

The next step must be to remove the seeping influence of the US and the “special relationship” which always meant we played deputy to the US sheriff’s lynch mob and posse.

Many of the US companies here notoriously avoid taxes — they have no right to seek so brazenly to influence our judiciary, and no right to dare to pretend the dollar can run the NHS better than the people.

We must say simply: free Assange; return the Venezuelan gold; no war on China; and no US companies in our NHS.

Doug Nicholls is general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions — www.gftu.org.uk.