THE U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE SAYS:
DO NOT SHOW YOUR PASSPORTS. DO NOT REVEAL THAT YOU ARE AMERICAN.
This instruction means:
We have committed many crimes.
We have many enemies.
We have massacred peoples.
Peoples are angry with us.
I cannot protect you.
This is our call to the American people:
In 157 countries of the world,
there are 702 U.S. military installations or bases.
Call your children back.
Return to your country.
Do not become the killers of the peoples of the world.
The U.S. Secretary of State openly admits it:
“I cannot protect you.”
But you do not need his protection.
It is enough that you do not become accomplices to the crimes of imperialist America.
The United States called its attack on Iran
“Epic Fury.”
It is not epic fury.
It is epic fear.
The “Epic Fury” operation,
as a result of the death throes of imperialist hegemony,
has brought epic fear,
and the final outcome will be completed
with the eradication of imperialism from the face of the earth.
To carry a U.S. passport
is no longer a shield.
It has now become a chain.
“Showing that you possess a U.S. passport, or revealing that you have a connection to the United States, may by itself be sufficient reason for Iranian authorities to detain or question a person.”
— Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State
The classical meaning of this is clear: in order to prevent U.S. citizens from being taken hostage and its spies from being captured, he is saying do not show your passports. From the perspective of the peoples of the world, its meaning is this: the paper of the paper tiger is being folded up.
Imperialist countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany frequently issue travel warnings to their citizens in relation to disasters and sudden developments around the world.
However, this statement by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is not a general instruction directed at all U.S. citizens worldwide. Rather, it appears within a specific “Security Alert” issued from the beginning of March 2026 due to the very high security risk in Iran.
This warning was first announced on 2 March 2026 as a “Security Alert” through the United States Department of State and the Embassy of Switzerland in Tehran, which serves as the protecting power for the United States in Tehran.
Later it was published as an official “Security Warning” on the State Department’s official travel website (travel.state.gov) and on the Virtual Embassy Tehran website. Shortly afterwards, as the clashes intensified and in response to Iran’s policy of ‘taking Americans hostage’, the warning was updated on 7 and 8 March and the message LEAVE IMMEDIATELY was repeated. This is the warning—and the fear—of knowing the consequences that arise from committing crimes and attacking a legitimate government.
This warning was issued in order to ensure the safety of Americans in the region following the operation launched by the United States and Israel against Iran, called “Operation Epic Fury.”
The operation carried out against Iran was intended as a show of force because U.S. imperialism cannot control Iran as it wishes—cannot rule it through monopolies, cannot plunder its underground and above-ground wealth, cannot create collaborators within the country and shape colonial relations on military, political, and economic foundations, and cannot station its military power within Iran. Unable to impose these ambitions upon the country, the United States reflects its impotence as anger. In reality, the true cause of its anger lies in the situation described above.
Despite the attacks of the United States in the region and its attempts to create a terror of fear, the decline of its deterrent power has meant that a U.S. passport is no longer a protective shield but has instead become a direct target.
The statements that follow continue to demonstrate the evidence of decay and death throes:
“Do not forget that the Iranian government may restrict or prevent departures from Iran. U.S.–Iran dual citizens must leave Iran using an Iranian passport. The Iranian government does not recognise dual nationality and treats U.S.–Iran dual nationals solely as Iranian citizens. U.S. citizens face a significant risk of questioning, arrest, and detention in Iran.” — Rubio.
This means the bankruptcy of U.S. power. Imagine a state which, for the sake of its interests, has assumed the role of the policeman of the world, with hundreds of bases in every corner of the globe and with more than half of its army stationed abroad at these bases—yet which says “do not show your passport”, admitting that despite all this power it cannot protect you.
This situation is not an ordinary case of helplessness or deadlock.
It is the collapse of U.S. hegemony.
While claiming to defend the interests of its people, the United States in fact demonstrates that its own contradictions and crises are deepening. It is expanding the collapse of its credibility in every region of the world and the disintegration of the lies about exporting fake democracy.
Rubio tells civilians caught in the midst of war not to reveal themselves. The United States—the killer of the world’s peoples, which produces policies of attack and war built upon conspiracies and lies against the peoples of the world, and which has organised coups resulting in thousands of operations and massacres—now says do not expose yourselves.
This is not a paradox. It means that imperialism, the most aggressive stage of dying capitalism, can no longer protect even its own people from becoming targets.
When we analyse Secretary Rubio’s warning “do not show your U.S. passport” and the politics of passports through a Marxist-Leninist and socialist revolutionary perspective, through a scientific dialectic, the picture that emerges before us is not merely a “security warning”, but the death-throes stage of imperialist hegemony.
In Marxism the state is a repressive apparatus that protects the interests of the ruling class (the bourgeoisie). The passport, meanwhile, is the seal of ownership and control that this apparatus places upon the individual. In the natural course of its repression over its own people, the United States now experiences anxiety over its exposure and the loss of control that results from its own aggression.
Rubio’s instruction to “hide the passport” proves that the passport is not a right, but a strategic instrument of the imperialist state. When the state cannot protect its citizens in the geopolitical crises it has itself created, it passes the bill on to the citizen by saying “become invisible.”
This is the bankruptcy of the bourgeois state’s lie of the “social contract.”
Within the framework of Vladimir Lenin’s theory of imperialism, the point the United States has reached represents the decay of finance capital at its highest stage. The reality of imperialism for the bourgeois class has ceased to be merely an internal phenomenon; as the order built upon exploitation enters its death throes, it has moved into a phase of open aggression with all its lawlessness and banditry.
In 2026, the U.S. passport was ranked tenth in travel freedom, sixth in overall strength, and allowed travel to 179 countries visa-free or with a visa on arrival. In the face of this picture, Rubio’s statement telling people not to show their U.S. passports proves the bankruptcy of U.S. power and prestige.
In the past, the U.S. passport functioned as a shield of immunity (a symbol of conquest) of imperial power. Today, Rubio’s call to “hide it” is an admission that this shield has now turned into a target. Power has produced its own opposite. The contradiction has become clear.
Imperialist arrogance has reached the point where it makes its own citizens afraid of their own flag. Donald Trump’s slogan “America First” has lost its value. Class contradictions have deepened, and reality will manifest itself through historical consciousness.
Rubio’s warning is a vivid example of how national identities and borders disregard human life in the service of capital’s wars. The working class has no homeland, and the “passport-hiding” manoeuvres of figures like Rubio are merely the expression of the fear that exploiters feel toward the chaos they themselves have created.
Rubio’s move is the diplomatic confirmation that U.S. imperialism is a “paper tiger.” If a state becomes afraid of the identity document carried in its citizens’ pockets, it means that the historical expiry of that state has begun.
When we deepen this move through a Marxist-Leninist dialectic and a scientific socialist perspective, what appears before us is not a simple “security warning”, but the structural crisis of imperialism and the stage of decay of the bourgeois state.
NOT THE WITHERING AWAY OF THE STATE, BUT ITS BANKRUPTCY AS A “REPRESSIVE APPARATUS”
As Friedrich Engels pointed out, the state is a repressive apparatus used to keep class conflicts under control. The passport, meanwhile, is a tool of this apparatus used to place the individual under ownership and to draw borders according to the interests of capital.
Rubio’s instruction to “hide your passport” represents the theoretical collapse of the bourgeois state’s lie of the “social contract.” By telling its citizens, “I cannot protect you—conceal your existence,” the state has abandoned the very basis of its legitimacy—its supposed duty of protection. This is an admission that the imperialist state sees the passport not as a shield, but as a shackle.
THE DIALECTICAL COLLAPSE OF IMPERIALIST HEGEMONY
Within Lenin’s theory of imperialism, the point reached by the United States is the decay (parasitism) of finance capital at its highest stage. Like a parasite afflicting the world, U.S. imperialism spreads poison through its aggression while simultaneously beginning to dig its own grave.
As the bourgeoisie loses ground abroad (in Iran and the Middle East), it increases repression against the proletariat and oppositional forces at home. Turning the passport into a “privilege” means tying the freedom of travel to a test of political loyalty. This is proof that the state is now trying to survive not through ideological apparatuses but through direct police-state methods. Our class perspective tells us: force is destroyed only by force.
The instruction within Rubio’s Passport Doctrine to “hide your passport” is not truly meant for the safety of citizens. In reality, it is an indication of the imperialist state’s inability to provide protection and the collapse of its hegemony.
Rubio’s move documents that U.S. imperialism has become a “paper tiger”, pushing even its own citizens toward de-identification in order to protect them.
For the working class, the solution is not to hide their passports, but to build an internationalist world without passports, borders, or classes.
The necessity of building such a world has now taken shape through the growing visibility of imperialism, whose consequences bring greater hunger and poverty to the people.
As Lenin said:
“The age of imperialism is the age of proletarian revolutions.”
Those who will realise this revolution under the leadership of the proletariat are the Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary socialist organisations that recognise that the principal contradiction between the peoples and imperialism is U.S. imperialism, develop policies accordingly, organise the people around objective realities, and lead a strategic struggle—rejecting the corrupting strategies of imperialism, resisting to the end, teaching the people to resist, and becoming a source of hope for the people.
Any ideology or reformist deviation outside this framework can only serve the parasitism of capitalism and prolong its life.
Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, the capitalist monopolies of U.S. imperialism, its army used as an instrument of repression, intimidation, and massacre, and institutions such as NATO and the Central Intelligence Agency, cannot protect anyone.
The greatest proof of this in history is the defeat of the fascism of Adolf Hitler, and the development of a consciousness among the peoples determined to defend their right to self-determination, even at the cost of blood and life.
The American people must stop the imperialist bandits who commit crimes in their name and must instead organise the brotherhood of peoples in their own right. None of the crimes committed against the peoples of the world will ever expire—neither legally nor morally.
If you do not wish to live under the most cursed passport and flag in the world, there is no option other than to fight and organise fearlessly against the empire of fear.
The obstacle standing before the creation of a new society has been overcome and brought into consciousness through the historical proof that imperialism is the principal contradiction.
As contradictions intensify, the American people must recognise this reality and take their place on the right side of history.
Socialists believe that the brotherhood of peoples can only arise from a common struggle against the system of exploitation.
The only way to prevent your passport and identity from becoming shackles is through joint struggle, by consigning to the dustbin of history those who organise this aggressive hegemony—namely the principal contradiction itself: U.S. imperialism.
Subscribe to stay up-to-date
