Zionism: In the Words of the Leading Zionists and their Allies

by M. Shahid Alam / November 19th, 2024

Nearly all of these quotes are gathered from the chapter epigraphs in the book, M. Shahid Alam, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (Springer: 2008). A few of the quotes are from non-Zionists. The sources for most these quotes can be found in this book.

 Chosenness

“Israel is not another example of the species nation; it is the only example of the species Israel.” Martin Buber

“Only Israel lives in, and constitutes, God’s kingdom…” Jacob Neusner

“For me the supreme morality is that the Jewish people has a right to exist. Without that there is no morality in the world.” Golda Meier, 1967

“We do not fit the general pattern of humanity…” David Ben-Gurion

“…only God could have created a people so special as the Jewish people.” Gideon Levy

Zionism

“There are upwards of seven million Jews known to be in existence throughout the world… possessing more wealth, activity, influence and talents, than any body of people their number on earth….they will march in triumphant numbers, and possess themselves once more of Syria, and take their rank among the governments of the earth.” Mordecai Noah, 1818

“The ultimate goal … is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years…. The Jews will yet arise and, arms in hand (if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland.” Vladimir Dubnow, 1882

“…the spirit of the age is approaching ever closer to the essential Jewish emphasis on real life.” Moses Hess, 1862

“…Jews are a nation which, having once acted as the leaven of the social world, is destined to be resurrected with the rest of the civilized nations.” Moses Hess, 1862

“Today we may be moribund, but tomorrow we shall surely awaken to life; today we may be in a strange land, but tomorrow we will dwell in the land of our fathers; today we may be speaking alien tongues, but tomorrow we shall speak Hebrew.” Eliezer Ben-Yehudah, 1880

“…we must seek a home with all our hearts, our spirit, our soul.” Peretz Smolenskin, 1881

“Let sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation: the rest we shall manage for ourselves.” Theodore Herzl, 1896

“Palestine is first and foremost not a refuge for East European Jews, but the incarnation of a reawakening sense of national solidarity.” Albert Einstein, 1921

Zionism:Weaponizing Antisemitism

“The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.” Theodore Herzl, 1896

“The struggle of Jews for unity and independence…is calculated to attract the sympathy of people to whom we are rightly or wrongly obnoxious.” Leo Pinsker

“The Western form of anti-Semitism—the cosmic, satanic version of Jew hatred—provided solace to wounded [Arab] feelings.” Bernard Lewis, 2006

Zionism: Ethnic Cleansing

“Will those [Palestinians] evicted really hold their peace and calmly accept what was done to them? Will they not in the end rise up to take back what was taken from them by the power of gold…And who knows, if they will not then be both prosecutors and judges…” Yitzhak Epstein, 1907

Zionism: Ambition

“Discussed with Bodenheimer the demands we will make. Area: from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates. Stipulate a transitional period with our own institutions. A Jewish governor for this period. Afterwards, a relationship like that between Egypt and the Sultan.” Theodore Herzl, 1898

“We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.” David Ben-Gurion May 1948

Zionism: Destabilizing Logic

“Will those [Palestinians] evicted really hold their peace and calmly accept what was done to them? Will they not in the end rise up to take back what was taken from them by the power of gold…And who knows, if they will not then be both prosecutors and judges…” Yitzhak Epstein, 1907

“God forbid that we should harm any people, much less a great people whose hatred is most dangerous to us.” Yitzhak Epstein, 1907

“As to the war against the Jews in Palestine….it was evident twenty years ago that the day would come when the Arabs would stand up against us.”Ahad Ha’am, 1911

“Two important phenomena, of the same nature, but opposed, are emerging at this moment in Asiatic Turkey. They are the awakening of the Arab nation and the latent effort of the Jews to reconstitute on a very large scale the ancient kingdom of Israel. These movements are destined to fight each other continually until one of them wins.” Najib Azouri, 1905

“It is all bad and I told Balfour so. They are making [the Middle East] a breeding place for future war.” Col. Edward Mandell House, 1917

“The question is, do we want to conquer Palestine now as Joshua did in his day – with fire and sword?” Judah L. Magnes, 1929

“It is our destiny to be in a state of continued war with the Arabs.” Arthur Rupin, 1936

“The day we lick the Arabs, that is the day, I think, when we shall be sowing the seeds of an eternal hatred of such dimensions that Jews will not be able to live in that part of the world for centuries to come.” Judah L. Magnes, 1947

“The state of Israel has had explosives – the grievances of hundreds of thousands of displaced Arabs – built into its very foundations.” Isaac Deutscher, 1954

“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country.” David Ben-Gurion, 1956

“Historical logic points to the eventual dissolution of the Jewish state. The powers around us are so great. There is such a strong will to annihilate us that the odds look very poor.” Benny Morris, 2008

Zionism: Demographic Threat

“In Jewish cities, villages and kibbutzim … families are having 1.2 children. For theYishuv, that spells extinction.” David Ben-Gurion, March 1943

 Christian Zionism

“…we welcome the friendship of Christian Zionists.” Theodore Herzl, 1897

“The entire Christian church, in its variety of branches… will be compelled… to teach the history and development of the nascent Jewish state. No commonwealth on earth will start with such propaganda for its exploitation in world thought, or with such eager and minute scrutiny, by millions of people, of its slightest detail.” A. A. Berle, 1918

“Christian Zionists favor Jewish Zionism as a step leading not to the perpetuation but to the disappearance of the Jews.” Morris Jastrow, 1919

“…Zionism has but brought to light and given practical form and a recognized position to a principle which had long consciously or unconsciously guided English opinion.” Nahum Sokolow, 1919

“Christian Zionism and Jewish Zionism have combined to create an international alliance superseding anything that NATO or UN has to offer.” Daniel Lazare, 2003

“Put positively: Other than Israel’s Defense Forces, American [Christian] Zionists may be the Jewish state’s ultimate strategic asset.” Daniel Pipes, July 2003

Destabilizing Logic: Alienating Muslims

“…it seems to me and all members of my office acquainted with the Middle East that the policy which we are following [support for partition]…is contrary to the interests of the United States and will eventually involve us in international difficulties….we are forfeiting the friendship of the Arab world…[and] incurring long-term Arab hostility towards us.” Loy Henderson, November 1947

“US prestige in the Muslim world has suffered a severe blow, and US strategic interests in the Mediterranean and Near East have been seriously prejudiced.” George F. Kennan, January 1948

“You can trace the resurgence of what we call Islamic extremism to the Six Day War.” Michael Oren, 2007

Destabilizing Logic: Rise Of Israel/Six-Day War of June 1967

“Israel was now [after 1967] seen by the West, and primarily Washington, as a regional superpower and a desirable ally among a bevy of fickle, weak Arab states.” Benny Morris, 2001

“The glory of past ages no longer is to be seen at a distance but is, from now on, part of the new state…” Editorial in Haaretz, June 8, 1967

“We have returned to our holiest places, we have returned in order not to part from them ever again.” Moshe Dayan, June 9, 1967

“A messianic, expansionist wind swept over the country. Religious folk spoke of a “miracle” and of “salvation”; the ancient lands of Israel had been restored to God’s people.” Benny Morris, 2001

Zionism: Support of Western Imperialist Powers

“If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine…[w]e should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.” Theodore Herzl, 1896

“Don’t worry, Dr. Wise, Palestine is yours.” Woodrow Wilson, March 1919

“The United States has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East comparable only to that which it has with Britain over a wide range of world affairs…I think it is quite clear that in case of an invasion the United States would come to the support of Israel.” John F. Kennedy, December 1962

Zionism: Incremental Strategy

“Erect a Jewish state at once, even if it is not on the whole land. The rest will come in the course of time. It must come.” David Ben-Gurion, 1937

“Egypt is the only state among the Arab countries that constitutes a real state and is forging a people inside it. It is a big state. If we could arrive at the conclusion of peace with it, it would be a tremendous conquest for us.” David Ben-Gurion, 1949

Settler-Colonialism/Ethnic Cleansing

“As soon as we have a big settlement here we’ll seize the land, we’ll become strong, and then we’ll take care of the Left Bank [of the Jordan River]. We’ll expel them from there, too. Let them go back to the Arab countries.” A Jewish settler, 1891

“[We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to hate us.” Israel Zangwill, 1905

“… Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English, or America is American.” Chaim Weizmann, 1919

“I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral.” David Ben-Gurion, 1938

“We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.” Moshe Dayan, April 1956

“Zionism comprises a belief that Jews are a nation, and as such are entitled to self-determination as all other nations are.” Emanuele Ottolenghi, 2003

“Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.” Benny Morris, 2004

Jewish Power

“There are upwards of seven million Jews known to be in existence throughout the world… possessing more wealth, activity, influence and talents, than any body of people their number on earth….they will march in triumphant numbers, and possess themselves once more of Syria, and take their rank among the governments of the earth.” Mordecai Noah, 1818

“When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat…when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse.” Theodore Herzl, 1896

““If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey.” Theodore Herzl, 1896

“…Jews are a great power in journalism throughout the world.” Israel Zangwill, 1914

“In large parts of Eastern Europe [during the early decades of the twentieth century], virtually the whole “middle class” was Jewish.” Yuri Slezkin, 2004

“The expansion and consolidation of United States Jewry in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries was as important in Jewish history as the creation of Israel itself; in some ways more important. For, if the fulfillment of Zionism gave the harassed diaspora an ever-open refuge with sovereign rights to determine and defend its destiny, the growth of US Jewry was an accession of power of an altogether different order, which gave Jews an important, legitimate and permanent part in shaping the policies of the greatest state on earth.” Paul Johnson

“…the Jews from every tribe have descended in force, and they are determined to break in with a jimmy if they are not let in.” Edward House, October 1917

 Jewish Power: Jewish Lobby

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.” President Harry Truman, November 1945

“I know I was elected because of the votes of American Jews. I owe them my election. Tell me, is there something I can do for the Jewish people?” President John F. Kennedy, December 1961

“Without this lobby Israel would have gone down the drain.” Isaiah (Si) Kenen

“During every congressional campaign, each candidate for every seat is asked to describe his or her views on the Middle East. Most office-seekers happily comply in writing. AIPAC then shares the results with its members, helping them to decide who is the most pro-Israel.” J. J. Goldberg, 1996

“AIPAC has one enormous advantage. It really doesn’t have any opposition.” Douglas Bloomfield, 2003

“In the last two decades between 1980 and 2000, American Jews gained power and influence beyond anything that they had ever experienced.” Stephen Schwartz, 2006

“A lobby is like a night flower: it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.” Steven Rosen, 2005

“If Israel nuked Chicago, Congress would approve.” Steve Reed, 2009

“1000 Jewish lobbyists are on Capitol Hill against little old me.” President George H. Bush, September 1991

“… before I was elected to office I vowed to be an unshakable supporter of Israel. I have kept that commitment.” President Bill Clinton May 1995

“…I will bring to the White House an unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.” Barack Obama, June 2008

Zionism versus Saving Jewish Lives

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the [Jewish] children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second.” David Ben-Gurion, 1938

“If I am asked could you give money from UJA [United Jewish Appeal] moneys to rescue Jews? I say ‘No; and I say again, No.” Itzhak Greenbaum, 1943RedditEmail

M. Shahid Alam is Emeritus Professor, Department of Economics, Northeastern University. He is the author of Israeli Exceptionalism (Springer, 2008) and Yardstick of Life (KDP, 2024), a book of poetry. Read other articles by M. Shahid.

 

Thawing Russia-US Relations?

Whether Trump spoke with Putin or not, it’s high time that the U.S. and Russian leaders communicate to resolve the existential crisis over Ukraine.

by Ray McGovern Posted onNovember 14, 2024

This originally appeared at Consortium News.

A former and future U.S. president talked with Vladimir Putin last Thursday! At least that is what The Washington Post reported today.

In a highly detailed account, the Post wrote:

“During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, said a person familiar with the call, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

The two men discussed the goal of peace on the European continent and Trump expressed an interest in follow-up conversations to discuss ‘the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon,’ one of the people said.”

Except on Monday, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, denied it ever happened.

As a follow-up, the Post was forced to report:

“Peskov called the story ‘completely untrue’ … ‘This is the most obvious example of the quality of the information that is now published, sometimes even in fairly respected publications. This is completely untrue. This is pure fiction, this is simply false information,’ he told the Russian news agency Interfax.”

Someone is lying here. The Post said it had five unnamed sources confirming the call and providing extensive detail of what was supposedly discussed.  Trump has said nothing so far about whether such a call took place. But on Monday he posted a short Fox video on his Truth Social account showing the world leaders he has spoken to so far and Putin is not among them. Volodymyr Zelenksy of Ukraine is.

A Long- Time Coming

It has been two and a half years since a conversation between U.S. and Russian presidents.

That last conversation was held on Feb. 12, 2022. It ended badly – the readout showing there was no room for compromise, no room for a “deal” to stave off war in Ukraine.

The U.S. would not reverse its stance on inviting Ukraine into NATO; and went back on an earlier undertaking not to put offensive missiles in Ukraine. The Russians saw their core national security interests at stake, just as the U.S. had core interests in preventing Cuba from installing offensive missiles in 1962.

According to the Russian readout, Putin made clear that Joe Biden “did not really address non-expansion of NATO, or non-deployment of strike weapons systems on Ukrainian territory.” Twelve days later, the Russians launched what they call their Special Military Operation.

The Biden administration knew this would happen. None other than NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg let that cat out of the bag (no doubt inadvertently) in a speech to the EU Parliament on Sept. 7, 2023:

“Putin’s precondition for not invading Ukraine was: No Ukraine in NATO. We rejected that. So he went to war to prevent more NATO.”

Context: Reading the Readout

The Kremlin placed the readout of the Feb. 12, 2022 summit-call squarely in the context of a key Putin-Biden telephone conversation nine weeks earlier on Dec. 7, 2021. That virtual summit had been arranged abruptly, at Putin’s urgent request.

And so it came to pass that Biden was at home on holiday in Delaware – without his minders. As things turned out, he apparently reasoned that agreeing not to put offensive missiles in Ukraine made sense, given the threat Putin saw in that (and the fact that the US already had such emplacements in Romania and Poland).

The Russian readout from that Dec. 30, 2021 telephone call stated: “Joseph Biden emphasized that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike missiles in Ukraine.” [Emphasis added.]

Biden administration officials, with the full cooperation of Establishment media, were able to obfuscate and suppress this key undertaking made by Biden when he was ‘home alone’, so to speak.

There was virtually no public reporting or comment. The only exception was former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, John Herbst, an ardent Ukraine fan, who quickly and quietly dismissed the readout as nothing new.

Dec. 7, 2021: U.S. President Joe Biden, on screen during video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Signs of Thaw 

A lot of water has flowed down the Dnieper River since February 2022. Much of it will be frozen thick on Jan. 20 when Donald Trump takes office. There are, however, already some tentative signs of a coming thaw in relations between the U.S. and Russia.

On Thursday, Putin publicly congratulated Trump on his victory, praising his “manly” response to the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. On Sunday, Kremlin spokesman Peskov told an interviewer there were “positive” signs for improved relations under a Trump presidency.

“Trump talked during his campaign about how he sees everything through deals, that he can make a deal that will lead everyone to peace. At least he talks about peace, not about confrontation and the desire to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” Peskov said.

Tempering expectations, Putin responded cautiously to a question at the Valdai conference in Sochi on Nov. 7. Asked what he expects from a second Trump administration, Putin replied, “I don’t know what will happen now. I have no idea.”

On Ukraine, nothing good will happen until Biden/Blinken/Sullivan can admit that what they have been saying for a year and a half is not true. Putin has not “already lost.” It is just the opposite. And his terms are correspondingly tough. On that basis, and only on that basis, will he be prepared “to deal.”

US ‘Exceptionalism’

Biden was fond of quoting former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s oft-stated belief that the U.S. was not only “exceptional” but also “indispensable.” It seems Biden and his acolytes, particularly Secretary of State Antony Blinken, may actually believe that.

What most observers have long since forgotten is that Putin called out Barack Obama on that very issue – precisely at a time when there was hope for increasing mutual trust. Putin placed a revealing op-ed about all this in The New York Times on Sept. 12, 2013.

In short, Putin persuaded Syria to let its chemical weapons be destroyed under U.N. inspection, and thus pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire when Obama agreed.

Obama later admitted that all of his advisers insisted he had to wage war on Syria because of a chemical attack near Damascus during the civil war there. It was a false-flag attack, and he sensed that. Obama was reluctant to start yet another overt war – this one on Syria. He told a lot of this story to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic.

Syria’s chemical weapons were destroyed and war was avoided. And not only that. The possibilities had increased perceptively for growing trust, only to be dashed when Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and friends mounted a coup d’etat in Kyiv just six months later.

Here’s the last paragraph of the NYT op-ed by Putin on Sept 12, 2013. As we shall see, there are clear echoes of this in Putin’s talk on Friday at Valdai, 11 years later:

“My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is ‘what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.’ It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

The Valdai Message 

Putin addressing the Valdai Club on Friday. (President of Russia)

Is there a chance for resuscitation of this “growing trust” from 11 years ago? In his Valdai presentation Friday, Putin made abundantly clear what the new international situation – the new balance of power – will now require, especially as a very large part of the world is already in BRICS and arrayed against a lily white, Western minority.

Putin’s words on Friday are as interesting now as his New York Times op-ed was 11 years ago:

“The Western-centric world has embraced certain clichés and stereotypes concerning the global hierarchy. There is supposedly a developed world, progressive society and some universal civilization that everyone should strive to join – while at the other end, there are backward, uncivilized nations, barbarians. Their job is to listen unquestioningly to what they are told from the outside, and to act on the instructions issued by those who are allegedly superior to them in this civilizational hierarchy.

It is clear that this concept works for a crude colonial approach, for the exploitation of the global majority. The problem is that this essentially racist ideology has taken root in the minds of many, creating a serious mental obstacle to general harmonious growth. [Emphasis added.]

The modern world tolerates neither arrogance nor wanton disregard for others being different. To build normal relationships, above all, one needs to listen to the other party and try to understand their logic and cultural background, rather than expecting them to think and act the way you think they should based on your beliefs about them. Otherwise, communication turns into an exchange of clichés and flinging labels, and politics devolves into a conversation of the deaf.”

It is possible to hope that, on Ukraine at least, U.S.-Russian talks can quickly move beyond cliches and labels, to stop the killing. Mutual trust is also possible, but it will take some time to rebuild it.

Perhaps it helps to recall that it almost happened just 13 years ago.

— Joe Lauria contributed to this report.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a C.I.A. analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

A New Wave of Movements Against Trumpism Is Coming

Our job is to translate outrage over his agenda into action toward a truly transformational vision.

By Mark Engler, Paul Engler 

November 10, 2024

Source: Waging Nonviolence


The Protect Our Futures march in New York City on Nov. 9. 

(Facebook/Met Council on Housing)

For many of us, the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s decisive electoral victory has been a time of deep despair and mourning. There has been plenty of commentary trying to make sense of Trump’s win and the factors that led to it. But no analysis changes the fact that the outcome represents a serious blow to our most vulnerable communities, a sharp setback for causes of economic and social justice, and a profound challenge to whatever semblance of democracy America has been able to secure. We have lived through it before, and it feels even worse the second time around. It is right that we take this as a moment to grieve.

But even amidst our feelings of sorrow or hopelessness, we can recognize that political conditions are not static. As we step out of our grieving and look ahead, there are reasons to believe that a new social movement cycle to confront Trumpism can emerge. And in making this happen, we can draw on lessons from what has worked in the past and what we know can be effective in confronting autocrats. Our job will be to take advantage of the moments of opportunity that arise in coming months to hold the line against Trump’s authoritarianism — and also link them to a vision for creating the transformative change we need in our world.

Here’s why we can expect a new wave of movements to arise.

Trump is a trigger

We have often written about the importance of “trigger events” in sparking periods of mass protest. Social movement organizers can labor for years in relative quiet, carrying out the long-term “spadework” — as civil rights icon Ella Baker called it — of consciousness raising, leadership development and building organizational structure. But there are also moments when issues of social and economic injustice are thrown into the spotlight by a dramatic or expected public event: A shocking scandal, a natural disaster, a geopolitical conflict or an investigative report revealing gross misconduct stokes widespread outrage and sends people into the streets.

In 2016, Trump’s election itself served as a trigger event. A wide range of groups, from the liberal ACLU to the more radical Democratic Socialists of America, saw membership and donations surge as concerned progressives braced for what was expected to come from his administration. New groups also emerged, such as Indivisible, which began as a viral Google Doc about how to confront elected officials and compel them to resist the Trump administration. It then quickly grew into an organization with more than 4,000 affiliated local groups by 2021.

At the same time, outrage among women about Trump being able to take office in spite of his overt misogyny led them to mobilize in record-breaking numbers. A call to action went out immediately after the election, and on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump’s inauguration, upwards of four million people rallied in Women’s March events, spread across every state in the nation. Scholars tracking participation identified this as “likely the largest single-day demonstration in recorded U.S. history.”

This time around, the mood is different. The shock of “how could this ever happen” that many experienced eight years ago feels distinct from the gut-churning sense of “it is happening again” that is sinking in this time around. As the New York Times described it, there is a “stunned, quiet and somber feeling,” sometimes accompanied by resignation, rather than an immediate impulse to rise up in resistance. That said, established progressive groups that have created space for members to gather to make sense of the electoral outcome and plan a response have seen a strong response. Most notably, a mass call two days after the election organized by a coalition of 200 groups — including the Working Families Party, MoveOn, United We Dream and Movement for Black Lives Action — drew well in excess of 100,000 people, with thousands signing up for follow-up community gatherings.


There is no better antidote to hopelessness than action in community.

There will be more opportunities to come. It is highly likely that future trigger events will arise as Trump begins implementing his agenda. Although he won a commanding electoral victory, a significant portion of his gains can be attributed to rejection of the status quo and a desire on the part of voters to sweep out a broken political establishment. On a policy level, Trump is often incoherent. Although he presents himself as a champion of those left behind, he cannot deliver for working people. Instead, many of the things that he will attempt may prove to be deeply unpopular, from tax cuts for the wealthy and attacks on women’s rights, to unconstitutional power grabs and cuts to social services or public benefits.

Should Trump begin to carry out the program of mass deportations that he has promised, resulting in separated families and shattered communities, conservatives could quickly find that their overreach has sparked backlash and defiance — not only from defenders of human rights but even from business people alarmed at the economic disruption.

In late 2005, when the Republican majority in the House pushed through a piece of anti-immigrant legislation known as the Sensenbrenner Bill — a measure which, among other impacts, would have created penalties for providing humanitarian services to undocumented immigrants — it gave rise to a series of massive immigrant rights protests in the months that followed. Hundreds of thousands marched in 2006, not only filling the downtowns of major cities like Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles, but also flooding public squares in places such as Fresno, Omaha and Garden City, Kansas. These actions galvanized the Latino vote and had lasting impacts in multiple election cycles that followed.

Likewise, in the early days of Trump’s first term, his administration’s “Muslim ban” prompted rallies and civil disobedience at airports around the country. While the ban was being challenged in court, the actions served as major public flashpoints, both bolstering local groups and giving rise to national formations such as #NeverAgainAction, while also prompting cities to make vows to protect migrants.

Public revolt can cut both ways: The rise of the Tea Party in 2009 became a significant hindrance to Barack Obama’s ability to pursue a progressive economic agenda. But whether such mobilizations come from the left or right, it is important to recognize that they can have significant consequences.

Activism during Trump’s first term was able to create a sense of an administration that was embattled and mired in controversy, rather than one carrying out a popular mandate. While most presidents can expect to enjoy a bump in popularity following their inaugurations, Trump instead faced record-low approval ratings. And while conservatives passed a major tax law that favored the rich, they were unable to realize other top goals such as the repeal of Obamacare. With the 2018 midterms, movements played a significant role in creating one of the most dramatic swings in recent electoral history, propelling a wave that both swept Democrats into power in many states and deprived Republicans of control of the U.S. Congress, closing their window of maximum legislative power.

Looking forward, Trump will trigger outrage. But outrage alone is not enough. It needs to be translated into action. Movements must be ready to capitalize on and extend the opportunities that Trump’s policies create. Here, preparation is helpful: By anticipating and planning for trigger events, movements can position themselves to take maximum advantage.

Different strategies for change can work together

When we track the impacts of mass protests, one of the most consistent things that we witness is that critics are eager to denounce activist tactics and preemptively declare new movements as ineffectual, even when they have scarcely just appeared. When mass protests erupted in Trump’s first term, there were a plethora of voices condemning them as pointless and even counterproductive.

In the New York Times, David Brooks conceded that the Women’s March was an “important cultural moment,” but argued that “Marching is a seductive substitute for action,” and that it ultimately amounted to little more than “mass therapy” for participants. “Change happens when people run for office, amass coalitions of interest groups, engage in the messy practice of politics,” Brooks wrote, contending that “these marches can never be an effective opposition to Donald Trump.” Such pessimism was sometimes echoed by left-wing commentators as well, who devoted more energy to dissecting the political limitations of the Women’s March than capitalizing on the opportunities it created to draw new people into long-term organizing campaigns.

In fact, people newly activated by the march became part of many subsequent efforts, and the following year the mobilization fed directly into the #MeToo movement, which erupted after another trigger event — namely, publicity that shed light on the sexual abuses perpetrated by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Not only did #MeToo have far-reaching implications for policy, in the legal system, and in other arenas of public life, it also significantly affected voting patterns, with the Washington Post reporting on a “women-led army” that was “repulsed by Trump and determined to do something about it” driving abnormally high turnout in 2018 and 2020.

But the even bigger problem for the argument of those who dismiss mass protest is the assumption that different approaches to creating change are mutually exclusive. To the contrary, key to both defeating Trumpism and winning what we actually want in the future is cultivating a healthy social movement ecosystem in which multiple approaches to change complement and play off one another. There is strong evidence from past mobilizations that mass protest in fact feeds such an ecology in many different ways. Following peak periods of unrest, which we describe as “moments of the whirlwind,” those who have been laboring for years in the trenches often remark on how the surge of interest and support significantly expands their horizon of possibility.

Social movements alone have the potential to produce a response to Trump that both invites mass participation and that is connected to a broader vision for change. The alternative — relying on legal cases or other insider challenges to the administration’s policies, hoping that politicians will save us, or relying on Democrats, by themselves, to not cave or conciliate themselves to Trumpism — is a recipe for defeat and demobilization.

The bright spots of the first Trump era came as movements not only rallied large numbers of people in defensive battles against the White House, but also carried forward popular energy by organizing around a positive vision for change. Here, the model offered by Bernie Sanders was very important. Sanders achieved far greater success in his 2016 primary challenge to Hillary Clinton than anyone in the Washington establishment could have imagined by running on a resolute platform of Medicare for All, free higher education, and confronting the power of corporations and the rich. Whether or not “Bernie would’ve won” in 2016 had he been in the general election, as many of his supporters believe, the senator was nevertheless vital in pointing to a model of how Trumpism could be combated with a progressive populist vision, rather than a retreat to the center and the adoption of “Republican-lite” versions of policy.

Groups motivated to build active support for such a vision — which included progressive unions, community organizations investing in electoral work in a more concerted way than ever before, and new or re-energized formations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, the Working Families Party and the Poor People’s Campaign — entered into contests that gave rise to the Squad at the federal level, as well as an unprecedented number of movement champions taking office locally.

The Sunrise Movement, another group that contributed to this push, exploded onto the scene in 2018, playing a key role in putting the Green New Deal at the center of policy debate and, along with Fridays for Future, revitalizing climate activism. Trigger events around police violence ignited a new round of Black Lives Matter protests and a national reckoning on race that has helped secure important gains around criminal justice reform — strides toward which have continued in spite of backlash.

This time around, we must be more clear than ever that our goal is to win over a majority of Americans. Movements should not be afraid to engage in polarizing protest, but they should be mindful of the challenge of producing positive polarization that reaches out to include more people in the fight for justice, while minimizing negative polarization that pushes away potential supporters. Crucial to this is always seeking to expand the coalition of allies, engage in political education to bring in newcomers, and not accept the myth of the righteous few, or the idea that the path to victory is through demanding ever-greater levels of moral purity among those we associate with, even if that means ever-greater insularity.

The day after the election, Sunrise tweeted: “Trump loves corporations even more than Democrats do, but he ran an anti-establishment campaign that gave an answer to people’s desire for change.” As social movements respond to outrage over Trump’s policies and tie their actions to a real agenda for transformative change, they puncture the pretense that he offers any sort of real alternative to a democracy ruled by elites and an economy designed to serve the wealthy. “We can stop him, and we must,” Sunrise added. “But it’s going to take many thousands of people taking to the streets and preparing to strike. And it’s going to take mass movements putting out a better vision for our country than Trumpism and proving that we can make it happen.”

If ever there was a time to allow ourselves a space for mourning as we contemplate the fate of our country, it is now. But ultimately, only we can save ourselves from despair. David Brooks intended to be dismissive in characterizing collective protest as “mass therapy,” but in one respect he is onto something: There is no better antidote to hopelessness than action in community.

Our past experience tells us that coming months and years will offer moments that trigger public revulsion. Social movements provide a unique mechanism for responding, creating common identity and purpose between strangers and allowing genuine, collective participation in building a better democracy. If we are to make it together through Trump’s second presidency and emerge in its aftermath to create the world we need, this may be our greatest hope. Indeed, it may be our only one.

Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia, an editorial board member at Dissent, and co-author of “This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century” (Nation Books). He can be reached via the website www.DemocracyUprising.com.

Paul Engler is the director of the Center for the Working Poor in Los Angeles, and a co-founder of the Momentum Training, and co-author, with Mark Engler, of “This Is An Uprising.”

© Waging Nonviolence. Waging Nonviolence content falls under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia, an editorial board member at Dissent, and co-author of "This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century" (Nation Books). He can be reached via the website www.DemocracyUprising.com.

America’s Descent Into Fascism Can Be Stopped

Henry Giroux

 November 8, 2024
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Photo by Jon Tyson

The election of Trump is more than a political event; it is an attempt to legitimize a brutal evolution of fascism in America. His rise is not accidental but symptomatic, emerging from the depths of collective fear, dread, and anxiety stoked by a savage form of gangster capitalism—neoliberalism—that thrives on division and despair. This climate, steeped in a culture of hate, misogyny, and racism, has given life to Trump’s authoritarian appeal, drowning out the warning signs of past and present tyranny.

While it’s clear that American society changed dramatically with Reagan’s election and the corrupt rise of the billionaire elite, we must also recognize how liberals and the Democratic Party, instead of resisting, aligned with Wall Street power brokers like Goldman Sachs. In doing so, they adopted elements of neoliberalism that crushed the working class, intensified the class and racial divide, accelerated staggering levels of inequality, and intensified the long legacy of nativism,  all of which fed into the conditions for Trump’s appeal. Clinton’s racially charged criminalizing policies, Obama’s centrist neoliberalism and unyielding support for the financial elite, and Biden’s death-driven support for genocide in Gaza have contributed to a culture ripe for authoritarianism. In short, this groundwork didn’t just make Trump possible; it made him inevitable.

But perhaps one of the most overlooked failures of liberalism and Third Way democrats, and even parts of the left, was the neglect of education as a form of critical and civic literacy and the role it plays in raising mass consciousness and fostering an energized collective movement. This failure wasn’t just about policy but, as Pierre Bourdieu observed, about forgetting that domination operates not only through economic structures but also through beliefs and cultural persuasion. Trump and his engineers of hate and revenge have not only rewritten history but obliterated historical consciousness as fundamental element of civic education. Historical amnesia has always provided a cover for America’s long-standing racism, nativism, disavowal of women’s right. Capitalizing on far right propaganda machines, Trump managed, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat notes, to convince millions of Americans that they “simply could not accept the idea of a non-White and female president.” Nor could they insert themselves in a history of collective struggle, resistance, and the fight for a better world. He also convinced the majority of Americans that it is okay elect a white supremacist to be the President of the University.

Bernie Sanders rightly observes on X that “It comes as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.” Of course, the Democratic Party shares with mainstream media stenographers the fact that they have refused to forcefully acknowledge, as Sherrilyn Ifill points out, that not only the MAGA crowd but also “a majority of white Americans in fact have chosen to embrace white supremacy rather than the promise of a multi-racial democracy.”   Sanders’ comments only scratch the surface. The issue of abandonment and moral collapse also extends to the pedagogical realm: for decades, the right has wielded the educational force of culture to persuade white, Latino, and Black workers to turn their backs on their own interests, binding them to an authoritarian cult and white supremacist ideology that exploits their alienation and sabotages any sense of critical agency. Since the 1970s, galvanized by the Powell Memo, reactionary conservatives have grasped, far more than the left, the transformative power of ideas. They have weaponized culture to dismantle institutions that once nurtured critical thought, education, and resistance. Recognizing that reshaping public consciousness was essential to their agenda, they systematically eroded critical literacy, attacked public spaces, and transformed public and higher education from forces of liberation —turning them into either sites of repression and training or more disdainfully, full scale sites of indoctrination. This was no accident; it was a core part of their long-term strategy—to strip society of its capacity for dissent, molding a populace more easily controlled, more willingly complicit in its own subjugation.

Trump is the grim culmination of this cultural war against reason, truth, and critical thinking. Mass ignorance and civic illiteracy have become not mere byproducts but the very engines of a strategy to blind working people and those considered expendable to the economic injustices ravaging their lives. Rather than addressing these economic onslaughts, they are instead lured into a communal theater of hate and bigotry. This spectacle of manufactured ignorance and call for cult-like loyalty does more than cloud the mind; it becomes a political weapon, rendering the dispossessed both docile and divided. Neoliberal ideology intensifies this dynamic, imprisoning people in suffocating bubbles of self-interest and hyper-individualism. It wages a calculated assault on collective solidarity, designed to transform the public into isolated consumers, unable to envision a politics beyond their private lives or recognize that their true power lies in unity and critical consciousness. At the same time, it takes advantage of the anxiety and loneliness experience by the disposed to lure them into a false community of hatred and lawlessness. The need for solidary falls prey under Trump into the lure of what Ernst Bloch in The Principle of Hope called the swindle of fulfillment.

With no viable movement for meaningful social change in sight, Trump and his modern-day Brownshirts exploited the void left by a crisis of consciousness. Into this gap, they injected a corporate-controlled culture that shaped daily life with a culture steeped in hatred, fear, anxiety, and the force of endless fascist like spectacles. It is worth noting that such spectacles are chillingly reminiscent of Nuremberg in the 1930s, designed to stoke division and obedience, distracting the public from any path toward collective resistance or liberation. This carnival of divisiveness and dehumanizing rhetoric did more than destroy the nation’s civic and educational fabric, it produced a poisonous populist culture that changed the way most Americans view the past, present, and future.

If we are to confront this fascistic momentum, we must urgently return to the tools necessary to rebuild a mass consciousness as a precondition for a mass movement–one that can use the mobilization of mass consciousness, strikes and other forms of direct action to prevent this new fascist regime from governing. We need to stop this machinery of death from enacting the enormous suffering, misery,  violence, and power that gives it both a sense of pleasure and reason for enduring.

With Trump’s rise to power, American citizens have empowered a fascist agenda—one bent on enriching the ultra-wealthy, gutting the welfare state, deporting millions, and dismantling the very institutions that uphold accountability, critical thought, and democracy itself. These structures are not just formalities; they are the lifeblood of a radical, inclusive democracy and the safeguard for an informed citizenry. In this perilous moment, Seyla Benhabib, drawing on Adorno and Arendt, confronts us with a question of profound urgency: “What does it mean to go on thinking?” Her call to “learn to think anew” resounds with particular force as we grapple with the stark reality of Trump’s election.

We are now compelled to rethink the very foundations of culture, politics, power, struggle, and education. The stakes are clear. In mere weeks, as Will Bunch notes, a man who attempted to overturn an election—who espouses overt racism, embraces white supremacy, and boasts about his rancid misogyny, has pledged mass deportations, and threatens military force against political opponents—will once again assume power. This is a historical crossroads that demands a radical reevaluation of our democratic commitments and strategies for real social and economic change.

Chris Hedges aptly warns that “the American dream has become an American nightmare [and that] Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay.” Trump embodies the cumulative effects of decades of moral and social corrosion. His presidency signals not a departure but an intensification of a deep-seated national crisis.

In this historical moment, we face an urgent challenge to confront and dismantle the forces entrenching fascist politics and authoritarian governance. Now is the moment to radically transform our approach to theory, education, and the liberatory power of learning—tools we must wield to build a robust, multi-racial working-class movement that is unapologetically anti-capitalist and unwaveringly democratic. We must relinquish the myth of American  exceptionalism and the dangerous illusion that democracy and capitalism are synonymous. The cost of inaction is dire: a future where democracy is not merely eroded but supplanted by a violent police state,—a betrayal soaked in blood, extinguishing the dream of a society committed to the promise and ideals of justice and equality.

The stakes could not be higher. We must confront this moment with uncompromising purpose, a blueprint for bold action, and an unyielding commitment to a radical democracy that defies fascist cruelty, bigotry, and the stranglehold of the financial elite at every step. Our future demands it, as does the vision of a society where justice, solidarity, and human dignity are not just ideals but realities—part of a future that defies the rising shadow of fascism threatening to consume us. We either fight to reclaim this promise, or we surrender to a darkness from which there is no return.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019), On Critical Pedagogy, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury, 2020); Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2021); Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury 2022) and Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-Revolutionary Politics (Bloomsbury, 2023), and coauthored with Anthony DiMaggio, Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2025). Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s board of directors.