FIGHT BACK IN TRUMPISTAN
Don’t Mourn, Fight
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Far be it from me to claim that the US government is a democracy. In my understanding, capitalism prevents genuine democracy because of the influence money has in elections and elsewhere throughout the political system. This is especially true in the current monopoly phase of capitalism we call neoliberalism. Just ask Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump wants to run his austerity program. The power of his purse was a crucial element in the final weeks of the Trump campaign. It will continue to be so until the printing presses that print money stop printing and the engines that run cryptocurrency melt the ice caps. In the minds of the uber rich, the US government is just another subsidiary and the people are employees, customers and suckers.
I’m not going to spend much of my time here trying to evaluate why Harris lost the election. There are others much more adept at that, including CounterPunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair. I will state that as far as I’m concerned the fundamental reasons for the Trump victory are misogyny, racism and the ignorance that fuels those phenomena. As any honest observer can tell you, neither phenomenon is limited to a particular class or region of the country, but it seems fair to say the South and Midwest contain populations where such sentiments may be in the majority of the voting population.
There is no easy way to defeat fascism within the context of a capitalist economy and a bourgeois electoral system.
One cannot sit in their living room and curse at the television, hoping it will go away. As history makes clear, fascists will not stop until they are stopped by the forces opposed to them.
That fact means organizing.
It means getting off one’s ass and hitting the streets.
It means not compromising with those in one’s union, one’s church, and one’s community who push fascist agendas of austerity and division.
If (or perhaps I should say when) ICE comes to your town and begins rounding up immigrants for deportation, one cannot turn away because it isn’t happening to their family.
When women are refused reproductive choice and threatened with prison time for asserting their right to that choice, one cannot compromise with the authorities locking those women up.
When Medicaid and other government subsidies for health care are cut—leaving people without health care—one cannot merely be glad it’s not them. These are just a few examples of when and where one must oppose the programs almost certain to be implemented in the coming months.
There will be those who argue that Trump isn’t that bad. They are lying. One need only look at his Vice President (who became almost invisible in the campaign’s final weeks) to understand the true agenda of the Trumpist government. Although the leadership of the House is uncertain as I write this, the United States is extremely close to a one-party regime. From the Supreme Court to the White House, the right wing is in control. If the House goes to the GOP, we will be living in a one-party state. I don’t hesitate at all when I call it a fascist regime. I don’t think the reader should either. Doing so describes the power out opposition faces. Capitalism’s current crises demand an authoritarian government. We recognize that our future demands that government’s dismantling.
It’s time to take a risk. To put your body on the line. To get in the streets and make noise. To cause a ruckus if the situation demands it. To piss the fascists off.
Don’t mourn, organize.
By Roger Hallam
One word. Proximity. Let me explain.
In a now largely forgotten book published in 1989 called Modernity and the Holocaust, Polish-Jewish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman examined the overwhelming evidence for why the Holocaust happened. It required a gang of political adventurers who seized control of the German state, wielding its immense organisational and industrial capacity. But this still leaves the question of how they managed it. In a key section titled Social Proximity and Moral Responsibility, Bauman argues that the decisive factor wasn’t ideology but the creation of psychological and physical distance between Jewish people and the rest of the population.
In 1933 the Nazis called for a boycott of Jewish businesses. It failed because too many non-Jewish Germans personally knew their local Jewish shop owners and felt a moral responsibility not to harm them. The Nazis learnt from this and, over the next decade, progressively reduced the proximity between Jews and other Germans. Jewish people were forced to wear identifying badges, then moved into camps, and ultimately, when they were murdered, the separation had become so vast that most people felt no moral responsibility to intervene.
To prevent fascism, we must do the opposite. A pro-social movement of political adventurers must take control of the state and progressively increase proximity. Proximity—not “economic growth”—is the key determinant of a flourishing civilisation. It’s what people truly crave: to connect, to sit down in small groups and talk. We care about “politics” and “self-interest” only to the extent that they foster this connection. Love—mutual care and recognition—is humanity’s foundational need. This truth spans the social sciences and is echoed in the wisdom traditions.
Let me give a few examples. In my award-winning research at King’s College London I showed that if people sit in small circles to discuss a social issue (with biscuits on the table!) for most of a public meeting, 80% leave feeling empowered. In contrast, only 20% feel empowered after a conventional meeting with a series of speakers and no small group discussion. Research shows most people initially attend campaign meetings not for political reasons, but because a friend invited them or they seek human connection. A Harvard study on negotiation found the single biggest predictor of success is whether the other party personally likes you. The early Christian church, one of the most successful movements in history, didn’t convert people through doctrinal persuasion but by fostering friendships. The evidence is overwhelming. “It’s absolutely fantastic,” one trade union leader told me after restructuring his events around small group discussions.
Progressives and the Left fail repeatedly because they are wedded to an Enlightenment secular religion that assumes people respond to ideas over emotions and ideology over connection. They’re embarrassingly mistaken. Fascist men, for instance, often abandon their views after forming personal relationships—such as getting a girlfriend. There are countless stories of individuals entering far-right spaces, listening, building personal connections, and subsequently helping others to leave those spaces. During the recent English riots a group of Muslims, faced with an angry crowd outside their mosque, offered food and listened to people’s concerns. Conversations ensued, tensions eased, and constructive dialogue began.
I’ve given over 200 public talks on the climate crisis, often with right-wing conspiracy theorists turning up to disrupt. I never argue with them but thank them for sharing their views and invite them to discuss afterwards. I take them aside in a small group, summarise their questions as they speak, and they continue talking. It works wonders. One of the main right-wing conspiracy theorists in the UK even shook my hand afterwards. Proximity can build a connection in minutes.
Of course this doesn’t work every time, and ideas have their place. But as Carl Rogers, one of the most influential psychologists of the last century discovered, listening with “unconditional positive regard” is the single most effective way to promote personal healing and growth. Rogers sparked a counselling revolution, transforming therapy. We need a similar revolution to transform politics. Change won’t come through conventional politics but by circumventing it. We must create proximity directly—through door-knocking and local assemblies organised around small group listening.
This is the next political revolution. I’m convinced that new movement parties could rise from zero to winning local and national elections in six months with these methods. We’ve already seen similar success with new parties in recent years. But it needs perfecting. A national project would require around £1 million to get started. Anyone with money out there would see a far better return by investing in this method to counter the far-right threat, rather than wasting funds on conventional political strategies.
We can either build a new civilisation based on closeness and connection or let humanity destroy itself by ignoring how we actually function. Getting this right, right now, is of utmost importance. You know exactly what I mean.
If you want to join the social movement that will create this revolution, sign up at timetoassemble.org.
Trump’s Second Term – Now is the time for a global fightback
ACR Statement
Thursday 7 November 2024, by Anti*Capitalist Resistance
Donald Trump won a second US presidency on 6 November 2024. The Republican Party is now in almost total control of US establishment politics as they also made gains in the Senate, giving them control of the entire legislature, the presidency and the Supreme Court. It is a victory for the US Plutocrats and Oligarchs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, the crypto-fanatics and west-coast Tech Bros.
Trumpism is part of the global counter-revolutionary wave we see with far-right populists, authoritarians, semi-fascists and libertarians taking power in countries around the world. What we are seeing is a process of a general shift to the far-right caused by neoliberalism and the collapse in the post-war liberal consensus that it has brought about. Trumpism is the same trend that produced Modi in India, Duterte in the Philippines, Meloni in Italy and so on.
But this victory, in particular, is a disaster for billions around the planet. The power of US imperialism to act or not act is still a decisive factor in global politics.
A second Trump presidency will be as chaotic and vile as the first. Only now his key intellectual backers will be much clearer on what they want to get out of it. Project 2025 is a blueprint for an authoritarian USA; it includes the proposals to sack thousands of government employees and place the rest of the US government bureaucracy under central presidential control. Elimination of the Department of Education to allow state-level control of curricula. It involves Rolling back transgender healthcare and social rights, making trans existence almost untenable in some states. It means the elimination of federal protections for gender equality, sexual orientation and reproductive rights. It will almost certainly prevent abortion pills from being sent through the post, which is the number one way people get abortions in the USA. We will see the mainstreaming of “conversations” about disenfranchising women. It also involves slashing funding for renewable energy research and development, increasing energy production and scrapping targets for carbon reduction.
Whether Trump’s promise to be a dictator on day one and use the military against political opponents was hot air for electioneering or not is unknown. But that he ran such a reactionary campaign and got such a decisive vote reveals something about the growth of far-right populist ideas. We know that both he and his Vice President JD Vance recently endorsed a book called Unhumans, a manifesto for the mass murder of left-wing activists along the lines of Pinochet in Chile. This reveals the fascist kernel of neoliberal politics, which has come full circle.
This defeat largely rests on the wretched politics and failed strategy of the Democrats. It is clear that the Democrats are not even a dented shield against the growth of the far right; they actively feed the problem. They were business as usual in a period of anxiety and division.
They ran a campaign against a populist who was appealing to ‘the common people’ by instead focusing on the virtue of the establishment – constantly repeating that Trump was a felon as if there are not millions of felons in the USA in a corrupt and unfair judicial system who might see in him a persecuted martyr. The Democrats’ fixation on the law courts to undermine him before the election failed utterly and added to his populist credentials. They preferred a campaign from the centre, focusing on celebrity endorsement, winning over middle ground Republicans, and parading with Liz Cheney. They appealed to the belief that the US is a country of equal opportunity and post-racism when it palpably isn’t.
Trump and his supporters see through this. They know it is a lie. They prefer bullish, macho posturing, might makes right, freedom from consequence. The Democrats focussed in the last few weeks on labelling Trump a fascist – the response from his supporters was either a shrug or to embrace the fact that he wound up the liberals so much. Trump is a cypher for all the most selfish and reactionary views in US society, but the Democrats were no alternative. His movement crystallised a view of the USA that rejects equality and embraces domination. His movement is not foreign to the US body politics; it is rooted in it.
The global counter-revolutionary wave is largely a reaction to the gains of the post-war era – the advances made by women, Black people, the LGBTQIA+ community and others. Trump appealed especially to white people and young men, to Christian nationalist far right and tech bro supporters of Elon Musk. He also picked up votes from the Arab American community that turned on the Democrats for their funding of Israel’s genocide in Gaza (although Trump will pursue the same policy). But he also drew support from a significant number of Black people (meaning people of colour) and women, those who reject the liberal establishment and want to resolve the contradictions of American society by embracing its supremacist values. Some of the US Black population also backs mass deportations of recently arrived immigrants if it drives down prices and improves wages (as Trump claims). That is the point of populism; it combines contradictions and appeals to different people in different ways while claiming to provide simple answers to complex questions and denying meaningful change.
There will be considerable contradictions in his populist programme. Trump promised a carbon fossil fuel bonanza to drive down energy bill costs and tackle inflation, but he also wants tariffs on imports to strengthen US industry, which will drive up prices. He seems unlikely to deliver better living standards and more jobs for US citizens, especially with massive public sector cuts. But we also have to be wary of assuming that people primarily vote on economic grounds – the modern political landscape is far more complicated and riven by ideological divisions rather than simple financial calculations.
His indication that he will withdraw support from Ukraine and ‘end the war there’ almost certainly means that Russia’s imperial annexation will be allowed to proceed. What this means for the broader region as Putin continues his expansionist project remains to be seen. Certainly, the emergence of a more multipolar world will propel us closer to a third world war at some stage. For the Palestinians, it also means more slaughter and defeat, Trump has been clear with Netanyahu that the far right leadership of Israel can “do whatever they need to do” to win.
The need for continued resistance goes without question. There will be many people feeling hopeless or full of despair right now, and that is exactly what the far right and fascists want. They take sadistic pleasure in the defeats they inflict on the ‘woke’ and on the left. But politics is determined by struggles for power and counter-power, building mass coalitions of resistance, identifying the weak points in the enemy’s side and mobilising forces to shatter their strength.
ACR is in total solidarity with those in the USA who reject this authoritarian turn and want to fight for a better world. We know the next few years will be difficult, but our movement has faced difficult times before. We know things will get worse before they get better. But we also know that we can argue for a world beyond capitalism, imperialism, and militarism, based on a society that provides for everyone and is sustainable with the environment. Runaway global warming is already with us, as is the worldwide strengthening of the far right; the two are linked. And politics does not end at the ballot box – that is another lie the Democrats relied on. Power comes from our organisation and resilience. We fight for a revolutionary change. Our role is to be part of the international fightback to change the world, to reclaim the future and build a better society for everyone!
6 November 2024
Source Anti*Capitalist Resistance.
By Te Glick
STOP PROJECT 2025 Rally across from Heritage Foundation in Washington DC (Credit: Elvert Barnes / Flickr)
The day before the big election I said to my wife that, if Trump ended up winning, it was important that a very broad, massive coalition to oppose him had been created by Kamala Harris and her supporters. As terrible as it is that, as I write, the MAGA’s will control the Senate and the White House, hopefully not the House, a potentially strong counterforce exists to continue the fight to move forward, not backwards.
Then, last night, lying in bed thinking about this so-serious situation we are now faced with in not just the USA but the world because of the MAGA victory, I remembered a very similar feeling after the November, 1972 runaway Presidential victory of Trump-similar Richard Nixon over George McGovern. 21 months later Nixon was gone from DC, resigning in disgrace before he was impeached.
What was Nixon’s vote total compared to Trump’s?
Nixon had a 23% margin of victory in the popular vote and won every state except Massachusetts and DC. As far as Trump, when all the votes are counted It looks like he’ll either be ahead by a couple percent or pretty much tied. And Harris will have won a lot more states than Massachusetts and DC.
Trump’s victory is really bad for the Palestinians; 2 ½ months from now Netanyahu and his allies will have an active enabler in the White House of their planned takeover of all of Palestine, from the river to the sea. It is terrible for our disrupted climate; a climate denier will be President one of whose main promises during his campaign was that if he won, the US would “drill, baby, drill.” Undocumented immigrants, including the dreamers, people brought to the US as children by family members looking for a better life, are facing a planned mass deportation of millions. Women’s right to abortion will continue to be in jeopardy as the movement against that right will be strengthened by Trump’s victory. The labor movement can expect to see anti-union replacements at the National Labor Relations Board. The list of MAGA’s neo-fascist plans, enumerated in the Project 2025 document, is a very long one.
It’s pretty overwhelming to appreciate what we are now facing. But it would be wrong to give up hope, for many reasons, among them:
-History sometimes develops in unexpected ways. Who would ever have thought after Nixon’s overwhelming landslide victory in 1972 that he would be disgraced and gone from the White House 21 months later?
-There are literally millions of us who have been active as part of the effort to defeat Trump. To the extent to which that movement refuses to give in and demonstrates visibly, in the streets and in other ways, that if will fight the MAGA’s, this can have an impact.
-Seven of the 10 ballot initiatives upholding the abortion rights of women, the right to control their reproductive health care, were successful, including several in states Trump won.
-Trump doesn’t control the courts. And even though the Supreme Court is what it is, there is no question that state courts, US District Courts and Courts of Appeal will play a major role slowing, at least, as well as more than that in some cases, the attempted MAGA coup.
Ultimately, what is most important right now is for progressives to resolve individually, on a personal level, that we refuse to give up. The Harris supporters who are demoralized by the election results need to see us continuing to take visible action. That is why “taking it to the streets,” in creative and massive and determined ways, is what now has to rise to the top of our tactical agenda.
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Ted Glick
Ted Glick has devoted his life to the progressive social change movement. After a year of student activism as a sophomore at Grinnell College in Iowa, he left college in 1969 to work full time against the Vietnam War. As a Selective Service draft resister, he spent 11 months in prison. In 1973, he co-founded the National Committee to Impeach Nixon and worked as a national coordinator on grassroots street actions around the country, keeping the heat on Nixon until his August 1974 resignation. Since late 2003, Ted has played a national leadership role in the effort to stabilize our climate and for a renewable energy revolution. He was a co-founder in 2004 of the Climate Crisis Coalition and in 2005 coordinated the USA Join the World effort leading up to December actions during the United Nations Climate Change conference in Montreal. In May 2006, he began working with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and was CCAN National Campaign Coordinator until his retirement in October 2015. He is a co-founder (2014) and one of the leaders of the group Beyond Extreme Energy. He is President of the group 350NJ/Rockland, on the steering committee of the DivestNJ Coalition and on the leadership group of the Climate Reality Check network.
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