BE AFRAID, VERY AFRAID

'Cast of dangerous clowns': Columnist claims Cabinet picks reflect 'allure of Trumpism'

Kathleen Culliton
November 19, 2024 9

RAW STORY

People dressed as clowns attend the Zombie Walk, October 20, 2024. REUTERS/Pablo Sanhueza

The kind of man Stephen King would depict luring unsuspecting children into sewers is the kind President-elect Donald Trump would pick for the secretary of education, a political columnist argued Tuesday.

Salon writer Amanda Marcotte on Tuesday made the case that Trump is actively seeking out men accused of sexually assaulting women for top positions in his administration or, as she calls it, his "cast of dangerous clowns."

"It's not just that Trump doesn't care about sexual assault," wrote Marcotte. "He appears to see it as a bonus if one of his nominees or allies has faced such allegations."

Three men Trump has tapped for Cabinet have faced sexual assault accusations, reports show.

The congressional Ethics committee investigated whether former Rep. Matt Gaetz sexually assaulted an underage girl, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been accused of sexually assaulting his children's babysitter and Fox News personality Pete Hegseth has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room, reports show.

The three men have publicly denied the accusations.

Marcotte argued Tuesday that the denials — and the accusations — don't matter to Trump or his voters.

"He expects his base voters to see these ... like they see him, as an aspirational figure," Marcotte wrote. "And not because they believe they're innocent men done wrong, either. The ability to commit crimes — even sex crimes — and get away with it is part of the allure of Trumpism."

Marcotte argued Trumpism came as response to the #MeToo movement that sought to hold men such as film mogul Harvey Weinstein — the convicted rapist Trump recently complained had been "schlonged" — accountable for attacking women.

"Defending a man's 'right' to have sex with underage girls would be making good on a campaign promise," she wrote. "It's tempting to hope this will anger the public and result in consequences for Trump, but frankly, that's unlikely."

'Apparently not a joke': Critics stunned as WWE co-founder reportedly expected for Cabinet as Education Secretary
Matthew Chapman
November 19, 2024 8:01PM ET

Donald Trump is reportedly expected to appoint Linda McMahon, the former co-founder of WWE and the chief of the Small Business Administration in his previous presidency, to head up the Department of Education.

The appointment, which swiftly followed Trump's announcement of TV personality and former Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz to head up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, prompted an instant reaction from commenters on social media.

"Linda McMahon being tipped for Trump’s education secretary," wrote Telegraph editor Gareth Davies on X, attaching a clip of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's famous "Stunner" finishing move. "Another senior US politician who has been Stunnered."

"Cause nothing says educating our children like being an ex-professional wrestling performer and running the @WWE, which has allegedly failed to protect employees from workplace harassment and sexual misconduct," wrote Kendra Barkoff Lamy, a former spokesperson to President Joe Biden while he served as vice president.

In addition to the reaction on X, others commented on the site's growing competitor, Bluesky.

"And, in further 'apparently not a joke' news, Linda McMahon of the WWE for Secretary of Education. LULZ PWNED as a theory of governance, I guess," wrote McGill University professor and Niskanen Center fellow Jacob T. Levy.

"Sort of like Oz at CMS, it’s not clear to me that McMahon would have an agenda of her own, but that might not be a problem for an administration that wants to shrink and eliminate much of DOE," wrote Yahoo Finance's Jordan Weissmann.

"I wonder if Linda McMahon will allow Jim Jordan and @timgill924.bsky.social [to] settle education policy disagreements in the ring?" wrote Michigan State University professor Brendan Cantwell.

'Betsy DeVos 2.0': Trump education pick raises alarms

Jake Johnson
Common Dreams

November 20, 2024

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced late Tuesday that he intends to nominate Linda McMahon, the billionaire former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, to lead the Department of Education, a key agency that Republicans—including Trump and the authors of Project 2025—have said they want to abolish.

McMahon served as head of the Small Business Administration during Trump's first White House term and later chaired both America First Action—a pro-Trump super PAC—and the America First Policy Institute, a far-right think tank that has expressed support for cutting federal education funding and expanding school privatization.

Trump touted McMahon's work to expand school "choice"—a euphemism for taxpayer-funded private school vouchers—and said she would continue those efforts on a national scale as head of the Education Department.

"We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort," Trump said in a statement posted to his social media platform, Truth Social. (McMahon is listed as an independent director of Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Truth Social.)

The National Education Association (NEA), a union that represents millions of teachers across the U.S., said in response to the president-elect's announcement that McMahon is "grossly unqualified" to lead the Education Department, noting that she has "lied about having a degree in education," presided over an organization "with a history of shady labor practices," and "pushed for an extreme agenda that would harm students, defund public schools, and privatize public schools through voucher schemes."

"During his first term, Donald Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to undermine and ultimately privatize public schools through vouchers," NEA president Becky Pringle said in a statement. "Now, he and Linda McMahon are back at it with their extreme Project 2025 proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, steal resources for our most vulnerable students, increase class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for disabled students, and put student civil rights protections at risk."

"The Department of Education plays such a critical role in the success of each and every student in this country," Pringle continued. "The Senate must stand up for our students and reject Donald Trump's unqualified nominee, Linda McMahon. Our students and our nation deserve so much better than Betsy DeVos 2.0."

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, took a more diplomatic approach, saying in a statement that "we look forward to learning more about" McMahon and that, if she's confirmed, "we will reach out to her as we did with Betsy DeVos at the beginning of her tenure."

"While we expect that we will disagree with Linda McMahon on many issues, our devotion to kids requires us to work together on policies that can improve the lives of students, their families, their educators, and their communities," Weingarten added.

McMahon is one of several billionaires Trump has selected for major posts in his incoming administration, which is teeming with conflicts of interest. During Trump's first term, McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, made at least $100 million from dividends, investment interest, and stock and bond sales.

The Guardian noted Tuesday that "in October, [Linda] McMahon was named in a new lawsuit involving WWE."

"The suit alleges that she and other leaders of the company allowed the sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of a ringside announcer, former WWE ring crew chief Melvin Phillips Jr," the newspaper reported. "The complaint specifically alleges that the McMahons knew about the abuse and failed to stop it."

'Declaration of war on expertise': Experts explain danger of Trump 'MAGA zealot' nominees

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump is interviewed by Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth at the White House in Washington, U.S. April 6, 2017. 

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

David Badash

November 20, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump has surprised and even alarmed many across the country, and “puzzled” and “baffled” some within his own party, with his Cabinet and other top White House nominations. Critics on the left have denounced his picks for their apparent lack of experience or qualifications for the roles they are expected to take on, noting some hold controversial or even false positions in the fields they may soon direct policy on. Meanwhile, experts in the fields of government, fascism, and democracy, are raising serious concerns about the potential “danger” some nominees represent, drawing comparisons to the “professional propagandists” often found in authoritarian regimes.

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU professor of history and a recognized expert on fascism and authoritarianism, on Wednesday pointed to this report on one of Trump’s most-recent nominations, Linda McMahon:





McMahon was Trump’s former administrator of the Small Business Administration, and is a former CEO of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), a major GOP donor, and has recently been the chair of a pro-Trump Super PAC, the board chair of a pro-Trump think tank, and the co-chair of Trump’s second transition team.

“Trump’s cabinet picks are a declaration of war on expertise and facts (that’s why there are several Fox hosts in the mix). The con artists, fraudsters, and professional propagandists that populate authoritarian governments see facts and laws as impediments to their goals,” Dr. Ben-Ghiat wrote.

READ MORE: JD Vance Accidentally Reveals FBI Director Wray Is Likely Being Replaced

Trump, announcing McMahon’s nomination, claimed, “Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World.”

McMahon’s only brush with the field of education came about 15 years ago, when she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She resigned after 15 months. At the time, her appointment was controversial, with one lawmaker lamenting, “her depth of knowledge regarding education is lacking.”




McMahon is far from the only controversial nominee.

On Tuesday, the vice chair of the powerful House Rules Committee Jim McGovern (D-MA) blasted Trump’s nominees as “beyond insane.”

“Someone who is credibly accused of having sex with an underage girl. Someone who sucks up to foreign dictators and has attracted major concern that they can’t be trusted to protect America’s secrets from our adversaries. Someone who paid hush money to cover up a sexual assault accusation, you know, to lead our military, he’s picked because Donald Trump likes him on Fox News? Someone who says that tap water turns kids gay? I mean, this is the dream team? This is the dream team? Really?”

He appeared to be referring to Attorney General presumptive nominee Matt Gaetz, Director of National Intelligence presumptive nominee Tulsi Gabbard, Defense Secretary presumptive nominee Pete Hegseth, and HHS Secretary presumptive nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State posted video calling Trump’s nominees “a trainwreck.”

“Gaetz, Gabbard, RFK – none of them have the experience or qualifications for the positions they’re seeking, in addition to the fact they’re all dangerous MAGA zealots,” the organization declared. They posted a video clip (below) from MSNBC with a chyron that noted opposition from the right to Trump’s Attorney General nominee, Matt Gaetz.

MSNBC’s justice and legal affairs analyst Anthony Coley told viewers that Gaetz, the recently resigned U.S. Congressman, “has no national security experience—not anything meaningful—little anti-trust experience, and he certainly has no experience with criminal law, except for being the target of a federal criminal investigation looking into inappropriate sexual contact, allegedly, with a minor.”

Trump has also just appointed his former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, a strong Trump loyalist, to be the U.S. Ambassador to NATO.

“Whitaker has little evident foreign policy or national security experience, making him an unknown to many in U.S. security circles,” The Associated Press reports. “Previous ambassadors to NATO have generally had years of diplomatic, political or military experience.”

“Before serving Trump,” Mother Jones notes, “he helped a company hawk bizarre products like a ‘masculine toilet’ to help ‘well-endowed men’ avoid unwanted contact with water.”

But The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a former U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia and nuclear weapons, served up this warning: “This is just hilarious, but the danger here is that it makes him Senate-confirmed and available for other stuff later.”

In other words, assuming Whitaker is confirmed, Trump could nominate him to another, even more critical role, declaring he’s qualified because he’s already been Senate-confirmed.

Last week, Nichols declared that Trump’s “nominations for intelligence, defense, and justice were revenge on people he thinks are his enemies. This is just endangering millions of innocent people.”

On Monday on MSNBC, Nichols went much further, delivered a scathing analysis of Trump’s nominees, calling them “an all-fronts assault on American democracy,” in another warning.

Trump, he said, is “trying to break the institutions of American government and American society, and what you’ve been seeing for the past few weeks is an all-fronts assault on American democracy, especially with these nominations.”

“I think the most dangerous of these nominations is actually [Pete] Hegseth,” Nichols explained. “And I’m kind of startled that we’re not sitting here talking more about taking a morning Fox [News] host and sticking him in the nuclear chain of command, to lead the largest—one of the largest—bureaucracies in the United States, in the world, including the person that’s supposed to look after the most powerful fighting force on the planet.”

And he concluded, “it’s also important to recognize that we could be in the first phases of a major constitutional crisis, even before Trump is sworn in.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

Dr. Oz nomination seen as potential boon for Medicare privatization

Donald Trump looks on as Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at a pre-election rally to support Republican candidates in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 5, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo
Donald Trump looks on as Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at a pre-election rally to support Republican candidates in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 5, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo

Eloise Goldsmith, 

Common Dreams

November 21, 2024

Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose unsuccessful 2022 Pennsylvania Senate bid included pitching voters on a plan to expand the privatized Medicare Advantage program, is now in a position to potentially actualize that plan.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Oz, also known by his TV personality name Dr. Oz, is his pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

"Dr. Oz—a massive investor in Pharma—told the voters of Pennsylvania his plans to privatize Medicare… and they rejected him. Now Trump is giving him the authority to see his industry-approved plan carried through," wrote the progressive-leaning outlet The Lever, which covered Oz's support for Medicare Advantage back in 2022.

Through Medicare Advantage, which has been promoted by Trump and other congressional Republicans, seniors can opt out of traditional government-run Medicare health plans and instead choose plans administered by private insurers, such as UnitedHealthcare and Cigna.

According to The Lever's 2022 reporting, Oz pushed Medicare Advantage plans on his show The Dr. Oz Show and co-wrote a 2020 column for Forbes with a former healthcare executive in which they argued that a "Medicare Advantage For All" plan can "save" our healthcare system. In the column, Oz and his co-author articulated a plan to expand Medicare Advantage by imposing a 20% payroll tax.

Oz "is not a good pick for a very powerful position in charge of a trillion dollars of healthcare spending," wrote Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project on X, in reference to The Lever's investigation.

The Lever also reported that Oz's plan to expand private plans under Medicare Advantage could "boost companies in which he invests." For example, Oz and his wife owned up to $550,000 worth of stock in UnitedHealth Group, at the time of reporting. UnitedHealthcare and Humana account for nearly half, or 47%, of Medicare Advantage enrollees nationwide, according to the health policy organization KFF.

Additionally, a 2022 investigation by The New York Timesfound that major health insurers have exploited Medicare Advantage to boost their profits by billions of dollars.

Project 2025, a list of right-wing policy proposals led by the Heritage Foundation that Trump has tried to distance himself from, calls for making Medicare Advantage the default option for Medicare beneficiaries, which, if enacted, "would be a multibillion-dollar annual giveaway to corporations at the expense of Medicare enrollees and taxpayers," according to the liberal research and advocacy organization the Center for American Progress.

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, offered a related critique of Oz: Americans "need someone who will crack down on insurers who want to deny care to the sick, providers who skimp on quality healthcare, corporations that want to privatize Medicare, and Big Pharma profiteers and ideologues who want to slash Medicaid and refuse care to low-income people. What they do not need is a healthcare huckster, which unfortunately Dr. Mehmet Oz appears to have become, having spent much of his recent career hawking products of dubious medical value."

In addition to the potential boon for private insurers, some researchers, news outlets, and members of Congress have also raised concerns about the quality of care administered under Medicare Advantage.

A 2022 government report found that "[Medicare Advantage Organizations] sometimes delayed or denied Medicare Advantage beneficiaries' access to services, even though the requests met Medicare coverage rules" and also "denied payments to providers for some services that met both Medicare coverage rules and [Medicare Advantage Organization] billing rules."

In October, a group of three Democratic lawmakers wrote to the current CMS administrator about increasingly widespread abuses and care denials by for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers.

"We are concerned that in many instances MA plans are failing to deliver, compromising timely access to care, and undermining the ability of seniors and Americans with disabilities to purchase the coverage that’s right for them," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), and Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter.

"We continue to hear alarming reports from seniors and their families, beneficiary advocates, and healthcare providers that MA plans are falling short, and finding a good plan is too difficult," they wrote.


In particular, they pointed to Medicare Advantage plans' growing reliance on prior authorization, a complex, barrier-ridden process whereby doctors must demonstrate a proposed treatment is medically necessary before the insurer will cover it.

"Overuse of prior authorization is not only harmful to patients, it hinders healthcare providers' ability to offer best-in-class service," they added.

Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, warned in a social media post Tuesday that "Dr. Oz wants to fully privatize Medicare."

"That's why Donald Trump put him in charge of Medicare," the group added. "We will fight to stop this charlatan from getting anywhere near our Medicare system."

Trump nomination of crypto banker Howard Lutnick another 'win for the billionaire class'

Howard Lutnick, Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, gestures as he speaks during a rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo

Julia Conley

Common Dreams

November 20, 2024

Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen feigned surprise on Wednesday over President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Wall Street CEO Howard Lutnick to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"Oh look, another billionaire has made his way into Trump's Cabinet," said the group, noting Lutnick is also a promoter of cryptocurrency and a Trump megadonor. "The conflicts of interest are almost too many to count."

Among the conflicts are Lutnick's involvement in the crypto industry and federal and state cases against Cantor Fitzgerald.

In addition to running the Wall Street firm, Lutnick is a banker for the "stablecoin" company Tether; purchasers receive a Tether token for $1, with the proceeds invested in reserves and Treasury bonds managed by Lutnick's Cantor Fitzgerald.

As Public Citizen noted, New York Attorney General Letitia James found in 2021 that Tether and another crypto firm "recklessly and unlawfully covered up massive financial losses to keep their scheme going and protect their bottom lines."

The company is also reportedly under federal investigation over alleged criminal violations of anti-money laundering rules and sanctions.

Public Citizen also said that while co-chairing Trump's transition team, Lutnick "may also have helped arrange a meeting between Trump and Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong," who "helped steer a record amount of political spending from the crypto industry into the 2024 election."

Crypto firms poured over $119 million into directly influencing the 2024 federal elections, Public Citizen found in August, making the industry's spending second only to that of fossil fuel companies.

As Politico reported in October, even other members of Trump's inner circle have accused Lutnick of using his transition team co-chair position to take meetings on Capitol Hill and "talk about matters impacting his investment firm, Cantor Fitzgerald—including high-stakes regulatory matters involving its cryptocurrency business."

Lutnick's nomination, said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, serves as a reminder that "Trump serves the oligarchy, not the people."

"Debris from crypto's political spending tsunami will jam up more halls in Washington than ever before if Lutnick is confirmed as secretary of commerce," said Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy advocate for Public Citizen. "The president-elect, who once correctly called bitcoin a scam, now surrounds himself with even more crypto enablers. Cryptocurrency won't return good jobs to the heartland or reduce food prices; it will only thin the wallets of those vulnerable to a now government-legitimized con."

Government watchdog Accountable.US pointed to more than $19 million in political donations Lutnick has made since 2009, nearly all of which went to GOP candidates and political action committees. He contributed $6 million to Trump's super PAC, Make America Great Again, Inc., in 2024 alone.


"Howard Lutnick's questionable qualifications to lead the Department of Commerce begin and end with his loyalty to the president-elect," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk.

Tether isn't the only Lutnick-linked company that's been investigated for wrongdoing. The Securities and Exchange Commission fined Cantor Fitzgerald $1.4 million in 2023, saying the company repeatedly failed "to identify and report customers who qualified as large traders." The company also agreed to pay $16 million in fines to the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 for using unauthorized communication channels.

Should Lutnick be confirmed as commerce secretary, Accountable.US said a "major regulatory conflict" could arise due to a dispute between the BGC Group, a spin-off brokerage of Cantor Fitzegerald, and futures and commodities exchange CME Group, over a competing trading platform BGC Group is launching.

"Lutnick's company's violations resulting in financial regulator fines and millions in right-wing political donations shows that political devotion takes precedence over actual experience to do the job in Trump's Cabinet," said Carrk.

Trump campaigned as a champion of working people as he railed against high grocery prices. As The New Republicreported on Tuesday, Lutnick has showered Trump's plan for across-the-board tariffs with effusive praise—even as leading economists warn the plan to impose tariffs on foreign imports will pass higher costs onto consumers, not foreign countries.

"In September, Lutnick told CNBC that 'tariffs are an amazing tool for the president to use—we need to protect the American worker,'" wrote Edith Olmsted. "Lutnick also gushed about tariffs at Trump's fascistic rally in Madison Square Garden last month, claiming that America was better off 100 years ago, when it had 'no income tax and all we had was tariffs.' His high praise for tariffs came even as he admitted Americans would face higher prices as a direct result."

Lutnick's nomination, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), "is a win for the billionaire class at the expense of working people.


"The across-the-board tariff plan," she said, "is a distraction from the MAGA scam to extend tax giveaways for giant corporations and billionaires like Howard Lutnick."

Trump's Cabinet of horrors exposes his totalitarian drift

John Stoehr
November 19, 2024 

Former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard attends a campaign rally of Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. October 22, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Donald Trump nominated an alleged rapist and sex trafficker to be attorney general. He picked a Russian asset to be director of national intelligence. He chose a religious fanatic and Kremlin stooge to be secretary of defense. And for secretary of health and human resources, he selected an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who once had a literal brain worm, and who habitually takes (“legal”) steroids to maintain, at the age of 70, the appearance of a physique of a man half his age.

There are the obvious things to say about this motley crew. Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr are , respectively, not qualified to lead the agencies they have been chosen to lead. None has managed anything larger than an office. None has the expertise required. Gaetz has never worked in law enforcement, Gabbard in intelligence, Hegseth in military leadership or Kennedy in public health. Their only qualification is their loyalty to the man who picked them, and how they look to him when they are on television.

Right now, the discussion seems to be concentrated on the Senate Republicans, who will have majority control of that chamber in January. They will be responsible ultimately for vetting Trump’s cabinet picks. The question is whether they will find the courage to restrain the President-elect or roll over, either by approving them or by letting Trump have what he wants through recess appointments.

Among liberals, the discussion seems to be limited to the absurdities each of these people brings to governance as well as the dangers they pose. “Yes, shake your head at the seeming absurdity of these picks,” wrote MSNBC’s Jen Psaki. “But don’t stop there. These choices aren’t just controversial; they require us to stay vigilant about how each potential new Cabinet member could negatively affect our lives.”

But I think we’re missing the bigger picture. These nominations signal the totalitarian drift that’s coming to Washington and the country. Yes, that’s right. No, I’m not exaggerating. It’s time to start using that word.

Totalitarianism seeks dominion over the individual to the point where individuality is erased. That’s what happened to the Republican Party. Individuals have looked the same, talked the same, acted the same and thought the same for a long time. (The men sometimes literally dress the same as Donald Trump, with a blue suit and a long red tie.) After the election, however, Republican behavior has finally been totalized.

As one GOP congressman said, Trump “is the leader of our party. … His goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word. If Donald Trump says jump three feet high and scratch your head, we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads.”

The objective is forcing the rest of America to conform the way the Republican Party has conformed. This can be seen in the anger expressed by some MAGAs. It wasn’t enough to win. Losers must now shut up and get in line, too. As a Trump attorney said recently: “You’ve got to own when you lose and say: this is America. We have to stand behind President Trump.” Senate Republicans are likely to approve his picks, no matter how bad, because the losers must be taught a lesson.

Totalitarianism also seeks to dominate the individual’s mind by going to war against facts, reason, science and any useful meaning of the word “proof.” In normal times, pre-Trump, we could expect the Senate to have a spirited debate over a President-elect's cabinet nominations, beginning with whether they’re qualified. Such debate is going to be impossible now, because “being qualified” is a meaningless term.

It is a stone-cold fact that Kennedy’s views on vaccines are not only insane, but in direct opposition to the moral principles of public health. But that fact won’t be accepted as fact. It will be taken as evidence of Trump’s enemies trying to sabotage his presidency. And there’s no way to break through this "conspiracist mindset," as Lindsay Beyerstein calls it. It is impervious, she said. “When scientists or the government or journalists come forward with evidence that vaccines save millions of lives and prevent untold suffering, the conspiracist answer is: Well, that’s what conspirators to kill our children would say.”

Because there’s no empirical anchor to conspiratorial thinking, totalitarians can make reality into whatever they want. Up is down, left is right – or in the words of the totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s 1984: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Therefore, the Republicans are likely to see nothing wrong with his picks. His nominee for the law is anti-law. His nominee for national intelligence is anti-intelligence. His nominee for national defense is anti-defense. His nominee for science is anti-science. But there’s no dissonance in the world of conspiratorial thinking. Up is the new down, and the only measure of morality is whether it pleases the dear leader.

The drift toward conformity and away from individualism isn’t limited to the GOP. Thanks to the right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale, totalizing groupthink has also been growing in the culture at large. The trick is that it comes disguised as subversive individualism.

During his interview with Trump, popular podcaster Joe Rogan said, “the rebels are Republicans now. They’re like, you want to be a rebel? You want to be punk rock? You want to, like, buck the system? You’re a conservative now. That's how crazy. And then the liberals are now pro-silencing criticism. They’re pro-censorship online. They’re talking about regulating free speech and regulating the First Amendment.”

If you are listening to liberals directly, you know there are no such efforts. But if you are listening to the right-wing media apparatus, or if you just feel the conspiratorial ambiance that it generates, it’s possible to cast yourself as a person who’s bucking the system, as if the party of billionaires is the party of the common people, as if people who look the same, talk the same, act the same and think the same are punk rock.

But the strongest evidence of totalitarian drift is the plain awfulness of Trump’s cabinet picks. They have not earned the right to be called on. They haven’t studied or mastered their disciplines. They haven’t built reputations among leaders, peers and professionals in their fields. They haven’t overcome adversity and hardship. They haven’t reached high and achieved. They certainly haven’t followed the road toward the American dream, which asks us to work hard and play by the rules.

And that’s the point. Totalitarians fear individual excellence, first because they can’t understand it, and second because excellence threatens their goal of totalizing conformity. They are not humble enough to admit that they are mediocre people but they are arrogant enough to believe they can force the rest of us down to their level.


With this cabinet, Trump can pick up where his second campaign left off, which is a movement toward “the consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity …” as Hannah Arendt once wrote.

“Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable,” she said. “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty” (my italics).

 

Solidarity National Committee: First response to 2024 US presidential election

By Solidarity

Published 12 November, 2024

First published at Solidarity (US).

IT SHOULD COME as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right. — Bernie Sanders

The November U.S. election has produced a sweeping victory, not just in the United States but internationally as well, for the far right. It has sent shock waves through not only the Democratic Party establishment but progressive forces and the movements for racial, Indigenous and gender justice.

To be sure, Trump’s decisive victory preempted the fears of post-election chaos and constitutional crisis — and all those concocted rightwing accusations of “massive voter fraud” evaporated like the morning dew. We can also draw a concluding line under Joe Biden’s lasting presidential legacy: enabling the Gaza genocide, clinging to his sagging reelection campaign well past its best-by date, and returning Trump to power.

The results may be every bit as calamitous as many commentators are predicting. That’s certainly true for the Palestinian people under Israel’s state-and-U.S.-supplied genocide, quite possibly for Ukraine’s struggle to defend itself from Russia’s invasion, undoubtedly for immigrant communities in the United States facing a new reign of terror, and for pro-Palestinian activist students and faculty confronting repression on campuses, as well as looming threats to anti-racist, pro-LGBTQ and transgender rights movements. It will also accelerate — we don’t know by how much — the global climate-change apocalypse.

There’s much to say about all this, and we can only touch on some of it in this initial response. But we must begin with a dilemma that the Trump/MAGA victory presents far beyond the defeat of a stagnant Biden presidency: For those of us in the socialist movement, working class struggle and activism are the critical element to winning serious and lasting gains. Yet today’s reality is that a substantial minority of workers in the United States — largely but not only among white workers — have been won over to voting for a deeply reactionary agenda. By some accounts, half the union members in Michigan supported Trump.

Workers voting for Trump don’t necessarily identify in a hard way with the vicious social policies of the far right. It’s tempting and partly valid to attribute the election result to white supremacy — but after all, that’s a constant reality in the United States, and doesn’t adequately explain the 2024 result. If this election revolved around one central issue it was inflation, in the wake of Covid’s disruption of people’s lives.

Racist anti-immigrant appeals were clearly a mobilizing force on the right, and obviously remain so, but electoral polling indicated that these were not primary — as was also true of the very real fears about the future of democracy that motivated much of the Democratic vote.

Working class desertion from the Democratic Party is not a brand-new development. It’s been emerging in elections since the 1980s, accelerated during the disastrous “neoliberal” decades, and come to the fore now. At the same time, political alienation is widespread throughout the population. In 2024 the Trump vote didn’t change much at around 72 million (compared to 74 million in 2020), while the Democrats’ presidential vote dropped by as much as 13 million to 68 million, from 81 million in 2020.

Even as we prepare to join the resistance, by all available means, to the coming onslaught on progressive movements and vulnerable populations, the socialist left needs to come to terms with the rightward political trends within much of the working class, and clearly analyze how they might be reversed.

The far right itself will do some of the work — as Trump’s tariffs, tax cuts for the rich and attacks on essential programs and services victimize millions of folks who voted for him. But that won’t automatically move working class people leftward, especially while so many react to crises in their lives as isolated individuals and families rather than as an organized class force.

Democrats’ debacle

We don’t ignore the severe stresses on people’s lives stemming from the Covid pandemic, especially the resulting corrosive inflation (falsely blamed by the right wing, of course, on “runaway government spending”). But we think that Senator Bernie Sanders points precisely to the basic reason why much of the working class has “abandoned” the Democrats.

It’s too easy to focus on secondary issues and tactical blunders. Of course, the Democratic establishment covered up Biden’s decline for way too long. Of course, their refusal at the convention to allow a single speech by a Palestinian-American delegate was a cynical, cowardly and racist snub — which might have been fatal if the election had turned out to be much closer and the Arab-American and progressive vote had been decisive.

But we have to get to why the Kamala Harris campaign — which was designed not by Harris but by the same coterie of corporate consultants who collect their inflated fees after every losing effort — was so insipid. Harris focused on the single substantive issue of abortion rights, which of course has resonance, along with not being Donald Trump, and very little else.

Her economic platform was mostly empty phrases about “opportunity,” with campaign-rally gestures toward unions — but nothing about the PRO (Protect the Right to Organize) Act that Democrats failed to pass, raising the poverty-level minimum wage, or tackling the obscene inequalities in the country. Rather than embracing Bernie Sanders’ message attacking corporate power, she (i.e. the professional consultants who shaped the campaign) chose to tour with Liz Cheney, essentially proposing a coalition government with non-Trump Republicans.

Her pledge to “build the world’s most lethal military” had nothing to do with appealing to the progressive voter base, or to any popular constituency at all. This was the Democrats’ promise to the ruling class to serve as the leading party of U.S. imperialism. If anything, Trump’s demagogic and lying claim to “quickly end the wars” in Ukraine and the Middle East may have sounded better to some voters.

To be clear, we will never know whether a genuinely progressive (or even traditional New Deal-type) campaign would have defeated Trump and the MAGA Republicans. It could hardly have done worse than the Democratic Party, which most emphatically did not run any such campaign. Nor is there the slightest reason to think it will ever do so.

Sanders hit the nail on the head when he concluded: 

Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.

Coming dystopias

The new Trump presidency will undoubtedly begin fulfilling his campaign promises to corporate, high-tech and crypto-currency interests: new tax cuts, deregulation, dismantling of environmental protections that are disastrously inadequate to begin with, etc.

The consequences of such measures — for the federal budget deficit and national debt, for the cascading climate catastrophe — will unfold over coming years. Promises like putting the anti-vaccination fanatic RFK Jr. over public health agencies, and Elon Musk in charge of a new budget-slashing commission, would also have long-lasting medical and social consequences.

What’s not clear is whether Trump will quickly move to implement measures like huge tariffs that would immediately de-stabilize the economy and international relations, and “the largest deportation program in history” that would cost tens of billions, could cause upheaval and violence, and seriously impact parts of the agricultural, service and even industrial economy.

In short, there might be competition between elements of the Trump agenda — straight corporate greed on the one hand, versus the crazier, more ideologically driven policies that could prematurely undermine the new administration’s support. (Given Trump’s own erratic impulses and some signs of decline, the White House chief of staff may play a decisive role.)

These matters are speculative, but in any case the challenges facing the left are daunting. Certainly, building resistance against anti-immigrant and mass-deportation threats must be a top-level progressive priority!

It’s a matter of regret that the hope for a modest Green Party breakthrough didn’t materialize nationally — although the potential was seen in a place like Dearborn, Michigan where the Arab-American and Muslim communities’ entirely justified rage against Genocide Joe Biden and the destruction of Gaza was manifested in 18% support for Green candidate Jill Stein.

The left’s inability to forge a credible alternative to the capitalist parties’ duopoly is part of how we’ve arrived at the present toxic political mess. At the same time, the strategy advocated by much of the left, “working within the Democratic Party to change it,” has done nothing to stop the party’s retreat to “the center,” i.e. to the right.

As has been true for over a century, the working class in the United States needs its own party, yet in this disastrous moment the prospects have rarely looked more distant. We don’t have a blueprint, but a political alternative can only emerge from the movements on the ground, including the outrage against the ethnic cleansing in Palestine, the continuing struggles for reproductive rights, and the modest rise in labor activism and strike activity — not yet an “upsurge” by historic standards, but a hopeful sign of revival. We note that reproductive rights ballot referenda passed even in some states that elected Trump, and in others voters raised the state minimum wage.

There are no shortcuts, and never have been. But immediately, the urgent task is to be part of the movements resisting the corporate and far-right attacks, the Gaza genocide, the brutal assaults on immigrant communities, and the climate-change threat to the survival of civilization.

The US election: How can we move forward while staring negativity in its face?

By Kevin B. Anderson

Published 12 November, 2024

First published at The International Marxist-Humanist.

The second election of Donald Trump to the US presidency and of the Trumpist Republican Party on November 5 represents nothing less than a new era of fascism. We may not be in 1933, but we are certainly in something similar to the 1920s after Mussolini seized power and the concomitant rise of fascist movements at a global level. At present, the neofascist National Rally in France has been receiving over 30% of the vote, the further-to-the-right Alternative for Germany well over 20%, and even in places like Brazil, where the moderate left has won recent elections (or California in the US), a turn toward the right in public opinion is evident.

Many sectors of global capitalism are joining in or at least accommodating themselves to the fascist turn, as seen not only in individual figures like Elon Musk but in global phenomena like the surge in financial markets on the day Trump’s election became apparent. Over the months preceding the US election, many key players decided to remain neutral in the face of Trumpism, from media like Facebook, the LA Times, and the storied Washington Post, to universities like Harvard declaring themselves neutral in social justice matters,

Causes and context

Since Trumpism’s rise in 2015, the US and global left have been discussing its causes, most of which have become too well known to detail too much here. But here is a basic list. 

First comes the wrenching economic crisis of 2008 and nearly 50 years of economic stagnation, which has left the working people in the broadest sense facing worsening conditions of life and labor. 

Second, comes the exhaustion of US imperialism and its allies after more than two decades of war in the Middle East with no end in sight, while on the other hand, some sectors are now under the illusion of an opening for Israel and the US against the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Iran that could spark a regional conflagration. 

Third, we have seen the rise, often manipulated by powerful forces, of anti-immigrant xenophobia, racist appeals over crime, and perceived disorder, all amid the demagoguery of Trump and his ilk. 

Fourth, we have witnessed the most virulent misogyny, both in political rhetoric and policy, from a stream of demeaning statements against women and sexual minorities to actions like abortion and transgender bans. 

Fifth, we are probably underestimating the ongoing effects of the COVID pandemic, not only in how its necessary “social distancing” tore at social solidarity, but also in how neofascists developed a whole new ideology of “freedom” around attacks on science in general, on vaccines in particular, and the closing down of schools and workplaces in the name of return to the “normal” capital accumulation regime as quickly as possible. These events have seemed to spur some leading capitalists (Musk et al.), public figures (Robert Kennedy, Jr.), and intellectuals (Giorgio Agamben, Carl Boggs) to shift way to the right on a “libertarian” basis. 

Sixth, we have experienced unprecedented attacks on environmental science and policy, as seen in expressions like “punitive ecology” even amid the floods and fires of the 2020s. 

Finally, the liberal and slightly anti-racist and anti-sexist wing of the dominant classes has over the past year forged a new type of unity with the far right in their joint and unstinting support for Israel’s genocide and, inside the US, repression of the student movement against that genocide.

Beyond mere causality: What to do?

The dialectical concept of second negativity teaches us never to stop at the analysis of the gravity of a new form of reaction and retrogression, but to go also the subjective level, to the state of the forces of liberation and opposition, and how to move them forward.

First and foremost, here is to avoid denial, to stare negativity in the face as the young Hegel once articulated, and to consider with utmost soberness the gravity of our situation. The world’s largest economic and military power, to a great extent because of its relative decline, has embarked upon the reckless path of neofascism. It appears at this writing that the Trumpists will control not only the presidency but also both chambers of the legislative branch, while they will continue to control the third branch of government via the Supreme Court. We should also be under no illusions about “constitutionally” minded military officers being willing to carry out Trump’s orders.

But it is equally important to avoid despair and especially to forget that a real alternative to capitalism exists: a society based upon the elimination of value production and freely associated labor as articulated by Marx over a century ago and put forward as a core concept for the global left by Marxist-Humanists over the past decade. Such concepts of the alternative are deeply practical. As reported recently by the sociologist Edgar Morin, who joined the French resistance to the Nazi occupation in his youth, what was lacking above all in 1940 was not so much left-wing organization or support for resistance among some sectors of the population, but any sense that an alternative to the new fascist order existed. People would not risk their lives merely to restore the corrupt, Nazi-appeasing Third French Republic.

Thus, while we need to defend the democratic republic everywhere versus neofascism, campism, and the like, and this is no small matter amid a plethora of ultra-leftist sects, we need to be utterly merciless in our critique of the centrist and slightly left-of-center forces that have brought us the Gaza genocide, larger military and police budgets, already draconian restrictions on immigration, burgeoning economic inequality, and now an ignominious defeat in the 2024 US election that has allowed a neofascist triumph.

To help us grasp what has happened and where to go from here, we need to reorganize our thinking at a theoretical and philosophical level. We need to dive once again and with new energy and creativity into the dialectic, into the concept of the alternative to capitalism, and into the dialectics of class, race, and gender in the form of an intersectional, liberationist, and humanist Marxism. Here we can of course draw on the writings of Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Frantz Fanon, Raya Dunayevskaya, and our own studies of their writings over the past decade, which have become widely recognized far outside our immediate circle as major contributions to revolutionary thought.

In the coming weeks, we must hit the streets to mount the largest and strongest popular resistance we can muster. To this end, we need also to form coalitions of the type of left that opposes all forms of capitalism, imperialism, and sub-imperialism, from the US to Russia to Israel, while also recognizing the racist, sexist, heteronormative, and climate-destructive nature of the present global capitalist order in ways that both unite with the working class while also opposing any form of class reductionism. Specifically, we need to defend both Palestine and Ukraine. Such a left pole can form a vital part of the anti-fascist resistance to Trumpism and its counterparts all over the world.

 USA

Trump’s Election: A Decisive Victory for Republicans, Now Resistance Begin

Tuesday 12 November 2024, by Dan La Botz

Donald J. Trump won a decisive victory for himself and for the Republican Party, taking the presidency, the Senate, and it appears the House as well, while in his first term Trump’s appointments remade the Supreme Court, which fully supports him. Trump and the Republican Party thus control all three branches of government giving him the power to implement his right-wing program and to transform the United States, and possibly dismantle its democratic system and suppress civil liberties.

Trump won not only the electoral college vote 312 to 226, but on this third election bid also for the first time won the popular vote, more than 74.6 million votes to 70.9 million. The Republicans gained three seats in the U.S. Senate—West Virginia, Ohio and Montana—giving them a majority and ending four years of Democratic Party control. Votes for the House are still being counted, but the Republicans appear likely to win there too.

Trump’s overall vote total was not crushing, but he had the continuing support from his base of older, better-off white voters, from suburban and rural voters, and also found new support among working class, Back, Latino, and women voters. He won the votes of 56% of those without a college education, won 13% of Black voters, and won 46% of Latino votes. He received 45% of the votes of those from union households.

Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris won fewer votes than President Joe Biden won in the 2020 election, including fewer votes from women and Black voters. Many people felt housing and food prices were too high, while others were motivated by Trump’s racist, sexist, and xenophobic message. Hundreds of thousand Democratic Party voters simply didn’t show up in several states, such as Ohio. Trump received greater support in 9 out of 10 counties throughout the country. While there was no general realignment, there was a rightward shift throughout the country.

As pundits noted, Trump has now created a multiracial working-class base for the Republican Party. For decades the Democrats claimed to be the party of the working class, now Republicans have taken that title from them.

Why did the Democrats lose? As Bernie Sanders wrote immediately after the election, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

Having lost the election, the Democrats face a crisis of identity and ideology. Bernie Sanders asked, “Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Probably not.”

The party leadership remains centrist, but many want the party to turn left, toward the working class.

Most progressives voted for Democrats, to their disappointment. Others voted for left parties, to no avail. Physician Jill Stein, presidential candidate of the Green Party won only 685,149 votes (0.5%), while the Black theologian Cornel West received even fewer. The left too will have to reevaluate its electoral strategy.

Trump Takes Command—and the Resistance Has Begun

President-elect Donald J. Trump claimed in his victory speech, “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” While this is not true—Obama had a much bigger victory with 53% of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes in 2008—nevertheless Trump will attempt to rule as an autocrat, imposing his will on the nation. Whether his authoritarian plans will lead to fascism remains to be seen, but the broad left is beginning to resist.

We can expect him to begin by carrying out his promises both to his working-class and middle-class base and to his billionaire partners such as tech mogul Elon Musk and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos.

He has promised working people that he will close the border and carry out a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants who he claimed are taking Americans’ jobs and bringing violence to their communities. There are now 22,000 Border Patrol officers. Sealing the U.S.-Mexico border—which is 1,954-miles (3,145-kilometre) long—will require more the current 22,000 BP agents. Trump says he will mobilize the National Guard to supplement the BP, but he would need the state governors’ permission and not all would give it.

Trump promised to deport the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, but rounding them up and deporting them would be an enormous job costing millions and requiring many more than the existing 21,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Families will be uprooted and broken up and there will be resistance. These policies would have an enormous and disastrous impact on the U.S. economy, since many immigrants work in construction, hotels and restaurants, elder care and childcare, cleaning, gardening, agriculture and other industries.

Trump plans to take greater control over the U.S. government, beginning by ending civil service protections for hundreds of thousands of federal employees who would become at-will employees, subject to firing at any time. He says he will revamp the Justice Department and use it to go after his political enemies.

On the economic front, Trump has promised new tax cuts and undoubtedly, they will be greatest for the rich, as he did in 2017. If he does this it would cost the government $4 trillion in revenues over the next decade. He has also said he would cut taxes on social security (retirement) payments of working people and taxes for tipped workers.

Trump proposes tariffs of 10% on most goods but of up to 60% on Chinese products and even 200% on Chinese cars. Such tariffs would increase prices for Americans and would also disrupt global trade and investment.

Trump will reverse President Joe Biden’s climate policies reducing subsidies to green energy and providing inducement to petroleum companies to drill for oil. And he will undo Biden’s pro-labor policies.

The resistance to Trump that first appeared with the Women’s March at his inauguration in 2016 has revived. Leftist-led demonstrations of hundreds took place after his election in Seattle, Portland, Berkeley, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Philadelphia. On November 9 more than a thousand union, environmental, feminist, and immigrant organizations marched in New York City.

A new national coalition of over 200 organizations has formed led by the Working Families Party, Seed the Vote, Movement for Black Lives, and Showing up for Racial Justice. The group held a mass call/livestream titled “Making Meaning in the Moment” attended and viewed by 140,000 people.
As one participant wrote, ‘The dominant politics were for all-out resistance to a Trump administration and re-centering progressives in the multiracial, gender-inclusive working class.”

If the protest movement becomes massive in the streets, Trump has said he is prepared to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1792, that authorizes the president to use the U.S. military within the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence.

Trump is an authoritarian. Will he create a fascist party and state? We will be watching developments.

Attached documents

• trump-s-election-a-decisive-victory-for-republicans-now_a8737-2.pdf (PDF - 910.9 KiB)
  Extraction PDF [->article8737]

United States (USA)

• Trump’s Second Term – Now is the time for a global fightback
• A People Divided Heads to the Polls to Decide the Nation’s Fate
• Election and Widening War
• Israel’s Next Attack on Iran
• Israel-Iran Conflict Becomes Issue in U.S. Presidential Election

• Dan La Botz

  Dan La Botz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He is the author of Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991). He is also a co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.

International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

Trump wins United States presidential election: ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’

By Lance Selfa & Sharon Smith

Published 9 November, 2024

First published at International Socialism Project.

The story of the 2024 election turned out to be remarkably straightforward. In a political environment where most of the electorate thought the country was moving in the wrong direction, where they perceived the economy as poor, and where most of them reported that inflation has caused them serious hardship, voters decided to toss out the incumbent party that Vice President Kamala Harris represented.

Donald Trump won the popular vote for the first and only time, and he made gains not only in rural areas, but also suburbs, and even Democratic Party strongholds like New York City and Chicago. According to exit polls, Harris did better than Joe Biden in 2020 with the most affluent Americans, but Trump improved over 2020 with everyone else.

One of the truisms in U.S. politics is “It’s the economy, stupid.” If the economy is growing and people have jobs and higher wages, the incumbent party is usually re-elected. If the economy is declining and people are having trouble making ends meet, the voters usually “throw the bums out” by voting for the challenger. For most of the Biden administration, as the larger economy recovered from the shocks it received during the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden has been an extraordinarily unpopular president. Biden’s unpopularity has confounded his advisers, who can’t square it with the “macro” economic indicators showing the U.S. has had the strongest recovery from COVID of all of its peers.

Yet COVID left behind economic disruption, including the highest inflation rates Americans have experienced in 40 years — which is, of course, effectively a wage cut. The explosion of military spending to support wars in Ukraine and Gaza also fuels inflation. As a result, U.S. workers’ living standards have declined under the Biden administration, while the booming stock market has helped the wealthiest Americans to do quite well.

Nearly every incumbent government in Europe, Asia and Latin America — most facing worse disruptions and recoveries from COVID than the U.S. — that faced voters in the last year or so either lost or were severely weakened. The midsummer replacement of Biden with Harris gave Democrats hope that they could avoid that fate, as Biden was clearly on a path to lose to Trump. In the end, Harris couldn’t escape the fact that, as the sitting vice president, all of Biden’s negatives attached to her.

This is the third consecutive presidential election where the incumbent party lost and where the incumbent president spent most of their term with approval ratings below 50 percent. Perhaps that says more about underlying discontent in U.S. society than it does about any particular candidate.

The Democratic Party’s campaign playbook backfired — again

In 2016, Hillary Clinton demonstrated her contempt for Trump’s then-overwhelmingly white supporters by labeling them “the deplorables” — rather than trying to acknowledge the source of their anger: the gross inequality of the economic status quo. Eight years later, with Trump’s support bigger in virtually every demographic group, it is impossible to ignore the economic despair that drove voters away from the Democrats, while Biden continued to brag that the U.S. the economy during his tenure is “ the strongest in the world.”

But those without the financial means to make a killing on the stock market are living paycheck-to-paycheck, unable to make ends meet, often while working two jobs.

In political system in which the two major capitalist parties, Democrats and Republicans, take turns in dominating the seats of power — without an actual opposition party — the only way for voters to express their dissatisfaction with the party in power is by voting for the other one, the lesser of the two evils.

Moreover, since Bill Clinton occupied the White House, the Democrats have embraced the same neoliberal policies championed by Republicans, with only slightly less obvious enthusiasm. Republicans since Ronald Reagan had railed against so-called “welfare cheats”, but Clinton was the president who actually ended “welfare as we know it” in the 1990s, sending millions of poor people into a downward spiral of poverty which has only grown today.

In recent decades, the Democrats have deliberately courted the votes of the well-educated and wealthy, and in turn, support for the Democratic Party has steadily eroded among its traditional working-class and Black constituents. This pattern has become even more exaggerated since Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign for president. Yet the Party’s powerbrokers have done nothing to change this disastrous strategy in the years since. They coronated Joe Biden as their 2024 candidate, even as his mental faculties were rapidly declining, and then, after finally dumping him, refused to hold an open Democratic Party convention in August — forfeiting even a semblance of democracy within their own party.

Now, the chickens have come home to roost. And the bigoted and mentally unstable convicted felon Donald Trump is going back to the White House, in an Electoral College landslide — while Republicans regained control of the Senate and perhaps will remain in control of the House, with vote counts still ongoing.

A closer look at the 2024 voting demographics should dispel the myth that the majority of the U.S. population is composed of incorrigible racists and misogynists who believe all of Trump’s lies — that Haitian immigrants are eating pet cats, or that the military should round up immigrants in mass deportations, for example. There is already some anecdotal evidence that many Trump voters don’t actually believe his more outlandish claims or expect him to fulfill his most draconian campaign promises.

As the New York Times reported in October, for example,

One of the more peculiar aspects of Donald J. Trump’s political appeal is this: A lot of people are happy to vote for him because they simply do not believe he will do many of the things he says he will.

The former president has talked about weaponizing the Justice Department and jailing political opponents. He has said he would purge the government of non-loyalists and that he would have trouble hiring anyone who admits that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen. He proposed “ one really violent day” in which police officers could get “extraordinarily rough” with impunity. He has promised mass deportations and predicted it would be “ a bloody story.” And while many of his supporters thrill at such talk, there are plenty of others who figure it’s all just part of some big act.

As one Republican pollster told the Times, “[P]eople think he says things for effect, that he’s blustering, because that’s part of what he does, his shtick. They don’t believe that it’s actually going to happen.” Only time will tell us whether or to what degree this is a correct assumption.

Until votes are fully counted across the country, most of the current data rely on exit polls, which thus should be viewed as estimates. That said, exit polls showed that nearly one in five Trump voters were people of color — a major shift from 2016. Trump won 26 percent of the Latino vote, including a number of mostly-Latino border counties in southern Texas. Trump gained less dramatically among Black voters, but nevertheless won between 13 and 16 percent of the Black vote overall (compared to single digits in previous elections), and between 21 and 24 percent among Black men, according to Politico.

Despite the reproductive rights crisis resulting from abortion bans, Harris’s margin among women voters was just 8 percent, the smallest since 2004. In a number of states where pro-abortion rights referenda passed, Trump still carried the state. This includes Missouri, where voters undid an abortion ban but a majority voted for Trump.

Biden’s unconditional support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza cost Harris at least some votes among Arab, Muslim and pro-Palestinian voters, though again national statistics are not yet available. But Trump carried the Arab-majority city of Dearborn, Michigan, where many polls had already showed voters turning against Biden and then Harris over their support for Israeli atrocities in Palestine and Lebanon. Harris won only 36 percent of the Dearborn vote, compared to Biden’s 68 percent in 2020. It now appears that while some voted for Trump, a whopping 18 percent voted for the Green Party’s Jill Stein at last count, compared with less than one percent for the Greens statewide.

Harris did, however, notably win among voters earning $100,000 or more annually, in what appears to be a long-term political realignment, although Trump maintains the support of super-rich billionaires.

Bernie’s advice

As could be predicted, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders waited only a day to issue a scathing critique of the Harris campaign. “It should come as no surprise that a Democratic Party that has abandoned working class people should find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders’ statement said. “Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?... Probably not.”

Sanders critique is true (especially the “Probably not” part), but it’s hard to take at face value. After all, Sanders and other Democratic Party “progressive” surrogates like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) were “all in” — first for Joe Biden and then for Harris throughout her short campaign. Both of them barnstormed for Harris across the swing states. Harris gave Sanders and AOC prime speaking slots at the Democratic National Convention (while refusing to allow a single pro-Palestinian speaker), where their speeches were intended to establish Harris’s bona fides among the Democrats’ progressive base. And now Sanders is telling us that the Harris campaign was doomed from the start?

Surely Sanders is correct when he criticizes the Democrats as a party of the status quo. Although we should also remember that Sanders and AOC were among the last defenders of Biden before Democratic leaders and donors shoved him out of the race. Harris’s “opportunity economy” agenda emphasized entrepreneurship with a few vague nods to cutting health care, housing and grocery costs. Even her ostensibly “big” proposal to add coverage for home care of the elderly and disabled to Medicare was barely more than a talking point — and even then, just a drop in the ocean of what it would take to fix the profit-based healthcare system in the U.S. that makes it unaffordable to many millions of people.

Could Harris have beaten Trump had she run on Sanders’ agenda? It’s doubtful. It’s hard to run as an “insurgent” when you’re the sitting vice president in an unpopular administration. But she didn’t even try.

Harris and AOC held set-piece events with union leaders like UAW President Shawn Fain. Union leaders cited Biden’s walking the UAW picket line, his National Labor Relations Board nominees, and creation of “good, union jobs” as part of infrastructure investment as proof that Biden (and presumably Harris, as his successor) was the most “pro-union” president in a generation. But union households provide only a slim advantage to the Democrats, with only 53 percent of household members voting Democrat, compared to 58 percent in 2012. And when the union density in the workforce is only around 10 percent — and just 6 percent in the private sector — even these pro-union issues won’t resonate in the broader working class.

In a period when the public gives unions their highest support ever, perhaps union leaders should spend more time and money helping workers to organize than to blow millions on Democratic election campaigns.

Who won turnout?

It will be weeks before we get an accurate picture of all the votes cast in the 2024 election. What isn’t at issue is that for the first time ever, Trump won the majority of votes. He is the first Republican to win the presidential popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004.

As of November 7, Trump had racked up about 72.7 million votes and Harris had 68.1 million. Elections expert Michael McDonald estimates that the overall turnout will be around 64.5 percent of the voting age population, compared to just under 66 percent in 2020. This represents a slight drop from the 2020 turnout, which was the highest since 1900. So, 2024’s turnout looks to be among the highest turnout in more than a century.

Exit polls suggest that Trump won 56 percent of the 8 percent of voters who were voting for the first time. About 6 percent of Biden voters in 2020 switched to Trump in 2024, compared to about 4 percent switching from Trump to Harris. For all the effort that Harris made to lure Republicans into the Democrats’ tent, it made no significant difference.

Compared to 2020, when Biden got 81 million votes, and Trump took about 74 million, both Democrats and Republicans appear that they will gain fewer votes, although Trump may catch up to his 2020 haul. But the Democratic Party’s decline will be more than 10 million.

So where did the Democrats’ 2020 votes go? A small number went to Trump, but it looks like most of them stayed home. In Detroit and Philadelphia, two of the main Democratic Party strongholds in the swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, Democrat turnout fell short. After all the hoopla about Harris’s door-knocking turnout machine, Harris won fewer votes from Detroit than the execrable Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016.

A telling account of why this happened in Detroit came from a Harris canvasser: “I was shocked by how many people said they already voted, basically allowing us to turn attention to people who hadn’t. There are some voters who are cynical and dissatisfied with everything, (who say) nothing ever changes. You could write 20 different stories about what Michigan voters care about, and it would be true.”

Harris, the “Republican-lite” candidate

The corporate media predictably drew the all the wrong lessons from the 2024 voting results. The New York Times, for example, blamed progressives, arguing,

The party must also take a hard look at why it lost the election… It took too long to recognize that large swaths of their progressive agenda were alienating voters, including some of the most loyal supporters of their party. And Democrats have struggled for three elections now to settle on a persuasive message that resonates with Americans from both parties who have lost faith in the system — which pushed skeptical voters toward the more obviously disruptive figure, even though a large majority of Americans acknowledge his serious faults.

But as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) accurately observed, “Kamala Harris did not run as a progressive, either in terms of economic policy or identity politics. But to a corporate media that largely complemented, rather than countered, Trump’s fear-based narratives on immigrants, trans people and crime, blaming the left is infinitely more appealing than recognizing their own culpability.”

Harris chose to court Republicans, not progressives, in the leadup to the election. The traditional electoral courting rituals were thus turned upside down, as Democrat Harris groveled to Republican voters and Republican Trump (somewhat more successfully) sought out Latino voters in particular. Harris’s support for reproductive rights and breaking through the gender glass ceiling took a backseat to finding common ground with Republicans on social issues.

Rather than focusing on what distinguished herself from Trump, Harris ran a “Republican-lite” campaign, emphasizing what she had in common with Republicans: her opposition to immigration and support for cracking down on the Southern border; reasserting her unwavering support for Israel’s genocide in Palestine; bragging about owning a Glock pistol to appeal to gun advocates.

Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney joined Harris on the campaign trail. Her father, the war criminal and neoconservative Dick Cheney, endorsed Harris with great fanfare.

But amid all this electoral jockeying, it wasn’t clear what Harris actually stood for. As a district attorney and then attorney general in California earlier in her career, she was neither consistently right nor left, but transformed into a proud liberal when running for president in the 2019 primaries. This year, running for president after Biden dropped out, she seemingly wanted to appear more conservative. So, she flip-flopped on her 2019 liberal opposition to fracking for oil and support for “Medicare for All” — but without admitting she’d actually changed her mind on these major issues. Not too surprisingly, many voters rejected this disingenuous candidate representing the incumbent Biden administration and went instead for the impudent billionaire, who has proven he is willing to at least shake things up, for better and for worse.

These are the unfortunate choices voters yearning for change were forced to make from within the two-party duopoly that traps the U.S. electorate in a chokehold.

An angry electorate, without a viable left alternative, turns right

The U.S. left has been far too weak to have an impact on elections in recent decades — a trend that has only worsened in the last few years. The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) was inspired by the independent socialist Bernie Sanders’s electoral successes in 2016 and 2020. But in both cases, Sanders acquiesced to the Democratic Party’s political powerbrokers and ultimately endorsed their chosen candidates, first Hillary Clinton and then Biden. And, as noted above, Sanders campaigned enthusiastically for Biden and then Harris.

Not surprisingly, the growth of the DSA — although a still very small organization with only a marginal influence on U.S. politics — coincided with the decimation of most of the revolutionary left, which had already been in decline for decades prior. The short-sighted goal of gaining broader political influence for the left via the Democratic Party no doubt played a role in furthering this development, but did not prevent the left’s overall deterioration. Sanders and AOC’s support for Biden and Harris illustrate this vividly.

If anything, the DSA accelerated the left’s decline in influence by its outsized focus on elections rather than prioritizing building grassroots movements that can influence politics outside of the electoral arena. There is a valid reason why the Democratic Party has been traditionally regarded by the revolutionary left in the U.S. as “the graveyard of social movements.”

This point can easily be proven in the negative, using abortion rights organizations’ reliance on Democratic Party politicians as a prime example. The abortion rights and women’s liberation movements won via grassroots organizations the right to abortion when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 — when anti-abortion Richard Nixon occupied the White House. But in the decades since, pro-choice organizations have depended on the Democrats to defend the right to abortion, and major pro-choice demonstrations have not been organized for two decades. Yet the Democrats, as the Party of Compromise, allowed the right to abortion to be eroded and then finally overturned in 2022. None of these politicians has sought to rebuild a vital pro-choice movement to change the status quo since then, even though it has caused a reproductive rights crisis that is killing women.

The only solution the New York Times — and the liberal establishment — has on offer is to wait until the next election cycles to vote: “Those who supported Mr. Trump in this election should closely observe his conduct in office to see if it matches their hopes and expectations, and if it does not, they should make their disappointment known and cast votes in the 2026 midterms and in 2028 to put the country back on course.”

But this is far from a solution. Elections themselves do not usually determine the balance of political and social forces at any given time. They normally reflect the balance of forces — although they can sometimes strengthen or weaken them — and can therefore be influenced by movements outside the electoral arena.

Today in the U.S., the balance of forces is weighted decisively in favor of the right because the left is so weak. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” as the saying goes. When the Democrats echo the Republicans in veering rightward, and the left follows the Democrats in pursuit of winning elections, voters hear no left-wing alternative viewpoint. As such, the right carries the day.

This is the situation we face today. It is easy to scapegoat immigrants for society’s problems when there is no left-wing explanation for falling wages and high inflation: the divide and conquer policies of the capitalist class.

The only possibility for shifting the balance of forces is through struggle — and organization — at the grassroots level. We caught a glimpse of what such struggle might mean last year, when the United Auto Workers (UAW) struck the Big Three Automakers and won. We also saw a glimpse this past spring, when pro-Palestinian protesters formed encampments at college campuses across the U.S.

But a much more significant rise in grassroots and class struggle is a necessary precondition for shifting the balance of class forces. Until then, the wealthiest people will continue celebrating their good fortune. The status quo will prevail, no matter who we did or didn’t vote for. And Trump will be taking office in January, with consequences that no one can now predict.

Lance Selfa is the author of The Democrats: A Critical History (Haymarket, 2012) and editor of U.S. Politics in an Age of Uncertainty: Essays on a New Reality (Haymarket, 2017).

Sharon Smith is the author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States (Haymarket, 2006) and Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capital (revised and updated, Haymarket, 2015).

Boris Kagarlitsky on the US elections, Trump, peace talks and prospects for world war

By Boris Kagarlitsky

Published 9 November, 2024

First published in Russian at Rabkor. Translation and footnotes by Dmitry Pozhidaev for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Marxist sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky is currently in a Russian prison for speaking out against the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The following interview with Kagarlitsky was conducted by a Rabkor viewer. This is the second part of the interview which deals with questions relating to the US elections, its potential impacts on the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine and prospects for a new world war. It was conducted before the US elections published on November 4. The first part can be read here.

Do you think that US policy towards the Israel-Palestine war could change with a new president?

Until recently, there was a bipartisan consensus in the US regarding support for Israel. However, things have indeed started to change lately — and not only from the Democrats. Remember that Republicans in Congress last winter delayed the vote on a bill to fund Israel. Yes, this was partly because the [Joe] Biden administration bundled aid for Israel with aid for Ukraine and other issues into a single bill, hoping that including Israel in the aid package would guarantee relatively easy approval from Republicans in Congress. Nothing of the sort happened, and the package stalled until spring.

[Donald] Trump is trying to attract US Jewish voters (most of whom still lean Democrat) by pointing to his sympathy for Israel and warning that [Kamala] Harris will stop supporting Israel’s military efforts. Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, both right-wing populists, are ideologically close. But it is uncertain whether this will work.

Israel’s main problem is not with the leadership of the US Democratic Party but with its own policies, which are causing worldwide outrage, including among Americans. Worse yet, the number of opponents and critics of Israel among US Jews is growing, as it is among Democratic voters in general. Thus, the evolution of party leaders’ positions reflect shifts in public opinion — and this actually strengthens Harris’s position.

Overall, reduced US support for Israel is inevitable, unless there is a change of power in Tel Aviv itself. That said, a complete reversal of US policy is impossible — Israel is still its main strategic partner in the Middle East. Netanyahu believes the West will tolerate his policies, no matter what he does, but he risks crossing a line where serious problems could begin.

Will a new US president influence the conflict between Russia and Ukraine?

Among the Russian elites, there was a long-standing illusion that Trump’s rise to power would solve all its problems. How he would do this was unclear — magical thinking was at play. Somehow, things would just improve. But by early autumn, two realisations set in. First, that Trump was unlikely to return to the White House. Second, that if he did return, things could get even worse. Trump is not interested in Ukraine. And if the Russians want to do something bad there, it is not his problem.

However, giving [Russian President Vladimir] Putin freedom on the Ukrainian question would require one very important condition: that Russia become a key US ally in the fight against China. For Trump, the Chinese threat is an obsession (as is opposition to Mexican migration). For the Russian economy, which has grown increasingly dependent on China, a pivot to the West would be catastrophic, economically and geopolitically. After all, the extensive land border with China lies with us, not the US.

Thus, friendship with Trump’s Republicans is far more dangerous for Moscow than hostility with the Democrats, who can ultimately be appeased with superficial political reforms and concessions in Ukraine. Especially since Ukraine’s “gains” are of no real value to Russia’s economy; this war is not about territory but about preserving the political regime in Moscow. Western elites will not demand deep democratisation; a mere facade of liberal decorum will suffice, as the more pragmatically-minded Kremlin faction understands.

Lastly, we need to understand China’s role in this setup. Not only is Beijing interested in keeping Trump out of the White House, but China’s economic interests also require the restoration of transit routes for goods to Western Europe via the Trans-Siberian Railway through Russia and Ukraine. Therefore, the Chinese need peace between these two countries and no conflict with the West, along with open and transparent borders. It’s just the economy. In the early years of the conflict, the loss of transit was offset by capturing the Russian market, but now that market is taken, and could face issues with European markets. So, not only is peace needed, but it is also becoming urgent.

Thus, a new configuration arises. Harris is backed by Chinese allies and Moscow’s pragmatists, while Trump has the support of a few very influential madmen within the Russian elite.

While Trump was president, he began building the wall between the US and Mexico. This resembles a mega-project to enrich construction businesses, while diverting budget funds from the military-industrial complex to the wall. Moreover, Trump did not start any new wars; he only ended conflicts inherited from previous administrations. Does this indicate that Trump has the support of the more peace-minded segment of US capital, or at least the segment that prefers pouring money into a wall over military production?

Trump indeed lobbies for the construction industry. Incidentally, a substantial portion of orders for construction work related to the wall would have gone to Mexico. And most of the migrants rushing to the US come from even poorer countries south of the Yucatán. So, regardless of Trump’s rhetoric, there will not be a conflict with Mexico.

But calling Trump “peace-loving” is very conditional. Increased defence orders benefit industry, and we must remember that, regardless of who the US president is, there is the state apparatus, Congress and intelligence agencies. They are far from omnipotent, but they will not just readily accept any policy. They benefit from continuity, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. The same problems would face any new president, including Harris if she were elected. But Democrats are better at working with the establishment than Trump’s people (the old Republicans also cooperated well with the bureaucracy, but they have since lost influence).

Lastly, while US capital is divided into competing factions, we should not underestimate their ability to reach compromises. They will seek a compromise under any president, though achieving one is more difficult now than it was a decade ago.

Even if Trump does not become president, his supporters will not disappear from US society. Do you think there could be another storming of the Capitol or a similar attempt by conservatives to seize power by force in the US?

Trump’s defeat, if it happens (which seems likely now), will demoralise his supporters. The storming of the Capitol was an exceptional episode. Trump’s strategy of grassroots mobilisation in 2020 unexpectedly backfired. In mobilising the grassroots, Trump’s supporters resembled the left. We too advocate grassroots mobilisation. The question is whom you are mobilising and by what means.

Trump brought millions of forgotten working-class people into politics, mostly white but not exclusively — people historically betrayed by the Democrats, who abandoned their progressive agenda. Tom Frank’s book What’s the Matter with Kansas? addresses this, showing how these people, mostly uneducated and politically inexperienced, expressed their resentment and frustration, first by voting for Trump and then, feeling betrayed again by the system, storming the Capitol. Ultimately, they got nothing but more humiliation and repression.

But Trump’s team learned lessons from the “Leninists” who relied on mobilisation — most of them were purged (I’m not joking; [former White House Chief Strategist under Trump, Steve] Bannon, for example, directly quoted Lenin). Trump’s team learned lessons from the Leninists who relied on mobilisation from within their ranks. Trump has distanced himself from grassroots activism, seeing it as a chaotic, dangerous, and uncontrollable force. Trumpism has become more bourgeois, even more conservative, despite the populist rhetoric. It has not become more respectable, of course, but it has grown consistently reactionary.

In 2016, both Trump and Brexit supporters in England, and even the National Front in France, mixed reactionary xenophobic or anti-immigration slogans with social demands that should have been voiced by the left. Back then, I wrote that such movements, unfortunately, expressed legitimate social protest. Even Bernie Sanders acknowledged this at the beginning of his campaign. Later, when the Democratic Party apparatus sank his primary campaign by dubious methods (and Bernie gave in), many of his supporters went over to Trump. And in Britain in 2016, both right and left supported Brexit. In France, during the European constitution referendum, there was a similar situation.

Recently, I was told that during a debate between Svetova and Sakhnin on Zhivoy Gvozd,1 a viewer commented that Kagarlitsky would support Trump. In reality, I have never supported Trump, but in 2016 I outlined the ambiguity of the situation whereby some progressive demands were being voiced by right-wing populists. Since then, things have changed (as they have with Donbas, if we compare 2014 and 2022). Trump, French nationalists, and their British counterparts have consistently abandoned any social agenda. Now it is a purely reactionary movement with no progressive elements.

And regarding workers, the right now behaves exactly as the left used to — they believe that workers have nowhere else to go and will keep voting for them. This is their fatal mistake. Theoretically, this creates an opportunity for the left — the true left, grounded in class positions — to win back the support of blue-collar working-class voters. But this will not happen at once and automatically. For now, we are likely to see growing demoralisation among society’s grassroots.

Why is Trump popular among Americans with his ideas?

Trump’s popularity was due to him addressing problems that the liberal establishment (including its left wing in academic institutions) denied.2 Yes, his proposals were wild. For example, let’s build a wall to keep out Mexico (incidentally, here in prison, I heard a similar idea — that Russia should build a concrete wall along its borders and shut itself off from the world, so IK-4 in Torzhok3 has its own Trump supporters).

But the problem of uncontrolled migration really exists! A low-educated worker from the Rust Belt or a farmer from the American South, for whom the outside world is limited to Mexico and Canada, is ready to accept such answers. No alternatives are offered! And however much we mock the ignorance of Trump supporters, there is a certain logic and even a hint of common sense in their behaviour. Sadly, I do not always notice this among intellectuals.

In recent years, conflicts that have been smouldering for years have intensified. Does this resemble the situation before World War I?

I have seen comparisons to World War I, or rather the period before it, in various texts for a long time. And indeed, there are similarities. World War I was preceded by an unprecedented economic globalisation that culminated in the exhaustion of markets. As a result, competition increased, leading to what Marxists of the time called heightened inter-imperialist rivalry. Only libertarians believe that markets function independently. In reality, market competition inevitably fuels political confrontation, often in the harshest forms.

But those are the similarities. There are fundamental differences as well. To begin with, in the early 20th century, more or less stable blocs formed: Germany and its allies against the old empires (Britain, France, and Russia), joined by the United States, whose ruling class chose a non-aggressive strategy at that time. Instead of attempting to push Britain out of its position as the world hegemon, the US began supporting Britain while simultaneously replacing it in this role — at first partially.

What is significant is that the competition centred on the same territories and the same markets. Today, the situation is qualitatively different. Only the Russian elite is still playing by late 20th-century rules, and only a few domestic Marxist dogmatists continue to analyse the situation in those terms.

The fact is, China does not strive for hegemony in the world-system; it is simply forming a China-centric economic space, using the rest of the world as a resource base. Naturally, goods need to be exported — to Europe, the US and Russia. But Chinese capital does not consciously create new markets or attempt to reformat them; it simply exploits them. China’s growth is disruptive to the world-system, precisely because there is no attempt to compete for hegemony.4 After all, hegemony is not just dominance but an ordered organisation and development of the system. There is none of that here.

For the US, war with China holds no prospects, but it does not solve the main issue: as long as the neoliberal regime of global trade exists, China will exploit it. And changing the regime would require radical changes to the entire system. Trump tried to introduce protectionist measures (which hurt Chinese capital), but even he is unwilling to reform the system, let alone revolutionise it. This approach will not work.

The crisis is escalating, and it will be accompanied by local wars and then a series of revolutions. In the end, as the old Soviet joke goes: “There will be no war, but the struggle for peace will be so intense, it will be even harder to bear.”

Do you see any threat of a new world war? Could the Israel-Palestine conflict trigger a world war?

Based on what I have said earlier, it logically follows that the Middle East conflict will not lead to a world war, not least due to China’s position, as war does not serve its interests. China is not trying to take anything from the West. This is not peace-loving but rather arrogant indifference. China wants peace, especially since its internal situation is not as stable as it seems.

The paradox is that regional players, trying to drag superpowers such as the US and China — and indeed anyone they can — into their conflicts, are the ones igniting wars. Israel’s ruling clique diverts growing domestic discontent by focusing public attention on war with an external enemy — that is Netanyahu’s policy. But this is unnecessary for the US, China or even Iran. There is a paradox here: the forces considered irresponsible and radical — Hezbollah, Iran — have shown restraint, while Israel (supposedly a civilised democracy) displays complete irrationality.

I have previously written about the similarities between our situation and what’s happening in Israel. Netanyahu understands that any end [emphasis in original] to the war would mean the end of his power. In Russia, we see influential forces reasoning in a similar way. And if we return to the situation with Lebanon, the war is not being waged to defeat Hezbollah but to prevent peace, which would require accountability.

What would have to happen for a world war to break out?

As I mentioned, we are not threatened by a new world war. We face a growing and expanding number of smaller or regional conflicts that consume enormous human lives and resources. The cumulative toll could be monstrous — and it is already huge. But this is not a world war with two opposing global camps.

More importantly, I sincerely hope that the warring parties, deeply affected by internal crises themselves, will gradually slide towards peace. Endless war is impossible, especially when these wars have no geopolitical purpose or sense. No one can win, and no one even wants to. But war for the sake of war is a dead end. If maintaining power requires endless war, that power will not last long.

For many today, unfortunately, peace is far scarier than war. In the long term, peace means revolution, or at least radical reforms. We are on the threshold of great change. The old man [Immanuel] Wallerstein,5 I think, was right when he predicted the end of the current world-system (which, by the way, included world wars).

• 1

  Zhivoy Gvozd (Live Nail) is a Russian opposition media platform established by former staff members of the now-defunct radio station Ekho Moskvy. It offers a range of content, including news podcasts, expert analyses, and discussions on political, economic, and social issues. Ekho Moskvy, a prominent independent radio station in Russia, was effectively shut down in March 2022. The Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office ordered its removal from the airwaves, accusing it of disseminating information that called for extremist activities and violence, as well as spreading false information about Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. 

• 2

  In his last book, The Long Retreat, Boris Kagarlitsky critiques the left for abandoning the working class by aligning with urban bourgeoisie interests and adopting politically correct stances. This shift, he argues, created a political void that the right exploited, co-opting the working-class agenda and causing a general rightward shift in the electorate. 

• 3

  Penal colony No 4 in the town of Torzhok in Russia’s Tver Region where Kagarlitsky is serving his term. 

• 4

  For a more detailed discussion of China’s capitalism, its resource-extracting nature, lack of hegemonistic ambitions, and the destructive consequences for the world-system, see Boris Kagarlitsky’s article "China and Russia in the Modern World-System — A Dual Challenge" on LINKS.

• 5

  For example, Wallerstein explores the structural crises facing the modern world-system and contemplates its possible transformations in his 1999 book, The End of the World As We Know It: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century.