KURD RESISTANCE 

DEM Party MPs protest the usurpation of municipalities in front of the Ministry of Interior

Deputies of the DEM Party protested in front of the Ministry of Interior in Ankara against the removal of Kurdish mayors from Office, warning of increasing lawlessness in Turkey.


ANF
ANKARA
Thursday, 14 November 2024, 15:12

Following the appointment of trustees to the municipalities of Batman, Mardin and Halfeti by the Ministry of Interior on 4 November and removal of the co-mayors elected in the 31 March local elections, protests continue in many cities of Kurdistan.

The Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) members of parliament protested in front of the Ministry of the Interior in Ankara against the removal from office of elected mayors and the appointment of trustees to the municipalities.



DEM Party Group Deputy Chairperson Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit stated that the AKP government has been carrying out a ‘coup’ against the will of the people since 2016 and has virtually abolished the right to elect and to be elected, especially for the Kurdish population.

At the last municipal elections on 31 March, the majority of the population showed the government the ‘red card’, said Koçyiğit and continued: “More than 70 percent of the country's population, including in the metropolitan cities, voted out the AKP government at the local level. The government was thus called upon to come to its senses, to return to democracy and the rule of law, and to respect the will of the people. In response to the threat of losing power, the AKP has once again resorted to the method of undermining the will of the electorate and appointing trustees, which has been in use since 2016. It started in Hakkari on 3 June, continued on 31 October in Esenyurt, and on 4 November, the anniversary of the 2016 coup against the HDP, the AKP woke us up with a new coup against the peoples of Turkey.”

Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit noted that they had already warned back in 2016 that the illegal removal of mayors from office would not be limited to Kurdistan: “In this country, every lawlessness is first tested in the Kurdish regions. All unlawful acts are first committed against the Kurdish people. But it should be known that the deprivation of rights of the Kurdish population is never limited to this region. Lawlessness spreads from there to all provinces and the whole country.”

The fact that no one in Turkey has taken to the streets to protest against the usurpation of Kurdish municipalities has led to the appointment of a trustee to the CHP-governed district of Esenyurt in Istanbul, said Koçyiğit and added: “Everyone must see this fact. Lawlessness is being practised against all the peoples of Turkey. It is a coup d'état against democracy in Turkey and a threat to us all.”

Appealing to the opposition, Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit stated: “Today we must stand side by side against this government, unite and defend democracy together. On the one hand, they say peace, on the other hand, they appoint trustees. The road to peace does not go through trusteeship. If all the peoples of Turkey stand side by side, if we build bridges of fraternity from Esenyurt to Hakkari, then we will defeat this ruling power, this fascism, and build a democratic republic in this country despite the AKP. Let us stand side by side, let us smash fascism hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder. Let us create the peace that the peoples of Turkey long for. Let us find a way to live together in an equal, free and democratic country.”

DEM Party calls on the KDP to end restrictions on their representatives in Kurdistan Region

DEM Party reacted against KDP's repression on its representatives in Hewlêr and said, “There can be no legal, political and moral justification for the expulsion of our representatives from Hewlêr by force and pressure.”


ANF
ANKARA
Thursday, 14 November 202


Hikmet Hatip, Aydın Yalvaç, Sıtkı Vakar, and Nasır Yağız, the spokespersons and officials of the HDP's Kurdistan Region Office in Hewlêr (Erbil), were forcibly placed into vehicles by the KDP's security forces and driven outside the boundaries of Hewlêr on 6 November. Without any official notice, the HDP representatives were taken in two separate vehicles and dropped off near the borders of Sulaymaniyah.

The Central Executive Committee (MYK) of the DEM Party released a written statement denouncing the expulsion of their representatives by the ruling KDP.

“We define the forcible transfer of our representatives from Hewlêr to Sulaymaniyah by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and its affiliated forces, which holds the powers of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), as a major setback for the future of Kurdish relations and democratic principles, and we follow this intolerant approach with regret. This dangerous step means sabotaging the ground for inter-party political dialogue and efforts towards national unity, which is the legitimate expectation of tens of millions of Kurds,” said the DEM Party statement, which further included the following:

“The DEM Party advocates the Kurdish people's struggle for freedom, democracy and peace under all circumstances. On this occasion, we need to remind that our predecessor HDP supported the independence referendum held in Southern Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) despite all kinds of pressure and criticism, while the regional states threatened it with starvation. Until just before the end of the resolution process, it was repeatedly stated that Hewlêr, like Amed (Diyarbakır), was the common home of the Kurds. Millions of Kurds do not expect political leaders to further divide and deepen the borders between Kurds as the hegemonic powers of the region want.

Relations between Kurdish political movements, wherever they are, must be based on mutual respect and direct dialogue. This is precisely the reason for the establishment of our office in Hewlêr. Unfortunately, the fact that our office in Hewlêr was made nonfunctional and its representatives were forcibly expelled from the city should be considered as a serious attack on the future of inter-Kurdish relations on the basis of unity.

We are always in favour of dialogue between political forces. On this basis, we call on the KDP to abandon this undemocratic and undiplomatic decision and to respect the political parties defending the democratic rights of the Kurdish people. There can be no legal, political and moral justification for the removal of our representatives from Hewlêr by force and pressure.

At the current stage, there has been no answer to our dialogue attempts with the KDP and KRG authorities for the solution of the problem, and no explanation has been made by those concerned as to why this anti-democratic attitude is preferred.”

The DEM Party listed their demands from the KDP and KRG as follows:

“Ending of the restrictions on our DEM Party and HDP representatives in Hewlêr,

Ensuring and guaranteeing the security of our official representation,

Keeping the channels of dialogue open without interruption on the basis of the principles of mutual respect and equality.”

HDP representatives in the Kurdistan Region expelled by the KDP

The spokespersons and representatives of the HDP's Kurdistan Region Office, who were forcibly expelled by the KDP, reported that the security forces told them, "You can no longer set foot in Hewlêr; go to Sulaymaniyah."


ANF
SULAYMANIYAH
Saturday, 9 November 2024, 08:33


Hikmet Hatip, Aydın Yalvaç, Sıtkı Vakar, and Nasır Yağız, the spokespersons and officials of the HDP's Kurdistan Region Office in Hewlêr (Erbil), were forcibly placed into vehicles by the KDP's security forces and driven outside the boundaries of Hewlêr.

Without any official notice, the HDP representatives were taken in two separate vehicles and dropped off near the borders of Sulaymaniyah.

The expelled representatives held a press conference at Azadî Park in Sulaymaniyah, sharing their experience with the public.

"They forced us into vehicles"

Hikmet Hatip, one of the HDP Kurdistan Region Office's spokespersons, said: "On 6 November, four of us from the HDP Kurdistan Region Office were summoned by the KDP security forces. They took our documents and placed us in two vehicles accompanied by 26 armed security personnel. They dropped two of us at the Simaqol checkpoint and the other two at the Dêgele checkpoint. We were told, 'You have no place in Hewlêr; go to Sulaymaniyah.' When we asked the reason for this treatment, we received no response."

Hatip continued: "The HDP Office was present in South Kurdistan within a legal framework. We have no legal or social problems. We recently had meetings with KDP officials, where we sat together. Even if there are any problems, we prefer to resolve them through dialogue and return to Hewlêr. We have families and have established our lives and businesses in Hewlêr. A delegation from the HDP will come to South Kurdistan to meet with KDP officials regarding this issue."

Rojava: Olive harvest threatened by Turkish attacks

The olive harvest has begun in Northern and Eastern Syria. Farmers in the Firat canton cannot go to their fields due to Turkish attacks, and the olives are in danger of rotting on the trees.


ANF
NEWS DESK
Thursday, 14 November 2024

,

The olive harvest has begun in Northern and Eastern Syria. Olives are harvested in the autumn after the first rain. Farmers in the Firat canton are very worried due to the ongoing attacks by the Turkish army.

Meryem Mihemed, a farmer from the village of Bûban near Kobanê, has already started harvesting in her olive grove. She has 600 olive trees. This plantation is enough to support a family. However, this year's yield is lower, she told ANHA.

Olive trees can be harvested every two years. Therefore, strong and weak harvests always alternate. This year should actually be able to have a good harvest. But due to the storms in the spring, the blossoms of the olive trees were torn off and only a few blossoms survived.

"Because of the attacks, we cannot harvest our olives"

The olive plantations in the Kobanê region are often located near the Turkish border with Northern Kurdistan. Due to the proximity to the border, Turkish soldiers prevent people from entering the plantations. Meryem Mihemed's field is also located in such an area. Mihemed told ANHA that people do not dare to go to their fields for fear of their lives. The constant Turkish artillery shelling is putting massive pressure on farmers and is aimed at forcing them to migrate.

ÖHD Amed Ecology Commission condemns ecocide in Cudi and Gabar Mountains


ANF
AMED
Thursday, 14 November 2024, 

In a written statement, the Association of Lawyers for Freedom (ÖHD) Amed Ecology Assembly condemned the destruction in the Cudi and Gabar Mountains of Şirnak (Şirnex). The statement said that expanding mining and oil drilling operations in the Cudi and Gabar mountains are contributing to escalating environmental degradation. The daily use of explosives for these activities is flattening mountaintops, destroying ecosystems, and threatening endangered species.

Large quantities of dynamite are used each day, resulting in significant damage to both land and water sources. Explosions have polluted underground water reserves, felled trees, and endangered local wildlife, particularly wild goats that rely on these mountains as a habitat.

'We will follow the ecocide'

The statement said that it was no coincidence that these regions, which have been depopulated and are often declared "Special Security Zone" since the 1990s, were subjected to ecocide, added: "The ecocide Qileban, Elkê and other regions and the deforestation of Kurdistan are narrowing down the living spaces of the Kurdish people and the living beings in the nature of Kurdistan. We will closely follow the process against this ecocide taking place in Kurdistan, where there is an intervention in the right to access clean air and clean drinking water, and to live in a healthy and balanced environment."

Looming Fascism and the Question of Hope

ByNorman Solomon

November 14, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.





When some leading thinkers at the London School of Economics saw fascism take hold in the 1930s, Oxford history professor Ben Jackson said in a recent BBC interview, they “argued that in those circumstances the people with economic power in society, the property owners, are willing to cancel democracy, cancel civil liberties, and make deals with political organizations like the Nazis if it guarantees their economic interest.”

That analysis has an ominous ring to it now as many tech industrialists swing behind President-elect Trump. They can hardly be unaware that Gen. Mark Milley, who served as the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman under Trump, described him as “fascist to the core.”

“Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos tweeted the morning after the election. Weeks earlier, as the owner of the Washington Post, Bezos had blocked an endorsement of Kamala Harris by the newspaper’s editorial board.

Bezos could lose billions of dollars in antitrust cases, but now stands a better chance of winning thanks to a second Trump administration. During the last decade, Amazon Web Services gained huge contracts with the federal government, including a $10 billion deal with the National Security Agency.

No wonder Bezos’ post-election tweet laid it on thick — “wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”

Not to be left behind at the starting gun in the tech industry’s suck-up-to-Trump derby, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote: “Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory. We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration.”

As a nine-figure donor and leading purveyor of online lies for the 2024 Trump campaign, Elon Musk has been working closely with Trump. The Tesla magnate, X (formerly Twitter) owner and SpaceX mogul is well-positioned to help shape policies of the incoming administration. A week after the election, news broke that Musk has been chosen by Trump to co-lead an ill-defined “Department of Government Efficiency” with an evident mission to slash the public sector.

Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg rank first, third and fourth respectively on the Forbes list of the world’s richest individuals. The three of them have combined wealth of around $740 billion.

“In recent years, many tech eliteshave shrugged off the idealism once central to Silicon Valley’s self-image, in favor of a more corporate and transactional approach to politics,” the Washington Post gingerly reported after the election. The newspaper added: “A growing contingent of right-wing tech figures argue that Trump can usher in a new era of American dominance by removing red tape.”

For amoral gazillionaires like Bezos and Musk, ingratiating themselves with Trump is a wise investment that’s calculated to yield windfall returns. Evidently, the consequences in human terms are of no real concern. In fact, social injustice and the divisions it breeds create the conditions for still more lucrative political demagoguery, with the richest investors at the front of the line to benefit from corporate tax cuts and regressive changes in individual tax brackets.

After Election Day, the fascism scholar Jason Stanley offered a grim appraisal: “People who feel slighted (materially or socially) come to accept pathologies — racism, homophobia, misogyny, ethnic nationalism, and religious bigotry — which, under conditions of greater equality, they would reject. And it is precisely those material conditions for a healthy, stable democracy that the United States lacks today. If anything, America has come to be singularly defined by its massive wealth inequality, a phenomenon that cannot but undermine social cohesion and breed resentment.”

The threat of fascism in the United States is no longer conjectural. It is swiftly gathering momentum, fueled by the extremism of the party set to soon control both the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government as well as most of the federal court system.

It’s not only that, as Stanley notes, “the Republican Party’s domination of all branches of government would render the U.S. a one-party state.” Already set in motion are cascading toxic effects on social discourse and political dynamics, marked by widening acceptance and promotion of overt bigotries and brandished hatreds.

The successful relaunch of Trump’s political quest has again rocketed him into the stratosphere of power. Corporate profits for the few will reach new heights. Only humanity will suffer.

This deeply perilous time requires realism — but not fatalism. In the worst of times, solidarity is most needed.

And what about hope?

Consider what Fred Branfman had to say.

In the late 1960s, Fred was a humanitarian-aid volunteer in Laos when he discovered that his country was taking the lives of peasants there by the thousands. He assembled Voices from the Plain of Jars, a book with the subtitle “Life Under an Air War,” published in 1972. It included essays by Laotian people living under long-term U.S. bombardment along with drawings by children who depicted the horrors all around them.

When I asked Fred to describe his experience in Laos, he said: “At the age of 27, a moral abyss suddenly opened before me. I was shocked to the core of my being as I found myself interviewing Laotian peasants, among the most decent, human and kind people on Earth, who described living underground for years on end, while they saw countless fellow villagers and family members burned alive by napalm, suffocated by 500-pound bombs, and shredded by antipersonnel bombs dropped by my country, the United States.”

Fred moved to Washington, where he worked with antiwar groups to lobby Congress and protest the inflicting of mass carnage on Indochina. During the decades that followed, he kept working as a writer and activist to help change policies, stop wars, and counteract what he described as “the effect on the biosphere of the interaction between global warming, biodiversity loss, water aquifer depletion, chemical contamination, and a wide variety of other new threats to the biospheric systems upon which human life depends.”

When I talked with Fred a few years before his death in 2014, he said: “I find it hard to have much ‘hope’ that the species will better itself in coming decades.”

But, Fred went on, “I have also reached a point in my self-inquiries where I came to dislike the whole notion of ‘hope.’ If I need to have ‘hope’ to motivate me, what will I do when I see no rational reason for hope? If I can be ‘hopeful,’ then I can also be ‘hopeless,’ and I do not like feeling hopeless.”

He added: “When I looked more deeply at my own life, I noticed that my life was not now and never had been built around ‘hope.’ Laos was an example. I went there, I learned to love the peasants, the bombing shocked my psyche and soul to the core, and I responded — not because I was hopeful or hopeless, but because I was alive.”

We’re alive. Let’s make the most of it, no matter how much hope we have. What we need most of all is not optimism but determination.


ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.   Donate

Norman Solomon is an American journalist, author, media critic and activist. Solomon is a longtime associate of the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). In 1997 he founded the Institute for Public Accuracy, which works to provide alternative sources for journalists, and serves as its executive director. Solomon's weekly column "Media Beat" was in national syndication from 1992 to 2009. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Since 2011, he has been the national director of RootsAction.org. He is the author of thirteen books including "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine” (The New Press, 2023).


Youth Resistance in the Age of Fascist Dream-Worlds

By Henry A. GirouxNovember 14, 2024Z ArticleNo Comments7 Mins Read
Source: LA Progressive
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail


For too long, liberals have failed to recognize education for what it truly is: not merely a service or a tool for economic adaptation, but the very foundation of democratic life.

Hyper-capitalism is the death knell of democracy. It reduces everything to a commodity, monetizing and pathologizing every aspect of life. The blind faith in markets and unfettered individualism has dismantled the social state, ravaged the environment, and fueled staggering inequality. By divorcing economic activity from its social costs, liberals have obliterated civic culture, creating a vacuum filled by despair and alienation. Into that vacuum emerged a band of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, radical Christian nationalists, and a cruel band of misogynists and neoliberal fascists.

Let’s be clear: liberals have never escaped the shadow of Reagan, whose anti-government rhetoric and racist spectacles reshaped the political landscape, nor that of Milton Friedman, whose dogmatic worship of capitalism and contempt for social responsibility set the stage for decades of exploitation. Liberals have not only failed to dismantle these legacies—they’ve deepened them. They accelerated the war on Black women, expanded the carceral state, gutted the working class with NAFTA, and under Obama, cozied up to bankers while millions of Americans lost their homes and livelihoods in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Instead, liberals clung to the isolating ethos of individualism and a myopic fixation on electoral wins at all costs, turning a blind eye to the loneliness and despair consuming millions of working-class people yearning for community and solidarity. In their neglect, they left an open wound, one that Trump exploited with his grotesque theater of hate. His fraudulent promises of “making America great again” cloaked a cynical swindle in the language of bigotry, lies, and the comforting rituals of spectacle, offering a hollow illusion of unity while solidifying a totalitarian nightmare rooted in the very structures of domination liberals refused to confront.

Liberals bear significant responsibility for the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement. Their complicity lies in more than their failure to challenge the “manufactured ignorance” churned out by today’s totalitarian digital disimagination machines. It is also rooted in their refusal to engage with how youth, people of color, and the displaced experience their suffering and name their realities.

For too long, liberals have failed to recognize education for what it truly is: not merely a service or a tool for economic adaptation, but the very foundation of democratic life. By reducing education to a set of instrumental skills needed to “compete in the global economy” and privileging standardized tests over critical thinking, they have stripped away the radical potential of learning while sabotaging any viable notion of critical pedagogy. Education is not simply about preparing individuals for work; it is about preparing them for the struggle to shape the world. When we turn education into a factory for producing compliant workers rather than active, informed citizens, we sabotage the very principles of democracy.

In their haste to placate the demands of neoliberalism, liberals abandoned the transformative power of education as a vehicle for collective consciousness. They relinquished any serious commitment to the idea that education could—and should—be a force that fosters social awareness, critical inquiry, and solidarity. Instead, they celebrated the hollow rhetoric of “school-to-work” and embraced policies that treated students as nothing more than cogs in a corporate machine.

Too many liberals remained silent as the media—a crucial pillar of democratic society—was surrendered to a far-right agenda and a corrupt corporate elite. In the process, the media has become a tool of misinformation, distorting reality to serve the interests of the powerful. Right-wing media has not just fostered ignorance; it has crafted a society incapable of distinguishing fact from fiction, truth from lies, democracy from authoritarianism.

This is the legacy of liberalism’s failure to defend education as a critical practice for political engagement. By abandoning the radical potential of the classroom and turning a blind eye to the growing monopoly over information, they have paved the way for the erosion of democratic values and social relations. In an age marked by the resurgence of fascism, especially with the election of Trump, Americans find themselves in a world where ignorance is weaponized and truth is under siege. Lost in the veil of spectacularized stupidity and lies promoted by the likes of Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network, and Elon Musk’s X, it is almost impossible to image education as both a defense and enabler of democracy.

Meanwhile young people act not only as cultural critics but also as cultural producers across a variety of platforms—from social media and podcasts to online documentaries, blogs, and art installations—creating new pedagogical spaces to educate and mobilize the public. These spaces are crucial in both raising awareness of the growing threat of fascism and advocating for the dismantling of entrenched systems—such as the influence of money, the Electoral College, gerrymandering, and other elements of a corrosive capitalism—that distort the promise of a radical democracy.

What is unforgivable is the liberal retreat into the mythic fantasy of an America that never existed. Historical amnesia has become a mass pedagogical weapon of depoliticization. This denial left the path wide open for a regime that embodies the darkest truths about the nation’s past and present. Now, we are left with a pedagogy of terror and ignorance—a cultural framework that normalizes violence and enshrines cruelty, allows the planet to destruct, accelerates the war on people of color and women’s reproductive rights. This is the “Third Reich of Dreams” Charlotte Beradt warned about, where the nightmare is both lived and embraced.

Trump’s fascist dreamscape is on full display in his administration’s appalling plan to deport between 15 and 20 million undocumented immigrants from the United States. This policy is not just about immigration—it is an act of racial and class warfare, targeting people of color, the poor, and millions fleeing poverty and violence in Latin America. At its core is the criminalization of vulnerable populations, carried out by a state machinery designed to dehumanize and eradicate those deemed unworthy of citizenship. This a form of domestic terrorism writ large as a white nationalist fantasy of exclusion and elimination.

Leading this heinous project are Tom Homan, Stephen Miller, and Kristi Noem—hard-right ideologues determined to weaponize the power of the state against entire communities. Stephen Miller, in particular, embodies the ideological extremism driving this policy. His declaration that “America is for Americans” chillingly echoes Adolf Hitler’s assertion that “Germany is for Germans.” This is not immigration reform—it is racial cleansing. It is a deliberate strategy of disposability, rooted in white supremacy, and executed through the machinery of the carceral state and the criminalization of everything considered other and disposable.

This policy envisions a dystopian reality: families torn apart, children ripped from their parents, and communities shattered. Immigrants are reduced to mere bodies—loaded into boxcars, shipped to prisons, or expelled from the country altogether. The parallels to Nazi Germany’s genocidal regime are undeniable. The projected image of trains deporting people to prisons and detention camps is a harrowing reminder of where such dehumanization and racial politics inevitably lead. This is not hyperbole; it is history repeating itself.

Trump’s immigration policy is the embodiment of anti-democratic values, a dystopian fascist nightmare that weaponizes fear, hatred, and dehumanization. It strips away any facade of justice or humanity, laying bare the raw brutality of racial exclusion and state violence. This is not policy—it is vigilante terror—crafted to solidify a fascist vision of America built on the ruins of dignity, compassion, and freedom.




ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.  Donate



Henry A. Giroux  (born 1943) is an internationally renowned writer and cultural critic, Professor Henry Giroux has authored, or co-authored over 65 books, written several hundred scholarly articles, delivered more than 250 public lectures, been a regular contributor to print, television, and radio news media outlets, and is one of the most cited Canadian academics working in any area of Humanities research. In 2002, he was named as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period in Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present as part of Routledge’s Key Guides Publication Series.

The One-Word Explanation for Trump’s Stunning Victory?

Corporate media pundits will not tell you, because it remains at the core of their belief system. But neoliberalism is not just an economic doctrine, but a political project that has now ushered us into the abyss of fascism.

By CJ Polychroniou

November 13, 2024

Source: Common Dreams





Donald Trump’s commanding victory over Kamala Harris seems to have surprised a lot of people both in the U.S. and around the world. Yet, it’s not surprising that Trump pulled off this victory, especially since polls predicted a tight race. What is surprising though is the scale of his victory. In a deeply divided society with a two-party system, one would have expected that either candidate would have won by a narrow margin.

Trump’s victory, which will have a wide-ranging impact on all aspects of U.S. society and will reverberate through the global political economy, represents a genuine political earthquake. He won the electoral college and the popular vote by expanding his coalition with historic demographic shifts. Even democratic heartlands saw large swings toward Trump, while Kamala Harris underperformed with both women (thus indicating that abortion was much less of a key issue than people thought it would be in the 2024 presidential election) and young voters. Young male voters, in particular, swung toward Trump in a big way as Kamala Harris not only put women on top of her agenda but, in turn, had very little to say about men. As for the loss of the working-class vote, which so much has already been said and written about it, suffice to say that Harris also had nothing to say to the mass of citizens facing economic hardship. Strangely enough, Harris and the Democrats in general did not even try to convey to the public some of the success that Biden’s economic policies had in contributing to growth and employment.


What the next four years will bring from the Trump administration may be unlike anything the United States has experienced in modern times.

Kamala Harris could not convince the voters. A considerable majority of the electorate did not share her priorities. That much is obvious. Following her loss to Donald Trump, Democratic National Committee finance committee member Lindy Li made a telling comment when she said that Harris’ bid for the White House was a “$1 billion disaster.”

Indeed, Democrats’ humiliating losses in the 2024 elections has sparked infighting and finger pointing about what went wrong and where the party goes from here. Whether Kamala Harris was the right choice for the Democrats is now of course an academic question. But it may be of interest to see what the New York Times said about Harris in November 2019: “Ms. Harris is the only 2020 Democrat who has fallen hard out of the top tier of candidates. She has proved to be an uneven campaigner who changes her message and tactics to little effect and has a staff torn into factions.”

The emerging consensus on Trump’s reelection is that it was fueled by the economy. But what exactly does this mean? Between the final quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2024, the U.S. economy under the Biden-Harris administration was in rather good shape. Unemployment was at its lowest level in decades, wages were rising (though it’s not clear at all if Americans’ pay has fully recovered from inflation), and the GDP was expanding above the trend. In fact, the U.S. economy has been growing faster than any other advanced economy by a wide margin. And the inflation has steadily cooled over the past couple of years.

Now, we do know of course that there was a mismatch in U.S. economy perception and reality, and that a Harris-Guardian poll conducted in the spring of 2024 had in fact revealed that almost everything that most Americans believed about the economy was wrong. However, all this can be explained by the fact that economies are too complex to be summed up by just a couple of indicators. A person’s perception of a country’s economic health can be influenced by one’s own economic status, pessimism about the overall direction of the economy based on comparisons about economic conditions even with the rather distant past, and sentiments about the role of government and even the public’s voice in government and politics. People who feel disconnected from the political system and have dismal views about the nation’s politics are not likely to express positive views about the state of the economy. In other words, perceptions about the state of the economy can be influenced by political biases.

The notion that Trump’s re-election was fueled not so much by the actual state of the economy but rather by voter anxiety over the general direction of the economy and who is really in charge of government in the United States would have made more sense. Most voters don’t feel economically stable or secure. They are aware of the growing economic inequalities and worry about job security. Surveys have consistently found that most workers in the U.S. can’t afford an emergency expense even of a few hundred dollars. For most U.S. adults, the American dream no longer holds true, including a staggering 80 percent among people under the age of 30.

Let’s call things by their proper names. It is the cumulative effects of neoliberalism on economic wellbeing, social cohesion, and democratic politics that explains the pessimism that exists in people’s minds about the direction of the economy and the condition of the country overall. It is the disastrous effects of neoliberalism that can explain the latest realignment of the U.S. electorate and Trump’s decisive victory over Kamala Harris. It is the dysfunctional U.S. economic system in its totality that has given rise to authoritarian demagogues like Donald Trump who promise unhappy and angry voters a return to a golden age.

The economic, political, social, and cultural dominance of neoliberalism has facilitated the rise of authoritarian populism and the far right not only in the United States but throughout the world. Here, I define neoliberalism not only as an economic doctrine primarily characterized by free markets, globalization, liberalization, massive deregulation, shifts away from social welfare programs, and the redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital, but also as a political project that aims to undo the demos and is carried out by the dominant economic classes through a brutal form of class warfare and with the explicit aim of capturing the political system and hijacking the state as the implementation of neoliberal policies requires large-scale intervention in the capitalist economy; and, equally important, as a sociopolitical ideology that puts individual self-interest before the common good, displays indifference to economic and social inequality and subsequently justifies plutocracy, offers acceptance to unequal power distribution, and transfers responsibility to individual agents.

Neoliberalism has attained a hegemonic position as an economic doctrine and sociopolitical ideology in much of the developed world and permeates the entire mainstream political space. Across Europe, social democratic and socialist parties have become virtually indistinguishable from conservative and right-wing political parties. In the U.S. the Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations pushed neoliberalism as the only viable alternative. Subsequently, what we have seen over the past twenty or so years across the developed capitalist world is the resurgence of ethno-nationalism, the rise of far-right political movements and political parties, and neofascist leaders like Orban in Hungary and Meloni in Italy and proto-fascists like Trump in the United States rising to power through the ballot box.

The new breed of authoritarian populists like Trump has emerged precisely because neoliberal capitalism has created so much discontent and anger that it needs a new model of governance to keep the system intact. And it comes in the form of proto-fascism or neo-fascism. Trumpism is an extreme far-right ideology that attacks democracy and seeks to disband progressive social agendas while promoting a new and more ruthless form of market liberalization. Trumpism is best defined as neoliberal fascism.

Unfortunately, as the traditional parties of the left have themselves embraced the neoliberal orthodoxy and the postmodern left has become obsessed with cultural issues and anti-racism at the expense of economic issues, a very sizeable chunk of the working class has been duped by the new breed of authoritarian populists and put its trust in turn in their hands in hopes of a better future. This is the tragedy of the Left. For without radical political leadership for guidance and inspiration, the working class of today fails to recognize neoliberal capitalism as the problem and has been made in turn to look for scapegoats. This is what Trump has managed to do with his vicious attacks on immigrants, undoubtedly more successfully than any other authoritarian demagogue in the western world.

Like their predecessors, the new breed of authoritarian demagogues with proclivities to fascist rhetoric like Trump are homogenizing nationalists. But with the U.S. being one of the most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations in the world, Trump knew he had to expand his voter base if he were to be successful in his bid for reelection. The fact that his message got through with black, Latino and Asian voters is nothing short of amazing. It seems that the more racist Donald Trump sounds, the more voters he attracts from minority groups. Indeed, the Republican Party is now less white than ever before, and that has to be a very distressing development for the future of the Democratic Party.

What the next four years will bring from the Trump administration may be unlike anything the United States has experienced in modern times. Trump feels he has a powerful mandate, which is hard to argue against, to fulfill his campaign promises. Deportations and closing the border, drilling, pardons, tariffs, targeting journalists, and signing executive orders for schools pushing “critical race theory” and “gender identity” could be among the first promises he may try to fulfill. The restructuring of the U.S. government will take time, and it is unlikely that the second Trump administration will be as disorganized and chaotic as the first.

Progressives and radicals should prepare for what lies ahead. We do live in interesting times.

CJ Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He has published scores of books and over one thousand articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).

AOC Asks MAGA One Question… The Results Are STUNNING

By Adam Mockler

November 12, 2024

Source: Adam Mockler

Adam Mockler with MeidasTouch Network analyses the responses to an experiment run by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez where she asked Trump voters in her district, why they also voted for her.

Dear Donald and MAGA: It’s Our Turn Now

By Michael Albert

November 14, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Source: Kelly Kanayama via ReligionWatch



Trump won an election. Are we beaten? Will it be years and still more years until there is space for anything positive? Is progressive activity now merely blowing into the wind? MAGA and more MAGA. I think not. Should we now prepare to endure extreme deprivation, disruption, and repression? Learn to survive. Prepare to help one another. Hate the power, but dodge it. I don’t think so. To assume Trump will successfully implement his preferred agenda will help guarantee that agenda. I say we shouldn’t assume darkness and thereby help it arrive. We should turn on lights.

Quite a few progressives may gear up, brace up, stand up. Serious and sincere, but with their thoughts on elections two and four years from now. That certainly has a point. Winning two years from now can help restrain Trump. Winning four years from now can replace him. But it misses that this election has been something new. Trump did not campaign to have himself and some others fill existing government roles. He campaigned to fundamentally change government roles. The point for Trump is not just to be President. He wants to change governmental rights and responsibilities. He wants to demolish and redefine.

Sometimes an authoritarian replaces an old boss with a new, worse boss. Other times an authoritarian redefines what being the boss means. The problem with a mainly next election approach, or a mainly keep-doing-what-we-do approach, is that we now need to do other than what we usually do because if Trump isn’t stopped now, his support may grow and elections later may be entirely sham affairs, supposing they happen at all.

So, Trump is in the saddle. He has the government. But the country is not yet in his saddle bag. Trump won just over half the voters. Maybe only one percent over. And how many didn’t vote at all? Additionally, a great many of Trump’s voters think they voted for change, for help for working people, to end war, and to protect embattled lives. They will get none of that. They were already mighty disaffected. They may become even more disaffected, but from a new incumbent.

Nonetheless, if Trump struts to agenda success after agenda success, if he trumpets each agenda success as him serving his people, if he boasts that he is bashing his peoples’ enemies, and if he dominates the airwaves more than ever, what he retains of his support may grow more attached. Having been deceived into thinking that Trump is an antiwar working class hero who seeks people-serving changes, those who now weakly support him, if he soon has many little victories to celebrate, may become convinced of his heroism. We have seen the result of such fealty too often already.

In light of those thoughts, I hope that beyond worrying about future elections, starting in January many leftists will move to stop Trump’s agenda lest by 2026 he abolishes the office of President to declare himself the people’s tribune, which will be Americana for “your Führer.” That danger knocked at our door on Election Day. We let it in. It is about to sit at the head of our table. It is reaching for a very big club. Now is the time to stop fascism’s march.

I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not. In one domain after another any near-term gain that Trump successfully enacts will empower him to seek bigger and more devastating subsequent gains. This could ramp upward monthly or even weekly. From inauguration on, we need to prevent that. But what do we fight against and fight for, and by what means?

I believe millions of people have already realized or will soon realize the full dangers that Trump’s Administration represents. But I also believe that most such people lack much prior experience of grassroots activism. I doubt many know where to go much less what to do to help experienced activists’ efforts to stop Trump.

Unless Trump’s personal weaknesses cause him to get sloppy and overreach, which is certainly quite possible, I believe he will try to ease into his agenda one manageable step at a time. Rhetoric will soar but he will start with smaller, easier, more vulnerable targets. He will celebrate each gain as a wondrous achievement. His media will normalize his methods. Each time he manages a gain, he will go further. That is the trajectory we need to prevent.

I don’t claim that Trump much less activists will proceed entirely as I hypothesize below. Trump may behave more like Trump usually behaves. And with Musk aboard, prospects for chaos rise even higher. Experienced activists will undoubtedly forge better, deeper, and richer plans than the hypothetical possibilities I suggest below. But I do think that a same broad guiding logic will apply to all issues: Creatively connect activist plans so that each activist effort aids the rest. Do not alienate potential allies. Do not give Trump excuses to use what many might deem warranted violence. Make Trump’s aims so costly for him to pursue that he slows or foregoes doing so. Simultaneously build support for further resistance. By our diverse but unifying actions, prevent Trump’s negative agenda but also seek our own positive agenda. At the risk of this commentary getting overly long, I think people may need some specifics to get a better feel for what is coming, however tentative and contingent the specifics may be.

Consider The Border: Trump declares the border closed. He sends additional agents, and perhaps troops to guard it. How might activists make such a choice too costly for Trump to carry through? Familiar options for this and all issues include publicly explaining the harm and displaying people’s opposition in demonstrations at local, state, or national venues. But maybe activists also cross the border and then return to the U.S. with immigrants who seek to enter. Perhaps activists accompany immigrants on foot, in cars, and in whatever ways make sense. When stopped and if arrested maybe activists stay with their new friends and many more activists demand everyone’s release. The point is that to stop Trump as soon as he starts seeking wins, I suspect we will have to take some unusual risks, expand our community, and escalate our thinking. Activists aware of the issues and possibilities will undoubtedly propose, discuss, and advocate worthy border plans beyond my ken. Solidaritous support, or its absence, will decide the border issue.

Consider Deportations: Trump vilifies and tries to deport our undocumented neighbors, workmates, and schoolmates. He likely starts with those in jail and their families. They are his easiest targets. If he succeeds there, then he widens his net. Activists work to expand public understanding of the situation and of the contributions of immigrants. As now and earlier, activists also likely protect and provide sanctuary for potential deportees by blocking police and ICE agents at churches, schools, and perhaps at larger and more dramatic and also more socially disruptive venues where immigrants are invited to sanctuary—like at public schools where faculty and staff invite them, at universities where students invite them, at concert halls where staff and performers invite them, and at sports stadiums where athletes invite them. To deport a million undocumented immigrants a year, that is a thousand thousand. It’s a lot of sanctuaries. Imagine no more symphony and no more football until deportation policies are rescinded. Are such approaches plausible? Experienced, involved activists will propose and advocate whatever campaigns they determine to be most workable and promising. Outcomes will depend on how many participate to together implement winning proposals.

Consider “Enemies”: Trump begins to investigate and prosecute, or perhaps even just incarcerate without investigation various “enemies.” He first targets his most hated and less public adversaries to only later move on to more notable opponents and eventually to whoever dissents sufficiently to earn his ire. Activists of course educate for popular support, but perhaps also flood courts, demonstrate in Washington, and provide sanctuary. Maybe activists also name our real criminal enemies including on Wall Street and hold revelatory people’s tribunals. How many new people respond and react to whatever’s undertaken? That will matter most.

Consider Jan 6 Insurrectionists: Trump frees and welcomes currently jailed MAGA members to the White House. We may say just a minute. We support rehabilitative rather than punitive justice. Perhaps we demand employing inmates to improve their rehabilitative surroundings. Employing inmates to build affordable housing that they and others can later live in. Providing inmates excellent education and job training so they are prepared to contribute to their families and society. Perhaps we say release and welcome into socially worthy pursuits prisoners held for non-violent crimes. Whatever demands and pursuits legal, prison, and other related activists pursue, how many prisoners, prisoners’ families, and others concerned with justice will help refine their proposals and take up the fight? That is what will decide the issues.

Consider LGBTQ+: Trump early on attacks LGBTQ+ people as abnormal or unnatural or whatever garbage he spouts. He expects to have near impunity but activists expand public understanding to combat ignorant prejudices and perhaps also, as with “enemies” and “deportees,” to provide sanctuary and court challenges. Perhaps noted LGBTQ+ performers, athletes, and scientists, plus then various broader Hollywood and athletic communities plus other citizens not only protest and educate but say that Trump can’t deny LGBTQ+ people without denying us all. We will all together resist. Then what?

Consider Reproductive Rights: I doubt Trump will seek abortion bans immediately, especially if our resistance efforts are succeeding for other items. But I think he will at least make overtures and try to prepare the public for this step. Nineteen state bans already exist and more demonstrations that demand reproductive rights and more movements that physically protect mothers and doctors in those states will be heard nationally as well. And whether that is part of an unfolding approach, or different and additional steps are taken, perhaps caring doctors and pretty much all nurses will decide to strike for associated demands. Dissent that steadily deepens and broadens wins.

Consider Homelessness: Trump enlarges anti-homeless rhetoric and then urges and finances sweeps in urban areas where he needs to bolster his support. Beyond education, what might activists do? Perhaps demand that millions more units of housing be built. Perhaps demand that more housing be provided right now in under-utilized motels and hotels. Perhaps activists will sit with the homeless to be swept up with them if it comes to that, and will then demand release for all. Perhaps activists will demand rent rollbacks and rent control plus defend against evictions. Whatever plans housing activists and their constituencies arrive at to implement, will they also help activists who address the other focuses of resistance, and will other activists who tackle different primary focuses help them? That would be an overarching development Trump could not easily ignore.

Consider Healthcare: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seeks to cut budgets and Medicare. He seeks legal penalties and de-Fluoridation. He announces insane vaccine limits, and guts drug safety policies. Perhaps the main first step activists employ to block these type efforts is to disrupt Kennedy’s appointment along with demanding and demonstrating for funding rural medical centers and especially to provide medicine and health care as free rights for all. Not only the scale of such resistance but also its trajectory would be compelling.

Consider Labor Protections and NLRB Appointments: To stop incursions on labor undoubtedly education, demands, and displays of dissent will arise. Higher minimum wage? Stronger child labor protection? Pass the PRO-Act? But what beyond that? Perhaps protests brought to the Halls of Congress? In any event, labor opposition led by the most militant and aware parts of the labor movement will need to be creative and speak to the widest possible labor audience. A national strike has been proposed for four years from now. If Harris had won, that would have been very sensible. Long prep time would have fostered great preparedness and participation. But with Trump having won, four years from now may be harder, not better. If many areas of resistance to Trump are growing and winning, perhaps it will make sense to move up the national strike. Whatever plans emerge, how many will support labor’s program, defend labor, and join it?

Drill Baby Drill: Trump will say he is doing it day one. Will he be? Will new or old sites be expanding their activity? If so, in addition to other on-going climate and Green activism perhaps those who have been involved for years will add widening paths for consideration and support. Block the Drills, Baby, Block the Drills. Provide for ex-fossil fuel workers. Expand mutual aid and social protections. Here might arise a worthy use for public service by even military (but now protective) forces, nationally and internationally.

Civil Rights Enforcement: Trump will want to reduce funding for agencies and programs that protect against repression and oppression. Again, education, rallies, and demands will arise. Perhaps people will also seek community control of police and various new police training and on the job requirements and responsibilities. Maybe some citizens who have suitable background and experience will even join the police to organize from within. Perhaps activists will decide to seek to communicate with police as workers and citizens, and not as presumed acolytes of violence and Trumpian control.

Cabinet Appointments: Trump is already high on this. Mostly he will want beholden cowards. So but for a few, if that, his appointments are likely to be a clown show. What might we do about that? Research the appointees? Educate about them? Yes, but these are new times. While activists avoid provoking violent responses, perhaps we protest appointees where they live, or maybe better yet at the law firms, media outlets, and other institutions they partner in. Make business as usual very difficult for those who spawned the likes of Trump’s Cabinet appointees. Perhaps also propose alternative candidates. Maybe convene an alternative shadow cabinet, even an alternative shadow government, whose members provide research, propose legislation, and advocate and facilitate change.

Civil Service Employees: Trump will likely initiate mass replacements. What to do? Lawsuits? Education and rallies? How about surrounding the agencies that are being taken over and preventing the new hires access? Perhaps treat them as if they are scabs, because they are. Could something like that be organized as more and more people and unions realize just what is at stake?

Social Security: Can Trump be crazy enough to mess with this? I doubt it.

Regulatory Government Departments including the FDA, EPA, CDC, etc.: This seems like firing employees, except more visibly. So what might activists do? Educate and display dissent, of course. But how about occupying the agencies first with seasoned activists but perhaps then with professionals in the same fields? Imagine doctors and researchers from all over society who organize to protect those who are supposed to protect the public.

Non Profits: This is like reducing government regulatory departments except out in the world of progressive non profits that pursue various popular programs. I think Trump will go after less popular targets before he goes after more popular ones. But regardless, Trump’s thinking is likely to be like that of all authoritarians. The more of civil society I can decimate, the more I can take over, the better it will be for me. Perhaps non-profit media should prepare their audiences to defend their existence or even to carry it on, but more clandestine, and from elsewhere if need be. Too apocalyptic? Maybe—but maybe not.

Voting Rights: I think this is at least a way down the road and will then depend on how Trump has done with his other agenda items, and derivatively with how much popular and institutional support he retains. That is why future elections depend on current successful resistance.

Public Schools and Universities: The ban the books, curb socially relevant education, regiment all learning, and put religion in the classroom wing of Trump’s support may gain his executive backing. Whether they do or not, fascistic parents, albeit incredibly confused, should not be permitted to take over school boards and impose anti-education policies. What to do? Maybe teachers resist en masse. Maybe parents do. This would certainly be harder in committed Trump country than elsewhere, but maybe anti Trump parents and teachers can reach through Trumpist myths and fears, especially once progress is occurring on other fronts. Maybe education-focussed movements can propose curriculum changes to actually benefit students. Perhaps movements can also welcome night time social and educational uses of otherwise empty public school buildings and university facilities to benefit local parents and families. Trump may start with private colleges and universities including using federal funds and whatever else he can muster to impose ideological restraints on administrations and faculties. Students and faculty re-conceiving and taking over schools may be their only remedy.

Public Libraries: Same as for public schools, or so it seems to me…

Green Investment and the Paris Climate Agreement: ecological survival may need local creative blockages, but no doubt also regional and national displays of sustained resistance of whatever sorts Green activists and supporters plan. Plus, and perhaps most important, activists might generate clear evidence that Green activists are eager and ready to aid all the other areas of struggle, and also to welcome all other areas to aid Green efforts. The merging of all opposition elements to collectively stop each aspect of Trump’s agenda—that is something everyone would hear.

Judicial Reform: Perhaps Biden can be pressured to grow the Supreme Court now and populate every open position he can with sensible jurists. Otherwise, perhaps activists will treat judicial appointments much like all appointments get treated, but also dissent and protest them like all bad policies.

Media: All authoritarians seek media control. Those who attain it become far more entrenched and destructive than those who don’t. Trump already has quite a bit of beholden media, both more and less mainstream. He will likely move to control still more, whether via licensing penalties, legal assaults, buyouts, replacements, or who knows what other tactics. What will activists propose? Can activist media work more collectively? Can activist media better coordinate coverage? Better aid activism? Better conduct fund raising? Can the public better Press the Press?

Military Policy: Almost everything may be impacted by the threat and actuality of domestic military intervention. Other than education, visible protest, and unity across focuses, will activists have other ideas? Perhaps some activists will join and then organize inside the military as during the Vietnam War? Maybe others will set up shop at the gates to military bases to provide progressive information and support for what will be growing numbers of dissenting soldiers.

International Relations: Of course activists will continue to demand an immediate ceasefire in the Mideast. Perhaps they will reinitiate the brilliant encampments of not many months back, this time not only behind the peace demand, but behind every aspect of anti Trump, anti Fascist resistance that the encampments can usefully gather student and faculty support for. And maybe activists will enlarge resistance to some old on-going targets like the Pentagon, the military budget, and Masters of War.

I know that many may feel my words above describe a delightful wish list but may also wonder if I have lost my mind. They might say I am too apocalyptic about Trump. They might say I am too optimistic about resistance. They might say they wish it was where more people are at. They might say couldn’t you have done one or two examples and moved on. But I believe I am neither too apocalyptic about Trump nor too optimistic about resistance. And I know that of course many of us aren’t ready today for all the above, but don’t lots of people have to get ready quite soon? Lots of examples ensure realizing just how much is at stake. Isn’t how to do it all what experienced activists need to think about? Isn’t it our job to ask how we get where we need to go?

I hope I am wrong but I think we have to mount sufficient resistance to block Trump early and then to stop him for good later. If we assume we can’t do that, we won’t do it. That’s where we began this article.

Forget about cynicism. Forget about defeatism. What to do now is the question we need to answer. Not who or what can we blame. And in any event a good many Democratic Governors, Mayors, and Congresspeople are going to be important allies for the tasks ahead. So ask not about yesterday. More than enough people are doing that. Ask how can we stop Trump. And whatever answers emerge, don’t we have to propose them, discuss them, figure out how to implement them, and then act on our plans? All quite soon.

We don’t need crazy, wild, juvenile, shaming or posturing. But we also don’t need resignation, “internal firing squads” or magical thinking. While respecting real difficulties, we can’t put off what we need to undertake until it is too late to undertake it.


ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.  Donate



Michael Albert
Michael Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. His personal interests, outside the political realm, focus on general science reading (with an emphasis on physics, math, and matters of evolution and cognitive science), computers, mystery and thriller/adventure novels, sea kayaking, and the more sedentary but no less challenging game of GO. Albert is the author of 21 books which include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World; Fanfare for the Future; Remembering Tomorrow; Realizing Hope; and Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Michael is currently host of the podcast Revolution Z and is a Friend of ZNetwork.

Directly Challenging the US Empire, Capitalism, and the Global Climate Crisis

Thoughts on the Morning After the Night Before (a few days later)

By Kim Scipes

November 11, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.





Well, the Democrats failed to keep Donald Trump out of the presidency again. That’s going to hurt a lot of people. I assume most of us would prefer that he was not in this position. However, I argue that if we carefully examine the situation, we can see that the situation is not as bleak as initially suggested—for example, Trump is an “attractor,” not a leader—and that if we on the left respond intelligently, we can have a major impact on this country and its role in the world.

The question now is how might the left—very broadly defined—understand and respond to the current political situation in the US? Assuming others will try to address this issue as well, I will share my analysis. (I don’t think any one person has all of the answers, but I believe that we can each contribute our respective analyses to help develop a valuable collective understanding.) Since I have been researching and writing over the last 40-plus years, I evaluate where my analysis was right and where it was wrong. Then I suggest where I think we might move to shape the future.

My biggest failure regarding the 2024 presidential election was not in my analysis, but in my lack of imagination. I think my analysis was very prescient, especially the part of the seismic economic changes that have been taking place in the country over the last 40 years and the on-going failure of capitalism for working people. However, I failed ultimately because I could not imagine people in response rallying behind Donald Trump; by voting for him, they were endorsing a representative of all the forces and policies that had destroyed much of the domestic based economy and local communities on which they had previously depended.

But who to turn to? Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the large majority of the Democratic Party have also been complicit in this corporate-led internal suicide that has victimized tens of millions of the US’s working people, and without having any real concrete proposals to address the social devastation of the last 40 years, they were at a serious disadvantage; at least Trump acted like he cared for those victimized, or at least he sympathized.

In short, I underestimated Trump and his ability to attract and hold on to followers. This, I argue, does not make Trump a leader; it argues he is an attractor; he attracts people. There is a big difference. What I’m saying here is that Trump has no real solutions to address social problems he and his campaign had identified. Therefore, we should recognize that there is a big difference between MAGA activists and pro-Trump voters: there is a space between them, and we need to blow this unity apart. Trump has an ability to unify those who think they have been mistreated, rightfully or wrongfully and, through his personality, get them to see commonality and follow him. I deem him “sniveler in chief”; no solutions but plenty of “I’ve been done wrong…!”

This is an important distinction that must be understood: this was an election against all our problems, not one that advanced solutions to address them.

What the Democrats got right in this election, in my opinion—pushed by core constituencies—is the understanding that we must include everyone possible into the American “family,” and that we can no longer tolerate inequities in how different groups get treated; that we cannot go back to the days of excluding white women or people of color from the pie; that white and male supremacy is totally unacceptable. Period. And this has grown as more and more people have received college educations, where these understandings have been developed and pushed.

However, at the same time, the Democrats ignored poor and working Americans, of all ethnicities, those white and people of color.

(And, at the same time, the Dems refused to honor those—particularly younger activists—who have a global perspective, hate the US role in the world, and care about people outside of our borders; the most grievous “fuck you” came around a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic National Convention.)

The problem is that enlargement of the American “family,” if you will, comes at a time when this family has been and remains under unrelenting attack by capitalism, and that this has been true for over 40 years, and capitalism’s ability to support working and poor people cannot expand; it can only continue to shrink. And nobody wants to address this reality: capitalism provides no long-term solution for the large majority of us!

So, with limited resources—as I argue below, for the elites, the Empire always comes first!—the elites of both parties have prioritized the needs of those in urban areas over those in rural areas. Supposedly, the cities were where the votes “lived,” but a lot of ones and twos spread over space out can come to a total a higher number.

This was an election where the rural United States rebelled against the urban US; I believe it was more of a “you’ve ignored us, and now we won’t let you do this anymore!” rather than the beginning of a rural-urban real war. And from what I can tell, there’s a lot of truth to this; the elites have ignored rural folks throughout the country. (For a powerful yet succinct analysis of how Wisconsin, a largely rural state, has been screwed over since the 1970s, see Roger Bybee, “The Role of Corporations,” in It Started in Wisconsin, edited by Mari Jo Buhle and Paul Buhle, 2012, Verso: 127-143.)

In ZNet, during August 2023, trying to combine all I had learned as a scholar and primarily a labor activist over the years, I published an analysis of the last 40 years (1981-2023) of the US in the world. I argued that we had to take a global perspective to truly understand this situation. (It is a very lengthy article, published in five separate articles—both are on-line for free. Parts 3 & 4 are most relevant to this article.) I have seen nothing comparable to it, before or since. In this, I quickly reviewed how the social order emerged from World War II, how it developed until 1981 (the end of Jimmy Carter’s administration), and then went into detail of its “development” since 1981, when Ronald Reagan became president.

I’m not going to review this entire article—I recommend that everyone reading this read the original article—but want to draw your attention to one very crucial detail that was all but ignored in this recent election campaign: the US National Debt. Quickly, the National Debt is a collective representation of all the surpluses and deficits enjoyed by the country since its founding as an independent country in 1789; it includes expenditures for all of the many US wars, social projects (such as New Deal), and specific programs (space program, interstate highway system). From 1789-1981 (192 years) the US National Debt reached $909 billion dollars or, more helpful for our purposes here, $ .9 trillion dollars. Ronald Reagan came into office after running as a “fiscal conservative” and, in eight years (1981-1989), doubled the National Debt from $ .9 to $2.7 trillion! (You can’t include what you started with, so it’s doubled instead of tripled.) That has expanded since then, under both Democrats and Republicans, and today, the National Debt is almost $36 trillion! (The annual deficit for 2024 alone was $1.8 trillion—twice that of the entire National Debt in 1981!)

Why is this important? What does it mean? It means that the economy, as bad as it has been, has been this good not because of solid economic production, as “suggested” by the political-economic elites, but because of financial manipulation; our leaders have been spending money that they don’t have, they have been writing “hot” checks! It is this financial manipulation that has allowed the US to do as well as it has; it has not been based on solid economic growth!

Now that in and of itself should be alarming. If you go to the US National Debt clock, which shows the national debt in real time, they also show how this compares to Gross Domestic Product or GDP, which is a measure of values of goods and services produced by this nation every year for the market (to be bought and sold). In 1960, the debt to GDP ratio was 52.21 percent; by 1980, it was down to 34.70 percent; by 2000, it had climbed to 54.48 percent, and as I write on November 9, 2024, it is 122.84 percent. And although they do not include a measure of the ratio of debt to GDP (which could be easily added to the chart), the St. Louis office of the Federal Reserve System publishes a visual representation of the growth of the National Debt since 1960 which is at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN.

Now, this in and of itself is a disaster in the making. But it’s even worse: as the National Debt continues to increase—and it is—the rate of interest on the debt increases. Going back to the National Debt clock, we are paying somewhere around $5.5 trillion this year just on the interest alone! This does not include paying down any of the principle of the debt owed. This is money being paid to investors, including to governments of foreign countries, that must be paid to enable us to continue to sell US Treasury Bonds to them to help finance the National Debt; if investors refuse to buy our bonds, we become observably bankrupt. Think of it as similar to the minimum monthly payment on your credit card; it must be paid to maintain any kind of recognizable economic viability.

So, until forthrightly addressed by our “leaders,” our National Debt will continue to climb, it is over 100 percent of GDP—which means if everyone worked for a year and took no pay checks (stay with me!), no investors got paid money due them (please!), etc., etc., we still could not eradicate the debt within a single year. This will continue to worsen the longer it continues: the interest rate due on the debt will increase (which, in turn, will add to the National Debt, and our National Debt will increase to greater and greater extents (i.e., exponentially).

Now, despite being unknown by most Americans, this is not rocket science and it is recognized by Central Bankers around the world: the US is bankrupt; we can never pay back these debts in any foreseeable time, especially if we continue as we are doing.

Why have these bankers not shared this with the world? Because should the United States declare bankruptcy, it would cause the entire global economy to collapse with immense social and individual suffering; the global economy is dependent on the US serving as the market of last choice, as the country that will buy their own goods and services under any conditions which, in turn, allows their respective economies to work: without that US capability (or perhaps, more realistically today, China’s), it would be catastrophe in probably every country in the world, and certainly all but the largest.

Part of this is by design; part of it is a natural outgrowth of the design. The design was the Bretton Woods agreements of 1944, when the US and the UK planned the post-World War II global economy under the conditions then existing: US domination of the world economy, as the only industrialized country to emerge all but unscathed from the death and destruction of the war and with the most modern and productive economy in the world, and with a dynamic labor movement that could force the largest corporations to share with their members. They designed the post-War economy to continue this status quo.

The natural outgrowth of this design was that it directly benefited those of us in the US as well as those who lived in other imperialist countries (often referred to as “developed” countries, but we were never told the basis of how they developed) at least until the late 1960s-early 1970s. Then, inter-capitalist competition—initially from corporations in imperialist countries and then, in the late 1970s, from a few corporations from a few formerly colonized countries—started changing the game, so that by 1980, major change had to come to the United States. (This is what Ron Cox’ work on global capitalist corporations—referenced in the original analysis—illuminates, while my work focuses more on the social ramifications of all of this.)

In any case, qualitative change occurs, beginning with the Reagan Administration and continuing until August last year (and continuing to date), which I documented in the original “40 years” article. My analysis has held up extremely well.

So, the current situation is the result of the United States seeking to dominate countries around the world, developing the US Empire and dismembering our domestic economy to do it: while destroying tens of millions of jobs, the US has spent at least $18.3 trillion on US war-making capability between 1981 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine (when the US started funding Ukraine after helping to instigate the Russian invasion in February 2022), and that doesn’t include the cost of developing and maintaining the US nuclear arsenal, nor does it include the $17.9 billion sent to Israel between October 7, 2023 and September 30, 2024. To put it another way, US elites of both political parties have sacrificed the well-being of all Americans for the elite’s vastly overinflated desires to control the world.

Trump voters seem to have recognized that money being spent in Ukraine has come at their expense, and perhaps to pay for Israel’s genocide since October 7, 2023; it’s not as clear regarding Israel. However, in general, they have not recognized the larger situation; that it is the US Empire to which their well-being is being sacrificed. (I’m not being down on Trump voters here; most Harris voters don’t recognize this either, and they don’t even understand about the money going to Ukraine.)

In other words, we on the left—however defined—have ignored a big opportunity and I think it’s time we address this problem: people can repudiate the US Empire, or we can take care of the American people by trying to create a domestic, non-capitalist economy that works for our people: we cannot do both! (While this sentiment is based on the work of Abraham Maslow, my experiences with mostly white, rural, working class students in Indiana over the last 20-plus years have shown they choose to take care of Americans almost anytime this choice is addressed and then presented to them! It doesn’t come automatically, but when discussed intelligently, they prefer taking care of Americans.)

The elites of both mainstream parties have cowed us by their incessant fear mongering about the need for “defense,” which is really money for maintaining if not expanding the Empire and building on past fears of Russia and China. It’s time we confidently take this on.

I think the elites are vulnerable here if we on the left will honestly go forth and challenge US militarism. There are two parts of this: one, neither China nor Russia is going to invade the United States. Period. If either tried, their forces would be decimated. And if the US thinks it can successfully invade either country, we will certainly lose; regarding Russia, just ask the Nazis! (Contrary to much of the US propaganda, at great cost—something like 27 million Russian and Eastern European people, men, women, and children—died defeating the Nazis, compared to the US losses of something like 400 thousand, mostly men in uniform, in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of war; while the US can claim victory over the Japanese, we cannot legitimately claim victory over the Nazis.) And the US Empire has been 0-3-1 in Asia, post-World War II, with the tie being against North Korea in the early 1950s.

The point I’m trying to make here is that our “defense” budget could be cut by about 90 percent and still provide necessary protection for the United States. That money could be used to address our National Debt, as well as do things that would help Americans.

The reality that must be faced is that the continuing arms race with Russia, China or whomever, cannot be won. We can spend until the cows come home—or Central Bankers get honest, which probably won’t be anytime soon!—but there is no way we can gain military superiority over either, much less both, of these countries: we can never eradicate their threat with our current policies. (And they cannot gain military superiority over the United States.) Should anyone of these countries—and a few others—feel existentially threatened by an opponent, it’s nuclear war time; and that means “lights out” for all of us.

In light of this, there is an alternative: now, it would have to be much more elaborate than simply this, but the heart of the issue is to get the major countries to end any thought of dominating another. What I’m thinking of is some sort of a global treaty whereby each major power agrees to not threaten each other or any other political communities, and to do this, immobilize their militaries to the bare necessity. For example, I argue that the US military could adequately defend this country with five of our nuclear submarines. (I assume Russia and China could do the same with their submarine forces.)

Think about it. While I’m behind on the latest operational capability of the US Navy, I think I’m in the ballpark: each of these subs carries 10 missiles, each which carries 16 independently-targeted hydrogen bombs. What that means is that each US nuclear submarine can attack 160 separate targets¸ such as cities, with a nuclear explosive. How many times do you want to make the rubble bounce?

[If you think I’m being crazy, think about the report analyzing the impact of a successful nuclear attack by the US on the USSR in the early 1960s. According to the late Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame, he participated in a study meant for the “President’s Eyes Only,” in which this estimated that 600,000 people would have been killed—in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as in the Soviet Union—and that was if the attack was a success, meaning the US had knocked out the Soviets! Ellsberg himself recognized that this was multiples of the numbers killed in the Holocaust!]

If there were a global “non-attack” treaty—and all of the other military weapons and troops needed to serve them were destroyed and/or demobilized—and there were heavy tax burdens placed on the extremely rich, then there would be billions and billions of dollars available to take care of one’s peoples and perhaps others, especially over time. At the same time, this drastically reduced military capability would still serve as a deterrent to an attack by anyone violating the treaty.

The point is that Empire=Death or at least national bankruptcy with increasingly widespread social disruption and economic distress. Capitalism has failed the large majority of people, both in this country and around the world, and threatens the extermination of all humans, animals, and most plants by the turn of the next century (the year 2100); see my talk at https://znetwork.org/zvideo/the-climate-crisis-capitalism-or-human-animal-most-plants-survival. We need to create a new economic system to surpass capitalism that will not destroy the environment nor the atmosphere surrounding the planet, and which will place the economic stability and security of all people at the forefront.

It’s time we on the left quit half-stepping and go for the entire enchilada! We must repudiate the US Empire and all of its death and destruction, and seek alternatives to capitalism, both to provide economic support for all of our people and to keep from burning ourselves to death, and for ways to help people in formerly colonized countries! Anything less than a sweeping proposal such as this is, from the beginning, doomed to failure: we need hope, not doom.

And now that we have this complete analysis (which hopefully will continue to develop), it is time to develop a strategy to achieve it: how can we get from where we are today to ending the Empire and capitalism, while allowing humans, animals and most plants to survive? We need to build organizations to develop and implement our strategy, to educate our members, and to win people over to our side, repudiating the false choice between Democrats and Republicans; neither can provide solutions facing most of us. It will take time to do this—it will not happen within an election cycle or two—but we want to try to make decisions on all levels that will move us toward achieving our three-pronged goal.


ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.  Donate

Kim Scipes PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Purdue University Northwest in Westville, Indiana. He is a long-time labor and political activist who has been publishing on AFL-CIO foreign operations since 1989; his path-breaking book is "AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?" (Lexington Books, 2010, 2011 paperback). He is one of the founders of LEPAIO, the Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations (https://aflcio-int.education). A former Sergeant in the USMC, he “turned around” on active duty, and has been a political and labor activist for over 50 years. He has published several books and over 250 articles in the US and in 11 different countries. His writings, many with links to the original article, can be found at https://www.pnw.edu/faculty/kim-scipes-ph-d/publications/.