The clear-cut election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America is a major development in the process of right-wing and extreme right-wing extremism underway in global capitalism. At a time when neoliberalism has deepened abysmal social inequalities that hit women and racialised people the hardest; at a time when the ruling classes are wallowing more and more in an opulence whose legal and illegal sources are so mixed that they can no longer be distinguished; at a time when the climate catastrophe and the collapse of biodiversity caused by the race to make a profit from fossil capital are hitting millions of poor people hard and threatening to take them with them; at a time when the race for hegemony is increasingly taking on the hideous face of neo-colonial supremacism and the savage appropriation of wealth at the cost of monstrous massacres.
In short, as the world moves closer to a tipping point into barbarism, an electoral system inherited from slavery, an openly reactionary private media and social networks operated by rogue capitalists like Elon Musk are handing over the government of the leading superpower to an unscrupulous fascist billionaire. A lumpen-capitalist, fraudster, liar, rapist, manipulator, racist, avowed putschist, openly climate-negationist and militarist through and through... It’s a planetary earthquake, a major advance in the authoritarian nihilism that gangrenes the ruling classes.
Putin and Netanyahu are jubilant: they can continue to spill rivers of blood and tears in Ukraine and Palestine without even a semblance of disapproval from Washington.Orban, Meloni, Le Pen, Wilders and their far-right friends are jubilant: they see the moment approaching when the European Union could fall completely into their net.
From North to South, from East to West, the criminals are gloating: insults, demagogy, virilism and the most shameless lies are being used to seize power in order to clear their names and become even richer in the service of the god of Capital.
Already incapable of ensuring peace and justice, or protecting the climate in the face of the dictates of the powerful, the UN and its agencies can only become increasingly powerless in the face of perils of all kinds. This will soon become clear at the COP in Baku, Azerbaijan. Not to mention the danger of war between China and the USA!
In the United States itself, the worst is to be feared. Unlike his first term, Donald Trump is coming to power with a team determined to apply a precise programme: ‘Project 2025’, concocted by the ultra-reactionary Catholic lobby of the Heritage Foundation.
Funded by the furthermost right-wing of the ruling class (notably the Koch brothers, magnates of the chemical and fossil fuel industries), this programme is a veritable declaration of war against the exploited and oppressed:
- - the establishment of a strong government with a federal administration and a justice system at its beck and call;
- - the tracking down, detention and deportation of 10 to 11 million illegal immigrants;
- - restoring patriarchal authority by banning abortion, suppressing LGBTQ rights and undermining inclusion policies;
- - the dismantling of environmental regulations, in particular to promote the extraction of fossil fuels;
- - the dismantling of the timid social protections introduced by the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’);
- - a new wave of massive tax cuts for business and the wealthy;
- - a deliberate move towards economic protectionism.
It is not certain that Trump will be able to implement this programme, which is full of contradictions (import taxes, in particular, can only boost inflation!). But the general direction is unambiguous.
This victory for reaction did not fall from the sky. On the one hand, it is rooted in the United States’ slave-owning and segregationist past, the breeding ground of a white, revanchist, patriarchal and Catholic conservative right, panicked by the phantasmatic fear of the “great replacement”. On the other hand, it is the adulterated expression of growing popular disgust with the political elites of both parties, especially since the Democrats and Republicans (led by Bush and Obama) joined hands to save the banks hit by the super-prime crisis in 2008. While drawing on the long history of white domination, Trump’s success lies in having managed the improbable gamble of capitalising on this disgust, not to build a new party - like Mussolini or Hitler - but to conquer the Republican party to the point of transforming it completely into an instrument at his service.
After Joe Biden withdrew, ‘Kamala, you’re fired’ became Trump’s battle cry. Faced with his brutality, while the vice-president’s candidacy had initially aroused a great deal of enthusiasm and combativeness, the Democratic general staff opted for a bland and smooth campaign, entirely subordinated to the quest for a ‘bipartisan’ rally with the anti-Trump Republicans. Faced with ‘Project 2025’, Harris rallied behind the exploitation of shale gas by ‘fracking’. Faced with Elon Musk and his ilk, she didn’t even dare call for a tax on big money. Her tour of meetings with Liz Cheney, an ultra-conservative politician and daughter of the hawk Dick Cheney, delivered a very clear message: voters can only choose between neo-liberal continuity (wrapped up in fine words about ‘democracy’) or ‘change’. Voters chose ‘change’... the concrete change embodied by Trump - at the expense of women, migrants, the climate and the poor in general.
This sequence could have had a different outcome. For that to have happened, the left, embodied for a time by Bernie Sanders, would have had to dare to break with the Democrats. It would also have needed to dare to radically convey the message that another world is possible - a non-capitalist world where life is good for everyone on a preserved planet. Finally, in the face of Trump, it should have amplified the powerful social, feminist, anti-racist and anti-fascist mobilisations of 2016-2018. Instead, the main focus was on the Democratic opposition in Congress.
This whole re-entrant curve culminated when Sanders rallied behind Biden in 2020 and the leading figures of the Democratic Socialists of America did the same.
As a result, the outline of a social and ecological alternative represented by the ‘Green New Deal’ was deflated in favour of Biden’s policy of green capitalism. A violently inflationary policy from which Trump has reaped the rewards. A protectionist policy that vindicated Trump. An imperialist policy brought to a climax by Biden’s unwavering support for Netanyahu’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people.
Beyond the legitimate concern it arouses, Trump’s victory sounds a warning - another one: in the face of a growing social and ecological catastrophe, the strategies of the lesser evil always pave the way for an even greater evil. It’s not ‘fascism’ yet, but it’s getting close. Trump is a kind of fascist and there is no shortage of genuine fascists in his entourage. Only mass struggles, the political independence of struggles and their convergence towards a radically ecosocialist political alternative can stop the march to the abyss. This path is becoming even more difficult, as Trump’s victory amplifies the deterioration in the balance of power. But there is no other way. In the United States, trade unionists in the health, education and automobile sectors, who have recently waged major struggles, will no doubt be on the front line. With women fighting for their rights. Their struggle is our struggle.
Published the 6th of November 2024 by la Gauche anticapitaliste. Translated for International Viewpoint.