by MHI
I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within … sick people, radical left lunatics. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by[sic] National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.
–Donald Trump, October 13, 2024, in a TV interview
I. Introduction
On January 20th, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States of America. He promises mass deportations, continued scapegoating of transgender people, concerted attacks on academic freedom, and even more vicious, authoritarian measures.
Since Election Day, Trumpist GOP elected officials have taken to declaring “elections have consequences.” Senator Lindsay Graham used this line to push back against fellow Senate Republicans who were chafing at Trump’s appointments. By doing so, Graham was, in essence, saying that Trump believes he was handed a mandate by the American electorate and that any challenges to his leadership, appointments, or legitimacy are unconscionable. Elections have consequences.
The victory of Trumpism in the 2024 presidential election has invigorated the Trumpists. They feel energized, they feel affirmed, and they have the momentum. It doesn’t matter to them that Trump’s popular vote victory was only a plurality, as they have never had any interest in the truth. This is a threat of truly gigantic proportions. It is a threat, and this is not hyperbole, that could see us facing nuclear war in our lifetimes. A threat of this scale demands a new stage in the struggle of humanity at large against Trumpism. Because of the strong opposition to Trumpism from large segments of the population, particularly groups and individuals whom its agenda will harm, we can expect substantial resistance. The narrowness of his electoral victory and failure to win a majority of the popular vote reinforces this point.
Since 2015, Marxist-Humanist Initiative has beaten the drum about the threat of Trumpism. In this new stage, MHI will continue to project our understanding of Trumpism, to aid those looking for theoretical tools to combat it, and to look for any new avenues of resistance that may arise. Spontaneous outpourings of resistance must be supported, as only mass movements from below, and maybe even social revolution, can be counted on now to halt Trumpism.
In this new stage, we must begin our work by asking who our allies really are. Before all else, being an ally against Trumpism means seeking to understand Trumpism. MHI began a prolonged and theoretical consideration of this movement, and the people that make it up, all the way back in 2015. For example, Andrew Kliman conducted a statistical analysis of Obama-Trump voters which demolished the argument that “economic anxiety” was the prevailing motivation for Trump voters, particularly for the so-called “white working class.” As the same old lines, “economic anxiety” and all, are now being recycled again, we must demand a full recognition of what Trumpism actually is from all who claim to be allies. It’s too late in the game to vacillate about what we’re facing.
To sum up MHI’s conclusions, the Trumpist base is authoritarian, white nationalist, misogynistic, nativist, and actively anti-democratic. They cannot be ignored, appeased, or convinced to abandon their views. They must be defeated and made to face consequences for their fascism.
Additionally, liberal democracy must be protected from authoritarians. This is a worthwhile political struggle, on its own merits. Marxist-Humanists have no interests separate and apart from the working class, and it is indisputable that an authoritarian regime is more punishing to the working class than a bourgeois liberal democracy. Moreover, the individual rights and freedoms that have been won under liberal democracy are ends. They are worth protecting on their own merits.
Furthermore, the Trumpist base existed before Trump. There has long been an anti-intellectual, authoritarian population in America. For example, Andrew Kliman has shown the connection between George Wallace voters, and what now manifests as Trumpism. The continued existence of this authoritarian base is an artifact of the unfinished nature of the American Revolution. This base will exist, either as an activated fascist movement or in an embryonic state, until the unfinished revolution is completed.
As we stated in our 2017 document Resisting Trumpist Reaction,
This part of our Perspectives seeks to draw lessons from Marx’s writings and practice that can help combat Trumpism and other expressions of white nationalism. In Section A, we argue that Trump’s election was not due to an uprising of the “white working class” against “economic distress” brought about by neoliberalism, but an expression of a long-standing white-nationalist strain of US politics. Section B examines Marx’s writings on and activity around Irish independence and the US Civil War. The foremost lesson we draw from this examination is that fighting white nationalism in the tradition of Marx entails the perspective of solidarizing with the so-called “white working class” by decisively defeating Trumpism and other far-right forces. Their defeat will help liberate the “white working class” from the grip of reaction and thereby spur the independent emancipatory self-development of working people as a whole.
[Emphasis added.]
This is the understanding that MHI will strive to project out of the organization, and it must be part of the starting point of any dialogue on Trumpism with those outside of the organization. Therefore, we must also face the problem of those within the left who still refuse to acknowledge the reality of the Trumpist threat.
II. Confronting Trump Denialism
Those of us on the left, both within MHI and outside of it, who recognize the threat of Trumpism, must battle against the authoritarian and illiberal tendencies within the left itself. What we have called the soft-on-Trump Left are now nothing short of sympathizers for authoritarians. They must be treated as such.
It is no longer 2016, and we know who Trump and his supporters are. There was never any excuse for spreading misinformation about Trumpism, but it has long since become completely unacceptable. Anyone who is issuing statements, a program, or analysis on Trumpism must recognize the Trumpist base as motivated by authoritarianism, anti-democratic ideology, and white nationalism. If they have not accepted the reality of that understanding, they are an accommodationist, actively spreading misinformation, or are a willing collaborationist. There must be zero tolerance for apologetics for Trump and his base.
With his second electoral victory, Trumpist apologetics have become more prevalent. The sympathizers argue that this victory has legitimized his presence in the American political scene. Some elected Democrats are now behaving as if Trump’s persistence in the political scene has normalized his politics, but it’s not that simple. Time does not heal all wounds, and an election cannot legitimize a fascist. Even the media, which was targeted by Trump before and who he has explicitly threatened with censorship, are back to doing their “diners in rural America” reporting on the hearts and minds of the “left behind” Trumpists. It’s as if we haven’t danced this dance once already. We don’t have time to flirt with apologetics, and we have to look at these fascists with clear eyes.
Unfortunately, the Democrats run the risk of letting these apologetics take root in their party if they don’t work to quash this now. Already we have heard the same old lines about “reaching out” to Trump voters and “meeting them in the middle.” Bernie Sanders’s self-serving statement after Election Day, which argued that the fault lied with the Democrats for “abandoning working class voters,” is so off the mark as to be delusional. The fault indeed lies in part with the Democrats, but not because they failed to appeal to the Trumpists. Rather, they are at fault for letting Trump remain on the ticket. For not ensuring a swift, legal prosecution of Trump for January 6. For, clearly, not taking the Trumpist threat as seriously as they should. Crucially, they also bear responsibility for not successfully inculcating and projecting an understanding of the Trumpist base that aligns with reality. Individual Democratic politicians have been strong on this, and clearly recognize the Trumpists for what they are, but they have not been able to embed that understanding into their party.
If the Democrats do adopt a line on the fascists that they are “economically anxious” and “responding to liberal overreaches,” then they will be accepting a role as a collaborationist party. This would be a terrifying outcome. They would be, for all intents and purposes, a controlled opposition. This is a role that some Democrats could be willing to embrace because they may see it as the only way to retain relevance in a political scene that has been completely shaped by Trumpism. Surely that would be a shortsighted devil’s bargain, but for careerist, bourgeois politicos it could make a twisted kind of sense. History has shown us that it’s more than a possibility.
While MHI is not entirely alone in recognizing the threat, we are currently in a minority. During the first Trump administration, spontaneous resistance appeared throughout the term. From the Women’s March, to the mass protests against the Muslim ban, and the mass uprising after the police murder of George Floyd, there were multiple different fonts of outrage that forced people onto the streets to push back against Trumpism.
What is new in the results of the 2024 election is that a substantial share of voters appear capable of splitting their ballot. According to NPR: “in each of the ten states with abortion protections on the ballot, the state’s ballot measure saw greater support than Kamala Harris, indicating that many people voted both to elect Donald Trump and to protect access to abortion.” These results show that resistance to Dobbs, which may have been labeled as anti-Trumpist before this, could come from Trumpists. The split-ballot voters can and must be cleaved away from the Trumpist base. We must show them that any worthwhile resistance to Dobbs must be anti-Trumpist.
However, the phenomenon of the split-ballot voters proves that all resistance to Dobbs may not be, at least in its first manifestation, anti-Trumpist. It is because of this tension that, while we must support spontaneous resistance to aspects of the Trumpist program, we must also ensure that we engage in these movements and project our understanding of Trumpism. It mustn’t be the case that there is a mass movement against the brutality, misogyny, and cruelty of anti-abortion laws, that doesn’t tie those unnecessary deaths and human pain to Trumpism.
MHI intends to practice our idea that social movements are capable of self-development. We refuse to dismiss initiatives or organizations because they aren’t perfect. But we also refuse to stay silent about the deficiencies, inadequacies, and limitations of the movements we are participating in. The disastrous, misogynistic, and heinous Dobbs decision must be resisted, and that resistance is worthwhile in and of itself. That being said, it must also combat Trumpism or it will be lost. Afterall, Trumpism is the movement that secured the far right dream of overturning Roe v. Wade. Trump appointed the SCOTUS justices that gave the right wing a supermajority on the court. This is the risk of spontaneous resistance to Trumpism without a theoretical framework for understanding it: they can fight one head of the Hydra and never put down the whole beast.
The truth is that we are entirely reliant on mass spontaneous resistance, as all other avenues of resistance have failed. The courts are controlled by Trumpism. All of Trump’s legal woes are gone, defeated not by any legal precedent or decision, but by the fact that “elections have consequences.” The Democratic party is toying with Trumpist apologetics. Trumpism has warped every institution around it to accommodate its fascism. While he has not, as of yet, fully secured the US military, Trump has announced his intention to replace the military’s top brass at the military, a move which must also be fought. So, we must look outside of the institutions, to the streets, and the streets will be sure to stir. Trump remains unpopular and he will push people into fury, but if the streets do not adopt a totalizing view of Trumpism, and a positive philosophy of democracy, then we are in serious danger.
III. The Extent of the Danger and the Threat to Liberal Democracy
MHI was always willing to confront Trumpist apologetics, but the need for that confrontation is at an all-time high. We are in an extremely dire situation, far more serious than his first election eight years ago. The state of the world scene is far more fragile, and the institutions of American democracy are still wounded from his last term. He is poised to strike upon a weakened liberal democracy and do enough damage to usher in decades of bloodthirsty, unchecked reactionary rule. All of that is if we even make it through this term. Trump is entering into office as war rages in Ukraine and in the Middle East. His authoritarian allies abroad are eager to be given carte blanche from the US president to continue their imperialist activities, with his backing and support.
He has surrounded himself with the Heritage Foundation, Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other extreme far-right reactionaries. Although some are of different stripes, the whole band is a fascist crew. The appointments that he has been gleefully announcing are all of men with no political accountability or future behind his will. They will help him hollow out democracy from within, and, in the case of the Heritage Foundation affiliates, have explicitly declared their intention to do so.
During the first Trump term, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was publicly shamed into leaving Trump’s economic advisory council. Throughout that term, and especially after January 6, big business kept Trump at arm’s length. More than just being unpalatable for the public, his instability was widely viewed as “bad for business,” both the business of government and the wider economy. A frightening development, which took place over the tail end of the presidential campaign and especially since the election, has been a noticeable change in the posture of big business towards Trump. Jeff Bezos silenced the Washington Post editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris. Now, Elon Musk has become so enmeshed in the incoming Trump administration that Congresswomen Jasmine Crockett has dubbed him Trump’s “co-president.”
These two notable, and frightening, examples are just anecdotes of individual capitalists. The larger trend is the real story, and it is the story of Wall Street and Silicon Valley doing what has been called an “about face” on Trump. In a May 2024 article on this turn around, the New York Times reported “more than a dozen bankers, asset managers, hedge fund titans, lawyers and venture capitalists, including attendees of the $25,000-a-head Milken Institute Global Conference this month, said that they were disappointed by Mr. Biden’s economic and border-control policies.” They’re willing to trade democratic norms for economic nationalism, harsh border policy, and trade war with China. Increasing global instability has big business more eager to embrace strongmen. The irony of this is that Trumpism has initiated or exacerbated much of this instability!
The way that Silicon Valley, in particular, has huddled around Trump is as telling as it is unsurprising. Online, the ubiquity and virulence of fascist propaganda is buttressed by Silicon Valley money, in particular by Musk’s fortune supporting the Twitter far-right. Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, Charlie Kirk, and Tucker Carlson are just some of the most well-known figures among the many misogynistic, fascist, and extremely profitable online media enterprises that are working as modern day Goebbels for the Trumpist movement. They spread misinformation and vile dehumanization, and they are allowed to do so on platforms with huge reach.
Again we return to a need for a positive agenda against Trumpism. MHI is not in the business of writing programs, nor do we intend to start. MHI does not have the illusion of itself as the sole author of a positive anti-Trumpist agenda. Instead, we maintain that the agenda must be developed by anti-Trumpist movements coalescing with each other and a vision of a post-Trumpist society. MHI hopes our theoretical labor up to this point would be of assistance to such a development.
It’s not just about halting the damage he could do, or even repairing what he’s broken, but crucially about fighting for expanding civil liberties, democracy, and preventing another Trump. The issue raised by Silicon-Valley post-truth politics is that Trumpism cannot be defeated without defeating post-truth. This is the awful vastness of the struggle facing us. We cannot defeat fascism if a vast fascistic propaganda array is allowed to operate unimpeded, but we cannot dismantle that array until we defeat fascism.
IV. Struggle on a Global Footing and Completing the American Revolution
In his memoir of the Russian Civil War, Victor Serge remembers the nadir of that conflict, when it seemed that the Whites would capture Petrograd. Someone, at that time, asked Lenin what would happen if the Whites won: “Vladimir Ilyich had his usual calm, solid forehead, his usual brisk laugh, jovial and sarcastic: ‘Well, what about it?’ he said, with a triumphant burst of laughter. ‘We’ll go back to underground activity.’”
In a sense, this did happen. The counter revolutionary forces were ultimately triumphant in Russia. A philosophy of human liberation was suppressed, violently, alongside anything that could be an alternative to Stalinism. The struggle for human liberation was pushed back into the margins and the underground. In our moment, Trumpism threatens to push political dissent and Marx into the underground. The only thing that Marxists can be proud of at this time is that Trump hates us. However, when Trump rails against Marxists, surely he doesn’t know about the prevaricating so-called Marxists who are hesitant to criticize him. If Marx’s philosophy is to survive as a living and breathing thing in the twenty-first century, it must be willing to earn the ire that Trump feels for it. We must be willing to continue, or begin, our work. We must be willing to do this, even if he pushes Marxism into the underground.
And what should that work be? I’ve said that we need to project our understanding of Trumpism, because the misunderstandings and prevarications serve only as apologetics. This is paramount. I’ve said that we must join, support, and engage with the spontaneous resistance that rises up in response to Trumpism. This too is paramount. In the thirties, the Stalinists declared “After Hitler, Our Turn,” and we know how that went for them. In responding to the current moment, the Stalinists, Platypus, and others, have made similar mistakes. Why should the masses turn to Marx when the Marxists they hear and see sneer at their struggle against Trumpism? We must stand with them, and show them that Marxist-Humanist philosophy recognizes this threat, as they do.
Simply put, in a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, we do not see merit in looking for “opportunities” for the left. We see self-serving cowardice. The advancement of the lines, programs, and self-conceived parties of the left must not be the priority in this moment when authoritarianism, all around the world, is looking to demolish democracy. Under authoritarianism, the working class inevitably suffers, and has no opportunity to exercise its own independent self-activity. Due to this an international movement for thoroughgoing democracy should be the paramount project of the contemporary left.
Trumpism is the American manifestation of this growing global trend of authoritarianism. It is extremely dangerous because it seizes the most powerful country in the world. Trump will give carte blanche to Putin and Netanyahu and his other authoritarian kindred spirits to continue unchecked. He will abandon the Ukrainians to Putin’s conquest, and he will leave the Palestinians to the mercy of Netanyahu’s vicious war. A regional war in the Middle East is all but started, and the risk of an expanded ground war in Europe is extremely high. We need to consider what struggle on a truly global footing against all authoritarians would look like. We must conceive how we could work solidaristically to combat Trumpism at home and abroad. This is not our struggle to fight alone, but one we can fight with Ukrainians, Russians, Palestinians, Israelis, Hungarians, Indians, Canadians, and so on.
For nearly ten years, Donald Trump has singularly dominated the political scene on the world stage. He has warped every institution he has touched, and he has never faced any real consequences for his crimes. The Democratic party has treated his entrance on the scene as something to dialogue with or respond to; they talk of his supporters as people to persuade. We understand, and have understood, that he is something to overcome. There will never be an end to Trumpism until a positive anti-Trumpism emerges that fights for the very things he seeks to destroy.
What this requires, first and foremost, is getting real. The much commented on subdued reaction of the 2024 resistance, compared to the broad coalition of the 2016 capital-r Resistance, is a product of many commentators, activists, and individuals hitting a political and theoretical dead-end. They can’t imagine how to face a man, and a movement that steamrolls over institutions, the rule of law, petitions, and really any norm. It is a moment that cries out for a new beginning, but that is a movement that will take real, prolonged, and hard-going practical and theoretical engagement from deeper and lower strata of the working class than we have seen engaged in this fight so far.
The so-called left, the activists, and the Democratic party have lost their right to lead this struggle. Now we must turn to the undocumented workers, the queer youth, the Black masses, and everyone who has a stake in fighting for an expanded democracy in the face of an encroaching authoritarianism. The fight is not over yet, we are far from defeated, and we can still see the construction of just such a set of ideas.
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