Politics

The Democrats’ fight against Bernie is appearing futile. Like a python choking on an elephant, they’ve miscalculated. The Party elites underestimated their opponent, and with each new attack the snake swallows an extra inch, harming only itself. Establishment figureheads are taking turns ruining their reputation as they attempt to ruin Bernie’s.

The U.S. ruling class as a whole revealed the depth of its crisis in this election: not since the Vietnam War have both wings of the establishment thoroughly discredited themselves. The Republican wing combusted quickly while the Democrats have chosen a slower, more torturous form of self-harm.

The problem with both parties is their inability to serve the super rich while successfully appealing to voters. As inequality widens, democracy suffers. Focusing on the “billionaire class” has catapulted Bernie’s campaign, but the presidency is not an institution that just anybody is allowed to capture.

How will this all play out? Nobody knows. Polls swing wildly in times of flux, making predictions risky. Here are two questions whose answers will guide the future of the election:

1) Can Bernie win the Democratic nomination?

2) If Bernie wins, what next? Will the establishment try to make a deal with him? And will Bernie take it? Or will he remain true to his rhetoric and be a candidate of the 99%?

Nobody except his cheerleaders believed Bernie could actually win, until recently. His momentum combined with Hillary’s crash has forced many to rethink.

An excellent article by Arun Gupta lays bare the machinery of the Party that could be used to decapitate Bernie’s campaign. Yes, the Democratic Party machine could destroy Bernie’s campaign, but it could come at a cost they might not be willing to pay. Most of the Party’s weapons are blunt instruments that leave too much evidence. And millions of people are watching closely.

The first major Party attack misfired badly when the Democrats tried to sabotage Bernie by restricting access to voter data. Hundreds of thousands of people expressed outrage on social media and by signing petitions.

The blowback stunned the Party, which quickly backtracked. They learned a powerful lesson: By destroying Bernie, they could destroy the Party, completely discrediting themselves in front of millions of people.

They didn’t realize how fast the political ground was shifting beneath their feet. Nobody did, and unless an anti-Bernie cryptonite is found soon, the crisis will deepen. Their own electoral game is rigged, yet out of their control.

The trump card of the Party elites is their control of “superdelegates.” But overplaying your best cards is risky too. Imagine Sanders winning the popular vote by wide margins in state after state, only to have the Party machine give the delegates to Clinton. Acting this undemocratically could trigger a deep crisis and destroy the veneer of democracy.

For now the Democrats have opted for a backup plan. It isn’t working. They launched a coordinated pro-Hillary bandwagon campaign, foolishly thinking that Bernie’s populist message could be drowned by a flood of “respected individuals” offering glowing endorsements of Clinton or making cheap attacks against Bernie.

Hillary’s bloated list of endorsers is a “who’s who” among Party elites; nearly every Democratic senator and House representative has endorsed Hillary, while an array of intellectuals have emitted a stream of drivel from their pens and mouths. But their pro-Hillary hack pieces have only invited rage and insults. Nobody likes an arrogant salesman with a shoddy product.

Gloria Steinem, Paul Krugman, Bernie Frank, Madeleine Albright, and a host of others have proven themselves cheap hitmen for the establishment. But their aim is off. The self-inflicted wounds are exposing the hollow intellectualism of the Party elites. Trying to sound smart is tough while making dumb arguments.

Esteemed liberal economist Paul Krugman proved to everyone how clueless he was about political change in his anti-Bernie article “How Change Happens.” His readers skillfully torched him in the comments section.

Famous feminist Gloria Steinem had to apologize for her sexist comment that young women like Bernie because “boys” do.

And Madeline Albright would apologize too, had she any dignity. In her pro-Hillary rant she said there was a “special place in hell” for women who would vote Bernie. But if hell does exist, Albright certainly has her own very special place reserved, for having argued that it was “worth it” that 500,0000 Iraqi children died as a consequence of the U.S. Clinton-era sanctions levied against Iraq.

These “influential” people have lost their authority, which hinged on a political equilibrium that has drastically changed. They can no longer stuff their beliefs down others’ throats. There is a resounding clash of realities which the elites are smashing their heads against, one after another. Young people care nothing about what these so-called experts say. Nor should they.

The mass discrediting of “respected” individuals represents another side of the establishment’s crisis. The question is being posed: who really has the ear of the people? It turns out that very few elites can exert much influence.

They are too alienated. Historic inequality has shrunken the establishment to 1% of the population. Meanwhile, the ranks of the “middle class” have been reduced, most of those still in the “middle class” are now struggling to get by, and the poor are getting poorer.  By breaching this alienation Bernie has exposed the whole rotten system that Hillary hopes to preserve.

The many organizations endorsing Hillary faced similar denunciations from their adherents. Groups like Planned Parenthood, national labor unions, The New York Times, and the League of Conservation Voters proved how unrepresentative they were of their followers and members.

An article by the Intercept noted that “Bernie gets endorsements when members decide; Hillary gets endorsements when leaders decide.” The leaders of these groups miscalculated; they tried to play the old political game without realizing the game had changed. They tried to help Hillary but only harmed themselves.

This dynamic can’t go on much longer. It’s too dangerous; it creates unpredictable political chaos. If Bernie survives the multi-state primary “Super Tuesday” on March 1st, the Party establishment may give up and approach him to make a deal. If they can’t beat Bernie they’ll join him; or more accurately, they’ll officially ask Bernie to join them.

What might an offer look like? Broadly speaking, they would ask Bernie to focus his campaign against the Republicans in certain ways, and if he were to become president they’d ask that he’d adhere to a small list of policy considerations.

But would Bernie take the bait as Obama did? Yes, most likely he would. As argued in a previous article, Bernie supports the unifying priority of the establishment: war and imperialism abroad, which requires less domestic spending at home.

His allegiance to the juggernaut of the U.S. military-industrial complex isn’t a blind spot of his politics; he’s trying to play ball. You’ll notice that Bernie isn’t advocating the slashing of the military budget during the debates, even though the vast majority of people would enthusiastically support such an idea, especially if it meant funding the programs Bernie is promoting.

Another indication that Bernie would be willing to join hands with the 1% is his stated willingness to support Hillary if he loses. If he is so anti-establishment why would he campaign for one of its most notorious figures? As author Diana Johnstone shows in her new book “Queen of Chaos,” Hillary is a quintessential member of the ruling class, representing everything that Bernie claims to be against. His principles are mushier than they appear on TV.

Sanders would surely justify his pro-Hillary campaigning as a “fighting against the right wing,” a common theme of Sanders’ politics over the years. He’s attacks have been limited to Republicans, which is why Obama’s establishment presidency provoked little criticism from Sanders, and never a strong denunciation.

Sanders has already made overtures to the Democratic establishment during his campaign. At a Party conference he pleaded for support, arguing that he is the candidate the Party should unite around since his popularity would increase voter turnout.

There is plenty of other evidence that Bernie could make peace with a Democratic Party agenda, based on the years that he caucused with Democrats in the Senate. It’s true the establishment doesn’t identify with Bernie. They don’t trust him. But Bernie identifies with them.

Many have compared Bernie Sanders with the UK Labor Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. But several articles have made the case, correctly, that Corbyn’s politics are far to the left of Bernie’s, who could taper his rhetoric just a bit to fit into the mold of the Democratic Party elites. The Democrats wouldn’t be able to make a deal with a Jeremy Corbyn, who’s been a consistent anti-war politician for decades, but they could possibly do business with Bernie, were they desperate enough.

The emperor can easily change clothes, and feels comfortable in different skin colors or genders. But capitalism will shed its democratic clothing if needed. If Bernie posed a real threat to core economic interests, the establishment would go to greater undemocratic lengths to prevent him from taking office.

And if Bernie somehow manages to become president without agreeing to a deal, his physical safety would be at risk. It may already be at risk. The U.S. ruling class just doesn’t allow anybody to become president. There is too much money and power at stake. The next few months are sure to be fascinating.

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It is becoming popular to compare the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, as if the two belong to the same “populist” movement, marching in the same direction from different sides of the Atlantic. Far from being significant, however, their points of agreement are entirely superficial and only serve to mask the almost diametrically opposed political trajectories of the two campaigns.

Sanders, for example, has been credited by people like former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich with creating a movement. Reich, in fact, has pointed to this “movement” as a principal reason for endorsing Sanders over Clinton: “I endorse Bernie Sanders for President of the United States. He’s leading a movement to reclaim America for the many, not the few. And such a political mobilization — a ‘political revolution,’ as he puts it — is the only means by which we can get the nation back from the moneyed interests that now control so much of our economy and democracy.”

But attaching the label of “movement” to the Sanders’ campaign mistakes appearance for reality. Sanders’ rallies have certainly attracted large crowds – even larger than those of Obama in 2008. But a crowd is not a movement.

In order to create a movement people must belong to an on-going organization where they participate in the important decision-making of that organization. In this way they play a significant role in defining the direction of the organization, and thus it becomes a part of their own identity as well. Even more, they establish relations with one another where they discuss and debate issues of policy, allow themselves to be influenced by the arguments of others, and influence them in turn. Participants are transformed from isolated individuals into members of a collective will.

But in the Bernie Sanders campaign his supporters do not play a role in establishing campaign policy. His campaign is top-down — like virtually all institutions in capitalist society — where Sanders dictates policy to his supporters. The fans who attend the Bernie Sanders rallies leave as isolated and atomized as when they arrived; they establish no relations among themselves. And Robert Reich should be assured that no political formation that is not itself democratic will succeed in democratizing society.

Sanders is not stupid; he knows he needs a movement to implement his program, given the power of the entrenched special interests of the 1%. But he also knows the risk of creating a movement: you lose control of the organization. Because he refuses to create a movement, his campaign takes on the quality of a fake veneer. This conclusion is forcefully confirmed by his operating within the Democratic Party, an almost entirely top-down organization that offers little more than lip service to working people. And it is confirmed once again with Sanders’ insistence that he will support Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic Party nomination.

The differences between Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn here are stark: Corbyn was elected to his position as head of the Labor Party, and he is accountable to his supporters. Although Sanders was elected as a U.S. Senator, no one elected him to run for president, and he is not accountable to his supporters in his campaign for president. In contrast, Corbyn’s Labor Party is structured so that its members can play a role in defining the Party’s policies, and Corbyn intends to amplify and enhance this option:

“Why not give members the chance to take part in indicative online ballots on policy in between annual conferences – and give our grassroots members and supporters a real say?” he asks, and then adds: “We want to see this democratic revolution extend into our party, opening up decision-making to the hundreds of thousands of new members and supporters that have joined us since May.”

This move towards democracy is already playing out in relation to the Trident nuclear submarine controversy. As International Viewpoint has reported, “But what horrifies the right even more is the way Corbyn is proposing taking the decision on Trident. He has said that it will be the membership, either at conference or a membership vote, that will decide the issue —sidelining the Parliamentary LP and the policy forums.”

Corbyn truly is creating a movement, thanks in large part to this democratic thrust. Thousands of young people have flocked into the Labor Party in order to have a voice in formulating party policy.

Aside from the question of party democracy, there is a second and related pivotal difference between Sanders and Corbyn. Sanders, of course, has advertised himself as a “socialist,” although many genuine socialists have taken offense at his use of the label. For Sanders, several capitalist countries in Europe are “socialist” and should be emulated. In other words, capitalism with a stronger social safety net and stricter government regulation of business for him qualifies as socialism.

The Wall Street Journal, strangely, has gone so far as to claim that Sanders “would also use government to control the means of production.” But Sanders has been quite clear in his rejection of this defining feature of socialism: “I don’t believe the government should own the means of production.”

Corbyn, on the other hand, is moving against privatization in favor of the socialization of services so that they can be democratically controlled and operate in the interests of the public. As reported by the BBC, Corbyn has argued:

“Privatisation isn’t just about who runs a service, it’s about who services are accountable to, it’s about who shares the rewards, about protecting the workforce and getting a good deal for local people who use the services. After a generation of forced privatisation and outsourcing of public services, the evidence has built up that handing services over to private companies routinely delivers poorer quality, higher cost, worse terms and conditions for the workforce, less transparency and less say for the public. We will give councils [councils are elected local governments] greater freedoms to roll back the tide of forced privatisation.”

In other words, Corbyn wants an economy that operates in the interests of the people. Privatization, although heralded by capitalists as the superior alternative because of its “efficiency” and “cost-effectiveness,” has in fact a miserable track record due to its pursuit of profit-maximization at all costs.

Finally, as has been well documented, Sanders has basically supported U.S. imperialism. He supported the bombing of Libya, the invasion of Afghanistan, he voted to fund the Iraq war, supported the U.S. war on Yugoslavia, and supports Israel.

Going in the opposite direction, Corbyn “has consistently been opposed to ‘military interventions’ on principle, including what he has called the ‘disaster’ of the 2003 Iraq invasion,” according to the BBC.

The article continues: “He has said he will oppose any new vote in Parliament for air strikes against the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria as well as Iraq, because bombing would only make IS militants stronger.”

Highly critical of U.S. militarism and NATO, Corbyn wants to place human rights at the foundation of foreign policy while rejecting military intervention in favor of diplomacy. In this way, he argues, the safety of the British people will actually be better secured.

Chris Hedges has reported that he and Kshama Sawant “privately asked Sanders at a New York City event where we appeared with him the night before the 2014 climate march why he would not run for president as an independent. ‘I don’t want to end up like Ralph Nader,’ he told us.” In other words, Ralph Nader is treated like a pariah by virtually the entire Democratic Party.

But there is nothing wrong with how Ralph Nader ended up. His many articles are widely disseminated and significantly influence public opinion. Of course, if the criterion for success is that he walks the corridors of power, rubbing shoulders with power brokers and sharing in their immense privileges, then Nader can be judged a failure.

At the other end of the spectrum, Jeremy Corbyn, in a 2015 interview with Middle East Eye, described his own campaign in this way: “This is a campaign about ‘we,’ not ‘me.’

By putting democracy at the center of his politics, Corbyn is creating a movement that aims at serving the people. Although the Labor Party is not revolutionary, Corbyn is setting in motion a dynamic that could lead in that direction. Sanders has borrowed the rhetoric of democracy while waging an undemocratic campaign in an undemocratic party surrounded by an undemocratic economy. Even if he were to win the presidency, Sanders’ campaign would go no further than Obama’s in producing “change.”

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Shifting political winds are battering the establishment, as the breeze flows to the back of the populists. The left-populist Bernie Sanders didn’t conjure the hurricane but adjusted his sails to it. As the political storm will grow apace with rising income inequality, new social attitudes are bringing fresh expectations, transforming politics as we know it.

What seemed impossible yesterday is suddenly necessary. This newfound urgency is testing the establishment, that looks unsteady in the face of Black Lives Matter, 15Now, climate justice, tenants rights, and opposing the public service cuts that devastated Flint, Michigan and destroyed public education.

The populist-fueled organizing helped expose the wide gap in the establishment’s politics, whose corporate interests prevent the satisfying of such demands. Bernie recognized this was happening and seized the moment, running on a platform that connected with the emerging mood.

He’s far from perfect, but the Left could learn from Bernie’s approach. This political moment is a precious gift, but to receive it you need an open mind and a change of habit. The thousands of new activists across the country engaging in the above issues are largely being ignored by the organized left — Labor, progressive and even socialist groups, most of whom seem too timid to get their hands dirty organizing with the new movements.

The failure to engage with populism has exposed the bureaucratic stasis of the organized left, whose core mission has morphed into “maintaining the organization,” usually in total isolation from the broader working class.

The administrators of the organized left excel at administering; but this strength turns into a weakness when it becomes a political-organizational strategy, detached from the world around it.

This strategy mislabels itself as a kind of “pragmatism,” falsely advertising itself as “common sense” politics. As they claim the monopoly on what’s “practical,” they dismiss the populist organizing as “unprofessional,” “unrealistic” or “too radical.”

But the political ground is quaking beneath the pragmatists’ feet, exposing cracks in their strategy. The organized left is under fire from the corporations on the one hand and the new movement activists on the other.

The low wages, high rent, and other issues have created a crisis in the working class that is rejecting the lifeless politics of the organized left. The tiny victories won by the left are getting drowned in a sea of poverty.

The relevancy of the organized left is being tested. Their shrinking political niche is slamming shut. In this new political context it becomes “pragmatic” — for survival’s sake — to skillfully engage with populism, helping lead these movement to success.

This is the only common sense solution: “plan A” went bust. But for the slow moving pragmatist any change is awkward. They’re notoriously bad about sensing shifting moods until they’ve manifested in fresh poll numbers, after the fact.

For example, when Obama entered office it was “pragmatic” not to support gay marriage, and when the polls shifted sharply Obama “pragmatically” changed his position. The left pragmatist uses a similar approach. In this way pragmatists are followers incapable of leading. But movements require real leaders who strive to move polls, not be shackled to them.

Polling still dominates the actions of some big unions and community groups: a political campaign may begin if polling indicates an easy victory, while a campaign is abandoned if it means actual struggle. Ending Jim Crow segregation probably didn’t poll well in many states before it was crushed, by bold organizing.

Polls are inherently conservative for many reasons. Relying on poll numbers wrongly assumes that politics takes place at the political center, but Bernie proved that the life-force of politics occurs on the margins. Inspiring a minority of people to take action is the lifeblood of a healthy, dynamic body politic.

The minority of passionate people who took action for Bernie spilled over to infect the centrists, moving the polls and re-setting the political equilibrium to such a degree that a “Democratic Socialist” has the highest favorability rating out of any candidate. Through these actions Bernie exposed the dull, uninspiring routinism of the organized left, most of whom are still stupidly campaigning for Hillary, their own members be damned.

The organized left has a fetish for polls because pragmatists assume that power dynamics are permanent and accepts their own limited power position in relation to their more powerful opponents. They believe, wrongly, that the balance of power between workers and corporations is static, which distorts their view on what is possible politically.

Once you believe a goal is “unachievable” it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, since you won’t commit the resources to organize and win. Luckily this losing logic wasn’t applied to ending slavery or Jim Crow, nor applied to demanding woman, immigrant and labor rights.

Because they often believe winning bold demands are impossible, the organized left aims low and achieves less. Just hitting the board is itself labeled a “victory,” no matter how far from the bullseye. This milquetoast approach doesn’t inspire members and encourages attacks from politicians and corporations, since acting like prey attracts predators.

The “pragmatic” approach is ultimately fear-based. As the organized left’s power shriveled, they “pragmatically” limited their actions to fit the ever-shrinking confines of political space, while the establishment took up ever-more room.

Over time the organized left evolved to survive in the tiniest political crevices. The unions, for example, excel at this approach and believed themselves safe until Friedrichs threatened to stomp them like ants. Justice Scalia’s death put a pause to the massacre but the corporations will not quit until their enemies are squashed.

As the left pragmatist’s power shrinks, their fear grows, and all political risks are shelved. Instead of demanding from management, a pragmatic union asks nicely. Or doesn’t ask at all. Instead they “partner” with the boss, showing good faith by taking strikes “off the table”: the union’s greatest weapon was tossed in a lock box and forgotten. And in exchange unions got nice rhetoric and lower wages.

Instead of educating and mobilizing their members and the community, the pragmatic leaders prioritized elections, campaigning for establishment politicians who were mislabeled as “progressive.”

After the election “victory” the bland lobby campaign begins. The “pro-worker” candidates are never held accountable post-election, since this would require challenging them instead of groveling.

To avoid embarrassing the politician, “unreasonable demands” are taken off the table. As a rare last resort an online petition might be distributed, but rarely in tandem with a powerful campaign that publicly challenges power.

This approach ensures that only the most watered down laws are passed. The organized left has no political champion, yet the label “champion” is freely given to anybody making the tiniest pro-union/”progressive” gesture.

This political approach alienated the community and ignored the membership of the organized left. It was 100% top down. The union leaders engaged politicians and disengaged from members.

The strategy had limited success until the politicians recognized what labor leaders didn’t: the power of unions doesn’t reside in the labor lobbyist, but the labor membership. The politics from the lobbyist are only effective if they can be backed up by action, and the more members who were left out of the equation, the more that politicians ignored the labor lobbyists.

As inequality created more billionaires, politicians cared less about smaller union donations. Hillary Clinton will gladly take union money, but before she even launched her presidential campaign she’d already received $21.5 million from the banks and corporations for “speeches” she gave since leaving her Secretary of State position and before declaring her candidacy, a form of legalized corruption that the organized left gets left out of.

The above strategies of “pragmatism” have disempowered the labor movement to the point where its very life is threatened by anti-worker “Right to Work” laws and other legal challenges. Fortunately, there are sections of the labor movement that recognize this as a problem and have taken some important steps.

SEIU initiated the 15now campaign in 2012, a demand that seemed like ultra-left lunacy at the time but has since ricocheted across the country. The bold risk was a sound investment that has raised political consciousness nationally, empowering working people to re-think their value at work.

It’s also given unions more leverage organizing new workers and power at the bargaining table. Community groups, unions, and socialist candidate Kshama Sawant have all successfully used the $15 demand to organize and win power.

Unfortunately, the full potential of this movement is being artificially restricted by the same groups promoting it. The organized left sees $15 through a pragmatist lens, distorting its purpose and devaluing its potential.

Instead of inspiring the community or pushing workers into action, $15 is often used as a “bargaining chip” with politicians, to continue the top-down political games. Instead of breathing fresh life into the movement, $15 is sucked up in the final gasping breath of the pragmatist.

A great example of this is the many unions that have endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. The former Walmart Board member and NAFTA/TPP champion doesn’t deserve a passing glance from labor, which has overwhelmingly endorsed her.

Unions are thus miseducating their members about Clinton, and some unions are blatantly lying — such as SEIU in Nevada — that falsely claimed that Hillary supports $15. She doesn’t.

But Bernie Sanders was pushed into adopting $15 into his platform by the movement’s power, and Hillary is being shamed for supporting only $12 by the establishment New York Times, that wrote:

“Economic obstacles are not standing in the way of a $15-an-hour minimum wage. Misplaced caution and political timidity are. The sooner Mrs. Clinton overcomes those, the stronger her candidacy will be.”

Some unions are also misusing $15 at the local level. In Oregon, for example, a strong 15now movement arose independently of the labor unions. The 15now groups sought support from unions as they gave direct support to unions bargaining for $15. It was a winning formula, as several unions fought and won $15 with direct aid of the 15now community group.

The whole Oregon labor movement went on record to support a $15 minimum wage, but tensions quickly arose with Oregon Democratic politicians who wanted a much lower increase. In response, some union leaders launched a $13.50 ballot initiative, which many speculated was aimed squarely at crushing the $15 ballot measure.

The pro-union $15now activists were unnecessarily given a reason to dislike unions, while Oregon politicians pounced on the disunity, by creating a new reactionary minimum wage system with three 3 tiers– $14.75, $13.50, $12.50– with a 6 year phase in time.

The $15 now demand was watered down, waterboarded beyond recognition. The urgency of “now” that made $15 powerful was maimed, yet celebrated as a victory by the unions who bargained against themselves.

The power of $15 cannot be fully harnessed while it’s simultaneously undermined. If the goal is to achieve cheap victories — as it often seems  — the labor leaders have badly misjudged this political moment, unnecessarily smearing their own reputations in the process. Instead of building a powerful independent movement, the union leaders betraying $15 are building yet more divisions.

The future of the organized left will be decided on the issue of bold leadership vs. “pragmatism.” As millions of people demand human dignity in the face of rampant inequality and injustice, they’ll be looking for strong organizations to join to champion their cause.

This demands that the organized left adopt a dynamic, inspiring approach. When an organization adopts lifeless politics, the prognosis is death. The organized left must meet the challenge head on; it’s now a matter of life and death.

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It’s easy to overestimate an adversary. Especially a billionaire who says scary, racist things.

The disbelief triggered by Donald Trump’s candidacy exposed a mass crisis of confidence in the establishment, whose policies alienated the electorate, creating a Trump-sized political void. Trump seems strong because the establishment is so weak, and hated.

Trump himself is a decades-old member of the establishment, but his entry into politics provoked vitriol from his former buddies. It’s an embarrassment to their rule that Trump is a contender to lead the country.

The ruling class has consequently unified behind Hillary Clinton: Republicans, billionaires and conservative military generals are flocking to her as they holler about Trump’s lack of credentials.

The establishment’s shallow anti-Trump rhetoric contrasts with the legitimate fears coming from vulnerable populations and the Left in general, which ring anti-Trump alarm bells for different reasons.

A Trump presidency does pose a direct threat to ethnic and religious minorities, to women, immigrants, labor, and basic democratic rights. These are all real concerns, but how large is the threat, and can the Left survive it?

A worst-case scenario was presented by Arun Gupta, an astute journalist and analyst whose recent article was entitled “How a Trump Presidency Would Unleash a Torrent of Racist Violence – and Devastate the Left.”

It’s a good read. Gupta envisions President Trump using the full powers of the federal government — including the National Guard —  to stop protests, attack reproductive rights, attack unions and immigrants, and outlaw Black Lives Matter, while “White supremacists, Neo-Nazis, the Klan, and the Alt-Right would all be welcome into his administration, overtly or covertly…”

Many of Gupta’s points are obviously correct. And several of them would be correct in the context of any Republican president in 2016, especially after eight years of a Democratic president.

The bolder assertions of Gupta’s deserve closer scrutiny, including his assumption that “Black Lives Matter will be declared a domestic terrorist outfit” and “there will be no more climate justice movement,” etc.

Gupta’s stronger assertions rely on comparing a Donald Trump presidency to past fascist governments, which used state power combined with mass movements to physically destroy labor unions, leftist organizations, working-class movements while targeting ethnic and religious minorities.

A mass movement is a central component of fascism, which is used as a hammer to violently smash existing working-class organizations and movements. The classic example of this dynamic remains Nazi Germany.

Gupta characterizes Trump’s campaign — correctly — as a “proto fascist” movement, meaning embryonic fascism, which may or may not develop into a fetus, let alone a baby. Proto-fascism has the DNA necessary to develop into a fully developed fascist movement, but without organizational sustenance and ideal conditions, the embryo withers.

While Gupta is right to warn of the threat, he overstates its imminence. A Trump presidency would feed the fascistic fetus in some ways while likely poisoning it in others.

A comparison of Trump’s campaign to the Nazi movement is helpful to illustrate. German fascism was a genuine, organized mass movement, with the Nazi party becoming the biggest political party in Germany. The party also had a massive paramilitary wing, the “Brownshirts,” which at its height had three million well-organized troops.

When Hitler came into state power, he brought with him his personal army, a massive political party with its own distinct, powerful ideology.

Trump doesn’t even have his own party, let alone a real movement (an electoral campaign is not a movement). His ideas are rudimentary and inconsistent. Because of him the Republicans are deeply split. Trump joined the Republicans out of weakness, not strength, and weakened the Republicans in the process.

Regardless, Gupta is right to criticize the U.S. Left for believing the establishment will save them from Trump. The ruling class fears organized workers far more than their old friend Donald.

The establishment, however, doesn’t arbitrarily dabble with fascism; they use it only when necessary, since engaging with fascism causes political and economic disruption, making profits less predictable.

Historically, a large section of the establishment opens its arms to real fascism when they literally fear for their life. Fascism is the “nuclear option” for capitalists, who use the far-right ideology to prevent the Left from taking power, so that capitalism can be preserved, and with it the large profits for the wealthy.

When Germany’s capitalists invited Hitler into power, the country was in shambles. The establishment was led by President Hindenburg, whom the Left rallied around as the “lesser evil” to Hitler.  After winning the election, the lesser-evil Hindenburg acted as the establishment figurehead, by appointing Hitler to be Chancellor.

The German establishment needed Hitler to save capitalism, which was in imminent danger of being overthrown by the millions-strong and growing Socialist and Communist movements, led by mass organized parties.

The balance of power between the establishment and the working class was nearly even. Consequently, the establishment could not rule effectively. Protests were numerous, employers were under attack with strikes, and pro-capitalist reforms could not be implemented without risking insurrection.

Hitler and the German establishment were in total agreement that the Socialists, Communists and the trade union movement were too powerful, and had to be crushed. The first inhabitants of the concentration camps were leaders of the Left.

The situation in the U.S. is nowhere near 1930’s Germany. The U.S. establishment doesn’t yet need Brownshirts to save capitalism. Yes, widening inequality is an inherent and growing threat to U.S. capitalism, but a new Hitler isn’t yet needed to smash the Left. This dynamic is ultimately what will prevent a President Trump from being too large a threat in the immediate future.

Yes, Gupta is right that white supremacists would be emboldened with a Trump victory, but they would likely experience a quick letdown, as Trump quickly gets incorporated into the Republican establishment. There is a reason he didn’t run as an independent or form a new party. His leverage within the Republican Party will be much less than Hitler’s leverage when entering office.

Behind the scenes Trump is already good friends with the establishment, whereas Hitler was an actual outsider who led and organized a real mass movement of the middle class, from scratch.

Trump’s followers will be completely let down by him in office, minus a smattering of racist policies plus the usual Republican program.

Gupta’s article also includes another big assumption about U.S. politics: that electing Republicans is bad for social movements and the Left in general. This was definitely true under President Reagan, but sometimes the opposite is true.

President Obama was in many ways awful for the Left: the anti-war and immigrant’s rights movements were decapitated. Both were powerful movements against Bush, and Obama continued Bush’s approach to wars and immigration, deporting more people than Bush and destroying Libya and Syria, matching Bush’s destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan.

If Trump becomes president, the various social movements — labor, peace, immigration, women, LGBT, Black Lives — will be given free reign to fight back by the Democrat-affiliated media and politicians, who will all discover the backbones they lost while Obama was in office. Good examples of media are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who were brave pit bulls against Bush but toothless puppies under Obama.

In this sense, a Republican president can open space for the Left, even as they attempt to implement policies against it, while Democratic presidents shut off political space. Under Obama, protests were discouraged. Challenging politicians with bold demands was prohibited as the working class was told to defend Democrats from the right wing. Politics was stifled.

Obama’s policies are incredibly right-wing and few working-class “leaders” lifted a finger, creating a political void on the Left soon filled by the Chicago Teachers, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Climate Justice, Native organizing, 15now, etc.

These are genuine movements to varying degrees, since they were either created by independent working class initiative or maintained by the energy of working class people, often despite a leadership who did little to nothing to support them.

Gupta envisions these movements being smashed by Trump. But a movement is sometimes harder to crush when it’s not well organized, especially when it’s in a fighting mood.

When the left was smashed in Germany, it’s precisely because they refused to fight, with Stalin famously relying on the German electoral system to eventually bring the Communists to power. Stalinists argued, “after Hitler, our turn.” This unwillingness to mobilize — as Leon Trotsky persistently denounced — allowed Hitler to brag that he came to power without “one single window-pane being broken.”

It’s possible that a President Trump might overplay his hand by taking the bold actions Gupta envisions. The backlash this could create is possibly just what the Left needs. The reason the establishment hasn’t already frontally assaulted the working class is precisely because these backlashes do happen, and create big political and economic disruptions.

For example, the Republican frontal-assault in Wisconsin led to massive demonstrations and nearly a general strike; the labor movement had every opportunity to win before they prematurely conceded. But it was the hundred thousand strong rallies that struck fear into the Wisconsin establishment and beyond.

The Obama administration created a different backlash when it escalated its assault on teachers unions via his “Race to the Top” program. In response the Chicago Teachers Union radicalized and spread a much more militant model of teacher unions that spread across the country.

It could be argued that the Occupy movement was itself a backlash against Obama’s economic policies, which Obama helped smash with national coordination with the FBI (the lesson being that both parties utilize state power to stop left movements).

Another way the Left can defend itself against Trump is the shifting societal attitudes that favor the Left, while Trump’s base are middle age or older and white. Young people prefer socialism to capitalism, Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The country is rapidly becoming more diverse, and thus less open to racism. Young people have overwhelmingly accepted homosexuality and are demanding action on climate change. Yes, these attitudes need to be organized, but they pose a potentially fatal blow to U.S. fascism.

Yes, there is a battle looming. Gupta is right to warn us of it. But Trump will not be the general to lead a real fascist movement. He is a buffoon who’s shown no zeal for organizing, and has no plan to build an independent political party, let alone a real movement.

As president he’ll be undermined worse than Obama was, or be completely forced to conform to Republican Party norms. His aptitude for politics ends with name-calling and race baiting, which are most effective for electoral campaigns, not governing.

It’s likely that Trump won’t be elected president; every debate reveals more shortcomings. After losing, he’ll return to TV and real estate, while a more suitable fascist leader waits in the wings.

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With Hillary Clinton’s victory in the bag, there’s a growing fear that her presidency will begin with a bang: regime change in Syria. Clinton has said as much. Last year Reuters reported that “removing President Assad” would be Clinton’s “top priority.”

This regime change sentiment was echoed more recently by her foreign policy advisor, Jeremy Bash, who said that Clinton would “…work to get Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, “out of there.”

More spectacularly has been Clinton’s repeated insistence during debates that a “no fly zone” should be implemented in Syria, which, as the Libyan experiment proved, is a euphemism for regime change and war.

The fact that such blatant warmongering can go unchallenged is itself a major PR victory for the establishment. The anti-war movement seems speechless, immobile in the face of yet another war.

This paralysis is due, in part, to the Left’s splintering over Syria, where vicious infighting over a consistent anti-war perspective has spoiled debate.

Instead of focusing on stopping the next war, the Left continues to bicker about who deserves the most blame for the Syrian catastrophe. As a result, working people are left in the dark about the U.S. role in the Syrian war. They don’t know the U.S. has been leading a proxy war against the Syrian government, and they are unprepared for the full-scale military intervention; still a very real possibility.

The vast educational void around Syria is being filled, in part, by mainstream politicians, such as moderate Congressional Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, who sounds “radical” when she recently wrote in an online petition:

”The war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad is creating more devastation, human suffering, and refugees…Have we learned nothing from Iraq and Libya? We must end our [U.S.] war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad now.”

If only most Left groups spoke as clearly as Gabbard about Syria, whose petition is only radical because the Left has so thoroughly minimized the U.S. role in funding, arming, training, and coordinating the proxy war against the Syrian government.

A key mistake some Left groups make is focusing their anti-war actions on “all sides,” wrongly believing that this alone is an internationalist approach against imperialism and war. But a critical component gets ignored when this principle is clung to.

Stopping the U.S. war on Syria requires that U.S. activists actively educate and focus on the U.S. role, so that people can be agitated into action and mobilized by the tens of thousands. The principled “pox on both houses” approach leads, in practice, to inaction, making it an empty phrase when what is needed is a concrete strategy for effective on the ground organizing.

The essence of a revolutionary, internationalist approach to anti-war strategy was summarized by Leon Trotsky, when he said “In the struggle against imperialism and war the basic principle is: ‘the chief enemy is in your own country.’”

The quote is a guide to action for those living in imperialist countries, and the U.S. remains the world’s foremost imperialist country. Syria is not an imperialist country.

The focus, therefore, for U.S. anti-war activists should be on the U.S.’ actions abroad in order to mobilize to stop it. An internationalist approach is working to minimize the harm that your imperialist country can do to the working class abroad.

All anti-war organizers should base their actions on this premise, since this truism allows for the most effective anti-war strategy when put into practice. Straying from this principle can get you into serious trouble.

It’s in your own country where you actually organize people on the ground, where they can be educated and mobilized directly against the government to apply direct pressure.

Writing the occasional antiwar article that analyzes the various bad actors is fine, but when it comes to the realm of action and organizing, focus is required. You cannot organize effectively against all sides. Your efforts must be prioritized where you can have the most impact, and where your efforts cannot be co-opted by your government as war propaganda.

Your own government is the enemy because its foreign policy is dictated by the same U.S. corporations that exercise power domestically, who exploit workers in the U.S., who don’t pay taxes in the U.S., and who fund anti-worker legislation domestically.

Some of these same corporations want raw materials, contracts, and new markets abroad, and will bomb the world to smithereens to get it. The fight against war always starts at home.

As Fred Halstead wrote in the groundbreaking work “Out Now,” the anti-Vietnam war movement was strong when it focused on educating and mobilizing U.S. society, from students, veterans, union members, etc., while also directly agitating U.S. troops stationed in Vietnam, who were emboldened by the mass rallies they saw at home. When U.S. soldiers began organizing against their officers by refusing to fight, the war could no longer continue. The excellent documentary “Sir No Sir” shows the power of organizing active duty military personnel.

The anti-Vietnam war movement didn’t focus on the violence of the North Vietnamese, or the role played by China and the U.S.S.R. They focused on the role played by the U.S., and because of this they were able to effectively educate and mobilize hundreds of thousands of people, stop the war, and effect a cultural change in the U.S., where for decades it was politically impossible to enact direct military intervention.

A similar approach was used by the Russian revolutionaries in World War I, where a massive anti-war movement was created, not by agitating against the Germans — who were arguably the aggressors — but by focusing first on the Czar of Russia, and then on the Russian capitalists who wanted to continue the war after the Czar’s downfall. The mobilization for “peace” grew to be one of the pillar demands of the successful revolution.

U.S. Left groups needn’t focus on the “evils” of Russia or the Syrian government; huge resources are already spent on this by multi-billion-dollar media conglomerates. Demonizing the enemy of U.S. imperialism doesn’t help U.S. workers in terms of mobilizing to stop the war. In fact, demonizing “the enemy” helps keep workers passive, since it makes the war appear “moral.”

A good example of this grave mistake comes from the International Socialist Organization (ISO), whose recent article criticizes the new antiwar coalition ‘Hands Off Syria.” The article reads:

“U.S. Hands Off Syria is exclusively focused on opposing U.S. military intervention and what it claims is Washington’s determination to achieve regime change in Syria. But this means the coalition and those who endorse it ignore the main source of the barbaric violence and repression in Syria today: the Assad government, its allies within the region and the Russian empire that backs Assad to the hilt….”

Hands Off Syria keeps true to the antiwar maxim “the chief enemy is in your own country,” and the ISO ridicules them for it.

The same article goes on to slander Hands Off Syria by accusing them of “…supporting a dictator like Assad and an imperialist power like Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

This “pro-Assad” slander has been aimed at anyone — this writer included — who focuses their fire on the U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict. The smear campaign has ruined the discussion around Syria, helping to miseducate people who might otherwise be organized into action.

The ISO fails to mention in its article that Hands Off Syria specifically mentions that “It is not our business to support or oppose President Assad or the Syrian government. Only the Syrian people have the right to decide the legitimacy of their government.”

The ISO calls Hands Off Syria “pro-Assad” because the group says, correctly, that Syria has the right to self-determination. In a nutshell “self-determination” means that non-imperialist countries, like Syria, have a right not to be interfered with by imperialist countries, such as the United States.

All revolutionaries have a duty to uphold this core tenant of anti-imperialism. Watering this principle down — because “Assad is a brutal dictator” — is another example of undercutting both theory and action around anti-war work.

The main demands of the Hands Off Syria coalition are completely supportable from an internationalist, socialist perspective, and deserve mention since they were unmentioned in the article that attacked them:

1   An immediate end to the U.S. policy of forced regime change in Syria and full recognition and compliance by the U.S., NATO and their allies with principles of international law and the U.N. Charter, including respect for the independence and territorial integrity of Syria.

2   An immediate end to all foreign aggression against Syria, and serious efforts toward a political resolution to the war.

3   An immediate end to all military, financial, logistical and intelligence support by the U.S., NATO and their regional allies to all foreign mercenaries and extremists in the Middle East region.

4   An immediate end to economic sanctions against Syria. Massive international aid for displaced people within Syria and Syrian refugees abroad.

Hands off Syria is a united front coalition that should have existed for several years; its late arrival is due to the gutter-level Syria debate among Left groups. So attacking this big step forward in anti-war work only detracts from the anti-war movement, and thus empowers the U.S. government to act with a freer hand in Syria.

A consistent antiwar approach means combining theory with action, going beyond intellectual exercises and into organizing. If an antiwar theory equals inaction in the face of war, that perspective is exposed as moribund, lifeless. An antiwar approach must have practical applications to movement politics, a way to connect with and mobilize the masses.

Blaming “all sides” has the unintended consequences of pacifying working people in the face of war, since the kind education that might agitate them into action — their own government’s actions — is being either minimized or crowded out by nonstop comparisons with the “worse” actions of other governments (those in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism).

In practice, every effort must be made to explain the history of the U.S. intervention in Syria, and how this intervention continues today, and how the logic of this intervention inevitably leads to a full scale military confrontation, as very nearly happened in 2013 when Obama backed down from attacking the Syrian government.

A revolutionary approach to war lies in exposing the lies of the capitalist media and politicians, so that workers understand the propaganda that is leading them into war, so they can be prepared to mobilize against it when war breaks out. Anything less is an academic exercise, divorced from the realities of the class struggle in the U.S.

Most conflicts have several precipitating factors, so ascribing blame to who fired the first shot or who was the “most savage” cannot be a guiding force in anti-war work. It serves mainly to distract, to disorient.  By focusing instead on Russia and Syria, the U.S.-fed lies go un-repudiated, and therefore can maintain a powerful stultifying force on working people in the face of war.

Any mass movement for peace wields revolutionary implications. Especially in the U.S., whose global empire of military bases acts as a stifling conservative political force across the globe, while the domestic politics have been stifled by this same “military industrial complex.” This behemoth of concentrated power will require an equal power to demobilize it, and that power can only be the working class mobilized.

Any effective anti-war work must stay true to the basic principles elaborated by Trotsky decades ago:

“The transformation of imperialist war into civil [class] war is that general strategic task to which the whole work of a proletarian party during war should be subordinated.”

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Change is in the air. Millions of people in the U.S. woke up to the living nightmare of a Trump presidency. The threat and shock posed by Trump jolted hundreds of thousands off their couch and into the street. People of all ages now want to “do something,” joining protests nationwide that the Washington Post called “a roiling movement across the country.”

Massive protests immediately followed the election results in just about every major city in the country, including an enormous demonstration in Los Angeles on November 12th that galvanized social media users nationwide to leave their computers and join the protests.

There have been nationwide coordinated protests of high school and college students leaving class for the streets; on the 17th 80 colleges participated in a walkout, using the anti-Trump hashtag #santuarycampus as their slogan.

Mayors across the country have urged calm but more protests are planned. The difference between a social movement and a series of protests is size and duration: a movement attracts broader layers of “non-political” people, engaging them into action while striving to mobilize newer layers for the next action, growing the movement.  If they continue, the anti-Trump protests will soon gain “movement” status. People from all walks of life have performed their first protest of any kind, confronting the repressive “riot” police and not backing down.  New groups are springing into existence as people spontaneously self-organize.

How powerful is the new movement? Time will tell. But it’s up to activists, organizers, and revolutionaries to prioritize throwing fresh logs on the movement flame, buying time to activate and educate new people while building and leveraging power.

Politics is often referred to as “the art of the possible.” As Trump himself proved, what was impossible yesterday is possible today. The world is changing fast, and even though the rightwing owns the White House, the Left owns the streets, for now. We must make good use of them, and quick, before Trump can consolidate his power.

The Left can achieve miracles in this moment if it strategically grows and broadens the infant social movement. What is possible depends on the strength of the movement. In math terms: if X grows larger (the social movement), then Y (anything) is possible, including preventing Trump from assuming power.

The anti-Trump movement will either grow or shrink. But it’s up to activists to grow the movement by any means necessary. Historically speaking, the most obvious evidence of powerful social movements are massive, ongoing street demonstrations that grow in proportion to the momentum the movement produces. The anti-Vietnam war movement is just such an example.

If a social movement grows large enough, it can become a revolutionary movement, where the establishment loses power as the people gain control over the streets, workplaces, and public institutions.

This was the case in Egypt, where the revolution grew to oceans of people, who eventually drowned the Mubarak dictatorship — and later his successor. A similar thing is occurring right now in South Korea, where protests that were initially mocked have grown so large that commentators are predicting the protesters “impossible” demands will be achieved: the downfall of the president.

If a revolutionary movement has the power to crush a ruthless dictatorship, as in Egypt, the American equivalent can surely prevent Trump from assuming power, or at least paralyze him politically.

Yes, this is unlikely, time is very short.  But the timeline was short in Egypt also:  the first protest occurred on January 25th, and the dictator was toppled by February 11th.  As Lenin said, “there are decades where nothing happens, and then there are weeks when decades happen.”

The larger the demonstrations become the more people get pulled into them. It becomes everyone’s daily routine and what they talk about in their free time as well as at work, etc. People begin to feel their power in gigantic demonstrations and eventually the demand becomes “inevitable” when a revolutionary movement grows to Egyptian proportions.

But to achieve this the anti-Trump movement needs cohesiveness and unity of action.

Instead of each separate group organizing their own, smaller actions over their own particular issues, organizations must work together in democratically run coalitions to organize ongoing massive demonstrations around issues that include everyone under attack, so that they can be coordinated nationwide.

There is already a call for a massive demonstration on Trump’s inauguration day, but there is time to organize several nationwide massive mobilizations before then. Each one would embolden new layers of people to take to the streets, and will, hopefully, get the labor movement engaged in a big way, while invigorating the Black Lives Matter movement, Latinos, women, students, LGBTQ, Muslims, and everyone who fears a Trump presidency. All should be demonstrating together, striking blows collectively.

The movement can be easily squandered.  Sectarian divisions that have plagued the left for years are re-asserting themselves. Some groups want to opportunistically use the moment to recruit to their own group while doing nothing to grow the movement. Groups and individual activists denounce the actions of others while doing nothing productive themselves. This ego-driven gossipy infighting has been a cancer on the left for years and needs to die now, lest it kill the movement.

All Left groups should be calling for local coalitions that organize ongoing street demonstrations that also make demands on local city and state governments. By making local demands — and winning them — the local movement will strengthen itself, and be better able to defend against a possible Trump presidency.

Local demands should be “united front” demands, meaning there are a few powerful demands that have broad support from the majority of the working class, mobilizing them into action. The existing energy must be funneled into something concrete locally to help grow the movement nationally.

Another reason to make united front demands is that the non-fascist Trump supporters — who are the majority — can see that we’re on their side. If we demand rent control, free childcare, living wages, debt forgiveness, etc., the working class Trump supporter can be recruited to our movement, and these demands can help grow the movement into revolutionary proportions.

Demands capable of mobilizing people in the streets can be both “reformist” and “revolutionary.” Past revolutions have been built on reformist pillars, such as the “reformist” demands of “Land and Freedom” that become revolutionary in the context of the 1936 Spanish revolution. The demands of the Russian revolution were simply land, bread and peace.

If a truly revolutionary movement is built, it’s possible that Trump can be prevented from becoming president. The establishment will act to stop Trump before the masses achieve it themselves. Not only because most of the establishment doesn’t like Trump, but because they fear that a revolutionary movement will target the entire ruling class next, and capitalism after that

If the ruling class acts to prevent a Trump presidency — and Pence becomes president, or Hillary — society will not simply go back to sleep. A revolutionary movement deeply changes people who cannot so easily be pulled away from being actively engaged in politics. Along with a revolutionary movement arises new organizations, new political parties, new associations of workers, renters, farmers, neighborhoods, and new human beings that feel more empowered and think about politics more critically. This new organized, socially active, collectively conscious human being is not so easily controlled.

A revolutionary movement will radicalize millions of people, on top of the millions who’ve already been radicalized by the announcement of Trump’s victory. These newly-radicalized people just need a coalition of organizations to help lead them into struggle, and once the masses have entered the revolutionary road, anything is possible. The moment can be seized or squandered. It’s up to us. Time is short.

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Shamus Cooke

This article originally appeared on CounterPunch on August 14, 2017.

Trump’s threats against Venezuela escalated recently from the economic to the military: after announcing sanctions he threatened that all military options were “on the table.” Trump’s actions were perfectly timed to lend support to the U.S.-backed opposition in Venezuela, whose ongoing violent rebellion aims to topple the government of democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro.

The apex of violence was focused on stopping the recent elections to the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), convened by President Maduro to rewrite Venezuela’s constitution with the goal of resolving the current social-economic crisis.

The ANC was tasked to become the most powerful governmental body while in session. Part of Maduro’s motivation in convening the ANC was to break the political deadlock that started when the U.S.-backed opposition gained control of the Venezuelan parliament, the National Assembly.

The wealthy opposition promised to prevent the ANC elections from taking place, while Trump promised economic sanctions if the ANC election wasn’t cancelled. The other usual suspects of Latin American counter-revolution also condemned the ANC elections: Spain, the Vatican, and the Organization of American States (OAS) were among other governmental and western NGOs that denounced the ANC, since they recognized that the U.S.-backed opposition would be deflated if the ANC were successful.

The western media that condemned the ANC elections has consistently failed to condemn the ongoing street violence by the U.S.-backed opposition, who used attacks on voting centers, roadblocks, economic sabotage and “general strikes” to prevent the election from taking place.

But the elections happened, and the unexpectedly high turnout rattled the nerves of the opposition, who didn’t expect the traditional base of Chavismo — the working and poor — would come out by the millions to support a broad diversity of candidates within the Chavismo Left.

The Chavismo Base Revived, For Now

The international media covering the election took zero notice of the enthusiasm from Venezuela’s poorest neighborhoods. A U.S. labor delegation that travelled to Venezuela to witness the elections was impressed by the broad participation and long lines at various voting centers in poor neighborhoods. SEIU 1199 Executive Vice President Estela Vasquez made notice of the lack of western media attention:

“One thing that I did think was significant is that I didn’t see any international media. No reporters from the New York Times, no cameras from CNN, no cameras from Fox Television, or any other international media… covering the poor working class neighborhoods that are the backbone of this revolutionary process in this country,”

The enthusiasm for the election that Vasquez noticed was echoed by a prominent left critic of Maduro, Stalin Perez Borges, who said:

“July 30 [the election] was also a tsunami within the ranks of Chavismo that propelled even those who are unhappy with the government to participate and send a message to the domestic and international right that we have not yet surrendered to imperialism nor are we willing to kneel before the neoliberal plans that the politicians and economists of the [opposition] have prepared for us…the [election] result has led to a recuperation of confidence as a social force, and provided a glimpse of the possibility for Chavismo to once again be able to call itself the majority.”

Because the opposition boycotted the elections, the ANC consists overwhelmingly of representatives of the left, where there lives a diversity of revolutionary political opinion. A third of the ANC was specifically reserved for representatives of trade unions, communal councils, indigenous groups, farmers, students, and pensioners, all sectors that have been radicalized by their experience under Chavez and by the violent actions of the opposition.

The class basis of the Constituent Assembly — the poor and working class — provides hope that this governmental body can provide real revolutionary initiative to resolve key issues that have been demoralizing the Chavismo ranks while empowering the wealthy opposition.

The ANC will not fix every problem and it will likely not usher in a socialist economy, but radical measures can precipitate a revolutionary dynamic that carries with it a logic of its own. The left in Venezuela is more dynamic than the Stalinist images accorded to it by the western media and U.S. Left.

Ultimately, the very convening of the ANC means that Maduro has moved to the left; and it was this leftward shift that provoked enthusiasm from the Chavismo rank and file. Convening the ANC surprised everyone and carried enormous political risks, especially in the middle of an opposition uprising backed by U.S. imperialism: if the masses did not participate in the elections the government would be exposed as lacking a broad social base, and such a weakness would have been instantly exploited by the Trump-supported opposition. But Maduro proved that he has a bit of Chavez in him yet, having correctly predicted that the masses would consider the ANC as a revolutionary tool to be used against the oligarchy.

Much of the international left has either not recognized Maduro’s shift to the left or not realized its significance. Their error is rooted in a misunderstanding of the Venezuelan revolution, which has always been a contradictory movement rooted in the poorest neighborhoods of Venezuela, yet reflected through a bureaucratic prism at the top; a process that under Chavez retained, at times, a call and responsive dynamic that propelled the base to take action, which, in turn resulted in more pressure on the leadership to move left. Such a fluctuating, complicated phenomenon is difficult to pigeonhole, and requires a more nuanced analysis than the intellectually lazy “pox on both houses” approach that has long-infected the U.S. left.

It’s true that there are powerful sections of Maduro’s bureaucracy who plan to use the ANC simply to out-maneuver the wealthy opposition and maintain their power and, if possible, to strike a deal with the opposition should the opportunity arise. Such a betrayal would, in effect, mark the end of Chavismo and prepare the ground for total victory of the opposition.

But the victory of the bureaucrats in the ANC isn’t a foregone conclusion, as some cynics on the left would have you believe. Maduro doesn’t command Chavez’s authority; he lacks the charisma and he’s been lacking in revolutionary initiative. The divisions within Chavismo’s upper layers opens up further opportunities for the impatient ranks that can push the project forward against the will of even the more conservative sections of leadership.

The job of the international left is to highlight the possibilities, amplify the program of the revolutionary wing and to educate people internationally about what’s at stake in order to reduce the interventionist options of Trump’s imperialism.

The majority of left analysis regarding the Venezuelan crisis fails at these basic tasks, focusing wasted energy on Maduro’s shortcomings while proposing nothing of substance to win the fight in progress. The ranks of Chavismo need concrete solutions not endless denunciations.

The central question is not whether one is pro-Maduro or pro-opposition, the question is “how do the revolutionary forces resolve the current crisis” and “what strategy should revolutionaries deploy?” Most of the left has nothing to say about these basic questions, while refusing to even discuss the relevance of the Constituent Assembly.

The working class in Venezuela recognizes that their fate depends on the outcome of the current struggle; they are in a fight for their lives and hope to use the Constituent Assembly as a weapon. The slogan “No Volveran” remains a revolutionary demand of Chavismo that declares the oligarchy will never return to power. But unless bold action is taken to drive the revolution forward the victory of the opposition is inevitable, and such a nightmare is currently trying to kick in the front door.

False Solutions From the Left

The current intensified class fight cannot be wished away, it’s based on the material conditions embedded in the economy: the unfulfilled needs of the working poor versus the opposition’s demand to retake the state apparatus and privatize public resources. The two sides cannot “make peace” with another round of elections or negotiations, yet this is exactly what many pro-revolution analysts are promoting as “solutions” to the crisis.

One such mistake can be found in the analysis of Carlos Carcione from Marea Socialista, a grouping who until recently was in coalition with the other socialist parties inside of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

The analysis put forward by Carcione contains some important critiques of Maduro’s government, but a key error is his “solution” to the crisis, which was put forward at the end of a recent interview:

“…the only democratic road, which cannot be captured by either of the two elites [Maduro’s government and the opposition] that are instigating violence, is the struggle to renew the Constitution of 1999.”

The demand to “renew the Constitution” is a talking point taken directly from the wealthy opposition. To renew the Constitution means to disband the Constituent Assembly and carry on with the electoral process on its normal timeline, as if a life or death crisis wasn’t engulfing the nation that requires revolutionary action now. It’s as if Carcione believes that erasing the ANC would be a “pause button” to the conflict.

Such a “demand” will find zero resonance in the Chavismo rank and file; they’ve voted more in recent decades than any other population in the world, and their voting for the Constituent Assembly was itself a showcase of democracy that Carcione oddly fails to recognize as important or legitimate.

The demand to “renew the Constitution” also fails to acknowledge that the opposition is skillfully using the elections to the National Assembly to retake power and undermine the government, by exacerbating the crisis and talking openly of overthrowing Maduro.

Elections to the National Assembly have become the path to power for the oligarchy, while a more directly democratic path has emerged with the Constituent Assembly elections, an infinitely more representative body than the National Assembly with actual capabilities of taking revolutionary action.

Ultimately one’s attitude towards the situation in Venezuela shouldn’t be decided by legal or so called democratic norms, but by which actions promote the interests of the working class and poor and push the revolution forward.

A similar non-solution to the crisis was put forth by Eva Gollinger, a longtime promoter of Chavismo who has been an increasingly vocal critic of Maduro. Gollinger’s critique of Maduro is often spot on, but her solution falls into the fantasy realm, where both sides realize they’re guilty of excess and thus agree to dampen the rhetoric for the good of the country:

“Voices of moderation need to emerge without fear of being branded traitors or opportunists, as has been happening to anyone publicly criticizing the government or opposition. The opposition leadership and its international backers must immediately condemn all violence….The opposition must accept the legitimacy of President Maduro and his administration and allow him to fulfill his presidential term, which ends in 2019. In return, the parliament should be allowed to assume its full mandate without further obstacles. Fair elections overseen by an independent electoral council should be held within the timeframe stipulated by law instead of being manipulated by political parties or foreign pressure.”

Gollinger certainly has good intentions, but her “solutions” are daydreams that ignore the material interests radicalizing both sides: the ranks of Chavismo need radical solutions to the crisis and the U.S. backed opposition will continue to take radical, right-wing action to regain state power. There hasn’t been a “reasonable middle ground” between these two extremes in decades, if ever, in Venezuela.

Revolutions are notoriously absent of moderation. Chavez himself was accused of being an extremist every time he took action against the oligarchy, which earned him the love and respect of the broader population in Venezuela and inspired revolutionary movements across the hemisphere.

Maduro’s moderation is precisely what has demoralized his base and empowered the U.S.-backed opposition. The working class of Venezuela does not have moderate demands, they require revolutionary action against their class enemies before the wealthy regains the state power to use against them. Moderate actions cannot attack the drastic inequality that pervades Venezuela to this day.

The left “demand” to renew the Constitution is a return to a dead end: one of the limitations of Chavismo was the over reliance on a representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy. The energy of the revolution was funneled into constant electioneering, and the representative system wasn’t representative enough, allowing politicians to be unaccountable to the movement that opened the door to careerism, while the slower moving legislative system allowed the demoralization to creep in.

The Constituent Assembly is a legitimate tool of revolution that can be used or wasted. Wishing for the return of the conditions that precipitated the crisis is an odd “solution.” The opposition chose to boycott the ANC elections because they hoped for a U.S.-backed coup. Let their miscalculation be their undoing.

What actions should the Constituent Assembly take?

Instead of warning incessantly of authoritarianism the left should be advocating revolutionary solutions: ones that stem the power of both the oligarchy and Chavismo upper-bureaucrats, a “revolution within the revolution.” Divisions among Chavismo’s leadership make such a scenario possible, and it’s desperately needed.

Agitational demands from the Chavismo base in a time of flux can move mountains. Economic solutions that incorporate more socialist policies at the expense of the oligarchy-controlled private sector are also crucial to advancing the revolution, since the capitalists have used their ownership over important economic sectors — like food production — to sabotage the economy.

Some of the below demands have been discussed in different sectors of the Chavismo left, and may find expression in the Constituent Assembly if left groups organize effectively. Ultimately demands that empower the working class at the expense of the oligarchy have the potential to inspire the broader population to action, keeping the revolutionary flame lit:

1. Remove the economic power of the oligarchy by nationalizing the sectors of the economy that have been used in economic sabotage, especially food production, the banking sector and international trade.
2. Strategically default on the foreign debt repayments that are bankrupting the nation, so that the money can be used for basic necessities and rebuilding the economy. The high interest debt repayments are shifting billions of dollars from the Venezuelan state into the pockets of rich foreign investors.
3. Fully fund and expand the key victories of Chavismo: education, health care, pensions, and housingwhile increasing the power of localities to administer these programs. Ensure that wages are rising above inflation for all wage workers. Pay for these initiatives by drastically raising taxes on capital gains, property, inheritance, and other oligarchy-targeted measures.
4. Jail the oligarchs who promote street violence and participate in economic sabotage. A longstanding demand among the Chavismo ranks is to take a firmer hand with an opposition who’s grown accustomed to no consequences for violent behavior.
5. Attack corruption of black market dollar profiteering by nationalizing foreign trade.
6. No reconciliation with the oligarchy and their patron, U.S. imperialism. Any “deal” cut by the opposition will be intended to stall the revolutionary process and require economic concessions that come at the expense of the Chavismo base. The opposition has proven that they will never accept a government they don’t directly control. With each new uprising they test the resolve of the government and its popular support, and when this support dissipates a successful coup — either militarily or legislative — is inevitable.

7. Use the National Constituent Assembly as a weapon of the revolution by taking the above actions while expanding direct democracy, enshrining increased constitutional power of communal councils, labor unions and other social-political bodies of the Chavismo rank and file to directly exercise state power.

If the ANC doesn’t take bold actions soon, the new constitution won’t survive the national referendum vote. And if the Chavismo rank and file don’t see a pathway to a better, more stable life with the ANC they will abstain, and the U.S.-backed opposition will have an unobstructed path to power.

Another reason the ANC needs to take radical action immediately is the upcoming gubernatorial elections that the opposition plans to participate in. These elections can be easily won by the left if the ANC takes swift action that inspires people to the polls.

Conclusion

Time is short. The ANC gave itself two years to fulfill its mission, but the enthusiasm generated by the election will fade quickly if revolutionary action isn’t forthcoming, or if the masses conclude that the new legislative body is content on maintaining the current balance of power instead of smashing it. Maduro’s bureaucratic/administrative maneuvers have outlived their usefulness, and projecting this strategy onto the ANC will transfer the disease of demoralization onto an otherwise healthy body.

The several co-occurring crises in Venezuela require a shift of power to the masses at the expense of the capitalists: any action that the ANC takes that promotes this while encouraging the self-activity of the working class will help refresh the cycle of bottom-up activity that flourished under Chavez but has waned under Maduro.

The street violence of the U.S.-backed opposition that has killed over 100 people and included two coup attempts will not subside on its own, especially when Trump has prioritized Venezuela for regime change. Successive U.S. presidents have understood the special “threat” to imperialism that Venezuela has posed, even if much of the left doesn’t.  Defeating Trump requires that Venezuelans move towards socialism, while requiring that socialists in the U.S. actively support this movement.

If the new constitution is a lifeless document it will fail the referendum vote and catapult the opposition into power. However, if the path to the constitution is full of revolutionary action the people will respond enthusiastically, and the broader hemisphere will be re-infected by the revolutionary energy that originally birthed the “pink tide.”

But the pink tide politics that eschewed western imperialism and neoliberalism has reached its ideological limits, demanding deep socialist inroads against the capitalists who’ve frustrated the project. A “red tide” can rejuvenate the revolutionary forces across the hemisphere and easily drown out the recent victories of various counter-revolutions. Venezuela remains the focal point of hemispheric revolution, to be won or lost, supported or ignored.

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This article original appeared on CounterPunch on September 4, 2017

When news struck that anti-Muslim protests with ties to white supremacists cancelled rallies across the country — in response to the huge anti-fascist rally in Boston — a clear victory was celebrated by the Left. A further anti-fascist victory was won in San Francisco, where a giant mobilization outnumbered a tiny smattering of far-right protesters who scurried away scared.

But these victorious battles won’t end the war. The cockroaches that crawled back under the floorboards will resume their work underground, where they join a mass of fascist termites eating away at the base of the U.S. political system.

The more conscious leaders of the budding fascist movement study history’s lessons. After Boston they made a strategic retreat, recognizing the balance of forces shifted against them. They’ll return to fight another day on more favorable terrain. Meanwhile they’re organizing.

The larger “alt right” white supremacist movement will continue to use ultra-wealthy donors and growing networks to refine their organizing in order to position themselves as the political “solution” to the deepening economic-political crisis experienced by millions of people.

Desperate people are vulnerable to fascism, and desperation is deepening: millions are eyeball deep in debt and 80% live paycheck to paycheck, while skyrocketing healthcare costs and rising rent heat up the social pressure cooker.

It’s this economic gut punch that the fascists hope to benefit from: as working people struggle to breathe, the fascists hope to offer cheap, readymade oxygen.

The fascist’s ability to attract followers directly depends on the Left’s failure to lead politically. The Left’s inability to organize around a bold politics has allowed the Far Right space to demagogue. Fascist ideas only seem appealing when there’s no viable Left alternative. Without a well organized revolutionary perspective the ideas of the fascist can appear radical and even “revolutionary” to the confused, scared, and desperate. It’s this long game the white supremacists are focused on.

Whereas the fascists are educating and organizing the unorganized, the Left is often, unwittingly, pushing people into the arms of the fascists. By offering confusing or contradictory ideas, the fascists are able to retrofit Left politics for Far-Right purposes.

There is a battle of ideas taking place on the internet, college campuses, and in the streets. These ideas cannot be destroyed by street protests or fists alone, especially when fascist soil is being fertilized by economic desperation.

The fascist movement is experiencing a quickly evolving renaissance, shedding the provocative symbols from the past while recruiting youth and refining their populist strategy of ‘economic nationalism.’

Fascists Against Free Trade!

Steven Bannon hates free trade like he hates Muslims. This “America First”-style economic nationalism is a strategy that has been instrumental in helping Trump posture as a populist, fooling millions of people in the process.

The Left is, sadly, partially to blame for Trump’s ability to pose as a trade-populist. For years a leading plank of the Leftists platform has been “anti-free trade,” a demand vague enough for Trump to steal it and repurpose it for the fascist agenda.

The Left was shocked when Trump campaigned on anti-free trade rhetoric. And after winning the election Trump tore up the Trans Pacific Partnership, which the Left had unsuccessfully demanded Obama kill. Trump’s action silenced the Left and riled up his base: In less than a month in office Trump had, seemingly, performed the most anti-establishment action since FDR.

Now Trump is throwing blows against NAFTA, threatening the life of the trade agreement long denounced by the Left. Obama vowed to “re-negotiate” NAFTA too, and it became one of his dozens of unfulfilled promises. If Trump tackles NAFTA he could win the next election by a landslide.

This is why the Left needs greater clarity on trade: it’s been weaponized by the fascists as the Left stutters in response. When Trump smashes the TPP and undermines NAFTA, he’s doing so from a U.S. corporate perspective; he wants to renegotiate to get a “better deal” for U.S. companies, workers be damned.
Since Mussolini’s Italy, a cornerstone of fascist economics has been trade protectionism (erecting trade barriers instead of free trade): it serves to fool the people while serving a section of corporations that benefit from trade wars with foreign corporations.

The opposite of free trade is protectionism: neither serve working people but both serve certain sections of capitalists. Corporations who compete well on the global market are fanatical free traders, but those capitalists that do badly overseas are fanatically anti-free trade, demanding “protection” from foreign competitors (like Chinese corporations) with government-imposed trade barriers.

It’s these anti-free trade capitalists who supported Trump’s campaign, and its this section of capitalists who’ve historically invested in fascist movements, a dynamic explained in Daniel Guerin’s classic work, “Fascism and Big Business.”

Capitalists undermine free trade in order to use “beggar thy neighbor” policies, trade policies that give them an advantage at the expense of their corporate rivals, ultimately causing trade wars. The fascist architect Steve Bannon is the biggest proponent of a trade war against China. In a recent interview he said:

“The economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that… We’re going to run the tables on these guys. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us.”

The journalist who interviewed Bannon explained that “… his strategy is to battle the trade doves (free traders) inside the administration while building an outside coalition of trade hawks that includes left as well as right.”

Bannon is able to recruit “left trade hawks” because the Left has miseducated its base about trade, allowing Trump to fool millions of people that he was the “radical” alternative to the establishment’s free-trade policies.

Revolutionary Fascism?

Fascist movements have historically fronted as a “revolutionary” ideology that use “anti-capitalist” rhetoric. They aim to be the “real” radicals and pose as more anti-establishment than other Left groups, who they accuse of being part of the status-quo.

It’s in this context that the “alt right” has exploited a weakness in the mostly-academic infighting around identity politics among the Left, where one side minimizes the importance of race/identity in politics while the other side minimizes class economic factors.

Leftists have traditionally acknowledged that race and class are inseparable under U.S. capitalism, yet the ongoing debates on the subject seek to do just this: in order to make their points both sides exaggerate their better arguments while minimizing that of their opponents, in a seemingly endless cycle of academic hair-splitting. Such debates are decades old among the Left, even though the current debate includes important ideas regarding race and identity.

However, both sides have unintentionally opened the doors of academia to the fascists, who’ve capitalized on various aspects of the conflict, just as they’ve done over free trade.

If Leftists minimize race/identity in favor of class, the fascists are given room to enter these political spaces with their “economic nationalism” platform, in ways that can feel indistinguishable from the Left. If marginalized communities don’t see their specific issues reflected in coalitions they’ll be less likely to join, and any anti-fascist coalition will not reach the critical mass it needs to be effective.

The opposite mistake is ignoring economic factors and over-relying on race/identity, which allows the fascists to pose as the champions of working class interests by offering economic solutions the Left ignores.

Steven Bannon’s recent interview comments are, again, a useful example:

“The longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

If you look beyond Bannon’s obvious racism you’ll notice he’s exploiting a deeper truth: a broader section of the population is drifting towards fascism because Bannon is pretending to address people’s material needs, while sections of the Left appear to only want to “talk” about race while actually not fighting for demands that disproportionately affect marginalized groups.

People of color, the disabled, women and other ethnic/religious minorities have specific, desperate needs around improved healthcare, education, housing, wages, transportation and more.

Meanwhile Bannon wants the Far Right to fight for “jobs” in high unemployment areas with false solutions such as trade protectionism and private sector infrastructure programs. If the Left abandons the fight for jobs — and other economic issues — the fascists are allowed to seize the initiative.
A New York Times op-ed recognized the danger in Bannon’s approach, in an article entitled ‘What if Steve Bannon is Right’

“…there are many more voters in Trump’s camp who still consider themselves Democrats. Some live in the much-discussed zone of despair, places where opportunities for people without a college degree are few, and the opioid epidemic rages. These folks are persuadable, if the message is economic hope…”

The Left can preempt Bannon’s white nationalism if it wins real victories in the arena of economic exploitation while simultaneously fighting for racial equity.

For example, fighting against housing discrimination shouldn’t be separated from the fight for rent control and against evictions; the fight for a $15 minimum wage and jobs is aided by demands against employment discrimination; the fight against education discrimination is helped by demanding full funded public education.

Martin Luther King Jr. cut to the essence of the class issues connected to the struggle for racial justice when he said:

“What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?”

Centering on the needs of those most marginalized means inspiring people to action; to fight over demands they desperately need fulfilled is the first step in creating a militant, revolutionary movement.

Rafael Diaz discussed some of the mechanics of building a multiracial-identity movement in a recent article:

“Taking power is no easy task, and we need to be doing all we can to dive into deep and trusting organizing relationships with diverse groups of people who all have reasons for showing up. It’s necessary that we get a sense of clarity in our collective self-interest in toppling a system that exploits us all through class and racial inequality…We can organize our workplaces and communities to collectively build institutional structures and political organizations to fight for issues that couple class struggle and racial liberation. Policies such as universal healthcare, prison abolition and tuition-free higher education would improve lives and severely lessen racial and economic inequity.”

Ultimately people of every identity are themselves divided by class, where upper-income people are typically more politically conservative. Knowing this, the Democratic Party establishment borrows safely from an identity politics detached from economic exploitation.

And seeing this, Bannon’s white supremacists talk increasingly about how “The Left is in bed with the establishment.” A diverse Left movement that challenges corporate power cannot be co opted by the Democrats, and is a critical ingredient in defeating the fascist movement in its infancy.

Lastly, the danger in detaching economic exploitation from identity politics is allowing the fascists to co-opt language from the Left. If the broader population isn’t trained to understand their circumstances in terms of economic exploitation, the fascists talking points become more compelling: “white identity” and “white pride” connect on a deeper level if “discrimination” is the only frame of reference people have to understand oppression, when in reality it’s mostly-white upper class people responsible for the suffering of poorer “white” people.

The Left’s Fatal Flaw: Misidentifying Fascism

Every racist is not a fascist. Nor can fascism be defined by a checklist of beliefs or government policies. In reality fascism is a mass movement that emerges in times of economic crisis, funded by a section of goal-oriented capitalists.

The ruling class chooses fascism when it cannot grapple with the social crisis caused by pro-capitalist policies. Mass unemployment, health care, the housing crisis, and other basic needs undermine the institutions of the status-quo. The pro-capitalist political parties lose legitimacy and find it increasingly difficult to maintain power, especially as they double-down on specific capitalist policies (neoliberalism) to keep corporations profitable.

Leon Trotsky explains the political-economic conditions that give rise to fascism in the classic work What is Fascism and How to Fight it:

“If the economy remains in the hands of a small number of capitalists, there is no way out for society. It is condemned to go from crisis to crisis, from need to misery, from bad to worse. In the various countries, the decrepitude and disintegration of capitalism are expressed in diverse forms and at unequal rhythms. But the basic features of the process are the same everywhere. The bourgeoisie is leading its society to complete bankruptcy. It is capable of assuring the people neither bread nor peace.”

When capitalism enters a crisis, corporations demand concessions: cuts in public spending, privatization of public resources, deregulation, lowering of wages and benefits, reducing health care and welfare and raising the age of retirement. All policies that serve to bolster profits.

To achieve these goals the ruling class must remove the social barriers to implementation. The main barriers are always the same: representative democracy and the organizations of the working class: labor unions, socialist/anarchist organizations and other working-class based community groups.

Trotsky summed up the ultimate goal of fascism:

“The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery.”

This is why in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy the first people thrown into concentration camps were not the Jews, but leaders of revolutionary organizations and trade unions. This sequential repression was made famous by a poem by the German pastor Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The Only Antidote to Fascism

Anti-fascist counter-protests are a key ingredient to beating fascism, but they are usually reactive, whereas the fascists are being proactive. It’s usually stronger to be “for something” than to simply be against it. Hitler explained in Mein Kampf that by taking the initiative the Nazi Party recruited people who wanted action; people who were tired of talk and wanted solutions.

This isn’t to minimize the recent mobilizations in Charlottesville, Boston and in San Francisco, which build strong connections between communities acting in self-defense. But in sports as in politics, the best defense is a good offense. Anti-fascist coalitions can also protect their communities by organizing for political demands, which take the air out of the fascists’ sails.

Ultimately the deepening economic-political crisis will continually re-pose a basic question to society that will be answered by either the Left or the Far Right: What are the economic-political solutions to the deepening crisis?

Without a diverse, inspiring and independent movement of the Left, the Far Right will be given opportunity to use the twin strategies of racist scapegoating and economic nationalism.

For now the Left has the upper hand, as shown by the mass demonstrations after Trump was elected and the recent anti-fascist mobilizations. There is still plenty of time for the Left to out-organize the fascists and give a revolutionary answer to the crisis of capitalism.

The wind is at our backs but the window is shrinking. Once the current stock market boom goes bust, history will accelerate again, shrinking the timeline in which the Left must prove itself capable of leading the broader community out of the crisis. Increasingly frequent natural disasters also serve to fast forward history.

In his above-mentioned essay Trotsky notes: “Fascism comes only when the working class shows complete incapacity to take into its own hands the fate of society.”

Funneling the current political energy into a bold politics will cut fascism off at the kneecaps.

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