A brief article by Benjamin from First of May Anarchist Alliance about the resurgent far right in the United States and how defeating Trump at the polls is not an adequate response.
A man walks into Latin night at a gay nightclub in Orlando during the city’s LGBT Pride weekend, murders dozens of young people, and injures dozens more. The FBI and police cite nonexistent evidence that he is connected to ISIS, which is regurgitated by the major media corporations despite being quickly disproved. The Republican presidential candidate promises to end all Muslim immigration despite the shooter being American-born. In Congress, Democrats stages a “sit-in” in defense of a gun control bill that hinges on the government’s “terror lists,” which have been found to include thousands of innocent Muslim people, as well as anti-war activists, black lives matter protesters, popular musicians, and others. In cities across America, Muslims face increased harassment and violence.
Amidst all this, there are increasing calls to focus on the election, on Trump. None of them seem to state the obvious: that the far right is winning.
What I mean is this: whatever the outcome of the presidential election, the far right–currently rallying around Trump and his anti-immigrant, white supremacist agenda–is already driving major aspects of American politics and life and will continue to do so. We see it in the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and the never-ending deaths in the Arizona desert of migrants forced to take dangerous routes by border walls already erected along safer crossings at the behest of anti-immigrant groups. Both are happening more now than they ever have before, and Trump and Clinton both promise to escalate these attacks even further.
We see it from the nearly-constant acts of right-wing terrorism against women, LGBT people, and racial minorities to the regular state-sanctioned murder of young black men, by police who frequently are sympathetic to white supremacist organizations, if they are not outright members. Both Trump and Clinton have accepted these parts of our lives, and will do nothing to stop them.
The only thing that will stop the far right is organized movements against white supremacist, sexist, and homophobic violence and for solidarity and self-defense for working people. But due to decades of repression by the state and cooptation by the elites in the Democratic party, if you’re poor and angry in America, there’s a good chance that the only people talking to you are saying it’s because of immigrants, or minorities, or feminists, or gays. Many people’s choices are either the far right or to simply accept the violence against them.
This is the problem that we must solve. The Democrats and their allies will tell us that defeating Trump is the answer, but it will not defeat the forces that brought us here. We need to reject the politics of cooptation and failure, stand up and fight against the far right. It’s not enough to defeat Trump. We need to defeat the far right’s America.
Originally posted: September 30, 2016 at First of May Anarchist Alliance
Comments
I'm not going to deny that
I'm not going to deny that gays are used as dissension in the US, but in which sense are they blamed for economic woes? I'd imagine that the vector a fascist would use is "liberals are more concerned about turning frogs gay than actually boosting the economy, we believe in creating American jobs" or something.
That isn't what Fascists are
That isn't what Fascists are saying, they use homosexuality and other none heteronormative relations as a symptom of national decline, and view greater tolerance for LGBTQ types as a way of increasing this decline.
Its tied to their ideas on rejuvenating the nation.
Reddebrek Oct 30 13:00 ‘That
Reddebrek Oct 30 13:00
‘That isn't what Fascists are saying, they use homosexuality and other none heteronormative relations as a symptom of national decline, and view greater tolerance for LGBTQ types as a way of increasing this decline.’
Just to be clear I take you to mean:
‘… and view with distaste greater tolerance for LGBTQ types…’
I had to read it twice to get your meaning (simple soul that I am).
No, I mean they believe that
No, I mean they believe that a society's tolerance shows the extent of its decline, more tolerance= more degeneracy which means society is in a far worse state, as they see it.
We need to revive the labor
We need to revive the labor movement first and foremost - building up existing unions where that's possible, building brand new unions whenever necessary, and in all cases bringing back the strike and the fight for power on the job. We need to do this on a vast scale - not like the IWW, building the revolution one sandwich shop at a time, but across industries, across cities, states and the entire country.
We also need a big tent electoral party of the left ("big tent" in the American political sense means that it unites everybody on the left - nobody cares what you think about Kronstadt or who killed Trotsky, it's all about building a better America and a better world)
Strikes and political struggles - in the street and at the ballot box - is what we need
Also, let's be blunt
White people who support Trump (and that's who supports him) are motivated by RACISM - with a side order of sexism and homophobia
Nothing else
There are no potential revolutionaries there
The average income of a Trump supporter is US$75,000 a year - in a country where half the working class makes less than US$12 an hour, that's not poor people
They're angry upper middle class racists, not potential revolutionaries
As for "solidarity and self defense for working people" - I'm all for solidarity, as I mentioned above about reviving labor and the strike weapon
"Self defense" tho?
This is America, where we have two parallel mass movements of gun nuts - "open carry" and "concealed carry" ("open carry" roam around carrying machine guns, "concealed carry" have pistols hidden in their waistbands and purses - there's a tactical difference but they are united by the insanity of gun nuttery,and racist fear of the big Black and the big Mexican, despite the fact that crime rates in our country are at 100 year lows) - talk of "self defense" quickly degenerates into gun insanity
So let's table that part of the program
All forms of violent crime are at all time lows...including violence by police against the public.
I'm old enough to remember when in New York City alone the cops killed 300 people a year - it never got on TV and we didn't have the internet then.
Today, police in the entire country only kill 1,000 people a year (in a country where there are 60 million gun owners with a total of 400 million guns - half the privately owned guns on planet Earth!) - the difference is, thanks to the internet and cell phone video, we actually see the violence
Let's focus on political action and - above all - organizing workers on the job
Tactically speaking, it will be a lot easier to do that under Clinton than Trump
What's your problem with the
What's your problem with the IWW?
Hey everybody!
Hey everybody! Look--
turns out, since cops only killed 1000 people, and the only reason we know about it is video, it's only a distraction from the real imoortant work--Building the One Big Party. Oh, and strikes. Lots of strikes. Get on it already gang!