Trump’s initial steps toward dictatorial rule
(This is the second of two parts. The first can be found in Part I.)
By Argiris Malapanis, Duane Stilwell, and Francisco Picado
A week after pardoning those who engaged in mob action on January 6, 2021, Trump signed another executive order blocking funding of federal programs already approved by the U.S. Congress. Even though the White House later rescinded this blanket freeze after a U.S. judge temporarily halted its implementation, other directives blocking the funding of projects previously approved by bipartisan majorities, such as the recent infrastructure law, are still in effect.
Blocking billions already appropriated by Congress expressed Trump’s view that the President can not only veto any decision of Congress he disagrees with. He can usurp legislative powers by organizing a “review” of congressional decisions he dislikes and effectively re-write them to serve his agenda.
The same attitude was apparent in Trump’s decision to keep the social media app TikTok going, despite a vote by Congress to ban it, which was upheld by the Supreme Court. The ban itself can be a precedent for restricting free expression, but Trump’s assertion of unfettered executive power is equally dangerous.
NEWS ANALYSIS
By the end of January, the direction of Trump’s second stint in the White House was unmistakable.
Trump is rapidly expanding the use of executive power — already a trend in U.S. politics for decades — but in a qualitatively new way. He has largely obtained unprecedented Congressional acquiescence, and he counts on a future favorable ruling from the Supreme Court. In the interim, he continues to act as if he has unrestricted powers.
On February 7, he took another step that has symbolic importance. Trump announced he would dismiss a number of board members of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and install himself as the chair. Within days, Trump became the Kennedy Center’s new chairman. It would be a mistake to dismiss, or minimize, this takeover of a cultural institution. The purpose was to dramatically announce the establishment of one-man rule in all areas of the nation’s life.
The Musk-led attempts to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and shut down government departments that only Congress is authorized to set up or take down — replacing them with Trump loyalists — are all aimed at serving such one-man rule.
In a major attack on labor, the Trump administration has sought to coerce tens of thousands of federal workers to quit their jobs while announcing the mass firing of others. On February 2, Trump also declared null and void all contracts federal workers unions had signed with the government during the last month of the Biden administration.
A witch hunt has begun
Meanwhile, Trump has launched a dangerous assault on democratic rights, under the guise of “combating antisemitism” by issuing another executive order that can target any opponent of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, he makes excuses for the overt antisemitism of his most reactionary supporters.
That order received less media attention due to the blizzard of attacks on anything related to “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” In this arena, a witch hunt is already well under way.
“A rightwing non-profit group that has published a ‘DEI Watch List’ identifying federal employees allegedly ‘driving radical Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives’ is bankrolled by wealthy family foundations and rightwing groups whose origins are often cloaked in a web of financial arrangements that obscure the original donors,” The Guardian reported on February 9.
“One recent list created by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) includes the names of mostly Black people with roles in government health alleged to have some ties to diversity initiatives. Another targets education department employees, and another calls out the ‘most subversive immigration bureaucrats.’
“The lists come amid turmoil in the U.S. government as Donald Trump’s… administration, aided by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has sought to fire huge swathes of the federal government and purge it of DEI and other initiatives — such as tackling climate change — that Trump has dubbed ‘woke.’”
The rightist offensive against “DEI” dovetails with and reinforces classic antisemitism. As a February 16 article posted on Substack put it, “In the American context, this racialized [anti-DEI] attack on liberalism often portrays black civil servants, politicians, and members of the military as undeserving parasites taking the place of qualified Whites. The structure of its worldview is the same [as classic antisemitism]: there is a self-dealing cabal parasitically controlling society, and all of its invocations of universalism, etc. are lies, and manipulations for its own benefit. This is the famous ‘socialism of fools.’”[1]
Constant rightist demagogy is also used to gain support for the anti-DEI witch hunt.
On February 1, for example, Trump falsely claimed that, under Biden, the Federal Aviation Administration’s practices of hiring people with disabilities and other efforts to diversify the air traffic controller workforce were to blame for the plane crash that killed 67 people in Washington, D.C., a day earlier. Such unsubstantiated and conspiratorial claims serve to mobilize Trump’s base among many in the middle classes and disoriented layers of workers, and to disguise and obfuscate the enormous danger of his actions.
The post WWII government-led witch hunt targeted “Communists.” Today’s witch hunt targets those the rightists define as supporters of “woke” policies. In practice, some who promote those policies have in fact undermined democratic rights and weakened the fight against racism and bigotry, just as some alleged “Communist” policies weakened the labor movement decades ago. But such blanket persecution, then and now, is nothing but a witch hunt.
Behind it today is the false claim that affirmative action — action that attempts to rectify decades of discrimination against Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, women, and others — is “reverse racism” and must be opposed. It argues falsely that racist and sexist discrimination is a thing of the past. And as Musk told today’s neo-Nazis in Germany, nothing to apologize for.
The ultraright has wind in its sails
These steps, as sweeping as they are, may not be enough for Trump.
A hallmark of a fascist movement is the promotion and use of extralegal shock troops that intimidate and violently crush any resistance.
Prime candidates for this role today are ultra-rightist militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers that led the storming of the U.S. Capitol four years ago. Blood Tribe, a Nazi group that orchestrated attacks on Haitian immigrants and their supporters in Springfield, Ohio, last year, helping Trump and his allies to scapegoat immigrants, is another example. Republican County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s recent program in Nassau County, New York — deputizing a “citizens’ militia” of retired cops and former members of the military to augment local police during emergencies — is part of this perilous pattern.
Whether such violent gangs will be fully unleashed remains to be seen, but the ultraright has wind in its sails. Many of its leaders are eager to push the envelope as far and as rapidly as possible.
In this climate, proclaiming one’s reactionary credentials is becoming a badge of honor. Rapper Kanye West, also known as Ye, tweeted on February 7, “I love Hitler,” “I am a Nazi,” and “I have dominion over my wife.” He also made statements spewing Jew hatred. Ye was invited to the White House during Trump’s first term. In August 2024, during an interview by a right-wing video gamer, Trump declared the rapper is “a really nice guy… He’s got a good heart.”
Other such rightists are part of Trump’s and Musk’s operations. Marko Elez, a former SpaceX and X employee who had joined Musk’s DOGE staff, recently resigned after the Wall Street Journal revealed he had posted on social media under a pseudonym, stating, “I was a racist before it was cool,” and “Normalize Indian hate.” On February 7, Trump and Vance called for reinstating the 25-year-old staffer. Musk obliged, immediately rehiring Elez.
The entire course of the Trump administration — including boasting about the number of daily raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rounding up immigrants for mass deportations — is aimed at instilling fear, which can result in paralysis.
Rightist demagogy
The Trump propaganda mill is also replete with daily doses of rightist demagogy aimed at confusing millions.
During a February 11 press event at the Oval Office, Musk, with Trump at his side, claimed demagogically that DOGE, the unaccountable task force he leads to reshape federal agencies, is carrying out the will of the people who elected Trump. “That’s what democracy is all about,” he proclaimed.
Musk and Vance have also undertaken an international campaign to promote ultra-rightist organizations around the world. They are doing so in the name of “supporting democracy”! Such theatrics were at the center of the U.S. vice president’s recent trip to Europe.
Addressing European politicians at the Munich Security Conference on February 14, Vance scolded them for not sufficiently upholding democratic values and offered what amounted to White House political backing for Europe’s far right. Vance urged these European politicians to end their opposition to ultra-nationalist, anti-immigrant parties such as the AfD. He claimed the effort to marginalize these parties, and their ideas, amounted to antidemocratic action. Under the guise of “supporting democracy,” Vance wholeheartedly embraced rightist parties that promote reactionary bourgeois nationalism, xenophobia, and imperial expansionism by force and violence.
Vance effectively told European NATO members they may no longer be Washington’s allies but its adversaries — unless, of course, the ultraright takes power in enough European capitals. His Munich speech, along with Trump’s push for a U.S. takeover of Greenland, are indications the trans-Atlantic military alliance as we know it may be a thing of the past in the not too distant future.
The day after this speech, which became the highlight of his first international trip as U.S. vice president, Vance privately met with Alice Weidel, the AfD’s co-chairperson, while declining to meet with German chancellor Olaf Scholz. For his part, Scholz decried Vance’s meeting with Weidel as unacceptable interference in Germany’s internal affairs.
Anticipating such public endorsements from the new occupants of the White House, Hungary’s ultra-rightist prime minister Viktor Orbán declared at a February 7 summit in Madrid of like-minded parties, the so-called Patriots for Europe: “Within just a few weeks, the Trump-tornado has transformed the world. An era has ended. We were heretics yesterday, but today we are the mainstream.”
Incipient fascism or another form of reaction?
A mass social base, the promotion and use of extralegal shock troops, the launching of a witch hunt, efforts to build a radical rightist movement at home and abroad, all at the service of the ruling billionaire families but cloaked in the mantle of a plebeian movement, are characteristics of incipient fascism.
As Novack pointed out in his book Democracy and Revolution,[2] “Fascism differs in one decisively important respect from other political expressions of reaction. It is a mass movement based upon the activity of a particular social force, the dispossessed and despairing petty bourgeoisie. Unlike Bonapartist and military dictatorships which are imposed from above, the fascist movement surges up from below. It has a plebeian composition, impetus and leadership.
“Fascism attracts to its banner the most discontented elements from the battered and bruised intermediate layers of bourgeois society. Its following embraces shopkeepers, professionals, white-collar workers, small artisans and functionaries in the cities and towns, and small landholders in the countryside. It recruits its shock troops from the lumpenproletariat, the unemployed and the most demoralized and backward toilers. It can make strong appeals to jingoistic war veterans who feel out of place and unrewarded in civilian life, to misled youth and alarmed pensioners beset by inflation and insecurity.
“The capitalists cannot smash the workers and shatter the parliamentary system by themselves alone. They require the services of a far more formidable, organized mass force and popular political movement to act as a battering ram. They find this agency in fascism. Through collusion with its top leadership, often unbeknownst to the ranks, they take hold of this seething social movement, which demands radical changes and has a momentum and aims of its own, and ultimately bend it to their purposes.
“These two opposing characteristics of fascism — a popular base and a plutocratic purpose — are inextricably intertwined. This duality endows the formation with a two-faced demagogic nature. It moves on two planes at one and the same time, presenting itself as a radical plebeian movement, while acting as quite another, a tool of the big bourgeoisie against the workers. Fascist gangs can be strikebreakers and bodyguards for the bosses, as Mussolini’s blackshirts were in their early days, while their publicists rave against the plutocracy.”
Whether and how fast Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) may morph into an incipient, or eventually a full-blown, fascist movement — like Hitler’s Nazis in Germany or Mussolini’s Blackshirts in Italy in the 1920s and ’30s, or a formation backing another form of dictatorial rule, cannot be predicted now. But the direction is clear.
Marxism is not a dogma but the generalization of the experiences of working people. It may turn out that the analysis Novack and other socialist leaders outlined decades ago is not a sufficient basis from which we can sketch as precisely as possible, and without any bombast or exaggeration, what’s unfolding today. Trumpism may lead to a form of dictatorial rule no one has yet seen.
But we can only interpret current events using the tools and methods available and within the limits of our resources and abilities. If new evidence down the road proves us wrong, we will gladly revise our assessment.
Labor, and all supporters of democracy, can still stand up
We can be confident about this much, however: Bourgeois democracy, preferable to any kind of dictatorship, is not destroyed yet. There is still time for working people and all who favor democracy to organize and stop the forces of reaction on their tracks. As Cannon said, “the issue will be decided in struggle.”
What is to be done?
First and foremost, we need to explain patiently and widely the danger of the rise of incipient fascism represented by the Trump administration’s actions. Most working- and middle-class people, including many who oppose some of Trump’s measures, do not yet understand, or even perceive, the possibility of such a danger.
Writing about a public mobilization of a small neo-fascist outfit in France in the 1970s, at a time when fascism was not on the march in that country, socialist leader Joseph Hansen noted, “The social forces involved when fascism moves forward are of colossal weight, are not easily identifiable by broad sectors of the population as fascism, [emphasis in bold added] and require mobilizations of comparable weight to crush them.”
Mobilizations in the streets to oppose the Trump-Vance-Musk triumvirate’s attacks on labor and democratic rights, as well as countermobilizations against any assaults by racists or ultra rightists, should be the order of the day.
A not insignificant minority of workers today are voting to join unions, leading successful strikes, and standing up to injustice in the workplace. These workers are likely to take the lead in standing up to the “Trump tornado.” This is an additional reason for the need to extend solidarity and material and other support to every union organizing effort, and any other labor struggle, and to identify with all those fighting oppression and exploitation around the world.
We must also try to win as many working people as possible to reject the “America First” outlook — advocated by Republicans and Democrats alike. Our motto should instead be “Workers and Farmers of the World First.” A united working class is the only effective wall against the billionaires’ race to the bottom. It is the only class that can ally with other exploited producers, like family farmers, to lift the world out of the bloody wars and dog-eat-dog competition of the profit system.
For the U.S. labor movement, that means grappling with the undeniable fact that it is impossible to protect “American jobs” while ignoring the plight of our brothers and sisters in other countries.
It is just as important to understand that immigration strengthens the working class, and that most immigrants are not the culprits of petty or organized crime.
And we can explain to any receptive ear the need to break from the Democrats and Republicans and to seek working-class political action independent from the parties of the wealthy.
(This was the second of two parts. The first can be found in Part I.)
NOTES
[1] “Antisemitism is the socialism of fools” is a phrase denouncing the ultra-rightist notion that Jewish “wealth” or “power” is the root of social injustice. According to British historian Richard Evans, the phrase was likely coined by Austrian left-liberal politician Ferdinand Kronawetter but is often attributed to German social democrat August Bebel and occasionally to Karl Marx. By the 1890s, the expression was widely used among German social democrats.
[2] Democracy and Revolution by George Novack, 1993 printing, pp. 164-165, chapter on “Bonapartism, Military Dictatorship and Fascism.”
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Categories: US Politics, World Politics
This reminds me of the stuff I used to read in the Daily World during the first couple of years of the Ronald Reagan presidency.
As a decades-long socialist, political and union activist in the IAM today, I appreciated this article and have shared it with a layer of union militants, those youth I work with in the Hands Off Cuba committees spreading across the country. Given the importance of these articles’ content and analysis, I have also shared it with Cuban trade union leaders and Cuban media that follow US developments and the efforts to end the US blockade of Cuba; so they know there is a voice for genuine marxism in the US.
There has been NO OTHER COGENT MARXIST analysis of the current period and the rise of an incipient fascist movement in the US that I have found—and none for groups that call themselves socialist or communist. A big weakness!
This paragraph is particularly important as working people, especially immigrants who are taking the lead in the fightback, recover from Trump’s “Shock and Awe.” “Mobilizations in the streets to oppose the Trump-Vance-Musk triumvirate’s attacks on labor and democratic rights, as well as countermobilizations against any assaults by racists or ultra rightists, should be the order of the day.”
Many fights for democratic rights will take place on the campuses where unheard of violations of constitutional rights, attacks on international students, pro-Palestinian groups and speakers, prevail. Union organizing efforts will face increased resistance by the bosses and rightists buoyed by Washington. Our right to strike will be more aggressively challenged as will fights for a woman’s right to choose, public education Vs. privatization and non-union charter schools, and the separation of church and state will be obscured if not obliterated.
We need to be in these battles with this WO analysis and help give political direction from historical experiences and marxist writings. Legal challenges are insufficient. As the saying goes “If not us, who, if not now, when?”
In normal times, bourgeois democracy is the best form of rule for the capitalist class. It is able to deal with conflicts within the bourgeoisie and absorb, muffle, and contain working class struggles.
But these are not normal times. The world went through a major economic crisis from 2008 to 2010. The USA and Western Europe are losing ground economically to China, which is now the leading manufacturing country in the world.
In the USA, many hundreds of thousands of factory jobs have disappeared, and living conditions for the working class have been deteriorating for decades. At the same time a tiny group of capitalists have become the richest people on the planet. And we have the bizarre spectacle of the unelected billionaire Elon Musk functioning as the de facto co-president of the country.
Thus, bourgeois democracy is under strain, not so useful any more for important sectors of the capitalist class, and liberalism is in crisis. We see that in a number of countries around the world, it is breaking down or under threat, both in imperialist countries like the USA, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Austria, and also in countries like India, Argentina, the Philippines, and El Salvador.
But I think it would be wrong to categorize these autocratic regimes as fascist, or to label the Trump/Musk regime as incipient fascist. Fascism arose in Italy and Germany after the working class in those countries tried and failed to overthrow the capitalist state. The bourgeoisie was well aware of the threat to their continued rule from a powerful working class, and recognized that the normal repressive apparatus of the state was insufficient to deal with this threat. A mass fascist movement was necessary to crush the labor movement and any independent movements, to atomize the working class, and to wipe out the concepts of class struggle and socialism.
Once the fascist movements accomplished these goals in Germany, the naïve fascists who believed in the “socialist” part of National Socialism were purged, and the regime reverted to a top-down dictatorship. The extra-legal storm troopers were incorporated into the official repressive apparatus of the state.
In the US today, Trump/Musk are smashing through the norms and laws of bourgeois democracy without needing any help from a fascist movement. The closest example we had of such a movement was the January 6 riot. But the labor movement is a shadow of its former self, the liberals are in disarray, and the state repressive apparatus seems to be quite capable of wrecking democracy on its own. If there is massive working class resistance at some point in the future, perhaps fascist gangs will prove necessary, but there is no point in making predictions about that now.
The important thing is not to try to find the best label, but to seek out, encourage, and support any manifestations of resistance to this increasingly dictatorial regime, whether from the labor movement, from immigrants, from students, or anywhere else. Remember the George Floyd protests from just few years ago, the largest protest movement in recent years. Keep in mind the wave of student protests in solidarity with Palestine over the last couple of years. We have not been defeated, and the resistance hasn’t really even begun yet.
It is an important article which catalogs the ground shifting actions of the new administration just within their first 6 weeks in office. I am a retired federal worker and union member. Our union’s members are facing binding arbitration while working without a contract. We had our first demonstration in DC to defend the USPS against Trump’s threats of privatization, and everyone’s right to find mail delivered to their mailbox reliably and safely. Our son is disabled and dependent on SSI, Social Security and Medicaid, as well as EBT and OTC benefits. My wife Maria is an Afro-Portuguese immigrant with an accent who is a naturalized citizen. Our daughter was the head of DEI at her agency office until a few weeks ago. We are all at risk. It is wrong to confuse DEI with “woke policies”, whatever the Hell they are. All DEI ever means is two things, and it has nothing to do with being woke, which only means awake to me. DEI meant 1. -that managers should at least all try and pretend not to discriminate too much, and 2. – coworkers should all try and get along, because that helps the mission of the agency, promotes teamwork, and creates a more friendly work environment. That is what they are demonizing. ( Unfortunately, I think the article was hampered by one unnecessary, vague, and politically mistaken sentence early on – ” In practice, some who promote those (‘woke’) policies have in fact undermined democratic rights and weakened the fight against racism and bigotry, …”. Really ? Am I supposed to “know” that ? Because I don’t know what the heck you are talking about with that one, or more importantly – why ? )