By Dave McKee
Donald Trump has been confirmed as president-elect in the United States, where the Republicans appear to have also won a majority in the Senate and House of Representatives.
Without a doubt, this is the worst outcome of these elections. Throughout his current campaign Donald Trump made quite clear his intent to scapegoat and attack millions of migrants, as well as roll back labour rights, deny abortion rights, and attack LGTBIQ+ and especially trans communities. He and his allies are willing and ready to diminish and undermine civil rights, and to violate even bourgeois democratic norms in order to implement policies that will deliver billions in tax breaks and profits to his rich and corporate backers.
Trump’s repeated racist description of immigrants as “monsters” and “vile animals,” and his comments about rounding up journalists and having them killed, have prepped the US population for violence and give a green light to violent far-right elements in his support base. The threat of vigilante persecution and pogroms against immigrants and racialized people, women and members of the LGTBIQ+ community, under the approving gaze of the Chief Executive, is real.
On the international stage, the implications are similarly dire. Cuba, already devastated by the six-decade blockade and the additional coercive measures that Trump introduced at the end of his first presidency (all of which Biden has maintained), is prepping for extensive aggression from Washington. In West Asia – where Benjamin Netanyahu is clearly delighted with the election outcome – there is the likelihood of increased US support to Israel’s genocide and war, as well as the real risk of US war on Iran. As with his first term, Trump’s intimations that he is anti-NATO and in favour of peace in Ukraine are a cruel joke, the punchline of which will be vastly increased military spending, an accelerated arms race and nuclear weapons proliferation, and prolonged war and destruction.
This is not to say that Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party don’t have their own package of dangerous policies – particularly relating to Israel’s genocide, militarism, policing, immigration and climate change. Like the Republicans, they are a party of monopoly capital, and their policies reflect that. But arguing that the electoral outcome doesn’t matter is unsophisticated and foolish. Trump is decidedly worse. His second presidency will be more aggressively reactionary than his first – he’s promised as much in his speeches.
Far-right surge is a global issue
Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are part of a global surge in far right and even fascist forces. It’s Trump in the US, but in Europe, we see Le Pen, Kickl and Wilders; in Latin America, it’s Bukele, Milei and Bolsonaro.
This trend is in response to sharpening contradictions of capitalism, beginning with declining rates of profit for the world’s largest monopoly corporations and increased competition between the world’s most powerful economies. As it seeks to protect and expand its power, the ruling class is putting some of its eggs into the far-right political basket – it’s not always in the same way in each country, but it’s a sign of capital’s willingness to constrain democratic rights in its effort to increase the rate of profit.
So, while reactionary politicians like Trump are dangerous in their own right, the real threat comes from the fact that they are figureheads of much larger movements which combine sections of the ruling class with poisonous social forces like the Christian nationalist right in the US, an essentially fascist movement committed to white supremacy, misogyny and the destruction of the labour and progressive movements.
In Canada, we see this in politicians like Pierre Poilievre, Danielle Smith, John Rustad and Blaine Higgs, who have all demonstrated their willingness to use climate change denialism, transphobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism and xenophobia to gather larger far-right coalitions as they pursue their political aims in the service of big capital.
Trump’s victory will put the wind into the sails of these far-right movements around the world, including here in Canada.
Working people need answers, not scapegoats
As was the case following Trump’s victory in 2016, pundits and parties are already beginning to discuss how this could happen. Are working people just racist, sexist and ill-informed? Many are, yes – both in the US and Canada and worldwide. But does that alone really explain the support that these far-right movements and candidates are receiving?
To get to that answer, we need to recognize the economic condition of the working class, which has been pummeled by rising unemployment, declining real wages and soaring costs of basic necessities like food, fuel and housing. At the same time, they see skyrocketing corporate profits and a huge and widening income gap between the richest 1 percent and everyone else. While these problems have become much more difficult in the past 3-4 years, they have persisted for decades and affected generations of working people.
In the face of this, mainstream centre and “left” parties have completely failed to address the severities of the economic crisis that working people face. Rather than promote an economic alternative – for example, through policies which increase wages and incomes, provide secure healthcare and pensions, and replace corporate free trade deals with fair trade that benefits all working people – these parties are doubling down on neoliberal policies within the framework of state monopoly capitalism.
While parties like the Democrats in the US and the Liberals and NDP in Canada fail to provide solutions to working people’s worsening economic conditions, far-right movements are able to move in with their reactionary narrative that peddles simplistic policies like border walls, tariffs and deep cuts to immigration. As such, they appear as outliers amid the political elites, the only voices providing an alternative. All the while, though, they are in the service of the economic elites, and they retain their popularity by spreading (and playing off) racism and xenophobia, misogyny and transphobia.
The solution is not for left and centre-left to continue to move to the right in order to capture votes, but for truly progressive forces to unite working people around an economic alternative that includes radical yet concrete reforms which directly address their working and living conditions while confronting the power of big capital.
Building the political left – based on class struggle, unity of the working class, racial and gender equality, and an independent working-class political movement – is crucial.
Seeds of resistance
Despite the grim situation, the basis for an effective resistance does exist. Both the US and Canada have seen a recent but sustained growth in working-class militancy, which has resulted in a strong strike movement that has fought for and achieved some impressive organizational and economic gains for working people.
But workplace struggles do not automatically translate into political ones – working people need a political vehicle through which to develop, promote and fight for an economic alternative. This starts with the labour movement – the organized and most advanced section of the working class – committing to intensify the class struggle in both the economic and political arenas.
Campaigns that are limited to texting parliamentarians or posting selfies on social media simply won’t cut it. We need education, organization and mobilization – in workplaces, in schools, in communities, in the streets. We need to build labour-community solidarity and fightback committees at the local level, engaging grassroots forces, and connect them on the provincial and country-wide level. And we need a program – policies for the real, fundamental and progressive change that working people are so desperately looking for.
The Trump victory shows that working people are being battered and that they are responding by listening to anyone who appears to speak for them. It should serve as a wakeup call for the labour and progressive movements to speak and campaign to the economic conditions of the working class, or face the consequences.
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