By Dave Stockton
Donald Trump’s inaugural address, was full of his usual demagogy, including the claim he had been ‘saved by God to make America Great Again’.
Prominent among his host of reactionary policies was his declaration of a state of emergency on the southern border. Within 24 hours he sent troops to block the Mexican frontier, effectively halting legal asylum applications and leaving thousands stranded there indefinitely.
His boast that he will launch ‘the largest deportation program in American history’ received a standing ovation. A Seattle judge immediately struck down his executive order depriving children born in the US to ‘illegals’ of their 14th Amendment constitutional right to citizenship. However, will the Supreme Court, packed with pro-Trump appointees, do the same for this and other right wing measures?
Despite his populist appeal to our ‘marvellous car workers’, his inauguration speech was really directed to big business, which will be enriched by his policies. Symbolically the three richest US oligarchs, the tech elite, stood behind him on the platform: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Trump has tasked Musk with leading a new Department of Government Efficiency to slash federal government spending, suggesting $2tn of the $6.8tn budget could go. He promised ‘the largest deregulation campaign in history’ to boost business and cut taxes for the rich.
As expected he has withdrawn from the Paris Accords on climate change. Trump is a climate change denier, whose central domestic policy is ‘drill baby drill’. He aims to expand US oil and gas production, with huge global repercussions for humanity.
The avowed antivaxxer has also withdrawn the US from the World Health Organisation, leaving its funding in shreds and hundreds of millions at the mercy of curable, but uncured diseases.
New World Order?
Wielding the threat of huge tariffs, Trump is trying to bully China and Mexico, as well as ‘allies’ Canada and the European Union, into agreements favourable to America. He demands the handover of the Panama Canal and Greenland, offering to buy the latter but refusing to rule out using force in either case.
This is the background to Trump’s claim that he is a peacemaker who will ‘stop wars not start them’ in the Middle East and Ukraine—for which he demands the Nobel peace prize! At best, this Pax Americana will impose unstable and reactionary agreements. A rotten normalisation between the Gulf monarchies and Israel will enable its continued dispossession of the Palestinian people—until the inevitable next conflict breaks out.
Fascist threat
When Trump promised to plant the Stars and Stripes on Mars, Musk jumped for joy. Musk later gave a Nazi salute at a rally, for which he has refused to apologise.
Though Trump is not a Nazi Führer, nor MAGA (yet) a fascist movement, Trump remains dangerous. His extreme rhetoric, claiming hordes of violent illegal immigrants have taken over ‘hundreds’ of cities, raping and killing ‘thousands of Americans’, provides fertile soil for the growth of the far right.
Any mass deportation operation would terrorise 11 million undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, with mass detention camps and a pervasive atmosphere of suspicion and informers everywhere. This would have echoes of the early Nazi regime.
Trump can also mobilise the Maga movement on the streets if he comes up against legal obstacles or losses in mid-term elections. If inflation takes off or there is a recession, Trump can hike his demagogic attacks to try to hold his base together, mobilising it against ‘internal enemies’—immigrants, Black Lives Matter, environmental and LGBT+ activists, striking trade unionists.
Teachers, among the most militant trade unionists, could be targeted in ‘anti-woke’ campaigns. Likewise he could withhold federal funds to ‘sanctuary’ cities and states which defy federal immigration orders. One of his first decrees was to end legal recognition of transgender people.
On the other hand he pardoned and released the more than 1,500 ‘J6 hostages’ convicted of insurrection and violence, including leaders of the fascist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Members of these white supremacist outfits paraded triumphantly in their fascist regalia outside the Capitol to pay thanks to ‘their’ president. They are part of the Maga movement and a potential fascist spearhead that Trump is willing to play with in extreme circumstances.
Resistance
With this dark turn in US society, there will be defiance. Learning the lesson of the 2016 movement against Trump, workers and the oppressed must build their own grassroots resistance and draw the unions into joining the revolt against him.
An immediate task is to defend migrants facing deportation, with anti-raids committees prepared to put their bodies on the line. Many of those threatened with forcible removal have been in the US for 20, 30 or 40 years.
Another clear threat lies at the door of workers facing government job cuts or deregulated working conditions. If rank and file trade unionists can link strike action to defend jobs and conditions to political campaigns to halt the deportation of their workmates, this could start to bind the strands of resistance together.
In the course of these struggles and others, US workers and minorities must break their organisations of struggle away from the discredited Democrats to form a new fighting party of all American workers and the oppressed.
