Donald Trump, who has dubbed himself King Trump, aims to divide and conquer the working class and oppressed in a manner far beyond that of previous Republican presidents like Richard Nixon’s or Ronald Reagan’s. His appointees dominate the Supreme Court, and MAGA Republican forces control both Houses of Congress.
This has allowed him to effectively rule by decree (executive orders) to dissolve a wide range of federal bodies dealing with racial or gender equality, public health, climate change and to dictate a right wing ideological curriculum for public education.
This unfettered presidential power is what Marxists call a Bonapartist regime, subordinating legislative, judicial and administrative arms of the world’s most powerful imperialist state to this quasi-monarchical power.
He has announced abolition of citizenship for children born in the USA to immigrant families (embodied in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment). He has declared null and void 60 years of civil rights and gender equality legislation, scrapped regulations aimed to combat climate change, abolished funding to federal social programmes, put anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy in charge of the federal health service, sacked or suspended thousands of civil servants and made these jobs dependent on political loyalty to the president.
Trump has also launched a veritable reign of terror against America’s migrant communities. Tens of thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have raided homes, workplaces and even kidnapped people off the streets. The National Guard has been sent to the ‘sanctuary city’ of Los Angeles to enforce this, while armed federal troops operate in Washington and threaten to do so in Chicago.
The scale of the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations on 1 June, the fightback in LA and defiance in other cities show the forces exist that can stop Trump. All sectors of the working class, Black, Latinx, and white, the trade unions and the campaigning organisations of the oppressed need to be mobilised in action. Otherwise they will see their social gains, their civil and democratic rights obliterated.
Global resistance
But it is not just the US working class who needs to resist Trump. His reach is global. The blizzard of tariffs has caused chaos and indicates the final breakdown of the neoliberal world trade system. Threats to countries as varied as Canada, Brazil and India may yet trigger a full scale recession.
If Biden was Genocide Joe, continuing to arms and fund Israel’s horrific assault, Trump has added to the obscenity with a plan to build ‘Trump Gaza’ on its ruins, as a Middle East Riviera, cleared of its Palestinian inhabitants.
His overtures to Putin to divide the mineral wealth of Ukraine with him have yet to be taken up by the wily Russian dictator. But Trump is willing to throw a dismembered Ukraine at Putin’s feet.
Meanwhile. as was seen in the Oval Office meeting of the hapless European leaders and Zelensky, obscene flattery is the prerequisite for winning any favours from Trump.
Starmer has had to obsequiously court him, pressuring King Charles to roll out the red carpet and host a state banquet in Windsor for his fellow ‘king’. We need to give the would-be dictator a right republican welcome when he comes to London, so images of the opposition to his reign are beamed around the world.
