CHICAGO—More than 8 million people took to the streets on 28 March, making the third “No Kings” protest against the Trump administration the largest single day of protest in US history, according to its organisers.
That mobilisation elicited different reactions among segments of the left. The social democrats of Jacobin chose these words to introduce a Ben Burgis analysis of the protest:
“The No Kings rallies have evolved beyond basic anti-Trump liberalism. Their messaging is sharply antiwar, anti-oligarchy, and far more substantive than the ‘resistance’ politics of Donald Trump’s first term. The Left should be proud to participate.”
The leftist journalist Arun Gupta objected. Writing on the eve of the October edition of No Kings, he didn’t mince words:
“[No Kings is] an astroturf campaign to rehabilitate pro-genocide Democrats while giving libs a performative outlet to feel like they are fighting fascism while they parade about in costumes waving signs about ‘Save our democracy’ before heading to brunch.”
Michael Albert, the long-time publisher of ZNet, tried to split the difference between praise for its ability to mobilise throughout the country and criticism for its limited agenda in “No Kings: Internationalism, Localism or Both”, concluding:
“[I]t is better to support No Kings, celebrate its growth, and work to expand and diversify it, than it is to ignore or deny its growth and moan about its needing to do more and reject it.”
It’s not surprising that one of the most visible manifestations of opposition to Trump would provoke different reactions on the left. But some question whether No Kings is a genuine opposition at all. The massive protest took place a month to the day after the US launched a war against Iran. The protest’s call to action included a charge against Trump for “spending billions of our tax dollars on missile strikes abroad while driving up the cost of living”.
Mondoweiss quoted the media critic Adam Johnson:
“Given how much Trump’s attack on Iran is rapidly escalating and the stakes involved, it seems now would be a good time for No Kings and Indivisible to marshal their tremendous resources and hold an actual antiwar march with clear demands, not more partisan pep rallies.
“The US is not under any threat of a ‘king’, nor do I have any sense of what this even means. It is however in the midst of an imperial murder spree and the largest opposition movement in the county, such as it is, should probably center this fact at some point.”
Given how unpopular the war is, it would hardly be a stretch for No Kings to have leaned into that opposition. And it was clear from many of the protests across the country that most attendees opposed the war. Pro-Palestine and anti-war contingents received support where they joined the protests, and anti-Zionist and anti-war groups like Jewish Voice for Peace endorsed the rallies.
Nevertheless, the organisers of No Kings didn’t foreground the war nor Israel’s extension of its ethnic cleansing campaign from Gaza to Lebanon. More objectionable, No Kings hosted an “online rally” including mainstream Democratic Party politicians, such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, known for their support of Israel.
One doesn’t have to believe that the American Israeli Political Action Committee is pulling the strings of No Kings to know that No Kings’ association with the Democratic Party leads to a dead end. Indivisible was the creation in Trump 1.0 of two Democratic congressional staffers. Several other DC-based liberal Democratic Party-supporting non-governmental organisations, from MoveOn to the American Civil Liberties Union to the AFL-CIO (which functions more like a DC NGO than a grassroots labour central), form the leadership of No Kings. The liberal MSNOW network promoted No Kings and supplied live television updates from the rallies.
Thus, the formation reflects all the weaknesses and electoralist assumptions of its Democratic Party-affiliated organisers. Under the No Kings umbrella is what might be called a “popular front” against Trump. From this point of view, No Kings is valuable because it’s so broad. Even if a small but significant minority of the people who attend these large rallies is active in such efforts as anti-ICE rapid response networks, most of the people who attend are anxious to vote against Trump’s party in November. The Democrats gain by default.
The champions of No Kings on the left, like the popular frontists of Jacobin, wouldn’t say that simply showing up at these mass rallies is sufficient. As Burgis argues:
“An effective solution to the three-headed demon of oligarchy, authoritarianism, and militarism would not start and stop in the electoral realm. The movement we need must be rooted in an organized working class. But if we only make these arguments in the pages of publications like Jacobin, we won’t reach the people we need to convince. We need to make them to the millions energized to fight authoritarianism in the here and now, and we need to make them not as hecklers from the sidelines but as co-participants in the fight.”
In the abstract, this is correct. What socialist couldn’t agree that the key to rolling back MAGA is an organised working class? Yet, Jacobin and its co-thinkers in the Democratic Socialists of America don’t really prioritise a grassroots focus. In fact, the paragraph that precedes the one above is more indicative of what DSA’s real strategy is:
“A more effective response [to ‘vote blue, no matter who’] to the resurgent right necessarily must involve displacing the centrist leadership of the Democratic Party, which has failed to provide any compelling political vision, and offering a robustly egalitarian political program in its place.”
Interestingly, this is essentially the same argument that Leah Greenberg, one of the aforementioned founders of Indivisible, made in a recent interview:
“[Compared to the 2018 ‘blue wave’ election in Trump 1.0] I think people have a much clearer understanding that there is a very direct relationship between the frustrations that they have with overall Democratic Party leadership and the need to get involved in the primary and the candidate cycle.”
It’s good to mobilise millions to show widespread opposition to Trump. But for many of the people at the head of this campaign, the purpose of these mobilisations is to provide an electoral army for the Democrats in the November midterm elections. Giving Democrats platforms they don’t deserve is a way to rehabilitate a party that much of its base detests for its fecklessness and unwillingness to fight Trump. And faced with that, even the organisers of No Kings know that Democratic voters are looking to turn the page on the party’s current leaders.
But let’s be clear: that’s not a phenomenon of Indivisible “moving to the left” and embracing DSA’s orientation. It’s a signal that the democratic socialists, who have always campaigned for “better Democrats”, are finding in No Kings a validation of their pre-existing perspective.
When all is said and done, the current amorphous liberal politics of No Kings also reflects the overall weakness of the current left in the US. What we actually need is a genuine left that campaigns against US imperial adventures and connects that to struggles against oppression and exploitation in the US. We need a left that aims to build organisations independent of the Democrats and their satellites.
If some of the largest manifestations of opposition to Trump don’t clearly foreground anti-war or anti-imperial messages, it’s because the political presence of a left that raises those demands is weaker than at any time since those politics won a mass hearing during the Vietnam War.
As Gupta has pointed out in his insightful essay on US social movements in the 21st century, many short-lived movements of millions, from the 2003 opposition to the US war in Iraq to the 2020 uprising following George Floyd’s murder, have dissipated for lack of organisation and ideological diffuseness. As he notes, small formations of Marxists formed national anti-war organisations that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets in 2003. But the largest of them, United for Peace and Justice, helped steer the movement into the “safe” channel of electoral politics and to their ultimate disappearance.
The movement in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza that emerged in 2023 helped to revive an anti-imperialist vision. But the liberal establishment to which No Kings is tied helped to crush that movement.
At the time of writing, No Kings is endorsing plans among labour activists to organise a “general strike” on May Day. It’s a good sign that No Kings is endorsing a labour-themed action whose key proponents are unions involved in May Day Strong—a network of union and left-wing organisations campaigning on a range of working-class issues. But it remains to be seen whether it will draw as many people as the 28 March protest, or whether May Day’s message of working-class solidarity will be lost in popular-front electoralism.
If electoralism wins out, it won’t be because No Kings hijacked May Day Strong. It will be because May Day Strong shares No Kings’ electoralist perspective. As three May Day Strong leaders put it in an article last July:
“We can’t counterpose electoral and strike action: we need to do both and understand the synergies. We need to both work within the Democratic Party to push the Dems leftward, and build independent political organizations that work inside and outside the Democratic structure and help us build our base.”
We should remember that the Trump agenda has received its biggest setback from activism in the streets against federal agents’ kidnapping of their immigrant neighbours in cities from Los Angeles to Chicago, and most importantly, in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. No Kings has certainly embraced anti-ICE activism, but the courageous actions of thousands of working people did more to derail Trump than any strategic decision taken in the offices of Washington NGOs.
First published at the International Socialism Project.
