New era of politics, new era of protest

The Trump era has opened with a resounding display of popular rejection of the incoming president. Across the US on 21 January, mass anti-Trump demonstrations choked the streets of major cities. More than half a million each in Washington and Los Angeles, 250,000 in Chicago, 250-500,000 in New York, 175,000 in Boston and Denver and hundreds of thousands more elsewhere, from Texas to Tennessee, from Florida to Oregon. Across the US, 3-4 million reportedly mobilised – along with people in 60 countries around the globe.

Last month, the billionaire called on his base to converge on the capital and set an all-time attendance record for an inaugural address. Yet Washington’s National Mall on 20 January was half empty, and dwarfed by the processions of resistance that followed.

Trump enters the White House having lost the popular vote by almost 3 million ballots and with a negative approval rating – unprecedented in modern times for an incoming president. But the Republicans have more legislative power than at any time since the 1920s: they hold the presidency, have majorities in both houses of the Congress, two-house majorities in 32 states and 33 governorships.

A host of reactionary bills, which have been prepared in the wings for several years, will be signed into law in the coming weeks and months. We already know about the proposed gifts to Wall Street and corporate USA, the defunding and privatisation of essential social services, the ramping up of already significant attacks on immigrants and Muslims, the attacks on women’s rights, the attacks on workers’ abilities to organise, the push for greater “law and order” – which means more green lights for cops to murder Blacks with impunity – and a renewed projection of US military power throughout the world. More will be forthcoming.

However, the capacity of Trump and the Congress to carry out a fully fledged reactionary agenda will be tested. The opening salvos of protest against the inauguration show that there is potential to build a mass left wing opposition that could cripple the Trump presidency. That might not happen overnight, but people have shown their willingness to mobilise against an administration that has not yet fired many shots.

Instability

Trump is the political expression of a neoliberal order in chaos. The regime that the president now stands at the apex of remains fragile, burdened with public and private debt and soaring inequality, and beholden to the vicissitudes of the global political and economic system, which is in a more precarious state than the US.

But while Trump’s victory was a dramatic expression of a political system in crisis, his presidency is also a destabilising force. The incoming president was bitterly opposed by his own party and continues to advocate economic and foreign policies that are at odds with the neoliberal consensus – in particular rapprochement with Russia, tariffs on imports and executive influence over the Federal Reserve.

Perhaps he can manage competing claims by endlessly throwing legislative bones to the Republican Congress in return for some slack in these areas. But if that’s the strategy, it will only confirm that he increasingly will rely on the dastardly deeds of the political establishment he claims to oppose. He might be able to claim some popular victories on trade and jobs growth – each exaggerated to the nth degree – but he will also own every attack on “the American worker” that he purports to stand for.

Global dimension

The destabilisation is clearly not simply an issue of domestic US politics. Trump’s populism is infused with imperial petulance: the phoney lamentations about the US military being depleted and weak, and about the US being ripped off by and the victim of a manipulative world order that refuses to pay its own way.

His insistence that “from this day forward, it’s going to be only America first” is a threat: one way or another, the entire world is going to pay for his presidency. That makes for a dangerous, volatile situation amid the crises afflicting US and global politics.

“America first”, like “Britain for the British” and “Aussie jobs for Aussie workers” is disastrous – portending a race to the bottom for the global working class by seemingly anti-global means. The political right in every country understands that.

For example, Australia’s former prime minister Tony Abbott wrote in the Australian on 14 January that the government here needs to cut public services and corporate taxes now and ask questions later: “It’s high time for people everywhere to stop lamenting his rise and to start responding to it”, he said. “If Trump’s tax cuts work, we will need to cut tax to stay competitive; if his tax cuts fail, we will need to reform fast or suffer a swift loss of confidence.”

“America first” means a race not just to economic conflict but also greater nationalist agitation and potentially greater and more frequent military confrontations. War can be a great unifier for reactionary regimes – but it can also provoke the greatest resistance.

All this makes the fight against Trump a global fight against what Trump, and every other right wing nationalist regime, stands for.

Workers, students and oppressed groups don’t control the international situation, the economic process, the legislative chambers, the establishment parties. But one thing our side has is our capacity to mobilise and fight. That capacity has the potential to shape decisively the nature and direction of politics by creating hesitation on the part of the legislators, by forcing backflips and opening fissures. If the world working class is not to pay for the reactionary agenda of Trump and right wing nationalist governments everywhere, it will be due to that capacity to resist being realised – that means organised.

And demonstrating that the global class divide, rather than the acrimony between national governments and ruling classes, is the source of our problems, can open the potential to rebuild a bigger, stronger left.

None of this will be automatic, however. Absent serious opposition, not just oppositional sentiment, political leaders can weather negative polls if their administration is united, conveys a sense of purpose and gets things done. So it will be incumbent on those in a position to do so, to organise, to mobilise, to speak out and to encourage every act of defiance.