Donald Trump – An Extraordinary Danger to the World.
What We Can Do?
7:00 pm Tuesday, 18 June,
Birkbeck College, Room B18
Mallet Street,
London WC1E 7HX
The character and politics of Donald Trump make him the most dangerous US president ever. He represents, literally, a threat to the whole world. While cynics outside the U.S. may be tempted to say Americans are getting what they deserve, we should recognise there is a massive resistance from Americans against everything this POTUS stands for.
Trump’s regime and his supporters have been targeting many people, especially immigrants, people of colour, women, Jews, Muslims and LGBTQ. This has not gone unchallenged. There has been huge grassroots opposition to Trumpism from these Americans and many others who refuse to let this regime trample their rights and liberties.
We outside America should recognise that if Trump consolidates his power and manages to suspend many of the democratic checks on his power as President, as he has threatened with his trenchant attacks on the free press, the independent judiciary, Congress and anyone critical of his reign so far–then things will get much worse for almost everybody. If America succumbs to authoritarian rule, then democracy across the world will be in a far more perilous condition.
This meeting will discuss how in our own countries we can speak out against Trump and Trumpism in order to support the Resistance in the United States and how to spread this support around the world. Please come along to find out how you can help.
Although not a Socialist Party public meeting, this will be of interest to our members and our sympathisers
4 comments:
At best the idea of this meeting amounts to misplaced self-righteous indignation and at worst it is mendacious propaganda. The arrival of Trump on the scene did not signal some unique calamity for civilisation. If anything Trump's first term in office may prove more benign than his smooth-talking affable mass-murdering predecessor Obama. The current regime under Trump has yet to take the US into any new wars, whereas Obama managed to kick off several whilst coveting his Nobel Peace Prize. Trump is not some demonic aberration. He is an altogether normal manifestation of the death cult of capitalism; except too crude and blatant for polite company who would prefer to maintain the syrupy veneer of respectability to cover up the venality of late stage capitalism (not that there was ever a less venal period of capitalism) Marxist Humanists would do better to focus upon the inhumanity of capitalism rather than waste time lambasting its current Twitter celebrity figurehead.
Tim, I have no idea what will be the content of this discussion but did not Marx detail the politics of political figures and their relevance for various sections of the ruling class in his 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
Trump does have some unique features as a politician and we can't ignore this.
"...Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation, and being at the same time, like a juggler, under the necessity of keeping the public gaze on himself, as Napoleon’s successor, by springing constant surprises – that is to say, under the necessity of arranging a coup d’état in miniature every day – Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois economy into confusion, violates everything that seemed inviolable..."
Doesn't that sound just a bit too familiar to you, Tim? ;-P
I went to that meeting of the “Marxist-Humanist Initiative” yesterday evening. From their point of view, it was a flop. I was the only visitor and duly made sure that the rest of the audience got a copy of our leaflet, all three of them, all MHI members. All the same, it was still interesting as I wanted to know why, and see how far, a group which has certain keys things in common with us (analysis of capitalism, need to end commodity-production) had gone off the rails. I am afraid they really have. They view Trump as a threat to political democracy in the US and urge people there to support the Democrat Party and others either to impeach him or to vote him out.
Their argument is this:
Political democracy is important to the working class as it provides the best framework for the development of the working class and socialist movements.
Trump is undermining political democracy and there is a very real danger that he might succeed.
Therefore socialists should work with others to defend political democracy (the speaker called it “bourgeois democracy”) and defeat “Trumpism”.
The first premise is true but the second is not and even if it were true the conclusion wouldn’t follow.
It is true that Trump has been behaving in a high-handed fashion but stuffing the Supreme Court with your political supporters is part of the US political tradition (all Presidents do this if the opportunity arises). However, it is quite over the top to say that there is an immediate prospect of political democracy being overthrown in the USA.
Trump has to stand for re-election in 2020 and even if he wins cannot stand for a third term, i.e. he’s gone in any event by 2024. There was speculation at the meeting, apparently serious, that Trump might refuse to leave the White House if defeated in 2020 or even, like some African dictator, change the constitution to allow him to serve a third term ! Which planet are they living on?
This is to show an ignorance both of how the US political system works (it is extremely difficult to amend the constitution and impossible if even a quarter of the states are opposed) and of how capitalism works. If Trump is replaced by some Democrat or his Vice President (if he’s impeached he’ll be replaced by the Vice President, Mike Pence, who’s a raving Christian fundamentalist) capitalism will remain. The problems it causes will continue, even fuelling popular support for demagogues like Trump. So will political democracy in US (such as it is) … and US imperialism.
ALB
I have started reading a pamphlet I bought last night with the attractive title of “Resisting Trumpist Reaction (and Left Accommodation)” and have come across this passage which shows just how far down the slippery slope they have slipped:
“The anti-neoliberal aesthetic, especially among young Sandernistas, is such that many would rather allow Trump to be elected than to dirty their hands voting for a centrist neoliberal like Clinton. As the 2018 midterm elections approach in the US, we are bound to encounter the same discussions we encountered when we wrote that the extraordinary dangers of Trump and Trumpism make it important for people to understand the difference between voting against Trump and supporting Clinton. “Supporting” constitutes a wider sphere of thinking and action than “voting” does. One can vote against Trumpism, even if that means voting for a centrist, without being in support of centrism.”
I suppose this could be true: you could vote for something even if you didn’t support it. However, this is not how anyone else will interpret your action, especially not the vote-hunting “centrist” (what is a “centrist” anyway?). It will be interpreted as support — and will in fact be support — however tight you might hold your nose when you vote.
Eugene Debs put the case against this rather well: “It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.” In other words, if you vote for a centrist and the centrist wins that’s what you will get. Or, if you vote for a capitalist politician capitalism is what you will get even if you don’t want it".
ALB
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