Tag: Trump

From the Archives: “Dark Days Ahead” (2016)

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I wrote this on the morning after the 2016 election, November 9. I had just finished a 10+ city speaking tour of Germany, got on a plane to London on election day, landed and took a train to Brighton, and then fell asleep as results were coming in—figuring that finding out in the late evening or the next morning was all the same. It was not a good morning. The German paper Jungle World asked me for my reflections, and I quickly dashed this off over coffee.

At some point it disappeared from the interwebs, but i was always curious if it held up, and I finally found the original in my Sent folder. In retrospect, it’s just creepy.

Dark Days Ahead

The election of racist demagogue Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency—in the face of  all of pre-election polls—has sent a shock wave through the left-leaning parts of the country. Coupled with what looks like A Republican domination of the Congress, which will allow Trump to appoint the empty Supreme Court seat , dark days are indeed ahead for the U.S. Left.

Trump was able to channel the social anxieties of his largely white base by deploying techniques of demonization and scapegoating against a number of minority groups (especially Muslims and undocumented immigrants), coupled with his support for protectionist trade policies and vague promises to revive industrial production and national glory. The fact that he may lose the total national popular vote—possible because of the U.S. electoral system’s state-by-state, winner-take-all structure—is a poor consolation. Trump has shown that, in these uncertain times, a rich man with a gift for improvisation, a certain kind of charisma, and a complete lack of ethics can indeed talk his way into leading a global superpower. Lacking a coherent political outlook and with a poor grasp of international politics, Trump will undoubtedly appoint conservative advisors, some of whom may be tied to the white nationalist movement, to craft his administration.

The U.S. Left, from militant anti-fascists to Democrats, has made no plans for this outcome. Whether Trump attempts  to implement his more outlandish promises—to register Muslims and build a wall on the Mexican border—will probably be seen in his first 100 days. With a Republican federal government, it also remains to be seen if the judiciary will be able to uphold the rule of law in the face of a president who has called to jail his opponent and has expressed only contempt for civil rights, democracy, and common decency. If that fails, we see shortly if Trump will merely be a figurehead for an especially racist conservative government, or if he truly will make moves towards establishing authoritarian state power, as many on the Left have claimed is his intention.

“Die extreme Rechte der USA nach Trumps Wahlsieg”

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“Im Fahrwasser Donald Trumps erlebt die radikale Rechte in den USA derzeit eine gesellschaftliche Relevanz wie zuletzt in den neunziger Jahren des vergangenen Jahrhunderts. Der neuerliche Aufschwung begann 2015 zeitgleich mit Trumps Präsidentschaftskandidatur und seinem Versprechen, eine Grenzmauer zwischen den USA und Mexiko zu errichten. Die wichtigste Rolle spielt in diesem Zusammenhang das Erstarken der „Alt Right“-Bewegung, eines internetversierten Zusammenschlusses weißer Nationalist_innen, Antisemit_innen und Anti-Feminist_innen, der die amerikanische Rechte auf eine neue soziale Basis gestellt hat.

„Alt Right“ steht über den hochrangigen Berater Steve Bannon mit der Trump Administration in enger Verbindung. „Alt Right“ hat es als aufstrebendes Bündnis aus Faschisten_innen und anderen weißen Nationalist_innen geschafft, sich im Internet als einflussreiche Präsenz zu etablieren und versucht nun, sich auch außerhalb dessen zu organisieren. Dabei zeigt „Alt Right“, obwohl ursprünglich in einer explizit faschistisch und nationalistisch geprägten Szene zu verorten, keine Nazirhetorik. Innerhalb der Sozialen Medien haben sie es geschafft, ihre Botschaften erfolgreich zu verbreiten. Die Bewegung versteht sich dabei darauf, Anhänger_innen verschiedenster ideologischer Anschauungen zu vereinen. Darunter auch bekennende Neonazis wie Andrew Anglin von der nationalistischen Website „Daily Stormer“. Die wichtigste intellektuelle Figur ist Richard Spencer, ein Faschist, der große ideologische Schnittmengen mit der europäischen “Identitären Bewegung” (IB) aufweist. Folgerichtig lud dieser 2013, anlässlich der von ihm jährlich organisierten „National Policy Institute Conference“, den ultrarechten französischen Theoretiker und Vordenker der „Neuen Rechten“ Alain de Benoist ein.”

Read the rest at Antifaschistisches Infoblatt

Audio of talk: “Anti/Fascism in the USA”

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An 40 minute audio recording of my talk “Anti/Fascism in the USA,” recorded in Montreal in April 2017, is now online. I cover how Trump’s presidential campaign energized white nationalists; the question of “Is Trump a fascist?”; the Trump administration’s appointees and their connections to white nationalist and right-wing populist politics; the rise in hate crimes; a detailed overview of the different fascist and white nationalist factions, including the Alt Right; and the re-emergence of the militant antifascist movement.

Listen to it on Submedia.