Right-Wing Riot: The Establishment Strikes Back

The violent storming of Congress on January 6th, the culmination of Trump’s bid to steal the election, provoked a tidal wave of disgust. The potential still exists to mobilize popular outrage into mass action to drive back the right, and to expand democratic rights and social programs. But instead the corporate establishment of both parties have seized the initiative. Their aim is not a program of democratic renewal or lifting up marginalized communities targeted by Trump, but rather to reestablish the tattered legitimacy of their corrupt system–and to reassert control over their two political parties.

Yesterday, for an unprecedented second time, Trump was impeached. This capped a week of extraordinary political crisis set off by the disgusting display of far-right fury unleashed in Washington, clearly prepared by Trump and some in the Republican leadership. With Trump oscillating between defiance and evasions, and the FBI warning of more violent MAGA protests this week in the run-up to Biden’s inauguration, yesterday’s impeachment vote is unlikely to temper the convulsions shaking US politics. 

The first weeks of 2021, rather than the hoped-for transition to a new era of political stability, was a grisly reminder of the enduring and multi-layered crises tearing apart US society. Over the past two weeks, almost as background noise, the US death toll from COVID kept setting appalling new records. And for the first time since April, last month recorded a fresh wave of job losses, prompting a New York Times headline: “Jobs Recovery Goes Into Reverse as Pandemic Takes a New Toll.”

The US ruling class is driving for a “return to normalcy” under Biden. Yet the corporate centrist agenda brings with it a serious risk of re-creating the conditions that gave rise to Trump and mass support for right-populism in the first place. The potential exists to cut across this process, given the huge growth of the US left around Bernie Sanders, AOC, and DSA, as well as the mass struggles of recent years, from the teachers strikes to the BLM uprising. But left leaders and organizations must offer a clear working class political alternative to Biden, or popular anger at Biden’s corporate policies can be captured by right-wing forces, just as Obama’s Wall Street politics prepared the ground for the Tea Party and Trump’s victories. Rather than echoing empty liberal rhetoric about defending our “sacred democratic institutions” or calls for “law-and-order,” the left must seize this opportunity to mobilize mass action to drive back the right, linked to a program of expanding democratic rights and programs of social uplift.

The ten House Republicans who joined Democrats to impeach Trump–even as the president retains majority support among Republican voters–is part of a bitter civil war now raging in the party. Despite his refusal to put Trump on trial this week, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signalled he may support impeachment, according to the New York Times, saying McConnell calculates impeachment “will make it easier to purge President Trump from the party.” The Senate is not set to reconvene until January 19th, the day before Biden’s inauguration. So it will likely be left to Senate Democrats, after they take control, to decide whether and when to proceed with a trial to convict Trump.

While we fully support impeaching Trump, this is for entirely different reasons than the political establishment. Alongside much of corporate America, including industries that funded and publicly supported Trump in the recent past, the political establishment is cynically using this political crisis to strengthen their grip over their respective political parties, and US society as a whole.

Far-Right Desperation

For working class people, especially people of color and other marginalized communities, it’s clear that Trump’s narrow electoral defeat offers little respite from the threats, political and physical, posed by white supremicist and fascist forces. Equally ominous, the mass radicalization of Trump’s wider base–which even now is still reflected and encouraged by big sections of the Republican leadership–underscores the ugly political struggles ahead.

While Trump and the far-right forces that were at the forefront of the Capitol riot clearly overreached, resulting in their current political isolation, that reality should not cloud the very real danger these forces continue to represent, or their potential to grow further in the years ahead. What is essential is for labor and the left to seize this moment to go on the political offensive against the right, and to expose the complicity of Republican politicians with Trump’s racist lies and conspiracies which whipped up sections of their base into increasingly violent confrontations. In this context, impeachment and a Senate trial are political opportunities to put all Republican representatives on the spot to openly declare their views on Trump’s actions and vote on his impeachment.

There is no need to exaggerate the threat posed by Trump’s forces; a sober assessment fully justifies a determined mobilization against them. But a clear assessment does matter if we hope to map out an effective strategy. And crucially, it matters if we want to avoid the pitfalls and pressures of the Democratic establishment’s dead-end strategy of shoring up the damaged political institutions of US capitalism. Especially in an era of capitalist crisis, this strategy can play into the hands of Trump’s brand of right-wing populism and anti-establishment posturing.

Unlike the rhetoric dominating the corporate media, the reality is the so-called insurrection never posed a serious threat of toppling the US government or preventing Biden from taking office. Instead, January 6th represented the rage and desperation of Trump’s base in the face of obvious defeat, along with the dangerous role of far right, white supremacist, and fascist forces who were active in the Capitol riot. But just as a beast is most dangerous when wounded, the period ahead could see a surge of violence from far right forces.

Impeachment

There is no doubt that Trump had spent months preparing to steal the election, from voter suppression to inciting armed far-right groups to political violence. The recording of Trump’s call to Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, pressuring him to commit election fraud by “finding” 11,780 extra votes, was just the latest example of the president’s corrupt and undemocratic methods. For these and so many other reasons, the left should support impeachment. 

It’s not just about preventing Trump from doing further damage in his remaining days in office. In the present context, impeachment represents a powerful and popular rebuke to the far-right forces arrayed behind Trump, further undermining and isolating them. If the Senate eventually convicts Trump, something a sitting US president has never faced, it would set an important democratic precedent, undermining the “imperial presidency” which accumulated increasingly authoritarian powers long before Trump took office.

There is a huge danger, however, of allowing the Democratic and Republican Party leaderships to monopolize the political response to Trump and his MAGA movement. Instead, the goal of the left must be to mobilize the broadest possible social forces into an active fight to isolate, demoralize, and deliver a crushing political defeat against the right. This is, of course, not the approach of the Democratic Party leadership, who fear mass working class politics even more than Trump’s right-populism. 

For organized left forces and leaders, it is therefore incumbent that we develop an independent strategy. Rather than relying on Congressional action or law enforcement crackdowns, our strategy to fight the right must be rooted in mass mobilizations and campaigns to politically isolate Trump’s hardened base. This must be combined with class appeals to broader layers of society who voted for Trump. Cutting across right populism requires the left to organize a powerful movement against the corporate establishment.

Mass Struggle Needed to Fight the Right

The January 7th statement from the Democratic Socialists of America’s National Political Committee stated socialists “must embrace the struggle to create a true multilingual, multiracial democracy in the United States. We must abolish the racist system of policing that aided and abetted the instigators of yesterday’s attempted coup. We must reject the white supremacist and anti-democratic politics enshrined in the Constitution and the Electoral College. We must replace capitalism with socialism: a system built for human need and run democratically by the working class.” 

It correctly calls for the impeachment of Trump and ends by outlining a wider working class program around which to organize the struggle, including COVID relief, Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and abolishing ICE, alongside other social and democratic demands. The DSA statement adds that “we cannot trust the corporate Democrats to do it,” and calls for a popular mobilization from below.

Unfortunately, despite the efforts of DSA to organize protests in a number of cities, there have not been many mass rallies and actions. It is a serious political shortcoming that Sanders, AOC, and other socialists in Congress have not used their national spotlight following the January 6th attacks to call for mass mobilizations and protests. They have made important points via social media and in the mass media, but their calls for action have been largely directed towards Congress. Of course it is absolutely correct to demand Congressional action, but an essential priority of elected socialists must be to use these platforms to promote mass struggle from below and the self-organization of working people. 

Particularly in the context of the threat posed by the far right, and the drive by the establishment to utilize this crisis to rally the country around their nationalist rhetoric, it is critical to organize a left response in the form of mass protests. This would not only help to raise working people’s confidence against the far right; it could also help to bring pressure to bear on the Senate to convict Trump and set into motion the social forces to pressure Biden’s incoming administration. Protests against the far right could be linked to a coordinated campaign to expand democratic rights and social programs to lift up the communities most targeted under Trump’s reign. 

With an energetic lead from figures like Sanders, AOC and the Squad, BLM and environmental groups alongside left labor unions, it would be possible to mobilize millions behind an organized campaign to pressure Biden and the Democratic majority on Congress to reverse Trump’s rightwing policy legacy, and much more.

Trump’s Overreach

Public opinion has shifted dramatically over the last week in response to the shocking scenes from the assault on Congress–and in response to the chorus of condemnation that followed. A widely quoted YouGov poll conducted just hours after the storming of the Capitol found that 71% of registered voters opposed the actions, though Republican voters were evenly divided with 45% in favor and 43% opposed. 

A day later, however, a PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed 88% of all voters opposed, with only 18% of Republicans supporting the assault on Congress. By Saturday, public support for impeachment was up to 56% with only 43% opposed in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll. 

This rapid shift in public opinion, especially within the Republican base, was not just a spontaneous revulsion to the shocking events of January 6th. A decisive factor was the immediate, powerful, and relatively unified response by the US ruling class. The entire spectrum of corporate media, including Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News outlets, were swift and unanimous in their condemnation. 

The National Manufacturers Association, a powerful lobby group that previously called Trump “a true champion for our industry,” issued a sharp statement labelling Trump’s actions “sedition” and calling for his immediate ouster. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board called for Trump to resign and described his actions as “impeachable.” In this context, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and other social media corporations took the extraordinary step of shutting down the accounts of a sitting president. 

Trump’s more far-fetched goal was to block Biden and remain President, but more realistically, his aim was to consolidate and harden a majority of GOP voters behind his political brand, positioning himself to play king-maker in the 2022 Republican primaries and, potentially, to run for president again in 2024. Measured against these objectives, it’s clear Trump’s strategy has spectacularly backfired. Already by the night of January 6th, half the Senators and a number of Republican representatives, who had previously pledged to vote with Trump, flipped, instead voting to confirm Biden’s victory. 

Since then Trump’s rivals have moved to decisively undermine his position within the Republican Party. It remains to be seen how far this process will go–polls are showing diminished but by no means extinguished support for Trump among Republican voters–but it’s clear the president’s power over the party leadership faces an unprecedented challenge.

Disaster Capitalism

Thanks to Naomi Klein’s classic book The Shock Doctrine, much of the global left is now familiar with how the capitalist class uses moments of crisis to their advantage–including political crises caused by the instability of their system. While there are important distinctions, it’s worth also drawing certain analogies between the present crisis and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, which were seized upon by the whole US ruling class to whip up genuine popular fears of terrorism into a frenzied nationalist unity behind the “War on Terrorism.” Unfortunately at that time many on the left, including Bernie Sanders, gave into the patriotic wave and voted to authorize the war on terror and the Afghanistan war.

The present crisis is far more complicated for the ruling class to use similarly, given that it’s fueled by fears of right-wing violence and the role of a sitting president and much of his party. But there are more than echoes of the post-9/11 dynamic in the chorus of calls to defend the hallowed sanctity of America’s democratic institutions, and demands to beef up law enforcement to wage war on domestic terrorists. Left social media has widely commented on the hypocrisy of these sanctimonious democratic pronouncements coming from the leadership of both parties after decades of US-backed coups in Latin America, profit-driven wars in the Middle East, and an establishment oozing in corrupt corporate money.

At the same time, it’s clear that the full-throated establishment response to Trump has, at least temporarily, won the support of tens of millions of Americans. In the near-term, Biden and the corporate-wing of the Democratic Party will be strengthened out of this crisis, which plays into their narrative of a “return to normalcy” and their warnings against “extremism” on both the right and the left (whereas before January 6th, working class enthusiasm for Biden’s “return to normalcy” rhetoric was far more limited).

For the capitalist class as a whole, this moment presents an opportunity to strengthen the tattered legitimacy of US political institutions, which they view as a critical bulwark against genuine democratic rule. Much of the ruling class has long understood, at least partially, that Trump’s entire presidency eroded popular confidence, in the US and internationally, in the so-called “Greatest Democracy on Earth.” But generally, large sections of big business made their peace with Trump after his 2016 victory. Many even sang his praises after Trump delivered them historic tax cuts, radical deregulation, and pro-corporate appointments across government and the courts.

But the dam broke last week. Republican leaders blamed Trump for their loss in Georgia, and Trump’s incitement of the deadly attack on Congress congealed a nearly unanimous ruling class outcry against him. 

This wholesale denunciation of Trump by the US capitalist class flows from two central threats they see to their profits and power. First, they recognize that Trump’s reckless attempts to cling to the presidency, and the throngs of MAGA zealots he can mobilize, have morphed from a sometimes-useful battering ram to push through pro-corporate policies into an out-of-control liability, destabilizing their domination of the Republican Party, US politics generally, and the prestige of US imperialism internationally. 

Second, with the mass BLM uprisings last summer still in their rearview mirror, the US ruling class fears the potential of a mass popular revolt against Trump and the far right if they fail to get ahead of things. Especially within the Democratic establishment, which already faces huge pressure from its base to pass big progressive policies, it is understood that the political dynamic could spin rapidly out of control if major protests erupt in response to Trump’s provocations. For the Democratic leadership, calls for impeachment and an aggressive law-and-order response to the far-right threat are, in part, designed to cut across more far-reaching demands for social change emerging from below.

Dangerous Calls for “Law and Order”

There’s a national spotlight on the spectacular failure of the various law enforcement agencies to prevent Trump’s marauders from overrunning the Capitol building and the displays of solidarity from some officers. Outrage at the double standards and rightwing radicalization of the police is higher than ever. Even Biden felt compelled to denounce the obvious police bias compared to their violent treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters. 

It’s completely understandable, therefore, for many on the left to see some poetic justice in the growing calls for the FBI and other agencies to arrest and prosecute MAGA zealots who threatened or carried out violent acts. After years of escalating rightwing violence, while politicians and law enforcement downplayed the threat of white supremicist and fascistic groups, no tears should be shed when these dangerous hatemongers are put behind bars. 

But it would be a self-defeating mistake for the left to support increasing the repressive powers of law enforcement. Offering police more resources today, under the guise of combatting right-wing domestic terrorists, will tomorrow rebound against our social movements. The left should not echo the Democratic Party leadership who is using this moment to paint themselves as the real defenders of “law and order” and the sacrosanct institutions of American democracy, compared to their “insurrectionist” Republican rivals. 

As Branko Marcetic points out in his recent Jacobin article, when Republicans like Senator Tom Cotton advocated harsh repressive measures against the BLM movement last summer, including labelling protesters as domestic terrorists, such calls were broadly denounced. Now, using popular outrage at the far right as political cover, establishment Democrats are rushing to pass similar policies to those they distanced themselves from just last summer. Democratic Senator Dick Durban has already announced plans to reintroduce a domestic terrorism bill into Congress, which represents a serious attack on civil liberties. 

The first two weeks of 2021 should dash any hope that 2021 will bring a “return to normalcy.” Yet despite the very real dangers on display this past week–both from the forces around Trump and from the corporate establishment–we shouldn’t lose sight of the bigger picture: this week an overwhelming majority of US society was more fully awoken to the dangers posed by the far right, and sharply rejected them. While the corporate establishment may temporarily succeed in co-opting this sentiment, we should take heart in recognizing that the shifts in mass consciousness is a driving force in the process. This opens very favorable terrain to build a serious socialist and working class political challenge in 2021 and beyond–if we get organized enough to seize the opportunity.