by Since being elected, Donald Trump has made some serious moves towards authoritarianism which the United States has not seen in a long time. It is worth taking a look at what he is doing, what “opposition” leaders are saying, and what we can do to fight back.
Donald Trump flirts with dictatorship
Donald Trump has attempted to exert a stranglehold over the press and freedom of speech in a way which no other President in recent history has. While the press was never apolitical or neutral or “purely factual”, Trump’s moves to control what can and can’t be said has gone much further than previous administrations. For example, earlier this year the Associated Press was banned from the Oval Office because they refused to recognize Trump’s re-naming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
More recently, steps were taken in forcing anti-Trump rhetoric off the air with Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” announcing it will no longer be on air amid a merger between CBS and Skydance. Jimmy Kimmel was suspended when chair of the FCC Brendan Carr went on right-wing podcast “The Benny Show” to say “These companies can find ways to change conduct and change action frankly on Kimmel, or there’s going to be extra work for the FCC ahead.” While Jimmy Kimmel returned to his show on the 23rd of September, his suspension was enough to send a message of “comply, or else.” The President would also post on Truth social that Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers are next.
More serious than Trump’s attacks on late night comedians is his use of deportation to silence dissent. Earlier this year, masked right wing agents jailed Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil for their vocal support of Palestine. The U.S. State Department and Homeland Security have, in the words of a recent ruling by Reagan-appointed Judge William Young, “acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target noncitizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech.”
Now, Trump has turned his attention to attacking left wing organizations. In his executive order issued on September 22nd, Donald Trump designated the anti-fascist movement “antifa” as a terrorist organization. However, antifa is not an organization, it is a movement, and so its designation makes about as much sense as designating the Tea Party or environmentalism as a terrorist organization. When reading further into the executive order, it’s clear that designating a non-existent organization as a terrorist organization is not his real goal.
In the executive order, it is stated “All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations … conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support.” It’s clear here that the intent is not so much to ensure that the non-existent “antifa” organization is banned, but rather to create a broad category of repression which can be applied to any left-wing groups which are broadly anti-fascist.
Later Trump wrote in a memo that expands his goals from targeting the non-existent antifa organization, to outright targeting the anti-fascist movement as a whole. In that memo, while he talks of “institutional funders”, he also talks of individuals who fund anti-fascist organizations. How this is implemented in reality has yet to be seen, but nothing in either the executive order or the September 25th memo is re-assuring.
The Occupations
Trump’s next moves are only more worrying. On June 8th, the national guard was deployed in Los Angeles in response to anti-ICE protests that erupted after an ICE raid conducted at a Home Depot. This wasn’t the first time Trump deployed the national guard to Los Angeles, he did the same thing five years ago during the Black Lives Matter protests. What made the difference here was that deployment occurred without prior approval from Gavin Newsom. This subtle difference matters—using federal executive authority to directly exert control over dissenting states is a dramatic escalation.
Shortly after, Trump ordered a similar deployment to Washington D.C. Taking advantage of the undemocratic denial of statehood to DC, Trump has been able to more reliably maintain the occupation there than in Los Angeles, where federal courts ruled that the national guard cannot become a police force.
With attempts at mass censorship and cracking down on left-wing groups, Donald Trump is testing the limits of how far he can take his authoritarian impulses.
This increasing authoritarianism, and lack of obedience to structures which previous governments were forced to hold at least some accountability to, should be of concern to everyone. Instead of addressing the needs of the working class, Trump is escalating attacks on the power of ordinary people. In fact, for most people, especially those in the occupied cities, the escalations are seen as an undemocratic military takeover with little reason other than Trump’s feelings on matters happening within those cities. However responses to it have been lackluster.
Fighting Trump will take more than strongly worded speeches from politicians, or small protests. The leadership of the Democratic Party has failed to stop Trump so far. Without a change of strategy, things will only get worse…
The Democrats Will Not Hold
Democratic politicians today, from Senator Ron Wyden, to governors JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom, have all voiced opposition to Trump sending in the national guard. For many, this opposition is welcome. But it is hard to be sure that their opposition is serious. JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom themselves requested the national guard to be sent to quell protests in 2020, when Donald Trump was still President. Wyden has supported a number of Trump’s most egregious abuses, the most serious being backing the genocide in Gaza.
Wyden, Pritzker, and Newsom are unable to actually oppose Trump, because they are funded by many of the same big businesses and powerful interests that fund Trump.
Trump’s attacks must be understood not merely as escalations occurring in a vacuum. They represent the rich and powerful trying to grab more control over society. To fight back, we need to build a mass movement of ordinary people. But while Wyden, Pritzker, and Newsom oppose Trump’s individual policies, they are not willing to call for the kinds of mass protest and disobedience required to stop him.
Even assuming that these politicians keep their promises, it is hard to imagine Trump respecting their authority. He seeks not to gain the approval of the governor of Oregon or Illinois for his actions, but rather to overrule them and exert direct executive control. The opposition that might have otherwise slowed the federal occupation of cities is now almost meaningless. Even if his actions are ruled to be against the law or constitution like it was in Los Angeles, that process could take months, and it is unlikely for Trump to abide by such a formality.
Any way you put it, putting complete faith and support behind the Democratic Party leadership is a strategy for failure. To stop Trump, we will have to build a mass movement of ordinary working people, not simply rely on the power of politicians and elected officials.
How The Working Class Can Fight Back
Since the new administration took office, resistance has manifested largely in the form of 50501 rallies and marches. For the most part, these protests are based on the power of popular will: they try to force the government to back down by showing its policies are unpopular. While protests like this can give even the most authoritarian leaders pause in the short term, they struggle to build the kind of sustained power needed to push back against a government determined to force its policies through. What’s ultimately needed to make these protests effective is to build a real presence of unions in them. Unions have a unique power to back up concrete demands with real actions, shutting down entire industries or cities.
While mass mobilizations like the 50501 protests are a good starting point, they are ultimately insufficient. Oftentimes, they are propagandistic, one-time mobilizations where everyone afterwards just returns to life as normal. But we can do more than just symbolic protests. While many today compare Trump’s regime to Nazi Germany or fascist Italy, the struggle against his administration actually isn’t much different than struggles against authoritarian regimes in the past, such as France in 1968, or the United Kingdom in the late 1980s.
When a unity of professors and students in May of 1968 demonstrated against Charles de Gaulle’s stultifying, conservative education system, Charles de Gaulle, much like Donald Trump would today, responded with the use of the police, and “non-lethal” weapons like tear gas in an attempt to quell the protests. Rather than retreating, the demonstrators escalated their protests, and received support from the locals who also had to endure the constant attacks of the police.
What started as a mere shutdown of two universities in Paris turned into a 24-hour general strike, which then turned into a complete shutdown of the French economy for the entire month. The strike became so powerful, so unstoppable, that the French government lost any control they could exert over the people, and Charles de Gaulle, believing that revolution was imminent, left France. What was once believed to be an all-powerful government with a strongman leader had been shattered.
In the words of Leon Trotsky, “The king is king only because the interests and prejudices of millions of people are refracted through his person. When the flood of development sweeps away these interrelations, then the king appears to be only a washed-out man with a flabby lower lip.”
In the late 1980s, another (albeit less revolutionary) mass struggle took place against the Thatcher government in the United Kingdom. A poll tax was introduced in Scotland, and later to the rest of the United Kingdom, in an attempt to shift money away from workers and into the hands of the rich and powerful. In response a struggle would ensue, with a key role played by the left-wing Militant tendency, wherein working people would organize themselves into anti-poll tax unions, councils would refuse to collect poll taxes, and threats of industrial action would be made if the government were to threaten non-payers with jail time.
While there was initially some insistence by moderates within the anti-poll tax campaign that they simply wait for the next election so that the Labour Party could take over the government, many knew that working people simply could not wait for the poll tax to be undone, and workers must take action immediately. The result of this campaign was the organization of workers across the country, and a left-wing tax rebellion so great that it would capture the attention of the capitalist press and government. Margret Thatcher would later say that the anti-poll tax campaign was the main reason why she resigned.
While in these examples mass mobilizations were used to a certain extent, they were hardly the only tactic for mass rebellion. The most important part of this was the working class moving as an organized bloc rather than individuals voicing their opposition into the wind. Workers and students, to replicate the success of the anti-poll tax campaign, need to get organized in solid coalitions against the occupation of their cities. These coalitions then need to employ a series of tactics, including most importantly, strikes. If this type of movement is to be built in the United States today, we could defeat the Trump administration before the next election.
DSA Must Lead
However, if we are to attempt such moves, it needs to be done quickly. Just during the writing of this article alone, Trump has announced that he is sending in the national guard to Portland, and is threatening Chicago with the same action. It happened in LA, it happened in DC, it’s happening in Portland, and it will happen again.
Portland DSA initially built a structure precisely for these types of moves being made by the Trump administration, a coalition of activist and labor organizations in Portland. Sadly, the coalition fell apart before Trump’s threats to invade Portland had been stated, and so Portland DSA was caught off guard when the national guard was sent. However, your chapter does not need to be unprepared. Building coalitions like this with solid responses to the moves being made by Trump can and must be done.
DSA should be at the center of this type of organizing. Our presence in the college campuses and the shop floors are unmatched by any organization. It is up to us, as people who can see right through the illusions of capitalism, to organize against Trump’s military dictatorship.
Diego Pajuelo is a member of Portland DSA and the secretary of its Washington County Branch, and a member of Reform & Revolution Caucus.
