Trump – A Bad Smell Removed

Trump modelled his stance and expressions on Il Duce, but he was an even bigger moron, and less competent than even that pompous ass.

Donald Trump's Presidency is ended. Joe Biden is President elect. With it, a bad smell that has hung over the globe for four years has been removed. So long as Trump's regime was in place, it was like a choking gas that sucked oxygen from the air, leaving the whole world complaining “I Can't Breathe!” Now, the whole world, for a short moment, can breathe once more, but it can only be a pause for breath. 

For four years, Trump's regime has spread idiocy, lies and corruption across the globe. But, even before that, the global ideology it represents was doing the same thing. It presented itself as Le Pen in France, Wilders in the Netherlands, Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey, Netanyahu in Israel, and Brexit in Britain. It is the reactionary ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie that has flourished, as that heterogeneous class was increased in size and social weight during the 1980's and 90's, by the kinds of conservative economic policies that were pursued during that period. Even before Trump, those ideas, and the financing for them, emanated from Putin's Russia, spread by the remaining Stalinists and their dilapidated organisations for whom the transition of the Russian regime to right-wing nationalism and populism occurred without them skipping a heartbeat. Trump's regime simply gave them greater credibility, and financing. Now that is over, for now. 

Trump has continually prepared for this moment of defeat. Hence all of the propaganda about fake news, about the conspiracy theory of the “deep state” - not all of which, of course, is untrue – and the building up of paramilitary forces, all heavily armed, ready to spring to Trump's support, to overturn a democratic election that they all have been convinced is a lie. But, although Trump sees himself as Mussolini – his stance and facial gestures are direct mimics of Il Duce – the truth is that Trump is an even greater moron than even that pompous ass. Like everything he touches, Trump's attempt to become a charismatic totalitarian has fallen apart, because of his own incompetence, and lack of seriousness. But, that should be a warning, because the next iteration of Trump, may not suffer those deficiencies. 

If Trump really were going to launch his own version of Mussolini's March on Rome, he would already have mobilised those paramilitary forces prior to and during the election. Unlike Mussolini, Trump has not built a fascist party to support his ambitions, and to organise the fascist gangs out in the country. Fascist coups do not get built on the basis of tweets. The fascists backing Trump did engage in violent acts against Democrats, and, no doubt, its only when we get first hand accounts that we will see the extent of that, which the media will have not fully reported. But, it has not been on the scale of the violent disruption of opponents that the Blackshirts undertook, and certainly not that of Hitler's storm-troopers. In part, that will be because black communities, over the last few years, have organised themselves not just in the Black Lives Matter movement, but also in Black Militia, a return of the Black Panther Party, and so on. 

But, Trump's own niece, the psychologist Mary Trump, has pointed out a danger, which is that given the psychotic, narcissistic nature of Trump, he will not be able to believe that he has lost, and, faced with that eventuality, he will be quite prepared to take everyone else down with him. His entire Presidency has seen that, at an individual level, as he has thrown his associates under the bus, time and again, to save himself, and his own self-image. But, as she and others have pointed out, this is a man with his finger on the nuclear button. In fact, too much should not be made of that. As others have pointed out, the Pentagon have undoubtedly gamed out such a scenario, and there is no way, he could just commit suicide for the entire planet. A bullet has his name on it, in any such scenario. 

This is not the real danger. It has always been obvious that Trump would not concede. He will dispute the election to the last, building the narrative that he won, and it is all a fraud, just as for years he claimed that Obama was not born in the US, and that his birth certificate was a forgery; just as he claimed that the crowds at his inauguration were bigger than ever, even though the pictures clearly showed otherwise. Trump stuffed the Supreme Court with his stooges in order to ensure that he could contest the elections, in the same way that the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Bush over Gore in 2000. Had the situation been the same, had it been a question of just one state holding the balance, and with only a handful of votes in dispute, then that might have worked. But, when all the votes are counted, it will be clear that the election was not even that close. On the popular vote, Biden will have around 5 million more votes than Trump, and he will have a clear majority of Electoral College votes. Biden will also have clear majorities in those states that have voted for him. There will be nothing to litigate that would make a difference without it being obvious that the Supreme Court would have simply acted politically and illegally itself. They will not do that. 

In fact, as the week has progressed, Trump has found more and more of his entourage deserting him. He apparently fumed in a phone call with Rupert Murdoch, when Fox News called Arizona for Biden, even though Trump's bette noir, CNN, had not. He demanded Murdoch have Fox retract its call, but Murdoch refused. He must have fumed even more when Fox joined other channels in declaring Biden President-elect. Only those closely enmeshed in Trump's world have clung to him, probably out of their own desire to save their skins from what is to come. Gone is the Rudi Guilianna, Mayor of New York, lauded by many at the time of 9/11. In place of that façade is now a twisted, poisoned dwarf who plays the role of Igor to Trump's Baron Frankenstein. 

Star Wars was written as a libertarian allegory, of the small peasant farmers and producers, led by a benevolent feudal aristocracy rising up in rebellion against the evil Empire of corporatism. Trump's defeat is where the Empire of the ruling-class, of large-scale capital, strikes back against the rebel insurgency of the petty-bourgeoisie, represented by Trump, Brexit, and that ideology of reactionary nationalism. In this respect, Trump's conspiracy theories, about opposition from the “deep state”, have validity, just as did Rees-Mogg's complaints that the British state was opposing their attempts to carry through Brexit. Of course, the state does that. It is its job. Its not a class neutral state, acting simply as an impartial mechanism. It is the state of the ruling class, whereas Trump, Johnson and co. are rebel insurgents, representing the interests of the ruling class's enemies within the petty-bourgeoisie. The state and all its institutions is the means by which that ruling class defends itself against such insurgency, without the need to rely on the working-class, as it did in 1848, for example, to defeat the Corn Laws. 

But, that ruling class is itself responsible for the conditions that led to that petty-bourgeois nationalist insurgency. The conservative policies it adopted from the 1980's onwards, and which sought to limit the rational development of large-scale socialised capital, and instead sought to build the wealth and power of the ruling class solely on the basis of an illusory inflation of asset prices, is precisely what diminished its own real economic and social power, as well as that of its allies amongst the working-class, and which simultaneously enhanced the economic, social and political power of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie. All signs are that it has not learned that lesson, as it continues to seek to put into office the same kinds of conservative social-democrats that pursued those policies for the last 40 years. 

In that case, this will be simply an interval. Blair/Brown offered no way forward, and the result was Brexit and Johnson. Hollande offered no way forward, and the result was nearly Le Pen. Macron has followed on from Hollande, and his support has disappeared, whilst Le Pen is now backed in the streets by the petty-bourgeois Gillettes Jaunes. Obama had no answers, and led to Trump. Biden has no answers, and so the next four years could easily be simply a prelude to the return of the same ideology that Trump represents, but now pursued by someone that does not suffer Trump's idiocy, someone that will have had four years of pushing the narrative that the election was stolen, and next time they have to be armed and mobilised. With Biden's record of seeking compromise with the Right, and starting already from his own conservative positions, and with the Democrats possibly being in a minority in the Senate, it does not bode well. 

But, in part that is down to us. Millions have been mobilised. Unfortunately, many were themselves mobilised on an inadequate basis. They too have been mobilised on a reactionary, petty-bourgeois basis that focuses on attacking the evil empire of corporatism, rather than seeing it as the foundation itself of Socialism. In the US, in Britain, as in France and elsewhere, sections of the Left have been mobilised around this reactionary concept of “anti-capitalism”, which really means opposition to big corporate capitalism. It feeds into economic nationalism, which is why in France, the programme of Melonchon was not that distinguishable from that of Le Pen, in Britain, Corbyn adopted the same pro-Brexit stance as the BNP/UKIP/BP and right-wing Tories. In the US, the Democrats, including those like Bernie Sanders, also pursue an economic nationalist stance that puts the blame for the condition of US workers on to foreigners, rather than on to capitalism itself. Instead of seeing the solution being going beyond what large-scale multinational capital and globalisation has created, to Socialism, they instead want to slow down that progress, or worse, turn it backwards and to focus on supporting less mature forms of capital. 

That someone like Corbyn should adopt this approach is not surprising, because his entire outlook, and that of those around him has been of this variety of seeking to promote petty-bourgeois national struggles, as opposed to promoting working-class struggles, that inevitably have to be waged against those reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist forces. The test for the working-class and for its socialist leadership, in the months ahead, is to break away from that reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism and moral socialism, and to develop the working-class consciousness around the principles of international socialism, and class solidarity of workers across borders, most markedly in relation to free movement, and in Britain, the reversal of Brexit. If we build such movements in Europe, in North America, and across the globe, we can drive things forward beyond the limitations of the politics of the conservative social-democrats. 

Immediately, the downfall of Trump's regime will mean that as the Empire Strikes Back, we will see Trump in court. All of the shady dealings, the corrupt and illegal payments and so on will begin to be exposed. All of the findings in respect of Cambridge Analytica and its offshoots are likely to be resurrected and inspected in detail. The FBI will reap its revenge against the Trumpists attacks on it, and the press will be unleashed. Other agencies will expand these investigations to other countries, especially as the ruling class seeks to undermine the next major centre of this rebellion in Putin's Russia, closely followed by Brexit Britain. Already, Biden insiders have been attacking the shape-shifting Johnson, for his previous attacks on Obama, and his sucking up to Trump. Trump described Johnson as Britain-Trump, and Johnson has been happy to adopt this role of Mini-Me, in his relations with Trump, just as other Tories were happy to supplicate themselves before him, desperate for some kind of a deal to relieve them from the disaster they have created by Brexit. 

All of that is good, as the forces of reaction are set on the back foot. But, we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted or sucked in by it. It means the defeat of our immediate enemies within the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, but it does not change the fact that we have a longer term enemy in the shape of the bourgeoisie itself. We will need to push beyond he conservative social-democratic agenda, and at least begin to raise the necessary demands of progressive social-democracy, as part of a Minimum Programme. In order to prevent another move backwards, we need to push forwards.