Lindsey German on POTUS and protest

The decrees ordered by Donald Trump in his first week as president have surpassed all predictions for mean, vindictive, dangerous and reactionary policies. He has pardoned those convicted over the attempted coup in January 2021, including open fascists like the Proud Boys. He has resumed sending heavy bombs to Israel and lifted sanctions on illegal West Bank settlers. He has talked to Jordan and Egypt about Palestinians from Gaza being deported to those countries.

In a stormy phone call with the Danish prime minister he insisted that he wanted to take over Greenland. He continues to threaten the same for the Panama Canal. His nominee for defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, former veteran and Fox News presenter, was appointed only after the casting vote of vice president JD Vance.

Trump has declared open war on migrants, threatening their children’s citizenship and announcing a state of emergency on the Mexican border, said he will withdraw from the World Health Organisation and the Paris climate accords, and stated that the government will campaign against gender ideology.

To cap these plans, his new best friend Elon Musk has made very clear where his allegiances lie. Two Nazi salutes at the pre-inauguration rally should be enough for anyone to see what is going on. But his speech to an election rally of the far right AfD in Germany underlined his emergence as a leader of far right and fascist ideology worldwide.

Chillingly, he said that ‘There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that’. This echoes the line of the German fascists who long for a return of the Third Reich.

All this is terrifying, marking a ratcheting up of far right ideology and policy even compared to Trump’s first term, at a time when the far right are growing in a number of countries and where the EU – often held up as a bulwark of liberalism – is seeing major threats in its core of Germany and France, alongside a fascist prime minister in Italy and a likely far right government in Austria. None of this is yet open fascism but it is on the road to fascism if we don’t do everything that we can to stop it.

Marxists have always argued that fascism takes hold both when there is a period of acute capitalist crisis and when the centre cannot hold, allowing space for both the far right and far left. This process is under way. While the crisis internationally is not as extensive or deep as it was in the early 1930s, it has led to super exploitation of workers in many instances, growing inequality and falling living standards. In turn there has been a growing disillusionment with ‘politics as usual’ and a rejection of the traditional parties of left and right.

Why in general is the right growing faster than most left alternatives? Partly because they reinforce widespread capitalist beliefs: nationalism, racism and support for the family. However it is also the case that the centre left parties, like Labour, don’t stand up to these ideas and therefore help to reinforce them by introducing their own policies which mirror the far right. Social democratic parties everywhere attack migrants, demand deregulation, penalise the disabled and sick, and do nothing to prevent the attacks on health, housing and education represented by public spending cuts.

There are few better examples of this than the egregious Labour government of Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper and David Lammy, to whom no policy is too right wing. More deportations, stop the boats, Israel has the right to defend itself, increase military spending, attack those on benefits, tough choices to cut pensioners’ fuel allowance while easing proposed taxes on non-doms – there’s an obvious pattern. Reeves’s latest call for easing planning and environmental regulations in the name of growth sounds just like Trump.

The latest polls show that Reform – much boosted by the Trump victory – is neck and neck with if not ahead of the Labour government, which has record unpopularity so early in its term. The reactionary policies of Labour are paving the way for Reform, with all that implies. 

Liberal opinion world-wide fears and despises Trump and Musk, but its reaction to them is to bow down before their power and go along with the most appalling policies, mimicking them where appropriate. Reeves has called for more of Trump’s ‘positivity’ the same weekend she wrote a column in the Sun urging draconian measures to get disabled and sick people ‘back to work’. So we can expect no opposition from what is supposed to be a Labour government.

Nor can we expect much from the mainstream media, where we saw contortions to try to explain why Musk’s salute was not fascist but perhaps a result of autism or maybe just an unfortunate arm movement.

The resistance to the right will have to come from below. There are millions in the US who oppose Trump and who will have to organise on a range of issues. In every country there is not a far-right majority, and in Britain polls show a dislike for Trump and many of the things he stands for. But that resistance needs to be organised and it is extremely urgent. The world is becoming a much more dangerous place.

Protest is not a crime

The liberal democracies are becoming much less liberal. Protest and dissent is being criminalised. Refugees and migrants find borders closed to them. Free speech on issues such as Palestine is under threat. I wrote last week about the police attacks on our Palestine protest in London and the arrest of our chief steward, Chris Nineham. Charges have now also been made against the Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Ben Jamal, with both due to appear in court next month for breaches of the Public Order Act.

They have been charged alone with many of the 77 others arrested on Saturday. A huge rally in East London on Saturday expressed solidarity and reaffirmed the movement’s commitment to continue protesting until Palestine is free. Given the threats to end the ceasefire and deport the Palestinians, plus the attacks on the West Bank, we will be continuing our protests as much as necessary.

The attempts to silence them are to deny the Palestinians a voice (just compare BBC coverage of our protests in every city and national marches with those of the farmers). There are now extensive reports of Zionist pressure on the police – approval for routes of our marches by those supporting the people who are protesting against is a particularly Orwellian development – and on the BBC. Now they are attacking central organisers of our movement and those MPs who have supported us.

If they succeed it will not be about Palestine alone but about any issue that criticises our government and its allies. That’s why we can’t allow it to happen and will be announcing our plans to march next month and to support Chris Nineham at his court case on 13^th February.

We will not be silenced.

This week: has turned into a big culture week, with the Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown, Oedipus at the Old Vic, and Nigel Kennedy at the Barbican. Next weekend I’ll be on the protest against Tommy Robinson supporters on Saturday, and at Stop the War’s Annual General meeting on Sunday.