"Trumpist militias" and other questions

Submitted by Class Struggle on 21 April, 2021 - 8:40 Author: Daniel Randall
Debate

Part of an ongoing debate on the USA. Click here to read all the contributions


Martin's latest contribution talks repeatedly about "Trumpist militias", which I think somewhat mischaracterises the nature of the armed far right in the US.

The intent of this mischaracterisation is presumably to respond to those of us who have argued that a "fascist" without any extraparliamentary/paramilitary street movement - something we can surely all agree is a consistent element of all forms of historic fascism - is an odd kind of "fascist". Aha, says Martin, Trump does have his extraparliamentary squads: the "Trumpist militias".

The armed far right and the militia movement in the US significantly predate Trump. It has gravitated towards him, rallied round him, and no doubt to some extent cross-pollinated with other elements within the broad, loose, "Trumpist" milieu. Trump has tipped the wink to the "good people on both sides" at Charlottesville, and the Proud Boys. He stirred up the protesters, including many militia elements, on 6 January. But he does not command those militias. In fact, the actually existing fascist far right in the US is somewhat split in its attitude to Trump.

The nuance between "Trump is a fascist" and "Trumpism has the potential to evolve in a fascistic direction" is not that the former really sounds the alarm and puts everyone on their guard and the latter counsels complacency. On the contrary. Stressing the nuance precisely counsels alarm - in order to head off, via mobilisation, the potential for a more explicitly fascist evolution (one that would, by the way, be more likely to "confiscate" Trump than be directly led by him as a "fascist leader").

On the DSA, I have repeatedly said I support the "Democrats 1" motion, which was amended by me at the EC and which I voted for there. That motion is short, and does not spell out in detail what an intervention into Democratic primaries motivated by the aspiration of a "break" would look like. Martin sometimes seems to imply that the DSA is already carrying that out, and that those of us who advocate a more "independentist" emphasis are pettifogging sectarians who want the DSA to pivot instead to the neo-Cliffite "party-building" of the ISO. In his most recent contribution he shrugs off any need for precision about that as "difficult to map", that we cannot "prescribe", beyond "generalities". Obviously acting as if we ourselves are capable of directly intervening in the DSA with fully-worked out, detailed proposals for which primaries they should intervene in and what their leaflets should say would be futile. But if we take what we apparently all agree on - that the DSA is a key terrain, the most important development in socialist politics in one of the most important countries in the world for over 100 years - seriously, we have a responsibility to do more than simply say, "yes, it's good, they're on the right track", and file anything more enquiring, detailed, or precise away as "too difficult for us to say from this distance."

What does the DSA's support for not-very-left-wing candidates in Democratic primaries, and the electoral donkey-work it conducts for them, do to build towards a "break"? It might help consolidate and grow DSA as the place to be for Democrat supporters who want to be "activists", doing Democrat electoral work with a side of other leftish activism around progressive causes; it does not bring a workers' party or a left party any closer.

On the Hawkins vote - no, the Green Party "has no potential to become a mass working-class party", nor would we want it to. But socialists could have used the Hawkins campaign to consolidate independent socialist organisation locally, including DSA chapters (some of which did support Hawkins), whilst pursuing a "united front" approach to unions, left organisations, campaign groups, etc., mobilising for a Biden vote. The Vermont AFL-CIO assembly that voted to build towards a general strike in the event of a coup (yes - small, only in one state, not "representative", etc... but we're a group of 100-odd people in Britain) was absolutely explicit about this "united front" model and pointedly did not insist on a "vote Biden" stance or denounce those not mobilising for a Biden vote as complacent, insufficiently alive to the Trumpist threat, etc.

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