Right Populism Returns and the Threat of War Looms Large

In 2016, a New York City billionaire ran an unusual campaign for the Republicans. Fox News, a reliable mouthpiece of the Republican Party, initially fought against his rise, but when it became clear that there was no stopping this movement, the network and the American right drifted from distaste to tepid support, and quickly growing into fanatical devotion. This new GOP supported isolationism, protectionism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and new “populist” appeals to the “real” American working class. Despite inflamed rhetoric and talk of polarization, the two parties both feign hatred for one another while working in a bipartisan fashion to continue dismantling the welfare state and massively increasing defense spending.

The four years under Joe Biden were promised to be a real “return to normal,” an embrace of institutions and bipartisanship under the slogan “nothing will fundamentally change.” Despite the fact that the “normality” of the capitalist system is one order of class oppression we must fight, not even this was achieved in the face of capitalist crisis. The assault on the working class continued with global inflation (driven by the drive for maximum profit in the face of the global pandemic and disrupted supply chains), and when unemployment shifted from historic highs to near-historic lows, interest rates skyrocketed to “cool the labor market.” This, coupled with a resurgence of crocodile tears around crime and immigration, and a rapidly senile Biden, proved a formula for Trump’s return to power.

Even in spite of Biden stepping down and being replaced by a younger, more cogent Kamala Harris, the Democrats quite proudly offered nothing but more of the same. Globally, in nearly every case of a competitive election in the 2021-24 period, the incumbent party lost, and often lost big. The Democrats didn’t lose quite like the Conservatives in the UK, but the Republicans did in fact gain a slim “trifecta” of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Presidency.

This new (old?) administration follows the formula of right-wing populists everywhere. On social issues, it pushes an agenda of drastic anti-immigration policy, eroding access to abortion, clawing back security for transgender people, and promoting “patriotic education” and prayer in public schools. The international-national right wing populist movement blames immigrants for social ills, rails against the liberal press, and pushes an isolationist and protectionist agenda. Trump shares commonalities with Viktor Orban and others of this ilk in his disdain for the press and the opposition in government. To what degree Trump will be able to completely convert his party to this program is unclear- already he is hitting headwinds in getting his most radical loyalists into positions like Attorney General and Secretary of Defense.

However, it is not just Trump who is moving to common positions with Orban or Meloni- on the critical issues of the drive towards war and attacking the working class, the Republicans and Democrats are heavily aligned. The Biden presidency was in many respects a continuation of Trump’s— from demanding capital divest from America’s Chinese rivals and increasing tariffs to deporting a record number of immigrant workers. The new Democrat coalition in fact positioned itself as to the right of Trump on migration. Meanwhile, while both parties courted the support of trade unions, they have both done their utmost to crush the working-class struggle through federal injunctions (see the rail “strike” of 2022). In the face of imperialist competition and the deepening of capitalist crisis, the result, no matter the party, is clear: wages will stagnate or decline in the face of inflation, the looming threat of war will continue unabated, the climate will continue its destabilization, and social services will be weakened, means-tested, cut or abolished as the forces driving the need for profit put the capitalist class at the top of the priority list for the rule-managers of capital.

Trump’s most heinous campaign promise is a plan to deport at least ten million undocumented immigrant workers from the United States. As has become the norm in capitalism in decline, the U.S. is dedicated to ridding itself of an “infectious” other. Though to what degree this will be implemented is uncertain as the ruling capitalist class has long benefitted from the oppression of migrant workers with reduced rights and working conditions, this threat cannot be perceived as a total bluff. There has been a bipartisan assault on immigrant workers, and although deportations are at record levels under Biden, the numbers Trump speaks of would necessitate national guard or military involvement, and likely would require the construction of even more concentration camps at the border. The response from the electorally-minded will be nothing but to watch in horror and hope that in four years, maybe we can make the camps more humane or make the deportation wait times shorter. The left-most politicians race to be the toughest elected official when it comes to “the border”. These politics serve no purpose other than to divide workers along national, racial, ethnic, and language barriers just long enough to pick their pockets.

In spite of how long and how expensive campaign season has become, the working class has always been more or less disinterested in the electoral process in the United States. The number of working-class voters peaked in 2020 and declined back near-2016 numbers in 2024. And those numbers paint a picture of a working class that abstains from the electoral process at about the same rate as they support them. Political analysts seek to explain voter disinterest as “failing to message” to these people. Insufferable wonks hope to use statistical tools to identify some or another selling point to get these people to the polls, often by breaking the working class into constituent groups based on race, gender, religion, job classification, and education levels. In spite of all of the efforts of this vast industry, Trump won an election where few switched tickets; instead, he likely won because millions stayed home, since “No one” isn’t a choice on the ballot.

The working class is called ignorant for rejecting electoralism. This brow beating serves no purpose but to further turn us off from the bourgeois-democratic process, and for good reason. The working class is perhaps aware of something about which the capitalist class is in denial—there is no room for workers in the agenda of capitalist political parties. Decades of decline in wages, health care coverage, life expectancy, the loss of a future retirement, and the guarantee of decline in every sphere of life is not a promise that animates the working class. This decline is not over, and will continue with velocity under Trump, as promised. Even if there was some pathway to a working-class mobilization into positions of power, we know from history that one cannot simply take hold of the ready-made state machinery and commandeer it for our purposes. Instead we must fight our own fight against the capitalist system, here and everywhere. Working-class political power only comes through a rejection of the capitalist system as a whole, and any movement to protect the institutions from a “threat to democracy” only serves to prolong this system of immiseration and decline.

Maintenance of this system will not only mean further degradation of services. As other nations in the world find themselves in a similar competition over resources in their fixation on profit, the more precarious nations will find themselves compelled to integrate further into the financial and political web of the more powerful countries, leading to blocs of nations with common interests and in-common enemies. Indeed the tensions between the NATO-aligned nations and those aligned with Russia, China, and Iran have graduated from “cold” forms of warfare, such as sanctions and cyber warfare, to conventional warfare fought by regional proxies. The forces that have brought the world to the brink of war are not subservient to any politician. Despite promises from Trump of a swift end to the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, this is hardly feasible in the long-run as capital heads towards a third generalized imperialist war. The President-Elect’s “dealmaker” mindset is no match against the need for capital accumulation. There is simply no beneficial deal to be made by Russia or Israel, two countries that are fully mobilized for war and have grown reliant on destruction and bloodshed. And while the US may wage a pressure campaign on NATO allies to “pay their fair share” in defense spending, this would only ratchet up tensions as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom arm themselves with the intent to strike.

In this period, the threat of total war is being felt across the world. And although there may be pockets of disorganized resistance, these will be met with waves of repression and propaganda in the event that war breaks out beyond the bounds of the current regional conflicts. War will be characterized as inevitability, and patriotism will be defined by one’s commitment to honor the nation. Workers will be called on to fight on behalf of the class that wages this war to annex highly prized land or to defend the laughably eroded liberal-democratic order. In either case there will be many justifications fabricated in the nick of time to ensure the necessary support. And just like every war, it will be the working class called to the slaughter. In the First and Second Great Imperialist Wars, millions of poor factory and farm laborers fought and died, and many cities were turned to ruins. In these great wars, many looked on in horror at the efficiency of the machine of death, only to hope that such a violent upheaval of this magnitude could never happen again. The First World War was called the war to end all wars, only to be followed with an even greater slaughter twenty years later. The Second World War ended with atomic weaponry used on civilians, and with much of Europe and Asia reduced to rubble. Any war that would be fought today on a similar scale comes with even more powerful weaponry. And although there was a “peace” of nearly 80 years since the last conflagration, we now find ourselves still tightly in the grip of imperialist capitalism that is holding the workers of the world hostage. There is only one way out of this dilemma, and it is to break this very system that nourishes itself on our blood.

Internationalist Workers' Group
December 24 2024

The above article is taken from the latest issue of Internationalist Notes (#10 Winter 2024-2025), broadsheet of the Internationalist Workers’ Group.

Wednesday, January 22, 2025