U.S: First impacts of Trump's second mandate
ByAlejandro Bodart YVince Gaynor
Since he assumed his second term 20 from January, Trump launched a reactionary offensive, authoritarian and imperialist. This time accompanies the establishment, With the support of a republican party aligned behind him, The explicit support of the main capitalist magnates, and the permissive positioning of the Democrats and the union bureaucracy.
The latter certainly collaborated that the great opposition mobilizations that received it in 2016, But the growing social and political polarization also feeds the radicalization of a sector willing to fight to stop it, And its reactionary program will not happen without provoking resistance.
The revolutionaries will have a fundamental role in the struggles that are coming and in the organization of the fighters who will lead them.
A global process
The rise of the extreme right is a worldwide phenomenon. Various expressions of this sector govern in seven European Union countries (Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Smell, Croatia, Slovakia and Finland), They are close to forming a government in Austria and are on the rise in France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Some of its most extreme and extravagant expressions, as the Argentine president Milei and the Salvadoran president Bukele, They are promoted as examples to follow internationally. Bolsonarism is maintained as a weight force in Brazil, Despite having lost the government.
Modi's fundamentalist regime in India and the authoritarian of Putin in Russia, They share central characteristics with the extreme western right. Even beyond these political expressions, a general tendency towards more authoritarian and repressive regimes predominates in the world throughout the capitalist political arch.
The extreme global right is not homogeneous, There are more radical or closer sectors to the classic right, More nationalists or neoliberals. But beyond the variety, They constitute the spearhead of a determined global turn to the right of the bourgeoisie, that has strengthened a reactionary sector of society.
A product of the systemic crisis
The systemic crisis that capitalism crosses from 2008 It is only comparable to those preceded by the two world wars of the last century. The destruction and concentration of capital of those wars, allowed the bourgeoisie to recover the necessary profitability to overcome those crises. Not seeing yourself today in a position to face at the moment, A new World War, They try to recover profitability by increasing exploitation.
For the depth of the crisis, It is not enough to have ended the welfare state and the bulk of the conquests won in the second postwar period or with the flexibility of neoliberalism. They need to end the most elementary rights of the working masses and reduce us to work until the body collapses, by the minimum indispensable to survive and continue working. Aware that this harms the vast majority, generates opposition and causes resistance, They need to reduce democratic mechanisms to a minimum and strengthen repressive devices to the maximum.
That the extreme right expresses more clearly this need for the whole of the imperialist bourgeoisie, It greatly explains its rapid acceptance and assimilation by bourgeois political regimes and parties, and contributes significantly to its global ascent.
At the same time, The phenomenon of the extreme right is part of a global polarization process, that also causes mass mobilizations, rebellions and revolutions, including important strikes that have revived some of the most powerful workers' sectors. It is an unequal process, Because despite the gigantic struggles and the radicalization to the left of important sectors, A political expression has not emerged in this pole, as if in the other.
Nevertheless, As they have not managed to crush the will to resist, What predominates is instability. And while the masses keep fighting, The revolutionaries will have the duty to boost their struggles and the opportunity to organize the most determined fighters, which allows to build and strengthen our revolutionary organizations.
2025 it's not 2016
This triumph of Trump is part of the global promotion phenomenon of the extreme right, feeds on it and, at the same time, strengthens all its expressions. This feedback explains, In a minor measure, The trust with which Trump and his partners assumed and launched such a comprehensive and deep offensive.
Trump was one of the first expressions of the extreme right, When he assumed his first mandate in 2016. At that time, It was not the main bet of the bourgeoisie, that he saw more risks than opportunities in his government. He faced great mobilizations against him and the opposition or lack of collaboration of much of the establishment. He failed to implement many of his initiatives and lost re -election in 2020. He was even prosecuted and convicted of several crimes. But it consolidated a radicalized social base, minority, But important; While traditional political expressions continued to disintegrate.
The Biden Democratic Government, Trump that happened, He maintained some of his key policies -like migration policy and tax cuts for corporations and rich- He broke strikes, Ruevo the Zionist genocide in Gaza; In addition to suppressing students who sympathized with Palestine. Bernie Sanders' claudication and the democratic socialists of America collaborated with that disappointment, that had generated expectations in previous years, And they supported the re -election of the "genocidal" Joe without looking, And then Harris. Consequently, Democrats lost about four million votes.
In the meantime, Trump was strengthened within the republican ranks as the most consistent opponent, as a radical figure and persecuted by the establishment and, fundamentally, as an expression of the extreme right, that advanced internationally during those four years.
Unlike what happened in 2016, The Republican party aligned behind its candidacy and built a coalition with more than 100 radical right -wing organizations and an ambitious reactionary program, Detailed in the project 2025 fromHeritage Foundation. The great bourgeoisie, that was divided during his first term, is now clearly inverted, clearly expressed by the public support of the technology magnates and the richest men in the world as Musk, Zuckerberg y Bezos, that they had sustained a much more progressive image so far.
The Trump government also has a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, A triumph in Congress -Republican Moria in the two cameras- and a more collaborative Democratic leadership than opponent.
The set of these elements shows that the imperialist ruling class has a higher level of unity on the need to adopt a more reactionary orientation. Evaluating that Trump's first mandate failed because he did not advance more decidedly, They support the current plan to try to impose deeper changes, more quickly. A similar dynamic has also led to the bourgeoisie of other countries to give support to the extreme right, for example, in Argentina.
Consequently, Trump and his partners arrived at the White House overflow. But your real support is minority in society as a whole. Trump won the choice by a margin of only 1,5 % And the abstention of a third of the electorate means that only one third chose it. This structural weakness of the government cannot be lost sight of, Behind his apparently unlimited current trust.
The dimension of the offensive
Since he assumed, Trump launched a battery of attacks on all fronts, Measures against workers, oppressed, democratic rights and environmental regulations and statements of imperialist aggression.
In one of its first measures, Trump pardoned the protesters convicted of the attack on the Congress of the 6 from January, several of them fascists declared. Its cabinet constitutes the most oligarchic and reactionary government since the nineteenth century. The location of the magnate Elon Musk with extraordinary powers on the budget, It is indicative.
Beyond how realistic its declared objective of cutting more than a quarter of the national budget, He has already fired tens of thousands of state workers and drives the “voluntary” retirement of two million more. Changed the categorization of the state structure to arrive the power to dismiss without impediment to millions of workers, previously considered non -political. He stopped all national and international social assistance, causing a global crisis of access to HIV medications, Among other problems.
Unleashed a mass raid from ICE, The immigration police, arresting to Miles, Moving dozens to the Guantanamo Detention and Torture Fields. He signed decrees that remove rights to trans people, that criminalize pro-palestine activists and eliminate programs against racial and gender discrimination.
Nullified the warm environmental regulations that Biden had implemented, He withdrew the country from the agreements of Paris and the World Health Organization.
Some of these measures have been judicially stopped, But the possibilities that many of them are ratified, instead of canceled, Today the current political environment and composition of justice are given.
There are also many ads of unacceptable measures, but that tonify the reactionary social base. In the same way, Elon Musk's Nazi greeting, although then denied that it has been, It is a powerful message to the radicalized right sector of the population, in which this government seeks to rely to face the inevitable resistance to the implementation of its program.
This action seeks to "flood the court" with so many scandalously reactionary attacks, But unfeasible, so that it is impossible to respond to all, and that those who do intend to specify, They seem less terrible or unnoticed. But it is also part of a cultural battle for "common sense". It seeks to radically expand racist attitudes and actions, chauvinist, xenophobic, homophobes and generally reactionary that are considered acceptable, and the rights that are considered "privileges" or directly crimes.
This battle is not less, whose objective is to strengthen and motivate the action of the most extreme sectors, violent and directly fascists that constitute the hard core of the social base of the extreme right; and weaken and demoralize workers and oppressed in general and activists willing to face these attacks.
The Trump doctrine
One of the central facets of the systemic crisis of current capitalism is the crisis of imperialist hegemony. U.S, still the main world power, is in a clear decline, While regional powers are strengthened and China arises as a global competitor.
In 2016, Much of the bourgeoisie opposed Trump's protectionist and isolationist trends and from 2020, Biden tried to recover the previous orientation. Now the conclusion seems to prevail that the multilateral strategy no longer serves, with which American imperialism dominates the world for long decades; And that an important change is needed to recover global power by force.
Thus, The abrupt turn promoted by the new government towards strong commercial protectionism and a more aggressive expansionist nationalism, It has the accompaniment of the establishment.
Trump began announcing new commercial rates against Mexico, Canada and China; and declared his intention to resume control of the Panama Canal, Annexar Greenland and Colonize Gaza. Although the latter are generally considered unfeasible, And the rates for Canada and Mexico were then negotiated, The ads served as a statement of intention.
Since then the United States has increased commercial rates with practically everyone, which downloads part of the crisis in the rest of the world, fortifying the profits of US companies, At the expense of others. This aggravates the economic crisis of all business partners in the United States, including historic allies such as Europe and Taiwan, and the countries where other ultra -right -wing leaders like Argentina govern. Thus, will generate greater diplomatic and political frictions among them, And it will sharpen the interimperialist conflict with China and Russia.
Trump is also intensifying a more aggressive and unilateral international political intervention. He played a central and visible role in imposing ceasefire in Gaza, and then propose the most expensive expulsion of the entire Palestinian population. Now he opened negotiations with Putin to agree on the delivery of Ukrainian territory to Russia, Behind the Ukrainian people.
Nevertheless, The attempt to strengthen by force, It also has an element of despair and entails a no less risk. Strengthen economically and geopolitally at the expense of the rest, including its historical allies, deepens the crisis and economic and political instability worldwide. That disorder and conflicts, wars, rebellions and revolutions that cultivate is, at the same time, The greatest danger to the plans of imperialism.
How to face it
Trump's new government offensive opens a new political situation, marked by a reactionary capitalist attack, qualitatively superior to the above and that the dynamics of the class struggle will change remarkably.
Although they still do not intend to leave the general margins of democratic-bourgeois institutions and completely eliminate union and non-bourgeois political organizations, The authoritarian and repressive jump they seek to impose is deep. It implies drastic cuts of democratic rights and a deepening of the state persecution, and of the parastatal violence against oppressed and trade union activism.
The Democrats, that threatened in the elections that if Trump won fascism, now they minimize the risks that until recently exaggerated. When the next elections approach, They will remember how dangerous Trump is to appear as the only alternative. But the need to face Trump and fight to stop his plans is immediate.
Far from this, The Democrats struggled to guarantee a quiet transition and now look for ways to collaborate with the new government. They want to prevent mobilization movements from arising that then require time and resources to demobilize and channel them towards lobbying and elections.
The revolutionaries have to act diametrically opposite. We cannot minimize the danger that the attacks of the new government mean nor oversize them. Beyond the characterization we make, We must be in the first line of denouncing the measures of this government, transmit the urgency of organizing to face them and call the broadest unit to give that fight, with the greatest possible force.
At the same time, We have to expose the Democrats who talk about Trump's danger to ask for votes, But not to face it when matters more. Explain your responsibility in opening the door, in disarming the movements that could face it more strongly and the need to build an independent political alternative of the capitalists and their interests.
We must continue the economic and social struggles that we have been giving for salaries and the right to union organization; against institutional racism and police violence; In defense of immigrants, The right to decide, to identity and all gender rights, among other. These are going to intensify. Just as we fight to establish that black lives matter, We will have to fight to defend the lives of trans people, migrants and women.
But democratic struggles in particular, They will charge a new prominence. We have to strongly take the tasks of organizing self -defense before the fascist sectors that will act more confidently, to face persecution and repression, to politically and physically defend the right to demonstrate and of all democratic rights, in a way that has not been raised in a long time.
The will to fight
The accumulated demoralization during the biden mandate, the deactivation of the movements of recent years by the Democrats and their definition of not organizing national protests for Trump's assumption, They greatly explain why this time, There were no mass demonstrations as in 2016.
Nevertheless, There is an avant -garde that sees the need and urgency to organize resistance. There are thousands of young people radicalized by the solidarity movement with Palestine, workers activated in Amazon or UAW strikes, Women activists, LGBT+, immigrants, blacks who have seen their movements deactivated by the Democrats and understand the immediate need to organize a serious fight, against a very real danger.
Trump’s offensive, It will inevitably cause resistance in the country and worldwide. The strength and possibilities you will have, They depend largely on the level of organization and the political orientation that this radicalized avant -garde has. This poses to the revolutionaries a task for today, a challenge of those in which we do not care what we do or do not do, What we achieve or not achieve.
Today it is possible and necessary to organize thousands of politically radicalized activists and workers willing to fight in a revolutionary project, to influence the course of the struggles that come, And to lay the foundations for a revolutionary party that represents the working class and fights for socialism in the United States and the world. And it can be done from a work to regroup the revolutionaries in the country and internationally, How the International Socialist League promotes.
