From Charlottesville’s 2017″Unite the right” fascist rally to January 6, 2021 – the capacity for violence is building further still.

Introduction: “Frank” is a well-paid white worker and a socialist who lives in a largely white neighborhood in a major East Coast city. In his life, he gets around and talks with a lot of workers, many of whom are Trump supporters. We had this conversation with him about the threat of violence from the MAGA base. 
In our previous articles on the perspectives for the Trump administration, we discussed the conflicts within the MAGA coalition and how those conflicts will tend to limit how far Trump can go. Here, the potential for serious violence stemming from the MAGA base comes clear. If we present the whole perspective in an unclear way, that’s because it is, because the entire situation is so totally unprecedented and volatile. Anybody who thinks she or he knows for sure what will happen is really confused.

Frank
The hard coreMAGAites, or whatever you want to call them, are people who have basically abandoned real solutions to the problems of the working class. They’ve become fixated on distractions that are based in racism, sexism, queer phobia and other forms of bigotry. So the only way that they see it at this point is for their problems to be solved practically by cruel violent things being visited upon those marginalized groups. So, what I would say is in the news cycle their minds kind of creates a villain of the week effect, where whoever happens to be the marginalized or oppressed group or other that is relevant to particular news story, their natural inclination is to figure out how harm can be visited upon that group, because they see that as a way of solving their underlying problem.

So for example, the situation with H-1b, visas, and more generally, immigration, because Vivek Ramaswami has decided to make himself a poster child for criticizing Americans and saying that Indians and other immigrant groups from Asia in particular, make better engineers than Americans do is raise the ire towards people from the Indian subcontinent. Raise the ire against those people, because people don’t look at it to say, “well, what is it about our education system that doesn’t enable people to become engineers in the numbers we might like.” They say “we need to get rid of Indians because they’re taking our jobs.”

This kind of derives from, like I said, a more basic mindset around attacking these marginalized groups, rather than trying to think about real solutions to any of the problem,

Oaklandsocialist
On the issue of a possible strike of East Coast dock workers, starting on January 15 and continuing into the Trump admistration: If a strike happens one likely outcome will be they’ll win job protection for current workers, and screw the next generation. And the current workers will be very happy with that. So far Trump has indicated support for the union. But the other issue is with the corporate wing of MAGA, which is to say Ramaswamy and Musk and company: will they speak up against Trump’s “support” for the strikers?

Frank
I’m not sure. I don’t see how Elon can keep his mouth shut, even when it doesn’t really benefit him, he seems to have to comment on everything.

Oaklandsocialist
Musk is one of the only people on the planet who can give Trump a run for his money, as far as ego.

Frank
Yeah, so, so that will cause a greater division within the MAGA coalition. For Musk, getting rid of unions, especially the powerful ones, is a major ideological prerequisite for everything else that he wants to see changed. So it would be a real issue for him to be associated with any perceived victory on the part of the longshore, which is what is going to come, because Musk has repeatedly said he believes in just crushing and all unions.

If he has success in getting Trump to flip flop on that, there’s going to be a lot of rage directed at him from the longshoreman, and that rage will reverberate throughout aspects of the white working class,

Oaklandsocialist
I don’t think anybody knows if he’s going to succeed in getting Trump to flip flop. My sense is that he will not, or it is more likely that he will not than that he will, because Trump is, to a great extent, a creature of the right wing populist movement that developed outside of him, but that he has helped. So then, if Trump comes does not flip flop on that, that would tend to strengthen the populist anti immigrant sentiment, As opposed to the Elon Musk/Ramaswamy wing of of the Trump administration.

Then there’s a related issue: Prices are not going to come down, and it’s possible that they could actually go up. You already have like this anti Indian immigrant sentiment, which for many is the same as a sentiment against Latino or Mexican immigrants because they’re both dark skinned.

Frank
Well, yes, so like the general feeling is going to be just towards whoever that other is, against who people are told to focus their firepower, both metaphorically and literally, in that direction. It could come from Trump, it could come from figures in the media. It could come from a variety of different places, but people are definitely in a position where they are totally prepared and ready to go if they’re told to direct harm and violence towards this group or that group, there’s definitely enough people who are primed for that and be and would be willing to participate in extra judicial violence. To that effect, if it’s a popular enough movement or moment, right?

Oaklandsocialist
So it could be it could be something purely accidental, like a crime that just happens out of the blue, or it could be actual provocation. And it almost doesn’t matter which one it is.

Frank
It could be a totally bullshit, made up story or totally exaggerated story. The point is, if it gets enough traction in the zeitgeist, people will be willing to act in violent ways.

Oaklandsocialist
So you’ve seen, for instance, a tendency towards murder and assaults on homeless people, right? Like there was that homeless woman that was recently burned alive on the subway in New York, for instance. And so, one possibility could be pogroms against homeless encampments.

Frank
Absolutely, I could definitely see the case. Or, like I had a situation in my city the other week where a guy who was clearly mentally unhinged and homeless came in shouting craziness. And there was an attitude on the part of one of the Trump supporters that I was with, he wanted the guy to do something so he would have an excuse to basically beat him to death The only reason he didn’t do that is that the homeless guy didn’t actually touch anyone. But if he had actually touched somebody, this guy I was with would have used that as his excuse to become a vigilante in his mind and save the day by basically killing a homeless person,

Oaklandsocialist
So it seems to me, you could have already got some increased assaults – bombings, arson and so on – against women’s health centers, especially those that that conduct abortions, and also the LGBTQ community, including both like centers and coffee houses and so on, and also against individuals.

Frank
Specifically against trans women. There’s an increase in violence against trans women, and that stuff will get really dark because they’re probably the most dehumanized people in this entire religion. This shit is such a blind fury that people who aren’t even trans could get misidentified and attacked for that reason.

So you have these people who don’t even understand the difference between a person who’s trans and a person who dresses up like a woman for fun. But I mean, so they’re not going to draw much of a distinction between like, as far as they’re concerned, anybody that’s associated with drag, trans, whatever, is like a child rapist and a groomer and wants to harm their children, whether they have kids themselves or not. So, those people are viewed as “pure evil”. And any violence, visited upon them is a good thing, because these people are going to harm their children, whether they have kids themselves or not.

We discussed to what extent black and Latino workers would participate in such attacks.

Frank
I think there would be a lot of support from black men for that type of activity.

I asked about a particular black, union conscious worker who had also voted for Trump.

Frank
He would recognize that’s wrong, but it wouldn’t be a game changer for him.

I asked about Latino workers who support Trump.

Frank
You can’t really shake them out of it if they’ve decided they like Trump after all this, they really are committed to the idea that “I’m one of the good ones. He’s not talking about me.” And they’ll literally go to the grave thinking, “well, until MAGAites start assaulting them, yeah.” But even then they’ll say, “Well, that was a misunderstanding.” You know? I mean, some of them maybe, if they’re directly affected, will change. But a lot of them will say, “No, this is a misunderstanding. It doesn’t characterize the whole movement.” So like until it becomes clear that it does characterize the whole movement when it’s not just one or two. That’s wishful thinking. I think a lot of the Latinos, especially the immigrants, who are really pro Trump, are very delusional people. They’ve kind of detached themselves from reality.

I’d like to think that eventually they would realize that, but I think it would be very difficult for the people that are really committed to that position to change the mindset. Anything’s possible. I just think it’s unlikely people who are on the fence about him, or voted for him, but don’t really like him, they might be easy to flip back over to “okay, this guy’s an existential threat. Fuck him, and everybody who likes it,” but ones that are decided that that’s their guy are very irrational thinkers. Gonna be very hard to move away from him. Yes, it’s more religious than anything else, that may be, but we still know that those Latino voters who voted for him are pretty small, minority, not an insignificant number but they are a definite minority of the Latino population.

But in my experience, I would say I think they’re more vocal than the people that are really against Trump. I think that there’s two reasons. One, people are scared that they’re going to be targeted themselves, so they try and stay quiet about it. And I just noticed a lot of people who really hate him just don’t even like discussing him because he’s so repulsive to a lot of people, they don’t even want to have a conversation about him. And the people that like him, who are Latino, will not shut up about it. They will tell you, the second they get the opportunity, how much they like him and how much they think he’s the greatest thing, because “I’m white.” I guess so they want to try, once again, to establish to me, “Hey, I’m one of the good ones.”So when they meet me as a white worker, the assumption is that I’m a Trump supporter.

For example, right after the election, I was at work, there’s another worker who had a name tag on “Raphael”. So, I said, “hi. How you doing?” You know, just to say hellp. He says “ I’m doing great, man. We won.” He put his fist out to spot on me. I’m like “I didn’t vote for him.”

He was like, “oh, oh” and then just kind of ended the conversation. Well after that, when I met other Latino people who were kind of putting that out there to me, I started to, like, let them talk a little more. And then the consistent theme, I would say – and this is sort of paraphrasing and aggregating different conversations I’ve had with different Latinos… The consistent theme is they say the same thing, “Oh, I agree. I’m Trump. You know, my family’s here legally,” or “I came here legally,” even if that’s not true, like one guy in particular came here so-called “illegally” and got amnesty. So now he’s not “illegal”. Now, the basic narrative is always the same, “yeah, I agree with what he says. You know, people who do it the right way, you know, should get to stay, like me and my family. But all those other ones that do it the wrong way, they’re all lazy and they do shitty work, and they should send them all back. No, me and my people, we do everything the right way.”

And it’s almost like they’re trying to prove that to me, even though I didn’t start the conversation, “Hey, I’m one of the good ones. I’m with you. I’m not with those other guys. I mean, so just remember that, you know, for future reference that I’m one of the good ones.” It’s difficult to tell how much of that is based in fear and how much of it they really believe. But it’s always the same narrative always follows those beats. “Hey, I actually, hey, you might not know this about me, white man, but I actually support Trump, and I support him because me and my family are the good ones, not those other guys. Those guys suck. I agree, you should get rid of them.” I’m exaggerating a little but I’ve literally have people tell me the rest of that verbatim. Even withinin a Latino family I know they believe that shit, they’re hardcore Trump people. They 100% believe in it. One of the in-laws, their whole family came here illegally, they all are hardcore Trump people, and they’re not faking it. They 100% believe in that stuff. Now, some of it is because they’re really hardcore Catholic. Others, once again, it’s that they feel like they’re the good ones and the other ones are the bad ones that they need to get rid of. They’re not just saying one thing to the white people and not sanother thing, internally. They’re hardcore Trump believers. They’re about it right now. Okay, when these guys say this to me, right? I always tell them I don’t like Trump eventually, but I’ll let them do their spiel first, and then I’ll tell them “I don’t

like Trump”. Sometimes they’ll just stop talking about it. That could be because they don’t want to start an argument, or because they don’t really believe it. And sometimes they’ll double down explaining why Trump’s good.

So I think people have internalized that narrative to some extent. So when they are challenged, they say: “No, you don’t understand. I know these people… like about the fucking Venezuelans…” Or the Cubans or if they’re not Mexican, they’ll talk shit about Mexicans. You know what I mean? it’s always the other ethnicities that are the real problem. It’s not their specific ethnicity, or the part of Mexico they’re from, or whatever. The other ones that are the issue, not my people, specifically, whoever that is no, and they’ll break it down for me. And like, these intricate racist ways where they say “no, you wouldn’t understand, because you’re a white guy, trust me, I know all the different types of Latinos, and some of them are garbage, trust me on this…” Usually something to that effect. So like, there’s a Costa Rican guy the other week. He explains to me why Venezuelans and Cubans suck. The Mexican guy from Michoacan explains to me why people from Sinaloa and Chihuahua suck. You know what I mean? It’s always “I’m not in that group. The other ones, those are the ones that are the problem,” right?

And then, like, if you have, like, one guy knows an illegal immigrant in California, you know, he’s Mexican, and he just basically explains how he’s, like, like, similar things. He’s like, “it’s the Haitians are the real problem. It’s not me. No, they’re the real issue,” even though he’s literally in the country illegally, and he said, “I can’t vote, but if I could vote, I’d vote for Trump.”

It’s that narrative of “I’m one of the good ones here” in some form or another

So conversely, when you look over at white working class people, they don’t really know the difference, you know. So this is all lost on them. I’m saying now, if they know somebody Latino a bit and they have a good relationship with them, then they’ll say, “Okay, well, not him,” but generally speaking, they’re totally fine with visiting violence on Latinos, maybe partly because of cultural reasons. They get uncomfortable when people speak Spanish because they don’t understand what they’re saying, or they’re dark skinned. It’s a whole series of things. Then the White Trump supporters are just like, “Fuck all those except for maybe a specific one that I know and I get along, even him, if there’s an attack on all Latinos in this area, he’s in trouble too.” The capacity to visit violence on those “other” people is readily there.

Oaklandsocialist
How do you think law enforcement would react to a pogrom, in a Democratic run state or cities like New York or Oakland, run by Democrats?

Frank
It’s gonna depend on how well organized and well armed they are. If it’s well organized and well armed, the police are not gonna get get in the middle of that, not to any significant degree. They’re too scared. For one thing, a pogrom in the United States would take a different form than a pogrom in Germany or Eastern Europe, because people here are so much better armed, you know, and the police are aware of that. So if there was actually, like mass movements where armed people were attacking these marginalized communities, police would figure out a way to stand off or help them.

Now, in a Democratic city, that’s true. If you had like, a large right wing movement coming in from somewhere else, and that was like threatening the stability of that city, the government of the city would be forced to order the police to do something but they’re not going to have their hearts in it, and they’re going to be incredibly aware of their own safety in the process, and a situation occurs from that where somebody gets killed or hurt like a police officer does, well, we’ll figure out a way to, instead of the regular response, which is come back with guns blazing and destroy them at all costs, they’ll figure out a way to say, “Well, look, we need to back off these people. They’re too dangerous. Officer safety is paramount. Let’s not get crazy involved.”

As for the possibility of calling out the National Guard: it depends on how much they’re willing to tolerate getting out of control, like, if it rolls it rolls to such a certain extent, these things are like disrupting the ability of people to go to work and shit, and I have to do something right in order to stop it. Now, when they determine that point is and what has to get done going to be a political decision, right?

We discussed the likelihood of at least a sector of the working class organizing independently.

Frank
I think it’s going to have to hit somewhat of a fever pitch for that to really become a thing, which is unfortunate. It’s going to be very bad for a lot of people. And the question is, in a sense, if it’ll be too late. And for a lot of people it will be.

I don’t think it’s every single so-called “illegal” immigrant and every single refugee is going to be expelled, but I also don’t hink it’s going to be standard regular business deportations. No, at the very least, it’ll be back to Obama levels, which will be a shocking change compared to where we’re at now, and they’ll probably be somewhere between Obama and just all out mass deportation of anybody who’s not a citizen. I think would take the form of number one, rounding up people in the homeless encampments and checking all of their citizenship status, also the hornaleros, right? And then, you know, some stuff like that. So it would have to be enough to satisfy the blood lust.

Oaklandsocialist
I think one conclusion that you have to draw from all of this is that whole drive for the 14th Amendment, and all of that, heads in the completely wrong direction, because that will exacerbate everything that that we’re talking about.

It’s true that Trump has enormously intensified and accelerated and exacerbated all the reactionary moods and attitudes and the degree to which it’s organized, including a tendency towards violence and all that. Trump has encouraged all of that, and he’s accelerated it. But Trump is not the problem. The central problem is this mood that exists. And yes, Trump in office accelerates that mood and strengthens it. But of he dropped dead tomorrow, that mood will still continue. So the attempt to keep him out of office by the 14th Amendment, – that will make that mood even worse, to the extent that such an attempt is even noticed,

Frank
He has, like, a great degree of being able to exploit and manipulate for his own ends. But he doesn’t have control, right? He did not create it.

Oaklandsocialist
If you look at the other end of the spectrum – like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, or Fred Hampton – they did not create the movement. The movement created them. It’s true that their existence and their role, helped strengthen the movement, but they did not create it. And it’s the same thing with Trump at this end of the spectrum. Or if you go back in history, if you look at Hitler or Mussolini – I think it’s it’s fair to say that if Hitler had not been born, or if he had been assassinated, or something like that, that fascism might not have taken power in the way that it did in Germany. But given all the other factors, it would have taken power some way or another, but not necessarily in that format.

And it’s the same with Trump.

Frank
Yeah, and the point is like these people need a violent, authoritarian strongman to deliver on some of this shit, even though it won’t fix the problems in their lives. They need some heads to roll so they can feel a little bit better in the interim. You know, if that doesn’t happen, the frustration, their economic anxiety is going to build and build and build and at a certain point this shit is going to come to a head, and they’re going to need some violence. And that’s not going to purge out their frustrations.

Oaklandsocialist
It’s only going to exacerbate it. You know, it’s like when it’s like when a man starts beating up his wife. It’s not like, “Okay, now I’ve got got rid of my, my aggressions. It’s not going to happen again.” Just the opposite.

Frank
You’re right, it will. It wants to break that barrier, and then it’s going to happen even more easily.

Movement, that’s the main point.

And I mean, he didn’t really create the movement it. He might understand it to a good degree, but a part of the problem with that is he understands he’s not in total, total control. So part of his tendency is to figure out, “all right, how much red meat do I need to throw these people so that they don’t eat me too,” you know? And he’s the only one who can really make that determination. That’s the shitty thing about him being such a singular leader, is that while he is surfing the wave and he doesn’t have control over it, he’s the only person who’s ultimately going to make the decisions about how he decides to ride this wave.

And Elon might have some inputs to him, but if that starts to screw him up, which it will, if Elon pushes him into positions that are not sustainable or tenable for him dealing with these people, he’s gonna realize it very quickly, and he’s gonna make adjustments to cover his own ass. That’s when he starts to become really unpredictable, and this whole situation becomes really scary, because if he notices himself losing ground because he can’t get prices under control the way he said he was, he’s doing things that Elon’s told to do that piss off his base got to start to say, “Okay, what do I need to get these people angry at someone or something? What is it going to be and what am I going to get them to do?” That’s when stuff can get really weird, right? And he’ll just start looking around, and he’ll see what people are saying. Find the news story. Whatever that news story is, he’ll just start talking about it every day until he’s blown it up into something that has people foaming at the mouth.

We talked about the example of the anti-vax movement and the fact that initially Trump was bragging about how quickly “he had developed Covid vaccine. Then, when he saw the covid conspiracy/anti vax movement develop, he jumped on that. That is an example of how the movement created Trump. And he’ll do the same if he sees himself in political trouble.

Frank
Yeah, he 100% will. And when he does that, people will enthusiastically, you know, get behind him, like he’s the major domo in a parade. And that’s when things are kind of get really fucking dicey. That’s when you’d better take certain safety precautions.

From Charlottesville’s 2017″Unite the right” fascist rally to January 6, 2021 – the capacity for violence is building further still.