I was honored to be invited to participate in a Zoom panel at this conference in Milan, of the Italian group “Left for Ukraine”. Here is a video of my presentation and below that is a transcript. I hope Left for Ukraine will post the entire session soon. I will publish that here as soon as they do so. This will also appear as a podcast.

I will start by recalling an event in 1978 in “Jonestown”, Guyana. There some 600 followers of the cult leader Reverend Jim Jones committed mass suicide by drinking cyanide laced Kool Aid, which they also fed to nearly 300 of their children. And that is not that different from the situation with the Donald Trump MAGA cult. And now, just in the last 48 hours, we have a rapidly developing constitutional crisis and the Trump administration is feeding some of the most highly classified state secrets to foreign rivals.

To understand the international consequences of this national disaster, we have to consider the concept of Eurasianism, which was first proposed in the 1940s by the US born and European based fascist, Francis Parker Yokey. He proposed that continental Europe should be one united whole and should drive out the influence of Britain and the US. Today, Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin takes up the theme of Eurasianism, but with Russia dominating the continent. Trump accepts that idea, with the corollary that he and his country should dominate the Atlantic, from Britain to Greenland to Canada and down to the Panama Canal. In other words, what can be called Atlanticism. What will go along with that is that China can have all of Asia.

Even if this scenario were possible, it does not mean “peace”. There will be an intensified battle between these rivals for dominance in Southwest Asia/North Africa, sub Saharan Africa and South America. This battle will heat up and war is possible, even possibly a nuclear war, if we keep going down this road.

This is part of the reason why what happens in US politics has global consequences and therefore should be understood by workers, and socialists among them, the world over. I hope the points I will raise will help in furthering that understanding.

2008 financial crisis and “Tea Party”
Let’s start by looking at the 2008 financial crisis, when then-President Obama bailed out finance capital and left workers to fend for themselves. The result was a populist movement called the “Tea Party” movement. As an anti-government rather than anti-corporate movement, it was a right wing movement, and the Republican Party drew it into their midst and, for the first time in their history, they actually developed a mass base.

Crisis of U.S. working class
The question is why was the 2008 revolt along right wing, rather than anti-corporate/left lines? The answer is something that no wing of the US socialist movement ever discusses (to my knowledge): The devastating political crisis of the U.S. working class.

What we have had is an 80 year war conducted first and foremost by the U.S. union leadership against all the best traditions of the labor movement. The union leadership demobilized the membership while they carried out a propaganda campaign that the unions and the employers were on the same “team” and that all the traditions of the past were dead and gone. These included the traditions of working class solidarity, of mass defiance, of a struggle for political independence and for socialism. And it wasn’t just a propaganda campaign; it was aimed at any member who struggled to maintain those traditions. Those members were ostracized, they were blackballed, they were physically threatened and assaulted, and some were expelled from the unions. I could speak for a half hour on this 80 year war.

This war had a massive effect on the U.S. working class to the extent that probably at least half of U.S. workers supported Trump. To think otherwise, to think this war had no impact on the consciousness of the US working class is pure idealism. Tens of millions of workers support Trump while other tens of millions stand passively by. This left a huge vacuum into which stepped Trump. I think this situation is not exclusive to the United States, by the way.

Trump and capitalist class
Now until fairly recently, Trump in the main did not have the backing of any significant sector of the US capitalist class, but that started to change last year or maybe a little bit earlier. Leading the way was the Silicon Valley venture capitalists. This enormously important wing of the capitalist class had torn down and then rebuilt to their own liking a massively important industry, the communication and entertainment industry. And bear in mind that by communication we are, including, not only mass communication (Twitter, Facebook, and so on); we are also talking about data transmission, which lies at the heart of the globalization of capitalism. And in the process of building this industry anew they smashed any attempts by the workers in that industry to organize.

And with that crowning victory, they thought, “well why can’t we remodel all of US society, and maybe the entire world, as we did to this industry? And who better for us to use in accomplishing this goal but Donald Trump?“ And so, led by them, major sectors of the rest of the capitalist class moved into the Trump camp. In part, by the way, those other sectors of the capitalist class had been put off by some concessions that Biden had made to the working class. They did not see any need for Biden to make those concessions because the working class was so fragmented and confused. In other words, the crisis in the US working in class. And so that is why major wings of the capitalist class, possibly the majority of them, ended up supporting Trump in last year‘s election.

U.S. Supreme Court paves the way for Trump
Trump and MAGA have also taken over the Supreme Court, which made a key ruling last year that paved the way for Trump to return to the White House. By a 6-3 majority they ruled that a president (meaning Trump) is immune from criminal prosecution for anything he does in office as long as it is related to his official duties. (Netanyahu must be jealous!) So, that means that a president can literally take bribes and it is legal. It means that a president can literally pass the most highly classified state secrets to a rival capitalist government – in other words, as they say “betray his country” – and it is legal. This ruling was made when Trump was under considerable legal threats. It paved the way for his election victory later last year. There is absolutely no basis for this ruling, neither in US law, nor in the Constitution. Everyone, including conservative, legal scholars, was shocked by the ruling. They should not have been.

Democratic Party
As for the Democratic Party, both during the election, and since then they have tried to play a middle ground. They tried to please both the capitalists and the increasingly polarized working class. The result is that they have pleased nobody. And so, while Trump has had some not very good polling numbers recently the Democrats support has been even worse. In a recent poll they had 27% support. That doesn’t mean that that is the percentage of votes that their candidates will necessarily get in the 202 bye elections, but it does show the collapse in confidence in their party in general.

The Trump/Vance/Musk Triumvirate in action
Now, let us look at what Trump has done since he returned to office. And really it should be called the Trump/Vance/Musk Triumvirate. That is who was running the executive branch of the government, congress, and at least the US Supreme Court. 

And I want to emphasize again that what I’m about to recount will have – in fact is already having – direct international consequences in Palestine, in Ukraine, in Italy, and beyond.

During his first term in office, Trump had a series of appointments who were more loyal to the demands of the US capitalist class than to Trump personally. He learned from that and this time direct personal loyalty to himself and himself alone is the central requirement to be appointed to any position in his administration. Or to put it another way: They must be willing to violate all laws as well as the sacred U.S. Constitution itself if Trump demands it. I don’t have time to review the appointments, but I should add that aside from personal loyalty to Trump, some of them are connected to Putin and/or Xi, and others are fascist sympathizers if not outright fascists. And I don’t use that term lightly.

Now, in terms of Trump’s major foreign policy initiatives, he has moved to give Israel a completely free hand, and he has, infamously, aligned himself with Putin regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I mentioned at the outset Trump’s threats regarding Greenland, Canada, and Panama. 

Domestically, Musk’s department of government efficiency or DOGE is central. Through DOGE, Trump has elevated Elon Musk into the position of co-president. And what doge has been doing in slashing tens of thousands of workers from different federal agencies is part and parcel of a plan to completely dismantle those agencies and then use that as an excuse to privatize them, many of them under the control of Elon Musk‘s own businesses. Part of this also would be rating of the funds within some of those agencies such as Social Security. So what you have is a giant privatization/repression/and corruption scam on a scale that would even make Putin proud.

Then you have the ethno-nationalist attack on immigrants, which is part and parcel of the increased repression in general and will most likely be used in the future as an excuse to call out either the national guard or actually the army itself or both.

And we should never forget the coming massive assault on the environment, an assault that will be felt all around the world, including, but not only, on the situation of global climate disruption.

Also, there is the important tendency of this triumvirate to actually defy the federal courts, which means there are no checks on the actions of the triumph for it other than a movement from below.

Also, Trump‘s tariff initiative will have a direct global impact. He basically wants to use the tariff threat in order to bludgeon other governments into line. And it threatens to not only massively disrupt the US economy, but in fact, global capitalism itself – partly because investors don’t know what’s coming from one day to the next. For this reason, and also because of Trump lining himself up with one of the main rivals of US capitalism – Russian capitalism – especially in regard to Ukraine, for these reasons, major wings of the US capitalist class are starting to have serious doubts about Trump. But what can they do about him? They cannot use the rest of the Republican Party against him. It is increasingly clear that the judiciary will not rein him in. And their media, the old line TV stations and newspapers, for example-no longer have the influence on masses of Americans that it used to have.

The unprecedented nature of the situation is revealed by Trump’s first action, on his first day in office, which was to pardon the 1500 federal prisoners who had been convicted for their role in the Jan. 6 coup attempt. These are violent fascist organizers, and many of them will certainly be out there organizing as we speak today. And as opposed to the past, they surely will have the financial backing of the Nazi-saluting Elon Musk. This means the potential for a mass, fascist paramilitary. And to give an example of what is happening, there is a eugenics conference – which is literally Nazi science – planned in the deep Republican state of Texas, and the University of Texas is associated with it as is Musk himself indirectly. If 10-15 years ago anybody had told me we’d be seeing this sort of thing here, I’d have told them they were hysterical. But it is happening. I’m not saying that literally fascism will take power in the U.S., but while it’s unlikely in my opinion, an extremely repressive/totalitarian government along the lines of Putin or Xi is far from ruled out. Very far from it..

U.S. military
Another possibility is this: in a situation of mass crisis, to which Trump might respond by trying to call out the military, possibly to prevent a setback of his party in the 2026 bye-elections. I think that it is not ruled out that under the right circumstances, wings of the military could actually start to take their independence of the civilian government, which is to say of the presidency. In other words, to move against Trump. It is a question that certainly needs to be thought through a lot more, especially because it would be totally unprecedented in all of US history. But then the entire situation of the Trump Vance, Musk Triumvirate is also entirely unprecedented.

Popular opposition to Trump
So now let us look for a minute at the opposition that is starting to develop: we have had all around the country, including in my area, a whole host, a little local protest, all almost all of which have been controlled either by the union bureaucracy or by the NGO’s, both of which are linked to the Democratic Party. The union leadership has been pretty silent. Or rather in some cases, it would be better if they had been. You have that great “reform“president of the auto workers union who shortly after Trump took office, wrote a column in the Washington Post, saying he was ready to “work with Trump“. Then there was the president of the flight attendant union, Sarah Nelson, who raised the threat of a general strike. However, she made a similar threat during the government shut down several years ago, but it turned out to be a little more than just a threat. You can’t rule out the possibility of her actually taking action, but that is by no means assured. So the result is that we cannot rule out the possibility of a mass result, but I think it would be chaotic and disorganized, something similar to the French yellow vest movement of 2018. If that were to happen, then the role of socialist I believe would be to encourage it, to emphasize the centrality of the working class struggle, and the need for working class independence, and also quite frankly for socialism.

Trump vulnerable
I think meanwhile there are two things that we should be advocating: first and foremost for the movement in general, we have to see that the triumvirate is actually extremely vulnerable in one key industry, and that is food production. It is vulnerable there because a huge proportion of the workforce is immigrant labor, and the majority of that labor is undocumented. Already many of them are staying off from work because of fear of being rounded up and being deported. So what I think we should advocate is that the unions should organize in that sector. Encourage those workers to in effect. Go on strike, which is to say do what they’re already starting to do, and organize union members and supporters to stand the strike picket lines for them. If that even started to happen, the US grocery store shelves would be empty within a week.

International working class solidarity
Now the second thing that I think that all socialist around the world should think about is the crying necessity for an international working class solidarity campaign. Such a campaign would make the links between the struggles against repression of people from Palestine to Ukraine, from Italy to the United States, while emphasizing the absolutely central role of the working class, that the working class must be at the center and must lead these struggles. Because if it doesn’t, then such struggles will inevitably be controlled by the capitalist class, and it will not achieve the results for which so many hundreds of thousands, millions in fact, of people have sacrificed and struggled for. Look, for example, at the great revolution which finally overthrew the fascistic Assad in Syria. Today, the new Syrian government is maneuvering, tacking back and forth, between the dictates of the governments of regional powers – Turkey and Israel – and global powers – the US and Russia, with China hovering in the background. As a movement that, no matter how heroic it may have been, was never led by the working class, and as a capitalist government – when it came time to make international links – which is unavoidable in every instance – when that time came, it had to make links with regional and global imperialist powers. The only other alternative would have been a working class-led revolution that made links with the international working class. That is and will be the same in every single other instance around the world. It doesn’t mean socialists do not support such movements, but we do have to help draw those lessons.

I hope that one result of this conference and similar efforts will be to consider taking up this banner: for a campaign for international working class solidarity. 

Added note: For the shifting attitude of the capitalist class towards Trump, seeThe Trump presidency: Four years of  chaos and corruption “won’t work”, not even for the capitalists!