The Rattle on the Tail of the Rattlesnake: Trump and the Danger of Right-Wing Populism in the US

For much of 2020, the US left vacillated as to what approach to take towards the national election. The left and progressive movements tended to downplay Trump’s authoritarian threat – despite the experience of his authoritarian behaviour since his 2016 election – which became very pronounced in the spring of 2020, when Trump suggested that the only way that he could lose the election was through fraud. Following the 3 November defeat of Trump, and certainly by the time of the 6 January coup attempt, some on the left wanted to turn their attention to attacking Biden who, it was believed, portended a warmedover neoliberal administration. In so doing, these comrades again misread the moment in which we are operating, and in which we will be operating for the foreseeable future. Trump surfaced as one of a series of leaders of a right-wing populist movement. This movement’s origins could be traced back to the nineteenth century but most recently to the post-1964 era among veterans of the Barry Goldwater campaign. This project, which came to fruition as the so-called New Right, involved a conscious effort to eliminate the liberal wing of the Republican Party; to make it the ‘non-black party’; and to mount a counteroffensive against the progressive victories of the twentieth century. This project, strategically directed and coordinated through a proliferation of right-wing think-tanks and other political organizations, included litigation, legislative/political work, and the creation and seeding of specific mass movements (such as the anti-busing, anti-abortion and anti-tax campaigns). The conservative segments of capital backing this effort, particularly the extractive industries, along with the organized small business sector, sought to ‘overthrow’ the twentieth century and return to a pre-New Deal moment. The success of this effort was to depend on the building of a new ruling consensus, which did partially arise in the 1970s and crystallized as neoliberalism in the 1980s. But the counter-revolution was not purely economic. It was a movement that also opposed the great democratic victories of the twentieth century, including the advances made by workers, people of colour, and women. It was also a reaction against growing concern about the state of the environment and the shifting role of the US in world affairs. Fascism is a choice, but, metaphorically, it is a shifting current within a larger ‘river’ of right-wing populism. The river of right-wing populism contains multiple currents, the character of which I have defined as ‘neo-Confederate’. The immediate aim of defeating the ‘New Confederacy’ necessitates a very broad front that unites around the defence of democracy. For the left, however, there must be more than that. Thus, forces on the left must be willing to unite with those in the Democratic Party who are strategically our opponents but who, at this moment, are in opposition – hostile opposition – to forces on the right who are advancing authoritarianism. Unity around matters such as voting rights, women’s rights and, in many cases, workers’ rights are quite possible