[Peace-discuss] Dylan Riley on Trump & "fascism"

[David Green]

https://newleftreview.org/II/114/dylan-riley-what-is-trump

The clear conclusion of a long and difficult article by Berkeley
sociologist Dylan Riley in New Left Review:

The political logic of pinning the ‘fascist’ label on Trump is plain
enough. It means uniting behind the programme of the present Democratic
leadership—Pelosi, Schumer, the Clintons, the Obamas and other
superintendents of the oligarchic order; the very project that gave Trump
the White House in 2016. Yet their ‘moderate’ strategy suffered stunning
defeats this November in Indiana, North Dakota and Missouri, while more
radical candidates for governor in Georgia and Florida did well enough to
produce contested results. Democrats lost non-college-educated white men by
34 percentage points in the midterms, but there are indications that an
egalitarian, pro-working-class politics might be able to break through this
wall. [55]
<https://newleftreview.org/II/114/dylan-riley-what-is-trump#_edn55>The
remarkable teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma, plus
successful ballot initiatives for the restoration of voting rights to
felons in Florida—arguably the most important victory of 2018—and extending
Medicaid in Idaho and Nebraska, along with the fact that Sanders remains
the most popular politician in the country, all point to the possibility of
a radical coalition that might span the rural-urban divide. But this calls
for consistent criticism of the big-money politics and financial-sector
dominance to which the neo-liberal wing of the Democratic Party is firmly
allied. The welcome election of DSAers to the House—and of unprecedented
numbers of women and underrepresented minorities—will have little effect on
the country if they do no more than serve as foot soldiers for Pelosi.

The logic of what was once called popular frontism can be seen most clearly
where it is resisted. Thus John Bellamy Foster, a spirited defender of the
‘Trump as neo-fascist’ thesis, argues that ‘The old Popular Front strategy
of the left uniting with establishment liberalism is only practical to a
limited extent in certain areas’, among them protecting ‘basic political
rights’ such as ‘the separation of powers and constitutional freedoms’.
 [56]  <https://newleftreview.org/II/114/dylan-riley-what-is-trump#_edn56>Of
course the defence of basic civil and political rights is an important task
for the US left. But does this mean defending an imperial presidency,
superordinate Senate-appointed federal judiciary and first-past-the-post
electoral system, rigged by the two dominant parties, as specified by the
separation of powers and the Constitution? The American state as currently
configured is one of the clearest exemplars of what Luciano Canfora calls
the mixed system: ‘a little democracy, and a great deal of oligarchy’. [57]
<https://newleftreview.org/II/114/dylan-riley-what-is-trump#_edn57>In
response to the right’s call for a new constitutional convention—which
ought to be welcomed, rather than greeted with horror—the left should put
forward its own political vision: proportional representation in
multi-member districts; a directly elected unitary chamber to which the
executive, the central bank and the judiciary should be ultimately
accountable; the abolition of the FBI, the CIA and the Department of
‘Homeland Security’.
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