Photograph Source: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson – Public Domain
What to think of Trump’s return to the White House? For the European bourgeoisies and their parties, the answer should be and has been positive and even enthusiastic. But why? Because of Trump’s very clearly expressed intention to implement reactionary, anti-union, anti-worker, anti-social and pro-capitalist policies that the European right-wingers would like to implement at home too, in order to “pacify” their own societies for as long as possible. An infallible sign of this capitalist euphoria: European stock markets exulted the day after Trump’s election victory…
Of course, far-right parties and forces have every right to exult more than anyone else, confident that Trump’s victory can only benefit them in their – for the moment unstoppable – march to power in many countries, including the largest in the European Union, such as France and Germany. Having already had the wind in their sails for some ten years, these far-right and even neo-fascist parties are now, thanks to Trump, becoming even more attractive to the ultra-right wings and tendencies already existing within the major parties of the traditional right. One man’s misfortune is another man’s gain, and the electoral hemorrhages and splits that these traditional European right-wing parties will undergo in favor of a rather more radical, Putin-sympathetic far-right are likely to reshape the political landscape of the whole of Europe, radically changing the balance of power within the European Union Commission too!…
However, it has to be said that there is another side to the European consequences of Trump’s return to the White House. That’s why the initial jubilation of the European bourgeoisie following Trump’s electoral triumph was short-lived. Why was this? Because there’s a major catch in all this: Trump’s aggressive protectionism and ultra-nationalism. So, as Trump makes more and more statements, day after day, confirming his intention to impose exorbitant tariffs on even his allies and friends, which will hit their economies hard, initial satisfaction is being replaced by worry, anxiety and even fear. It’s a real cold shower that not only dampens their enthusiasm, but also profoundly changes the mood and disposition of the bourgeoisie, the media and the European right towards Trump.
In short, what is emerging on the horizon just one month after his election victory is that the European right and bourgeoisie are almost doomed to develop an attraction-repulsion relationship with Trump and his administration! On the one hand, the attraction caused by ideological proximity and shared hatred of those below. And on the other, the repulsion caused by profound geostrategic differences and, above all, by Trump’s aggressive protectionism. A protectionism that could well set off a firestorm in societies across the old continent and beyond (in China, India, Mexico and even Canada, for example), and further destabilize their already fragile political systems, due to the social stagnation and record unemployment resulting from the bankruptcy of entire sectors of their economies and the probable loss of millions of jobs…
It goes without saying that such contradictory relations cannot last forever, and that the European bourgeoisies and their political staff cannot be torn forever between attraction and repulsion for Trump. Sooner or later, the scales will tip in favor of attraction and more or less peaceful coexistence, or repulsion, which could lead to tragedy. If, of course, these dramas are not prevented by the entry into play of social and political forces capable of stopping and defeating both sides. That said, we can’t rule out the possibility that some of Trump’s staunch supporters, or even political clones, might turn against him if their conflicts of interest become too acute. Indeed, the first signs of such a shift are already perceptible when, for example, Italy’s Prime Minister, the meta-fascist Mrs. Meloni, or her far-right racist and Islamophobic friend, the Dutchman Mr. Wilders, denounce Trump’s protectionism and stand up with their other European partners against the tariffs he wants to impose on their countries’ products.
But what seems to worry Europeans most are Trump’s atypical character traits, which make him totally unpredictable and uncontrollable.(1) And this is all the more true given that he decides everything on his own, because he has cleared the air around him and there are no longer any safeguards or institutional safety valves to prevent him from doing anything crazy. Like, for example, choosing his own cabinet, which the European press has been quick to describe as “extravagant” or “appalling”, while predicting that the next American administration will be “chaotic”.
And where does the European left stand in all this? What is it thinking and doing at this critical moment in history? The answer could be summed up in these words: it’s doing very little. For a start, its once powerful but now discredited and weak social-democracy is merely enduring events without reacting, as for example in Germany, where it expects to suffer a historic defeat in next February’s elections, with a result that could be no more than half that of the very radical far-right!
As for the more combative, radical left, its influence and strength are limited enough to be able to influence social democracy and the events that are shaking our world. With the obvious exception of France, thanks to the existence of the New Popular Front (albeit rather weakened) and the workers’ unions, which have recently demonstrated their fighting spirit. However, this more radical left faces a major problem in its fight against the far right: the existence of a left that “hesitates” and avoids clearly denouncing Trump as the mortal enemy of unions, labor, feminist, ecological movements and everything else that makes up the left. And worse, it is confronted with a current of this “hesitant” left, which sympathizes with Trump, attributing to him… “anti-systemic” virtues, making him a potential ally of those this ‘left’ calls ‘anti-imperialists’.
Not surprisingly, the vast majority of those who see Trump as an anti-system activist are also Putin sympathizers. Just as it is not unsurprising and without historical precedent to see people on the left adopting such positions that drift towards the far right. In reality, today’s supporters and admirers of Trump and Putin are merely perpetuating a sad, or rather criminal, phenomenon from the interwar period, which saw even eminent representatives of the labor movement and the left, such as the Italian Nicola Bombacci or the French Jacques Doriot (2) recognize in…Mussolini and Hitler “champions of peace”, “anti-imperialist revolutionaries” and “unifiers of Europe”!
Our conclusion can only be (very) provisional, as everyone awaits further events to form a clearer idea of what Donald Trump’s second presidency will mean for Europe and the world. However, one thing is already more than certain: we will need to mobilize everything that can be mobilized around the world, firstly to resist tooth and nail, and secondly to defeat the extreme right and the Brown International in the making, which currently constitutes the greatest mortal threat to what remains of our humanity, our rights and our planet…
Notes
1. https://blogs.mediapart.fr/
2. Founder and leader, with his friend Gramsci, of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the ever-popular Nicola Bombacci was imprisoned and deported several times by the Fascist regime, of which he was a sworn enemy, before gradually drawing closer to it and finally joining the Repubblica di Salo. Arrested and shot with Mussolini by the partisans, he died with his fist raised, shouting “Viva il Socialismo”.
Number 2 of the French Communist Party in the ’30s, Jacques Doriot, who was very popular with the workers, switched to the far right in 1936, becoming one of its leaders. Collaborator with the Nazi occupiers, leader of the fascist Parti Populaire and creator of the French Nazi Legion, he fought with the Wehrmacht in Russia and died in Germany in 1945 at the end of the war.
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