I was disappointed to find two of my old comrades (avowed Marxists) distributing a video appeal to vote for Harris-Walz to save “American representative democracy” from the threat of Trump “fascism”.  Whatever one believes about a possible 2nd Trump presidency, there are enormous defects in said video appeal (which largely repeats the same narrative as do other “Marxist” backers of the Harris-Walz campaign).

1. Video content. One of said old comrades asserts that disseminating said video will enable people “to be informed”.  In fact, it is a disinformation propaganda piece repeating the hypocritical Harris-Walz campaign narrative.  It focuses exclusive on Trump and his backers; and it omits all mention of the actual record of the Biden-Harris Presidency and of the Harris-Walz campaign.  Misleading arguments and deceitful omissions therein include the following.

(1) It suggests that Trump, if he loses, will launch a second insurrection and attempt a military coup.  In fact, Trump’s 2021 MAGA insurrection was possible only because he then was commander-in-chief.  With Biden in the Oval Office until inauguration day on January 20, suggestion of a MAGA insurrection and coup is baseless fearmongering; any attempt would be an absolute fiasco (even more so than the one in 2021).

(2) It describes Trump as lacking respect for the rule of law.  That is fair; but centrist Democrats, while less blatant, are not much better (and no better at all in foreign policy).  In fact, said Democrats expose their own contempt for democracy, by acting to keep the actually progressive Green Party off the ballot wherever they can do so.  Moreover, Democrat politicians portrayed Trump’s 2016 win and presidency as illegitimate because of “Russian meddling”, evading their candidate’s flaws and ineffective campaign.  Congressional Democrats then conducted a purely partisan impeachment over his temporary hold on appropriated military aid for Ukraine, despite that the preceding Obama-Biden administration had done the same (even if not from such partisan motives).  Trump is habituated to respond to attacks with counterattacks.  Trump undoubtedly concluded that the Democrats were playing dirty, so why should he not do likewise!

(3) It reports Trump’s promise that he will build an “iron dome” anti-missile system over the US which would destabilizing nuclear deterrence and increase the threat of nuclear apocalypse.  One of Trump’s multiple grandiose promises!  The video evades the fact that Biden and Harris have already committed the US to a destabilizing nuclear-weapons modernization program [Xiaodon Liang: U.S. Nuclear Modernization Programs (Arms Control Association, 2024 Aug)] while aggressively provoking the other major nuclear power with a proxy war against it in Ukraine.  The US has already abandoned crucial arms control treaties (ABM, INF, Open Skies) despite Russian objections; and Harris, like Biden, shows no interest in renewing them.

(4) It says that Trump would pour billions into military spending for the benefit of the merchants of death.  He would, but the video minimizes the fact that Biden-Harris is already doing exactly that with their demands for ever increasing military spending, despite that the US is by far the world’s biggest military spender (38% of world total as of 2021 according to SIPRI, and, with other NATO added, it comes to 54%, while Russia’s share is 3.1%).

(5) It complains that Trump would attempt to impose a Pax Americana upon the world.  It evades the fact that Biden and Harris are pursuing a new cold war against China as well as the one against Russia, while maintaining hundreds of foreign military bases on every populated continent and continuing the US pursuit of global “full-spectrum dominance”.  Here the only meaningful difference between Harris and Trump is that Trump, unlike Harris, wants to end Biden’s new cold war against major-nuclear-power Russia.

(6) It notes that Trump is pro-Zionist and will back the Israeli genocide in Gaza and elsewhere.  True, but it evades the fact that Biden and Harris have been funding and equipping said genocidal mass murder, and continue to do so, while vetoing UN resolutions and other efforts to stop it.

(7) It notes that Trump would reverse efforts to replace reliance upon fossil fuels thereby accelerating the coming of climate catastrophe.  However, the video evades the fact that Biden-Harris and Harris-Walz have already committed to preserve reliance upon fossil fuels.  Although the Biden-Harris regime provides incentives for clean energy (produced for profit by capitalist firms); it also continues existing subsidies for fossil fuels and refuses to take action to curb fossil-fuel extraction.  In fact, the US is the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas; and the Biden-Harris team actively facilitates both drilling and fossil fuel exports [Allie Rosenbluth: “Biden’s fossil fuel hypocrisy is betraying the planet,” Al Jazeera, 2023 July].

(8) It speculates that Trump would prevent needed regulation of AI.  It evades the fact that the Harris’ campaign platform is silent on this issue (and on much else, likely a concession to anti-Trump neocon Republicans whose votes they are pursuing).

(9) It says that a Trump-Vance administration will serve Wall Street thru deregulation of the economy and undoing of social welfare programs.  On this point, Trump would no doubt be somewhat worse than Biden and Harris.  He is a deregulator and backer of tax cuts especially for the rich.  However, left unsaid is: that most Democrats in Congress and the Harris-Walz campaign are every bit as reliant upon corporate and billionaire donors as is Trump-Vance, and the resulting subservience to capitalist campaign funders is a bipartisan practice.  In fact, Harris’ proposed tax reforms, if actually enacted, would be very modest.  Moreover, the Keynesian policies of Biden and Harris invariably rely upon private enterprise and consistently avoid seriously offending powerful corporate profiteers.

(10) Omitted is any mention of Trump’s hostility to immigration by poor people of color fleeing impossible conditions resulting from past and current Western imperial interventions and impositions.  Why the silence?  Biden-Harris, in their 2020 campaign, promised a humane immigration policy in contrast to that of Trump.  But, in his 1^st year, Biden deported some 20,000 Haitians (more than his 3 predecessors combined over 20 years).  The Biden-Harris regime continued Trump’s disingenuous Title 42 rule to shut the border to most would-be immigrants.  In 2024, for the sake of political expediency, Biden and Harris capitulated to MAGA Republican demands in a failed bipartisan immigration bill (which Harris promises to resurrect).  Biden then issued an executive order which effectively closes the border to most of the desperate migrants and denies access to hearings for nearly all asylum seekers; and Harris defends that action.  Centrist Democrat politicians have no principles which they will not abandon for the sake of political expediency.

2. Fascist repression? The video predicts that a 2nd Trump presidency would be a thoroughly repressive autocracy.  It quotes extensively from fascistic Trump advisors (Bannon, Flynn, Thiel, Leo) who make statements suggestive of seeking to undo “American representative democracy” in the interests of ultra-reactionary corporate oligarchs and bigoted “Christian” nationalist theocrats.  Certainly, a President Trump would like to be able to exercise CEO-type autocratic power.  The video assumes that he would be able to actually do so.  Problems with this scenario.

(1) In the video itself, JD Vance complains over the near total lack of oligarch support for the Bannon-Flynn-Thiel-Leo program.  In fact, capital rules in this so-called “democracy”; and most capitalist oligarchs (while they may like Trump’s regulatory and tax policies) are not currently willing (unlike in capital-threatened 1920s Italy and 1933 Germany) to jettison pluralist liberal “democracy”.

(2) Trump is a notorious liar with both threats and promises (largely BS which his hardcore MAGA base loves to hear).  He promises a massive increase in good jobs for workers; he will not deliver.  He promises stable affordable prices for consumer essentials; but his promised tariffs would actually increase said prices.  He threatens to veto a 15-week national abortion ban; who will trust that he would actually do so?  Would he roll back some existing progressive reforms?  He would try; but, absent a compliant Congress, not all that he threatens.

(3) Trump is a reactionary demagogue who has found success in pandering to bigotry.  Nevertheless, his only real loyalty is to his narcissist self.  He craves popular adoration.  So, he would promptly abandon any policies which would bring strong and widespread public opposition (just as he has been wavering on the abortion issue).  Moreover, institutional resistance would thwart any attempt to install a full-blown autocratic regime or all-out repression of dissent.

(4) Democrats have utterly failed, even when in control of Congress and the Oval Office, to prevent a considerable evisceration of such limited “democracy” as once existed in the US.  They have taken no action to remake the rogue-dominated Supreme Court.  Even with trifecta control of the federal government, they failed to enact needed legislation: for police accountability, for voting rights protections (including to stop gerrymanders or even to mandate proportional allocation of Presidential electors), for campaign finance (including legislative reversal of Citizens United), and so on.  They refused (under Obama) to enact the pro-labor Employee Free Choice Act even when they had trifecta control of the federal government including filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate.  Moreover, it is the effects of the Democrats’ decades of embracing neoliberal economic policy which created the level of popular discontent which Trump-MAGA reaction has successfully exploited.  Furthermore, half the “states” have been captured by MAGA Republicans who have already taken advantage of federal government inaction and reaction in order to enact some bigoted and anti-democratic policies.  Can anyone credibly show that a Harris-Walz administration would actually take the requisite measures (which Democrats failed to take during previous opportunities) in order to reverse much, if any, of that?

(5) Whatever Trump would do to suppress dissent would provoke a powerful popular resistance and thereby spur badly needed revolutionary organizing.  Meanwhile, progressives’ reliance upon centrist Democrats effectively discourages organizing for revolution or even for decisive action against MAGA reaction.

3. 3. Choice. The Harris-Walz campaign had 2 choices: (1) center-right alliance with neocon imperialists (Dick and Liz Cheney, John Bolton, et al) and genocide-backing Zionists; or (2) center-left alliance aligning with the social justice advocates for human rights in Palestine, Lebanon, Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, et cetera.  It chose the former.  Although a Harris Presidency would be a little less oppressive domestically then one led by Trump, there is no reason to believe it would be any less oppressive and murderous in its foreign policy.

4. 4. “Antifascist united front”! In the US, many avowed “socialists” (claiming to be anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-genocide, pro-social-justice, et cetera) are advocating for a “broad anti-fascist united front” in support of the Harris-Walz-Cheney-Bolton campaign in order to block Trump from another 4 years in the Oval Office.  There are 2 possible evaluations of that policy: (1) it is a surrender to genocidal imperialism; or (2) it is a necessary compromise to prevent systemic repression of our struggles for social justice.  Problems with said “united front”.

(1) This “united front” rests upon unquestioning acceptance of the Democrat fearmongering campaign narrative.  For reasons provided in 2 above, this a highly dubious premise.

(2) Given the Harris-Walz choice to ally with the rightwing neocon Republicans and spurn the anti-genocide social-justice voters; said united front, with its proponents’ refusal to condemn the Biden-Harris foreign policy and immigration practice, is a surrender to genocidal imperialism.  In fact, many of the avowedly Marxist anti-imperialist organizations which are pressing for left unity behind the Harris-Walz campaign have actively embraced US imperialism as they also back Biden’s new cold war against Russia.

(3) The united front with Harris et al to block Trump from regaining the Presidency is a tactical move, but one whose proponents evidently have not connected to any strategic plan, certainly none which its proponents (so far as I have seen) have presented.  They do not explain how blocking Trump will eliminate MAGA reaction or other obstacles in the way of advance toward revolutionary people power, or even securing basic democratic civil liberties (which have also come under attack from Biden and other Democrat office-holders: witness repression of campus protests, prosecutions of journalists and whistle-blowers, refusal to pardon unjustly-held political prisoners).  They seem not to recognize that tactics divorced from strategy is a recipe for ultimate failure.  Suppose Harris wins; will MAGA go away?  What will prevent the MAGA party, led by a more astute and articulate Vance, from winning in 2028 or 2032?  The anti-Trump obsessives do not even raise the question.  Neither do they say how they will get the Democrats to actually act to roll back MAGA power in the red states or in the Supreme Court.  They evidently have no strategic plan.  They simply obsess over the odiousness of Trump and the bigotry of his MAGA base while unquestioningly accepting liberal Democrat fearmongering that he will exercise unconstrained repression against the left.  In fact, unless Democrats obtain decisive control of both houses of Congress (very unlikely) along with the Presidency, they will continue to be too weak and too indecisively fickle to be able to undo MAGA rule in the red states or in the Supreme Court.

4. 4. 5. Strategy. What is a correct strategy and tactics?  Consider the following!

(1) Any strategy must be formulated in accordance with the ultimate objective.  For revolutionary socialists the ultimate objective is comprehensive social justice (economic, environmental, civil rights, human rights, international).  That will require replacing the capitalist social order (in which the prime societal imperative is the selfish pursuit of private gain and the accumulation of private wealth by predatory means, producing a ubiquity of social evils).  The needed replacement is a progressive social order (socialism wherein the societal imperative will be the satisfaction of human and social needs).

(2) The long-term strategic plan under pluralist liberal capitalist pseudo-democracy must be to build a revolutionary social justice movement to force concessions (progressive reforms) from the capital-subservient regime.  Priority must be: for reforms to empower the people (the working class and its allies) and to impose constraints upon the exercise of power by capital, not for liberal-reformist ameliorative measures to keep down discontent and the populace politically passive.  These struggles for concessions must be used to draw people into struggle against the capital-serving regime so as to educate them as to the obscured realities of capitalism and thereby build a growing revolutionary social justice movement.

(3) Also necessary are temporary and limited alliances (tactical united fronts) with capitalist political factions (centrist liberals and sometimes with illiberal reactionaries [*]) on issues where said ally is actually committed to the fight for some useful enactment.

[*] Example.  The anti-imperialist left should ally with Trump and his MAGA Republicans in advocating for cutting off US funding for Biden’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

(4) Even if a strategic united front against MAGA fascism were appropriate, its proponents’ current practice is fundamentally wrong.  Our task can never be to build a progressive voter constituency for capital-serving centrist Democrat politicians.  It must always be to build/organize the independent (of all capital-serving parties) revolutionary social justice movement fighting for its current strategic objective whether that be: (a) preventing or undoing fascistic repression, or (b) obtaining people-empowering and capital-constraining reforms so as to enable the people (the working class and its allies) to eventually seize state power.

(5) Even if backing Harris-Walz-Cheney-Bolton were truly necessary and appropriate, then the correct policy would be to inform our listeners as to the capital-subservient genocidal-imperialist perfidious nature of said centrist party while also explaining why and how its election would contribute to our cause.  When one goes silent on imperialism while backing extreme imperialist politicians, one abets their imperial crimes against humanity.  If we do not tell the truth (the whole truth) to our listeners, they will eventually stop listening thereby leaving us with no following.  Dimitrov, laying out policy for the popular front against fascism [in his Main Report delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International” (1935)] noted that “Communists, of course, cannot and must not for a moment abandon their own independent work of Communist education, organization and mobilization of the masses.”  And as Mao stated [in On Policy (1940)], “United Front policy is neither all alliance and no struggle nor all struggle and no alliance, but combines alliance and struggle”.

4. 4. 5. Conclusions. The aforementioned video is simply devoid of any critique of Biden’s unjust policies or of the Democrat campaign’s endorsement thereof.  My avowedly Marxist and anti-imperialist old comrades, using said video to win votes for said campaign, are, in effect, conducting a whitewash in pursuit of a win for the Harris-Walz-Cheney-Bolton center-right ticket.  In portraying the perfidious centrist Democrats as saviors of progress and “democracy”, they neglect, even undermine, efforts to build the revolutionary social justice movement.

In my opinion, the liberal “socialist” assertion, that a Trump win in November will be the end of progressive political activism and anti-capitalist resistance in the US, is mistaken.  It is what centrist Democrats (and their rightwing Republican allies) want us to believe.  Nevertheless, we should take precautions.  Accordingly, my prescription is to oppose both lawless ultra-reactionary Trump and genocidal imperialist Harris for commander-in-chief (by voting for genuine progressive Jill Stein).  Democrats are already vilifying Stein and her voters as facilitators of a possible Trump win.  In fact, if the Democrats lose because of the numbers of progressives voting for a real progressive, it will be their own fault on account of their genocidal and other anti-people policy choices.  Moreover, it will send them a message that they need to actually earn the votes of progressive left voters rather than continue to take those votes for granted.  As for precautions, I advocate asking people to vote for all Democrats (however genocidal, imperialist, and capital-subservient) in Congressional races so as to deny Trump and his MAGA Republicans complete domination of the federal government.  Given the anti-people policies of both major parties, a largely ineffective divided federal government is somewhat to our advantage.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.