Trump’s victory is huge: at 3pm today (French time), he wins in terms of absolute votes – more than 71.3 million compared with nearly 66.5 million for Harris – and in terms of percentage – 51.1% compared with 47.4%. In addition, Libertarians and others won 0.8%, Jill Stein 0.4% and the rest 0.2% – and he is therefore President, having won in the swing states (Nevada, Michigan and Arizona had yet to be counted at that time, but the die was cast). What’s more, the Republicans appear to have won the Senate and possibly the House of Representatives.
This is a defeat for the proletariat and democracy, which calls for analysis, resistance and counter-attack. That’s why we welcome this morning’s statement by the United Automobile Workers, which has the merit of reminding us that the working class is in the majority and that it has the same aspirations and demands whatever its vote, with Donald Trump and Elon Musk as its enemies.
Harris could not have won on her own, being the candidate of one of the two major parties of the American capitalist class. In 2020, Biden won against Trump not on his own strength, but because of the powerful wave of demonstrations by Blacks and all the youth with them, whose detonator had been the assassination of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Why didn’t we get that this time?
Of course, the record of the Democrats in power, with the decline in the real standard of living and purchasing power of the broadest sections of the population, is the basic fact. But it’s not good enough to stop there and say that you can’t beat the far right with a liberal programme that is, to say the least, soft on ‘social’ issues. Such recriminations are based on illusions. Harris could not have had any other programme than the one she had. The defence of democracy had to (and will have to) be done without the Democratic Party and outside it, and it is on the terrain of the defence of democracy that the Democrats have instilled weakness.
Because, let’s never forget, all of Biden’s four years have been under the sign of the “U.S. Capitol Attack” on 6 January 2021 and the absence of a judicial crackdown on Trump in its aftermath. While all “serious people” know of his dependence on Putin, the ruling circles of the US have chosen to keep quiet about this fact that is so disorientating and problematic for them and their credibility: a president who is a ‘Russian agent’!
What’s more, this time, unlike in 2016, it is key circles of capital that have moved towards Trump, certainly to control him, but also to direct his blows against the unions and the labour movement (as outlined in the Project 2025 of the Heritage Foundation, the “prestigious” neo-liberal think-tank aligned with Trump). Elon Musk’s key role – not in moderating Trump as far as he is concerned, quite the contrary – is part of this, as is the intervention of shareholders to prevent the traditionally pro-Democrat mainstream press from expressing an opinion – the editorial team of the New York Times was on strike on the day of the vote!
And the dollar is rising and so are the stock markets: the capitalist class is betting on Trump, who is no longer an “accident” as he was in 2016.
The element of physical intimidation, typical of fascism, has been present in the United States at least since 6 January 2021 and was a factor in Trump’s election. It combines with the strong masculinist and virilist dimension of a campaign in which the struggle for or against male domination over women was a central issue – and although this masculinist vote also includes female voices (just as there are, in Iran, female guardians of the Islamic veil), the majority of those resisting Trump were women.
Let’s repeat: violence was already an element of this victory. It took place under threat, because everyone knew that Trump would not concede defeat. The methods of “bourgeois democracy” alone have been defeated in advance. It is the methods of the picket lines of the strikers in the automobile industry, victorious in a conflict over wages at the end of 2023, and of self-defence against the police and militias on the part of young Blacks, aided by other sectors of youth, as in 2020, it is these methods alone, involving the independent organisation of the broadest masses, that will be effective against Trumpist violence and attempts at intimidation.
But that’s precisely the point: a spontaneous but independent surge, like the one that defeated Trump No. 1 in 2020, did not take place. It no doubt began, but did not spread, against Trump No. 2 in 2024. Here a key political factor comes into play: the mobilisation of universities on the theme of Palestine has, for the most part, done nothing for the Palestinian people and has played into Trump’s hands.
This is neither the fault nor the responsibility of the students and the millions of young people revolted by the suffering of Gaza, but of the political direction given to this movement by its leaders, namely the vast majority of the extreme left and the sectors claiming leadership of the movement, who, from 7 October 2023, the day of the provocative Hamas pogroms, denounced Genocide Joe (Biden) as THE culprit and agent no. 1 of genocide. In reality, the said genocide is looming in the rubble of Gaza, a year on, and the campaign against Genocide Joe has done nothing to prevent it.
On the contrary, by diverting legitimate indignation into a movement uncritical of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and acting on the basis of fantasised representations, a democratic and internationalist mass mobilisation similar to, but more thorough than, the spontaneous mass movement that defeated Trump in 2020, was undermined.
A combined mobilisation demanding a halt to arms supplies to the IDF, aid to Ukraine and real democratic repression of Trump and the coup plotters of 6 January 2021 would have been needed. But this was made impossible, the movement undermined by campism, ‘anti-Zionism’ and the Genocide Joe slogan.
And Netanyahu can say this morning: “Congratulations on the greatest comeback in history. Your return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America. This is a huge victory!”
This “new beginning”, based on the alliance between the Israeli far right and the most reactionary evangelical currents in America, is the total destruction of Gaza: genocide is likely to happen now, along with the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. The zealots of the Genocide Joe slogan have NEVER referred to Trump as Genocide Donald. Will they (when it’s too late)? Nothing is less certain. The direction taken by the pro-Palestinian movement has almost openly played into the hands of the Palestinians’ two worst enemies with genocidal ambitions: Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
This is a terrible but necessary and indispensable political assessment. No, there has been no internationalist revival, no new broad vanguard mobilising to the cry of “Palestine”! It should have been, it could have been, if this mobilisation had also fought against Iran and Russia and supported Ukraine, acted to really force the Biden administration to stop arms deliveries and called on people to go to the polls en masse to block the road to Genocide Donald…
Trump’s victory belongs to Putin, to the Iranian regime, which pushed Hamas into the pogromist provocation of 7 October 2023, and to Netanyahu, but they would not have achieved this success without the help of the political disorientation unleashed by the Palestinian issue, to the great misfortune of the Palestinians.
7 October failed to produce the Ukrainian defeat. It is this defeat that Trump and Putin are now going to try to achieve, hand in hand. The danger is total and immediate for the Ukrainian people, threatened in the same way and to the same degree as the Palestinian people.
The class struggle and the war in old Europe are therefore becoming the crux of the world situation – there is no Eurocentrism in this observation, but on the contrary, it is taking into account the needs of the exploited and oppressed throughout the world. We’ll be coming back very shortly to the consequences in France and to the lessons and urgencies opened up by this situation for the New Popular Front and for the trade union organisations.
On this day, Aplutsoc sends its fraternal greetings and its full support to our comrades in the US who have fought to defeat Trump on a class line, from Oakland Socialist and the Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign, to the comrades who have expressed themselves along these lines in New Politics, and beyond them to the thousands of trade unionists, notably from the United Auto Workers (UAW), who are seeking the path of independent action to counter-attack and win.
The original French version of this article first appeared on aplutsoc.org.
Translation: Daniel Mang