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On 2/2/20 10:32 PM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote:
There are some very good reasons not to support the Democrats, but the idea that what we're facing in Trump is essentially similar to what we faced with Goldwater, Reagan and Bush is not one of them.
I wouldn't say that Trump is like any of these previous politicians but he certainly reflects the new Republicanism that has been brewing for a decade or so, maybe more.
I don't know how many comrades listen to rightwing talk radio but that's where Trump comes from. I used to listen to this guy Steve Deace who had a show on a NYC AM station that was syndicated around the country. Deace spent more time attacking RINOS than Democrats, the term for Republicans in name only. Deace was a Christian fundamentalist of the kind that Chris Hedges wrote about in a book titled "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America". I don't agree with the term fascist but his research is invaluable.
All this stuff that we label as "Trumpism" did not come from him. It came from the Tea Party right, the bible thumpers, the nativists, the Putin admirers who were there all along. He gave them a voice.
In the process of becoming the dominant voice of the Republican Party, they have intimidated the old guard at first and then transformed them into True Believers.
But as Mark Lause brought out, what difference does it make for the left? The Republican Party has radicalized and you at the same time have people like ex-ISOer Alan Maass writing things like this:
"For the next year at least — possibly one or two or three or more, but maybe less — a left-wing radicalization will continue to take the form of a surge of democratic socialist politics, with a particular focus on elections within the bounds of the Democratic Party, even as those bounds are strained."
Are you fucking kidding me? A particular focus on elections within the bounds of the DP has something to do with "radicalization"? What does it mean to be a radical? If it is making speeches about the "billionaire class", then it is a different kind of radicalization that young people underwent when I was young. These were people who joined SDS. Right? They occupied buildings on campus, not passing out literature to help DP candidates get elected. That's what galls me about the confusion Jacobin and the DSA have sown. Words like "socialism" and "radicalization" are being redefined to mean the left-liberalism of a wing of the DP.
But that's okay. A vacuum is being created that genuine socialists and radicals will fill. My only hope is that they will not try to fill it with the bogus "Leninism" of my misspent youth.
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