A lot of people on the radical left have been pushing the idea that Trump is attempting a coup. But while Trump might welcome such a thing, I don't see it happening. For such a thing to occur there would have to be institutional support for it. While most of the Senate Republicans have been proclaiming their support for Trump, they haven't been doing anything concrete that would overturn the election results. And if we take a look at other institutions there is even less evidence that a coup is in the offing. It would require support from the military and the intelligence agencies (i.e. the so-called deep state). The military brass for the most part hates Trump's guts, and ditto for the intelligence agencies, with which Trump has been feuding with since the 2016 election. And this should not at all be surprising. In other countries, coups usually occur during periods of deep political unrest. Mussolini's "march on Rome" took place following a period of deep unrest among Italy's industrial workers which had resulted in numerous strikes and factory occupations. That unrest put the fear of God into Italy's upper and middle classes, who were hankering for a strongman to restore order. Mussolini's takeover had support from major institutions like the military, the Catholic Church, and indeed the Italian king himself.
Hitler's rise to power in Germany occurred in the midst of the Great Depression, following several years of governments that had proven incapable of dealing with the economic slump and of the political unrest associated with it. Germany's ruling class was fearful that the country's two major working class parties: the large SPD and the smaller KPD, and the trade unions would all get together to form a workers government. That never happened, but fears of such a prospect encouraged some of Germany's biggest industrialists to throw their support of Hitler and his National Socialists. In the US, I don’t see anything like that going on right now. True that we have seen an uptick in activism by much of this nation’s youth, who have been willing to go into the streets on behalf of BLM, even in the midst of the pandemic. But these young people are not a real threat to the ruling class, at least not yet. For that to happen, these new movements would have to expand much further and link up with labor unions so that they would be in a position to not just organize demonstrations and protests, and even riots, but to also be able to foment strikes, and even a general strike. Thus far, BLM and allied movements are still quite far away from able to do these things. And without that capacity, they’re simply not going to be scary enough to convince the ruling class to back an authoritarian seizure of power by Trump or anyone else. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#3544): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/3544 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/78268963/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
