*Re: DSA should campaign against Trump's plans to steal the election* John is right that the silence is a problem. He is wrong about almost everything he proposes to do about it, and the thread has split along lines that make both errors harder to see.
Start with what the threat actually looks like. John O'Brien pictures January 3: Congress dispersed, martial law, Hegseth obeying. That scenario is possible, and I would not rule it out. But it is the least likely route because it is the most expensive one. The more probable path runs through the ordinary machinery. DOJ inquiries into county election offices. Certification fights in a handful of states. Federal "monitors." Prosecutions timed to intimidate the officials who count. Nothing needs to be abolished for the result to be decided in advance. This is what I have been calling patrimonial Bonapartism: the state apparatus treated as the personal household of the executive, with loyalty substituted for procedure by office. Calling it Nazism, or fascism in the 1933 sense, points people toward barricades when the fight is in county canvassing boards and state legislatures. Marv's point about conditions deserves a straight answer. A general strike call from DSA today would be a press release. The union density, the shop-floor organization, and the Marxist currents inside the locals that could carry it—none of it exists at the scale the slogan assumes. John's "main strategy" skips over the question of who would actually walk out. That is substitution, the group announcing what the class should do and then blaming the class, or the unions, or No Kings, when it doesn't. But Charles has the better of the No Kings argument. The coalition's own literature commits it to lawful, disciplined, de-escalated action. That is a program, and it is a program of trusting the courts and the certification process to hold. If they don't hold, the coalition has no second move. Marv says mass marches transform consciousness. Sometimes. They can also teach a million people that showing up once and going home is what resistance is. On the Palestine movement: John, lumping it in with Tucker Carlson is indefensible, and it discredits the rest of your argument with exactly the people you need. Some antisemites will blame Israel for whatever happens. The answer is to fight them inside the movement, which means being in it. What would I actually propose? Concretely and modestly: DSA chapters and allied union locals building election-defense committees now, at the county level, trained to watch certification and to turn people out fast when an office is threatened. That is work. No kings will not do it because it cuts against their legalism, and it is work that puts socialists next to union activists in a fight with a clear object. If it grows, the strike question can be posed seriously. If it doesn't, we will have learned something about where we actually stand. Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#43526): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/43526 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/121405050/21656 -=-=- 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. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
