(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Any analysis of Trumps re-election must be based on George The Floyd# uprising, which remains the most important political, or rather anti-political, event in recent American history.
I Minneapolis and other cities in 2020, the state's constitutional power was rejected. Unfortunately, most analyses of the election are stuck in a completely outdated left-right dichotomy that makes little sense in the American context, especially given how unconvincing it would be to claim that the Democrats constitute a left-wing political party. Harris's campaign was tellingly populated with ultra-wealthy celebrities and conservative hawks, including Dick Cheney's daughter.
In the current situation of crisis and disempowerment, the police are the front line for control of all excluded subjects.
The 2020 uprising, on the other hand, represented a breakthrough in the history of American anti-capitalist rebellion, with people taking to the streets in more than 2000 cities in more than 60 countries in support of the movement. Black Lives Matter. Only in USA It is estimated that between 15 and 25 million people participated, the largest ever in American history. The iconic scene, where the police station in the third district of Minneapolis is in flames, shows the ruling Class that something like this could happen at any time. That the African-American-led, multiracial rebellion was not mentioned at all during the election, reveals the extent to which the ruling class remains united when it comes to avoiding a showdown with the ruling order.
I campaignone we were witnessing a shitshow of competing factions of the local capitalist class fighting for advantages over other members of the ruling class, but where everyone agrees to do everything to prevent another uprising of the size of 2020. If Trump 2016 was a preemptive counterrevolution, which was supposed to ensure that any possible fusion between Occupy and Ferguson was put to rest, Trump 2024 is an attempt to make impossible the new state-negating rejection that we saw in full force in the summer of 2020.
A new movement that rejects
With Herbert Marcuse and Fred Moten we can understand riotand the protests in 2020 as the rejection of a politia front line for kontrol with all excluded subjects. That is why it is 'ordinary' police operations that mobilize people and make them go crazy. This has been the case throughout the new protest cycle, from Sidi Bouzid in 2010 in Tunisia and London in 2011 to Ferguson in 2014, Minneapolis in 2020 and Paris in 2024. The names of the proletarians whose deaths brought masses of people to the streets – Mohamed Bouazizi, Mark Duggan, Michael Brown, George Floyd, Nahel Merzouk – serve as the motto of a new movement that rejects. A bevægelsen, which rejects the bankrupt political left-right system, and which knows that it cannot bet on any of the existing visions of another world. They are all running out, and have been for some time.
The new fascist forces
National Democracy is still not an opposition to fascismn. In fact, it never was. Only if we understand it can we analyze Trump as a late capitalist fascist whose political program is based on racial exclusion, xenophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and a vision—if we can call it that—of national rebirth. I say if because Trump, like the other late capitalist fascists, is far less grandiose and visionary than the fascists of the interwar period. Late capitalist fascism is a strangely hollowed-out form of fascism—whose images of a better future are colored postcard visions of an imaginary past. This is an imaginary heyday of postwar American industrial society before Black Panther Party, feminism and all sorts of 'woke' gender-bending movements.
This realization – “I see the crisis” – was the material basis for Trump’s pitch as president.
The new fascist forces are in many ways just an expanded version of the criminal element that we know from both the Italian fascism and German Nazism. But we need to revisit the old analyses of the relationship between the state and crime. The left communists never gave the criminal element much importance, although Marx himself sporadically included it in his analysis of Bonapartism during the Second Empire. Amadeo Bordiga merely stated that citizenshipit had a 'Janus face' that made it possible for the state to be alternately social democratic or fascist. In his comprehensive reconstruction of Marx's work, Maximilien Rubel wrote an entire monograph on Marx historical analyses of Bonapartism, which included a section on the "Praetorian Regime" with five marshals who ruled the country in five military 'pashals' (Trump's use of the Border Patrol in 2020 on the streets of Portland may be a foretaste of what is to come).
The Bonapartist state formation took place between two revolutions about twenty years apart, during which the French proletariat was constantly on the verge of returning to the barricades: «Now? Is it happening? This must be the moment!» A situation not unlike the one we are currently experiencing, which is marked by an enormous increase in mass protests, riots and uprisings from 2011 onwards. The journalistic writings of Marx and Engels to New York Daily Tribune and in the pamphlets of the First International were full of prophecies of coming uprisings in which the ruling order would surely implode. And as in previous eras, we see a return to political crime to quell unrest. This is the case everywhere today, but it is especially visible in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Emirates and Iran, all of which have made corruption and murder central elements of their domestic policies. In the US, Trump represents the final rise to power of the 'informal gang' (Jacques Camatte).
Fascism is not the opposite of democracy. This was already evident in 2016, and it should be crystal clear now. That democracy has been reduced to casting a vote every four years already says a lot. Trump’s ingenuity lay in his ability to transcend the individuality of the voter at the ballot box and “let the masses speak” (Walter Benjamin) – all the while blaming migrants, China or the ‘deep state’ for a persistent economic downturn. Trump at least registers the crisis, even if he tries to short-circuit it by scapegoating specific groups (“shithole countries” whose migrants “eat the dogs” in Springfield and elsewhere). This realization – “I see the crisis” – was the material basis of his pitch as president. That Trump's solutions will in no way reverse the downturn is obvious to many, I think, and probably also to a large part of those who voted for him. But at least he addressed the difficulties – that did Harris No. Her campaign had nothing to say to the many whose real wages have stagnated for decades and who have difficulty affording housing, care, and other basic goods.
Exclusions
Trump’s reelection cannot hide the fact that American society does not exist. In fact, Trump himself repeatedly says so. His America in no way pretends to include all those who live in the country. Trump has talked about shooting political rivals in the face and is now trying to carry out mass deportations of migrants. The national unity and greatness he promises can only be created through exclusions, deportations, and killings – in the style of Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three and killed two in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Unity recreated through exclusion: This is the return of the civil war. The same civil war that the democratic representation of society does everything to hide.
We have entered a new period marked by what we can only characterize as a military tyannicidum.
The United States may account for 26 percent of global GDP, but the country is in a state of insidious 'purges'. The Americanske citizens are among the most heavily armed in the world, with 89 guns for every 100 inhabitants, a total of 270 million guns on the streets. Many of these citizens are organized into militias and are ready to fight. Charlottesville and January 6, 2021 was just the beginning. Every year, more than 30 people are killed by firearm, averaging over 80 victims a day. It is no longer a question of “transforming imperialist war into civil war,” as Lenin wrote in 1915, but of realizing that we already have both.
Mass protests
A large part of them mass protests, which have taken place over the past 15 years all over the world, sprang from a shocking fury against the absolute power of politicians who seem to murder and terrorize populations with complete impunity. The performative legal proceedings against war criminals in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s feel like a distant memory. How distant is, of course, most evident in the ongoing destruction of Gaza, but also in the brutality of the recently deposed Assad regime against the Syrian revolutionaries in Aleppo and Ghouta. And it was not only Syrian revolutionaries who were confused by the impunity, Assad Even Carla Dal Ponte, the former chief prosecutor at the UN International Criminal Court in The Hague, expressed her astonishment at the lack of political will to prosecute Assad.
We have entered a new period marked by what we can only characterize as a military cyanide , where leaders like Putin, bin Salman, Netanyahu, Biden and Trump feel invited to do whatever they want, without any consequences. Remember when Trump rejoiced in the murder of Michael Reinoehl, carried out by US Marshals in October 2020? The point, of course, is not to assert law and order, but to expose the extra-legal nature of legal violence itself.
Bombings and murders
It is therefore not surprising that we are witnessing a revival of the methods of the Russian populists who plotted to assassinate the Tsar and other aristocratic figures in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the last decades of the 19th century. Such efforts were intended to dramatically visualize the oppressive functions of Tsarist rule for all to see. As state terrorAs the slow violence of capitalist accumulation continues to unfold, bombings and assassinations of politicians or other members of the ruling class by courageous but desperately isolated individuals are likely to only increase in number.
Bombings and assassinations of politicians or other members of the ruling class by brave but desperately isolated individuals are likely to only increase in number.
Luigi Mangione's alleged shooting of a UnitedHealthCare-director on December 4, 2024 may quickly prove to be a beginning, not an exception. While the political theory that once accompanied the concept of “propaganda of the deed” has few adherents today, the unbearable contradictions in a crisis-ridden American society are only deepening. Something must be done. ViolenceIt is already everywhere, and many see it as necessary to strike back.
