By JOHN LESLIE
After the assassination attempt on former President Trump, some GOP supporters—from Tucker Carlson to Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.)—called Trump a “changed” man after his brush with death. Politico commented that they used “words like ‘emotional’ and ‘serene’ — even ‘spiritual’ — to describe Trump.” And indeed, Trump’s “rambling” 90-minute acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee started out with a hint of moderation, with Trump saying, “As Americans, we are bound together by things that are shared—we rise together or we fall apart. I am running to be president for all of America. Not half.”
But what followed this olive branch was a diatribe against immigrants, in which he declared, “There is a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease, and destruction.” He also aimed diatribes at the Democrats and the leaders of the United Auto Workers union, who were blamed for “allowing” U.S. auto plants to be moved overseas.
Within the next few days, it was clear that Trump was back to his old brand of rhetoric. “No, I haven’t changed,” Trump affirmed on July 28. “Maybe I’ve gotten worse.” He went on to blast the newly crowned Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris with crude and misogynistic slurs.
Politicians and campaign supporters speaking at the Republican convention placed major blame for the country’s problems on immigrants and transgender people. The GOP platform calls for the “largest deportation operation in American history.” Former Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro took the convention stage to echo charges that the former president himself has made on numerous occasions: “Joe and Kamala, they threw out the woke blue carpet across the Rio Grande, opened our borders, to what? Murderers and rapists.” He went on, “We read the papers! It’s murderers and rapists. Drug cartels. Human traffickers. Terrorists. Chinese spies. And a whole army of illiterate illegal aliens stealing the jobs of Black, brown, and blue-collar Americans.”
GOP convention speakers included North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who recently told a church congregation that “some folks need killing,” and has referred to LGBTQ+ people as “filth” and LGBTQ+ relationships as “cow shit.” Transgender people were also the subject of virulent rhetoric from Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and John James (Mich.).
All of this comes in the context of the far right gaining a more mainstream foothold in the GOP under Trump. White nationalist ideas like the so-called great replacement theory—the idea that “elites,” often Jews, are replacing the American people with what they claim are more pliable immigrants from Latin America. The “great replacement” theory appears on the lips of right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson and in the speeches of GOP politicians including Trump, Matt Gaetz, JD Vance, Elise Stefanik, and others.
GOP ghoul Ted Cruz played to the great replacement theory in his speech, saying that “Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children”; he disregarded the fact that undocumented people can’t vote and that there are very few instances of this sort of voter fraud. Cruz used terms like “invasion” to describe the situation at the border and claimed that the undocumented are responsible for rape, murder, and human sex trafficking that targets “teenagers, girls and boys.”
Convention speaker Thomas Homan, former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Trump, claimed that immigrants are an existential threat to the U.S. Echoing the great replacement theory, he claimed that Biden’s border policies are ”national suicide!” To the cheers of convention goers, he said, “I have a message for the millions of illegal aliens who Joe Biden allowed to enter the country in violation of federal law. … Start packing, because you’re going home!” Two years ago, Homan was invited to speak at a white supremacist America First Political Action Conference organized by the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, but left before the event started.
Another threat from the right comes from the mainstreaming of Christian nationalism and white nationalism inside the GOP—a constituency that many of the utterances of new VP candidate JD Vance seem to appeal to. There is considerable overlap of this trend with groups outside of the electoral arena—militias and other far-right groups like the Proud Boys or Patriot Front, that are salivating for civil war and retribution against those sectors of society that they blame for their problems.
Fake populism and the real pain of the working class
Trump and Vance, who are both Ivy League educated and wealthy, are attempting to profile the GOP as a kind of conservative workers’ party. “We’re done catering to Wall Street,” Vance proclaimed in his GOP convention speech. “We’ll commit to the working man!” He praised Trump, saying, “We need a leader who’s not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man, union and nonunion alike. A leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations, but will stand up for American companies and American industry.”
Trump tied his nationalistic message to an attack on the UAW leadership. Following his claim that China was planning to sell in the United States vehicles that had been assembled in Mexico, Trump declared, “The United Auto Workers ought to be ashamed for allowing this to happen, and the leader of the United Auto Workers [Shawn Fain] should be fired immediately. … Every single autoworker, union and non-union—you should be voting for Donald Trump because we’re going to bring back car manufacturing, and we’re gonna bring it back fast.”
Teamster President Sean O’Brien, speaking at the GOP confab, gave a very friendly nod to the Trump-Vance ticket. The next day, O’Brien further disgraced himself by seeming to endorse the reactionary racist and anti-trans agenda of the far right. An earlier Workers’ Voice article exposes O’Brien’s treachery: “Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri published an article the day after O’Brien’s remarks that said, ‘The C-suite (Corporate) long ago sold out the United States, shuttering factories in the homeland and gutting American jobs, while using the profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion and the religion of the trans flag.’ To which Sean O’Brien commented on X, ‘@HawleyMO is 100% on point.’”
There is real pain in working-class communities who have suffered from the bipartisan assault on their living standards. Plant closings, union busting, the proliferation of low-wage jobs, and austerity have destroyed whole communities. Right-wing populism—as expressed by the Trump-Vance campaign—seeks to deflect the anger of workers toward immigrants, oppressed nationalities, or LGBTQ+ people. Scapegoating immigrants and Queer people for society’s ills lets the capitalist system off the hook.
Indeed, the drumbeat of anti-immigrant vitriol is calculated to sow fear and to discipline the working class—immigrant and non-immigrant. Mass deportations are unlikely because the U.S. capitalist economy is highly dependent on immigrant labor, including the undocumented. The capitalists recognize this and understand the sort of social power that all workers have. Dividing workers into “native” and immigrant cuts across this potential power.
In reality, Trump’s policies have favored the rich with tax breaks, bailouts, and attacks on unions. Trump has spoken in favor of right-to-work laws that gut union rights because “it is better for the people” to not have to pay union dues. The Trump-Vance phony populism is belied by the fact that they have numerous corporate donors and the pledge of Elon Musk to fund a pro-Trump PAC to the tune of $45 million per month.
Vance’s reactionary views
JD Vance, who according to his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” grew up in poverty with a drug-addicted mother, made his money as a venture capitalist with ties to the tech sector. Before his entry into politics in a 2022 run for the U.S. Senate, he was an opponent of Trump. In 2016, he messaged his former Yale roommate, referring to Trump as “America’s Hitler.” Senate candidate Vance, however, became a true MAGA believer.
Vance is an advocate for increasing the birth rate in the U.S. by providing free prenatal health care and childbirth coverage. He is quoted as saying, “The fact that we’re not having enough babies, the fact that we’re not having enough children, is a crisis in this country.” He favors tax credits for child care.
Vance is also against abortion rights and in 2022 spoke in favor of a national abortion ban. Recently, he softened this stance in line with Trump’s position of leaving abortion legislation up to the states. Vance also favors increased police access to women’s health-care records.
According to VOX, “Vance is deeply ensconced in the GOP’s growing “national conservative” faction, which pairs an inconsistent economic populism with an authoritarian commitment to crushing liberals in the culture war.” It should be no surprise that Vance is aligned with PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who said that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Vance is an admirer of the far-right government of Viktor Orbán. According to the Washington Post, “During his senatorial campaign, Vance extolled the virtues of Orban’s traditionalist policies regarding marriage, including loans to married couples that were forgiven the longer they stayed together and had children. ‘Why can’t we actually promote family formation,’ he asked at an event, before attacking the ‘childless left.’”
Given Trump’s age and overall poor health, it’s even possible that Vance will finish the term if Trump wins in November. The danger Vance presents stems from his clearer ideological grounding on the right compared to Trump’s apparent lack of real ideological principles. We can expect that the younger Vance would be a more effective and articulate representative of the most reactionary escorts of the capitalist class.
The need for mass independent action
Both ruling-class parties are in crisis, which reflects the multiple crises of the capitalist system—economic, social, and the climate catastrophe that is quickly gathering steam. The growth of the far right and its induction into the mainstream of the GOP is a consequence of the failure of reformism to defend the working class and oppressed.
The danger from the right should not allow us to have illusions in the Democratic Party as a bulwark against reaction. At every turn, the Democrats cede ground to the right. Certainly, this is true on immigration and the Democrats’ support for the neo-McCarthyite attacks on the Palestine Freedom Movement.
Voting for the lesser evil against Trumpism is at best merely pressing a pause button. In order to advance the struggles of the working class and oppressed, we need a decisive and clean break with the twin parties of capital. The Democratic Party is not an arena of struggle for the oppressed and exploited. Instead, it is the graveyard of progressive social movements. Real change will only come through the mass struggles of millions fighting in their own interests.
Defeating an invigorated ultra-right movement will require the greatest possible unity in action, mass counter-mobilization, and self-defense through organized defense guards. Isolated groups taking action on their own will get cut off by the state and the fascists. Absent a clear class-struggle alternative, many workers can be drawn into the orbit of the far right. Our program has to offer a clear working-class analysis of the system and to point the way forward.
Getting the unions involved in the fight against the far right is an urgent task. But the current housebroken leadership of the unions seems incapable of grasping the dangers that working people and the oppressed face and the need for action that is independent of the two big capitalist parties. Regardless of who wins the election, the road ahead will require a combined struggle for an independent class-struggle leadership in the unions, for mass action by the movements for social change, and a strong united defense of democratic rights.
Advancing the struggles of the oppressed and working class also means that working people need our own party. Such a party would not be a purely electoral party but one that leads struggles every day of the year in the streets, in the unions, and in every neighborhood for the interests of the oppressed and exploited.
