There is a disturbing trend among some critics of U.S. imperialism on the global scene to give Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a pass because he’s made some demagogic comments about Russia and the Middle East to appeal to right-wing isolationist forces. They willfully overlook (if not outright apologize for) his dangerous appeal to white supremacist ideology in the U.S.
I am especially outraged by the most recent article (the culmination of a trend, to be sure) by Joshua Tartakovsky, chief editor of Global Independent Analytics website, who has traveled in Donbass and written many good articles about the struggle there.
Tartakovsky’s Dec. 11 article, sporting the ludicrous title
“Trump, Demonized Unfairly by the Liberal-Corporate Media, Must Now Appeal to Latinos”, is an outright apologia that even embraces the racist canard about the border with Mexico being “too porous.” As if an imperialist super-power that stole half of Mexico and super-exploits its people to the hilt has any reason to complain, or a white male journalist based in the U.S. has any right to decide what is “life or death” for a Mexican worker!
Trump is no “outsider” compared to the awful imperialist Hillary Clinton. They are of a piece, in the usual “good cop, bad cop” operation of U.S. electoral politics. Trump is being promoted by the ruling-class dominated mass media in order to SHIFT THE POLITICAL AGENDA TO THE RIGHT — away from people’s struggles such as Black Lives Matter and the Fight for $15. What’s more, Trump’s crusade is providing fertile ground for the growth of a fascist movement of the most reactionary elements in the U.S. This can only do grave harm to our efforts to build an independent people’s movement in solidarity with the struggles against Empire around the world. It must be fought.
Those who claim that Trump should be supported on the basis of his foreign policy statements, despite his utterly reactionary record of divide-and-conquer politics, are just the flip side of those preachers of “lesser evil-ism,” who demand unconditional support for Democrats like Obama and Hillary Clinton because of their empty words on diversity and equality, despite their record of war crimes and servility to Wall Street. Both are destined to keep people tied to the two-party system that U.S. imperialism depends on to maintain its rule. (This is true even if Trump were to run as a pseudo-“independent,” much like his billionaire cohort, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, did.)
The way forward is to build an anti-imperialist people’s movement independent of both parties and the U.S. ruling class. It’s not the easy way. It is the only way.
You cannot fight fascism in Ukraine or Syria and give it a pass in the United States. And nothing could be more dangerous and divisive at this moment for the unity of the international anti-imperialist movement and the struggle inside the belly of the beast, when Black and Brown people are being shot down on an almost daily basis by police and racist vigilantes, women’s clinics are being attacked by terrorists, and Muslim communities are being terrorized by white supremacists.
It is the responsibility of genuine internationalists and anti-imperialists to take a stand against this reactionary trend. True friends of Novorossiya and Russia, Libya and Syria, Venezuela and Kurdistan — it is time to not only write and critique, but to take action, by joining local protests against Trump and the fascist movement he is helping raise to life, as well as against Clinton, Obama and the other Democratic and Republican war-mongers.
I urge everyone in the New York area to join the Unity Rally to stop Trump and his corporate media megaphone, which has been called by a broad coalition of people’s organizations, for Sunday, December 20. You can get the details here: http://peoplespowerassemblies.org/no2trump/
December 11, 2015
(revised 12/14/15)
Red Star News + Translations 