By Miguel Sorans, leader of Socialist Left and the IWU-FI.
6 November 2024. The polls predicted a dead heat and that it could take days for the result to be known, but Donald Trump’s victory ended up being quicker and more resounding. He won North Carolina and reversed the results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states lost to Biden in 2020. He won with the popular vote and would take a majority in the Senate and House of Representatives.
He has won the US presidency again
Trump is a far-right-wing, racist bigot, xenophobe, misogynist, convicted sex abuser, with openly fascist ideas. This triumph is being celebrated by the far-rightists of the world such as Meloni, Le Pen, Bolsonaro, or Milei.
The question for millions is: how could such a far-right fascist character win again? For the same reason, Meloni, Bolsonaro, or Milei won in other latitudes. And for similar reasons for which he had won in 2016. Many workers and youth vote against capitalist governments that prioritise big corporations over the well-being of the masses.
With the USA, it expresses the hatred of millions for the capitalist-imperialist Biden-Harris government, who lost 15 million votes compared to the 2020 elections. More than Trump winning, Kamala Harris and the Democrats in power lost. Harris could not overcome the debacle of the Democratic party that had to replace Biden’s candidacy in a hurry. Harris could never disguise or hide that her administration continued to lower the standard of living of the working class and popular sectors. She could not hide that she herself persecuted migrants. She could not hide that Biden and herself lead a government that supports Gaza genocide. That it financially and militarily supports Israel and its criminal massacre of the Palestinian and Lebanese people.
That is why thousands of supporters of the Palestinian cause went to her events to repudiate her. That is why she did not have the support of broad progressive sectors or the youth for her repugnant position in favour of the genocide in Gaza. Neither the black community nor Latinos have massively supported her leadership. Even Roger Waters and environmental activist Greta Thumberg rejected support for both Harris and Trump.
Trump got the traditional ultra-conservative, racist, right-wing American vote, from the evangelical, anti-choice, anti-women and dissident communities. White working-class members affected by the social crisis in the ‘rust belt’ states gave him the wrong vote. He won votes from minority communities because of their dislike of the current administration and Trump’s promises of change. He works for multinational corporations and supports Israel’s actions in Gaza and Palestine. Let’s remember he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem in his first term in office.
The return of Trump to the presidency is a new expression of the crisis and the social and political decay the capitalist-imperialist system has been experiencing for a long time. It has its own expression in the USA. The so-called ‘American dream’ disappeared long ago, and the decay deepened since the economic crisis of 2008. ‘As of July 2023, more than 37 million people, 11.5 per cent of the population, live in poverty and 6.6 million (4 per cent) are unemployed. (…). Inequality is growing, with the top 10 per cent of earners taking almost half of all income and the bottom 50 per cent earning only 13 per cent. The American dream of plenty and prosperity, as the ideological underpinning of US imperialism, is only a reminder of an uncertain past, giving rise to growing apathy and discontent with the two traditional bourgeois parties, the Democrats, and the Republicans. Forty-eight per cent of Americans rate their economic situation as bad and seven out of ten Americans (69 per cent) believe the economy is ‘getting worse’ and 77 per cent are dissatisfied, frustrated or angry’ (“United States: between the political crisis and the ballot box”, Ezequiel Peressini, https://uit-ci.org/index.php/2024/08/27/international-correspondance-n53-stop-the-genocide-gaza-resists-palestina-lives/?lang=en).
The prospect of the new government of the far-right Donald Trump will not bring improvements for the American working people and youth, nor for immigrants. Least of all, it will have anything for the Palestinian and Middle Eastern peoples, the Ukrainian people, or the exploited peoples of the world. Trump will continue the policy of exploitation and global gendarme and genocide of US imperialism. Logically aggravated by its fascist and repressive facets, which we cannot minimise and must confront.
IWU-FI will urge the working class, youth, women, dissidents, and popular sectors in the USA to fight for their demands against Trump’s government from 20 January 2025. The social and political crisis will remain open in the USA. From Socialist Core, an organisation that supports the IWU-FI in the USA, we call for a critical vote for alternative candidates, such as Jill Stein, Cornel West, and other independent candidates such as Claudia De la Cruz, of the Socialism and Liberation Party. Pointing out that ‘This critical vote can help strengthen the pole of those who are struggling, taking part in the growing strikes, in solidarity with Palestine and in the struggle of the black community against racism and police violence, facing the challenges we will continue to encounter after the elections. Whoever wins, the serious socio-environmental crisis and the enormous inequality, as well as the development of popular struggles itself, pose the challenge of building a left and working-class party where the new union, youth, anti-racist and anti-fascist, environmentalist and feminist vanguard converge.’ (https://uit-ci.org/index.php/2024/11/04/for-a-protest-vote-against-the-genocidal-republican-and-democrat-party/?lang=en)
From the IWU-FI we ratify and support all the steps that can be taken on this path of building a united political alternative of the left and the fighters of the USA outside the Democratic Party, which is nothing more than a vehicle for the defeats of the workers and the peoples.
