Editorial

The Extraordinary Dangers of Trump and Trumpism

August 29, 2016

Marxist-Humanist Initiative is thoroughly, unequivocally, opposed to Donald Trump and all that he stands for. We are aghast that part of the so-called “left” thinks that there is anything good about him, and that some “leftists” actually support Trump because he comes from outside the political establishment and trash-talks about it. Whether such responses are based on “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” or “better the devil you don’t know than the one you do,” they are irredeemably irresponsible and unserious. They disregard Trump’s class bias, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, totalitarian inclinations, and interest in using nuclear weapons, and treat those who will suffer under Trump as “collateral damage.”

The backbone of his campaign are appeals to racism, nativism, xenophobia, and sexism. Despite Trump’s recent vague doubletalk, he has—as everyone knows–vowed to build a wall across the Mexican border and force Mexico to pay for it, and to ban Muslim immigration. Even if he is defeated on November 8, the racist, xenophobic movement he has created—Trumpism—is likely to persist and it is questionable whether the flimsy institutions of U.S. bourgeois democracy are any match for it.

The allegedly “anti-establishment” and “anti-elite” character of Trumpism doesn’t make his racism and chauvinism any less despicable or more deserving of “understanding.” Any and every discussion of Trump and Trumpism that fails to denounce their racism, sexism, and xenophobia clearly, loudly, and without qualification—without ifs, ands, or buts—is complicit with them. There are no mitigating circumstances. There is no silver lining. There is just willingness to tolerate racism, sexism, and xenophobia.

It is not “far left” to say that there is some good in Trumpism. It is just infantile posturing.

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MHI public meetings in London Sept. 11 and Stockholm Sept. 14
Video: MHI Tackles “The Vanguardist/Spontaneist Binary” & “Overcoming Capitalism” at Left Forum
Video: MHI’s London Meetings on Humanism, Housing Movement
Video: Documentary film: “Raya Dunayevskaya: Biography of an Idea”