The Nazi Regime Begins

Trump, Musk, and fighting the fascist oligarchy

It has begun. Trump is the President and Elon Musk did his part in launching the administration by doing a Nazi salute at the inauguration.

Musk’s Nazi salute. He does it twice, and the video is crystal clear.

We must know what we’re up against. This brand of fascism, this administration, is going to be brutal. Zuckerberg, Bezos, the CEO of Google, the CEO of TikTok, and a legion of other wealthy and powerful people joined Trump in ushering in his presidency. A trillion dollars were up on that stage, in addition to vast amounts of power over the United States and the world. We are in a new era of fascism, and as Quinn Slobodian writes: “The threat the US faces is less a fascism of blood and soil than a nihilistic capitalism of the bottom line.”

This iteration of fascism is all about the oligarch class. It will fuse corporate power with state power, as fascism has always done, but it will also strip our government for parts and attack the working class specifically to reinforce the power of the ruling class, rather than attempting to build the power of the nation in any way. The oligarchs want to repeal the New Deal, repeal worker protections, crush unions and more. We must understand this as we enter the second Trump administration. We will be confronted with Nazism, unparalleled greed, and countless attacks from multiple directions. And, in the chaos, we must keep hold of this bigger picture if we are to effectively fight back.

The Trump onslaught is already upon us in direct, material, tangible ways. ICE raids are about to start; by the time you read this, they may have begun. Today they will likely be executed in fourteen cities. At the same time, Trump and Melania are both scamming the MAGA faithful out of billions of dollars with crypto schemes. The first executive orders of the new administration target trans and non-binary people, increase oil production, and even move to end the birthright citizenship enshrined in the constitution.

The attack on birthright citizenship is unlikely to be upheld, but as with many of his orders Trump and the fascist cabal don’t need it to stand for it to be a ‘success.’ Fighting it will take resources, and time. And, particularly now that the Laken Riley Act has made it through Congress with Democrats in support, they will deport thousands of people in that time. Those deported will include numerous migrants accused of crimes about whom nothing has been proven. Trump will run with his illegal, and more importantly deeply immoral agenda until he and his cadre are stopped.

Along the way we will be repeatedly bombarded. The executive orders signed already go far beyond what I’ve detailed above. He pardoned the January 6th defendants, paused the TikTok ban (yet another act outside his defined powers), undid 78 Biden-era actions and more. These weren’t just extreme acts intended to immediately harm large numbers of people, they were also mundane, stupid, and meant to signal a new era. He signed an order to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, although, as NBC reports, it’s not clear if the president has the authority to rename an area in international waters. He signed another changing the name of Alaska's Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, back to Mt. McKinley.

The list goes on. The intent is malice, certainly, but it is also to overwhelm. We know this, we know the endless Trump spectacle. It’s so familiar that the media’s willingness to cover his every comment and action as breaking news has become a trope over the past decade. But now these soundbites are once again coming from the most powerful person on Earth, who doesn’t care about the law and is willing to go beyond his defined powers, pushing the envelope and potentially expanding the scope of his authority. And, this round, Trump appears to have come prepared, surrounded by a retinue of greedy and malicious minions ready to hand him executive orders and excited to hurt as many people as they can.

During the first Trump term a culture emerged among all those who opposed him of responding to each decree with a mix of mass mobilization and collective freak out. It was understandable, and I participated in it myself. And some of these mass mobilizations were needed, the immediate response was vital in the case of Trump’s Muslim ban, for example. But when we’re limited to rapid response, when we react to each thing this man and his administration do on a case-by-case basis, when we jump both physically and emotionally at every move he makes we’re unable to formulate a coherent mass response, and we have difficulty building the power to defeat the fascist movement over the long haul.

Photo by Srikanta H. U on Unsplash

There is a tempting option, for some, that I see discussed fairly often. It’s sticking our heads in the sand, dissociation, tuning out. If you’re reading this I presume you’re not choosing that path, and we should be clear that choosing not to react individually to each of Trump’s statements or orders is a far cry from pretending they do not exist. Instead, we must see his attacks on migrants, on the structure of our government, on queer people and numerous other groups and institutions as part of a larger whole. Each executive order may arrive separately, but they are all connected, and to defeat the fascist project we must see the through-line and address the problem at the root.

When we attempt to scramble after one Trump action, then another and another and another, we find ourselves burnt out, our forces divided, and the larger fascist project steamrolling on. We need to develop the power, strategies, and vision to take on the entire oligarchical far-right beast, rather than fighting its many heads one by one. And that means taking a step back. Trump signed so many orders already that I left out dozens writing to you today. Each time I saw another I wanted to jump at it, wanted to add it in, wanted to rage against the evil and the inanity and the petty pile of shit sitting in the Oval Office signing orders he hasn’t even read.

But I didn’t. I will not drown you with the barrage of orders any more than I already have. Instead I will practice what I preach, take a step back, and say that we need answers that match the magnitude of the problem we face. We need to build a movement large enough to crush the fascist menace, powerful enough to overthrow the capitalist system of endless greed that enables the monstrosities we’re witnessing, and visionary enough to construct a better world. That is how we win.

I am deliberate about using the word “build” again and again because we are so accustomed to protest. We’re used to meeting every injustice with a march, with a protest, with a rally. As Vincent Bevins writes, “At its most basic level, a protest says, ‘I don’t like this—you fix it.’” And we know, finally and more clearly than ever, that we are not dealing with a regime or with a political system that is interested in fixing our problems. Twelve Democrats joined the GOP in passing the Laken Riley Act to start off the Trump regime, handing the new administration and ICE the power to put migrants in detention without due process, and allowing conservative states to effectively change federal immigration policy.

So we’re past the point of asking, we’re past the point of demanding. This system is not built for the 99% and the political class is unwilling to stand up to fascism. We’re no longer begging, we’re at the point of building the power to get what we need and force change. It’s that or accept Nazism as the new normal. The choice is clear.

Photo by Pawel Janiak on Unsplash

It won’t be easy, the days ahead and the fight ahead. It won’t be enough to respond to every Trump act, every post, every statement. There’s no way around the fact that constantly reacting won’t cut it. It will be necessary, in many cases, but it will not be sufficient. Millions and millions of us also need to build. We need to tune out the noise, not jump at every soundbite, and create the institutions and organizations that allow people to come together and generate real power. We must organize and we must maintain a long-term plan and vision, an awareness of the longer trajectory of the fascist arc, and we must build to meet it down the line, not constantly rush to meet it at every stop along the way.

We are the only remaining barrier, the only bulwark. But fighting like hell doesn’t always mean rushing headlong into the breach. We must also spend time gathering forces, learning, building capacity, constructing organizations from the ground up and reinforcing those that already exist. All of this must be done urgently, but that doesn’t mean doing the first thing available to us. This is a marathon, a marathon we need to win. That takes strategy and smarts, and we’re up against billionaires who have, in some cases, been planning this takeover for decades. But we can win, we have the people, and now we need to build the power. As Malcolm X said, “We're not outnumbered. We're out organized.” So let’s get organized.

P.S. Some links to jumpstart your involvement in the organizing ahead:

Organize or join a union: https://workerorganizing.org/

Organize or join a tenant union: https://atun-rsia.org/resources

A growing national group organizing toward systemic change led by people of color: https://www.dreamdefenders.org/

Keep fighting for a free Palestine: https://palestinianyouthmovement.com/

Link up with DSA: https://www.dsausa.org/get-involved/

Join the national debtors’ union: https://debtcollective.org/join-our-union/

Youth organizing against the war machine: https://wearedissenters.org/

Find a mutual aid group near you: https://www.mutualaidhub.org/

There is work being done in your area, people are organizing in your town, your state, in the arenas you care about. One way or another, join others in building power towards real change.