Things fall apart; the center cannot hold

Trump, TikTok, and a Truce in Gaza

It’s happening all at once. Trump’s inauguration is upon us, a ceasefire has gone into effect in Gaza, and TikTok is officially banned. None of this should be happening right now. A Gaza ceasefire should’ve been reached months and months ago, TikTok shouldn’t be banned, and Donald Trump should’ve been soundly defeated in November. But here we are, witnessing the results of a center that has always leaned right, and has finally folded fully to fascism.

The ceasefire in Gaza, so long awaited, is here. After fifteen painful months of witnessing genocide and protesting our country’s funding and arming of mass slaughter, there is a real reprieve. The news of peace, temporary as it may be, has brought a sigh of relief, but that sigh cannot fully displace the relentless pain. Tens of thousands were murdered before seeing this day, and Israel continued to kill up to the moment of official implementation, slaughtering well over 100 people in the last few days. For all these reasons and more the exhale that accompanied the news of the ceasefire collided with the boundless anger and sadness in so many of us, creating a strangely numbing buzz. Only witnessing the celebrations of Palestinians in Gaza brought moments of unequivocal joy.

HATEM KHALED / REUTERS

Here in the U.S. we should all note that the ceasefire which has just gone into effect in Gaza is very nearly the deal Israel rejected eight months ago. Biden himself confirmed that the current ceasefire is based on the “precise contours” of the May 2024 plan. So what changed? By some accounts from Biden administration diplomats, the difference was Trump. The Guardian recounts a Biden official detailing part of the recent ceasefire negotiations as follows:

“In one extraordinary moment, the official said, Witkoff [Trump’s envoy] was dispatched on his own to Israel to meet with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a high-stakes gambit to convince him to take the ceasefire deal. The meeting between Witkoff and Netanyahu, which took place during Shabbat over the initial objections of Netanyahu’s aides, was described as ‘tense’, according to Israeli media. Reports said that Witkoff put pressure on Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire-for-hostages deal and agree to key concessions to halt the war sooner.”

And it worked. There are numerous factors at play here, and Trump is certainly not benevolent, but the Biden refusal to bring pressure to bear, the administration’s refusal to cut off the flow of bombs and the steady stream of billions of dollars, allowed for a genocide. Without that support Israel would have been forced to halt its mass slaughter. But instead, the genocide marched on for 15 months, and the ceasefire finally arrived just in time for Trump to credibly take credit for its implementation.

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash

This is why the center cannot hold. The consensus in DC has been to support Israel at all costs, no matter what. In refusing to buck that trend, in eagerly supporting Israel, in inviting Netanyahu to Congress in the middle of his genocide, in disregarding internal State Department reports about Israeli atrocities and more, the centrist Democrats both enabled countless war crimes and handed the incoming Trump administration a win on a platter. According to a recent, unsurprising report, Trump might not continue to bring the massive U.S. influence to bear on Israel, might not enforce a ceasefire for long, but right now he’s able to ride into his presidency on this victory. The center, on the other hand, has proven itself unwilling to oppose genocide, unwilling to do what’s right, even unwilling to do what’s necessary to effectively fight the man and the party they themselves have labeled fascist.

We see another potential victory handed to Trump and the GOP with TikTok, which has gone dark. At this point Biden is saying that the social media app should remain available to Americans. But this comes after the Democrats embraced conservative arguments around TikTok, passed legislation banning the app, and signed it into law. And now Trump is saying he’ll sign a 90-day extension for the platform, and potentially save its U.S. presence. This would be another win for the incoming administration, handed to them on a platter by the centrist Democratic Party.

This is how the center folds. It cedes to the logic of fascism just as it lets the right run roughshod over norms without putting up a fight. We see this with the concessions made around of the framing with TikTok, with immigration, increasingly with trans rights, and more. The Laken Riley Act is currently the most profoundly disturbing example of the center ceding and ceding and ultimately embracing the logic and the legislation of the far-right. This extremely dangerous bill requires “mandatory detention for undocumented immigrants who are arrested, charged, or admitted to shoplifting, theft, and other related crimes.” As Noah Lanard writes, the Senate version that is likely to become law even expands mandatory detention to cover cases where someone is implicated in assaulting a law enforcement officer, or a crime that causes death or serious bodily harm.

The bill would also essentially let states and judges have massive influence over immigration policy, powers currently held by the federal government. Lawsuits from states could be heard by district court judges, who could then order sweeping changes to national immigration policy. This would obviously be used and abused by far-right state governments. And yet 10 Senate Democrats voted to advance this bill. The ACLU calls the bill “likely unconstitutional” in addition to immensely harmful. It hands Trump and the far-right massive powers to enact their fascist agenda, but it’s being handed to them on a platter by several crucial Democratic votes.

The center won’t fight fascism. These Democratic Senators have eagerly adopted the hard-line Republican rhetoric and logic on immigration. Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego is spouting lines on Twitter that are impossible to fathom Democrats pushing out just two years ago. Just the other day, in framing his support for the Laken Riley Act, he said: “Cartels are targeting Arizona teens on social media—luring them into smuggling migrants and drugs with promises of huge sums of money.” The Senator sounds like Trump here, and he follows this line by saying it’s his rational for voting to upend the immigration system and detain and deport migrants who haven’t been convicted of anything.

Gallego isn’t alone, of course. One Democrat after another has become willing to spout deeply conservative, and often dishonest, rhetoric about migrants. The center has given in willingly, even eagerly at times. What’s striking is that there are much more compelling arguments for winning elections. Voters are more moved by arguments about billionaires, corporations, and economic issues generally. There is no need to cede this ground, unless you’re unwilling to ever confront billionaires and bosses.

And that’s why the center will never provide the winning argument against fascism. They are unwilling to move a step to the left, so they end up stepping right and right and right. Centrism is defined in part by never being willing to take a stance that might be seen as opposing capitalism or ruling class interests. In fact, this cohort exists to protect those interests, so it must actively punch left and oppose systemic change, even if it means moving right in the process.

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

We, the people, have to watch out to ensure that we don’t fall for the tendencies that these so-called leaders succumb to. We have to not cede an inch to the ruling class or the fascist movement, which are waging an ideological war on the working class at all times. They want us scared, want us to give into fear-mongering about immigrants while the real people stealing our jobs are the bosses sending them overseas or replacing us with machines. Fascists want us scared of all change generally, want us forever clinging to a past that they have no actual intention of trying to return to. They use hate and nostalgia to conjure up a white supremacist fantasy while they actually work to lead us all into a bleak dystopia where a handful of people have everything and the 99% have to scrabble just to survive.

We need to organize today, tomorrow, and for years to come. At the same time we need to realize that we are involved in an ideological war whether we realize it or not. When we are unaware of these relentless battles, we become victims. When we know that the ruling class is constantly propagandizing and attempting to brainwash the masses we can begin to fight back. Most importantly, we need to realize that the organizing and the struggle over our collective consciousness, attitudes, and political outlook are not at all separate. To put it plainly, we change our minds through action. We change our politics most effectively through organizing. Debate, pontification, and scrolling on our phones are not the most effective ways of shifting beliefs. It is action, especially action in solidarity with others, that changes minds.

In a democracy that is real and functional debate and persuasion might be enough, maybe. Even then our politics would, I believe, need to be lived out to be real and meaningful. A real democracy is, by definition, a system where democratic practices form the bedrock of society. Most of us have little to no familiarity with a system like this, because being able to live out democracy at work and in our neighborhoods would be a very different sort of lifestyle than the one we have today.

In this increasingly fascist country, there is no doubt that we must build a this better and more democratic society. We must build it with consistent action that diverges radically from business as usual. How we talk to each other still matters, it matters a lot, but now more than ever we must be aware that action is what will save us. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t read, learn, debate, discuss, but it means changing the world and changing ourselves is best done through concrete work with others. Millions of people organizing with their co-workers and neighbors is how we could salvage this country, and salvage ourselves.

We cannot afford to lapse into the lies, lazy thinking, and mundane dehumanization of fascism. If we absorb the news from the comforts of our homes, if we see people getting deported on little screens but are never out there to block ICE vehicles with our bodies, never out there organizing community defense committees, never out in solidarity with the vulnerable it can become terrifyingly easy for the banality of evil to insidiously creep into our minds. The center preaches waiting four years, getting them next time, donating to campaigns but never using improper channels. We’ve seen where that gets us. We sit on a precipice and are still told to have patience and propriety. No more.

It’s time for bold action. It’s time to break the rules deliberately, because following the sort of rules that say migrants can be detained just for being implicated is an actual “first they came for” scenario. We’re here. We have arrived. Now a fascist is getting inaugurated, again, and this time he appears more ready to hurtle us down the path of destruction. This time he is aided by a center that eagerly punches left while bowing to the right. We must reject the logic that permits this behavior, as we resist the behavior itself. The proper channels have failed us; they were never meant for us in the first place. All we have left is ourselves, and it’s time for us to build the power to save one another from a system that is throwing us to the wolves. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

P.S. Some links to help jumpstart your involvement in the work that lies ahead:

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

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

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

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

Organize against the war machine: https://wearedissenters.org/

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

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

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

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