This is a moment of opportunity
Strange as it may seem
It’s a weird time to talk about opportunity. It’s a strange time to look around and see that this is the exact moment we need to seize. That word, opportunity, tends to mean something unequivocally positive, the chance you’ve been waiting for, the moment you can’t wait to take advantage of. But this is a different sort of opportunity, one more connected to necessity than excitement. This opportunity is shaped more like a tunnel when you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place — you don’t have much choice but to run through.
Our rock and hard place in America, and around the world today, are fascism and economic turmoil. Generally, fascists run on stabilizing the economy. Trump did it with inflation and high prices, just as Milei in Argentina and Orban in Hungary and other fascists have done. These far-right demagogues make economic promises, they offer a trade. You get stability, they get their authoritarian rule. Except that, increasingly, the promised economic prosperity doesn’t come. What we’re seeing right now is the fundamentally selfish and short-sighted effects of Trump’s reckless tariffs, which prioritize his interests above all else, even above the world economy and the interests of other capitalists.
So here we are, with fascists kidnapping and disappearing our neighbors and throwing countless jobs and livelihoods into jeopardy all at once. Stuck between these pincers as they close in on more and more of us, opportunity could understandably be the furthest word from your mind. But Trump is quickly pissing away his biggest advantage, the perception that he’s a good businessman and strong on the economy. His tariff declarations over the last week are already shattering his coalition, provoking retaliation from China, and opening up this tunnel that we might be able to run through, that we might have to run through if we want to make it out of the regime in one piece. So, right now, opurtunity is calling.
The first sign of opportunity in this difficult moment comes from the right beginning to fracture. The coalition that elected Trump includes a range of billionaires, and several are now openly voicing their disapproval of his tariff plans. GOP mega-donor Ken Langone is the co-founder of Home Depot, and he’s calling the high tariffs on Vietnam “bullshit.” Bill Ackman, Jamie Dimon, and other billionaires are starting to speak out as well, and this sort of fracturing will weaken the MAGA coalition.
Even Elon Musk is appealing directly to Trump on tariffs, and getting rebuffed. His departure from the White House inner circle alone would be a delightful victory, but it’s increasingly looking like just one of several silver linings here, because these billionaires aren’t just expressing dissatisfaction, they’re suing. The New Civil Liberties Alliance (funded in part by Leonard Leo, longtime leader of the Federalist Society) is taking legal action over these tariffs, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is considering taking Trump to court as well. This isn’t just an imagined rift in the far-right alliance, it’s a real wedge. Seven Republican Senators are now co-sponsoring a bill that would reclaim Congressional power over tariffs. Trump has already said he’d veto the legislation if it got to his desk, but it looks like it’s too late to squelch the growing divide that could split the right.
Even more important than elites going at it over tariffs, the working class portion of the Trump coalition is beginning to fracture around the economy too. The graphic below, from John Burn-Murdoch and YouGov, uses data collected before this new stock market chaos. But as you can see the threat of tariffs, the persistent high prices, and the economic uncertainty were already starting to break apart the Trump coalition when it comes to support for the president’s economic agenda:
This is just the beginning. As economic instability grows, as the trade war escalates, millions will be pulled away from the Trump coalition by their pocketbooks. They will join millions of disaffected non-voters, millions of liberals flooding the streets, and millions of leftists. As people defect we must make sure that they reject not only this presidency but the ideas that underpin it. As they defect we have to take economic dissatisfaction and gradually teach folks that being anti-immigrant helps the bosses, being anti-trans helps the billionaires, all of these far-right scapegoat issues hurt people we should be in solidarity with, and then boomerang around to hurt us. With this understanding we can collectively develop a recipe for real change.
The opportunity here is to help people see that anger at prices going up and the economy getting worse is just the beginning, not the end. It’s the beginning of overcoming a system of greed and hoarding that got us to this point. It’s the beginning of seeing that the staggering wealth inequality produced by capitalism will always lead to Trumps and Musks, will always lead to fascism and economic turmoil. This moment is an opportunity to see that we have to come together to topple the oligarchs once and for all.
It won’t be easy, taking this moment and translating it into the change we need. A whole lot of people are motivated by self-interest, which is how we’ve been trained to operate by centuries of capitalism. But we have a chance here to show people that their self-interest is inextricably intertwined with the interests of the entire working class. We are tied together whether we like it or not, even though it might take real hardship for some people to learn that.
But we can speed up the process. In our communities, in our families, on the job we can talk to people about a way out of the hardships we face, a way out of being pinned between a rock and a hard place. We can and must talk to people about breaking the shackles of capitalism and fascism. We must remember that a huge chunk of Americans don’t have clear and hardened political beliefs. A lot of people are floating and flexible and will find themselves more willing to learn than ever when faced with the economic consequences of this regime.
As Corey Robin just wrote, “The tariffs were always going to be the thing that broke up the Right.” And every day that seems more true, more possible. Millions of people are already dissatisfied and looking for a way out. We have to provide it. We have to provide a vision, in our relationships and communities and through the organizations of the left, for a better future. Our options aren’t neoliberal decay or Trump’s bullshit tanking of the economy. There are answers out there that actually put people first, that can provide a livable future and ensure we all have what we need to survive and thrive. There are people out there whose politics is empowering you, not bosses and billionaires.
The time to raise that banner is now. The time to recruit the tens of millions of people who never felt heard, never voted, never felt empowered is now. In the darkness we have to seize this opportunity, because it’s our ticket through this mess. We have a chance, right now, to recruit the people in the streets into the long-term struggle. We have a chance to recruit the angry and the disaffected and the downtrodden. In conditions that seem hopeless we can and must create hope with deliberate action, organizing, education, and ultimately by building a way up and out. As strange as it might seem, this is our moment.
Let’s get organized, and bring some folks along:
Join DSA: https://www.dsausa.org/get-involved/
Unionize your workplace: https://workerorganizing.org/
Talk to your neighbors and form a tenant union: https://tenantfederation.org/tenant-unions/
Federal workers (and others) check out the federal unionists network: https://www.federalunionists.net/
Organize against the war machine: https://wearedissenters.org/
Fight the coup: https://indivisible.org/coup
Take Down Tesla: https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown
People Over Profit: https://linktr.ee/putplanetoverprofit
Check out Dream Defenders: https://www.dreamdefenders.org/
Join the Debt Collective: https://debtcollective.org/
Every community has great people doing long-term organizing work. Talk to that one more radical friend, google organizations in your area, see what groups folks follow online. Get plugged in, now is the time.
This is so true and well thought out, Thank You!
Like a 🪃 boomerang, when you throw it out, it comes back to you.
Find things that break the ice in face to face encounters with your neighbors.
We sink or swim Together
This is excellent framing—calling it “a tunnel we might have to run through” captures the moment well. But the tunnel doesn't just pass through economic instability or fascist opportunism. It leads to the ontological and institutional failure of the neoliberal era, and if we don’t seize this rupture for transnational reinvention, we’ll just be running in circles.
The true battle isn’t just Trump, or tariffs, or the fracturing right. It’s the global consolidation of hegemonic control by a class of executives, investors, political elites, and media architects whose incentives are entirely extractive. The neoliberal elite cannot be reformed—they must be disempowered. That’s why any solution rooted purely in national action will fail. Nationalism is their terrain. Even the “left” gets captured there.
We need to bolster and reimagine international institutions and transnational solidarity networks. We need to develop pressure campaigns across borders—targeted not just at companies, but at the people behind them. The ones with names. Sanctions should be levied not just at rogue states, but:
Corporate oligarchs who undermine democracy,
Board members greenlighting exploitation,
Investors sustaining ecocidal markets,
Media elites laundering ideology for profit,
Politicians who block accountability mechanisms.
This is a call for international class warfare, but grounded in protective justice, not vengeance. The same way tax havens operate across borders, so too should movements for systemic accountability. And yes, the collapse of the current paradigm is a horrifying opportunity. But it's still an opportunity.
We must act accordingly.