Time to prepare
We know a little about what lies ahead. We have to get ready.
As we start to fight the onslaught of fascism with renewed vigor, a lot of us are looking to examples from around the world. I’ve seen discussion of Orban’s Hungary, Putin’s Russia, Mussolini and Meloni in Italy, and more. I would guess that each of these are helpful in their own way, but I want to propose that looking at Argentina under Javier Milei is as good a starting point as any. I say this because of the man himself, the policies he’s implemented and tried to implement, and the ways people have resisted.
Milei embodies a modern, libertarian (in the U.S. usage of the word) fascism. As he campaigned for Argentina’s presidency he proclaimed himself to be an anarcho-capitalist. That term can best be translated as letting capitalist exploitation run wild while simultaneously hobbling state capacity. As Milei said in an interview this past June: “I love being the mole inside the state... I'm the one destroying the state from within.”
If you recall the history of fascism, you might know that a strong state was often a key facet of the programs implemented in the 1930s and ‘40s. The fascist leadership typically sought to limit the autonomy of capitalists and their corporations, and subordinate them to the state. But the iteration of fascism embodied by Trump and Milei prioritizes the interests of the oligarch class to such a degree that limiting the capacity of the state, both to regulate corporations and to provide services that could instead be privatized for profit, becomes the number one priority. The head of Trump’s transition team has already called him the CEO of the United States Incorporated, and Milei’s actions over the past year make clear that he looks at Argentina in the same way.
Argentinian journalist Diana Cariboni says that if there is one country we should look to for the playbook of Trump’s second term, it’s Argentina. As she writes for openDemocracy, “If there is one country already trying some of Project 2025’s most extreme policies to weaken the state and render the enjoyment of rights obsolete, it is Argentina.” She explains at length what exactly that’s looked like:
“Milei has made an unprecedented cut to all public spending at close to 30%. He cut investment in education by 40%, denied increases to pensions, cut access to life-saving drugs for cancer patients, defunded the science and technology system and universities, and laid off almost 27,000 public employees.
He closed the public media and froze food distribution to soup kitchens. Now, he’s set to sell off public companies in the fields of nuclear energy, aviation, fuel, mining, electricity, water, cargo transport, roads and railways.
Milei has eliminated nine ministries, including the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity and the Ministry of Education – something that the 'Mandate for Leadership' mentions and Trump has also spoken about.”
He’s also dismantled all gender policies and defunded services including those for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, closed the Institute against Discrimination, Racism, and Xenophobia, and is actively persecuting civil servants who don’t align with his dangerous vision. From top to bottom we know that Trump and his cadre share this vision. Given the glacial pace of the U.S. Congress and the different economic and political conditions here it’s unlikely that Trump will be able to move as quickly as Milei, but we should be aware of what they’re bound to attempt, and are already attempting as the GOP tries to ram through a bill giving Trump the power to shut down non-profits as we speak.
We should also be aware of how Argentians resisted and at times halted this libertarian fascist agenda. The first moment we should examine came last winter, just 45 days after Milei took office, when 1.5 million Argentines took to the streets. Workers from all sectors joined in a massive general strike: transit, aviation, government, banking, sanitation, and more were shut down. “Not one step back,” one union declared, “for the unity of the workers movement is essential in protecting the rights we’ve achieved.” In the U.S., as in Argentina, attacking workers’ rights and going after the labor movement are and will be top priorities of the fascist movement.
As detailed on Inequality.org the general strike centered on Milei’s Omnibus Bill: “The proposed legislation contained sweeping changes to Argentina’s economic and political structure, including the privatization of state-owned companies and an unprecedented expansion of executive powers.” But the scale and power of the resistance made the legislature falter. After the general strike, “The National Congress of Argentina rejected Milei’s Omnibus Bill. Initially approved by the Chamber of Deputies in a 144 to 109 vote, majority support faltered when it came time for an article-by-article review.” The first Omnibus Bill consisted of 664 articles. For months the fascist coalition struggled to push through an amended 269-article version — with significant concessions. The bill that eventually passed, five months later, is still awful, but the dramatic weakening of Milei’s signature legislation over months of powerful fighting back is a glimpse of the potential of real opposition.
I want to be honest about the fact that Argentina has much greater union density than the U.S., but it wasn’t only union members out there for the general strike, other mass strike actions, and protests. Civil society, students, the left writ large and others flooded the streets and shut down Buenos Aires and much of the country. We’ve seen the potential of the U.S. to turn out and protest by the millions, and with increased organization we can do that more strategically and systemically to shut things down and stall or even halt elements of the fascist encroachment.
Many things need to happen for us to be able to put up a fight that is as strong as Argentina’s, or ideally stronger. I’ll just focus on three today: moving beyond spontaneity, building a different type of union movement, and not relying on others to save us. Vincent Bevins recently wrote what I think of as the definitive takedown of the spontaneity fetish that gripped much of the Left across the world in the 2010s. I don’t agree with everything he wrote, and that’s okay. His book If We Burn looks at the wave of protest from Occupy to the Arab Spring to similar uprisings in Brazil and Ukraine and beyond. One of the theses is that large numbers of people coming together in mass protest doesn’t automatically spark a powerful and democratic revolution. He’s responding to the idea that ran rampant in the 2010s that mass mobilization will spontaneously lead to something akin to a real uprising and the transformation of society. The evidence of the last decade backs him up amply, with one movement after another unable to combat entrenched institutions and power structures via spontaneous means.
In lieu of spontaneity, Bevins essentially argues that we need to prioritize long-term dedicated organizing – the formation of organizations and institutions that build people power for the long haul might be less exciting than throwing tear gas back at cops as you take over the center of your city, but it’s more effective. And, when the time comes, your dedicated and effective movement might take over a city, and shut it down. But not in a sudden and spontaneous act, most likely. Rather it would be part of a larger plan, or the seizing of a moment of opportunity that we’ve prepared for and worked towards.
Key to that long-term organizing will be unions. We see that truth in Argentina, and throughout the world. The big unions in this country must both expand their organizing efforts (I think of the UAW spending $40 million to bring new members into the union) and expand what they see as the purview of their fight. It’s not enough to just bring in new members, and fight for the wages and benefits of existing members; unions must see themselves as leaders in the struggle against the far-right. As the title of Bill Fletcher Jr.’s election postmortem reads: Labor Now Needs to Be an Anti-Fascist Movement. Later on in the piece he expands on this, writing that we must “Move organized labor to the point that it becomes a conscious anti-fascist movement, including significant member education about right-wing populism and fascism and by building coalitions at the local, regional and national levels to oppose the far-Right.”
Labor needs to see this as its work immediately, because fascism presents an existential threat to the entire union movement. Elon Musk, the most prominent Trump surrogate in the latter part of this election, is already one of several oligarchs suing the National Labor Relations Board and seeking to dismantle the whole institution. He in turn is propped up by those who are unwittingly opposing their own self-interest, and direly need political education — education that unions could, should, and sometimes do provide their members. I recently got to speak to some union leaders in Illinois and Wisconsin and every one emphasized the conversations they were having with members, telling their fellow union siblings that a Trump administration threatened their livelihoods directly. But there is much more to be done. Labor as an anti-fascist force requires deeper organizing, more resources, more conversations, and a shift in how unions see their role in society. It’s time to shift into being a more comprehensive force for good, breaking out of narrow lanes and building transformative power rather than aiming for limited objectives.
This isn’t the first existential threat to the union movement, in fact labor unions were born under existential threat. In the early days unionization was illegal, criminal, and often suppressed by extrajudicial violence. That sort of unfettered capitalism mirrors the fascist state in how police forces are used to suppress worker organizing and strikes. There’s a lesson there in the necessity of opposing the oligarch class and the capitalist system, especially in this moment where the fascist movement seeks to allow capitalism to run wild. Moments of rupture will come, brought about by the awful policies of Trump & co., and we need to do our best to be ready.
We need sustained organizing and capacity building in unions and radical organizations of many stripes. This is the work that lies ahead, and it requires all of us. No one is coming to save us right now; it’s on the working class, the rank-and-file, the grass roots to build power from the ground up at this moment. We are the ones positioned to reach our neighbors, our co-workers, the people who trust us and with whom we have relationships. We must engage those who typically sit on the sidelines, and bring them into this struggle. Right now we have a world to win, so let’s get to work.
Haymarket has several free Ebooks here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/blogs/517-ten-free-ebooks-for-getting-free
I especially recommend Let This Radicalize You: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1922-let-this-radicalize-you
Elite Capture: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1867-elite-capture
And Class Struggle Unionism: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1767-class-struggle-unionism
AK Press also currently has free Ebooks: https://www.akpress.org/featured-products/featured-topic-free-ebook.html
I especially recommend No Pasarán! Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis: https://www.akpress.org/no-pasaran-ebook.html
And Street Rebellion: https://www.akpress.org/street-rebellion-ebook.html
There are also some newsletters that I’d like to recommend in the current context:
Kelly Hayes — Organizing My Thoughts: https://organizingmythoughts.org/about/
Mariame Kaba — Prisonculture’s Newsletter: https://prisonculture.substack.com/
Angry Education Workers: https://angryeducationworkers.substack.com
Margaret Killjoy — Birds Before the Storm: https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com
Once again I hope these resources help. Find your people and your organization, or bring your people along and start an organization. See you in the struggle, solidarity. - JP
Your writing has inspired me to join my local DSA organization. I just went to my first meeting and am feeling energized. Thank you for your work.
Great book suggestions. I just recently started Let This Radicalize You.