Well, I think there would not have been a Muslim ban. That would be better. I
think that the cabinet appointees and those appointed to head federal agencies
would have been qualified for their positions and not people who wished to
destroy the agencies they were appointed to head. That would be better than
Trump's appointees. I don't like the idea of the attorney general being a
person who is opposed to civil rights, for example. We would not be confronted
with the possibility of social security and medicare being privatized if
Hillary had won in the Electoral College. We wouldn't have a White Nationalist
as a chief advisor in the White House. Of course, if you're in favor of White
Nationalism and privatizing social programs, then I guess it makes no
difference to you.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard Driscoll
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2017 12:49 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Calling Trump a ‘
Miriam:
Had Hillary been elected I agree that 'things would be significantly different
at this point in time!" However to state that they would have been better is
making too many assumptions. In my opinion of course.
Richard
On 2/16/2017 7:44 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I'm not Bob, but my response is, yes, theoretically, on a long term basis,
you're correct. But really, can you honestly say that Hillary would have
appointed someone like Jeff Sessions to be attorney general, or Tom Price?
Look at the appointments, the Muslim ban, Steve Bannon and what he is
accomplishing. We can enumerate all of the sins of the Corporate Democrats
and the ways in which they've contributed to Trump's election, but it is
delusional to say that things wouldn't have been significantly better if
Hillary had won. And that has to do with Trump's impaired capacities and the
ruthlessness of the Far Right.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 11:11 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy]
RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Calling
Trump a ‘fascist’ disorients the working class
Bob,
In my opinion, debating the finer qualities(grin)of Hilary Clinton and Donald
Trump, is an exercise in futility. Asking if one would be "better" than the
other is like trying to pick between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.
More worthy of your ability is to ponder what sort of government would serve
the needs of All citizens. Then, neither Clinton nor Trump would be in the
running.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/15/17, Bob Hachey <bhachey@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Frank,
"Lazily into a republican trap?"
I must say I resent that one just a bit.
In 2008 I was mighty happy that I didn't have to vote for Hillary
Clinton because the relatively lesser known Obama was there. If the
best the Democrats can do is Hillary Clinton, then we'd better get
used to rule by the Republicans. An organized left minus corrupt
folks like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is what we need.
I will give you only one thing. President Clinton would have been
better than President Trump. But do you really believe that she'd be
fighting hard for things like an increase in the minimum wage or a
single payer health care system?
Do you think she'd lift a finger to more tightly regulate the big
banks from whom she has received mighty handsome speking fees?
Now, I see the left and even some in the center marching in the
streets and flooding their members of Congress with phone calls. More
and more Americans are waking up to the mess we're in. IT is too
damned bad that it took the election of Trump to wake up those folks. The
ones who've been asleepin?
They're the lazy ones!
It's time to stop blaming the left and start blaming the corrupt
bastards who hold leadership positions in the Democratic Party.
Democrats need to stop talking like lawyers and start talking like
regular people. That's one lesson from Trump. Also, Democrats need to
stop taking contributions from the evil practitioners of financial chicanery.
Here's a good one for you on what's wrong with the Democrats. Tom
price was just confirmed as secretary of health and Human Services,
)UGH! Yes that's bad. But here's what's even worse. In order to take
his new post, he had to resign from his seat in Congress. His Georgia
district elected Trump by a very small margin of 3 percentage points.
That suggests that it is a seat where Democrats could compete and win.
But it seems that the Democratic leadership is not much interested in
competing for this seat! Now that's the kind of wimpy behavior that has
thwarted democrats in recent elections.
The Democrats had better learn fast how to play hardball just like
the Republicans do or they may as well close up shop. The necessity
to play hardball is another lesson from Trump.
Bob Hachey
Bob Hachey
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Frank ;
Ventura
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 7:15 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] Calling Trump a ‘fascist’ disorients the working
class
Bob, not even close. Bernie couldn't even win here in Massachusetts,
arguably the furthest left state in the union. His poll numbers were
low but his supporters vocal. The working class has been conditioned
to fear socialism and that is how they viewed Bernie. He would have
lost the general election by a landslie. Any Democratic candidate for
president needs to win by about a 15 to 20 percent margin to overcome
Republican election manipulation. Al Gore wasn't able to overcome
this and neither was Hillary Clinton. The good ole boys and the
heartland honeys are very fearful that their homes, SUVs, 3.2 kids,
and guns will be taken away if one of those "commie bastard" Dems take
office.
That is what right wing talk radio teaches them isn't it? As far as
Bubba goes; he wasn't running. Anyone who considered that an issue
fell lazily into a republican trap. As I predicted many times it
would be the left that weakened the Democratic party to the point
where no Democratic Party candidate could beat Trump. The history so
far has proven me correct, that is wasn't the far right that threw
the election for Trump; it was the far left. Like I said the
Champagne is flowing in the hot tub's of Lexington and the Vodka is
flowing in the smoking rooms of the Kremlin. So enjoy your Smirnoff now
America until we are forced to dig our own graves.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bob Hachey
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 9:24 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Calling
Trump a ‘fascist’ disorients the working class
Hi Frank,
ARE you saying that the fear of Bernie motivated folks to vote for Trump?
How could the left truly support Clinton given Bubba's rotten
record in the White House?
Shame on the Democratic leadership for trying to force Clinton down
our throats. IF they hadn't rigged the thing, Bernie would have won
and he'd have likely beaten Trump given that he had way more
enthusiasm behind him than Hillary ever could. Lots of Clinton votes
were done very half-heartedly.
Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam ;
Vieni
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2017 6:58 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Calling Trump a ‘fascist’
disorients the working class
That's not my analysis. I didn't meet any working people who liked or
voted for Hillary. The more educated and politically moderate people
did. And apparently, 3 million more voted for her than Trump.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Frank ;
Ventura
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2017 6:20 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] Calling Trump a ‘fascist’ disorients the working
class
Miriam, all true and to look it at deeper the left put most of its
energy (this election cycle) attacking the Clintons, although only
one was running, and the Democratic Party as w hole. That didn't sit
well with middle of the road working class folks who viewed it as a
radical attempt against democracy. The result was that it pushed the
folks that we would consider the working class further and further to
the right and that is why Trump was so unstoppable, by anyone.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam ;
Vieni
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2017 1:27 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] Calling Trump a ‘fascist’ disorients the working
class
And then there's the question of just who the working class is.
Remember that only a small percentage of people voted at all. So when
we say that Hillary got the majority of the popular vote, what does
that mean? Talk to working people on Long Island and you'll find that
most of them supported Trump. When the Left talks about the working
class as if the working class actually agrees with its positions, and
I've seen numerous articles saying this, my response is that the Left
is in as much of a bubble as was the DNC.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl ;
Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2017 11:18 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Calling Trump a ‘fascist’
disorients the working class
"What working people need is to organize independently of both
capitalist parties."
Well said. But the hard part is in the doing. With so much
confusing propaganda by the Ruling Class, and so many years in
refining their control over the working class, the task of teaching people
to think, is daunting.
Call Donald J. Trump a Fascist and his opponents eagerly agree, while
his defenders snarl and hurl curses. And nothing changes. But
challenge the corrupt capitalist system and you could well wind up
like Leon Trotsky or Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. Or you might
find yourself living in poverty and shunned by your former friends,
like Paul Robeson. The Great American Capitalist Oligarchy can allow
us to tear down their shills and front men. They have unlimited
numbers of eager ass kissers waiting in the wings. What we, the working
class, lack are ass kickers.
Let's turn our attention away from Donald J. Trump and pull on our
steel toed boots.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/12/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2017/8107/810702.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 7 February 20, 2017
(front page, commentary)
Calling Trump a ‘fascist’ disorients the working class
BY SETH GALINSKY
Many liberals, some conservatives and almost the entire middle-class
left call President Donald Trump and his administration fascist.
Drawing on the rich history of the revolutionary workers movement,
the Socialist Workers Party has a different view.
Is there something fundamentally different about the Trump
administration compared to previous Democratic and Republican ones?
Is Trump really a new Adolph Hitler or “Mussolini in a blue suit and tie,”
as Norman Pollack wrote on the Counterpunch website Feb. 3?
Or is Trump simply the new chief executive officer of the U.S.
ruling class, who won election because of the widespread distrust in
his opponent Hillary Clinton and interest in the working class for
political change at a time when they’re being battered by the
effects of a deepening worldwide capitalist economic crisis?
The answer to this question has serious political consequences for
anyone who is interested in defending the interests of the working
class in the United States and around the world.
Because of the decline in Marxist political culture in the world
today, “fascist” is an epithet used by many on the left to mean any
demagogic politician. They care little for seeking to learn the rich
history of the revolutionary working-class movement’s writings on
fascism from Germany and Italy to the U.S.
Fascism is the name given to reactionary mass movements that arose
leading up to World War II — like those led by Benito Mussolini in
Italy and Hitler in Germany and with echoes in the U.S. and other
imperialist countries — that were backed by the capitalist classes
in those countries when the existing dictatorship of capital could
no longer survive by normal “democratic” means.
Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Russian Revolution, who was expelled
from the Soviet Union in 1929 by Joseph Stalin as part of a broader
counterrevolution against the program of V.I. Lenin that led the
workers and farmers of Russia to power in 1917, wrote extensively
about fascism.
His goal was to lay bare the class dynamics that led to its rise and
to politically prepare revolutionary-minded workers to fight against it.
Through the fascist movement “capitalism sets in motion the masses
of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and
demoralized lumpenproletariat — all the countless human beings whom
finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy,”
Trotsky explained, and then uses them as thugs to smash the labor
movement and its vanguard communist organizations.
The fascists “initially rail against ‘high finance’ and the bankers,
lacing their nationalist demagogy with anticapitalist demagogy,”
notes Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes in
Capitalism’s World Disorder. In order to divert ruined
petty-bourgeois elements and demoralized workers from seeing
capitalism as the problem, the Nazis scapegoated the Jews as
responsible for the growing economic and political crisis and
whipped up calls for a “final” solution to the “Jewish question.” At
the same time, the fascists “ape much of the language of currents in
the workers movement. ‘Nazi’ was short for National Socialist German
Workers Party.”
“Fascism is not a form of capitalist rule, but a way of maintaining
capitalist rule,” Barnes said.
Fascist groups, which exist on the fringes at first, only get
financial and political backing from a significant section of the
bourgeoisie when the working class “puts up an increasingly serious
challenge to capitalist rule itself,” Barnes said.
In Germany and Italy the working class was unable to unify and
mobilize its allies to overthrow capitalism and take power because
of the betrayal by the Stalinist Communist Party and the reformist
Social Democrats.
In 1930 the Social Democratic Party received 8,577,700 votes and the
Communist Party 4,592,100 votes compared to 6,409,600 for the Nazis.
If the Social Democrats and Communist Party had formed a united
front, if the trade unions they led had built workers defense
guards, if they were on a political course to lead the working class
to overthrow capitalist rule, they could have stopped fascism on the road
to power.
Instead, they did nothing to stand up to the fascist gangs and
Hitler came to power without a fight.
Workers paid the price of the Stalinist and Social Democratic
betrayal in blood. Millions of Jews and gypsies were sent to their
deaths in concentration camps. The unions were destroyed. The
working class was driven off the political stage.
Counterpunch’s Pollack says the election of Trump is “a forward
space in what I term a pre-fascist configuration, i.e., analogous to
Germany in 1938.” Hardly.
Trump surprised bourgeois politicians and pundits across the
political spectrum. He convinced a layer of workers that he was the
lesser evil compared to Clinton; not so hard to do given the
anti-working-class record of Bill and Hillary Clinton when they occupied
the White House.
Hillary Clinton helped Trump win by calling workers who were
considering a vote for him “deplorables” and “irredemables.”
That’s the same language many on the left still use today. Andrew
Levine, says in Counterpunch Feb. 3, that “Trump’s supporters fall
into three broad categories: dupes, deplorables, and opportunists.”
Levine says it’s “the lowlifes whose cages he [Trump] had rattled
and whose passions he had inflamed” that are the problem, showing
his scorn and fear of the working class.
In fact, Trump’s policies are a mix of steps designed to attract
working-class support, like his disdain for the government’s fake
unemployment figures and his call for infrastructure building and a
repair program to provide jobs, with demagogic nationalist rhetoric
that divides the working class. Like other bourgeois politicians he
seeks to shore up capitalism.
Facts don’t matter to the ‘left’
To those crying “fascist,” however, the facts don’t matter.
Workers World Party leader Larry Holmes, to take just one example,
said in a Jan. 29 speech, “Building the ‘Wall’ and this ban on
Muslims are fascist acts.”
Holmes leaves out that about 650 miles of the “wall” along the
U.S.-Mexico border has already been built, mostly by the
administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Does Holmes think
Clinton and Obama are fascists?
Labeling Trump a fascist, helps pave the way for resuscitating the
Democrats, the rulers’ other party, as the answer.
There is another danger in mislabeling Trump and his administration
as fascist. It disarms the working class politically for when
fascism really does raise its ugly head once again — as it
inevitably will when the ruling families see no other way to maintain
capitalism.
Communist workers don’t care which bourgeois candidate any
individual workers voted for — or didn’t — in the presidential
election. What working people need is to organize independently of
both capitalist parties.
Far from the political space for workers to discuss, debate and
fight having been smashed by fascist gangs, the field is wide open.
The Socialist Workers Party’s candidates take its revolutionary
program and win support on workers’ doorsteps in cities, towns and
the countryside, as well as on strike picket lines and social
protest actions.
We say the Socialist Workers Party is your party. What we do now in
building a revolutionary workers party will be decisive in the years
ahead.
Related articles:
Anarchist ‘black bloc’ politics pose threat to working class
Berkeley: Anarchists shut down speaker, attack workers Fascism rises
when capital must crush working class
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