Bernie did very well against Trump and had the DNC not manipulated, he very
well might have gotten the nomination. The people who voted for Trump because
they were disgusted with the ruling elites, the people who wanted a change from
the status quo, may very well have voted for Sanders, rather than Trump. They
were people who were looking for someone who seemed to be talking to them and
who cared about what they needed. Hillary did a lot of fund raising with big
donors and she had high profile people supporting her. What she didn't do, was
to go out like Sanders and Trump did, and have lots and lots of rallies with
working and middle class people. And Sanders also went to some extremely poor
areas and had rallies. There are many articles by a variety of people, which
talked about this. No one was put off by Sanders' talk of being a socialist,
no one except Paul Krugman and the like. The Liberal Elites wanted Hillary, as
did the Pentagon andnd the CIA and the Neo Cons who deserted the Republican
party to support her, and the Neo Liberals. The Black politicians, now part of
the ruling Elites, also wanted her and they dragged a lot of black people along
with them, but not all of them. The Republicans weren't the only folks stealing
votes. There were all those missing primary votes in Brooklyn, for example.
The Democratic Party lost because it backed the wrong horse. You should read
that really informative article that Roger posted last night which is a
terrific analysis of what happened and stop listening to the propaganda of the
Democratic Party leaders who would rather cause a war with Russia by blaming
them for Hillary's loss, than taking responsibility for the kinds of things
that they did which were exposed by leaks.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Frank Ventura
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2017 1:19 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE:
Re: Calling Trump
Miriam, yes I know how wide of a margin Hilliary won the vote by and I believe
if it weren't for republican manipulation the real margn would be far greater.
However, if Hilliary were to express views in line with say Bernie or someone
further to the left she to would on the defensive and her numbers would be much
lower.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2017 9:52 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] RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Calling Trump ...
Frank,
Please don't forget that the Democratic Party won the popular vote. That means
that there were more opponents of Trump than supporters of Trump. The
Electoral College was created to prevent the common man from choosing our
president. Add to that, the Republican manipulation of the election, something
they managed to do in 2000 and 2004 as well.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Frank Ventura
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2017 1:53 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] RE: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] Calling Trump a ‘fascist’ disorients th
Carl, answer is a government based on social justice but that is not what the
heartland is leaning towards. They are moving towards social Darwinism.
Frank
-----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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