The Next Four Years: Advance and Defend Peoples’ Struggle! Fight Rising Fascism!
Donald Trump has been declared the 2024 US Presidential winner after a year of imperialist false solutions paraded by the two ruling parties of the United States. The implications of this fact mark a difficult road ahead as US monopoly capitalism has once again crowned its most undeniable champion. The International League of Peoples’ Struggle calls on the people of the United States and the world to take advantage of this moment and prepare for another four years of organizing the people to strike imperialism and all forms of local reaction as the crisis of US imperialism continues to unravel under another Trump regime.
It must be made clear that the re-election of Trump does not primarily mark a “rightward shift” among the masses of the US. It marks, instead, the outright failure of the Democrats under Biden and Harris to deliver genuine solutions to the people. Despite championing legal democratic rights such as reproductive healthcare and equal institutional opportunities for marginalized social groups, the Democrats oversaw rising inflation of basic living necessities, attacks on labor organizing, repression of people’s movements at home and a devastating rise in seemingly endless wars abroad. It has become clear to the people that Harris had no strategy beyond a continuation of Biden’s empty promises while continuing business as usual for the corporate oligarchs and war profiteers.
Trump came to power because his campaign rhetoric unmasked the Democrats’ true nature as an anti-people party. Given his own viciously anti-people policies and his unapologetic backing of the richest and most powerful monopoly capitalists, his election reflects the critical urgent need for people to build a genuine alternative for themselves that would guard peoples’ rights and deliver a just and equitable society. In the coming years, organizing the people looking for real change but fed up with the false solutions of the Democrats will be a most crucial task of the ILPS US Country Chapter.
Under Trump, we should expect to see an exponential rise in anti-people attacks, from both state and non-state forces, and a rising concentration of power in a shrinking handful of monopoly capitalists, particularly in the tech, energy, financial, real estate, and weapons industries. Trump has promised the “largest deportation in US history,” and we should take him seriously given his racist, xenophobic campaign rhetoric and his previous policies of intense border militarization that families are still reeling from today. He has partnered with the clerico-fascist Chrisitan nationalist elites to parrot socially conservative policies against LGBTQIA rights, equal pay and opportunity for women, and ultimately to intensify the anti-socialist and anti-Muslim witchhunts from the height of the 1950s “McCarthy” and 2000s War on Terror periods.
Trump’s big business confidants will be given gifts of widespread corporate deregulations and probably positions in his cabinet like in his last administration -- diehard Trump supporter Elon Musk, monopoly owner of electric automobile, space launch technology, and social media platforms and one of the richest men in the world, is one such probability. The secretive plan of the Heritage Project think tank, “Project 2025,” crafted specifically for a Trump win, provides a roadmap for stripping the federal government of any regulatory measures for this very purpose. This would bring large scale attacks on workers organizing while increased labor flexibilization and artificial intelligence management of workers will further lower working hours and wages. It’s highly likely that more of the few remaining productive industries will be moved overseas, despite Trump’s America First rhetoric, leaving more US workers to the drudgery of the monotonous service industry and opening up more workers in the global south to super-exploitative conditions. It will also continue to raise prices on basic goods such as fuel, food, and rent while raising interest rates and the financialization of healthcare, education, and homeownership that will even further immiserate the masses into debt.
Trump has promised “peace through strength” and to use military might to maintain US imperialism’s declining superpower status in the world. He threatens more aggression towards China at the expense of Filipino, Korean, Hawaiian and other peoples’ sovereignty and safety, continued funding of the Zionist genocide of Palestine and war moves towards Iran, and possibly an invasion of Mexico. Despite his public criticism of the NATO alliance and his supposed desire to make a peace deal with Russia over the war in Ukraine, Trump has cozied up to the far right and neofascist movements taking power in Europe, and these elements are nearly all united in keeping NATO as the world’s most powerful military alliance and keeping its existential mission in militarily defeating Russia. This will all mean even less funding for social services in the US as total military spending overtakes $1 trillion in 2025.
Trump has threatened a complete crackdown against protests and peoples’ movements, to the point of calling in the US military and even “deporting” pro-Palestine protesters. These threats should not be taken completely at face value, as the upper echelons of the US military are not necessarily wedded to Trump’s inner circle, and there exists no legal mechanism as of yet to deport activists for what Trump is referring to. It is more likely that Trump will inflame his fascist mass base, growing in boldness in the years since the January 6th 2021 takeover of the US Capitol, to wage extrajudicial violence against his opposition. Therefore, peoples’ movements should prepare for very intense repression but should not be feared into silence - now is the time for courageous, militant action!
All in all, what this means for the people of the US over the next four years will be deeper economic crisis, political turmoil and deadlock in the legislative system, an upsurge in state repression, an emboldened fascist movement ready to wage street violence against the anti-imperialist and democratic mass movement, and increased US-led war and aggression worldwide. It is therefore the duty of the peoples’ mass movement, which ILPS proudly serves, to challenge the crisis-ridden ruling system by organizing the people to fight back, building broad alliances against fascism and oligarchical rule, and challenging the false reformist narratives of the Democrats through militant demands for peoples’ rights, peace and justice! Under neofascist Trump, just as under warmongering and corporate-friendly Biden, let us carry forward our Peoples’ Platform, defend peoples’ struggle and continue to grow the movement that will end imperialism and win a bright future for humanity to replace it once the struggle is won!
DEFEND PEOPLES’ STRUGGLE!
FIGHT BACK AGAINST WAR, REPRESSION, AND GENOCIDE!