Trump's resounding victory in the presidential election and his return to the White House have caused a strong shock. In contrast to those who gave him up for dead after the failed assault on the Capitol, thus underestimating the danger of this reactionary threat, Trump returns stronger and more defiant after beating Kamala Harris in the popular vote.
In line with most predictions and polls, Trump's victory was not a narrow one: he won three million more votes than in 2020 and is the most supported Republican candidate in history, while Harris lost almost seven million compared to the previous election.
As we have already pointed out in previous statements [1] , the phenomenon of Trumpism and the global rise of the far right respond to deep social causes. But the analyses of the media, supposedly serious and liberal, supported by a legion of opinion makers and representatives of the reformist left, and even some who, for some reason, proclaim themselves “Marxists”, do nothing but present formulas that are as easy to swallow as they are superficial. They explain everything based on the campaigns of hoaxes and disinformation on X and social networks. How simple. Elon Musk and people like him would be responsible for this “catastrophe for democracy”, both in the US and in the rest of the planet.
But this line of opinion carefully conceals the fact that the media support for Kamala Harris has been even more intense and thunderous. Newspapers and magazines that are solid pillars of the system in the US and Western countries, such as The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, El País and many more, important general television channels, numerous figures from Hollywood and the music industry, with millions of followers on social networks, or well-known presenters such as Oprah Winfrey have all thrown their support behind Kamala Harris and the Democrats.
What this army of newspapers and televisions, which appear to be the most serious and rigorous in their reporting, do not say is that they are the ones who spread the most hoaxes every day using a well-known formula: telling the truth in trivial and superficial aspects, in order to lie shamelessly in those that truly matter.
No. Propaganda, disinformation and lies have always existed under the capitalist order, as we suffer every day on the combative left, and they undoubtedly play a relevant political role in the class struggle. But on their own they do not explain such a large-scale victory for Trump and such a humiliating defeat for the Democrats. The underlying reasons must be sought much closer to home: in the criminal policies practiced by the Biden Administration that the system's media have so ardently defended.
Biden has launched a warlike agenda, both in Ukraine and in the Middle East, arming Netanyahu to the teeth to carry out genocide in Gaza and brutal aggression against Lebanon, and pushing a neo-fascist regime like Zelensky’s into a reactionary and imperialist war. The vast majority of the Western media approved it all and did not hesitate to amplify Zionist propaganda with the fallacious argument of their right to “self-defense,” applauding the Ukrainian government and giving their blessing to NATO’s increased arms spending.
Biden and the Democrats have governed for Wall Street while driving down the living conditions of the working class, hit by the uncontrolled rise in housing prices and an inflation that is filling the pockets of large corporations. Trump's anti-immigration agenda is nauseating, but the Democrats have applied equally cruel legislation at the border, matching Trump's record of deportations.
Biden and his collaborators have demonstrated a harsh repression against militant unionism and the fighting left, and have not hesitated to resort to police brutality to end university encampments in solidarity with Palestine.
And, as a backdrop, the unstoppable decline of American imperialism against China and Russia continues to exacerbate the internal destabilization of a power that, until not long ago, imposed its order on the world.
A Government of bankers, billionaires, Nazis and lunatics
After his victory, Trump has shown how far he is prepared to go to defend the global interests of the American great bourgeoisie. Some appointments have reinforced the image of an eccentric that Trump consciously cultivates and with which he fuels the media tension surrounding him. But on important issues, his administration's policy will follow the dictates of the great economic powers.
His administration will include two bankers, Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary and Howard Lutnick as Commerce Secretary, both CEOs of large investment funds. Bessent is well known for having enriched himself alongside George Soros with his stock market bets in the early 1990s. But the most important thing is that with both of them in key positions, new tax cuts will be approved, as already happened during Trump's first term, to further enrich Wall Street, banks and large corporations.
Trump has announced the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency headed by two other billionaires: Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, according to Forbes magazine, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical magnate. A department that will be tasked with eliminating all kinds of environmental, labour and financial regulations and cutting back on federal government. In his first statements, Musk has promised that he will cut up to 2 billion dollars and fire thousands of public employees. It seems that they are trying to transfer Milei's program to the United States.
Elon Musk, who is increasingly emerging as Trump's right-hand man, insists that the government should function like a business, specifically like his own companies, where he boasts of requiring workers to work up to 80 hours a week. These are the same multimillionaires as always, those who at the dawn of capitalism accumulated great fortunes through child labour, and who want to further extend a savage capitalism without labour rights. The same ones, by the way, who supported Hitler or Mussolini with their anti-worker, anti-communist and anti-Semitic demagogy to prop up their businesses.
Another high-stakes battle will be fought at the Department of Education, where Trump has appointed Linda MacMahon, the wife of a wrestling mogul, to take over the role of “cleansing up leftist education plans that propagate gender ideology and are a waste of resources.”
Of course, he has insisted on cutting Medicare and Medicaid to the bone, the two precarious public health services used by millions of Americans who lack health insurance. Trump has appointed two real lunatics to head the Department of Health, Robert F. Kennedy, a champion of all kinds of conspiracy theories, and Dr. Mehmet Öz, a former surgeon who has become a multimillionaire television celebrity who is dedicated to scamming people with supposed miracle health products. But behind these two specimens are hidden the interests of the powerful insurance companies and multinational health corporations, which are the ones that will carry out the underlying strategy.
To this list of bankers, billionaires and idiots are added neo-fascists like Pete Hegseth, appointed Secretary of Defence and, therefore, head of the Pentagon and the Army. Hegseth is a well-known Fox presenter, a Christian fundamentalist who displays numerous Nazi tattoos and who openly calls for a civil war against social movements, anti-fascists, unionists and leftists who want to “kill our founders, kill our flag and kill capitalism.”
As Secretary of State he has appointed Marco Rubio, a faithful representative of the Cuban lobby in Miami, furiously Zionist, anti-communist and against abortion, and a proven war hawk defending an aggressive policy against China, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.
The list is completed by many more names, such as Elise Stefanik, appointed US ambassador to the UN, who considers this institution an anti-Semitic organization. Mike Huckabee, chosen to be Ambassador to Israel, who argues that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian” and publicly defends Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. Or Thomas Homan, known as the border czar, who already served the previous Democratic Administration at the head of the border police, and who has promised that he “will lead the largest deportation operation this country has ever seen.” Obama already awarded this individual the “Presidential Rank Award” in 2015 for his work in “law enforcement and deportation operations” [2] .
In the face of these appointments, which must be backed by the Senate - which undoubtedly cause concern in certain sectors, Trump has already said that he will manoeuvre to impose them. The Bonapartist character of his Administration will be accentuated to prevent any institution or organization from conditioning or limiting his Presidency, something that is easier for him than in his previous term since he has control of Congress, the Senate and the Supreme Court, and with a Republican Party where nothing moves without his approval.
The class struggle will not stop
Despite this threatening tone and the far-right government he has formed, Trump faces a very complicated scenario.
On the foreign front, he has promised to end the war in Ukraine. But things are not that simple. An immediate withdrawal, or, in other words, forcing Zelensky to make a deal with Putin that would entail substantial territorial losses for Ukraine, would mean a new and humiliating defeat for American imperialism. Just as Biden had to face the disaster in Afghanistan, Trump will now have to manage the setback that awaits him in Ukraine. A reality that will undoubtedly take its toll.
On the other hand, despite Trump's pro-Zionist agenda, the continuation of the genocide in Gaza and the invasion of Lebanon are not bearing positive results for US imperialism. On the contrary. Relations with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, with Egypt and with Turkey continue to deteriorate and expose the region even more to the influence of China. The discredit and growing isolation of the US, which Trump may further aggravate, does not bode well for Washington's foreign interests.
As in 2016, Trump promises to make America great again, but his alternative to achieve this, resorting to a harsh tariff policy against China and the rest of the world, could reap the same disastrous results as during his previous term. Chinese capitalism is stronger today than in 2016 and has multiplied and diversified its investments around the world precisely to avoid this policy of sanctions.
Trump cannot ignore that the global economy is more intertwined than at any other time in history. And breaking away from this is extremely difficult. That is why his friend Elon Musk, who produces 30% of Tesla's production in China, has repeatedly spoken out against the imposition of new tariffs.
In an extraordinarily difficult context for American imperialism, Trumpism's main goal is to put things in order at home, keep the "internal enemy" at bay and hit the American working class hard. But even in this respect, things are not going to be so simple.
Trump’s promise of a mass deportation of up to eleven million illegal immigrants has already met with criticism from major business sectors, linked to both Democrats and Republicans, who point out that such a plan would be a severe blow to an economy in which 20% of the workforce is made up of immigrants [3]. Sectors such as construction, agriculture and hospitality would collapse; hence the insistence on reaching an agreement between the two major parties with “reasonably” repressive policies.
Trumpism has in its sights the Palestinian solidarity movement, the militant and anti-fascist left, social movements and, especially, the combative unionism that in recent years has challenged big magnates like Jeff Bezos at Amazon, the Big Three in the automotive industry and many of those multimillionaires who fully sympathize with Trump to guarantee them a tough line against the working class.
Trumpism, and this is a characteristic feature of fascism, uses demagogy and populism, but to hit the working class and the left, spreading hysterical anti-communism against everything that smells of revolution.
The class struggle is entering a much tougher phase, where authoritarian tendencies are becoming stronger every day. Trump's re-election deepens these tendencies by discrediting the reformist left that appealed and continues to appeal to the capitalist state, to bourgeois democracy, to combat the far right and fascism. The capitalist state not only does not stop the reaction, but protects and promotes it, as has been amply demonstrated in the case of Trump.
To confront Trump and the far right, there is only one way: build a powerful organization of the working class and youth with a revolutionary and socialist program, which promotes mass mobilization of the oppressed and direct action, including self-defence against fascist gangs and police brutality.
Notes :
[1] [1]Donald Trump returns to the White House after a resounding victory
[2] Ultraconservative war hawks dominate Trump's cabinet
[3] Business leaders, Republicans and Democrats, warn Trump about the economic disaster of a mass deportation
