Implications of a Second Trump Term for Working Class and Oppressed Peoples

Irrespective of the rhetoric which characterized the campaign, the world’s majority will continue to be compelled to struggle against imperialist exploitation and oppression

By Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor, Pan-African News Wire

Wednesday November 13, 2024

Political Review

There are numerous arguments being advanced as to the reasons behind the outcomes of the November 5 presidential and congressional elections which resulted in the declaration of former President Donald Trump as the winner of the race for the White House.

Republicans retook control of the Senate while the final composition of the House of Representatives remains to be determined.

Among some of the leading Democratic Party officials and pundits there have been sharp disagreements over why the campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did not prevail in their attempts to defeat Trump in what would have been his final attempt at occupying the Oval Office. Some officials such as former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have blamed incumbent President Joe Biden for not exiting the race earlier allowing for a primary contest which could have determined his successor over a period of several months.

Vermont Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders accused the Harris-Walz ticket of not placing enough emphasis on the plight of the working class in the United States allowing for the right-wing demagoguery Trump and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance to mascaraed as champions of ordinary people attempting to stay ahead of inflationary pressures.

Upsurge in Racist Threats

Neither of these explanations took serious considerations of the continuing racist, sexist, misogynist and anti-LGBTQ plus bigotry which permeates the ideological framework of the U.S. and its dominant social groupings. Although Harris has never been considered a left-wing radical within the Democratic Party, the Republican campaign media tactics centered around labelling her and Walz as such. 

In the immediate aftermath of the media calling the elections in favor of the Trump-Vance ticket, African Americans in various states across the U.S. received text messages ordering them to report to plantations to resume the slave labor which was the bulwark of colonial and antebellum periods of North American history. The abolition of African enslavement grew out of an international movement to end this economic system in the U.S. and other geopolitical regions in Western Europe and the Western Hemisphere. 

In the U.S., it would take a Civil War between 1861-1865 to destroy the structural basis for African enslavement. Later at the conclusion of 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified nearly three years after the Emancipation Proclamation issued by then President Abraham Lincoln. 

At the time of the conclusion of the Civil War there were nearly four million Africans subjected to involuntary servitude. Another 500,000 were considered “free” although they were denied the legal rights of social equality and self-determination. Then of course, the passage of several Civil Rights Acts and the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution during the period of 1866-1875 ostensibly granted African Americans full “citizenship.” 

Nonetheless, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist terrorist organizations ensured the overthrow of Federal Reconstruction and the return of near slave-like conditions for African Americans after the contested presidential elections of 1876. The adoption of segregationist laws ushered in the era of Jim Crow where African Americans were the victims of thousands of lynchings, forced geographic removals, land thefts and the imposition of sharecropping, tenant farming and peonage. 

Consequently, the arrival of text messages to the mobile phones of African Americans in Alabama, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and South Carolina provided a clear picture of what the upcoming era will entail. These texts targeted African Americans studying on college and university campuses such as Clemson University, Ohio State University, University of Alabama, among others. A number of messages threatened racist violence against African Americans from the Klan and other racist groups. 

The Economic Crisis and the Expansion of Imperialist War

One of the central myths of the Trump-Vance campaign was that the economic crisis facing the U.S. is the direct result of the policies adopted and implemented by the Biden-Harris administration. The falsehoods that during the Trump administration of 2017-2021 there was a major improvement in the socioeconomic conditions of working class and oppressed peoples can be easily refuted with the facts.

If the actual situation is correctly examined, it will reveal that tremendous problems existed for the majority of people in the U.S. even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in the early months of 2020. Corporate tax cuts given to the transnational corporations by the Trump administration along with massive subsidies to the Pentagon exacerbated the federal budget deficit and lowered real wages for working people.

During 2019 a record number of store closings exceeded 9,300 with 23 corporate bankruptcies costing workers hundreds of thousands of jobs. These closings included long-time retail outlets such as Payless Shoe Source, Sears, Forever 21 and many others. 

The following year was one of the most distressing in modern history. The worst pandemic in over a century resulted in more than a million deaths, tens of millions of job losses and tens of thousands of permanent business closings. The Trump administration initially released $2.2 trillion in stimulus funds in order to avoid a complete economic collapse and prolonged depression.

Trump’s handling of the pandemic created confusion and pandemonium. Although MRNA vaccines were distributed on an emergency use basis, there were conflicting messages over whether they should be accepted among the people. Attacks on healthcare workers, including physicians and nurses, reached unprecedented levels. By the end of the first Trump administration the spread of COVID-19 persisted without any clear strategy to bring the pandemic under control.

In response to the police executions of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and numerous African Americans, mass demonstrations and rebellions erupted throughout the U.S. The outrage over the brutal deaths of African Americans spread to other geopolitical regions in Europe, Africa and Asia. The United Nations Human Rights Commission held hearings on racist state violence in the U.S. at the aegis of the African Union (AU), which evoked the resolutions submitted by Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik Shabazz) when he attended the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit in Cairo, Egypt in July 1964. 

Consequently, the failure to respond adequately to the pandemic and the attempted suppression of anti-racist demonstrations in 2020 was instrumental in sealing the fate of the first Trump administration. With the ascendancy of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, there was great expectations on the part of many oppressed and working peoples for fundamental reforms.

During Biden’s first year in office with a Democratic Party effective majority in the House of Representatives and Senate, an additional stimulus package was approved. All together $5.5 trillion in stimulus funding was made available in the U.S. by the end of 2021.

Despite this massive infusion of federal money into the U.S. economy, real wages declined while consumer prices skyrocketed impacting the ability of working people to purchase food, gasoline, housing and other important necessities of life. Measures by the Federal Reserve Bank to calm inflation has not resulted in a substantial improvement in the living standards in the U.S.

It was these contradictions which were exploited by the Trump campaign to win 73 million to the 68 million votes of Harris-Walz in the presidential elections. However, the advocacy of tariffs, mass deportations and political retributions against perceived enemies will not bring about the promised economic revival for the tens of millions experiencing hardships and impoverishment in the U.S.

World War, Fascism and the Anti-Imperialist Struggle

It is important to review the history of the rise of fascism during the early decades of the 20th century beginning with Italian National Fascist Party under Benito Mussolini during World War I. Like the White House tenure of Trump, there are many myths surrounding the improvement of the economic conditions under Mussolini where it was said that “the trains ran on time.” 

The reign of the Italian fascists from 1922-1943 was characterized by the subjugation of the North Africa territory of Libya and the execution of the liberation movement leader Omar al-Moktar in 1931. The Ethiopian people were subjected to a genocidal war from 1935-1941 where the use of mustard gas and a systematic policy of extermination led to the deaths of 70,000, the injuring of 200,000 and the displacement of millions. Other North African territories were contested by Italian and German fascist regimes against Britain, France and the U.S. from 1940-1943.

In Germany, the seizure of power by Adolph Hitler in 1933 eventually led to World War II which resulted in the defeat and destruction of Germany by May of 1945. Neither Italy or Germany have gained the economic and military dominance which the fascists sought in the aftermath of the First Imperialist War.

Trump has run three electoral campaigns under the theme of making America great again. If history is a guide to the contemporary world situation, Trump’s program for reclaiming the uncontested supremacy of Washington and Wall Street will inevitably fail. The overwhelming majority of people throughout the world will vigorously fight the imperialist onslaught by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by the U.S.

As has been demonstrated in Palestine and other states within West Asia, the determination of people to resist Zionism and their U.S. imperialist backers has only grown exponentially. Trump’s policies will end in economic ruin for the U.S. as well as defeat at the hands of oppressed and working people domestically and throughout the globe.