Stephan Kimmerle analyzes how Trump’s nationalist authoritarianism arises from a crisis of capitalism, especially neoliberalism, and he advocates that DSA be part of the mass resistance against Trump while boldly confronting its root causes.

Stephan Kimmerle is one of the editors of “A User’s Guide to DSA”, and he is a Seattle DSA activist. As an educator, he’s a union rep and involved in a reform caucus within the Seattle Education Association. He has been engaged in the labor and socialist movement internationally, from being a shop steward in the public sector in Germany to organizing Marxists on an international level.

This essay was first published in our book, “A User’s Guide to DSA.” You can order it here on this website.

This essay aims to explore the role of socialists and the labor movement in opposing Trump and his MAGA movement. I begin by looking at Trump’s support, his place in the capitalist system, the ruling class’s strategies, and where working-class resistance stands today. With this understanding, I argue that socialists should both position ourselves in opposition to Trump – collaborating with liberal groups and even the Democratic Party when they genuinely act against Trump – while also maintaining our distinct voice and promoting a break with capitalism, toward a fundamentally different, democratic, socialist society.

Here’s what this article aims to do:

1. Diagnose Trumpism as an authoritarian, ethno-nationalist movement born from the crisis of capitalism in general and neoliberalism in particular, and analyze why his regime should not be categorized as “fascist,” but why understanding fascism can still be helpful in assessing the character of Trump’s regime.
2. Explore the crisis of neoliberalism and capitalist disarray, including economic and imperial decline, which created the conditions for Trump’s rise.
3. Survey the resistance landscape, including the limits of liberal-led mobilizations, labor’s contradictory response, and the debates within DSA.
4. Offer strategic proposals based on united-front principles, emphasizing the need for socialists to organize independently, but without abstaining from broader action.

While we can and should unite in a broader resistance to actually block Trump’s historic assault on immigrants, workers, trans people, and the environment, the aim for socialists cannot be to revert to the alleged “good old times” – obviously not to “Make America Great Again,” but also not to restore any pre-Trump neoliberal order.

There is no doubt that, in the short term, Trump poses a greater threat to the working class and marginalized people through his extreme right-wing attacks on democratic rights and hard-won social gains, when compared to the Democrats’ pro-capitalist defense of the old status quo.

However, socialists don’t just oppose right-wing nationalism; we also oppose Wall-Street liberalism. While we’re against Trump, we don’t want to go back to the conditions that allowed him to rise in the first place. Instead, we want to uproot the capitalist system that created past neoliberal policies and is now fueling authoritarian, nationalist attacks.

1. Diagnosing Trumpism

Trumpism is an authoritarian, nationalist response to the crisis of capitalism in general and neoliberalism (the dominant economic paradigm from the 1980s until the Great Recession) in particular.

Like classical fascism, Trumpism functions as a movement, giving it the capacity to push through its agenda in ways that simple political shifts – incremental changes through legislation, policy adjustments, or leadership changes within the established system – cannot. A clear example of this is how the MAGA movement fundamentally reshaped the Republican Party by displacing its traditional leadership and power structure.

However, unlike classical fascism, Trump’s presidency has not eradicated all forms of democracy or working-class self-organization. Although he has steered towards a more authoritarian system, his methods rely on the capitalist state (ICE etc.), rather than the direct force of fascist paramilitary gangs on the streets, to implement policies like arresting immigrants and assaults on the left. The system still retains checks and balances and a separation of powers, despite an increasing and threatening concentration of power in the executive.

Is Trump a fascist? And does that really matter? Actually, the two questions depend on a useful definition of fascism.

If fascism is strictly confined to the context of Italy in the 1920s or Germany in the 1930s, then Trump cannot be classified as a fascist by definition, and whatever threats we may face in the future, history offers us little guidance.

Conversely, characterizing fascism too broadly will not provide much understanding either.

Jason Stanley, for example, defines it in his popular book “How Fascism Works” in the following way:

I have chosen the label “fascism” for ultranationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural), with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf. As Donald Trump declared in his Republican National Convention speech in July 2016, “I am your voice.” ¹

Stanley’s insights into anti-democratic tendencies, the divisive “us vs. them” perspective, the power of deceptive narratives, and the cult around a leader are undeniably valuable. However, this broad definition fails to distinguish between distinct types of right-wing authoritarian political movements. His definition is also based on superficial features, such as the rhetoric and ideology of the movement, rather than a Marxist assessment, which includes those elements, but as part of a deeper structural analysis.

In the essay “The rise of end times fascism,” Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor argue:

The governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.²

Without fully clarifying what they mean with the term “end times fascism,” this seems to be the essence: The far-right has a vision to solve the fundamental economic and ecological crisis by supremacy, suppression, borders and wars of exclusion.

What is end time fascism’s role in a class society? Klein and Taylor write:

As fascism always does, today’s Armageddon complex crosses class lines, bonding billionaires to the MAGA base. Thanks to decades of deepening economic stresses, alongside ceaseless and skillful messaging pitting workers against one another, a great many people understandably feel unable to protect themselves from the disintegration that surrounds them (no matter how many months of ready-to-eat meals they buy). But there are emotional compensations on offer: you can cheer the end of affirmative action and DEI, glorify mass deportation, enjoy the denial of gender-affirming care to trans people, villainize educators and health workers who think they know better than you, and applaud the demise of economic and environmental regulations as a way to own the libs. End times fascism is a darkly festive fatalism – a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy.³

And how to fight back?

How do we break this apocalyptic fever? First, we help each other face the depth of the depravity that has gripped the hard right in all of our countries. […] Second, we counter their apocalyptic narratives with a far better story about how to survive the hard times ahead without leaving anyone behind.⁴

Taylor and Klein offer us an insightful perspective of the psychological mechanisms of the far-right appeal that “downwardly mobile” people might experience. However, this definition of fascism reduces it to a far-right ideology, independent of its actual function in a capitalist class society and the current class struggle. The political conclusions are quite modest – an appeal to fight back on the ideological level with a more hopeful story that does not leave anybody behind.

From a Marxist viewpoint, classical fascism consisted of a movement of enraged middle layers in society – historically: farmers, small business owners, lawyers – pushed down into the working class or outright poverty. This mass movement based itself on the fury of these layers about their misery. It used the most reactionary ideas – nationalism, antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny, etc. – to build a mass movement which was organized to smash all forms of democracy, especially all forms of democratic organizations, especially working-class self-organization (in unions, other labor organizations, co-ops, even cultural and sports associations).

Fascism developed out of a deep crisis in society in the interwar period. Capitalism was stuck in economic turmoil and stagnation. The working class tried to overthrow capitalism in waves of revolutionary upheavals, but failed – yet it still represented a major threat to the capitalist class. Faced with this impasse, the capitalist class allowed the fascist movement to be the battering ram. To restore full capitalist hegemony in society, they allowed the fascist movement to take over, push aside the usual pro-capitalist democratic rules, and let the fascist mob reign. In this situation, the ruling class lost some direct political control over their system.

Compared to German Nazis and Italian fascists, the current Trump regime represents much more of an attempt to use the state apparatus to achieve its aims, whether it be weakening labor and environmental protections by dismantling state regulatory processes, or terrorizing migrants and protestors by empowering ICE and Border Patrol, federalizing the National Guard, and using the judicial system, more and more streamlined in an ultra-conservative direction.

Still, this is not the terror of totalitarian repression, industrial genocide, and world war that the fascists imposed on the world a century ago on a mass scale. Trump is not, at this point in time, threatening us with such a scenario, despite being much better prepared and organized in his second term. This does not mean his policies are not highly dangerous, deeply reactionary, and utterly barbarous. Indeed they are.

One fundamental difference with fascism is that we still have many (though not all) of the democratic rights that past generations fought for and won. We are still able to speak relatively freely and openly organize.

However, to understand the full dimension of Trumpism and the MAGA movement, it helps to look at some parallels:

1. A Movement: Trump’s ascent was marked by a movement that, for example, pushed aside the Republican Party establishment. Trump bases himself on a minority movement of enraged people in society. The aim is not to win a majority for their ultra-conservative ideas, but to force their views onto society.
2. Downwardly Mobile Middle Layers: The social basis for classical fascism – declassed petit bourgeois layers like farmers, small shop owners, etc., being pauperized and proletarianized – is weaker, as their numbers in society are much smaller today. However, there are whole layers and whole areas in the US where former better-off working-class people – aka “the middle class” – were pushed down into poverty, leaving whole regions, for example in the Midwest, in a state of desperation and despair. With declining capitalism and new waves of climate enforced mass migration, the number of desperate, declassed poor people might even grow further as a potential, unstable basis for far-right and neofascist tendencies.
3. Against “Marxism,” Labor, and the Left: Given the weakness of socialist and Marxist ideas internationally, it is striking how explicitly anti-socialist Trump, Bolsonaro, and company are. Classical fascism built itself in fights, often street fights, against a mass socialist and communist movement. The MAGA movement has those features built into its propaganda, with the fury about the establishment and the status quo bizarrely redirected against “socialism” and “Marxism.” Richard Seymour writes in his book Disaster Nationalism: Barack Obama, sovereign of drone strikes, was a ‘socialist’ according to the Tea Party movement. Joe Biden, for whom socialized healthcare is too radical, is a ‘Trojan Horse for socialism’ under the control of ‘wild-eyed Marxists’ according to Trump … Anti-communism without communism is hallucinatory, but not entirely new. If previous waves of anti-communism at least responded to real communist uprisings and movements, they scarcely ever engaged with communism as it really existed.⁵
4. Ultra-conservative Ideas: Capitalism breeds reactionary ideas. They are not a product of conspiracy and indoctrination, or at least, not primarily. Trump and his movement can randomly put together world views of ultra-nationalism, white supremacy, misogyny, and transphobia because they can use all the ideological tools that are already available and widespread. Richard Seymour describes the far-right populist appeal of figures like Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, and Orban: Disaster nationalists speak the language of class. They claim to represent an ‘abandoned’, ‘betrayed’, ‘left-behind’ constituency, abbreviated in the anglosphere as the ‘white working class’ … The overall pattern, though, is for the far right to start with a largely middle-class base and then build effective coalitions across classes … The key word in the phrase ‘white working class’ tends to be ‘white’ … [A]fter decades of official omertà on terms like ‘class,’ after years in which we were all ‘middle class’ and the burdens of class and work were glossed over in the giddy hubris of globalization, class returned as a pseudo-ethnic identity. And its defining characteristic was not militancy, but ethnic loss.⁶ (To describe this phenomenon in its real proportions, it has to be said that there is also a different side: While these reactionary ideas appeal to Trump’s MAGA movement base, it’s also true that for many of his voters and supporters, a significant part of Trump’s appeal was his claim to represent a break from Democratic Party politics. Trump tapped into anger about the status quo, and not everyone who was looking for that change, and – temporarily – ended up supporting Trump, did so with white supremacist or anti-trans motives.)
5. A Reactionary Movement to Ram through Change: The MAGA movement serves a function in today’s capitalist society in general, and for the capitalist class in particular, to overcome the obstacles that they face. What are these obstacles? US capitalism and imperialism are in crisis at all levels. That’s the next part of this analysis.

2. Crisis of Neoliberalism & Capitalist Disarray

The need and desire for a battering ram to force through change stems from the crisis the capitalists face.

In 2008, the neoliberal model crashed, fully based on its own success. Neoliberalism was not just a set of policies, but a regime of capital accumulation, an economic paradigm, and one of the “long waves” of capitalist development. After the deep economic and social crisis in the 1970s, neoliberalism restored and increased profits for the capitalist classes in the most powerful countries. This new regime of capital accumulation was based on:

• a massive expansion of capitalist exploitation globally (absorbing the former Soviet Union, China, and other Stalinist states into the global capitalist system) and the establishment of “free markets” globally, AKA globalization.
• an expansion of exploitation in the depth of society (commodifying health care, home care, formerly publicly run parts of the economy, forcing capitalism deeper into every pore of society).
• increasing the power of finance capital on a global scale (another aspect of capitalist globalization), based on “free trade” and stable monetary relations (therefore the dominance of central banks to assure non-inflationary money since the 1980s; therefore their “independence” and their power to assert “natural consequences” over “politics”). This led to austerity and the appearance of a reduced role for governments.
• reduced power of organized labor through a significant weakening of unions. (This accelerated after Reagan crushed the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in 1981, and Thatcher broke the miners’ strike in 1984-85). Weakened unions led to intensified exploitation at all levels. This also helped turn the former mass workers’ parties (mostly social democratic, but some communist) into pro-capitalist, neoliberal forces.

From a capitalist perspective, this helped overcome the crisis of profitability at the end of the Keynesian era – the previous regime of accumulation – in the mid-1970s. However, this also led to transforming overcapacities and over-accumulation to unseen amounts of money, fictitious capital, in the hands of mega-billionaires.

Capitalism is now mired in economic stagnation, dangerous financial bubbles (in many cases larger than before the 2008 Great Recession), and a lack of convincing narratives and policies for the ruling elites as well as for the governed.

The crisis of neoliberalism is accompanied by an additional crisis of US imperialist dominance. The rise of China and the development of a multi-polar world make it harder for the US ruling class to impose its will on other nations and world markets.

Internationally, a declining US capitalism has less incentive to invest as much as before to maintain “Pax Americana’s” rule over the planet. Short-term brutality is replacing long-term investment; short-term profits is replacing a strategy of long-term exploitation. Trump and a segment of the US ruling class want to cash in on a century of US imperial dominance, right now. “After us, the deluge,” is their approach.

Domestically, relative stagnation and economic decline in significant areas of the US are clashing with a growing expectation of the US working class and young people for economic, racial, and gender justice. The ruling class’s willingness to pay for these aspirations and other “entitlements” is declining. Here as well, short-term profits are replacing a strategy of social cooptation and domestication.

But the pro-capitalist critics of Trump, confronted with a moribund neoliberalism on one hand and Trump’s authoritarian nationalism on the other, have no coherent alternative to offer that could rehabilitate their system. At the core of the rise of Trump was the bankruptcy of the old status quo. Trust in the institutions, parties, and narratives of the capitalist system is exceedingly low.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear

wrote Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks in Italy, while incarcerated by the fascist regime between 1926 and his death in 1937. Some translated the “morbid symptoms” freely to “now is the time of monsters.” However, morbid symptoms can include monsters and clowns, tragedy and farce. The appearance of chaos is a built-in feature because of the erratic nature of Trump – and of this kind of regime where the capitalist class is allowing a movement-driven strongman to play a more independent role to ram through change.

In classical fascism, the ruling class lost direct political control over their system, and especially their state. The capitalist class in a bourgeois democracy – with its checks and balances, with the economic power and social weight of the capitalists, their media, and their spin doctors (from religious leaders to TV stations, and from schools to social media) – can have much more control than if a dictator takes over (or, especially, an enraged movement based on reactionary ideas).

Ernest Mandel summarized this relationship between the fascists and the capitalist class:

Looked at historically, fascism is both the realization and negation of monopoly capital’s tendency – first noted by Rudolf Hilferding – to ‘organize’ in totalitarian fashion the whole of social life in its interests. Fascism is the realization of this tendency, because in the last analysis it has performed this historical function. It is the negation of this tendency, because, contrary to Hilferding’s expectation, fascism has only been able to perform this function by the extensive political expropriation of the bourgeoisie.⁷

Looking at the extreme form that this relationship between the state and the capitalist class can take under fascism can help analyze the much more initial tendencies of Trumpism. The capitalist class is not happy with every step that Trump has taken. They try to push back, using their usual avenues of the mass media, the political system, the courts, and the state apparatus. The liberal wing of the ruling class even encourages ordinary working-class people to protest Trump at times. However, major sections of the capitalists have been willing to allow Trump a certain amount of chaos and independence.

Among the capitalist class, not all factions are happy with where things are heading. Trump’s economic nationalism, particularly his tariffs, have already pushed the US economy to the brink of recession. This is not what a stable regime for capital accumulation looks like. Trump’s actions threaten to weaken US imperialism’s role as a global hegemon. David E. Sanger in The New York Times wrote:

In a span of only 50 days, President Trump has done more than any of his modern predecessors to hollow out the foundations of an international system that the United States painstakingly erected in the 80 years since it emerged victorious from World War II.⁸

Political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr. commented, “he is so obsessed with the problem of free riders that he forgets that it has been in America’s interest to drive the bus.”⁹

Even Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has grown nervous, fearing increased uncertainty could hinder private investment. The editorial board described Trump’s tariff offensive as “the biggest assault on the world trading system since the end of Bretton Woods” and called for an end to the campaign.

But the pro-capitalist critics of Trump, confronted with a moribund neoliberalism on one hand and Trump’s authoritarian nationalism on the other, have not been able to win a stable popular majority for their traditional establishment policies. When in power, their rule has generated widespread popular discontent, which allowed Trump and his right-wing populism to narrowly win the presidency in 2016 and again in 2024.

3. Resistance Landscape

The actual resistance against Trump so far is only slowly building momentum, but with recent protests, we have re-entered a stage of mass engagement and mass politicization. However, liberal ideas dominate the resistance: dreams of returning to the status quo before Trump – the same conditions that created Trumpism in the first place.

On June 14, 2025, the “No Kings” mobilizations brought around 5 million people into the streets in approximately 2,000 cities. The messages on signs were liberal, trying to reclaim the US flag and constitution from Trump. The speakers were very pro-Democratic Party. However, the protestors were significantly younger, more ethnically diverse, and enraged at deportations with more radical slogans about crushing ICE compared to the April 5th “Hands Off” mobilizations when 2-3 million people protested in approximately 1,400 cities.

The socialist left, including DSA, was also more present in the protests with its own signs and slogans. However, within the resistance, the labor movement and the socialist left are either opportunistically following the liberal leaders or, in a self-isolating way, abstaining from getting fully involved.

While unions have protested issues like arrests of immigrant members mostly at the local level, organized labor’s broader impact against Trump’s actions has been minimal. When Trump abolished collective bargaining rights in several government agencies via executive order, the labor movement did not mount much resistance. At the same time, Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters, has been trying to appease Trump and cover up for nationalism. On the left wing of the labor movement, Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, has occasionally appeared to support Trump’s tariffs out of an understandable desire to oppose the corporate free trade regime. However, he failed to formulate a clear alternative to Trump’s right-wing nationalism.

The broader left, centered around figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, is developing more of a profile. Their “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” drew crowds of tens of thousands of people, often in “red states,” but they are still recovering from their failures in 2024 when they often echoed the Democratic Party’s narrative.

The radical left has its own baggage. All too often, it drew an equal sign in 2024 between Biden’s and then Harris’ Democrats and Trump’s MAGA movement, leading to self-isolation.

Membership in DSA has been rising again since Trump’s re-election, but this hasn’t yet translated into significant action.

DSA’s leadership called on members to join the “No Kings” protests, but did not join the organizing coalition. This half-hearted approach made it easier for liberal forces to dominate the messaging. The moderate wing of DSA – a narrow minority on DSA’s NPC, but a majority in some large and influential chapters like New York City – criticized the NPC decision. The Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) published an article by Emmett McKenna that argues:

DSA declined to formally participate in the coalition [for the No Kings protests on June 14] because some members of the NPC majority voiced concern about some protesters potentially waving American flags or dressing as Uncle Sam, since the protests occurred on Flag Day with a theme opposing monarchy. While there was a second vote days before the protests, which passed – which led to an email to chapter leaders the day before the protests encouraging them to attend – the initial decision not to support the No Kings protests meant DSA was ill-prepared to be an active partner in the planning of the protests. By then, it was too late for many chapters to get involved, communication of DSA’s late partial endorsement did not reach most members, nor did the logo get added back to their website. To be fair, some chapters and individual DSA members did attend or even organize No Kings protests, but if the national organization had endorsed the event earlier, it could have centered its own socialist message and encouraged chapters across the country to attend and promote in time for them to participate and show its strength in the antifascist movement. Unfortunately, many coalition partners and DSA members were left with the impression that protesting Trump is not a priority for the national organization.¹⁰

In grappling with what a better approach to getting our socialist message out might look like, the same article points to Socialist Majority proposals, such as their resolutions to the DSA 2025 Convention, which contain only vague slogans. In reality, the reference to our “own socialist message” turns out to be a mere abstract lip service to overcome capitalism and imperialism. Never is it mentioned or shown in practice what this socialist message would be about concretely.

In reality, DSA suffers from both sides: on its moderate side, an opportunism in uniting with movements, liberal organizations, and left progressives without raising an independent working-class and socialist profile; and on its left, a sectarian non-engagement, rescinded endorsements of candidates like AOC, and abstention from real battles in society, which likewise fails to effectively promote socialist ideas.

This dynamic was most sharply posed in the 2024 presidential election, where the left majority on the NPC failed to orient to the main question that millions of working-class and oppressed people thought about (how to stop Trump). On the other hand, the moderate minority correctly wanted DSA to be involved in the fight to block Trump, but shied away from promoting the need for an independent working-class political force that opposes both the right-wing Republicans and the pro-corporate Democrats.

A better alternative to both courses would have been to boldly declare the need to build a socialist alternative in all 50 states, but simultaneously to clearly acknowledge – without illusions, prettifications, or political endorsements – that any vote for Harris in the swing states to block Trump is a reasonable tactical choice in fighting the greater evil. Speaking out this tactical truth about voting (one of the less important forms of struggle), allows us to fully focus on the crucial strategic task of building working-class independence.¹¹

4. A United-Front Strategy

Without a mass movement to confront Trumpism, the dire danger that the MAGA movement represents will not be halted. However, a simple coalition with all forces opposed to Trump, including the pro-capitalist, neoliberal leaders, will not be enough. As Alberto Toscano wrote, this is like “allying with the cause to ward off its effects.”¹²

How do we get to a united front with all forces prepared to fight Trump, and simultaneously keep our distinct message of opposition to the pro-corporate Democrats and fighting against the root causes?

Cian Prendiville wrote for the Irish Marxist magazine Rupture on the principles of joint campaigns on what the workers’ movement has called a “united front,” which I think expresses very well how we should approach coalitions and mass actions against Trump and the MAGA movement:

The phrase ‘united front’ is often used by socialists when talking about such joint campaigns. This term is a bit of a relic dating from debates of the 1920s, when military analogies were all the rage, and people were perhaps more used to the concept of multiple armies striking together, but marching separately under their own banners, with their own power structures and war aims.

Today, however, the phrase is more likely to be misunderstood as a call to simply brush differences with others under the carpet, like parents hiding their parenting disagreements from their children in order to ‘present a united front’. But applied to mass movements, that kind of ‘united front’ would be disastrous for socialists. It would amount to self-censorship; silencing our critique of capitalism, burying the socialist alternatives, and ultimately weakening the movements … [W]e should fight for united fronts to be arenas of debate and discussion as well. We shouldn’t accept a “not in front of the kids” set-up where debate is confined to the pub or backroom negotiations …

There can be a real temptation for socialists to refuse to engage in movements involving forces to our right … Betrayal is inherent in reformism. This is even true for those who pose as more radical, but still limit their horizons to what is possible within capitalism. When push comes to shove, they will side with staying within the confines of capitalism, and break whatever promises they made to working-class people.

However, if workers and young people are attempting to use reformist, left-populist, or even left-liberal parties or campaigns as a tool to fight for their interests, what should socialists do? We cannot afford to simply stand aside in ‘splendid isolation’, and criticize from the sidelines. Instead, we should seek to mobilize these people into activity to fight for their interests, and intervene in these movements to highlight how socialist ideas better match their interests and the needs of the movement.

Rosa Luxembourg is often quoted as pointing out that “those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Conversely, socialist ideas grow and grow rapidly; when people do move, that is when they engage in mass movements and no longer leave politics to the politicians, but storm the stage and become active makers of history. We saw that in Ireland with the massive leftward shift during the water charges revolt and the Repeal movement. The existence of those movements changed people’s attitudes. It shifted the dial rapidly to the left in general, but especially for those who got actively involved …

We must learn to walk and chew gum – build mass movements, and intervene in them with socialist ideas. The united front method can help us with that.¹³

DSA needs its own socialist message when actively participating in the broad anti-Trump movement. Some key demands and policies that can form the basis of this are:

• Stop Trump: abolish ICE, no more deportations and detentions, full citizenship rights for all undocumented workers. For a massive jobs program to offer unionized living-wage jobs to both US-born and immigrant workers, to end the divide and conquer tactics. A massive program to provide high quality housing, healthcare, and social security for all
• Defend our democratic rights; for a major expansion of people’s rights in the US, with voting rights for all, automatic voter registration; Democratically reform all institutions like Congress, the Supreme Court, etc.
• Medicare for All, including reproductive and trans care, putting the major pharmaceutical and insurance companies under democratic and public ownership
• Close all US military bases abroad and bring all troops home; the US should exit NATO and end military aid to Israel
• Abolish student debt; free, inclusive, public higher education for all
• A green new deal creating unionized, high quality jobs for millions, while focusing on overcoming the legacy of racism and oppression to uplift marginalized communities
• Build millions of permanently affordable, publicly owned social housing units
• Black Lives Matter: for a right to live in peace from police terror; end mass incarceration, dissolve all special units of the police and abolish the FBI; for democratically elected community boards with full oversight over police policies; for a massive expansion of social services and mental health services to address many of the root causes of anti-social behavior and public disorder; and for a working-class based community force to keep our communities safe
• Defend workers’ rights and expand labor rights by fully granting workers’ control and management over the massive companies that dominate the economy; start by taking the 100 largest corporations under democratic, public ownership
• Reorganize the financial markets to allow rational planning at the heart of the economy by taking the major banks and financial institutions under democratic and public ownership

We should not shy away from focusing on much more limited demands and struggles, as long as we meaningfully promote our wider ideas of democratic socialism as well.

Conclusion

My thesis is that Trump is a reflection of a decaying capitalist system in crisis. Significant parts of the US ruling class are desperate enough to allow this MAGA would-be dictator to push society into further turmoil. However, the main feature here is that Trump’s pro-capitalist opponents fail to offer a viable alternative for working and marginalized people. Socialist victories – even just on an electoral level, like Zohran’s win in the primary in New York – scare the ruling elites, as they point to the only available viable solution for working-class and oppressed people: to reorganize society along democratic socialist principles.

Trump’s MAGA movement can be stopped. Trump is presiding over a fragile coalition. He is mobilizing a movement of people with objectively very different interests. A working-class resistance movement with alternative socialist policies can reach and excite people, even a section of Trump’s working-class base, if it includes bold demands that can have an impact and improve people’s lives.

However, even if we beat Trump and the MAGA fanatics, as long as capitalism survives, we will see more, and even more, brutal expressions of the most reactionary ideas that this system brews.

We can’t choose the masses and ignore the program, letting the movement be directed back into the arms of the appalling pro-capitalist policies of Democratic Party elites. As we have seen in the 2024 presidential election, such an approach demoralizes and actually turns away the masses.

But we can’t choose the right program against Trump and forget about the masses either. The program will be stale and meaningless.

A United Front approach is needed. That entails both: unity in action, even with liberal forces, against Trump, but with full independence, to promote clear socialist and working-class politics against the liberalism and Democratic politics currently leading the movement.

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1 Jason Stanley, “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them,” 2018.

2 Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, “The Rise of End Times Fascism,” theguardian.com, April 13, 2025, theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk

3 Ibid.

4 Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, “The Rise of End Times Fascism,” theguardian.com, April 13, 2025, theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk

5 Richard Seymour, Disaster Nationalism – The Downfall of Liberal Civilization, Verso, October 2024, versobooks.com/products/3147-disaster-nationalism

6 Richard Seymour, Disaster Nationalism – The Downfall of Liberal Civilization, Verso, October 2024, versobooks.com/products/3147-disaster-nationalism

7 Ernest Mandel, “Introduction,” Leon Trotsky: The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany

8 David E. Sanger, “Trump’s First 50 Days: The Great Unraveling,” The New York Times, March 11, 2025, nytimes.com/2025/03/11/us/politics/trump-50-days-foreign-policy.html

9 Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, “The Lesson of Trump vs. Powell,” April 17, 2025, WSJ.com, wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-jerome-powell-federal-reserve-interest-rates-tariffs-8ef4a95e

10 Emmett McKenna, “DSA for the Masses: Organizing the Anti-Fascist Majority,” socialistmajority.com, June 29, 2025, socialistmajority.com/theagitator/dsa-for-the-masses-organizing-the-anti-fascist-majority

11 To see how I argued for this at the beginning of 2024, see: Debate: DSA & The 2024 Elections”, February 8, 2024, reformandrevolution.org/2024/02/08/debate-dsa-the-2024-elections/; “DSA & The 2024 Elections: In Politics, Silence is Acceptance”, March 22, 2024, reformandrevolution.org/2024/03/22/dsa-the-2024-elections-in-politics-silence-is-acceptance; “Uncommitted to Biden, Committed to a Democratic Socialist Party”, March 9, 2024, reformandrevolution.org/2024/03/09/uncommitted-to-biden-committed-to-a-democratic-socialist-party/

12 Alberto Toscano, “Late Fascism – Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis,” Verso, 2020, versobooks.com/products/2627-late-fascism

13 Cian Prendiville, “United Fronts – Don’t Leave Your Socialism at the Door,” Rupture, November 23, 2022, rupture.ie/articles/united-front-methods