This is the first of a three-part series assessing MAGA, developing anti-fascist strategies, and organizing for democracy and affordability in Maine and nationally.
Trump’s had a bad month so far. Although Senate Democrats caved on the shut down, Trump’s numbers have slipped as many voters blame the Republicans for SNAP cuts, federal layoffs and furloughs, and airport chaos. Yucking it up with Saudi Prince MBS failed to distract from his disorganized retreat on the Eptsein files, MTG’s mid-term resignation, and early Wall Street wobbles. Meanwhile, there is a noticeable shift in mood on the left. Katie Wilson won big in Seattle… as did centrists in New Jersey and Virginia. Mainers crushed a Republican referendum to suppress voting rights. Millions turned out for No Kings! rallies in October and significant and sustained opposition to ICE invasions has thrown sand into the gears of Trump’s pet militia. Trump’s chummy approach to his meetup with Zohran Mamdani might indicate he’s feeling vulnerable on the affordability front. All this is to the good, but don’t count MAGA out.
Trump has accumulated a great deal of power. He has succeeded in remaking the Republican Party into a far-right machine and has done lasting damage to the liberal welfare state. He has remade NATO, crippled the Iranian challenge, and is openly pushing for a coup in Venezuela. The Supreme Court rubber-stamps 90% of what he does. And there is more to come. It is easier to destroy than to build. Moreover, Trump and the MAGA right are building a purified imperialist administrative state that will not “go back to normal” even if Schumer and Jeffries claw back a narrow majority in the House. There is little prospect in the short term for completely reversing Trump’s cuts and evisceration of democratic rights, and even dimmer prospects for reforms and spending on the (limited) scale of Biden’s (failed) Build Back Better.
No one has a crystal ball, but it’s worth thinking through potential scenarios.
[Read next: Mainers don’t want Janet Mills for Senate]
The first scenario—and the most likely to my mind—is a Reagan-to-Bush-to-Clinton trajectory, that is, frontal Republican attacks on unions, civil rights, and democracy followed by centrist Democratic modifications of the worst excesses. Those modifications will come as a relief, but the danger lies in accepting a “new normal.” Clinton did little to undue Reaganism. Newsom, Shapiro, and Whitmer offer no systemic solutions to the problems ordinary families confront today. Mamdani and Wilson—along with Brandon Johnson in Chicago—may serve as major or minor outliers in fighting for pro-worker reforms, but these will not be championed at the federal level by the Democratic Establishment. Furthermore, the Supreme Court stands ready to strike down any transformative efforts that happen to sneak through.
The second most likely scenario is a third Trump term, whether headed by Trump himself or his heir. We should not underestimate the MAGA elite’s determination to hang on to power by any means, legal or otherwise. A recession may undo them temporarily, but Reagan used the 1982 recession to smash unions, strip social spending, demoralize his opponents, and consolidate his popular and ruling-class support. Authoritarian figures are often able to ride out chaotic circumstances as long as there is no coherent alternative. If you had to bet on Schumer or Trump in a political brawl, who do you think would come out on top?
A third scenario could open up with a massive electoral rejection of MAGA in 2026 and some initial rise in social struggle, leading to an AOC-type victory in the presidential primary and a related qualitative shift in the level of class struggle, perhaps anchored by a national strike on May Day 2028. This scenario poses the greatest threat to the billionaires as a class and MAGAism as a movement. It’s the perspective we should fight for, but it’s also the least likely outcome in my view. Why?
Despite Trump’s wobbles, the underlying balance of forces between the oligarchy and the working class still tilts strongly in favor of the rich. The billionaires tolerated the liberal welfare state—expansive public education, civil rights legislation, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—for a long period. From Reagan to Obama, both parties hacked away (sometimes drastically) at it over the long neoliberal era, but they did not eradicate it. The billionaires adapted and learned to get what they needed from the state under the given circumstances as they paid ever diminishing taxes in exchange for social control at home and global control abroad.
Trump has opened a new path for them. And they are demonstrating an inclination to rule in a different way. They are not only surrendering to Trump out of moral cowardice, they are also plowing trillions into AI, oil, banking, military production, etc. Lip service to climate change is out, an ugly feeding frenzy is in. The bankers are sensing hundreds of billions in windfall profits by privatizing Social Security and public education. Besting China and breaking unions are their organizing principles and nearly a trillion dollars a year in military funds will buy off any “constitutional” brass in the Pentagon. The billionaires might have been slow to Trump’s party, but they’re drinking from the punch bowl now.
Against this juggernaut, elites in the liberal political class are unable to imagine a world beyond free-market neoliberalism. Like the billionaires, Schumer and Jeffries are not only political cowards, they see incentives for their own social layer in containing the resistance to those strategies that land them back in charge. This makes them a weak force in the face of Trump’s lust for power. However, they are not without resources: they have practically unlimited money, a small stable of national Democratic politicians who have figured out they must at least posture as radically anti-Trump, and, most importantly, no more than the beginnings of an organized opposition to their left.
[Read next: The case for Troy Jackson]
Despite some recent counterexamples (Mamdani, UAW stand up strikes, ICE protests, etc.), the U.S. working class remains fractured. A historical process of sustained class struggle is the only means to construct new consciousness and mass organizations. This process could develop relatively quickly (several years), but we are starting from a very low level of organization, so it will most likely be more drawn out than in previous periods of heightened class struggle in the U.S. (1905–1919 or 1933–1938, for instance). There are other enormous challenges, including social media spectacle, generational activist discontinuity, the dispersion of working-class life, robber barons’ ability to withstand company-specific strikes, international production and distribution, etc. None of that is insurmountable, but it speaks to the continuing vulnerability of class-based challenges to both liberalism and MAGAism.
Socialists argue that fascism is a counterrevolutionary, extraparliamentary movement posing falsely as a challenge to capitalism. However, once they come to power, fascists rule in the interest of, and with the support of, the capitalist class. These two aspects must be considered simultaneously. In Germany, the fascist movement came before the fascist state. However, Italian fascism came to power earlier as a political force several years before it succeeded in completely remaking the state in its own image. For instance, resistance leader Antonio Gramsci retained his parliamentary immunity until 1926, four years after Mussolini’s assumption of power. In the Spanish, Chilean, and Argentine cases, varying combinations of fascist movements and military maneuvers via the armed forces led to fascist (or fascist-type) states. The German and Italian cases might be classified as “fascism from below,” while the Spanish, Chilean, and Argentine cases may be classified as “fascism from above.” The Jim Crow State in the U.S. and Modi’s India represent varieties of the species.
In my mind, what matters most here is directionality. It is less important to classify MAGA as a “fully” fascist movement and more useful to determine its potential to move in that direction. In my view, Mamdani was right, “yes,” Trump is a fascist. But does it matter how we define MAGA?
Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “Know thy enemy and know yourself and you will not be defeated in one hundred battles.” No one bats 1.000, but his point stands. If Trump and MAGAism are lurching towards fascism, we need to study their strengths and weaknesses, redress our own shortcomings, and develop specific initiatives to drive a wedge into their base.
I will return to this question next week in Part 2 with some lessons from past generations and strategies we can pursue today to shift the balance of forces in favor of the working class.
[Read next: No Kings! speech by Portland city councilor Wes Pelletier]
