We should view the Trump assassination attempt as a modern version of the “Business Plot” of 1933, where the forces of monopoly finance capital tried to overthrow the government so that they could install a fascist leader. This isn’t because Trump has a role that’s equivalent to the one FDR had, in which the communists could pressure him towards making concessions to the workers. Trump is not viewed with hostility by our permanent security state because this state fears he’ll overthrow the system, or advance a genuinely anti-imperialist agenda. The deep state, or at least the parts of the deep state that were involved in this attack, want to get rid of Trump because of the destabilizing role he has outside of policy. Much of the U.S. public has a sense that such behind-the-scenes manipulations have been present within this story, and communists must align ourselves with the most conscious elements of the mass backlash towards this coup attempt.
The danger the deep state sees in Trump doesn’t come from Trump himself, but from how the deep state views the MAGA base, as well as the MAGA faction within government. Initially the drivers of the new cold war were worried that Trump would go against their agenda, but then he fully went along with it when they pressured him through the “Russiagate” psyop. These geo-strategists, and the monopolists they work for, now instead view the broader MAGA movement as the main thing which must be countered. This had become apparent by the end of Trump’s term, when the feds interfered in the election by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, entrapped MAGA members into a sensational governor kidnapping plot, and did all they could to make sure the Capitol was stormed.
In 2024, we’ve continued to see signs that the dominant wing of our ruling class holds such a wary stance towards MAGA: CNN’s avoidance of covering Trump at crucial moments; the legal system’s selectively applied treatment of Trump; and now this act of violence that the media’s liberal side has often tried to downplay, and that Biden has refused to call an assassination attempt. Given the country’s history of presidential assassination conspiracies by rival governmental factions, that the shooter was a registered Republican means the RNC plausibly had something to do with it, likely because the neocons wanted to replace Trump with Haley. Getting rid of Trump wouldn’t just have let the neocons install a president who’s more competent at imperialism than Trump or Biden; it would have kept the MAGA base from taking on the more threatening role that it now has great potential to have.
So many conservatives and independents have come to MAGA because they see it as a way to combat our ruling institutions; to defeat monopoly capital’s degrowth agenda, end the wars, and abolish the intelligence agencies which negate our constitutional liberties. Trump isn’t the right leader to do these things, but it’s precisely because of this that so many MAGA supporters could soon come towards a more developed consciousness.
If or when Trump gets a second term, he’ll be allowed to fail. To refuse his mandate for re-industrializing America, enable the deep state, and let the wars drag on. When this happens, MAGA will decline, and many of the people who initially believed in it will become independents like how Bernie Sanders supporters did. Because Trump has lived, he’ll be able to assume this role as the figure that unintentionally spreads mass revolutionary consciousness. That kills the illusion which MAGA represents, and creates the conditions for an authentic dissident force to take its place.
To ready ourselves for the second Trump term, communists must connect with the many Americans who are reacting to these events by rejecting the liberal psyops around it. Who recognize how absurd it is to believe there’s no chance that the permanent security state had a role. Obviously just because these Americans have rejected the Democratic Party’s lies about the attack doesn’t mean they can’t be fooled by the anti-“woke” psyop; but it’s for this reason that communists so badly need to insert ourselves into this discourse. That we need to steer these Americans away from the narratives which blame China, Iran, and “communism,” and clarify to them that communists are their allies in this fight against their government’s corrupt activities.
We need to inform them that the anti-imperialist countries are their allies too. And we can back this idea up by pointing to how these countries talk and act. Russia, China, and Venezuela, despite all having been in conflict with Trump during his presidency, have outwardly stated their support for Trump amid this act of violence. This means the only reason why Iran hasn’t made an equivalent statement is that Trump’s acts of aggression towards it were too severe, with Trump having murdered Iran’s beloved general Soleimani. These Americans who’ve turned against liberalism are able to be steered away from the psyops that blame these countries; even with Iran there’s a compelling argument against the empire’s propaganda, namely that the “Iran tried to kill Trump” narrative is highly convenient and reminiscent of “Iraqi WMDs.”
We can win these proto-conscious mass elements to our cause for the same reason that Lenin could win the people to his cause, as he explained in his writing about a situation which parallels our own:
At present, British Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson and against Lloyd George, they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany. If the objection is raised that these tactics are too “subtle” or too complex for the masses to understand, that these tactics will split and scatter our forces, will prevent us from concentrating them on Soviet revolution, etc., I will reply to the “Left” objectors: don’t ascribe your doctrinairism to the masses!
The strategy that I’m proposing, where communists use the deep state’s attacks on Trump to connect with the masses who are against these activities, doesn’t even go as far as what Lenin is proposing here. Whereas Lenin was advocating for communists to endorse these bourgeois politicians so that communists could show they were a better alternative to them, myself and most of the other communists in my tendency don’t call to vote for Trump. On the main, our position is that communists should reject Trump, while making it clear to Trump supporters and sympathizers that we’re allies in the fight against the liberal order. It’s through this method that we can take advantage of the intensifying conflict within our ruling class, which fulfills the second requirement for revolution that Lenin described:
It is only when the “lower classes” do not want to live in the old way and the “upper classes” cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. This truth can be expressed in other words: revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters). It follows that, for a revolution to take place, it is essential, first, that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking, and politically active workers) should fully realise that revolution is necessary, and that they should be prepared to die for it; second, that the ruling classes should be going through a governmental crisis, which draws even the most backward masses into politics (symptomatic of any genuine revolution is a rapid, tenfold and even hundredfold increase in the size of the working and oppressed masses—hitherto apathetic—who are capable of waging the political struggle), weakens the government, and makes it possible for the revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it.
Doesn’t this sound familiar? A crisis among the elites that brings even the parts of the masses who are politically backward towards a political consciousness, one that communists have potential to turn revolutionary? With this violent coup attempt, the primary wing of the deep state has gone too far, and provoked a backlash that it’s trying to manage through downplaying the attack. Alternatively it’s using the strategy of telling Americans that the shooter was working for Iran, but even a psyop as insidious as this one can’t ultimately be effective. Not if we work to intervene, and build up the layer of the people who have an anti-imperialist education. The moment for us to progress the class struggle to its next stage is here; we have to use it.
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