Ted Rall: Here Comes the Rise of the Anti-Trump Left

Ted Rall writes that Here Comes the Rise of the Anti-Trump Left.

Meanwhile, out in the streets where real political change can happen, I expect to see an anti-Trump resistance incorporating anarchists, veterans of the Occupy Wall Street movement, communists and socialists, radicalized left-wing Democrats, old hippies from the 1960s, Black Lives Matter activists, pro-immigrant people, work together and individually to oppose the radical right policies that we are going to see flying out of Washington over the next few years.

Out on the streets, Trump’s repressive tone will prompt brutal police tactics to which nonviolence will no longer be seen as the only acceptable counteraction. The “peace police” of the wimpy protests of the 1990s and 2000s will go extinct. Nonviolence will retake its rightful place as a noble and desirable tactic, but no longer the exclusive approach to taking on repressive government goons.

Donald Trump will be atrocious for the United States, especially with the Republican House and Senate. He’ll attack immigrants, Latinos, Muslims, victims of police brutality, God knows who else.

But he’ll be good for the Left. And, in the long run, the Left will be great for us.

Emphasis Mine

Trump might be good for the Left, but he will con those who do not have a grounding in Marxism. He is a Capitalist through and through. In looking out for himself, he is looking out for Capitalism.

The opposition to Trump must be based on principles, not on what we think he said. Trump has undergone a great journey that his own supporters do not comprehend. They think he is still the racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and islamophobic misogynist bigot that they had come to love.

They do not understand that Capitalism uses racism, homophobia, xenophobia, islamophobia, misogynism, and bigotry as tools of social control to divide workers against themselves. These tools are only useful in that they keep society under control, and will be abandoned once they cease to be useful.

I predict that Trump will legalise Gay Marriage in the USA before Australia does. Homophobia is losing its edge as a means of social control.

Even if Capitalism stripped itself of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, islamophobia, misogynism, and bigotry, we would still oppose Capitalism and work to replace it with Socialism, because the underlying social relations in Capitalism prevents people from reaching their full potential as human beings.