ZJW
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Moo wrote:
‘In my opinion, Trump won because Americans blame Biden for the cost-of-living crisis (due to the myth that governments control the economy, when it’s the other way ’round). Also, protectionism sounds good to workers, even though its an issue that only concerns the capitalist class. ‘Agreed.
Moo also wrote:
‘That Trump positions himself as a racist & xenophobe, & yet, he greatly increased his share of the vote from ethnic minorities.’
Well, *anti-Trump media* so position him, yes. But if you watch/read FOX or Newsmax it’s another story. You say he’s (anti-black) racist, and they come back with ‘Is that so? Then, what about his Platinum Program during his first term?’ And then there are all these Republican black congressmen (or other electees) oozing out of the pores that support him, not to mention the black reporters or anchors on Fox or Newsmax.
As for the anti-migrant thing, it is very easy to be taken in by it. Here is Bannon just after getting out of jail. Government encouragement of mass immigration as a deliberate policy to depress wages, especially of blacks and latinos. ‘The system is rigged against the working class […] we’re going to move past the politics of race with an intermediate stop in the politics of gender which is being forced
on everybody right now we’re going to get to what is important and that’s the politics of money’ etc. Amorphously pretty convincing stuff.(You can stop listening at about 14:30 unless you want to hear him take questions from the press and go on about election-cheating and the like.)
If all Trump/Vance speeches had been written by Bannon, there’d have been no talk of illegal Haitians eating US-passport-carrying dogs and cats (among several other classic Trump statements) and they would have won by a much bigger margin than a mere 50.4% to 48% (so far, according to AP).
In fact, in his victory speech Trump even bragged of support by, among others, Arab-and-Muslim Americans:
‘They had some great analysis of the people that voted for us. Nobody’s ever seen anything like that. They came from, they came from all quarters. Union, nonunion, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American, Muslim American, we had everybody and it was beautiful. It was a historic realignment. Uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense.’
An actually rather bizarre speech for Trump in so far as it was marked by lack of gratuitous offensiveness, and reference to migrants was both scant and benign.
Speech transcript:https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-victory-speech-full-transcript-1981234
As a further challenge to some people’s imagination there’s the Arab-American / Muslim vote:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/dearborn-arab-americans-trump-party
And a couple days before the election, the exemplary
self-described ‘extremely liberal’ Democrat Arab-American who not just voted for Trump but campaigned for him:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZqC8q6bpl0&t=168s to 3:37 and then off it, about 50 seconds or so in all.)and also about her, the first three paragraphs here: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/2/why-many-arab-voters-in-michigan-are-flocking-to-trump-ahead-of-us-election
Moo wrote:
‘According to BBC News, 48% of Hispanic-Americans & 50% of Asian-Americans voted for Trump! Can you imagine! ‘
What is the challenge to the imagination supposed to be?
In addition:
‘Trump about doubled his share of young Black men – which helped him among key Democratic voting group. About 3 in 10 Black men under the age of 45 went for Trump, roughly double the number he got in 2020.’ (from https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latinos-black-voters-0f3fbda3362f3dcfe41aa6b858f22d12)
Obviously such voters are not Guardian etc readers or they’d have ‘known better’, eh?
The election of Trump was the US proletariat’s imposition of its dictatorship:
https://jacobin.com/2024/11/trump-2024-election-inflation-economy
This is much closer to my own idea of an ‘underplayed classic’. Arrigo Barnabé at the Teatro Pixinguinha in São Paulo, 1979, exhibiting a marriage of popular music and the dodecaphonic series (Schoenbergism).
Or, the same song many years later, and much much less crudely:
In connection with #249321 #249333 #249495 #249530 and #249536 above,
I would like to add into that sub-thead Robin Cox’s most recent relevant contribution: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2024/no-1442-october-2024/material-world-non-market-socialism-is-feasible
I don’t know what thread to put this into, but Dietzgen comes up so I’ll put it here.
The CWO’s review of a new book about Pannekoek (found to be both superfluous and ‘shoddy’ in its treatment of him):
In connection with #254338 —
About expatriate Irani royalism’s pro-Israelism: https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/exiled-iranian-monarchists-align-with-israels-hardliners/
And also here, by the infamous David Miller, writing on the Irani state’s Press TV website … and in fact he mentions the author of the h.moss recommended article, in an uncomplimentary fashion naturally:
Harris vs Trump vs Stein/West:
about the Muslim vote and Arab-American vote in the US:
Harris, Trump, or Neither? Arab & Muslim Voters’ Anger Grows
ALB –
Here’s a link, that will work, to the h.moss recommended article: https://archive.ph/lRWgPA critique of that IP review of the David Adam book is here:
In the same issue (no longer the current one) an article titled ‘Political organisation is key’, which is not worth linking to, ends on this note:
‘Comrade Conrad pointed out that the left in general is in a parlous state. The much vaunted revival of the Young Communist League seems to have come to exactly naught. The Socialist Appeal/RCP success in recruiting young people has been hugely exaggerated. In reality it is a Potemkin village. Internationally too the left is doing badly. For example the Democratic Socialists of America have declined from 100,000 registered members to around half that now. Meanwhile, there has been the complete collapse of the Corbyn project. This has had an adverse effect, but without people learning the lessons.
Instead there is the search by the flotsam and jetsam for the next soft left alliance, broad party, anti-cuts initiative or some other such nonsense. What is needed is commitment to founding a Communist Party.’
