Democrats Fail to Quell Mass Outrage with “No Kings” Protest as Trump Retreats on ICE Enforcement

Editorial Board

The Democratic mafia, in collusion and contention with the Republican mob, seeks to put an end to mass rebellion which erupted earlier this month in Los Angeles. Their attempts at low-intensity counter-insurgency have fallen flat.

The imperialist party seeks to traffic with the justified fury of the masses, since it is directed mainly at their political colleague and rival Donald Trump—the head of the old imperialist state and leader of the Republicans. It is the Democrats’ prerogative to transform this outrage into votes while at the same time putting out the fires set by the people. First and foremost we must understand that the masses themselves have already made conquests from their justified rebellion, forcing the ultra-reactionary Trump to make an about-face and call for an end to certain workplace Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. It was these attacks on the deepest and most profound sections of the class that lit the powder keg and erupted in violent rebellions.

The Democratic mob for its part called out all its supporters among the masses and made sure the protests were littered with the red, white, and blue flags of US imperialism. On top of this, they made ideological and political interventions through the most backward elements in the movement, declaring that any transgression of the old order was “giving Trump what he wants.” At the top of their lungs they cry out that Trump is invoking fascism and never stop complimenting this with the idea that the masses should obey orders from the police and military. Their political line is this: if we have entered fascism, the response must be to capitulate to it with “non-violence”, opposing it through collaboration with it. While the Trump administration has accelerated the process of reactionization in response to the deepening economic crisis under the slogan “Peace through strength”, the response of the Democratic mafia in its efforts to corral the mass movement has essentially been “Strength through peace”.

On the morning of the planned No Kings protests, two Democratic mafia politicians of a considerable rank were shot in Minnesota in an act of political violence carried out by an alleged supporter of Donald Trump. In response to this, former vice presidential candidate and Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz made the Democratic mafia’s plans for capitulation clear by calling off the protests in his state.

Indivisible, a Democrat-controlled Zionist “grassroots” organization, further highlights capitulation via its co-executive director Ezra Levin. According to the media monopoly CBS: “Levin said there were some concerns about outside agitators trying to disrupt protests, but he said people shouldn’t feel ‘as if we’re going into battle. That’s not what this is about. This is peaceful protest. People are going to have funny signs, people are going to be dancing, people are going to be chanting, people are going to be expressing their First Amendment rights.’”

What should people feel when they are forced to stand off against militarized ICE agents carrying out kidnappings of their co-workers and people, when these kidnappings occur under the protection of National Guard soldiers and US Marines? War has been waged on the people and the people rightly know they are going into battle. The ruling class, regardless of which mafia is speaking, invariably tries its best to split the movement between those they deem peaceful and those who defend their rights with any degree of force. But it is not working, and the rebellions continue in spite of it.

The mass rebellion is justified, while the actions of the ruling class are neither morally nor legally justified—not even by the shambolic democratic ideals of the bourgeoisie. What they call “fascism”—which in reality is the ultra-reactionary terrorism of monopoly capitalism—cannot escape the people’s judgment.

The economic crisis is behind these increased contradictions, and US imperialism is to blame.

The Economic Crisis Forces the Democrats to Ramp Up Peace Policing

The Democrats and Republicans work toward the same aims because they are the political representatives of the same class, the imperialist ruling class. Currently mired in an economic crisis of their own making, the imperialists and their representatives in the two mafias collude and contend on how to best dig their way out of it. With the economic crisis of overproduction deepening, ruling class politicians must devise how to best carry out the destruction of the overproduced productive forces, including the working class itself, while minimizing rebellion against their order.

The heightening contradictions of the economic crisis translates into greater political violence and greater instability, both among the two party mafias and between the state and the masses. Both parties are increasingly forced to present their leadership as a mortal question in order to generate hysteria among the masses and mobilize them behind their grotesque agendas, with the natural result being increased violence directed against their representatives—inevitably expressed in an individualist form. At the same time, for the deepest and most profound masses, the workers who are poorest, most exploited and oppressed, the rhetoric of the mafias is not enough to hide their oppressors’ fundamental agreements in accelerating oppression and exploitation, of which they are the primary targets domestically, and hence the sharpening economic crisis provokes their violent and explosive rebellions against the old order.

Throughout the Trump administration, with the acceleration of reactionization, the Democrats have been plotting to win leadership of the rebellious mood of the masses in order to stifle it through their countless methods of low-intensity counterinsurgency, such as funneling their struggles into the sluggish state bureaucracy through a dizzying array of lawsuits or organizing peaceful protests with state permission. In essence, their role has been to mobilize the masses to think they are fighting back, parasitizing off their anger for electoral gain, while allowing the Trump administration to get away with its sinister agenda. The revisionists and opportunists provide cover for the left-wing of the Democrats, the left-wing of the Democrats provide cover for its right-wing, and the Democratic mafia as a whole provides cover for its colleagues in the Republican mob.

However, these mobilizations are a double-edged sword whose wrath the Democrats cannot escape. On the one hand, because the masses will inevitably rebel, the Democrats must try to get ahead of this and mobilize the masses themselves to maintain law and order and funnel it toward their electoral gain. On the other hand, the mobilization of the masses against the government increasingly politicizes them against the policies of the Republicans, which objectively brings them into contention with the Democrats who not only collude with the Republicans while pushing their own reactionary policies but pursue the same or similar policies. For this reason, the Democrats must maintain their mobilizations at the level of personality politics and turn their protests into circuses, hence the “funny signs” and “dancing” they promise combined with their empty jabs aimed at Trump’s personality and appearance.

It is from within the cracks of such a facade of resistance that the righteous fire of rebellion emerges, promising to burn away the charade of imperialism, opportunism, and revisionism, and snatching conquests from the clutches of imperialism. This is what took place in LA with the reignition of the uprisings—the Democrats could not contain the rebellion despite all of their threats. This is what forced Trump’s retreat on ICE raids, exposing the collusion of the Democrats and their failures to improve the lives of the people despite mobilizing millions.

Trump Wins Another Defeat

The Trump administration, who has waged and lost all kinds of wars under his reactionary slogan “Peace through strength”, has proven its only strength to be spinning the humiliating defeats of US imperialism as great victories. Within 5 months of regaining his post at the head of US imperialism, not only has he failed to make good on his promises of saving the economy and ending wars across the world, but he has managed to accumulate even more defeats through the nefarious campaigns he has initiated.

These include his trade wars and sanctions as part of the inter-imperialist contradiction over domination of the Third World; his war of aggression against Yemen, which failed miserably within months; his politically-motivated deportations aimed at quelling the pro-Palestine movement, which continues to this day and has provided a powerful impetus to the anti-ICE rebellions; his plan to intensify ICE raids, which has just suffered a reversal, while the agency faces a budget crisis; his attempt to repress the ensuing LA uprisings, which only caused it to intensify and spread; and his wars against Iran and the Palestinian resistance, which have only sped up the burial of Israel. In fact, his temporary successes, such as the austerity measures and the gutting of the government, have only been able to take place with the collusion of the Democrats and their aligned business union leadership, who have been bribed into submission.

In regards to his latest reversal around ICE, Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday, “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

Following the post, a top ICE official ordered a pause on raids at agricultural businesses, meatpacking plants, restaurants and hotels, as well as on undocumented people who have not committed crimes—a source of rebellions in recent days, such as in response to a massive raid at meatpacking plants in Nebraska.

The ICE raids are a tool of the imperialist ruling class to manage their deepening economic crisis by assisting with forced layoffs, spreading terror to make workers’ conditions more precarious and thus force down wages and conditions across the working class, and weakening competitors and further consolidating monopoly capital. Monopoly media NBC news reports that most of the workplace raids have targeted smaller businesses, leaving monopolies able to make use of cheap migrant labor at their choosing. The targets of ICE raids has specifically been in line with the needs of monopoly capital, with fewer raids in industries experiencing worker shortages, such as construction sites, a result of the uneven development of the economic crisis.

While monopoly media and Trump himself portrays the reversal as being due to the influence of monopolists in those industries pressuring Trump, the fact is such pressure is based on the rebellions of the masses. On the one hand, the masses’ rebellion is costly to the imperialists and inspiring to the working class, with the great conflagration of LA spreading to workplaces and cities across the country. On the other hand, the masses refuse to sign up for their own deportation, with those businesses facing raids having difficulties rehiring. All in all, it is another attempt by the Republicans in collusion with the Democrats to cover their losses with arrogant proclamations, hoping to hide the reality that resistance by the masses has triumphed once again.

Photo: Los Angeles police open fire on protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets at the No Kings march. Protest organizers estimate 200,000 demonstrators in attendance.

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