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Title: President Trump Author: CrimethInc. Date: November 9, 2016 Language: en Topics: Trump, apocalypse Source: Retrieved on 3rd December 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2016/11/09/president-trump-countdown-to-apocalypse
Move the doomsday clock forward another click.
We were right about the direction things are heading, but wrong about
the timeframe. We thought Clinton would win the election, and would then
be discredited by new scandals and the challenges of preserving an
increasingly unpopular status quo, producing a reactionary surge like
the one that recently toppled Dilma in Brazil. Instead, the scandal
broke before the election, with the announcement of further FBI
inquiries into emails associated with Clinton. And, as with the Brexit
vote, everyone underestimated just how desperate and reactionary the
general public has become—at least the ones who still identify with the
ruling order enough to vote at all. It’s later than you think.
It’s significant that the news event that rescued Trump’s presidential
bid was essentially an intervention by the FBI. This tells us a lot
about the era we are entering: it is the security apparatus of the state
that will be calling the shots, not the aspects of government that
purport to improve the lives of citizens. Capitalism, long stabilized in
the so-called First World by the compromises that produced the middle
class, will henceforth be imposed by force. The surplus of the 20^(th)
century has run out; the velvet glove is coming off the iron fist. Sure,
demagogues like Trump and Sanders will continue to promise us the moon
every four years or so, but it won’t be peace treaties that will
preserve the prevailing order—it will be police.
News like this is bound to induce despair, but we must not let this
election cause us to lose faith in humanity as a whole. Elections serve
to represent us to each other at our worst, distilling the most
offensive, cowardly, and servile aspects of the species. Many people who
would never personally wrest a mother from her children are capable of
endorsing deportation from the privacy of a voting booth, just as most
people who eat meat could never work at a slaughterhouse. Were it not
for the alienation that characterizes government itself, most of the
ugly policies comprising the Trump agenda could never be implemented.
Presidential campaigns are calculated to promote apathy, giving the
impression that all the important decisions in the world are out of our
hands. That’s the point of state politics: to immobilize us outside the
halls of power, distrusting each other and ourselves.
Today, even the most law-abiding liberal must realize that we cannot
continue to watch from the sidelines. Against the spectacle of
powerlessness, we must counterpose our own agency. But to what purpose?
Surely not to prop up yet another political campaign. We have to think
bigger.
The fundamental problem is that power is structured into such vertical
concentrations in the first place. If the President of the United States
did not wield such disproportionate influence over the fate of
humanity—if the free market did not enable businessmen to accumulate so
much leverage over society—then Donald Trump could not be so dangerous,
however despicable a person he is.
Those on the Left who have persisted in the naĂŻve belief that the right
government could solve the problems generated by global capitalism are
partly to blame for this situation. The Democratic Party was foolish to
back an establishment candidate at a time when so many people are
desperate, angry, and rebellious. In legitimizing the idea that America
is or should be great in the first place, Democrats smoothed the way for
Trump to promise to make it great once more. Every tax dollar good
liberals paid to the government hoping it would care for the poor, sick,
elderly, and underprivileged has built the juggernaut that will now roll
across their civil liberties. Every law they continue to obey will aid
and abet that process. And if the media outlets and politicians that
decried Trump as the candidate of the apocalypse accept him now in the
name of the democratic process, this only confirms their complicity.
The problem is democracy itself: the form of government that brought
Adolf Hitler into office. In response to the polls, we assert that no
one should have the right to rule over anyone else. Neither Donald
Trump, nor Barack Obama, nor Mother Theresa could ever use such power
for good. We have to create horizontal structures and autonomous
movements that can meet our needs directly, rather than continuing to
feed resources into structures that will be used against us for the
benefit of a few.
Let us look for silver linings in this cloud of oncoming tear gas.
Perhaps it is for the best that someone like Trump is coming to power
now, rather than four years hence. Let the right wing demonstrate that
their solutions are just as inadequate as those proposed from the Left.
In a time of economic crises, ecological collapse, and spreading war,
the state is a hot potato: no one will be able to hold it long. Those
who voted for Trump will be disappointed indeed if they actually believe
he will bring back the heyday of Fordist capitalism in a globalized
world.
Of course, disillusioned Trump voters will not necessarily join our
ranks. They are more likely to move further to the right, just as
Sanders supporters may simply entrench themselves deeper in futile and
antiquated fantasies of 20^(th) century socialism. We should set out to
debunk the arguments from both sides, keeping dialogue open with
everyone we can while preparing for open conflict with those who are
determined to bring about a more totalitarian world.
We must not let the outrage that people feel today shift into a
hopelessness that could become the new normal. Only in taking action,
however small, can we come into a sense of our collective agency. This
is the time to strengthen ties between communities in struggle and those
who will be most affected by Trump’s policies. This is the time to
dispense once and for all with hope for any solutions from above, any
brighter future apart from the actions we take on a day-to-day basis in
our immediate surroundings. This is the time to learn and practice
proper online security—who knows how far the repressive operations of
the state will go, or how fast.
There will be new social movements, new uprisings, new fights ahead.
This is the time to find each other and prepare to go resolutely forward
into them.
Cradle the seed, even in the volcano’s mouth. Good luck out there,
comrades.