Protest politics in the age of Trump

So who else is mad as hell about the sym­bol­ic trans­fer of power between rival fac­tions of the bour­geois­ie? Remem­ber all the demon­stra­tions that spon­tan­eously broke out eight years ago, when Barack Obama was first in­aug­ur­ated? And then the acute sense of out­rage we sus­tained throughout his two terms in of­fice, hold­ing reg­u­lar protests as the gov­ern­ment he over­saw de­por­ted a re­cord num­ber of un­doc­u­mented im­mig­rants?

Oh wait…

None of that ever happened. In fact, the first is­sue of In­ter­na­tion­al So­cial­ist Re­view re­leased dur­ing Obama’s pres­id­ency fea­tured one of his 2008 cam­paign slo­gans: “Yes we can!” Des­pite the fact his for­eign policy plat­form was vir­tu­ally identic­al to that of his pre­de­cessor (save some stuff about shift­ing fo­cus away from the Middle East, to­ward East Asia), and al­though do­mest­ic­ally he merely fol­lowed through on Bush’s bail­out of the banks, most self-de­scribed Marx­ists sat back and cheered to them­selves as Obama was sworn in. The lead ed­it­or­i­al an­nounced that

the elec­tion of Barack Hus­sein Obama as forty-fourth pres­id­ent of the United States is a wa­ter­shed event. In a coun­try where Afric­ans were brought in chains, were slaves un­til 1865, where leg­al (or de facto) se­greg­a­tion was the rule, and where the ma­jor­ity of Afric­an Amer­ic­ans were not giv­en the right to vote un­til 1965, Obama’s elec­tion is his­tor­ic… En­gage­ment is the or­der of the day.

By con­trast, this same pub­lic­a­tion frowns upon any sort of en­gage­ment with the in­com­ing Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. “Res­ist­ance” is the or­der of the day: “Let the res­ist­ance be­gin. The churn­ing fear and re­vul­sion swirl­ing in­side us as we watch Don­ald J. Trump take the oath to be­come the 45th pres­id­ent of the United States will be at least some­what bal­anced by the sat­is­fac­tion of watch­ing in­spir­ing and un­pre­ced­en­ted levels of protest rising up to greet an in­com­ing pres­id­ent…” Con­jur­ing up the ghost of fas­cism, any­one who en­ter­tains the idea of en­ga­ging with the new pres­id­ent is branded a col­lab­or­at­or.

What’s so dif­fer­ent, though? You’d think that a Marxoid sect that traces its lin­eage to Len­in would re­mem­ber his fam­ous para­phrase of The Civil War in France (1871) in State and Re­volu­tion (1917): “Marx grasped this es­sence of cap­it­al­ist demo­cracy splen­didly when, in ana­lyz­ing the ex­per­i­ence of the [Par­is] Com­mune, he said that the op­pressed are al­lowed once every few years to de­cide which par­tic­u­lar rep­res­ent­at­ives of the op­press­ing class shall rep­res­ent and repress them in par­lia­ment!” Ob­vi­ously it would be folly to ar­gue that both ma­jor Amer­ic­an parties are identic­al. Yet neither rep­res­ents the in­terests of the work­ing class, so why en­gage with either?

Yas­min Nair put it bluntly in a piece weigh­ing the pros and cons of sta­ging demon­stra­tions against Trump: “Everything you’re march­ing to pre­vent, dear march­ers, has already come to pass.” The anti-Trump spec­tacle is a cru­cial part of the Trump spec­tacle. But as I’ll prob­ably join in, if only to try and push par­ti­cipants bey­ond the lim­ited frame of protest polit­ics. In oth­er words, I’ll prob­ably just yell scary shit about the dic­tat­or­ship of the pro­let­ari­at.

Hav­ing at­ten­ded one of the protests today, I’m wor­ried they’re gonna be really lame. For the last few days, all the left­ists on my feed have been say­ing: “Come in­aug­ur­a­tion day, shit is gonna go down for real.” Noth­ing I’ve seen on any of the livestreams has come even close to that, though, though some an­arch­ists in Wash­ing­ton, DC torched a limo and smashed a few win­dows. To be sure, I don’t be­grudge any­one who wants to lift some shit they want if they can get away with it. But I don’t see what’s so spe­cial about today. Just don’t take a bunch of selfies as you do it.

It’s just all so an­ti­cli­mactic. Ex­cept for the in­aug­ur­a­tion it­self, which with 3 Doors Down has already cre­ated an im­press­ive end-times feel. But the protests are likely go­ing to fea­ture mind­less chants like “Hey hey, ho ho, Don­ald Trump has got to go!” and stu­pid ban­ners that say “When they go low, we go high.” When people go home they’ll all pat them­selves on the back for “let­ting their voices be heard” or what­not, smugly demon­strat­ing to every­one how right they’ve been this whole time (what the alt-right has ac­cur­ately dubbed “vir­tue-sig­nal­ing”). Maybe the In­ter­na­tion­al So­cial­ist Or­gan­iz­a­tion will sell some pa­pers.

The wo­men’s march on Wash­ing­ton to­mor­row is be­ing billed by its lead­ing or­gan­izers as ex­pli­citly not an anti-Trump march, which leads some to won­der about the event’s tim­ing. Nev­er­the­less, hear­ing them talk about the need to cre­ate “safe spaces” — where they can stage “cour­ageous con­ver­sa­tions about race and priv­ilege” — I can’t help but feel like the left is once again rud­der­less and adrift, as it was dur­ing the Bush years. Re­volu­tion­ar­ies should not be seek­ing sanc­tu­ary or asylum, some­where they can feel safe; they should be seek­ing to make re­ac­tion­ar­ies feel un­safe. Give them nowhere to hide.