“At the moment that the “normal” police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium — the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat — all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.”
Excerpt from
Fascism: What it is and how to fight it (1944)
Trotsky, Leon
I’ve been thinking about “all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy” and my mind went back to the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011. Obama’s America.
What did Trump have to say about that at the time?
From the Daily News, 13 December 2011:
Trump on Occupy Wall Street 14 Dec 2011, Wed Daily News (New York, New York) Newspapers.com
And what did Mr Hope and Change Obama have to say about them? He said some words. But he tried to play both sides.
“I understand the frustrations that are being expressed in those protests,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News on Tuesday. “The most important thing we can do right now,” he added, is “letting people know that … we are on their side.” When he first expressed sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street movement two weeks ago, Obama added a characteristically cautious qualification: “We have to have a strong, effective financial sector in order for us to grow.”
Obama Occupy Wall Street 20 Oct 2011, Thu The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California) Newspapers.com
When the Occupy Wall Street movement was forcibly dismantled by police in late 2011 and into 2012, Obama did not directly intervene to stop the crackdowns. Cities across the country saw coordinated efforts to remove protesters from public spaces, often using riot gear, tear gas, and mass arrests. The Obama administration did nothing. He also did nothing to stop the Supreme Court’s decision on Citizen United, which allowed for unlimited corporate spending in U.S. elections, from becoming law a year earlier.
Of course, I’m hardly the first person to connect the dots between Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, and MAGA. People have been doing it since at least early 2016:
There was a hunger for someone to provide a message like what Trump is offering—that the cozy Wall Street-Washington nexus cares nothing about them and it is time to take matters into their own hands and reject the blandishments of those who have put them in the state they are in. It was Trump’s genius to be able to understand and articulate that message, and to articulate a message that obliterates the traditional liberal-conservative ideological cleavages.
But I wonder how many young people today know much about Citizens United, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. I haven’t seen much analysis in the media connecting those dots to Trump’s recent victory. A quick search of the New York Times for “trump occupy Wall Street” in the last year comes up exactly nothing relevant. Nothing much comes up for “trump citizens united”, either. It’s like they don’t want to state the obvious – that the combination of unlimited corporate campaign funding and an angry, disenfranchised and ignored working class came together in the Obama years to create Trump’s second term.