It’s so much likelier that Trump will win this year than it was in 2020 not just because of the swinging political pendulum, but also because the dominant wing of the ruling class has made clear that it now views Trump as an acceptable candidate. If the neocon-aligned, monopolist wing of the bourgeoisie were to not be confident they can control Trump, then Nikki Haley would still be a relevant factor. Haley has proven to no longer be seen as necessary, meaning the monopoly finance capitalists expect Trump to carry forth their next cold war maneuvers. This isn’t truly surprising, because during his first term Trump acted as an even more aggressively anti-Russian president than Obama. If he’s allowed to repeat this pattern from 2025 through 2029, though, it will do serious damage towards MAGA.
Much of the discourse around Trump, whether it’s coming from his supporters or from his enemies, is based not within what he actually stands for but within what these different elements pretend he stands for. The biggest examples of this have been liberals attacking Trump for supposedly being pro-Russian, and Trump’s defenders praising him for the same reason. The Russiagaters depend on the narrative that Trump and the other MAGA figures are enemies of U.S. foreign policy, while the MAGA leaders maintain their mass support by convincing their base that they’re authentically antiwar.
Psyops are involved on both sides of this discourse. The Russiagaters use unsubstantiated reports of collusion and foreign interference. The MAGA side promotes narratives about Iran and China being in cahoots with the U.S. deep state, making Trump’s warmongering against these countries appear justified. To survive, MAGA has largely had to rely on the statement that “Trump didn’t start any wars,” which is only compelling when you ignore how much he escalated the existing wars and how much closer he brought us to World War III.
The illusion of MAGA being genuinely anti-establishment will be discredited to the maximum extent if Trump becomes president again, and continues to aid the war machine during the present era. This is an era when the war machine has come to bring so much material harm towards the USA’s people that any president who continues the wars will become a target for intense mass outrage. Such backlash is coming to Biden right now, and it’s so severe that it could be what loses him the election. The reason why the equivalent thing will happen to Trump is that left-leaning young people aren’t the only ones who’ve been developing a proto anti-imperialist consciousness. Biden’s foil is the young left-wing people, while MAGA’s foil will be the layer of conservatives who will no longer accept a leader that keeps up the imperial project.
For the ones in this layer to become disillusioned with MAGA, they won’t need to be exposed to the independent media which documents imperialist crimes, though that media has an important role. This is because during the stage we’ve entered into, the imperialist wars have much more visibility to the U.S. public than they did in the Obama or Trump eras. The inflation crisis has become severe enough that it’s among the people’s top concerns, and everyone sees how our government is forsaking our needs in favor of perpetual military adventures.
A post-2024 president Trump would try to shift the blame for his continuation of the wars, but no matter how much culture war rhetoric he and the other anti-woke figures put forth, the plain reality will be that he’ll have failed to end these conflicts. Which means there will be a reaction from the MAGA base, a much bigger reaction than the ones which came from certain parts of MAGA when Trump struck Syria. Those instances were just blips in the news cycle as far as most Americans were concerned; for the Ukraine and “Israel” proxy wars to continue under Trump, and then perhaps have new wars be added onto them, would be seen by the masses as a crisis. A crisis that can only be ended through fundamental change.
The promoters of the anti-woke psyop will attempt to divert this discontent, perhaps promoting QAnon or some other conspiracy that portrays Trump as a secretly revolutionary figure. These kinds of tricks by the ruling class are only so effective, though. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the hoax that the czar propagated to make it look like capitalism’s problems came from Jews, didn’t prevent the Russian revolution. And the reactionary trade unions, which had elements that were susceptible to the Protocols hoax, were instrumental towards Bolshevism’s victory. Communists have the potential to bring many more among the disillusioned conservative elements into an authentic anti-imperialist mass mobilization, and away from reactionary explanations for our worsening conditions.
Should the deep state let Trump win, nothing will fundamentally change in terms of governance. Yet this will only further show why change is necessary and inevitable, no matter what our ruling class wants to happen. Change will come one way or another, that’s the nature of class conflict and of history. This will be true even if the deep state somehow manages to overcome the decline of the Democratic Party’s base, and force through a Biden victory. The most likely scenario, though, is one where the deep state instead lets Trump win, which will be the worst thing that could happen to MAGA.
In essence, MAGA has already been dead for a while, with its demise having arguably been confirmed earlier this year when Trump effectively stated he seeks to increase NATO funding. Now we’re just waiting for Trump to show he’ll repeat his first term’s foreign policy. All that remains is the myth of MAGA as a viable means for defeating monopoly capital, which is a myth that can’t survive a second Trump term. We need to take full advantage of the opportunities for mass agitation that our crises are creating for us. And a crucial part of this is to fill the vacuum that MAGA’s demise will leave behind. MAGA has provided an outlet for many of the Americans who’ve grown disillusioned by our ongoing post-2008 depression, and by the forever wars from this era. We need to replace it with a genuine avenue for mobilizing against the imperial system; one that works to bring Americans into unity with the Russians, the Iranians, the Koreans, the Chinese, and the others who are resisting the hegemon.
If we pick up many among the MAGA base, we’ll also be better able to pick up people within an even larger element: the element that’s alienated from politics. Our biggest goal needs to be to reach the Americans who otherwise wouldn’t get politically involved, due to essentially being pushed out of politics by our fake capitalist “democracy.” The amount of workers who don’t vote is bigger than the amount of them who’ve been voting MAGA in hope that this will bring change. We can use MAGA’s downfall to expand the struggle into both of these demographics.
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