USA/Canada

Yes, Trump is fascist

I can’t see where Dan Katz ( Solidarity 676 ) is coming from with his pedantic insistence that Trump is not, as in truth he is, a fascist. Or where Katz is going with it. Sure, we want accuracy and as far as possible, precision. We want to avoid demagogy and using words in such a way that feeling is substituted for reason. In office, Trump did his best to be a rules-free dictator. He broke every rule and precedent he felt he needed to. He has discredited the FBI and the CIA (the main trouble with that is that he wanted to make them his wholly pliant weapons and tools). Before 2016, and in...

Not just populist

As a regular reader of your newspaper I find you get most of the important things right like Ukraine and Brexit; but why do some of your contributors go out of their way to deny that Donald Trump is a fascist? Dan Katz repeats the “Trump is not a fascist” mantra ( Solidarity 676 ) maintaining instead that Trump is merely “a right wing populist”. That view may have been plausible a few years ago, but what marks Trump out from the likes of Orban and Erdogan nowadays is that he has actually initiated a right wing insurrection which came close to succeeding in overthrowing the elected government...

Trump’s stay-out-of-jail card?

In the 1930s Depression era America, evangelists went on the radio to rob the poor of their hard earned cash. One in particular peddled the line that there was a mother somewhere saving her money in a cookie jar but not knowing for what purpose. Now was the chance to send that money to reverend so-and-so to help him “do God’s work”. The USA has never been short of con artists tricking the working classes out of their earnings. At the present time the most accomplished of these is Donald Trump. His latest grifting exercise raised $14 million in a fortnight following his arraignment in New York...

Trump not fascist

I enjoy Jim Denham’s columns, but the last one (7 June) was spoilt by the casual denunciation of Donald Trump as a fascist and the claim that in “November 2020 74 million Americans voted fascist”. Trump’s a peculiar, unpleasant, right-wing pig, for sure. But misunderstanding the problem Trump and his movement poses for the left and the US labour movement helps no one. Trump has widespread support across the Republican party and, in particular among its elected representatives. So, if Trump’s a fascist, the Republican party is a fascist party, too, right? Except the Republican party does not...

A slaughterhouse and Watts

Released in 1978, Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep initially had a difficult time reaching an audience. It was made on a tight budget while Burnett was finishing at film school — he was writer, producer, editor and director — and there were problems with the film’s release as Burnett had not acquired the rights to the 22 songs on the soundtrack. That was eventually sorted out and the film was transferred to a 35mm print and DVD. It became a much praised depiction of working-class African-American life in the Watts district of Los Angeles, shot almost entirely on location and using many non...

America the “most authoritarian”?

Anti-Americanism has a long history on the left. Of course the American history of genocide of the native population, slavery and then segregation at home, and imperialist aggression overseas, is repugnant to anyone calling themselves a socialist. Recent events surrounding the rise of the fascist Donald Trump and the fact that in November 2020, 74 million Americans voted fascist, only goes to confirm a dim view of the so-called “land of the free.” But can America seriously be described as “the most authoritarian country in the world”? That description comes from Roger McKenzie, former Unison...

Sanders denounces Biden-Republican deal

On Thursday 1 June the US Senate approved a budget deal negotiated between President Biden and Republican leaders in order to approve an increase in the USA’s federal debt ceiling. Bernie Sanders voted against, saying: At a time when climate change is, by far, the most existential threat facing our country and the entire world I cannot, in good conscience, vote for a bill that makes it easier for fossil fuel companies to pollute and destroy the planet by fast-tracking the disastrous Mountain Valley Pipeline. When the future of the world is literally at stake we must have the courage to stand...

US script writers face long strike

The Writers’ Guild of America, which represents writers for film and TV studios, struck for a new contract from 2 May after 98% of members voted in favour. The WGA strike is the first time unions have raised the issue of generative artificial intelligence (AI), new programs such as Chat-GPT that writers fear could be used to de-skill or downgrade their work by generating plot outlines or possibly even scripts. While discussion still swirls about how exactly they will or should be used, possibly for strike-breaking, the union is insisting that its use should be subject to negotiation with them...

Behind the "crisis of democracy"

In America the Republicans are trying to turn the political clock backwards on Black people and white society, on women’s rights over their own bodies, and many other things. The Republican party is no longer the more conservative of the two main political parties. It is whatever Donald Trump says it is. Trump is a fascist, and the other leading Republicans are at best people willing to accommodate to fascists. The political drama now and since about 2015 and Donald Trump running for President, will, if events go the Republicans’ way, affect world politics, including British politics, for...

Trump: too big to jail?

Orson Welles said he was discouraged from standing for senator because he was divorced. The great American public would deem that marital status as signifying immoral character. Welles chose not to stand and voters in Wisconsin ended up sending one Joseph McCarthy to Washington. The appearance of moral probity was thought a necessary attribute for a successful political career and hypocritical transgressions were thus kept firmly behind closed doors. The saintly J F Kennedy, a serial womaniser, had fixers who prevented details of his sexual-harassing behaviour leaking to the media. It was...

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