By Carl Davidson
LeftLinks Weekly, June 7, 2024
The news of the day offers us two sharply divided visions of who we are as a people.
The first is complex. We see Biden honoring the 1944 sacrifices made during D-Day by American soldiers fighting fascism.
As students of history, we know the bottom line: honoring these men is always fitting and proper. At the same time, we can be critical. The main problem with D-Day was the long delay in launching it. Winston Churchill always wanted to see the Nazis kill as many Russian troops as they could before the Germans had to turn back. This meant, however, that the most decisive battle of WW2 was at Stalingrad, where the sacrifice of millions broke the Wehrmacht profoundly. While it's proper to honor D-Day, we should not let it be used as a 'fog of war' preventing us from understanding the bigger picture. The America of popular democracy was one component of a worldwide popular front against fascism. Nor should we forget the ‘premature antifascists’ who fought with the Lincoln Battalion in Spain, 1936-38.
Yet there was another concurrent America leading up to 1941, the sizable 'America First' bloc led by the American hero-turned-fascist, Charles Lindbergh. We're often told that the 'America First' crew disappeared with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The assertion is misleading. Our Lindbergh fascists moved under cover while many of their key politicians continued to work in Congress as paid agents of the German Reich, forming a sizable antiwar faction and dispersing millions of pieces of Nazi propaganda via the U.S. mail. We can thank Rachel Maddow for her excellent 'Ultra' podcasts that have uncovered and spotlighted this piece of history for us.
This brings us to the week's contrasting bit of news. Speaking at a rally in Phoenix, AZ, Trump denounced his conviction by a unanimous jury in a New York City courtroom on 13 felony counts pertaining to the abuse of election laws. “Those appellate courts have to step up and straighten things out or we’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said, aiming at the Dept of Justice, judges, and the entire legal system. The bulk of his talk, however, was on Biden and the border. Politico reports: “I want to send Joe Biden’s illegal aliens back home where they belong,” Trump said. “They have to go back home because quite simply, Joe Biden wants an invasion. I want a deportation. I want a deportation. On day one, I will seal the border. I will stop the invasion, and we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in the history [sic.].”
Hardly anything Trump stated as fact was true. But what mattered more was not facts, reasonable assessments or economic platforms. It was the narrative, a continuation of the old Lindbergh 'America First' bloc's outlook. Trump declared that none of the current problems abroad mattered. The main problem was 'the enemy within.' And this enemy reached far beyond brown-skinned people at the border. It obviously includes us, the left, but Trump wants to lock up everyone who has opposed him, including major media figures and Members of Congress like Liz Cheney. And if he loses in November, it can only be, in his mind, because the election was rigged, and the 'enemy within' still needed to be taken down, and the Constitution along with it.
The 'America of popular democracy is a wide front, and our rainbow of the Squad, aka, the Justice Democrats, is the left wing of it. We have deep roots, going back to the slave revolts, the abolitionists, the Wide Awakes of 1860, and the abolition democracy of Reconstruction. Trump's bloc has deep roots as well, going back to the Know Nothings, the pro-slavery Copperheads in the North, the Confederacy itself, and the 'white Christian' redeemers of the KKK in the 1920s. His rhetoric around 'the border' is largely aimed at evoking dreams of a 'White Republic' of days gone by. It's quite accurate to call them neoconfederates today, even if it doesn't fit nicely on a bumper sticker.
Why does this historic framing matter? We need to get clear on the fact that policies and platforms alone don't win elections or assemble the forces needed to win them. Many white workers, for example, are solidly with the Democrats, despite sharing the same economic situations and hope as those in the Trump camp. How do they differ? They haven't bought into the 'defend and restore whiteness' themes of the MAGA crowd. They hold to a broader and opposing narrative of a common front against fascism, one that sometimes includes the old 'Double-V' slogan advanced by the Black press during WW2: Victory against Fascism abroad and Jim Crow at Home.
We didn't hear about 'Double V' or Stalingrad in Biden's speech. More importantly, we didn't hear a decisive break with Israel's Likud over the ongoing Gaza slaughter. Team Biden has its views, and we have ours. That spells out a task for us in waging a struggle within a common front against a greater danger. Carry it out wisely. There's a lot at stake.
We are sheep being lead down a dark path by sociopathic serial killers. We deserve our fate cause we stand down instead of standing up to out pathetic system of democracy. The elite oligarchy and AIPAC are our puppet masters. We reap what we sow. Enjoy.