This story was first published in the People’s Tribune February-March print edition.
The Trump coalition is moving fast, trying to impose a dictatorship on the U.S. and the world.
The cruel hunting of immigrants and separating families, the assaults on the LGBTQ+ community, the homeless, the hungry, Black Americans, students and others are tactics used to divide and conquer — while they rob us. They want us to accept a police-state dictatorship, shredded social programs, and no constitutional rights. Nonetheless, millions of people are fighting back. Resistance is growing daily.
Why a dictatorship now?
In the U.S., 43% of the population lives in poverty. Homelessness is rampant and growing. Prices keep climbing. Jobs continue to be automated or sent overseas, real wages keep falling, and the endless wars kill hundreds of thousands while consuming trillions of dollars that should go for human needs.
The working class is demanding real change; people want a society that takes care of everyone. The billionaires and corporations who run the U.S. need a dictatorship to control people while they loot the public treasury, slash and privatize public programs and cut jobs. It’s about them maintaining their power and profits under crisis conditions.
And although many of Trump’s executive orders have been unprecedented and an extreme escalation, this crisis has been a bipartisan affair. Billionaires finance both the Democrats and Republicans, and the attack on democracy and the economic assault on the workers have gone for years. This includes the attack on unions, deindustrialization, destruction of social programs, privatizing things public, deregulation, huge tax cuts for the rich, militarizing the police, weakening voting rights and constitutional protections, tightening immigration controls, the police violence (especially against people of color), the genocide, etc. It’s not just about Trump or the far right.
The real enemy of the people is the billionaire class and their profit-driven system. If we are to stop their rapid motion towards dictatorship, we, the people, must stand up in defense of the entire working class and everyone who faces oppression. Once we accomplish this, we can break the hold of the billionaires and big corporations and begin to build a peaceful society that meets everyone’s needs.
