On the Liberal Myth of “Trump’s Base”

The discussion on the centrist article on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, which appeared in WV No. 1137 (27 July 2018), led to a further important correction that had been resisted by the central SL/U.S. party leadership until the 15th National Conference. The same leading international comrade who objected to the Kavanaugh article also objected to WV’s repeated references to “Trump’s base” as the source of the anti-immigrant measures and flagrant racism of his administration. For example, we wrote in the Kavanaugh article: “Like the roundups and detentions at the Mexican border, Trump’s [anti-Muslim] ban plays to his white-supremacist base.” Our conference document wrongly asserted that this statement was “not narrowly false”; actually, it was simply false.

While Trump has many supporters, including fervent ones, he does not have a base that is independent of the longstanding electoral base of the Republican Party. The idea that “Trump’s base” is responsible for the current reactionary political climate is a direct echo of the Democratic Party “resistance,” which blames white workers who voted for Trump, whom they label “deplorables,” both for Trump’s ascendancy and for his policies in office. The purpose is to push illusions in the other party of American capitalism by whitewashing the Democrats’ role in the bourgeoisie’s war against the working class, immigrants, black people and all the oppressed.

By adopting the framework of “Trump’s base,” we were capitulating to these liberal bourgeois forces. To argue, as we had, that Trump’s policies are determined by his “base” subscribes to the lie that the policies of the capitalist state are determined by the “will of the people” as opposed to the capitalist ruling class.

In defending the liberal myth of “Trump’s base,” several leading comrades argued that our use of the term did not refer to white workers. This was reflected, for example, in the Introduction to Black History and the Class Struggle No. 26 (August 2018), which stated, “While some white workers did vote for him, Trump’s base is the petty-bourgeois Tea Party types as well as other reactionaries and religious nuts.” However, as a March motion passed by the SL/U.S. Political Bureau in the aftermath of the conference rightly noted, “Whatever definition of Trump’s ‘base’ is used, it is a way for the liberal bourgeoisie to whitewash itself and cover up its own track record, posing as ‘friends of the oppressed’.”

The political logic of WV’s harping on “Trump’s base” would be to write off the possibility of winning white workers to the fight against racial oppression and for working-class power—that is, to reject the perspective of integrated class struggle and socialist revolution. By joining the anti-Trump chorus about his “base,” we partook in the idealist and liberal notion that racism among the white masses is the source of racial oppression rather than the American capitalist system in which it is rooted. As the Political Bureau motion further argued:

“Backward consciousness is not the source of racial oppression, although it is part of sustaining the oppression and economic degradation of blacks, Latinos and other minorities, and of maintaining the oppression of the working class as a whole. Racial oppression fundamentally stems from the American capitalist system and its ruling class, which divide the working class along racial lines. The responsibility for increased reaction under the Trump presidency lies centrally with the bourgeoisie represented by both its parties and supported by the labor lieutenants of capital.”

In the WV No. 1137 article and elsewhere, border guards and the cops were particularly identified as elements in “Trump’s base” that he was whipping up for further acts of racist violence. In fact, such acts are part of their job. These armed forces are at the core of the capitalist state, whose very purpose is the violent repression of workers and the oppressed as well as any who would oppose U.S. capitalist rule. This is true regardless of which party is in power.

However, WV repeatedly asserted that Border Patrol and other police agencies were “emboldened” by Trump, implying that the state somehow became more repressive under his administration and that it would be less repressive if a Democrat were in power. Notwithstanding Trump’s rhetoric, police violence and anti-immigrant crackdowns have not fundamentally changed between his, Obama’s and previous administrations. As Leon Trotsky put it in response to those who argued that the nature of the police changed under a social-democratic government, “Though governments may change, the police remain.”

Trump has emboldened fascist terror gangs. But he didn’t come to power based on mobilizing these racist murderers. His victory was secured by the mechanisms of American bourgeois democracy. That he found widespread popular support in the 2016 election is in no small measure because the Democrats responded to his call, “Make America Great Again,” by declaring, “America Is Already Great.”

The Republicans openly stoke racist reaction, while the Democrats lie and then do the same thing. In 2016, however, the Hillary Clinton campaign did not even make a pretense of offering anything to working people ground down by massive economic dislocation. The Democrats have since invoked the bogeyman of “Trump’s base” to explain their defeat and refurbish their credentials. By echoing this myth, we were politically flinching toward the Democratic Party.

In correcting the false notion of “Trump’s base,” we also concurred with comrades who criticized the slogan, “Democrats paved the way for Trump.” Especially in the way it was used for the current Black History pamphlet cover—“Racist Trump White House: Democrats Paved the Way”—the slogan implies that there is a qualitative difference between the Democrats and Republicans. It echoes the liberal view that if only the Democrats had a “better” candidate (for example, Sanders) or if only the Obama administration had been “better,” Trump would not have won. We received a letter from a longtime supporter, B. Montoya, who argued as much after we used the slogan in the wake of Trump’s 2016 victory. But we wrongly defended the slogan (see “Democrats, Liberals and the Union Tops,” WV No. 1104, 27 January 2017). By insisting so much on “Democrats paved the way,” we made it seem as though the Democrats’ greatest crime was laying the groundwork for Trump’s rise, letting them off the hook for their own attacks on working people and the oppressed.

Correctives to capitulations to the pressures acting on the SL/U.S. have repeatedly come from leading comrades outside the country, underlining the key role such comrades play in helping the SL/U.S. maintain its Marxist program and moorings. We anticipate that liberal pressures will only sharpen and heighten in the coming period, as campaigning for the 2020 presidential elections gets under way. Against the drive by liberals and reformists to “defeat Trump” and elect Democrats, whether “corporatist” or “progressive,” we put forward our revolutionary program for proletarian independence and the need to forge a multiracial workers party that fights for a workers America.