Joe Rogan is a vessel of racism and racist demagoguery. He twists and ignores historical and present day realities to peddle – and he is well paid for it – a racist narrative to white workers. In his telling, the interests of white workers are at loggerheads with workers of color. Progressives, the social justice movement, and especially the labor movement should challenge his narrative and the narrative of others like him.

White workers derive advantages from racism to be sure, but it also comes at a price, moral, cultural, and material. Thus in challenging racism, this side of the dialectic can’t be ignored or minimized. In fact, it should command systematic and creative attention, if we hope to move white workers from the MAGA camp to the camp of democratic, egalitarian, and social progress for all.And yet in too many instances this side of the dialectic is, like an orphan, who finds too few suiters.

I saw a dear friend of mine yesterday. She’s in a battle with cancer that she is fighting with every bit as much grace, honesty, and courage that has marked every day of her life. Upon leaving I told her that she’s not only a remarkable political activist, but also, and this counts a lot in my book, the best friend anyone could ever have. Since both of us are Bruce fans, I thought I would post one of his songs that I suspect she likes too.

(I presented this nearly 10 years ago to the National Board of the CPUSA, shortly before the party’s convention in 2014, where I stepped down. It wasn’t greated with great enthusiasm, I’m posting it because most of it holds up pretty well; some things not so much. It’s slightly edited here and there.)

On Janurary 6 insurrectionists, coordinated by a defeated presidential candidate and his cronies, stormed the capital in an attempt to overturn the results of a properly and legally conducted election two months earlier. Never before had this happened. The peaceful transfer of power was considered sacrosanct. Bloody clashes might substitute for an orderly and peaceful transition in some other country or region of the world, but not here, not in the citadel of democracy. But then, with the whole world watching the unthinkable and unimaginable happened – a bitterly contested, bloody, and messy transition of presidential power. So much for the myth of “American Exceptionalism.”

While the coup failed, the Republican Party, the MAGA movement, and right wing social media, the trifecta of authoritarian rule and lawlessness, didn’t exit the political stage though. Did anybody think they would?

And until they do, two things are clear. First, we still face an existential danger to democracy, equality, and everything else that we hold dear. Even with a calcified and evenly divided electorate, things could go south real fast.

What is also obvious is that any major rebuff to this retrograde bloc will do its dance on the terrain of electoral politics. Other terrains of struggle shouldn’t be abandoned. Quite the contrary. But a qualitative shift in power in a progressive, consistently democratic direction requires, as a first condition, the decisive defeat of this retrograde bloc at the ballot box. Such an outcome will likely take more than one election cycle and its consolidation will hinge in no small measure on what is done between as well as during election cycles.

We live in momentous times!

I hear it said that Ron DeSantis is Trump without all the drama and personal excesses. He is more calculating, more focused, and smarter on the one hand and less ego driven and unpredictable on the other.

But what this comparison misses is Trump’s innate ability to energize, direct, sustain, and manipulate a mass base. When it comes to giving voice to people’s basest passions and assembling a cross class constituency on a national level, Trump so far is in a class by himself. Nor does DeSantis or any other Republican have the daring to recklessly act, to roll the dice like Trump demonstrated on January 6.

And it is naive to think that Trump won’t clean up some of his mistakes, including acting in a more measured way in some situations, if there is a ‘next time.’

Right wing extremist authoritarianism, fascist or some other variety, is in many ways an irrational system and its politics therefore rest to no small degree on demagoguery, lies, and perfomative politics as well as force. On this count, Trump stands above DeSantis, admittedly no novice, by a considerable margin. That could change, but I doubt the odds makers in Vegas would give you great odds on that bet.