Watched some of Trump’s rant in Georgia last night and I could only think that the explanation I hear from some on our side of the divide that white workers who still support him aren’t necessarily buying into his raw racist invective. I find this delusional. Racism is at the core of Trump’s message. It’s what he peddles, and practically nothing else. Moreover, in this election, Biden and the Democrats did offer an alternative working class agenda, including robust support for the labor movement. White privilege — and it comes in many forms — is a stubborn thing. And class politics that ignores it really isn’t class politics.
I was rereading (after a loooong vacation) C. Wright Mills discussion of what he called the “labor metaphysic.” And it got me to thinking about the actual role of labor (the working class) – not its role in the realm of theory – over the past half century and how it jived with my worldview. I haven’t come to any conclusions, but I will say some of my thinking was metaphysical and thus requires at least qualifications and modifications.
In claiming to be the victim of a rigged and corrupted election and making baseless accusations of fraud last night, Trump is attempting to set one half of the country against the other, provoke violence, and delegitimize the election. His campaign to “blow up” what millions of voters decided in the sanctity of a polling booth earlier this week should be strongly repudiated by people of all political persuasions. The fire of hatred, disruption, and division should be summarily resisted and extinguished.
Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the election is distracting the full attention of the federal government and civil society from throwing their full weight against a deadly and destructive pandemic. At a moment when we need social solidarity at every level of society and sustained and coordinated government action, he is organizing division, distrust, and denialism. Trump is the Jefferson Davis of our time. And neither we nor history should forget that. What he is doing is criminal.
Trump’s assault on the election system won’t prevent Joe Biden from taking his oath of office on Jan 20, but it is further radicalizing an already anti-democratic, authoritarian, white nationalist, Trumpian mass base. If anything, this base, trafficking in conspiracy theories and alternative facts, could well be the most enduring legacy of his presidency. Any hope of weakening this racist, revanchist juggernaut will turn not so much on uplifting words as the enactment of anti-racist and anti-crisis policies by the incoming administration and Congress. Such policies won’t neutralize this reactionary grouping entirely; that is too much to ask for. But if they cause some of its working class supporters (broadly defined) to reconsider their loyalties and views that may be about as much as we can hope for in the short term.
