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People take part in a mass protest against Trump one day after his inauguration in Washington, DC, on January 21, 2016. (Stephen J. Boitano / LightRocket via Getty Images)
A Better Resistance To Trump Is Possible
It’s time for a mainstream movement against Trumpism.
People take part in a mass protest against Trump one day after his inauguration in Washington, DC, on January 21, 2016. (Stephen J. Boitano / LightRocket via Getty Images)
“I do not want to do four more years of ‘Resistance’ nonsense under Donald Trump. Good God,” democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said a few weeks before the election. “Does anyone remember what that was like?”
Yes, we do. The “Resistance” was cringe. Ocasio-Cortez’s comments were funny because they were true: the first Trump administration was awful, and the futility of the liberal “Resistance” was part of the horror. The pussy hats. The safety pins. The childish nicknames for the president like “Orange Man” and “Drumpf.” It’s triggering to even write these things down.
This time around, the vibe is different. Disturbingly quiet, quiescent, even. That’s much worse.
To be sure, socialists are organizing. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani is running for mayor, and socialists are pressing for publicly funded renewable energy. Unions are organizing, too, preparing for the anti-labor onslaught that’s coming.
But we also need a broad coalition that includes but is not limited to socialists and can blunt or derail the worst of the crazy right-wing experiment that is about to unfold. Over 48 percent of American voters voted against Trump. The country has plenty of likely recruits for a mainstream resistance movement against Trumpism. Such a movement should organize around issues with a broad popular appeal.
It could start with defending popular public goods like K-12 schools and universities. Most Americans like their local public schools, and Trump’s promise to destroy the Department of Education will have devastating consequences for public education if carried out. Right-wing movements like Moms for Liberty seeking to use niche cultural issues to destroy public schools have not been especially successful. Indeed, while the anger over lockdowns during COVID was often expressed in right-wing terms, it showed how much people valued their public schools: they were angry to have important public services taken away.
A mainstream resistance movement can tap that vein. The Left doesn’t always realize how much we have to defend: we have great schools and higher education institutions of all kinds in this country, and Trump’s effort to destroy them will not be popular.
Speaking of all that we have to defend, we have decent environmental regulations and enforcement agencies, some of the most beautiful natural ecosystems in the world, the greatest national and state parks, and some of the cleanest air and water, especially remarkable in our cities. We could lose all that under Trump, who has promised Big Oil he will deregulate everything and allow capitalists to pollute with impunity.
Trump is a climate denialist who sees climate change as a culture war issue. Especially as climate-related disasters pile up under Trump and he continues denying their reality, many will likely want to become climate and environmental activists.
Another area in which we have much to lose: personal freedom. Whether on abortion, infertility treatment, gay and transgender rights, or free speech, most Americans are not going to like the coming authoritarian crackdown that has been hinted at or promised on a wide range of issues, and many will get into the streets to defend those basic rights.
A movement against a second Trump term should organize around issues with a broad popular appeal.
Those are all resistance issues for a movement that could start tomorrow, based on the comments that Trump and his people have made about what they intend to do in office. But then there are the matters on which Trump is going to disappoint. Those, too, can be pressure points for a resistance movement.
Contrary to what he has promised his fans in the fitness and wellness communities, Trump’s secretary of health and human services nominee, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, is not going to be able to crack down on microplastics in an administration mobilized to defend industry against every sort of regulation. Nor will he be able to improve child health and tackle chronic diseases in an administration determined to dismantle environmental regulations and public health agencies. Many of the young people who are excited by such promises are about to experience their first big political disappointment from these snake oil salesmen of the Right, and some of them will get into the streets as a result.
Even more importantly, Americans hoping for a return to the prosperity they enjoyed during the first Trump administration may have a rough and rude awakening: if he enacts the tariffs he plans, most economists agree that economic mayhem will ensue, with poor and working-class people hit the hardest. Just as households begin to recover from inflation — a process that has only recently started — costs will explode.
If he deports immigrants on the scale that he promises, that too will deliver yet another body blow to the American economy and standard of living, on top of providing a series of horrifying spectacles that will offend many Americans’ sense of basic human decency.
Another likely disappointment for some voters will be labor. Trump and vice president–elect J. D. Vance cosplayed as friends of the working class, and while they may throw labor a few scraps to try to placate at least some sections of the movement, they are planning a deeply anti-union National Labor Relations Board and an assault on basic labor rights that will make it as hard as possible for workers to organize.
There are people who voted for Trump because, as in past campaigns, he positioned himself as antiwar compared to the Democrats. Most of them are in for a serious letdown. While he may actually deliver on his promises to wind down the war in Ukraine, he is almost certain to make the situation in Gaza worse; I don’t think anyone can argue that Palestinians are wrong to be terrified of millenarian evangelical Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel. Trump will also be just as belligerent toward China as Biden has been, but with less foreign policy expertise tempering that bellicosity behind the scenes.
Americans are tired of war, and no one wants their children to die in defense of the grotesquely brutal regimes our government calls our allies. While Jewish, Arab, and other left-wing groups have been protesting the war in Gaza for over a year, Trump’s proposed foreign policy moves could broaden that movement.
On the national level, it’s unlikely that much positive progress can be made by such a movement. But it can mobilize people and build our institutions, making it easier to win progress at the state and local level. During the last Trump administration, Democratic Socialists of America’s membership soared, Ocasio-Cortez and other leftists were elected to Congress, and New York state passed groundbreaking renters rights and climate laws. Such a movement could also limit the damage Trump poses to our civilization, change the discourse and politicize many who are currently checked out or drifting right.
See you in the streets. I won’t be wearing a pink hat, but our (lowercase R) resistance is still needed.
