The 2020 American election poses interesting questions for anti-authoritarian progressives, not just in the United States, but around the world. On the one hand we have a candidate who is problematic with only a handful of positive ideas, and with many more flawed or even terrible ones. That candidate presents one appealing proposition however: those to his left may be able to influence policies during his presidency that will affect the lives of millions, whether it be the calls for universal healthcare, prison and police reform/abolition, or urgent action on the climate emergency. On the other hand we have the current incumbent, an authoritarian man who is emboldening white supremacists and is obsessed with demonizing migrants and refugees, a man who supports the destruction of the very ecosystems sustaining us and is likely to accelerate irreversible and wide-scale extermination of our living world.
The past four years are informative in what Trump could do with four more years. If Trump sees that he can win a second time by suppressing the vote of minorities, especially Black people, and by openly appealing to conspiracy theorists of the QAnon variety and the far right, then it is reasonable to assume he would only get worse upon a second victory. We could see a fascist takeover of the U.S. government, a disastrous prospect. His supporters will shower him with so much praise as to effectively constitute a death cult, with conspiracy theorists (such as QAnon) fusing with established right-wing millennarian religious movements and more “moderate” conservative forces. We will have a nuclear-powered military superpower with an administration appealing to an apocalyptic religious cult, white supremacists and hardline misogynists, racists, homophobes and transphobes — in the time of a climate emergency and economic crises. We simply cannot afford to risk this scenario.
Simply put, there is no guarantee that American democracy can survive a second Trump victory.
Critiquing or even criticizing elections for, ultimately, not leading to fast enough change or even sometimes hampering change can and should be done, but it should be done in parallel to developing and promoting a risk assessment culture. There should be a way for anti-authoritarian progressives to multiply the angles from which we tackle an issue, and to arm ourselves with the tools to push for social and environmental justice in as many settings as we can, from the household to the street and passing by the ballot box, the school/university, places of worship, workplaces and so on. To take one example: oppositions to the carceral regime can benefit from more serious prison reforms, which would at least benefit those currently being victimized by it, and which could allow wider networks to be formed with prison abolition as their goal.
Developing a risk assessment culture requires an understanding of the irreversible nature of the threat of climate catastrophe and the immediate threat of American authoritarianism. This also requires rejecting the tendency that exists within activist circles to adopt an “all-or-nothing” attitude when the consequences are already largely outside of individuals’ control. Not doing so leads to the fatalistic conclusion that nothing we do ultimately matters, and neither people nor justice can function under these assumptions.
I also urge against the notion that elections don’t matter in the United States, not just because that’s an objectively false statement but also because, as a Lebanese, I know what it’s like to come from a country where they truly don’t. At 29 years old, I have been allowed to vote only one time in my life because the Lebanese parliament, barely recovering from the Syrian military occupation, illegally extended their own term multiple times, with no one to challenge them. In that one election, which occurred in 2018 after being postponed from 2009, the independents running had to contend with the entire sectarian establishment as their opponents. They made modest gains, but not enough to make a difference. They also ran without the certainty — unlike in the pre-Trump United States — that the loser of an election will concede to the winner, nor did they have the certainty that they won’t be murdered should they win.
This is why I continue to engage with flawed systems when the alternatives are much worse. This comes from an existential fear of worse scenarios and is influenced by lived experiences, my own as well as others in the region and beyond. American liberal democracy is extremely fragile, and it should be changed and even transcended for the better, but it remains better than the visions put forward by the authoritarian right, the largest illiberal force in the United States today. Simply put, there is no guarantee that American democracy can survive a second Trump victory.
From the perspective of the activist, the Supreme Court is a tool, and it can be used to further the causes of social justice or hamper them.
This lesser evilism informs my attitude towards the U.S. Supreme Court as well, which will be affected by the presidential election. This does not change the fact that the very nature of a Supreme Court needs to be challenged, notably the fact that its members have lifetime tenure. Nor does it imply that a liberal Supreme Court will always be on the right side of social justice issues. After all, Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted in favor of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline crossing the Indigenous Appalachian Trail, and had a very mixed record on racial justice, prisoners’ rights, capital punishment and tribal sovereignty, as the Marshall Project details. Luckily, the pipeline was cancelled due to increased costs related to delays — costs inflicted by the anti-pipeline movement — but had the project gone through it would have led to widespread environmental destruction.
The very idea of individuals, whether judges or otherwise, having this much power over the lives of hundreds of millions of people needs to be deconstructed — especially when it comes to the American colony’s actions towards Indigenous people and the descendants of those it has enslaved and exploited.
Both are true: the Supreme Court is highly problematic, a fact which won’t change with this election, and it can still matter who populates it. From the perspective of the activist, the Supreme Court is a tool, and it can be used to further the causes of social justice or hamper them. Agreeing to this does not require supporting the Supreme Court, or even believing that long-term positive change can come from within the state, but we can impact it to reduce suffering whenever possible, especially in the immediate future. It is merely a recognition of facts, facts that can be challenged and changed.
This is where a risk assessment framework is helpful: having liberal judges is no guarantee for social justice, but it is better than having a conservative majority, because the latter can take away basic rights such as reproductive rights which would add another burden on activists.
In conclusion, the upcoming U.S. election is not just an option between two visions of society (although there certainly is that component too). It is an opportunity to modify a system, even if the modifications are relatively small in comparison to wider ideals. This is possible through accepting that the principle of “lesser evilism” and it does not have to be synonymous with de-intensifying struggles for justice and equality. The conclusion that Biden is better than Trump does not imply that we need to let our guards down if Biden wins. On the contrary, it means continuing the calls for police abolition, a Green New Deal, reproductive rights, trans rights, Black rights, immigrant rights and so on, and even intensifying them. This is why I strongly believe that leftists and anti-authoritarian progressives have a responsibility to vote out Trump.
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Writing for a repsected anti-war, anitimperialist organization like WRL, you failed to establish a substantive argument as to why Biden will be less of a war monger than Trump when his tawdry 47 political history is stuffed evidence to the contrary. Here’s my take:
Like Forest Gump, Joe Biden always seems to be standing in historical crossroads. Serving in various capacities during the entire Clinton/Bush/Obama empire-on-steroids era, Biden was there at each critical juncture signing racist legislation, arming the police, applauding reckless trade bills and cheering plans for endless war. Where Gump was a mensch of marginal intelligence, Biden is a prick of compromised intelligence. His nefarious side is well hidden in the patented Clinton-feel-your-pain façade intended to slip the DNC’s neocon endgames and neoliberal economics past the public’s bullshit meter.
Here are four reasons that taken together show how Joe Biden has done more substantial harm to Blacks over the course of his political career than anyone else in post-Jim Crow history:
1- He enthusiastically pushed for NAFTA
After years of creeping erosion of American productivity by bipartisan free trade neoliberals, the Clinton administration broke the dam and completely washed away the manufacturing base by authoring one of the worst pieces of legislation in US history: NAFTA. Joe Biden, a dyed-in-the-wool free market, PNTR acolyte, was there helping to insure NAFTA’s success every step of the way. The massive damage this bill did to the future well-being of American workers and small farmers in the US and Latin American was made all the more egregious considering how it increased the wealth of the DNC donor class in inverse proportions to that of Blacks.
Result for Blacks: their jobs were shipped overseas.
What Blacks should know: if they can summon up the patience, they’ll discover how Trump’s trade policies have reset the course to restoring America’s productivity. But like Chinese economic plans as opposed to short-term cowboy-capitalist plans, the correction is a nationalist, long-term strategy.
2- He co-authored the Clinton Crime Bill (CCB)
Biden and Clinton are the fathers of the private plantation concept that permits profiteering from conscripted slave labor. They put more young Blacks and Latinos in jail for non-violent crimes than anyone before or since. Yet later as VP, Biden supported Obama’s refusal to prosecute a single white collar architect of the 2008 Financial Meltdown. If that doesn’t suggest institutional racism, nothing does. Thanks to these two fascist jailers, the US now has the ignominious distinction of having the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. It’s impossible to underestimate the profound collateral effect of the CCB on communities of color and the working poor as a result. As co-author of CCB and working hand in hand with notable segregationists, Biden, who’s also a crusader for the War on Drugs, took to the floor of the Senate literally shouting: “[When] the Democratic response was ‘Law and order with justice’ … I would just say, ‘Lock the S.O.B.s up!’” Biden is still proud of the CCB despite the fact it disproportionately incarcerates minorities and that it created the draconian 3-strike rule – a measure so vile, no other civilized nation has anything approximating it. So if we recoil from a privatized prison concept that condemns people to spend the rest of their lives in prison, often for minor offenses, how should Blacks regard the proactive racial profiler who co-created it? And as if to erase any chance that he’s softened his approach, he chose a cop – a bad cop to boot – as VP.
Result for Blacks: With out of work fathers winding up in jail and mothers often working two jobs, Black kids join gangs for socialization and end up in prison like their fathers in a cycle designed to feed the Carceral Industrial Complex.
What Blacks should know: The Trump Prison Reform Bill went a long way in restoring some sanity to the justice system, and provided much needed reforms which will ultimately inure to the benefit of Blacks more than any other demographic.
3- He oversaw the continued militarization of America’s police forces
In 1997, the Department of Defense created the 1033 program to supply America’s police departments with warfare surplus from the Middle East invasions. As a consequence, a driver of an MRAP armored vehicle, for example, could more or less continue in his MOS when he enters civilian life by simply joining a police force and ignoring his post traumatic stress. It’s a win-win situation for the military-security-complex, and one that Obama enthusiastically expanded upon, with Biden once again right by his side channeling his demented Forest Gump doppelgänger.
Result for Blacks: A perceived state of siege, as the weaponized police function as an internal army of occupation.
What Blacks should know: It seems Trump is also responsible for this and is following the Clinton/Bush/Obama march to Armageddon. But to Trump’s credit there is a mitigating factor, namely Trump’s Opportunity Zone tax scheme designed to reconstruct inner cities for low income and working class residents with improved workforce housing and focused commercial retail to upgrade overall quality of life. The idea is that crime will be reduced as a result… which ironically is a central tenet of democratic socialism.
4- He enthusiastically supported the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
PNAC was drafted during the final year of Clinton’s second term, by a cabal of Republican neocons (almost all of whom have migrated to the Democratic Party solely to back Joe Biden). The Project was jump-started on 9/11 which provided the mandate for The Endless War. Since then, Biden – a true-blue chickenhawk, has been stumping at every chance for enforcing American Exceptionalism – a racist euphemism for regime change wars against people of color. If elected, the new Biden triumvirate, which includes Harris and Rice, will ramp up the massive AFRICOM buildup in lieu of an eventual military campaign to sabotage China’s Fordist masterplan for shoring up Africa’s infrastructure so Africans can afford Chinese goods and services.
Result for Blacks: Military service is being offered to young Blacks as a ticket away from gang violence and prison, but active duty presents the same servile circumscription while its perils far outweigh its benefits. In addition, traumatized vets of all colors will continue to enter the police force upon discharge bringing with them the conditioning that responds to every emergency as a confrontation with an enemy. This last aspect has been particularly prejudicial for Blacks.
What Blacks should know: In trying to end The Endless War by pulling troops from Syria and Afghanistan and initiating no new invasions, Trump is hoping to save literally trillions of dollars that would have been pissed away for the sole benefit of MIC. If successful, Trump will stem the flow of psychologically damaged vets entering the police force and claw back money for domestic programs that inure to the benefit of Blacks.
Hey John,
Thank you for your comment and for the time you took to write it. I honestly think I was clear in saying that Biden is nowhere near my preferred candidate. I think Bernie or Warren would have been better but even with them I would have had critiques and still come to the same conclusion regarding Trump, namely that he is much worse.
That is the crux if my argument. I do believe in lesser-evilism and I think rejecting it is not morally justifiable.
The argument for Biden is an argument against Trump, and an argument for the movements that can come out around a Biden presidency, which have some liberatory potential. There is no such potential on the Trump side, quite the opposite.
Trump is an immediate and existential threat and should be voted out. Once that happens, Biden should be opposed when necessary and supported, even if critically, when justifiable. Americans are not too far, relatively speaking, from being able to achieve something like a green new deal and universal healthcare. While Biden isn’t explicitly supporting these, a lot of the Democratic base is. Same for for refunding the police, supporting things like national parks, the post office, indigenous sovereignty, lgbtq rights, reproductive rights, immigrants rights, BlackLivesMatter and so on. This is the most progressive Democratic or Democrat-adjacent movement in modern history.
To opt out of that process when so many people are on the streets and so many people are genuinely terrified of what a Trump second win can do to the US and the world is, I think, immoral.
Thank you for your time again and all the best
Joey Ayoub
Chris Hedges indicated a Trump loss would be far worse to free speech and free balanced reporting. I had already known this since the erosion has been from left for 30 years or more – Political Correctness and Hate Speech laws and with the rise of large online tech platforms which are more so and in fact more fascist than Trump can ever be. Freedom and Responsibility to that freedom and for that responsibility to all people are the foundational elements.
Electing someone from the party of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and now big business and elitism is flawed past the one who wants to and is ending wars, brokering peace, raising up the standard of living for all us regular folks, and starting to bring back manufacturing – the backbone which supports all others.
Evil is never necessary, nor is choosing between those seen as such. The Two-Party Dictatorship must be ended. Choosing one over the other is where I differ here because freedom and responsibility are paramount. The issues of your last paragraph are important but they can not be forced upon people by either Dictatorship.
Left / Right are antiquated terms of the past. I suggest a progression past the linear model into a triangle.