As a result of Trump’s accession to power and the resulting left-liberal upsurge, the far left is being forced to ask ourselves different kinds of questions. These events have driven huge numbers of people into the world of social activism and brought liberals and the left closer together. Instead of playing gadfly to a liberal administration, like it was under Biden, there are now meaningful opportunities to find common ground with liberals against fascism. The danger for the left is that the liberal establishment would like to use this closeness to subsume the most active parts of the base into the NGO industrial complex, and stultify the rest into taking no real revolutionary action. They want to shape the world of social activism along electoral, reformist lines, but they will not be able to. We also have fleeting chances to reshape this world into one that we want, but first we need to understand where we are and where we want to go.

Cultural hegemony

Liberalism is sometimes called the invisible ideology. It has been hegemonic in US society since our independence from Britain. Cultural hegemony is the way that an idea structures the context of discussions without even being acknowledged or focused on. The idea that we have elections and some civil rights enumerated under the law is something that most Americans take for granted to the point that we are now often unable to recognize the gradual erosion of those rights, or the possibility of any other form of politics.

In the US, an appeal to resist monarchy is an appeal to core historical/national values. In school, we are taught that one of the key accomplishments and products of America is the establishment of a democratic republic, which is why liberals patriotically cling to that legacy. It’s also why America has produced a unique sort of fascism, as the ultimate paradox of liberal contradictions – Trumpism.

King Trump

The second Trump administration has been on an unprecedented run of constitutional crises, to the point where each new scandal distracts from the last, and the polycrisis expands far more quickly than it can be resolved. Immediately after Trump took office, the Constitution became unavailable from the White House website, and the articles relating to habeas corpus, and the Spanish language version are still not there. The Library of Congress followed suit in August, erasing the official record of Articles 8, 9, & 10 from the version of the Bill of Rights displayed on their website. The implications of these changes, combined with Trump’s comments about suspending habeas corpus, and his failed power grab on Jan. 6, 2021, are clear. Trump is laying the groundwork to undermine the liberal system from within. Like a good fascist, he is using the system against itself to try to establish a new system where he can rule as an autocrat, not just an oligarch.

 

“It’s entirely possible we are living at an inflection point in history where the American republic may be destroyed” -Prof. Jiang Xueqin

 

The Resistance

If Trump is a fascist trying to overthrow democracy, the normal, liberal, American response should be that this means it’s time for the people to rise up in arms, as the Founders intended. However, this is not what the No Kings movement is trying to achieve. When we went, we saw US flags, empty words, and a bunch of cops. When some comrades waved their communist flags, they were questioned and castigated by other marchers. When we yelled at the cops as you do at a protest against the government, these organizers tried to pacify us. They had registered the protest themselves. The cops were there for our protection, you see. These guys are the long arm of the soft counterinsurgency that extends beyond hard repression into the colonization of ideology through controlled opposition. For them, the problem is Trump & his violation of the Constitution, not America and the Constitution itself, and it’s important for them to push the message that we should decouple these things and identify with an idealized Americanism.

The consequence of this is an internal struggle within the movement between the rank and file and the organizational core. Although veterans have come out in droves to support the movement, there has been drama between lead organizers and a veterans’ group that existed within No Kings. They claim that lead organizers silently infiltrated their veterans-only chats and refused to leave or stop doing so. They felt that they were being spied on by people who did not have their best interests in mind. Democrats Abroad went viral when they posted “We’ve changed the ‘No Kings’ theme of other events around the world to ‘No Tyrants’ so as not to mix messages in a country with a monarchy.” This statement basically confirms that it never was really about being against monarchy. For Democratic Party-affiliated lead organizers, No Kings is a theme. It is a useful rallying cry – for votes – but not a meaningful goal or principle.

 

Perfect Victims

The liberal mentality towards activism, which is the default for most people, revolves around spreading awareness by making speeches and social media posts and participating in debates to influence people’s opinions. The goal is to get support. For what? For liberals, votes in elections. For radical groups, it could be anything from the practical (meeting needs, contributing to ongoing projects, etc.) to the delusional (just the idea of support in people’s minds). We are so used to being able to vote that we act like the opinion of most people is the highest priority, even as they make it so it matters less and less. The whole point of Trump & allies trying to move away from a liberal system towards dictatorship is to make it so that our opinion doesn’t matter at all. It doesn’t matter when we march around in circles with a police escort, no matter how many people come out. We have to make it matter by focusing on things we can directly affect, which liberals don’t want to do. They want to continue to focus myopically on optics and popularity, even in a world where that potentially doesn’t matter anymore. They are deliberately steering the movement away from its stated goal of resisting the Trump regime.

As one social media user? said “they are advertising their weakness,” showing that even when we field millions, the anti-Trump resistance as styled by the media can’t seem to accomplish much with that energy. The anti-ICE resistance has all the characteristics of a popular uprising, but it has anticolonial implications that go beyond just the Trump administration. The resistance specifically to Trump by comparison focuses on the person of the president as this untouchable symbol. Instead of the brick and mortar institutions that form the mechanisms of Trumpian power, we are told to focus our energy against the man himself, who we may never see in our lives. We are seen to make demands and scream at a brick wall, but there isn’t much to reassure someone that this movement is capable of fighting a fascist regime.

 

“Why are you standing for a colonial flag? Why are you singing the anthems of a genocidal state? You do not owe inherent loyalty to a state that is killing you. States do not have the right to exist. People do. What we need is not patriotism, what we need is working class unity. ULFP recognizes this and we condemn the terrorist state of America, and we are ready to resist, without asking the city for permits and without Walmart sponsorship.” -United Front for the Liberation of Palestine statement on June 13th, 2025, Bakersfield, CA

 

Meeting the Moment

Understandably, a lot of liberals are demoralized and confused. Resisting the Trump regime is an admirable goal, and it’s hard to understand why this movement is taking this form. At the same time, a lot of people are feeling newly empowered and engaged. Some people are looking beyond their own ideology for answers for the first time. This situation presents an opportunity for the left. Meeting this moment requires being able to present average people with a practical pathway to a better society. We need to show up in civic spaces in ways that are critical but not unfairly negative about the good work people are doing. We should keep the split between liberals and the left alive, and remind people it is there, but not in a way that comes across as an exclusivizing purity test. We must continue waving our own flags and chanting our own slogans, not to divide a movement, but to assert our political independence, expose the divisions that already exist, and try to build a real movement where only an inorganic facsimile of one can now be found.

It is important that so many ordinary people want to demonstrate their opposition to the government. It would be easy to gatekeep around who wasn’t paying attention during the George Floyd protests, the Stop Cop City movement, and other examples of popular resistance, but it would be better to use those experiences to compassionately inform our way of approaching the situation and sharing that context with new people. We can show those who are beginning to doubt themselves that we can fight back and even win sometimes. We have to be the ones to do that because the mass media will always try to cover up and ignore our victories. The people will need to understand revolution, not as a slogan but as a technical process, if we want to make it. We will need to understand socialism as a workable way of life, not an opinion, to be able to create it. If we are bold enough to meet the people where they are at, and they are bold enough to join us, then maybe we perfect victims can become imperfect victors.

 

“The most revolutionary thing you can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening”

-Rosa Luxemburg