Selected excerpts from stories on how to go about creating a resistance movement as Donald Trump takes office ...
- Dan Rather Facebook status, Nov. 30.
Should we normalize Donald Trump? Matthew Yglesias of Vox has a very provocative and thought-provoking take that might strike many of his fellow progressives as counterintuitive.
The case he is making is that authoritarian populist leaders abroad have been beaten by attacking their policies more than their personalities. And with Donald Trump outlining a far-right Republican buffet of initiatives, from the environment, to taxes, to entitlements, to abortion, to the law, etc. the Democrats would be better served getting out of the reality show mindset and try to push the debate into the realm of normal politics.
[links to:]
- Matthew Yglesias "The case for normalizing Trump." Vox Nov. 30.
Trump genuinely does pose threats to the integrity of American institutions and political norms. But he does so largely because his nascent administration is sustained by support from the institutional Republican Party and its standard business and interest group supporters. Alongside the wacky tweets and personal feuds, Trump is pursuing a policy agenda whose implications are overwhelmingly favorable to rich people and business owners. His opponents need to talk about this policy agenda, and they need to develop their own alternative agenda and make the case that it will better serve the needs of average people. And to do that, they need to get out of the habit of being reflexively baited into tweet-based arguments that happen on the terrain of Trump’s choosing and serve to endlessly reinscribe the narrative of a champion of the working class surrounded by media vipers.
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Corruption alone won’t win the argument ... But Jan-Werner Müller, a Princeton political scientist who recently published an excellent little book about authoritarian populist movements, finds that Trump supporters’ indifference to Trump’s corrupt leanings is actually rather typical. Even when clear evidence of corruption emerges once an authoritarian populist regime is in place, the regime’s key supporters are generally unimpressed.
“The perception among supporters of populists is that corruption and cronyism are not genuine problems as long as they look like measures pursued for the sake of a moral, hardworking ‘us’ and not for the immoral or even foreign ‘them,’” he writes, “hence it is a pious hope for liberals to think that all they have to do is expose corruption to discredit populists.”
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Remember why Republicans support Trump The Trump era has featured frequent plaintive cries from liberals who just can’t understand how honorable, decent Republicans could support a man who openly courts Vladimir Putin, tweets attacks on individual journalists, poses with taco bowls as Hispanic outreach, and engages in massive financial conflicts of interest.
But Republican Party elected officials, whether you agree or disagree with them, have some pretty clear reasoning. They were obviously uncomfortable with making Trump their party’s standard-bearer, but having won both the nomination and the general election, he is now pursuing a very recognizable version of the GOP’s partisan agenda. ...
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Of course, if Republicans decide they want to change course on this and start reeling Trump in, Democrats should happily join them and cooperate in a bipartisan drive against lawlessness, corruption, and subversion of American foreign policy by the government of Russia. But as long as Republicans are backing Trump, ignoring his partisan agenda in order to avoid normalizing Trump is an enormous danger because it ignores the main reason Trump is able to get away with abnormal behavior.
A November 22 Quinnipiac poll revealed both the risks and the opportunities currently facing Democrats. It showed that attacks on Trump’s character have set in, and most people agree that Trump is not honest and not levelheaded. But it also showed that a majority believe he will create jobs, that he cares about average Americans, and that he will bring change in the right direction. Yet at the same time, Quinnipiac also finds that most voters favor legal abortion, oppose tax cuts for the wealthy, oppose deregulation of business, and oppose weakening gun control regulation.
Which is to say that the most normal, blandly partisan parts of Trump’s agenda are also among the least popular. And yet Trump’s support for them is what immunizes him from Republican criticism and oversight over the abnormal stuff. Defending the basic norms of American constitutional government is important, but doing it as a partisan agenda won’t work — it turns off Trump’s core supporters and signals to wavering ones that his opponents are focused on abstractions rather than daily life. As long as Trump is enjoying the lockstep support of congressional Republicans, his opponents need to find ways to turn attention away from the Trump Show and focus it on his basic policy agenda and the ways in which it touches millions of people.
- Jesse Singal "Why Some Protests Succeed While Others Fail." SCIENCEofUS, New York magazine, Nov. 20.
Since those [inauguration day] D.C. protests are coming up, and are likely to be massive, they are a natural focal point for the complicated questions surrounding protest and organization. So I asked several scholars of activism, protest, and movement-building what advice they would give to the organizers, and how their own work fits into their predictions about what could go well or poorly in January.
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Taken together, then, all this research points to three general rules for the organizers of the D.C. protests, as well as the other protests that are likely to crop up in the days ahead:
1. Trump can be useful as a galvanizing force, but keep things focused on whatever your particular issue is. That issue will be around long after Trump is gone, and will, in many cases, require forms of activism and advocacy that have little to do with the man himself. The goal should be to give people ways to make progress on the specific issue threatened by Trump, not to protest the man himself endlessly.
2. Make everyone who is interested in your cause, or who exhibits curiosity about it, feel welcome. Other than wanting to help, there should be almost zero prerequisites. If someone doesn’t speak the lingo, or doesn’t know what intersectionality is, or anything else — it doesn’t matter — they can still contribute. And the more you can make activism part of their social life, the more of a meaningful role you can give them, the more likely they will be to stick around and to spread the word. Education on specific ideological issues can always come later.
3. Stay nonviolent. At a time when passions are high there is a real potential for backlash. There are times when disruptive protests can be strategically deployed, but nonviolence is key.
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Stephanie Kirchgaessner "If Berlusconi is like Trump, what can America learn from Italy?" The Guardian Nov. 21.
Political opposition: ‘Stop crying and try to understand his voters’ For years, Berlusconi’s boorish behaviour was a gift to political opponents and journalists who were free to ridicule him. But ultimately they did not prove an effective opposition.
“Berlusconi’s opponents had a very wide and open avenue and they couldn’t resist walking down that avenue. This brought them to a number of defeats. Because when he said: ‘The west is [superior]’, and opponents said: ‘How politically incorrect, white imperialist’, the reality is that a huge part of the Italian voters said in private: ‘He is right,” said Giovanni Orsina, author of Berlusconism and Italy, an exploration of how Berlusconi held on to power.
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Everyday sexism: prepare for a new feminist fightback Berlusconi was ultimately acquitted of knowingly hiring an underage prostitute at his infamous “bunga bunga” parties, and of abusing his position to cover it up. But his tenure became synonymous with the everyday demeaning of women – particularly on television – as sex objects, as the prime minister regularly insulted and mocked women in public, even making sex jokes at public events meant to honour women’s achievements.
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But in Italy there was also a backlash, and an awakening among some Italian women, according to Emma Bonino, the former foreign minister and feminist who helped secure abortion and divorce rights in Italy in the 1970s.
“Berlusconi’s attitude prompted a sort of revolt from women, and women’s groups, who had been silent and absent for years, even on important women’s issues,” Bonino said. It prompted opposition to female stereotypes, particularly in the media, and the scourge of domestic violence, which had often gone unacknowledged, she said.
Berlusconi and the law: a worrying precedent Last week Trump settled fraud lawsuits relating to Trump University for $25m, removing a legal headache despite having pledged to fight the cases to the bitter end.
He has also alleged that he is the subject of an audit by US tax authorities and, before his election, had threatened to sue women who had accused him of sexual harassment and assault.
Berlusconi faced similar entanglements with the judicial system and the issues ultimately pressured him and constrained his ability to pass legislation. Prosecutors who sought to charge him with crimes were derided as unelected communists, and there a poisonous relationship soon developed between judges and prosecutors and the prime minister’s office.
“Berlusconi tried to use his political power to defend himself, making laws and using his position as prime minister to delay trials. There were also several legal attempts – like making a law that as president of the republic you cannot go to trial as long as you are in power – but he never really succeeded,” said Orsina.
Trump enters the White House after a contentious election in which he derided federal investigators at the FBI, but also after he was seen as having been helped by the FBI director, James Comey, who made a surprise announcement about the continuation of a probe into Hillary Clinton – which was later dropped – 11 days before the election. Trump has also sought to delay a civil fraud trial into one of his businesses until after his inauguration.
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