Trump is a socialist
A true hero of America’s working class
Jeffrey Denny
You don’t have to be an Alex Jones/InfoWars conspiracy nut job to see what’s happening right in front of our noses.
It’s not that the socialists are close to seizing power in America.
They already have. How? By installing their puppet, one Donald J. Trump, as president. Until Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is ready in 2024.
Fake news? Don’t the socialists attack Trump as much as Trump attacks the socialists? Isn’t the GOP whipping up a new red scare, a socialist under every bed, to win in 2020?
False flag. That’s what the socialist deep state wants you to think.
Consider the evidence, well beyond his Russian support, connections and oligarch owners, that Trump (sorry, Bernie) is the first American Socialist president:
1.Like many socialist leaders, Trump is a hero of the working class.
The working class elected Trump because he stands up for the working class (except for his hotel contractors). He speaks for them. Everything he does, however crazy, he does for the working class that elected him. That is, the white working class, who definitely are not afraid that America is getting too brown.
Trump’s working class will rationalize, defend or outright excuse everything he does — even if it hurts them (and the country).
Trump, however, is nowhere on par with a socialist leader like Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro when it comes to starving, clubbing and shooting the working class who elected him. That couldn’t happen here.
2. Like many socialist leaders, Trump strengthens his power by creating enemies of the people and the state.
He holds huge raucous rallies where he whips up his loyal mob to chant angry slogans and shake their fists at their terrible enemies. Including the independent professional media that questions his authority and behavior as journalists in free countries are supposed to do on behalf of the people.
But certainly if a foreign dictator brutally murdered a Washington Post columnist for doing his job as a journalist, Trump wouldn’t ignore the crime and defend the dictator. That couldn’t happen here.
3. Like many nationalist socialists, Trump rallies his base by appealing to patriotism, dividing the country and demonizing others.
I’m not comparing Trump with a certain leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, as some do.
Trump would never equivocate if neo-Nazis in Hitler haircuts marched on a Founding Father’s university with torches chanting, “One people, one nation, end immigration,” “Jews will not replace us,” and “blood and soil.” That couldn’t happen here.
4. Like a socialist leader, Trump promised America will have the best, cheapest healthcare for everyone.
He also promised “jobs, jobs, jobs” for everyone. And to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Then he created jobs, jobs, jobs for his Washington swamp people, many who were caught doing swamp stuff and left office in disgrace or under indictment.
But unlike for many socialist leaders, after visiting socialist France, Trump promised the biggest patriotic military parade ever to glorify him but our military patriotically said uh, no. So he’s trying to make the military pay for his national emergency Mexican border wall.
5. Like a socialist leader, Trump is defying the Constitution that curbs presidential power, saying it doesn’t apply to him.
He declared his national emergency for the wall like it’s martial law giving him full and complete powers.
He’s expecting support from the people’s legislature, in which many are afraid of his popularity with the working class, and the courts where he’s installed his jurists. “They have become apparatchiks in Trump’s authoritarian scheme,” one Republican commentator said of Republican legislators who are kowtowing to Trump.
6. Like a socialist leader, Trump has his own official state media.
Every dear leader needs more than a poor press secretary to lie, dissemble, distract and divert with a straight face and huffy attitude.
All the top socialist presidents have their own official “news agency,” like America’s Fox News, to dominate the airways, disseminate official talking points, and attack anyone who dares to question the president, his greatness and his infallibility.
“There should be patriotically minded people at the head of state information resources,” Russian President Vladimir Putin once advised.
“Hannity Remains Number One Program for the Second Year in a Row,” Fox reported for 2018.
Trump’s state media loyally touts his successes, smears his opponents, and features hosts who make millions offering slick commentary that panders to, excites and convinces working-class viewers they’re better off with Trump, and the real threat is from Trump’s opponents.
Some Trump state media people at Fox frequently advise the president. Others drop the pretense and join his administration to run media relations.
7. Like back in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Trump uses the power of the state to prop up and essentially nationalize chosen industries.
However obsolete those industries might be, such as coal, Trump seeks to enrich his wealthy oligarchs and hires their executives and lobbyists to “regulate” — i.e., slash regulations — on behalf of their industries. In the name of the people of course.
8. Also like back in the USSR, Trump will suppress science.
The Soviets used to ban certain areas of science (e.g., biology, physics, statistics) that were deemed idealistic, bourgeois or outside of strict accordance with official ideology.
That could never happen here. Except maybe for suppression of overwhelming scientific proof and urgent warnings of man-made climate change and global disaster that’s already happening (see: Florida and everywhere). On behalf of state-favored industries like coal, the oligarchs and the people.
9. Like many socialist leaders, Trump is getting richer in office.
“Since Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president in late 2015, at least $16.1 million has poured into Trump Organization-managed and branded hotels, golf courses and restaurants from his campaign, Republican organizations, and government agencies,” a mid-2018 report by the independent nonprofit ProPublica journalism organization tallied from public records.
The report continued, “Because Trump’s business empire is overseen by a trust [run by his sons] of which he is the sole beneficiary, he profits from these hotel stays, banquet hall rentals and meals.”
But Trump’s working class base couldn’t care less. Of course he’s getting rich from being president and so far, getting around obscure laws such as the Emoluments Clause in Article I of the Constitution.
Otherwise, what kind of brilliant billionaire businessman would Trump be?
10. Like a socialist leader, Trump brilliantly feeds and enjoys his cult of personality.
Interesting passage from The New Republic’s Alexander Hurst last December:
“Personality cults are a hallmark of populist-autocratic politics. The names of the various leaders are practically synonymous with their movements: Le Pen, Farage, Duterte, Orbán, Erdogan, Chávez, Bolsonaro, Putin. Or if we were to dip farther back into history: Castro, Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin.
“Like religious cult leaders, demagogues understand the importance of setting up an in-group/out-group dynamic as a means of establishing their followers’ identity as members of a besieged collective,” Hurst wrote.
Sounds like Trump and the MAGAs. But that couldn’t happen here.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
