On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 1:48 PM Michael Meeropol <mamee...@gmail.com> wrote: > NOW -- if the new leadership of the Democratic Party in Nevada would > concentrate on expanding union density in that state, they would be both > building a Democratic Majority and creating independent centers of working > class power ... (hope, eh?)
The best way for Democrats to weaken the far right? Build up the labor movement by Brendan O’Connor, Guardian, March 9 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/09/labor-movement-working-class-america-politics . . . ... because an organized working class that can fight (and win) is our only hope to defeat an increasingly militant far right. Without a robust labor movement, guided by the principles of anti-fascism and anti-racism, the sole bulwark against far-right violence will be the state – specifically, the law enforcement agencies whose repressive power has grown exponentially in the last few decades, and is inevitably turned against workers, the poor, the racialized and the left. . . . The point is not to attempt to win over people who would take up arms to oppose a multiracial, socially equitable democracy; the point is to build a movement that can fight for a society where the appeal of such ideologies is obviated. The more successful any fascist or far-right populist movement is, the more working-class people will be absorbed into it, won over by its subversiveness, its superficial anti-capitalism, and its appeals to blood and soil. But at their core, these movements are not for working people and the poor; they are based in the reactionary middle classes: the heirs to suburban fortunes; the cops and prison guards and border patrol agents; the serial entrepreneurs who never have to suffer the consequences of their failures. The struggle against fascism does not begin or end with fighting fascists in the street. In fact, the most successful antifascist mobilization is not one in which the fascists get beaten up, but one that is so well-organized, publicized, and receives such popular support that the fascists never show up at all. ... Sustaining such mobilization over time will not be possible without a dynamic, vital labor movement, freed to experiment with new organizational forms that reach new layers of the American working class – a movement that can also lead the fight against climate change, police violence and mass incarceration, and against the capitalist order that, when in crisis, gives rise to fascism in the first place. # Brendan O’Connor is a freelance journalist and the author of Blood Red Lines: How Nativism Fuels the Right -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#7137): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/7137 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/81210165/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
