A federal jury returned a verdict of liable for the arch-reactionary Donald Trump. He stands accused and liable for his abuse of the writer and former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and his subsequent defamation of Ms. Carroll when he branded her a liar. This verdict comes even as the right-fascist Trump machine gears up for the 2024 imperial elections.
Trump, worth some 2.5 billion dollars according to Forbes magazine, was ordered to pay 5 million dollars to Ms. Carroll. A settlement of this kind — undoubtedly soon to be subject to various challenges by his legal team — would reduce his net worth from 2.5 billion USD to 2.495 billion USD, hardly threatening him with destitution. In fact, this judgment is likely to further inflame his already ravenous right-fascist base and energize them in the run-up to the 2024 election. Ms. Carroll, on the other hand, has an estimated net worth of between $1–3 million USD. This would represent a substantial victory for her.
Of course we cannot discount the personal forces at work here: the trauma, disgust, and anger felt by Ms. Carroll and her personal investment in this suit. However, neither can we be willfully ignorant to the political meaning of the suit. Although the suit represents the righteous culmination of a decades-long campaign to hold the misogynist Trump accountable for his actions, it is also the theater in which the latest campaign of the war between the left-fascists and right-fascists is playing out. Although Ms. Carroll’s legal teamtime has made valiant attempts to keep the case from becoming a political dogfight, nevertheless — this is a right-fascist presidential hopeful, and the eyes of the ruling class are on him. Trump, along with the brutal right-fascist governor of Florida, DeSantis, represents the political ascendency of the largest and most reactionary monopoly capitalists: Sheldon Adelson; the ultra-Zionist, Isaac Perlmutter; shipping company Uline; finance capitalists at Blackstone; etc.
Newspapers and television stations have trumpeted the verdict. “A stunning result,” writes Politico’s Ankush Khardori, calling it a “new first – and a new low.” We know, of course, that this is far from a new low. President Clinton was a sexual abuser, and Nixon was a far worse criminal than either man; the sitting president, Biden, was credibly accused of forcing himself on staffers.
For Trump and his supporters, this has been the perfect opportunity to demonstrate his callousness, his “fitness,” to be the strongman that the right-fascists are slavering for. Even as the verdict came in, Trump’s campaign surged over contender DeSantis. What’s brewing on the left-fascist side? The blue-tie-wearing mummy Joseph Robinette Biden is as much of a cipher as Trump — he is merely the empty suit into which the ruling class pours their ambitions. Neither man is anything in-and-of-themselves. Despite the challenge to Trump in the courts, Biden still trails him by six points.
The ruling class is performing its behind-the-scenes calculus. We can see the results of their mathematics: despite the trial, they are swinging in favor of open right reaction. As for Trump, his trial strategy was designed to send a surge of energy through his supporters, through the most violent brand of fascists, and to play along the most reactionary lines in the country. He didn’t even show up to the trial, and his lawyers essentially abandoned any pretense of defense. This is typical strongman positioning, which Trump and his puppeteers must hope the ruling class will find appealing.
So far, they do. We must ask ourselves: how many ruling-class men see themselves in Trump? How many of them abuse the women around them wantonly, openly, and callously? Are Trump, Biden, Clinton, the outliers within the ruling or political classes? Or are they merely the standard, the white patriarchal archetype by which all ruling-class men judge themselves? We should be unmoved by the machinations of the capitalists. They are playing a game in which they alone are the victors. Trump, Biden, DeSantis, whoever they choose, will be the person that benefits their bottom line — and saving the bottom line of the capitalist elite means damning the rest of us.
This is an excellent article, that whilst not discounting the trauma of the victim of the crimes of Trump against women posits the trial within the context of the factional warfare occuring within the US ruling class.
The article correctly identifies the class forces backing the fascist Trump but how increasing sections of the ruling class are weighing up whether to back Trump as the “man of the hour” going into 2024. I think the fact Trump was platformed immediatly after this trial by the supposedly liberal CNN is indicative of this trend.
However, I take strong issue with the phrase “left-fascist side” to describe the wing of the ruling class supporting the Democrats. I do not think it is scientific to describe fascism as having a “left” or “right” wing.
Do not misunderstand me, the Democrats and Biden are vicious class enemies. They are imperialist war mongers abroad and they are authoritarians at home supporting a militarised police state. However, fascism is more than dictatorial bourgeois rule. Fascism is a specific form of capitalist dictatorship when bourgeois democratic norms are completely destroyed and whilst it is reaction all down the line its defining feature is virulent and open anti-communism. Fascism, unlike other forms of capitalist dictatorship also has a mass extra-parliamentary base, usually from the petty bourgeoisie, that can be utilised as a battering ram during the stage of the fascists consolidating or seizing power. Clearly this description fits Trump, De Santis and MAGA but not the Democrats.
Once again, this is not to enter into any territory of “lesser evilism”. The Democrats are in themselves deadly enemies of the working class. They cannot and will not offer any resistance to the rise of fascism. However to describe them as “left fascist” does not clarify matters for the working class. We must be able to explain to them how the Republican Party are a genuine fascist threat in the US but also that the Democrats are also class enemies and that the only path forward lies in the independent moblisation of the working class in their own defence.