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EVERYONE (SORT OF) LOVES A DISRUPTER  
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John Feffer
December 12, 2024
TomDispatch
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_ Off-the-record, some liberals support Trump on a case-by-case
basis. In normal times, finding overlapping interests with your
political adversaries makes sense. But let’s be clear: Trump will
not be playing by the rules of normal politics. _

,

 

Liberals hate Trump, no question about it. He’s the definition of
illiberal: authoritarian, racist, sexist, and downright nasty. Not
only that, he’s a living repudiation of the liberal delusion that
America runs on meritocracy.

But you want to know a dirty, little secret? In back alleys, encrypted
group chats, and off-the-record conversations, liberals will still
support Trump on a case-by-case basis. Of course, they’d never vote
for the guy, but they’ll give two cheers for some of his policies.

I discovered this ugly truth during Trump’s last term while writing
an article on the shift in U.S. policy toward China from lukewarm
engagement to hostile decoupling. The general consensus among the
foreign policy elite was that, at least in terms of relations with
Beijing, Trump was a useful idiot for slowing China’s roll with
harsh rhetoric and tariffs.

“Trump is a madman, but I want to give him and his administration
their due,” one prominent liberal intellectual told me
[[link removed]].
“We can’t keep playing on an unlevel playing field and take
promises that are never delivered on. It’s really China’s turn to
respond, and it’s long overdue.”

It wasn’t just China. For years, liberals and conservatives alike
were, for instance, pushing the concept
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burden-sharing: getting U.S. allies to cover more of the bill for
their security needs. But it was only Trump who really made it happen
by blackmailing NATO members and other U.S. partners into doing so.

Sure, few warmed to the idea of the United States actually pulling out
of NATO, but even many of our European allies, though they publicly
grumbled, were secretly happy about The Donald’s _gaiatsu_.
That’s the Japanese word for outside pressure that enables a leader
to force through unpopular changes by blaming it all on foreigners.
The self-described liberal leader of NATO, Dutch politician Mark
Rutte, even came out in the open after Trump’s reelection to praise
the American president
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making European countries more militarily self-sufficient.

It wasn’t just liberals who thrilled to Trump’s unorthodox foreign
policy during his first term either. Some of those further to the left
also embraced Trump the engager (with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un),
Trump the isolationist (and his threats to close U.S. military bases
globally), and Trump the putative peacemaker (for concluding a deal
with the Taliban to end the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan).

Trump, in other words, was not just an unanticipated crisis; he was
also an opportunity. Deep in their hearts, anyone unhappy with the
status quo will support a disrupter. Quite a few Democrats disgusted
with this country’s border policies, inflation, and its coastal
elites even crossed over
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vote for Trump in November because they wanted change, regardless of
the consequences.

Trump 2.0 is going to be the same but worse, like a strong cheese
voted out of the refrigerator only to grow ever more pungent as it
moldered in a dark corner of Florida. The latest version of Trump has
promised more violence and destruction the second time around, from
mass deportations to mass tariffs. And he’s planning to avoid
appointing anyone to his administration who might have a contrary
thought, a backbone to resist him, or the least qualification to enact
sensible policy.

In the face of such a vengeful and truculent force returning to the
White House, surely, you might think, it will be impossible to find
any liberals embracing such anarchy the second time around.

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Buy the Book
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Think again. This is how American politics works, if only for
liberals. The modern Republican Party routinely boycotts Democratic
administrations: blocking Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court
nomination, working overtime to shut down the federal government,
voting _en masse_ against legislation it would have supported if
introduced by a Republican administration. The MAGA crowd has, in
fact, turned noncooperation into something of an art form.

Liberals, on the other hand, pride themselves on bipartisanship, on
getting things done no matter who’s in power. So, inevitably, there
will be cooperation with the Trump team as it sets about the
“deconstruction of the administrative state” (as Trump cheerleader
Steve Bannon once put it
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Worse, there will even be some silver-lining liberals (and a few
leftists) who pull up a seat to applaud the wrecking ball — not
perhaps for its wholesale destruction of neighborhoods but at least
for its demolition of a select number of buildings that they deem
irreparable.

Each time such destruction takes place, the self-exculpatory comment
from such silver-liners will be: “Well, somebody had to come along
and do something!” If Trump is the only tool in the governing
toolbox, some liberals will indeed try to use him to pound in a few
nails they think need hammering.

BURNING BRIDGES WITH CHINA

In his 2024 State of the Union address, Joe Biden argued that he did a
better job than Donald Trump of standing up to China. He
certainly devoted more Pentagon dollars
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containing China. And not only did he not roll back Trump’s tariffs
on Chinese products, but he added some of his own, including a 100%
tax on Chinese electric vehicles. Biden also made concrete moves to
decouple the U.S. economy from China’s, especially when it came to
the supply chains for critical raw materials that Beijing has sought
to control. “I’ve made sure that the most advanced American
technologies can’t be used in China,” he insisted, adding
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“Frankly for all his tough talk on China, it never occurred to my
predecessor to do any of that.”

Biden’s moves on China, from export controls and subsidies for chip
manufacturers to closer military relationships
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Pacific partners like Australia and India, received the enthusiastic
support of his party. No surprise there: It’s hard to find anyone in
Washington these days who has a good word to say about engaging more
with China.

So, when Trump takes office in January, he won’t actually be
reversing course. He’ll simply be taking the baton-like stick from
Biden while leaving all the carrots in the ground.

That said, Trump’s proposed further spike in tariffs against China
(and Canada and Mexico and potentially the rest of the world) does
give many liberals pause, since it threatens to unleash an
economically devastating global trade war while boosting prices
radically at home. But trade unions backed by such liberals support
such measures as a way to protect jobs, while the European Union only
recently imposed stiff tariffs
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their own on Chinese electrical vehicles.

So, yes, neoliberals who embrace free trade are going to push back
against Trump’s economic policies, but more traditional liberals who
backed protectionist measures in the past will secretly (or not so
secretly) applaud Trump’s moves.

BACK TO THE WALL

On taking office, Joe Biden rolled back his predecessor’s harsh
immigration policies. The rate of border-crossings then spiked for a
variety of reasons (not just the repeal of those Trump-era laws) from
an average of half a million to about two million
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However, in 2024, those numbers plummeted
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despite Trump’s campaign claims — but no matter. By then, many
Democrats had already been reborn as border hawks.

That new, tougher attitude was on display in executive actions
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Biden took in 2024 as well as the border security bill
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Democrats tried to push through Congress earlier this year. Forget
about finding a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented
immigrants who keep the American economy humming, Biden’s
immigration policy focused on limiting asylum petitions, increasing
detention facilities, and even allocating more money
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build Trump’s infamous wall.

As Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at
Columbia Law School, pointed out
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the eve of the November election, “What we are seeing is that the
center of the Democratic Party is now adopting the same policies, the
same postures, that MAGA Republicans were fighting for about six years
ago.”

And yet such punitive policies still weren’t harsh enough for MAGA
Republicans and their America First followers. The bottom line was
that immigration-averse voters didn’t want to support Democrats
pretending to be MAGA Republicans. When it came to the White House,
they wanted the real thing.

As politics change hands in Washington next January, it’s going to
be difficult to find any Democrats who will support the mass
detentions and deportations Trump is promising. Yet many liberals,
like the unprecedented number of Latinos
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pulled the lever for Trump in 2024, do want major changes at the
border with Mexico. In Arizona, Democrat Ruben Gallego won a squeaker
of a Senate election by emphasizing border security
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even backing a border wall (in certain areas). Such liberal border
hawks will be happy when the Republican president does the dirty work
so that Democrats don’t suffer the political fallout that is sure to
follow.

REMAPPING THE MIDDLE EAST

On the face of it, the Abrahamic Accords were a liberal nightmare. The
brainchild of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, they promised
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repair relations between Israel and the major authoritarian regimes in
the region: Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Morocco, and Sudan. The
deal was a reward for illiberal leaders, particularly Israel’s
Benjamin Netanyahu. The primary losers would, of course, be the
Palestinians, who would have to give up their hopes
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state in exchange for some Saudi handouts, and the Sahrawi people who
lost their claim to the Western Sahara when the United States and
Israel recognized
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sovereignty over the entire region.

Instead of shelving the Accords, however, the Biden administration
pushed ahead with them. After roundly criticizing Saudi autocrat
Mohammed bin Salman for, among other things, ordering the murder of a
U.S.-based Saudi journalist, Biden mended ties, fist-bumping that
rogue leader, and continuing to discuss how and when the Kingdom would
normalize relations with Israel. Nor did his administration restrict
Washington’s staggering weapons deliveries to Israel after its
invasion and utter devastation of Gaza. Yes, Biden and crew made some
statements about Palestinian suffering and tried to push more
humanitarian aid into the conflict zone, but they did next to nothing
to pressure Israel to stop its killing machine (nor would
they reverse
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Trump administration’s decision on the Western Sahara).

The liberals who support Israel (come what may) like Pennsylvania
Senator John Fetterman
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New York Congressman Ritchie Torres
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and the New Democrat Coalition
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the House of Representatives are, of course, going to be enthusiastic
about Trump’s ever tighter embrace of Netanyahu next year. But there
are also likely to be quiet cheers from other corners of the
liberal-left about the harder line Trump is likely to take against
Tehran
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(Remember Kamala Harris’s assertion
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her presidential run that Iran was the main adversary of the United
States?) The Arab Spring is long gone and a strong man in the White
House needs to both schmooze with and go toe to toe with the strong
men of the Middle East — or so many liberals will believe, even as
they rationalize away their relief over Trump’s handling of a
thoroughly illiberal region.

LOOKING AHEAD (OR DO I MEAN BEHIND?)

Anyone to the left of Tucker Carlson will certainly think twice about
showing public enthusiasm for whatever Trump does. Indeed, most
liberals will be appalled by the new administration’s likely
suspension of aid to Ukraine and withdrawal from the Paris climate
accord, not to mention other possible hare-brained maneuvers like
sending U.S. troops to battle narcotraffickers
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Mexico.

Trump will attract liberal support, however quietly or even
secretively, not because of his bridge-building genius — in reality,
he couldn’t even
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a bridge-building infrastructure bill through Congress in his first
term — but because all too many liberals have already moved
inexorably rightward on issues ranging from China and the Middle East
to immigration. The MAGA minority has seized the machinery of power by
weaponizing mendacity and ruthlessly breaking rules, in the process
transforming politics much the way the Bolshevik minority did in
Russia more than a century ago. In the pot that those Republicans put
on the stove, the water has been boiling for more than a decade and
yet the left-of-center frogs barely seem to recognize just how altered
our circumstances have become.

In normal times, finding overlapping interests with your political
adversaries makes sense. Such bedrock bipartisanship stabilizes
fractious countries that swing politically from center left to center
right every few years.

These are, however, anything but normal times and the second-term
Trump team anything but center-rightists. They are extremists bent on
dismantling the federal government, unstitching the fabric of
international law, and turning up the heat drastically on an already
dangerously overcooking planet.

In 2020, I raised the possibility of a boycott, divestment, and
sanction (BDS) movement against the United States if Trump won the
elections that year. “People of the world, you’d better build your
BDS box, paint ‘Break Glass in Case of Emergency’ on the front,
and stand next to it on November 3,” I wrote
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“If Trump wins on Election Day, it will be mourning in America. But
let’s hope that the world doesn’t mourn: it organizes.”

Four years later, Trump has won again. Do I hear the sound of breaking
glass?

Here, in the United States, a stance of strict non-engagement with
Trump 2.0, even where interests overlap, would not only be a good
moral policy but even make political sense. When things go
disastrously south, laws are broken, and the government begins to
truly come apart at the seams, it’s vitally important that no
left-of-center fingerprints be found at the scene of the crime.

Let’s be clear: the Trump administration will not be playing by the
rules of normal politics. So, forget about bipartisanship. Forget
about preserving access to power by visiting Mar-a-Lago, hat in hand,
like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
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MSNBC’s _Morning Joe_
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“Fascism can be defeated,” historian Timothy Snyder wrote
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after the November elections, “but not when we are on its side.”

So, my dear liberal-left, which side are you on?

Copyright 2024 John Feffer

Featured image: The Most Dangerous Person in the World
[[link removed]] by Alisdare
Hickson [[link removed]] is licensed under CC
BY-SA 2.0 [[link removed]] / Flickr

_Follow TomDispatch on Twitter
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[[link removed]]. Check out the newest Dispatch
Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands
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final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s
novel Every Body Has a Story
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Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War
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as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
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Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World
War II
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Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from
America’s Wars: The Untold Story
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_JOHN FEFFER, a TomDispatch regular
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author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands
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director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy
Studies. Frostlands
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a Dispatch Books original, is volume two of
his Splinterlands series, and the final novel in the trilogy
is Songlands
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He has also written Right Across the World: The Global Networking of
the Far-Right and the Left Response
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