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UNIONS AS A 21ST CENTURY ANTI-FASCIST FORCE
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Bill Fletcher Jr.
April 8, 2025
In These Times
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_ Trump and his MAGA movement are conspiring with oligarchs to turn
the U.S. into a rightwing authoritarian state. The labor movement can
play a key role in fighting back. _
Letter carriers across the country rally to stop the Trump
administration from stripping the U.S. Postal Service of its
independence and possibly privatizing it, Jim West/UCG/Universal
Images Group via Getty Images
One of the principal difficulties facing the Democratic Party
establishment and most leaders of organized labor is a failure to
accept a fundamental reality: _there is no normality._ The failure to
grasp this state of affairs has led to strategic paralysis and
a tendency to believe that by being the “adults in the room,”
the Democrats — or the trade union leadership — can
embarrass the Republicans and force them to engage in good faith
behavior. That is not the case.
The rise of President Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA)
movement has represented the morphing of a broad, rightwing populist
movement into a fascist movement that seeks to destroy constitutional
democracy. The current purging of the federal government, through Elon
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), aims at both
opening the doors to a kleptocracy as well as ensuring loyalty to the
MAGA vision and its retrograde goals.
Yet while MAGA can be defined as fascist (or postfascist), what we do
not yet see is full fascism in power. Rather what we are now
witnessing appears to be something along the lines of Viktor
Orbán’s regime in Hungary and, ultimately, a Putinesque regime,
i.e., increased rightwing authoritarianism. Still, the aim of the
Trump regime remains to destabilize all real and
potential opposition.
MAGA, as a movement, has converged with the objectives of that
segment of the capitalist class often referenced as
“oligarchs.” Particularly situated in high tech, this group of
capitalists has become very influential through their control over
critical online and communications systems. Initially aligned, for the
most part, with Democrats, the oligarchs appear to have decided that
they are nothing short of superior beings that must seize the reins of
government in order to operate it much like a business, and for their
own ends. This includes expanding their wealth, but also for those,
such as Musk, who have a quasi-science fiction vision of a future
where the elite abandon Earth and settle Mars or some artificial
satellite, there is the need for direct governmental involvement in
such projects. Along with the oligarchs are those in the business
class who simply wish to ravage the federal kitty, leading to the
emergence of kleptocracy.
In earlier eras the expression “offensive of capital” would be
used for moments when the capitalist class would move to reverse the
victories that working people had won. We are now experiencing
something more dramatic than that. This is a ‘blitzkrieg’ of
segments of capital in alignment with a mass rightwing movement,
making the current attack especially dangerous. To put it another way,
the millions of diehard MAGA supporters are not just observers but
have become the foot-soldiers for Trump even when they may have an
ambivalence about the objectives of the oligarchs.
Organized labor has been divided over whether and how to respond to
this offensive. Roughly speaking, there are three general categories:
_the collaborators, the ostriches and the resisters_. The
“collaborators” are those unions that are going along with
Trump’s agenda. The “ostriches” are those that are attempting
to avoid conflict and hoping to simply last out the next four years.
The “resisters” are those that seek to reject MAGA and the
current offensive. Each of these categories are quite uneven and their
approaches have their own limits. The resisters, for instance, are
prepared to ally with other groups to a certain extent, but have
a tendency to work on their own. The federal sector unions that are
being forced to resist are mainly relying on litigation and lobbying,
for instance, appearing to be largely uncomfortable with, or
unprepared for, more mass actions, such as work stoppages. This
dynamic may soon shift as a result of Trump attempting to obliterate
collective bargaining for nearly one million federal workers.
The difference in approach among sections of organized labor is not,
primarily, a disagreement over tactics. Rather, it reflects
differences over how to understand the nature of the moment and, as
a result, the question of what is the necessary strategy. The reality
is that we are living through a time when forces of fascism are on
the march. This means that confronting MAGA solely on the grounds of
deteriorating working (or living) conditions is insufficient. The
Trump regime is aiming to roll back all of the progress made
throughout the 20th century, and is targeting political opposition
wherever it arises. This requires an all-hands-on-deck response. This
is not a moment for faux bipartisanship; it is a moment for
resistance and obstruction to block the Trump administration from
carrying out its far-right objectives.
Rank-and-file members of our unions should be won over to fully
appreciate the nature of the danger facing us, and all that it
implies. This begins with a major education effort among the
membership coinciding with mobilizing against the specific attacks
workers are facing, be they loss of jobs, loss of union recognition,
moves against migrants, further attacks on the social safety net,
failure to respond to increasing natural disasters or a dragnet on
political speech. The job of working-class leaders is to link these
threats together into a story about how Trump’s allies and the
oligarchs are conspiring to steal from the majority, and institute
a white, Christian nationalist authoritarian state, i.e.,
minority rule.
Taking on MAGA will need to involve, but not be limited to, labor
militancy. Accompanying shrewd and creative tactical actions must be
a proactive vision regarding an alternative to rightwing
authoritarianism, an alternative many of us summarize as the fight for
a “Third Reconstruction
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political realignment carried out through a multiracial democratic
movement from below. This is a challenging but essential task since
many in this country have not only lost faith in constitutional
democracy, but they have lost faith in the ability to bring about
lasting progressive change.
Reversing this sense of pessimism is key to the survival of the labor
movement, both among established trade unions as well as more
nontraditional forms of labor organizing. Workers must be convinced of
the possibility of beating back the darkness and winning. Indeed, our
work must be guided by the notion that we are fighting for a future
without fear_._
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Bill Fletcher, Jr. [[link removed]]
is a talk show host, writer, activist, and trade unionist. _The Man
Who Changed Colors_ is his latest novel. His first novel is _The Man
Who Fell From the Sky_. He is also co-author (with Fernando Gapasin)
of _Solitary Divided_, and the author of _“They’re Bankrupting
Us” — Twenty Other Myths about Unions._ You can follow him on
Twitter, Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
* Trump's Make America Great Again Movement; Oligarchs; Organized
Labor; Fightback;
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