In less than two weeks after Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States, the American political scene is in complete upheaval.
While Trump is rapidly and dangerously changing policy and the focus of the Presidency, there have been protests across the United States and the political establishment has become sharply polarized. While nearly 60 democrats boycotted Trump’s inaugural, the man watched apprehensively by the whole world gave a disturbing inaugural address along now familiar lines that the new presidency was all about jobs, infrastructure, big industry, and wiping out the ISIS from the face of the earth, and the subtext, in its absences, told of how civil and human rights were to be nowhere on the agenda.
The day after the address saw the biggest ever wave of protests across cities and towns in the US since anti-war protests after Vietnam, and in Washington, certainly more than twice as many people protested at the Mall than were present at the inaugural address. This was the Women’s March on Washington. Over a million women, men, and children marched in the city to protest against Trump’s brazen misogyny, and for a reaffirmation of women’s rights. Millions others joined the Women’s March in cities across the US.
In a week since taking office, Trump has rolled back many of the policy and trade measures taken by the Obama administration. He has also signed extremely damaging executive orders banning funding to groups and organizations that facilitate abortion, provide information about it, or lobby for legalization. In keeping with his climate change denial he has given the green signal, via executive order, to the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, both of which had been stayed by the Obama administration following prolonged protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe from the region, environmental activists and citizens. He also wants to build a wall to stop immigrants from Mexico crossing the border into the US, as a result of which the Mexican president Peña Nieto has cancelled his visit to Washington.
The most damaging executive order yet was signed by Trump on day 8. Again, via executive order, he has banned citizens of seven Muslim majority countries (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia) from entry into the US, thus effectively blocking the entry of refugees from these war torn regions where US military intervention has historically been at the core of resulting conflicts. This has led to the detention of people with valid travel documents provided by US agencies at airports across the country, as also at other major airports in the world there were reports of holders of valid travel documents being barred from boarding flights. This led also to massive protests by civil rights groups, citizens, who were joined in solidarity by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. All protests were joined by prominent citizens, as well as Congresspersons.
This last executive order created ripples across the world, and also in the American political fabric, quite apart from criticism from other heads of state. As Democrat senators and other associates joined the protests, the judiciary stepped in with swift hearings and issued orders blocking parts of this ridiculous ban, empowering federal marshals to ensure that border officials comply with the order. This latter move resonated with other federal judges who issued similar orders, raising questions about the legality and constitutional validity of the ban. On the ground, citizens are enjoining and pressurizing their representatives in Congress to take a very clear stand on these issues. It is becoming clear that Democrat leaders are being called upon to go several steps further than joining protests, and making their stand known where it matters. There are vociferous demands that they stop cooperating against the Trump administration, and block the vote against the confirmation of a number of key cabinet appointees who subscribe to Trump’s misogyny, racism, xenophobia, class bias, climate denial, retreat of the state in ensuring people’s rights, and absolutely every other progressive human principle.
The protests, with massive and unprecedented participation by ordinary working people, compelling elected representatives to take a stand, swift and sound judicial intervention, as well as a sharpening discourse on the rights of refugees, the role of immigrant populations in the working fabric of a society, the role of the state in ensuring rights, and a keener public understanding on the borderless nature of capital are extremely heartening even in the face of fear that has ripped through the world with Trump’s election. It does seem that ultimately those who stand by progressive values, even in supporting particular aspects of a politics based on identity, are coming together forming a massive wall with writing in clear bold letters saying in unequivocal terms that an ever growing majority of the American people are not going to stand by while a right wing government tears through the fabric of society.
The emerging Trump doctrine has major implications for us in India. The RSS, which since its inception has a history of being mesmerised by fascist ideas and projects, has predictably found a new icon in Trump. Successive Indian governments have been following an increasingly pro-US line, and the convergence which began with the adoption of the policies of liberalization, privatization and globalization by the Indian ruling classes and went on to acquire growing military-strategic dimensions in the wake of 9/11 and Indo-US nuclear deal, now threatens to reach a new alarming level on the basis of shared Islamophobia and clamour for ‘containment of China’. The worldwide protests against Trump policies provide an encouraging environment for the Indian people to challenge and defeat the collusive convergence between the fascistic Trump doctrine and the despotic Modi dispensation.
