WHY TRUMP'S DIVIDE-AND-CONQUER TACTICS ARE WORKING
- Gonzalo Santos
- Oct 30, 2024
- 4 min read
DIVIDE-AND-CONQUER has been one of the oldest political tricks since ancient times - that's how the Romans conquered the Jews in Palestine, for example. Tradition attributes the origin of the motto to Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great: in Greek: διαίρει καὶ βασίλευε, meaning "divide and rule."
Trump first used it in 2015/16 to drive a wedge between whites and non-whites, by championing "birtherism", anti-immigration, anti-BLM, etc. He also exploited the Christian Right's longstanding Islamophobia, homophobia, and misogyny.
The "innovation" in this election is his doubling-down on said wedge issues to make inroads with Latinos and Blacks, pitting them against each other, and even against immigrants and refugees within their own panethnicities or races. Measurable shifts to Trump's camp - especially among young Black & Latino men - have happened already.
The one element lacking to successfully counter and beat back these divide-and-conquer tactics is the absence of any heighten levels of consciousness, clarity, and mobilized collective action among the targeted populations.
Though there have been mighty manifestations of intersectional, multiracial, multi-issue enlightened solidarity (e.g., the BLM marches of 2020, the pro-immigrant mobilizations of 2006, 2010, 2013, the women's marches in and after 2016), there has been a fatal dependency to, and cooptation by, the politically opportunistic, ultimately elitist, Democratic Party Establishment - the other half of the corrupt duopoly that rules America for its bloated plutocracy, under a increasingly worn and discredited veneer of democracy.
The Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns of 2016 and 2020 were the last attempt by progressives and radicals to wrestle control of the Dem Party from the hopelessly compromised and clueless liberal "centrists", using the same, much more successful strategy of the Tea Party/Maga hard right within the Republican Party since it began in the "Compact with America" 1990s, turbocharged since the 2010s, meeting little to no resistance from “traditional” Republicans.
But there is and was a fundamental asymmetry of power between the two cases that explains why one effort failed while the other succeeded: both efforts on the electoral left and right had tremendous popular backing; but the Pat Buchannan/Newt Gingrich/Trumpist juggernaut had a robust sector of the American plutocracy, its more reactionary sector, behind it - a club of rabidly rightwing billionaires. Bernie had no such support from any other source - certainly not from the mushy liberal billionaires and their powerful political operators in the Dem party - than grassroots popular support. Immense and authentic as this was, the Dem Establishment easily vanquished them both times and marginalized Sanders' populist progressive coalitions.
On the first time around, Hillary et al simply banished the Sanderistas from the scene, thinking she did not need them - a big mistake, it turned out! The second time around, a wizened Dem Establishment made a liberal-progressive "pact" with the Sanderistas, set up platform joint task forces, and after Biden won in 2020, actually launched a series of bold, progressive legislative proposals - including immigration reform, climate change mitigation, major public works, combating income/wealth inequality, police reform, voter rights, women's rights, etc.
It was all a montage, a phony mirage. Soon, the Dem Establishment - remember, historically as overtly and deliberately beholden to the plutocracy as the Republican Establishment since the ascent of Reaganism - soon regrouped and single-handedly derailed all of these pro-labor bills, using the filibuster and merely a pair of Blue Dog Senators. Biden and Harris then began systematically to move to the right - most notoriously on the topic of asylum rights.
With the American working classes abandoned once again by their supposed "allies" in the Dem Party, the way was cleared for the Trumpian divide-and-conquer crass demagoguery demonizing and blaming immigrants for every ill, and his macho posturing and finger pointing on low wages and inflation, to bring him roaring back to the national stage and even make inroads with young Black and Latino men.
What has been the Dems' response? To move further to the right, especially on immigration, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, etc., where the Dems have nothing to show, while pointing out how "divisive" and "hateful" and "dangerous" Trump is!
So, here we are, with Trump's fascist Maga movement at the gates of power, again. The Dems have certainly enabled his rise twice - with their mushy, appeasement, triangulation tactics, their deluded complacency of what they are really dealing here (the rise of fascism), and their preternatural reluctance and inability to confront the plutocracy as a whole and engage in bold, audacious moves to rempower the working classes again - as FDR once did.
But the social movements have had their role, too. They have allowed, by and large and repeatedly, to be coopted by the duplicitous siren songs of the Clintons, of Obama, of Biden, and now of Harris. They have been ideologically disarmed and organizationally hamstrung (via the same mega donor class that funds the foundations and the Dem Party).
Where is the immigrant rights movement? Why are the Arab/Muslim communities the only ones holding Harris accountable for the Gaza genocide at the voting booth? Why is there not a similar outcry and massive movement to hold Harris accountable for the trampling of Asylum rights and dismissal of the longstanding cry for immigrant justice? Why does it take an openly racist "joke" on Puerto Rico by a two-bit comedian to elicit a strong response in the Puerto Rican diaspora, while the other Latino communities remain absent from the national stage in every way? Why is the disgusting anti-immigrant Ted Cruz and the weasel Marco Rubio heading to re-election in Texas and Florida with huge Latino support?
The divide-and-conquer tactics are working, at two levels: (a) the plutocracy has us all fighting between two parties, not realizing both are corrupt agencies of separate factions of said plutocracy. (b) The duopoly is preventing the vast array of progressive social movements from uniting and fighting back effectively - outside the channels of cooptation of the duopoly.
Deal with it, Americans. ¡Desapendéjense! ¡La lucha sigue y sigue!
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