Oppose Anti-Trump Assaults on Democratic Rights!
Demand Fmr. President Trump be reinstated on Colorado ballot, drop all charges!
“Fair application of the law” under capitalism doesn’t exist. “Law and order” are reserved for the ruling capitalist families.1 Those who don’t belong to the privileged classes are presumed guilty until proven innocent.2 All we have, as working-class people, is the Bill of Rights — the amendments that guarantee our freedom of expression, the right to not incriminate ourselves, and protection from unreasonable search and seizure, all won in class struggle.3 The ruling capitalists, however, detest this and do all they can to curb, diminish and ultimately erode our democratic rights.4 While the ostensible target is supposedly Donald Trump, the witch-hunt against him is designed to curb working people’s civil liberties.
Working people have a special interest in defending democratic rights because we’re the real targets of every government witch-hunt, no matter who the original target may be.5 Ruling capitalist classes actually prefer to begin by curbing the rights of controversial figures, because then it can be done in the name of civility (Dobbs 1976). But what they’ll always do next, all in the name of fairness and “applying the rules equally” to “everyone,” of course, is clamp down on unions, working-class organizations and others trying to peacefully petition the government.6
They start ramping up these attacks when the usual instruments and organs of control begin to struggle containing proletarian rebelliousness,7 such as the recent rise in union drives and strike activity unseen in decades.8 The road to fascism — a totalitarian dictatorship whose sole aim is to crush the combat and organizational capacity of the working-class — is paved with the withering of civil liberties, as seen in the European history of the 1920s and 1930s (Trotsky 1944).
The obsession with jailing and disqualifying Donald Trump from the 2024 Presidential ballot, held by a coalition of Democrats, “never-Trump” Republicans and “Independents,” is really aimed at curbing our democratic rights. Ever since millions of working-class voters came out in droves for Donald Trump in 2016, especially in states that upper-class liberals look down on as backward,9 liberal and ‘never-Trump’ conservatives belonging to the capitalist class who dislikes Trump’s style haven’t taken a break from trying to destroy the 45th President and his family’s lives. Many attempts, before the current ones, failed to stick. From “Russia-gate”10 to “Ukraine-gate”11 and so on. The suits and criminal cases are too various to keep up with.
With many more working people coming out to vote for him again in 2020, as Democrats hankered down on their anti-working-class contempt, with woke ideology and various flagrant attacks on free speech,12 the January 6 frame-up constituted an unprecedented escalation of these attacks on civil liberties.13 This time, they not only tried to criminally implicate Trump. They also went after his supporters and anybody who dared to peacefully protest the election results that day.14
The January 6 frame up hasn’t seen its identical, or anything close to it, since World War II15 and World War I16, when the U.S. government locked up revolutionaries bravely and rightly speaking and acting against imperialist war, especially in unions and factories where wartime production took place. This should give us an idea of where the state of the class struggle is at worldwide, with major military conflicts continuing, alongside increasing working-class pushback. Beyond punitive financial charges against Trump, and all the civil suites that’ve been thrown at him, the bogus “insurrection charges” have been the most productive in their aim of disenfranchising the former President and his voters, the latter of whom (again) are the real targets.17
Given that such attacks on civil liberties before Trump were reserved for the working class and oppressed nationalities, the rulers’ use of such weapons against one of their own is truly unprecedented.18 However, we must have absolutely no illusions in the Republican Party either, as their own attempt to reply in kind by going after President Biden and his family, particularly his son, Hunter Biden, with whom conservative media is just as obsessed with as liberals are of Trump and his family and associates, is equally dangerous and a threat to democratic rights, particularly the right to due process. Both ruling class parties are attacking democratic rights with their respective political prosecutions of their political opposition. In both cases, working people lose.
Last Tuesday evening, the Supreme Court of Colorado ruled that President Trump had to be removed from the state ballot for both the primary and general elections, including barring him from being a write-in candidate, citing Amendment 14, section 3, of the U.S. Constitution which reads:
“No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress or elector for President and Vice President or hold any office, civil or military in the United States or under any state who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer under any state to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given comfort and aid to the enemies thereof. A Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 on the decision. The majority argued that in their judgement, President Trump tried to conduct an insurrection, and thus could be barred from the ballot. They wrote, “Congress does not need to pass implementing legislation for section 3’s disqualifying provision,” adding that the section is “self-executing.” While the suit brought by never-Trump Republicans in Colorado alleges President Trump participated in an “insurrection” on Jan. 6, he has not been convicted by any court of committing insurrection. These allegations are based on biased opinions and hearsay. Listening to Trump’s hour-long speech will show he specifically called for peaceful protest. To those who’ve studied the real fascist insurrections of the 20th century, like in Italy (Trotsky 1944) and Spain19, the use of this term to describe the events of Jan. 6 would be laughable if not so dangerous.
As referenced above, the 14th Amendment was one of the three revolutionary amendments added to the Constitution during Radical Reconstruction, after the Confederacy’s defeat.20 The “Civil War,” referred to by Marxists as the Second American Revolution, was a continuation of the first, completing the work it left undone, namely abolishing slavery. The 14th Amendment particularly granted Blacks citizenship, guaranteeing that nobody born on U.S. soil shall be restricted the full rights and privileges thereof. Section 3, referenced by the Colorado court, was meant to bar former confederacy officers from serving in government positions after the war. Moreover, Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, which the Colorado ruling didn’t even acknowledge or reference, let alone contend with, clearly states that any enforcement of Section 3 must be enshrined in legislation passed by Congress.
Clearly, despite any legalese that anti-Trump proponents may appeal to, this move is a flagrant attempt to take the former President out of contention, because the wing of the bourgeoise that hates him doesn’t think they can beat him politically. They’re just trying anything that sticks. If they could jail him on murder charges, or grand theft auto, or marijuana possession, they would. It’s crucial that all working people give no political support to those forces backing the witch-hunt against Donald Trump and his supporters, not because we support his capitalist politics, but because what they do to him today will be done to us tomorrow or the next day.
Trump 2016 victory, and the risk of his re-election in 2020 which anti-Trump forces did everything in their power to prevent, shook a majority faction of the bourgeoisie who realized that their ability to rule through democratic presidential elections wasn’t so sure and certain as before. The response by this faction, steadily overtime, was to incite the middle-classes, who’d been hit hardest by capitalism’s recent finance crises of the 2000s, against the working class, many of whom happen to be “white” and from rural states and counties. Neglecting the fact that today’s working-class in the United States is multinational, culturally rich and diverse (Waters 2019) — so much for equity and inclusion, huh? — the anti-Trump majority in the capitalist class has been mobilizing middle-class radicals to not just dislike and hold contempt for working people, but to attack rallies, slander their strikes and walkouts.21
We must oppose the witch hunt against Fmr. President Trump, not so much to save him, but because we fully understand that we are the real targets of the witch hunt. When working people break from both capitalist parties and their reformist “third parties” by our millions and form our own independent labor party that’s based on the trade unions, there’s no doubt that both the anti- and pro-Trump wings of the capitalist class will use this anti-democratic measure currently being utilized against Trump today against our future, and current, revolutionary political candidates. Talk by pundits about how this will “help” Trump are being reckless. This is a horrifying precedent. The Colorado ruling is a blow and must be opposed and soundly defeated.
Stop the witch hunt against former President Trump!
Drop all charges against him and his supporters!
Stop all political prosecutions now!
JonathanSalinas@substack.com
Apart from the daily experience of a working-class person living in a capitalist society who’s had any kind of run-in with the police, even for slight infractions like traffic stops, Marx and Engels wrote the classic work on the machinations of the capitalist state and on who it benefits, and Vladimir Lenin wrote a study of it during the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Engels, Frederick I., and Karl Marx. 1884. Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. 1st ed. Hottingen-Zurich: Verlag Der Heweizeriachen Volkebuchhandlung. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm.
Lenin, Vladimir I. 1918. The State and Revolution. 1st ed. Moscow: Russian Communist Party, Soviet Republic. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/.
For an article that mentions how the early artisan working class in America fought for the Bill of Rights, against government intrusions, during Shay’s Rebellion, see:
The Militant. "SWP Leader Discusses Constitution during Trial against the FBI." Themilitant.com. Socialist Workers Party, September 12, 2022. https://themilitant.com/2022/09/03/swp-leader-discusses-constitution-during-trial-against-the-fbi/.
Socialist Workers Party leader Farrel Dobbs explains in this re-printed discussion how, based on his 50 years of class struggle experience at the time it took place, the capitalist rulers ultimately aim to erode democratic rights as they did in Italy and Germany.
Dobbs, Farrel. "Counter-mobilization: A Strategy to Fight Racist and Fascist Attacks." Marxists.Org. Pathfinder Press, May 1976. Accessed December 25, 2023. https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp-us/education/counter/index.htm.
Evans, Terry. "‘Conspiracy’ Frame-up in Michigan Is Blow to Rights." Themilitant.Com. Socialist Workers Party, September 12, 2022. https://themilitant.com/2022/09/03/conspiracy-frame-up-in-michigan-is-blow-to-rights/.
Evans, Terry. "Drop All Charges Filed against the African People’S Socialist Party!" The Militant (New York), May 8, 2023. https://themilitant.com/2023/04/29/drop-all-charges-filed-against-the-african-peoples-socialist-party/.
Trotsky’s anatomy of fascism lays out how this historic process happens.
Trotsky, Leon. "Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It." Marxists.Org. Marxist Internet Archive, Pioneer Publishers, August 1844. Accessed December 25, 2023. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm.
Barnes, Jack, Mary-Alice Waters, and Steve Clark. 2022. The Low Point of Labor Resistance if Behind Us. 1st ed. New York: Pathfinder Press. https://www.pathfinderpress.com/products/the-low-point-of-labor-resistance-is-behind-us.
Waters, Mary-Alice. 2019. In Defense of the US Working Class. 1st ed. New York: Pathfinder Press. https://www.pathfinderpress.com/products/in-defense-of-us-working-class_by-mary-alice-waters.
Evans, Terry. "Liberals Hail FBI Witch Hunt against Trump White House." The Militant (New York), March 5, 2018. https://themilitant.com/2018/03/05/liberals-hail-fbi-witch-hunt-against-trump-white-house/.
Evans, Terry. "Liberals Push Impeachment, Target Is the Working Class." The Militant (New York), October 21, 2019. https://themilitant.com/2019/10/12/liberals-push-impeachment-target-is-the-working-class/.
Penner, Steve. "Ontario School Board ‘Cancels’ 1,000s of Books." The Militant (New York), October 16, 2023. https://themilitant.com/2023/10/07/ontario-school-board-cancels-1000s-of-books/.
Evans, Terry. "Prosecutors Quit as Frame-up of Former President Trump Unravels." The Militant (New York), March 14, 2022. https://themilitant.com/2022/03/05/prosecutors-quit-as-frame-up-of-former-president-trump-unravels/.
Galinsky, Seth. "Judge Tosses Felony Count against Jan. 6 Defendants." The Militant (New York), March 28, 2022. https://themilitant.com/2022/03/19/judge-tosses-felony-count-against-jan-6-defendants/.
Clark, Steve. "On Eve of WWII, Rulers Task FBI as Washington’S Political Police." The Militant (New York), December 12, 2022. https://themilitant.com/2022/12/03/on-eve-of-wwii-rulers-task-fbi-as-washingtons-political-police/.
Debbs, Eugene V. "Imprisoned for Opposing US War Drive, Debs Ran for President." The Militant (New York), August 21, 2023. https://themilitant.com/2023/08/12/imprisoned-for-opposing-us-war-drive-debs-ran-for-president/.
Evans, T. (2022, September 4). New indictment of Trump is frontal attack on free speech: Defend constitutional rights! Drop the charges. The Militant, Vol. 87(23). https://themilitant.com/2023/08/26/new-indictment-of-trump-is-frontal-attack-on-free-speech/
Evans, Terry. "White House Attacks Target Constitutional Protections." The Militant (New York), September 19, 2022. https://themilitant.com/2022/09/10/white-house-attacks-target-constitutional-protections/.
Morrow, Felix. 1974. Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain. 2nd ed. New York: Pathfinder Press. https://www.pathfinderpress.com/products/revolution-and-counter-revolution-in-spain_by-felix-morrow.
Editorial. "Why We Defend Constitutional Rights." The Militant (New York), September 5, 2022. https://themilitant.com/2022/08/27/why-we-defend-constitutional-rights/.
Steele, John. "CL in Canada: ‘Drop Charges against Freedom Convoy Truckers’." The Militant (New York), September 25, 2023. https://themilitant.com/2023/09/16/cl-in-canada-drop-charges-against-freedom-convoy-truckers/.