Resolutions for 2025: Be Resolute, Study Strategy, Organize Friends, Undermine and Fight Trump

CARL DAVIDSON
By Carl Davidson
LeftLinks Weekly, Jan. 5 2025
 We’re observing the fascism now taking posts of power in Washington, DC, but we will examine it here in an American grain. We don’t see it as merely a copy of Mussolini or Hitler. We think its roots are in American soil and especially in the Slavocracy, rather than European soils.
Harsh rule against the enslaved and those marked for extermination was subdued for a brief period by ‘abolition democracy’ in post-Civil War Reconstruction but was soon overthrown violently by the Counter-revolution of 1876. The open terrorist dictatorship of the reborn ‘Southern Bourbons’ and their death squads, the KKK and the ‘Red Shirts’ deprived African Americans of any semblance of bourgeois democratic rights across the South. Moreover, ‘Jim Crow’ reached to the Canadian border with the 1898 ‘Plessy vs. Ferguson’ ruling of the Supreme Court, even if the terms were less harsh above the Mason-Dixon line. Thus to an important degree, European fascists of the 1900s borrowed some ideas from our example. Hitler even sent law students to our universities to figure out how Jim Crow laws could be adapted to his outlawing of the Jews.
In 1945, Woody saw fascism was defeated in Japan and mostly defeated in Europe. Spain’s Franco remained in power until his death in 1975. (Unfortunately, Woody, who died in 1967, didn’t live to see it). In the U.S., 'Jim Crow' fascism in the South was set back with what we now can call the ‘Second Reconstruction,’ from 1955 to 1975. It began with civil rights and school desegregation battles and ended with the assassination of MLK and the violent repression of the Black Panther Party, along with the use of troops against the Black uprisings that followed for several years into the 1970s.
A New Right emerged and aimed for power after 1975. It started with the work of Richard Viguerie, a rightwing ‘direct mail’ expert, with a staff of 250 centered in a headquarters just outside DC. Viguerie and his crew came out of the religious fundamentalist and anti-communist youth organizations of the 1960s. In 1976, his team became the chief fundraisers of the George Wallace campaign. With Wallace defeated, Viguerie continued working for a variety of far-right causes to build his infamous lists, even with the Korean Rev. Moon’s Unification Church for a time. He soon was convinced by Howard Phillips, Paul Wyrich, Phylis Schafley and others like them to work on electing Ronald Reagan.
But Reagan was too moderate for the New Right. So Vigeurie’s team hooked up with Jerry Falwell to build ‘the Moral Majority,’ initially around opposition to desegregation and only later to abortion. To make a long story short, the major result was the formation of the ‘Tea Party’ caucus in Congress. Together with rightwing ‘Christian nationalist’ evangelicals, this cluster in the GOP became the mass base for Trump’s winning rightwing populist campaign in 2016. Once in power, Trump’s bloc was soon joined by several fascist groups and their militias—Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and others.
Trump’s main target was the ‘Third Reconstruction’ politics that had regained power with the financial crisis of 2008 and the election of Barack Obama. Trump’s 2016 victory marked the start of a political see-saw trying to crush any Third Reconstruction. But it was diverted by Biden’s victory in 2020, followed by Trump’s attempted coup in January, 2021.
Now we start 2025 with Trump about to resume residence in the White House again. But it won’t be the same as Trump 2016-2020. To begin, Trump has purged the GOP of nearly all traditional Republicans. It’s now completely the Party of Trump, with ‘The Donald’ operating as a mafia don. To have any status, let alone positions of power, any wannabe GOPer now has to pledge fealty to Trump the person, not the Republican party or even the Constitution.
Trump also now has about 30 billionaire donors grouped around him. Elon Musk is simply the richest of them, donating some 250 million of his $440 billions in wealth to the latest Trump campaign. In 2016, Hillary Clinton had the lion’s share of the very wealthy, while Trump then only had a few. In 2024, while Harris still had a 3/5s majority of the very wealthy; Trump’s 2/5 share is far larger (and more publicized) than before—and the shift is in his direction.
Our ruling class today is thus sharply divided. So is the electorate, with neither candidate getting above 50%, and only 1.5 percent separating them. In Electoral College terms, if only 250,000 voters across three swing states had flipped to the Dems, Kamala Harris would be our new president.
The working class (of all nationalities) was roughly divided evenly too. Of nonunion workers (88% of all workers), the Dems got 48% to Trump’s 51%, while union workers (12% of all workers) were 57% for Harris, and 40% for Trump. Counting white worker voters alone, a majority of 55-60% goes to Trump, depending on what’s counted. It should be noted that 40% of these, while a minority, is still a sizable one, and it’s the more class-and-union conscious of the whole. Trump also made significant gains in a sizable minority (40%+) of Hispanic voters and small gains among Black male voters—about 3 in 10 of younger Black male voters under age 45 went with Trump. Black voters overall, naturally, voted overwhelmingly for Harris.
We go into these numbers to counter hype and get a more accurate assessment of the entire electoral terrain. ‘The working class is backing Trump!’ is clearly overstated hype, even if counting white workers alone. But it’s also clear that the left is in dire need of an overall assessment of the politics of the working class, voters and nonvoters alike. Then, we need the numbers also subdivided by nationality, religion or non-religion, sex, gender, and others. Do we see who might be advanced, middle or backward politically? How much is insurgent, and how much passive? How many are antifascist? (We suspect a good majority) Or socialist? (We would guess a much smaller minority, say 5 million or so).
If you think all this is leading up to a quote from Sun Tzu and ‘The Art of War,’you’re on target: ‘Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” This quote is common, but the entire small book is worth studying by those serious about strategy and tactics. Go here to take a look.
Our main resolution for 2025 is to be resolute. The numbers would indicate that the left has a very tough battle ahead, and the progressives and liberals toward the center are not likely to do well without the left. Likewise, we will not do well without them. So our next resolution is to make as many new friends in real life as we can, especially friends we can count on to protect us and, even better, to fight alongside us. Here are some guidelines we learned in Beijing long ago, by those who had also studied Sun Tzu:
On strategy: ‘Unite and develop the progressive forces, win over many of the middle forces, then isolate and divide the backward forces, so as to crush our adversaries batch by batch.’ On tactics: ‘Seek common ground, isolate differences, then solve problems one by one.’ Then: ‘Wage struggle on just grounds, to our advantage, and with restraint.’
Trump enters the White House also facing a tough task. It is one thing to win high posts in an election. It is quite another to consolidate fascist rule across the country at all levels and across all the institutions of civil society. He and his billionaire buddies and fascist militias are getting started. We have to do so as well. Surrender nothing without a fight or a contest.

Also: see post below.  We must be ready.