We have at least one advantage. Donald Trump is a known quantity. If it is not always possible to foresee his moves, his reactions are usually predictable. It should be possible to exploit his weaknesses.
Trump thrives on media attention. Seeking to control the news cycle, he manufactures one crisis after another, each intended to distract from the last. During his first term, this forced many people into a cycle of reaction, allowing Trump to set the tempo of engagement. When your enemy controls the tempo of the conflict, he can keep you continually on the defensive.
To this end, Trump is always saying and doing horrible things. With his cabinet picks, for example, it appears that he is trying to provoke a scandal so that his most outrageous nominations function as lightning rods channeling anger and attention, enabling him to push through the rest of his agenda unnoticed.
It is up to us to set our own priorities, to seize the initiative and force our adversaries to fight on the terrain we choose. Knowing some of Trump’s plans for his first days in office, we can begin choosing battles that we might be able to win. The earlier that people can achieve a few decisive victories, even on a local scale, the sooner people everywhere will rediscover that resistance is possible.
Trump will overreach, especially if we force him to. Recall the heady days of summer 2020, when he was trying to show his backers in the ruling class that he could regain control of the streets. When he
sent federal agents into Portland in July 2020, he was pouring gasoline on a fire, catalyzing a massive public response that the federal agencies loyal to him—chiefly Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security—could not suppress. Those who had initially watched from the sidelines eventually poured into the streets, taking up
umbrellas, leaf blowers, fireworks, and shields. They continued coming out for over a hundred consecutive days.
Arguably, Trump was not defeated at the polls in November of that year, but in the streets in July 2020, when the people of Portland demonstrated that his lackeys were no match for them. This cost Trump the support of capitalists seeking to reestablish law and order—at least in
that election.
3
Exerting Leverage
A crucial element of the victory that took place in summer 2020 was the polarization of local and state governments against Trump. The complicity of Democratic officials in “blue” states and cities is well-established, but they still have to pretend to represent their constituencies, which often means chasing after powerful social movements in hopes of coopting them. If we play our cards right, we should be able to force Democrat-controlled local and state governments and agencies to refuse to cooperate with at least some of Trump’s programs. In 2020, popular sentiment forced many local prosecutors to drop the charges against those arrested during the uprising. Many municipalities have been declared sanctuary cities. As empty as those words often are, we can aim to force politicians to give them meaning. Any division that emerges within the ruling class, however small, will be to our advantage.
The first battle will be fought for the hearts—and schedules—of anarchists and other rebels who were active in 2020. Do we have it in us to mobilize again, more, differently? The second battle will be fought for a broader swath of the population, including rank-and-file Democrats. Are they prepared to accept the second Trump era as business as usual, or will they gravitate towards resistance?
If Democrat politicians are not compelled to break with the Republican agenda, we could end up in a countrywide situation analogous to what happened to the
Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, where the majority of the general population came to oppose the proposed police training facility but politicians of every stripe closed ranks in a bipartisan consensus in favor of imposing it by brute force. But if a critical mass of rank-and-file Democrats conclude that they have a responsibility to become unruly, that will force at least some Democratic politicians to hold themselves apart from the “law and order” consensus.
We should also anticipate defections from the bureaucratic and managerial classes. Trump plans to fire thousands of federal employees and surely many more will resign. The effects will trickle down to every level of society. We need to create opportunities for newly disaffected people to connect with each other and put their skills at the service of the movement. If some of them bring insider knowledge of the bureaucracy, all the better. When it comes to leaks from those who retain their positions, there should be an emphasis on equipping movements to act rather than simply seeking to discredit the administration in an imagined court of public opinion.
To take on an entire government, we have to create friction between the different factions that comprise it and exploit the vulnerabilities that this opens up.
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