Are US progressives playing into Trump’s hands?

The Lowdown with Matt Johnson on their failure to follow an anti-fascist strategy

You can to listen on Apple (see the player below) Google, Spotify and all other Podcast hosts

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This year could be fatal for the West. If Trump wins re-election, the American guarantee that it will defend Europe will go, and the American Republic itself will be in the gravest danger.

I will be writing about the West’s crisis pretty much continuously. Let’s begin with my Lowdown interview with the US journalist and author Matt Johnson this week.

We talk about the threat Trump poses, but also about a less discussed contradiction at the heart of the US progressive movement.

On the one hand, US liberals and leftists say they are fighting an almost fascist movement. And although they display a little hyperbole, their comparison is fair enough.

Trump uses street violence and mass deception in his attempts to seize power. If elected, he will use the resources of the state to persecute his enemies. If he isn’t a fascist, he is at least fascistic.

And yet, and to generalise, US progressives are not following an anti-fascist strategy.

Anti-fascism requires huge compromises. You put aside any policy objective that diverts you from the greater good of defeating Trump. You make every concession you can to bring waverers over to your side.

Democrats don’t appear to be doing that.

They are running Joe Biden, who is too old, and Kamala Harris, who is too unpopular. American friends say that the political system gave the Democrats no opportunity to find other candidates, although if Biden falls sick or dies before November they will have to.

More generally there does not appear to be a true anti-fascist spirit on the US left. One sees few signs of people being willing to park their woke ideology or strong left positions in the interests of luring moderate Republicans and undecideds away from Trump.

Let’s hope they change before it is too late.

Matt Johnson was a great guest to discuss these issues with. He is a progressive who thinks that Trump represents all that is ugly and malicious on the American right. But he retains the intellect and independence of thought to see the faults on his own side.

Matt is the author of a bracing study How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment, which uses the writings of Christopher Hitchens to examine the contradictions of today’s progressives.

I bounced off Johnson’s work to write a piece last year on how the woke movement was way too sectarian for its own good.

I concluded:

“Left-wing politics succeeds by building the broadest possible coalitions. The relentless focus on differences by the woke, social justice or whatever-you-want-to-call-it movement can bring only marginal gains at too high a cost.”

If Trump wins, that cost will indeed be too high. Let’s hope there is still time to turn a grim situation around.

Here’s the piece. There’s paywall, but if you don’t want to commit to supporting my journalism, it comes with a free trial!

Many thanks for reading.

Wokeism: The movement that dare not speak its name

The most successful political movements pretend they are not political movements at all. They want the public to believe their goals are not ideological but common sense and common decency, and who could possibly object to that?

Nowhere is the denial of the political more strenuously proclaimed than on the “woke left” – or, if you do not like the term, “the social justice left”.

The confusion about names is symptomatic. Because the movement denies its existence, it can say that the right and, indeed, the far-right has conjured up wokeness as a phantom menace.