Arzu reflects on the US Presidential elections, and the need for system change.
There is too much agonising over the US elections and the victory of Donald Trump today. Liberals in the US, at least on social media, have little or no ability, it seems, to self-reflect. Accusations abound about the stupidity and nefariousness of their Trump voting co-citizens. This side of the pond, when even key right-wing figures like William Hague turned their noses up at the thought of another Trump presidency, there is a mix of pity, rage and guilty self-satisfaction that British PM Starmer and Foreign Secretary Lammy had hedged their bets on a recent trip to the US and met with Trump. Lammy, having previously called Trump a Nazi, is now well on the road of extreme obsequiousness to the man: today congratulatory messages, previously common ground messaging, and in September at the meeting at Trump Tower he ‘laughed in all the right places’ and had been offered a second portion of food by his host. Yes, I know this is public diplomacy. That’s what is so wrong.
Jonathan Cook put it best this morning on X:
“Kamala Harris didn’t lose because she’s a woman or because she’s black. She lost because if your donor-rigged political and media system limits the choice to two hardline neoliberal candidates, with anything else denounced as ‘communism’, the most hardline, neoliberal candidate will have an edge. Over time, the system just keeps moving further to the hardline, neoliberal right. You can’t stop that relentless shift by voting for one of the two symptoms of your diseased political system.
“You have to rise up against the diseased system itself.”
I disagree somewhat. Being a woman in the US, will have hampered her. The toxicity of US racism, as with the UK and Europe (and other Europeanised settings such as Australia), surely suggests that ‘race’ had a part to play. But, to rework Jim Carville, it’s the system, stupid. Cook has succinctly explained the how of it. He also speaks the usually unspeakable. The people need to rise up and change the system.
This is a not a call for some fancy dress coup d’etat like that attempted on January 6, 2021 by Trump supporters. It is a call for those who can now see – and third party / protest voting and non-voting due to voters’ horror at US complicity in the Israeli genocide against Palestinians has shown that there is a growing part of the US populace – to dream differently.
We had all sorts of calls for a vote for Harris, even from Muslim leaders and public intellectuals. Either they claimed it was the best of two bad options, or that Harris could be persuaded after the elections to change her stance on Gaza. This is the type of naïve politics that many of us has as teens and twenty somethings had. Even those of us cynical about the merits of the system thought we could create lobbies to bring about change in ‘our’ favour like our Zionist nemesis brought in ‘theirs.’ This should not be the talk of political activists opinion makers and intellectuals of middle age and older. Not even before October 2023.
Doubtless a Trump victory means hard times are coming in the US and around the world. Guess what, Harris’ dog-whistling on immigration, her zeal to support ‘Israel’s’ ‘right to self-defence’ (herself a key cog in the US administration’s machine of genocide), her history as District Attorney in San Francisco and Attorney General in California and her highly racialised sentencing regime, were all signs that a Harris victory would mean just the same.
A new world is rising. The disenfranchised and oppressed of the US, from multiple communities, are being fed a diet of conspiracies and competing narratives in culture wars that simply prop up the US’ supremacist system. Many didn’t vote, others voted third party. But we have to also recognise that many (many) voted for Trump. Those US based activists and their global allies have to provide an alternative vision to the ‘diseased system’ that ‘just keeps moving further to the hardline, neoliberal right.’
US liberals, as many have noted today, need to take a long hard look at themselves. The left / greens / radicals stumping up candidates instead of movements have to do that much more. None of us around the world can help you and none of us, under the US’ cosh one way or the other, can afford your failure to do this.
Arzu Merali is a writer and researcher based in the UK. She had her ESTA to travel to the US revoked under the Obama administration.
Images:
Gage Skidmore, ‘Donald Trump speaking with attendees at a “Chase the Vote” rally at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona.’ CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed
MarylandGov Pics, ‘Vice President Harris Visits M&T Stadium Vaccine Site.’ CC BY-SA 2.0 Dee
