The Oscars took place in the wee hours of Monday morning South African time. Although my favourite film, A Complete Unknown, a biopic about Bob Dylan, was nominated multiple times, it did not win a single accolade.
I found the movie compelling. It did not only focus on Dylan’s life and mastery of song writing, it also shone a light on American politics and activism before the trade union leadership was captured by commercial and business interests and evolved into a labour aristocracy. Not many would believe that American trade union leaders were once openly communist. But they were.
This preceded the devil’s pact between the United States political and business elite’s objectives to eliminate any communist or socialist ideals. Hence, today you can have a supposedly independent politician Bernie Sanders call himself a socialist, yet at the most he’s a social democrat, who is always willing to compromise and bow to big business and the political elite. We witnessed his cowardice when he sold out his own supporters at the Democratic Party convention so Hillary Clinton could steal the presidential nomination. Even the progressive-sounding New York working-class rhetoric of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is devoid of any real substance and does not advocate for real change in American society or the flailing Democratic Party itself.
I am honestly tired of US President Donald Trump. It would be great not to talk about his latest decree. I secretly hope he is like the Titanic, thought of as unsinkable and because of that refuses to move out of the way of the approaching iceberg.
It’s impossible, though, because Trump 2.0 has entered the White House like a hurricane, revealing all he has learnt from his previous term.
One, the election campaign does not stop. Trump continues to convene election type-rallies. He speaks to the public through his Make America Great Again (Maga) movement. In South African factional terms, he has not disassembled the core that brought his electoral victory. Some supporters he has brought into government, while others he has organising his rallies.
Second, he knows not to trust the government bureaucracy. There will be no Anthony Fauci this time. Elon Musk and his minions are creating havoc and fear in every government department and agency. Trump seems to hold the view that the current system has the US president serving the agenda of the bureaucrats. Trump understands society’s anti-establishment sentiments, so traditionally as president he would be thought of as a part of the establishment. His bonfire approach, though, temporarily at least creates social distance between himself and the government bureaucracy.
Imagine if the ANC took this approach back in 1994, despite the sunset clause, and sent a fax to all government workers asking them to explain what they are doing and why they should continue doing this so as to retain their jobs. Hell, let us be honest, most of us would not mind if any political party did this today.
Three, Trump is the epitome of transparency. He not only reads press statements but actually takes questions from the press regularly. There are most likely embedded journalists with preassigned questions in the press conferences. But he also tries to answer unscripted questions. Accusations of Trump being a fascist look weak with this remarkable transparency with the media. You may have noticed the outgoing Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, copying Trump and fielding media questions directly. The only time I can remember a South African president being directly questioned by the press was Thabo Mbeki being interviewed by Redi Direko (now Tlhabi).
Fourth, Trump understands that the US and Europe (the collective West) cannot compete with the economic behemoth called China. Chinese business and political sectors work comprehensively in tandem. Many have observed over the years that the US two-party system is a sham, regardless of who wins elections, be it the Democrats or the Republicans, the political and business elite remain in charge. But even this sham is not strong enough to resist Chinese economic and trade growth. The Chinese one-party political model means that there are no opposition parties or highly contested elections to worry about. Musk and his crew are given the task of obliterating the state machinery so that loyal businesses can take over the functions, so that business and the political leadership will work hand in glove, similar to the Chinese. In other words, the construction of an oligarchy.
Fifth, he is carving the world in the image of the US so that it understands that the world exists to serve the US. We witnessed that first-hand in that infamous press conference with Trump, his vice-president JD Vance and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. There is a myth that this is about Ukrainian rare earth metals. Ukraine does not possess much of these minerals and the little it has is mostly in the Russian-annexed land. Trump is ensuring that the US is able to pull out all support, both weapons and personnel, from Ukraine. Simultaneously, Europe accepts its role is to serve the US agenda. The latter may take longer, but in Trump’s estimation the rise of like-minded right-wing populist political parties in Europe and the increasing role of Vladimir Putin’s Russia will mean that in the not-too-distant future Europe will capitulate into the real 51st state of the US.
Many are quick to blame the Republicans, especially the Maga movement. It’s easier to blame them than supposedly good people like the cowardly Sanders or manipulative AOC. Even more difficult is to admit that Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, generally the entire Democratic Party leadership, laid the foundation for Trump. The Democrats are the ones who abandoned the working class and have successfully created a division between the black and white working class.
Think of when Martin Luther King Jnr or Malcolm X were assassinated. It was when they sought to bring about unity between the black and white working class. Or Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, who was on the streets gaining a lot of traction by uniting white and black working-class communities.
It was under Carter that a democratic Iran was overthrown and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab Middle East countries came under the heel of the US. It was Clinton, more than Ronald Reagan, who removed the guardrails of acts like Glass-Steagall, which placed restrictions on affiliations between commercial and investment banks that had been passed so as to protect the American people from an unregulated financial and banking sector. It was also Clinton who constructed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which moved working class manufacturing jobs from the US to Mexico, thereby ensuring a living wage for Americans would never be a reality.
It was Obama who continued the US’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while broadening the supposed war on drugs in Central and South America. Obama normalised the use of drone warfare, especially to assassinate opponents of the US. We must also remember that it was under Obama that a democratic Ukrainian government was overthrown just because they chose to be close to their neighbour Russia. And it was Biden and the current Democrats who showed Trump how to weaponise policies and strategies. They weaponised Covid-19 and its treatment as a political stick to beat Trump. They took the valid problem with racist police and weaponised it into a Black Lives Matters campaign against Trump, and conveniently ignored it after the 2020 elections. The Biden government weaponised the dollar against Russia and tried to re-establish the Cold War. Biden also weaponised tariffs, and forced the European Union to follow suit, against China.
Trump is doing exactly what the Democrats want him to do and they could not. Do not believe any less. South Africa, and every other developing country, must recognise that it has no real friends within the US political sphere. Their friends are the US working class, both black and white. This includes conservative Christian fundamentalists in the Maga movement, as well as those in the African-American and Latino communities who hate the Democrats and could have even voted for Trump.
But we need to begin to accept that we do not have an organised working-class political movement of any real significance in South Africa.
We have professional politicians who speak as if they are raising the issues of the poor and the working class, but they are basically opportunist centrists. If they want to get any power they know to backtrack and “contextualise” (dilute) their socially based views.
Be prepared to march cheerfully into oblivion, blaming the Trumps of the world, but know we have allowed them to be weaponised.
Donovan E Williams is a social commentator. @TheSherpaZA on X.
