Reframing the Trump Election

Reframing the Trump Election

A review of Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need (2017)

by John M Repp

The epigraph of No Is Not Enough:  “I’m not looking to overthrow the American government, the corporate state already has.”

• John Trudell, Santee Dakota activist, activist, artist, and poet (1946-2015)

Naomi Klein’s thesis is contained in her title. She encourages the various progressive movements in the United States to start meeting with each other to see what connects them. Klein writes that an informal beginning of such collaboration was happening at Standing Rock. Then Trump got elected.

She describes a two-day gathering in Toronto in the spring of 2015 for Canadian progressive groups where they wrote The Leap Manifesto, a vision statement and a platform that all could stand behind. The Leap Manifesto is reprinted at the end of the book. It is indeed inspiring.

Yes, we must defend those people and groups Trump attacks and resist his destructive policies. However, we must develop a more powerful vision, a better narrative for the future. At some point, we must take the offensive. There are many more people stepping into activism after Trump’s election and a vision and narrative can coordinate all our efforts. The Trump election is a warning but also an opportunity. If all the people and groups who are being attacked could unite around a vision, a narrative and a platform, we can win the world we need.

Klein writes that Trump is only a symptom of a failing democracy and foreign policy. He could never have gotten elected unless the system was already corrupt. If we just get rid of him, Pence and the Republicans lose their majorities in Congress, we will still have a set of corrupt systems.

Klein applies some of her earlier ideas about branding and shock to the Trump phenomenon. She warns us that we should expect even bigger shocks from this regime if there is another large terrorist attack or a financial crisis. They may try to establish a “state of emergency”. Klein’s biggest fear is that when it becomes obvious to Trump’s base that he cannot make America great again, he will start a war. He is already war-mongering, provoking North Korea and Iran.

The tragedy of the Trump election is that “the climate movement was on a roll, winning victory after victory against oil pipelines, natural gas fracking, and Arctic drilling, very often with resurgent Indigenous communities in the lead.” (p.20) Similarly, the anti-corporate globalization movement was starting to win victories after the battle of Seattle at the end of 1999, but then 9-11 happened. This short look back shows us the neo-liberal economic system has been in crisis for many years because it cannot produce the promised prosperity for all.

Giving tax cuts to corporations and wealthy investors was supposed to create more jobs. Where are the jobs? Privatizing parts of government was supposed to increase efficiency and lower cost. It has not. The “free market” is supposed to bring the best of all possible worlds. But inequality increases, wages stagnate, homelessness gets worse and the life expectancy of white non-college educated men is falling. Klein does not explain this but the reason we have these dismal results is that we really don’t have a free market. We have huge corporations, often 3 or 4 in each major sector, and huge Wall Street banks, all with massive political operations. With globalization the international investor class has the power to veto any policies they don’t like in any country, by just devaluing the currency or selling off stocks or bonds and pushing down the markets. We are several generations past a time when there were hundreds of small firms competing in a free market such that the most efficient prospered the most. The free market model as a model works, but it does not describe our current economic and political reality. The “free market” has become a slogan that masks the reality of a corporate dominated economy.

And people can see the hypocrisy. There was nothing free market about the bailout of Wall Street after the financial crisis of 2008/9. There is nothing free market about the huge subsidies the fossil fuel industry receives. As the legitimacy of the system decreases, ever more extreme measures are needed to prop it up.

At the Canadian meeting to write The Leap Manifesto Klein writes, “the greatest obstacle our platform would face was the force of austerity logic – the message we have all received, over decades, that governments are perpetually broke, so why even bother dreaming of a genuinely equitable society?” (p. 246) She lists a set of tax policies that would produce the revenues to pay for the plans in the manifesto and are more just.  These policies require increasing the taxes on corporations and the wealthy as well as cuts to subsidies for example to the fossil fuel sector. All are policies left progressives in the United States would wholeheartedly support. But advocates of MMT i.e. modern monetary theory would say Klein herself has not completely broken with austerity logic. MMT activists are trying to speak with Klein about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory MMT points out the Federal budget spending need not be constrained by income (i.e. taxes and borrowing) like a household or a business is. Why? It is because a sovereign government has the power to create money. https://wwfor.org/can-afford-save-planet/ This is a very simple concept but the implications are revolutionary.

Klein also writes that “the capacity to pit populations against each other based on skin color, religious faith, and sexuality has been the single most potent to tool for protecting and sustaining this lethal order.” (p.264) Trump uses this tool and continues to shock us. But facing a common threat, we can choose solidarity and make “an evolutionary leap”. (p.266) We can reframe Trump’s election and see it as a chance to win the world we need.

Reviewer’s comment: Klein’s suggestion that progressive left groups start meeting with each other to write a manifesto, say something similar to the Declaration of Independence, with the people’s grievances followed by our vision and platform, can be seen as nonviolent direct action method number 5 of the 198 methods of nonviolent action listed by Gene Sharp. http://www.aeinstein.org/nonviolentaction/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/ Marching is method number 38. The “Resistance” needs to start using some of the other tactics such as all the different kinds of strikes and occupations. And even more important would be the development of a nonviolent strategy as outlined in the book Self-Liberation: A Guide to Strategic Planning for Action to End a Dictatorship or Other Oppression. http://www.aeinstein.org/self-liberation/

It is true that parts of the American government (the CIA) have partnered with dissident groups and used these methods to overthrow governments that the U.S. opposes. Gene Sharp, the researcher who has written about the historical use of nonviolent strategy and tactics makes clear these methods are tools that are neutral. They can be used by a political group of any leaning. We want to use them to restore and deepen democracy in the U.S. and deal with climate change.