Dear Brother Reich,

You have recently republished Asli Aydintasbas’s advice to the public on how to handle a Trump autocracy. You have a long and consistent history as a liberal advocate, as a friend to organized labor within the Clinton circle of the Democratic Party, and as a critic of the Trump campaigns and the open fascist threat they represent.

However, the advice you are promoting, in short, is a demonstration of the pathetic condition of U.S. liberalism and its near collapse in the wake of Trump’s popular vote victory. This is a regrettable but necessary judgement. As demonstrated by many of your op-eds, you understand a key part of the big problem: concentrated wealth and power and its corruption of democracy. However, you now seem utterly clueless on what to do about the problem.

Let’s review Aydintasbas’s advices which you find “useful.”

Advice #1. Don’t panic. “Autocracy” takes time.

This really says, “Be a couch potato.” Pay no mind to Trump’s consolidation of a fascist regime, from top to bottom, judging by his circus of distractions that have been served up as cabinet and department appointments. It’s hard to imagine a more irresponsible piece of advice. Perhaps you are also suffering from a memory lapse. The critical role of the mass mobilizations of women, and the mass resistance to Trump’s incitement of racist killings, launched from day 1 of the last Trump administration, slowed down and obstructed such consolidation then.

Advice #2. “Don’t protest.”

Who is this talking to? The Women’s March? The George Floyd protests? The half million workers who were on strike this past year? Teamsters? Steelworkers? Longshore and hospital workers? Teachers? Who?

The unending horror of “lone gunmen” and “lone driver-kilers,” the still rising inflation, the addiction and prison epidemics are cooking up a dreadful stew.

So when someone says, “Don’t bother suburbia and the country clubs with your protests,” how can one gauge a statement so foolish? It actually sounds like the usually fatal moral illness, known in the labor movement, as the “scab outlook” on solidarity. It’s like Charles Dickens trying to find common humanity on both sides of a strike, but failing — except to help break the strike.

Once lines are drawn, as they are now, that path, the so-called middle path, fades quickly. Note the proverbial “middle of the road on a two lane highway” should not be confused with the Buddhist “Middle Way,” which, as Mao Zedong “explained” in the Little Red Book, remains in the “middle” of the strike.

The path to unity is a path of struggle — to unite in sufficient strength and to demonstrate sufficient shows of force. Otherwise, you lose.

Advice #3. “Skip identity politics.”

Here again, we wonder who you have been talking to. Identity politics has a number of meanings, but the record is completely clear what Trump means, because his first administration had a deliberate racist, sexist impact on policy, funding, and governance. Recall Trump’s “decent” Charlottesville Nazis, his celebrating the Rittenhouse murders, his call to militarize and shoot Portland protesters, his contempt for victims of police murders, and his trashing civil and labor rights legislation with right wing judges.

Reich plans to “skip” racism and gender issues. But how do the victims of discrimination — based on race, nationality, sex, gender, age, or disability — “skip” their oppression, harm, and injustice? Further, what defense of “democracy” that leaves out everyone but white, suburban, well-fixed liberals can possibly overthrow a fascist regime?

Advice 4. “We need a charismatic leader”

It is difficult to avert sarcasm in response to this piece of advice. It is also difficult to avoid the conclusion that Brother Reich and others embracing this brand of pathetic liberalism have given up on democracy, and are now awaiting the perfect leader. Perhaps they await the second coming of Christ?

These admonitions must be soundly rejected. Instead, I offer the following:

First: Don’t wait!

Plan and engage in resistance now. Find something for everyone you know to do. Reach out to any and all who will be left behind by Trump’s billionaire agenda.

Second: Join every protest you can!

There is where the base and leaders of resistance will be found. There is where the measure of force of the resistance must be demonstrated.

Third: Aggravated inequalities have led to serious injustices across this land.

Indeed, the entire justice system, and the degraded economic system on which it is based, is a wreck, as the Trump drama has profoundly exposed. Any plan to overthrow fascism without addressing so-called “identity issues,” the mass grievances of the many oppressed peoples of this country, is a fraud.

Fourth: Forget the “great leader” theory.

No “white knight” is coming over the hill to save us. Only Spartacus. I am Spartacus. We are Spartacus. We are our own protection, or else there is no protection.

Fifth: The advice Reich shares says the struggle is not about capitalism and socialism. He is wrong.

There is no alternative to billionaire / monopoly power other than more socialism, by which I mean, more public goods providing the means of life, and more equality — each of which lay the foundation for more democracy for working people.

Brother Reich: Get out of the middle of the road. Get off the couch. Start marching!

The opinions of the author do not necessarily reflect the positions of the CPUSA.

Image: UC Berkeley photo by Hulda Nelson

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