My weekly column in the daily Plymouth Herald (12.11.24), just touching on the outcome of the Trump election victory. Of course, there’s more to say, but at least opposition is in print early, especially in a city where our Palestine stall is often challenged by Trump-supporters eager to shout at us about the most bizarre conspiracy theories as well as overt Islamaphobia and pro-genocidal slogans. But not everything fits inside 600 words, and anyway, words aren’t enough. We need to organise to Dump Trump!

Not my headline, but “Trump must not be allowed to fulfil vision”.

So what should we do about Trump?

According to the group he has around him and the people he’s carefully placing into office, Trump’s second term as President of the wealthiest and most militarily powerful empire the human world has ever known, is about to change everything.

Everything that is, except the maintenance of Capitalism: the economic, political and social system based upon private ownership of wealth. Trump will amplify the individual, corporate and national competition for power and control of the means of production and markets in pursuit of profit.

Trump, a billionaire in cahoots with billionaires, is not about to redistribute wealth and make everyone richer. He didn’t the last time round.

Between 2017 and 2020 the USA lost 2.6million jobs. Three million more people lost access to any health insurance to total of 28 million impoverished human beings. Profits rose by 68%, nearly doubling, whilst wages increased by 8%, bumped-up mostly by manager’s salary-hikes at the expense of the low minimum wage. Home ownership increased by 2% making the property-owning middle classes feel better off, house prices rising by 27%. Rents for the poor more than doubled. His was a government of the rich for the rich and will be so again.

Trump’s 2024 election manifesto represented him as the bringer of system change. Not the eradication of poverty and exploitation – instead there shall be yet more billionaires and wealth accumulated into the non-taxable bank accounts of the 1%.

Trump’s “right-wing populist nationalist movement” (as defined by himself) will protect and work for the domination of the American White Man. They will, indeed, benefit.

Trump’s America will be racist and misogynist, supported by an ideological cadre in government and on the streets. That means scapegoating, gaslighting and flagrant misinformation as government standards.

1.5million migrants forcibly deported inside his first year of office, families torn apart, hundreds of thousands in internment camps, will cause enormous economic turmoil. These are the people who reap the harvests, pack the goods, serve at table, and cook and clean in the homes of the middle classes. Irreplaceable.

Protectionism will wreak havoc. The big import tariffs on foreign goods will ensure a significant rise in inflation, job losses and a trade war

Trump’s promise to end all action on climate, withdrawing from international agreements and to “dig, dig, dig” for more oil and gas will condemn the world to climate catastrophe. Climate Change will accelerate, causing extremes of weather that his citizens will not escape and will suffer without the State taxes available to protect or re-home them.

Trump will support the complete eradication of the State of Palestine, whilst the promised end to the current war in Ukraine will only be a prelude to much larger wars to maintain global American supremacy.

In all, Trump represents civil war at home and war abroad. Trump’s far-Right Movement is heavily funded and reaching-out across Britain and Europe and beyond. It will be a totalitarian government, holding power over all houses and the judiciary, entrancing the people with false hope and mythology in the face of deepening global crisis.

Trump must not have it his own way. And he won’t. The USA is a federal system of local governments, the blue “sanctuary states” committed to upholding the quest for equal rights and eradication of poverty.

America is not a United State. A third of all those entitled to vote, did not vote at all, the Democrats offering little or nothing. In every State there is resistance, particularly at grass roots. The struggle for Women’s rights, Black Lives, workers rights and climate action will continue. And must do so here at home, lest we all fall for Trump’s lies.