By Stella Calloni on November 10, 2020
Stella Calloni, photo: Bill Hackwell
The anticipated declaration by U.S. President Donald Trump announcing that he had won the most complex election in American history, last November 4, when there were still millions of votes to be counted, is a tactic that has been used since the days of the banana republics, a euphemism used to conceal the colonial reality in these countries. The accusations over the past few months that his Democratic opponent Joe Biden was preparing an electoral fraud are an obvious and long-standing strategy of “dirty campaigning” under the guidance of the ultra-right-wing, fundamentalist and mafia groups that surround him.
This “strategy” was used in several elections in Latin America, where the propaganda of the United States announced fraud to raise doubts, in anticipation of the results in support of their “favorites”, which is what happened in Bolivia where Washington, the Organization of American States, the chain of media controlled and financed by the hegemonic power, accused President Evo Morales of fraudulent elections on October 20, 2019. In reality the fraud was prepared by them and their local associates, the Bolivian fascist ultra-right.
In this scenario, the great fraud began a few hours after the closing of the elections when it became evident that Morales was going to win in the first round, the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, denounced “irregularities” that did not exist in the minutes, which the opponents were waiting for in order to begin the coup d’état, launching violent groups into the streets.
From that moment on, a dynamic of violence was installed in the Bolivian capital and in various places in the country, a criminal repression, preventing, within the framework of the situation created, any solution proposed by the Bolivian leader, as the police and military forces entered the coup game, whose leaders “suggested” 20 days later that the President resign, literally with a gun to his head.
At this time in the United States, it could be said that Trump was a poor performer when he announced his victory to his followers, warning also about an alleged fraud, displaying confidence, but at the same time determined not to concede or leave his post if he was defeated, which then became a constant threat.
Moreover, he tried to stop the counting of votes, maintaining the falsehood that what he was asking for was actually stopping the voting, when this had already ended in all the states, in a confusionist maneuver, especially after having tried to suppress the postal vote, because it was “controlled” by his opponents of the Democratic Party. These contradictions revealed a disturbing presidential desperation, despite the fact that all the possible scenarios had been prepared to which he could resort by acknowledging that he would never accept defeat.
Anticipating these situations, he rushed to appoint ultra-conservative Judge Amy Conney Barrett to the Supreme Court on September 26, filling the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was considered a feminist and progressive icon of this highest court deciding on issues of immigration, gender equality, abortion, or equal marriage, among several other issues, which had distinguished her in her position.
Trump had previously appointed two more judges to the nine-member court, and adding Barrett guaranteed that she would lean heavily toward the harsher conservatism.
One day after the election, when millions of votes were still in the postal system, Trump threatened to turn to the Court to stop the vote count in some states like Wisconsin and others where Joe Biden was slowly starting to rise and the stakes were getting higher, while the image before the world of the once great single power was being shattered into pieces showcasing imperialist decadence and collapse.
If anything was missing, it was the presence of the armed paramilitary militia groups that had acted alongside the federal troops, sent illegally by Trump to suppress the massive demonstrations against the police and their criminal actions, which continued for more than a hundred days, especially in Portland, Oregon, right up until the elections. In these demonstrations, now resumed, which journalists abandoned, there were important instances of unity and organization that marked the strong social fracture in the country.
The coronavirus pandemic exposed that which was hidden, splintered the mirrors to show the most decadent expression of the greatest power in the world, in open decline, and exposed the internal problems of the United States as never before, emphasizing that the period under the Trump administration had aggravated the greatest problems, bringing the social fracture to the limit of what was bearable.
“The current inequality is not only expressed in the incongruent economic distribution, but in many cases it includes social rejection, racial and gender discrimination, fewer opportunities for personal development or access to the health system for minorities,” said analyst José R. Oro in Cubadebate on September 19, 2020. He was referring to the striking inequality with regard to the 20 percent of the U.S. population that possesses approximately 75 percent of the wealth, while the remaining 80 percent receives only 25 percent.
“That is the measure of inequality, evident and humiliating, in a nation of such great resources,” said Oro, recalling that the United States ranks 109th out of 159 countries, more unequal than Turkey, Qatar, Ivory Coast, the Philippines, or El Salvador, to name a few examples close to the U.S. index. Only Israel and Hong Kong are reported as having more inequality than the United States among developed countries.
In his analysis, he warned about a series of variables that would influence these elections, such as the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences, as well as the state of public order, affected by the protests against racial discrimination, police abuse against minorities and street confrontations with white supremacist groups, which support the president.
On the other hand, the policy of absolute indifference and denial in the face of the pandemic led to the dramatic situation of more than 200 thousand deaths, only to sustain an open economy, in a crisis that had been coming for a long time, also hidden under the carpet, to which they tried to assert that everything was a product of the Coronavirus. Trump was determined to call it the “Chinese virus”, in the commercial, media and political war he unleashed against China, his last and suicidal obsession. The “cold war” returned, although it never left completely.
Trump’s behavior is obviously irrational, although that irrationality has been laboriously crafted and extended to a significant sector of the population converted into an army of “zombies,” which repeats that discourse automatically: the blame lies with China of the World Health Organization (WHO) of the “satanic” Democrats to whom the president attributed the attempt to “implant” communism in the United States.
Knowing Biden and his close teams, this was a nonsense by all accounts, but it was the old tactic of terrorizing a good part of the captive population with falsehoods and lies, subjected to disinformation and deculturation, as a way of dominating “hearts and minds” that was imposed after the defeat suffered in Vietnam in the 70s.
The reality
“Trump’s other alternative to reduce the margin that separates him from the Democrats is to try to exploit social tensions, considered the other fundamental variable, and set himself up as the defender of law and order,” according to ACLED (Conflict Location & Event Data Project), a non-governmental organization that analyzes global conflicts.
According to ACLED, since last May “there have been 10,000 popular marches in protest in the United States. Seventy-three percent were related to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in which not only African Americans participated, but a diversity of social groups and especially young whites. In all these cases, the marches were peaceful, but 54 percent of them were violently repressed by the police.
Some 360 demonstrations were held against these marches, most of which were attended by white supremacist groups, including armed militias and the sinister Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which acted with extreme violence. A report by ACLED in Portland, Oregon says this is one of the five U.S. states most at risk of seeing an increase in armed citizen groups’ activity during and after Tuesday’s November 3 election, citing more than 80 right-wing militia organizations.
The FBI as well as Homeland Security have identified the groups as a possible “trigger” for violence around the elections. Under the rubric of “anarchist movements,” described as “domestic terrorism” by Donald Trump himself, a narrative has been constructed that seeks to encourage fear in the white population and justify police repression, as seen in the murders of African Americans.
“This is not something new, but rather a resource that has always been exploited by the right wing, the problem lies in the limits that they are willing to go to by encouraging these contradictions, above all because, up to now, the president’s strategy is not yielding the results that he had hoped for,” points out ACLED .
In fact, the president of the United States in his speeches of the last few hours openly incited violence by calling for “defending” the elections if his adversary, who he is not willing to hand over the government to, wins, since he considers that he is the only one who can assure “the survival of the country”. Will he be the prophet of Manifest Destiny in this century?
Noam Chomsky, linguist, academic, political scientist and writer, one of the most respected intellectuals in the United States, in an interview with journalists from the American magazine, The New Yorker, said days before the elections that “in the 350 years of parliamentary democracy, there has been nothing like what we are seeing now in Washington,” considering that “the executive has been almost completely purged of any independent critical voice, nothing but sycophants”.
Among other things, he noted that a retired high-ranking officer went so far as to write an open letter to General Mark Milley , who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reminding him of his constitutional duties to send the U.S. military to remove the president if he refuses to leave.
Trump is the “worst criminal in the history of humanity,” said Chomsky, considering that his policies attempt to “destroy the perspective of human life.” He also warned that the groups and advisors surrounding Trump “are essentially creating an international alliance of extremely reactionary states, which can be controlled by the White House, which, of course, has moved far to the right, breaking all international agreements,” also pointing out the dangers of not having an arms control program that “is one of the most important issues in the history of humanity,” among others, such as the environment.
Trump’s arrogance, his ignorance and his unpredictable behavior exposed the United States in an unprecedented way, in the midst of a social fracture, which augurs very difficult times, while at the same time revealing the most undemocratic electoral system in the world in the 21st century, in the midst of a capitalist crisis. Its project of dominating the world has been left behind, in the face of the wall of powers such as China, the Russian Federation and other key countries that have put an end to unilateralism and dreams of absolute power.
Trump’s performance is similar to the actions of his servile associates in our region: devastated countries, with enormous social, cultural and economic destruction, ending all the rights acquired in years of struggle, such as the racial issue, fanaticizing his followers in a brutal emulation of Nazi fascism, which devastated humanity in the last century. But this is another time and nothing will be the same. Even outright fascism is a belated resource, even if it retains the roar of an old lion.
Source: Red in Defense of Humanity – Argentina, translation by Internationalist 360°