IN HIS FOURTH of July speech on Saturday US president Donald Trump attacked the ‘angry mob’ that opposes him and which he claimed were out to ‘indoctrinate our children’ and ‘trample’ on freedom in America.
In his speech that verged on the hysterical Trump attacked the ‘radical left’ and Marxists saying: ‘We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters, and people who in many instances have absolutely no clue what they are doing.’
This followed his speech at Mount Rushmore last Friday when he stated: ‘In our schools, our newsrooms and even our boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism.’ He continued to promise to bring the full force of the state down on his opponents, saying: ‘That is why I am deploying federal law enforcement to protect our monuments, arrest the rioters, and prosecute the offenders to the full extent of the law.’
Trump went out of his way to defend his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic that is raging through the US and has now reached a record number of infections after states followed his instructions to reopen industries and businesses to save the economy.
As of yesterday, the deaths from coronavirus in the US stood at 132,318 the highest number of fatalities in any country.
Trump dismissed this saying that in 99% of infections the virus was ‘totally harmless’.
This didn’t stop him from blaming China for a ‘cover-up’ about the virus’s origin and demanding that China must be held accountable for spreading a global pandemic.
Trump’s hysterical attack on ‘the mob’, radical lefts and Marxists and his increasingly desperate attempt to blame China for the US economic collapse, accelerated by coronavirus, cannot be dismissed simply as the ravings of one unhinged man.
Trump represents in the sharpest way the hysteria that is gripping the ruling class in America and throughout capitalism internationally.
20 million jobs were wiped out in the US in April and, despite the mad rush to reopen, 14.7 million are still out of work.
This will shoot back up as industry and businesses are forced to close down once again as coronavirus spikes once more across the country.
With the US extra jobless benefits (which boosted unemployment benefit temporarily) expiring at the end of July, millions of US workers will be dumped into poverty.
The Republicans are arguing that these benefits are keeping workers from returning to work!
With workers and youth across the US rising up against the brutality of the state, the US ruling class are living in fear of revolution as workers refuse to accept a return to the starvation of the 1930s.
The hysteria of the US ruling class is matched by that of the ruling class in Britain which is driving down the same road as Trump.
Last week, Boris Johnson told the Evening Standard that there will be no extension of the furlough scheme despite the massive wave of lay-offs in retail and aviation announced last week.
Johnson insisted the scheme, due to be wound down from August and ended by October, was not ‘healthy either for the economy’ or for the workers.
Following the US the Tories have joined in blaming China for coronavirus and at the weekend it was revealed Johnson is about to phase out the technology from Huawei in the 5G network in line with the new US sanctions against the Chinese technology company.
Johnson and the British ruling class have entered a strategic alliance with Trump and the US ruling class, an alliance against not just China but against their own working class that has been revolutionised by the crisis.
The working class in the US and Britain must emulate this by building their own strategic alliance.
An alliance of workers and youth in both countries will have the common goal of bringing down their governments and going forward to workers’ governments that will expropriate the capitalist class and advance to socialism. This will provide the impetus for the victory of the world socialist revolution to put an end to capitalism for good.
