{"id":845,"date":"2020-08-05T18:30:53","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T23:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=845"},"modified":"2020-08-20T06:10:21","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T11:10:21","slug":"a-new-era-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2020\/08\/a-new-era-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"A new era begins?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Extraordinary political events have shaken the United States since the police murder of George Floyd, and the sheer scale and size of the fight against police terror is unprecedented. Well over a thousand<\/a> cities, suburbs, and small towns across each of the fifty states have seen Black Lives Matter protests. The New York Times<\/em> estimated<\/a> that by July 3, \u201c15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd.\u201d<\/p>\n

The national uprising spread internationally<\/a> and left few institutions untouched, while the major political parties and their proxies scrambled to respond. The toppling of long-hated symbols\u2014from Confederate monuments to statutes of Christopher Columbus and local thugs like Philadelphia\u2019s Frank Rizzo<\/a>, along with the destruction of the Third Precinct<\/a> police station in Minneapolis\u2014are actions reminiscent of past revolutions, echoing the overthrow of Stalinism in 1989-1991 or Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak<\/a> in Egypt in 2011. That millions took to the streets during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic tells us something about the deep rage unleashed.<\/p>\n

Are we witnessing the beginning of a new era of militant mass struggle, or is this just a flash in the pan, an episodic explosion? The crises and polarization of recent U.S. history that brought us to this moment strongly suggest the former. The combativity and radicalism of the demonstrators, overwhelmingly led by multiracial youth, have propelled the demand to defund the police, long a goal of the radical prison abolitionist movement<\/a>, to the center of national political debate. To say this is extraordinary is an understatement. It has called into question the very nature of the capitalist state, in one of the most powerful and most stable nation-states of the last century.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s threats<\/a> to unleash \u201cominous weapons,\u201d \u201cvicious dogs,\u201d and to deploy active duty troops\u2014he later had to back down\u2014further radicalized protesters. It was left to an array of Democratic governors and mayors across the country to use police and National Guard troops to attempt to crush the protests. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city\u2019s first Black female mayor, took a hard line against protesters. At the height of demonstrations in the week following Floyd\u2019s murder, she raised the bridges and limited public access to the business and government district in Chicago\u2019s affluent downtown Loop.<\/p>\n

Undeterred, demonstrations continued across Chicago and the rest of the country. More than 14,000<\/a> people have been arrested nationally, while in New York City 47 police cars<\/a> were damaged or destroyed. Nothing like this has happened in the U.S. in fifty years, not even during the years of urban revolts and mass protests against the Vietnam War. That last generation of rebellion took place during the end of the post-World War II economic boom, while today the United States is mired in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Even before the economic collapse triggered by the COVID-19, four decades of one-sided class war meant that half of U.S. residents were already living in<\/a> or near poverty.<\/p>\n

The insurrectionary quality and radical demands of the uprising have shifted national politics dramatically to the left and forced quick concessions<\/a> from a discredited political establishment. It should remind us of the observation<\/a>, made by the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin that, \u201cDuring a revolution, millions and tens of millions of people learn in a week more than they do in a year of ordinary, somnolent life.\u201d It\u2019s not just that there is a new willingness to confront the United States\u2019 racist past and the racist policies<\/a> of its brutal police forces, but what is at work is a deeper longing for a dramatic shift in politics across the board.<\/p>\n

The lid is off<\/h4>\n

To put it bluntly: the lid has come off the smoldering powder keg of U.S. society. Even some thinking sections of the conservative establishment media have taken notice. The National Review<\/em><\/a>, the long-time voice of \u201crespectable\u201d conservatism, declared on June 6:<\/p>\n

And yet something else seems to be happening, something that suggests these events are a harbinger of even more serious upheavals in the years ahead<\/em>. These upheavals will not be averted by justice being done in Floyd\u2019s case, or by reforms in policing, however overdue they may be. And these upheavals will be \u201cabout\u201d a lot more than race. To understand why, it\u2019s necessary to appreciate that the protests over Floyd\u2019s death were both a sincerely felt reaction to an appalling incident, and another round in a broader social and generational fight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Long-time Wall Street Journal<\/em> columnist Gerald F. Seib looked at the current political landscape and asked<\/a>, \u201cWhen does a country reach a tipping point\u2014a point when the citizenry concludes that things are simply spinning out of control, and that something different is required?\u201d Quoting business historian Ron Chernow, Seib concludes, \u201cMy guess is that we are seeing a situation that is of the deep and lasting variety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Financial Times<\/em> columnist Rana Foroohar<\/a> sees in the uprising the potential for a new labor movement. Her reasoning for this is pretty straightforward:<\/p>\n

The economic divide is about as stark as it was the last time the country saw this kind of social unrest, in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. But while the marchers then were mainly Black, and the organizers were civil rights leaders from African American communities, today\u2019s Black Lives Matter protests are much more diverse. They are happening in some overwhelmingly white communities\u2014places like Boise, Idaho, and Colorado\u2014as well as in multicultural cities such as New York.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The multiple shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic\u2014the economic collapse, the national uprising against racism, and the tottering position of U.S. imperialism\u2014have not only radicalized a large section of the U.S. population but also isolated the Trump administration from large sections of the U.S. ruling class. Trump has tarnished the image of U.S. imperialism across the globe so badly and mismanaged the pandemic with such dire economic consequences that a sweeping victory of the Democrats in the fall elections is a virtual certainty. This is despite<\/em> the candidacy of Joe Biden, a living fossil of twentieth century U.S. politics, accurately called \u201cyesterday\u2019s man.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Challenges for the U.S. Left<\/h4>\n

During the last five years, the U.S. left has gone through a rebirth<\/a> that has surprised many of its own adherents and bewildered the U.S. political establishment. This is best represented by the explosive growth of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which now claims more than seventy thousand<\/a> members. Much of DSA\u2019s growth can be attributed to Bernie Sanders\u2019 two presidential campaigns, especially the 2016 campaign that put the term \u201cdemocratic socialism\u201d back into mainstream politics. While Sanders\u2019 politics were always a very mild version of socialism, more like New Deal liberalism<\/a>, in the dry wasteland of mainstream U.S. politics, he has been celebrated as a radical who inspired a generation of young people to become socialists.<\/p>\n