7 hours Ago By Aimee Meade
There’s a rumbling in America. Some radical, street-fighting men have emerged to challenge the Maga movement and Donald Trump’s ruthless power-grab. Exhibit A.
“We are really in danger right now and we have to rally the grassroots to take back the destiny of America!” Sorry, that was Al Gore, the former vice-president and environmentalist, speaking on a television talk show last weekend. “I think there may be a rising demand for another president in his late seventies,” he joked.if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }What about Exhibit B? “It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once.
.. For far too long we’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell us that America’s house is not on fire, even as the flames are licking their faces.
”That would be the billionaire governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, a scion of the Hyatt hotel chain. His call to arms was delivered in New Hampshire, where politicians go for one purpose only: to put down a calling card for the 2028 presidential campaign. Good luck with that one, JB! We haven’t had enough billionaires running America lately.
The Democrats are in a low-energy funk about their party’s future. But organic, nationwide street protests against Trump have attracted hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. They have no obvious leader or uniform slogan.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_mobile_l1"}); }if(window.adverts) { window.adverts.
addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }The banners are homemade. For some, it’s “No More Tariffs”. For others, it’s “Real Americans Protect the Constitution”.
Snatching people off the streets and locking them up in El Salvador has caused real anger. “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” is another rallying cry.These protests have a 60s hippy-dippy feel.
I was sitting in a quiet café when a young woman suddenly handed me a bracelet with a date on the beads and an exhortation to “be there”.She dashed off before I had a chance to say, “For what?” Only later did I realise it was for an anti-Trump rally. We could be in for a summer of rallies.
There is an enormous, pent-up demand for action that establishment politicians including Gore and Pritzker recognise. Kamala Harris is about to emerge from her self-imposed purdah.They are watching with alarm as left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 35, and radical senator Bernie Sanders, 83, attract vast crowds to their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.
Twenty thousand people turned up to hear them in Utah, deep-red Mormon country.This Saturday, Bernie is taking his roadshow to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, formerly the home of the industrial behemoth US Steel. The old plant now houses a giant casino.
But the galvanising energy of the 60s civil rights movement that re-emerged after George Floyd’s murder by a policeman in 2020 provoked an anti-woke backlash. Today Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House, the last remaining symbol of the rallies that swept America, has been painted over and erased.if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_mobile_l2"}); }if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }“We have bigger fish to fry than fights over what has been very important to us,” said Washington mayor Muriel Bowser.
“But now our focus is on making sure our residents and our economy survives.”There is no sign of Antifa, the movement that purportedly terrified the right during the first Trump presidency. Masked, black-clad anarchists became the go-to bogeyman for everything Maga disliked about the left.
Their presence at anti-Trump protests and vandalisation of liberal inner-city strongholds in Portland, Oregon and Seattle were a potent way to defuse criticism of white supremacists at the Unite the Right rally and the January 6 Capitol riot. “Historically, dictatorship and authoritarianism can push people into violent action,” Mark Bray, the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, told USA Today. “That has happened in the past, and we are potentially moving into uncharted waters.
”But the Gaza protests on university campuses, arguably the heir to Antifa, have provoked massive retribution from Trump, using antisemitism as a spur to punishing Ivy League citadels like Columbia.#color-context-related-article-3584937 {--inews-color-primary: #3759B7;--inews-color-secondary: #EFF2FA;--inews-color-tertiary: #3759B7;} Read Next square SARAH BAXTER In Donald Trump's republic of fear, no one is safeRead MoreThe 60s are often viewed through a nostalgic filter. They were marred by the assassination of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, and ended in 1970 with the gunning down of anti-Vietnam protesters at Kent State university.
Richard Nixon won the 1968 election and the next 25 years were dominated by Republican presidents (with a brief Jimmy Carter interlude). But liberals embarked on their long march through US institutions.if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_mobile_l3"}); }if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l3"}); }That’s now threatened by Trump, who is coming after the courts, universities, NGOs and federal employees.
The White House is itching for the revival of Antifa, which would give him the excuse to invoke emergency powers and deploy the US military. According to Mark Esper, Trump’s former defence secretary, the President wanted to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act in 2020 to set US troops on Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington, a prospect that horrified Esper and General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When Trump sought to stay in power after the 2020 election, former general Michael Flynn, a fervent supporter, took to the airwaves calling for martial law.
It is not too far-fetched to suggest that Trump would seize on future street clashes to suspend the electoral process and extend his term in power. This accounts in part for the terrified paralysis of his opponents.But nature abhors a vacuum.
The question is, who is going to fill it?Sarah Baxter is director of the Marie Colvin Centre for International Reporting.
