ISO seeks to channel anti-Trump protests behind the Democratic Party
By
Tom Hall
14 February 2017
The first three weeks of the Trump administration have seen an unprecedented outpouring of popular opposition to a newly installed government. Millions of people in the US and around the world have taken part in demonstrations opposing Trump’s anti-democratic policies.
The protests show that despite a quarter century of unending war and more than 15 years of the “war on terror,” the American ruling class has been unable to create a mass popular base for imperialist war or anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant racism. On the contrary, the largely spontaneous response to Trump’s attacks on democratic rights reflects the deeply felt progressive sentiments among workers and young people.
As always in the initial stages of such a process, the underlying class issues have yet to emerge openly, and the prevailing political perspective is one of protest and pressure on the existing political parties and institutions. The independent and revolutionary role of the working class has yet to find political expression.
The International Socialist Organization, one of many organizations that orbit the Democratic Party and seek to provide it with a “left” cover, is doing its best to prevent this from happening. In a series of articles on its Socialist Worker web site, the ISO explicitly argues that the mass protests have already shifted not only the Democrats, but even sections of the Republicans, to oppose Trump.
An editorial published February 1, “The people versus the president,” provides a case study in the way that the ISO works to obscure class issues and distinctions in order to confuse opposition and direct it behind the political establishment and the capitalist system.
The…