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After spending Sunday night hiding in an underground bunker for fear of the thousands of protesters who continued to surround a White House late at night with the lights off, Donald Trump rehearsed a counterattack on Monday.

Ignoring the advice of some of his advisers, who urged him to try to tone down the protests against police repression and for justice for George Floyd, which had already become the most widespread rebellion in 50 years, he redoubled his efforts to impose a repressive way out to the uprisings.

Trump launched his message at St John’s church, near the White House, where he called himself the "president of law and order" and declared the protests to be "acts of domestic terror”. He announced the dispatch of the army to ensure control of Washington DC and said that if the governors and mayors of the country (where nighttime curfews and the dispatch of National Guard delegations are widespread) didn’t repress the protests more intensely, he would send the army to ensure order in their cities, with or without the agreement of the local governments. He said that the protesters would be arrested, detained and hunted down, threatening long sentences. He focused on Antifa (anti fascist action), as responsible for the clashes at the protests.

After Trump issued the statements, 1,600 soldiers entered the area of the capital, stationed military trucks in the surroundings of the White House and monitored protests from helicopters, flying low with notoriously armed personnel.

Repression, in accordance with presidential orders, effectively intensified nationally. In Louisville (KY), David McAtee was shot dead and his body was left in the street for twelve hours by the police. The Associated Press (as of June the 1st) has reported 4,400 detainees, but many observers believe these are conservative numbers.

The arrogance and the repression do not manage to hide the increasement in Trump’s political isolation in this clash. Journalists released leaked FBI reports that dismissed Antifa's involvement in organizing the protests. A growing number of Republican legislators distanced themselves from Trump's line of confrontation.

Trump's isolation is not only due to the worsening of the protests in recent weeks, but to the general course of the economic, social and health catastrophe, which has confirmed Prensa Obrera's characterization of the United States as not only the center of the pandemic but also of the capitalist crisis that was developing before it erupted.

The bonapartism of plebeian and police bases that Trump has tried to mount, linked to his policy of trade war and repatriation of capitals, as a defense against the capitalist crisis, has failed. He failed to consolidate a regime of personal power, when his policy seemed to reactivate sectors of the industry or when he boasted of record unemployment numbers, at the cost of enormous exploitation and precarious employment. Now the crisis has overcome all defenses and Trump is playing all his cards to crush the rebellion that has risen up against him.

The economist Nouriel Roubini, remembered for his accurate forecast of the 2008 crisis, in a recent interview (Intelligencer, 5/22), rejected the sayings of those who make optimistic forecasts of a rapid recovery of the markets based on rises in stock prices. The economist explains the rise by the influx of Treasury funds given to companies, through monetary and fiscal packages. But he also points out that, in July, millions of the newly unemployed stop receiving their benefits and that the trend towards a fall in consumption is irreversible, among other things, because any drop in unemployment will be met with more precarious jobs and lower wages.

The revolts in North America have opened a new stage worldwide. After a brief interval, imposed by the pandemic, the rising wave of mass struggles seen in the past year in the Middle East, in Latin America, in France and, although with a program with imperialist influence, in Hong Kong, has resumed with renewed forces and nothing less than in the heart of the international capitalist system.

The Protest Doesn’t Stop

The enormous militarization, the curfews and the threats haven’t been enough to nullify the movement set in motion. On Tuesday night, the 2nd, there were protests in all 50 states, as well as in Washington DC and Puerto Rico.

The radicalization was preceded by a growing wave of labor and tenant strikes. In that process, the union bureaucracy has not only failed to play a progressive role but has been part of the lobby to reopen the industry and hand over its workers to the coronavirus, in exchange for not stopping the accumulation of profits.

It is no coincidence that the headquarters of the AFL-CIO union bureaucracy was burned down on Monday by protesters. Among their federated unions, they count the police associations, which play a systematic role in defending the violent actions of their members. However, grassroots union sectors have participated in the protests or published political statements in support of the revolt. The Minneapolis bus drivers, who refused to let their buses be used to move arrested protesters, went on general strike and issued a political statement which explained their actions and where they claimed "Police brutality is unacceptable! The system has failed the entire working class, from the coronavirus to the economic crisis we face" (Socialist Resurgence, 29/5).

The new chant, which accompanies those raised by the anti-repressionist movement in previous stages, is "Abolish the police”. After experiences with governments of both political signs, of co-optation and savage repression against successive generations of fighters, a broad vanguard abandons any idea of partial reforms and demands the complete dismantling of the repressive apparatus.

Can this be solved in November?

The Democratic Party has gone out with all its figures to flirt simultaneously with the protests and not to bring about any fundamental change in the situation, even while continuing to direct the repressions where they are in power and without calling for an end to the repression.

President Barack Obama published a letter in which he seems to support the protests, although he condemns the acts of violence, as if they weren’t systematically produced by the state apparatus. The focus of his letter is that, together with the protests, changes will come in the next elections. Obama states that each city has different problems and we will have to see how to try out local reforms according to their needs. Nothing could be further from a huge movement that denounces an unbearable system of oppression, which operates from one end of the country to the other.

The Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, rushed to have his picture taken at a protest and announced that he would go to George Floyd's funeral, only to say that it was inevitable that the protests would be repressed, but that he recommended the police aimed at the legs, not the heart.

The Democratic Left, behind Sanders and the Socialist Democrats, plays no politically independent role in the protests, although thousands of its militants are undoubtedly on the front lines of the mobilizations. They are a purely electoral force, busy at the moment denying that they can negatively affect Biden's chances of a victory over Trump in November.

But it is undeniable that the political conditions of the elections, which would be held in November (whether or not they are held and whether they are still the subject of a political and legal struggle), will vary enormously according to the outcome of the current situation. A picture of the advance of the movement and the recounting of Trump's repressive advance will open up a new political context. If the repression succeeds in imposing demobilization, Trump could regain his breath and even maintain a cadre of exception until the elections.

Trump Out Now

The defeat of Trump and his racist and repressive government, which has shown its willingness to give up the lives of the people in order to keep the profits of capital moving, is the central task of the moment. First of all, along with the jailing of all the police who participated in the murder of George Floyd and the other racial crimes, all those who have ordered and carried out the savage repression seen these days must be arrested. The army and the National Guard must be withdrawn. Curfews and states of siege must be lifted. All detained demonstrators must be released and any legal cases against them annulled. And to proceed with the dismantling of the police and prison apparatus, which is an undeniable mechanism of class and racial oppression.

To achieve this objective, it is necessary to forge the political and protest unity of a broad and dispersed fighting movement that doesn’t have a common strategy of action. It means organizing assemblies, in every place of work, of study, of housing. It also means promoting meetings in trade unions, student bodies and all people's organizations. The popular rebellion must act in a unified way as a condition for victory.

Voting to unify the entire fighting movement into a common stream and establish the program of the masses’ demands.

The urgent problems and demands that the pandemic and the economic crisis have placed as matters of life and death cannot be absent. Free health care for the entire population, from coronavirus testing to routine medical treatment; workers' and popular control of  the compliance of the health and safety conditions demanded by the pandemic; suspension of all evictions and the guarantee of a single home; social security for the unemployed without time limit; prohibition of layoffs and suspensions; full enforcement of work agreements and a minimum wage that covers a family living costs.

A path of mass radicalization and fighting militancy has begun in the world's leading global power. Trump’s defeat will be a point of support for workers' and anti-imperialist fighters all over the world. The exploited of the world look with expectation, support and solidarity to the workers and youth of the U.S. who have stood up.