By Stanley Thomson

In our thousands,

In our millions,

We are all Palestinian

– Chanted at a 50,000 strong march on the anniversary of October 7th

Author’s note:

This piece has been reworked slightly since its initial release in December 2024. Since then, many of the problems with liberal and progressive complacency, moderation, and collaboration with the far-right of a special type that I articulated in these paragraphs have materialised. A recent article in Politico covered the gathering of a group of moderate Democrats in Loudoun County, Virginia,¹ where over the course of a day and a half they diagnosed, in isolation, the reasons for the electoral defeat and their recommendations for Democratic party strategy moving forward.² I believe these summary documents from Third Way’s “Comeback Retreat” are instructive in understanding not only the most likely political trajectory and campaigning strategy of the Democratic party in opposition to Trump, but also the political mindset and ideological standpoint of those informing it.

Tellingly, and unsurprisingly, there is no indication that the Democrats will mobilise to materially back grassroots resistance to the Trump administration. Only weeks into the second Trump term,³ Democrats have already shown their willingness to censure party members taking even the most milquetoast of stands against the new government.⁴ In keeping with their function as the aesthetically progressive side of American politics, they have decided that the furthest acceptable action against the far-right amounts to wearing pink for International Women’s Day in a muddled attempt to signal protest against the conservatives.⁵ “It’s time to rev up the opposition and come at Trump loud and clear,” chair of the DWC and New Mexico representative Teresa Leger Fernández told Time magazine. What exactly is loud or clear about a handful of political elites wearing pink, the same elites who full-throatedly backed the brutal genocide against the Palestinian people that has affected largely women and girls, is beyond this writer.

Indeed, the actual strategy of protest the Democrats seem most enthusiastic about is to avoid protest altogether. In a guest essay for The New York Times, James Carville, “a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns, including Bill Clinton’s in 1992, and a consultant to American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC,” petitioned Democrats to “roll over and play dead.” How this strategy would be distinct from their existing actions is unclear. Regardless, it is clear that for a majority of Democrats “the most radical thing [they] can do is nothing at all.”⁶

What is obvious in all of this mud is the necessity of revolutionary transition. In the West, which for decades has slumbered in the comfort afforded to it by the Pax Americana, millions of potential revolutionary workers are awakening to the brutal realities of imperialism that undergird their increasingly uncertain lives in the suburbs and cities of the core. The tasks of the anti-imperialist left are clear: to develop the theoretical clarity and the practical confidence to build and develop robust and sustainable left infrastructure, to build parties and networks of mutual aid and solidarity, and to encourage the masses to step boldly into political action. It should come as no shock to anyone that the bourgeois parties will not come to save us from the rising threat of fascism. As this piece demonstrates, they are in fact the soil out of which fascism grows, and to defeat fascism we must organise and create a real, tangible political alternative capable of mobilising the workers of the world in the direction of the communist horizon.

Sub-note: This piece was written with an intended audience of not-for-profit workers and soft progressives. As such, readers will note that an inclusive “we,” “us,” and “our” is used to refer to this audience. This does not reflect the present readership, or the politics of Red Ant. It is best read with this in mind, to better understand both the politics and positions of those within the NFP space, and the degree to which radical political positions have to be couched in palatable language to pass muster in these circles, and to avoid causing offence or backlash.

Here on unceded Wurundjeri country, it is Buath Gurru, grass-flowering season. As the warming sun bakes the earth, cicadas emerge chanting their ancient rhythms.

I began writing this piece several weeks before the results of the US election threw a strangely familiar wrench into the hopeful machinery of the progressive movement. My original intent was to explore melancholy and its relation to what I’d identified as a uniquely liberal form of defeatism in broad terms, as a general meditation on complacency and moderation among progressives. With Trump headed once more for the White House, it feels appropriate to relate this exploration more closely to the dynamics and moods now at play, to the concrete expressions of liberal melancholy and its potential antidotes as they exist in the aftermath of the election.

On the day, I was among progressives from the not for profit movement, coming together to plan and strategise for the months ahead. The mood in the room was that a historical victory for progressive, liberal forces was certain. Despite a general wariness borne of Trump’s surprising win in 2016, the prevailing feeling was that we had this in the bag, that the forces of hatred and bigotry were no match for the upbeat and uplifting joy that the Harris/Walz campaign, along with their celebrity endorsers, had built. In a manner befitting this zeitgeist, a movement leader from the UK called in to discuss progressive strategy under the Starmer government. Asked for their hot take on the upcoming vote, they replied enthusiastically. “Harris will win with 292 electoral votes. She will win the popular vote, and there will be chaos and unrest as the MAGA crowd attempts to question the results and thwart the process.” This was greeted with smiles and nods, and an acknowledgement by our comrade from old Britannia that, “of course, anything can happen.” Indeed it can, and did. But with hopes firmly grounded within the sphere of liberal electoral politics, and our ears attuned to the echo-chambers of progressive opinion, many of us were in for a nasty surprise.

Throughout the day folks nervously checked the results, a subtle mood of creeping dread becoming more pronounced as the hours passed. I could sense the optimistic belief in a Harris victory becoming troubled, replaced with anxiety. Rosy optimism gave way to stress lines and furrowed brows. And then the other shoe dropped. Late afternoon, in the last session of the day, one of us announced the results. A sense of disbelief and shock rapidly circled the room. A bizarre sense of deja vu arrived unbeckoned into our midst, a feeling of history repeating itself, of time out of joint. How could this have happened, again? Some people attempted gallows humor, but this did little to alleviate the concern and shock. Those of us who had suspected the result in advance fared little better: forewarned is not necessarily forearmed. I could feel the melancholy beginning to take.

At dinner later that night, discussing the results with a fellow activist from America, they asked me how I retain my optimism in situations like these, and if I really believed that a socialist alternative was possible. We talked amicably, and they seemed politely receptive, but I could tell that there was little likelihood of a serious re-assessment of their stance on the matter, of taking seriously an explicitly working class, anti-capitalist revolutionary politics as the antidote to fascism. Despite the repetition of a historical defeat at the hands of an openly extremist coalition of far-right forces, and the mounting evidence of the incapacity on a global scale of liberalism to challenge or defend against it, the liberal faith in progressive business-as-usual is difficult to shake.

Over the next few days, on social and mainstream media, the tone from the nominal left shifted to accommodate, alongside depression and grief, anger and hatred. Dominating the narrative were discussions of the stupidity and moral failings of those who had elected Trump. Articles and think-pieces by liberal opinion shapers were shared and re-shared that located the primary causes of the result in growing misogyny and racism, in the lack of education of Trump voters, in the rise of mis- and dis-information and the cynical propaganda of provocateurs like Tucker Carlson. Alongside this were brutal denunciations of the left, of activists who had dared to so much as suggest that a self-proclaimed progressive party should not materially fund and support an active genocide. Judging from the vociferous commentary therein, one could be forgiven for imagining that the Democratic party had run Bernie Sanders, or Jill Stein as their presidential candidate, rather than a jailer and war criminal who ran on a platform not dissimilar to that of Trump’s 2016 campaign.

That voters could have been motivated by disastrous economic conditions was hastily remarked upon and then sidelined just as quickly. Acknowledgements of economic motivations always appeared alongside mantras about the booming stock markets, growing GDP, or named Biden as “the most pro-union president in US history.” A low bar to clear. On all fronts, disdain and disgust with the “deplorables” aroused all too familiar memories of the liberal echo-chambers that sprang up in the wake of Trump’s first electoral victory. The same people who hours before the election were talking about “circular firing squads” on the left, and attacking radical leftists for calling on Democrats to fight the right with genuine left politics, were now lashing out at anyone in striking distance. The supposedly united progressive movement, quick to rhetorically place itself above this kind of disunity, was now tearing itself and the people it claimed to be fighting for, to shreds. And this, I suppose, brings us to the present moment.

This piece explores left melancholy and defeat—both as it has been conceived in the past, and with regard to its present expression in liberal progressive responses to the second Trump presidency. It seems as good a moment as any to stop and look deeply at the way those of us in the progressive movement react when faithfully held beliefs in our ideas, our tactics, and our politics are shaken by mass rejection. I want to invite us to stop blaming everyday working people and rather seek to understand how and why, across the world, workers are voting for right-wing “alternatives” to an aesthetically progressive liberalism. And, more importantly, I want us to make a sincere attempt to understand why so many people are abandoning said liberal parties, when on the issues their values tend to skew progressive. Instead of dwelling in comfortable moral superiority, I want to encourage progressives to turn our analysis to the failures of the liberal capitalist system itself, to lift our heads up from think pieces and angry tweets for long enough to properly consider an important question: what will become of so-called liberal democracy in the twilight years of the Pax Americana, and how might we reach beyond ourselves to build a truly democratic system in its stead?

A fire

in the master’s house

is set

– Zach De La Rocha

Footnotes

1. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/02/third-way-patriotism-democrats-campaign-00206890 ↩︎
2. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000195-5511-d4a2-afbf-dd7121940000 ↩︎
3. The revisions to this article and the author’s note date from the 10th of March, 2025, to publication. ↩︎
4. https://apnews.com/article/house-censure-green-trump-joint-address-61d82026983c99a269209bbeb32b45a5 ↩︎
5. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/08/democrats-trump-pink-protest ↩︎
6. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/opinion/democrats-trump-congress.html ↩︎