Lenin’s ‘weeks where decades happen’ are upon us

By Ken Ferguson

DESPITE A YEAR of cringing and cowering before Trump by Starmer, Labour, and assorted centrist governments — from soft fascism in Italy to coalition politics in Germany — the US imperialist beast remains unsatisfied.

That is the key lesson spelled out in Trump’s words and demonstrated by his deeds, most clearly in the military assault on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president. No amount of grovelling letters from the king, or ego-massaging through boosted NATO war spending, pretending that Trump is “one of us”, can conceal the brutal truth. He is a hard-line US imperialist, and his relationships are based solely on how countries fit into and serve that agenda.

Hence the Olympic-record silence from the Starmer regime — itself elected on the basis of a small proportion of UK voters — over the clear breach of international law represented by bombing a country and kidnapping its president.

 Slippery statements about the US needing to explain its actions, or that nobody is weeping for Maduro, cannot hide the reality that the so called UK-US “special relationship” is that of a dog to a lamp post, with the latter draped in a Union Jack. We now face a nuclear-armed gangster regime based first and foremost on US interests, seeking not allies but servants. The assault on Venezuela is the culmination of 20 years of hostility, including sanctions, coup attempts, piracy against shipping, and ceaseless propaganda against the Bolivarian government.

 As we write, it remains an open question whether the current Venezuelan government will be allowed to remain in power on the basis of serving US oil and other corporate interests, or whether a return visit by US bombers and boots on the ground remains an option.

 Washington is already threatening Cuba, Colombia, and even NATO member Greenland, and is met, at best, with mild tut-tutting from its so-called allies. Voice readers would be well advised to read Trump’s revised statement on US strategy, published just as the Christmas trees went up and largely ignored over the festive season until the Venezuela thunderclap.

This direct exercise of state power for regime change is only part of a wider offensive. Trumpism is bolstered by far-right forces ranging from the thuggery of ICE raids — backed by shootings and the deployment of troops on US streets under the guise of crime fighting — to direct intervention in European and international politics.

 The official position of the Trump regime warns against immigration in openly racist terms, claiming it will “dilute” Europe’s population, while close allies cheer-lead the far right AfD in Germany, Le Pen’s National Rally in France, and Tommy Robinson in the UK. The latter has welcomed Trump’s assault on Venezuela and has even called for a US invasion of the UK to depose Starmer.

For the left in Scotland, the UK, and internationally, the lessons are clear and stark.

Trump and his allies, including Reform, cannot be bought off by diplomatic compromise. They must be confronted, exposed, and defeated. There should be no illusions about the severity of the test this places on the broad Labour, progressive, and anti-racist movement.

 That movement urgently needs to link the concerns of Scotland’s working-class majority — living standards, housing, and the NHS — with a programme capable of confronting and defeating the lies of the far-right Reform. Some of this may emerge during the run-in to May’s Holyrood election, but given the depth of voter demoralisation it will need to be more than the claim-and-counter-claim politics that currently passes for debate at Holyrood.

The Scotland Demands Better demonstration last September offered a glimpse of what an alternative might look like — but only a glimpse. The underlying crisis of disillusionment and the flow of votes to the far right share a common root: 40 years of neoliberal failure, producing austerity, service cuts, low pay, and crisis in housing and the NHS.

Allied to this has been the wholesale abandonment of working-class interests by so called “workers’ parties” such as Labour, and their counterparts in the US Democrats, French Socialists, and German SPD. Parties will, of course, play a role in any movement to defeat the far right and open the road to a people- and planet-centred, public ownership-based Scotland.

But this will require far greater depth, including trade unions, campaign groups, community organisations, tenants’ groups, and more. Such a movement must be rooted in demands for public ownership that end scandals like PFI in the NHS, freeing millions for healthcare; bring vast energy resources under public control to cut bills; and build thousands of council houses for rent to reduce waiting lists and break landlord power.

There can be no illusions that this approach will not meet fierce resistance from entrenched wealth and its political servants. But it must be pursued if we are to meet the needs of people and planet — and defeat the far right.

As Mao put it, “a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step”. Time to march.