Going to the Mats: We Are the Resistance
Supporters of President Donald Trump face years of suppression, ostracism, persecution, and even public prosecution.
There is every indication, today, that supporters of President Donald Trump face years of suppression, ostracism, persecution, and even public prosecution. Already, there is a rush by social media and tech executives to permanently ban communication by President Trump with almost half of American voters. Hollywood gloats. Hillary Clinton cheers. A few world leaders rallied to support the right of the president to use social media to communicate with voters. And some in both parties demurred when President-elect Biden compared Republican leaders with Nazis.
The goal, as one prominent media commentator put it, will be to “cleanse” the Trump movement.
The goal, as one prominent media commentator put it, will be to “cleanse” the Trump movement. The Lincoln Foundation announced it was collecting information on all Trump staff so that they could “be held to account.” The leftwing Lincoln Project announced it was building a database of Trump administration staff and individuals so that “They will be held accountable.” The editor of Forbes, a publication on the right, warned corporations not to hire any Trump administration spokesmen, writing that Let it be known to the business world: “Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists [pictured] above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie.”
We do not know, at this point, how far the cleansing or “de-Trumpification” will go. Much will depend upon us. More than 74 million Americans voted in 2020 to reelect President Trump. That is 47 percent of those who voted. Biden won with 51.3 percent of the popular vote. (Third-party candidates, including the Libertarian candidate with more than a million, took the rest of the votes.)
Voters for President-elect Joe Biden were bombarded by the mainstream media for four years—and with unprecedented ferocity during the election itself. The other roughly half of Americans decided how to vote for President Trump despite the amoral battering, grotesque distortions, and rabid partisanship delivered by the media. So which is the more independent-minded, committed, tougher side?
And, of course, we are not alone. Many Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and Objectivists view Biden-Harris with disgust but would not support Trump.
- What do we face?
- Where do the election and Capitol Building attack leave us?
- What assets do we have?
- What would be a permanent winning strategy?
- What should be its cardinal goals?
Four Years Ago
Exactly at this point, four years ago, the enemies of President-elect Trump raised the cries: Resistance! No normality! Not my president! Impeach! The Atlantic reported: “The day after the election victory of President-elect Donald Trump, protesters took to the streets in cities across the country, expressing anger and resistance. Thousands marched in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle, and more, chanting and carrying signs.”
Protestors blocked highways, confronted police, and a few were arrested. We met Antifa, an energized Black Lives Matter, and sundry other activist leftists. On inauguration day, riots swept Washington with cars burned, police attacked, store windows smashed. More than 230 were faced with felony rioting charges. And the “pussy hat” cadre listened to speech after speech inciting hatred and fear of the new President.
Congress boiled with proposals to impeach the new President, name a special prosecutor to ferret out his crimes, investigate how Russia helped him steal the election. And the media—ah, the media, humiliated by election of a candidate they had gone berserk to defeat, wallpapered their pages and blared at the TV screen about Trump finances, Trump’s family, Trump and sex, Trump and Russia. The honeymoon was an attempted murder.
My family and many of my friends had gone into opposition to Trump. When I published “Donald Trump and His Enemies: How the Media Put Trump in Office,” my wife’s oldest and best friend called me an “asshole” to my face. My wife did not respond.
Primed for Suspicion
At this new transition in Washington, we have not even the gift of basic certainty. There is not enough evidence publicly available to conclude that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen by Democrats. The burden of the proof is on proposition asserted. In absence of evidence for a stolen election, we must reject the proposition.
The confounding factor is that in the run-up to the election, Democratic Party officials in state after state used the COVID-19 epidemic to justify changing the election ground rules; election safeguard procedures were upended with mail-in ballots—in California mailed not once but twice to all state residents (not just citizens); and in the heavily Democratic states where the most changes took place, lower court judges routinely turned down challenges.
The instant that these questions were raised, the mainstream media adopted the mantra “baseless,” “unsubstantiated,” “unsupported allegations.”
Many accepted predictors of election outcomes such as attendance at rallies, the results of last-minute polls, pointed to a Trump victory in states where on November 3 he lost. Questions were raised about a “new generation” of suspect polling machines. The instant that these questions were raised, the mainstream media adopted the mantra “baseless,” “unsubstantiated,” “unsupported allegations.” And repeated it like name, rank, and serial number. The problem was that allegations had been raised, again and again, including by hundreds of poll workers and observers. Instead of investigating the claims and possibly unearthing evidence—or encouraging others to come forward—the media blared repeatedly, “No evidence!”
This closed rather than opened and settled the investigation. Active investigations—an indication of importance and interest—tend to bring forward new testimony and evidence pro and con. With Biden the winner, the media wanted no part of that. The mainstream media shut down all investigation exactly in contrast to what it did for the last four years with even the flimsiest charges against Trump. The absurd allegation that he ridiculed a disabled reporter got more support, more stories, and more passion than all the reasons for doubting the legitimacy of the 2020 vote.
Doubt about the election outcome will fester for years. More than two decades elapsed before the truth about the 1960 election, which Democrats stole, became a matter of record and history.
Doubt about the election outcome will fester for years. More than two decades elapsed before the truth about the 1960 election, which Democrats stole, became a matter of record and history. But too late to change the course of history. Many urged Republican candidate Richard Nixon to challenge the outcome of the election. Actions by Mayor Richard Daly in Chicago and his mob connections, and actions by Lyndon Johnson’s henchmen in Texas, led prominent Republicans to demand that Richard Nixon oppose the results. Nixon demurred, pleading that a challenge would divide America.
The relentless progress of history, challenge by challenge, may yield a verdict on the 2020 election. This is not always the case, though.
The Perfect Attack on President Trump
Nothing could have more gravely damaged President Trump, handed a more lethal weapon to his enemies—and ensure that achievements of his administration could be drowned in the hate of his enemies—than what happened in Washington, D.C., on January 6.
If Trump’s supporters wanted to guarantee the permanent triumph of “Trump derangement syndrome,” no tactic could have been more brilliant than a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol building at a time that ensured worldwide media coverage. The event handed to the new administration and other enemies of Trump a bloody shirt that media and Democrats will never cease to wave.
Trump did summon supporters to Washington on the day that the election results would be confirmed in Congress. Speaking to the crowd, he said their protest must focus on Congress, where the certification process was underway. They must be adamant about the need to confront the questions being raised by members of Congress who had pledged not to certify.
There is nothing in any of that to condemn the President. In the aftermath of invasion by some demonstrators, turning protest into riot and disrupting a session of Congress, the causes are sought in Trump’s words and actions. Michelle Obama recently referred to an “insurrection.” That was the tenor of hundreds of comments entertained by the mainstream media.
News anchors, commentators, panelists, and interviewees proclaimed that this was the “first” and “worst” political violence in American history. We had “seen nothing like it.” It was the beginning of a new era of violence in politics. It attacked “the people’s House.” It was like the Reichstag fire.
The past four years had not witnessed climactic leftwing violence? New groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter bringing terror to American cities night after night with rioting, looting, arson, bomb attacks on police, seizure of police stations, beating of opponents, and even long-term occupation of parts of cities? At those times, the focus of the media was the “causes” of the violence, reasons, explanations—in other words, the narrative that violence is wrong, but we certainly can understand, and we must examine our own racism to find the real cause. In short: a good cause, guys, but keep down the violence because it looks bad.
Year after year, the left is associated with violence, including on U.S. university campuses where a speaker with disapproved viewpoints, like Manhattan Institute senior scholar Heather Mac Donald, are met with campus riots.
When Trump addressed those who gathered in Washington, he had no reason to expect the attack on the Capitol. Republicans don’t “do” violence. The left does. And that has been true ever since the New Left violence of the 1960s and groups of that era like the Black Panthers in battles with police and the Weather Underground with its bombs.
The sole instance of earlier “Republican” or “right” violence that I hear cited is “Charlottesville.” Trump’s enemies go there as their only supposed example of violence on the Trump side. But that most-loved smear has been exposed repeatedly. A protest at the removal of a historical statue was confronted by a leftwing counterprotest, especially Antifa. And the risk when rallies are confronted with violent disruptors is some deadly incident as at Charlottesville when a car ploughed into the crowd.
The incident has been milked dry for attacks on Trump. Asked about the Charlottesville clash, he said there were legitimate, patriotic demonstrators on both sides. And then, he unmistakably and vehemently condemned violence, force, on both sides. But, if your goal is to destroy a political opponent, dirty tricks not excluded, you try to twist beyond recognition what he said. And keep repeating the slur. Can you refute this?
A friend recently argued that President Trump routinely calls out “fringe” groups. His only example was a reference to Charlottesville. What Trump does is respond to media attacks on groups that support him by insisting such groups include “good people” and “patriots” as well as troublemakers.
When will we have more information about those who made the futile, anti-Trump assault on the Capitol? Some 50-plus of the demonstrators have been arrested. Who will they turn out to be? Even as the attack unfolded, rumors went viral that Antifa “infiltrators” and “provocateurs” had incited and led it. I watched dozens of people on Facebook accept and reassert and “share” the allegation. Some specific reports and photographs were offered as evidence. The story was reported the next day by the New York Post and now other media are addressing it.
“At least two known Antifa members were spotted among the throngs of pro-Trump protesters at the Capitol on Wednesday, a law enforcement source told the Post.
“The Antifa members disguised themselves with pro-Trump clothing to join in the DC rioting, said the sources, who spotted the infiltrators while monitoring video coverage from the Capitol.
“The infiltrators were recognized due to their participation in New York City demonstrations, and were believed to have joined in the rioting so that Trump would get blamed, the source said.”
With the Trump presidency over, and this heaven-sent media event, the mainstream media, Democrats, and their progressive intellectual cadres tossed aside all restraint, all perspective, to circle Trump for the kill. Impeach Trump this week, cried House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Others called for invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove him from office as unfit to serve. This was virtually 100 percent on the Democratic side of the aisle.
No more Tweets by Trump to his 74 million supporters—blocked. “Cleanse” the Trump movement. Trump had made enemies over four years. He refused to be attacked and not respond; he took wildly unpopular actions on issues such as “global warming” (aka “climate change”). He became the first president to call out the mainstream media—its left partisanship, its “advocacy” journalism, and its constant denigration of Trump’s supporters.
Calls for Trump’s immediate removal by any means—without waiting until January 20—are intended to imply that he is responsible for the attack on the Capitol. That his “incitement to insurrection” is an established fact. That he is incompetent and unfit.
The goal is to demolish his legacy, obliterate it before he leaves office, and make his “failure” as president official. This reflects the threat he represented to the progressive agenda by opposing climate change as a reason to cancel the fossil fuel industry and the Industrial Revolution. Opposing the attack on Israel as being a racist enemy of its neighbors. Opposing “identity politics” in government, business, and education. Opposing cherished leftist causes such as “defund the police,” “stop fracking,” “stop off-shore drilling,” “the Green New Deal,” “open borders,” “amnesty for illegal entrants to the country,” “nationwide lockdown,” a “liberal” Supreme Court, enforcement of leftist ideology by social media companies, sex change operations for members of the military, blaming wildfires on “global warming” and more.
Make no mistake, Trump threatened the neo-Marxist social and cultural agenda on all fronts. And thus, the near “derangement” of the loathing for him, the determination to uproot all his achievements and salt the earth that they may never grow again.
In Opposition
Whatever the success in exorcising the Trump spirit from American politics, some 74 million Trump voters, and 25 states that went for Trump in 2020, remain. Not a “minority” easy to ignore. But insofar as possible, they will be ignored, and excluded, by Democrats and their mainstream media allies preparing to pressure the new administration as far left as possible. The party of Trump lost the election; now, progressives can resume the agenda pursued by Barrack Obama.
No, they can’t. Not that easily—if at all.
- The approximately half of Americans who voted for Trump’s reelection did so despite a mainstream media blast not just during the election but over four years. Trump’s enemies tried everything—literally thousands of appeals in news stories, columns, editorials, talk shows, documentaries, books. Voters whose views have not been shaken by now are unlikely to embrace the Biden-Harris worldview in the name of “coming together.” (The “narrative” of the attempted Trump “coup” or “insurrection” or “takeover” is a desperate ploy to alienate Trump supporters.)
- Despite all hopes and predictions of Democrats, Republicans gained seats in the House of Representatives. The Senate did switch to Democratic by the slenderest possible margin. At least half of statehouses in the country have Republican governors and majorities. This does not resemble in the least the balance of forces that made possible the New Deal and Great Society lunges toward socialism.
- There is much support for a Republican, conservative, or libertarian agenda—and opposition to neo-Marxism—that never translated into support for Trump. As shown by the endless wrangles among candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, the 2020 vote was not for Biden-Harris but against Trump personally. Is there already, in fact, a dark Web of thinkers (foremost among them, Jordan Peterson) demanding logic, freedom from political correctness?
- In two presidential elections, millions of advocates of the market economy, limited government, private solutions in health care and pensions—and opponents of the “politically correct” in all its manifestations—have mastered the internet and social media platforms as a counterweight to the leftist lock on mainstream media. Mark Zuckerberg can ban Trump, but probably can’t survive a boycott by Trump supporters. Be confident that the mainstream media has revealed again and again its rage at “alternative media” that baffle and defy its monopoly on information and opinion.
- The shibboleths of progressive policy—and revival of explicit socialism in universities and the younger generation—have dominated mainstream media chatter and policy proposals like the Green New Deal. But new generations of intellectuals, many non-academic, for decades have laid the intellectual foundations of laissez-faire capitalism, strict constitutional limits on government power, individualism versus identity politics and new racism, the critique of the anti-Industrial Revolution and environmentalism, and the superiority of Western civilization. Books, articles, online sites, institutes, think tanks, colleges, organizations, and movements add to and disseminate ideas on these topics. This would have been a fantasy in the 1930s, the 1960s, and even the 1980s. It is no longer. I think of sources to which I now can turn, with a click, for non-mainstream information and ideas on any topic. Not least, among hundreds, are the newest media prodigies, Breitbart News and Jewish World News.
New Administration Old Hat
The new administration and leftists waiting in the wings will go right back to Obama’s agenda and then take off from there:
- Full-scale support for the “green” agenda, including the Paris Accords, choking off fossil fuel with taxes and anti-technology measures, making the United States the world’s electric car dealership, and all other radical environmentalist schemes brewing for four years.
- Open borders with Mexico and the rest of the world, proposals for amnesty for tens of millions of illegal immigrants, the end of deportations and penalties.
- Back to Obamacare and forward to full socialized medicine.
- Racial quotas, official or de facto, in every possible setting on the model of today’s American universities.
- The “war on cops” and, at the same time, the curtailment of Second Amendment rights
- Radicalization of the redistribution of wealth by means of schemes such as guaranteed income.
- Hunting down a long list of “alt-right,” “neo-Nazi,” “fanatical,” “hate” groups as identified, for example, by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center.
- Full speed forward on legislation granting the wishes of the spectrum of self-identified sexual and “gender” groups. This will become virtually ubiquitous if not stopped.
For a comprehensive list, and the vision of a fully collectivist United States, see the articles on what is called “The Great Reset.”
Going Into Opposition
The impact of the opposition to this agenda will depend upon intellectual leadership. Only ideas, a coherent philosophy, can focus mass resistance. Focus refers here to both the targets and how a potential diversity of efforts among tens of millions of Trump supporters can be effective.
Focusing on targets to oppose requires identification of what is fundamental and what is secondary and derivative. And that challenge is philosophical.
- The “green revolution” has the potential to overturn science, technology, industry, and the American standard of living in the name of contagious scientific delusion powered by ideology. One of Trump’s great accomplishments was to stop this in its tracks.
- Open borders policy has the potential to overwhelm American traditions in government, and American individualism, with immigrants arriving from countries foreign to already-endangered concepts such as property rights, the rule of law, and limitation on government power, and with no intention of adhering to or respecting those concepts. That is, a policy to make the left Democratic agenda invincible at the polls. Trump spent four years reversing this trend.
- Focusing “types of efforts” refers to defining how a multiplicity of tactics can have the same target—and then rousing and organizing Trump supporters and others.
- There never has been a widespread movement on the right to call colleges to account using the leverage of financial support. To succeed against the howls of afflicted professors, such a boycott would have to be defended by a continuing powerful critique of universities of the kind advanced by Heather Mac Donald and others.
Nor has there been a widespread movement to bargain with the mainstream media over the viewpoints, content, and participants in reporting and opinion. Again, using the leverage of financial support would have to be justified and explained to sustain such a movement. Already in response to the banning of the president from Twitter, prominent conservatives have closed their Twitter accounts.
Steps like that have impact only when they involve large numbers of protestors. With a powerful infrastructure of individuals and organizations on the right, who cumulatively reach millions of readers and members, the next step is to create a way to act together with the same target, the same position, and the same call to action. The first such occasion should be the outrageous Democratic push to impeach President Trump—again. The attack on the Capitol building was an insurrection (“revolting against civil authority or an established government”), but President Trump did not incite it. What concerted action could involve enough individuals to demonstrate determination to strike back? This is a critical question too infrequently asked.
Supporting the Right Leadership
Today, individuals and organizations work to promote the best ideas associated with Trump and to defeat the worse ideas of his enemies. Making this possible, and effective, is work on the philosophical, scholarly, and ideological underpinning of these policy differences. Individuals and organizations committed to these ideas achieve impact only when they are supported by audiences and have financial resources to create and market an excellent product.
This dynamic is crucial. We would like to see more books on bestseller lists that make a powerful case for our ideas. A miniscule percentage of the 74 million Trump voters could make dozens of books a year too prominent to be ignored by mainstream media. The authors would have to be interviewed, their op-ed articles sought, and be invited as commenters on the news. This does not happen anywhere nearly often enough.
The same dynamic applies to enterprises from online publications to think tanks to periodicals. If these are potentially effective voices on the right, they will receive no willing encouragement from the mainstream. Only when “subscribers” thrust these organizations into the public arena will mainstream media be forced to accept them as part of “conversation.”
If we pay attention to an individual or organization only after anointment of the mainstream media, we do not set intellectual trends. We follow them.
By the 2022 midterm election, or the 2024 presidential election, could we have the beginnings of a newly activated movement of individuals, publications, and organizations to exert influence on the country’s direction?
Yes. And perhaps, at last, we would discover the lost continent of Atlantis, a longing of mankind since Ancient Greece? No, I don’t think the goal is remote. Go back to my point that for decades now the intellectual foundations of political freedom, individualism, capitalism, and the devastating critique of all variants of statism have been elaborated by scholarship, set forth in works now classics of liberty, and translated into policy and advocacy by institutes and think tanks. In fact, for the first time in American history there are rising intellectuals, seasoned in controversy, philosophically rooted, in numbers required for intellectual revolution.
Equally indispensable, and now available, is a public educated in the life-and-death stakes of individualism versus collectivism and sufficient to demand that the ideas of these intellectuals be heard.
What would be the cardinal goals?
- Newly empowered intellectuals with better ideas than “progressivism” (“progress” towards what?), neo-Marxism, or politically correct postmodernist philosophy. These new voices must have the audience and status to make it difficult for editors, talk-show hosts, news programs, and candidates themselves to simply ignore what they say. The goal is to have in the “public space” voices in direct, articulated, philosophically grounded opposition—and contrast—to the media choir.
- Newly empowered publications online and in print with a large enough audience to force the mainstream media to treat them as part of the spectrum of opinion that must be considered. That must be quoted and consulted for the mainstream media to sustain its pretense to representing all viewpoints.
- An intellectual movement with a broad consensus about what is—and is not—the American right. The benefit of an intellectual movement acknowledged as such, seen as coherent and influential, is that it can convincingly declare what movements are and are not the American right—and why. The movements that my friend, mentioned earlier, offered as examples of the “fringe” right were Proud Boys, Q Anon, the KKK, and neo-Nazis. But those organizations have nothing to link them with the American right-wing movement. With a two-party government, it is not enough to vote Republican to be “on the right.” Nor to share a policy position with the right. Such organizations are linked with the right as a smear tactic. That would be the response of a right-wing intellectual movement to gross mis-categorization. This would deprive the left of a favorite way to attack the right without bothering about right-wing ideas.
- A final goal of fostering a genuine right-wing intellectual movement would be to begin to convey to candidates for office what kind of principles and policies they must advance to win support of responsible right-wing opinion-makers. This is influence exerted on the local level since every candidate for national office, except the president and vice president, is on the state or more local level. And so are thousands of candidates for state and local offices. All seek support of defined sectors of opinion.
Out of the dishonest, disheartening, and disgraceful 2020 election and its perhaps not unpredictable climax might arise an American politics of intellect and idealism to save our country and lead the world.
If these goals could be achieved in a preliminary but convincing way by 2024, and demonstrate their value in action, then in coming decades an intellectual politics of the American right—republicanism, conservatism, libertarianism, objectivism—could reorient the entire map of American politics. The essential benefit would be to further polarize the country. That means making the in principle choices unmistakable: between Enlightenment ideals and postmodernism, individualism and collectivism, capitalism and socialism, and freedom and government domination.
Out of the dishonest, disheartening, and disgraceful 2020 election and its perhaps not unpredictable climax might arise an American politics of intellect and idealism to save our country and lead the world.
About the Author: Walter Donway
« How Would a Fully Privatized Economy Handle a Pandemic? Claims of Electoral Fraud? Debunked! Discredited! But Not the Navarro Report »
