The Dem die-hards who won’t fall off and radicalize leftward during Biden/Harris are going to fully internalize the “kids in cages” as an acceptable reality/“necessary evil” of US imperialism by 2024 like they did with the drone strikes and the torture by 2012. They’ll memory hole the fact that the ICE/CBP camps and arrests/kidnappings in unmarked vans were the justification for fearmongering DSA-adjacent progressives and succdems into voting Biden to “stop fascism” in the first place. Calling it now.
Keep in mind that there will also be Dems who radicalize outward. Our job is to bring as many as possible left.
Very true. Not only should socialists be ready with answers for the newly anti-status-quo people who might have the ear of right-“libertarians” and cryptofascists, but we should be trying to re-radicalize and consolidate the people who had originally flirted with some form of “democratic socialism” or social-democratic aspirations through the breadtube pipeline or through the Sanders and DSA entryist campaigns starting around 2017, but have been dragged right back into the Democrats’ sphere of influence by virtue of ““socialists”” and even some unironic “anarcho-Bidenists” endorsing the Dems’ phony harm-reduction strategy on the false basis of “voting out fascism”, and are soon going to be left behind and extremely disoriented when Biden and Harris quietly continue most of the reactionary “fascist” (read: neoliberal) policies that started under (Bush, Obama and) Trump, and the Dems accelerate their attempts to shut down and co-opt the BLM movement.
Seeing the libs shatter their “coalition” and return to brunch while all the current problems continue getting worse is going to drive even more of the lesser-evil hostage voters nuts, and on the margins at least a few otherwise-radical workers and lumpen are going to snap and say “fuck it, maybe Qanon had a point about the Democrats and the deep state” if they don’t see any effective socialist leadership calling out the same bullshit from a non-opportunist, non-revisionist Marxist perspective. This is how Obama’s betrayals paved the way for the Tea Party in 2010, and the same process will pave the way for Qanon in 2022.
During this period of confusion, what Marxist orgs do exist are going to have to continue organizing like hell to keep their uncompromised banners raised, continue coalition building with other independent socialist organizations and the best elements of other “progressive” organizations, and continue aggressively putting forth appropriate transitional, scientific, and revolutionary demands that resonate with workers who are fucking tired of everything related to the status quo.
