The Left Must Win MAGA Workers

Many leftists are faced with co-workers who look to “America First” and “Make America Great Again” (MAGA), and have to deal with their appeal in the working class. The left usually offers three alternate ways to deal with conservative workers: shunning them as hopeless bigots, preaching “woke” liberal ideas to them or embracing color-blind “bread and butter” issues while conciliating their prejudices. These are all dead-end strategies.

Pro-Trump workers chose a reactionary answer to a legitimate desire to improve their economic conditions. They think they can achieve this in a partnership with their class enemy, the capitalist class, with Trump at the head of it. To many white as well as Latino and black Trump supporters, “America First” means investing in the U.S. so their kids can have good jobs and afford a decent life. To the ruling class, “America First” means world domination on the backs of both U.S. workers and the world working class. This will lead to more wars, stagnant wages, unemployment, loss of democratic rights and the slashing of Medicaid now and Medicare and Social Security tomorrow. War and plunder overseas require economic austerity at home.

Instead of “America First,” it is necessary to put the workers first over their exploiters. This can only be done by uniting the multiracial working class to defeat the capitalists. For this reason, we must not surrender conservative workers to the forces of MAGA reaction without a fight. These workers cannot improve their own conditions if they keep going down the anti-immigrant, anti-woman, white-supremacist road.

How can leftists begin speaking to pro-Trump workers? Here are some pointers.

Do not blame MAGA voters for Trump’s crimes. Pro-Democrat workers often say, “It’s their fault, they voted for Trump. They got the government they asked for.” Not true. All U.S. workers are allowed to do is choose every four years who will oppress and crush them. Trump, just like the Democrats, serves the interests of the American capitalist class—not the workers who voted for him.

Minorities, women and leftist workers have a justified hatred for the Trump administration. However, blaming their conservative co-workers for Trump’s crimes only keeps workers divided, thereby preserving the profits and power of the ruling class.

Do not call all Trump supporters fascists. Fascists are the KKK, neo-Nazis, Proud Boys. They are organized extralegal race-terrorists whose aim is to militarily crush the workers movement. Many fascists choose to join the ranks of the police and especially ICE, as Trump’s regime consciously recruits ICE agents with fascist dog whistles.

A fascist is not the same as a worker with race prejudice. Fascists and racist vigilantes must be defeated on the streets by the workers. Do not debate these terrorists. Do not debate cops. Do not debate hardened racists.

How to fight against race prejudice? Prejudice and working-class unity do not mix. A worker must ultimately choose one and let go of the other. The vast majority of workers hold both feelings of working-class solidarity and an array of prejudices. The aim is for class solidarity to overcome all the prejudices the ruling class pushes in order to divide and conquer their wage slaves.

There needs to be a sorting out of Trump supporters. Leftists need to have an appetite to give revolutionary leadership to a segment of these co-workers. If you refuse to speak to any worker who has race prejudice (or, to give another example, any male co-worker who holds backward prejudices against women), you will find yourself not speaking to many co-workers on the job.

How do you know whether someone is a hardened bigot—e.g., someone who wears the Confederate flag and throws minority co-workers under the bus every chance they get—or a worker with race prejudice who may be won over to the fight for black equality and workers revolution? Observe their actions. Determine whether they have a pro-union instinct or any hatred of injustice. Use that positive quality like a chisel to chip away little by little at the rock of their prejudice. White workers with racist prejudices have been known to vigorously defend black people on the job simply because they despise the bosses more than they despise their co-workers. They understand that the union really has to defend everybody. You need to use a worker’s progressive instincts as a lever to flip them to our side.

You should be known for opposing racism and discrimination. At the same time, you don’t want to be perceived as an indignant preacher around whom workers have to walk on eggshells. Pick your shots.

You will be trusted to the degree that you can handle backward prejudices in a firm, thoughtful way. These will be defeated and overcome through social struggle. Remind co-workers of the common enemy of white and black workers. Prove how race prejudice and competition for scraps from the master’s table only help the capitalists steal from the working class. And always have your co-workers’ backs against the bosses.

Workers prefer less talking, more action. Seek out concrete actions to pull Trump supporters in the direction of working-class interests. Conservative workers may falsely believe that mass deportations will bring more jobs, but they don’t like the idea of ICE kidnapping someone they know. Such workers may be willing to join a defense campaign for an immigrant co-worker detained by ICE. Similarly, workers who generally believe racist stereotypes might stand up for a black co-worker they know who is discriminated against by the bosses.

Seek out opportunities to mobilize co-workers for this type of small defensive action, which will help to raise the consciousness of conservative workers. At the same time, the way minority workers will believe what you say about MAGA workers’ potential for common struggle with them is to see it in action.

Begin with something you both agree on, then flip the script. Begin conversations with pro-Trump workers by distinguishing yourself from the liberals. Only then can you effectively explain your opposition to Trump. For example, you could begin a conversation on DEI by explaining how you hated that the liberal establishment guilt-tripped workers and claimed that all white male workers were the enemy of women and black people.

Then flip the script with a new idea that might not be accepted right away. Demonstrate how Trump’s racist anti-DEI purge is a war on all labor, including white workers. The ruling class began by targeting black federal workers, whom the racists falsely claimed “Didn’t Earn It.” This was the opening shot in the battle to purge 300,000 white and black federal employees and eliminate collective bargaining. This paves the way for abolishing collective bargaining in other sectors as well. Ohio followed this model, passing a law that prohibits both DEI and all faculty strikes at public colleges.

Conservative workers need to understand that in some ways the class struggle is like a street fight. Since the capitalists always aim the first punch at the most marginalized people—blacks, immigrants, women and trans people—workers must answer it with a strong, united punch against the class enemy. Otherwise, they will be the next victims. That is why all workers must fight against discrimination.

Internationalism begins with opposing one’s “own” ruling class. Most Americans will oppose their own rulers long before they solidarize with the peoples of the world. The best way to defend the Palestinians and other oppressed nations is to mobilize U.S. workers to defeat their own ruling class! Unsolicited lectures about caring for people overseas often increase workers’ resentment that no one seems to care about how they themselves are struggling to survive.

For now, U.S. workers are mostly patriotic and support their own rulers. Their rotten, pro-capitalist union leaders persuade them to scrap their own strikes anytime the government invokes “national security.” Indeed, strikes do threaten the power and security of the national capitalists. Empower workers to disregard this emotional blackmail and strike for what they need.

If workers ask your opinions on the world, try to explain how they themselves are harmed by U.S. imperialist attacks abroad. These make American workers less safe, not least because the capitalist class brings the war home: ICE and the National Guard occupy U.S. cities; immigrants and U.S. citizens have been murdered by immigration agents and the police; now Trump’s regime is threatening workers’ right to bear arms. Remind workers how soldiers who fight overseas for America’s billionaires return home to unemployment, PTSD and cuts to VA health programs. Fan the flames of class anger against the U.S. rulers by pointing to workers’ own interests.

MAGA workers don’t have to morally regenerate in order to defend oppressed workers. “Immigrants are welcome here” and other liberal cries of humanitarianism often push workers deeper into the arms of Trump. Conservative workers don’t need to feel charitable in order to defend immigrants. They need to understand the game the enemy is playing with them and respond accordingly. The U.S. imperialists bomb and plunder other countries, rendering them unlivable. Then they open and close the U.S. border like a faucet, depending on their labor needs. They try to use immigrant workers—who are deprived of all rights and forced to work for less—as a weapon against U.S. labor.

American workers have no choice whether immigrants come in, and they don’t even have to like them. But they do have a choice about what to do now that they’re here. Organizing immigrant electricians, construction workers, truck drivers, etc. into the unions is the only alternative to disastrous wage competition.

Will workers continue to unite with Trump and their own exploiters and support ICE occupations of their cities, the shredding of their own right to walk around without masked gunmen demanding to see their IDs, the constant lowering of their own wages through competition with the remaining immigrants, and the encirclement of the remaining islands of unionism by a sea of non-union labor?

Or will American workers unionize immigrants and demand they get the same democratic rights so they can strike without fear of deportation? Will they fight for more jobs for all through a shorter workweek at no loss in pay, instead of today’s rivalry over the shrinking piece of the pie?

Labor is only as strong as its weakest link. Leftists must lead white workers in defense of the most marginalized groups in order to strengthen labor’s fighting capacity.

Take a break, leave the door open. Workers may discontinue a discussion that is pushing them out of their comfort zone. The important thing is to try to end discussions in a way that doesn’t sever the relationship entirely. Sometimes a relationship does need to be severed, but that is a very rare case.

Workers have a long memory. Don’t be surprised if you get nowhere in a discussion and then a year later, after something in the world has changed, they say, “Remember what you said to me back then? You were right.”