Ertuğrul Kürkçü*
The United States stands on the brink of one of the most critical crossroads in its history since the Civil War.
On 1 July, Donald Trump, empowered by the Supreme Court, entered the 2024 elections as the “disgraced” leader of the Capitol Hill insurrection of 6 January 2020, but still the shameless leader of the American right, waving the flag of “Constitutional Nullification”. In 2021, on his social media platform Truth Social, he wrote: “… do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
‘New tech wealth’ sides with Trump
In the same post, Trump accused “Big Tech” of close collaboration with the Democrats, stating, “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!” Now, “Big Tech” companies, for some reason, are siding with Trump. A few days ago, Elon Musk hosted Trump as his personal guest in a chat room on X [formerly Twitter], and did not hesitate to contribute to his exoneration. The new tech billionaires, led by Peter Thiel, the owner of PayPal, are generously supporting the conservative think-tank “Heritage Foundation” in order to squeeze the principles of Trump’s “Project 2025” into the Republican agenda for his second term. In the guise of agitation to grant “Constitutional” status to the political and cultural tenets of American reactionaries — such as misogyny, heterosexism, the sanctity of the family, creationism, etc — “Project 2025” promises generous incentives and deregulation to all major enterprises, especially technology companies. It also aims to roll back environmental regulations on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency industries, cut workers’ rights, scrap all regulatory bodies and open up significant profit opportunities for major corporations and billionaires, including many of Trump’s allies in Silicon Valley.
J.D. Vance: More frightening than Trump
Historian Heather Cox Richardson, one of those illuminating the strong resistance to the possibility of Trump returning to power with her book Democracy Awakening, summarises “Donald Trump’s plan” as “to consolidate power in the executive branch if he wins the election”. Cox highlights that the most terrifying aspect of the “Project 2025” is the mass dismissal of public servants to replace them with political appointees. She draws attention to the resemblance of the US political system under “Project 2025” to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, one of Europe’s most grotesque new autocracies. […] The idea is to concentrate all centres of power in society into the hands of a single individual […] “What they call ‘Illiberal Democracy’ or ‘Christian Democracy’ is, in essence, a world where a few white, heteronormative men control the lives of women, racial and ethnic minorities and sexual minorities to return what they consider a traditional worldview to their country.”
Cox states that what truly “frightens” her is not “Trump, who has no belief, no concern other than avoiding prison and holding onto power and money”, but “J.D. Vance (the vice-presidential candidate), who suddenly began speaking on behalf of large cryptocurrency enterprises”. She says, “Now, I look at the 78-year-old Trump, who is visibly in poor health, and then at J.D. Vance and this ‘tech bros’ idea, the idea that they should control the world, and this is what actually worries me the most. Because if you concentrate power in a single leader and then give that leader over to the control of billionaires who have no other concern than controlling the world’s money supply […] this creates an unbelievable situation we’ve never heard of before. Peter Thiel’s influence over J.D. Vance, along with all other aspects of consolidating power in the executive branch, could ultimately make J.D. Vance an extraordinary power in collaboration with Peter Thiel.”
‘The Other America’ is rising
Sensing the air of an assault driven by a combination of the greed for power and wealth and the desire to dominate the bodies of women and the poor — everyone except a handful of rich white men — “the other America” is now gathering around the other option in the two-party US political system, appearing to be willing to submit to this invasion for the moment.
For the first time, demands for fundamental rights such as free education, free healthcare and paid leave, alongside the recognition of workers’ rights, women’s bodily autonomy and the call for the state to get out of homes and doctors’ surgeries, have become central election slogans under the Harris / Walz [campaign] — issues rarely mentioned in the recent lexicon of mainstream politics. This fact and more importantly, the mobilisation of women, youth, black people and workers, who feel they have a voice and power in this struggle, make the US election campaign significant for the future course of all rights and freedoms struggles worldwide.
Gaza on the election agenda
In a rally in Michigan last week, where a significant Arab-American population resides, [presidential candidate Kamala] Harris, faced with cries of “Gaza genocide”, said that she and Biden had been working “night and day to secure a ceasefire agreement and bring the hostages home.” However, as long as US military aid to Israel continues unabated, it is clear that these words have failed to appease either the protesters or those among the Democrats who demand the continuation of traditional pro-Israel policies.
It is evident that a victory by the Harris-Walz team led by the Democrats in the US elections will not spell the end of American imperialism. It was American imperialism that, during World War II, allied with the Soviet Union to defeat the international fascist coalition of Germany-Italy-Japan. Nevertheless, the anti-fascist energy unleashed by this alliance and the global consequences of destroying the central powers of the international reactionary movement paved the way for a series of positive developments for the Global South, from the collapse of classical colonialism to the recognition of racism and genocide as crimes against humanity.
However, the destructive role of US world politics, particularly in expanding NATO, and the outbreak of the Ukraine-Russia war, have been the primary reasons for the weakening of the forces of peace and democracy in our region. The “illiberal democracy” now championed by Orbán, Putin and Erdoğan, which has become the inspiration for reactionaries in the US and is striking back at centuries-old gains like a boomerang, has largely sprouted from within the contradictions of US global policies.
On the edge of these contradictions too, is the US’s contradictory stance towards the right of the Kurds to self-determination, whereby it is playing both sides against the middle.
In August 2020, then presidential candidate Biden, who advocated strengthening the opposition against Erdoğan’s regime, described Trump’s decision on 15 October 2019 to withdraw US troops from northern Syria paving the way for Ankara to expand its invasion of Rojava as “the most shameful thing a US President has done in modern history in the field of foreign policy […]”. He added, “I would not have withdrawn the troops [from northern Syria…] The real issue here is Turkey. I would have sat down with Erdoğan and told him to his face that he would pay for what he did. He will pay that price.”
Two years later, on 14 June 2021, Erdoğan and Biden embraced at NATO’s Brussels summit: not a word was uttered by Biden regarding the oppression and persecution faced by the Kurds from Turkey and regional states. While the war drums thundered, the phrase “peaceful resolution” was not even mentioned in that room.
Erdoğan, too, had said that he would raise Biden’s recognition of the Armenian genocide when heading to the NATO Summit. Upon his return, when asked, “What happened?” he replied, “Praise be to God, it was never brought up!”
Even if the Harris-Walz team wins the November elections, it is highly unlikely that there will be significant shifts towards democracy and peace in our region. However, if the defeat of fascism that began in the US in 2019 and of the reactionary movement continues, and a heavy blow is dealt to the enemies of women, labour and nature, it is reasonable to expect that this may have secondary but positive effects on international politics.
It is entirely possible that the global power shifts could create opportunities not only for reaction and fascism but also for the forces of democracy and peace worldwide during a period when democracy and the rights of women, environmental rights and workers’ rights are at the forefront of everyday political discourse in the model country of capitalism.
All the dynamics that ended the first Donald Trump era in the US are rising once again: “Black Lives Matter”, “My Body, My Choice”, “Me Too”, “No Justice, No Peace”, “Workers’ Rights are Human Rights” – as these cries spread from traditional and digital media, they will inevitably resonate in all languages. The Kurdish women’s movement’s gift to humanity, “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (Woman, Life, Freedom), will accompany them too.
Even the fact that the American people, by overcoming American fascism as it climbs to power, open up new spaces for the dynamics of change in the Global South and, in doing so, partially repay the debt owed by their ancestors to the world’s peoples, is no small thing.
(*) Ertuğrul Kürkçü is the current Honorary President of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and Honorary Associate of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). He spent 14 years, from 1972-1986, as a prisoner in Turkey for political activism. He is also member of Progressive International Council.
