All Hands on Deck
An Appeal for Global Resistance to Trump and his oligarchs
“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention. . . .”
Chorus, Shakespeare’s Henry V
As others have written, the resistance to Donald Trump in the U.S. is much weaker now than eight years ago. But what happened eight years ago would be like casting a drop into a river’s foaming rapids.
In his last interview with his American chronicler Edgar Snow, Mao Zedong said he was “héshàng dǎ sǎn,” which Snow translated as “a monk with a leaky umbrella.” But Mao was not professing humility; through a literary trope Mao said he was “no hair” (a bald Buddhist monk) “no sky” (a leaky umbrella), meaning that he recognized no law and no heaven, no authority or power greater than his own ambition.
This is what we face today. The domestic and foreign policies of the oligarchy led by Donald Trump are united by the principles of contempt for law and rights, and the idolatry of wealth and force. Every government, movement, and citizen in the world must ask — can I live in a world without rules, even if rules entail hypocrisy and double standards? Will I acquiesce to a world where there is “No law, no heaven?”
Trump’s domestic policy has turned Washington into the center of a conspiracy to dismantle our national government while spreading its web of supremacy and domination from California to Guantanamo. There are no legal ordinances, just whims enforced by Musk’s storm-techies. So far no bullets have been fired, but it is just a matter of time until Kyle Rittenhouse, Enrique Tarrio, and their likes get command of armed units answering to Kash Patel, Peter Hegseth, or Tulsi Gabbard. ICE has already integrated far-right vigilante groups into its operations.
Trump’s demands for the Panama Canal, Greenland, Canada, and now Gaza are throwbacks to a time when no United Nations Charter guaranteed the territorial integrity of states and outlawed the acquisition of territory by force. His casual endorsement of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza aims, in defiance of all international laws and norms, to complete the genocide begun by the State of Israel with the complicity of his predecessor.
The primary qualification for his position of Peter Hegseth, Trump’s Secretary of Defense, is his contempt for the Geneva Conventions and other laws of war. Defending war criminals convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice was how Hegseth first captured Trump’s attention.
The virtual abolition of foreign assistance, the imposition of ideological constraints on scientific research reminiscent of Stalin, and the subordination of health care to dogma and ignorance both domestically and abroad amount to a war on reality in the name of unrestrained domination and cruelty.
I pretend to no standing to issue any call to action, but the moment calls for human wave upon human wave of global resistance to these onslaughts, mobilizing every resource across borders of all kinds to assert support for governance, global and local, dedicated to service and solidarity. I appeal to all who may possess the standing that I lack to mobilize a resistance equal to this threat.
A powerful call to resistance and well stated. Thank you! And what really caught my attention were these three words: "reminiscent of Stalin" which I believe so accurately defines so much of what is happening. I had already begun to call Guantanamo "Trump's Gulag" from what I know of how Stalin vanished so many opponents, but your including science and health makes the need for defiance to the Trump coup even more relevant.
Brave text and perfect call. Congratulations and thanks Barnett.