Donald’s Dismantlings and Understanding Fascism
1. Introduction:
Despite the neo-liberal establishment charging Donald Trump with several federal crimes related to his actions within office the first time,[1] as well as being under fire by numerous civil lawsuits, the reality TV-star has been catapulted to his second presidential term. Since taking office, he and his cronies have hit the ground running. Trump’s second foray into heading the executive branch, especially after many very public legal impediments, has signaled that he is a stable element to a significant group of bourgeoisie, a marked difference from the uncertainty around his presidency the first time around. As a consequence, he has grown in support, legitimacy, and financial backing.
Where his first election campaign was primarily self-funded, now, the capitalists have been awakened. Prominent right-wing billionaires, like Timothy Mellon and the Uihleins, donated millions to Trump’s second primary election,[2] but supported other Republican-party candidates in the first. In the case of the Uihleins, they actually threw their packing-peanuts fortune in conservative groups that were particularly opposed to Trump, favoring Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, over the current president.[3] However, now, more of the “establishment” is getting behind Trump. There’s been a shift; he is a safer investment.
Of more concern to the public than the big conservative donors, and more surprising to them, are the Trump benefactors who represent some of the newest and fastest growing monopolies; namely, consumer-facing technology. Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chairman of Facebook and Meta, Jeffrey Preston Bezos, the founder and executive president of Amazon, and Elon Reeve Musk, whose parents owned emerald mines in apartheid South Africa and who owns significant equity in numerous communications, finance, and tech companies, have all publicly given huge sums to Trump’s campaign, and were all seated prominently near the incumbent president at the time of his inauguration. While Zuckerberg, Bezos, and another tech capitalist, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, all gave a staggering $1 million to Trump’s election efforts,[4] Musk outdid all of them with a mind-numbing $288 million,[5] doubtlessly coinciding with his appointment to the head of the Trump administration’s new government “review” agency, the Department Of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which shares the same name as the crypto-currency Musk owns a good deal of.
These are only some of the biggest public faces we know of who are part of a significant trend regarding the support of the current sitting U.S. president; a trend of increased bourgeois investment and backing, despite increasingly violent rhetoric and actions. The bourgeois liberal media cycle has mostly confined this trend to discussions of “tech bros” inexplicably throwing their money and political support behind Donald Trump’s racist, transphobic, divisive, and “anti-democratic” regime. However true this view may be in a liberal and reductionist way, we, as Communists and dialectical materialists, can accurately understand that Trump’s increased investments are simply the continual rising of a fascist tide. This tide will rise and fall in ebbs and flows, sweeping one demagogue aside for others, but, if left unchallenged, it will unalterably bring about a powerful and destructive fascist state which, at our current period, we are only beginning to see take form under the nascent fascist regime of an orange-faced reality show actor.
2. Fascism, a Process of Imperialism
With a flurry of executive orders, Trump has intensified the transformation of the settler-colonial American state away from the neo-liberal model of the current ruling class of monopolist financiers (who, in many ways, are still the same group of Euro-American financier capitalists who benefitted from colonialism and the imperial world wars of the first half of the 20th century, building the current dominating apparatus of capitalist-imperial accumulation and its respective state powers) and into a new form. The emerging new form is primarily supported by the smaller domestic bourgeoisie, over and against the much larger imperial monopolist financiers, who rule over the world’s productive forces from the very top of the capitalist hierarchy, and who have their interests represented by the neo-liberal order and their respective states.
These bigger imperial financial capitalists serve as an enormous parasitical impediment and disintegrative force to further capitalist production globally, and oppress all beneath them, including all the smaller bourgeoisie. All the capitalists who wish to engage in production must grovel at the feet of the imperial financiers, signing up for large loans and lines of credit and selling off portions of the ownership of their companies in the form of stock. Without the investments from these financiers, the capitalist would be uncompetitive in the wider market.
It is when the intolerableness of this antagonistic relation between the biggest imperial financial capitalists, who only wish to make returns on their investments, and the more production-minded smaller bourgeoisie, who are strangled by their credit, reaches a head that we see the arrival of hyper nationalism and fascist movements, as we are undoubtedly seeing now.
Trump, as well as all fascist movements, has, as their primary support, this stratum of smaller bourgeoisie, who, despite all their wishing and strivings, are not as successful as their big financier imperial overlords and are oppressed by their capital. Though not being representative of the rank-and-file “Trumpers,” even the likes of Bezos and Musk, who are able to engage in financing (i.e., the economic hallmark of imperialism) in their own right, can’t be considered among the biggest capitalist-imperialists. The most powerful capitalists in the world do not keep all their assets under their own name, but allow their capital to be fluid, hiding it within layers and layers of parent-child companies and constantly moving it from one corner of the world to the other, changing its name – its currency form – numerous times in the process of seeking profit. Though they may not have as much cash on hand as a Musk or a Bezos, at least officially, their command of the economy and their ability to collect profit from their many possessions over the entire globe far surpasses any of the pop culture entrepreneurs who get so much fanfare for being rich.
In addition to the direct predatory actions of the imperial financiers, the smaller and more domestic bourgeois elements are also antagonized by the cheap imports of the imperial market, and the laws of the neo-liberal state that serves the imperialists and their monopolies. Small-fry capitalists, all the time, are having the productive forces they put to work absorbed up into the financial landscape of their betters, usually forced to sell the company to them outright as their ownership is continually diluted.
Being oppressors themselves, however, these smaller bourgeois forces still retain a vested class interest in sucking up the surplus labor value of the proletariat, and are infected with individualist dreams of personal accumulation at the expense of the working masses. Not wanting to end or even reform the capitalist mode of production they benefit from in any real way, the smaller bourgeoisie cannot critique their own oppressors from a materialist and solely economic view. They can only create a division between themselves and their enemies through idealism, painting themselves as the “honest” businessman and the financiers who dominate them as “dishonest,” or “evil,” though not because of any material critique. Because they cannot make a material critique, and, in all honesty, wish to become financial imperialists themselves, they have no other recourse to create a division between themselves and the current financial imperialists than idealist slanders, utilizing the bigoted racial, gender, religious, or otherwise baseless and slanderous rhetoric they learned from the violent history of imperialist accumulation, calling their enemies all “degenerate” conspirators and targeting capitalist property for their own expropriation, by virtue of the owner’s racial, religious, gender, or other personal cultural identifiers. This is the reason behind the reactionaries’ constant raising up of the “evil Jew” boogeyman. The result of this kind of targeting is that, out of the old society, new capitalist accumulations of land, productive forces, and labor that serve the fascists are made. Second-class citizenship and full valorization of labor value is enshrined for minorities that run against the aims of the empowered “patriots,” as well as the elimination of great swathes of them and their property in order to free up space for new productive forces. Here we will remind the reader that the concentration camps of the Nazis that are such a famous example of fascist state violence were, by and large, labor camps.
The lesser bourgeoisie turn to fascism and commit violence on minorities in order to ascend to the ranks of imperial “godhood,” building their power by getting political and creating new capitalist accumulations in service to themselves out of the same reactionary views towards the lower strata that fueled all previous capitalist accumulations throughout history. This is the material reason behind their hyper-nationalism, their racism, their queerphobia, misogyny, and their general reactionary nature; all ideological tenets existing now within capitalist-imperial society and as a result of it that, when further weaponized behind the power of the state through fascism, create new violent imperial accumulations out of the strata targeted, parasitically enriching a privileged group of bourgeoisie to the point of their transformation into a new strata of imperial financiers.
Because of its occurring out of the basic antagonism between the powerful imperial financiers and the smaller, domestic bourgeoisie, fascism can accurately be described as a basic process of capitalist-imperial society; a “clearing of the house” of one stagnant imperial monopolist group and their related state for the establishment of another of greater energy, complete with a reciprocal boom of economic profit that catapults capitalist production forward, churning, as its fuel, the labor power of minority groups.
3. Changing of the Guard
We can see that the Trump administration is working within the fascistic trend just described, and we must arrive at the sobering conclusion that we are entering yet another time of imperial crisis and fascist resurgence. To appease his domestic bourgeois constituents and the working-class reactionaries, he has issued tariffs on foreign imports, increased deportations, and instigated a trade war with China, which, despite being led by a self-professed “Marxist” government, is the biggest imperial rival to the United States on the economic stage. Additionally, the many articles, videos, and think pieces describing the systematic disruption and, in many cases, dismantling of U.S. federal agencies – all taking place under the authority of Trump’s executive orders and under the purview of the new executive office formed from these orders, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – without any recourse to the legislative or judicial branches of government, can scarcely be avoided.
In their own fallacious way, liberal institutions are right to sound the alarm bells regarding these actions, yet they are incapable of offering any solution or constructive word in opposition – due to the very fact that they are liberals. All they can do is hopelessly demand more from their bourgeois representatives (who are more-or-less waiting to see how things will play out before moving around their portfolios), and oscillate between horror on the one hand, and a delusional hope that the next election cycle can somehow wash over all the contradictions of their society on the other.
However no elections can save the U.S. government from its inevitable falling to abject fascism. The immense levels of bourgeoisie, as well as the immense reaction present in a “reformed” slaver and settler society – the home of the petite-bourgeois fantasy of “the American Dream” – will not be able to face the dramatic reduction in global standing that it is currently facing without a giant up thrust of fascist violence that will eventually be successful in its seizure of the state apparatus. If Trump’s regime is not capable of carrying the fascist program through to completion and satisfying the clamoring reactionaries and his bourgeois base, then someone else will surely pick up the torch. This is because the imperial world is shifting, and the internal contradictions within the domination of the current Euro-American financiers are coming to a head, enflaming the antagonisms within the current imperial societies generally, especially the antagonistic contradiction between the smaller bourgeoisie and the imperial financiers: the contradiction that fuels the fascist movement.
Until recently, within the U.S., the contradiction between the imperial financiers and smaller domestic bourgeoisie was not as antagonistic. The “First World” was able to experience, more or less, cooperation between the Euro-American ruling class of financiers who dominate its productive forces and its smaller bourgeois strata, resulting in less of a fascist threat than we see now. The antagonism between these two sections of bourgeoisie was duller because of the enhanced accumulation of both of these forces at the expense of the more proletarian sections of the world. The proletariat of South America, Africa, India, the fallen Soviet bloc, and many polities in the Pacific and Asia are all exploited thoroughly by the Euro-American imperialists, and have this exploitation maintained actively by, mostly, the military might and predatory capital of the United States and their financiers. Prior to our current imperial crisis, all of this accumulation was flowing in smoothly. The bedrock poverty-wages of the “Third World” served to smooth over many of the antagonistic contradictions between the classes within the empire domestically, including that of the imperial financiers and the domestic bourgeoisie, who could, for a time, forego their fierce and uneven struggle for domestic labor and both play in the “bounty” of the speculation and cheap labor of the colonized nations. This allowed for the routine raises in pay, benefits, and general economic incline within the imperial-capitalist “First World” countries that took place from about the 40’s and into the early 2000’s, including the “New Deal” period in the U.S., which acted as a tool of bourgeois reform to suppress the revolutionary urge of the poor and laboring classes within the domestic United States.
However, the upward economic mobility within the empire has slowly been grinding to a halt. The loss of many “Third World” colonies on the part of the imperialists is a contributing factor. Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Sudan are all countries in Africa that had been dominated by Euro-American bourgeois imperialists; all have overthrown their Western-friendly governments quite recently, in the short period from 2020-2023, with many of the new governments directly speaking against European and U.S. imperialism. Additionally, the nations of Latin America are more and more creating anti-Western political alliances utilizing the socialistic traditions of the Cuban Revolution and the Bolivarian independence movement.
Another factor is the ascendance of rival imperial powers, most notably, the imperialist financiers within China. The Dengist economic reforms relegated the Chinese proletariat as hosts to large sections of the Euro-American imperialists’ production in the 80’s and 90’s, birthing also many Chinese financiers. These financiers are now the leading members of the BRICS association, a growing rival imperial economy to the Euro-American dollar.
There is also the basic economic law of profit stagnation which, as owners of mature productive forces, the imperialists are facing at increasing rates. All these account for instability within the imperial countries, but especially the United States, which results in new political movements, including fascist ones.
4. The Current Dismantlings
Par to the fascist course, the federal adjustments Trump, DOGE, and their supporters are now making to the state apparatus are justified with the use of violent rhetoric towards minorities, stating that they are combatting “DEI” policies, which stands for “Diversity,” “Equity,” and “Inclusion;” signifying in the fascist psyches of Trump and his supporters a struggle against the supposed “degenerative” effect of national and cultural minorities on their society.
A Business Insider article regarding the government dismantling,[6] last updated on April 2, 2025, gives a brief overview of how the dismantlings have affected numerous federal agencies and includes quotes from the Trump administration concerning these agencies. Disregarding the Insider’s pro-bourgeois views and in an effort to give a quick and expedient overview of the dismantlings so far, below we include large sections from the aforementioned Business Insider article (the portions in quotes), as well as sections from other articles (cited accordingly), and our own brief commentary; after which, we will draw appropriate conclusions.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS):
“Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a major restructuring of the agency that will include laying off around 10,000 federal workers, refocusing the mission of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to preventing epidemics, and consolidating the sprawling department's 28 divisions into 15 divisions.The expected staffing reductions at the HHS — which oversees 13 federal agencies including the CDC, Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — include 3,500 jobs at the FDA, 2,400 at the CDC, and 1,200 at the NIH.
HHS said the overall restructuring aligns with Trump's Department of Government Efficiency workforce optimization initiative, and that the employee cuts alone will save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year.”
Kennedy has also vowed "a massive testing and research effort" to determine the cause of autism by September of this year,[7] amassing the private medical records of American citizens and creating a new registry for the “disease.”[8]
U.S. Postal Service (USPS):
“Elon Musk has called for the privatization of the US Postal Service, and Trump has said he would consider merging the independent agency with the Commerce Department.In a letter to Congress on March 13, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy committed to working with DOGE to make the agency more efficient, including cutting 10,000 jobs and eliminating billions of dollars from the budget. And in a March 17 follow-up letter, DeJoy further detailed USPS's plans to work with DOGE, including a review of the agency's real estate portfolio.
Days later, DeJoy announced in a statement that he would be stepping down from his role effective immediately.”
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS):
“The task force (DOGE) sought access to the Internal Revenue Service's data system that houses highly sensitive information about every taxpayer, nonprofit, and business in the country, The Washington Post reported on February 16... But The White House later agreed to block DOGE's full access to the IRS's payment systems, instead granting read-only access of taxpayer data that has been anonymized, the Post reported on February 20, citing people familiar with the arrangement...The IRS was also one of several federal agencies where probationary employees were fired en masse...
And the IRS is working up plans that could cut its 90,000-person workforce in half through a variety of layoffs, attrition, and incentivized buyouts, the Associated Press reported on March 4 citing people familiar with the matter.”
The National Institute of Health (NIH):
“The National Institutes of Health — the federal agency that funds and conducts medical research under the Department of Health and Human Services...has also been targeted by Trump and Musks's widespread staffing cuts across the federal workforce, with the agency losing over 1,100 staffers, according to an internal email obtained by Reuters.”Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS):
“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that provides healthcare to more than 160 million Americans, said in a press release on February 5 that its officials were working with DOGE to find ‘opportunities for more effective and efficient use of resources in line with meeting the goals of President Trump...’In response to a post containing a Wall Street Journal article about CMS collaborating with DOGE, Musk wrote on X, ‘Yeah, this is where the big money fraud is happening...’
On February 12, a group of 32 Democratic Senators wrote a letter to Trump urging him and Musk to keep their ‘hands off Medicare or Medicaid...’ ‘DOGE is invading CMS, posing immeasurable risks to Americans' health care,’ the letter reads. ‘DOGE representatives, with no training or expertise, could make unilateral, politically motivated decisions to target both beneficiaries and health care providers while blocking access to care and essential payments for services.’”
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA):
“On February 14, the space agency confirmed to Flying, an aviation-focused magazine, that DOGE staff were on-site to review its payments...NASA has done quite a lot of business with Musk's own space company, SpaceX, amounting to around $14.5 billion in contracts between the two...”
Department of Education (ED):
“Trump has repeatedly said he wants to shut down the Department of Education (ED). On February 12, he told reporters that he wants the department closed ‘immediately,’ adding that it ‘is a big con job...’Along with some GOP lawmakers, Trump has said that education should be handled at the state and local level, and that a federal agency isn't necessary...
And on March 20, Trump made moves on that plan, signing an executive order directing his new education secretary, Linda McMahon, to begin the process of eliminating the department...
On February 12, DOGE said that it had cancelled a number of ED contracts — including a ‘$4.6M contract to coordinate zoom and in-person meetings,’ a ‘$3.0M contract to write a report that showed that prior reports were not utilized by schools,’ and a ‘$1.4M contract to physically observe mailing and clerical operations...’
The cost-cutting group has also said that it has terminated 89 contracts at the ED, totaling $881 million...”
US Agency for International Development (USAID):
“Musk has been working to shut down the US Agency for International Development, which funds humanitarian efforts around the world. As the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid, the US channeled nearly $32.5 billion through the agency in 2024, providing aid to countries like Ukraine, Jordan, and Ethiopia...In a post on X on February 3, Musk accused the agency of being a ‘criminal organization’ and said he ‘spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.’ Hours later, USAID workers were told to stay home from work, and within days, the agency announced that all direct hire personnel would be placed on leave globally, with a few exceptions — a move that would have reduced its workforce from over 10,000 employees to less than 300...
Following a lawsuit from federal employee labor unions, a federal judge partially blocked Musk and Trump's attempted shutdown of USAID — which legal experts argue is illegal without approval from Congress. The judge's order temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing USAID workers on leave, first until February 14, and in another extension, until at least February 21...”
However, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of continuing DOGE cuts.[9] Only days before the court’s decision, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, gave a speech in which he announced that 83% of USAID programs were being cancelled, or 5200 contracts.[10]
On January 20, at least 6,256 programs were operating, worth $120 billion. By May 7, 5,365 programs were cut (amounting to $51 billion).[11]
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA):
“Following the deadly American Airlines plane crash in Washington DC in January, Musk announced he would be going after the Federal Aviation Administration...Days after the crash, Musk wrote on X that the FAA's ‘primary aircraft safety notification system failed for several hours,’ adding that, as a result, Trump gave the DOGE team his approval to ‘make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system...’
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed Musk's role, saying the DOGE team was ‘going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system...’
Last year, the FAA proposed fining SpaceX (one of Musk’s most notable companies; our parentheses) more than $600,000 for two occasions where the rocket company is said to have violated its launch licenses.”
Department of the Treasury:
“Trump said he granted Musk and his DOGE team access to the Treasury department's digital payments system, which controls trillions of dollars in payments to Americans — everything from Social Security benefits to tax refunds...The Treasury Department said Musk's team was only granted ‘read-only’ access to the system, but the move still sparked criticism, particularly from Democratic lawmakers and federal workers' unions. The unions sued the Treasury Department, arguing that the agency had illegally granted Musk access to sensitive personal and financial information...
Trump defended Musk's access to the platform, telling reporters it was only so that DOGE could find additional areas to cut government waste...
...in March, a federal judge indefinitely blocked DOGE from accessing personal identifying information at the Treasury Department, as well as at the Education Department and the Office of Personnel Management.”
Federal Emergency Management System (FEMA):
“The president has called the agency, which employs more than 20,000 staff around the US, a ‘very big disappointment’ that is ‘very bureaucratic,’ ‘very slow,’ and costs ‘a tremendous amount of money...’On February 10, Musk wrote on X that ‘FEMA betrayed the American people by diverting funds meant for natural disasters to pay for luxury hotels for illegal migrants...’
On February 11, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security announced that four FEMA officials had been fired in connection to the payments, including the agency's Chief Financial Officer, two program analysts, and a grant specialist.”
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA):
“On February 6, a group of Democratic lawmakers accused ‘unelected and unvetted associates of Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’ of targeting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA is in charge of forecasting the weather, analyzing climate data, and tracking extreme weather events...Senator Chris Van Hollen and Congressman Jamie Raskin, along with other Maryland Democrats, penned a letter alleging that DOGE bureaucrats had been visiting NOAA headquarters, housed within the Department of Commerce, with the intent to break up the agency and merge it with the Department of the Interior...
The lawmakers argue that DOGE is illegally attacking NOAA without congressional approval, in an attempt to dismantle and privatize the agency which they say would rob American farmers, businesses, and citizens of crucial, life-saving services...
The Trump administration has already laid off hundreds of workers at NOAA, which meteorologists say will degrade weather forecasts and public safety.”
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB):
“Musk has repeatedly called for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was established in 2011 after the Great Recession to oversee financial products and services offered to Americans. It seeks to protect Americans from financial scams and abusive practices, like excessive overdraft fees...‘CFPB RIP,’ Musk wrote on X on February 7 next to a tombstone emoji...”
In April, 90% of CFPB employees were laid off.[12]
In addition to these instances, portions of the federal workforce were also “bought-out.” A January 28 email from the Office of Personnel Management that was sent to the majority of federal employees promised full-pay without work until September 30 to any who resigned.[13] 75,000 of them, or roughly 3.5% of federal employees accepted the terms.[14] This, despite money not being allocated by Congress for the purpose, casting doubt on the validity of the whole arrangement.
Clearly, all is not peaceful in the halls of power.
The rapidity and energy by which these dismantlings are taking place under so flimsy but also so reactionary a banner as “DEI” and “eliminating government waste” is a reflection of the high-level of reaction within the U.S. (a necessity for any imperial nation, and especially a settler-colonial one), and the nearly supreme authority that has been granted to the American executive branch as a result of the “Patriot Act” and “War on Terror” pivoting of the early 2000’s – definitely too large a topic to do justice to here, but, suffice to say, it is the United States’ own imperial policies that have allowed for the over-bloated power of the executive branch, resulting in the president and executive orders becoming a central legislative power in the country, sidelining Congress and the traditional “democratic” bodies of the United States.
Put simply, and using a materialist analysis, Trump and his clique are dismantling the government because the government serves the interest of their larger financial adversaries – the imperial financiers – and is an impediment to the growth of the smaller capitalists that represent his constituents.
It is the stratum of the biggest imperial financiers, with few exceptions, that any and all “stable” governments of the “First World,” including their bureaucratic agencies, are subordinated to. The status quo “stability” of the U.S. government, and any other nation within its sphere of influence, actually signifies stability regarding the profit accumulation of this section of high-level financier capitalists. These imperial capitalists have chained all the smaller capitalistic elements of their society to credit lines they hold the reins to, and are the beneficiaries of decades-old systems of bureaucracy that allow their wealth to control the movement of governments. The contradiction between these large monopolist imperial financier capitalists who stand above any one national boundary and the more “domestic” financial and industrial capitalists who are beneath them, the strata of bourgeoisie that is the majority support behind the latest Trump regime, is a real contradiction that boils over into real forms of inter-class bourgeois conflict, and real attacks on governmental structures – as we are seeing now.
Empowered as they are under Trump, these smaller bourgeoisie are engaging, however unconsciously, within this wider contradiction, and their attempts to snatch up the facets of government they are excluded from is their latest and most prominent grasp for power within it. Their vigorous gutting of USAID, an agency which has long been a tool of the imperialists to maintain global comprador capitalists that support the neo-colonial order, is a tell-tale sign of just such an interclass bourgeois conflict. Additionally, all federal agencies award lucrative contracts to the private sector, with the biggest players, those aligned with the imperial monopolists, gaining the lion’s share. The Trump administration’s targeting of virtually all the agencies listed previously can be explained as attempts to upset the regular government looting by the imperial monopolists and their forces, replacing it with looting by his constituent forces.
5. How High Will the Waters Rise?
At our current period, there is still a neo-liberal section of society throughout all the affected countries that will attempt, vainly, to hold onto their precious “normal” as the fascist tide rises around them. Regarding the situation in the U.S., in the selections from Business Insider we included above, we can notice that Trump, Musk, and their DOGE team did notget all that they wanted. Our Euro-American imperial financiers, who are aligned with the status-quo operation of most current governments, are still powerful, and they have quickly countered to lessen the impact of, or to deny entirely, the Trump interference in their business. USAID is the clearest example of this, with the agency heavily and energetically targeted by the administration but energetically defended, with some of the biggest contracts being retained despite the massive cuts.
Andrew Natsios, the former USAID administrator under George W. Bush, said that DOGE’s actions against the department have weakened the country’s reach globally, allowing for the growth of Russian and Chinese influence.
“Our economy, our security and our way of life is dependent on our connection to the developing world and not just the rich world and we have just lost our influence in the developing world.”[15]
Natsios is right when he says that the United States’ economy and way of life is dependent on its connection to the developing world. That “connection” is the imperial financiers’ oppression of the “developing” world’s proletariat, a function USAID effectively performs by supporting foreign comprador capitalists aligned with US capital, and by serving as a vehicle of state espionage. Because these “connections” are so vital to the imperial financiers’ operations, and due to the real threat of up-and-coming Chinese and Russian financial rivals to the Euro-American financiers, many of the largest USAID contracts, though initially cut, were reinstated, with mostly contracts regarding “smaller, local organizations” getting the ultimate boot.[16] The “connection” between the current dominating Euro-American financiers and their oppression of the “Third World” is still being maintained. The fact that the Trump administration was unable or unwilling to sever this connection entirely at this time is because the big financiers are still powerful, and are still capable of protecting the status-quo imperial order they benefit from.
The vocal disapproval of Trump and DOGE’s actions by large sections of prominent capitalists also shows the strength of the current imperial clique. Many large companies have vocalized their position against the Trump administration and the extra-legislative actions of the DOGE agency, rejecting their demands for anti-“DEI” policies, which so far have only been enforced regarding federal agencies. Microsoft, Delta Air Lines, and JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, were some of the big objectors,[17] with the Wal-Mart heiress, Christy Walton, and her “No Kings Protest” being a recent and prominent edition to the dissenters.[18]
There are large sections of capitalists who, apparently, have not found the crisis so crippling to their profit that they need to go on a political crusade, and are, more or less, content with the current ruling strata. As the crisis of imperialism worsens and fascism develops among the masses however, the fascist camp will gain legitimacy while the Euro-American imperial financiers’ hold on society will continue to wane. Many of these once staunch opponents of “Trumpism” will change their tune in their search for profit, throwing their investments behind him or the subsequent fascists as they gain more legitimacy, just as large portions of bourgeoisie have done already with Trump’s second term.
In actuality however, and because the crisis within Western imperialism has not yet reached a sharp enough point, Trump is most likely not the fascist who will establish the “American Reich.” At our current stage, their movement is not organized enough to fully combat the liberal establishment, and the imperial bourgeoisie are still capable of defending their investments and status-quo neo-liberal society. However, as the fascist tide continues to rise even portions of the biggest global bourgeoisie will be in support, especially as the new imperial relations – occurring from the domination of a new set of leading imperial financiers – deny profit to the decaying Euro-American power. For now, however, there will be a counter to the dismantling and all the damage that Trump does to the federal apparatus. If they are to remain in power, the Trump clique will likely not be able to carry a fascist program forward to its completion. As the imperial crisis worsens however, the fascist tide itself will sweep Trump and his administration away as political “moderates,” raising up new demagogues who will take the program further than Trump and his supporters currently can, up to and including the complete overthrow of the neo-liberal state and the establishment of hyper-nationalist fascist dictatorship.
6. Conclusion
The liberals, their state, and the domination of the current ruling imperial bourgeoisie are all bound to be washed away and soon. What will replace this order? The fascists organize to uphold the violence of class society, and to replace the tottering empire with another one. They have, as their foot soldiers, the most ignorant and reactionary swathes of the lower-classes who, denigrated by oppression, have decided to view the crisis around them, a crisis of capitalism and imperial violence, in the most ignorant and backwards ways, willing to violently target minorities and the already struggling groups of oppressed people in order to seize whatever privileges they can gain as the bourgeoisie transform both them and the minorities they target into thorough pawns of their new accumulations.
In this time of crisis, fascism will come to power throughout the whole decaying imperial world if it is not resisted. Luckily, it will always be resisted and resisted in every way by those who walk the true path of the dialectical march of history, the path of the revolutionary proletariat. As Communists, we are not mystified by our society and made reactionary, taking the side of the oppressor. We understand the class and material motions of capitalist-imperialist crisis, and are, throughout the whole world, forming associations amongst ourselves for the study of Marxism and the formation of an organized Party to resist and eventually eliminate both the fascists and the capitalists, carrying the world into the new epoch of the socialist society, which we understand is inevitable due to the inherent contradictions of capitalism that no fascist or bourgeoisie will ever be able to solve, and which can only be solved by the unified empowerment of the proletariat.
Fascism creates new capitalist accumulation out of market stagnancy, playing a regularlyoccurring role in the capitalist-imperial system generally. Due to the imperial-capitalist mode of production, the capitalist societies will always deal with the reactionary hordes clamoring for new privileges and new violent systems to ensure a bedrock poverty proletariat and their own parasitism. This is a reflection of the bourgeoisie’s domination over the productive forces, and their related domination over society. Like the bourgeoisie they represent, fascists are, as always, due to their class interest, seeking these same things: cheaper labor, new annexations, and new accumulations, and all in order to grant privileges to themselves and their few at the expense of the “foreigner.” Trump is only the latest form of open fascistic accumulation, accumulation that the United States has frequently employed to secure capital for its national bourgeoisie.
We cannot say that the genocidal treatment of the indigenous peoples of North America, chattel slavery, Japanese internment camps, Jim Crow laws, the “war on drugs,” imperial war, or the militarization of the U.S. border share nothing with fascism, even though they all occur under the “normal” government of the United States. The imperial world is a world of violence and deprivation for the vast majority in order to create privilege and decadence for the minority, and this is true during liberal, neo-liberal, and fascist government forms. The fact that we are now, within the United States, facing a fascist government form is a sign of the desperation of all capitalist classes, proof of crisis in the imperial world, and also a firm signaling of an immense period of opportunity for the Communists that we are just now beginning to grasp hold of. We can and will cut through the reactionary smokescreens of ignorance with much greater ability now that we are entering a period of crisis in which all the underpinnings of our current imperial society are being thrown into the air, with the masses increasingly dissatisfied and clamoring for answers.
The rising of the fascists, who spring up in order to violently enforce the imperial relation in their favor, is also a rising of their antithesis: the class-conscious proletariat. In its political ascendance, and having nothing to gain by clinging to the reaction of class society, the proletariat will cut through the fascists, the bourgeoisie, and all reaction generally as they take their proper place as production’s next ruling class; the final ruling class, who will transform the world away from the violence of all imperialism and capitalist domination, and towards the abundance of the free and liberated communist society.
Endnotes
[1] Politico Staff. 2023. “Tracking the Trump criminal cases.” Politico. June 13, 2023. https://www.politico.com/interactives/2023/trump-criminal-investigations-cases-tracker-list.
[2] Baker, Graeme. 2024. “Trump Campaign Gets $50m Boost from Single Donor.” BBC. June 20, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce448zzwp2go.
[3] Shaw, Donald and David Moore. 2024. “Cardboard Billionaire Uihlein Vaults Up the Ranks of Trump Backers.” More Perfect Union. October 17, 2024. https://substack.perfectunion.us/p/cardboard-billionaire-uihlein-vaults.
[4] Kim, Juliana and Bobby Allyn. 2024. “Tech moguls Altman, Bezos and Zuckerberg donate to Trump's inauguration fund.” NPR. December 13, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2024/12/13/nx-s1-5227874/trump-bezos-zuckerberg-amazon-facebook-open-ai-meta-inauguration-fund.
[5] Thadani, Trisha, Clara Ence Morse, and Maeve Reston. 2025. “Elon Musk donated $288 million in 2024 election, final tally shows.” The Washington Post. January 31, 2025. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/31/elon-musk-trump-donor-2024-election.
[6] Goodwin, Grace Eliza. 2025. “Elon Musk’s DOGE has worked quickly to cut federal agencies. Here’s a list of what’s been targeted so far.” Business Insider. April 2, 2025. https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-agencies-musk-doge-targeted-list-2025-2.
[7] Wendling, Mike. 2025. “RFK Jr pledges to find the cause of autism by September.” BBC. April 11, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0z9nmzvdlo.
[8] Tin, Alexander. 2025. “RFK Jr.'s autism study to amass medical records of many Americans.” CBS News. April 22, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-autism-study-medical-records.
[9] Whitehurst, Lindsay and Ellen Knickmeyer. 2025. “Appeals court clears way for DOGE to keep operating at USAID.” AP News. March 28, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/doge-usaid-elon-musk-e56588069f7610ef13f844293d058ccb.
[10] Schreiber, Melody. 2025. “Rubio announces that 83% of USAID contracts will be canceled.” NPR. March 10, 2025. https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/03/10/g-s1-52964/rubio-announces-that-83-of-usaid-contracts-will-be-canceled.
[11] Walker, Amy Schoenfeld, Malika Khurana, and Christine Zhang. 2025. “What Remains of U.S.A.I.D.?” The New York Times. June 22, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/22/us/politics/usaid-foreign-aid-trump.html.
[12] Megerian, Chris. 2025. “Nearly 90% of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cut as Trump’s government downsizing continues.” AP News. April 17, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-doge-cfpb-elon-musk-456b747c367fccbcf3b74d2893cd1a35.
[13] U.S. Office of Personnel Management. 2025. “Original Email to Employees.” OPM.gov. https://www.opm.gov/fork/original-email-to-employees.
[14] Tecotzky, Alice. 2025. “75,000 federal employees took Trump's buyout, fewer than the White House's goal.” Business Insider. February 13, 2025. https://www.businessinsider.com/75-000-federal-employees-trump-elon-musk-doge-buyout-2025-2.
[15] Walker, Amy Schoenfeld, Malika Khurana, and Christine Zhang. 2025. “What Remains of U.S.A.I.D.?” The New York Times. June 22, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/22/us/politics/usaid-foreign-aid-trump.html.
[16] Ibid
[17] Jeyaretnam, Miranda. 2025. “These U.S. Companies Are Not Ditching DEI Amid Trump’s Crackdown.” Time. February 26, 2025. https://time.com/7261857/us-companies-keep-dei-initiatives-list-trump-diversity-order-crackdown.
[18] McEvoy, Jemima. 2025. “Billionaire Walmart Heiress Promotes Nationwide Anti-Trump Protests.” Forbes. June 10, 2025. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2025/06/10/billionaire-walmart-heiress-promotes-nationwide-anti-trump-protests-on-june-14.