Racist Resentment Against Refugees

November 9, 2025November 9, 2025 ~ OlIver Blackwell ~ Leave a comment

A Delusional Way Out of the Crisis

“Enough…”

After the attack in Solingen on August 23, 2024, Friedrich Merz used this slogan to reflexively demand stricter deportation and asylum policies without a moment’s pause or even respect for the mourners. Criminals are to be deported to Afghanistan and Syria. The fact that the legal requirements for this are – for good reason – lacking did not play a role, even less so the fact that this would require cooperation with Afghan and Syrian terrorist regimes. Merz succeeds in driving the other parties forward with populist rhetoric. In a competition to outdo each other, the democratic parties are fighting for the refugee deportation national championship. They are praised by the AfD for finally doing what the AfD has always demanded.

“Authoritarian Temptations”

Back in 2018, the study “Authoritarian Temptations” diagnosed the “manifestation of a ‘raw bourgeoisie’”[1] and found “that authoritarian attitudes are hidden under a thin layer of civilized, genteel (‘bourgeois’) manners […].”[2] They manifest themselves in contempt for weak groups, the demand for privileges for the established and an orientation towards “competition and personal responsibility.”[3] “Authoritarian temptations are […] primarily to be interpreted as reactions to individual or social loss of control. They generate a demand for political offers aimed at restoring control through the exercise of power and domination as well as through exclusion and discrimination or group-related misanthropy.”[4]

The breeding ground for such “authoritarian temptations” is the worsening experience of crisis. They range from war and environmental destruction, terror, poverty and social division to social decline. In the face of such experiences, the neoliberal advice that everything will be fine with hard work and permanent self-optimization loses its plausibility. The impression arises that everything is “getting out of hand” and out of control. Authoritarian, identitarian and resentful attitudes are gaining traction and are combined with the illusion that this can reverse the loss of control and restore the threatened normality. “Concrete” solutions to “concrete” problems are demanded. They are determined by the search for stability in a mixture of authoritarian-repressive and identitarian strategies. Identitarian boundaries are marked between Germans and non-Germans, workers and freeloaders, friends and enemies and, where possible, enforced in an authoritarian and repressive manner.

“Germany, But Normal” (AfD)

The capitalist relations of production and dissociated reproduction, of work and life outside it, of production and consumption, of tension and relaxing recreation are assumed to be normal. This understanding of normality, which also applies to defenders of democracy, is interspersed on the right with what the AfD understands by “Germany, but normal.” This is primarily about ethnic and cultural identity. It essentially includes traditional gender dualism and the bourgeois family as well as a dichotomous world view that makes a clear distinction between those who belong and those who must remain outside. “Race” is replaced by ethnic and cultural identity as an exclusionary marker – occasionally concealed by the euphemistic talk of a plurality of ethnicities. But even this does not abolish the exclusion marked by identity, because every ethnic group should remain where it is or be “returned” to where it belongs. Exclusionary identity politics becomes the basis of “group-related misanthropy” (Wilhelm Heitmeyer). Strategies of exclusion aim to return to a confusedly imagined normality by regaining control.

A right-wing “culture war” along the lines of “nobody can take away our German identity” is in some ways replacing the “class struggle.” The socially disadvantaged, who feel respected and understood in their longing for German normality, overlook the fact that they too would be further marginalized by the AfD’s economic policy ideas. The “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance” (BSW) closes this open socio-political flank. It combines the issue of social disparities and social exclusion with a German-national orientation, according to which the first priority must be social justice for Germans who have been left behind. People who have to flee their home countries because they are victims of all the crises that destroy the foundations of life – be it poverty, economic crises, collapsing states, wars or ecological destruction processes – compete with them.

Together Against the “Superfluous”

The current attempts to re-establish control are focused on migrants. They are stigmatized as the “mother of all problems” (Seehofer). The democratic center as well as right-wing and left-wing German-identitarian orientations agree on this. In contrast to the already unspeakable asylum debates in the 1990s, which were accompanied by attacks on refugee shelters, there is no longer even talk of fighting the causes of flight. This kind of talk was not meant seriously back then either. However, it was obviously used to relativize the so-called asylum compromise by referring to the “actual” problems that drive people to flee their home countries. In the meantime, the view has become so nationally and immediately narrowed that the global dynamics of destruction are no longer even in sight.

However, the focus extends beyond Germany’s borders when it comes to recruiting migrants who are needed to compensate for the shortage of skilled workers in production and marketing, such as in the care sector. Foreign human capital is important so that Germany does not fall even further behind in global competition. In this way, the terror of deportation against “useless” people who exploit “us” is combined with the global hunt for usable human material that benefits “us.” A differentiation between superfluous “parasites” and “honest workers,” even among natives, is part of a consensus that is shared right up to the democratic “center” of society. Such selection also applies internally, albeit to a lesser extent. Analogous to the asylum debate in the 1990s, the rejection of migrants today is also linked to social cuts for locals and their stigmatization as “work refusers.”

The Fetishization of Work as a Social Consensus

The hatred of non-working migrants and “native refusers of work” is an expression of the fetishization of work in capitalism. Labor is not a contradiction to capital, but rather its substance as an indispensable source of value and surplus value. Therefore, work should not be affirmed, but criticized. It is no coincidence that the slogan “he who does not work should not eat” is a cross-class social consensus. Hatred of non-working people is a manifestation of structural antiziganism. It feeds on the rejection of Sinti and Roma, so-called gypsies, who have refused a modernity based on work, while structural anti-Semitism is virulent in the rejection of “rapacious financial capital” at the expense of creative capital, i.e. in a critique of capitalism reduced to the sphere of circulation à la “closing the casino” (attac). Both ideas are linked by the fetishization of work. They meet in the need to irrationally concretize crisis situations in terms of individuals or certain groups (who are then to be excluded), as well as in the illusion of being able to compensate for the loss of political control and regain political agency through regulatory and even authoritarian measures and orders.

The latter is a fanciful illusion. Even authoritarian governments cannot regain the lost controls. The barrier that even they cannot overcome is the logical and historical barrier of capital valorization. This barrier is set by the fact that – mediated by competition – less and less labor is used for the production of value and surplus value, and this decline can no longer be compensated for by cheaper production and the expansion of markets. However, the ability to act politically is tied to a functioning accumulation of capital. The more this accumulation collapses, the more clearly the political capacity to act, as well as legal capacity, including human rights, reach their limits. The extent to which legal capacity is tied to the ability to valorize labor as “human capital” is dramatically demonstrated in migration policy. The protection of the law is open to exploitable migrants, while those who are superfluous for the valorization of their labor are given inferior rights, if they are lucky, or end up being handed over to terrorist regimes without the right to live, locked up in camps or left drowning in the Mediterranean while sea rescue is criminalized.

Freedom, But Different

Against the backdrop outlined above, democratic and repressive-autocratic politics are moving closer together. In terms of content, both variants are confusingly similar, the more it is a matter of ultimately desperate attempts to extend even post-democratic control options beyond the crisis. They differ above all on the formal level of hostility or respect for democratic processes and institutions. The latter is no small matter and must be defended against attempts to undermine democracy. However, this should not obscure the fact that more is at stake if collapse is to be prevented, namely liberation from subjugation to the deadly and irrational end in itself of capitalist socialization, namely the increase of capital for its own sake. Freedom would consist of gaining control over the reproduction of life within the framework of an “association of free people,” instead of living or dying as an appendage to the machinery of valorization. “Under the spell of the tenacious irrationality of the whole” (Theodor W. Adorno), this may seem illusionary. Beyond this spell, however, nothing is more unrealistic than the supposedly “illusionless pragmatism” (Robert Kurz) to which so-called Realpolitik has committed itself in the face of the escalating deadly reality of the crisis. The more this continues, the more the catastrophe accelerates, instead of the “course of events” being interrupted and broken – irritated by the suffering of people and with a critical view of the social totality of capitalist socialization. Then “freedom […] could consist in the fact that the people who come together to reproduce their lives not only do so voluntarily, but also deliberate and decide together on the content as well as the procedure. […] Such freedom, which would be the exact opposite of liberal universal servitude under the dictates of labor markets, is in principle practically possible at all levels and aggregations of social reproduction – from the household to the transcontinental networking of production” (Robert Kurz).

[1] Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Authoritarian Temptations, Berlin³ 2018, 87.

[2] Ibid., 310.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 84.

First published in konkret in 11/2024.

Trump at the Inner Barrier of Capital

June 6, 2025 ~ OlIver Blackwell ~ 1 Comment

The reindustrialization of the USA, which Trump wants to force through his protectionism, is being undermined by automation trends in industry.

Tomasz Konicz

What does Donald Trump want? Since the so-called “Liberation Day” at the beginning of April, when the right-wing populist announced the introduction of comprehensive tariffs for almost the entire late capitalist world, Washington’s specific regulations, tariff rates and exemptions have been changing almost on a weekly basis. The economic uncertainty that Trump’s protectionism brings with it is considered by economists to be an important factor that could contribute to an economic slowdown or even recession in the US. Companies and corporations cannot calculate reliably, the flow of trade between the US and China has largely come to a standstill, and supply bottlenecks in the US can hardly be avoided despite the latest postponement in the trans-Pacific trade war.

First and foremost, it is around seven million industrial jobs that Donald Trump wants back. For more than 40 years, employment in the industrial sector in the United States has been declining, from just under 20 million industrial workers in 1978 to just under 13 million in 2023.[1] Between 2002 and 2022, the number of industrial companies in the United States fell by 45,000, which corresponds to a decline of around 14% within two decades.[2] This deindustrialization of the US has led to the very social disruption that has once again propelled Trump into office – and the White House must confront this misery, precisely because the increasingly authoritarian Trump administration can hardly afford to be voted out of office without ending up in prison due to multiple obvious violations of the law. The consolidation of an authoritarian regime in the United States can only be achieved by socially immobilizing broad sections of the population, similar to what Putin was able to do in Russia.

And, from a narrow-minded national perspective, the connections are clear: the deindustrialization of the US goes hand in hand with the creation of massive trade deficits with China and German Europe in the age of globalization. Last year, the United States recorded a new record deficit of $1.21 trillion,[3] which is far above the highs during the US housing bubble in 2006 (786 billion) and the post-Covid era in 2022 (971 billion).[4] Last year, the US recorded a deficit of $295 billion with the People’s Republic of China alone,[5] while the figure for the EU was $235 billion, of which Germany accounted for $84 billion.[6] Trade surpluses are used to export deindustrialization and debt, which also formed the core of the German beggar-thy-neighbor economic model at the height of globalization. This correlation is also manifested in the share of industrial production in total GDP,[7] which in 2023 was around 26% in China, 18.5% in the FRG and only around 10% in the US (in the 1970s it was still just under 25%).[8]

So is this a big scam, as the Trump administration is postulating in order to legitimize its protectionism? The relationship between job losses in the industrial sector and the actual output of US industry makes it clear that it was primarily competition-mediated productivity increases that led to the deindustrialization of the US. Between 1980 and 2000, during the same period in which the industrial workforce in the United States fell from just under 19 million to 17 million,[9] US industrial output roughly doubled (percentage figures from the Fed, in inflation-adjusted 2017 prices).[10]

Rising industrial production with declining employment in the industrial sector is an expression of the rationalization push in commodity production in the course of the IT revolution from the 1980s onwards; it is the empirically verifiable consequence of the inner barrier of capital – the competition-mediated tendency of the capitalist valorization process to get rid of its own substance, the value-forming labor in commodity production. Even in the 21st century, when the US industrial workforce shrank massively (from 17 million to just under 13 million), the output of this shrinking industrial workforce stagnated without a corresponding decline (the crisis-related slumps in industrial output in 2009 and 2020 were quickly reversed).[11]

What’s more, according to the National Association of Manufacturers,[12] value added in the United States amounted to around $2.93 trillion in 2024 (in 2010 it was just under $1.8 trillion, in 1997 only $1.38 trillion),[13] with the United States paradoxically growing primarily in foreign trade. Manufacturing exports have more than doubled in the last two decades, from $622.3 billion in 2002 to $1.63 trillion in 2024. What is Trump and his entourage upset about? Well, in the same period – the heyday of globalization – the volume of world trade has more than tripled: from $4.9 trillion in 2000, to $9.8 trillion in 2010, to $15.7 trillion in 2023. The US’ share of world trade has thus fallen – to 7.9% in 2023.

The opposing trends in capitalist commodity production – which lacks new labor-intensive fields of valorization – were also noticed and addressed by US monetary policy. As early as 2014, the US Federal Reserve noted that industrial production in the United States was continuing to grow (with the exception of short-term slumps caused by the crisis), while employment was not, meaning that “industrial growth is not synonymous with growth in industrial jobs.”[14] The Fed offered “productivity growth” and a shift in sectoral focus towards “computers and electronics” as explanations.

Trump’s protectionist policy thus appears to be failing due to the increasingly clear inner barrier of capital, the relentless melting away of the mass of spent labor in commodity production as a result of competition-mediated rationalization (the idea that capitalism could be reproduced as a financial market-driven service society was already disgraced in 2008). This is particularly evident in the development in China, where Trump’s protectionism believes it has recovered its lost industrial jobs. Even in the state capitalist workshop of the world, which owes its economic rise to millions of mercilessly exploited cheap workers, automation tendencies are spreading ever faster.

China is now the global leader in the installation of industrial robots. By 2023, the People’s Republic had already overtaken Japan and Germany in the automation of goods production: 470 industrial robots per 10,000 wage earners were in use in China, compared to 419 in Germany and 429 in Japan.[15] The dynamics of this automation push are dizzying: in 2023, more than twice as many robots were put into operation in the People’s Republic than in the next five industrialized countries combined. The world’s automating workshop accounted for more than 50% of global demand for robots in 2023.[16] Meanwhile, forecasts predict that the People’s Republic will become the center of robotics, with more than half of humanoid robot production predicted to be based there this year.[17]

And it is precisely Trump’s protectionism that is tempting capital to further boost automation in reshoring in the United States. According to the US automation service provider Formic, which specializes in the leasing of industrial robots, the general uncertainty caused by the trade disputes led to a 17% increase in the use of robots at the beginning of 2025. The new settlements of industrial companies, which Trump’s capricious customs regime is intended to provoke, would also be built at the globally applicable productivity level, which would entail a high degree of automation. Chinese robotics manufacturers in particular are likely to sense new market opportunities here. Trump’s crazy idea that millions of US wage earners would manufacture smartphones by hand is becoming obsolete, even in China, due to rapidly advancing automation.

Ultimately, however, Trump’s reshoring fantasies are milquetoast calculations that overlook the connection between declining industrial production and the inflated global financial markets. Hyper-productive global industrial production – especially in China – was dependent on a global deficit economy with the US at the center of deficit cycles in which global debt has risen faster than global economic output since the 1980s. And it is precisely this deficit economy, realized by means of increasing financial bubbles, that has been extinguished since the major inflationary surge of 2020, after the central banks had to curb their expansive monetary policy. According to the IMF, global debt fell between 2021 and 2023, contributing to the global economic slowdown, the widening of the US deficit and the increasing destabilization of the globalized world economy through deficit cycles.[18]

The erratic, contradictory behavior of the White House mentioned at the beginning is above all an expression of this contradiction: the US trade deficit is exploding because its trading partners are having to rely more heavily on exports due to the economic slowdown, while Trump’s protectionist measures are jeopardizing the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency and causing turmoil on the US bond markets. Trump expected turbulence with his protectionist turnaround, which is why he wanted to initiate it as soon as he took office – but it was the rapid rise in interest rates on US government bonds that forced him to reverse course. In the meantime, US trading partners such as Japan are threatening to sell US government bonds during negotiations.[19] It is effectively the nuclear option in the trade war, which also highlights the absurd state of late capitalist commodity production, whose production surpluses are exported to the US, which can borrow in the world’s reserve currency as the measure of value of all commodities.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/forty-years-of-falling-manufacturing-employment.htm

[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-decline-of-u-s-manufacturing-by-sector/

[3] https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/us-international-trade-goods-and-services-december-and-annual-2024

[4] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/trade-balance-deficit

[5] https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china

[6] https://www.fool.com/research/us-trade-balance/

[7] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/manufacturing-value-added-to-gdp

[8] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAPEFANA

[9] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP

[10] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPMAN

[11] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS

[12] https://nam.org/mfgdata/facts-about-manufacturing-expanded/

[13] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/manufacturing-output

[14] https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2014/12/manufacturing-is-growing-even-when-manufacturing-jobs-are-not/

[15] https://archive.ph/bL8tt#selection-1101.15-1101.47

[16] https://ifr.org/downloads/press2018/2024-SEP-24_IFR_press_release_World_Robotics_2024_-_China.pdf

[17] https://www.asiamanufacturingreview.com/news/china-to-manufacture-half-of-world-s-humanoid-robots-by-2025-nwid-1613.html

[18] https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2024/12/02/persistent-fall-in-private-borrowing-brings-global-debt-down

[19] https://thediplomat.com/2025/05/how-japans-1-1-trillion-in-us-treasuries-became-a-strategic-lever-in-the-new-tariff-war/

Originally published on konicz.info on 05/26/2025

Into the Crisis One Tariff at a Time

March 28, 2025March 28, 2025 ~ OlIver Blackwell ~ Leave a comment

With its protectionist tariff policy, the new U.S. government is ushering in the end of the age of neoliberal globalization.

Tomasz Konicz

Protectionism is likely to become the new normal. The first foreign policy reflex of the new U.S. administration was to instigate trade wars. At the beginning of February, just a few days after taking office, President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on goods from China, Canada and Mexico.

At 25%, the import duties on goods from Mexico and Canada were much higher than for China, whose goods were subject to additional import duties of just 10%. The U.S. is by far the most important trading partner for all three countries, with each of them recording trade surpluses.

However, while the tariffs against China actually came into force, Trump suspended the implementation of protectionist measures against neighboring countries to the north and south of the U.S. for 30 days on February 3rd. At this point, the U.S. government entered into negotiations with Mexico and Canada, during which the threat of punitive tariffs remains in place. In fact, Trump has already been able to secure significant concessions: both Canada and Mexico agreed to tighten controls on their borders with the U.S. Mexico wants to mobilize around 10,000 troops to secure the border so as not to jeopardize the economic position of its northern border region as an extension of the U.S. workbench.

In fact, Trump’s alleged economic protectionism is a geopolitical instrument of power that can be used to extort concessions. In the case of Mexico, which is particularly susceptible to economic pressure from the U.S. because of its increased economic dependency on them as a result of the U.S. nearshoring strategy, the aim is for better defense against migration movements. Canada, on the other hand, is apparently actually being forced to integrate more closely into the U.S. economy – the foreseeable struggle for the resources in and trade routes through the rapidly thawing Arctic make Trump’s bizarre annexation demands regarding Canada and Greenland at least understandable.

China immediately announced retaliatory measures: Tariff increases now introduced there include 15% on energy sources and 10% on agricultural machinery, spare parts for trucks and similar products from the U.S. However, the Chinese government has the short end of the stick in such trade wars. In 2024, the U.S. trade deficit amounted to the gigantic sum of $918.4 billion, of which China alone accounted for $295.4 billion. Even if both sides initially suffer economic disadvantages in a trade war, especially in the current stagflative crisis phase, for example in the form of higher inflation, an escalation would always hit the economy with the export surpluses harder than the deficit country, which can at least hope to substitute imports burdened by tariffs through increased domestic production.

The European Union is in a similar situation, having aligned itself with the export-focused German economic model since the euro crisis and achieving a trade surplus of 235.5 billion euros with the U.S. in 2024. Around 20 percent of all EU exports go to the U.S., its most important sales market. The special tariffs of 25 percent on steel and aluminum, which Trump issued in mid-February, were immediately described by the EU as illegal. It saw “no justification for imposing tariffs on its exports,” according to the EU Commission, which threatened countermeasures to “protect the interests of European companies, workers and consumers from unjustified measures.”

Only Trump’s First Salvo in the Transatlantic Trade War

This was effectively only Trump’s first salvo in the coming transatlantic trade war, as only a few manufacturers in the EU are substantially affected by this. The EU’s trade surplus is primarily generated with cars made in Germany, machinery and pharmaceutical products – on February 18^th, Trump consequently threatened punitive tariffs of 25% on cars, semiconductors and pharmaceutical products. Added to this is the EU’s agricultural sector, which is incurring the wrath of the U.S. government due to some EU trade restrictions – for example against the infamous chlorinated chicken. The EU agricultural sector knows exactly what to expect. At the turn of the year, agricultural exports from the EU to the U.S. climbed to their highest level in 15 years. “Mountains of butter, pyramids of cheese and lakes of milk” are currently being laid out for export in anticipation of the coming trade barriers, reported the Austrian newspaper Der Standard.

Trump has already indicated to media representatives that his government is working on a comprehensive protectionist offensive that is likely to hit the EU particularly hard. In principle, the upcoming U.S. tariffs are to be imposed on individual EU countries and not on the entire economic area in order to promote divisive tendencies in the EU, make a joint EU counter-strategy more difficult and reward countries governed by Trump’s ideological allies, such as Hungary, with exemptions. The U.S. Department of Commerce is currently drawing up a list of countries that use “unfair trade practices” in order to impose “reciprocal tariffs” on them.

It is almost certain that Germany’s beleaguered car manufacturers will face new burdens, as the EU car import tariffs of 10% are far higher than those in the U.S. (2.5%). The spreading panic was already evident in the public announcement by VW CEO Oliver Blume that he intends to hold direct talks with the U.S. government. The German mechanical engineering industry is also likely to face tariff increases. If the trade conflict with the U.S. escalates, forecasts predict an additional economic slump of up to 1.5% of gross domestic product for Germany in particular.

What Retaliatory Measures Remain for the EU?

Bourbon, jeans, Harley-Davidsons, peanuts – what retaliatory measures are left for the EU? Brussels and Berlin are certainly aware that the EU is at a disadvantage in trade disputes due to its export surplus. So far, leaders have signaled a compromise proposal and a counter-threat to the U.S. government. The EU appears to be prepared to buy larger quantities of liquid gas from the U.S. and to reduce tariffs on U.S. vehicles in order to reduce the U.S. deficit.

Building on the protectionist experience gained during Trump’s first presidency, the EU had already issued a regulation at the end of 2023 that allows for swift retaliatory measures should “economic coercion” be used against the currency area. This time, it is not just about the import of goods, but also services. This could cause difficulties for U.S. IT giants such as Alphabet, Meta and Amazon in particular, who have very quickly come to terms with Trump’s authoritarian efforts.

However, in terms of economic policy, one can hardly speak of an about-face turn in U.S. policy. It is more a further intensification of the previous restrictive trade tendencies, as Joe Biden’s administration also continued the protectionist measures from Trump’s first term in office in a modified form – especially in the form of the economic stimulus programs that benefited domestic producers. And it is precisely in the increasing protectionism that the crisis process becomes evident. The fight for trade surpluses is a concrete expression of the inner barrier of capital choking on its productivity, which has so far been overcome within the framework of neoliberal deficit economies, especially in the U.S.

Trump now appears to be ushering in the final break with the era of neoliberal globalization, which gave rise to gigantic deficit cycles fueled by speculative bubbles. The U.S., with the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, forms the center of this financial bubble economy, in which U.S. trade deficits act as a global economic stimulus program – until the accompanying deindustrialization led to widespread social disruption and political instability in the U.S., which in turn elevated right-wing populist forces to the White House. In their second attempt, they now seem more determined than ever not only to drive forward fascization in domestic policy, but also to stage a revival of the devastating protectionism of the 1930s, which exacerbated the crisis at the time.

Originally published in jungle world on 02/27/2025

Cancel Culture USA

March 15, 2025 ~ OlIver Blackwell ~ 1 Comment

The purges and deportations threatened by Trump have already begun.

Tomasz Konicz

It seems that what follows neoliberalism is based on the methods that neoliberalism used in previous decades to implement its infamous structural adjustment programs. They are fascistoid decay products of neoliberalism that are now unwinding the neoliberally deformed constitutional state in the U.S. The shocking implementation of controversial neoliberal austerity programs, taking the public by surprise with far-reaching deregulation measures; these tactics find their equivalent in the shock strategy that Trump and Musk are now using to eliminate any potential for opposition in the state apparatus. It’s all happening in quick succession – and these are just the first steps.

Immediately after taking power, in its first week in office, the Trump administration abolished all equality programs (DEI or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and introduced a whistleblower system in the U.S. administration.[1] Not only have all programs that were intended to give minorities greater representation in the state apparatus been abolished without replacement. The White House has also set up an email address where whistleblowers can report incidents that “circumvent” the new regulations, as the New York Times (NYT) put it.

What does this mean in concrete terms? The DEI programs, hated by the racist U.S. right, ultimately amounted to giving preference to candidates from socially disadvantaged or underrepresented minority groups in applications, provided they had the same qualifications as their fellow applicants. If this continues to happen, it could be interpreted as a continuation of the DEI measures, which could prompt losing applicants to report this to the Trump administration. Ultimately, this means that it is safer for decision-makers in the U.S. public administration and state apparatus to hire white men in the future in order to avoid career-damaging accusations of “woke” activities.

It is a thinly disguised racist regulation designed to expand the dominance of white America in its power apparatus. At the same time, it creates an atmosphere of tattle-tailing and suspicion based on racism, which is conducive to the control of large power apparatuses. At the beginning of February, lists of “targets” in the public sector were published online, containing names and photos of mainly black public sector healthcare employees who are accused of “woke” thought crimes, such as using pronouns, supporting Democrats or working on DEI initiatives. It is unclear where these right-wing denunciation sites (“DEI Watch List”) get their information from.[2]

The fight against the “woke” DEI measures functions as a versatile ideological vehicle for the return of racism – and climate change denial. Meanwhile, in response to climate disasters (fire in Los Angeles) and accidents (plane collision in Washington), the White House has even established the narrative of blaming the DEI programs.

Everything Must Go!

On the surface, Trump and Musk want to implement an extreme form of neoliberal austerity policy. The Orwellian construct of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), led by Elon Musk in a legal gray area, wants to cut the U.S. budget, which totaled 6.7 trillion dollars in 2024, by two trillion dollars.[3] To this end, the Trump administration has sent emails to all 2.3 million public sector employees asking them to look for “higher productivity jobs” and to accept a severance package by February 6^th that provides for continued pay until September 2025.[4] Shortly before the deadline, only 20,000 employees agreed to this arrangement.[5] In a first step, ten percent of public sector jobs – more than 200,000 jobs – are to be eliminated, which points to tough disputes in the coming months that are likely to provide the Trump administration with further opportunities for the reactionary politicization of the shrinking state apparatus.

The richest man in the world also had his crosshairs on the U.S. aid organization, USAID, which Elon Musk described as a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists.”[6] For decades, USAID not only acted as a humanitarian aid organization, it also flanked U.S. interests globally as part of a standard “soft power” approach. The imperialists in the White House clearly want to do without this in the future. Nearly all 10,000 employees of the U.S. government’s aid agency have been laid off, and most programs in developing countries have been discontinued.[7] The U.S. State Department will now only directly control and manage a few selected aid programs.[8] In addition, around 60 U.S. foreign policy front organizations involved in promoting civil society and democratic structures in authoritarian states such as China, Russia, Iran and Hungary have lost their funding, according to the NYT.[9] Hungarian ruler Viktor Orban in particular – who was granted an audience with Trump in mid-September – has vehemently criticized these projects.

Another priority of the Trump administration is the education sector and the Department of Education, which he wants to deprive of most of its funding – not that it is particularly necessary. According to the report, the Department of Education is not only to be stripped of funding, but all its functions that are “not explicitly stipulated in its statute” are expected to be distributed to other departments, according to reports in the U.S. media.[10] This is expected to happen as early as the end of February. In addition to alleged cost-cutting constraints, the Biden administration’s programs for equality and tolerance in education appear to be the main motivating factors behind this move. Trump seems to be seeking a fundamental, authoritarian-reactionary new beginning here.

U.S. universities, which often have a liberal reputation, are also already in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. Hundreds of millions in state funds are on the hit list, so university leaders are avoiding public criticism of the previous revision of equality programs. Professors and university leaders prefer “not to provoke the president,” according to the NYT, as the financial screws are already being tightened.[11]

Hand on the Money Lever

Elon Musk’s biggest coup to date came in his capacity as a “special government employee” (the White House’s official term for the oligarch) in his attack on the Treasury Department’s payment system, which handles a large proportion of U.S. payments.[12] The so-called Bureau of the Fiscal Service is a mere executive body run by civil servants who are not political appointees. It handles nearly 90 percent of all federal government payments, such as social programs and tax refunds. It stores data on more than 100 million U.S. citizens and most government employees, which previously only a “handful of top non-political officials” had access to, according to the Independent.[13]

But now Musk has managed to access the data stream using his DOGE construct, and he has the support of Trump’s Treasury Department. The oligarch seems to be less concerned with the efficient processing of payments than with controlling them and possibly blocking any payments. This would simply mean that Congress, which provides the legislative basis for the payment office, would be undermined by the Trump administration. Musk has wanted to gain access to the payment system since December, but was refused by the now resigned head, with his team exploring the possibilities of payment stops in particular. In disputes with recalcitrant parts of the state apparatus, in repression against “ideological enemies,” as Rolling Stone put it, the Trump administration and its oligarch are now in the driver’s seat.[14] Anyone who doesn’t do their part is – without an ounce of bureaucracy – cut off.

If Musk’s actions are reminiscent of oligarchies such as Ukraine or Russia, where it is common to abuse state power to enforce particular interests, then this is because late capitalism in the United States is entering its oligarchic stage as part of crisis-induced brutalization.[15] In the meantime, a number of lawsuits have been filed against these actions by – let’s say – the Trump administration,[16] but these proceedings will be carried out in a judicial system that has been deliberately infiltrated by Republicans and right-wing groups for many years by means of political appointment campaigns.[17] The staunchly right-wing Supreme Court, which has already granted Trump general immunity for his second term in office as a precaution, is only the tip of the reactionary iceberg in the judicial system.[18] And it is precisely here that many of the Trump administration’s plans will be decided, as they operate in a legal gray area. For this reason, the Biden administration tried to fill as many judgeships as possible by the end of 2024 in order to counter the right-wing offensive in the coming judicial war.[19]

Fight For the “Deep State”

The fight against the so-called “deep state,” against informal networks in the ministries of power, which Trump has taken up the cause of,[20] is a classic right-wing projection.[21] The U.S. right wants to seize the “deep state” as part of its fascist impulse and, if necessary, build it from scratch so that it never has to leave power again. The Trump administration’s attacks on the FBI and CIA serve this very purpose. It is not about destroying or weakening these state agencies, such as the Department of Education or USAID. Trump wants to turn them into his personal instruments of power – another characteristic of oligarchic, authoritarian systems.

The capitalist rule of law is practically on the brink of collapse. The subjectless form of capitalist domination mediated by the state and judicial apparatus, as implemented by the FBI and CIA at home and abroad, is thus degenerating into potential prey for particular interests. Which oligarch will win the next “elections” by spending billions to push through his interests via the FBI and CIA? This is the future that threatens the U.S. if Trump succeeds in his grab for the “deep state.” The suppression of any opposition movements by the United States’ highly trained and militarized repressive apparatus would be possible almost without interruption, regardless of the rule of law.

Trump is planning a comprehensive purge of the FBI, in which FBI officials who have investigated Trump and his supporters are on the hit list. This right-wing “cancel culture” targets all those who appear to be disloyal. Here, too, there is formal talk of “cuts”[22] to which six FBI leaders have already fallen victim.[23] The purges could affect “hundreds, if not thousands” of agents, according to U.S. media.[24] Every FBI investigator involved in the investigation following Trump’s attempted coup d’état in January 2021 is effectively at risk. In the meantime, FBI agents have even gone to court to obtain an emergency court order to deny the Trump administration access to their identities.[25]

At the CIA, however, which has a tense relationship with Trump due to his preference for despots, the usual threatening emails with severance offers were sent out – this applied to all CIA people without exception.[26] A spokesperson for the notorious intelligence agency explained that this approach was intended to bring the CIA into line with the goals of the new administration. As early as November 2024, CIA insiders warned that Trump wanted to politicize the intelligence service and transform it into a personal “weapon” to be used unlawfully against political opponents, for example.[27] Musk’s empire is already closely intertwined with the U.S. state apparatus, for example with space programs and intelligence services.[28]

Guantanamo For Migrants

This Trump crusade, in which the separation of powers and all checks and balances of the U.S. political system are to be undermined in the fascist tradition, is taking place against the backdrop of extensive deportations of migrants by the new administration. The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was instructed at the end of January to achieve a daily arrest rate of 1200 to 1500 “illegal” migrants.[29] Countries such as Colombia, which refused to grant landing permits to deportation flights from the United States, were threatened with tariffs by Washington and brought into line. The same applies to Mexico, which is deploying around 10,000 soldiers to the border to secure it following comprehensive U.S. tariffs, which have been suspended by Trump for a month. The Trump administration is also deploying Army and Marine units to the southern border.[30]

The ICE migrant hunt, which is supported by large sections of the U.S. population,[31] is now proving too successful:[32] At the beginning of February, interned migrants sometimes had to be released because the detention centers were overcrowded.[33] But the Trump administration seems to have found a solution for this too. The infamous military base at Guantanamo, which served as a detention and torture center for Islamist terrorists during the “war on terror,” is to become a – well – concentration camp for all the migrants detained by ICE who cannot simply be deported. The capacity of this camp is said to be up to 30,000 people.[34]

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/us/politics/trump-immigration-climate-dei-policies.html

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/federal-health-workers-terrified-dei-website-publishes-list-targets-rcna190711

[3] The White House stated that Musk was a “special government employee.” https://www.golem.de/news/doge-weisses-haus-aeussert-sich-zu-elon-musk-2502-193042.html

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/politics/federal-workers-opm.html

[5] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/04/trump-buyout-offer-federal-workers-deadline/78208851007/

[6] https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/04/usaid-marxists-once-again-elon-musk-again-displays-his-invincible-ignorance/

[7] https://time.com/7212938/trump-administration-pulling-almost-all-usaid-workers-off-job-worldwide/

[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/politics/usaid-trump-musk.html

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/politics/democracy-human-rights-fired.html

[10] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-administration-to-take-steps-to-defund-education-department/ar-AA1ylYd4

[11] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/trump-executive-orders-universities.html