Democrats can’t defeat fascists because they bow to same interests

Many letters lately from the right wing telling Donald Trump opponents to suck it up, get over it, get behind him. Many good letters from progressives telling the rightists that they’ll continue to fight. Much talk about changing and improving the Democratic Party. To both: Really?

The right wing is becoming more and more fascistic, following a similar path that led to full-fledged fascist movements in the 1920s and ’30s in Europe. There can be no principled accommodation with them. They must be defeated.

But all too many on the progressive left harbor deep delusions about what the Democratic Party is and can be. Parties and formations like it have never and cannot ever defeat fascism and the alt-right because the Dem hierarchy represents and bows to the same 1 percent interests.

The progressive base must awaken and see the Democratic Party for what it is — just the flip side of the coin, the mirror image of what the Republicans are.

Progressives and their potential mass allies — including many working-class Trump supporters — must create a new, independent, fully democratic movement that’s free of corporate money and corruption — and ready to fight back. Nothing else can win against the reactionaries.

This story was originally published December 14, 2016 at 12:48 PM with the headline "Democrats can’t defeat fascists because they bow to same interests."