Following the defeat of the far-right in Brazil and Serbia, we now have yet more encouraging news right from the imperialist heartlands of the US and Israel. In Israel, Netanyahu has lost his majority even though his coalition remains the biggest bloc with 53 seats in Israel's 120-member parliament (called the Knesset). The most significant upshot of the elections is the emergence of the Arab parties as a significant factor with as many as 19 seats which ensured the defeat of Netanyahu. The US midterm elections reduced Trump to a 'lame duck' president for the remaining term of his presidency by giving an emphatic majority to Democrats in both chambers of the US Congress - the Senate (upper house) as well as the House of Representatives. Democrats won historic victories in several traditional Republican citadels, in some cases ending nearly a century of Republican stranglehold.
Trump had belatedly sensed the groundswell of public anger against his hugely unpopular tyrannical misrule and tried to do some damage control by pretending to distance his government from Israel and promising to end the Iran war. He also tried to manipulate the electoral roll and explored the option of buying votes by promising handouts. But nothing worked and the working people of America gave him a roaring rebuff and elected a whole lot of progressive representatives. The US now has its first ever Muslim Senator in Abdul El-Sayed from Michigan, the first ever Black woman Governor in Keisha Lance Bottoms as the elected Governor of Georgia, the first ever Native American woman governor in Debra Haaland (New Mexico) and the first ever Palestinian-American state senator in Aber Kawas for the New York State Senate.
The changing political trend that recently gave the US four young Socialist Mayors in New York (Zohran Mamdani), Seattle (Katie Wilson), Los Angeles (Nithya Raman) and Washington, D.C. (Janeese Lewis George) has now produced this potential for a significant leftward shift to resist and defeat the far-right racist politics epitomised by two terms of Donald Trump's presidency and the politics and policies of what is now called Trumpism. This potential has asserted itself in the face of the disastrous impact of the war of aggression on Iran and the ongoing genocide in Palestine by the Trump-Netanyahu combine, impacts which are felt not only internationally but in the domestic economic conditions and political environment within the US itself. The deep affordability crisis triggered by low wages, reduced state spending on public welfare, increased military spending and escalating costs of war have made life extremely hard for the working people of the US.
Yet at the other end of the spectrum, Trump's MAGA America now celebrates obscene wealth, epitomised by the rise of the world's first trillionaire in Elon Musk and the ever closer coalescence between the Trump Administration and the greed and plunder of American oligarchs. The racist anti-immigrant war unleashed by the Trump Administration has made life insecure not only for immigrant communities but the American people at large what with the terror, violence and militarisation unleashed by the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) apparatus of the state. University students and teachers condemning the genocide in Gaza and the cruel occupation of Palestine by Israel are facing the wrath of the Trump Administration working in tandem with the hugely influential Israel lobby.
Against this backdrop, large sections within the Democratic camp are denouncing the bankruptcy, hypocrisy and cowardice of the Biden era and working for a bold pro-people agenda that calls for a wealth tax on billionaires and living wages for workers, increased spending and improved delivery in the arena of public health and education, embargo on giant Data Centres that are devouring resources and degrading the environment, and strict regulation of the reckless use of AI technology which has triggered massive unemployment and all-round disruption. Trump supporters have not dared to attempt any coup against this midterm mandate delivered by the American people, but by terming it a 'giant step back in history' Trump has indicated that his administration will be on a collision course with the Democrat controlled chambers of the US Congress.
The defeat of the Netanyahu regime and the massive meltdown of the Trump Administration in the US midterm elections should have a great welcome resonance in India. The Modi government has sacrificed India's interests and dignity at the altar of its strategic subservience to the US-Israel axis. The domestic politics of the Sangh brigade borrows heavily from the racism, Islamophobia and dictatorial paradigm of Trump and Netanyahu. Just when the US electorate is delivering this historic mandate against Trumpism, we learn that the Modi government hired two American lobbying firms spending $ 2,25,000 per month to secure congratulatory social media posts and phone calls from the Trump Administration to boost Modi's image!
Shocking silence over Trump's tariff war and humiliating anti-India comments and paid soliciting of praise from the same Trump Administration reveal a pathetic picture of the Modi government behind its 'Vishwaguru' bravado. We, the people of India, must now get ready to reject this cowardly Indian stooge of Trump and Netanyahu who has mired India in deep disaster on every front.
