Labor’s future will also be decided by its response to a reactionary political climate, and whether it can overcome two sinister and mutually reinforcing dynamics that are now at play in the movement: opportunistic collaboration with Trumpism along narrow sectoral lines, and the embrace of an “America First” nationalist agenda targeting immigrant workers. Left unchecked, these forces promise to further fracture labor by dividing native from immigrant workers, and to consolidate a tenuous affinity between working-class anger and the MAGA movement, diverting economic frustration into a far-right populist coalition. This is a time to choose sides: between deeper class unity and solidarity, or shortsighted conciliation with Trumpist power brokers.

I worry about this as well; that reactionary currents in Trump’s America will so overwhelm everything else that otherwise-legitimate political impulses will be co-opted by the right. It’s easy to imagine people wanting to “do something” and finding it convenient to direct their energies into the movements and ideologies they find among the fascist mainstream.