#DesdeAbajo in english: There is a huge political vacuum in the United States right now

Rodolfo Montes de Oca

Special Issue in English of #DesdeAbajo about the #ElectionDay in #USA.  In this number Chuck Morse founded the Institute for Anarchist Studies in 1996 and taught at the Institute for Social Ecology. Morse translated the classic biography of the revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti by Abel Paz entitled Durruti in the Spanish Revolution (AK Press).  In 2010, he completed a translation of Juan Suriano’s Paradoxes of Utopia: Anarchist Culture and Politics in Buenos Aires, 1890–1910 (AK Press). He lives in Oakland, CA.

How do you see these elections in the USA ?, Is there any parallelism between these elections and other electoral processes in the past?

We are living through a period of extreme social polarization in the United States and the major political parties are unable to respond to this in a meaningful way. As a result, most Americans regard them with contempt. Although this is not new per se, the degree of contempt for politicians is new. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for anarchists.

What is your opinion on the Obama goverment? ... Uruguayan writer Carlos Maggi said that Barack Obama was a "quiet revolution"... What do you think about it?

Generally speaking, Obama has been more competent and more intelligent than his predecessors and the election of an African American to the presidency is a historic defeat for American white supremacy. However, Obama's foreign policy has been overwhelmingly continuous with that of his Republican predecessors and his domestic policy only slightly different. There has been no revolution.

How do you see the policy on the immigration of both candidates? You dare to affirm as I do the magazine Letras Libres that the Republican candidate is an "American fascist."

Trump is not a fascist in a classical sense, but he is deeply racist and xenophobic and his campaign has mobilized white racists throughout the country. It would probably be impossible to implement his immigration policy, as he articulated it during the campaign, but even partial implementation would be pure terror. Clinton’s immigration policy should be largely continuous with that of the Obama administration.

In Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro accused Colombian immigrants of being the culprits of the economic crisis, while in the US, the candidate Donald Trump blames Mexican immigrants ... Is it the same policy?

It’s difficult to say. The two contexts are very different.

Why anarchism fails to connect with these discontented majorities? ... Regardless of the winner, what should be the attitude of the anarchists to the new government?

There is a huge political vacuum in the United States right now, and an enormous amount of contempt for politicians and political parties. Anarchists should use this as a basis upon which to talk about alternatives, but we will need to overcome our deep counterculturalism and try to find a way to make our vision as programmatically concrete as possible.