Jacobin magazine, the main media outlet of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is engaged in a deliberate and systematic effort to downplay the threat of fascism and dictatorship posed by the second Trump administration.

Jacobin’s first assessment of the new Trump government was published on January 23 under the headline “On Day One, Trump Wasn’t the Dictator He Promised to Be.” This was three days after Trump’s fascistic rant at his inauguration and Musk’s Hitler salute to the aspiring führer, and the issuing of dozens of executive orders laying out the framework of a presidential dictatorship. False when published, the article has since been rendered ludicrous by the ensuing daily assaults on basic democratic rights and social programs.

The article, by Brown University Professor Alex Gourevitch, begins:

Donald Trump promised to be “a dictator on day one.” Instead, his barrage of executive orders is largely an organized pursuit of his campaign pledges—with a noticeable lack of action on tariffs and immigration raids thus far…

In any event, the first executive orders of Trump’s second administration … amount to a somewhat bolder exercise of presidential power than is customary for an incoming president, but nothing approaching the exercise of dictatorial power…

What is Jacobin talking about? In the three weeks since his inauguration, beginning in the days’ that preceded the Jacobin article, Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to the US Constitution.

This has included executive orders, citing a non-existent invasion by immigrants, to assert absolute and unilateral power as commander-in-chief to carry out mass deportations of migrants. Trump has claimed emergency powers to mobilize the military for domestic policing, not just at the US/Mexico border but anywhere in the country.

Trump has also asserted his right to withhold funding appropriated by Congress for public health, education and vital social programs on which tens of millions depend to live. He has dispatched the world’s richest man, the fascist Elon Musk, to seize control of the US Treasury payments system and shut down entire federal departments, such as USAID and Education, firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

But, according to Jacobin, this is “nothing approaching the exercise of dictatorial power.” It’s just business as usual.

The article goes on to state:

The seeming exception is the order abolishing birthright citizenship, which sounds straightforwardly unconstitutional and seems likely to be struck down by the courts. In that case, the measure of whether or not it is an example of dictatorial power comes down to whether he is willing to directly confront the courts. There’s little chance of that [emphasis added]…

It is striking, however, that he has not imposed any specific tariffs yet. All the explanatory noise coming from Trump confidants is that they are likely to be targeted or even graduated, to avoid dramatic one-off price changes…

Immigration is the other headline issue on which Trump proceeded with more caution than one might have predicted. It looks like he is setting the groundwork for significant action (i.e., lifting restrictions on immigration enforcement in schools, hospitals and churches), but he has retreated from the promised day-one mass deportations and raids…

The entire content of the article is aimed at sowing complacency. Trump will not defy the courts, and the courts will likely rule against him. The trade war measures are just bluffs that will have limited impact. The mass deportations, which have already begun and are provoking growing outrage, are not really going to happen.

One will search in vain in this article for the word “fascism,” or any mention of the war against Russia in Ukraine, the bipartisan military buildup against China and the US/Israeli genocide in Gaza. There is no reference to imperialism or militarism, no reference to the working class and the class struggle, and virtually no reference to the extreme growth of social inequality. Perhaps most damning is the absence of any mention of Trump’s attempted coup of January 6, 2021 and the Democrats’ cover-up of the scale and implications of the first attempt led by Trump to establish a dictatorship.

This is what the World Socialist Web Site published on the morning of January 20, in advance of Trump’s inauguration, in a statement titled “American degradation: Trump returns to the White House:”

Nothing marks so clearly the irredeemable collapse of American democracy as the return of Donald Trump to the White House, four years after attempting to overthrow the last election by force and install himself as president-dictator despite his overwhelming defeat at the polls. Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States, not by means of a coup d’état, as he sought to carry out on January 6, 2021, but thanks to his support in the financial oligarchy that rules America, along with the prostration and bankruptcy of his nominal opponents in the Democratic Party.

The downplaying of the fascistic character of the Trump administration is inextricably connected to Jacobin/DSA’s role as a faction of the Democratic Party.

On January 27, Jacobin published an interview with Faiz Shakir, the campaign chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 election campaign, headlined “Faiz Shakir Wants to Bring Workers Back to the Democrats.” This was an advertisement for Shakir, who was running for the post of chair of the Democratic National Committee. The Democratic leadership ended up electing Ken Martin, a more right-wing and establishment functionary who chaired the Minnesota State Democratic Party.

The line advanced in the interview was that it is possible to counter Trump by transforming the Democratic Party into a party of the working class. While acknowledging that we are living in an “oligarchic age in which the powerful ruling elite run this country,” Shakir promoted the corporatist trade unions, including the Teamsters, headed by pro-Trump Sean O’Brien, and declared, “We have to be a people’s party.”

This was followed three days later by yet another commentary arguing that Trump’s government did not signify the collapse of American democracy and there was little real danger of dictatorship. Headlined “Trump’s Weakness Is the Left’s Opportunity,” the article cited the court’s temporary blocking of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memo halting all federal grants and loans to state, local and non-governmental agencies. This supposedly proved that “Trump’s word is not law, and that he is vulnerable to policy backlashes just as every president has been.”

Claiming that “guardrails” against presidential diktat remain in place, the author wrote that Trump’s “defeat here shows what building a successful opposition will look like.” It continued: “It will mean rallying around politically popular programs like Medicaid and using them to push a broader argument that the welfare state makes the country a better place to live.”

This ignored the fact that while the deadline for halting the payments had been temporarily suspended, the executive orders that mandated the impoundment of funds authorized by Congress remained in place. Moreover, it has since emerged that the Trump administration has largely defied court orders requiring that, at least for now, bans on federal grants authorized by Congress be lifted.

The author of the article, a Rutgers University academic, absurdly advised that the “Left” adopt the playbook of the Republican-right Tea Party and pack meetings with people “ready to scream at their representative over what they thought were threats to their health care.”

Jacobin on January 6: “No insurrection”

There is nothing new in the efforts of Jacobin and the DSA to sow complacency and politically disarm the working class. This was their response to Trump’s attempted coup of January 6, 2021.

At 5:52 p.m. on January 6, after Trump’s fascist foot soldiers had rampaged for hours through the Capitol without any serious opposition from the police or the military, coming within seconds of seizing lawmakers or Vice President Mike Pence as hostages to halt the certification of Biden’s election victory, Jacobin founder and then-editor Bhaskar Sunkara tweeted: “I’ve seen the stability of US republican institutions in the face of a right-wing mob and a party whose leader is committed to their delegitimation so far.”

On January 26, 2021, Jacobin published an article (“The Meaning of January 6, 2021”) that stated:

The Capitol riot … was no insurrection…

Most of the crowd was not armed … No concerted effort had been made to coordinate a riotous demonstration against a symbol of state power with actual insurrectionary intent among the military, sections of the media, or many other spheres where power is concentrated and perpetuated.

Further on, Jacobin wrote that in “this insurrection that wasn’t … No plan animated Trump’s supporters other than to slap down, momentarily, his successor and nemesis.”

These statements were obviously false when they were written. The January 6, 2021, coup attempt was the product of a months-long conspiracy involving top Republican leaders, sections of the corporate media, military and intelligence officials, far-right Supreme Court justices and fascist paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. The entire political establishment was aware of what was being prepared.

Days after the insurrection, the head of the D.C. National Guard revealed he had been blocked from deploying troops to protect Congress by Trump military appointees. Trump had fired his previous defense secretary, Mark Esper, just days after his election loss. Meanwhile, the FBI was coordinating with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, and Trump openly incited violence, calling the election “rigged” and urging the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was directly implicated. On January 5, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell asked him to halt the certification of the election based on fake elector slates submitted by Republicans. Alito sat on the request throughout January 6, only denying it after the coup had failed.

For Jacobin and Sunkara, however, the main conclusion to be drawn from the January 6 coup was that “republican institutions” were “stable.”

The WSWS, in contrast, examined the processes leading up to the coup and the significance of January 6 itself. On June 1, 2020, after Trump deployed military police to violently clear protesters from Lafayette Square and threatened martial law, the WSWS warned: “A turning point in American history has been reached.”

In the lead-up to January 6, 2021, Trump openly incited his supporters, tweeting on December 19: “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there it will be wild!” The WSWS repeatedly warned that the Democratic Party was fostering complacency.

On the morning of January 6, it described the congressional vote to certify Biden’s victory as taking place under an “active and ongoing effort” by Trump to stage a coup.

The day after the attack, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North declared: “Not only can a fascist coup happen here. It has happened here, on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.” He warned that, even though the initial coup attempt failed, it would happen again.

Jacobin and the Democratic Party

It is useful to ask the question: Who benefits from the grotesque complacency promoted by Jacobin and the DSA?

The answer is: The Democratic Party and the ruling class it represents. The Democrats, exuding a combination of cowardice and complicity, are doing nothing to oppose the Trump administration. They are petrified at the prospect of a growth of mass popular opposition to the attacks on democratic rights and social conditions.

In politically chloroforming workers and young people, the DSA, a faction of the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy, gives aid and comfort to Trump, the Republicans, their Democratic “opponents,” and the financial oligarchy and military-intelligence apparatus both parties represent.

It provides a justification for the DSA’s hero Bernie Sanders, along with the rest of the Democrats, to sit through Trump’s coronation without a peep of protest and then offer to collaborate with the new administration.

As the WSWS wrote in a January 28, 2021 Perspective statement:

The Democrats’ abject cowardice and complicity serve to dull the consciousness of the masses of people, burnish the image of Trump and the Republicans and spread the fatal illusion that all is well. All of those who seek to minimize the fascist assault on the Capitol, incited and supported by the US commander in chief, are guilty of politically disarming the working class and strengthening the neo-fascist right.

The same applies with redoubled force to Jacobin and the DSA under conditions of Trump’s return to power and the Democrats’ capitulation to his fascist rampage.