Trump in Scotland this weekend: Protest this billioniare bigot
Text of the Socialist Party Scotland leaflet for this weekend's protests
Donald Trump – the racist, sexist billionaire who currently occupies the White House – is visiting the UK, including Scotland this weekend.
He is not welcome. He will be met with protest on an unprecedented scale.
There is outrage at the inhumane treatment of immigrant children locked in cages in detention centres by the racist Trump administration.
Again and again Trump inflames war and conflict in the Middle East and the threat of nuclear war, he attacks the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people on a regular basis.
We have seen resistance since Trump was elected from the massive women’s marches, the walkouts of school students against gun violence and the airport protest shutdowns opposing the travel ban.
Our fury should be directed not just at the US president as an individual, but at all the reactionary politics of hatred, division, and greed he represents.
Any system which elevates a man like Trump to the position of most powerful individual on the planet is one which is utterly broken. Trumpism is a symptom of the rottenness and bankruptcy of capitalism, both in the US and internationally.
We are calling for all working class and young people to join in mass protests against Trump’s racism and sexism, his prioritising of profit over lives, and the entire capitalist system he and this rotten Tory government hosting him represent.
Trump like the Tories here pushes bigoted ideas to sow division among working class people and take the heat off those really responsible for austerity and poverty: the capitalist class.
We need to show solidarity with those in America fighting back and fight to inflict a mortal blow on the reactionary Tory government.
We need to fight for socialism
Trump got elected by cynically posing as an ‘anti-establishment’ candidate. He was able to win support from a minority of angry, disenfranchised voters, including some from the working class.
The best antidote to Trumpism is not the lesser evilism of corporate politicians like Hillary Clinton or the Democrat establishment. Bernie Sanders’ radical political revolution against the billionaire class including policies like socialised healthcare and raising the minimum wage could have defeated Trump’s divisive rhetoric.
In Britain we have seen support for Corbyn’s radical left policies and also young people in 2014 campaigning for independence seeking an escape route from austerity.
The recent successful mass mobilisation in Ireland to repeal the anti-abortion 8th amendment shows we can organise to defeat reactionary politics.
Capitalism is a system where 8 billionaires have the same amount of wealth as 50% of the planet’s poorest people.
It is incapable of providing even a decent standard of living, secure jobs, affordable, housing or a safe environment for the majority and future generations.
Instead of Trump’s billionaire tax cuts and trade wars, we need to take the wealth off the 1%. A socialist society would be one in which the vast wealth and resources currently concentrated in the hands of the elite are publicly owned and democratically controlled by working class people.
Trump and capitalism can be defeated. We need to build mass movements and a mass party of workers and youth that stands on socialist policies.
If you want to help build a mass movement against Trump and Trumpism, and if you want to organise to fight for socialism – for a society run in the interests of the 99% – join us, and get involved in the fightback today!
Come to the protests
Friday 13th July
Glasgow 5pm George Square
Dundee 5pm City Square
Saturday 14th July
Edinburgh 12 noon Scottish parliament
