Donald Trump ended his first term in office in 2021 by supporting an insurrection that attempted to overturn the election results. Four years later, after securing a return to the White House, Donald Trump and his accomplices are waging war against both US democracy and society. This is manifest in their executive usurpation, seizing all the powers of the government and concentrating them in the personal will of the President. It involves the elimination of bases of opposition, not only in the agencies of government but also in civil society, including universities, trade unions, and media. It is revealed in storm trooper violence, as unidentified armed masked men invade communities and workplaces, seizing people with no legal justification. It is seen in government actions that punish opponents and provide billions of dollars of benefits to supporters.
In response, opposition to the MAGA assault on society is growing.1 It is developing in the electoral system, reflected in the rise of New York City’s new democratic socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani and upset victories in special elections across the country. Resistance is growing in the streets as seen in the massive nonviolent direct action to protect immigrant neighborhoods from attacks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and in the seven million who turned out for No Kings Day to protest the administration’s abuses of power. This opposition, if it continues to grow, could undermine MAGA power and conceivably at some point remove Trump and his associates from office.
Still, what about a worst-case scenario where electoral and non-electoral opposition is insufficient to limit MAGA tyranny? Where democratic procedures and the right to vote have been so denied that it is impossible to defeat MAGA at the polls? Where official and vigilante violence are unrestrained by law? Where many remain bamboozled by lies and distraction? Where all dissent has been effectively branded as treason? Where those who don’t go along with the program are subject to harassment, beating, jailing, and death? And where much of the population has been driven by fear into silence and acquiescence? How do we resist the MAGA juggernaut under such conditions?
Tyrannical regimes from Serbia to the Philippines to Brazil and other countries have been brought down by large-scale nonviolent direct action that made society ungovernable. While the US has a rich history of social and labor movements using mass action and local general strikes, it does not have a tradition of using people power for the defense of democracy. However, in other countries where democratic institutions have been so weakened or eliminated that they are unable to halt tyranny, such methods have emerged and been used effectively. They are known by such monikers as nonviolent uprisings, people power, general strikes, political strikes, and, as I will refer to them here, social strikes.
Social strikes express power that inheres in the fundamental dependence of ruling groups on those they rule—a reality emphasized by both Marx and Gandhi. Social strikes cause a problem for the owners and managers of the businesses and institutions that they shut down. They appeal to and mobilize a wide public by embodying its values and interests in opposition to the regime. They demonstrate that the authorities depend on the cooperation and acquiescence of those they rule, and that they are vulnerable to the non-cooperation of the population.
Social Strikes in American History
From the outset of the Trump regime, calls for mass disruptive action started coming from unlikely sources. When asked in an interview what would happen if the Trump administration systematically defied court orders, Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization normally associated with legal action through the courts, replied, “Then we’ve got to take to the streets in a different way. We’ve got to shut down this country.”2 Similarly, senior Democratic representative Jim McGovern said, “We can’t just sit back and let our democracy just fall apart. What we need to think about are things like maybe a national strike across this country.”3 Sara Nelson, head of the Association of Flight Attendants, said that American workers—no matter what they do or what sector they are in — now have very few options but to “join together to organize for a general strike.”4 On the mass calls of anti-MAGA groups, the question of general strikes and other popular action is continually raised.
Calling for general strikes is a staple of the radical toolkit. Indeed, I have called for one several times myself. But why is the idea of such mass actions now voiced so widely? There are three principal reasons:
- Widespread Harm: The Trump administration’s policies have been inflicting broad-based economic suffering already, giving credibility to actions based on mobilizing diverse publics.
- Weakened Institutions: The demolition of key institutions of democracy, constitutionalism, and the rule of law threatens to leave few alternatives to popular uprising.
- Insufficient Opposition: The leadership failure of the Democratic Party to effectively oppose the emerging MAGA tyranny has led to despair over the weak resistance within the institutions of representative government.
These undeniable realities compel people to think in unaccustomed ways. Are there precedents in US history from which they can learn?
As noted, the US has little tradition of using popular “civil resistance” for the defense of democracy. However, the country has seen at least half-a-dozen phases of intense class conflict like those the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg called “periods of mass strike.”5 These have gone far beyond the withdrawal of labor power that conventionally defines a strike to include mass picketing, occupation of workplaces and government buildings, nonviolent direct action, shutdowns of commerce, blocking of traffic, and other disruption of everyday activities. Mass strikes have often been met with severe repression, including violent conflict with company guards, police, state militias, and the US Army.
The US has also seen a handful of actions that fit the classical definition of a “general strike” as a coordinated work stoppage by trade unions in many different sectors. Notably, in 1886, a strike for the eight-hour day evolved into a general strike in Chicago and other locations. Since then, there have been a handful of general strikes in individual cities, for example Seattle in 1919, San Francisco in 1934, and Oakland, California, and Stamford, Connecticut in 1946. All have been sympathetic strikes in support of unions in struggles with their employers.
Such union-called general strikes, however, have been rare in US labor history. American unions are bound by laws specifically designed to prevent them from taking part in strikes about issues outside their own workplace. In most cases their contracts include “no-strike” language that bans them from striking during the contract. Unions that violate these prohibitions are subject to crushing fines and loss of bargaining rights. Their leaders can be—and have been—packed off to jail.
Strikes for specific political purposes, such as affecting legislation or deposing political leaders, are common in other countries. In March 2025 alone, there were general strikes in Belgium, Argentina, Serbia, and South Korea—all directed against government austerity policies or, in the case of South Korea, unconstitutional seizure of government power.
Social Strikes vs. MAGA Tyranny
What if MAGA rule so dismantles the institutions of representative democracy that normal institutional processes are insufficient to overcome tyranny? Around the world, general strikes, “people power” uprisings, and other forms of “social strikes” have overthrown violent, armed dictatorships. What conditions might put social strikes on the agenda in the United States?
Intense Public Dissatisfaction. Growing disaffection of the population might lead to a “great repudiation” by a large majority. As a study a century ago noted, “strike conditions are conditions of mind.”6 Social strikes are unlikely to happen before a large fraction of the population is enraged at the MAGA tyranny, dubious that more moderate forms of action will suffice, and willing to take personal and institutional risks to oppose it.
Increased Organization. Growing self-organization and capacity to act by the movement-based opposition, and forces of social self-defense more broadly, might reach a tipping point. This would require cooperation among national organizations and networks. But more important is local organization, formal or informal, that is able to act and coordinate with others. Such networks need to be able to persist despite pervasive repression.
Escalation Tactics. Actions by the movement-based opposition that win wide popular support and participation could provide “exemplary actions” that visibly oppose the harm the regime is doing and show that people can stand up and resist, thereby laying the groundwork for mass participation in social strikes.
Divisions within the Regime. As Abraham Lincoln (and the Bible) observed, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” A divided regime is less able to engage in a strategy of either consistent repression or manipulative concessions. Similarly, every regime depends on the support of its supporters, whether in the form of campaign contributors, propagandists, or soldiers, police, and other agents of repression.Turning points in civil resistance in the Philippines, Serbia, and many other cases came when police and soldiers opposed a coup or refused to fire on protestors.
Regime Intransigence. The powerful defeat challenges to their power through a combination of repression and concession. A ruling force may appear strong because it never backs down, but in the long-term such pig-headedness is likely to force more and more of society into opposition.
Failure of Other Tactics. Many people, quite reasonably, prefer conventional forms of institutional resistance to ameliorate their conditions rather than risky ventures like social strikes. The failure of less drastic forms of resistance often lays the groundwork for social strikes.
Although such conditions for social strikes do not currently exist in the US, harbingers may point toward their emergence. For example, millions of people have participated in a series of days of action opposing MAGA autocracy and its Gestapo tactics; its decimation of food, housing, and healthcare for millions of Americans; and its destruction of our climate and environment. Polls demonstrate that a majority of the public has increasingly opposed such Trump initiatives.
Laying the Groundwork for Social Strikes
Although social strikes can seem to emerge suddenly and unexpectedly, they are often preceded by less visible organizing efforts and smaller-scale actions. With the Democratic Party currently failing to effectively act as an opposition party, there is an important role for a “non-electoral opposition” that can mobilize those harmed by MAGA, identify common interests, unify their programs and actions, and articulate alternatives. A movement-based opposition has come into play since Trump’s election, exemplified by the participation of millions in protest days of action like Hands Off!, MayDayStrong, and No Kings Day, and the mass civil resistance to ICE raids, the National Guard occupation in Los Angeles, the ICE occupation of Minneapolis, and other abuses across the country. That opposition is part of a developmental process that could, depending on circumstances, culminate in social strikes. “One Million Rising,” launched by the progressive, anti-Trump group Indivisible as “a national effort to train one million people in the strategic logic and practice of non-cooperation,” could be a step in preparing participants in mass protests for social strikes.7
Ongoing social self-defense can increasingly incorporate elements of noncooperation and disruption that evolve toward social strikes and serve as living representations of their potential power. They can combine strikes with non-workplace actions like boycotts, commercial shutdowns, mass picketing, blockades, occupations, and civil disobedience. Actions will constantly need to seek the “sweet spot” between effective disruption of MAGA oppression and alienation of forces that might otherwise be won over.
Successful social strikes generally depend on support from sources of power that go far beyond established social movements. They require—and often acquire—support from sectors like educational, medical, and legal professionals; civil society institutions like universities, hospitals, and religious denominations; and political forces including local and state governments, legislators, judges, jurors, sectors of government agencies and security forces, and segments of political parties. Such forces often join social strikes not out of fondness for social movements, but from a growing understanding that coming together to vanquish an autocracy may be necessary for both their own self-preservation and the preservation of society itself.
Prospects
It is difficult to envision concretely what social strikes would mean in the context of the struggle against Trumpian autocracy. We can presume that growing rage at Trump’s depredations may so manifest itself at some point in some form, but what form will depend on many unknowns: what the regime might do, what the people might do, what institutions might do.
By far the two largest outpourings of popular protest in recent decades in the US were Occupy
Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. Almost no one anticipated either of these movements, and the forms they took were very different from each other and from previous forms of action in the
US or, indeed, elsewhere in the world. In such a context of unpredictability, preconceived plans
and assumptions can not only be wrong but also disorganizing. Any attempt to shape such events needs to start by recognizing their uniqueness.
The detailed timelines of social strikes cannot be known in advance. They are likely to grow out of a gradual and not always visible buildup of harm—and resentment at harm. This is already occurring in Trump’s America. It could lead to a series of escalating struggles, possibly punctuated by defeats or by concessions generating temporary calm. Popular opposition could also diminish as a result of repression, MAGA counter-maneuvers, a sense of futility, or other “unknown unknowns.” A period of apparent quiescence with a rising sense of grievance might lead to a sudden explosion of popular rage and a mass uprising. Whether gradually or rapidly, social strikes will need to develop the necessary strength to reduce MAGA power enough to bring an end to its rule—through elections, collapse of political support, or social disruption.
Resisting the rise of tyranny no doubt requires sacrifice. After all, we are dealing with an aspiring tyrant who already sends armed, masked agents into farms, restaurants, and neighborhoods to brutalize workers and their supporters; endorses the roughing-up and arrest of elected political opponents; and lionizes foreign leaders who shoot down demonstrators in the street. But that sacrifice will not be primarily on behalf of one political party vs. another. It will be a defense of democracy—defense of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is defense of the human rights of all people; of the conditions of our earth and its climate that make our life possible; of the constitutional principle that government must be accountable to law; of global cooperation to provide a secure future for our people and planet; and of our ability to live together in our communities, our country, and our world.
We can hope that social strikes will not be necessary to limit and ultimately end MAGA tyranny. Accomplishing that goal by less drastic forms of social self-defense inside and outside the electoral system would likely require less risk and less pain. But if other means are unavailing, experience around the world indicates that social strikes may provide a way for people facing authoritarian takeover to establish or reestablish democracy.
This piece draws from the report Social Strikes: Can General Strikes, Mass Strikes, and People Power Uprisings Provide a Last Defense Against MAGA Tyranny? published by the Labor Network for Sustainability and ZNetwork.org.
References
1. MAGA refers to “Make America Great Again,” the campaign slogan used by President Donald Trump that has become shorthand for the xenophobic, anti-democratic, and revanchist ideology of the president and his most committed supporters.
2. David Remnick, “The A.C.L.U. v. Trump 2.0,” February 14, 2025, in The New Yorker Radio Hour, produced by The New Yorker and WNYC Studios, radio, 33:50, https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/articles/the-aclu-v-trump-20.
3. Jon Keller, “Rep. McGovern is thinking ‘out of the box’,” MASSter List, February 24, 2025, https://massterlist.com/2025/02/24/rep-mcgovern-is-thinking-out-of-the-box.
4. Bob Hennelly, “Listen: ‘We Have Very Few Options But to Join Together to Organize for a General Strike’,” March 10, 2025, in Stuck Nation Labor Radio Hour, produced by Work-Bites, 53:17, https://www.work-bites.com/view-all/nelson-strike.
5. Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906; repr., Detroit: Marxist Educational Society of Detroit, 1925), https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-strike.
6. The Interchurch World Movement of North America, Report on the Steel Strike of 1919 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1919), 28, https://archive.org/details/reportonsteelstr00inte/page/n3/mode/2up.
7. See https://www.nokings.org/rise.
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