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The Politicians Won’t Stop This War. Only the People Can.

The No Kings movement needs to become a mass anti-war movement.

This Saturday, millions of Americans and people all over the world will gather under the slogan “No Kings.” The previous two No Kings rallies, held last June and October, were the largest single-day protests in US history, drawing between 4 and 6 million people to the streets.

The sheer size of the protests has been heartening and has invigorated the ongoing and often successful resistance to Trump’s policy. Still, I’ll confess I’ve always been of two minds about “No Kings” as a slogan. Meant to evoke the American legacy of resistance to tyranny dating back to the Revolution, No Kings has, at best, felt like a blank-slate slogan that could be filled in with specific objections to Trump’s lawlessness, the brutality of the anti-immigrant crackdown, or the sheer corruption of the White House’s relationship with plutocrats such as Elon Musk. But it has risked being a bit too vague and evasive about the situation the world is currently facing. For one, Donald Trump is not a monarch; he is an aspiring autocrat who holds an elected office. And. like many forms of liberal anti-Trump politics, No Kings has seemed excessively focused on Trump’s personality rather than his policies, with no clear effort to mobilize for an alternative political vision.

This weekend’s No Kings rallies will take place under the shadow of Trump’s most dangerous political adventure, the war against Iran that the US and Israel launched at the end of last month. At least one prominent protester, Bruce Springsteen, who will be performing in St. Paul, Minnesota, realizes that No Kings now has to mean No War. In a video announcing upcoming concerts that will take up the anti-Trump message, Springsteen evoked the 1970 anti-militarist anthem “War.”

No message is more urgent right now than opposition to the Iran War.

While Trump has created many disasters, none is likely to be as far-reaching and globally devastating as the current conflict, which has already turned into a regional war. In addition to costing hundreds of lives, the Iran debacle has disrupted the global economy, raising the price not just of oil but of other essential goods such as fertilizer. So far, the most severe effects of the war are being felt in the Middle East and Asia, but there’s every reason to think that the combination of higher inflation, rising interest rates, rising yields on US high-yield........

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