March 24, 2026

Thousands of anti-Trump protests are taking place all over the U.S. on March 28 under the banner of “No Kings.” Their message is that people want to live under a “democracy,” not the “dictatorship” Trump is moving towards — which protest organizers compare to the president appointing himself king.

While these actions have a progressive bent, the program is limited to defeating the Republican candidates in the mid-term elections in November. Organizers of No Kings — and 50501, Indivisible, “Hands off,” etc. — are tied to the Democratic Party and seek to “take back Congress.” That would, at best, only slow the drift towards a right-wing dictatorship.

What the global working class needs is for the masses in the belly of the beast to move beyond anti-Trump slogans and become firmly anti-imperialist. It’s not enough to say the war against Iran is somehow “bad for the U.S.”

The administration launched this brutal war for big business and Big Oil and empire. It’s bad for the U.S. working class. It’s terrible for the people of West Asia and especially Iran. The movement to push back Trump’s agenda has to support and defend the Iranian people and their government against this war.

It’s necessary to take a clear position against genocide and all imperialist wars and acts of aggression. It means acting in solidarity with Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela – and Iran and Lebanon — and any other country in Washington’s crosshairs. It also means putting our bodies on the line in the fight against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and for migrant rights.

What democracy?

The other problem with the No Kings movement is the framing of the struggle against Trumpism as one to “defend our democracy.”

In fact, democratic rights for working-class and oppressed people are extremely restricted under the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the vast majority of people by a minority class of multimillionaires and billionaires. Workers have more rights if they have a union, but even the best contracts — which are getting harder and harder to win — only mitigate the terms and conditions of exploitation.

State repression at home and military aggression abroad happen regardless of which capitalist party holds a political majority.

The capitalist profit system has to expand economically in order to survive. This is what drove what 20th century Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin called “imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism.” This is why imperialist countries launch wars — including the current war against Iran — to colonize or re-colonize the rest of the world for the benefit of the wealthy class. The capitalist beast is particularly vicious when its system is in decline, as is the case today.

Marxist-Leninists — which includes Workers World Party —often refer to capitalist rule as “the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” This definition applies regardless of whether the state is a capitalist democracy, a fascist state, a military dictatorship, a state under martial law or is ruled by a monarch — actually or metaphorically. The term “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie” means the bourgeoisie — the capitalist class — is the ruling class. Trump may come off as being irrational, but he remains a representative of the ruling class.

The war against Iran, which a majority of people in the U.S. oppose, is a clear example of how undemocratic bourgeois rule really is.

A fascist dictatorship is the purest form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The danger of fascism is a built-in feature of capitalist rule.

To really guarantee “No Kings” we have to get rid of capitalism and establish what Marxist-Leninists have referred to as “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” That means the majority class — the proletariat, or the working class — runs society for the benefit of all. This is truly “what democracy looks like.”

To end the threat posed by Trump and Trumpism once and for all, working class and oppressed people and their allies need to put an end to capitalism altogether.