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The ‘Fight Oligarchy’ campaign is channeling anger at Donald Trump’s administration, but to mount any real resistance it must break with the Democrats
By Thomas Foster
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Tuesday 25 March 2025
Issue 2948
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are heading up the campaign
Tens of thousands of activists in the United States have been joining “Fight Oligarchy” rallies organised by Democrat politicians Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
Sanders stated that the aim of the rallies is to create resistance to president Donald Trump. The rallies are drawing in huge crowds, with tens of thousands attending each one, packing out arenas.
In Denver, 34,000 people came out—the largest rally that Sanders has ever hosted. The mass events are happening just as some Democrats face pressure from constituents demanding stronger opposition to Trump.
Sanders told one rally last week, “We will not allow you (Trump) to move this country into an oligarchy.”
Ocasio-Cortez said, “We’re going to throw these bums out and fight for the nation we deserve.
“This isn’t just about Republicans, either. We need a Democratic party that fights harder for us, too,” she said, drawing some of the loudest applause of the event.
Ocasio-Cortez called on people to help elect candidates “with the courage to brawl for the working class”. Sanders added, “You know who the biggest criminals are in this country? They are the CEOs of major corporations who are robbing us every single day.”
The rallies are attracting people who feel disillusioned with the Democrats’ lack of opposition to Trump. United Auto Workers union president Shawn Fain spoke at one of the rally wearing a shirt that read “Eat the rich”. He told the crowd that “billionaires don’t have a right to exist.”
Other speakers hit out at the bosses and the rich, offering a strong direction for class anger. But seemingly absent of the rallies was discussion about Palestine and US politicians complicity in the genocide.
The tagline of the events has been, “Where We Go From Here”. But if anything is certain, where the left must go is not to the Democrats.
The capitalist party acts as a shock absorber for any radicalism, turning any chance of transformative change into mild-mannered reforms.
Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez lined up behind Joe Biden and stayed largely silent on Israel’s war even as a mass movement raged. That hampered the left from putting forward an alternative to both the Democrats and the Republicans.