When You Win, Take The Win

And push for more.

Earlier this week, multiple news outlets reported that murderous Nazi asshat Greg Bovino had been relieved of his position as Border Patrol’s Commander of Operation at Large. He was demoted to his former job overseeing customs operations in El Centro, California.

The White House denied that Bovino was losing his job, but was hazy on what exactly he’d be doing. Everyone seems to agree, though, that Bovino is leaving Minneapolis, where his reckless, bloodthirsty leadership led two federal agents to murder residents on camera in cold blood, after which Bovino shamelessly smeared the victims and encouraged his underlings to continue their spree of violence, death and terror.

Before Bovino’s departure, Trump administration officials doubled down and doubled down again on the claim that federal agents could do absolutely anything to the residents of Minneapolis without consequences. Now they’re backpedaling—both in their rhetoric, and by removing Bovino, thereby suggesting that the murders under his watch were in fact both bad and his fault.

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This looks like a win. But some commenters on social media and elsewhere haven’t been so sure. Trump’s climb down, they argue is not sincere capitulation. Rather, he’s making conciliatory noises in order to diffuse backlash—especially Republican backlash. Once the situation is more stable and the GOP has a fig leaf to cover their repulsive Nazi genitals, they will return to the business of racism and murder because they are Nazis. From this perspective, Bovino’s departure is not a win, but the opposite. When media reports the de-Bovinoing of Minneapolis as capitulation by Trump, it gives him cover and undermines resistance.

I understand why people are wary of Trump’s motives and actions. But I think framing every Trump defeat as a victory for Trump is bad analytically and bad tactically. Assuming the enemy is three steps ahead of you even when they’re scrambling is a recipe for despair. More, it makes it impossible to build on victories or to honestly assess which strategies work and which don’t.

In this case, Minneapolis’ strategies worked. It’s worth counting the ways.

Minneapolis showed how to beat Trump

When ICE came to their city, the people of Minneapolis (citizens and non citizens, white and non-white) organized en masse to protect their immigrant and POC neighbors. They created mutual aid networks to provide food, health care, and other services to non white people so they would not have to go onto the street and face ICE patrols. They organized a peaceful, powerful general strike in the city as an act of protest. They set up patrols to follow, observe, record, and often righteously insult ICE agents as they performed their gestapo function.

The sweeping peaceful protests showed the nation incontrovertibly that ICE was not welcome in the city, and that ICE, not Minneapolis residents, was the source of the city’s chaos. In addition, ICE murders and lawlessness have been extensively documented and shared on media. When federal agents committed murders, large numbers of people were there to record it and witness it.

As a result, the administration’s go to tactic of simply lying and demanding media and partisans go along utterly failed. A poll after the murder of Alex Pretti this week showed that Trump’s approval on immigration had hit record lows, with 58% saying that ICE had gone too far and only 38% expressing approval of the agency—a whopping 20 point deficit on what was one of Trump’s strongest issues in 2024. Another poll showed that a majority of Americans now support abolishing ICE altogether..

More, key Trump constituencies broke with the administration. Trump’s minions claimed Pretti deserved death because he was legally carrying a gun which he never brandished; this was a bridge too far for the NRA, who called the demonization of Pretti and his gun “dangerous and wrong.” A promising Minneapolis GOP governor candidate also condemned the Trump administration and actually left the Republican party, declaring, “I cannot support the … stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”

As the extent of the backlash became apparent, Trump-friendly politicians began oozing towards the exits. Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, a reliably brutal and immoral fascist Trump ally, said that Trump needed to “recalibrate” ICE activity. Fascist Fox News propagandist Laura Ingraham and Texas far right MAGA representative Chip Roy claimed that they’d never supported DHS in the first place. Centrist New York Democrat and all around quisling motherfucker Tom Suozzi scribbled a panicked apology for his vote last week to fund ICE, claiming he didn’t know what he was doing. Every Democratic Senator except for asshole traitor John Fetterman has said that they will not vote for the current ICE funding bill.

In short, the entire political spectrum, from the far MAGA right to spineless centrist Dems have shifted against ICE. They have done so because the public now hates ICE. And the public has shifted ICE because Minneapolis organizers shifted them. The cost was very high, and is, horrifically, ongoing. But resistance worked. The right is terrified; the Democrats have developed spines. That’s a win.

One win is never going to be the war

Many people do not trust the win, though. Trump, after all, has not repudiated the goal of mass deportation. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has not been removed—and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy even argued that removing her, which many of his colleagues are calling for, wouldn’t matter since it’s really ghoulish racist special advisor to the president Stephen Miller who is spearheading the evil ethnic cleansing policy. Republicans in Congress are so far uniformly opposed to abolishing ICE, and since they hold majorities in both houses as well as the presidential veto, the growing number of Democrats who want to get rid of the agency have little leverage.

Given all that, the removal of Bovino and the dispatching of border czar (and incredibly corrupt dipshit) Tom Homan to Minneapolis to make nice seem like transparent efforts to avoid real change. Trump isn’t surrendering; he is at best beating a strategic retreat so that he can return to fascist murder and ethnic cleansing as soon as possible.

The thing is, the fight against authoritarianism is never going to be a one and done endeavor. The US fought a civil war in which some 700,000 died in order to emancipate 4 million enslaved people. That was a victory. But it didn’t end fascism in the US. Neither did the complete mobilization during World War II to fight the Nazis. Neither did the Civil Rights Movement. Neither did the election of a Black president.

If we only count total victory as victory, then there are never going to be any victories, because, as scholar Nicholas Mitchell writes, “Bigotry does not give up easily.” Fascism has deep roots in the US, and fascists are committed opponents whose devotion to white supremacy is tenacious. “History tells us that bigotry is an intergenerational problem that responds to external opposition and defeat by evolving, and it exists in a constant state of reflection and revision to achieve its goals,” Mitchell argues. If the bigots in the Trump administration (very much including Trump) can’t win through escalating fascist terror, they’ll try to de-escalate and see if that gets them more traction to continue with the concentration camps and totalitarianism.

To beat the fascists, you have to beat them over and over. But that’s all the more reason to recognize when you have beaten them, so you can replicate and build on those wins.

It’s also a reason to recognize when fascists have beaten you and where and how you’ve failed. Biden’s refusal to crush MAGA after the 2020 election was one of the worst strategic failures in the fight against fascism since Neville Chamberlain. People don’t want to acknowledge that Trump has experienced a setback in part because they worry that if Trump’s opponents (especially elected Democrats) believe that Trump is defeated, they’ll stop fighting and try to return to their normal default of trying to find common ground with the GOP while kicking the left.

The people in Minneapolis, though, do not seem inclined to stop fighting. Nor do Democrats, who have, again, been showing more gumption than at any point in Trump’s second term. The increased willingness to fight is directly tied to the perception that Trump’s opponents are winning and that Trump’s coalition is in disarray. If you could somehow convince everyone in the nation that Trump was in fact as powerful as ever and on his way to another stunning victory, you wouldn’t have defeated Trump. You’d have handed the fascists a massive propaganda victory and kneecapped resistance.

It’s important to remind people that fascists are losers

Part of the appeal of fascism is that it’s an empowerment fantasy. Fascists claim they are tough and coordinated and cool and all powerful. They insist that everyone else is weak and trembles before them. This sways many people (like, say Jeff Bezos, or all those university presidents) whose whole lives are based on sucking up to power and pissing on the powerless. A lot of people want to be bullies. Failing that, they at least want to be on the bully’s side.

When fascists lose, though, all those would be bullies start to wonder if they didn’t pick the wrong orange shit-donkey. Small victories are how you create the environment for bigger victories—for election losses, court losses, coalition fractures, elite abandonment.

Fascists don’t generally just lie down and die when you gain ground, which means that victories can be a risk. Fascists may retreat, regroup, figure out new methods, become stronger. That’s all bad. But it’s also true that if you never win, you lose. Trump right now looks weaker than at any point in his second term. That’s reason to fight harder. But it helps no one to pretend that he’s invulnerable. He is not, and small wins show that bigger wins are possible.