Following the massive No Kings protest held in the US and internationally this past Saturday, the official organizers of the event held an online call Tuesday night, titled “What’s Next After No Kings?” At its height, some 40,000 people watched the event live, with over 26,000 still watching at the conclusion.

This high viewership, along with Saturday’s protest, which drew an estimated 7 million people, expresses mass opposition to the fascistic Trump administration and its ongoing attacks on the working class.

Under conditions where Trump is running roughshod over the Constitution and arrogating to himself absolute power to imprison his political opponents and assassinate alleged “narco terrorists,” speakers on the call proposed no concrete action to remove Trump from office.

The entire purpose of the meeting, which did not allow any public comment, was to block the development of an independent movement of the working class against the capitalist system, the source of inequality and fascism, and channel mass social anger back into the political graveyard of the Democratic Party and electoral politics.

This is under conditions where there is no guarantee the 2026 midterm elections or the 2028 presidential election will even take place. Trump is currently surging federal agents, immigration Gestapo and National Guard elements to major cities without the consent of local politicians. In an interview this week with The Economist, Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s leading January 6 co-conspirators, made clear that Trump is planning to violate the Constitution and remain president for a third term.

“Trump is gonna be president in ’28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” Bannon said.

Repudiating the American Revolution, waged to destroy the “Divine Right of Kings,” Bannon said, “there is a plan,” and that Trump is “an instrument of divine will.”

In the face of coming dictatorship, the Democratic Party-aligned speakers proposed no actions to actually remove Trump from office. The words “impeachment” or “strike” were never uttered.

Speakers at the event included several executives of organizations tied to the Democratic Party. The event was moderated by Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson from Movement for Black Lives (M4BL). Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible; Lisa Gilbert, co-executive director of Public Citizen; and Jiggy Geronimo of “progressive” consulting firm JG Insights, provided the most substantial comments.

In his remarks, Levin noted that Saturday’s protests were supported by nearly 300 “partners,” including the American Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and MoveOn.org. While the AFT and SEIU were named as “partners,” no union representatives were on the call.

Under conditions where the Democratic Party is widely hated for collaborating with Trump’s dictatorship, from attacks on immigrants to support for Trump’s war budgets, Levin was the only person during the event who, however briefly, actually criticized a Democratic politician. Levin noted that there were 86 “No Kings” demonstrations in the state of Pennsylvania, where Senator John Fetterman, previously supported by Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America, was “currently voting with Republicans to end the government shutdown.”

In the course of the 80-minute event, this was the only criticism leveled at the Democratic Party. Speakers spent the rest of the event praising the efforts of the Democrats to “get a win” in the ongoing government shutdown by restoring Affordable Care Act subsidies, which had the effect of minimizing how rapidly the disintegration of democratic rights is proceeding in the US.

Gilbert, of Public Citizen, bluntly stated that the purpose of the event was to “channel the momentum from this weekend” into “winning” the “government shutdown fight.”

She claimed that “Thus far this budget battle leverage moment is being utilized by Democrats effectively to push for negotiations and an eventual deal that returns healthcare to regular Americans.”

Gilbert continued: “We have had numerous votes in the Senate on the House-passed continuing resolution, which is a bill that would open the government without improving our healthcare, and in these votes, so far, we have lost only a few Democrats. So thus far we are doing really well and they are holding the line.”

Gilbert said that in order to inspire the millionaires in Congress to fight for the working class, it was “essential” that “our outside pressure” keep the “Dem caucus together and to provide accountability if they start to waiver if they don’t stay tough…”

In order to keep the Democrats, a party of big business and war no less than the Republicans, “tough,” Gilbert proposed two less than useless “calls to action.”

She said, “First, in the next 24 hours, call your senator’s office and leave a message telling them they should restore healthcare to millions of people and thanking the Democrats for staying strong on the shutdown so far.”

Gilbert then called on participants to organize events in opposition to the “Republican healthcare heist.” These actions included taking a picture in front of a hospital and holding a “rally” or “press event.”

In an interview with USA Today, Gilbert told the newspaper she hoped the protests would inspire people who never considered themselves “activists” to start contacting “members of Congress” and posting on social media “their concerns.”

In other words, leave it all in the hands of the Democrats. As the World Socialist Web Site previously wrote:

It must be stated bluntly that any subordination of this movement to the Democratic Party will prove fatal—absolutely fatal—to the struggle against Trump’s fascistic conspiracies. … the Democrats act not as opponents of the Trump administration, but as its collaborators and enablers.

Far from exposing these collaborators, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson of Movement for Black Lives falsely claimed the millionaire bourgeois politicians were “fighting for us.” Henderson specifically named as examples black Democrats, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock and failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

Since coming into office, both Johnson and Warnock have participated in attacks on immigrants. During the Biden administration, Johnson proposed that the city build a large concentration camp for immigrants on a field containing heavy metals and petroleum products. Upon Trump’s return to the White House in January, Warnock was one of several Democrats who voted in favor of the anti-immigrant Laken Riley Act, characterizing his vote as a “genuine step toward true bipartisan cooperation to secure and strengthen resources at our southern border…”

The Democrats, beholden to the same capitalist interests and system as their “Republican colleagues,” have already proven they are incapable of and unwilling to stop the rise of fascism in the US or internationally. In response to Trump’s failed coup on January 6, Biden and the Democrats called for a “strong Republican party” and bipartisan “unity” with their Republican “colleagues,” even as the Republicans continued to support Trump’s drive to dictatorship.

The fight against fascism, as the Socialist Equality Party explained in its statement to the “No Kings” protests, must be rooted in “the social and political struggles of the working class, based on an internationalist socialist strategy.” The statement continued: “The defense of democracy is impossible without the development of a socialist movement to end capitalism and place the wealth of society under the democratic control of the working class itself.”