As some of you may remember, I, along with a few million of my fellow Americans, attended a No Kings rally last weekend. Since then, I’ve seen a few misconceptions about the rallies floating around the interwebs, so I thought that I would address a few of the erroneous assumptions.
Trump is still president.
Yup. It may come as a surprise, but deposing Donald Trump over the weekend was not a goal of No Kings. These were peaceful rallies, not insurrections. The goal is to hold Trump accountable, not overthrow him.
As much as Trump deserves to be impeached or subjected to 25th Amendment removal, it simply isn’t in the cards with Republicans in control of Congress and few, if any, ralliers had any illusions that it was.
We don’t have a king.
This one is a favorite and has even been trotted out by Trump himself. Yes, we realize that America has no kings; we’re just not sure you realize it. Consider that there are at least three social media posts by the White House since Saturday depicting Donald Trump with a crown.
Even if you think this is trolling rather than kidding on the square or hiding his intentions in plain sight, Trump is already ruling by decree without the consent of Congress (including bailing out political cronies with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars), using the military to occupy American cities without the consent of state governments, setting price controls, taking “golden share” interest in private corporations, allowing a masked and secretive police force to abduct people off the street, removing guardrails against corruption and (of course) authoritarianism, unilaterally starting a low-intensity war, and repeatedly stating that he has the “right to do anything I want to do.” That sounds a lot like a king’s behavior, and not a particularly benevolent one.
No Kings was about warning the president that we don’t want a king and won’t stand idly by.
It was just the usual Democrat protesters.
There were some Democrats. There were also many others.
I’m not a Democrat and have never been one. I’ve attended demonstrations only rarely and most of those were Tea Party rallies.
I haven’t seen polling on the participants of No Kings, but I think you’ll find that these events brought out a lot of fresh faces and non-Democrats.
No Kings was funded by the Communist Party.
Wait, I thought the No Kings protesters were all Democrats. Democrats and Communists are two completely different parties, despite what MAGA might think. These two claims undercut each other.
The sole piece of evidence that I have seen of communist influence is a event notice that was posted to the platform formerly known as Twitter that lists CPUSA as a sponsoring organization. The flip side is that that notice was for one event out of many, and the CPUSA was one sponsor out of many. There are reportedly more than 200 groups that make up the coalition that organized the protests.
The CPUSA said that its members “were in the mix,” but made no mention of funding the events.
If the Communist Party is indeed a sponsor, I could point to the fact that the United States has officially partnered with communist nations in the struggle against fascism (and I don’t use that term lightly, see Prof. Greg Jackson’s definition) in the past. World War II, anyone? Politics and the struggle against dictatorships often make strange bedfellows. That seems to be the case here.
Anyone who thinks that the millions of Americans who took part in the protests are being taken in by communist propaganda (or maybe there are 5 million American communists?) is fooling themselves. All the money in the world can’t make people show up if they don’t believe in the cause.
George Soros funded the rallies.
There is an indirect connection between George Soros and No Kings. The Economic Times reports that Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) awarded grants to Indivisible, one of the organizing groups of the demonstrations, but the OSF website states, “We do not pay people to protest or directly train or coordinate protestors.”
Open Secrets shows that donors to the Indivisible Project in 2024 were almost exclusively individual donors.
Again, MAGA is attempting to discredit No Kings by emphasizing the connection to Soros, but the big picture is that Indivisible seems to be largely a grassroots organization of concerned Americans, and Soros is only a small part of the group’s funding. Further, the Fox News expose of Indivisible cites only $3 million given in 2023. According to my math, that was before Trump returned to the White House.
George Soros, 95, has long been a bogeyman for Republicans. Having been born in Hungary in 1930 and survived the Nazi occupation of Europe, Soros has good reason to oppose fascism. As I said earlier, fighting authoritarianism takes a broad coalition, and not everyone in the coalition is going to agree across the board.
The Soros argument reminds me a lot of liberal critiques of the Koch brothers’ support for the Tea Party, another grassroots movement with organizational and financial support from numerous sources.
No Kings is anti-Christian.
I saw one online poster claiming that No Kings was anti-Christian and possibly demonic because Jesus is a king.
The fact is that the No Kings attendees were concerned about wannabe secular kings rather than spiritual ones. A great many of us who attended are Christian. In fact, for many attendees, following Christ’s admonitions to love your neighbors and your enemies and foreigners is a reason to oppose the Trump Administration’s sadistic behavior.
If you look at pictures from the various No Kings rallies, you’ll see no shortage of Bible-inspired messages.
It was a Hate-America rally.
The government has claimed that No Kings was about hating America. In truth, I have seen no indication of anti-American attitudes either in the rally I attended or in online reporting. There were lots of American flags and the criticism was focused on Trump, RFKJR, ICE, and Mike Johnson.
The only way No Kings can be construed as anti-American is if you think Trump is America. That’s an attitude a king might display.
The crowds were overstated and not convincing.
The decentralized nature of the No Kings demonstrations makes counting difficult, and a final count is not yet available. Organizers claim 7 million attendees, but even if the actual count was half that, it would be significant.
At 7 million, the demonstrators would equate to about two percent of the entire US population. That is a politically seismic movement. The III Percent militia group claims that only three percent of colonial Americans fought against the British in the Revolutionary War (although that number is probably low), and political scientist Erica Chenowith has claimed that if 3.5 percent of the population is willing to engage in nonviolent civil resistance, such as mass demonstrations, a dictatorship can be overthrown.
The fact that 1-2 percent of the population was willing to come out on a Saturday and march against Trump should frighten the president and his MAGA enablers. That is especially true since opposition to Trump is likely to increase as the economy slows and the president’s abuses of power worsen.
You’re just a [insert insult here].
Often by this point (or before), my MAGA conversation partners will start calling me names. Resorting to insults is often an admission of defeat by people who don’t have the facts on their side.
To those who can maintain civility, you have my appreciation. Civil discussion is a big part of what’s missing in America. If we can bring it back to small corners of the internet, dinner tables, or political rallies, we will have won a small victory.
One small but important aspect of the No Kings rally that I attended was the peaceful coexistence of No Kings demonstrators and pro-Trump counterprotesters. The two groups existed in the same space without yelling, name-calling, or throwing fists (or bullets). These days, that’s something to celebrate.
Summary
The massive No Kings rallies show a groundswell of opposition to Donald Trump’s reign. Republicans have badly overplayed their hand and face a growing voter backlash. It’s no wonder they want so badly to discredit what is essentially an anti-Trump coalition, but the people who showed up on Saturday are not going away. As Trump continues to abuse his authority in new and frightening ways, their numbers will only grow.
Over the weekend, I spent some time talking with our friend, Chris Karr. Chris asked me to be a guest on his Initiative podcast. I’m sure that I’m not as interesting as he thinks I am, but we had a great conversation. If you’d like to have it delivered to your inbox, visit https://theinitiative.us to subscribe. It should be released in a few days.
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Note: Added the Hate-America section after publication.
Sitting this one out on account of some deadlines today, but thanks again for the interview yesterday, David. Assuming no big surprises this week, your episode should be up by the end of the week.
I still owe some replies to Curtis and Cameron on the prior thread, and I'll be circling back to those later today (after I finish paying bills - Soros has stiffed me yet again).
Seems to me that “no kings” was a preternaturally American concept and founding impetus. So it’s pretty ironic and fairly hilarious that the GOP is on the side against it now. Really shows you how far they’ve fallen in their subjugation to Trump. #sad.
That said, it’s fine to be against something. But at the ballot box, you’d like to be able to vote “for” something. And I’m not sure how coherent an alternative the other side has presented thus far.