From the War of Position to a War of Maneuver
Our heads are all on a swivel as Herr Trump has taken the first steps toward implementing his MAGA dictatorship! Trump was depicted on the White House website last week wearing a crown unabashedly captioned ‘Long Live the King!’ Trump nation, the MAGA Nation, is traditional American nationalism on steroids.! As I’ve shared in previous posts that, this national identity, driven as it is by the populist right, is white nationalism.
In popular parlance that nation is called the Red Nation. But it can’t be any clearer that we now live in two nations: one supporting a dictatorship, and the other clinging to democracy. That other nation, the Blue Nation, my nation, must now revise its approach to pursuing its long-term aspirations. It is to that subject that I now turn.
I have devoted a lot of time arguing that the challenge for both the mainstream right and the mainstream left is to respond to populism by making concessions to them that recapture a pragmatic middle ground in American politics. But the way that Trump has taken a sledgehammer to the political system and the constitution itself cries out for a revision of my previous thinking.
In earlier posts I summarized António Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, i.e., a project for offering ‘intellectual and moral leadership in civil society.’[2] I argued that the conditions of liberal democracy in the US called for a Gramscian ‘war of position,’ or ‘trench warfare’ in the institutions of the state and civil society. The war of position is a way to fight for incremental change, and sometimes fairly significant reforms, while continuing to make value-based ‘what does it means to be an American’ arguments to support policy initiatives. To do so is to advance a hegemonic project.
But Trump is ignoring legislative and judicial norms and doing whatever he wants to do. Conservative intellectuals, the folks around Project 2025, know that most Americans don’t agree with their agenda. But they hope to create enough chaos to make most Americans yearn for a strong leader to guide the country from the abyss. It’s in this context that I want to offer the opposite Gramscian concept of the ‘war of maneuver’ to characterize the period we have moved into with Trump 2.0.
Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s portrayal of the ‘war of maneuver’ is useful. In the war of maneuver certain groups experience naked domination, because they have little or no redress to protect their interests before the law. For Omi and Winant this describes the condition of people of color in the United States until the passage of the civil rights laws of the 1960s. In my work I’ve shown where people of color had garnered sufficient resources to begin to conduct a war of position in American institutions by the twentieth century.[3]
Nevertheless, Omi and Winant offer a panorama to what life was like in pre-1965 America for people of color. They posit that ...
Slaves who escaped to the North America or Canada or who formed maroon communities in
forests or swamps, Indians who made war against the United States in defense of their peoples
and lands, Chinese and Filipin@s who drew together in Chinatowns and Manilatowns in order
to gain control over their collective existence ...
are all examples of the war of maneuver. They go on to declare that ...
Tremendous cultural resources were nurtured among such communities; enormous labors were
required to survive and to develop elements of an autonomy and opposition under such conditions.[4]
I want us to think about how, despite the fact that the ‘coup’ may have already happened at the federal level, we still have ‘tremendous cultural resources’ in Blue states and even in Blue places in Reds states. At this critical moment we must ‘nurture’ (our) communities and each other. Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s wrote On Tyranny as he witnessed Trump’s first term. His first three exhortations: ‘do not obey in advance,’ defend institutions’ and beware of the one-party state.’[5]
The Republicans are already acting like a one-party state at the federal level, though we’ll have to see how that works out for them over time. But if the Blue Nation heeds Snyder’s first two warnings, we can make it exceedingly hard for the Red Nation to have its way. If institutional players don’t just role over for Trump when he issues his edicts, he may have a hard time realizing his dreams.
Many corporations across the country, fearful of losing federal contracts, have already rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion goals. However, going against the grain, I’m proud to say that many corporations and the state public education system in my home state of Washington have decided ‘not to obey Trump (at least not fully) in advance.’
A front-page article in the Seattle Times recently read “Leading firms, companies in Seattle ditch DEI.”[6] These companies included Amazon, Starbucks, Costco and D&L Gates (the law firm of the father of Bill Gates, Jr., co-founder of Microsoft). The headline titillates readers, but upon a close reading one finds companies side-stepping Trump’s mandates.
Starbucks ‘scrubbed two sections called equality for Black people and LGBTQ+ rights,’ but its V-P for ‘inclusive experience’ said it continues to ‘aim to foster a more inclusive culture.’ Starbucks renamed the ‘Inclusion, Diversity and Belonging’ policies to ‘Belonging at Starbucks.’ However, a company spokesperson said ‘its commitments are unchanged, as are its employee programs and benefits.’
Gates’ daddy’s law firm did purge language from its website pledging that 30% of candidates for leadership jobs and promotions’ be from ‘historically underrepresented communities.’ Some employees complained about that move. But a firm spokesperson said it was happy with its team members and remained committed to building an ‘inclusive and talented team.’
Costco, of course, had already made news by standing firm in the face of a letter from nineteen Red State attorney generals demanding that it terminate its DEI programs. The company simply shrugged those requests off saying that its ‘commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary.’[7] Major corporate players in Washington state appear to be staying the course in response to the Trump’s threats to their business practices.
The news is equally as encouraging in the realm of public education. Chris Reykdal, the superintendent of public instruction for the state of Washington declared that he ‘will not be intimidated’ by Trump’s executive order to eliminate DEI policies in the state’s public schools. There are risks of the loss of federal funds, but Reykdal points out that withdrawing federal funding requires Congressional action.
I attended a panel on civic education sponsored by the League Women Voters in my hometown of Bellingham last Saturday. The superintendent of the nearby Ferndale school district offered a wonderful response to Trump’s DEI demands as they relate to public schools. She said that you can’t undertake a public-school education mission without DEI. To begin with the end, every school should strive to make every child feel they belong. That is what it means to be inclusive. Every student body is diverse. They come from different backgrounds and life experiences. A good teacher knows something about their students and meets them where they are to offer an education that meets that student’s needs. Such an approach is not equal, because every student is not the same. But it is equitable in that it offers each student the opportunity to gain a quality education.[8] My hope is that messaging like that of superintendent Dominguez is penetrating across Washington and other Blue states.
In Blue places in the US we are entering a war of maneuver as Trump tries impose his naked domination outside of the rule of law in many areas of life. In the business world he is attempting to usurp the right of businesses to devise personnel policies and marketing strategies that allow their enterprises to maximize profits. In the education sector he is trying to back inequity and race and class exclusion to levels not seen since the 1960s.
Like the Indigenous people fighting to salvage a way of life US settlers were trying to destroy, or Black and Brown people systematically marginalized or excluded before 1965, we must fight to retain insulation and autonomy from the Trumpian onslaught today. In all those Blue places, remember: “Don’t obey in advance! Defend our institutions!
1] Hoare, Q. & Smith, G.N (Eds.). (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. New York:
International Publishers. 1971, p. 57.
[2] For war of maneuver, see Omi and Winant, pp.142-43. For me on POC and war of position, see Johnson and Frombgen,"Racial contestation and the emergence of populist nationalism in the United States. Social Identities,Vol. 15, No. 5, September 2009, 631-658.
[3] Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States. 3rd edition. New York: Routledge Publishers p. 143.
[4] Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York: Tim Duggan Books (Imprint of Penguin Random House Books, LLC),2017.
[5] Jim Brunner and Alex Halverson,“Leading firms, companies in Seattle ditch DEI.” Seattle Times, February 24, 2025, p. A1.
[6] Jeff Green and Saljel Kishan, “GOP officials urge COSTCO to end DEI policies,” Seattle Times, January 29, 2025, p.A11.
[7] Paraphrasing of comments by Kristi Dominguez, League of Women Voters, Bellingham Washington, February 25, 2025.
