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In the era of President Donald J. Trump, a strange warped reality has enveloped us into a world of terrifying executive orders, fictive events touted as fact and a flow of scandals that just dont seem to stop. The first few weeks of the administration have been both exhausting and horrifying for all of us who are subject to U.S. governmentprocesses, like the court system, being challenged by an administration simply in favor of legitimizing its own power and voice. The processes that sanctify and solidify the U.S. secular, liberal hegemony are being penetrated by an alt-right. The alt-right consolidation of power is not a visible movement that people can pinpoint on the streets. While its no longer in the form of a KKK rally, the alt-right has consolidated its power through what seems convincingly similar to a passive revolution.

In Neo-Gramscian terms, Cihan Ziya Tugal, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, classifies the passive revolution as an incorporation of revolutionary movements (the alt-right) in existing systems (U.S. liberal democracy). This transformation mainly consisted of bourgeois empowerment without popular participation and economic loss of privilege for the aristocracy without its total extinction." A passive revolution is distinct because in this case, the conservative right from the Tea Party to the pro-life movement have expanded their networks in civil society. The proliferation of organizations and social networks that regulate everyday life, or civil society, has generated the means for a formidable and politically organized base. Trumps process of delegitimization of the liberal order made up of institutions, to which people consent, exercises a reinforcement of his own domination. If we consider civil society as an arena of organizational networks that can be mobilized by political society and ultimately the state, the president's close ties with alt-right organizers, like Bannon, engenders the links between civil society and the state. His rise to power elicits an unlinking of liberal forces and the state and relinks the state with the alt-right political movement, is in line with the traits of a passive revolution. Trump's presidency has affirmed the conservative right as a whole, particularly in its efforts for generating and supporting organizations that regulate American's relationships with the economy, society and the state, all in-line with conservative thought. What this entails is a difficult environment for access to abortions and contraceptives, and the expansion of undocumented peoples rights, among other civil liberties.

The passive revolution is not yet complete though we see the process of it unfolding before our eyes. The left must not only learn how to better read the signals and headlines of the minutebut read it in unison. With every "so-called judge" comment or executive order that circumvents Congress follows the political impetus for establishing an alt-right hegemony. In interpreting Trumps rise to power as a state that is day by day becoming more entrenched in the alt-right power bloc, those who oppose must find the common ground to fight its messaging. The mass protests in airports and on the streets becomeincreasingly necessary. Shows like "Saturday Night Live" (SNL) have become an increasingly important stage that not only undermines the administrations authority through skits and humorbut on a certain level displays its horror. "SNL" has been able to cut through and represent the absurdity of the administration in a way that the mainstream media has failed in communicating to the public. In our increasingly dystopian reality, the inverse result has manifested in comedians providing a more apt critique of current politics than the "so called" critics in the newsroom.

The "so called" prefix that renders the institution or position in question as fake requires the overwhelming response provoked, whichcalls into question the "so-called" presidents authority. I am not unable to admit that the alt-right is indeed a well-organized political movement with clear messaging, unity and social activity in its base. What they are able to do that is so extremely fundamental for the left to appropriate is the movements convincing promise to offer those living in precarity with a vision for a better future. The movement is not made up of one class of people, but Trump was able to mobilize the movement to its current height of influence by outlining a class struggle and offering the impoverished what the left failed to deliver to people in 2008. On the left, we must find a way to focus on an uplifting class message, one that can unify and offer an alternative to the fascism served daily. Perhaps this is in the form of organizing to reinvigorate the labor movement in solidarity with a myriad of race, sexuality and documented status issues, or perhaps it requires something new. Whatever this possibility entails, it is clear that it needs to happen faster than the alt-rights not-so-passive passive revolution.

Meryem Uzumcu is a School of Arts and Sciences senior majoring in planning and public policy, Middle Eastern studies and womens and gender studies. Her column, Fahrenheit 250, runs on alternate Tuesdays.

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UZUMCU: Alt-right's passive revolution is upon us - RU Daily Targum