{"id":36957,"date":"2025-10-17T13:37:58","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=36957"},"modified":"2025-10-17T13:37:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:37:58","slug":"americas-no-kings-quandary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=36957","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s No Kings quandary"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This article is an on-site version of our Swamp Notes newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here<\/a> to get the newsletter delivered every Monday and Friday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here<\/a>, or explore<\/a> all FT newsletters<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I have little doubt that attendance at the \u201cNo Kings\u201d anti-Trump protests taking place on Saturday will exceed the previous turnout. The first one, on June 14, which was Donald Trump\u2019s 79th birthday and the day when he staged his enervating military parade, drew an estimated 5mn protesters. Organisers of the second are hoping to double that tally. The greater the volume of Americans taking to the streets, the better their prospects of instilling some hesitancy in Trump\u2019s mind. This may sound like thin gruel amid his remarkable assault on America\u2019s constitutional order. But Trump is obsessed with crowd sizes; a sea of humanity might make him think twice. Given the limits to what marches can achieve, this is a perfectly reasonable theory of the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The originator of the \u201cno kings\u201d slogan was the 50501 group, a progressive outfit that stands for \u201c50 protests, 50 states, one movement\u201d. In practice they expect marches in 2,500 towns and cities. That is not nothing. I am also struck by how many non-protesting types are getting behind this rising spirit of protest (\u201cgroundswell\u201d, alas, would be too strong a word). Take David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, who was originally hired as a conservative voice on that paper\u2019s liberal-leaning op-ed pages. In an essay for The Atlantic entitled \u201cAmerica needs a mass movement \u2014 now<\/a>\u201d, Brooks approvingly cites Saul Alinsky, the 1960s Chicago radical and arch theorist of civil resistance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With his five rules of protest, Alinsky laid out the road map for the anti-Trump resistance: \u201cPick the target, freeze it, personalise it, and polarise it. Another (the fifth) was: Ridicule is man\u2019s most potent weapon.\u201d But Brooks, like me, is sceptical that the No Kings protest will on its own shift the needle. \u201cConventional politicians don\u2019t have the vision or power to reverse a historical tide,\u201d he writes. \u201cChuck Schumer is not going to save us\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009large anti-Trump rallies attended exclusively by NPR listeners in blue cities do not impress rural voters.\u201d <\/p>\n

To wit, the sponsors of No Kings are almost exclusively progressive \u2014 teachers unions, human rights groups, pro-choice advocates and so on. That is all good and well. But it would be considerably more potent were they to add chambers of commerce, veterans associations, entrepreneurs and religious leaders to their ranks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The No Kings rallies face two additional hurdles. The first, ironically, is that they lack a king. Movements need leadership. America\u2019s most successful civil resistance campaign was led by a king, Martin Luther King. He always had specific goals in mind. At the famous 1965 showdown on Selma\u2019s Edmund Pettis bridge, King\u2019s objective was to provoke the town\u2019s good \u2018ol boy police into meting out savagery to peaceful protesters on live TV. The ensuring national outrage would pressure President Lyndon Johnson to pass the Voting Rights Act. King achieved his goal, which was specific, easily graspable and practical. In addition to its loose and decentralised character, \u201cNo Kings\u201d lacks an equivalent rationale. Its only clear deliverable is to mess with Trump\u2019s head via sheer scale of numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But tomorrow\u2019s marchers will not be wasting their time. Republicans are clearly worried about the potential optics of Saturday\u2019s protests. Mike Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives, this week said: \u201cWe call it the Hate America rally\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009I bet you\u2019ll see Hamas supporters, I bet you\u2019ll see Antifa types. I bet you\u2019ll see Marxists on full display \u2014 people who don\u2019t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic.\u201d <\/p>\n

Indeed, Johnson\u2019s \u201cHate America\u201d phrase has caught on. We should be careful what we wish for. But in the spirit of MLK a heavy-handed police response to peaceful demonstrators would be helpful to the No Kings cause. The point about kings, as Stephen Miller, Trump\u2019s de facto prime minister, keeps reminding us, is that they do what they like. Miller has mused about Trump seizing \u201cplenary authority\u201d. Another word for that is tyranny. Most Americans have not yet grasped what is at stake. I wonder what it would take for them to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I am turning this week to my esteemed colleague Brooke Masters, the FT\u2019s US managing editor. Brooke, you\u2019re based in New York and thus largely unencumbered by Washington DC\u2019s restrictive political lens. How much of the \u201cNo Kings\u201d message is breaking through to the general public in your view? Am I too sceptical of its prospects?<\/p>\n

Recommended reading\u00a0<\/h2>\n