Laverne Cox has blasted Democrats for not being “proactive” enough when it comes to opposing president-elect Donald Trump.
After Trump’s first victory in 2016, there were marches and movements, and people vowed to fight. Now the left seems to have just accepted that Trump is in power, with Democrats being “reactive and not proactive,” she said.
“He’s been very clear. Anyone who dissents, he’s going sort of get rid of them, or you know, shut them down, sue them, charge them criminally,” Cox told journalist Kara Swisher during an appearance on Swisher’s podcast, On.
Trump has famously called for jailing his perceived “enemies,” and since winning re-election he has arguably made a point of filling his incoming administration with loyalists who won’t stand in his way of achieving even his most extreme campaign promises.
“The really important thing to understand about fascism is that this is how fascism rises,” she continued. “That everyone capitulates to power where the dehumanization of large swaths of people is normalized.”
Trump and his supporters spent more than $215 million on anti-trans ads during the election, creating a “permission structure” that demonized and scapegoated trans people, Cox said. Attacking immigrants was also a key part of Trump’s electoral strategy.
The result is that dehumanizing trans people and immigrants has become deeply “normalized,” with consequences that extend far beyond those communities, she argued. Even the conversation around female reproductive health focuses on the fetus and not the person carrying it.
“The left has not been proactive enough in terms of creating counter-narratives,” she said. “And I really think that for me it’s about humanizing people. It’s about a rehumanizing process.”
