Letters From a Reader: Why Getting Involved With the Democrats—Even to “Take Them Over From Within”—Will Wind You Up in the Arms of Fascists

Part 2: The Democrats’ Impeachment Strategy: Whose Interests?

December 4, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Yesterday the impeachment process moved to a new phase. The head of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, gave his report to the House Judiciary Committee. This committee will hold hearings and then vote on whether Trump should face trial in the Senate.

The Democratic leadership only began these hearings after years of opposing any effort to impeach Trump. What changed their minds? Was it the way in which Trump continually incited hatred and violence against people who aren’t white, telling four congresswomen of color who opposed him to “go back where they came from” and saying that Central American refugees were “invading” the U.S.? Was it the way that Trump has torn up rule of law and called for suppression of dissent? Was it his gross misogyny and attacks on the right to abortion and on LGBTQ rights? Was it the concentration camps for immigrants at the border, the “Muslim ban,” and the ripping of children from their parents who were seeking asylum from persecution? Was it the racist massacre in El Paso, and everything that concentrated? Was it the attacks on truth and science and the intensified plunder of the environment? His threats to “totally obliterate” countries, including through use of nuclear weapons?

No. None of this, to the Democrats, was cause for removal. In fact, at the very time that lives were being lost and mutilated and catastrophe was being threatened, these Democrats were vowing to “work with Trump” and kept trying to make deals on this or that reform, only to find themselves played for suckers. And they are STILL doing that, and still telling people that all the most heinous crimes and gravest threats of Trump need to “wait for elections.”

So what did cause the Democrats to begin impeachment? It was the revelation that Trump had tried to withhold military aid from Ukraine to force that government to dig up or invent dirt on Joe Biden, the leading Democratic candidate. This revealed, in the words of Nancy Pelosi, “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”

Whose Interests?

The very first thing that has to be said about the Democrats and their terms for impeachment, is the following from Bob Avakian:

…while, from their bourgeois perspective, their concern is very real in regard to the imperialist “national interests” of the U.S., the “norms” of how this system’s rule has been imposed and maintained, the importance to them of a “peaceful transition” from one administration to another through elections—and the danger posed to this by Trump’s trampling on these “norms”—Pelosi and Company, in focusing this “impeachment inquiry” on this narrow basis, have underlined the fact that they are acting in accordance with their sense of the interests of U.S. capitalist imperialism and its drive to remain the dominant imperialist power in the world, and that they continue to refuse to demand Trump’s ouster on the basis of his many outrageous statements and acts directed against masses of people, not only in the U.S. but internationally…

These Democrats do have big differences with Trump over how best to ensure U.S. domination of the world, and much of that is focused up on how to approach Russia. But are those our interests? Is that what keeps you up at night? Should it?

In fact, their interests are not our interests! Their war crimes in defense of empire range from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Vietnam to Obama-era drone assassinations throughout the world. Like the Trump/Pence fascist regime, these Democrats represent a section of the U.S. ruling class which cannot live without dominating, exploiting, and carrying out murder and mayhem around the world. The sharp differences between the Trump/Pence fascists and the Democrats focus on how best to pacify and control people here while they plunder the world and carry out exploitation within the U.S.

Those are their interests. Our interests fundamentally lie in doing away with their rule altogether to emancipate humanity, even as right now there is an urgent battle to oust this fascist regime and the very direct threats it poses to humanity.

So that is the first thing:  they are banning mention of the most urgent and pressing issues bound up in this fascist regime and they are couching everything that is up for debate in terms of what is best for American–that is, capitalist-imperialist–interests. AND they are trying to get us into that same mind-set.

Now in making the point that these Democrats are also imperialists who commit horrendous war crimes around the world, that is NOT to say that “oh, who cares, they’re all the same.” Yes, on one level, these competing blocs are essentially the same, and the system they represent must be overthrown in order to emancipate humanity and end these horrors—and that is critically important! But at this time the Trump/Pence regime represents an immediate threat of catastrophe for the planet and humanity, and the direct repression of any attempt to change things for the better. This fascist regime represents an acute and immediate danger, now, and we really do have to drive it out the only way it can be driven out at this point, through massive, sustained, nonviolent struggle.

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Next: Part 3: Playing to Save the System, Not Trying to Defeat Fascism