Trump Impeached, Fascists React, People Rejoice—Take the Struggle Higher in the New Year!

Updated December 30, 2019, from an article originally appearing December 20, 2019 | revcom.us

Two weeks ago the House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump. This was a major event—and a very good thing! Even with the narrow terms on which the Democrats carried this out, people seized on it with enthusiasm. Thousands poured into the streets. They were both furious and exhilarated at the fact that Trump was finally beginning to be held accountable for some of his towering crimes.

The next step in the process is for the Democrats to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, and for the Senate to then hold a trial of Trump. The Senate is supposed to impartially evaluate the evidence and then vote on whether Trump should be removed from office.

The fascist Republican Party grouped around Trump reacted with fury and arrogance. The Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell openly stated that he would NOT be impartial. McConnell said that he would coordinate the trial with Trump himself—the accused—and that, anyway, since he, McConnell, had already concluded that Trump should NOT be removed, there was no need for further witnesses or other evidence to be added. Whoever heard of such a thing!?! And yet this absurdity is on track to become the “new normal” under the Trump/Pence fascist regime.

Trump himself accused the Democrats of treason, and “making war on democracy.” When hosting a delegation from the Guatemalan government—a government infamous for repression and murder of opponents—Trump went so far as to say that “they knew how to take care of” the kind of opposition he was encountering from congressional Democrats.

The Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi responded by holding back the articles of impeachment until she could be sure of a fair proceeding, and other Democrats are putting forward the demand that Congress be allowed to see new, and possibly more damning, evidence.

A Criminal Is Indicted—and That’s a Good Thing!

It is true and important that the Democratic leadership focused on a crime pertaining in large part to “national security”—that is, the imperialist interests of the U.S. around the world. They explicitly did not take on the much more serious outrages perpetrated by this fascist regime against the masses of people and the planet itself. All this works against what is needed by humanity, here and around the world.

But the articles of impeachment do hit at the very important point that Trump had abused power and run roughshod over the rule of law. This includes the way he obstructed the impeachment process itself by refusing to turn over evidence and allow members of his administration to testify, in defiance of the law and the separation of powers. Had there been no impeachment whatsoever, or had the articles been voted down in the House, the fascists would have been further strengthened.

The fact that this criminal WAS impeached and now goes to trial is something to be welcomed and built on. In particular, the #OUTNOW! Movement—with its uncompromising demand to oust the entire fascist regime and its important insistence on mobilizing millions in the street to carry this through—must be built through January. The furious, and unconstitutional, reaction of the Republicans makes the situation extremely unpredictable. People who want to see this regime out—people who are now in anguish but still paralyzed—must be challenged and summoned into the streets to help determine the shape of a situation that is extremely volatile and in which the political equation could change, in a way that is in the interests of humanity.

A New Situation, Full of Uncertainty

The point is that right now, nobody knows what comes next.

But, again, the masses of people responded in a powerful, even if beginning, way to the impeachment. Thousands came into the streets on the night before the vote, furious about Trump and seizing a chance to act. Many responded to and took up the chant of OUT NOW! and the slogans being put forward by the #OUTNOW! contingents. So, again—this shows real potential that must be seized on and built further.

These sharpening conflicts at the top and the heightened uncertainty they bring make the activities called for by Refuse Fascism and #OUTNOW! for January even more important and make it possible to reach out much, much wider.

In this situation, the following point stands out all the more sharply:

The Democrats, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, etc., are seeking to resolve the crisis with the Trump presidency on the terms of this system, and in the interests of the ruling class of this system, which they represent. We, the masses of people, must go all out, and mobilize ourselves in the millions, to resolve this in our interests, in the interests of humanity, which are fundamentally different from and opposed to those of the ruling class.

This, of course, does not mean that the struggle among the powers that be is irrelevant or unimportant; rather, the way to understand and approach this (and this is a point that must also be repeatedly driven home to people, including through necessary struggle, waged well) is in terms of how it relates to, and what openings it can provide for, “the struggle from below”—for the mobilization of masses of people around the demand that the whole regime must go, because of its fascist nature and actions and what the stakes are for humanity.

All this makes it more important than ever to put forward and struggle for the demand that the whole Trump/Pence regime must go NOW—and that the key to doing this is bringing forward more thousands today, working toward millions, in massive, sustained, nonviolent struggle.