The Fascist “#OVERTURN” Campaign And The Fight To Establish New Fascist Norms

What Will The “Decent People” Do?

Updated December 21, 2020 | revcom.us

 

Editors’ Note: Since this editorial was originally posted early last week, the electoral victory of Joe Biden was further cemented through the official certification of each state’s electors on December 14 and Biden’s victory was acknowledged for the first time by significant Republicans such as Mitch McConnell and others. However, this has not led to Trump and large sections of his fanatical supporters conceding that he has lost, or even backing off their campaign to #Overturn the election. Rather, Trump has stepped up his overt backing of the fascist mobs that have violently rampaged behind the claim that the election was stolen; signaled his public warmth to Michael Flynn, who has been advocating that the election be done over under conditions of martial law; and overall underscored his command to “fight for Trump.” At this point, two outright lunatic fascist congresspeople have even promised to challenge the formal acceptance of the election results by Congress on January 6. As such, the dynamics—and dangers—described in this piece have not only continued, but in some ways have intensified and grown more acute, as has the necessity of good people to shake out of their stupor and respond.

The last several weeks have witnessed an unprecedented campaign against the truth that Joe Biden won the election… and the truth overall.

So let’s start out with the truth. Which is that Biden won, by over 7 million votes of the people and by 74 votes (306 against 232) in the Electoral College. According to Chris Krebs, who had been head of cybersecurity in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, this election was the “most secure in American history”—a statement, backed by facts, for which he was promptly fired and threatened. According to dozens of court decisions throwing out Republican objections to the voting—including by many Republican judges and even Trump-appointed judges—there was no significant fraud or even honest mistakes in the counting. According to some high-ranking state Republican office-holders in disputed states—secretaries of state in charge of counting the votes, and two governors—Biden won their states.

Biden’s clear-cut victory is one hugely significant truth. To get a sense of just how significant, look around you at what the Trump/Pence regime has been leading for the past several weeks in what Trump himself calls his “overturn” campaign—and what many other people have correctly called out, based on the evidence, as an ongoing attempted coup.

Last week, Trump “consecrated” the array of violent threats, bogus lawsuits, outrageous demagogy, and utter lies that he is deploying to illegally stay in power as the “#OVERTURN” campaign. This campaign signals that there will be no going back to normal—and the “new normal” is not anything that decent people can accept.

The Normalization of Mob Rule

Officials who have stated the simple factual truth that Biden won—from ordinary people who volunteer to count votes to prominent Republican office-holders—have been menaced, fired, threatened with firing, subjected to death threats, had their houses surrounded in the middle of the night by gun-toting chanting mobs, and publicly threatened with death. One Republican office-holder pleaded with Trump to stop stirring up people around the blatant lie that the election was stolen, saying that people are going to get killed; Trump ignored the plea and continued to whip up his mobs.

Think about what it means that today, as we go to press, Electoral College electors in at least one state—Michigan—must enter and exit the meeting under heavy armed security, due to fascist threats. The fascists are fighting to establish a new normal of mob rule and intimidation of all who oppose them.

And the decent people have done nothing.

The Normalization of Anti-Constitutional Mass Disenfranchisement

126 Republican members of the House of Representatives—60% of their total membership—signed on to a bogus suit filed in the Supreme Court to throw out the results of the elections, including minority leader Kevin McCarthy, as well as 18 Republican state attorneys general (who are the highest law enforcement officials in their states).The lawsuit, filed by the fascist-dominated government of the state of Texas, objected to some of the legally established voting rules in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan, claiming that these rules had somehow violated the rights of Texas. This is so groundless that the Supreme Court, now honeycombed with fascists, refused to even hear it.

Think about what it means that these many prominent Republicans are demanding that what are indisputably lawful results of an election be overturned on baseless grounds. The fascists are fighting to establish a new normal of massive disenfranchisement in which the winner is NOT determined by the votes cast, but by what the hard-core fascist bloc of states, acting at the direction of leading fascists, state is in their interests.

And the decent people are doing nothing.

The Further–and Violent—Normalization of Blatant White Supremacy

The Trump overturn campaign has been saturated with the most blatant white supremacy in generations, in the halls of power and in the streets, and this has reached new depths in the past weeks. Their core argument has been that the votes of Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Atlanta—all cities in which there is a very large Black vote—should not be counted. Again, this is not on the basis of any proven fraud whatsoever but rather of the mere suspicion of the possibility of such fraud, which is what the actual case filed by Texas in the Supreme Court argued.

To put it very plainly, the unstated foundation and obvious implication of the argument of these fascists is that “Black votes are not only inherently suspicious but illegitimate and in any close race should be disallowed.” Justice Jill Karofsky on the Wisconsin Supreme Court wrote in a decision around one such Trump effort that “This lawsuit… smacks of racism."

After the pro-Trump rally in Washington, DC, on December 12, 700 Proud Boys rampaged through the streets, terrorizing people; they violently attacked and vandalized Black churches, destroying Black Lives Matter banners in front of the churches, in acts which the minister of one of the churches compared to the cross-burnings of the Ku Klux Klan. And when the Texas lawsuit was turned down, the head of the Texas Republi-fascist party threatened to secede—which evoked the language and ideology of the slave holding side of the U.S. Civil War.

Think about what it means that the police allowed the Proud Boys to rampage, and that no leading Republican—who endlessly and demagogically carry on and wildly exaggerate about vandalism against stores and the removal of reactionary statues—said anything about this. The fascists are fighting to establish a new normal in which openly white-supremacist ideology and actions which prevent, invalidate and throw out Black votes and which attack Black people, political activists, and Black churches are not only okay, but set the terms for all of society.

And the good people are doing nothing.

The Normalization of Conspiracy Theory and Lunatic Epistemology

According to numerous polls, the majority of Republican voters refuse to let go of their belief, in the face of all evidence, that Trump won. Literally insane conspiracy theories—the kind that used to be made fun of as “tin-hat” thinking and that in other countries, when taken seriously, have justified the deaths of millions of people—are believed and spouted by tens of millions of people.

What does it mean when this lunacy gets led and continually reinforced by the White House, Fox News, Republican legislators, the talk radio demagogues, and other fascist power centers, and some of these liars and lunatics are given guest shots on “the regular” media? The fascists are fighting to establish as a new normal epistemology in which “narratives”—in this case the fascist narrative—can “trump” the objective evidence, and grease the way for the worst crimes against humanity.

And the good people are doing nothing.

What Will You Do Now?

Again—it is important that Biden won. As we said in the beginning, look at what these enraged fascists are doing now and think what they might now be doing if Trump had actually won. And if you are taking comfort in the fact that thus far the courts have ruled against the fascists, and thus far the fascist movement headed by Trump has not succeeded in this, think what might have happened had the Biden victory been closer. Think… and then, wake the hell up.

It matters that people voted Trump out—it matters greatly. But the fascists have shown you that they are not going away. They are doubling down and going on the attack for years to come, whether they succeed in their current coup attempt or not (and by the way, the threat is still real). And the Democrats, by their overwhelming silence and by the pitiful peeps of protest that they do make, have shown you that they do not intend to fight them.

Indeed, it is even worse. Biden, along with the New York Times editorial board, are making proposals for bipartisan cooperation. The main problem is not that these proposals have no chance of coming into being—which they almost certainly don’t—and not only that they are promoting deadly illusions about the intent of these fascists—which they are—but that they are promoting the ethos of conciliation with the fascists. In the words of Bob Avakian:

Biden and the Democrats cannot “bring the country together,” as they falsely claim, because there can be no “reconciliation” with these fascists—whose “grievances” are based on fanatical resentment against any limitation on white supremacy, male supremacy, xenophobia (hatred of foreigners), rabid American chauvinism, and the unrestrained plundering of the environment, and are increasingly expressed in literally lunatic terms. There can be no “reconciliation” with this, other than on the terms of these fascists, with all the terrible implications and consequences of that! 

 This new normal—of decent people conciliating with fascists—must also be opposed… thoroughly, uncompromisingly and unceasingly.

The wish to “go back to normal”—a “normal” which at its “best” is a horror for billions of people around the world and tens of millions within the U.S.—is not only indefensible but impossible.

There is no going back.

The simple fact is that if the “decent people” continue to essentially do nothing in the face of this other than get behind Joe Biden’s disastrous plans—if the streets and public square are ceded to the fascists, if all political initiative stays in their hands—then not only won't Biden be able to “bring people together,” not only will his administration be treated as illegitimate by tens of millions, but all of this along with the workings of the capitalist imperialist system itself will strengthen the fascist movement causing great harm—including potentially fueling a return to power.

Which leads to another simple fact: if the decent people do not rouse themselves from their political opium-dream and really ask themselves WHY this fascism has taken such root, WHAT within the structures and dynamics of this society gave rise to it, and HOW can we act to root out this threat… again, this victory will have been squandered. There are answers to this—most importantly in the work of Bob Avakian who has studied this question for decades and given leadership to the movement against it for over 20 years.

The future remains unwritten—and right now, it is acutely in the balance. In the words of the revolutionary rock band The Clash,

“What are we gonna do NOW?”

See the full film, excerpts and Q&A of this film

Proud Boys burn banner torn from Asbury United Methodist Church, December 13, 2020, Washington, D.C. Credit: @KristenClarkeJD

Proud Boys and other white supremacists burn a Black Lives Matter sign from the Asbury United Methodist Church in D.C. while dousing it with lighter fluid to intensify the flames. This public act is intended to terrorize and send a message to Black people. pic.twitter.com/0YNsTDaVqF

— Kristen Clarke (@KristenClarkeJD) December 13, 2020