Do any of the bourgeois politicians, of either the Democratic or Republican Party, represent anything good?

No. They all represent something very bad: the system of capitalism-imperialism that is based on monstrous, literally murderous exploitation and oppression of masses of people, not just in this country but all over the world.

Are all these politicians—and both of these political parties—“the same”?

No, again. They have real differences over how this system should be governed, and enforced, and how this society should be held together under the rule of this system.

Do these differences actually matter for those who are exploited and oppressed under this system, for all those who aspire to a more just world?

It depends. Most of the time, the differences between these two parties are not significant enough to make it right and necessary to single out one party and focus on opposing it. But, on very rare occasions, these differences do matter that much. This is one of those times.

Why? Because one party—the Republican Party, headed now by the Trump/Pence regime—has become thoroughly fascist. Fascism is “open and aggressive dictatorship, trampling on and perverting the rule of law, relying on violence and terror, on behalf of the predatory capitalist system and as an extreme attempt to deal with profound social division and acute crises (both within the country and in the global arena).”¹ And: “If fascism fully takes hold in the most powerful country in the world, this could lead to a catastrophe from which humanity may not be able to recover.”² 

The situation today is that the conditions that make possible a revolution to do away with this whole system do not yet exist, and are not immediately on the horizon, but there is the possibility of forcing the removal of this fascist regime through massive, sustained nonviolent mobilization. Right now, meeting the immediate needs of this acute situation—and preparing for the revolution that is the fundamental solution to the horrors in the world that are caused by this system—must focus on removing this fascist regime from power.

As I have emphasized:

Driving out the fascist Trump/Pence regime is urgently necessary. It concentrates the question of whether there will be any favorable basis for continuing the struggle against racist oppression and police terror and every kind of injustice and oppression, as well as the plunder of the environment. It concentrates the question of whether there will be a future—one worth living—for humanity.³

Refusing to recognize this reality, saying it does not matter now which group of politicians is in power, and taking up the worse than meaningless stance that “these politicians are all the same”—this is not simply silly pseudo-“left” sectarian nonsense—it amounts to active collaboration with this fascist regime and the very real horrors it is relentlessly moving to hammer into place.

The conclusion is this: Everyone who really cares about ending exploitation, oppression and injustice, the rapidly accelerating destruction of the environment and the endless wars caused by this system

needs to join those who are already in the streets, who are not waiting for an election that Trump is already stealing through an ongoing fascist coup, and instead are taking up the call from RefuseFascism.org for sustained non-violent mobilization, day after day, raising the demand that the Trump/Pence regime must be OUT NOW!⁴

1. Statement By Bob Avakian, August 1, 2020, On The Immediate Critical Situation, The Urgent Need To Drive Out The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime, Voting In This Election, And The Fundamental Need For Revolution. This Statement is available at revcom.us.  [back]

2. This Is the Situation, These Are the Stakes—emphasis added here. This article is also available at revcom.us.  [back]

3. Sleepwalking “Wokeness” and the Trump/Pence Nightmare. This article by Bob Avakian is also available at revcom.us.  [back]

4. Sleepwalking “Wokeness” and the Trump/Pence Nightmare—emphasis in the original.  [back]