On September 16, the “impeachment trial” of Ken Paxton, the Christian fascist Attorney General of Texas, ended with Paxton found not guilty on 16 charges involving corruption and bribery. 

The proceeding was a farce from beginning to end. Paxton was “tried” by the Texas Senate—a body overwhelmingly composed of Christian fascists. It was presided over by Dan Patrick, a leading Christian fascist nationally and Texas’s Lieutenant Governor. Shortly before the trial began, Patrick received $3 million from a pro-Paxton fascist group of West Texas oil tycoons called “Defend Texas Liberty PAC.” One of its leaders threatened “political revenge against any senator who sided against Paxton in his trial.” As the trial began, Paxton’s wife (and Texas state senator) tweeted a picture of herself standing in the Senate chamber, her hands folded in prayer and her eyes closed, wearing a dress the color of handmaid’s red. 

Paxton in fact is flagrantly fraudulent and corrupt. The web site “Governing” described him as being “on an island of corruption of his own.” He also is a total sleazeball. He stole an expensive pen from a courtroom’s metal detecting box. He used “burner phones” and fake emails so that Uber rides to his mistress’s home wouldn’t be on his own phone. 

But he is an ardent Christian fascist, and a leading member of a “mega congregation” rooted in the “inerrant truth of the Bible” that sprawls over two campuses in the outer reaches of suburban Dallas. Texas Monthly described him as “a fundamentalist who wears his heart on his sleeve.” He also has been leading the charge of Republi-fascist-led states against the Biden administration. He initiated a lawsuit to overturn Biden’s election, and he has the endorsement of Donald Trump. On behalf of the Texas government he has sued the Biden and Obama administrations dozens of times, spearheading the efforts of Republi-fascist-led states to overturn federal laws and regulations on immigration, the environment, and other issues. 

A Brawl Between Fascists

Earlier this summer, the Texas House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton and send his trial to the state Senate. The Texas House of Representatives is also controlled and dominated by Christian Republi-fascists. 

So, why would two Republi-fascist-dominated and -led bodies of the Texas legislature go after each other so vehemently? The dispute was not, as the New York Times wrote, between a “hard right” (the Christian Republi-fascists in the Senate), and “moderates” (the Christian Republi-fascists in the House of Representatives). Both sides are truly, deeply, madly fascist. (And, it must be noted, the Democrats, including their so-called “progressive” wing, was reduced to being passive spectators of the entire chingaso [fight] between them, making occasional modest criticisms and comments, and casting utterly meaningless votes.) 

But the anger and bitterness between the warring fascists was and is real. Much of the underlying dispute has centered around funding for public education. 

In his recent Interviews on The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show, Bob Avakian (BA) points out that today’s powerful movement of Christian fascists began coalescing when, in the early 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prayer in public schools could not be imposed or encouraged. Fundamentalist Christians think this marked a time when “God was thrown out of school” and the country began accelerating in directions they regard as intolerable. Jerry Falwell, a now-dead founder of biblically based Christian fascism, wrote in 1979, “I hope I live to see the day, when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”

Forty-three years later, leading Christian fascists in Texas are close to making that nightmare a reality. They regard what goes on in the educational system as foundational to the kind of fully theocratic society they are determined to impose not just in Texas, but nationwide. Not in the distant future, but soon. This would mean a society ruled by religious authorities and religious law—and Christian fascist authorities and law are the only kind they recognize as legitimate.

The Texas House of Representatives is still composed largely of people who represent vast rural areas, where not too long ago the majority of the state’s population lived. Property taxes are a major source of funding for public schools, which are one of the few remaining institutions in many of those communities. People who live in them are too remote from the larger cities and towns where they could send their kids to the “Christian academies” or other forms of private schooling that are more readily available to middle-class people in the large urban areas like Houston and Dallas. Further cuts in funding for public education would be disastrous for these schools. 

Fascist state leaders like Paxton, Patrick, and Governor Greg Abbott have for years been pushing for massive cuts in property taxes as well as cuts in state funding for public schools, and more state support for vouchers and charter schools. This has already left many rural districts in what Texas Monthly called “financial ruin.” And “everybody knows” that when these fascists talk about “tax relief for property owners,” they mean further massive reductions in funding for public schools. Diane Ravitch, a professor and historian of education, accurately summed up that Governor Abbott’s long-term goal is to eliminate property taxes and completely privatize education. The Christian fascists in Texas’s House of Representatives are opposed to that. 

A Deadly Serious Reality—That Can and MUST be Changed

“This is the time to put up or shut up, it won’t come back this way again.” 
—From “There Is No Time,” by Lou Reed

Paxton’s triumph in this fight is a major event in the development and consolidation of fascism, specifically hyper-aggressive Christian fascism. It has national implications. It is an expression of the “… deadly serious reality that these fascists are determined to crush—as violently as necessary—anyone and anything, anywhere in society, that stands in the way of implementing their horrific objectives,” as BA wrote in part 3 of his series “Revolution, a Real Chance to Win.” 

Paxton’s victorious fascist faction declared their determination to crush their opponents as soon as his acquittal was announced. Paxton went on at least nine radio shows and podcasts in what Houston Chronicle writer Jeremy Wallace called his “revenge tour,” to denounce both Democrats and what he regards as traitorous Republi-fascists. Dan Patrick mocked leaders of the impeachment and threatened a “full audit” of money spent on it. Greg Abbott said he was calling for a “special session” of the state legislature in October to pass school vouchers, “the easy way or the hard way.” He also called on “faith leaders” to speak to their congregations about what he called “school choice and parental rights” on October 15. 

Paxton’s acquittal is a blatant example of how Christian fascists are completely tearing up all the established norms of how society should function, and establishing their own rules. They regard anyone besides themselves in power as illegitimate. Meanwhile, the Democrats continue with their pathetic impotence in the face of this onslaught by encouraging people to register to vote (even as the fascists are attacking the right to vote of Black and other oppressed people in Houston and other cities, and have irreversibly entrenched themselves in power in Texas). 

The fascists are moving very fast. The path this situation is taking, if it isn’t reversed, will have horrific consequences for humanity, and planet Earth.

Put Revolution on the Map

All this is reality, and no one can escape this reality. Either we radically change it, in a positive way, or everything will be changed in a very negative way. 

—Bob Avakian (BA), Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating…

Part of what is alarming these fascists is that Texas, like much of the rest of the U.S., is changing in ways they find threatening. Over the past few years, powerful protests against police murder and brutality of Black people rocked every major city in the state. They also rocked small towns that had long been bastions of white supremacy. Towns like Vidor, an infamous “sundown town” and longtime snake-pit of KKK activity; Jasper, where James Byrd was murdered in a 1998 modern-day lynching; Alpine, hard by the U.S./Mexico border in the mountains of West Texas. Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights led powerful protests of thousands of young women who took over downtown Austin and its bridges; it got international attention when it boldly disrupted a fundamentalist church service in Houston, demanding the right to abortion. Courageous people have stood up against attacks on gay and trans people in suburbs of Dallas, Houston, and Austin. 

This kind of protest and resistance is vitally important. But what is needed most of all—what will change the terrible situation we are all in—is a revolution to overthrow the system of capitalism-imperialism that gives rise to the plagues of murder by cops, degradation of women, and other horrors of this society. That revolution is necessary, and it is more possible now, including because of the intense conflict among the rulers, like that expressed in the Paxton impeachment. 

And revolution is precisely what the revcoms—revolutionary communists—are working towards and preparing for. People need to get with this revolution, now, and join with us revcoms in spreading the word and building organization for it.

As we wrote on revcom.us last week: 

If you are not seriously checking out the work of Bob Avakian in the face of this—his analysis of this situation, the strategy for revolution he’s developed, the vision and blueprint for a whole new society embodied in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America and the scientific method and approach that undergirds all this—you are being derelict and irresponsible as a human being, and frankly full of shit!

There is no time to waste!