This is Bob Avakian—REVOLUTION—number 130.

After taking over the California National Guard and sending Marines into Los Angeles—despite the opposition to this by the mayor of the city and the governor of the state—Trump has now occupied Washington, D.C. with military forces, and is declaring that he will do the same to Chicago and other cities like Baltimore and Oakland. It is not a coincidence that these are cities with large Black populations and Black mayors.

This is not about “fighting crime” but is about enforcing police state fascist rule and carrying out the racist terror that is at the heart of Trump/MAGA fascism.

As I pointed out in my social media message #113 earlier this year: “The Trump MAGA fascists would have been on the side of the Confederacy in the Civil War, fighting to maintain, and expand, slavery.” And: “After the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War, these Trump/MAGA fascists would have been with the Ku Klux Klan, with its repeated lynchings and other terror to reinforce open segregation and brutal discrimination.” 

Trump is insisting on defending and restoring Confederate symbols and monuments which celebrate slavery and white supremacy.

Trump is a blatant white supremacist who hates Black people and others who are not white/European. He hates Muslims. He is determined to persecute those who are not white Christian fascists. In 2020, I wrote a 10-part series at revcom.us, Donald Trump—Genocidal Racist, making the case that he is exactly that. 

Now, coming back to power, Trump is even more unrestrained with his aggressive racism. A big part of what these fascists mean by “Make America Great Again,” is reversing the gains that have been made, since the 1950s, in the fight against racist oppression and terror. These MAGA fascists are moving to silence and suppress the truth about slavery and other atrocities in the history of this country, while also denying the fact that Black people, and others, are still subjected to systematic discrimination and murderous oppression. According to the perverted MAGA fascists, in this country of continuing white supremacy it is somehow white people who are discriminated against! The truth, as shown by study after study, is that continuing discrimination against Black people remains a terrible fact of life—in housing, health care, employment, education, the courts and the overall “justice” system—in every part of society. And, as I have repeatedly called attention to: Since 1960, the number of Black people killed by police is greater than the thousands who were lynched during the whole time of open segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror after the Civil War.

Another major dimension of this is the fact that Trump’s massive firings of government workers has hit Black women especially hard, because the government has, for some time now, been a major source of employment and a decent income for Black women, and their families.

All this is an expression of the fact that openly, aggressively enforcing white supremacy is a big part of the fascist rule of the Trump regime.

And occupying cities like Washington, D.C., Chicago and Baltimore is a big part of doing this. Yes, there is a problem of crime in these cities—but this is not about crime. And it is not a “gimmick” or a “distraction,” as a number of Democratic Party politicians keep insisting. This is about using the military against people in this country as a continuation and escalation of Trump’s blatant racism and lawless tyranny overall; it is about the consolidation and enforcement of openly dictatorial fascist rule in the country as a whole.

Recently, a retired U.S. Army Major General, Randy Manner, has spoken out against this—cutting to the heart of it in comparing what Trump is doing to what Hitler and the Nazis did in Germany in the 1930s: mobilizing military forces under Trump’s command “as a show of force to anybody who opposes” Trump. This is the same reason why Trump has established a “rapid reaction force” of soldiers prepared to move to any situation where Trump is determined to put down people opposing him, any situation where he arbitrarily declares an “emergency.”

Talk of “fighting crime,” to “justify” the use of the military to occupy cities, is just a means of carrying out even more blatant repression, unrestrained brutality and murder to which Black people, and others, have been subjected throughout the history of this country—and which the Trump fascist regime is determined to enforce without regard to, and in flagrant violation of, the Constitution and the rights of people that are supposed to be guaranteed in the Constitution.

This is about going after Trump’s “enemies” within the ruling class as well. As I have emphasized in “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating” (also available at revcom.us): The Trump fascist regime is “determined to gut and pervert ‘the rule of law,’ trample on people’s rights, and adopt what amounts to an undisguised capitalist dictatorship, ready to use violence not only against masses of people but also against its rivals in the ruling class.”

I will get into all this further in my next message: Crime is a real problem. But fascism is not the answer to crime—fascism is itself a monstrous crime.