A full picture of what was involved with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania—including the motivation of the shooter—is not clear at this point. But whatever the actual motivation of the shooter, and whatever might be involved with this, it has nothing to do with any positive change, and certainly nothing to do with an emancipating transformation of society, which can only be brought about through a revolution, involving millions of people and aiming to sweep away this whole system and replace its relations and institutions of exploitation and oppression, and its putrid culture, with ones that are liberating and uplifting.

What is clear is that this attempted assassination of Trump is part of the increasing craziness and chaos going on, in the world overall and particularly within this country. In turn, this shooting greatly intensifies all this—and regardless of what was the motivation of the guy who attempted to assassinate Trump, this attempted assassination is now figuring into the already very deep and continually sharpening divisions within this country, and in particular the conflicts within the ruling class of this country.

All this is an expression of the fact the way this country has been ruled for generations, by a basically unified ruling class, can no longer hold. The outcome of all this is very likely to be a radical change, of one kind or another. The crucial question, as I have said before, is whether this will be a radical reactionary change, further intensifying the already terrible oppression and horrific atrocities built into and continually committed by this system of capitalism-imperialism—or will it be a radical revolutionary change, opening the way to abolishing the basis for all this atrocity?

This is also very clear, and must not be lost sight of, or suppressed: The fact that Trump was shot at one of his rallies in no way changes, or lessens, the fact that Trump is a fascist.

In my previous message (number Sixty-Three), I went in some depth into the fascist nature of Trump and the Republican Party. As part of this, I cited some important analysis by the African-American theologian Hubert Locke. Locke died a few years ago, but before that he had made a point of calling attention to the danger of Christian fascism as the driving force in the particularly American form of fascism. As I have emphasized, Christian fascism is not the same as Christianity in general as a religion: Christian fascism is a form of Christian fundamentalism, a fanatically anti-scientific lunacy marked by determination to reverse even the partial gains that have been made in the struggle against injustice and oppression over the past 75 years. 

Hubert Locke drew on the experience of one of his fellow Christian theologians, James Luther Adams, who had observed firsthand the rise of the Nazi fascists in Germany in the 1930s. As Locke recalled: Adams warned that “American fascists would not come wearing swastikas and brown shirts [like the German Nazis]. The American variety [of fascists], he said, would come carrying crosses and chanting the Pledge of Allegiance.” That is what we are seeing now, with the fascism of the Republican Party headed by the MAGA maniac Trump.

And this whole thing with the shooting of Trump has, at least for now, strengthened his campaign to come back to power. It has enabled the Republican fascists to paint Trump as some kind of “martyr” and God-ordained “savior,” when in reality Trump represents the most horrific, murderous oppression of masses of people. This shooting has also added to the defensive posture that many Democrats were already assuming, with reports that some leading Democrats are now saying that they are resigned to losing the election and accepting the fact that Trump will come back to power—which he will do with a vengeance. (The Democrats were already sharply divided, with some openly calling for dumping Biden as their candidate—not because he has fully backed Israel in carrying out a genocidal slaughter of Palestinians, but because Biden clearly seems to be exhibiting diminished mental capacity, and he doesn’t seem capable of waging the kind of vigorous campaign that could defeat Trump.)

While all of this is not “out in the open on these terms” there does seem to be a major divide in the Democratic Party between those who are resigned to, and willing to accept, losing the election, and allowing fascism to consolidate power with a vengeance, and, on the other hand those who actually take seriously the declared position of the Democrats that Trump represents, as they put it, “an existential threat to American democracy” and therefore they must do everything they can, within the framework of the electoral process, to prevent Trump from coming back to power.

As I also called attention to in message number Sixty-Three, this “American democracy” is actually an outer shell covering the inner core of capitalist dictatorship, in the service of horrendous atrocity; and, while the Democrats are desperate to maintain this outer shell, the Republican fascists are fanatically determined “to shatter this shell of democracy in order to enforce full-out, unfettered exploitation, oppression and plunder of people and the environment.” 

It is not clear how all this will play out in the period between now and the scheduled presidential election in November, with the increasing chaos and upheaval in the world, and specifically within this country, including the deep divisions within the ruling class. As dramatically illustrated by the attempted assassination of Trump, many jolts, of different kinds, can occur seemingly “out of nowhere,” causing major disruptions and upheavals in “normal life” and the “normal functioning” of this system. And, again, whatever the motivation of the shooter, the attempted assassination of Trump is, beyond even other major “jolts,” a kind of social and political “earthquake” that is bound to continue profoundly affecting the situation in the country (and indeed in the world as a whole) as things continue to unfold.

This brings into focus the fundamental question of how all this—the attempted assassination of Trump and the intensification of the larger conflicts in the country overall—relates to the possibility for an actual revolution: how this revolution could be wrenched out of this intensifying situation. I will get directly into that in my next messages.