As I am writing this, Donald Trump is facing multiple criminal indictments and impending trials, relating to his attempt to pull off a coup and remain in power after he lost the 2020 election, and other accusations of serious crimes.
Beyond just Trump’s hardcore supporters, some people—who look at things only in partial ways and on the surface—have fallen for the claim, loudly declared by Trump himself, that he is the victim of unjust prosecution, or persecution.1 This includes some among those bitterly oppressed under this system, who have been taken in by the superficial appearance that, since Trump is being gone after by people running the government, then there is something to identify with in Trump’s situation, even something to admire and respect in how Trump is defiantly denouncing these criminal charges and those bringing them.
In this regard, it is important to consider that Trump’s posturing—including his attempt to strike a “mad dog” pose in his mug shot in his “booking” for his trial in Atlanta—seems to be aimed at appealing not only to his openly and aggressively racist “base” but also to others who should know better, including Black and Latino men (Trump apparently calculates that at least some of them will be impressed by his macho posturing).
This adds an additional dimension to why it is important to be clear about what it is that Trump actually represents, and what is actually going on with these indictments of him.
On a certain level, there is the fact that, as I have pointed out before—and as I will get into further here—Donald Trump Isn’t “Tough,” He’s a Bloated Bag of Fascist Feces.2
But it is necessary to go deeper, to get to the basics and the essence of the matter.
First of all, Trump is a representative of the ruling class of this life-stealing, soul-crushing system of U.S. capitalism-imperialism, and he has the backing of a powerful section of that ruling class.
Second, and more particularly, he is a fascist—a representative of the fascist section of that ruling class. And let’s be clear on what this means. In a recent article at revcom.us, the point is emphasized that Trump, and others pushing things toward outright fascist rule in this country, have
unleashed an organized and armed social base of millions who believe they’re on a “mission from god” to impose an agenda of open white supremacy, the patriarchal subordination of women and the purging of LGBTQ people from public life, anti-immigrant terror and anti-scientific lunacy. To accomplish this, they need to and are itching to “blow up” the normal operation of political rule of this system.3
Now, some people are so twisted in their thinking that they actually recognize what Trump represents—or at least that he is an open, blatant racist—but then they take the stance that it is somehow better to go with a known racist, like Trump, than with people who pretend not to be racist but actually are, like the leaders of the Democratic Party. This is an expression of a pitifully narrow vision and lowered sights—the failure to see beyond the confines of this system of capitalism-imperialism, and a failure even to conceive of things beyond a situation where the choice is between blatant and “disguised” racists. More specifically, this kind of thinking fails to understand that when a leading politician of one of the two ruling class parties (in this case, the Republicans) trumpets blatant racism, that is not just a matter of their “personal opinion” or “personal bias.” It is an open declaration of the intent to make that racism, and everything that is bound up with it, official government policy, with the forceful backing of the full power of the state (the police, armed forces, courts, prisons, and so on), as well as racist “militias” and other armed fascist goons (the modern-day equivalents of the Ku Klux Klan and the lynch mobs of the era of open, “legalized” segregation and “second class status” for Black people). Among other things, this is why these fascists are determined to eliminate from public education even limited reference to the real history of this country, including the horrific nature and effects of slavery, the consequences of this, and the continuation of racist oppression, down to today.
The fact is that Trump is not simply an “open” racist. As I put it in a series of articles in 2020, he is a genocidal racist, who would be more than willing not only to continue incarcerating, but to actually kill off, huge numbers of Black people, and other people of color, whom he clearly regards as less than human.4
It also has to be said that the notion that it is somehow “better” to go with “open” racists is, at least in some cases, not only a reflection of gross ignorance but also what must be called out as foul ambition: the striving to somehow get in position to escape the consequences of this overt racism and get in on the “goodies” of this system, which rest not only on murderous oppression of Black people, and others, in this country but on vicious exploitation, and super-exploitation, of literally billions of people, here and all over the world, including more than 150 million children in the Third World (Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia).
What Is Really Going on with the Trials of Donald Trump and Conflicts “at the Top”
In basic terms, the fascist section of the ruling class, represented by Trump and the Republican Party, is determined to tear up the “traditional norms” through which this country has been governed since shortly after the end of the Civil War in 1865, including the “peaceful transfer of power”—which in reality is the “peaceful transfer of power” between the different sections of the ruling class, through elections (with the winners in elections taking office, and the losers accepting the results). Tearing up these “norms”—while moving to take over, and utilize for their fascist program, key government institutions, including local school boards, election boards, state governments, the “intelligence” agencies and armed forces, as well as courts at every level, up to the Supreme Court—all this is crucial for the fascists in instituting unchallenged rule by them and eliminating even the appearance of allowing certain “civil and legal rights” that have been won through determined struggle against racist, sexist and gender oppression and other injustices.
(The article at revcom.us to which I referred earlier gives a number of examples of the offensive by the fascists to tear up the “norms” of this oppressive system, including the move toward impeaching Joe Biden—in part as “payback” for the Democrats twice impeaching Trump when he was president, and in a larger sense as part of the Republican offensive to seize and consolidate a fascist form of rule in the country as a whole.)
On the other side (that is, with the opposing section of the ruling class, generally represented by the Democratic Party) the determination is that maintaining the “traditional norms” and the way of ruling the country that has been carried out for generations—and making certain partial moves for “inclusion” and “diversity,” while continuing the illusion of “liberty and justice for all”—is the best way to maintain the stability of capitalist rule at home and to pursue the “national” (that is, imperialist) interests of the U.S. ruling class in the international arena. This section of the ruling class is firmly convinced that tearing up these “norms,” and openly reversing the partial concessions to the struggle against injustice, will seriously threaten the stability of American capitalist-imperialist rule “at home” and undermine its position internationally at a time when it is facing a serious challenge to its domination in the world, not only from Russia, as concentrated now in the war in Ukraine, but even more so from the rising power China (which still pretends to be “socialist,” with rule by a so-called “communist” party, but has long since become an actual capitalist-imperialist country).
For the Democratic Party, and the section of the U.S. ruling class that it basically represents, it is necessary and vitally important to maintain, and to loudly propagate, the notion of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill,” a great experiment in democracy, and (as they never tire of repeating) “the leader of the free world.” This is why, for example, Joe Biden has made a point of declaring that the U.S. has been a shining light of freedom and inspiration to the world for over 200 years.
The answer to this is powerfully expressed in the following statement:
Go search where you may, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
This was said by Frederick Douglass, former slave and determined abolitionist, in 1852, but this statement by Douglass boldly speaks the truth about this country right down to today, with the continuing massive crimes committed under this system, within this country and all over the world.
(In “AMERICA: Truly a Model—of DEPRAVED RACIST GENOCIDE,” in light of the horrors perpetrated against Black people throughout the history of this country, I called attention to this blunt truth: “In terms of depravity, you can’t find anything Hitler and the Nazis did that was worse than this.” I challenge anyone who wishes to dispute this, to read that article, and other material at revcom.us exposing an endless chain of atrocities that have marked this country, from its beginning and throughout its history. And, in A Final Note, at the end of this article, I provide further exposure and analysis of some of the monstrous crimes of this “leader of the free world,” from its founding down to today.)
Democrats and Republicans: Back to the Past, Destroying the Future
Someone recently made an important and insightful observation: The Democrats, as well as the Republicans, each in their own way, are trying to restore a situation that existed in the past, while they both represent a deadly serious threat to the future of humanity.
The fascist Republicans want, and are determined to bring about—with whatever violence they deem necessary—a return to the situation that had long existed in this country, before and even for some time after World War 2, where inequality was institutionalized and openly enforced, including racial, sexual and gender discrimination and oppression.
For their part, the Democrats want a return to the situation where U.S. imperialism was the clear and essentially unchallenged dominant power in the world. (This is a situation which existed at the end of, and for a short time after, World War 2, which ended in 1945, and then again for a while after the disintegration and demise of the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist in the early 1990s.) And along with the way the policies of the Democrats, as well as the Republicans, and the ongoing functioning of this whole system, is destroying the environment at a rapidly accelerating pace, these Democratic Party imperialists are willing to risk the future and very existence of humanity in their determination to beat back the challenge to U.S. world domination, from a rising capitalist-imperialist China in particular. It is revealing, for example, that the last two presidential candidates of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, are open and aggressive war-mongers. Among other crimes, both Biden and Clinton supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, an international war crime, based on crude lies—an invasion that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and massive destruction and dislocation in Iraq, and unleashed a maelstrom of death and destruction in that part of the world. And now, Biden as president is aggressively pursuing, and continually escalating, U.S. involvement in a proxy war with Russian imperialism in Ukraine, while also actively preparing for war with China.5
The two impeachments of Trump pursued by the Democrats while they controlled the House of Representatives reflect their basic differences with and serious concerns about Trump’s role and policies as president.
The most recent impeachment of Trump followed after, and held Trump responsible for, the massive attack by his supporters on Congress as it met, on January 6, 2021, to officially certify Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. This attack on Congress was part of an attempted coup by Trump, with the aim of overturning the results of that 2020 presidential election and remaining in power in defiance of those results. The Democrats’ opposition to this, and impeachment of Trump over this, clearly involves the great concern of the Democrats to maintain the “traditional norms” of this system—in particular the “peaceful transfer of power” between different sections of the ruling class—along with the illusion of “democracy, with liberty and justice for all”: camouflage covering over the actual dictatorship (the monopoly of political power and “legitimate” armed force and violence) exercised by the capitalist-imperialist ruling class.
The previous (first) impeachment of Trump, which began at the end of 2019, centered on the charge that, in order to undermine Joe Biden—who was probably going to be (and turned out to be) Trump’s Democratic Party opponent in the 2020 election—Trump was sabotaging military aid to Ukraine, which was then involved in a more limited war with pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine (which, with the Russian invasion in 2022, has increasingly become a major war in which the U.S., headed by the Biden administration, is ever more deeply involved). Along with the particular question of what Trump was doing as president in relation to Ukraine, there was the concern, particularly among the section of the ruling class represented by the Democratic Party, that Trump was undermining NATO and other military and political “alliances” that are headed by the U.S. One of the main focuses of Biden—overall and as concentrated in the war in Ukraine—is to “repair,” fortify, and expand such alliances.
(Also, one of the major criminal indictments that Trump is now facing involves “endangering national security”—that is, U.S. imperialist interests and domination internationally—by illegally hanging onto and carelessly handling “classified” documents that relate to this so-called “national security.”)
It is important to understand that both sections of the ruling class of this capitalist-imperialist country agree on taking whatever extreme measures might be necessary in the attempt to keep China from surpassing the U.S. as the world’s most powerful imperialist country. But these opposing sections of the U.S. ruling class are deeply divided not only over how to rule the U.S. itself, but also how to achieve the perverse goal of maintaining the USA as “Number One”—number one exploiter, oppressor and plunderer in the world. The fascists (or at least some of them) believe that being involved in a lot of formal alliances with other (lesser) countries may restrict the freedom of U.S. imperialism to act—including with unrestrained violence and destruction—to enforce its interests, anywhere in the world. And, more specifically, at least many of these fascists strongly feel that the proxy war that the U.S., with Biden’s lead, is waging against Russia in Ukraine is a distraction from the necessary focus on opposing China and using whatever means may be necessary to prevent China from surpassing the U.S. as the world’s dominant imperialist power, militarily as well as economically. And these fascists see the war in Ukraine strengthening the ties of Russia with China, making the opposition to U.S. domination more powerful. On the other hand, Biden—and those allied with him in the ruling class—are waging, and continually increasing U.S. involvement in, a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine (using Ukrainians as “cannon fodder” in this war) because this part of the U.S. ruling class is convinced that delivering a defeat to and weakening Russia, and its ability to challenge U.S. dominance, is important in its own right and will also drive a wedge between Russia and China.
It should not have to be said that these kinds of concerns, on either side, have nothing to do with the fundamental interests of the masses of people in this country, and in the world as a whole. But, if it does need to be said, the following is very important as a fundamental orientation and guideline:
The interests, objectives, and grand designs of the imperialists are not our interests—they are not the interests of the great majority of people in the U.S. nor of the overwhelming majority of people in the world as a whole. And the difficulties the imperialists have gotten themselves into in pursuit of these interests must be seen, and responded to, not from the point of view of the imperialists and their interests, but from the point of view of the great majority of humanity and the basic and urgent need of humanity for a different and better world, for another way.6
The Trials of Donald Trump, the Profound Conflicts This Reflects, and a Rare Time When Revolution Becomes More Possible
Returning directly to the current trials of Donald Trump, as can be seen in what I have shined a light on here, what these trials represent is a certain concentration of the larger, overall conflict between the two sections of the capitalist-imperialist ruling class in this country—a conflict and struggle reflecting bitter and profound antagonisms between them, with each side increasingly feeling that what is represented by the other side is an existential threat and potentially fatal blow to the very nature and role of this capitalist-imperialist country and its position as the dominant power in the world. These divisions within this ruling class will continue to deepen and sharpen, with the result that they are increasingly unable to rule in a “unified way.”
As I have analyzed in depth and repeatedly emphasized, all this—what is happening within this country as well as in the larger world arena—is now heading toward, and could definitely lead to, something even more terrible than “normal life” under this system. But it is also very important to recognize that this also holds the potential for something truly emancipating—an actual revolution to overthrow this system, in this most powerful capitalist-imperialist country, and bring into being a radically different and far better system—a potential which has the possibility to become a reality IF the revolutionaries have been getting out the message broadly among the people, shining a light on the deeper reality of what is happening and why, bringing out that there IS an alternative to living this way, and struggling with people to break with all their wrong ways of thinking and get with the revolution.
It is crucially important to recognize the very real danger represented by Trump and the fascist section of the ruling class—and its “base” of lunatic racists, women-hating and LGBT-hating, anti-immigrant, and anti-scientific lunatics, itching for a new civil war—but it is also crucially important to recognize two basic things: 1) This fascism is not somehow “alien” to the “virtuous” nature of this “democratic leader of the free world,” but is an outgrowth of the fetid soil of this country—arising out of its putrid internal nature and historical development—as well as a response to the challenge to its dominant position in the world. Put another way, this fascism is an extreme expression of the vicious exploitation... the virulent, violent white supremacy, male supremacy and patriarchy... and the grotesque “American supremacy”—all of which is poured into the foundation and deeply embedded in the dominant relations, institutions, and culture of this country. These are the relations, institutions, and culture of a system that is completely putrid and outmoded, long since past its expiration date, spreading dangerous poison everywhere from its rotting core, and posing a very real threat to the future and very existence of humanity. And 2) The situation today “needs to be radically changed, to where there are masses of people prepared to defeat these fascists and to do so as part of getting rid of this whole system, which has bred these fascists, along with all the other horrors it continually perpetrates.”7
To conclude, this must quickly become the basic understanding that masses of people, first in the thousands, and then in the millions, are won to take up, and act on, to make an urgently needed emancipating revolution a powerful reality:
When conflicts among the different sections of the bourgeois (capitalist) ruling class become so deep and hostile that they are no longer able to rule in the “normal way” they have for generations, “that is a sign of extremely deep and acute cracks and fissures in the entire established order; and such a situation must be seized by the oppressed not to side with one section of the bourgeoisie against another... but instead to rise in revolutionary struggle to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie altogether.”8
_______________
NOTES, by Bob Avakian
1. There is a certain similarity between some people who are drawn to supporting Trump and various figures who have endorsed and aided the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, out of a misguided belief that Kennedy represents some kind of positive opposition to “the establishment” (or the “established order”) when in fact Kennedy’s “opposition” is well within the framework of the existing system of capitalism-imperialism, and at the same time it is marked by anti-scientific lunacy, particularly but not only in opposition to safe, effective, and life-saving vaccines. There are, of course, differences between right-wing and “left-wing” populism. The right-wing variation generally is marked by hatred for intellectual elites, especially as these “intellectual elites” are seen to be giving undeserved benefits to “inferior people,” at the expense of “law abiding, hard-working, patriotic Americans.” The “left” variation of populism is likely to be characterized by opposition to corporate elites, or more generally to the super-rich (“the billionaire class”), with demands like a more “equitable” distribution of wealth under this system.
Yet, it remains true that there is a significant area of overlap between right-wing and supposedly left-wing “populism.” Both include political forces and tendencies marked by a kind of irrational opposition to certain powerful figures and forces—whether the government (or parts of it) and “intellectual elites,” or big corporations and financial institutions—an opposition which lacks any scientifically-based understanding of the system in which all this is grounded, and an opposition marked by a big dose of “don’t tread on me” individualism, which rests on, and reeks of, the parasitism of American capitalist-imperialism (the fact that this country, as the dominant capitalist-imperialist power in the world, feasts off the exploitation and oppression of literally billions of people throughout the world, including the more than 150 million children who are super-exploited particularly in the Third World of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia).
In relation to all this, it is crucially important to understand that the problem is not this or that financial or government institution, or the Democratic or Republican Party “establishments,” as such, but the system of capitalism-imperialism itself, which all of these different institutions and centers of power are part of, even with their different particular interests and roles and different approaches to maintaining and enforcing this system.[ back]
2. The article “Donald Trump Isn’t ‘Tough,’ He’s a Bloated Bag of Fascist Feces” is available at revcom.us.[ back]
3. “If You’re Hoping ‘It Will Work Out All Right In the End,’ You Better Read This: Three Ways Fascism Has Just Moved Closer.” This article is also available at revcom.us.[ back]
4. Donald Trump—Genocidal Racist, available at revcom.us. [ back]
5. Go to revcom.us for extensive writings from Bob Avakian on this U.S. proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, including: The War in Ukraine and the Interests of Humanity: A Scientific Revolutionary Approach vs. Harmful Confusion and Chauvinist Delusion; "Don't Worry About Nuclear War—If There Is One, Russia Will Lose!" The Dangerous Demagoguery of Timothy Snyder on Behalf of U.S. Imperialism and Its Proxy War in Ukraine; Ukraine: World War 3 Is the Real Danger, Not a Repeat of World War 2.[ back]
6. BAsics, 3:8 (BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, RCP Publications). [ back]
7. This statement is cited in Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating. It was first put forward in From The Revcoms (Revcom.us): A Declaration, A Call To Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution, also available at revcom.us. Emphasis added.[ back]
8. This is part of the important statement soon to be published at revcom.us, From The Revcoms (Revolutionary Communists), Revolution, Building Up The Basis To Go For The Whole Thing, With A Real Chance To Win: Strategic Orientation And Practical Approach. [ back]
A FINAL NOTE: On the Real Nature and Monstrous Crimes of This Country
The American Crime series, at revcom.us, analyzes 100 of the worst crimes of this country, since its founding and down to today—a list that speaks not just to “isolated incidents” of wrongdoing but a whole pattern of atrocities, repeated over and over again, reflecting the essential nature of this country—a list that will continue to grow until a revolution overthrows and uproots the system of capitalism-imperialism that rules in this country and replaces it with a radically different and far better system, based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have written.
Concentrating much of the monstrous crimes of this country and its ruling class, there is the fact that this Republic of the so-called “United States” of America is:
A Republic whose “National Anthem” was written by a slave owner (Oh, oh say can you see... all the sla-a-ver-y...)!....
A Republic founded on slavery and genocidal robbery: keeping millions of Black people in chains for generations... killing off huge numbers of Native Americans and stealing their land... waging a war that ripped off half of Mexico, greatly expanding slavery....
A system that, from the start and down to today, has been grounded in heartless exploitation, using and abusing masses of people to create wealth for the few, with violent white supremacy, male supremacy and gender oppression built into and enforced by this system... plundering people in all parts of the world... destroying the environment, and waging unjust war after war, even to the point of threatening the very existence of humanity... killing off hope for a decent future, or any future at all.
(This is part of an important statement from the revcoms, Allegiance, which is available at revcom.us.)
The USA is a country in which a woman is assaulted/beaten every 9 seconds. It is a country where huge numbers of women are raped and otherwise sexually assaulted every year; a country where the right to abortion has been ripped away from women, with the assertion of male supremacist control over their bodies, and their very being, constituting, in a very real sense, a form of female enslavement. This is a country in which LGBT people are discriminated against, persecuted, bullied, vilified and abused, brutalized and outright murdered.
This is a system in which more than 40 million women are ensnared and enslaved in international sex trafficking and the so called “sex industry”; a system where hundreds of millions of women are cruelly exploited as a key part of the “supply chains” of the world economy and the overall capitalist-imperialist system, in which the U.S. has for decades been the dominant power.
And there is the massive unjust violence perpetrated by U.S. imperialism in the “international arena”:
In addition to the continuing crimes against humanity carried out by the U.S., just since World War 2, including the U.S. slaughter of millions of civilians in Vietnam, and before that in Korea, and the bloody coups it has engineered in Indonesia, Iran and elsewhere, in the period from 1846 to the present the U.S. has intervened in South and Central American countries—militarily, through CIA coups, or in other ways—at least 100 times, at the cost of literally hundreds of thousands of deaths and endless misery for the people of those countries.
(This is from my article “Shameless American Chauvinism: ‘Anti-Authoritarianism’ as a ‘Cover’ for Supporting U.S. Imperialism,” which is also available at revcom.us.)
And there is the fact that the U.S. is (up till now, at least) the only country to actually use nuclear weapons, with its atomic bombing of two Japanese cities at the end of World War 2, instantly incinerating hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and subjecting many others to slow agonizing deaths from the effects of radiation. And then, in more recent times, there has been the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, built on blatant lies—and now the proxy war in Ukraine, along with active preparation for war with China, with the growing danger of nuclear annihilation.
All this under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
As for the claim by Biden (and the section of the ruling class that he represents) that the U.S. is engaged in an historic struggle, within this country itself and throughout the world, of “democracy” vs. “anti-democratic authoritarianism,” in “Anti-Scientific ‘Anti-Authoritarianism’ Serving American Imperialism and Promoting American Chauvinism,” I provided the following list of some of the countries where, just since World War 2, the U.S. has been allied with—and in many cases has installed, through invasions, bloody coups, etc.—oppressive governments that are “authoritarian” (that would have to be considered “authoritarian,” according to the “logic” of the “theorists” of “authoritarianism”):
Chile... Brazil... Haiti... Cuba (before the 1959 revolution)... El Salvador... Nicaragua... Guatemala... Honduras... Panama... the Dominican Republic... Greece… Poland... Indonesia... the Philippines... South Korea... South Vietnam... China (before the victory of the revolution in 1949)... Iran... Iraq... Turkey... Israel.
Again, this is only a partial list of the “authoritarian” governments backed—and often installed through invasions, bloody coups, etc.—by the U.S. imperialists, just since World War 2.
Beneath the outward appearance of “respectability” (and even the aura of “solemn dignity”) that surrounds many of the “leaders” of this country, there is the reality of the truly perverse, demented mentality that someone is required to have—or is compelled to acquire—in order to serve as top functionaries of this system. Besides the facts and analysis I have already provided clearly illustrating this basic point, there is the following, serving as a reminder that, for not only murderous but truly ghoulish mentality, you can look not only at Donald Trump, or other fascist Republicans, but also at someone like Hillary Clinton. As pointed out in a recent article at revcom.us (an updated version of American Crime Case #35: The 2011 U.S.-NATO War on Libya) in 2011, as Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton was among the strongest and loudest advocates of the U.S./NATO bombing of the North African country of Libya, which led to the ouster of the government headed by Muammar Qaddafi, and at the same time the deaths of thousands of Libyans. The end of Qaddafi’s rule also led to widespread chaos and civil conflict within Libya, which has continued in various forms down to today—and which has greatly magnified the death and devastation that has resulted from recent massive flooding in Libya.
As that revcom.us article points out, when the forces opposed to Qadaffi—benefitting from the months of U.S./NATO bombing of Qaddafi’s forces—finally captured, tortured, and murdered Qaddafi himself, Clinton laughed on TV, saying, “We came, we saw, he died.” But those who captured and killed Qaddafi did not just torture him in some vague sense: They sodomized him, in an especially brutal way. It is with knowledge of this, that Clinton gleefully made the ghoulish declaration: “We came, we saw, he died.”
And then there is Barack Obama himself, whose election as “the first Black president” is supposed to be regarded as a great achievement and “proof” that this country is continuing to advance toward “a more perfect union.” The following provides some, but only some, of the truth about the actual role of Obama, as the chief executive of this truly monstrous capitalist-imperialist power, and more fundamentally the truth about the nature of this country and this system as a whole.
In 2012, Barack Obama spoke these words while praising the U.S. military for its role in Vietnam:
[O]ne of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam—most particularly, how we treated our troops who served there.... [Y]ou wrote one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history.
(Barack Obama, May 28, 2012, part of the Vietnam War Commemoration)
There was, and there is, nothing “heroic” about the U.S. military. On the contrary, it is—without the slightest exaggeration—a machinery of massive, and unspeakable, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and its actions in Vietnam constitute a systematic concentration of this, with a level of destructiveness and depravity that is almost unfathomable:
the slaughter of millions of Vietnamese civilians, with incessant bombing and shelling, including of schools, hospitals, dams and other crucial infrastructure, and widespread use of napalm, white phosphorous, Agent Orange, and millions of anti-personnel weapons, burning to death and maiming huge numbers of children and others;
ruining the livelihood of millions of Vietnamese—destroying large parts of the soil and livestock so essential for the people in rural Vietnam;
torture of people held as prisoners—including large numbers of civilians—male, female, old and young, including the very young;
mutilating the bodies and wearing as “trophies” body parts of Vietnamese killed; mass rape of Vietnamese women and girls.
All this, and more, by the U.S. military and its “heroic” soldiers.
Included in the “American Crime” series is the account of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which U.S. soldiers wantonly murdered over 500 civilians, almost all of them old people, non-combatant women and children. And it is a well-documented fact that this massacre was not some kind of exception, or aberration, but represented the essential approach and means of the American war machine in Vietnam, fueled ideologically by a perverse, poisonous combination of ignorant, irrational anti-communism, American chauvinism, and grotesque racism and misogyny which regarded and treated the Vietnamese people as subhuman “gooks” and “slopes,” and females the lowest of all.
This is the actual history of the U.S. role in Vietnam, which in the twisted minds of the heads of state of U.S. imperialism, such as Barack Obama, is considered, and praised, as “one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history.”
This not only reveals the thoroughly corrupt mentality of Obama—and anyone who would preside over this truly monstrous system—but it is also the case that Obama is here willfully, and viciously, rewriting history: He turns upside down the actual role of these “troops” in Vietnam. He complains that the “troops” who carried out these atrocities in Vietnam were not “thanked” for their “service” of horrific war crimes, but instead these war crimes were, rightly and righteously, condemned by masses of people in this country.
And Obama fails (or refuses) to mention the fact that many of these troops (and former troops) came to openly rebel against what they were ordered to do in Vietnam and became an important part of the massive opposition to the U.S. role in that war. In opposition to what Obama perversely hails as heroic, that rebellion of U.S. troops against the government and the system that was encouraging and commanding them to carry out almost unbelievably horrific atrocities—that kind of rebellion is truly something to honor and encourage.