On Tuesday, June 6, vicious anti-LGBTQ protests targeting school districts hit nationwide news with hundreds outside of school board meetings in Rockville, Maryland and Glendale, California, including a violent fascist assault against counter-protesters in Glendale. Importantly, there were people who came out to oppose these fascists, including the revcoms in Glendale. But the counter-protesters were far outnumbered by the fascists.

These are Nazi-like mobilizations that are unleashing mobs on the basis of Dark Ages religion and male supremacy. This is happening through a playbook of establishing “parents groups” and attacking the rights of LGBTQ people in the name of “protecting children.” In Glendale (and North Hollywood the week before), reactionary Armenians were mobilized on the basis of Christian fascism to paint any rights or teaching about rights for LGBTQ people as “sexualizing” or “grooming” their children. In Maryland, the “protect our children” slogan was joined to the demand for so-called “religious freedom” to “opt-out” of “their” children learning in school about the humanity of LGBTQ people—and fundamentalist Muslims were also mobilized for this.

The “parents’ rights” these fascists are talking about doesn’t have anything to do with protecting children. It is a historically used tactic to manipulate and to mobilize millions on the basis of the traditional patriarchal family, in which men essentially dominate women and children and enforce traditional heterosexual gender roles in the upbringing of the children. These protests are part of a nationwide, coordinated Christian fascist movement to terrorize LGBTQ people and drive them out of public life, with a spearhead right now against trans people.

This was explicitly expressed by a fascist at the “Conservative” Political Action Committee convention in March, who said “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” This is already happening—like the trans teacher who was removed from the North Hollywood elementary school for everyone’s safety after they were threatened and their pride flag burned. This is in service of establishing a Christian Fascist America (even if fundamentalist Muslims are part of it for now) by creating an atmosphere of fear that works when people are passive in the face of this.

These mobilizations are happening in the context of more than 500 new anti-LGBTQ bills being introduced this year in the legislatures across the country. The two prongs of attack go hand in hand: Republi-fascists in the halls of power and violent thugs like the Proud Boys in the streets. This month, the Proud Boys (whose membership is growing after their participation in the 2021 attempted coup) are mobilizing nationwide to carry out violent terror targeting LGBTQ Pride Month and were part of the attack in Glendale.

Like the attack on abortion, this is another part of the drive to a Christian Fascist America. It is rooted in a capitalist-imperialist system of exploitation and oppression with patriarchy and white supremacy built into its functioning. AND this drive is ripping up the normal way this system has been ruled for decades and has covered over this functioning with the illusion of “perfecting democracy.”

Radical change is coming, one way or another—the question that must be sharply posed to people is whether that change will be reactionary and oppressive or revolutionary and emancipating… and what role they will play in it.

The Stifling and Unconscionable Silence in the Democratic Strongholds

Both Rockville and Glendale are cities in “blue states,” or in other words where there are millions and millions of people who believe in the rights of LGBTQ people and want to see a society where they are included as full human beings. There should have been thousands of people protesting in defense of this. But a big part of the problem in states like California is that the decent people are being led by the Democratic Party and by “woke” identity politics to either think they are in, or want to seek out, “safe spaces,” as if they can somehow maneuver away from fascism through voting in people who will fight for “inclusive” policies in the schools and public life overall. The fascists outnumbered those who were supporting LGBTQ kids and teachers by more than two to one.

At the same time, in Glendale, over 100 people did come out and stood firm against these fascists.  The revcoms were both inside the hearing and outside where things got very intense, and helped organize people to stand up against the fascists. Both inside and outside, we spoke to the two futures shaping up before us and how a new, emancipating society really could be brought into being through an actual revolution. We were working to break down and apply this from the WE ARE THE REVCOMS Proclamation:

Basing ourselves on the scientific method of the new communism, we actively apply the strategic approach of Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution: involving masses of people in rising up to resist the continuing crimes of this system, and defending people from attacks on their rights and their lives by racist, woman-hating and anti-LGBTQ thugs, in and out of government... winning people to the scientific understanding that we do not have to live this way—that this system of capitalism-imperialism is the root cause and fundamental source of all the unnecessary suffering that masses of people are subjected to, here and throughout the world, and poses a growing threat to the very existence of humanity through the accelerating destruction of the environment and increasing danger of nuclear war—and that we need to, and can, bring a whole different and much better system and world into being through revolution.

Much more is needed and in even bolder and more clarifying ways. But right now, take the WE ARE THE REVCOMS statement, take your heart and courage and your friends, and go out to the Pride events wherever you are to take this to the people and stand up for people under attack.