Last week, Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in a New York court. This was completely unprecedented. Trump is not just the ex-President, he's one of two major candidates for the next presidency, the leader of a fascist movement of millions, and is, in the words of the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, “a bloated bag of fascist feces”!

This is the first time, in the whole history of the U.S., that a former president was convicted of a crime in a court of law. See the sidebar, “The Basic Facts,” to understand the case against Trump, and the 34 felonies that he was found guilty of. 

Immediately, howls went up from the bloodthirsty fascists literally calling for lynch mobs to go after the judge, jury and anyone who defends this verdict. Biden responded with a speech celebrating “the rule of law” (while in the same speech, defending and backing a genocide of the Palestinian people). 

Biden posted on social media that, “There’s only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: At the ballot box.” While the Democrats are trying to confine you to thinking and acting within the electoral framework, the fascists are using every move against Trump—even legitimate legal cases—to prepare for civil war if they lose that election. Trump and the Republi-fascists are working now to get their fanatical, unthinking social base of millions to believe that any outcome of the 2024 elections that does not result in Trump coming to power is completely illegitimate—that the Democrats are rigging the 2024 election and anything that the fascists do in the service of getting into power is justified, and even “sanctified by god.” To them, the results of this trial justify anything.

Left to itself, whatever happens will be a complete and utter nightmare for humanity. But people who care about the interests of humanity cannot “leave this to itself.” This sharpening clash holds the potential for a radical revolution to emancipate humanity. As Bob Avakian says in his social media dispatch Revolution #8:

The basic reason why this revolution is possible now is because those who have ruled this country for so long are bitterly and deeply divided among themselves, while the country as a whole is being torn apart by divisions that can no longer be covered over and things can no longer be held together in the way they have been for generations.

Everything will very likely be coming to a head and coming up for grabs this year, 2024, with the presidential election this year a sharp focus of the fight between the dominating ruling class parties—Democrats and Republicans—a fight that is very likely to break all out of the bounds of the “normal way” they exercise power over the people, and keep their whole murderous system going.

Fascists Call for War

Let's go deeper into this.

In the moments after the verdict, a wave of fascist Trump supporters posted one word: “War.” On one of the major fascist forums, someone posted: “There are only two choices in November, Trump or civil war, I will hope for the former but prepare for the latter.”

One person posted, “Find the jurors. All of them. Take no prisoners.” Another wrote in reference to lynching, “Just give them the rope. The time for talking has long gone. Let them swing outside the courthouse.” In one exchange on a fascist message board, one person wrote: “1,000,000 men (armed) need to go to Washington and hang everyone. That's the only solution.” Another responded, “Trump should already know he has an army willing to fight and die for him if he says the words... I’ll take up arms if he asks.” The Trump campaign claims it broke a record, raising almost $53 million in 24 hours.

But it wasn't just the rank-and-file fascist social base that was foaming at the mouth. Virtually every Republi-fascist ruler responded with outrage—acting as if the entire criminal trial was a “rigged” political attack by Biden and the Democrats. The theocratic fascist Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, posted: “The weaponization of our justice system has been a hallmark of the Biden Administration, and the decision today is further evidence that Democrats will stop at nothing to silence dissent and crush their political opponents.” 

Trump railed against the ruling, painting it as a political attack to silence him by people who “want to destroy America.” He argued—with no evidence—that this was all orchestrated by a corrupt judge who is “really a devil,” with Biden pulling the strings behind the prosecutor. With no sense of irony, Trump—who IS a fascist—went so far as to say that, “we are living in a fascist state.” 

But when Trump and these fascists talk about the rule of law, they mean entirely shredding it, and perverting it to what serves them and their larger fascist agenda. Trump has vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political opponents, and he's explicitly said he wants to be a “dictator on day 1,” because “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.” 

This agenda is aimed at “reclaiming” America as a “god-ordained” white Christian nation with a literal interpretation of the bible holding “dominion” over law. They are aiming for a society ruled through open white supremacy and vicious hatred of immigrants, the subordination of women and purging LGBTQ people from public life, all enforced through violence, terror and laws that will serve this.

Biden and the Democrats Uphold the Nightmare “Norms of American Democracy” 

In the face of this, Biden spoke out directly upholding the verdict. He said, “the American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed.” He argued that “it’s reckless, it’s dangerous, and it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict. Our justice system has endured for nearly 250 years, and it literally is the cornerstone of America.”

It is important to fight for the rule of law. But we should be clear: when Biden and the Democrats talk about the rule of law, the content of the law that they are upholding is subordinated to and flows out of what serves this system of capitalism-imperialism with all the exploitation, oppression and brutal inequality this system routinely enforces.¹

When Biden talks about “America's justice system enduring for nearly 250 years,” he's talking about the “justice system” that legalized slavery; then the Jim Crow system of open white supremacy and KKK violence; and today legalizes the new Jim Crow, a system of mass incarceration and police terror which continues to enforce white supremacy but now pretends to be color-blind. Joe “fund the police” Biden is one of the architects of this new Jim Crow which has led to almost two million people in prison today, more than half of them Black and Latino.²

Right now, Biden is funding and fully backing Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people. And he is perverting the international rule of law to mean whatever serves the system of U.S. capitalism-imperialism. So when Putin—America's rival—commits war crimes, Biden upholds the International Criminal Court when it issues an arrest warrant. But when Israeli prime minister Netanyahu—America's attack dog in the Middle East—commits genocidal war crimes before the eyes of the world, Biden is outraged when the same International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant. 

A Fateful Moment

Our choices are not between MAGA fascists and war criminal Democrats. There is a radically different and far better way the world can be. As the Declaration from the revcoms, We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System, says: “The new socialist system based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America will do what can never be done under this system of capitalism-imperialism: Through its institutions, through elections and in an all-round way, this new socialist system will provide the means to politically empower the masses of people, in order to carry out the revolutionary transformation of society, and to contribute to this process in the world as a whole.”

But to get there, we need a revolution and that revolution is possible... not in some far-off time, but in this time. To understand what is coming to a head—the danger, but especially the positive potential for this revolution—it's worth quoting extensively from Bob Avakian's social media dispatch Revolution #11: 

The presidential election this year, 2024, will be a sharp focus of the fight between these ruling class parties—Democrats and Republicans—a fight that is very likely to break all out of the bounds of the “normal way” they exercise power over the people, and keep their whole system going.

This could lead to armed clashes between the opposing sections of the ruling class, which could even develop into large-scale military confrontation—a new kind of civil war. In any case, this kind of profound crisis within the ruling system is bound to affect every part of society, and every major institution of this system, including its armed forces—with the real potential for major splits in those institutions.

The fascists in this country as a whole are not as great in numbers as those who are opposed to the fascists, but these fascists are driven by an irrational fanaticism, fueled by the notion that this country will not be worth living in, if they do not take extreme measures to reverse the way things are going. They also have a lot of initiative because a major section of the ruling class is made up of fascists, who dominate very important institutions, including the Supreme Court, and they are also willing to act outside of the “normal procedures” of this system and mobilize violent fanatics to achieve their goals.

At the same time, among the majority of people who are opposed to this fascism, too many are still going along with “the way things have always been,” clinging to the hope that “somehow things will work out as they always have”—while many are also weighed down by the belief that nothing can be done to change the very negative direction of things. The Democratic Party is deathly afraid of mobilizing masses of people in the way that would be necessary to decisively defeat the fascists, because the Democrats fear that this could lead to things “getting all out of control,” threatening their whole system.

This is where the forces for revolution come in: bringing out sharply the reality of what is happening, and why, and bringing alive the only positive solution to all this; acting, urgently and decisively, to change the whole alignment, the whole “polarization” in society—rapidly repolarizing things in a way that is increasingly favorable for revolution—winning masses of people, from every part of society, to break with this whole system and come over to the side of the revolution.

The forces for revolution must come to the fore in the fight against the fascists—and do so not with the aim of preserving, or restoring, the “democratic” form of this murderously oppressive system of capitalism-imperialism, but with the strategic goal of bringing down this whole system, and bringing something much better into being.

This is a fateful year... a crossroads for humanity. Work with and join the Revcom Corps for the Emancipation of Humanity to bring that much better world into being.