The Trump regime, including MAGA forces that control dozens of states, is recklessly racing to hammer into place a hideously fascist and highly repressive society. 

In the realms of art and culture, education and ideology, in the schools, universities, museums and everywhere, they are moving aggressively to make MAGA fascism and its warped view of history the required national standard.

In the realm of politics, it is “knives out.” They are wielding the massive police and prosecutorial power of the government to attack their enemies within the ruling class and among the people using the bare thinnest of pretexts about “investigating corruption” or “stopping crime in the streets.” And they are even more openly moving to rig elections.

All this can and must serve as a wake-up call alerting people to the truly existential and immediate nature of the threat. As the August 15 Call from Refuse Fascism says: 

Fascism is not a looming threat. It is upon us now. 

Humanity’s only hope is for the decent people of this country to rise in our millions. We cannot wait for future and rigged elections. We must drive the Trump Fascist Regime from power.

** MAGA Hunts Down Trump’s Ruling Class Opponents

On Friday morning (August 22), FBI agents raided the home of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, claiming they were looking for classified documents that they suspected Bolton of wrongly possessing. They hauled out many boxes of documents which can now be pored over in search of some kind of evidence of wrongdoing. Later they raided Bolton’s office as well.

Everything about this reeks of fascist retribution by Trump against one of his ruling class critics, and the regime is making little effort to hide that. So far it has offered no actual evidence that Bolton has broken any law. Vice President Vance even said that “we’re in the very early stages of an ongoing investigation,” which underscores the vindictiveness of a massive and highly public raid. 

And Trump officials have been publicly reveling in their power over Bolton. FBI chief Kash Patel tweeted: “NO ONE is above the law. @FBI agents on a mission.” His assistant Dan Bongino chimed in: “Public corruption won’t be tolerated.” And Attorney General Pam Bondi added: “America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always.” These tweets also aim to smear Bolton as a criminal and maybe a “traitor” (a threat to “America’s safety”) in the public eye, even though Vance already admitted that they know very little (“We’re in the very early stages” of investigation). And so they are also an attack on the basic principle of “innocent until proven guilty,” in favor of the Alice in Wonderland “legal principle” of “first the sentence, then the trial.”

Trump ridiculously claimed to have nothing to do with the raid, to not even know it was going to happen. But not only has he been boasting about “retribution” against his enemies for years, he has specifically targeted Bolton on numerous occasions, calling him “a lowlife.” With Trump’s Mafia-style of leadership, that was more than enough for his minions to understand that they should move on Bolton.

Bolton is himself a high-level ruling class operative who played a major role in the 2002 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq—war crimes that caused millions of deaths. And under Trump’s leadership he helped direct the killing of an Iranian military leader (and four other people) while he was in Iraq—which is also a war crime. But obviously, that is not why Trump is going after him, and nor does Bolton’s history as an imperialist operative make this raid any less ominous. In fact, in some ways it makes it more ominous.

Since leaving his post in the regime in 2019, Bolton has relentlessly mocked Trump as a fool being played by other world leaders like Russia’s Putin, and as being incapable of being president. These criticisms were largely rooted in actual differences over how the U.S. could maintain world domination, but also had a element of personal contempt. These differences go beyond Bolton and add to the weight of this move against him.

In any case, a hallmark of the fascist form of capitalist rule is that none of that is tolerable—not real policy differences, not personal disrespect, not mockery; not from the masses, but also not from ruling class rivals or even ruling class idols. Fascism overall is a system based on total obedience, and the fascist leader can wield the government’s instruments of violence and repression to crush anyone who deviates from that. 

But what is particularly involved here—what makes this very “high stakes”—is that Bolton and the ruling class forces he is tied to pose real obstacles in the way of MAGA’s massive remaking of how the system is ruled, which is at the heart of fascism. Put simply, the fascists are driven to go after their rivals in order to advance their project.

And Bolton is certainly not the only target. Trump’s Department of “Justice” had previously launched investigations of other ruling class critics that were more aligned with the Democratic Party—former CIA chief John Brennan, former FBI chief James Comey, and others. The regime has also called for prosecution of Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, all for “mortgage fraud.” Before he became FBI director, Kash Patel wrote a book titled Government Gangsters that ended by listing 60 prominent people, and later said, “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly.” 

** Texas Fascists Go Full Speed Ahead on Election Rigging, Imprisoning Opponent

Previously we wrote about the “unprecedented power grab in the state of Texas”—moves by the fascist majority in the state legislature—at Trump’s orders—to redraw congressional election maps to create five additional Republican-leaning districts. And we also wrote about the resistance of Democratic legislators, who faced down heavy fines and threats of prison by leaving the state and thus temporarily blocking the change in the maps.

Last week the Democrats returned to Texas and the fascist redistricting plan went into high gear. After the first session of the legislature attended by the Democrats, the fascist majority demanded that each Democrat give their signed “permission” to be “escorted” by a State Trooper, 24 hours a day, until the redistricting was passed. Told that if they did not sign, they would not be allowed to leave the Capitol building, most submitted to this intentionally humiliating condition and signed. 

Only one did not—Rep. Nicole Collier, a Black woman, declared, “I refuse to sign away my dignity. … I won’t just go along quietly with their intimidation or discrimination.” 

The fascists followed through. Collier was prevented from leaving the Capitol building for two days—finally being released after the Republicans had passed their redistricting bill.

Collier’s lonely stand inspired crowds of protesters to come to the building in her support—four of whom were arrested when they refused to follow police orders to leave. Several other Democrats publicly tore up their “permission slips” and some joined Collier on the floor of the legislature overnight. One of the women who was arrested posted to Instagram: “We are looking straight in the face of fascism and we cannot back down.”

The Texas battle also sparked moves by top Democrats in California to “counter” Texas with their own redistricting, which they believe will add five Democratic seats, thus in theory (assuming they can pull it off) “neutralizing” the Texas vote rigging.

What is revealed by the Texas Republicans’ fascist moves (again, at Trump’s instigation) is that they are not going to give up power through the “normal workings” of the system. It’s “knives out” in MAGA land. They are not betting everything on redistricting. Already plans are being floated to saturate Democratic areas with ICE thugs and National Guard on election day as a way to keep down the Democratic vote. 

And if somehow they still lose the election, do you really think they will peacefully accept that result and go home?

** Oklahoma Secretary of Indoctrination Testing New Teachers for MAGA Values

The Oklahoma Department of Education is implementing a new certification test for teachers coming from New York and California.¹ Superintendent Ryan Walters says it aims to prevent new teachers from “indoctrinating” kids with “woke ideology” and ideas that are “antithetical to the state's conservative political values.” But in reality, it is Walters who wants teachers to indoctrinate students in MAGA madness. Walters himself told USA TODAY that the test is an “America First” certification, referencing a core slogan of MAGA.

What does this mean? Well for one thing, Oklahoma recently changed its curriculum to mandate teaching the baseless lie that the Democratic Party stole the 2020 presidential election from Trump. This is a form of lunacy, totally disconnected from reality, and it served to both rev up and justify the bloody January 6, 2021 attempted coup. Now, “required reading” for Oklahoma youth.

“America First” education also involves covering up and/or “prettifying” the true history of the U.S.: its foundation through genocide of the Native people, the enslavement of millions of African people, and the conquest and theft of the American Southwest from Mexico. These things—which formed the historic foundation of America’s present wealth and power—are either denied or treated as a historical “blip” that has nothing to do with the present… which is also a way to deny the brutal oppression that continues in new forms. Or as the head of PragerU (which is partnering with Oklahoma on reshaping the schools) put it: “It’s the old-fashioned approach of, we’re not going to create angry kids. We don’t teach ingratitude. We think you’re lucky to be an American.” (For more on this see section below on PragerU.)

On top of all this, Walters’ promotion of “Oklahoma values” also means pushing fundamentalist Christianity in the classroom, in direct and radical defiance of the U.S. Constitution.² Last year, he issued a memo that “every teacher and every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom. And will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom.” The Bible’s Ten Commandments were also added to the new curriculum. 

Both these moves are currently being contested in the courts and in the state legislature and are not fully in effect. Funding for the Bible in every classroom project was turned down in the legislature but many schools are using donated Bibles instead. And a new bill to post the Ten Commandments has been introduced, using the “logic” that “The Ten Commandments is one of our founding documents.” (It isn’t!) The bill’s sponsor believes that recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings hacking away at the separation of church and state have created a better basis for his bill to succeed. 

PragerU and the National Dimension 

What happens in Oklahoma is not a one-off, it is more like a pilot program for dozens of MAGA-dominated U.S. states. 

This test was developed by PragerU (founded by David Prager). PragerU is not a university; it is a national source for spreading MAGA and Christian fascist ideology, using short videos narrated by pro-MAGA influencers. PragerU for Kids YouTube channel includes a video depicting a cartoon Christopher Columbus saying "slavery is as old as time," and “being a slave was better than being killed.” Another describes George Floyd as a “Black man who resisted arrest.”

There are already at least nine states that have agreements to work with PragerU (including Louisiana, New Hampshire, Montana, Arizona, Oklahoma, Florida, Texas, Idaho, and Alaska). So what is happening in Oklahoma is not just some backwater tragedy, it is the shape of things to come if these fascists are not driven from power.

*** 

This fascist juggernaut must be STOPPED through the historic nonviolent but determined uprising of millions in DC, beginning November 5 (the one year anniversary of Trump's election) aimed at driving the Trump fascist regime from power!