For over two weeks, Trump’s face-masked fascist goon squads have terrorized the immigrant and Latino communities of Los Angeles. All over LA, the same scene: thugs in masks and heavy body armor, often brandishing big weapons, and with nothing but the word “POLICE” on their chest for identification, roll into an area. They see a guy getting in a pickup truck with gardening equipment or they find a woman selling food at a card table and they grab them up—ordinary working people, arrested for the crime of trying to feed their family. Often these stormtroopers don’t even allow people their legally guaranteed right to a phone call to a loved one or a lawyer. Hundreds and maybe thousands have been taken like this—nobody really knows, because these ICE thugs operate as they see fit.

This is way beyond any weak notion of “creeping fascism”—this is “leaping fascism,” right in Los Angeles and coming soon to a city near you. This is NAZI shit—right down to the stormtrooper get-ups and the masks, the snarls and the whines about “being disrespected.”  

And these frontline fascists have backup—nearly 5,000 National Guard and Marines, sent by Trump over the protests of the governor of California and mayor of Los Angeles.

But there are two sides to this battle, and the righteous side—the one on the side of the slandered and unjustly persecuted—is growing in strength. People are resisting. Through networks of self-defense and community groups, through viral videos taken by bystanders, people hear about this and gather and shout, protest and raise a ruckus. This doesn’t stop the fascists, but it lets them know they’re hated and it slows them down. This resistance has to be supported and multiplied. Take a look at these to get a sense of what we mean. 

There is a contagion of resistance—one now spreading far beyond those in the videos to many ordinary people.

Vicious Attacks on Ruling Class Rivals

You get a sense of what is doled out to ordinary immigrants, or to bystanders who might object or raise a question, when you see footage like this of New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander. In this video, ICE agents rough him up while arresting him for accompanying an immigrant after his hearing out of the building, before ICE swooped down to take them both. (Lander got released after four hours, but as we write the immigrant Lander accompanied—whom he knew as “Edgardo”—has “disappeared into the system.”) 

Even more ominous are the continuing attacks on California Senator Alex Padilla. Padilla had attempted to ask a question of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and for this “crime” he was wrestled to the floor, put face down, handcuffed, and frog-marched out of the press conference. Again, classic fascism. Listen to Padilla himself draw the connection.

Then it went from bad to worse. Vice-President J.D. “the professional hillbilly” Vance came out and, while criticizing Padilla for “political theater,” acted as if he couldn’t remember Alex Padilla’s first name, and called him “Jose” Padilla. Jose Padilla is the name of someone who had been convicted of aiding and abetting terrorism back in the days of George W. Bush. When a reporter asked Vance’s spokesperson about how Vance could confuse Alex Padilla’s name when they had served together in the Senate, the press spokesperson said that Vance “must have mixed up two people who broke the law.” This equates Padilla’s attempt to question Noem with terrorism! To say the least, there’s a strong whiff of an intentional setup in all this and a very dangerous equation of asking a question with terrorism.

As we have pointed out before, if they will do this kind of thing to a member of the ruling class for merely attempting to defend the rule of law or raise questions to a fascist, what will they do—no, what are they doing—to ordinary people? 

There is a further important dimension to this: the chances to actually stop fascism and remove a fascist regime are far, far better if there is a mass movement from below (as we are beginning to see in a different way in Los Angeles right now) and splits within the system’s institutions of rule (as we are also seeing in California).

The intensely sharpening situation in California—and the threat by ICE to “take this show on the road’ to Chicago and New York—underscores these points from Bob Avakian’s recent social media message REVOLUTION #124, "Donald Trump’s whole fascist regime is caught in a contradiction of its own making: his continual Big Lies:"

The Big Lies about immigrants, and the brutal, lawless actions carried out on the basis of these Big Lies, is a front line assault and battering ram in this regime’s move to consolidate its fascist rule. At the same time, acting on these Big Lies—viciously going after immigrants who are not violent criminals—is causing big trouble for the Trump regime: Masses of ordinary people, including large numbers of people who are not immigrants but do believe in basic rights and treating people fairly and decently, have been outraged by these attacks on immigrants and have mobilized in protest against this—as part of the continuing huge protests and resistance overall against the many-sided outrages continually perpetrated by this fascist regime and its ongoing lawless tyranny.

Enough is enough—in fact, things have already gone way too far, and if this fascism is not defeated and removed from power soon, it really will become too late.

The time is upon us: There must now be a major, qualitative ramping up of relentless resistance against this fascist regime, becoming even more massive and sustained—mobilizing millions and millions of people—moving non-violently but with fierce determination around the the crucial unifying demand that Trump and his fascist regime must go—NOW: aiming for nothing less than bringing the functioning of this fascist regime to a halt and creating the conditions where it is removed from power.