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 A Guide to This Issue of Revolution

What You Need to Know and Engage This Week
About the World and Revolution: In This Issue
July 4, 2022

TO THOSE READERS, NEW AND OLD, OUTRAGED BY THE FASCIST COURT AND COMING HERE TO FIND OUT ABOUT THE REVOLUTION

This IS the website—along with The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube—that is devoted to making an emancipating, real revolution, right in the heart of this capitalist-imperialist, oppressive system. And now—in this very heavy week—is the time for you to get into this. What follows is a guide to the times, and to what this website has to say about them.

The Fascist Assault on the Rule of Law and Human Decency

These past two weeks have seen change at a breakneck pace prominently including:

  • The cluster of reactionary Supreme Court decisions that have hit with earthquake-like shock. These include the brutally misogynist and enslaving reversal of Roe v. Wade, the case that guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion… but others as well that get to very basic questions about how we are going to live… 2022 Session of Supreme Court: An Ugly Wave of Fascist Rulings… an Ominous Foreshadowing of Even Worse to Come and Fascist U.S. Supreme Court to Planet Earth: DROP DEAD!
  • The hearings of the January 6 committee, which reveal just how close things came to a successful and far bloodier straight-up fascist coup in January 2021, very consciously engineered by Trump himself, have raised the question of whether and when Trump himself will be criminally arraigned, and what will happen if the Justice Department just sweeps this under the rug… or if it actually indicts… and in either case, how the threat of a fascist takeover remains a “clear and present danger.”

All of this was not just a preview of, but a further headlong descent into, the “something terrible” in the title of Bob Avakian’s seminal talk, Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed. A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution. All this taken together sent an unmistakable message: that the fascists have radically changed the rules of how things will be run, going toward an even more highly repressive, theocratic, racist, woman-destroying, and American chauvinist form of rule; and that there is an armed wing of these fascists willing to—itching to—take up arms to enforce that and drive it further.

The Response

Here is an important point from “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating” that relates to this:

Every day, and in a thousand ways, the reality screams out that there is no living together with this fascist lunacy—and no one should want to! There is no way that any decent person should want to live in the society, and world, that these fascists are determined, that they are willing to kill, to bring into being….

And as the “the normal way” society has been ruled is failing to hold things together—and society is increasingly being ripped apart—this can shake people’s belief that “the way things have always been” is the only way things can be. It can make people more open to questioning—in a real sense it can force people to question—the way things have been, and whether they have to stay that way. And this is all the more likely to happen if the revolutionary forces are out among the people shining a light on the deeper reality of what is happening, and why, and bringing out that there IS an alternative to living this way.

We began to see this as well. Who can deny the waves of shock, angst and anger that swept through people—especially women—on June 24, the day that Roe was reversed, and in the days since? Those days have seen people come into the streets, many for the first time. Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, which stood virtually alone in leading resistance to this going into the decision, has continued to be at the forefront of this, setting terms (even as other forces which had previously held back have now also mounted demonstrations, and—very importantly—brand new people have organized actions as well, in all kinds of places). We report on the past week of demonstrations here.

At the same time, however, some forces launched totally false and extremely vicious attacks against not only Rise Up, but the revcoms Sunsara Taylor and Bob Avakian on the very day after the decision came down, at a time when Rise Up was mobilizing people in the streets. While these forces claim to be so-called “grassroots pro-choice activists,” what kind of “pro-choice” group would launch a slanderous assault on the group that had been standing at the forefront? What kind of “pro-choice” group would use slander and hysteria to try to wreck Rise Up and prevent them from acting? Go here to see Rise Up’s response to this attack, and here to read a letter from Rise Up leaders in Austin, Texas, on how they not only took on these haters but led a demonstration this past Saturday of over 1,000 people. And go here to see other actions this weekend, by Rise Up and others, against the overturning of Roe.

The unconscionable attacks have been provoked, at least in significant part, by what was accomplished particularly by Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights in this immediate period, and the way this objectively exposed these opportunists for what they are (and are not) and threatened their position as “woke” appropriators of people’s outrage at injustice. But for some it was something even more sinister, as can be seen in the obsessive and slanderous attacks on Bob Avakian, or BA.  

Indeed, BA is the principal target of these attacks and is treated in terms that are utterly false and have the stink of COINTELPRO (an infamous FBI program to destroy revolutionary movements in the 1960s—go here for an article outlining that history). In Haters Who “Don’t Want to Hear About BA” Are Telling on Themselves and in the statement from the revcoms refuting these attacks (A Reply to the “Statement Against RiseUp4AbortionRights”: In Defense of the Emancipation of Humanity and the Leadership We Need to Get There), we get into why BA’s leadership and the work he has brought forward is so essential.

This huge turmoil among many people about how they see the future—combined with the certainty that more of what people took for granted as to “how things are” will be coming under sharp fire… along with the huge and irreconcilable divisions among those contending to rule this country and the ways in which “the normal mode of functioning” is coming apart… are what make revolution in this country much more possible than it has been for generations.

Preventing that revolution from taking root—preventing people from engaging BA, and even worse—is one deeper, strategic, and very dangerous aim of some of the key forces behind these attacks.

What Is to Be Done—NOW?

In this situation—with the fascist offensive, the widespread anger, the ongoing resistance, and the counterrevolutionary attacks on those who had been at the forefront or helping give leadership to that resistance—it is more important than ever that everyone reading this get out there, now. For the revcoms, get out there with your full revolutionary understanding. For new people, run with the revcoms if you can and if you cannot, take materials from this page of our website and go out to where people are. As part of this, support and turn out for the calls by Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights as they continue to wage this battle.

People will resist this. For most, it goes against what they’ve been conditioned to believe and aspire to, and it poses a hard road. But it’s the road we have to travel if we want to get free. In that regard, this excerpt from a recently posted letter from a reader is crucial:

To put it simply: We have zero chance of bringing forward millions of people to make revolution without massively and radically transforming the thinking of the people.

And we have zero chance of massively and radically changing the thinking of the people without fierce, uncompromising ideological struggle to wrench people out of all of the bullshit—and there is a lot of it!—that they are caught up in and winning them to revolution.

We have something very precious here—we have the leadership at a time which cries out for revolutionary leadership like never before… use Haters Who “Don’t Want to Hear About BA” Are Telling on Themselves as well as A Reply to the “Statement Against RiseUp4AbortionRights”: In Defense of the Emancipation of Humanity and the Leadership We Need to Get There to bring to them the truth of about this leadership and how incredibly positive this is for the people. We have the strategy brought forward by that leadership, not only in “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating,” but now in Organizing for an Actual Revolution: 7 Key Points, that concentrates the strategic approach to making this revolution into a concise presentation. These 7 Key Points need to get far and wide, letting people know that revolution is possible in these times and that there IS a strategy that can win… yes, even in America. We have the RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube, which brings you a dynamic presentation every week of why we need a revolution, what this revolution is all about, and the goals of this revolution.

Especially on July 4, use this segment from The RNL Show with people and use this poster, which goes to the nature of this country. The horrors people are waking up to run deep in the guts of this country. They go all the way back to the founding of this country: it is not just that there is something wrong in this country, there is something wrong with this country. But with the rise of the fascist movement and its increasingly anaconda-like grip on society, we are on track to see a whole other level of reactionary violence. Unless… unless… there is a revolutionary force that comes forward to challenge this and provide a way out of this madness. For it is in just such times as now that revolutions can be made.

Many in recent weeks—and especially in recent days—have noted that this country is polarized in a way it has not been since the Civil War, 160 years ago. This is true—but the polarization right now is very bad for the people, for decency, for justice, or for respect for the truth. And the times are moving very quickly… A leading revcom recently observed that, “The core of the fascist social base is ready (is itching) to be the army of ‘the new Confederacy’ in a new Civil War—but where are the people on the other side of this divide at now?!” We need to repolarize all this—for an emancipating revolution—and we need to urgently move to accomplish this.

Get into these articles. Spread them on social media. And take these materials out “in real life.”

Included in this issue:

* SOMETHING TERRIBLE, OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Urgent Revolution That Is Needed. A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution, by Bob Avakian

* Organizing for an Actual Revolution: 7 Key Points

* On why BA’s work and leadership is so essential—vs. the “woke”attacks

* The Fight for Abortion Rights

* July 4

* In The 1960s, The Government Spread Lies to Foment Violent Conflict Within the Movement. These Lessons Need to Be Taken on Board Today

* 2022 Session of Supreme Court: An Ugly Wave of Fascist Rulings… an Ominous Foreshadowing of Even Worse to Come

* Fascist U.S. Supreme Court to Planet Earth: DROP DEAD!

* San Antonio: 53 Immigrants Suffocate in Back of Trailer: The System of Capitalism-Imperialism—GUILTY of Murder!

* What IS The Position Of the Revcoms On LGBTQ Rights? If You Are Ready And Eager To Read The Truth Rather Than Opportunist Lies and Inventions, Read These

* From International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners Now:
Iran: Surge of Executions and Repression Amidst a Surge in Massive Protests

* Announcing the revcom.us Summer Fund Drive: Your financial support for revcom.us can literally make a world of difference

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We are at a turning point in history. The capitalist-imperialist system is a horror for billions of people here and around the world and threatening the very fabric of life on earth. Now the election of fascist Trump poses even more extreme dangers for humanity—and underscores the total illegitimacy of this system, and the urgent need for a radically different system.

The website Revcom.us follows the revolutionary leadership of Bob Avakian (BA), the author of the new communism. Bob Avakian has scientifically analyzed that we are in a rare time when an actual revolution has become more possible in the U.S. He’s charted a strategy for making that revolution, and laid out a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for “what comes next” in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

Revcom.us projects BA’s voice, leadership, and vision throughout society. It posts his timely leadership for the revcoms (revolutionary communists) and the whole movement for revolution, including his social media posts, and curates his whole body of work. 

Our website applies the scientific approach BA has developed to analyze major events in society and the world—why they are happening, how they relate to each other, how all this relates to the system we live under, where people's interests lie, how revolution is in fact the solution to all this, and what the goals of that revolution are.

Revcom.us acts as a guiding and connecting hub for the revcom movement nationwide: showing what’s being done, digging into what’s right and what’s wrong, and rapidly learning—and recruiting new people into what has to be a rapidly growing force. As part of this, revcom.us feature and promotes the weekly The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube.com. 

Put it this way: there will be no revolution unless this website not only “keeps going” but rises to a whole different level!

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