Last week, we wrote about the importance of the April 5 protests, and the need to connect people with the scientific understanding of what we're facing, why and what's needed that is being provided by Bob Avakian, the revolutionary leader who has brought forward the new communism. We want to share below an initial report from a team of revcoms in one city who focused on distributing the new pamphlet produced by The Bob Avakian Institute: TRUMP/MAGA FASCISM: What We’re Really Facing, Why and What Must Be Done to Defeat It Before It’s Too Late.

This pamphlet is an urgently needed resource. Over the next two weeks, we encourage everyone to put a focus on distributing this pamphlet. Reach out to people wherever they're gathered: at concerts, art shows, protests, to Sunday brunch crowds and beyond. Donate and raise funds for the National Campaign to Get @BobAvakianOfficial Everywhere. And do so while pulling people together to watch and discuss the important message: 2025: A New Year—Profound New Challenges—And a Profoundly Positive Way Forward in the Face of Very Real Horror and The Bob Avakian Interviews, 2025: Humanity Does Not Have to Live This Way.

As we wrote last week:

What people understand—about what we are facing, and why—will shape how they respond. What they think is needed will shape what they do, and do not do. And ultimately, whether humanity will win this round.

This is why it's so important that Bob Avakian, the revolutionary leader who has brought forward the new communism, is providing real-time clarity and strategic leadership to equip people for the fight ahead.

From a team of revcoms: 

In two teams of two, we focused on reaching as many people as we could with the new pamphlet of new social media messages with a focus on Trump MAGA fascism, along with his seminal New Year's message. Together, we distributed over 150 pamphlets and raised over $350 for The Bob Avakian Institute to cover printing and to contribute to their mission.

This was a crowd of many, many thousands who were angry and deeply agonized. They were glad to be there, and had a lot of questions about what the next steps ought to be. This was disproportionately people above 40 with many from the '60s generation, who hadn't protested since then. And then, lots of people in their 20s and 30s who see the extreme danger of what this regime could mean for the future and the planet. People put a lot of energy into their homemade signs—expressing their worry, shock and fury, to make people think and laugh.

We approached people with the pamphlet—showing it to people and putting it into their hands. We explained briefly that this was a new pamphlet from the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian and it’s a donation of $2, $3, or $5 or more. 

A lot of people got the pamphlet because they really wanted to know the answer to the title: what the fuck are we facing, why, and is it really possible to defeat it? One person on our team said this question—of how to defeat fascism before it's too late—was sort of a "show stopper" with people responding, "yes that is my question, how do we do that?!" 

We opened the pamphlet to the Table of Contents and showed them the questions that BA is speaking to, zeroing in on the analogy to Germany under Hitler. Most people agreed with the analogy, but hadn't really thought through the essential lesson, that the consolidation of the Hitler regime “laid the basis” for the horrors to follow, and the crucial lesson is the Trump regime must be PREVENTED from consolidating.

We would also point to the urgent need to really understand what we're facing: that this is fascism, and what that is. We opened the pamphlets to pages 8 and 9 with the text of REVOLUTION #114, which defines what fascism is. We had a lot of discussion with people about how the essence of what we're facing with Trump is not the "oligarchy or billionaires." This was clearly a contrast people hadn't thought through and many were appreciative of the difference in understanding. Some would argue, "but isn't it both?" But even still, they could see the problem of trying to win over the fascists based on their "economic grievance." One guy responded, "yeah, that's true, these fascists really do hate women..." He sort of paused, and added, "and Black people... and immigrants." One woman was wearing a Handmaid's Tale costume which she said she made in 2016 and was so angry that she kept having to pull it out of the closet for these protests. She said, "yeah, ok, but it's complicated" and walked through different aspects of the fascist coalition. The person on our team who was talking to her agreed with this, but then said, "ok what gets more to the essence vs cover over the essence," fascism or oligarchy. And with clear eyes, she said, "yeah, ok, fascism because if you think it's just oligarchy you won't get the Christian nationalism or the appeal of Trump who pulls it all together." 

One guy had a sign with a picture of Trump and Musk that just said, "stop the rich and greedy." Someone on our team approached him and said, "Hey I appreciate your sign, but Trump and Musk aren't mainly driven by greed, this is about fascism." We had a brief discussion of this, and he said: "Wow, I never thought of it that way." He wanted the pamphlet so that, in his words, "I can understand what I don't know." Another guy who got the pamphlet said, "Wow, I just came to raise my voice and take pictures, I didn't think I'd learn so much."

There were others who appreciated what we were saying about fascism, but then also saw the bigger problem of a system of billionaires controlling things which opened up a bigger discussion of what capitalism is. One woman got the pamphlet because she wanted to know about the potential for system change. Someone else got it because he wanted to understand why capitalism gave rise to this fascism. 

A lot of people "felt" what we were saying about what was needed, but for those who wanted to get more concrete, we opened up the pamphlet to this from REVOLUTION #112:

Before Trump’s fascist rule can become fully consolidated and carry out even far worse horrors than what it is already perpetrating, it must be defeated through powerful mass mobilization—overcoming all “divide and conquer” schemes, uniting all who can be united, from many different viewpoints and perspectives, in actively opposing, defying and resisting this fascism, in continually growing numbers—moving to quickly involve millions, determined to create such a profound political crisis that Trump cannot govern the country and continue to implement his fascist program, with all its terrible consequences.

There were a lot of people who were curious about hearing from a revolutionary communist in this situation, and many who wanted to know more about the new communism. Here, we pointed people to the info in the back about who BA is and encouraged them to watch the Interviews with him that were done earlier this year.

An important point of discussion with people about why they should get this pamphlet had to do with the importance of "how people think." There was a section of people we talked to who were already agonized about this—grappling with the problem of American ignorance, passivity and individualism. Someone on our team was talking with an Asian guy who had been active in the 1960s, and knew a lot about the history of Nazi Germany. He agreed with the need for people to understand what fascism really is, but raised the problem in our culture, that “people just skate along the surface.” He said that for some people who are older, "the Holocaust wasn’t that long before the '60s, and the understanding of what this meant is in our bones, but generations that have come after just don’t know." We appreciated that he was raising these problems—but these are problems we need to go to work on. And we came back to the work BA is doing, and why this needs to be engaged to help break through the very problems he's pointing to—especially now. While its true people “skate along the surface” and are too often “superficial” in their method of thinking, this situation is forcing people to re-examine assumptions and open them up to a deeper approach and method to scientifically understand and radically transform the world. 

In the main, the people we encountered were not feeling that this was a "one off" protest. They were feeling the need to keep acting with an anxious searching for what is the way forward and how to stop this, and openly agonizing on whether it could be stopped. And they really wanted answers for what humanity is now confronting.

All this was not from long discussions but mainly through wielding the pamphlet itself to provoke people to want to go deeper. But you can see here—just from a few hours of being out with this, of how urgent it is to, as was said last week, "connect these answers with the questions that will be before these people, stepping forward in this crucial moment." Now this is what needs to happen everywhere.