Biden has enforced massive amounts of repression and brutality along the border, and he has already expelled far more migrants than Trump did. Yet the Republi-fascists claim the U.S. is now is being “invaded” and the border is “out of control.” In a recent letter to Biden, Greg Abbott, the Christian fascist governor of Texas, said that “chaos [at the border] is the direct result of your failure to enforce immigration laws…” and that Biden has “violated [his] constitutional obligation to defend the States against invasion.…” A fascist Congressman from Texas this week began moves to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, head of the Department of Homeland Security, for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

But if both the Democrats and the Republi-fascists agree on harsh repression as the leading edge of their “border policy,” why is this such an explosive question between them?

Immigration is one acute expression of the way divisions at the top of this society are tearing apart all of society, and of the fact that the “norms” that have cohered the U.S. for 150 years are shattering. Bob Avakian’s 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 provides valuable insight into the conflict dividing the rulers of this country into bitter opponents. In it, he notes that the fascist program centers around

“restoring” America to its mythological “greatness” on the basis of aggressive white supremacy, crude and brutal male supremacy and suppression of LGBT people, xenophobia (hatred and persecution of foreigners and immigrants, particularly from what Trump infamously referred to as “shithole countries”), forceful assertion and chauvinistic trumpeting of American dominance and “the superiority of western civilization,” along with willful rejection of science and the scientific method, especially where it would interfere with unrestrained plunder of the environment, as well as people.

Christian-fascist leaders like Abbott are building up and rallying a social base around heartless repression, racist slander and insults against immigrants, and the demonization, humiliation and criminalization of entire nationalities. They carry out nonstop tirades that immigrants are “taking your jobs, bringing in drugs that are eating at our communities, changing the country’s culture, overwhelming our border.” The fact that this whole picture is a big lie does not matter; for these lies are designed to foster a sense of aggrievement and a desire for revenge that is essential to cohering a “make America great” fascist movement.

The Democrats want to use different “legitimating norms” to consolidate support among people they regard as their “base.” On the one hand, a harsh, hostile America that beats down and throws out millions of immigrants is not the image of themselves they want to project globally. Nor is such an image useful in appealing to those millions who don’t like or even hate the blatant injustices of American society but don’t want to risk what is involved in actually eliminating those injustices: which is revolution, nothing less. So the Democrats are willing to make some paltry concessions—like allowing 30,000 people to get immigration “paroles” for two years while millions are batted away—and to use sweet-sounding phrases like “safe, orderly, and humane,” even as they are carrying out vicious repression against migrants.

But both Democrats and Republi-fascists represent the interests of the predatory system of imperialism, a system which is based on and requires massive exploitation of billions of people, and which therefore requires brutal violence to enforce it (see “Part Three: Migration and Refugees” from the interview with Bob Avakian published in spring 2022). By contrast, the interests of the great masses of people, in this country and throughout the world, are to make revolution, overthrow the imperialist system, and build revolutionary societies, on the road to communism.

The intense conflicts “at the top” are also part of what makes the time we live in a “rare time,” when the possibility for making revolution is heightened. To again quote “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating”:

And as “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.

As this contradiction sharpens, these words must be kept in mind and applied.