The future of the armed forces—and the future that the fascists are preparing for—came into sharp relief in two incidents last week: the taking down of a poster, and the “takedown” of two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The armed forces of this system are a tool of this system of capitalism-imperialism—and as such, responsible for horror after horror, over hundreds of years, including genocidal assaults against whole peoples.  But their transformation into an outright instrument of this fascist section of the ruling class—with its program of utterly unrestrained white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia and enforced ignorance, and its gutting of even the most basic rights and the rule of law —would make things far worse for the masses of people.  At the same time, there are ways that these changes could destabilize these crucial instruments of the system, in the event that millions take to the streets against this fascism.

There Is No Place for a Freedom Fighter in Trump’s America

Harriet Tubman is one of the great people of U.S. history. She freed herself from slavery, running away from her plantation and risking death, rather than go on living enslaved.

But she did more. She went back into slave country 13 more times to free about 70 more slaves—again risking re-enslavement, torture and death every time she did so. She spoke out against slavery constantly, and she lent political and moral support to John Brown, who daringly led a raid on the U.S. armory at Harpers Ferry in a failed but heroic attempt to seize guns for enslaved people and spark a war to smash slavery forever. ¹

But when Jennifer Hegseth, the wife of Secretary of Defense Pete “Pig-of-Death” Hegseth visited a U.S. military base in Germany, cowardly officials at the base scampered to take down posters of Harriet Tubman up for Black History Month, as part of their campaign against “DEI” (“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”) Trump and his fascist flunkies like Pete Hegseth have been using attacks on “DEI”—by which they mean any and all attempts to reform the blatant segregation, brutal discrimination, exclusion and erasure of oppressed people that ran through every corner of U.S. life until 75 years ago—to restore that overt racism and far worse. So down comes the heroic antislavery warrior Harriet Tubman. This came just days after Hegseth changed the name of a major U.S. Army base from “Fort Liberty” back to “Fort Bragg,” (originally named after the brutal Confederate general Braxton Bragg). 

Preparing an Instrument of Open White Supremacy

But let’s take it out of the realm of Harriet Tubman and history. On Friday night of the same week, Trump fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown, Jr. who is—guess what?—Black. Trump gave no reason for firing Brown, but according to the New York Times, “Trump advisers point to a video that General Brown recorded in the furious days after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020.” You can (and should) watch the video right below. This video is not Harriet Tubman summoning people to freedom; this is someone serving in the repressive arm of the state soberly and honestly reflecting on the constant discrimination he has been subject to throughout his life and career. 

But even this, in the words of the Times, “electrified the military rank and file.” And clearly, with armed forces in which 43 percent of those serving are people of color, that was too much for Trump. Not satisfied with that, Trump also fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy (the percentage of women in the military is 17.5 percent) and General James Slife, the vice chief of staff of the Air Force, who urged airmen to think about institutional racism after George Floyd’s murder. (Slife is white.)

Brown was replaced by retired three-star general John Daniel Caine.  Caine’s principal distinction and qualification seems to be that—at least according to the notoriously mendacious (lying) and egomaniacal Trump—Caine once told Trump that "I love you, sir, I think you're great, sir, I'll kill for you sir."² 

The Trump-Hegseth duo was not done. Hegseth then fired each top lawyer in the Army, Navy and Air Force so that he could bring in people who would be more lenient on war crimes. (Even as war crimes within the armed forces routinely go unpunished, for Hegseth even the small percentage that do get tried is too much.)

Again, the armed forces of this system have carried out towering crimes in defending the core interests of capitalism-imperialism.  But the intent in these moves by Trump should be clear: the transformation of the armed forces into a qualitatively more white supremacist, misogynist, anti-gay, unhindered, and—above all—loyal-to-Trump force.

It Can Be a Two-Way Street… IF

But there’s another part to this story.  On February 11, while Hegseth was visiting the Patch military barracks in Stuttgart, Germany, around 55 kids at Patch Middle School walked out of classes and protested on the campus for about an hour. This protest was organized by a 13-year-old girl who (according to the Washington Post) “decided to act after seeing how Trump’s executive orders would target diversity events, including a drama club performance that celebrated Black History Month with Motown songs… [and] … also were concerned with how the Trump administration’s directives would affect people in the LGBTQ+ community.” 

She described how exhilarating it was to take this step: “There was this great sense of community and belonging. Like we’re not alone, because so many kids came out.” And separately, a group of adults got within earshot of Hegseth’s delegation, booing and chanting “DEI!” Also notable is that the Patch Middle School administrators sent out a letter upholding their students’ right to speak out and protest.

The question is not whether there are people who hate this fascism and will even resist it. The resistance right on the base itself is significant, and inspiring. The question before us is whether the resistance to this fascism throughout society can grow fast enough and wide enough to actually break Trump’s hold on power, and drive him out. It will take thousands right now taking the step that this 13-year-old did, but if she could stick her neck out on an army base, so can you! 

A movement of millions in the street, refusing to back down from the righteous stand that “we refuse to accept a fascist America” can powerfully impact every institution of society. Go back to C.Q. Brown—what compelled him to make the video that ultimately led to his downfall? What, for that matter, compelled Mark Milley, the head of the Joint Chiefs at the time, to publicly apologize for his shameful participation in Trump’s stunt of marching to a church to denounce the protesters—and what led him and the defense secretary at the time to argue strenuously against Trump’s desire to use the army to repress the demonstrations? Why did some other generals at the same time strenuously argue for army neutrality and in so doing hearken back to the days of the Vietnam War, when social divisions over the war and racism made the army an unreliable fighting force (go here to hear Bob Avakian’s description of this process in his recent interview)?

They felt compelled because millions were in the streets for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, day after day, raising big questions about the whole history of this country. People like Milley worried that wielding the army in a political dispute could split the armed forces, and seriously impact the overall stability and legitimacy of their system. This not only reflected the sharp divide reaching way up into the ruling institutions at the time; it gives a sense of how millions acting in determined, sustained protest against fascism itself could have even more powerful reverberations in every major institution.³

This is also one part of why Trump is moving so quickly to “whiten and masculinize” the top ranks and the officer corps as a whole. It is not just insane but very dangerous to rely on the “normal” mechanisms this system provides when Trump is defying them, shredding them and/or radically remaking them before our very eyes. The rapid-fire changes in the past week drive home the need for those who oppose this to respond with speed, determination and courage. There are people who can be reached… but the time really is NOW.