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During my now 65 years as a political activist, I have witnessed many things, three of which I want to single out as being of lasting significance. My appreciation of each of them today comes not so much from my “having been there,” but from an understanding of their significance gained over time, with the help and input of many comrades and friends.

1. THE SIXTIES

There is a mistaken impression that “the sixties” was an American phenomenon. What we now call “the sixties,” was actually a global upsurge of resistance and revolution extending from the late fifties through the mid-seventies. It embraced both rebellions in the advanced capitalist countries as well as socialist and anti-colonial revolutions in the Third World. 1968 alone was a year of global rebellion much like 1848. It saw the student-worker revolt in France, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the explosion of the Cultural Revolution in China, the massacre of student demonstrators in Mexico, the popular resistance to the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the birth of the Palestinian resistance at the battle of Karameh, the Naxalite rebellion in India, martial law declared in Uruguay in response to the Tupamaros, as well as the urban uprisings in the U.S. following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the growth of the Black Panther Party. (See my chronology of 1968 posted on www.dissident.info.)

What is important to take away from the particular experience in the U.S. is what a growing revolutionary situation can look like. It is commonplace for people who were not there, or for people who were there but have been “recouped” by the ruling class, to sneer at how foolish people must have been to think that there could have been a revolution. Really? Let's take a look.

The first ingredient of a revolutionary situation is a severe crisis in the ruling class that causes it to split and not be able to rule in the old ways. Such a political crisis does not necessarily arise from an economic crisis. In fact, the period of so much intense upsurge in the sixties, during which the ruling class was very much thrown on the defensive politically, coincided with the peak economic power of the U.S. globally.

What did happen was that masses of people threw off their superstitious awe of the state and seized the political initiative away from the ruling class. People labeled the police as pigs. Soldiers in Vietnam refused to obey orders and rolled hand grenades into the tents of officers who were too gung-ho. Students burned down dozens of ROTC buildings. Women flat-out rejected the institutions of patriarchy. There were massive urban revolts in the U.S. and a growing Black liberation movement. The state had lost legitimacy in the eyes of millions.

One result was a furious debate within the ruling class over how to handle the situation and regain control. Should there be a repressive clamp-down or should people be bought off with temporary concessions? The intensity of the struggle eventually led to a situation where both the president and vice president were forced to resign and the country had a president and a vice president who were appointed, not elected. That's what a crisis in the ruling class can look like. (For light entertainment, I recommend people read former Vice President Spiro Agnew's memoir Go Quietly... or Else.)

The second requirement of a revolutionary situation is a revolutionary-minded people. They don’t have to be a majority, but they do have to be a significant force. In the ’60s there was a great awakening to the reality that the “American Dream” was actually an American nightmare for so many people here and around the world. While there was no deep understanding of what an actual revolution would require, literally millions of people came to believe that the existing system was hopelessly flawed and what was required was a “revolution.” Far from being a social stigma, there was a great deal of approbation for people who called themselves revolutionaries.

People also began to act on their new self-identity. It was immoral to remain a passive observer. Demonstrations in Washington became so militant that the Nixon administration took to surrounding the White House with a wall of buses for fear that people would storm the seat of executive power. The call to shut Washington down in May of 1971 resulted in such an outpouring that the Army was called in to defend the capital and over 12,000 people were arrested—the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.

But while we at least had a start on the first two requirements of a revolutionary situation, what we did not have was the third ingredient: a revolutionary party with the determination, the understanding, the plan, the leadership, the organization among the people, and the program for a post-revolutionary society that could both galvanize and lead a successful seizure of power. Even the most advanced force in that time, the Black Panther Party, never sat down and seriously addressed the question of what it would take to actually overthrow the state and lead a new revolutionary society.

2. THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Few people today are familiar with even the outlines of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), and it is probably the single most lied about event in world history. It was an amazing ten-year mass upsurge in China led by Mao Zedong to break the power of the entrenched revisionist “communists” who wanted to follow the path of the Soviet Union, a path that would—and ultimately did—lead to the restoration of capitalism. 

It was my privilege to have visited China twice during the latter half of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. As with the sixties, my understanding of what happened in this momentous world event comes more from study after the fact and from the insights of others, than from my own personal observations. That said, it was still amazing to see with my own eyes!

While books and films on the GPCR correctly focus on the demonstrations, mass meetings and “big character posters” that were at the heart of the struggle for power, one aspect of the GPCR that is little recognized is that it produced the most massive political education program in human history. At each point, the entire country was mobilized to read and discuss the same major theoretical work. When I was there in 1972, people were studying Anti-Dühring by Engels and in 1975 it was Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program. At one point I kind of naively asked if they really had enough copies of Anti-Dühring for everyone to read. I was told in a rather matter-of-fact way that the state publishing house had just run off another 50 million copies. Now that's taking study seriously!

Another often forgotten aspect of the GPCR that impressed me so much were the “socialist new things.” I wrote about these at the time. These were experiments from below in forging new social and economic relations at a local level that presaged what a future communist society might look like. There were places where local communities consciously turned what had been commodities into social services. The use of these services was no longer linked to or exchanged for money earned by the recipients of those services. People used what they needed and contributed to the common weal in other ways. 

In 1972, I visited a small village near the Daqing oil field in Manchuria. In this village, the women all worked—but in different sectors of the socialist economy. Some women worked in the fields as part of the local agricultural commune. They were paid mostly “in kind” from the crops. Some other women worked in a small local co-op factory that manufactured tacks. These women were paid from the money received from selling their tacks to the state. Finally, some women had jobs in the oil field and were paid cash wages directly by the state.

The interesting fact here is that all the women worked hard, yet they received quite different incomes that were based on the differing economic productivity of their labor. The women who worked in the fields had the lowest income. The women from the tack factory were in the middle. The women who worked in the oil field made the most, because the productivity of the state-owned oil field was the highest.

The women in the village were all involved in studying Marx and they were wrestling with a theoretical question: They understood why some of them made more money than others. But did it have to stay this way? They didn’t think so. So, they decided to pool their incomes from the three different sources and divide the money more evenly. This was a startling break with the laws of exchange in a market-based economy. It was, in fact, revolutionary! It was a step toward communism, made by people consciously breaking with the concepts of “cash value” and private ownership as natural and inevitable.

In the end, the socialist transition to communism was defeated in both the Soviet Union and in China; capitalism was restored. “Living labor” was once again subordinated to “dead labor” (capital as accumulated labor). The slogan “Serve the People” was replaced with the slogan “To get rich is glorious.” The great lessons learned under the leadership of Mao were that the revolutionary seizure of power is only the beginning, not the final goal, and that you cannot “produce your way to communism” by increasing the level of material abundance. The period of socialist transition is much more characterized by intense class struggle over changing economic and social relations that requires a leading core that is consciously striving for a classless society. 

3. THE BIRTH OF THE NEW COMMUNISM OF BOB AVAKIAN

The most important and lasting thing to come from the sixties is the new communism of Bob Avakian. Avakian is the architect of a new framework for human emancipation and is, without question, the Karl Marx of our time.

The defeat of socialism in the Soviet Union and China presented a big issue to “sixties people.” But Avakian refused to accept the triumphalist conclusions of the propagandists for capitalism. He has now spent over 50 years investigating what actually happened and has upheld the tremendous achievements of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. But he then dug into not only what was done right, but why mistakes (some of them quite grave) were made. With what method and approach did the leaders of these revolutionary societies address the freedoms and necessities they confronted? And how might we today do it differently and far better?

I will try to lay out what I see as some of Avakian’s important conclusions and insights, but no one should take my observations as “authoritative” and they certainly do not replace the need to actually read Avakian’s basic works.

What Avakian highlights is the failure to be thoroughly scientific; scientific meaning to bring one’s ideas into correlation with reality and not wishful thinking. Too often, 20th century communism (the “old communism”) fell into an almost religious approach, substituting belief for reality. One striking example was the teleological claim that communism is inevitable. Communism is NOT inevitable; it is possible, there is a material basis for it, but it is not inevitable.

I think what has impressed me the most in Avakian’s work is his new conception of socialism. Too many people today think of a socialist state as one with a “mixed economy” in which capitalism is restrained by the power of representative democracy while the state guarantees a basic standard of living and medical care for all.

By contrast, Avakian has built on Marx’s concept of socialism as a period of transition in which the class dictatorship of the capitalist class is replaced by the class dictatorship of propertyless working people and their allies. The conscious goals of this transition are an economy governed by social needs rather than by a commodity market, and an end to the necessity for one section of society to hold institutionalized power over the rest.

Another way of characterizing these goals was stated by Marx:  the abolition of all class distinctions, of all the production relations on which those class distinctions rest, of all the social relations that correspond to those production relations, and the revolutionizing of all the ideas that correspond to those social relations.

But a barrier to masses of people taking up this understanding was the too frequent suppression of critical thinking by the old communism. In contrast, Avakian calls for a socialist society with room to disagree and “air” for people to breathe. While maintaining socialist state power against any violent attempts to restore capitalism, the new socialist state is best characterized as having a solid core with a lot of elasticity. Communists should never fear the truth and should encourage dissent, because all truths can be learned from.

Avakian points out that contradictions can arise between the people and a socialist state. While the socialist state has to protect the people from external enemies and any forceful restoration of capitalism, the socialist state also has to protect the rights of the people from the state itself. Of particular importance is Avakian’s insistence that communists lead the state mainly through ideological and political influence and not through organizational control. Members of the communist party must be subordinate to the law and the constitution of the socialist state, and are afforded no special privileges by virtue of being members of the party. 

In particular, Avakian calls not only for the right of people to criticize the state and even call for the restoration of capitalism, but further, the state should in part fund such criticism and also fund the legal defense of persons prosecuted by the state to the same extent that the state funds their prosecution. This is a concept of legal rights that no capitalist state has ever dared espouse.

Avakian has also sharply criticized the ideas that truth has a class basis (rather than truth being objective) and that working and oppressed people have a special purchase on truth simply by virtue of being exploited or oppressed. From this flowed the faulty idea that just putting working people in positions of power, rather than fighting for all of society to have a deeper understanding of the path to classless society, would solve the problems.

Another example of faulty analysis in the old communism is the idea that the basis for communism is material abundance, from which flowed the idea that a socialist state could just “produce its way to communism.” There is a certain required level of abundance to have a communist economy, but the principal necessity is the change in people’s thinking and social relations—not how much material wealth there is to go around.

The old communism also did not always do well with issues of internationalism. The goal of communist revolution is not the improvement of the lives of the people in a given country, but rather the global emancipation of humanity from the fetters of capital. As Avakian points out, the principal task of a communist country is to serve as a base area for world revolution. Yet too often communist leaders succumbed to nationalism and concentrated on the interests of their own country.

Plus, there was a serious failure in the moral underpinnings for communism and the road to get there. The new communism of Bob Avakian is firm in holding that the ends do not justify the means. Crimes cannot be committed on the grounds that they will get us closer to communism. Rather, communist means must always flow from and be consistent with the goals of communism.

Like Marx, Avakian has been a prolific commentator on current events and has provided invaluable guidance. In particular, he has over the last forty years documented and warned of the rise of Christian nationalism and fascism in this country. (Here, see Bob Avakian’s Work on Fascism: 1996-2025.) People in Germany might have had the excuse that “no one could have seen what was coming.” People in this country cannot claim that excuse.

At the same time, Avakian has looked much more deeply into the path for revolution in developed capitalist countries, and the deadly pull on even the best-intentioned people toward overestimating the strength of necessity and underestimating the freedom that exists to transform that necessity—ultimately leading them to either denying the possibility of, or just sitting and waiting for, a revolution. Instead, what is required is an active analysis of the fault lines of the existing society and constant straining at the limits of the possible with a concrete goal in mind:  the hastening of a revolutionary situation.

It is important to understand that the body of work that Avakian has created is not an add-on, a refinement, or a particular application of Marxism. Rather it is a qualitative leap in the science itself, comparable to the leap made by Marx. At the time of Marx, capitalism had consolidated state power in America and the major states of Europe, and was spreading across the globe like a metastatic cancer. Humanity had nothing to confront it with save bourgeois democracy, syndicalism, or utopian concepts of socialism, often based in religion. Marx changed all that with a scientific explanation of the capitalist system and what had to be done to abolish it. 

Today, with the defeat of the great revolutions of the 20th century, the globalization of capitalist production, the existential climate threat to the planet, and the world-wide spread of fascist movements, the old tools of bourgeois liberalism, social-democratic labor movements, and even the best of past communist thought, have been shown to be utterly inadequate to the challenges facing humanity. It is at this point that Bob Avakian has stepped forward to address what has to be done, but with a qualitatively transformed and more scientific, evidence-based method and approach. Avakian has given humanity the tools for its next great leap.

Like Marx in his time, Avakian is a controversial figure. Marx was considered something of a dogmatist and sectarian by the reformists of his day. To get a feel for this, people should watch Raoul Peck’s film The Young Karl Marx. Yet like other great scientists before and after him, the insights of Marx have proven basically true and have come to both shape our understanding of the real world and alter the course of history.

Having been witness to this development over many years now, I can say that if you are serious about emancipating humanity then you have to become a student of Bob Avakian. I have to admit that as a student of Avakian, I was often late for class and didn't always make good grades. But I never dropped out of school. Young revolutionaries today have the most advanced revolutionary thought in the world in their hands with their whole lifetimes ahead—and I still have another 15 years. Together, let's run with it!

There is much, much more, but I would encourage people to dig into Avakian’s many written works such as The New Communism, the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, and Breakthroughs.

Codicil

In December 2020 at the height of the COVID crisis in New York City, I was living a few blocks from a major hospital in Brooklyn. Outside the front of that hospital, lines formed daily of people waiting to be seen in the emergency room. Around back, behind the hospital, there was a row of refrigerator trucks for the bodies for which there was no longer room in the hospital’s morgue. 

While that pandemic crisis has abated for now, the global warming crisis has not. We are now pretty much past the point of no return. For about three billion years, plants, algae and cyanobacteria have been patiently extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, using solar energy to synthesize carbohydrates, and releasing oxygen back into the atmosphere. In the last three hundred years, that whole process has been dramatically reversed, with the burning of fossil fuels releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere in massive quantities, trapping solar radiation in the form of heat. 

Today, almost everything that moves in commerce (trucks, planes, trains) moves on energy released from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, petroleum and natural gas). Yet at the same time, the amount of energy that falls on the earth from solar radiation is more than enough to meet humanity’s foreseeable needs. So what prevents simply switching to solar energy in place of fossil fuels? The capitalism system.

Many trillions of dollars of capital are invested in both fossil fuel powered equipment and in the extraction and distribution of fossil fuels. To abandon that, would require the literal destruction of all that capital. The owners of capital have zero incentive to eat that massive loss, and they have the powerful compulsion from competing capital to continue with what they are doing. Only a new communist revolution can change this and put humanity first. This is a basic reality, yet most people find it easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine an end to capitalism.

Interrelated with the climate crisis is the destruction of the viability of life for millions of people in their home countries. One result has been the mass migration of people from the global South toward white, imperial Europe and America. The year that I was born, 1940, was the “high water mark” for white people in America. Whites made up 90 percent of the population. Today, whites make up 60 percent of the population, and an even smaller percentage of school-age children. 

That demographic change in the U.S., combined with the decline of U.S. economic power in the face of global competition and the impact of the movements of women and people of color, has provided the basis for a core of reactionary capitalists to organize a fascist movement. A movement appealing to the preservation of the economic well-being and social superiority to which white, male, Christian Americans feel entitled. Hence the emergence of a fascist movement to “Make America Great Again.”

The horrors that consolidated fascism will wreak on this country and the world are beyond the imagination of most people. Trump must be driven from power NOW, before it is too late.

On January 7, Renee Nicole Good was murdered by ICE thug Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ross shot Good multiple times at close range, and then cursed her. “Fucking bitch” he said as he walked away from a woman still dying. 

In response, people poured into the streets. The outrage and courageous struggle of the people in Minneapolis has, over the past 12 days, actually escalated in the face of both ever more violent repression and sub-zero weather. The fascist MAGA movement has intensified its violations of the rule of law and the norms of this system. This has taken sharpest form in Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would enable him to deploy federal troops to crush the people resisting in Minneapolis. He seemed to momentarily back off of this, only to mobilize 1,500 federal troops on standby in Alaska on the weekend. Trump has not only continued to attack and threaten the Democratic governor and mayor, he is said to have launched a federal investigation of them for conspiracy to impede ICE agents. He has poured 3,000 ICE agents into Minneapolis, outnumbering local police by a 5 to 1 ratio. He unleashed his Department of Justice to investigate Renee Good’s widow, Becca—provoking six federal prosecutors to immediately resign. And meanwhile, Trump’s minions in the media and Congress began invoking the specter of civil war.

If last week marked “a giant leap into full-out fascism,” it is hard to know what to say about this week—only that as part of that leap, the forms and norms of what had been regular imperialist rule continued to shake and shatter. This is rapidly becoming a situation in which, to quote the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, “those who have ruled over us, for so long, can no longer do so in the ‘normal’ way that people have been conditioned to accept.”

A State of Siege Enforced by Violent Thugs

The whole population of Minneapolis is under siege, with thuggish agents everywhere. This is especially true for immigrants who fear going to work, buying food, picking up prescriptions or walking their kids to school. (An important part of the resistance there has been people teaming up to make sure immigrants get food and medications and are as safe as possible.)

But it's not just immigrants. ICE is openly targeting people because they are not white or have an accent—and in complete violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, ICE is demanding people show them proof of citizenship. ICE is rampaging through the city, harassing and often violently abducting immigrants—and violently attacking anyone, including citizens—who stands up to them courageously in peaceful protest and defense of immigrants.

Five days after killing Renee Good, heavily armed ICE agents without a valid warrant smashed down the door of a Liberian man’s home, while his wife and small child were inside. He was seized and thrown into detention at an Army base in El Paso, Texas. 

On January 14, ICE agents chased a man into his home and then shot their guns through the door, with no concern as to the fact that children were inside. The wounded man, who is Venezuelan, was taken to the hospital, and two people who had come to his aid were arrested. Meanwhile, hundreds of neighbors gathered in the street, demanding that the Minneapolis police arrest the ICE agent, and demanding that ICE leave the area and the city. ICE responded by firing flash bang grenades and pepper gas at the crowd. 

Other incidents, captured on video, show gangs of ICE thugs violently pulling people out of their cars and beating them mercilessly as bystanders are filming or screaming at them to stop. And it has now also become quite “normal” for ICE agents to demand that randomly selected non-white people “show me your papers” and submit to questioning to “prove” they have a right to be here.

This wave of lawless violence is being unleashed by top fascist leaders. For example: less than a week after the murder of Renee Good, senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller posted this message to federal agents: “You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one—no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist—can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.” Translation: “You are above the law; kill, beat or maim anyone that gets in your way.”

ICE thugs are running with the message. Repeatedly, ICE agents are referencing Good’s murder as a direct threat to protesters. Minneapolis resident Phil Maddox posted a video to reddit of ICE agents, one with his gun drawn, boxing his car in and telling him “you won't like the outcome" if he follows the agents. "You did not learn from what just happened?’” Patty O'Keefe and a friend, both U.S. citizens were legally observing ICE from their car when they were violently arrested and detained by ICE. ICE sprayed pepper spray into their windshield vent to fill the car, broke the windshield and pulled them from their car. On the way to the detention center, an ICE agent threatened Patty, "you guys got to stop obstructing us, that's why that lesbian bitch is dead." The "lesbian bitch" is a vicious woman-hating reference to Renee Good.

Defeating Fascism and Raising Your Sights Beyond the Confines of This System Which Has Given Rise to This Fascism

As we wrote last week:

Whatever you thought “normal” was (under fascism!) died on a snowy Minnesota street with Renee Nicole Good.… People must be brought to see and to really “take on board” the implications of this basic fact. We cannot pin our hopes on or wait for elections that may well never happen. We must act now, together and determined, uniting all who can be united, in sustained, nonviolent protest demanding: Trump Must Go NOW!

At the same time, people urgently need to be asking these questions, and digging deeply for answers:

What kind of a system puts the reins of power into the hands of these ugly fascist thugs waging illegitimate violence against righteous people standing up? What kind of system drives people from their homelands for the basic ability to survive, and then demonizes and mass-deports them in the most vicious way? What kind of system unleashes dark-ages misogyny against women who do not "know their place"? 

It is this system of capitalism-imperialism which has given rise to this fascism, and is responsible for so many other atrocities. 

Now ask yourself, what kind of a system do we need? What kind of system could give backing to the broad aspirations of so many to defend and support each other in the face of fascist violence? What kind of system could give backing to the desire for collective means of survival instead of cutthroat dog-eat-dog competition? 

In this rare time, when revolution has become more possible, it is more and more urgent to raise your sights and think outside the confines of this system, to the need and possibility for a radically different system. The concrete framework and blueprint for this is spelled out in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian. And the vision for this is distilled in the Declaration from the revcoms, We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, a Fundamentally Different System:

A whole different way of living is possible: a whole different way to organize society, with a radically different economic foundation and political system, emancipating relations among people and an uplifting culture—all of this oriented to meeting the basic needs and fulfilling the highest interests of the masses of people.

Last week, the U.S. bombed the sovereign nation of Venezuela, killing over 100 civilians and kidnapping the President, Nicolás Maduro. Since then, Trump and other forces in his fascist regime have been on a rampage: threatening to attack and asserting his right to dominate, control and invade any country anywhere—without any legal constraint. But while Trump sounds like a madman, this is not just madness. They are laying out their fascist strategy to remake the world in the interests of a fascist America more able to contend with who they see as their main imperialist rival, China. 

In a world of intense cutthroat competition between nuclear-armed powers, Trump's fascist military moves and attempts to bully countries and whole regions of the world hold the extreme danger of spiraling out into nuclear confrontation, which really could lead to the extinction of humanity.

In this article we are going to cover Trump's outrageous threats, the fascist justification, strategy and dynamics behind them, the accelerating drive towards global conflict—and where the interests of humanity do, and do not, lie.  (Go here for this week's article on “Why Trump Says Greenland Is Essential for American Strategic Interests.”)

"If we don't do it the easy way, we're going to do it the hard way."

Since last Saturday, Trump has threatened Cuba and Colombia, threatened land strikes in Mexico, and threatened to attack Iran. He has repeated the openly gangster threat to invade Greenland: "We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not because if we don't do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland.... If we don't do it the easy way, we're gonna do it the hard way."

This is not just a threat on Greenland, but a threat on longtime American allies in NATO (Greenland is controlled by the European imperialist country Denmark).¹ This kind of military threat on European allies is unprecedented and, if the big European powers don't just capitulate to Trump's demand for Greenland (which they very well might), it could either lead to war or the dissolution of NATO.

Similar to Trump's argument in defending the assault on Venezuela, Trump's key advisor and fascist ghoul, Stephen Miller, argued in an interview on CNN:

The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere.... We're a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our own backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries, but not to us, to hoard weapons for our adversaries, to be able to be positioned as an asset against the United States rather than on behalf of the United States.

Miller didn't spell this out, but in speaking of U.S. "adversaries," he was talking about China, which purchased more—perhaps much more—than half of Venezuelan oil and overall, over the past decade, has enormously increased its trade, investment and aid in Latin America. 

Trump Restrained Only by His Fascist "Morality"

This remaking of the global order involves shredding any pretense to international law, breaking up old alliances and much more violently and forcefully asserting the U.S. right and ability to dominate the Western Hemisphere and the whole world. 

The revolutionary leader Bob Avakian described this powerfully in a social media message last spring: 

Fascism is a qualitatively different way that this system enforces its rule over people. 

Trump fascism is a regime that openly and aggressively strips away basic rights and blatantly declares that there is no rule of law and due process of law other than what it dictates, and that raw destructive power is what must rule in the international arena, without even the pretense of adherence to international law or concern about the sovereignty, or even the right to exist, of less powerful peoples and countries.

In a New York Times interview last week, Trump himself made this shockingly plain. Here was the exchange:

Reporter 1: Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage?

TRUMP: Yeah. There's one thing. My own morality. My own mind. That's the only thing that can stop me.

Reporter 2: Not international law?

TRUMP: I don't need international law. I'm not looking to hurt people.

Pause on that for a minute: the only check on Trump is his "own morality" and his "own mind." Leave aside the fact there can be no justice without the rule of law—whoever is in power. But this is the cold, calculating Trump who lies like breathing. Trump who hates Black and Brown people, and "foreigners," and demeans them as "animals, criminals and rapists who are poisoning the blood of our country." Trump—completely lacking in compassion and empathy who revels in the suffering of those he sees as weak or a "stain and a drain" on society and who has led a movement to meme-ify hatred and gleefully celebrate vicious racist cruelty. Trump who openly fantasizes about executing his opponents, reveling in revenge and retribution. Trump at the helm of a lunatic force of millions who think he has been appointed by god to rescue America as a white Christian nation violently dominating the world. 

And when Trump says, "I'm not looking to hurt people," in his sick mind, he means this. Because he does not consider those he has already hurt—and all the millions he intends to hurt—as "people." Trump does not see the immigrants and women, LGBT people, those who oppose him, and the billions from "shithole" countries as human.

This is an illegitimate, fascist morality: one that the millions of decent people need to recognize, and come together to defeat!

A Strategy for a Fascist America Dominating the Planet

There is a view, on the part of the fascist section of the ruling class, that the whole global alignment coming out of World War 2 has become a fetter, an obstacle, to full U.S. global domination now being challenged by a rising China. This previous order involved the U.S. sitting atop strategic alliances with Europe, dominating the world with a thin cover of abiding by "international law," or acting in the "name of democracy." 

The truth is that American domination has meant more intensified exploitation of the people of the world and the environment through globalized networks of sweatshops, mines, and farmlands, all serving the needs of empire. The U.S. has violently enforced this plunder through the slaughter of millions of people since World War 2—from Korea to Vietnam, Indonesia, Haiti and Latin America, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other countries. The widespread destruction from this, combined with intensified climate change, has forced millions from their homes and homelands.

But this was done with high-minded lies and working with allies.

The fascists are tearing all this up, and aiming to impose a different strategy and vision. One that deals with what they see as existential challenges to America's rule. This is spelled out in the National Security Statement released last December.

As part of this, Trump, Miller and the rest have been touting Trump's version of the "Monroe Doctrine." This refers to a doctrine issued by President Monroe in 1823. Monroe declared the entire Western Hemisphere as the U.S. "sphere of influence," warning European powers to keep out. This wasn't an empty policy. Since then, the U.S. has intervened in South and Central America at least 100 times—through invasions, CIA coups, training death squads, and more. This has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and endless misery for the people of those countries. (For an extensive list of these interventions, go here.)

Now, the fascists are feeling extreme urgency to more tightly control the whole of the Western Hemisphere both to roll back China's ability to operate in the region, and to shore up a regional foundation from which to contend with China. In the press conference which announced the invasion of Venezuela, Trump threatened: "Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again."

But all this will not be easy. While these fascists can accomplish a great deal through force and violence, they do not have everything in control and the future is extremely uncertain and dangerous. 

Ramping Up America's Deadly War Machine

At the same time as Trump is threatening the world, he announced a proposal to increase the military budget by 50 percent—from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion! This is attempting to deal with a major strategic problem faced by U.S. imperialism: despite the U.S.'s military might, it has an outdated, bureaucratic and relatively slow "military industrial base" in contrast to China. China spends less than a quarter of what the U.S. spends on its military, but has hundreds of thousands more soldiers, and in some ways, a more technologically advanced and much faster-paced military apparatus. In an interview last year, the fascist "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth said that in the last 10-15 years, "the Pentagon has a perfect record in all of its war games against China... we lose every time."

To deal with this, Hegseth announced an attempt to remake the whole process of American weapons building. He said last fall, "We're not building for peace time. We are pivoting the Pentagon and our industrial base to a wartime footing." 

Combined with the military preparations, there is the ideological component. Hegseth is working to forge a fully fascist military cohered around open white supremacy, the macho degradation of women and hatred of LGBT people, and America first threats of violent domination—with a license to openly commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, pledging their allegiance to the fascist tyrant above all else. But this, too, is full of contradiction for these fascists in a military made up of almost half Black, Latino and other people of color and 17 percent women. They are very far along in their agenda, but here again, the fascists do not have this all sewn up. (To read more about these changes in the military, go here, here and here.)

The Democrats: Denouncing Trump Within the Confines of U.S. Imperialism

There have been some individual Democrats who have called out the illegality of Trump's open violation of international and domestic law. Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump's kidnapping of Maduro was "clearly illegal under international law." 

But the main leading Democratic Party politicians have only criticized Trump for not getting congressional approval. Hakeem Jeffries, leader of the House Democrats, started his statement by saying, "Nicolas Maduro is a criminal and authoritarian dictator who has oppressed the people of Venezuela for years. He is not the legitimate head of government." After a full paragraph along these lines, Jeffries acted as if the problem was that Trump didn't have a good enough plan for "what's next," and finally went on to critique the way Trump illegally stepped around Congress.

Unmentioned in these statements is that the biggest criminal and illegitimate head of government in the world right now is the fascist head of the world's #1 global oppressor: Donald Trump, who has no fucking right to invade countries and steal their resources like a rampaging vampire.

The biggest cries of concern have to do with the fact that Trump's moves could give a green light to China and Russia to do the same kind of thing. After critiquing the illegality of what Trump did, Himes argued, "So what China and Russia just learned is that the beacon of liberty and rule of law in the world [sic] has now green lighted snatch-and-grab operations in Estonia, in Taiwan, wherever Xi and Putin decide they want to go next."²

But all those concerns are confined within the terms of what serves this monstrous, blood-soaked system—the same system that's given rise to this fascism.

Feverish Competition and Contention Driven by This System of Capitalism-Imperialism

These dangerous moves on the part of the fascist section of the rulers are not just driven by greed, or unhinged fascist lunacy, but by the underlying driving dynamics of a system of capitalism-imperialism. In his 2018 talk, Why We Need an Actual Revolution and How We Can Really Make Revolution, Bob Avakian gave life to the "expand or die" dynamics of this:

...we live in a grossly lopsided world—a world where a few dozen billionaires have as much wealth as the poorer half of humanity, and a small number of ruling classes, in a small number of countries, dominate, oppress, and control the destiny of the masses of humanity, with consequences that are already terrible and could before long become catastrophic. And, in everything that I have been shining a light on—regarding the world we live in, under the domination of capitalism-imperialism—we are seeing the consequences of a system based on the private appropriation, by competing centers of capital, of wealth that is socially produced through networks of production involving vast numbers—ultimately billions—of people all over the globe, who are forced to work in relations of production and conditions that exploit and dehumanize them. It is not simply greed that drives these capitalists to constantly seek out ways to more ruthlessly exploit people—it is the fact that, if they do not do this, or if some other capitalists do it more successfully (that is, even more ruthlessly), then they will face the prospect of not just falling behind but actually going under, eaten up by other capitalist sharks. It is the private appropriation of socially produced wealth, and the anarchy—the feverish competition and contention—that results from this, which ultimately underlies and drives all the horrors that are concentrated in the “5 STOPS”³ and the conditions to which the masses of humanity are subjected.

"This system is completely absurd—criminally, monstrously absurd—and completely outmoded"

From all this, we can see that the top oppressors are willing to risk all of life on earth in jockeying for position to be the world's #1 exploiter. This is utter insanity. Especially when it's the case that all the technology and knowledge that goes to building machines of death and networks of exploitation could be unfettered to meet human need—if we had a radically different system. 

The sharp divides among the rulers of this system and their inability to rule in the ways that masses of people in the U.S. have been conditioned to accept makes this a rare time when revolution—real revolution to bring that radically different system into being—is more possible. Right now, more than "normal times," the utter illegitimacy of this system is hanging out for all to see. But people need to be challenged to confront the system that is driving this, and raise their sights to the fact that we don't have to live this way:

This system is completely absurd—criminally, monstrously absurd—and completely outmoded: long past its expiration date, past the time when it can lead to anything positive for humanity—and, on the contrary, it stands as the direct barrier to the emancipation of humanity from all this madness, atrocity, and unnecessary suffering. The rise of fascism, in many other countries as well as in the U.S. itself, is a glaring sign of the thoroughly outmoded nature of this system and the heightened danger it poses to humanity as a whole.

We are now at the point where it is more and more urgently necessary to move beyond this whole monstrous system—beyond a situation where people are forced to struggle just for individual survival, with everyone compelled to be in competition and conflict with others, and the masses of people everywhere are chained down by outmoded oppressive relations, while the future, and the very existence, of humanity is increasingly endangered.

And it is possible now to move beyond all this.

A whole different way of living is possible: a whole different way to organize society, with a radically different economic foundation and political system, emancipating relations among people and an uplifting culture—all of this oriented to meeting the basic needs and fulfilling the highest interests of the masses of people. This is set forth, in both a sweeping and concrete way, in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have written. Summaries of basic points in this Constitution—shining a light on the truly emancipating way we could be living—are laid out in the Declaration WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM. (This Declaration, as well as the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, is available at revcom.us.)

—from Bob Avakian, 2025: A New Year—Profound New Challenges—And a Profoundly Positive Way Forward in the Face of Very Real Horror

In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!

This Whole System is Rotten and Illegitimate! We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, a Fundamentally Different System!

To understand the strategic role of Greenland to the U.S.'s ability to control the world, it's very helpful to look at a map. Greenland sits at a critical area between North America, Europe, and the Arctic. 

From the perspective of the U.S. empire, controlling Greenland is not optional. This is due to several interlocking factors: (a) the need to control travel routes and shipping lanes around Greenland (which helps control access between Europe and North America), (b) to maintain access to the Arctic (preventing China and Russia from roaming freely), and (c) to have the sole ability to build up military infrastructure on the island (the region is key to detecting and blocking submarine and bomber routes, especially from Russia). And, as climate change accelerates, this may open up access to Greenland's large reserves of rare earth minerals which are essential for new technologies. Right now, the U.S. sees its dependence on China for these rare earth minerals as a big strategic weakness, and they want to prevent China, and other imperialist powers, from controlling these strategic resources. 

At this point, even as the U.S. has a large military base in Greenland, it is ultimately Denmark and Europe overall that is supposed to "defend" Greenland and prevent Russia and China from having free rein there. But the American fascists don't think Europe is at all aggressive enough in this. 

This dovetails with serious concerns about what these American fascists see as the "decline of Europe." The November 2025 National Security Statement warned of the danger of Europe's "civilizational erasure"—because there has been an influx of migrants (due to the nightmare imperialism has wrought in their homelands), Europe is losing its "Western" (aka white Christian) "identity." And Trump is constantly railing against Europe for relying too heavily on America's military might and not investing heavily enough in European military strength.

History teaches that fascists, once firmly in power, are extraordinarily difficult to remove. It is absolutely critical that we take up the responsibility to expel such a regime before consolidation becomes irreversible. Donald Trump’s fascist administration, through repeated injuries, usurpations, and acts of violence, has forfeited any claim to legitimacy. Therefore, We the People submit the following indictment asserting that the Trump administration constitutes an illegitimate fascist regime and must be removed from power.

Donald Trump: You are indicted for crimes against the people of the United States and installing fascism in the U.S.

I. A Regime of Tyranny and Betrayal of the Constitution

The Trump administration has systematically violated the fundamental principles of the U.S. Constitution. The promises of liberty, justice, equality, consent of the governed, and the rule of law have ALL been eroded by the actions of a President who is sworn to preserve and defend them.

Trump has defied federal courts, ignored lawful orders, targeted judges and lawyers, and replaced constitutional governance with rule by decree. He has used executive power to obstruct justice, override Congress, and install loyalists who serve his will rather than the public good.

He has wielded federal agencies as weapons against immigrants, protesters, journalists, and political opponents, even threatening the execution of members of Congress. This administration has undermined basic democratic rights, targeted marginalized communities, and shredded civil liberties with open contempt.

II. Crimes of Fascism and the Consolidation of Dictatorship

Trump’s MAGA Fascism aims to install an open dictatorship, unrestrained and unchecked, reliant on white-supremacist Christian-nationalism, misogyny, xenophobia, and violent repression. The actions of this administration are not isolated — they form a coherent fascist program. Traditional democratic channels cannot halt a regime that destroys those very channels.

Count One: Violent Persecution and Terrorizing of Immigrants

Trump unleashed heavily armed federal strike forces and illegally mobilized National Guard units to target immigrants and anyone racially profiled as such. ICE became his private army — disappearing people, terrorizing children, defying courts, and deporting individuals to torture and abuse in concentration camps both here and overseas.

Count Two: Lawless International Aggression

Trump has openly disregarded international law and disparaged our allies, waged unauthorized military actions, threatened wider war, and supported acts of genocide and war crimes. He asserted a doctrine of U.S. domination over entire regions, dismissing international law and human rights.

Count Three: Attacks on Elections and Voting Rights

Trump pardoned January 6th insurrectionists, empowered election deniers, gerrymandered Black and Brown communities out of political power, and enabled voter suppression schemes designed to entrench minority rule.

Count Four: Subversion of the Courts

The Supreme Court — illegitimately packed with Trump loyalists — continues to overrule lower courts, often through unexplained “shadow docket” decisions. They have surrendered judicial independence, suppressed the voice of the people, and enabled the regime’s assault on the Constitution.

Count Five: Weaponizing Federal Power Against Political Opponents

The administration twisted law enforcement and prosecutorial powers into instruments of retribution. Political enemies, NGOs, journalists, and movement activists were all targeted.

III. A History of Repeated Injuries, Usurpations, and Abuses

The Trump regime has intensified white supremacy, misogyny, and the erasure of LGBTQ+ people; demonized immigrants; escalated militarism; and undermined science and public health.

To establish and enforce white supremacy, Trump exalted the Confederacy, purged diversity programs, attacked the teaching of Black and Native history, removed symbols of civil rights progress, and installed white supremacists in key positions.

To subjugate women and erase LGBTQ+ people, Trump dismantled reproductive rights, threatened nationwide abortion bans, outlawed gender-affirming care, purged transgender people from public institutions, and reinstated oppressive norms as state policy.

To target entire peoples and escalate global conflict, Trump carried out mass deportations, stripped legal protections from migrants, bombed foreign nations illegally, backed genocide, and invoked 19^th century doctrines of imperial domination.

To consolidate dictatorship, he declared himself above the Constitution, weaponized the DOJ, attacked universities and the press, purged the military, and created a personalist authoritarian system.

IV. Violations of Human and Civil Rights at Home and Abroad

Trump’s administration has committed widespread violations of civil, constitutional, and human rights:

• Silencing journalists, suppressing protest, and retaliating against whistleblowers.
• Warrantless surveillance, unlawful detentions, and militarized policing.
• Cruel treatment of detainees; particularly women and children, immigrants, and transgender individuals.
• Rollback of LGBTQ+ protections, racial equity programs, disability rights, and reproductive freedoms.
• Family separations, denial of asylum, and deportations to known torture regimes.
• Abandonment of international human rights commitments and obstruction of war-crimes investigations.

These constitute moral, legal, and humanitarian crimes deserving the strongest condemnation.

V. A Government of, by, and for Tyrants

Trump, and the officials complicit in his regime, have enriched themselves while undermining public health, education, economic stability, environmental protections, and essential social programs. They have dismantled oversight mechanisms, sold influence to the wealthy, and reduced governance to a corrupt spectacle.

This is an authoritarian plutocracy government, run by and for a corrupt elite.

VI. The Mandate of the People: Trump Must Go NOW

No matter how they attain power, fascist regimes are never legitimate. Trump’s regime poses a direct threat to humanity in an era of climate catastrophe, nuclear proliferation, and global instability.

Therefore, we declare:

• President Donald Trump needs to be removed from power immediately.
• The entire Trump regime is illegitimate.
• Its continued rule violates the Constitution, human rights, and the principles of a free society.
• Any further executive or legislative action that oppresses or exploits the people constitutes a direct attack on the public.

VII. A Call to Action for a Free and Just Future

Fascism is not a looming threat. It is upon us now. It is a completely different, brutal, form of rule. It cannot be lived with; it must be defeated.

Fascist rule is never legitimate, no matter how it comes to power. This administration surrendered any claim to “legitimacy” the minute they began using their power to violate and dismantle the U.S. Constitution and our rule of law.

If we dare, we can defeat this horror unlike anything we’ve faced before. If we fail to even try, future generations will never forgive us.

There can be no business as usual under fascism; that’s why we call on people across this country to join us in sustained, nonviolent mass resistance. To walk out of work, to walk out of school, and to come from all across the country — millions together in the streets of the nation’s capital — returning again and again, day after day, until the Trump regime falls!

The future is unwritten. Which one we get is up to us.

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY,
WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FASCIST AMERICA.
TRUMP MUST GO NOW!

Bodies are piling up on bodies. And those who have survived are searching for signs of their loved ones through mountains of corpses. This is no longer a metaphor. This is not a story. This is not a film. This is a reality ridden with bullets day after day.

— World-renowned filmmaker Jafar Panahi

On December 28, the Iranian people launched a powerful uprising against their hated rulers—the theocratic fascists of the Islamic Republic (IRI). It quickly spread across the country to some 180 towns in all 31 of Iran’s provinces, involving many tens of thousands of Iranians, perhaps millions. 

To crush this tsunami of mass protests, the IRI unleashed a campaign of mass murder, arrests and terror across the country. Rivers of blood flow through the streets of Iran, in every city and region.

Beginning around January 8, when the protests leaped in size and scope, the regime’s repressive forces began firing directly into the crowds with live ammunition, sometimes at close range. Rooftop snipers assassinated overwhelmingly unarmed demonstrators. Machine guns were used against protesters according to some reports. Security forces were seen “finishing off” wounded protesters—sometimes even in hospitals. 

As the Islamic fundamentalist rulers unleashed this bloodbath, they also imposed a near-total cutoff of internet and cellphone access to prevent the protests from spreading further and to prevent the world from witnessing their towering crimes. 

Yet glimpses of the carnage and stories of the regime’s depravity leaked out of Iran nonetheless.  

The numbers of those killed are uncertain. Some say that at least 3,400 protesters have been slaughtered by the regime, with thousands wounded. The Sunday Times of London wrote this weekend that they had received a report from doctors in Iran documenting the murder of 16,500 protesters who have died and 330,000 who have been injured. The fascist theocrat-in-chief, Khamenei himself, has admitted to the murder of "several thousands" of protesters. At least 10,000 protesters, and maybe double the number, have been arrested and jailed, some 800 threatened with execution. It's likely that most of those killed are under 30.

The Islamic Republic’s depraved killing and terrorizing spree extended into hospitals, family homes, even funerals for those it murdered. One doctor reported that his hospital was overwhelmed: “This was a mass-casualty situation… Our facilities, space and personnel were far below the number of injured people arriving. The trauma cases I saw were brutal, shoot to kill.” An ophthalmologist in Tehran told The Guardian that a single hospital documented more than 400 eye injuries from gunshots.

The IRI’s armed thugs are occupying and searching hospitals for wounded protesters, arresting them on the spot, sometimes taking them away before they’ve been treated. Families who come to morgues or hospitals to retrieve the bodies of loved ones have been forced to declare that their relatives were members of the regime’s hated Basij militias, or that they’d been killed by “terrorists” (i.e., the protesters) in order to receive their bodies. Families have also been made to pay—sometimes according to the number of bullets used—for their release.

A Righteous Uprising, a Damning Indictment of the Islamic Republic

This uprising began on December 28, 2025, with a strike and protests by merchants in Tehran due to an economic crisis. But the rebellion spread quickly across Iran, largely driven forward by students demanding “Down with the Dictator,” “Down with [Ayatollah] Khamenei,” “Freedom, freedom, freedom.”

But this uprising is not merely economic. As a post by Arash Seyfi on Osyan's instagram feed states, "Although the initial spark of this uprising were the economic demands... what soon became clear was that it went beyond limited demands for a livable income and any kind of bargaining with the system. The current revolutionary uprising targets the entirety of the Islamic fascist regime—a system that is neither capable of providing a minimum subsistence nor of providing a meaningful future for society." 

The Islamic Republic is justifying their mass murder with the lie that the protesters are “terrorists,” inspired or directed by the U.S. or Israel. While there are many different forces involved in Iran’s protests, including pro-U.S. reactionaries, at its heart is a thirst—and a courageous determination—for freedom and emancipation. 

Meanwhile, the fascist commander-in-chief of U.S. imperialism, Donald Trump, threatened to intervene, saying “help is on the way,” and urged the protesters to “take over your institutions if you can."

Whatever attack Trump is threatening will be of no "help" to the people of Iran, but would be aimed at attempting to solidify U.S. domination of the Middle East. (The U.S. would, among other things, like to deal a blow to its main imperialist rival, China, which is Iran’s largest trading partner and buys 90 percent of Iran’s oil.)

A statement on January 7, 2026 from the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist, Maoist) who base themselves on the new communism developed by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, called on people not to choose between oppressors of this same system of capitalism-imperialism, but to fight for a liberating revolution opposing both the Islamic fascist regime of Iran and the U.S. imperialists: 

We will bury the murderous Khamenei and the entire theocratic, plundering, misogynistic, freedom-murdering system of the Islamic Republic of Iran!

We will break down the prison doors! Prisons are no place for the masses of people. Instead, we will hold the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s political, security, military leaders, and economic plunderers in prison!

We will destroy the project that the fascist Trump, genocidal Netanyahu, and their Iranian minions have for the future of Iran!

Together with the people of the world, we will fight to emancipate humanity from all these enemies of humankind and nature!

This is an uprising against fascist tyranny and torture chambers, bitter oppression and poverty, the medieval oppression of women, the systematic discrimination against religious, ethnic, and national minorities, and the suppression of speech, thought and art.

To take one dimension of this, millions of Iranians yearn for a country where women are no longer enslaved by the IRI’s system of gender apartheid, subject to the dictates of patriarchy—in public and family life. Videos of the protests have been full of women tearing off their forced hijab (veil), and lighting their cigarettes on burning images of Khamenei (women smoking in public is highly stigmatized). In Iran, misogyny is the law of the land: women’s testimony receives less weight than men’s; men can prevent their wives from holding jobs or traveling abroad; women cannot sing alone in public or attend many men’s sporting events; and violence against women often goes unpunished. On top of this, being LGBT is illegal, and sentences for same-sex relations include flogging and even death.

Trump Seems to Back Off Threat of Attack, but the Danger Still Looms

As we reported last week, after the uprising in Iran first broke out, Trump threatened Iran’s rulers that if they killed protesters, the U.S. would attack: “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” 

Then, after the Islamic Republic announced it would not execute any protesters (at least for now), Trump seemed to reverse course. In the wake of the Islamic Republic’s mass slaughter of protesters, Trump praised the regime for halting the public executions that it had threatened, basically claiming it as a “win” for his bullying. “Iran canceled the hanging of over 800 people. They were going to hang over 800 people yesterday,” Trump said. “And I greatly respect the fact that they canceled that.” He even repeated some of the IRI talking points, saying that protesters had been firing at regime forces and killed hundreds of them--i.e., they were “terrorists”—so the IRI was justified in clamping down.

But whether Trump is actually backing off these threats or not is extremely uncertain. On January 15, Trump’s press spokesperson said that “all options” remain on the table in Iran. Meanwhile, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group are heading toward the Persian Gulf and an additional dozen American fighter jets have arrived in Jordan over the past 24 hours. In response to Trump's threats, the Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian tweeted a warning that a strike against Khamenei would amount to a full-scale war with Iran.

If Trump does go ahead with an attack on Iran, this would not only bring down extreme suffering on the people of Iran, it would create even greater danger in the whole region of the Middle East. There's a whole other dimension in which Iran is a key potential prize in the brewing global conflict involving the major nuclear armed powers of U.S., China and Russia. One or another of these powers could end up seeing vital interests at stake in not backing down. In this way, such an attack could start as one thing and, intentionally or not, erupt into a much wider, more destructive and more all-engulfing conflict.

Such a war would not only be opposed to the interests of humanity, it poses the real threat of human extinction. Trump, this egomaniacal fascist lunatic, is walking around with his finger on the nuclear trigger.

The Protests Continue from the Rooftops... Even as the Future Is Uncertain

It is very difficult to know precisely what is happening in Iran today due to the butcher regime’s media, cellphone and internet blackout. The New York Times is reporting that there have not been any large scale protests since January 11. So it is possible that the uprising may have been suppressed for the moment. Though even in darkness, there seem to be outbursts of protest through the night. Video from January 15 posted on the instagram from Burn the Cage, a movement to free Iran's political prisoners, shows a nighttime protest with call and response from the rooftops: "Death to Dictator. Khamenei is a butcher. We will bury you and drag you down. Like what people did during the Shah." (The Shah of Iran was a U.S.-backed tyrant who was overthrown in 1979.)

People in the U.S. have a special responsibility to stay alert: opposing Trump's fascist aggression on Iran and the world, and standing with the people of Iran courageously rising up. And people in the U.S., and around the world, have a responsibility to grapple with the questions posed by the new communists with the Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist Maoist: 

Will another oppressive regime ride in to replace this one atop the wounded bodies of the people? Or, by spreading social understanding of what a real revolution is, will the overthrow of the IRI pave the way for a real revolution, replaced not by another oppressive and exploitative regime, but by a new socialist republic? Now, the overthrow of the IRI is on the immediate agenda—but the even more vitally important challenge is how this question gets answered.

See: From Atash/Fire, Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist—The Islamic Republic Must Go!

Down with the Islamic Republic on Iran!

No U.S./Israeli Attack on Iran!

In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America!

This whole system is rotten and illegitimate! We need and we demand: a whole new way to live, a fundamentally different system!

This brief round-up was written on January 17. More information continues to reach the world in bits given an almost total internet blackout by Iran’s regime since January 8. We are currently limited to sharing some verifiable links to give a glimpse into the situation among prisoners amid the protests that began December 28, 2025 in Iran. Reports are that severe repression throughout Iran took place this past week. Follow Burn The Cage on IG for timely updates in Farsi, using translation tools to read and share, and stay tuned to future reports from our campaign about the situation of the political prisoners as we learn more in the coming days.

“No to Execution Tuesdays continue, even in total darkness”

In recent weeks, Iran’s prisoners seem to be unable to publish their weekly statement from the “No to Execution Tuesdays” hunger strike campaign, which is now about to complete its second year of continuous weekly prison protest. Political prisoner Ahmadreza Haeri in Ghezel Hesar prison is one of few prisoners able to communicate with the outside world recently. On Tuesday, January 13, issued the following statement, excerpted here:

Today is Tuesday, January 13, 2026, and the 103rd week of the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign; a week that is being held under unprecedented and horrific conditions: a complete digital and communication blackout throughout Iran…In such circumstances, we are unable to communicate with the members of the campaign. However, aware of the continued collective will of political and ideological prisoners, and with faith in the history of this campaign, we are publishing this statement on their behalf and to ensure that this chain of resistance is not broken… We declare our full solidarity with the protesting people, the grieving families, the political and conscience prisoners, and all those who are fighting to survive and be seen in this organized blackout. The “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign has always declared that executions are not a means of revenge, but a tool of the government to create fear, suppress protests, and break society. Today, this truth has been exposed more than ever.

No to Execution Tuesdays continue, even in total darkness.

Grave Danger to Detainees Amid Blackout

On January 14, 35 civil rights organizations, including the Free Narges Coalition, PEN America, and the Center for Human Rights in Iran, and Kurdish, Baloch and Azerbaijani groups signed a statement calling urgent attention to the grave risks to prisoners, whose ranks have swelled with at least 22,000 new arrestees:

Both recent and long-standing detainees—including human rights defenders, journalists, writers, and artists—face an acute and often overlooked risk. Past patterns in Iran demonstrate that periods of widespread unrest are accompanied by heightened abuses inside detention facilities, where these groups are particularly vulnerable to extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, torture, and other forms of ill-treatment. Those held in solitary confinement and denied contact with the outside world are at especially high risk… [E]very hour of inaction increases the risk of irreversible loss of human life and gross violations of human rights.

Day of Grassroots Solidarity

In a situation that continues to be fluid in Iran, the upcoming day of solidarity with Iran’s prison and street rebels take on added urgency—to stand with the Iranian people and against Iran’s regime as well as imperialist threats/moves. 

Download the following flyer.

On JANUARY 28, 2026, the International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners Now (IEC) together with the Unitarian Universalists of San Francisco Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) invite you to 

Stand With Iran’s Rebels & Against U.S.-Israel War Threats/Moves on Iran! Free Iran’s Political Prisoners Now!

With an 8-9 AM VIGIL and a 6-9 PM FILM SHOWING—INSIDE THE IRANIAN UPRISING (2022)

1187 Franklin Street, San Francisco, CA

These are special events to mark what would be the culmination of the 104th week of the courageous “No to Execution Tuesdays” weekly hunger strike by thousands of prisoners in scores of prisons across Iran. These selfless and brave prisoner rebels are the conscience of the society and call to us.

Iran’s theocratic regime executed over 2,000 prisoners in 2025, the most in 20 years, and is now conducting brutal round-ups and street executions amid a new, sustained mass uprising since December 28, 2025. As of January 14th, over 2,400 people have been reported to have been killed, thousands injured, and at least ten thousand in custody under horrific conditions. The situation is unfolding as we write. Letters from prisoners vow to continue their struggle amid all this.

On January 28 we will stand with those who are bravely standing up in Iran’s prisons and protesting in the streets for a better world. Their struggle is our struggle.

As people living in the U.S. we have a special responsibility to oppose the vicious war threats by fascist Trump against Iran, which can only bring more suffering to the people there. In June 2025, Israel and the U.S. bombed Iran in an unprovoked attack. They bombed Evin prison which houses most of Iran’s political prisoners! Trump's latest threat to attack Iran to “save its peaceful protesters” is very serious, and could potentially lead to a regional or even world conflagration. No one should forget that the U.S. has shown it will use nukes on civilians, as they did in Japan. The U.S. has over 5,000 nukes!

We will mark this moment with two events: 

• On the morning of Wednesday, January 28, at Franklin and Geary Streets in San Francisco from 8-9 AM the UUSF weekly vigil. Bring signs and banners that express solidarity with Iran’s prisoners and protesters, and opposition to U.S.-Israel war threats.
• Later that evening from 6-9 PM, we’ll show the PBS Frontline documentary “Inside the Iranian Uprising,” in the UUSF’s TSK room about the powerful 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. It is both timely and relevant as millions rise up in Iran to demand an end to the whole oppressive regime—versus battling against one atrocity after another. 

Urgent questions about the future of Iran, the region, and the world pose themselves to people of conscience. 

After the film there will be solidarity statements, a brief Q & A session, and community mingling. (Send statements to freeiranspoliticalprisonersnow@gmail.com.)

From diverse political perspectives, we treasure our unity in our common cause for justice: We demand of the Islamic Republic of Iran: FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW! We say to the US government: NO THREATS OR WAR MOVES AGAINST IRAN! LIFT SANCTIONS!

More info: FreeIransPoliticalPrisonersNow@gmail.com or humanrights@uusf.org

To donate for the event, send checks or money orders payable to International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran's Political Prisoners Now, 18601 N. Hwy 1 #212, Fort Bragg, CA 96437

Lastly, watch this powerful statement by Miles Solay of the band Outernational on January 15. His caption sums it up with moral and political clarity: “Full support to the righteous uprising in Iran to overthrow the fascist dark ages Islamic Republic. Free all political prisoners in Iran now! NO TO ALL USA AND ISRAELI intervention, attacks. The fascist regime of Donald Trump is no friend to the people of the world.”

We will bury the murderous Khamenei and the entire theocratic, plundering, misogynistic, freedom-murdering system of the Islamic Republic of Iran!

We will break down the prison doors! Prisons are no place for the masses of people. Instead, we will hold the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s political, security, military leaders, and economic plunderers in prison!

We will destroy the project that the fascist Trump, genocidal Netanyahu, and their Iranian minions have for the future of Iran!   

Together with the people of the world, we will fight to emancipate humanity from all these enemies of humankind and nature!

THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN (IRI) MUST GO!

Now, the roar of anger from 47 years of suffering, poverty, and repression is reverberating throughout Iran. Countless people have stood in an unequal and furious battle, facing the oppressors, fearless of death, crying out for life and liberation. The children of this country have come to the fore demanding to survive and to live a meaningful life fit for human beings. They have pledged their lives as collateral for this liberation, and their blood is flowing in the streets. These sacrifices will never be forgotten, and these crimes will not go unanswered.

The revolutionary overthrow of the IRI is an urgent need of the majority of our society: a revolution that uproots the entire system of the IRI and builds a fundamentally different political, economic, and social system that will serve the immediate and long-term interests of our oppressed and exploited people; a revolution that will crush these criminals and their entire economic, bureaucratic, and military apparatus, a revolution that will sweep away poverty and oppression by relying on the wisdom, enthusiasm, power, and participation of all the people; a revolution that does not allow the work of millions of people, the resources of this land, and people’s daily lives to be monopolized and controlled by a mega-capitalist minority (Islamic or non-Islamic) and their imperialist masters, who keep things functioning in the same old way. No! We will not allow that!

The revolutionary overthrow of the IRI is urgently needed: A revolution that tears down prison doors and frees the captured fighters, and so that their strength, courage and consciousness can broaden and build the revolution and a fundamentally different and new socialist system. Prison is not the place for these loved ones. Prison is the place for Khamenei [the “Supreme Leader” of Iran] and the IRI's political, security, military, and economic plunderers to be held accountable according to the most advanced and progressive rules of procedure after the establishment of the future socialist system.

The revolutionary overthrow of the IRI is our immediate agenda: But we will not allow the evildoers of the “Pahlavi Project" [Reza Pahlavi is the son of former U.S.-backed Shah (absolute monarch). See Atash article: A “Project” Named Reza Pahlavi!: Manufacturing an Imperialist Alternative vs. Revolutionary Overthrow of the Islamic Republic!] with the support of the fascist Trump and the genocidal Netanyahu, to take the place of the fascist Islamists and dictate and impose a program on society that is essentially no different from the IRI and has nothing to do with the basic needs of our people—which have been the driving force behind this current uprising. We will not allow the security apparatus and repression of the IRI to be replaced by the security apparatus and repression of SAVAK [the brutal secret police under the Shah]—whether in cahoots with the Basij and the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Basij are a paramilitary force under it] or under the leadership of the Mossad [Israel’s brutal secret police]—which would put chains on the youth of this country, and repeat a history of enslavement. 

The revolutionary overthrow of the IRI is urgently needed: But we will not allow Trump, the fascist president of the United States, to determine our fate and to exploit our struggles against the IRI for his unbridled imperialism, leaving our society trapped in the web of imperialist relations that is at the root of our current misery. 

The revolutionary overthrow of the IRI is urgently needed: But at this critical and dangerous moment, we will not allow various types of “reformists” and those who wistfully dream of “change,” whether in or out of government—who fear the anger and just struggle of the people and have for decades called for “peace” and promoted compromise with the inhumane IRI regime—to control, manage and misdirect.

The IRI is a fascist and outmoded theocratic regime, based on a capitalist foundation, and dependent on the [global] capitalist-imperialist system. Inevitably, and inherently, its survival has been based on plundering people's livelihoods, on the reactionary legal framework of Islamic law, on economic, political and cultural injustices against the people, on repression, imprisonment and execution, on suppression of freedom of thought, on suppression of science, on national oppression and misogyny, on destruction of the environment, and is now hated by the absolute majority of the Iranian people—in other words, zero “legitimacy”! Today, a minority of these people are standing up, risking their lives to put an end to this regime. This force must grow and put the IRI under a nationwide siege of the people. However, this movement is walking on a razor’s edge: it knows what it doesn't want, but “What We Want and How We Will Get It” is dangerously vague and ambiguous in people's minds. 

Will another oppressive regime ride in to replace this one atop the wounded bodies of the people? Or, by spreading social understanding of what a real revolution is, will the overthrow of the IRI pave the way for a real revolution, replaced not by another oppressive and exploitative regime, but by a new socialist republic? Now, the overthrow of the IRI is on the immediate agenda—but the even more vitally important challenge is how this question gets answered.

Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist, Maoist) — www.cpimlm.org

January 7, 2026

The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal. But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.
—Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International

Nearly two months ago, Israel and Hamas¹ agreed to Trump’s 20-point “Peace Plan” and a ceasefire. Last month, the United Nations Security Council approved a U.S.-sponsored resolution endorsing this plan.² By then all the living Israeli hostages held by Hamas had been freed, meeting a key requirement of the ceasefire.

But the ethnic cleansing and vicious oppression and terror being brought down on the Palestinian people has continued, even as this is getting less and less worldwide attention.

Israel is still:

* Killing: Israel’s military continues to bombard Gaza—from land, air and sea.

At least 366 Palestinians have been killed and another 938 injured since October 11, when the ceasefire took effect.³ Israel’s ongoing killing spree also spreads terror across Gaza, and makes life, reconstruction, and aid deliveries much more difficult if not impossible. 

Israel firebombs refugee camps, destroying tents and burning alive people inside them. And they have repeatedly used drones to kill people for crossing an arbitrarily drawn and often invisible "yellow line" (these are areas from which the Israeli army operates).

This past week, two children—brothers Fadi and Juma Abu Assi, 8 and 10 years old—were killed by an Israeli drone as they gathered firewood for their father, who is disabled. 

In an official statement, the Israeli army said these children were "suspects" who "conducted suspicious activities on the ground, and approached [Israeli] troops operating in the southern Gaza Strip, posing an immediate threat to them." They continued that the Israeli army "eliminated the suspects in order to remove the threat."

The threat?! These were unarmed children collecting firewood so they could eat a warm meal! 

Upon receiving their dead bodies, their father said, trembling: "I removed the shroud and hugged them. My little Juju's head was blown off... His arms were severed and parts of his torso were gone." He added that "Fadi's right hand and left leg were cut off."

* Blockading: Israel continues to blockade urgently needed food, medicine and other aid—even infant formula. Instead of the 600 trucks a day promised by Trump’s plan, Israel is allowing in only 220 daily, while some 6,000 trucks loaded with enough aid for three months wait at the border. Israel finally opened the Rafah crossing into Egypt—the only crossing open to the world and not leading into Israeli territory. But Israel opened it only for Palestinians leaving Gaza, not the thousands wanting to come back in.

* Freezing: Israel is still blocking tents, mobile homes and other housing from entering Gaza, denying Palestinians adequate shelter, even as a harsh winter is upon them. 

* Destroying: Israel is continuing to occupy growing swaths of Gaza and to destroy and level whole neighborhoods, leaving more and more Palestinians with no homes to return to.

No Change in Israel’s Genocidal Intent, No Change in Trump's Genocidal Support 

Trump and his fascist counterpart in Israel—led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (aka Netan-Nazi)—continue to work closely together. And while they do have real tactical differences on various issues, the U.S. continues to pour huge amounts of political and military support into backing Israel's military death machine. 

In fact, on December 1, Trump and Netanyahu reportedly spoke by phone. According to Netanyahu’s Office, they reaffirmed their joint “commitment to disarming Hamas and demilitarizing the Gaza Strip,” this as Israel drops U.S.-made bombs on Gaza.⁴

Amnesty International sums up: “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signaling any change in their intent.”⁵ (Emphasis added)

It warns, “The ceasefire must not become a smokescreen for Israel’s ongoing genocide.” 

Yet that’s what it’s become, with Israel’s atrocities barely making the mainstream news, if they are covered at all. 

U.S. “Housing Solution” for Gaza = The Promise of Israeli Concentration Camps

Shelter is one of the most urgent needs people have in Gaza. Israel has systematically—and criminally—damaged or destroyed 84 percent of all structures, including completely destroying over 60 percent of its housing units. Today, 1.7 million Palestinians—over 80 percent of Gaza's population, is displaced and forced to live in tents or makeshift shelters. Especially now, with winter's freezing rains, they’re barely habitable, if habitable at all. 

If this were a real ceasefire, Israel would end its bombardments and open Gaza’s borders. This would allow the UN and other aid agencies to flood the territory with the equipment and supplies they have at the ready. It would enable the Palestinian people, with all their creativity, determination and experience, to build livable temporary shelters and then begin the process of reconstruction. 

But Israel’s objectives and the Trump plan have never been about helping the Palestinian people, much less respecting their fundamental rights and humanity. They’ve always been about suppressing and subordinating—even eliminating—the Palestinian population and ensuring U.S. imperialist domination of the Middle East, and Israel’s dominance of historic Palestine, and military dominance in the region overall. 

As a result, virtually no reconstruction has taken place in Gaza. Why? Because of Israel’s ongoing attacks and blockade, and because the Trump plan gives Palestinians no authority to govern their own land, determine their own future, or protect themselves from Israel’s murderous assaults. So the U.S.-sponsored UN resolution calls for disarming all Palestinians and “demilitarizing” Gaza (except of course for Israel and forces chosen by Trump) before any construction can be authorized there. 

What the U.S. has reportedly decided to do is begin building new, temporary housing in the so-called “Green Zone.” That’s the 53-58 percent of eastern and southern Gaza that’s been seized and occupied by Israel, cleared of nearly all Palestinians, largely razed to the ground, and is now policed by the genocidal Israeli army.

The so-called “Red Zone” to the west, where over two million Palestinians have been forced into, would be left to rot for the time being.⁶ 

All the details of this plan have yet to be decided on or released, but it’s not hard to see how it could lay the groundwork for new genocidal outrages:

• There are reports that Israel will only allow in "well vetted" people—with no ties to Hamas. But Israel has a long history of claiming people have ties to Hamas to set them up for assassination or imprisonment and torture, providing zero proof—from journalists, doctors, aid workers and on and on. This provides a political pretext to only allow in people who will collaborate with Israel.
• Would Palestinians be allowed to leave, for example to see family members, or are they to be locked into a concentration camp disguised as a housing development?
• Would Palestinians trying to enter be detained or imprisoned?
• Would the whole operation turn into the kind of killing field that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid stations did? (See box on new CNN exposure of mass graves.)
• By refusing to rebuild in the “Red Zone,” where well over 90 percent of the Palestinian population is living, is this a means for forcing a mass exodus from Gaza?
• Does this plan open the door to a permanent Israeli occupation, or annexation of over half of Gaza and perhaps “repopulate” it with Israeli settlers?

What's Driving This?

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a reactionary attack on Israel which included the targeting of civilians. some 1,200 people were killed and some 250 taken as hostages. In response, Israel launched a full-scale genocide aimed at the Palestinian people as a whole. 

In the two years plus, Israel has murdered at least 70,117 people, including at least 20,179 children. At least 170,999 people have been injured. And these numbers do not include the thousands still buried under the bombed buildings and ash. Israel obliterated the entire infrastructure of Gaza, leaving only trauma, terror and rubble—schools, hospitals, mosques and churches, libraries... all gone.

In November 2023, revcom.us spoke to why this was happening: 

Netanyahu (aka Netan-Nazi) and Israel’s rulers are seizing on Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel—which included the war crimes of taking hostages and the murder of civilians—to attempt a “final solution” to the “Palestinian problem.” This means, at a minimum, reducing the Palestinians to such a state that they can no longer pose any obstacle to Israel’s objectives. Beyond that, it could mean mass expulsion and/or slaughter on a massive scale, beyond even what Israel is now carrying out.

This is what has continued to unfold—in new and horrific ways. And because the U.S. system of capitalism-imperialism requires Israel as a military and political outpost in the strategic region of the Middle East—the rulers of this system have continued to back and fund and support Israel's open genocidal slaughter.

Trump’s Fascist, Imperialist “Peace Plan” Must Be Opposed

To maintain the cover of stability, Trump is insisting that his “peace plan” is moving ahead, despite problems (including Israeli airstrikes), into Phase 2, and that he plans to announce his “Board of Peace” before Christmas. This is the board—with Trump himself at the head—that would assume total control of Gaza, and eventually—supposedly—replace Israeli forces with an international stabilization force. Whether this will actually come to pass is impossible to know with certainty.

However, people should recall that in 2001, the U.S. invaded and occupied Afghanistan, promising to liberate its people, end “terrorism,” and build a new society. In 2003, it invaded Iraq, promising to create a liberated, “democratic” Iraq. These grandiose promises and real plans of the U.S. imperialists failed abysmally, while costing hundreds of thousands of Afghans and nearly a million Iraqis their lives. 

What we can say with certainty about the current situation in Gaza, and which revcom.us has previously exposed HERE and HERE, is that Trump’s is a thoroughly reactionary, predatory plan which represents a further assault on the Palestinian people, a further bolstering of the genocidal Israeli state, and a further and deeper U.S. intervention into the Middle East.

End Israel’s Blockade of Gaza!

Stop the U.S.-Israeli Genocide of the Palestinian People

This whole system is rotten and illegitimate! We need and we demand: a whole new way to live, a fundamentally different system!

Revolution is a very serious matter and must be approached in a serious and scientific way, and not through subjective and individualistic expressions of frustration, posturing and acts which run counter to the development of a mass revolutionary movement which is aimed at—and which must be characterized by means that are fundamentally consistent with and serve to bring into being—a radically different and far better world. Revolution, and in particular communist revolution, is and can only be the act of masses of people, organized and led to carry out increasingly conscious struggle to abolish, and advance humanity beyond, all systems and relations of exploitation and oppression.

A bedrock, scientific understanding which must underlie the development of such a revolutionary movement is that:

The whole system we now live under is based on exploitation—here and all over the world. It is completely worthless and no basic change for the better can come about until this system is overthrown.

And that:

In a country like the U.S., the revolutionary overthrow of this system can only be achieved once there is a major, qualitative change in the nature of the objective situation, such that society as a whole is in the grip of a profound crisis, owing fundamentally to the nature and workings of the system itself, and along with that there is the emergence of a revolutionary people, numbering in the millions and millions, conscious of the need for revolutionary change and determined to fight for it. In this struggle for revolutionary change, the revolutionary people and those who lead them will be confronted by the violent repressive force of the machinery of the state which embodies and enforces the existing system of exploitation and oppression; and in order for the revolutionary struggle to succeed, it will need to meet and defeat that violent repressive force of the old, exploitative and oppressive order.

Before the development of a revolutionary situation—and as the key to working toward the development of a revolutionary people, in a country like the U.S.—those who see the need for and wish to contribute to a revolution must focus their efforts on raising the political and ideological consciousness of masses of people and building massive political resistance to the main ways in which, at any given time, the exploitative and oppressive nature of this system is concentrated in the policies and actions of the ruling class and its institutions and agencies—striving through all this to enable growing numbers of people to grasp both the need and the possibility for revolution when the necessary conditions have been brought into being, as a result of the unfolding of the contradictions of the system itself as well as the political, and ideological, work of revolutionaries.

In the absence of a revolutionary situation—and in opposition to the revolutionary orientation and revolutionary political and ideological work that is actually needed—the initiation of, or the advocacy of, isolated acts of violence, by individuals or small groups, divorced from masses of people and attempting to substitute for a revolutionary movement of masses of people, is very wrong and extremely harmful. Even—or especially—if this is done in the name of “revolution,” it will work against, and in fact do serious damage to, the development of an actual revolutionary movement of masses of people, as well as to the building of political resistance against the outrages and injustices of this system even before there is a revolutionary situation. It will aid the extremely repressive forces of the existing system in their moves to isolate, attack and crush those, both revolutionary forces and broader forces of political opposition, who are working to build mass political resistance and to achieve significant, and even profound, social change through the politically-conscious activity and initiative of masses of people.

The outrageous and criminal invasion of Venezuela on January 3, 2026—along with the threadbare imperialist justifications for it, the murders that led to it, and Trump’s bragging threat that “we’re going to run it”—drives home the imperialist character of the system that has basically ruled this country since the late 1800s. But what is that system? Could humanity ever rise beyond it? What could replace it—and how would it work?

On the basis of this country's founding in genocide and slavery, it has committed endless war crimes and crimes against humanity in maintaining its rule. Watch this from the revolutionary leader, Bob Avakian, from 2017, where he outlines a whole series of similar crimes committed by those who rule and represent this system—very similar to what Trump & Co. are doing now to Venezuela. Or look at the highly condensed summary of just a portion of the crimes we dig into in the American Crimes section of this site.

Many politicians have promised “peace” (even Trump, a war-mongering fascist, tries to make the outrageous claim he's the "President of Peace"). But we live under the system of capitalism-imperialism. And that has meaning for whoever runs it.

Capitalism-imperialism compels a handful of “developed” capitalist countries to dominate, distort and parasitically suck the blood from the vast majority of the world’s people. Capitalism-imperialism—in its compulsive, competition-driven requirement for ever more profit—means that millions of children in Asia, Africa and Latin America die each year from preventable disease, hunger, or both. Capitalism-imperialism compels wars to dominate the oppressed nations of the world, and wars between imperialist powers to sit atop that domination. Today even the “liberal-imperialist” New York Times demands that the U.S. military catch up with, match and be able to overpower its rival China—including in the ability to wield and use nuclear weapons. This system is built on cut-throat competition and rivalry… on expand-or-die… and that finds concentrated expression on the international level.

The human cost is staggering. Just since the end of World War II, the U.S. military has killed roughly 10 million people. Count the dead from Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia… count the dead from Guatemala, Chile, and El Salvador… from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Gaza… from Congo and Mozambique… and you will find death either carried out by, sponsored, or funded by America. And whoever ascends to the top of that system—whether Democrat or MAGA fascist—will move to deepen that exploitation and carry out the aggression necessary to sustain and defend it.

Trump—as a fascist—does this in a way with no regard for international or even U.S. law and in a particularly murderous (and dangerous) way. But he does this as a servant of the same capitalist-imperialist system that Biden and Obama also served.

Constitution Serving the Emancipation of ALL Humanity

But this isn’t the only way the world can be. This horror can and must end. Not just the particularly gangsteresque rule of Trump, but the whole imperialist system in this country and everything that flows from it. The technology and knowledge exist to organize society on a radically different foundation: getting to a world without exploitation and oppression. This is the goal of communism.⁷ The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by Bob Avakian, contains the sweeping vision, firm foundation and concrete blueprint for a socialist society that is in transition to this communist world: emancipating humanity from all forms and relations of exploitation and oppression, and from the ignorance and selfishness required and perpetuated by systems based on exploitation.

The new state power based on this Constitution can only be brought into being through a revolution involving millions in which the old machinery of exploitation, domination and oppression is not just reformed but abolished. 

This series of articles will focus on how the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America lays out the framework for how this new power would transform the relations between the U.S. and that vast majority of the world that it has up to now plundered, oppressed, repressed and waged war upon. The new socialist state power will do that on the basis of a radically different economic and political system, and a struggle to forge whole new relations among people.

Internationalism: Fundamental to the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America

The Preamble of the new Constitution sets out the most fundamental guiding principles of the new power. So it is worth noting that the second paragraph immediately takes up the relation of the New Socialist Republic in North America to the whole world:

In contrast to the way in which the capitalist-imperialist state serves and enforces the interests of a small ruling group of exploiters, the New Socialist Republic in North America, with the continuing leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party, bases itself on, and proceeds from, the fundamental interests of those most bitterly exploited and oppressed under the old system, and the masses of people broadly, and provides the means for them to play an increasingly widening role in the exercise of political power and the functioning of society in accordance with those interests–in order to carry forward the struggle to transform society, with the goal of uprooting and finally eliminating all oppressive and exploitative relations among human beings and the destructive antagonistic conflicts to which these relations give rise. 

This is a process and goal which, fundamentally and in the final analysis, can only be achieved on a global scale, with the advance to communism throughout the world. The orientation and principles of this state, as embodied in this Constitution, are internationalist: While giving due emphasis to meeting the material, intellectual and cultural needs of the people within this state, on a continually expanding basis, and to promoting the further transformation of this society to continue uprooting social inequalities and remaining aspects of exploitation and oppression, the socialist state must give fundamental priority to the advance of the revolutionary struggle, and the final goal of communism, throughout the world, and must adopt and carry out policies and actions which are in accordance with and give concrete effect to this internationalist orientation. 

This is a political vision and a morality unlike anything else in this society. If you read through the new Constitution with this in mind, you’ll see it take concrete form in many different principles and policies of the new socialist republic.

In regard to where we began this article, what does this new Constitution say about foreign relations? Could such a thing even remotely close to what’s going on in Venezuela happen in a society based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America? The answer is no! The U.S. today has roughly 800 military installations in other countries. These bases serve as ways to control the countries that they’re in and to suppress movements of opposition, including revolutionary movements, against regimes that are allied with the U.S. Remember again—10 million, around the world, slaughtered by the U.S. military and related institutions since the end of World War II.

Yet in a hostile, imperialist-dominated world, there remains a need for defense. Here’s how the New Socialist Republic would approach it:

1. The basic components and structures of the armed forces and militia and other organs of public defense and security of the New Socialist Republic in North America will have been brought into being through the course of the revolutionary struggle for power, once the conditions for that struggle had emerged: the development of an acute revolutionary crisis and the emergence of a revolutionary people, in the millions and millions, who have the leadership of a revolutionary communist vanguard and are conscious of the need for revolutionary change and determined to fight for it. With the establishment of this Republic, these institutions of public defense and security will be further developed in accordance with their essential purpose and role: to defend and safeguard the New Socialist Republic in North America and the security and rights of its people, in furtherance of the aims of this Republic and in support of the masses of people in carrying forward the revolutionary transformation of society, and contributing as much as possible to this transformation throughout the world. 

2. In keeping with this purpose and role, and in accordance with its internationalist orientation, the New Socialist Republic in North America will dismantle all remaining bases of the former imperialist USA in other countries and will renounce all treaties and agreements, military and otherwise, which were imposed by that imperialist state on other countries and peoples or which in any case served to impose and enforce the domination of the imperialist USA. The New Socialist Republic in North America renounces all wars of aggression and domination, and all occupation of other countries in pursuit of such domination and aggression, and will not station its forces, nor establish bases, in another country, except in circumstances where this is clearly in accord with the wishes of the masses of people in that country and where such action would actually be a manifestation of the internationalist orientation and other fundamental principles and objectives set forth in this Constitution and would contribute to the advance of revolutionary struggle in the world in accordance with these principles and objectives.

A Final, Important Point

The imperialist invasion of Venezuela and the illegal arrest of Nicolás Maduro, along with the press conference announcing this, calls to mind this passage written by Bob Avakian (BA) more than four years ago. Many in the ruling class are already raising that Trump’s move poses the danger of serving to legitimize similar moves by Russia against Ukraine and other eastern European countries and—even more ominous for the rulers—China vis-à-vis Taiwan. Over four years ago, writing of the splits within the ruling class over how to rule—splits which have since sharpened immeasurably—BA wrote the following:

It is extremely important to deeply understand this:

As this situation develops, and the ruling class is more and more unable to rule in the old way, society and daily life for masses of people, from different parts of society, can become increasingly unsettled and chaotic, with frequent “disruptions” of the “normal” way things have been.

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.

At such a time, the real and powerful alternative embodied in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, by Bob Avakian, needs to get into the bloodstream of society. This does provide, as we said at the start, the sweeping vision, the concrete blueprint and the firm foundation for a whole new way to live… and a fundamentally different system. With society being ripped apart, and revolution more possible—even in the face of fascism, genocide, climate catastrophe and nuclear war—it is urgent that people raise their sights to the radically different world that's possible and take responsibility as part of the larger mission which this Constitution serves—bringing forward real emancipators of humanity.

Introduction: In last week’s issue, we began a short series on how the new socialist state power, founded on and guided by the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, by Bob Avakian (BA), would approach relations with the whole world. See Part 1. We wrote that: 

“The Preamble of the new Constitution sets out the most fundamental guiding principles of the new power. So it is worth noting that the second paragraph immediately takes up the relation of the New Socialist Republic in North America to the whole world:

In contrast to the way in which the capitalist-imperialist state serves and enforces the interests of a small ruling group of exploiters, the New Socialist Republic in North America, with the continuing leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party, bases itself on, and proceeds from, the fundamental interests of those most bitterly exploited and oppressed under the old system, and the masses of people broadly, and provides the means for them to play an increasingly widening role in the exercise of political power and the functioning of society in accordance with those interests–in order to carry forward the struggle to transform society, with the goal of uprooting and finally eliminating all oppressive and exploitative relations among human beings and the destructive antagonistic conflicts to which these relations give rise. 

This is a process and goal which, fundamentally and in the final analysis, can only be achieved on a global scale, with the advance to communism throughout the world. The orientation and principles of this state, as embodied in this Constitution, are internationalist: While giving due emphasis to meeting the material, intellectual and cultural needs of the people within this state, on a continually expanding basis, and to promoting the further transformation of this society to continue uprooting social inequalities and remaining aspects of exploitation and oppression, the socialist state must give fundamental priority to the advance of the revolutionary struggle, and the final goal of communism, throughout the world, and must adopt and carry out policies and actions which are in accordance with and give concrete effect to this internationalist orientation."

This is a political vision and a morality unlike anything else in this society. It is founded on BA’s basic point that internationalism means that the whole world comes first. This week, Part II focuses on how the new economy will be structured to give that "fundamental priority.” 

Imagine: A New Economy to Serve a Base Area for World Revolution, Meeting Human Needs and Protecting the Environment

Article IV of the new Constitution focuses on “The Economy and Economic Development in the New Socialist Republic in North America.” The economy—or the mode of production—forms the basis for every society. So how would the socialist economy differ from the horrible global inequality, plunder and grinding exploitation of today’s capitalist-imperialist mode of production? How would it not just become a more “equitable” division of the spoils of this parasitic system? That will involve struggle, at times quite sharp—and the new Constitution provides the foundation and principles on which to wage that struggle.

Right up top Article IV states that:

Social production and economic development are guided and evaluated according to three overarching criteria: 

1. Advancing the world revolution to uproot all exploitation and oppression and to emancipate all of humanity; 

2. Meeting social need, creating a common material wealth that contributes to the all-around development of society and the individuals who make it up, and overcoming oppressive divisions between mental and manual labor, town and country, different regions and nationalities, and men and women;

 3. Protecting, preserving, and enhancing the ecosystems and biodiversity of the planet for current and future generations.

Let’s dig further into that first big goal of advancing the world revolution to uproot all exploitation and oppression, with the crucial Section 9 of Article IV:

Section 9. The Socialist State as a Base Area for the World Revolution. 

1. This orientation is built into the state’s economic structures and its planning system and priorities, as well as its capacities to dispatch resources and people to different parts of the world to carry out various internationalist tasks and responsibilities. 

2. In all international economic relations, proletarian internationalism and the needs of the world revolution come first. 

3. With other socialist states that exist or come into being, trade will be carried out under the principles of proletarian internationalism, to aid the construction of socialism in these countries and the world revolution. 

4. With regard to imperialist and reactionary states, the New Socialist Republic in North America will not put economic exchanges and agreements above its responsibility to support revolutionary movements in these countries. 

5. Trade with nations and countries which remain under the domination and oppression of imperialism must also be conducted on the basis of proletarian internationalism, and will take into account relations of dependency imposed by the former U.S. empire–requiring, in some cases, that parts, supplies, equipment and other assistance be provided to these countries for some time. But this must also take into account the nature of these countries and of their governments and ruling classes, the class struggle within them, and the role of these countries internationally. 

6. The structure of production and the resource base of the socialist economy cannot depend on labor and materials from other countries–much less exploitation and domination. The development of a socialist economy must not involve the export of capital–for example, building factories, or making loans, for profit. A socialist economy must not reproduce relations of domination and inequality in its international interactions. This question, too, must be put before the masses of people, as part of their coming to more deeply understand, and to act on, the basic principles on which the New Socialist Republic in North America is founded and according to which it must proceed. 

7. A socialist economy must practice self-reliance and sustainability at the same time that it aids the struggles of the exploited and oppressed of the world.⁷

8. The economy must be planned and developed in such a way as to make provision for, and actually provide, the resources and technology necessary for the security and defense of the society and the state against provocations, aggression and attacks by imperialists and other reactionary forces. At the same time, this must be done in accordance with the principles set forth in this Constitution–including specifically those regarding defense and security–and without allowing the provision of the necessary means for defense and security to fundamentally distort or undermine the development of the economy, and the society overall, along socialist lines and the fulfilling of internationalist responsibilities. The armed forces must, at all levels, strive to economize on expenditure and, where possible and in correspondence with overall economic planning, engage in productive activities that can contribute to their self-provisioning.

The Legacy of Parasitism and the Struggle Around What Comes First 

 Let’s pause for a minute and dig into point 6. Right now, under the system of capitalism-imperialism, the standard of living in this country is based on a parasitical relation with the rest of the world, particularly the vast majority of people who live in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The clothes that people in this country wear, the phones we use, the fruits and vegetables available in the better-off areas, the big-screen televisions—these are produced by literally hundreds of millions of super-exploited, desperately impoverished people in places like Congo, Bangladesh, and Mexico. Those humans who produce this wealth include 150 million children—children whose lives are foreclosed and foreshortened, and ground up into the commodities we consume. 

At the other end of the spectrum (leaving aside the ruling capitalist-imperialists) is a relatively large layer of people in this country who work in finance, insurance, real estate and other occupations that are bound up with seeking out the highest possible return on the wealth that this parasitical exploitation produces. This group has greatly expanded over the past 70 years. It is not the majority, but we are talking about well over 10 million people in operations made possible by and devoted to furthering this parasitism. And this parasitism has had a major effect on how everybody thinks and what they aspire to in America—a point to which Bob Avakian devoted a lot of attention in his work Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis.

So adhering to point 6 will require a tremendous restructuring of the whole economy, with big implications for how people live and even much dislocation. It will also mean sacrifice for many—both for those sections which have “made big bank” on the basis of this parasitism, but to a degree almost everyone living in this country. And that need for sacrifice will almost certainly give rise to struggle in planning the economy in a way that breaks the chains of this imperialist domination while still meeting the material needs of people within this country. As point 6 says, this will require putting the question before the masses.

In putting this question to the masses, those fighting to continue revolutionizing society will face resistance based on breaking with some of the style of life afforded by imperialist parasitism. Counter-revolutionaries will be all mixed in with people who just honestly disagree or have questions. Those working to lead the society further toward communism will be able to draw on real strengths in waging this struggle to transform production and to revolutionize people’s thinking. One strength will be an end to the insecurity and “fear of falling further” that haunts tens of millions even beyond the most impoverished people. 

At the same time, there will be a lot of people who will gravitate to what the new economy makes possible. First, this economy will make it possible for people to work co-operatively and collectively to solve great social problems, rather than scuffling and scraping to make a living and the dog-eat-dog struggle for survival. Think about the scientists and people with technical ability who will for the first time be able to fully put their skills and their desire to serve people into action in a dimension almost unimaginable today. Think about the youth, as well as the oppressed masses, who will seize on the chance to contribute to breaking down the savage inequalities left over from capitalism-imperialism not only in this country but around the world, with the backing of—and not the resistance and suppression by—the leadership of society. Think about people having the chance to go to work on “protecting, preserving, and enhancing the ecosystems and biodiversity of the planet for current and future generations,” instead of helplessly living with dread of human extinction hanging over their heads. Think of the exchange of cultures on the basis of breaking down the stereotypes and hatred of other people that blast like an airhorn from the MAGA fascists today—and that in ways more subtle, though still poisonous, permeate the culture in “normal life” under capitalism-imperialism.  

All this will play out in the kinds of society-wide debates and discussion that the Constitution provides for—including by making room for and funding those who disagree with the radically new orientation of the socialist economy and the policies flowing from that orientation. This will almost certainly involve times of sharp and widespread struggle—and that’s good! Why? Because as people come to learn more and transform their thinking through that process of discussion, debate study and more discussion, deeper unity can be built. And we are talking not only about unity on the specific policies under debate, but over the whole crucial orientation of “American lives are not more important than other people’s lives,” and “internationalism—the whole world comes first.”

Again, a Final Important Point

The U.S. invasion of Venezuela and the illegal arrest and kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores has in the past week been accompanied by new threats from Trump and others in his administration against Greenland and Denmark, Colombia, Mexico, Iran and other countries as well. As our article Trump's Global Rampage, And the Method to the Madness makes clear, there is an extremely significant danger of world war involved in this.

Over four years ago, writing of the splits within the capitalist-imperialist ruling class over how to rule—splits which have since sharpened immeasurably—Bob Avakian wrote the following:

It is extremely important to deeply understand this:

As this situation develops, and the ruling class is more and more unable to rule in the old way, society and daily life for masses of people, from different parts of society, can become increasingly unsettled and chaotic, with frequent “disruptions” of the “normal” way things have been.

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 we wrote last week, at such a time, the real and powerful alternative embodied in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, by Bob Avakian, needs to get into the bloodstream of society. This Constitution provides the sweeping vision, the concrete blueprint and the firm foundation for a whole new way to live… and a fundamentally different system. With society being ripped apart, and revolution more possible—even in the face of fascism, genocide, climate catastrophe and nuclear war—it is urgent that people raise their sights to the radically different world that's possible and take responsibility as part of the larger mission which this Constitution serves: the emancipation of humanity.

Performing:
William Parker & Matthew Shipp

Tickets: $25 General Admission | $100 Special Reception (details TBA)

February 3, 7 pm
at Revolution Books, NYC
437 Malcolm X Blvd/Lenox Ave (at 132nd Street)
New York, NY 10037
Tel: 212-691-3345

Your tax deductible donations will go toward the mission of The Bob Avakian Institute to preserve, project, and promote the works and vision of Bob Avakian with the aim of reaching the broadest possible audience. Bob Avakian is a revolutionary political thinker and leader, and architect of the new communism. 

U.S. OUT OF VENEZUELA

TRUMP MUST GO NOW!

In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!

This Whole System Is Rotten and Illegitimate. 
We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, a Fundamentally Different System!

In an outrageous, unprecedented and fascist gangster press conference, Trump declared that the U.S. is "going to run" the sovereign nation of Venezuela. This came hours after the U.S. sent their military in the dark of night to kidnap the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. turned the power off in parts of Venezuela's capital city, Caracas, and bombed two military bases, a naval port and an airport.

The criminal fascist thug Donald Trump is claiming the "right" to take over an independent country of 30 million people—maybe for years! He said that "for a period of time, the people that are standing right behind me. We're going to be running it." The people standing behind him were the fascist yes-men, Marco Rubio, General Dan Caine and dark ages Christian fascist nutcase Pete Hegseth.

Three points on why this is happening, and what the people in the U.S. must urgently understand and do to stop this:

1. In an illegal and illegitimate violation of international law and the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people, the fascist Trump said the U.S. would be directly controlling Venezuela, with U.S. oil companies seizing control of Venezuela's vast natural resources:

As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time. They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place. We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country. 

Who the fuck is the U.S. to be invading a foreign country because they're not "exploiting their own oil" in the way Trump see fit?! This is the American gangsters trying to violently enforce the idea that the U.S. has the "right" to wage wars, murder civilians, and violate international law if it sees it is in their imperialist interests. They are doing so based on easily refutable lies of drug smuggling or stealing "America's oil"—oil that just happens to be under Venezuelan soil! As for the idea that “this is our [that is, the U.S.’s] oil,” go here for an understanding of gangsterish way that the U.S. came to dominate the oil industry in Venezuela, what that has meant for the people of Venezuela, and why in fact the U.S. has NO legitimate claim on this oil.

In addition to violating international law, Trump is violating U.S. law by waging a war without congressional oversight! They are trying to legitimize war crimes because "we say they're legal." And they've been doing this for months—killing over 100 civilians in international waters with no due process!

The fascist regime is also moving to crush all protest and dissent against it inside the U.S., labeling anti-fascists as “domestic terrorists.” Everyone should stay attuned and be ready to oppose further leaps in repression, now in the context of war.

As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian wrote months ago: 

Trump fascism is a regime that openly and aggressively strips away basic rights and blatantly declares that there is no rule of law and due process of law other than what it dictates, and that raw destructive power is what must rule in the international arena, without even the pretense of adherence to international law or concern about the sovereignty, or even the right to exist, of less powerful peoples and countries.

This invasion of Venezuela poses an extreme danger to the people of Venezuela, Latin American and the people of the world. And it poses a sharp moral and political challenge to those who hate this but are standing aside: Are you alright living in—and benefiting from—a world where the U.S. can openly invade other countries because the U.S. imperialists see it in their interests? Are you alright living in—again, and benefiting from—a world where the U.S. can send its military to murder people and kidnap people who stand in their way?

If not, then don't you have an urgent and special responsibility to stand up against these bloody war crimes being committed in our name?! 

2. While Trump focused on illegally and blatantly seizing Venezuela's natural resources, this invasion is about much more than "oil profits." This is about qualitatively stepped-up imperialist domination and control of an entire continent at a time when the U.S. is contending for global domination with its main imperialist rival, China. Especially now with the U.S. seizing control of resources that China relies on, this contention holds extreme danger for the people of the region and could spiral out into nuclear war. 

For over 100 years, the U.S. has dominated Latin America through invasions, coups, torture and backing extremely repressive puppet governments. But as revcom.us wrote in an article on the Trump regime's National Security Strategy Statement (NSS), "A Strategy for a Fascist America Dominating the Planet": 

China has over the past decade significantly upped its trade, investment and aid in Latin America. It has funded infrastructure projects including roads, telecommunication networks, etc. The U.S. now intends to undermine, limit and roll this back. As the NSS contends, "The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity."

This fascist section of the imperialist ruling class feels the need to shore up the entire Western Hemisphere—including Canada and Greenland—as the U.S.'s "neighborhood" where they have total military and economic control. At this press conference, Trump and Rubio openly threatened Cuba and Colombia to fall in line, or else.

These fascists are attempting to deal with what they see as existential problems in maintaining the U.S. as top dog in a world of tremendous upheaval and volatility. This is part of the larger fascist program they see as their last chance to "rescue their system": rule through open violence and terror, the crushing of dissent and gutting of the rule of law, unleashing vengeful white supremacy, ethnic cleansing of immigrants, the patriarchal enslavement of women, purging of LGBT people from public life—wrapped together with Christian fascist lunacy and America-first belligerence.

These extreme moves have created sharp divides within the dominant ruling institutions of this system and throughout society, with many feeling that what the Trump regime is doing will destroy the U.S. and its standing in the world. But while they oppose this, those forces need to be compelled and enabled to drive this regime from power—through the sustained nonviolent protest of millions, uniting all who can be united behind the demand, The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go NOW! 

3. "We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way." –Bob Avakian

What this regime is attempting is extreme, and while they are very far along in installing all-out fascism, they do not have everything sewn up. Because of big changes in a world of extreme volatility and upheaval, and the shredding of the traditionally oppressive social fabric in the U.S., the imperialists can no longer rule in the old way that people have been conditioned to accept.

This has led to what Bob Avakian has recognized as a rare time when revolution has become more possible, even in this powerful country. People should go here and here to learn about this. 

Now is the time—urgently—to come together with others. Join in uniting all who can be united to defeat this fascism, to stand with the people of Venezuela, and to get organized for an actual revolution to get rid of the system that has given rise to this fascism—and so many other atrocities, including the danger of human extinction through nuclear war and climate catastrophe.

As we have said in the Declaration, We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System:

A whole different way of living is possible: a whole different way to organize society, with a radically different economic foundation and political system, emancipating relations among people and an uplifting culture—all of this oriented to meeting the basic needs and fulfilling the highest interests of the masses of people.

With the world in the balance, this is what people need to raise their sights to, and be part of bringing into being.

On November 26, two National Guard soldiers in Washington, DC were shot at close range. Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old woman, died, and Andrew Wolfe, a 24-year-old man, is still in the hospital with extremely serious injuries. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan man who fought on the U.S. side in the Afghanistan war has been charged with first degree murder and three other felonies. He has pleaded not guilty.⁷ Lakanwal was shot on the scene and is still in the hospital. 

The shooting of the two National Guard members was a heinous act. And as Refuse Fascism said in a statement, “Incidents such as this have nothing to do with and only do harm to the nonviolent mass struggle of millions that is needed to drive the fascist Trump regime from power.” But Trump and the other MAGA vultures were quick to jump on this tragic situation to further whip up hatred against Muslims and overall anti-immigrant sentiment, and to impose even more restrictions on immigration from the “Third World.” 

Although even the police say that they don’t know what motivated the shooting, Trump declared it was “terrorism.” Kristi Noem (head of the Department of Homeland Security) claimed (without evidence) that Lakanwal had been “radicalized” by people in the Afghan community in Washington state. She said that that whole community needed to be “investigated.” Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville tweeted “We must IMMEDIATELY BAN all ISLAM immigrants and DEPORT every single Islamist who is living among us just waiting to attack.” Trump called for a “reexamination” of all Afghans who had previously been granted asylum or other legal status. 

Trump also called for the expulsion of all Somali immigrants, calling them “garbage,” and saying they should “go back to where they came from” and that “their country is no good for a reason.” And he ordered major ICE operations targeting Somalis in the Minnesota-St. Paul area, where more than 80,000 people of Somali origin live.

In that same cold-blooded xenophobic (immigrant-hating) spirit Trump’s chief advisor, Stephen Miller, posted this (responding to criticism of Trump for blaming whole countries for the [alleged] act of one person):

This is the great lie of mass migration. You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies. No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.

How America “Broke” Afghanistan

As one Pakistani novelist said on hearing this, “Who broke the homeland!!?” 

This is exactly the right question! The answer to that starts with the fact that Afghanistan is “cursed” by its strategic location bridging Central and East Asia to the Middle East. So imperialist powers have repeatedly fought to control it. Britain invaded three times in the 19th century. In 1979, the former Soviet Union, which was a social-imperialist country (whose dominant power is now Russia), invaded to prop up a friendly government. In response, the U.S. helped organize, arm and fund Islamic fundamentalist armies to overthrow the pro-Soviet government. At least one-half million Afghan civilians were killed, and Afghanistan’s Islamic theocratic fascist forces were given a tremendous boost. This was part of U.S. imperialism’s drive to control the entire region of Central Asia and the Middle East. Yes, all these countries had all the problems of oppressive class societies to begin with—but by the second half of the 20th century, U.S. imperialism was the power that mainly set the terms for who did and didn’t rule, and what did and didn’t happen in these countries.

In reaction to this and other developments, nationalist political movements rooted in Islam arose in this region. Bob Avakian summed this up in 2007 in a way that explains much about the international dynamics of the past 30 years:

What we see in contention here with Jihad [Islamic fundamentalism] on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade [increasingly globalized western imperialism] on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these “outmodeds,” you end up strengthening both.

While this is a very important formulation and is crucial to understanding much of the dynamics driving things in the world in this period, at the same time we do have to be clear about which of these “historically outmodeds” has done the greater damage and poses the greater threat to humanity: It is the historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system, and in particular the U.S. imperialists.

The U.S. War Against the Taliban

One grouping of those theocrats, the Taliban, came to power in 1996 after a period of civil war. They imposed extreme oppression of women as well as minority religions and others. In 2001, Osama bin Laden operated out of a base in Afghanistan to engineer the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. The Taliban offered to negotiate bin Laden’s turnover to the U.S., but the U.S. instead seized the opportunity to invade and occupy Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban. They cobbled together a corrupt and widely despised puppet government in its place. War erupted between the U.S. and its lackey government on one side and the Taliban on the other, leading to an estimated 241,000 civilian deaths by violence, and hundreds of thousands more from war-caused hunger and disease.

Forty years of war, generations being born, living and dying surrounded by death, destruction, brutal oppressors and foreign armies. Agriculture devastated, and the economy increasingly dependent on war spending and other funds, almost all of which either came from or were controlled by U.S. imperialism.

What It Really Means to Work for American Occupiers

During the U.S. occupation many thousands of people worked for the U.S., the pro-U.S. government, or NGOs or businesses tied to the U.S. Some were thugs and gangsters tied into one or another warlord that the U.S. allied with, but some took these jobs either to ward off hunger, or in the misguided belief that the U.S. was actually there to help liberate them from the oppressive Taliban. But doing this also put them at odds with many in their families or neighbors who opposed the U.S. occupation even as they also hated the Taliban. And it put them at risk of being killed by the Taliban.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal was one of them, reportedly recruited into the CIA-led Unit 03 of the Kandahar Strike Force in 2012, when he was just 16 years old. These Strike Forces (also known as “Zero Units”) were in fact death squads, committing war crimes against the Afghan people. In 2019, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on 14 documented incidents in which these units carried out night raids, bursting into homes as people slept, and slaughtering civilians, including small children and elderly people, and other crimes.⁸

When the U.S. was recruiting Afghans to work with them, they always promised “we’ll protect you, we’ll have your back.” But then when the U.S. pulled out, it made no serious provision for the safety of tens of thousands of people who had worked with them, whether as teachers, soldiers or political leaders. There was a desperate scramble for people to get out as the Taliban retook the country. Some thousands did escape, and then (like Lakanwal) were put through intensive vetting to prove, again and again, that they were “loyal” enough to enter the U.S., while the U.S. government sought to wash its hands of them as quickly as possible.⁹

We don’t know a lot about Lakanwal, but one thing that has been reported by friends, family and social workers is that he appeared to be going through a mental breakdown, spending weeks in a dark room not talking to anyone, going off for weeks in the family car. And this was reportedly bound up with his experience in the Zero Unit.

So when it comes to the question of “who broke the homeland?” it is clear it is the imperialist system, with its built-in drive for imperialist powers like the U.S. and its rivals to divide and redivide the world. Then, when things go sideways for them, they have the nerve to turn on the victims of their butchery and treachery, and question their humanity, and demand that they be cast out of society or driven into the shadows? Afghanistan is not unique in this. You can look at our series American Crime and find some similar stories all over the world, including from more than one of the 19 non-European countries from which Trump has now banned all immigration to the U.S.

Faced with a huge crisis of that very system, the fascist section of this imperialist ruling class—Trump, Miller, Vance and all the rest—are on a mission to save that system through a fascist form of rule. In their view, a fascist form of rule—one rooted in blatant, open and violent white supremacy, in male domination of women and repression of LGBT people, and in open hatred and massive scapegoating of  those they consider “foreigners”; one saturated in anti-scientific ignorance and theocratic fundamentalist Christianity; and one in which due process and civil liberties are essentially wiped out—is the only thing that can save the empire.

In the face of this, once again, we revcoms say:

In The Name Of Humanity, We Refuse To Accept A Fascist America!

This Whole System Is Rotten And Illegitimate!
We Need And We Demand: A Whole New Way To Live, A Fundamentally Different System!

In the early hours of today, the United States launched a “large-scale” assault against Venezuela, with airstrikes against several military and civilian targets in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, as well as in the states of Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira. Furthermore, Trump announced by a social media post that the United States had “captured” the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, and that they are being transported (on the USS Iwo Jima) to the U.S. The fascist U.S. Attorney General, Pamela Bondi, announced that charges have been filed against Maduro so that he can be tried in a New York court.

The United States has no right to disregard international law, bomb a country, and kidnap its president, as if they were the “world’s policeman.” The fact that the regime of Maduro, Diosdado Cabello [Venezuela Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace], and Vladimir Padrino [Venezuela Minister of Defense] does not represent anything positive for the Venezuelan people does not make a U.S. imperialist invasion legitimate or represent anything “good.”

This U.S. aggression against Venezuela is criminal and is a serious demonstration of the serious danger that the United States represents to the world, especially now under a fascist regime like Trump’s: It takes place after months of illegal bombings and serial extrajudicial executions in the Caribbean and Pacific waters, following recent U.S. attacks in Nigeria and open threats to launch new attacks against the reactionary Islamic Republic of Iran. This invasion against Venezuela is a demonstration not only of the imperialist character of the United States, but also of the fascist character of the regime that governs there today, and is another step in the consolidation of a fascist military, economic, and political bloc in Latin America that is a loyal vassal of U.S. interests.

It is urgent to strongly oppose this imperialist invasion and all imperialist moves by the United States. It is repugnant and criminal how sections of the right, both within Colombia (including directly [ex Colombian presidents] Uribe, Duque, and Pastrana) and in Latin America (the fascist-leaning presidents of Argentina, Javier Milei, and Ecuador, Daniel Noboa) are calling for this invasion to be celebrated as a “humanitarian intervention” or even, as former [Colombian] President Uribe stated, an act of “legitimate (self-)defense” on the part of the United States. This servile and pro-“national subjugation” position must be condemned and confronted. And although the discontent of a large section of the Venezuelan population with the Maduro regime is understandable, their desires for change are being used as an instrument to justify the criminal U.S. aggression and to install a regime loyal to Trump’s United States, with all the horror that this also means for the vast majority.

It is necessary to organize the broadest, deepest, and most determined anti-imperialist struggle, “we need to develop a movement that opposes any aggression by the United States against Venezuela, Colombia, or any other country, and to do this without taking sides with the imperialist interests of any of the contending imperialist powers, but rather by opposing the imperialist system as a whole. To forge such a movement, we must not ‘ignore what divides us’; we must grapple, using the right method and spirit, around the differences in viewpoints and programs, so that more and more people can become more conscious and identify programs that can only lead from one catastrophe to another, and instead embrace those programs that aim for a fundamentally different future.” [From the Revolutionary Communist Group, Colombia: No U.S. Imperialist War Against Venezuela! No Imperialist Domination Over Latin America and the World!]

It is necessary for broad sections of the people in Colombia and other parts of the world to mobilize right now, condemning this imperialist aggression against Venezuela. We must mobilize a powerful force that opposes the plans of the U.S. imperialists to consolidate Latin America as their backyard, loyal to Trumpist fascism. “Now is the time to take on this inspiring challenge which enables us to unite in combating the ongoing crimes, and against the system that causes them, the capitalist imperialist system.”

U.S. OUT OF VENEZUELA!

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY, WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FASCIST AMERICA!

THIS WHOLE SYSTEM IS ROTTEN AND ILLEGITIMATE—WE NEED AND WE DEMAND A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM!

TRUMP MUST GO NOW!!!

Revolutionary Communist Group, Colombia | January 3, 2026

We are in the midst of a major fascist leap in the suppression of protest and dissent—but most people don't even know about this. Revcom.us has been reporting on the extreme repressive moves which are otherwise getting very little attention—in the mainstream media or among anti-fascist writers. And this urgently has to change.

This week, we are pulling together a number of these articles and encouraging readers to spread these widely. Grapple together about what is required to combat these fascist repressive moves as part of defeating Trump/MAGA fascism and as part of building up the forces for revolution to bring a radically different, and far better system into being. How do we sound the alarm throughout society? How do we raise standards among the decent people who oppose this fascism? How do we build a movement that has each other's backs?

In a December 15 article on a memo from the fascist Department of Justice, we wrote:

This memo almost certainly foreshadows a major leap in repression. This can neither be brushed off and treated as empty threats, nor can we allow ourselves and all the decent people opposed to this fascism to be preemptively scared into submission. Such moves—if people are mobilized to understand the threat they pose—could politically backfire on the fascists.

But that only happens if consciousness is raised about the real danger of these moves and if standards are adopted in the movement against Trump that “an injury to one is an injury to all,” with individuals and organizations standing with anyone under attack.

In addition to articles from revcom.us, we want to highlight a few other voices sounding the alarm from different perspectives:

Pam Bondi’s Ominous New Memo: “Operationalizing” Trump’s All-Out Fascist Vision, revcom.us, December 15, 2025. 

An overall analysis and dissection of the Justice Department memo issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi, its implications, and what to do in the face of it.

***

Regime Launches “All-of-Government Effort to Dismantle” All Opposition to Fascism, revcom.us, October 20, 2025. 

An overall analysis and dissection of two September executive orders from Trump—one designating “antifa” as a “Domestic Terror Organization,” the other calling for an all-out campaign against political dissent and opposition using the pretext of “domestic terrorism.” 

***

“Don’t Talk”—A Fundamental Principle for Resisting Repression and Defending the Rights of the People, revcom.us, February 10, 2025. 

Essential reading that prepares people to understand and deal with encounters with FBI and other “investigators” being unleashed by the Bondi memo.

***

How Can The President Go After Citizens, Senator Elissa Slotkin, December 17, 2025.

A short YouTube talk on how and why the Bondi Memorandum is another major step in repression.

***

The Bondi Memo’s Quiet Rewriting of Domestic Terrorism Rules, by Thomas E. Brzozowski, Lawfaremedia.org, December 12, 2025.

Brzozowski writes, "If you were not already on high alert, you should be now." Brzozowski is a former Counsel for Domestic Terrorism in the Counterterrorism Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

***

U.S. Military Willing to Attack “Designated Terrorist Organizations” Within America, General Says, Nick Turse, The Intercept, December 16, 2025.

Head of the U.S. Northern Command testifies in a Senate hearing that if he was ordered lawfully to deploy troops in cities against “designated terrorist organizations,” he would “execute the order.”

***

FBI Making List of American “Extremists,” Leaked Memo Reveals, Ken Klippenstein, December 6, 2025.

Klippenstein was the first to report on the Bondi memo. 

***

In a hit piece on Substack, Kris Goldsmith relies on tired slander and anti-communist distortion to attack Refuse Fascism for its association with the revcoms and Bob Avakian, the revolutionary leader and architect of the new communism.  Goldsmith paints a cartoon caricature of sinister communists working behind the scenes to take advantage of people in protests against fascism for "visibility."  He repeats the lie that the revcoms are a "cult."  Absent in his essay are any actual statements from Avakian or the revcoms.

Goldsmith laces his argument with dire warnings that Refuse Fascism and the revcoms will do damage to the fight against Trump/MAGA fascism. This is despite the fact that Refuse Fascism (an organization involving people from different perspectives which was formed just weeks after Trump's first election) has been the most consistent, and usually the only, national organization that has recognized what we are facing as fascism and called on people to act commensurately. 

Goldsmith's whole argument is based on the Trumpian logic that "a lot of people are saying" so it must be true. 

But repeating crude slanders and cheap lies does not make those slanders and lies any more true, or less harmful—and invoking others who have spewed the same lies and slanders does not make them any more credible.  It only puts you in the company of others using unprincipled methods, and joins in the harm such unprincipled attacks do.  This is especially terrible now, given the monumental stakes involved in the fight against this Trump/MAGA fascism. 

Many people have called out these divide-and-conquer schemes, seeing the urgent need to unite all who can be united behind the single demand: The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go NOW!  But there are unfortunately too many others who take up the "I heard it on the internet so it must be true" logic, believing lies and distortions about the position of the revcoms and Bob Avakian without having the intellectual integrity to look into it for themselves.

These attacks—and the accompanying gossip culture—do the dirty work for Trump fascism by working to undermine the broad and principled unity needed to defeat this fascism.  These tactics—relying on rumor, lies and distorting people's views to isolate and silence them—smack strongly of the tactics of the right wing fascist forces in this country and the political police (the FBI, etc.) who create pretexts to go after revolutionary groups, and who engage in character assassination to discredit revolutionary leaders. (See: “In the 1960s, the Government Spread Lies to Foment Violent Conflict Within the Movement...”)

Especially as the Trump fascist regime is moving to classify all anti-fascist opposition—from Democratic Party politicians to No Kings protesters—as "domestic terrorism," these attacks are extremely dangerous.  Don't fall for it.

Principled debate over strategy and analysis are essential to any movement for positive change.  But that is very different than lies, slander, and personal attacks.  With Goldsmith in particular, these attacks seem to be covering over and distracting from major differences about this fundamental truth: the Trump fascist regime cannot be contained, it must be stopped.  And the only way to stop it is to drive it from power through sustained, nonviolent determined protest centered in Washington, DC at the seat of power.  This is what the organization Refuse Fascism, involving people from different perspectives and viewpoints, has been tirelessly organizing people to do. 

Three Essential Differences

Central in Goldsmith's attack is a dishonest distortion about who Bob Avakian is and what his work and leadership are actually about. 

Bob Avakian (or BA) is a revolutionary leader and the architect of the new communism.  He’s played a role in the revolutionary movement going back over 60 years now, to the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley and working closely with the Black Panther Party.  You can learn more about him, his work and his life here. 

Here, we are going to focus on three crucial points at issue: how serious is this fascism; on what basis should the dividing lines within those fighting this fascism be drawn; and what does good leadership consist of.  As part of that, we’ll go into BA’s work on fascism, leadership and the importance of critical thinking so that people will actually have some basis to judge right and wrong.  We’ll also show how Goldsmith avoids original sources and instead relies on rumors and innuendo and why Goldsmith’s mode of attack is not only incredibly dishonest but dangerously irresponsible. 

Difference number one: How dangerous and how consolidated IS this fascism?

The single most important question facing people in this country today is the rapid imposition of fascism on America. 

In his hit piece, Goldsmith talks about the “creeping normalization of fascist politics in America.” “Creeping normalization”—sorry, but that ship sailed a long time ago. “Creeping?” Please. As the Refuse Fascism call states, “Fascism is upon us.”

It’s not creeping. It’s in power and moving to consolidate that power daily.  Do you want to deny the truth of what Bob Avakian said less than three months ago?

If this fascist regime is allowed to remain in power, everything that decent people have felt they could rely on to seek justice will be brutally shut down...every uplifting moral value will be reviled and repressed...every sphere of society will be remade, in terrible ways, in line with the male supremacist, anti-LGBT, white supremacist and anti-immigrant cruelty and the anti-scientific, health and climate destroying madness of the Trump fascist regime and the bloodthirsty ravings and depraved violence of fanatics heading “the department of war,” with the deranged maniac Trump having his finger on the nuclear button.

Every vision, and every active striving, for a better, more just world, for a future worth living in, will be violently suppressed and effectively foreclosed, at least for the foreseeable future.

This is not hyperbole—it is the bitter reality that is being rapidly enforced.

No, this didn’t happen overnight. Bob Avakian has studied the question of fascism in America, and he has written and spoken on it for 30 years.  He’s traced its development and scientifically analyzed its deep roots in American society, as well as the dynamics driving it. Go here from 2004, here from 2017, and here from two months ago to get a sense of the content, through-line and the development of this analysis.  So yes, not overnight, but way the hell away from “creeping”—and with Trump Two, all this has taken a further leap.

A History of Attacks Which Serve to Hide the Real Difference

Goldsmith hinges much of his argument on recycling old attacks on Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, a national organization that revcom Sunsara Taylor founded along with abortion provider Merle Hoffman, feminist writer Lori Sokol and others.  What Goldsmith doesn't tell you is that the organizations who launched this attack were the same ones who refused to call for mass protest against the overturning of Roe v Wade. These groups focused only on distribution of abortion medication and abortion funds.  While both provide an essential service, this was a losing and defensive strategy.  In contrast, Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights called people into the streets with the aim of preventing the ripping away of the fundamental right to abortion nationwide. 

The organizations that attacked Rise Up followed the longstanding line of the Democratic Party—minimizing the fascist danger, ceding the moral high ground to anti-abortion fanatics, compromising on women's lives, and working within the “normal channels” of this system, even as an illegitimate fascist-packed Supreme Court was ripping away basic rights, and the fascists were shredding those “normal channels.” 

But, as Goldsmith does today, instead of openly debating out these differences over strategy and analysis, they relied on lies, slander and personal attacks to shut down this debate.

And whatever the intention, Goldsmith's attack on Refuse Fascism serves the same goal: keeping people's thinking and actions confined to terms set by the “normal channels” of this system, even as once again and even more rapidly, those channels are being shredded.

Goldsmith says he is seeking to protect the "Removal Coalition” from the "co-optation efforts" of Refuse Fascism.  The Removal Coalition is a relatively new grouping, started in June 2025.  Goldsmith writes: “Veterans, activists, and content creators gathered in Washington right now for the Remove the Regime rally have every reason to be proud. This is the kind of pro-democracy organizing we need more of—creative, strategic, and grounded in community.”

But he does not speak to the important differences over strategy.  In writing about the three days of protest organized by the Removal Coalition on November 20-22, revcom.us wrote: 

All this brought important energy and public pressure and opposition to Trump into the nation's capital and this is a positive contribution to the mass struggle that is needed to bring about the regime's removal. At the same time, while impeachment could be one means through which this demand is met, it is not the only means through which Trump could be nonviolently removed. Even more essential: it is unlikely in the extreme that it would be brought about without a massive, nonviolent, sustained struggle of millions demanding Trump's removal. Also, the terms and pacing of this struggle must not be set by congressional calendars and procedures; the pace of the fascist juggernaut is way too urgent for that. And while lobbying can certainly play a role, such activity cannot substitute for what must ultimately be millions in the streets in sustained nonviolent protest—centered in Washington, DC.

Goldsmith Indulges Himself in Fantasy and Delusion in the Face of REAL Danger

Goldsmith repeatedly downplays the extreme danger of Trump MAGA fascism, danger that is posed right now.  He does this in a recent video when he says that “Senator Mark Kelly is being investigated for sedition—and that’s a good thing.”  He paints a rosy scenario in which Kelly will certainly be acquitted and at the same time this will finally wake up the Democrats and, through a series of elections, allow for the threat of fascism to be crushed.  Goldsmith blinds himself to the actual threat being posed to Kelly and to the rapid and radical fascist-driven transformations of the officer corps and military justice system (that Goldsmith assumes will acquit Kelly). He refused to deal with the actual reasons the Democratic Party as a whole has up to now not resisted fascism, and to the great likelihood that the 2026 elections—if they happen at all—will be rigged by Trump and MAGA (a process already being set in motion). 

Even if somehow this extremely complicated and extremely unlikely chain of events should come to pass, it is profoundly immoral to wait until the midterms while thousands of people are being chewed up and destroyed by Trumpian fascism and the whole planet is being imperiled. 

So, that’s difference number one—“creeping normalization” and relying on the Democrats vs. coming to grips with the reality of the fascist transformation of America NOW.

Difference number two: On what basis should the movement against fascism unite?

Goldsmith further argues, “Opposition to fascism, on its own, is not a political compass. What matters is what they want in its place.” 

To the contrary, at this time opposition to fascism is in fact the most important political dividing line in the country.  The single thing that has to unite millions—communists, Democrats, never-Trump Republicans, social democrats, all the decent people who refuse to capitulate to dark ages fascism—is the determination to drive the Trump fascist regime from power.  Whether you want to restore what you see as “the promise of America,” or whether like us you advocate for getting to a world “without everything America stands for and everything it does in the world,” we must come together behind one single unifying demand: The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go NOW!

As Avakian has repeatedly argued for:

Many individuals, organizations and groups will have different views on what has given rise to this fascism, and what should replace it, and we revcoms (revolutionary communists) will continue to forthrightly put forward and argue for our views on this, and encourage others to similarly put forward their own perspectives. But this must take place in the context and atmosphere where we are all pulling together to overcome every obstacle—including “divide and conquer” schemes, from whatever source and in whatever guise—uniting all who can be united, in the millions and millions, to achieve the truly historic goal of driving out this fascist regime.

Part of Goldsmith's "warning" is that Avakian and the revcoms supposedly have sinister and nefarious goals in trying to unite with others, trying to "coopt" mass movements.  Aside from the capitalist mode of thinking that movements against oppression can be "owned," we have to ask: why is wanting to defeat fascism to restore the status quo seen as a legitimate position, but wanting to defeat fascism because you are driven by the interests of humanity all over the world to live free from exploitation and oppression is somehow suspect? 

Last December, in a social media message Avakian predicted that this accusation might be made by "people looking for some reason, or excuse, not to rise to the challenge of defeating this fascism"

I am not calling for a mass movement to defeat Trump/MAGA fascism as some kind of “gimmick” whose aim is not really to defeat this fascism but is to somehow “trick” people into supporting a revolution to overthrow the whole system. One of the most fundamental principles of the new communism I have developed is the need to consistently approach things in a serious, scientific way—and this means being open and honest about what our objectives are. As I said at the beginning, we revcoms (revolutionary communists, based on the new communism) are serious about defeating this fascism—because this fascism represents a very real horror not only for the people in this country but for people throughout the world.

At the same time, as I have repeatedly emphasized, this fascism has been brought forth by—has grown out of the very soil of—the system of capitalism-imperialism and its development through the history of this country. By its very nature, this system has continually brought forth horror after horror; and only an actual revolution can open the way to finally ending the terrible atrocity and needless suffering constantly caused by this system.

We revcoms will continue to work urgently to win people, in the thousands and then millions, to see the need—and to act on the need—for revolution. If it turned out that a massive movement actually succeeded in defeating Trump/MAGA fascism, without that involving the revolutionary overthrow of the whole system of capitalism-imperialism, then we would certainly not somehow be “disappointed”! We would recognize the great importance of this victory, for the cause of humanity. And we would continue to work tirelessly to carry forward the struggle toward the goal of revolution which is necessary to end the endless horrors of this whole system of capitalism-imperialism, and bring into being a much better system—as set forth in the Declaration at revcom.us: WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM.

Difference number three: The question of leadership

Without a real argument of substance to make, Goldsmith falls back on the favorite of those who want you to avoid engaging Bob Avakian, that the revcoms are a “cult.”  Avakian himself has spoken to this more than once, including why this kind of thing too easily gets over in the current culture. 

Beyond that, though, one of the hallmarks of the new communism that Bob Avakian has brought forward is the recognition of the need for a scientific, evidence-based approach to understanding and radically changing the world. He argues for a process that fosters debate and dissent.  Speaking about the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America which Avakian authored, he said:

It is a fact that, nowhere else, in any actual or proposed founding or guiding document of any government, is there anything like not only the protection but the provision for dissent and intellectual and cultural ferment that is embodied in this Constitution, while this has, as its solid core, a grounding in the socialist transformation of the economy, with the goal of abolishing all exploitation, and the corresponding transformation of the social relations and political institutions, to uproot all oppression, and the promotion, through the educational system and in society as a whole, of an approach that will “enable people to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, and in this way to continually learn about the world and be better able to contribute to changing it in accordance with the fundamental interests of humanity.”

Avakian goes on to say, in this same message (“Irresponsible Opportunist Distortions Should Not Be Allowed…”), 

The principles and methods that have led to the development of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America are also the basis and the guideline for how we revcoms approach working with many others, of different political perspectives, in order to unite all who can be united in massive, powerful, sustained and relentless non-violent struggle to defeat and remove the Trump fascist regime—which, from our perspective, is a crucial part of moving to bring about the revolution that will lead to the profoundly liberating system that is embodied in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, aiming for the emancipation of humanity as a whole from all systems and relations of exploitation and oppression everywhere in the world.

This is what I and the revcoms actually stand for, and have dedicated our lives and efforts to fighting for. Honest questions or principled disagreement about this is welcome and can be the basis for meaningful discussion and debate—at the same time as everyone who refuses to accept a fascist America is united as a powerful force to meet the urgent need to defeat and remove the Trump fascist regime.

That is the principle, clarity and urgency needed now.  As the fascist regime is moving so so quickly to lock down an all-out fascist America which threatens humanity and the planet, it is everyone's responsibility to not fall for dishonest divide-and-conquer schemes, and call these out when you see them. 

Did you know that from 1956 to 1971 the FBI conducted a program designed to foment conflict within revolutionary movements, as well as broader movements for reform—conflicts which not only crippled these movements, but served as a cover to carry out frame-ups and even outright murder of revolutionary fighters and activists?

Did you know that they sent undercover people into these movements specifically to create or magnify conflicts? Did you know that they relied on unsubstantiated gossip and often inventions, as well as forged documents as part of their arsenal?

Did you know that they took statements out of context to distort the real views of activists and revolutionary fighters and use these as pretexts for smear campaigns and attempted prosecutions?

All this came to light in 1971, when some brave and heroic people appropriated the files revealing this program in a nighttime operation to go into an FBI office and bring these criminal activities by the government to light. As a result, many people in the movements of the time and even beyond, in broader society, adopted different standards for settling inevitable conflicts over politics and ideology in a principled way, and preventing the police, FBI and other government agencies from spreading slanders, fomenting conflicts and endangering the lives of people active in the struggle for justice.

Now, decades later, a new generation is way too unaware either of the FBI activities or the protocols widely adopted. We saw the results of this in 2022, with the vicious and very dangerous slander campaign that was launched against Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, the revcoms, Bob Avakian and Sunsara Taylor. And now, in light of the heightened repression from Trump fascism and the low standards that exist among people broadly, we are reissuing this article.

We urge people to read and spread the article below, and to insist on principled discussion and debate over disagreements and to oppose any dangerous campaigns of lies, disinformation and distortion.

~~~~~~~~~~~

COINTELPRO was launched by the FBI in secret in 1956 in the context of the rising civil rights movement, and operations were later “signed on” to by the Kennedy administration. Its reach was broad and vicious. The FBI, working in sync with local police “Red Squads” (political police) wrote leaflets fomenting conflicts between different groups. They sent anonymous letters warning parents and school administrators of what their children and students were supposedly doing. They conducted police surveillance and repression against antiwar coffee houses opening near military bases. And those the FBI identified as leaders, in particular, were marked for “neutralization” by the FBI, a euphemism for being framed up on serious criminal charges or killed.

One of the earliest, ugliest and most grievous FBI operations was against Malcolm X. We recently covered this, and we are including it here as a companion to this article.

Going After Martin Luther King Through Personal Slander and Harassment

One element in COINTELPRO attacks on the civil rights movement was the dissemination by the FBI of allegations about Martin Luther King’s sex life that had nothing to do with the struggle for civil rights, or debates within that movement or in society as a whole. The FBI bugged King’s bedroom(!) and then, directly or posing as “concerned individuals” sent supposed taped “evidence” to media outlets and others, including colleges where King was invited to speak, demanding he be disinvited. They even sent such a tape to his wife, Coretta Scott King, in the hope of causing anguish and breaking up the marriage.

The FBI also circulated allegations that King’s movement had organizational and financial connections to communists, playing on anti-communist prejudices, to push (and provide an excuse for) white liberals and what the FBI identified as “the responsible Negro community” to stay away from the civil rights movement at a time when civil rights activists were being brutally attacked and murdered by police and the KKK, and as a cover for massive surveillance of the civil rights movement. Whether or not the authorities were directly involved in King’s murder in Memphis in 1968 as his family and close associates have insisted, the COINTELPRO operation created conditions that facilitated his assassination and was continued for a year after his death.

Going After the Panthers: Fomenting Conflicts to Murder Leadership

A major objective and focus of COINTELPRO was isolating and setting up the most revolutionary forces at the time, especially the Black Panther Party (BPP), for attack. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, in a secret memo, wrote to offices calling for “imaginative and hard-hitting counterintelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPP.” (Emphasis added.)

As they did with Malcolm X (see the accompanying article), the FBI often focused on setting up others to do the actual dirty work. To take one notorious example, the FBI forged a letter, supposedly from someone in the community, to Jeff Fort, the leader of the Blackstone Rangers, a Chicago gang at the time, claiming that the Black Panther Party was getting ready to move on him. In this case, in the climate of the times when there was both a broad culture of being alert to moves by the authorities to forge accusations to set people up, and when there was broad respect for the Panthers and the revolution, Fort decided the threatening letter was not credible. This letter was part of a larger COINTELPRO operation that set into motion events that led to the assassination of Panther leader Fred Hampton by Chicago police and the FBI in 1969.

In another COINTELPRO operation, the LA office of the FBI came up with a plan to forge a letter claiming the US Organization (United Slaves), which had been attacking the Panthers, believed that the BPP had a contract out to kill their leader. The LA FBI office wrote that the objective was for “this counterintelligence measure [to] result in an ‘US’ and BPP vendetta.” The operation was part of what led to the terrible murder of Black Panther leaders John Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter by US members in Los Angeles.

Again, there were real issues to resolve, questions to investigate, and debates to struggle out among those struggling for a different and better world in different ways, coming from different outlooks at the time, as now. The pattern and practice of COINTELPRO was to exploit these contradictions to twist them into vicious, destructive personal attacks, with an aim of disintegrating the movements for social change and an edge of isolating and setting up the most radical and revolutionary forces and leaders for what COINTELPRO documents euphemistically referred to as “neutralization.”

Conclusion: don’t fall for—and don’t tolerate—the kinds of behavior that mimic what the FBI has used to destroy social movements. Call it out.

Resources:

The book The COINTELPRO Papers, by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall contains a vast collection of original FBI memos and reports including documentation for the incidents described in this article. It is available as an online PDF.

This article draws on installments of the American Crime series at revcoms.us: American Crime Case #41: COINTELPRO—The FBI Targets the New Left, 1964-1971 and American Crime Case #42: COINTELPRO—The FBI Targets the Black Freedom Struggle, 1956-1971.

An important letter drawing lessons for today from the COINTELPRO operation against Malcolm X: A Reflection on Piggery—Then and Now.

Trump/MAGA fascism is being aggressively imposed on this society in many horrifying ways, instilling fear and a pull towards cooperation with government authorities. One of the ways people are being confronted with this is in situations where people are stopped as they go about their daily business at school, work, or shopping for food and necessities. Right now, that is a living reality for people who are being targeted as “illegal” immigrants, based on how they look or talk. But there are other situations that can be equally frightening: like when someone is arrested at or in connection with a political protest, or when someone is being questioned by police when they don’t have any idea what it is about. In all cases, people need to know what is the best way to respond to prevent these government agencies from doing great harm. 

In the popular culture in movies and TV shows, to the ever-present law-and-order shows of one kind or another, and even the news, all trumpet the same theme: if the police want to talk to you, you are already assumed to be guilty—of something. To exercise one's legal rights is viewed as further evidence of guilt; even the most basic right—getting a lawyer to defend oneself from the legal and illegal onslaught of cops, prosecutors and judges—is depicted with a sneer as "lawyering up," as though this shows you must be guilty or have something to hide. 

Sometimes you hear the police reading what’s called the Miranda warning (see box) to a person they are intending to interrogate, stating that you have the right to remain silent and the right to a lawyer. But then everything proceeds as though the person being questioned is showing their guilt by refusing to answer questions and getting a lawyer to represent them.

But in real-life situations, the best advice lawyers give anyone who is being arrested, questioned or contacted in any way by the police is: DON’T TALK. 

It is important for people to know what rights they DO have when agents of repression come sniffing around. And it is especially important to insist on those rights even as they are increasingly coming under attack. 

Bob Avakian has spoken to this point in his social media message @BobAvakianOfficial REVOLUTION #106:

As we revcoms (revolutionary communists) have made clear in the Declaration WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM: “So long as we are still living under the rule of this system of capitalism-imperialism, we will defend people against attacks on their lives and on the rights that are supposed to be guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.”

So, what rights based on the U.S. Constitution are supposed to apply whether during an arrest or in any contact with police or government agencies? How should people defend their rights individually and collectively, and what kind of culture is needed to resist the government forces of repression?

The Right to Remain Silent—Don't Talk

When facing agents of government repression (here we are talking about the local police and prosecutors, state or federal law enforcement or various government agencies), the principle of "Don't Talk" is an important legal principle overall, and it is crucial in fighting to protect the various movements of resistance and of revolution from government repression. This principle is stressed very strongly by criminal defense lawyers and civil rights organizations—you have a RIGHT to remain silent.

Many legal rights organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and National Lawyers Guild (NLG), have published materials to inform people of their rights. The most important thing they all advise is to assert your right to NOT answer questions. 

For example, the following is from a brochure published by the ACLU of Southern California: 

WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE STOPPED BY POLICE, IMMIGRATION AGENTS OR THE FBI:
YOUR RIGHTS 

• You have the right to remain silent. If you wish to exercise that right, say so out loud.
• You have the right to refuse to consent to a search of yourself, your car or your home.
• If you are not under arrest, you have the right to calmly leave.
• You have the right to a lawyer if you are arrested. Ask for one immediately.
• Regardless of your immigration or citizenship status, you have constitutional rights.

And the National Lawyers Guild advises what to do if an FBI agent or police officer knocks at the door:

Do not open the door. State that you are going to remain silent. Do not answer any questions, or even give your name. Anything you say, no matter how seemingly harmless or insignificant, can be used against you or others. Ask the agents to slide their business cards under the door and tell them that your lawyer will contact them. If the agent or officer gives a reason for contacting you, take notes and give the information to your lawyer.¹⁵ 

What Harm Can Talking Do?

There are many myths and lies promoted in the dominant culture and by the police themselves which leave people confused and feeling they have no choice but to cooperate. This is absolutely wrong and dangerous to any movements of resistance from among the people. 

Myth #1—Cooperating will make the authorities go away.

In fact, it often does just the opposite. After all, if they size someone up as a "talker" or weak link, they'll milk this person for all the information they can get. They may return with more questions or continue this line of questioning with others.

Myth #2—Talking will prevent being arrested.

The authorities promote the illusion that a person should try to "save their own hide" by cooperating and talking. In reality, as the ACLU and NLG underscore, in many circumstances talking may increase the chances of a person being busted, and may be sealing the case against himself/herself as well as others.

Myth #3—As long as the information provided is harmless, there's nothing wrong with talking.

When people don't know their rights and talk freely to the authorities, this can do great harm—no matter what information they provide.

First of all, because the person doesn't know the full agenda of the authorities, he/she has no basis to evaluate whether or not information is "harmless." Even if the authorities claim to be investigating something that has nothing to do with your politics or political activities (or those of others), appearances can be deceiving. The authorities can and will twist any information to their advantage.

Secondly, the act of talking encourages the authorities to pursue this tactic and go after others.

Finally, and most importantly, talking fuels the government's efforts to eliminate any movements of opposition and dissent, while standing firm and not talking as a matter of principle contributes to building a culture of resistance and defiance.

Myth #4—If I don't cooperate, won't it look like I have something to hide?

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR),

This is one of the most frequently asked questions. The answer involves the nature of political "intelligence" investigations and the job of the FBI. Agents will try to make you feel that it will "look bad" if you don't cooperate with them. Many people not familiar with how the FBI operates worry about being uncooperative…. (T)hey [the FBI] are intent on learning about the habits, opinions, and affiliations of people not suspected of wrongdoing....

They will do anything to get a person to talk: from good cop/bad cop approaches (aimed at getting the person to "open up" to the more sympathetic cop) to threats and outright brutality. They also use "mind games" such as saying that others have already informed on a person; or even going so far as falsely telling someone a family member has died in order to get the person to let down his/her guard and reveal information about themselves or others.

Any information that a person provides—no matter how seemingly insignificant—can be twisted and used against that person themselves, or against people and organizations who expose and oppose the crimes of this system. The government has a long history of lying about the facts and fabricating "evidence" in order to frame movement activists and revolutionaries. They take intelligence gathered from a variety of sources and use it in the most sinister ways, even including murder. Consequently, there is no reason to be in the least defensive about not talking to or cooperating with authorities.

If a person thinks that he/she can just "bullshit" an agent, this too is a trap. The investigators are trained to be "friendly" and listen to people's stories. To quote a textbook on interrogation techniques, "Letting the subject tell a few lies, and letting him apparently get away with them, is an excellent technique, and works well with many types of subjects. We have seen that lying on the part of the subject works to the advantage of the interrogator...." The NLG has pointed out:

Keep in mind that although they are allowed to lie to you, lying to a government agent is a crime. Remaining silent is not. The safest things to say are "I am going to remain silent," "I want to speak to my lawyer," and " do not consent to a search." [emphasis added]¹⁶

Conclusion

As spoken to throughout this article, as part of trying to beat down movements of resistance and of revolution, agents of the government (police, FBI, prosecutors, etc.) have developed methods to trick, intimidate and brutalize people into giving up legal rights and protections established by the legal system in this country. This basic dynamic and truth needs to be clearly understood, and if various organizations and movements are serious about the challenges they face, they need to grapple with how—mainly by relying on mass movements of the people—to resist such repression.

History has shown that when the decent people refuse to concede the moral authority on what is right and what is wrong, they are better able to withstand repression and continue to develop resistance. If they do not take this approach, they find themselves in a situation where: That which you do not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn—or be forced—to accept. Part of building a culture of defiance and resistance among people standing up against fascism and the crimes of this system is refusing to allow the government to either intimidate or bamboozle people into giving up resistance, and refusing in any way to enter into complicity with such intimidation and repression.

In this context, the legal principles underlying "Don't Talk" take on heightened importance. Those confronted by police agents should not be bamboozled into giving up the legal rights they do have, as this will only lead to strengthening the repressive apparatus of the state, and help to undercut the ability to struggle against the crimes of this system and to build a movement for revolution to overthrow this system and bring about a fundamentally different and much better system. 

Readers’ Corner highlights views that you, our readers, send us on the big questions about making revolution. Questions about building the movement for an actual revolution. Or responses to, and thoughts provoked by, the social media messages from Bob Avakian—the revolutionary leader and architect of the new communism. Thinking and questions you may have on other important documents from Bob Avakian (BA) and the Revcoms. As well as reflections on the new communism brought forward by BA, both overall and in relation to the urgent moment at hand. Now especially is a time for collective scientific grappling.

Please send these to revolution.reports@yahoo.com. If your submission isn't reposted, it will still feed into our overall enriched understanding of what questions we should be speaking to.

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Since the article last week titled “Trump’s Global Rampage, and the Method to the Madness,” Trump has continued with outrageous gangster threats around the world:

*The Pentagon ordered an aircraft carrier “strike group” to be deployed from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East to add to U.S. forces there, adding to Trump’s threats against the regime in Iran.

*Trump announced he will stop Venezuela from sending any more oil or aid to Cuba, and threatened: “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA–ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

*Trump also doubled down on threats against Greenland. Trump reasserted that the U.S. was going to get Greenland—“We can do it the easy way, or the hard way.” On Wednesday, hours before top officials from Greenland and Denmark met with JD Vance and Marco Rubio in Washington, DC, Trump posted that Greenland should be “in the hands of the UNITED STATES… Anything less than that is unacceptable.” After the meeting, the Danish foreign minister said, “We didn’t manage to change the American position. It’s clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland.” 

The next day, France, Germany and several other NATO countries began sending small military units to Greenland, apparently intended to show that they could handle Greenland’s defense. Trump’s press secretary said that the move by the Europeans would not "impact the president's decision-making process, nor does it impact his goal of the acquisition of Greenland at all." In fact, on Friday, Trump announced new 10 percent tariffs, beginning February 1, on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Finland until they agree to talks on the U.S. takeover of Greenland. Those tariffs would increase to 25 percent on June 1 and continue until a deal is struck. This is economic blackmail on the part of the U.S.

On Friday, an 11-member bi-partisan congressional delegation traveled to Copenhagen and held a series of meetings with the leaders of Denmark and Greenland, offering their support amid Trump's threats. Senator Murkowski told NBC News: “The signals are clear, I think you will find that support in Congress to acquire Greenland in any way is not there.”

It is important to note that part of Trump’s approach has been to invoke the possibility of China or Russia seizing Greenland to justify the U.S. seizing it instead. First, this is a bullshit rationale that because some other power might do something bad, then the U.S. must do that same bad thing because “it’s good for America, and we’re the good guys.”⁸ But even more, this reveals the increasing danger of nuclear war between these contending imperialist powers. Underneath the seeming insanity of it is the logic of imperialism—a madman’s logic, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not serious or extremely dangerous. (See last week's article, “Trump’s Global Rampage, and the Method to the Madness,” for more on this.)