We are confronted by—we are now being ruled by—a fascist regime: relentlessly assaulting civil rights and liberties and openly promoting bigotry and inequality; acting with callous disregard or cold-blooded malice toward those they consider inferior and a drain or stain on the country; on a mission to deny health care to millions who will suffer and many who will die without it; crudely degrading women, as objects of plunder, breeders of children without the right to abortion or birth control, subordinate to husbands and men in general; defying the science of climate change, attacking the science of evolution, and repudiating the scientific method overall; a regime brandishing an arsenal of mass destruction and threatening nuclear war; intensifying state terror against Muslims, immigrants and people in the inner cities; unleashing and giving encouragement and support to brutal thugs spewing vile “America First,” white supremacist, male supremacist and anti-LGBT venom—a regime that boasts of all this and declares its intention to do even worse.
This has caused disgust, anger, and agonizing among huge numbers of people, and there have been many important acts of resistance, big and small, to the continuing outrages committed by this regime and its supporters. But the regime remains in power and is determined to ride roughshod over all obstacles to carry out its monstrous agenda; and the need for a massive outpouring of people, acting together nonviolently but with sustained determination, to create a political situation where this regime cannot remain in power—cries out.
The organization Refuse Fascism (RefuseFascism.org) has put forward a call and a plan, and is actively building, for that mass mobilization, to begin on November 4.
So this is the challenge we are facing. To meet this challenge there are big questions that need to be seriously engaged, even as people are moving to build momentum toward November 4.
Donald Trump claims to have won the popular vote in the 2016 election. That is another of his Big Lies. But the fact is: It would have been a disgrace if just 10 people voted for this, or 10 thousand—but tens of millions did. Why? The fundamental answer lies in the whole history of this country and its role in the world.
Did you know that the Constitution adopted by the founders of this country institutionalized the right of men to rape, at will? I had thought of beginning this talk with that statement—and then, in response to the gasps of shock and disbelief that such a statement should call forth, I could have said: No, the Constitution didn’t actually do that, but it did something no less horrific: institutionalizing the enslavement of millions of people. In fact, however, the Constitution adopted by the “founders” did legalize mass rape: Besides enshrining property relations in which men could legally rape their wives, the Constitution, by explicitly codifying the status of slaves as property, in effect established the “right” of the slaveowners to do anything they wished to their slaves, including raping the women. And slave women were raped, regularly and repeatedly, by their owners and overseers.
Often, people who do not want to face the reality and the implications of this will argue: “We have to judge things by the standards of the time—people back then did not know better.” As they say in England: rubbish! For one thing, the slaves knew better! And there is the example of Edward Coles, who before becoming governor of Illinois was private secretary to James Madison (the main author of the U.S. Constitution): Coles freed his own slaves and tried to convince Madison and Thomas Jefferson (author of the Declaration of Independence) to do the same. They refused, but you can’t say nobody knew better back then! It is true—Madison and Jefferson (and, yes, Hamilton!) belong to a past time—and it is long past time that we move beyond what they represent.
The terrible truth is that, with some notable exceptions (including the very significant exception of the generation that came of age in the 1960s), white people overall have either been directly involved in, or have supported or at least passively accepted all this throughout the history of this country. During the whole time of slavery. During the decades of Jim Crow segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror, when repeatedly Black people, in particular Black men, who did not “know their place”—or sometimes without even knowing why, angered some white person—would be lynched, while crowds of white people would gather in a “picnic” atmosphere, vying to get parts of the mutilated body of the Black person hanging from a tree, and photographs of this were turned into postcards that were sold throughout the country. Yes, this is true—the ugly, shameful truth. Today, with the repeated murders of Black people by police, in the rare instances when the murdering cop is indicted, there are white people who sit on juries and refuse to convict. And still too many white people who claim to care about justice, and will take to social media to denounce far less outrageous and sometimes even trivial acts, cannot find it in themselves to be outraged and moved to act about this! If the police wantonly shot down dogs, over and over again, there would be a huge outcry throughout society, including from people who are silent, or make excuses, when this is done to human beings of darker skin.
Now, it would be wrong, and harmful, to ignore the fact that there are white people, in particular younger white people (but others as well), who have taken to the streets to protest these murders by police, and who have put forward the stand: White silence is violence, it is complicity in murder. This is, of course, a good thing—and it needs to happen much more, on a much greater scale. But, given the actual history of this country, down to today, does it really make sense to insist, as some people still stubbornly do, that “fascism couldn’t happen here, not in this country, with our democracy and our great traditions”?!
It is, however, very important to dig into the question: How did things come to this point, where we are confronting the real horror of a fascist America? Here, told briefly, is the “longer story,” the broader history that has led to this.
Thousands of years ago, human beings, who had lived for tens of thousands of years before in small hunting and gathering societies, settled on land and carried out farming and domestication of animals, particularly in the “fertile crescent” of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East areas. With this came the emergence of class division, the polarization between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, including the patriarchal oppression of women by men. As this way of life spread and took hold in large parts of the world, ancient civilizations and empires arose—for example, in India, Egypt, China, Persia, Greece and Rome, and then, centuries later, the Islamic empire, covering a large territory in the Middle East and parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. While built on plunder and oppression, they nevertheless brought forth many great achievements in architecture, art, music, the development of language and literature, science and other spheres. But the history of the rise of empires has also been the history of their decline and fall—because of contradictions and conflicts within them and because of invasions from outside forces, themselves driven by their own contradictions, conflicts and challenges.
This went on for thousands of years. But then, several hundred years ago, something dramatically new emerged: the development of the capitalist system. This is a far more dynamic system than previously existed in human history—a system driven by its own internal contradictions to constantly expand, to continually transform the technological basis on which it operates, to repeatedly intensify the exploitation of people on which its profits rest. And, again as a result of the contradictions and conflicts within and between different countries, and the rise and fall of different powers, it just so happened that it was mainly in Europe that capitalism first took hold and emerged as a dominant force on the world stage. This was accomplished, in its very foundation, through the most horrendous means. Karl Marx, the founder of communism, described, with bitter irony, the “rosy dawn” of capitalism: the massive hunting of slaves in Africa, shipping them in chains, in the millions, to be worked mercilessly in the Americas; the conquest of the original peoples in South America and their enslavement unto death in the gold and silver mines there; and atrocities of a similar kind that fed countless human beings, in far-flung parts of the world, into the relentless machinery of an ever-expanding capitalism. This, as well as brutal exploitation, including child labor, within these capitalist countries themselves, was the basis on which “western civilization” made leaps in its development and became the dominating force in the world, economically, militarily, politically, and culturally.
Capitalism, through all the horrors it has brought about, including two world wars and countless other armed conflicts, has in fact laid the basis for a whole new leap, beyond relations of exploitation and oppression, and the madness of war and environmental destruction; but, at the same time—and this is now posed in very stark and acute terms—this system of capitalism stands as the greatest obstacle to this advance, and human society everywhere is straining against the confines in which capitalism continues to enchain human existence.
This puts in proper perspective and sharply refutes the racist notion of “the superiority of western (that is, white European) civilization” and the idea that somehow capitalism is the highest form of existence that human beings can attain and should aspire to.
And here is the “shorter story,” the more particular reasons why things have come to this crossroads in this country, with potentially disastrous consequences for human beings everywhere.
The USA is a country which established its territory and built the foundation of its wealth through the armed conquest of land, genocide, slavery, and ruthless exploitation of successive waves of immigrants to America. And it has continued as a country marked by white supremacy, patriarchy and male supremacy, and other oppressive divisions, while expanding its domination into an empire stretching across the globe, sitting atop a lopsided world of profound inequalities and plunder of the environment (it would take the resources of nearly 5 earths for the rest of world to have the kind of “consumer society” that exists in the U.S.)—all this backed up and enforced by a massive machinery of death and devastation, the U.S. military, and reinforced with a constant barrage of ideas and culture rationalizing and justifying all this oppression and destruction, propagated through an equally massive machinery of molding public opinion. Today, while the U.S. is, and loudly proclaims itself to be, the world’s number one superpower, it is riddled with sharpening contradictions, and facing growing challenges, within the country and internationally, and this has brought forth a fascist regime that now holds the reins of power, with the finger of a demented bully on the nuclear button—a regime that, without exaggeration, threatens not just greatly heightened suffering for the masses of humanity but the very existence of humanity itself.
So this poses sharply the immediate, urgent challenge we face.
Calling this regime fascist is not an “insult” but speaks to the terrible reality. On the website revcom.us this explanation regularly appears:
“Fascism is the exercise of blatant dictatorship by the bourgeois (capitalist-imperialist) class, ruling through reliance on open terror and violence, trampling on what are supposed to be civil and legal rights, wielding the power of the state, and mobilizing organized groups of fanatical thugs, to commit atrocities against masses of people, particularly groups of people identified as ‘enemies,’ ‘undesirables,’ or ‘dangers to society.’
“At the same time—and this can be seen through studying the examples of Nazi Germany and Italy under Mussolini—while it will likely move quickly to enforce certain repressive measures in consolidating its rule, a fascist regime is also likely to implement its program overall through a series of stages and even attempt at different points to reassure the people, or certain groups among the people, that they will escape the horrors—if they quietly go along and do not protest or resist while others are being terrorized and targeted for repression, deportation, ‘conversion,’ prison, or execution.”
Refuse Fascism has published as a pamphlet, and posted on RefuseFascism.org, material that can be made into portable panels outlining the outrages already committed by the Trump/Pence regime, as well as what they are preparing to do (and what they have called forth from the thugs they have encouraged and unleashed), in their attacks on Muslims, immigrants, civil liberties, women and LGBTQ people, on the environment and on the people of the world, and what they have done to reinforce and fortify white supremacy, police brutality, and mass incarceration. It is very striking how far things have already gone, and how much worse they are bound to get, if this regime is allowed to remain in power and fully implement its agenda.
One of the most distinguishing and significant features of this particularly American version of fascism is the “unholy alliance” between Trump and fundamentalist Christian Fascists. As I pointed out in another recent talk:
“Trump, I think it’s fair to say, could not have won the election if the Christian Fascists ... not only if they had opposed him, but if they’d been unenthusiastic about him ....And ... even when the ... pussy-grabbing thing came out, they didn’t turn against him (...Jerry Falwell, Jr. and all these others)—because they recognized: “Here is somebody who is going outside of the whole rules and the way this is done in the ‘swamp of Washington,’ who will actually carry through on this stuff [like outlawing abortion and suppressing gay people].”... And Trump, for his part, recognized that if he didn’t get this force behind him, he was not going to be able to do it....
“Pence is obviously a critical linchpin in this ... uniting of what’s represented by Trump ... and the Christian Fascists.... [T]he regular bourgeois institutions, ... like CNN, the Democratic Party and so on, ... they keep saying: ‘He can’t do that, that’s not the way things are done.’ But then [Trump] does it, because he’s not playing by those rules. He’s not working within the norms as they’ve been. He is going directly up against them, precisely as an important part of what he’s doing.”
And, while Pence plays a very important role in all this, he is far from the only Christian Fascist in this regime. Besides the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, who is himself a Christian Fascist, to the Supreme Court—re-establishing, after the death of Antonin Scalia, the right-wing majority on the Court—Trump’s cabinet is full of these Christian Fascists.
Perhaps it seems harsh, or even extreme, to refer to these fundamentalist Christians as fascists. Well, in Katherine Stewart’s book The Good News Club, The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, she cites these comments by Rich Lang, himself a former Christian fundamentalist, who broke with that and became a liberal Christian pastor:
“When I was born again [Lang recalls], faith was something inside of you, something you were supposed to reflect through your life. But in the 1980s, something happened. Fundamentalist Christianity jumped back into the public square with the intention to reshape the country as a Christian nation as defined by them....
“It’s no different than the Nazis wanting to start with the Hitler Youth. That is where you’d want to start if you were trying to build a fascist movement....
“That’s the word, ‘fascism.’ Nobody likes to use it in this country. But I believe that in this country, underneath the appearances, that is exactly the great temptation of our time. ...[A]nd you have to call it what it is—‘Christian Fascism.’”
Stewart further summarizes Lang’s views this way: “Modern fundamentalism, like fascism in earlier times, he says, involves a strong feeling of persecution, typically at the hands of godless liberals or a religious ‘other’; the belief that one belongs to a pure race or national group that is responsible for past greatness, suffers unjust oppression in the present, and is the rightful ruler of the world; the impulse to submit unquestioningly to absolute authority; and the relentless drive for power and control. It is, he says, a kind of supremacist movement, with religion rather than race at its core.”
And there is this chilling statement by Lang:
“People have no idea it’s going on....
“What does it mean that the conservative church that’s growing in America is an end-times church? What does it mean that we are raising a generation of children to believe that they are the last generation? What is going to happen if we keep on telling them, ‘Don’t care about the environment, and bring on the war, because we’re going to be lifted out of here, and you can forget about loving your neighbors, because they’re just going to get blown away?’”
So, that is the insight of someone very familiar with these Christian Fascists. And the fact is that, in this country, with its whole history of genocide, slavery and racism, any form of fascism, including one basing itself on “Christian supremacy”—any urge to “restore past greatness”—cannot help but be bound together with white supremacy.
The Republican Party has been moving in a fascist direction since the late 1960s, with further leaps since then to becoming more and more openly fascist.
In running for President in 1968, Richard Nixon adopted what has been called the “southern strategy,” which the Republican Party has followed ever since. This is a direct appeal to white supremacy—to the racism of white people, particularly (though not only) in the southern states, who are enraged that Black people are not “staying in their place.”
The Republican Party is not “the Party of Lincoln”—as it sometimes demagogically claims to be—it has become much more the Party of the Confederacy.
With Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party took another leap on the road of fascism. Reagan very deliberately began his campaign for president in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where in 1964, three civil rights workers were kidnapped and brutally murdered by white supremacists. There, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Reagan proclaimed his support for “states rights,” which, particularly in the South, have long been code words for white supremacist lynch-mobism.
And after George W. Bush took things still further in a fascist direction—including the open use of torture and the active promotion of Christian fundamentalism—the Trump/Pence regime has made the leap into all-out fascism.
There is a direct line from the Confederacy to the fascists of today, and a direct connection between their white supremacy, their open disgust and hatred for LGBT people as well as women, their willful rejection of science and the scientific method, their raw “American First” jingoism and trumpeting of “the superiority of western civilization” and their bellicose wielding of military power, including their expressed willingness and blatant threats to use nuclear weapons, to destroy countries.
The truth—another terrible truth that must be faced—is that, in the context of profound and acute contradictions that are asserting, or re-asserting, themselves in ways that are tearing at the very fabric and deepening cracks in the foundation of this country, at the same time as the American empire is facing serious challenges internationally, fascism is one possible resolution of this, on the terms of this system and its ruling class, even as this is a horror for humanity.
While the Constitution does establish the separation of church and state—and the Christian Fascists are wrong, or simply lying, when they insist that the founding documents of this country established it as a “Christian nation”—the reality is that Christianity has all along been the unofficial state religion of this country, and the country’s identity, throughout its history, has been as a “white Christian nation,” grounded in male supremacy as well as white supremacy and driven by a “manifest destiny” to dominate not only the continent of North America but ultimately the world as a whole. All this has been brought into question, and has become the focus of intense struggle, going back to the 1960s and, in some important ways, back to the Civil War. And while developments internationally, including the demise of the Soviet Union, have given further impetus to the globalization of the capitalist world economy, this very heightened globalization has propelled changes that have sharpened contradictions within the U.S. as well as on the world level, particularly with an emerging capitalist China mounting a challenge to U.S. global economic dominance, at the same time as this heightened globalization, under conditions of western imperialist domination, has wreaked havoc in countries throughout the Third World, including the Middle East (and other places where Islam is the prevailing religion), adding fuel to a virulent Islamic fundamentalism that has declared war on the “decadent West” and on “infidels” and others oriented toward the West and facilitating its imperial domination.
In order to bring about any positive resolution to all this, even short of abolishing and moving beyond this whole system, it is necessary and crucial to break with the “normal routine” and the “normal workings” of the political process.
Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, recently wrote that, faced as we are with the gravity of the growing climate crisis, those now ruling us may end up destroying civilization because of their willful ignorance and opposition to the scientific method. This was said very seriously, and it is deadly serious. Speaking to this, in “A Question, A Challenge for Paul Krugman, And All Those Concerned About the Future of Humanity,” I emphasized the importance of refusing “to simply hope that the ‘normal workings’ of a process that has brought these people to their ruling position will somehow prevent them from acting in accordance with their ‘willful ignorance,’ and worse.” But why do many people still stubbornly cling to such false hopes?
Thomas Frank is the liberal author of a book with the catchy title What’s the Matter With Kansas?—How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. But the more important question is: What’s the matter with liberals?
Well, it is important, first of all, to draw the distinction between ruling class “liberals” and “regular” liberals. As for “liberals” of the ruling class, what is “the matter” with them is something I will get to shortly. But for those who are not part of the ruling class, the “matter” is that, although they are willing to admit that there are real problems in this country and they would like to have a more just society, and world, many resist recognizing the systematic and systemic nature of the injustices, and they fear the conflict, turmoil and chaos that could be set loose by a determined struggle against this. Even as they do have a sense of the horrors that the Trump/Pence regime represents, too many are caught up in thinking that amounts to this: “I am hoping, and by staying within the established ‘norms’ I am gambling on the hope, that the horrors don’t hit me and those I most care about.” This, it has to be said, is politically as well as morally bankrupt, and will only contribute to the impending disaster. It used to be a common saying: To the person of the Right, order is more important than justice, while for the person of the Left, it is the opposite. Now, the question is put squarely to liberals, and really to everyone: Which, after all, is more important: Order, even if that is the order of fascism, with everything that means? Or justice, even if that means stepping outside of our “comfort zone,” and putting ourselves on the line to prevent this fascism from consolidating its rule and fully implementing its program?
Another dangerous illusion is the notion that, particularly for Black people, what is happening now is just more of the same. Yes, the history of this country is the history of unspeakable atrocities committed against Black people, as well as others—but what we are facing now, with this fascist regime, is the heightened possibility not just that this oppression will be carried to genocidal extremes, and that the masses of people everywhere will be subjected to previously unseen horrors, but that the human species itself will be wiped out.
In confronting and moving to prevent this, one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way, and weighing people down, is American chauvinism—the disgusting notion that America and Americans are better and more important than everybody else. This is a poison infecting people broadly in this country, even among the bitterly oppressed, and there is a great need for people to break with this American chauvinism. Free yourself from the GTF!—the Great Tautological Fallacy. A fallacy: an idea, or a way of thinking, that is false, wrong. A tautology: a round-in-a-circle way of reasoning that asserts something and then claims to prove it by merely asserting the same thing again. So, the Great Tautological Fallacy to which I am referring is the notion that America is a force for good in the world, and therefore whatever it does is good (or at least done with “good intentions”), even if the same thing when done by other forces, especially forces opposed to “us,” is bad, is evil—because... because America is a force for good in the world. Thus, in the grip of the Great Tautological Fallacy, when one is told by the authorities in government and the media, etc., that North Korea developing a small number of nuclear weapons and a few long-range ballistic missiles poses a “grave threat,” one does not question, one does not ask why that is a “grave threat,” while the only country ever to use nuclear weapons, the United States, having thousands of nuclear weapons and the capability to use them, anywhere in the world, is somehow not a grave threat. Under the influence of the Great Tautological Fallacy, one does not stop to think about the fact that, in this situation, North Korea could only be developing this weaponry as an attempt to deter an attack from the United States—for North Korea’s leaders know that if they initiated an attack, they would face massive, overwhelming retaliation—and from the point of view of the imperial rulers of the United States, such a possibility of deterrence is precisely the problem, because it could in some measure limit the ability of the U.S. to dominate and dictate.
Here is another example: Recently, Chelsea Manning, a former solider, who took great risk and spent years in prison for exposing, among other things, war crimes by the U.S. military in Iraq, was extended an invitation to be a lecturer in an academic program at Harvard University. But then, when some government officials and others, including Mike Pompeo, objected and threatened to pull out of the program, Harvard disinvited Manning. Well, who is Mike Pompeo? He is the head of the CIA—an “intelligence” arm of the U.S. government which, without exaggeration, is an instrument of murder on a mass scale. Going back to the 1950s, and through succeeding decades, the CIA has worked through right-wing butchers, in countries such as Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia, and many others, to pull off coups that have removed popular governments from power and replaced them with murderous reactionary dictatorships. More than a million people have been slaughtered as a result of these actions by the CIA. But, through the lens of the Great Tautological Fallacy, the head of the CIA is a respected figure, and his denunciations of Chelsea Manning can cause Manning to be ousted from the program to which she was invited at Harvard.
Of great help in casting off the Great Tautological Fallacy is the “American Crime” series that appears regularly on revcom.us—where you can get a beginning sense of the scope and the depth of the atrocities that have been carried out, here and all over the world, by the rulers of this country, from the beginning and down to today.
But from childhood we are indoctrinated with the notion that America is a shining light of freedom, and the President of the United States is “the leader of the free world.” Well, when has this been true? Was it true during all the years of slavery? Or during the long years of Jim Crow segregation after the Civil War, when thousands of Black people were lynched while leering mobs of white racists celebrated, and Black people as a whole were subjected to constant terror? Is this a shining light of freedom now, when Black people have to take to the streets demanding “Stop Killing Us!” because the police kill a thousand people every year, many of them unarmed, especially Black people, Latinos, and Native Americans? When millions of women are battered and huge numbers are raped every year in this country, is this a shining light to the world? And what is this “free world?” Does it include the countries where the U.S. has backed and armed military juntas and other oppressive dictatorships, with their bloodthirsty death squads terrorizing the people, over the last 100 years and more, throughout Latin America and many other parts of the world? Does it include today countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey—all “allies” of the U.S. and all ruled by brutally repressive governments? Or what about the Philippines, where the government has carried out the cold-blooded murder of more than 10,000 people within the last year, and the head of state, Duterte, openly boasts of this? Does the “free world” include Israel, a nuclear-armed state that has occupied Palestinian land, in flagrant violation of UN resolutions, for 50 years, and forcibly maintains over a million Palestinian people in Gaza in what amounts to an open-air prison, living barely above survival level, and subject to repeated bombardment by Israeli armed forces, which in 2014, with full support from the U.S. government (headed then by Obama), killed over 2,000 people in Gaza, the overwhelming majority civilians, hundreds of them children. Is all this the “free world” of which the U.S. is the leader? Once you remove the blinders of the Great Tautological Fallacy, it can be seen that the “free world” simply means those parts of the world that are under the domination of, or are “friendly” to, the United States, no matter how monstrous their ruling classes may be, while the “non-free world” is made up of those who remain outside of, and especially those who pose opposition or obstacles to, the domination of the U.S. empire.
The U.S. government wages war in Africa and Asia, as well as the Middle East, claiming it is fighting to defend civilization against the brutal and murderous Islamic fundamentalist jihadists. But the imperialists of the U.S. are certainly no less brutal and murderous, and the “civilization” they boast of is literally built on the blood and bones of people all over the world. And why is this Islamic fundamentalism such a force now? Fundamentally because of the workings of capitalist imperialism itself. Besides the overall role of imperialism in creating more favorable soil for these Islamic fundamentalists, actions of the U.S. imperialists have further fed their growth.
In the 1980s, the U.S. actually armed and built up Osama bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalists to strike at the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
In 2003, in violation of international law, the U.S. invaded Iraq to overthrow the head of government there, Saddam Hussein. This invasion was carried out under the cover of lies that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. This invasion, and the occupation of Iraq by American forces that followed, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, set off bloody conflicts among the Iraqi people and created more fertile ground for Islamic fundamentalist forces.
And the same thing happened in Libya. Under the presidency of Barack Obama, and with the insistent urging of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. intervened in a conflict within Libya on the side of forces opposed to the long-time ruler Muammar Qaddafi. With the fall of Qaddafi—which was brought about mainly as a result of massive bombing of his forces by the U.S. and its allies—the rivalries and conflicts within Libya were intensified, and Islamic fundamentalist forces gained strength.
Or take the case of Iran. In 1953, the CIA engineered a coup that overthrew a popular government that was moving to nationalize the oil of the country, so that it could be used for the development of its economy, instead of being controlled and plundered by the U.S. and Britain. This coup brought the Shah of Iran to power, and the people of Iran suffered decades of torment and torture at the hands of the Shah and his secret police. And, here again, these actions of the U.S. created more favorable ground for the forces of Islamic fundamentalism, which ultimately seized power through the revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979.
These are only a few examples of the American crimes that have been committed, and the kinds of consequences that have followed from these crimes, in countries all over the world. And all this underlines the crucial importance of casting off the blinders of the Great Tautological Fallacy and breaking with American chauvinism. We need to think about humanity, first and above all.
During the 1960s, a whole generation (or a large and defining part of that generation) broke with American chauvinism, cast off the Great Tautological Fallacy and, at the cost of real sacrifice, dared to stand up against the atrocities committed, here and throughout the world, by the rulers of this country, and fight for a better world. Unfortunately, all too many (though not all!) of that generation have become disoriented and have allowed themselves to become, as the French say, “récupérer”—that is, they have come back under the wing of the ruling class, in particular its “liberal” representatives in the Democratic Party, and have far too much accepted things on the terms of a system they once, very rightly, recognized as viciously criminal. But now, when the workings of this system have brought this fascist regime to power, there is, more than ever, a profound and urgent need for people, of all generations, to finally and thoroughly break with American chauvinism, and act in the interests of humanity.
Here is another important statement that can be found on revcom.us:
“The Democrats, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, etc., are seeking to resolve the crisis with the Trump presidency on the terms of this system, and in the interests of the ruling class of this system, which they represent. We, the masses of people, must go all out, and mobilize ourselves in the millions, to resolve this in our interests, in the interests of humanity, which are fundamentally different from and opposed to those of the ruling class.”
Why is it that the Democrats can only try to resolve this on the terms of the system—and for that reason cannot offer any alternative that is in our interests, in the interests of humanity?
Why are they determined to keep things within the “established norms” and “acceptable limits.”
We can turn to the words of Barack Obama, shortly after Trump won the electoral college vote. We, Democrats and Republicans, are on the same team, Obama insisted. And he made a point of saying that we should wish Trump well and help him succeed because his success is success for all of us. Well, we can say that here Obama was telling an important truth—ultimately and fundamentally they are all on the same team—which explains why the Democratic Party will only oppose what the Trump/Pence regime is doing within narrow limits, and always in the interests of the “team” of which they are all a part. And, really, we should all help Trump succeed with his fascist agenda, because a “successful” fascism will be good for all of us? Only with the perverted logic of the system all these politicians serve, and with the poisonous outlook of American chauvinism, could anyone put forward such a position!
Like the Republicans, the Democrats believe in the superiority of the capitalist system of exploitation and the “exceptional greatness” of America and its empire.
They champion a brave new world of “21st century globalization,” which rests on a vast network of sweatshops where people, including children, slave long hours for near-starvation wages.
They firmly believe in the right of America to dominate the world—and to overturn governments, bomb countries and slaughter people to do so—but they say it should be done with the cooperation of allies and in the name of “making the world more free, orderly and peaceful.”
They will talk about “diversity” and “inclusiveness” while actually acting to maintain the fundamental relations of inequality and oppression that are hallmarks of this country, because those relations are built into this system and it could not exist or function without them.
In short, even with their real differences with the Republicans, they represent and serve the same system—the system whose “normal workings” have now brought fascists to power.
It will only make things worse, and work against what needs to be done to put an end to this nightmare, if people are taken in when Trump appears, for a moment, to be “more reasonable” and is praised by his ruling class opponents for being “more presidential,” or when they treat him as a miserably failing clown, or an egomaniac with no ideology or program, while he forges ahead with his fascist agenda. Hitler, too, while perpetrating monstrous atrocities, and preparing to do even worse, became skilled at “normalizing” this at each step and at times “toned down” his rhetoric. This fed illusions that too many wanted desperately to cling to.
Upon coming to power, Hitler moved to crush the communists, because of his deep hatred for communism and because the communists were the most powerful organized opposition to the Nazis. Early in the Nazi regime’s rule, the Reichstag (German parliament building) was burned down and, although there are indications that the Nazis themselves were responsible for this, they blamed the communists, and seized on this situation to round up communists and declare emergency measures eliminating or severely restricting rights and liberties, measures which they moved to make permanent. A group of communists was charged with burning down the Reichstag—but the trial actually resulted in the acquittal of most of them, including the prominent communist Georgi Dimitrov. Many people wanted to believe: If communists are acquitted in court proceedings in these circumstances, surely that shows that the “separation of powers” and the remaining institutions of democracy can still “work” to contain and restrain Hitler. These kinds of illusions fed political paralysis and undermined the kind of massive resistance that might have ousted the Nazis from power, before they were able to force the reorganization of society in line with their barbaric outlook and aims, and go on to commit atrocities on a scale few would have thought possible when the Nazis first came to power.
So, it is crucial to correctly understand, and respond to, the maneuvers of the fascist regime in power now in this country and the conflicts among the powers-that-be. As the statement on revcom.us, about why the “liberal” section of the ruling class cannot resolve this crisis in our interests, goes on to say:
“This, of course, does not mean that the struggle among the powers-that-be is irrelevant or unimportant; rather, the way to understand and approach this ... is in terms of how it relates to, and what openings it can provide for, ‘the struggle from below’—for the mobilization of masses of people around the demand that the whole regime must go, because of its fascist nature and what the stakes are for humanity.”
This brings us again to Refuse Fascism and November 4. As the publication from Refuse Fascism, “NOV. 4—IT BEGINS” explains:
“RefuseFascism.org is a movement of people coming from diverse perspectives, united in our recognition that the Trump/Pence regime poses a catastrophic danger to humanity and the planet and that it is our responsibility to drive them from power. This means working and organizing with all our creativity and determination toward Nov. 4 when many thousands of people will fill the streets of cities and towns, beginning a struggle that must continue day after day and night after night, eventually involving millions of people, demanding: This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!”
As I also emphasized in the “Paul Krugman” article:
“People who hold many divergent points of view must come together and act politically, in what is really a meaningful and powerful way, to deal with the looming—in fact the ongoing—disaster embodied in this Trump/Pence regime, because of its willful opposition to the scientific method and its utter disregard for and repeated trampling on the truth, because of its overt white supremacy and misogyny, its xenophobic and bigoted attacks on immigrants, Muslims and LGBT people, its raw ‘America First’ jingoism and the grave danger it poses to human existence through its predatory approach to the environment and bellicose wielding of military power, including its expressed willingness and brazen threats to use nuclear weapons.”
Many people who deeply hate everything Trump is about, have nonetheless raised: If we drive out Trump, then we’ll just get Pence, and if anything he is even worse. But that reflects still too much being confined within, and weighed down by, the “normal way” of doing things, which is precisely the trap that people have to break out of in their millions and millions. It is a matter of driving out the whole Trump/Pence regime through massive and sustained political mobilization and resistance from below, changing the whole political landscape, the whole political situation, culture and atmosphere in society. If, and as, this begins to happen on the scale and with the determination that is needed, this, in turn, will have significant repercussions among the ruling political forces, creating or deepening cracks and divisions among them and forcing at least sections of the “liberal” ruling class forces to pretend to recognize the legitimacy of what this mass mobilization is demanding, while at the same time seeking to co-opt it and bring it back within the normal and “acceptable” channels and positions. This, in turn, must be responded to by seizing on the further openings that are created by all this, to draw even greater numbers of people into massive and sustained mobilization. And this overall dynamic must be continued, amplified and accelerated toward the goal of actually driving out this regime before it can fully consolidate its rule and implement its program.
Thousands must be organized to take to the streets in cities all over the country, beginning on November 4, overcoming fear and feeling the strength of their common cause and action, and their common aspiration and determination, making clear their resolve to not just make a statement but to continue—and, more than that, to spread and multiply their numbers and impact—until millions have been mobilized and refuse to stop until the demand has been met: This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! Preparations must be made, logistically as well as politically, so that this mobilization can be sustained and can continue to expand and gain strength, so that the spirit, the determination and courage of those involved can be lifted and reinforced, while growing numbers of people, from broad and diverse sections of society, can be involved and can provide support and assistance. This is the great cause and the great movement to which all those who REFUSE to accept a fascist America must apply their energy and creativity to make a reality, now and moving forward to November 4, and beyond.
A Better World IS Possible!
In the most fundamental sense, only a thorough transformation of society, through a revolution to break the hold of this system and bring into being a completely different economic and political system, geared to meeting the needs of the people, for basic necessities and for a stimulating and inspiring intellectual and cultural life, seeking the truth through scientific means and giving flight to creativity and imagination, with new relations among people that do away with all oppressive divisions—only this can bring an end to the unnecessary suffering that is continually inflicted on the masses of humanity and make possible a world where human beings can truly flourish.
Going back to the foundation of this country and the decisive role that slavery played in its rise as a capitalist power, and reflecting on the historical development of not just this country but human society more broadly, I have pointed to this profound reality:
“There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.”
Within the framework and limits of this talk, it is not my purpose, nor is it possible, to go deeply into the analysis of why this system cannot be reformed but must be abolished through revolution. I have done this in the book The New Communism, which not only speaks to why a revolution is necessary but also what the character of that revolution must be, and how that revolution could actually be brought about, even up against the tremendous power of the existing oppressive system.
And in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America a sweeping, and at the same time concrete, vision and plan for a radically different society and world is laid out, embodying a whole new dimension of freedom and whole new relations, among people and between people and the environment, beyond the narrow confines and the terrible consequences of the present system of exploitation and plunder.
But, whether we consider ourselves revolutionaries, convinced of the need for a radical overturning of the system and thorough transformation of society, or we believe that it is possible to bring about changes that will lead to a more just society within this system; whether our understanding is that America is not, and cannot be, a force for good in the world, or we hope it still can become that—all of us need to come together, and act together, with the urgency that corresponds to the terrible present and the gravely imperiled future that this fascist regime represents for humanity, and with the conviction that something far better is necessary and possible.
We may have differences about what that “something far better” is, and how it can be brought about—and we should continue to discuss and debate this, with the orientation of seeking the truth, whether convenient or inconvenient, comfortable or uncomfortable, and following the truth wherever it leads—but it is not only possible but crucial and urgent that we unite—and actively go forward to win truly massive numbers of people—to act, in a really meaningful way, to bring about the removal of this fascist regime before it can fully consolidate its rule and bring down the full effect of its horrific agenda. In the “Paul Krugman” article, I put it this way:
“Krugman is a proponent of capitalism, whereas I am an advocate of communism, a new communism, who is convinced that what is ultimately and fundamentally required to deal with the current horrors facing the masses of humanity, and the looming threat to the very existence of humanity, is a truly radical and emancipating revolution. But that is not the immediate question and challenge before all of us at this present moment. Rather, it is to deal with the grave danger posed by those now in power, through nonviolent but massive and sustained political action—the mobilization of first thousands, growing into millions, determined to get and remain in the streets until this regime is removed from power. Does not the common recognition that this regime ‘may end up destroying civilization,’ demand of us—of all those, of many divergent viewpoints, who can recognize that these are the stakes for humanity—that we act together, and do everything in our power, to bring about the massive political manifestation that is urgently needed to drive out this regime?”
And, in concluding, let me go back to what I wrote at the end of that article:
“to act, from their own perspective, to give meaningful support to, and indeed to become actively involved in, the critical work building toward November 4: publicly endorsing and promoting the Call from Refuse Fascism, helping to break through what is effectively a white-out of this by the mainstream media, donating and raising funds, directing people to the RefuseFascism.org website, and in countless other ways helping to develop the necessary political and organizational basis for what Refuse Fascism very rightly calls ‘this great cause.’ For it is the massive and sustained political mobilization called for by Refuse Fascism that truly represents the prospect of forging a positive path through and beyond this extremely dangerous and potentially disastrous situation.”
