Posts by issue number/Posteos por número de la edición

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.

Over the past month, Donald Trump let the last nuclear weapons treaty between the U.S. and Russia expire. This treaty froze the number of deployed nuclear weapons at 1,550 for each side—more than enough to wipe out the entire population of the earth many times over. Yet, this was not enough for Donald Trump, nor were there any serious opposed voices raised by other prominent politicians. To quote the New York Times, this “leaves both superpowers with no limits on the size or structure of their arsenals, at the very moment both are planning new generations of nuclear war heads.” [emphasis added] 

The U.S. has projected an increase in spending on “defense” of 66 percent next year, over an already high increase this year—and further increases for each of the next 10 years. Other powers—both “lesser” imperialist powers like France or Poland, and wannabe imperialists—are now moving to add to their “stockpile” or to begin to produce their own nuclear weapons if they do not yet have them. Meanwhile, the main U.S. rival for world domination—China—has been making its own rapid and dramatic advances in nuclear war technology and weaponry, as has Russia. 

It is no wonder that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently set their “Doomsday Clock”¹ at 85 seconds to midnight—the closest it’s ever been. 

This is insane. Utterly insane. The capacity exists to wipe out human misery, hunger and exploitation… and yet this capacity is being driven to develop quicker, more efficient and more complete ways to destroy humanity.

But there is a logic driving this insanity. It is the death-bound logic of expand or die. It is the logic built into the system we are forced to live under. And that system is capitalism-imperialism—in which a handful of powers are driven to contend for control of the people and resources of the planet… lest they be driven under by a rival power. 

In the face of this escalated threat of the mass extinction of humanity, the millions and millions of decent people, who would want to see a world without war, have largely ignored what is happening. This LACK of public alarm, or even awareness, especially as compared to earlier times when the threat of nuclear war heightened and people did raise alarms and resist it, is a very striking aspect of this situation. 

Why such silence at the gates of hell?

Some people tell themselves it’s hopeless… and thereby accept the extreme and accelerating danger of humanity being incinerated! To those who do this: you don’t want to look too close, do you? You don’t want to seriously think about this “problem” that threatens humanity. But is not this act of acceptance (even in the form of “I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it” ignore-ance) also insane? Criminally insane?

For here is the hard but liberating truth: it is hopeless so long as you insist on confining your thinking to terms based on working within (or in some cases on the margins of) the capitalist-imperialist system that birthed these weapons and is now pumping the gas toward Armageddon. 

A Scientific Basis for Hope

But if you can liberate yourself from the myth that “there is no alternative” to capitalism-imperialism, then there is a basis for hope and a way to go to work on making this hope a reality. Real hope—hope founded in that material reality and a scientific approach to understanding that reality, including as it pertains to society… and to war. This has been addressed by Bob Avakian in a number of places:

It is true that, so long as there are nuclear armed imperialist (and other reactionary) states, the people of the world will be subject to nuclear blackmail. That underscores once again the profound, and acute, importance of my statement that the people of the world can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity—they need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. (This statement is part of interviews that were done with me last fall on the YouTube RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show.) [from "Don't Worry About a Nuclear War--If There Is One Russia Will Lose!": The Dangerous Demagoguery of Timothy Snyder on Behalf of U.S. Imperialism and Its Proxy War in Ukraine"]...

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. And it is a scientific fact that humanity does not have to live this way.

In order to no longer live this way, it is necessary to carry out a thoroughgoing revolution, to overthrow the system of capitalism-imperialism, and bring into being a radically different and much better system. A sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for that radically different and much better system is contained in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored. In this Constitution, the following is made very clear:

"The New Socialist Republic in North America will not develop, and will not use, nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. It will wage a determined and many-sided struggle to rid the world of all such weapons—and it will do this as part of the larger, overall struggle to defeat and dismantle all imperialist and reactionary states and forces and to advance toward the achievement of communism, throughout the world, which will finally make it possible for the desires and dreams of countless human beings throughout history, and the fundamental interests of humanity, for a world without war, to at long last be realized."

This is not just a dream or simply a lofty aspiration. As I have spoken to throughout these messages (and in a concentrated way in numbers One through Eleven), this is a rare time when the revolution to overthrow this system—yes, right in this powerful capitalist-imperialist country—is not only urgently necessary but is possible, and this revolution would make possible a crucial leap toward an emancipating future in which humanity can truly thrive, without the terrible suffering to which the masses of humanity are now subjected, and without the continual threat of nuclear annihilation. [from REVOLUTION #42: Imperialism—and Imperialist War: What is, and is not, its fundamental motivation, nature and role, and how it can be finally ended.]

Get into Bob Avakian. Learn about the revolution we need, the emancipating leadership we have and the world we could win.

To make revolution, you need three conditions. In the words of Bob Avakian (BA), the first one is this:

A crisis in society and government so deep and so disruptive of the “usual way of things,” that 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.

Every week, the Trump fascist regime drives this first condition further. And this past week the regime and Trump himself took further big leaps in moving to subvert what is considered one of the main ways that "people have been conditioned to accept" the oppressive and exploitative rule of American capitalism-imperialism: the U.S. elections. 

These fascists deeply and fanatically believe that only they are the legitimate rulers of this system and they are actively working to rig and steal the next election—without violence if they can, but through violence if they must. What is urgently required are millions of people determined to wrench a livable future for humanity out of this extremely volatile and dangerous situation.

Election Rigging, Violent Threats and Practice Runs

Since Trump was prevented from stealing the 2020 election—despite an all-sided campaign which did actually come very close to succeeding—he and those around him have been actively working to steal the next election. On Trump's first day in office, Trump pardoned about 1,500 insurrectionists who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to overturn the 2020 election. In August 2025, Trump asked fascist governors to redraw election maps to openly favor the fascists. He has worked to remake how American elections are run and has repeatedly threatened to run for a third term.

This has intensified over the last two weeks:

This week, Trump has repeatedly threatened a federal takeover of elections. This would be a major violation and break with the U.S. Constitution itself, which says that the states oversee the elections. 

Twice he has said that "The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” And he even went so far as to spell out what kind of places needed to be “taken over,” naming Philadelphia, Detroit and Atlanta as incapable of conducting fair elections because they are all “unbelievably corrupt.” These are all majority Black and Latino, and majority Democratic cities. 

On February 3, the fascist architect and ideologue Steve Bannon said, “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November.” And addressing Democrats, he said, “We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”

A leap in this offensive took place on January 28 when the FBI raided an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized 700 boxes of ballots from the 2020 elections.² In the midst of this raid, Trump himself got on speakerphone with the FBI agents to ask questions and praise them for being part of this outrageous raid. This kind of direct intervention from the fascist commander-in-chief is unprecedented.

Analyzing what was really going on with this, Marc Elias—an elections lawyer for the Democrats—said: 

This is not only the election denialism of 2020... this is about proof of concept for the future. People talk about seizing ballots and surrounding polling places and stealing elections as if somehow these things are easily done. These are conceptual frameworks that people in the administration have to get comfortable with, moral frameworks they have to get comfortable with. They have to contend with the Constitution and the law and judges and all that, but they also have to contend with just the sheer logistics of it all. Like, how do we actually do this thing where there are ballots in the possession of a county official? How are we going to get them and how are we going to then count them in a way that is going to cast doubt on the outcome or cast doubt on the outcome through other propaganda and disinformation campaigns? And I think that this Georgia thing is just as much about that as it is about 2020. And in that respect, we have to be honest: Donald Trump and his administration are pulling something off. They actually did seize ballots. They actually got their hands on them... at the end of the day, Tulsi Gabbard is on a truck full of documents that have been seized from an [election] office. And those are now in the possession of Trump's FBI...

One of Trump's regrets from 2020 is that he didn't seize the voting machines, and in a recent interview, he openly pondered whether National Guard troops were “sophisticated enough” to impound ballots in the upcoming election. 

As a vicious climax to the week, Trump posted an ugly racist attack of Barack and Michelle Obama—depicting them as apes—in the midst of a video lying about the "stolen 2020 election." And in all these attacks, there is a vicious and openly white supremacist assault against voting rights for Black people and Latinos. 

All this is happening in a context in which court rulings that go against the Trump regime are routinely ignored, and in the great majority of cases that get to the fascist dominated Supreme Court, the Court rules in favor of Trump. 

Elections: Why They Mean Nothing… 

What we've cited here just scratches the surface of an onslaught of lawsuits, proposed legislation, blackmail and other maneuvers by the fascists to make sure that Republicans either “win” the election (by preventing people who oppose them from voting, or from having their votes counted), and/or are in a good position to overturn the election results if the fascists lose. 

This whole situation is politically explosive. Millions are actively opposing this regime in every corner of society. Trump's armed gestapo is murdering protesters without remorse. Meanwhile, Trump is itching to send the U.S. military into city streets and continues to threaten to execute his political rivals. 

In a country that has relied on the "peaceful transfer of power" as one of the central things that provides this system with legitimacy, openly ripping that away is not a minor matter. We'll speak to this point more below, but first, let's get clear on what elections are, and are not.

Despite the cover of "freedom and democracy," elections have never been the process through which decisions in this system of capitalism-imperialism get made. But they have been at the foundation of why people go along with this system. You're constantly told that if you passionately oppose the white supremacy and patriarchal oppression of women and LGBT people, if you can’t stomach the mass deportations and wars, if you dread the ongoing destruction of the environment… then you should vote for someone to change all this. But because all this oppression is woven into this system of capitalism and cannot be ended under this system, there can be no real meaningful change brought about through elections.

The elections do, however, give this system a so-called "popular mandate." They tell you that the elections express “the will of the people.” But the reality is that who you vote for and the questions you hear debated are pre-selected to serve the interests of that same system. You don't change or "control" this system through the elections, but the elections is how you get controlled, confined and channeled—in your thinking, and actions. 

Just think about the election of 2024 where you could not meaningfully vote against the genocide in Gaza. Because as profound as the differences are between the Democrats and the Republi-fascists, they do have a fundamental unity about the need for their empire (again, even as they have sharp irreconcilable differences over how this empire should be ruled). And whatever else is going on, the American empire needs Israel to play a role as attack dog and military outpost in the strategic region of the Middle East.

...And Why (Sometimes) They Could Mean a Lot

But now that con game is in a crisis.

The Republi-fascists existentially feel that they cannot preserve the American empire without a sharp break with the "normal" way that U.S. capitalism has functioned for the last 150 years and are determined to smash that whole way of operating. These dangerous maniacs fervently believe that only they, and only their program of open and unconstrained white supremacy, male supremacy, erasure of LGBT people, hatred of immigrants, anti-science lunacy, belligerent war mongering, the crushing of protest and dissent, and decimation of the rule of law—only that recasting of U.S. society is legitimate and can “Make America Great Again.” And the path to achieving this demands defeating, crushing and subordinating—as violently as necessary—their opponents, both in the ruling class and among the people. Elections also have to be “retooled” (assuming they are continued) into an automatic affirmation of fascist rule. (See sidebar for more from Bob Avakian on the roots of this.) 

In the election of 2020, Bob Avakian called Trump's attempts to steal that election a "rolling coup." The culmination of this all-sided effort was on January 6, 2021 when thousands of crazed fascists violently stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of the vote. When it was over, BA labeled it a dress rehearsal.

This time, the fascists are determined to succeed.

This Situation Demands That YOU—That Every Decent Human Being—Step Up Their Commitment to Stop This and Search for a Way Forward Out of This Truly Existential Crisis

No one can predict exactly how this situation will unfold in these next weeks and months—the situation in the U.S., and around the world is extremely volatile. But Trump/MAGA fascism is accelerating, and working overtime to lock down their grip on society and consolidate their fascist program.

What we can predict is that those who are ignoring or downplaying this danger are marching you to disaster. The Democratic Party and their leading representatives are desperately clinging to the very elections that the fascists are moving to rig and steal. As a ruling class institution, they are working to maintain the stability of capitalism-imperialism and will not risk the upheaval that might be required to defeat Trump fascism. Elias himself, while sounding the alarm that Trump's moves are "terrifying," ended up just arguing that what people should do is protest, keep filing lawsuits, "make a plan to vote, pay attention, and make sure that everyone in your social circles understands what's going on."

In the face of this fascist warp-speed juggernaut, this is extremely inadequate and profoundly irresponsible. If this regime is allowed to consolidate, it will not just mean absolute horror for masses of people here and all over the world, it could crush any real possibility of resistance, or the struggle for a better future. With the increased danger of climate catastrophe and nuclear war, it's not an overstatement to say that it could even mean the extinction of our species.

There need to be growing millions recognizing the full fascist program, in sustained nonviolent protest, determined to drive this whole fascist regime from power NOW! People's rights—including their basic right to vote—need to be defended as part of going up against and defeating this juggernaut as a whole. And people broadly need to have each other's backs in the face of the severe repression being brought down by the fascist regime. 

At the same time, there is great urgency in looking deeper into the very system that has given rise to this fascism, and so many other atrocities, and in looking for answers outside of and beyond this system. For while the situation is full of extreme and very negative danger, there is also the possibility that a revolution to bring a whole new system into being could be wrenched out of all this craziness if through this, the second two conditions for revolution are developed. Again, from Bob Avakian:

A revolutionary people in the millions and millions, with their “allegiance” to this system broken, and their determination to fight for a more just society greater than their fear of the violent repression of this system....

An organized revolutionary force—made up of continually growing numbers of people, from among the most oppressed but also from many other parts of society—a force which is grounded in, and is working systematically to apply, the most scientific approach to building for and then carrying out revolution, and which is increasingly looked to by masses of people to lead them to bring about the radical change that is urgently needed.

That radical change is spelled out in an inspiring way in the Declaration from the revcoms, 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. But we need a whole different system, with a whole different Constitution—the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America—which will provide much greater rights for the people, including the basic right to have the fundamentally determining role in a new society and government whose purpose and goal is to eliminate all exploitation and oppression, everywhere.

The fact is that, despite its claims to speak in the name of “we, the people” the U.S. Constitution is a document that was written by and has served the interests of slave-owning and capitalist exploiters, from the beginning of this country down to today. It is a document that restricts the notion of “freedom” to what is possible within the killing confines of this system of capitalism-imperialism, a system of brutal exploitation and murderous oppression. It is a document that sets the terms for enforcing this system which treats the masses of people, here and all over the world, as objects to be used and abused to generate profits and increase capital for a small number of big-time exploiters...a system that casts off as useless, and treats as dangerous, huge numbers of human beings who cannot be profitably exploited...a system that causes endless wars that kill off millions and cause massive destruction...a system that treats the environment as something to be plundered in the pursuit of profit and rivalry to dominate the world.

The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America is completely, fundamentally different than the U.S. Constitution. This Constitution for a new socialist republic provides a sweeping vision, a firm foundation and concrete blueprint for bringing into being a society, and ultimately a world, free from all forms of slavery, all exploitation and oppression based on class, race, sex and gender, all relations in which one part of humanity is subordinated to and dominated by others.

The new socialist system based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America will do what can never be done under this system of capitalism-imperialism: Through its institutions, through elections and in an all-round way, this new socialist system will provide the means to politically empower the masses of people, in order to carry out the revolutionary transformation of society, and to contribute to this process in the world as a whole.

While uniting all who can be united to defeat this fascism, this is what people need to raise their sights to—and be part of fighting for.

As we write, the grave danger of war looms over the Middle East. The fascist Trump regime is once again threatening to launch a war on Iran. Such an illegitimate, imperialist act of aggression threatens the lives of many thousands, perhaps millions, if it spreads across the region, and perhaps beyond.

This past week, Trump warned that a U.S. armada was heading toward Iran, prepared to carry out military strikes “with great power, enthusiasm and purpose,” if Iran’s Islamic Republic didn’t bow down to Trump’s nakedly imperialist demands for submission. 

Trump’s demands? A permanent end to all nuclear enrichment (which Iran has the right to do³); limits on the range and numbers of Iran’s ballistic missiles; and an end to all support for Iran’s allies across the region. In other words, Iran is to be left defenseless while the U.S. and Israel, with their massive stockpiles of nuclear bombs and other weapons of war, and military bases and alliances across the region, would have free rein to attack Iran and others in the region whenever they decide to.   

“Time is running out,” to accept these outrageous demands, Trump warned, “it is truly of the essence!”

The U.S. has surged military forces into the region, including the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group,⁴ combat ships and destroyers, at least a dozen attack aircraft, submarines that can launch cruise missiles at Iran, and anti-missile systems. Long-range U.S.-based bombers can attack Iran, and the U.S. has between 30,000 and 40,000 troops already stationed in the region.

Meanwhile, the leader of Iran’s Islamic Republic has threatened to launch a regional war if the U.S. attacks.

The situation is extremely fraught and quickly developing. There are reports that the U.S. and Iran are now negotiating and may avoid war. Other reports claim the U.S. has already decided on war. 

Oppose Fascist Trump’s Imperialist Bullying and War Moves

Revcom.us will continue to follow this perilous situation and keep readers informed. But right now several key things are very clear:

1. These threats and any attack on Iran by the fascist Trump regime are completely outrageous and illegitimate. They are not being done in support of the Iranian people’s just struggle against the Islamic Republic, or to end the danger of nuclear war, just the opposite: they’re being done to more forcefully impose U.S. imperialist domination, including military domination, on Iran and its people and the entire Middle East region.
2. The people of this country have a responsibility to the people of Iran and the world to vigorously oppose any and all aggression, bullying, and military attacks on Iran.
3. The U.S. imperialists are the world’s “top predators.” But Iran’s theocratic rulers are also thoroughly reactionary: they are part of the global capitalist-imperialist system, and have just slaughtered thousands of Iranians who rose up for justice in early January. The rebellions of the Iranian people over the last period—over the severe economic privation in these past weeks, and especially in 2022 around the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” are overwhelmingly progressive and should be supported.
   Now is not the time to choose between oppressors. People in this country also have the responsibility of supporting the just struggle of the Iranian people, against their hated rulers, for justice and a brighter future. In this light, see Intervew with Osyan⁵ on the January Uprising in Iran, and War Has Casualties?! from Atash/Fire, journal of the Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist.

The criminal and very dangerous threats by U.S. imperialism and the fascist Trump regime, as well as the crimes of Iran’s Islamic Republic, once again emphasize the urgency of the call from the revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, Bob Avakian:

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.

No U.S.-Israeli Attack on Iran!

Support the Just Struggle of the Iranian People! 

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!

But the slaughter of our people had other international partners as well. In this massacre, the security services of the Islamic Republic of Iran benefited from the obvious and unprecedented cooperation of the Russian and Chinese security services. These facts must be highlighted when preparing an indictment for the massacre of people during the January 2026 uprising by the armed forces of the IRI (including the Islamic Revolutionary Guards [IRGC], the Basij [its civilian militia], and its international branch, the Quds Force). The participation of Israel, China, and Russia in this massacre should be exposed and protested on a worldwide scale.

With this introduction, we will discuss the suppression of the January 2026 uprising. What we know so far is this: thousands of people were killed across the country, more than 100,000 people were injured, people's neighborhoods were destroyed, the wounded were kidnapped from hospitals and killed, and medical centers were turned into centers of murder.

After the June 2025 military attack on Iran by U.S. and Israeli forces, the Fars News Agency (which is close to the IRGC) wrote: “Why shouldn't we repeat the experience and the executions of 1988? Don't you think the time has now come to repeat that successful experience… which helped us to run the country for years without any problems and not have to deal with the problem of terrorism.... If we rid ourselves of our enemies in just the same way that we got rid our enemies in 1988, we can feel secure.”⁷

This shows that the IRI had been preparing to commit this crime. The arrests and executions that followed [the June military attack], and the October 2025 “Enhanced Punishment for Espionage” law, promulgated by [Iran’s President Masoud] Pezeshkian, indicate that they were preparing to commit a major crime.

The Doctrine and the Structure of Repression, in Generic Terms

Now let's turn to the doctrine and structure of repression in the IRI. Everyone knows that in the IRI, the security and survival of this regime determine its policies. From the IRI's perspective, protest is an on-going feature of Iranian society, not an occasional occurrence. Therefore, they have adopted a model of continuous repression. The model of continuous repression is built into the identity of the IRI. This is the general characteristic of the IRI's security doctrine. However, it is specifically designed to suppress urban youth. Statistics on the victims of the January 2017 and November 2019 uprisings, the [2022] Mahsa “Jina” Amini uprising, and the January 2026 uprising, clearly demonstrate this reality.

The model of repression in Iran is a hybrid of Chinese and Russian [imperialists] methods combined with local structures and practices. Of course, because the repressive apparatus of the IRI is heir to the organized repression apparatus of the [Mohammad Pahlavi] Shah's regime, it is not without the influence of certain Western [imperialists] methods of repression. But the hard core of the IRI’s current suppression doctrine is indebted to the Chinese and Russian methods of suppression.

The IRI has adopted China’s so-called “Strike Hard” doctrine. “Strike Hard” is a structural policy to exert tight control over society. It operates on the basis of fear, speed and intensity of the action, and control over the narrative. The key principle of “Strike Hard” in relation to large protests is to stop the protesters by administering a severe shock. Implementation of “Strike Hard” includes mass executions and, in street operations, the use of military-grade weapons, indiscriminate and coordinated killings in multiple cities, attacks on hospitals, and mass arrests.

The IRI's model of repression borrows from Russia its use of asymmetric violence, and shadow-operations, and terror-inducing tactics. Russia's pattern of repression in Africa (especially by the private Wagner forces controlled by the Russian government) is recognized as among the most violent and brutal models of “population control and political suppression.” Asymmetric violence reacts to any instance of “violence” or self-defense by the people with exponentially greater violence and terror-producing operations. [The late IRGC Commander] Qasem Soleimani⁸ both learned from the “Wagner model” and used it in his suppression of  the people of Syria.

This model includes severe repression and mass killings, targeted shootings of civilians, “cleansing” operations in protest areas, the use of heavy weapons of war, disappearances, executions at close range, and the dissemination of fabricated narratives to justify the crackdown. The goal is: “deterrence through fear.”

The IRI retained some of the methods of repression used by SAVAK [Shah’s secret police] and in 1979-1980, combined them with [Aytollah] Khomeini's idea of forming a “20-million-strong army,” which resulted in the creation of a vast network of Basij forces in the neighborhoods, schools, factories, and offices. It is a local, cheap, and decentralized security force network that enforces theocratic control throughout the country. The Basij has a huge budget, and is constantly recruiting from both cities and rural villages.

Conclusion

Our Party has always grappled with the issue of the IRI “model of survival,” and has grappled with how to develop a systematic method of confronting it, based on a precise knowledge of the repressive apparatus, its doctrine and methods of operation, and to transfer this understanding to the youth who step into the arena of struggle against the regime. In the face of repression, the question is always: what can we do to turn the repression used on us back against itself—and to mobilize the people to wage the struggle on an even larger scale. At its core, the answer to this question is political and ideological line. Attention to technical and tactical principles is subordinate to that. In this regard, the document titled “Accumulating Forces and Organizing for Revolution” (an excerpt from the documents of the 11th Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Iran, MLM) says:

So far we have encountered great obstacles along our way, and will do so again. … On this path, we must maintain our strategic nerve. During storms, heavy blows, and setbacks, we must keep our heads above water, not lose our sense of direction, and not give in to “it cannot be done,” “we’ll be isolated,” and “why didn’t we take such and such a step earlier.”

We can maintain this basic orientation, not through sheer willpower, but by using the scientific method of seeking to understand the problems and search for solutions. In other words, political struggle with a correct orientation is the decisive factor in confronting the repressive apparatus and transforming each act of repression into a broader and more enduring struggle against the IRI. Even now, in light of the repression of the January 2026 uprising, we must once again examine the structure of the power that we are going up against, and the factors that strengthen it or lend it resilience.

Since the U.S.-Israeli military aggression in June 2025, the IRI has increasingly tied its fate to the intense rivalry between the Chinese and Russian imperialists and U.S. imperialism. In exchange for this loyalty, China and Russia helped rebuild the IRI's military and security apparatus. At the same time, in response to public unrest and uprisings, the IRI adopted the approach that “public dissatisfaction equals continuation of the 12-day war,” and began preparing for the massacre. The infiltration of Israel's proxy forces into the people's uprising gave the IRI an opportunity to declare war on the uprising of the unarmed people, and with the pretext of “we are at war, and the enemy has infiltrated,” was able to unite internal factions of the government and even to bring along a number of religious intellectuals, reformists, and national-religious figures.

This analysis tells us that we must strongly oppose any policy that seeks to drag the popular uprisings into imperialist contention. When the many women and men fighters grasp the complexities of the political scene, and the character and objectives of the various forces involved in it, then they can prevent others from following the worthless orders of the fascist Trump, the Mossad security apparatus, and their hired broker, Reza Pahlavi. 

The significance of having the theory and policies to confront repression is as significant as having a theory and policy to confront the regime's theocratic religiosity, its attempt to squash freedom, its mandatory hijab and its enforcement of national oppression, its reactionary regional wars, and so on.

Now, a major and decisive battleground with the Islamic Republic of Iran is to turn the regime’s repression from a tool of its survival into a driving force for its overthrow. 

Success in this difficult arena requires creating and strengthening a powerful movement with two simultaneous characteristics: it must have the ability to actively and effectively resist severe suffocation by the widely deployed domestic repression machine, and at the same time it must keep the tentacles of scavengers dependent on Israel and the U.S. away from the people and prevent the toxic polarization of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Success in this struggle depends on thousands of young people—who rose up and put their lives on the line in these uprisings—developing a revolutionary method and approach. They must have a clear understanding of who are the friends and the enemies of the revolution. They should not only be against the IRI but they must also stand against U.S. imperialism and the imperialists of China and Russia who support the IRI—and support the struggle of people in those countries to overthrow their governments.

The prerequisite for turning repression back against itself requires that a broader movement grasp these political lessons, and that they become widespread among the people. This political factor is crucial to further isolate the IRI both domestically and internationally. Without this revolutionary orientation, we will not succeed in creating the broadest popular alliance within the country, nor in gaining the support of the people around the world. This policy must be reflected in the people’s slogans. The slogan that must resonate and appear on doors and walls everywhere is: Down with the Islamic Republic of Iran—Long Live the New Socialist Republic in Iran.

The message of the Sarbedarans is this: To end the one-sided war being waged by Islamic Republic, or any similar regime that may replace these fascists, the people need their own revolutionary army. The people will fight against their conditions of oppression and exploitation; they will sacrifice their lives, multiplying and spreading courage. The point is that all of this must find a political focal point, with a clear program and a strategy for realizing that program, so that we can turn repeated historic defeats into victories—the victories for the “New Socialist Republic [of Iran]”—because, this is the only alternative that can truly free our society from the grip of centuries of oppression and exploitation in both old and new forms, and inspire humanity in every corner of the world.

Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)

THE CRIME: On August 19, 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) along with British intelligence launched a military coup overthrowing Iran’s popular, elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. In 1951, during an upsurge of protest against British colonialism, Mossadegh had nationalized Britain’s Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Great Britain had plundered Iran’s oil wealth for decades.

Britain moved to destabilize Mossadegh’s government, including by launching an international boycott of Iranian oil. The U.S. soon joined the coup plotting, conspiring with Iran’s Mohammad Reza Shah [King] Pahlavi and the military, and orchestrating an anti-Mossadegh propaganda campaign.

On August 19, mobs joined by the military took over streets chanting “Long live the Shah! Death to Mossadegh!” They ransacked pro-Mossadegh newspapers and attacked his supporters. Street battles raged. By late afternoon, military units seized control of Mossadegh’s house, breaking the resistance. By evening, 300 lay dead, as General Fazlollah Zahedi rode to Radio Tehran atop a tank and broadcast that with the Shah’s blessing, he was the new prime minister.

Iran’s nationalist upsurge was crushed. The Shah ruled as an iron-fisted U.S. puppet for 25 years. Speaking out risked arrest by SAVAK, his U.S.-trained secret police. Thousands were murdered, jailed or barbarically tortured—they even threatened to torture children in front of their parents. When millions rose against the Shah in 1978-79, he shot down thousands with U.S. backing before being ousted. The 1953 coup and what followed ended up helping pave the way for a new Iranian nightmare: the 1979 founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

THE CRIMINALS: After covering up for 60 years, the CIA admitted in 2013:

The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.

In the U.S., that meant President Dwight Eisenhower on down through the State Department, the CIA, and the military. In Britain, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and on down.

THE ALIBI: For decades, the U.S. and British rulers covered up and lied about having orchestrated the anti-Mossadegh coup, and their media cover story turned reality upside down. It portrayed this U.S.-led fascist military coup against a widely supported, elected leader as a popular “revolution” against a Hitler-like lunatic trying “to make himself unchallenged dictator of the country,” as the New York Times put it.

THE ACTUAL MOTIVE: A CIA memo spelled out U.S. goals: “to effect the fall of the Mosaddeq government; and to replace it with a pro-western government under the Shah’s leadership with [General] Zahedi as its prime minister.”

The U.S. used the 1953 coup to muscle into Iran and replace Britain as top dominator. Mossadegh’s nationalization was reversed, and U.S. oil giants were cut in on the spoils, reaping enormous profits. The coup was a warning against similar moves to nationalize imperialist companies. And it embedded Iran as a key military outpost for the U.S. against regional liberation struggles and in its Cold War clash with the Soviet Union.

REPEAT OFFENDERS: In 1979, the Shah was overthrown and replaced by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), a regime that, while reactionary, was viewed by the U.S. as an obstacle to its immediate interests. In the decades since, the U.S. has bullied, intervened, and threatened Iran. It fueled the bloody 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, which left a million dead or wounded, to weaken both. In 1988, as a warning to Iran to halt the war, the U.S. warship Vincennes “accidentally” shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing all 290 on board. Since then, the U.S. has imposed punishing sanctions and threatened war repeatedly, and it still seeks to dominate and control Iran.

This year, the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, will see an ugly torrent of red-white-and-blue celebrations of America as a “great country”—spearheaded by Donald “Make America Great Again” Trump. This is a celebration of America now led by fascists. But the truth is that America was NEVER “great,” whoever was heading up the government. 

As revolutionary leader Bob Avakian said, if people are stung by that truth about America, they need to look at reality:

This “Republic” to which we are supposed to pledge allegiance was founded on slavery and genocidal robbery: keeping millions of Black people in chains for generations... killing off huge numbers of Native Americans and stealing their land... waging a war that ripped off half of Mexico, greatly expanding slavery.

So, was this a great country all during that time—when millions of people were enslaved—owned by bloodsuckers who constantly whipped the slaves to make them work harder under horrific conditions, slave-owners who raped masses of enslaved women? Was this country great then?!

Was it great when, for generations after slavery was formally ended, Black people as a whole were segregated, discriminated against, and continually terrorized, with repeated massacres of Black people and thousands of Black people lynched? Was it great when, all during that time, LGBT people were “illegal,” when women were legally treated as inferior to men—and men could legally rape their wives? Was it a great country then?!

Or is it great, now, when people are everyday denied basic rights? When the police kill a thousand people every year, especially people of color, and in the 60 years since Civil Rights Acts were passed, segregation and discrimination has remained as bad, or worse, as it ever was, and thousands of Black people have been killed by police—even greater numbers than all those who were lynched during all the years of Ku Klux Klan terror after the Civil War!

Has this country ever been great, when, right from the beginning and down to today, the whole thing has literally been built on the broken bodies, the blood and bones, of millions and now billions of people, worldwide—cruelly exploited, used and abused, by this system—with all this backed up by murder on a massive scale carried out by the police and the armed forces of this country?

No, this country has never been great. It has always been a horror for masses of people. 

(from social media message REVOLUTION #2: When has the U.S. been a “great country”?)

It’s way past time for this system—capitalism-imperialism—that rules in this country, dominates the world and now has spawned fascist rule, to be thoroughly abolished, through an actual revolution.

Below is Part 3 of a series that highlights aspects of how 250 years of America has been nothing but a horror for the masses of people, here and around the world. We call on our readers to send in your contributions to this series—articles, video, audio, artwork, social media posts. Email revolution.reports@yahoo.com or message @therevcoms via social media.

See also: 

• Part 1: American Crime Case #98: 1953 CIA Coup in Iran: Torture and Repression–Made in the U.S.A.
• Part 2: American Crime Case #12: The 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the Destruction of Black Wall Street

Part 3: Emmett Till and Lynchings, Past and Present

An excerpt from Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About

by Bob Avakian

The Trump regime rode into 2026 on a rampage. From Venezuela to the streets of Minneapolis, the regime murders with impunity and demonizes whole peoples and countries without any pretense of the rule of law.

On January 7, an ICE agent murdered Renee Good in cold blood for daring to stand up for her immigrant neighbors. On January 24, CBP agents beat Alex Pretti to the ground and executed him. These are Trump’s Gestapo thugs—unleashed in Minneapolis on a campaign of terror and vengeance. The regime has responded not with accountability, but with lies, justifying murder through the twisted logic that anyone who resists deserves to be shot down.

This is fascism, a different form of brutal rule to enforce white supremacist, patriarchal, and xenophobic oppression and violence. As long as this regime remains in power, this terror will not only continue—it will accelerate. The events of this month—from illegally bombing Venezuela and kidnapping the leader of a sovereign nation to murdering civilians in the streets—have brought this home in blood and should dispel any complacency.

This regime will not be bound by any laws or measures of decency that stop them from advancing their aims. They have:

• begun genocidal ethnic cleansing of non-white immigrants, rounded up and sent to concentration camps by lawless masked men;
• unleashed war and terror abroad, while moving aggressively to crush dissent at home;
• branded anti-fascist protesters and political opponents as “domestic terrorists,” laying the groundwork for mass repression.

SHREDDING ANY RULE OF U.S. OR INTERNATIONAL LAW, and getting away with it over and over, is paving the way for horrors that surpass those of the Nazi regime. There is no living with this.

The protests in Minneapolis and across this country have been righteous and inspiring. They must continue—and they must grow. And we must join our righteous fury in the streets with the only demand that truly measures up to the threat this regime poses to all of humanity:

Trump Must Go Now!

No community is safe while the fascist Trump regime controls federal agencies and consolidates power. There is no restraining or abolishing ICE when Trump’s attacks on immigrants are the battering ram and linchpin of his fascist program. To stop ICE terror—and every outrage of the last year—the whole regime must be stopped.

Nothing but massive nonviolent struggle by you, and millions of others like you, can do that. By walking out. By shutting down. By millions rising in massive, unrelenting, nonviolent protest and resistance. By coming back stronger in the face of attack and repression. By uniting, not dividing, across many viewpoints and backgrounds.

We must not wait for future and rigged elections.

The power of the people must drive the Trump Fascist Regime out of power now—before it is too late.

ICE Must Go
The Whole Trump Fascist Regime Must Go Now
In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America

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. 

***

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.⁹ 

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]¹⁰

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. 

One of the things that comes through most powerfully in Bob Avakian’s memoir¹ is that a profound hatred for the oppression of Black people has been a defining part of Bob Avakian’s life from the time, as a teenager, he learned about the lives of the Black people with whom he developed deep ties of friendship. Never feeling that, because he is white, “it is not his place” to be involved in the struggle against this oppression—but, on the contrary, determined to contribute whatever he could to this struggle—Bob Avakian (BA), from the time he worked closely with the Black Panther Party in its revolutionary days in the 1960s, has made the liberation of Black people a defining part of his life’s commitment and work. As he developed as a revolutionary communist, and emerged as the foremost revolutionary leader and thinker in the world, this commitment has become even deeper and has been strongly interwoven with a dedication to the emancipation of all humanity from every form of oppression and exploitation.

As BA has written about his life’s work:

Why was I doing the work I was doing? Once again, we’re back to for whom and for what. I wasn’t doing this work for myself. When I was young, in middle school and then even more so in high school, my life got changed in a very major way by coming into contact with people that I hadn’t really known that much before, in particular Black people. I started learning about their situation and how that relates to what goes on in this society as a whole. I was drawn to the culture—not just the music and the art overall, but the whole way of going through the world—of the Black people who became my friends, and the world they introduced me to. And I came to the point of recognizing: these are my people. Now, I knew they had a different life experience than I did. But these are my people—I don’t see a separation—it’s not like there are some other people “over there” who are going through all this and somehow that’s removed from me. These are my people. And then I began to recognize more deeply what people were being put through, the oppression they were constantly subjected to, the horrors of daily life as well as the bigger ways in which the system came down on them. And as I went further through life and began to approach the question of what needs to be done about this, and was introduced to taking up a scientific approach to this, I realized that my people were more than this. I realized that my people were Chicanos and other Latinos and other oppressed people in the U.S.; they were people in Vietnam and China; they were women...they were the oppressed and exploited of the world...and through some struggle, and having to cast off some wrong thinking, I have learned that they are LGBT people as well.

These are my people, the oppressed and exploited people of the world. They are suffering terribly, and something has to be done about this. So it is necessary to dig in and systematically take up the science that can show the way to put an end to all this, and bring something much better into being. You have to persevere and keep struggling to go forward in this way. And when you run into new problems or setbacks, you have to go more deeply into this, rather than putting it aside and giving up.

So this is why I’ve been doing the work that I’ve been doing.²

Bob Avakian grew up in Berkeley, California. Unable, because of a life-threatening illness, to be directly involved in struggles taking place against racial oppression for several years after graduating from high school in 1961, BA nevertheless closely followed and strongly supported the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, and at the same time was influenced by and supportive of the militant stand and role of Malcolm X. This was reflected in an article that BA wrote at the age of 19 in 1962 supporting the struggle of Black people. (This article was submitted to the liberal magazine Saturday Review. Although the article was not published, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Norman Cousins, personally replied—indicating that, although the magazine had chosen not to publish this article, he recognized that the article spoke, in a strikingly compelling way, to very important questions.)

Having recovered from his illness, in 1964, BA became actively involved in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California in Berkeley, where he was a student. The central issue of this movement was the right of students to carry out activity on the campus in support of the civil rights movement. BA was among the 800 who were arrested during the occupation of the university administration building, which was the high point of the movement and led to winning its demands.

As the civil rights movement increasingly gave way to a more militant Black liberation movement in the second half of the 1960s, BA was strongly influenced by this. He left the university and dedicated his life to working for radical change. As a result of direct contact and discussions with Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panther Party, and getting to know Eldridge Cleaver (who also became a leader of the BPP), BA worked closely with the Black Panther Party from its earliest days and at the height of its revolutionary role and influence.

In 1967, BA attended rallies, and spoke at one of the rallies, held by the BPP in North Richmond to protest the killing there of Denzil Dowell, part of the long and continuing chain of murders of Black people by police.

In 1968, when Huey Newton was facing murder charges as a result of a shoot-out with Oakland cops, BA spoke—along with a number of key figures in the Black liberation movement, including Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, James Forman, and leaders of the Black Panther Party— at a Free Huey rally held in the Oakland auditorium on the occasion of Huey Newton’s birthday.

BA worked tirelessly to build support, including among white people, for the demand to “Free Huey!” At a “Free Huey” rally at the courthouse in Oakland where Huey Newton’s trial was being held, BA was arrested for “desecrating” (burning) the American flag.

During this time, at the invitation of BPP leaders, BA wrote a number of articles for the Black Panther newspaper.

At a rally of thousands, led by the Black Panther Party, on May First, 1969, BA spoke of the need for revolution and called on white people in particular to more actively take part in movements for revolutionary change in the U.S., and to support such movements throughout the world.

By the beginning of the 1970s, millions of people in this country were in favor of some kind of revolutionary change, but they faced profound challenges. How could this revolution be made—or was it even possible to make a revolution here, up against such powerful forces of oppression and repression? Which were the key forces that had to be mobilized to have a real chance to carry out such a revolution? What kind of leadership was needed, and what methods and approaches should that leadership be based on? The difficulties in confronting and seeking the answers to these hard questions, combined with brutal and often murderous repression by the powers-that-be, led many revolutionary organizations, including the Black Panther Party, to split and end up departing from the road that could lead to real revolution.

By this time, partly because of the influence of the Black Panther Party, which had popularized the “Red Book” of quotations from the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, BA had become convinced not only that revolution was necessary, and was possible, but that it had to be led by a vanguard force that based itself on the scientific method and approach of communism, as it had been developed initially by Karl Marx, then further developed by V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution in the early part of the 20th century, and then in turn further developed by Mao, who led the Chinese revolution and the new, socialist society in China, until his death in 1976. BA led in the formation of the Revolutionary Union at the end of the 1960s, with the aim of working toward the establishment of the vanguard party of revolution, based on the science of communism. During the first part of the 1970s, BA was both the practical leader and the leading theoretician of the Revolutionary Union, writing much of the essays and polemics for its theoretical journal Red Papers. This included major articles, particularly in Red Papers 5 and 6, that involved groundbreaking scientific materialist analysis of the situation of Black people, historically and down to the present—how and why their particular conditions of oppression had changed, from the time of slavery to the present era, and how this objectively put Black people in a potentially powerful position to be a driving force not only for their own liberation but for the communist revolution whose fundamental aim is the abolition of all oppression and exploitation. These articles included powerful polemics, arguing against positions and programs that would not lead to, but would actually work against, this liberation and the revolutionary transformation of the world as a whole.

In 1975, with BA’s leadership, the Revolutionary Communist Party was founded, with the aim of being the vanguard force for the revolution that was, and continues to be, profoundly necessary. Over the decades since then, BA has fought to keep that Party on the revolutionary road and to bring forward new revolutionary forces to revitalize and strengthen the vanguard forces for the revolution that is now, all the more urgently, required. While continuing to provide practical guidance to the revolutionary forces, BA, through summing up the experience (positive and negative) of the communist movement, and drawing from a broad range of human experience, has brought forward a new synthesis of communism (also referred to as the new communism) which, most decisively, has established communism on an even more consistently scientific basis. As BA’s Official Biography explains, the new communism “is a continuation of, but also represents a qualitative leap beyond, and in some important ways a break with, communist theory as it had been previously developed. It provides the basis—the science, the strategy, and the leadership—for an actual revolution and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation.”³

A defining part of this new communism is the emphasis it gives to the struggle for the liberation of Black people, and the relation of this to the ending of all oppression. And this has continued to stand out in BA’s leadership role and work over the decades, up to the present.  At revcom.us there is a special section, Bob Avakian on The Oppression of Black People & the Revolutionary Struggle to End All Oppression, which contains clips from films and selections from the writings of BA on this question. The following are just a few examples of important works and leadership by Bob Avakian, over the past few decades, that speak to this decisive question.

The book Reflections, Sketches & Provocations, written by Bob Avakian during the 1980s, contains a number of commentaries, speaking in a number of dimensions to the oppression of Black people and the struggle against this oppression, including support for rebellions following the murder of Black people by police. This book begins with the essay “Hill Street Bullshit, Richard Pryor Routines, and the Real Deal,” which powerfully exposes how terror against Black people, and other oppressed people, is “part of the job” of the police—and is “a reward” for carrying out the role of maintaining the “law and order” that keeps the oppressed in their desperate and miserable conditions. Going deeper, it speaks to how this is rooted in this system of capitalism-imperialism, which has had this oppression built into it from the very beginning.

In the 1990s, BA raised the idea that there should be a day, every year, when people mobilized to protest police brutality, mass incarceration and repression by the government. This proposal was taken up and a broad coalition, including family members of people killed by police, was formed to initiate, in 1996, the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. At its height, over the next decade, this National Day of Protest, held every October 22nd, rallied thousands of people in dozens of cities across the country. And activities by people who have been part of this coalition have continued since then.

During the past two decades, BA has given a number of filmed speeches, and written articles, essays and books, in which the liberation of Black people and its crucial relation to the communist revolution, aiming for the emancipation of all humanity, has been a major question.

BA’s 2003 speech Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About, begins with a searing exposure and condemnation of lynching, and speaks to the horrific reality of slavery and the oppression of Black people down to today, including the continual murder of Black people by police.³

In 2006, BA gave a series of 7 Talks, in which once again the oppression of Black people, and the struggle for their liberation, is a major theme. One of these 7 Talks, Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, begins by speaking to the experience of Black people in this country; and the question of slavery and the overall oppression of Black people is, of course, a major part of this talk. It is in Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy that the following is clearly stated:

There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.

(This is also the very first statement in BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, the handbook for revolution.)³

At the beginning of BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less!, in 2012, this point is stated emphatically:

Let’s start with just one great crime of this system: police murder—after murder—after murder—of Black people and Latinos, especially youth.³

This is part of the powerful exposure in this speech of the role that continuing murders by police play in enforcing this monstrous system of exploitation and oppression, the system of capitalism-imperialism.

At the beginning of his October 2017 speech The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible,  BA speaks powerfully to the horrors of slavery in this country—including the rape by slavemasters of huge numbers of enslaved women. This speech shows how the murderous oppression of Black people, continuing down to today, is one of the main roots of the fascism that has come to power in this country with the Trump/Pence regime; and, in this speech, BA repeatedly returns to the critical importance of the fight against this oppression.³

BA’s 2018 speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution begins this way:

In 2012 in Revolution—Nothing Less! I talked about the outrageous murder of Ramarley Graham earlier that same year—shot down in his own house in the Bronx by the New York City police. He was only 18 years old. Do I have to tell you what “race” he was?! His mother kept saying: “This has to STOP!” And his father repeated over and over: "WHY did they kill my son?! WHY did they kill my son?!" New York cops then loudly rallied around their fellow pig who murdered Ramarley in cold blood, viciously taunting Ramarley's family and loved ones, demonstrating yet one more time the ugly truth that, in the way this country has been built, and for the powers-that-be in this country, the humanity of Black people has never counted for anything—they have never been valued as human beings, but only as things to be exploited, oppressed, and repressed. Six years later, and with cold-blooded murders by police continuing in an unbroken chain, I will say again what I said then: How many more times does this have to happen? How many more times do the tears and the cries of anguish and anger have to pour forth from the wounded hearts of people?! How many more times, when another of these outrageous murders is perpetrated by the police, do we have to hear those words that pour gasoline on the already burning wounds: “justifiable homicide, justified use of force” by police?! How many more?!³

In that 2018 speech, BA not only powerfully exposes once again the horrific oppression that this system of capitalism-imperialism inflicts on Black people, and on other oppressed people in this country and throughout the world, and the grave danger this system poses to the very future of humanity; he also lays out in this speech (and in a more recent article A Real Revolution—A Real Chance To Win, Further Developing the Strategy for Revolution³) the strategic approach that could make it possible for this system to be finally overthrown through a revolution in which millions and millions of people are led to fight to put an end to this system and bring a radically different and much better system into being.

In the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by BA, a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for that radically different and much better system is set forth. And the principles and means for finally putting an end, at long last, to the oppression of Black people is a major part of that Constitution.³

This year (2020), BA has written as many as 30 articles in which this decisive question—the oppression, and the struggle for the liberation, of Black people—is a recurring subject.³

In the speeches and writings of BA overall, there is not only powerful, penetrating exposure and uncompromising condemnation of brutal and murderous oppression but, even more importantly, there is scientific analysis of how all this is rooted in this system of capitalism-imperialism and of the need, the possibility, and the means for making revolution to overthrow this system and finally put an end to all the outrageous and unnecessary suffering that the masses of humanity are continually subjected to under this system.

***

It is a very precious thing for the oppressed of the earth when they have a leader whose life is dedicated to their emancipation, and who has the determination, and the scientific method, developed over decades, to point the way, and continue to carve out the path, to achieving that emancipation. BA is such a leader. As emphasized in the article Bob Avakian: A Radically Different Leader—A Whole New Framework For Human Emancipation:

As a revolutionary leader, BA also embodies this rare combination: someone who has been able to develop scientific theory on a world-class level, while at the same time having a deep understanding of and visceral connection with the most oppressed, and a highly developed ability to “break down” complex theory and make it broadly accessible.³

One of the things that most distinguishes BA’s role as a revolutionary leader is his willingness—indeed, his insistence—on telling people the truth, even when they may not want to hear it. This comes through in the way BA exposes and refutes unscientific ways of thinking—all kinds of “conspiracy” theories and superstitious ideas—that lead people, including the most bitterly oppressed people, away from understanding the world as it actually is, and keep them from seeing not just the need, but the possibility, of radically changing the world, in a way that will lead to ending oppression. A big problem that BA has taken on, straight-up, is the role of religion as a mental chain on the masses of Black people, and other oppressed people, and the need to break this chain in order to most powerfully wage the struggle to finally be free of all oppression. BA has repeatedly emphasized that, in order to end oppression, “you have to want revolution badly enough to be scientific about it.”

Science means judging whether something is true, or not, by whether there is evidence that it actually corresponds to reality—and not believing something because it makes you feel good to believe it, or not refusing to believe something because it makes you uncomfortable. In the article Conspiracy Theories, Fascist “Certitude,” Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach To Changing The World, BA has spoken directly to this problem:

many of the basic masses, who are bitterly oppressed under this system, also are suspicious of and even are inclined to reject science and scientifically-grounded analysis. But this also leaves you vulnerable to all kinds of unfounded “conspiracy theories” and other wrong and harmful ideas, including the notion that nothing people do will make a difference because “it’s all in god’s hands.”³

In the 2014 Dialogue with Cornel West (REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion), which took place during the upsurge of protest and rebellion in response to the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, while speaking to the importance of uniting people broadly in the struggle against oppression, including people who hold religious views, BA also emphasized that the revolution that is needed to finally put an end to oppression must be led with a scientific, not a religious, outlook and method.³

From the start of the article Bob Avakian On Emancipation From Mental Slavery And All Oppression, written this year (2020), BA does not hold back in speaking to these critical questions:

In 1863, mid-way in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln finally issued the Emancipation Proclamation and, as a result of the Civil War, Black people were formally freed from literal, physical slavery. But today the question is: When, and how, will Black people finally be free from all forms of slavery and oppression? And this poses straight-up this big question:

When will Black people finally emancipate themselves from the mental slavery of religion?!....

Once more, the question is sharply posed: How can Black people be finally and fully emancipated from centuries of oppression, and how does this relate to ending all oppression, of all people, everywhere?

The answer is that the possibility of this is real, but it can happen only on the basis of a scientific approach to changing the world and the scientifically-grounded understanding that this oppression is rooted in and caused by the system of capitalism-imperialism—the same system that is viciously exploiting and murderously oppressing people not just in this country but all over the world and is plundering the natural environment—and that this system must and can be overthrown through an actual revolution and replaced by a radically different and far better system: socialism, whose final goal is a communist world, without any oppression or exploitation of anyone, anywhere.³

***

From his early years, forging close personal ties with Black people and increasingly learning about their lived experience, to his development as this rare leader who has brought forth the most advanced scientific revolutionary theory with the new communism—a defining part of the life and work of Bob Avakian has been the liberation of Black people from centuries of oppression, and the understanding of how this relates to, and is a crucial driving force in, the communist revolution to finally abolish every form of oppression and exploitation, everywhere.

BA himself has expressed this in the following poetically powerful statement:

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.

1. From Ike to Mao and Beyond, My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, A Memoir by Bob Avakian, Insight Press, 2005. [back]

2. Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Insight Press, first printing, 2016, pp. 321-22. In addition to THE NEW COMMUNISM, in other recent works by BA—in particular Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary, and Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism—the oppression and the struggle for the liberation of Black people, and its relation to the emancipation of humanity as a whole, is a prominent subject. These works are available at revcom.us.  [back]

3. All of these works are available at revcom.us. (Information about how to acquire the print and e-book editions of BAsics can be found at revcom.us. Audio of the 7 Talks is available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us; and Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy has been published in a print edition, the text of which can also be found in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us.)

The film of the Dialogue between Cornel West and Bob Avakian, REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion, is also available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us.

The article Conspiracy Theories, Fascist “Certitude,” Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach To Changing The World (longer and shorter versions) is available at revcom.us as well.

The importance of Bob Avakian as a revolutionary leader, who has further developed communism as a consistently scientific method and approach, is a central theme in SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION: On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak. Ardea Skybreak is a scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, who is also the author of the important book THE SCIENCE OF EVOLUTION AND THE MYTH OF CREATIONISM, Knowing What’s Real And Why It Matters. Each of these books by Ardea Skybreak is published by Insight Press, and the Interview with Ardea Skybreak (SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION) is also available at revcom.us

The following articles, written by Bob Avakian this year (2020), which speak to the oppression of Black people and the struggle to end this oppression, are available as well at revcom.us:

Donald Trump—Genocidal Racist (Parts 1-10) 

Racial Oppression Can Be Ended—But Not Under This System

Police And Prisons: Reformist Illusions And The Revolutionary Solution

Anything But The Truth—Bob Avakian Exposes Lies, Distortions, Distractions and Evasions About the Murderous Oppression of Black People

Lynching, Murder By Police—Damn This Whole System! We Don’t Have To Live This Way!

Bob Avakian On Emancipation From Mental Slavery And All Oppression

Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James And The Whole Truth

Donald Trump Isn’t “Tough,” He’s A Bloated Bag Of Fascist Feces

Bloated Bag Of Fascist Feces Trump Isn’t “Tough”—Part 2: Who Really Has Heart?

Trump And Pigs: A Racist Love Affair

Fucker Carlson, Fascist “Fox News” And The Broadcast Of White Supremacy

Bob Avakian on Black Trump Supporters: What If Jews Had Supported Hitler?!

Bob Avakian On: A Beautiful Uprising: Right And Wrong, Methods And Principles

On Statues, Monuments, And Celebrating—Or Ending—Oppression

Fascists Today And The Confederacy: A Direct Line, A Direct Connection Between All The Oppression

Patriarchy And Male Supremacy, Or Revolution And Ending All Oppression

Sounding Like Southern Segregationists: It’s Not Just Trump—It’s Democrats Too

Bob Avakian Brings Out the Truth: Barack Obama Says Police Murdering Black People Should Not Be Normal—Unless He’s President

Bob Avakian On Ugly Words & Phrases

Bob Avakian On Tulsa Racist Mobs

A Real Revolution--A Real Chance To Win: Further Developing the Strategy for Revolution

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