Refuse Fascism has been calling for people to amass in DC in sustained nonviolent, but determined, protest aimed at driving the Trump fascist regime from power. In thinking about this, someone made a very relevant observation, with a variation (or, actually, reversal) of the common phrase in sports, about a very talented player or dominant team (“You can’t stop them, you can only hope to contain them”), as applied to the Trump fascist regime: “You can’t hope to contain it, you have to stop it.” (“Stop” in this case meaning remove—drive out.) 

This captures the essence of the ideological struggle that needs to be waged with the masses of decent people who vigorously and viscerally abhor—and in significant numbers are actively resisting—various outrages perpetrated by the Trump fascist regime but have not, yet, been won to see that all these outrages are part of a comprehensive approach to transforming society, in a rapidly accelerating way, on an actually fascist (not just abstract “authoritarian”) basis. 

It is worth returning to the original call from Refuse Fascism for November 5:

The Trump Fascist Regime is illegitimate. What it is demanding we become is unconscionable. At every level of society, in every institution, tens of millions of us know this in our bones. If we dare, we can defeat a horror that threatens humanity’s very survival. If we fail to even try, future generations—if they exist—will never forgive us.

The Trump Fascist Regime is shredding the rule of law. Making a mockery of due process. Disappearing immigrants and other brown-skinned people into brutal concentration camps. Aggressively resurrecting genocidal white supremacy. Reversing the gains not only of the 1960s, but even of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Enslaving women through the brutality and suffocation of forced motherhood. Erasing LGBT people. Trampling democratic rights. Violating international law. Illegitimately deploying the military on U.S. soil. Assaulting and threatening politicians and judges. Paving the way for boundless terror against the people. Accelerating climate collapse. Cutting science and medicine, costing millions of lives. Depleting humanity’s store of knowledge. Destroying truth. Drowning out reason. Subjugating the arts to fascist cruelty and conformity. Targeting everything that is decent, moral and good. All at the whim of a debased lunatic tyrant.

Hopes of waiting this out are illusion. Every accommodation—even in the name of preserving some ability to do some good—only fuels the regime’s demand for ever more slavish submission. Every capitulation—by universities, law firms, agencies—only feeds its ravenous hunger to remake all of society in its grotesque image.

This is FASCISM. A different form of brutal rule. It cannot be lived with. It must be defeated.

The elections are way too late. Besides, no honest person can expect the tyrant who instigated and then pardoned the January 6th insurrectionists to respect an election he loses.

What we are up against with the masses of decent people can be concentrated this way: They are holding out the hope that we are actually wrong about all this (in essence, the stakes of what we are facing with Trump/MAGA fascism, and what it will take to defeat it).

I think this is the overall and critical ideological battle that needs to be waged, and won, with growing numbers of decent people, even as those who have been effectively won to a basic understanding of this continue to be mobilized. 

At the same time, there is a dialectical relation between these two decisive dimensions of things: at every point, mobilizing all who can be mobilized, on the basis of unity around the one great unifying demand (The Trump fascist regime—or, shortened, Trump—Must Go NOW!), while continuing to wage the ideological struggle, as broadly as possible, around the decisive question: the stakes for humanity and what it will take to actually drive out this fascist regime. I think the movement around Refuse Fascism, involving people from different perspectives, has to win qualitatively more people, to act on the basis of that single unifying demand while it works to deepen the understanding of those who do take part of the real character of what we face.

It also seems like a call should be made for every participant to become an organizer of others. In other words, everyone who has been involved in the November 5 mobilization in DC, and/or any of the other mobilizations there, should be actively called on (and assisted, in terms of basic orientation, key materials, etc.) to become ongoing organizers, working to bring forward many more people, in DC itself, and from other parts of the country, to become part of the historic, nonviolent but determined struggle to actually drive out this fascist regime.