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Three Ways the Fascist Regime Has Escalated This Week: Trump's UN Speech, Cruel and Anti-Scientific Lunacy on Autism and Violent ICE Abductions

The Trump regime is moving on all fronts with what the fascist ideologue Steve Bannon called "muzzle velocity." In addition to the repressive moves of the regime spoken to elsewhere in this issue, we are pulling together here key ways that fascism is escalating.

Watch and listen to a major statement by Bob Avakian.

This underscores why we cannot fight this regime issue by issue, but must take the offensive to drive out the whole regime. In a major new statement @BobAvakianOfficial (REVOLUTION #141, "The Time Is Urgently Upon Us Now—To Drive Out The Trump Fascist Regime!"), the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian speaks powerfully to why this is necessary, and how it's possible.

Trump’s UN Speech: Clarion Call to Fellow Fascists in Europe

Donald Trump’s speech last week at the UN was filled with rants that were both deranged… and very dangerous. Large parts of it were directed at fomenting and encouraging fascism in Europe. Trump repeatedly dished out anti-immigrant venom related to Europe, with phrases and images that closely echoed Adolf Hitler’s calls to keep German blood and soil “pure”—calls that served as “justification” for “cleansing” Germany of Jews (leading to the genocide of six million Jews and mass murders of millions of other “undesirable” people). 

Among the remarks Trump made along those lines: 

  • “We have reasserted that America belongs to the American people, and I encourage all countries to take their own stand in defense of their citizens as well… You're destroying your countries. They're being destroyed. Europe is in serious trouble. They've been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody's ever seen before. Illegal aliens are pouring into Europe, and nobody's doing anything to change it, to get them out. It's not sustainable.”
  • “You have the right to control your borders, as we do now, and to limit the sheer numbers of migrants entering their countries and paid for by the people of that nation that were there and that built that particular nation at the time. They put their blood, sweat, tears, money into that country, and now they're being ruined.”
  • “Proud nations must be allowed to protect their communities and prevent their societies from being overwhelmed by people they have never seen before with different customs, religions, with different everything.”
  • He singled out London mayor Sadiq Khan (who is a Muslim of Pakistani origin), calling him a “terrible mayor” and out-and-out lying that Khan wants the city to be under Sharia (Islamic religious) law.

Trump also attacked the scientifically based warnings about the urgent threat that climate change poses for humanity and the planet, calling it “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He told European countries: “If you don't get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail. And if you don't stop people that you've never seen before, that you have nothing in common with, your country is going to fail… This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake, and they cannot let that happen any longer. You're doing it because you want to be nice, you want to be politically correct and you're destroying your heritage. They must take control strongly and immediately of the unmitigated immigration disaster and the fake energy catastrophe before it's too late.”

It should be noted that during a European “security conference” in February, Vice President JD Vance explicitly gave backing to the AfD (Alternative for Germany), a German neo-Nazi party, and blasted the German government for what Vance claimed was suppression of the fascists’ “free speech.” Trump has long had a close relationship with Viktor Orban, fascist leader of Hungary. Now, Trump stood before representatives from around the world to invoke ugly Hitlerian language and call on forces in Europe to follow in the footsteps of fascist America.

This is what building an international fascist front looks like. It underscores the grave threat to all of humanity posed by fascism coming to power in the biggest, most powerful empire in the world.

Trump and RFK Push Dangerous Unscientific Claim About Autism and Tylenol

Tylenol display that says "clinically proven" at a Cosco Warehouse, Pittsburgh, January 2023.

 

Tylenol display at a Costco store, January 2023.    Photo: AP

In a White House press conference with his “health czar” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others, Trump loudly and repeatedly recommended that women should not take Tylenol during pregnancy because, he claimed, it causes autism. Tylenol (whose generic name is acetaminophen, or paracetamol outside the U.S.) is a widely used pain- and fever-reducing drug. Tylenol has undergone repeated scientific study and testing—including for use in pregnant women—and found to be safe. That includes investigations to see if there is any link between Tylenol use in pregnancy and incidence of autism in children.1

As many medical and public health experts warn, Trump and RFK’s quack claims about Tylenol and autism are not just false but dangerous. Untreated fever can cause harm to the pregnant woman and developing fetus. Medications like aspirin or ibuprofen (brand names like Advil and Motrin) treat fever, but these medications can also cause harm to the developing fetus. Tylenol is the only safe option for pregnant women who have fever. So if pregnant women who are influenced by Trump and RFK refrain from taking Tylenol, the untreated fever could actually do damage to them, their fetuses and seriously affect the health of children when they are born. Not only that, women will have to go through the pain and suffering of high fevers from illnesses they get during pregnancy. Trump’s advice to those women?—“Just tough it out.”

Steven Fleischman, the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), one of many medical groups that have spoken out against Trump and RFK’s false claims, said: “Suggestions that acetaminophen use in pregnancy causes autism are not only highly concerning to clinicians but also irresponsible when considering the harmful and confusing message they send to pregnant patients, including those who may need to rely on this beneficial medicine during pregnancy.”

At the same press conference, Trump and RFK repeated unscientific allegations about links between childhood vaccines and autism. Trump said that the combined MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine “could be a problem” so each vaccine should be taken separately instead. Aside from the fact that there are actually no separate vaccines available for those diseases, the falsehoods about vaccines uttered by Trump and RFK before a national audience are part of the fascist regime’s assault on vaccines and public health overall. This will cause real harm to millions of people by putting up more barriers to get life-saving vaccines and sowing unscientific “doubt” about the vaccines broadly in society.

Finally, Trump once again posed “common sense” against scientific methodology, serious research and testing. Trump has promoted the idea that evidence-based thinking is not as important as what he calls “common sense.” “Common sense” told people for centuries that the earth was flat and that demons caused disease (and some Trumpites still believe that—but most people who have had the opportunity to learn to think about the big wide world do NOT). This continual promotion of “common sense” against science by Trump is both a necessary part of the fascist mind-set—and in its own profound way, another great crime of this regime.

Caught on Video: ICE Gestapo Violently Assaults Immigrant Woman at NYC Courthouse

Take a look (or another look, if you’ve seen it) at the wrenching video above of a violent scene inside a New York City immigration courthouse. The perpetrator of the violence is an ICE agent, and the victim is Monica Elizabeth Moreta-Galarza, an immigrant woman from Ecuador. Monica’s husband had just been arrested when he showed up at the court for an asylum hearing. When she desperately tried to hold on to her husband in an attempt to prevent him from being kidnapped, ICE goons pulled on her hair to separate the couple. 

As the video begins, Monica is desperately pleading with an ICE agent to not take her husband away. She says in Spanish, “You guys don’t care about anything!” and that if her husband is deported to Ecuador, “They are going to kill him.” The agent mocks her, telling her “adios, adios.” Suddenly, he rams her against the wall and then shoves her to the floor, in front of her terrified children. 

Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller who was arrested last June while trying to escort an immigrant whom ICE was trying to arrest in the same courthouse, said that the agents who arrested Monica’s husband showed no warrant nor gave any lawful grounds for detention. He posted on X: “an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital.”

This happened as protesters rallied outside the courthouse at 26 Federal Plaza, where hundreds of immigrants have been arrested in the past several months when they appeared for routine hearings. Many have been imprisoned for days or even weeks without due process—in overcrowded cells without proper food, medication or sanitation, and cut off from outside contact. 

Because the attack on Monica Elizabeth Moreta-Galarza was caught on video and widely seen, the Department of Homeland Security was forced to announce that the ICE agent who brutalized her was “relieved of his duties.” But as one commentator on the video post rightly said: “If this is what they’re unafraid to do *in front of the press* imagine what they do behind closed doors. This is horrific.” And this is happening all across the country.

The only way to bring a stop to this horror is to drive out the whole Trump fascist regime.

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

Trump Must Go—NOW!

_______________

FOOTNOTES:

1. We are not able here to get into what is the current scientific knowledge about autism, including the understanding about its causes. But a key point is that the overwhelming consensus among medical and scientific experts is that autism is tied to a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors, with genetics playing the biggest role. For a helpful discussion on autism, see the September 24 interview with Dr. Peter Hotez on Democracy Now! Dr. Hotez, an expert in vaccines and public health, is Dean of Baylor College of Medicine's National School of Tropical Medicine and professor in the departments of Molecular Virology & Microbiology and Pediatrics.  [back]

We are at a turning point in history. The capitalist-imperialist system is a horror for billions of people here and around the world and threatening the very fabric of life on earth. Now the election of fascist Trump poses even more extreme dangers for humanity—and underscores the total illegitimacy of this system, and the urgent need for a radically different system.

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