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What You Need to Know and Engage This Week
About the World and Revolution:
In This Issue, March 14, 2022

Raising Hell… FOR Revolution

Toward the end of last year, Bob Avakian (BA) gave an extremely important, historic and very timely talk, SOMETHING TERRIBLE, OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed. A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution.

As one key part of what is a sweeping and wide-ranging work, BA digs deeply into the basis for, and the implications of, the consolidation of the Republican Party as a fanatical, truth-denying fascist party, one which is “hell-bent” on violently remaking all of society to be even more viciously and repressively white supremacist, male supremacist and national chauvinist. He analyzed the ways in which those sections of the rulers (mainly inside the Democratic Party), who are opposed to this fascism but who are still dedicated to preserving this horrendous system of worldwide exploitation and oppression, were attempting to deal with this but have no real answers to either this fascist assault or the actual forms of oppression that torture, degrade and drain the life out of the masses of people every hour of every day. He showed how the depth of this conflict has led to a situation in which the old ways that the rulers had held things together were now being rent apart and could no longer hold—that there would have to be a radical change, one that was either reactionary and enslaving or revolutionary and emancipating. He exposed the ways of thinking in the so-called “progressive” movements and among the masses that hold back and do damage to the revolutionary struggle. And on that basis he showed how revolutionaries could go to work on this situation, one which now is hurtling in a direction of still further, unimaginable horror, to transform it into one in which millions of people, with a tested core of hundreds of leaders, could be brought forward to make revolution.

This work, as BA says in the title, forms a necessary foundation upon which one can understand the events of this tumultuous period and a basic road map with which we can transform it. This is why BA’s talk is the first thing you come to when you open up this website every week. This is what we revolutionaries use to analyze and understand the situation and how to transform it. This is what this website attempts to apply every week.

And this is what we invite YOU to dig into, talk with us about, and spread to others.

Right now, and on the basis of what is in this talk, revolutionaries—and everyone who cares about the future—need to be raising hell, dramatically calling out this system and its crimes, and the still worse crimes it is on track to commit, struggling with people over how they are thinking about all this, and mobilizing people to act. Revolutionaries need to provoke, challenge, inspire and organize thousands and then millions—all to this purpose:

Everything depends on bringing forward a revolutionary people, from among the most bitterly oppressed, and all parts of society, first in the thousands and then in the millions, as a powerful revolutionary force, organized from the start and consistently with a country-wide perspective, impacting all of society and changing the terms of how masses of people see things and how every institution has to respond. Everything must be focused now on actually bringing forward and organizing this revolutionary force.

International Women’s Day: An Important Step Forward

One important step in carrying forward this transformation took place last week on March 8, International Women’s Day, when hundreds marched to defend the right to abortion. The fascists have already drastically ripped away the right to abortion in Texas and set the stage for virtually eliminating abortion—pending the Supreme Court decision expected in June which (if it goes as expected, an outcome that the so-called pro-choice movement is conceding) will trigger laws which will virtually eliminate the right to abortion in Texas and the whole middle of the U.S.

This will mean that forced motherhood, which is nothing less than female enslavement, will be on track to become the law of the land. And that will mean horrendous suffering and degradation in the here and now for countless women. Yet the so-called leadership of the so-called pro-choice movement is itself so enslaved to the dictates of the Democratic Party—which wants to avoid confrontation with the fascists over this issue—that they have refused to mount any struggle or even sound the alarm about this forced enslavement of women! Millions and millions—most people, to be accurate and blunt—don’t even know what is about to happen!

It is against this backdrop—and up against the need to mobilize thousands and then millions, very quickly, to oppose and defeat this horror—that the marches in over a dozen cities took place last week…marches that can in fact mark a real and important beginning, if they are correctly understood and built on. So go here, here and here to find out what happened, to draw important lessons and to dig into how to go further, and go to the site of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights to learn how to get involved in this crucial movement. And go here and here, for worldwide coverage of this.

Very much linked to the attack on abortion is the heavy reinforcement of patriarchal (male supremacist) gender oppression in general going on right now, spearheaded by the fascists.  These fascists are on a rampage. This issue covers two important fronts of this: a horrendous Florida law that would outlaw any positive education around or even mention of LGBTQ people and relationships in public schools, with potentially severe penalties—nicknamed the “Don’t Say Gay” law—and the ongoing horrific police repression directed against transgender people, especially Black and other oppressed nationality trans women.

Ukraine: A Dangerous Flashpoint and a Critical Struggle That Must Be Waged With How People Are Thinking

The most critical international conflict going on right now is the war in Ukraine, where Russia has launched a horrible military invasion of the sovereign country of Ukraine, and NATO—the military alliance headed by the U.S.—has been backing Ukraine with significant arms shipments, military training, economic warfare, and perhaps other means as well. Within the U.S., this war has entered into the conflict between the fascists and those in the ruling class opposed to them.

The truth is this: while the Russian invasion is utterly unjust and wreaking terrible suffering on the Ukrainian people, this war grew out of imperialist contention between Russia and the U.S.-led NATO bloc of imperialists for influence and power within Europe. The U.S. is not and has not been some innocent good-hearted giant standing above the fray; it is a bloody-jawed beast, one that supports the even bloodier and indeed genocidal war now going on in Yemen. (That war, in Yemen, is NOT being covered in the U.S. media with anything approaching even 1/1000th of the attention being given to Russia and Ukraine.)

Both sides, in different ways, are pursuing imperialist interests. People should be opposing both the Russian invasion and the maneuvers and machinations of the U.S. and the NATO bloc to utilize the war for their imperialist purposes, and should definitely struggle very hard against the dangerous demagogy going on among many so-called liberals and leftists who are in one way or another supporting “our rulers” and even, outrageously, calling on them to “do more against the Russians.”

We here within the U.S., living under a system whose war crimes—past AND present—dwarf those of Russia and indeed every other power on the planet, must be raising hell among the people to see how they are allowing themselves to be made the “foolish victims of deceit and self-deceit,” in the words of the great revolutionary leader V. I. Lenin. As Bob Avakian has recently written, "What is called for, and urgently now, is to oppose all imperialist marauders and mass murderers, and all systems and relations of oppression and exploitation, while giving particular emphasis to opposing 'our own' imperialist oppressors who commit their monstrous crimes 'in our name' and seek to rally us to support them on the basis of a grotesque American chauvinism, which we must firmly reject and fiercely struggle against."

Bob Avakian provides three important and timely articles in this issue, including one that is new this week, “Bob Avakian Calls Out FRONTING FOR THIS SYSTEM OF OPPRESSION.” And see “Imperialist Parasitism and ‘Democracy’: Why So Many Liberals and Progressives Are Shameless Supporters of ‘Their’ Imperialism” and “Shameless American Chauvinism: ’Anti-Authoritarianism’ as a ‘Cover’ for Supporting U.S. Imperialism.” In these articles, BA cuts through the lies being used to get people lined up behind the U.S. interests in this war. He enables people to see how they are being lied to and manipulated and to expose the reality. He struggles with people to see the real class interests behind those lies, the basis on which people fall for them, and what really has to be done to shake people out of this dangerous delirium that they are being whipped up into. Get into these—get into these deeply—and get them out in creative ways.

We also cut into the extremely dangerous bullshit being whipped up for a NATO-enforced “no-fly zone” over parts of Ukraine—a proposal which carries with it increased danger for WAR between NATO and Russia, a war which could well involve nuclear weapons. And, in an important piece by Raymond Lotta, we strip the paint off the poisonous pro-imperialist and chauvinist “greenwash” being put forward by the environmental activist Bill McKibben. Plus we provide graphics with which to go onto social media and raise hell there. Take this material; wield it; and go out and—again—raise hell with it, finding the ways to sharply challenge whole blocs of people over how they are being led to think and act.

In the midst of all this, the Democrats continue their embrace of outright piggery in the name of getting “tough on crime.” The spectacle of Joe Biden crowing like a mockingbird in his State of the Union address “fund the police… fund the police… fund the police… fund the police…” four times—and getting a standing ovation when he did even from the fascists!—should not be filed away. This too—not just the speech but the whole program of increased repression that it fought for—has to be continually opposed. We’ve covered this in recent issues here, here and here  and we want to strongly encourage readers to continue to get out this graphic and this basic point of understanding.

These are the main arenas in this issue. And there are other articles, letters, reports and images as well, all detailed in the table of contents.

With all these: read to understand… and wield to transform.

 

Included in this issue:

International Women’s Day

Ukraine

Other

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From the genocide in Gaza, to the growing threat of world war between nuclear powers, to escalating environmental devastation… the capitalist-imperialist system ruling over us is a horror for billions around the world and is tearing up the fabric of life on earth. Now the all-out battle within the U.S. ruling class, between fascist Republicans and war criminal Democrats, is coming to a head—likely during, or before, the coming elections—ripping society apart unlike anything since the Civil War. 

Bob Avakian (BA), revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, has developed a strategy to prepare for and make revolution. He’s scientifically analyzed that this is a rare time when an actual revolution has become more possible, and has laid out the sweeping vision, solid foundation and concrete blueprint for “what comes next,” in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America. 

The website revcom.us follows and applies that leadership and is essential to all this. We post new materials from BA and curate his whole body of work. We apply the science he’s developed to analyze and expose every key event in society, every week. Revcom.us posts BA’s timely leadership for the revcoms (revolutionary communists), including his social media posts which break this down for people every week and sometimes more. We act as a guiding and connecting hub for the growing revcom movement nationwide: not just showing what’s being done, but going into what’s right and what’s wrong and rapidly learning—and recruiting new people into what has to be a rapidly growing force.

Put it this way: there will be no revolution unless this website not only “keeps going” but goes up to a whole different level!

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Everything you possibly can! 
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