Just ONE WEEK: The Fascist Direction and Momentum of the Trump/Pence Regime

August 28, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

As “Some Points on Strategic Orientation for the Coming Period,” from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, points out:

For many years now, Bob Avakian (BA) has pointed to the rise of fascist trends and a definite fascist movement in U.S. political life. BA has scientifically analyzed the rise of this fascism, its underlying causes and drivers, and peculiarly American expressions such as Christian fascism—and what is to be done for the emancipation of humanity—and we strongly encourage people to seriously engage the following works by Bob Avakian:

(a) The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy... And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer, and

(b) The compilation of excerpts in The Coming Civil War and Re-polarization for Revolution in the Present Era.

The Democrats, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, etc., are seeking to resolve the crisis with the Trump presidency on the terms of this system, and in the interests of the ruling class of this system, which they represent. We, the masses of people, must go all out, and mobilize ourselves in the millions, to resolve this in our interests, in the interests of humanity, which are fundamentally different from and opposed to those of the ruling class.

This, of course, does not mean that the struggle among the powers that be is irrelevant or unimportant; rather, the way to understand and approach this (and this is a point that must also be repeatedly driven home to people, including through necessary struggle, waged well) is in terms of how it relates to, and what openings it can provide for, “the struggle from below”—for the mobilization of masses of people around the demand that the whole regime must go, because of its fascist nature and actions and what the stakes are for humanity.

ON NOVEMBER 4, 2017

Take To The Streets And Public Squares in cities and towns across the country continuing day after day and night after night—not stopping—until our DEMAND is met:

NO! This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!

From Refuse Fascism

Last week, in the face of growing protest over his embrace of Nazis and KKK murderers in Charlottesville, Trump didn’t back off. He doubled-down. He continued to give aid and comfort to neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, even in the face of widespread outrage. He banned transgender people from joining the military. He pardoned fascist pig Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He announced an endless escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. He slashed land set aside for national monuments (large areas that have been protected from environmental destruction). And he did much of this as Hurricane Harvey bore down on Texas and Louisiana, posing a grave danger to millions of people.

Trump is not mentally unfit. His agenda is not dead in the water. And his presidency is not failing. As we wrote last week:

Trump is calculating. Trump is moving. He is tearing up the legitimating norms of this country—the principles that politicians are supposed to pay lip service to and the procedures through which government is supposed to proceed—and he is doing this consciously. He is setting the new norms that he believes to be necessary for “American greatness”—a USA up against tremendous challenges and contradictions. Trump, and the regime he leads, stands for unapologetic, violent, lynch-mob-style white supremacy... to replace the systemic and systematic but hypocritically denied white supremacy enforced by the police, the courts, and a thousand other institutions. Trump and Pence and the regime they lead—including the many generals now holding civilian posts—stand for and implement open, unapologetic, vicious American bullying with nuclear weapons... to replace diplomatic, covert, “multilateral” American bullying with nuclear weapons. Trump, and Pence, and their legions of Christian fascist minions, stand for open, unapologetic, virulent hatred and degradation of women and LGBTQ people, including outright denial of fundamental rights, to replace the hypocritical and disavowed (but widely practiced) misogyny and anti-gay discrimination and oppression. Not to mention the open vicious attacks on Muslims, immigrants, etc.

Think about that... and how the moves by Trump in just the last week fit into that picture.

In ONE WEEK...

Monday, Trump announced a wider, more vicious, and overtly endless war in Afghanistan. There are reports this begins by sending 3,900 more U.S. troops into the country. He declared the U.S. is killing terrorists, not “nation building.” Which means, in part, there will be no more pretenses that this war is about anything but the naked interests of America Über Alles. And Trump made clear U.S. commanders need not worry about how many civilians are slaughtered in the process.

Tuesday in Phoenix, speaking at one of his Hitler-style rallies, Trump incited his mob with even more escalated attacks on the press. And, as the nature of the two sides that clashed in Charlottesville (and in protests around the country) became unavoidably clear to millions and millions, Trump upped the ante with even more full-throated support for the racists, anti-Semitic Nazis, and other thugs in Charlottesville along with gushing over monuments to slavery and Jim Crow.

On Thursday, acting on orders from Trump to figure out how to slash public lands set aside to be preserved, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposed shrinking the size of three national monuments. This would open vast, environmentally essential tracts of lands to capitalist exploitation. And this proposal throws a bone to rabid fascist forces, like the ones who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016, for whom environmental protection of public lands is an anathema. And it spits in the face of objections from Native peoples who live in the areas of these monuments.

On Friday, Trump banned transgender people from joining the military, and ordered the Pentagon to move on his transgender ban overall. This can only be understood in the context of the whole Christian fascist agenda of the entire Trump/Pence regime. For them, the vicious re-assertion of unchallenged white supremacy is tightly bound up with imposing Bible Belt old-school patriarchal “morality” on society.

Friday night, as Hurricane Harvey bore down on Texas and Louisiana, Trump pardoned Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio is a fascist. Arpaio overtly defied court orders to stop racially profiling Latinos. He was convicted for doing so. Trump’s pardon was an extremely ominous green light for pigs everywhere to institute open racial profiling, and further unleashed his armed fascist minions to feel free to attack immigrants. And it was a slap in the face to any pretense of respect for rule of law.

Trump threatened a government shutdown if Congress didn’t fund his border wall. And he threatened to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, putting 800,000 young people in immediate danger of being ripped from their families and the country they grew up in, and deported.

At the end of the week, the U.S. imposed draconian new sanctions on Venezuela which will likely lead to widespread suffering. This was part of an effort, which includes military threats, to bully Venezuela’s government into submission, or perhaps overthrow it.

A Coherent, Extraordinarily Dangerous Fascist Package—This WHOLE Regime Must Go!

Again, because the stakes of appreciating this are so high: This week cannot be seriously understood as the bumbling of an inept egomaniac who doesn’t understand the rules of governing the United States. It can only be accurately understood in the context of a regime that is tearing up the ways in which this country has been governed, and implementing a fascist agenda.

Bob Avakian has analyzed how this agenda springs from the deepest needs and contradictions confronting U.S. capitalism-imperialism, and has identified what can and needs to be done in response, and we strongly encourage readers to read, grapple with, and share that analysis. (See “The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy... And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer” and “The Fascists and the Destruction of the ‘Weimar Republic’...And What Will Replace It”)

None of this is to say that the Trumpites have it all wrapped up. The horrors they’ve already inflicted and promise to inflict, and their radical break with traditional bourgeois-democratic norms, have generated mass outrage from below, and sparked fierce infighting from above. And as Refuse Fascism has summed up, “The Fascist Character of This Regime Makes It Possible—and Necessary—to Mobilize Millions to Drive It From Power.”

But that’s the point. Driving Trump, Pence and the whole regime from power, and it must be done by the people in our millions. If resolving this crisis is left to the machinations of the ruling class, the horrors will continue even if Trump himself is forced from office.

This underscores the life-and-death urgency of Refuse Fascism’s call: On November 4, “We will gather in the streets and public squares of cities and towns across this country, at first many thousands declaring that this whole regime is illegitimate and that we will not stop until our single demand is met: This Nightmare Must End: the Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

“Who will end this nightmare? We will. Only the determined struggle of millions of people acting together with courage and conviction can drive this regime from power.” (From the call from Refuse Fascism for November 4)

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