A Message to the “Man Who Knew Too Little” and All Who Choose Not to Confront the Reality of the Fascist Nightmare

March 12, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

I recently read a New York Times lifestyle piece titled “The Man Who Knew Too Little“ that covered the life of Erik Hagerman, a former top corporate executive, who has (since Trump/Pence came to power) gone to great lengths to stick his head in the sand. Hagerman has sworn to not learn anything about developments in U.S. and world politics after November 8, 2016. Hagerman has created a fantasy world for himself where he never has to confront the reality of the rapid transformation of the U.S. to a fascist form of governing. This lifestyle piece speaks to the reality that, like Hagerman, there are many people who call themselves liberals, leftists, or democrats who are seeking to cope with the reality of a fascist regime coming to power. Looking for one way or another to “get on” with their relatively stable lives and turning away from confronting reality.

Well, I have a message to the “man who knew too little” and to all those who wish to escape from this nightmare but are instead turning towards fantasy:

Whether you choose to confront reality as it actually is or not, this reality will eventually confront you. Just as it is confronting millions already. The dynamics of capitalism-imperialism are creating profound necessity for the rulers of this system and there is a powerful compulsion towards an extreme resolution of these dynamics. And now in the world’s biggest superpower a fascist regime has risen to power that is shredding the old laws and governing norms in society and hammering into place an openly white supremacist, male supremacist, and American chauvinist form of rule that relies on naked force and violence to remove all obstacles in its way.

Just in the last week, the Supreme Court ruled that immigrants (documented or not) can be detained indefinitely while ICE rounds up hundreds in Gestapo-like raids of immigrant communities; Mike Pence ominously announced that abortion would be abolished “in our time”; and all of this while (despite the “promises” of talks with North Korea) the threatening rumbles of global nuclear war grow louder. Is this really the kind of world you want to live in?

What if I told you there is a way to actually end this nightmare, that it doesn’t require fantasy, but it will require confronting reality as it actually is? There is no better tool for understanding what we are facing right now, and therefore what is required of us, than the recent film of a talk called THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible by Bob Avakian. As the website revcom.us says of the film:

Bob Avakian (BA) dissects that the election of Donald Trump signals that we are being confronted and now ruled by a fascist regime. It examines why people voted for Trump and how things came to the point where we are confronting the real horror of a fascist America. Told briefly is the “longer story,” the broader history that has led to this.

In the talk, BA drives home the importance of taking sustained, mass, defiant, nonviolent action to drive out the Trump/Pence regime, and he takes on the most common arguments against doing so. In the wide-ranging question and answer that follows, BA digs into the problems facing the movement against fascism. This talk repays repeated viewing and discussion.

(Watch the talk and find out more at revcom.us.)

It is not an exaggeration to say that the lives of billions of human beings and even the planet itself depend on what we do or don’t do in this critical historical moment. There is a basis in reality to end this nightmare, there are millions who hate this, but it will require grasping and confronting reality as it actually is: that this is fascism and the only solution is mass action of millions, in defiant nonviolent protests, to drive this regime out, before it consolidates.

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