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Friday, August 30, 2019

FRIDAY - The Michael Slate Show: Fascists Threaten Revolution Books - Berkeley, Which Side Are You On? Plus, Trump Attacks Disabled Migrants

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Friday, August 30, 2019
10 - 11 AM - PDT
The Michael Slate Show


KPFK 90.7 FM  |  Listen Live
Website 
Twitter,  Facebook

This week: 

Fascists Threaten Revolution Books, Which Side Are You On? Plus, Trump Attacks Disabled Migrants

Rafael Kadaris, of Revolution Books, Berkeley, on the Fascist Threats to Attack the Bookstore on September 1



From Revolution Books, Berkeley:

In the last couple years, a bunch of vile know-nothing pro-Trump fascists have repeatedly attacked Revolution Books and even threatened to burn it down! Once again this Sunday, Sept. 1, they’re marching on Revolution Books.
The call for their “No to Marxism” protest says, “Revolution Books is a communist anti-American store.” Guilty as charged! 


Rafael Kadaris
will talk about the threats and the response of Revolution Books and others to these fascists.

Trump's new immigration"public charge" rules -- their impact on the disabled, and their roots in the system of slavery On August 14, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published its final public
charge rule. This policy would allow the U.S. government to deny permanent residency and visas to people who rely on or who are “likely to rely on” public benefits for food, housing and medical assistance. We'll discuss the impacts and the roots of these policies with Talila A. Lewis, a community lawyer and consultant. 
 
 
 

On To the $50,000 Goal by August 31st!

Turning Minds Toward Revolution
Raising Funds for the Revolution Tour

Updated August 25, 2019 | revcom.us
Fundraising for the National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour is at a critical juncture. Significant amounts of money are needed—at least $50,000 by the end of August, and much more past that—for this Tour to continue its work through the end of the year and beyond, and to spread the seeds of actual, overthrow-the-system revolution nationwide. The August 25 Facebook Live was an important focal point—a major leap was made toward that $50,000 goal.  
The stakes are enormous, the time is short. The political landscape sharpens and grows more dangerous daily. This Tour brings people what they need, not the Bourgeois Electoral Bullshit droning constantly in the media, or the narrow identity politics that is, at bottom, just another form of “me first.” It brings them a movement for actual revolution. It introduces them to a leader, Bob Avakian, who has broken open a path for revolution that can lead to the emancipation of humanity, and can have a real chance at winning.

Read more and DONATE NOW HERE.

Friday, August 23, 2019

SUNDAY - National Revoluion Club Livestream; FRIDAY - The Michael Slate Show: Silky Shah, Detention Watch Network, Plus Andy Zee re Trump's Fascist Statement on Jewish People

Received via email.  We Recommend:

Friday, August 23, 2019
10 - 11 AM - PDT
The Michael Slate Show


KPFK 90.7 FM  |  Listen Live
Website 
Twitter,  Facebook

This week: 

Silky Shah, Detention Watch Network on Trump's Latest Anti-Immigrant Action -- Instituting Indefinite Detention of Refugees

The Trump/Pence regime’s plan to remove any limit on how long families with children will be detained by the government while their asylum claims are heard means many thousands will be held in hellish conditions indefinitely. Trump says he will end “birthright citizenship” for children of immigrants, gutting the 14th Amendment.

Indefinite detention is currently prohibited by a measure known as the 1996 Flores Settlement Agreement. Abrogating this agreement would not only allow the Trump regime to give itself the right to detain asylum seekers indefinitely, but would allow it to impose even harsher conditions. 26 immigrants have died in ICE custody since Trump became president. We'll talk about this with Silky Shah, Executive Director of the Detention Watch Network.

Andy Zee on Trump's Fascist Statements on Jewish People

This week, Donald Trump stated, speaking of Jewish people in the US “If youvote for a Democrat, you’re being disloyal to Jewish people and you’re being very disloyal to Israel.” This statement was attacked by many people, and #DisloyaltoTrump trended on Twitter. We'll talk about all this with Andy Zee, a co-initiator of RefuseFascism.org, and a participant in the National Revolution Tour.


Viewing Party:
National Revolution Tour Livestream

Sunday, August 25, 2 - 4 PM
2716 S Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90007-2225

Come together with others at the Revolution Club Organizing Center for a viewing party of the National Revolution Tour livestream.

This will be a chance to hear from the people who have been spreading the Get Organized For An ACTUAL Revolution Tour, how they have been impacting society with this message, what they have been learning. And they will be making the case for the need for major funds to push ahead to the next leg.

Next Stop New York City!

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

How many more concentration camps?

From Refuse Fascism - SoCal:


Take to the Streets!
Little Tokyo Protest
Saturday, Aug.24, 2pm
#TrumpPenceMustGo

March starts at the Japanese American Museum
369 E. 1st St., LA 90012

How many more concentration camps?
How many more of our children separated from their parents?
How many more of our people have to die in white supremacist massacres?
It is not enough to hate this fascist regime.  Waiting for 2020 to vote is unconscionable and irresponsible!  This regime must be drive out of power now!
Blood is on the hands of the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime!

Bring your anger, outrage and determination.
Bring your signs and banners.
Bring your whistles and noise makers.

It is not enough to hate this fascist regime. We have to Drive it out. Prepare for the time when we can take to the streets in our thousands and then millions and stay until this fascist regime is ousted.

We Demand: In the Name of Humanity, the Trump/Pence regime Must Go!
323.946.1742
SoCal@refusefascism.org
FB@RefuseFascismLA




Refuse Fascism Organizing Meeting
Sunday, August 25 @ 5:30 PM
Echo Park United Methodist Church
1226 N. Alvarado St., LA 90026

If Not Now, When?
If Not Us, Who?
Let's get organized now to move thousands, and then millions, nationwide, in non-violent, sustained mass protests to drive out the fascist Trump/Pence regime.


PACK THE COURTROOM!
Monday, August 26, 8:30 AM
Metro Court, 1945 S. Hill St.
Floor 7, Dept. 74


The LAPD and City Attorney have charged 11 Refuse Fascism members with 57 misdemeanors designed to criminalize our call to bust people out of the business-as-usual of accommodating with fascism.  The LAPD spied on Refuse Fascism to try to stop us.  We're exposing that and bringing a motion to dismiss because of this unconstitutional spying and discriminatory prosecution.

Friday, August 16, 2019

FRIDAY - The Michael Slate Show: Andy Zee and Coco Das, It's Not Enough to Hate Fascism, We Have to Drive the Trump/Pence Regime Out

Received via email.  We Recommend:

Friday, August 16, 2019
10 - 11 AM - PDT
The Michael Slate Show


KPFK 90.7 FM  |  Listen Live
Website 
Twitter,  Facebook

This week: 


Andy Zee and Coco Das, on the Massacre of Latinos, the Concentration Camps for Immigrant Children, Massive ICE Raids, "Send Her Back" Fascist Rallies -- and WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Coco Das recently wrote at RefuseFascism.org, "On the heels of the mass murder in El Paso, in which a white supremacist targeted Latinos and killed 22 people, the Trump/Pence regime sent ICE agents, its American Gestapo, to unleash more terror. 680 workers at chicken processing and other food processing plants in Mississippi were rounded up and detained."

"This is in fact an ethnic cleansing of Latino immigrants and citizens, waged by the Trump/Pence regime and its many soldiers, from government agents in ICE and Border Patrol to young white supremacist men who are willing to follow the marching orders of a whole fascist movement, fed and strengthened by Trump’s immigrant bashing at Nazi rally after Nazi rally."

Andy Zee is part of the Get Organized for an Actual Revolution Tour, currently in Chicago. The Revolution Club there recently issued a challenge, "WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? Are you on the side of white supremacy and fascism? Or are you on the side of ending this oppression?"

Coco Das (@coco_das) is a contributing editor to RefuseFascism.org.

They will talk about why there is still time to drive out the Trump/Pence regime, -- but not that much time.

Saturday, August 10, 2019

Fascist massacre in El Paso... LAPD spying against those who fight back... What will you do?



From the National Revolution Tour

On the Murders in El Paso and the Hateful White Supremacist Offensive: What Are You Going to Do Now?

August 5, 2019 | revcom.us

On Saturday a man who claimed that Latino people are “invading” the US murdered 22 Latino people in El Paso, Texas.  The week before another man opened fire at a festival in the town of Gilroy, CA, on a crowd of mainly Latino people, killing 3.  And this follows mass murders in Jewish synagogues, that targeted them for supporting these so-called “invaders.”
This lie of invasion totally turns history upside down: it is the US, after all, that stole the land from the Native people who lived here and waged war on Mexico to seize the area of California to Texas – in order to expand slavery into new areas.
There is a straight line from that ugly history to today.  Right now, the president of the US continually defames, slanders and threatens Latino people, Black people, immigrants, and Muslims.  This white supremacist agitation is whipping people up for a race war, a civil war to “make America white again.”  Trump can talk out of two sides of his mouth all he wants, but everyone knows his realmessage.  This is FASCISM, pure and simple, and this is a fascist regime in the White House trying, and succeeding, in actually locking in a fascist America.
The question is, WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? Are you on the side of white supremacy and fascism? Or are you on the side of ending this oppression?
The rot and horror we now see is a concentration of this system, a system that must be OVERTHROWN, through mass revolution.  We are recruiting for that revolution right now, to move forward the time when we can get rid of this. You need to check out the National Revolution Tour and get with this revolution.  And we are supporting the movement to unite millions right now to drive out this fascist regime with massive, sustained, nonviolent resistance, as called for by Refuse Fascism.
Finally, the problem brought into sharp relief by the massacre in El Paso is notone that can be solved by “gun control.”  The problem is this imperialist system, the white supremacy it cannot do without, and too many guns in the hands of those working to install fascism in America.

Major Op-ed From Revolution Club Members in Yesterday's LA Times

The LAPD spied on our group. Here’s why we shut down the 101 Freeway

BY MIGUEL ALEX ANTONIO AND CHANTELLE HERSHBERGER

One of us moved from small-town Ohio to pursue a career in fashion. We are from different backgrounds, but on two separate mornings, we stood together to bring traffic on the 101 Freeway to a halt.

The first time we stopped freeway traffic was in September 2017, about a month after Heather Heyer was killed during peaceful counter-protests of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. At the time, Donald Trump said there were “fine people” among the torch-bearing white supremacists. We went back out onto the freeway two months later to unfurl a 50-foot banner that read “Trump/Pence Regime Must Go.”
Our freeway actions were completely nonviolent and had been planned carefully to ensure they were safe and well-executed. What we didn’t know until much later was that some of our meetings to discuss the state of the world and our actions in response to it had been infiltrated by an undercover spy sent in by the Los Angeles Police Department.
The city of Los Angeles waited almost a year to bring a total of 57 charges against us and nine other activists who took part in nonviolent protests, both on the freeway and at UCLA. As part of that case, police reports and transcripts were released documenting how, on four occasions in 2017, an LAPD informant secretly attended and recorded meetings of our group, Refuse Facism, at the Echo Park church where we met.
The informant reported on discussions in our meetings about fundraising, ordering pamphlets, getting a permit, planning a route for a march, and “moving ordinary people into active opposition.” At least that bit of note-taking was accurate: Moving ordinary people into active opposition against a regime we believe has descended into fascism was exactly what we were trying to do. Nothing short of removing this whole illegitimate regime from power will stop this nightmare, and that will take millions of people acting together in sustained, nonviolent, determined protest.
The infiltration of our group hearkens back to the LAPD’s past. In his book “Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD,” Max Felker-Kantor documented how during the 1970s and early 1980s, the department’s Public Disorder Intelligence Division spied on thousands of groups and individuals. After an ACLU lawsuit revealed the full scope of the spying, the division was disbanded, and its activities curtailed. But the department now has an anti-terrorism division, which was involved in the investigation of our group.
Our group is concerned about fascist rule. Having our private meetings infiltrated by a police spy suggests that we’re right to worry. The 1st Amendment right of free speech is being challenged across the nation. Since Trump’s election, 35 states and the federal government have either passed or introduced anti-protest legislation.
Earlier this summer, our case came to trial. When we took the stand and were asked why we blocked the freeway instead of just voting or attending the women’s march, we explained that we believed that the current threat to humanity and the planet required more from us than protesting for a day and going home.
History has shown us that fascism can absorb individual acts of resistance and gets normalized after waves of shock and outrage die down. The Trump/Pence regime has taken us through many such shocks, and “the new normal” now includes concentration camps at the border, where children continue to die and conditions are brutal. The response from civil society to this so far is shameful — which is exactly what we were trying to prevent.
Our supporters in the courtroom wore T-shirts that read: “Would you have convicted the people who hid Anne Frank?” With our action on the freeway, we were asking others to imagine what could have been different if people had acted BEFORE Anne Frank had to hide. Our trial ended with a hung jury after three days of deliberation, because the majority of jurors understood we were not criminals. But almost immediately, the city attorney’s office announced it would retry the case.
Later this month, we will once again stand trial for our action blocking the freeway. The LAPD and city attorney may disagree, but it should not be a crime to stand up against fascism. On the contrary, we hope everyone who cares about justice will join us.
Miguel Alex Antonio and Chantelle Hershberger are members of Refuse Fascism and the Revolution Club

Friday, August 9, 2019

FRIDAY - The Michael Slate Show w/ Andy Zee & Tala Deloria: What's Going on, the National Revolution Tour, & Driving Out This Fascist Regime

Received via email.  We Recommend:

Friday, August 9, 2019
10 - 11 AM - PDT
The Michael Slate Show


KPFK 90.7 FM  |  Listen Live
Website 
Twitter,  Facebook

This week The Michael Slate Show will be airing a special two-hour edition:

Tala Deloria and Andy Zee on the Situation in the U.S. Today, The National Get Organized For an Actual Revolution Tour, and the Urgent Need to Drive Out the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime. 


The past week has been a week of terror against immigrants. Following the massacre of 22 people in El Paso, Texas, by an anti-immigrant fascist, ICE staged the largest immigration raid in decades, rounding up for deportation 680 people in Mississippi. This follows massacres and attempted massacres in Jewish synagogues. 

The president of the US continually defames, slanders and threatens Latino people, Black people, immigrants, and Muslims.  This white supremacist agitation is whipping people up for a race war, a civil war to “make America white again.”  This is FASCISM, pure and simple, and this is a fascist regime in the White House trying, and succeeding, in actually locking in a fascist America. We'll talk with Tala Deloria and Andy Zee from the Get Organized for an Actual Revolution Tour, on why people need to take a stand NOW, why this system cannot be reformed and must be overthrown, and the urgent need to drive out the Trump/Pence fascist regime.

WATCH:  The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go, In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America, a Better World is Possible, a Talk By Bob Avakian

This talk from Bob Avakian (BA), Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, provides a scientific understanding of the roots of this fascist regime—in the history of the U.S. and the deeper roots in the system of capitalism-imperialism. He does so with passion, humor, humanity, and a deep sense of history. He cuts into the deepest, most agonizing questions, first in the speech and then in a wide-ranging Questions and Answers.

If more people watched this talk, it could change today’s political equation. But far too few have seen this talk, or even know about it. You are needed to be part of changing this.

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Let's Puerto Rico the Fools in the White House!

From RefuseFascism - SoCal:



Want to be part of planning to drive out the Trump/Pence fascist regime?


Fascism is advancing rapidly in ways that are shocking the conscience of millions. This is a moment that holds the potential for a real leap in developments one way or the other – in the consolidation of fascism and all the danger that portends for the world, or towards the kind of sustained resistance necessary to drive out the regime and wrench history in a different direction.

Right now, we must redouble our efforts to prepare for the ONLY way this nightmare of the Trump/Pence regime can be ended:
“A different kind of protest. We need to organize now for the time when we can launch massive, sustained nonviolent protests in the streets of cities and towns across the country – protests that continue day after day and don’t stop, creating the kind of political situation in which the demand that the Trump/Pence regime be removed from power is met.” from the Refuse Fascism Call to Act

Sunday, August 11, 5:30pm
Mass Organizing Meeting
of Refusefascism.org L.A. Chapter
@ Echo Park United Methodist Church

1226 N. Alvarado St. LA CA 90026

For more info:  323.946.1742
SoCal@refusefascism.org


Saturday, August 3, 2019

"Individualism, BEB and the Illusion of 'Painless Progress'” by Bob Avakian

"Send Her Back." "Rat-infested." "No human being would want to live there." Almost every day the Trump/Pence Regime hammers forward with their open white supremacy, xenophobia, and fascism. Yet people in this country remain passive... waiting for elections and Democrats, despite the repeated collaboration of these very Democrats.

How to understand this? What to do about it? Bob Avakian is providing invaluable analysis and direction in these extremely dangerous times for humanity. We urge you to read this newly published excerpt from a recent talk given by Bob Avakian:
 Individualism, BEB and the Illusion of “Painless Progress”
The following is taken from a recent talk given by Bob Avakian

Individualism, BEB and the Illusion of “Painless Progress”
July 29, 2019 | revcom.us
All this—even the seemingly more “benign,” or oblivious, individualism—links up with the repeated and stubborn insistence on chasing after the illusion of painless progress. If something makes people uncomfortable—and still more, if it holds out the prospect of sacrifice, necessary sacrifice, on their part—far too many people turn away from it. As I’ve pointed out before, there’s this whole attitude of approaching reality as if it’s a “buffet,” or approaching it like a consumer: “Well, that makes me uncomfortable. I’ll just leave that to the side. I don’t want to look at that because that makes me uncomfortable.”
I am going to talk later about some of the more ridiculous and outrageous forms of this. But just to give a little preview, as I pointed out in The New Communism, some people went on one of the college campuses a couple of years ago with a poster of Stolen Lives, people who’d been killed by police (not all of them, by any means, but dozens), and someone came up and started whining: “I don’t like that poster, it makes me feel unsafe.” As I commented at the time: Oh, boo-hoo! Let’s get out of this boo-hoo shit and start talking about and engaging seriously what’s happening to masses of people, one significant part of which is represented by what’s on that poster.
One of the most common and problematical forms of this repeated and stubborn insistence on chasing after the illusion of “painless progress,” particularly among people who consider themselves somewhat enlightened (or progressive, or “woke,” or however they want to put it), is what we very rightly term BEB—Bourgeois Electoral Bullshit—and the phenomenon that people continually confine themselves to the narrow limits of what is presented to them by one section of the ruling class, as embodied in the Democratic Party: “These are the limits of what I’ll consider in terms of possibly bringing about change”—because this is the well-worn rut of what is, at least up to this point, relatively safe in terms of political engagement. It may even become not-so-safe in the future, depending on how things go with these fascists who are working to consolidate their power right now through the ruling regime of Trump and Pence. But for now it seems relatively painless. It is also completely ineffectual and doesn’t bring about any kind of change that’s needed, but it’s a way to feel that you’re doing something while avoiding any sacrifice, and even any real discomfort.
One of the ways this gets expressed, along with the BEB, is people, in their masses, not confronting the reality of Trump/Pence fascism, and therefore not acting in a way commensurate with the danger and the potentially even greater horrors this represents.
Just to step back, and to speak to a very important element of this that I’ve touched on before, Trump’s election—through the electoral college, not the popular vote—is, in a real sense, an extension of slavery: the people who voted for Trump are the kind of people who would have been pro-slavery, had they been around at the time of slavery in the United States. And those who find it acceptable to have the overt white supremacist Trump in the White House are the kind of people who would have ignored or would have openly accepted and justified or rationalized slavery when it existed. And here I have to invoke what I thought was a very insightful comment by Ron Reagan (yes, Ronald Reagan’s maverick son, who is also, to his great credit, an unabashed atheist): Trump’s much-analyzed, over-analyzed, “base” will continue supporting him, no matter what he does, Ron Reagan has pointed out (and this is very insightful), because Trump hates all the same people they hate.
As opposed to all the obfuscation about the economic difficulties people are going through, blah, blah, blah, that is often used to rationalize why people voted for and continue to support Trump, what Ron Reagan has sharply pointed to is the essence of Trump’s “base.” And, by the way, notice how all the mainstream media, CNN and so on, continually use this term: Trump’s “base.” This is a neutral term, “base.” These are a bunch of fascists, okay? And by using these euphemisms, or these neutral terms, like “base,” you’re obscuring and keeping people from seeing what is actually represented by Trump and those who support him, and the depth of the real danger this poses. Ron Reagan’s comment is very much to the point. He went on to elaborate: They hate LGBT people, they hate women (independent women, and really all women), they hate Black people, they hate immigrants, they hate Muslims, and so on. And Trump hates all the same people they hate.
That is why they’ll never desert him, whatever he does. That is why he could very rightly make the comment: “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue in New York City and these people wouldn’t turn against me.”
At the same time, it has to be bluntly said: For the millions, and tens of millions, who say they hate everything Trump stands for and what he is doing but who, after all this time, have still not taken to the streets in sustained mobilization demanding that the Trump/Pence regime must go, this makes them collaborators with this fascist regime and themselves guilty of the egregious crime of tolerating this regime when they still could have the possibility of achieving the demand that it must go, through such mass mobilization!
To paraphrase Paul Simon: They are squandering their resistance for a pocketful of mumbles—and worse—from the Democratic Party.
It is long past time—and there is still time, but not much time—for this to change, for masses of people to finally take to the streets, and stay in the streets, with the firm resolve that this fascist regime must go!
And here are some very relevant questions for the millions and tens of millions who hate everything Trump stands for but have failed or refused to mobilize, in their masses, in non-violent but sustained action around the demand that the Trump/Pence regime be removed from power, as has been called for by Refuse Fascism: If you will not take to the streets now to demand that the Trump/Pence regime must go, what will you do if Trump is re-elected (perhaps through the electoral college, even if he again loses the popular vote)? And what will you do if Trump loses the election (even by the electoral college count) but then refuses to recognize the results and insists he is still President?!
At the same time, it is necessary to point to the very serious problems with the dangerous naiveté and “left” posturing of certain “progressive” intellectuals. For example, someone like Glenn Greenwald, who has done some good things in exposing the violations of people’s rights under this system—human rights, civil rights and civil liberties—but who, whenever anything’s brought out about the terrible crimes and horrors that are represented by the Trump/Pence regime, insists upon immediately saying things like, “Yes, but what about Hillary Clinton, and what about the Democrats, and the terrible things they have done?” All of which is true. As we have pointed out: The Democratic Party is a machine of massive war crimes and crimes against humanity. And this does need to be brought out. At the same time, it is necessary to recognize that the Republican Party is fascist, and if you don’t understand that this has real meaning and real importance—and every time someone speaks to the outrages and horrors perpetrated by these fascists, you insist on immediately raising, “Yes, but what about the Democrats?”—you’re leading people, or pointing people, away from an understanding of the real dynamics going on here and the real dangers.
And then there is Slavoj Žižek. As is very bluntly, and very accurately, put in the article by Raymond Lotta, “Slavoj Žižek Is a Puffed-Up Idiot Who Does Great Damage”:
Slavoj Žižek, an influential fool-of-a-philosopher who often poses as a “communist,” declared his support for Donald Trump on British TV. A victory for Trump, according to Žižek, will help the Republicans and Democrats “rethink themselves”—and could bring about “a kind of big awakening.” And speaking from his “what-me-worry” perch [Lotta goes on], Žižek pronounced that Trump “will not introduce fascism.”
As Lotta then succinctly states: “This is wrong, this is poison.” And it is similar to the kind of wrong and dangerous thinking that people like Glenn Greenwald fall into and propagate. Similarly to Glenn Greenwald, it involves playing down the actual reality and danger of what’s represented by fascism, even as, once again, the Democratic Party is an instrument of bourgeois dictatorship, and a machine of massive war crimes and crimes against humanity.
This kind of wrong thinking is also exemplified by someone like Julian Assange, who actually, from all appearances, and it does seem to be the case, contributed to the machinations that went on around the Trump campaign, involving, it does seem, the Russians in this, and who did so with the same kind of rationalization that Žižek put forward, as cited by Raymond Lotta—that Clinton and the Democratic Party represent the old establishment, the old ways of doing things, and if they’re defeated and somebody who’s outside the establishment gets in, it will shake things up. I have heard Assange saying (his own words, not just others characterizing what his position is): “Maybe this will lead to a negative change, or maybe it will lead to a positive change, but at least it will lead to change, or it will hold open the possibility of change.”
Well, what kind of change is it actually leading to? There’s no room for agnosticism or ignorance about what kind of change it is leading to. Yes, bourgeois dictatorship in any form is very bad for the masses of people, very oppressive and repressive of the masses of people, and needs to be overthrown. But an overt fascist dictatorship that tramples on any pretense of upholding rights for people is not something that should be put in the category of “maybe it’ll be a positive change, or maybe it’ll be a negative change.”
Now, at the same time as making this sharp critique, particularly with regard to Julian Assange, it is very important to emphasize the need to oppose the persecution of Assange by the U.S. imperialists, whose persecution of him is in response to and revenge for his part—not in something to do with the Russians, but overwhelmingly in exposing just some of the monstrous crimes of this system. In this regard, there was an interesting article called “Julian Assange and the Woeful State of Whistle-Blowers” by Edward Wasserman, who’s a professor of journalism and the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. (This article appeared in the New York Times on Saturday, April 27 of this year, 2019.) Wasserman points out that, with whatever his failings are, political and personal, Julian Assange, through WikiLeaks, “enabled spectacular disclosure of official secrets,” including, as Wasserman himself puts it, “war crimes, torture and atrocities on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan” by the U.S. And this is why he’s being attacked in the legal arena and politically by the U.S. ruling class. This dimension is where people need to rally to Assange’s defense, even with his limitations and failings. And the need and importance of defending Assange, particularly from political/legal persecution by the U.S. government, has been greatly heightened by the fact that this government (headed by the Trump/Pence fascist regime) has now piled on very serious charges of espionage in this process of persecution, with dire implications not just for Assange but for any and all who would dare to uncover and expose the war crimes and crimes against humanity continually carried out by U.S. imperialism and its institutions of violence and repression.
Yet, without in any way failing to give due importance and emphasis to opposing these repressive moves by the U.S. government, it remains necessary and there is also great importance to criticizing this outlook and approach embodied in the thinking of people like Assange and Glenn Greenwald, as well as Žižek. The idea that these bourgeois (or “establishment”) politicians are just “all the same,” without any analysis of the nuances, or even the blatant differences, between them and the consequences of this for the masses of people, the masses of humanity—this is very harmful.
Here it is worth looking at the criticism that was raised of the German communists in the period of the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s. The slogan was attributed to the German communists: “Nach Hitler, Uns,” (meaning: “After Hitler, Us”). In other words, the same kind of thinking—that Hitler actually heading up the government would shake up things and would cause such a crisis in society that, then, the communists would have a chance to come to power. This represented a very serious underestimation of what was represented by Hitler and the Nazis, and the terrible consequences of this for humanity. Yes, the communists there should have been consistently and firmly opposing the whole system on a revolutionary basis, but it was also very important and necessary to recognize that Hitler and the Nazis were a particularly perverse and extreme representation of all the horrors of this system, and would carry them out in very extreme forms.
So, in relation to all this, there is a need for a scientific approach to building opposition to the fascism embodied in the Trump/Pence regime in the U.S. today, in a way that is based on and proceeds from the understanding that’s captured in works of mine like “The Fascists and the Destruction of the ‘Weimar Republic’... And What Will Replace It” and “Not Being Jerry Rubin, or Even Dimitrov, but Actually Being Revolutionary Communists: THE CHALLENGE OF DEFENDING FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS—FROM A COMMUNIST PERSPECTIVE, AND NO OTHER.” (These articles are available at revcom.us. They are part of the Collected Works of Bob Avakian.)
As I have stressed several times, and as concentrated in the slogan we have brought forward: “The Republican Party is Fascist, The Democratic Party is Also a Machine of Massive War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.” This emphasizes the importance of both aspects of things: recognizing the particularity of what’s represented by the fascism of the Trump/Pence regime and the Republican Party as a whole, and confronting the nature and massive crimes of the whole system, and all those who are functionaries and enforcers of this system, definitely including the Democratic Party.
In an article in the New York Times (Tuesday, July 16, 2019), “Racism Comes Out of the Closet,” Paul Krugman makes the point that not just Donald Trump but the Republican Party as a whole has gone from “dog whistling” racism to overtly and crudely expressing it. Krugman concludes this article this way, referring to the Republican Party’s dropping of even any pretense of opposing racism:
It’s tempting to say that Republican claims to support racial equality were always hypocritical; it’s even tempting to welcome the move from dog whistles to open racism. But if hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, what we’re seeing now is a party that no longer feels the need to pay that tribute. And that’s deeply frightening.
Krugman does have a point—an important and relevant point—here, as far as it goes. The problem is that it doesn’t go far enough, and in particular does not break out of the constricting terms of contradictions and conflicts among ruling class parties (the Republicans and the Democrats). The stance of hypocritically pretending opposition to such outrages as racist oppression, while in fact acting as the representatives, functionaries and enforcers of a system that has this oppression built into it and could not exist without this oppression—this does not just apply to the Republican Party in the past (if it ever applied to that party at all over the past 50 years and more) but also applies to the Democratic Party. What is concentrated in this situation is the need to recognize, and correctly handle, a very real and acute contradiction: the fact that, on the one hand, the Democratic Party, as much as the Republican Party, is a party of a system that continually commits, and cannot help committing, massive crimes against the masses of humanity and embodies an existential threat to the very future of humanity; and, on the other hand, the fact that (to paraphrase what is cited above from Krugman’s article) there is a very real difference and very direct danger embodied in the fact that one of these ruling class parties (the Republicans) openly abandons much of the pretense of being anything other than a rapacious, and yes racist, plunderer of human beings and of the environment. This requires the correct synthesis of, in fundamental terms, opposing the whole system, of which both of these parties are instruments, and actively working, in an ongoing way, toward the strategic goal of abolishing this whole system, while also, with the same fundamental strategic perspective, recognizing the acute immediate danger posed by the fascist Trump/Pence regime and working urgently to bring forward masses of people in non-violent but sustained mobilization around the demand that this regime must go!
Failing to really recognize and act on this understanding, in its different aspects and its full dimension, is very much related to individualism—particularly in the form of seeking the illusion of painless progress, rather than being willing to confront inconvenient and uncomfortable truths and to act accordingly, even with the sacrifices that might be required.
With all the nuances and particularities of contradictions that do have to be recognized, this crucial truth can be put in this basic and concentrated way:
The Democratic Party Is Part of the Problem, Not the Solution.
Here a challenge needs to be issued to all those who insist on the position that “the Democrats are the only realistic alternative”: On the website revcom.us, there is the “American Crime” series, which chronicles and outlines many of the most horrific crimes of the U.S. ruling class, going back to the beginning of this country and right up to the present, carried out under Republican and Democratic administrations. Here is the challenge: Go read that “American Crime” series and then come back and try to explain why it’s a decent thing to do to be caught up in supporting the Democrats.
Along with its other crimes, and its particular role in maintaining and enforcing this system, in the current circumstances the Democratic Party is also an active facilitator of fascism because of its refusal, even on the terms of the system it represents, to do anything meaningful to oppose the fascism of the Trump/Pence regime. This is concentrated in the insistence by Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi (or Piglosi, as she should be called) that impeachment is, once again, off the table. Some people may not remember (or may have chosen to forget), and others may not even know, but there was a massive sentiment to impeach George W. Bush back around 2005-2006, in particular because of the way he took the country to war, attacking and invading Iraq, causing massive destruction and death in that country, on the basis of systematic lies that were very consciously perpetrated by his whole regime, including Colin Powell, Cheney and Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and the rest, who deliberately and systematically lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and supposedly threatening the U.S. (and “allies” of the U.S.) with those weapons. These lies were the rationalization for perpetrating the U.S. war of aggression against Iraq—which, in fact, was an international war crime. There was a mass sentiment toward impeachment of George W. Bush largely on that basis. Well, when the Democrats, in the 2006 election, won control of both houses of Congress, immediately Nancy Piglosi said impeachment is off the table. And now she’s doing the same thing again—and she’s doing this not just as an individual, but as representative of the leadership of the Democratic Party. To borrow a term from the gang scene, the “shot-callers” of the Democratic Party are saying: “We shouldn’t impeach Trump because that will just serve him; he’s trying to goad us into impeaching him.” As though it would not be a good thing for Trump to be impeached. Piglosi insists: “We’re not gonna fall for that, we’re gonna hold Trump accountable.”  Oh yeah? How? How are you going to hold him accountable when you refuse to use one of the most powerful instruments you have, impeachment, to actually do something meaningful to oppose what he’s doing?
I saw a commentator on one of the networks the other day who made an observation which (along with and despite a bunch of nonsense that she was also spouting) was actually somewhat insightful and important. She said: “Laws don’t enforce themselves. If you can do something and get away with it, the law is meaningless.” Well, Piglosi, your “accountability” (holding Trump “accountable”) is meaningless because you are refusing to exercise the most effective means you might have to “hold him accountable.”
Now, some people say that this is just being done by Piglosi and the rest because they have the 2020 election in mind, and they don’t want to feed the Republican Party ammunition for their insistence that “this is a witch hunt” against Trump and the Republican Party. That may be a secondary consideration on the part of the Democrats, but if you listen to Piglosi she’s telling us what the deal actually is. She’s saying it would further divide the country to impeach Trump—as if the “country” is not already very deeply and very intensely divided, at this point, which is precisely why someone like Trump could get elected in the first place.
But there are really three reasons, or we could call them “three fears,” that Piglosi and the rest have. They’re afraid of Trump and the Republicans, so they’re allowing Trump and the Republicans to set the terms of what they can do. Their “logic” goes like this: “Since Trump would lash back if we tried to impeach him, therefore we shouldn’t try to impeach him.” This is the logic of what they’re saying, even if they don’t directly and explicitly articulate it like that. So they’re letting the Republicans set the terms—which, of course, only causes the Republicans to be even more aggressive in pursuit of their agenda and in defying and trampling on the “norms” of this system. Even according to their own bourgeois “principles,” the Democrats should be acting on the basis of what’s in their Constitution, not according to what the Republicans will allow them to do.
Secondly, along with being afraid of Trump and the Republican Party, they are afraid of the reality that laws don’t enforce themselves. They’re afraid that if they impeach Trump—and if, somehow, they even succeeded not only in impeaching him, but actually getting him convicted in the Senate—that Trump might well declare: “Fuck you, I’m the President, I don’t recognize this impeachment.” Then, what and whom can they turn to? This brings up the other dimension of this second point: They’re afraid of Trump’s “base.” They’re afraid of these fascist forces out there who are being encouraged and goaded by Trump to increasingly act in a violent manner and who (as I’ll speak to shortly) do have a lot of weapons and are demonstrating not only their willingness, but their eagerness, to use them. So Piglosi and the rest are afraid of that.
But at least as much—and here is the “third fear”—they are afraid of the people on the other side of the divide in the country, the people who tend to vote for the Democrats, especially the basic masses of oppressed people. They are afraid of the very people, basic masses and others, whom the Democratic Party is responsible for “corralling” into the BEB and “domesticating” their dissent. They’re afraid of the people who are angry about what’s represented by Trump and Pence. They don’t want those people out in the street, unless it is contained within the narrow confines of what the Democratic Party, and the system it serves, can allow. And they don’t want the confrontation between those people and the fascists who have rallied behind Trump. You think they want to see masses of Black people, immigrants, and others, including masses of people from different strata who are furious over Trump—you think they want to see them in the streets in direct and determined opposition to what is represented by Trump and Pence? That’s one of the worst nightmares of Piglosi and Company, not only because of the potential for militant confrontation with the fascists, but because people could then get completely out of the control of the Democratic Party, and the whole system of which the Democrats are representatives, functionaries, and enforcers. A big part of what they are representing and enforcing would be seriously jeopardized.
So this is what’s really going on with Piglosi and the rest in stubbornly resisting a move toward impeachment.
And then we come to one of the main aggressively fascist functionaries in the Republican Party, the Congressman from Iowa, Steve King. Recently, along with all of his other outrageous postings and overtly racist, misogynist, and crudely derogatory statements about Muslims and immigrants, and so on, King recently posted a meme, with this comment, on his official campaign page:
Folks keep talking about another civil war. One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use.
Now, it has to be said that there is a “demented insight” in this comment. Obviously, this is a vicious attack on trans people, as well as those supportive of their rights. So, on the one hand, this is an outrageous statement, a thoroughly reactionary and vicious statement. But it does express a certain demented insight, or a demented representation of some truth, because while people are rightly supporting the rights of trans people, gay people, women and others, there are real limitations and problems with the spontaneous outlook prevailing among those on the correct side of the divide. There is a narrowness along lines of “identity,” and an ignoring of, or a not paying sufficient attention to, the larger dynamics that are shaping up in the society (and the world) as a whole, and the implications of this, as represented, once again, by the fact that, while people are fighting around or raising some resistance around this or that particular instance of oppression, discrimination and prejudice, they are not rallying to take on the whole massive assault that’s embodied in the Trump/Pence regime, let alone the whole system that has produced this regime. There is the serious problem that, as a whole, people who consider themselves “progressive” or “woke” have, to put it mildly, not made any real rupture with American chauvinism (about which I will have more to say shortly). And, related to this, there is the fundamental problem of attempting to resolve the conflict with what is represented by the Trump/Pence regime and its fascist “base,” with its “8 trillion bullets,” through relying on (or seeking a return to) what have been the “norms” of the bourgeois order in this country (and, on the part of some, this involves a call for “restoring civility”) while the fascists are determined to trample on and tear up these “norms” and are perfectly happy to have those who oppose them adopt the stance of “civility” (accommodation) toward their unrelenting fascist offensive. Although this does not apply absolutely, it is far too much the case that the words of the poet William Butler Yeats describe this very serious situation: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” And so, while things could be heading toward a civil war, and it could come down to that even in the not-too-distant future, the present lineup is very unfavorable for anybody who represents anything decent in the world.
All this is, in a demented kind of way, represented in King’s statement that one side has about 8 trillion bullets while the other side doesn’t know which bathroom to use. Again, it’s not that the question of bathroom use and the larger questions it encapsulates is unimportant. It is important. But there’s a larger picture here of this developing trend or motion toward a civil war which right now is very one-sided in a very bad way, and if things continue on this trajectory the outcome could truly be disastrous.
So that should be serious food for thought—and not only that, but also a serious spur to action for people who do care about all the various ways in which people are being brought under attack and oppression is being intensified all across the board against large sections of the people who need to be brought together to fight against the offensive from these fascist forces—and, in more fundamental terms, need to be brought forward on the basis of recognizing that it’s the whole system, out of which this fascist phenomenon has arisen, and which embodies such terrible oppression of people not just here but all around the world, that needs to be swept away.
Now, another element of this that we can’t overlook is that, while a lot of what King describes applies in a certain demented way, particularly to progressive or so-called “woke” middle class people, there is another kind of problem with regard to more basic oppressed people, and in particular the youth—a big problem that their guns are now aimed at each other. And without going more fully into this right now, this is something that needs to be radically transformed in building a movement for an actual revolution.
So here we come to the question of the relation between building for an actual revolution and the still very urgent question of driving out this fascist regime. The following from Part 2 of Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution remains extremely relevant and important:
The relation between the struggle against this fascist regime and building the revolution is not a “straight road” or a “one-way street”: It must not be approached, by those who understand the need for revolution, as if “first we must build a mass movement to drive out this regime, and then we can turn our attention to working directly for revolution.” No. It is crucial to unite and mobilize people, from different perspectives, very broadly, around the demand that this regime must go, but it will be much more difficult to do this on the scale and with the determination that is required to meet this objective if there are not, at the same time, greater and greater numbers of people who have been brought forward around the understanding that it is necessary to put an end not only to this regime but to the system out of whose deep and defining contradictions this regime has arisen, a system which by its very nature has imposed, and will continue to impose, horrific and completely unnecessary suffering on the masses of humanity, until this system itself is abolished. And the more that people are brought forward to be consciously, actively working for revolution, the growing strength and “moral authority” of this revolutionary force will in turn strengthen the resolve of growing numbers of people to drive out this fascist regime now in power, even as many will not be (and some will perhaps never be) won to revolution.
New Communism book cover
The New Communism

The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, by Bob Avakian

Download PDF of book here