A SIMPLE FORMULATION

I've got a very simple formulation for trump and all of his reactionary chickenshit followers and fearmongers. If your fucking bombs can cross their borders, then they can cross yours to get away from those bombs, so fuck you.
Read please....

Trump’s “Alternative Facts” on Refugees vs. the Truth

The U.S. and Other Imperialist PowersCreated 60 Million Refugees and Must Not Be Allowed to Demonize, Discriminate Against and Deport Them

January 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Friday, January 27, President Trump issued an executive order blocking all refugees from around the world from entering the U.S. for 120 days, and banning those from Syria indefinitely. He also suspended any immigration from Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Sudan—all Muslim majority countries—for 90 days. (See “Trump’s Executive Order Attacking Refugees: ‘Extreme Vetting’=Extreme Cruelty and Racism, with a Genocidal Logic”)

Trump’s Fascist “Alternative Facts” vs. Refugee Crisis Realities

Trump’s order claimed these steps were necessary “to ensure that those approved for refugee admission do not pose a threat to the security and welfare of the United States.” Trump warned that many could be “radical Islamic terrorists” who pose a danger to people in the U.S. He told ABC those being barred from coming into the U.S. were people who “are going to come in and cause us tremendous problems.” He declared: “They’re ISIS.”

These Trumpian “alternative facts” are naked lies. Refugees are not endangering people in the U.S. It’s the U.S. which is endangering tens of millions of people around the world, and is more responsible for the largest global refugee crisis in history than any other country on earth. And now Trump’s fascist regime is targeting and vilifying the victims in order to justify radically escalating this global humanitarian atrocity and outrage.

Over the past decade, a tsunami has been building, a tsunami of human beings now numbering some 42,500 every single day on average—forced to flee for their lives from war, terror, persecution, and increasingly environmental devastation, desperately seeking safety and shelter anywhere they can find it. This deluge of displacement has reached a total of over 60 million people. Half of them are children!

What do the overwhelming majority of these refugees—the 12 million Syrians, nearly four million Afghans, some five million Iraqis, and 15 million from Sub-Saharan Africa—have in common? They’re escaping regions where imperialism has made life hell, through decade after decade of exploitation and plunder, of backing torture regimes, and now more than 15 years of the so-called “war on terror”—in reality a war of imperialism. This war has taken the lives of millions directly or indirectly. It has fanned the flames of reactionary Islamic jihadist terror, which has created its own nightmares for the people. One major driver of the tidal wave of global refugees: the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, an illegitimate, criminal war based on lies. It led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, drove over 4 million from their homes, and turned Iraq into the birthplace of ISIS.

Refugees arrive by dinghy at the Greek island of Lesbos, 2015. AP photo

---

Droughts caused by global warming and climate change are also increasingly fueling global migration and refugees. The climate crisis is caused overwhelmingly by the United States and other imperialist powers, but its impacts are being felt most immediately and devastatingly in impoverished and oppressed countries, including North Africa and the Middle East. It is estimated that [between] “50 million and 200 million people — mainly subsistence farmers and fishermen — could be displaced by 2050 because of climate change.” (New York Times, 5/16/16)

These millions are desperately fleeing horrors that all too many Americans can’t (or refuse to) even imagine, for their lives and the lives of their loved ones. They’re carrying tiny children and whatever belongings they can carry, crossing parched deserts, dangerous borders, deadly combat zones, risking their lives in flimsy rubber rafts on the high seas, all to find shelter and sustenance – not commit acts of terrorism.

Refugees a danger? New York Times columnist Roger Cohen points out, “A Cato Institute study of refugees admitted to the United States between 1975 and 2015 found that the chance of an American being killed in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee is 1 in 3.64 billion”—in other words far, far, far less than the danger of being killed in an auto-accident or in a mass shooting by some deranged American—or murdered by some mad-dog cop.

These refugees are among the bravest most self-sacrificing people on earth, yet they’re being demonized and dehumanized by the Trump fascists who are truly the sewer-dwelling scum of the earth. News outlets like Breitbart and InfoWars are spreading “fake news” that immigrants from the Middle East are spreading diseases, raping women, and threatening them with genital mutilation. All this has real parallels with how the Holocaust started—not immediately with concentration camps, but with lies—with the vilification and dehumanization of the Jewish people as vermin, as disease carriers, as anti-German radicals and communists, and more.

Trump-Pence: Making America’s Racist, Inhumane Refugee Stance Far, Far Worse

The Trump-Pence fascists claim that U.S. borders have been wide open to anyone and everyone—including “Islamic terrorists.” Another “alternative fact”/lie. The reality is that U.S. borders have never been wide open, including under Obama, but closed very tightly to the vast majority of humanity fleeing the wars, persecutions, and environmental horrors the U.S. has done the lion’s share in creating.

Of 5 million Syrian refugees, the U.S. took a mere 10,000 last year. Of the world’s 60 million refugees, most end up in relatively poor countries like Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. According to theNew York Times, “One in four refugees now finds shelter in the world’s poorest countries, with Ethiopia and Kenya taking many more refugees than, say, Britain and France.” Think about this: the world’s capitalist powers have become wealthy by dominating and plundering the world’s poorest countries. Then when that poverty, war and oppression becomes impossible to survive and people flee for safe haven, those imperialist countries slam the door shut and force other impoverished countries to deal with the crisis.

Saturday night at airports across the U.S. we began to get a glimpse of the leaps in the targeting of whole populations being put in place by Trump-Pence. Suddenly with no warning, people with families in the Middle East were threatened with being divided forever, never being able to visit their relatives, or have their relatives visit the U.S. Students away on break couldn’t get back into the U.S. Even those who are green card holders—legal residents of the U.S.—were detained at least temporarily (some 375) if they were traveling from countries targeted by Trump. In other words, anyone from whole swaths of the Middle East who’s a Muslim is being targeted as a suspected terrorist—a cloud is cast over the whole population of nine million Muslims living in the U.S. (Many anti-Muslim hate crimes have already been reported across the U.S., the latest, a mosque in Victoria, Texas which had been the target of threats in the past, was burned to the ground on Saturday night.)

The Muslim Ban, the Fascist Remaking of America, and the Danger of War

All this is part of a broader, more deadly and sinister fascist remaking of the U.S. that Trump-Pence are trying to steamroller through. To take one dimension, Trump’s order discriminated against Muslims entering the U.S. and favored Christians. In other words, it imposed what’s called a “religious test” for entering the U.S. “The document does not explicitly mention any religion,” the New York Times stated in an editorial, “yet it sets a blatantly unconstitutional standard by excluding Muslims while giving government officials the discretion to admit people of other faiths”—in other words Christians.

(Trump told the Christian Broadcasting Network that under past presidents, “If you were a Muslim you could come in [to the U.S.], but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible.” Yet another lie: “In fact, the United States accepts tens of thousands of Christian refugees,” the New York Times reports, “According to the Pew Research Center, almost as many Christian refugees (37,521) were admitted as Muslim refugees (38,901) in the 2016 fiscal year.”)

As revcom.us analyzes, the “religious test” inserted in his executive order is part of a broader fascist program: “Trump and the Christian theocrats in his cabinet of ghouls are out to forcefully impose an explicitly Christian identity on this country, and embed that in U.S. policy.” (See “Lives in the Balance...Which Will Win? Trump’s First Days: The Heavy Hand of Fascism and the Spark of Resistance”)

Trump is painting these refugees as suspected terrorists—until they can prove otherwise—and broadly painting the 200 plus million people living in the countries his executive order targeted, as well as the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims as terrorists as well, part of a “radical religion,” which his National Security Advisor Michael Flynn calls “a cancer.” And Flynn has made a point of targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran—one of the countries named in Trump’s executive order.

Ominously, as Trump directs his generals to prepare new military options in the Middle East, his executive order must also be seen as part of preparing the ground for escalating the U.S. slaughter – even genocide – of peoples in the Middle East and beyond in the name of “eradicating radical Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth.”

All this is further fueling and exacerbating the reactionary clash between outmoded imperialism and outmoded Islamic fundamentalism which has caused so much destitution, suffering and death across the region, especially since the U.S. launched its “war on terror” in 2001. In fact, if the aim was to intensify this contradiction, Trump couldn't have done better than his latest actions.

No Airport Business-As-Usual, and Driving Out Trump-Pence

On Saturday, beginning at New York’s JFK airport, then quickly mushrooming nationwide to airports in Houston, San Francisco, Dallas, Salt Lake City, Denver, Chicago, Washington, DC, Portland, Newark, Seattle-Tacoma, Boston, San Diego, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles, people righteously disrupted airport business-as-usual to denounce and stop the Muslim and refugee ban. (Breitbart attacked the protests immediately with the blaring, “alternative fact” headline: “Terror-Tied Group CAIR Causing Chaos, Promoting Protests & Lawsuits, as Trump Protects Nation.”)

These were very important actions – and showed the broad potential to quickly mobilize many thousands. But Trump’s executive order is still in place, his regime is still in power and aggressively defending its actions and fighting forward. So there’s a great need for people (especially those who are not Muslims and not from the Middle East) to continue to stand up for those being targeted, to spread this struggle to more people and more places, and to build this as part of a movement of millions saying NO!, and determined to drive the illegitimate Trump-Pence regime from power.

         

How Would a Humane, Emancipatory Society Deal With Refugees?

Authored by Bob Avakian, and adopted by the Central Committee of the RCP

Do you know anyone else—any person or organization—that has managed to bring forth an actual PLAN for a radically different society, in all its dimensions, and a CONSTITUTION to codify all this?—A different world IS possible

See: "E. International Relations" (pp. 29-31); "H. Immigrants, Citizenship and Asylum" (pp. 60-62); and "Section 9. The Socialist State as a Base Area for the World Revolution" (pp. 87-88).

The U.S.’s barbaric, inhumane treatment of those around the world in the greatest need of help, raises the question – what’s the alternative? What would be a humane way to deal with the displacement of millions?

Answer: with exactly the opposite goals, methods, culture and morality than that of the Trump-Pence regime – which is an extreme expression of the essential nature of U.S. capitalism-imperialism.

There is no way the United States could ever make up for or repay the masses for the death, destruction, and suffering it has caused them all over the world, including now in particular the countries it has devastated of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Even a genuine revolutionary socialist state could not make full restitution for the centuries of horrors the United States has inflicted on people. But a revolutionary socialist state on the road to communism would work and struggle to overcome the scars that this imperialist monstrosity has left on the world and its people. Such a state would be coming from a whole different standpoint and would move to make huge changes so that such horrors were stopped, and a world brought into being where they could never happen again. Such a revolutionary state would put the world, and the revolutionary emancipation of all humanity first—not “my country.” And not holding onto any form of oppression or privileged position vis-a-vis other peoples or countries.

Among many other things, such a state would not intensify the plunder, military conquest, and environmental destruction that are driving the refugee crisis in the world today, but move to end them as part of uprooting the capitalist-imperialist system these horrors spring from. And its immediate orientation, in foreign relations, culture, education, morality and economic decision-making would be to support and assist people around the world fighting oppression, and to build a society which puts humanity first, not America.

This is not a dream—it is real, and realizable, and laid out in tremendous detail in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian and adopted by the Revolutionary Communist Party. Today, everyone should join in and strengthen the inspiring resistance now being waged around the country against the Trump-Pence regime’s fascist ban; and as we do so, we should also be wrangling over what it would take to truly get beyond a world of such horrors.

American Lives Are Not More Important Than Other People’s Lives!
—Bob Avakian, BAsics 5:7

GREAT SUCCESS !

Over 1900 dollars were raised for Victoria Hospice at the Jay Brown Memorial Show on the 28th. It was fanfuckingtastic ! I didn't realize that Roy ( ex-AWT ) was the frontman for BLKR until they took the stage ! It was great to see him back in action, and especially exciting to have him come up on stage ( along with so many others ) to sing AWT's signature song , "Alcoholic White Trash". Awkward AC played, and seem to get better and better each time I see them. Riffheist are one of my favourite locals, The Gnar Gnars rocked the shit outta the place, The Hoosegow should fucking stay together because they always make me happy, and Fully Crazed are a new band made up of skate/hardcore veterans, and as expected, they tore shit up. It was awesome to see Dustin on drums again, and he's just as fucking good as he was during the Shutdown days ! 
   As usual, old friends were seen ( and loved ), and new friends were made. Of special note, some awesome kids came down from Nanaimo to show their support for a worthy cause, and I thank them. Hannah and her crew are welcome back any time ( not that they need my invitation ).
   So again, do not take Hoon's efforts for granted. He has been doing this for 11 years now, and it all comes from the heart.
  Hopefully I'll see you all before next year !
       Good day.

COME OUT, WON'T YOU ?

That time is upon us once again, where old and young come out to rock for a good cause, and to remember those who have enriched our lives in so many ways.
  This Saturday the 28th at Logan's is going to be a great night of punk/hardcore. You can't go wrong with Riffheist, The Gnar Gnars, and the awesome Hoosegow. I think it's the debut show for  Fully Crazed, who will live up to their name ( or so I've been led to believe ).

As always, Hoon has done a great job of organizing this thing, and I especially found this year's poster both beautiful and heartbreaking.
  We'll see you on Saturday.

NUMBERS

Ever since trump became president, he seems to be obsessed with the number of people at his inauguration ( vs. the number of people at obama's ), the number of votes he received, the number of illegal immigrants who voted against him ( fucking ludicrous ), and the number of protesters out there at any given time. He seems desperate to legitimize himself as the supreme leader of the fascist states of amerikkka . He is a sick and dangerous motherfucker.

Why Does Trump Continually Lie About the Elections And the Size of the Crowds At His Inauguration?

January 24, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

What IS Fascism?

Fascism is the exercise of blatant dictatorship by the bourgeois (capitalist-imperialist) class, ruling through reliance on open terror and violence, trampling on what are supposed to be civil and legal rights, wielding the power of the state, and mobilizing organized groups of fanatical thugs, to commit atrocities against masses of people, particularly groups of people identified as “enemies,” “undesirables,” or “dangers to society.”

At the same time—and this can be seen through studying the examples of Nazi Germany and Italy under Mussolini—while it will likely move quickly to enforce certain repressive measures in consolidating its rule, a fascist regime is also likely to implement its program overall through a series of stages and even attempt at different points to reassure the people, or certain groups among the people, that they will escape the horrors—if they quietly go along and do not protest or resist while others are being terrorized and targeted for repression, deportation, “conversion,” prison, or execution.

For humanity to advance beyond a state in which “might makes right”—and where things ultimately come down to raw power relations—will require, as a fundamental element in this advance, an approach to understanding things (an epistemology) which recognizes that reality and truth are objective and do not vary in accordance with, nor depend on, different “narratives” and how much “authority” an idea (or “narrative”) may have behind it, or how much power and force can be wielded on behalf of any particular idea or “narrative,” at any given point.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 4:10

Trump seems to be fixated on proving that he had a larger turnout at his inauguration than Obama (he did not) and that he won the popular vote of the election (which in fact he lost by nearly 3 million votes). These are easily proven facts—the first by photo comparisons, statistics of subway ridership on the days of the inauguration, etc.—and the second by the insistence of the mainly Republican state governments that the illegal votes Trump claims were cast for Clinton simply were not. So why does he keep doing this?

The most common explanation is that he is sick—a pathological narcissist who cannot tolerate the idea that he is not the most beloved person ever to walk the earth.

Trump is a sociopath. Yet there is a method to this sort of madness. And that method is fascism.

The first and main thing to understand is that Trump is mainly focused on speaking to, and continually firming up, his hard core of true believers. He is reassuring them that they and—and really he—represent the “real Americans,” the vast majority, and that the “liberal elites” and the groups of people whom he continually demonizes and delegitimizes (immigrants, Muslims, Black people, etc) are lying to frustrate and prevent Trump and his followers from getting “their rightful due.” He is trying to make them impervious to the actual reality of things, to objective facts, and instead providing them “alternative facts,” in the words of his adviser Kellyanne Conway, through which they can sustain their faith. He is preparing them as a fighting force, if need be, to defend him.

The second purpose for this madness is to provide further rationalization to prevent Black and Latino people from voting, through laws whose one and only purpose is to deny the right to vote to Black and Latino people, such as voter ID laws and forbidding ex-felons from voting (which affects Black and Latino people disproportionately due to discrimination in all spheres of American life, especially but not only the criminal “justice” system).

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, has pleaded with Trump to not do this because it will delegitimize the electoral system. And that leads to the third reason. Trump announced in advance that if he lost, he would not recognize the results since his loss would prove that the elections were rigged. There is little doubt that he would have waged a no-holds-barred battle to get in power. Looking down the road, he does not intend to be deterred in his “mission” by the matter of elections; and he is even now preparing public opinion to invalidate any election that might not go his way, presuming that elections continue to be held.

Last point: people say we should not “normalize” Trump—and that is correct. But the main meaning of that must not be his narcissistic madness, but the fact that he is a FASCIST.

HERE WE GO

At this point, I doubt anyone disbelieves that fuckface trump hates women. From his stupid sexualized comments, to the potential charges being brought against him, it's fucking obvious. But now with this fascist in office, things are getting uglier and more dangerous.

Trump Signs Global Anti-Abortion Order—First Step in Fascist Regime’s Assault on Women’s Rights

January 23, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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Can This System Do Away With, or Do Without, The Oppression of Women?—A Fundamental Question, A Scientific Approach

An article from
Break ALL the Chains!

Read more

You cannot break all the chains, except one. You cannot say you want to be free of exploitation and oppression, except you want to keep the oppression of women by men. You can’t say you want to liberate humanity yet keep one half of the people enslaved to the other half. The oppression of women is completely bound up with the division of society into masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited, and the ending of all such conditions is impossible without the complete liberation of women. All this is why women have a tremendous role to play not only in making revolution but in making sure there is all-the-way revolution. The fury of women can and must be fully unleashed as a mighty force for proletarian revolution.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 3:22

One of the main facets of the Trump-Pence fascist program is a major ramping up of attacks on women, and in particular the right to abortion. On Monday, Trump took the first official step of the regime in this war on women by signing an executive order that restored an anti-abortion measure with global effect. Known as the “Mexico City policy” (because it was first implemented under Ronald Reagan at a 1984 UN conference in that city), the measure denies U.S. family planning funding and technical assistance to foreign NGOs—including clinics, private hospitals, and reproductive health and family planning organizations—that perform or “promote” abortions.

This policy is also known as the “global gag rule” because it prohibits the NGOs that receive U.S. funding from even discussing abortion as an option or referring women to an abortion provider. And the rule also bans those groups from advocating for greater access in general to abortion in those countries.

When the global gag rule first went into effect, there was already a ban on the use of U.S. foreign aid for abortions—and this ban continues. What the global gag rule does is to expand the anti-abortion dictates by imposing U.S. control over how the NGOs use their own funds raised from sources other than U.S. aid. It forced many public health and family planning organizations, especially in poor countries, that depend greatly on outside funding to make a choice: stop performing or even advocating for abortion, which is crucial for women’s health and their lives overall—or continue this vital service but lose significant amounts of funding that support other important medical services they provide.

Under President Reagan and again under the two Bushes, the global gag rule had real—often deadly—consequences for women. Groups like Population Action International (PAI) have documented how it led to more women in poor countries having unwanted pregnancies or dying from unsafe abortions. The closing of health clinics or reduction in their services limited or closed off people’s access to contraceptives and to health care for wide range of problems from malaria to HIV/AIDS.

Obama struck down the Mexico City policy with an executive order at the beginning of his first term. Trump has now revived the global gag rule, and it will have devastating consequences for women around the world. In a statement on Trump’s executive order, PAI said:

Trump’s Global Gag Rule will not only severely restrict access to legal abortion, but will also have more insidious and damaging effect on women’s health overall. Health care providers will be forced to cut services, increase fees, and even close clinics altogether as a result of severe funding cuts. There are 225 million women in developing countries who want to avoid pregnancy but are not using modern contraception, but this policy will put birth control even farther from their reach…

“Trump’s Global Gag Rule will obstruct and destroy the work of health care providers who are often women’s main—and sometimes only—source for reproductive health care, and their entry point for receiving a wide range of primary health care services," said Suzanne Ehlers, President & CEO of PAI. “To be clear, this policy is an attack on women’s bodily autonomy and freedom, and we will see an increase in unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions as a result.”

While Trump is now bringing back a previous Republican anti-abortion policy that had been canceled by Democrats, this is not just a “swing of the pendulum.” As we have written about the events of the last couple of days, “the Trump-Pence regime made chillingly clear its determination to radically and quicklyreorder the current form of political rule in the U.S. into fascism” (from “Lives in the Balance... Which Will Win? Trump’s First Days: The Heavy Hand of Fascism and the Spark of Resistance”) With the executive order on the Mexico City policy, Trump is firing the opening shot in a major component of this fascist reordering of political rule, the overturning of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. It’s a rallying cry for the Christian fascists' fighting forces who want to see Roe v. Wade, in the words of Trump’s VP, Mike Pence, “consigned to the scrap heap of history.”

This is not about the health of women or to “protect life” or any other falsehoods used as justification by the anti-abortion fanatics. The real objective is to greatly intensify patriarchal control over women—to turn women into nothing more than incubators and sexual playthings for men—under the signboard of “make America great again.”

This is a horrible vision and program that the fascist regime is now moving quickly to forcibly implement—and it must be stopped by massive resistance of millions, acting in the interests of humanity.

BACKTRACK

It has been widely reported that madonna gave a "profanity laden " speech at an anti-trump rally in the u.s. Today she is doing damage control by saying that her words were taken "wildly out of context ". Well, I don't know what she said, (not having time for much of her bullshit ) but why the fuck do celebrities always backtrack when there's been a negative media reaction to something they may have said ? If you mean it, back it up and tell the media ( and whoever else )  to go fuck themselves. No apologies to anyone, especially trump and his fascist assholes. This shit ain't over, motherfuckers....

Lives in the Balance... Which Will Win?

Trump’s First Days: The Heavy Hand of Fascism and the Spark of Resistance

January 22, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On its first weekend in power, the Trump-Pence regime moved quickly to establish a fully fascist state. At the same time, millions of people around the world demonstrated against Trump and Pence in the Women’s March, demonstrating the tremendous potential for resistance.

The fate of billions now directly hangs on whether Trump-Pence will be able to fully consolidate this fascist state... or whether this massive opposition can be marshaled into a force to prevent its consolidation and move to oust it from power altogether.

Two futures contend. There is still time to stop this, but we must act soon.

Fascist Terms Are Set

Click to enlarge

Through Trump’s inaugural address and then his speech to the CIA, as well as through use of the White House website and handling of the press, the Trump-Pence regime made chillingly clear its determination to radically and quicklyreorder the current form of political rule in the U.S. into fascism. We’re going to walk through the key points of what this is, and in a separate appendix to this article we annotate each point with examples from Trump’s two speeches.

Trump’s inaugural address privileged those who voted for him as the legitimate citizens, directly addressing them above all. He claimed his supporters as a “movement” of “forgotten Americans,” who will now be taken care of... by him.He recited a list of their grievances—some real, some imagined, and all of them distorted through the fascist, racist funhouse mirrors of Trumpworld. He stoked their resentment against “the elites”—by whom Trump clearly means intellectuals, artists, scientists, political people who opposed his election for whatever reason, as well as those who attempt to win some reforms on the more egregious abuses of this system, and not the finance-capitalist billionaires, the “mad dog” generals, the stone-cold racists, and lunatic religious fanatics with whom he has stocked his cabinet—and he portrayed himself as the champion who will now vanquish those enemies.

The racism and sexism, the systemic discrimination that permeates U.S. society is totally denied in Trumpworld—while there may be some vague “prejudice,” that can be washed away in the blood shed by patriots. Trump goes so far as to say that “at the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will discover loyalty to each other.” Please note: “bedrock” and “total allegiance” (emphasis added). If you can’t see how stunning this statement is, then substitute the word Germany or the “volk” for “United States of America,” and tell us why such a statement would not work for Adolf Hitler. Those who are not white, those who may have at one time or another dissented, may be allowed into this brave new world, but only on condition of their submission and “total allegiance.”This is a world in which the fascists, and white people in general, will have rights and privileges and legal standing, and those who are not fascists—or who are not white males—will live as second-class citizens at best.

In line with this, in a move that was as unusual as it was ominous, Trump said nothing in his speech about the Constitution and the primacy of the rule of law over the whim of individual rulers, but said that he owed his allegiance—and presumably derived his authority—from “you the people.”

Trump aggressively threatened the entire rest of the world with American power, reviving and popularizing the fascist slogan from the 1940s of “America First,” and calling it a “new decree” and “a new vision that will govern our land.” In every encounter, according to Trump, the U.S. will assert its interests and mess over whoever must be messed over to gain them. Trump promised to “eradicate” those he deemed to be enemies “completely from the face of the earth.”

To understand the roots and the dynamics of Trump's ascension to power, get into these two works

by Bob Avakian:

The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy… And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer

The Fascists and the Destruction of the 'Weimar Republic'...And What Will Replace It

At the CIA, Trump—who has falsely claimed that he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning—nonetheless said that once there, the U.S. should have taken the oil, and went so far as to enunciate the principle of “to the victor belong the spoils.” The U.S. military—already larger and more powerfully armed than the next six militaries after it combined—will now be further put on steroids. Trump said that he would support the CIA 1000 percent—meaning, given his campaign promises, that kidnapping, torture, assassination, unlimited drone strikes, and all-round brutality will no longer have even the pretense of checks. People should check out the American Crimeseries to get just a hint of the literally millions the CIA has killed and tortured over the past 70 years, all over the planet, in the service of U.S. imperialism. Trump promises, in a world in which U.S. power faces new challenges, that he will take this exploitation and domination to a whole new level, enforcing it if need be with nuclear arms, and that he will let the CIA, the military, and the police totally off their leashes, supporting them “like never before.”

Trump unleashed a war against the press. Trump whipped up the CIA against the press in his speech to the agency, a blatant threat to the right to free expression. Further: he violated what has been an accepted norm for centuries that the army and other forces of the state are to remain “neutral” or “apolitical” in the sense of not siding with one or another faction of the ruling class; instead, Trump bragged in his CIA speech about his great support in the military, the intelligence agencies, and the police. This whole speech—given on an off-day of work, so that most of the people who attended were those who favored Trump and who gave him a chillingly enthusiastic welcome—smacked of forming a faction within the agency to directly serve his interests against other forces. This goes with Trump’s unprecedented seeding of his cabinet with “retired” generals. To return, however, to the muzzling of the press, it is true that the big media in U.S. society generally train people in the outlook of capitalism-imperialism and the ruling class, and generally act as stenographers for “government sources”; but Trump has already begun to intimidate and suppress anything in the media that he deems to get in his way and in the way of the radical re-ordering of society that he is moving forward with.

Trump made clear in his inaugural speech a genocidal thrust toward communities of color, painting stereotypes of subhuman communities and implying extreme repression to “stop the carnage.” It is not for nothing that Trump has expressed a certain kinship to Rodrigo Duterte, the ruler of the Philippines who has unleashed a reign of terror in the ghettos there, carrying out thousands of extra-judicial street killings in less than a year. You could say the same about Trump’s call for nationwide stop-and-frisk (against Black and Latino people “to stop crime”), or his appointment of the most consistently racist senator in the entire U.S. Senate to be his attorney general. And it is extremely significant—and extremely ominous—that one of the first things on the White House website was a call to take the supposed restraints off the police and to enforce law and order.

Trump and Pence have made the theocratic Christian fascist movement a key part of their ruling alliance, with Trump now draping himself in the clothes of someone “chosen by god.” How else to explain his seemingly serious remarks to the CIA on how god interrupted the rain so that he could give his inaugural speech? Or the chilling medieval passage in his inaugural speech in which, after detailing the changes he would make, he said that god and the U.S. military and police would protect us? Indeed, the Trump-Pence regime is an anthill of Christian fascist fanatics, beginning with Pence himself, but also including Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos, and Steve Bannon.

         

Trump attempted to impose an alternate reality of “Trumpworld” on public discourse, a world in which the facts are what Donald Trump says they are and those who disagree will be threatened and silenced. In this bizarro world, Trump’s attacks on the CIA all through December and January for their finding that the Russians had conducted “cyberwarfare” intended to help his election never happened; it was all an attempt by the press to create a feud. In this bizarro world, Trump’s inauguration attendance broke all records (when in fact it was rather pitiful by comparison with Obama's and other past inaugurations). In this bizarro world, the press secretary takes no questions but tells the press what is reality and insults and threatens them for reporting what actually did happen—for reporting the most simple and minimal facts which everyone can see. Yes, there is an egomaniac psychopathology to Trump, but that is not at the heart of this: Fascism always seeks to impose an absolutist and fantastical version of reality on society and to straitjacket any attempts to get at the objective truth of anything.¹

Trump called out and attacked other sections of the ruling class—for the purpose of silencing them and bludgeoning their acquiescence in his fascist reordering of society.Trump directly blamed those who have ruled the U.S. for the past quarter century for the problems of the masses, claiming that they enriched themselves while plundering the people. And it is certainly true that sitting on the stage of the inauguration were big-time criminals and criminal accomplices who have indeed ordered and carried out terrible things. But Trump is essentially attacking and implicitly threatening them for not being criminal enough, in his eyes, and he’s doing this to extract their cooperation, or at least silence, in his move to fascism. Forget the lurid tales about Russian prostitutes—Trump figuratively pissed all over his rivals at his own inauguration. And then, at the banquet afterwards, like the pimp and con man that he is, he played the “nice guy,” the “schmoozer.”

Resistance to the “New Order”

Throughout the week leading up to the inauguration, resistance began to grow. By Friday, Trump’s inauguration was forced to share the headlines with demonstrations in the streets that went all day and into the night, full of spirit and determination.

Then, on Saturday, millions of people in the U.S. and around the world turned out at “The Women’s March,” expressing serious but exuberant opposition to Trump. These marches swept up many, many people who do not normally demonstrate and are far from politically radical, but who cleared the day and in some cases came hundreds and even thousands of miles to make their statement. This in turn represents a broader layer of humanity and, potentially, billions. In short, this was something to take real heart from, and to welcome.

At the same time, the ways must be found—now—to take this further. Haunting this march was a precedent: the weekend shortly before the launching of the war against Iraq by George W. Bush, in which perhaps eight million people around the world came out to voice their opposition. This, too, was a great thing; but Bush held in his hands the power of state, and he ignored the marchers and launched what has turned out to be an utter and truly horrific disaster not only for the people of Iraq, but for people all over the Middle East and, indeed, the world. The toll in deaths and trauma of that war is terrible to contemplate, it continues today, and it will continue for some time.

The vows back then to “punish them at the polls” were worse than meaningless; they derailed people from building the fierce, unyielding opposition that was required. People around Bush crowed that they were “creating reality on the ground” that others would have to relate to—an approach taken up by Trump, in spades—and they did in fact set new terms, effectively silencing most opposition for several years until the war they launched ended in such an utter disaster for U.S. imperialist interests in that region and around the world that they lost initiative.

Such an approach with Trump and Pence—the idea that the road forward is for people to take over and “revitalize” the Democratic Party—is wrong on many, many counts, but in terms of the current moment it is most wrong because it disarms people in the face of an extremely dire threat. The Trump-Pence “brand,” to use the parlance of the day, is not conservatism, or populism, or even “just” reactionary and ugly racism, sexism, and xenophobia (though it is indeed all that)—it isFASCISM. Fascism is greater than the sum of its parts—it is, to again cite the definition we’ve used in these pages over the past months:

...the exercise of blatant dictatorship by the bourgeois (capitalist-imperialist) class, ruling through reliance on open terror and violence, trampling on what are supposed to be civil and legal rights, wielding the power of the state, and mobilizing organized groups of fanatical thugs, to commit atrocities against masses of people, particularly groups of people identified as “enemies,” “undesirables,” or “dangers to society.”

At the same time—and this can be seen through studying the examples of Nazi Germany and Italy under Mussolini—while it will likely move quickly to enforce certain repressive measures in consolidating its rule, a fascist regime is also likely to implement its program overall through a series of stages and even attempt at different points to reassure the people, or certain groups among the people, that they will escape the horrors—if they quietly go along and do not protest or resist while others are being terrorized and targeted for repression, deportation, “conversion,” prison, or execution.

The danger is this: while you are setting out to do “the hard work of grassroots organizing for the long haul,” Trump and Pence are gearing up the machinery of a fully fascist state, rousing their social base, and moving to crush the masses of people and any efforts at such grassroots organizing that they cannot neutralize in an extremely telescoped time frame.

As for the Democrats, and all those antiwar people who were drawn back then into working so hard to “remake” the Democratic Party only to find themselves supporting the essentially pro-war candidate John Kerry, we must quote the bitter truth put forth by Bob Avakian:

If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are. (BAsics 3:12)

Now, to be clear, there is in fact a path of hope, a way forward. But to find that way, we have break out of the channels and, indeed, constraints that set the terms for our thinking.

What Is To Be Done?

The logic of fascism is to stay on the attack, to move quickly and to threaten and bludgeon anything or anyone who gets in their way. The method of fascism is shock and intimidation, one outrage after another, until people are reduced to crouching and cringing in the face of repeated and unpredictable blows.

We now face a situation in which Trump and Pence hold in their hands the power of state and in which they have begun to work that logic. But as yet, this power is not consolidated.

There is not much time... but there is yet a window that still exists.

If on Monday and Tuesday of this week, people answered the call of refusefascism.org in sufficient numbers to begin to stop business as usual, and to call forward others to do that...

If as the week went on, others answered that call, in a snowballing effect, and—as happened just last fall in South Korea when millions came into the streets and in the space of a few months drove the president from office—thousands and then millions came into the streets, in many different forms of protest...

If these men and women and young people refused to be divided and deterred, but stuck to the simple truth of the NO! to Trump-Pence fascism...

If this reached into every corner of civil society and the culture at large...

If this combined with over-reaching by Trump-Pence, or with yet another outrage that “crosses a line,” and if all this further opened people’s eyes to the true nature of this regime and what it would mean for humanity, and still more growing numbers of people, reaching into all of society including the government itself, found ways to resist...

If those who knew and had access to the facts were inspired to find the ways to get out any of the real stories behind Trump-Pence and their means and methods and motives and histories, and this created even greater unease, scandal, and crisis...

If the sheer numbers began to demoralize and even peel away or win over some Trump supporters (even as it would inevitably energize others), and the momentum began to shift further so as to make not just the lack of support but the fierce and growing opposition to this fascist regime clearer, and there were breaks in the opposition camp...

If forces in the power structure itself, some of whom are for various reasons disquieted by the move to fascism or seriously concerned by and opposed to some of what Trump is aiming to do (which, after all, IS a radical and extremely risky restructuring of how the ruling class “normally” rules), and some of whom may feel directly threatened by it, but who will not act unless the actions of all society begin to make them feel that they have to act... if those forces began to come out in serious opposition in an effort to put the regime on the defensive (as was done, in fact, in the 1970s when ruling class forces came together to force Nixon out of office)...

If, in short, a serious political crisis arose... then this regime could be stopped.

To those who say this can’t happen overnight, we are tempted to say it could best happen overnight; that comparable instances like South Korea last fall or Egypt in 2011, when the dictator of 30 years was driven from office in the space of less than a month, show the possibility of doing this; and that the terrible and grievous experience of Germany—where Hitler used the time he had after his initial ascent to power to step-by-step wipe out his opposition and radically (though “legally”) alter the laws of Germany—shows the dangers of not acting with speed. But instead, we’ll say only that this IS possible and that attempts to defeat and uproot this regime later on would be immeasurably harder than it would be right now.

This is not to say that this path would not be difficult, nor to minimize the dangers. It IS to say that the path of waiting to see would be worse.

The momentum from this weekend has created a rare opening; it will not last forever. Let history not judge that we squandered it.

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1. Indeed, Trump’s narcissism is right out of the fascist playbook, in which the followers personally identify with and put blind faith in the “strongman,” seen as anointed by god to “redeem” the nation. [back]

[Scroll down for annotations]

In the winter of 2011, five years ago, the people of Egypt flooded into Tahir Square and rose up in rebellion against decades of brutally oppressive rule by the Mubarak regime—a regime backed by and playing a key role in preserving the interests of the U.S. Empire. They stayed in the Square in the tens and hundreds of thousands until on February 11 of that year, Mubarak was driven from office. (Photos: AP)

In South Korea, for almost three months now, people have gone into the streets, week after week, demanding the immediate removal of President Park Geun-hye. In a country of 50 million people, there have been 2 million at some of the protests. Park and her family is hated: Her father, Park Chung-hee, brutally ruled South Korea from 1961 to 1979 after seizing power in a military coup. Park Geun-hye is accused of corruption, the government has been forced to impeach her, and a court is now deciding whether to uphold this decision. Protests are continuing, with the people demanding the immediate ouster, arrest, and imprisonment of the president.

Annotations

Trump’s inaugural address privileged those who voted for him as the legitimate citizens...

Trump began the inaugural speech by addressing the people in general. He said that now “the people will become the rulers of this nation again.” Directly after that paragraph, however, Trump performed a rhetorical sleight of hand and made clear that he was addressing only those who voted for him, saying that “you came by the tens of millions to become part of an historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before.” While he did take the oath of office, at no time in the speech did he mention the Constitution or the importance of the rule of law (there is no phrase to the effect that “this is a government of laws, not of men and women”). The entire thrust of the first part of his speech was to actually posit a new legitimacy of Trump voters.

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Trump aggressively threatened the entire rest of the world with American power...

In his inauguration speech, Trump said, “We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be only America first, America first.” And later, “America will start winning again, winning like never before.” Trump then made clear what that means, and what extreme military measures he will take, when he said, “We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones—and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth.”

In his speech to the CIA, Trump reiterated his threat: “We have to get rid of ISIS. We have to get rid of ISIS. We have no choice. Radical Islamic terrorism—and I said it yesterday—has to be eradicated. Just off the face of the earth.” Right in the beginning, Trump previewed a theme of his talk: “We’re going to do great things. We’re going to do great things. We’ve been fighting these wars for longer than any wars we’ve ever fought. We have not used the real abilities that we have. We’ve been restrained.” Then he said, “There can be wars between countries. There can be wars.” Trump talked about all the military people he is putting in his administration, saying, “the generals are wonderful and the fighting is wonderful.” And then he talked about the Iraq war in order to put forward his agenda for why the U.S. should utilize its military might ever more aggressively and more viciously in the world. He said, “The old expression: ‘to the victor belongs the spoils’—you remember? You always used to say ‘keep the oil’.” Trump then lied: “I didn’t want to go into Iraq.” But then he followed that up with, “Maybe we’ll have another chance.” In this way Trump made it clear that he intends to use the full extent of U.S. military might, including nuclear arms, to wipe anyone considered an enemy of the U.S. off the face of the earth. And by telling the CIA, “I am with you 1,000 percent,” Trump made clear he will back any and all measures, including torture and other unconstitutional practices, in the service of U.S. imperialist interests.

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Trump unleashed a war against the press...

Trump bragged about his support in the military, police, and CIA. He said in the speech at the CIA: “You know, the military, and the law-enforcement generally speaking—but, all of it—but the military, gave us tremendous percentages of votes. We were unbelievably successful in the election with getting the vote of the military and probably almost everybody in this room voted for me, but I will not ask you to raise your hands if you did. But I would guarantee a big portion. Because we’re all on the same wavelength, folks. We’re all on the same wavelength.”

A major part of his speech to the CIA was to continue his attack on the press. In the first minutes, he said, “I always call them ‘the dishonest media.’” He also said, “They [media] are among the most dishonest human beings on earth.” Trump tended his whole speech to the CIA with liesabout the turnout for his inauguration address. These claims—or what were called “alternative facts” by those in the Trump camp—have been proven to be lies by photos, historical facts, and other evidence by the press. Trump called the press liars for saying the turnout was 250,000: “We had a massive field of people. You saw that. Packed... It looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was... and I get this network shows an empty field. And it said we drew 250,000 people. Now that’s not bad. But it’s a lie.” And then Trump threatened: “So we caught them. And we caught them in a beauty. And I think they’re going to pay a big price.” So on day one of his presidency Trump has made it clear he is going to intimidate and suppress anything in the media that gets in the way of his fascist agenda.

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Trump made clear in his inaugural speech a genocidal thrust toward communities of color, painting stereotypes of subhuman communities and implying extreme repression to “stop the carnage”...

At the end of the first part of his inauguration speech, Trump mentioned the conditions of “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities,” and blasted the education system, ending with “And the crime and gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.” It is this last sentence that carries the weight of the paragraph—clearly targeting Black and Latino youth caught up in the gang life as the source of the problem. And then he followed up with: “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” In the one mention of the conditions of Black and Latino people in the inner cities, Trump clearly blamed the conditions on a section of the victims themselves, left out any mention of institutional and systemic racism, including mass incarceration and police brutality and murder, and went so far as to purloin a major slogan of the movement against police murder (No More Stolen Lives!) for his own purposes. In this context—and with a page posted at the White House webpage that very day titled “Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community” saying that “The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration”—this is a threat, not a promise.

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Trump and Pence have made the theocratic Christian fascist movement a key part of their ruling alliance...

In the CIA speech, as part of his diatribe against the press for reporting the fact that there was low attendance for the inaugural, Trump said: “And they said ‘Donald Trump did not draw well.’ And I said, ‘well it was almost raining.’ The rain should have scared them away. But God looked down and he said ‘we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.’” This is, on one level, lunacy—but it is deadly serious. Trump is claiming that he has the blessing of god, and he will use this claim to justify all sorts of horrific actions. In a similar vein, Trump declared in his inaugural speech, “We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we will be protected by God.” The close connection he makes here between the military/police and god is aimed at advancing the claim that whatever the military and police do is, again, blessed by god.

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Trump attempted to impose an alternate reality of “Trumpworld” on public discourse...

In the CIA speech, once again as part of his attacks on the press, Trump said, “And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number one stop is exactly the opposite. Exactly.” Here Trump simply denies the fact—amply recorded in his many tweets and quotes—that he has been repeatedly attacking the CIA and other spy agencies in the last couple of months.

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Trump called out and attacked other sections of the ruling class—for the purpose of silencing them and bludgeoning their acquiescence in his fascist reordering of society...

After some perfunctory acknowledgement of the presence of previous presidents at the inauguration and the help of the Obamas in the transition, Trump immediately launched into a verbal assault on the other sections of the ruling class: “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished—but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered—but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.” Trump didn’t name names—but it was clear he was including in this attack many of those in his audience he sees as ruling class rivals to the fascist vision and program.