Reader Responds to “The Shutdown...” Article
December 16, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Editor’s note: The following are excerpts from a reader’s correspondence responding to the Revolution article “The Shutdown, the Showdown, and the Urgent Need to Repolarize... for Revolution.” (see revcom.us) We are posting this as part of the important, ongoing discussion of the current situation and encourage our readers to write with their thoughts, including on this and subsequent articles, as well as responding to this correspondence.
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From a reader:
This article [“The Shutdown, the Showdown, and the Urgent Need to Repolarize for Revolution”] is one of the most powerful articles ever to appear on revcom.us. Not only is it informative in the most scientific sense of the word, it is incredibly USEFUL. I have gotten it into the hands of every progressive-minded person I can, and urge them to dig in and deepen their understanding of “the situation and its underlying dynamics,” and especially wrangle over the article’s points on what is to be done about all this. The fact that differences within the ruling class are not static but in motion is crucial, especially at a time when the Christian fascist movement is, as we say, busting a move.
What disturbs me terribly, however, is not anything that is in the article, but one thing that is not in it, what I believe is a serious error of omission. In delineating the key characteristics of American fascism circa 2013, the article does not include its deadly homophobic agenda. I search the article for any mention of this particular issue and I don’t find it. I think it’s wrong to assume that denial of same-sex rights, not to mention the prospect of pogroms and outright murder of homosexuals, are “included” within the article’s otherwise comprehensive points about subordination of women, abortion rights and traditional patriarchal relations in society.
The Christian fascists’ agenda re LGBT people has its own dynamic. It is so crucial to their outlook and plan to establish a theocracy that the leap to outright civil war or other major rupture with the status quo we have now could very well flow from how this contradiction plays out. Just as with abortion, it is one of their most uncompromising “lines in the sand.”
As the powerful April 2013 article upholding same-sex marriage rights put it: “There are conflicts within the ruling class of the U.S. over how to handle this. Some sections of the ruling class (more or less associated with the Republican Party) argue that a brutal enforcement of ‘traditional values’ is the only way to maintain the system in times of great social and economic turmoil. Within that mix, the head of the Christian fascist Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, told a right-wing talk show host that ‘I think you could see a social and cultural revolution if the Court goes too far on this.’ By ‘revolution,’ Perkins and others of his ilk mean violent fascist repression in one form or another.”
The Republican Party has written denial of same-sex rights into its program, and while there are some adjustments and compromises being made in the wake of widespread and growing support among the masses for same-sex equality, the Christian fascists have not changed their agenda on this question one bit. Just look at their activities outside the U.S., in Africa for example. Uganda’s homophobia is their pride and joy. Recently, they’re embracing and endorsing Russia’s prohibitions against same-sex relations. If the Christian fascists face difficulties right now in pushing overtly for outright genocide against homosexuals in the U.S. as they do in the Third World, that doesn’t mean they no longer have that arrow in their quiver.
As a revolutionary communist who happens to be gay, I realize I am opening myself up to the criticism of “identity politics” in writing these remarks, as if my motivation here is to assert some personal agenda over the interests of the revolution as a whole. I don’t think that criticism will stand. And I also don’t think specific mention of this contradiction in outlining the key battle points of the rising fascist movement is just adding another “laundry list” issue. “We can’t mention every single issue in every single article,” would go the criticism. I think the issue of same-sex oppression is on a par with the battles around the subordination of women, immigration reform, racial discrimination, creationism and global climate change in terms of its real potential to ignite an explosion in the developing dynamic. It’s no accident that in Germany the Nazis had an Office to Combat Homosexuality & Abortion.
I will end with this key quote from BAsics 3:25: “This is a contradiction which, in the society overall, is ‘out of the closet.’ It could be forced back into the closet, and underground, with not only the stronger assertion of the kind of fascist movement that is being supported and fostered by powerful ruling class forces in this period, but with the actual assumption of a fascist form of bourgeois dictatorship. But the struggle against the oppression of gay people is not going to be easily suppressed. We should understand the potential of this as well, and the need to relate correctly to this, to foster the further development of its positive potential and its contribution to the movement for revolution.”
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