Trump: The Vileness IS the Point

August 17, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The vicious misogyny and the scurrilous attacks on immigrants... the threats of violence against the Black Lives Matter movement should they dare to speak out at one of his rallies... the braggadocio and braying, the bullying and utter lack of substance or even reason... the refusal to admit he’s wrong, even when totally caught out in a lie or an outrageous slander... the flaunting of his riches and of his viciousness in getting them... these are not beside the point, or secondary things, about the Donald Trump candidacy. These ARE the point.

It is very revealing that the racists who feel betrayed by the Republican politicians for not “standing up for” the Confederate flag have rallied around Trump. They may not even know his record of whipping up racist, lynch-mob-like hysteria in New York during a notorious trial of Black and Brown youths that proved to be a frame-up (and for which those youths served years and years in prison). He doesn’t even have to say anything about it—they feel instinctively that he represents them. They dream of being him. They will follow him.

It is very revealing that Trump vows that he would go after and defeat any perceived “threats to America.” Even his ridicule of and personal attacks on established ruling class politicians like Barack Obama and John McCain serve a purpose—to attract those who are alienated from the politicians of today NOT because they serve reactionary ends, but because they do not do so aggressively and viciously enough!

And it is also revealing that even though the liberal populist Bernie Sanders has actually drawn bigger crowds, it is Trump who has been given hour after hour of air time on all the cable news channels to spout his poison. Sanders is also being used by the imperialists (see accompanying article). But Trump, for now, is being used to set the main tone and terms of things—to make sure that the grievances of the “angry white men” who have been taught to take out their resentments against those beneath them in the social pyramid, and who have been taught to aspire to bossing around and humiliating others, are given full voice and erected as a powerful pole in society. Those who make the decisions feel that it is useful to them that the outright white supremacy, male supremacy, and vicious hatred of immigrants (xenophobia) that is the cultural glue of America must be reinforced in a year when those who have been the victims of all that have been standing up, questioning, and resisting.

Trump is not a clown show. Trump is not a gimmick to boost TV ratings. Trump may spout idiotic rants, but these are calculated and the Trump campaign is deadly serious. Again, the rants and the viciousness and even the idiocy ARE the point. It is no coincidence that the summer of Trump is the summer when white men have gone into the streets with automatic rifles—at Stone Mountain, Georgia, to celebrate the Confederate war to maintain slavery (and in other places that have not been reported); in Ferguson, when Black people rebelled; at army recruitment centers around the country; and who knows where next. Please note: this is a very serious escalation, and has received very little attention from those who have given Trump center stage.

Bob Avakian has pointed to a lineup forming, including among the rulers, of a possible “coming civil war”—he has gone into the roots of why that could happen and he has made the analysis to show how, faced with such a situation, we must actually prepare for and hasten the emergence of the political conditions where revolution is possible, and then fight to win. He has led in developing a Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America that actually could, among many other things, clear away the soil that gives rise to one Trump after another and set totally different terms for a society in which resources and will are marshaled to overcome the scars of this society. Now more than ever—this analysis needs to be engaged.

For the time is late. Make no mistake. Have no illusions. They are preparing. Those who cannot stand what Trump represents, those who want justice, also need to prepare. But NOT by getting into a defensive crouch, and NOT by flocking to and sheltering under the wing of some Democrat (even one who claims to be “socialist”) or a “moderate” Republican in the vain hope of sliding by; but rather to get organized for an actual revolution to uproot everything in society that gives rise to, and gives a megaphone to, a Donald Trump.

 

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