January 17, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The following was received from the Revolutionary Communist Group of Colombia. The translation is the responsibility of revcom.us/Revolution.
The FASCIST Trump-Pence Regime Is an Alarming Danger for Humanity and We Have to Stop It!
On January 20, Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States is scheduled. If his fascist regime begins, the most powerful machinery of domination that exists today in the world, the Yankee imperialist state, will be led by this rabid fascist and the Christian fundamentalist Mike Pence and a whole team of white supremacists, xenophobes, Christian fundamentalists, and women-haters. The repercussions of the establishment of such a fascist regime constitute an alarming danger, not only for the United States, but for the whole of humanity.
Like bourgeois democracies, fascism consists in the exercise of dictatorship by the capitalist class, but by unleashing open terror and violence against those whom it considers “undesirable” and “enemies” and against the masses in general, passing over so-called civil and political rights, and in the vast majority of cases with the exaltation of nationalism and racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and tradition. Such a regime means all that.
The Trump-Pence regime is a grave danger for immigrants, Latinos and Muslims: As the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico, correctly puts it, “Mexicans and Muslims are, to Trump, what the Jews were to Hitler.” Like Hitler in Germany, Trump has used the exaltation of nationalism and the promotion of hatred of foreigners. He has fueled hatred and attacks against immigrants, has sworn to build (or rather expand) a wall on the Mexican border, branded Mexicans as “rapists and criminals” and threatened to deport more than 11 million “illegal” immigrants.
If his regime begins, this will deepen the stigmatization of Muslims and anyone who professes Islam or any faith other than Christianity. Trump threatened to not allow any Muslim to enter the United States, and Mike Pence assured that they will extend this to those of other religions if they come from countries or territories they regard as terrorists; and it’s not just a question of “incendiary statements:” Trump has appointed to high positions Christian fundamentalists such as Mike Flynn, who has repeatedly asserted that Islam is a “cancer,” that it is rational to fear Muslims and that Islamic cultures are inferior to the imperialist West. We cannot allow all this and more to take place!
The Trump-Pence regime is a grave danger for Black people: It will give more free rein to the white supremacy and racism that have characterized the United States since its founding, it will unleash lynch mobs and empower the police to continue murdering Blacks, especially young Blacks, with impunity. Steve Bannon, picked by Trump as senior adviser and chief strategist, makes clear what his government will mean for Blacks when he proclaims that the slave flag of the Confederacy must be “raised and waved with pride,” for it “proclaims a glorious heritage.” We cannot allow all this and more to take place!
The Trump-Pence regime is a grave danger for women: It will concentrate, as closely related elements, two expressions of brutal oppression against women: On the one hand, Donald Trump is the personification of the culture of rape, degradation and objectification of women that exists in this society, boasting of being a harasser of them who grabs them by the genitals, calling to “treat them like shit” and insisting that the value of a woman is determined by her “sex appeal.” Such a fascist regime will play a disgusting role in propagating in society all this misogynistic culture as “normal.” At the same time, Mike Pence—as a representative of the Christian Fascist movement that wants to impose a society based on a literal interpretation of the Bible—will push the efforts to gut the basic rights of women conquered with fierce struggle, especially the right to abortion. Blatantly showing his fascist fangs, Trump said he would nominate judges to the Supreme Court to overturn this right and threatened women who have an abortion and the doctors who perform them with jail time. We cannot allow all this and more to take place!
The Trump-Pence regime is a grave danger to the planet: Trump has publicly stated that he believes climate change is a “hoax” invented by China, and this is not just nonsense coming from his own fascist prattle; those who were picked to hold the highest environmental-related positions are Rick Perry, nominee for energy secretary, and Scott Pruit, who was picked to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who systematically and against all scientific evidence have denied the existence of climate change. So willing are they to silence anyone who opposes their anti-scientific verdict that they asked for the names of those who have researched and worked to prevent climate change in the last five years and the emails that they have exchanged about it! Climate change researchers and scientists have taken this threat so seriously that they have hastened to back up their research outside of the United States.
The extraction of fossil fuels such as oil will be exacerbated by destructive techniques such as fracking. Scott Pruit, shameless advocate of these measures, and Rex Tillerson, chief of Exxon-Mobil and future secretary of state, will be responsible for seeing that the destruction of the environment will further serve the Yankee imperialists’ interests. We cannot allow all this and more to take place!
The Trump-Pence regime is a grave danger to the truth and to critical and scientific thinking: For these fascists to attack all scientific evidence of climate change, to claim that the “big bang theory is ridiculous,” to attack proven facts like evolution and to, in its place, be determined to teach in schools that the Earth was created in six days, shows the fundamentalist and obscurantist character that their regime will have. These fascists have a total disregard for the truth and science.
Unashamedly, they massively propagate crude falsehoods, distortions and deliberate deceptions and attack anyone who criticizes them. And they will not just say it, this regime will strengthen the state repressive machine against those who think differently, and already warned those who hate what the system represents: “No one should be allowed to burn the American flag. If someone does, there must be consequences. Maybe the loss of citizenship or a year in jail!” We cannot allow all this and more to take place!
The Trump-Pence regime means imperialist and even dirtier wars: Trump has sworn to take the “fight against terrorism” to new levels without “hindrances,” such as a ban on torture. With the excuse that jihadists use methods of torture—taught and trained by the Yankees themselves—he seeks to establish its use as legal and legitimate. He promised the widespread use of the waterboarding and tortures “worse than the waterboarding.”
This bloodsucker will have the nuclear codes and will be in charge of “greatly reinforcing and expanding the nuclear capacity” of the United States. Contrary to what some deluded people think of the tactical changes in the Russia-United States relationship, the contradiction between the imperialists, instead of being mitigated, threatens to become more acute. The other imperialists will not stand idly by in the face of the moves announced by these fascists and they will also reinforce this type of weaponry, bringing the situation to the brink of a nuclear war, which, given the current technological development, means putting at risk human existence on this planet! We cannot allow all this and more to take place!
The Trump-Pence regime is totally illegitimate!
Some say that it is necessary to “wait and see what happens” because it remains to be seen if Trump will apply what he says or will take a moderate path. To begin with, the method that they apply is to choose to ignore the elephant in the room in order to avoid uncomfortable truths, creating false expectations about the Trump-Pence regime. But more importantly, history has shown how disastrous such passivity is.
Let us think for a moment about this little-known statement by Martin Niemöller, a German Protestant pastor who was arrested under the Nazi regime and who, like many of his generation, did nothing from the beginning to stop the fascists:
“We preferred to remain silent. Clearly we are not innocent and I wonder again and again: What would have happened if in 1933 or 1934, 14,000 Protestant pastors and all the Protestant communities in Germany would have defended the truth to their death? If we had said, ‘It is not right that Hermann Göring just puts 100,000 communists in concentration camps to die.’ I can imagine that perhaps 30,000 or 40,000 Protestant Christians would have died, but I can also imagine that we would have saved 30 or 40 million people, because that’s what [the silence cost us].”
It is true that history does not repeat itself, but it is also true that we do not have to repeat the same mistakes of the past, and the fascists will not “wait and see” how people respond to their government, but rather will go forward swords in hand to commit atrocities against the people, and they will promote the acceptance of these atrocities.
It is unacceptable to sit idly by. Nothing can give legitimacy to a regime like the Trump-Pence regime that will unleash monstrous crimes against humanity and which does not give a damn about destroying the planet in order to “make great again” an imperialist nation like the United States. Nothing can give legitimacy to a regime that plans to trample on millions and treat them as less than human. And a capitalist-imperialist system is no less illegitimate because its defenders at different levels, there and here, call to “keep calm” and accept this regime, as do bootlickers like [former Colombian President Álvaro] Uribe, [Colombian President Juan Manuel] Santos and even Timochenko himself [current commander in chief of the guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)], who by showing the real counterrevolutionary character of the FARC says that they hope that the Trump government “can play a prominent role for the benefit of world and continental peace.”
We communist revolutionaries have learned in blood that the alternative to the fascists is not, and never has been, bourgeois democracy or building a “real democracy.” We know that this has really served to mask and reinforce the dictatorship of the ruling classes over the people and that it has played a role in providing validity for ultra-reactionary positions within their “democratic system.”
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, imperialist kingpins like Trump but who differ in how to maintain domination and looting of the entire planet, have called for accepting the Trump-Pence administration because “such are the rules of the game,” rules which they, as a class, define and which they decide when to pretend to observe and when not to. Aligned with the ruling classes are advocates of all stripes of this system, who call for accepting Trump’s administration because he was “democratically elected” and “this is how democracy works.” In effect, bourgeois democracy does work this way and this is the role played by the forces that uphold this banner: to channel, confine and control all the political activity of the people within the limits of the bourgeois electoral system and within the framework of the “politics of the possible.” They indoctrinate the people with the idea that what is possible is that which is not outside the framework of the capitalist-imperialist system (regardless of the particularities), while seeking to lead people to not oppose reactionary programs, legitimizing the system, thus opening up the road to fascist forces like those of Trump and Pence. Fascists like Hitler and Mussolini also came to power through “democratic means” and they brought disastrous horrors for tens of millions of people.
In these times the future of the world is up for grabs. The sharpening of the contradiction between the imperialists, the accelerated drive of the environmental catastrophe to a point of no return, together with the promotion and normalization of right-wing programs in the world that is already evident in countries such as France, Germany, Holland, Chile, and Colombia, among others, represent an alarming danger for humanity. But this is not inevitable, it can be stopped.
Millions of people in the United States and around the world are rightly outraged and distressed by what such an illegitimate regime might mean. And within the ruling classes themselves there is contradiction as to whether the Trump-Pence regime can represent their imperialist interests long term, insofar as it might unleash opposing forces that call into question their entire system. As the comrades of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, have said, “the current angst and outrage could be transformed, in a very short, telescoped period of time, into resistance which reaches such massive proportions, and is characterized by such a depth of determination, that it actually creates a ‘crisis of rule,’ and prevents the Trump/Pence fascist regime from consolidating its hold on the governance of society.” (revcom.us) [This passage is from the Mission and Plan of Refuse Fascism—revcom.us editor.] It is true that such a possibility entails much difficulty given that dispersion and confusion is widespread among the people, but at the same time it is true that there is a real material basis for stopping this fascist regime. There is no guarantee that this will happen, but what is guaranteed is that without struggle, this will not be achieved. And people in all parts of the world have to be part of this struggle.
It is narrow and misguided thinking to think that this is an issue that only matters to the people of the United States. These fascists do take into account in their calculations the world arena, but there are some short-sighted people who do not see the repercussions for the world as a whole. There needs to be global resistance to a global threat. In a highly integrated and globalized world like today, the impact of resistance to the fascist Trump-Pence regime in many countries like Colombia and others is incalculable. We are faced with a vital question and we must answer here and now: Which side are we on? On the side of those who represent terror, war and the destruction of the planet; or on the side of humanity? Let us side with humanity and act accordingly!
Revolutionary Communist Group of Colombia | January 15, 2016
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