A RefuseFascism.org Teach-In

What is fascism . . . What it means for humanity that the Trump/Pence Regime is fascist And, Why It Must Be Driven Out.

A talk by Andy Zee

Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org

 

Updated March 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

This is a talk given by Andy Zee of the Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org, at the teach-in in New York City, March 17. It has been slightly edited for publication.

Thank you and welcome Live Stream and video audience. Tonight I am going to take some time to get deeply into the Refuse Fascism Call to Action. Then, we will have a discussion and then the local chapter has a plan for some smaller discussions, which will not be livestreamed.

It is my intention that this talk provide a deeper understanding of what we face with the Trump/Pence regime and what we need to do to stop it. This talk should spark other teach-ins, dialogues, salons, forums, short YouTubes as well as provide impetus for planning and organizing to develop the ways and means to drive out the regime. So, let’s begin.

A Call to Action:

NO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America! Drive Out the Trump/Pence regime!

The Trump/Pence regime is a Fascist Regime. Not insult or exaggeration, this is what it is. For the future of humanity and the planet, we, the people, must drive this regime out.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence have assembled a vicious cabal that has put forth positions and begun initiatives which demonstrate that they fully intend to shred political and social norms with catastrophic consequence. Because Trump has his finger on the nuclear trigger, the Trump/Pence regime is more dangerous to the world than even Hitler.

So begins the Call to Action of Refuse Fascism. Today we are going to deeply dig into the import and significance of this Call to Action.

After the Call makes the case for how and why the Trump/Pence regime is fascist and what this fascism means including why it poses a grave threat to humanity; it shows the process through which fascism develops; it sharply puts forth why people must not normalize or collaborate with a fascist regime; and, then in conclusion, the Call puts forward four broad objectives and tasks to stop it by driving out the regime. So I am going to break down the Call to discuss the fascism of the Trump/Pence regime; the process through which it unfolds; the danger of normalization, conciliation and collaboration; and the program of Refuse Fascism in the bold strokes of the four objectives at the Call’s conclusion.

The First of these Objectives is that OUR SINGLE UNIFYING MISSION MUST BE TO DRIVE OUT THE Trump/Pence regime.

Today we will answer: Why is this, DRIVING OUT THE REGIME, the unifying mission and objective of Refuse Fascism?

And, why must this become the goal for the millions of people who are agonized over what the Trump/Pence administration is doing… for the millions who took to the streets in the largest protest in U.S. history on January 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration.

And, in that context,

Why is the NO! and why is the Refuse Fascism Call to Action, a key guide to understanding what it is that humanity faces with the Trump/Pence regime and a broad framework of orientation and principles for stopping this fascist regime by getting to and achieving the single objective of ousting Trump/Pence from power. The Call, without mincing words, starkly puts forward what is at stake should we fail to do so.

The short answer to WHY is because they are bringing fascism. This is not hype or exaggeration, but what it is. And fascism when it is fully consolidated leaves little to no recourse for change.

A vignette from the Atlantic Monthly:

Stephanie Delgado-Garcia had volunteered for Clinton in Pennsylvania and went to vote with her formerly undocumented immigrant parents. She took a picture of her mother wearing a Hillary button in the voting booth. “I felt like I lost my country that night,” she said. “Here was a man who essentially told the American public that the America I thought was great was in fact broken for making my story possible,” she said.

Stephanie is not alone in her sense of loss. It’s personal for her, yet its cause and solution is societal. A week after the election I was at a brunch meet-up in Harlem and a older man from the neighborhood said that he couldn’t leave his house for three days after the election and didn’t look or speak to another person for the whole week until that brunch at a local restaurant. Mental health professionals report an increase in people seeking help from the trauma of the elections.

But this is not the worst of it. In Phoenix, Arizona, Guadalupe García de Rayos, who came to the U.S. when she was 14 and has lived here for 22 years and is now a 36-yr old mother of two children was arrested inside the U.S. Immigration office after she had reported to them, just as she had been doing every month for six years.The ICE agents had to bust their way through 100 immigrant rights defenders who had mobilized to defend the immigrants. They used their bodies to block the van, but it got through and Guadalupe was driven to the border and sent back to Mexico.

Millions of families now live in terror. Native Americans defending their tribal lands at Standing Rock, North Dakota—struggling in the cold of winter to prevent the water of the Missouri River from being poisoned by an oil spill—Native peoples who through their heroic and just struggle inspired thousands to join them were shut down by the Trump/Pence regime as the DAPL pipeline was approved.

Then, and this is crucial to understand, feeling unleashed by the new Trump/Pence fascist regime, the North Dakota state government passed a draconian law that basically says it is OK for drivers to run over protesters who are blocking a road in non-violent civil disobedience. Thirteen other states passed similar laws including Arizona, where in February the state senate passed a bill that could have allowed the state to seize your house, car, any assets you have if you take part in a political protest that the police call a riot—before you are convicted of any crime. THIS IS A COMING ATTRACTION OF THE FUTURE THAT LIFE UNDER FASCISM WILL BE. 

Yes, Fascism can happen here. It has begun. A fascist regime is in power. With the Republican Party in control of both houses of Congress, in control of the majority of most state legislatures and governorships, and soon possibly in dominant control of the Supreme Court, the danger is real. And, let’s be clear the Republican Party has been a fascist party for a long time now. And, as we will discuss later as we dig into the Refuse Fascism Call, the Democrats will normalize and collaborate with the regime because keeping the system going is more important to them than what this regime will mean for the masses of people and the future of humanity.

The anguish people feel is just. The actions of millions righteous. But, if people don’t know what they are up against, the nature of the beast we confront, then their actions will fall short of what is necessary.

If you treat a cancer with only painkillers and don’t get rid of the cells that are mutating and destroying your body, it will destroy your body. We face a political cancer. It must be driven from power.

PEOPLE ACT ON WHAT THEY UNDERSTAND. The KEY to opening up the possibility of Driving Out the Trump/Pence regime is how people understand the reality we face. If we understand the necessity we face with this draconian fascist form of rule, then, with leadership, people in their masses can find the will and the way to act to drive this cancer from power.

The Refuse Fascism Call is the sharpest analysis of what has changed with the assumption to power of the Trump/Pence regime. There is nothing else that identifies the problem as fascism so sharply and succinctly, and nothing else that provides a way forward commensurate with what humanity faces.

The Call is controversial. It is not what most people are already thinking and doing—even as we have seen that the Call really resonates with what people do know about the Trump/Pence regime. And, the Call reflects a different approach from how most people conceive of building a movement.

Typical “movement thought and process” is you figure out what most people already want to protest around and call a protest. Then repeat. It doesn’t matter whether your protest is actually addressing the problem people face, or if it will lead people to better understand that problem, or if it will enable them to see more clearly what will redress or solve the problem.

The point I am making is that if you tell people only what they already know, you will leave them, and the terrible situation they are in, right where they already are.

What we are doing with this Call is tapping into the huge reservoir of people who feel, as Eddy Grant once sang, that “deep in my heart, I abhor” what this regime represents, and who have stood up, who continue to protest, and it leads them and millions more to see the nature of the beast we are up against and therefore, what must be done.

Let’s go back to the CALL and see what it says about the Fascist Regime:

In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!

Drive Out the Trump/Pence regime!

The Trump/Pence regime is a Fascist Regime. Not insult or exaggeration, this is what it is. For the future of humanity and the planet, we, the people, must drive this regime out.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence have assembled a vicious cabal that has put forth positions and begun initiatives which demonstrate that they fully intend to shred political and social norms with catastrophic consequence. Because Trump has his finger on the nuclear trigger, the Trump/Pence regime is more dangerous to the world than even Hitler.

Let’s stop here—TRUMP is even MORE dangerous than Hitler... Trump has said... if we have nuclear weapons, why don’t we use them? He has said, then “let’s have a nuclear arms race”... this at a moment when tensions around the world are extremely tense from the Mideast to North Korea.

His strategic adviser, Stephen Bannon, who Trump has put on the main committee that deals with matters of the national security, the National Security Council, who calls himself an economic nationalist—with his Alt-Right platform, Breitbart... and let’s dispense with euphemisms, he is a FASCIST with a program that echoes very closely the Nazi Party, that he sees a war that could last decades between Judeo Christian Civilization and Islam, which is thinly veiled as a war of the WHITE north.

Yes, Trump is more dangerous. Hitler could only dream of such a weapon.

Continuing from the Call:

Fascism has direction and momentum. Dissent is piece by piece criminalized. The truth is bludgeoned. Group after group is demonized and targeted along a trajectory that leads to real horrors. All of this has already begun under the Trump Regime. History has shown that fascism must be stopped before it becomes too late.

… (I’m going to skip a paragraph)

In the first weeks of the Trump/Pence regime they have begun subverting the separation of powers, the separation of Church and State, called for a new nuclear arms race, demonized the press, dismissed the very concept of truth substituting their own fabricated “alternative facts.” It can already be said of Trump/Pence that “first they came for” the Muslims, then the Mexicans, then all refugees, then women, then Black and Latino people, LGBTQ persons, the environment, and anyone who doesn’t conform or submit to their vision and plan for a nation cohered around white supremacy and a political form of Christian fundamentalism, that should rightly be called Christian Fascism.

Three points:

[1] Fascism has direction and momentum: Dissent is piece by piece criminalized. The truth is bludgeoned. I have spoken some about this but we should be clear that there is a method to this madness—destroy all credibility in what is objectively true, make everything a matter of opinion and narrative, create a narrative of an aggrieved section of the people—the true Americans (read white people who get behind Trump’s America First fascist movement, and those people from other groups who can be compelled to fight and die to defend Trump's vision of America while demonizing and preparing for war against every “OTHER” group of people), and ENFORCE this by [a] criminalizing dissent—including having the state (that is the police) lock people up and worse for what has been, at least formally, a protected right to free speech; and [b] mobilizing his mob to beat people up and “take them out on a stretcher.” Make no mistake: the murder of a man from India at a bar after work in Kansas, is already happening and is a forewarning of what is to come.

[2] The Call says: “First they came for the Muslims, the Mexicans, then all refugees and immigrants...”

THIS THEY HAVE BEGUN. Communities are terrorized... Families torn apart. But, this is madness with an objective—to demonize, drive people to live in the margins in constant fear, and more fundamentally to drive millions out, if not actually throw them out... And at the same time, to enlist the whole country in a morality and ethos of complicity to stay silent or to join in.

The groundwork was laid before... “If you see something say something.” Mass deportations—three million deported under Obama... but, the program of Trump/Pence is a leap beyond.

Let’s be clear of yet another method to the madness—so that we can understand the way that the whole society gets re-molded with fascism. Note the step-by-step progression... of “First they came for the Muslims… then they came for the Mexicans.” What happens: First, the “undesirables,” to the fascists that is, get demonized, driven under ground, locked up and thrown out, if not ultimately worse. Then, everyone else who goes along with this becomes part of the problem—complicit and paving the way for a whole society to be a part of fascist order. And, three, all this prepares the people for aggression and war against people all over the world to assert American Empire in a different way than has been the dominant way that the U.S. has gone about this.

[3] That paragraph ends with the vision of a “nation cohered around white supremacy and a political form of Christian fundamentalism, that should rightly be called Christian Fascism.”

Now you might think that Donald Trump, a lifelong vile sexual predator, and the Christian Fundamentalist movement are complete opposites. But, what they share is a thoroughly misogynist view of women—a view and horrific practices that objectify, degrade, control, brutalize, and cost women not only the ability to live full lives as people, but even their very lives.

So, we need to understand the roots of what has coalesced in the Trump/Pence regime.

What we are dealing with is not just another really repressive and reactionary Republican administration, not principally a vile narcissist with a twitter feed with a bunch of racist billionaires surrounding him, but a regime that has brought together what has been developing—fascist movements, white supremacist KKK/militia and Tea Party movements that overlap with a huge Christian Fascist movement—that have been taking root inside of and outside of the power structures for several decades now, which have been brought together under the Trump/Pence regime that will codify—that is cement—into law a fascist America and change life as we have known it in ways that you can’t imagine. Donald Trump has become the vehicle to political power for a whole ugly range of fascist movements that have been growing with their separate media, culture, arms and militia, as well as being infused up into the military and especially various formations of special forces.

Stephen Bannon has said that America is not just a nation with an economy, but at the center core of what “we believe” is that “We are a nation with a culture and reason for being.” And, this culture is white, Christian against all others. This is why immigration is central to the start of the Trump/Pence fascist regime. And, we should be clear that they will work to enlist Black people and immigrants into their fascist America as enforcers here and around the world of this horrific program by making these the only choices to avoid destitution, incarceration, or deportation, or even worse.

Christian Fascism and Donald Trump may not be a perfect fit, but they don’t have to be.

For an in depth understanding of this whole process I recommend that you get into the “The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy… And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer” by Bob Avakan, the leader of the RCP who has developed a new synthesis of communism.

All of this comes together in the next paragraph of the Call, which concentrates the most defining features of fascism... and as such ties together what I have been speaking about:

Fascism is not just a gross combination of horrific reactionary policies. It is a qualitative change in how society is governed. Fascism foments and relies on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive re-institution of oppressive “traditional values.” In Trump’s election campaign he encouraged and fed on the threat and use of violence to build a movement and come to power. In his inaugural address he pledged allegiance only to this movement. What is crucial to understand is that once in power fascism essentially eliminates traditional democratic rights.                                

The Trump/Pence regime has brought together under the banner of “Make America Great” all of these things: racism, xenophobia (fear and hatred of others), hatred of women and differently gendered people, a re-institution of traditional values... but what is essential to understand is that this will create tremendous misery for masses of people here, and around the world, and what is most important to understand is that with fascism’s basic elimination of what have been democratic rights—the right to dissent, not papering over the repression that normally goes on against opposition forces in this society—what fascism discards in traditional rights, will make it immeasurably harder to fight for any kind of better future. In most countries where fascism has been fully consolidated, it has only been removed by an outside force, such as defeat in war.

So I have taken some time to go into the sections of the Call that succinctly describe fascism. To put this another way, fascism is a qualitative change in how a capitalist/imperialist society is governed, including what the societal norms have been—which means what the values, morality, and customary way that people relate to each other and to different groups in society has been. The Trump ethic of bullying and to the victors belong the spoils—whether in how predatory men like him relate to women, or white people relate to everyone else, or his doctrine of war—which is really straight up undisguised colonialism—and I quote Mein Trumpf: “to the victors belong the spoils.”

Fascism means the virtual elimination of basic democratic rights, including the right to dissent. Yes, such rights have been severely limited and curtailed for whole sections of the people from the foundation of this country, and increasingly so (with 2.3 million still incarcerated as of last year, and over 3 million people deported during Obama's administration), but fascism, what Trump/Pence are preparing to bring down on society, is on a whole other level.

Fascism uses violence of the mob and of the state to demonize, attack, destroy and divide people to accomplish these objectives. Fascism makes the whole society complicit in horrific immoral crimes. A whole society of what people have rightly called “Good Germans” referring to the millions of German people who looked the other way as first communists and radicals were hauled away, then gypsies, then people with disabilities, then the Jews were rounded up and slaughtered.

Not only does the Refuse Fascism Call to Act starkly put forth what is the essence of fascism, which we have just gone into, but it goes into what kind of struggle is necessary.

So, I am going to go back to a crucial paragraph that I left out that comes early in the Call:

After it says:

Fascism has direction and momentum. Dissent is piece by piece criminalized. The truth is bludgeoned. Group after group is demonized and targeted along a trajectory that leads to real horrors. All of this has already begun under the Trump Regime. History has shown that fascism must be stopped before it becomes too late.

The next paragraph reads:

Millions of people, outraged by this regime, took to the streets delivering a stinging rebuke to Trump the day after the inauguration. Protest and resistance continues against the many attacks on the people by the Trump/Pence administration. This must grow broader, deeper, and more determined. This resistance is righteous and necessary, but it is not sufficient. We must recognize that the character of fascism is that it can absorb separate acts of resistance while continually throwing the opposition off balance by rapidly moving its agenda forward. The Trump/Pence regime will repeatedly launch new highly repressive measures, eventually clamping down on all resistance and remaking the law… IF THEY ARE NOT DRIVEN FROM POWER.

This is a critical paragraph in this call. I want to highlight Two Points:

[1] Millions took to the streets and millions are still agonizing over what this regime means for the future and want to act. And, there are thousands, who continue to act.

Everyone who has a heart for the people, who recognizes the danger of this regime should welcome and uphold righteous acts of resistance and protest. This resistance must grow broader, deeper, and more determined. Refuse Fascism should unite with such resistance, talk and work with people, as well as at times, call actions itself so that the resistance involves more and more people, so that it reaches into sections of the people who have not as yet been active—this is one of the reasons why the Refuse Fascism Tour that is now in Texas at SXSW is traveling the country and why we need more such tours, and the protest needs to become more determined. If the future depends on what people do now, and it does, our actions should reflect that. Determination is not just tactics employed in a protest, but the serious commitment to resist until victory is won.

The Call next says: “This resistance is righteous and necessary, but it is not sufficient.” And goes on to give the reason for this:

... the character of fascism is that it can absorb separate acts of resistance while continually throwing the opposition off balance by rapidly moving its agenda forward. The Trump/Pence regime will repeatedly launch new highly repressive measures, eventually clamping down on all resistance and remaking the law… IF THEY ARE NOT DRIVEN FROM POWER.

This identifies a crucial understanding that even if particular measures are partially rolled back or stymied, even if Trump sends out nice tweets and reads from a teleprompter for an evening... even if there are partial pushbacks on one or another front... as long as the regime has its hands on power, they can move very quickly to change the rules of the game. If we just look at the way they summarily dismissed all of the U.S. Attorneys from the Obama administration on a Friday morning calling for them to be out by the end of the day, whether or not there was a replacement or a crucial case pending; or the way they fired the Acting Attorney General when she defied Trump, gives you a glimpse of why and how they can in an instant change the rules of the game. For now, they are reluctantly and only more or less “obeying” the rulings that have stayed the Travel Ban—but they fully intend to make this the law.

Stephen Miller, Attorney General Sessions’ former staff member and now key adviser to Trump—a person, by the way, who is a protégé of and recommended by David Horowitz, a reactionary fascist who has made it his life’s work to purge the universities of critical thinking and progressive thought—said: “The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.” (Emphasis added)

If you don’t get that what we are dealing with is not just another really repressive and reactionary Republican administration, but an emerging fascist regime, your fight will be rearguard—your fight will be only in reaction to whatever they do, and misleading people into what will be a disaster.

If you don’t get this nature of what we are up against you will be pulled to other easier solutions other than what it will take for the people to put a stop to this and why stopping this regime requires that the people be mobilized to Drive Out the Regime.

Instead, you will wait it out, or work for the next election, or look to just create a safe space—an enclave to escape and hope against reality to survive; or, you will fight the good fight and even see this as a great opportunity to “build your movement” against one or another or even many abuses... UNTIL ONE DAY THE Trump/Pence regime SLAMS THE DOOR SHUT.

The Trump/Pence regime IS IN POWER. That has real meaning and stakes. They have a riled up social base and they have the Republi-Fascist Party in power in Congress and a majority of State Houses. If that is the case, why do we say that it is still possible to STOP them? That it is Possible to Drive Them Out. Because there is a WINDOW for us to act NOW. That window is open, not wide, but open, and it could slam shut crushing and much more thoroughly closing off the possibility to put a stop to the fascist program.

Let’s go to the next section of the Call:

Don’t Normalize... Don’t Accommodate… Don’t Conciliate...

Don’t Collaborate…

There is method to Trump’s madness that echoes Hitler. Fascism advances in stages through outrage, shock and intimidation, followed by brief periods of normalization where people accommodate to the new situation the regime has imposed.

 After the election, Obama said of Trump: “We are now all rooting for his success.” NO! If Trump succeeds, humanity loses. Bernie Sanders has said that he will work with Trump on jobs or where they agree. NO! If you work with fascists you normalize the road to horror.

This is not just a pendulum swing Democrat to Republican, but a regime that is moving to establish a fascist order under the signboard of “America First.” Acting as if the election in 2018 or 2020 is the way to deal with this regime is folly, betraying a lack of understanding of just how fast, furious, and profoundly this regime will change the rules, cement its rule, destroy lives and crush spirits.

You cannot try to “wait things out.” Those who lived through Nazi Germany and sat on the sidelines, looking on as Hitler demonized, criminalized, and eventually rounded up one group after another, became shameful collaborators with monstrous crimes.

Let’s break this down:

» FASCISM HAS A TRAJECTORY—it is a serious restructuring and remaking of society while still within the framework of the system of capitalism and imperialism and for the objective of strengthening that system as seen by one faction, which itself is fractious—divided and fighting amongst themselves even as more fundamentally they move with haste to implement their program—a fractious, fascist faction of a powerful section of the ruling class who now have control of all three branches of the Federal government and the majority of state governments, and, as we saw in the election, they have a huge base in the police forces, the border patrol, and significant influence in the intelligence apparatus and the military.

Yet, it is extremely important to recognize that, even as they have captured the Presidency and established a regime of ghoulish thugs, nonetheless, to hammer their full agenda, to implement their full fascist vision and program, they are not on a clear playing field. It will be a fight that they have to wage... which they are doing—seizing initiative everyday even as they create new problems for themselves as they bulldoze ahead. It is important to learn from history and from what they have said and what they are doing that the regime will unfold their program in steps but with an overall pace and method of unrelenting shock and awe. There is method to the madness. But, most important, we need to understand that this is a fight that the Trump/Pence regimes has to wage in opposition to:            

» Struggle within the ranks of the rulers... They must target their opposites grouped mainly in the Democratic Party, but not only... and, as the section I just read sharply makes clear, for the Democrats, preserving the system is more important than stopping fascism. This struggle is sharp: Think about the chant “Lock her up” or maybe the Second Amendment people will take care of it...

» The fascist regime, even as it attempts to shatter previous world relations and norms, nonetheless does so in a situation of real world events that are beyond their control. There are many other players on the field.

» Even natural disasters can impact (Katrina) but even more, the actions of other forces who aren’t in power e.g., from reactionaries (such as ISIS), to the righteous struggle of people around the world (such as the Arab Spring).

» And, in what is decisive and central for us here in Refuse Fascism but really for all the people who want to see this regime gone, they must implement their full agenda in relation to the people of this country (and the world). And what the people do and don’t do in relationship to the measures they are taking and in response to their regime. What the people are led to do, what we lead them to do, to be able understand what the problem is that they face and how to respond, will have a lot to do about whether or not the regime is able to force people to comply with its edicts and how it distracts, bribes, and divides people.

Every section of society will be “in the field” putting forward different programs and viewpoints and advocating different courses of action.

This is the ground, the field, the terrain, that the Regime must contend with and it is the field that we are acting on—working to lead people to understand in very basic terms the problem and act in a way that can win—by driving out this fascist regime.

Back to the CALL:

Fascism advances in stages through outrage, shock and intimidation, followed by brief periods of normalization where people accommodate to the new situation the regime has imposed.

I am going to just read the Bold Face...

If you work with fascists you normalize the road to horror.

This is not just a pendulum swing Democrat to Republican, but a regime that is moving to establish a fascist order under the signboard of “America First.”

You cannot try to “wait things out.

Obama once again led the way in demobilizing and ideologically disarming people. The fact is, for the same underlying reasons that give rise to the move from one faction of the rulers—the Republicans—to embrace a full out fascist program, is also the underlying reason that Obama and the Democrats could not and would not meet the real needs of the people who see them as representing their interests. This is why there are still no jobs for the masses of people, why Obama deported three million people, why mass incarceration stayed at genocidal levels. There are larger forces and imperatives of their system and empire that compel this. Then you have people like Bernie Sanders, and there are others, who want to sit down at the table to work with the fascists once again for bribes and jobs. Was it OK to work on re-building the factories and infrastructure in Germany in the early 1930s? Hitler did put people to work. But at what cost to humanity?

I can’t take the time here to discuss the media in any depth—all the ways and reasons they are under attack from Trump—fundamentally, as indicated earlier, to create a population that can’t think critically, that believes the narrative of its choice, all the while the regime creates a new reality that one day you MUST accept. And, while there is some resistance from the media, including a few real stands of principle, the norm is to treat this just as more partisan politics—with a nut case on one side who can’t resist mouthing off in person or on Twitter, all the while disarming people to understand the real deal.

There must be total non-compliance with this regime. Period. Scientists are now furiously copying scientific data so that a science-denying regime doesn’t destroy years of human knowledge even as they are rapidly moving to reverse even the grossly insufficient measures that have been taken thus far in the last few decades to protect the environment.

Last, on this section warning against normalization that leads to collaboration... be clear that is a slippery slope that gets fast quick, and the longer this regime is in power, the slicker and steeper and the faster and the more difficult it will get to put on the brakes and to get off the track of cooperating with a regime that is illegitimate, immoral and a mortal threat to humanity and the planet.

Once again, from the Call:

Those who lived through Nazi Germany and sat on the sidelines, looking on as Hitler demonized, criminalized, and eventually rounded up one group after another, became shameful collaborators with monstrous crimes.

At this point the CALL to Action says:

All of this is what renders the Trump/Pence regime illegitimate and a grave threat to people all over the world. Therefore, we resolve:

[1] Our single unifying mission must be to Drive Out the Trump/Pence regime.

[2] We must manifest the power of NO! everywhere: on signs, billboards, walls, social media and the news. NO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America must resound.

[3] Every outrage committed by this regime must be met with greater and greater resistance.

[4] We must ORGANIZE: working with all our creativity and determination toward the time when millions of people can be moved to fill the streets of cities and towns day after day and night after night, declaring this whole regime illegitimate—Demanding, and Not Stopping, Until the Trump/Pence regime Is Driven from Power.

I have been speaking to the single unifying mission of Driving Out the Regime throughout this talk and will say a few more things when we get to point four on organizing for the kind of situation where the regime can be driven out. First I want to speak to Point 2: We must manifest the power of NO! everywhere: on signs, billboards, walls, social media and the news. NO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America must resound. And, also, in this context the importance of getting out this Call to Action.

Through the getting the NO! known everywhere in this country... and through getting this Call wherever people are questioning, agonizing standing up, fighting back, resisting Trump and Pence... having it discussed and debated in and on the media and social media... in forums in the universities, the Town Squares and Town Halls as well as the classrooms and religious institutions... All of this spreading the NO! And Spreading the Call! When COMBINED with organizing, organizing people into Refuse Fascism, including uniting with struggles, as I discussed earlier, including Refuse Fascism itself calling for specific mass resistance and outpourings... all of this contributes to broadly raising consciousness, changing how people think, even if initially by introducing a new, different, and more accurate understanding of the problem and the way out... all of this contributes to that one single unifying mission to DRIVE OUT THE Trump/Pence regime because we Refuse to Accept a Fascist America—not just for people here in the U.S., but in the name of humanity.

All of this... together with things that are beyond our control, things that develop in the world everyday, some that the Trump regime does and the resistance that their actions call forth—as well as things that they or we don’t initiate but which every force has to respond to... all of this is part of the process of change… how people see the problem we face—what they think—and therefore what they see as necessary and possible to do.

Once again, people act on what they understand. Especially so when they face extreme situations. And, they need leadership—they need people who see the problem and the way out and who ACT and Lead on that understanding.

I've given the example of a fire. You know, if you are in a burning building, or you are just outside a building that's on fire, and don't know anything about it, about fire that is, and its properties, you could commit a big mistake. You could just start running around through the building, not knowing that most people die in fires of smoke inhalation.

But if you were a professional firefighter or you had learned something about this, you would understand that the first thing you've got to do is see if you can find some water, wrap it around a cloth and wrap it around your face and nose, and wrap similar pieces around other people's faces who are trapped in the fire, and then crawl out, getting below the level of the smoke since it rises. Because most people die of smoke inhalation and suffocation in that way. And yes, you would have to keep your eye out to be sure that the burning ceiling didn't fall in, or the floor didn't collapse. So those are things that you would have to know. But if you had experience in this you would have a chance to get people out of a desperate situation. But if you don't know what you are facing, you could make a grave error or run in terror when there are people who could be saved.

So that's by analogy. Right now people are acting against what the Trump/Pence regime is doing. They hate his despicable character. But they don't yet, en masse, meaning in their millions, understand the qualitative changes that this regime is going to bring and why only driving it out can bring it to a halt. Which is why they do protest, but why we are in a struggle to get people to understand what they face and therefore why we have to building up to the time when millions do want to act in such a way that they can drive the regime out.

This underscores why we need to get more deeply into the substance of the Call and do so with the kinds of questions that come up. Here I will speak to one of these questions—that it’s beyond the pale to compare Trump to Hitler, that Sunsara Taylor wrote about on revcom.us, “Why It’s Not Just Right, but Highly Illuminating and Very Necessary to Compare Trump to Hitler.” (I recommend the article and going to revcom.us everyday.) She got this from a reactionary, Tucker Carlson, but we hear this all the time from people who do want to resist Trump. What do they say:

» Don’t say that because it turns some people off—never mind if it is an important analogy that clarifies what we face and the stakes. But, why does it turn people off?

» Because it makes them uncomfortable? Why? What is the thinking behind their discomfort and does their thinking correspond to reality—to what the Trump/Pence regime actually is and will do? Does it help a patient if the doctor doesn’t tell them the truth about the disease they have and enlist them in the process of fighting the disease? No, it doesn’t.                                   

» Making the comparison with Hitler forces people to confront the enormity of the horrific future that this could mean... it’s unthinkable, not in their experience, not what the good people on CNN/MSNBC and their Facebook feed are leading them to think about. Denial of reality leads to paralysis and/or complicity.

» And/or some people who begin to see the truth that we face—fascism—don’t want to confront the logic of where this will lead and what they should do in the face of that horror—the changes they should make to their lives and work to stop this. If you wait till it really gets bad to disrupt your life and act, it could well be too late.

» And/or those who know a little, or even a good deal of history, they sometimes get hung up on the surprising fact that this is not Germany, that it is not 1933, and that the development of fascism in the U.S. is taking place here and now and not then and there... In short, they are not able to drill down to the essence of what fascism is and pull back the lens to see the larger picture.

Once you do that, you can see how eerily fitting the parallels between Hitler and Trump/Pence are... and how much there is to learn from the analogy and the history.

Fascism has been developing in the U.S. over decades and is now coalesced in this regime. Yes, fascism comes to America wrapped in the American Flag, America First, and the Bible... (once again I recommend reading “The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy... And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer” and The Coming Civil War and Repolarization in the Present Era by BA).

I spoke earlier to the third point of the three-part program at the end of the Call: Every outrage committed by this regime must be met with greater and greater resistance.

Here, just a few comments on the fourth point: once again,

We must ORGANIZE: working with all our creativity and determination toward the time when millions of people can be moved to fill the streets of cities and towns day after day and night after night, declaring this whole regime illegitimate—Demanding, and Not Stopping, Until the Trump/Pence regime Is Driven from Power.

If this happens, then the whole political landscape would be dramatically transformed, every faction within the established power structure would be forced to respond—and all this could lead to a situation in which this fascist regime is driven from office.

This is what we are aiming for. The key to it is understanding the necessity we face and then, on that basis, organizing, organizing, organizing—bringing forward the people who see this, to work and struggle together, to develop the plans that can unite with the many, many people who yearn for this nightmare of the Trump/Pence fascist regime to be gone, to find the pathways and the leaps to building the struggle ultimately of millions who have the determination to not stop until the battle is won, to be in the streets in their millions creating such a political crisis that the ways and means are found to boot this regime out of power.

We must have our sights clearly on this objective—spreading the NO! Uniting with struggles that are going on—helping to make them broader, deeper, and more determined, organizing people and raising the funds so that organizers can be freed up, so that signs and stickers and billboards can be paid for, building the organizational capacity to really reach the millions who need to be reached and brought into a great struggle to oust the regime.

Join with Refuse Fascism, reject the politics of hatred and cruelty, racism and misogyny, xenophobia and war for empire against other peoples around the world, think and reject the no-nothing anti-scientific bullshit of this regime—from Trump’s lies to Mike Pence’s biblical literalist repressive future. Sign and circulate The Call... and as The Refuse Fascism’s Call to Action concludes:

Let it not be said that we did not move heaven and earth to drive out this regime. This must be a moment in history when millions stand together with conviction and courage, overcoming fear and uncertainty, to resist and say NO! Not just for ourselves, but in the name of humanity.

Drive Out the Trump/Pence regime!

 

For full coverage and the current issue of REVOLUTION click here

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.