Letters From a Reader: Why Getting Involved With the Democrats—Even to “Take Them Over From Within”—Will Wind You Up in the Arms of Fascists

Part 1: A Liberal Democratic Politician and a Fascist Functionary Walk Into a Bar... But What Happens Next Is Not Really a Joke

December 2, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Last week, the former Maryland governor and 2016 wannabe Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley confronted Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security Kenneth Cuccinelli in a Washington, DC bar.

O’Malley loudly called out Cuccinelli as “the son of immigrant grandparents who cages children for a fascist president.” Rather than let this go any further, Cuccinelli left the bar.

In contrast: One week earlier, at the most recent Democratic debate for this year’s candidates, 10 candidates talked for three hours and spilled out 22,000 words, but never once mentioned the “F” word.

It wasn’t because the question wasn’t put. The debate led off with a query to the candidates as to how central should Trump's conduct be to the presidential campaign, given that he was now being impeached. Bernie Sanders even grabbed the headline off the debate by warning Democrats NOT to be “consumed” with Trump—in other words, don’t call out Trump’s egregious and accelerating moves toward a fully fascist form of rule but focus instead on health care, climate change, and housing—lest they lose the election.

Now health care, housing, and especially climate change are all crucially important. But not only can none of these be solved within this capitalist-imperialist system, there will be no ability for any serious movement on any of these outrages to even function should Trump’s fascism fully consolidate. And every other candidate essentially followed the lead of this self-styled “socialist” in answering the question. They went after Trump’s “corruption,” but as to the question of the fascist character of what this entire regime has been doing—the open white supremacy that launched Trump’s campaign in 2016... the fact that his head of immigration, Stephen Miller, had just been revealed to have connections to the “white nationalist”—that is, Nazi—movement... the fact that there are increasing and accelerating moves toward Christian fascist religious domination in reinforcing patriarchy and gender oppression generally and in the spheres of education and culture... to all those, not a mumbling word.

And despite an explicit question on “white supremacist violence,” nobody linked that violence to the Trump/Pence regime and the blatant, open white supremacy of the regime; and only one candidate saw fit to even touch on the cages at the border.

You could also say—and I’ll make the case for it later this week—that the same general approach has been applied by the Democrats to these impeachment hearings.

In looking at the contrast between O’Malley’s simple truth-telling and the evasion and obfuscation of these candidates—and yes, even the “radical” ones like Sanders and Warren—I couldn’t help remembering something Bob Avakian said shortly after 9/11, when the fascist juggernaut now in high gear had picked up tremendous momentum under George W. Bush, and was implementing extremely repressive measures and embarking on criminal wars:

[I]t’s quite likely that if you gave truth serum to the liberals in the ruling class (and their liberal allies in society generally) they would tell you something along these lines: “You don’t understand what’s going on here, there’s a whole police-state fascist thing being set in motion. We’re doing our best to hold the ground against it, but you gotta understand what’s going on here.”

O’Malley didn’t need truth serum per se, but a glass of Guinness and the sight of this fascist child-torturer Cuccinelli seems to have performed a similar function. But BA then goes on to make the most telling point:

And there would be a certain truth to what they’re saying, although the standpoint from which they would be saying this is the standpoint of the imperialist bourgeoisie itself; and from this standpoint the ruling class liberals (and those who follow in their wake) will sooner or later (and often it is sooner) take this position: it is better, far better, to have all this war and police-state repression than to have our whole thing called into question or challenged fundamentally. [emphasis added]

Times have changed, and while the Democrats then overwhelmingly supported the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader assaults on countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa, they do not do so as openly today.

But they still refuse to state the truth about what humanity faces, and for the same reason: because to tell the actual truth that there is a fascist in the White House moving to implement this fascism, with all the horror that entails, could indeed lead to the calling into question and even the fundamental challenge to the whole thing.

And guess what? If O’Malley were running this year, he would’ve done the same.

Next: Part 2: The Democrats’ Impeachment Strategy: Whose Interests?