In what follows, we lay out the ways in which Trump has, since his inauguration just four weeks ago, gone on an all-out offensive to hammer firmly into place a fascist America.  

The revolutionary leader Bob Avakian opened his New Year's Message with this sharp and concise definition:

Trump 2025 is not just another administration coming into office. This is fascism: the undisguised dictatorship of this system of capitalism-imperialism in the world’s most powerful capitalist-imperialist country—openly and aggressively oppressive and repressive—a fascism fueled by anti-scientific and Christian fundamentalist lunacy, moving to forcibly impose its racist, immigrant-persecuting, woman- and LGBT-hating MAGA madness, determined to unleash unbridled capitalist plunder and naked imperialist expansionism, prepared to violently crush any opposition or resistance.

The article below shows how this is happening all across the board, and in society as a whole.

FASCISM IS ILLEGITIMATE

No matter how it comes to power (including if it comes to power through elections), fascism is always illegitimate. And here it has to be asked, for those who feel that Trump’s electoral victory somehow validates him:

Would anyone, other than blatant Nazis, argue that Hitler’s rule was legitimate, even though it rose to power through the “normal processes” of Weimar Germany? Would any decent person not agree that Hitler should have been driven from power, by mass mobilization, before his fascist rule was fully consolidated, with all the unspeakable horrors that followed?! 

As one critical part of his breakneck-speed efforts to hammer down this fascism, Trump is breaking all the norms, and in particular the rule of law and Constitutional principles, of this system. 

In the Declaration We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System, the revcoms make clear: 

So long as we are still living under the rule of this system of capitalism-imperialism, we will defend people against attacks on their lives and on the rights that are supposed to be guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. 

This defense is important in its own right and it is a critical part of defeating fascism. It is extremely urgent that all people—including those who right now fervently believe in this system’s Constitution and form of government—be united with to carry that fight forward. Those who have pointed to the shredding of the rule of law (go here and here, which are part of our page on Voices of Resistance) and called on people to resist are making important contributions—this must be built on and taken further.

At the same time, We Need and We Demand also says: 

[W]e need a whole different system, with a whole different Constitution—the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America—which will provide much greater rights for the people, including the basic right to have the fundamentally determining role in a new society and government whose purpose and goal is to eliminate all exploitation and oppression, everywhere.

It is both because this struggle is so important in its own right and as part of getting to that “whole different system” that we sound the alarm. The horrific attacks being mounted now will almost certainly take a leap to a “higher”—and significantly worse and much more difficult-to-turn-back—level if there is not a fight mounted against this whole illegitimate regime aimed at defeating this whole MAGA fascist program.

For all those reasons, we revcoms whole-heartedly support the call from Refuse Fascism to take to the streets on Presidents’ Day around the slogan:

NO! IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY, WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FASCIST AMERICA!

What follows is a view of the overall shape and dimensions of Trump’s attacks of the past four weeks and some of the key ways in which this has gone and is going down.

Trump/MAGA fascism sees Trump himself—and insists that others see him—as being above the law. 

On February 15, Trump put out a social media post stating that "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law," and then later pinned this to the top of his page. Trump once bragged that he could murder someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City in broad daylight and his supporters would still love him. This statement treats this as a matter of fact: that whatever Donald Trump does, so long as he does it in the name of “saving his country,” is legal. 

This theme began in his inauguration speech, when Trump announced that “My life was saved for a reason,” referring to his attempted assassination. “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

Trump treats the power of the office as a way to both unleash the MAGA vigilantes who worship him and to turn law enforcement into his private strike force.  

On his first day in office, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly every person who violently stormed the capitol on January 6, 2021 to prevent the counting of electoral votes (which Trump decisively lost) and to install Trump as president. The vast majority will be even more fanatically devoted to him as a result. Moreover, this action gives a green light to these thugs to attack as they wish without fear of punishment.

Trump has been waging war on those members of the FBI who had anything to do with the investigation of January 6, forcing resignations, firing some and making loyalty to Trump personally the chief criterion. His new FBI chief published an enemies list in a 2023 book, presumably of those he will be using the FBI to hound and persecute.

Trump also used the Department of Justice (DOJ) as a political tool to advance his own interests: this is highlighted in the recent case of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, indicted for bribery by the federal government before Trump assumed office. Trump’s DOJ ordered attorneys to file a motion dropping the indictment; the motion stated that part of the reason for this would be so that Adams could carry out policies in NYC against immigrants that Trump favored. The lead attorney for the New York District, as well as six other attorneys who were asked to do it, refused… and resigned in protest, knowing that they would be fired. In doing so, several of them sounded the alarm about the blatant violation of the basic rule of law.

Trump has also withdrawn Secret Service protection from former government officials who have come under physical threat but whom he now regards as his enemies; this includes former general and head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley (who opposed Trump’s attempted use of the army against protestors around the murder of George Floyd in 2020); Anthony Fauci, who is hated by Trump’s base for taking what were overall correct measures to stop the spread of COVID-19; and even former members of his administration who have fallen out of favor with him.

Trump/MAGA fascism is waging war on immigrants.

Also on his first day, Trump moved to end birthright citizenship, which is blatantly unconstitutional—a violation of the 14^th Amendment which established the constitutional right of citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. Trump also set in motion the massive persecution of millions of immigrants by giving a free hand to the immigration police to raid churches, schools, hospitals, and elsewhere. As part of this, he also moved to cancel the legal protected status of more than 500,000 refugees, which could make them subject to expulsion from the U.S. To handle all this, Trump opened up the torture dungeons at the U.S. military prison camp in Guantanamo, Cuba—where immigrants, who are already filling this hellhole—will be out of the reach of any legal assistance. At the same time, Trump offered instant political asylum to white South African farmers in South Africa. (See The Trump/MAGA Fascists Begin a Genocidal Offensive Against Black People—and Don’t Say “It Can’t Happen Here”!)

Trump is waging war against Black people.

We devote an entire article to this here this week. And as for Trump’s bullshit that he wants a “color-blind” America, we refer to Bob Avakian’s excellent analysis of the lie behind this constant fascist assertion here.

Trump has continued his misogynist woman-hating policies.

On February 13 Trump’s “secretary of health, education, and welfare,” Robert Kennedy, Jr., announced that “President Trump has asked me to study the safety of mifepristone.” Mifepristone is a drug that enables women to induce abortion at home. Since being approved 25 years ago, mifepristone has been used safely by around 6 million Americans, according to the FDA. Used widely for abortion and miscarriage care, it is over 95% effective and safer than Tylenol. However, Kennedy said, “I agree with him [Trump] that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year,” adding, “I serve at the pleasure of the president, I’m going to implement his policies.”  

Trump is viciously attacking trans people.

Trump built his campaign around hatred, fear-mongering and agitation directed against two groups—immigrants and trans people. He and his campaign relentlessly mocked and dehumanized them, lying about them and stirring up baseless fears. Trump carried his heartless, ignorant and extremely dangerous bullying into his inaugural speech, in which he declared that there are only two genders, which are determined "at conception,” which basically said that trans people do not exist and therefore merit no rights or recognition—and immediately tried to force as many as 1,500 trans women into men's prisons. While that attack was overturned, Trump has ordered an end to all payments, grants, etc. for transition medical care and related services for trans people under the age of 19 related to their transition—and he is working to ban transition care entirely; and has implemented measures to deny trans people federally financed health care and this has succeeded in making some hospitals shamefully withdraw treatment from trans youth. 

Meanwhile, they have gone so far as to remove the T, standing for Trans, in the National Monument at Stonewall Park, commemorating the fight for LGBT rights.

Trump has, from his inaugural speech on, made threat after threat against other countries and other peoples.

This has included threats to take over Greenland, threats against Panama to seize the Panama Canal, threats against Canada to annex it and, most outrageously of all, his continued insistence on his lunatic and genocidal “proposal” to force all two million Palestinians in Gaza out of their homeland and into permanent exile so that he can take it over and turn it into a luxury resort.

Trump has assaulted science and evidence-based thinking from the start, promoting ignorance (in the guise of “common sense”) and a militaristic and intolerant brand of religion aiming to dominate public life.

To begin with, Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head up the nation’s health. Kennedy has no background in medical science but has made a career of attacking life-saving vaccination and even the proven and essential scientific understanding that germs and viruses transmit disease. Trump has already begun to put the power of the federal government behind this lunacy; on February 14, he ordered federal funding withheld from schools and universities that require students to be vaccinated against COVID-19. 

But in some ways even more pernicious and deadly, Trump has promoted the idea that evidence-based thinking is not as important as what he calls “common sense.” “Common sense” told people that the earth was flat and that demons caused disease for centuries (and some Trumpites still believe that—but most people who have had the opportunity to learn to think about the big wide world do NOT). Nevertheless, “common sense” is used by these fascists as the justification for almost every measure. This enshrinement of “common sense” took on a gruesome and heartless dimension when Trump immediately said that the tragic airplane-helicopter collision on January 29, which caused 67 deaths, was caused by “DEI.” When the press asked him for evidence, he said “common sense”—in other words, Trump did not need evidence but could rely on his own racist and sexist prejudices instilled by his upbringing. 

Going along with this all-round promotion of ignorance, Trump has continued to build up the Christian fascists at the core of his “base.” In a pair of recent speeches to prayer breakfasts, he declared his mission to “defend the rights of Christians and religious believers” and “bring God back into our lives.” An executive order titled “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families” aims to divert potentially billions of dollars each year of public money to private, predominantly religious schools, with his Congressional allies expected to push for the first ever, nationwide, federally funded private school voucher program in the coming months. 

Trump has launched the multi-billionaire Elon Musk into an extremely powerful role, accountable only to Trump, to shut down or slash governmental agencies—especially those involved in any kind of assistance to masses of people.

Musk has bragged about putting a government agency—in this case USAID, a mechanism through which the U.S. carries out social programs in foreign countries as part of cementing its alliances—“through the wood-chipper.” He has either done, or announced the intent to do, similar things to other agencies—like the Department of Education, the Consumer Protection Bureau and at least a dozen others. The idea, as the newly anointed head of the Office of Management and Budget said, is to make people who work in these agencies “not want to go to work in the morning, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

Musk’s vicious antics have caused checks to be frozen, important programs that deeply impact people’s lives to crash to a sudden halt, and thrown thousands of people who have devoted their lives to service out of work overnight. When Musk’s minions have been called out for racism—one of them literally posted, among other things, “I was a racist before it became popular”—after a brief flurry, Musk has kept them on and continued the rampage. They have stuck their nose into the payment systems of government agencies like Social Security and in general recognized no authority other than Trump, who appointed Musk and did not bother with any kind of legislation or confirmation process to do so. Elon Musk is not the heart of the problem—but with this viciousness, his utter lack of concern for the damage he is doing, and lawlessness, he does concentrate it.

One final point: Trump’s domination of the media has made everyday life a firehose of lies, threats, hate-filled agitation, insults and lunacy. But there is method to the madness. The purpose is to intimidate, confuse and demoralize the tens of millions of decent people who can’t stand this fascism. It's aimed at shock-and-awe silencing of those who don't want to just fight this, but who want to stop it.

Bob Avakian, again from his New Year's Message, said:

Contrary to what we are constantly told, it was not “the American people” who chose this fascism. There is not one undivided “American people”—there are "two countries" within this country.

Avakian goes into the roots of the “two countries” in the Civil War, and the “direct line from the pro-slavery Confederacy, at the time of the Civil War, to the fascism of today, with its determination to make America once again openly, aggressively white supremacist, male supremacist and anti-LGBT people.” He concludes:

It is not a time for turning inward and attempting to “take care of self” as the juggernaut of Trump/MAGA fascism gains momentum and crushes masses of people. This is a time for reaching out to all the others who feel the same outrage at Trump/MAGA fascism—a time for collective action and self-sacrificing struggle for the greater good: the greater good of defeating this fascism.