The Gathering Storm:
The Trump/Pence Regime and the Unleashing of Racist/Fascist Shock Troops
June 5, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
May 26, a Friday night, in Portland, Oregon, a city well known as progressive and tolerant. Two teenage girls—a Muslim wearing a hijab, and her non-Muslim Black friend—are riding the train, having a good time, minding their own business. A white man comes at them, spewing racist and anti-Muslim hatred. Some other white guys come to their defense, but the attacker, Jeremy Christian, swiftly turns on them, slashing the throats of three men, two of whom die.
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In court the next day, Christian shouts out: “Death to the enemies of America. Death to antifa [anti-fascists]. You call it terrorism. I call it patriotism. Die.”
This is not an isolated incident. In recent months there have been two other murders carried out by white nationalists. In March, white supremacist James Jackson traveled from Baltimore to New York for the purpose of killing Black men in the media capital of the world—he murdered 66-year-old Timothy Caughman. On May 20, Sean Urbanski, a member of the “alt-Reich: Nation” neo-Nazi Facebook group, stabbed Richard Collins III, a Black college student and U.S. Army lieutenant, to death as he waited for an Uber ride.
And even these horrors are only the tip of the iceberg. Around the country, organized fascist gangs are gathering strength and stepping out with the aim of “defending” white Christian American “civilization” from Muslims, Black people, immigrants, and communists.
The New York Times reports that groups like the “Oath Keepers” (made up of active-duty and retired police and military!) and the “Proud Boys” have mobilized for violent protests to defend Confederate monuments—the symbols of the enslavement of Black people—against being taken down across the South. According to other reports, at some of these rallies people chanted the (German) Nazi slogan “Blood and Soil” and “We [white people] Will Not Be Replaced,” carried flaming torches (deliberately invoking images of KKK rallies), and in some cases automatic weapons. Some Black people who supported taking down the monuments were threatened with lynching.
In Berkeley, California, these forces battled students who opposed having Nazi hate-speech celebrities like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos on campus. In Portland, Christian himself was at a Nazi “free speech” rally the week before he carried out his murders, swinging a baseball bat and heading for anti-fascist protesters. (Cops took his bat away but did not arrest him.)
According to the Times, many leaders of these groups “say they are supporters of Mr. Trump’s agenda to tighten immigration and fight political correctness” The Times goes on: “Some groups like the Proud Boys have initiation rituals that include violent hazing and require an oath of fealty to Western culture. Their followers thrive on hyper-masculinity and celebrate when one of their brethren hits a leftist agitator. They mock Islam and purport to be soldiers against a ‘war on Whites,’ while being mindful not to embrace overt white supremacy. Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime associate of Mr. Trump’s, has taken the Proud Boy oath.” [Emphasis added.]
These fascist groups rest on, draw from, and further “inspire” a much larger “sea” of violent hate crimes and threats. Though this is always a presence in the U.S., since Trump’s campaign—marked by open incitement to violence against protesters, and all-but-open racism against Muslims, immigrants, and Black people—hate crimes have been on the rise. Just in the last week, there were news reports that Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James found the “N-word” painted on the gate of his home, and a noose was found at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. But in fact there have been hundreds of incidents of racist graffiti, nooses hanging at construction sites or at middle schools, verbal assaults where people are told on the street to “go back to where you came from,” and others which never make the news.
A campaign of organized fascist terror has been unleashed, “celebrating” white Christian supremacy and targeting the most oppressed people in the U.S., as well as anyone who comes to their defense. And we should be clear, from the perspective of these fascists, they are just getting started.
This is a pivotal moment: These attacks directly target tens of millions of people, and many millions potentially can be mobilized against them. The question right now is: Will people stand, alone if necessary, or in their dozens or hundreds, and fight to bring forward thousands and millions to go up against this, and for a radically better society—OR will we allow this dark wave to sweep over us, imposing a nightmare for which the whole world will pay a terrible price?
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