Supreme Court Legalizes Religious Bigotry, Xenophobia, Fascist Presidential Powers

Down with the Muslim Ban! The Whole Damn System Is Guilty!

June 26, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Today, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump/Pence regime’s openly bigoted, xenophobic Muslim Ban, which severely restricts travel from seven countries. Five of the countries are predominantly Muslim (Yemen, Iran, Syria, Somalia, and Libya), and the two others are North Korea and Venezuela. 

This decision came on the same day the Supreme Court also ruled in favor of anti-abortion fanatics in NIFLA vs. Becerra, the day after it upheld racist gerrymandering aimed at further marginalizing Black and Brown voters in Abbott v. Perez, and two weeks after it upheld anti-LBGTQ bigotry in a case from Colorado.

The Muslim travel ban decision means that the Trump/Pence regime can now go ahead fully with making it enormously difficult, if not impossible, for people from these targeted countries to emigrate to or seek political asylum in the U.S., join their families already in the U.S., get needed medical care, study in the U.S., or just visit as a tourist. (As revcom.us has exposed, while fighting temporary injunction against the Muslim Ban in the courts, the regime had already gone a long way in imposing severe travel restrictions in various ways.) All this represents a vicious, even life-threatening attack on thousands upon thousands of people because of their religion, and because U.S. imperialism has targeted the countries they live in.

This is a reactionary and fascistic decision. The Supreme Court’s Chief Justice and the four others who sided with him claim this is not an anti-Muslim ban based on unconstitutional religious discrimination, because “The text [of the ban] says nothing about religion” and is on the surface “neutral toward religion.” Never mind that Trump has been telling the whole world it’s a Muslim Ban for two years, and it still overwhelmingly targets Muslim-majority countries! 

The justices claimed Trump’s words don’t matter—only days after they cited the words of a county commissioner’s factual statements about the role of religion in justifying bigotry as reason to give a green light to anti-LGBTQ bigotry in the Colorado case. Both decisions attack the separation of church and state, codify Christian religious bigotry and discrimination, and represent steps toward imposing the rule of Christian fascism. And the Muslim Ban decision legalizes racism and xenophobia as well!

The Court ruled that a President can do pretty much whatever he or she wants when it comes to immigration and the borders, including banning entire nationalities from entering the U.S., as long as they provide a fig leaf excuse of “national security,” which the Court claims is “largely immune from judicial control.” Their ruling even drew on openly racist decisions used decades ago to justify the exclusion of Chinese people. 

This decision represents yet another assault on the rule of law and the centralization of fascist power in the hands of the Trump/Pence regime.  

What These Latest Supreme Court Decisions Say…and What We Should Do

1. The recent reactionary round of Supreme Court decisions—on the rights of LGBTQ people, on the voting rights of Black and other oppressed peoples, on the travel ban enacted against Muslims, and on the “rights” of religious people to hide the truth about abortion as part of denying them their right to control their own reproduction—are no more legitimate than the Dred Scott decision that stated that Black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect, the Korematsu decision that upheld the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II in concentration camps, and others. Nobody should respect these decisions from the “highest court of the land” at all; people should fight against them and everything they represent.
2. These decisions show both how deeply woven racism, misogyny, and jingoism are in the American system of capitalist-imperialism and how, with the rise of the fascist Trump/Pence regime as an “answer” to the system’s problems, these are taking on an even more aggressive and directly ominous form. The 250 years of American history do not show a steady march to justice, but the stubborn persistence of racism, misogyny and jingoism and the continual reassertion and adaptation of these evils into even more virulent forms of racism, misogyny, and jingoism. This system cannot be reformed; it must be overthrown. As the work HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution puts it, “…we have the leadership, the science, the strategy and program, and the basis for organizing people for an actual, emancipating revolution. We have Bob Avakian (BA) the leader of this revolution and the architect of a new framework for revolution, the new synthesis of communism.” It is urgent, in the midst of this crisis now rocking this society, to make this known far and wide. 
3. These decisions underline the fact that, as Bob Avakian drives home in his filmed speech on this fascist regime, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible—it is useless and worse than useless to expect the “normal channels” to deal with the fascism that has now been brought forward. Indeed, Trump and Pence continually point to their relentless packing of the courts with Christian-fascist theocrats as one of their great “accomplishments.” People have to act outside these channels, and drive out this regime through mass struggle.
4. Talk by the top Democrats as to how they oppose these decisions and “that’s why we must vote” blur over and take people away from the fact that we face a monumental struggle in which new horrific things go down every day and the future is ever more uncertain; putting hopes in a so-called blue wave while a fascist onslaught continues is suicidal.

Down With the Muslim Travel Ban!

This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America

This system cannot be REFORMED—It must be OVERTHROWN!