The Trump/Pence fascist regime doubles down, post‑election

Dangers and Openings for Struggle

November 10, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

The morning after the midterm elections, revcom.us published the article, “The Elections Just Past, The Future We Face, And The REAL Revolution Humanity Needs.” It remains relevant and conveys important basic orientation that people need which cuts against illusions, delusions, and even the blues that liberal and “progressive” people are thinking and being told to think by similar voices in the media.

However, there have been important developments since. Here, we want to speak briefly to an additional important point of orientation in response to what Trump has done over the last four days.

In a nutshell, since the elections Trump has doubled down—aggressively asserting even more vicious fascist terms: on immigration and the right to asylum; against the press, singling out Jim Acosta of CNN for refusing to stop asking questions about Trump’s anti-immigrant demagogy, as well as several Black reporters for raising similar questions, including about Trump’s appeal to “white nationalists”; and in his appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general after he fired Jeff Sessions.

Each of these attacks on the press and against asylum seekers, as well as threats against birthright citizenship, is cut deep with full-out white supremacy—in their vicious racist message and in the program the regime is barreling ahead to implement. Make no mistake, these are not only calls to rouse his “base,” but are concrete fascist measures that should sound the alarm that the regime’s fascist agenda will increasingly be a juggernaut. Trump’s nomination of Whitaker is potentially an attempt to undercut, if not wipe out, the Mueller and other investigations.

The people need to be alert to the sharpening struggle at the top of the political system, particularly now that the Democrats are poised to be the majority in the House of Representatives, even though not until early January. We should recognize that it would be a serious matter if Trump attempts to stop or circumvent the Mueller and other investigations.

It is right that people took to the streets in struggle to prevent this, numbers need to grow, and people need to be determined to see this struggle through. We must not have more situations where people protest once, like with the Muslim ban, and then sit back while the Trump/Pence regime refines their ban just enough to get through the courts and then it goes into effect with scarcely a whimper from broad masses of people.

A few Democratic congresspersons have said that they intend to exercise their role in checking any attempt to thwart the investigation into the Trump regime. Yet Nancy Pelosi, the current minority leader of the Democrats and potentially the next Speaker of the House, said in her post-election remarks that impeachment is not now on the table, and that her position is that it is “not unifying. And I get criticized in my own party for not being in support of it. But I’m not. If that happens, it would have to be bipartisan.” Thus far, Pelosi’s posture represents the dominant line of those sections of the ruling class who both have significant differences with Trump and are in his line of fire.

The following two paragraphs from this website provide important orientation for how to analyze and act on this unfolding situation.

The Democrats, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, etc., are seeking to resolve the crisis with the Trump presidency on the terms of this system, and in the interests of the ruling class of this system, which they represent. We, the masses of people, must go all out, and mobilize ourselves in the millions, to resolve this in our interests, in the interests of humanity, which are fundamentally different from and opposed to those of the ruling class.

This, of course, does not mean that the struggle among the powers-that-be is irrelevant or unimportant; rather, the way to understand and approach this (and this is a point that must also be repeatedly driven home to people, including through necessary struggle, waged well) is in terms of how it relates to, and what openings it can provide for, “the struggle from below”—for the mobilization of masses of people around the demand that the whole regime must go, because of its fascist nature and actions and what the stakes are for humanity.

To more deeply understand how the Trump/Pence fascist regime has arisen out of the whole history of this country and system of capitalism-imperialism and the stakes and road forward for humanity, there is nothing more clarifying than the film: THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible, a speech by the leader of the revolution, Bob Avakian.

Every fascist move by the Trump/Pence regime, including moves by Trump and/or his regime to undermine the investigations, should be met by mass resistance in the streets involving more and more people and diverse political organizations—everyone who recognizes the profound danger this regime poses to people here and around the world.

People should also go to refusefascism.org to learn about and join the group that is organizing “a movement of people coming from diverse perspectives, united in our recognition that the Trump/Pence Regime poses a catastrophic danger to humanity and the planet, and that it is our responsibility to drive them from power through non-violent protests that grow every day until our demand is met.”