On the Vicious Murders in New Zealand

March 18, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Last week an internet-white-supremacist-fascist invaded two mosques in New Zealand, murdering 50 people. He live-streamed the murders on Facebook, aiming to incite other fascists and racists and to terrorize the masses. (This broadcasting of a racist massacre is reminiscent of the role that “postcards of the hanging”—that is, postcards made out of pictures of lynching victims and then spread around the country—played in terrorizing the Black masses during the days of Jim Crow.) The accounts of parents trying to shield their children from the mayhem are as heartrending as the vicious racist arrogance of the murderer is infuriating.

This follows the massacre of nine Black people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2016 by another internet racist, and a slaughter of 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last November by someone who also appears to be a fascist.

The original comment of Donald Trump when asked if he thought that “white nationalism”—that is, white supremacist fascism—is a significant problem was to say, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people.” As a matter of fact, it is a HUGE problem—for humanity. There is an open and unapologetic white supremacy that feeds into and drives forward today’s fascism in countries which were historically white-majority or white-colonial regimes. Trump’s election gave a boost to this, and he can always be “counted on” to objectively give backing to this. So this vicious and intentional show of indifference (and actual objective support) is outrage on top of outrage.

It is also worth noting that just a few days earlier, in an interview with the fascist Breitbart News Network, in reference to congressional investigations into different possible illegalities involving Trump and the regime, he noted that: “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they [that is, Trump’s opponents] go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.” This is a bald threat that if these investigations—and by implication, any other form of resistance from either within the ruling class or “from below” come to pose a serious obstacle to the fascist juggernaut—he will call out the dogs, both official and unofficial.

From the outrageous murders to the backing and threats from Trump, these are all manifestations of a fascism that is contending around the world. This promises a world where people of the “wrong” religion, people who are not white, women, LGBTQ people, and others will be subordinated and worse, where basic political rights are trashed, and those who oppose the established order are dealt with by an openly violent repressive form. This fascism is the product of capitalism-imperialism. It is one form of rule—one option—that capitalist ruling classes (or sections of those rulers) may feel compelled to resort to when they confront extreme contradictions, as they do today. We strongly recommend that people go from this article to the film of the talk by Bob Avakian, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible. And also check out the new clip of Bob Avakian's answer to a questioner last summer on the rise of fascism around the world as well as other important international phenomena.

Those other forces in the ruling class who oppose Trump—these Democrats, whose leaders have just spoken strongly against even impeaching Trump—have no answers to this fascism beyond maintaining and entrenching the nightmare system that gave rise to it. They have no answers to the sharp contradictions of the system and themselves participate fully in the persecution and demonization of immigrants, the genocidal mass incarceration and police murder of Black and other oppressed nationalities, the degradation and oppression of women and all the other forms of gender oppression, the wars for empire, and the plunder of the environment. To confine your thinking to the choice between these two futures is to consent to keeping yourself, and the rest of humanity, locked within that nightmare.

Humanity needs a whole different and far better future—one beyond all forms of exploitation and oppression, and all the antagonistic relations between people. This revolution is being prepared today, concentrated now in the Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour.

One important part of that struggle is the actual battle to drive out the Trump/Pence fascist regime, uniting very broadly on the basis of bringing out strongly what humanity actually needs: an emancipatory revolution.