Genocide means killing off a whole people, or a large part of that people. Genocide is what the Europeans did to the native peoples in America, while stealing their land. Genocide is Hitler and the NAZIs murdering six million Jews.
Donald Trump hates Black people, and everybody who is not a “white English-speaking, Christian American.” If he could, he would kill off a whole lot of them, and put many of the rest in jail for life, or drive them out of the country.
This series has presented compelling evidence (just part of the mountain of evidence that could be cited), clearly showing that Donald Trump is a genocidal racist. From this, it should be obvious that it is very wrong, and potentially catastrophic, to underestimate the great danger that Trump poses to Black people, other oppressed people, and humanity as a whole.
Some people, and in particular some Black people, argue that, even after slavery was ended, things have always been terrible for Black people in this country, so Trump really does not represent anything different or worse. Here a lesson from history, not that long ago, sheds crucial light on things, showing how seriously wrong and extremely dangerous this kind of thinking is. For centuries and centuries, Jews in Europe were segregated and cruelly discriminated against, and were repeatedly subjected to pogroms (organized massacres). But when Hitler and the fascist NAZIs came to power in Germany in the 1930s, this led to the imprisonment in concentration camps of basically all the Jews in countries under NAZI control, and then to the mass murder of 6 million Jews (what the NAZIs called “the Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem”).
As I said at the beginning of these articles:
Yes, even after slavery was ended, Black people have been continually subjected to horrific oppression and terror, right down to today—but the fully unleashed rule of genocidal racism, which is what Trump is aiming for, would be a horror on a whole other level. The slow genocide of Black people which has already been going on—through things like mass incarceration and continuing murder by police—can quickly become a much faster and more complete genocide if Trump and his regime succeed in remaining in power and carry forward more fully their fascist program.
And once more, as I emphasized in my August 1 Statement,* the hour is getting late, but it is not yet too late, to defeat the fascism concentrated in the fascist regime of Trump (and Pence) and to wrench something positive out of this increasingly terrible situation. But that requires fully facing up to what this regime of genocidal racist fascism represents and what it is aiming to do, and using all appropriate means to remove this regime from power—above all the mobilization of masses of people, to get in the streets, starting now, in the thousands, and stay in the streets, becoming millions, powerfully putting forward the unifying demand that this fascist regime must be OUT NOW!
And, as I emphasized in that August 1 Statement, in the most fundamental terms, it requires working to create more favorable conditions for, and to build up the organized forces for, the revolution that is needed to finally put an end to this system, which has from the beginning rested on genocidal racism and other horrific forms of oppression—and which now, with this fascist regime, is moving to take this to even more monstrous levels, posing a very real and grave threat to the very existence not only of Black people but the masses of oppressed humanity and ultimately humanity as a whole.
This is not hype or exaggeration in any way—it is the cold hard fact we are faced with—and it demands that, in the name of and for the future of humanity, we act on the basis of fully confronting this reality and moving, in our millions and millions, to change this reality, before it really is too late.
* STATEMENT BY BOB AVAKIAN, August 1, 2020, ON THE IMMEDIATE CRITICAL SITUATION, THE URGENT NEED TO DRIVE OUT THE FASCIST TRUMP/PENCE REGIME, VOTING IN THIS ELECTION, AND THE FUNDAMENTAL NEED FOR REVOLUTION. [back]
