These Lunatics Are Serious—Are You?

Trump Summons Fascist Mobs to DC to Stop January 6 Election Certification

December 28, 2020 | revcom.us

 

If this were a normal year, it wouldn't even be news when the Senate and Congress meet on January 6 to formally certify the well-established fact that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump handily in the 2020 election. Most elections, the January 6 congressional certification passes as a mere formality.

But this is not a normal election.

Yes, Biden DID win—decisively. And yes, the Electoral College—despite Trump’s demagogy, threats and bribes—DID certify Biden as the winner. And yes, the courts DID decisively throw out Trump’s utterly groundless lawsuits. But Trump continues on the warpath. And this, unfortunately, is not a joke. One way or another, it will have consequences.

Trump Calls the Fascist Mobs Back to DC

This year on January 6, Donald Trump—the fascist president of the United States—is stoking the reactionary rage of his rabid base of MAGA mobs and white supremacist street-fighters with deranged conspiracy theories of a stolen election. He is calling them into the streets of DC in record numbers to a rally he promises will—and this IS a quote—“be wild.”

At the last #Overturn rally held in DC, MAGA fascists and Proud Boys savagely assaulted counter-protesters and bystanders. They targeted Black churches, openly tearing down their Black Lives Matters signs and setting them ablaze in a scene that Rev. Dr. Ianther M. Mills described as “reminiscent of cross burnings” (a signature of the Ku Klux Klan terror). In this context, Trump's call can only be understood as an urging of the same and worse.

This year as January 6 approaches, Trump is lashing out at Republicans in the Senate and Congress, pressuring them to override the votes of millions by refusing to certify the election. In his usual way, Trump attributed to his opponents what he is actually doing, claiming that the Democrats would have treated an electoral loss as an “act of war, and fight to the death.” Then he castigated Senate Majority Leader McConnell for not doing the same. Already, several unhinged, fact-denying, fascist Congresspeople have promised to do so.¹ And while most Republicans have thus far refused to follow Trump’s urging to disrupt the January 6 certification, Trump is whipping up resentment against them for this at a time when mobs of his supporters are already showing up armed at the homes of elected officials who don't fall in line with Trump's coup.²

To state what should be obvious: Even if Trump doesn’t succeed in preventing the certification of the election on the 6th, this is unprecedented and dangerous. It is FASCIST. At minimum, Trump and his fascist movement will emerge further battle-hardened, aggrieved, and hungry for vengeance. This must not be normalized or ignored.

Yet, that is precisely what is happening. The decent people of this country are silent. They are passive. They are looking the other way. Unless this starts to change, humanity's future is in serious peril.

Every decent person needs to take up the challenge of confronting this deeply and contributing to a collective effort to turn this around.

Trump’s Fascist Attempt to Overturn the Election Is Doing Damage—Now and for the Future

Too many people are evaluating this unprecedented and many-sided fascist assault on the election and the planned rampage in DC on the 6th only in terms of whether or not it might “succeed” in the short term. They point to Trump’s overwhelming electoral defeat and the way that the courts have shot down his claims of electoral fraud to insist that his threats regarding January 6 are even more far-fetched and therefore dismissible, perhaps even laughable.

But this is akin to standing behind a wall that is being repeatedly hit with a battering ram, smugly chuckling when each blow only leaves a crack or sends a few splinters flying through the air... all while ignoring that the wall is weakening, the foundation rotting, and the mob outside is growing harder and more determined.

For one thing, no one can say when and if the wall might come down. While it is not the most likely outcome at this point that Trump will succeed in overturning the election or otherwise staying in power, no one—not Trump, not Biden, not you who are reading this—can be completely sure at this point. But even if he doesn’t succeed in staying in office past January 20, this fascist movement is gaining strength and initiative, with profoundly dangerous implications both long term and near-term.

Think What It Means… for Now, and for the Future

Think what it means that fascist terror has been normalized to such a degree that a a mob of over a hundred fascists, some with firearms, stormed the Oregon state-house on December 21 and it wasn’t even a major news story.³ Or that a Trump campaign surrogate can casually say things like: “January 6 is a big day. If you get a stimulus check, you might want to go out and spend it on guns and ammo because it could come down to that.” A former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence compared the threatening rhetoric of many close to Trump to the language that leads to “radicalized terrorist cells in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.”

Think what it means that outrageous fascist maneuvers once believed to be “unthinkable”—like calling out the military against domestic protest or declaring martial law to overturn an election—must now and going forward be treated as real possibilities. A recent example: Trump invited Michael Flynn to the White House and, according to CNN and the New York Times, asked his aides about Flynn's proposal that Trump re-do the election under conditions of martial law. According to reports, “ranking officers have discussed what they would do if the president declared martial law.”

Think what it means that the overwhelming majority of Trump voters—a population numbering in the many millions—actually believe the conspiracy theory-driven LIE that the election was stolen from Trump! And that this LIE centers on supposed voter fraud concentrated in urban, heavily Black-populated areas. Not only are these people completely inoculated against any facts or evidence that contradict that and any other fascist LIE Trump might tell them, they are convinced to their core that Trump was betrayed and victimized by the institutions, laws, and norms of government that obstructed his fascist coup. All this is already fueling—and will continue to fuel—a growing fascist determination to further assault and shatter these institutions and norms and carry out violence driven by white supremacy, misogyny, and hatred of immigrants.

A defeated coup, when backed by a battle-hardened determined core of millions, with tens of millions more believing that their opposition—i.e., Biden—is in power illegitimately, has the potential to reemerge, especially when that opposition is demobilized and oblivious to the threat.

It is unacceptable—a real problem that must be confronted and actively worked on and transformed—that the millions of decent people who correctly voted in overwhelming numbers against Trump are silent in the face of all this, letting it fester and worsen.

There Can Be No “Reconciliation” with These Fascists

The most conspicuous thing about the Democrats through all of this is their near-total silence about any of it. In fact, it is far easier to find the spattering of Republicans who will condemn the mobs, threats of death and other violence, and attempts at a coup than it is to find sharp denunciation from the Democrats or any attempt by them to organize serious resistance inside Congress or to call for masses into the streets to stand against this attempted fascist coup.

Instead, they are busy talking about “national healing” and common ground. As Biden put it in a recent tweet: “After a year of pain and loss, it’s time to unite, heal, and rebuild.” But as Bob Avakian has pointed out:

…there can be no “reconciliation” with these fascists—whose “grievances” are based on fanatical resentment against any limitation on white supremacy, male supremacy, xenophobia (hatred of foreigners), rabid American chauvinism, and the unrestrained plundering of the environment, and are increasingly expressed in literally lunatic terms. There can be no “reconciliation” with this, other than on the terms of these fascists, with all the terrible implications and consequences of that!

It is necessary for the interests of the people—of this country and around this world—to be asserted and fought for by growing numbers of decent people who uncompromisingly reject and repudiate the whole fascist program of America-first, white supremacy, male supremacy, and hatred of foreigners. This requires stepping outside of—and acting in opposition to the political terms set by—the normal political channels and the terms being fought for by these Democrats.

There Is Leadership, and Work to Do, to Turn This Around

There are reasons, rooted in the nature of the system of capitalism-imperialism that we live under and the massive changes and crisis this system has brought about on a world scale and in this country, that this fascism has emerged and is not going away even in the face of electoral defeat. There are reasons, also rooted in this system and its dynamics, that the Democrats are determined to seek common ground and stability for their system, rather than call out and take on these fascists and the threat they pose to humanity's future. Bob Avakian (BA) has done unparalleled work, much of which can be found on this resource page, to scientifically examine these reasons and their implications.  

Understanding those reasons—and on the basis of that understanding, what to do about them and how to go about changing the situation we face—is essential for the storms ahead. To not dig into that work that BA has done is to insist on flying blind into the hurricane when the stakes for humanity are far too high to do so.

It is extremely important that RefuseFascism.org, an organization that unites people from very diverse political perspectives to work to mobilize the millions of decent people in this country in nonviolent mass protest to stop a fascist America, has put out the call for people to find creative ways to express their opposition to this fascist marauding on January 6. We urge our readers to join in that effort as well as to learn from the important forums RefuseFascism.org has held to understand this situation and the way forward.

Finally, we urge you to talk with others you know and to write to us with your thinking and ideas on how we transform this situation so that it is no longer the case that decent people are silent as fascism gains momentum and threatens humanity's future.

E-mail: revolution.reports@yahoo.com
@therevcoms

 

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1. These include Alabama Representative Mo Brooks, senator elect Tommy Tuberville who said he is considering the idea, and QAnon conspiracy theorist and Georgia congressperson-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene who said, “I’ve got President Trump’s back.”  [back]

2. See “MAGA Fascists Threaten to Kill, Burn, Rape Officials Who Resist the ‘Overturn’ Campaign,” at revcom.us.  [back] 

3. As reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting, the fascists pushed their way through the doors to the state Capitol in Salem, demanding an immediate “reopening” of the economy and calling for the arrest of the governor. Some carried guns and bear spray, and most were not masked.  [back]

Proud Boys with their deranged conspiracy theory that Trump won the election at the “Million MAGA March.” Washington, D.C. Photo: AP

Proud Boys burn banner torn from Asbury United Methodist Church, Washington, D.C., December 12, 2020. Credit: @KristenClarkeJD

See the full film, excerpts and Q&A of this film

A Pledge to the People of the World: In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.