3 Big Things About Trump’s Speech:
Donald Trump’s inaugural speech was nakedly imperialist. He talked about expanding America and openly threatened to seize territory from other countries—including Panama. He revived the phrase “manifest destiny”1 to justify this—the idea that America has some right granted by “god” to seize other lands and dominate their people—and talked about building “the strongest military the world has ever seen.” He portrayed the most violent imperialist power in history as “being taken advantage of.” In demanding that Mt. Denali in Alaska be renamed Mt. McKinley2, Trump was sending a message by honoring a president who launched an unprovoked war to seize Puerto Rico, Philippines, Guam, and Cuba—and then later took over what had been the independent country of Hawaii.
Donald Trump’s speech was racist, misogynist and anti-LGBT. Trump continued to repeat his slanders of immigrants as lunatics and criminals and single them out as scapegoats for everything wrong. He vowed to dismantle any program that even tries to overcome the centuries-old and ongoing oppression of, and discrimination against, Black people and other oppressed nationalities, women, and LGBT people. Trump signified his determination to viciously enforce strict gender roles, going so far as to deny the very existence of trans people! Trump used coded language to signify going after the teaching of the true history of this country—the slavery and genocide upon which it built its power—and the current reality, as well as the teaching of material on the oppression of women and any mention of the existence even of LGBT people. (Trump “dog-whistled” this by saying that “we have an educational system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves in many cases… to hate our country”—these are code phrases used by fascists to describe Black history courses, for instance, which they have outlawed in states like Florida—along with “cleansing” school libraries of any books that treat LGBT people in a positive light.)
Donald Trump’s speech was dangerous Christian-fascist lunacy. In this speech, Trump cast himself as a latter-day messiah who was chosen to bring a “new golden age” to America. Mentioning the attempt to assassinate him, Trump said that “[M]y life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.” This fantasy was then amplified by two of the preachers there to give prayers for Trump: Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, and Lucius Sewell, a Black minister from Detroit who gave a borderline delirious invocation that talked about the “millimeter miracle” that supposedly evidenced intervention from god. This further promotes a holy war, “end-times” mentality that gives the fanatical followers of Trump a further dimension of mindless aggressiveness.
There was a palpable sense of urgency in Trump—of wanting to move fast. He laid out a series of extreme executive orders that he signed later that day in front of a whole arena of devoted MAGAnuts. Among other things, these orders would further militarize the border AND take any restrictions whatsoever off of drilling for oil or gas.
Two Important Take-Homes:
First, be clear: while white supremacy, patriarchy and other oppression have been woven into this country from Day One, Trump/MAGA fascism represents a qualitative change in the form through which this country is ruled and will take all these crimes to even more horrific levels if it is not stopped.3
We have to recognize in Trump's determination to move fast and hard with this full-on fascist onslaught the need to act quickly and boldly: uniting all who can be united to defeat this Trump MAGA fascism.
Second, Trump is not somehow different from this system. Trump/MAGA fascism is an extreme expression of it. From the slavery and genocide at its foundations that have never been fundamentally uprooted to its whole history of wars for empire all around the world, this is a system of murderous exploitation. The presence of Biden and Harris right up front at the inauguration, along with Obama and both Clintons, giving it the Democratic Party seal of approval, spoke volumes. The contradictions between the Democrats (and figures like Liz Cheney) and Trump/MAGA fascism may be intense, but they are within the context of how best to serve and extend the rule of that system.
In speaking of this fascism and its relation to the system, Bob Avakian, the revolutionary leader and architect of the new communism, has said:
The Trump/MAGA fascism that is now moving to take power, having arisen out of the soil of this whole system (and the whole history of this country), will unleash all this horror more fully and in more blatant ways, while at the same time the basic nature and dynamics of this system as a whole are subjecting the masses of humanity to terrible suffering, destroying the environment at an accelerating rate and heightening the danger of all-out war between the U.S. and its rivals in Russia and China—all nuclear-armed imperialist powers.
What I have sharply stated before stands out all the more urgently now:
We can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to dominate the world and to determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible.
This entire message from BA must reach all of those who were disturbed, upset, or righteously infuriated by the whole horrible spectacle of the Trump inaugural and the future it promises; and it must reach them NOW.
And right now, every corner of society must resound with these messages:
IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY, WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FASCIST AMERICA!
THIS WHOLE SYSTEM IS ROTTEN AND ILLEGITIMATE—WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE… A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM