Trump fascism is a regime that openly and aggressively strips away basic rights and blatantly declares that there is no rule of law and due process of law other than what it dictates, and that raw destructive power is what must rule in the international arena, without even the pretense of adherence to international law or concern about the sovereignty, or even the right to exist, of less powerful peoples and countries. 

–Bob Avakian, REVOLUTION #114: “Defeating Trump/MAGA fascism: Looking to some future elections... or working now to mobilize millions around this powerful unifying demand: The Trump fascist regime must go!” (underlining added for emphasis)

The truth of Bob Avakian’s insightful and hard-hitting observation from last March rang home again this past weekend. On Friday, the Washington Post reported that “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered Special Operations to kill the survivors of a September 2 U.S. strike on a small boat off the coast of Venezuela. The Post said that according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation, Hegseth gave the verbal order: "Kill them all." 

After the first hit on the boat, the Post said that video feed from a drone showed survivors clinging to wreckage. The commander then ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s order. Hegseth responded to Friday’s report in the Post by dismissing it as “more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland”—though he never actually denied ordering the murders.

Hegseth followed this up with the threat: "We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists." This state-sanctioned murder in international waters was the first of more than 23 strikes on boats off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia. Over 80 people have now been murdered.¹

Ordering the execution of unarmed people who were desperately clinging for dear life to a burning boat is not just a war crime by international law, but given that the U.S. is not even at war, it is state-sanctioned murder prosecutable by U.S. criminal courts.

On Saturday, a group of former judge advocate generals (JAGs)—military lawyers responsible for, among other things, prosecuting war crimes—issued a statement declaring that the group unanimously “considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both,” and called for “anyone who issues or follows such orders [to] be prosecuted for war crimes, murder, or both.”²

At the same time, the main committees in the Senate and House overseeing the military—made up of Republicans and Democrats—issued statements promising “vigorous oversight.”

Meanwhile, Trump War Threats Ratchet Up

All this occurred on the same day that Trump warned all aircraft to avoid the skies of Venezuela, in one of his unhinged ALL-CAPS tweets. Closing off the air space of another country is an extremely aggressive move that can be considered an act of war. In the main front-page article in its Sunday edition, the Washington Post reported on this and made the point that “the U.S. has about 15,000 troops in the region spread across about a dozen other warships in the Caribbean and support forces in Puerto Rico. It’s the largest military buildup there in decades.”

THIS COULD VERY WELL BE THE PRELUDE TO WAR. Yes, Trump could still back off this; nobody can predict the future. But that’s just the point. What was a dangerous and flammable situation just had several more gallons of gasoline poured on it by a madman playing with a box of matches.

Any war launched by the Trump fascist regime would be a criminal outrage. People in this country have a huge responsibility to oppose any such aggression, nonviolently in the streets and in the arenas of public opinion, as an imperialist predatory war waged by a fascist regime. 

Also at stake here is whether the U.S. military will follow blatantly illegal orders without question. We've written elsewhere on the struggle by the Trump fascist regime to forge the U.S. military as an openly fascist fighting force, loyal only to the fascist tyrant and not the U.S. Constitution they pledged an oath to.³

If the regime is able to hammer into place the use of the U.S. military as a force for openly carrying out illegal orders, and if it succeeds in fully purging dissent within the ranks of the ruling institutions, it will mark a further qualitative leap toward fascist consolidation.

And in this moment, one of the most dangerous illusions people could take up is the idea that Trump fascism is somehow self-destructing on its own, or that the courts will rein it in, or that the midterms will deliver a solution. As we highlighted in last week’s article, fascism cannot be contained, managed, or waited out; it must be defeated. The millions who hate what this regime is dragging society toward cannot outsource their responsibility to fill the streets to demand, day after day, that the regime must go NOW.

A High-Stakes Moment Where What People Do Matters

In this situation, when Trump’s actions are leading to some more open opposition within the ruling institutions, Bob Avakian’s strategic guidance in the major statement REVOLUTION #141, The Time Is Urgently Upon Us Now—To Drive Out The Trump Fascist Regime! deserves special attention and reflection:

In a number of messages—including the previous one (number 140)—I have spoken to the basic means through which this regime could actually be driven from power: the decent people, in the millions and tens of millions, who deep in their hearts abhor this fascism, must seize the initiative themselves, rising with nonviolent but powerful determination to reset the terms, creating a massive “political earthquake from below,” bringing about a profound political crisis such that the completely illegitimate nature of the Trump fascist regime stands out all the more sharply, provoking and motivating major shifts and realignments throughout society, including within the dominant and ruling institutions, such that this regime can no longer function and cannot remain in power.

There are many people and forces within the ruling institutions—or with strong ties and potentially important influence within those institutions—who are very deeply troubled by, or even strongly opposed to, how they see the actions of the Trump fascist regime “violating the Constitution and the law, destroying our great American experiment in democracy” and “seriously undermining and damaging our country’s standing in the world.” As a revolutionary communist who has developed the new communism as a whole new framework for human emancipation, I have a fundamentally different understanding of the nature of the system that rules in this country and its role in the world; but, at the same time, I have a clear sense of the very real difference it makes, in a profoundly terrible way, when there is not even a pretense of democracy and basic rights are openly trampled on. In light of the urgent need to defeat and remove the Trump regime that is enforcing an undisguised fascist dictatorship, and the crucial importance of uniting all who can be united to drive out this regime, I recognize the particularly important role that such people and forces, with ties and influence in key institutions, could play in regard to this urgent need. I also recognize that they will only feel both compelled and enabled to play this role if there is, in fact, the kind of “massive political earthquake from below,” that can be brought about by millions taking up the Call from Refuse Fascism, and in this way moving to create the kind of political crisis where this “political earthquake from below,” in combination with heightening divisions within the dominant and ruling institutions, could lead to the removal of the Trump fascist regime.

How this can be made real as the crisis accelerates—how masses of people could act on and impact this situation so as to move qualitatively closer to the goal of nonviolently driving this fascist regime from power—should be something that all readers of this website should actively think about, discuss and work to make real in these intense coming days and weeks. 

In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America!

The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go NOW!