At his October 5 rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, Trump defended his criminal, imperialist war against Iran in terms which should make any decent person’s blood run cold. He asserted, without evidence, that Iran could “take out” the major West Coast metros like Los Angeles and San Diego: “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.” Coming out of the mouth of this fascist leader, at this point in time, in the context of his historical disdain for cities, especially “blue” cities like L.A. that overwhelmingly reject Trump/MAGA fascism, it’s not hard to see the method to the madness. When the destruction of these Southern California cities was “floated,” the crowd at the Nuremberg-style rally cheered. They were led to cheer for the imagined annihilation of tens of millions of people in this country, just as they are being led to cheer for the real annihilation of people in Iran. Once again, for the fascist leader and his hard-core social base, cruelty is the point. There is a deliberate normalization of the genocide of anybody who would stand in the way of U.S. imperialist (and increasingly the revival of old-style colonialist) domination worldwide, and of the suppression, including by force and violence, of any opposition to fascism “domestically”. 

This comes just two weeks after Trump, speaking at the UN, threatened to “annihilate” the entire country of Iran—a country of 93 million people (!)—if a deal is not reached after the elections. The fact that world “leaders” at the UN did not storm out of Trump’s speech—that they even gave this modern-day Hitler-with-nukes the legitimacy of their attendance at all—betrays the rotten character of the entire global capitalist-imperialist order. Moreover, it shows just how much Trump has changed the terms of what is and is not deemed to be “normal or acceptable.” 

Several months ago, Bob Avakian spoke to this brutal reality:

The launching of this unprovoked and unjust war against Iran, by the U.S., as well as Israel, is—according to international law, and by any meaningful definition—a major war crime. (Among other outrages, the U.S. and Israel launched this war against Iran while Iran was engaged in negotiations with the U.S., and “neutral forces” involved in these negotiations had made clear that progress was being made). In the waging of this war, the U.S. and Israel have committed further war crimes on a massive scale, with the deliberate bombing of civilian targets (and, on top of this, Trump has committed yet another, depraved war crime with clearly genocidal implications: threatening to wipe out Iranian civilization).

Sound familiar? There’s a direct line from Trump’s 2017 threats to annihilate North Korea, to his 2019 threats against Afghanistan, to today’s repeated genocidal threats against Iran. What’s on display, and what the Trump fascist regime is repeatedly creating public opinion for, is “the fascist way of war: mass murder is legal because we say so”. 

As revcom.us has also said, “[E]ven those Democratic politicians who raise criticisms of Trump’s war do so on the grounds that it’s not the way to hamstring Iran and secure larger U.S. interests...This was captured by Democratic Senator Gary Peters shouting at U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine, ‘You don’t have a long-term plan to actually win this war. Win the war!’” 

To quote again from Bob Avakian, from Humanity on the Brink, on the nature and content of Trump/MAGA fascism: 

The rule of the Trump regime is the dictatorship of one section of the ruling class, which is determined to impose fascism as the form of capitalist-imperialist rule, utilizing the force and violence of the state (police and military forces and repressive institutions of government, such as the FBI, “Homeland Security,” etc.) not only against people in society as a whole but also against the “mainstream” section of the ruling class. With fascism, dictatorship is open, blatant, undisguised dictatorship, and the exploitation and oppression that is the actual basis and nature of this system of capitalist-imperialism, within this country and internationally, is blatant, undisguised exploitation and oppression, unrestrained by the “norms” and “rules” of “mainstream” capitalist-imperialist dictatorship.

The challenge before us is this: will we rise to meet this moment of tremendous peril for humanity with the resolute, revolutionary determination that is necessary? Will we unite all who can be united to defeat Trump/MAGA fascism? Most essentially, will we want an end to this madness badly enough that we will be scientific about the root of the problem and the fundamental solution: revolution? Will we work to build up the basis to lead millions to overthrow these imperialists at the soonest possible time, to put an end to their bloodsucking, people-destroying system and bring a much better system into being?

Stop the U.S.-Israeli War on Iran!

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!