An Open Letter To Bernie Supporters:

Updated October 21, 2019 | revcom.us

 

An earlier version of this letter was handed out at Bernie Sanders’ October 19 New York City rally.

You are here because you want to see a more just world. So do we.

You may also be here because on some level you get that the regime now in power is fascist, and you think campaigning for Bernie is an answer to that.

So we need to talk.

Two points:

One, the world that Bernie says he is fighting for is a more just world... for Americans.

But America grinds up billions of people in the global south to produce the wealth of this country. America suppresses them when they dare to rise up against a regime which the U.S. supports. America plunders the environments of these countries to far more devastating effect. America uses a small portion of the riches it gorges on as crumbs for the masses in this country—crumbs that amount to real privilege. This—the howling gap between America (and imperialist powers like America) and the rest of the world—is the most significant inequality and privilege there is. Bernie wants a bigger share of the crumbs from that. Is that what YOU want?

Bernie not only does not question these relations, he speaks of “national security”—a code word for the enforcement and expansion of that horror. Bernie supports human-killing economic sanctions against Venezuela. Bernie supported Israel’s violent, genocidal military assaults against the people of Gaza over the past decade. Do you want “national security”? Or do you want an end to the world where America does whatever it takes to maintain its empire and rains down death on whoever gets in the way of that? “National security” is nothing but the national interests of the imperialist ruling class.

Face it. Bernie’s dream of a fairer American empire for the people in the U.S. may make life easier for some people in the U.S. But why let yourself be constrained by the choices that they put before you? If humanity is to be emancipated, if revolution is to be REAL, that empire must be brought down.

Two, the overriding issue facing humanity right now is the existence of a fascist regime in the White House bent on consolidating its rule. Yes, in the October candidates’ debate, Sanders said impeachment is necessary—but only because of “national security” (there’s that phrase again) and the emoluments clause. First off, far from “violating national security,” as Bernie charged, Trump is promoting an even more violent strategy to defend America, with stepped-up nuclear weapon development and breaking out of nuclear treaties.

But more to the point: What about the children in concentration camps at the border? The virtually open calls for a white supremacist America? The encouragement Trump openly gives to police brutality? The Christian-fascist and misogynist attacks on the rights of women to control their own bodies and the similarly “inspired” assaults of the Justice Department and other arms of the regime against LGBTQ rights? The headlong daily acceleration of environmental destruction? The violations of the rule of law, the evisceration of the public school system in favor of religious, especially Christian-fascist, schools, the attacks on science itself, and on criticism? These are FASCIST deeds of a FASCIST regime—and fascism is a word that Bernie refuses to use. If Bernie were around in the 1930s, would he oppose Hitler for his “corruption” and the notion that he wasn’t defending German “national security,” and would he offer to work with him on “infrastructure” projects? Would YOU?

Look, the situation with the fascist regime now in the White House is urgent. If it weathers the storm and consolidates, this would devastate and cripple and very possibly wipe out for a long time any struggle for justice. It could, in fact, mean the extinction of humanity. But if people in their millions succeed in removing it through massive struggle from below, the horizons would expand in ways we can barely imagine right now.

If you are relying on the elections to change this, think about this: The cabal of Trumpite white supremacist/American chauvinist and Christian-fascist theocrats now in power have said that this is their “last chance.” Do you really think that these fascists will just go along with it if the impeachment or the election go against them? And if they don’t—then what? Again: think. Hard.

There is a movement, right now, gathering every Saturday and aiming to grow to something on the order of Puerto Rico or Hong Kong, demanding that in the name of humanity, the Trump/Pence fascist regime must be driven OUT NOW. And then... it’s on. You are needed in this movement, urgently. Learn about this at Refusefascism.org. Join this.

And if you really want a world in which not just Americans but all of humanity overcome the fetters of capitalism—then get into Bob Avakian, BA, who has brought forward a new communism. BA is not about crumbs for one section of one people, but a real revolution aiming at the overthrow of the capitalist-imperialist system and the emancipation of all humanity. Read the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which he wrote. Or watch his film Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution.

There's a huge struggle that needs to be waged. See you on the front lines.

www.revcom.us @tuneintorevcom