The Fascist Assault

On September 14, a federal appeals court upheld the Trump/Pence regime’s termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for immigrants from six countries.¹ Since 1990, TPS has protected some immigrants from deportation and enabled them to get work permits. People get TPS if the government determines they are unable to return to their homelands safely because of natural disasters or armed conflicts. It is supposed to provide a “safe haven for migrants who may not qualify for asylum but are nonetheless fleeing, or reluctant to return to, potentially dangerous situations.”² TPS has to be reviewed and renewed every six to 18 months by the Secretary of Homeland Security.³

In November 2017, Trump announced that his regime was ending TPS for Haitians. A couple of months later, he declared TPS would be ended for people from El Salvador, and other countries soon followed. People’s lives have hung in the balance as lawsuits to keep TPS made their way through the courts.

The latest court ruling jeopardizes the lives of about 300,000 immigrants and their families, which include at least 270,000 children.^4,5 Legal challenges to it will likely be made. But if it stands, immigrants from El Salvador currently protected by TPS would have to leave the country by November 5, 2021⁶; people from Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras, and Nepal—all countries Trump called “shitholes” in a January 2018 discussion of TPS⁷—have a January 2021 deadline.

The regime and its supporters claim that the “... T in TPS stands for temporary,” and that “In the case of citizens of El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan, the crises that triggered the TPS designation have long since passed.”⁸

Actually, for decades, crises of crushing poverty, environmental devastation, and horrific violence have wracked Haiti and El Salvador, to take two examples. At the time TPS began, Salvadorans were fleeing a country torn by a civil war in which the U.S. supported and trained death squads that killed about 75,000 people and displaced one-fifth of the population.⁹ Then in 2001, two massive earthquakes left much of the already devastated country in even worse ruins. The U.S. invaded Haiti in 1915—about 30,000 people were killed in the next 19 years of U.S. occupation.¹⁰ It has since supported murderous dictators¹¹ and dominated regimes that preside over some of the worst poverty and intense environmental destruction on the planet.¹² The fascist regime’s attempt to end TPS is as if the U.S. set fires in apartment buildings, shot down some of the people who tried to escape, and now is throwing many of those who did back into the flames.

In 2010 Haiti suffered a 7.0 earthquake that caused enormous damage. 58,000 Haitians came to the U.S. after the earthquake. Now they are among the 300,000 immigrants that Trump has denied Temporary Protective Status. (Photo: Special to revcom.us)

Ending TPS is a key component of the regime’s attempts to drive millions of immigrants out of this country. It is part of the fascist project to make America white and English speaking. The fight to defeat the attacks on TPS is crucial in its own right, and as part of the struggle that demands Trump/Pence Out Now!

1. U.S. court allows Trump to phase out immigrant humanitarian protections, Reuters, September 14, 2020.  [back]

2. Temporary Protected Status: Overview and Current Issues, Congressional Research Service, April 1, 2020.  [back]

3. Temporary Protected Status: An Overview, American Immigration Council Factsheet.  [back]

4. Court Sides with Trump on Right to End TPS, Catholic Philly, September 14, 2020.  [back]

5. Children of TPS holders fight for their parents protection in court, NBC News, August 14, 2019.  [back]

6. Thousands of immigrants in Texas could be forced to leave the country following court decision on protected status, Texas Tribune, September 14, 2020.  [back]

7. Trump derides protection for immigrants from ‘shithole’ countries, Washington Post, January 12, 2018.  [back]

8. Ninth Circuit Affirms that TPS is Temporary and Subject to the Non-reviewable Discretion of DHS, Federation for American Immigration Reform, September 14, 2020.  [back]

9. American Crime #38—The U.S. Backs El Salvador’s Death Squad Government, 1980-1992, Revolution/revcom.us, July 9, 2018.  [back]

10. American Crime #80—1915-1934: The U.S. Invasion, Occupation, and Domination of Haiti, Revolution/revcom.us, September 12, 2016.  [back]

11. From Cradle to Grave, United States Protected Jean-Claude Duvalier, Fran Quigley, Indy Star, October 13, 2014.  [back]

12. History, Environment, Politics Make Haiti Poor, NPR, February 4, 2010.  [back]

On June 1, Trump declared in a White House speech, “I am your President of law and order” and vowed to “dominate the streets ... [with] thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement officers.”¹³ A few hours later, Trump and an entourage of pigs and fascists paraded from the White House and across Lafayette Park so he could pose with a Bible in front of a church. The park’s plaza had been filled with people non-violently protesting police brutality until federal forces cleared the way for Trump by “blanketing the street with clouds of tear gas, firing stun grenades, setting off smoke bombs and shoving demonstrators with shields and batons.”¹⁴

On September 16, media reports came out about written testimony to a House committee by Adam DeMarco, a major in the DC National Guard, who refuted the Trump regime’s lies that protesters had been “violent,” that tear gas was never used, and that demonstrators were warned to disperse—a legal requirement before police try to clear a crowd. DeMarco also revealed that there was a Defense Department “weapons transfer” request on the afternoon of June 1 for “approximately 7,000 rounds of ammunition.”¹⁵

Even more ominously, DeMarco’s written testimony stated that the chief military police officer in the Defense Department emailed him and others the same day to find out if the DC National Guard had a “Long-Range Acoustic Device” (LRAD) and an “Active Denial System” (ADS).¹⁶ These are both considered “non-lethal” weapons. But LRAD is a “sound cannon” that blasts a painful “wall of sound” with the potential to cause permanent hearing damage. ADS, called a “heat-ray,” uses short wavelength radiation to heat the skin and produce a scalding sensation over the body. Both are “designed to produce instantaneous pain, causing crowds to disperse and allowing authorities to reimpose order.”¹⁷

Neither the LRAD nor the ARD was used against protesters that day, at least in part because the weapons weren’t available to the federal pigs then and there. But the vicious actions the regime mobilized in DC, the lies it perpetrated about what it did, and the high-tech weapons they attempted to assemble indicate the level of violence that the fascists are already using in attempts to put down protest.

13. Donald Trump Speech Transcript June 1: Trump May Deploy US Military to Cities, June 1, 2020.  [back]

14. Federal officials stockpiled munitions, sought ‘heat-ray’ device before clearing Lafayette Square, whistleblower says, Washington Post, September 17, 2020.  [back]

15. Feds requested heat ray before clearing DC protest, National Guard Major says, WBRZ TV, September 17, 2020.  [back]

16. Adam DeMarco, Responses to Questions for the Record, July 28, 2020.  [back]

17. Military Police Wanted to Use This ‘Heat-ray’ Weapon Against D.C. Protesters, Popular Mechanics, September 17, 2020.  [back]

On September 17—“Constitution Day”—Fascist-in-Chief Trump announced that he plans to issue an executive order to establish a “national commission to promote patriotic education,” called the “1776 Commission.”¹⁸ Trump fired broadsides at what he called “critical race theory” and “decades of left-wing indoctrination.”

“Left-wing” indoctrination in public schools?!?!

In fact, for well over a century public education has routinely whitewashed U.S. history. A significant and powerful aspect of this year’s uprisings against police brutality and murder, and in support of Black Lives Matter, has been that millions of people of all nationalities and backgrounds, across the country, have begun to shake off this indoctrination, and confront and uncover the actual history of this country: That it was founded in slavery, theft, and genocide... that its wealth was built upon ruthless exploitation here and around the world... that many at top levels of power honor slave owners and the military leaders who fought to defend slavery. Trump and his fellow fascists despise and fear that many millions of people are coming to grips with and confronting the ongoing reality of this history.

Trump took particular aim at the 1619 Project, an undertaking by the New York Times named after the year the first enslaved Africans arrived on the soil of what became the U.S. As we wrote last week, this project “sheds light on important facts about this country and its roots in slavery.”¹⁹ Trump sneered that all this is “ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together.”

At the same event where Trump announced the commission, Christian fascist Vice President Mike Pence said, “I have faith that he who guided our founders on this day, 233 years ago, guides us still. For as ... James Madison,²⁰ reflected ... it is impossible not to perceive in it [the U.S. Constitution] a finger of that almighty hand....”²¹ This was a signal that the “education” promoted by Trump’s proposed commission will, in actuality, be indoctrination to not only instill unthinking patriotism but also theocratic Christian fundamentalism in youths.

Trump’s “education” commission is a dangerous move by the fascist regime toward re-forging and imposing overt white supremacy, male domination, America-first chauvinism, and Christian fundamentalism on all of society as the “civic bonds” tying the U.S. together—and to punish, even outlaw the teaching of actual reality, and a critical approach to learning about U.S. history.

18. Donald Trump Speech Transcript, September 17, 2020.  [back] 

19. As revcom.us noted at the time of the 1619 Project, this represents an effort by those like the New York Times and other progressive public intellectuals to open up some of the actual history of this country in order to “save America,” within the myth of America constantly striving for and advancing toward “a more perfect union.” Go here for further discussion of this.  [back]

20. James Madison was one of the most influential of the “Founding Fathers,” and the primary author of the U.S. Constitution. He was a major owner of human beings—slaves—and one of the achievements of the Constitution he authored was devising a political framework that brought together states in which slavery was the dominant mode of production and states dominated by merchant capitalism. This was the “genius” of the electoral college: It provided disproportionate representation to the slave states. More recently the election of the white supremacist Trump/Pence regime resulted from these continuing inequalities. In works such as Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, Bob Avakian has written extensively and deeply on the early history of the U.S. and how slavery was embedded in the foundations of this country and has shaped every dimension of U.S. society since.  [back]

21.Donald Trump Speech Transcript, September 17, 2020.  [back]

Speaking to a cheering fascist crowd at his September 18 Nazi rally in Minnesota, Donald Trump mocked a journalist who was injured by police while covering a Black Lives Matter protest in May—calling the outrageous attack a “beautiful sight.” The journalist, Ali Velshi of MSNBC, was covering the protests in Minneapolis after the police murder of George Floyd. And overall he was reporting on the protests accurately and letting viewers hear what the protesters were actually demanding. As he and his crew reported live on-air from the streets, the police attacked the people who were protesting angrily but peacefully.

Trump said at the rally, referring to Velshi and mocking his injury and gloating in his hurt, “He got hit in the knee with a canister of tear gas and he went down. He was down. ‘My knee, my knee.’ Nobody cared, these guys [the police] didn’t care, they moved him aside.... you finally see men get up there and go right through them, wasn’t it really a beautiful sight? It’s called law and order.”

Velshi tweeted in response, “So, @realDonaldTrump, you call my getting hit by authorities in Minneapolis on May 30, 2020 (by a rubber bullet, btw, not a tear gas cannister) a ‘beautiful thing’ called ‘law and order’. What law did I break while covering an entirely peaceful (yes, entirely peaceful) march?” Velshi wasn’t the only journalist injured by pigs during the George Floyd protests—one photojournalist was hit by a rubber bullet that permanently blinded her left eye, and more than two dozen others were subjected to police violence.²²

This wasn’t just a despicable outburst against an individual journalist. As an MSNBC statement points out, “When the President mocks a journalist for the injury he sustained while putting himself in harm’s way to inform the public, he endangers thousands of other journalists and undermines our freedoms.”

MSNBC journalist, Ali Velshi, who got hit in the knee with a rubber bullet while covering a Black Lives Matter protest in Minnesota, in May 2020. At a Nazi rally on September 18, Trump told his fascist supporters the outrageous attack was a “beautiful sight.”

One of the hallmarks of the Trump/Pence regime from the start has been vicious attacks on journalists and media generally if they even hesitate to obediently accept—let alone if they object to—all the lies and fascist shit spewed out by Trump. Any reportage unfavorable to him and his regime is instantly denounced as “Fake News.” The press itself is declared “enemy of the people” de-legitimizing and undermining any opposition including within ruling circles. This is a crucial part of their attempt to impose a fascist clampdown on all opposition, and Trump has escalated it further with his celebration of police violence against a journalist as “beautiful” and “law and order.”

22. Police targeted journalists covering the George Floyd protests, Katelyn Burn, Vox.com, May 31, 2020.  [back]

MAGA crowd gathered where early voters had to pass to vote, shouting “Four more years” and waving their flags, and of course, not wearing masks or social distancing, putting waiting voters in jeopardy.

Saturday, September 19, 8:30 am, the second day of early voting in Virginia. Hundreds of people are already lined up outside the Fairfax County Government Center waiting for the polls to open, many spurred on by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg the night before and the looming threat of a Supreme Court packed with fascists picked by Trump.

But they won’t have to wait long to see fascists in action—75-100 Trump supporters were already rallying in another part of town. Heeding Trump’s many calls to “Be poll watchers ... Watch all the thieving and stealing and robbing they do,” they set off to the polling place to “tell them who they should go and vote for.” They arrived, horns blaring. They crowded the area where people were lined up so that voters had to pass through or walk around them as they shouted “Four more years” and waved their flags. And of course, these MAGA fools were not wearing masks and not social distancing, thus putting waiting voters in real jeopardy.

According to election officials, “Some voters, and elections staff, did feel intimidated by the crowd and we did provide escorts past the group.” Eventually officials decided to move the line inside the building—which increases the COVID risk—to get away from the fascists.

This whole scene evoked the way anti-women (a/k/a, “pro-life”) “activists” swarm abortion clinics, shouting at, harassing, and intimidating women and staff going inside—and which was part of a broader campaign that included bombing clinics and murdering doctors. These MAGA fascists are obviously not trying to “persuade” anybody—they want to create an atmosphere in which people are afraid to vote.

And this is only the very start of voting. As a Democratic legislator summed up, it is an “ominous foreshadowing of what’s to come in America ... Diehard Trump supporters taunting and hazing Americans trying to exercise their constitutional rights ... Fascist authoritarianism at its finest.”