What You Need to Know: Wednesday, January 6, 2021

January 6, 2021 | revcom.us

 

Today will be an important, perhaps pivotal, day in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election and carry out a fascist coup. Two big things will be happening, and there are important things to do in the face of that.

One: the Senate is supposed to officially confirm Joe Biden’s win in the electoral college. After this, there is no path with even a phony pretense of “legality” through which Trump could claim the presidency. Trump could then only hold onto it through a naked show of force—one form or another of a military coup.

Republicans in the Congress have organized to stop or at the minimum block and delay the process long enough for a special provision in the law to possibly click in which would allow the decision to shift to the House of Representatives, where the Republicans could win. Trump’s vice-president, Pence, will preside over this ceremony. Trump has openly demanded that Pence declare the votes of certain states that voted against Trump null and void, and through that ploy to illegally give Trump the victory.

Let’s recognize, and lead others to recognize, what this is: an attempt to illegally overturn the election to install fascism in power.

Two: Trump has supported calls for mass demonstrations demanding that the results of the election be overturned and has promised to speak at one. This will be the third of such demonstrations since the election; the last one was marked by organized assaults against anyone the fascists suspected of not being loyal to Trump. The fascist white supremacist Proud Boys tore down Black Lives Matter banners at historically Black churches. Refuse Fascism has called on people to protest this in various ways. Some of the fascists have vowed to stay in DC for the rest of the week.

An Explosive Mix

These two developments taken together create an explosive mix. All eyes will be—and should be—on DC.

In this context, people who oppose this fascism should be urgently getting word out on social media of the need to actually recognize what this is, call this out, get organized to fight it and take up some of the measures being called for by Refuse Fascism right now. Over the past two days, Sunsara Taylor has hosted important programs around this juncture on listener-supported Pacifica radio. These shows featured Andy Zee, Cornel West, and Reverend William H. Lamar IV from the Metropolitan AME church in DC (which was attacked earlier this month by the Proud Boys) yesterday (go here to see a video version); and Carl Dix and Michael Coard on Monday (go here). 

If you have not watched these shows, watch them, NOW; and if you have, then spread them, as far as you possibly can. These speakers break down the present-day danger and historical roots of what’s going on, making clear the political stakes to all who remain blind to this; and they struggle hard with the self-seeking individualism, obliviousness, and spinelessness that this system has imbued and reinforced in people. Get these out as a whole, or make clips of them, but get them out.

If you who are reading this take part in any actions today, get word of this to revcom.us by writing to: revolution.reports@yahoo.com.

Other Significant Developments

Also yesterday: at least one Democratic candidate for the Senate—Raphael Warnock, the Black pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the historic church of Martin Luther King Jr.—won a “runoff” election against fascist Kelly Loeffler for one of the Senate seats from Georgia. Loeffler, a fascist lapdog, had vowed to support Trump’s coup attempt today in the Senate. In a second Senate race, the Democrat Jon Ossoff is running ahead of the Trumpite fascist David Perdue. If both are defeated, this will objectively represent a repudiation of Trump—who campaigned for them the Monday before the election, focusing almost entirely on his demand to overturn Georgia’s electoral win for Biden.

Finally: on Tuesday, the district attorney in Kenosha, Wisconsin refused to indict police for shooting Jacob Blake seven times in the back, almost murdering him and, in the process, paralyzing him. This utterly groundless and outrageous decision drives home again the basic point made by Bob Avakian: 

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness. (Basics 1:24)

And the fact that:

White supremacy and capitalism—they have been completely interwoven and tightly “stitched together” through the whole development of this country, down to today; to attempt to really put an end to white supremacy while maintaining the system of capitalism would tear the entire fabric of the country apart. White supremacy and capitalism—it is not possible to overcome and finally abolish the one without overthrowing and finally abolishing the other. (From Why We Need an Actual Revolution and How We Can Really Make Revolution, a speech by Bob Avakian)

This outrageous injustice should forcefully remind us: the urgent fight to prevent a fascist America must be built as part of a larger fight—the fight to make revolution in the U.S. as part of the worldwide struggle to emancipate humanity from all forms of exploitation, oppression, antagonistic conflicts and the suffocation of the spirit.

WHAT IS THE DANGER OF TRUMP'S ATTEMPT TO OVERTURN THE ELECTION?

Share everywhere!