The Democrats Are Showing You That They Will NOT Oust Trump and the Regime He Heads...
What Will YOU Do?
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This is addressed to those of you who cannot sleep at night because you agonize over what this fascist regime threatens to do and is doing... for those of you despairing over the future... but who sit paralyzed, refusing to act. Those who still trust that the Democrats—and the system those Democrats serve—will somehow, at the end of the day, do the right thing.
Last Thursday, the Democrats announced that the full House of Representatives would vote this week on whether to impeach Trump and try him for (a small slice of) his crimes. One hour later, they showed you why they will not do what is urgently required to stop this fascist juggernaut from rolling forward.
Three Disgusting Collaborations with Fascism, Courtesy Nancy Pelosi
Collaboration #1: Pelosi announced that the Democrats would back Trump on his new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. Trump has bragged that this trade agreement would further consolidate and deepen the United States’ plunder of Mexico, as well as gives it advantage in its imperialist competition with Canada... and the Democrats were proudly on board. Mexico—where, to take one horrendous example of what this means, children in Oaxaca have rotting teeth and deformed bones because the ground water is polluted with arsenic as a result of having been used to grow broccoli for U.S. winter dinner.
Collaboration #2: Pelosi announced Democratic support for the highest military spending bill ever. This new bill expands the U.S. military into space and further builds up its already dominant force of nuclear weapons—which Trump, who has sole control over those weapons, has threatened to use numerous times. This new bill finances the hundreds of U.S. military bases around the world to enforce its rule; the drone strikes that take hundreds of lives a year in “collateral damage”; the undeclared wars, invasions, and “special forces” operations in countries in Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa; the training schools for the U.S.-supported torturers and coup-makers in Latin America; and so on. The Democrats had done their usual teaser of putting in parts of the bill that would appeal to those people who generally oppose war—for instance, part of the original bill would have stopped U.S. support for the genocidal war being waged by their “client” regime Saudi Arabia against the country of Yemen1—only to allow them to be cut from the final version.
Collaboration #3: Despite the fact that they all know that Trump is a fascist (and some of them who are no longer major figures in the party will say so, as a letter from a reader pointed out), virtually every major figure in the Democratic Party refuses to utter that word.2 If they did, they would have to call people into the streets to do whatever it takes to stop such a horror from going down—and that, more than anything, they do not want to do. They would not exactly be able to “reach across the aisle”—and most of all, what they say and do themselves would have to be commensurate in some way to meet such an existential threat.
The Democrats do care about putting some kind of a check on Trump. But they care about that in the context of something much more fundamental that they share with him: keeping the U.S. empire dominant in the world and keeping things within this country stable to ensure that domination.
This is as if a German in the time of the Nazis, claiming to oppose Hitler, would nevertheless say that Germany needs a strong military, a dominant economic position against other countries, and that most of all people must never accuse the Nazis of being... Nazi. They might even say that for Germany, with its great traditions in philosophy, the sciences and arts, someone like Hitler could only be a passing phase... and that one must not be rash. Above all, they might say, don’t go into the streets.
A stance, in fact, that all too many in Germany took, in one form or another.
What They Fear: Trump, the Fascist Base... and YOU
But this is not all sewn up.
Bob Avakian (BA) has pointed out that these top Democrats have three big fears. They fear Trump and the Republicans. They fear the strong possibility that, if they succeeded in getting a guilty verdict in the Senate, Trump would simply refuse to leave office and bring out his fascist mobs inside and outside the military and police to defend him. But most of all, they fear YOU.
Here it’s important to quote all of what BA says:
[The Democrats] are afraid of the people on the other side of the divide in the country, the people who tend to vote for the Democrats, especially the basic masses of oppressed people. They are afraid of the very people, basic masses and others, whom the Democratic Party is responsible for “corralling” into the BEB and “domesticating” their dissent. They’re afraid of the people who are angry about what’s represented by Trump and Pence. They don’t want those people out in the street, unless it is contained within the narrow confines of what the Democratic Party, and the system it serves, can allow. And they don’t want the confrontation between those people and the fascists who have rallied behind Trump. You think they want to see masses of Black people, immigrants, and others, including masses of people from different strata who are furious over Trump—you think they want to see them in the streets in direct and determined opposition to what is represented by Trump and Pence? That’s one of the worst nightmares of Piglosi and Company, not only because of the potential for militant confrontation with the fascists, but because people could then get completely out of the control of the Democratic Party, and the whole system of which the Democrats are representatives, functionaries, and enforcers. A big part of what they are representing and enforcing would be seriously jeopardized.
Think about that last fear. The corollary is this: YOU, joining with others, could change that equation. You could learn from those in Chile, Hong Kong, Algeria, Iraq, and elsewhere who stand up in the face of great repression... you could learn from the brave protester in Hershey, Pennsylvania, who dared the wrath of the Trumpian mob last week... you could act.
You could act.
The Stakes Before You
In January, there will be a trial in the Senate. Trump wants to use this trial to go after the Democrats. Trump, as well as his most loyal minions (the Barrs and Bannons of the world), see this as their chance to hammer home his notion that “the president can do whatever he wants.” Other Republicans want to use their majority to make it a more or less quick two-week process where, after going through the motions, they vote to acquit.
Either way, the outcome is unpredictable... if you act, and only if you act. If there are thousands in the streets, growing into hundreds of thousands and then millions—and, again, if you say that’s not possible, there are people all over the world right now proving you wrong... if they were unified around the single, simple demand of TRUMP/PENCE OUT NOW!... then, and only then, there would be a real chance to drive this regime out. Not a guarantee, but a chance.
And think what that would mean. The chance for a future for billions, a future whose very existence is now imperiled... the chance to transform the terrible horrors already imposed, where children in cages is the “new normal”... and the chance to glimpse a world where all this was no more. A better world IS possible—on this website, and in the works of Bob Avakian, you can get into and find out about the new communism that BA has brought forward: what that world could be and how the revolution that is needed to bring it into being can be made. We need a movement where, based on the conviction that a better world is badly needed and possible, we can discuss and debate with others what that world should be.
Refusing to act is not without consequence. You, individually, have to make a decision. To stand by while the madman with his finger on the trigger stays in power, probably coming out stronger than before... or to join with others and ACT.
To end again with BA:
[I]t has to be bluntly said: For the millions, and tens of millions, who say they hate everything Trump stands for and what he is doing but who, after all this time, have still not taken to the streets in sustained mobilization demanding that the Trump/Pence regime must go, this makes them collaborators with this fascist regime and themselves guilty of the egregious crime of tolerating this regime when they still could have the possibility of achieving the demand that it must go, through such mass mobilization!
To paraphrase Paul Simon: They are squandering their resistance for a pocketful of mumbles—and worse—from the Democratic Party.
It is long past time—and there is still time, but not much time—for this to change, for masses of people to finally take to the streets, and stay in the streets, with the firm resolve that this fascist regime must go!
1. The Saudi-led coalition’s war of aggression on Yemen has killed tens of thousands, pushed millions to the brink of starvation, and created the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world today. The Saudis have blockaded food, medicine, and other needed goods, while bombing Yemen’s food, water, medical systems, and other infrastructure—in other words, using starvation and disease as weapons of war, which is a clear war crime under international law. See here for more background. [back]
2. The most notable of the few exceptions are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar and a) they are NOT powerful figures, and b) their role, whether they’ve been let in on it or not, is to appeal to those who are extremely disaffected from the whole system but not yet ready to come to grips with what it will take to make any fundamental change, and hold out the illusion that if you all just try hard enough somehow this time the Democrats can be made to act against what they most fundamentally are: one of the two major parties charged with ruling the most powerful oppressive system in the world. [back]
In late September 2019, Nancy Pelosi (and the Democratic Party leadership of which she is a prominent representative), after a prolonged stubborn insistence on refusing to impeach Donald Trump, reversed course and announced that an “impeachment inquiry” of Trump would be undertaken. This reversal was hinged upon—and Pelosi and Company have made an attempt to focus this “impeachment inquiry” overwhelmingly, if not solely, on—the revelation (stemming from a report by a government “whistleblower”) that Trump has been involved in an effort to pressure the government of Ukraine to do Trump the “favor” of digging up (or “cooking up”) dirt on Joe Biden, former Vice President (under Obama) and a leading contender for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidential election in 2020. Pelosi and the Democrats have identified this as an abuse of presidential power, in pursuit of Trump’s personal interests (particularly looking ahead to the 2020 election) and have given emphasis to their insistence that, in making this “favor” the basis (and the price) for the continuation of the U.S. military aid to Ukraine, in its confrontation with pro-Russian forces, Trump “undermined U.S. national security,” particularly in relation to its major adversary Russia. In other words, while, from their bourgeois perspective, their concern is very real in regard to the imperialist “national interests” of the U.S., the “norms” of how this system’s rule has been imposed and maintained, the importance to them of a “peaceful transition” from one administration to another through elections—and the danger posed to this by Trump’s trampling on these “norms”—Pelosi and Company, in focusing this “impeachment inquiry” on this narrow basis, have underlined the fact that they are acting in accordance with their sense of the interests of U.S. capitalist imperialism and its drive to remain the dominant imperialist power in the world, and that they continue to refuse to demand Trump’s ouster on the basis of his many outrageous statements and acts directed against masses of people, not only in the U.S. but internationally: his overt racism and promotion of white supremacy and white supremacist violence; his gross misogyny and attacks on the rights of women, including very prominently the right to abortion, and on LGBT rights; his repeated calls for and backing of intensified brutal repression and suppression of dissent; his discrimination against Muslims and his cruel targeting of immigrants, involving confinement in concentration camp-like conditions, including for those fleeing from persecution and the very real threat of death in their “home countries” and seeking asylum on that basis, and the separation of even very young children from their parents; his assault on science and the scientific pursuit of the truth, including denial of the science of climate change and continuing moves to undermine and reverse even minor and completely ineffective protections of the environment; his threats to destroy countries, including through the use of nuclear weapons—in short, his all-around drive to fully consolidate fascist rule and implement a horrific, fascist agenda, with terrible consequences for the masses of humanity.
Bob Avakian,
from Individualism, BEB and
the Illusion of “Painless Progress”
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