by Coco Das |
Trump’s speech at Thursday night’s fascist rally in Montana was not the speech of a man who fears his days are numbered. To all those who are sitting back, still waiting for Trump’s imminent defeat at the hands of a blue wave, the Mueller investigation, nonexistent checks and balances, or a Democratic Socialist congressional candidate, watch this speech and tell me Trump is not utterly, arrogantly, and confidently triumphant.
This speech was especially vile, especially violent, and especially sickening in light of what has come out in the last two weeks for the whole world to see. Children in cages, 3000 children separated from their parents and transported all over the U.S., concentration camps being prepared on military bases, heartless cruelty and abuse by agents of this fascist regime, and on top of those horrors, the Supreme Court rulings upholding the Muslim Ban and Christian fascist fake pregnancy clinics. Trump gloated about his Supreme Court victory, both the ruling upholding “The Trump Travel Ban” and Kennedy’s resignation, and why shouldn’t he gloat? He’s winning, delivering what he promised – a ban on Muslims, a country without brown immigrants, a white, Christian Fascist America.
There are plenty of articles quoting this speech. You can find them. In short, Trump escalated his attacks on political opponents from the Democratic Party, inciting the audience to chant “Lock her up” yet again, calling African-American congresswoman Maxine Waters a “low-IQ individual,” saying that a vote for Democrats is a vote to “let MS-13 run wild in our communities.” He went after “fake news,” just days after a shooting at a newspaper in Maryland, made what really has to be taken as a rape “joke” in reference to Elizabeth Warren, and called the brave protester who scaled the Statue of Liberty a “clown” who was endangering law enforcement and said the police should have just put out a net and seen if she landed on it.
We must oppose these attacks fiercely, which all too few people have. There were a few hundred people protesting outside of the rally, and that is very important. But where was everyone else? A few critics have seized on some of the more disgusting excerpts from Trump’s speech, but we need to grasp the big picture that Trump’s blustering speech in Montana clearly illustrates. Trump is the fully fascist leader of a fully fascist movement, and right now, his approach to critics is to double-down. He is getting things done even while there is opposition – in reality an opposition that is so easily thrown off course it’s laughable. Scott Pruitt’s resignation gives us the latest wobbler. Yeah, Scott Pruitt resigned. So the fuck what? Wheeler, his replacement is every bit the climate change denier and environmental plunderer that Pruitt was, just without so many scandalous pigtails to pull on… this removal is not even a speedbump for the regime. Trump, Pence, the biggest stalwarts of the regime, all the agencies set up to violently enforce the regime’s policies, all of the institutions of government increasingly purged of non-fascists, and a rabid fascist base, are still intact.
There is only one demand that is an answer to this danger. Trump must go and take his entire illegitimate regime with him. We are in the middle of the biggest upsurge in resistance since the protests of early 2017. This is extremely important, we must not let up. We must not give any of them a moment’s rest, but any demand short of removing the man at the helm of all this is at best unrealistic and at worst, a mistake that will lead to unthinkable horrors. The horrors right now are intolerable enough. No more chances, no more triumphant speeches from this monster.
This upsurge in resistance is important. It can grow and disrupt the fascist program, but we can’t just slow it down. This regime has shown it can absorb protest and bounce back harder. We have to stop it. Millions of lives are at stake. Children’s lives. Not just in this country, around the world. We have to stop celebrating flimsy victories and start working for a real victory, the end of this fascist regime.
Refuse Fascism has the strategy and plan to do this: a different kind of protest – massive, sustained nonviolent protests in the streets of cities and towns across the country that continue day after day and don’t stop, creating the kind of political situation in which the demand that the Trump/Pence regime be removed from power is met. This is the crisis that the regime hasn’t faced yet. It is possible and realistic. We have the power and the responsibility to do this, together. Everyone with a heart for a humanity, everyone who just can’t tolerate this another minute … let’s go.