A Second Term Would Be Fascist ‘Shock and Awe;’ Join 60 Days of Struggle Demanding: TRUMP/PENCE OUT NOW!”
For three and a half years, a demented bully has lied, jeered, broken the law, torn families apart, built concentration camps and packed them full, threatened to lock up his opponents, pardoned and lionized outright war criminals, brandished nuclear weapons, declared himself above the law, demeaned women, denied science, fueled the mass deaths of COVID, threatened the media, and cheered for white supremacists and vigilante murderers.
More times than we can count, he has shocked the conscience of the world.
More times than we can count, experts have cried, “He can’t do that!” But he does it anyhow.
If he is allowed a second term, all this will be unspeakably worse.
Listen to Miles Taylor, former chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security who served under Trump. I quote:
There are people serving very close to the President that have told me verbatim we should expect, quote, “shock and awe” if the President wins a second term. You will see a flurry of executive orders.”
Taylor was speaking of Trump’s foreign policy, but we can expect the same across the board.
Listen to what Trump wanted to do to immigrants on the border, what Taylor heard him say, but what Trump was prevented from doing by people who he has now kicked out and publicly attacked. Taylor says:
Trump would be dreaming up “sickening” medieval plots “to pierce the flesh” of migrants, rip all the families apart, “maim,” and gas them. “This was a man with no humanity whatsoever,”… “He says, we got to do this, this, this, and this, all of which are probably impossible, illegal unethical,”… “And he looks over me and he goes, you fucking taken notes?”
These are the rantings of a genocidal racist who will be unleashed if by hook or by crook he gets another term.
Legal experts have looked at the nearly 300 federal judges Trump has packed onto the courts and warned that we are hurtling towards theocracy. Mike Pence’s Bible enforced by the state. Forcing women to bear children against their will.
Do you know that in Mike Pence’s Indiana, a woman was sentenced to 30 years in prison for allegedly inducing her own abortion or maybe just miscarrying? Do you know that the fascist lunatic Trump put in charge of teenage girls in his immigrant detention centers kept a calendar of their menstruation cycles and personally flew to their cells to “counsel” them if they ask for an abortion—even if they were raped? You think this won’t be done to all women? You think it’s acceptable now? It’s not funny when Trump “joked” that Pence wants to hang gay people. That is where things are headed. Don’t say that could never happen here. Did you listen to the lunatics they put up at their Nazi RNC? They want to punish women for abortion, deny them of birth control, and one of their speakers says women should give up their vote to their husbands. They put this center stage—they are TELLING you where they are going.
All this as Trump shreds environmental protections, accelerating climate change that is already fueling floods in Bangladesh, droughts in Africa, and driving millions from their homes. We are gathered here in 106 degree heat, wildfires raging across the state, and Trump has repeatedly threatened to withhold aid because Californians overwhelmingly oppose him.
This regime is threatening the future of human civilization itself!
Fascism is not just the worst of Republican policies. It is a qualitative change in the form of rule, the obliteration of all the norms, the evisceration of the democratic rights we have been told that we have, like the ability for people to oppose them—in the streets in our protests, or even within the halls of power. Fascism is a form of rule that relies on open terror and violence—from the state and from the mob—against all they deem “enemies,” “undesirables,” or “dangers to society.”
And this is not standing still. We are gathered at a moment when Trump has unleashed and defended the killer of two heroic protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Anthony Huber and Jojo Rosenbaum were heroes who stood up for Black lives. We are gathered as MAGA fascists ride through Portland spraying paint guns and other weapons at protesters like the American Taliban they are. We are gathered as Bill Barr, the most powerful law enforcement agent in the country, is restructuring the state to brand protesters as terrorist and imprison them for life. When Trump just posed with a sheriff who openly advocated throwing a whole generation of Black people into warehouses, preventing them from having children, and holding them till they all died off and then turning the warehouses into shopping malls. Trump posed with this Nazi AFTER these comments were made public.
That is genocide, pure and simple, and as Bob Avakian has said in a new series which everyone here should read at revcom.us, Donald Trump Is a Genocidal Racist.
The fascists are fighting to lock all this in thru a second term whether it takes stealing, sabotaging, or canceling the election. Every day new projections come out from well-informed, ruling class figures about the danger of Trump declaring himself the winner even it means spewing an avalanche of lies, breaking the law, and unleashing violence and bloodshed.
Many are now saying, “Well, if he does that, then we’ll take to the streets, like they’ve done in Hong Kong and Belarus.” That’s a step—but we cannot passively wait for things to get worse.
That would be like the LA Lakers sitting down their best players for the first three quarters and saying, “If the other team runs up the score, then we’ll put in LeBron James and the rest.” If they did that, the other team WOULD run up the score and the Lakers would be so far behind they wouldn’t have a chance.
Well, these fascists are running up the score on us right now and we have to get out there on the court and take the initiative away from them.
This is why RefuseFascism.org is launching, starting today, 60 days of struggle.
All September, we must spread this message—Trump/Pence Out Now!—and the plan to drive out this regime through mass, sustained, nonviolent protest. We—all of us here, those of you who’ve been active and those of you who just now are stepping into things—need to be working together, beginning right after this demonstration, on how to build up our numbers, how to spread to every corner of society, how to strengthen our cohesion and ability to resist.
By October, people need to be in the streets every day demanding TRUMP/PENCE OUT NOW!, growing in our numbers and refusing to be intimidated or provoked by the fascists and all they throw at us. Uniting all who can be united—from Never-Trumpers to mainstream Democrats to revolutionary communists and followers of Bob Avakian like myself, and many more, from health workers to celebrities to youth and those among the hardest hit. All raising the single, unifying demand: Trump/Pence Out Now!
In fighting for this, it is not us—just those of us out here now and the others around the country today—up against them, the fascists with all their strength and terror. It is us carrying the hopes and aspirations and interests of literally billions of people around the world. It is us fighting to arouse and call forward the millions in this country don’t want to become accomplices to genocide and fascism. It is us pushing on the cracks and deep divisions that exist all throughout all the institutions of this society—the military, the courts, the halls of power, the structures of finance and international relations—to compel those who are not part of this fascism to act to remove this regime from power.
This is possible. If we declare right here, right now, together with each other that we will not find our place in a fascist America. That we will move heaven and earth to prevent it. That we will lead others to overcome fear and get out of their comfort zones as we do the very same ourselves together. That we will do this not for ourselves, but for all of humanity.
There is beauty, there is power, there is meaning in standing up together. Not only stopping this great catastrophe for humanity but in forging ourselves into a different kind of people, one that looks out for each other, one that puts humanity first, one that wins a better future for everyone on this planet. This is what history demands of us. This is the gift we can give to the people of the world if we dare. It is up to each of us, and all of us together.
Put your fists up and say it with me:
In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!
Trump/Pence Out Now!