Speedbumps on the Highway to Christian Fascism and the Resistance Still Needed

Speedbumps on the Highway to Christian Fascism and the Resistance Still Needed

Episode 153

Sun, Apr 23, 2023 6:08PM • 46:50

Coco Das 00:00

They are just going for their traditional patriarchal — the Bible taken literally — horror of a Christian, theocratic, fascist state. It’s not a long game anymore. I think they’re trying to accelerate and get this done as quickly as possible. There has been such a failure to confront what it is that these fascists are after, what kind of society they want to hammer into place, and that they’re not backing down and they’re not going to stop, and what kind of opposition does that require?

There needs to be a connected, united response from the decent people. Protest that destabilizes the status quo, that really gets people thinking about what’s happening and why it’s happening, and fills them with that determination and fury, that’s the kind of protests we need. When people get into the streets fighting for our interests, our values of diversity, for justice, then there is a potential to change the whole game.

Sam Goldman 01:20

Welcome to Episode 153 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show, Refuse Fascism exposes analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States.

In today’s episode, we’re sharing a chat Coco das and I had yesterday about this past week’s developments. For those who listen regularly, you know that Coco is a frequent guest guest host and fellow member of the Refuse Fascism editorial board. She is also just the best at both clarifying what’s going on and why, and challenging you when you need to be. We talk about: SCOTUS preserving the status quo of mifepristone access; Trump not being anti-abortion enough for Christian fascists; what’s driving the fever pitch in the assault on LGBTQ rights — are we seriously just leaving it to trans folks to prevent their erasure? how protests makes a difference; the Texas senate advancing legislation to put the ten commandments into schools; Abbott pardoning the murderer of Garrett Foster; and so much more.

Sam Goldman 02:41

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Sam Goldman 03:40

Coco and I cover a lot of ground in the episode but there’s one development from this past week that I left out. I mean, there’s more than one, but I want to mention one briefly; the latest in the case of woke corporations standing up to fascism. People hoped that the Dominion voting defamation case against the fascist news network Fox News would force accountability for their promotion of the Big Lie, but Dominion took a bag of cash and the peddlers of hate and lies are back to business as usual with no real admission of wrongdoing. “We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” FoxNews said in their statement. They are poised to do the same thing in the future, perhaps opting for dog whistles instead of megaphones., but I’m not convinced. With that, here is my conversation with Coco.

This was a really, really crazy week for humanity. I feel like the Christian fascists continue to advance and too many of the decent people are putting their heads in the sand. To me, that means that I need to talk to my friend and fellow Refuse Fascism Editorial Board member who frequently lends her brilliance to the show, Coco Das. Thank you for chatting with us about this past week. We’re gonna go through some of the headlines and just kind of break it down a little bit. Thanks for coming on.

Coco Das 05:10

Thank you for having me. I feel the same way.

Sam Goldman 05:13

Let’s start with what a lot of people are waking up feeling a little bit lighter. Last night, the Supreme Court, in what seems like a 7-2 ruling, paused abortion bill restrictions from taking effect during the appeals process. What that does is it preserves the status quo of availability of mifepristone. The legal battle will continue over mifepristone in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, May 17, but in the meantime, access remains as it was. I wanted get your thoughts on this; both what you are thinking and what you think is needed in terms of people’s understanding in this moment. I have some thoughts too, but I wanted to hear from you first.

Coco Das 05:59

Yes, it’s a good thing that the Supreme Court didn’t uphold Kacsmaryk’s ruling, which would have taken with mifepristone off the market. This is temporary. It’s going to be going back through the Fifth Circuit, and even the Fifth Circuit ruling that had come down upheld a lot of very damaging rulings in this case, and would have limited a lot of the access to mifepristone.

This is upholding the status quo in states where abortion is legal, and there are many states, Texas being one of them, where abortion is not legal. I’m still trying to sort out what does this mean for women in Texas? And what does it mean for women nationwide? Certainly being able to get mifepristone here, so that women don’t have to travel out of state, that’s an important service.

But the fact remains that we are living in a moment where Christian fascists are really going for the whole thing. They are not gonna be satisfied with this being a state-by-state question. That’s bullshit. They want female enslavement across the land, where women do not have access to abortion, don’t have the right to make their own decisions about when and if they’re going to have children.

What that means for women’s lives, their place in society, their ability to participate fully to fulfill their dreams, we know what’s happening on the ground in these states where abortion is legal, where women are being forced to bleed out and in horrific pain, because they can’t get miscarriage care. It’s just an all out punishment of women, as you’ve said, in other podcasts episodes. Maybe we can call it a speed bump on the road to Christian fascist consolidation. but that’s all it is, and people need to wake up to the reality.

Sam Goldman 07:56

I really think that that’s a helpful way of looking at it. One of the things that I was reading this morning is by Mary Zeigler, a legal scholar who focuses on reproductive rights. Her legal expertise is broader than that, but she does focus on reproductive rights. She had written in response to this, one thing that I think was helpful, she wrote: “The Court steps back in this latest order, preserving the pre-lawsuit status quo when it comes to mifepristone, but we can read only so much into the court’s decision. For 50 years, anti- abortion rights groups have shown that they are willing to play the long game, and with a court as conservative as this one, they have no reason to cease their efforts.”

I thought that was a helpful reminder of this idea of a speed bump, if you will, like you were pointing to and where they’re really going. We’ve talked about this before on the show. What they’re going for is being all-out nationwide ban on all abortion, and everything that they’re doing right now is in service of that goal. We can expect that this will be back before the Supreme Court, probably by the fall. So this this isn’t done. Even while, again, this this is a sigh of relief for everyone who needs this access right now, and I don’t want to discount that, while also making clear that this battle isn’t over, it’s not done.

Coco Das 09:21

I’m sure it’s — now with more of them in power, with the way that Trump transformed the judiciary — it’s not a long game anymore. I think they’re trying to accelerate and get this done as quickly as possible without taking their eyes off that ultimate goal. They’re not backing down, I think, is the point of that. We have to understand what they’re going for.

There just has not been the equivalent of that kind of determination, and even the understanding of this fundamental right to abortion, why it’s so important for the role of women in society. The reproductive rights movement, under the wing of the Democratic Party, has been all over the place. There has been such a failure to confront what it is that these fascists are after, what kind of society they want to hammer into place, and that they’re not backing down and they’re not going to stop, and what kind of opposition does that require?

Sam Goldman 10:15

Precisely. And what kind of people are we, that we look at them preserving a “status quo” of access — The New York Times, I think, said preserve or restores broad access to the pill — and it’s like broad access? To where? To what rural communities? To what women living on the res? When such a crumb, such a case that shouldn’t have even been before the Supreme Court gets ruled remotely favorably, people are like, trained to cheer.

It’s heartbreaking to me about how normalized this assault has become. When you are talking about what kind of resistance or what kind of response does this require, there’s what Biden said last night, and I just want to read part of it, which was: “Let me say this, I will continue to fight attacks on women’s health. The American people, but also continue to use their vote as their voice and elect a Congress that will restore the protections of Roe v. Wade.”

Coco Das 11:16

First off, using your vote as your voice. That’s it. Don’t flood the streets. Don’t [SG: Don’t use your voice.] Don’t use your voice. Use your vote as your voice, yeah. Don’t yell in the street and get together with other people and raise hell in a non-violent civil disobedience or mass protest. Which is actually the way that any social justice in any right has been won for oppressed people in this country — and women are oppressed people. This also infuriated me. It’s time to stop relying on people like this, or this institution of the Democratic Party. They’ve had 50 years to codify Roe, and didn’t do it. They’re not going to call their base out into the streets to use their voice. This is not going to win us what badly needs to be won, which is nationwide legal abortion.

Sam Goldman 12:08

Yeah, the only thing I would add, Coco, is, as we’ve talked on the show a lot about, we are confronted with a Republi-fascist party that is in no way bound to the norms that have operated in this country for over a century. What do people think January 6 was about? It was about not accepting a loss. These fuckers don’t care about “the will of the people” or whatever, or about your vote. They’ve showed that they’re going to suppress it, they’re going to gerrymander it, and if they can’t use legal means to use extralegal means. If that’s what you’re up against, and your only thing is vote — that’s what you’re telling people to do as people’s lives are being destroyed right now, as over 5000 women, right now, are being forced to give birth against their will each month, what? That’s what you’re telling people to do?

It’s sickening. If you just look at abortion and not the host of other attacks on the people in relation to restricting voting — I don’t think personally that voting is the mechanism for change, I do defend civil people’s rights to vote, but — but look at Ohio. Ohio is advancing measures to make it harder for voters to pass an abortion rights amendment. And Ohio isn’t the only place that this is happening, where people are being told well, there can be ballot measures and voting is a losing issue for the GOP. They actually have something they can do about that. They can take away your ability to vote on it.

That’s what we’re seeing. I think that that underscores your point of we have to confront what we’re up against in totality. And that part of that includes that the so-called opposition party can’t be relied on to solve this; that they have shown that they are incapable of doing that. [CD: I agree with everything you just said.] I just am so like [sigh] it’s not frustrated — like abortion is a winning issue for the Democrats. I really wish that they fucking act like it, that you see on social media, or GOP is losing on abortion, GOP just loves losing.

Coco Das 14:18

They’re not losing on abortion in Texas. They’re not losing on abortion in states where 22 million women have no right to abortion. It’s cynical and disgusting, but in the main it’s not true. It’s not because the majority of people agree with them about abortion. It doesn’t matter that the majority of people don’t.

Sam Goldman 14:41

I think that that’s the key thing, because I think when people are saying that, when that is the analysis, I think people are looking to the base. The fact that the majority of people want there to be abortion rights, they think that because something is unpopular, it is therefore a losing strategy.

Coco Das 14:59

Also, what this doesn’t take into account is that this program, and this hollowed out Republican party that’s, you know, become fully fascist, people are united around the whole program, even if they have differences on various parts of it. We’ve talked to, there were, many young people who came through the Texas Rise Up for Abortion Rights, and they were all talking about how they came from these very conservative backgrounds, and at some point understood or came to a better understanding about abortion and became pro-choice.

Though many of them talked about how their families were on the fence, they didn’t support total bans on abortions. They even were supportive of some of the activism that these kids were doing, but it was not going to change their vote, because they’re voting for a whole program; they’re voting for the white supremacy, they’re voting for the Christian fascism, they’re voting for that vision of society as opposed to where they feel society is going right now. There’s just so much wrong with that conceit that it’s a losing issue.

Sam Goldman 16:05

This is an AP story, Meg Kinnard, came out yesterday, ‘Anti-abortion group last Trump over federal banned comments’, a major anti abortion group, Susan B. Anthony Pro Life, responded to a statement by the Trump campaign spokesperson about division among the 2024 GOP presidential field on abortion related issues. They said it would not support any White House candidate who did not, at a minimum, support a 15-week federal abortion ban. Their news release said “the Supreme Court made it clear in its decision that it was returning the issue to the people to decide through their elected representatives in the States and in Congress, holding to the position that it is exclusively up to the states is an abdication of responsibility by anyone to elected office.”

Coco Das 16:53

What we’re seeing here is even the top dog fascist might not be fascist enough for some of these really lunatic extremists in the base. We’ll see — I think we’re going to talk a little bit about Garrett Foster and Abbott’s pardon. You saw something similar there, where you have Trump, who was willing to tear up all the norms, transform the Republican Party. Then you have an entire movement where the furthest extremes, really going for a theocracy — really going for fascist consolidation, really going for all the things that they talked about — that the woman belongs in the home as mother and wife that Black people better know their place, LGBTQ people need to be erased, they need to not exist in society.

There’s a section that is emboldened to really push for that to be consolidated and hammered into place as soon as possible. I think they see an existential crisis in a way that really more of us should see the existential crisis. This is part of why people were so fanatically devoted to Trump; they saw this as their last chance to hammer this society that they want into place. I don’t think Donald Trump personally has the same views on abortion. He’s a fascist narcissist leader. He can and has gotten pushed farther and farther.

Sam Goldman 18:23

As some people have called it: The race to the bottom. [CD: The race to the bottom, yeah] I think what it does, is gives more evidence to our claim that what they are going for is a nationwide abortion ban. And they aren’t going to stop till they have it. The notion that you can wait, and you can rely on the courts or on voting in your state to protect, you know, an enclave of abortion rights, is a deadly strategy, because they are going for it all. To me, that’s the takeaway. I wanted to get a sense from you on people that are listening to what we just talked about, how can we take action? Does our protest around this make any difference if they don’t care about the lives of women?

Coco Das 19:13

I think it does matter the kind of protest. If the aim of that protest is to just spill out your emotions so you can go back to your life — protest isn’t a form of therapy. If it’s just to register voters and tell people wait, okay now, take your fury go home and sit on it till November. No. That’s not the kind of protest that matters at all. But protests that destabilizes the status quo, that really gets people thinking about what’s happening and why it’s happening and fills them with that determination and fury, that’s the kind of protest we need.

We need sustained protests. You need to be willing to keep coming back, keep coming back, and not back down from your demand. You need a lot of people, and right now we don’t have a lot of people. And part of that is because of the way that the system works on people, the collapse of the reproductive rights movement. Even now, when they’re calling people into the streets, they haven’t made the case of why — or it’s just channeled into the elections. This is not inspiring millions of people to come back out into the streets.

What protest does when it is inspiring, when it does have a critical mass, when it does keep coming back, and when it does bring out the truth of what’s going on, that creates a political crisis of legitimacy, it shows an emperor has no clothes, it calls out that complete moral and political and intellectual, and how abject that program is, and how the people in power do not have an answer to what’s going on. When the people who are in power are faced with that kind of crisis of legitimacy, sometimes, often, they have to concede to the demands of the people in the interest of getting back to the stability of their society.

That’s why the civil rights protests were so important. That was how you got the end of Jim Crow, was through that kind of protest. How did we get the right to abortion? It was women burning their bras, women carrying their coat hangers and raising bloody hell. Time after time, there are examples of what kind of protest is needed and how that makes an impact on all of society. It also generates controversy, and that causes people to start discussing this in their workplaces and schools. So what we’re doing, a little later, is we’re taking bloody sheets, and we’re covering the steps of the federal courthouse in Austin later.

This is for all the 5000 women a month being forced to give birth against their will, for the women who are being forced to bleed out to the brink of death before they’ll get any miscarriage care, for the girls and the women who are gonna become increasingly suicidal or take desperate measures to end their unwanted pregnancies. So we’re trying to bring out that this is the blood of women on the hands of these Christian fascist judges. We need to be in the streets everywhere demanding the restoration of legal nationwide abortion.

Sam Goldman 22:28

We will definitely be sharing on our social media, photos from it, so that people can do it in their own cities, towns campuses. It is really important and something that can be replicated elsewhere. I’m so glad that y’all are doing it. Since we’ve been talking about this Christian fascism, we could stay on that for a little bit, because there was other examples of it advancing this week. One is Texas specific as well, taking the Guardian headline: ‘Texas lawmakers advanced bill to force schools to display Ten Commandments.

State senators advance a bill that is a basic violation of separation of church and state.’ This is from The Guardian, Richard Luscombe. “Every classroom in Texas could be made to display the Ten Commandments prominently after lawmakers advanced a proposal to push more religion into schools. A parallel bill also approved by the Republican controlled Texas Senate on Thursday would require educational establishments to set aside time every day for students and employees to read the Bible or other religious manuscripts or to pray.”

Coco Das 23:40

This is horrifying.

Sam Goldman 23:41

But it’s unconstitutional Coco.

Coco Das 23:45

It’s unconstitutional…yes.

Sam Goldman 23:48

Didn’t the Supreme Court rule that you can’t display the Ten Commandments and have prayer time in school? So this doesn’t have a chance, right?

Coco Das 23:57

Well, I believe that there was a recent ruling from the Supreme Court that did open this possibility up, and I can’t remember what that ruling was.

Sam Goldman 24:05

The Kennedy case. In the Kennedy case, a football coach prayed on the football [field] involving students. I could go longer into it, but to keep it brief, that’s basically what it was. And the court ruled that it was private, even though it was very public, and therefore it was acceptable. It kind of opened the door to more of the encroachments on this separation.

Coco Das 24:28

It’s not inconceivable that this could go through. The influence of this hardcore Christian fascist base and politicians in power — Greg Abbott is a Christian fascist; Dan Patrick is; and the legislature is full of these Christian fascists — it’s not inconceivable that it can’t go through and that it will continue to influence education here in Texas, which is already heavily influenced by the Christian fascists and the white supremacy suppressing the actual history of Texas as a refuge for slaveholders, suppressing the history of what the fight at the Alamo was about, all this stuff.

It could go through, but it’s also just, in itself, is making a statement that they do not see any limits on their influence in their power. It’s so twisted. They don’t give a shit that these kids in Uvalde are gunned down. They don’t give a shit about that. They don’t care that you have to face this kind of terror. People are even scared to send their kids to school. Kids are terrified of going to school. And they think that putting the Ten Commandments up, that is what’s going to be the moral compass of society. Just, again, more evidence that we have to wake up to the theocratic, the Christian fascist threat. They are not stopping. They don’t care if you think it’s outrageous, or do you think that they can get away with that. They’re gonna try and they might succeed.

Sam Goldman 26:02

Looking at courts — the higher up you go, the more they’re stacked with fascists, the more they’re dominated by fascists — is not a winning strategy as they are catapulting further towards the theocracy. A lot of these things are test cases to see how far they can push it. Again, how far are we going to go to push back? Not to just get past things back to the status quo, but to push them all the way back, to stop this assault entirely.

That’s just kind of what it makes me think of. There is what can only be called a fever pitch in the assault on LGBTQ rights. This has been going on all year really. According to HRC over 500 anti- LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures, just in this year alone, and this is a record. Over 210 bills specifically targeting transgender and non-binary people, also a record. And 34 anti-LGBTQ laws have been enacted so far this year, including laws banning life saving gender affirming care. That would be the top laws that have been passed.

The rate of these anti-LGBTQ bills in state houses across this country is more this year than in each of the previous five years. And there is a focus on the most Nazi-esque efforts to prevent trans youth from living their lives; accessing age appropriate medical unnecessary, best practice health care. This is in addition to their bathroom bills, their sports bills. That is the overall landscape, and then just this week, Florida expanded, “Don’t Say Gay” through 12th grade. Over in Montana, Montana’s House Speaker has silenced representatives Zooey Zephyr, a trans gender lawmaker who rightly said that she won’t apologize for saying that lawmakers would have “blood on their hands” if they passed a ban on gender affirming health care. She was silenced for two days so far in sessions that have a direct impact on transgender rights and health care.

Florida, again, codified the seizing of children from their parents — parents who are or may be suspected of — being at risk for — providing care to their children. This could include you seizing cisgender children from parents. Again, this bounty hunting of people. Missouri had launched, this week, I think it is now down due to protests, but they have launched a new form on their website to report transgender individuals and those who help them to the government. These are just some of the stories from this past week of the horror that is being inflicted with genocidal aims. I just wanted to get your thoughts on what’s happening. And why is it at such a speed and fever pitch right now?

Coco Das 29:10

It’s so much violence. It is genocidal. It’s aimed at eliminating this population, not just sending them back into the closet, but actually eliminating them — taking children away from their parents who are trying to help their children survive and be happy. This is just heart wrenching. I think it’s at a fever pitch because of so much that has come before that has just unleashed and emboldened this movement to even not give up any pretenses that they want to respect the rule of law or they care about children or any of that. They are just going for their a traditional patriarchal, the Bible taken literally, horror of a Christian theocratic, fascist state.

These are all also test cases to see how far they can go. It’s a domino effect, they’re all like trying to outdo each other in the cruelty of their laws. It’s transforming all of society. It’s transforming the culture, where you have this very violent gunned-up base that is also ready to enforce. They’re ready to believe everything that their leaders say that’s full of anti-science, genocidal lite, and also lying untrue rhetoric. Transgender people have become the main scapegoat, right now, of these Christian fascist lunatics. You’re unleashing this permission to be as hateful and violent as you want against people that they don’t think should be seen as people.

One thing that I’m wrestling with is all of these things are related to each other, they’re fights in their own right, the fight for trans rights, the fight for the right to abortion, the fight for voting rights, but all of these assaults are coming from this united fascist movement. Not that they agree on everything, but they’re united in these assaults and going for what they want in society. There needs to be a connected united response from the decent people, and, I think that’s something we need to wrestle with. What does it look like? It’s great that there have been protests against some of these bills and transgender people and allies coming into the state houses, but it needs to be much broader than that. It really needs to be a society wide reckoning. That’s not existing right now.

Sam Goldman 31:42

I also think that when it comes to Refuse Fascism, one of the things that I appreciate about the analysis that was first brought forward when we were founded was that it operates on it a triad — they are connected, and they are their own legs, if you will. There’s the white supremacy, the vicious xenophobia, American chauvinism, and there’s the patriarchy. Fascist movements foment and rely upon those to advance and consolidate power.

There’s a interesting — it is long — piece put out by the Southern Poverty Law Center on male supremacy [that] is at the core of the hard right’s agenda. The piece is full of research wrangling with this as a pull that has been often neglected. There’s been more recognition and understanding of this vicious white supremacy that is propelling this movement, and one of the factors that hasn’t been looked at is the violent patriarchy that you are speaking to. It’s violent. The violence that is forced motherhood comes from the same place as the violent denial of gender affirming care. It’s the same place that comes from these anti-drag bans. All of that — there’s the same source.

While they do need to be fought in their own right, I do agree that this recognizing of what unites it and where this is coming from, and that it is part of a fascist program, is something that needs to be spread and then acted upon. When you look at the protests that have occurred in response to these genocidal bans on gender affirming care, or the bans at school levels from children participating in sport — cruel, cruel shit that’s happening, you mainly see those who identify as transgender or non-binary, you see parents of those affected. I mean, you see really bold shit, like at one of these — I think it might have been Florida, I’m sorry, if I got the state wrong — a young person injected themselves with hormone therapy on the thing and talked about how this was saving their life. Stuff that gives you chills; that makes you cry.

It’s wonderful that people are putting skin in the game because their skin’s in the game already, but I’m sorry, y’all, it’s got to be all of us. It’s too much of: “That’s their fight.” And not enough of: “These are our people.” We need to fight this all the way and beat this back. That’s just my personal thoughts on it. I’m not exactly sure what that looks like. I don’t have a program, but we’ve got to learn a little bit from history on how this goes down, and not make mistakes that we should have learned from. We’ve been talking about violence and the Christian fascist movement advancing and people not rising up. As we do that, I just think about people that do see themselves in the larger struggle, and even if they aren’t directly affected, have risen up.

One of those people was Garrett Foster, who participated in the uprising for black lives and was killed for doing so. Just recently, the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, put out a vow to pardon the killer of Garrett Foster. I think that we need to talk a little bit more about this and both what this means for “legitimizing” the murder of protesters, and what we need to be seeing about this rabid fascism that’s on the move.

Coco Das 35:31

Yeah. So first, for people who don’t know about this case, Garrett Foster was a white man. He had gone to, I think, around 50 protests for Black Lives Matter in Austin in the summer of 2020, when the whole country was rising up after the murder of George Floyd. He would go with his fiancee who is a quadruple amputee. They had been together since high school, she had gotten a virus, had developed an illness — I think they had been together a year when she had to have all four of her limbs amputated. And he, by all accounts, just a devoted, loving individual, a very caring person. And this is a person who saw an injustice and he went out in the streets, day after day, all through the summer of 2020.

At one of these protests, this rabidly racist Army sergeant and rideshare driver, who had been tweeting and messaging about killing protesters for several weeks, drove into one of these protests. In Texas, open carry is legal, so Garrett Foster had a rifle, which was his right to do. Daniel Perry drove into the crowd, Garrett Foster asked him to lower his window so they could talk. The crowd stopped the car, and in that confrontation, where Daniel Perry sometimes said the gun was pointed at him, sometimes said it wasn’t. In his initial statement, didn’t say that the gun was pointed at him, said he was afraid that that gun was going to be aimed at him, that Garrett Foster was carrying.

But very quickly — this wasn’t a long conversation that went on — he shot and killed Garrett. A jury in Austin, in Travis County, just found, based on carefully considered evidence — I think it was like almost two weeks of trial, 17 hours of deliberation — decided that Daniel Perry was guilty of murder. He has not even been sentenced yet. The sentence hearing was going to be happening after the verdict was announced. But that very night the verdict was announced, and then Tucker Carlson, even getting more rabidly fascist and white supremacist, went on and sort of challenged Greg Abbott to pardon Daniel Perry.

The trial proceedings are still ongoing. There’s a huge lawlessness to saying that you’re going to push a pardon board to recommend a pardon before the trial is even done; before the sentencing has even happened. I’m going to promise to pardon. I don’t know what Abbott would have done without the Carlson segment. He’s a very perfectly active fascist in his own right. He has run Texas as a fascist laboratory for eight years. He’s made plenty of fascist moves that smack in the face of the rule of law and due process, but in this case, the very next day, Abbott said he’s going to push for this pardon.

It’s just extremely ominous on so many levels. Even more evidence has come out since the verdict of Perry’s just vicious violent racism. He [Daniel Perry] was referring to Black Lives Matter protesters and black people as monkeys. You pardon somebody like this, it’s open season on protesters [for] all of the the white supremacist vigilantes who want to go out and just kill people that they hate. I think it’s also just an indication of how this fascist movement has this momentum and has this beast that keeps getting more and more horrific and more and more openly violent, and is preparing the ground for civil war.

There’s a very good video segment on last Thursday’s RNL, Revolution, Nothing Less show on YouTube, based on an article that was in revcom.us, about this case. Why was it, in 2020, that Trump and this fascist movement was put on the defensive by these protests — not that the protests were necessarily aimed at them, but it was a political crisis — and then they really felt a need to crush them and they unleashed their social base to violently suppress these protests. So there’s a lot to go into about what this meant, but Kyle Rittenhouse going and killing two protesters, shooting three — all of this had a chilling effect on the protests.

So there’s just a lot on the line — the right to protest. They’re [fascists] not talking about protecting their “protesters,” the January 6th rioters. Ashley Babbitt is a martyr to them. But to them, Garrett Foster is a race traitor, and doesn’t deserve to live. And they feel that about any of the people who stand up for justice who are opposed to their program.

Sam Goldman 40:25

I really appreciate that breakdown, Coco, and I, I also wanted to add that the Democrats in response to when this was going down in that summer — but also now, when the fascists don’t hold power in the White House and whatnot — they have wanted the police to be the force that suppresses the protesters, instead of the vigilantes, at a time that people were rising up. It’s a protest of police violence, and murder by the police. It kind of makes you dizzy.

The Democrats, I think we do have to have people think about, they are very, very, very scared to take these fascists that are gunned to the teeth, this fascist base, they’re very afraid to take them on. And they are very afraid of what they will do. They don’t want anyone to take this on. What that does is that cedes the discourse, it cedes, the streets, it cedes, the political fight to those who are gun to the teeth, dripping in their white supremacy, in their American chauvinism, in their patriarchy, to further advance. They are living in fear of this fascist base as this fascist base gets more violent, gets more revanchist, and is called out by their Tucker Carlson’s to not put down their AR-15s.

Coco Das 41:49

I think they’re living in fear of the fascist base and their own base. That’s the tragic thing here, is that in the way that the Republicans are very happy to call out their base to get in the streets, to use any means that’s available to hammer in their program, for many reasons — main reason being that the Democrats, their job is to maintain this empire, maintain the stability of the system, and maintain America’s position as top dog, and — their main job is not to even stop a fascist consolidation in this country. Their main job is to protect the Empire and advance the Empire, and they have disagreements with the Republicans on how to do that. Their main job is not to look out for the rights of their base.

I think people need to get into this, and why, and, why do we tear our hair out looking at the Democrats, and why they’re doing certain things? It’s because they’re doing their job. It’s not their job, actually, to look out for our best interests. That’s our job. That’s up to us. It was such a beautiful uprising. Something beautiful came out of something horrific, and it shows potential of what can happen — not that they went all the way, not that they won — they did win the conviction of George Floyd’s killer, and it reset the terms in society for a short period of time. But it shows the potential of when people get into the streets, fighting for our interests, our values of diversity, for justice, to stop killing black people in the streets, stop killing us stop doing these things, then there is a potential, actually, to change the whole game.

Sam Goldman 43:35

Thank you, Coco, for coming and chatting with me and helping us process this past week of confusing and horrifying news. I wanted to give you a moment if there’s anything that we didn’t talk about or anything else that you wanted to say.

Coco Das 43:55

Just keep digging. I want to say to the audience: Just keep digging for what is underlying all this. If we know what the root of it is, what these fascists are going for, then use that as a way to act. Don’t retreat into your houses or bury your heads in the sand because if that happens, we have no chance.

Sam Goldman 44:18

Thank you so much again, Coco. You can follow Coco on Twitter @Coco_Das. Check out her writing at RefuseFascism.org. Thanks, Coco.

Coco Das 44:31

Thanks Sam.

Sam Goldman 44:33

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Thanks to Richie Marini, Lina Thorne and Coco Das for helping produce this episode. Thanks to incredible volunteers, we have transcripts available for each show, so be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox. We’ll be back next Sunday. Until then, in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.