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2024 Elections: The future hangs in the balance
Refuse Fascism Episode 223
Sun, Oct 27, 2024 1:49PM • 55:46
Sam Goldman 00:22
Welcome, to episode 223 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 excerpts from a virtual forum we hosted this past Friday night, October the 25, titled The 2024 Election, The Future Hangs in the Balance, featuring Paul Street and Andy Zee. Save the date, because Refuse Fascism will be having another live episode, virtual forum post election, Thursday, November 7, at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, putting our heads together to respond whatever the situation is. We’ll have more information on it in the next episode.
Help us reach more listeners at a time when refusing fascism is needed more than ever, after you listen to the show, be sure to share it with others. Click the Share button in your app to send this episode to a friend or ten, or let the world know why you listen by rating and reviewing an Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice, it really does make a difference. And, of course, we read every one. Thanks to the patrons who help make this show possible — join the community for as little as $2 a month at Patreon.com/RefuseFascism.
The program which we are sharing highlights from explored how the imminent election reflects and impacts the larger historical crossroads we’re in. To be clear, the election and the crossroads are not one and the same. We are sharing segments that stood out to us and that we think would be of interest to you our listeners. The full program is available on our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/Refuse_Fascism — under lives. Tonight, Donald, “poison the blood of this country,” Trump will have his night at the Garden, Madison Square Garden, reviving the mass American Nazi rally held there on February 20, 1939 with Trump’s platform of mass deportations and sending the military against the “enemy from within,” we sincerely hope that the decent people of New York City do not ignore this event, do not rely on elections alone to defeat this menace — that instead, there are many courageous people who counter this danger outside and inside the garden, refusing to accept a fascist America in the name of humanity, taking the example of Isidore Greenbaum, a young Brooklynite who, in 1939 rushed that very stage and yelled “Down with Hitler!” disrupting the event.
I want to thank those who tuned in live this past Friday for their really thoughtful questions and engagement. So many questions we didn’t get to, but we’ll speak to in the coming episodes. If you’re like me, one of the biggest questions on your mind is: What should people of conscience be thinking about doing in the face of fascist acts in the wake of the vote. The truth is, as one of our patrons, Jay pointed out: “We don’t know all the kind of shit that might pop off where, and I think we need to unfreeze our imaginations from some of the fear that may be clogging them.”
Already, poll workers are being threatened and physically attacked. Just this past week in Texas, a poll worker was punched for telling a fascist to simply take off his red MAGA hat. I’ll be speaking more about ways to act next Sunday and on our live November 7, but here is what we do know: Fascism is never legitimate. If Trump wins, we need to be in the streets, and we need to be prepared to put our bodies on the line to defend people, especially our immigrant siblings. We also need to be in the streets against any attempts of a coup to stop a fascist takeover.
While things are different, because the fascists do not have the White House this time, their base and their party are far more cohered, they have the Supreme Court, and they have a media apparatus, including social media, they didn’t have before.While there are differences, and the Democratic Party being in power now does alter the terrain, there still are lessons we can learn from Trump’s last coup attempt. In short, it matters to be in the streets to oppose any and all of Trump and the Republi-fascist attempts to try to subvert the election. It matters to not cede the streets to MAGA Nazis. It matters that we don’t obey in advance. It matters that we Refuse Fascism! With that, here is my discussion with Paul and Andy.
Good evening and welcome to The 2024 Election, the Future Hangs in the Balance, a virtual forum sponsored by the Refuse Fascism podcast and the RNL Revolution Nothing Less show. I’m Sam Goldman, host of the Refuse Fascism podcast and host of tonight’s discussion. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. Tonight, I’ll be talking with Paul Street. If you listen to the podcast, you know Paul as a frequent guest. Paul is a historian. an author a Refuse Fascism editorial board member. You can find his writing over at Counterpunch, where he is a regular contributor and his very active on Substack, the Paul Street Report.
I’m also glad to be joined by Andy Zee. Andy is the host of the RNL, Revolution Nothing Less Show. The RNL Show airs on YouTube, at YouTube/RevComs, and exposes the problems that people here and around the world face and brings to life the solution, through a real revolution to emancipate humanity. Andy is a follower of Bob Avakian. Whether you are joining us via Zoom, webinar, live on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or are part of the in person audience in LA, thank you for being with us. It’s not too late to take a moment to share this, to invite others.
I want to start with just a few notes on our format: I’ll be saying a few words to get us started, and then kicking off a conversation with Paul and Andy, and then there will be time for your questions, so be sure to put them in the chat. If you’re on Zoom, there’s a Q and A button with a question mark, you can put your questions there. And if you are joining us live in person in L.A., I’m sure there’s a friendly face to direct your questions to. And if you are watching via live stream, just put your comments as a reply. Welcome Paul, welcome Andy. Thanks for joining me.
Paul Street 07:04
Glad to be here.
Andy Zee 07:05
You bet.
Sam Goldman 07:06
Almost four years ago, Trump attempted a violent coup. In their time out of the White House and not behind bars, Trump, and his now much more sophisticated team, are more prepared than ever to carry that coup to completion, planning a vengeful program and blatant dictatorship in which their unchallenged domination would be enforced by every means at their disposal. In 2020, Trump did not have the enthusiastic support and compliance of the entire GOP and the broader conservative movement. He did not have his thoroughly fascist majority established on the Supreme Court. He did not have effective control of any major social media platforms. He did not have his movement battle tested and prepared for real world violence.
Now, 10 days to the election, he has all that and more. He had a pillow tycoon speaking at rallies in 2020 and 2021. Now, it’s the wealthiest man on the planet, carrying out an entire parallel campaign to deliver Trump to the Oval Office. As bad as normal might be, none of this is normal. The latest New York Times poll found Harris and Trump tied 48 to 48. Half the country says yes to Trump’s fascism. We don’t know what will happen on November 5th or after, nor do we know what will happen in the next hours or days with the real potential of a World War III. But right now, in addition to the prospect of a coup attempt, there is a real shot Trump could win outright, securing the majority of the electoral college votes.
It must be said that regardless of the election results, fascism is never legitimate. We are talking about fascist wielding state power in the most powerful and most lethal country in the world — the most deadly empire in history — a fascist movement steeped in white supremacy and Christian nationalism, painting the cleansing of their white nation in biblical terms, eager to emulate and outdo the genocides of the Old Testament. These Republi-fascists are fighting for a permanent win, one that eliminates for good all their political enemies and all the people who they think have destroyed “their” country.
For this fascist movement and its millions of adherents, for whom the pussy grabbing, mass deportations, now extra-judicial executions of shoplifters or suspicious individuals, aka Black youth, are desirable. They see this as the final battle of good versus evil, light, versus darkness. They see this as an existential crisis — if they lose this, they lose everything… and if you think you will lose everything, what aren’t you willing to do? They have a chance of winning. They have timing, unity and a cult like status, all backed up by the whole history of this country.
As horrific as Trump’s first term was, from kids in cages to the Muslim ban, what they are promising, and are increasingly prepared to do, would make that look like Fisher Price fascism. He is boasting right now about a military crackdown on “enemies from within.” Days away from the election, he has doubled down on his Hitlerian rhetoric, and his fascist collaborators openly plan to institute a more fully fleshed out program on “day one” of his dictatorship. Woven together with their missionary zeal to seize power is the keystone of their program: the unprecedented mass deportation of over ten million people. Think of the violence necessary to carry out such a campaign: raiding homes, workplaces, places of worship, destroying communities, ripping apart families, rounding up anyone suspected of lacking documentation, putting whole communities in dismal camps.
For the fascists, the prospect of this violence is not incidental or regrettable, but a way to mold, coalesce and institutionalize the future they are fighting for. As all this unfolds, the Democrats are telling you that the only thing to be done, the way to stop this madness is to vote in an election that the Republicans are working overtime to subvert, and have already declared illegitimate if they lose. So it’s time to wake up and take this mango hued mother-fucking fascist seriously and literally — to recognize the fascist base and movement in this country, for whom hunting down and locking up millions of human beings in cages solely because they were not born here, because their skin is darker than theirs, or because they disagree with their leader, seems like a great idea. To recognize this isn’t to stare into the abyss, but an act of hope that we can fight for a future free from fascism. So, with that, let’s get into it.
I want to start off with a big question, and I know that news has been shaping up that I did not get to look at really closely before the program, and Andy and Paul might want to speak to those things. Here we are, the 2024 election is ten days away. We’ve got fascism geared up and chomping at the bit for their chance to get back in power. We’ve got the non fascist majority in this country sleep walking, treating this as an important election, but still just an election, a normal election.
We’re really at a crossroads, a crossroads much bigger than any election, and this country, this empire, is facing unprecedented crises, from global warming to global displacement of tens of millions of people, from genocidal wars to the real potential of a civil war here in the belly of the beast, and in the midst of this, days away is an election where, not by coincidence, fascism is on the ballot. Most folks who say: The future hangs in the balance in this election — are just talking about who you’re going to vote for. I want to get in[to]: What is it that we’re talking about here? What do you see as what’s at stake, the moment that we’re in right now? Paul, do you want to start?
Paul Street 12:54
Yeah, sure. Wanna welcome everybody in. That’s absolutely right. We have just gotten news reports that Iran has been attacked by Israel. The specifics are very weak. I don’t know if oil fields were attacked or if Tehran was attacked, so just keep that in mind, everyone — as we speak, untold new imperialist horrors are unfolding in real time — U.S. backed Imperial horrors, I might add.
Before I answer your question, Sam, a quote that I saw an X from an activist named Hadi Nasrallah, where he wrote: “The entire U.S. system must be dismantled if burning children alive in a hospital is the lesser evil,” that’s the lesser evil. That is a lesson about the entire system needing to come down.” I suppose you’re right, Sam, that millions and millions of Americans are sleep walking through this election that involves one of the parties that’s gone completely full on fascist in a more comprehensive and menacing way than ever before. It’s not new, but maybe we can dig into that very question a little bit more as we speak.
But if that’s true, that has a lot to do with the media, which just insists on normalizing a candidacy, and really promoting a candidacy, of a flat out malignant sociopath and probably one of the biggest assholes in the history of the entire human race. And by the way, happens to be a Amerikaaner or Christian white nationalist neo-fascist, and the symbol and spearhead of a comprehensive movement for the Christian fascist takeover and makeover of American society — it’s pretty bad. I think that’s right. Most people are still focused on the horse race and voting, and you know, it’s about who you vote for. I think we’re here to say: What are you here to fight for? Not just who are you here to fight for, but what are you here to fight for? And: What vision of a kind of world that you want to live in are we here to fight for?
By the way, since I mentioned fighting, and maybe we’ll talk about this a little bit too — it really looks like this isn’t just the election of 2024. This is going to be the electoral extravaganza and clusterfuck, with a significant amount of bloodshed into 2025, and god knows what. This is really shaping up… and maybe that’s something we’ll end up talking about, with the potential for violence, for significant violence and civil conflagration. What’s at stake? In my writing at Counterpunch and on Substack, I’ve been talking about four mutually reinforcing apocalyptic horsemen brought to us courtesy of capitalism/imperialism, the system: ecocide, fossil fuel-addicted, growth-addicted capitalism, turning the planet into what I call the greenhouse gas chamber — one.
Apocalyptic horseman number two (don’t get depressed, please wait [crowd laughs]. I say these things because I believe in our ability to understand truth and reality and act upon it in a liberating and revolutionary way.) Two: potentially nuclear war, and god knows if we’re moving closer to that right now, when we find out more about what’s happening in Iran. Three: pandemicide, which I don’t think is going away, I don’t I think it’s going to rear its ugly head and still lives.
And the fourth one is fascism. It’s not one and two and three and four, they’re mutually reinforcing and mutually multiplying. They interact with one another like a simultaneous equation system. I think this is true whether Trump ends up in the White House next year or whether Harris ends up in the White House next year. I really like something that Bob Avakian, the revolutionary communist leader, has been hitting upon for the last few years: The future is radical. That’s already locked in. The old, previously normative ways of ruling and governing — previously normative bourgeois democracy, electoral democracy and rule of law — really seem exhausted and fading.
The future is radical, and only question is, what kind of radical is it going to be? Can it be radically awful? radically terrible? radically fascist? radically ecocidal? radically oppressive? or will it be radically liberating? radically, genuinely revolutionary? and moving us towards the emancipation of humanity. and what that has to do with the election? is an interesting question, but I think we’re going to talk about how this election and the conflicts that have opened up with two sections of the ruling class and much of the population at each other’s throats — I used to think it was only just the Republicans that were at the Democrats’ throats.
I was sort of skeptical about what I’ve been hearing from Avakian and others, that the Democrats are actually really going to be at the Republicans’ throats, but now, in the last week or so, I’m hearing the Democrats — it’s now all of a sudden okay to say ‘fascism’ — It’s like there’s often been a reluctance to say that, and with this kind of battle, it’s potentially an opening — an opening for real radical democratic transformation from the bottom up, if we can get our shit together and get the right kind of leadership with the right kind of vision, and get enough people involved in a revolutionary process in this country.
Sam Goldman 17:52
We then talked about what we should learn from the experience of defeating Trump electorally in 2020.
Andy Zee 17:58
One of ideas behind trying to keep Biden in is we could at least buy some time. Well, we bought some time. And you know what? We got Joe Biden in there, and fascism got more god damn powerful and united and toxic and malignant than it was four years ago. You don’t defeat fascism with elections. It doesn’t stop it. It just grew, the recent decisions by the Supreme Court are just unhinged, they control 26 of the nation’s state government, they’re probably going to take back the Senate — that’s what happened with Joe Biden in the White House; the horror of the Biden/Harris regime, of the Biden/Harris presidency. Live-streamed genocide that is seen by millions and millions of young people in this country, leading them to courageous moments of activism on our campuses.
The provocation of nuclear Russia with an imperialist proxy war, profoundly reckless, profoundly dangerous, bragging about drilling more gas and oil than any country in history, and overseeing that at a time of escalating climate catastrophe, Biden and Harris sign on with a border bill that’s as bad as anything the Republicans wanted to do. And I could go on and on about how horrible the Biden administration has been, and Kamala Harris has shown that she will continue all of those negative and reactionary and reckless and imperialist policies, all these progressive promises she’s making of things she’s going to do if she gets the presidency, amounts to trying to blow smoke up our asses, because she knows damn well, because she’s a veteran of the Senate and Joe Biden is a veteran on the Senate, they both know damn well, they’re not going to get bills to make Roe v Wade the law of the land again, they’re not going to get a chance to sign a bill for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, they’re not going to get a single bill from the absurdly powerful and mai-apportioned right wing U.S. Senate.
So this notion that: Well, we’ll get in there, we’ll get something done — No, you won’t, you don’t get shit done. You’re not going to get anything done. We have a minority rule system. We have a right wing, right wing tilted governance system. Time is up. Time’s up on this. We can’t keep marking our moments of mass political engagement around four year election cycles. When’s the next one, 2028? 2032, 2036? Are you kidding me? What the fuck are you talking about here? Mother nature isn’t waiting for us to pull our heads out of the ass of the every four years election cycle. She’s moving fast right now. Guess what? Time’s up. What do you think about that, Andy?
Sam Goldman 20:34
I wanted to jump in just to say one thing briefly. Anyone who’s saying: Well, you know, we may lose this one. Well, we’ll try again in 2028, those who are influenced by the Democrats, I should say, are not grasping the gravity of what we face. If the Fascists are able to seize power, they’re not going anywhere. We’re not talking about a normal election, and we’re also not talking about politics, as has been done in this country before. I just think that bringing people back to that reality, it is critical. And I’ll also say — and this is something that I think is a disagreement between us: I think that right now, we’re ten days away, and my concern primarily isn’t what people do or don’t do, who they vote for. That isn’t my concern. My concern is, what are people doing the next day? And that is a big concern of mine. Not dismissing the reality that you’re presenting. It’s just a burning question on my mind. Andy, you wanted to add something to what Paul said? I think we got to make good on it.
Andy Zee 21:36
Well, you just said a lot too. Look, I think Paul brought out very sharply, trenchantly, what this fascism would mean, and the fact that the Fascists are prepared this time, which they weren’t in the last time; they’ve learned the ropes. Not only is there that Project 2025, there are actually other groups that are making up the lists of who’s going to replace whom, it’s gonna be a full out fascist regime. That’s because a section of the ruling class — this is backed by some very powerful people, very powerful banks, industrialists, all this — and the engine of it is a white Christian fascist movement.
There’s a lot we can say about that, but this is not a future that is in the interest of humanity, even as half the country sees it in their interest. That in itself should tell you something about the nature of this system and this country and why it’s not worth keeping. In fact, it needs to be overthrown. Then there’s another level of necessity that the system has imposed on the Democrats who made all these promises, as they always do, but they can’t possibly carry them out because of the workings of the system itself. [They] have brought us to both existential crises — you spoke about the pandemic and the ecocide.
But this war danger is real. They have conducted a proxy war — which means a war where they’re using the soldiers of Ukraine to fight with Russia — and that has reached a point now where there’s a stalemate. Where that goes, I don’t know, but it’s going to intersect with what’s happening in the Mid East, where some of the same imperial powers are lining up and squaring off against each other, and that has the potential to spill completely out of control.
On every single question that the people cared about and thought that they would get something done when they elected Biden, the Democrats could not do it because the system itself won’t allow them to do it — the necessity on the border that they have faced — what are they going to do with this massive influx of immigrants from the very crisis they’ve created in countries throughout the world? — the environment, we just mentioned that — the wars, we just mentioned that — the very fact that their whole economy gets out of kilter all the time.
I want to re-emphasize this point, this situation in Gaza: Time after time in this war, this genocide, this absolute slaughter, it just comes in. It hits you right here. And in particular, I’m thinking of just this last week, the report that we put on the RNL Revolution.Nothing Less Show, about the evidence from doctors, the testimony from doctors that babies are being shot in the head, followed up by these young people who tried to become journalists when the journalists were being killed. They were getting wounded, and they were in a hospital, and then Israel deliberately targeted that hospital and burned them alive. There’s no way you can say “never again” as a justification for this state. This horror, is now in your face, and if the existential questions for humanity are in your face.
But the fact that this election will not be like anything normal… Sam, you said you want to know what people can do the day after… Well, what people do the day after, is going to depend a lot on what people do right after this broadcast — whether or not people are listening to and tuning into the social media of Bob Avakian, where they’re learning about what’s behind all this, what the potential is for a revolutionary movement; how, in fact, we can go at this and change things. As the world gets more and more tumultuous in this situation, the question is: Will there be a force out there that’s following this leadership that not only is telling you there’s a chance for revolution, having mapped out a strategy for that revolution, but is also telling you that we don’t have to live this way?
There’s a whole other way we could be living. There’s a Constitution for a New Socialist Republic, and if Kamala Harris is elected, these fascists aren’t going to accept that. Every bourgeois publication is saying that. That’s not a very contested idea, that they’re going to come out and fight that. Will there be a force that’s fighting them not to back Kamala, but for a whole different world? That could start changing people’s minds and changing people’s minds very rapidly, because even to fight for her is going to require some sacrifice in that situation, and let alone if Trump wins, and people are horrified by that and take to the streets, or want to take the streets, if there’s a force that say no, we can’t allow, as Paul has said and written about, there’s no legitimate way to bring fascism in.
Fascism itself is illegitimate. Can people in that situation be one to fight these fascists, not to restore what has caused this genocide, what is causing this ecocide, as you put it, but fight for a whole different world? That’s a different ball game. And when you have society being torn apart at the top, then that gives an opening for people to burst through, but they don’t just burst through without anybody working to burst through, you’ve got to actually get behind the leadership that exists to do that, and you’ve got to also get organized into the Revcom Corps for the Emancipation of Humanity, so that you have a disciplined, organized force, clear on its aims, that can lead and inspire millions, first thousands, then tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of millions, something that could happen very rapidly in that period between the election and what would be a scheduled inauguration or coronation or fascist fucking takeover if we don’t do what we need to do.
Sam Goldman 26:57
We spoke about the differences between 2016 2020, and today.
Paul Street 27:03
I think this is another part of what makes 2024 different than 2020, is the extent and the depth of the degree of the divisions between the different wings of the ruling class. And related to that, to the different wings, to the different political parties, one of which has now gone full hog 100% on with neo-fascism, and one of which still clings to previously normative, you know, bourgeois Western democracy and rule of law. Now about this time in 2016 as we were getting ready to get shocked by the Trump victory, Barack Obama was on the phone with Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential candidate, Tim Kane, and Hillary was listening in, and he said, you know, Tim, no time to be a purist, but you’ve got to keep a fascist out of the White House. That’s how he put it. And Hillary was listening in and overheard it and said to Kane that I agree with that sentiment.
They’ve known the other party’s fascist for a while, and they never wanted to say it. The day after Trump was elected in 2016 Obama, when Biden went out to the Rose Garden and gave this ridiculous goddamn speech about how this, you know, that’s okay. That’s what happens in a democracy. Sometimes you win an election, sometimes you lose one. And he said, I talked with Donald Trump last night, and I trust him that I can pass on the baton of democracy and he will carry it forward. Here we are now in October of 2024 and the floodgates have opened on the F word, and it’s a hell of a thing to listen to.
One Admiral John Kelly; Kamala Harris is saying it now; all the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, just about it reporting that they say that this guy is an existential fascist threat to democracy. Well, that’s a hell of a situation. It says very strongly that there’s going to be a real tussle this time, when Trump either wins in a really nasty kind of way through intimidation and vote counting shenanigans or tries to steal the election, and we’re going to have post election violence. I’ve been trying to tell people for a long time, stop focusing just on the horse race. Start focusing on how you’re going to respond.
We have yes a number of scenarios, and we have to be flexible, and we have to have a solid understanding of just what’s at stake here, and how this conflict between these different wings of the ruling class and these different parts of the population are going to create chaos, but also create an opening for revolutionary progress. And I think our project is to get off of this blue versus red polarization, which is killing us and crippling our politics. And the key word is in a word that Avakian uses, we have to work on people. We have to talk about this all the time. Get past this fucking red vs. blue stuff and start understanding the real polarization that we need. We need to re-polarize this country. We need to talk to everybody we know about the need to re-polarize this country.
Stop calling fascist America red. Try brown, as in the color of Hitler’s brown shirts. We need to re-polarize this country with the people, the masses of people, versus the capitalist ruling class that has let this take place, that has its own divisions, and the capitalist imperialist system that is red, white and blue, we have to re-polarize that.
Andy Zee 29:52
This breaking apart right in front of your faces. Trump will not accept anything other than being in power and being dictator for more than one day. That’s just a ruse. But what are they going to do? Who has Biden and the who’s still president? Just by the way, it’s kind of hard to find him, but he is still president, and Kamala Harris? What are they going to do? They still command the armed forces in this situation, but there is National Guards in places like Texas, in different states that I don’t want to get too involved in speculation, but there is going to be very sharp conflicts, and maybe even armed conflicts, and maybe even conflicts between sections of the police forces, military forces.
Sam Goldman 30:33
We talked about, what is pulling the United States towards fascism.
Andy Zee 30:37
But right now, the trajectory is one where there is no coming together of the two factions of the ruling class. There’s no good future under Harris. Harris is not Biden part two, which is how it’s being projected. Oh, she’s not really any different. She’s running Hillary’s campaign. That’s mainly being said to say she’s going to lose. And she is running Hillary’s campaign because the Democrats have no answers, but all the things that Paul just talked about, the planet is saying, you know, that clock is ticking the danger of war. That clock is going very fast.
Even before this genocide took off, last year, that Bulletin of Atomic Scientists said that they moved the Doomsday Clock to the danger of nuclear war as close to midnight as it has been in decades and decades and decades. This is not stuff that we’re saying to hype or gin anybody up for to get with the Revcoms. This is what’s happening. If you think about what a Harris regime is going to have to do in the next period. If you think about that, these fascist are not going to go away. Paul did a whole explanation at the beginning of this. And there’s things that Bob Avakian has written and that been done on the Revolution — Nothing Less Show these fascists have taken over the Republican Party that is now a fascist party.
In 2017 it was a fascist party, but it had a lot of other elements in it, those elements have been purged. Yes, on the federal level, but throughout states across the country, they have done a job. They have a very cohered thing. The historian Robert Paxton, who, very reticent even now, to call Trump fascist, he does finally call them that. We had struggle over this during the heyday of Refuse Fascism in 2017 to 2019, but he just said in the conclusion of an interview with The New York Times, that one big difference right now is that Hitler and Mussolini would have wanted to have the cohered fascist social base that Trump has. That’s not an exact quote, but that was the actual point at the end of this article.
This is a guy who tries to be very, very accurate and doesn’t engage in hyperbole, but he recognized that there is a cohered fascist movement with leadership up and down, funding from some of the largest banks and financial institutions and Internet things and the richest man in the world. And now check this out. In the last few days, some of the major newspapers in America refuse to endorse Harris, who they are for, because they are afraid of Donald Trump and the fascists. I don’t know what people need to wake them up, but this is a serious business now. In terms of the call/poll?, well, then of course you should vote for Harris, then, and no, because she’s going to be under siege to that and be capitulating to that.
Paul made the point earlier, I think was an important point, that they did have an opportunity to go hard against Trump in the first years of the Biden administration. They didn’t do it. They backed off, just as Obama wouldn’t do anything against the war criminals of the Bush regime, and what they did in Iraq. The Democrats will not fight the way you want them to fight, because they are representatives of this system, and they carry out the imperatives, which means the needs of this system, that’s what they are. To say that the fact that they’re more fascist now than they were before, means we should vote for Harris is an unscientific approach, which means it’s not objectively looking at the alignment of forces and what they’re each doing right now, what the necessity, what the things that the Democrats are doing are going to be forced to do, and what they won’t do against the fascists.
Sam Goldman 34:13
We talked about Trump’s threats against the so called, “Enemy within,” their first to go to enemy who poses the biggest threat to them is the other section of the ruling class. When they’re talking about Marxists, they’re not talking about actual Marxists. They’re talking about the Democratic Party, and they’re also talking about their “traitors.” Right now today, even you know, he went out with this threat on mass arrests of his political enemies, but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to stop there, and that doesn’t mean that it’s okay because they’re just going to go after Democrats.
No, the hallmark of their program is going for mass deportation. They’re going for Kristalknacht, they’re going for an unprecedented attack on the most vulnerable people, and to anyone who wants to think of themselves, let alone be someone who stands for the emancipation of humanity, we’re actually gonna need to throw all in, in defending, standing up for and fighting for our immigrant siblings and fighting for all those who come under attack. There are whole sections of people that these fascists have deemed as not human, as not deserving the right to have any dignity, let alone freedom and our personal sense of safety, up against the demonization of a whole people.
We’re going to have to measure ourselves against that. So there were two comments that aren’t questions that I just wanted to put into this space because I thought that they were important. One person was talking about what they see as the connection between what’s planned and the Mexican repatriation program of 1930s you know, 2 million U.S. citizens deported. And then someone else had mentioned that the Republi-fascists plan to deport anyone who participated in protests against genocide, even those that have legal visas.
Yes, the point is the targets are vast for these fascists. So I wanted to put in this question for us to think about: What if Trump wins outright within the system, without having to call out his shock troops, if we end up with people accepting this is the normal working of the system, is that possible, or is the simmering violence certain to break out? If people let themselves be herded toward fascism, where is our opening then?
Paul Street 36:41
What if Trump wins flat out? I don’t even know that he can. There’s so much monkey business already in place with messing around with election boards. There was just a thing in New York Times today about four contested states now have local election boards that are headed by Neo Nazis, in essence, who are not going to accept an outcome that doesn’t go their way. And there’s all kinds of intimidation. We already have poll intimidation because we have early voting in a certain way. We’re already having fascists showing intimidating people. So I don’t know that any kind of real clean victory is even possible. And even if it is, it’ll be through a completely unjust and illegitimate 18th century slave owner system called the Electoral College, which actually most Americans, when you when you really discuss it with them, they hate.
You know, it’s really kind of amusing. Try to talk to someone from another country and explain the Electoral College to them and why we have an election in like just six or seven states, and why it would be irrelevant for Kamala Harris to win California by 5 million votes instead of 5,000 votes, and why most of the country doesn’t even have a presidential election. And then try and explain to them the Senate apportionment regime. That’s a lot of fun too, and lifetime appointed Supreme Court Justices and all that kind of nonsense. It’s all illegitimate. And there’s a good liberal scholarship on these institutions, these minority rule institutions that tilt this country far to the right of the populace. They go back to slavery, every single one of them, states’ rights, the Second Amendment, and all the guns are out there, the Senate apportionment regime and the Electoral College, they all go back to slavery. They’re illegitimate.
I would never forget Donald, excuse me, I confused these two guys. Adolf Hitler rose to power fully constitutionally, through legal means. He was appointed chancellor, and he won an election and the Reichstag fire, and then things got really messy. But he continued to try and wrap his fascist regime in the aura of the rule of law and even a certain aspect of parliamentarianism. He kept addressing the Reichstag. I mean, it was a joke, but he kept going in there and talking to them. Many of us are so pissed off at Trump that there’s going to be protests anyway, if he gets in, there weren’t it was a clean win. Wasn’t it in 2016? and people came out, and he’s promised to declare the Insurrection Act and bring out live ammunition and shoot fucking people down.
Andy Zee 38:55
First off, we can’t say a number of things. One thing we can say, if he wins outright plurality, you know, the popular vote and the electoral college, and it’s seems to be cut and dried from the norms of this system that you well described, and in fact, that it’s been even further tilted by the changes they’ve made in these election boards. But I think it’s quite likely that there will be people who want to protest. That’s one thing, maybe not, maybe not right away, but people will be in shock, but maybe they will.
Second, I don’t know what the Democrats are going to do, actually. I mean, one would think that they will probably capitulate. That would be given history and and what they try to uphold the norms. But on the other hand, you know, Mark Milley said he’s had to put bulletproof windows and curtains on his house. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, probably the Democrat with the most strategic thinking and the strongest will of any of them, just happened not to be home, and her husband was bashed over the head with a hammer. You know, still to bad effect. Adam Schiff has been threatened.
These newspaper owners, very powerful people, billionaires, are fearful, so maybe fear will keep people home, but there is a deep well of not wanting to see if dictator day one was just a bluff or was real, because I think people have heard a lot of stuff that it is for real, and the fact that the necessity has now made them say what they didn’t want to say, which is that this is a fascist regime, tells you that they’re going to have to get out of their comfort zone, or they feel a compulsion to get out of their comfort zone, to actually deal with what is they see as an existential threat to America being number one through maintaining the bourgeois democratic form. They do see that as existential, just as the fascists see transforming that as existential.
So I don’t know what they’re going to do in the face of people protesting. You know, if nobody calls a protest, I think somebody might. And we’ll have to see who does that and how they do that, and we have some experience, we could probably contribute to that. And then we’ll see how that protest can be transformed into something more fundamental, that something that gets at the more fundamental roots of this system. We don’t have a crystal ball, but I think it’s completely counter to any objective assessment of how things are arrayed right now to think that if Trump wins, then everything collapses, and it’s, I’ll tell you one thing, it’s not going to be back to normal.
Even if, for some reason, things were relatively peaceful for a while, these people are going to run wild his social base, and he’s preparing to do some really horrific things. I think he is going to round people up. And you don’t think that’s going to have repercussions throughout society, among immigrant communities, who are majority in many cities, including the one where we’re speaking from, this is going to be a tumultuous time. Whether it happens on November 8 or somewhat later, I don’t know, but it’s on us too, to wake people up to what’s actually going on and what the actual stakes are. I’m not casting an insulting, but actual meaning some perverse thinking that there’s some pathway to this can just go to some form of normalcy.
I don’t think it’s normal. I don’t think it’s going to be the same world. You’re not going to be living in the same world in the same way? Yes, people in Germany, there were people who got through it. Okay, that’s who you want to be? That stain is on you forever and anybody you ever influenced. And the stain is still on society today. It still tears at the hearts of anybody who reads the history or sees a movie of Anne Frank or anything else. So this, I think we just have to not be so complacent about that. I will say the Democrats that they claim to have a bevy of lawyers, which is how they like to fight things. They have a bevy of lawyers who are prepared to file suits on all kinds of irregularities that have already happened.
As Bob Avakian has pointed ultimately, that will go to the Supreme Court, and we’ll find in the interests of Trump. But imagine that process going on, and the opportunity that that would present to actually unleash all kinds of mass struggle, because we’re not going to rely on courts that actually going to get decided by a fascist Supreme Court. I don’t know what this is going to be, and either do the people who say, if he just wins outright, it’s going to be all just like, not so good, but we’ll get through it. They’re not looking at the reality, at least the way it seems to be shaping up, and all the indications are that’s just not the right understanding of what’s actually at stake.
Sam Goldman 43:35
I really appreciate that Andy,
Paul Street 43:37
I asked one thing to that really key point that Andy just brought up, which is that just because Trump gets in and perhaps wins legally, these right wing paramilitaries out there and fascists out there are not going to go, oh, okay, we want it clean, so now we really believe in bourgeois democracy. Their blood lust needs to be slaked. They’re going to come out in retribution. Police are going to take it as a real green light that they can shoot folks down like they’ve never shot folks down before, and they’re going to go apeshit. They’re going to see a Trump victory as a red flag in front of a bull and they’re going to come running after us.
And Trump has promised remember any protest. He wants to declare the Insurrection Act. He says he wants to deploy the military to round up a What is it, 11, 12 (million) so-called illegals? He’s also said he wants to enlist the military to go into the inner city and “end crime in one day.” And people are not going to put up with that shit. I know a lot of people are not going to put up with that stuff. And I know people in a certain red state in this country who talk about wanting to defend immigrants against the coming deportation campaign, there’s gonna be a lot of sentiment against that. So I don’t think it all goes away. I think you can count on them doing things that are gonna stir people up and bring reactions and counter reactions. Violence seems indicated very strongly after the election, regardless of its immediate outcome.
Sam Goldman 44:52
Here’s the question: why is it that this is so close after four years? Members of Trump in power after the coup attempt, after Trump talking about immigrants poisoning the blood of the country, calling immigrants vermin, talking about unleashing the military on the enemy within. How is this such a close election, and seemingly getting closer, no matter what Cheney the Democrats tote around, no matter how many former generals call them fascists, no matter what celebrity they bring on or what scandal comes out. So much so that I think there was a poll that this person is referencing that half, about half of those who will vote responded that they view mass deportation favorably. So it’s so close that Trump may not even need to steal it, though he is clearly ready to. How have we gotten to this situation?
Andy Zee 45:49
Because this country was founded on slavery and as exploitation. That’s its foundation. There’s, there’s millions of people who like this stuff that he says that, and I would recommend to people the most current posting of BobAvakianOfficial on social media, number 98 where he says, about the people who support Trump, they’re not being supported just because they’re having a hard time economically. He said the basic reason, even for those who are having a hard time economically, the really relevant question is, why do they support the all time lying ignorance, promoting racist, misogynist, hater of women and all around fascist Donald Trump? The answer can only be that, at the very least, they find nothing wrong with racism and misogyny which makes them misogynist and racist.
What a terrible irony for those Black people and other people of color who support Trump, just like those who support a Hitler and the Nazis in Germany, they support a fascist because a fascism appeals to them. And on the other hand, the Democrats, they mumble around most of the time. People are not inspired by Harris, because most of the time she avoids the question, and it’s all PR and it’s all that Trump’s going to be bad, and he is going to be bad, but you don’t have any answers outside the framework of this system. That’s why it’s, you know, it’s close. And then years ago, actually, three and a half decades ago, I think, Bob Avakian spoke about the danger developing white Christian fascism in this country, and he quoted a very famous author who said that when fascism comes to America, it’s going to come wrapped in the flag and with a Bible in the hand.
Of course, Trump is actually obliged, and does this picture every time he shows up at CPAC, where he hugs the flag and then goes and sells a Bible that has the Constitution in it. There is a correspondent in the 30s. Her name was Dorothy Thompson, I believe, is a very famous columnist at that time. And she was expelled from Germany, lot of famous stories, and she was then gotten on a campaign to say that fascism could come here. And she said, when our dictator turns up, you can depend on it that will, he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. I just want to emphasize this one of the boys, because one of the things that’s been happening, what that Trump has been doing and said, Well, why is he talking about Arnold Palmer’s the golfer’s penis? Why? What does this have to do with anything? And why is he going on all of these bro podcasts?
You see, this is the opposite side, but the same misogyny that has him say you can grab women by the pussy when you’re powerful, it’s part of that, which is also the same underlying ideology as overturning Roe versus Wade and turning women into a traditional role in society. This is another reason why it’s so close, because this current and along with the white supremacy, is very deep in America. It’s very, very deep. You know, it’s all this stuff on “Trad wives” on the one hand and this “bro” culture on the other. They like what he says. That’s one thing these columnists can’t get. They actually like it. This resonates with them, and that’s another reason why we need a revolution that’s not just going to be so that people get, you know, three squares a day, and able to, because it’s an old saying, but just have a decent economic life.
But as we’re talking about a totally different social relations between people of different nationalities, between people of different genders, between people who had their experience of working with their minds, and those who’ve been locked out of it. We’re talking about overcoming all of those relations and all the ideas that correspond to it. And Trump gets down in the gutter with all the ideas that perpetrate this system and perpetuate this system. And that’s part of why it’s close and all Harris was offering for a while is joy.
Well, I don’t know how much joy there is in this kind of society. Everything I’ve been reading is that there’s all kinds of people on pills and depressed and anguished, and kids are going into school killing each other. You know, I remember going under the desk with the danger of a nuclear war, but now people are going to drill so that their classmates don’t fucking kill them. This is a sick society, and the Democrats offer no answer to that. They’ve had plenty of opportunities to do this. They can’t do it because it’s intrinsic in the economic system, the political system and the culture of this country.
Paul Street 50:17
I think it’s as close as it is, because a lot of what Andy just said and Trump is playing into shit that really exists. He’s playing into a real white counter-reaction against Black civil rights gains, and then the declining white percentage of the population and the perception of immigrant influx, and also white and male counter reaction against women’s victories and against feminism and against changes that are taking place in the job market. So there’s a real mass base for what Trump’s behind. It’s not just completely made up.
I think also the media. Despite this last week or so of saying fascism a little bit, the media has just been normalizing the Trump phenomenon, treating this as a normal election. Steve Kornacki, let’s, let’s go on the big board. Right? Dorky Steve and all his brilliant pushing of different buttons. And this is like the election of 2008 and this is like 2004 and this county went this way, and that precinct, went that way, and you’re sitting there, you’re thinking, but did you know this motherfucker that you’re talking about here is a is an eliminationist, genocidal, ecocidal, sociopathic, malignant fascist?
For years they’ve been up and tracking this. They’ve been referring to Trump as a “populist.” Yeah, he’s just kind of, he’s kind of inclined towards populism. And they talk about him like, they talk to the Republican Party, like it’s a working class party, which is just idiotic. So they’re just kind of like, you know, the other they’ve kind of switched teams, you know, the Democrats used to be the working class party, and now the Republicans, it’s just ridiculous. There’s this big smoke screen that they do about it. I think also it’s as close as it is because we have a media we have an intensely polarized and segmented mainstream media environment and social media environment where just about nothing can move a whole lot of people. There’s just no level of horror anymore.
On the right, they can move millions and millions of people off of Trump. And I mean, you could damn near put up a video of Trump and Vance sitting down with a human child and chopping them up and eating them, you know. And, and it just wouldn’t matter. There’s just he meant it when he said, You know, I could go out and shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, you know. And it’d all be called fake news. I mean, one of the key aspects of the fascist project past and present is to literally destroy the very concept of objective truth and to lie constantly about everything, so he just gets deflected on anything. And there’s an exhaustion about it too. It’s insane. It’ll drive you crazy trying to keep up with the insanity of Trump in his party.
Sam Goldman 52:35
I want to just thank you both so much for taking the time to talk with me, to talk with us, to wrangle together over what it is that we really face in this moment now. And I want to thank all of you who have been tuning in and sharing your questions and your engagement and wrangling right alongside us and the questions that we didn’t get to today. We’re going to keep you in mind in future episodes of the Refuse Fascism podcast. I know the RNL Show is going to be thinking about these questions and maybe speaking to or writing about them as well, and you might see some things from Paul, I’m sure, on the Substack about these similar themes.
I want folks to save the date because Refuse Fascism will be doing another I don’t know if it’s gonna be live. I don’t know if it’s gonna be a webinar, so stay tuned, November 7 at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Sorry, west coasters. You can read more from and stay connected with Paul via his Substack, which hopefully someone can put in the chat for me. You can find Andy over at youtube.com/there coms on Thursdays, usually 8 p.m. eastern time, hopefully someone can put that in the chat too, so people can be connected and you can catch me and the Refuse Fascism podcast every Sunday night. Search for Refuse Fascism wherever you get your podcasts or sign up at refusefascism.org to get them in your inbox each week. Yeah!
Andy Zee 54:06
Also, they can go since I referenced several times the Bob Avakian Social media, that’s it’s @BobAvakianOfficial on almost every social media platform.
Sam Goldman 54:17
I’m going to end the way that I always do. In the Name of Humanity. We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America. Good night.
Sam Goldman 54:29
Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism, as always. Please share this show with others. Rate and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen or comment on our social posts or YouTube uploads. It makes a difference and is so appreciated. And of course, follow, subscribe wherever you listen, so you never miss an episode. As always, we love hearing from you. Find us on social media @refusefascism. Find us on YouTube at refuse_fascism. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if YouTube is your thing or, Leave us a voicemail. See link in the show notes.
If you want to reach me, you can do so at Twitter, at Sam B. Goldman. You can drop me a line at Samantha [email protected], or on the Tiktok Sam GoldmanRf. Thanks to Mark Tinkleman, Richie Marini and Lina Thorne 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. Until next Sunday. In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.