By Coco Das
The Refuse Fascism statement, “A Call to Conscience…A Call to Act” is a powerful tool to get millions of people in this country urgently oriented and acting to defeat Trump/MAGA fascism before it can consolidate its rule. This statement needs to be spread to every corner of society starting now.
Every week, the fascist Trump regime is making huge leaps in tearing up the rule of law and civil and democratic rights. With the criminally ominous arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, fascism has advanced to the stage of Gestapo-like kidnappings of activists. Now is the time to take very seriously the lessons of the poem from Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Niemöller was a prominent pastor who started out as a supporter of Hitler, but later became a voice of opposition and a target of the Gestapo. This quote stands as an important indictment of German complicity with the Nazi horrors. But not enough people living in this country are seeing themselves in this poem. Not enough people – as much as they hate what Trump represents – are even recognizing this as fascism. And too many people are waiting for someone or something outside of themselves to come and stop this. The lesson of this poem is this: You must act before the fascists are at your door.
Refuse Fascism has issued A Call to Conscience…A Call to Act that the German people did not have when there was still time to stop Hitler from carrying out his full program. This statement starts with a crucial foundation: NO! In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America! With the future of people all around the world hanging in the balance, we act for all humanity. If millions in this country facing fascism immediately make this their starting point, the outrages they are quietly accepting now can very quickly become intolerable.
The statement goes on to justify a single unifying demand: The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go! Imagine this demand resounding through the streets and institutions and airwaves of this country, bringing society to a halt, filling people with the determination to stay in the streets until their demand is met. Until this regime faces that kind of political crisis, it can absorb protests against one attack or another. With their bloody hands on the levers of power and their bloody fangs on people’s necks, the regime will constantly have the initiative while the people will constantly be on the defensive, vulnerable to being divided and conquered and beaten into submission, physically, mentally, and morally.
If we allow that to happen, it is not only people living in this country who will suffer. The Trump fascist regime – while it echoes the slave-holding confederacy, Jim Crow segregation, and Nazi Germany – has no historical precedent in the scale of destruction it is setting into motion. With the climate crisis at a tipping point, the looming danger of war between nuclear-armed powers, and a global refugee population of over a hundred million people, this regime is a threat to the very future of humanity and life on this planet.
“The clock ticks toward the midnight hour. Each minute brings new shocks and jolts. Each second shatters lives.”
Study this statement and see how it embraces the more than half the people in this country that viscerally hates Trump/MAGA and feels dread for the future. But it goes far beyond putting a label on what they fear and hate. In a compressed way, it gives them an understanding of the full scope and danger of the fascist program, the moral clarity to stand against it, and the only real way to drive this fascism out of power.
“There is a way to defeat this. We, the undersigned, call on the decent people who don’t want to live in a fascist America – who are more than half the country – to courageously rise up as one.
… Millions in the streets not allowing business as usual when that business is cementing fascist rule with the vilest degrading morality down our throats. MANY VOICES AND BODIES DEMANDING: THE TRUMP FASCIST REGIME MUST GO! With this we can and must create a political crisis in which the Trump regime cannot govern and implement their fascist program or even maintain his hold on power.”
Yes, this will take struggle and sacrifice. But history has shown that people will act with tremendous courage in the face of danger when they understand what’s at stake and the role they must play in changing history. Here is a document that has the power to galvanize the decent people of this country to do what the German people did not do – if we take the responsibility to wield it.
To quote the powerful ending of the Call to Conscience, Call to Act:
Let it not be said that when there was still a chance to stop an unprecedented threat to the future of humanity, we did not rise to meet the challenge of our time. Let us not allow the watching world today to despair of our silence and our failure to act. Instead, let the world see our determination and courage and hear our righteous demand:
In The Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.
The Fascist Trump Regime Must Go!