Episode 295
This week, Sam talks with Paul Street about the continuing danger that comes from an increasingly embattled Trump regime in the aftermath/continuing horror of the Iran war “operation” debacle.
Follow Paul Street on Substack at paulstreet.substack.com.
Mentioned in this episode:
America at 250: Ruled by An Illegitimate Fascist Regime On Track to Destroy the World
What is the Meaning to Humanity of the Fourth of July in the Time of Trump? by Paul Street
Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp
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Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown
Refuse Fascism Episode 295 The Paradox of a Weakened Trump
Sam Goldman 0:58
Welcome to episode 295 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 works to unite all who can be united in mass nonviolent resistance in the streets and throughout society to drive the Trump fascist regime from power.
This week we’re sharing a conversation with Paul Street. Paul is a historian, author, and leader of Refuse Fascism. First of all, apologies for being off the past couple of weeks. We haven’t been on vacation, we’ve been hard at work on a special project that we’re excited to share with you. Next Friday, June 26 at 6:00 p.m. Refuse Fascism will hold a live public forum on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, titled: America at 250 Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth. If you’re anywhere near Philadelphia, I hope you’ll join us. I’d love to meet more listeners in person. I’ll tell you more about it shortly.
Before we begin, if you appreciate the Refuse Fascism podcast, help us reach more people, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, share this episode and consider becoming a paid Substack subscriber or joining our Patreon community. Every bit of support helps us keep going, keep growing, and keep bringing the demand that the Trump fascist regime Must Go Now! to society as a whole. Now, on to today’s episode.
I want to step back a bit. A lot of people are asking whether the Trump regime is losing strength, but popularity and power are not the same thing, and recent events have made that contradiction impossible to ignore. The Trump regime’s war of aggression on Iran has brought the world to a perilous and uncertain moment, even with his ceasefire… is it? Let me restate that. Even with his “ceasefire,” the dangers continue, including the possibility of wider war, immense human suffering, heightened global instability, and confrontation among powerful nuclear-armed states.
Trump is leading humanity toward consequences whose full dimensions cannot yet be fully seen. I want to highlight that this situation could have an enormous impact on the struggle to remove the Trump fascist regime. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, we confront a country ruled by an illegitimate fascist regime on track to destroy the world. History is full of moments when people convinced themselves that there was still time, time for the courts to intervene, time for the next election, time for someone else to step in. By the time they discovered otherwise, history had already moved. The space for recourse had narrowed, the avenues for redress, both inside and outside the halls of power, closed.
The opportunities to stop what was unfolding had slipped away. America at 250 has not been this divided since the Civil War. We are in many ways two countries within one border. Right now, the fascist country is waging an all-out fight to win, to govern by decree and brute force. And what is much of the opposition doing? Doing that waiting that I mentioned, otherwise, deluding themselves, still looking for an exit ramp that doesn’t require confronting the magnitude of the problem.
Waiting for the midterms, waiting for the courts, watching approval ratings as though fascism can be defeated by becoming unpopular, as though a fascist movement is a failing restaurant that will close once enough people leave one star reviews. That’s not how this works. To be clear, many people have shown real courage. People have stood up to ICE raids. Communities have mobilized to defend immigrants. But too often these struggles remain disconnected from the larger necessity of removing the regime driving all of it.
What is needed is a growing demand: Trump Must Go Now! reaching into every corner of society with people acting to assert it everywhere, people choosing conscience over compliance, students walking out, communities defending those under attack, educators and artists refusing censorship, public servants refusing complicity, people refusing to let black and brown immigrants disappear, truth be erased, or whole groups of people be sacrificed — a refusal that spreads from campuses to neighborhoods, from cultural institutions to the halls of power, disrupting business as usual and creating a profound crisis of legitimacy for this regime.
This is why the demand Trump Must Go Now! matters now, not because millions are already in motion, but because they aren’t. Political situations can change rapidly, a crisis, a war, a shocking act of repression, a step too far by the regime, and people do go into the streets to protest. The challenge is whether, when that happens, there will be an organized force capable of giving direction to that moment, so it does not evaporate or get channeled into accommodating to the regime or stepping back and giving them more time, but instead leading people to drive this regime from power through sustained nonviolent mass resistance. Which brings me back to Philadelphia.
This past week, on the eve of Juneteenth, a federal appeals court cleared the way for the Trump regime to replace the slavery exhibit it removed at the President’s House site on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall. The rule handed Trump a victory in a broader effort to reshape how people understand America’s past and what they will be prepared to accept in its future. History is being fought over, because the future is being fought over. Why is the Trump regime so obsessed with whitewashing history? Why are black history and liberation struggles under such sustained attack?
At a Juneteenth conversation kicking off Philadelphia 250 Nikole Hannah-Jones put it plainly: “History is erased, so rights can be erased.” When people no longer understand how rights were won, they are less prepared to defend them when they come under attack. That’s why Refuse Fascism is convening a public forum on Friday, June 26, that’s this Friday at 6:00 p.m in Philadelphia’s Independence Mall: America at 250 Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle over Truth. Join Michael Coard, Dread Scott, myself, along with others for a timely discussion of why the battle over black history and national memory has become such a critical front in the fight over the future of this country.
On the eve of July 4th, against the backdrop of Independence Hall and steps from the Trump-censored President’s House Memorial, where enslaved Africans were held in bondage as the foundations of the American Republic were laid. We’ll dig into what these attacks on history mean, where they are leading, and what responsibility people have to act. So, if you’re in the area at all, anywhere near the area, I hope you’ll join us. If you’re not in the area, I hope you’ll invite your Philadelphia area friends, family, all that to go in your place. You can find more information in the show notes or at Refusefascism.org And with that, here’s my conversation with Paul Street.
A lot of people are looking at the last few weeks and drawing a comfortable conclusion, or maybe I should say a comforting conclusion. Trump is fading, he’s tanking in approval, he’s tanking in his war on Iran. He’s tanking in some elements in Congress and in some court battles, and some of his signature spectacles have flopped or been ridiculed. And people see these setbacks, and they think that the regime is weakening, but what if that’s exactly the wrong lesson?
To get into some developments from this week alone, and what this means at this very moment, when the regime is preparing to wrap itself in the symbolism of America’s 250th anniversary, it is also intensifying its efforts to not just control the history, but control what future we are allowed to imagine. As Refuse Fascism’s new America 250 statement argues: The danger isn’t only what the regime is doing, it’s the way millions can begin adapting to it, telling themselves someone else will stop it, that the next election will solve it, that there is still plenty of time.
So, what does it mean when a regime suffers humiliations, but is able to use them, and advance? What does it mean when people mistake a lack of popularity for a defeat? and what would it actually take to remove this fascist regime before it consolidates power? To talk about all this and more, we’re joined by historian, writer, and a leader of Refuse Fascism, Paul Street. Welcome, Paul.
Paul Street 5:07
Hi, Sam. Great to talk again. Though the topic, as usual, is a little dark.
Sam Goldman 7:48
I wanted to start with: A lot of people seem to be interpreting some serious real setbacks and public embarrassments and declining popularity as evidence that Trump is losing, that he’s failing. I was wondering if you could help us step back and help us understand what these failures are, and why they aren’t the end of Trump fascism? Why is it not true to say that Trump fascism is failing?
Paul Street 9:20
I’m around a lot of liberal folks when I’m in Iowa City, in a campus town, and you’re quite right, there is this almost a sense of triumphalism, certainly of comfort: Oh, he’s done, he’s fading. You hear about his brains are coming out of his ears and the splotches on his wrists… that’s one of the narratives, he’s physically declining. He clearly was humiliated with what he called his excursion, which was a monumental imperialist crime in Iran. Maybe we’ll get into a little more detail on that, but he got his butt kicked over there in a lot of ways. He did not come back with any of the original war aims he insanely proclaimed at the beginning of that, and that’s not lost on people who follow current events, that that was a humiliation.
His overall approval rating really has tanked, that’s true. I’ve seen 35% I’ve seen 31% in some polls, and someone mentioned to me recently a poll that had him at 29%. There are specifically polls about working class whites, his supposed base all along, his core base. The way the media understands working class whites is a little off, it means white people who don’t have college degrees, but in any event, that’s a demographic, and that he had won significantly in 2016 and 2024 and 2020 come to think of it, and he’s way down with working class whites, he’s way down with young men.
I guess he’s not cool anymore to them. I’m not sure quite why he ever was, but well… I could say a thing or two about that…[chuckles] but he’s down in rural areas, he’s losing, in, like, rural Iowa, rural Wisconsin. Well, farmers were really hit hard by his tariffs, which have closed off markets that they had in Asia and elsewhere, but also hit hard by the Iran war, which closed off the Strait of Hormuz, which was not just oil and gas, but a lot of key components of fertilizer, so their prices of fertilizer went up at the same time that he’s crushing their markets… then there’s Iran.
I want to quote from Refuse Fascism’s America at 250: Ruled by an Illegitimate Fascist Regime On Track to Destroy the World, Refuse Fascism’s recent latest statement, heading up towards July 4th, which the MAGA forces are getting ready to create as a great celebration of their freedom to oppress Black people and oppress immigrants and oppress women and oppress trans people and oppress Latin Americans, and all of that. I think this is dead on. As the document says: “Trump MAGA fascism is not collapsing. In fact, every setback they face compels them to escalate their attacks to lock in their fascist program, using every means at their disposal, unbound by domestic or international law.
The more unpopular Trump becomes, the more he lashes out with revenge, hatred, and moral depravity, and the more hardened his fascist movement becomes, celebrating the use of intimidation, blackmail, and violence to eliminate opposition and crush dissent. The powerful sections of the rulers that back Trump, you know, the Musks, the other tech barons — many of whom showed up at his June 14 Ultimate Fighting Championship extravaganza outside the White House to mark his birthday — the rulers who back Trump have staked the future on changing the form of rule of this country, and they will not give up power easily.
Refusing to face this reality is unconscionable. Accommodation and conciliation with this fascism is immoral. This reminds me of what you hear, it’s kind of a standard narrative, a wild animal is never more dangerous than when it’s trapped. This guy gets more dangerous. He does not accept defeat. Fascists do not accept defeat. These people still hold executive branch power atop the most lethal superpower nation in world history. They are continuing to engage and sit atop a rolling fascist coup. White supremacists, xenophobic nationalists, arch-patriarchal, they have a Supreme Court on their side, they have allies across half of the states, and they are not about to just fade away and give up this power because of public opinion polls. That’s not what fascists do. So, for example, they just sent out 100 FBI agents to investigate, and they hope cripple a simple voting registration organization in a battleground state, Cleveland, Ohio.
They just secured the Attorney General of the United States, who is Trump’s personal attorney, by the way, which is insane in and of itself, just secured 15 indictments against civil libertarian activists in Minneapolis who engaged in efforts to protect their brown-skinned immigrant brothers and sisters against the mass, racist, nativist, lethal protester-murdering ICE and Border Patrol campaign up there in the Twin Cities last December and last January. Trump has issued an order recently saying that the Post Office is supposed to not deliver mail-in ballots in states that refuse to hand over their voter rolls to the federal government. This is a complete violation of the Bill of Rights, but that doesn’t matter at all.
He is still pushing the SAVE Act. There’s a whole brouhaha going on right now with the Republicans in the Senate, where he’s insisting on trying to push through this bill that would require proof of citizenship in order to vote based on the false premise of massive illegal voter fraud. ICE, with its expanding network of death camps and concentration camps and torture camps from coast to coast in this country, has recently announced that they don’t have to report on deaths within their detention facilities if the death takes place at a hospital. So they deny medical care, they serve people terrible food, they harass them, they break up their medications, they kill them. But if they get sent out to a hospital and die an hour later, they don’t have to report it. That is a genocidal eliminationist exterminist ethnic cleansing policy.
ICE activity is up recently, I’m hearing reports about. Anyone who thinks ICE was defeated because they got rid of Bovino and they got rid of Kristi Noem, and they brought in this Tom Homan as the border czar, to be more political about it, they are showing up at courtrooms at immigration hearings across the country. I’m getting reports that has not gone away. Trump had this insane ultimate fighting championship fascist extravaganza to mark his birthday. It’s at the White House, and he was caught on camera grinning as the victorious gladiator said, “Michelle Obama’s a man, isn’t that right, America?” or something like that. That’s massive fascist sexism, plus massive fascist racism, plus massive fascist transgender bashing, and I just don’t think people get it.
They are going after the midterm elections in about 18 different ways. Trump bullied the governor of Colorado, a Democrat, into granting a commutation to Tina Peters, who was a local county election official who let Trumpists into her voting machines in 2020 that is a, you know, a really serious freaking anti-democratic transgression. The signal that sends that her sentence was commuted under pressure from Trump for the 2024 and for 2026 and 2028, it’s a big signal. It’s telling local precinct level, county level election officials, which the Trumpists have been hugely pushing to go take jobs in election offices. It’s a green light to them to screw with the 2026 midterms, it really is. You see this kind of just snide liberals, like they’re winning. There’s almost like a triumphalism: See, he’s unpopular.
It doesn’t seem like they’re getting it. I will wrap this up by telling you that here in Iowa City, which is an arch liberal, super democratic campus, company town, university town, there is a poster, and I’m seeing it in yard signs now too, right where you get your grocery carts, and it says: “Votes Melt ICE.” You will defeat the fascist Gestapo SS militarized police force of ICE with votes, and this is all over town now. On the bottom, it says: “paid for by Indivisible Iowa.” I’m guessing this is happening in other states as well.
I’m sorry, ICE is funded at an extremely high level, at a level higher than the militaries of almost every government in the world through September of 2029 under the big ugly fascist bill that you and I and a bunch of other Refuse Fascism people will remember, it was signed as B-2 stealth bombers flew over our heads on July 4th of 2025, and they added $70 billion more to it through 2029. This year, they are hiring ICE officers with giant signing bonuses as we speak. Votes do not do that. And by the way, when it’s indivisible, they mean votes for Democrats. ICE grew, expanded significantly under Obama. ICE grew significantly and expanded under Biden. So you know, voting for Democrats does not melt ICE. I’m sorry.
Sam Goldman 18:28
Also, even if you want to rein in Trump’s Gestapo right now, maybe you believe that ICE has some role, and you feel disgusted by the hunting down of your neighbors and the locking them up in concentration camps, you do not do that while there’s an American Hitler in power. That doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen. I think that there’s a lot of, as you were getting, really erroneous miscalculations happening right now in terms of the danger, and very much so, in terms of the normalization. There were two things that I just wanted to respond to as we continue the discussion. One thing is, you pointed out the unpopularity. It is very important that people fully appreciate that it is a good thing. It is a good thing that he remains very, very unpopular. That is a good thing.
Paul Street 19:28
He has not achieved what Hitler achieved by May of 1933.
Sam Goldman 19:51
Yeah. We would be in a worse situation if this was done with more approval, but the longer it goes on and the longer it’s allowed, the longer we allow it, the more changed we will all become because of it. They would like to do it with popularity, but they don’t care if they have to. What matters most to the fascists is the power, the domination, is the eliminating those who don’t go along. And wow, you do that, and guess what, you are the majority, because you got rid of everybody else that stood in your way.
Everyone who’s listening to this that has a heart for humanity, we can’t allow that. Then one of the other things that comes to me with these polls is some of the lowest numbers. They’re talking about independents and other parts of the population moving unfavorably against Trump in terms of white non-college educated men. One needs to note that those polls, they were mostly looking at views of Trump’s handling the economy and not his handling of our immigrant siblings’ lives or the voting rights and full humanity of Black and brown folks more broadly. We gotta be real with what’s happening, as you were getting at.
I thought it was really helpful how you were walking through where, if we take a step back, we see that the regime isn’t collapsing, and how they can become more dangerous in those moments that they face backlash or other forms of opposition; how they can lash out more. One question that I have is, when thinking about Iran in particular, how does this new situation, how does that, or does that change the status of this regime? I know that this is one area where there’s like internal tensions amongst Republicans, and I’m wondering: Does this open new vulnerabilities and create new necessity that they’re going to be like even more? How do we understand this?
Paul Street 21:58
There does seem to be a newfound pushback in the Senate related to the SAVE Act, and how Trump is insisting upon putting a completely unqualified fascistic real estate buddy of his atop the Directorship of National Intelligence. They’re having an actual sort of executive versus legislative branch tussle about that, that I can’t help but think is enabled, at least in part, by the fact that he has just humiliated the American empire in a really egregious kind of way. Is there any point at which he becomes so decrepit, so debased, and so obviously dysfunctional for basic elementary, imperial, and capitalist purposes that he has to go? That could happen. I don’t rule that out.
He does seem more disconnected from reality every day, every week. 60, 70, insane social media posts, a bunch of them at like one in the morning, whole days dedicated to hatred, putting up a post showing the Obamas as apes, for God’s sakes. He took it down later, but it’s very important, I think, that we always say the Trump fascist regime. It’s the whole damn regime. There are people waiting in the wings. This is a whole movement. Trumpism and MAGA are a movement, and Trumpism and MAGA have a party, and they have a regime, and we are finding out from this book that’s about to come out by Maggie Haberman and a co-author whose name I don’t remember, called Regime Change, that Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance pushed hard last year and came close to getting rid of habeas corpus. That is, the right of people to be seen before a judge before just being hauled off to jail forever.
Miller, in particular, wanted to get rid of it way back when Los Angeles was the main target of the mass deportation campaign. Later, in Indianapolis, even after the cold-blooded murder of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Vance pushed hard for, and almost got through with, the Insurrection Act. There was a movement for that. That’s who your next president would be if, in fact, this guy keels over. There’s a whole team there, Russell Vought — I’m not going to go through it all. And there’s a whole bunch of ruling class backers who have bought in with tech bros and fossil fuel capitalists that have, including a newly minted Afrikaner Nazi trillionaire named Elon Musk, they have bought in completely with authoritarian Christian white nationalism.
If you don’t want to call it fascism, you can call it that, call it what you want – a new form of governance, dictatorship, but beneath and beyond previously normative, you know, bourgeois, democracy, rule of law, and all that kind of old-fashioned stuff. They’re ready to go with this new form of governance, and if Trump keels over tomorrow, or just become so obviously debilitated that they’re compelled to do something about it, we still will have a fascist regime to deal with. I sort of ended up going there, and in response to your question.
Sam Goldman 24:52
It’s an important discussion that opens up so many other urgent questions as well, along with a bunch of bullshit theories that people have, on how things get resolved without any struggle. There’s this notion that somehow this nightmare is going to fade and be this blip little memory, and somehow like that won’t take us… like, somehow they’ve worked on this fascist consolidation for decades and decades, but somehow just really magically, without any struggle or sacrifice, it’s going to like just vanish — genie back in the bottle.
Paul Street 25:37
The Heritage Foundation will just close up shop. Yeah, right.
Sam Goldman 25:37
Yeah, I feel like I want to shake people sometimes, you know, back to reality, and I think your point about why it’s important to demand the removal of the regime is really important. I also think that Trump is unique. He has done something no other Republican was able to do. He has brought this country closer to fascist consolidation than ever before. If we don’t think that he’s part of that special sauce, I think we’re also not being real either.
Paul Street 26:10
There’s a shtick that Trump developed, I think, out of his corporate media background that Vance and no one seems to have. Vance doesn’t have it. Rubio, DeSantis showed he doesn’t have it. Whatever that weird shit is, he’s got it.
Sam Goldman 26:22
And, that may not matter at this stage of the consolidation, because they already have power. It may be able to do what they need to do for them to continue without a Trump, is my point. But I think we don’t know that, and to a certain point it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the regime needs to go. One theory is that if you look at this, Maggie Haberman — am I saying her last name correctly? And what is it, Jonathan Swan? — which, why did you choose not to report on this immediately in April, 2025? Why the shredding of habeas corpus for immigrants, just getting rid of it?
Paul Street 26:46
Well, you’re gathering sources for a book that has to be just right and has to come out… It’s like an academic.
Sam Goldman 27:03
Right, but that aside, I think that one of the things that you see is, as you were getting at, how far Miller and Vance wanted to take this. There’s this theory that somehow, Trump is a stabilizing force; that if you had a Miller/Vance in charge, it would be even more.
Paul Street 27:30
My sense from some of the reporting is that there was a secretary to the chief of staff who is a practiced Republican attorney who made very strong arguments against both of those in meetings, and that also this sort of gray eminent Susie Wiles is sort of — in so far as there’s a — stabilizing force, she’s sort of it, and probably not Trump, as a stabilizing force, is just sort of certain amount of cowardice about going all the way with that, but he probably wants to, if the situation is right.
I wanted to mention one other thing, because we were talking about where people are. I definitely hear you about, yeah, people are having a lot of fantastic dreams about conspiracies and all of that. 59% of Americans, in a very reputable Public Religion Research Institute poll that came out a couple days ago, say that Donald Trump is a dangerous dictator. Six in 10 Americans say that Donald Trump, “is a dangerous dictator.” So my question to you and listeners is, okay, when do we take to the streets and the public squares to remove this dangerous dictator? It is sort of part of this wild juxtaposition of different things going on, acknowledging that someone’s a dictator, calling him a king, showing up in the millions at No Kings rallies. But if that’s true, what are we doing here?
I think some of the sense that he’s on the way out and that he’s being defeated, and if you look at the question the way it was actually asked, it’s kind of interesting, it’s: He’s a dangerous dictator and his power will have to be checked before he destroys democracy. So that’s the caveat. It doesn’t just stop at: He’s a dangerous dictator — He’s a dangerous dictator, and his power must be checked. So it’s this belief that the courts… they just supposedly he can’t call the Kennedy Center, the Trump Kennedy Center, and thousands of people went to the Kennedy Center to wait for that moment when his name was taken off, and yay, his name was taken off. There’s this just this sense that one court decision doesn’t go as the way he wants, one grand jury indictment rejects one of his DOJ prosecutions, and then we’ll get those Democrats in there, in — supposedly they’re going to win back the House and the Senate — and everything will be okay.
Well, I think we’re suggesting that the situation is a little more urgent and dire and requiring of mass intervention right now than this sentiment is. Voting melts ICE? No, it doesn’t. We’re not going to fix this that way. That’s not how fascism rolls. It doesn’t just go away. They have announced… Why this obsession with the bringing up 2020 again? Why the shame that was heaped upon the California elections recently? With how long it took, it’s creating distrust of the whole electoral process in anticipation of the possibility of losing the midterms and creating a narrative for not honoring the outcomes of elections they don’t like.
This is the party of January 6th. I was with a group in Chicago where we said January 6, We Remember! Trump Must Go Now, Not November! something like that. I mean, this is a party that tried to carry out a putsch. I think a lot of people that I know are actually even now still in shock that a guy who ordered a putsch on January 6, 2021 actually even got back in the White House in the first place. This is a long overhang of depression and shock.
Sam Goldman 30:47
I’m thinking, people listening to this and people listening to you and Refuse Fascism talk about why lobbying and midterms won’t resolve this, listening to you or I break down why we can’t rely on institutions that have failed to stop fascism advance or Democratic Party leadership that’s repeatedly shown itself unwilling to wage the struggle that this moment demands. The only rational thing that somebody who is confronting that fascism, what they think of next is: Well, then is there a way out? Because if you look at the streets, you see that people aren’t there, and if you called something tomorrow, even though people hate what’s happening, they wouldn’t be out. So, how do you see a way through this? A way out of it?
Paul Street 31:37
I think that what Refuse Fascism has advocated all along during Trump 47 — I suppose this was true under Trump 45 too — which is a mass resistance movement, nonviolent, that’s sustained from day to day, that sends the message that business as usual is not going to proceed as long as rulers insist on imposing a fascist regime. Honestly, I think that is still a legitimate demand, and I think Refuse made a very serious effort to mobilize such a campaign, such a movement in Washington, D.C. last November, with the understanding that if it didn’t completely catch hold like we hoped it would, that we’d be moving into the election cycle and the faith in solutions through voting, right? The Indivisible Iowa poster, Voting Melts ICE — no, it doesn’t, but hey, voting — that’ll be it.
What could spark that kind of sustained mass resistance? Very different than 9 million people on one day, once every five months, a la Indivisible. That could get sparked, history is full of accidents and conjunctures. It’s not just all determined in advance. Who knew that the murder of George Floyd, for eight minutes was going to be caught on tape and just brilliantly, volatility disseminated across the internet and lead to 20 million people in the streets in the summer of 2020, connected to the conjuncture of COVID happening, and a whole bunch of people being out of school and being out of work. It was a remarkable series of accidents.
I don’t know what might spark some scandal in terms of what’s going on in ICE facilities, another egregious police murder, a murderous attack on Cuba. There are any number of fault lines in areas and volatile zones of history that could emerge, and we should always be attuned to them. I’m thinking more and more that the faith in elections is almost like a civic religion in this country. I was talking with someone recently, and they said: Well, mass consumerism and voting, those are the two American civic religions. I don’t know, but voting is really key. It’s a key part of the American identity, and it’s under attack in a really big way. I don’t know how the midterms are going to play out. I don’t think any of us do.
We don’t have an absolute ability to see the future, but my sense is there’s going to be a very significant, many-sided attack on them. There already is, and I don’t think they’re ready to accept outcomes that they don’t like. But I think it’s very important for us to talk about just how dire this regime is, and plant a pole in the ground pointing people towards the future; look, this is what they’re doing. I think that could be a really key and instructive moment. Anti-fascists of various types and Refuse Fascism folks should actually stay engaged.
I don’t think they’re giving up power easily, or simply, or peacefully — they’re just going to melt and go away because of public opinion polls, or because of some court decisions, or because of some voter outcomes. It’s possible that the Democrats will take back the House. It’s possible, but then, how much will they really be able to do is a whole other question. So, I think we have to tell the truth and be in a position to try and inspire people, and educate people, and motivate people, and present a model of resistance with a sense that another world is possible than the kind of world that gave rise to this regime.
This regime did not come out of nowhere. We are not just people trying to: Oh, let’s get rid of Trump, and everything will be okay. No, I want Trump out of there as the beginning of a process that leads to… changes the terms of politics and movements in this country, with an eye to creating a sort of society that would not just give fascism occasional temporary political defeats, but to sweep fascism, as a phenomenon, into the dust bin of history. We can’t have this. Humanity just can’t have this.
That’s a very, very big project, but I think clearing out this particular regime is sort of a prerequisite to that. Some people disagree with me, but they don’t like that. I’ve been accused of having a stages theory of history. First, we have to get rid of Trump, and then only then can we have the social movement, the social revolutionary movements we need. It remains to be seen, and I think we have to do the best we can to analyze the concrete situation we’re in and advance alternatives.
Sam Goldman 35:48
There is a lot of what you were saying that really resonated. One of the things, in terms of voting in the elections, that people are seeing is the only way out of this and the way out of this, and how much that does the work of the fascists. The more that we find a way to live with this fascism, the more it has the room to breathe and consolidate. That’s really what people are doing, not intentionally all of them, but what they’re being conditioned to do is to wait. All of it is a form of waiting, and waiting and waiting and waiting. You’re waiting for the midterms, which are really a way to hold things back and wait for the 2028 elections, and all that time fascism is enabled to advance in that.
There’s something about seeing what they did in California — the fascist view of the California elections as a preview for what they want to do in the midterms. Any time that they don’t win, it must be fraud, and if they don’t win, guess what? They don’t believe that the people who voted against them have a right to vote. They don’t think that they’re even human. There’s a lot… to say it’s a dangerous miscalculation is an understatement at this point. I just wanted to appreciate and lift that up. I also think that your point about, we can’t see the future, it’s but we can see certain patterns.
The most likely one is that Trump continues to commit more and more just completely outrageous acts of state repression, whether it be more killings of people that are observing ICE activity, or whether it be this repression, arresting people who are protesting outside of an ICE facility, or something like that. The more he blunders internationally, the more legitimacy the regime loses. In that situation divisions at the top of society could further widen, even around this Iran deal. There could be a dividing thing, but if he was removed just on the basis of Iran and other fascists being like this wasn’t a good deal, that would not be a good grounds for removal.
Paul Street 38:06
He’d be getting removed for being a bad imperialist!
Sam Goldman 38:09
It wouldn’t check the fascism. So what I’m getting at is you were pointing to the possibility that there is, in a situation like that, awakening this sleeping giant that is the people in this country who hate everything that Trump represents and everything that he’s done. So a situation could emerge provoked by a step too far by the regime, including in its attempts to steal the midterms, which is what you were pointing at.
Paul Street 38:35
Yeah, I’m kind of focused on that, but I think there’s a number.
Sam Goldman 38:38
Yeah, where millions could refuse to cooperate and pour into the streets. The question then is, will there be a force out there that’s demanding and settling for nothing less than the removal of the Trump fascist regime, or is that moment going to be another blip where people go into the streets and then it recedes and the fascism just drops the hammer? This is why it’s so important that people are getting the demand Trump Must Go Now! The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go Now! everywhere.
So it’s, as you were talking about, influencing and inspiring people. So that there’s a real dividing line between: you’re either living with this fascism, or you’re stopping a fascist America. That way, if the time comes when, because of this political situation, millions are jolted to rise in the streets, that they are doing it in a sustained, nonviolent way, where they’re going for nothing less than Trump Must Go Now! and within that situation, you have all the institutions responding to that demand and compelled and enabled to remove the regime.
I think that it’s really important for people to think about how this could happen, and that I think for a lot of people it’s very hard when you see what’s happening and you see that people aren’t moving. Why aren’t people acting, and how could they act? I think it’s really important that people get into the work that needs to be done now, so that should an opening exist, we’re able to seize it.
Paul Street 40:14
I think that’s exactly right. I will say, as a historian, the history of social movements, political movements, is full of examples of exactly what you’re talking about — the importance of planting a pole and having a cadre in place to guide folks when those moments come. Just small circles of abolitionists, and then all of a sudden people flooding to their cause. I used to do a lot of labor history, and it’s just any number of the rise of the mass production unions have these stories of these little cadres of communists and other spark plug militants who were getting nowhere, or at least they felt they were in like 1933 or 1934 and then were speaking to thousands by the end of the 30s and in through the 40s.
There is a widespread repressed understanding that we’re right about this regime. I have had so many discussions with people at No Kings rallies. We went out to the Bruce Springsteen concert in Chicago, and you get this kind of: Yeah, you’re right, I’m with you, I just don’t think that can happen yet, right now. It’s like: We’re in with you, but we’re not ready to go there right now.
I remember going to a vigil for Alex Pretti at the Iowa City Veterans Hospital, and I was having this kind of… it was a vigil, so everything’s very peaceful. It was kind of religious, so I was gingerly talking to people about the need to get rid of the Trump fascist regime, and I ran across this woman who had a two-sided makeshift kind of protest poster. On one side of it, it said, “Love for Alex Pretti, Peace to Renee Good,” or something like that, it was very humanistic and very kind and wonderful, and you know it’s a nice thing. I was talking to her, and I said, you know, behind this is a regime, and ICE and Border Patrol are part of a whole regime. She smiled at me, and she turned her poster around to the other side, and it said: “Remove the Dictator Now.” This was made by her privately in her own house, and she sort of showed it to me sheepishly. It wasn’t the main thing she’d had at this thing. She turned around and said, “You’re right, Remove the dictator now.”
As I was listening to you, Sam, also, I was thinking about the heart attack analogy. This problem of people thinking that their popular input in on society comes once every two or four years on those holy days of the corporate crafted major media candidate centered big money electoral extravaganzas — as Noam Chomsky used to call them — that the masters hold for us every two or four years. This is a mechanism of quicksand, of just keeping people trudging along, as if that’s the definition of politics, the only politics that matters. This is not distinct to a fascist era, but becomes particularly, not nauseating to me, or noxious, at least in a fascist period.
When you’ve got a fascist in the White House, and you’ve got a fascist regime, telling people to wait til elections months out or years out, is kind of like coming up to someone in the middle of a major cardiac arrest and saying take a couple aspirin and make sure to go see a really not very good doctor who may not even be alive in five months or 12 months or however far out the next election is. People get that analogy all the time. They sort of go: Oh, you’re right about that, yeah, you know, wait, there’s a dictator, he should go right now, not a year from now, or something like that. That’s my favorite medical analogy.
The other medical analogy is that this regime right now needs to be understood as a form of malignant cancer. When the diagnosis comes in, and you got to move fast on it, you don’t wait until January 20, 2029 to remove a great big life-threatening cancer. Sorry, you’ve gotta move quickly. There’s no guarantees that the operations will work or the treatments will work, but the science is pretty clear: If you’re going to have a chance to survive and emancipate humanity in a post-fascist era, then these things are going to have to be done.
Sam Goldman 41:04
Well, Paul, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us, and I don’t know if you have any other final words about whether it be today, Juneteenth, that there was anything we didn’t talk about, or anything regarding this 250th thing at the time of fascism, or any closing words you wanted to add.
Paul Street 42:34
You mentioned Juneteenth. I’m glad you mentioned that, because I think one thing that really the last recent months have been very instructive about was how anti-Black racist this regime and movement is. A lot of us were having this struggle in Chicago with Black people who were saying this is not our fight, because this fascist regime was coming mainly at brown-skinned immigrants, who some of these folks had been led to dislike and to fear, because they were coming into Southside and West Side Chicago neighborhood. Oh my god, they attack a Black housing complex in September in Chicago, and in the neighborhood of South Shore, that they said there were Venezuelans in, but there were also a bunch of African Americans, and they brutalized hundreds of Black children and Black families in ways that were very instructive.
Now they’ve torn up Black congressional representation and destroyed black voting rights in a neo-Jim Crow campaign in the South, and then portraying the Obama as apes, and this line about Michelle Obama. I mean, these people are anti-Black fundamentally in their bones. I think that’s been very instructive for certain parts of the population in recent weeks, and I think that the July 4 protest activities that Refuse may be involved in around the country, and in D.C. really want to dig in on that. I encourage people to take a look at one of the greatest speeches ever given in American history, which is by the escaped Black slave and leading abolitionist Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave is the meaning of the Fourth of July? It would be great to hear passages from that sterling brilliant oration referenced and read aloud in this summer’s celebrations. It’s a very important document.
Sam Goldman 45:47
And Paul, you have a piece up now on Counterpunch: What is the meaning to Humanity of the Fourth of July in the time of Trump? We’re going to link it in the show notes, and people should give it a read.
Paul Street 45:58
Well, super. Yeah,
Sam Goldman 45:59
Thanks again, Paul.
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