The State of Fascism and The New War of Aggression Against Iran

Episode 282

“Donald Trump, in onjunction with Israel, has launched a murderous, illegitimate, and illegal war against the sovereign country of Iran—openly aimed at regime change. This is an unprovoked war of aggression, the supreme war crime, and it must be stopped now.”

-from the ⁠new statement posted to RefuseFascism.org⁠

Friday afternoon, prior to the unprovoked attack that the US and Israel launched early Saturday morning, Sam Goldman and Paul Street recorded a conversation about Trump’s extremely long State of the Union speech and where things stand in the US in relation to the consolidation of fascism, including the moves towards war against Iran that were already clearly being made.

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To get involved, text REFUSE to 855-755-1314 or ⁠⁠⁠sign up online⁠⁠⁠, follow @RefuseFascism on social media (@RefuseFashizm on TikTok) and our YouTube channel: @Refuse_Fascism.

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Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown

Episode 282 The State of Fascism and the New War of Aggression Against Iran

Sun, Mar 01, 2026 2:25PM • 56:06

Sam Goldman 00:23

Welcome to Episode 282 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, relentless, nonviolent resistance to drive the Trump fascist regime from power. This week, I am excited to share a conversation I had on Friday afternoon with historian, frequent guest of the show, Paul Street. Paul is a member of the Refuse Fascism national leadership group and has a great Substack newsletter, The Paul Street Report.

We are going to share a conversation with you where we discuss Trump’s State of the Union. As always, we want to give a big thank you to everyone who rates and reviews the podcast, supports us on Patreon, subscribes on Substack and picks up Refuse Fascism merch. That support is how this platform keeps going and growing. If you’re listening and you haven’t done that yet, after the episode, take a moment please to rate the show, write a review on your listening platform of choice, subscribe to our Substack or become a patron. It helps us get these ideas out where they actually need to be.

Sam Goldman 01:38

Early Saturday morning, Donald Trump and Israel launched a murderous, illegitimate and illegal war on the sovereign country of Iran with the aim of regime change. First and foremost, humanity cannot afford to have this man’s finger on the nuclear trigger for another day — Trump Must Go Now! This war is not only illegitimate because they are targeting children, it’s not only illegitimate because they don’t have the approval of Congress, the war is illegitimate because it is the supreme international crime: a War of Aggression — and this risks escalation to all out nuclear war, which could spell catastrophe for humanity.

It’s worth sticking on this point about aggression, because many Americans have become numb to what War of Aggression actually means. The fact that George W. Bush was never brought to justice was a ringing endorsement of wars of aggression on behalf of the whole of the American political establishment. But that’s not the way things have always been, or have to be. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which followed World War Two, made this very clear. The Tribunal declared: “War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent state alone, but affect the whole world.

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” The fact that this war began with the bombing of a girl’s Elementary School, murdering 150 girls and young women, and the fact that these actions could easily escalate to nuclear armageddon, illustrate that “accumulated evil,” in a way the jurors of Nuremberg probably could not even conceive. But we know that the fascists in this regime do not feel constrained by international law or anything besides Trump’s “own morality.”
We know this because he said exactly that to reporters from the New York Times. In a speech announcing this war on Iran, Trump said that we are starting this war “not for now. We’re doing this for the future.” How much clearer could he be that there was no imminent threat to the United States and that he doesn’t care? Let’s be clear: The repressive regime in Iran should not be supported. It’s a reactionary, theocratic and viciously patriarchal state that has brutally oppressed the Iranian people.

But fascists are not and cannot be liberators. Trump himself is heading a patriarchal Christian fascist regime. He does not care about the people of Iran or the Middle East. He is acting in what he perceives to be the interests of U.S. Empire, and fully expects to dominate if the U.S. prevails. This U.S. led war on 93 million people is not a distraction. It’s not a ploy. It’s not a foreign agenda. The war is integral to the Trump regime’s global fascist vision. No more talk of democracy or rule of law, only overwhelming American violence. And this war will give Trump a pretext to step up repression within the U.S. to consolidate his fascist rule.

So, there’s some questions people have to face: At what point do you face the reality that this regime is on the offensive and will not allow itself to be stopped or deterred by what you have been taught are the normal channels? The Democratic Party can’t fight this gangster fascism in the way it needs to be fought, and they can’t be relied on to oppose this war in any meaningful way. While they may object on procedural grounds, both Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have pointedly refuse to oppose war on Iran, even with ample opportunities to do so. Instead of recognizing this is a war of aggression, many U.S. politicians and media outlets like the New York Times have chosen to use the term “war of choice” to describe what Trump has undertaken.

The functional difference is that “war of aggression” is an unambiguous legal term requiring actual accountability. “War of choice,” on the other hand, even when it’s being used as a criticism, identifies the action as a poor policy decision, instead of a paramount crime against humanity. Refusing to acknowledge this war of aggression for what it is, has the same impetus and effect as refusing to recognize the fascism that defines this regime. If we’re honest that a fascist regime is waging a war of aggression, then “wait for the election and vote for affordability,” isn’t just inadequate, it’s an abdication in the face of historic emergency.

At what point do you face the reality that the Democratic Party cares more about preserving this system than it does about preventing and getting rid of fascism and everything that goes with that fascism? In regards to this war, we should count on them to oppose a war with Iran as effectively as they oppose the invasion of Iraq and the years of horror that followed. That is to say: Not at all. Years ago, the Iranian graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi put it this way: “The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me, and the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you and our governments are very much the same.” This is even truer now.

Our people are the people of the world. Our interests are the interests of humanity, and what your government wants you to do for its interests you must refuse to do. Only we can stop this — the millions of us who have a heart and conscience but who are being cajoled into normalizing a fascist nightmare. Trump Must Go Now! Stop the War on Iran. Flood the streets with these inextricably linked demands louder and clearer every day, in the streets until they have been won. Read and spread the statement from Refuse Fascism: Stop the illegitimate and illegal war on Iran! Get in the Streets! Trump Must Go Now! — linked in the show notes. With that, here is my interview with Paul Street.

Sam Goldman 07:44

Hey, Paul Street, how’s it going?

Paul Street 07:51

Well, you know, it’s okay. I’m living in a country still on the precipice of potential fascist consolidation, but we are struggling on, and hoping to try and raise some consciousness about what’s really going on in America, as opposed to some other triumphalism that I think we’ll be talking about in a bit.

Sam Goldman 08:08

Absolutely. I’m so glad to be talking with you. There was the State of the Union on Tuesday, and then there’s everybody’s takes on the State of the Union. Reading all these takes of the State of the Union, there was a lot of “longest speech, not much was said, a rally for an ailing wanna be strong man” type narrative. What I’m hoping to talk with you about is: What really was this fascist State of the Union, and why does it matter? Where are they taking things? What are the Democrats saying about it? And if we follow their lead, where does it go? Most fundamentally, based on all of that: What is needed from the decent people in this country? That’s why I’m so glad to be connecting with you today to get into this. Let’s start with: What did Trump actually say in this State of the Union? and: Why does it matter? What did you find to be the fascist essence running through it?

Paul Street 09:05

The funniest late night joke that I saw all week after the address goes to Jimmy Fallon, where he said that nobody was more offended by the State of the Union address, he said, than the Epstein files, because they didn’t get mentioned once, and they mentioned him 37,000 times. I thought that wasn’t bad. There’s a lot of talk about how he didn’t have any real positive agenda — [mocking tone] policy agenda, like presidents are supposed to during normal State of the Union addresses with congressional control at stake in midterm elections.

Listen, this guy is who Refuse Fascism said he was from day one, back in Trump 45 — not a normal bourgeois democratic rule of law President trying to make an actual case to voters for why they ought to support his supposedly positive agenda. Somebody who captured this very well, very early on, was Timothy Snyder. I can put up a link to the interview he did on Salon in April of 2017. He said: This guy is not going to make a normal case. He wants to have a Reichstag Fire moment. And he says, I don’t think this guy will leave office without a coup attempt. That was kind of clairvoyant, but it wasn’t that hard to see, because he’s a fascist. This is a fascist regime.

You can read all the standard commentaries about the address, and they point out that he lied about [mocking tone] how tariffs are gonna to replace the income tax, and he lied about the economy, and he lied about… just a million different things. He said he was going to protect Social Security and Medicare and all that. Well, yeah, of course he did. That’s what he does. But the main thing he did in this speech was call the Democrats radical left crazy, lunatics who are out to destroy America. In a lot of the accounts I saw, there was this notion that he stayed kind of positive and sunny, making all these kind of Reaganite claims completely absurd, about a booming economy. Then they’d say, and about an hour in he turned dark and he turned evil. Well, yeah, and that’s when he started this whole narrative.

No, that’s right, he didn’t make any coherent policy argument about much of anything. The sort of one partial exception to that was he did make a pitch for that Save America Act. What is the Save America Act? It’s something he’s trying to get through Congress to basically make it impossible for millions of people to vote. He wants voter ID and proof of citizenship based on this complete fiction that there’s an epidemic of voter fraud in this country, which is intimately related to his nativist anti-immigrant agenda. The talk is that he doesn’t seem to be able to get that through the Senate, but now a bunch of right wing influencers, and perhaps people in the Trump administration itself are getting ready to issue an Executive Order to mandate this in complete defiance of the 4th and the 10th Amendment, where supposedly he’s able to do that.

That’s what this narrative is about, and also the repeated claims that also made it into the State of Union Address to the effect that the 2020 election was stolen. What’s this all about? It’s about stealing, subverting, potentially refusing to accept the outcomes of and even potentially canceling the 2026 midterms, potentially seeing ICE and Border Patrol gendarmes in and around democratic cities and around polling stations, possibly even depending on events as they proceed, a declaration of some sort of national emergency, which allows him to bring in troops to subvert the election, which might be something that could emerge out of some of his foreign policy adventures.

Almost unmentioned in a lot of these commentaries is the fact that he has a gigantic armada in the Persian Gulf. No one knows exactly what the hell is going on and what he’s going to do, but the potential of a war with Iran and what that might stir up domestically, and the opportunities it might give for him to claim that we’re under threat of terrorist attacks and to interfere with the elections… That’s what the State of the Union address was about, along with the spectacle this very classic fascist, circus-like atmosphere where he would drag out war heroes and then act like a carnival barker, selling, getting everybody to stand and applaud for an alleged war hero. He brought out the hockey thugs — the U.S. right wing hockey team that won the gold medal.

Particularly provocative was his bringing out isolated examples of people who… allegedly have been victimized in very gory kinds of ways, the way he talked about it, by immigrant crime. Also this recurrent device of throwing out one of his MAGA ideas, and this was most dramatically the case with sanctuary cities, and then getting all of his people on the right side of the congressional chamber, the Republi-fascists, to stand, uproariously and loudly applaud, chanting, “USA, USA,” while the Democrats who were there — and I understand half of the congressional delegation didn’t show I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s the number stood there — and then he would shame them: What’s wrong with you? You radical left enemies who are trying to destroy the country.

Literally just for a minute, he just kind of stared over at them while the Republi-fascists were applauding. The violence, the virulence of the hatred that he was sparking towards this allegedly radical left party — which we all know is really kind of a centrist, corporate moderate, not particularly radical party at all — it was really not normal. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a face off like that in the United States State of the Union address. And, on top of which, going on for nearly two hours is really bizarre and characteristic of this notion of cult of personality build up around this guy, where he’s just allowed to just drone on endlessly. It was really strange and disturbing and fascistic.

Sam Goldman 14:46

Disturbing. That word really resonates with me after watching it. Disturbing in what he was saying. Disturbing in the… I don’t know if the level of white supremacy that was vomited from his mouth, has ever been on the floor of a State of the Union quite like that. Disturbing in what he was saying. Disturbing in the rabidness of his party, pointing and shouting and the enemy that is the Democratic Party. All of that incredibly disturbing — the disturbing level of misogyny. All of that, so disturbing. Disturbing, the amount that this has been normalized as just like: Oh, he’s such a nut job; Oh, what an ego, maniacal, fading loser. To me, that is so disturbing. And, then disturbing that people could characterize anything that they saw from the Democratic Party as anything that would resemble an opposition.

Paul Street 15:45

Well, there is this kind of narrative that he just sort of has dementia and he’s kind of screwed up, and he’s just so selfish and corrupt and really doesn’t have any kind of world view at all. He’s just a really mean, gross old man, kind of like your right wing uncle that you have to deal with during Thanksgiving. As if there’s no actual discernible fascist worldview in his comments. You just brought up two key parts of them that were pronounced in the address: The genocidal white supremacism and the militant patriarchy. We could add in the xenophobic nationalism. It’s all there. He’s not content free. He is not just a random hater. He comes from somewhere ideologically and politically, and so do the people around him, for god’s sakes and quite doctrinally.

Sam Goldman 16:28

I think that that’s really important, and the fact that this time, this is not a one man show. People need to get that through their head. There’s nobody who has advanced fascism in America like Trump has advanced fascism. Nobody! Many have tried, and nobody has succeeded like Trump. We have to start taking him seriously. If we haven’t been we’re way past time to do that. And it is not only Trump. It is a whole party apparatus now, and we’ll get into that more. I do want to say, though, that he can be a narcissist and a fascist. He can have sun downers and be a fascist. One doesn’t negate the other, and one is principal.

Paul Street 17:10

At the same time. He is distinct from earlier classic fascist leaders in his level of pure, venal corruption. That’s true. Hitler and Mussolini weren’t trying to turn themselves into ultra billionaires. They were true believers. But okay, so what? He could still be a fascist at the same time. And furthermore, he does have total fascistic true believers in his administration. Above all Steven “We are the storm” Miller who took his young adult worldview from a fascist novel called Camp of the Saints, which I won’t go into the details in here, but I strongly suggest that listeners Google up the novel Camp of the Saints… Russell Vought, leading propagandist Steve Bannon — these are full on doctrinal fascists who really do think in complete sentences. They don’t just need picture presentations like Trump. They’re for real.

Sam Goldman 18:01

Yes, and he’s a performer. Many, many fascists have also had that talent. I wanted to return to the speech. There’s the speech, and then there’s the whole moment that the speech is sitting in, and perhaps we can talk about that too, but there were a few things that you said… A lot of people point to the lies, and there are so many that it makes sense that people look at them, but then when you look at them, what are you seeing? I think that matters. For me, it’s seeing; being able to look at the lies and see two things.

One, to be able to see the lies and the level of the lies as an exercise in themselves; I am the leader, and I define reality. The fact that he has shaped a whole party around the reality that he’s made, and that they’re making together… [PS: I think that’s a really good point.] I think he is, back to your word, disturbing. Then, there’s the point that you were getting at about the program that the lies serve in people evading, probably more willfully than not at this point, the content of that program — that these lies are in service of fomenting and consolidation of power through xenophobia, the most virulent misogyny, and white supremacy. I thought Sasha Abramsky said it well when he said that every nook was thumping with the rhythm of American fascism during that speech.

For those who didn’t listen or didn’t read, I just wanted to lift up some points, especially on this open white supremacy and xenophobia. Whole sections of this nationally televised address were about spewing the most grotesque hatred of Somali Americans that I think we’ve ever heard. It was really just like 4chan content coming out of the mouth of the President of the United States. States. It was a program that was full ethnic cleansing content; repeatedly demeaning, dehumanizing immigrants. Talking about the “scourge” of illegal immigration. Talking about this — maybe you want to talk more about — what this “war on fraud” is about. But that was definitely a theme. Talking about people, “Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration, open borders, bringing those problems right here to the U.S.A.”

I just feel like it’s worth people really confronting some of the content of what he did say, that’s being normalized. There was one thing that you said that I thought was so important that is being missed, which was his direct threats to elections, and this basic bedrock principle that has, you know, cohered this this country, in terms of the shift of power from one party to another. It was incredibly overt. Zach Beauchamp for Vox has put out a piece that the most important line from Trump’s State of the Union was: “They want to cheat,” talking about the Democrats’ opposition towards the Save Act, where he said, he being Trump: “Their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat. We’re going to stop it. We have to stop it.” Coming from somebody who’s already tried to subvert an election, orchestrated a coup and then pardoned the coup plotters.

Paul Street 21:33

Part of this of defining reality and just the insanity and the contradictions being part of the message itself, has to do with the hypocrisy. So you create this whole narrative about, how about the other party wants to cheat when you actually tried to have a literal physical coup to cancel an election on January 6, 2021. When you now are spearheading and have your fascist operatives undertaking a many sided campaign to subvert, gerrymander, cancel and generally poison the 2026 midterms, not to mention the 2028 general elections. When you “joke” about having a third term and say things like, this should be my third term right now…

There’s two things going on with that claim: One, you’re repeating the lie disproven in 62 different court cases that the 2020 election was stolen, and you’re blowing right past — I think it’s the — 22nd amendment, which limits presidents to two terms. But this hypocrisy… This wasn’t in the address, but do you remember his response to the murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, where he said he doesn’t like people bringing guns to protest? This guy was a champion of Kyle Rittenhouse, when Kyle Rittenhouse slaughtered two people with an illegally owned AR-15 at a Black Lives [Matter] rally in August of 2020.

This is a guy who was pissed off at Secret Service because they had metal detectors keeping paramilitary, fascist, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and the rest from taking AR-15s up to the Capitol on January 6th. His party made heroes out of the McCloskeys who threatened the Black Lives [Matter] march in St. Louis with weapons in the summer of 2020. It’s just: I get to be completely absurd — because I do, because I am the king, and this is how it goes. That’s absolutely right. Now, he has recently sent the FBI into seize the voting records of Fulton County, Georgia, in order to supposedly dig up proof that the 2020 election was really stolen.

But it’s not about the past, it’s about the future. It’s about creating the narrative that they’re cheating [Democrats], and that’s why we have to perhaps declare a state of emergency and intervene against this. And this is why people can scream all they want: He’s not making positive policy proposals; He’s not trying to win over the electorate — He’s never been doing that. It’s always been about trumping the rule of elections and the rule-of-law with the rule of violent white men like him.

Sam Goldman 24:04

Thanks for that. I think it’s very clarifying. I wanted to return to something you had talked about when we first started, which was the response from the Republi-fascist party overall. Watching Senators and Representatives leap to their feet for virtually every line… it was spectacle, but it wasn’t just spectacle. I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about what did that enforced enthusiasm reveal about how this fascist party is being forged, and how public displays of obedience function to crush dissent and consolidate power.

Paul Street 24:42

Well, it felt violent. It really did. It almost felt like they were daring people to stand up and take a swing at them. I think they would have liked that. I think that was one of the goals, the hope was to provoke some sort of really intense response that they could go with. This party, fundamentally, more than is properly understood, relies on violence to discipline its own party as well, by the way. It’s distinctly possible that Trump would have been convicted in the Senate after January 6th, but for the fear that even people in his own party had of violent retribution.

Trump said during the State of the Union address that he opposes all forms of political violence. He does not. He said essentially nothing about when the Hortmans, the Democratic politician in Minneapolis, was killed last June, 14. An aspect of fascist politics is a kind of cultish, physical feeling, rallying, in defense of the Dear Leader. This kind of ritual and this kind of spectacle is part of it, and it has to be unanimous. It can brook no dissent whatsoever from within their own party. Discipline in their own party is really key. It was a key part of the rise of Hitler. Some of the first targets were those who were deemed insufficiently on board with the Fuhrer at first… the Night of the Long Knives and all of that. I’m not sure I’m answering your question, but I actually feel like you might have some thoughts when you asked that, that you might want to elaborate, because it’s a good point.

Sam Goldman 26:14

What you said was really helpful, and it has everything to do with… this speech isn’t happening in a vacuum, it’s happening at a moment where he has all branches of government. He controls it all. [PS: You can include the Pentagon in that.] Yeah… and how is he going to wield that power? For as long as he has it, to lock things down in society. What the dynamism is between what he’s saying and what humanity and really the whole world, has already experienced in the year that he has been in power. I just wanted to see if you had anything else to say about the larger situation that he was speaking into, and how this fascist speech translates into real danger for people here and around the world? Or put it another way: Where are these fascists taking us? What do you see lying ahead if they’re not stopped?

Paul Street 27:16

Another thing about that standing cultishly and pointing at Democrats who were there is the race and gender of it. It’s just very disproportionately white men with Southern and Western drawls to their voice, not completely, pointing at a significantly more non-white and female gendered cohort. You could just feel those ancient American divisions of race, nationality and national origin and gender as part of that.

But the moment is an extremely chilling one, to say the very least, on numerous levels. I always say to people: You don’t have to agree with us necessarily, that this is a fascist regime — you’re wrong, and I’ll tell you why — but it’s to agree with our slogan at Refuse, that Trump must go right now. The moment includes just letting the last nuclear arms treaty lapse for regulation and the potential launching of a new nuclear arms race. This is a question of grave and lethal significance to all of humanity.

The moment includes recently taking away the Environmental Protection Agency’s Endangerment finding on how carbon emissions, the excessive extraction and burning of fossil fuels, feeds an ongoing, developing climate catastrophe. But the moment also includes, while we celebrate, you know, the rise of resistance against the ICE and Border Patrol raids in Chicago and Charlotte and Minneapolis/St. Paul and all that, they are planning with their Big, Beautiful Bill money, which is completely exempt from the current shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security — they are planning for and beginning construction for a gigantic expansion of a concentration camp network. They have 65 (to) 68,000 people in detention right now. They want to add 80,000 people in 2026.

I personally don’t think these concentration camps are only about locking up brown and black skinned immigrants. We have seen executive orders portraying people with any kind of criticism of the fascist agenda or of capitalism or of the traditional family, or a Christianity, being designated to be domestic terrorists. A lot of U.S. citizens need to look long and hard about what this massive concentration camp construction [could mean]. Wired recently had a report about how they are building out hundreds and hundreds from coast to coast, in places you might not even expect, of new ICE offices. They’re purchasing up office territory all over the country. $45 billion have been given to them to turn ICE into the most well funded law enforcement agency in U.S. history.

I have heard that it’s funded at a level beyond the military of most countries in the world except China and the United States of America. That’s part of the moment. Then the other part of the moment is the consolidation of control over media, the literal shaping of images that come in through the internet and through television screen to millions of Americans. Trump doesn’t just have Fox News, which, in my writing forever, I’ve been calling Fatherland News. He doesn’t just have, you know, right wing Newsmax and the One America Network. People who follow media will tell you that since his buddy, the Ellison family, since Paramount has taken over CBS, there’s been a noticeable change in CBS news content.

So in a sense, he has CBS. He has the editorial page of the Washington Post and some of the content of the Washington Post through his buddy Bezos. He has impacted content in terrible ways at the Los Angeles Times. Now we just found out yesterday that Paramount Skydance is going to get Warner Brothers and CNN — Warner Brothers the whole broad media empire and the film empire. This is also extremely dark, and something that is not to be laughed off at all. The number of places that you can go to find just sort of normal liberal criticism of the of the Trump fascist regime is narrowing as we speak. So there’s that, and I think I mentioned before, the armada of forces in the Persian Gulf.

Very few of us, including it seems like, even some people inside Pentagon, people seem to really know what this maniac wants to do with them. He’s seized a sovereign head of state out of his presidential home in Venezuela. It’s clearly threatening an intervention, possibly an invasion in coming months or years, of Cuba. Every day there’s something new. It’s relentless. It’s flooding the zone. People get exhausted trying to keep track of it. This notion that we can wait around till January 20, 2029, for this madness to stop is… it’s appeasement, it’s surrender, it’s capitulation, it’s madness. When I say this to people at rallies, privately, you know, we’ve sort of had a nice… we’re at a liberal rally: Hands Off! ICE Get out of here! and say, you know, ICE is a political federal police state, fascist arm of an administration of a regime called Trump. People go: That’s right.

Prospects for a decent future really can’t survive three more years of this guy. Certain people nod, and they agree with that. Maybe they’re just being polite, I don’t know, but to tell people to wait to midterms in November, which only mean new people being seated the following January, or, for God’s sake, to wait until the general elections in 2028 which only means new people being seated in seated in January of 2029, is like telling someone in the middle of a heart attack to take two aspirin and go to a regularly scheduled appointment with a really bad doctor who’s already pretty sick and who may well not be alive in nine months from now, or 23 months from now. And the really bad doctor in that analogy who might be dead is the U.S. electoral system, but it’s also an opposition party, so called, that doesn’t seem to have the willpower or the capacity to seriously fight fascism in a real serious way, as I think was on display in all of the different Democratic Party responses to the State of the Union Address.

Me and some friends in and around Refuse Fascism had a little bit of a division of labor. I focused on the rebuttal speech that CIA veteran and recently elected Virginia Governor, Abigail Spanberger gave, and it was really kind of dismal and depressing. I’ll just say something as an aside, because I’m an historian. She opened right away by saying: Here we are in the wonderful House of Burgesses in Virginia, which first met in 1705, in order to own affairs democratically. I thought to myself: Oh, my God, you know what they did in the House of Burgesses in 1705? They passed the Virginia Slave Codes, which consigned Black people to lifetimes of black chattel slavery.

I mean, it’s just like: Excuse me, you’re gonna hold that up? She said the usual kind of stuff that he lied a lot. He didn’t seem to have any real positive proposals. But the main thrust of her critique, and what the Democrats are going to do, she said, is focus on this question: Has this President made your life more affordable or not? She went completely to economics. I don’t want to dismiss affordability as an issue. I experience it every day. There’s a problem with prices and all of that, but if you pitch it so completely at that level, which I think was also the case in the Democratic Party protest on the Mall, and I’m sure got a lot of references at State of the Swamp rally that Miles Taylor led, an indoor event.

You don’t talk about the fascism, and you don’t call it fascism, and you don’t talk about the xenophobic, nationalist, genocidal racism and the militant patriarchy and all that, and you just talk about affordability… people need to remember Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich brought up the standard of living of Germans significantly in the mid 1930s, okay. Really? It’s just about economics. It just sounded: Has this President made your life better. So if it’s just about you and your family. Are you better off under this President? Well, A) We’re not, but B) even if we were, even if somehow we were, this would be a nightmare scenario of fascism.

There was some criticism in Spanberger’s speech of ICE and: What’s ICE doing? But we hear this a lot about ICE and the deployment of troops to cities… It’s a waste of taxpayer money. She literally said this money would have been better spent on real law enforcement. Not that this money is being spent on a fascist program, not that this money is being spent on a so called immigration enforcement program that is actually the tip of a spear… That is actually functioning as a Gestapo or an SS, to undo and subvert bourgeois previously normative democracy and rule-of-law in this country, broadly understood — that’s part of a program that’s building and building out a concentration camp network unrivaled in the world, that if they get their fever dreams fully enacted, will include not just immigrants or alleged immigrants, but everyday liberal, progressive, radical left, even moderate republican dissidents who don’t wanna live in a fascist state. I found that very, very disturbing. Now, of course, Abigail Spanberger is a longtime foreign policy operative, intelligence personnel, CIA veteran, so she had nothing to say about Trump’s impending war. Well, she had one little line about it, and nothing to say about what he’s doing in Latin America and the attack season.

Sam Goldman 27:16

We want to give our consent to it. We shouldn’t probably flatten it so much, but that is, I feel like, a lot of it. Your analysis of the Democratic response is really helpful. I wanted to just add a couple things and a further question on part of it. I think that people hang on to and celebrate, at this point, acts that are so not commensurate to this moment. There’s celebration for doing what is less than the bare minimum. Those examples get lifted up as heroic acts when, really, like anything short of shutting down his speech is not opposition. I get people not showing up. He doesn’t care. It doesn’t actually make an impact.

I get you’re not participating in that, but unless y’all are getting dragged out because you’re calling him and his party the fascists that they are. At a time where he’s, you know, setting the planet on fire, seeking to lock in a program of making it unthinkable to live in a time where people weren’t hunted down, locked up [PS: Like the Fugitive Slave Act], thrown away for being immigrants — that He wants to lock in, in a situation where it’s unthinkable to think that you could question the president the government, that that’s the world that he is fighting for, and anything short of disrupting that, in a fundamental sense, calling for his immediate removal, that’s not opposition. That is appeasement. That is conciliation.

Maybe you can hold up your sign today, but if he’s allowed to continue to rule, that won’t be true tomorrow. I think that there’s a level that people do not want to confront, that they do not want to go there. There was one aspect — and I’m not saying that there weren’t people who shouted out or didn’t… bring a guest that got dragged out just for standing up, a woman who was like brutally arrested by ICE, who was brought there, but she was the only one who was besides Green, for his sign calling out Trump’s racism. But there’s what the Democrats did in lack of response, and I think that many people see it as inadequate as opposed to dangerous.

I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about how, if people follow this lead, trying to manage to coexist or slow walk this fascism, instead of confronting it and working to defeat it, how does that shape what becomes possible or impossible going forward? It may be connected to that. There’s inadequate versus dangerous in there’s also this aspect of the Democratic Party is bereft of any answers to this fascism, and if you could speak a little bit more to why that is the case.

Paul Street 27:46

I read that the leadership, led by Hakeem Jeffries, in the House, cracked down in advance on any efforts that were circulating about disrupting the proceedings, which I found interesting. I think you’re right, it would have been better to try and shut the whole thing down. This thing of leaving and not attending, kind of feeds and reflects this notion that we’re just checking out of this; it’s all so ugly, and I can’t even pay attention to it. Which is also very problematic — just to disassociate. Many people I know are just burned out on it and exhausted, and they disassociate; Well, we just didn’t go so we didn’t pay any attention to it.

There’s a kind of triumphalism that Democrats are propagating, as if we’re winning, because his poll numbers are down. I’ve seen his approval rates as low as 37%, it seems like the average is 41%. Like Trump cares about that. Like this regime is not willing to rule in authoritarian fashion in defiance of public opinion and like they haven’t always been like that. Even some of the celebrations of Minneapolis — I mean, it was a remarkable, heroic resistance there, but — what gets lost sometimes, they pulled four to five thousands of human beings out of the Twin Cities, okay? Most of them people of color, incidentally. It’s like, no. Great, people rose up, they should have, but you didn’t win, and, like I said, they’re building out now.

They’re building out like crazy. When people drive ICE, or they think they drove ICE and Border Patrol out of their cities, ICE and Border Patrol go somewhere else. And actually, oftentimes they didn’t really drive them out, just their tactics changed a little bit. Democrats’ emphasis on the elections, part of the capitulation, and part of the problem with it is that there’s too much horrific fascist policy being enacted every day. And the time factor… hey, 2027. Hey, 2029. Do you know how much shit is gonna happen by then? That’s just too late. The problem we’ve talked about is they’re moving to cancel these things, to subvert them, to distort them. They won’t accept them.

After January 6th, is there any doubt that this kind of regime is gonna accept election outcomes that it doesn’t like? What did he do on his first day? He let the people who tried to overthrow 2020… he pardoned and granted clemency to 1,500 or more January 6th putchists. But there’s an even deeper question. Let’s say we got past all the obstacles to electoral success for the Democrats, got past, somehow magically, the attempts to subvert and cancel the elections and they get in. This party has shown no ability, when it is in power, or willingness, or when it was in power, to fight fascism the way it needs to be fought.

They had power, and Trump was never properly, or in time, brought to heel for what he attempted to do. He was allowed to run free. The Supreme Court was allowed to reimpose the female enslavement of forced motherhood in a number of states in this country, without any kind of proper response from the Democratic Party. Its captivity to imperialism, or its embrace or its imperialist nature turned it into just predictable, pathetic supporter of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which may have cost it the 2024 election with with younger voters. So even when they get in, if they can, which seems unlikely, but possible, anything’s possible, they don’t seem to do the things that are required to sweep fascism into the dustbin of history.

You just kick the can down the road if you don’t actually take on and fight and crush the fascist movement and extirpate fascism as a political phenomenon in this country. Which is something that would require bold government action supported by masses of people. It’d be a hell of a thing, but it’s necessary, and it’s essential if we want to go forward, because, in the name of humanity, there can’t be a fascist America. There can’t be a fascist movement in power or with the potential to return to power in this country. Doing the types of things that that that that requires, is just not what they are about, because being about that would require stirring up masses, millions of people, in ways that the sponsors and elites behind and atop both of the parties, including the Democrats, just don’t want to see. It sparks a mass engagement that elite parties don’t want. This is a problem we have with capitalist control of our whole electoral system and political culture, actually all the way down to the grassroots.

Sam Goldman:28:02

Let’s get into that. The Democratic Party response to the State of the Union both official, which I know that you’ve written about, and other non official offshoots ranged from silence to symbolic gestures — with exceptions, I’m not saying that there weren’t a few exceptions — but fundamentally pathetically cowering, like beat dogs. I was hoping that you would talk to us a bit about what you observed, how you understand that response, and what it reveals about a party that is relying on the norms of a system that fascism is actively shredding.

Paul Street 31:06

You’ve got to ask our permission. It’s about proceduralism, not about whether the U.S. should preserve or advance their stake on the globe, their ability to dominate without restraint, to be an unchallengeable global power. Please talk to us first and get our authorization before you topple the regime in Cuba or steal the president from Venezuela or blow up boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

Well, let me qualify a little bit, though: We do want them. We do want people within the political class to do things to remove Trump. It’s not our job to tell them exactly how to do it. The mechanisms are there. Impeachment in the house, trial and removal in the Senate. That’s there. 25th amendment is there. Forcing resignation is there. There was a president forced out by people. They think Nixon just resigned, but trust me, Nixon didn’t resign until Barry Goldwater, the Republican Senator, went in and said: You will be impeached, and then there will be a trial in the Senate and you will be removed — and that’s when he resigned. So it’s kind of a de facto.

There are constitutional mechanisms there, and they’re not going to act on them unless millions of people engage in a sustained mass popular movement. Can we call it an uprising? But it has to be ongoing, that says there will be no business as usual in this country. There will be a political crisis in this country as long as you folks in power insist on imposing a mass fascist regime. [If] we can get to a situation where we did make a movement commensurate to that, and they still wouldn’t remove a fascist regime, and then that raises some really deep, rooted and fundamental radical questions, like: Would it take a revolution or something akin to that?

We’re coming up on the 250 year anniversary of the American Revolution, and the Ken Burns series shows, it was a pretty messy affair. God knows we don’t want that, but what’s it gonna take? It doesn’t seem that the impetus and the spark for that will ever come from the top down. It’s going to have to come from the bottom up. We can exacerbate splits within the elite and see those splits operationalize in policy and reality. That can, in turn, fuel the willingness and the confidence and the courage of people at the, at the rank and file level, but us regular people out here in the real world, we have to take the initiative. This will only happen from the bottom up.

To emphasize some of the points, you know, the response from the Democratic Party cowering inside norms that fascism has already blown apart, that there were no answers equal to the moment.

Sam Goldman 47:48

Absolutely, and in order to do that, people do have to break with things. I think that in order for people to see that the time is now, one of the things that they have to do is they have to confront very uncomfortable truths. 1) As you said, we are not winning, not yet and pretending otherwise through don’t watch an avoidance or triumphalism that just by the fact that most people are against this, or pointing to the midterms. This doesn’t protect people, it actually disarms them. Those responses may feel comforting, but politically, they function as enabling this fascism to advance in abject capitulation to truly a horrific future when we already see that this is a regime that’s locking down society, crushing dissent, threatening the world, threatening the planet, and openly asserting that raw power is the law.

I sent you that Snyder piece [Fascist Failure: the State of Trump] because it’s the best articulation of a bad argument. There are some true aspects of his argument, but the fundamental point that I walked away with, and it’s it then gets echoed out by other people taking their analysis from Snyder’s analysis is that Fascism is a possibility being consolidated, but not a likelihood, and that the forces of good are prevailing.

Paul Street 48:40

He apparently accepts the definition of where we are right now as Levitsky’s term, Competitive Authoritarianism.

Sam Goldman 48:57

That’s exactly what he says we are.

Paul Street 48:57

And Competitive Authoritarianism means you sort of have, you still have liberal democratic forms, but you have an authoritarian regime that’s subverting them, but they haven’t done it yet. And that seems to me to underestimate the genocidal racism and the militant patriarchy and the xenophobic nationalism that’s already afoot in an imperial presidency, including the Pentagon.

Sam Goldman 48:57

But it also does point to, in my opinion, of like: We have to define it this way if we want to confine people this way — if we still want people to do the voting thing, if we are still doing democracy, and democracy is above all else — bourgeois democracy, that is — and we can’t say: Hey, this is still advancing. We have to say: [PS: He’s failing at fascism. Yeah.] He’s failing at the fascism. But stay vigilant. But don’t stay too vigilant. Pay attention, but don’t follow your logic all the way.

Paul Street 49:14

Well, it seems to be a definition of fascism. Like a lot of what we’ve come up against is: It’s not fascism until it’s fully consolidated. You’re not advancing fascism as a movement and as a project. But you know, it also was sort of discordant to read the Snyder piece, and then within two hours of reading it, I read that Netflix had backed off on the Warner Brothers deal, and this fascist oligarch, Ellison is about to get control of CNN and hand it over to Trump. Then I read the Wired piece about all the ICE offices. Then I read the reports on the concentration camp build out. No, we’re not failing here. We’re expanding now.

Snyder’s a historian, and in many ways, as a result of that, me being a historian, I can say this, still kind of focused on the past, I think, more than the present. A lot of these historians, they look at Nazi Germany in 33 and they say, look what Hitler achieved within the first 100 days. Have you read Peter Fritz’s book Hitlers First Hundred Days? It really is chilling. It really is extraordinary. Really, by May 1, 1933 they have destroyed all left and liberal opposition, and they seem to have even rallied a lot of ordinary working Germans. I’m happy that that kind of total hegemony has not happened under Trump 47. We can go out and march and we’re not going to get shot. That’s true. But at the upper reaches of the commanding heights of this empire, fascists are in power and setting up a future that could cancel all prospects for a decent future, not to mention, that could wipe out the last remnants of previously normative bourgeois democracy and rule of law in this country.

Sam Goldman 52:03

And the very capacity for human survival on this planet, if they’re able to continue this.

Paul Street 52:10

Sometime we should talk about… I think I mentioned Andreas Malm to you. This ecological issue has a very underestimated overlap with the more classically social and political bases in ideology of fascism than is commonly understood. He coined this phrase fossil fascism.

Sam Goldman 52:30

I don’t know if you saw but they started going after the Center for Biological Diversity.

Paul Street 52:35

That’s one reason I say you’re wrong if you don’t think it’s fascist, but you don’t have to necessarily understand or accept our full analysis to get behind Trump Must Go Now! The ecological agenda enough is to say Trump Must Go Now! The nuclear arms policies, in and of themselves are enough to say that Trump Must Go. The attack on vaccines and cancer research and public health, to me, is enough to say that Trump Must Go Now! [SG: That is true.] So join us, and then you’ll have dinner with me, and we’ll tell you why it’s fascism.

Sam Goldman 53:02

That’s true, and you should go have dinner with Paul and find out why it is fascism, because I think that if people don’t actually confront the fascism of it really and fully, that it’s here, that it’s now, that actually there can be game over for humanity. There can be game over for life on this planet. If that is a real prospect, then you aren’t going to upend your life in the way that people are going to need to to stop this fascism.

Paul Street 53:34

Without getting that it’s fascism, you’re not going to engage in the type of struggle that’s gonna be required to save livable ecology, to save nuclear sanity and so forth. Yeah, you’re right. You’re right.

Sam Goldman 53:43

I think that people can understand this. This is gettable, but we got to get it, like, now, because they’re going for game over, and we’ve got to stop playing their game, and we have to actually change the game. Part of changing the game is we have to understand what they’re playing. I just want to thank you, Paul for sharing your expertise, your perspective, your insight, and, of course, your time. You can always find Paul at the Paul Street Report on Substack. As always, there will be a link to follow Paul. Please subscribe to his Substack. We really rely on Paul’s analysis and his ability to do this work, so please support it. Paul, any last words?

Paul Street 54:30

Just my agreement with you. This regime has to go. It’s just an existential requirement for sustained prospects for a decent human future. We only have one life. What are we doing on this planet if we’re not working to get rid of a debased, deranged, existential menace to all of humanity, like Trump and his regime?

Sam Goldman 54:47

Thanks so much.

Sam Goldman 54:49

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You can also text “refuse” to 855-755-1314, so you’re always in the loop. Much appreciation to Richie Marini, Lina Thorne and Mark Tinkleman for helping produce this episode. We’ll be back next Sunday. Until then, In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!

IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY, WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FASCIST AMERICA!

NOW IS the TIME WHEN WE MUST RISE UP and ACT to STOP the CONSOLIDATION of TRUMP MAGA FASCISM. For the lives of people here and around the world we must refuse unlawful and inhumane orders… we must fill the streets and town squares in non-violent protest—not stopping until we become millions — not relenting until this regime is no longer able to implement its program or maintain its hold on power.

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