Episode 271
Solidarity to all those under attack by ICE this week and mobilizing to defend their communities in North Carolina.! The continuing protests in D.C. have taken on even more urgency with Trump’s call for members of Congress to be put to death (for upholding the constitution, of course). The Remove the Regime Coalition rally was yesterday (Nov. 22) and tomorrow Refuse Fascism is calling on 3,000 people to link arms around the White House:
Monday Nov. 24, 3-6 PM; Surround the White House 1.0 {Part 3} (more information here)
This week, Sam is joined by historian of the U.S. and the Atlantic world John Donoghue to discuss Trump MAGA fascism and the sort of united front across political perspectives needed to defeat the fascist threat we face. Dr. Donoghue is an Associate Professor at Loyola University in Chicago where he’s been traveling from to participate in the Trump Must Go NOW protests in Washington, DC.
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Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown
Episode 271 United for the Removal of the Regime
Refuse Fascism podcast
Mon, Nov 24, 2025 8:26PM • 41:01
John Donahue 00:00
The Trump administration, this fascist regime, is kind of acting like a cornered animal, which is a very dangerous prospect for all of us. Trump’s need for distraction from regime threatening crises brings him further and further down the line to abject use of political violence. So here we have the president of the United States actively calling for the execution of six military veterans of the United States Congress who did nothing but cite the law. Every fascist regime that gains power can be likened to a cancer, which will metastasize unimpeded, unless met with some kind of effective therapy. There is no therapy for fascism except its absolute and abject defeat. Popular front building is the only way to defeat fascism.
Sam Goldman 01:04
Welcome to episode 271 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 to drive out the Trump fascist regime through mass, relentless, nonviolent resistance. Today, we’re sharing an interview with historian John Donahue.
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Before we go anywhere else today, we start with giving all our love, respect and solidarity to the people of Charlotte and Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, who are resisting ICE terror. For days now, masked, heavily armed, federal agents and unmarked dark vehicles have been spotted across North Carolina, trespassing onto private property, pulling over drivers at gunpoint, and abducting workers they “suspected of being undocumented” — no warrants, no legal justification, no accountability.
In the face of mass ICE terror raids, where hundreds have been brutally abducted, people have been ripped from their homes, from places of work and worship.There are people in North Carolina who are meeting this terror head on with mass defiance and mass nonviolent non cooperation. Hundreds of protesters, for example, gathered outside businesses like Manolo’s Bakery, which temporarily shut its doors to protect employees and customers from being targeted by Trump’s ICE Gestapo.
At a Home Depot on Wednesday, more than hundred people gathered to confront federal agents attempting to kidnap day laborers. The same day, over a thousand people attended a volunteer event at a local church to support and protect immigrants. Throughout this past week, we’ve seen community defense networks running 24 hour rapid response. And, extremely powerful and worth noting, lifting up and spreading everywhere: Over 30,000 students in the Charlotte Mecklenburg school district took part in a sick out on Monday. Walkouts spread throughout the week. By the week’s end, more than 56,000 students had refuse to go to class, making the Charlotte protests one of the largest expressions of opposition to Trump’s anti-immigrant terror in the country.
This is courage. This is what acting like the world depends on what we do looks like. This is what refusing fascism looks like, and this is what it should look like everywhere, all across the country, joined with the demand: Trump Must Go Now. And especially, this is what it should look like in the nation’s capital. Today we also want to shout out everyone who made yesterday’s Remove the Regime protest at the Lincoln Memorial possible — FLARE USA, all the organizers who mobilized, the influencers who put out their call, who attended and brought people into the streets, and everyone who turned out. It really mattered. People converging in D.C. to demand the removal of the regime is precious.
We’ve gotta build on this momentum now. Let’s be very clear: We need to flood D.C., again and again and again — not once, not twice, but relentlessly. As beautiful as thousands in the streets are, we need to grow to tens of thousands, to millions, very quickly, and not stop until this fascist regime is removed from power. This week made the stakes brutally clear. The Trump regime is openly preparing for war on Venezuela, as we talk about in the interview, threatening to execute Democratic Party officials, you had Trump standing next to Mohammed bin Salman, the man U.S. intelligence has concluded ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, with Trump saying that MBS “knew nothing.” He shrugged that “things happen,” smeared Khashoggi as extremely controversial and claimed “a lot of people didn’t like him.”
You also had Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucy pressing Trump about the Epstein files, and Trump’s response is sneering and saying: “Quiet, quiet piggy.” A sitting President calling a woman journalist a pig for doing her job. Yes, he is a fascist pig. It is raw and undisguised as all this unfolds, the regime keeps marching forward to dismantle the Department of Education, attacking truth, science, and the very idea of an educated people. But things are not hopeless. There are so many people this week who have been awakened to the danger. The question is: Will we act? We the people acting together in sustained, nonviolent mass protests, can end this nightmare. We can drive them out, but we can’t wait, and we can’t look for leadership elsewhere. It’s gotta come from us; each other.
That is why tomorrow, Monday, November 24, at 3:00 p.m., we are converging again in Washington, D.C., to lock hand to hand and surround the White House. We need 3,000 people to complete the two miles around it. Be one of them, bring everyone you can. Be the beacon that calls forward the millions that need to end this nightmare, that need to get to D.C. So if you’re in driving distance, get there. If you can take the day, take it. If you can get on a bus, get on one. History is not written by those who stayed home. It’s written by those who showed up when everything was on the line, and that time is now, and we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. We won’t wait. Trump must go now with that. Here is my interview with John Donahue.
Today, I am honored to be speaking to John Donahue, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago who specializes in the history of the Early Modern Atlantic World. John has been on the Professor watchlist, surely under the eye of Charlie Kirk and his mob. John had a documentary series that was on insurrectionary white nationalism that was canceled by MAGA mobs. And, very importantly, John has thrown into the movement demanding Trump Must Go Now! He has been traveling to D.C. to participate in protests, and is in D.C. right now for this weekend’s protest. Welcome John. Thanks so much for joining me.
John Donahue 08:01
Thanks, Sam. It’s great to be here. Look forward to speaking with you.
Sam Goldman 08:04
This has been a week, and I feel like we can’t get into why this regime needs to be removed, why he can’t be contained, why we can’t wait for midterms — any of the other questions that I have — before we take a moment to talk about the ratcheting up, not just of rhetoric, but actual violence that we’ve seen this week from Trump. So I’m wondering, from everything that you’ve seen right now, even if you just look at this past week, the rhetoric, the threats, the actions, I was wondering: What have been the big signals that are flashing red from this week alone, that what we are dealing with in Trump and his regime is something fundamentally different?
John Donahue 08:52
It’s interesting because we can think of fascism as this monster, this leviathan, with its reach extending into all areas of our lives, and this insurmountable beast. But right now, while that image is still resonant, it’s also… the Trump administration, this fascist regime, is kind of acting like a cornered animal, which is a very dangerous prospect for all of us. It’s, in a way, chipping Trump down to size by bringing the horror show of the Epstein files to his face and showing him that this could become public knowledge, whether it links him with Putin or child rape and sexual assault, these are all terrible things, and it’s clear that the President, over time, uses distraction after distraction to sort of get out of these crises.
As the crises mount in intensity and they’re a direct threat to the longevity of his regime and the unity of the MAGA party, they’re gonna become increasingly desperate. So here we have the president of the United States actively calling for the execution of six military veterans of the United States Congress who did nothing but cite the law, that our military has the responsibility to disobey illegal orders. We’ve seen the commander, the chief of the Southern Command in the Caribbean, resign because of what he considered to be illegal orders to summarily execute alleged drug runners who are not eligible for summary execution.
It’s interesting, I could say one thing as an historian of piracy in the early modern Caribbean. Pirates, since the classical ages, were labeled in Latin, hostis humani generis (enemies of mankind) because they had declared war on the world and recognized no sovereign power. We have Imperial regimes like Rome declaring, in the Law of Nations and Maritime Law, that they have the power to summarily execute pirates, hostis humani generis. Here we have alleged drug runners being subjected to summary execution in the way that pirates in the Classical Age were, and then later on, the Black Flag pirates under Blackbeard and so forth.
But both the Roman regime and the British Empire that extracted such vengeful justice on pirates did so in the name of arbitrary power, in the capacity to scapegoat others who stood in whatever way the power wanted to go. So in classical Rome, it was conquest of the Mediterranean world. In the early modern period in the Caribbean, when the Black Flag pirates, most of their depredations were on the west coast of Africa, attacking the slave trade, the Royal African Company monopoly, and that is why this the summer execution of pirates was revived in that classical age.
Here we have a president borrowing from some of the greatest tyrannical regimes in history to put our military in this position of executing innocent people simply because they’re there and they suit his purpose. So that is one realm of desperation. When our military refuses to participate as the Southern Commander did, we have a crisis in the military and in the fascist regime. So like a cornered animal, Trump’s need for distraction from regime threatening crises brings him further and further down the line to abject use of political violence.
I just read a second before we got on, that the death threats to those six members has eclipsed the thousands, total, since yesterday. The Sergeant at Arms has ordered new security details for all six. So we are looking at an increasingly desperate regime that is not only resorting to rhetorical violence, it is deploying secret police in American cities to literally round up people of color, scapegoated racialized, marginalized people, violate all of their constitutional rights, whether they’re documented or not, and send them to concentration camps — as the regime is purging the military high command of anyone who’s not deemed consistently and dependably loyal to Donald Trump. We’re moving further and further and further down the road to institutionalized violence.
Sam Goldman 12:55
I think that we’re constantly told, this is it — this will be the point that he can’t go any further. That just crossed that line. Comedian Michelle Wolf does a weekly recap. It’s not long, it’s like maybe a minute or two. She starts with the outrage that people rightly felt with Trump referring to a female reporter that asked a question, telling her “Quiet, Piggy!” and how going from there to calling for the execution of people who refer to the Constitutional right that members of the service have, and she gives another example of just pure absolute violence, and like makes that comment seem like nothing, and how the goal post is constantly moving at the same time we’re constantly being told: That’s it, he’s gotta be done for now — and how many times mainly people in like the pundit world are like ‘He’s gotta rein it back in now, that went a little too far.’
It perplexes me after this long that people are still peddling that. Doesn’t it seem, to your point about how dangerous a cornered rat is, with Trump, any challenges or vulnerabilities he comes under, he immediately becomes more more likely to drop the hammer to crush any possibility that he’ll be challenged. I’m wondering, how do you explain to people that this isn’t a regime that will be contained by norms, by going too far, by doing something that’s illegal, that this is a regime that can be waited out or voted away?
John Donahue 14:40
It’s the nature of fascism, isn’t it? is what we have to realize. When we establish that the essence of fascism historically, we need the empirical evidence, and we see in case after case after case, starting in the United States in the late 19th century, crossing the ocean to Europe and then that sort of reciprocal influence all the way to today, every fascist regime that gains power can be likened to a cancer, which will metastasize unimpeded unless met with some kind of effective therapy. There is no therapy for fascism except its absolute and abject defeat. When we realize that there is no will, there’s no incentive — it’s not even conceivable to a fascist regime to, “rein it in,” to protect their power.
The Trump regime has divorced itself from its base. Whether we look at the Epstein files as an example that destroying its rural base and its sort of assault on agricultural subsidies and USAID and that link. So we’re seeing it. At least in those two important sectors and others that we could think of, right now, that the regime is turning its back on its base. It doesn’t feel beholden to them. It’s told Christian nationalists: Don’t worry, you’ll never have to vote again. There’s no accountability here. The only accountability is the sycophants to Donald Trump and what he needs them to do for him to perpetuate his power, up to the point where they’ll stand aside and let them knock down half of the White House. So when we recognize the essence and nature of fascism established through historical evidence, we must conclude that there is no accountability conceivable to a regime that is only accountable to its own nefarious designs and its leaders.
So that’s one slice of it. The other slice of it is — and I found this to be appalling as far back as 2016, right after Trump was elected — that our institutions will save us. Our institutions aren’t self actualized. They are operated by human beings, and as we’ve seen, our institutions can be swept clean of human beings, as we saw in the DOGE purge. That’s an element of fascism too, the weakening of institutions that defend the rule of law making it easy for the regime to impose its will. Third piece is — and I taught this on Tuesday, I was teaching the Constitution to my History 211 class, the first half of American History — never did the framers imagine, when they set up a system of checks and balances between three co-equal sovereign branches of government, that two of those branches of government would voluntarily cede their sovereign power to the executive to create an authoritarian regime.
If a fascist regime abandons accountability to its own people and literally says: Don’t worry about the democratic process, we don’t need it — the institutions have been swept clean of effective, informed and competent people, and we have two branches of government ceding their co-equal sovereign power to the executive, there is no institutional defense. We don’t even have a constitutional regime in operation right now. There’s no way for these institutions now to function in a way that can impede the progress of fascism unless there is a return to a consensus that we live in a democratic republic by MAGA political operatives and office holders and those MAGA placeholders and federal institutions.
But I would not hold my breath for that. In fact, I think it’s delusional to think that will happen. So when we have pundits saying: Trump needs to rein it in now, because it seems he’s jumped the shark with the Epstein files — that is an impoverished understanding of fascism. Conceptually, it is politically naive and existentially dangerous.
Sam Goldman 18:17
Your warning here is spot on, and I the same is true to people who are putting all their energy into a much later date of resolving this through a process that Trump has never respected. I think that regardless of what one thinks of the electoral system or anything, put that all to the side, and just look at the fascist at hand. Just look and listen to Trump. There’s all that he’s done to make voting kind of moot through their congressional remapping and all of that. But he led a coup, then pardoned those people, [JD, through exasperated laughter: Just that, right!] That they went around saying that never happened. Nobody does Constitution more than him. The truth is, whatever he says, it is all of that. To think that you are going to wait till, what would that be? January 2027?
John Donahue 19:02
Yeah, yeah, the new Congress. You mean, when they’d be sworn in again? Yeah.
Sam Goldman 19:18
Not only, put aside what you will have accepted in the meantime, the kidnappings, the concentration camps, [JD: destruction of the economy], exactly, the deprivation of basic rights… You think he’s going to give up power?
John Donahue 19:34
No, no. Exactly.
Sam Goldman 19:36
I don’t know how you feel about this, but I’m just like: I’m tired of being told that I’m being irrational, [JD: Oh my gosh, yes.] that this strategy of the massive, nonviolent, relentless outpouring of the masses of people exerting their power from below, that that is crazy, could never work. And meanwhile, people…
John Donahue 20:00
Oh, it’s a Catch 22 situation.
Sam Goldman 20:03
Yes, the election denier will uphold free and fair elections. And I’m the crazy one? I don’t know how you see that.
John Donahue 20:12
There’s a million ways to come at that. Just think about our conversation, where I’m talking about weakening institutions, and we can’t trust that these elections are going to take place. This President staged a coup to stay in power and ran in the last election on the big lie that the election was stolen from him, treated the insurgents — these violent seditionists who tried to overthrow the U.S. government by overturning the election of 2024 — calling them patriots and pardoning them.
That’s about the clearest language we can get from a fascist saying: I don’t care about elections, I’ll lie about them, and I won’t respect the results. So to have the punditry, the mainstream media and liberal establishment, the Democratic Party, letting the chilling effect of Charlie Kirk’s assassination limit the few tools we have — one of which is language — to accurately describe what’s happening so we understand it and the threat it presents. You can describe MAGA as the biggest cowardly movement in history, because it’s seemingly afraid of everything, but fear is also afflicting our side of the equation — this potential popular front between the far left and moderate liberals, because they won’t drop f-bombs.
They won’t drop them because we were told, after Charlie Kirk’s killing, by American fascists, that using the term ‘fascist’ is the language of terrorism and political violence. I know the people in the mainstream media and the Democratic establishment are far brighter than that. So there’s a moral failure here that we need to rectify with our activism to call not only the regime to account, but to challenge this milquetoast framing of the situation as somehow just a matter of conventional politics in a more intense framework. It is debilitating and it’s dangerous. I think maybe Murphy is one of the few members of Congress to use the ‘f’ word.
Sam Goldman 22:15
His speech yesterday. I’m not sure if you watched it.
John Donahue 22:18
There’s another kind of f-bomb in that one. [chuckles] [SG: Pick a side]. Pick a side. What side are you on? Yes.
Sam Goldman 22:25
In his speech, he’s straddling both the moral dimensions of: Who are we? but also, he believes in this constitutional republic, and he’s using that framework as well, of choose a side. Are we doing this, or are we doing something else?
John Donahue 22:41
Murphy is choosing the only kind of framework that will defeat fascism. As ideologically sound, as empirically informed and as energetically dedicated and personally committed as we are on the far left, we’ll never win this alone. We need that kind of framework because it’s the only kind of framework that we can appeal to and use, if not only want to defeat fascism, but create the social democracy in the future that we want to thrive in, where we can just get at the root of the political economy of capitalism as the sort of structure that has created all of the racist identity politics and grievances — white grievance politics — that enables a demagogue like Trump and a fascist movement like MAGA to flourish. So we need our establishment to speak honestly and courageously, which is almost funny.
I feel that I’m laughing at myself as I’m saying that we need the establishment to speak honestly courageously. But we’re in the existential crisis here… their power as well as the ones they claim to defend. At a certain point, Murphy’s right, we’ve gotta stand up and be counted. What side are you on? Even in the self interested worldview of the liberal establishment in the mainstream media, it should still resonate.
Sam Goldman 23:56
Exactly. Do you want to exist? That’s where we are at — If you want to exist, media, opposition party, any of that — if you want to exist, this is the side to be on. The strategy that we are working under is that we need a massive civil uprising from below that involves millions, does not last a day, creates a situation that everyone has to pick a side, including those in power, because: How are we seeking to remove this regime? Through legitimate means. There are mechanisms, and there are probably new mechanisms that could be created that would be within the rule of law.
That is what we are calling for. It will not be us taking him out in handcuffs. That is not the model we are working on. We’re working on the model that has driven out tyrants before. We have to create that situation from below that compels and enables the people, including the people on the Trump side of the aisle, that we’re not going to appeal to them from their humanity, but we’re going to create a situation in which it is much more favorable to remove him from power than it is to keep being his lackey.
John Donahue 25:19
The consequences under the law. [SG: Exactly.] Popular front building is the only way to defeat fascism. You laid out very clearly that it’s not just the righteous appeal; We refuse to accept a fascist regime, a fascist America, a fascist world. It’s just sheer self interest. It can be viewed that way; existence itself. I wanted to add to this in terms of framing the appeal according to the constitutional rule of law: The military is being actively purged by a fascist regime. If we have some new core of incompetent fascist ideologues commanding our armed forces, we’re going to need to depend on lower ranking officers and the rank and file to know what the Constitution and their oath doesn’t ask of them, demands of them.
So when we base our appeals, when we from from our position on the left, frame our appeals around constitutional rule of law, that’s not only politically sound strategy, that’s existentially necessary, because we need those Americans who have chosen to serve to do their duty. Because whenever this moment happens — and we seem to be accelerating towards the moment that we’re all waiting for, right, Insurrection Act, martial law, etc. — that’s why these six Democrats stood up to be counted. That strategy, or that tactic, I should say, is part of this wider strategy of popular front building. If we do not have the military A) knowledgeable and B) seeing clearly what’s happening, our chances of removing Trump from power diminish incredibly.
This is what I love about Refuse Fascism, if I could just say one thing really quickly. I was searching for a group like this, and when I met Jay leafletting on campus at Loyola, and I was talking to her about a lot of my criticisms of the contemporary left and these debilitating silos and that we put ourselves in, almost a tribalism that has weakened us, what I love about Refuse Fascism is we have one central object, which is to remove Trump from power.
Most of us come from farther on the left in the spectrum, but actually students that I teach and I talk to outside of class who are interested in Refuse Fascism, they’re not as far left as many of us are, but they see Refuse Fascism as this big tent that they don’t have on campus because of the silo-ification, if you will, the identity politics, hiving of academic activism, or activism on college campuses. I think that’s really important, and so we’re reflecting in Refuse Fascism this wider strategy that we’re recognizing is necessary.
Sam Goldman 28:03
Exactly. What you say resonates a lot. You think about what it would take — the tens of millions that it would take to be involved in this struggle — you think that the vast majority are gonna agree on anything? But what it is, is that we’re gonna unite on this. None of the futures that any of us want, as divergent as they might be, are [ever] going to be possible if this fascist tyrant remains in power and forecloses the possibility of even there being a future. That’s what I really appreciate about this, and I do agree with your reflection on on this being a rare thing, and I wish it wasn’t. We have to make it less rare, but sometimes it’s in moments like this where movements do shift and change. I don’t have enough history that backs this up, it’s more of like a belief. I believe that if there’s people with principle that continue to assert that principle that more people will become principled. But that’s probably naive, on my part.
John Donahue 29:05
No, it’s not. It’s the only way slavery was abolished. You had the first foundation of activism, which is on the plantation, it was commissioned by African Americans, who have a multitude of ways to resist, from breaking a tool so they couldn’t work, to running away, to revolting. Then you had the small minority of abolitionists, mostly free Black people and very determined white partners, who were constantly agitating, to use Frederick Douglass’s words, “agitate, agitate, agitate.” They were a small, considered to be a fanatic, minority that were being chased through the streets of American cities by lynch mobs.
But by the time of the Civil War, the general public in the North — large swaths of it — were praising John Brown for an abolitionist insurrection where he attacked a federal arsenal in order to take the arms and start a slave revolt around the South. So this is how change works. Sometimes you feel: Does this make a difference? You know, there’s seven of us in front of the Heritage Foundation. [laughs] And it does make a difference. It’s showing up — showing up with determination and resolve and the will to confront, at every turn, a self identifying fascist, has to happen. We’ll never win if they’re not to be made pariahs. We have to make sure people see them for what they are, drop f-bombs and confront, and agitate, agitate, agitate. So you’re right. You were right to say… more people of principle spread the principle.
Sam Goldman 30:40
I think that what you were saying about, we need to be where they are, they cannot have — the fascists, that is, and those that enable them — can’t have a moment of peace (I’m meaning that in a non violent sense.). I wonder how you see that connected to why you’re in D.C.? Why you think that it matters that we do converge in the nation’s capital to demand the removal of this regime? What is unique about being at this site?
John Donahue 31:11
To draw again on history, and the history of activism, whether we’re talking about the advancement of women’s rights, or we’re talking about the abolition of slavery, or the advocacy for interracial democracy, or the labor movement, all of them start out appearing to be fringe radicals that are deemed simply disruptive, a pain in the ass, and crazy. That’s how the American patriot movement started, the American Revolution. That’s how the Russian Revolution started. That’s how the French Revolution started. That’s how the abolition movement started.
Showing up first is very important. RF and aligned groups are showing up first. We’re moving resistance from a wonderful, promising spectacle of these No Kings demonstrations — really, that was important for starting to change principle and in no way, shape or form am I criticizing them. I’m saying it’s groups like ours, that probably start from a more radical position to begin with, who recognize that it’s not just no kings, it’s stop fascism, because many kings are held accountable ultimately, like the British monarchy was a parliamentary monarchy — there were breaks on. There’s no brakes on fascism. We’re not looking at a king here.
I hadn’t thought much about this until right now. We’re not looking at a king, we’re looking at a fascist despot who has shown time and time again, his willingness to sacrifice people, whether it’s their careers, their reputation, or even their lives, to advance his own power — to the point where he has created and budgeted a secret police force with funding that exceeds that of the United States Marine Corps. So we’ve gotta show up, and we are showing up, and we’re leading.
As the conditions continue to deteriorate economically, as the armed might of tyranny becomes more and more visible on American streets, as the disdain for the democratic process cannot be denied in the general public’s eyes — I don’t know what that will be, none of us do — then the hammer is gonna drop — martial law is declared or the Insurrection Act, we need to be doing our job to prepare the way for resistance and to build that popular front — and to be willing to be criticized, laughed at, viewed as, you know: That’s a nice idea, but I’ve gotta go to work — that kind of thing.
That’s what being a radical is, that’s what being a revolutionary is, that’s what being a dedicated citizen is. It’s a small price to pay when you think of the stakes. So, “Free your mind,” as George Clinton said, “and your ass will follow.” We have the freed minds, and the proverbial “ass” is the body of the people moving with us. For all those reasons, what we’re doing in D.C. is absolutely vital. History will bear it out, has borne it out, and probably will bear it out.
Sam Goldman 34:06
There’s something about not reducing it to being a placeholder, but there is something to, like, the Surround the White House, 1.0 that Refuse Fascism and others are are doing, and hopefully many, many more people will come out on Monday the 24th at 3:00 p.m. to participate in locking hands around the White House. There is something about being the placeholder there until the millions are, but not in some passive sense, but in the sense of being there to call forward more, but in the process not waiting for what atrocity is the one. Ultimately, it’s what this regime does that compels people to act.
John Donahue 34:51
Yeah, but I think we also, in Refuse Fascism and these other groups, we need to push the envelope here. We need to confront. I think the next phase is well considered civil disobedience, because you need to provoke the beast for it to out itself to the world as the violent cancer that it is. This is just de rigeur civil rights strategy. This is, this is what it is.
Sam Goldman 35:15
See, this is where, like, I, I’m not disagreeing, but haven’t they done it?
John Donahue 35:20
You mean at like Broadview, for example?
Sam Goldman 35:23
Yeah, exactly. Haven’t they showed their hands already?
John Donahue 35:25
I agree with you. You’re 100% right. Yeah, they’re shooting ministers in the head for praying. Well, that’s one person. Spectacle, spectacle — We need mass spectacles of this. [SG: Is it the scale?] Scale, scale — Tiananmen Square, Red Square, if you will. Boston Common, the Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries in France — mass spectacle to actively confront, not violently, but in direct conflict with unjust laws or an unjust institution falsely enforcing laws. That’s the world turner — historically speaking, that’s the world turner. When we build, in our popular front initiative, a big enough critical mass, and I don’t know what it would be — to occupy some public space and refuse to leave, to try to present a petition to Congress and be forced out — I don’t know.
Who knows? We need to plan about this. As radical as what we’re doing is, as the forefront, how far ahead of things that we are, if we think that these strategies are going to turn the tide, I think we’re deceiving ourselves. We have to understand that spectacle is the attention getter in an information age, social media age, and you change public opinion, not from disgust and despair to what’s happening to: [claps] We need to get involved in regime change.
Sam Goldman 36:55
Are there historical examples that you feel like are the most relevant or helpful?
John Donahue 37:02
The Edmund Pettus Bridge March would be perfect example, or the Salt March that Gandhi supporters, I think it was 1933, and the New York Times reported, as salt was this basic fundamental of life that Indians had been performing themselves for millennia, and the British now put a tax on salt. So that’s a way to command, control, exploit resources, so forth. So this necessity of life, salt being taxed in a colonial fashion, manufacturing, poverty and so forth, Gandhi’s movement held a mass march to protest the paying of these taxes. And there’s a phalanx of British military there to stop the march — I think they were going to go to the sea to make the salt.
One after another, wave of nonviolent protesters walked up into the ranks of the military, and they just beat the hell out of them. The Gandhi supporters that had medical resources there to take, and it wasn’t reckless, but it was calculated, and it took incredible guts. But the New York Times was there and said, at that moment, the claims of the colonizer is, we are bringing civilization to savages. Our moral authority is the justification for our rule. Well, when you bring out the beast in its fullness, that moral authority collapses, and that’s what the New York Times reporter was saying to the world. It’s going to take more. My gosh, the courage of these protesters, not knowing where they’re going to be sent — God knows, when they’re detained, what can happen to some of them. That’s an example that I think we have to follow, but on a massive scale.
Sam Goldman 38:31
We have to figure out, I agree, what’s next, and how do we continue to call forth the millions that we need, not possibly waiting for the regime to do something awful that magically brings people into motion and all of that.
John Donahue 38:48
We have to have the people mobilized before that moment.
Sam Goldman 38:50
Exactly, exactly. Well, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. So glad that you’re in D.C. I hope to connect with you tomorrow.
John Donahue 39:01
For sure. Sam, thanks so much. And sorry if I got a little excited and interrupted you at certain points. I do apologize for that. [laughs]
Sam Goldman 39:08
That’s my communication style. Interruption.
John Donahue 39:11
Okay, I can’t wait to meet you tomorrow. I’ll look out for you.
Sam Goldman 39:15
Absolutely. If people want to connect more with like your writing or anything like that. Do you post anywhere
John Donahue 39:22
I’m gonna start a Sub stack. I’ve been behind on that.
Sam Goldman 39:25
I know it’s terrible, but we have to at this point. Well, great, great speaking with you, John.
John Donahue 39:31
Thanks, Sam, I appreciate it, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Sam Goldman 39:34
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