Speech by Justin, a Refuse Fascism Volunteer, in front of the White House on January 3, 2026 following Trump’s Illegal Bombing of Venezuela and Abduction of Maduro
If you were still looking for a line this administration hadn’t crossed yet, let it be this. Yesterday, our struggle was politics. Today it is war.
The foundation of a functioning democracy is debate and the rule of law. That foundation has crumbled.
For decades now, the Republican party has been diverging from these principles: good-faith debate and rule of law. That separation is now complete. This is no longer a debate between two parties representing competing interests for a representative government. It is a struggle to determine whether to have a democracy at all.
Fascism is not coming. It is here.
On this, there can be no more debate: MAGA has shattered the rule of law—the principle which promises that all people will be bound and protected equally under the Constitution. Each day sees that broken promise fade further from living memory.
Instead, the far-right philosophy on display in today’s invasion (and so many more things before now) is the one at the heart of MAGA, of the juntas, of the Nazis, of Franco, and fascists everywhere. They say to us:
“The law exists to protect me and bind you.”
• This president abducts the leader of a sovereign nation (Venezuela) to try him for crimes in a US court — yet that very president remains immune to prosecution in his own land…
• Meanwhile, this president bombs Somalia and Nigeria under the guise of “protecting Christians” while shielding the genocide-committing prime minister of Israel from facing international justice.
• Even as he brings Maduro up on charges of cocaine trafficking, he grants his presidential pardon to far more prolific cocaine traffickers who flatter him.
This undoing of the rules-based international order is but a reflection of the unequal, malicious weaponization of justice we see on the streets of the U.S. every day.
The rule of law is broken. When the rule of law is broken, that thing they call “the law” becomes just another means of the powerful to constrain powerless.
To rely on such a “law” to protect you at this point is to rely on the good will of those who have proven to you again and again that they do not mean you well. Under such Fascist lawlessness, the protection of “the law” is only granted to Fascist collaborators.
When they go low, do not lay down!
Do not bind yourself to this unjust law of authoritarians… rather, choose to create, to uphold, to steward the true law of democracy as it ought to be.
This is an audacious thing to say! We might ask ourselves, who are we to decide the law? Well, I’ll tell you who we are. We are The People! We are the inheritors of a Revolution that sought the end of imperial rule over these American continents. We are the People who through slow degrees sought and still seek to form a more perfect union—with liberty and justice for all—where all people are created equal and to whom are owed irrevocable rights.
It is audacious! It really is! To be this kind of citizen requires courage, requires conscience, requires a boldness of imagination.
In the name of the People of Venezuela… in the name of the People of the United States… in the name of People everywhere yearning to live free… Refuse to obey a so-called law which binds you and does not protect you!
Refuse to ignore the call of your own conscience!
Refuse to legitimize needless war with your silence and fear!
This is but a part of what we mean. This and so much more is what we are saying when we declare that We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.
Once you make the decision to boldly steward the rule of law rather than timidly comply with fascist dictates, all that follows is mere logistics.