Hi all,
Now here’s a good article from an interesting newspaper of which I was just
made aware today.
Bob Hachey
Trump After 100 Days: It Is Not “How Little He Accomplished...” But How Much
Further He Moved Things Toward Full-out Fascism
May 8, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
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Authored by Bob Avakian, and adopted by the Central Committee of the
RCP
Do you know anyone else—any person or organization—that has managed to
bring forth an actual PLAN for a radically different society, in all its
dimensions, and a CONSTITUTION to codify all this? — A different world
IS possible —
Check out and order online the Constitution for the New Socialist
Republic in North America (Draft Proposal).
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“As we approach the 100th day of this regime the question is not—as the
mainstream liberal media and the Democrats present it—how little Trump has
accomplished
in his 100 days, the essence of the matter is how much—how far, how draconian
are the things he’s already done and where this will lead if not stopped.
And stopped soon.”
―Andy Zee, Spokesperson for Revolution Books NYC, speaking at Refuse Fascism’s
April 27 Emergency National Teach-In “Fascism in America—Could It Happen
Here? Is It Happening Here? What is the Danger that the Trump/Pence Government
Poses?” Watch Video
HERE.
On April 29, Donald Trump marked his 100th day in power by skipping the
traditional White House correspondents’ dinner and presiding over what can only
be described as a Hitler-style rally
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
There he touted his many—fascist—accomplishments, including appointing
fascist-enabler Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, launching multiple attacks on
immigrants, increasing backing for “law enforcement” (also known as murdering
police), gutting environmental regulations and further building up the U.S.
military. Trump wasn’t “reaching out” or “normalizing”—he was doubling down on
his fascist agenda, as he ushered in another week of savage assaults on
the people and the planet.
Assaulting and Threatening to Tear Up Basic Rights and Norms
The correspondents’ dinner is usually an event where the mainstream press pokes
mild fun at the president and vice versa, and the world gets propagandized
with the illusion that in the United States, a free press keeps the president
in check. Not this time. Trump would have none of that. He has declared the
press an “enemy of the people.” In Harrisburg, he railed that he skipped the
event because the media is a “disgrace.”
This is not simply or mainly Trump being a thin-skinned bully. This is
consistent with an escalating war on the press and political expression more
generally.
On April 30, Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, ominously told ABC News
that changing the libel laws to enable the government to sue its media critics
for “slander”— something Priebus acknowledged would require constitutionally
amending (really gutting, even abolishing) the First Amendment—was “something
that is being looked at.”
In a similar vein, last week Trump demanded the U.S. Senate strip away rules
that require 60 votes for some measures to pass, declaring these norms, which
aim to produce some element of consensus in the ruling class, “an archaic
system.”
And on May 4, Trump signed a new executive order allowing tax-exempt religious
organizations to directly endorse candidates. This assault on the separation
of church and state empowers the Christian fascist power bloc, and is a step
toward forcibly imposing reactionary religion throughout society.
The Trump regime is assaulting some of the basic norms of this society. These
norms are bourgeois-democratic—that is, they regulate the normal functioning
of a system of exploitation, plunder and oppression. They are democratic rights
within a basic framework in which the capitalist-imperialists dictate their
will to society. These norms enable the rulers to work out differences among
themselves but also afford the masses some limited “space” in which to debate
and organize (even as this is constantly under attack, and often violently
repressed in these same normal workings of the system). But this regime’s
assault
on these norms is NOT to change them in favor of the masses—it is to radically
reshape and make much more violent and openly repressive—qualitatively more
repressive—the edge of dictatorship, both against their rivals and the masses
of people. Should they succeed in this reshaping, the consequences will be
dire; and what they have already accomplished has caused great suffering and
put the world at tremendous risk.
Signaling, and Preparing, for Leaps in Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide
In Harrisburg, Trump saved his most hateful vitriol for immigrants and the
foreign born, whom he compared to “snakes” in language right out of Nazi
Germany.
When some protesters courageously stood up, he threatened, “That’s right, get
them out of here. Get them out.” Trump was whipping up and organizing his
fascist base in the arena. Meanwhile, outside there’s growing mobilization of
violent alt-right, fascist groups of neo-Nazi bikers, skinheads, KKKers,
off-duty pigs, militia and other white supremacist scum who are organizing to
attack anti-Trump protests. Twice in April, hundreds of such ready-to-brawl
fascists descended in
Berkeley, California.
Armed Nazis marched in
Pikeville, Kentucky,
where they were confronted by an equal number of anti-fascist protesters.
Two days later, Trump praised President Andrew Jackson, and wondered aloud “why
was there the Civil War?” This invocation and exultation of a genocidal
slave master is in service of an agenda of terroristic ethnic cleansing and
intensified violence against Black and Brown people in the inner cities that
is at the core of Trump’s “Make America White Again” agenda.
Allying With and Legitimizing Murderous Authoritarian Regimes
Meanwhile, Trump had a “friendly discussion” with Philippine president Rodrigo
Duterte, praising how hard he was fighting to “rid” his country of drugs.
Since taking over, Duterte has directed police and vigilantes to
terrorize and slaughter
drug suspects. By some estimates, 7,000 people, mostly the bitterly oppressed,
have been massacred without any due process. What does this say about Trump’s
own plans for supporting other mass murderers around the world and for stepping
up the “war on drugs” in the U.S.?
Trump also congratulated Turkey’s fascist president, Recip Tayyip Erdoğan, for
expanding his dictatorial powers through a draconian crackdown and purge
(most recently the firing of nearly 4,000 civil servants and judges). He, too,
has been invited to the White House, on May 16.
Savage Assaults on the Poor, Working People and Women
In the past week, Trump announced tax cuts that “Shifts Trillions To
Wealthiest,” as one headline put it, while rescinding rules promoting healthy
school
lunches, an action disproportionately harming oppressed people. Then on May 4,
the Republican-controlled House of Representatives rammed through a bill
that ends the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) and drastically cuts back
Medicaid, slashes protections for people with preexisting conditions, and swells
the ranks of the uninsured by tens of millions, while giving wealthy Americans
billions in tax cuts.
These are moves that will kill poor people, with Black, Latino, and Native
American people who are already living in desperate conditions affected in the
most extreme ways. And the House vote to repeal Obamacare threw raw meat to
Trump’s fascist base, for whom the very term “Obamacare” evoked a racist frenzy.
The Trump/Pence “health care” bill also represents a ferocious attack on
women’s reproductive rights, and their very lives. Among other things, it
further
restricts access to abortion. It prevents Planned Parenthood from accepting
Medicaid reimbursements for a year, cutting off nearly 400,000 poor women from
basic health services like life-saving cervical and breast cancer screenings
and access to birth control. The bill also opens the door for states to allow
insurance companies, Fortune
reports,
to return to treating “sexual assault, domestic violence, postpartum
depression, pregnancy, and Caesarean sections as preexisting conditions,
charging
women who have experienced them more or denying coverage entirely.”
More Violent Assertion of U.S. Power Around the World, More Environmental
Devastation
More unrestrained, violent assertion of U.S. power around the world is the
other side of Trump’s fascist vision and agenda. This is a real threat to all
of humanity. After
warning,
“we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea,” Trump
continued to ratchet up U.S. threats and military moves on the Korean Peninsula.
On May 2, a U.S. anti-missile defense system—which is actually a threatening
offensive weapon—went live in South Korea. While this was taking place, B-1B
Lancer bombers took part in U.S.-South Korea exercises simulating an attack on
North Korea, further backing that regime into a corner, and ratcheting up
the possibility of a horrific war, possibly including with nuclear weapons.
Trump’s first overseas trip was announced: to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the
Vatican. This signaled, among other things, that the U.S. rulers were giving
their full backing to the apartheid, ethnic-cleansing state of Israel and the
head-chopping, Islamic fundamentalist Kingdom of Saud, who are committing
enormous crimes in Palestine, Syria, Yemen and across the region. Visiting
Israel and Saudi Arabia also signals that the U.S. plans to act aggressively
against the Islamic Republic of Iran, potentially putting the lives of many
across the region at risk. In the Horn of Africa, the U.S. carried out new
military attacks in Somalia.
In his first major address, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
spelled out
how he saw translating Trump’s agenda of “America first” into foreign policy.
The U.S. had been “promoting economic activity” and trade in the “emerging”
(oppressed) countries, and supporting its allies, he claimed, but “things got a
little bit out of balance.” This Trumpian theme—that the world’s most ruthless
exploiter and leading warmonger has been too nice—is aimed at forging a fascist
people willing to welcome towering crimes. Now it’s Trump Time. There will
be more hard-edge ruthlessness, with friend and foe alike, more wielding
America’s military might... more bombs, more missiles, more assassination
squads,
and more risking war, and more playing with nuclear fire.
As if all this weren’t horrendous enough, the Trump/Pence regime also
accelerated its assault on the environment. On April 27, it delayed
consideration
(basically refused to oppose) a coal industry lawsuit aimed at eliminating
existing regulations on how much mercury and other toxics coal plants can emit.
The next day, the regime announced it would “review” offshore drilling policies
and regulations that are opposed by the fossil fuel industry, including
the banning of offshore drilling along most of the Atlantic Coast and much of
Alaska.
This is not a regime becoming “more normal.” This is not a regime that is not
accomplishing anything. No! This was yet another week of a fascist regime
moving to rapidly consolidate its power. It must be driven out before it
succeeds!
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