This AWTWNS news packet for the week of 14 November 2016 contains four articles. They may be reproduced or used in any way, in whole or in part, as long as they are credited.
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US: “In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America”
14 November. A World to Win News Service. We selected the following four items from the 14 November 2016 issue of Revolution, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (revcom.us). The first, a message signed revcom.us which came out immediately after the election of Donald Trump, is being widely distributed as a leaflet (see revcom.us for a pdf) and in other forms.
In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America
Rise Up… Get Into The Streets… Unite With People Everywhere
to Build Up Resistance in Every Way You Can
Don’t Stop: Don’t Conciliate… Don’t Accommodate…Don’t Collaborate
Donald Trump has now won the presidency. Under the slogan “Make America Great Again”, he has viciously attacked Mexicans and Muslims, threatened to deport millions and boasted that he will build walls and close borders. He incites people to fear and hate those who are “different”, or who come from other countries or nationalities, or practise different religions. He crudely demeans and degrades women, and openly boasts about molesting them. He’s a champion of white supremacy who has insulted and threatened Black people, and whipped up a racist lynch-mob mentality. Trump has mocked the disabled. He is an aggressive and unapologetic militarist, who threatens to use nuclear weapons and will have his fingers on the nuclear codes. He openly advocates war crimes and crimes against humanity – including torture and killing the families of people accused of terrorism. He plans to pack the Supreme Court with justices who will gut and reverse the right to abortion, gay rights, and other important legal rights. He calls climate change a hoax and his policies will wreak further devastation on the environment. He has attacked and threatened the press and stirred up his supporters to do the same. Trump has utter contempt for facts and the truth, and consistently lies to advance his agenda. As for the rule of law, Trump went so far as to openly threaten his opponent, Hillary Clinton, not only with jail, but even assassination. Donald Trump is an outright fascist. And he is now the president-elect.
Fascism is a very serious thing. Fascism foments and relies on xenophobic nationalism, racism, and the aggressive reinstitution of oppressive “traditional values”. Fascism feeds on and encourages the threat and use of violence to build a movement and come to power. Fascism, once in power, essentially eliminates traditional democratic rights. Fascism attacks, jails, and executes its opponents, and launches violent mob attacks on “minorities”. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and ’40s, under Hitler, fascism did all these things. They imprisoned millions in concentration camps and exterminated millions of Jews, Roma people (Gypsies), and other “undesirables”. And Hitler did almost all of this through the established institutions and the “rule of law”.This is where this goes. And yes, Hitler himself could “talk graciously” when he felt it would serve his interests and lull his opponents.
Trump did not even win the popular vote, (even though he did win the “electoral college” which decides elections in the US). Hitler himself came to power through democratic procedures, including through the process of elections. Should people have accepted Hitler?! Unfortunately, they did, at a horrific cost to humanity. Today, with nuclear weapons, that cost could be far higher.
In the name of humanity, we must refuse to accept a fascist America!
The fact that Trump won as many votes as he did must be understood. The fact that he got more than even 10 percent of the vote is disgraceful and reveals some very ugly things about America. So why did this happen? The world today is turbulent, full of changes. Those who supported Trump’s fascist program were overwhelmingly sections of white people, especially but not only white men, who yearn for the days of open white supremacy and American global domination, and the blatant subjugation of women. A significant minority of white people did oppose him, but we have to confront how deep the racism, the national chauvinism, and the hatred of women is woven into this society, and not give in to this, but vigorously challenge and fiercely oppose it.
But even more than this, Trump was backed by powerful forces in this society. Beyond those who directly supported him, the media, the Democratic Party, and others treated him as a legitimate candidate, refused to call him out as the fascist he is, and now call on everyone to accept his ascension to power. All the major powerful forces in this society bear the responsibility – it is they who have, over decades, either built up this fascist force or have “enabled” it.
You cannot try to “wait things out” with fascists. Those who lived through Hitler’s Germany and sat on the sidelines, looking on as Hitler rounded up one group after another, became shameful collaborators with monstrous crimes against humanity. Trump and his regime must be resisted and defied, beginning now, in many different ways and in every corner of society.
Reconciliation and collaboration would be nothing less than criminal and deadly. Literally. Come together… resist… and let the whole world know that we will not allow this to stand!
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Ruling Class Says Trump Is President… Get Over It…Tens of Thousands in the Streets Say NO!!
In the wake of the election of Donald Trump, key opinion makers in the mass (that is, the ruling class) media are portraying the incoming Trump regime as a legitimate “peaceful transition of power”. They say this is essential to what makes America “great”. Literally “normalizing” fascism.
But in the streets, on high school and college campuses, in large cities and small towns, in vigils and fierce confrontations, people are not accepting that this is just business as usual. People are refusing to accept the ominous implications of a fascist presidency. Many thousands have marched in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Oakland. In Portland, defiant protesters have taken the streets for four days straight in the face of police pepper spray and rubber bullets. People are refusing to accept Trump’s war on immigrants. They are refusing to accept his obscene celebration of prejudice, ignorance, and hate for those who don’t fit into the dominant American culture of white supremacy and patriarchy.
Thousands and thousands have marched on Trump Tower in New York and Chicago. Signs say “Love Trumps Hate”. Chants of “Not our president” and “Fuck Donald Trump!” disrupt business as usual. Freeways have been blocked in LA, Miami, Atlanta, and Iowa City. Hundreds of Phoenix high school students walked out of classes. They marched to the state capitol chanting “Who’s Donald Trump? Not our president!” and “Whose city? Our city!” Thousands of high school students in California, Colorado, and Washington and hundreds in Iowa have walked out in protest. Large and angry rallies against Trump broke out immediately on college campuses, especially on the West Coast but also at schools like the University of Pittsburgh, historically Black Fisk University in Tennessee, and the University of Texas in Austin. In Cincinnati, an anti-Trump march with a significant component of LGBT rights activists converged in the streets with people, mainly from the Black community, protesting the refusal of a jury to convict the pig who murdered Samuel DuBose.
Voices with influence, including clergy, and people in the art and entertainment communities are taking a stand and speaking out. Among those were, in New York, Lady Gaga, Mark Ruffalo, and Cher, who joined protests late on election night at Trump Tower. Jennifer Lawrence tweeted “Let this be the fire you didn’t have before… If you are an immigrant, if you are a person of color, if you are LGBTQ+, if you are a woman – don’t be afraid, be loud!” And New York Daily News columnist Shaun King wrote, “No, we should not wait and see what a Trump administration does. We should organize our resistance right now.”
Students at American University in [Washington] DC burned American flags, as did protesters in Atlanta where The New York Times reported that protesters “revis[ed] Mr. Trump’s campaign slogan [and] chanted ‘America was never great.'”
In Cleveland and Chicago, revolutionary communists – the revcoms – and some others have gone nose to nose with howling Trump supporters.
In the midst of all this, the message from revcom.us, “In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America”, has been taken up widely by all kinds of people, and is playing a critical role. It needs to be spread much more widely.
Tens of thousands, now, are standing up. They are motivated both by a sense of the magnitude of what Trump’s ascension means, and refusing to accept the hate crimes already being committed in the wake of the election – like assaults on Muslim women and attacks on immigrants. The response to the Trump election – in its size, determination, and breadth of people – is unprecedented in modern US history, going back to the Civil War. This is very important and positive. It needs to both keep going and spread. At the same time, everybody needs to be figuring out both how this spreads and finds more organized expression.
And the sites of resistance must become scenes where people are seriously discussing and debating what gave rise to a Trump and how to get beyond the confines of a system that legitimates and dictates not only “choices” like this but values like this as well.
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Report from the Streets of Los Angeles
From a correspondent:
On Friday, 11 November, a protest of 3,000 people blocked the 101 Freeway that runs through the middle of LA, and marched through down-town. There were 200 arrests, in addition to hundreds of other arrests of protesters on Wednesday and Thursday. Other protests took place in cities and on campuses throughout Southern California.
On Saturday morning, well over 10,000 people from all over Southern California – shocked and outraged at the election of Donald Trump – came together at MacArthur Park, in the centre of the Central American immigrant community, and marched to the Federal Building in down-town Los Angeles. It was the fourth day in a row that anti-Trump protesters had taken to the streets of LA. People came from many different sections of society with all kinds of home-made signs, together delivering a serious, determined, and powerful message that the election of Donald Trump is unacceptable, and that his fascist program against the people has to be opposed.
College and high school students were there from many different campuses where protests, marches, and walkouts had taken place in recent days. There was a powerful outpouring of women of all ages expressing, together with men, a visceral disgust at Trump’s vile and dangerous misogyny against women. And there were a large number of people from the LGBT community, whose lives are threatened by the Christian fascist programme that Trump and Pence openly support. The marchers strongly expressed their support for immigrants, including by chanting “Immigrants are welcome here” while immigrants from Central America lined the streets.
The sense was palpable that the country has just entered a new and dangerous period. In this moment, the headline on the statement put out by revcom.us, and on hundreds of posters – “In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept A Fascist America” – had a powerful impact on many, many people, and on the march as a whole. It expressed the seriousness and gravity of this historical moment, while raising people’s sights to see that they are acting in the interests of all humanity. Before and during the march, hundreds of people grabbed for the posters and donated generously to pay for them. Over $800 was raised in donations for these during the day.
A vibrant Revolution Club contingent led hundreds and hundreds of people throughout the day to pledge, in a call-and-response way, that they would not conciliate; they would not accommodate; and they would not collaborate; that they would act in the name of humanity. And thousands of copies of the statement “In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept A Fascist America”, together with the brochure “HOW WE CAN WIN: How We Can Really Make Revolution”, were taken up by marchers and by immigrants who lined the streets.
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To ALL Revolutionaries, Students, Professors, and Others on Campuses!
With the election of Trump, we confront a FASCIST America, No Less!
1. In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America! Spread this statement everywhere – at the outpourings of protest that have erupted, bring it into classrooms, hand it out in cafeterias, spread it on social media, saturate the campus with this, sit down and really get into, grapple with, and discuss it with others.
Work with students and professors to anchor teach-ins on the content of this – on what Trump ACTUALLY represents, what FASCISM is, its history, and its implications for vast sections of people, and what WE need to do! Study and discuss these works by Bob Avakian: “The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy… And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer” and “The Fascists and the Destruction of the ‘Weimar Republic’… And What Will Replace It.” Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, has done scientific analysis over decades that sheds a great deal of light on the current political juncture – its roots, its dynamics, and what must be done in response.
Take to heart, and act on, the title and call of this statement: “Rise Up… Get Into The Streets… Unite With People Everywhere to Build Up Resistance in Every Way You Can! Don’t Stop: Don’t Conciliate… Don’t Accommodate… Don’t Collaborate!”
Establish Trump-free and fascist-free zones! We need teach-ins and sit-ins! We need massive multifaceted resistance to the whole program represented by Trump, any acts of white supremacy and misogyny, any attacks on immigrants and Muslims, and other manifestations of fascism.
2. Go deeper – be radical!
What the vast majority of seven billion of humanity faces is a horror, the system of capitalism-imperialism. Trump is but a concentrated manifestation – grotesque and monstrous – of this system. This is not the best or only possible world or society. A radically different and far better world is possible.
Bob Avakian’s The New Communism provides a thoroughly scientific approach to knowing and radically changing the world, making revolution and a whole new framework for the emancipation of humanity.
Get into – and organized into – the ACTUAL revolution, to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time, for a communist revolution aiming to get beyond the long darkness of humanity divided into masters and slaves. “HOW WE CAN WIN — How We Can Really Make Revolution” details the strategy for such a revolution. What is needed is YOU: contact and get with the Revolution Club on campus. If there is no Revolution Club on your campus, organize one — go to the Revolution Club page to find out how.
3. Fight back against the authorities’ attacks on radical discourse and organization, critical thinking, and resistance. Respond with more, come back stronger!
REVERSE the outrageous “bans” that have been – ILLEGITIMATELY – placed this fall on members of the Revolution Club at two major campuses in this country, University of Chicago and CCNY [City College of New York]. Join with the Revolution Clubs in fighting this, in welcoming the revolutionaries onto campus and into your classes, and being part of this struggle.
All those who feel there needs to be genuine discourse on “What is the problem and the source of horrors in the world?… What is the solution?… and What will it take to change and get beyond all this?” needs to be part of this, as do all those who value critical thinking and free speech! In a world of Trump-Fascist America, it is worth remembering the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller, “First, they came for the communists….,” take heed, and fight to reverse these bans!
Resist and repel every attempt to shut down radical discourse and debate, to wall off the campus from the larger world, and to attack those on the front lines of resistance against oppression and refusing to accept a fascist America.
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