February 10, 2025
Permalink: https://revcom.us/en/behind-vicious-whirlwind-trumps-attacks
Trump 2025 is not just another administration coming into office. This is fascism: the undisguised dictatorship of this system of capitalism-imperialism in the world’s most powerful capitalist-imperialist country—openly and aggressively oppressive and repressive—a fascism fueled by anti-scientific and Christian fundamentalist lunacy, moving to forcibly impose its racist, immigrant-persecuting, woman- and LGBT-hating MAGA madness, determined to unleash unbridled capitalist plunder and naked imperialist expansionism, prepared to violently crush any opposition or resistance.
Bob Avakian, the revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, is right, and has been right for a long while: this… is… fascism. And day after day, as part of implementing this fascism, Donald Trump unleashes five or six or more new attacks. Attacks on whole groups of people; attacks on basic legal rights and the rule of law; attacks on other countries and other peoples; attacks on forces and institutions within the ruling structures of society that he sees as obstacles or enemies. Attack, attack, attack.
In the face of this, many decent people feel overwhelmed and powerless. That feeling is actually part of the purpose of these attacks.
But if we are going to have any real chance of stopping this madness, we DO have to know what Trump/MAGA fascism is doing, and why. So let’s look at two of the main kinds of attacks of just the past week.
Vicious Attacks on Whole Sections of People
The Trump/MAGA fascists have launched vicious attacks on the fundamental rights of whole groups of people, beginning with immigrants and trans people.
The Trump/MAGA regime has begun sending immigrants who are accused of entering the U.S. illegally to a harsh and remote detention center at Guantanamo military base on Cuban soil.1 They plan to send as many as 30,000 people, who will be living in tents! Not only will this isolate them from family and community, but it makes it much more likely that if and when they are allowed to make their asylum claim in immigration court—as is their legal right—they won’t even have an attorney to argue their case. Trump has also begun to make deals with the presidents of El Salvador and Guatemala to send immigrants to prisons there. Trump has even said he is considering an offer from El Salvador’s fascist president Bukele to send prisoners, including U.S. citizens, to El Salvador’s prisons, where they too will be out of the reach of lawyers and the U.S. legal system, not to mention family and other ties. And horrific as the prisons of the U.S. are, the ones in El Salvador are a whole lower circle of hell.
Trump has also ordered that the federal government (including Medicaid and other insurers) cease all payments, grants, etc. for transition medical care and related services for trans people under the age of 19 related to their transition—and he is working to ban transition care entirely! He has refused to legally recognize their very existence and has begun a push to drive them out of the military. There was an inspiring demonstration of trans people, as well as others, in New York during the week against this outrage. But shamefully, many of these institutions have gone along with this terrible injustice! Now, it is righteous that immigrants and, in particular, the sons and daughters of immigrants, along with trans people and some medical personnel, have begun to stand up; but it is not righteous that not nearly enough other people have joined them!
And here’s a deeper point: These attacks—and there will be more on other sections of the people as well—are not “stand-alones.” They are part of a larger plan to hammer down a fascist America and that fascist plan has to be recognized, fought, and defeated as a whole.
Totally Violating the Rule of Law
Trump/MAGA fascism has attacked the “separation of powers” which gives the courts and Congress some ability to limit the president.
The U.S. Constitution is supposed to prevent one man, or one clique, from being able to violate the laws and rule as they want. Yet, to take one outrageous example, Trump has empowered Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, to shut down whole departments of the government that Congress approved and funded. Musk has also gotten into the payment records of individuals—for example, people getting Social Security—and has tried to grab access to the payment systems of the government, a move temporarily blocked for now by a federal judge. And if any of this goes to the courts that are infested with and, in the case of the Supreme Court, totally controlled by the fascists, the chances of Trump/MAGA fascism winning are very good.
Meanwhile, some who still hold out hope that the Democrats will ride to the rescue chanted “Where is Congress”? during a recent rally while revcom Carl Dix spoke. True, they were implicitly expressing criticism of, or at least disappointment with, Congress—but they need to recognize a) that Congress, and specifically the Democrats, are no longer “interested” in warning of Trump’s fascism, as some of them did for a brief period before the election, b) they are trying instead to channel people into petty pressuring of the fascist Congresspeople who either support Trump or have been totally intimidated by him, and c) the Democrats are more interested in preserving this capitalist-imperialist system, no matter who is running it, than opposing it in any way that could weaken it, not to mention putting it in danger of being uprooted.
Because of that, the Democrats in Congress are not interested in—in fact, they are utterly opposed to—anything close to the kind of struggle it will take to actually PREVENT this fascism from winning out… struggle which could cause increasing numbers of people to actually question this system that gave rise to this fascism and to turn against that system. So, to answer the question, “Where is Congress?” they are busy trying to drug you into thinking that some variation of “working within the rules of the system” will somehow be able to “get things back to normal”—as if these fascists are going to just accept any defeat as legitimate and as if the “normal” of environmental destruction, the threat of world war, and all kinds of the other murderous oppression and exploitation built into the “normal” of this system is anything we should want to get back to.
How Could Fascism Actually Be Defeated?
Yes, this can seem overwhelming. And that is the idea—to overwhelm the decent people, to make us feel as if we have no way to fight. But if we let Trump/MAGA fascism pick off one group after another, while doing nothing, they will win. If we let them rip away one legal right after another without fighting tooth and nail against them, they will win.
At the same time, there is a deep weakness concealed within all the frenzy. MAGA must move swiftly and make a show of great power to throw people on the defensive, so that they can cement these changes in how the society will be governed. It is not as if most people support this vicious lunacy. In fact, there are tens of millions of decent people who oppose Trump, who are sickened by what is going on, and who have the potential power—if they would dare to act—to make the country ungovernable.
Bob Avakian, in his social media message @BobAvakianOfficial REVOLUTION #111, “We revcoms are serious—and all decent people need to be serious—about actually defeating this Trump/MAGA fascism,” went into what this could look like:
So, what does defeating this fascism actually mean—how can this actually happen? It means building and mobilizing a truly broad and determined mass movement—uniting all who can be united, in rapidly and continually growing numbers, all over the country—aiming to become so massive and powerful that it creates a profound political crisis, such that Trump cannot govern the country and implement his fascist program.
There are literally tens of millions of people who viscerally hate what is represented by this Trump/MAGA fascism. Think of the massive outpouring of outrage that was called forth by the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd in 2020, and the way that, at the time, it changed the whole political situation in the country. This shows the potential for people to be rapidly mobilized, on an even greater scale, in sustained, determined opposition to Trump/MAGA fascism, with the goal of actually defeating this fascism, as I have spoken to this here.
We do not have to be whipped around and confused by the whirlwind of attacks. We can, and frankly we must, learn to approach these attacks scientifically, to understand why they are happening, and how best to resist them. We can dig deeper into where this fascism comes from… into how it relates to, and has grown out of, the whole economic and political system of this country… and what kind of world humanity could have, and how we can fight for it. That means going to the work of Bob Avakian, here, here, and here to learn more, as you fight.
And if we do all that, we can very possibly defeat it. There is still time—and that time must be seized. We owe it to humanity and to the future.
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FOOTNOTES:
- The U.S. base at Guantanamo has its roots in the period of U.S. colonial rule over Cuba. When the Cuban people rose up in 1895 against the Spanish colonialists who ruled the island at the time, the U.S. used an explosion on one of its warships in the harbor of Havana (which was most likely an accident) as justification to wage war on Spain, invaded Cuba, and went on to directly rule the island for four years. When the U.S. troops finally left, Congress passed a law called the Platt Amendment that gave the U.S. control over nearly every aspect of Cuban economic and political life—and allowed the U.S. to set up a military base at Guantanamo. For more on this history, see “American Crime Case #59: The U.S. Invasion, Occupation, Domination, and Plunder of Cuba: 1898 to 1959.” [back]