Joy Reid v. Bob Avakian on the Two American Countries

Where and Why Liberal Anti-Fascism Stops Pathetically Short

While making dinner two nights ago  I was very struck by a rant I heard on MSNBC from the strident liberal Democratic Party talk show host and leading “woke imperialist” Joy Reid. In a six-minute talk that contained some nice riffs of bitter eloquence, Reid explained why in her view US Americans should not and cannot “come together” across partisan (Red-Blue”) lines after the re-election of the fascist pig Donald Trump.

Two Countries in One, No Resolution Without Revolution

I found Reid’s words partly consistent with the revolutionary communist leader Bob Avakian’s recent argument that the “so-called United States”  is now divided between “two countries” in one nation. The 2024 president election, Avakian wrote ten days ago, “brings out sharply that there really are ‘two countries’ within this country.” Further:

“This…is an extension of a fundamental division that has existed since the beginning of the so-called ‘United States’ of America, with its foundation in slavery and genocide—a division which has never really been resolved throughout the history of this country—not through the Civil War in the 1860s, and not through changes that were brought about through the 1960s and in the years following. As I have said before, there is a direct line from the pro-slavery Confederacy, at the time of the Civil War, to the fascism of today, with its determination to make America once again openly, aggressively white supremacist, male supremacist, and anti-LGBT people.”

By Avakian’s analysis, with which I agree, there are key differences between the current “two countries” bifurcation and that of the Civil War era.  One of those differences is that the 19^th Century version of this split (“two countries in one nation”) – the epic rift between the “free labor” North and the slave South – was resolved with the liquidation of formal Black chattel slavery during the Civil War and its aftermath (which involved the criminal restoration of racist oppression very much likes slavery under new names in the South) within the reigning US capitalist system (which developed into full-on capitalism-imperialism by the 1890s).  The current version pits fascist Americans (colored red, ironically enough) against “decent” or at least non-fascist Americans.  It is NOT resolvable on nonfascist grounds under the reigning US capitalist-imperialist system. As Avakian explains:

“This [contemporary/2024] division into ‘two countries’ can find no good resolution under this system. The election of an outright fascist, Donald Trump, as the head of this system is a powerful demonstration of this. There can be no good resolution under this system because, despite the false promises and lies of the ‘mainstream section’ of the ruling class (represented by the Democratic Party) the whole system rests on ruthless exploitation—and oppression based on race, sex and gender, the plunder of the environment and of people throughout the world, as well as the devastation of war—all this is built into the ruling system of capitalism-imperialism. One ‘country’ within this country—those who support fascism—demand and celebrate this oppression and madness. The other ‘country’ wants an end to this oppression and madness—but there can be no end to it, under this system. And so long as things are on the terms of this system—and limited within the confines of this system— the fascists will have initiative which decent people cannot have.”

“And Now Ya’ll Want Us to ‘Come Together’?”

On that note, let’s read Joy Reid’s aforementioned rant, which I transcribed from the MSNBC Website. It’s quite interesting and suggestive. After a brief introduction in which she put up a clip from a Black female psychologist telling viewers why it is legitimate to cut off family members who voted for the orange-brushed fascist, Reid said this on “why we can’t come together”:    

“The people who two weeks age were chanting ‘let’s go Brandon’ and cheering as he called Vice President Harris the trash he was going to take out. Now they’re yelling ‘why can’t we all come together?’ Really?  I seem to recall that when your guy lost the last election, you didn’t come together.  Your people stormed the Capitol, smashed in windows, and rioted….and menaced poll workers…Those who spoke out against Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the election got death threats…And now they your guy won, suddenly ya’ll want to come together? Would that before or after we get over ‘Your Body, my Choice’?

Look, clearly Brandon [Biden] wants to come together.  Here he is, kee-keeing with the guy who he was just saying was destroy the soul of America [here MSNBC put in a clip of Biden shaking hands with Trump in the White House last Wednesday]. It’s a remarkable scene. When Biden beat Donald Trump in 2020, Trump refused to attend his swearing in.  But Biden will be there at Trump’s [inauguration]..you know, I guess the whole peaceful transition of power thing only works for Republicans when the power is being peacefully transferred to them.

And its not like Donald Trump has changed. His entire campaign was centered on anything but ‘coming together,’ but rather around insults, threats, weird swaying and Hitler quotes.

So please, educate me. What would you like us to come together around? You all are the ones claiming that his lady [here MSNBC put up a picture of Kamala Harris] , the sitting Vice President of the United States, would have been a ‘DEI hire’ despite having been a duly elected prosecutor, attorney general of the largest state in the Union, a United States Senator and the VP while you claim that this guy [MSNBC puts up a picture of Trump]  is more qualified than she is because he’s a man and he played a successful real estate tycoon on a popular tv show? Seriously?

Are we meant to ‘come together’ around his running mate, whose only job prior to 18 months as a senator was working for Peter Theil but is apparently not a DEI Vice President for some reason that I cannot fathom – a guy who has not once taken back his insults against half the women in this country? We’re coming to together around sliming women as ‘childless cat ladies’ now? Really?

So the four star general [here MSNBC put up the picture of US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, a Black man] is a ‘DEI hire’ to you [and you are] scared to get on a plane with a Black pilot but [you think] this guy [here MSNBC put up the picture of Trump’s nominee for Austin’s job – the white supremacist FOX News hack Pete Hesgeth] is qualified to be Secretary of Defense because he was a National Guard captain and he co-hosts a popular weekend tv show on FOX? What makes him NOT DEI? I’ll keep noodling on it I’m sure it’ll come to me.

And Trump is hiring a bunch of these unqualified people [here MSNBC/MSDNC put up a picture of 22 Trump cabinet picks] for really important jobs in his next administration, demanding that we all affirm them as perfectly serious candidates, so that we can all, you know, ‘come together.’

It is a common feature of authoritarianism and fascism that the nation is called to ‘come together’ under the autocrat and accept that his incompetent lackeys are our betters. The idea that any random white guy or right-thinking woman with zero background is inherently superior to any Black person or woman no matter how many  degrees or qualifications they have, is a conceit of fascism and ethno-nationalism – that, no, we cannot come together around.

We cannot come together around mass deporting millions of immigrants and potentially separating families or throwing them into internment camps. 

We cannot come together around kicking women or gay or bi or transgendered people out of the military just because macho man weekend tv guy said so.

Or around the idea of banning abortion and IVF nationwide and watching more women dies from sepsis  or more teenagers giving birth to rape babies.

We can’t come together around Matt Gaetz, who is accused of trafficking a teenage girl, being the top law enforcement official in the land  and getting to see all the evidence against him, including the identities of his accusers, with the freedom to persecute them and prosecute anyone else that Donald Trump tells them to.

We cannot come together around banning accurate Black history or re-naming military bases after Confederate generals.

We cannot come together around ignoring the women who accused Trump of sexually harassing or abusing them [here MSNBC put up a picture of 25 women who have charged Trump with sexual offenses].

We cannot come together around Elon Musk, who runs an app infused with racism and misogyny, and who gamed that app to sway an election and now essentially co-owns a president alongside Vladimir Putin.

We cannot come together around the United Sates becoming the junior partner to Russia and the handmaid to letting Bibi Netanyahu and his right-wing religious fanatics destroy what’s left of the Palestinian people.

Joe Biden is perfectly free to come together with Trump and the people who literally three days ago were calling him every name in the book because he’s he president and therefore immune from prosecution by our soon-to-be autocrat under John Robert’s rules for American kings.  So he has the privilege of ‘coming together’ with the guy who quoted Hitler on his way back to the White House.

Some of us do not have the privilege to ‘come together’ around that.”  

Five Good Points

Okay, that’s the Reid rant, in full, ya’ll. Pretty good and righteous, right?

Not so fast.

I count five laudable things that any decent non- and even  anti-fascist person can agree with in Reid’s throw-down.  I also count nine big problems with her segment.

Let’s start with the decent stuff (my next subsection will get into the seriously F’d up stuff):

+1.  The brief but nonetheless useful and accurate identification of Trump and Trumpism as authoritarian and, better, fascist.  Both labels fit, as some of us have been explaining for more than eight years. (For what’s worth, Reid deserves some credit for having used “the F-word” – fascism – well before Kamala Harris belatedly decided to go public with it in describing Trump, three weeks before the 2024 election).  

+2. The calling out of the blatant hypocrisy inherent Republifascists telling Americans to “come together” under the Hitler-channeling Trump-Vance regime after a campaign in which the Republifascist party hurled one racist and sexist insult after another at the Democratic candidate and much of the populace.

+3.  The subtle call out of the pathetic Weimar-gone-Vichy Democrat Joe “Semi-fascism” Biden for “kee-keeing” (slang for “making nice and chatting with”) with the Fascist Leader Trump – a Hitlerian monster who is leading the charge for the neofascist Christian white nationalist takeover and makeover of American government and society.  It was quite clever for Reid to note Biden’s special fascism-accommodating privilege related to how  the Trump high court’s immunity ruling insulates Biden from Trump’s promised revenge prosecutions.

+4.  The counsel that decent people cannot and should not “come together” with Republifascists around: mass deportations and detentions; racist and sexist voting and hiring criteria for the executive branch; the plutocracy of the degenerate parasite and multi-billionaire fascist Elon Musk; ignoring Trump’s sexual assault victims; female-enslaving and murdering abortion bans; kicking women, gay, big, and trans people out of the military; the white nationalist erasure of Black history; the celebration of the slaveowners’ Confederacy; the promotion of dangerous, racist, sexist, and “unqualified” people to high state positions.

+5. The clever dig at the US Supreme Court’s chilling July 1, 2024 blanket immunity ruling freeing US presidents from prosecution for any and all “official acts”: “John Roberts’ rules for American kings.” Nice.

Nine Problems, Five Stops

So, that’s five points where decent and nonfascist people – folks in the better one of the “two US countries” (Avakian)  – can agree. 

But now let’s dig into nine interrelated problems with Reid’s rant, the most significant of which   reveals the deadly and harsh limits of her and her party’s frankly inadequate “resistance” to the fascist country within the not-so United States.  I rank these problems in what I consider their rising order of fundamental significance, from least to most relevant.

+1. DEI Does Not Apply. There’s obviously no mystery about why the Gaetz and Hegseth and other white male and white male-friendly Trump Cabinet nominations aren’t (attempted) “DEI hires.” White males are precisely those who DEI advocates say are overrepresented (and who are in fact overrepresented in terms of race and gender) in the US power structure.

+2.  Not Random. The claim that Trump’s Cabinet nominations reflect “the idea that any random white guy or right-thinking woman with zero background is inherently superior to any Black person or woman no matter how many  degrees or qualifications they have” is dumb. The racist and fascist Trump may or may not actually believe that, but the Trump team’s criteria here include demonstrated commitment to the Christian white-nationalist fascist project, fealty to Trump, and at least some relevant presence and history in the public sphere and/or right-wing political and policy networks. It’s obviously not true that “any random white guy or right[-wing] women” could get the nod for a Trump Cabinet post. (On a related noted, its also idiotic to say that the Republifascists think Trump is “more qualified than [Harris] is because he’s a man and he played a successful real estate tycoon on a popular tv show?” Did Reid’s mind slip back 2016 when she said that? She is aware that Trump was US president between 2017 and 2021, no?)

+3. “Junior Partner”?! Trump’s affection for the white nationalist and fascism-promoting strongman Vladimir Putin is disgusting and consistent with his fascism, but Reid’s assertion that the US Empire — still by far and away the world’s leading military power — will become a “junior partner” to Russia (far behind China as the main rival to US power in the world system) under Trump is  preposterous.

+4. All of American History. Reid fails to note that “the banning of accurate Black history” is actually the banning of the accurate teaching of all of American and US history, which cannot be remotely or properly understood without a proper understanding and factoring in of the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and anti-Black racial oppression in general.  This might seem to some like a small matter, a quibble; I disagree. Reid’s word choices reflect a narrow identitarian standpoint and should be changed to “the banning of accurate American history with racial oppression, genocide, and patriarchy included.”[1])

+5. “I’m Speaking” (for Genocide). Reid’s statement of concern about the butcher Netanyahu and concern for the Palestinians is richly duplicitous given the Reid- and MSNBC-backed Biden-Harris administration’s sickening, criminal, and ongoing “ironclad” support for Ziofascist Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing operation in Gaza. Reid’s candidate Kamala “I’m Speaking” Harris basically told anti-genocide protesters to STFU unless they wanted Trump to win and upheld Israel’s “right to defend itself” as the mass killers in Tel Aviv used US arms, funding, and protection to sadistically murder, maim, sicken, and starve Palestinian children in the tens of thousands.

+6. Ruling Class Qualifications. Reid fails to note critical aspects of what would have made one “qualified” for a Cabinet position in a Kamala Harris presidency: proof of past, present, and future dedication and service to the parasitic, destructive, racist, sexist, nativist, eco-cidal, and imperialist US capitalist system.  Reid’s bourgeois-identitarian attachment to ruling class qualifications naturally extend to the militantly capitalist-imperialist corporate-friendly mass incarcerator and nativist Kamala “Do Not Come” Harris, who built her career on the imprisonment of Californians of color and who finished her Democratic presidential nomination speech by promising to keep the US military as “the most lethal fighting force on earth” – a promise of continued massive US war crimes.

+7. Small Potatoes. There’s zero call in Reid’s sermon for any kind of real anti-fascist activism beyond not sitting down with fascism-backing relatives for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.  Surely it’s not too soon to talk about the need for mass resistance to the coming new fascist government, including the mass deportation campaign Trump is already trying to prepare.  Reid wants people to blow off their right-wing relatives this holiday season?  That’s pretty small (mashed) anti-fascist potatoes, I’d say! Let’s get serious about bringing down this horrific fascist regime atop all three branches of the US government soon….something you’ll never hear about between drug and investment commercials from MSNBC/MSDNC talking heads telling us to get ready for distant, savagely time-staggered electoral extravaganzas run by and for ruling class political elites who will never (see below) take up a serious fight against fascism.

+8.  No Criticism of Harris for Telling Us to Come Together – a Blatant Identitarian Double Standard in the Mocking of Dem Surrender.  As noted above, Joy Reid took a deserved swipe  at the old white guy Biden’s “privileged” surrender to the fascist Trump transition.  Curiously (and predictably) enough, however, Reid gives a transparently identitarian free pass to her defeated Black female candidate’s equally if not more disgusting bending of the Vichy-like knee to President Elect Adolph Trump -- a politician Harris called a FASCIST not just on Charlamange Tha God’s radio talk show (three weeks before the election) but on CNN (two weeks before the election)! Listen to Kamala “Let’s Come Together as a Nation” Harris’ concession speech after the election:

“I know folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now. I get it, but we must accept the results of this election. Earlier today, I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power. A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny. And anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. At the same time, in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God.”

What the holy fuck!! Never mind that the sick fascist ogre who beat her mocked her racial identity and family of origin and essentially called her a lazy and stupid whore as well as a communist (a supposedly terrible thing to be – I think the opposite). Never mind that Trump is an openly eco-cidal white supremacist and women-hating authoritarian spearheading a movement for the Christian white nationalist takeover and makeover of American society. Never mind that he openly pursues tyranny. Never mind that the monstrous Hitler fan “and his team” that Kamala says she wants to “help with their transition” into power atop the world’s most lethal nation have a many-sided plan to lock in white supremacist, capitalist, environmentally exterminist and arch-patriarchal rule for the foreseeable future.

+9. No Resolution without Socialist Revolution this Time.  Last but not least, my main point: Joy Reid is on solid moral ground when she says that we cannot and should not “come together” with “the fascist country” (Avakian’s language, not hers) but the cold and scientific fact is that she and her Democratic Party-affiliated corporate cable news channel cannot come close to telling us how to defeat that vile and lethal country.  And that’s because Avakian is right: you can’t defeat fascism under the terms and within the political and societal boundaries of capitalism-imperialism, an anarchic class rule profits system of ruthless exploitation that relies fundamentally on what the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA calls “the five stops”: (i) white supremacism/racial oppression, (ii)  patriarchy, (iii) nativism/immigrant-bashing, (iv) ecocide/environmental destruction, and (v) imperialism/war. 

The two US American countries of the mid- and late- 19^th and early 20^th centuries could violently “come together” to shed formal Black chattel slavery. They did bloodily overcome the division between the “free labor” capitalist North and the slave labor capitalist South through the processes of Civil War, Reconstruction, white “Redemption” (birthing the long proto-fascist Jim Crow regime) and the rise to full-on Imperialism (the Spanish American War provided a great moment for sectional reunification) and imperial power on the world stage.  But the two American countries of 2024 cannot be reconciled beyond Amerikaner fascism without going beyond capitalism-imperialism.  Full on Black chattel slavery could be gone beyond under the capitalist and then capitalist-imperialist system as the US rose to global power.  But domestic fascism cannot be overcome under US capitalism-imperialism today, in a time of declining US hegemony and continuing and rising contestation of US power on the global stage.  The  “five stops” are the seedbed of fascism and they are non-transcend-able under the de facto underlying  class dictatorship of capital in the “United States.”  

The last words go to Avakian, who posted this yesterday:

“After calling Trump a fascist, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and other leading Democrats are now busy bragging about how they are upholding ‘the peaceful transfer of power,’ are helping Trump with his ‘transition’ to power, and they hope he will succeed as President! …Once more, the Democrats themselves are driving home the crucial point I have repeatedly emphasized (for example, in my article FASCISM AND THE WHOLE SYSTEM, available at revcom.us): The Democrats, and the ‘mainstream’ section of the ruling class that they represent, cannot fight the fascists the way they need to be ‘ought—and this fight needs to be waged as part of fighting to abolish this whole system… Fascism, as represented by Donald Trump, is a white supremacist, male supremacist, anti-LGBT, immigrant-hating, aggressively environment-destroying, anti-scientific, religious fundamentalist fanaticism, determined to use the power of the government to forcibly compel obedience to its dangerous and destructive lunacy, and to viciously persecute those who oppose or resist. And, now that the election is over, here are the leading Democrats anxious to cooperate with and assist the fascist Trump!..For the Democrats, the ‘stability’ of the rule of this system of capitalism-imperialism, even in the form of fascism, is more important than actually defeating fascism.”

Damn straight.

Please report any typos or other mistakes to me in comments or via email. When required I make corrections to the Substack Website version.

Notes

1. The “anti-Critical Race Theory [CRT]” bills that have been passed in some red states also ban the accurate teaching of the racist and genocidal ethnic cleansing of America’s original indigenous inhabitants and of the role of patriarchy/gender oppression in the American past and present.