More Stuff NOT to Say if We Are Serious About Stopping Fascist Consolidation

& Two Things to Say

So I’ve done 24 of these “stuff not to say” entries so far, and it turns out I’m not done. Here below are six more.

Yes, I’ll get to some of what we should be saying.

First, however, more take-downs of things NOT to say.

25. “I can’t do anything, I’m just an individual.” There’s a kernel of truth in this statement. Unless you are some kind of superhero or deity, which I doubt you are, you cannot personally defeat fascism on your own. Sorry! It is going to take collective and indeed mass action on a grand and sustained scale to do that. So… stop being “just an individual” and find an anti-fascist group to join and work with. If your circumstances don’t allow you to come out in the streets and public squares or go to meetings with others, you can perhaps give some financial support and otherwise back anti-fascist groups through phone-banking, online commentary, fundraising, writing opinion pieces, and more.

Donate to the militantly anti-fascist Revcoms here.

Donate to Refuse Fascism here.

#26. “Don’t believe Trump’s claims that he can turn the country into a dictatorship because he doesn’t actually have the power to do so. He’s actually a very weak president, as is seen in him having to go around Congress with executive orders.” This is the basic stupid argument of a recent long Ezra Klein commentary at The New York Times. As the historian Rick Perlstein rightly responded on Facebook: “This [Klein essay] is horseshit. [Trump] is weak? Only until an entire federal agency that he believes has crossed him by upholding the law stop getting paychecks….They have seized the power of the federal purse. How could he possibly have more power?”

“The whole edifice of the federal bureaucracy and the executive branch more broadly is being structurally transformed before our eyes with cascading effects in all directions,” writes the political scientist Joe Lowndes.

“Trump’s (real) agenda is unpopular and may become wildly so when the economic pain hits,” writes Tom Strong. “He's old, fixated on a few ideas, like tariffs, that could easily be his undoing. And there's real tension between his authoritarian goals and his (or at least his accomplices') desire to demolish the federal bureaucracy. “But he's got the Supreme Court, he’s making an end-run around Congress, and his party is helping him aggregate power to the executive like no one before. That's incredibly dangerous… Moreover, the opposition is far weaker, such as it is right now. At the end of the day, the only strength that matters is relative.”

“Literally everything that could go in front of the Supreme Court is a jump ball at best,” adds Aaron Agonisti. “His lawyer argued presidents could have political rivals killed! The SC going along the argument (supposedly with reservations) pretty much nullifies any practical limits that office had.”

“While I think it’s always good to be reminded that those in power are not gods,,” the literature professor Benjamin Balthasar adds, “the segment of the progressive punditry issuing proclamations that there is nothing to see here…are far too smug and comfortable.”

Here are the opening lines of a front page news story in today’s Times:

“The new president has left virtually no corner of the nation’s capital untouched in a wide-ranging effort to tear down the federal government and refashion it to his liking…President Trump in just two weeks back in office has moved with astonishing speed and boundless ambition to overturn the existing political, economic, cultural and international order in an even more far-reaching way than many of his supporters or critics had imagined possible…Mr. Trump has thrown the nation’s capital into turmoil by purging enemies at home, attacking allies abroad, shuttering one agency while targeting others, handing the tools of government to an un-elected billionaire, ignoring multiple laws, trying to rewrite the Constitution and even flirting with staying in power beyond his two-term limit.”

It is very early in Trump’s second and far worse fascist administration. None of the early challenges to his insane orders and actions have yet made it anywhere near the Trump-crafted Christian Fascist Supreme Court —- the God-like court that last July granted (in the decision to which Mr. Agonisti refers above) Trump full legal immunity from prosecution for any crimes he commits in connection with his “official duties.”

27. “1,446 More Days!” A liberal who posted this today is referring to how many more days are left in Trump’s second four-year term, to the official end of Trump’s official constitutional presence in the White House. So, wait, no effort to remove the tangerine-tinted tyrant and his band of lethal Republi-fascist lunatics from power before January 20, 2029? Seriously? We are just going to let the sick Trump-Vance-Alito-Johnson-Thune-Heritage Foundation-Turning Point-FOX News government of Amerikaner Fatherland Fascism stand? For real?! Why on Earth would we do that?! The terrible, potentially terminal consequences of letting these vicious Republi-Nazi maniacs hold power for 1,446 more days (four years minus 14 days) will extend far beyond the time frame of the election cycle. And, by the way, it is by no means clear that Mein Trumpf will agree to leave after two terms, even if an election is held and he technically loses that election in 2028. Justy say’n.

28. “A former governor of Puerto Rico made a hateful comment about the LGTB community, the whole island went on strike, all government employees walked out, nobody was working demanding his resignation for days. He had no other choice than to resign, but people in this country don't have those guts.”

Someone named Ines on “social” media actually wrote those eight terrible words I just boldfaced. Talk about self-fulfilling pessimism! Many thousands of have already come out in significant protests of Trump’s fascist agenda. The “shock and awe” is already wearing off. Tomorrow there will be anti-fascist rallies in all fifty of the nation’s state capitals!

Here was my online response to Ines: “Goddamnit thousands have alreasdy come out against the Trumpist-fascist Blitzkrieg! Join them/us and do everything you can to encourage and cultivate the ‘guts’ we needs okay...? Let's make it tens of thousands then hundreds of thousands and then millions and then tens of millions, alright? What do you say?”

Ines is correct about what happened in Puerto Rico in 2019. We can do the same thing on a national scale. We can and must make this country ungovernable under the sick fascist Trump-Vance-Thune-Johnson-Roberts-Hegseth-Hannity regime!

29. “Clearly the state is not a fascist one at this time — if it were, I’d disappear after writing this message, all left political activity would have to go underground, and the like.” A Marxian academic I know wrote this online yesterday. I think it’s a foolish comment. I’ve heard some version of this sentiment again and again from left-identified intellectuals and from a leading Chicago left activist. Sorry to repeat myself here from an earlier PSR but my response is the same as in #21 a few days ago: imagine that you had a noticeable tumor starting to form on your neck and growing larger by the day. Imagine further some clown telling you not to be concerned about the growth on your neck because “you can still speak and swallow. You’ll know you have throat cancer,” they tell you, “when you can’t do those things anymore!” Trump and Trumpism have been exhibiting classic signs of fascist cancer for more than eight years and now the cancer has expanded like never before. Without an urgent radical intervention it will fully consolidate, with disastrous consequences at home and abroad. Imagine refusing to intervene against the choking of someone by a police officer until you had proof that the victim was no longer breathing.

+30. “The people united, will never be divided!” I heard this chant again and again during a recent impressive march against Trump’s deportation campaign in downtown Chicago. I like the spirit but this incantation is kind of dumb in at least two ways. First, it skirts with tautology by saying that united people will not be divided people — basically that united people are united people. Second, it assumes stasis, asserting that currently united people could not get torn by future divisions. Sorry, but solidarity has to be actively sustained over time by movement organizers and participants. (“The people, united, will never be defeated!” is not much better since the decent people, however united they may be, will ultimately be defeated by their ruling class[es] if they don’t seize state power and make a revolution to abolish class rule and other and related oppression structures.) I know I probably sound too nit-picky here to some readers but I actually think our word choices here matter in terms of guiding our vision and goals.

Good Stuff

Want to read some words I heartily endorse? Okay, two examples:

(a) This from the brilliant activist Vicki Edwards online today:

“Take to the streets now, we can't afford to wait for fascism to consolidate power. If you can't find a rally in your area, gather a few friends, make signs and go to a busy street corner. Be an inspiration for all those who hate what is happening. There needs to be resistance everywhere, thousands of people growing into millions, making this country ungovernable.”

Bullseye! 100%!

(b) Listen to the words from Revcom activist Noche Diaz’s remarkable speech prior to his arrest in Chicago last Saturday: https://www.facebook.com/reel/549976988072054

“Tell them no. Tell them no! Tell them no!!! In the name of humanity, we refuse a fascist America! Into the streets! Day after day! Do not stop! Make this country ungovernable!”