A Socialist Response to Fascist Mobilizations
The Confederate flag of slavery and racist KKK terror marches through the Capitol
Since our founding, the Communist Workers Group (CWG-USA) has advocated mass labor-centered mobilizations and building Labor, Black and Brown Self-Defense Guards to defend the workers and oppressed against fascist and white supremacist mobilizations. As an example, see our article “Fight Capitalist Reaction!”.
We do not call on the capitalist state to “ban the fascists” or censor them, which would be used primarily against the Left and the workers movement. The January 6th DC provocation and lack of labor counter-mobilization is reflective of the dearth of working class leadership and organization and the depth of the illusions in both the capitalist state and the Democratic Party as protection against social reaction.
In order to build that leadership, militant workers should form class struggle caucuses in our unions to fight to replace the sellout union misleaders who will not fight fascism. Build an independent fighting Workers/Labor Party based on a political program of Transitional Demands that mobilizes the masses in the fight for workers rule and socialism! For a new world party of revolutionary socialism!
Coup? Insurrection? Tantrum? Or Dress Rehearsal?
Small “d” democracy has been under attack since the revolution-the one in 1776 –established the Constitution in 1789 held sacrosanct today by the hypocrites, liars and representatives of the ruling class on both sides of the aisle. The Founding Fathers’ masterwork the Constitution-the first compromise with slavocracy-created and has maintained a framework for the capitalist class to ensure its own democratic right to a forum of the franchised while ensuring the Black population and non-propertied classes’ franchise was denied, limited or otherwise controlled. Herrenvolk democracy-prepared the way for the ruling class to impose ‘socialism for the rich’ and perpetual subordination for the masses.
This capitalist dictatorship, posing in the cloak of constitutional democracy, was progressive in the struggle against the vestiges of the feudalism and later the slavocracy but as capitalism suffers its principal internal contradiction, the ever present law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall eats into the economic foundation, stagnating production and emiserating the masses. Social conflict is now the rule not the exception. But not all street manifestations are against the oligarchs and for social justice and workers power. Some, as we have seen since Charlottesville through the storming of the Capitol, are right wing reactions of the declining middle class and lumpenized sectors. They see their piece of the pie declining, and there is no lack of talking heads to tell them that the Black, Brown and immigrant workers are to blame. When you stoke that schlock for decades what do you expect?
Hitler had his Beer Hall Putsch, Nixon had his gang that couldn’t shoot straight and Trump has his warmed over Budweiser barstool bois. These clowns dress up like wannabe warriors with no real plan and unleash a riot on the capitol after chanting themselves blue in the face for years that Blue Lives Matter and now in the aftermath find themselves on the other side of the baton. Could an auto-coup have been successful? Not under the tactical leadership displayed by this mob. Can they become a fighting force of reaction? Undoubtedly so.
Will the status quo accept the Lindsay Grahams and Mitch McConnell’s back into the fold and unite against street violence? No doubt. Will the police presence be felt in the communities where the white chauvinists, racists, and fascists live or will it be felt in the black and brown communities and wherever the movements of the workers and oppressed stand up? Obviously every dime put into the armed forces of the state 99 cents goes to crushing the social justice and workers movements and DHS’s anti-immigrant war drive. We saw this under Clinton, Obama and Trump and no doubt we will see this under Biden as well because the capitalist crisis continues on its terminal death march and the masses will continue to be called into the streets by desperation and need.
Racist Trump mobs’ message to the Black Community!
This Trump-inspired assault was part putsch but more lynch mob, if just theatrics so far as lynching Pelosi or McConnell. The nooses were meant as a message to the Black community nationwide. The message is, “don’t organize, don’t vote, and don’t come on job sites they believe should be free of Black bodies. On the docks and construction sites and even at NASCAR where racists try to intimidate Black workers, nooses are the preferred white power symbol. The media is (in this case) the message. Thank you Marshall Macluhan! We have little doubt they would have carried out their fascist mob terror if they had been able to get to Pelosi and especially the DSA-supported “Squad” of Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush.
Trump’s object was to prevent certification of the Electoral College vote that is to replace him. He believes his own propaganda and thinks out loud that he is preparing his 2024 run. His mob was ready to hang Pence, who had flipped and said he could not do as asked and reject the Electoral College tally. So this was a failure for Trump for the present. But not a failure for those already running for 2024, i.e. Hawley, Cruz et. al. and not for Confederate flagbearers, nazi shirts (Camp Auschwitz and “6MWE”) and Proud Boys are preparing for actions on the 17th and 20th. The minimal resistance they met from such confused police as did not get the message has the fascists calling for police blood. The liberals, naturally make this the fact of the week. The Republicans leave a bad odor in the masses’ noses and this causes talk of a split in that party, reflecting a split in capitalist class opinion between those who wish to stick with the Constitutional superstructural facade and those who want a stealth fascism.
The variety of police response ranged from trading punches to taking selfies with the mob and one shooting. Arrests did not begin until after the acrimony. Meanwhile Don Jr. is free and bourgeois are NOT calling to disbar let alone arrest Giuliani. McConnell says the Senate can take up impeachment on the 20th, i.e. after Trump leaves town! Leaving the executive branch in shambles for the next two weeks as cabinet members abandon town lest the sewage sticks to them.
Workers’ champions know the history of slave rebellions and strikes and even labor picnics suppressed by police gunfire, i.e. murders! Intersectionals who would have you believe they speak for the Black Lives Matter movement, say what Biden says: that if BLM had approached the Capitol steps en masse, many would have been shot. Of course this is true but also a deflection from the truth that the police were complicit in an insurrectionary act by enemies of the working class! History shows how police bullets are not reserved for Black bodies alone.
What’s Next?
Talk about Trump resigning, 25th Amendment and impeachment is not likely to result in his removal. All the GOP 2024 hopefuls know they cannot go the route of Romney, Sasse or even Graham, but have to genuflect to chieftain Trump right down to the last. In response, Liberals are championing censorship of social media, ironically in much the same way as Trump (in practice.) We would be glad to see a workers militia stomp Trumpers and even the POS himself, but we do not support media suppression at all. Socialists have always pointed to the contradiction that the freedom of the press only applies to those who own the press. Today that is Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Murdoch; the media are theirs and they manipulate what you see, they set the editorial policy and they hire ideologically compliant journalists to present the variety of viewpoints of the differing wings of the capitalist class. Workers need their own press and journalists free from the pressures of profit seeking stockholders. We oppose the media owners’ censorship. To defeat censorship the workers movement demands the expropriation of the big media platforms to be put under workers self management and control. BOSSES OUT! NEWS FOR THE PEOPLE NOT FOR PROFIT!
The Lincoln Project conservatives and all the rest of the rats jumping ship acknowledge the fact that the right wing echo circle in the media has been spreading fake news and in the name of “No Spin Zones”, been spinning a web of deceit that has deadened the critical ability of many viewers to discern reality from fiction. Today we live in a multiverse of beliefs and alternate realities. Long the dream of the DeVos types, critical thinking skills denied youth for decades has set the stage for conspiracy theory to replace critical analysis of multiple sources and digging for facts.
We now live in a world where class analysis is discarded and replaced with constantly shifting conspiracy theories which rely on the premise that the Mainstream Media is in on the Soros-Gates-Biden pedophile ring tied to Big Pharma’s plans to vaccinate the world with toxins and microchips, made possible by the fear inducing Plandemic fabricated to turn you into sheeple. The ICUs are not overflowing, the refrigerated morgue trucks are not really filled with the dead, and COVID is no more deadly than the annual flu. So we are told.
Capitalism in Decay Produces Fascism
This is a prelude of things to come. The fascists and white supremacists have not been cowed, but are continuing to organize. The social reaction will increase as Biden’s Democratic Party administration will be unable to meet the pandemic and economic crises except through austerity and repression, driving the working class further down and the despairing petty-bourgeois layers into the arms of the fascists.
The fascists are still not well-organized. There is no mass national fascist party and their organizations remain splintered and lack leadership. This will take a while to overcome but is no cause for workers to be complacent like Trumka. Trumka contrasted the workers campaigning for the two Dems in Georgia to the mob at and in the Capitol. We need to keep the spotlight on his first allegiance to the Democrats and how he is their apologist through thick and thin. He said, just once and months ago, that the Union would not accept a coup. Context matters! He was only speaking in reference to Trump’s claim that the election would be rigged! He sees no fascist danger so far as we can tell from his statements for attribution.
The “Vote Biden” socialists told you that electing Democrats was the way to fight the fascists and what we got was DC on January 6th and more fascist/white supremacist mobilizations coming up. Liberal lawmaker legalism brought us to this brink. Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys got a get out of jail free card; he just had to get out of town. Unless mass struggle against the capitalist system breaks out creating a beacon of revolutionary hope, the petty bourgeoisie, lumpens and backward sections of the class will be driven further into the despair of social reaction and fascism.
The Democratic Party, a capitalist party, plays the same role as social democracy in other countries. Like social democracy, the Democrats pave the way for fascist reaction as they will not and cannot offer solutions to capitalist crises. What is urgently needed is a class struggle, fighting Workers/Labor Party, a combat party of the workers and oppressed, to serve as the “tribune of the people” and fight for socialist revolution.
If large sections of the capitalist ruling class are not on board with a costly fascist regime at this time, they certainly would be if they felt their system of exploitation threatened by workers’ struggle. And workers are going to have to fight if they do not want to be ground down even further. It is a survival question for our class, as is already evident in the miles-long lines for food!
Censorship, like repression, is no good for workers’ needs!
Twitter and Facebook have started the new censorship. What is the workers’ interest in how such platforms self censor? Media, like other major capitalist enterprises should be under workers control. First order of business we must identify our class enemy, which is the capitalist class. We understand they pull together and apart at the same time as “individual Capitals.” Those who support censorship today can tomorrow back fascists at home, like the regimes past and present they back in the dependent countries, colonies and semi-colonies. The idea that censorship will stop fascism should be laughable, but so should General Milley’s reassurances to Pelosi. Like the social-democrats abroad, liberals learn nothing the plutocrats don’t prescribe. Allendes always trust Pinochets. For workers’ survival, history shows us that class political independence is required. It is the ruling of our experience.
