ABOUT​
INTRODUCTION​

Fascism is as much a call to action as it is a form of governance. 

The fascist plague that visited pestilence and death on Europe in the early 1900's was deemed "unfathomable" in America. That was before a vector in the incarnation of the Sun King Trump and the Alt-Right emerged. 

From the streets of Charlottesville, to the borders with Mexico, and on NFL football fields on Sunday's, a din of racist, xenophobic, nativist and authoritarian calls were sounded. Gathered under one tent, this litany of grievance, hate, and revenge melded into a movement many identified as fascism. The alarm once sounded produced an anti-fascist resistance movement.   

Since 2004, Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) has argued that an American fascist class exists, and poses an immediate threat to humanity. He's defined its animating ideological framework as "Christian Fascism." Avakian's theory holds that the Fountainhead (America's imperialist class) is prepared to jettison the veil of bourgeois democracy in favor of a 'Christian Fascist' state to maintain their rule.  

As the voice of New Black Nationalism, we believes the emergence of a fascist state in the Cathedral (America) cannot be discounted. Given our analysis that American Empire is in decline and headed toward an existential crisis, it must be considered as a real possibility. 

Having said that, Chairman Avakian's theory begs some fundamental questions. What is the ruling classes' necessity to impose a fascist system in the near-term? What form would American state-sponsored fascism take? What ideological framework would American fascism adopt, and why? These issues warrant further examination.   

After reviewing Bob Avakian's writings, NewBlackNationalism.com has found the Chairman's analysis wanting. It contains gaps that need to be filled, and assertions that require upgrades. Our analysis also departs from Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Communist Party in the following areas; 

1) Alt-Black.com believes that should a fascist state surface in the Cathedral (America), it would be clothed in the garments of White Nationalism, rather than the 'Christian Fascist' project articulated by Bob Avakian.  

2) As early as March 2017, (three months after Trump's inauguration)  Bob Avakian predicted that a fascist state could be imposed on the Cathedral in "four months." Alt-Black.com believes Avakian erred based on an incorrect assessment of the current strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. imperialist ruling class. The sourcing and rationale of Avakian's error concerns us. 

3) Bob Avakian states that "Liberal bourgeois democracy, such as that represented by Clinton and Obama, and fascism, such as that represented by the Trump/Pence regime, are different forms of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. They represent the rule of different sections of this same class.​"  

'The Heresy' at Alt-Black.com disagrees that a dedicated "fascist wing" currently exist across the spectrum of the ruling imperialist class--which is to say fascist stronghold exist within the globalist corporations, the military leadership, the courts, and the political class. On the other hand a real social base among millions of white leaning nationalists, nativists and evangelicals does exist.   

While this article sets forth New Black Nationalists' differences with Bob Avakian and the RCP's analysis, we applaud their theoretical work, and continuous efforts to build opposition to the Trump/Pence regime. We hope this article generates more discussion about the nature of fascism, and how to assess the pre-revolutionary period we are entering.  

Fascism is no longer a precise term. On the left, the tendency to reflexively associate fascism with Nazis or assign a host of iniquities to fascism without offering a coherent analysis is all too common. For that reason, we have referenced the Euro-fascist experience of the 1920's and 1930's as a baseline for comparative analysis. 

Much has changed over the past 100 years. It could well be the case that for New Black Nationalists, radicals and revolutionaries, our  conceptualization of fascism will have to be retrofitted.        


Bob Avakian, the RCP, and the "Refuse Fascism" Movement

Since 2004, RCP Chairman Bob Avakian has been the most racial left exponent warning that the Cathedral is on the precipice of passing over to a fascist imperialist state. Avakian's analysis has gained support among left activists. Refuse Fascism, the broad-based movement the RCP helped jump start, is also harvesting the support of a growing audience.   

In December 2016, Refuse Fascism's (RF) launch at Cooper Union in New York City was streamed to 200,000 viewers. Participants at the launch and subsequent Refuse Fascism events have included Jeremy Scahill - founding editor of The Intercept website, Antifa anarchists, Imam Ayub Abdul Baki of the Islamic Cultural Center of NY, feminist activist Gloria Steinem and Social Democrat Cornell West, who joined Avakian in forums on "Revolution and Religion."  West has also characterized the Sun King's administration as neo-fascist. 

Refuse Fascism's profile mirrors the RCP's proclivities for engaging in provocative actions and street-tough political work. RF's call on November 4, 2017, for non-stop, non-violent demonstrations to drive the Trump/Pence regime from office, sparked a bizarre national media dust-up that found Newsweek magazine defending Refuse Fascism against the reactionary right. 

Newsweek condemned far-right "news" outlets Info Wars and Gateway Pundit for releasing stories stating Antifa and the RCP were starting a 'civil war,,' and that 'Antifa-bred supersoldiers were going to behead white people in towns squares across the country."  Said Newsweek, "Far Right conspiracies had morphed the event into a fantasy world of unrealistic expectations." 

The New York Times and several corporate media outlets that covered Refuse Fascism's demonstrations underscored the legitimacy of the debate over American Fascism, and the opposition to it as well.  


Some Historical Thoughts on European Fascism ​

To contemplate American Fascism is to acknowledge its historical antecedents etched in the blood and soil of Mussolini's Italy (1920-1945), Franco's Spain (1936-1973), and Hitler's Germany (1933-1945). Avakian's analysis draws primarily on the German experience. However, the differences between conditions that spawned Euro-fascism and todays' situation in the Cathedral are significant. 

France, Spain and Germany's path to achieving national unification and acquiring the instruments of nation-state development were diminished by occupying foreign powers as late as the mid-1800's. By the early 1900's they lagged behind the U.K., France and Portugal in the imperial scramble to colonize Third World countries.  

Italy, Germany, and Spain entered the 1900's with weak national parliamentary systems. Their limited experience with constitutional democracy and crafting effective checks on monarchy and the military continued up to the breakout of World War l.  

Europe's opening to fascism was also facilitated by the absence of the acquired culture and traditions that become embedded over time in enduring institutions (legislative, judicial, executive and a 'free press'). These institutions are the essential props of liberal democratic systems. 

Confronted in the post-World War l era with unstable economies and political chaos, Spain, Germany, and Italy's weak centralized states were simply overwhelmed and collapsed. Germany was systematically dismembered by the Treaty of Versailles after losing World War 1. Spain's Civil War was a proxy European civil war that foreshadowed World War 2, and lead to Franco taking power. Mussolini's 1920 March on Rome to seize power followed a period of intense political chaos.        

All three countries fended off near socialist and communist revolutions prior to fascism's triumph. Fascism was the antidote--the reactionary response to the revolutionary upsurges in the 20's and 30's to crush the communist "Third International" red wave. It did so under the guise of "defending the fatherland." 

By comparison, America's historical democratic project has little in common with the conditions that led to fascism in Italy, Spain and Germany. The Cathedral's economic crisis during the Great Depression and the radical upsurges of the sixties did not generate fascist movements.     

Since the 1700's, the Cathedral has "stage managed" elections and transferred power to succeeding administrations. Conceived in corruption, and dedicated to white aristocratic rule, political parties and legislatures for hire are the hallmark of American democracy. Marketed and sold as exercising the people's will, along with an 'independent' press and freedom of assembly, these institutions still enjoy widespread support. 

Saying that these institutions enjoy widespread support, should not be construed to mean that people are satisfied. Quite the opposite, the populist wave raging against globalism, banks, establishment politicians and "special interest" will find more pronounced expression at the ballot box. If the 2016 election taught us anything, it's that the populist wave within the Republican Party bestowed legitimacy on nativism, white nationalism, and racism. On the left, the populist energy was rooted in Bernie Sanders' (Comrade Kerensky) Social Democratic youth revolution.  

As fraudulent and flawed as America's bourgeois democracy is, imposing a fascist system portends complex difficulties. Avakian gives short shrift to these realities. His claim that the Cathedral could go fascist in 2017, when Trump first took office and the ruling imperialists weren't confronted with a crisis, was precipitous and dismissive of cultural and political imperatives. 

As stated earlier, we don't rule out the Fountainhead crossing over to state-sponsored fascism. We believe that Fascism could be imposed in the midst of an acute crisis where the ruling class has no other option to maintain power. We can also foresee fascism becoming the "go to" option should a revolutionary struggle to overthrow the ruling class fail or the outbreak of 'race war' occurs.   

We simply don't believe that a transition from bourgeois democracy to fascism is as easy as Bob Avakian suggest. 


​Bob Avakian's Framing of the Fascist Threat 

In Bob Avakian's March 2017 article Some Points on the Strategic Orientation For the Next Period, the RCP Chairman sets forth his thinking on the Cathedral's path to fascism which is quoted here at length;    

"Liberal bourgeois democracy, such as that represented by Clinton and 
Obama, and fascism, such as that represented by the Trump/Pence regime, are different forms of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, that is," of the capitalist-imperialist class, exercising its rule and enforcing its system. They represent the rule of different sections of this same class.​"

"Fascism is the exercise of blatant dictatorship by the bourgeois (capitalist-imperialist) class, ruling through reliance on open terror and violence, trampling on what are supposed to be civil and legal rights, wielding the power of the state, and mobilizing organized groups of fanatical thugs, to commit atrocities against masses of people, particularly groups of people identified as “enemies,” “undesirables,” or “dangers to society.”

"While the fascist Trump/Pence regime has its hands on the reins of state power, it has not yet fully and firmly consolidated its power and successfully implemented its fascist program." 

"Stopping this fascist regime, through massive political resistance, before it consolidates power its necessary and still viable at this point. There is an urgency to act and act to make real advances in ousting this regime in the immediate four months and it would be immeasurably harder to unseat the regime as time passes and fascism consolidates."  

New Black Nationalists have no quarrel with Avakian's formulation that America's imperialist powers can exercise their rule through a bourgeois democratic dictatorship or a fascist dictatorship. Nor do we take issue with his description of the elements that characterize a fascist state. 

However, as stated earlier we disagree that a dedicated "fascist wing" currently exist within the ruling imperialist class. Avakian's also insist that the Trump/Pence wing "has its hands on the reigns of state power," but hasn't consolidated its program. As the Chairman neither defined nor identified the functioning elements of this fascist class headquarters, We found his formulation somewhat capricious and arbitrary.


Trampling on Civil and Legal Rights - Meeting the Fascist Threshold?

Since we agree with Chairman Avakian that fascism represents a qualitative change in the bourgeoisie's class rule by eliminating civil rights, legal rights and persecuting "enemies of the state," the scale and breath of the Trump's administration's attacks are at issue.             

Without question, the Sun King's attacks on people of color, immigrants and women signal a real escalation in scaling back civil and legal rights. But do they rise to the level of fascism or place us on its threshold? In that light, we reviewed the following issues.    

Trump's (Muslim) Travel Ban in January 2017, eliminating immigrant and non-immigrant visas for seven predominantly Muslim countries was upheld in June 2018, by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision. The Executive Order wasn't a new initiative. It built on the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System Act passed in 2002, under the Bush administration. Barak (Deporter-in-Chief) Obama continued using a modified version of the program until 2011, before suspending it.  

In April 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered enforcement of the  "Zero Tolerance Policy." All persons entering the U.S. "illegally" at the border were to be detained and deported. Because children could not be held for more than twenty days, they were separated from their families and held in detention centers. The photos of children severed from their loved ones and being locked in cages sparked international outrage. In June 2018, Trump was forced to sign an execute order reversing the policy. Nevertheless, internment camps of immigrant asylum seekers continue to operate.     

Trump's attack on DACA remain "on pause" after it was rescinded in June  2017. Plans to phase out DACA after the extension expired in March 2018, have been put on hold by several courts. Meanwhile, Homeland Security has revoked Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for 59,000 Haitians. They must leave the country in 2019. 

Since taking office the Sun King has targeted women's reproductive rights by trying to reduce Title X federal funding to Planned Parenthood by as much as 40 percent. Having promised conservative evangelicals that he'd appoint Supreme Court judges to overturn Rowe V. Wade, Trump's  appointment of the "Georgetown Prep" prowler, Brett Kavanagh unleashed a national firestorm of protests over his confirmation. 

In July 2017, President Trump announced that transgender people would be prohibited from serving in the military. The day after, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Joseph Dunford said "There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President's direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance." A year later, nothing has changed.  

One of Trump's more sinister plots against The Darker Nation and Latinx was establishing the Presidential Commission on Elections Integrity in April 2018. Created to examine phantom voter fraud that resulted in him losing the popular vote by three million tallies, the commission sought to lay the groundwork for massive voter nullification of people of color. The Commission suddenly folded in January 2018, having accomplished little more than bullying some states to turn over voter files. 

The FBI's Counter Intelligence Program against Black nationalists, radicals, and revolutionaries embodied in the new designation of "Black Identity Extremists," began under the Obama administration. The FBI illegally conducted surveillance against Black Lives Matter and other Black activists under the program designed to designate Black Nationalists and activists as terrorists.        

Based on the scope and magnitude of these attacks, "The Heresy" reached the following conclusions about the qualitative level of attacks to restrict civil and legal rights.  

1) Most of the attacks leveled by the Trump administration have originated as Executive Orders coming out of the Oval Office or his cabinet (Homeland Security and the Justice Department). 

As such, the Republican Party has acquiesced to executive authority and not exerted its control over both houses of Congress to promulgate more draconian legislation. Acquiescence may not be the same as active support, but can lead to the same result if not challenged over time. 

2) Some of the Sun King's attacks have stalled out in the courts or been  defeated by massive opposition of the people and the political establishment. 

3) The consistent undermining and internal sabotaging of Trump's authoritarian edicts and foreign policy initiatives by individuals and opposition cells in his own administration, is a telling indicator that a fascist headquarters is not running the executive branch of the Tower (U.S. government). 

As opposed to Chairman Avakian's theory of "intersectional bourgeois warfare" between the Trump/Pence wing and the Obama/Clinton wing, it may be just as accurate to note that there is a significant guerilla rearguard action being waged by the Republican bureaucratic establishment against Trump Inc. 
 
NewBlackNationalism.com believes the Sun King's state-sponsored attacks outlined above represent a serious escalation of targeted attacks. On the whole, however, they haven't risen to the level of a qualitative leap to a fascist state or a serious transition to a fascist state.  

Looking back at the 60's, Presidents Johnson and Nixon authorized full scale counter intelligence war operations to discredit Martin Luther King, and the Civil Rights leadership. At the same time FBI Director Hoover's COINTELPRO program launched a wave of armed assaults on Black Panther Party headquarters nationwide to assassinate, frame and imprison its members. 

Nixon unleased the FBI and the CIA to carry out domestic spying operations against news reporters, entertainers, politicians, the Democratic Party and its 1972 presidential candidates that the White House directed covert operations to sabotage. 

At that time Bob Avakian was leading the Revolutionary Union (RU), which was in its party forming stage to create the Revolutionary Communist Party.  As the Watergate scandal unfolded, President Nixon's impeachment became a growing demand. 

The Revolutionary Union joined most left groups claiming that Nixon was dragging the country toward fascism. The RU asserted there was an intersectional ruling class battle for supremacy between the Nelson Rockefeller wing of the bourgeoisie (liberal democratic) and the  Nixon fascist wing. 

Then as now, the RU stated, "The kicking out of  Richard Nixon has  become a mass demand of the American people. The RU supports this demand and believes it is very important now to mobilize mass struggle in support of it, around the slogan THROW THE BUM OUT! ORGANIZE TO FIGHT!"  If that sounds familiar, it should. It's the same line as Refuse Fascism.   

The Sixties were not generally been characterized as a fascist period, but assaults on radical, revolutionary and dissenting voices was as significant, if not more draconian that what we've witnessed the past few years. 

Is There a Dedicated Fascist Headquarters in the Ruling Class? ​

As "The Heresy" indicated earlier, we disagree that a dedicated "Fascist Wing/Headquarters" currently exist within the ruling imperialist class.

We define a dedicated "Fascist Wing/Headquarters" as follows;

"A fascist headquarters can be described as the existence of a significant (impactful) section of capitalist/imperialists leaders, capable of exerting influence over domestic and foreign policy governance. This imperialist class cabal works in concert with elements in the Tower's (U.S. government) state, political, administrative, and military apparatus to severely restrict or eliminate basic democratic rights and freedoms. The coercive machinery of the state is mobilized to neutralize or eradicate designated enemies of the state. Uber-Nationalist, racist, and religious ideologies are deployed in defense of the state, and heavy emphasis is placed on an agenda of grievance, victimhood and revenge." 

Our method of evaluating the existence of "fascist wing/headquarters" operating within the ranks of the Fountainhead focused on the policies and the actions dominating the Cathedral's foreign and domestic agenda.   

Foreign Policy

Concerning international relations, Trump's "America' First" manta is not so much a foreign policy doctrine, as it is an adjunct to his  "economic nationalist agenda." The Sun King's foreign policy is a random checklist of quixotic foreign policy impulses anchored by a few constants. Those constants include shaking down NATO countries to contribute more to their own defense budgets, appeasement to Russian revanchist designs, and unqualified support for Israel and Saudi Arabia. 

NewBlackNationalism.com's analytics posits that American Empire under Trump is a scaled-down iteration of the establishment Neo-con's foreign policy created in 1997, by the Project for a New American Century (The Kristol, Kagan, Cheney, Wolfowitz group). Their doctrine advocated a forward leaning foreign policy agenda to maintain the U.S. as a peerless unipolar global power. 

Trump raged against America's involvement in stupid foreign wars, but today  14,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, 5,000 troops in Iraq, and 2000 troops in Syria. To no one's surprise, Trump is not calling the shots over the military brass or the wars. His foreign policy ego-trip is 'kicking it' with Kim Jung Un.     

Trump's ignorance of the geo-strategic dimension of managing American Empire, his quick temper, and grandiose illusions about being the world's most powerful man, poses a severe challenge to the Fountainhead. 

While U.S. Armed Forces generals refused to carry out Trump's orders to assassinate Syrian President Assad, and White House staff members secretly remove signing documents from his desk to avoid a foreign policy disaster, attempting to contain Trump from damaging American Empire's global architecture is not a sustainable enterprise.  

What is most disconcerting to the Fountainhead, is the potential breach in American Empire's grand strategy. The Cathedral's global three dimensional chess board dictates that preventing Russia and China from forming a united front opposed to U.S. global interests must be avoided at all cost. Moreover, America's strategic alliance with Europe and NATO is foundational to America's dominance over Global North.  

The Sun King has done exactly the opposite. He's appeased Putin in the face of the 2016 Russian cyberattacks against the Cathedral. His trade war with China, and continuous assaults on NATO have created real difficulties with the prevailing Neo-con grand strategy.     

Domestic Policy

As it concerns America's economy, historically Euro-fascist governments forged special relationships with the dominate national economic powers. The capitalists class of Spain, Italy and Germany were given a free run or extraordinary concessions in exchange for clamping down on the working class.  

The Nazi's, forged a partnership with leading German business interests, who supported Hitler's massive armaments buildup in exchange for advantageous contracts, subsidies, and suppressing trade unions. Mussolini's administration brought unions under state ownership, while authorizing two-thirds of Italy's 22 designated critical economic sectors to form strategic cartels. Franco's Spain discarded economic liberalism and directly intervened to allow the industrial sector to set prices and wages. 

Comparatively speaking, Trump and the GOP have plundered the U.S. Treasury for the billionaires tax cut, and massive deregulation. Corporations are running amok ignoring environmental and worker safety standards. But these economic policies have been the stock and trade of the Republican Party since the "Reagan Revolution." Trump's renegotiation of trade deals and engaging in trade wars to stop other nations from 'sticking it to America' is  the base rhetoric of victimization to appeal to white nativist impulses.  

Trump's "economic nationalist" agenda falls short of a centrally directed plan or agreement between the Tower (U.S. government) and fascist-leaning corporate titans representing Global North." Any economic deal struck with the Trump/Pence regime and Avakian's fascists wing, would presumably have to reconfigure the economy in a way that grants a decisive advantage to the white working class to consolidate it as a fascist social base. 

If there is one overriding difference between the Euro-fascist joint political and economic arrangements and the Cathedral today, it is that the Fountainhead totally dominates the governance structure. They own and control the political elites through campaign contributions. They're lobbyists swarm over Washington, D.C. like locusts writing federal legislation. To them, Trump is a pathetic two-bit pimp. The weak capitalist classes in Europe were partners if not subordinates to the political and military class.    



BOB AVAKIAN'S CONSTRUCT OF CHRISTIAN FASCISM

In 1998, Bob Avakian penned an article raising the specter of a right-wing conspiracy to impeach President Bill Clinton, for his sexual peccadillos with an intern. This right-wing conspiracy, said Avakian, was led by the Christian Right. The Chairman went on to observe that;   

"Through a highly orchestrated crusade for traditional values and a professed moral righteousness represented by old-time religion.... the Christian Right will put into effect an aggressively reactionary and repressive political and social agenda."

Avakian's warning in 1998, that the Christian Right would be a GOP stalking horse for reactionary causes came 20 years after the 'Moral Majority'  and the 'Christian Coalition' movements were already major players in the Republican Party. Their "Family Values" platform sought to legalize school prayer, overturn Roe V. Wade, oppose the Equal Rights Amendment and oppose state recognition of homosexual acts.  

Over the next 15 years the Christian Right's reactionary platform got smashed. They lost the national argument on virtually every single issue. 

Roe V. Wade has held the line, although its opponents continue to chip away at the edges. Same-sex intercourse was legalized nationally in 2003. Same sex marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015. Adoption of children by same-sex married couples was legalized nationwide in 2015. Twenty-two states plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation. Since September 20, 2011, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals have been able to serve openly in the military.

The broad rejection of the Christian Right agenda did not dissuade Bob Avakian. To the contrary, the Chairman doubled down; promoting the Christian Right to "Christian Fascist" status in 2004, and elevating their mission to "establishing an American Theocracy"--a sort of Saudi Arabia on the Potomac. 

In the aftermath of 911, the Christian Right experienced a brief resurgence with its call for a holy crusade against the Muslim world, led by George "The Confessor" Bush. In 2017, Chairman Avakian expanded his theory on Christian Fascism.  

"Christian fascists" he says, "are a powerful, leading component of the fascist cohorts that make up the Trump/Pence regime. These biblical literalists are steeped in anti-scientific ignorance, hatred for LGBTQ people, and a determination to deny women any control over their own bodies and reproductive functions."

"These fascists are deadly serious about imposing a theocracy—a society in which the Bible taken literally and forcefully becomes the basis for the law, culture, and morality of all society. Donald Trump has appointed Christian fascists to leading influential positions in major institutions and organizations. They are rapidly shaping law and society as they move towards the theocracy they seek. They pose a mortal peril to all society."

Avakian's dismissive attitude about the ass kicking Christian Conservatives suffered the last 20 years, raises questions why he continues to bestow so much influence on Christian fundamentalists. 

Evangelical conservatives are key players in the Republican Party. But that's been true the last four decades. They make up 35% of the GOP voter base, and in some states casts more the 45% of the votes in Republican primaries. Their base influence within the GOP has been sustained not because their ranks are growing, but because young people, women, fiscal conservatives, moderates, and libertarian Republicans are fleeing the party.

The porn star chasing Sun King was not the Christian Rights' candidate  of choice  in the 2016 GOP primaries, Ted Cruz was. Trump simply cut a deal by giving 'the chosen ones" a Federalist Society hand-picked list of Supreme Court candidates he'd appoint in exchange for their votes. Packing a conservative Supreme Court is the Christian Right's last refuge to roll back women's reproductive rights. 

Indeed, Brett Kavanagh's confirmation is the culmination of a forty year effort by the Republican right-wing to win a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. But to read the RCPs newspaper, you'd think a fascist  Supreme Court occurred under Trump's watch. 

The RCP's October 5, 2018 issue of Revolution newspaper states that "If he [Kavanagh] is approved for the Supreme Court he would lock in a pro-fascist majority in a branch of government which can decisively affect all parts of the government, as well as the rights of the people to speak out and dissent."    

Again, Trump or any other Republican president would have nominated a justice committed to overturn Roe V. Wade, uphold 'Citizens United, and restrict voting rights. If Bob Avakian wants to argue that Brett Kavanagh will be a qualitatively different justice than the conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, he's free to do so. That argument carries little purchase for us.  

This is the dictatorship of the ruling imperialist class status quo ante. So yes, Chairman Avakian, some of these Christian troglodytes will get appointments in the Sun King's court. To the victors go the spoils. That's Politics 101, since time immemorial.  

Worse still, the Chairman seems not to know that the Christian Right is a shrinking breed. As ReligionNews.com reported in 2017,

 "American evangelicals — once seemingly immune to the decline experienced by their Catholic and mainline Protestant neighbors — are losing numbers and losing them quickly." The percentage of self-identifying Christian evangelicals has dropped from 23% to 17% between 2006 to 2016. 

In NewBlackNationalism.com's view this declining trajectory of the Christian Right will continue. The Cathedral is inexorably following the European nation-state models that continues to evolve into highly secularized states. There will be no 'American Exceptionalism' in this regard.  

FINAL THOUGHTS ON FASCISM, TRUMP, AND THE RCP'S ANALYSIS 

This article has argued that Alt-Black.com cannot identify the existence of an American 'fascist class' or fascist state based on the historical models of fascist countries or the writings of Bob Avakian, Chairman of the RCP. 

"The Heresy" could not identify an explicit and decisive shift in domestic or foreign policy that could be characterized as a consensus fascist platform guiding the Tower's (U.S. government) policies and actions. Specifically, Chairman Avakian's claim that 'Christian Fascism' is the guiding ideology of an emerging fascist state is highly questionable at best.  

Thus a valid question arises;  If there is no fascist state, no fascist class, no consensus fascist domestic or foreign policy, and no guiding fascist ideology,  then how do we explain what's transpiring in the Cathedral today? Clearly these aren't normal times. 

We continue to believe the Cathedral is entering a pre-revolutionary period in which its global architecture and domestic institutions are deteriorating. We believe that both the laws of imperialism and maintaining empire are driving the Cathedral to a rendezvous with a 'crisis moment.' In general the Fountainhead, is ratcheting up a full spectrum of digital surveillance and active population control measures, while stoking racial and sectarian discord. 

Trump's election is symbolic of the decline of American Empire. As Autocrat- in-Chief he is probing the boundaries of the republic to amass personal power concentrated in the executive branch of the Tower. His embrace of various reactionary and racist bullhorns are just a means to his ends. 

That being said, Trump has consolidated a solid white/nativist/nationalist social base. That is a major development. He has transformed the GOP from a party of white conservatives into a quasi-white nationalist party. That is another change. Both these developments have the potential to become permanent features of the Cathedral's political DNA.

Finally, Trump has altered the Cathedral's cultural calculus. We have entered a period of intensifying race-based cultural warfare, provoked by Trump and the Alt-Right. This race-based cultural warfare is the most prominent feature of the pre-revolutionary period.  


TRUMP:  THE SUN KING AUTOCRACY

Irrespective of how one chooses to characterize the intensified period of political, racial, and gender polarization gripping the Cathedral, the Sun King Trump is the animating force at the center of the whirlwind. How one analyses his ideological outlook, political agenda, motives and relationship to the imperialist ruling class is critical to assessing the issue of fascism and the pre-revolutionary period we're entering.        

Since Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015, we have characterized him as a ignorant, unstable, racist, demagogue. We never viewed him as a fascist, but a classic autocrat. To some that may be a distinction without a difference. And perhaps they are right. 

Trump is a Social Darwinist devoid of any ideological compass. His political aspiration was to become the leader of a mob of disaffected whites--the more low-information they are, the better. Trump's Republican primary victory validated that tapping anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Latinx, anti-Black, and anti-women sentiments was the secret sauce to coalesce Odin's Legions under the big tent of white nationalism. 

The Sun King's autocratic ambitions did not hinge on him winning the Oval Office. Two weeks before election day with Trump trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls, on October 22, 2016, Trump and Jared Kushner were contacting LionTree founder and chief executive Aryeh Bourkoff about the prospect of launching a television network. The Sun King wanted to launch a television network that would be further to the right of FOXNEWS. In other words, WNNN (White Nationalist Network News).

When asked about the rumors of the television network, Trump said, ‘I’m not going to give up trying to be president, but just in case it doesn’t happen, I want to have a voice for me and my people ... we will not lose the voice we’ve built," as reported in the Huffington Post. It's clear that once Trump won the GOP primary, he was planning on engineering a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, with or without the Oval Office. 

Trump's election as President revealed a profound miscalculation of the potency of latent white nationalism. It also revealed the profound hatred whites across the political spectrum, harbored for the GOP establishment, the Tower (government bureaucracy) and the corporate media. 

Trump, if few others did, understood the potential of the white nationalist backlash. He welcomed every white nationalist stream that emerged. The Christian Right, whose origins were in the segregationist movement to create all white religious schools to avoid integrated public schools, was one of many streams of white nationalism. And this is where Avakian's insistence that American Fascism is a Christian Fascist project perplexes us. 


WHITE NATIONALISM​

Trump is no more a Christian evangelical than he is a liberal or a Klan member, as was his father. Nor is he a subscriber to any of the divergent schools of thought of the Alt-Right. He is their useful idiot. They are his conduit to power. Trump has no ideological or historical grasp of any of these movements. His mindset is power, money and the bottom line. White nationalism is his default bottom line. As we have pointed out in the past

The backbone of the Trump-Alt-White axis are the 57 million nationalist leaning whites who voted for the Tribal Leader in 2016. They were middle-class whites, suburban whites, low-income whites, Appalachian Mountain whites, rural and small town whites, Wall Street whites, educated suburban white women, blue collar-Joe Budweiser whites and religious whites. There were even five million whites who voted for Obama before going tribal. Odin's Legions come from every region, class, religion, ethnic and income group. They were mostly Republican, but included many Democrats and Independents

The RCP, like other left groups seem content to slap labels on adversaries, designate them as inherently evil, and gin up their supporters to destroy the target. This same tendency applies to white nationalism generically speaking. As recent events have proven, it's not difficult to mobilize hundreds, if not thousands to show up at a Klan/Nazi rally. But that hardly exhaust the role of leadership.   

Serious analysis of white nationalist surge is not at a premium. This is surprising, because Trump's consolidation of an unapologetic white nationalists social base is the most significant political development we've observed since 2015.    

Within the White Nationalists movement Alt-Black.com has identified the Alt-Right ethno-nationalist trend as its most significant element. New Black Nationalists have consistently warned about underestimating the Alt Right; 

The optics portray a motley crew of fanatics and kooks, but obscures the reality that the Alt-Right is the fastest growing political movement in the country. The Alt-Right is the galvanizing force of political activists driving the economic nationalist and white nationalist agenda. This is a movement of theorists, organizers, writers, protesters, thought leaders, publicists, politicians, fund raisers and radio personalities. The internet is the connective tissue that binds their movement. 

In addition, we pointed out in our article "Whitopia" that those constituting the most serious elements of the Alt-Right, see the Nazis and Klan as harmful to their cause. Their strategy calls for patient long-term political work focused on changing the culture and educating whites about the advantages of creating a white homeland in the Cathedral. 

Where did the white ethno-nationalist acquire their strategy?  From their own lips, they openly admit they studied and learned from the left. Indeed, they have fashioned  their own version of implementing Lenin's signature work, 'What Is To Be Done?' But how would Bob Avakian know that? Search if you will on the RCP's website, but you'll not find a serious analytical article on the Alt-Right. But there are at least a hundred on the Klan, the Nazis and the Christian Fascist.   

CONCLUSION  

At the end of the day the Sun King is a base opportunist, self-serving racist autocrat. He will say anything, coddle any reactionary movement, and promote any racist ideology in furtherance of his dictatorial ambitions. He has consistently probed the boundaries of authoritarian rule and will continue to do so until he is stopped. 

His ambition which has no limits, caused him to him to enter into discussions with Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater to contract for a private army to fight the  war in Afghanistan. According to "The Intercept," in December 2017, Prince and Oliver North also pitched then CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Trump to create a private spy agency that would only report to them directly. The Sun King wanted to circumvent the Deep State intelligence apparatus.     

Donald Trump is as much a danger to humanity, as he is to the Fountainhead's imperial rule over American Empire. Now that Wall Street has its millionaires tax cut and deregulation that allows them to plunder at will. Now that the Republican Party and the reactionary right-wing conservatives have consolidated their Supreme Court justices, the Sun King's days may be numbered. His instability as CEO of American Empire is too high risk. 

Since taking office the Fountainhead has engaged in a containment strategy to surround Trump with government bureaucrats, a Republican Senate and 'responsible' establishment figures. They must forestall Trump from taking actions that strategically threaten the foundation of American Empire. Thus far they've succeeded in preventing the Sun King from disrupting the equilibrium of the U.S.-led Global North. But containment is not sustainable solution. The stakes are too high.  

As a backup strategy, they have given the green light to a Soft Coup to remove Trump from the Oval Office. It's called the Mueller investigation. Having concluded that the Special Counsel has the goods on the Sun King's criminal enterprise, which may include damning evidence of money laundering and criminal conspiracy with Russian nationals.

The confluence of events are heading toward a collision, where the irresistible force meets the immovable object. Mueller's investigation is an existential threat to Trump. The Sun King is positioning himself to shut down the investigation at any time. That would almost certainly lead to a "constitutional crisis." 

Trump came to Washington to blow up the establishment, and that's exactly what he intends to do. We close with an interesting definition of autocracy, courtesy of Wikipedia, to wit; 

An autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d'état or mass insurrection.)










Is America Going Fascist? - On Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Communist Party's Analysis

by W. Bernell Brooks, III
HomeVesey RepublicThe SidebarWhat We BelieveVesey's Republic of Letters Haiti: The Barbecue Revolution's Path to Power

In attacking people who are genuinely opposed not only to fascism but to the capitalist-imperialist system as a whole, one of the main lines of their assault is (to use a very relevant analogy) viciously going after the Weimar Republic (the bourgeois-democratic republic in Germany after World War 1, which was replaced and forcibly abolished when Hitler and the Nazis came to power in the 1930s). We have to understand the meaning and significance of this, and the purpose behind it.

Going after the equivalent of the Weimar Republic in the U.S. today, the Democratic Party and the “Liberals,” and so on—attacking them as nothing less than traitors—is part of an overall program aimed at silencing and outright suppressing, including through the force of the state, any group or section of society, even within the ruling class, that would pose an obstacle to the implementation of the program that the Christian Fascists, and forces in the same general camp with them, are very seriously seeking to impose on the U.S. (and indeed throughout the world). There is, and for some time there has been, a very definite, conscious and concerted effort by the forces in that general fascist camp to systematically attack not just communists, or anarchists and other radicals, but liberals, mainstream ruling class liberal politicians—attacking them as having been nothing less than traitors, from the time of the cold war to the “war on terror.”
Bob Avakian RCP Chairman & Cornel West
RCP's Definition of Fascism​
Fascism is the exercise of blatant dictatorship by the bourgeois (capitalist-imperialist) class, ruling through reliance on open terror and violence, trampling on what are supposed to be civil and legal rights, wielding the power of the state, and mobilizing organized groups of fanatical thugs, to commit atrocities against masses of people, particularly groups of people identified as “enemies,” “undesirables,” or “dangers to society.”
Excerpts: The Fascists an the Destruction of the Weimar Republic by Bob Avakian
About the Revolutionary Communist Party​
The RCP​ is the only multi-racial communist organization that surged out of the radical 1960's, that remains in tact and continues to advocate the overthrow of the capitalists / imperialist class. Controversial Maoists since their founding in 1974, they have a long history of doing political work among the people of the Darker Nation in factories, housing projects, on college campuses and among its intellectuals. Over the decades, the RCP has accrued some receipts in Black communities.  

Among the RCP's members at the party's founding were former Black Panthers, SNCC organizers, members of DRUM (The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement) and anti-war Vietnam Veterans and other Black liberation movements of the times. 

Led by Chairman Bob Avakian, the RCP has amassed a substantial of corpus of theoretical works and analyses since the 1970's. In this instance, 'The Heresy' at Alt-Black.com examines the RCP's analysis on the issue of fascism. 
New Black Nationalist - Reissue 
Originally published in March 2019


December 11, 2020 - We are re-issuing this article initially released in the Spring of 2019. Our understanding of fascism and Trump's efforts to institute authoritarian rule has expanded since we drafted the article. But we have not made any alterations to the original article other than updating the name of our New Black Nationalist network which was then the Alternative Black Nationalist.    
​                     -------------------------

The RCP never responded to our article. However, we  suspected the logic of Avakian's arguments and the RCP's actions over the past years would lead to precisely what happened in August 2020:  Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Communist Party endorsed Joe Biden for President.

Avakian explained his decision by saying
“At this critical hour, every appropriate means of non-violent action must be utilized to remove this regime from power,” Avakian wrote. “And if, in spite of mass protest demanding the removal of the Trump/Pence regime, this regime remains in power when it is time for voting, then — without placing fundamental reliance on this — using all appropriate means to work for the removal of this regime must include voting against Trump (assuming the election is actually held). “To be clear," he added, "this means not a 'protest vote' for some candidate who has no chance of winning, but actually voting for the Democratic Party candidate, Biden, in order to effectively vote against Trump.”

New Black Nationalists did write this article to lambast the RCP. We respect their work, but we felt their analysis was incorrect in this instance. As longstanding forces in the trenches of the revolutionary camp, we look forward to working with the RCP in the future. In the interest of full disclosure, the author of this article was a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade. 

In struggle,
Selwyn Trench - Stateless Maroon of the
New Black Nationalist Movement 


Bob Avakian and the RCP Endorse Joe Biden for President