REVOLUTION #121

To those engaging in unprincipled attacks: Is your goal defeating fascism, or just slandering those working for this?

For those “movement progressives,” assorted “anarchists” and self-identified “leftists” who have been engaging in unprincipled opportunist sectarianism, this fundamental question is now sharply posed: What are your actual goals and priorities—uniting all who can be united in the crucial struggle to defeat Trump/MAGA fascism with the aim of bringing something far better into being...or opposing and slandering others who are working tirelessly to do so?

This is Bob Avakian—REVOLUTION—number 121.

In my last message (number 120) I discussed the opportunist attacks on RefuseFascism.org—undermining and sabotaging its crucial efforts to unite all who can be united in opposition to Trump/MAGA fascism—and how these attacks revolve to a large degree around painting me as some kind of “monster” that must be isolated and “disavowed.” As part of this, there is the ridiculous and outrageous claim that I am a “racist.” While it is useless, and a waste of time, to try to answer every slanderous lie against Refuse Fascism, the revcoms and myself—lies which continually spew forth like filth from a backed-up toilet—this accusation that I am a “racist” cannot go unanswered.

Here again, it is helpful to refer to reality: specifically the reality that, for more than 60 years—beginning long before most of those making this accusation were even born—I have actively, passionately, devoted myself to the fight against racist oppression. For anyone actually interested in the truth about this, this is gone into extensively at revcom.us, including in the article Bob Avakian For The Liberation Of Black People And The Emancipation Of All Humanity, which is also, as a video, the subject of a special episode of the YouTube RNL (Revolution, Nothing Less!) Show. (This can be accessed via the Playlist of the RNL YouTube Show, and through revcom.us.)

But, never mind, the accusation is being spread: “Bob Avakian is a racist!”—so that obviously must be the case, despite all the undeniable evidence to the contrary.

Similarly, various opportunists accuse me of being an “authoritarian,” who insists that only what I say matters, and that I must be followed blindly. Never mind the fact that my life’s work, including the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored, clearly demonstrates that this is another crude lie.

Still, the accusation that I am an tyrannical “authoritarian” must be true, because people are spreading this rumor, and after all rumors are more important than actual evidence about reality!

These disgusting accusations are also part of an ugly history, including recent history. In 2022, Sunsara Taylor and others associated with the revcoms united with people coming from other political perspectives to initiate RiseUp4AbortionRights!, which led tens of thousands in determined, bold and creative mobilization and actions, calling on people even more broadly to join in the fight to defeat the impending move to reverse the right to abortion. The Democratic Party, and those aligned with it, did nothing positive to join and strengthen this crucial fight for the right to abortion—in fact, they essentially discouraged this—and instead they, media aligned with them, and a gaggle of petty “movement” opportunists focused their efforts on lies and slander aimed at undermining RiseUp4Abortion Rights! and the mass mobilization it was leading—once again, largely by attacking Sunsara Taylor and the revcoms, and myself in particular.

This garbage has even found its way into the Wikipedia entry on myself: slanders and distortions inserted there by unprincipled people, “vandalizing” this entry—which has been allowed by Wikipedia, while not allowing corrections, backed up by evidence, of these gross distortions—even though this constitutes a violation of Wikipedia’s supposed “principles.” It is completely wrong for this to be allowed, and effectively encouraged, by the “gatekeepers” of Wikipedia—and it is yet another thing when this is “contributed to” by some who claim to be about some kind of “progressive” change (or “leftist” politics). But such is the nature and role of certain unprincipled opportunists masquerading as people seeking a better world!

This does a great deal of harm. But the bigger reality is that this would not do nearly as much harm if it were not for the whole putrid culture which I have spoken to and the fact that far too many people, who really should know and do better, either embrace this putrid culture or are intimidated by it and by those who aggressively promote and traffic in it.

It also has to be said that this kind of culture, and the violation of basic principles associated with it, provides a favorable atmosphere, fertile soil, and significant openings for fascists, in and out of government, and others who want to disrupt and destroy movements actually working for positive change—as a long history in this country (and others) has tragically demonstrated.

Why this is such a significant negative phenomenon now—with all the very real harm it does, especially when so much of such profound importance is at stake—that is mainly a subject for another time. But it is clearly the case that this cannot be separated from the parasitism, and the associated extreme individualism, that has characterized this country in particular in a very pronounced way for decades now: the “benefits” of feasting off the vicious exploitation of masses of people around the world, especially in the poorer countries of the world, including more than 150 million children, without whose exploitation the “great American economy” would not be nearly so prosperous, even as the accumulation of wealth in this country is heavily lopsided in favor of the super-rich.

At the same time, there is the factor that, even among those who claim that they are opposed to capitalism, there is adherence to “TINA”: the fundamentally erroneous but widespread notion that “There Is No Alternative” to this system that is in fact capitalism-imperialism, and the often accompanying insistence that those of us who recognize and act on the reality that there is a radically, emancipating alternative, must therefore be deluded dogmatists and a dangerous “cult”!Here again, the reality is that those who insist on this distorted viewpoint cannot imagine a radically different and far better world because they are not proceeding with a scientific approach to objective reality, and instead are trapped in and proceeding on the basis of the superficial and subjective. And this ties in with the narrow sense of self-interest which is the “bottom line” in how too many approach things.

In this regard, there is the following insight, voiced by someone with whom another revcom recently had an interesting conversation: People just stay on the surface of things, and then stop when things get hard. There is a broad sentiment of anti-capitalism, but this is often accompanied by the idea that you can’t really do anything about it—because, if you thought otherwise, you’d have to do something about it.

Yet, in opposition to all that, masses of decent people are being confronted with the urgent need to “do something about it”—even as the “it” is not (yet) the whole system of capitalism-imperialism but the fascist Trump regime that is now in the ruling position within this system.

It is very positive that so many people, literally millions of “ordinary people,” have continued to come forth in protest and resistance against the terrible juggernaut of Trump/MAGA fascism.

BUT...

But so long as the putrid culture I have spoken to continues to set the terms of things—or even to have a significant influence, including among people seeking to oppose Trump/MAGA fascism—this putrid culture could well end up destroying the best efforts of sincere and serious people who have mobilized time and again to oppose this fascism and who need to be mobilized in an even more powerful way, in non-violent but determined and sustained action, really uniting all who can be united and overcoming all divide and conquer schemes, in order to put an end to the escalating juggernaut and heightening nightmare of the Trump fascist regime.

As for myself, and others who are sincerely and seriously working toward this crucial objective, I will end this message by repeating what I emphasized in my message number 118:

Going forward, it is crucially important and necessary for all those who say they are opposed to this Trump/MAGA fascism to engage in principled relations with each other, working tirelessly to unite all who can and must be united in order to defeat this fascism, and approaching differences in that context and with that orientation.