REVOLUTION 78
More stale, rotten garbage from the Obamas
More stale, rotten garbage from the Obamas.
This is Bob Avakian—REVOLUTION—number Seventy-Eight.
Despite the enraptured delirium of the zombified delegates at the Democratic Party convention (and some not attending the convention), the much-anticipated speeches by Michelle and Barack Obama at that convention were a warmed-over serving of fetid food for foolish thought, which was poisonous when it was first served up, years ago now, and has turned especially rancid with time and intensifying circumstances.
Both speeches involved worn-out, pretentious yet puny, populism—attempting to portray the difference between Democrats and Republicans as defined by the fact that Democrats are compassionate and “hard-workin” middle class people, as opposed to privileged and pampered rich people like Donald Trump and the Republicans. Among other things, this was a rather crude attempt to slide over the fact that the Democrats, as well as the Republicans, have the backing of very wealthy capitalists, including a number of billionaires; and, most fundamentally, even with their very real—and now very deep and bitter—differences, both Democrats and Republicans are ruling class parties of the capitalist-imperialist system.
At the same time, the Obamas, and Barack in particular, made a determined effort to downplay and distort the very real differences—deliberately leading people away from the understanding that the Republican Party, with Donald Trump at its head, is a fully fascist party: overtly and aggressively racist, woman and LGBT-hating, immigrant persecuting, environment plundering, science-denying theocrats, determined to rule society based on a fanatical fundamentalist rendering of Christianity, and to crush, as violently as necessary, any opposition to their rule, including rivals in the ruling class.
What Obama is doing with these distortions goes along with the “gimmick” of Tim Walz and Kamala Harris describing Trump, J.D. Vance and the rest as “weird”—covering over the content of this “weirdness,” downplaying the danger of what these fascists are actually all about.
Once again, we heard from Barack Obama the tired-out trash that it is important to “listen to” and try to “understand” these fascists—when experience has repeatedly shown that these fascists are perfectly happy to have you indulge them in that way, while it utterly fails to make them any less fascist.
This poisonous nonsense, and worse, is not new with Barack Obama: he has been pushing this narcotic delusion for decades—going back at least to his 2004 speech at the Democratic Party convention that year, with his insipid insistence that there are not the “red states” of America and the “blue states” of America, there is only the United States of America. That mind-deadening drivel served then to disorient people regarding the very real danger of the fascism that was already gaining strength at that time, and now it serves to disarm decent people in the face of a far more developed, determined, powerful and viciously aggressive fascism.
Why do the Democrats avoid calling out the actual fascist nature of Trump and the Republicans? Because, to acknowledge the fact that one of the two “legitimate” ruling class parties of this system is fascist can call into question the legitimacy of the system as a whole. And, as I pointed out in Message number Eleven, the Democratic Party is deathly afraid of mobilizing masses of people in the way that would be necessary to decisively defeat the fascists, because the Democrats fear that this could lead to things “getting all out of control,” threatening their whole system.
Meanwhile, as I have emphasized in message number Seventy-Five: reality is coming for the lies and illusions being spread by the likes of the Obamas and the Democrats as a whole. There is the very real danger posed by the fascists—and those hypnotized by the Obamas will be woefully unprepared to deal with this. Even more fundamentally, along with all the terrible and unnecessary suffering the system of capitalism-imperialism continually imposes on the masses of humanity, this system—with its ongoing and accelerating destruction of the environment and the serious danger of direct warfare between nuclear-armed capitalist-imperialist powers—poses a serious threat to the future, and the very existence, of humanity.
The glazed-eyed throngs at the Democratic Party convention, with their public display of popular idiocy, and all those who get taken in by the Democrats, are being set up for a rude awakening. As demonstrated by the Obamas, and other leading Democratic Party politicians, including Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the Democrats are incapable of providing a serious challenge to the fascism of Trump and the Republican Party—including the fact that even if Harris/Walz were to win the majority (not just in the popular vote but also the Electoral College count) it is almost certain that Trump and the Republicans would refuse to accept this, and things would likely be thrown into chaos and upheaval, even beyond what happened with the last presidential election (in 2020).
Even more decisively, the Democrats are obviously incapable of offering any emancipating alternative to this soul-crushing, people and environment destroying system of capitalism-imperialism.
But there is an alternative. For reasons I have gone into in previous messages (particularly numbers Eight through Eleven, and numbers Sixty-Three through Sixty-Six) this is a rare time when revolution to put an end to this whole system is possible. We, the revcoms—revolutionary communists based on the new communism I have brought forward—represent, and are working tirelessly for, this real, and emancipating, alternative to all the atrocity and horror built into and constantly perpetrated by this system of capitalism-imperialism, above all American capitalist imperialism. We are working for an actual revolution to overthrow this monstrosity of a system—right in this time we are living in now—right in this country, which is the main source of all the unnecessary suffering and madness that people here and throughout the world are subjected to.
It is time to get with this revolution—get with the Revcom Corps for the Emancipation of Humanity, and become part of the organized and determined forces seriously working for the real, revolutionary alternative. It is time to bring into being a fundamentally different, far better—truly emancipating and uplifting— system and way of relating to each other, and finally become fit caretakers of the earth.
(A final note: For anyone who wants to get more fully into why there is a wave of fascism around the world, as well as within this country, and how this is fundamentally related to the system of capitalism-imperialism, this is discussed in messages Sixty-Three through Sixty-Six, and the interviews with me on the YouTube RNL [Revolution, Nothing Less!] Show, as well as a number of other works of mine that are available at revcom.us, including “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating,” and my January, 2021 New Years Statement, A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity. There is also important analysis relating to this in other works that are available at revcom.us, in particular two articles by Raymond Lotta, Imperialist Parasitism and Class-Social Recomposition in the U.S. From the 1970s to Today: An Exploration of Trends and Changes, and The “Industrialization” of Sexual Exploitation, Imperialist Globalization, and the Descent Into Hell. With regard to the revolutionary alternative to this system of capitalism-imperialism, the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored, sets forth a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a radically different system, whose fundamental aim is the emancipation of people everywhere from every form of oppression, exploitation and degradation.)