REVOLUTION 79

Kamala Harris at the Democratic Party Convention: A Disgusting and Revealing Spectacle

Kamala Harris at the Democratic Party Convention: A Disgusting and Revealing Spectacle.

This is Bob Avakian—REVOLUTION—number Seventy-Nine.

The whole experience of the Democratic Party convention, ending with the speech by Kamala Harris, could be summed up by repeating the heading of my message number Seventy-One: Supporting a mass murderer and mass incarcerator running for President?! Who could be so desperate and so deluded?

This convention was a living demonstration of exactly that: people desperate and deluded enough to wildly embrace a mass murderer and mass incarcerator. For, as I have shown in previous messages, including number Seventy-One, that is exactly what Kamala Harris is.

In her speech on the last night of the convention, Harris ignored, denied and distorted the actual history of this country, which was marked at the beginning by slavery and genocide against the indigenous people, and which has repeatedly unleashed massive destructive violence on people in every part of the world, in order to enforce the vicious exploitation on which America’s dominant position in the world rests. This is the ugly reality beneath the pompous claims of politicians like Harris that America is “the greatest country in the world.”

Harris spoke often of “freedom” but, while trumpeting her role as a prosecutor, and playing on her “identity” as a woman of color, a freedom that she did not speak about is freedom from being terrorized, brutalized and outright murdered by the police, a very real horror which is the collective experience of especially Black, Latino and Native America people. (To repeat this terrible fact once again: Since 1960, the police have killed more Black people than the thousands who were lynched during the whole time of open “Jim Crow” segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror after the Civil War.)

Harris also did not talk about the fact that the U.S. has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world—especially with the mass incarceration of Black people and Latinos—

something which Harris, as a prosecutor, worked to increase.

But Harris definitely did repeat the worn-out cliche about America as a land of opportunity, where nothing is impossible for people who work hard; and she prattled on about the virtues of the model “middle class.” Not only is this a gross distortion—it is downright cruel. Despite her empty pledges about ending poverty, it is a fact that millions in this country remain trapped in poverty, with many effectively locked out of the formal economy. Harris’s talk about how anything is possible in this country, and everyone can become “middle class,” comes down to saying that if people are poor it is their own fault—when, in fact, it is the result of the nature and functioning of the economy and the overall system of capitalism-imperialism that rules in this country and dominates the world.

Toward the end of her speech, Harris spoke about her potential role as “Commander-in-Chief” of the imperialist military of the USA. As I have shown before, this military is a machinery of massive death and destruction, which (together with the bloody “intelligence agencies” of this country) has slaughtered millions of civilians in countries all over the world—all in the “service” of maintaining the USA as the world’s leading oppressor and plunderer of people and the environment.

This part of Harris’s speech brought to a head the disgusting current of chauvinistic American supremacy that had run through convention as a whole: As Harris bellowed her bloodthirsty threats to wield America’s might against those who would challenge it, the crowd echoed this ugliness with repeated chants of “USA! USA! USA!”—and it became increasingly difficult to distinguish this crowd from a typical Nazi rally, American style.

Harris did dedicate a significant part of her speech to warning about the danger posed by Trump. But, here again, much of this was an extension of the ugly American chauvinism of her speech overall—with accusations that Trump would betray and undermine America’s dominant position in the world.

At the same time, the threat posed by Trump was portrayed by Harris as if it were caused just by the mad, egotistical character of Trump himself (aided by a few “allies” of his). This presents things as if all Americans could be united, despite their differences, if it were not for a few “bad actors” like Trump. It leads people away from the actual, clear-headed and determined struggle that needs to be waged against the fascism in this country—which in fact is a mass phenomenon, of which Trump is both an expression and a leading force. (In my previous message, number Seventy-Eight, I spoke to why the Democrats avoid calling out the actual fascist nature of Trump and the Republicans.)

One particular theme that ran through this convention, and was spoken to by Harris in her speech, is the importance of the right to abortion. This is clearly intended to be a major rallying cry of the Democrats in the upcoming election. But the truth is that the Democrats have repeatedly undermined and betrayed the fight for abortion rights: making clear, time and again, that they are willing to “compromise”—that is, sell-out—the right to abortion in order to maintain the stability of the rule of this system of capitalism-imperialism.

For decades, the Democrats retreated morally and politically on the question of abortion, allowing the anti-abortion forces to have the political and moral initiative. The Democrats have themselves run some pretty prominent so-called “pro-life” (anti-abortion) candidates; and leading Democrats, like the Clintons, have promoted the stand that abortion should be safe, legal—and rare—a completely wrong position, a terrible concession to the anti-abortionists’ argument that there is something morally wrong with abortion!

In 2022, after it was leaked that the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v. Wade, ripping away abortion as a constitutional right, did the Democrats call on and mobilize people to take to the streets in massive protests, declaring that there would be “no business as usual” unless Roe were retained and abortion remained a basic right throughout the country?

No! Instead, they attacked—and used so-called “progressive” forces tied to them, to attack—RiseUp4Abortion Rights!, which we revcoms initiated, together with others determined to fight for abortion rights, mobilizing tens of thousands in this fight, in the face of these unprincipled attacks.

Now, the Democrats are once again insisting that voting for them is the only means of restoring the right to abortion. But the record of the Democrats makes clear that they are not willing to carry through a real fight for this right, especially if such a fight would threaten the stability of the rule of the capitalist-imperialist system.

Beyond that, and of even more fundamental importance, the “price” for supporting the Democrats is to become complicit in their backing of Israel in its genocidal slaughter of Palestinians, and the other monstrous crimes continually perpetrated by this system—a “price” that no decent person should be willing to pay.

Enlisting in the cause of the Democratic Party is enlisting as willing accomplices in the crusade of U.S. capitalism-imperialism to remain the world’s number one exploiter, oppressor and plunderer of people and the environment, even at the cost of risking the future, and the very existence, of humanity.

There has to be a better way—and there is: revolution, to overthrow this truly monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism, and bring into being a fundamentally different and much better system and way of life, in the interests of humanity as a whole.

For reasons I have spoken to in depth throughout these messages (beginning with numbers One through Eleven) this revolution is not only profoundly necessary; especially in this rare time we are living in, now, it is possible. It is time, and long past time, to cast away dangerous delusions about the Democrats and the system of capitalism-imperialism that they serve and work to enforce. Everyone who truly hungers for a society and world free of injustice and oppression, and who really is concerned about the future of humanity, needs to become part of the organized ranks working urgently for the revolution to do away with this monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism and bring something much better into being.