The Bob Avakian Interviews 2025, PART 1

Fascism, Capitalism, and the Way Out of the Madness

The Bob Avakian Interviews, 2025: Humanity Does Not Have to Live This Way!

QUESTIONS in Part 1: Fascism, Capitalism and the Way Out of the Madness

1. What are we facing with the Trump MAGA fascist regime, and what are the stakes of this? (00:26)

2. Why, right after the election, did you say that “this is not a time for demoralization and despair—it is a time for righteous anger and revolutionary determination”? (3:24)

3. What’s the importance of the two slogans: “In the Name of Humanity We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America” and “This Whole System Is Rotten and Illegitimate—We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System.”? (6:34)

4. If we had a time machine and we could just fast forward into the future into a revolutionary society based in the Constitution that you wrote for the New Socialist Republic in North America, how would things be different? What would it look like? What would it feel like? (15:10)

5. Why are the attacks on science so dangerous today, and why is a promotion of science such an important part of the revolution and the change that we need to bring about for emancipation? (23:00)

6. Popularly, when people talk about capitalism as the problem, they often target CEOs and see them as the essence of the problem. How does that differ from a scientific understanding of what capitalism actually is and how it actually functions? (29:00)

7. You argue that capitalism is not just greed or the accumulation of wealth. Why? And why does it matter to have a scientific understanding of capitalism? (37:13)

8. We’re being hammered with this notion that “the American people chose Trump” because he didn’t just win the Electoral College, but he won the popular vote. So what do you say to people who argue that “the American people voted for Trump” so we should just accept this? (43:04)

9. What do you say to people who argue that there aren’t really splits among the rulers, that they’re “just all the same, and all no good”? (51:20)

10. What would it look like to bring forward tens of millions of people in massive opposition and resistance on such a level that we create the kind of profound political crisis where Trump literally cannot govern the country and implement his fascist program? (55:36)

11. You described the protests of the ’60s where people didn’t give up because “they’re not listening.” Can you speak to the notion that the point of protest is to “get the rulers to listen?” (1:01:29)

12. Often, at the high tide of an upsurge against oppression, you’ll hear people say that they’re “just never going to give up,” but when they encounter obstacles, the protests subside. Could you speak to why you need more than determination, and why theory is the dynamic factor in ideology -- that people act on the basis of what they have come to understand? (1:08:51)

13. Can you speak to how you find the courage to make the sacrifices you have made and how other people should find that courage -- especially in these heavy times? (1:15:03)

Watch Part 2: The New Communism: A Whole New Way to Live, a Fundamentally Different System HERE.