Photo / UnPac, FB
January 6, 2022 will mark exactly one year since that terrible day when a lynch mob broke into the U.S. Capitol.
This last year has shown that a growing extremist movement in America is utterly committed to destroying what’s left of American democracy and imposing a right-wing dictatorship. This movement must be stopped – by an equally relentless movement of decent people determined to defend the best of the American heritage and move it forward.
The last year has also proven conclusively that the corporate wing of the Democratic Party is just not up to the job. This makes it all the more important to expand the movement now in the streets defending democracy.
The new fascist movement in the United States has developed in the midst of massive economic dislocation resulting especially from automation of jobs and from the pandemic. Powerful forces within the ruling class have financed this assault on democracy. They don’t want those who are suffering to have a say in how society is organized.
Like earlier such movements, today’s extreme right wing glorifies cruelty. It is resurrecting and building upon the very worst in American history, especially white supremacy and male supremacy. This can be seen, for example, in the hero worship of vigilante killer Kyle Rittenhouse, the support for a militarized and violent police, the assault on the human rights of women, and in the demonization of immigrants.
A culture of vigilante violence is being created to demonize and threaten anyone who dares oppose extreme, fascist positions. Black Lives Matter activists and supporters, election administrators, education workers, school board members, public health officials and progressive state and federal legislators are among those who have been attacked or threatened with violence. These threats are now directed not just at progressives, but even at conservatives such as the Republicans in Congress who voted for infrastructure bills and measures designed to raise the debt ceiling.
There’s a real danger that a combination of vigilante violence, gerrymandering, and laws suppressing the vote could allow the far right to capture both the Congress and the White House in the next three years. That could end with the right imposing an outright dictatorship.
As this danger has grown, concern has intensified about the reluctance of the top leadership of the Democratic Party to stand up to the extreme right, and the Democratic leadership’s refusal to aggressively fight for important legislation such as the voting rights measures and the Build Back Better bill. For example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has done nothing to condemn the hateful rhetoric of conspiracy theorist Rep. Lauren Boebert, and refused to support a motion to expel Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for aiding the mob that stormed the Capitol. Pelosi took that position despite the fact that Greene had advocated the execution of Pelosi in social media posts in the past.
And just as the response of the Democratic top brass in Congress has been tepid, so has been the response of a White House run by Democrats. In early December, the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, issued a scathing statement which described U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland as “shivering under his desk” instead of vigorously going after former President Donald Trump and the others responsible for the January 6 mob attack. In another statement, Shaub accused members of Congress and their staff of “living in a universe where it’s 1991” when in the real world, “it’s more like Germany before Hitler took power.”
The experience of Germany should warn us: Fascism comes to power step by step. If it is to be stopped, every move against democracy must be opposed vigorously while it is taking place. Those who hesitate to confront the fascists enable them.
Many years ago, a leader of the fight against slavery pointed out that the defenders of slavery were so fanatical that they simply had to be countered by opponents every bit as determined. “You cannot neutralize nitric acid with cologne water,” explained the great abolitionist orator Wendell Phillips. That approach should guide us today. The antidote to the poison of today’s American fascism is not the half-hearted, tip-toeing “opposition” of the top leaders of the Democratic Party. It is a massive movement of people of all walks of life to oppose dictatorship and defend democracy.
This movement is already underway. From the efforts to unionize Starbucks and Amazon to the groups like Rednecks for Black Lives which are fighting for voting rights to countless groups defending victims of police violence, people are speaking out all over America. This needs to continue and expand into every part of this huge country. Together we can defend and expand democracy and crush the schemes underway to destroy it!
Visit this link to hear the voices of youth who go on hunger strike for democracy: Youth Go On Hunger Strike For Democracy
