By: Bob Avakian
Some people who should know better have insisted that defeating Trump/MAGA fas- cism is not a fight that Black people should be involved in. A number of different arguments have been made in the attempt to “justify” this ridiculous position, and here I’m going to speak to how wrong this is.
One of the main arguments is this: “White people created this mess, so let them deal with it.”
First of all, there is not one uniform, undivided white people, all supposedly united behind Trump. Although just over half the white people who voted in the recent election voted for Trump, nearly half the white voters (tens of millions) did not vote for Trump—and a significant number of white people who are not Trump supporters did not vote at all, including some who refused to vote for Harris because of the Biden/Harris administration’s support for the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people. Huge numbers of white people have been mobilizing in protest and resistance against Trump.
So, the notion that “white people,” in general and as a whole, are responsible for this situation is way too simple an explanation of the problem. (It is the case that about one- fourth of Black men who voted actually voted for the openly racist Trump, so that is another part of the problem that needs to be addressed.)
Trump is a fascist— which, particularly in this country, means aggressively enforcing racial oppression, as well as oppression based on sex and gender. He is openly moving to wipe out any mention of race (or gender) and the whole oppressive history of this country, as part of his determined drive to reverse even the partial gains that have been made, over the past 80 years, in the fight against this oppression. A number of years ago now, during Trump’s first time in power, I spoke to this very clearly:
People need to understand that Trump is a genocidal racist. He may not be trying to bring back literal slavery but he is definitely aiming to take this country back to a situation where overt white supremacy is blatantly promoted, codified in law and court decisions, and enforced through systematic, full- blown white supremacist violence.
What sense does it make to say that Black people should not be actively opposing this?! Let’s get down into this further: If white people were responsible for slavery, did that mean that Black people should not have fought in the Civil War, in the way they did, becoming a major force in defeating the slave-holding Confederacy and putting an end to slavery?
Or, again, if white people were responsible for the open (“Jim Crow”) segregation and racist terror that Black people were subjected to after slavery was ended, did that mean that Black people should not have risen up in the Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements, in the 1950s and since— or that the gains that have been made through this struggle, against open segregation and legal discrimination, are of no importance for Black people?!
Who would make such arguments? As for those making similar arguments now—insisting that Black people should stay out of the fight against Trump/MAGA fascism—would they even have a platform for reaching people with these arguments, if it weren’t for the gains that were made through the heroic, self-sacrificing struggle of Black people against open segregation and discrimination? This has been a righteous struggle that has changed the way a lot of people see things, including a lot of white youth especially, motivating them to join in the struggle against this racist oppression. This has been powerfully demonstrated through the 1960s, and since— and again recently in 2020, in the massive, righteous uprising in response to the cold- blooded murder of George Floyd by a heartless pig.
Trump and his whole fascist regime is aggressively moving to reverse these gains, and slam Black people (and others) back into a more openly, brutally oppressed condition: how in the world can that be a reason for Black people to stand aside from the fight against this Trump fascist regime?!
Yes, oppression of Black people would exist even if Trump weren’t in power—because this oppression is built into this system of capitalism-imperialism. What all this shows is not that all the struggle against this oppression didn’t accomplish anything.
What it powerfully demonstrates is that the whole
