Why it is harmful to advocate a vote for Clinton “to stop Trump” in our work to destroy fascism and capitalism

From the “Assata Shakur for President 2016” Facebook page.

As the masses rise (and they are going to rise no matter what–we are on a rising trajectory of rebellion and revolutionary activity), the government is going to start cracking down even more harshly no matter what. This will happen just as much under Clinton as it would under Trump.

There’s also the flip-side, and this is something that most “radicals for Clinton”-type people don’t understand, is the history and mechanisms of fascism. Fascism doesn’t come from nowhere–it is part of capitalism’s DNA, especially the DNA of imperialist countries. No matter what imperialist country you look in, even after it was smashed in Europe, there has been a “pilot light” of fascist ideas burning ever since. Liberalism (the reigning ideology of capitalism) allows this–liberalism says we have to protect the right of fascists to organize and have free speech that they can use to recruit.

But when capitalism hits a crisis, as it *always does* because that’s how capitalism works, a large number of disenchanted middle-class people go looking for answers, and some of them always find the answer in fascism.

That is happening now. We are entering a moment of great crisis in the global capitalist system. People need to realize that Trump didn’t create this rising fascist movement–it has been accelerating well before he got on the world stage, for the past decade or so. It will continue to rise no matter whether he’s defeated or not–it’s part of the logic of the global political-economic system, not some fad. Seeing Trump as the root of the problem is seeing only the surface level.

You cannot vote fascism away. Fascism has to be destroyed by force–it doesn’t reason with you, it doesn’t listen to you. If we want to destroy it, we need communists, anarchists, and revolutionary nationalists of oppressed nations organized and ready to kill it. That is the beginning and the end of it.

So how can we do that? We have two choices–

(a) tell a weird and confusing story to the working poor and deeply-oppressed people of this country and say, “Fascism is rising no matter whether Trump is defeated, but let’s vote for the candidate who isn’t fascist but will merely wink and nod as fascism keeps rising.”

But what will that do? It won’t help us build revolutionary people’s self-defense organizations–it will lead the people to think we want to softball the truth. We have to give the unmodified truth to the people–fascism is coming, President Clinton or no. We can’t organize with anyone if they think we’re full of shit.

(b) Tell them the full truth: don’t vote. It never worked for you before, and it won’t stop fascism now. Organize–let’s build a people’s militia and as fascism rises, let the organized and armed people also rise, and as we do it, pull out the root–capitalism–that gives rise to fascism in the first place.

One time and quick on the difference between Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought

A big part of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is saying that we need to draw a very firm line and say, “Y’all other communists need to WAKE UP!–something went really drastically wrong trying to do things the old way, and Mao pointed out what the problems were. We either take him seriously and go to the hard work of revamping literally everything in our theory and our practice along the lines that he pointed out, or else we’ll probably keep making the same mistake.”

Meanwhile, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought folks are like, “Mao added some stuff that was pretty cool, no doubt, he was good, but you guys are a little extreme. Look, nothing went super-duper wrong–we still have some socialist countries. So you’re being too extreme by saying we need to think through everything again.”

Although MLM and ML-MZT superficially appear to say many of the same things, this difference in orientation between “everything needs to be re-thought” and “keep everything basically the same, just make some alterations” is one of the very most important differences.

What’s more..

I remain flabbergasted that anyone can call themselves “Mao Zedong Thought” and reject the theory of social-imperialism, which Mao asserted and pioneered, and reject that capitalist restoration can happen, which Mao asserted and pioneered. It’s like, exactly what elements of Mao Zedong’s thought are they claiming, just the mass line?