by Theo Horesh with response from Richard Mellor
In stating that, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump just threatened to commit genocide against a nation of 90 million people. And since the only way that could happen in a night is through nuking its major cities, it would instantly make Trump the most murderous dictator in history. And just to make sure you understood the significance of his statement, and that he was indeed speaking of an instantaneous genocide, he added that this would be “…one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”
Of course, Trump is an unhinged tyrant, but he is also a fascist tyrant, and this is what fascists do—they murder people en masse and brag about it. And after having watched almost every major party in the western world support the most closely observed genocide in history in Gaza, it is no longer unthinkable that he would do it, and it is no longer unthinkable that they would learn to live with it. And it is no longer unthinkable that we would all be forced to grapple with its implications in our hearts and minds.
Never mind the fact that nuking Iran would make the Persian Gulf uninhabitable by making the water its states depend upon for desalinization undrinkable. Never mind the fact that this would mean the collapse of the global economy for many years to come, and the likely deaths of hundreds of millions of people by hunger related illnesses, since no one would be able to process oil in those states for generations, and this would raise to the price of food dramatically. Never mind the fact that Iran would surely strike Israel’s nuclear reactor in the south, thereby making much of the country, along with Gaza and much of the West Bank, uninhabitable as well.
The deaths in Iran alone would place Trump in the great pantheon of the most murderous tyrants in human history, like Hitler and the Mongolian Tamerlane.
It is not inconceivable, because a dehumanizing discourse of Islamophobia, on both the left and the right, has made it possible to kill Muslims with impunity. It is not inconceivable, because the United States has already done much the same thing in large parts of Japan, Germany, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam—with the full support of both major parties. And it is not inconceivable, because even our most moral presidents like Jimmy Carter have armed genocides as a matter of course—with Carter himself having armed the genocide in East Timor and major crimes against humanity in El Salvador and Guatemala, where a genocide would occur under his predecessor, Reagan.
Trump makes the crude brutality of the American empire impossible to ignore. He makes its gangster tactics of coercion, which both parties have carried out for generations through financial means, evident for even his dumbest supporters. And he places the repulsive character of our abuses of power on display so that every leader from around the world must make a conscious decision about whether to support the empire, and all the more so because he has teamed up with the most Hitlerian leader of the world’s most murderous state in his attacks on the world. And that provides perhaps a silver lining to rule by fascist tyrants—their crimes are obvious whereas those of liberals are always well cloaked. But to threaten the extermination of a nation of 90 million people should be a step too far for all but his most sociopathic supporters.
Now, every single person around him, and every single world leader, has a legal and moral duty to remove him from power by any means necessary. Every single person lacking access to the levers of power must demand that he be removed from office, and every single person in his cabinet must take the necessary step of invoking the mental fitness of the president to hold office and remove him under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution—or else be held responsible for what could amount to precisely what he suggested: the greatest crime in history…
… and all for Israel.
Theo Horesh is the author of ‘The Holocausts We All Deny: The Crisis Before the Fascist Inferno’.
Richard Mellor – I would like to think not. But beyond Trump, US capitalism and the US body politic is rotten to the core. It is of course a reflection of capitalist decay on a world scale. I say I think not but it’s important to reflect on the fact that a considerable portion of the US Congress are Evangelical Christian religious fanatics who see the present situation as Biblical prophecy and it will give them a key to open the doors of heaven.
The reality is that calling for the 25th Amendment, the removal of Trump and all the other measures that can halt the potential of humanity being dragged over the abyss—calling for the troops to revolt etc. are all valid.
But the reality is that unless the US working class in particular settles accounts with the US bourgeois the chances of a future for our grandchildren are becoming slimmer. If nuclear madness doesn’t destroy civilisation, the chance of environmental catastrophe will. These are both products of the capitalist system; they are market driven.
A Russian revolutionary leader once said 80 or more years ago that the crisis facing the working class and our ability to end capitalism and transform society was a crisis of leadership. That truer today than it was then. We cannot reform this system of production and as for human civilisation, nothing is permenent. The planet can and will outlast us.
The No Kings marches, peaceful, carnival like and dedicated to law and order are promoted by their organizers in order to get Democrats in to political power. The same with the union officials that are claiming they “support” a general strike on Mayday, less than one month from now. They want a “day of Action” nothing more. Go to their websites and look for the push for a General Strike ion Mayday. You won’t find it. They too, want you to “Vote Blue “as a means of saving the world. They want to put the party in power that obliterated Gaza.
But the millions that attended them are a different matter, the disgust and hatred that millions of Americans have toward the two capitalist parties is rife and at some point the movement will break free of the stifling hold reformers, liberal bourgeois politicians and their allies atop organized labor have on any movement that challenges the system.
Rosa Luxemburg once said that a future under capitalism is only Socialism or Barbarism; today it is socialism or annihilation.
“Workers of all countries Unite, You have nothing to lose but your chains” Marx famously said. And that seemingly harmless phrase has terrified the capitalist class for over 150 years. It’s good advice and we should heed it and the present situation on all fronts demands it.
A global federation of socialist states based on production for social need and not the profit of a few is not utopian. Thinking it’s impossible is utopian.