IN HIS FOURTH of July speech US president Donald Trump attacked the ‘angry mob’ that opposes him and which he claims are out to ‘indoctrinate our children’ and ‘trample’ on freedom in America.
He continued: ‘We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters, and people who in many instances have absolutely no clue what they are doing.’
Earlier at Mount Rushmore he had stated: ‘In our schools, our newsrooms and even our boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism.’
This speech unveiled his ‘Red Scare’ line for fighting the presidential election due on Tuesday November 3rd, 2020. This is after his attempts to revive the US economy by pumping billions of dollars into it have failed, and after he has completely discredited himself with his attitude to the coronavirus pandemic.
He has presided over a coronavirus catastrophe. The total number of cases and deaths from coronavirus in the USA as of July 19th amounted to 3,698,161 and 139,569 respectively!
That the most advanced capitalist country on the planet has the greatest number of cases and the greatest number of deaths worldwide speaks for itself! Trump’s November 3rd moment of truth is now fast approaching, at the same time as his desperate efforts to revive the US economy have failed to provide the millions of jobs that he promised the US workers.
Trump’s hysterical attacks on ‘the mob’, ‘radical leftists’ and Marxists – allied to a massive anti-China witchhunt – have now become his only remaining viable tactic. In fact, with the US’ extra jobless benefits (which boosted unemployment benefit temporarily) expiring at the end of July, millions more US workers will be dumped into poverty.
With workers and youth across the US rising up against the brutality of the state, the US ruling class is now living in fear of revolution as workers refuse to accept a return to the starvation of the 1930s.
Trump’s main policy is now to try to mobilise the US right wing to wage a civil war on the ‘radicals’ and return to rule on the crest of an anti-communist wave or coup. Trump is now using federal state forces to intervene in US states against the ‘radicals and Marxists’ in an attempt to scare the most reactionary elements in the USA to vote for him on November 3rd.
The attorney general for the US state of Oregon has filed a lawsuit against the federal government, accusing it of unlawfully detaining protesters in Portland.
Federal officers using unmarked vehicles have been forcibly seizing protesters from the streets of Portland city and detaining them without justification.
Federal agents, deployed directly by Trump, have also fired tear gas and munitions into crowds of demonstrators that Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf called a ‘violent mob’.
In the lawsuit, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum requested a restraining order to stop agents from the Department of Homeland Security, US Marshals Service, US Customs and Border Protection, and the Federal Protection Service from making any more arrests in the city.
‘These tactics must stop’ Rosenblum said in a statement. ‘They not only make it impossible for people to assert their First Amendment rights to protest peacefully, they also create a more volatile situation on our streets.’
She added: ‘The federal administration has chosen Portland to use their scare tactics to stop our residents from protesting police brutality and from supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. Every American should be repulsed when they see this happening. If this can happen here in Portland, it can happen anywhere.’
Trump has responded by threatening to send more federal law enforcement officers to major US cities to take on the ongoing protests. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is also planning to deploy some 150 agents to Chicago this week, and has said that New York City, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland are targets.
Trump is not preparing for a presidential election, he is preparing a right wing coup in the USA.
The US trade unions must not just stand by and watch these developments. They must call a general strike to bring down the Trump regime and prepare the conditions for the US working class to go forward to the American Socialist Revolution.
There is no other way forward!
