Refuse Fascism’s Emma Kaplan speaks in Tulsa’s Deco District before the president’s rally. The group wants non-violent protests to prompt Donald Trump’s ouster. Refuse Fascism photo
By Clint Confehr
Refuse Fascism, a self-described “movement of people,” marched against the Trump Administration in Tulsa, Okla. last weekend to drive that regime “from power through non-violent protests.”
“Vote with your feet in the street,” says “Coco Das,” an Austin, Tex.-area resident who: admits to using a pseudonym; reports some Refuse Fascism activists have received death threats; and says she wishes she wrote the slogan.
Das, Refuse Fascism’s national spokesperson, is a member of its editorial board.
Massive protests, she says, are a way to show influential people that the masses and like-minded citizens outnumber the Trump Administration and its supporters. Refuse Fascism leaders say “the Trump/Pence regime poses a catastrophic danger to humanity and the planet” and must be removed before the Nov. 3 election.
“We’re not waiting for the election,” she said, referring to her essay “Who Says We Can’t Drive Out a Tyrant?” It’s at RefuseFascism.org. Examples of fascists’ removal without elections include Richard Nixon’s resignation because of “splits at the top of society.”
Last summer, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello resigned after weeks of protests. In 2017, South Korean President Park Geun-hye was ousted for corruption after hundreds of thousands of people protested in the streets. Arab Spring protests shook regimes across the Middle East, including Hosene Mubaric in 2011.
After George Floyd was killed, sparking a month of protest since his May 25 death, she says, “things depolarized” on: the use of American soldiers for political reasons; Trump’s “anti-truth” campaign; immigrants in concentration camps; and the value of black lives.
“Black lives won’t matter as long as this regime is in power,” she said. The Trump Administration “represents a resurgence of white supremacy” that includes a “strong base of Christian fascists” who back Trump because they believe he can establish the theocracy they want.
A co-initiator of Refuse Fascism in late 2016 is Carl Dix, a national spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party USA.
“Trump brings an American fascism [that’s]: rooted in the Confederacy; wrapped in the flag; and Mike Pence’s Bible-taken-literally — spreading its poison of white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia, and oppressive, fundamentalist ‘traditional’ values,” Dix says. “While the movement to defend Black lives and end white supremacist police murder has inspired protests all over the world, it has terrified one person in particular – that bloated bag of fascist feces named Donald Trump … We’re at a crucial crossroads with a beautiful protest movement bringing a great diversity of people into the streets with a determination to see white supremacy and other horrors caused by this system ended on the one side and a fascist regime determined to crush this protest movement as part of hammering full-on fascist rule into place.”
Protestors in Tulsa last weekend may or may not have outnumbered those attending the president’s rally one day after Juneteenth. Regardless, Das says protests since the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis “have inspired people around the world and suddenly the movement has shaken people awake.”
Das says Refuse Fascism refrained from encouraging demonstrations because of the coronavirus pandemic. Since Floyd’s death and protests, the group wants people in the streets because Trump is afraid of an overwhelming number of “ordinary people” protesting in the streets.
Refuse Fascism spokesperson Emma Kaplan says the group opposes voter suppression but calls for Trump’s ouster, noting in 2016 his regime “maneuvered elections … for which he was impeached.”
Fascism is: a political philosophy, movement, or nationalist regime frequently exalting race over individuals; and government led by a dictator who stamps out opposition, and regiments industry.
