McCarthy then issued a statement denouncing impeachment, declaring, "the radical Democrat agenda must be stopped," and hailing Trump's commitment to "helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022."
In other words, the Republican Party is now fully committed to the defense of a fascistic president who sought to retain power, even after a sizeable electoral defeat -- seven million votes -- through methods of violence and provocation. As for their Democratic "colleagues," the Republicans oscillate between threatening to kill them and extracting political concessions in the name of bipartisanship.
Two questions are left unanswered by the Democratic Party: First, how has it become possible for the fascistic right to acquire such influence and power within the US that even within Congress the Democrats fear for their lives? Second, following from the first, what are the social interests driving the growth of fascism?
The answers to these questions explain the response of the Democratic Party. Any serious examination of the rise of fascism in America would expose its connections to the politics of the ruling class. Whatever their tactical differences with the Republicans, the Democrats represent this same social class.
Three weeks ago, even as the blood and filth were still being scraped from the walls of the US Capitol, the World Socialist Website wrote that the attempted fascist coup was "a turning point in the political history of the United States."
"The hoary glorifications of the invincibility and timelessness of American democracy have been totally exposed and discredited as a hollow political myth. The popular phrase 'It Can't Happen Here,' taken from the title of Sinclair Lewis' justly famous fictional account of the rise of American fascism, has been decisively overtaken by events. Not only can a fascist coup happen here. It has happened here, on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.
"Moreover, even if the initial effort has fallen short of its goal, it will happen again."
This warning was both timely and prescient. It has taken only three weeks for the official pronouncements of shock and horror to dissipate and for the capitalist politicians of both parties to resume their course ever further to the right. The unwillingness and incapacity of the Democratic Party to defend democratic principles, even when the physical survival of its own representatives is directly threatened, is a warning to the working class.
The defense of democratic rights cannot be entrusted to any section of the American ruling class, its twin parties or its state institutions. The only social force whose existence is entirely bound up with the defense of democratic rights is the working class -- the vast majority of the population, but one which is entirely unrepresented in the existing political system.
The working class must mobilize its class strength as an independent political force, taking up demands for a full investigation into the January 6 coup, the arrest and prosecution of all those involved, inside as well as outside Congress, and the public exposure of every aspect of the coup before the American people.
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