Statement by Y Red, 16 June 2025

While Trump celebrated the Army’s parade, showing his power to the American people and China, in a thinly veiled threat, many people took to the streets in hundreds of protests to show their opposition to the Bonapartist regime. 

According to the New York Times:

"The parade, according to the white house, celebrated the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army with a procession of troops, weaponry, and military vehicles as protesters marched across all 50 states President Trump presided over a show of American military might in the nation’s capital on Saturday evening, in what became a test of wills and competing imagery, with demonstrators around the country decrying his expansion of executive power.

He stood on Constitution Avenue as armored vehicles dating from two World Wars and overflights of 80-year-old bombers and modern helicopters shook downtown Washington. The city was locked down, divided by a wall of tall, black crowd-control fences designed to assure that the parade, the first of its kind since American troops returned from the Gulf War in 1991.

When Mr. Trump left his seat between his wife, Melania Trump, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, it was to swear in new soldiers — “Have a great life,” he told them after the brief ceremony — and then, at sundown, to recall the Army’s greatest moments.

He invoked George Washington and recalled Gettysburg. Yet he spoke more to the Army’s power than to its purpose. “Time and again, America’s enemies have learned that you threaten the American people, soldiers are coming for you. Your defeat will be certain, your demise will be final, and your downfall will be total and complete.”

Hours before he left the White House, the day had already encapsulated the sharpness of America’s divide over immigration, free speech and Mr. Trump’s determination to reshape the government, universities and cultural institutions to adopt his worldview.

By design, military parades are part national celebration and part international intimidation, and Mr. Trump has wanted one in Washington since he attended a Bastille Day parade in Paris in 2017. Formally, the parade celebrates the decision by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1775, to raise a unified, lightly armed force of colonialists after the shock of the battles with British forces at Lexington and Concord. That army, which George Washington took command of a month later, ultimately expelled the far larger, better armed colonial force.

But no celebration of history takes place in a political vacuum. And protesters in large cities and small towns from Seattle to Key West showed up in overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations against how Mr. Trump was making use of the modern force. His decisions over the past week to federalize the National Guard and call the Marines into the streets of Los Angeles, in support of his immigration roundups, has supercharged a debate about whether he is abusing the powers of the commander in chief" [i]

Mr. Trump must go but so is bloody American imperialism, ruled by the capitalist class.

The Democratic Party is not better as Biden has shown. It is the other head of the bloody imperialist ruling class.

This is the time to form a workers' party loyal to the interests of the international working class!

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[i] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/14/us/politics/trump-parade-protests.html