The genocide in Gaza is bringing two conflicting world trends to the forefront: the surge of fascist depravity and the rising movement for an egalitarian world. Inspired by the courageous resistance of the working class in Palestine to the Israeli rulers’ barbaric ethnic cleansing, young people around the world have responded with mass campus protests. As they witness the carpet bombing of civilians and the “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza (npr.org, 5/4), they are recoiling in horror from the capitalist bosses’ business as usual. Most important, they are fighting back.

Over the last two weeks, more than 2,500 college students have been arrested across the U.S. (New York Times, 5/7). In solidarity with the millions of displaced workers and children in Gaza, the student encampment movement has spread to Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. At the same time, the forces of rising fascism have viciously attacked the students. Given the choice of supporting peaceful protests or the mass murder of innocents, the capitalists’ mouthpieces and front people have made their position clear. From the mainstream media and liberals in the White House and Congress to Donald Trump’s MAGA zealots, the rulers’ stooges have come down squarely on the side of the U.S.-funded genocide. They have decided that protest must be crushed, that dissent will not be tolerated—a brutally clear message in a time of worldwide capitalist crisis. As inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens and the next world war approaches, the bosses are compelled to do all they can to try to pacify and intimidate the international working class.

But the bosses will not have the ultimate say. The fightback of workers in Gaza, and the unity of millions around the world to defend them, shows that our class can and must take our future into our own hands—by putting the bloodthirsty capitalists out of business with communist revolution.

How the bosses lie about violence

From Genocide Joe Biden's press secretary to House Speaker Mike Johnson to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the bosses' stooges have hyped a bogus narrative about "violent" protests and “rampant” anti-Jewish racism on the campuses. Strategically, Progressive Labor Party supports mass revolutionary violence to smash the violent capitalist state and put an end to the daily violence of the profit system. We also support the right of student protesters to defend themselves with force, as they did at UCLA, against the violence of the kkkops or gangs of pro-Zionist thugs. It’s good training for the bigger fights to come. 

In reality, though, the campus protests have been overwhelmingly nonviolent--akin to the sit-ins of the U.S. civil rights era, which were also met with violence from both the Ku Klux Klan and the Klan in blue. As college presidents have sicced the police on students for the crime of pitching tents on lawns, the cops have predictably resorted to chemical warfare and potentially lethal rubber bullets (Newsweek, 5/2).  At UCLA, videos showed dozens of pro-Zionists “attacking students…beating them with sticks, using chemical sprays and launching fireworks as weapons….[V]iolence ebbed and flowed for nearly five hours, mostly with little or no police intervention” (NYT, 5/2). Three days later, none of the thugs had been arrested for the assault. 

The bosses won’t hesitate to use violence against rebellious workers because they know they can’t survive without it. As a system defined by the theft of value from the many by the few, capitalism is built upon force and coercion. It is violent by its nature. As the bosses’ liberal democracy proves increasingly less able to keep their system afloat, they are moving steadily toward fascism. The liberal ruling class of finance capital, the main-wing bosses who back Biden and fund the Ivy League universities, are wantonly heaving out the so-called anchors of democracy, the phony freedoms of assembly, speech, and the press. At Columbia University, the citadel of liberal journalism, the cops rounded up student reporters and locked them inside a building to stop them from observing the scene of the police attacks (New York Magazine, 5/1). At UCLA, the coordination among university officials, cops, and fascist thugs represents a new development in the U.S. in this period, one reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

The false narrative of anti-Jewish racism 

Doubtless some despicable anti-Jewish sentiments have been voiced on or near campuses over the last several weeks. But for all the outraged hand-wringing in Congress and by the rat-fink college presidents, we have yet to see a single account of a Jewish student physically harmed because they were Jewish. (On the other hand, many Jewish protestors have been injured by cops and campus security because they were anti-genocide.) And we've certainly seen nothing to compare to the racist shootings of three Palestinian college students last November in Vermont (AP News, 11/30/23). 

Egged on by Biden, against virtually all of the evidence on the ground, the bosses' media and the pro-genocide Zionist pressure groups keep cynically conflating the students’ anti-Zionism with antisemitism.  In fact, these are two completely different things. Anti-Jewish racism—like anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim racism—divides workers and hurts the entire working class. Anti-Zionism—like all attacks on nationalism--helps the working class, including Jewish workers and students. The mid-2oth-century Zionists were a group of Jewish bosses who cut a deal with the British imperialists to create a “Jewish state” where they could exploit Jewish labor and super-exploit Arab labor. The birth of the settler colonialist state of Israel in 1948 expelled 700,000 Arab workers from their homes, a foreshadowing of the flight and displacement of nearly two million Palestinians in Gaza (Aljazeera, 4/23). The very concept of a Jewish state led to the racist apartheid we see today in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. Like all states, the state of Israel must be smashed by communist revolution. 

The working class responds with international solidarity

The heroism and perseverance of workers in Palestine is moving workers and students around the world to rally to the defense of our class. Mass anti-genocide demonstrations have erupted across Europe, in Australia, in Mexico City, and—despite government crackdowns—in the Middle East. Fifteen hundred people have been arrested in Jordan alone (NYT, 4/29). In Paris, students at the elite Sciences Po—the alma mater of President Emmanuel Macron—occupied buildings, were battered by police, and forced the closure of the main campus (Barrons.com, 5/2). In Spain, Britain, Germany, and Australia, thousands of students have established anti-genocide encampments, demanding that their universities divest from any ties to Israel’s war machine (NYT, 5/3). In some cases, as in the U.S., these protests have been joined by anti-genocide workers—the “outside agitators” called out by compulsive liar Eric Adams. In the spirit of the Freedom Riders who organized against racist segregation in the U.S. in the 1960s, our Party calls for more agitation, from inside and out, to stop the mass murder in Gaza. All workers’ struggles belong to the whole working class. When workers and students unite in multiracial unity to fight back against state violence, they become a powerful force. Join PLP to smash capitalist terror and stop the bosses’ genocides for all time!

The following text is the Why I joined speech delivered by a young PL’er at our May Day march in Broooklyn:

Over the last year, capitalism has murdered:  

1,300 workers in the U.S. by cops

10,000 farmers in Pakistan

35,000 workers in Gaza

1 million workers in the Congo, and COUNTING

Now more than ever we need to unite, fight back, and join the Progressive Labor Party (PLP).

My family is from Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. Many of them were freedom fighters in the struggle for national liberation.

I have family members who have died and became martyrs to the struggle, who were imprisoned, and who’ve had to flee their homeland in search of refuge. Although the Eritrean independence movement was confined to its national borders, growing up, I admired the feat of a people smaller than the size of New York City fighting an entire country backed by Western and Soviet imperialists! 

No it was not easy, many lives were lost and workers sacrificed everything…my grandparents were threatened, tortured, and had their house burnt down all because they held down the line for their country and did not sell out to imperialist forces.

It was the political will and strength of Eritrean workers who struggled to fight for thirty years and WIN! 

This is my family’s story and it used to primarily inform my ideas, but despite what the bosses’ propaganda tells you, I realized the international working class is worth fighting for past nationalism. 

Fast forward, I met PLP online, and then on the streets handing out CHALLENGE newspaper. 
After meeting the Party in person, I got the chance to meet many members from all over the world. It was from them that I learned that PLP does not just struggle over ideas, but that we are a FIGHTING Party and we have been for decades.

I met comrades who recounted stories of fighting the KKK and engaging in revolutionary class struggle in Colombia, Haiti, and Mexico, I met comrades who lived out the idea of multiracial class unity in action.

These days, I’m a college student going to protests for Palestine where fellow students in over 120 cities across the country facing immense pressure from their institutions, are getting suspended, surveilled on their phones, kicked out of school, harassed, and beaten by cops all because they are pleading to their institution to stop supporting genocide.

When I ask my classmates and friends what they’re fighting for, they tend to say: 

Free Palestine, Free Congo, Free Sudan, etc.

But struggles for national liberation are not enough!!

We cannot beg our bosses for freedom… 

The most important freedom is freedom from exploitation, from capitalism.

We do not ask them; we take it, united as the international working class.

The working class is divided by local bosses and held captive by nationalist ideas; the ruling class does not want us to see that we have more in common with the Pakistani farmer, the Congolese miner, and the migrants on Staten Island than we do with fascist Eric Adams or genocidal Joe Biden.

Our destinies as workers of the world are interconnected. We depend on each other to live and fight another day. The working class makes the WORLD go round, whether that’s in building our phones, harvesting our food, teaching our children…it’s us, not the bosses.J

Now more than ever is when we need multiracial class unity

Now more than ever we need to smash borders

Now more than ever we need to unite under an international communist party
 
THIS IS WHY I JOINED PLP, AND YOU SHOULD TOO!

LOS ANGELES, CA, May 2- This morning, a contingent of fascist Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and California Highway Patrol (CHP) KKKops, attacking with rubber bullets and stun grenades, evicted students and supporters from an encampment against genocide in Palestine at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). They arrested over 200 students, professors and supporters of the encampment. The night before, the liberal fascist UCLA administration, the LAPD and CHP sat back and did nothing but watch while 50 masked Zionist thugs attacked the encampment with lead pipes, fireworks, and chemical sprays, sending over 20 student encampers to the hospital. Meanwhile, a chorus of politicians, media outlets and pundits, including President Joe Biden and House Leader Mike Johnson, have demanded a nationwide crackdown on all campus, anti-genocide encampments.

But this attempt to crush what is a growing anti-genocide, anti-war movement on campuses is backfiring. While this gaggle of liberal and conservative politicians and media endlessly blab about the rights of university students to get their education unimpeded by “disruption”, and make phony and disgusting charges of “antisemitism” against the encampers, students around the country are getting an on-the-ground education about the role of the state and educational institutions under a capitalist system.

Student’s boldness exposes bosses’ lies about education 

Far from the havens for free speech, academic discourse and scholarly investigation, as touted by college and university bigwigs, the nationwide attacks on student-led campus encampments expose the truth: whatever form capitalism takes, it is in essence a class dictatorship. Educational institutions under capitalism must serve the needs of the ruling class. Israel has played the role of attack dog, ensuring U.S. bosses’ control of crucial Mideast oil. Any popular threat to U.S. financial and political support for Israel will therefore not be tolerated. A widespread challenge to that foreign policy like the encampments, even though peaceful, must be shut down violently by cops or the military.

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members consistently visited the encampment for the week that it remained up and running. We were impressed by the level of organization and collectivity in the encampment, as well as the dedication and commitment of the students who participated. Before we entered the camp, one of the students explained rules designed to protect the encampment from the Zionists, and informed us that the good of the collective encampment was primary. Everything needed by the students, from food to medical supplies to the materials necessary to make signs, was donated and shared. Organized security cordoned off any Zionist agitators who entered the camp and “escorted” them out.

Many UCLA faculty and staff actively supported the encampment. Two close friends of PLP were involved, one an undergrad student and the other a doctor and professor at the UCLA Med School, widely known and respected on campus, who has facilitated the involvement of PLP there. When it became clear that the cops were going to attack the encampment on the evening of May 2, health workers, professors and others supported the students in many different ways, from preparing on the scene medical teams, including med students, to opening up buildings for students who needed to get away from the KKKops.

Reject nationalism, fight for communism

The fascist attacks on these brave anti-genocide students at UCLA and nationwide became one of the key points brought out in our May Day program, which was co-emceed by the UCLA undergrad. Participants loudly applauded the fighting spirit of the encampments. PLP is growing on college campuses in both Northern and Southern California, and we are encouraging young comrades to join mass organizations and give communist leadership to the mass anti-war, anti-genocide movement.

The main weakness of the encampments is an allegiance to the idea that the problems of Palestinian workers could be solved if they had their “own” state. This nationalist outlook, which advocates substituting a different group of exploiters for the Israeli Zionist bosses who maintain apartheid in Palestine now, will only maintain an exploitative capitalist system and lead to more oppression and death for the working class. Only communist revolution, led by PLP, can bring the long suffering of workers in Palestine to an end and build a bright future for all of our class worldwide!

FREDERICK, MD— At Hood College, at least 50 students gathered at the campus’s chapel for a rally and march in solidarity with workers and families suffering from the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza. This is the second student-led rally on campus this academic year—the first being on November 9th. Inspired by their experience at the first national solidarity rally in Washington, DC on November 4th, multiple students and leaders of student organizations coordinated in just five days the first student-led mass protest since 2018, which was when the administration approved a “No Hate at Hood” walkout.

Unlike the 2018 demonstration, the organizers did not get approval from the college. The rally provided students a way to express their rage at both the college administration and Joe Biden for their continuing support of genocide. The genocide in Gaza—just like in Congo, Myanmar, and Darfur—is part of ongoing attacks on the international working class due to inter-imperialist rivalry. The U.S. is desperate to maintain its imperial status against rival imperialists in China and Russia. As capitalism falls deeper into crisis, the ruling class turns to war and fascism to save their atrocious system. 

Students take the lead

November 9th of last year, between 60 and 80 students, professors, and community members walked out from class and work to denounce the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide of workers in Gaza. The student-led walkout came as part of a call for a national day of solidarity for workers whose lives have been destroyed by the fascist Zionist Israeli government, as well as the cowardly Hamas leaders. Our comrade worked with classmates to spread the word about this walkout, posting flyers around campus and online.

The fightback continues

One member of Progressive Labor Party and a student at the college helped to spread the word for the February rally and march. They coordinated a fiery music playlist of international and revolutionary music, created politically sharp posters with a classmate, and ensured the safety of the rally as students walked off campus into downtown Frederick. Our comrade, with three friends, distributed dozens of CHALLENGEs and flyers. 

In a display of classic Hood College hypocrisy, campus safety officials stopped short of the campus entrance. This left students at the mercy of potential racist attacks and local police officers who followed the march both in uniform and in unmarked cars to try and intimidate the march.

Students led rallying cries against President Andrea Chapdelaine, Genocide Joe Biden, and blood-soaked Benjamin Netanyahu. We chanted demands for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. This ruffled the feathers of the thinly veiled racists from both Hood College and Frederick.
Like the first rally, the energy was electrifying. Students’ frustration with, and disappointment in Chapdelaine’s refusal to acknowledge the genocide, sparked necessary discussions—the same discussions that the administration was all too eager to conduct in 2022 soon after the war in Ukraine began.

Our comrade spoke to the need for solidarity among all students and workers, more than what the pro-Palestine chants called for. Instead of arguing over choosing sides and who is more deserving of compassion, the comrade clearly stated that workers are more than their national borders and ethnic backgrounds. Capitalism needs racism and nationalism to keep workers divided and justify their imperialist wars and genocides.

Administration's racism exposed 

Since Hamas’s attack on workers in Israel and the government’s monstrous response, there have only been passive emails from Chapdelaine calling for peace, and a history lecture on Israel and Palestine since the early 20th century. Hood College, like many liberal arts campuses, regularly advertises itself as an inclusive, diverse community that celebrates open discourse and varied perspectives. Students and faculty who have been here for years know this is a bald-faced lie. Within two weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the administration held a pro-Ukraine campus rally and a panel discussion referring to the “Crisis in Europe.” All of this and more were recalled by speakers during the November walkout, joined with cries of “Shame!” toward the administration and those who denied the deadly reality of the workers in Palestine.

The second rally shows that not only are students still fed up with Chapdelaine and her attempts at “keeping the peace,” but that they are ready for stronger action that challenges the campus and bursts its picture-perfect bubble of a small, liberal arts college. In the weeks since the rally, students have been continuing conversations that the college refuses to facilitate. With this being our comrade’s final semester, much of the work will continue to focus on channeling the righteous student anger into organizing and planting the seeds for even more militant actions. There is great potential among students here and as communists, we must continue to bring revolutionary, internationalist politics to the struggle.