Israeli fascists continue murdering Palestinian civilians

Al Jazeera, 7/27–The Israeli military has issued new evacuation orders in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis that further expand into an area where displaced Palestinians have been forced to shelter while killing dozens in an attack on a hospital in the centre of the enclave…The Khan Younis invasion displaced at least 180,000 Palestinians in the first four days since it was launched, with many having to move without their belongings, according to the United Nations…an air attack killed many people inside a home in the area on Saturday morning before the Israeli military ordered the latest mass evacuation…Israeli artillery shelling has been targeting the town of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis…The Israeli military launched a huge attack on a field hospital established in a school in Deir el-Balah, killing at least 30 Palestinians and wounding dozens, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health… three missiles were fired from fighter jets at the Khadija School…The enclave’s civil defence organisation said the school, the latest of many to be hit this month alone, was housing 4,000 displaced Palestinians…

D.R. Congo workers suffer from foreign interventions

Foreign Affair, 7/26–Last year, the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo turned 30. It is a grim milestone…the war in Congo has excelled at evading international recognition…Today, more than seven million Congolese are displaced, more than at any other time in history, and yet the war still barely features in global media…There are more than 100 different armed actors fighting in the east, most of which are pursuing separate ends. The M23 itself, however, is easier to grapple with. The group is largely funded and trained by Rwanda, which sees the organization as a way to project power and gain access to Congo’s resources…Congolese officials have also invited Burundi, Malawi, South Africa, and Tanzania to send troops into its eastern region for assistance. The conflict, in other words, is transforming from a low-grade internal clash to an expanding interstate and communal war.

U.S. and Russian bosses prepare for direct conflict

The Guardian, 7/28–Vladimir Putin has warned the US that if Washington deploys long-range missiles in Germany from 2026, Russia will station similar missiles within striking distance of the west. The US would start deploying long-range fire capabilities in Germany in 2026…The US’s “episodic deployments” are in preparation for longer-term stationing of such capabilities that will include SM-6 and Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons that have a longer range than current capabilities in Europe, Washington and Berlin said.
In a speech...Putin told the US it risked triggering a cold war-style missile crisis with the move. “The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” Putin said. “We will take mirror measures to deploy, taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world.”

War preparations continue in Asia

Nikkei Asia, 7/29–Foreign ministers from Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. stressed unity and vowed to expand collaboration on cyber and maritime security in the Indo-Pacific at a meeting in Tokyo on Monday, which U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailed as "a moment of unprecedented strategic alignment”...The statement did not directly name China, but came as Beijing launched a series of military drills in the seas around Taiwan in May, and stepped up joint military activities with Russia in the South China Sea earlier this month. "This is a moment of unprecedented strategic alignment among our four countries," Blinken said…

The four-way gathering followed a "two-plus-two" session between foreign and defense ministers from Japan and the U.S. on Sunday. The two nations agreed to closer collaboration between their defense forces in the Indo-Pacific -- including a revamping of how U.S. forces are organized in Japan -- and a renewed bilateral focus on Japan's southwestern islands located close to Taiwan.

Shots fired! The attempted assassination of the once and possibly future Racist-in-Chief Donald Trump is just the latest signpost of  fast-rising fascism and nearing world war.  As imperialist China advances at the U.S. rulers’ expense,  the Republican Party stands united behind an incoherent, incompetent grifter with no principle beyond his own self-interest. The Democrats are fractured over Genocide Joe Biden’s public displays of mental and physical decrepitude. Together, the two parties are exposing the capitalist bosses’ desperation, decay, and unbridgeable divisions.  

In short, the U.S. ruling class is a hot mess. Their cherished liberal democracy–based on voting and the myth of workers’ “freedoms”—is on life support. Their one way to check their death spiral, even temporarily, is to resort to fascism–to more aggressive state terror and direct control by the capitalists themselves. We cannot vote our way out of fascism; we must fight back to destroy it. Progressive Labor Party fights both the open fascists backing Trump (see page 1) and the liberal fascists of finance capital (see letters on page 6) while organizing to arm the working class with the most advanced ideas. In this period of unsustainable instability, the liberals remain our greatest threat because of their ability to declaw the ferocity of our class and mislead us into a fascist movement. From the United States to South America to the Middle East to Africa to Asia to Europe to the Caribbean, workers need a real solution to the perpetual crisis of capitalism. Communism is what you are looking for. 

Failing empire splits the ruling class

At no other time in history has the U.S. empire faced so many rivals—China, Russia, Iran, North Korea—with so much military and economic might. Arch-rival China is on a clear trajectory to become the next dominant imperialist superpower. The U.S. is a shell of the country that dominated the globe after World War II. The old U.S.-led “rules-based international order doesn’t really exist anymore…China is…building its own alternative order. As the old order unravels, these overlapping blocs are competing over what will replace it” (Foreign Affairs, 6/18). To prevail in a profit-driven system, the capitalist bloodsuckers have only one choice: world war.

Meanwhile, two competing factions of U.S. bosses are deeply divided over the role the country will play in the world. On one side are the finance capitalists, represented by the Democratic Party, whose profits are tied to controlling international markets and the flow of oil. This wing historically has controlled the government and state apparatus, and has been more willing to sacrifice some short-term profits for long-term gains.

On the other side are the Small Fascists, represented by the Republican Party and Trump (see box for details), who are reluctant to contribute in the name of U.S. global supremacy. Case in point: In 1944, the U.S. bosses were willing to pay 94 percent in taxes (CBS News, 12/7/11). In 2018, the Small Fascists cried about a 23 percent tax rate (New York Times, 5/3).

Both of these gangs are huge threats to the working class. We call the finance capitalists Big Fascists for their bigger money, bigger weapons (at least for now) and bigger danger to mislead and disarm our class. We call the more domestic-oriented wing Small Fascists—although, if given the opportunity, they’d have an equal capacity for state terror and racist and nationalist violence.

Over the last half-century, as imperialist China began to threaten their dominance, the Big Fascists’ suffered a series of humiliating defeats, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Now the liberal rulers are trapped by their own contradictions. On the one hand, they need to scapegoat groups of workers—chiefly immigrants—to keep our class divided and deflect blame from the bosses’ dysfunctional system. At the same time,  they need a multiracial mass military willing to sacrifice their lives for a fading empire that makes workers’ lives unlivable. 

Small Fascists encroach on state power 

Amid the rotting of U.S. imperialism, the Small Fascists saw a window of opportunity. What began as a fringe Tea Party movement after the 2008 economic crisis has now penetrated into every pillar of the state, from Congress to the courts to the White House. Trump instigated a rebellion after losing the 2020 election, and sounds ready to do the same on a larger scale this time around. The Supreme Court, packed with Trump appointees, has ruled that presidents have impunity to do whatever they want. The bosses appear to have passed the point where they can settle their differences without blood on the ground.

The vile Trump—sexual predator, self-serving felon, born-again hypocrite—is of course a danger to the working class.  But he’s also a problem for the bosses. He has no coherent strategy to advance the interests of the U.S. ruling class or even the Small Fascist wing. Like Biden, he reflects U.S. decay. Even so, the Small Fascists have successfully hijacked the Republican Party, which seems far more disciplined and unified than the Democrats at the moment. 

In his best-selling Hillbilly Elegy, Trump’s running mate, the brazen opportunist J.D. Vance, blames the white working class for their problems under capitalism. He’s also called for cutting off welfare benefits (states.aarp.org, 9/8/22). Meanwhile, Trump's white racist base is gaining traction among some Black and brown workers (NYT Times, 7/15) who have seen little but growing inequality and the gutting of social services under Big Fascist rule. 

Riding with Biden into fascism

As the pathetic election spectacle in the U.S. sputters on, it’s the Big Fascists who continue to slaughter our class in Gaza. After tens of thousands of survivors had fled to Al-Mawasi, a designated “safe zone,”

Israel’s Nazi bosses used made-in-U.S. bombs in one of the bloodiest atrocities of a nine-month genocide (NY Times, 7/15). The current official death toll in Gaza is nearly 40,000. Every hour, the U.S.-Israel fascists drop 42 bombs, destroy 12 buildings, kill 15 people and injure 25 more(OCHA, 11/1/23). 

Genocide Joe boasts about the “toughest set of reforms to secure” the U.S.-Mexico border “ever in history” (CNN, 2/23). He’s used his Border Patrol gestapo to match Trump’s deportation numbers (Immigration Policy Institute, 6/27). But Biden’s concentration camps have triggered little mass protests, no rebellions in the streets.  Compared to 2020, the working class has “cooled down,” just as Biden’s Big Fascist masters hoped, though the movement against the Gaza genocide is a glimmer. 

There is no lesser evil among capitalist bosses—only evil. No matter which murdering monster occupies the White House, we can’t afford to be complacent. Workers, youth, and soldiers are losing their illusions about U.S. democracy. Those who supported the likes of  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were gravely disappointed by her defense of genocidal Zionism. Those who joined the largest protest movement in world history after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery,  and Breonna Taylor got crumbs in return. But without organized fightback and communist consciousness, disillusionment can turn into isolation and aimless, suicidal violence, as we saw with Thomas Crooks. Cynicism is not the answer.

Fascists on the attack, we fight them back!

The bosses will have you think that the only choice we have is between open fascists and liberal fascists. But there is always another way: communism. 

Progressive Labor Party has long warned of deepening splits among the bosses, of rising fascism and possible civil war. But communists must do more than warn workers; they must also prepare workers to fight back. A mass, unified, multiracial working class is the one thing the bosses cannot control—and cannot overcome. 

We can't predict when or where the next world war will begin or how the devastation will play out. So, friends, what can we do? We can share this editorial with our folks and cultivate deep political and personal relationships with more of our class siblings. We can dare to defy our local bosses by uniting with other workers for what's in our best interests. We can strive to motivate everyone around us to commit to fight like a communist for life. Progressive Labor Party doesn’t have the numbers to turn the guns around—yet. But what we do today—and what we refuse to do—counts. Fight fascism! Choose the only way out of the hellscape of capitalism–choose communism!

Define to fight it - Information Box

Capitalists compete by any means necessary. Much like smaller criminal gangs, different groups of capitalists battle one another to secure territory, resources, and exploitable labor–the basis of their profits.They have created the state as a mechanism to manage and protect this ruthless profit-driven system. Through laws, police, prisons, elections, the military, schools, the media, and other institutions, the bosses have built a dictatorship to keep themselves in power—and keep the working class out of power. 

Fascism is a stage of late capitalism in crisis where the liberal democratic veil peels away to reveal a rotting dictatorship. The bosses use state terror to discipline their own class and enforce compliance by the working class–both essential conditions for waging global war. Fascism is marked by more direct and centralized rule, with intensified racism, sexism, and nationalism. 

The Big Fascists are the dominant finance capitalists, principally the multinational banks and oil companies (JPMorganChase, ExxonMobil). They’re trying to build a multiracial, patriotic coalition to back U.S. imperialism and protect their far-flung profits. This is the wing that plays the drums of World War III. 

The Small Fascists are mostly domestically oriented capitalists, spearheaded by the Koch, Mercer, DeVos, and Coors families, along with Richard Mellon Scaife, Harry and Lynde Bradley, John Olin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch and a cast of other billionaires. They want to cut taxes for short-term profits and are reluctant to invest in costly ground wars to defend the global U.S. empire. Their agenda includes a racist gutting of social services at home and a retreat from U.S. imperialist alliances, including NATO. 

Violence, a tool of the capitalist state - Information Box

Violence is part and parcel of the capitalist system. As CHALLENGE goes to press, the motives of 20-year-old Thomas Crooks are unclear. Whether this was an act of lone-wolf vigilantism or one backed by either side of the U.S. ruling class, it’s clear that both the Small and Big Fascists, cynical opportunists who they are, will exploit the incident for votes. 

Before the blood dried on Trump’s ear, all shades of Democrats, from so-called socialist Bernie Sanders to Nancy Pelosi, quickly tweeted that “violence has no place in our democracy.” This is the same U.S. democracy that was built through genocide and enslavement. It’s the same democracy that spawned the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow, that has lynched, deported, and incarcerated our class, that threw  workers of Japanese descent into concentration camps, that terrorized Muslim workers after 9/11—and that’s just within the U.S. borders. The Big Fascists became the world’s biggest gangsters through violence on the daily. 

But responding to organized state violence with acts of individual violence can only hurt the working class. To defeat the capitalist bosses, workers need mass, organized violence. We need communist revolution. 

STATEN ISLAND, NY, July 2- Once again, the racists rear their ugly heads on Staten Island, organizing a rally against migrants. Once again Progressive Labor Party (PLP), showed up to oppose them! NYC has been one of the epicenters of the racist anti-migrant crisis. Kkkop turned Mayor Eric Adams is mandating local churches to become shelters rather than find permanent housing for all workers. This particular church in Staten Island which  has agreed to shelter 15 single migrant men nightly is now under attack by racists. As the capitalist system spirals deeper into decay and the global migrant crisis intensifies tens of millions of workers’ from Gaza to Latin America, to the U.S. are displaced by capitalist crises like genocidal imperialist wars, racist unemployment, super-exploitation, sky-high costs of housing, and the twin crises of capitalist driven climate and homelessness

It is under these inhumane, unbearable circumstances that capitalism forces workers to risk their lives to flee all that they know, and that's when arch-racist Scott LoBaido, a Trump loving, racist goon, called for a rally to attack migrants on Instagram. Unfortunately for Lobaido and his band of racists on Staten Island, PLP mobilized our antiracist, multiracial, multigenerational contingent made up of members and friends to shut these racists down. Fighting these racists in the streets is a crucial step in organizing workers to smash this racist capitalist system and its rotten borders and replace it with the only system welcoming and nurturing to the entire international working class: communism! 

Planning to shut the racists down

Lobaido, who gained notoriety for building a racist base on Staten Island to attack migrant workers, mobilized his racist followers on instagram to stage an anti-migrant protest at the church. Alerted by a friend who monitors LoBaido’s racist, pro-Trump Instagram ravings, PLP members instantly organized a plan to fight back. Friends in Peace Action Staten Island and SI4 Palestine were contacted to join us at the church. We were welcomed by the pastor to gather on the church steps to oppose the racists, who were standing behind a police barricade across the street.

LoBaido used a bullhorn to address his followers and attack our group. We began to use a bullhorn, too, but the police stopped us. They said that LoBaido had a sound permit, while we did not. One of our members then pointed out to the cops that it was illegal for anyone to use a sound magnifying device within 500 feet of a church. Of course, the cops, who are never neutral, ignored us and allowed the racists to continue to use the bullhorn. Undeterred, all of us began to chant antiracist, pro-migrant slogans to drown out the racists. Everytime the racists chanted “USA”, we chanted “KKK” and managed to drown out many of the racists’ leaders who got on the mic including former mayoral candidate KKKurtis Sliwa, the leader of a racist vigilante group called the Guardian Angels.

After more than an hour, the various racist speakers, almost none from the neighborhood, ended their vile rants and left with their followers. Although LoBaido claimed that he was representing neighborhood sentiment, almost all the racists left in cars. Further disproving his lie, Party members who sold CHALLENGE and distributed pro-migrant leaflets before and after the rally were well received. A high point was when a car was stopped waiting for a traffic light, and the driver blasted his horn the whole time to drown out the racist speaker. He applauded us and took a CHALLENGE and a leaflet. After the racists finally departed all of us, including those who came from Peace Action and Staten Island for Palestine, left in an organized manner. 

Small and Big Fascists: a threat to migrant workers

LoBaido represents the Small fascist, openly racist wing of the U.S. ruling class, most of them Trump supporters, including Nicole Malliotakis, the Republican Congresswoman representing Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. Politically, the Republicans dominate Staten Island. However, last week, when Staten Island politicians gathered at the church for a press conference to condemn the migrant shelter plan, one of the most vehement in opposition was Democratic Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks. The liberals are fascists in waiting.

As the migrant crisis continues, public officials, including Black Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, continue to fail to plan to adequately care for them. To save money, the migrants are to be sheltered in six Staten Island churches, including the one today. Happily for the capitalist rulers and their lackeys like Adams, this policy also stirs up racism and divides workers. While the Big Fascists lackey politicians and institutions use identity politics and intersectionality to divide our class, while ramping up racist, anti-migrant and sexist attacks on workers around the world. In contrast, Small Fascist Trump supporting misleaders like Lobaido play on workers’ disaffection with liberal rulers by scapegoating migrants, winning many Black and Brown workers to buy into the racist trope of migrant men being unvetted predators and joining the Trump style domestic rulers ranks of small fascists in the process.

It is vital for the Party to militantly oppose the open racists like LoBaido and his followers and to work in other organizations to build antiracism and win workers and students to our line. However, we want workers to see that it is the Big Fascist main wing of the ruling class, represented by scum like Adams, Hochul, and Biden, that poses the greatest danger to our class. They still dominate the state and are doing their best to prepare for the war they hope will enable them to maintain their position as the world’s top capitalist dog.  We let Lobaido know that as long as PLP is around we will be there to run the racists out of town. 

The only way to stop them once and for all is with communist revolution. Communism means  building a world without borders, imperialist wars, and racist and sexist profits because workers from Gaza to Staten Island and beyond will be in charge of meeting all our needs, not profit nationalist hungry bosses. If you agree, Join PLP so we can build this world together!

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, June 29—The U.S. ruling class wants us to believe their electoral circus is the only way to fix the problems inherent to capitalism. But as communists we understand that the only way out of this worldwide misery of capitalism is organizing to smash it and replace it with communism, a society run by and for the international working class. In this vein more than 50 comrades and friends gathered to learn from inspiring fightback stories of veteran Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members who organized against U.S. imperialism in Vietnam and against racist and sexist attacks in the U.S. in the late 1960s and 70’s. We discussed how to apply these lessons to the current movement against racist genocide in Gaza. 

The opening speech detailed the disasters our international brothers and sisters are living through today from imperialist wars, to genocide in Palestine and Sudan, to climate catastrophes, to racist anti-immigrant attacks. The importance of revolutionary optimism was emphasized- the understanding that the international working class will one day smash this horrific capitalist system. Participants then moved from table to table to learn from five veteran comrades who shared inspiring stories of how they joined the mass movement against the Vietnam War and against racism. They spoke about gaining the experience and confidence to join a Party dedicated to fighting for a communist future free of wars for profit, inequality, police terror and the impossibly long list of capitalist-created social ills.

The world, then and now

The world was different then. Millions of workers around the world were inspired by the communist movement led by the Soviet Union and China. There was mass unrest, strikes, antiracist rebellions in cities and mass marches. In 1969-70 Black workers led a strike of 164,000 workers against General Electric for 102 days. The Party led thousands marching to the Labor Department in support, chanting “Warmaker, Strikebreaker, Smash GE.” In 1970 postal workers went on an illegal, wildcat strike, once again led by Black workers. In 1970 over 400,000 workers struck against General Motors. In 1971 when the U.S. bosses invaded Cambodia, protests on college campuses exploded. 

PLP was involved in bringing revolutionary ideas to campuses and workplaces, to picket lines and mass marches. Masses of workers and students were in action and many Party members acted boldly in response. We pushed the limits. We made mistakes but we learned by doing.

Practice is primary.

Nationalism is nationalism, but it was different back then. Revolutionary nationalists, aligned with many communists, defeated the U.S. imperialists, kicking them out of Vietnam. Today Vietnam is a capitalist country and a sweatshop for profiteering corporations led by Nike. Nationalism is a dangerous idea for the international working class because it keeps us tied to the bosses of capitalist nations. Just because they look like us and speak the same language as us does not mean they have our interests. Capitalists will always use their power to continue their profiteering.

Some key lessons from those years

Lesson 1: Multi-racial, working-class unity is necessary to fight racist attacks! PLP called for college students on summer vacation to get factory jobs and build a worker-student alliance. Many Party members learned from workers how to fight the bosses on the job. Strike support during the 1970 General Motors strike was organized by PLP college students on strike against the Vietnam War. The point was to show how capitalism was a system that attacked the whole working class. GM, GE and the U.S. Postal Service attacked workers in the U.S. by cutting their wages and forcing them to work in dangerous conditions while U.S. imperialism dropped bombs on workers in Vietnam. 

Lesson 2: Base Building is key! This means we have to get to know each other and build trust to effectively fight back. Comrades described how much of this happened at the bar. Spending time together, building friendship and struggling over ideas are all necessary ingredients to building a strong movement that can survive the bosses’ attacks. 

Lesson 3: A communist party is necessary to eradicate capitalism! Fighting the bosses takes discipline, organization and commitment. Right now the working class is unorganized and influenced by capitalist ideas of individualism and cynicism. But workers can reject those ideas and organize to fight back collectively. Under communism workers will run the world. We need millions of workers committed to fighting for a world where we work collectively based on what we all need, not based on profits for billionaires. 

We take inspiration from these fightbacks but today we live in a different period. This period is one of increasing chaos as the world’s bosses' rivalry for top-dog status spirals us towards world war III. There is more racist scapegoating of migrants, more genocidal attacks and more brutal suppression of fightback. Our job still remains the same though. We must continue the lifelong struggle to defeat capitalism with communist revolution. We have a long and difficult road ahead. We need everyone to join us so we can bury this disastrous system once and for all! On that grave, we will build a new world- one where all humanity is valued!