SAN FRANCISCO, October 17—Hundreds of antiracist fighters assembled on short notice today to stop a fascist rally dead in its tracks. When word went out that the racist, sexist Proud Boys planned a rally here, it was Progressive Labor Party’s (PLP) revolutionary communist duty to be present, ready to fight back with our anti-fascist class sisters and brothers.
Yet the Proud Boys are small fry compared to the Big Fascists who control Wall Street and wage wars over Mideast oil. So to eradicate all fascists, we must kill the profit system that birthed them all, possible only when readers like you help build a mass Party of millions.
Break a fascist’s face
The city of San Francisco is a target because it is what is termed by the bosses as a “sanctuary city” that supposedly shelters immigrant workers. It also draws the gutter racists’ wrath because many residents of the city are antiracist, and it has a Black mayor. The initial rally permit was for Dolores Park in the Mission District (until recently home to many immigrant workers) but the night before the venue was changed to the UN Plaza.
The day of, the racist scum from “Team Save America” totaled six people and were defended by a force of approximately 300 kkkops. They were met by close to 400 anti-fascists.When the fascists arrived they were escorted behind a barricade by the police and they tried to speak. We shouted them down and threw plastic bottles of water to shut them down. Someone beat up one fascist, another fighter punched their leader, Philip Anderson, breaking his two front teeth. The fascists spoke for less than 10 minutes before being whisked away under police escort.
A few PL’ers organized a small contingent to attend the counter-demonstration. As a student newer to the Party said, “We are here for two reasons: One is to clear the streets of fascists and defend the right of protest for the working class, and secondly to recruit anti-fascists to the PLP.” We distributed over 300 leaflets and dozens of copies of CHALLENGE to the anti-fascist fighters, and made contacts.
PLP says, No free speech for fascists! Fascist words and movements have led to genocidal state terror and the slaughter of tens of millions of workers in the past 90 years. Fascist terror in the U.S. more recently took the lives of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 and two antiracists protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. We have learned the lesson—fascist words kill, and we must stop fascists from promoting racist violence when necessary.
Organizing to protect ourselves in the present as a united working class is necessary, but it is not our only goal as a Party. Our goal, as the international PLP, is to win millions of workers and students to the reality that fascism directly results from capitalism in crisis and decay, and that both will only be destroyed with communist revolution!
Liberal politicians & kkkops attack the working class
The city’s Black liberal mayor, London Breed, spent at least $96,000 on overtime police pay to send the force of 300 to defend the fascists. This is the same mayor who promised, this past June, to reallocate funds from the police and into reforms to supposedly benefit Black workers. But like all liberal politicians, when push came to shove, Breed sent out the kkkops to defend the capitalists and their private property.
The racist cops’ defense of fascist groups while attacking anti-racists is nothing new, and we should never expect them to be “neutral” in these struggles. Throughout this past summer we watched the bosses’ attack dogs beat and arrest countless anti-racists in the streets, only to allow murdering teen Kyle Rittenhouse stroll past them with a smoking assault rifle. They all protect this racist capitalist state!
Only communism crushes fascism
Some 100 counter-protesters wearing black clothing and flak vests identified with “Antifa,” short for anti-fascist. Antifa is a coalition of various groups including some who agree that violence against the far right is sometimes called for. The Antifa flag (“The Iron Front”) echoes the bosses’ lie that communism is like fascism, when in reality communists have been the greatest antiracist and anti-fascist force in history.
It was the communists who opposed fascism in Europe before and during World War II. It was the communists in the Soviet Union and the European partisans trained and organized by the Soviets who defeated Hitler. The Soviet Union lost millions of citizens in that conflict and the Nazis suffered 75 percent of their losses fighting the Soviets (Washington Post, 5/8/15). The U.S. and Great Britain held back and didn’t enter the war in Europe until it was clear that the Soviets were winning and that other workers of Europe might follow their lead and throw out capitalism elsewhere.
As the drums of imperialist war become clearer on the horizon, PLP is fighting to build our anti-fascist movement of millions. When the international working class takes power again, we’ll make sure that no seed of capitalism is ever allowed to grow—only communism. Fight fascism, join PLP!