BOSTON, September 19—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) marched against a New England nazi organization, chanting "Hitler rose, Hitler fell, racist Nazis go to hell" and "The Cops, the Courts, the Ku Klux Klan, All a Part of the Bosses' Plan!” We marched to the West Roxbury District Court where a pre-trial hearing was being held for nazi Chris Hood who had been arrested in July for physically attacking an LGBTQ organizer at a children's book reading in Boston.
In the Boston area and around the country, neo-nazi organizations are using attacks on LGBTQ people as the "tip of the spear" to attract new recruits. They are taking advantage of the fact that sexism and anti-gay acts marginalize non-gender-conforming people. The day before our march (Sunday, 9/18) a dozen neo-nazis protested against the Boston Children's Hospital Gender Multi-Specialty Service, a program that addresses the needs of transgender youth. PLP members were among 200 anti-nazi protestors confronting these scum. Many cops were there in force protecting the nazis. Without the cops, they would not have walked away unscathed. We mass leafletted before our demonstration to bring the lessons of fighting fascism back into the consciousness of the working class. The most important lesson is to recognize the role of communists as the most uncompromising fighters against fascism and the only force capable of destroying the capitalist system that is ever spiraling into fascist decay (see editorial on page 2). Join PLP!
Cops, courts won’t stop nazis: it’s up to us!
The working class in Massachusetts is witnessing a rise in neo-nazism: “the Anti-Defamation League counted 388 reported hate, extremism, antisemitism and terror incidents in 2021. Five years earlier, it tallied only 123” (GBH, 5/18).
Other nazi attacks in recent months in the Boston area include:
- Demonstrations at Brigham & Women's Hospital against doctors who are fighting for equal treatment for Black cardiac patients. The nazis called this "white genocide.”
- Protests against the Boston Holocaust Memorial.
- Hanging a banner on 9/11 on a bridge over a highway saying "Jews did 9/11."
- A pop-up march through Boston on July 4 weekend, beating up a Black man.
Small groups of nazis and white nationalists may commit dozens of racist, anti-gay attacks, even murders and bombings, but they become much more dangerous when the big capitalist ruling class throws their support behind them. Right now, these groups are aligned with and funded by the Small Fascist (see Glossary, page 6) movement but they could also be used by the Wall Street/Biden fascists as their system flounders.
In fact, the history of the rise of Hitler in 1920-1933 Germany shows this. When the German economy crashed, and the workers’ movement grew, the big German capitalists, Thyssen, Krupp, Siemens and I.G. Farben, desperately began to fund and support Hitler big-time. Without their support Hitler could not have come to power.
Big Fascists still big danger
For years, the FBI (with their racist history of crushing the Black Panther Party and killing Civil Rights leaders) has been keeping a "list" of neo-nazis and right-wing terrorists, but have done essentially nothing to crush these domestic terrorists. Boston’s Big Fascist (see glossary, page 6) liberal Mayor Wu and other politicians publicly decry these groups as “repugnant bigots,” but they let their cops and courts protect them allowing them to grow and spread racism and sexism and divide the working class.
The U.S. liberal world order is crumbling at home and around the world as Big Fascist U.S. finance capitalists move towards war with Russia and China. They will need unofficial armed militias to maintain control of their system when they can't rely on the police force or army to crush dissent. These groups will be used like the paramilitary forces in Latin America from the 1960's until today to carry out extra-judicial killings and disappearances, smashing protest movements and workers' strikes.
Still, the Big Fascists, who hold state power in liberal cities, pose the greatest danger for the working class. We only have to look at the example of Eric “top cop” Adams in New York City whose personal mission is to beef up the military police and carceral state, while masquerading as a hip-hop mayor bent on stopping crime and gun violence.
We need to set the standard that the multiracial working class will stand up to all fascists and force them back under their rocks. A united and multiracial working class army can smash both Small Fascist goons and the Big Fascist’s gestapo state just like our communist predecessors smashed Hitler and Mussolini. Death to fascism! Power to the workers!