As the liberal U.S. bosses escalate their attacks on tech giant Facebook (now rebranded as “Meta”), their pretense of “protecting democracy” against “domestic terrorism” is in fact an exercise of state control and capitalist dictatorship. As the U.S. accelerates toward more open fascism and global conflict, their rulers must first and foremost discipline their own class.
When whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked thousands of documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), she revealed what were mostly open secrets: Facebook’s sexist body-shaming of teenaged girls on Instagram; its open market for sex trafficking of women and children; its callous promotion of click-bait racism (CNN, 10/28). This is business as usual in the maximum-profit world of social media. What’s new is the liberal bosses’ urgency to crack down on billionaires like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and force them to fall in line with the rulers’ agenda.
To understand the liberals’ move toward fascism, the natural response of capitalism in crisis, we must look at the deepening split within the U.S. ruling class. The Big Fascists, the finance capitalists representing the wealthiest bosses and most powerful multinational corporations, are the architects of an imperialist world order they’ve dominated since World War II. The Small Fascists, the opposition wing mobilized by Donald Trump, make most of their profits domestically and oppose higher taxes for the next big war. At stake is the future of U.S. imperialism.
With their empire in decline, the Big Fascists won’t give up world dominance without a fight—most likely with capitalist archrival China. To prepare for war, rulers turn to fascism—first to discipline and unify their own ranks, then to control the working class. To defend their system from internal and external threats, they must use every instrument in their state apparatus, including the internet and social media. The U.S. government investigations of Facebook are a step toward organizing all of society while building patriotism and nationalism for imperialist war. That is why Progressive Labor Party fights to win our class to reject fascism and fight for a communist alternative.
The hammer of discipline leads to fascism
While Zuckerberg leans toward the Big Fascists, his short-sighted individualism makes him unreliable. He donated $419 million to turn out the Democratic vote in 2020 (NY Post, 10/14) and funded the failed Newark charter school initiative, a pet project for the liberal bosses. But most of all, Zuckerberg is for Zuckerberg. He’s the controlling shareholder of a company valued at more than $900 billion. Facebook’s algorithms are engineered to generate maximum likes, shares, attention, and ad revenues. Given the racist, sexist essence of capitalist society, it was inevitable that racists and sexists—representing fascists big and small—would dominate the platform.
For the liberal U.S. rulers, reining in tech kingpins is nothing new. In 1998, under President Bill Clinton, the Department of Justice brought an antitrust suit against Microsoft to force Bill Gates into finance capital’s tent. Now social media are the ones under the gun. In the 2016 presidential races, the liberal bosses stood helpless as Trump expanded and weaponized his following through Twitter. They were infuriated when Facebook enabled Russian hackers to help throw Trump and the Small Fascists the election. They are determined not to let it happen again.
The Big Fascists’ quandary is that social media is much harder to tame than the old media of TV networks and newspapers like the New York Times. After the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, the rulers squeezed Twitter and Facebook to kick Trump off their platforms. From the evidence of last month’s Congressional hearing, where Haugen was the star witness, more aggressive moves are coming.
Social media hurts working class
Under capitalism, everything that might have been a social good, like being able to stay connected with people far away, turns into its opposite. As a tool for profit, social media:
- Generates racist violence For many workers, Facebook IS their internet—and their main source of news. Along with WhatsApp, it has fomented ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia (harvardpolitics.com, 4/19), violence against Muslim workers in India (Slate, 10/26), and genocide against the Rohingya working class in Myanmar, a campaign that “has led to murder, rape and forced migration” (New York Times, 11/6/18).
- Trafficks women workers In Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Facebook knowingly serves as a market for enslavement: “the recruitment,...buying, and selling of domestic workers” (BBC, 9/23).
- Spreads anti-scientific lies and conspiracy theories “Facebook has facilitated the spread of misinformation [including anti-vaccination falsehoods], hate speech, and political polarization” (The Atlantic, 10/25). Regarding “combustible election misinformation,” a former employee noted that “we amplify them and give them broader distribution” (NYT, 10/26).
- Fuels sexism and alienation “Passive consumption of sexually objectifying content on social networking sites...result in lowered body satisfaction and self-esteem, particularly in women” (Frontiers in Psychology, 8/25). Teens who regularly use social media are three times more likely to feel socially isolated (NPR, 3/6/17).
- Represses fightback Following the kkkop murder of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, police used social media platforms to map, identify, and arrest protesters (The Verge, 10/11/16). They did the same after the summer 2020 rebellions. As fascism rises, militant workers and communists in particular will be targeted and attacked. Clearly, we cannot use online organizing to replace real-life base-building and immersion in workers’ lives.
Fascism and inter-imperialist rivalry
The imperialist bosses in China (and Russia) hold a big advantage over the Big Fascists in the U.S.: a unified ruling class that rigidly controls social media, and media in general.
So how could the U.S. bosses’ slap-down of these rotten social media be a danger for the international working class? The enemy of our enemy is not our ally. Just as the finance capital main wing fights to shut down Small Fascist content, they will also shut down any dissent at odds with their patriotic war agenda—including CHALLENGE. The attack on Facebook is a precedent for a much broader assault upon the working class.
From chaos comes fascism but dark night shall have its end
We cannot afford to be complacent. A weakened U.S. is not an automatic opportunity for the working class. Out of the bosses’ desperation comes fascism. Workers must arm ourselves with communist politics, a mass Progressive Labor Party, and a fighting red army. As we raise our red flag high, we raise it with CHALLENGE in hand! Only a communist revolution—the final conflict—will liberate our class. Long after the Zuckerbergs of the world and their billions have been ploughed under, it is a story we will tell ourselves, with communist media run by and for the working class.
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Día de Los Muertos honors victims of racist police terror
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- 09 November 2021 391 hits
LOS ANGELES, November 1—As communists, we know everything is political. We strive to make that apparent to our friends and the entire working class. It is with this in mind that we took Día de Los Muertos, a holiday to honor the dead, and united with impacted families to not only honor loved ones, but indict this racist system that stole them from us. The event with about 75 attendees included dinner, music, poetry, a police car shaped piñata, and a pin the Molotov cocktail on the cop car game.
A poem, excerpted below, was written and performed by a comrade who has spent the last two years immersed in the struggle against police murder. As a Party, we have consistently injected revolutionary politics into the reform struggle. This poem lays out the current struggle we are waging –that police murder cannot be reformed away. KKKops will only be abolished when we overthrow the entire system of capitalism through a revolution led by Progressive Labor Party. The poem was well received and we will follow up with a Party forum discussing this very topic.
Día de los Muertos
This Día de los Muertos
We honor Nicholas Burgos
And all those souls the police stole
With stories of our loved ones told
Break bread, art and music
And a film with raised tombstones
Flowered by multiracial fists and Mexican marigolds
And poems
Both passionate and bold
And gotta fight like Ghada writes
Tonight
We deepen our ties
And love a little deeper
See past the masks and masquerades
Of politicians that parade by
But instead listen
What are those who passed away trying to say?
What is the lesson?
I think of Julius Fuchick on this night of hallow
A Czechoslovakian communist who wrote notes on scraps in secret
Even as he faced certain death by Nazi gallows
He said, “in real life there are no spectators: you all participate in life”
His work in the underground helped defeat fascism
and inspired Ricardo Neftalí Basoalto
You know him as Pablo
But you probably didn’t know it
That he took the name of a Czechoslovakian poet
Neruda—
So what are the deceased who live on within us trying to tell us?
The building blocks of life are found on icy rocks of comets
The universe is ours!
But beyond the poetry and astrophysics
Capitalism is killing us and the environment
It’s never been more apparent
But if only common sense was enough
If we couple it with scientific philosophy
We can learn that we need to be communists
Cuz the jig is up and the vote is in
Drugs are being criminalized by Joe Biden again
A public health crisis like covid
And we are dying by the hundreds of thousands
From synthetic opioids and overdoses
And guaranteed more police violence
The community harm – you name it
Are these sins of capitalism?
And forever destined to repeat
Because they’re imprinted in the profits
And foundations of finance on Wall Street
Which has stood the test of every reform for centuries
Including Abolition and a civil war
We live in one of the most democratic cities
In the most democratic state in one of the most democratic countries
And it cages the most people than any place on Earth
So where does this confidence that their state apparatus can work for us come from?
When billionaires fund U.S. imperialism abroad
Do we raise a fist or a brow?
What is in it for them?
When folks who claim to be the new political sages
Maybe using different language up on these stages
Sounding radical but with the same message wrapped in a new package Do we still say they’re the lesser evil, the answer, or do we get enraged?
And recognize the fundamental flaws of simply passing laws
Focusing on the effects and not the cause. Going to the polls for politicians within institutions designed for our demise
Petitioning for legislation that can purportedly abolish their policing
That they created and control since day one in this country
Is not up for discussion let alone defunding
The belief that through passing bills or even with a storm on capitol hill
That this system can be abolished piecemeal
Without a violent revolution to end this whole damn system
Is the new opiate of the masses—
It’s about more than shutting it down and burning it down
But what do we build now and in its place?
The genius of the masses is found
Where the struggle abounds
In the groundedness
Yes it’s about the sun on high but without the fertile dirt
It’s the difference between Mars and Earth
So what is our class trying to teach us
The working class
That is screaming out segregated
Like our dearly departed
But trying to reach us
In desperate need of organization
We are inevitably defeated before we get started
If we don’t build a communist Party
I know this poem
Is only words on a page
Like pan de muerto on an altar
But consider this food for thought
From those beyond the grave
Resting in power
And when
Maria, Evelia
Marie, Pamela
Sam, Amanda
Rosa, Eloina Leti, Hilda
Deanna, Christina
Valerie, Barbara
Lisa, Lea
Emily, Jonetta
Ghada,
Hasta la Victoria!
Victoria
When we join together.
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Newark: workers fight racist kkkourts and kkkops
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- 09 November 2021 432 hits
NEWARK, NJ, October 15—A multiracial, multigenerational group of workers in Newark flooded the courthouse as a show of action against racist policing. When Black workers are under attack, what do we do? WE STAND UP, FIGHT BACK! Since June 2021, the Newark Police Department (NPD) has stalked, harassed, terrorized, and arrested members of the Rodwell/Spivey family. After undercover police illegally and brutally stopped and frisked one of their family members, the Rodwell/Spivey brothers and their neighbors bravely stepped in. While Mayor Ras Baraka’s right arm reform organization, People Organizing for Progress (POP) have dragged their feet to aid the family, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) immediately went to meet with and build a defense team for our working class brothers and sisters. The main lesson learned from the Rodwell/Spivey struggle is that liberal politicians and reformists are the main danger. The liberal section of the capitalist class utilizes Black politicians like Ras Baraka to shortchange workers’ quality of life, while laying the groundwork for liberal fascism.
Real fightback vs performative solidarity
As the terror from the state continues, so does the movement to fight back. At the courthouse, over 30 PL’ers, organizers, and friends attended to give support and call for Justin of the Rodwell Spivey families to be freed and all charges to be dropped. PLP and friends stood outside of the courthouse to give speeches about why they came out. A local high school teacher started off by explaining the importance of leading by example. “As a history teacher I can talk about the importance of understanding the lessons of the past antiracist struggles, but we know that leading by example is the best lesson that any teacher can put together. Our students need to see that the struggle continues and what it looks like to be a part of it.”
A worker for a non profit exposed the hypocrisy of the moment. She pointed out the painted street that read “BLACK LIVES MATTER” and the new Dr. Martin Luther King statue nearby, while Black, white, and Latin cops and politicians terrorize present-day anti-racist fighters. While Baraka and liberal misleaders in POP engage in performative activism, PL’ers practice communist thinking and fight back to smash racism for good.
State terror against Black workers
On June 1, cops racially profiled a group of Black men while they looked at clothes in a van. After jumping out of a police wagon and attacking one of the men, the police illegally searched and brutally attacked the rest. The brothers, watching from their house, came out to defend them. Had they not done so, the KKKops might have killed them. As antiracist communists, we know when workers fight back, it scares the ruling class. From a young age, educational institutions under capitalism teach us that workers are supposed to revere cops, even when workers see the differences in how they treat and divide workers. In this instance, the police–with the aid of Newark’s Black, liberal Mayor, Ras Baraka–showed how they only serve fascism. In the ensuing days after the attack, the cops stormed into their house with guns drawn while the family was sleeping and crushed insulin belonging to the youngest brother. Days later, NPD set up mobile precinct trucks outside of their house, forced them and any visitors on the block to show identification, and to this day the KKKops continue to survey and occupy the block.
For millions of workers around the world,police terror will always exist as long as capitalism, a system that thrives on the violence of exploitation, exists. Capitalists need viciously racist cops to defend and legitimize its oppressive dictatorship. Thus smashing capitalism is the only viable form of self defense for our class. Only when workers reject dead end reforms and liberal politicians, and fight directly for communism will we rid ourselves of police terror. Fighting for communism means smashing the exploitative profit and wage system that breeds racist and sexist inequality, sociopathy, and criminality. It means building a world where there is no need for cops, because workers will run all aspects of society to ensure our collective safety and wellbeing. Communism means real justice.
What is the international significance of this case? Like Joe Biden’s Border Patrol attacks immigrants, Baraka’s KKKop attacks in Newark represent what we can expect from liberal capitalist bosses–more death and terror for Black workers. Like the Scottsboro case in the 1930s, communists must once again lead an international fightback to free the Rodwell/Spivey family and their neighbors from the grip of liberal state terror.
Courts, tool of the bosses
Capitalists use the courts to repress working class fightback. At the court proceedings, young Black men are brought in chained like slaves. While three of the brothers attacked by the cops were released, Justin is still imprisoned in Essex County Detention Center as Covid-19, rodent infestations, and abuse run rampant in NJ jails. All four of the Rodwell/Spivey brothers are being charged with resisting arrest, aggravated assault, obstruction of justice, and assault of an officer as prosecutors try to break the family with delays and withholding of key evidence. Justin has not been able to be home with his two children since June.
PLP has stood with the Rodwell/Spivey family since they began to fight back over the summer. We will continue to fight until Justin is freed and all of the charges are dropped against the brothers. However, we can’t ignore the contradiction in this campaign. No matter how big or militant a reform movement gets, without a push for communism, workers around the world will never receive justice from the level of state repression we face. However, being part of antiracist fightback is essential for our class to learn how to smash racism and build a world where workers are central.
As one PLP member said at the courthouse after the family thanked them for coming, “This fight isn’t just about your family. Across Newark, and the world, police are constantly terrorizing the working class - especially Black workers. For every one family that fights back, hundreds accept the attacks because of fear. We need to fight back not just to show the ruling class that they can’t terrorize us without retribution, but to give the working class confidence that they can fight back.” Join PLP at the Veteran’s Courthouse, Thursday, November 18 at 9:00 AM!
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APHA Convention RX: Communism good for workers’ health
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- 09 November 2021 496 hits
WASHINGTON, DC, October 27—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) health workers once again sharpened the politics at the national convention of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Even as Covid-19 has kept the conference still mostly virtual, we were able to attack capitalist health care as serving the bosses profits system and not the needs of the working class. As in past years, we promoted an antiracist resolution that we had written with friends, prepared a special APHA Challenge supplement (bit.ly/APHA CHALLENGE), and presented a PLP program at the end of the conference. We were able to bring communist ideas into the struggle against racist public health conditions and challenge people to join the fight for communist revolution.
Putting communism front and center
Our virtual PLP program, “Racism and Capitalism: Is Communism the Solution?” was a great success. We promoted it during many sessions we attended all week during which we raised the issues of capitalism and communism. Eighty people attended and heard three young comrades speak about revolution versus reform, imperialism, and the need for a party.
One speaker challenged public health workers to go all the way “upstream” to smash capitalism, the root of social problems, instead of stopping with piecemeal reforms. The destruction of people’s lives due to imperialism and its policies through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other organizations was clearly described with an emphasis on how capitalist international relations are NOT CHARITABLE.
When the third speaker asked what made people mad under capitalism the chat function went wild with multiple examples! We then had 30 minute breakout rooms of about six people each with a PLP facilitator where we discussed how revolutionaries participate in reform struggles and/or what went right and wrong in previous communist revolutions. Even more people were interested as 121 people registered for the event and all will get copies of the program. There were multiple requests for transcripts. One young participant was inspired to say “it’s great that there are so many passionate and active people,” and others liked the opportunity to discuss in the breakout rooms.
Capitalism will always incarcerate the working class
As police and prison reform efforts have spread around the country we have joined many of these struggles and discussions that have included prison abolition – a situation that can only exist for the working class after a communist revolution. The resolution, Advancing Public Health Interventions to Address the Harms of the Carceral System, had passed as a late-breaker last year but had to be resubmitted this year to become permanent policy.
We testified in the hearings on this resolution about the high incarceration rates in New Orleans where air conditioning is denied to prisoners, about the horrible conditions in detention centers where Covid-19 management is non-existent and medical care is incompetent, and how releasing prisoners during the pandemic did not lead to dangerous situations. The reviewers had initially given it a negative assessment but the authors doggedly pursued the issue within the APHA membership and finally the reviewers put it on the agenda and it passed with 86 percent in favor. It will be posted on the APHA website and public health workers and others can continue to use it in campaigns locally and nationally to decarcerate the prisons.
Keep fighting
The APHA is attended by thousands of public health workers each year who are dedicated to reform struggles for better health care and access. The APHA leadership is tied to Big Fascist main wing bosses(see glossary on page 6). The organization is there to ensure the bosses interests are advanced in public health care.
Our goal is to fight for the needs of the working class and build a communist movement led by PLP. When it is in person, we always organize a demonstration about a key issue and try to involve local workers and students who cannot afford to attend the expensive conference. In these actions we try to lead with advanced ideas that build confidence in the working class. Meanwhile, we continue to meet more and more fighters who question capitalism, like the three new young members who spoke at our session. We continue to fight for our position that capitalism can never provided decent health care for workers, who are only seen as commodities. We’ll be back next year to bring the fight for communism to the conference in Boston.
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Communist revolution: the antidote to capitalist crisis
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- 09 November 2021 537 hits
WASHINGTON DC, October 28—“I don’t know what I’ve been told, pharma’s pockets lined with gold!” Lies and tricks will not divide, humanity standing side by side”; “14 billion doses NOW”; “No more pharma greed, global vaccines are what we need” and “Break the patents!” These chants rang out as 100 people marched to the Executive Office Building near the White House to demand the liberal Joe Biden administration end the pharmaceutical industry’s control of vaccine patents.
The multinational and multiracial character of the demonstration demonstrated the value and necessity of internationalism and working class unity. Covid-19’s devastating worldwide spread has hurt workers the hardest in accordance with the racist, sexist and imperialist nature of capitalism itself. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) represented these politics at the rally today, adding chants that were picked up like, “This is what SOLIDARITY looks like”.
After the rally downtown, 30 workers and PL’ers marched to the home of Jeffrey Zeintz, who heads Biden’s Covid Response Team. He refused to meet us, so we camped out all night outside his house, and at 6 am rang alarm clocks and had a bullhorn rally to “wake him up” to the need for global vaccines.
Vaccine equity NOW!
Rallying on the eve of the G20 meetings, organizers from the reform group “Justice is Global” were joined by public health workers including Public Health Awakened (PHA), medical students from Rutgers University, PLP members, and several other groups to demand that the Biden administration make vaccine equity a reality around the world.
They called upon the U.S. to demand the G20 countries support the TRIPS waiver, which would release the patents on Moderna and Pfizer mRNA vaccines to all countries. Providing resources to countries to produce mRNA vaccines themselves is needed to guarantee that people everywhere can be vaccinated.
The capitalist drive for maximum profit prevents the capitalist system from solving the global Covid-19 epidemic, let alone addressing how unequally SARS-CoV-2 has affected workers worldwide. The drive for vaccinations again illustrates how only replacing the profit system with global communism can meet our class’s global needs. PLP members brought this message to this rally by selling CHALLENGE, engaging in extended discussions with other participants, and gaining contacts with several of the organizers present.
“We have the tools but not the politics”
Scientists have explained with evidence-based reasoning that vaccinating the entire working class can stop the spread of Covid-19, including its variants, and decrease the risk of new variants that might not respond to vaccinations and emerging treatments. As speakers pointed out, we have the tools but not the politics to end this pandemic.
A high point of the rally was when public health workers from PHA spoke emphatically about the current policy being a public health failure. These young professionals organized for this event at each step of the planning. PLP members have regularly met with PHA every two weeks over the past year and have pushed for more militancy in the group. We are excited by their leadership in this event and look forward to continuing the struggle against capitalism and racism.
Communism will defeat biggest viruses: imperialism and racism
The reform groups organizing the event channeled anger and boldness in attacking both the Biden administration and the pharmaceutical industry’s greed. However, they failed to attack capitalism, connect capitalism with racism and imperialism, or offer real solutions.
Workers around the world are suffering in grotesque ways from this pandemic, and many other health and social conditions exacerbated by the pandemic. Victory in this struggle means breaking with the politicians in Congress and organizing for an international mass communist revolution to destroy capitalism instead. Without this perspective, we end up fruitlessly falling into the trap set by various factions of vicious capitalists and their politicians who run society.
Smash racist vaccine borders and join PLP
The capitalists, meanwhile, have linked the vaccine to profits by limiting who gets vaccinated. India, for example, is the world’s largest vaccine producer but exports them to the biggest imperialists, despite the grand promises of the UN’s COVAX program. Making the vaccine available for free in the U.S. while effectively denying it to the rest of world is a recipe for increased nationalism and extends the racist arrogance of U.S. imperialism even further. As long as we have capitalism, vaccines become just another tool in rivalry among the imperialists as Russia, China, and the U.S. use them to pursue their own alliances in a buildup for World War 3 rather than meet workers’ needs.
The bosses once again are playing with our lives! We fight to build an international revolutionary PLP that can smash all borders and abolish money and make the vaccine freely available to all. While protesting Biden’s bozos like Zeintz at six am are a good start, the urgency of this global struggle demands a different kind of wakeup call — a call to join PLP and sweep capitalism out of power with communist revolution! JOIN US!
