University officials giving names of dissenters to federal fascists

SFGate, 9/12–Officials at UC Berkeley have sent over a hundred names of students and staff to federal officials, who are looking into allegations of antisemitism as part of an ongoing federal investigation. The names of 160 students, faculty and staff were sent to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights after the office demanded documents related to complaints of antisemitism and discrimination at the university. “The UC systemwide Office of the General Counsel (OGC), in compliance with its legal obligations to cooperate with the agency, directed UC Berkeley to provide those documents to the federal agency”...

Israeli military continues bombardment of Palestinian homes

Al Jazeera, 9/14–Israeli forces have intensified their bombardment of Gaza City, leveling three residential blocks and killing at least 53 Palestinians, including 35 in Gaza City, as families continue to flee under the threat of new forced evacuation orders. The Israeli army marked the al-Kawthar tower in Gaza’s southern Remal neighbourhood as a target before destroying the building on Sunday with a series of missile strikes less than two hours later…“It was another sleepless night for those in Gaza City, with the sounds of drones, the constant hum of machines of war, and the explosive remotely detonated robots across the city”...

U.S. bosses crack down of workers critical of Kirk

France24, 9/14–For some Americans on the far right, Charlie Kirk died a “martyr” and any criticism of the hugely popular conservative activist must be punished…Middle Tennessee State University’s president announced…an employee’s firing for a “callous” comment about Kirk…Some Kirk supporters have turned into online sleuths, searching out accounts that praised or celebrated Kirk’s murder…These efforts have targeted teachers, firefighters and even military personnel, some of whom have lost their jobs. MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd lost his job shortly after on-air comments about Kirk, one of the first of many figures to experience similar fallout. Office Depot said Friday that it fired a worker at a Michigan store who was seen on video refusing to print flyers for a Kirk vigil…

Small fascists expanding influence in news outlets

The Guardian, 9/14–The US right has appeared to increase its influence on mainstream media in America in recent weeks, especially in television news which has been a major target of the Donald Trump administration. CBS News…installed a Trump ally as its ombudsman, weeks after the family of Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men, and a friend of the US president, sealed control over Paramount, the owner of CBS. Now Paramount is reportedly looking to buy Warner Bros Discovery, the media behemoth behind CNN, which would potentially bring the influential news network under the roof of an increasingly Trump-friendly conglomerate. At CBS News, parent company Paramount placed Kenneth Weinstein, the former head of the conservative Hudson Institute thinktank, to oversee public complaints. 

U.S. borrowing leading to another bubble

Foreign Affairs, September/October–For much of the past quarter century, the rest of the world has looked in wonder at the United States’ ability to borrow its way out of trouble…bond markets have become far less submissive, and long-term interest rates have risen sharply on ten- and 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds… As of May 2025, all the major credit-rating agencies had downgraded U.S. debt, and there is a growing perception among banks and foreign governments that hold trillions of dollars in U.S. debt that the country’s fiscal policy may be going off the rails.

IDF snipers used to target civilians

Der Spiegel, 9/10–”Sergeant D.”...is a sniper in the Israeli army…suspected of having committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip…One accusation that has been made repeatedly is that the army has been intentionally killing civilians. Numerous reports and anonymous statements from soldiers seem to indicate that such accusations are rooted in fact…Videos, photos and digital analyses in addition to interviews with dozens of experts, former soldiers and international law experts indicate that members of the unit have likely shot unarmed people to death and thus may have committed war crimes. 

U.S. Donald Trump’s military assault on Washington, D.C., marks a massive escalation of state terror against Black workers and a clear sign of rapidly rising fascism on the road to world war. U.S. capitalism is in crisis. The capitalist rulers need to terrorize workers who could revolt—and especially Black workers, the revolutionary vanguard of the international working class. 

The smaller domestic capitalists, those fronted by Trump, plan to use the D.C. occupation as a model for targeting Black, immigrant, and antiracist workers nationwide. For the moment, Trump’s power grabs have given his gutter racist faction the upper hand over the liberal racist Democrats, who represent the big multinational capitalists of finance capital. But make no mistake: The emerging U.S. federal police force—a hallmark of fascism, as evidenced by the Nazi regime in Germany—is a bipartisan creation, decades in the making. 

No matter which brand of fascism wins out, the only force on Earth that can smash it is the organized power of a communist-led, multiracial working class. As the illusions of liberal democracy and the brute reality of capitalism get more exposed by the day, smoldering embers of resistance will flare all the more brightly. It is the task of the international Progressive Labor Party to fan those flames into worldwide revolution. 

Fascism: capitalism in crisis

Behind Trump’s racist theatrics about rescuing D.C. from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor,” his latest move toward full-blown fascism is rooted in the crises and contradictions of capitalism itself. As U.S. imperialism declines and lashes out like a wounded animal, it faces growing political isolation, most notably over the Zionist genocide in Gaza. In Ukraine, yet another defeat for the U.S. bosses seems written on the wall. 

As unemployment and inflation rise, and divisions within the U.S. ruling class sharpen, rival imperialists in Russia and China are emboldened. For the U.S. capitalists, fascism is their desperate, last-ditch attempt to resolve their crisis and stave off their fall.

D.C. occupation: trial run for fascism

The thousands of National Guard troops now patrolling Washington are an advance guard to prepare the ruling class and condition the working class for fascism. The howls about “crime” in the capitalist media are so many racist dog whistles, as old as slavery. In fact, D.C. crime is at a 30-year low (U.S. Department of Justice, 1/3). Trump declared a state of emergency in the city after a former staffer with DOGE, Elon Musk’s digital shock troops, was allegedly assaulted by two unarmed 15-year-olds on August 3. From there, events moved fast.

After federalizing D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department and deploying National Guard soldiers from six states, the Trump administration dropped any pretense of fighting crime and launched an indiscriminate dragnet. Black workers and youth were subjected to a wave of racist stop-and-frisks, already standard practice for DC’s kkkops (dcnewsnow.com, 9/16/24). Black workers were targeted as they sat on their stoops (The Independent, 8/13), while immigrant delivery workers were singled out for arrest by the ICE Gestapo (NBC News, 8/19). 

The D.C. cops’ racist terror campaign has focused on the city’s southeastern, Black-majority wards, where stops occur on average every ten minutes (ACLU DC, 2/4). In a city where Black and white workers are roughly equal in population, police stop white workers just 13 percent of the time. It’s no coincidence that the recent invasion followed the mass firing of Black federal workers (see box). Racist policing and racist unemployment are two big parts of the bosses’ plan to marginalize, dehumanize, and scapegoat Black workers for the failings of the profit system.

Trump’s trial run for fascism isn’t limited to the U.S. capital. In June, he mobilized 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to back up ICE’s immigration raids and squash mass fightback. Now he’s planning to go national. Last week, he ordered the Pentagon to form a military “rapid reaction force” to counter protests while threatening Chicago and New York with federal occupations of their own (ABC News, 8/25).

The fascist state the liberals built

Not long after Trump unleashed his occupation, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Black Democrat, praised the president for deploying the National Guard (Washington Post, 8/28). More than Trump, it’s the liberal misleaders who deserve credit for racist police terror nationwide. 

Liberal Democrats laid the foundation for the state terror apparatus that Trump’s faction has built upon. Under Jim Crow Joe Biden, the number of racist police murders broke records each year. Before becoming president, Biden spent decades in the U.S. Senate building racist hysteria over “predators on our streets.” He also led the charge to pass President Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill. Coming on the heels of Clinton’s slashing of 250,000 federal jobs and closing record amounts of federal housing, the law pumped out billions of dollars to hire 100,000 new local cops. It established mandatory minimum sentencing that mainly targeted Black workers. It decimated a generation of Black families with mass incarceration.  

Two decades later, Barack Obama did more than anyone else to militarize the cops. In 2011 alone, $500 million in military weapons and assault gear were funneled to local police departments (wired.com, 6/26/12). Obama exploited a 9/11-era law for the indefinite military detention of suspected “terrorists” without charge (ACLU, 12/31/11). In short, much of the fascist infrastructure that Trump’s using today was built in plain sight by the Democrats.

Don’t vote, revolt!

While the capitalist class counts on its mad dog cops and fascist terror apparatus, the most powerful force in the world is the international working class. Capitalist crises created the conditions for the two greatest revolutions in history, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the 1949 Chinese Revolution. History shows us that the contradictions of capitalism can be resolved in only one of two ways. One is fascism. The other is communism, a world run by and for the working class.

The bosses live in mortal fear of an organized, united, international, multiracial working class ready to fight for revolution. It’s why they’re sparing no effort or expense to sow racist terror and division. In turn, our resistance cannot be spontaneous or identity-based. Fighting for the liberation of an isolated group of workers here or there will never smash capitalism. Neither will short-term reforms or the latest popular, lying stooge who wants your vote. If ever there was a time to link local struggles with the international movement for communist revolution, that time is now. Join PLP to make the communist world we deserve a reality!

[JC1], “Black Workers: Key to Revolution.” to read visit www.plp.org and find it in our literature section

Racist unemployment 

Over the past four months, the shocking racist termination of over 300,000 Black women from federal jobs, mainly in D.C., has driven Black women’s real unemployment to over ten percent and pushed overall Black real unemployment into double digits (MSNBC, 7/17).  

From the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War to the civil rights era and beyond, the federal government became the largest single source of Black employment. Until recently, it employed more than twenty percent of Black workers, most of them women. Black workers are disproportionately represented in essential federal jobs, including the U.S. postal service, as well as in the military, basic industries and transportation, transit, healthcare, and education. 

Progressive Labor Party holds that Black workers, and especially Black women, are the key to revolution. The workers subjected to the sharpest racist and sexist oppression have the greatest material basis for communist class consciousness. Workers have always fought back against capitalism; Black workers have fought back hardest, with Black women at the forefront. [JC1] Only a united, multiracial working class can smash this genocidal imperialist system and build communism upon its ashes. When we do so, Black workers’ leadership will be instrumental to our victory.

This past spring, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). As we pause the historic 1975 Boston Summer Project—one of the most defining struggles in PLP’s history—we do so to inject an awareness of the broader historical context that shaped and continues to guide our Party. From its beginnings with barely two dozen members of the old U.S. communist movement, PLP has grown into an international organization with active chapters in 27 countries.

The following is a reprint of an article originally published a decade ago to commemorate the Party’s 60th anniversary. Amid devastating racist and sexist attacks on our class—and as a decaying capitalist system slides ever closer to fascism—the Party’s analysis, history, and enduring presence stand as a beacon of light in a dark night and remain more urgent than ever

It all started April 17th 1965...

Over our first half-century, PLP has propelled the march to communism — first by leading anti-racist, working-class struggle, and through that struggle advancing communist ideas. This two-pronged strategy — practice and theory — is the basis for winning masses of workers to fight for communism.

Why communism? In our vision, the working class will determine the future of society. It will destroy the capitalist world and its brutal exploitation. It will smash a system that drives us into constant unemployment and poverty. It will stop the racism and sexism that drags down all workers. It will smash the racist cops who break our strikes and kill our Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant sisters and brothers. And it will put an end to the imperialist wars that send our youth to kill their class brothers and sisters worldwide, all for the bosses’ profits.

A communist world

Here is our vision for a communist world:

A society run by workers and for workers. After all, the working class produces everything of value and should rightfully receive the benefits of our labor. Collectively, we can determine how to share what we produce, according to need.

Abolition of the exploitative wage system and the money that runs it. We have no need for the parasitic bosses who steal most of the value of our labor through wage slavery.

Multi-racial unity with women and men workers and an end to the racism and sexism that divides the working class. Racism and sexism is rooted in capitalism; the bosses rely on it to steal trillions in super-profits worldwide.

Elimination of all borders, artificial lines drawn by the bosses to make even more profits from workers they call “foreigners.” Nationalism is an antiworker ideology that enables the imperialist rulers to exploit natural resources and cheap labor. It also enables them to make war on other workers. Communists are internationalists because the working class is one international class, with a common class interest, under one red flag.
This is the world the PLP has fought for from the start. We will continue to fight until our class prevails. We invite all workers to join this struggle — for ourselves, and for our children and grandchildren.

Struggle and theory

From its earliest beginnings in the 1960s, PLP has fought tooth and nail against attacks by the ruling class. We have organized and supported Ford workers and striking teachers in Mexico; wildcatting miners in Hazard, Kentucky; longshore workers in New York City; jute workers in India; miners in Britain; garment workers in Los Angeles; bank workers in Colombia; transit workers in Washington, DC; Chrysler sit-down strikers at Detroit’s Mack Avenue plant; farm workers in California, and bakery workers at Stella D’Oro in the Bronx. We have stood with evicted workers in Palestine-Israel, earthquake victims in Pakistan, and hurricane victims in Haiti, New Orleans, and New York City. We have led anti-imperialist struggles against the UN in Haiti. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

Antiracism is a hallmark of PLP. We backed Black workers and youth in the 1964 Harlem Rebellion, and fought off racist school segregationists in Boston in 1975. In 1976, we integrated Chicago’s Marquette Park. Throughout our existence, we have led more than a hundred thousand protesters against the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis across the United States. We have mobilized against racist killer cops from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, to Chicago, to Ferguson, Missouri.

PLP has stood in the forefront of opposition to the bosses’ wars. In the 1960s, we were the first to organize mass demonstrations for the U.S. to “Get Out of Vietnam!” We formed the Worker-Student Alliance in the anti-war Students for A Democratic Society. PLP broke the U.S. travel ban to Cuba and undermined the rulers’ House Un-American Activities Committee to the point of collapse. More recently, working both within the military and on the streets, we exposed the U.S. rulers’ invasions of Iraq as a murderous oil grab.

None of these developments came out of thin air. They grew out of our Party’s analysis of past class struggles and the achievements of millions of workers. PLP studied the strengths and weaknesses of the communist movement led by — among many others — Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. In 1917, this movement created a revolution in Russia; In 1949, a revolution in China. It defeated the Nazis in Europe and the fascists in Japan in World War II. It reached its highest point in China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which attempted to push back a growing elitism in the party leadership and put the masses in charge of society.

PLP is the only group to point out what went wrong in the Soviet Union and China. We are the only organization to analyze how socialism in those countries led back to the unvarnished profit system, where all workers are now mired.

A communist society will have no bosses or profits. It will be led by the working class through its Progressive Labor Party.

Marxism: an evolving idea

The history of the Progressive Labor Party began in 1962. A small group of communists left the Communist Party USA and organized the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM). They rejected the CPUSA’s capitulation to capitalism and its abandonment of the open advocacy of communist revolution. The old communist movement proposed that the bosses would peacefully relinquish control of society and allow what the CP called “socialism” to be “voted into existence.” The communists who formed PLM refused to mislead workers and broke away from the old guard.

In the course of PLP’s history, we have rejected some traditional Marxist concepts and advanced a number of new ones, all based on our practice and our examination of world events and the decay of the old communist movement. These new principles are expressed in a series of documents, including Road to Revolution I, II, III and IV; Revolution Not Reform; and “Dark Night Shall Have Its End.” (These are all available on plp.org or in pamphlet form.)

Above all, Progressive Labor Party stands for the principle that the working class must fight directly for communism rather than moving first through a transitional phase of socialism. We reject this two-stage theory because events have shown that socialism inevitably leads back to full-blown capitalism. In both Russia and China, socialism preserved capitalist features such as money and the wage system, leading to inequalities that divided the working class. In both of these countries, the communist party became a new ruling class where privileges were attained through party membership. We believe the working class can and will be won before the revolution to fight directly for communism — to abolish the wage system, the cult of the individual and other capitalist relics.

Core principles

PLP’s main principles are:

Internationalism, under the slogan “Smash All Borders,” where workers’ class unity is represented by a single mass, international Party;

The fight against racism, a strategic necessity in the struggle to overthrow capitalism;

The fight against the special oppression of women — sexism — another critical component in uniting the working class, a prerequisite for revolution;

A concentration among industrial workers, who produce the capitalists’ profits and the weapons for the bosses’ imperialist wars;
Workers’ power through armed struggle, since the rulers constantly use their armed state power to violently suppress the working class.

Throughout its existence, PLP has fought for these principles in unceasing class struggle. We have learned that building the Party is the first order of business for communists. Capitalism cannot be reformed. Whatever gains workers make in reform struggles are limited and temporary; sooner or later, the bosses always use their state power to take them back. Communists strive to turn reform struggles into schools for communism, into vehicles for building the Party. Winning workers to the PLP is the one and only victory the ruling class can never take back. We therefore urge all workers and youth to join us now for the next half-century in this historic task: to organize a communist revolution.

Washington D.C., August 26–As Head Racist- in-Chief Donald Trump sends the National Guard to Washington,  D.C. for a so-called crime “crackdown,” the  Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is on hand to make it clear that fascism isn’t welcome here (or anywhere else, for that matter)! (Read our editorial on page 2). On a recent Wednesday at Columbia Heights, five comrades distributed 90 CHALLENGEs in 90 minutes.

We have shared 200 communist flyers that include the attacks in L.A., as well as D.C., and another that calls for the transit system to stop advertising for the Border Patrol. 

On Saturday at a rally in the same neighborhood, 300 demonstrators loudly cheered when a Party member called for communism as the only solution to the fascist attacks being launched by the Trump Administration. As a result we got 10 contacts who were interested in the Party, as well as distributing over 100 CHALLENGEs. The fight for a workers’ run world is indeed heating up!

Fascism in real time

As U.S. bosses are losing their control on the working class among sharpening interimperialist rivalry with Russia and China, they are forced to lose the liberal masks of “diplomacy”and clamp down with more aggressive tactics. Ballot boxes and “democracy” are traded in for assault rifles and tanks. The bosses’ attacks are costing them four times as much daily as it would cost to house every homeless person in D.C. (Common Dreams, 8/22). Hence we have fascism, which is playing out in Washington’s streets.

Workers fight back!

These militarized forces are facing multiple organizations and residents who are fighting back. “Free DC” is on everyone’s lips. The attack is on Black youth and workers, as well as immigrant workers, in restaurants, day labor sites and checkpoints where vehicles are stopped and searched. But when Black workers in a neighborhood were being questioned, they chanted “Am I free to go?” until the fascists left. 

At the subway stop in Columbia Heights the Homeland Security forces arrested a resident for fare evasion. Of course transportation should be free, as the only fair fare is free fare! Over a hundred residents confronted the group of cops and ICE agents, and they left with their tails between their legs. The checkpoints have become a target for rapid response networks to redirect traffic and warn drivers to change their route.

On the D.C. border one group of checkpoint fascists just gave up and went off, probably to another site. Meanwhile, daily rallies, GoGo music, Black Joy and many other events are popping up on multiple sites. Our Party has been active in all these activities and covered in some interviews. 

The only crime is capitalism

Trump has claimed there is a crime crisis in D.C. to justify martial law and the National Guard. Other cities are on his radar with threats aimed at Chicago and Baltimore next. He has attacked the District of Columbia’s policy of “No Cash Bail”, and his prosecutor here wants to try youth as adults. Home detention for teenagers along with already existing curfews is another racist strategy. Stop and Frisk is back in force and targeting young Black residents as before. This is not a ”distraction” from the Epstein files, but one of many tools in the fascist playbook. Mayor Muriel Bowser has gone along with all of this with her police chief leading the way. Liberal politicians set the stage and cave under even the slightest threat. 

Years of efforts to reform the criminal injustice system have disappeared. This opens the door to talking to residents about revolution and communism. Capitalism has pulled back the curtain of liberal democracy to reveal its vicious oppression of the working class with its racist mantra and terrorism towards all parts of the working class, including federal workers, professors, and students. 

Keeping the momentum going

The Party’s task going forward is to share CHALLENGE with our neighbors in rapid response groups, reach out to National Guard members to resist attacks on residents, and prepare for the American Public Health Association meetings which will be in Washington, DC in November. 

Above all we must talk to everyone we have contact with about how necessary it is to learn about Progressive Labor Party and seriously consider joining a study group or ongoing meeting with us in some form or fashion. This is a life and death struggle. A friend of the Party said to us in January, “This is your time!” Although she doesn’t want to be a communist, she knows PLP has to step up its game now or we will lose this opportunity to grow. The only future for the working class is to overthrow capitalism and organize for communism. PLP is the only group to do this. JOIN US!