The main wing of the U.S. ruling class has escalated its campaign to check Donald Trump and bring him into line with the bosses’ primary objective: to win mass support among U.S. workers for the next big inter-imperialist war and the fascism the bosses need to wage it.
In the wake of the firing of FBI Director James Comey, the capitalist media scandal around Trump’s possible collusion with Russia is growing by the day. Former FBI chief Robert Mueller was chosen as special counsel to prosecute “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and...any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” (cbsnews.com, 5/17). The bosses are playing hardball. Their intensified effort to discipline their own ranks is a hallmark of rising fascism.
Whether or not Trump and his flunkies actually colluded with Vladimir Putin to help Trump get elected president last fall, the bosses’ open infighting is dangerous for the working class. It distracts from intensifying racist attacks in the U.S. and around the world, such as the U.S.-led airstrikes that have killed thousands of civilians in Iraq and Syria in three years of fighting with the junior capitalists of ISIS (New York Times, 5/25). And it uses Trump’s bizarre and reckless style to build working-class support for the state terrorists who compose the liberal main wing of the ruling class—not to mention the racist, murderous FBI (see box).
Trump, Precarious Servant for U.S. Empire
Trump’s short reign has been a horror for the international working class. He’s launched two raids in Yemen that killed at least 30 civilians (The Guardian, 5/24). He reinstated the racist “global gag rule” that denies family planning funding to organizations that discuss abortion as an option for women. Domestically, Trump has expanded Obama’s racist anti-immigrant policy, creating a climate of fear among all workers, undocumented, documented, and citizen alike. He has appointed overt racists like Betsy DeVos as education secretary and Jeff Sessions as attorney general. He has submitted a draconian, racist budget that slashes billions from what few social welfare programs are left. And his proposed healthcare reform threatens to leave an additional 23 million people without coverage (Congressional Budget Office, 5/24).
The rulers’ master plan is to force U.S. workers to accept fascist conditions in preparation for war with another world power, likely China or Russia. The bosses’ problem is that Trump is too volatile and unreliable to serve as an effective CEO for a U.S. empire in decline.
Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton before him, backed policies similar to Trump’s assaults on workers. But unlike Trump, they were able to hold on to the support of a large section of the working class, including most Black and Latin workers. They were helped by identity politics, which excuse racism and sexism when pushed by Black people. In 2014, for example, Obama signed off on an $8.7 billion cut to food stamps (MSNBC, 2/14). His signature education policy, Race to the Top, was no less destructive and racist than George W. Bush’s much-maligned No Child Left Behind. Obama deported a record 3.2 million immigrants, of whom more than 80 percent had no history of violent crime (Intercept, 5/15). All of this happened with relative quiet from the liberal bosses’ media.
FBI Comey, Not so Disciplined Himself
Unlike Obama or Clinton, however, Trump is unable or unwilling to veil his administration’s flagrant racism and sexism—and he refuses to be reined in, at least up to now. That’s a big problem for the ruling class. Trump’s most brazen act was the unceremonious firing of Comey after the FBI director had launched the Russia collusion investigation.
Comey is somewhat undisciplined himself. Last October, just eleven days before the presidential election, he announced that he had revived the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails of classified information. Though the investigation came to nothing, Comey’s bombshell may have helped torpedo Clinton, the main wing’s candidate of choice. It drew howls of outrage from Democratic Party main-wingers like Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer. Now, however, these same politicians are hailing Comey as a martyr and calling his firing a “Nixonian” coverup (Intercept 5/9). Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, joined a Washington protest to demand appointment of a special counsel (Mother Jones 5/10). Some Democrats and media outlets are even calling for Trump’s impeachment.
This is a message to Trump and the entire political class that their service is always conditional. They can be replaced if they do not serve their ruling-class masters appropriately.
Mueller, the Hammer to Bring Trump into Line
When it came time for the Justice Department to name a special counsel, Robert Mueller was the perfect choice to bridge the partisan divide and help unify the main-wing bosses. Mueller was appointed FBI director days before the September 11 attacks in 2001. He served under both Democrat Obama and Republican George W. Bush, and served them well:

Mueller is as straight an arrow as they come. He is the longest serving FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover himself and certainly the most influential. He took the FBI from a agency primarily focused on law enforcement and after-the-fact prosecutions and investigations into, really, what is a global intelligence agency deeply focused on counterespionage and counterterrorism cases…(Biographer Garret Graff on NPR, 5/17).

No friend of workers, Mueller can be a credible mediator for disagreements within the ruling class. For as long as they can, the bosses will use the legal system to solve their growing problems. Until they can’t.
Towing the Line of the Grand Chessboard
The first two stops of Trump’s inaugural overseas trip were Saudi Arabia and Israel, both staunch U.S. allies that reflect the deteriorating position of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East and the world. The U.S. State Department has known for years that Saudi Arabia has provided “clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region” (Independent, 10/14/16). Israel, meanwhile, is widely hated for its ever-expanding West Bank occupation and apartheid treatment of Palestinians. During the Obama years, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, talked openly of defying U.S. wishes in the region. While Netanyahu has softened his stance since Trump’s victory, Israel remains a questionable ally in a period of intensifying pressure on U.S. imperialist aims.
Different Sides, All Capitalist
Regardless of who comes out on top in this struggle among bosses, workers will lose. While Trump’s open fascism is a threat to the international working class, the gravest mistake we can make is to choose sides in this battle. We cannot support Democratic politicians in their move against Trump, whether they’re mainstream leaders like Schumer and Pelosi or liberal fake “outsiders” like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The Democrats also represent the forces of war and fascism. If anything, they are even more dangerous than Trump and his ilk, because they are better able to deceive and mislead honest, anti-racist workers.
The only path away from these imperialist misleaders is the path to Progressive Labor Party and communist revolution. Our Party and our paper, CHALLENGE, have consistently attacked politicians and media of all strains for what they are: agents of capitalism. A PLP of millions—leading a working class of billions—will sweep them all away.

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FBI: Myth & Reality

The glorification of James Comey and Robert Mueller is a naked attempt to win the working class to support the FBI, a ruling-class institution, as a lesser capitalist evil. But the FBI’s racist history makes it clear that this is a deadly proposition:
Contrary to Hollywood’s image of the heroic FBI rooting out the Ku Klux Klan in the South (as portrayed in the movie, Mississippi Burning), nothing could be further from the truth.  In reality, the FBI focused on smashing local militant anti-racist groups (such as Deacons for Defense) as well as national organizations, from SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) to the Black Panthers.
The FBI established COINTELPRO, a counter-intelligence program, in an effort to crush both the Communist Party USA and the growing civil rights movement. After the 1963 March on Washington, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover singled out Martin Luther King, Jr. as a primary target. COINTELPRO also targeted Malcom X (Manning Marable, A Life of Reinvention). It has been well documented that the FBI conspired to destroy the Black Panther Party (In These Times, 12/4/13).
The FBI played a crucial role in aiding HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) during the anti-communist crusades of the 1950s. From 1946 to 1952, the FBI doubled its number of agents. In 1951, it launched a secret “Responsibilities Program” that spied on teachers and lawyers, among others. Its most vicious attacks were reserved for Black communists like Paul Robeson.
In short, let us expose the FBI for what it is: a ruthless agent of capitalist dictatorship.  

New York City school students suffer the racist indignity of attending one of the most segregated school systems in the country. This is no accident. It is a calculated plan by the city’s ruling class to maintain exclusive enclave schools that are significantly or predominantly white—and to subject the other 90 percent of the city’s 1.1 million public school children to a racist, sub-par education.
The bosses’ segregation strategy is designed to divide the working class, build racist ideas about Black and Latin children, and blame students for the failure of capitalism. Fewer and fewer opportunities exist for young people. High-paying jobs are a thing of the distant past for workers with high school educations. Entry-level, low-paying jobs in offices and restaurants are increasingly filled by people with college diplomas. In this wage-cutting climate, where the bosses are funneling resources into the U.S. military for the next global inter-imperialist conflict, they see no need to pay for a school system that prepares all students to succeed.
Instead, they are fostering a school system of a few so-called “good” schools and a vast number of “bad” schools. The “good” schools are a hybrid public-private system to serve the city’s middle-class and more affluent residents. These schools receive more money per student and get better facilities and more varsity sports teams. On top of that, many have PTAs that can raise up to a million dollars a year or more to further supplement their funding from the New York City Department of Education (DoE).
Racist residential school zones, deliberately drawn to exclude Black and Latin students, are used to keep certain elementary schools mostly white. A school “choice” system to legitimize racist screening practices helps middle and high schools do the same. From a young age, most white students are categorized as “smart” or “talented and gifted” or “hard working.” Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Black and Latin students are branded as deficient and undeserving of a decent school.
In the midst of these daily racist attacks on New York City school children, the parents, teachers, students, and administrators at Park Slope Collegiate have been trying to build a public secondary school in Brooklyn that is open to all. The PSC community has struggled for years against the DoE’s racist education system. It refuses to track students into ability groupings, a proven tool of segregation. It actively recruits an integrated student body. It publicly protested the DoE’s installation of an elitist enclave school in its building. It continues to battle to rid the school’s campus of metal detectors, and to defend its students against racist assaults by school safety agents and the New York Police Department. Most recently, PSC rocked the DoE’s racist boat by demanding an integrated sports program, with equal access to varsity sports teams for its Black and Latin students. The Progressive Labor Party is proud to have participated in many battles against racism fought by the PSC community.
The bosses and their system are powerful but fragile, which explains why the DoE deems PSC a threat. The recent McCarthyite attack on PSC (see CHALLENGE, May 31), an attempt to use anti-communism to divide the school and stop its multiracial fight against racism, is an old bosses’ ploy. During the Civil Rights Movement, the KKK governors of Mississippi, Alabama, and other Jim Crow states tried to block the unity of Black and white workers and students, many of whom were communists, by declaring that “race mixing is communism. “ New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina and Mayor Bill De Blasio are defenders of the new Jim Crow, which feeds on school segregation and racist inequalities.
Since our formation in the 1960s, PLP has joined workers’ battles against racism. Our Party is committed to the struggle to build a communist society led by the working class, free from capitalist racism, exploitation, oppression, and devastation. Standing shoulder to shoulder with the families and school staff at PSC, fighting to defend young people from a racist school system, is a part of our responsibility to fight for workers’ power and a communist world.

CHICAGO, IL, May 23—Another pre-trial hearing was scheduled today at the Cook County courthouse for killer Chicago kkkop Jason Van Dyke, who is responsible for the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald on October 20, 2014. Caught on dashboard camera, the 16 shots that Van Dyke pumped into Laquan’s body as he lay lifeless in the street was another stark reminder of the role the kkkops play in the defense of the racist capitalist system. The resultant cover-up by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and State Attorney Anita Alvarez further demonstrated the racism of the state, sparking mass outrage and militant fightback throughout the city and beyond. As Van Dyke’s lawyer baldly stated in court, the murder of Laquan was simply “business as usual.” (Chicago Tribune, 5/25)
Bosses’ Kkkourts Protect Killer Kkkops
The court showed its role in protecting the racism of the state when an observer in the courtroom was brought up on charges of contempt of court for his response to the racist proceedings. Despite already being indicted on first-degree murder charges, Van Dyke and his attorneys continue to postpone his trial by filing ridiculous motions attempting to have the murder indictment dismissed. During this hearing, the crowd was forced to listen to Van Dyke’s scumbag lawyer prattle on at length over all the reasons he was “justified” in his racist murder of a Black teenager.
The judge denied the motions to have the murder charges cleared. This outcome provoked excitement among many of the anti-racists in the room, including one anti-racist teacher, who snapped his fingers repeatedly in approval of the judge’s decision. “What is your purpose here, sir?!” the Cook County presiding judge barked at the teacher.
“To see a racist murderer go on trial,” the anti-racist defiantly responded, turning to face Van Dyke and his lawyers.
With this bold statement and a multi-racial crowd packing the courtroom, these antiracists and PLP helped send the message that racist kkkops and the capitalist state that protects them will never be tolerated as “business as usual.”
The judge and his bailiffs used the disruption as an excuse to set an extreme example of the bold anti-racist. The judge demanded that he be brought forward. In response to having his racist authority undermined by both the snapping and the teacher’s defiant response to his questioning, he had the man arrested for direct contempt of court with bail set at $40,000.
Once the initial shock passed, PLP comrades present wasted no time. Immediately after the hearing was over, we determined the identity of the man and began contacting community bond organizations, his family, and lawyers in order to have him released as soon as possible. He was out on bond that same evening. We commend this fighter for defying Van Dyke and the racist kkkourts and will stand in solidarity with him in any legal battles that lie ahead.
Not Just a Few Bad apples
Despite the presumed “victory” of the judge dismissing the motions to prevent Van Dyke from going to trial for murder, we communists will continue to stress the relationship of the cops, the courts, and the preservation of the murderous capitalist profit system. Even if the killer cop stands trial, even if he were to be found guilty by a jury (fat chance), the brutal system that breeds racist murderers like Van Dyke would still remain intact. Despite the gratification that would result from seeing a racist cop locked up, such a conclusion could lend itself to the false argument that “it’s only a few bad cops” and that the bosses’ justice system can be reformed to meet the needs of the working class.
The comrades here in Chicago will continue to challenge Van Dyke and the racist, sexist system that trained him, armed him with weapons, and unleashed him on our class. We will challenge them in the courtroom, in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our schools. We will march again on his very home in the Archer Heights neighborhood, as we did last summer, to remind everyone that there will be no refuge for racist murderers (See Challenge 7/16). With every action, every argument, every new comrade won to the Party, we will build the momentum and power to eventually bury the bosses once and for all with international communist revolution.

Ruling-class historians have segregated the fight against racism and the fight for an egalitarian system, communism. In reality, the two were connected like flesh and bone. Many antiracist struggles were led by, initiated by, or were fought with communists and communist-influenced organizations. Many Black fighters were also dedicated communists and pro-communists of their time.
In turn, the bosses have used anti-communism as a tool to terrorize and divide antiracist fightback. Regardless of communist affiliation, anyone who fought racism was at risk of being redbaited. Why? 1) The ruling class understands the natural relationship between antiracism and communism, and 2) Multiracial unity threatens the very racist system the bosses “work so hard” to maintain.
This series aims to reunite the history of communism with antiracism. Part I explored how the fight to free Scottsboro Boys was ignited by the International Labor Defense of the Communist Party. See Robin D.G. Kelley’s book Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression to find out more.
The following piece excerpts from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in the essay, “The Civil Rights Movement” by researcher Davarian L. Baldwin at Trinity College.   

The Civil Rights Movement was a decades-long mass uprising of Black and white workers and students against the most open forms of racism in the U.S. Its impetus was the growing international communist movement fresh off the defeat of fascism in Europe and quickly growing in China, Africa and around the world, combined with the growing resistance to racism by the Black workers in the U.S.
The U.S. ruling class tried to shut down the mass antiracist fightback by using anti-communism to divide and terrorize the movement. In the period right after World War II, the Soviet Union was admired by workers around the world, including in the U.S., for defeating the Nazi war machine. The workers-led society in the Soviet Union stood in stark contrast to the legal segregation workers faced in the U.S.
Trained by CP, Became Civil Rights Leaders
While the racist Jim Crow laws in the South were are well known, segregation cut across the country. Black workers who moved to northern cities to look for jobs faced racism in looking for homes and on the job as well.

Between 1940 and 1960 the Great Migration brought over six million African Americans to industrial centers in the urban North and West, where migrants were met with new forms of racial containment. They were often restricted to domestic and retail service work. Those who found industrial employment were kept out of labor unions
(Baldwin).

The communist movement had been heavily involved in the fight against racism in the South since around 1930 and had built up a mass movement that included Black and white workers and students. The struggle to defend the Scottsboro Boys, nine young Black men wrongly accused of raping two white women, galvanized the anti-racist movement (see CHALLENGE, 5/31). This communist-led struggle brought thousand of Black and white workers into organizations that fought racism and trained many of the leaders of the civil rights movement.

If you look at all the…auxiliary organizations[of the Communist Party in Alabama], the International Labor Defense, which focused on civil rights issues, they had up to 2,000. The Sharecroppers Union had up to 12,000. You had the International Workers Order. You had the League of Young Southerners. You had the Southern Negro Youth Congress. [In total], it touched the lives easily of 20,000 people.
There were many people who were trained in the Communist Party who went on to become Civil Rights activists [including] Rosa Parks…some of her first political activities were around the Scottsboro case…She never joined the party, but as a young woman, she and her husband, in fact, attended some of the meetings…the infrastructure that was laid forward that becomes the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, was laid in many ways, not entirely, by the Communist Party (Robin Kelly on WNYC Radio 2/16/2010).

WW II and After: Communist Fighters Under Attack
The movement against racism that grew in the 1930s didn’t stop during World War II.

The United States entered the wartime world as the self-professed face of democracy, but African Americans began to make links between Nazi racism, European imperialism, and American [racism].
Veteran activist and president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) A. Philip Randolph threatened to lead a 100,000-person March on Washington Movement (MOWM) in November 1941 if wartime production was not desegregated…
Between 1942 and 1945 industrial centers, military camps, and port cities, including Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles, exploded with race riots. Ongoing…attempts to constrain black life erupted in violent riots in more than forty cities (Baldwin).

After the war, the U.S. bosses came under increasing pressure as the Soviet Union and the international communist movement exposed the hypocrisy of U.S. capitalism, describing itself as a pillar of “democracy” while denying even the most basic freedom to Black citizens.
Black communists played a leading role in exposing U.S. racism to the world and came under attack as well. Paul Robeson was a communist actor, singer, athlete and political activist. He was a man of international renown and used it to build the movement for workers’ power and the fight against racism. Robeson and other communists came under extreme attack by the U.S. bosses who were terrified of the multi-racial fight against racism

In 1947 W. E. B. Du Bois placed the grievances of African Americans before the newly formed United Nations in his famous “Appeal to the World” address…singer and activist Paul Robeson signed a U.S.S.R. petition to the United Nations, “We Charge Genocide,” documenting a series of human rights abuses against African Americans. Communist activist Claudia Jones organized in Harlem for jobs, housing, and humane immigration policies. Both Robeson’s and Du Bois’s passports were revoked until 1958 while the Trinidadian [Claudia] Jones was deported to Britain. In the Cold War context, black struggles for freedom were largely denounced as un-American (Baldwin).

The bosses’ anti-communist McCarthyism campaign was an attempt to strangle the communist movement in the U.S. and stop the fight against racism. It terrified many people. Leading fighters were driven underground, out of the country and some were put in jail. For a while, there were few public demonstrations against racism in the South or North as anyone, Black or white, who stood up against Jim Crow, housing or school segregation was labeled a communist and subject to being harassed or attacked by the FBI.
But the working class continued to fight and the struggle against racism eventually focused on the Jim Crow laws that segregated all forms of life in the South. The U.S. bosses were particularly vulnerable to the fight against Jim Crow laws. The German Nazis had used the laws as a model for setting up their fascist system “[Hitler in Main Kampf] describes the United States as ‘the one state’ that had made headway toward what he regarded as a healthy and utterly necessary racist regime” (NY Times 5/22). Black soldiers returning from the war were increasingly unwilling to tolerate fascism at home after fighting it in Europe.
Many Black workers began to resist legal segregation and Alabama civil rights leaders decided it was time to take mass action against the laws.
In 1955, Rosa Parks was asked to make a stand that would spark the campaign. When she refused to get out of her seat setting off the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Black working class of Montgomery, experienced by the communist-led fight to defend the Scottsboro Boys and the many other battles against racism, was prepared to fight and that they did.