Biden is bringing World War III

A few words on the debate. Surprise! Trump told some lies. One was his false, racist claim that immigrants getting benefits is what’s threatening the future solvency of Social Security.

The truth is that immigrants pay significantly more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Undocumented immigrants, in particular, pay an estimated $11.6 billion a year in taxes, but are not eligible for most benefit programs.

On the other hand, Trump told the truth when he said that Biden is bringing World War III much closer. However, Trump distorted the reason for this. He said it’s because world powers in competition with the U.S. — like China and Russia - don’t respect or fear Biden. That’s not the point.
The real reason Biden is bringing WWIII closer is that Biden upholds the needs of the wealthiest and most powerful finance capitalists, like JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. Those imperialists have investments all around the world, profiting hugely from cheap labor, expropriating natural resources, and controlling markets.

Those top U.S. capitalists will do anything to try maintaining domination globally. They’re willing to sacrifice our lives - and the lives of our sisters and brothers in the working class around the world — in a desperate effort, including nuclear war, to preserve their empire and global dominance.
The conclusion: neither Trump nor Biden - nor any politician who may replace Biden at the Democratic Convention - is worthy of our support. They all serve the capitalist system. That system has to go!
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Don’t forget Trump is dangerous

The Capitalist Class and its stewardship threatens the working class. Unfortunately we are allowing CHALLENGE to focus on the liberal wing of the ruling class, Biden and the Democratic Party. 

But there are two or more wings of the ruling class and a critique of the Trump plan to reshape the United States poses an immediate threat as well which not all members of the working class understand if we go by the increasing numbers of unemployed and employed workers, white, Latin and Black who are considering voting for him.

The situation is complex, but in my opinion, short term the greatest threat to the working class is the Trump populism that is proposing to jail the left and refashion the machinery of government in the image of the mafia (proposing to change Civil Service rules etc.).

The Party should provide a long term blueprint of transforming our current social and economic system at the same time, it must not fail to tackle our immediate tasks.

CHALLENGE RESPONDS

It would be a dishonor to our history to have an “attack Trump now and deal with Biden later” approach. The Old Communist Movement, in their rightful anger against rising fascism, mistakenly formed a United Front with liberal bosses against the Nazis, which resulted in only fortifying the bosses’ system. Once the Red Army defeated the Nazis, those same liberal bosses turned on the communist movement.

Knowing what we know today, we can’t ideologically disarm our class like that. We need to have confidence in the working class to be able to fight for the most advanced position—now and later.  

So yes, fascist Donald Trump is and continues to be a danger. All the U.S. liberal media will agree. Despite how he seems at the debate, Jim Crow Biden is no toothless animal. This wolf in sleepy sheep’s clothing has the most powerful of U.S. billionaires of finance capital backing him. He is also overseeing the genocidal slaughter of over 35,000 Palestinians, and greenlighting billons in weapons for the Israeli fascist state. It’s the liberal fascist Biden administration who is unleashing its fascist police dogs and using their judicial system to attack workers who oppose it.

In addition to winning people over to the fact that the problem isn’t just Trump or Biden, that it’s capitalism, the most immediate task is to fight attacks on our class (from all sides) and build PLP. We have Summer Projects organized around the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention to fight against both the Small and Big Fascists.
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Juneteenth is beginning of Jim Crow

I have a suggestion regarding the Juneteenth holiday.  The ruling class has co-opted Juneteenth,  calling it “a celebration of the end of slavery.” However,  I think it should be called the end of chattel slavery and  the beginning of Jim Crow slavery.  Similarly,  the Civil Rights movement was the end of Jim Crow slavery and the beginning of identity politics slavery.  Even the New York Times has printed multiple articles documenting how health care,  wages,  public education,  and so much more are so much worse for Black and brown people.  The only thing the NYT leaves out is that capitalism is the root cause of these conditions AND that only communism will abolish this shameful history.

We need to highlight another shameful event in capitalist history that happened 71 years ago on Juneteenth . On June 19, 1953 the U.S. rulers murdered communist heroes Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs were accused of giving the Soviet Union the supposed “KEY” to the atomic bomb.  According to the accusation, the Soviets were “too stupid and incapable” of figuring out how to construct a nuclear weapon. In fact,  just 4 years later,  the “stupid and incapable” Soviets launched the first artificial satellite (Sputnik) and 4 years after that the “stupid and incapable” Soviets launched the first astronaut (Yuri Gargarin) and brought him safely back to Earth. 

Creating a nuclear weapon is VERY complicated.  The Rosenbergs had no knowledge of non-nuclear physics and most certainly no knowledge of nuclear physics.  There is no way that they could have understood any of the complicated equations and descriptions of the bomb design process.  Moreover,  the one piece of so-called “evidence” that was produced at the trial was a FLAWED diagram of one component of the bomb that the Rosenbergs were accused of giving to the Soviets.

The U.S. government was sure that the Rosenbergs would confess in return for life imprisonment rather than death.  But the Rosenbergs refused the government’s phony “offer,”  instead proclaiming their innocence.  The Rosenbergs were working class heroes who should be remembered for their refusal to go along with the Cold War motivated accusation that they were Soviet spies. That is why on Juneteenth we should also honor the sacrifices of these communists along with those of Black enslaved workers who sacrificed their lives fighting this racist system built on slavery.
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Fight for East Africa heating up

Al Jazeera, 6/30–Paramilitary forces battling Sudan’s army for more than a year say they have captured a key state capital in the war-torn country’s southeast. “We have liberated the 17th Infantry Division from Singa [the capital of Sennar state],” the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) announced on X on Saturday. Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan…said the RSF is gaining control of an increasing number of territories across Sudan, especially in eastern and western parts of the country’s south. “They already control a large portion of the Darfur region, with the exception of el-Fasher, which is the only remaining city under the army’s and allied groups’ control,” she said.

Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The conflict in the country of 48 million has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The latest RSF breakthrough means they are closing in on Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where the army, government and the United Nations agencies are now based. 

U.S. ally Ruto cracks down on Kenyan workers

Foreign Affairs, 6/28– Tuesday was one of the deadliest days in Kenya’s recent history. An estimated two dozen people were slain—some in front of the Kenyan parliament and others in Nairobi’s slums. They were killed by the country’s security forces for exercising their human rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. It was the culmination of a week’s violence, during which young protesters opposing new taxes and the government’s excesses were abducted, arrested, beaten, shot, and tear-gassed.    

Kenyan President William Ruto threatened to intensify the repression. He denounced the protests as “treasonous,” smeared its participants as “criminals,” and ominously directed the security forces to “deploy all measures.” Police moved from using tear gas to live ammunition.
The spark for the latest protests was the introduction of a new finance bill that would levy punishing taxes on everyday essentials, including sugar, bread, and cooking oil—a policy that would hit poor Kenyans particularly hard. The same bill set aside vast sums for the renovation of the president’s residence and other extravagant expendituresBBC, 6/26–Haiti's interim Prime Minister Garry Conille has vowed to end lawlessness with the help of a Kenyan-led international force deployed to the Caribbean nation…400 Kenyan police officers, in the first tranche of an international force, was a "unique opportunity" to restore order, Mr Conille said…

But there is fierce opposition in Kenya to the deployment - not least because police are accused of brutality in their own country, the latest example being the fatal shooting of protesters in the capital, Nairobi, on Tuesday…

Working with Haitian police, and headquartered at a US-built base, the Kenyan officers will aim to take back key sites that have fallen under the control of gangs, including the nearby airport and sea ports. Although Kenya has a history of taking part in peacekeeping missions, its police force has never set foot outside Africa.

Bosses continue fight for resource-rich DR Congo

The Guardian, 6/29–Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have seized a strategic town in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s volatile east, a local official said. “Kanyabayonga has been in the hands of the M23 since Friday evening,” the administrative official said, under condition of anonymity. Kanyabayonga lies on the northern front of the conflict in North Kivu province, which has been rocked by violence since 2021 when the M23 (March 23 Movement) resumed its armed campaign in the region. The town is considered a pathway to the major commercial centres of Butembo and Beni in the north.

Clashes “are causing displacement of civilians,” the UN Joint Human Rights Office said in its monthly report on Friday. “Humanitarian organizations providing support to the displaced have suspended their operations for security reasons,” it said.

As open fascists win elections throughout Europe by targeting migrant workers, the liberal racist bosses—from France and Britain to the U.S.—are leading their own virulent attacks. With the collapse of the old liberal world order, the rapid rise of China, and the accelerating decline of the U.S., the rulers’ ranks are split and unstable. As inter-imperialist rivalry escalates and capitalism plunges into crisis, immigrants are in the capitalist rulers’ crosshairs. In places with aging populations, including the U.S. and Europe, the bosses absolutely need migrant labor to keep their economies afloat. At the same time, however, they need anti-immigrant racism to divide and exploit workers—and to super-exploit Black, Latin, women, and immigrant workers. And they need scapegoats, a hallmark of rising fascism, to take the blame for their failing system.

The global “migrant crisis”—more than one hundred million displaced workers—is a creation of the bosses and their national borders, the artificial lines that serve to parcel out the capitalists’ profits. The solution to the crisis is communist revolution—to create a borderless world that serves the needs of the entire international working class.

Biden’s racist treachery

On June 5, U.S. President Joe Biden exposed the liberal bosses’ treachery with an executive order that effectively stops migrant workers from claiming asylum in the U.S. Four years after promising to reverse Donald Trump’s brutal migration policies, Biden used Trump’s go-to statute: the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, a racist law that excludes “any class of aliens” if their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States” (Al Jazeera, 6/5). This was nothing new for Genocide Joe. Last fall, breaking another 2020 campaign pledge, his administration confirmed it would build 20 miles of border wall in Texas with funds set aside by Trump. In May, Biden backed a proposed law to block asylum claims and add another 1,500 nazi border patrol agents (New York Times, 6/16). After Trump’s puppets in Congress torpedoed the bill, the widely despised Biden took matters into his own bloodstained hands. In a desperate effort to beat Trump again this fall and keep his finance capital masters in charge, he’s joined the global chorus of anti-immigrant fascists. He is scapegoating migrants for U.S. decline and the incurable sickness of capitalism.  

The collateral damage of Biden’s liberal racism are the workers and children fleeing the dire effects of U.S. imperialism, from capitalist climate change and war to joblessness, hunger, torture, and death. Thousands of migrants are trapped in squalid tent camps in Mexico, many of them run by cartel gangsters (American Sociological Association, summer 2023). Others are forced to risk their lives on remote routes into the U.S. through the California desert (Reuters, 6/11). 

Biden’s latest assault on migrants is more than a ploy to win votes from misguided workers. The main wing capitalist rulers—the big banks and multinational oil companies—are fending off a challenge by the Trump-fronted, isolationist bosses. At the same time, they need to condition workers to fight in the next world war against China or Russia or both. Vicious attacks on the most vulnerable workers are designed to acclimate our class to rising fascism. The bosses’ tools are uber-nationalism, intensified racism, the suspension of fake legal “freedoms,” and wholesale terror by the state. While the rulers’ liberal media outlets will urge us to vote for Biden as the “lesser of two evils,” make no mistake: Liberal misleaders are the main danger! We cannot vote our way out of fascism and inter-imperialist war. To smash the bosses’ borders, we must abolish capitalism. Only communist revolution can truly liberate our class!

Europe: bosses on both sides build a base for fascism

The echoes of French imperialism still ring strongly across North Africa, compelling millions of workers to migrate north toward Europe in search of stable lives. With capitalism in decay and the French economy stalled, these migrants are met with anti-Muslim racism from French politicians and misled workers alike. Four days after Biden’s racist crackdown, the gutter racist, anti-immigrant National Rally swept to a shocking win in the European Parliament elections with 31 percent of the vote, up from 23 percent in 2019—and more than double the total for President Emmanual Macron’s Renaissance party (New York Times, 6/10). Macron, who’s even less popular than Biden, called for snap elections to the French parliament this summer. It’s a risky move that could usher the first openly fascist party into power in France since World War Two. 

Elsewhere, Germany’s Hitler-loving Alternative for Germany party finished second in the EU elections with 16 percent, up from 11 percent in 2019, with much of its new support coming from young workers (Reuters, 6/9). In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s proudly fascist Brothers of Italy quadrupled its share to 29 percent. In the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders, who refers to Moroccan immigrants as “scums,” won six seats in the European parliament, up from one (AP, 6/10).

Like Biden, Europe’s main wing capitalist leaders are responding to the open fascists’ threat with revved-up racism of their own. In January, Macron joined forces with the National Rally’s Marine Le Pen and signed a new law that cuts off social benefits for migrants and eases deportations—an “ideological victory,” Le Pen bragged (Le Monde, 1/27). In France, “Islam and its practitioners are more than ever perceived and treated as needing control, surveillance, change, and if not, suppression” (Bridge Initiative, 1/24). In Britain, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has launched his Tory Party “manifesto” to cut legal migration by half each year, to put severe caps on work and family visas, and to force migrants to pass a health check before entering the country—and then to buy insurance if they are “likely to be a burden” (Independent, 6/11). Sunak’s disgusting slander echoes Trump’s racist rant about migrants “poisoning the blood of our country” (nbcnews.com, 12/17/23). Whatever their deep divisions, all bosses are sworn enemies of the workers of the world.

Stop migrant genocide with communist revolution

On June 8, the Israeli “Defense” Forces retrieved four Israeli captives—and slaughtered at least 274 Palestinians, including dozens of children, in a refugee camp in Nuseirat, in central Gaza. Already overwhelmed hospitals were thrown into chaos (Al Jazeera, 6/11). More than 37,000 Palestinians have been murdered to date by Israel’s Zionist regime and made-in-U.S. bombs—nearly all of them migrants from the mass expulsions of 1948 or 1967 or the descendants of those refugees. As Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign continues apace, the migrant workers of Gaza are trapped in a stranglehold of national borders, with Israel on one side and Egypt on the other. Their homes have been destroyed and they have no place to go. One of the fascist members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s racist cabinet has called for their “voluntary migration” out of Gaza—to clear the way for Israel’s bosses to grab some highly valuable real estate and the vast reserves of offshore oil and gas.

Most of all, like workers in the U.S. and Europe, the migrants of Gaza are trapped by anti-working-class ideas—by the nationalism of Hamas and other misleaders who want a share of the profit pie. Their one way out of this nightmare is to unite with the international working class under the red flag of communist revolution. The fight for communism is inseparable from the fight to liberate workers in Palestine and forced migrants everywhere. Progressive Labor Party is building a mass organization of workers that transcends the bosses' borders. We are dedicated to ending racism, sexism, nationalism, and imperialism for all time. Join us in the fight for worker liberation!

Washington, DC, June 8 — “ARAB, JEWISH, BLACK AND WHITE! WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!” chanted several dozen Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades and friends marching around the White House. We joined thousands of workers and students from around the U.S. gathering to form a “red line” demanding an end to genocide in Palestine. A busload of almost 40 PL’ers, students and friends from New York City joined comrades in Washington, DC and both raised internationalist communist politics and learned valuable lessons to carry the anti-imperialist class war forward.

With the confirmed death toll in Gaza exceeding 37,000, and the estimated numbers missing many tens of thousands higher, Israel, the  rabid, mad-dog, fascist, puppet state of the U.S., has stirred masses of youth and workers into action. The revolutionary communist PLP salutes the brave masses facing down riot police in daily protests against genocide, and we fight to unite the entire international working class to smash this entire imperialist system once and for all!

Learning to fight, fighting to learn

For the bus ride down, young Party comrades planned and led a study group on nationalism vs internationalism, based on the 1968 PLP text, Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism, whose lessons are just as relevant today. Millions of youth and workers are appalled at the Israeli fascist genocide. Meanwhile opportunist groups uncritically praise the armed resistance led by Hamas, attacking any criticism as “dividing the resistance.” As communists, theory and practice are inseparable — and it’s the opportunists who divide the working class by hiding capitalist ideas in nationalist and religious dressing.

The study group discussion was vigorous and disagreements were sharp, with every person participating and sharing their views. While there were mixed views on nationalism, sharp points about how nationalism has not actually liberated the working class came from several workers/students from Puerto Rico, Lebanon, Ireland, and the Dominican Republic among others. And, despite some disagreements on the question of nationalism, one student joined PLP and will continue struggling with us. Others agreed to join or consider joining regular Party study groups. Our fight to unite the working class for an armed revolution for workers’ dictatorship from NYC to Gaza continues!
PLP brings red line to “red line”

We arrived in D.C. to what was more of a festival than an actual protest. There were discussions about the massacres in Palestine and a people’s court. Hundreds of youth and workers held a symbolic “red line” made from fabric around the White House’s gates which had the names of workers murdered by Israel. We soon found out that police presence was low because march organizers had a permit for the action and there was a pride parade happening nearby (in fact anti-Genocide LGBTQ+ protestors who rallied next to the parade were some of the only protesters attaked by police that day). The main “red line” action seemed like a performance that complied with the capitalists' laws despite the angry mood of thousands willing to break them! Some of the organizers of the march even walked around asking people to sign a sheet to get candidates elected in the presidential campaign. 

After evaluating the situation, we decided to turn up the energy and bring our own political red line to the protestors. We led a march around the White House, which a crowd of protestors joined, encouraging those holding the red cloth to yell red chants. Throughout the day, we distributed 1,000 CHALLENGEs and over 1,100 leaflets calling to smash the genocide in Palestine with communist revolutions that will burn this system to the ground.

Comrades and friends debriefed on the day before departing back to NYC, and the consensus was our Party-led injection of militancy and energy into the protest was both necessary and well-received against the sedated, election-oriented event organizers. It also became clear that political disagreements on nationalism were unresolved among some of our friends. In particular, some students questioned if focusing on internationalism and anti-imperialism “de-centers” the legitimate aspirations of workers in Palestine for freedom. Essentially, their question was: how are we as communists engaging in the struggle against Israeli genocide?

“From the masses, to the masses”

Part of how the disagreement on the bus was handled reflects our task to sharpen our political skills and build a mass base for PLP. Self-critically, one of the things we could’ve done better was to first invite the students who came from the encampments to share their experiences fighting back in sharp antiracist struggle. These courageous students exemplify the militant student-worker unity that our Party fights for.  much to learn from. And we should emulate their bold struggles. We could’ve also presented our chants earlier on, discussed and provided clarity about why we do the chants that we do. 

At the same time, our Party’s line, shaped by six decades of sharp struggle, is an invincible revolutionary weapon in the hands of these students and the masses. PLP fights for internationalism because there is a class basis in international, working class solidarity. We oppose nationalism because we have the history proving that despite tremendous struggles like in Vietnam and South Africa, it’s a dead-end solution for the working class. Vietnam today is a global center for sweatshop factories, while South Africa’s African National Congress is in alliance with the same apartheid fascists the international working class waged a decades-long armed struggle against.

Communism is liberation

If we know that nationalism leads back to capitalism — and racism, sexism, and imperialism —  we must fight for liberation by opposing it! Capitalism is our enemy no matter the gender, skin color or religion of whatever politicians are the face of it.  than ever the working class is looking for actual solutions - not another fake “progressive” form of capitalism. 

That same day of the march, Israel committed another massacre killing 274 more of our class siblings at a refugee camp. Our task is to crush imperialism or it will keep crushing us. The imperialists are preparing to plunge the international working class into another World War for their profits. PLP’s solution is to organize the international working class to fight for a communist world that is run by and for the working class, where there are no genocides, wars or nations that divide us. PLP is a party for ALL youth and workers with antiracist, anti-sexist and anti-imperialist ideas — JOIN US!