We have seen this historically and we continue to see this at racist borders today: concentration camps and genocide are an integral part of the political economy of the capitalist system, and every capitalist imperialist power. From the extermination campaigns against indigenous workers who lived in what is now North America to the U.S. encampment of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II, these bloody stains on the U.S. are buried, obscured, and even warped into tortured apologies by the bosses’ media. Today, as the U.S. bosses imprison thousands upon thousands of refugees from Haiti and Latin America in camps, it’s not enough that we learn and gain awareness of these atrocities against the working class. We must fight back.
It’s up to workers to arm ourselves with the rich and militant history of workers’ fightback. Over a half century ago, author Yuri Suhl did just that, and wrote a history of fightback and rebellion within one of the darkest periods of working class history. For communists, Suhl’s They Fought Back serves as a manual containing lessons for how workers, staring down the face of brutal oppression, can join fists and fight back.
Fascist capitalism can be defeated
In 1967, Yuri Suhl compiled accounts of resistance to Nazism during World War II. His purpose was to dispel the myth that Jewish workers in Europe were passive and never fought back against the Nazi fascists. Most of the accounts are of lesser-known events and resistance leaders. These are honest, and although written from a nationalist perspective, Suhl and the authors highlight communist and rank-and-file leadership.
The account by Alexander Pechersky, a Red Army commander who led a revolt at the Sobibor death camp, is worth retelling. It shows how even in the most desperate situation, with confidence in the working class and a strong political base, the fascists can be taken, even from within their strongholds.
The Sobibor camp in eastern Poland was the final destination for Jewish deportees from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, France, Austria, and later the Soviet Union. The Nazis murdered them at the rate of 15,000 a day. Those who remained labored from five in the morning to eight pm, barely surviving on bread and moldy barley. Typhus was rampant, and the Nazi guards immediately executed those who contracted it. The guards systematically beat the workers with whips and forced them to count their own lashes. For the rest, the children, the old and most women, there was no work, only death.  
Red Army Lieutenant Pechersky arrived at Sobibor in September, 1943, from Minsk, the first transport from the Soviet Union. He and 80 other men were spared from the ovens; the others were never seen again. Initially he suffered severe depression and nightmares, but quickly moved past that to begin escape plans and base building.  
The Nazis conducted massive executions in retaliation for attempted escapes. Pechersky reasoned that everyone must escape and relied on the workers there to make that escape possible. He allied himself with two young workers, one of whose father was a communist, who helped him to organize political discussions in the barracks, which he describes:
For those who did not understand Russian, Shloime translated into Yiddish. They translated for each other into German and Dutch ... The barracks dwellers sat on the lower bunks together with the "Easterners" (that's how we who came from the Soviet Union were called by the camp inmates). They were hungry, exhausted from hard labor, their bodies bruised from the whippings; they were doomed to death. However, it sufficed to have a brief rest, a few peaceful moments, and one's spirit rose again. Especially here, in the company of women, backs straightened out, eyes sparkled, laughter was heard, and wherever you turned, a lively discussion was in progress. And what were they discussing here? They talked about the war and its prospects; about countries and cities; about science and technology; about the theater; music, and literature; about the contradictions in human nature and about the future of humanity; here they sang, cried, and kissed; here the feelings of love and jealousy came into play; all the emotions that set the human heart aglow and quickened its pulse beat found expression here. (pp. 20, 22)
Most striking was Pechersky’s lack of cynicism. He had every "objective" reason for feeling despair, and yet he did not. Despite everything, many imprisoned workers continued to believe Hitler's lie that their lives would be saved, and this gave rise to defeatist ideas borne of fear. While capitalism exists there will always be some workers who feel this way, a lesson for us to always keep in mind.
Pechersky’s List
In the 1990s, a blockbuster Hollywood film, Schindler’s List, glorified a Nazi officer and capitalist who felt sympathy for his Jewish prisoners being sent to slaughter. Working within the Nazi system through bribes, he made a list of those to save by working in factories he ran, with the helpless Jewish prisoners having little agency in their future. In stark contrast to this passivity, at Sobibor,  “Pechersky’s list” included thirteen leading Nazi officers assassinated in advance with axes and knives secretly made by the Red Army and Jewish prisoners. They also determined that any imprisoned workers who betrayed them would be killed. Before and during this revolt, carefully planned tunnels were dug, guns were taken from the dead Nazis, and telephone lines cut.
During the revolt in October 1943, all 600 inmates made a break for freedom. About 400 succeeded in breaking out of the camp, but about half of these were killed by landmines. Pursued by aircraft, the SS (Nazi soldiers), police, and thousands of troops, some were killed. Polish fascists killed yet more – these were the anticommunist Armija Krajowa, the “national army” of the anticommunist and anti-Semitic Polish “government in exile” in London, who are “heroes” in today’s capitalist Poland. Still, some managed to elude their pursuers, and Pechersky's group of 60 men and women succeeded in making contact with Soviet “partisans,” or communist guerillas.
Before the revolt, in one of Alexander Pechersky's barracks discussions, he was peppered with questions about liberation and the state of the war. One person asked, “If there are so many partisans, why don't they attack our camp?" Pechersky replied, "The partisans have their tasks. No one can do our work for us." The workers were excited by that idea and embraced it. Their collective self-reliance was the other prong of the winning strategy. They realized — as the working class must again today — it is up to us to make change.
Auschwitz rebels betrayed by U.S., British capitalists
In contrast to Sobibor, there was also an escape from Auschwitz. The escapees made their way to the Vatican, contacting the British foreign minister and President Roosevelt to try to convince them to bomb the crematoriums and railroad transport lines. All refused. U.S. Asst. Secretary for War John J. McCoy told the World Jewish Congress:
    ... After a study it became apparent that such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources [Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Why-wasnt-Auschwitz-bombed-717594].
Those death camps functioned with direct Allied knowledge and complicity. Those agents of capital were not interested in saving the lives of the Jewish workers, communists, trade unionists, and others who were in the camps. The Auschwitz rebels’ strategy of relying on the bosses for help, waiting and negotiating, cost more lives.
Lessons from Sobibor
When workers rely on themselves, they can win their objectives, but when they rely on the agents of the bourgeoisie, labor union fakers and rotten politicians of every party, they are doomed. This is a key lesson for the international working class in this period of the development of fascism as a worldwide system.
As fascism further develops in the U.S. as they face off against imperialist rivals China and Russia, the camps housing refugees today may serve as prisons for all workers and others who rebel, and we must learn from our class’ experiences at Sobibor.
Nazism was defeated by mustering every ounce of working-class heroism during those six years of world war. But although Nazism was defeated, capitalism was not. The imperialists that united with the Soviet Union only until they could defeat their rival imperialists, the German Nazis and Italian fascists, went on to install fascist regimes to murder and terrorize workers across Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. They still do. More workers have been murdered by the fascist regimes installed and bankrolled by these imperialists than were murdered by the German Nazis, Italian fascists, and their allies during World War II. Many of the refugees braving the horrific journey to the U.S. and EU borders today are fleeing these fascist regimes, and it is the duty of today’s communists in the Progressive Labor Party to learn from the past —the victories and mistakes—and finish the job.
World-wide, there are millions of workers who have no intention of being herded into death camps. But the bastard bosses and their two-bit chumps will never be defeated unless we organize now, with the spirit of those fighters at Sobibor, to smash all camps and this entire capitalist system for communist revolution.

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.

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.

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!