While Trump and his technocrat new money allies battling the old money party of Exxon Mobil Citibank are taking all the headlines, the most important historical event took place on February 8th, in Lincoln Heights, outside of Cincinnati. Right now, the primary contradiction driving world events is one section of the ruling class fighting others, whether at the level of empire where the last gasp of a dying U.S. is seeing China and Russia circle or the current fight being played out in Washington.

The bosses are hungrily attacking the working class as they build their fascist state. In order to build a fascist state, these bosses are going to need fascists. They have some goofy militias that are the butt of most jokes, but what they’d really like are some committed Nazis. If they can get them waving swastikas, even better.

It was no accident that Elon did a Nazi salute to embolden the fascists and galvanize them for an all out assault on the Black working class. He and all the bosses, both liberal and conservative, need a pacified working class too scared to say anything as they watch all of the civil rights, healthcare, and education reforms fought for and paid for in blood rolled back. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Nazis waving swastikas and carrying guns showed up and tried to intimidate a Black working class community.

Black workers key

Well, the Black workers in Lincoln Heights right outside of Cincinnati got their guns, confronted, and chased away those cowardly Nazis. Any of them that they caught got taught a quick lesson. The lessons from the victory over those armed racists need to be clarified, amplified, and reproduced. This is a watershed moment in U.S. history and needs to be reproduced everywhere. It shows the way to stop Nazis. It also shows that the working class will confront violence with Nazis.

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) will continue to say that the Black proletariat is the key to revolution. Winning the Black working class to an antiracist, working class view of the necessity of communist revolution is the prime focus of the PLP. The Black workers said, “We have to fight back!” They correctly pointed out that President Donald Trump and his administration have given the White nationalists the confidence to show up without fear of being punished.

After chasing away the Nazis, the Black workers in Lincoln Heights then organized a standing room only meeting to discuss and organize themselves for their own protection.  They condemned the kkkops, who quickly sent out an Orwellian missive saying that they didn’t protect the Nazis. When pigs and politicians start squealing out their lies and sounding apologetic, you know they’re scared.  They should be. 
There are lessons that the working class needs to learn from the way that the Black working class continues to be the cutting edge of class struggle in the U.S.

Lessons learned for the future

1) The Working Class Black community was armed when they confronted the Nazis and continue to remain armed as they have set up their own patrols, apart from the bosses’ racist state apparatus.

Make no mistake, our working class sisters, siblings, and brothers in the community showed up strapped. Having experienced the racist KKKops firsthand, they did not expect the police to protect them. In fact, the community was very critical of the police saying, “The lack of action from law enforcement to question and obtain the identities of the demonstrators was an “insult” to the community, Talbert said, which she says has seen the same police department interrogate locals and minors for simple, non-dangerous offenses like congregating on sidewalks

2) There was an immediate and swift response.

When they heard about the Nazis rallying near their community, men and women showed up. They felt rage and refused to pacify it. They showed up and exposed those fascists for the cowards they are. A multi-generational, multi-gender group of the Black proletariat showed up and showed out.

3) They did not let the cops keep them away and grabbed a swastika flag.

They correctly identified the kkkops that routinely harass their children for hanging out in front of their own homes and who shot BLM protesters as being very comfortable with and protecting the Nazis. They had no intention of setting up a picket line in front of the police with signs and spitting some chants. Nope. They turnt it up.  The kkkops realized at once that they could not contain this problem.

The Black proletariat filmed themselves as they burned the swastika flag. This was a symbol to the working class that has been shared and viewed millions of times that we can fight these cowards.

Yes, millions of people have watched the video of them coming out and chasing off the Nazis. This video has inspired and emboldened the working class as a whole. It will force the Nazis to either show up in a greater force later or to stay in hiding for longer. The contradiction is being intensified. It is important for the PLP to provide as much communist support and leadership to this community as possible to maintain and build multiracial unity in the face of organized white supremacy.

4) White members of a neighboring community showed up the next day to rally against racism. It is crucial that white workers from this community join the armed patrols of Black workers.

Black and white workers must fight together

The members of the working class white and Black neighborhoods need to reach out and organize against this racism together. This can not devolve into a struggle of white people vs Black people. This must be a multiracial struggle against modern day fascism. Racism divides the working class.

As the Lincoln Heights working class has organized their own patrols with guns, people everywhere need to send messages of solidarity and support to our brave siblings, brothers, and sisters outside of Cincinnati who have shown the way. PLP will continue to facilitate this antiracist fight back.

If anybody who reads this is interested in fighting racism, especially if you’re in Cincinnati, please contact PLP, and let’s do what needs to be done.

Capitalists compete by any means necessary. Much like smaller criminal gangs, different groups of capitalists battle one another to secure territory, resources, and exploitable labor–the basis of their profits.They have created the state as a mechanism to manage and protect this ruthless profit-driven system. Through laws, police, prisons, elections, the military, schools, the media, and other institutions, the bosses have built a dictatorship to keep themselves in power—and keep the working class out of power. 

Fascism is a stage of late capitalism in crisis where the liberal democratic veil peels away to reveal a rotting dictatorship. The bosses use state terror to discipline their own class and enforce compliance by the working class–both essential conditions for waging global war. Fascism is marked by more direct and centralized rule, with intensified racism, sexism, and nationalism. 

The Big Fascists are the dominant finance capitalists, principally the multinational banks and oil companies (JPMorganChase, ExxonMobil). They’re trying to build a multiracial, patriotic coalition to back U.S. imperialism and protect their far-flung profits. This is the wing that plays the drums of World War III. 

The Small Fascists are mostly domestically oriented capitalists, spearheaded by the Koch, Mercer, DeVos, and Coors families, along with Richard Mellon Scaife, Harry and Lynde Bradley, John Olin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch and a cast of other billionaires. They want to cut taxes for short-term profits and are reluctant to invest in costly ground wars to defend the global U.S. empire. Their agenda includes a racist gutting of social services at home and a retreat from U.S. imperialist alliances, including NATO. 

Oppose fascist anti-masking laws

Fascist state campaigns to pass laws to penalize people for wearing masks when “committing a crime” are spreading from the initial efforts in New York, North Carolina, and other states (CHALLENGE, 10/16). Here in Maryland, the Zionists in the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are leading the charge with the support of Black politicians and organizations (Jewish Insider, 2/16). The ADL claims that Jewish students are being harassed by masked pro-Palestinian students based on their lie that anti-semitism is widespread on U.S. campuses. The bigger lie -- that opposing genocide in Gaza by the Israeli state is antisemitism -- has been raised once again in the halls of the Maryland General Assembly. This is the state where a Progressive Labor Party (PLP) teacher and several others have been disciplined for social media posts (CHALLENGE, 2/16/24) while allowing Zionist narratives to be pushed uncritically in schools. PLP is fighting this anti-masking bill, gathering support from students at the University of Maryland who themselves have protested martial law in the Philippines and genocide in Gaza and recognize the dangers of facial recognition and drone surveillance.  

The bill is being sponsored by several well-known Zionist politicians but also by Black delegates from Prince George’s County (Karen Toles and Adrian Boafo).  These delegates hail from the same area represented by Glenn Ivey, a Black politician who is now in the U.S. House of Representatives and received contributions of $7 million dollars from AIPAC and refused to criticize Israel’s genocide when confronted by protestors. It appears these local delegates are following in his footsteps. The NAACP and Urban League are supporting this legislation despite the fact that it will lead to racial profiling in largely Black areas such as Baltimore and Prince George’s County. By comparing the masking of protestors against genocide with the masks and hoods worn by the KKK and the Proud Boys, these misleaders are helping lead Black students and workers to  jails and prisons. This is like the Nazi collaborators in Germany’s Jewish Councils (the Judenrat), collaborators with the Nazis that led masses of Jews to the gas chambers in exchange for helping an elite few escape to Palestine and other destinations.

Other opposition is coming from disability justice groups who support masking for both health and political reasons and from groups opposing Maryland’s investment in Israeli businesses. As CHALLENGE has pointed out before, masking to protect against airborne viruses and poor air quality needs to be expanded, not discouraged, and the public health concerns are important as flu, COVID variants, and possibly bird flu circulate and sicken our friends and coworkers. Testimony continues in Annapolis and the struggle to stop this legislation will continue. 
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Liberal misleaders, fascists show their unity 

In the recent Professional Staff Congress contract struggle, the liberal and fake leftist faculty have shown their true colors across CUNY by lining up behind the PSC misleadership’s claims that our new bogus wage-cut contract is a “victory.” At one campus, amazingly, a fake leftist PSC officer co-hosted a local chapter meeting defending the new contract — alongside the rightwing leadership, which includes rabid Zionists. All in the name of “civility,” they’d argue – because after all, we’re all in the same boat and must work together!

This chapter meeting was an illustration of the essential unity of liberal misleaders and fascists, especially when contrasted against years of student and Progressive Labor Party-led antiracist fightbacks. This unity is evident in the outright hysterical lies and ongoing lawsuits from the fascists on one hand, to the fake left’s typical redbaiting claims of indoctrinating students, exaggerating facts, their history of cooperation with the administration, and blaming PL’ers for provoking Zionist attacks. 

When the fake leftists rejected PL’ers calling for unity against Zionist attacks, they suggested PL’ers turn themselves in to campus police and “confess” that we, not the inspirational mainly women Muslim students organizing antiracist struggle - for the very first time - were the leading force behind a struggle. And by magic, the Zionists would stop their harassment! In a later struggle when campus police beat and arrested one of our students, mass protests and fightback rocked the campus. The absent fake left audaciously spoke on behalf of the struggle to the PSC’s newspaper, Clarion, about their mildly worded petition.

While every struggle has its weaknesses, a fatal weakness is forgetting that the main danger comes from the liberal misleaders. Under fascism, the temptations for opportunism may be greatest. But the working class can’t share boats with liberal misleaders or fascists, and we aren’t civil with them either. This new contract is an opportunity to expose the liberal misleader/ fascist unity once again, and our growing CHALLENGE networks in CUNY are the alternative – as we build our campus student-worker alliances and become the leadership and build the mass PLP the working class deserves!
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Intl students speak language of fightback 

The students have come here from all over the world. They are studying to improve their English so they can enroll in college. For several semesters now I have been engaging them to improve their conversational skills, but they also need to work on their reading and writing, grammar, comprehension, the whole works. They are Black and white, Asian and Latin, men and women. Some are straight out of high school, most are a little older, often with children. 

We talk about their journey here. Those from Yemen, Ukraine, Russia or South Sudan come because of war. So sometimes we talk about imperialism. Nationalism comes up, but everyone gets along, including those from Russia and Ukraine. They often help each other to express themselves in English. When I say that rich capitalists (imperialists) promote these wars for profit and workers fight and die, some nod their heads in agreement. But others are angry that their nation or ethnic group is suffering. I should fight a little harder for the idea that workers and soldiers should make war on the warmakers instead of fighting and killing each other.

I asked about Trump and his viciously racist immigration policies. They are here legally but they are now worried, both for themselves and for friends and family. One pulled out a large envelope and raised it up. “These are my papers. I now carry them with me all the time.” I asked if anyone else did that. The reply was that almost everyone now carried their papers with them.

These students have all kinds of skills and potential. Some want to be nurses or teachers, some want to work in computer science or in fashion design. Some want to start a small business. When I ask them about communism, some are quiet but others immediately talk about equality and people sharing. There are very little to no negative comments. I agree with equality and sharing. Then I tell them that communism also means no money or profits and people like them will run the world.
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We need a mass party

The 1/15, CHALLENGE’s page 8 article was entitled “How Bolsheviks Built a Mass Revolutionary Party” but in the article a quote from Lenin’s What Is To Be Done is favorably reprinted STATING “that such an organization (i.e. communist party) must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity…”  Is our intention to build a mass communist party or to follow in the Leninist tradition and build a party of professional revolutionaries?

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has abandoned the idea of a cadre party of professional revolutionaries. We oppose the cadre party approach because we disagree sharply with the idea that the working class or its communist party needs “professionals” and experts to take charge. 

Leaders must understand and exemplify communist ideals a little better than the rest of us but those leaders must be workers and students fighting side by side with masses of workers and students in class struggle.  The first commitment of those leaders must be to help develop more and more working-class leaders with the goal of all workers being leaders.  

The Bolshevik reliance on expert and professional leadership eventually moved the revolution in the wrong direction. Both the Soviet Union and China turned to relying on privileged experts to oversee actual industrial production while professional revolutionaries in the leadership of both communist parties, the Soviet CP USSR and the Chinese CPC, made the political decisions.  

In the USSR the threat of Nazi invasion led the leadership of the CP USSR to unite with U.S. and British capitalist bosses to maintain their socialist rule.  In China decades later the CPC leadership moved so strongly in a capitalist direction that a mass movement of students and workers rose up in rebellion to the “capitalist roaders” launching the Cultural Revolution (CR). 

The CR was the beginning of the development of a mass party and their actions fighting for mass workers’ power inspired PLP to rethink our ideas on what a communist led workers’ movement should look like.  Mao, chairman of the CPC was too afraid of losing his position as China’s leader and used the Chinese army to smash the CR rather than take the risk of being pushed aside by the capitalist roaders who ruled alongside him.

How will PLP have a different outcome? The answer will be found in our ability to learn from the successes and mistakes of 150 years of communist struggles.  Some of that has already taken place.

PLP has a new, young and dynamic leadership who will not stop short of winning a mass communist led working class movement to rid the world of capitalist rule once and for all.  We have placed the leadership of the working class in the hands of men and women workers, many of them Black, Latin, immigrant and part of the LGBTQ community.

We also have to be completely honest and open about mistakes our movement has made in the past including mistakes we in PLP have made.

Communism is a living, breathing set of ideas in constant change and development like everything else and we can and will defeat the exploitation and oppression of capitalist rule.
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Africa is a geographic mishmash because of capitalism

Al Jazeera, 2/23–Africa has the most countries of any continent with a total of 54. Rather than following natural terrains or historical boundaries, many of its borders are strikingly straight in some areas and jagged in others, cutting through mountains, rivers and even communities. Most of these artificial borders trace back to the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference, a meeting that concluded 140 years ago this week in which European powers carved up the continent among themselves with no African nations invited or represented…Britain drew a straight-line border along the 22nd parallel, a line of latitude 22 degrees north of the equator, separating Egypt and Sudan…

Housing costs are destroying the illusion of prosperity 

The Guardian, 2/24–I bought my home in a hurry in 2020,” said Meg, 60, an office manager from Maryland. “It was less expensive to take on a mortgage than to keep paying ever-increasing rents for my college-student daughter and me.” Now housing costs consume 50% of her income…Our necessities consume 75% of my income, with 50% of that housing costs” …“I’ve come to view home ownership and healthcare as destabilizing forces in my life,” said Bernie…the couple was foregoing medical and dental treatment of any kind…despite a pre-tax household income of more than $250,000.

Deaths in Gaza are greatly underreported

Nader.org, 2/21–The official Hamas count that all sides like to cite is now over 48,000 deaths…American doctors back from Gaza before the Rafah closing last year said…put the death estimate almost a year ago at a minimum of 95,000, not counting tens of thousands of families buried under the rubble…Why would all sides to this one-sided Israeli war of extermination rely on Hamas’ figures? Well, Hamas has an interest in low-balling the number of deaths to limit the rage of its inhabitants and allies abroad for not protecting the people of Gaza and not providing them with shelters. 

In San Diego, workers resist modern day slave catchers

KPBS, 2/20–...patrol San Diego’s Linda Vista neighborhood in search of suspicious vehicles…They’re activists with Union del Barrio, a locally based immigrant rights group, looking for any signs that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is trying to arrest their neighbors…These volunteers are trained to spot undercover vehicles. Usually American-made SUVs like Dodge Caravans or Ford Explorers with tinted windows that don’t normally park in their neighborhoods…Once they verify that a vehicle belongs to ICE, the activists notify hundreds of followers via social media and group chats…

In Los Angeles, workers organize to resist ICE blockheads

NBCLosAngeles, 2/20–a Los Angeles-based group is doing patrols of its own to look out for its community. A handful of volunteers patrolled throughout South LA on Wednesday to look out for immigration officers. The volunteers, which is comprised of activists organized by Community Self Defense Coalition, say their mission is to alert the public of the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and inform residents of their rights…when the volunteer group scopes out ICE agents, they look out for tinted SUVs without license plates or exempt plates. When they believe they’ve spotted immigration agents, patrol members livestream their location. Additionally, they pass out cards that remind residents of their rights.

Imperialist nations prepare for missile warfare

ForeignPolicy,2/20–Under former President Joe Biden, the U.S. military moved eagerly to seize the opportunities that the INF Treaty’s demise has opened in Asia by developing, testing, and fielding new ground-launched missiles that previously would have been prohibited…the Army in particular welcomed the end of the INF Treaty because it gave the service a clearer role in a possible conventional war in the Indo-Pacific. Army leaders have moved almost as quickly as technology will allow to develop and field the new capabilities…