Fighting Fascism
The need for mass, independent organizations of the working class
The continued extreme use of force against working people by the capitalist class here and across the globe is in preparation for what they know will become a massive uprising in opposition to the extreme austerity, anti-democratic, racist, sexist, police-state measures they are planning to enforce to guarantee a steady increase in profits for themselves.
Trump is pursuing a policy putting American business interests above all others worldwide—in essence—to, “…expand territorial power for a class of transnational elites who believe they’re above the law.” 1
His goal is to form “special economic zones” in countries around the world controlled by a select group of U.S. and international business partners devoted to establishing rapidly multiplying forms of private territories with their own business-friendly laws, like looser environmental regulations and labor standards. (It’s what the Trump administration brokered for Gaza in its cease-fire with Israel.) And not only internationally, but here in the U.S. as well.
It is a continuation and intensification of past U.S. imperialist actions, but with a new blueprint for establishing the military and political domination of U.S. capital over all the natural resources in the world, and to control the labor to extract them in every country in the world.
This is a new form of fascism—led by the United States—in this universal capitalist war against the working class.
The only thing that can hinder this new stage in this imperialist war on the world is the power of a massive, independent and democratically-organized working-class movement in solidarity against it. This movement must include working-class organizations, social justice groups, community organizing groups and, most importantly, all those unorganized people opposed to capitalism’s turn to fascism—all those who are not in any groups or organizations—the overwhelming majority of people in the world!
Capitalism’s inevitable decent into fascism
To accomplish their goal of crushing the working class, the Trump administration has used immigration enforcement to militarily occupy our communities and criminalize anyone opposed to ICE, racism, sexism and fascism. The U.S. has become a model for criminalizing immigrants in countries across the world—rounding them up, deporting them, incarcerating and killing them—and criminalizing anyone who dares to speak up in defense of immigrants.
The surveillance state
Along with the all-out assault on immigrants and anyone who supports them, they have an ulterior motive—to identify anyone who has been on a demonstration, a strike, students walking out of schools—targeting anyone opposed to Trump’s assault on immigrants and democracy and on the living standards of the masses of workers.
In order to enforce their plan, they have created a surveillance program that not only uses new technology—drones, satellite imaging, social media platforms, etc.—they are using facial recognition, car license cameras on public streets, private surveillance cameras—even hacking private cell phones—to identify us and put us in their data base of “undesirables.”
According to a February 3, 2026, article in the New York Times titled, “ICE Is Watching You,” by Tressie McMillan Cottom:
“You don’t need to understand how digital tracking works or have a degree in constitutional law to grasp what is happening to your privacy. You need only know this: Whatever is happening with your data, it is important enough to the most egregiously lawless administration in American history that it be collected and consolidated. It is important enough that a federal cowboy kept one hand on his phone even as his other hand reached for his gun. A militarized federal police force that acts out of loyalty on the whim of a political leader who relishes retribution and adulation is the tip of an iceberg. You don’t build a nuclear bomb for peace any more than you build a national surveillance apparatus just to manage a border wall. This kind of weaponry could effectively nullify our Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable search and seizure. It also could more easily enable the government to trample on your free speech. And it could do all of this without meaningful transparency or oversight.”
But this is not new. The surveillance state has been forming for a long time. In a February 4, 2026, article in the Times, titled, “ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants,” by David Wallace-Wells:
“Last month Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, bragged to Fox News about how he was pushing to ‘create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding and assault — we’re going to make them famous.’ But Homan, Trump, his adviser Stephen Miller and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, haven’t conjured a new surveillance state out of whole cloth. We are now several decades into the militarization of American law enforcement and the expansion of the homeland security mandate, which have together yielded an unnerving mix of imperial impunity and national-security-style policing that the historian Nikhil Pal Singh has called a new form of ‘homeland empire.’ Last May, researchers at Georgetown Law republished a 2022 report, ‘American Dragnet,’ which found that ICE spent $2.8 billion on expanded surveillance capabilities from 2008 to 2021. The spending had nearly tripled since 2015, and most of the increase was invested in geolocation. … By 2022, the researchers found, ICE had already scanned the driver’s license photos of one-third of American adults and had access to the information contained on a typical license for many more. It was tracking the movement of drivers in cities home to three-quarters of American adults and could locate three-quarters of American adults through their utility records. … This may not feel like a significant escalation, given how police officers routinely radio in to check the records of those they’ve pulled over, for instance. But giving indiscriminate checkpoint-style power to every agent in the field, Bier said, is ‘a total reshaping of law enforcement in the United States.’ Instead of investigating a crime by identifying a suspect and then pursuing information about him or her, officers instead begin with someone they want to treat as a criminal and then use the technology to find a justification.”
Taking the control out of the hands of the minority-
dictatorship of capitalism
Capitalist democracy is defined as the right of corporations to reap private profits by any means necessary. They have the right to buy businesses, land or property anywhere in the world it’s for sale. They are not bound by borders! They can kidnap and jail presidents of other countries as they have most recently done in Venezuela; they can shut-down virtually all trade with Cuba—essentially trying to starve the Cuban population into capitulation to U.S. imperialism.2
The U.S. is and has always been a slave-state
The U.S. is a country that was founded upon the right of European invaders to subjugate the indigenous population and enslave masses of Black, Brown, and Asian Americans as outright slaves—and subjugate Irish, Italian, Eastern European, Muslim, Jewish, and other American immigrants.
The power of grass roots
movements based upon democratic participation of groups and
individuals working together
There is a rich history of resistance to U.S. imperialism. Great victories have been won by workers in the early 20th century marking the beginning of the formation of a massive labor movement to organize unions, voting rights for women, the Civil Rights Movement, voting rights for Black Americans, the Vietnam Antiwar Movement.3
The most successful movements and organizations included mass participation of individuals and groups in a democratic decision-making processes. They were successful because masses of people became involved in the decision-making process.
The good news is that the people of Minneapolis, and elsewhere around the country, are organizing on a door-to-door basis in their communities. Churches are delivering food to undocumented families who fear going to the grocery store, neighborhoods have organized ICE “watches” in order to warn people when ICE is sighted in the area and then confronting them and actually forcing them to leave in some instances. So far, hundreds-of-thousands of people have signed up for “ICE Watch” training across the country.
This is a concrete example of true grass-roots organizing springing up among the working class. The overwhelming majority are opposed to ICE and to Trump and feel it’s important to take a stand in support of their neighbors under ICE attack. This is happening without the direction or leadership of political parties or organizations in the communities. It’s happening because there is a mass radicalization going on right now among the working class here and everywhere.
We need coalitions that welcome everyone—groups, labor unions, as well as people who are not in any organization—based upon an open, transparent and democratic structure with one person, one vote and majority rule—organizations that are independent of capitalist parties and controlled by the working-class majority with leaders chosen by that majority.
This is our most important message now.
If we are for socialism, we must be for empowering the working class to rule in our own defense and for the good of all.
1 Read, “Trump Is Not a Nationalist. He’s Something Worse.”
By Jean Guerrero elsewhere in this issue of Socialist Viewpoint.
2 Read, “Trump’s Assault on Cuba and the World,” elsewhere in this issue of Socialist Viewpoint.
3 Read, “Lessons of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement,” and “An Antiwar GI’s Story,” elsewhere in this issue of Socialist Viewpoint.