LaborFest

1 day ago

‘Hitler’s hatred of the scientist had intensified. There was a price on his head’: the tragic story of Robert Einstein, Albert’s cousin
After the famous physicist fled Germany in 1933, his cousin Robert moved his family to Italy, where they thought they had found safety. Then, the day before liberation, Nazis smashed down their front door …
Thomas Harding
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/apr/19/hitlers-hatred-of-the-scientist-had-intensified-ther…
Sat 19 Apr 2025 12.00 CEST

Early on the morning of 3 August 1944, a unit of heavily armed German soldiers arrived at the Villa Il Focardo outside Florence.
They didn’t knock. They didn’t ring the bell. They simply smashed through the front door, marched in and started shouting for the villa’s owner, Robert Einstein, cousin of the world-famous scientist Albert Einstein.
Robert and Albert had grown up together in Munich, Germany, in the 1880s and 1890s. For 11 years they had lived in the same house. You could say they were brother-cousins. Their fathers, Jakob and Hermann Einstein, were in business together, running an electrification company. Over the years, they had brought electric light to beer halls, town squares and cafes.
In 1894, the Einstein company failed to win a large contract and went bankrupt. The two families moved to Milan and started again. When this business also went bust, the brothers parted ways but the cousins remained close. Robert stayed in Italy, qualified as an engineer and married Nina Mazzetti, a priest’s daughter from the north. In the 1920s, they moved to a small apartment in Rome and began building a life.
Grainy sepia mage of Albert Einstein's cousin Robert
Robert Einstein.Photograph: Il Nuovo Corriere
This was around the time that Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party (PNF) took power. The fascists were, at this point, not particularly antisemitic and Jews were as likely to be party members as the rest of the population. For his part, the Jewish Robert Einstein did not join the fascists, but as a businessman he was sympathetic towards their investment in public infrastructure and modernisation of the government.
Meanwhile, Albert Einstein had returned to Germany and published his paper on relativity. In 1922, he was awarded the Nobel prize and was the most famous scientist in the world.
As it happens, I have a personal connection to the Einsteins. Our two families knew each other in Berlin in the 1920s. My grandmother used to tell a story from when she was a child. One day, Albert Einstein and his wife came for dinner at the family’s apartment on Kaiserallee near the Kurfürstendamm. She recalled peering through the keyhole of the dining room door and seeing that the great scientist was wearing house slippers, confirming rumours of his forgetful nature.

After the meal, her father, Alfred Alexander, escorted Albert to the salon to take coffee, intending to quiz him about the theory of relativity. But when he climbed into bed later that night, Alfred confessed to his wife that he and his guest had become so engrossed in discussing the latest detective novels that he had forgotten to ask.
The two men also had a professional relationship. My great-grandfather was the Einstein family doctor. On 27 April 1926, Albert Einstein wrote a letter thanking my great-grandfather for the treatment he had provided to his terminally ill uncle and aunt: “Dear and esteemed Dr Alexander!” Albert said. “Words cannot express the good you have done for my family.” Having detailed the specifics of the treatment, he ended with a sentence that imagined a tactile link between the two families: “Clasping your hand in sincere gratitude, A Einstein.”
Neither Albert nor Alfred had a sense of the horror their families would soon face.
In 1934, Robert and Nina Einstein were still living in Rome when Nina’s brother asked them for help. His wife had died and he was struggling to look after their seven-year-old twins. Robert and Nina had two girls of their own (Luce, who was 17, and Cici, who was eight), but they agreed to take in their two nieces.

The Rome apartment was now too crowded. Robert and Nina shared a love of nature and decided the time was right to move to the countryside. They found a villa outside Florence called Il Focardo. It had a peach orchard, vines and olive trees. Perhaps most importantly, it came with 10 contadini, or farmers, who would help manage the estate. It was paradise.
In May 1938, Adolf Hitler was invited to Florence by Mussolini. Desperate to impress his visitor, the Italian leader spent vast sums cleaning up the buildings, parks and streets, then gave the Führer a pomp-filled guided tour of the city. Travelling in a 20-car motorcade, they were cheered on by tens of thousands of flag-waving Italians, right arms raised to the sky in the fascist salute. The two men appeared to bond during this trip.
Black and white image of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini (both standing in front carriage) driving through the festively decorated streets of Florence on 10 May 1938
View image in fullscreen
Benito Mussolini driving through the streets of Florence with Adolf Hitler in May 1938. Photograph: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy

Six months later, on 11 November 1938, to the shock of Italian Jews, Mussolini announced the introduction of racial laws (similar to the Nazis’ Nuremberg laws). The legislation was approved by parliament and signed into law by King Vittorio Emanuele III. Jewish children were forbidden to attend public schools and universities. Jews could no longer work in banks, insurance companies or local government. They could not marry non-Jews, serve in the army or be PNF members.
In practice, these laws were intermittently enforced, dependent on the whims of the local police and party officials. As a result, the Einsteins’ lives at Il Focardo were little affected. Luce continued to attend medical school in Florence. Cici and her cousins went to the local high school, while Robert and Nina managed the estate.
This sense of relative calm changed in the autumn of 1943, when the German army swept through northern Italy and occupied Florence and its surrounding area. On 1 December, Mussolini’s minister of the interior, Guido Buffarini Guidi, announced on national radio Police Order Number 5, including this command: all Jews were to be rounded up and put in concentration camps.
Over the next seven months, more than 8,000 Jews were arrested, amounting to 20% of the Italian Jewish population. The roundups, or razzia as they were called in Italy, were carried out by German SS and police forces, supported by Italian fascists.
Robert and Nina were still living at Il Focardo with their two daughters and two nieces. They had been joined by Nina’s sister Seba and a third niece, Anna Maria, the daughter of another of Nina’s sisters whose family thought she would be safer in the country.
Over the next days and weeks, Robert and his family watched in horror as Jews across Tuscany were arrested and put on trains to Auschwitz. It was too late for the Einsteins to flee. With the railway stations, airports and border crossings carefully monitored, the Nazis and their Italian partners made it impossible to leave.
Albert Einstein’s cousin Robert with his family at Villa Il Focardo outside Florence.

Robert Einstein and family at Villa Il Focardo outside Florence. Photograph: courtesy of Anna Maria Boldrini
But the Einsteins still thought they were safe. They were tucked away in the villa, far off the beaten track. Nina and the other female family members were Christian and therefore would not be a target of the roundups. And while Robert was Jewish, he was an Italian citizen and much respected locally. It was unlikely that anyone would give him away.
This dark period underlines another connection between my family and the Einsteins. We also experienced the horrors of fascist persecution. My family was German Jewish. My grandmother was thrown out of Heidelberg University because of her religion. Her father had to close his business, as Jews were not allowed to practise medicine. The Nazis stole our family’s precious house by the lake outside Berlin.
Most of my family were able to get out of Nazi Germany, including my grandmother and her parents. They were very grateful when they found refuge in England. But five of my relatives were not so lucky. They were still in Berlin when, in 1943, the Nazis organised their latest roundup. All were murdered in the Holocaust.
By the third week of July 1944, the allies were quickly moving up through Italy from the south. At night, planes could be heard buzzing overhead. There was talk that Florence might fall in a few weeks.
It was the height of the Tuscan summer. The sun beat down unrelentingly. The contadini were working in Il Focardo’s orchards, harvesting the peaches. And it was then that Robert heard there was a German unit looking for him. According to the local priest and an owner of a nearby estate, the soldiers had specifically mentioned he was the cousin of Albert Einstein.
Why would the Germans want to track down Albert Einstein’s relative in Italy? A decade earlier, in 1933, the great scientist had fled Germany when he learned the Nazis wanted to kill him. This was hardly a secret. Newspapers across Europe carried front page stories stating that Hitler wanted Einstein assassinated. London’s Daily Herald announced “Price placed on Einstein’s head”, adding this was valued at £1,000 – equivalent to about half a million pounds today.
Fearing for his life, Albert had fled to England, where he holed up for a few days in Norfolk. He then took a boat with his wife to the US and moved into a house in Princeton, New Jersey.
If anything, Hitler’s hatred of Albert Einstein had intensified over the intervening years. The scientist had very publicly criticised the Nazi regime in the newspapers and raised money for the war effort. He had also provided support to the US military (given its secrecy, it is unlikely that Hitler knew of Einstein’s involvement with the Manhattan Project).
By the summer of 1944, he was, if anything, considered by the Nazi regime to be even more of an enemy than in 1933. The threat of assassination was still very real.
The problem, for the Nazis, was that living in the US, the famous physicist was well beyond their reach. The same was true of his nearest relatives. Albert’s wife, stepdaughter, sister and eldest son were all living in the US, while his first wife and youngest son were in neutral Switzerland.
This left his cousin, Robert, as his closest relative living in Nazi-occupied Europe.
After hearing the Germans were looking for him, Robert and Nina decided he must go into hiding. It was agreed Nina and the girls would stay at the villa; after all, they were Christian, what harm could come to them?
So it was that, in late July 1944, Robert kissed his family goodbye and headed up the rocky track towards the woods behind the villa. There he would remain for the next two weeks, sleeping in a different spot each night.

As the days passed, Robert could hear gunfire and artillery shells, and it sounded as if it was getting closer. Coming to see him one day with supplies, Nina confirmed this. She had heard on the BBC radio that the allies were 20 miles south of Florence. They might be in the city later that week. The prospect of liberation after years of war was thrilling.
Sepia photo of Albert Einstein’s cousin Robert and his wife Nina
View image in fullscreen
Robert Einstein with his wife Nina …
Sepia photo of Albert Einstein’s sister-in-law Nina with her daughgters Luce and Cici
View image in fullscreen
… and Nina with their daughters, Luce and Cici. Photographs: courtesy of Anna Maria Boldrini
This is how things stood when, at 7am on 3 August 1944, the group of heavily armed Germans smashed through the front door of the villa. Alerted by the noise, Nina ran to see what was happening. She found seven soldiers standing in the front hallway. She was soon joined by her two daughters, sister and three nieces. Having lived for a while with her husband in Munich, Nina could speak a few words in German. She demanded to know what was going on. How dare they barge into her house like this?
The intruders were led by a captain who looked to be in his early 30s. He was of average height, had a gaunt face, short-cropped blond hair and wore round metal glasses. Unlike the other soldiers who carried machine guns, the captain had only a pistol which was tucked into a holster on his belt. Ignoring Nina’s umbrage, he demanded to know the whereabouts of the patrone. Where was the cousin of Albert Einstein?
Nina didn’t answer. The German asked again, his voice rising. She maintained her silence. When the captain looked to the others, they also kept quiet.
Frustrated, the captain ordered the seven women to be taken into the cellar. They were pushed along a narrow corridor, then through an open metal door and down some steep wooden steps. Once they were downstairs, the door was closed and locked with a clank.
In the cellar, the quiet was pierced by the creak of the door, followed by the heavy sound of boots coming down the stairs
Over the next few hours, the hostages followed what was going on upstairs. They heard the shuffle of boots overhead: it seemed the soldiers were exploring the villa’s every nook and cranny. Later came the sound of corks popping, followed by the clinking of glasses, cheering and laughter. After that, there was the rumble of large pieces of furniture being dragged across the floor and the unmistakable sound of a ping-pong game being played. By mid-afternoon, things had calmed down. Perhaps the soldiers were resting?
Robert, meanwhile, was still in the woods. He had seen the German soldiers arrive in their military vehicles. He was terrified but paralysed by indecision. Should he stay out of sight or run to the villa and protect his family? If he did the latter, what then? He was unarmed and alone. In the end he decided to stick with the plan. Given the allies were quickly approaching, surely the soldiers would not stick around for long. After stealing supplies and anything else of value, they would move on.
Back in the cellar, the quiet was pierced by the creak of the metal door, followed by the sound of boots coming down the stairs. “Raus!” a soldier screamed. “Raus! Raus!”
German prisoners of war arriving in Gosport, Hampshire, UK, June 1944In Gosport, Hampshire, UK: some of 1,096 German prisoners of War after their arrival at Gosport (England) on HM Landing Ship Tank (LST–165). (This was the first transport with prisoners from Normandy. They were interrogated and distributed to various camps according to their classification).
Photo, June 1944..webp
‘No one wants a Nazi in their family’: a German prisoner of war, a secret affair and the mystery of my dad’s parentage
Read more
Nina was taken to the living room for questioning, while the other six women were locked in an upstairs bedroom. The captain demanded that she disclose her husband’s whereabouts and sensing she had to give him something, Nina said she sometimes met her husband in the woods, but she never knew where he would be. To find him, she called his name. Satisfied he was at last getting somewhere, the captain told two of his men to escort Nina outside to search for Robert.
By now it was dark, but their way was illuminated by a full moon. As they walked up the rocky track towards the woods, Nina called her husband’s name.
“Roberto,” she cried, “Roberto.” When there was no response, they continued on. She called again. “Roberto! Roberto.” Again there was nothing.
When Robert had first gone into hiding, they had discussed exactly this scenario. If Nina came looking for him at a time they had not previously agreed, he was to stay hidden, so this is exactly what he did. He heard his wife call for him, but did not come out.
After 30 minutes, the soldiers realised their efforts were futile. They returned to the villa and informed the captain. Furious, he told his men to bring down Nina’s daughters, Luce and Cici. He would press them for details. And if they still refused to help, he would be forced to take drastic measures.
Robert was standing in the woods when he heard a noise that filled him with terror. It was the sound of machine guns firing. He started to run.
A few minutes later, he bumped into his nieces and sister-in-law, who were fleeing the villa. Robert was desperate to know what had happened. Where were his wife and daughters? Were they OK?
They told him the terrible news: Nina, Luce and Cici had been murdered. Their bodies were back at the villa. The Germans had set the building on fire. Robert screamed in anguish and collapsed to the ground.
At almost exactly the same time that Robert heard the machine-gun fire, Germans blew up five of the bridges across the Arno River in Florence. They then retreated to the north. Early next morning, 4 August 1944, New Zealand soldiers arrived in Florence. The city was liberated.
Six weeks later, an American war crimes investigator sent a letter to Albert Einstein informing him that his cousin’s family had been murdered in Italy. The news was devastating.
A letter to Albert Einstein informing him of the death of his cousin’s wife and daughters
View image in fullscreen
A letter to Albert Einstein informing him of the death of Nina and her daughters. Photograph: © The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Digital image photographed Ardon Bar Hama
A year later, Albert would hear more terrible news from Italy. Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, Robert had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. He died in a hospital in Florence on 13 July 1945.
After the war, my family lost contact with the Einsteins. They were living in the US and Switzerland; we were in London. The only remaining evidence of a connection was the letter from Albert Einstein to my great-grandfather.
But contact was made again when I met Robert Einstein’s niece, Anna Maria. Though in her 90s, she still had a clear memory of the dreadful events of August 1944.
She told me it was the worst day of her life; she was still terrorised by what happened.
She was also confident about why the murder had taken place. It had been ordered at the very highest level in the Nazi regime. Robert had been targeted because he was the cousin of Albert Einstein. And as Robert was not available, they had brutally murdered his wife and daughters. It was a vendetta.
The Einstein Vendetta by Thomas Harding is published by Michael Joseph at £22. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. Follow the author on X @thomasharding … See MoreSee Less

‘Hitler’s hatred of the scientist had intensified. There was a price on his head’: the tragic story of Robert Einstein, Albert’s cousin

www.theguardian.com

After the famous physicist fled Germany in 1933, his cousin Robert moved his family to Italy, where they thought they had found safety. Then, the day before liberation, Nazis smashed down their front …

LaborFest

2 days ago

No Neutrals There

US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine

by Jeff Schuhrke

www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2608-no-neutrals-there

The definitive history of the US labor movement’s complicity in Zionist settler colonialism, and a call for today’s labor militants to organize in solidarity with Palestinians.

US trade unionists are often told to keep quiet and remain neutral on Palestine because “Palestine has nothing to do with unions” and “weighing in” only distracts from struggles for better working conditions.

No Neutrals There makes a timely and critical intervention against that pervasive sentiment by recounting the history of the US labor movement’s century-long involvement in the struggle for Palestine. Scholar Jeff Schuhrke convincingly demonstrates that unions in the United States have never been silent or neutral on the question of Palestine. In fact, they have played a key role—in the initial Zionist colonization of Palestine, the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948, supporting US foreign policy commitments to Israel, and the ongoing suppression of the Palestinian liberation movement.

In his compelling telling of this history, Schuhrke conclusively shows that US unions helped build and maintain the state of Israel, and also shines a light on important exceptions to this rule: instances of US labor solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle that point the way forward for today’s labor movement.

Reviews

Praise for Blue-Collar Empire:

“In Blue Collar Empire, Schuhrke, a long time labor journalist and scholar, lays out the entire disturbing history of the American labor movement’s decades of close involvement in anticommunist crusades around the world. The reality of the AFL-CIO’s ties with the Cold War, the CIA, and America’s bloody foreign policy is, I assure you, much more astounding than you might think.”
—Hamilton Nolan, author of The Hammer

“In this comprehensive and consequential study, Jeff Schuhrke sheds light on the often nefarious international agenda of the AFL-CIO. During the Cold War, as Schuhrke documents, the top leaders of the U.S. labor establishment, driven by fervent and indiscriminate anti-communism, helped sabotage nascent union movements in countries across the globe. In doing so, the AFL-CIO undermined cross-border working class unity and bolstered multinational corporate power. Blue-Collar Empire thus offers much vital information and insight, both for scholars seeking to understand the rise and decline of the 20th century labor movement, and for union activists working today to build (or re-build) international networks of solidarity.”
—Toni Gilpin, author of The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland

“In this highly readable and engaging book, Jeff Schuhrke explores the disastrous history of American labor's role bolstering U.S. imperialism in Latin America and elsewhere. He explains that Cold War anti-Communism was not the only key to the AFL-CIO's own ‘foreign policy.’ Equally crucial were the ideological linkages that put a liberal brand of industrial pluralism close to the heart of the modernization theory celebrated by the State Department and the CIA. Thus, in trying to transplant a North American version of ‘free’ collective bargaining to the oligarchic regimes of Latin America, U.S. trade unions, whether funded by the CIA or not, found themselves complicit with repressive elites that could tolerate neither left wing insurgencies nor conservative enterprise-based trade unionism.”
—Nelson Lichtenstein, author of A Fabulous Failure: the Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism

“For too many years, too many unions followed the State Department like sheep, supporting lethal, union-member-killing anti-communist policies abroad in the hope of keeping at least a small seat at the table. Jeff Schuhrke’s eye-opening new book, Blue-Collar Empire, is an indispensable history of this devil’s bargain, a chilling lesson why, as a new, different kind of labor movement awakens, unions must never fight for economic justice at home while denying it to those abroad.”
—Greg Grandin, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The End of the Myth … See MoreSee Less

No Neutrals There

www.haymarketbooks.org

Haymarket Books: books for changing the world.

LaborFest

3 days ago

‘Let Us Unite’ by Takeshi Takahashi from The Proletarian/プロレタ
リア(Chicago). No. 4. January 25, 1910.
revolutionsnewsstand.com/2025/05/05/let-us-unite-by-takeshi-takahashi-from-the-proletarian-プロレタリアchicago-no-4-january-25-1910/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKHXDRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFsNXRqWjV4OUdlUGhkWUZyAR4GbHnSNqmn3Pm6PYQuqwVN104P1WZrA9KF0nm6s0YeEk1JpSfXEE6uY4OROg_aem_cAUeZrJUB1b8Fs8P1ADwgA
Beet harvesters in Oxnard, California. 1910.
Stating the danger of war between Japan and the U.S. and the harmful division and racist exclusion of Asian workers, Takahashi denounces jingoism in the workers’ movement. Takeshi Takahashi came to America as a teenage “disciple of Denjiro Kotoku,” in 1906 and built a branch of Kotoku’s Socialist Revolutionary Party, established that year, in San Francisco. The S.R.P. and the Bay Area I.W.W. soon held meetings and exchanged papers. By June, 1907 the San Francisco I.W.W. was producing leaflets in Japanese at the same time, the Socialist Party had passed anti-Asian resolutions in California and nationally. While in Chicago Takahashi joined the I.W.W. in 1907, writing articles about Japanese labor in Hawaii and Japan. With the encouragement of Emma Goldman, Josephine Conger Kaneko and others, he launched the Japanese-language I.W.W. paper The Proletariat in 1909. However it was only to last a year for lack of financial support.

‘Let Us Unite’ by Takeshi Takahashi from The Proletarian/プロレタリア(Chicago). No. 4. January 25, 1910.
It is no longer necessary to insist upon the right of Japanese workers to enter this country, the same as other nationalities. Yet there are still some who come out in every manner opposing the interest of Japanese workers. These are like the capitalistic yellow journalists who have large opportunity for knowing nothing whatever of the subject under discussion. Their sole purpose is to simply arm others. They repeat all their arguments upon scanty knowledge, about the final impossibility of the harmony of the races, largely showing their racial prejudice, and with one or two of their ‘own’ labor questions. For instance, in the National Convention of The Woman’s Trade Union League, a delegate from San Francisco point represented this well.

The delegate introduced a resolution urging the extension of the Chinese exclusion law to include Japanese.

She furthermore stated: “It is a question of bread and butter to us on the Pacific coast. I was instructed by the Central Labor council, which is paying my expenses here, to introduce the resolution. We know the Japs out of our way. The Chinese are gentlemen in comparison.”

We do not know ourselves whether Japanese are gentlemen or not. We have been enough referred to already by the capitalist writers as “bad, dishonest Japs”.

The strange thing is to hear the same “old story of the Japanese” by a delegate to a laborer’s convention, when as a matter of fact, all those “bad Japs” have practically ceased to come to this country according to the restrictions of the immigration law.

Clever socialists have already withdrawn their Anti-Japanese views because they know now what “Mighty Conquerors” Japanese workers can be even while they are in such miserable condition. Why should the need be to cry Japanese exclusion any longer, although the expenses of said delegate were paid to introduce the resolution from Far-way-west San Francisco. Yet Japanese exclusion is not out of season, a part of the bargain was also well displayed in the convention of the A.F. of L. which took place recently in Toronto in adopting Anti-Japanese resolutions.

Recent conditions prevailing among Japanese workers on the western coast are deplorable. A vast throng docked in front of an employment agency seeking a job even in mid-summer. The active Anti-Japanese movement for the last 3 years has been effective enough to drive them out of certain districts and concerns. The movement employs a cowardly and sneaking method even using means of violence. Japanese are attacked in day time openly on the streets of the western metropolis and no one interferes.

At the same time, what are the capitalists of both countries realizing today? They are greeting each other with best wishes over the pacific billows, and do not hesitate to compromise whenever their interests demand it, though they are engaged in hot commercial fighting in the markets of China.

How cordially was Prince Kuny, who represented aristocratic Japan, received in the White House! How did Baron Shibuzawa and his party, which represented plutocratic Japan, meet an arrogant hospitality of American capitalists, as they traveled through every city while you, you workingmen, greet Japanese workers by the throwing of bricks and sneering. However, let these be the affair of the past. The time now reaches us that such a trifle difference should vanish altogether and we should and must unite upon a common interest against our real enemy, the Capitalist class.

We call the attention of fellow workers, that the fierce competition in the markets of Eastern countries are driving the nations into crisis.

A vast increasing of military and naval armament of Germany and England which was once commented by the journals in sensational manner are only the situations that responded commercial conflict of both countries in Chinese markets.

A rumor of a coming fight between the U.S.A. and Japan is not the outcome of the question of “school children” nor that of “emigration” but it depends on the further development of the policy of trusts in Manchuria.

What the outcome may be of this commercial competition, no one can tell, but it is very safe to predict that we, working men, shall become one, and all, directly affected by it. In either case the war would be declared or even if they compromised, it would be on a more wise way in which to exploit us by wholesale.

Certain, so long as Capitalism exists, it is that, in the future, as the past has in many cases illustrated, mere diplomatic peace talk will not do, and our blood will be taken to accumulate more wealth for a few persons, which recalls horrid memories of Jap-Russo war. We, workers of America and Japan especially, should not neglect to learn a lesson from the past. We shall not any longer be driven to the battle field like cattle. Workingmen of all nations should come forward to stop the inclination of Militarism, through every effort and if necessary, by means of extreme measures.

Let us unite! Not only in words, for unless our unity develops into actual action, the emancipation of wage slaves can not be accomplished. Salvation lies in the unity of workmen regardless of race or color!

Down with capitalism, patriotism, militarism and racial hatred! Throw away flags of the nations into the mire. Let our red banner alone be triumph eternally over the earth. On there our aspiration lies!

The Proletarian, a bilingual paper published in Chicago by Takeshi Takahashi for ‘Japanese members of the Industrial Workers of the World’, lasted on briefly with a few issues produced in 1909 and 1910. Takeshi came to America as a teenage anarchist, a “disciple of Denjiro Kotoku,” in 1906, and attempted to build a branch of Kotoku’s Socialist Revolutionary Party, established that year in San Francisco. The SRP and the Bay Area I.W.W. held meetings and exchanged papers and by June, 1907 the San Francisco I.W.W. was producing leaflets in Japanese. At the same time, the Socialist Party had passed anti-Asian resolutions in California and nationally. While in Chicago Takahashi’s anarchism developed into anarcho-syndicalism and he joined the I.W.W. in 1907, writing articles about Japanese labor in Hawaii and Japan. With the encouragement of Emma Goldman, Josephine Conger Kaneko and others, he launched The Proletariat in 1909. However it was only to last a year for lack of financial support.

PDF of full issue: files.libcom.org/files/The%20Proletarian%20Chicago%20No%204%20January%2025%201910%20English%20Jap… … See MoreSee Less

‘Let Us Unite’ by Takeshi Takahashi from The Proletarian/プロレタリア(Chicago). No. 4. January 25, 1910.

revolutionsnewsstand.com

Beet harvesters in Oxnard, California. 1910. Stating the danger of war between Japan and the U.S. and the harmful division and racist exclusion of Asian workers, Takahashi denounces jingoism in the…

LaborFest

4 days ago

New May Day Video Sparks Joint Labor-Socialist Movement Work
APRIL 26, 2022 by FRED GLASS
www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/new-may-day-video-sparks-joint-labor-socialist-movement-work/
The phone call from Jim Miller, a vice-president of the San Diego City College faculty union, came early in 2018. Would I be interested in making a presentation to students and faculty about the history of May Day on May 1?

Why, yes, I would be. I knew from decades of teaching labor history to City College of San Francisco students that the story behind International Workers Day—officially celebrated in dozens of countries across the world, but not in the country in which it originated—remained largely unknown, even as a modest revival of interest in the holiday among socialists and union activists had been growing for the past several years.

The San Diego talk went well. So, I tinkered with that lecture/slideshow each year, improving and presenting it to unions and DSA chapters, until COVID-19 put a halt to in-person events—at which point I decided to expand it into a video that could be used anytime anywhere.

The result, a half-hour documentary called We Mean to Make Things Over (after a lyric from the nineteenth-century “Eight Hour Song”) will have its Zoom premiere on April 30 and in person at a number of California venues in the latter half of April. Beginning on May 1 it will be made available on the video’s website for free use by DSA chapters.

Appropriately enough, given its topic, the premiere itself has become a nexus of labor and socialist movement cooperation.

Making We Mean to Make Things Over

I have had the great fortune to work with a group of artists and craftspeople who are spectacularly good at what they do, several of whom are fellow DSA members. One is East Bay artist Jos Sances, who provided superb scratchboard drawings (see accompanying artwork). Los Angeles animator and California DSA state council member Paul Zappia put Jos’s drawings and other archival illustrations and photos into creative motion.

The multi-talented Elise Bryant, who directs the Labor Heritage Foundation and serves as national president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, sang the “Eight Hour Song,” supported by San Francisco’s Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus and jazz combo The 300 Club. New York-based Sokio composed original music. And longtime East Bay DSA videomaker and actor Sophie Becker recorded the voiceover narration just before she moved to New York.

These diverse contributions were skillfully stitched together by award-winning documentarian-turned-editor Rick Tejada-Flores. Tejada-Flores began his career as a filmmaker for the United Farm Workers in the 1970s. He was present, camera in hand, at the birth of the now-famous “Si se puede” slogan. He went on to co-direct The Fight in the Fields in the 1990s, among a dozen nationally distributed PBS feature films.

With the exception of Becker’s voiceover work, which was paid at union scale, everyone donated their labor to the project. Animator Paul Zappia noted, “I feel very lucky to have been a part of this project, especially at an exciting time when workers around the country are beginning to understand their power and their right to determine their own livelihoods. The history of these movements is the exact history everyone should be taught across the country—and I hope that those watching can gain a new or renewed sense of hope for the future we have ahead.”

The funding for the voiceover and the recording studio rental was generously donated by the California Federation of Teachers’ Labor and Climate Justice Education Committee, members of which are also working on a study guide to accompany the video.

Timing couldn’t have been better

In a moment when celebrating May Day has been making a comeback and DSA has become the largest U.S. socialist movement since the 1940s, the labor movement is showing renewed signs of life as well. The Amazon breakthrough win in Staten Island, Starbucks cracking open, and cultural institutions like museums and newspapers going union—all are signaling a new potential for working-class awareness of its power.

Last year on May Day an unprecedented level of cooperation between the official labor movement and DSA—unthinkable for decades during the Cold War and its long hangover—resulted in local demonstrations across the country demanding labor law reform: the PRO Act.

Labor/DSA cooperation has only become stronger since last year. Joining the trend, a number of in-person and Zoom screenings of We Mean to Make Things Over are taking place in the two weeks prior to May Day, supported by labor and DSA chapters together:

At UC Berkeley, the Center for Labor Research and Education hosted a screening on April 20, co-sponsored with the campus YDSA and the lecturers’ union, UC-AFT. Twenty of Jos Sances’s illustrations for the video were enlarged, framed, and hung on the walls of the conference room. The screening doubled as a gallery opening. Among the dozens of audience members were faculty who pledged to show the video in their classes.
In Sacramento, the local DSA chapter and the Central Labor Council are co-hosting the screening on April 29 at local activist hangout Organize Sacramento, with the Council providing drinks and desserts. Organizers of the May Day march two days later will speak on the issues behind the march, including the demand to release immigrant detainees held by ICE. The march will take a stop at the detention facility.
On April 30, the Zoom premiere run by East Bay DSA will include, in addition to the screening, a rundown by representatives from several labor councils around California of their planned May Day events, so that viewers can learn where to march locally and get a sense of the scope of actions around the state.
To RSVP for the 7 pm (Pacific) April 30 screening go to the online East Bay DSA events calendar. For more information on the video see the We Mean to Make Things Over website. … See MoreSee Less

New May Day Video Sparks Joint Labor-Socialist Movement Work – Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

www.dsausa.org

The phone call from Jim Miller, a vice-president of the San Diego City College faculty union, came early in 2018.  Would I be interested in making a presentation to students and faculty about the his…

LaborFest

1 week ago

When a Historian Saw This Haunting Photograph of a Nameless Native Girl, She Decided She Had to Identify Her
In 1868, Sophie Mousseau was photographed at Fort Laramie alongside six white Army officers. But her identity—and her life story—remained unknown for more than a century
www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-a-historian-saw-this-haunting-photograph-of-a-nameless-native…
Martha A. Sandweiss, Zócalo Public Square
April 29, 2025

Alexander Gardner photograph of commissioners at Fort Laramie, 1868.jpeg
Sophie Mousseau is identified simply as “Arapaho” on one version of the photo and “Dakota” on another. National Anthropological Archives / Smithsonian Institution
As a scholar of 19th-century American photography, I’ve looked at countless old photographs: the carefully labeled portraits of the powerful (always the most likely to be photographed) and the many pictures of women and children, enslaved workers and Native families, rural laborers and urban bystanders that include no identifications at all.

Some years ago, I began to wonder whether I could identify some of the unnamed people in old photographs. Might I be able to name that gold miner, that railroad worker, that soldier lying dead on the battlefield at Antietam? Would my understanding of history shift if I knew who these people were?

My attention focused on a photograph by the celebrated Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner. Taken at Fort Laramie, in what is now Wyoming, in spring 1868, it depicts six white men standing in an oddly formal arc around a young Native girl. The men, all fresh from Civil War duty, are members of a federal peace commission sent west to this fort along the Oregon Trail to persuade the Lakota to move to a newly created reservation.

The handwritten labels on the extant copies of the photograph carefully identify these men: General Alfred Howe Terry, General William S. Harney, General William Tecumseh Sherman, General John B. Sanborn, Colonel Samuel F. Tappan and General Christopher C. Augur. The girl is never named. She is simply “Arapaho” on one version of the photo, “Dakota” on another. She looks straight at the camera and begs us to stare back.

Who is she?

Preview thumbnail for 'The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West.webp
The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West
Spinning a spellbinding historical tale from a single enigmatic image, “The Girl in the Middle” reveals how the American nation grappled with what kind of country it would be as it expanded westward in the aftermath of the Civil War.

I looked for her in other pictures made at the fort. She’s not there. I searched through the personal papers of the commissioners and the government records of the treaty negotiations. Nothing. Finally, in the archives of the Fort Laramie National Historic Site, I found a small notecard left by a visitor in 1978. He’d seen a copy of the photograph on display; the blanket-wrapped girl was his grandmother, Sophie Mousseau. The name connects an unidentified child to the historical records; it lets us find her story.

Sophie proves easier to track than most girls born on the Northern Plains during the years of the Indian Wars. Traces of her Oglala Lakota mother survive in the spare federal records that track reservation residents. Curious writers recorded her French Canadian father’s memories of the “old days.” Since Sophie’s father turned litigious, and her first husband became a murderer, bureaucratic records also preserve imprints of her life, even as descendants’ memories grow increasingly faint.

Sophie’s life leads us into a sprawling Western world. Born in the Dakota Territory shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, she died on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, one of the very poorest parts of a Great Depression-riddled nation, in 1936. Her first husband, a white Civil War veteran, effectively kidnapped their five children after he fell in love with another woman. He married her and banished Sophie to the newly created Great Sioux Reservation.

Sophie was working as a laundress at a federal boarding school in Pine Ridge when federal troops massacred some 250 Native people at nearby Wounded Knee in 1890. She later married a mixed-race Lakota who gave up his career as a circus juggler to become a much-valued translator for some of the country’s leading anthropologists. With him, Sophie had another eight children, for a total of 13.

General William Tecumseh Sherman (third from left) and commissioners in council with chiefs and headmen at Fort Laramie in 1868.jpeg
General William Tecumseh Sherman (third from left) and commissioners in council with chiefs and headmen at Fort Laramie in 1868 Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Sophie experienced domestic violence, observed the consequences of military violence, and saw firsthand the consequences of the political and legal violence that denied rights to people like her.

Indeed, she was born of violence. Thirteen years before the photograph was made, Harney, the general who stands with Sophie in the photograph, attacked a Lakota village at a place called Blue Water Creek in western Nebraska. His men wounded a young mother named Yellow Woman and used her infant for target practice. Then they rounded her up and marched her to Fort Laramie. At the same time, Harney ordered all the traders in the area into the fort. There, Yellow Woman met the trader Magloire Alexis Mousseau, who later went by the name M.A. They married, became Sophie’s parents and stayed married for over half a century. The general was an accidental matchmaker.

When Sophie’s parents ushered her into Gardner’s photograph, they saw two men they knew: Harney, whom they’d met more than a decade earlier, and Sanborn, whom they’d just hired as their attorney. Sophie and her family had their place in a West that was both a big place and a small world.

Neither the photographer nor government officials saw fit to record Sophie’s name 157 years ago. But Sophie’s name transforms a banal photograph into a picture that leads us into a world of families and the complicated racial politics of the 19th-century West. Her story transforms a picture ostensibly about men negotiating a peace treaty into a meditation on the endemic violence that shaped so many American lives. When we know who Sophie is, the photograph becomes a different kind of evidence altogether.

A 1947 photograph of Ira Hayes (left), the Pima Indian present in the famous image of the flag raising at Iwo Jima Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 4.0
Names tether people to historical records. Names are what let us trace people through old newspapers and books, census records and legal documents, family memories, and community gossip. Names are what transform the anonymous people in old photographs into particular individuals with complicated stories of their own.

In recent weeks, as part of a broader assault on historical records, exhibitions and books, government functionaries have scrubbed countless government websites of historical names: civil rights activist Medgar Evers, Medal of Honor recipient Charles C. Rogers and baseball star Jackie Robinson, among others. Amid fierce public pushback, some of the sites have now been restored. Critics insisted those names mattered, not only because they honor individual accomplishments, but because they denote bigger stories about combating racial segregation or fighting for civil rights. Individual stories make the abstract more concrete, the past more complex.

When Ira Hayes, the Pima Indian present in the famous image of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, loses his clear tribal affiliation in an article headline, we lose something. It’s no accident that most of the names and stories scrubbed from the record are those of people of color.

American history needs more names, not fewer. It needs the names of the famous and the names of those who, like Sophie, have remained unidentified in personal and institutional archives. Take that shoe box out of your closet and label your family photos. Everyone’s story matters.

Martha A. Sandweiss, an emeritus historian at Princeton University, is the author of The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West. This article was written for Zócalo Public Square. … See MoreSee Less

When a Historian Saw This Haunting Photograph of a Nameless Native Girl, She Decided She Had to Identify Her

www.smithsonianmag.com

In 1868, Sophie Mousseau was photographed at Fort Laramie alongside six white Army officers. But her identity—and her life story—remained unknown for more than a century

LaborFest

1 week ago

Hitler's First 100 Days — And Trump's
The parallels between the first months of both tyrannical regimes are striking and chilling, with one big exception.
www.commondreams.org/opinion/hitler-trump-first-100-days
WERNER LANGE
Apr 27, 2025
Common Dreams
The fascism unleashed upon Germany beginning in January 1933 with the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor, the youngest ever, and that which unfolded within America with the second inauguration of Trump in January 2025 as President, the oldest ever, exhibited many sinister similarities, but also definite differences during their first 100 days of respective repressive rule. By May 1933 democracy in Germany was dead and buried; but American democracy—one in reality never fully identical with American ideals—still remained alive, though deeply wounded and increasingly afflicted, after just over three months of incessant blows from the Trump regime. The difference offers the antifascist resistance in the United States an opportunity for victory if a viable broad-based united front can be resolutely developed and firmly maintained.

Day One

In the evening of January 30, a bitterly cold winter day, the victorious Nazis staged a massive torchlight parade through Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate which lasted over four hours and included some 30,000 uniformed Storm Troopers (SA). Perhaps as many as 1 million Berliners, around one-fourth of the city population, turned out to witness the Nazi spectacle. Among them were a few protestors who were summarily beaten up by the SA, a small taste of what was in store for dissenters. The march ended at the Presidential Palace and Reich Chancellory where Hitler and President Hindenburg stood together as a symbol of national reconciliation in what was portrayed as the “rebirth of the nation.” Among the songs echoing from the massive crowd was the Song of Germany with its infamous opening refrain of “Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles.” Several other large pro-Nazi rallies were held across Germany in subsequent days, as were a few sporadic counter-demonstrations organized by Social Democrats and Communists.

By contrast, the parade celebrating Trump’s second inauguration, also on a bitterly cold day, was held indoors at the Capital One Arena. The inauguration ceremony itself was also held indoors, at the Capitol Rotunda, the site of a violent Trump-inspired putsch attempt four years earlier. Several major corporations and individual billionaires donated $1 million each to help fund the extravaganza attended by a number of authoritarian foreign leaders, including the co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Similar to the nationalistic themes sounded at Hitler’s installment, Trump claimed his presidency marked the “beginning of a Golden Age for America.” As was also the case for the Führer, Trump gave voice that day to the Messiah myth claiming that his life was spared from an assassin’s bullet because he “was saved by God to make America great again.”

Fascist Laws and Orders

Within a week after he moved into the Reich Chancellory, Hitler reportedly declared “I’m never leaving here,” and then promulgated a series of anti-democratic orders to ensure fascist rule in perpetuity. The first major one came on the day after the convenient burning of the Reichstag on February 27, which provoked Hitler to declare at the scene of the crime, “We will show no mercy anymore; whoever gets in our way will be slaughtered.” The “Reichstag Fire Decree for the Protection of the People and State” nullified many civil liberties; expanded protective custody; and sanctioned removal of state governments. It was used to imprison anyone considered an opponent of Nazism and suppress publications deemed unfriendly to the Nazi cause. Significantly extending the repression was the “Malicious Practices Act” of March 21 and the “Enabling Act” of March 23. On April 7, six days after a nationwide boycott of businesses owned by Jews, the Hitler regime enacted the “Law for Restoration of Professional Civil Service,” which purged all Jews as well as those German citizens considered disloyal from civil service and teaching positions. Thousands of Germans immediately lost their jobs and others lost government contracts, as the mythical “peoples community” (Volksgemeinschaft) was systemically converted into a racist Aryan “community of blood” (Blutgemeinschaft), exemplified by the “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Damaged Offspring” enacted in mid-July.

Within a week after he moved into the Reich Chancellory, Hitler reportedly declared “I’m never leaving here,” and then promulgated a series of anti-democratic orders to ensure fascist rule in perpetuity.
May Day 1933 in Nazi Germany was anything but a celebration of labor militancy and liberation from capitalist class rule. The Hitler regime declared this “Day of National Labor” to be a grand celebration of a rejuvenated nation, one which attracted the active participation of millions throughout the country. On the next day, the Nazis outlawed all free trade unions and integrated all German workers into a newly created German Labor Front led by a rabid anti-communist. By May 9, day 100 of the Hitler dictatorship there was no democracy or viable open opposition left in Germany; any resistance was driven underground or in exile. The fascist regime of terror proceeded triumphantly with a massive book burning on its 101st day in power.

Similar to Hitler’s stated intent to protect the German people from “criminals” with the draconian Reichstag Fire Decree and Enabling Act, Trump resorted to the 18th century Alien Enemies Act to protect the American people from allegedly vicious criminal gangs of foreigners, particularly Venezuelans. With the approval of SCOTUS, despite due process violations and cases of mistaken identity, those rounded up under provisions of the AEA were sent to the notorious concentration camp, CECOT, in El Salvador, likely never to return. Trump’s intense antagonism toward immigrants manifested itself on his first day in office when he announced his intent to end birthright citizenship; declared a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexican border; and barred asylum for people arriving through the southern border.

In mid-February, he fired 18 immigration judges; eliminated federal funds for undocumented immigrants; and proposed using U.S. military bases to detain targeted immigrants. In early March, he designated English as the official U.S. language, and announced plans to send an additional 3,000 troops to the southwestern border. Underscoring the racist nature of his immigration policies, he offered White South African farmers expedited U.S. citizenship, but expelled the Black South African ambassador after his government criticized Trump’s policies. In late March, Homeland Security revoked temporary protected status (TPS) for 532,000 people of color (Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans) and ordered their exit by late April. In early April, he revoked visas held by South Sudanese passport holders. Especially harshly targeted for deportation were pro-Palestinian students, activists whom Trump’s Attorney General Bondi ominously called “domestic terrorists.”

Trump as Hitler.jpeg
A demonstrator holds a placard showing a picture of US President-elect Donald Trump modified to add a swastika and an Adolf Hitler-style moustache during a protest outside the US Embassy in London November 9, 2016 against Trump after he was declared the winner of the US presidential election. – (Photo by Ben Stansall / AFP via Getty Images)
Purging the federal government of employees deemed disloyal was a nearly daily occurrence during Trump’s first 100 days, as was seeking retribution from law firms and officials critical of Trump’s actions. In late January, Trump fired the NLRB general counselor, a Democratic board member; fired dozens of Inspector Generals; and removed Democratic EEOC members. In early February, he fired 60 State Department contractors; fired the Director of CFPB; ordered AG Bondi to lead a task force designed to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” in the federal government; fired the head of the FEC; appointed loyalists as members of an independent advisory board on espionage; fired the inspector general for USAID; fired several workers at FEMA; directed that all Biden-era U.S. Attorneys be terminated. In mid-March, he fired 19 workers at NASA; replaced the top lawyer for the IRS; and fired two Democratic managers at the FTC. In early April, he fired the Vice Admiral in Greenland who was critical of Vice President JD Vance; and he removed a DOJ lawyer who questioned the decision to unlawfully deport a Maryland man to El Salvador. After a meeting with far-right activist Laura Loomer, who claimed the head of NSA was disloyal, he fired him. In March, Trump targeted a series of law firms perceived as foes, including the one at which Kamala Harris’ husband worked.

Project 2025, euphemistically called “Mandate for Leadership” by its misanthropic composers, the far-right Heritage Foundation, is a handbook for dismantling democracy and undermining social welfare in America, and its notorious recommendations have been largely followed by the Trump regime during its first 100 days. On January 24, Trump reinstated an anti-abortion policy and revoked two Biden directives designed to improve access to abortion. On February 13, he asked RFK Jr. to study the safety of the abortion pill, mifepristone. Project 2025 calls for ending medication abortion, and the Nazis considered abortion (by Aryan women) to be murder. Also in accordance with Project 2025, Trump signed an executive order to abolish the Department of Education (which he identified as a “big con job”) on March 20, and sharply reduced staffing at NOAA in late February. On the chopping block erected by the Heritage Foundation were also the Head Start program; federal student loans; climate change protection; child labor protection; the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice; and food assistance programs.

Adding to the long list of draconian measures to be enacted were the anti-democratic recommendations of the Capital Research Center, a right-wing think tank with access to Trump’s White House. Founded during the Reagan years by a former Vice President of the Heritage Foundation and funded in large measure by the far-right Koch family, CRC drew up a hit list of 150 groups it considered “pro-terrorist” and recommended their dissolution. Exclusively included in its cross hairs are a good section of the American Left, such as National Lawyers Guild; Democratic Socialists of America; CAIR; Jewish Voice for Peace; Code Pink; Black Alliance for Peace; and Center for Constitutional Rights. Especially singled out for deportation are members of Students for Justice in Palestine, “the group by far most responsible for the current anti-Israel protest movement,” according to the CRC. After providing testimony before several Congressional hearings in 2024, CRC president Scott Walter briefed White House officials about his research findings and deportation recommendations in late March 2025. Shortly afterwards, several pro-Palestinian activists were arrested and deported.

Whitewashing History

The Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy necessarily denigrated other racial and ethnic groups as inferior, even subhuman, and also devalued the role of liberating ideals and revolutionary movements, such as The Enlightenment and the 1789 French Revolution. In April 1933, Hitler’s newly appointed Minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels, declared that the whole aim of the new regime was “to erase 1789 from memory.” To accomplish this monumental scrubbing of history and culture, books antithetical to Nazi ideology were routinely burned; non-Aryan educators banned; pedagogy restructured; and scholastic texts rewritten. Within its first year, the Hitler regime enacted a series of discriminatory laws directed against non-Aryans. On April 25, the “Law Against Overcrowding Schools and Institutions in Higher Education” severely restricted academic admission of non-Aryans. A few weeks later, an “Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy,” a conglomeration of prominent Nazi white supremacists under Heinrich Himmler established the framework for marginalization of non-Aryans and implementation of eugenics. Within a month, the sterilization law was passed.

To accomplish this monumental scrubbing of history and culture, books antithetical to Nazi ideology were routinely burned; non-Aryan educators banned; pedagogy restructured; and scholastic texts rewritten.
On his first day in office, Trump issued an order “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness” designed “to promote the extraordinary heritage of our Nation and ensure that future generations of American citizens celebrate the legacy of American heroes”; he then proceeded to rename the highest mountain in Alaska Mt. McKinley and declared that the Gulf of Mexico be called the Gulf of America. A week later, he issued an order “Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday,” which established Task Force 250, housed in the Department of Defense, to take “actions to honor the history of our great Nation, including the naming of 250 Americans to he honored in the National Garden of American Heroes. With the executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” enacted in early April, Trump ironically asserts that over the past decade there has been “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” and then proceeds to do exactly that. “It is the policy of my Administration,” the order states, “to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.” To begin to accomplish this whitewashing of American history he ordered that all “improper ideology” be removed from the Smithsonian museums and National Zoo, and that funding for any exhibit or programs which “degrade shared American values” or “divide Americans based on race” be prohibited.

Restricting Sexuality

Nazi ideology regarded homosexuality as a disease on the national community and homosexuals as “enemies of the State.” Transgender and other gender-affirming identities were regarded as mental illnesses. In a 1928 survey, the Nazi Party (NSDAP) officially stated that “anyone who even thinks of homosexual love is our enemy.” Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code, adopted in 1871, criminalized sexual relations between males; in 1935, the Hitler regime broadened the law to include any “lewd act” (e.g. mutual masturbation) and sharply increased penalties for violations. In February 1933, the Prussian Ministry of Interior ordered Berlin police to shut down all establishments catering to “persons who indulge in unnatural sexual practices,” an order which quickly spread to many other cities. On May 6, the SA raided and destroyed the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. Persecution of homosexuals and transgender persons sharply escalated in subsequent years. In 1936, Himmler established the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion. In the years between 1937 and 1939, some 95,000 German men were arrested for homosexuality and imprisoned, many in concentration camps to die.

On the first day of his second presidency, Trump announced recognition of only two sexes, male and female, and then repeatedly targeted the transgender community in the following weeks. In rapid succession, he required transgender women to be housed in prisons for men; ordered removal of third gender options on IDs; moved toward pushing transgender people out of the military; ordered federal agencies to end programs that recognize transgender people; aimed to prevent transgender students from participating in women sports; removed reference to transgender people from National Park Service websites; ordered the CDC to review gender ideology; denied student loans relief to workers aiding transgender youth; and moved to phase out gender-affirming medical treatment for veterans. In mid-April, Trump sued the State of Maine for allowing transgender people to participate in women’s sports. In late January, he rolled back protections for LGBTQ students and required federal workers to remove pronouns from their email signatures.

Celebrating Racism

Racism in Nazi Germany, much of it inspired by Jim Crow laws in America, directly or indirectly infested every action of the Hitler regime. Nazism had absolutely no tolerance for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Neither does the Trump regime. Unleashing his rancid racism with a vengeance, Trump took over 20 separate actions against DEI programs in the first 100 days of his reign. Terminating all DEI programs across the federal government was among his numerous orders on Day One. Ten days, later he even blamed DEI policies for a deadly midair crash between an Army helicopter and a commercial airline over the Potomac River. In his lengthy bombastic speech to Congress on March 4, Trump boasted that his regime “ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and, indeed, the private sector and our military” and “we removed the poison of critical race theory from our public schools”.

Suppressing Dissent

Even before the 1933 passage of the Editor’s Law, which permitted only journalists who refrained from criticizing the Nazi regime to continue to work in their profession, the German press was systematically forced to conform to Hitler’s views. After the rigged election on March 5 and passage of the Civil Service Law on April 17, German newspapers increasingly self-censored themselves and remained silent about the unfolding atrocities. On March 9, a prominent anti-fascist journalist, Fritz Gerlich, was arrested and eventually ended up in the Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered in late June.

America’s mainstream press, routinely identified by Trump as an “enemy of the people,” increasingly came under scrutiny and suppression in his second reign. Echoing the censorship sentiment of the Nazi Editor Law, Trump restricted the White House press pool to only those journalists hand-picked by him. In early February, he called for CBS to lose its broadcasting license, a charge he repeated two months later after the network aired a “60 Minutes” broadcast he disliked. On February 23, he called MSNBC a “threat to democracy,” and in mid-March he cancelled all contracts held by key news wire services (AP, Reuters, Agence France-Presse) with Voice of America. In late March, a manager of Trump’s re-election campaign sued The Daily Beast for defamation.

Echoing the censorship sentiment of the Nazi Editor Law, Trump restricted the White House press pool to only those journalists hand-picked by him.
In addition to a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News, Trump has sued the Des Moines Register, CNN, and the Pulitzer Prize Board. In late January, Trump’s FCC Chairman ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS, public news outlets which a Trump devotee, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, labeled “communist.” In mid-April Trump asked Congress to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by $1.1 billion. To make sure another liberal institution, The Kennedy Center, came under his far-right ideological control, he appointed himself as Chair and named two Fox News members to its Board. The National Endowment for Humanities had most of its grant programs cancelled, and its chair was forced to resign. Trump’s counterterrorism czar, Sebastian Gorka, asserted critics of the deportation actions of his boss are “on the side of the terrorists” and might be criminally charged for “aiding and abetting” terrorism.

Trump’s repression of dissent and criticism extended beyond the media to include judges, prosecutors, and law firms. After calling federal judge James Boasberg a “radical Left lunatic” for blocking his unlawful deportation scheme, Trump said he should be disbarred and impeached. He also suggested federal judges be removed from cases reviewing his policies. In late February, he fired prosecutors involved in cases against him or the January 6 rioters. In late March, he fired two longtime career prosecutors in Los Angeles and Memphis, and in mid-February he directed all Biden-era U.S. Attorneys be terminated. He also fired the directors of the Office of Special Counsel and Office of Government Ethics. In late April, the FBI arrested a judge in Wisconsin for obstructing a deportation case.

Militarization

Nazi Germany increased its military spending faster than any other state in peacetime, with the share of military spending rising from 1% to 10% of national income in the first two years of the Hitler regime alone. Just after his first 100 days, Hitler approved a financial budget for his growing war machine of 35 billion Reichmarks over eight years; the entire national income of Germany in 1933 was 43 billion Reichmarks. Military spending for his first year in office was budgeted three times larger than spending on all civilian work creation measures in 1932 and 1933 combined.

Within the first week of his second presidency, Trump issued militaristic orders for “Restoring America’s Fighting Force”; “The Iron Dome for America”; and “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.” That third order identified the U.S. military as the world’s “most lethal and effective fighting force,” and called for a “singular force on developing a warrior ethos” throughout the military. On March 21, he unveiled a new stealth bomber, the F-47. On April 10, he bragged that “we have a weapon that no one has a clue what it is, and this is the most powerful weapon in the world, which is more powerful than anyone even close.” Three days earlier, he announced a $1 trillion Pentagon budget for FY 2026, a 12% increase ($107 billion) over FT 2025. In its publication of all military-related expenditures, the War Resisters League claims Trump’s 2026 military budget constitutes 24% ($1.3 trillion) of all federal spending, and past military expenditures account for 26% ($1.4 trillion) of the federal budget. Accordingly, Trump’s real military spending accounts for 50% of the entire federal budget, a colossal military expenditure despite the fact that the Pentagon failed a 2024 audit, the seventh consecutive failure.

On June 14, the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and his 79th birthday, Trump is reportedly planning to hold a massive 4-mile-long military parade in the nation’s capital. On February 4, he drafted instructions to obliterate Iran if the Islamic Republic assassinated him; the same day he proposed a U.S. takeover of Gaza. A month later, he issued an ultimatum to Hamas: “either free all hostages or die.”

Privatization

Despite its nominal commitment to socialism, an economic system based upon public ownership of means of production, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), aka the Nazi Party, introduced a radical program of privatization of steel, banks, mining, shipping, railroads, and welfare organizations. Among the industries privatized within the early years of Hitler’s dictatorship were five major commercial banks; the United Steelworks, the nation’s second largest enterprise; German Railways; Upper Silesian coalminers; and the German Shipbuilding and Engineering Company. Privatization generated significant revenue for the Nazi war machine and also helped solidify political support from the super-rich.

Trump’s enthusiasm for privatization echoes the Nazi goals.
Trump’s enthusiasm for privatization echoes the Nazi goals. Following the Project 2025 playbook, he explored the possibility of privatizing the USPS, the Social Security Administration, and Medicare. With the confirmation of Dr. Oz, a fervent supporter of Medicare Advantageprivate alternative to traditional Medicare, as head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services on April 4, the effort to privatize Medicare was significantly accelerated. Similarly, privatizing health services for veterans received a big boost with the appointment of a new Department of Defense chief, Pete Hegseth, who publicly promoted shifting more vets to VA-funded private care. Social Security remains in the crosshairs of privatization advocates in the Trump regime. DOGEcancelled leases for 45 Social Security offices and reduced its ten regional offices to four. In early April, the head of the Social Security Administration asserted that to streamline operations it would be necessary to “outsource nonessential functions to industry experts.” In early February, Trump fired more than 100 workers at Fannie Mae, and announced plans to privatize both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A month later he proposed the privatization of Amtrak, the Transportation Security Administration, and the federal student loan program. Also on the auction block are public lands targeted for massive sell-offs to wealthy private investors and developers.

Synchronization

In a major push to consolidate more power, the Hitler regime enacted laws introducing a national policy of Gleichschlatung, coordination of all government operations and social organizations under Nazi control. As a result, state parliaments not under Nazi control were dissolved; every public expression of pluralism was disallowed; political parties critical of Nazism were abolished; all Jewish and Social Democratic officials were fired; and all cultural and judicial institutions were aligned with Nazi ideology or disbanded.

The real purpose of DOGE is to consolidate power, synchronize government operations, and privatize government services as well as dismantle agencies long hated by the Far Right.
Trump announced the formation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on his first day in office with the ostensible purpose of saving American taxpayers around a total of $2 trillion by rooting out alleged massive fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government. Its purported purpose is itself a fraud. At most, only 15% of that savings goal is within its grasp. The real purpose of DOGE is to consolidate power, synchronize government operations, and privatize government services as well as dismantle agencies long hated by the Far Right.

Nine of the government agencies targeted by DOGE are highlighted in Project 2025. Its former co-chair, Vivek Ramaswamy, explicitly used the term “synchronizing” government operations when announcing a key purpose of DOGE. Elon Musk, the Nazi-saluting Chair of DOGE, revealingly used the same term in a bizarre podcast with Trump disciple Senator Ted Cruz. The Nazi policy of Gleichschlatung is commonly translated as synchronization. The executive order establishing DOGE directed its administrators to “work with Agency Heads to promote inter-operability between agency networks…and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization.” Technological synchronization appears to be a prelude to sociological synchronization, i.e. Gleichschlatung.

Militant Protectionism

Although protectionism through tariffs had been an official policy of Germany since the late 19th century, Hitler’s regime escalated militant foreign trade relations to a new level in an attempt to achieve autarky, economic self-sufficiency. The seeds for this new economic policy, formally adopted in mid-1934, were laid during Hitler’s first 100 days. In a February 11 New York Times article entitled “Danes See Hitler Waging Tariff War,” a German official is quoted as saying “Tariffs are the only emergency defense of my country.” That “emergency defense” received a major boost a month later with the appointment of Hjalmar Schacht as President of the Central Bank; Schacht was widely credited with saving Germany from devastating hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic.

The aggressive use of tariffs by Hitler pales in comparison to what Trump unilaterally imposed on so-called Liberation Day.
Through various financial manipulations to generate funds without adding to the budget deficit and implementation of favorable trade agreements with countries in South America and southeastern Europe, this banking wizard set Nazi Germany in 1933 on the path toward self-sufficiency in a war economy. Further progress, however, depended upon conquest of other countries, something the Nazis with their stated need for Lebensraum viciously accomplished in subsequent years.

The aggressive use of tariffs by Hitler pales in comparison to what Trump unilaterally imposed on so-called Liberation Day, April 2. Virtually all US imports were smacked with a 10% tariff, and 57 countries were saddled with reciprocal tariffs between 17% to 49% in Trump’s tariff blackmail scheme. Singled out for especially harsh measures was Communist China. What started with a reciprocal tariff of 34% escalated to 125% and then, in the wake of China’s countermeasures, rose up to 245% by late April. By contrast, increased tariffs imposed upon all other nations were paused for 90 days, as Trump claimed many were “kissing my ass” to cut deals.

As was the case for Nazi Germany, trade wars initiated by tariff escalations relied upon expansion of national borders in order for the economic aggressor to achieve success. This may explain Trump’s persistent determination to acquire Greenland, and his repeated wish to make Canada the 51st state.

Disappearing People

Disappearing people deemed outside the Aryan Volksgemeinschaft, and later massively exterminating them, was a barbaric speciality of the Hitler dictatorship. The pernicious practice began in earnest in wake of the February 27 Reichstag fire, which was blamed on a foreign communist but, in fact, represented a false flag operation staged by the Nazis themselves. In the aftermath, tens of thousands of communists were rounded up and incarcerated without trial in makeshift concentration camps under great cruelty. The first official concentration camp, Dachau, opened on March 23 and it was designated by Himmler as “the first concentration camp for political prisoners” to be used to restore calm to Germany. Many of its political prisoners, which also included Social Democrats and “intellectual instigators,” were murdered shortly after arrival. Mass incarceration and execution of political prisoners during Hitler’s first 100 days was a harbinger of an institutionalized barbarism to come which collectively consumed the lives of millions of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, “asocials,” “professional criminals,” “Rhineland bastards,” and other “Untermenschen.”

The concentration camps of choice for Trump’s ruthless deportation actions are the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) in El Salvador. On February 12, over 50 Venezuelans labeled “high-threat illegal aliens” were deported to Guantanamo Bay and imprisoned in Camp 6. Since January, some 250 Venezuelan “gang members” have been sent to El Salvador under the auspices of the Alien Enemies Act; the bulk of these men, allegedly all members of the Tren de Aragua gang, were sent there on March 16 in defiance of a federal judge’s court order to halt the deportations. A day earlier, ICE deported Abrego Garcia, falsely claimed by Vice President Vance to be a “convicted member of the MS-13 gang” to CECOT where he remains, despite a unanimous ruling by SCOTUS that his deportation was illegal. The mass deportations in March have been denounced by the Venezuelan government as a “crime against humanity” reminiscent of Nazi behavior.

The mass deportations in March have been denounced by the Venezuelan government as a “crime against humanity” reminiscent of Nazi behavior.
Incarceration and/or deportation of political prisoners, specifically Palestinians or pro-Palestinian activists, have become routine under Trump’s reign. As of late March, the visas of over 800 international students have been revoked by the Trump regime’s policy of “catch and revoke.” Though reasons for this repressive action are often not given, participating in pro-Palestinian protests seems to be a common denominator.

The case of Mahmoud Khalid illustrates the extreme measures employed by ICE to rid the country of one legal resident deemed a threat. Khalid, a Palestinian student leader of protests at Columbia University against genocide in Gaza, was arrested by ICE agents on April 8 and sent off to a prison in Louisiana. No criminal charges were ever leveled against him; instead the Trump regime invoked a McCarthy-era law, Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which provides for deportation of aliens if their presence is deemed potentially harmful to US foreign policy. The same law has also been used to set up many others for deportation. Instrumental in Khalid’s arrest was Betar, a far-right Zionist group hell-bent upon disappearing anyone it considers a Hamas supporter. Its executive director, Ross Glick, met in March with several senior government officials, including Senator Ted Cruz, and urged them to take action against Khalid and other “terror supporters.” Khalid, who has Algerian citizenship and was a green card holder in the U.S., is married to an American citizen who gave birth to their first child on April 21. Reflecting the callousness of current immigration policy, Khalid was not permitted to be present at his son’s birth. If the Trump regime has its way, Khalid and all others in his predicament will be disappeared.

Resistance

The parallels between the first 100 days of both tyrannical regimes are striking and chilling, with one big exception: the Resistance. The ferocity and velocity of Hitler’s NSDAP fascism had all but ended any open opposition by early May 1933. By sharp contrast, resistance to Trump’s MAGA machine tyranny slowly but steadily grew over the course of its turbulent first 100 days. The first significant outbreak of antifascist Resistance came in February, President’s Day, renamed “No Kings Day” and “Not My Presidents Day” by protestors who numbered in the hundreds of thousands and appeared in all 50 states.

The ferocity and velocity of Hitler’s NSDAP fascism had all but ended any open opposition by early May 1933. By sharp contrast, resistance to Trump’s MAGA machine tyranny slowly but steadily grew over the course of its turbulent first 100 days.
On April 5, which may eventually mark the beginning of the end of the Trump regime, an estimated 4 million protestors filled the streets at 1500 public sites throughout the nation in a massive display of resistance. Driven by outrage at Trump’s many repressive actions, they demanded “Hands Off” government agencies and services targeted for termination. Indicative of the stirrings of a sleeping giant at this historic protest is the fact that for many outraged participants, especially seniors, this was their first public protest. April 19, dubbed National Day of Protest and “We (the People) Dissent,” witnessed another massive demonstration. Over 800 local protests took place nationwide. Among the explicitly antifascist slogans displayed on a forest of signs were “Resist Fascism, Fight Oligarchy”; “Stop the Turd Reich”; and “The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go.” Capturing the sentiment of the growing Resistance was the popular sign present at all of these demonstrations: “We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America.”

Trump balloon at Hands Off Protest.jpeg
A large balloon with an image of US President Donald Trump is seen above protesters holding signs during the nationwide "Hands Off!" protest against Trump and his advisor, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in downtown Los Angeles on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty Images)
That refusal also made its appearance at the ballot box as well as on the streets. Despite pouring in over $25 million to elect a MAGA candidate to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Musk’s chosen one lost by a 10-point margin (55% to 45%) to a liberal candidate, Susan Crawford, on April 1. On the same day, Republican candidates for Congress in a special election in Florida prevailed, but by a much narrower margin than previously for the same seat, portending problems on the horizon for Trump’s MAGA machine in the midterm elections.

However, those crucial elections are 18 months away, a period fraught with danger as well as opportunity. For Trump’s MAGA march to full-fledged fascism to triumph, executive orders and laws far more pernicious than enacted in the past 100 days will be required. Still available in his arsenal of repression are the Insurrection Act and a declaration of Martial Law. Either requires a qualitative shift in the status quo. A false flag operation, the functional equivalent of the Reichstag Fire, would suffice. So would a declaration of war against Iran or China. Alternately, any significant domestic escalation of violence by the Resistance (or agent provocateurs) may also provide the excuse for mass incarceration of dissenters and cancellation of midterm elections.

It is imperative that the growing resistance movement remains strictly nonviolent, for as the wise counsel of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. informs us: “The aftermath of non-violence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.” Beloved community built on love, not a Volksgemeinschaft or MAGA dystopia built on hate, is within our reach beyond the present evil. … See MoreSee Less

Hitler's First 100 Days — And Trump's | Common Dreams

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The parallels between the first months of both tyrannical regimes are striking and chilling, with one big exception.