LaborFest
LaborFest was established in 1994 to institutionalize the history and culture of working people in an annual labor cultural, film and arts festival.
Rap group Kneecap claims pro-Palestine messages were cut from its Coachella set
www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2025-04-21/kneecap-coachella-2025-controversy
Three people onstage, including one in a balaclava in green, orange and white
Mo Chara, left, DJ Próvai and Móglaí Bap of Kneecap onstage. (Helen Sloan / Sony Pictures Classics)
By August Brown
Staff Writer
April 21, 2025 12:03 PM PT
The outspoken Northern Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap is well-known for scathing criticism of Israel’s attacks on Gaza during its live sets. But the band says a few pointed moments from its two Coachella sets were cut from the fest’s official livestream, and wonders if its messaging played a role.
The band’s performance at the fest’s second weekend featured projections of text reading “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is being enabled by the U.S. government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes. F— Israel Free Palestine.”
Los Angeles, CA: May 23, 2022 – Controversial Irish emcees Moglai Bap and Mo Chara and DJ Provai, who together are called Kneecap, made their first trip to L.A. and didn't waste a second of it on stage at School Night. The group walked around L.A. and ate dinner at Shake Shack before performing at the Avalon Hollywood & Bardot.
MUSIC
Coachella may be ‘notorious,’ but Kneecap just needs ‘12 Irish’ to get the crowd going
The band said on social media that those messages were supposed to have appeared during their Weekend 1 set as well, but “our messaging on the US-backed genocide in Gaza somehow never appeared on screens either.”
Representatives for Goldenvoice, the fest’s promoter, did not immediately return a request for comment.
During its first weekend set, the band reportedly led a boisterous chant celebrating the 2013 death of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, which they said was cut from the livestream as well.
No sets from Coachella’s Sonora Tent — the indoor venue reserved for the punk-inspired acts that made Goldenvoice’s early reputation — were filmed for the livestream during the second weekend. There, the group reportedly said onstage that “the Irish are not so longer persecuted under the Brits, but we were never bombed under the f— skies with nowhere to go.”
Indio, CA. April 12, 2025 – Gary Tovar portrait as he is watching Together Pangea at the 2025 Coachella in Indio, CA on Saturday, April 12, 2025. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
MUSIC
Goldenvoice founder Gary Tovar is Coachella’s eternal fan: ‘When the music moves, you move with it’
“Some uncensored messaging to Coachella,” the band wrote after its Weekend 2 set, posting images of its projections.
Kneecap was far from alone in criticizing Israel’s attacks on Gaza during Coachella. Headliners Green Day altered the lyrics of “Jesus of Suburbia” to sing, “Runnin’ away from pain, like the kids from Palestine.” Other acts like Blonde Redhead and Bob Vylan displayed Palestinian flags during their sets.
Music manager and executive Scooter Braun, who organized a museum exhibition on the Nova festival massacre in Israel, said on Instagram that Coachella founder Paul Tollett “is a good man and has been an outspoken advocate on behalf of survivors of the Nova Music Festival.”
Rap group Kneecap claims pro-Palestine messages were cut from its Coachella set
www.latimes.com
The band from Northern Ireland said on social media that those messages were supposed to have appeared during its Weekend 1 set as well, but “our messaging on the US-backed genocide in Gaza somehow ne…
'Don’t wait until we are all gone': Former sex slaves demand justice now
www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/society/20250422/dont-wait-until-we-are-all-gone-former-sex-slave…
Lee Young-soo, a 97-year-old survivor of Japan’s wartime sex slavery and one of the most vocal advocates of victims, poses before an interview with The Korea Times at Heeum, the museum of the wartime atrocities, in Daegu, March 19. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
By Jung Da-hyun
Published Apr 22, 2025 7:00 am KST
Updated Apr 22, 2025 7:00 am KST
Lee Young-soo slams stalled reparations, saying justice can’t come from silence money
Editor’s note
This is the last in a two-part series of articles on Korean victims of Japan's wartime sex slavery. Most of the 240 Korean women officially registered as victims died without ever finding justice. Now, with only seven known survivors still living, fears are mounting that their unresolved stories will fade into silence. — Ed.
With only seven known survivors of Japan’s wartime sex slavery still alive in Korea, the urgency to resolve the issue is mounting.
For 97-year-old Lee Young-soo, one of the most vocal advocates among the victims, which Japan euphemistically calls "comfort women," time is running out — but justice still feels out of reach.
During World War II, the Japanese military forcibly conscripted tens of thousands of young women to serve as sex slaves for soldiers on the front lines. Many were deceived with false promises of employment or education, only to endure relentless sexual violence, physical abuse and deep, lasting psychological trauma.
Even at nearly 100 years old, Lee vividly remembers the moment she was abducted when she was just 14 years old.
That night, sleeping beside her mother, she noticed a soldier pressing down on a young girl’s neck outside of her house. The girl began signaling to her.
"At first, I thought she was just trying to get my attention for fun," Lee recalled.
But when she stepped outside, Lee was dragged away into the night by the soldier, not knowing where she was being taken.
"It was dark. I had no idea where I was going," she said. "That’s how I was taken to Japan."
Lee has been speaking publicly since 1992, challenging societal stigma. Since then, she has remained at the forefront of a movement demanding a full and formal apology from the Japanese government and the resolution of one of the darkest legacies of Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule over Korea.
But more than 30 years after her first testimony, little has changed.
Lee Yong-soo, a survivor of Japan’s wartime sex slavery, shows a photo taken with former President Yoon Suk Yeol during an interview with The Korea Times at Heeum, the museum of military sexual slavery by Japan, in Daegu, March 19. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
"I was visited by many politicians and presidential candidates over the years, all promising to resolve the issue, especially during election season," Lee said. "But none of them have ever followed through."
Former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was recently ousted over his Dec. 3 martial law imposition, also visited Lee during his candidacy.
"He came to Daegu and said, ‘How could this not be resolved yet? I’ll fix it.’ But nothing happened," Lee said, with frustration and disappointment.
With Yoon’s impeachment, another promise to resolve the sex slavery issue has been left unfulfilled. For survivors like Lee, the focus is no longer on who leads the country.
"It doesn’t matter who it is anymore," she said. "What matters is that someone, anyone in the government, steps up and acts, before it’s too late."
As the number of survivors shrinks each year, the urgency to address the sex slavery issue intensifies.
Following the death in February of Gil Won-ok, another victim and a prominent activist who dedicated her life to raising awareness of the atrocities, only seven known survivors remain.
The passing of outspoken figures like Gil has left a significant void in the movement, making it increasingly difficult to maintain momentum in the push for historical accountability and reparations. Public attention to the issue has also waned in recent years.
For the few survivors still living, time is running out. Their calls for justice and formal acknowledgment have become more urgent than ever.
Lee Yong-soo, a victim of Japan's wartime sex slavery, bids farewell during the funeral ceremony of fellow victim Gil Won-ok at Incheon Red Cross Hospital, Feb. 18. Yonhap
Controversial deal
The Korean and Japanese governments reached an agreement on Dec. 28, 2015, with then-Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, announcing what they called a "final and irreversible" resolution to the sex slavery issue. As part of the agreement, Japan pledged 1 billion yen ($7 million) to a Korean foundation to support the surviving victims.
However, the agreement was made without consulting the victims themselves, drawing widespread criticism and sparking public backlash.
The agreement especially faced criticism for including a clause in which the Korean government pledged to refrain from criticizing Japan over the issue in the international arena. Many viewed this as an attempt to silence advocacy efforts and downplay the survivors’ suffering. Critics further condemned the deal for trying to settle the immense trauma endured by the victims since childhood with a 1 billion yen payout.
According to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, a total of 100 individuals — including 35 surviving victims and 65 bereaved families — received compensation through the fund. Payments were administered by the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation, which was created to manage the disbursement.
However, the foundation was dissolved in 2018 under the Moon Jae-in administration, which declared that the 2015 agreement failed to address the core issues surrounding Japan’s wartime sexual violence.
Since then, approximately 6 billion won from Japan’s contribution remains unused, with the government still undecided on how to allocate the remaining funds.
Lee has consistently rejected the 2015 agreement, criticizing the 1 billion yen fund as an attempt to silence victims rather than deliver justice.
"The money should be returned to Japan," she said firmly. "What we need is real reparation — not hush money."
Lee Yong-soo, a survivor of Japan’s wartime sex slavery, looks at a photo of herself with other victims in the yard of Heeum, the museum of military sexual slavery by Japan, in Daegu, March 19. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
More than just compensation
To the survivors and their advocates, compensation is not just about financial assistance. It is a symbolic act of accountability.
"There’s no other way to represent the seriousness of this issue without money," said Phyllis Kim, executive director of the U.S.-based Comfort Women Action for Redress and Education (CARE).
With most victims now deceased and those responsible no longer alive, Kim stressed that financial compensation holds significant symbolic value — not merely as material support, but as a formal acknowledgment of Japan’s wartime responsibility.
"For this reason, compensation remain a central part of resolving the comfort women issue," she said. "It’s not just about the money. It’s about Japan recognizing its wrongdoing through a meaningful and concrete gesture."
Kim also argued that the issue should not be viewed solely as a bilateral dispute between Korea and Japan, but as a universal human rights concern rooted in the systemic abuse of women during times of war.
"This isn’t just a Korean issue or a matter of diplomacy between two countries," she said. "It’s a global issue. Sexual violence against women continues to occur in conflicts around the world even today."
She added that Japan’s response to the issue has the potential to send a powerful global message — much like Germany’s acknowledgment of its past human rights violations — by setting an international precedent for accountability and historical reckoning.
Photos of victims of Japan’s wartime sex slavery are displayed at Heeum, the museum of military sexual slavery by Japan, in Daegu, March 19. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
Some activists are also calling on Korea to refer the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a move only the state — not individual victims — can make.
"Japan has consistently refused to address or resolve this issue through proper channels of justice," Kim said. "Referring the case to the ICJ could finally bring survivors the recognition and dignity they deserve."
For more than 30 years, Lee has spoken before international bodies, joined rallies and lobbied governments in pursuit of justice. She has nothing left to prove. She only has one final wish — Japan’s sincere apology and proper compensation.
"We need Japan to admit it was a war crime," she said.
"Don’t wait until we are all dead."
'Don’t wait until we are all gone': Former sex slaves demand justice now – The Korea Times
www.koreatimes.co.kr
With only seven known survivors of Japan’s wartime sex slavery still alive in Korea, the urgency to resolve the issue is mounting. For 97-year-old Lee Young-soo, one of the most vocal advocates amon…
La Doña Mural in the Mission Exemplifies Resilience of Latinx Community
theguardsman.com/la-dona-mural-in-the-mission-exemplifies-resilience-of-latinx-community/
April 3, 2025
The Guardsman
The “La Doña de San Francisco” mural was painted by Vanessa “Agana” Solari Espinoza in 2021. Located at Mission and 26th Streets on the side of Casa Guadalupe in the Mission District. Photo courtsey of Cecilia Cassandra “La Doña” Peña-Govea
By: Ana Woods
anagwoods@gmail.com
A larger-than-life mural of native San Franciscan musician La Doña proudly displays the word “RESILIENT” on Casa Guadalupe supermarket at 26th and Mission. The mural has been a part of the Mission since June 2021. Local artists Agana, Vogue and Robz were asked to create the mural for a collaborative campaign with the S.F. Giants.
For the mural, Agana, Vogue, and Robz had to wait to find the right wall and the right circumstances. However, after finding out the wood on the side of Casa Guadalupe was weak, Agana said, “I basically repainted the whole mural twice. It was worth it because I knew how much it meant to the folks who lived there. Through creating the mural, I was able to connect the dots and cross-pollinate music, sports, and Bay Area love.”
Agana is also from the San Francisco Bay Area, and her art includes contemporary street art and large-scale muralism. She uses her platform to speak out on issues such as racial injustice and women’s empowerment. Agana became more widely recognized for her work on the “RESILIENT” mural but said, “I’ve painted a million murals for free.” Agana’s cultural work through intentional and intricate artistry can be admired throughout the Bay Area.
When asked about the connection between art and activism, lead artist Vanessa “Agana” Espinoza said, “Art is a way for the community to engage. Walls and borders are built to separate us. If we put our stories on them, it brings us together and creates unity. It’s a big responsibility and I don’t take it lightly.”
Cecilia Cassandra “La Doña” Peña-Govea grew up in a musical family playing trumpet for her parents’ conjunto. In “To My Sister Before Fame” from her most recent album “Los Altos de Soledad,” her sister René performs a spoken-word poem about fame and family. La Doña embraces the ties with others and the support we can provide to those around us during troubling times.
5_culture_ladona_thorsen-1-1.jpeg
San Francisco artist La Doña in front of the “RESILIENT” mural by Agana on the side of La Casa Guadalupe Supermarket on 28th and Mission. Photo courtesy of Cecilia Cassandra “La Doña” Peña-Govea
La Doña’s music embraces many different Latin American rhythms heard around the streets of the Mission, such as reggaeton, cumbia, salsa and norteña. La Doña represents her community through music and doesn’t compromise her activism or values for palatability. She expresses this in her 2023 song “Can’t Eat Clout”:
“Ya I might sound good
But you can’t eat clout
Me dicen que no puedo (they say I can’t)
Sin elles no puedo (without them I can’t)
Pero esto es mi juego (but this is my game)
Siempre gano en mi juego (I always with my game).”
La Doña takes power in her music to embrace who she is and where she comes from. She rejects notions of having to conform to those who don’t agree with her message or values.
She described the San Francisco music scene as “such a tight-knit, close community. A lot of us are making art around a shared reality of resistance to gentrification, of cultural integrity, and cultural art. Community has been built around migration, this exodus from other places. By home-making within San Francisco and the larger Bay, we share a lot of the same messages, which makes it very worthwhile, exciting, and comfortable.”
When asked how she felt after seeing the mural completed, La Doña said, “We did a beautiful unveiling with my family. They came out and played music, and we had just a really beautiful moment to celebrate their artwork. Murals’ act of occupying public space is so unique to me. It’s combating whitewashing, putting color on the walls and painting our stories, but also maintaining a presence.”
La Doña and her mural remind us now more than ever of the importance of staying true to our values. Amidst recent political attacks on vulnerable communities, La Doña’s intersectional activism shows the resilience of San Francisco, the Mission, and the Latinx community. Artists like Agana and La Doña aim to inspire younger generations to reimagine their monuments and idols to create a world that reflects their lived experiences.
La Doña Mural in the Mission Exemplifies Resilience of Latinx Community – The Guardsman
theguardsman.com
La Doña and her mural remind us now more than ever of the importance of staying true to our values. Amidst recent political attacks on vulnerable communities, La Doña’s intersectional activism sho…
SFSU’s legacy of activism: decades of struggle for education reform
1968-1969 strike shares several similarities to recent strikes by CFA
goldengatexpress.org/105966/campus/sfsus-legacy-of-activism-decades-of-struggle-for-education-ref…
Byline photo of Sean Young.jpegSean Young, Copy and Opinions Editor • Mar 5, 2024
The American Federation of Teachers march with picket signs during the San Francisco State University strike in 1968-1969. (Terry Schmitt _ Courtesy of the University Archives).png
Archival
The American Federation of Teachers march with picket signs during the San Francisco State University strike in 1968-1969. (Terry Schmitt / Courtesy of the University Archives)
For over 55 years, San Francisco State University has been a hub of activism efforts to reform education, with students, faculty and the greater campus community actively participating in strikes and protests for decades.
In November 1968, students from the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front started striking in response to the suspension of George Murray, a teaching assistant and member of the Black Panther Party. The strike ended in March 1969 and would become the longest student strike in U.S. history on a college campus.
Ann Robertson was a graduate student at SFSU, then called SF State College, when the 1968 strike began.
“I come from a background where my family wasn’t political at all. So all of this was incredibly new to me,” Robertson said.
Most of Robertson’s classes were canceled, but one of her philosophy professors did not participate in the strike, so she attended his class.
“I was more on the sidelines, just beginning to get politicized myself. But when I came back [to teach at SFSU], I actually had a very good relationship with most of the faculty in the philosophy department,” Robertson said. “When I was a student, I was kind of critical of them for not being more radical.”
Robertson’s politicization ultimately led her to become involved with the California Faculty Association, the union that represents around 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches at all 23 California State Universities.
Before the CFA was established statewide, the American Federation of Teachers was the union representing faculty at SFSU.
Arthur Bierman, co-founder of the SFSU AFT chapter, wrote a letter to the San Francisco Bay Guardian in December 1968 that SFSU was in a state of crisis despite the image presented by interim SFSU president S.I. Hayakawa and his administration.
“The workload at [SF] State is 50% higher than comparable colleges in other states; instructors’ pay is 20-30% lower; instructors have no contract; and the Academic Senate’s decisions have been violated frequently at will by the chancellor and trustees,” Bierman wrote.
On Jan. 6, 1969, the AFT went out on strike against SFSU administrators, the California State University Board of Trustees and state legislators — over 350 teachers formed a picket line near the entrance of the campus at 19th and Holloway Avenue to prevent students from going to class by crossing the picket line.
“The union was sympathetic to the Black students,” said Bierman in an oral interview in 1992. “The main reasoning along these lines was that the third-world people were not going to escape their lower position in the economic scale and acceptance into society unless they got themselves educated.”
Robertson added that alongside the support and solidarity for the Black Student Union, the AFT was concerned about possible legal repercussions for striking as state law prohibited state employees from striking or using collective bargaining.
Among the AFT’s demands were the establishment of rules for faculty involvement in decisions around unit and class load assignments and amnesty for all faculty, students and staff who participated in the strike.
The ADF also demanded that SFSU’s administration settle the 15 demands of the Black Student Union and Third World Liberation Front.
Similarly to the AFT, the CFA demands were designed to benefit students and faculty members. One of the key demands by the CFA was a 12% salary increase to keep up with other educational institutions and inflation. CFA demands included a 1500:1 student-to-counselor ratio and easily accessible gender-inclusive restrooms.
Mark Allen Davis, CFA-SFSU racial and social justice representative, emphasized the critical importance of faculty unions engaging with students to tackle their demands and that students are just as fired up and engaged as they were in the 1960s.
“Tuition hikes, the war in Gaza, the attack on [Critical Race Theory] and LGBTQ+ rights, all of it is right for students just as much as it was back then to organize and participate and engage,” he said. “We wouldn’t have had such a successful December 5 strike on this campus if it wasn’t for the support of the students.”
Davis noted one main difference: students and faculty in the 1960s faced issues that were more in the forefront. At the same time, today’s campus community deals with more distractions that prevent them from tackling as many issues.
“Students shouldn’t have to pay tuition because education is a public good. The entire society benefits when people are well-educated. So it makes sense to help society pay for it, not the individual,” Robertson said.
Similarly to the CFA, the AFT quickly reached a tentative agreement on Feb. 25, 1969, and the union voted on and approved it on March 2.
The faculty returned to work two days later with provisions to dismiss disciplinary actions against faculty members who participated in the strike, funding, and staffing for the Black Studies (now Africana Studies) Department and the School (now College) of Ethnic Studies.
The strike proved that the AFT and future educator labor unions like the CFA could execute a strike without legal repercussions or punishment.
Though the faculty was able to get most of their demands met by the SFSU administration, the AFT failed to settle the demands set by students. The BSU and TWLF continued to strike until March 21, 1969, when they reached an agreement, ending the strike after 133 days.
Robertson noted that several parallels between the AFT and CFA strikes could be seen. Still, she believes that solidarity between faculty and students was stronger in the 1960s and that today’s faculty and students are looking to rebuild that strong alliance.
“It’s real power. That’s where our power comes from. It comes from acting collectively,” Robertson said. “Because if we’re all doing something together, which we’ve decided on democratically, we can begin to control what happens at the university.”
SFSU’s legacy of activism: decades of struggle for education reform
goldengatexpress.org
For over 55 years, San Francisco State University has been a hub of activism efforts to reform education, with students, faculty and the greater campus community actively participating in strikes and …
‘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 …
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/apr/19/hitlers-hatred-of-the-scientist-had-intensified-ther…
Thomas Harding
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
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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.
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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
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Robert Einstein with his wife Nina …
Sepia photo of Albert Einstein’s sister-in-law Nina with her daughgters Luce and Cici
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… 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
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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
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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
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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 …
Echoes Of Eureka a seven-movement opera on early Chinese immigrant history
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Trump, Fascism and the Authoritarian Turn
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DK RENTON
April 1, 2025
When leading Democrats debate whether Trump is a fascist, they’re asking if he’ll change the voting system so that they can’t win an election again.1 When Marxists debate the same question, we do not isolate what will happen to the politicians from what will happen to society as a whole. Exploring the question of fascism means asking whether Trump will follow through with his threats and actually dismiss tens of thousands of civil service employees, abolish overtime pay law, outlaw public sector unions, and eliminate the federal minimum wage. What we’re debating is whether he will apply the open violence of the state to deport people in numbers never seen before. We’re asking whether he will start the wars he would need with Canada, Panama or Denmark, in order to fulfil his fantasies of territorial expansion. If we liken him to a fascist we aren’t necessarily saying he will succeed in carrying out all of these tasks. We’re asking whether he will do enough of them, unleashing such a wave of violence against his political and racial enemies, so that in four years’ time the United States, (and therefore the world) will be a crueler place than it is now.
I am not making comparisons with the past—that of historic fascism—because I am mesmerized by it or because I want anyone else to be. Rather, we should understand fascism as one of a series of broader techniques to deepen counterrevolutionary power that repeatedly suggest themselves to any authoritarian trying to deepen their rule under conditions of capitalism. We can use the history of authoritarian success against itself. We can draw on it to explore which supposed obstacles to authoritarianism are likely to fail and which will prove more robust in opposition to a regime that is still deepening its power over us. As I will argue, so far Trump has been governing with a degree of authoritarianism that is equivalent to fascism, certainly early Italian fascism. However, for the label to remain accurate, a regime must continuously radicalize, innovating in response to events, crossing thresholds including the use of mass violence against enemies in society and the state, and culminating in war and genocide. It is not yet obvious that there is such a degree of popular anger and enthusiasm for the regime to keep on radicalizing in that distinctive fascist way. In history, there are examples of regimes that begin with a burst of fury before stabilizing into ordinary capitalist authoritarianism (Spain, Portugal, most military dictatorships). By considering this evidence, I will show that, rather than concentrating on applying the (at times, misleading) label of fascist to Trump, the important thing is to learn the lessons from historical antifascist movements to formulate a robust counterpolitics to the Trumpian agenda.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE RIGHT: THE UNITY BETWEEN LEADER AND MOVEMENT
When the interwar antifascists explained their enemy, they settled on one factor that explained fascism’s destructive power. In contrast to all previous right-wing conservative or authoritarian politics, fascism was the first attempt to use the masses against democracy. Clara Zetkin, who in the 1900s was one of the leaders of the socialist women’s movement, and in the 1920s a spokeswoman for the Communist International, put it like this: “The fascist leaders are not a small and exclusive caste; they extend deeply into wider elements of the population…in terms of the social composition of its troops, fascism encompasses forces that can be extremely uncomfortable and even dangerous for bourgeois society.”2
Trotsky warned from exile in 1931 that German fascism had become a real mass movement, that it organized the unemployed and significant numbers of workers alongside small owners. “The big bourgeoisie,” he wrote, “likes fascism as little as any man with aching molars likes to have his teeth pulled.”3
Both Hitler and Mussolini built a fascist party, then used it as a counterweight to the pressures on them to conform with mainstream politics. Each leader began as a minority, trying to recruit within a larger mass movement of counterrevolutionaries. In Italy, Mussolini’s first supporters, the fasci di Combattimento, were a mix of veterans and those too young to have served in the 1914–18 war. They were choosing between Mussolini and his rivals (the poet Marinetti, the adventurer D’Annunzio). They chose fascism, ultimately, because that party pioneered the use of violence against the left. Communists were beaten, kidnapped, menaced, or killed. Between March and May 1921, fascists destroyed 119 Chambers of Labour, 17 newspapers and printing workers, 59 People’s Houses, 83 Peasants’ Leagues, 131 Socialist Clubs, and 151 Cultural Clubs.4 The violence began outside of the state. Then, as it continued, police officers participated and both judges and conservative politicians expressed their support for it. The violence ended a whole period of successful workers’ struggles.
Fascism in Germany also began within the milieu of the Freikorps (the private armies that flourished in Germany in the aftermath of military defeat). There, too, the starting point was violence against the left: between January 1919 and June 1922, there were 376 political murders in Germany; 354 of them were carried out by supporters of the Freikorps or other far-right groups. The victims were Socialists or Communists.5
Both of the interwar fascist parties were militia parties. They used their private armies in a distinctive way—treating il doppiopetto e il manganello(the double-breasted suit and the bludgeon) as equal priorities. The parties were serious about standing in elections and taking power through them. They were no less committed to their own version of armed struggle. Once the streets were under fascist control, they would be able to take on the state and reshape it until the state delivered, at every moment and in every task, the fascist’s ideal of homes for their people, schools for their people, and jail (or worse) for their enemies.
Both Hitler and Mussolini employed their militia sparingly, most actively in the periods before they were in government, or before they had broken the previous Liberal Italian and German states. The militias were used to terrify liberal and center-right judges and politicians and prevent them from making any sort of protest. They were the loaded gun on the table—you couldn’t limit or restrict fascism, you could only defeat it in a bloody civil war.
The way in which Trump comes closest to the politics of the 1920s is through similar dynamics of building, emboldening, and adapting to a street movement. He has an independent base of supporters and even a militia that supports him. No one else on the US or European right has anything like Trump’s relationship to a violent street movement. The relationship differs in only superficial ways from the interwar years: Most people are recruited online rather than in person; They do not pay subscription fees to him. Rather, they buy the ties and earrings, wallets, wines, and mugs which Trump advertises.
In common with the street movements of the 1930s, today’s street-fighting far right has already employed forms of violence against the left and gender or sexual minorities. Some of Trump’s supporters intimidated election officials in 2020. Others participated in a state-sponsored manhunt that ended in a killing (Michael Reinoehl) or cheered on a murderer (Kyle Rittenhouse). Corporate-owned social media encourages hundreds of thousands of people, rewarding them with greater attention as they move up a scale of assertive acts: first taking sides against “libs,” then harassing people on the other side of politics, building up to doxxing. In order to cross the threshold of becoming participants in acts of violence, it is no longer necessary for a fascist party to mobilize its affiliated militia. Rather, individuals and groups who have congregated on 4Chan or even X can answer that call.
Trump entered his first term benefiting from the support of a movement he had not created—the tens of thousands who had participated in Gamergate and the millions who had given up Fox News in favor of Breitbart. Between joining Twitter in 2009 and 2017, Trump posted more than thirty thousand times on Twitter, acquiring thirty-six million followers. Trump seemed to be using his platform with inexplicable generosity. He used it to promote anyone on the right—living in the United States or abroad—including neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, and advocates of armed insurrection. On the surface, this tactic was irrational: Trump was dissipating his message to court extremists with audiences in the hundreds. It’s not what any other TV star would have done. That behavior was not intended to increase his platform, but it won him a base of supporters—intense Trump loyalists willing to risk anything, including jail time, for his sake.
The first test of Trump’s relationship to his movement came with the Unite the Right mobilization in Charlottesville. A crowd of three hundred people in a uniform of khaki pants and white polo shorts chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” They attacked antifascist counterprotesters, spraying them with mace. One fascist, James Fields Jr., drove his car at antifascists, killing trade union organizer Heather Heyer. Trump told journalists that there were “very fine people on both sides” and blamed the fighting on antifascists. Under pressure from the press and Republicans, Trump for the first time turned against his supporters, dismissing his chief strategist Steve Bannon. For the next two years, antifascists could be optimistic. It seemed that left-wing protests had broken the link between Trump and his street-level base.
Trump isn’t a fascist yet, his party isn’t in its core politics, his voters are largely the Republicans of 2012 and 2008, rather than an army committed to certain outcomes in advance. But the distance between him and fascism has narrowed to such a fine point that it would take very little to cross it.
Trump, however, rebuilt the relationship with his far-right supporters during 2020. He backed the QAnon conspiracy theory, which said that the Democrats were controlled by a small group of Satan-worshiping paedophiles. Supporters of QAnon were arrested after attacking restaurants rumored to have held captive children, assembling bombmaking materials, attacking Catholic churches, derailing trains, stalking politicians and attacking them in their homes.6 On one day in July 2020, Trump retweeted a dozen QAnon Twitter accounts. When Republican lawmakers criticized him, the White House communications team sided with Trump and QAnon against them.7 Again, Trump was giving up institutional backing to court his far-right followers. He hasn’t stopped rebuilding his bonds with them since.
On January 6, 2021, Trump instructed his supporters to “Fight, fight, fight!” urging them to march on Capitol Hill, hoping to overturn the result of the 2020 election. His supporters took over hallways and offices, and forced the presidential confirmation proceedings into retreat. As sedition, the march was incompetent: there was no plan for how to hold the institutions of the state against democracy. It was an insurrection, Mike Davis wrote, “in the sense of dark comedy.”8 But to see the lack of plan is to miss the point. Like revolutions, counterrevolutions need their moments of theatre—their Ayodhya, their march on Rome (which, too, was derided at the time: how could it be a real insurrection if Mussolini rode in by train?). Trump’s involvement in the action deepened his relationship to the militias, to the likes of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Boogaloo movement. To an extraordinary extent, so did his fulfilled promise to pardon those who took part. Hitler and Mussolini were not born committed political warriors; they became ones. It was their participation in attempted uprisings, their decision to accept their radical supporters’ involvement rather than denounce them afterwards, and their doubling down on the extraelectoral dimension of struggle that made them into fascists.
When Trump pardoned those who had been sentenced for taking part in January 6, he went further than his allies expected. JD Vance told reporters that those who committed violence during the Capitol riot “shouldn’t be pardoned.” Trump ignored him, releasing even those serving lengthy jail terms or convicted of extreme violence. Vance then had to make an embarrassing climbdown.9 The reason Trump went further than other Republicans would have gone is that he sees the movement as a potential counterpower under his own control to a much greater extent than they do. There will be times when Trump encounters obstacles in his mission to purge universities, deport migrants, and attack the left—and his allies will offer themselves as a street force capable of solving his weaknesses. All we have seen in the last five years suggests that Trump will use them for this purpose.
YOU DON’T NEED MANY IDEOLOGUES
Later in this piece, I’ll address one possible limit to Trump’s power: that only a minority of people in Trump’s inner circle would support the use of violence against his enemies. As the example of Vance and the January 6 pardons show, even now many of Trump’s closest allies fail to understand how committed he is to a project of personal rule.
Yet, even in the classical interwar fascist states, most of the second-rank leaders had joined the fascist party from outside or were cautious about elements of its program. Think, for example, of Adolf Eichmann, the man charged by the SS with organizing the mass deportation of Jews in the Holocaust. As Hannah Arendt famously pointed out, at the time of Eichmann’s trial—he had joined the Nazi Party more than a decade after the party’s foundation, after stints in the YMCA, and a Christian walking association. He was a serial joiner, armed not by a deep ideological motivation but an overwhelming instinct to follow.10 This is not at all to excuse Eichmann, but rather to suggest that fascism’s firmly committed ideologues are often a relative minority. Why should it be different now?
The reason why more radical fascists were able to dominate the passive joiners was due, in part, to the vagueness of the fascists’ plans for government. They, in turn, encouraged a dynamic in which second- or even third-rank leaders were invited to guess what the leader wanted, imagine themselves in the leader’s mind, and come up with plans for government. These were then tested by dynamics of internal selection and competition, with the more radical proposals generally triumphing. The minor leaders in this description don’t need to be converted to the full program of fascism, they just need to be enthused by the idea of taking over the state, pushing it in new directions, acting out grudges against their enemies, or simply identifying with ascendant power without regard for what that power does.
Think, for example, of a relatively minor piece of legislation that originated outside of the Trump inner circle, the bill HR 9495, which was introduced into Congress in winter 2024 by New York Republican Claudia Tenney. The point of the bill was to enable the President to declare any nongovernmental organization a terrorist supporter, and to remove its tax exemption as an NGO—with the Palestine Solidarity movement, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch very obviously in Tenney’s sights. Tenney has been a Republican since the days of John McCain and Mitt Romney. She is a Republican who has pushed rightwards by arguing what is common sense to Israel’s supporters: that genocide is legitimate, that protest against it must be banned, and that even those people who stand adjacent to actual protesters (that is, the conformist leaders of human rights charities) are dangerous radicals whose voices need to be silenced.
What you need for a fascist outcome may not be a large group of committed fascists, but a moment of right-wing advance and innovation, and a willingness to use the state in new ways so that the previous limits on authoritarian power no longer apply.
THE US STATE IS NOT SO FAR FROM FASCISM ALREADY
One of the problems with the discussion of whether a social order is or is not “fascist” is that it smuggles in an unacknowledged comparison with the interwar European societies in which fascism emerged. In Europe, a distinction had emerged between the metropolis and the colonial margin. At the centers of capital accumulation, a system of human rights flourished with the gradual removal of barriers to equality of citizens based on their national origin or religious beliefs. Workers won the vote, pensions, and access to state education, heralding the emergence of modern welfare states. Part of the shock of fascism lay in its sudden reversal of what many had assumed was a universal trend towards equality. Yet hundreds of miles away in the colonies of the global South, the colonized were treated as less than equal and deprived of rights under political regimes which made sharp distinctions between European citizens and non-European subjects.
Fascism’s attacks on Europeans who had moved closer to full citizenship rights—socialists, the left, gay men, and Jews—erased this geographical distance. It deployed similar violence in the European metropolis to that which the colonizers had used in Africa or Asia against the racial subjects of empire.
In both the 1930s and today, the United States lies outside of Europe‘s colonial paradigm because the structures of US society rested directly on colonial territorial expansion, the recent genocide of the indigenous population, and imported slavery. The worlds of full rights-bearing citizens and those without rights in the United States were not kept geographically distinct as they were in Europe (the South lost the Civil War). Nor did the rights of citizens ever become universal (Radical Reconstruction failed). The United States contained within one set of expanding borders both colonizer and colonized. In consequence of colonialism and slavery, as the Panthers observed a half century ago, if you were Black in the United States then violence was never kept at arms’ length.11 Even before Trump was in power, significant groups of oppressed people in the United States already experienced levels of state-sanctioned violence which would normally be associated with an authoritarian society.
Trump promised to “end the transgender lunacy.”12 Most states have already banned healthcare for trans youth. There are already hundreds of laws policing which bathrooms trans people may use, what jails they are sent to, and what sports they may compete in. At the federal level, the attacks continue unabated with trans and intersex passport holders, at best, stuck in legal limbo and, at worst, totally disenfranchised.
Under the Biden Presidency, university lecturers were subjected to laws prohibiting them from teaching classes that acknowledge the country’s history of racism. Over half of the country’s states passed laws limiting the teaching of Critical Race Theory.13 By spring 2024, ten thousand books were already banned from US libraries.14 The Democrats repeated the mistakes of European liberals in the 1920s and 1930s: they conciliated Trump’s base by continuing and deepening attacks on migrants, hoping to displace the impact of authoritarianism outside the borders of the United States. However, the continuation of such policies over the last four years has created the opportunity for him to take the violence further. Biden’s administration in 2023–4 deported three hundred thousand people, one sixth of whom were adults with children in the United States.15 The immigration police have been recruited, the flights have been chartered, the detention camps made ready.
THE POLITICS THAT GREW WORSE IN POWER
The greatest difference between fascist and other forms of right-wing rule was that fascist governments radicalized in office. Fascists came to power through promising significant change and by mobilizing people in their thousands, and yet fascism in power dropped its revolutionary rhetoric, instead taking decisions which had the effect of boosting the rich. Fascist regimes had to make good in some way the distance between promise and reality. In both classical cases, this meant offering ordinary people liberation through military victories overseas. The way to do this was through the pact under which Italian and German capitalists accepted fascism, judging that they’d gain from far-right promises to purge socialists from the workplace. That agreement changed—corrupted—the way workers were supposed to approach the state. A working-class Italian would not become richer under fascism—unless they were granted a villa in the empire in Abyssinia. An ordinary German could prosper, beyond a certain point, if the nation captured colonies and recruited citizens to settle the outposts. The vague yearning for change was displaced into using the nation for permanent war.
It is true that, seen purely in its own terms, the 2024 election result represented continuity rather than change. The two-party system has produced elections in a 49-49-2 split in almost every presidential contest since 2000….In that context, of course, 2024 was going to produce more or less what it did.
Although fascism produced similar regimes in both Italy and Germany, it is not the case that each society became fascist at the same speed. Nor is it the case that because the far right hasn’t yet taken over and purged a democratic state at any point since 2016, this generation of populists never will. In the case of Hitler, fascism began within days of his accession to power. Within one hundred days of Hitler being appointed Chancellor, he had issued decrees suspending the German Constitution’s protection of civil rights, free speech, and due process. The Enabling Act permitted Hitler to rule without needing parliament. Laws dissolved state governments including Prussia, Germany’s largest state, with its huge Socialist and Communist electorate. All Jews and antifascists were dismissed from government employment including in schools, universities and the judiciary. Trade unions were taken over by the state. People remember the German example and assume that fascism means dictatorship from day one.
But in Italy, by contrast, Mussolini was in power for three years before an opportunity presented itself to declare the country a dictatorship. The Socialist parliamentarian Giacomo Matteotti was assassinated by fascists on June 10, 1924. In the aftermath of his death, the opposition parties met, determined to boycott parliament, but could not agree on what to do next. They feared confronting Mussolini directly. Unlike him, they had no militia. Nor did they dare call on the forces of the far left—the Communists too kept their own, sectarian, distance. Not daring to call on the people to resist, they asked the Italian King to intervene and he refused. In January, Mussolini made a speech to Parliament accepting responsibility for Matteoti’s death and promising to govern, from that moment on, as a dictator. As late as November 1926, four years after Mussolini had taken power, he faced opposition in the Italian Parliament from deputies including the Communist Antonio Gramsci. A further attempt on Mussolini’s life was used to justify the laws banning the left from office.
THE FAR RIGHT IS WINNING IN MANY COUNTRIES
On the right, as on the left, the breakthrough for radical politics takes place when several societies go through similar crises at the same time. Change needs to happen at the level of the international, so that participants in rival states can learn from each other’s advances, emulate them, and, ultimately, surpass them. An isolated revolution (or indeed counterrevolution) can face resistance from interest groups, sanctions, or even the threat of invasion from other states saying they are policing their breakthrough on behalf of the mainstream. It is much easier to transform one country’s politics if it is one of several radical states governing at once.
In the 1920s, Mussolini offered Hitler a model of how to come to power (his March on Rome inspired Hitler’s Beer Hall putsch), the idea of ruling by a one-party dictatorship, and a slogan as to how to run an economy. Later, Hitler was able to surpass Mussolini’s example—Germany was a richer country with a greater potential military power. But you could not have had fascism in Berlin without Mussolini having broken through first.
One of the reasons why Trump is able to govern as an authoritarian is that we are living in a world where a series of other right-wing states—Israel, Hungary, Russia, India—are already promoting themselves, funding allies abroad, recruiting friendly journalists, paying for automated social media influence, and finding propagandists willing to serve them.
At the time of writing, the most dynamic of Trump’s global allies is, of course, Israel. In a world which declares it a rational and legitimate exercise of state policy for Israel to murder the civilian population of Gaza, Trump’s fantasies of occupying Greenland and totally cleansing the Gaza strip of all remaining Palestinians become “rational” too.
LIMITS ON AUTHORITARIAN ADVANCE
So far, I have been listing some of the most obvious points of comparison between historic fascism and the present authoritarian turn. In the next section of this piece, I will address some of the factors which are often said to be likely to curtail his power and analyze how powerful each may be.
It is often said that Trump’s voting base is lifelong Republicans, rather than committed ideological fascists. If he goes further than they would tolerate, surely, they must turn against him. It is true that, seen purely in its own terms, the 2024 election result represented continuity rather than change. The two-party system has produced elections in a 49-49-2 split in almost every presidential contest since 2000. One candidate wins a higher share of the vote, neither obtains (or even seeks) a majority. In that context, of course, 2024 was going to produce more or less what it did. The Democrats might have won. They lost for many reasons, not least because the United States has been living through an oil boom for four years and the gains of that inflationary boom have been so swallowed by the rich that most voters had no good reason to back Harris. Look beyond the United States and 2024 was the first time since 1945 in which incumbent parties in every single affluent state that held elections that year (including Britain, France, Japan and India) saw their share of the vote fall. The four-point swing against the Democrats was in fact the least dramatic vote-loss of any governing party anywhere that year.16
Trump won because enough usual Republican supporters voted along party lines and enough previous Democrat voters stayed home. The problem with portraying the 2024 election as a constraint on Trump’s power is that there is no mechanism by which moderate Republicans (even assuming such a constituency exists) can influence him. Trump has won his second term. Whether he ignores or amends the constitution and tries to declare himself President for life—or whether he finds some less brazen device by which he and his allies can keep his system of government intact without him—he will not face an election like 2024 again.
Part of the problem faced by opponents of dictatorship is that the political call for voters to vote to stop fascism, which was made loudly in 2024, failed to find an audience. We can test this by segmenting the electorate according to the reasons they give for voting. In the 2020 election, pollsters asked voters whether they were voting positively (because they identified with the Democratic program or with Biden) or negatively (to stop Trump). Four years later, the fastest fall in turnout was among the people who had described themselves as negative, that is, anti-Trump voters.17 Millions of people who had turned out against Trump in 2020 decided four years later that even his threat could not compel them to back the Democrats given their record in relation to the economy and Palestine.
During the election, Kamala Harris told the New York Times that Trump was a fascist because elite gossip insisted that he was—that is, because John Kelly, his former White House Chief of Staff, had heard Trump quoting Hitler with approval.18 Robert Reich culled together lists of the parts of Trump’s ideology that he liked least, and said that he shared those ideas with fascists.19 In other words, Reich forgot the opportunistic way in which fascism had always traded in political language. In reality, neither Harris nor Reich were thinking about what fascism might actually mean. They were, rather, trying to win an argument and motivate voters by making the points that they thought would play best with their base.
The Democrats have pursued this strategy many times before. In 1964, Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination for the presidency. He pledged to increase US military power. Pat Brown, an old school Democrat, who served for two terms as Governor of California, said that Goldwater’s speech to the Republican convention “had the stench of fascism. All we needed to hear was Heil Hitler.” Three years later, the Marxist Hal Draper wrote, “You can’t fight the victory of the rightmost forces, by sacrificing your own independent strength to support elements just the next step away from them.” Democrats consistently exaggerated the threat posed by Republicans, Draper argued, as a way of concealing how little their own party differed from them. Pat Brown (the man who had labeled Goldwater a fascist) had helped pass laws criminalizing Mexican farm workers during his time as Governor. When the Berkeley students had spoken out against the Vietnam war, Brown had unleashed the police on them. Draper observed that “the lib-labs would be yelling ‘Fascism’ all over the place” if the same appeal to the repressive state had been ordered by a Republican.20
During the election, several commentators sought to prove Trump’s malice by saying that he had a far-right program. This program was “Project 2025,” a manifesto for presidential transition drawn up by the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation.21 That document was drawn up not by Trump, but a group of his supporters. It plans tax cuts, reducing both Medicare and Medicaid, and removing protections against discrimination on grounds of gender identity or sexual orientation. If they get their way, the authors would dismiss tens of thousands of educators. Since November, Trump has nominated authors who contributed to Project 2025 to lead his Office for Management and Budget, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the CIA.22
In contrast to the visions of the interwar fascists who needed a strong centralized state in order to wage war, the Heritage Foundation envisages the weakening and privatization of the state. This raises the possibility, at least potentially, of a serious conflict, with one wing of the Trump movement promising a “state capitalist” future (state spending on the economy, the promotion of the 1950s-style family) and another wing promoting “neoliberalism” (raiding the state like a broken piggy bank, crashing spending on roads, air infrastructure and handing huge profits to the rich). But Project 2025 was never Trump’s blueprint and his relationship to it is more equivocal. In the first weeks of Trump’s administration, Project 2025 has informed a series of Executive Orders whose tenor has been solidly authoritarian—whether that has been through militarizing the Mexican border, removing healthcare for trans people, or unmaking civil rights-era laws. The use of presidential decree to make these “laws” is already creating a kind of personal postdemocratic rule that goes beyond any precedent, in any of the states of the capitalist core, at any time since the end of the Second World War. Beyond that, it’s not clear at all how much vision the two wings of Trumpism share.
One good way to understand Trump is as the equivalent in the United States to Benjamin Netanyahu, Narendra Modi, Giorgia Meloni, Viktor Orbán, Javier Milei, and Jair Bolsonaro….Thinking about these allies may help us to understand a realistic sense of the future towards which Trump is aiming—not necessarily the ending of elections as such, or the jailing of AOC, but a managed democracy in which there are still formal contests between two rival parties but power never changes hands.
Earlier in this piece, I acknowledged that Trump is short of allies who are committed to using violence against the left and destroying the existing state. His appointment to his Cabinet and other senior roles are mostly not fascists in any traditional sense. Since November, commentators have been transfixed by the billionaires who’ve gathered to sit at Trump’s top table—Ramaswamy, Linda McMahon from WWE. But they are the rich demanding gratification, rather than loyalists. The same is also true of the influencers who called on their supporters to vote for Trump: Joe Rogan, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard—all recent ex-Democrats.
Significantly, Trump doesn’t appear to have any obvious candidate in his immediate entourage who could play the role of a strategist. In 2016, Steve Bannon seemed capable of planning to take the regime in an ever more radical direction. Eight years later, Trump has no obvious counterpart to him. While there are people in his inner circle who would be comfortable with a transition to authoritarianism, there is no one beyond Trump to visualize that path.
Yet, one can find among Trump’s appointees several who were complicit in the attempt to overturn the 2020 elections—including White House counsel, Christina Bobb, who chose eleven Republicans in Arizona willing to vote for Trump in the electoral college despite his loss there.23 Bobb has called the left “evil” and “demonic,” and urged Trump to clean out “the filth”—meaning us leftists.24 Other appointees are clearly influenced by the far right. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, has a German-style Jerusalem cross tattooed on his chest and the white supremacist slogan Deus Vult on his arm. Hesgeth has called for a civil war at the end of which the military and the police would jail leftists, even middle-of-the-road Democrats.25
I have made the point already that Trump may not need a large core of committed supporters—if there are enough people willing to experiment alongside him, that could be enough. Linked to this, it may be that figures of sufficient malice emerge—the likes of Stephen Miller, maybe, equipped as he now is by the experience of four years in government.
One good way to understand Trump is as the equivalent in the United States to Benjamin Netanyahu, Narendra Modi, Giorgia Meloni, Viktor Orbán, Javier Milei, and Jair Bolsonaro. This generation of right-wing leaders have not exactly cancelled elections. Rather, they have tried to suffocate the democratic system. Hungary’s Civic Alliance party (Fidesz) has dismissed nonparty journalists from the state-financed TV and radio channels. Faced with a constitutional court where Fidesz did not have a majority, it introduced different retirement ages for judges depending on whether they backed the ruling party (62 and 80).26 It has made new appointments until it secured its proregime majority. The party introduced a series of laws proscribing NGOs. Fidesz has banned gender studies, removed trans people’s legal status, and introduced pronatalist policies. It has campaigned through a series of lurid antisemitic lies, blaming all opposition on the supposed influence of a single Jew, George Soros. Hungary is often characterized as a “managed democracy”; Fidesz’s policies are reported in both the state and privately owned media, while their opponents’ messages are ignored. The Hungarian system of government is authoritarian without being classically fascist. Hungary has fought no wars, begun no genocide. Thinking about these allies may help us to understand a realistic sense of the future towards which Trump is aiming—not necessarily the ending of elections as such, or the jailing of AOC, but a managed democracy in which there are still formal contests between two rival parties but power never changes hands.
NOT WITHOUT CHALLENGE
The most compelling reason to feel some confidence about the future is that Trump’s first term saw him fail to deliver on his authoritarian promises.Deportations fell by around a third between Obama and Trump (before returning to 2010 levels under Biden).27 Trump’s expansion of the Mexican wall was modest.28 The total number of death row prisoners executed fell. In his first term, Trump’s authoritarian instincts often proved self-defeating. The fact that Trump was pushing for more executions caused journalists to investigate and gave death-penalty campaigners energy to resist him. Trump was unpopular and state governors didn’t want to be seen to be copying him.
The difficulty is that, in the intervening eight years, Trump’s inner circle has built up a certain degree of technical knowledge—his allies better understand how the system works. There was a visible illustration of the differences between the two inauguration days: In 2017, Trump announced no more than two executive orders on the day of his inauguration, and one of them was a policy he loathed (keeping the Affordable Care Act going). Eight years later, Trump used his speech to announce two hundred executive orders, which he has since carried out.
The social base of Trump’s regime is wider than it was, particularly in terms of the assent he has received from sections of the rich. It is true that in the November election, Harris had the backing of most US bosses and outspent Trump. However, since Trump’s election, a number of billionaires have made overtures to him, including Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The motives behind this shift are not hard to discern: Trump promises to close down so much traditional federal infrastructure and replace it with forms of outsourced government that there are fortunes to be made in the grabbing of data and contracts.
There is a large difference between governing a society dominated by your allies and one where the rich didn’t want you, didn’t choose you, regard you as an upstart, and would prefer that you had lost. But if we see the 1930s as a model, the wealthy were far from keen on either Hitler or Mussolini. They would have preferred democracy to continue, but they made peace with fascism. A common metaphor used by historians to explain their decision is the idea of a pact. There was never a single meeting at which the bosses, as a class, sat down with Hitler and agreed to give away a significant part of their social power under an authoritarian regime. And yet the outlines of their consent and its rationale were apparent. The ruling class feared Communists more than they feared Nazis. So long as the regime cleaved to familiar right-wing ways of ruling, expanding the army, subsidizing industry, the rich made peace with it.
Trump’s personality makes it harder for him to govern as an effective ruler. Like all dictators in history, he is constantly changing his mind, feuding with subordinates and getting rid of the people who were last week’s favorite. To a greater extent than any obvious comparator, his first term was chaotic, short-termist and weak at exploiting the opportunities available to it. During Trump’s first year in office, he dismissed a third of his staff. No other president in living memory has come close to that attrition rate.29 Trump’s picks for high office have the records for the shortest tenure by any chief of staff (Reince Priebus, 192 days), national security advisor in US history (Michael Flynn, 22 days), and any White House director of communications (Anthony Scaramucci, 10 days). In place of legislative triumphs, Trump’s first term was punctuated by dismissals. The churn made Trump weaker. With the exception of the Supreme Court, where Trump was able to benefit from Democratic arrogance and favorable circumstances, the turnover in senior roles prevented the administration from making the plans that could have altered the balance of politics.
Another argument that is sometimes deployed against the vision of Trump as a fascism-developing dictator is that second-term presidents generally disappoint their followers. All presidents are weak, at least in terms of domestic politics, dependent on making alliances in Congress. Yet Trump has significant advantages compared to most US presidents—Congress is servile and the Supreme Court has repeatedly signaled that it will not trouble him. If the pattern of the first few weeks is followed, and Trump is able to govern this time around by repeated executive decrees, then he has much less reason to care what the legislature does. The German Parliament did not cease to sit, after the Enabling Act, which had permitted the Chancellor to make laws without it. It became instead a part-time body, of no more than ceremonial function.
WHAT KIND OF COUNTERPOLITICS MIGHT RESTRAIN TRUMP?
Part of the crisis facing the left today is that it really does make a difference to the Left whether our opponent is pushing towards fascism or not. Different strategies of resistance follow from our analysis of how far Trump will go. We have to decide what kind of opponent we face. And yet, the opponent we have in front of us is one who seems poised, always, between two different approaches to politics. One of the reasons it is so hard to fight him is because we—and most voters —don’t yet know just how bad his second term will be.
We remember the 1930s as the devil’s decade, the period when fascism ruled. Yet, in the United States, the Communist Party grew from seven thousand to seventy thousand members—most of the new members had not been in any group when the decade began. They brought into being new kinds of left-wing organizations that would shape US politics until the Civil Rights years. Then, as now, new forces are waiting to come onto the field…
Over the last two decades, in almost every country, the tactic of denouncing our enemies as fascist has failed to stir right-wing (or indeed liberal or center-left) voters. When Giorgia Meloni was invited to address the confederation of the CGIL trade union federation in March 2023, she had to delay her speech because of union delegates drowning out her words with the partisan anthem ‘Bella Ciao.’ And yet Meloni, whose party the Brothers of Italy has as its symbol the fascist tricolor flame, won 44 percent of the vote in the 2022 election. She had secured a higher proportion of the vote in a free election than Hitler or Mussolini ever managed.
One way to explain the failure of the fascist label is that this generation of far right leaders are not fascists, will never be, and voters can see the difference for themselves. Calling them fascist makes the accusers look like they are exaggerating and cannot be trusted. If that approach is correct then the left likely needs more precision. Facts have accumulated in such numbers that we can see with clarity that the old rhetorical approach is not working. To prove politically galvanizing, we need a new paradigm capable of explaining the world around us. We should take our cue from the likes of Karl Marx and the opening lines of the Eighteenth Brumaire. Leftists should refrain from, in our anxiety, conjuring up the spirits of the past to our service. We have become obsessed with the past when we should be grasping the specific circumstances around us.
It follows that we need new terms—Naomi Klein’s “mirror world,” Richard Seymour’s “disaster nationalism”—a whole new vocabulary which takes on board this new politics without forcing it into the patterns of the past. 30
In this way of understanding Trumpism, the people to celebrate are the hundred thousand people in Michigan who, in February 2024, voted uncommitted to protest against Democratic complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Or the thousands of trans people demanding continued access to health care from one New York City hospital. Or the students who protested in vast numbers against US backing for the war, only to see a generation of Democratic university administrators sending cops in riot gear against them. Or the thousands of trans people demanding continued access to health care from one New York City hospital. They didn’t want to see Trump in power; and yet they were correct to reject the liberal arguments about keeping silent, standing down all criticism, accepting genocide as the price for democracy. If ever a generation of Trump voters are going to reject him and move left, there need to be some people who can talk to them, and insist that we are the rebels, the people on whose shoulders the police batons fell. We did not wait to see what Trump would become, we fought.
But what if Trump indeed makes the short journey from “not yet” fascism to the real thing?31 In the last hundred years, there have been very few moments like the one we are living through. The people winning elections on the right encourage a degree of sadism in their support, which has few precedents other than the 1930s.32 If we imagine, even for a second, that this wave of advancing right-wing politics will turn to violence, then the two likeliest candidates would be either Modi or Trump, since each has a relationship to a militia of armed supporters. Their peers in Hungary, Italy, Finland, Britain and France cannot draw on a similar (small but radical and committed) base. When one reads the newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s, what is striking is the atmosphere of imminent violence. Fascist newspapers—before fascists started killing people—offered a drum-beat of killing. “Death,” they promised “to the adversary, outrage and persecution for the opponent.”33 Fascist novels from the period end with traitors hanged. They promise their readers a future filled with delight, its joy to be counted in the number of Communists awaiting execution.34
In Trump’s campaign speeches, and in Elon Musk’s rants on X, a similar mood is being created—a condition of tense preparation before acts of cruelty. On immigration, Trump’s language, which was once distinguishable from the politicians of the 1920s and 1930s, is now identical. When he speaks of “every city and town that has been invaded and conquered,” when he says that people crossing the border are “military invasions without the uniforms,” and calls every ordinary person fleeing war or persecution “vicious and bloodthirsty criminals,” what he is preparing is a society that will look upon acts of violence—even murder—and applaud.35 Trump isn’t a fascist yet, his party isn’t in its core politics, his voters are largely the Republicans of 2012 and 2008, rather than an army committed to certain outcomes in advance. But the distance between him and fascism has narrowed to such a fine point that it would take very little to cross it.
During the interwar years, antifascists formulated a series of distinct tactics that were intended to block the rise of fascism. They spoke of unity between socialist forces (the “united front”). They urged the separation of people willing to give fascism their militant support from the larger group of moderates, who have fallen behind that politics.
Joseph Fronczak’s recent work of comparative history, Everything is Possible, helps us to understand how powerful these tactics were, not just in resisting fascism, but in transforming how Communists and Socialists saw themselves. Historians of political ideas used to argue that the concepts of left and right emerged in 1789, in the debates of the French National Assembly, and that the terms have a continuous history from then on. Fronczak disagrees. He observes that in Britain, France and the United States, between about 1789 and 1934, the terms “left” and “right” were rarely spoken, and had little if any meaningful content. The left emerged after 1918. The threat of a vicious enemy caused different tribes of socialists to get organized. “Antifascism drove the left’s transformation.” Faced with the rise of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, which threatened the destruction of both the Communists and their moderate left-wing rivals, the former began to argue that all forces on the left need to unite in their mutual self-defence.36 The Socialists, after some delays, agreed. “Only since then, since the middle years of the Great Depression, has it made sense for people to imagine the left as…a mass collectivity.”37 It was the threat of fascism, and people’s responses to it, which created the left.
When Trump tries to take the United States into a new and worse place, he will have opponents. We remember the 1930s as the devil’s decade, the period when fascism ruled. Yet, in the United States, the Communist Party grew from seven thousand to seventy thousand members—most of the new members had not been in any group when the decade began. They brought into being new kinds of left-wing organizations that would shape US politics until the Civil Rights years. Then, as now, new forces are waiting to come onto the field – they will be young, they will come from parts of the population that the left has not reached yet.
However Trump governs, we need to show that there are more people out there who reject the expansion of the carceral state than who support it. We need more protests like the 2023 United Auto Workers strike, and their emulation by other workers. We need the revival of Black Lives Matter. We have to cohere the millions of Americans who support trans liberation into a visible mass movement. When Trump called on his people to march on Washington, a number in the low tens of thousands participated in that gathering. By contrast, more than twenty million people joined in protests following the murder of George Floyd. When both left and right go all out to mobilize, we are still so much more powerful than them.
Trump, Fascism and the Authoritarian Turn – Spectre Journal
spectrejournal.com
DK Renton looks to historic fascism to analyze the direction of Trump’s authoritarianism and for examples of a counterpolitics to fight it.
Three Times Workers Resisted Fascism in Minnesota History
Historical examples of workers resisting the oligarchical forces of fascism and authoritarianism.
workdaymagazine.org/three-times-workers-resisted-fascism-in-minnesota-history/
BY AMIE STAGER | April 3, 2025
Workers and unions across the U.S. are raising the alarm about the Trump administration’s attempts to divide the working class.
“They want us to be distracted by attacking the working class on innumerable fronts, but we must stand united,” said University of Minnesota Twin Cities graduate worker Greyson Arnold at a recent rally organized by AFSCME 3800, which represents clerical workers, and GLU-UE Local 1105, which represents graduate workers.
The Amazon Labor Union-IBT Local 1 located in Staten Island, New York, released a statement on immigrant solidarity, saying they refuse to be divided: “By standing together across all lines of difference, we are building a movement stronger than their fear tactics, stronger than their threats. That unity will break their divide-and-conquer strategy and make real change possible. We call on workers, communities, and the labor movement to join us in defending immigrant rights as a core labor issue. A threat to one is a threat to all, and we will not stand by while our coworkers are targeted.”
Union leaders have pointed to the importance of building worker power in response to division attempts. “When they come after one group, they come for us all,” said Association of Flight Attendants International President Sara Nelson at a rally for Delta Air Lines workers in January. “Nothing on this Earth turns without us. If we understand our power in this moment and we organize together and have each other’s backs, we can take action. Strike action, organized action, moral action.”
In an interview with Bob Hennelly, Nelson said that after the elimination of collective bargaining rights for Transportation Security Administration workers by the Department of Homeland Security, workers have “very few options but to join together to organize a general strike.”
On March 27, President Trump signed an executive order to end collective bargaining for many federal employees, which Minnesota AFL-CIO president Bernie Burnham has called“unprecedented union busting.”
The Minnesota AFL-CIO also released a statement on January 26 in support of immigrant workers. “Trump and his billionaire friends are counting on workers to turn on one another while they cut their own taxes, gut worker safety standards, roll back union rights, and more,” the statement reads. “Every worker should remember that an immigrant doesn’t stand between you and a better life – a billionaire does.”
Workers have a long and storied history of resisting attempts to pit them against each other. We found examples specific to Minnesota’s labor movement, which has a militant legacy that can be learned from today. Workers organized and mobilized to take defensive and offensive measures against various forces—hate groups, corporations, and corporate-backed elected officials—that sought to violently divide their communities and hoard resources.
Teamsters Local 574 Forms Union Defense Guard in 1938
In “It can’t happen here?” Joe Allen wrote about the Teamsters’ fight against the Silver Shirts in Minneapolis. The global economic crises of the 1920s and ‘30s empowered a rise in fascism. Hate groups formed in Europe and the United States, and Minneapolis was host to one of the largest chapters of the nationalist, fascist, and pro-Nazi Silver Shirts, AKA the Silver Legion of America. Sarah Atwood wrote about the organization for Minnesota History. Founded on January 30, 1933, as a paramilitary organization by journalist and Christian mystic William Dudley Pelley, the group also faced opposition in Minnesota, where the informal Anti-Defamation Council was organized to investigate antisemitism. In 1936, journalist Eric Sevareid began reporting on the Silver Shirts for the Minneapolis Journal, hoping to raise the alarm, although he felt his editors were framing the organization as unserious.
Workers in the 1934 Teamsters’ truckers’ strike defend the picket line against the private army of the Citizen’s Alliance. Image from the Minnesota Historical Society.
In Teamster Politics, union activist, communist organizer, and historian Farrell Dobbs wrote about the Union Defense Guard, which was a group of union members that mobilized to confront the Silver Shirts in 1938, four years after Teamsters Local 574 (also known as Local 544 in some sources) led the truckers’ strike that transformed Minneapolis into a union town. Dobbs was one of the initiators of the strike, which challenged the Citizen’s Alliance, an anti-union business oligarchy that was renamed to Associated Industries. When the Silver Shirts came to town, they threatened to raid the union’s headquarters and were using violent rhetoric against the re-election of Farmer-Labor governor Elmer Benson. Local 574 staff, Indigenous worker, and military veteran Ray Rainbolt was commander of the Union Defense Guard, a multi-union formation that set up combat defense training and an intelligence unit for hundreds of union members. When Silver Shirts leader Pelley came to Minneapolis to deliver a speech, his cab driver reported it to Rainbolt, who led the Union Defense Guard to where Pelley was scheduled to speak. The audience that had gathered left, and Pelley fled the city. The Union Defense Guard thwarted other Silver Shirt gatherings in Minneapolis, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Pelley disbanded the organization.
Immigrant Women-Led Resistance in the Iron Range Strike of 1916
On June 2, 1916, after receiving a smaller paycheck than expected, Joe Greeni walked off the job at St. James Mine near Aurora, Minn., spontaneously sparking what would become a violent and deadly strike against the largest corporation in the United States at the time, a U.S. Steel subsidiary called Oliver Mining Company. Many different ethnic groups of immigrants worked in the mines, and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) sponsored parades and dances to bring people together during the strike. Women, who were included as members of the union, regularly attended these events and played active roles in strike defense, refusing to be intimidated and sometimes going to jail for peaceful and violent resistance in support of the strike.
Members of the IWW on a Sunday picnic during the 1916 Iron Range strike. Image from the Walter P. Reuther Library.
On July 28, private armed deputies hired by the company tried to shut down a parade, and women defended the marchers by rushing to the front. On another occasion reported in August by the pro-labor Mesaba Ore, women physically resisted against mine guards denying them access to fresh water at mining camps, where the company sometimes cut off access to wells. In late July, mine worker Louis Stremola was arrested for interfering with the arrest of a woman, allowing her to escape custody. Although the miners lost the strike, workers and their families were militant in their resistance to the oppression of the companies that wielded control over their communities.
In an analysis on the strike for the Mining History Journal, historical researcher and writer Pamela R. Stek wrote that the media, controlled by companies, focused on the transgression of gender norms to question immigrants’ citizenship and roles as mothers in order to paint them as dangerous agitators: “Women strike activists faced public censure when anti-strike reporters and editors denounced female strike supporters as unfit mothers and suggested that an IWW victory would lead to the breakdown of family and society.”
The People’s Pilgrimage of 1937
According to MNopedia, the Workers Alliance, an organization that mobilized unemployed workers across the U.S., established a temporary branch in Minnesota called the People’s Lobby. On April 4, 1937, they gathered over a thousand people at the state capitol in support of governor Benson’s legislative package allocating $17 million in aid to the unemployed. What began as a demonstration turned into an overnight occupation after an activist used a knife to open the senate chamber door. Around 200 people peacefully occupied the chambers overnight, where they gave speeches, sang songs, and ate hot dogs. Benson addressed the demonstration, speaking against the senate and corporate interests that were opposing higher taxes for the wealthy. He vocalized his support for the protesters, who left in the morning at Benson’s request.
People’s Lobby members gather during their occupation of the Minnesota Capitol on April 4, 1937. Image from the Minnesota Historical Society.
Benson was used to raising the ire of Republicans; during his time as governor, the Republican-controlled Senate blocked many of Benson’s radical proposals. Following the sit-in, Republican senators accused Benson of encouraging intimidation. The protest made national news, but Benson’s package did not pass, and Minnesota’s economy experienced a recession later that year.
By Amie Stager|April 3, 2025
Amie Stager is the Associate Editor for Workday Magazine.
Three Times Workers Resisted Fascism in Minnesota History
workdaymagazine.org
Historical examples of workers resisting the oligarchical forces of fascism and authoritarianism.
Twitter Mural At Twitter HQ
www.facebook.com/ArthurKochStudio/videos/2405266762983575?locale=nb_NO
Arthur Koch Studio
21. desember 2022 ·
Here is the video I made of the Twitter street mural. I posted a youtube link on my personal page and nobody responed so I assume Youtube links are suppressed.
"Get Your Tickets To Mars."
Guerrilla Street Mural at San Francisco Twitter Headquarters by Climate Justice Street Mural Arts Project. In conjunction with the Labor Fest and Revolutionary Poets Brigade cultural event, "Get Your Tickets To Mars." Poets, musicians, and artists will sing and speak out on this day about the madness and reality of Twitter. ART, NOT OLIGARCHY! Are you also sick of billionaires, wealthy corporations and their politicians mis-managing, profiteering and wrecking our communities and planet? Musk is an over-the-top example of the class of the modern-day-kings mis-ruling the things we need to survive.
#twitter #elonmusk, #streetmural, #artivism, #arthurkochstudio, #Climatejustice, #muralarts, #climatejusticestreetmural, #guerillaart, #twitterdown, #twittershutdown, #twittertakeover, #twittergate, #oligarchy, #Democracy, #StreetArt, #FreeSpeech
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Okinawa police, U.S. military to hold joint patrol in night district
www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15707983
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
April 12, 2025 at 15:52 JST
Bars and other establishments line the street extending from the main entrance to U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa city. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
NAHA–A joint patrol involving Okinawa prefectural police and the U.S. military is to be mounted in the entertainment district of Okinawa city near the U.S. Kadena Air Base following a series of high-profile sexual assaults involving drunken American personnel.
The Okinawa city government announced April 11 that the patrol would be held over a period of four hours from 10 p.m. on April 18.
Officials from other agencies, such as the Okinawa city and prefectural governments, the local office of the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry’s Okinawa Defense Bureau and local neighborhood associations, will also take part.
Sexual assault cases in Okinawa involving U.S. military personnel have been on the increase since last June. In 2024, the Okinawa prefectural police detained four individuals, although one case did not lead to an indictment. The detention figure was the largest in a decade.
The joint patrol will be the first since 1974. The prefectural police and prefectural assembly have been cautious about staging patrols due to concerns about the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement, which states that if officials of the two sides are at a crime scene, the U.S. military has jurisdiction over the U.S. suspect.
A high-ranking prefectural police official dismissed the idea that there could be an infringement of the right to investigate because the focus of the joint patrol would be to raise crime prevention awareness around the entertainment district.
The Okinawa city government and local police have conducted awareness campaigns in the past.
The city government plans to continue the joint patrols after April 18 but has not decided on dates yet.
Joint patrols have been held in the past in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture, and Sasebo in Nagasaki Prefecture, according to the government.
(This article was written by Kazufumi Kaneko and Satsuki Tanahashi.)
www.asahi.com
NAHA–A joint patrol involving Okinawa prefectural police and the U.S. military is to be mounted in the entertainment district of Okinawa city near the U.S. Kadena Air Base following a series of high-…