On 10 September, racist, far-right political provocateur Charlie Kirk was shot dead in front of an audience at Utah Valley University as he spewed his usual incendiary, bigoted talking points. His death sparked a hysteria of media coverage and widespread condemnations of political violence from his far-right political allies to self-proclaimed democratic socialist figures such as Senator Bernie Sanders and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. The utter hypocrisy of these condemnations is glaringly obvious to anyone with an iota of knowledge of the history of the United States of America. In the words of civil rights activist H Rap Brown: ‘Violence is as American as apple pie’. REAGAN GRAY reports.
Less than a year into US President Donald Trump’s second term in office, the country is a political pressure cooker. Bourgeois political pundits are framing the current situation in the US in line with ‘great man’ theory, defining it as the end of ‘American democracy’ simply because Trump wants to be a dictator. Others say this emergence of authoritarianism and fascism is something foreign to the US. But what is playing out is the inevitable return to the characteristics of imperialism in crisis. What many people in the US are acknowledging for the first time is the same belligerence which the majority of oppressed people and countries have been subjected to at the hands of the US throughout the development of capitalism.
The bloody foundations of the US
The US emerged from the British colonial conquest for new markets, resources and labour to exploit and enrich their ruling class. This settler colonial project was predicated on the genocide of the indigenous people of the Americas, killing 96% of the population since 1492. The introduction of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the US in 1619 began the brutal exploitation of enslaved Africans which developed the foundations of the US’s productive capacity and infrastructure. The slave-owning ‘founding fathers’ declared US independence from Britain in 1776. As US capitalism developed and slavery was abolished de jure in 1865, the institution of racial segregation, Jim Crow laws and the development of the prison system ensured the continuity of exploitation of black people through disenfranchisement and mass incarceration up till today. Throughout all of this, the ruling class has utilised the arms of the state – the military, the police, the courts and judiciary, as well as its civilian auxiliary forces such as lynch mobs like the Ku Klux Klan – to defend its interests.
Abroad, CIA-backed coups have overthrown democratically elected leaders and funded the massacres of revolutionary groups and their suspected supporters from Chile to Grenada to Indonesia (see page 11). During the McCarthy era of the mid-20th century, the US government used political terror to halt the spread of communism domestically, spying on, imprisoning, and murdering suspected communists or communist sympathisers. There is not a page of US history that is not drenched in blood. The current violence that emanates from within the US to Palestine, Yemen, Cuba, Venezuela, and beyond is not cropping up as a result of the current administration; it is foundational to the violent pursuit and defence of US imperialist interests.
Is it fascism?
Trump’s unabated imperialist aggression and open disregard for bourgeois democratic norms are rightfully sounding alarm bells. The administration’s increasing authoritarianism must be understood as an expression of a ruling class struggling for control of economic power amid a worsening global capitalist crisis. Fascism is the weapon of the ruling class in danger of collapse, when the social fabric under capitalism begins to fray and the ruling class cannot quell the masses through bourgeois democratic means alone. Characterised by militarism, authoritarianism, extreme repression of political dissent and the promotion of ultra-nationalism, its emergence is a response to economic crisis; an attempt to combat antagonistic class forces by mobilising the state and its auxiliaries to preserve capitalism and protect the interest of the ruling class by any available means when under threat. The emergence of Nazism and the Third Reich was a response to the economic crisis following the First Imperialist War. Nazism reared its head as a bulwark against the spread of communist ideology that was proliferating at the time. Today the lack of a communist movement in the US or internationally starkly contrasts to the conditions from which fascism emerged in Germany. There is no organised mass movement in the US which is posing an immediate threat to the ruling class, no communist international. There are, however, ripening conditions in which these have the potential to form, with a working class that is daily growing more discontented with the economic instability.
Today, the crisis of capitalism sharpens these class antagonisms, and raises class consciousness among both the bourgeoisie and proletariat. The ruling class is preparing its defence in anticipation of how bad conditions will get for the working class because it is already keenly aware of how harshly it will need to attack the living standards of the working class if it is to maintain its profit margins and class position. Under capitalism, the social relations of production require this. The working class gets squeezed tighter and tighter, conditions get worse and worse until rebellion erupts. Trump’s slide toward fascism is pre-emptive, setting out to destroy any organised opposition before it can form.
Trump gears up for war with the US working class
Trump’s recent deployment of US troops domestically proves that the ruling class will not hesitate to deploy whatever state forces it needs to suppress an exploited working class. In June, Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles to quash popular protests against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the increased raids, detention and deportation of migrants (see FRFI 307 ‘LA uprising: US regime escalates migrant attacks’). This unprecedented manoeuvre was a reaction to the popular and growing political protests that quickly outnumbered local law enforcement and ICE agents in the city.
In August, Trump declared a state of emergency in Washington DC fabricating a crisis of ‘unchecked crime’ to invoke the presidential power to deploy the National Guard to the streets of Washington DC for 30 days to ‘return to law and order’. According to a government study in 2022, Washington DC, the US capital, had more police per resident and invested more in policing than any other US city. From day one of the deployment, videos recorded military personnel patrolling the streets, making arbitrary stops, harassing people outside of their homes, and targeting poorer and predominantly black and migrant neighbourhoods. In response, protests erupted against the city’s occupation. In a press conference, Trump responded brazenly: ‘See, they fight back until you knock the hell out of them, because it’s the only language they understand’, giving the clear green light for the guard to terrorise the streets of DC and attempt to violently put down any anticipated resistance. DC’s black communities have a long history of fighting back against racial and political terror from the state and its racist lynch mobs, from the Red Summer Race Riots of 1919 to the protests following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It is no coincidence that Washington DC was the first target on Trump’s list, which now threatens to include Chicago, Memphis, and Philadelphia, with more to follow.
Trump prepares the troops
On an international scale, the Trump administration is preparing the US for the intensification of inter-imperialist rivalries. US business must constantly compete with other imperialist countries for access to land, resources, markets and labour to exploit in order to maintain US capital accumulation (see pages 8 and 9). A signal of this resurgence of US imperialism came on 5 September when Trump signed an executive order to rebrand the US Department of Defense to the US Department of War. This is a return to the original title established by first US president George Washington in 1789. In the executive order, the administration asserts that this change ‘sharpens the Department’s focus on our own national interest…our willingness and availability to wage war to secure what is ours.’
Trump’s ideological war
On 23 September, Trump addressed the United Nations in New York. In his hour-long speech, he spewed racist rhetoric, blaming the current woes of the world on ‘unchecked’ immigration. Leaning into this blatantly racist scapegoating rallies his reactionary supporters and builds the ideological pretext for the intensification of attacks on migrants. The Trump administration is transforming the already militarised ICE with a projected $100bn infusion over the next four years – a massive increase to the $9.9bn allocated for fiscal year 2024. In addition to the expansion of detention facilities, ramping up raids and deportations, and the deployment plain clothes ICE agents all over the country, ICE is recruiting thousands of new agents to the force. Offering sign-on bonuses up to $50,000 for Deportation Officers and an average of $30,000 in student loan forgiveness, 150,000 new applicants have already flooded in.
McCarthyism 2.0
Free speech and political expression are rapidly eroding under Trump’s authoritarianism. The Trump administration is using ICE to police and repress free speech and political movements, particularly Palestine solidarity. On 25 September, a Louisiana judge ordered the deportation of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was abducted from his New York home by ICE in March and detained in Louisiana for over three months for his involvement in the Colombia University student Palestine movement. In July, a report was published by retired US federal agent Jennifer Baker claiming that the Chinese Communist Party is funding left organisations which have been involved in Palestine solidarity in the US including Samidoun, Palestinian Youth Movement, Party for Socialism and Liberation, People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition and CodePink. Adding fuel to the fire, the right-wing is capitalising on the death of Charlie Kirk to attack any political dissent. On 23 September, Trump signed an executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation, citing this as an attempt to target ‘radical far-left’ ideology. Whilst Trump pursues his mask-off agenda, he isn’t just seeking the ideological support of an electorate, he has set out to enlist and consolidate civilian auxiliaries to defend the current US interests. The right-wing is taking up vigilante style ideological policing, combing through social media, doxing and reporting anyone who has expressed anything politically adversarial to the MAGA agenda in attempts to get them de-platformed, fired from their jobs or investigated. Meanwhile, government officials are shamelessly calling for violence against their political adversaries. On 25 September, in response to an interview with Democrat congresswoman Pramila Jayapal where she called on Democratic party members to be ‘strike ready’ and ‘street ready’, John Gillete, Republican congressman in Arizona posted on X: ‘Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried convicted and hanged..it will continue’.
Political divisions in the US are clearly threatening to come to a head. The right is emboldened under Trump while the lack of an organised left is as glaring as it is dangerous for the working class. There is no apparent organised vanguard of the masses in the US. Repression and political persecution will intensify, and spontaneous ruptures will continue. We saw the sparks of a movement in 2020 with the explosion of Black Lives Matter in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd. This was a watershed moment which struck fear into the ruling class. Today, the protests in solidarity with migrants in Los Angeles and the mobilisations in DC against the city’s military occupation are the signs that, backed into a corner, the working class has no other option but to build the fightback.
FRFI 308 October/November 2025
