Friday, February 22, 2019

Trump has declared a global war on socialism. We’re fighting back



US President Donald Trump unleashed a tirade against socialism in a fascistic speech on Monday.

“The twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere,” Trump bombastically declared, to chants of “USA, USA, USA!”

The speech came only a few days after the declaration of a state of emergency, whose immediate purpose is to mobilize the military to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.

Trump’s assault on core constitutional principles is a declaration of war on the working class and all opposition to the dictates of the corporate and financial elite.

The WSWS is fighting to mobilize the working class against this attack, and we need your financial support. Support the fight for socialism!
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Whatever Trump may hope, it is not socialism’s “twilight hour,” but rather the opposite. The struggles of masses of workers and young people are bringing them into direct conflict with the ruling class and the capitalist system.

The greatest fear of the representatives of the ruling class—Democrats and Republicans in the US, and their counterparts internationally—is that the growth of the class struggle will acquire a socialist political orientation and leadership.

This is the most urgent task. The answer to the ruling class’s policy of war, authoritarianism and counter-revolution is the development of a powerful political movement of the working class against the capitalist system.

The World Socialist Web Site is intervening aggressively in every manifestation of working class struggle, from the maquiladora workers rebelling against the unions in Mexico, to the strikes by teachers in the United States, to the struggles of tea plantation workers in Sri Lanka.

To meet the tasks posed by the political situation, we need resources. Financial contributions from our readers make it possible for us to send reporters wherever struggles break out, expand our technical infrastructure, and finance our staff.

Every dollar donated translates into more workers gaining access to a program and perspective to fight back. 


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Sincerely,
Joseph Kishore
SEP National Secretary
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  PERSPECTIVE  

Trump declares global war on socialism

US President Donald Trump unleashed a global tirade against socialism at a Florida university Monday, in which he targeted Venezuela as the front line in this fascistic crusade.
Delivered to a hand-picked audience of Republican operatives and right-wing Venezuelan and Cuban exiles chanting “USA, USA, USA” and “Trump, Trump, Trump,” both the speech—and the response to it—had a fascistic character.

It resurrected the language not only of McCarthyism and the John Birch Society in the United States of the 1950s, but that of Mussolini and Hitler in the Europe of the 1930s.
US POLITICS 

Bernie Sanders announces 2020 presidential campaign

Sanders is not the representative of this insurgent working class movement.

As the WSWS wrote in February 2016, when polls were registering his growing support in the early stages of the Democratic Party primaries: “He is rather the temporary beneficiary of a rising tide of popular opposition that is passing through only its initial stages of social and class differentiation.”

The WSWS explained that Sanders was the response from within the ruling class to this movement. His function was and remains to serve as a lightning rod to channel social opposition back behind the Democratic Party. Read more.
THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM 

ISO and DSA bar Socialist Equality Party panel on the fight against fascism from upcoming Historical Materialism conference

Socialism in Our Time, a public event organized by the journal Historical Materialism and produced in conjunction with Jacobin Magazine and the Socialism Conference, has rejected a proposed panel submitted by the Socialist Equality Party on “The fight against fascism and the lessons of history.”

Jacobin Magazine is produced by supporters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The Socialism Conference is directed by the International Socialist Organization (ISO).
The decision to exclude the panel is a blatant act of censorship, motivated by the political differences of the DSA and ISO with the Trotskyist politics advanced by the Socialist Equality Party, the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International.
  WORKERS STRUGGLES  

Oakland, California teachers walk out as unions sabotage West Virginia strike

Three thousand teachers in Oakland, California began a strike at the end of class yesterday to demand increased pay and a reduction in class sizes.

They are also opposing plans by the Democratic Party controlled school board to slash funding and close as many as one third of the schools in the district. The strike is the latest in a wave of strikes by educators against the bipartisan assault on teachers and public education. Read more.

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