Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Perspective: Zionist assassination plot against Nerdeen Kiswani is a warning to the working class
The assassination plot against Palestinian-American activist Nerdeen Kiswani is a warning to the entire working class. Last week, the FBI and New York Police Department revealed that Alexander Heifler, a 26-year-old from Hoboken, New Jersey, planned to firebomb Kiswani’s home with the aim of killing her.
Heifler is affiliated with the JDL 613 Brotherhood, a Zionist organization founded in 2024 that draws its inspiration from the fascistic Jewish Defense League.
Revealed in the plot is not simply the criminal conspiracy of one individual. It is the product of a definite political environment, cultivated from above by the ruling class, in which far-right Zionist organizations, sections of the state and both capitalist parties have worked to criminalize opposition to genocide, equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism and incite violence against those who speak out and organize in defense of the Palestinian people.
Kiswani is a US citizen who has lived virtually her entire life in the United States. She is the founder of Within Our Lifetime, a New York-based organization that has played a leading role in organizing protests against the genocide in Gaza and against the Democratic and Republican politicians who support it. Speaking to the World Socialist Web Site after Monday’s press conference, Kiswani said the attack was aimed at silencing broader opposition to war and repression. “I think they’re trying to suppress anti-genocide, anti-war, pro-Palestinian, pro-freedom advocates,” she said.
The plot followed months of threats, stalking, doxxing and incitement directed at Kiswani by Zionist organizations. As Eric Lee, one of Kiswani’s attorneys, explained at the press conference, the attack was “the deliberate and intended product of a political strategy by the Trump administration to cultivate extra-legal paramilitary militia forces to murder its opponents and suppress dissent in the aim of establishing a dictatorship in this country.”
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In February, Kiswani filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Betar and associated individuals under the Ku Klux Klan Enforcement Act of 1871. The complaint invokes the statute’s private right of action against non-state actors when “two or more persons… conspire… for the purpose of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws.” The significance of the suit is not only that it seeks relief for a campaign of threats and intimidation, but that it identifies this campaign for what it is: an organized attempt to terrorize political opponents and deprive them of basic rights.
The Ku Klux Klan Act was one of three Enforcement Acts passed by Congress between 1870 and 1871 to uphold the democratic and equal-protection guarantees embodied in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments adopted after the Civil War. These measures were a response to vigilante violence by the KKK and other extra-legal terror organizations aimed at violently violating the rights of newly emancipated black Americans.
The actions of the KKK were connected to the utilization of vigilante violence in the United States to counter the emergence of working class struggle—from company gunmen and deputized “posses” to private detective armies such as the Pinkertons and strikebreaking mobs. That such methods are now being deployed against opponents of genocide and imperialist war underscores the depth of the crisis of the American ruling class and its accelerating break with democratic norms.
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The plot against Kiswani occurs within the context of increasingly violent and openly fascistic rhetoric from the highest levels of the state and the Republican Party over the preceding months.
Florida Representative Randy Fine, who has advocated dropping nuclear weapons on Gaza, declared that if he had to choose “between dogs and Muslims” it “would not be a difficult choice.” Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville referred to Muslims as the “enemy… inside the gates” and called for a ban on all “ISLAM immigrants.” Representative Mary Miller demanded, “Deport them all. Now.” Earlier this month, Representative Andy Ogles declared that “Muslims don’t belong in American society” and that “Pluralism is a lie.”
The targeting of pro-Palestinian protesters represents the importation into the United States of methods long employed by the Israeli state. The JDL 613 Brotherhood is a newer Zionist formation in the political lineage of the Jewish Defense League. Its founder, Yisrael Yaacob Ben Avraham, has publicly glorified Meir Kahane, the fascist founder of the JDL. Organizations such as Betar and JDL 613 openly draw on this reactionary tradition, which has always combined militant nationalism with the advocacy of political violence.
More fundamentally, the attempt on Kiswani’s life arises out of the turn toward dictatorship within the United States and the deliberate effort of the Trump administration to criminalize opposition and encourage political violence. In a March 22 post on social media, Trump issued a thinly veiled threat, declaring: “Now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the Radical Left, Highly Incompetent, Democrat Party!”
This is the language of a regime preparing to treat political dissent as an enemy to be crushed. The deployment of paramilitary ICE forces into American cities and airports, the drive to abolish birthright citizenship and other basic democratic rights are components of a systematic conspiracy to establish a presidential dictatorship.
Today the target is a Palestinian-American opponent of genocide. Tomorrow it is workers on strike, students protesting war, immigrants resisting deportation, journalists exposing state crimes or anyone else who comes into conflict with the drive toward dictatorship and war.
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The attack on Kiswani was fostered not only by the Republicans, but by the Democratic Party as well. The political groundwork for the criminalization of opposition to Zionism and the genocide in Gaza was laid under the Biden administration. Mass student protests were met with coordinated police repression, mass arrests, suspensions, expulsions and an incessant campaign of slander equating opposition to Zionism with antisemitism—aimed at isolating protesters and legitimizing state violence against them.
The Democratic Party is absolutely opposed to the development of a movement from below against Trump’s dictatorship. As Trump wages war on the Constitution, the Democrats do nothing. They have repeatedly funded the government, voted for massive military and security budgets, and confined all “opposition” to procedural complaints and empty rhetoric. In practice, they function as accomplices: working to suppress mass resistance, channel opposition back into electoral dead ends and ensure that the attacks on democratic rights proceed uninterrupted.
The vast majority of the population opposes this. That opposition was visible again at the press conference defending Kiswani, where Muslims and Jews stood together, united in opposition to Zionist terror and in defense of democratic rights. It has also been visible in the immense protests that filled cities across the United States in the “No Kings” demonstrations last weekend.
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The campaign to defend Kiswani is inseparable from the struggle against genocide, imperialist war and the capitalist system that gives rise to both. The democratic rights of all can be defended only through the independent mobilization of the working class, in the United States and internationally, on the basis of a socialist program directed against war, fascism and capitalism.
2. Arab regimes’ backing for US-Israel war on Iran preparing region-wide conflagration
Last week Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Saudia Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) jointly condemned what they called Iran’s “blatant” and “criminal” attacks on their energy infrastructure. They declared their right to act in “self-defense” under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and “to take all necessary measures to safeguard our sovereignty, security, and stability.”
The statement signals their impending intervention as active belligerents in a criminal and illegal war against Iran alongside the United States and Israel.
The Arab regimes have from day one focused solely on condemning Iran’s retaliatory strikes on their territory, without even mentioning the aggressors, Washington and Jerusalem, by name. The four weeks of bombing have killed thousands of civilians, around 150 children on the very first day of the war, assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior officials, struck more than 8,000 military, infrastructure and civilian targets and destroyed 130 naval vessels.
Iran had explicitly warned that any state permitting its territory, airspace, or bases to be used in attacks against it would be treated as a “legitimate target.” Despite public claims to the contrary, the six Gulf Cooperation Council states—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman—all allowed the United States and Israel to use their airspace and military installations, just as they had during the US-led war on Iraq in 2003.
While Gulf officials insisted they had pressured Washington not to strike Iran and had refused to authorize the use of their bases, the US–Israeli operation relied on precisely those facilities. This includes Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base, which hosted US refueling planes and offensive actions, while the US has fired ballistic missiles at Iran from Bahrain.
The conclusion is clear: these governments were complicit in an illegal war that has already taken the lives of thousands of Iranian civilians.
That complicity flows inexorably from the dependence, which they describe as “regional security”, of all these despotic regimes upon the US and its military power. Before the war, unable to be seen publicly supporting the perpetrator of the Gaza genocide and its principal backer, they wrapped themselves in the language of “de-escalation”, “negotiations”, “regional security” and “stability”. But the moment the confrontation widened, that façade was dropped.
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Since the outbreak of the war on February 28, the Gulf states have faced sustained Iranian missile and drone attacks targeting US military bases and critical national infrastructure—energy production and refinery sites, desalination plants, airports, and other economic facilities. At least 27 people have been killed across the region. According to the Saudi outlet Asharq Al-Awsat, 83 percent of Iran’s missiles and drones have been directed at the Gulf states, with only 17 percent aimed at Israel.
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Gulf economies are estimated to be losing more than $2.3 billion per day, while oil exports have plunged by nearly 60 percent—from 25.1 million barrels per day to just 9.7 million. The attacks have undermined the Gulf’s position as a global hub for aviation, business, and tourism—key income sources for both citizens and migrant workers.
Saudi Arabia’s financial position was already weakening before the war, prompting cutbacks in megaprojects designed to reduce dependence on oil. Riyadh had hoped to benefit from higher oil prices by exporting crude through its Red Sea pipeline, but this is now threatened by the Yemeni Houthis’ entry into the war and the effective closure of the Red Sea to shipping. Vessels are being forced to bypass the Suez Canal and reroute around the Cape of Good Hope.
The smaller Gulf states are even more exposed to the shock.
The collapse of the Gulf economies reverberates far beyond the peninsula, threatening to ignite a new wave of mass unrest across the Arab world—a second “Arab Spring” directed against the authoritarian regimes that dominate the region. As a recent Al Jazeera headline noted, “The Arab Spring hasn’t ended, and Arab regimes know it.”
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Nowhere is the destabilizing impact of the war more acute than in Egypt, whose repressive regime under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has survived only through continuous Gulf bailouts.
With 116 million people—twice the population of all six Gulf states combined—Egypt is the political and demographic center of the Arab world. Its economy is among the region’s most fragile, a reality underscored by Morgan Stanley’s recent downgrade. As the Gulf’s financial lifeline frays, the foundations of Sisi’s rule are beginning to crack.
Suez Canal revenues are again under threat as Gulf oil and gas shipments slow and major shipping companies avoid the Red Sea due to potential Houthi attacks. This strikes at one of Egypt’s few reliable sources of hard currency.
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For Egypt’s workers and rural poor, the consequences are devastating. Poverty has risen steadily since 2020; by 2023, more than 35 percent of Egyptians lived below the national poverty line. Inflation continues to erode wages and savings.
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In Iraq, which is unable to export oil via the Strait of Hormuz, production from its main southern oilfields has fallen from 4.3 million barrels a day to just 1.3 million. The government relies on oil sales for nearly all public spending and more than 90 percent of its income.
Jordan’s government is haemorrhaging an estimated $3.5 million a day as energy prices soar and natural gas supplies collapse. Israel’s shutdown of its gas platforms—Jordan’s primary source—has choked the country’s energy system, with knock-on effects in Syria where electricity shortages are worsening.
Rising energy costs will deepen an already severe unemployment crisis: joblessness has climbed steadily in recent years, reaching 21 percent in 2025, while youth unemployment has surged past 40 percent. This has forced nearly 10 percent of Jordanians to seek work abroad, mainly in the Gulf. These jobs and remittances look increasingly precarious.
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In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is at the point of collapse. Israel’s withholding of the tax revenues collected on its behalf has forced the PA to put its staff on short hours and delay wage payments. PA staff now face the loss of their jobs. The unemployment rate is already 40 percent.
The greatest danger facing the Arab regimes is an eruption of popular opposition. They are all widely despised for their rampant corruption, inequality, and alignment with Washington and Tel Aviv’s wars. Known for sweeping attacks on democratic rights, tight media control, stage-managed elections, and constitutional manipulation, these regimes have intensified repression since the war began.
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The alignment of the Arab states with Israel and US imperialism marks the terminal political degeneration of the regimes created by the post–World War I imperialist carve-up of the Middle East.
The struggle against the criminal war on Iran and its perpetrators and collaborators demands the independent political mobilization of the working class to overthrow their own rulers. The lesson to be drawn from recent experiences is unambiguous: imperialism cannot be negotiated with; it must be overthrown.
Workers across the region must be armed with a genuinely socialist, internationalist perspective to oppose the war on Iran, the broader escalation of war against Russia in Ukraine, and advanced plans to target China. To defeat the reactionary US–Israel–Arab alliance, the working class must rally all the oppressed behind it in revolutionary opposition to capitalism—the root cause of war.
In a globalized economy, the path to ending war, genocide, national oppression, and social exploitation lies not along national lines but along international and socialist lines. It requires the working class to take power and establish a United Socialist States of the Middle East, as part of the fight for world socialist revolution.
This begins with a determined effort to unify workers—Arab, Iranian, Jewish, Kurdish and all others—across national, ethnic, and religious divisions. It demands the building of a new revolutionary leadership: the International Committee of the Fourth International.
3. Hegseth’s insider war investments and the character of the American ruling class
The Financial Times revealed late Monday that Pete Hegseth, the Trump administration’s Secretary of War, is implicated in an insider trading operation involving his personal broker at Morgan Stanley and extensive investments in major US defense firms, including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, in the weeks leading up to the opening of the war against Iran.
The FT report details evidence indicating that Hegseth’s broker traded based on advanced intelligence—information known only to senior Pentagon and National Security Council officials—allowing the secretary to position himself for massive financial gains as the war unfolded.
According to the FT report, which cites multiple sources “with direct knowledge of internal Morgan Stanley communications,” large-scale buy orders were placed for defense sector exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and targeted equities two to three weeks before the first waves of US airstrikes on Iranian infrastructure in late February.
Those trades, executed through accounts nominally administered by Hegseth’s long-time financial advisor, James Halvorsen, were timed to take advantage of a predictable surge in defense stocks once the war began.
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While the Financial Times concluded that there was “no direct proof that Hegseth personally directed or discussed these trades,” it cited three sources “close to the Secretary’s personal office” who confirmed that he was in “near-daily contact” with Halvorsen throughout the period in question, including during restricted interagency war briefings.
“Everything about the timing, the content of the messages, and the nature of the investments strongly suggests insider knowledge of forthcoming war plans,” said one former senior compliance official quoted by the newspaper. “This wasn’t smart guessing. These were guided trades.”
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Within hours of publication, the Pentagon issued an indignant statement denouncing the Financial Times exposé as “categorically false, malicious, and defamatory.” A press release from Department of Defense spokesman Sean Parnell claimed that Hegseth “has had no involvement whatsoever with personal investments or trading decisions since assuming office” and accused the British newspaper of “a politically motivated attempt to smear a decorated veteran and patriot.”
The statement went further, demanding a full retraction and threatening “legal consequences” if the allegations were not withdrawn. However, Parnell notably refused to address any of the factual claims laid out in the FT story—the dates of the trades, the identification of specific defense sector instruments, the known communications between Halvorsen and Hegseth’s office, or the percentage gains upon declaration of hostilities.
Instead, Parnell attempted to discredit the source material, alleging a “foreign disinformation agenda” without providing any evidence whatsoever. That the Pentagon responded not with documentation or transparency but with rage and evasion speaks for itself. If the allegations were baseless, they could be easily refuted through the release of brokerage records or ethics compliance disclosures.
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The revelations regarding insider profiteering through war-related equities intersect directly with recent reports about the manipulation of both oil futures and “prediction markets” tied to the unfolding conflict with Iran. In February, investigative journalists uncovered a pattern of suspiciously timed transactions on commodities and derivatives exchanges, where traders made stunningly accurate bets on the start dates, suspension announcements, and so-called ceasefire “openings” in the war’s early phases.
Significant spikes in short-term volatility options—precisely calibrated to White House and Pentagon press conference timings—pointed to advance knowledge of when the administration would signal either escalation or détente. In several instances, speculative position-holders reaped profits within hours of official statements, implying not mere coincidence but a flow of restricted information from national security officials to private actors operating within the global financial system.
The picture that now emerges is one of a ruling class that is not only waging imperialist war abroad but monetizing every phase of its own military aggression. Decisions of war and peace, involving the lives of millions, are being exploited as opportunities for personal enrichment by the very people ordering the bombings. For the fascist Trump regime, the blood-soaked machinery of imperialism now doubles as an investment boondoggle.
These exposures further confirm that the decadence and corruption at the highest levels of the American state have reached a terminal stage. A government that treats war openly as a business venture—where cabinet officials position themselves to profit from the destruction of entire nations—has lost all vestiges of political legitimacy.
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Tens of billions have already been squandered in the bombs dropped over Tehran and Isfahan, which have killed thousands of people, while the White House war criminals demand another $200 billion to continue the death and destruction that is rapidly escalating into a ground invasion of Iran.
For the financial elite, all of this translates into more dividends to be disbursed by Wall Street. The criminal marriage of finance capital and militarism is being openly flaunted. Grotesque figures such as Trump and Hegseth are not aberrations but the product of the decline of American capitalism and its takeover by the criminal underworld. Those who are personally cashing in on imperialist war and barbarism are capable of anything, including nuclear warfare.
That these revelations center on Hegseth is entirely fitting. A product of Fox News, white Christian nationalism, and the post-9/11 permanent war state, Hegseth has long embodied the fusion of fascist politics and ultra-nationalist militarism. As a commentator, he defended notorious war criminals, excusing the massacres of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the top US military commander, he is linked to extrajudicial killings of Venezuelan fishermen during US naval operations in the Caribbean, a crime whitewashed by both the media and Congress.
Hegseth has repeatedly invoked biblical scripture to justify the bombings of Iranian cities, describing the campaign as a “divine reckoning” and a “cleansing of evil.” Now, even as he sermonizes about piety and patriotism, he stands exposed for enriching himself through the carnage he commands—a fusion of religious zealotry, capitalist greed and contempt for human life.
In past imperialist wars—going back to the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s and through the first Gulf War in the early 1990s and then the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya after 9/11—profiteering was often conducted by semi-anonymous contractors and executives hidden behind shell corporations. Today, the corruption occurs right out in the open and is carried out by those who plan and direct the wars themselves.
The revolving door that once separated the Pentagon, Wall Street, and the media has been effectively erased; the same individuals are occupying all three spheres simultaneously. Hegseth, like others in the Trump administration, moves between cable studios, corporate boardrooms, and military war rooms without objection within ruling circles.
It is no coincidence that same political and financial figures implicated in protecting and covering up for the sexual crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and his global network of collaborators are now seen in the circles surrounding Hegseth and Trump. The same culture of impunity and degeneracy pervades every level of the American oligarchy.
The United States has begun bombing Iran with B-52 bombers, setting the stage for a massive increase in the saturation bombing of the country of 90 million as the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran intensifies. “We’ve successfully started to conduct the first overland B-52 missions,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine announced Tuesday at a Pentagon briefing.
The B-52 is capable of carrying 70,000 pounds of gravity bombs and nuclear weapons. It is the aircraft at the center of a US bombing campaign that dropped more tonnage on Indochina than was used by all sides in World War II combined, that carpet-bombed Cambodia in a secret campaign that killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, and that leveled entire cities in North Vietnam—where US bombing destroyed 85 percent of all buildings and killed roughly 20 percent of the population.
The United States, having failed to achieve its war aims through a month of airstrikes, is massively escalating the war. The administration is now turning to the methods it used in Gaza: mass murder and the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure.
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One month of war has produced a catastrophe. The human rights group Hengaw reported at least 6,900 killed in Iran through Day 29, including 720 civilians and 150 children. Iran’s Red Crescent reported more than 85,000 civilian structures damaged, including 64,000 homes and 600 schools.
Between 3.2 and 4 million Iranians have been internally displaced. In Lebanon, according to the Health Ministry, more than 1,247 have been killed and 3,600 wounded since Israel launched its assault on March 2. The Pentagon reports that 15 American service members have been killed and more than 300 wounded.
5. The Iran war and the erosion of international law
Among the first victims of the Iran war is international law, as it was developed after the Second World War. Almost all legal experts agree that there is no basis in international law for the war being waged by the US and Israel against the country of 90 million inhabitants. It is an illegal war of aggression, a “crime against peace,” as one of the main charges against the Nazi criminals in the Nuremberg trials read.
It is not the first time that the US and its allies have flouted international law. The wars against Yugoslavia (1999), Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011) clearly violated international law. But back then, the attackers still tried to keep up appearances and legitimize their wars with far-fetched arguments.
This is no longer the case today. President Donald Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have all publicly announced that they no longer care about international law.
Trump declared in early January that he needed “no international law,” and that only his “own morality” could set limits for him. At the Munich Security Conference, Rubio announced that in the future, one must no longer “place the so-called global order above the interests of our populations and our nations.” And Hegseth opened the Iran war with the announcement that the US was fighting “without stupid rules of engagement” and “without politically correct warfare.”
The German government immediately supported this. The open breach of international law was obviously convenient for it. Germany’s ruling elites, who were deeply implicated in the crimes of the Nazis, have always perceived the Nuremberg verdicts as a disgrace to which they only reluctantly submitted.
After the Nuremberg Tribunal ceased its work, the West German judiciary continued the prosecution of Nazi crimes only hesitantly. By 2005, in 36,400 criminal proceedings, only 6,700 of a total of 172,000 accused had been convicted. Many mass murderers, with the blood of hundreds and thousands on their hands, were never indicted and continued their careers unhindered. The control center of the government, the Chancellery, was headed for ten years by a co-author of the Nazi race laws, Hans Globke.
Merz’s party colleague Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission, also supports the war and speaks out against international law. On 9 March, she told EU ambassadors that the debate over whether the war was “a war of choice or a war of necessity” missed the point. Europe must simply “take reality into account.” It must “no longer be a guardian of the old world order.” This, she said, was part of a world “that belongs to the past and will not return.” The EU required “a more interest-driven foreign policy.”
There are, however, also voices in German ruling circles that consider the open rejection of international law to be a mistake. The most prominent comes from Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who at an anniversary event of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin on 24 March declared: “This war is contrary to international law—there is little doubt about that. ... Our foreign policy does not become more convincing by our not calling a breach of international law a breach of international law.”
This criticism of the Chancellor by the Federal President, who is actually supposed to stay out of day-to-day politics, is extraordinary. But Steinmeier and others who criticise Merz’s stance are not concerned with international law per se, nor with the democratic principles for relations between states anchored within it. Rather, they fear that such an open breach with international law will harm Germany’s foreign policy interests, undermine its support for the Ukraine war, and weaken its economic relations with other states. They have a tactical, not a principled, relationship to international law.
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Kiev could become a collateral victim of the Iran war in several respects: The already scarce air defence munitions and reconnaissance and intelligence capacities of the US could be diverted to the Middle East, and Moscow could gain additional leeway, thanks to rising oil revenues, to continue its war with undiminished severity.
Above all, however, the questioning of international law by the government “removes the normative basis from the arguments on which Germany relies internationally in its dealings with Russia: the rejection of military force to change borders, as well as the condemnation of the targeted destruction of civilian infrastructure and the demand for a just peace.”
In other words, the Iran war and the open rejection of international law expose the lies with which the government has so far justified its support for the Ukraine war to the tune of tens of billions of euros.
With the undermining of the rules-based order, according to the DGAP, Berlin is accelerating “the erosion of its own foreign policy effectiveness.” Its credibility and influence would be weakened “especially in the Arab world and the Global South.”
This dispute over international law is therefore not about right or wrong, war or peace, but about how the interests of German imperialism—the continuation of the war against Russia, the conquest of new markets and raw materials in the “Global South,” greater independence from China and the US, and dominance in Europe—can be most effectively pursued.
The danger of a third world war, threatened by the escalation of the Iran war, will not be averted by a wing of the ruling class that commits itself to international law in words, but only by an independent movement of the international working class that fights against war, for social equality, democracy and a socialist society.
That Huerta states she remained silent for decades “to protect the farmworkers” is itself an indictment, not only of Chavez as an individual, but of the political and organizational culture that prevailed within the UFW. Her account underscores the degree to which the apparatus subordinated the well-being of individuals, including its own leading members, to the preservation of its public image and institutional interests.
It is necessary, however, to reject the framework, already widely promoted in the corporate media, that presents these revelations as the tragic fall of a once-great civil rights figure. Chavez was not a progressive leader whose legacy has only now been tarnished by scandal. His political trajectory, methods and alliances placed him firmly within the orbit of bourgeois politics and the labor bureaucracy. The emerging evidence of abuse is entirely consistent with the authoritarian and anti-working-class character of his leadership.
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From the outset, Chavez advanced a strategy based not on class struggle but moral persuasion. Drawing on Catholic asceticism and nonviolence, he sought to pressure agribusiness and the state for reforms rather than mobilizing workers as an independent force. This outlook was bound up with his virulent anti-communism, expressed through purges of militants and the suppression of rank-and-file initiatives that challenged his authority.
As the UFW developed, these tendencies assumed increasingly authoritarian forms. Operations such as the “Wet Line,” attacking undocumented workers, deepened divisions within the working class, pitting workers against one another on the basis of their legal status, instead of uniting them.
7. Gino Paoli, leading voice of postwar Italian popular music, dies at 91
The death of Gino Paoli on March 24, 2026 at the age of 91 marks the passing of one of the central figures of postwar Italian popular music. A leading representative of the so-called “Genoese school” of songwriters, Paoli helped reshape Italian music in the late 1950s and ’60s, composing works that have endured for decades, including “Il cielo in una stanza,” “Sapore di sale,” “Senza fine” and “La gatta.”Paoli stands as a towering figure in Italian popular music for good reason. He belongs to, and helped crystallize, the tradition of Italian melodicism: a clarity of line, emotional immediacy and structural economy that gives his songs their enduring power. His melodies, at once simple and deeply expressive, exemplify a musical language capable of conveying complex inner states with remarkable directness.
Many of Paoli’s most enduring works—including “Sapore di sale,” “Il cielo in una stanza” and “Che cosa c’è”—were arranged by another central figure of Italian music, Ennio Morricone. Before achieving international fame through his film scores, Morricone was a prolific arranger at RCA Italiana, where his work played a significant role in shaping the sound and musical identity of the “Genoese school” of singer-songwriters.
To understand Paoli’s significance requires more than considering his catalog of achievements. His long career reflects the emergence of the cantautore (singer-songwriter), the growing integration of music into commercial mass culture and the political limits of a generation shaped by the unresolved contradictions of postwar Italian capitalism.
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The cantautore has often been presented as the embodiment of artistic authenticity. In reality, it was a broad and internally differentiated phenomenon. While Paoli’s work centered on personal and lyrical expression, other figures—among them De André, Tenco, Francesco Guccini and Giorgio Gaber—pursued a more overtly social and critical direction, addressing inequality, class and political life more directly, with varied degrees of success.
This diversity reflected a wider search for new forms of expression under changing historical conditions. At the same time, the expansion of the recording industry and mass media placed music within increasingly commercial frameworks, shaping both its production and its reach.
Within this context, Paoli’s orientation toward the inner life became a defining feature of his work. His songs, focused on love, memory and subjective experience, achieved broad resonance precisely because of their immediacy and emotional clarity. They became embedded in Italy’s cultural life and continue to speak to universal aspects of human experience.
That emphasis, however, also marked one of the principal tendencies within the cantautore movement. Where others sought to confront social contradictions more directly, Paoli remained largely within the sphere of personal expression. This reflected not simply an individual choice, but a particular artistic path shaped by the cultural and political limits of the period.
Paoli’s personal life bore the imprint of these pressures. In 1963, at the height of his early success, he attempted suicide, shooting himself in the chest. He survived, but the bullet remained lodged near his heart for the rest of his life.
While often treated as a purely personal episode, the event can be best understood within a broader context. The postwar economic boom, far from a period of unbroken progress, involved intense social dislocation and psychological strain. For artists navigating fame and creative expectations within an increasingly commercial cultural sphere, such pressures could become acute.
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Paoli’s later turn to formal politics, serving as a parliamentary deputy for the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1987 to 1992, has often been cited as evidence of his social engagement. More fundamentally, it signaled an adaptation to the existing political order.
By this point, the Stalinist Italian Communist Party had long since abandoned even a nominal connection to socialism, transforming itself into a pillar of the parliamentary order. Its policy of the “historic compromise” and sustained collaboration with bourgeois parties expressed a definite class orientation: the containment of working class struggle within the framework of the capitalist state.
Paoli’s association with the party reflected the broader evolution of layers of intellectuals and artists who, as a result of the betrayals of the PCI and trade union apparatus, gravitated toward official institutions. What appeared as engagement took the form of participation in parliamentary life, rather than alignment with independent class struggle.
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Paoli’s career spanned the transformation of Italy from postwar reconstruction to the crises of the 21st century. Over this period, music itself underwent profound changes, shaped by technological developments, industry restructuring and globalization.
From vinyl records and radio to digital streaming, the means of production and distribution evolved, but his work retained continuity with the traditions established in the early cantautore period.
Paoli’s death is a bookmark in the history of Italian music. His passing follows that of other major figures of his generation, marking the gradual disappearance of those who shaped the cultural landscape of the postwar period.
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Gino Paoli’s songs endure because they give clear expression to fundamental human emotions, capturing moments of intimacy, longing and reflection.
At the same time, the conditions that shaped this artistic outlook have not disappeared. The tension between individual expression and the need for a more consciously social art remains unresolved.
Paoli’s death thus marks not only the loss of a major artist, but the close of a chapter in which these questions first emerged in modern Italian music and which remain, in essential respects, unanswered.
The Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney has appealed to Canada’s Supreme Court to overturn lower court rulings that found unlawful Ottawa’s February 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act to disperse the far-right “Freedom Convoy.” The Convoy menacingly occupied downtown Ottawa for 23 days and blocked key border crossings with the United States to press for the final elimination of all remaining COVID-19 pandemic mitigation measures.
The Liberals are intent on ensuring that they and future governments retain the broadest possible latitude to invoke emergency powers in political and social crises, in particular against the working class and a developing movement against austerity and war.
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The Convoy protest, which never mobilized more than a few thousand people, was promoted by Trump-aligned forces, sections of the Conservative Party, and right-wing media outlets for the purpose of destabilizing the Liberal government and pushing establishment politics even more sharply to the right. Among its initiators and chief organizers were proponents of far-right conspiracy theories and advocates of the elected government’s replacement by an emergency “junta.”
The Convoy’s ability to dominate political life for weeks was due to the widespread support it enjoyed within the ruling class, the media and the state. The Tory government of Ontario Premier Doug Ford refused to take any action against the movement. Conservative politicians courted the protest, including Pierre Poilievre, who met with organizers and rose to leadership of the party in its aftermath by touting his credentials as the Convoy’s most strident supporter.
In striking contrast with their treatment of worker and left-wing protests, the Ottawa police and RCMP allowed the occupation of the capital to continue indefinitely, even as residents were subjected to harassment, intimidation and increasingly intolerable living conditions. Pro-Convoy elements in the police repeatedly leaked information to its leaders.
Faced with mounting economic damage and a loss of control, the Liberal government turned to the Emergencies Act to force a mobilization of the police and cut off organizers’ funds. Its overriding concern was restoring order in the capital and securing trade flows with the US.
The Convoy was quickly dispersed. But in its immediate aftermath the provincial governments, with Ottawa’s support, moved to dismantle remaining pandemic measures, implementing a core demand of the protest.
The trade unions and the New Democratic Party played a critical role in legitimizing this authoritarian turn by backing the invocation of the Act and voting to sustain it in parliament.
In contrast, the World Socialist Web Site and Socialist Equality Party (Canada) opposed the so-called Freedom Convoy while also opposing Trudeau government’s breaking of the taboo on the Emergencies Act; since its use and the sweeping powers exercised—freezing bank accounts, banning assemblies and forcing financial institutions to hand over information without warrants—set a far-reaching precedent in the assault on democratic rights.
The WSWS warned that once normalized, such emergency powers would be directed first and foremost against growing working class opposition, including political strikes, and other left-wing movements.
The government’s subsequent efforts to reinterpret and conceal the legal threshold for invoking emergency powers underscores how democratic safeguards can be eroded behind closed doors. Against this, the WSWS insists that the defense of democratic rights and the fight against the far-right depends on the independent political mobilization of the working class, not reliance on the courts, the pro-capitalist trade unions, or any faction of the capitalist state, which all function to contain opposition and preserve the existing social order.
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In the ensuing four years, governments across Canada have continued to escalate the attack on the right to strike, pushed to restrict the right to protest—smearing demonstrations against Israel’s imperialist backed genocide in Gaza as “antisemitic”—and invoking extraordinary measures, including the “notwithstanding clause,” to override constitutional protections of democratic rights. Tens of billions of dollars are being funneled into a massive military build up while public sector jobs are being slashed and essential public services starved of funds.
The Carney government’s appeal to the Supreme Court is a warning that the Canadian ruling class, despite its internal divisions, is determined to preserve and expand its capacity to deploy authoritarian measures in the class battles that lie ahead. The experience of 2022 demonstrated that the ruling class is prepared to override legal limits and deploy authoritarian powers when confronted with a crisis affecting the interests of Canadian capital.
The defense of democratic rights cannot be entrusted to any faction of the ruling class or the courts. It requires the independent political mobilization of the working class on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program.
9. Resident doctors to strike, Starmer threatens—Time for a unified fightback to defend the NHS!
The UK’s 50,000 resident doctors will strike again for six days from April 7, their 15th walkout since March 2023.
The strike was called by the Residential Doctors Committee (RDC) of the British Medical Association (BMA) after it emerged doctors would be awarded a measly 3.5 percent pay increase this year. Inflation is already 3.6 percent by the RPI measure and will rise sharply with the effects of the war on Iran.
This is not only an insult to resident doctors. It is an indictment of the course of action pursued by the RDC.
The RDC entered closed-door talks with the Labour government in January, having accepted Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s terms for doing so. These were: abandoning any addition to the 5.4 percent pay uplift last year, which left pay 21 percent behind real terms 2008 levels, and discussing a paltry offer of 4,000 additional specialty training places—which were repurposed jobs not new ones.
Some 50,000 resident doctors are estimated to be out of a job this year.
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Labour’s threats against the resident doctors are ultimately aimed against all opposition to its agenda. It refuses to restore their pay at a cost of just £1.7 billion because it is scraping for every penny to fuel a planned increase in military spending to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027, another £17.4 billion a year, and 5 percent of GDP after that.
Resident doctors and all NHS staff, widely respected in the working class, can give a lead to a movement demanding that the billions squandered on the private profiteers and the war machine be invested in public services savaged by years of austerity: including a fully funded public health service.
This must be done in opposition to all sections of the trade union bureaucracy, including the RDC, which seeks various partnerships with the Starmer government. A new leadership must be built among NHS workers. We appeal to those who agree to contact NHS FightBack today.
10. Australia: What has happened to the enterprise agreement at Western Sydney University?
Ever since the end of January, the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has touted a vague “in-principle” agreement at Western Sydney University (WSU) as a pace-setting “win” for its members nationally.
This deal for a new 2026-2029 enterprise agreement (EA) was struck with management behind closed doors while many members were still away on summer leave. According to the NTEU, no details of the proposed EA would be finalised for weeks. It had to first be signed off by the NTEU national executive before NTEU members at WSU could be permitted to examine, discuss and vote on it.
Two months on, no copy of an agreement has been provided to NTEU members, let alone voted on. In the meantime, nevertheless, the WSU management is implementing the EA, as a fait accompli, with the NTEU’s assistance, including the imposition of job cuts and more onerous workloads.
There is widespread anger and concern among WSU staff members over severe under-staffing, including in student services, unfilled vacancies and increased workloads for academics.
11. “Americans don’t want this war”: Protesters at “No Kings” rallies speak out
World Socialist Web Site video reporters spoke to protesters at the third round of “No Kings” demonstrations on March 28, which drew millions of people into the streets across the United States in what was the largest single-day protest in American history.
Organizers estimated that roughly eight million people participated in more than 3,300 events across the 50 states in every major city, along with hundreds of small towns.
12. Australian government distances itself from illegal war on Iran that it supports
Over recent days, the Australian Labor government led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has engaged in an utterly cynical attempt to distance itself from the illegal US-Israeli war against Iran that it supports and continues to actively participate in.
Labor has not voiced a word of criticism of the flagrantly illegal character of the war, an unprovoked assault on a sovereign nation. Nor has it so much as mentioned the many specific war crimes that form part of this war of annihilation, from the assassination of top Iranian leaders to the bombing of schools, hospitals and other vital civilian infrastructure.
Instead, Labor’s line has been to suggest that the purported “objectives” of the war may have been met, and to ponder publicly as to whether it will soon end.
The transparent aim is to deflect from the fact that Labor is an active party of the war. It is carrying out this distancing operation under conditions where opinion polls show overwhelming opposition to the war, and where its consequences are being felt in soaring fuel prices and a broader spike in inflation hitting the working class.
Speaking on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “7:30” program on Monday evening, Albanese declared: “Quite clearly there is a need to see an end point. I think that’s what people want to see,” adding that he was hoping for “de-escalation” because of the “economic cost” of the war.
Albanese timidly suggested that the fascistic US president Trump may be in a position to claim that the “objectives” of the war had been met.
The most striking thing about what followed was that Albanese simply repeated all of the lying pretexts that were used to justify the continuing war and signaled his support for the bombardment.
13. Workers strike auto parts manufacturer in Findlay, Ohio
About 150 workers at an auto parts plant in Findlay, Ohio launched a strike on March 24 for better wages and health benefits.
The strike began at Freudenberg-NOK after talks with United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 1327 broke down. Workers at the company produce seals, O-rings, gaskets and other components critical for engines, transmissions, drivetrains and hydraulic systems. In addition to Findlay, Freudenberg-NOK has operations in Sandusky, Ohio, as well as in Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Georgia. The company also operates in Canada, Mexico and Brazil.
Neither the UAW nor the company has made public statements about the content of the contract negotiations. Workers say the strike centers on demands for higher wages, more affordable healthcare and what they describe as a fair overall contract. They have also emphasized the need for compensation and benefits that keep pace with rising costs.
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While UAW members in Findlay are on strike, the union is seeking to push through a sellout contract on 1,100 Nexteer workers in Saginaw, Michigan. The new contract cuts wages for new hires, effectively establishing a third tier. It also contains substantial givebacks on out-of-pocket benefit costs.
For decades, the UAW has collaborated with the auto companies to cut workers’ wages and benefits as corporations seek to boost profits. At the same time, wages and living standards for workers in parts supply have diverged sharply from those of assembly-line workers at major automakers, reflecting the growth of a vast, lower-paid supplier network.
This process was greatly accelerated following the 2009 bailout of the auto industry under the Obama administration. The terms of the bailout included massive concessions, including wage freezes, cuts to retiree healthcare and the introduction of second-tier wage structures for new hires. The UAW played a critical role in suppressing workers’ opposition and enforcing one concessionary contract after another.
Economists note that inflation has further widened this gap. According to research from the Economic Policy Institute, average real hourly earnings for motor vehicle workers—including both Detroit automakers and parts suppliers—have fallen significantly since the 2008 crisis, with wages failing to keep pace with rising prices for housing, healthcare and other living expenses.
The UAW has supported automakers’ reliance on outsourcing to suppliers in order to reduce costs in the competitive global auto market. By shifting large portions of production to independent parts manufacturers, automakers reduce direct labor costs and transfer wage pressures onto subcontractors, while eliminating tens of thousands of jobs.
On Saturday, March 28, 2026, the United Auto Workers (UAW) bureaucracy shut down the strike of the Bath Marine Draftsmen’s Association (BMDA, UAW Local 3999) at the General Dynamics naval shipyard in Maine just days after it began. This lightning-fast ratification of a four-year collective bargaining agreement at Bath Iron Works (BIW) was not a “win” for the 620 designers, engineers and technicians who walked out Monday, March 23, it was a strategic intervention by the labor bureaucracy to enforce “labor peace” at a critical bottleneck of the American war machine.
As the Trump administration escalates its criminal military campaign against Iran, the production of Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers has been elevated to a supreme national priority, to which the material needs of the working class must be subordinated. Neither the Trump administration, General Dynamics management nor the union bureaucracy could allow this strike to continue.
While the union apparatus hailed the agreement as a “foundation for the future,” the ratification was conducted under conditions of a deliberate information blackout. The UAW moved to preempt a broader mobilization by forcing a vote before the rank and file could fully digest the scale of the surrender. However, leaked terms from the membership reveal the scale of the capitulation: Annual wage increases of 10, 6, 5, and 5.5 percent, which fail to keep pace with the real-world costs of a war economy, and the regressive merging of sick and vacation time into a single paid time off (PTO) pool.
15. Jürgen Habermas (1929–2026): The philosopher who chose the state
To understand the content of Habermas’ work—and why the limitations of his thought carry consequences that extend far beyond academic philosophy—one must begin not with the man but the political environment in which his life and career unfolded. Habermas was 15 when the Nazi regime collapsed. West Germany after 1945 was a society haunted by its fascist past, administered in many cases by men who had participated in and accommodated themselves to the Nazi regime, and ideologically committed to a ferocious anti-communism that not only precluded a genuine democratic reckoning but also covered up and legitimized Nazi crimes.
The young Federal Republic needed intellectuals who could articulate a basis for political legitimacy that did not rest on the discredited traditions of German nationalism. Habermas filled this role with considerable skill. His concept of “constitutional patriotism” (Verfassungspatriotismus)—allegiance not to the German nation as an ethnic or cultural entity but to the universal principles embodied in the postwar Basic Law—provided the West German intelligentsia with a vocabulary for political commitment that did not require the rehabilitation of the national past. This was a genuine service, and it explains why Habermas was, for decades, something close to an unofficial philosopher of state for the Federal Republic.
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Had Habermas studied Trotsky’s writings on the rise of German fascism—developed in real time in the early 1930s, grounding the catastrophe in the dynamics of class struggle and the criminal failures of working class political leadership—he would have encountered an analysis that drew precisely the opposite conclusion from the same events. Trotsky argued that fascism triumphed not because the working class was inherently incapable of revolutionary action, but because its existing leaderships—the Social Democrats, who placed their faith in the bourgeois state, and the Stalinists, whose ultra-left adventurism split the workers’ movement—proved catastrophically unequal to the task. The lesson of 1933, on this analysis, was not that revolution must be abandoned but that the working class required a new, genuinely revolutionary leadership. That Habermas never confronted this analysis—that the entire Trotskyist tradition is virtually absent from his work—is a silence of enormous political significance.
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The career of Jürgen Habermas illuminates, with exceptional clarity, the fate of an entire current of postwar European thought and a recurring pattern in the history of the German intelligentsia. The thinker who begins by engaging with Marxism ends by placing his intellectual powers in the service of the bourgeois state. The vocabulary of constitutional patriotism and communicative reason is new, but the political content is not. At every decisive moment, the intellectual chooses the state over the independent movement of the working class.
Habermas was not a hack or a mere propagandist. His theoretical project represented a sustained attempt to provide intellectual foundations for reformist politics after the catastrophes of the 20th century. But having abandoned the critique of political economy, the materialist conception of history and the revolutionary role of the working class, Habermas was compelled by the logic of his own position to seek an alternative basis for social critique in the procedures of bourgeois democracy—in the idealised speech situation, in constitutional patriotism, in the norms of rational discourse. When the crises came—war, austerity, the disintegration of the liberal order he had devoted his career to defending—he had no recourse but to rally behind the state, lending the prestige of critical theory to the very policies that critical theory had originally claimed to oppose.
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
