Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today: 

1. Charlie Kirk: The Horst Wessel of the MAGA movement

In the 36 hours that followed the assassination of Charlie Kirk—the fascist political operative whose activities were lavishly funded by billionaire oligarchs and for which he was paid millions of dollars—he has been posthumously elevated to the status of a national hero. Once again emulating the propaganda tactics of Hitler and Goebbels, the Trump administration is portraying Kirk as a political martyr, an American version of the German Nazi Horst Wessel. After the latter’s violent death in February 1930, the Nazis eulogized Wessel as an exemplar of Germany’s patriotic youth. A hymn to honor Wessel’s memory, the notorious “Horst Wessel Song,” became the anthem of the Nazi Party.

In a similar process of political canonization, Charlie Kirk is being transformed into the Horst Wessel of the fascistic MAGA movement.

That the Trump administration and its fascist followers would exploit Kirk’s death for its political purposes can come as no surprise. But the impact of the propaganda campaign has been amplified by the collaboration of the Democratic Party and the establishment media.

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Trump and the fascist right have seized on Kirk’s death to threaten mass repression and violence against those who oppose them. On Wednesday, Trump denounced those who had “compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis” and vowed that his administration would “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity.” The next morning he announced that he would award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kirk, posthumously, the first outright fascist to receive the award.

Trump makes these threats under conditions in which no information is yet available about the identity of the shooter or his motive. This merely exposes the transparently political purpose for which the killing is being utilized. 

As for his followers in Make America Great Again, Turning Point USA, Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart and the whole array of billionaire-funded far-right media, the Kirk murder is the occasion to threaten vengeance and bloodshed. The World Socialist Web Site has also received violent threats in response to its initial analysis.

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The denunciations of “political violence” by Trump and the Republicans reek of hypocrisy. These are the same forces that orchestrated the coup attempt of January 6, 2021, celebrated vigilante killers like Kyle Rittenhouse and encouraged armed intimidation of public health officials during the pandemic. Their conspiracy theories have inspired mass shootings from Christchurch to El Paso to Buffalo, the plot to kidnap and murder the governor of Michigan, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, and the violent attack that nearly killed the husband of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

Only three months ago, the Democratic leader in the Minnesota state legislature and her husband were murdered by a gunman espousing Christian nationalist and anti-abortion views. The response of Trump & Co. was to lie about the killer’s motives, claiming that he was left-wing and to step up the stream of fascist invective that would inspire copycats.

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The universal line from the Democratic Party, repeated as if following a script, is that “violence has no place in American politics,” or as the New York Times wrote in its editorial published Thursday, “such violence is antithetical to America.” Who are they kidding? As H. Rap Brown once remarked, “violence is as American as cherry pie.” 

None of the Democrats responding to Kirk’s assassination could even bring themselves to make the basic point that the president of the United States has systematically promoted violence against his political opponents, including leading Democrats. Just one week ago, moreover, Trump murdered 11 people in a shipping boat off the coast of Venezuela and threatened Chicago, one of the country’s largest cities, with “war.” Not to mention the ongoing genocide in Gaza, backed by both parties, which has killed tens of thousands. The entire ruling class is steeped in blood.

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The Democratic Party’s adaptation to Kirk and the right reflects its own class character. It represents Wall Street and the corporate-financial oligarchy. Its concern is not to alert the population to the danger of fascism but to chloroform it, suppressing mass opposition that would threaten capitalist rule. 

Some young people, disgusted by Kirk’s reactionary politics, have expressed satisfaction over his death, much as others hailed the killing last year of a healthcare CEO. This sentiment is profoundly mistaken. Individual acts of violence resolve nothing. They only play into the hands of the far right, strengthen the state and reinforce the argument that repression is necessary. 

As Trotsky wrote in 1939, in an essay written after 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan shot and killed Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, “Not the lone avenger but only a great revolutionary mass movement can free the oppressed, a movement that will leave no remnant of the entire structure of class exploitation, national oppression, and racial persecution.” To defeat fascism, “it is necessary to set in motion millions, tens and hundreds of millions of the oppressed throughout the whole world and lead them in the assault upon the strongholds of the old society.”

This is the basic issue confronting workers and youth today, in the US and internationally. The struggle against fascism cannot be waged with the methods of individual revenge, nor can it be entrusted to the Democratic Party or any faction of the ruling class political establishment. It requires the conscious and organized mobilization of the working class, the vast majority of society, based on a socialist program.

2. Israeli terror in Gaza City intensifies following failed assassination attempt against Hamas negotiators 

Two days after Israel attempted to kill Hamas negotiators with an airstrike on the Qatari capital of Doha, the Zionist regime has stepped up its genocidal attacks across the Gaza Strip.

Since Tuesday, dozens of Palestinians have been killed amid relentless bombardment, while overcrowding in the southern camps is forcing civilians to return to homes in Gaza City, even as Israeli forces issue evacuation orders and raze residential structures to the ground.

In the last 48 hours, over 70 Palestinians have been killed throughout Gaza, with the death toll climbing amid intense strikes targeting both homes and aid seekers. Gaza’s Health Ministry now reports that war casualties have surpassed 64,000, with one-third of the victims being children.

Humanitarian organizations confirm that civilian infrastructure continues to be systematically destroyed in the Israeli campaign, deepening the crisis for roughly one million displaced Palestinians.

The situation in southern Gaza’s displacement camps has reached a breaking point, with conditions “so desperate that some people who fled Israel’s new offensive on famine-struck Gaza City in recent days are heading back towards the falling bombs,” Reuters reported.

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Satellite imagery reveals a vast patchwork of tents and ruined buildings populated by displaced civilians determined not to be uprooted again. 

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Reports from the BBC and New York Times document a widespread refusal among Palestinians to abandon Gaza City, despite evacuation orders and purported “humanitarian zones” announced by Israel. Olga Cherevko, UN spokesperson, recounted Gazans’ bitter defiance: “People are just sick and tired of moving… When they did move, they were bombed in those places too.” 

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The plans by Israel for the complete occupation of Gaza and forced transfer of Palestinians out of the strip, with the Netanyahu government moving forward with the criminal seizure of Palestine with the backing of US imperialism, are known and can no longer be covered up.

Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved the military operation to capture all of Gaza City—the one part of the strip not militarily controlled by Israel—with a stated deadline for Palestinian evacuation by October 7, 2025, a full two years after the genocide began.

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The air strike targeting Hamas negotiators in Qatar has exposed the fraud of US and Israeli claims they are seeking a negotiated settlement of the genocide and end to what they refer to as a “war.” The expanding mass condemnation of Israel’s campaign as ethnic cleansing and charges that the US is facilitating these crimes, indicates that the genocide in Gaza is entering a new stage of barbarism.

3. “The whole working class needs to strike”: Libbey Glass workers continue walkout in Toledo, Ohio

Workers at Libbey Glass in Toledo, Ohio, are continuing a walkout that began August 23 after they overwhelmingly rejected the company’s “last, best and final” offer. The contract would have stripped workers of overtime, hiked healthcare costs, gutted seniority rights and delivered inadequate pay raises.

The 900 office and production workers at the Toledo operations are members of International Association of Machinists (IAM) Lodge 1297 and three locals of the United Steelworkers (USW). They produce a wide range of glass tableware for one of the largest glass manufacturers in the world, which employs over 6,000 globally.

The three-week strike is the longest since a two-and-a-half week-long walkout in 1974. Libbey workers last struck in 2016, in a walkout that lasted two weeks. Since then, they have been forced to accept major givebacks, including during the company’s 2020 bankruptcy restructuring, when the IAM and USW pushed through a concessions-laden contract. The company is now privately held and reportedly profitable, yet management is determined to make permanent the concessions while driving workers even harder.

Far from seeking to broaden the fight, the IAM and USW bureaucracies are isolating it, corralling workers behind a strategy of pleading with management and appealing to the same Democratic politicians who have repeatedly attacked workers. Among these is Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who postured on the picket line while just three years ago voting to ban the strike by 120,000 railroaders and impose a White House-brokered contract that workers had already rejected. 

Libbey workers who spoke with World Socialist Web Site reporters voiced their anger not only at management but also at the political establishment and union bureaucracy. 

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Libbey workers face not just a fight against one company but against the entire corporate and political establishment, backed up by the union bureaucracies that have repeatedly sabotaged their struggles.

The IAM and USW have called the strike an “unfair labor practice” (ULP) strike rather than a contract strike, claiming the company has not bargained in good faith. This is a legal tactic that allows the unions to shut down the strike once management can show a pretense of “good faith” bargaining—without any guarantee of winning workers’ demands.

The critical task now is to break through the isolation imposed by the IAM and USW. The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) calls on Libbey workers to immediately form a rank-and-file strike committee, democratically controlled by workers themselves, to take the struggle out of the hands of the union bureaucracy. Instead, power and decision making must be controlled by workers on the shop floor.

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Such a committee would fight to expand the strike, uniting Libbey workers with autoworkers at Jeep and Dana in Toledo, as well as oil refinery workers, logistics workers, teachers, and every section of the working class coming into struggle against wage cuts, layoffs and authoritarian attacks on democratic rights. Only through a common fight, waged on an international scale, can workers secure substantial wage increases, restore lost benefits and put an end to corporate exploitation.

4. United States:  Jobless claims highest in 4 years as tariff-driven layoffs, price hikes wreak havoc on US workers

More than 260,000 Americans filed initial unemployment claims last week, the highest level in four years, according to data released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This is a sign of the deepening social crisis confronting the US working class, driven increasingly by the trade war measures of the Trump administration and the use of AI to slash jobs.

The mounting unemployment portends an eruption of class struggle under conditions where Trump is escalating his drive toward dictatorship. Seizing on the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the administration is accelerating political repression.

The new report comes just after the BLS massively revised downward employment figures for the 2024 fiscal year. It now says that 911,000 fewer jobs were created than previously estimated. Figures for August show only 22,000 jobs were added, while June was revised into negative territory. Manufacturing jobs overall are in the negative for the year.

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Amid the rising cost-of-living crisis, Trump’s tariff measures are beginning to manifest in higher inflation figures. Tariffs, which are taxes paid by importers, function as a regressive sales tax because costs are eventually passed on to consumers. This process is now clearly underway. 

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Trump’s claim—parroted by the union bureaucracy—that tariffs would benefit American workers and bring back jobs has been exposed as a lie. The opposite is taking place. Through mass layoffs and price increases generated by tariffs, American capitalism aims to make workers pay for the mounting economic crisis, the growth of public and private debt, the uncontrolled rise in share values, and the diversion of resources toward war.

For the ruling elite, the main significance of the numbers is to what extent they impact the likelihood of an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve next week, ensuring continued access to cheap money to fuel speculative bubbles and unimaginable personal fortunes.

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Significantly, General Motors CEO Mary Barra sold 40 percent of her stock in the company, worth tens of millions of dollars.

For workers, however, the picture is disastrous. A majority of Americans are already living paycheck to paycheck, and a significant portion cannot afford the unexpected expense of even a few hundred dollars. Personal bankruptcies rose 11.8 percent between June of 2024 and June of 2025, according to Newsweek.

Officially, the unemployment rate remains at 4.3 percent. But this is a massive underestimation of the real toll. The labor force participation rate, a measure of those of working age either employed or actively looking for work, has been falling for the last two years from its post-lockdown high of 62.8 percent in August 2023 (a figure far below pre-pandemic levels, which had already declined to their lowest since the 1980s). This is a sign that millions are dropping out of the labor force, including those who have given up looking for jobs.

Youth unemployment stands at 10.8 percent, more than double the national figure.

The economic war on the working class finds its political reflection in preparations for civil war, with the deployment of troops to Washington, DC and soon to Chicago and dozens of other cities.

The aim is to suppress all opposition to policies which are already generating significant opposition. In particular, they are aimed at the working class, which is being thrust into struggle by the impossible cost of living and brutal working conditions. The death of Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. five months ago was followed by a string of major industrial accidents, including explosions at US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works near Pittsburgh and a fireworks factory in southern California, and the death of a food processing worker in a meat grinder.

Signs of opposition include strikes by defense workers at Boeing and GE Aerospace. Boeing, no doubt with the blessings of the White House, is moving to replace striking workers. The International Association of Machinists (IAM) bureaucracy, which earlier urged Trump to intervene, has said nothing about the move.

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Trump’s tariff policies, while aimed at finding new sources of revenue and attempting to address the balance of trade deficit, are wreaking havoc on the US economy, and on the world economy of which the US and every other country is a component part. Postal volumes into the US have declined by 80 percent due to the reversal of de minimis tariff exemptions, as many companies suspend shipping to the US. Consumers are reporting hundreds of dollars in tariffs for relatively small purchases, such as computer equipment. 

These developments are leading to explosive class struggles. “I’m worried we are repeating conditions right before World War Two. We are on the path toward an explosion,” one striking nurse in Michigan told the World Socialist Web Site this week. “The whole working class needs to strike. We need to put the rich people in their place,” a striking Libbey Glass worker in Toledo, Ohio said.

5. Election in Norway returns Labour to power, as far-right Progress Party doubles vote share

Norway’s governing Labour Party (AP) emerged as the largest party in Monday’s general election, taking 28.0 percent of the vote and 53 seats in the 169-seat parliament (Storting). Although the bloc of “left” parties secured a total of 88 seats—a majority needed to re-elect AP’s Jonas Gahr Støre as Prime Minister—the biggest gain in the vote was achieved by the far-right Progress Party (FRP), which doubled its support to around 24 percent. 

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The Norwegian political establishment’s unanimous support for NATO militarism and war will mean, whatever the differences that may emerge over the composition of the new government, increased attacks on the living conditions and rights of the working class. Over the past three years, energy prices spiked dramatically due to the European imperialists’ support for war with Russia, which saw them massively reduce low-cost Russian gas imports. Norway substantially increased natural gas exports throughout Europe, and demand for its hydro power rose sharply as its energy grid was integrated ever more closely into supply chains across the continent.

With domestic energy prices at a record high in December 2024, Labour’s popularity slumped to just 14 percent in the polls. In January, the SP left the government coalition, criticizing Labour for giving up national control over Norway’s energy policy to the European Union. This stoking of nationalism played directly into the hands of the FRP, whose gains across many of Norway’s regions came at the expense of the SP. The SP lost more than half of its more than 13 percent support at the 2021 election, securing just 5.6 percent this time around.

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Norway’s Trade Union Confederation (LO), which has over a million members in a country with a population of just over 5 million, lauded Monday’s election result. “Our social model is based on freedom, equality, and solidarity,” declared LO leader Kine Asper Vistnes. “It has proven itself well equipped to handle crises and transitions. Now we must take care of it.”

The so-called Norwegian or “Scandinavian model” has in fact long passed into history. In its heyday in the post-war period, it rested on an extremely transitory set of global economic and geopolitical factors that allowed governments in the Nordic region to make substantial concessions to the working class while maintaining close ties to American imperialism. The rehabilitation of world capitalism by Washington in the aftermath of World War II, during which the Norwegian bourgeoisie proved itself more than willing to collaborate with the Nazi occupation of the country, created a brief window of perhaps 25 to 30 years in which national reformist programs gained a new lease of life, allowing levels of social inequality across the Nordic region to decline significantly and the welfare state to expand. But since the 1980s, this process has been in steady reverse. Privatizations, handouts to the wealthy, and strict spending controls have seen the gap between rich and poor increase across Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

For Vistnes to hold up the present political conditions in Norway as a powerful advertisement for the “Norwegian model” provides in fact one of the most devastating refutations to all of those political forces around the world who claim that capitalism can be “humanized” by means of pressure for “reforms” from below, and the advice of well-placed and well-paid union bureaucrats. The country is a frontline state in NATO’s war aimed at subjugating Russia to the status of a semi-colony, and the entire political establishment has mortgaged the future on building up the military in alliance with American and European imperialism. Although in comparative terms many Norwegian workers still enjoy better-paid jobs and stronger protections than their colleagues across Europe, these rights are under constant attack. Moreover, the hundreds of billions to be invested in war will, one way or another, be extracted from the workers and the public services on which they depend.

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Although some of the most right-wing sections of the business elite expressed their frustration at the election outcome, the relatively relaxed attitude of the main sections of the establishment was summed up in comments by Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) head Ole Erik Almlid. He told NRK, “I am sure that ways can be found to cooperate well with both the Storting and government in the future.”

6. Wildcat strikes erupt among thousands of municipality workers in Turkey

The government declared war on the working class by raising the minimum wage below the official inflation rate at the beginning of the year, followed by social attacks on public sector workers during the summer months. The salaries of both 600,000 public sector workers and nearly 4 million public employees and 2.5 million retirees were once again crushed by inflation, with the cooperation of trade union confederations.

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The severe austerity measures and intensified exploitation imposed on millions of workers and retirees in the public and private sectors are aimed at enriching the capitalist oligarchy, aided by tax amnesties and incentives, and at financing militarism. The cost of the Turkish ruling class’s military spending to pursue its reactionary interests in the Middle East is being paid for by attacks on workers’ social conditions.

Turkey, whose defense spending accounts for 2 percent of GDP (800 billion Turkish liras), will need to allocate an additional 1.5 trillion Turkish liras from its budget to increase its spending to 5 percent in line with its NATO commitment. This would mean further cuts in social spending and a further increase in taxes, which are mainly collected from working people.

The intensifying class war against the working class is closely linked not only to militarism but also to the construction of a presidential dictatorship. The wave of strikes in Izmir is taking place under conditions where the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is escalating its attacks on the CHP and fundamental democratic rights.

Workers who are fighting for their wages and social rights must also raise their voices against this anti-democratic oppression. Because the construction of an authoritarian regime targets the working class above all else. And a democratic regime based on social equality can only be established through the independent political mobilization of the working class and its seizure of power.

7. Sri Lankan unions undermine Ceylon Electricity Board workers opposition to government’s restructuring agenda

It has been a week since the 25 trade unions at the state-owned Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) began a work-to-rule protest. According to reports, large numbers of CEB workers—in the head office, power plants and sub-centers—are participating in the industrial action. 

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government, in line with International Monetary Fund (IMF) dictates, is moving to break up the CEB into four separate companies. The government has only been able to proceed with this cost-cutting attack on the jobs, wages and working conditions of the CEB’s 22,000-strong workforce because the union leaderships fully endorse it. 

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Although electricity workers have voiced their opposition to the restructuring, the union leaderships, including those that have called the work-to-rule protest, are unwavering in their support for government’s restructuring plan.

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When Sri Lanka defaulted on foreign loans in April 2022, the IMF intervened on behalf of international bankers and other lenders, taking control of the economy and ordering Colombo to impose a harsh austerity program. The IMF measures involve a massive program of public sector restructuring and privatization, and extracting the maximum from the working class and the rural poor, through higher taxes and cuts to social welfare programs.

President Dissanayake’s JVP/NPP government, following on from the previous Wickremesinghe administration, is stepping up these assaults, aiming to begin repayment of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt in 2028. The Sri Lankan trade union bureaucracy, including the CEB unions that are active members of the company’s restructuring committees, is an essential part of this process. 

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The Dissanayake government has made clear that it will not abandon its commitment to the IMF program.

As a senior official from the Ministry of Power recently stated, the government’s restructuring program would be implemented according to “national needs,” and compulsory retirement could be implemented for those who cannot comply with restructuring.

In a direct threat against workers taking industrial actions, he added, “The public cannot be held hostage to the demands of a few.”

Last month, the Dissanayake government mobilised the police and army to break national strike action by thousands of postal workers over wages, overtime, job permanency and other demands. The postal union leadership betrayed their members, quickly calling off the strike without meeting any of its demands.

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One worker, who agreed on the need to fight the government’s agenda, told the World Socialist Web Site that some employees “think it is too late” to fight government’s restructuring program because it had already been enacted and implemented. This is a mistake.

While the government is moving ahead with its agenda in alliance with the union bureaucracy, CEB workers must organize independently of the trade union bureaucracy.

8. Oracle’s Larry Elison seizes $100 billion in wealth in a single day

Ellison’s increase in wealth on Wednesday is equivalent to the annual economic output of Kenya, a country of 51 million people. It is also equivalent to what 2 million typical US households make in a year.

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Ellison owns 41 percent of Oracle, the fourth-largest software company in the world, founded in 1977. Oracle stock surged over 40 percent on Wednesday after announcing a series of massive deals, including one with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, to provide server infrastructure for OpenAI’s expansion plans.

Artificial intelligence technology, which has immense revolutionary potential, is, under capitalism, being used to initiate widespread corporate restructurings and mass layoffs. The US financial oligarchy projects that the AI boom will expand its wealth by trillions of dollars in the coming period, while further impoverishing the working class.

The very real and enormous capacity of AI to replace and augment human labor is being combined with a massive speculative mania on Wall Street. Stocks in major technology companies—almost all located in the US—are vastly outperforming both the US and international market in what a Financial Times column called “part miracle, part mania.”

Ellison’s wealth briefly eclipsed that of Elon Musk, up to that point the world’s richest man, before settling into second place. Ellison and Musk are both ardent supporters of the American fascist movement led by US President Donald Trump.

The vast surge in Ellison’s wealth followed the Wall Street Journal’s report that Oracle had signed a deal to sell OpenAI approximately $300 billion in computational power over a period of five years.

The Journal reported, “The Oracle contract will require 4.5 gigawatts of power capacity, roughly comparable to the electricity produced by more than two Hoover Dams or the amount consumed by about four million homes.”

The announcement came just days after OpenAI Chairman Sam Altman and other technology billionaires met with US President Donald Trump at the White House. During the White House dinner last week, the technology executives repeatedly praised Trump, who reciprocated by promising to “make it a lot easier” for the assembled billionaires to “get your permits” for the power generation necessary for their AI plans.

OpenAI is conjuring up the money necessary to pay for its massive contract with Oracle out of thin air. As the Journal reported, “OpenAI is a money-losing startup that disclosed in June it was generating roughly $10 billion in annual revenue—less than one-fifth of the $60 billion it will have to pay on average every year. Oracle is concentrating a large chunk of its future revenue on one customer—and will likely have to take on debt to buy the AI chips needed to power the data centers.” 

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Over the next three years, major technology companies are expected to invest nearly $3 trillion in computer hardware and data center infrastructure, all financed by speculative debt, in a vast financial bubble of unprecedented scale.

The ability of Oracle to provide this massive computational infrastructure is likewise dependent on a vast debt load. Its debt-to-equity ratio is 427 percent, compared to 32.7 percent for Microsoft.

Even among America’s billionaires, Ellison is known for his exorbitant spending. He held the record for the world’s most expensive home, having spent over $200 million on his villa near Palo Alto, California. Ellison also owns 98 percent of the land on Lānaʻi, the sixth-largest of the Hawaiian Islands, and the 43rd largest island in the United States.

Ellison is an advocate of uncontrolled mass surveillance, telling Oracle investors, “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on … It’s unimpeachable.”

The Ellison family has been on a buying spree. This year, Ellison’s son, David, orchestrated the takeover of Paramount Global, owner of CBS and MTV. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount is preparing a takeover of Warner Brothers, potentially making the Ellison family the most dominant players in the global entertainment market.

It is noteworthy that neither Senator Bernie Sanders nor Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have commented on the vast one-day rise in Ellison’s fortune. While Ellison is an ideological supporter of Trump, he has donated widely to all factions of the political establishment, including prominent Democrats.

9. Australia:  Labor’s attack on the CFMEU: One year under state control

A report was tabled in parliament last week on the first year of the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) operating under quasi-dictatorial state control. It spells out, more plainly than ever, that the federal Labor government’s appointment of administrator Mark Irving was always aimed at facilitating deeper cuts to wages and conditions in the building industry and more broadly. 

On August 23, 2024, Irving was handed total control of the industrial interests of the CFMEU construction division’s around 80,000 members. As the first step in Labor’s unprecedented attack on workers’ democratic rights, hundreds of elected officials and delegates were immediately removed from their roles.

This was carried out under the pretext of stamping out alleged corruption and links to organized crime within the union, based on unsubstantiated claims contained in a trumped-up media campaign by the Nine Entertainment newspapers.

The government, the media and the construction companies have had a year to provide evidence of their assertions of a vast criminal enterprise throughout the CFMEU. But they have proven absolutely nothing.

Instead, the initial pretext has substantially fallen away. Low-level CFMEU organizers along with leaders of the organization have been targeted by the administrators, not on the grounds of any allegation of criminal wrongdoing, but in an increasingly transparent purge aimed at refashioning the union. 

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Irving notes that more than 75 percent of organizers in New South Wales (NSW), and around 50 percent in Queensland and South Australia, have been replaced since August 2024, including by “experienced organisers from other Unions.” This is significant, because almost all unions, led by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), have given their full-throated support to the administration from the outset.

In other words, union officials that endorsed the most blatant government attack on the democratic rights of workers in decades are now being installed to “represent” those workers.

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By restricting the wages and conditions of construction workers, Labor is seeking to drive down the pay of all workers. And by imposing police-state measures on this powerful section of the working class, it is establishing a precedent for repressive actions directed against all others. 

10. Germany: IG Metall pushes through cuts at Thyssenkrupp Steel with a “social collective agreement”

Germany’s biggest trade union, IG Metall, has signed off the loss of 11,000 jobs and wage cuts of around 8 percent at Thyssenkrupp Steel in a new “social collective agreement.” The union’s action reaffirms that defending jobs and wages can only be carried out, not with, but only against the IGM apparatus and its network of works councils. 

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Thyssenkrupp workers face an important decision. If they do not stand up to the IGM bureaucracy and the works council, not a single job is safe. On the contrary, the current cuts will facilitate the next ones. If Thyssenkrupp believes that the transition to “green steel” cannot be achieved profitably, Russwurm and Thyssenkrupp CEO Miguel Lopez will sell off or break up the steel division. Only a skeleton workforce will remain to produce steel for war materials and weapons. 

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Of the approximately 10,000 IGM members who approved the agreement, most were aware that the union, to which they transfer part of their wages every month, will not fight for them anyway. Older colleagues in particular are likely to be tempted to retire early with a reasonable level of security after having devoted decades of their lives and health to the steel industry.

But the workforce—especially younger workers—must resist the downward spiral. Action committees must be set up at all plants, in which workers who want to fight, regardless of their union membership, can organize. This includes all those who are not prepared to accept that their livelihoods be subordinated to shareholder profits and the German government’s preparations for war.

The action committees must network with each other and establish contact with steelworkers at other companies—HKM, Salzgitter, Arcelor, Saarstahl, Voestalpine, Tata Steel, Vallourec, etc.—as well as with workers in other industries such as auto and suppliers. Workers in Germany, Europe and the world face the same problems and the same tasks.

If workers do not stand up to the IGM apparatus and its henchmen in the works councils now, there is only one way they will go—downhill.

11. United Kingdom:  Starmer welcomes President Herzog to reaffirm Labour’s support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians

On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed Israel’s President Isaac Herzog at the doors of Number 10 Downing Street, his official residence.

Herzog is head of a state that the UN’s International Court of Justice ruled in February 2024 was “plausibly committing genocide”, ordering it to take all measures to prevent any acts contrary to the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In November 2024, the UN’s International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity for Israel’s ongoing war on the Palestinians in Gaza. More recently, the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide.

The meeting took place despite widespread opposition to Herzog’s visit for his support for the war, with even some Labour Party MPs obliged to concede that his visit is “not compatible with our obligations under the Genocide Convention”. Starmer’s readiness to meet Israel’s head of state confirms that he fully supports Netanyahu’s genocide of the Palestinians despite his making the token gesture of criticizing Israel’s latest offensive and threatening to recognize a Palestinian state.

The genocide is part of US imperialism’s broader plans to assert its control over the resource-rich Middle East and its geostrategic transportation corridors, targeting Iran and its former allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen, in preparation for a confrontation with China, from which Britain hopes to profit.

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Herzog, despite his attempts to portray himself as the respectable (aka non-fascistic) face of Israel as a former head of Israel’s Labour Party, has abandoned any pretense of supporting a “two-state solution” and fully endorsed the collective punishment of Gaza. He views Britain’s meaningless recognition of a Palestinian state if Israel fails to meet certain conditions, including agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza—along with the same move by other European states—as an inexplicable reward for Hamas and a betrayal of Israel by the British government. 

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Thousands of people protested in support of the Palestinians outside Downing Street on Wednesday evening as Herzog met Starmer, and later outside the foreign relations think-tank Chatham House, where they banged pots and pans as Herzog delivered a speech.

After the meeting, Number 10’s spokesperson said Starmer had told Herzog the strike on Doha was “unacceptable” and condemned it as “a flagrant violation of a key partner’s sovereignty” but added that “the UK and Israel are longstanding allies”.

Herzog unashamedly defended the assassinations, saying Netanyahu’s decision “to strike at the top leadership of Hamas terrorism is important and correct”. He added, “In the face of terrorism and absolute evil, it is necessary to fight with determination and boldness in order to first and foremost bring about the release of the hostages and create a better future for us and our neighbors.”

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Starmer defended his decision to meet Herzog, rejecting calls to cut diplomatic ties. He said, “I will not give up on diplomacy. That is the politics of students.”

Next week, Starmer is to host US President Donald Trump during his state visit to Britain.

12. United Kingdom:  Starmer’s right-wing reshuffle prepares austerity budget

Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been continuously criticized by Britain’s ruling elite for falling short when it comes to attacks on social services and increasing military spending.

With France plunged into political crisis by huge planned spending cuts, and Labour preparing its own austerity budget for November, Starmer has been forced to bring forward a cabinet reshuffle originally planned for the autumn to reassure his corporate and financial masters that there will be no retreat from the right-wing agenda they are demanding.

A pretext was made of Angela Rayner’s resignation last week as deputy prime minister and deputy leader of the Labour Party, after a tax-sleaze scandal fueled by the right-wing Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.

Her departure was a political gift to Starmer, allowing him to replace a hate-figure for the right despite her essential loyally to Labour’s pro-business, militarist agenda. Besides the crime of a northern, working-class background and an outspoken dislike for Tories, she led the only two Labour initiatives which are not openly right-wing: a housebuilding program and a “workers’ rights” bill.

Two of Starmer’s replacements—of Rayner as housing secretary and her ally Justin Madders as minister for employment rights by Blairite loyalists Steve Reed and Kate Dearden—are aimed at assuring finance and big business that these specific policies will be tailored to their every whim.

But the reshuffle goes much further. It is intended to convince the ruling class that Labour will carry out in full what it was helped into office to achieve: a historic reduction of social spending and the return of the military budget to levels not seen since the Cold War.

*****

Throughout the summer, right-wing pressure on Starmer was provided with a vehicle by the universal media and political promotion of far-right, anti-asylum seeker protests and the anti-migrant, law-and-order campaigning of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. He has used the reshuffle to embrace this agenda wholesale.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who has led the criminalization of opposition to the Gaza genocide and stepped-up raids and deportations of migrants, was given Lammy’s old job of foreign secretary. Into her shoes stepped prominent right-winger Shabana Mahmood, who has demanded further cuts in immigration and deportations of asylum seekers.

*****

It is a mark of just how savage the attacks being prepared by Starmer’s cabinet are that it will not entrust a genuine election even to a party membership largely gutted of any vaguely left-wing sentiment.

This is government by a hated, right-wing cabal, headed by a prime minister with the lowest popularity ratings of any leader in the western world. It rules in open hostility to the population, on behalf of warmongers and the super-rich.

13. Australian #MeToo saga continues with Liberal senator’s defamation action upheld

The outcome of a defamation case earlier this month shed highly revealing light on the long-running saga sparked by the claims of former Liberal Party staffer Brittany Higgins that her work colleague Bruce Lehrmann raped her in the parliamentary offices of then Coalition government Minister of Defence Linda Reynolds in 2019.

Reynolds is a right-wing figure, who has played a key role in a military build-up centering on Australia’s integration into the US-led drive to war against China. She initiated the defamation action over claims made against her in the media by Higgins.

he contention challenged in court was that a conspiracy had existed, emanating from Reynolds’ office, to cover up the rape allegations. Higgins asserted she was pressured not to press charges, was unsupported and silenced, with threats of losing her job.

The rape allegations, court case, and conspiracy accusations have been front page news for much of the past nearly five years. The media storm was sustained by the central role of the then Albanese Labor opposition, a role which continued once Labor took office in May 2022. Labor helped to keep the spotlight on the Higgins saga, in league with the #MeToo milieu and virtually all sections of the media.

***** 

The debacle that surrounded the court hearings and their media reporting was the outcome of the evisceration of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the right to a fair trial and the right to silence.

The furor created around the sexual assault allegations and Labor’s embrace of the Higgins case was not motivated by a genuine concern for working-class women or victims of sexual violence. Instead, Labor, then in opposition, seized on the case as an opportunity to differentiate itself from the Morrison Liberal government on an essentially right-wing basis and to whip up its upper-middle class base using the language of identity politics.

The unsubstantiated claims of a conspiracy against Higgins served to shield the real conspiracies that were underway against the population, which Labor supported and participated in.

That included the drive to end all public health safety measures amid the COVID-19 crisis. Labor joined hands with the Coalition government to “reopen” the economy, in a pro-business offensive that has resulted in the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of people, the majority of them vulnerable and working class.

At the same time, Labor, then in opposition and now in government, has partnered with the Coalition in supporting the AUKUS agreement with the US and the UK, as part of the far broader preparations for a US-led war against China.

The agreement, signed by Morrison with the approval of Labor and kept secret from both parliament and the electorate, involves spending $368 billion on nuclear submarines. This required a massive increase to the military budget, which is to be paid for through the diversion of funds from health, education, and welfare, further worsening the living and working conditions of the working class overall.

The outcome of the Reynolds case and the five years of the Higgins saga again underscore the reactionary role of identity politics, both in its attack on core democratic rights and its diversion from the fundamental class issues, including war and austerity.

14.  Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, Middle East

Africa

Kenya:

School students at school in Nairobi, Kenya protest over corporal punishment

Nigeria: 

Resident doctors in Federal Capital Territory hold seven-day strike over pay and staff shortages

Oil and gas workers strike over right to join a union

South Africa:

Westbury residents in Johannesburg protest water shortage

Refuse workers in Durban walk out and stage picket after wages are cut in half

Europe

Belgium:

Brewery workers for multinational AB InBev in Jupille strike for improved pay and working conditions

Greece:

Taxi drivers in Attica protest difficult working conditions

Netherlands:

KLM ground staff at Schiphol Airport stop work for improved cost of living pay award

United Kingdom:

Protest at use of agency staff to break Birmingham, UK refuse workers’ strike

Strike by academic staff at Edinburgh University, Scotland over job cuts

Care workers at Scottish charity strike over pay parity

Crew of UK-based research vessel strike over pay and conditions

Ancillary hospital workers at Airedale hospital, England to strike over pay and terms parity

Middle East

Iran:

Strike of aluminum workers enters seventh week

15.  The Tactics and Tasks of the Leninist Opposition

As a supplement to the lecture “The Stalinist bureaucracy launches a war on the Trotskyist movement”, delivered by Clara Weiss to the 2025 SEP US Summer School on Security and the Fourth International., the World Socialist Web Site is providing the ninth and last chapter of “The Crisis of the Revolution and the Tasks of the Proletariat”, a major programmatic document produced by leading imprisoned Soviet Trotskyists in 1932. 

This document irrefutably shows that despite the ever-more ferocious repression by the GPU under Joseph Stalin, the Trotskyist opposition remained a fighting force in Soviet life, determined to develop its struggle in the working class. 

16. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky 

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.