Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. No Kings, No Nazi Führers! Mobilize the working class against Trump’s dictatorship!
More than 2,500 “No Kings” protests are being held on October 18 throughout the US, in every major city and many smaller towns, as well as in other countries. The Socialist Equality Party supports these demonstrations and calls for the broadest possible participation. The last “No Kings” demonstrations, on June 14, attracted upwards of 10 million people in what is believed to have been the largest single-day political protest in American history.
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The language coming from the White House is the language of civil war. Trump has called for the military to be used against the “enemy within.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has described even the Democratic Party as a “domestic extremist organization.” Trump has opened up the White House to neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists and far-right propagandists, who are openly plotting the abolition of democratic rights.
What is unfolding is not a temporary aberration or a passing episode. There will be no “return to normal.” With the Trump administration, the American ruling class is breaking with constitutional forms of rule.
The decisive question is: What is to be done? How can Trump’s coup be defeated?
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To defeat Trump and send him to the dustbin of history, it is first necessary to understand what this gangster represents. Trump is not a rogue individual, but the political representative of the American capitalist oligarchy. He is the personification of a ruling class that has spent decades enriching itself through financial speculation, parasitism and the relentless impoverishment of the working class.
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Trump, whose corrupt operations were financed by banks during his years as a real estate conman, is their guy. His corruption, total lack of scruples and penchant for violence fit their needs. He has been chosen to deal with an escalating series of economic, social and geopolitical crises for which no conventional, legal, Constitutional and non-violent solutions are at hand. The foundations of the US economy have been rotted out by unprecedented debt and the continued erosion of the dollar’s value on world markets. Above all, they are terrified of the growth of popular opposition to the obscene concentration of wealth in an infinitesimal segment of society.
The 400 richest Americans now control more than $6.6 trillion, while the vast majority of the population is confronting soaring inflation and eroding living standards. US household debt has reached a record $18.39 trillion, including more than $1.2 trillion in credit card debt and $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. Such levels of social inequality are incompatible with democratic forms of rule.
However reckless, bizarre, incoherent and even absurd Trump’s ramblings may appear, there is a logic that connects all facets of his policies: they are aimed at imposing the consequences of the bankruptcy of American capitalism, within the United States and internationally, on the working class.
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That Trump does not speak merely for himself is demonstrated by the absence of serious opposition within the political establishment. Every institution of American capitalism has either endorsed or adapted itself to his authoritarian agenda.
Nine months of the second Trump administration have proven beyond any doubt that the Democratic Party is not a force of opposition but of collaboration and complicity.
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To the extent that any strategy is to be inferred from the disparate statements of the Democrats, it consists entirely of 1) appealing to the Supreme Court to overrule Trump and 2) winning back control of Congress in the 2026 elections. The absurdity of relying on the Supreme Court is self-evident. As for waiting for the outcome of the 2026 elections, there is good reason to believe that if they are even held, it will be with military and fascist para-military forces patrolling the streets of US cities and the ICE gestapo threatening voters outside polling places.
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As for the apparatus of the trade unions, it is doing nothing as the Trump administration wages a war on the working class. One would never know, judging from the spinelessness of the AFL-CIO, that unions first emerged as organizations of struggle against capitalist exploitation and political repression. The AFL-CIO and its associated organizations have absolutely no independent policy for the defense of the working class.
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The Socialist Equality Party calls on all those participating in the “No Kings” demonstrations to take up clear and urgent demands to rally opposition to Trump’s dictatorship. These must include:
- The removal of the Trump administration from power and the dismantling of its fascistic apparatus.
- The immediate withdrawal of all troops from American cities and an end to the militarization of public life.
- An end to the persecution and deportation of immigrant workers, and the abolition of ICE and DHS.
- The immediate end of all threats and acts of aggression against Venezuela and other countries, and the dismantling of the American war machine.
- The defense of free speech and all democratic rights, including the right to protest, organize and speak against the government without intimidation or censorship.
- An end to the mass layoffs, cuts to social programs and destruction of living standards.
These demands cannot be achieved through appeals to the ruling class or its political representatives. They require the independent intervention of the working class, acting as a unified and conscious political force. Workers must organize collectively to resist the attack on democratic rights and prepare a general strike to bring down Trump’s dictatorship.
The Socialist Equality Party calls for the formation of rank-and-file committees in every workplace, factory and neighborhood to coordinate this struggle. These committees must unite every section of the working class—teachers and nurses, auto and logistics workers, public employees, youth and students—into a single, powerful movement. They must become the foundation for a counteroffensive linking the defense of democratic rights to the fight for jobs, wages, healthcare and social equality.
In the development of the struggle against dictatorship in the United States, it is critical to understand its international dimensions. It is necessary to break with all forms of nationalist parochialism. The greatest strength of the working class lies in its international character. American workers must see themselves as part of a global working class, and strive consciously to connect their fight against Trump with the movement of the working class on a global scale. In an epoch when all aspects of the production process are ruled by global economic networks, the strategy of the working class must be international.
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Many of those participating in the last “No Kings” demonstration drew inspiration from the American Revolution. It is necessary to recall that the great uprising of the American colonists in 1775 was provoked by the British monarch’s deployment of troops in Boston, New York and Philadelphia to intimidate and suppress opposition to tyranny. Now, as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the spirit of revolutionary commitment to the defense of the rights of man must be revived. These are indeed, as the great Tom Paine wrote so memorably, “the times that try men’s souls.”
The ruling class is in the process of repudiating all the democratic rights established in that revolution and reaffirmed in the great struggle for the abolition of slavery led by Abraham Lincoln between 1861 and 1865. The defense of these rights is now inseparable from the development of a working class movement to achieve its social rights: the right to a job and a livable income, to food, housing, healthcare and education. These rights are not compatible with the capitalist profit system.
To achieve these rights and stop the descent into fascism and barbarism, the working class must take power into its own hands, reorganize economic life on socialist foundations, and establish genuine democracy based on social equality. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and its youth organization, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), call on workers, young people and all those who are committed to the defense of democratic rights and social equality to take up this fight: Build rank-and-file committees in factories, all work places, schools and neighborhoods.
We urge all those who agree with this strategy to join the SEP and turn the immense social power of the working class into a conscious movement for socialism.
Healthcare workers are engaged in a critical fight, and not only against Kaiser. They are also on a direct collision course with the Trump administration. A key part of his fascist strategy is the destruction of what remains of public health and promote anti-vaccine quackery in order to drive down life expectancy, redirecting money “wasted” on the sick and elderly to Wall Street and the military.
The support of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez for the Gaza genocide provoked broad anger and deeply discredited the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Ocasio-Cortez is a member. The DSA, through Jacobin, has concluded that now is an appropriate time to attempt to rewrite the record of support for genocide and present the Democratic Party and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez not as defenders and enablers of the genocide but as its opponents. A main aim is to whitewash the DSA’s record in preparation for a potential run by Ocasio-Cortez for Senate and even president.
Jacobin’s article, titled “Ultraleftism Can’t Free Palestine,” is a condemnation of what it calls “ultraleftism,” which in this case refers to individuals and political tendencies that oppose the advocates of genocide, particularly the Trotskyist movement and the World Socialist Web Site.
4. Washington and Berlin push NATO to the brink of war with Russia
The planned meeting between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday threatens to push the world to the brink of nuclear war. According to reports, the United States is preparing to supply Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles—long-range precision weapons capable of striking targets up to 2,500 kilometers away, including Moscow and other major Russian cities.
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The escalation coincides with NATO’s ongoing nuclear war exercise “Steadfast Noon,” currently taking place over Northern Europe. The annual maneuver involves around 2,000 soldiers and more than 70 aircraft, including German Tornado fighter jets capable of carrying US nuclear bombs stationed in Europe. According to NATO headquarters in Mons, Belgium, the drills simulate the dropping of nuclear weapons on Russian targets. The current phase focuses on the North Sea and includes the Dutch air base at Volkel, Belgium’s Kleine Brogel, Britain’s Lakenheath, and Denmark’s Skrydstrup. Germany is participating with three nuclear-capable Tornados and four Eurofighters.
These “exercises” underscore that the NATO powers are not preparing for defense but for nuclear war. On Wednesday, just two days before the Trump–Zelensky summit, NATO defense ministers met in Brussels to coordinate the next phase of the war. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth made clear that Washington expects its allies to massively increase arms spending and weapons purchases, chiefly from the United States. “Our expectation today is that more countries contribute more money, that they buy more to support Ukraine,” Hegseth declared, cynically insisting this was necessary to bring the war to a “peaceful end.” In the Orwellian doublespeak of the 21st century, “peace” is to be achieved through total war.
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Eighty years after the crimes of the Wehrmacht and the SS, the German ruling class is once again preparing for a war of conquest in the East. Under the banner of “defending democracy,” Berlin is pursuing the same imperialist aims that twice plunged Europe into catastrophe: domination of the continent, control over Eastern Europe and ultimately the subjugation of Russia itself. The reckless drive to arm Ukraine with Tomahawks, to rehearse nuclear strikes under “Steadfast Noon” and to transform Europe into a forward operating base for NATO war is bringing humanity face to face with the danger of annihilation.
Not one of the assembled speakers even mentioned events in the United States, where President Donald Trump is erecting a presidential dictatorship based on the military, police and fascist agitators.
6. British painter Edward Burra: A neglected chronicler of 20th century society
Cornish Clay Mines 1970
[Description: " Burra painted this piece when he was in his mid-60s, during his travels in the British countryside. It’s one of several works he made expressing his anxiety at the post-war industrialization of rural areas. Mine shafts litter the hills in the distance, and the foreground is focused on a petrol station. This ordinary scene is suffused with an ominous threat, as threatening advertising mascots look down on a man grappling with an anaconda-like petrol pump."]
Tate Britain presents the first major London retrospective in forty years of Edward Burra (1905–1976), one of Britain’s most enigmatic and incisive figurative artists.
Born into a middle-class family in Rye, East Sussex, and educated at Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art, Burra suffered all his life from chronic illnesses. Rheumatoid arthritis and pernicious anaemia left him unable to work in oils, yet he transformed watercolour—long considered a delicate or secondary medium—into a vehicle for radical expression. Through layering, bold pigmentation, and intricate detail, Burra achieved a richness often indistinguishable from oil, using it to conjure grotesque satire, surreal horror, and biting social critique.
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...Burra remained a solitary figure, never joining another group or political movement. He avoided public statements and interviews, expressing his opposition to militarism, authoritarianism, and bourgeois values through satire and irony rather than ideological clarity. “Nothing matters,” he once remarked—a nihilistic refrain that echoes through his later work.
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Burra’s art reveals certain objective social truths. Whatever his ideological failings and ambiguities, his paintings critique fascism, state violence, and bourgeois complicity. And in this light, he emerges not just as a chronicler of twentieth-century society but as one of its more perceptive witnesses.
7. Spanish workers and students stage national stoppages against Gaza genocide
The national stoppages and protests across Spain, called by major trade union and student federations, confirmed continued opposition to the Gaza genocide despite efforts to proclaim the success of Trump’s “peace deal”. But they were tightly controlled by the union bureaucracy which seeks to dissipate mass opposition into safe channels.
8. Germany’s Left Party cheers Trump’s murderous colonial plan for Gaza
The participation of the Left Party in the large anti-genocide demonstration in Berlin at the end of September was a deliberate deception. In reality, it supports the US-Israeli “peace plan,” which places Gaza under colonial administration, as well as Germany’s rearmament and war policy.
9. Mississippi executes Charles Ray Crawford amid nationwide execution spree
Mississippi death row inmate Charles Crawford became the third of four men scheduled to be executed over four days this week. The US is on track to carry out 43 state-sanctioned killings in 2025, the highest number in more than a decade.
10. Family files suit over immigrant postal worker who died in police custody
Last November, Kingsley Fifi Bimpong, a 50-year-old immigrant postal worker, died after Eagan, Minnesota police arrested him on false suspicion of drunk driving and left him to suffer a fatal stroke on the floor of a jail cell.
11. Texas university systems attack freedom of speech, limit discussion on gender
Two of Texas' largest university systems have ordered "audits" of gender courses as Republicans carry out agitation against "LGBTQ ideology."
12. Australian police exaggerated “antisemitic” incidents amid crackdown on opposition to Gaza genocide
The police classified pro-Palestinian protests, and even Zionist attacks on opponents of the genocide, as “antisemitism,” in a fraud that was perpetrated against the public.
13. Bangladesh garment factory fire kills at least 16 workers
A locked door blocked desperate garment workers from reaching the roof and fresh air, and most died from inhaling toxic fumes from the fire.
14. Leaders of Republican youth movement praise Hitler, joke about Holocaust in internal discussion
Following the exposure of the Telegram messages between Young Republican operatives, filled with admiration for Hitler and racial slurs, Vice President JD Vance has repeatedly defended the fascists as “kids making jokes.”
15. Accurate Energetic Systems workers raised safety concerns before fatal Tennessee explosion
Several workers warned about safety hazards before the blast at the munitions factory that killed 16 workers, in one of the worst industrial disasters in the US in decades.
16. Australia: Glencore locks out coal mining workers in New South Wales
The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International), unanimously adopted this document at its founding congress on June 13–15, 2025. It traces the central historical experiences of the working class and Marxist movement in the 20th and 21st centuries, and establishes the principled foundations for the building of the Trotskyist movement in Turkey and throughout the region.
New sections of the document will be published in coming days. Here is the latest published section of a total of 33:
31. The Socialist Equality Parties and the World Socialist Web Site
18. Demand the freedom of Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site have initiated a global campaign to demand the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk. The fight for Bogdan’s freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
