What Newsom calls an “extraordinary measure” is in fact a damning indictment of capitalist society. Workers who produce society’s wealth are unable to afford basic nutrition, while the state mobilizes troops to distribute food rations like in a war zone. The federal shutdown itself, an act of deliberate economic sabotage carried out by a far-right Congress and a White House consumed by factional warfare, is only the immediate trigger for a crisis decades in the making.
California, often touted as a beacon of progressivism, is a state of staggering inequality. Silicon Valley billionaires amass fortunes measured in hundreds of billions while 5 million residents rely on food stamps and hundreds of thousands are homeless. In this context, Newsom’s “humanitarian” deployment of the National Guard is a political maneuver designed to conceal the failure of capitalism under the banner of compassion.
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The underlying issue is not simply that millions of people rely on food assistance, but that hunger on this scale exists in the richest state of the richest country on earth. Food banks are overwhelmed even in “normal” times. The shutdown, which has halted or delayed funding for vital programs from SNAP to WIC (Women, Infants, and Children), has turned chronic poverty into acute emergency.
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Newsom and other Democratic officials present themselves as defenders of democracy, but their opposition to Trump is entirely within the framework of defending capitalist rule. The clash between state and federal authorities recalls the tensions of the Civil War era, however there is no progressive constituency among them: both sides represent the same oligarchic interests.
The use of the National Guard for hunger relief exposes the moral and political bankruptcy of American capitalism. A society that requires soldiers to distribute food is one in advanced decay.
After decades of enriching the financial aristocracy, the ruling class now confronts a population increasingly unable to survive within the existing system.
2. Trump demanding $230 million from Justice Department over past investigations
In a mafia-style shakedown, President Donald Trump is demanding that his hand-picked Justice Department appointees approve some $230 million, paid for by taxpayers, in compensation for investigations conducted during and after his first term in office. The news, first reported Tuesday by the New York Times, comes in the midst of a government shutdown that is depriving hundreds of thousands of government workers of paychecks and threatening to close down food assistance programs on which millions rely.
Such damage claims by a sitting president are unprecedented, raising glaring conflict of interest issues. In Trump’s case they are compounded by the fact that the Department of Justice officials tasked with ruling on his demands, known as administrative claims, are Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former personal defense lawyer, and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr., who represented Trump’s co-defendant in one of the cases for which Trump is demanding compensation.
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Trump has lodged two administrative claims. The first, submitted in late 2023, seeks damages over the FBI and special counsel investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible connections to the Trump campaign. The second complaint, filed in the summer of 2024, accuses the FBI of violating Trump’s privacy by searching his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 for classified documents. It also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in charging him with mishandling classified records after he left office.
Administrative claims are submitted first to the Justice Department to see if a settlement can be reached. If the DOJ rejects such a claim or declines to act on it, the claimant can then sue in court. “Still, that is an unlikely outcome in this instance,” the Times wrote, “given that Trump is already negotiating, in essence, with his subordinates.”
Deputy Attorney General Blanche said at his confirmation hearing in February that his attorney-client relationship with the president continued. He represented Trump in both the classified documents case and the case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith over Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump’s fascist supporters.
Associate Attorney General Woodward, who heads the DOJ’s civil division, represented Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta, in the classified documents case. He has also represented a number of other Trump aides, including current FBI Director Kash Patel, in investigations related to Trump or the January 6 insurrection.
If and when a cash settlement of Trump’s claims is awarded, neither the Justice Department nor the White House is under any legal requirement to inform the public.
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Trump’s effort to extort $230 million from the Justice Department is only the latest example of his utterly corrupt use of the presidency for self-enrichment. Trump’s family launched a $TRUMP cryptocurrency memecoin before his 2025 inauguration that netted hundreds of millions of dollars. He and his allies also profited from stock sales in Truth Social, his publicly traded social media firm, which spiked following policy favors to investors. Trump accepted luxury assets while in office, including a $500 million aircraft provided by Qatari interests for display in his planned presidential museum.
Various Democratic lawmakers have denounced Trump’s demand for $230 million in taxpayer money as a “shakedown” and “self-dealing,” but, as always, they propose nothing, not even impeachment proceedings, to stop it.
3. Unifor pushes nationalist poison as Stellantis and GM cut Canadian auto jobs
The response of the Canadian union Unifor to last week’s announcement by transnational auto company Stellantis that it will move production of the new Jeep Compass model—initially slated for its Brampton, Ontario assembly plant—to one of its US facilities further exposes the utter bankruptcy of the union’s reactionary nationalist policies that have steadily decimated the living standards of autoworkers for decades.
The 3,200 assembly workers at the Brampton plant, along with thousands more in the auto parts and supplier network, have been on layoff since early 2024. They were told to expect about an 18-month shutdown while the plant was retooled for the next-generation Jeep Compass. But in February 2025, Stellantis announced that due to “today’s dynamic environment,” retooling would be indefinitely “paused.” The company, which pocketed hundreds of millions in government subsidies, had been contractually obligated to reopen the facility and had floated a mid-2026 restart. Now, even that estimate has been shelved.
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What has been the response of Unifor and the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney? Aside from perfunctory statements of “disappointment,” Unifor President Lana Payne—an enthusiastic backer of the Liberals and “Team Canada”—called on Carney to use Canada’s “leverage” to enforce Stellantis’ contractual obligations. Vito Beato, president of Unifor Local 1285 in Brampton and a supporter of right-wing Ontario Premier Doug Ford, denounced the company’s “impersonal” robocall to workers announcing the decision. Federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly floated vague threats of legal action, while Carney assured reporters that Stellantis might consider “a different model” for Brampton after the conclusion of USMCA (US-Canada-Mexico trade pact) negotiations. He even suggested some Brampton workers could “relocate” to Stellantis’ Windsor, Ontario assembly plant—four hours away—to fill vacancies there, with plans for a third shift to resume in 2026 after years of reduced operation and long-term layoffs.
For Unifor, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), and the entire corporate-political establishment, tariffs are acceptable only when wielded on behalf of Canadian capital. “We cannot surrender the future of EV production to overseas automakers,” Payne recently insisted. A 100 percent tariff on lower-priced and better engineered Chinese EVs and 25 percent duties on Chinese steel and aluminum are thus defended as patriotic “industrial strategy.” The tariffs on China dovetail with a Trump-Carney agreement to weaken China while massively increasing military expenditures for a future war.
In a particularly bombastic statement, Payne remarked, “We can’t allow Trump to pit province against province, sector against sector and worker against worker. We need to stand together and hold the company accountable.” What balderdash! The entire approach to the union’s relations with the auto bosses has been an unabashed embrace of pitting Canadian workers against their counterparts in the American and Mexican auto industry. That nationalist policy, entrenched in the 1985 split of the continent-wide United Auto Workers (UAW) into competing Canadian and American contingents, remains the centerpiece of the auto unions on both sides of the border.
The decision in 1985 to abandon any fight against concessions within the UAW and split the unity of North American autoworkers opened the way not just for a whole wave of further concessions in the US. It enabled the Big Three auto companies to increasingly pit Canadian and American workers against each other in a series of “whipsaw” threats to close plants and cut wages....
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The wave of nationalism and corporatism unleashed by the split is not “ancient history.” In 2023, when for the first time in many decades autoworkers faced nearly simultaneous contract expirations, Unifor officials worked overtime to keep Canadian workers separate from their colleagues at the Detroit Three in the United States. In the United States the UAW also pursued their own nationalist-corporatist perspective....
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Unifor’s agitation for trade-war reprisals and “Canadian-first” investment incentives is the political mirror of the Carney government’s wooing of Trump. Both represent the same class policy: to protect capitalist profits through tariffs and militarism at the expense of the living standards of the working class. Canadian nationalism is not a defence of workers but a mechanism for subordinating them to the interests of “their own” ruling class.
Workers have no interest in backing either the “elbows up” rhetoric espoused by both the Conservatives’ Pierre Poilievre and the nationalists of the so-called “left.” Nor can any store be laid in Carney’s growing “elbows down” approach to relations with the Trump administration. Whatever Carney does, whether he is supporting the European imperialist powers’ efforts to expand the war against Russia in Ukraine or seeking to negotiate a “new economic and security” deal with the fascist Trump, he is seeking to advance the interests of Canadian imperialism.
Workers cannot fight Trump and all he represents except on the basis of a class struggle program in opposition to all factions of the Canadian bourgeoisie and by forging fighting unity with the working class in the US. Indeed, workers, whether across North America or internationally, cannot defend their jobs and livelihoods amid an unfolding global trade war—one moreover that is part of a developing imperialist world war—by lining up with their “own” ruling class.
The working class in the deeply integrated markets of the United States, Canada and Mexico must chart their own common independent course.
4. Workers threatened with hunger as Trump’s class war shutdown continues
With the US government shutdown entering its third week, the second-longest in history, its impact on the American working class is intensifying. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, is expected to run out of funding as soon as next week, according to press reports.
A memo dated October 10 from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to state governments stated that while funding is sufficient to sustain the program through October, “there will be insufficient funds to pay full November SNAP benefits for approximately 42 million individuals across the nation.” SNAP is jointly administered by the federal and state governments.
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About one in eight Americans rely on food stamps, yet even with this assistance, roughly one in seven were still food insecure in 2023, according to Feeding America. If the program runs out of funding next month, it would trigger a rapid spread of hunger across the country.
SNAP has a contingency fund of $6 billion, according to CNN, but benefits for next month are projected to cost $8 billion. Even a 50 percent reduction in funding would require food banks to quadruple their output to meet the shortfall, Craig Rice, CEO of the Manna Food Center in Maryland, told NBC News.
On Tuesday, hundreds of federal workers lined up at a food pantry, after having gone three weeks without pay. “I’m overwhelmed by the line,” Pastor Oliver Carter, organizer of the event, told CNN. “I didn’t think we were going to have this many federal employees.” One worker from the Social Security Administration told the channel: “You always thought that getting a government job or you know, a federal job, that that’s security, and it’s not.”
The misery unleashed by the shutdown is by design. The Trump White House is using the crisis to slash funding, illegally fire thousands of workers and either eliminate social programs outright or render them inoperative.
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Even without the shutdown, many food stamp recipients were already set to lose benefits due to tighter work requirements, reduced parental exemptions and the elimination of provisions for veterans and the homeless. The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” passed over the summer, included more than $180 billion in cuts to food stamps. According to the Urban Institute, 22.3 million US families would lose some or all of their benefits under the changes. These cuts accompany roughly $800 billion slashed from Medicaid, measures designed to help finance $3 trillion in tax cuts and a massive $300 billion increase in military spending.
Meanwhile, Trump is spending almost $300 million to remodel the White House to add a gilded banquet hall to receive billionaire guests and other luminaries. The entire East Wing, previously the most publicly accessible part of the White House, is to be razed as part of the redesign.
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The ruling class is preparing for social unrest over the impact of the cuts. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has postured as an opponent of Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles, has announced that he is deploying the California National Guard to food banks across the state in a so-called “humanitarian” mission.
Other programs are also on the brink as the shutdown drags on. Tens of thousands of preschool children across 134 local Head Start programs will be affected if federal funding is not restored by November 1. According to the Associated Press, six programs have already missed their October funding disbursements.
Air traffic controllers (ATCs), who are being forced to work during the shutdown, are set to receive their first zero dollar “paycheck” next week, according to the union. ATCs are already massively overworked and dealing with aging equipment, which led to several near-disasters earlier this year. Staffing shortages and call-ins have contributed to dozens of flights being canceled during the shutdown.
Federal contractors will not receive back pay in many cases, and small businesses are being impacted by delays in green card and visa processing for foreign workers.
The New York Times also noted the potentially significant impact of the shutdown on credit markets, including the availability of affordable federal loans for the agricultural industry, which is already reeling from Trump’s tariffs. “For farms and small businesses, October is a critical month for borrowing money,” the paper wrote. “Some are paying their taxes, having gotten a six-month extension from the spring. Others are trying to stock up on inventory, or purchase equipment for the upcoming planting season.”
Extreme-right Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who played a major role in the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, has introduced bills to divert unspecified funding to food stamps and farm programs, claiming this will “hold Democrats’ feet to the fire.” This is political theatrics and the height of hypocrisy, given the Trump administration’s policy of social counterrevolution.
But the Democrats are deliberately downplaying the dangers. Rather than warning of Trump’s fascist program or doing any anything to oppose it, they have spent the shutdown issuing groveling appeals for Trump to “negotiate.” At Saturday’s “No Kings” protests, which drew an estimated 7 million people, Democratic politicians avoided any mention of fascism and urged attendees to place their faith in the courts—where Trump commands a 6–3 majority on the Supreme Court—and in next year’s midterm elections, which may very well never take place.
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The role of the trade union bureaucrats has been to block any organized opposition in the working class. Nowhere is this clearer than among federal workers, tens of thousands of whom are being laid off or forced to work without pay. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and other public sector unions have refused to call any strikes or even organize demonstrations, limiting their response to token legal appeals and hollow press statements while their members are driven into destitution.
The suppression of struggle by the union apparatus serves to give the Trump administration a free hand as it carries out its class war offensive. But this is exactly what must be opposed and overturned. As the Socialist Equality Party explained in a statement Tuesday:
The working class has not yet intervened as an organized force, with its own program. This must change. The central target of all the Trump administration’s actions is the working class. It is workers who are being thrown into unemployment by the mass firing of federal employees, who face the destruction of vital social programs, and who will suffer from the elimination of the Department of Education and the escalating attacks on teachers …
… There is a growing mood of social opposition and protest throughout the United States and internationally. The task now is not to wait passively for the next demonstration but to use this opposition as a lever in the fight for a movement of the working class for socialism.
5. Eddington: Lost in the desert
2020 was a year of explosive social, economic and political turmoil. It encompassed the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the beginnings of the ruling elite’s criminal policy of malign neglect and mass infection, the multi-trillion dollar Wall Street bailout, the global protest movement against police violence in response to the murder of George Floyd and the Trump-Republican conspiracy to overturn the 2020 US presidential election and establish a presidential dictatorship, culminating in the fascist coup of January 6, 2021.
A filmmaker seeking to dramatize the explosive political climate would be faced with significant artistic challenges, but also major opportunities. A serious examination of 2020’s interconnected crises would present the chance to cut through many falsehoods and set out the truth as honestly as possible. But, surely, to dramatize the complex situation in the US at the time meaningfully would involve some attempt to grasp the overall social dynamics at work—or to offer an artist’s intuitive feeling for them.
Unfortunately, Eddington has no such approach. It is chiefly characterized by confusion, cynicism and a misanthropic attitude toward society at large.
6. The Frankfurt Book Fair—in the service of the war against Russia
The Frankfurt Book Fair, held October 15–19, was dominated by Germany’s war policy against Russia. As a team from the World Socialist Web Site observed, this provoked considerable disapproval among visitors.
As in previous years since 2022, Russian publishers were excluded from the fair. Ukraine, by contrast, was given extensive space. Financially supported by the German federal government and the City of Frankfurt, the Ukrainian exhibition even had its own stage. There, both Wolfram Weimar (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), minister of state for culture in the Federal Chancellery, Bundestag (parliament) President Julia Klöckner (CDU) and former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made appearances. According to reports from one visitor, Ukrainian soldiers even appeared on stage in full uniform.
Weimar’s predecessor, Claudia Roth (Greens), announced funding of €900,000 for a German-Ukrainian book project. What such funding promotes could be seen clearly at the Ukrainian stands, which featured right-wing war propaganda and literature glorifying Stepan Bandera, the central figure of Ukrainian fascism.
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This year’s Peace Prize of the German Book Trade was awarded to Eastern European historian and right-wing propagandist Karl Schlögel, a vocal advocate of rearmament and of achieving a military victory over Russia. Throughout the week, Schlögel dominated the media and numerous events with his mantra that Ukrainian soldiers were “heroes” who were “teaching Europeans what lies ahead of them.”
The WSWS team had previously drawn attention to the case of the imprisoned Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk with posters outside the book fair and distributed an article criticising the awarding of the “Peace Prize” to the warmonger Schlögel.
In his acceptance speech for the €25,000 award, Schlögel lived up to these expectations, delivering a warmongering speech that portrayed the military defeat of Russia as Europe’s “destiny.” Like many former Maoists who made careers in Germany—he was a leading member of the Maoist Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1972 to 1980, which glorified Stalin and branded the “social-imperialist” Soviet Union as the “main enemy”—Schlögel has become a fervent supporter of the rebirth of German imperialism.
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The much-traveled historian, who places great value in his books on personal observation, seems not to have noticed the gigantic monuments to Stepan Bandera and other Nazi collaborators now glorified throughout Ukraine—or, more likely, he agrees with this glorification. After all, 10 years ago he vehemently defended his fellow historian Jörg Baberowski, who had claimed that Hitler “was not cruel.”
In an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau, Schlögel had already spoken in favor of deploying Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) troops in Ukraine—even against the will of the German population. Asked by the reporter whether “the deployment of German soldiers in Ukraine would be legitimate to secure peace,” Schlögel replied, “Yes. But it will trigger a fierce controversy in Germany.”
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The World Socialist Web Site team had a very different experience outside the fair. Several visitors who initially hurried past turned back to take leaflets once they realized that they were about the struggle against war and militarist propaganda.
Many expressed their concern about the danger of a new large-scale war and spoke out against the reintroduction of conscription currently under discussion in Berlin. “They even want to use a lottery system to force young people into the army. I find that so appalling,” said one visitor. On the same day, the office of the German Peace Society–United War Resisters (DFG-VK) reported that its counseling services were being “positively flooded”: visits to its homepage had risen from 24,000 in May to 125,000 in September.
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Hans, a World Socialist Web Site reader who helped distribute the flyers, said, “That phrase has never been true in the 20th century—and today, with nuclear weapons, I can’t even find words for it. We all know from history that it has never worked; on the contrary.”
Regina from Heidelberg added, “There’s that saying, ‘The rich bring the weapons, and the poor bring the corpses.’ That’s exactly it. It’s pure profit-making. We all have grandparents or uncles who died or came back crippled from war. The trauma still runs through families—there were two world wars.”
A young woman named Jana, who works professionally with the deaf and hearing-impaired, said, “I’m in my early thirties, and I’m deeply worried about the future. I always hoped that Germany, of all countries, had learned something from history, but apparently that’s not the case.” Her parents had always opposed war on principle. “They were also against this terrible rearmament—because history shows that wars always claim innocent victims.”
Jana bought the book The Logic of Zionism: From Nationalist Myth to the Gaza Genocide. She stressed that the current Gaza war showed the utter senselessness of such violence. “They’re saying there’s a bit of a pause now—after two years of bloodshed! But what about all the people who were killed? What about them? Does none of that matter anymore?”
Jana said she believed “war only ever leads to more hatred and extremism.” She recalled a statement by US President Biden about the Ukraine war: “Biden once said, ‘In Ukraine, we will fight to the last Ukrainian soldier.’ And I thought to myself—it’s not his children or his compatriots who are the cannon fodder. What right do they have to make such decisions? It’s always about economic interests. It’s terrible. They talk about human rights, but under capitalism they make money from war and weapons—at whose expense?”
7. Gaza “peace” deal exposed as cover for genocide and ethnic cleansing
On October 9, Hamas and Israel signed a “peace” agreement involving the release of all remaining Israeli hostages and the permanent occupation of Gaza by Israel. The agreement, spearheaded by US President Trump, was hailed by all factions of the US and European imperialism, along with the capitalist regimes in the Middle East, without exception, as a step toward “peace.”
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In contrast to the ridiculous claims that Trump, a genocidal warmonger and would-be dictator, is seeking “peace” in the Middle East, the World Socialist Web Site explained that the agreement “creates an imperialist protectorate that tramples on the rights of the Palestinians and strengthens American control over the energy-rich Middle East.”
Nearly two weeks since the signing of the agreement, the correctness of this assessment is undeniable. The “peace” agreement has sanctified the permanent Israeli occupation and annexation of a large portion of Gaza, coupled with daily mass killing and the deliberate starvation of the population.
The absurd lie that “peace” has been achieved has allowed the US and international media to once again stop reporting on the genocide, despite the fact that Israel is still occupying, killing and starving the people of Gaza.
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The Israeli annexation of portions of Gaza is to be accompanied, within the framework of the agreement, by an openly colonial arrangement for the government of Gaza. Under the proposal, Gaza is to be governed by a “Board of Peace” that will be “headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump” and include “former [UK] Prime Minister Tony Blair.”
This arrangement is a flagrant violation of international law, trampling underfoot the internationally recognized right of all people to self-determination.
The “peace” deal in Gaza has furthered the conditions for Israel to move forward with the annexation of the West Bank. This week, Israeli lawmakers voted 25-24 to advance a bill declaring that “the laws, judicial system, administration, and sovereignty of the State of Israel shall apply to all areas of settlement in Judea and Samaria.”
The fraud of the Gaza agreement carries far-reaching lessons for workers and young people fighting to stop the Gaza genocide and oppose imperialist war and neo-colonialism. Every government and political tendency that supports or excuses this crime—whether in Tel Aviv, Washington or the capitals in the Middle East—stands exposed as an enemy of the working class. They have given their stamp of approval to an agreement that makes permanent the colonial subjugation of the Palestinian masses and gives a fig leaf of legality to the ongoing genocide.
After two years of mass killing, all protests directed at pressuring the US or European political establishment into opposing the genocide have shown themselves to be totally ineffective.
The only way to stop the ongoing genocide is to build a mass movement of workers and young people against war based on a socialist perspective.
8. Peru’s new president brutally represses mass protest, leaving one dead and 100 wounded
Repression unleashed against a massive mobilization opposing the recently installed government of José Jerí in Perú resulted in one person killed by the police, one in a coma and over 100 injured (including 11 journalists). Jerí, a 38-year-old lawyer who was elected as a congressman for the Somos Perú party, ascended to the presidency through constitutional succession after serving as the president of Congress. He replaced then-President Dina Boluarte who was removed overnight on October 10th. He is the eighth Peruvian president in less than a decade.
The tragic toll from the October 15 demonstration bears a grim resemblance to the killing of 49 civilians who mobilized to protest the parliamentary coup that removed the pseudo-left nationalist president Pedro Castillo, which led to his vice president, Boluarte, ascending to power.
Then, as now, the repression was not about defending “order and social peace” but about sending a message to imperialism and the multinationals operating in the country that the new government would defend capitalism and guarantee the profits extracted from the exploitation of Peruvian workers.
The reaction of the newly installed President Jerí to the bloodshed in the streets of Lima was to solidarize himself with the Peruvian National Police (PNP) and declare a state of emergency in Lima and the neighboring port city of Callao. Presented as an anti-crime measure, the decree is clearly aimed at suppressing popular opposition. It suspends basic democratic rights and places the two cities under the control of the PNP and the Armed Forces.
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Boluarte’s removal, far from representing any concession to the overwhelming hostility that made her the least popular president in Peruvian history, was driven in large part by the jockeying by different right-wing factions in preparation for elections five months from now.
The October 15 mobilization was primarily called by youth collectives attempting to emulate the “Generation Z” protests that have overthrown governments elsewhere in the world. Transport unions, which had conducted blockades and strikes in recent months to ask the government to address the wave of extortion and violence they suffer, largely decided to abstain from the mobilization.
The General Confederation of Workers of Perú (CGTP) declared its support and participation, stating that Jerí's ascension “only represents a change of figures” and criticized his vote for laws that weakened the justice system and favored organized crime. However, the CGTP and other union confederations have for decades opposed any attempt to confront the decline in workers' living and labor standards—the real reason behind the increase in crime and violence—by mobilizing the working class and uniting their struggles.
The union affiliation rate in Perú is one of the lowest in the region, with a general figure of barely 8 percent of salaried workers, and around 5 percent in the formal private sector. For the so-called “Generation Z,” major struggles by the union and mass affiliation to them ceased to exist years before they were born.
9. Chancellor Merz plans to establish the “Tank Republic of Germany”
In a detailed interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung last weekend, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democrats, CDU) outlined the ruling class’s program of war and great-power politics. According to Merz, Germany must build “the strongest conventional army in Europe,” exceed NATO targets and prepare for a period in which “the law of the strongest” will once again apply. The era of a “rules-based order based on international law” is over, he said, adding that what matters now is “strength.”
These statements are nothing less than an open declaration for war and unrestrained rearmament. Merz called for Germany to once again become the dominant military power on the continent—if necessary, independently of Washington. Although he emphasized that he wants to maintain the nuclear alliance with the US, which grants Germany the ability to participate jointly with the US in firing nuclear weapons, he then explained that, due to growing transatlantic tensions, a joint European alliance with France on nuclear weapons could also be necessary in the future.
In the same breath, he did not explicitly rule out Germany’s own nuclear armament should nuclear cooperation with France not materialize. He merely stated that the time is not yet ripe for such a discussion and pointed out that at least two treaties—the Two Plus Four Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—actually “preclude” this path. When pressed by the F.A.Z. that “the largest country in the European Union will not be able to avoid an honest discussion on this issue at some point,” he replied: “The time is not ripe for that. My concern now is conventional defense.”
This statement is a warning: the federal government is first massively upgrading its conventional weapons and, when the time is “right,” will not shy away from nuclear armament. Provocative comments calling for a “German bomb” appear repeatedly in the mainstream media. In August, the Handelsblatt noted in an article headlined “Strange ... must we learn to love the bomb?”: “The technology is not the problem. The decision for or against a European and, ultimately, German nuclear force is a political one.”
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The parallels with the war economy of the 1930s are particularly striking. Then, as now, the state provides contracts, directs capital, controls the workforce and justifies everything on the grounds of national “necessity.” Under the Nazi Four-Year Plan, industry, the financial system, and the labor market were completely placed at the service of war preparations. Today, this is happening under a nominally “democratic” façade, but with the same economic mechanisms: state control, monopoly formation, export offensives and ideological mobilization.
The thrust of German imperialism is also the same as under Hitler. Eighty years after the crimes of the Wehrmacht and the SS, the German ruling class is once again preparing a war of aggression in the East. Under the pretext of “defending democracy,” Berlin is once again pursuing the same great power goals that have already led Europe to ruin twice: supremacy on the continent, control over Ukraine and all of Eastern Europe, and ultimately the subjugation of Russia.
Added to this is the pursuit of imperialist interests in other regions of the world through brute military force. Merz’s complaint that Europeans do not have “bunker-busting weapons” to stop Iran’s nuclear program, or the means to “disarm” Hamas, sums up the logic: a German-led Europe must be capable of military intervention and war to assert its geostrategic and economic interests.
10. Trump administration escalates ICE raids following “No Kings” protests
In the days since an estimated 7 million people protested across the country against the the attacks on democratic rights and threat of dictatorship by the Trump administration, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched new raids and major kidnapping operations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and in Wilder, Idaho.
Using aggressive and dangerous tactics, including indiscriminate sweeps and the deployment of military-style force against immigrant communities, the latest ICE actions are part of the Trump administration’s escalation of arrests, detention and mass deportations. These measures are also being intertwined with the mobilization of the National Guard to suppress public opposition to the assault on immigrants.
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In an incident in Chicago reported by Yahoo News on Tuesday, Illinois State Representative Hoan Huynh—a Democrat and Vietnamese American candidate for Congress—was surrounded by armed Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers after he attempted to observe suspected ICE activity in the city’s Albany Park neighborhood.
Huynh recounted that six agents blocked his vehicle and at one point an officer pointed a firearm directly at him and threatened to bash in the passenger window. DHS attempted to justify the confrontation, claiming that Huynh had tried “to disrupt operations.” Huynh said the intimidation was “violent federal bullying meant to silence public oversight.”
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In a series of statements, DHS and ICE officials have defended their unconstitutional operations. [DHS spokeswoman Tricia ] McLaughlin told reporters after the Idaho and Los Angeles raids that federal law enforcement “continues to dismantle criminal networks within U.S. borders” under the direction of Trump and [Homeland Security Secretary Kristi] Noem.
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Immigrant rights groups have denounced the latest escalation. Activists with No Kings Chicago have organized daily vigils outside ICE processing centers and issued a statement that reads: “These raids are acts of terror. Families are disappearing overnight. The government treats our neighborhoods like occupied territory.”
As demonstrations have spread in response to the raids in every area, the Trump administration has invoked extraordinary powers to suppress the opposition. The administration received court authorization this week to deploy the Oregon National Guard to Portland, where anti‑ICE protests have intensified.
In a divided 2-1 decision issued on October 19, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit asserted that Trump’s claim of threats to “federal personnel and property” in Portland constituted a legitimate basis for invoking emergency powers, even if he exaggerated the events. The court agreed with Trump’s Justice Department that the mobilization was necessary “to restore order against anarchist elements interfering with federal operations.”
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The recent ICE raids have coincided with stepped‑up National Guard mobilizations across several states, justified under the pretext of “domestic stability operations,” increasingly backed by court approval.
The domestic militarization and crackdown are being carried out in parallel with the administration’s war policies abroad. President Trump’s ongoing military mobilizations in the Middle East, Asia and the Caribbean against the enemies of US imperialism are combined with deployments on US soil portraying domestic dissenters as internal enemies.
The bringing together of the unconstitutional and indiscriminate ICE dragnets against immigrants and the military tactics against protesters is central to the implementation of dictatorial rule under the Trump administration’s second term.
The latest raids and mobilization of the National Guard are part of the implementation of police state measures, as part of Trump’s coordinated political offensive aimed at terrorizing immigrant workers and normalizing mass repression. The brutality on Canal Street, the tear gas in Chicago, the shootings in Los Angeles and the military‑style assault in Idaho all form part of a unified strategy to criminalize poverty and dissent.
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At the No Kings protests on Saturday, while masses of people made it clear that they are opposed to Trump’s dictatorial agenda, the Democrats on the platform focused on the need for Trump and the Republicans to work with them in a bipartisan manner while studiously avoiding any discussion of the imminent danger of a fascist dictatorship or what should be done to stop it. This is because the Democratic Party is a capitalist party beholden to the same corporate and financial interests supporting Trump’s authoritarianism.
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To defeat the fascist threat and defend democratic rights, workers and young people across the US must break with the Democratic Party and build rank-and-file committees in the factories, neighborhoods and schools as part of a mass socialist movement to bring down the Trump government.
In an extended interview Monday on Pod Save America with Tommy Vietor, Barack Obama’s former National Security Spokesman, Graham Platner—the Bernie Sanders–backed Democratic Senate candidate from Maine—revealed that he had a Totenkopf (“Death’s Head”) tattoo on his chest, which he received nearly 20 years ago during his third deployment as an infantryman in the United States Marine Corps.
After stating “I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner offered the unconvincing claim that he was “very inebriated” when, as a young Marine on liberty in Split, Croatia, he and his comrades “chose a terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall.” Revealing the normalization of fascist imagery within the US military Platner added, “skulls and crossbones are pretty standard military uh military thing.”
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Since the end of World War II, neo-Nazis around the world, including groups like Atomwaffen, have continued to brandish the symbol to signify their hatred of Jewish people and loyalty to Hitler and fascism.
Platner claimed that neither he nor anyone else he interacted with since getting the tattoo in 2007 raised this history or confronted him over it. He tried to sanitize the matter by invoking his background checks in the military and US State Department: “In the nearly twenty years since, this hasn’t come up… I enlisted in the Army… passed a full background check to join the Ambassador to Afghanistan’s security detail.”
That such iconography could circulate for years within the US military and diplomatic-security apparatus underscores what the World Socialist Web Site reported six years ago in “Neo-Nazi networks exposed across US military”: fascist and white-supremacist currents have been cultivated inside the armed forces.
Following the interview, Platner’s former political director, Genevieve McDonald, posted on her personal Facebook account, “Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff.” McDonald added, “he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”
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Despite apparently knowing since at least 2012 that he had Nazi imagery on his body, Platner did not seek to remove or cover up the tattoo until yesterday, October 22, 2025.
Platner is one of three Democrats running for Senate in the 2026 election. Earlier this month, Maine Governor Janet Mills, 77, the favorite of the party establishment, announced her candidacy, joining Platner and former congressional staffer Jordan Wood. Last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer endorsed Mills, calling her the “best candidate to retire Susan Collins,” the Republican senator.
Sanders and other pseudo-left elements are trying to sell Platner as a “progressive” and “working class” outsider. In reality, like Dan Osborn, the Sanders-backed 2024 “independent” Nebraska Senate candidate, Platner is a right-wing soldier for imperialism whose adult life tracks the arc of Washington’s colonial wars.
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It should be noted that Platner felt compelled to reveal his Nazi tattoo only after he received information that his Democratic opponents in the primary were planning to reveal it themselves. Last week, Platner sought to contain the fallout from Reddit posts surfaced by his opponents in which Platner described himself as a “communist” and “socialist.”
In an interview with CNN last Tuesday, Platner repudiated any association with left-wing politics. He said, “I’m not a communist. I’m not a socialist. I own a small business. I’m a Marine Corps veteran.”
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Platner’s Nazi tattoo and record of killing for US imperialism has not prevented Sanders, the phony socialist from Vermont, from continuing to back him. On October 21, Sanders angrily defended the ex-Marine, saying “I personally think he is an excellent candidate and will support him, and I look forward to him becoming the next senator from Maine.”
Pressed about the Nazi tattoo, Sanders waved away the issue as the product of “the corrupt campaign-finance system,” adding, “We don’t have enough candidates in this country that will take on the powers that be and fight for the working class.”
This grotesque invocation of the “working class” to defend Planter exposes the political role of Sanders and the Democratic Socialists of America. Their task is not to fight fascism and inequality, but to channel mass social opposition to war and the financial oligarchy back into the Democratic Party.
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In an interview on the YouTube show Breaking Points Thursday, California Representative Ro Khanna likewise reaffirmed his support, characterizing Platner as a “working class candidate,” while dismissing the revelations as “politics of personal destruction.” Both Khanna and Sanders support the U.S.-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, a campaign waged in alliance with fascist units such as the Azov Battalion inside the Zelensky government. Their defense of Platner—a US veteran flaunting Nazi imagery—is fully consistent with their imperialist politics.
Joining this reactionary phalanx is the United Auto Workers bureaucracy, which formally endorsed Platner’s Senate campaign last week. In the press release, UAW President Shawn Fain proclaimed Planter has “chosen to stand with the working class.”
Fain’s praise for Platner’s supposed “stand with the working class” is a fraud. The UAW apparatus, which suppresses strikes and collaborates with management, is itself a key component of the nationalist structure that defends capitalist property relations and US imperialism.
12. New far-right prime minister installed in Japan
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The establishment media both in Japan and abroad have hailed the fact that Takaichi is the first woman to become the country’s prime minister, claiming there is a progressive quality to her administration. This serves to distract from Takaichi’s far-right-wing record as well as the upcoming attacks on the working class that are being prepared.
Furthermore, Takaichi’s elevation to power was a highly anti-democratic process. The broad population had no say in her election as LDP president nor in electing her to be prime minister. She was selected by the highest levels of the state as the bourgeois parties hashed out behind the scenes who would become prime minister.
Takaichi represents the far right of what is already a right-wing party. She is a prominent member of the ultra-nationalist organization Nippon Kaigi. The group promotes historical revisionism and remilitarization and calls for so-called “patriotic” education, or in other words, education that whitewashes and minimizes the war crimes of Japanese imperialism in the 20th century. It also advocates abolishing democratic rights for the working class while opposing gender equality for women.
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Takaichi is not planning to simply continue the agenda of her predecessors, but in alliance with [the right wing coalition party] Ishin has already pledged to rapidly accelerate war planning and remilitarization in line with the demands of the Japanese ruling class and the Trump administration in Washington.
13. Australian Labor government appeases financial elite on superannuation tax
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government performed a revealing backflip last week on its election promises to increase the low tax level, from 15 percent to 30 percent, on earnings from assets worth more than $3 million held in superannuation funds.
Under the Labor government’s latest proposal, its changes—still to be detailed—will be delayed for 12 months until July 2026, giving the rich more time to rearrange their investments to avoid any impact.
The compulsory superannuation system set up by the Hawke-Keating Labor government in 1992, which deducts payments from workers in place of wage rises, has funnelled trillions of dollars into the financial markets. It has also become a lucrative tax rort for the most affluent layers of society, as the 15 percent tax on superannuation is well below the top income tax rate of 47 percent.
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In his announcement last week, Chalmers declared: “Labor built our superannuation system and we’re making it even stronger, fairer and more sustainable.” In reality, the compulsory superannuation system set up by Labor was always a means of cutting government spending on pensions, a tax rort [scam] for the wealthy and a huge boost for the financial markets. Many of the super funds are compulsory “industry” funds, jointly run by employers and trade union bureaucrats.
At the same time, because of inadequate lifetime superannuation balances and miserable aged pension payments, 22.6 percent of retirees now live in poverty—a proportion that has nearly doubled over the past decade, according to an Australia Institute study.
Under the Labor government, as elsewhere around the world, millions of people are being impoverished while billionaire wealth continues to soar, social programs are cut and vast sums are funneled into the military amid preparations for war.
14. An open letter from the Socialist Equality Party (UK) to supporters of Corbyn’s Your Party
Millions of workers and young people are looking for a way to fight austerity, genocide, escalating global imperialist war, the rise of the far-right, climate catastrophe and the assault on democratic rights. Hundreds of thousands recognise the need for a political break from the Labour Party and for a new mass party of the working class to fight for socialism.
Your Party is not that party.
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Your Party’s “broad principles” are suspended in thin air, outside of time and place. There is not a single reference to any of the concrete political events and experiences worldwide or in Britain which make necessary and urgent a mass socialist and internationalist party of the working class.
Trump’s efforts to erect a fascist dictatorship in the United States, the promotion of far-right parties across Europe, and the worldwide eruption of imperialist military violence, including Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinians to forge Trump’s “New Middle East”, point to the violent reality of capitalism: a ruling class that will stop at nothing to defend its wealth and power against foreign rivals and against the working class at home.
Your Party’s documents make no reference to history. Corbyn offers no explanation for the transformation of the 125-year-old Labour Party into a ruthless instrument for Thatcherite and far-right policies. None of the major struggles of the working class in Britain or internationally are reviewed. Your Party claims to be socialist yet has nothing to say about the Russian Revolution, or the fight by Leon Trotsky against its betrayal by the Stalinist bureaucracy. No lessons are drawn, even from the past decade. This would expose Your Party’s initiators, including Corbyn himself, and their international allies’ (Bernie Sanders in the US, Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France and Yanis Varoufakis in Greece) betrayal of the working class.
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Yes, a mass socialist party of the working class is needed urgently. Such a party must be international, linking British workers with their class brother and sisters worldwide; it must be based on the political independence of the working class from the capitalist class and its servants in the labour and trade union bureaucracy; and it must encourage the growth of rank-and-file organisations in every workplace and neighbourhood to mobilise the working class to expropriate the wealth of the oligarchy, break the resistance of the state, and place economic and political power in the hands of the working class, the overwhelming majority of the population.
Such a party will only develop in a determined fight to develop socialist political consciousness in the working class against the reformist, pro-capitalist politics of Corbyn, Sultana and their backers in the pseudo-left. A party capable of defeating imperialism requires a leadership grounded in the lessons of history, based on the century-long struggle of the Trotskyist movement for the strategy of world socialist revolution. That party is the Socialist Equality Party, the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
Join its ranks today and help prepare the genuine mass socialist party of the working class that will be forged in the class battles ahead.
15. Oppose the persecution of anti-genocide medic Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan!
NHS FightBack calls on all health workers to demand an end to the persecution of prominent British Palestinian anti-genocide medic Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan. Dr. Aladwan was arrested at her home in Gloucesteshire at 7.30a.m. on Tuesday morning by Metropolitan Police officers.
The arrest escalates the two-year campaign against Dr. Aladwan, a National Health Service (NHS) doctor for seven years (a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon) with an impeccable record. Her persecution is being organized by the highest levels of the state, including by Labour government Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
The persecution seeks the removal of Dr. Aladwan’s medical license and is being led by the Zionist partly-government funded Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).
After being held for hours during which she was interviewed, Dr. Aladwan was released on bail Tuesday evening. She revealed that in custody, she was “Denied water for 6+ hours, Refused essential medication, Held in a freezing cell, denied a blanket”, and was “Isolated with a disabled intercom.”
Dr. Aladwan was accused of offenses including misusing a public communications network and sending malicious communications. This relates to her personal beliefs expressed in social media postings, and her political activity opposing Israel’s genocide Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. She has a large social media following of tens of thousands.
Until its proscription by the Starmer government in early July, Dr. Aladwan was a member of Palestine Action. Over 2,000 people have since been arrested under counter-terror legislation for protesting the banning of a non-violent protest group.
Dr. Aladwan’s arrest was filmed and had been viewed over 1.7 million times by Wednesday evening on the X platform. Her arrest was met with outrage. [Video included.]
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Dr. Aladwan has faced extraordinary harassment over the last two years. The Canary website reports that its journalist “was present at a protest outside Downing Street on Wednesday 15 October. NHS doctors and nurses were protesting against state repression of their freedom of speech over Israel and Palestine. As we put out on our social media, cops got violent after they arrested a doctor that was there…
“The woman [doctor] arrested was de-arrested after just eight minutes,” it stated. The Canary explains that this apparently happened because Dr. Aladwan was actually the target for arrest in a case of mistaken identity. Canary provided a photo showing that prior to the arrest the police were in discussion with two men linked with the pro-Zionist group, Stop The Hate UK. Canary commented that footage from the day “shows cops with Dr Aladwan’s name on a piece of paper, as well as instructions on the law that they were going to arrest her under”.
Dr. Aladwan was arrested just two days before she is to appear, Thursday, before an Interim Orders Tribunal (IOT), which will determine whether to impose an interim order of conditions on her registration, or an interim order of suspension.
The doctor was cleared on September 25 by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) in an investigation over her social media posts. The case against her was brought by the General Medical Council (GMC) regulator which said her fitness to practice medicine had to be investigated and demanded interim conditions be imposed or that she be suspended.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism stated on August 8 that it had “submitted a complaint to the General Medical Council (GMC) regarding social media posts on a doctor’s account.” This was one of “numerous complaints” it issued to the GMC. But these charges were thrown out by the MPTS, which said it did not believe the complaints against her were “sufficient to establish that there may be a real risk to patients” and that she had done nothing to “undermine public confidence in the medical profession.”
Dr. Aladwan’s solicitors, Rahman Lowe, stated, “The GMC presented allegations that her posts could be considered antisemitic, supportive of terrorism, or otherwise damaging to public trust in the profession. However, Dr Aladwan, represented by Barrister Tom Gillie of Matrix Chambers and Rahman Lowe Partner, Zillur Rahman, argued that her posts were a legitimate exercise of free speech, consistent with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”
While cleared, Dr. Aladwan is still not free to practice and remains under investigation. This is due to the extraordinary intervention of a government led by Keir Starmer, who describes himself as a “Zionist without qualification”.
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To date the British Medical Association, the main doctors’ union, has not even made a statement on Dr. Aladwan’s state sanctioned persecution.
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On October 20, Dr. Aladwan published leaks from the GMC [General Medical Council regulator] showing, in her words, that the GMC “seeks my suspension for being ‘unrepentant’.” She added, “The first tribunal found no need for any order. Now, the GMC demands suspension because I refused to ‘moderate’ speech that was already deemed acceptable. This is not about safety. It’s about punishment. They are explicitly seeking what the ‘Israeli’ lobby demanded: my removal from practice for my political views. This is the weaponization of medical regulation. This is political persecution.”
Andre Damon is a brilliant frequent contributor of reports and perspectives to readers of the World Socialist Web Site. In this video he delivers the first part of a two-part lecture on the topic, “How the GPU Murdered Trotsky”. Text of the lecture is found within the article.
Included in the lecture is a focus on the insidious actions of the GPU agent, Mark Zborowski, who retired as a "medical specialist" in San Francisco.
Here are topic articles for further study.
17. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
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.
