An important perspective from the World Socialist Web Site:
The brutal killing of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the Trump administration’s invasion of Venezuela mark a qualitative escalation in the drive toward dictatorship at home and imperialist conquest abroad. These events expose the Trump administration as a regime of fascist criminals that increasingly operates through raw force, dismisses legality as an inconvenience and regards the working population, domestically and internationally, as an enemy to be subdued.*****
Criminality abroad and dictatorship at home are inextricably linked. The oligarchy has elevated Trump because it can no longer defend its interests through legal and democratic forms. Moreover, the vast resources required to wage war for global dominance must be extracted through a frontal assault on the working class and demands ever greater repression and violence.
On January 6, 2021, Trump spearheaded a coup that sought to halt the transfer of power and overturn the Constitution. This coup is now being implemented under a second Trump administration, overseen by the sitting president of the United States.
The descent into dictatorship cannot be explained as merely the product of Trump’s personal ambitions or psychopathology. The United States is governed by a capitalist oligarchy that fuses the aristocratic outlook of monarchy and the ideological reaction of the slavocracy with the class interests of finance capital. Trump declared in an interview with the New York Times that the only limit on his power is “my own morality.” But Trump’s “morality” is that of the oligarchy, which has placed him in power and in whose interests he rules.
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During this year 2026, the American and international working class will observe the 250th anniversary of the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, a world-historical event that founded the United States and marked the beginning of a new epoch of political and social revolution.
The military struggle against British rule began in April 1775, when the colonists took up arms at Lexington and Concord. But the American Revolution did not arise as an orderly constitutional dispute conducted by a small layer of colonial notables. It occurred as a consequence of the radicalization of broad sections of the population in opposition to the increasingly oppressive actions of the British monarchy and imperial administration. As repression intensified—through arbitrary executive power, punitive economic measures, the denial of basic rights, and the use or threat of military force—the conflict drove the development of mass resistance that could no longer be contained within established political channels.
This radicalization found expression in an eruption of new forms of political self-organization. Tens of thousands of ordinary people were drawn into active political life, creating local committees, assemblies and networks of coordination that challenged imperial authority and increasingly displaced it. As the historian Richard Alan Ryerson explains: “The American Revolution mobilized tens of thousands of ordinary men in hundreds of communities, large and small, to change both the political and social order...”
Fifteen months after Lexington and Concord, delegates assembled in Philadelphia adopted a declaration drafted by 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson that proclaimed universal democratic principles as the basis of the struggle for American independence. The document includes what is arguably one of the most revolutionary sentences ever written:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
*****
The historical legacy of the American Revolution acquires burning actuality in the present. The principles proclaimed 250 years ago are being repudiated on every front. The Bill of Rights lies in tatters, and the political system is being remodeled on the basis of dictatorship. All the “grievances” against King George III outlined in the Declaration—including that he “sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people”—could serve as an indictment of the present government.
*****
Five years ago, Trump attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 elections in a fascist coup. The Biden administration treated Trump with kid gloves, and he was never held accountable for this criminal conspiracy.
During the 2024 elections, he pledged to “rule as a dictator from day one,” and the Democrats themselves described him as a “fascist.” Yet over the past year, as he systematically implemented the drive for dictatorship, the Democrats have worked tirelessly to suppress and demobilize opposition. Trump carries out criminal and unconstitutional actions without even the suggestion from the Democratic leadership that he should be removed from power.
Their priority is never the defense of democratic rights but the preservation of capitalist rule. They agree with the essential content of Trump’s agenda—militarism, austerity, corporate deregulation and the expansion of the repressive apparatus of the state. What they fear above all is not Trump’s dictatorship but the eruption of a mass movement from below that threatens the foundations of the capitalist order. To rely on the Democratic Party is to render any genuine opposition to dictatorship impossible.
*****
The events of the first week of 2026—the invasion of Venezuela and the killing of Renee Nicole Good—mark a political turning point. Protests are already developing across the country, including more than 1,000 demonstrations on Saturday. Outrage over the murder is intersecting with a broad popular opposition to war, dictatorship, inequality and the vicious persecution of immigrants.
But the aim of these demonstrations cannot be to appeal to the very gangsters orchestrating these crimes to change their policies. As the demonstrations against the Gaza genocide proved, protests that are not guided by a political strategy aimed at the mobilization of the working class are ineffective.
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The Socialist Equality Party puts forward the following demands and program for the protests against the murder of Renee Nicole Good:
- The immediate arrest and prosecution of all those responsible for the murder of Renee Nicole Good
- The withdrawal of all ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) forces from Minneapolis and every other city
- The abolition of these Gestapo agencies that terrorize immigrant communities
- The immediate release of all detainees held in ICE custody and an end to all raids, renditions and deportations
- Full legal rights and protections for all immigrant workers and their families
- The withdrawal of all troops from Venezuela and the Caribbean and the dismantling of the US war machine.
- Repudiation of all support for Israel and solidarity with the Palestinian people facing an ongoing genocide.
To fight for these demands requires:
- The organized intervention of the working class—the social force that produces everything and whose interests are fundamentally opposed to the oligarchy’s assault on democratic rights and social conditions.
- The complete political and organizational independence of the working class from the Democratic Party and its collaborators and apologists.
- The recognition that the fight against war and the attack against democratic rights must be linked to a fight against the capitalist system.
- The implementation of an international strategy that recognizes the necessity to connect the struggles of workers within the United States with those of the working class throughout the world. The fight against globally organized transnational corporations cannot be waged on a purely national basis.
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The SEP calls for the building of rank-and-file committees in every workplace, school, hospital and neighborhood. These organizations must be independent of the corporatist trade union apparatus, which functions as an arm of the state and blocks genuine resistance. They must be developed as centers of resistance, uniting all sections of the working class—in industry, logistics and transport, restaurants and fast food, social services, legal defense, education, public services, arts and culture, entertainment, medicine, healthcare, the sciences, computer technology, programming and other specialized professions—together with student youth, against Trump’s fascist government, the complicity of the Democrats and the broader assault on democratic rights and living standards.
In the same way that the radicalization of the population in the 1770s produced new forms of political self-organization—committees and assemblies that challenged imperial authority—the fight against dictatorship today requires the conscious construction of independent organizations of workers’ power. It is for this purpose that the SEP and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) initiated the formation of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
*****
In the course of his interview with the New York Times, Trump was asked, “Is there anything that you think can constrain your power on the world stage?” He replied, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
The White House megalomaniac is wrong. There is a power greater than Trump and the oligarchy. It is the power of the American and international working class.
But the program and leadership needed to fight back must be built. The Socialist Equality Party advances this strategy as the way forward for workers and youth who want to fight. We call on all those who agree with this perspective to join the SEP and take up the fight for socialism, to secure a future free from fascism, war and capitalist barbarism.
