Italy’s Autumn of mass protests and strikes for Palestine boiled over into four days of rebellion following Israel’s attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla. This culminated in a general strike and millions on the streets on 3-4 October. The explosion of popular struggle, with the working class and the strike now placed at its centre, accompanied by a mass, militant student movement, is a hugely significant development in the fight for Palestine, and the broader fight against the capitalist and imperialist system.
A rising tide of struggle in Italy has been set in motion since 1 September, when 50,000 people marched in Genoa to accompany the launch of the Global Sumud Flotilla. Genoa hosts one of Europe’s most important ports, and the protest sent off the Flotilla with mass support and a warning: if the Flotilla were attacked, then dockworkers, along with other workers, and backed by a mass movement, would strike and “block everything”—blocchiamo tutto! 
The declaration was initially made by the dockworkers organised in the Autonomous Port Workers Collective (CALP). It was quickly taken up by the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), one of Italy’s many so-called base unions which have been set up in recent decades to organise rank-and-file workers into class struggle in opposition to Italy’s traditional trade union federations which, like Australian unions, are dominated by institutionalised, do-nothing bureaucrats. 
The base unions directly organise only a small minority of Italian workers, so their ability to implement serious industrial action without the main union federations is usually very limited. But now, the boldness of the slogan—blocchiamo tutto—combined with rising anger at the situation in Gaza and the Italian government’s complicity with Israel’s genocide, sparked a surge of energy, confidence and mobilisation. Along with the base unions and the growing calls for strike action, this has been fuelled by growing mass Palestine rallies, a youth radicalisation centred on high school and university blockades and occupations, and countless smaller actions, including rallies, local blockades, encampments and so on, often organised by Italy’s social centres. At the core of most of this upsurge in spontaneous activity are Italy’s various far-left and communist organisations.
The date was set for a general strike, called by the base unions, on 22 September. To try to undermine this call, and to give itself some much-needed left cover in the face of growing pressure, Italy’s main union federation, the CGIL, called a last-minute strike for 19 September. A cynical manoeuvre, this strike was not intended to be widespread, and indeed it wasn’t, outside of some transport and education workers. Yet, contrary to the wishes of the CGIL leaders, it helped to legitimise the idea of a general strike for Palestine, and helped to lay the basis for the success of the 22 September general strike.
This strike involved many more workers than 19 September and unleashed a confident mass movement prepared to defy the police and new anti-protest laws, to block ports, train stations, highways, schools and universities. Without the backing of the major union federations, many workers did not participate in the strike, or participated as individuals without much economic impact on their workplace. But the momentum was building.
With the attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla on 1 October, a new peak of mobilisation was unleashed. Snap protests drew thousands into the squares of every major city late at night and with no notice. I eventually found the tail-end of the protest in Florence, where hundreds were still in the square at 1am. In some bigger cities, clashes with police and blockades of stations and roads were already beginning and raging through the night.
Crucially, on the night of 1 October, the CGIL now backed the call for a general strike on 3 October. The momentum was such that there was no way they could avoid such a call at this point without losing all legitimacy in the eyes of the working class. Forcing the CGIL into such action was a major victory for the movement and ensured 3 October would be a historic day.
The day before, still in Florence at this point, I headed at 8am towards what I’d been told was going to be a university blockade. On the way, I happened to run into something else—hundreds of high school students standing in the street outside their school in the centre of the CBD. The entrance was being blockaded by a combination of school and uni students. The high school students seemed very happy about this situation, with support for Palestine ubiquitous among their cohort, and any waverers won over by the fact that this was much more exciting than school. They could name at least three other high schools in Florence alone that were also being blockaded that morning.
Half an hour later, and following people wearing keffiyehs, I found my way to the blockade of the University of Florence. The student activists had chosen the via Laura campus due to its ongoing ties with Israel. The entrance was blocked, and protesters chanted and made speeches outside. As more students arrived, many presumably expecting to go to class, they instead overwhelmingly joined the protest. When a critical mass was reached, the blockade became an occupation. Hundreds of students marched into classes to shut them down, chanting, singing and pulling the students out to join the protest. 
One of the songs was clearly a bit new and took a while to catch on, but soon hundreds were singing it on repeat. I was told it was an adaptation of a workers’ song associated with an important strike a few years earlier. Some of the lyrics translate as: “Forward together; united in the struggle; against imperialism; there will be victory!” A mass assembly was held to discuss the politics and organisation of the occupation, before the students then led a march into the city centre, stopping by every blockaded high school along the way, whose students joined the march. At the time of writing, the occupation at via Laura is ongoing.
That night, I joined another mass demonstration in Florence. This time, thousands marched through the city centre before heading to Florence’s main train station, Santa Maria Novella. Everyone knew what was coming: the night before, stations had been stormed and blockaded in Milan and Turin. We faced a line of fully decked-out riot police. As the crowd swelled and surged, a series of explosions rang out—smaller fire crackers thrown by protesters, I think, followed by thunderously loud explosions from police flashbang grenades. But no one was deterred; the crowd grew, the chants grew louder, and soon the police retreated. Thousands stormed in, occupying the train platforms and tracks. These scenes were playing out across Italy. A 24-hour strike on the railways began at 9pm that night.
The 3 October general strike is an incredible and perhaps unprecedented achievement. A purely political strike, and a general strike, carried out with massive, active participation, as a result of a surging movement from below, which was declared illegal by the Italian government, given no real support from any of the entire official opposition of the political establishment; and all for an international cause that does not seemingly directly affect Italian workers. And not just any international cause, but that of the Palestinians—a people systematically demonised and dehumanised as Islamic terrorists.
The general strike and mass mobilisations were a big victory over the far-right Meloni government, which serves the interests of Italian capitalism, the third biggest exporter of arms to Israel after the US and Germany. Like governments around the world, Meloni wants to impose further austerity on the working class to fund obscene increases in military spending. She derided the strikers as people just seeking a “long weekend”, and her government declared the strike illegal, threatening unions and individuals with repercussions. She also recently passed laws to punish protesters who block important infrastructure. This all failed miserably.
The CGIL reported the strike as a widespread success, with 60 percent participation. It was particularly strong in the education, transport and logistics industries, and among metalworkers. Mass demonstrations accompanied the strike, with perhaps 2 million people mobilising across the country, including 300,000 in Rome. Along with this went an enormous wave of blockades, often led by student activists who swarmed past police lines to block, occupy and shut down ports, train stations, major highways, even airports, warehouses and distribution centres, along with schools and universities. The blockades made the strike massively more disruptive. Long-distance trains, for example, were announced by the CGIL as not being affected by the strike. But occupations of the train tracks meant that everything was stopped—something I can attest to, as I was trying to get to Rome for the huge national demonstration the next day. I’ve never been so happy to wait several hours for a train!
It’s incredible to think that after all this frenetic activity, the very next day, 4 October, 1 million people took to the streets of Rome for Italy’s biggest demonstration since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I made it into town the night before, and Palestinian flags and keffiyehs greeted me everywhere. The metro on the way to the protest’s starting point was packed with rally-goers—I remember thinking that there were more people on this single train, two hours before the march was even due to start, than I’ve been with at many Palestine protests over the decades.
It felt like the whole world was protesting there in Rome; a never-ending sea of humanity which, despite walking up and down for hours, I never saw the start or the end of. Every side street of the official march route was jam-packed. It was so big you could easily go and line up for a pizza and beer, sit for two hours, rejoin the demonstration and still be nowhere near the end of the march. As we marched past the Colosseum, I couldn’t help but think of the petty attempt of NSW police and Premier Chris Minns to stop us in Sydney from marching to the Opera House on supposed “security” and “safety” grounds. What a joke.
There are a few important points flowing from the events in Italy. First, the global complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza has encapsulated so much about the morally bankrupt world we live in. In the last two years, every institution of this system has utterly debased itself in the service of genocide, from the Labor Party to the ABC, and so many more. In Italy, this includes all the so-called opposition parties. I say “encapsulated” and not revealed, because for so many workers and students, this system has already been failing them year after year, while its politicians and ideologues become less and less credible.
This partly explains the explosion of struggle in Italy. The banner of Palestine has become a symbol and a unifying rallying cry for everyone fed up with a system of shameless liars, hypocrites and murderers, who preside over an economic system of inequality which keeps us poor, locked out and with nothing to lose.
Second, while socialists have been saying for some time that Israel’s barbarism is a product of an entire sick system of capitalism and imperialism, and that the road to Palestinian liberation was inseparable from a working-class struggle against that system, nothing makes the case quite like a general strike. Italian workers and students have planted the flag, and it’s now up to the rest of the world to emulate these efforts. Mass, militant class struggle is the way forward for Palestinian liberation, and the liberation of us all.
Third, Italy shows that in circumstances of widespread discontent, a bold minority—in this case comprising relatively embryonic rank-and-file workers’ organisations and a radical student movement—with an orientation to mass action and class struggle, can galvanise millions into struggle and transform the situation, precisely because they called for militant, determined action. They didn’t do it by moderating their demands or sucking up to the likes of the Italian Democratic Party or the CGIL leaders, the rough equivalents of our Labor Party and ACTU. This should be a huge inspiration for us all, as it shows that a movement that is both mass and militant is not only what is needed, but is clearly possible.

Josh Lees

Italy’s general strike shows the way forward

Widespread government corruption in the Philippines meant that recent <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/mass-protests-rock-indonesia">mass protests in Indonesia</a> and <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/nepals-gen-z-revolution">Nepal’s so-called Gen Z revolution</a> resonated with Filipinos. Tens of thousands were expected at a nationwide protest on 21 September, coinciding with the anniversary of Ferdinand Marcos’ 1972 declaration of martial law, after corruption scandals related to flood control infrastructure projects took over the national spotlight.
However, many more turned out. The most significant rallies were held in Metro Manila, the national capital region consisting of sixteen cities. At Luneta Park in Manila, a symbolic site of the independence struggle from Spain, the morning crowd reached close to 80,000, according to organisers. Across town in Quezon City, an afternoon protest along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, commonly referred to by its acronym EDSA—a major highway at the centre of protests that ultimately brought down the Marcos dictatorship in 1986—reportedly grew to 100,000 people, including those who started at Luneta Park.
A smaller, younger crowd confronted police barricades along Mendiola Street and Recto Avenue, a road leading to the presidential palace, where police arrested more than 200. Locals have referred to the confrontation as the “Mendiola riots”, harking back to the state violence of the 1987 Mendiola massacre, when protesters demanding land reform were gunned down by security forces under the new democratic government of Corazon Aquino.
Protests began days before 21 September outside government offices and construction firms. University walkouts nationwide involving thousands of students, staff and service workers also occurred. For weeks, public hearings in the Senate and Congress investigating flood control projects saturated the media. Environmental NGO Greenpeace, using estimates from the hearings, calculated that 1 trillion Philippine pesos (around 26 billion Australian dollars) may have been lost to corruption since 2023. More than half may have come in 2025 alone, through ghost projects, half-done construction and substandard work, resulting in dike breakdowns that leave residents stranded in floodwaters during major storms.
Politicians and the companies to which they awarded flood control contracts are bound together as shareholders, campaign donors and/or family businesses. One illustration is the rise of the billionaire Discaya couple, dubbed the “King and Queen of flood control”, who own six construction companies—and 40 luxury cars worth around 465 million pesos (A$12 million).
The crisis has been dubbed “<a href="https://situationreport.net/commentary/kleptospirosis-when-corruption-becomes-a-public-health-crisis">kleptospirosis</a>”. Combining “kleptomania” (the irresistible urge to steal) and “leptospirosis” (a bacterial disease), the term refers to a public health emergency caused by rampant corruption. The monsoon season and frequent exposure to flooding across the country this year led to thousands of cases and numerous deaths from the disease. The National Kidney and Transplant Institute’s gym even had to be converted into an extension ward to accommodate the extra patients. Leptospirosis thrives in conditions of poverty: inadequate housing, unsafe water and limited health care. It is a recurring danger in a city with failing sewerage systems that frequently expose residents to knee-deep floodwaters.
Both the president and vice president voiced support for the protests, but they are hypocrites. With relatives in Congress and local government, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr (son of former dictator Ferdinand) and VP Sara Duterte (daughter of the last president, Rodrigo) hail from “fat dynasties”—families whose members hold several public offices simultaneously. 
Both received millions in contractor donations for their 2022 election campaign, despite provisions banning such graft. Their donors were rewarded handsomely. One Marcos sponsor, Quirante Construction, gained contracts worth a billion pesos (A$26 million) just a year after the election. The sole corporate donor of Sara Duterte’s campaign is linked to Genesis88, the top flood control contractor in Davao del Sur, a municipality on the southern island of Mindanao, with projects worth 2.9 billion pesos (A$75 million).
It’s not just Marcos and Duterte. According to a study published by Manila University’s Ateneo School of Government, 80 percent of congressional representatives and more than 50 percent of local government officials hail from political dynasties. 
The overarching demand of the 21 September protests was to jail the corrupt. However, those in the highest levels of government will not be held accountable without significant escalation. High-profile corruption scandals in the Philippines follow a predictable script: hearings are sensationalised, but the biggest thieves eventually get away thanks to their powerful allies. 
For example, the broadcasts of President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment trials were one of the most watched programs on TV and led to mass protests along EDSA, triggering his ouster in January 2001. The disgraced ex-president was convicted of plunder and sentenced to life in 2007, but was pardoned a month later by his successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. 
Accused politicians often book VIP escapes to private hospitals abroad due to sudden bouts of illness. Arroyo was charged with plunder, attempted to fly to Singapore and spent almost five years in hospital detention until being acquitted in 2016 by her Supreme Court appointees. Beforehand, then-President Duterte gave his blessing by offering a pardon. Congressman Zaldy Co, at the centre of today’s controversy, went “missing”—until the House confirmed he was in the United States for medical treatment.
Mounting public pressure continues, however. In early September, the Senate president was removed; later, the speaker of the House resigned. The president announced that the government would not include new flood control projects in the 2026 national budget, redirecting funding to education and health. After 21 September, nearly 36 billion pesos (A$940 million) were reallocated to social programs.
The Philippines is one of the fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia. But the political dynasties have ensured that the growth primarily benefits private corporations at the expense of the vast majority. Regarding the share of wages in the national economy, the Philippines ranks as one of the lowest in the region, at 35 percent—even lower than the capitalist haven of Singapore (38.5 percent). Further entrenching inequality, big business recently defeated proposals to raise the minimum wage by 200 pesos a day (roughly A$5). It is no wonder that the three richest Filipinos increased their wealth by 563 percent over the last decade, reaching 1.8 trillion pesos (A$47 billion). 
As revealed by the flood control scandals, profit-making and state politics are irrevocably linked, the political dynasties being organised precisely for that end. The setup made the Marcos and Duterte dynasties, alongside eighteen others, even fatter—securing “obese” status by obtaining five or more seats in the May midterm elections. 
Profits and political power are the lifeblood of political dynasties. Mass disruption of cities, campuses and workplaces—like in the <a href="can%20tip%20the%20balance%20by%20demanding%20to%20alleviate%20the%20impacts%20of%20rampant%20theft%20and%20for%20the%20freedom%20to%20organise%20for%20such%20demands.%20Taxing%20the%20rich%20can%20address%20intense%20inequality%20and%20rising%20cost%20of%20living%20while%20universal%20social%20protection%20and%20improvements%20in%20public%20services%20and%20wages%20are%20indispensable%20measures%20for%20environmental%20hazards%20to%20come.">“Block everything” movement</a> in France and Italy—is how profits and political legitimacy can be undermined. But the extensive influence and organisation of the political dynasties and their local machines remain key to their lasting electoral victories.
An enduring challenge to dynastic rule in the Philippines requires an equally powerful anti-capitalist political organisation, wielding its power in elections, on campuses, in workplaces and on the streets. The continuing outburst of mass action since September needs to be harnessed to the end of building the organisation and confidence of working people as they fight to ensure that public wealth goes to public good: securing concrete improvements in public services, infrastructure, wages and universal social protections. These are not only indispensable measures to protect against the environmental hazards to come; they would strike at class inequality, the foundation of the political dynasties.

Yen Llanes

Mass protests and ‘kleptospirosis’ in the Philippines

A wave of censorship and political intimidation is sweeping the United States. Led by key figures in the Trump administration, including the president, the country’s vast far-right movement is pressuring employers to sack or silence left-wing workers and to purge outspoken political progressives from state and state-funded institutions. One of the latest casualties in this war on the left is a history professor in Texas, Tom Alter, who was fired last month for speaking, in his own time, at a socialist conference. 
A judge has since <a href="https://www.puntorojomag.org/2025/09/27/judge-rules-for-tom-alter-as-battle-against-university-continues">ordered the university to reinstate Alter</a>, but management has indicated that it will continue investigating him. The following is the original statement and call for solidarity released by his organisation, <a href="https://socialisthorizon.org/">Socialist Horizon</a>.
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Defend free speech! No to fascists! Reinstate Professor Tom Alter Now! 
Beloved tenured history professor and Socialist Horizon member Tom Alter was summarily fired on 10 September by Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse for expressing his views in a virtual conference unrelated to the university. This action cannot stand. Socialist Horizon calls on people everywhere to join us and demand that Professor Alter be reinstated to his tenured position.
President Damphousse fired Dr Tom Alter based solely on a video published online by an extreme right-wing provocateur who infiltrated and secretly video-recorded segments of a virtual socialist conference with the intention of publishing information to slander and attack conference participants. In videos posted on their website, this person declares that they are a proud fascist who tries to monetise exposure of the left as an “anti-communist cult leader”. This grifter publicly exhorts followers to embrace fascist ideology and take action, is an antisemite that states that Jewish people “chose to die in the Holocaust”, is a self-declared racist and xenophobe, a homophobe and a transphobe that spews hate speech throughout their platform that is solely designed to inflame and incite.
After the fascist’s “exposure video” reached President Damphousse, he summarily fired Dr Alter, a tenured professor, without questioning or investigating the content, without considering its authenticity or validity, without any form of due process, and violating existing state law and campus policy, which requires a formal due process procedure.
What did Alter talk about that triggered fascists, and that Damphousse considers so unacceptable? 
The statement issued by Damphousse to terminate Dr Alter unambiguously affirms that he fired Alter for what he said at that conference, stating no other reason, and accusing Alter of “inciting violence”. But his speech, a transcript of which can be viewed <a href="https://universitystar.com/32736/news/texas-state-terminates-history-professor-over-comments-made-at-conference/">here</a>, in no way calls for violence. 
Alter spoke against this cruel and unjust system and argued in favour of replacing it with socialism, and he advocated organising politically to achieve this. Alter’s political views <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/694835/image-capitalism-slips.aspx">reflect</a> those of nearly half of the total US population. Almost half now oppose capitalism and 40 percet favour socialism over capitalism. Alter’s views are far from subversive; they reflect the mainstream. It is a just cause that more and more people are joining, one people believe to be worth fighting for, and represents a change in thinking that is scaring the bigots, fascists and capitalists. 
It is in fact the fascist infiltrator who incites violence against oppressed people, and in this case, directly against Alter. It is Alter’s employer, Texas State University, that inflicted violence: stripping Alter of his job, refusing him any due process, casting him and his family into the uncertainty of unemployment and making them a target for the extreme right, while slamming the door shut on his free speech and academic freedom. Alter’s First Amendment right to speak, guaranteed by the Constitution, has been violated, as has his academic freedom—a protected right developed by his national faculty union, the American Association of University Professors.
The fact that a marginal fascist streamer with a dangerous and extremist ideology can pressure the president of a prestigious public university system to illegally fire a tenured professor for his opinions is alarming. Most concerning, if we do not stop this, it will set a precedent that will embolden the most dangerous bigots, right-wing extremists and fascists who will continue to target people across the country. If they can influence and direct the president of the Texas State University system so easily—who else will they go after?
We call on President Damphousse to stop this flagrant attack on constitutionally-protected free speech, to undo this wrongful termination, and to immediately reinstate Dr Tom Alter to his teaching position. 
The termination of Dr Alter is a serious attack that upends his livelihood, his professional and academic career, and sets a very dangerous precedent. President Damphousse’s actions appear to be in accordance with the far-right politics of Texas politicians Greg Abbot and Ted Cruz, as well as being in line with that of Donald Trump, who has used the office of the presidency to wage war on his political opponents. 
Damphousse’s actions align with Trump and the far-right forces trying to impose and enforce an authoritarian regime that wants to silence critics, crush political dissent, and attack anyone they perceive to be oppositional to their project. Even more threatening, Damphousse’s actions strengthen the power and influence of fascists and enable the most violent and reactionary groups to also attack and take action against anyone they deem to be part of the left. 
It is Trump who inflicts violence against millions through his authoritarian political attacks that target people of Colour, women, transpeople, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, impoverished and unhoused people, and the working class as a whole. It is the far right and the fascists who are building movements to harm innocent and vulnerable people. It is this capitalist system that Alter spoke against that inflicts mass violence, condemning billions to hunger, poverty and war, while a handful accumulates ever-growing obscene amounts of wealth that is stolen from the rest of us.
Alter is being attacked because he is telling a truth that many people in the United States believe today: that capitalism is ruining their lives and that socialism is a better system. If Dr Tom Alter can be fired for expressing his personal beliefs and principles, then people everywhere are in danger. If he can be fired for expressing a point of view at a conference, away from his work and in his daily private life, then none of us are safe. 
His case must draw support from people of all sectors of society: workers, teachers, nurses, students—anyone and everyone who upholds the value of free speech. As the great anti-slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said, “The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected”.
We call on everyone to join us in building the broadest possible solidarity campaign to win this decisive battle.
The attacks on Dr Tom Alter and socialist politics will not intimidate Socialist Horizon. We will defend our comrade and we will continue fighting for the very cause he is being attacked for: justice, freedom and equality. We will also continue building the organisation that it will take to win it.
Dr Tom Alter is not only a beloved faculty member at Texas State but also an advisor to several student organisations. He is the author of a celebrated history of socialism in the American South, Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas (University of Illinois Press). He is also the father of two children. Socialist Horizon demands that Texas State University immediately restore Tom Alter’s position as associate professor of history. 
Socialist Horizon also calls on all organisations and individuals that defend the basic democratic right to free speech and reject fascism and authoritarianism, and all socialists in particular, to join this fight. This is an attack on all of us. We need to confront it with the broadest unitary campaign for Alter’s immediate reinstatement, in defence of free speech and against fascism.
Follow the <a href="https://socialisthorizon.org">Socialist Horizon website</a> for campaign updates.

Socialist professor targeted in US censorship campaign

Dissent and lose your job. That’s the principle of the campaign to turn Charlie Kirk into a MAGA martyr.
The second Trump administration has always placed a heavy emphasis on the repression of dissent. Almost immediately after his inauguration, he made good on his promise to attack the Palestine solidarity movement, using everything from masked ICE goons to suspension of federal university funding grants. He has campaigned to erase anti-racist ideas from public life under the guise of attacking the hated “DEI”. Even before Kirk’s death, Trump’s second term was the high watermark of the US right’s long war on “cultural Marxism”, which dates back at least to the war on terror, when Kirk’s predecessors like Ann Coulter tried to officially rehabilitate McCarthyism.
Kirk’s death opens a new phase, marked by one Louisiana Republican’s vow to “cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals”. (The phrase “cancel with extreme prejudice” originated during the Vietnam War in US military and spy organisations as a euphemism for murder.) Anyone who uttered a critical remark about Kirk would now be targeted by a campaign to sack them from their job, endorsed from the top by Vice President J.D. Vance: “Call them out. And hell, call their employer”.
This was not just about people in public life—university professors like those Kirk had targeted with his “professor watch-list” or public figures like Jimmy Kimmel. Academics, journalists and entertainers are important scalps in creating a climate of repression: their downfalls can provide a model for bosses to follow, and a threat for workers. 
But the movement to “cancel” aimed at workers with no real public profile: teachers, airline employees and all kinds of white-collar and retail workers have been targeted and suspended or sacked. Dissent has been punished everywhere from the Nasdaq to Freddy’s Frozen Custard &amp; Steakburgers in Quincy, Illinois, which sacked an employee for posting “another one bites the dust”. 
This is repression that goes beyond state power. Trump’s ICE agents rounded up Palestine solidarity protesters for deportation, and his National Guard has been sent on theatrical tours of major cities. But to repress dissent more thoroughly, the US right is turning to the fundamental form of oppression that defines capitalist society: bosses’ power over workers.
That basic power relation of capitalism shapes the production and distribution of ideas. That’s most obvious in the case of massive, privately owned media conglomerates, like those that organised the disciplinary suspension of Jimmy Kimmel and are currently lining up to purchase TikTok. But it’s about more than the media. Capitalism represses dissent by making it dangerous to speak your mind if you want to keep your job.
Right-wing political activists know it, and they have always taken advantage of it to repress the left while claiming to be the champions of individual liberty. That’s why, immediately after Kirk’s death, the “Charlie Kirk Data Foundation” appeared to centralise the reporting and purging of anti-Kirk workers, and that’s why Vance pointed his MAGA followers to use the power of the capitalist class to control their opponents.
The model is familiar. The USA was never a fascist dictatorship, but up to the 1960s, it was an extremely authoritarian society. Figureheads at the top—FBI directors, members of Congress or conservative activists—would send the signal for repression, set the talking points and issue public denunciations. Intellectuals, artists and journalists could serve as public examples, denounced and blacklisted from public life. But whether it was the Red Scare or segregation, the grunt work of authoritarianism in the USA was often carried out by private employers and property owners. For millions of anonymous workers, their livelihood depended on keeping their heads down, fitting in and staying out of trouble.
What kind of authoritarianism is this? Former Vice President Kamala Harris called Trump a fascist. Then, having lost the election, she just disappeared, unseen until she got a gig at a real estate agents’ conference on the Gold Coast. But the Democrats’ hysteria in the 2024 election, followed by their astonishing passivity, shouldn’t be a cause for complacency. The US state may not experience an overnight transformation into a one-party dictatorship after a Reichstag fire, but Trump’s presidency represents a genuine attempt to establish a less free society.
This is more than a culture war. For socialists, movements like Black Lives Matter and the Palestine solidarity movement are still missing the key ingredients of working-class leadership and anti-capitalist politics that they need to challenge seriously the oppressions they aim to destroy. But for a conservative, they still look like a serious danger: a growing hostility to US foreign policy in elite institutions, mass hostility to the police in big cities. Trump and his allies are on a mission to wipe out basic ideas of social equality and anti-racism, to make them dangerous, to push them to the margins of society.
The truly odious nature of Charlie Kirk helps in that cause. In the aftermath of his death, the slightest scepticism about his far-right ideas has become the litmus test for the right.
In their new era of ascendancy, conservatives and bosses have gleefully adopted small-l liberal ideas. “Psychosocial safety” has become an excuse to attack trade union activists. “Anti-racism” is a major concern for right-wingers only when it comes to crushing Palestine solidarity. Now the Republicans have embraced “consequence culture”. 
Those liberal ideas mostly sidestepped the question of class. Now class must be absolutely central in the left’s response to clarify the repression that is unfolding. Trump’s war against “woke ideology” is an attack on the living standards and rights of workers. Those early days of Musk’s DOGE delegitimised the very idea that the state could ever regulate capitalists or redistribute wealth, and provided models for how to treat workers with cruelty, deliberately humiliating them before mass sackings. Now the sanctification of Kirk has provided pressure—or an excuse—to identify and purge any troublemaking employee.
The response to Kirk’s death is a bosses’ war on free speech, and it’s part of a broader turn in the West towards the silencing of dissent. Bosses’ power to sack and control employees is becoming a central plank of new right-wing authoritarianism. Workers’ power will be central to resisting and overturning it.

D. Taylor

Charlie Kirk’s legacy: a bosses’ war on free speech

CHICAGO—Donald Trump and the MAGA right wasted little time in capitalising on the gruesome 10 September murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Before authorities in Utah, where Kirk was killed, had even located a suspect, Trump and the MAGAverse were blaming Kirk’s death on an amorphous “left”. Within days, leading right-wingers—not just MAGA “influencers” but Trump officials up to the vice president—were calling for repression against the left.
Vice President Vance led the charge, encouraging right-wingers to monitor social media and to report to employers anyone who made light of Kirk’s killing. Because so few people really made light of Kirk’s murder, the dragnet changed to sweep in people who were insufficiently deferential to MAGA’s desire to turn Kirk into a martyr. The Washington Post
fired award-winning journalist Karen Attiah when she simply criticised Kirk’s legacy by quoting him in his own words.
The government-orchestrated attack on free speech reached a crescendo when Trumpite Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr suggested that the broadcast network ABC, a subsidiary of the Disney Co., could save itself from regulatory problems by removing late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show from the air. ABC dutifully complied, announcing the “indefinite” suspension of Kimmel’s program on 18 September.
Kimmel’s offence, according to Carr and the MAGA right, was to imply that Kirk’s killer was “one of theirs”. Subsequent information—revealed after Kimmel’s monologue—cast doubt on that assertion. But no matter. Carr had achieved his purpose. It put media corporations on notice that the government would be policing their speech—in direct violation <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/what-the-constitution-says-about-free-speech-on-the-airwaves">of the letter of the law that created the FCC in 1934</a>. The ever oafish Trump then said he’d like other networks to fire their late-night comedians, for whom the president provides an endless supply of comedic material.
What MAGA didn’t anticipate was the pushback the Kimmel cancellation received. Most Democrats and even a few Republicans criticised Carr’s move. Boycotts and cancellations of Disney streaming service subscriptions increased. The unions representing writers, actors and musicians who worked on Kimmel’s show mounted protests. More than 400 well-known actors and performers issued a statement condemning ABC, and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani pulled out of an ABC-sponsored event in protest.
Within a few days, Disney reversed itself and announced that Kimmel’s show would return to the air. Now, two networks of local ABC affiliates, Nexstar and Sinclair, have also backed down. But we shouldn’t think that the battle for free speech is won.
First, the government pressuring private entities to censor speech it doesn’t like has been the Trump administration’s modus operandi
since it returned to office in January. It has cut billions in research grants to universities, leading many to discipline students or faculty who had protested Israel’s war in Gaza, or to scrap university programs that met with administration disapproval. It announced it would deny security clearances to law firms considering representing clients suing the administration. Trump filed frivolous lawsuits against CBS’s and ABC’s news operations—which he certainly would have lost if they had gone to trial—leading their parent companies to make multimillion-dollar settlements.
Second, the success of a wealthy, well-known and nonpolitical entertainer like Kimmel can obscure the larger attack on free speech and the left that MAGA will continue to prosecute. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/09/18/charlie-kirk-comments-prompt-firings-across-us/86216872007/">More than 100 people have been fired or disciplined</a> for comments made after the Kirk killing. That includes <a href="https://cwa-tseu.org/free-speech/">Dr Tom Alter</a>, a tenured professor at Texas State University, fired after a troll with fascist and antisemitic sympathies reported to Alter’s employer that the professor <a href="https://www.puntorojomag.org/2025/09/13/defend-free-speech-no-to-fascists-reinstate-professor-dr-tom-alter-now/">had spoken at a socialist conference</a>.
Trump issued an executive order declaring “antifa” (short for “antifascist”) a domestic terrorist organisation. Although no provision in US law permits Trump to do this, his action is a signal to federal law enforcement. Federal agencies like the FBI could conduct investigations, infiltration of organisations and arrests of people on the left—which, in Trump world, means just about anyone who opposes the administration’s policies. Given that “antifa” is not an organisation nor even a coherent ideology, the vagueness of the target is a weapon in the hands of law enforcement. 
Another way that the administration will attack liberal and activist organisations is by weaponising the tax code. US tax law provides educational, charitable, religious and social organisations an exemption from paying federal taxes if they do not engage in partisan politics or electioneering. The administration has also supported legislation that would allow the Treasury<a href="https://www.nonprofitvote.org/whats-the-nonprofit-killer-bill/">
secretary to designate any organisation as “terror-supporting”</a> without any proof or due process. The feds can revoke tax-exempt status and compel organisations to pay millions in fines. Merely the threat of those penalties could lead organisations such as immigrant rights groups, which are mounting opposition to Trump’s deportation regime, to curtail their activities.
One final, but by no means less important, aftershock of the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric since Kirk’s murder is the licence it gives to right-wing elements to wreak violence on their opponents. Trump’s and Vance’s claims that “the left” is a uniquely violent force in US politics is the <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-violence-rare-united-states">exact opposite of the truth</a>, according to the libertarian Cato Institute—hardly a friend to the left. The “permission structure” that Trump, Vance and others in the administration are creating will make right-wing violence like the 2017 murder of antifascist protester Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh or Kyle Rittenhouse’s 2020 vigilante murders of Black Lives Matter activists more likely, not less.
Developments since Kirk’s death should clarify some points amid the noise and social media vitriol. They have exposed the lie that conservatives and the far right are somehow champions of “free speech” against a censorious left “cancel culture”. When billionaires like X’s Elon Musk and Fox’s Rupert Murdoch own massive communications platforms from which they spread conservative and far-right ideology into the body politic, it’s hard to take the claim seriously. With few exceptions, the right’s pretensions to “free speech” were always phoney and mostly raised when others used their free speech to criticise the right’s bigotry.
But observing that the right’s free speech rhetoric is disingenuous shouldn’t let mainstream liberals off the hook. The attacks on university activists protesting the war in Gaza didn’t begin with Trump. They started under the Biden administration, with the support of the White House and most Democrats. And the liberal MSNBC network fired commentator Matthew Dowd for comments he made on live TV only a few minutes after Kirk’s killing.
In contrast, championing free speech has always been central to the left. From the abolitionist press in the pre-Civil War era to the Industrial Workers of the World’s free speech fights in the early 1900s to opposition to McCarthyism in the 1950s to the Free Speech Movement at the University of California in 1964, the best part of the left and workers’ movement has always defended free speech.
Free speech and freedom of organisation and assembly are crucial for defending and extending other rights. The first nine months of the Trump administration have demonstrated that elite institutions like universities and the corporate media are willing to “bend the knee” to an increasingly authoritarian government if they think their profits, endowments or investments will be served. On the other hand, ordinary people, organised to push back on the Trump administration’s predations, have shown a far greater willingness to defend our rights.
The actions of thousands of ordinary people across the country have impeded the administration’s efforts to kidnap our immigrant neighbours off the street. And ordinary people sitting on grand juries in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, have refused federal prosecutors’ attempts to criminally indict people arrested for protesting immigration authorities or the administration’s military deployments. The real defenders of democracy in the US are much more likely to be found at street demonstrations or at “know your rights” trainings than in the halls of Congress, the courts or corporate boardrooms.

Lance Selfa

Free speech under attack in the US

In the second week of September, a two-day strike and plant-gate sit-in at the Nile Linen Group in Alexandria forced management and officials from the Labour Ministry to concede to a <a href="https://manassa.news/en/news/27111">package of demands</a> after an infant died in her mother’s arms inside the factory. 
Workers said the mother—just ten days back from maternity leave—was blocked from leaving for emergency care because of punitive leave rules and a cost-of-living allowance clawback that effectively trapped her at work. Security forces ringed the free-zone compound, two workers were briefly detained, and management tried a “cool-off” lockout by sending everyone home. It backfired. Workers returned en masse to continue the strike, elected negotiators, and won commitments on an investigation, compensation and changes to pay and leave practices. By 15 September, production resumed following management’s written pledge to address demands.
The same week, <a href="https://revsoc.me/-50409">a wave</a> of labour unrest across upper Egypt’s sugar industry—Edfu, Kom Ombo, Armant and Dishna—subsided after weeks of stoppages over pay, arrears, hazard allowances, overtime and the non-application of state-announced minimum wage measures. Envoys from the regime-run General Federation of Trade Unions and local officials descended on plants, <a href="https://www.madamasr.com/2025/09/14/news/u/%D8%B9%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%B3%D9%83%D8%B1-%D8%A5%D8%AF%D9%81%D9%88-%D9%88%D9%83%D9%88%D9%85-%D8%A5%D9%85%D8%A8%D9%88-%D9%8A%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%82%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B6%D8%B1/">promising</a> October raises and a review “at the highest levels”. Some groups ended strikes under pressure, including threats of dismissal and state security referrals; others suspended action with explicit warnings they’ll down tools again in January at the start of the production season if promises aren’t honoured.
Read together, these two episodes show how shopfloor bargaining in 2025 is actually happening in Egypt: a combustible mix of desperation-driven action, security containment and last-minute fixes that arrive only after escalation. Even under today’s repression, strikes still force the state–capital nexus to bargain—grudgingly, temporarily, and case-by-case.
A slow, stubborn uptick
Granular national strike statistics are deliberately hard to come by, but we have credible signals from 2024-25 that collective action is ticking up despite the climate of fear.
The year 2024 saw a <a href="https://revsoc.me/workers-farmers/49598/">broad rise</a> in labour complaints and protest events, dominated by wage and minimum-wage issues amid currency collapse and runaway prices. Employers in both public and private sectors used exemptions and procedural loopholes to dodge mandated increases. Workers responded with petitions, stoppages, and plant-gate rallies that triggered targeted arrests, firings, and prosecutions.
Throughout 2025, according to my labour sources, the country has witnessed more than 70 strikes and protests spanning textiles, ceramics, sugar mills, retail, petroleum, chemicals, utilities, and education. Workers’ demands have centred on overdue wages, annual bonuses, enforcement of the minimum wage, and improved conditions, with large-scale actions including a 4,000-strong strike at Ceramica Inova and coordinated stoppages across Upper Egypt’s sugar industry. Employers and authorities frequently responded with repression—including arrests of T&amp;C and greenhouse workers, suspensions and investigations at El-Shorbagy, and dismissals of union leaders—while others sought to defuse unrest through Ministry of Labour-led mediation or emergency fund payouts.
This isn’t a <a href="https://merip.org/2007/05/strikes-in-egypt-spread-from-center-of-gravity/">2006-style explosion</a>. It’s an incremental curve—a rise in frequency and breadth from the post-2013 nadir, expressed as short, defensive, economic strikes that are extremely sensitive to local triggers (a fatal accident, unpaid arrears, a humiliating rule). Workers are calculating, not reckless: they end strikes when repression bites or when tangible wins are secured; they hold their fire until leverage peaks (e.g., the January sugar campaign season).
Why is it happening? Inflation, repeated devaluation cycles, and a wage floor that is either eroded by prices or not applied at all. Put bluntly, the cost of living has crossed the threshold at which fear of the police competes with fear of hunger. That’s the inflexion point at which Egyptian workers historically move from complaint letters to stoppages.
What the strikes tell us about the regime’s playbook
Policing first, bargaining later: plants are surrounded, entrances controlled, and small numbers are picked up early to chill momentum. Only when production halts and workers hold their ground do mediators appear—labour directorates, federation officials, MPs and governors.
Procedural fixes, not structural change: The “solutions” offered are narrowly tailored: suspend one manager, promise an investigation, pay a tranche of arrears, float a month-X raise. No change to the underlying enforcement vacuum on wages and safety, and no recognition of independent organising.
Time-buying. The favourite tactic is to defer: “October”, “three months”, “after the presidency’s review”, “at budget time”. That punt only works if workers disband, and in the sugar case, they explicitly set January as a hard deadline.
Free zones, not free unions: the Nile Linen case underlines how “export zones” pair hyper-discipline (leave rules, docked allowances, gate control) with weak inspection and security gatekeeping. It’s the quintessential model of privatised coercion under public cover.
Under the surface, though, the state’s posture betrays anxiety. When local stoppages reverberate—through national supply chains (sugar) or foreign-currency exports (textiles)—the case files travel “up”. That upward escalation is the workers’ leverage.
Labour lit the fuse in 2011
Egypt’s modern labour insurgency didn’t begin in Tahrir. It was forged on the shop floors of <a href="https://merip.org/2007/03/egyptian-textile-workers-confront-the-new-economic-order/">Mahalla</a> and across transport, civil servants and public services in the mid-2000s. Those strikes disoriented the state’s forces, birthed strike committees and then independent unions—most famously the <a href="https://flickr.com/photos/elhamalawy/albums/72157607027521066/">real estate tax collectors’ union</a>—years before the revolution began on 25 January 2011.
When the 2011 uprising peaked, wildcat strikes in transport, textiles, steel and the public sector on 8-10 February <a href="https://arabawy.org/24959/permanent-revolution/">were decisive</a>. They took the revolution from square to system: from spectacle to shutdown. Within months, new federations and dozens of independent unions proliferated. For the first time in decades, Egyptian workers could credibly bargain outside the state’s official federation.
The revolution’s <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/bread-freedom-social-justice-9781780324333/">social soul</a> was not a romantic abstraction; it was the organised power of workers to halt production. That force helped topple a president and briefly opened a window in which wages rose, corrupt managers were purged, and shopfloor dignity was renegotiated.
After the coup—how it was crushed
The 2013 military takeover set out to extinguish politics by decapitating the networks most capable of paralysing the state: political parties, youth groups, community organisations, and independent unions (including informal labour networks) inside workplaces.
Legal crackdown: protest and public-order laws criminalised assembly; the 2017 trade-union framework forced re-registration under state terms, starved or dissolved independents and restored de facto monopoly to the official federation, now coupled with <a href="https://eipr.orghttps://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/reports/pdf/a_lopsided_law_1.pdf">draconian restrictions on the right to strike</a>.
Security filtration: factory union committees were either purged or co-opted. Activists were harassed; labour leaders faced case-by-case <a href="https://revsoc.me/-50223">prosecutions</a> for “obstructing production” or “inciting”.
Managerial impunity: plant bosses learned that police would enforce internal discipline, from gate control to forced leave to lockouts dressed up as “maintenance”.
Wage theater: headline “minimum-wage” decrees and presidential “allowances” became PR covers, unevenly applied, easily dodged through exemptions or hollow claims on “inability to comply”.
The result was not a pacified labour force so much as a frozen one. From roughly 2014 to 2020, strikes became rare, brief and isolated. People still suffered; they just suffered silently. The state proved it could jail thousands, kill by example, and make union legalism a dead end.
Then prices did what police could not: they melted the freeze. The pandemic’s aftershocks, global food and energy spikes, and repeated devaluations pulled the last nails from household budgets. By 2022-25, the “no strike” equilibrium had eroded, not because repression eased, but because survival left no slack.
Where the movement stands now
This is not 2006-11 redux. Today’s labour fights are defensive and economic—not overtly political—focused on arrears, allowances, safety, childcare, meal stipends, shifts, and even the right to reach a hospital when a child is dying. They are short-cycle and local, measured in days rather than months unless the state stonewalls. They are also networked yet atomised: WhatsApp groups, ex-unionists and NGO veterans still share tactics and draft demands, but no national coordination with real teeth exists.
The risks are also clear: targeted arrests, mass firings, “disciplinary” dockings that erase the very raises you just won, and blacklist-style threats inside free zones. That’s why many stoppages end not in victory but with a warning and a date to resume if management backslides.
Sceptics will say that a few concessions here and there change nothing. They’re wrong. In Egypt’s current political economy, every shopfloor win—whether restored hazard pay, scrapped punitive leave rules, back pay for overtime, or a posted safety notice—has cumulative effects. Each gain raises the reservation wage, as even modest improvements, once normalised, set baselines that other plants imitate. They also expand the repertoire: once a plant has struck and survived, the next stoppage is less daunting and better organised. Most importantly, such victories rebuild confidence, the rarest resource under repression, built incrementally not through manifestos.
This is countercyclical politics from below. While elite pacts revolve around asset sales, debt service and foreign backing, workers are quietly renegotiating the daily reproduction of labour. It is not glamorous, but it is how movements survive long winters.
The state dilemma
Egypt’s rulers face a structural contradiction they cannot ideologically resolve. They need exports and domestic production to secure foreign currency and sustain patronage. They need docile labour to offer investors predictable costs and avoid disruptive headlines. At the same time, they need public credibility that “the state cares” even as real incomes collapse.
They can’t have all three. When prices surge faster than wages, labour unrest becomes a cost of doing business. The regime compensates with selective coercion (to deter organisation) and transactional concessions (to keep assembly lines moving). That’s precisely what the September strikes showed.
The longer arc
Egypt’s labour movement ignited the 2011 revolution’s decisive phase by translating street protest into stoppage power. The counter-revolution understood this perfectly and built a system designed to defang workers: re-monopolise representation, criminalise assembly, make managers de facto police, and flood the airwaves with a cult of “order”.
For a while, it worked. But no authoritarian model can repeal arithmetic. When the grocery bill doubles while allowances vanish, plants don’t stay quiet forever. What we’re witnessing now is not a return to the old days—there is no national wave, no open federation, no safe civic space. It is a learning process under extreme constraints. Workers are rediscovering what they already knew: if you don’t stop the machine, nothing changes.
September’s strikes didn’t rewrite the system. They did something more important for the long haul: they showed thousands of workers, again, that the machine still stops when they decide it will.
That’s the line that matters in 2025. Not the fantasy that one grand strike will topple a militarised political economy, but the reality that incremental, repeatable, local wins—backed by credible threats to escalate when promises fail—are rebuilding the only power that ever made Egypt’s rulers blink.
The question for 2026 is not whether Cairo will suddenly allow free unions. It won’t. The question is whether, plant by plant, shift by shift, workers continue converting unbearable living conditions into precision strikes that win real money, real safety, and real dignity, and whether those informal networks begin talking to one another again. If they do, the regime will face a familiar headache: a labour movement that doesn’t need permission to breathe.
The Egyptian labor movement is alive, conservative in tactics, brutalized by context, and—because of the economy—becoming unavoidable again. The state can’t crush prices. That’s why it won’t crush strikes forever.
Most importantly, such victories rebuild confidence, the rarest resource under repression, built incrementally rather than through manifestos.
First published by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Hossam el-Hamalawy

Egypt’s workers stir again

On 22 September, half a million workers, students and solidarity activists mobilised in more than 80 cities across Italy under the slogan “Blocchiamo Tutto” (Let’s block everything). The Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), which initiated the action, has called for “the immediate break-off of relations with the terrorist state of Israel”.
Major ports across the country were shut down from Genoa, Palermo, Livorno, Ancona, Trieste, Salerno, and Venice, where strikers braved police water cannons. Train stations were blockaded in Naples, Turin, Rome, and Milan, while strikes of railway staff paralysed transport networks. 
Protests took place on a truly national scale, including in regional centres with little living memory of struggle, demonstrating the depth of support for Palestine and indignation at the government’s inaction. 
At Rome’s La Sapienza University, students launched an occupation of the arts faculty, while campuses in Bologna and Torino were blockaded. Many schools were shut as students and staff walked out.
Demonstrators also took to highways, shutting main roads in Pisa, Florence, Turin, Bologna and Rome. In doing so, they were defying the Meloni government’s Security Decree passed in June, which makes blocking traffic and major infrastructure a serious criminal offense. This will be an early test of strength between protesters and the government over the enforcement of these laws. 
The strike wave even reached the Vatican, where members of the Association of Vatican Lay Employees joined a march to parliament as part of the Priests Against Genocide network. 
Italy’s solidarity movement has been galvanised by the Global Sumud Flotilla currently sailing to Gaza, the largest-scale attempt to break Israel’s siege and deliver vital aid thus far. One of the Flotilla’s departure points was the northern Italian port city of Genoa, and it was there that the Block Everything movement began last August. 
As the convoy prepared to launch, a campaign to collect food aid for Gaza revived the city’s dormant but deeply-rooted activist traditions. Unions, neighbourhood committees and charities collected more than 300 tons of materials. On 30 August, 40,000 marched to see off the flotilla singing Bella Ciao, out of a population of 564,000. 
The call to action was taken up early on by the Autonomous Port Workers Collective (CALP), a Genoan dock workers’ collective affiliated to the USB, one of the country’s many “grassroots” or “base” unions, which operate separately from the mainstream federations. 
In a widely shared video, CALP member Riccardo Rudino pledged at the demonstration: “If, even for 20 minutes, we lose contact with our comrades on the flotilla, we will block all of Europe: from Genoa’s docks, not a single nail will leave, it will be a global strike”.
Under the slogan “Lets close the ports to war”, CALP has previously blocked arms shipments intended for Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, and on 7 August refused to load arms onto a Saudi ship allegedly bound for Israel. Last Thursday, dockworkers in the port city of Ravenna also took action, blocking two trucks suspected of carrying weapons. 
Coming off the back of these actions, the impressive response to USB’s call for a strike on 22 September represents a significant leap forward for the movement. The call to block everything has been taken up in workplaces from ports to logistics centres, but also drawn huge sections of civil society behind it, from Trieste in the northeast to Sicily in the south. 
The main union federation, the CGIL, which represents the majority of organised labour, has dragged its feet in mobilising its membership for Gaza, and didn’t participate in 22 September. CGIL instead organised its own four-hour strike three days before, which was strongly observed in some workplaces. But the more significant action on 22 September emerged from below. The hope is that this mobilisation can put pressure on larger, more conservative federations like CGIL to organise serious strikes. 
The size of the demonstrations is an expression of a rising tide of struggle in Europe, fuelled by disgust at Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and a continent-wide turn to austerity and militarism. 
In France, hostility to the government’s proposed austerity budget generated the first “Bloquons tout” (“Let’s block everything”) movement on 10 September, forcing the resignation of one prime minister, and pressuring the unions to call mass strikes against his replacement. This provided a clear model for Italy to follow. 
In Spain last week, protesters forced the abrupt ending of the Vuelta, Spain’s Tour de France equivalent, in opposition to the inclusion of the Israeli team. Spain’s centre-left government, which has long traded on rhetorical opposition to Israel’s genocide, has been forced to cancel a €700 million deal to acquire Israeli-designed rocket launchers. 
While governments across Europe attempt to cover their complicity in genocide and placate the movement for Gaza with meaningless gestures, Italy’s governing far-right coalition has refused even this concession. 
Days before the strike, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right Lega, went on Israeli channel <a href="https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2025/09/19/salvini-intervista-israele-palestina-hamas-news/8132274/">i24news</a> to denounce the Palestine movement, saying “I don’t think they know what they’re protesting about. Islamic terrorism is the main problem in the world today.”
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of the fascist-rooted Brothers of Italy, seized on small clashes in Milan provoked by police to demonise what she characterises as the “violence and destruction” of “hooligans”. The government’s attacks are not limited to words. Palestine protests, including those of high school students, are routinely met with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/reel/910031973922530">brutal police repression</a>. 
Meloni’s highly authoritarian party is committed to ruling as the “party of order”, and to repressing any manifestation of left-wing opposition. It sees the militarised Israeli ethno-state as a model to be emulated. 
But the government’s opposition to the movement is about more than ideology. It’s also about defending the nexus between the Italian state, the US-led NATO military alliance, and Italy’s highly profitable weapons industry. Meloni has committed to raise defence spending to meet NATO targets of 5 percent of GDP in the next decade. This will mean a massive windfall for companies like Leonardo, currently valued at €29.45 billion, which rely heavily on contracts with Israel. 
The cost of this new arms race will be borne by workers already reeling after years of one-sided class war. In Italy, real wages have fallen 7.5 percent since 2021, precarity is rife and, on average, three people die at work every day. 
Against this world of austerity and war, 22 September is another flicker of hope. It shows the possibility of a political response based on working class power and solidarity. As the USB said in a statement on the day of the strike: “Workers have returned to centre stage and are calling on citizens, all citizens, to stand up. They are not doing so for a contract renewal but to demand justice for a distant and tormented people. In this age of selfishness and individualism, this seems unthinkable. But no, solidarity between peoples and brotherhood beyond borders are not dead and buried values; on the contrary, they are alive and kicking.”

Luca Tavan

‘Block everything with Palestine in our hearts’: Italy paralysed by Gaza actions

The fiftieth anniversary of Papua New Guinea’s independence this month was marked by the announcement of a proposed major joint defence treaty between PNG and its former colonial power, Australia. “We’re talking about totally integrated forces,” PNG’s Defence Minister Billy Joseph told the ABC on 15 September, “Australian Defence Force and PNG Defence Force using the same equipment...fighting together, defending our sovereignties as an integrated force”. 
So much for independence. 
Albanese might <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/visit-papua-new-guinea-golden-jubilee">pontificate</a> that Australia and PNG are “neighbours, partners and equals”, but this military agreement shows how things really are. It continues Australia’s 120-year domination and exploitation of PNG.
From 1906 until 1975, PNG was a colonial possession of Australia. School history curricula in PNG acknowledges this, but for Australian students, this nearly 70-year long period of domination likely comes as a surprise. 
In their 2024 article “‘The Moat of Oblivion’: Australia and the Forgetting of Papua New Guinea” academics Helen Garner, Jonathan Ritchie and Brad Underhill suggest that that in the nineteenth century era of White Australia, politicians did not try to integrate PNG into the Australian national identity because most Papuans were, and are, non-white. 
The Australian state did not want to launch a genocidal frontier war akin to those waged against Indigenous peoples on Australia’s mainland and Tasmania, or to encourage migration of whites to PNG. Instead, PNG was shunted “somewhere else” in Australia’s nationalist and cultural mythology, as an island that belonged to Australia, but was not occupied by Australians. This political separation underpins the exploitative nature of Australia’s engagement with PNG. 
While ostensibly an Australian territory, from 1906 onwards Papuans were denied democratic rights, including the right to vote. Even after being incorporated as Australian citizens in 1948, Papuans required permits to travel south. Many Papuans who left the island were ensnared in “blackbirding”—a slave labour system where Pacific Islanders were forced to work on Queensland plantations. 
Sequestering Papua New Guinea also smashed up the migratory traditions of Pacific Islanders. As Gardner et al describe: “The six-kilometre stretch of water between the northernmost Queensland Island Saibai and the Shore of Papua was both a physical and conceptual barrier between continental Australia and the island of New Guinea in the minds of white Australians—but not those of the Torres Strait for whom it had always been a pathway rather than a boundary”. 
The Australian state imposed both English and Christianity on the people of PNG in its colonising drive, attempting to force national cohesion along Western capitalist lines on highly differentiated peoples. To this day, PNG is the most<a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/07/20/papua-new-guineas-incredible-linguistic-diversity"> linguistically diverse</a> place on earth, with more than 800 recognised languages. 
Australia’s interest in PNG has always been imperial. Viewed through military eyes, the island is Australia’s gateway to (and from) the Asia Pacific. 
The theatre of imperial conflict expanded from Europe towards Asia in World War II, and with this shift, warfare came closer to Australia’s neighbourhood. In January 1942, Japan invaded Rabaol—a township on the PNG island of New Britain—with the intention of capturing the capital Port Moresby. Had this occurred, it would have represented an incursion upon the northernmost flank of Australian, and therefore US, influence. 
The ensuing Kokoda Track campaign, which repulsed the Japanese invasion, has been incorporated into nationalist myths as an epic chapter in Australian war history. Papuans—whose own homes were besieged—are remembered only as helpful sidekicks in this mythos, as “Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels” tending to wounded soldiers. 
Ironically, Australian politicians were motivated to abandon PNG as a colony in order to ensure their ongoing imperial influence. As World War II gave way to the Cold War, Australian politicians realised that holding formal colonies was no longer tenable, as major social struggles for national liberation took place in Asia and Africa. 
Australian politicians feared PNG might fall under Communist influence, like many other national independence struggles at the time, without a negotiated transition to independence. Jon Piccini argues this in his 2024 article “‘Time is Against Us’: Anti-Communism, Decolonisation, and Papua New Guinean Independence” in the journal Australian Historical Studies. Catholic organisations worked to foster anti-Communist attitudes among the small PNG elite—and leaders of the trade union movement—as part of their attempts to cultivate a future ruling class loyal to Western capitalism. 
Piccini quotes Richard Krygier explaining that his organisation, the Catholic anti-communist outfit Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, intervened in PNG to “pre-empt the field before the Communists and their friends emerge on the scene”. Whether and on what terms the people of PNG wanted independence was of marginal concern in these circles. 
Preparations for PNG’s independence began in the 1960s under a series of Liberal and Country Party federal governments. In 1964, Australia’s Department of Territories cut the pay of PNG’s public servants to that of 40 percent of Australians doing the same work—supposedly as a precursor for dealing with fewer resources in an independent state. 
Whitlam’s Labor government, elected in 1972, accelerated the move towards independence. In 1973, PNG transitioned to “self-government”, and on 16 September 1975, became fully independent. Gyngell describes that PNG’s first governor-general, Sir John Guise, noted during independence ceremonies that “Papua New Guineans were lowering the flag of their colonisers, not tearing it down”. Typical of paternalistic colonialism, these events have been remembered as examples of Australia’s benevolence towards PNG.
But as even former Australian prime minister Paul Keating admitted in his memoirs, this “benevolence” brought limited benefits to the people of PNG. “As colonialists,” he wrote, “Australia’s army has been generally benign but I’m not sure we were much good at the task. Not least, we had bequeathed Papua New Guinea a public sector and a military force, modelled on our own, that were expensive and quite unsuited to the needs of a developing country”. 
Since independence, PNG has experienced endemic poverty. As of 2022, fewer than 20 percent of households had access to safe drinking water and fewer than 10 percent safely managed sanitation. 
Australia has never been motivated by humanitarian concern for Papuans. It is not concerned with poverty, the education of girls, corruption or rising sea levels, whatever its official statements on Pacific relations might say. Since independence, successive governments have worked to maintain Australia’s economic and military domination of the region. 
According to the Australia—Papua New Guinea Development Partnership Plan of 2024-2029, Australia is Papua New Guinea’s largest trading partner, allocating $637.4 million in loans and grants, and $2.56 billion in budget support loans. Australia has more or less taken for granted that PNG’s economic reliance on Australia will ensure their political affinity to Western capitalism and therefore pliancy to its military presence. 
As imperial tensions between the US and China have steadily heightened, Australia has worried about waning influence. A 2023 naval security agreement launched between China and the Solomon Islands—typically seen as safe in Australia’s sphere of influence—gave the Australian establishment a scare that China’s economic leverage might win them more military allies in the Pacific. 
Albanese’s Labor government has doubled down on their real ambition: reliable, no holds barred military access to PNG. In August, Defence Minister Richard Marles announced that $500 million would be spent on the long-expected expansion of PNG’s Lombrum naval base. 
Should the proposed mutual defence treaty between Australia and PNG materialise, it will represent a formalisation of the existing state of affairs, as well as a guarantee—from Australia’s perspective—that PNG will remain in the Western camp. 
From colonisation, to independence, and after, Australia has never cared about the rights and wishes of Papuans. Their intention has always been to dominate the region economically, to secure military acquiescence.

Priya T.

Australian imperialism in Papua New Guinea: past and present

The death of Charlie Kirk has made me think about the growth of the right-wing presence on US campuses during the last three decades. The student right during these years morphed from Ronald Reagan boosters into the neo-Fascist <a href="https://threewayfight.org/what-charlie-kirks-life-and-death-can-tell-us-about-the-u-s-right-in-the-age-of-trump/?fbclid=IwY2xjawM4ESNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHu8PqzTEntFEztYxLQuEmyv4smjV33BW_JmQofQ3W6Q8P5lUO81PBwPWMsvq_aem_l9157vR0G7XvFPGl73RotA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Christian nationalists</a> of Turning Point USA. Yet one of the major reasons for the success of Charlie Kirk and his roadshow was the weakness of the campus left. Another was the financial and political backing from the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/turning-point-usa-donations-surged-pandemic-rcna37143" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rich and powerful</a> from its very founding, despite its origin mythology of starting out in Kirk’s family’s garage.
Scanning through many articles documenting the growth of Kirk’s “nonprofit” foundation during the past decade is like watching a well-capitalised media start-up with aspirations to become a global player. Turning Point’s <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/800835023/202501359349304810/full" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">IRS tax return</a> reported, for example, that it had revenues over $86 million in 2024. Kirk received a salary of over $285,000 and another $99,000 in compensation. Not huge in corporate terms. But, for student politics, this was unprecedented. This <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&amp;v=WORO-OgThig" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">gushy video tour</a> of Turning Point’s headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2019 gives an idea of the burgeoning confidence of Kirk and his entourage.
The post-sixties campus
Whether you date the decline of the campus left in the waning years of the Vietnam War or in the decade that followed, when the New Left turned to the working class, it was pretty clear by the late 1970s and early 1980s that the right had begun to build a significant presence on college campuses. Not everywhere at once, of course, it was a herky-jerky process. The Republican Party, however, took building their campus operations far more seriously than the Democrats, who, from my perspective, appeared virtually non-existent, disorganised and had little political appeal.
The Republicans drew many of their future leading cadres from battles within the College Republicans and against the student left, liberal faculty members, and administrators. Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, for example, future Republican presidential campaign managers and advisers, first cut their teeth in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/05/us/man-in-the-news-fierce-ambition-karl-rove.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">College Republican politics</a> in the 1970s. On campuses previously known for their liberalism and radicalism, typical of the media coverage of the time was a New York Times article from 1984, “Students Leaning to the Right”:
“In his freshman year at Princeton University, Peter Heinecke joined a campus organization so low key that hardly anyone knew it existed. It was the Princeton University College Republicans. ‘It was pretty much a dead thing’, Mr. Heinecke recalled. So much so, in fact, that nobody even bothered to renew the club’s registration with the Dean’s Office. That was last year.
“This year, in the flush of President Reagan’s re-election victory, the College Republicans is very much alive. Membership has grown from a mere handful of students a year ago to 200, with double that on the mailing list. As unusual as the conservative trend might seem at Princeton—a traditionally liberal school—it is hardly an isolated example. On campuses across the nation, students are increasingly becoming aligned with the Republican Party.”
The College Republicans were joined in their efforts by local initiatives that gained a national following, such as the <a href="https://dartreview.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dartmouth Review</a>, founded at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in 1980. Anti-apartheid activists built <a href="https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/journeys.dartmouth.edu/dist/3/834/files/2016/05/DivestmentProtests-MandelaHall-1985.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“shanty towns”</a> on the Dartmouth campus to highlight the racial oppression and poverty of the Black majority in South Africa in 1986. Calling themselves the Dartmouth Committee to Beautify the Green Before Winter Carnival, twelve Dartmouth students—ten of whom were on the staff of the Dartmouth Review—attacked and destroyed the shanties with sledgehammers on Martin Luther King Day. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/13/us/at-dartmouth-the-right-borrows-the-protest-mantle-of-the-left.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According</a> to an article in the New York Times:
“But the shanty episode is only the latest part of a long campaign by The Review against most of the moves the college has made in the last decade to show sensitivity to women, nonwhites and homosexuals. ‘There is freedom of speech here as long as you’re firmly left of center’, said Roland Reynolds, the editor of The Review. ‘It’s the idea that you can’t criticize people who happen to be black, who happen to be women.’ He described the crew that attacked the shanties as ‘the Bernhard Goetz of Dartmouth’.”
Bernhard Goetz was the infamous New York City <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/771433/fear-and-fury-by-heather-ann-thompson/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“Subway gunman”</a> who shot four Black teenagers—and paralysed one of them—claiming they tried to rob him and he was defending himself. That a Dartmouth Review editor would openly identify with a racist vigilante, while its staff eagerly participated in a sledgehammer attack on anti-apartheid activists, speaks volumes about their racism and embrace of political violence against their opponents on the campus by 1986. The Dartmouth Review had rich and powerful friends, including <a href="https://socialistworker.org/2015/12/08/the-crusade-against-political-correctness" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ronald Reagan</a>. This was long before Charlie Kirk was around.
In the early 1990s, the campus far right received a boost from then-President George H.W. Bush with his infamous attack on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01kX1WGdJWc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“political correctness”</a>—a forerunner of the current attack on “woke”—during his commencement speech at the University of Michigan in May 1991. Bush was not known for his emotional displays, but he clearly enjoyed giving the speech, buoyed by the support of many students in the audience. Bush’s attack was enthusiastically taken up by the <a href="https://socialistworker.org/2015/12/08/the-crusade-against-political-correctness" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">mass media and intellectual pundits</a> with the broad support of the Republican establishment and a correspondingly weak response from the Democrats and most college and university administrators.
I was a member of the <a href="https://joeallen-60224.medium.com/international-socialism-is-my-north-star-c3730df819ba">International Socialist Organization</a> at the time, and we were one of the few socialist organisations that tried to build on a handful of college campuses despite our small size. We immediately recognised the threat that Bush’s attack on “political correctness” posed to the small, very limited gains made by African-Americans and other minorities, women and working-class students, who had suffered major setbacks during the two terms of Reagan’s presidency. Bush’s election triumph in 1988 was viewed by many of us as Reagan’s third term. The ISO <a href="https://archive.org/details/whats-behind-the-attck-on-politically-correct" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">published a pamphlet</a>, What’s Behind the Attack on Politically Correct?, by Lance Selfa and Alan Mass. They wrote in the introduction:
“No sooner had President Bush announced the end of the war against Iraq than he declared a new war at home. The battle wasn’t to be fought with weapons, but with idea. Its armies would be made up of right-wing ideologues, media pundits, university faculty, and students, not soldiers.”
The ISO was much better prepared to deal with this new witch hunt than many groups in the US left that had little to no campus presence. Even though we had a tiny number of members nationally in early 1990 (possibly 200), we bolstered our presence during the buildup to and war against Iraq during the latter half of 1990 and early 1991. We launched the National Network of Campuses Against the War, though short-lived, and we were able to project ourselves beyond a handful of campuses.
Under the perfect sun
In 1992, I was living in San Diego, California. An old friend and comrade, Phil, and I were trying to build a branch in a city that hadn’t had a previous branch of the ISO. I know that there were more than a few people who thought that our effort was more like a long vacation. I saw it as a fun adventure. San Diego had a reputation for being a <a href="https://archive.org/details/underperfectsuns00davi/page/n14/mode/1up?view=theater" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">major tourist destination</a> and very conservative. Our small ISO branch was largely active at the University of California at San Diego campus located in La Jolla, a rich, scenic seaside enclave. The campus felt more like a resort. Our campus club was called the International Socialist Club.
But San Diego had a radical tradition, despite being a Navy town with major Marine Corps bases nearby and having a large Christian evangelical presence. Socialist writer, novelist and historian Dan LaBotz <a href="https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/article/the-intellectual-autobiography-of-an-american-leftist/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recalled</a>:
“I finished high school in 1963, went to Southwestern Community College in Chula Vista, then to San Diego State, graduating in 1968, and a year later went to the University of California at San Diego where I studied literature with <a href="https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/fredric-r-jameson-1934-2024/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Fredric Jameson</a>. I also sat in on <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Herbert Marcuse’s</a> undergraduate lectures on Marx and, on one occasion, convinced him to lead a discussion of the Paris Commune for the local chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, of which I was a member. I helped to form a small IS chapter that engaged in strike support. Already a supporter of the United Farm Workers then organizing agricultural workers in California, we joined boycott picket lines at grocery stores, and also participated in strike support at a tomato ranch. We also supported a Greyhound Bus lines drivers’ strike.”
UCSD did have some radical legacy, including the New Indicator newspaper and its “Disorientation Manual”, a radical introduction to the campus, and a weekly film series with a political discussion after. Within the city limits, San Diego was pretty much like any other big American city, but it was surrounded by suburbs that were a bastion of the Christian right, replete with a <a href="https://creationsd.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Creation and Earth Science Museum</a>. I remember my first night in the city—I was out jogging and paused to take a breath when a car stopped in front of me with a bumper sticker that proclaimed, “Rocks prove creation!”
In the early 1990s, historic changes were beginning to reshape San Diego. The post-Cold War and post-Gulf War reorganisation and downsizing of the defence industry, along with Bush’s recession that hit the city and county hard, especially housing construction, sent the economy into near depression. In 1992, however, it was the <a href="https://socialistworker.org/2011/08/19/no-justice-no-peace" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rebellion in Los Angeles</a>, following the acquittal of three of the four police officers in the assault on Rodney King in April, that was a lightning bolt that shook up campus politics at the very end of the Spring.
President George H.W. Bush also faced a challenge from his right, first with fascist sympathiser Pat Buchanan in the Republican primaries, and then an independent presidential campaign with the strange character of Ross Perot. All of this took the swagger of the UCSD Republicans, who increasingly gave off the aura of a defeated army. But some of the others on the right saw an opportunity. Three weeks after the LA rebellion, hundreds of posters were plastered across campus, along with hundreds of invitations on cards placed at the cafeteria dining tables, inviting the campus community to a lecture sponsored by the Objectivist Study Group, the followers of <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/garbage-and-gravitas/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">right-wing crackpot</a> Ayn Rand.
The speaker was George Reisman, an economics professor at Pepperdine University and a well-known figure among followers of Ayn Rand. The title of his lecture was “Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism”. Reisman wanted to target ethnic studies at UCSD, which he denigrated as “worshipping your savage ancestors”. He had a long involvement in far-right politics stretching back to the mid-1950s. At a banquet dinner honouring Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man and mentor to Donald Trump, who was forced to resign from his committee assignments because of the swing public opinion against McCarthy, Time magazine <a href="https://time.com/archive/6869342/opinion-one-enchanted-evening/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>:
“The noise rose several decibels when 17-year-old Columbia University Sophomore George Reisman of Students for America called Cohn the ‘American Dreyfus’ and barked: ‘Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy will be redeemed when the people have taken back their government from the criminal alliance of Communists, Socialists, New Dealers and the Eisenhower-Dewey Republicans.’”
Four decades later, he was at UCSD to attack Black and Latino students, faculty and administrators. Reisman was one of the direct connections between the old and new McCarthyism. The UCSD Department of Ethnic Studies at that time was two years old. Walking across campus that day, I saw many people reading the posters but not knowing quite what to make of them. Was this some weird prank? The Objectivists were a campus club, but not known for such provocative behaviour; they were dismissed as a small group of marginal weirdos with little cache. This meeting had all the hallmarks of an outside and well-funded operation.
Our small ISO kicked into high gear. We talked to everyone and every organisation on campus that we needed to picket the meeting and fill the hall to challenge whatever vile bigotries were going to be spewed out that night. Despite our hard work, we weren’t sure how many people were going to turn out. The night of 13 May, we began our picket with fifteen to twenty people outside the lecture hall. Phil made one of his class flyers, “Fight Racism. Defend Multiculturalism!”
It appeared to us that most of the crowd going into the lecture hall was from off campus; they gave off the vibe of being rich weirdos from La Jolla. Reisman and his coterie were incensed that we were protesting. They came out of the hall to stare at us and shake their heads. The hatred in his eyes was incredible. He went back into the hall, and then we came in. Our numbers grew, but at the beginning of the lecture we were outnumbered about two to one. There were about 50 of us and a hundred of them. The chair of the meeting began by reminding us that this lecture was to be copyrighted and not to be quoted without permission. There was a burst of laughter from our section of the audience. Reisman was not pleased.
Right away, he denounced us as “commissars” who stifled “free speech”. By the time Reisman’s lecture began, our supporters in the audience were about equal in number with the Objectivists. Reisman’s speech, with his repetitive drumbeat of the phrases “savage ancestors” and “western civilisation”, along with his sneering tone, enraged the audience. People exploded. “Don’t call my ancestors savages!”, Reisman snapped back, “Who the hell are you? Shut up!”, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. A Gulf War veteran, who wore a gas mask and biochemical gear, rose every time Reisman said “western civilisation”, holding a poster of a slave ship over his head and turning to the audience. He later told me an older woman kept punching him in the back of the head the entire meeting.
It was the only campus protest where I thought a fight would break out because people were so enraged by the provocative racism of the speaker. The meeting got so rowdy that the campus police were called, and slowly the meeting dispersed. The Objectivists were enraged but defeated. Darlene Price, the president of the OSG, told the San Diego Union-Tribune, “Everything we put into that meeting was destroyed. We received nothing”. Phil, who was also the faculty advisor to the International Socialist Club, told the disciplinary board: “When he [Reisman] mentioned savages, he was motioning toward the Black and Latino areas of the audience”. Despite their best efforts to get us kicked off campus and fine us, we prevailed in the disciplinary hearing.
Looking back three decades at the events that night, I see that all of the vile politics of Charlie Kirk were present then, and what was needed was the financial backing and political hustle to turn into a nationwide threat to us all. I also look back on it and think it shows that we can beat them.
Joe Allen is the author of <a href="https://authors.tertulia.com/allenojoe-draftv4iskv/books/teamsterland-reports-on-america-s-most-iconic-union-reports-allen-o-joe/B0FLDHKX48">Teamsterland: Reports on America’s Most Iconic Union</a> and <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1441-the-package-king">The Package King: A Rank and File History of UPS</a>. He lives in Chicago.

Joe Allen

Fighting the far right on campus: a small victory from the US in 1992

Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, suffered a setback in the elections of the province of Buenos Aires on 7 September. Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) won in just two of the eight electoral areas in Argentina’s most populous province, home to more than 17 million people or 40 percent of the entire Argentine electorate. With the national mid-term elections due to be held in late October, this was an important test for the government.
Milei came to power in 2023, and immediately implemented a series of draconian anti-protest and anti-strike laws, combined with mass cuts to public spending, large public sector lay-offs and privatisations. During the Buenos Aires provincial election campaign, he promised his supporters, “We’re going to put the final nail in their coffin”, referring to the centrist Peronist opposition. But even Milei could not spin the result into something positive. On election night he struck a very different chord, saying “Without a doubt, on the political front, today we have suffered a clear defeat”.
The major beneficiaries of this defeat are the Peronists, a coalition of various parties from the centre left to centre right. Closely linked to the union bureaucracy, the Peronists have governed Argentina for the majority of the years since its return to democracy in the 1980s, introducing a range of neoliberal measures during that time. The Peronists won 47.3 percent of the vote in Buenos Aires, claiming victory in 100 of the 130 municipalities. LLA, by contrast, won just 33.7 percent. In the two most populous and working-class electoral areas, the Peronists beat Milei’s coalition by 25 and 10 percentage points respectively. 
The strong Peronist vote much more reflects a rejection of Milei’s program than enthusiastic support for the Peronists. In just two years, Milei’s austerity has savaged the living standards of the working class. Last year, the poverty rate reached a record high 54.8 percent. A full 70 percent of people run out of money for monthly expenses by the 20th of the month, according to economist Guillermo Oliveto. Milei dismissed this statistic, saying, “If it were true, you would have to walk down the street and it would be full of corpses”. 
On top of his clear indifference to mass poverty, Milei’s administration has been mired in corruption scandals, which have likely had an impact on some voters who bought into his self-described “anti-elitistism”.
The other encouraging outcome of the election was the strong vote for the Workers’ Left Front (FIT-U), a coalition of far-left socialist parties. Across the province, the FIT-U won 4.3 percent of the total, or 350,000 votes. Electorally, the province is divided into eight areas. In the third and eighth areas, which have respective populations of more than 5 million and 600,000, the FIT-U consolidated itself as the third political force, winning just over 5.5 percent in each. 
In La Matanza, the largest municipality in the country with nearly 2 million people, the FIT-U won 7.5 percent. In other areas, its vote reached between 6 and 8 percent. The strong result means the FIT-U will hold on to its two lower house MPs. The party’s program includes massive expansions of public health and education, nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, putting politicians on a teachers’ wage, cutting regressive taxes and establishing a national jobs program. Its success shows that even a relatively small party, when it puts forward a decent left-wing program, can win a section of workers and students.
Ana Paredes Landman, a teacher, will hold one of the seats for the Socialist Workers’ Movement (MST), one of the four parties that make up the FIT-U. In a statement she pointed to the resistance, led by the left, to Milei’s program as responsible for his defeat:
“There were the workers of the Garrahan (hospital), the disability movements, retirees and so many popular sectors who, with the support of the Left Front, kept the resistance alive while other spaces linked to the union bureaucracy and Peronism chose passivity. The good electoral result of the Left Front marks a recognition of those of us who uphold a consistent proposal, who do not turn our backs and who always defend the rights of workers and youth in the legislatures and in the councils.”
Another important part of the FIT-U’s approach is that it doesn’t just offer an electoral alternative but also actively builds resistance in the streets, university campuses and workplaces. The MST have been leading some of the most high-profile resistance to Milei’s austerity. One example is the Garrahan paediatrics hospital in Buenos Aires. Milei’s attacks on the free and public hospital, which treats 40 percent of Argentina’s paediatric cancer cases, have turned it into a symbol of resistance. The MST is the dominant political force in the Garrahan union. It has led a series of strikes at the hospital and marches on congress—one of which ended with healthcare workers surrounding the congress building. The union general secretary, Norma Lezana, an MST member, has tried to link the Garrahan struggle to the broader struggles of all workers, saying that while their action “is centred on the Garrahan, it includes all the demands of the population ... if the Garrahan wins, and we manage to keep it from closing, that will also be a victory for the entire population”.
Ultimately, the election is an important setback for Milei and his ultra-conservative agenda. While two general strikes and other major industry strikes in the first year of his term stymied some of the most extreme elements of his program, the resistance has become more isolated since then. Only the best organised sections of the working class, often where the socialist left is strong, have kept up the pressure with consistent strikes and protests. 
Nonetheless, the Buenos Aires election shows that the far right’s advance can be checked, and that the centre can make gains electorally against it. While the Peronists and their partners in the union bureaucracy have largely given up the fight against Milei in the streets and workplaces, the presence of a sizeable far left with some weight in key sections of the working class has been crucial in building resistance. 
Unfortunately, the far left is still too small to challenge seriously the influence of the Peronist movement. But for a growing section of workers, it does provide a political alternative capable of leading at least some of them in action. Continuing to build and strengthen a genuinely anti-capitalist movement that reaches further into the working class is the key to challenging seriously both Milei and Peronism.

Italy’s general strike shows the way forward

Mass protests and ‘kleptospirosis’ in the Philippines

Socialist professor targeted in US censorship campaign

Charlie Kirk’s legacy: a bosses’ war on free speech

Free speech under attack in the US

Egypt’s workers stir again

‘Block everything with Palestine in our hearts’: Italy paralysed by Gaza actions

Australian imperialism in Papua New Guinea: past and present

Fighting the far right on campus: a small victory from the US in 1992

Setback for far-right Milei and advance for left in Argentina

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