As fascists fight fascists, workers must choose communism

On January 11, the U.S. Justice Department—a lethal weapon for the world’s most deadly state terrorists, the U.S. ruling class—announced a new division to target “domestic terrorism.” One year after the assault on the Capitol by loyalists of Donald Trump, the vicious battle between two factions of U.S. capitalism is getting even hotter. Controlled by the liberal fascist bosses and their Democratic Party, at least for now, both the Injustice Department and the U.S. Congress have launched sweeping investigations of Trump and his top confederates. These finance capital liberals, also known as the Big Fascists (see glossary, page 6), are taking another step toward full-blown fascism.
To date, more than 700 people have been arrested for their roles in the January 6 rebellion, including 375 for felonies (Washington Post, 1/11). Eleven Trump associates have been charged with crimes (CNN, 7/21/21). The New York Times, the liberal bosses’ leading propaganda machine, is making a case to charge Trump himself with a scheme to confiscate voting machines (2/1). This is just the beginning. The Big Fascists’ media are calling for new laws to more severely prosecute any and all threats to their agenda (TIME, 1/24).
In the fight between Big Fascists and Small Fascists, our class must be clear-eyed about capitalist democracy. We do not hold state power. Capitalism is a dictatorship against the working class, while communism will mean the dictatorship of the working class. Only then do we get to decide how to run society.  Make communist revolution with the international Progressive Labor Party.
Big Fascists, big problems
The Big Fascists, represented by the largest banks and multinational companies like ExxonMobil and Google, are tied to the old liberal world order and expansive U.S. imperialism. To protect their trillions in profits, and to counter rising imperialist gangs in China and Russia, they bankroll 750-plus armed bases around the globe and spend more on the U.S. military than the next 10 nations combined (aljazeera.com, 9/10/21)—a big potential advantage in the next world war.
But unlike China and Russia, the Big Fascists are hobbled by splits in their ranks. The myths of liberal democracy--“free and fair” elections, a government that “plays by the rules”--constrain them. Meanwhile, the Small Fascists, the domestically oriented capitalists fronted by Trump, are free to more openly cheat and steal their way into power while leveraging gutter racism and sexism to mobilize their base. The January 6 insurrection was a warning shot of more to come. To prepare for war and build a united, patriotic, multiracial military, the Big Fascists need to use their legal apparatus to crush the Small Fascists and discipline the whole capitalist class.
If and when they succeed, the liberal rulers will proceed to the second essential element of fascism: an all-out campaign to mislead, pacify, and attack the working class, first by eliminating communists and anyone else not with the program. The Joe Biden administration’s offensive against "domestic terrorists," including modern Klansmen like the Oath Keepers, is aimed both to destroy the Big Fascists’ enemies and to confuse the working class. As CHALLENGE consistently points out, the liberal bosses are the most virulent racists and our most dangerous class enemies. Why is that? Because they have a greater ability to deceive honest, anti-racist workers, and a far greater--and proven--capacity for mass murder, from Hiroshima to Vietnam to Iraq.
While the liberal rulers still have the loyalty of their generals and more “dark money” than the Trumpers to buy elections (NYT, 1/29), there is no guarantee they will come out on top. After continuing to bungle the bosses’ response to Covid-19, Biden is deeply unpopular. Though the Republicans are a minority party, they already control the U.S. Supreme Court and most state legislatures. They appear likely to retake the U.S. Senate (cnn.com, 11/21/21) and the House of Representatives this fall (New York Post, 12/31/21). Trump is a narrow betting favorite to be returned to the White House in 2024 (bonus.com, 2/1).
For the Big Fascist liberals, a Small Fascist sweep would have dire implications for what's left of the old U.S. empire. As president, Trump was soft (to say the least) on Russian President Vladimir Putin. He showed disdain for traditional U.S. allies and is distrusted by liberal bosses in Europe and NATO. As more than a hundred thousand Russian troops have massed on the border with Ukraine, Small Fascist Republicans in Congress are showing no appetite for inter-imperialist confrontation. Said Congressman Matt Rosendale of Montana: “Despite claims by war hawks on both sides of the aisle, it is not in our national interest to spill American blood and treasure in Ukraine” (msn.com, 1/22).
As Russia advances on Ukraine and expands its military influence in Africa (cnbc.com, 9/13/21), and China becomes the ally of choice for bosses in the Middle East (New York Times, 2/2), the Big Fascists may be running out of time.
Liberal democracy = liberal fascism
In the history of class society, going back to the ancient Greeks (the slave-owning forerunners of the U.S. Founding Monsters), democracy has always been a dictatorship of the ruling class. Today's liberal democracy is an absolute dictatorship of the finance capitalist bosses. When the Big Fascists cry that democracy is under threat, it means they are fearful that their control is in jeopardy.
Voting is a con game to foster the illusion that workers decide what happens in society. Little more than a year after Biden was elected as the “compassionate” alternative to Trump, he’s committed one anti-worker atrocity after the next: normalizing Covid slaughter, caging children at the border, cheerleading for more funding for killer kkkops.
But that’s business as usual under capitalism. What's new is that the liberal rulers--divided, corrupt, getting weaker by the day—are seeing that they can no longer govern in the old way. Though they’d prefer to keep the charade of democracy, they can’t allow it to usher their Small Fascist rivals into power. (It’s worth noting that Adolph Hitler became Germany’s chancellor through democratic elections, though the Nazi Party never polled more than 37 percent of the vote.)  The U.S. Justice Department’s renewed focus on domestic terrorism is a preliminary move to put the liberals’ internal competition out of business—and, sooner than later, to go after other “enemies of the state,” including Progressive Labor Party.
We will never liberate the working class from the bondage of capitalism as long as we hold illusions about what we control. Under liberal democracy, the capitalist bosses own our labor and the means of production. The rulers control the institutions of the state: the government, the media, the schools, the military. What we control is our ability to build class unity and consciousness by advancing class struggle. Our Party and our class are fighting back from Haiti to Colombia to Pakistan, from Mexico to East Africa. We’re exposing the dead-end identity politics that Black mayors are weaponizing against Black and Latin workers in Los Angeles and Chicago and New York and Newark. Smash the rulers’ democracy! Fight for communism! Join PLP!