Fight Back! News

News and Views from the People's Struggle

Statement

By staff

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement by Tallahassee Students for a Democratic Society.

At the start of the Spring 2025 semester, FSU Admin secretly axed LGBTQ+ Housing – which provides much needed accommodations to transgender and queer students living on campus without communicating their decision to any students, or even the Inter-Residence Hall Council (IHRC). This comes amid escalating attacks on the rights and autonomy of queer and trans people by the reactionary Trump administration and the ruling Florida Republican Party.

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By La Comisión Chicana/Latina+ de la Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad

En las primeras dos semanas de su presidencia, Trump ha desatado una campaña muy publicitada para deportar a chicanos, mexicanos, centroamericanos y otros más. Aunque alega que está enfocándose en criminales, la redada más reciente en Denver, CO, tuvo a oficiales deteniendo a todos en el vecindario y preguntando por documentos. Adicionalmente, Trump también ha cancelado el Estatus de Protección Temporal o TPS (en inglés) para más de 300,000 venezolanos e intentó restringir la ciudadanía por nacimiento garantizada por la 14ª Enmienda de la Constitución de los Estados Unidos. Trump incluso ha comenzado a enviar detenidos a la base militar de Guantánamo en Cuba, aislándolos de sus familias, amigos o cualquier apoyo legal.

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By LGBTQ & Women's Movement Work Team of FRSO

It seems like Trump signs each bigoted executive order before the ink dries on the last. He hasn’t spared any time or pulled any punches in attacking trans people.

The latest executive orders include holding federal funds hostage to bar trans athletes from sports and trans kids from receiving healthcare. Based on pseudoscience, one executive order declares that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes.” This erases the thousands of cisgender intersex people living in the United States. The same order mandates that trans women be barred from women’s restrooms in federal buildings, and it calls on coworkers to turn against each other to report them. It also prohibits changing gender markers on passports.

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By Chicano/Latino Plus Commission of the FRSO

In the first two weeks of his Presidency, Trump has unleashed a highly publicized campaign to deport Chicanos, Mexicanos, Central Americans and others. While he claims to be targeting criminals, the most recent raid in Denver, CO, had officials stopping everyone in the neighborhood and asking for documents. In addition, Trump has also cancelled Temporary Protected Status or TPS for more than 300,000 Venezuelans and tried to restrict birthright citizenship granted in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Trump has even started shipping detainees to the Guantanamo military base in Cuba, isolating them from family, friends, or any legal support.

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By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from Louisiana State University Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

On Monday January 20th, LSU SDS led a march on the capitol with other organizations to unite in opposition to Trump’s backwards agenda. Days before, our reactionary governor Jeff Landry issued an executive order that encouraged all Louisiana residents to raise a “Make America Great Again” flag in celebration of Trump’s inauguration. He also participated in this by flying a MAGA flag in front of his mansion.

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By staff

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the International League of Peoples’ Struggle.

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle celebrates the announcement of a Gaza ceasefire deal between the Palestinian resistance forces and the genocidal occupation state that has waged a war of extermination against the Palestinian people for more than the past year, in actuality for now more than a century.

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By la Comisión Sindical de la Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad

Durante tres días, a partir del 8 de enero, la Patrulla Fronteriza realizó redadas de inmigración aterrorizando a los residentes del condado de Kern alrededor de Bakersfield, California. Como una manada de lobos, cazaron y detuvieron a cientos de personas. Atraparon a 78 personas, alineándolos para su deportación. El condado de Kern es uno de los principales productores agrícolas de la región y muchos de los afectados eran trabajadores agrícolas o trabajaban en la industria.

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By Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad

Mientras los venezolanos celebran la inauguración del Presidente Maduro el 10 de enero, la Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad saluda la Revolución Bolivariana, el Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), y sobre todo al Presidente Maduro por otra gran victoria. Superando las sanciones estadounidenses, la interferencia electoral y las mentiras, el pueblo de Venezuela ha triunfado una vez más.

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By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

The Palestinian resistance has forced the Israeli apartheid regime to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza. This ceasefire agreement is a significant achievement won by the bravery, sacrifice and unity of the Palestinian resistance, bolstered by the patriotic forces in Yemen, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and, until recently, Syria.

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By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

For three days starting January 8, the Border Patrol conducted immigration sweeps terrorizing Kern County residents around Bakersfield, California. Like a pack of wolves, they hunted and detained hundreds. They snatched up 78 people, lining them up for deportation. Kern County is a top producer of agriculture for the region and many affected were farm workers or work in the industry.

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By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization shares its condolences with the family, friends and comrades of Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez, chairman of the Young Lords Organization. He died on January 10, 2025, at the age of 75 in Chicago.

All those who knew him appreciated Jimenez’s determination and his ability to motivate others to action, all the while teaching about the need for revolution and socialism. A revolutionary to the end, he often quoted Mao Tse Tung on the united front strategy, “Unite the many to defeat the few!”

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By Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad

Apenas unos días después del comienzo de 2025, el área de Los Ángeles ha sido envuelta por incendios sin precedentes. Entre una sequía amplia y vientos con fuerza de huracán, algunas áreas que nunca habían tenido que ser evacuadas debido a los incendios han quedado completamente destruidas, con más de 100,000 personas ordenadas a evacuar la zona hasta ahora.

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By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Just days into 2025, the Los Angeles area has been engulfed by record-breaking wildfires. Amidst widespread drought and hurricane-force winds, some areas which have never once needed to evacuate due to fires have been completely destroyed, with over a 100,000 people ordered to evacuate the area so far.

2024 was, yet again, the hottest year in history. Global average temperatures crossed an important threshold in 2024: 1.5° C (2.7° F) warmer than pre-industrial levels. This was the maximum temperature set as goal by the Paris Climate Accords, the threshold after which dangerous effects of climate change are expected to become commonplace.

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By Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad

Trump está a punto de asumir el cargo en su inauguración en Washington, D.C., el 20 de enero. Desde expansiones absurdas de territorios, hasta desafiar la ciudadanía natal protegida por la constitución, ya sus declaraciones escandalosas vienen una tras otra. Aunque parte de esto sin duda pretende animar los elementos más reaccionarios de su base, su retórica incendiaria contiene amenazas reales y materiales. Trump y su cúpula de billonarios intolerantes y tontos harán todo lo posible para cumplir su agenda opresiva y reaccionaria. Un vistazo a sus nombramientos para la administración entrante es un anticipo del desastre que seguramente vendrá. El mensaje es claro — las grandes empresas vienen primero; el planeta y el pueblo vienen al final.

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By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

As Venezuelans celebrate the inauguration of President Maduro on January 10, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization salutes the Bolivarian Revolution, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and especially President Maduro on another great victory! Overcoming U.S. sanctions, election interference and lies, the people of Venezuela have triumphed once again.

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By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Trump is set to take office at his inauguration in Washington, D.C., on January 20th. From nonsense expansionist land-grabs, to challenging constitutionally protected birthright citizenship, already his outrageous statements come one after another. While some of this is undoubtedly blustering meant to embolden the most reactionary elements of his base, his incendiary rhetoric contains real, material threats. Trump and his thunderdome of billionaire bigots and fools will make every effort at their disposal to pursue their oppressive, reactionary agenda. A look at his appointments to the incoming administration is a preview of the mess that’s sure to come. The message is clear—big business will come first; the planet and the people will come last.

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By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

As 2024 draws to a close, we prepare to march into the new year. It promises both challenges and opportunities, and now is the time to take stock of the world around us and recommit to the work ahead.

The past year has been a flashpoint—a series of crises that have shone a piercing light on the stakes of our fight. In Palestine, the genocidal war in Gaza, and the unflinching resistance of the Palestinian people and their allies, provoked a global tidal wave of solidarity and outrage, making clear the urgency of the anti-imperialist struggle.

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By Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad

El 27 de noviembre, el Líbano y el gobierno israelí, que cuenta con el respaldo de los Estados Unidos y el apartheid, implementaron un alto el fuego. Hezbolá, un poderoso ejército en el Medio Oriente que lucha por liberar a Palestina, combatió a Israel hasta detenerlo. El Ejército Libanés ya está reportando que las fuerzas de ocupación israelíes han violado los términos del alto al fuego varias veces en los dos últimos días.

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By Freedom Road Socialist Organization

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization condemns the ongoing U.S.-backed aggression against Syria. President Bashar Al-Assad has been forced to flee the country, and now sits in exile in Moscow. What is clear is that the Syrian government has collapsed. This blatant assault on Syrian sovereignty is part of a larger effort – by Western imperialists, Israel and reactionary forces in the region – to defeat the Axis of Resistance, which is fighting for the liberation of Palestine and to end U.S. control in the region.

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By Mick Kelly, FRSO Political Secretary

Comrades and friends:

On behalf of the Central Committee, and indeed the entire membership of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, we thank the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and its member organizations for organizing this important conference. We salute all of you who are gathered here. Having a developed understanding of imperialism and national oppression, as well as the fights for national liberation, is vital for understanding the world as it is and what one needs to do to change it. This conference will no doubt further this end.

Trump and the decline of U.S. imperialism

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the U.S. is symptomatic of a monopoly capitalist power in decline. His return to power reflects a failure of the other party of monopoly capitalism (the Democratic Party of Biden/Harris) and its inability to address the needs and aspirations of the working class. Drawing from a toxic brew of national chauvinism and reactionary currents of all kinds, Trump’s return to the White House will signal the sharpening of a host of contradictions domestically and internationally.

Trump has referred to himself as “Tariff Man,” promising to slap 20% tariffs on all imports and substantially more – 100 or 200% – on things like electric vehicles from China. The people around him, like some of the Biden crowd, look towards “delinking” the U.S. economy from the People’s Republic of China.

In his outstanding work, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin made the point that one of the features of imperialism, of decaying monopoly capitalism, was that big capital finds it increasingly difficult to utilize science and holds back advances in the productive forces. This phenomenon is on full display in the U.S., where someone like “vaccine skeptic” RFK Jr will be put in charge of public health, and where industrial policy is turning against technologies that cause less harm to the environment, such as electric vehicles.

The role of the U.S. in the world economy is shrinking. In 1960 the U.S. had about 40% of the world GDP. Today it is about half that. There was a day when U.S. imperialism championed free trade. For the past decade-plus, Washington DC has moved away from the neoliberal trade model, erecting a growing tariff blockade. The abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and paralysis of the World Trade Organization are signs of things to come.

After World War II, the United States constructed a web of economic intuitions where Wall Street and Washington DC occupied center place. That world is gone, and it has been replaced by a fragmenting world economy, where the decline of U.S. imperialism is picking up speed. Trump will accelerate the process.

One of the symptoms will be a sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions, which will have political and military dimensions. For example, Trump’s view of the Ukraine is that it is mainly a concern of Europe and that too much U.S. time and treasure has been wasted on it. If implemented as policy, this shift on the Ukraine will force the European imperialist powers, especially Germany, to carry out a military buildup while putting new stress on NATO.

What we are seeing is clearer definition in the developing spheres of influence and domination – where the U.S. has a smaller role to play. Also worth noting is that the two other monopoly centers of monopoly capitalism, i.e. Japan and the European Union, are also producing a smaller share of the world GDP.

People vs. imperialism

The principal contradiction in the world today is between the peoples, nations and countries of the developing world versus imperialism. The U.S. is presently the principal imperialist power, and as such, it is the main danger to the world’s peoples. From Puerto Rico to the Philippines and Palestine, people are rising up and fighting for liberation.

The battle taking place in the Middle East is vital to the world revolutionary process in the current period. On one side you have Western imperialism, Zionism and Arab reaction. On the other, we have the heroic resistance of Palestine and Lebanon, and a whole axis of resistance, which encompasses Yemen, Syria and the popular forces of Iraq and Iran. This is a battle of world historic importance.

The U.S. cannot continue to exist as a world empire without dominance of the Middle East, and this fact explains why the bond between imperialism and Zionism is so strong. The broad masses of people throughout the Middle East hate foreign domination and want it to end. Israel is the cop on the beat for Western imperialism, a reliable nightstick that can be used against those who want freedom and independence. This means that Trump will double down on the Gaza genocide facilitated by Biden/Harris.

It is also worth noting that things can turn into their opposite, that Israel can move from being an asset to a liability: if the genocide and carnage in Palestine and Lebanon provoke uprisings in the Arab world, the position of imperialism will be impacted.

The fact that many of the forces fighting imperialism and Zionism are not led by the working class does not change the revolutionary, anti-imperialist nature of the struggle that is taking place. Stalin, an outstanding Marxist-Leninist and pathbreaking theorist on national question, wrote in the great work, The Foundations of Leninism:

“The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such ‘desperate’ democrats and ‘Socialists,’ ‘revolutionaries’ and republicans as, for example, Kerensky and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory, of imperialism.”

That said, the struggle for working class leadership in the movements for national liberation is important, and as communists we have the responsibility to support other communists who are contending for leadership in the national movements – be it in Palestine or anywhere else.

Marxism-Leninism and the fight for national liberation

In an environment of declining imperialism, there are some important things to keep in mind.

First, there needs to be a strategic alliance, a “union” as Lenin put it, between the working class in the advanced capitalist countries, and the broad masses of the oppressed in the developing countries. There are hundreds of millions of people in rural areas locked in semi-feudal property relations, which in part provides the material conditions for people’s war.

Second, while there has been a resurgence of the communist and national liberation movements, party building and the construction of revolutionary, communist organizations is a vital task in the present period. Ending, or breaking free of imperialism is not easy, and to successfully do so over the long run requires organizations that embody the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism. Building a new communist party should be the central task of revolutionaries in the U.S., and great progress is being made on this front.

Third, national liberation movements which weaken imperialism are objectively progressive and will hasten imperialism’s end. Self-determination of oppressed nations is a democratic demand, and, to the extent and degree that the fight for self-determination weakens imperialism, those fights should be supported. This has an application in multinational states, including the U.S.

Fourth, monopoly capitalism is a law-governed system where the drive to seek the highest rate of profit is basic. While capitalism is always incapable of genuine long-range planning, imperialism in decline is animated by the shortest of short-term gain and contingency. One of the things that makes the Trump administration dangerous is precisely a reactionary pragmatism that is reshaping the U.S. empire. It is a recipe for more wars and intervention, particularly in Latin America and the Pacific.

Finally, we need to be proletarian internationalists who are serious about uniting the working and oppressed people of the world. Looking around this room, that is exactly who we are. Mao made the point that imperialism is strategically a paper tiger. He was right – in the short term imperialism is an “iron tiger,” it is dangerous. In the long run it will certainly be defeated.

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Long live the unity of the people of the world!

Long live the unity of working and oppressed people – we have nothing to lose but our chains!

#RevolutionaryTheory #FRSO #Statement #Imperialism #Trump #NDFP #OppressedNationalities

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