![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therealnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/GettyImages-2198395777-scaled.jpg?fit=2000%2C1333&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nElon Musk speaks as US President Donald Trump looks on in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 11, 2025. Photo by JIM WATSON\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n This story was originally published by In These Times<\/a> on Feb. 11, 2025.<\/em> It is shared here with permission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n President Donald Trump relishes deploying the \u200b\u201cweave,\u201d his vulgar stream-of-consciousness<\/a> spiels in which his vengeful fantasies and antipathy towards a cast of enemies become punchlines in an insult-comic routine. His far-right former adviser Steve Bannon has termed the Trump administration\u2019s psychological warfare approach \u200b\u201cflooding the zone.\u201d The far-right billionaires\u2019 plan is clear, now we need one\u2009\u2014\u2009and fast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The U.S. working class has been thrown onto the battlefield with no organization. And we are in disarray. We must get our forces to coalesce into a united front, fusing the powers of disruption and solidarity. We need to fight back. But how?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey have built our coalition for us by virtue of the wide range of attacks by race, class, gender, legal status and more,\u201d says Gene Bruskin, who led a successful union campaign at a Smithfield pork processing plant in North Carolina in 2008, a campaign that also involved immigrant workers striking over deportation raids. \u200b\u201cIt is on us, in particular the labor movement with its 14 million members, to recognize this and organize our movement of opposition accordingly. This will open the door for our future victories,\u201d Bruskin tells In These Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The plutocratic forces aligned against the working class don\u2019t have a broad mandate<\/a> for their assault, but they are projecting power by using the media to stoke fear and demobilize us. One clear target they are focusing on in an attempt to carve up the working class is the immigrant population. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It would be a mistake to dismiss their attacks as merely smoke and mirrors. Rather, the media-inflated chaos is part of their plan, an effective way to control the narrative, literally rehashing old stories to incite fear. Last week, the Guardian<\/em> published<\/a> an article exposing how Immigration and Customs Enforcement is re-releasing decade-old press statements with new dates to give the impression that ICE was ramping up deportations close to Trump\u2019s inauguration. It\u2019s a common tactic of psychological warfare with historical echoes in this country\u2019s past. In the 1930s, historian Greg Grandin notes in The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America<\/em>, anti-Mexican nativism allowed President Herbert Hoover to run for president on the promise of expulsion of Mexicans from the country, with intellectuals openly fretting about \u200b\u201cracial replacement.\u201d The head of the unemployment office in Los Angeles at the time wanted Mexican workers eliminated from the workforce, saying: \u200b\u201cWe need their jobs,\u201d and offered as a solution deploying cops to set up high-profile raids \u200b\u201cwith all publicity possible and pictures,\u201d a \u200b\u201cpsychological gesture\u201d meant to \u200b\u201cscare many thousand alien deportables.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sign up for The Real News Network Newsletter<\/strong> and stay ahead with news and analysis designed to inform\u2014and inspire action.SIGN UP<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a lot of work, so they wanted what little there was to go to citizens,\u201d said one Mexican worker who spent two decades working in the country, according to historian Dana Frank\u2019s book What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? Stories of Ordinary People & Collective Action in Hard Times<\/em>. In Texas in 1932, a man threatened to blow up City Hall if jobs weren\u2019t taken from Mexicans and given to white workers, writing to the mayor of El Paso: \u200b\u201cBrother we passed the court house the other day. Look who was a clerk, a Mexican. A Mexican, can you beat that? In a white man\u2019s place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Grandin, estimates put the figure of those who were forced to leave the country in the 1930s at between 300,000 to two million people\u2009\u2014\u2009among them many U.S. citizens. In California\u2019s San Fernando, as chronicled by Frank, a worker told a local Spanish-language paper how immigration officials \u200b\u201crode around the neighborhood with their sirens wailing and advising people to surrender themselves to the authorities. They barricaded all the entrances to the colonia so no one could escape,\u201d said the worker describing the arrest of workers in lemon groves. \u200b\u201cWe the women cried, the children screamed, others ran hither and yon with the deputies in hot pursuit yelling at them that their time had come to surrender.\u201d \u201cReal power is\u2009\u2014\u2009I don\u2019t even want to use the word\u2009\u2014\u2009fear,\u201d said <\/a>Trump in 2016. Performance is Trump\u2019s m\u00e9tier, and inciting fear is the most common bit in his drama repertoire. As the political scientist and author <\/a>Corey Robin has noted, \u200b\u201cpolitical actors use fear when there is a mismatch between their power-mongering and the capacity of the state. As is true of all performance on stage, fear is designed to amplify the voice of the actor, far beyond the confines of the theater. Contrary to what people think, the purpose of fear is not sadism or cruelty. It never has been. It is to compensate for a lack of state capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, we need fearless journalism that tackles our most urgent crises and inspires action. Movements fighting exploitation, the climate crisis, and systemic injustice depend on us to amplify their voices and tell their stories. We reject corporate cash and paywalls to keep our work accessible to all\u2014but we can\u2019t do it without you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Make a tax-deductible donation or become a sustaining member today and join the fight to protect independent media!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n DONATE NOW<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there\u2019s what the historian Timothy Snyder has called \u200b\u201canticipatory obedience\u201d and the imperative command: \u200b\u201cDo not obey in advance,\u201d which has been making the rounds on social media posts and countless news stories. But as M. Gessen argued<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em> on February 8, obeying in advance can be a perfectly rational response, as humans take responsibility for others and seek to avoid \u200b\u201ccollective hostage-taking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The example of collective hostage-taking is especially resonant for union members who organize collectively, as Gessen describes<\/a>, \u200b\u201cthe phenomenon when individuals cannot be free to act because of a constant, credible threat of collective punishment. Collective hostage-taking is particularly insidious because it pits different sets of values against each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As one worker recently wrote to me when asked to comment on a source of division in their union: \u200b\u201cUnfortunately I have to think of the consequences for others. I\u2019m not concerned with the impact upon myself, but others get blamed for my actions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under these conditions, it\u2019s critical to support any worker who speaks out and organizes within their union to refuse to bend the knee to Trump and Musk. Will rank-and-file workers defy their accommodationist leaders<\/a> in unions that are going along with Trump\u2019s plan to decimate the working class? And will labor leadership join together to resist these attacks, even when they\u2019re trained on workers outside their own union\u2019s membership, such as federal workers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Weeks into Trump\u2019s second term, we\u2019ve already seen that he isn\u2019t invincible and have witnessed the limits of executive power. Trump backtracked on his initial threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Many of his executive orders are tied up in the courts. Thousands of people have rallied<\/a> nationwide since Trump\u2019s reelection to protest<\/a> mass deportation sweeps, attacks on programs that acknowledge race and gender inequality (part of a right-wing effort to destroy the post-Civil Rights settlement<\/a>, such as ending President Lyndon Johnson\u2019s 1965 ban on racial discrimination in federal employment or government contractors), and restrictions<\/a> on transgender rights, including banning gender-affirming care for young trans people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe first days after Trump\u2019s inauguration were the coldest days here in Chicago, and I don\u2019t know if it was the bad weather or anti-immigrant threats they heard in the news, but people didn\u2019t show up for work,\u201d says Juan Vargas, a Teamsters Local 703 grocery worker. But one week later, he tells me in Spanish, \u200b\u201ceither people lost their fear or went back to work to afford to eat.\u201d Workers\u2019 centers like Arise Chicago, Chicago Community and Workers\u2019 Rights, Centro Sin Fronteras, as well as unions including the Chicago Teachers Union and others have held numerous<\/a> trainings since the presidential election to get residents prepared, building on what they learned and experienced during Trump\u2019s first term in the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Martin Unzueta from Chicago Community and Workers\u2019 Rights says 60 Latino Teamsters from Local 703 attended the Know Your Rights trainings. Countless more training sessions have been held across the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where the sticks of ICE agent intimidation won\u2019t do the trick, the Trump team is bringing out the carrots to chip away at the workforce. Musk has offered bribes to federal employees to purge them from their government jobs, but only 20,000 have accepted the buyout, according<\/a> to Axios. Jacob Morrison, member of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1858 in Huntsville, Alabama, says the annual churn rate is more than 100,000. In 2022 alone, according<\/a> to the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, voluntary attrition from the civil service included 150,000 federal employees leaving the government, including 70,000 who retired and 77,000 who quit their jobs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The upshot? Rather than reduce the size of the federal workforce, Musk and his minions have actually so far helped grow federal union membership to the highest<\/a> in its history to 321,000. AFGE has been recruiting new members to resist Musk\u2019s attack while also picketing<\/a> to prevent him from gaining unauthorized access to buildings and Treasury Department data and rallying<\/a> on Capitol Hill. Where he has been foiled, Musk has upped the ante by threatening mass layoffs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s no coherent pole of opposition in the labor movement or anywhere else, especially among the feckless and corporate-owned Democrats.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Now the Trump administration is facing numerous lawsuits, including <\/a>to block the so-called deferred resignation plan, and protests are starting to spread<\/a>, such as the AFL-CIO and other major unions<\/a> trying to repel Trump\u2019s assault on the Department of Labor. But there\u2019s no coherent pole of opposition in the labor movement or anywhere else, especially among the feckless and corporate-owned Democrats. Meanwhile, the far-right has cohered an insurrectionary vanguard of professional self-professed \u200b\u201crevolutionaries<\/a>.\u201d The truth today is the opposite\u2009\u2014\u2009the struggle we face is between worker power and billionaire rule. Vought and his cronies have hijacked the government, but they\u2019ve also outlined how we can fight them: \u200b\u201cThe hour is late and time is of the essence to expose the charade, rally the country\u2026 and seize every leverage point to arrest the damage,\u201d said Vought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are living through a moment in which the economic and political spheres are more tightly joined than ever with corporate capture of both parties, creating an opening as barriers between the two spheres disintegrate and the unity of corporate and state power melds into what can only be described as an oligarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt this point in any argument like this one, the question arises of what should be done and, more critically, what can be done.\u201d wrote<\/a> New York Times<\/em> columnist Jamelle Bouie on February 5. \u200b\u201cThe sad answer is not that much<\/em>. Those with the direct institutional power to slam the brakes lack the will and those with the will lack the power.\u201d This may be true when it comes to the political establishment, but there is another potential source of power: the labor movement, where the resistance must be one of polarized classes, workers vs. the bosses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAttacking immigrant workers hurts the entire working class, as employers take advantage of the fear caused by threats of deportation to undermine wages and working conditions, and weaken unions,\u201d said<\/a> the United Electrical Workers in a statement. \u200b\u201cThe actions of Trump and his billionaire supporters have already begun to generate popular resistance, and we can expect to see more. The labor movement needs to play a key role in channeling that anger into an effective fightback.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The labor movement is facing an existential crisis, but it does have leverage. There\u2019s no other organization of the working class with a membership base of 14 million in key industries that can disrupt the economy, and a war chest as plentiful as the labor movement\u2019s coffers today. We know that any resistance requires organization. And the labor movement is best positioned to provide it\u2009\u2014\u2009in coalition with other progressive forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s high time for a united front coalition\u2009\u2014\u2009a broad working-class movement that fights for all workers, welcoming everyone, regardless of gender or immigration status. What\u2019s needed is nothing short of a coalitional bloc premised on organized labor\u2019s highest values and unifying ethos: An injury to one is an injury to all. The question is which unions will step up and take on the mantle of leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In their book Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World<\/em>, Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce offer a set of strategies rooted in the history of past struggles for a new generation of organizers. Among the various forms in which workers can wield power, Bhargava and Luce list solidarity and disruption, harnessing our strength in numbers and wielding a credible threat to shut things down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than large noisy demonstrations with no clear aims, workers can take part in the types of actions that block traffic to prevent ICE from conducting workplace raids. If a private-sector employer is collaborating with ICE or discriminating against transgender workers, workers can throw up obstacles by mass strike action, shop-floor action<\/a> and sabotaging<\/a> the boss to prevent them from getting their way through hammering their profits, wresting power from them and prying free of their control. To counter the power of billionaires, we are going to \u200b\u201cneed strategies that chart a path [workers and their communities] can travel, from the world as it is to the world as it could be.\u201d The difficult path we must traverse is from an America First to a Workers First world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s going to require unlikely alliances across the working class rooted in a solidarity strong enough for workers to act together in sufficient numbers to disrupt the status quo. Tactically, because we don\u2019t have enough power in numbers, we\u2019ll have to work alongside broader liberal formations<\/a> like Indivisible, a volunteer-driven group of progressive Democrats, as well as loose online groupings such as #BuildtheResistance<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This coalition will also require peeling away support from MAGA, either when Trump\u2019s supporters become disaffected or when we make it too costly for them to continue to align with a president that\u2019s all in for the super rich. Drawing them in will require an orientation to class-struggle politics. Musk and his billionaire pals represent everything that is wrong with capitalism, in which the relationship between workers and bosses is one of domination and exploitation, which grinds us down every day, leaving us overworked, underpaid and unfree. Pointing to one of the greatest struggles for freedom in the nation\u2019s history, Bhargava and Luce write, \u200b\u201cthe abolitionist fight was complicated and messy, and involved alliances of unlikely subjects. Slavery ended in the United States through the actions of people with a wide range of motives and positions. Such unlikely alliances will be necessary today.\u201d The organizing that we must undertake will require us to \u200b\u201cassess what sources of power are available\u201d to us, and \u200b\u201cwhat strategies are possible given the context.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This moment calls for a broad coalition that knits together an anti-billionaire revolt from below. We need to peel away the soft core of persuadable voters who cast a ballot for Trump. While the AFL-CIO has so far failed to coordinate mass actions nationwide to stop Trump\u2019s assault on the working class, it\u2019s not for nothing that the federation is collecting stories<\/a> to put worker faces on the attacks from Trump and his billionaire cabinet, and has created the \u200b\u201cDepartment of People Who Work for a Living,\u201d as an organized response to Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Federal workers organizing across unions through the Federal Unionist Network (FUN) have called for a national day of action<\/a> on February 19. \u200b\u201cWe are nurses, scientists, park rangers, protectors of our country, researchers, and attorneys who serve our communities every day,\u201d FUN wrote in an email on February 10, announcing the day of action. \u200b\u201cIf we speak out together, we can make it clear to the public why the Trump administration\u2019s attack on our jobs is designed to make all of our lives worse, all to benefit billionaires like Elon Musk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Higher education workers are holding<\/a> a strategy session on February 13 in the face of illegal budget cuts<\/a>, including to the National Institutes of Health. \u200b\u201cThe billionaire class is waging a war on workers, putting our nation\u2019s healthcare, research, education, and jobs at risk,\u201d the cross-union group called Labor for Higher Education, which is organizing under the broad banner of \u200b\u201cHands off our healthcare, our research, our jobs,\u201d recently wrote <\/a>on its website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Educators are also coming together locally <\/a>to defend themselves and their students and in the process are building a movement infrastructure that could be used to fight back. \u200b\u201cWe believe this is a crucial moment for CTU and allies to bring together a number of large locals and community organizations who are strategically situated in key sectors and geographies,\u201d says Jackson Potter, CTU\u2019s vice president. \u200b\u201cThere is a distinct possibility that May 1, 2025 could resemble the movement moment that we saw on May 1, 2006, when 400,000 people marched in Chicago [for worker and immigrant rights].\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In late January, Homan vented<\/a> his frustration on national TV about how well organized workers and communities are in Chicago. \u200b\u201cHundreds of schools have mobilized walk-ins and sanctuary teams to fight back against the Trump attack,\u201d Potter tells In These Times<\/em>. \u200b\u201cIn order to spur our defense of immigrant rights, civil rights and labor rights, we are working to help anchor a convening in March with unions facing contract expirations and groups planning May Day marches, to surface shared demands, tactics and solidarity.\u201d The United Electrical Workers are also part of the effort. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But we also need a national pole of opposition where partisans of labor\u2019s troublemaking wing can come together to make sense of how immigrant workers, trans workers, Black workers on a \u200b\u201cDEI Watch List\u201d<\/a> and other targets of the billionaires aren\u2019t faced with the blame for austerity budgets nor for corporate decisions to offshore jobs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We may be in the beginning of a new movement upsurge, which opens up both new dangers and new possibilities. The dangers include an onslaught of repression, co-optation and absorption by stronger coalition partners, which could lead to a large yet unaccountable organization capable of throwing its weight around to divert the public\u2019s will to fight into political dead-ends, including running cover for the feckless and corporate-dominated Democratic Party, stifling the flames needed to broaden movement disruption. It\u2019s a fraught dynamic to build power. But there are also possibilities to jumpstart new cross-union political vehicles of worker power from below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To take advantage of the possibilities, we need to expand public debate on how we fight back, which in turn can build the capacity of organizers to generate strategy on the basis of their rank-and-file experiences fighting the boss. In Labor Notes<\/em>, UE organizer Mark Meinster argued<\/a> that moments of upsurge are not usually led by the top national leaders, but a small minority of militant labor unions ready to take action because they are independent from the mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo where does organizing capacity come from in an upsurge?\u201d Meinster asked. \u200b\u201cHistorically, three places: a) the minority of unions willing to take militant action, b) new formations that come together during the upsurge, such as the new CIO industrial unions in the 1930s, and c) people fighting for profound changes in society, such as the civil rights movement of the 1960s, socialists in the 1930s, or anarchists in earlier periods.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Union locals can host strike schools nationwide and create political education programs. Worker education also includes vital labor education programs at public<\/a> and private universities. Other efforts will have to be more explicitly socialist<\/a>\u2014the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America\u2019s Academy for Socialist Education, for example, is offering classes <\/a>on striking, political economy, the making of the MAGA coalition and the crisis of the neoliberal ruling classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Opposition efforts will have to emerge from workers themselves. UPS Teamster John Elward said <\/a>he discussed an idea with a UNITE HERE organizer to hold mass membership meetings to bring together local union members. \u200b\u201cThe idea is to build rank-and-file power rather than just officers or delegates at a labor council,\u201d wrote<\/a> Elward on the social media platform X. \u200b\u201cLabor councils are incredibly important, but we need members to build solidarity across the ranks rather than be isolated and misinformed about labor issues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHolding open membership meetings for all union members across sectors in geographic locations is a great idea to build credibility again with our members and re-teach the values of solidarity,\u201d responded<\/a> Jimmy Williams, Jr., president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We need to be teachers and learners in schools of class struggle. And that begins with members feeling less isolated. \u200b\u201cUFCW Local 663, like many union locals, is an amalgamated behemoth representing tons of different employers,\u201d says Paul Kirk-Davidoff, a steward at Seward Community Co-op in Minneapolis. \u200b\u201cWhen I was working at a food co-op, we started hosting bonfires where we would invite other union co-op workers. We used this to plan out our contract campaigns, and to build connections at the rank-and-file level. My friend works at a small suburban chain and has taken the mantle of leading these. His partner is a talented artist and they make lots of fun buttons together. We have started contract negotiations and he has held several get-togethers to hang out and make art. We\u2019re at square one so making the union more than just a contract at your shop is critical. I\u2019m extremely proud of the work that all of us youngsters in this union have done to form connections. We\u2019re all pissed off and lots of us are looking for a place to fight back; by reviving a union culture, we\u2019re opening up that space.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To create a broad base of class fighters, we need to massively scale up what Kirk-Davidoff describes. As Mark Brenner wrote<\/a> in Labor Notes<\/em> in 2010, \u200b\u201cif labor\u2019s going to find our own way\u2009\u2014\u2009and bring everyone who\u2019s been steamrolled by corporate America along with us\u2009\u2014\u2009we need to rethink: what is it that makes a union strong?\u2026The work ahead of us is simply too much for smart staffers to handle it all. It requires an exponential increase in the number of members who have authority to develop strategy and take action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n International solidarity is another component of worker strategy as bosses seek to polarize us along nationalist lines. \u200b\u201cGrocery stores get food from across the world,\u201d says Kirk-Davidoff. \u200b\u201cI take note of where my meat and seafood comes from, and track it. Our crab legs mostly come from Newfoundland, which has a strong food processing union, the FFAW. When the tariffs were announced, I sent an email to the union rep for the plant where they process our crab legs and got in touch. If the tariffs actually go through, it will be cool to see where we can go with this connection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another point of discussion and connection is how to prepare for May Day 2028, the call by the United Auto Workers to align contracts for a potential general strike. \u200b\u201cCross-union efforts that bring members together to decide and wage their electoral strategy could take this work even further, helping grow a class-wide vision,\u201d Keith Brower Brown of Labor Notes<\/em> wrote<\/a> recently. \u200b\u201cThe run-up to May Day 2028 could build that kind of multi-union, member-led political discussion, even for unions who don\u2019t align their contracts in time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One key division to tackle through political education is between native-born and immigrant workers. In New York, Trump and Musk might strip<\/a> building trades members of thousands of jobs if they follow through on threatened cuts to infrastructure spending, which includes more than 500 projects in the state, worth $22 billion. That\u2019s an opening to reframe the conversation among union members in the building and construction trades from immigrants taking jobs to bosses rigging the economy to devastate their livelihoods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Recent social movement protests in defense of immigrant workers or other causes have had little staying power and have dissipated in the face of counterattacks by elites<\/a> to hold on to their concentrated power. But social protests can build layers of organizers even in defeat. Previous immigrant struggles have produced leaders ready to fight back. Now the question is: how do we cohere veterans from these past fights and newer ones into lasting rank-and-file leadership?<\/p>\n\n\n\n When discussing immigration policy, we must understand immigrant workers in their class relationship to their employers\u2009\u2014\u2009because the fundamental dynamic is about the economic power imbalance between workers and bosses\u2009\u2014\u2009rather than framing their plight solely as a wedge issue about immigrant rights. Instead, their labor struggles should be placed at the center of the fight against billionaire rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s where boycotts of employers can play a role. If Trump and billionaire CEOs hamper the functioning<\/a> of the National Labor Relations Board, we should organize strategic secondary boycotts<\/a>\u2014legal caveats be damned. That\u2019s us wielding economic power, moving as fearlessly and audaciously as Musk\u2019s illegal sacking of federal workers. Let\u2019s draw inspiration from the United Farm Workers\u2019 grape boycott in the 1960s, made possible because agricultural workers aren\u2019t covered by federal labor law, as well as the unsanctioned red state teacher strikes in 2018 and a more recent illegal strike wave in Massachusetts<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, we can help make the Tesla brand synonymous with Nazi apologetics and Musk the poster child for CEOs nationwide trampling on workers\u2019 rights. Musk needs to be the face of a public backlash, holding him responsible for all calamities that befall workers and their communities from the gutting of the government. Some of this work is already starting to be done. According to Politico<\/em>, new polling<\/a> show\u2019s Musk\u2019s popularity \u200b\u201cin the toilet,\u201d which could help to hinder his efforts on behalf of the Trump administration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And Musk\u2019s more controversial actions are having economic consequences in the United States and across Europe, including Sweden where Tesla mechanics have been on strike for more than a year. In California, the U.S.\u2019s largest market for electric vehicles, the company\u2019s sales<\/a> have plummeted with the company\u2019s operating profit down 23 percent. In Germany, sales dropped by 59 percent as Musk told the country\u2019s population to get over their \u200b\u201cpast guilt\u201d over Nazi-era crimes against humanity, and Tesla\u2019s market share in the country is down<\/a> from 14 percent to 4 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like the abolitionists of the 19th<\/sup> century arrayed against the planter class, today we need to break the economic, ideological and political foundations of billionaire rule. \u200b\u201cThe international movement, with enslaved and formerly enslaved people at the heart, fought to pass laws, boycotted consumer products, rallied in mass meetings, petitioned legislatures, marched, engaged in mass public education, ran away, took up arms, operated underground railroads, and created a new common sense about the evils of slavery,\u201d write Bhargava and Luce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our approach needs to be similarly multifaceted\u2009\u2014\u2009narrative shifts through storytelling, lawsuits, direct action on the shop-floor, sabotage, mass strikes, boycotts, political education, large nationwide marches\u2009\u2014\u2009adjusted for the present context. Not everyone who opposes this corporate takeover of American society will be our friends. Some in the united front will certainly disagree with us on some issues, just as many abolitionists were racist<\/a>, and many anti-fascists were pro-capitalist<\/a>. We may have to work in alliance with them, while also refusing to compromise our values or goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wherever Trump and Musk\u2019s attacks have galvanized members of the working class to fight the billionaires, we need to welcome them into the fight. The Right\u2019s strategy is attrition. Ours is additive. May a\u00a0million opposition efforts bloom, from the ground up. It\u2019s time for the labor movement to lead in building a\u00a0majority bloc of the working class against billionaire\u00a0rule.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Luis Feliz Leon is a staff writer and organizer with Labor Notes. Follow him on Twitter @Lfelizleon<\/a>.More by Luis Feliz Leon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The super rich are in command, as Donald Trump and Elon Musk run a rampage on the working class. To stop them, the labor movement needs to lead. BY\u00a0LUIS FELIZ LEON FEBRUARY 20, 2025 (therealnews.com) Elon Musk speaks as US President Donald Trump looks on in the Oval Office of… Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therealnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/In-These-Times-logo.jpeg?resize=780%2C174&ssl=1\"){kind=logo}
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\u200b\u201cEvery day we hit them with three things,\u201d Bannon told<\/a> PBS\u2019s Frontline <\/em>in 2019. \u200b\u201cThey\u2019ll bite on one, and we\u2019ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never\u2009\u2014\u2009will never be able to recover. But we\u2019ve got to start with muzzle velocity.\u201d
\u200b\u201cWe want to put them in trauma,\u201d said<\/a> Russell T. Vought, Project 2025\u2019s man in the Trump White House, who has returned to lead the Office of Management and Budget, in a 2023 speech. \u200b\u201cWe want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.\u201d
Since taking office, Trump and his effective co-president Elon Musk have mounted a frontal assault<\/a> on workers through executive actions, aimed at rooting out disloyal workers in the federal workforce, illegally firing members of the National Labor Relations Board and and dismissing a <\/a>member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and threatening to freeze funding for healthcare (especially gender-affirming care<\/a>), education, transportation and other services, while also conducting immigration raids that have ensnared <\/a>U.S. citizens and stoked fears of racial profiling.
Whatever you call it\u2009\u2014\u2009a hostile takeover, a blitzkrieg\u2009\u2014\u2009the effect is the same: overwhelm workers and befuddle the opposition as billionaires carry out a rolling coup. In terms of union organizing, you could liken<\/a> the volleys of attacks from the Trump White House to bosses holding the country\u2019s working class in a massive captive-audience meeting, using shock-and-awe tactics to divide us up.
Even though there are divisions between the tech billionaires and the nationalist populists in the MAGA camp, Trump and his cronies are broadly united in a war of attrition against the working class. One of their chief means is a propaganda war against the media. \u200b\u201cThe opposition party is the media,\u201d said Bannon in the 2019 Frontline<\/em> interview. \u200b\u201cAnd the media can only\u2009\u2014\u2009because they\u2019re dumb and they\u2019re lazy\u2009\u2014\u2009they can only focus on one thing at a time.\u201d
Trump himself has also taken aim at his political opponents, likening them to foreign enemies that the United States fought in World War II. On the campaign trail last year, Trump said<\/a>, \u200b\u201cOur country was at war with the enemy, and they wanted to extinguish our way of life forever. This time, the greatest threat is not from the outside of our country, I really believe this. It\u2019s the people from within our country that are more dangerous.\u201d He has also compared<\/a> his political enemies to \u200b\u201cvermin\u201d that he has pledged to \u200b\u201croot out.\u201d
Three weeks in, we know the administration\u2019s field of opposition has now expanded to include the entire working class. In the midst of this class war, we can look to military strategy to help us understand their maneuvers. According to Sir Lawrence Freedman\u2019s Strategy: A History<\/em>, the German military historian Hans Delbr\u00fcck slotted strategy into two categories: annihilation, which involved a crucial battle to eliminate the enemy, and exhaustion, also termed attrition, which is about wearing the enemy out.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTHE CLASS WAR IS ON<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Kelly Lytle Hern\u00e1ndez, a professor of history and African American studies at UCLA, told<\/a> Politico <\/em>ahead of Trump\u2019s inauguration: \u200b\u201cStrongly encouraging and frightening people into leaving will be a main strategy.\u201d Up until 1929, Lytle Hern\u00e1ndez has argued<\/a>, immigrant workers could enter the United States without official permission, but then \u200b\u201cCongress outlawed border crossings with the specific intent of criminalizing, prosecuting and imprisoning Mexican immigrants.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a cruelly ironic twist, repatriations and ethnic cleansing by deportation later created a labor shortage addressed by legally bringing into the United States millions of Mexican workers to work the agricultural fields, a cheap and highly exploitable labor source managed through the Bracero Program from the 1940s through the 1960s. <\/p>\n\n\n\nTHE POWER OF FEAR<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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While raids are still very much on people\u2019s minds, immigrants in Chicago have had the support of a community and local political leadership that has largely stood against Trump\u2019s threats of deportations, and workers are informing each other of their rights in the face of intimidation from ICE officials. Sanctuary cities like Chicago, complained Trump\u2019s border czar Tom Homan, \u200b\u201care making it very difficult\u201d because residents are \u200b\u201ceducated\u201d about how to avoid immigration sweeps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Musk thinks it\u2019s a do-or-die moment for an oligarchic takeover of the U.S. government, and has brought in his twenty-something cost-cutting henchmen to lend axes: \u200b\u201cThis is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we\u2019re ever going to have,\u201d the neo-Nazi sympathizer<\/a> said in December.
\u200b\u201cThe stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,\u201d said<\/a> Vought in 2024 under the Biden administration. \u200b\u201cOur adversaries already hold weapons of the government apparatus, and they have aimed it at us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nOPPOSITION TIME<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
That capitalist system has been the daily experience of workers for far too long. But it\u2019s now turbocharged into an extreme version of political oligarchy, in which bosses are looting the federal government for parts and threatening to destroy the livelihoods of millions without as much as a pretense about democracy. They know they can\u2019t survive under real democracy, so they\u2019re ready to abandon it. It would be foolish to chalk up what\u2019s going on to a defeatist lament of \u200b\u201csame as it ever was.\u201d It\u2019s not. Workers didn\u2019t vote for a billionaire takeover of their lives at work and in society. \u200b\u201cThey voted specifically to lower the cost of living,\u201d Bouie reminds us<\/a>. \u200b\u201cThey certainly did not vote for a world where the president\u2019s billionaire ally has access to your Social Security number.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nFROM BELOW<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
ENDING BILLIONAIRE RULE<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
LUIS FELIZ LEON<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n