250 Years of the Same Old Racket: A Civil Servant's May Day Confession

Source

By: Alan Browne, a working stiff in a right-to-work state

Look, I know we're only a week past May Day of 2026. And I know we're now just two months away from the biggest damn spectacle of nationalism this country has probably ever seen—the 250th celebration of the Declaration of Independence. Fireworks, flag-waving, politicians from both parties slapping each other on the back about "freedom" and "opportunity" while the rest of us try to figure out how to keep the lights on.

 

But I need to tell you about a meeting I sat through last week. Because it says everything about where we're at.

 

My workplace has about 4,000 workers. Many of them are third-party contracted—which is a fancy way of saying the employer can squeeze them dry without any of the pesky responsibilities that come with being an actual employer. Of the permanent employees, almost none have a union. I'm in an administrative role, frontline adjacent, and at this mandatory all-staff meeting for my specific department, less than half of the 150 or so people even bothered to show up. Managers sat in their little cluster. The rest of us workers sat separately, like we always do. Of course, there were other managers commingled in our huddles just in case we started talking about something other than the topic at hand.

 

Me and one other coworker wore red. That's it! Just two people out of maybe 50. Why? Because we remembered. We remembered the workers movement of the 1880s and we remembered the Haymarket martyrs. We remembered that May Day exists for a reason that has nothing to do with maypoles and everything to do with the eight-hour day and blood in the streets of Chicago.

 

The consciousness of the working class where I live? It's next to zero.

 

But here's the thing—people “feel” it. They just don't have the language for it yet.

 

What People Actually Know (Without Knowing They Know It)

 

They know prices are up on everything. They know inflation means their dollars buy less, or that the product got smaller but costs the same. They know the Trump Administration is rattling sabers in the Strait of Hormuz, and gas prices are bouncing around like a cheap casino token. They know a war with Iran is on the table, and they know their kid might get drafted if this thing goes hot.

 

They know functional unemployment is a nightmare. We're on the precipice of a major crisis, and most people can smell it coming.

 

I won't even get into healthcare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or education. That's its own article. Maybe a series.

 

But part of my job is helping people find work. Helping them become "better versions of themselves" so they can get hired and let me tell you what I see every single day:

 

People facing homelessness. Right now. Not next year. People living in shelters, in rescue missions, in their cars, on the street. They're desperate. They're looking for answers. They're trying to figure out how to escape this meat grinder where one mistake—one layoff, one medical bill, one car breakdown—means you're economically ruined for the rest of your life. Just trying to meet basic needs.

 

Some are recently out of prison. Felonies on their record. many of them violent felonies. Their prospects for employment, training, loans, grants? Next to nothing.

 

Some are seriously mentally ill. Off their meds. Kicked out of support networks. Lost access to doctors. No housing. Living with relatives if they're lucky, migrating state to state if they're not, doing Labor Ready gigs for a few days' pay, just enough to get a bus ticket to the next town.

 

And here's the kicker: some have advanced degrees. Bachelors. Masters. PhDs. Recently unemployed because their workplaces downsized or shut down completely. Credentials don't protect you. Nothing protects you.

 

The Numbers Don't Lie (But the Media Does)

 

Now, I bring this up because in the last presidential election, the Democratic candidate ran on a platform that was downright “optimistic” about the unemployment rate. Record lows, they said. A strong economy, they said.

 

That's a lie. It's a lie based on a flawed calculation that's been used for decades—one that doesn't count people who've stopped looking for work and it counts homeless people with a temp gig as "employed."

 

The real number? According to an article in Politico from February 2025, written by a member of the Ludwig Institute on Shared Economic Prosperity, functional unemployment in this country is closer to one out of four people. Twenty-four percent!

 

Let that sink in.

 

The Ludwig Institute actually measures economic indicators for the working class and poor people. Not GDP. Not stock market numbers. Real indicators. And their statistics are baffling. In major metropolitan areas across the country, what the corporate media tells us versus what people are actually facing on the ground might as well be two different countries.

 

The Long View: How They Broke Us

 

We're living through the largest wealth disparity in the history of the United States. Since the 1970s, corporations have been seizing the levers of government—judicial, legislative, executive—and dictating the direction of our society. They've allied with other places that share their worldview. They've exploited and exported misery all around the world.

 

But here at home? Declining quality of life. The American dream—the post-WWII version, when we emerged as the richest, most powerful country on earth—is dead. What we got instead was a cold war fought over the developing world. Struggles for natural resources, labor markets, raw materials. And here at home, as soon as rights and privileges were granted to some minority classes, the working class started to unravel.

 

Coincidence? I don't think so.

 

The government never really helped. Sure, there were court decisions and reactionary legislation. But none of it ever empowered workers to make their own decisions. We were still using the tools available in a Democratic society controlled by a capitalist economy with imperial ambitions. We never had a real choice. The ruling class learned this lesson back in the early days of English colonies, right after Jamestown was destroyed. They figured out fast that they could drive a wedge between us. Separate society and fracture us all so we wouldn't unite in our common struggle.

 

Race. Region. Religion. Immigration status. Gender. Pick your division. They've used every single one.

 

So What Do We Do About It?

 

Here's where I'm supposed to tell you to vote. To support Democratic candidates and to trust that the right people getting elected will fix this.

 

I'm not going to do that.

 

Don't get me wrong—I'm not saying don't vote. I'm saying voting is the floor, not the ceiling. And if you think the Democratic Party is going to lead the working class out of this mess, you haven't been paying attention for the last fifty years. They'll take our votes. They'll talk a good game. And then they'll compromise with the other side while the rent goes up and the jobs go away and the wars keep coming. 

 

We need something else.

 

We need working class organizations to take control of our unions. And where unions don't exist, we need to build them. From scratch if we have to. Right-to-work state or not, we organize. We do the hard, slow, dangerous work of building power on the job.

 

But even that's not enough.

 

Workers need a political party of our own, rooted in our workplaces, communities and organizations that can fight for public ownership of major industries. Democratically managed and answerable to workers and communities, not shareholders. We need to take the factories, the logistics networks, the energy grids, the healthcare systems, the housing stock—and turn them into publicly owned, democratically managed sources of qualitative change.

 

And that means something specific. Not nationalization that puts bureaucrats in charge instead of CEOs. Democratic management with actual workers on the board. and allowing communities to have a voice. Real accountability from the bottom up.

 

This is how we escape the meat grinder. Not by begging the people who profit from it to be nicer to us.

 

A Global Struggle

 

And we don't do this just in the United States. The same corporations that are squeezing us in right-to-work states are squeezing workers in Indonesia, in Brazil, in Nigeria, in Poland. Same playbook. Same owners, different flags.

 

The working class has no nation. We have interests that cut across borders, and those interests are fundamentally opposed to the interests of capital. The sooner we act like it, the sooner we can build something real.

 

So yeah. Two months from now, they're going to throw a huge party for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Fireworks. Speeches. Politicians telling us how free we are.

 

And then the day after, the rent will still be due. The gas will still be expensive. The boss will still be watching the clock. The unions we don't have will still not exist. And the people sleeping in their cars will still be sleeping in their cars.

 

Unless we decide to do something about it.

 

May Day wasn't about flags. It was about workers. And until we remember that—until we act like it—nothing is going to change.

 

In Solidarity

India: a further swing to the right

by Michael Roberts

In the recent state elections in India, the ruling BJP-led coalition government won resounding victories in some key states previously held by opposition parties. In the highly populated West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, India’s most powerful female politician, who had been in power for 15 years, saw her Trinamool Congress party (TMC) trounced by the BJP (she has refused to accept the result).  And in the small southern state of Kerala, the pro-business Congress party ousted the ruling left wing alliance in a landslide victory, with the BJP also gaining on foothold in the state for the first time ever. The BJP now controls 21 of the 28 states in India.

In the 2024 general election  Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retained power. The BJP was formed by members of what was basically a Hindu religious fascist party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an organisation modelled on Mussolini’s Black Brigades. Modi was a long-time member of the RSS who then moved seamlessly into the BJP. 

After winning power in 2014, Modi has increasingly cemented his control of government.  The nationalist BJP is now seen as ‘business-friendly’, but it is still dedicated to turning a multi-ethnic and multi-religious India into a Hindu state, where minorities, particularly Muslims, would be reduced to second-class citizens.  With increasing confidence, the Modi government has suppressed any public dissent by liberal democrats and socialists against this trend.  Many opposition politicians have been imprisoned for lengthy periods on trumped-up charges and prevented from participating in elections and in public debate.

So how is it possible for the BJP and Modi to be so popular?  First, because of the bulk of the BJP’s political support comes from the rural and more backward areas of this huge country who have not benefited from the strident rise of Indian capitalism in the cities. These areas are bulwarks of Hindu nationalism, incentivised by fear of muslims. 

The second reason is the total failure over decades of the main capitalist party and standard bearer of Indian independence, the Congress party, to deliver better living standards and conditions for the hundreds of millions, not only in the country but in the city slums. Congress appears to millions as the party of the establishment controlled by a family dynasty (the Gandhis), while the BJP appears to many as the populist party of the forgotten people.

Now even the leftist government in a small state of Kerala in the south-west of India and predominantly Christian, not Hindu or Muslim, has fallen.  Kerala is constantly promoted among the international left as a success story for public investment and support for the poor over the rich. The reality is less sanguine.  The Left Democratic Front government appears to have lost touch with working people.  Take these examples from one source.

For 266 days, ASHA workers of the public-health system that the LDF boasts about at international forums went on strike for a wage ₹21,000 a month; they were only drawing ₹7,000. After 10 months of protest, the government raised it to ₹8,000. The leftist government claimed that the strike was just a Congress conspiracy. 

The 2021 manifesto of the leftist government had promised a minimum support price of ₹250 per kilogram but it was no higher than ₹200 in 2025. Farmers in the rubber belt complained that they could not survive and their children were being forced to migrate to the Gulf and elsewhere. Youth unemployment has reached 30% and among young women, 47%, nearly three times the national average. The government promised 20 lakh jobs in five years, but none had materialised.

Worse, corruption emerged. Around ₹2.7 crore ($300k) was paid by a mining firm to the Chief Minister’s daughter’s IT company between 2017 and 2020 for no demonstrable services.  In the election campaign, the leftist alliance dropped its secular approach and tried to woo Hindu nationalists. As one source put it: “Kerala in 1957 voted Communist because the Left spoke for the labourer, the tenant, the Dalit, the fisherman, the woman in the kitchen and the field. Kerala in 2026 it began speaking only for itself.”

The ‘Communist’ left and Congress have failed to offer a clear alterntive to the BJP, which continues to boast of the unending success of the Indian economy since Modi came to power.  The Indian media and Western economists laud the strong economic growth that India is apparently enjoying under the Modi government.   

So ecstatic are mainstream economists about the success of Indian capitalism under Modi that talk of his neo-fascist past and current repressive measures are ignored.  Instead, all the talk is of India ‘catching up’ with China and even surpassing its real GDP soon.  For example, Goldman Sachs projects India will have the world’s second-largest economy by 2075.  Modi made the economy a major part of his election pitch, pledging to lift the country’s economy “to the top position in the world”. This is nonsense, as I have shown elsewhere. It is true that the world’s second largest country by population has had very fast economic growth, averaging 5-6% a year (in fact a little slower in the 2020s), although the official figures can be questioned. 

Source: IMF, author

Also according to official figures, poverty in India has declined substantially in both rural and urban areas. Based on the official poverty line, rural poverty fell from 64.9 percent in 2011-12 to 19.3 percent in 2023-24, while urban poverty declined from 39.7 percent to 8.6 percent. A similar pattern is observed for ‘extreme poverty’, which declined from 30.7 to 3.1 percent in rural areas and from 17.4 percent to 1.4 percent in urban areas over the same period. 

But these estimates are again to be  questioned. Labour market data suggest a much higher inequality in earnings with the top 10% of Indian earners getting income 17 times higher than the bottom 10%. Indeed, India’s economic growth post pandemic has been uneven, or “K-shaped” (where the rich have thrived, while the poor continue to struggle). India may be the fifth largest global economy at an aggregate GDP level, but on an income per person basis, it still languishes at the 140th rank. Inequality has widened to a hundred-year high according to research from the World Inequality Database!  The top 10% of the Indian population now holds 77% of the total national wealth.  The rise in inequality has been particularly pronounced since the BJP came to power in 2014. By 2022-23, top 1% income and wealth shares (22.6% and 40.1%) reached their highest historical levels and India’s top 1% income share is now among the very highest in the world.

In contrast, many ordinary Indians are not able to access the health care they need. 63 million of them are pushed into poverty because of healthcare costs every year – almost two people every second.  Indeed, it would take 941 years for a minimum wage worker in rural India to earn what the top paid executive at a leading Indian garment company earns in a year.  While the country is a top destination for ‘medical tourism’, the poorest Indian states have infant mortality rates higher than those in sub-Saharan Africa. India accounts for 17% of global maternal deaths and 21% of deaths among children below five years.

Rural distress, stagnation and falling farming incomes have led to a number of protests by farmers. According to Samyukta Kisan Morcha, an umbrella of farm unions, over 100,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last ten years of Modi’s rule. India ranks 111th of the 125 nations in the Global Hunger Index (2023) report. India is home to over a third of the world’s malnourished children, which is not only a health crisis but has a wider impact on the economy. A 2023 joint report by FAO, UNICEF, WHO and WFP, found that 74% of the population cannot afford healthy food. 

The key for Indian capitalism (as it is for all capitals) is the profitability of its business sector. The profitability of Indian capital took a huge plunge in the 1970s, as profitability did globally.  Under successive Congress-led governments, neo-liberal policies were adopted to drive up profitability. Then came the Great Recession and the ensuing Long Depression and profitability and growth began to fall back.  Modi came to power as a result. Under Modi, Indian capital has sustained a relatively high rate of profit, enabling it to expand investment and the economy.

Source: Penn World Tables 11.0 series

Investment to GDP reached 42% at the peak of the credit boom of 2007.  However, after the Great Recession of 2008-9 and the ensuing Long Depression of the 2010s, investment to GDP fell back significantly, until the Modi regime steadied the ship for Indian capital after the COVID pandemic slump.

Source: IMF

The Modi government is being encouraged by the international economic institutions to keep up the incentives to Indian capital. In its latest report, the World Bank said: “Boosting private sector-led growth will be critical to strengthening economic resilience and supporting more young people to enter the workforce, A predictable, business-enabling environment will help to unlock investment and create jobs at scale in priority sectors like energy and infrastructure, manufacturing, tourism, healthcare, and agribusiness.”

But India’s economic future is uncertain. “India is not immune to these global shifts. Intricately connected to global value chains, India faces external shocks and acute effects from these global policy changes, including tariff escalations and volatile capital flows.”  India imports nearly 90% of its crude oil and 50% of its natural gas requirements. Conflicts in the Middle East, such as the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, pose a severe risk to this energy supply, potentially creating high inflation and hindering economic activity. If oil prices stay elevated for an extended period, it could significantly impact India’s external balance and increase the government’s subsidy burden. Industrial activity in early 2026 has been a mixed bag, with manufacturing and mining showing resilience while electricity generation acts as a drag. 

So the Indian economy remains vulnerable to global economic crises, particularly due to high energy import dependence and geopolitical disruptions. External headwinds like Middle East conflicts and global supply chain disruptions threaten momentum. If there is a global economic slump, India will join it.

‘No fear of roaring lions’: Iran has a long history of standing firm against outside aggressors

Yannis Kontos/Sygma via Getty Images

Amin Saikal, Australian National University; The University of Western Australia; Victoria University and Amitav Acharya, American University School of International Service

US President Donald Trump’s threats against Iran since the war began have targeted not just the country’s military capabilities, but its entire civilisation.

In recent days, he has threatened that Iran would be “blown off the face of the earth” if it attacks US ships trying to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

He’s previously pledged to send Iran back to the “Stone Age”, and warned that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”.

These statements show not only extreme belligerence, but Trump’s complete lack of understanding of Iran’s long, resilient culture and civilisation and the fortitude of its people.

Iran has been subjected to much internal strife and foreign power intervention, but it has never been colonised or subjugated. At every difficult moment in their history, Iranians have fought to preserve what is theirs.

Persian influence in ancient Greece and Rome

Since the Greco-Persian Wars (499 BCE), Persia has served as the West’s ultimate “other”: a dark and despotic oriental villain menacing an enlightened West.

This is despite Persia’s return of exiled Jews in Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple in 538 BCE, and its tolerance of diversity in the world’s first truly multicultural empire.

The victories of a coalition of Greek city-states over the Achaemenid Persian imperial forces at Salamis (480 BCE) and Marathon (490 BCE) are considered pivotal moments in the history of Western civilisation.

Yet this was just a minor setback for Persia. In fact, Persia continued to play a decisive role in Greek affairs. Persian gold helped Sparta defeat Athens in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), and Persia was often the most important mediator in Greek affairs.

The Parthian and Sasanian Empires that followed the Achaemenids in Persia then challenged the Romans.

In 260 CE, Sasanian Emperor Shapur I captured Roman Emperor Valerian in battle – an unprecedented act. A century later, Shapur II’s army fought off an attempted invasion by Emperor Julian, killing him in the process.

Western triumphal narratives tend to forget that Persia repeatedly humbled the greatest Western empire in ancient times.

The triumph of Shapur I over the Roman emperors Valerian and Philip the Arab in Naqsh-e Rostam, Iran. Wikimedia Commons

Surviving invasions from the east and west

Alexander the Great conquered Persia militarily. However, he embraced Persian culture, which outlasted Greek influence in the region.

The advent of Islam did not extinguish Persia’s civilisation or resilience, either. Islamic leaders preserved Persian language and culture, kept pre-Islamic festivals such as Nowruz (the 3,000-year-old Persian New Year), and adapted Zoroastrian concepts into Shiite Islam’s emphasis on resistance to tyranny.

The Mongols’ multiple invasions (between 1219 and 1258) devastated Iran, yet core elements of Persian civilisation survived. Persian power flourished again, especially under the Safavid dynasty (1501–1736).

During the Qajar dynasty (1789–1925), Persia was squeezed by the Anglo-Russian rivalry of Great Game era, but was not subdued.

During the second world war, Iran was occupied by the British in the oil-rich south and the Soviets in the north. However, both powers pledged, along with the United States, to respect Iran’s sovereignty and withdraw at the end of the war.

A turbulent 20th century

This episode rejuvenated Iranian nationalism and prompted a movement to free Iran from traditional major power rivalries and gain control over its own resources. This especially pertained to oil, since the British had controlled Iran’s oil reserves through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) from the early 19th century.

In 1951, a long-time nationalist-reformist, Mohammad Mossadegh, was elected prime minister and promptly nationalised the AIOC, sparking a major dispute with London.

Mossadegh also sought to limit the power of Iran’s monarchy in favour of democratic reforms, causing a conflict with the young, pro-Western Mohammad Reza Shah, who was still the country’s reigning monarch.

The shah was forced into exile in 1953, only to be returned to the throne days later when Mossadegh was overthrown in a covert operation by the US Central Intelligence Agency, with MI6’s help. (Fifty years later, US President Barack Obama acknowledged the CIA’s role in the coup.)

Mohammad Mossadegh during his court martial after being overthrown. Wikimedia Commons

The US backed the shah as a pillar of American hegemony in the Middle East. In return, US oil companies received a 40% share of Iran’s oil industry.

Yet the shah was able to transform his dependent relationship with the US into one of interdependence. Iran became a pivotal player in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and in the region.

In the wake of the 1973–74 energy crisis, then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned the United States would react with force if it was “strangled” by a cut in oil deliveries – a veiled message to the shah.

The Iranian revolution of 1978–79 then toppled the shah and enabled his chief religious and political opponent, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to assume power. Khomeini declared Iran an Islamic Republic with an anti-US and anti-Israel posture.

He essentially based his rule in the historic pride Iranians held as a people in charge of their destiny.

Khomeini and his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sought to entrench Shia political Islamism as the ideological guide and legitimate foundation of the state. But they sought to blend this with the Iranians’ sense of civilisational, cultural and nationalist identity, especially in the face of outside aggression.

‘Iran is my land’

The celebrated Persian-speaking poet Abul-Qasim Ferdowsi (940–1020 CE) once said:

Iran is my land, and the whole world is under my feet. The people of this land are the possessors of virtue, art and bravery. They have no fear of roaring lions.

As Iran’s standoff with the US continues, it appears the regime is prepared for the long haul against yet another military foe.

But there is no military solution to the conflict. Diplomacy within the framework of mutual respect and trust is the best way forward. Otherwise, the region and the world may remain captive to an energy and economic crisis that could have been resolved through negotiations, rather than war.

As for the future of the Islamic government, that needs to be determined by the Iranian people.

Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Australian National University; The University of Western Australia; Victoria University and Amitav Acharya, Distinguished Professor of International Relations, American University School of International Service

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ken Klippenstein: Insane Pre-Crime Strategy Unveiled for Leftist “Extremists"

 Insane Pre-Crime Strategy Unveiled for Leftist “Extremists"

New national strategy vows to “cripple them BEFORE" crimes are committed

Ken Klippenstein May 6,2026

Sebastian Gorka

Subscriptions are declining; PLEASE become a paid subscriber so I can keep doing this work

Subscribed

The White House declared war on the American people today, labeling its political opponents as terrorists, including “Left-wing extremists.” The new label also claims that there are “deepening alliances” between “the far-left and Islamists” — or pro-Palestinian protesters.

The language is contained in the White House’s newly released National Counterterrorism Strategy. It is the first National Strategy to be unveiled since 2021, when the Biden administration issued its document. The Strategy identifies the “left-wing,” “anti-Fascists,” “Anarchists” and “radically pro-transgender ideologies” as threats equivalent to jihadi groups like al Qaeda and ISIS, or narco-traffickers. 

The Strategy is the brainchild of White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka, an eccentric figure I have reported on, who last year hinted at terrorism charges being levied for political opponents of the administration. The document makes clear he got his wish. Gorka called the Strategy “my life’s work,” and apparently waxed so poetic in previous drafts that his superiors told him (by his own account): “Cut it down, Gorka!”

“Currently we face three major types of terror groups,” the Strategy says, listing “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs,” “Legacy Islamist Terrorists,” and “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.”

	Strategy 2.52MB ∙ PDF file
Download

"Counterterrorism" itself is a propaganda term, sanitizing the actual practice: pre-crime, which aims to build cases against people for what they might do, most ominously based on speech or beliefs. (I've written about the Bureau’s pre-crime push at length.) The Strategy doesn't bother hiding it. It promises to "Identify terror actors and plots before they happen" and to use "law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent."

The Strategy also hints at a crackdown on pro-Palestinian groups. In a section laying out “five functional aspects of the current CT environment” beyond the previously named three categories, it warns of “New and deepening alliances between the far-left and Islamists, i.e., the ‘Red-Green’ alliance” — a phrase borrowed from conservative discourse to suggest a conspiratorial alignment between the American left and radical Islam.

The “Red-Green alliance” term has been pushed by Israeli think tanks like the Reut Group — which defines the term as “the nexus between radical progressive groups to Islamists organizations” — and picked up by right-wing U.S. news outlets. The framing is designed to recast pro-Palestinian activism as a front for jihadism.

The Strategy proposes employing the same tactics used to map out jihadi networks like al Qaeda against Americans here at home, promising “rapid identification and neutralization” of the supposed threat. This is exactly the technique that Gorka and other top Trump officials like Kash Patel cut their teeth on during the post-9/11 global war on terror — experience that I previously warned they would lean heavily on.

Per the document:

“In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT [counterterrorism] activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent.”

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) defines the threat as those espousing “anti-American,” “anti-Christian” and “anti-Capitalism” viewpoints. The new National Strategy uniquely identifies “radically pro-transgender ideologies” as terrorists, adding yet another threat group to the federal government’s targeting.

As I reported last year, the FBI in response to Charlie Kirk’s murder was preparing a war on what it considers transgender “extremism,” based on my sources. That report was subject to endless fact-checks asking how I knew this — something I can’t answer without burning my sources — and whether I was spreading panic in the transgender community. The counterterrorism strategy affirms my reporting, explicitly pointing to “the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies” as part of its justification for the new targeting. 

The Strategy is, in important respects, Charlie Kirk’s strategy. Within hours of his September 10, 2025 murder at Utah Valley University, White House, Justice, and Homeland Security officials scrambled to draft a sweeping domestic crackdown, as I previously reported. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the killing “a domestic 9/11,” vowing his department would now do to American political networks what it once did to al Qaeda’s in going after their finances.

Charlie Kirk was not just an ally of the new terror hunters. Trump reportedly considered the 31-year-old Turning Point USA co-founder part of his “extended family,” in his words, with a direct line to the Oval Office that few others enjoyed. The President credited Kirk with delivering young voters in 2024, posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom on what would have been his 32nd birthday, and used his February 2026 State of the Union to mourn “my great friend Charlie Kirk,” with Kirk’s widow Erika seated in the chamber as a special guest.

Kirk’s death resulted in the issuance of NSPM-7, on which much of the new counterterrorism Strategy is built.

The new Strategy also leans heavily on grievances about the “weaponization” of counterterrorism powers under prior administrations to justify a sweeping expansion of those same powers. It cites past FBI controversies — surveillance of “conservative Catholics attending traditional mass in Virginia,” “parents standing up for their children at school board meetings,” and investigations of “Members of Congress, or President Trump and his associates” — as the rationale for what it calls a previous “radical shift” in U.S. counterterrorism.

In other words: abuses of counterterrorism authorities against the right have now become the grounds for unleashing those same authorities against the left.

The Strategy anticipates this reversal and tries to inoculate against it. “Our counterterrorism powers will not be used to target our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us,” it insists, before going on to describe a regime that does precisely that — provided the disagreement is categorized as “extremism.”

Except that’s exactly what it does!

The strategy includes a foreword by President Trump that emphasizes its unparalleled focus on the homeland: “my Administration has put an unprecedented focus on dismantling threats to the American homeland in our Hemisphere.”

The global war on terror has come home.

Subscribe if you think the government shouldn’t investigate crimes that haven’t happened

UK Politics: Corbyn backs independent without telling his own party

Reprinted from the UK socialist website Left Horizons

Corbyn backs independent without telling his own party

6 May 2026

By Roger Silverman

Even in the bizarre context of British politics today, it is unusual for a political party’s national leader to endorse the candidate of a rival party without even informing, let alone consulting, his own local members on the spot. But members of Your Party’s local proto-branch in Stratford and Bow have learned from the press that Jeremy Corbyn is demonstratively supporting the mayoral candidate of a different party – Mehmood Mirza of the newly constituted party, Newham Independents.

Some years ago, Mehmood Mirza stood for Labour’s National Executive Committee for its allocated ethnic minority seat. Shortly before the ballot, together with the purge and wholesale closure of both West Ham and East Ham Constituency Labour parties, along with others, he found himself expelled.

For a while he associated with the group founded in their place by local socialist activists, but soon parted company with them to found a separate party of his own – Newham Independents – recruiting almost exclusively among the local Pakistani Muslim population. Newham socialists made persistent attempts to join forces with the new party on a common programme and even made a bloc with it in the last round of council elections, but their subsequent approaches to them have since been brusquely rebuffed.

Due to widespread disaffection at the bungling and at times politically corrupt administration of the overwhelmingly Labour Newham council, the new party won a couple of local by-elections and were joined by a defecting Labour councillor. Now for the second time, Mirza is standing for mayor of Newham and newly recruited allies are standing for every single council seat.

At first sight, the party’s manifesto is very attractive. It promises free school meals for all primary and secondary students, free resident parking permits, plus two hours of free parking across the borough and “more social housing”. This is in a borough which only a year ago needed emergency financial support from the government and which has recently become the most indebted council in London, with over £2bn owed by the town hall.

In 2025, Newham’s council tax was hiked by 9%. But Mirza has ruled out any further increase in council tax in one of the most deprived boroughs in the country. He says he volunteers in a foodbank and sees first-hand how people are struggling. “It’s not the right time to increase council tax”, he says, “Yes, the council needs money, but there are other ways to save money and to generate money.”

So, what are these other ways? He has an easy answer. “To ask for money from the central government…In central government, they’ve got enough money… We will campaign for more funding from central government. We will tell them our needs, we will explain to them what our needs are,” says Mirza.

So that is Mirza’s policy? To ask the government for more money? This is naivety bordering on fantasy. There is no chance that the government will relent and simply pour money into Newham’s coffers, irrespective of the appalling poverty of its residents. If this Labour government is refusing any further concessions to a mayor and council controlled by the Labour Party, then it is hardly more likely to when it is led by an anti-Labour independent council.

For all his good intentions, if Mirza becomes mayor, then there will be chaos. He won’t know how to handle the budget and will follow the line of the chief executive. Bankruptcy could follow and the government would then send in commissioners to impose a draconic budget. This fiasco would discredit not just Mirza and Newham Independents, but also potentially Jeremy Corbyn, who has so very publicly endorsed his candidacy. 

We have many times seen the same phenomenon – a candidate who makes grandiose promises, often in all sincerity, but without the vaguest idea how to pay for them, apart from “explaining to the government what our needs are”. What is needed is a strategic programme harnessing the energies of the local working-class population.

Newham is the site of spectacular housing and infrastructure projects, all feverishly springing up during the run-up to the London Olympics. These include countless towering luxury apartment blocks of empty flats, mostly owned by foreign billionaires who have never once even visited them, but cynically use them as convenient piggy bank investments in which to hide their ill-gotten black money.

At the same time, it is also the home of record numbers of homeless street-dwellers, many of them sleeping in doorways right below these largely uninhabited tower blocks. A socialist council would organise and mobilise the homeless to occupy these empty flats and fight for an end to exploitation, cheap labour and profiteering landlords.

It is a crushing disappointment to those of us locally who flocked enthusiastically into Your Party, when the first appeal was made to launch it, that despite repeated attempts to invite Jeremy Corbyn to visit us, engage with us and confer with us, he has ignored all such invitations. Newham has rich working-class traditions and local trade-union activists are appealing to Mehmood and Jeremy to meet with us to plan the genuine socialist fightback our borough so desperately needs.