The Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) with 100,000 members nationally and important experience in organizing campaigns, should put itself forward as a leader of the movement against the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. In fact, for the good of the American anti-war movement, for the good of the Iranian people and the people of the region, it is important that DSA take the lead.
The war, now a regional war affecting the entire world, has already claimed thousands of lives and it will kill many more. Many of the victims are civilians, like the 150 children killed by an American missile at a girls school in Iran. U.S. soldiers have also been killed. The war will lead to rising prices for gasoline and everything else, affecting the entire American and world economy. Working people here in America and around the world will pay the price, in fact they are already paying with their lives and their well-being.
The groups now attempting to lead the anti-war movement—the Workers World Party, the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and ANSWER—will make it impossible to build a strong, healthy movement that can attract the American people. All of those groups have for years supported the Islamic Republic of Iran, a theocratic totalitarian state that has killed tens of thousands of its citizens for participating in pro-democracy protests. The American people will not want to march against the Iran war under the flags of the Islamic Republic.
Those groups argue that because Iran has been an enemy of the United States and Israel, and because it is now fighting them, that the Iranian government is an anti-imperialist nation that deserves our political support. Their position of support for the Iranian state made it impossible for them to rally or even to offer full-throated support to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran in 2022 or the reform movement protests of 2025-26.
Some in DSA want to join with Workers World, PSL, and ANSWER to build the antiwar movement. That would be a grave political mistake. DSA members should consider how their association with pro-Iranian government groups will affect their electoral campaigns and their elected officials. Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty and the campaigns of other DSA members will be jeopardized by such an alliance. The New York Times and other news media will conduct investigations that reveal such connections. The New York Post, Fox News and other rightwing media will publicize the association in an attempt to discredit DSA.
Rather than joining the small, existing anti-war movement with its current leaders, DSA, with its large numbers, talented members, and organizing experience, should put itself forth as a leader of the movement. It should enter into a coalition with the groups like Indivisible that have organized the No Kings protests, most of whom are liberal democrats and independents, and many of whom are progressive activists, while some are democratic socialist. DSA should organize with them. As all good organizers have always done, DSA should organize those to its right, not those like PSL who falsely claim to stand on the left. There is nothing leftist about support for the authoritarian governments of Iran, Russia, and China as those group have.
DSA, unlike Workers World, PSL, and ANSWER, should at the same time demonstrate a consistent anti-imperialism, opposing the imperialist wars of Israel and the United States, but also opposing Russian imperialism and supporting Ukraine. Support for Ukraine means defending its right to sovereignty and self-determination, including its right to get arms wherever it can.
When an organization campaigns, whether for a candidate or for a cause, it changes itself and it changes its relationship with other groups and with the public. A serious DSA anti-war campaign, based on democratic socialist principles, calling for ending the war on Iran and self-determination for the Iranian people, will bring out the best in DSA, clarifying its politics and unifying its membership.
DSA has the numbers and the wherewithal to play a leading role in the anti-war movement with allies like those in No Kings, and it should step up now.
Ukraine energy grid struggles under Russian attack
The horrific U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran will have many victims, foremost among them the people of Iran who have bombs, missiles, and massive clouds of burning oil descending upon them and who will almost certainly be denied the democracy that most of them crave. Others who live in the region will suffer as well, and globally all who survive on the edge will be devastated by the coming crisis of the world economy. As the cameras focus on Iran, Israel has been able to bombard Lebanon and renew its genocidal cut-off of food and aid to Gaza. But there are other, less obvious but no less real victims of this terrible Middle East war: the people of Ukraine, who have been fighting for their lives against Russia for four long years.
On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched an all-out war against Ukraine in an attempt to recreate the Tsarist and Soviet empires. Like Trump in his war of choice against Iran, Putin used the language of existential danger and self-defense to cover up an act of naked aggression. And just as MAGA today preposterously claims there is no war on Iran – just an “operation” or “an excursion” – in order to claim Trump’s campaign promises of peace remain intact, Putin outlawed using the term war, rather than “special military operation” to refer to his invasion. And just as Trump and Netanyahu launched their attack while in the midst of peace talks with Iran (meriting the same infamy as Japan for its attack on Pearl Harbor), Putin tried to disguise his perfidy by declaring he was pulling back his troops just before his forces crossed the Ukrainian border.
As the Ukrainians knew from the beginning, Russia has 28 times the territory of Ukraine, 3.6 times the population, and a dozen times the economy. Yet the Ukrainian government and its people had the courage to resist Russian imperialism, and with arms from the United States and Europe, and with their heroism and ingenuity, succeeded for a few years in leveling the playing field. They did not win, but neither could Russia defeat them.
When President Donald Trump entered his second term a year ago, he began to tilt the field sharply in favor of Russia. He pressed Ukraine to accept Russia’s demands, that Kyiv cede major chunks of its territory, including land that is still in Ukraine’s hands. He berated Volodymyr Zelensky for not being sufficiently obsequious. But most seriously of all, in 2025 he ended all new U.S. military aid authorizations to Ukraine. Some previously approved arms were still delivered and the Europeans were allowed to buy some U.S. weapons to give to Ukraine. This limited aid enabled Ukraine to gain a little territory in 2026, but it was not adequate to prevent Russia from wreaking havoc on Ukraine’s power grid.
Now, however, the U.S-Israeli war on Iran has severely weakened Ukraine’s position. The very weapons that Ukraine desperately needs – particularly antimissile munitions — are now being expended at a prodigious rate by Washington and its allies in the Middle East. Last June, during the previous, much more limited U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, the US diverted some 20,000 missiles from Ukraine to the Middle East. Bloomberg reports that the United States and its partners in the Gulf have probably used well over 1,000 PAC-3 interceptors alone in the first week of the current war. That’s almost twice the annual production of the weapons and more than the US and its allies have supplied to Ukraine since the Russian invasion four years ago, according to Kyiv. Clearly Trump is not going to prioritize Ukrainian needs. U.S. weapons won’t be available for direct transfer to Ukraine or for European purchase and redelivery to Ukraine.
Russia on the other hand has no such problems; while it was getting drones from Iran earlier in the war, it has since acquired the technology to build and improve Iranian-style drones in its own factories.
At the same time, the war has led to the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” and a surge in the price of oil – a disaster for much of the world, but a benefit for Russia, which is a major hydrocarbon exporter. And now Trump has temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil sales. All this will give Moscow more money to finance its war on Ukraine.
Not only Iran and the Middle East, but the entire world is drawn into the war as oil markets, trade routes, and stock markets are affected. Prices will rise and life will become harder for many. We live in an age where authoritarian leaders—most recently Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Vladmir Putin—violate international law, invade foreign nations, depose their leaders and impose new ones, commit crimes against humanity, and even genocide.
The war’s impact on world politics will also be profound, strengthening authoritarianism and great power imperialist rivalries. Trump’s war on Iran, which violates the U.S. Constitution which give Congress the power to declare war, is also a violation of the U.N. Charter, a kind of world constitution intended to prevent acts of aggression. And Trump has now demanded Iran’s unconditional surrender and asserted his right to choose its new leader, yet another and more egregious violation of national sovereignty and democratic norms.
Wars and violence, decapitation strikes and the slaughter of civilians – these often set off spirals of terrorism. The horrendous attacks on Iran and Lebanon have already led to new terrorist incidents, including antisemitic violence, in the United States and around the world. And we can expect to see more. The war will help extremist groups recruit, raise funds, and buy arms to engage in terrorism. This has nothing to do with left politics, and indeed it will serve the interests of state power, as governments respond to terrorist attacks by mobilizing more police and restricting civil liberties, creating an even more authoritarian political environment.
If the war goes on for very long, it will lead to mass migration as people fleeing the war seek safety in other countries. Even in the best of cases such migration leads to tensions between migrants and host nations, and in the worst of cases is accompanied by xenophobia and violence. Rightwing parties have in the past demanded that their nations exclude migrants and the issue has frequently carried them to power. All of this is bad for the world at large and particularly for Ukraine.
Ukraine’s war of self-defense is that of a democratic state—however deeply flawed—against one of the world’s most authoritarian nations. Ukraine’s democracy has been weakened in part by its leadership’s conservative economic policies but also by the state’s transformation because of the war. Wartime conditions led President Zelensky to remain in office without new elections, a reasonable decision, but one that over time undermines democracy.
The pressures on Ukraine have also led Zelensky to offer the country’s expertise on drone missiles and the defense against them—won at great human cost— to help the United States in defending its bases in the Middle East. This is unfortunate and disappointing. One understands the impossible dilemma that Ukraine faces: it’s hard to plead for U.S. arms and then refuse help in return, particularly when the European have failed to decisivelyoppose Washington’s war on Iran. Nevertheless, this further ensnares Ukraine in great power politics, puts Zelensky on the side of the U.S.-Israeli imperial war, and will undermine the moral support it has garnered as an opponent of imperialist aggression.
The U.S. anti-war movement has yet to gain any traction, in part because everything has happened so quickly (other invaders have taken some time to build their public case), in part because of the complexity, and in part because some of the groups organizing the anti-war movement have been supporters of the Iranian government. If an anti-war movement is to be successful, it will have to clarify its views on both Iran and Ukraine.
In the case of Ukraine, we must reassert our support for Ukrainian sovereignty and self-determination and that country’s right to get arms wherever it can in order to defend itself. At the same time we must support those Ukrainians who fight against their country’s neoliberal economic policies and who defend democracy, unions, workers’ rights and women’s and gay rights.
In the case of Iran, we must unequivocally oppose the U.S.-Israeli war, while opposing as well Iran’s theocratic and totalitarian government that was prepared to kill 30,000 people to stop popular protests. We support the struggles of the Iranian people for reform, for democracy, and for human rights.
[Update: March 16: The characterization of the European attitude to the Iran war has been clarified to indicate a lack of decisive opposition.]
[Editors’ note: We are posting this article, written on the eve of the war, because we believe that its analysis still holds up, and it shows what some progressive forces were saying beforehand. The authors – the Roud Collective, a group of Iranian political activists in exile – offers this note: The initial version (in Persian) of this statement was published – by coincidence – on February 28, the first day of military aggression against Iran. Consequently, it does not analyze the sequence of events that has unfolded since. For this English version, we have summarized the original text without incorporating more recent developments.]
Introduction: Every war massively endangers or complicates the individual and collective survival of the affected people through its direct effects and consequential damages; apart from the killing of civilians and the mass of injured and refugees. The inevitable occurrence of the catastrophic consequences alone is sufficient to invalidate the claim of a “rescue of the Iranian people through foreign military intervention.” This is particularly true because the extent of the ongoing crises in Iran already (even before the war) imposed horrific suffering on the oppressed people and has brought the state of society to the brink of social collapse. In this test, we first list the most important general consequences of war in a condensed form and then name more specific implications regarding the current war. The writing and publication of this text are driven by the hope that, especially in this critical situation, resistance against war, militarism, and imperialist intervention in Iran (as well as in the Middle East and worldwide) will find a louder voice, without being integrated into the propaganda of the rulers of the Islamic Republic (IR) and their allies/proponents, who are themselves part of the problem.
1. General effects of war on very conditions of life
War destroys and/or interrupts economic infrastructures, people’s livelihoods, and vital service infrastructures.
War destroys the natural ecosystem and the human environment, which has immediate and/or permanent consequences for the livelihoods and health of people.
War poses additional dangers for the most vulnerable layers of society: primarily for women and children of the lower classes, poor people, as well as for day laborers and precariously employed members of the working class.
War creates a space of extreme insecurity that revolves only around bare survival and disrupts social coexistence as well as solidarity.
A war atmosphere is accompanied by an intensification of authoritarianism as well as the strengthening of patriarchal relations and violence.
In addition to the direct costs at the expense of the livelihoods and supply of the underprivileged, war opens the door for economic-military oligarchs to expand their plundering under the pretext of defense and national security.
The direct costs of war (armaments) consume public wealth resources on which the minimal welfare of the underprivileged depends. The follow-up costs (reconstruction of war destruction) also make future minimal welfare impossible.
War normalizes death and devalues the life and existence of human beings.
2. General social and political consequences of war
War is accompanied by the state’s declaration of a state of emergency and an increasing militarization of public space, which initiates a further tightening of the political blockade and the suppression of opponents. Consequently:
War destroys the achievements of social movements, the possibilities for struggle from below, and generally the political agency (subjectivity) of the masses.
The general coordinates of war conditions make the position of state’s agency more exclusive. Among other things, it strengthens the predominance of the state due to the increasing dependence of society on basic state services.
The aggression of a foreign state makes it easier for those in power to project structural corruption as well as systematic crimes and oppression outward. Generally, through the increase in nationalist tendencies (around national borders and territorial integrity), it creates the basis for the alignment of a part of society with the state and thus leads to the weakening of social solidarity, which is needed for collective struggles against the existing order.
The war atmosphere activates already existing divisions beyond the agency of the masses. Likewise, it increases the scope for the emergence and/or growth of militias, opportunistic currents and reactionary and/or far-right tendencies, as well as targeted or disruptive interventions by rival security services (both of the domestic state and other states). All of these, in turn, increases the danger of a social collapse and civil war: the war of all against all, instead of a common struggle against common enemies.
War conditions not only massively hinder the possibilities of promoting popular and people-oriented interests and policies (especially in a dis-organized society as Iran), it also ensures that the political field in the post-war period revolves primarily around the owners of violence and wealth, as well as the military. War is a catastrophe for politics from below.
War hides the interlocking of authoritarian and imperialist structures, fuels good-evil dualisms, and thereby leads to intellectual misleading and political fragmentation of the oppressed, whereby their potential strength (for a collective struggle) is scattered and weakened.
War interrupts the continuity of the chain of struggles of the oppressed, which usually manifest particularly in social movements and mass uprisings.
By wearing the people down, eliminating their political agency, and stoking an atmosphere of insecurity, deprivation, and despair, war establishes the conditions for the emergence of imperialist alternatives from above.
War weakens the oppressed and strengthens states, powers, and rulers.
3. Specific implications of a probable war in the current situation
3.1. War has always been a vehicle for militaristic capital accumulation based on the expansion of a militaristic economy. Given that in crisis-ridden late capitalism: a) the processes of capital accumulation have become stagnant and inefficient; and as a result: b) imperialist polarizations and conflicts between the centers of global capitalism have increased significantly; and c) conventional policies are no longer capable of managing the consequences of this global crisis, ensuring the submission of the oppressed, or containing their rebellious uprisings; the dependence of capitalism on militaristic accumulation and simultaneously militarism as a management strategy has increased drastically. This is why some theorists, such as Sandro Mezzadra,[1] refer to the current phase of capitalist development as a global war regime.
3.2. The continuum of militarization, war, and warmongering has long intensified the process of militarism in the Middle East. This process has pushed the economic lives of the region’s oppressed to a breaking point, suffocated the political life of these societies, stifling any potential for political development, and facilitated the state’s suppression of class struggles and social movements. It has also led to the violent elimination of progressive forces and currents, and reinforced the divisions and divergences resulting from religious and national borders to the detriment of the internationalist solidarity of the oppressed. Although this imperialist process has historical and global roots and dimensions, the Iranian state (alongside the state of Israel) has been a firm pillar in the Middle East over the last decades to facilitate and intensify this process to its current acute limits.
3.3. Particularly with the promotion of nuclear and missile strategies as well as the “Axis of Resistance,” the Islamic Republic (IR) entered a terrain that was consistent both with the geopolitical strategies of Russia in the Middle East (let us remember Syria) and, as a “useful” stimulus, with the imperialist and military expansion of the USA and Israel. By proxy strengthening Russian (and partially Chinese) interests in the regional conflicts between the eastern and western imperialist blocs, the IR effectively placed Iranian society in a permanent state of semi-war, connected to a permanent state of emergency. The main features of this state have been: the devastating economic costs of nuclear policy, the expansion of militarism and regional interventions, as well as the intensification of oppression and political suffocation. All of this was normalized through a pseudo-anti-imperialist discourse centered on the Axis of Resistance, national security narratives focused on an external enemy, and ambitions of establishing a Shiite-Iranian great power. Aside from several instances of military escalation with Israel, most notably the so-called 12-day war in June 2025, the primary manifestation of life under a semi-war state has been the long-term endurance of devastating economic sanctions imposed by the Western imperialist bloc. This crisis-ridden mechanism has further paralyzed the underprivileged majority while enriching the military-economic oligarchy.
3.4. The patriotic war is a myth. The oppressed people in Iran have been under the fire of both sides for more than a century: both from internal despotism and from imperialist power relations. More importantly: these fire-guns are based on common mechanisms and are interdependent in their functionality. Even after the outbreak of this current war, the duality of aggressor states and victim state remains merely a hollow slogan designed to lead the masses astray into the slaughterhouse. Both sides are constituent elements of a comprehensive system of rule and oppression in the Middle East; a system reproduced through the interwoven functions of these forces at both local and regional levels.[2] Although the recent military aggression by Israel and the U.S. against Iran occurred within the context of imperialist geopolitical conflicts, in which the Islamic Republic has also been an actor, this aggression has imposed yet another war upon the people of Iran. This external conflict stands in addition to the chronic internal war the IR regime has long waged against the majority of its own population.
3.5. The discourse/approach that concludes from a comparison of the imperialist power/hegemony of the US with the regional power of the IR that one must take the side of the “weaker” in this “unequal war” ignores, in addition to the mentioned interdependencies, the sub-imperialist nature and functions of the IR: the violent reproduction of capitalist relations in Iran and the imperialist order in the Middle East through the subjugation of the masses; the expansion of militarism in the region through the proxy mediation of the imperialist rivalry between the Eastern and Western camps.[3] The propagandists and carriers of such a discourse ignore, wittingly or unwittingly, that both sides of the current war, regardless of their geopolitical differences, have been complementing each other’s functions in the submission of the oppressed in the geography of Iran. Since the Islamic Republic no longer possesses the endurance to ensure the long-term submission of the masses, this war will serve as an auxiliary force to secure that subjugation, albeit in a new guise.
3.6. The final outbreak of this war, the threat of which has long made the general living conditions of the underprivileged masses much severe and crisis-ridden, was a decision that the elites of the respective states, with their own profit-and-loss calculations, made over the heads of the oppressed masses of Iran and the region. For the maximal oppression and suffocation by the IR have left no room for the oppressed to cultivate and expand their own agency (though this is a general rule of any capitalist state). In the current balance of power, since the masses have possessed a limited level of agency, they are now facing the extreme costs of this imposed war; costs they can pay only with their own lives.
3.7. Despite all the harsh conditions and hostilities that surround us and have drastically reduced the possibilities of collective resistance, the agency of the oppressed is not entirely eliminable. More importantly, the current precarious situation provides even more vital reasons to continue the struggle. Now, the voice of resistance against the war must be amplified, and a clear line must be drawn against warmongering forces and tendencies. Although the outbreak of war reinforces a discouraging and frightening atmosphere, the inevitable intensification of public misery and political oppression necessitates organized resistance. In such a war situation, resistance does not mean supporting either side, nor does it mean following the myths of rescue from outside or defense of the fatherland (patriotic war). Rather, it will be realized through collective organization to defend the principle of life and to maintain the agency and solidarity of the oppressed. For example, through organizing of aid projects to support the vulnerable social layers; or through any initiative that strengthens organization in the work and public spheres. Such acts and initiatives can, in addition to their immediate necessary functions in the daily lives of people, also build bastions of resistance against the destruction of social solidarity or against the instrumental exploitation of the masses (by those in power). This is the only way to minimize the war’s immediate suffering and devastation while preparing ourselves for the socio-political threats of the looming post-war period.
3.8. With the outbreak of the mass uprising in December 2025 /January 2026, we did not only witness the horrific and unprecedented repression of the IR. This uprising also showed, in a bitter way, how the oppressed of Iran now stand simultaneously in an unequal struggle against three power fronts: the IR with its openly fascist features as the ruling state; the Pahlavi reactionary front with its openly fascist tendencies as a pretender to power; and the imperialist powers that were the motor for the unfolding of the neofascist rise in the contemporary world. All three fronts attach no value to human life, while having reinforced each other in various ways. Be it through powers that gloss over their geopolitical imperialist goals in a military aggression against Iran in the name of rescuing Iranians from endless suffering; Be it through those who, in order to come to power (the throne), have always beaten the drum of warmongering and the necessity of foreign military intervention; Or be it through the state of the IR, which has long imposed on us a life on the edge of war or in a semi-war state for the survival of its shameful rule; a brutal regime, that now assumes the pose of the victim-state and the defender of the people – the same people it slaughters by the thousands if “needed.”
3.9. All three groups count on our despair. Each of these three fronts hopes that the despair into which we have fallen through our catastrophic life under the death-based ruling system will entirely extinguish our political agency. So that we would say: Let come what may; it can’t get any worse than this. If we look back into our collective historical memory, however, all the bitter experiences we have gone through since the final failure of the constitutional revolution (1906) until today testify that in the sequence of our failures, we were confronted each time with something worse that threw us back into an even more ruinous situation. Even if we do not want to look back into our long-term historical memory, the documented consequences of humanitarian military interventions since the 1990s until today reveal the truth: from Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan to Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Sudan. Given the long-standing and multi-dimensional hell that the IR has built, it is completely understandable that the oppressed reach the point of desperation. But if we can set aside the grip of despair for a moment, in favor of the vital decisions that determine the future of society, we will acknowledge that this war will worsen our historical situation.
3.10. Political currents that have been presenting foreign military aggression as necessary to get rid of the evil of the IR and actively promoted and normalized such a criminal solution consciously remain silent about the evil consequences of this solution. For they are mostly the same ones who enabled the horrific massacre of the IR in January 2026, namely the mass murder of the protesters; those who then presented this massacre – with shocking indifference – as the necessarycosts of war against the IR regime. This time, too – while they been propagating and normalizing military aggression – they are well aware that the costs of war are to be paid by others, so that they themselves can enjoy the blessings of the war.
3.11. There is no doubt that we must bury the stinking corpse of the IR in order to be able to begin a new way in Iran, for this corpse has shaped the walls of our historical prison. But this can only happen through ourselves, not through powers that, given the testimony of the long history of the 20th century, are themselves prison builders and breeders of prison guard; be the Pahlavi gang or the IR itself.
Conclusion:
The current war in Iran is not a war of the US state and Israel against the Islamic Republic, but their common war (by both sides) against the people who, by a misfortune of fate, are forcibly citizens of the IR. This is a catastrophic war against the oppressed of Iran as it disrupts and weakens the unfinished process of their struggles against the oppression system of the IR. This war, as the newest manifestation of inter-imperialist conflicts, in continuation of the previous efforts of the ruling powers, aims to lead the combative aspirations of the oppressed into the abyss. Even after the war, we will be facing to another form of internal war against the oppressed. Therefore, collective resistance against war and militarism cannot be a separate process from the totality of the struggles of the oppressed. Rather, it must be part of a continuous and comprehensive resistance to defend the lives and the fundamental rights of the oppressed.
Our resistance against the war is a resistance against the core of the ruling policy, whose continuation needs the war[4]: politics from above. We are against the war because we believe in the power of connected and conscious people; in the capacity of the oppressed for transformation. Because a politics from below is both necessary and possible.
No to imperialist wars
No to warmongering and militarism
Long live life
Woman Life Freedom
Contact:
E-Mail: roudcollective@proton.me
Instagram: roudcollective.global
[1] Mezzadra, S. and Neilson, B. (2024): The Rest and the West: Capital and Power in a Multipolar World. Verso.
[2] Let us remember that the counter-revolutionary birth of the Islamic Republic from the 1979 Revolution resulted from an imperialist rupture in a revolutionary process that had its origins in the 1953 coup d’état.
[3] The fact that the U.S. government views this war as a means to return Iran to the Western imperialist camp does not change the fundamental mechanism described in this paragraph.
[4] Carl von Clausewitz famously stated that “war is a continuation of politics by other means.”
The article, below was written the day the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began for the French journal L’Anticapitaliste andthe on-line journal International Viewpoint, but it was not published until March 2. I have updated this version of the article.
President Donald Trump promised to be the “president of peace” and to avoid foreign wars of regime change such as America’s “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Trump has launched just such a war on Iran and the question is: Will his base and the American people support or even tolerate it?
Trump declared war on Iran, and together with Israel, bombed several cities including Teheran, the capital, killing Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and other top Iranian officials, as well as striking military bases and nuclear facilities. Iran then retaliated by attacking Israel and U.S. bases in Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, and Oman. Israel has also gone to war with Lebanon. So now there is a enormous and complicated regional war.
A diplomatic resolution of U.S. differences with Iran was possible, but Trump, who calls himself “the peace president,” chose war. As is always the case in war, there are innocent victims. There are now thousands of civilian dead and wounded, among them between 160 to 175 young schoolgirls, teachers, and staff of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran. Trump launched the war saying, “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. A vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.”
Trump suggested that war was necessary because Iran would soon have nuclear weapons and missiles that could reach the United States. U.S. government reports denied both claims. “For that reason, he promised, “We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground.” He added, presenting himself as a liberator, “Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand… When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” So, this appears to be just the sort of war for regime change that Trump when he was a candidate for president had promised to avoid.
Trump launched the war without consulting or even informing the U.S. Congress, which under the U.S. Constitution is the only arm of government with the power to declare war. Democrats had announced earlier that they planned to go to Congress on March 2 with a war powers resolution which would have prevented Trump from going to war with Iran. But Trump beat them to the punch. Democrats will present the resolution this week in an attempt to stop the war.
Both some Democrats and Republicans have criticized Trump’s turn to war. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, who is co-leading the effort in the House to force a war powers vote, called the strikes on Iran “acts of war unauthorized by Congress.” Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego said, I lost friends in Iraq to an illegal war. Young working-class kids should not pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn’t been explained or justified to the American people. We can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die.”
In cities around the country there were small protest demonstrations as the war began, but the largest with only a few hundred participants. Some of those organizing these protests actually support Iran’s government, claiming it is, “anti-imperialist.” But there is little popular support for Iran’s regime since Khamenei had the Islamic Revolutionary Guard murder between 25,000 to 35,000 protestors who opposed the authoritarian regime in January.
Will the American people accept Trump’s war? Will his base turn against him for violating his promise to avoid just this sort of war? Will the Democrats stop him in Congress? Or can the anti-war movement stop him in the streets? That’s our challenge.
A critique of the Left’s unconditional solidarity with ruling Kurdish parties, and a call for class-based solidarity that sides with workers and toiling classes for a democratic state that guarantees equal rights for all.
Kurdish-inhabited areas, from wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan#/media/File:Kurdish-inhabited_areas_(orthographic_projection_with_inset).svg
The global Left faces a complex challenge: how can it defend the legitimate rights of the Kurdish people in the context of existential conflicts, while maintaining consistent critical standards toward all ruling authorities without exception? This balance is a fundamental condition for the credibility of internationalist solidarity itself.
Solidarity with the oppressed Kurdish people, with other oppressed peoples, and with the toiling masses is a foundational principled position of the global Left. This position is grounded in internationalist values that reject national oppression, class exploitation, and all forms of discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, language, or gender.
The Kurdish people have been subjected to historical and ongoing national oppression in several countries across the region, encompassing genocide, forced displacement, denial of cultural and linguistic rights, and political repression. This reality imposes on left and progressive forces a clear stance in support of their legitimate rights and just struggles.
Yet this position, which genuinely serves the cause over the long term, does not rest on unconditional alignment. It must be grounded in reliable sources and the reports of international human rights organizations (See appendix). It also rests on a clear distinction between supporting the Kurdish people’s rights to dignity, equality, cultural and linguistic rights, and the right to self-determination, and granting absolute endorsement to the practices of specific Kurdish nationalist parties that have been documented as complicit in serious human rights violations.
The essence of this solidarity must be directed toward supporting the project of a citizenship state, a state founded on full equality among all citizens regardless of nationality, religion, language, or gender. A state that guarantees social justice and individual and collective rights through accountable deliberative democratic institutions. Defending national rights does not mean transforming identity into a basis for power, but rather ensuring those rights within a just legal framework that encompasses everyone.
Some left currents around the world have at times treated certain Kurdish nationalist parties as the exclusive expression of an oppressed people’s cause. They have extended unconditional solidarity without adequate accountability, despite these parties lacking genuine democratic representational legitimacy for the Kurdish people as a whole.
Despite the complexity of circumstances, these parties did not come to power through free, fair, and transparent elections open to independent international observers. They imposed their dominance through armed force, militias, money, security control, and military and political deals with regional governments or with regional and international powers.
Documents and sources from numerous credible human rights organizations indicate that some of these ruling Kurdish nationalist forces are implicated in serious human rights violations. Throughout their history, they have carried out political assassinations, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and torture against their opponents, many of whom came from the ranks of left forces. This conflation of solidarity with the people and support for party authority may harm the cause itself. It transforms solidarity from a principled humanitarian stance into a narrow ideological alignment that may undermine the Left’s moral and political credibility.
This pattern of engagement with the causes of oppressed peoples is not new in the history of the global Left. In the early 1990s, when I arrived in Europe as a refugee, many left forces were rightly condemning the unjust economic blockade imposed on the Iraqi people following the First Gulf War.
Some of those same forces simultaneously refused to acknowledge or condemn the crimes of Saddam Hussein’s nationalist regime (1968 to 2003), on the grounds that it was a progressive, anti-imperialist regime, or that the timing was not right and that focus should be exclusively on lifting the blockade.
This position is being repeated today with the Kurdish question in different forms. This is by no means a comparison between the savage crimes of the Ba’athist nationalist regime in Iraq and the human rights violations committed by ruling Kurdish nationalist parties.
The underlying logic is similar in both cases: reluctance to criticize documented violations under the pretext of exceptional circumstances, inappropriate timing, or other political priorities.
Documented Positive Aspects
According to reports from international human rights organizations and humanitarian bodies, there are positive aspects that must be noted objectively when assessing the situation in Kurdish-majority areas.
In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, international reports have documented the region’s hosting of large numbers of displaced persons and refugees from various Iraqi and Syrian communities, providing camps and humanitarian assistance under difficult economic conditions.
Reports have noted a relatively higher level of social, religious, and cultural freedoms compared to some surrounding areas, with a considerable degree of security and relative religious and ethnic diversity. The region played a documented role in protecting certain minorities, including Yazidis, Christians, Sabaean-Mandaeans, and Sunni Arabs, from the threat of genocide during the rise of ISIS, providing a safe haven for thousands of displaced people.
In northern and eastern Syria, international reports documented the effective military role of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in fighting the terrorist organization ISIS, with American and Western support. They contributed to liberating vast areas from the organization’s control and paid a heavy toll in lives.
There have been attempts to build an administrative model under exceptional wartime conditions and ongoing siege, with efforts to manage the region’s ethnic and religious diversity.
Reports documented relative progress in women’s participation, particularly in military and administrative spheres, something relatively rare in the regional context. Despite human rights violations, the administration of dozens of displacement camps housing tens of thousands of people under difficult and complex humanitarian conditions was noted, amid limited resources and international support.
Documented Violations in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Despite these positive aspects, reports from international human rights organizations have documented serious violations in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which is jointly governed by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
In practice, the region is divided into two zones with separate party and security administrations, each with its own apparatus, forces, and sphere of influence. A hereditary family rule pattern is entrenched within both parties, with key decision-making positions passed within the Barzani and Talabani families, deepening the monopolization of power and undermining the institutional and democratic foundations of governance.
Reports have documented increasing restrictions on freedom of expression in the region, including the arrest, mistreatment, and in some cases torture of journalists and human rights defenders. Significant gaps exist in protecting women and girls from domestic violence and crimes committed against them. Widespread repressive practices continue against political opponents and civil society activists, including arbitrary detention, torture, and suppression of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
Documented violations also include the suppression of peaceful demonstrations that emerged in protest against unemployment, corruption, and unpaid salaries. In many instances, security forces used live ammunition against protesters, resulting in deaths and injuries. Dozens of activists and journalists were arrested. Independent media outlets that covered the protests were targeted.
The security apparatus affiliated with both parties exercises broad surveillance over society. Direct criticism of the ruling families who control power through hereditary succession may expose the critic to security prosecution and worse.
Documented Violations in Northern and Eastern Syria
In northern and eastern Syria, reports from neutral international human rights organizations have documented widespread and systematic violations committed by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). These include restrictions on fundamental freedoms such as freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, suppression of political opponents and civil society activists, and the forced recruitment of children under the age of eighteen, a serious and documented violation of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as widespread arbitrary detentions without fair trials and systematic torture in detention centers.
In its report on the situation in Syria, Human Rights Watch clearly documented the SDF’s continued recruitment of children, including boys and girls, and the detention of tens of thousands of people, including women and children, under difficult conditions in camps such as Al-Hol and Al-Roj and others, under American supervision.
The UN Secretary-General’s report on children and armed conflict contained official documentation of multiple cases of child recruitment by Kurdish People’s Protection Forces in Syria, despite the forces’ repeated and publicly declared commitments to end this practice.
International reports documented the suppression of peaceful demonstrations in several cities, protesting deteriorating services or security practices, through the use of force and arrests. They also documented cases of forced displacement of Arab residents from their villages after liberation from ISIS under security pretexts, raising concerns about demographic engineering.
Additionally, restrictions on press freedom and freedom of expression were noted, along with the closure of media offices and civil society organizations that criticized the Autonomous Administration’s policies.
These violations are not isolated incidents. They reflect an authoritarian structure in need of fundamental reform. The war on terrorism and genuine security threats are used as justifications for suppressing opposition and restricting freedoms in ways that go beyond security necessity.
The Gap Between Progressive Discourse and Authoritarian Practice
It must be noted that a significant segment of the global Left is drawn to the concept of “Democratic Confederalism” and the theories of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey, adopted by the “Autonomous Administration” in northern and eastern Syria as an alternative to the centralized nation-state. However, a critical reading of actual practice on the ground reveals a sharp paradox: while talk of “communes” and grassroots democracy abounds, real power and military and financial decision-making are concentrated in the hands of unelected Kurdish party cadres operating with rigid centralist logic.
When progressive concepts such as ecology, feminism, and statelessness are invoked in ways that appear more oriented toward projecting a progressive image before Western public opinion than toward serving as a systematic framework guiding political practice, they risk being reduced to a legitimizing narrative for an authority that has been significantly tied to American military and security support. We would argue that this does not ultimately strengthen left thought, and may indeed weaken its intellectual credibility and political coherence.
The documented role of the Syrian Democratic Forces in fighting ISIS should be acknowledged. Yet this military role, despite its importance, does not eliminate the need for a critical assessment of the military, political, and economic structures that took shape within the framework of international alliances. External support can create structural dependencies that, over time, may influence internal decision-making processes and organizational priorities, especially if it is not accompanied by the preservation of the movement’s independence and its popular base. This risk is not limited to support coming from the United States and its allies; historical experience shows that reliance on major external powers of any kind carries similar dangers for movements seeking emancipatory change.
As the center of gravity shifts from autonomous popular mobilization to external dependency, funding, and support, the movement transforms from a social force rooted in a popular base into a paid military force.
This transformation weakens the voluntary and revolutionary spirit and reorganizes the internal structure according to the logic of external dependency. Over time, the survival of these movements becomes tied to the continuation of international support rather than to the stability of their socio-popular base. When this support stops or its priorities shift, the structural fragility becomes evident, either through a rapid decline in political and military capacity, or through acceptance of the supporting party’s conditions for the sake of survival.
This structural contradiction becomes clear when SDF leadership accepted, as a fait accompli, the role of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) as the primary Kurdish national reference point, despite the family-tribal nature of its governance and its associated corruption, despotism, hereditary power, and the dominance of conservative patriarchal values. This positioning reveals the subordination of proclaimed progressive principles to narrow nationalist calculations.
We also witnessed the withdrawal of most non-Kurdish components from the SDF, the decline of popular support for the project, and the shift in international arrangements as the United States distanced itself and moved toward coordination with the Syrian government, all revealing signs of a deep crisis.
This contradiction is further confirmed by the recent agreement between the Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with American support and the blessing of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq. While it is a positive step that reduces the likelihood of war and spares the region’s populations of various nationalities further destruction, the agreement contained no clause concerning women’s rights, state secularism, halting privatization, protecting the public sector, the rights of workers, or holding democratic elections to elect all officials, nor any other basic left demands. All of this reflects a clear gap between the progressive theoretical discourse and actual practice on the ground.
Accordingly, what is occurring cannot be characterized as a struggle between the Left and forces of authoritarianism, but is rather, in its essence, a struggle between competing national classes and elites over power, dominance, and spheres of influence.
Left Forces Must Clarify Their Position: Which Class of the Kurdish People Do They Stand With?
Despite the accumulated and independent international documentation of repression and human rights violations referenced briefly above, an influential segment of the global left discourse has continued to classify certain Kurdish nationalist forces within the category of the progressive Left or national liberation movements, without serious accountability for their practices. The historical national oppression suffered by the Kurdish people is treated as if it grants immunity from criticism to forces that claim to represent them, even when those forces engage in repression.
Here, the global and local Left must resolve its position from a clear class perspective. Peoples are not homogeneous blocs. They are class formations in which national contradictions intersect with class contradictions, and no people or ethnicity is free of internal class struggle. It is not sufficient for the Left to declare abstract solidarity with “the Kurdish people” without clearly specifying exactly with whom it is standing in solidarity, and against whom. It must clearly resolve its position: with which class of the Kurdish people does it stand?
The Kurdish people are divided into classes with contradictory interests.
On one side: a rentier bourgeoisie that controls the governance of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, practicing corruption, despotism, and hereditary rule; and a ruling class in northern and eastern Syria that maintains centralized political and military dominance while allowing only a limited and tightly constrained degree of political pluralism within its formal structures and public sphere, operating under a progressive label.
The two coordinate fully to impose their class-national authority, integrated into the policies of global capitalism politically and militarily, particularly with the United States and its aggressive imperialist policies in the region, actively supporting the ruling regimes (the oppressive national bourgeoisies), and actively participating now in the nationalist Islamic system of governance in Iraq, and likewise in Syria following the recent agreement between the SDF and the “Syrian government.”
These two ruling classes have no fundamental class disagreement with these oppressive nationalist regimes regarding their policies that are hostile to the interests of the toiling classes. Rather, they share in impoverishing the masses, suppressing freedoms, and violating the economic, social, and political rights of the toiling masses regardless of their national or religious background.
On the other side: a broad class of Kurdish workers and intellectuals, and residents of those areas from other nationalities, who suffer from poverty, unemployment, marginalization, corruption, despotism, repression, rising costs of living, and the collapse of basic services in health, education, and infrastructure. Their rights to independent union and political organizing are restricted, and they face security repression at any attempt to protest or demand their rights.
This is the same class that is exploited to produce the wealth appropriated by the ruling classes, mobilized through nationalist fervor and sectarianism for wars in service of the interests and projects of the first class and its imperialist allies, while it alone pays the price of these conflicts in blood, lives, and the futures of its children, for nationalist wars that serve no real interests of their own.
Principled Solidarity: Defending the Cause by Also Criticizing Those Who Distort It
True left solidarity means standing beside the oppressed classes against all who exploit and oppress them, whether from the same nationality or another, and refusing to align with nationalist leaderships that deploy the discourse of national liberation to justify their authoritarian power, class privileges, and plundering of society’s wealth. The Left cannot justify hereditary rule, corruption, or the suppression of the toiling masses under any name.
Yet this reluctance persists in some left circles when confronting documented violations, under the pretext of protecting solidarity or not serving the enemies of the cause. This position departs from the internationalist values founded on rejecting injustice wherever it occurs and defending human dignity by consistent standards that do not shift with changing national identity or ideological background.
Beyond principled considerations, this position does not serve the interests of the Kurdish people themselves, and particularly the toiling masses who aspire to democracy, equality, and social justice, and who need genuine democratic mass leaderships that are accountable and subject to real change.
In light of the documented reports of international human rights organizations, the Left must pose critical questions to itself:
Do we reject hereditary rule and demand genuine democratic elections even in areas whose peoples we stand in solidarity with?
Do we reject despotism and demand genuine political pluralism and full freedoms?
Do we condemn arbitrary detentions and political assassinations and demand accountability for their perpetrators, even when they belong to forces we stand in solidarity with?
Do we reject torture and repressive practices in detention centers and demand fair trials for detainees?
Do we defend the rights of Kurdish workers and intellectuals?
Do we condemn corruption and the pillaging of public funds?
Do we defend the right of Kurdish journalists, activists, and human rights defenders to criticize Kurdish authorities without fear of repression?
Do we defend the full equality rights of Arab, Turkmen, Syriac, and other citizens in Kurdish-majority areas?
Do we reject child recruitment and demand its immediate cessation, even when practiced by forces we stand in solidarity with?
Do we believe that detainees, including those accused of ISIS affiliation, deserve humane treatment under international law and fair trials, or should they be humiliated, tortured, and abused as America and the SDF have done in detention centers according to documented reports?
Do we reject left and liberatory forces being supporters of or part of the American imperial military and security apparatus, or receiving funding from it?
If the Left’s response to such questions repeatedly takes the form of “Yes, but the circumstances are exceptional,” or “Yes, we reject these practices, but the timing is not right,” or “Yes, these are our principles, but context must be considered,” then a serious problem emerges. When it comes to documented and systematic violations committed by ruling political authorities, human rights and left principles should not be indefinitely deferred by appeals to exceptional circumstances or political timing.
Context may help us understand complex situations, but it should not become a permanent justification for suspending core principles. We are not assessing isolated individual actions shaped by personal histories; rather, we are holding accountable organized political forces that exercise institutional power and make deliberate policy decisions.
The global Left’s position of solidarity with oppressed peoples is greatly appreciated and represents one of its most important historical contributions to the struggle for justice. This solidarity must evolve and deepen. At the same time, it requires frank critical review to ensure its consistency with the core values on which it is founded.
Solidarity is a principled position that must not be abandoned. It gains its credibility when coupled with frank criticism upon the emergence of documented violations. Reluctance under the pretext of exceptional circumstances may weaken left discourse and bring it closer to the logic of opportunism that it criticizes in capitalism and its institutions. What is required is deepening solidarity by linking it to the values of citizenship, freedom, equality, and accountability for all without discrimination.
Supporting the Kurdish people’s struggle against the oppression practiced by authoritarian nationalist regimes in the region does not contradict criticizing the repressive practices of ruling Kurdish forces and authorities. Defending a just cause requires criticizing every practice that distorts it.
Democracy and human rights are left values enshrined in international human rights covenants. They must be applied by a single standard to all. Any double standard may hollow out the left project of its moral content. Credibility requires a clear understanding that true solidarity means defending the rights of all. Here lies the distinction between principled solidarity founded on left values, and uncritical solidarity that may transform into alignment at the expense of left and humanitarian principles.
The Alternative Project: The Citizenship State and Social Justice
Current local, regional, and global circumstances do not permit the formation of an independent Kurdish national state in the foreseeable future, nor does there appear to be any serious international support for this path.
Therefore, the more productive and realistic struggle is the joint struggle between the Kurdish people and the other peoples of the region for an alternative project that transcends the exclusionary nation-state model, guarantees the collective and individual rights of the Kurdish people and all other communities within democratic citizenship states, rather than calling the toiling masses to nationalist wars that serve no genuine interests of their own and produce nothing but further destruction, displacement, and victims.
The global and local Left must support a democratic citizenship state founded on full equality among all citizens regardless of their nationality, religion, language, or gender. A state built on a democratic constitution grounded in international human rights covenants, one that guarantees the national and cultural equality of all communities and rejects any form of national domination. And a democratic federal system founded on fair geographical and administrative principles, enabling broad self-governance under the umbrella of a unified state that guarantees equal rights and resources for all its components.
This state is founded on genuine democracy that ensures free and fair elections, political pluralism, separation of powers, judicial independence, press freedom, and independent union and political organization, and that breaks entirely with all forms of hereditary power and family rule. It is also founded on the greatest possible degree of social justice, guaranteeing the rights of workers and intellectuals of all nationalities and religions, and rejecting the privatization and neoliberal policies that impoverish the masses and enrich ruling elites at their expense.
This is the project that deserves the solidarity of the global and local Left. A project that combines social justice, national justice, political democracy, and social emancipation, one that does not replace one form of national authoritarianism with another that differs only in the language of the ruler and the identity of the dominant elite.
The Kurdish cause is a just cause deserving genuine solidarity, solidarity that means supporting the struggle of the Kurdish people, all other peoples, and the toiling masses across the region for their human, national, and democratic rights within the framework of a just citizenship state and social justice, not alignment behind nationalist elites who exploit this cause to entrench their power and preserve their class privileges.
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Appendix: Reports of International and Regional Human Rights Organizations on Human Rights Violations in Iraq, the Kurdistan Region, and Syria
This article’s analysis draws on reports issued by international and regional human rights organizations, listed in this appendix for documentation and transparency.
Seizing upon what they consider to be a generational opportunity, with Iran’s theocratic dictatorship shaken by the January people’s uprising, Trump and Netanyahu launched a “prolonged” attack from the air on February 28. While the attacks are aimed, they say, at eliminating Iran’s nuclear and missile capacity, it clearly involves an effort at regime change. With their nefarious surprise attack – conducted in the middle of negotiations — and the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in his residence along with other regime leaders and members of his family, they have committed at least three major war crimes: launching a war of aggression, attacks on the civilian population, and assassination of the political and military leadership of sovereign nation. This is also a precedent for other imperialist and subimperialist powers everywhere.
Of course, it is not surprising that many sectors of the Iranian population have expressed joy at the demise of the murderous Khamenei, who in January gave the green light to the massacre of at least 7,000 of his fellow citizens who had dared to demand democracy and an end to 47 years of theocratic authoritarianism. But we must ask, as many Iranians also are doing, what the US and Israel have in mind for their country, amid the language about destroying the “evil” Islamic Republic and its violent threats to the region and the world. Spoken by perpetrators of genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza, and of a new form of fascist imperialism in the Americas, their claims to humanitarianism give the word hypocrisy a bad name.
The US and Israel have shown incredible technical proficiency in managing to assassinate at one swoop not only the Iran’s Supreme Leader, but also many others in the top leadership. And this is a leadership that was forewarned against such stealthy assassinations by the precedent of Israeli precision attacks in 2024 on the top leadership of Iran-allied Hezbollah inside their secret headquarters in Lebanon and on Hamas representatives right inside highly secure government sites inside Iran itself.
At this juncture, the US and Israel sense victory against their opponents in the region and seem to believe that now is the time, in Netanyahu’s murderous expression, “to finish them off.” And to be sure, this sense of victory was augmented by the assassinations of February 28. But the more important factor here lies in how all this reeks of imperial hubris, not only from the side of tiny Israel, but even from the gigantic US superpower, the greatest military colossus the world has ever seen. For never in history have airstrikes of this sort overthrown a government without the use of ground troops sent by the imperialist power (as in Iraq) or a well-organized armed rebel force (as in Libya).
Even as Trump is facing growing social and political opposition at home, including from the cascading revelations of the Epstein files, he keeps expanding his imperial reach.
At present, this is happening all at once in three major regions: (1) The US has a number of major naval vessels blockading Venezuela, now under what amounts to a predatory protectorate, even as it has formed what amounts to a blockade around Cuba, depriving it of the oil supplies crucial for the functioning of any modern society. (2) He has launched an open-ended conflict with Iran, population 90 million. (3) Trump has set up a “Board of Peace” to administer the Gaza Strip after the Israeli genocide, in which Israel as well as Arab and Muslim states participate, but no Palestinians. Moreover, he has expressed the intention of developing this Board, over which he has sole veto power, into an alternative to the United Nations.
Iran in the Wake of the 2026 People’s Uprising
At this writing, the US believes it has Iran on the ropes. It thinks it can corral a popular uprising that exceeded in depth and scope anything the country has seen since the 1979 revolution. In January, the theocratic regime succeeded in driving the population off the streets at the cost of at least 7000 deaths and 40,000 arrests. The truly massive and determined 2026 uprising united two major strands of recent opposition, the more class-based and rural uprisings of 2017 and 2018-19 over economic grievances, and the giant 2022-23 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement that united demands for the end of theocratic restrictions on women with unrest in two regions inhabited by oppressed minorities, Kurdistan and Sistan and Baluchistan. In this sense, the opposition matured and deepened by January, embracing very wide sectors of society, including the vast majority of the working people. However, unlike “Woman, Life, Freedom,” this uprising did not put forth any positive slogans about the future. This is partially but not entirely explained by its very brief duration, only a little over a week, before it was crushed by gunfire.
Another distinctive feature of the 2026 uprising was its economic context, that of a collapsing currency and other dire economic problems, far worse than those already faced in the uprisings of 2017 and 2018-19. The 2025-26 economic collapse strikes at the very heart of the regime and has forced much of the population into desperation. Given that desperation, the regime evidently decided it had to crack down harder than in the past to contain the movement.
At the same time, the 2026 uprising against the Islamic Republic has been imbued with deep contradictions, most notably support in certain quarters for Reza Pahlavi, the cossetted son of the shah overthrown in 1979. Pahlavi enjoys this support despite his anti-feminist, anti-Kurdish, pro-Trump, pro-Netanyahu, and other reactionary stances. But because the Pahlavis have been out of power for 47 years, during which time various other forms of opposition to the regime have sprung up but never succeeded even in liberalizing it, a tinge of nostalgia has occluded the reality of their oppressive rule. While part of this is surely due to media manipulation from abroad, not to speak of organization and funding from the US and Israel, it also reflects the rightwing, neofascist turn that is impacting many countries across the globe at a time when the left is being defeated or relegated to a defensive position.
That said, some real openings in favor of democracy and social justice are also on the agenda in Iran, as seen most notably in the 2022-23 “Woman, Life, Freedom Movement,” which expressed on the whole an emancipatory agenda with more in common with the aspirations of the global left than with Pahlavi and his ilk. It is also seen in the courageous demonstrations at the end of February by university students, which included a slogan directed against both the regime and Pahlavi, “No monarchy, no supreme leadership.”
If the popular movement has gained in strength and depth over the past decade, even considering these deep contradictions, the regime has also evolved. Many are noting that the 2026 generation of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (RPGC) and the Basij militia has been much more brutal and callous toward the population than its earlier counterparts. In considering why this seems to be the case, it should be noted that during the 2010’s, Iranian regime forces like the RPGC fought for many years in Syria. There, they took part in and drew lessons from the Assad regime’s slaughter of some 500,000 people in order to suppress the 2011 people’s uprising, which allowed it to stay in power all the way until 2024.
The 2024 overthrow of the Assad regime in the face of popular unrest and collapse due to internal corruption and misrule, the defeat of Hamas under Israel’s genocidal military campaigns in Gaza by 2025, and the decimation of Lebanese Hezbollah at the hands of Israel in 2024, have left Iran bereft of allies and thus more isolated in the region than at any time in the past century. This stung the regime especially hard, given the fact that only three years ago, it exercised a degree of domination across an entire area sometimes called the Shia crescent, ranging from Iraq through Syria and Lebanon, and then down into Yemen, along with its Sunni Muslim allies Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine. Not for millennia had Iranian power reached into the Mediterranean to this extent. While the current Iranian regime has never more than a subimperialist power, as its economic and military weight remained limited, it too suffered from a kind of wannabee imperial hubris. These pretensions were brutally dashed by the end of 2024.
All this surely gave the Iranian masses a sense that the regime was entering its final phase. After this year’s uprising, the antagonism between those masses and the regime has reached a point of no return. It is probably irrevocable now. But even though many on the streets may believe that fall of the regime is now on the agenda, this is far from clear. In fact, the failure of parts of the security and military apparatus to come over to the people suggests that the regime may be able to survive in some form. Nor, as mentioned above, can the US-Israeli air attacks topple it on their own. Moreover, US goals remain murky, especially when one considers what happened in Venezuela, where they reached a compromise with factions of the Maduro regime. Do they really want a mass uprising in Iran to succeed?
Be that as it may, the January uprising and the February-March air attacks have signaled that Iran and the region have entered a real turning point.
In approaching this, the global left needs to recognize these new developments, which include: (1) a new level of popular unrest in Iran, the deepest anywhere since the COVID pandemic; (2) a new type of reckless, violent, and fascist-tinged imperialism, abetted by frightening new weapons of surveillance and assassination and willing to speak openly of conquest, domination, and forcible resource extraction.
And while surely focusing on the new, we also need to rely on longstanding principles that have guided the left, such as support for the emancipation of women, oppressed ethnic and sexual minorities, and the working class as a whole; anti-imperialism and support for national independence and sovereignty; and finally, envisioning a society free of dictators, kings, theocrats, and monarchs, not only in the state, but also our families, communities, and workplaces, which can be accomplished fully only with the abolition of capitalism on a humanist basis.
In the context of Iran today, this would mean the firmest opposition to both the vicious US/Israeli attacks AND to the reactionary, theocratic regime of the Islamic Republic.
As Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine enters its fifth year on February 24, the UKRAINE SOLIDARITY NETWORK (US) calls on progressive and peace-minded people to renew their moral, political, and material support for the people of Ukraine in their resistance to Russia’s invasion and their rights to self-defense and self-determination.
We must remember Ukraine even as we struggle against so many other outrages that rightly demand our attention: the US-backed genocide in Gaza, US military strikes on Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, and small civilian boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, and the Trump administration’s assault on immigrants, health, the environment, and social and democratic rights.
Massive Casualties
Russia’s war of aggression has been as deadly as any war in the world over the last four years. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022, battlefield casualties (killed, wounded, missing) reached an estimated 1.8 million by the end of 2025, including 1.2 million Russians and 600,000 Ukrainians. The battlefield death toll alone is estimated at around 460,000 combatants – 325,000 Russians and 140,000 Ukrainians.
In addition to battlefield casualties, civilian casualties in Ukraine have reached over 53,000, including over 14,500 killed. The civilian death rate in Ukraine rose 31% in 2025 as Russia escalated its terrorist tactics of targeting civilian homes and energy infrastructure far from frontline battlefields with missile and drone strikes.
The horrors in Ukraine join the horrors of other wars and associated hunger and disease ravaging our planet over the last four years in Palestine, Sudan, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. People struggling for peace and democracy in all of these countries deserve our active solidarity.
A Stalemated War
Contrary to the Kremlin narrative of inevitable Russian victory, Ukraine has fought Russia to a standstill. In the first year of the war in 2022, Ukraine recovered nearly half of the land that Russia occupied in its initial offensive, pushing Russia out of the northern regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, and most of Kharkiv and much of Kherson in the south. Since then, the frontlines have been largely frozen. Despite enormous losses of personnel and materiel, Russia has gained only 1.5% of Ukrainian territory in the last three years.
Russia’s war finances are in trouble. Oil and gas revenues, 30% to 50% of Russian state revenues over the last decade, dropped by nearly 50% in 2025 to a five-year low. Ukrainian “kinetic sanctions” have hit Russian oil refineries, ports, and tankers, and have combined with declining global oil prices and western sanctions to begin to defund Russia’s war machine. Russia’s 2025 military budget was 40% of its national budget, which means that stronger sanctions might cripple Russia’s military.
Unspeakable War Crimes
The war crimes committed by Russia are unspeakable. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Llova-Belova, for the war crime of abducting tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia for Russified and militarized education. The ICC has issued further arrest warrants for four top Russian military commanders for the war crime of bombing civilians. Russian air strike terrorism on civilian homes and energy infrastructure in Ukraine has increased since these ICC arrest warrants were issued.
In an ominous escalation, Russian has been striking substations that feed power into the cooling systems of nuclear power stations since November and most recently earlier this February, risking a deadly Chornobyl-scale meltdown and radiation release.
Russia is training its drone operators on “humansafaris” that target Ukrainian civilians in Kherson. One in twenty people remaining in the city of Kherson were a casualty of Russian drones in 2025.
In the occupied territories, Ukrainians are subjected to political repression and forced Russification. If they refuse to take Russian passports, they are denied access to public services and banking. Children are often taken from parents who want to remain Ukrainian and their homes and property are being confiscated. Many are subject to detention and interrogation, forced conscription into Russia’s army, torture, sexual violence, and/or summary execution.
The Trump-Putin Alliance
The Trump administration policy has allied with Russia against Ukraine in its actions and negotiation posture. Since the Trump administration came into office, military aid to Ukraine has been cut by 99%. It cut all humanitarian aid to Ukraine shortly after taking office for education, healthcare, shelter, heat and power, war-displaced persons, HIV drugs, mental health services for war-distressed children, families, and veterans, and other services. In December, the US restored a token $2 billion of the former $63 billion USAID budget for humanitarian aid programs that is now being spent through UN programs trying to aid Ukraine and other war-torn countries like Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Also immediately upon taking office, the Trump administration closed US Justice Department programs to monitor and enforce sanctions against Russian frozen assets, influence operations in the US, and other sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Trump defunded US programs to document Russian war crimes, including cooperation with the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine and the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which had identified and documented some 35,000 Ukrainian children forcibly abducted by Russia.
After repeatedly voting for UN General Assembly resolutions since Russia’s full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022 that affirmed Ukraine’s sovereignty and demanded that Russia halt its military operations and withdraw back to Russia, in February 2025, the US reversed course under the Trump administration on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine. The US, and its satellites including Israel, voted with Russia against a similar resolution condemning Russia’s invasion and demanding that Russian troops withdraw.
While Trump still allows Europeans to buy weapons they can send on to Ukraine, US shipment delays have left crucial Ukrainian air defense missile launchers without missiles to fire against incoming Russian missiles in recent weeks.
Trump’s alliance with Putin is rooted in their far-right ideological affinity for a world of imperial spheres of influence, authoritarian rule, and racist, misogynistic, and homophobic “traditional values.” Grifters on both sides have been bargaining to partition Ukraine between them like a piece of real estate. The Russian side has been led by Kirill Dmitriev, a Stanford and Harvard trained veteran of McKinsey and Goldman Sachs who runs Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and 15 years ago scammed purchasers of apartments in a building development in Kyiv out of their investments. On the US side are Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, all long engaged in money laundering the real estate investments of Russian oligarchs and other Russia business ties.
Russia is now pitching Trump’s team on a $14 trillion business deal that is contingent on the US forcing Ukraine to accept Russia’s negotiation demands. It would involve lifting Western sanctions on Russia, joint arctic oil and gas exploitation, Russia returning to the dollar-based payments system, preferential US access to the Russian market, compensation for US corporate assets lost in Russia during the war, US aid for Russian aircraft modernization, joint mining of lithium, copper, nickel, and platinum, and cooperation on nuclear power plants to power AI data centers. All of this scheming is being conducted behind the backs of the Ukrainians.
Negotiations on the DimWit Plan
In the Trump-sponsored negotiations, the US has pressured Ukraine to capitulate to Russia under what has been dubbed the DimWit Plan (after Russian negotiator Dmitriev and US negotiator Witkoff). Russia demands that Ukraine cede occupied land in Crimea, plus land Russia does not control in partially-occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson provinces. Furthermore, Russia demands deep cuts in Ukraine’s military, no international security guarantees for Ukraine, and snap elections in hopes of seating a new Ukrainian government that will become a Russian vassal.
President Zelensky has indicated a reluctant willingness to compromise on a ceasefire and freeze at the current frontlines and forgo joining NATO – but if and only if Ukraine receives credible international security guarantees against further Russian aggression. The Ukrainian public seems to agree.
Despite Ukraine’s openness to compromise and Russia’s intransigence, President Trump repeatedly says Putin wants peace and Zelensky is the obstacle. Trump’s year of negotiations has been the deadliest year yet in the war for both Ukrainian civilians and Russia’s predominantly poor and ethnic minority soldiers.
Campist Contradictions
The Trump-Putin alliance puts to rest the false proxy war narrative of those campist geopoliticians and privileged pacifists on the Western left who are far away from the Russian assault troops, missiles, and drones raining down terror on Ukraine.
The campists have claimed that Ukraine is merely a proxy force fighting Russia on behalf of Western imperialism as if the Ukrainians do not have their own reasons to fight for their right to exist. The proxy war claim was always a canard. With Trump now aligning the US with Putin, the narrative collapses on its own contractions. It is more absurd than ever.
As Artem Chapeye, the Ukrainian writer, progressive activist, and now soldier explained to an American audience last August, “If this is a proxy war between Russia and US, why are the Ukrainians still fighting after the Trump-Putin alliance?”
Ukrainian Self-Determination
The Ukraine Solidarity Network totally supports the Ukrainian struggle for self-defense, security, and self-determination – as do most American people by a strong two to one margin in recentpolling. It is up to the Ukrainians to democratically decide what is an acceptable peace. We will not stand by while Russian and American oligarchs try to sell out Ukraine and divide it between them for their own profits and far-right ideological objectives.
We will continue our material aid and public education in coordination with trade unions and progressive organizations in Ukraine.
We will continue to work with progressive Ukrainians and Russians and support their demands:
Full and complete withdrawal of Russian troops from all of Ukraine..
International support for the armed and unarmed resistance of Ukrainians against the Russian invasion.
International economic sanctions against Russia’s war machinery, including its political, military, and economic elite, its access to the international financial system, its imports of weapons-related technology, and its exports of fossil fuels that fund and fuel Russia’s war machine.*
Return to Ukraine of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russia and Belarus.
Freedom for the tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied territories incarcerated for opposition to the occupation and resistance to genocidal Russification.
Freedom for all Russians incarcerated for war resistance and political dissent.
Asylum in countries abroad for Ukrainians, Russians, Belorussians, Palestinians, Sudanese, Haitians, Venezuelans, Afghans, and all people seeking refuge from political repression and war.
No amnesty for Russian war criminals.
Cancellation of Ukraine’s foreign debts.
Confiscation of Russian assets abroad to be used to support Ukraine’s military self-defense, social services, and post-war reconstruction.
Reparations from Russia to help fund a full post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.
An end to the Western imperialist policy of imposing a neoliberal program of privatization, deregulation, debt dependence, exploitative mineral extraction, and cuts to public services and labor rights on Ukraine today and for its post-war reconstruction.
* The question of sanctions is complicated and controversial among activists committed to Ukraine’s struggle. It’s especially important in the US that we do not accept the predatory politics of the imperialist US state. The Ukraine Solidarity Network will be discussing these issues with our Ukrainian comrades whose lives and national freedom are on the line.
Backroom Bargaining: Racketeering and Rebellion in New York City’s Labor Unions
By: Jane Latour
University of Illinois Press, 2026
My first contact with labor reformers in New York City was nearly 50 years ago. Like many rank-and-file dissidents, before and since, these critics of union corruption were prophets without honor in their own local.
Teamsters Local 282 was, at the time, one of the most mobbed-up affiliates of a national union then rightly notorious for its organized crime ties. Its members drove trucks full of cement or other building materials to local construction sites, while 282 leaders like Bobby Sasso extorted bribes to insure labor peace or allow non-union operations.
Sasso held various union jobs for 25 years but his real boss was not the drivers, whose dues paid his salary. It was a wise guy from Howard Beach in Queens named John Gotti. As head the Gambino family, Gotti siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars from the local, until a hitman responsible for 19 murders – Salvatore (“Sammy the Bull”) Gravano – became an FBI informant and helped put “The Teflon Don” behind bars.
Rank-and-filers critical of employer shake-downs, no-show jobs for mob associates, and other crooked schemes in Local 282 displayed enormous, almost reckless, courage. In the 1970s and 80s, they called their dissident caucus Fear of Reprisal Ends (FORE)—and suffered retaliation in multiple forms for organizing it. FORE was affiliated with the Professional Drivers Council (PROD), a Ralph Nader inspired advocacy group that I worked for, at the time, and helped merge with Teamsters for a Democratic Union in 1979.
Most of the 5,000 “ready mix” drivers in 282 steered clear of FORE, because its key activists were so regularly threatened, harassed, or blacklisted.
Nevertheless, a FORE candidate who ran for local union president in 1978 got 42 percent of the vote in a low turn-out election—before being fired, along with his running-mate. The 282 president re-elected that year was John Cody, who was convicted of labor racketeering just a few years later by a U.S. Attorney who described the local as “a candy store for the mob.”
Nevertheless, some deeply cynical 282 members continued to view FORE as a bunch of “Boy Scouts.” Or, worse yet, “Teamster enemies” working for “the feds,” as local officials like Cody and Sasso always claimed–until Sammy the Bull actually took that route to the federal witness protection program in 1991. The testimony that nailed John Gotti included this proud boast by his former under-boss:
“I had control of the whole thing. The president [Sasso], the vice-president, the secretary/treasurer, delegates, foreman. If I wanted a foreman in there, I’d tell Bobby, ‘Put this guy to work.’”
In the last half century, the culture of blue-collar unionism in the Big Apple has become far less Mafia-influenced, due to successful union democracy and reform struggles. In the 1990s, a longtime leader of Teamsters Local 804 in Queens—Ron Carey—became International union president, with the backing of TDU and its chapters around the country. Under Carey’s leadership, the Teamsters conducted a successful nationwide strike at United Parcel Service, the union’s largest employer, in 1997. Local 804 continues to be a model Teamster local today, by nurturing rank-file-activists like Anthony Rosario, a UPS veteran named “2025 Labor Organizer of the Year” by In These Times, because of his exemplary work with non-union employees of Amazon.
The changes made possible when IBT rank-and-filers, like Rosario, won the right to vote on their top officers became an inspiration for union reformers elsewhere. Just three years ago, UAW members—long saddled with a corrupt and undemocratic Administration Caucus– used referendum voting to put opposition candidates, like Shawn Fain, in office, after decades of tightly controlled convention elections, which favored the incumbents.
However, in old fashioned business unions—still run from the top down, nationally or locally– institutional loyalty runs deep. Where grifters and goons still hold power in New York City, they’re usually savvy enough to deflect any criticism of themselves by claiming that internal dissent threatens the very existence of trade unionism itself. In the Trump era, there’s even more weary cynicism for incumbents to exploit– about the inevitability of corruption in politics, big business, and organized labor.
This is the local labor terrain explored by the late Jane Latour, a much-beloved labor organizer, journalist, and advocate for women in the building trades. Her previous book, Sisters Inside the Brotherhoods, was an outgrowth of her work for the Women’s Project of the Brooklyn-based Association for Union Democracy (AUD). Her new volume again utilizes oral history interviews, this time with predominantly male building service employees, painters, carpenters, utility workers, maritime union members, and Teamsters who joined FORE to fight labor-management corruption in the construction industry.
Backroom Bargaining also profiles two of the most important late 20th century helpers of union dissidents, both past contributors to New Politics. They were Herman Benson, the socialist founder and longtime director of the AUD, and Burton Hall, a Yale Law School graduate and former public defender who helped his labor clients utilize the “membership bill of rights” created by the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959. As Latour recounts, it was Benson “who built a network of lawyers, scholars, and public intellectuals willing to aid the cause of often ostracized union rebels” and Hall who waged “tenacious court battles to force the union establishment to respect their hard-to-enforce rights.”
One of the most interesting chapters in the book deals with the limitations of legal remedies–as necessary as their pursuit has been in countless union democracy and reform struggles over the last 65 years. In a chapter entitled, “We’re from the Government and We’re Here to Help You,” the author recounts the debates that have engaged several generations of union members and officials about varying forms of “government interference” in union affairs.
These have ranged from U.S. Department of Labor investigations leading to re-runs of improperly conducted union elections to longer lasting judicial oversight resulting from Justice Department lawsuits filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. To settle this debate, sort of, Latour quotes Ken Paff, a co-founder of TDU still involved with the group fifty years later: “We don’t rely on the government or the law. We use the government and the laws, and we rely on the rank-and-file.”
All of the workers in Latour’s book, who experienced “the gap between the ideal and the disheartening reality of the U.S. labor movement” were dead or long retired before Labor Notes developed one of its most popular current training sessions. That workshop addresses a still relevant question: “What to do when Your Union Breaks Your Heart?”
According to former teachers’ union organizer and Labor Notes Board member Ellen David-Friedman, the target audience is workers “wondering how it is that their union, an organization that exists to make work life better, is in the hands of people who are not doing that?” As Backroom Bargaining reminds us, the struggle to hold union leaders accountable—and replace them, when necessary, with workers more committed to union democracy and reform—can be difficult and frustrating. But rarely as risky as challenging the mob associates who bullied and betrayed the dues-paying members of Teamsters Local 282 long ago.
Fortunately, Labor Notes, TDU, and the AUD all remain on duty as essential allies of such efforts. And readers of Jane Latour’s posthumously published book about labor “racketeering and rebellion,” in the past, will find it to be a useful “road map for the fight against autocracy and corruption” anywhere that either exists in our country today.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader and two-time candidate for president, died on February 17, 2026 at the age of 84. The leading social and political figure of Black people in the United States in the later twentieth century, he suffered from Parkinson’s disease and died of progressive supranuclear palsy. The story below, originally published in December 2023 in New Politics, deals principally with his two presidential campaigns.
Jesse Jackson for President 1984 and 1988
Rev. Jesse Jackson was the most significant Black leftist political candidate of the twentieth century, running for president in 1984 and 1988, coming in third and second in the Democratic primaries in his first and second campaigns respectively. Though in places his campaign took on the character of a movement, nevertheless he not only failed to win election, but also failed to convince Democratic Party to adopt his progressive program. While many Black voters and others admired and took pride in his achievement, some on the left felt he had ultimately served the Democratic Party establishment.
Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina to 16-year-old Helen Burns; his father was her neighbor, Noah Louis Robinson. Jackson was tormented by the stigma of his illegitimate birth. “When I was in my mother’s belly, no father to give me a last name, they called me a bastard and rejected me.” (Marshall Frady, Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson New York: Random House, 1996), p. 78.) Reading his biography, one has the sense that this initial stigmatization and rejections remained at this center of his psyche and that in reaction to that sense of rejection it provided him with his driving ambition.
A year later, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, a maintenance worker who adopted Jesse and gave the boy his last name though over the years he largely neglected him. Jesse Jackson grew up in a poor Black community, protected as he said by “the triangle,” of which the first corner his mother and grandmother, the second his school teachers, and the third the church. (Fraday, Jesse, p. 101.) Mother, preacher, and teacher all demanded that the young Jesse prove himself, that, as he might have said later, he “be somebody.” As one biographer writes, “In fact, the strenuous discipline in which he was raised left him forever after obsessed with the traditional rectitudes of grit, pluck, industry, pertinacity—these staunch verities that, as he saw it, provide his deliverance from the claim of the futility of and the abjectness of the communing enclosing him.” Those tenets and what he himself calls his “conservative Christian orientation” provided Jackson his moral compass. (Frady, Jesse, p. 106.)
Even as a youth others recognized his perceptiveness, his “flair of phrase” and his “ambitiousness.” Others told him that he was special. When he was a teenager he told his biological father that he had had a dream. “I dreamed I was a preacher, leading the people through the rivers of the waters.” As a leader of the church youth group he frequently spoke in church. “Church was my laboratory where I could develop and practice my speaking powers with more and more confidence.” When he was 15, he told a friend, “I want to be a minister.” (Fraday, Jesse, pp. 111-16.)
Jackson attended Sterling High School, segregated like all southern schools at the time, where he was elected class president, earned letters in football, basketball, and baseball, and in 1959 finished tenth in his class. As a high school student, following the victory of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, Jackson made the daring and risky move of sitting in the front of the bus in Greenville. Home from college, in 1960 he and half a dozen other students engaged in a small sit-in protest to desegregate the Greenville public library, his first civil rights activism, but when his step-father objected to his getting arrested, he left the growing movement.
Like many Blacks, Jackson hoped to escape the South’s stifling racism by going north. A talented quarterback in high school, he turned down the offer of a minor league football contract and accepted a football scholarship to the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1959, proud to be at a Big Ten school. There, however, he had no chance of becoming a quarterback, a position reserved for white athletes. And he was warned “not to socialize” with the white coeds. Though he had left the South, he had not escaped America’s pervasive racism. On campus he was part of “an isolated minority” and fell into depression. He later said his experience at the U of I “came close to breaking my spirit.” (Fraday, Jesse, pp. 138-40.)
Into the Civil Rights Movement
So, after several unhappy months at the U of I, Jackson left. He now enrolled at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, a mostly Black school in Greensboro. It was there that he met Jacqueline Lavinia Brown, courted her, and when she became pregnant married her. He and his wife began their family and he focused on his studies, and though the civil rights movement was burgeoning all around him, he kept his distance. Still he found time to attend the March on Washington in March, 1963.
Then one day that same year, urged by mentors and friends to join the movement, he gave his first speech to a rally of about 100 students preparing to take action. Jackson rose and spoke: “History is upon us. This generation’s judgment is upon us. Demonstrations without limitation! Jail without bail! Let’s go forward!” And the group moved out. At that moment Jackson found his voice, demonstrated his charisma, and took up his calling. (Fraday, Jesse, p. 173.) He organized more protests and a warrant was issued for his arrest and he was jailed, taking advantage of the situation to write a “Letter from a Greensboro Jail” in imitation of Martin Luther King’s famous missive. Thousands of people marched through Greensboro demanding his release, giving proof that the movement would support him and lift him up and as a result, he went free.
After graduating with a degree in sociology from North Carolina A & T, Jackson received a scholarship to attend Chicago Theological Seminary and moved his family to the Windy City. He got a job organizing for the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCC), a local civil rights group. In 1965 he joined the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and his drive and organizational ability caught the attention of King and other SCLC leaders. He asked to speak to King and urged him to take his movement north to Chicago. A month later King brought Jackson on to the SCLC staff, at 24 years of age the youngest of King’s aides. Jackson was put in charge of SCLC’s economic campaign called Operation Breadbasket, organizing mass boycotts of white companies to pressure them to hire Black workers and buy from Black-owned businesses.
Jackson came on board just as King was preparing to transform his civil rights campaign in the South into a national movement. So he succeeded in getting King to come to Chicago where King led a march into the suburb of Cicero and was met by hate filled demonstrators who left him shaken. A “Summit” with Mayor Daley produced a document full of hollow promises. “Most Black Chicagoans regard it as a sell-out.” The SCLC leadership was aware that they had failed to meet their goals. (David Levering Lewis, King: A Biography, Urbana: University of Illinois, 1970, p. 351.)
Just three courses short of earning his master’s degree, Jackson left the seminary to throw himself into the civil rights movement. He soon began working with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. participated in the famous civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama, and worked in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that King had founded. In 1966, King made Jackson head of the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket, an organization led by Black ministers and businessmen to economically improve Black people’s lives . In that capacity, Jackson organized a “selective patronage” campaign to reward stores that hired Black people and boycot those that didn’t. When Operation Breadbasket became a national organization in 1967, King made Jackson the national director. Under Jackson’s leadership, some 40 companies were pressured to hire several thousand Black workers.
However, Jackson’s political style and personal ambition brought him into conflict with Rev. Ralph Abernathy, who had become head of SCLC after King’s 1968 assassination. Jackson then created his own organization, Operation PUSH: People United to Save Humanity. Jackson’s break from SCLC and establishment of PUSH coincided with the migration of the civil rights struggle from the South, where it had fought de jure (legal) segregation, to the North, where Black people confronted systemic de facto segregation in all areas of life. Northern society and urban politics differed fundamentally from the South and required different political analyses, strategies, and rhetoric.
King’s anti-Vietnam War position and his failure in Chicago left him more criticized and more isolated, nevertheless he turned toward the organization of the Poor People’s Campaign, seeking alliances with other minority groups like Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans and Asian Americans in order to change the country’s economic agenda. The goal was to bring economic justice to working class and poor Americans by improving their employment and housing.
In March of 1968, a strike by 1,300 Black garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee came to King’s attention and he decided to go there and stand in solidarity with them. The Memphis workers’ strike was a way both to continue the civil rights movement in the Southin which he had been involved for almost 15 years and to take up the issue of economic inequality which was his new cause. The strikers carried signs reading, “I am a man,” conveying their demand for fair treatment, respect, and equality. King spoke inspiring words to the strikers expressing his confidence in the justice of their fight. Jackson, part of King’s inner circle, went back to the motel with him, and there on the balcony on April 4, 1968 King was assassinated.
Operation PUSH
Back in Chicago immediately after King’s murder, Jackson was a guest on the Today Show, where he was asked about the assassination. The highly emotional Jackson said, “I come with a heavy heart because on my chest is the stain of blood from Dr. King’s head…He went through literally, a crucifixion. I was there. And I will be there at the resurrection.” Jackson’s presence at King’s assassination allowed him to claim legacy. King was dead, Jackson would continue his work.
Jackson would work from his base in Operation PUSH, which he now called a “Rainbow Coalition,” a term meaning unification of Blacks with Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, and progressive whites. Jackson appropriated and gave different content to that term coined by Fred Hampton, leader of the Black Panthers in Chicago, who had been assassinated by police in 1969; while the Panthers had preached revolution, Jackson advocated Black capitalism and political reform.
To finance PUSH, Jackson raised money from a variety of Black politicians, business people, and artists, among them Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton; Gary, Indiana Mayor Richard Hatcher; singer Aretha Franklin; football star Jim Brown; and actor Ossie Davis. Black community leader, physician, and businessman T.R.M. Howard, a major figure in the fight for civil rights in the South, served on the PUSH board and headed its finance committee. PUSH ran a variety of educational programs, pressured Anheuser Busch (Budweiser, etc.) and Coca Cola to institute affirmative action, and produced radio broadcasts about Black issues. PUSH also established ties with such important Democratic Party leaders as President Jimmy Carter, to Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Joseph Califano, and Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall.
Operation Breadbasket and Operation PUSH gave Jackson a strong base in Chicago’s enormous Black population, which reached a peak of 1,187,905 in 1980. And PUSH’s national campaigns gave it a reputation of fighting for justice among 26.5 million Black people, who then made up 11.7 percent of the total U.S. population. Jackson had networks of Black supporters among political, business, sports, and arts elites. And in a community in which Protestant ministers had historically played the role of spokesmen, he was himself a Black Baptist preacher. Driven by ambition and well aware of these assets, Jackson decided to run for president in 1984. Linked as he was to Chicago’s Black bourgeoisie and to the Democratic Party, it would be hard to deny that he was a capitalist candidate for president. Yet he was also a populist with a large Black proletarian following. A master politician, he was able to juggle the two roles. While he was based in Chicago, he was the most prominent spokesperson for Black people in the late twentieth century.
Jackson’s social and political platform as a Black leader was in the tradition of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society, combining calls for economic programs for the working class and the poor with demands for civil rights. But nothing in it challenged the fundamentals of capitalistism itself. Jackson was an ardent advocate of social reform, but certainly no revolutionary. In any case, continuing his work through the next decade and a half, he decided to enter electoral politics.
Jackson for President
Jackson’s decision to run for president in 1984 was an expression of what Bill Fletcher, Jr. has called a “Black political insurgency in the late 1970s, early 1980s” that included the 1983 mayoral campaigns of of Mel King in Boston in and of Harold Washington in Chicago. , both of which found supporters among progressives on the far left, particularly among the Maoists.
Jackson’s 1984 campaign had many of the characteristics of both a social movement and a protest campaign. His activist campaign linked his presidential bid to the struggles of Blacks and Latinos, poor communities, labor unions, and workers. In sharp contrast to other earlier Black presidential candidate s, his vote totals were impressive: 3,282,431, or 18.2 percent of the primary votes. He won five primaries and caucuses: Louisiana, the District of Columbia, South Carolina, Virginia, and one of two separate contests in Mississippi making him the first African-American candidate to win any major-party state primary or caucus.
Writing at the time, Prof. Cornel West, who is running for president in the 2024 race, praised Jackson’s campaign, but criticized both the white and Black left. Of the Black movement, West wrote,
“First, Jackson’s charismatic style of leadership accentuates spontaneous and enthusiastic attraction at the expense of constructing enduring infrastructures. Second, Jackson’s most loyal constituency—the Black community and especially the Black churches–presently seems to lack the patience, resources and ideological wherewithal to engage in prolonged political organization. And lastly, to certain extent Jackson’s allegiance to the Democratic Party diffuses energies which could be directed toward alternative political mobilization.”[i]
Unfortunately, this critique was – and remained – accurate.
Of the white left, West said, “the American left continues to hold black radicalism at arm’s length.”[ii] But this was not completely true. Though not many, some white liberals and progressives rallied to Jackson’s 1984 campaign , and more did so in 1988. For example, Bernie Sanders, Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, backed Jackson, saying he believed that he could win white working class votes. Of left organizations the Communist Party, in a demonstration of political triplicity, worked in the 1988 Jackson and Mondale campaign, even while running its own Hall-Davis campaign. Most involved were the Maoists who had become the dominant trned of the far left of the 1970s (as even their opponents recognized), but who were discarding revolutionary politics for electoral populism.
The Maoist movement had gone into crisis not long before Jackson’s campaign. A group of talented organizers in the Revolutionary Communist Party left in 1977 to found the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, while the Communist Party Marxist-Leninist (previously the October League) dissolved in 1980. The League of Revolutionary Struggles (LRS), founded in 1978, similarly dissolved in 1990. The Maoists, those still in organized groups and those now without a party, threw themselves into both Jackson campaigns, particularly in 1988.
Bill Fletcher, who came out of that milieu, viewed the 1988 campaign very favorably: “The campaign sought out the sectors of society that were ignored, that were marginalized, reaching out to white farmers in the Midwest…reaching out to the workers that were on strike, that were being crushed, speaking to them.” He argues that the 1988 Jackson campaign:
“…brought together a very broad segment of left and progressive forces, many of whom had not been able to work on anything for years, but suddenly realized that they shared something in common. That was what was unique. People on the left made a decision that this campaign was strategically critical; [and they] got into the campaign, dug in deep, and started building, building labor constituencies, building farmers [groups]….This was the work of people on the left and I think it was exceptional.”
Jackson found support not only from Blacks, but also from Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans. He crisscrossed the country, speaking in Black, Latino, and white working-class communities. He showed up at union picket lines and marched with immigrants. He seemed to be everywhere demanding change.
Jackson did exceptionally well in 1988 more than doubling his votes in the 1984 campaign. He received 6.9 million votes and won 11 contests: seven primaries (Alabama, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Puerto Rico and Virginia) and four caucuses (Delaware, Michigan, South Carolina, and Vermont): he won 29.7 percent of the vote compared to the 42,2 percent for Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts.
The Aftermath
The leftists who had supported him believed that his campaign had laid the basis for an ongoing movement. And perhaps it might have, but Jackson wasn’t interested. As Fletcher says,
“After the November election there was a great debate that took place in Rainbow circles and the question was: What happens to the Rainbow?. There were many promises about how the organization would be built. We were told that it would be a mass, democratic organization that we would be building around the country, that would basically take the approach of working inside and outside the Democratic Party. That was thrilling.
“There was an element within Jackson’s constituency that started to make the argument that the Rainbow’s future was to be determined by Jackson. Not to be determined by the thousands of people who had dedicated themselves to his campaign. When you’re dealing with a charismatic figure, it is very hard to rein them in.
“Jackson misanalysed that moment at that juncture and thought that a permanent Jackson wing of the Democratic Party had emerged as a result of the 1988 campaign. And it hadn’t. In March of 1989 there was a meeting of the executive board of the Rainbow. To the surprise of many people, myself included, Jackson came forward with a plan to reorganize the Rainbow into what was a personal or a personalist organization.
“I don’t think that we recovered. Things didn’t play out as we hoped, but it was pathbreaking, in terms of the issues that were brought to the surface, not like anything that had arisen perhaps since the 1940s. Despite any weaknesses on Jackson’s part as an individual, he has to be credited with understanding the moment up until late 88, and that’s when the songs of the sirens misdirected him.”
Jackson persisted. The Rainbow disappeared.
With his base in Operation PUSH in Chicago and his relationships with Black business people, corporations, and the Democratic Party, Jackson remains a prominent Black political figure. He has never deviated from his commitment to social reform—but within the limits of the Democratic Party and Black capitalism. He is reputed to have a personal wealth of $9 million. In 1996 he established the Wall Street Fund to support “minority vendors,” that is Black business, though in 1999 praised Donald J. Trump. He remains today both a major African American leader and a contradictory figure.
Conclusion
As we have seen, when Black candidates have run on third-party presidential or vice-presidential tickets—whether Communist, Socialist, or Peace & Freedom—they received few votes and seldom contributed to building the social movement or changing American society. But when they ran in the Democratic Party, as Chisholm and Jackson did, they could receive significant numbers of votes, and in the latter’s case, even create around the electoral campaign the feel of a movement, but because they remained tied to the Democratic Party,, it absorbed the candidates and their supporters but gave little in return.
Thanks to Michael Letwin for his comment on an earlier version of this article.
Notes:
[i] Cornel West “Reconstructing the American Left: The Challenge of Jesse Jackson,” Social Text , Winter, 1984-1985, No. 11 (Winter, 1984-1985), pp. 3-19
It is time for Iranian and Ukrainian progressives to come together in solidarity and find ways to help each other on the basis of allegiance to human rights and democratic principles.
In January 2026, Syria witnessed a military escalation between the Syrian army and its allied militias on one side, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the other. The agreement reached in February 2026 between the “Syrian government” and the SDF constitutes — regardless of one’s political stance toward either party, and despite all reservations and differences — a rational, peaceful step in the right direction. It spares the population from destructive military conflict. These developments once again raise the central question of the Kurdish issue and the national question in the Middle East.
This region has endured bloody national conflicts that have left millions of victims and displaced persons in their wake. The Kurdish people today are dispersed across four states: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The fundamental question remains: what is the possible solution? Does it lie in building separate nation-states, or in the struggle for a citizenship-based state grounded in equal rights?
A History of Oppression
The Kurds have been and continue to be subjected to severe national oppression. In Iraq, the brutality reached its peak with the Anfal campaigns and the chemical bombing of Halabja, as well as Arabization policies. In Syria, it manifested through the Arab Belt project and the 1962 census, which stripped hundreds of thousands of their citizenship. In Turkey, Kurds were classified as “Mountain Turks” and thousands of villages were destroyed. In Iran, they faced complex repression, executions, and economic marginalization.
Yet these policies were not directed solely at the Kurds, for the dictatorship that crushed Kurdish identity is the same one that oppressed all citizens. The struggle against national oppression is part of the broader fight against tyranny. Confronting genuine oppression does not come through replacing one dominant nationality with another, but through dismantling the very foundations of the exclusionary nation-state and building a democratic state based on equal citizenship.
Experiences of Power and Bets on External Actors
In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the once-oppressed nationality transformed into a ruling power, confronted with accusations of repressive practices and organized corruption. The two ruling parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), established hereditary family rule, curtailing democratic rights and the rotation of power. In Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces evolved into a centralized structure with limited space for pluralism. Despite some progressive reforms, numerous human rights violations were documented, including the recruitment of children. This demonstrates that the flaw lies in the very structure of the exclusionary nation-state itself.
Some Kurdish national movements relied on American support for their projects. Yet America has backed reactionary regimes and has never stood on the side of oppressed peoples. Its alliance with Kurdish forces served to fill a vacuum created by the absence of large American ground troops. More recently, this alliance in Syria has tilted toward the central government. Betting on the great capitalist powers is betting on a political mirage.
Marginalizing Class Struggle and the Danger of Civil Wars
National conflicts drive societies toward fanaticism and civil wars, turning the masses into fuel for conflicts that do not serve their interests. The exclusionary nationalist discourse transforms the conflict, diverting the class confrontation between workers and ruling classes into a false identity conflict. It uses national antagonisms as a tool to weaken class struggle and deflect attention from questions of rights, labor, and social justice.
Under the pretext of defending nationality, class struggle is marginalized, exploitation is justified, and the powerful are shielded from accountability. The task of the left is to draw on human and internationalist identity, and to stand in solidarity with the suffering of all civilian victims of violence and war — without ethnic or religious discrimination. Selective solidarity is an inhumane way of thinking that entrenches fanaticism and weakens every emancipatory project.
Is the Nation-State Achievable Today?
The objective conditions do not appear to be in place for a Kurdish nation-state project. Kurdish territories are surrounded by hostile regional powers, and national movements lack genuine international support. American support is transient and tied to immediate interests. And even if a Kurdish entity were to be realized, what would guarantee its survival or prevent its transformation into yet another authoritarian model? The experience in the region, and in Syria in particular, speaks clearly: partisan-tribal governance, autocracy, corruption, and human rights violations.
There is a demographic reality that cannot be ignored: in many areas, no single nationality constitutes a clear majority. How can a national project be built on territories inhabited by citizens of other nationalities? This reality generates sharp tensions and opens the door to accusations of Arabization, Kurdification, or Turkification. It is difficult to erect a nation-state in multinational spaces without producing new national injustices.
The Citizenship State and Rights Grounded in Human Identity
It is necessary to distinguish between demanding cultural, linguistic, and administrative rights and demanding a separate nation-state. These rights are legitimate demands that every left-wing person should support. But the struggle for them is more realistic within the framework of an equal citizenship state — a state founded on the full equality of citizens before the law, without national or religious discrimination, and one that transcends national and sectarian affiliations in its political structure. The viable alternative today is a citizenship state that neutralizes nationality and religion in the exercise of power, and that limits the formation of parties on national or religious grounds.
Far-reaching powers can be granted to regions, which would strip the conflict of its ethnic charge. This goes hand in hand with a comprehensive constitutionalization of rights, the building of oversight institutions, and an independent judiciary. The citizenship state may appear to be an ideal dream, but the project of a separate nation-state is even more idealistic and further removed from reality. Speaking of an independent, stable Kurdish state surrounded by hostile states, without international support and in multinational spaces, is a distant dream. The citizenship state, by contrast, is a gradual project that begins with concrete steps: the constitutionalization of rights, the construction of democratic institutions, the implementation of decentralization, and the strengthening of the rule of law.
The Right to Self-Determination and Realistic Rationality
While fully supporting the right of the Kurdish people and all peoples to self-determination, including secession, the current conditions are not suited to the proclamation of new nation-states. What is needed is a rejection of forced unity and support for voluntary unity. The foundations of equal citizenship, just as the defense of the right to self-determination, must lead to greater rights, more equality, and a better life.
This position is not hostility toward Kurdish national liberation, but a defense of the very essence of liberation against the distortion inflicted upon it by bourgeois national projects. Under present circumstances, the masses are driven into wars and national conflicts, plunging into ever-deeper crises for the sake of entities threatened with transformation into further authoritarian models. For Marxists and left-wing activists, this means applying scientific rationality, studying conditions, balances of power, and realistic possibilities, and avoiding dragging the masses into lost and destructive wars. Trust must be placed in rationality, not in national heroics or national pride, for such discourses lead to more wars and more destruction.
The Tasks of the Left
The task of a genuine left is to draw its political line apart from all parties to the national conflict, and to fight for a state based on citizenship, equal rights, and social justice — not on national or sectarian foundations. The road is long and arduous, but it is the only path to a genuine and lasting solution. The left can organize itself in practical terms by building organizations that transcend nationalities and sects, that start from the common interests of the working class, and that link the struggle for national rights to the social struggle against exploitation, corruption, and despotism.
The fundamental struggle is the dismantling of the chains of this exploitation and the building of a democratic, socialist, and humanist space. The road to the rights and freedoms of the Kurdish people runs through the rights and freedoms of their Arab, Turkish, Syrian, and Iranian neighbors, in a state that does not question its citizens about their origins, that guarantees them bread and freedom, and that respects their human dignity.
Of all the global liberation struggles, Iran’s situation is one of the most paradoxical and confusing. The Islamic regime is a theocratic modern capitalist state that dominates the lives of Iranians through a military corporation, the IRGC. It came to power through a violent counter-revolution where autonomous networks of worker councils were systematically targeted. The daily rule of the clerical aristocrats is brutal to everyone yet has upheld an ethnic hierarchy pitting Persians against other groups. The loudest and most vocal opposition to this military corporation’s rule is a coalition of right-wing activists who loudly denounce leftists, want a Western friendly government, and want to proclaim a king. Support for this state built on environmental injustices against minorities comes from anti-capitalist groups who have been hosting workshops on how to resist militarism for decades.
While many are still in denial, the truth about the Iranian regime is that it is a deeply authoritarian, oppressive, violent project meant to bring about a messianic liberation for Shiites. And yet it even oppresses Muslims with persecutions against Ismailli communities and Sufi collectives. It has consistently failed to provide a basic standard of living for most and yet seems to have all this money for its ideological projects with low support. Protests and desires for the regime to fall have been present since its inception. There have been several mass protests movements from the reformist “where is my vote” protests in 2009 which united millions in calling for reform to more recent protests that are calling for the abolition of the state.
In every situation the formula is the same, a shocking level of mass violence and a ruthless manipulation of geopolitics. There is not genuine free speech and organized political opposition is not allowed. After 4 decades of crushing any alternative, the only organized political opposition has been in the diaspora. The failure of the left to help build an alternative political movement has allowed for the son of the former dictator and right-wing allies to fill that gap. Many Iranians who would never think to go back to his rule have been gradually courted into this coalition which started subtly and increased declarations of support for Reza Pahlavi over time. Many are not ideologically believing the West needs to intervene, but are deferring to the only large political coalition that is firmly against the Islamic Regime’s rule.
The current coalition leading Iran’s protest claims to have clarity in its stated goal of bringing down the Iranian regime and installing Pahlavi as a transition leader or monarch, depending on who you ask. They have built networks that highlight the regime’s undeniable crimes while publicizing and naming the victims. They also loudly advocate for stronger sanctions, labeling the state on a terror list, and taking action to protect protesters (although the level of military intervention they are asking is unclear and generally kept vague). There isn’t a fundamental safety in this approach as it is at the whim of a notoriously flaky aspiring despot to press the “final” button to end the regime. They fundamentally believe Trump’s rhetoric on being a strongman whose status as a wildcard can be used to break the regime. This ignores multiple major retreats after big threats (to the chagrin of neocons) including the U.S.-North Korea confrontation in his first term, allowing a Turkey-backed government in Syria to develop (instead of deposing Iran’s ally Assad), and keeping the Venezuelan state apparatus intact.
This flawed analysis and one dimensional strategy doesn’t account for Trump’s tendencies nor does it account for genuine political disagreements in the regime’s opposition. The Pahlavi coalition also failed those in Iran after encouraging protesters to take unprecedented risks in their desire to change. They were told that mass IRGC defections were around the corner and they had convinced international powers to intervene. Iranians used this information to escalate their protests believing that help was imminent. To understand the context of the pro-Shah chants, Chowra Makaremi and Amir Ahmadi Ariandescribe the situation as one where Iranians already believed that action was taken. These chants were more a celebration of a perceived victory than a strong ideological current towards monarchy. What followed is one of the most tragic memories in all of Iranian history. The current death toll has different estimates but even the lowest reliable estimate by the Iranian human rights organization HRANA (6,800) is a testament to the terrifying mass murder capacity. The diaspora organizers need to be accountable to inform us whether the coalition was given bad information or are they using Iranian grief as a political tool?
On the other end of the spectrum you see a broad coalition of liberals, leftists, antiwar activists, pro-Palestine groups, and human rights coalitions failing to live up to the moment. While there is disagreement among these groups, and plenty of exceptions (especially with individual Palestinian calls for solidarity) this end of the political spectrum is struggling to have real relevance with Iran politics. Within this broad coalition there are some common currents to how Iran is talked about.
Directly calling for solidarity with the Iranian government and supporting their actions as an act of resistance against imperialism. This is a vile position espoused by people who host regime-connected figures such as Mohammad Marandi on the Electronic Intifada or Mint Press.
Acknowledging Iran’s oppressive nature but believing their role in an anti-imperialist struggle requires us to ignore their “contradictions.” This a worldview that robs Iranians of their agency and ignores working class struggles. It is very similar to Western war hawks’ views of civilians as disposable agents for a larger strategy. This worldview is common in figures like Vijay Prashad and a popular Palestine advocacy page SavesheikJarrahNow which fundraised for war victims in Palestine but has used the platform to encourage people to ignore Iran protests
Perpetually confused activists who know something is wrong but their worldview doesn’t allow them to witness a dynamic solution. These are people who will stand in solidarity with folks in the global South through anti-war activism. They don’t have an answer when U.S. rivals commit atrocities. They will likely say something along the lines of “I criticize my own government first” which is limiting and unhelpful in this context.
Organizers who care deeply about Iran and Palestine and are overwhelmed at the political divisions. They try to raise awareness and some even raise funds but generally we are at a loss. I am in this camp.
Much of the U.S. left has gladly used the Pahlavi coalition’s manipulation as an excuse to demonize Iranian protesters and betray working class resistance. These polarizing narratives do not serve anyone living under the boot of the current fascist Iranian state.
I desire an activism to bring down the Islamic Republic and preserve the rebel heart of Iranian society. I believe this can be done with a deep understanding of the dynamics of resistance without an organized figure.
The purpose of this article is not to propose a concrete strategy. That is a loaded prospect should not fall on one person. I write this article as guidance for building a liberatory political strategy that embraces the diversity of popular struggle against the Islamic Republic. I hope this helps people discover points of unity around Iran that allow them to form creative coalitions and develop an emergent strategy. At the end of this article I will propose 6 concepts that can nourish a liberation movement. These include non-partisan rallies, getting money into hands of Iranians, supporting smaller disruptive protests over mass rallies, building diverse coalitions, disrupting propaganda, and a transitional council with many leaders.
Beyond Persians and Iranians
When we talk about the repression of the Iranian state we are not only talking about Persians. This struggle includes Iraqis whose government has been taken over and acts as a puppet for the IRGC. It can include Yemenis and Afghans whose nations have been intervened with by the Islamic regime, as well as the diverse ethnicities living within Iran.
The past 100 years at least, Iran has gone through a deep centralization hoping it would foster modernity and development. The reality is that it has strengthened inequality and resorted to the central state to repress people’s dreams and even movement. Alborz Ghandehari writes:
“The Islamic Republic, like the Pahlavi monarchy before it, has also pursued centralist development policies which have enriched the country’s Persian centre while institutionalizing the organised abandonment of peripheral regions populated by national minorities including Kurdish, Baluch, Arab, and Lor communities.”
At the heart of Iran’s struggle is also a divide between ethnically Persian groups and many other ethnicities, some brought into the state through force in the early 20th century. These are the most likely to put out statements against all interventions and occupiers.
In Southwest Iran, the Ahwazi struggle has its own character and list of grievances. In the late 2010s, the UN came out with a report naming Ahwaz as one of the world’s most air polluted cities. It has also dealt with regular strikes due to water shortages from industries that inefficiently use water depriving the region. To try to weaken opposition, the government has started bringing in unemployed Persian workers from central regions to displace workers. Different Ahwazi groups on social media bring further attention to their struggle. There are many parallels between how Iran has treated non-Persians and racial/economic injustice in the U.S. Kurdish people are 10% of Iran’s population yet 50% of its prisoners. There’s long history of Kurdish resistance against the Shah’s and Islamic regime and they were at the forefront of the Women Life Freedom protests. Originally a slogan used for Kurdish guerrilla fighters, they have been appropriated by monarchists without respecting their origin. The current Iranian government doesn’t allow for traditional Kurdish names to appear on government documents. When Jina Amini was murdered, both the Persian diaspora and regime insisted on using the name “Mahsa” which was forced on her.
These are only a couple examples of Iran’s tremendous ethnic diversity and there needs to be more of a focus on bringing their voices and perspectives to the mainstream. This round of protests featured prominent anti-regime and anti-Pahlavi slogans among Azeri’s in Iran. Using divisions to enable autocracy must be stopped and we need a move towards pluralism.
Outdated tools – Who’s still talking about sanctions?
As an antiwar activist who opposes imposing sanctions as an act of warfare, I don’t endorse them as a strategy. I do however witness the strategic dilemma where advocating for sanctions relief could cause harm. The last time there was sanctions relief almost all the money was sent to Iran’s foreign interventions including IRGC war crimes in Syria and supporting its sectarian proxies in Iraq to put down popular uprisings. Any strategy that utilized sanction relief needs to have a strategy to get that money to everyday people. Whether sanctions have succeeded or failed (I believe the latter view) people need to realize taking an action that improves the material conditions for a regime is also a form of harm. There isn’t any evidence that regime members being able to access funds will leads to a return of wealth to the working class. Therefore organizing around this topic is not considerate or effective around this time.
The Iranian regime is a predatory apparatus that chronically steals from Iran’s working and popular classes. There needs to be a strategy to weaken the power of the state or at least gain significant concessions from it. The reform strategies of working with the reformist coalition have failed and used by the state to create an image of being to modernize. In reality, Iran has pursued ruthless neoliberal policies and modernized its surveillance apparatus while keeping the country backwards, the people oppressed, and opportunities limited.
Iran’s dynamic labor struggle
Iran shows that there is a fundamental need to organize in a new way. In absence of organized clear political opposition, much of the resistance to the Islamic Republic operates like a shadow. Large labor unions are replaced with a labor council that could disappear tomorrow due to threats, and another one may reappear a few days later.
The left holds this idea of an industrial formal working representing working class struggle while missing that Iran’s working class struggle is largely in informal and feudal-like sectorsof the peripheries. This can look like Kurdish “Koolbars” passing goods between borders and regularly dealing with violent border patrol or arbitrary extraction. Fishers in Ahwaz who use it to feed the communities. Fuel transporters in Baluchistan have also organized and faced abuse. These are lifestyles and survival strategies with a very distinct relationship to labor so more education is needed among the left. Small collectives of domestic workers may get together to organize a mutual aid drive after a disaster then disperse or organize secretly once their organization takes a form that the state can grasp. It’s different local committees in non-Persian areas in the peripheries who are even more abused and failed by the government.
A lot of people who are leftist or anti-war lack this fundamental understanding of progressive forces in Iran. Long-term durable organizations are replaced by short term-charters offering a pathway to organize. As an example during the Women, Life, Freedom uprisings, 20 organizations including unions, professional organizations, and collectives put out a 12 point statement declaring goals for the revolution. This document called for free speech & freedom of religion as well as emphasizing demands not as present in diaspora protests such as LGBTQ protection and dismantling state capitalist institutions and directing the funds through educational and environmental initiatives.
Another prominent labor struggle (ignored by most labor radical activists) was the Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane privatization struggle. Workers in the Haft Tappeh factory revived a union and started selecting leaders to expand the labor struggle. Women’s right’s activist Sepideh Gholian was arrested for her journalism uplifting the labor struggle. Note this confluence of labor and media activists coming together to highlight a shared struggle. contrasts to the diasporic loud expressions of indignation, these activists use the little resources they have to tell a story and push for a better life.
Due to intense repression of labor unions by the Iranian government, workers would often go weeks or more at a time without sharing updates. When I was trying to uplift this struggle, I was always anticipating an update or hoping for a concrete step to support. I learned that the needs of the people are dynamic and changing according to the freedom they can breathe when given the opportunity. I believe there is a lesson here for every political faction to challenge what solidarity means to them.
This is not a vague idea of the past, since labor organizing & progressive struggles are still very much alive in Iran and does not get the support it needs. During this uprising, a joint statement was put out by student activists from multiple universities in solidarity with the protests:
“Today these crises have accumulated upon on another: poverty, inequality, class oppression, [the long list continues….]and the environmental crisis. All are direct products of a corrupt and worn out system: the naked embodiments of the policy of repression revealing its bloodthirsty face more clearly than ever.”
It continues, “Neither Pahlavi nor the regime,” and, “The University has once again reminded us that it stands against despotism.” The full statement can be found by activists who translated their statements. Another statement was put out by the syndicate of bus workers in Tehran which named this round of violence as one of the worst killings in this regime’s history while condemning foreign interference and Pahlavi’s opportunism.
When statements like these are released, they show that people on the ground still have hope for change and believe there are still ways to resist without depending on intervention. Instead of building relationships and dreaming strategies to support them, all the political coalitions choose to ignore these voices for their convenience. We need to support the Iranian labor and popular coalitions for a free Iran and prioritize protecting their organizing.
Analyzing the state and understanding Iranian capitalism
A lot of the modern left doesn’t have an astute analysis of the nature of the Iranian state’s brand of capitalism. I’ve even seen some pages boast about their generous welfare programs. While there have been some social programs implanted, their effects can vary and are subject to cuts during neoliberal austerity phases. Most union activity is banned as this counterrevolutionary government consolidated its power in the early 80s through a mass murder of union activists and the violent closure of many labor councils that held sway during the revolutionary transition. Iran does have state intervention but even the state industries are run privately and for profit, often by untalented government cronies
Wages are low for most with stark inequality and a high unemployment rate. Reducing international tariffs devastated some local industries including Haft Tappeh Sugar in favor of inviting private capital. There is also rampant predatory behavior by private institutions that goes unregulated. Fake visa processing or property sales can leave someone walking into an empty office to realize all the money they’ve spend was a clever scam. People who fell victim to these convincing frauds are almost never able to recuperate their money as the government allows predatory industries to be unregulated. Iranians are used to their currency being low value so they have to wager their currency against expensive gold coins hoping they appreciate in value. In this area there are some similarities with the current status of US capitalism where some people gamble on crypto to make up for the weakness of the labor market.
Ironically, one of the biggest failures of the anti-imperialist movement is failing to recognize the Islamic Republic as an imperial project. The amount of denial from many progressive groups about Iran’s interventions has been curious. During the Syrian uprising Bashar Assad’s government, on the verge of multiple crises, survived longer than expected thanks to Iranian military intervention. In the book Syria After the Uprisings, Joseph Daher documented that shortly after sanctions relief Iran invested $40 billion in Syria over a few years and had thousands of troops there. 40 billion is an amount that would be significant investment in the U.S. In Iran it could revitalize an entire industry and pull millions out of poverty. They also sell missiles to other members of the axis of resistance including militias in Iraq, the Houthis who played a role in putting down the Yemeni uprising of 2011, and Hezbollah. All of these countries has mass protests against Iranian influence in their economy which were not supported by anti-imperialists. The crimes committed against their opposition, especially in Syria, are truly a tragic chapter in the history of Middle East warfare. The people of Iran witness these major investments and make the connection to their government’s imperial actions and their own poverty. Paria Rahimi writes:
“Inside Iran, people have long rejected this rhetorical trap. One of the most common protest slogans of recent years—’Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I will sacrifice my life for Iran’—is not a chauvinist or xenophobic rejection of international solidarity. It is a refusal to be sacrificed in the name of an opportunistic, imperialized version of anti-imperialism. It is also a direct inversion of the regime’s founding slogan, “Neither East nor West, Islamic Republic,” and its project of dissolving the nation into an abstract Islamic ummah while exporting violence beyond its borders to enforce a Shiʿa imperial doctrine rather than any emancipatory project.”
Seeing billions of dollars go into foreign interventions has enraged almost everyone living in Iran deeply. There is a long list of investments people would like to see including more efficient environmental projects that protect water. Instead a number likely reaching over 100 billion was spent on spreading the government’s Shiite sectarianism. Seeing the violence of this interventionist project and a lack of a solution from activists, many have started to turn to the West for support, tired of anti-imperial slogans that ignore their lived experience.
The failures of the left & long term liberation in Iran–
After decades of failures from progressive and left organizers, the loudest and most organized opposition is right wing. There are a loud number of voices outside (and increasingly in) Iran who think Pahlavi as a transition leader is the only option. I personally fear a coalition that acts with foreign money and behaves in a dictatorial manner in the safety of the diaspora. Their uncritical use of AI, contributing to a global water crisis, is a testament to their hostility towards other human rights and environmental causes. Right now Iran’s injustices are deeply rooted in environmental damage, and if they can’t use better tools out of concern for the world’s drying waters, how can they be expected to fix Iran’s water crisis? I don’t believe contracts with more bids will fundamentally make the Iranian economy more sustainable.
I fear their political alliances will make Iran a state that will experiment with deeper resource extraction and predatory contracts from outside power. They will also continue much of Iran’s surveillance and oppression of the peripheries with a few concessions, such as no mandatory hijab. The coalition is still focused on humanitarian appeals for Trump to help, offering political cover for his many scandals and failures.
While he may intervene, it will come at a cost of giving him positive media attention. He will use our community to build his base teasing Iranians with the promise of change. He’s using rhetoric to build political capital and build and may escalate but historically he uses strategic or symbolic strikes over actual overthrows. Much of the Iranian opposition isn’t interested in a long-term strategy as they have convinced themselves for decades that the regime’s fall is around the corner. While this unpredictable situation may be the end, we must still build a movement. The recent overthrow of Assad took 13 years after multiple disasters early on seeming to spell the end. A new kind of emergent strategy is needed whether the regime survives this crisis, or the Pahlavi supporters get their way and install him in power.
The other angle is that there is no guarantee Trump will pick Pahlavi, as he is notoriously unpredictable and goes for situations he can control. If the West does win and installs their own oppressive agenda, the Western powers will have the Islamic Republic to thank for decades of preventing organized and popular resistance of gaining a foothold. Pariah Rahimi writes:
“The left must confront an uncomfortable fact: the Islamic Republic is, in practice, one of the most advantageous adversaries the United States can have in the Middle East. Its permanence stabilizes regional antagonisms, legitimizes militarization, and sustains the circuits of global capitalism far more effectively than a nationalist, secular, right-leaning political order ever could. Any agreement with this regime does not weaken imperial power; it consolidates it.”
For the left to gain relevance, the first step is to apologize and admit the failures of these coalitions that were supposed to be liberatory. There needs to be accountability to listen and communicate with Iranians in general. There needs to be an updated analysis, and there needs to be new coalitions with the courage to “cancel” certain long term propagandists. There can’t be any change if organizers can’t get the first step: acknowledgment.
Let’s build a coalition
Overall there is a new form of organizing needed, one that witnesses and supports the diversity of Iran’s ethnicities, movements, and tactics.
1. Hold non-partisan rallies
Much of the failure to respond to the current crisis is people’s commitment to their ideology. Monarchist protesters hold “pro-democracy” rallies where they tell people who the next KING is. Anyone who speaks against this will be escorted out or even risk physical violence. People deserve to attend rallies where their choice and agency can be respected. It should also be a place of open debate and sharing where people can learn about actions they can take. For this reason I don’t even support framing the protests as “anti-war” or “leftist” as we want a diverse range of voices to be present. Pahavi supporters can show up as their own contingent, not the stated voice of “the Iranian people.”
2. Get money and power into the hands of Iranians.
At this point I’m not focused on sanctions, be it putting more in or removing them, though I don’t endorse them as a strategy. We need to hone in on our goal to get actual funds to people in Iran. No one really knows how the Pahlavists spend their money on Iran. But I can’t seem to find any indications that they’re supporting labor strikes and uplifting non-Persian voices. To fill this gap, targeted fundraising needs to help localized networks and unions to build capacity under the shadows. There needs to be maximum pressure on the regime that any funds, made by its ruling class or potential sanctions relief, need to go to civil society organizations rather than furthering repression (The last time–2015–when there was sanctions relief, almost all the money was sent to Iran’s foreign interventions including IRGC war crimes in Syria and supporting its sectarian proxies in Iraq to put down popular uprisings) The Iranian regime is a predatory apparatus that chronically steals from Iran’s working and popular classes. There needs to be a strategy to weaken the power of the state or at least gain significant concessions from it for a sanctions removal strategy to be worthwhile or effective.
3. Supporting smaller, localized and disruptive protests.
The current Iranian uprising is incredibly brave and deeply inspiring which makes their repression and betrayal more tragic. Unfortunately, this regime has survived by developing strategies to break mass protests. Much of Iranian resistance has for purposes of safety gravitated towards smaller protest that can be dispersed quickly for protesters safety. Mass protests are a language that many in the West can understand but they may be too risky of a tactic for this context. Many resisting authoritarianism in this past century have offered a range of tactics that can keep a movement alive without encouraging hypervisibility. Mass protests can be taken out when organizers on the ground decide the risk is worth it and it is the responsibility of those in diaspora to provide them with accurate information about their level of support. These movements can gradually be built into diverse opposition parties as the safety of the situation will allow.
4. Organizing Diverse coalitions
The current movements don’t account for deep movement building and depend on figureheads and figures on limited strategies. Everyone has their own language but when it comes to Iran I think of it as a struggle for “victims/targets/resistance of/to the IRGC” as much as if not more than “Iranian voices.” While identifying as Iranian can be supportive this nuanced understanding is an invite to bring in a larger coalition. Iran’s oppression is not limited to Persians, though both Shah supporters and tankies find convenience in framing it as such. There are ethnic groups within Iran that aren’t Persian and need a voice. There are Afghans and Arabs who have had the IRGC intervene in their economy.
Beyond ethnic diversity we also need political diversity. A lot of political organizing around Iran targets major governments. I believe organizing should encourage solidarity between U.S. and Iranian labor unions and strikers. There should also be a shared struggle with U.S. anti-authoritarian protests as in Minnesota are standing up to government that acts as an occupier and increases it’s daily intrusions in people’s lives.
There are also increasing collectives of activists in the U.S. who create their own networks to counter the major protests. In 2022 in response to Persian hostility towards Kurdish protesters, groups like Feminists 4 Jina were created to honor the Kurdish origin of the Woman Life Freedom slogans. They also held political education reminding people of the brutality of the Pahlavi regime towards Kurdish areas and how the current movement is whitewashing the history while appropriating their slogans. At a major Iran protest in New York a few weeks ago, different groups created an anti-monarchist contingent to share solidarity with Iranian protesters.
5. Disrupting propaganda networks with grassroots power
All propaganda networks (right and “left”) that promote a reductive narrative on Iran without highlighting protesters’ views need to be condemned. A recent analysis of Iranian media analyzed thousands of clips of protests and found that pro-Shah chants were shouted at just 17% of protests in Iran. Major “Iranian voice” outlets mostly highlighted only those favoring Reza Pahlavi. They generally won’t publish statements by union activists and student groups, or periphery focused groups because it’s easy to ignore their condemnations of Pahlavi. More and more Iranians are reporting it is hard to attend support rallies as they are increasing their partisan disposition towards Reza Shah and bringing Israel flags. There are also reports of people facing violence for speaking out.
On the other side, any of the major “anti-war” coalitions that host “hands off Iran” rallies will have an awful pro-regime slant. People who know literally nothing about Iran will have the mic praising the government purely because of its rhetoric. Much of the pro-Palestine movement allowed sectarian voices to be present at their protest. There were many joint solidarity articles and statements, but many protests were taken over by sectarian leaders. A lot of these voices fill the internet with false information and gaslit the thousands of people that trusted them to be a voice for peace. With some exceptions, organizers as a whole were unable to take stances for other countries. This coalition rightfully called out the inhumane siege of Gaza but were praising the Houthi’s who at the same time were carrying out their own siege of Taiz in Yemen.
All of these voices are religiously anti-intersectional and awful spokespeople for a politics that can bring hope. We have a region plagued by war and tyranny and yet we keep producing political leaders who find a way to grift and continue the peoples suffering. Both these polarizing narratives must be challenged whether it be at their protests or public exposure campaigns.
6. Call for a transitional council where people of different backgrounds and views nominate 20-100 people to act as a shadow government.
They can nominate their own leader with their definition of a quorum. One thing that is perplexing to me in this moment is the sheer number of Iranian leaders I have seen over the years that have shown brilliance and courage and inspired millions. And yet these protests are honed in on one figure who hasn’t been to Iran. He can give good speeches but most of his policies are generic templates of policies one can print out from any think thank or UN working group. I refuse to believe that we can’t do better. My personal nomination is Nasrin Sotoudeh as she is an international lawyer who knows the Iranian legal system well and has worked officially and unofficially in Iran. I still believe if we have a nominating system,we can put the true desire of Iranian people to the forefront.
This shadow government should be independent and can play a role in strategic fundraising and international pressure. It can hold votes virtually for members who register and can define who participates.
The 120-year liberation struggle against authoritarianism started in 1906 and continues to this day. I have walked the streets of Iran many years ago. I see a spirited people whose essential gentleness and buoyant optimism in hard times as a source of inspiration. I have also seen the spiritual, emotional, and physical toll this regime has taken on the collective dignity. There is no doubt they need to go and reformism is doomed to fail especially in this context. I, however, see people outside Iran needing to do better. We don’t know what it will take to finally break this regime, but we can still get together and dream of a new coalition to carry Iran forward.
This is an interview with Michael Quinlan, Emeritus Professor of Industrial Relations, University of New South Wales done on January 20, 2026 as he drove me and my wife Sherry Baron through northwestern Tasmania. – DL
View near Woolwich in Kent showing convicts working in the shipyard, Museum of New South Wales.
Convict James Wilson organized a rare successful excape by Irish Fenian convicts who were picked up by a U.S. ship in 1876. See more here.
DL – When we were in the Woolmer’s Estate UNESCO Convict site in Northern Tasmania we came to an exhibit where you actually appeared in a video speaking about convict labor. You were explaining the convict laborers’ extraordinary rates of conflict and you said to me, “That’s forty years of work,” meaning 40 years of your work and that of Hamish Maxwell-Stewart. So, in those forty years—of research and writing on convict labor, what were you searching for and what did you discover?
MQ – I started a project on the origins of worker organization in Australia from 1788 to 1900 back in 1982. I wanted to identify every worker organization, union, and informal alliance, political or industrial and put them into a large database. I then started working with Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, a professor of digital history at University of New England in New South Wales who was working on another large database on all convicts transported to Tasmania. With both databases we had a lot of quantitative information on convict workers and we also collected and analyze a lot of qualitative information. I didn’t include convicts initially in my database, but then I did because there were 165,000 convicts who were transported to Australia between 1788 and 1868, and they made up the bulk of the country’s workforce up until about 1840.
Flogging of a convict.
After serving their sentences some convicts became small landholders but many shifted to wage labor. Around 60 percent of convicts were assigned to private employers; this usually occurred shortly after they arrived. They could remain assigned until they served out their sentence or received a ‘ticket of leave’. Transportation was typically for 7 or 14 years or life, though few returned. If assigned convicts committed offences punishments included being sent to a jail, road gang or penal station. A shorter sentence meant the convict could be returned to their master unless the master specified, they didn’t want them back. Masters tended to hang on to highly skilled convicts.
Catherine Bartley, convict,
DL – And did these conflicts involve both men and women?
MQ – Yes, both men and women, though predominantly men, but among the women, if anything, their levels of dissent, such as absconding, were much higher.
My colleague Hamish had a database of every convict transported to Tasmania, about 78,000, so that is about half the total that were transported to Australia. Unlike slaves, while convicts were unfree workers they remained controlled by the state. While over half were lent out to private employers, their private employers could not directly punish them for offences but had to prosecute them before a court. And his database had all the details, all the times they were bought before the courts.
DL – And what did you learn from those records.
MQ – What we found was that convicts were charged on numerous occasions, usually at least four times each on average. The workers with higher skills got charged less. Those offences were largely work-related dissent. About two-thirds of those charges were for dissent at work, for refusing to work, for go-slows, all that sort of stuff.
There were hundreds of thousands of cases where convicts were tried for work-related dissent in both Tasmania and New South Wales, which were the two early colonies. So, then we started to count them. We went through the bench books, that is, the magistrates court’s records. Because they were not slaves, they had to be brought before a court. But even better than those records, in one sense, were the conduct records.
The convict system was run by an enormous bureaucracy and they had an archive in Tasmania called CON-31, which was a summary file for every transported convict, every time they’d been brought up before the courts, before they either died
or were freed. So even when the court records had disappeared, the CON-31 records contained a summary of the case. So, the incredible bureaucracy had everything recorded in double or triplicate, a wonderful resource for historical research.
So, we went through all the bench books and CON-31 records, and what we found was that convicts were being brought up and tried for work-related dissent at virtually every district bench on a daily basis, including collective action. That is, convicts taking action, and being charged with insolence (i.e., talking back to their masters), striking or engaging in a go-slow or setting fire to a barn. All of this was happening on a really regular basis, and even really small things ended up in the courts.
The latest count we have is that there were over 11,000 instances of collective action by convicts between 1788 and 1883 and including over 1,700 strikes involving about 50,000 convicts.
In this painting, it looks like convicts are receiving their ration of break. Employers kept good records that can aid historian in reconstructing the past of convict labor.
DL – So you’ve discovered this tremendous number of convicts acts of resistance from absences from work to outright rebellion.
MQ- Yep. And there were more violent ones than people had ever realized.
DL – What do you mean by a violent rebellion?
MQ – Well, open revolts where they went out and basically plundered estates or tried to actively resist colonial authority. The biggest single one was in 1804 when about a third of the convict population revolted near Sydney in New South Wales.
DL – Did you then publish your findings?
MQ – Yes. We put all that together and wrote a book called Unfree Workers, which was just on the convict resistance. [Unfree Workers: Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia, 1788-1860 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).] And this research also forms the basis for “Unshackled: The True Convict Story” which has been exhibited in various places and is now housed at the Woolmers Estate Museum.
DL – And so what was new or important about your research? What did you add to the field of labor studies?
MQ – I think our research alters our understanding of both Australian history and labor history more generally. In terms of Australian labor history, it shows that you can’t understand what happened with free workers unless you look at convicts and semi-free workers. In fact, the first major crisis of worker control in Australia was not in the 1890s when the big maritime and pastoral strikes on the sheep stations occurred, but rather in 1833 to 34 when convicts revolted against the system at a massive scale.
There were over 600 instances of collective action in that one year. And so that was one thing that actually broke the convict system. The convicts early on had been paid, that is up until the early 1820s, but then in 1824 authorities tried to treat them like slaves and convict resistance grew, driving up the price of labor and peaking in 1833-34.
Australia’s first major exports were whale oil and wool. Fine wool was exported to the textile mills of Europe. At that time, you needed products that weren’t perishable, given the distance, and wool was valuable. So, convicts really provided the workforce for the pastoral industry. They also built all the infrastructure, the roads, the bridges, the public buildings, a lot of private buildings, port facilities, all that sort of stuff that actually made capitalism grow very rapidly.
In addition, because they got paid initially, convicts were important consumers. And this is why Australia didn’t turn into a gulag like some other convict penal settlements.
Most of the convicts were transported for petty property crimes, but a significant minority of them were political dissidents and industrial activists. Some 4,000 to 5,000 of them were actually industrial activists or political rebels. This made it possible for the convict laborers to join forces with the free immigrant laborers to create a working-class movement. Together, ex-convicts and free emigrants formed a very effective labor movement, which in the 1850s has secured the eight-hour day and also won political representation that was on a par with the United States.
The alliance that was formed between the workers the free and the ex-convict working class—and this is a very important thing—there was no division. It didn’t matter whether you were transported or had arrived free. There were no divisions within the labor movement on that score. And it was really part of the democratic push in Australia.
There was a revolt by miners at Ballarat in Victoria in1854, where the potential of breaking into open revolution was such that the colonial authorities caved in and Australia got representative government. There was an attempt to create the equivalent of a house of lords in New South Wales which was labeled the “bunyip aristocracy,”
William Charles Wentworth, one of the wealthiest colonists, proposed to establish a hereditary peerage, an Upper House of lords, in the Colony of New South Wales, Daniel Denihay, a politician and the son of a convict, ridiculed the idea, calling it the “bunyip aristocracy,” The bunyip was a legendary, frightening creature of Australian Aboriginal folklore that lurked in swamps and billabongs to take small children.
Denihay talked about the bunyip aristocracy, all these lords on acres that were actually just jumped-up squirts, basically, of no consequence. And then went back to the early corruption of the colonial period and suggested one landholding family (the Macarthurs) should have a coat of arms consisting of two rum kegs because they’ve been associated with the Rum Core, a corrupt group of military officials who had usurped power in the early colony and used rum as currency. The popular satire of a bunyip aristocracy lampooned the idea of a heredity aristocracy out of existence. So therefore, no House of Lords was established. There are no unelected upper houses in Australia. You’ve got elected representatives in upper houses where the election system wasn’t very good, but that’s true of many countries. But we never got a completely unelected body. We never got a peerage in Australia.
New South Wales Mounted Police attacking Aboriginal warriors during the Waterloo Creek massacre of 1838
DL – What was there any relationship between these convict labors and the indigenous Australians?
MQ – That is a tortuous story. There were no alliances like you might have seen with slaves with native populations in other countries. But there were tensions because the convict communities were very gender-imbalanced societies. Some convicts on remote estates stole aboriginal women, which led to problems. And so there was payback. In Tasmania, most Aborigines today, the great bulk of them, are descended from families where the women were kidnapped by seal hunters.
Then too, the convicts were used by the big landholders to exterminate the native population. And, on the other hand, on occasion, the threat of aboriginal payback caused the convicts not to want to work in conflictive areas or to demand higher wages to work there. So generally, it’s not a good story.
William Buckley; (1780 – 30 January 1856) was an English convict who was transported to Australia, escaped, was given up for dead and lived in an Aboriginal community for many years.
The biggest state owners did attempt to stop that practice of kidnapping the women from the indigenous people only to the extent that it was causing problems with the Aboriginals themselves. In Tasmania, the Aborigines only started to resist quite actively in the 1820s, but by then it’s too late. There were not enough of them left. And the Europeans got very good at harassing them until they tribal groups collapsed.
On the biggest estates in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, the Aboriginals were hired to track escape convicts running away. So there were no alliances really formed between the convicts and the Aboriginals.
And unlike some colonial societies, the indigenous population wasn’t an important workforce except as domestics and pastoral workers in remote areas.
DL – You’ve told us a lot about the content of your study of convicts. But what’s important in terms of methodology? When we talked earlier, you said that you were critical of contemporary labor history methodology. What is different and important about your methodology?
MQ – Well, I see myself very much in a Thompsonian tradition of bottom -up history. E.P. Thompson, the British labor historian, wanted to look at all worker organization. He talked about the importance of recovering lost ideas and small groups from history, those that were no longer seen to matter. But actually, they had an influence and it’s important to look at all those individuals and groups.
The great thing about a database is that you can actually include every single individual or organization in that database and it means that every bit of data you pull out leaves a little imprint of that group. But more than that, you can recover those groups because there’s qualitative information on them in the data base. You can talk about those groups in detail and you can discover networks as Monika Schwarz, Hamish, I and others have been doing. You can use the court records in relation to, say, particular convict gangs to find out through the pattern of who’s been in every instance of collective action, who the ringleaders are what are the networks you know these are things that people never thought they’d ever be able to recover.
The problem with a lot of history today, in my view, is it’s been affected by neoliberalism. It has become too individualized. Collectivities are important as agents of resistance and change, particularly formal collectivities, though informal collectivities are also important. And one thing my database enables you to do is to systematically look at both informal collectivities like a temporary association of workers with unions and political parties that are more formal. And so you can get to see that relationship systematically. And that’s what the database shows. There’s a substitution effect over time from informal to formal organization, though informal organization never disappears.
There are today people looking at the slave experience and the convict experience. Well, that’s all interesting and worthwhile. But it’s the collective action that actually changes things. It’s the networks that change history, not the experience of individuals. And what these databases enable you to do is recognize the networks. We’re labeled digital technocrats or numbers-driven by cultural historians but more so than narrative historians when we pick an example, we know that it’s representative.
We also know the limits of our data, so we say in our book on convicts, we say well mostly it comes from court records and police reports, and there are lots reporting collective action. But there is a bias to instances where convicts are defeated. We don’t know the number of instances where they made successful demands because many such victories never went to court. We know victories were more common because of indirect reporting of it. But we don’t know all the instances where they won. There’s no record.
And so, we admit there are limits. But at least when we pick cases or examples to illustrate a point or describe something in detail, we can pick ones we know are representative. When a qualitative historian goes through it, they’ll take an example. But they rarely really explain why it’s typical or how it’s typical. They just select it. Now, I’m not criticizing qualitative history. We use it. Our work is not just statistical. We integrate it with qualitative analysis to flesh things out. This allows us, for example, to describe what happens to a particular road gang like Notman’s road gang near Launceston.
Robert (Bobbie) Notman was the superintendent of a northern road gang near Launceston that acted as a mobile penal station in the period of the early 1830s when one major penal station in Tasmania, namely Macquarie Harbor, had closed and its ultimate replacement Port Arthur was yet to operate. Notman was harsh as were the punishments the magistrates inflicted and notoriously the gang was named after him. Road gangs typically had 100-200 convicts and Notmans was typical in this respect but not in terms of the level of punishment which exceeded all penal stations including Macquarie Harbor which was worse than the better known Port Arthur.
We used both quantitative and qualitative information to explain why that road gang’s dissent eventually changed the system. The impact of the gang on authorities came out of narrative records. But we were only aware that that road gang was the most really active road gang in Australia through statistical research, and before that it was unknown to other historians. Australia has a very important role for convict labor but is convict labor typical of many societies. There were convicts and slaves here; and in the Caribbean you had convicts and slaves; and in America you had indentured workers, slaves and transported convicts,
DL – As well as enslaved Indians.
MQ – Yes, and you need to look at all of them. And so that’s one lesson that Australia is a particularly well documented position on convicts, but we’re also looking in other categories of labor, like indentured workers and free workers, who were also heavily subordinated. But the lessons from our research isn’t just about convicts. It might also be tried more systematically with slaves. We know slaves resisted and rebelled. Mary Turner’s work [Mary Turner, ed. From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves: The Dynamics of Labour Bargaining in the Americas, (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995).] was really excellent on that and both from the stage of absconding or running away through to strikes and open revolts. But just like the convicts, we don’t know the scale of that we don’t know now it’ll be harder because the slaves did not have to be brought before the court to be punished but there are records, absconding notices, the estate record, the plantation records. What we need is people systematically using those records to try and construct that experience.
And that means all resistance. Some historians argue, that when people strike that’s resistance, but when they’re bargaining, that’s not resistance. But bargaining is resistance because basically you’re trying to change the terms of the conditions under which you’re employed. Making a demand is resistance. Simply going up and saying, “we want this” is resistance and organization.
So, we need a broader understanding of that and a more systematic study to be able to see both things in the database. I’ve got in worker organization and convicts. Hamish’s database has been integrated, which is what we’re trying to do now and put them on an open platform where everybody can use them into the future long after we’re gone. So common access to these huge databases, because they take an age to construct, but also be templates for other countries to build similar ones. And we’d be able to build a much richer and more comprehensive understanding of the history.
You know, the history of the labor movement in the United States is not simply the history of unions alone. It’s the history of all categories of labor and the levels of resistance. they put up and we needed integrated story. The big explosion in 1833
-34 in Australia, involved free workers. There is a spike in free worker resistance as they form unions too, but the bulk of the spike was due to the convicts.
So, and it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. Free and convict workers reshaped Australian society. When free labor was arriving in large numbers, they’ were arriving into a society that’s was already riddled with decades of industrial conflict.
Almost all Shi’a mosques host Basij centers. Basij is the popular arm of the IRGC, directly controlled by “the Supreme Leader.” These Basij centers are the primary reason Iranian protesters have been targeting mosques …Iranian protesters do not need Israeli instigation when they have no political freedom, elections are rigged, the economy has collapsed, government corruption is systemic, and Islamic laws are forcibly imposed on everyone.
The day after a remarkable one-day general strike in Minneapolis held to protest federal agents’ murder of Renée Nicole Good, on January 24 federal agents murdered a second person, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive care nurse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Federal spokespeople immediately declared that Pretti was a domestic terrorist who had intended to “massacre” federal agents who, they said, shot him in self-defense but videos of the event contradicted the government’s claim.
One can see clearly in the videos that Pretti, holding a telephone in his hand to video ice agents, stepped up to assist a woman who had been pushed down, when he was attacked by seven agents who knocked him to the ground, pepper sprayed him, and beat him. The agents then discovered that Pretti was carrying a concealed handgun, as he was permitted to do under state law, though he never brandished the weapon. Agents took his gun from him and then Border Patrol agents shot him ten times, killing him.
As had happened earlier with Good’s murder, Federal agents took command of the shooting site, and even though state officials with a judicial warrant demanded a right to examine the scene the Department of Homeland Security refused. Despite the below zero temperatures (-6 degrees Fahrenheit, -21 Celsius), hundreds of people took to the streets to protest Pretti’s murder and thousands showed up for a spontaneous outdoor memorial service for him.
Governor Tim Walz, who had earlier ordered the National Guard to stand ready, now mobilized it to keep order in Minneapolis. Local activists have been angered to learn that he is sending it to protect the Whipple Federal Building which houses the federal court and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center rather than to stop ICE from attacking people in their neighborhoods.
There are already 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act which allows the president to mobilize the U.S. military to occupy the city. He now says that Democratic governor Walz and Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey “are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric.” So far, Trump has not sent in the military troops though his Justice Department is investigating the governor and mayor for allegedly impeding ICE agents.
The people of Minneapolis and the entire country have been shocked and appalled to see ICE agents breaking down doors and entering homes without warrants. ICE officers stop people of color on the streets demanding to see their identification and proof of citizenship. ICE went to one home, arrested a five-year old boy, and then accused his father of abandoning him before sending the whole family to detention in Texas. A handicapped woman in a car on her way to a doctor’s appointment had her car window broken and was dragged out of her car, then passed out and was taken away in an ambulance. These violent attacks on many residents, both immigrants and U.S. citizen, which have become everyday events, have frustrated and angered the people of the Twin Cities. After the ICE murder of Good, people were prepared to act.
The Minneapolis general strike against ICE on January 23, the day before Pretti’s murder, was supported by labor unions, religious groups, and community organizations mobilizing under the slogan “Day of Truth & Freedom” and calling for “no work, no school, no shopping.” It virtually stopped economic activity in the city. The idea of a general strike arose from the ranks of activists who saw it as the necessary next step. While many unions and union members participated, none of the unions called a strike, which would have been a violation of their collective bargaining agreements with employers and could have led to legal and economic penalties. Many workers called in sick, using one of their sick days to take the day off, while in other cases hundreds of small businesses closed down to support the strike, releasing their workers for the day.
Thousands of Minneapolis and St. Paul residents participated in dozens of self-organized committees that responded to the ICE and Border Patrol in their workplaces and communities. Local groups have been organizing for months. Neighborhood groups come out with shrill whistles when ICE agents are spotted on the streets and some use their cars to block streets. Teachers organized in their schools and then helped organize parent groups so that both could respond to ICE officers who shot chemical agents at students and arrested teachers. In a few cases these informal networks have created neighborhood or workplace assemblies, though such assemblies are not yet common.
On the day of the strike, one hundred clergy members who gathered at the airport and blocked the facility were arrested for failure to comply with police and then released, while tens of thousands marched through downtown Minneapolis in sub-zero temperatures. Everywhere people shouted “ICE out.” There were also protests in other cities across the country, many demonstrating in that half the country in sub-zero temperatures, with snow, sleet and ice.
Trump has now begun to change his approach under pressures from Democrats, some Republican legislators, and conservative pro-gun organizations. The rightwing gun groups believe Americans need their guns so that, if necessary, they can fight the federal government, so they are outraged that federal officers killed a man who had a legally registered handgun that he never brandished and that was taken from him before he was shot several times in the back. Trump has asserted that he and Democratic Governor Walz are “now on a similar wavelength.” Trump is replacing the head of the Minneapolis deportation operation, the notoriously violent Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol commander-at-large, with Tom Homan, the White House “Border Czar.” Trump also changed his view of Good, the first Minneapolis ICE murder victim, after he learned that her father was a fervent Trump supporter.
Trump’s attack on immigrants and citizens continues to expand with “Operation Catch of the Day” in Maine which, as in Minneapolis, is targeting Somali immigrants. With a budget of $85 billion dollars and 22,000 agents, ICE has the power to continue to wreak havoc on other U.S. cities as it has on Minneapolis. ICE funding comes up again in the federal budget on January 20 and Democrats are threatening to refuse to vote for any bill that contains ICE funding. Whether they can and will stop the vote for more money for ICE remains to be seen.
The Minneapolis general strike has been a significant step. Unlike Europe or Latin America, we don’t have general strikes in the United States. The Minneapolis general strike is unprecedented in contemporary America. Not since 1934 has there been a general strike in Minneapolis and no other city has gone on strike since the Oakland general strike of 1946. But it has also been a long time since federal officers have beaten, gassed, and murdered white U.S. citizens with impunity. We have gone beyond the reactionary McCarthyism of the 1950s. The events in Minneapolis confirm that we now live in the grip, the death grip, of an authoritarian government, but also that there is a powerful, popular resistance. We are in a struggle for justice, for democracy, and for our lives. And that struggle goes on, most intensely in Minneapolis, but also everywhere else in the country. And the end is not in sight.
Deborah Lipstadt became famous for standing her ground against a nasty Holocaust-denier named David Irving. Once considered a capable historian, Irving moved steadily into absurdity, denying Auschwitz had gas chambers, denying the Holocaust, denying Hitler wanted to kill the Jews. Lipstadt wrote a book Denying the Holocaust castigating Irving. In 1995 Irving sued her for libel. The judge found that Irving was in fact a Holocaust denier, racist, etc., etc. A good outcome.
Except that Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt is a died-in-the-wool Zionist and that’s completely colored and warped her thinking. In 2011 she wrote The Eichmann Trial; Denial: Holocaust History on Trial whose major point was to attack the legendary Hannah Arendt who in her Eichman in Jerusalem reminded the world of Zionist deals with the Nazis and who was scathing about the Jewish leaders on the (Nazi-created) Jewish Councils. Arendt had written, “Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had been really unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery, but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and half and six million people.”
Lipstadt, was appointed by Biden as Special Envoy Combating Global Antisemitism in 2022 and served until January 2025. In September of 2024 she apparently gloried in the Israeli attack on Hezbollah by responding to a comment about Oct. 7 possibly showing Israeli weaknesswith the quip“Want a beeper?”The beeper attacklargely on Hezbollah men in their homes killed over 30 people and blinded and otherwise injured 3,000 others. It was called “terrorism” by none other thanLeon Panettaformer director of the CIA. Responding to her joke the Council on American Islamic Relationscalled (vainly) for her resignation.
She denies that Israel has conducted a genocide in Gaza. Instead, she toldTime magazine late last October,“You can say this was a tragedy.” It’s a “tragedy”, meaning there’s no criminal responsibility. It was just one of those sad moments in history.
On January 21, 2025, Washington D.C. saw a huge antisemitic provocation. In front of a Republican crowd celebrating the inauguration of Trump, Elon Musk did two stiff-armed saluteswide seen as Nazi salutes. Millions saw it live and on video. Musk at the time was the darling of the new Trump Administration. He was normalizing conduct that which for 90 years was beyond the pale. Anyone who had any sense was disgusted. Predictably the ADL dismissed this staggering act as an “awkward gesture.”
So what did the now retired Special Envoy in combat with antisemitism have to say? Lipstadt told theJewish Telegraph Agency,“I believe we have much, much bigger things to worry about regarding contemporary antisemitism than this particular issue.” saying she was referring both to Musk’s salute and the ADL’s response. What were the “much bigger” things she thought we should be worrying about? One of them evidently was students protesting on campus against Israeli genocide. After her term as Special Envoy she was offered a position at Columbia University and wrote a screed “Why I Won’t Teach at Columbia” for Bari Weiss’s right-wing The Free Press. In it she recalled as she had watched at times “in horror,” as, “administrations coddled anti-Israel protesters who broke university regulations, harassed other students, and prevented the normal learning process from proceeding.” Good god, they violated REGULATIONS, they harassed students [largely a lie] and they hindered the LEARNING PROCESS. Nowhere does she mention the atrocities these RULE-BREAKERS were protesting. Columbia and other colleges were purged; college presidents were hauled before Congress and later fired. But that was not good enough for Lipstadt.
On January 11, 2026, Mississippi’s largest synagogue burned in an arson attack.Lipstadt retweetednews of this with the comment, “This is a major tragedy. But it’s more than that. It’s an arson attack and another step in the globalization of the intifada.” She did this without knowing anything at all about the details of the attack. It came out that thealleged arsonistwas a teenager who hated Jews and saw the synagogue as having “Jewish ties” and being a “synagogue of Satan.” In answer to the reading of the chargeshe replied, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” There was no connection at all to Palestine, the Middle East or the “intifada”. It was just the same moronic and vile antisemitism that has plagued the world for 2,000 years.
Holocaust expert Lipstadt could have apologized for her error and then moved on, but three days later in a retweet she wrote, “True — the Mississippi arson suspect isn’t Islamist. But if you use ‘intifada‘ to mean indiscriminate attack on Jews, then it’s correct usage. Fahoud, the murderous Islamist attack on Iraqi Jews (sic) 1941 is often called a pogrom, a Russian word. Is that wrong?” Several things to unpack here. She writes “if you use ‘intifada’ to mean indiscriminate attacks on Jews…” But only fascist-minded people say “intifada” means that. “Intifada” is Arabic for “shaking off.” It was a term popularized in the late 1980’s when masses of Palestinians justifiably took action (almost all of it unarmed) after decades of Israeli oppression. Her claim ranks with the lie that “Globalize the Intifada” means “Kill the Jews.” Second, the attack in 1941 was carried out by pro-Nazi Iraqi nationalists. It had nothing to do with Palestinians or Zionism and it’s even unclear how much religious hatred was involved, let alone “Islamism.” Third, slandering Palestinian victims of genocide and the people who support the victims by connecting them to an unrelated Mississippi arson is simply despicable.
Lipstadt’s Zionism fatally overcomes and distorts her knowledge about the Holocaust and antisemitism.Mehdi Hasansums up in a tweet, “Lipstadt is a liar and an anti-Palestinian bigot bent on smearing the Palestinian cause.” In a conscious or unconscious rebuke of Lipstadt the main picture inThe New York Times articleabout the Mississippi synagogue on January 20 shows from the back a young man wearing a watermelon-colored kippah, the kind that shows solidarity by Jews for Palestinians.
Despite a ceasefire between al-Sharaa’s government & SDF, the president is not providing enough assurances that Syrian Kurds are protected, argues Joseph Daher.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa sighned a ceasefire agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on January 18, 2026. [GETTY]
Despite Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government and the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), agreeing on another ceasefire on Tuesday, infighting and tensions in the country continue.
The SDF have called on a general mobilisation of Kurds to defend their territories amidst the government’s military offensives that seek to consolidate their power in Syria.
Weeks of clashes saw government armed forces advance into the Kurdish majority neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh in Aleppo, which resulted in the forced displacements of over 100,000 civilians. This culminated with government forces capturing large parts of the provinces of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa, following the withdrawal of the SDF.
Damascus’ military offensive in Aleppo, as well as other SDF-controlled areas, took place after the expiration of the 31 December 2025 deadline stipulated in the 10 March 2025 agreement. Brokered by Washington between the interim Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi, the head of the SDF, the agreement sought to integrate both civilian and military wings of the SDF into the state. However, the political deadlock remained.
What’s more, the military escalation took place just two days after a meeting in Damascus between the Syrian authorities and the SDF, which had US military personnel in attendance.
It’s clear that during the ongoing negotiations, the Syrian authorities were developing a plan to first launch a military operation in Aleppo, and then extend it to other SDF controlled areas. They rallied various Arab tribes – which have been in contact with al-Sharaa for some time now – in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa in order to prepare a general offensive against the SDF.
This was all done with the support of Turkey, as well as a green light from Washington.
Uncertainty
The initial 18 January ceasefire and 14-point agreement, provided for the entry of Syrian armed forces into the northeast of the country and the integration of the SDF into the national army. Nevertheless, this did not stop government military escalation.
A new agreement was settled on Tuesday 20 January. Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) announced that Syrian government armed forces will not enter the centres of the cities of al-Hasakah and Qamishli. They will remain on the outskirts. Damascus also stated that Syrian military forces will not enter Kurdish villages, and that no armed forces will be present in those villages other than local security forces drawn from the residents of the area.
In addition, according to SANA, Abdi is expected to ” propose a candidate from the SDF for the position of Deputy defence minister, as well as a candidate for Hasaka governor, names for parliamentary representation, and a list of individuals for employment within Syrian state institutions.” However, many uncertainties remain regarding the viability of this agreements and its implementation.
Whilst the US (along with France) had officially been working to de-escalate tensions between the two actors, and despite being the SDF’s long-standing partner in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), Washington has not imposed any meaningful pressure to stop the Syrian government’s military actions.
In fact, the US has become an important supporter of the new ruling authorities, as evidenced by the multiple meetings between Trump and al-Sharaa, as well as the removal of Caesar sanctions in December 2025.
On its side, Ankara has been pressuring the SDF to dissolve and integrate into the Syrian army. It is worth noting that Turkey considers the group an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it classifies as a terrorist organisation. Turkish officials have reiterated, on multiple occasions, since the beginning of the Syrian government’s military offensive that it is willing to fight Syrian Kurdish-led forces alongside the Syrian Army.
Turkey also shelled areas of Qamishli last night, and it is widely believed it provided significant logistic assistance in the latest military operations.
Following the fall of the Assad regime, Turkey has become one of the most important regional players in Syria, particularly in the north of the country. By supporting the Syrian authorities dominated by Hay’at Tahrir Sham (HTS), Ankara has consolidated its influence over the country.
Other than pushing for the return of Syrian refugees and seeking to profit from the economic opportunities offered by reconstruction, Turkey’s main objective is to deny Kurdish aspirations for autonomy, perceived as a national security threat, and dismantling the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
Weaknesses
In just a few days, the Syrian ruling authorities captured two-thirds of the territories held by the SDF. Beyond the immediate geo-strategic aspects, this rapid advance also demonstrates the limitations of the AANES’ political project amongst non-Kurdish populations, especially Arabs. Over the years, sections of the Arab population have protested against discrimination, targeted ‘security’ practices, and imprisonment of activists, as well as lack of real representation within AANES institutions.
Instead of trying to develop strategies to win consent of Arab popular classes in the areas under their control, SDF leaders have instead collaborated with tribal leaders in order to manage the local populations. However, these tribal leaders are known for changing their loyalty according to who the most powerful political actors of the moment are, and focusing on defending their own material interests. As the balance of forces have progressively shifted in the favour of Damascus, the tribal leaders followed suit.
Furthermore, the SDF’s leadership misplaced confidence regarding continued US support, as well as their lack of interest in building wider and deeper political alliances with the country’s democratic and progressive forces, weakened the sustainability of the SDF’s political project.
Centralising power
Ultimately, the recent military offensive by the government’s armed forces should be read as part of the continued attempt by current Syrian ruling elites to centralise power and its rejection of a more inclusive path for Syria’s future.
This has been the case since Assad’s fall. In the months that followed, significant human rights violations were committed under al-Sharaa’s leadership, notably the massacres of Alawite and Druze populations on the coast and in Sweida. Alongside these attacks, the ruling authorities have also sought to curb democratic rights and freedoms.
Furthermore, the ruling authorities and their supporters are accused of entertaining an aggressive discourse against Kurds and the SDF, with allegations of significant racism and human rights violations committed by government forces and affiliated armed groups.
For example, Syria’s Minister of Endowments, Mohammad Abu al-Khair Shukri, issued a religious directive urging mosques across the country to celebrate what he described as “conquests and victories” by Damascus-aligned forces in eastern Syria, and to pray for the success of the Syrian Arab Army’s soldiers.
Furthermore, by specifically encouraging the mention of verse six of Surah al-Anfal from the Holy Quran, it suggests that he intended to make a reference to the 1988 Anfal military campaign. This was carried out by Saddam Hussein against Kurds in today’s Kurdistan Iraq, which was marked by chemical attacks, mass killings, and widespread destruction.
Despite this concerning context, regional and international rulers have continued to support the Syrian ruling authorities, legitimising and strengthening their power over the country.
Therefore, despite al-Sharaa granting linguistic, cultural, and citizenship rights to the Kurdish population in Syria, as well as official positions within the state, legitimate fears remain.
A top priority now for progressive and democratic forces in Syria is to stop the bloodbath, allowing for the safe return of displaced civilians, and struggling against hate speech and sectarian practices in the country. Syria’s future is at stake. Indeed, the new ruling authorities have shown that their plans are not a radical rupture with the authoritarian practices of the former regime.
No plans for democratic and inclusive political representation and sharing of power are currently provided by Damascus. All Syrians seeking democracy, social justice and equality should be worried about these dynamics, and should struggle against them with all their might.
Regarding the current catastrophic repression of the mass uprising in Iran, an urgent task is to stand collectively against further mass killings by the Islamic Republic, whether on the streets or in prisons. This must be aligned with a collective stance against any form of warmongering under the guise of saving the Iranian people.
NP editor’s note: These three excerpts provide anonymous accounts from Minneapolis of resistance to ICE’s occupation of the Twin Cities since early December. The first two reports describe protests following ICE agent Jonathan Ross’s murder of Renee Good on January 7th and the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant on the 14th. The third describes rapid response networks organized to monitor ICE and warn neighbors about their whereabouts. Click on the headlines to read the full reports as published by Crimethinc.
Yesterday, on January 7, I went to the Bishop Henry Whipple building at 8 am with a friend. The Whipple building is the ICE headquarters for the entire Upper Midwest; it is where they stage before carrying out their raids. I took pictures of their license plates for about an hour. A third friend planned to join us. Then she texted me that she couldn’t make it because ICE had shot someone.
My friend and I left Whipple and sped towards Portland and 34th, where the shooting had just taken place. When we arrived, Signal stopped working for both of us, as if our phones were being jammed. There was yellow crime scene tape up and dozens of MPD officers were protecting ICE officers in full tactical gear. The cops had a Bearcat with an LRAD on top. Greg Bovino himself, the “commander at large” of Border Patrol, was standing there in tactical gear. A crowd was forming—not just recognizable activists, but also ordinary neighbors who lived on that block coming out to cuss at them. We started a chant: “Cops! Pigs! Murderers!”
Things heated up when an agent tackled a protester about a block away. He grabbed them by their clothing and tried to force their hands behind their back in a snowbank. Somebody else body-checked the agent, knocking him down. A few people from the crowd ran over to see what was happening. A middle-aged local demanded to know why they were arresting the person.
“She was slashing tires,” the ICE agent answered.
The man yelled back, “I’m gonna do that too, motherfucker!”
There was a standoff for a couple minutes until the agent let the person go and retreated to the larger group of ICE agents.
The crowd started to gain confidence, getting in the faces of the ICE agents and chanting more aggressively. MPD cleared an exit for ICE to leave by heading south on Portland Avenue; they began to drive their vehicles out. Some people started shouting for people to get into the street to block them. The crowd hesitated at first, but a few people got into the street and blocked an ICE vehicle. Seeing this, more people began to get into the street. MPD officers shoved them out of the way. People kicked the ICE vehicles as they sped off. One person almost got hit.
As more of the crowd blocked Portland Avenue, the cops tried to clear a different exit for them, aiming to enable them to head west on 34th. People started chanting “Fists up, feds down, get the fuck out of town!” ICE guys with less-lethal launchers and shotguns were guarding an SUV as it tried to leave. People started throwing snowballs. The crowd surged forward and I came face to face with an ICE agent sticking the barrel of his launcher in my face.
“What are you gonna do,” I demanded, “shoot me too?”
He shot the launcher at my face at point-blank range. My first thought was “I just lost an eye.” That’s how it felt. Street medics pulled me back and started flushing my eyes. Off to my right, I could see people chasing some ICE agents into an alley behind some houses. I saw the same middle-aged man who had intervened on behalf of the other protester also take a pepper ball to the face at very close range. The agents shot tear gas and tackled somebody else.
Two comrades who were helping to give me medical treatment assisted me in moving to a house two blocks away to get cleaned up. I showered and put gauze on the wound on my face. When I got out of the shower, I saw more commotion down on the sidewalk. It was hard to tell whether ICE was chasing people or people were chasing them.
Some people erected a barricade at Portland and 33rd, a block away from where Renee was murdered. The barricade remains there today, with protesters camping out there—including some familiar faces who held down the George Floyd Square autonomous zone half a mile away for over a year.
The barricade at Portland and 33rd, a block away from where Renee was murdered.
I went home to nurse my wounds and wash the pepper spray out of my clothes. A couple hours later, I heard reports that ICE was raiding Roosevelt high school and had rammed an observer’s car with one of their cars, weaponizing their vehicle as we’ve frequently seen them do. A fight broke out outside the main entrance. They arrested a protester, but they failed to catch the student they were trying to kidnap. This should remind everyone that they aren’t invincible: when we commit ourselves to our actions, we can beat them.
At about 4:30 pm, a group of 30 or 40 protesters breached the doors of the Federal Courthouse downtown. As security guards pushed back against the revolving doors to keep them out, someone smashed out a window. No one was arrested there. The spontaneity of the moment and the sheer number of little protests flaring up around the Twin Cities made it impossible for the authorities to react to all of them.
That night, there was a mass vigil to mourn Renee’s death. Some ten thousand people came out, crowding around burn barrels as they flooded Portland Avenue as far as the eye could see. It felt like everyone on the Southside was there.
People stand vigil for Renee Good after ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered her.
I had two hours left at my work shift when my phone started blowing up. Several comrades didn’t know where I was and thought I might be out in the street.
“Where are you?”
“You OK????”
“Shots fired at 24th and Lyndale”
“They just shot another person”
Every rapid response group chat was talking about the same thing. All kinds of rumors were flying around. Did they shoot one person or two? Were the victims alive or dead? Somebody said ICE had shot a 12-year-old Venezuelan boy in the leg. Somebody else said the victim was hiding in his house for fear of arrest and desperately needed medical attention. I didn’t know what to believe.
It’s always like that when a new emergency is going down. In the course of the past 45 days of federal occupation, scrambling through a fog of war to find out what just happened has become a familiar sensation. Somebody sent me a livestream of a crowd running away as ICE agents shot tear gas grenades and flashbangs at them.
Time slowed to a crawl. I hurried to finish up the drudgery I was working on as fast as I could. When I felt like I could get away with it, I told my coworkers I had a family emergency and I had to leave early. I jumped in my car and ran every stop sign on the way to 24th and North Lyndale.
I ran into a crew of street medics two blocks north of the crowd. They told me about what they’d seen before I got there. ICE had snatched two kids suspected of throwing a firework at them—20 masked thugs charging up to grab the kids, only to release them half an hour later under intense pressure from the rest of the crowd. The medics warned me that they were going to get out before the cops started mass-arresting people. In their opinion, I was walking into a kettle. The air already stank of tear gas.
At 24th Street, I found a crowd of about a hundred people facing off against a skirmish line of Minneapolis Police Department pigs in riot gear. The feds had already left and handed over the situation to the local cops. Somebody was slowly beating a drum. To my right, kids stood up on an elevated front lawn, screaming “Fuck ICE!” and “Fuck 12!” down at MPD. Somebody was brandishing a tear gas canister that had been fired at them, showing it off to their friends. A TV news crew was there. They tried to talk to me. I pushed my way through the crowd to get away from the cameras. Beyond the skirmish line, a block south on Lyndale near 23rd, I heard the sound of shattering glass.
I doubled back and went around the block. I came out on the other side of the skirmish line. There was a crowd of young people on this side, too. They were smashing up two SUVs that I recognized immediately as ICE vehicles by their blacked-out windows and out-of-state plates. Guys were trading kicks at the glass. Somebody was proudly displaying a big Mexican flag. One young person jumped up on the hood and stomped her foot through the windshield. Somebody with a can of red spray-paint tagged “HANG KRISTI NOEM” on the side of the other car.
A graffiti artist identified the ICE mercenaries for what they are: Nazis.
A few people pulled a locked gun safe out of the trunk of one of the cars. Somebody dumped a fingerprinting kit on the ground. Someone else was rifling through a folder of documents at a frantic pace, snapping pictures of each one with a cell phone. There was an ICE face mask in the driver-side door of the nearest SUV. Appropriately enough, there was an ice scraper on the floor of the vehicle.
Suddenly, I heard a loud bang behind me. The familiar acrid taste of tear gas filled my nostrils. I started running south with the rest of the crowd. When we got to the next intersection, however, I turned around and saw that the cops were pulling back, shooting projectiles at the crowd as they moved east on 24th. The crowd got its bearings and we turned around and ran back up to 24th. There were such huge clouds of tear gas to the east of us that I couldn’t see the cops anymore.
“This is one! This is ICE!” I heard somebody yelling excitedly. She was pointing at another silver SUV parked on 24th. I checked the plates against the database of ICE vehicles that activists keep, saw that she was correct, and instantly felt silly for doing clerical work in the middle of a riot. Someone started whacking one of the side windows with the ice scraper that had been in the previous vehicle, striking it as hard as possible. After a few swings, there was a satisfying crunch as the window gave in. People around me began kicking in these windows, too. Somebody got the driver’s side door open and threw a firecracker inside.
Some overzealous cameraman—I couldn’t tell if it was the same guy from before—muscled his way through the crowd to get a shot of the ICE vehicle receiving this treatment. “No video!” someone roared at him. “If you let him take pictures of this shit, somebody is going to jail!” A few people forcefully encouraged the cameraman to turn around and leave the area.
When the tear gas cleared, I saw that the cops were gone. It seemed too good to be true. I ran up a couple blocks to scout the perimeter. They were nowhere to be seen.
I went back to where the two smashed-up ICE vehicles were. A festive block party mood had set in. People were setting off fireworks. Somebody was trying to pry open the gun case. Someone was dancing on top of a vehicle again while someone else blasted “I Don’t Fuck With You” by Big Sean. Young folks passed around a bottle of Hennessy. A lane of traffic had opened up. Some passing motorists raised their fists out the window and shouted “FUCK ICE!”
During the months preceding the surge of ICE agents to the Twin Cities, local people and organizations created a relatively centralized rapid response network, in which observers would submit sightings with varying levels of substantiation to an admin on a mass text system. As soon as admins could intake, reformat, and verify the reports, they would blast it out on the system and people nearby would converge. This seemed to work for turning people out to major operations, like a raid on an apartment complex, but began to falter as ICE experimented with faster, more lightweight operations.
Then, around December 1, the raids essentially stopped, and the influx of agents began a campaign of door knocks and snatch-and-grabs. The previous model was immediately rendered obsolete, because the window of time to intervene shrank to a matter of minutes. Community members who were wanting something more confrontational than the existing legal-observer-style bottle-necked system started to build out a parallel system to fill the gaps and move more nimbly.
This new system began with a large-scale chat for Southside reports, where anyone can drop an alert of any kind. As ICE operations accelerated in volume and speed, the open, more nimble chat grew in members and became a space that attracted those who wanted to do more than simply record ICE operations. People integrated the existing whistle program to alert targeted people about ICE’s arrival and to harass the agents, then increasingly got in the way—blocking ICE vehicles with personal cars, using their bodies to block agents, using crowds and car patrols to intimidate small groups of agents into withdrawing.
As the chats got larger, more chats were made to break the city up into smaller and smaller segments—some of which have gotten as small as a four-block radius. This allows people to see reports directly relevant to them and respond to nearby sightings quickly and effectively.
Counter-Surveillance
These networks have benefited greatly from a program of counter-surveillance at the local ICE headquarters. The Whipple, a federal building in Fort Snelling on the outskirts of the Minneapolis and St. Paul, has long been a regional headquarters for ICE, having previously housed other federal agencies. The complex is located across the street from a National Guard base, down the road from a military base, and next to the preserved fort itself. The fort sits on the sacred site of the convergence of two rivers. It was one of the earliest sites of colonization in the area; at one time, it was a concentration camp holding native Dakota people.
The Whipple includes offices, processing and detention facilities in the basement, and a sprawling parking lot. Community members identified this complex as a key location over the summer; they have maintained a presence there since August.
The building is hemmed in by two state highways, two rivers, and an airport. With only two vehicle exits, tracking ICE vehicles entering and exiting the facility is easy. Whipple Watch, as it’s called, has involved protesters and observers stationed there for months, gathering intel on the convoys headed into the city or taking detainees to the airport, identifying patterns of operations such as surge days and times, and carefully cataloging the plates of vehicles going in and out. This database of plates gets near constant daily use, enabling rapid responders on foot and in cars to confirm known ICE vehicles in real time. ICE has begun swapping out cars and plates throughout the day to undermine this counter-surveillance, but the volume of submissions pouring in is only growing.
Whipple Watch describe their goals as threefold:
to provide an early warning system about surges and convoys to the local rapid response networks,
to gather data with a special focus on the license plate database, and
to ensure that ICE knows they are being watched, even on their own turf.
Whipple Watch has undeniably succeeded in achieving these particular goals, even in the face of a hostile militarized force.
Much of ICE watch consists of patrollers in cars or on foot, monitoring and reporting on the movements of federal agents.
How It Works
Each chunk of the city (Southside, Uptown, Whittier, and so on) has rotating shifts of dispatchers, who admin a running Signal call throughout operational hours. Sometimes, multiple dispatchers overlap to split up the extra tasks of watching the chat, relaying reports to other channels, and checking license plates. Dispatch also helps people evenly distribute patrols across an area, takes notes, and assists people through confrontations. All patrollers in cars and on foot and stay on the call throughout their patrol. There is a constant flow of information, allowing other cars to decide whether they are well-positioned to join in, take over tailing the car, or continue searching for additional vehicles.
Since the structure has divided up into more granular neighborhood-based zones, people in many areas have also developed a daily chat system, with chats that are re-made and deleted each day to keep them clear and not maxed out of participants (as the maximum number of members of a Signal group is capped at 1000). Various areas of the cities and the suburbs have replicated the basic structure of this system but with slightly different models, chat structures, vetting systems, and data collection.
A data collection team collects anonymized data submitted from Whipple Watch and many of the local rapid response chats, aggregating them into consumable formats, such as interactive maps of hotspots. This team also admins the searchable database of license plates sorted by “confirmed ICE,” “suspected ICE,” “confirmed not ICE,” and other categories.
Additional place-based chats have emerged around school systems, faith communities, mutual aid grocery deliveries, and the like. Another development was the Neighborhood Networks intake chat, which acts as a clearinghouse for incoming volunteers. New people from anywhere in the city—or anywhere in the state of Minnesota—can be added and oriented to a list of chat options, and admins will add them to the open chats or connect them to the vetting and training processes for the more closed chats.
Most recently, dispatchers have experimented with a relay system in which patrollers who tail vehicles to the edge of their zone can communicate through dispatch across chats to pass off the vehicle to a patroller in the next region. This allows the patrollers to remain in tighter and tighter routes, which they can swiftly come to know intimately well in order to navigate them better than any ICE agents.
Finally, Spanish language relayers copy ICE alerts from dispatch calls and local chats, translate them, then send to large Spanish-language Signal and WhatsApp networks.
What might look from the outside like an over-formalization of chats for different kinds of information, or else like too little structure in the completely open calls that all patrollers for a given zone join in simultaneously, coheres into a highly effective, self-organized, and well-maintained communication ecosystem. Information moves reliably across scale through the chats and dispatchers, and patrollers quickly adopt cultural practices that enable them to avoid talking over each other and to relay information in a clear and organized manner. Volunteers self-select into shifts of varying lengths, deciding what routes to run based on their knowledge, skill, interest, and availability.
This system is constantly shifting, highly adaptable, somewhat difficult to explain to outsiders, and surprisingly easy to integrate into—once you get over the shock of receiving over 1500 new messages per day.
“You Don’t Know How Crazy It Is Here”
The response from ICE has been measurable. They have changed their tactics. They have been chased out of neighborhoods during operations. They have been caught discussing how scared they are and the fact that many of them have left.
They’ve also continuously and aggressively escalated their violence against observers. Patrollers who follow ICE too closely or for too long will often be boxed in so that between four and ten officers can surround the car, beat on the doors, yell, film, and threaten them with arrest. Patrollers who have blocked ICE with their cars have been rammed, have had their windows busted in, have been pulled out to be detained or arrested. People have been put into ICE vehicles, driven miles away, then thrown out of the car. Agents have taken people out of their cars, then driven their cars several blocks away and left them running in the street. Recently, agents have been pepper spraying cars—sometimes trying to fill the interior of the vehicle in order to force people out of it, other times just using the chemical weapon to brightly mark the cars for further harassment and targeting.
Recently, ICE agents threw a tear gas canister out of their vehicle while driving on the highway to try to deter someone from following them. Agents have not only followed patrollers home, but have identified the driver or vehicle following them and led drivers to their own home addresses as a form of intimidation. Patrollers shared with us that agents have beaten them, have tried to run them over, have driven directly at their vehicles head on, held them at gunpoint, shot out their tires, and dragged them out of moving vehicles. While the murder of Renee Nicole Good shocked the nation, it came as no surprise to those who have been on the streets of the Twin Cities over the past six weeks.
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The Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) with 100,000 members nationally and important experience in organizing campaigns, should put itself forward as a leader of the movement against the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. In fact, for the good of the American anti-war movement, for the good of the Iranian people and the people of the region, it is important that DSA take the lead.
[Editors’ note: We are posting this article, written on the eve of the war, because we believe that its analysis still holds up, and it shows what some progressive forces were saying beforehand. The authors – the Roud Collective, a group of Iranian political activists in exile – offers this note: The initial version (in Persian) of this statement was published – by coincidence – on February 28, the first day of military aggression against Iran. Consequently, it does not analyze the sequence of events that has unfolded since. For this English version, we have summarized the original text without incorporating more recent developments.]
The article, below was written the day the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began for the French journal L’Anticapitaliste and the on-line journal International Viewpoint, but it was not published until March 2. I have updated this version of the article. 
Reeking of Imperial Hubris
The day after a remarkable one-day general strike in Minneapolis held to protest federal agents’ murder of Renée Nicole Good, on January 24 federal agents murdered a second person, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive care nurse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Federal spokespeople immediately declared that Pretti was a domestic terrorist who had intended to “massacre” federal agents who, they said, shot him in self-defense but videos of the event contradicted the government’s claim.
