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In Providence on Sunday an event to mark the 174th anniversary of the publication of the The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was underway at Red Ink Community Library when a number of self-identified Nazis, holding a red swastika flag, began banging on the windows screaming obscenities.

Due to the publication of The Communist Manifesto, February 21 is celebrated internationally as Red Books Day and the Nazis apparently came in response to this event which was advertised on Facebook. Video from both inside and outside Red Ink Library shows nearly two dozen Nazis wearing masks to hide their faces.

Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza made the following statement:

Providence is home to diverse people, cultures, and ideas and our city has no room for hate-filled actions meant to intimidate and cause fear. My administration is committed to making every resident feel safe and protecting the rights of people who are gathering peacefully. Anyone with information regarding the incident last night involving a swastika flag is encouraged to contact our police department.

Update: Uprise RI has the Providence Police Department report from the incident last night:

On Monday February 21st 2022 at approximately 18:40 hours, District 8 and 9 received information and were advised a group of Neo Nazis were proceeding to the Red Ink Community Library (130 Camp Street) to interrupt the individuals who were inside attending a reading.

At 1845 the District 8/9 cars proceeded to 130 Camp Street. While responding dispatch advised police they were receiving calls for an active disturbance. Upon arrival we observed approximately 15-20 subjects (from the Neo Nazi group) standing outside and striking the front window of the Red Ink Community Library with their hands. As soon as all of the District 8 and 9 cars arrived on scene with the overhead emergency lights on, the Neo Nazi crowd began to disperse. Moments later the crowd of subjects walked to their vehicles parked on adjacent streets and left the area. Police did not observe any damage to the building.

Car-282 (Ptlm. Lugo) remained on scene until 2015 hours to ensure no further disturbances.

Sergeant Groot was on scene.

Body Worn camera was activated.

During the last few minutes of the reading, as can be seen on the Facebook livestream, one can hear the Nazis chanting, rattling the windows and screaming obscenities.

You commie piece of shit! shouted one Nazi. You fucking commie piece of shit! Commie Scum! Shut your goddamn mouth you fucking whore! Commie Scum off our streets!

Video taken of the Nazis from inside the library and posted on Twitter show a clearly visible Nazi flag.

Neighbors alerted the police. After a short time six Providence Police Department vehicles arrived and the Nazis dispersed. See here.

The Black Lives Matter RI PAC responded in a statement:

There is no greater threat to Rhode Island than nazism and white supremacy. Yesterday evening, an organized group of Neo-Nazis that have established themselves throughout Rhode Island terrorized Red Ink Community Library in Providence Ward 3.

Candidates for Providence City Council Ward 3 have responded to the event:

Im saddened and disgusted to learn about the events that took place on Camp Street last night, said Bradly VanDerStad. Our city is better than this. Domestic terrorists have no place in Providence.

Bill Bartholomew did an excellent interview:

Ward 3 Democratic Committee

We, the Ward 3 Democratic Committee, are extremely disturbed that a group of self-identified Nazis, holding a red swastika flag, banged on the windows and screamed obscenities outside of the Red Ink Community Library at 130 Camp Street in the Mt. Hope neighborhood on Monday, February 21, 2022. We condemn the intentions and the actions of this group of Neo-Nazis in no uncertain terms; such hate-filled and intimidating behavior is unacceptable in our community. One of the wonderful aspects of Ward 3 is the variety of ideas and diversity of cultures represented within it. We stand with everyone who embraces acceptance, civil rights, and love over the fomenting and agitation of fear, white supremacy, racism, hate, and violence.

NeverAgain Rhode Island stands in solidarity with the Red Ink Community Library and residents of Mount Hope

We spent Sunday afternoonrallying outside an I.C.E. processing facilityunder construction in Warwick to call attention to Americas cruel immigration policies, and the culture of othering and dehumanization that leads to genocide like the Holocaust.Then on Monday night, ideological remnants of the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germanyattacked a leftist libraryin the heart of our community. When we sayNeverAgain is Now, we mean nowthe forces of white supremacy and antisemitism will remain until we defeat them.

Martin Nimollers infamous 1946 confession begins with, First they came for the Communists/And I did not speak out/Because I was not a Communist. We know how his story ends, and the lesson within it is clearall of us must speak out, before there is no one left.

ICE is cloaking its brutality in bureaucracy, but last night we saw the cruelty and malice of this ideology on full display. Their processing facility is just one stop on the road to camps, to deportation, to disappearing from ones home. It is a necessary mechanism in the machine of genocide. The machine doesnt stop, will not stop, until every component is dismantled.

These struggles are all connected.The same hate groupthat targeted and harassed our comrades at Red Ink Library last night have also advocated calling ICE to target and abduct immigrants, in addition to taking hateful action against socialists and Jews.

Please join our allies and Mount Hope community members tomorrow afternoon at Billy Taylor Park on Camp Street at 4pm to stand up against the hatred and bigotry that is the fuel for this machine of genocide.

You can alsodonate to Red Ink Community Library.

In solidarity, NeverAgain Rhode Island

Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) released the following statement:

I am absolutely sickened by the image of a swastika waving in the streets of Providence. Hate groups like neo-Nazisand white supremacists have no place in our city,said Congressman Cicilline. Groups like these and the hatred they spew have too often led to terrible violence. The rise of neo-Nazis, white supremacy, and antisemitismin our country is not something we can afford to ignore.This hatred and last nights attack are a scourge on our community, and we must all condemn it in the strongest terms.

This group of Nazis may be the Rhode Island chapter of NSC-131, the same group that has been holding banner drops on highway overpasses from north of Boston to at least as south as Cranston Rhode Island. More information on NSC here.

Note: After this story went to press, Uprise RI received an email taking [minor] fault with the title, which includes a line from Martin Niemllers First they Came for the Socialists.

The poem that many know as beginning with First they came for the socialists, did not begin that way. It really started with First they came for the communists.

Our red-baiting American leaders in the mid-20th century, who wanted to paint Communists as never-a-victim-always-a-terror changed the poem to make it a more palatable one to our McCarthyist society at the time, focusing just on Socialists, erasing the fact that Communists were killed by the Nazis for their views as well. For Communists to ever be victims was unacceptable, even if it was historically true.

I apologize for going on at such great length, but just wanted to send this your way in case it is relevant to any follow-up articles. People still like to play this whole Socialism I dont like, but its okay, but COMMunism, thats gotta be out of bounds game, and my hope is that all of us together can fight back against that.

Heres an article (a bit lengthy, unfortunately) that explores this editorial choice, and the anti-communist reasons behind it.

Uprise RI has made an Access to Public Records Request to the City of Providence for the police body cam footage.

Read more here:
Nazis interrupt book reading in Providence: First they came for the socialists... - Uprise RI

OPINION:

What could be more working-class than truck drivers? Spending 12 straight hours on the road, driving a big rig, isnt for sissies. And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to the manner born (the son of a prime minister), with his beautifully styled hair, has the audacity to call them fascists because they protest his arbitrary COVID-19 restrictions.

Now, our own Freedom Convoy is forming up in Barstow, California. It could be on the road as early as Wednesday. According to organizers, more than 38,000 people have signed up so far.

Theyre putting up fencing around the Capitol again, ahead of President Bidens State of the Union address. The same that was in place for most of last year in response to the insurrection of Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. Will the Army Corps of Engineers begin blowing up bridges leading to Washington to quell an imaginary uprising? And to think, we used to call it First Amendment speech.

Mr. Biden will use the Capitol Police, as Mr. Trudeau used Canadian cops, to quell demonstrations visions of the czars Cossacks swinging their sabers at marchers.

Old Joe and Young Justin are cut from the same cloth.

In 2020, the presidents campaign styled him lunch bucket Joe. Mr. Biden went to Washington in 1973, at age 29. And there he stayed, and stayed, and stayed. The president and physical labor are not well-acquainted. Mr. Trudeau entered the House of Commons at age 36.

In the fairy tale version of socialism, socialists are champions of the working class thus, the communist symbol is a hammer and sickle representing those who toil on farms and in factories.

In reality, Marxists/socialists gave up on the proletariat a century ago when they refused to join the revolution.

This gave rise to cultural Marxism, formulated by Antonio Gramsci, who said workers were being held back by faith and family. Like Soviet communism, progressives wokeism is aimed at deconstructing both.

This contempt for the working class started with Marx himself, who loved the proletariat but only at a safe distance.

During his 61 years on earth, he never set foot in a factory. His collaborator, Friedrich Engels, offered to take him on a tour of one of his families factories. Marx refused. He didnt want reality to intrude on his fantasies. He preferred to spend his time reading statistical tables in the library of the British Museum and turning out stultifying tracts.

Revolutionaries are invariably drawn from the middle or upper-middle class from Vladimir Lenin to Fidel Castro to Hugo Chavez to Mr. Trudeau.

Workers sense the hypocrisy of their would-be liberators. When I was a student at Boston University in the 1960s, the local (Maoist) Progressive Labor Party leader ordered her cadre to join a picket line with striking GE workers. They reported back: Emily, these people hate us. They hit us and spit on us.

When his soulmate Castro died in 2016, Mr. Trudeau waxed eloquently on the love the Cuban people had for their commandant to such an extent that he ruled them for 50 years without ever standing for election and sent a million of them into exile.

The typical socialist has never done hard, tedious or boring labor. Most have a post-graduate liberal arts degree. At age 30, theyre still living at home. If they ever marry, they wont have children. They think the earth is overpopulated and diapers are a capitalist conspiracy.

They fret over saving the planet, saving the trees, saving the whales, saving endangered species anything but saving the people.

Like climate change, COVID-19 has been a godsend for the left, another opportunity to coerce people, reallocate resources and get them used to taking orders and living like the proles of Orwells 1984. The faceless masses are here.

Many Trump supporters are drawn from the lower end of the middle class. Youre more likely to find them on a gun range or at a motorcycle rally than slapping bumper-stickers on their electric cars that urge us to Think globally, act locally.

In 1917, during the October Revolution, protestors were in the streets of Moscow, calling for an end to the Romanov monarchy. This time it could be patriots in Americas streets calling for the restoration of small r republican government.

Power to the People was a slogan from the era of protest. Guess what? We are the People.

Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer and syndicated columnist.

Follow this link:
Biden and Trudeau hate the proletariat - Washington Times

The nation's foreign policy focus has turned to how to contain Russian President Vladimir Putin's ambitions toward Ukraine, and his underlying goal of finding ways to reconstitute Russia's control over neighboring states, as he pines for the old days of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Whether Putin will use military force or other forms of continued intimidation tactics, there is little doubt he is haunted by the dissolution of the USSR and is looking for some way to reconstitute Russian influence and control over Ukraine and other key former Soviet republics.

In the United States, while it goes unrecognized, we have our own USSRa collective of red states that are bound together in our union benefitting from the very socialism they claim to disdain, but which is so apparent they must be termed "The Union of Socialist States of Red."

What do I mean by that? Well, let's turn to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his quite ridiculous but repeatedly used term to attack Democratic policies as "socialist." McConnell and the Republican chorus have lambasted the Biden Build Back Better bill and its components by stating that if adopted, the United States would devolve into a state of "permanent socialism." Their critique is that the redistribution of wealth through renewing child credits, increasing access to child care, providing for pre-kindergarten education, or broadening Medicare coverage, are not vitally important policy initiatives but rather tenets of Democratic plans to create a socialist republic.

However, the real champions of redistributing wealth in a way that takes money from those who pay a much bigger share of the federal tax burden and channels it to those who shoulder considerably less in federal taxes are Mitch McConnell and his Republican red state "comrades." It is the blue states like New York, California, Connecticut and Massachusetts which pay into the federal government far greater amounts of federal tax revenue than what they get back from the federal government. Moreover, it is states like McConnell's home state of Kentucky that pay far less in taxes to the federal government than what they actually get back.

According to the Rockefeller Institute of Government, which measures so called state balance of tax paymentshow much each state pays in taxes to the federal government versus what the federal government grants and spends in each stateover a 5-year period New York taxpayers, for instance, have paid in $142.6 billion more to the federal government than they have gotten back from the feds in money distributed to the state. In 2019, alone New York's balance of payments with the federal government was that it received almost $23 billion less in federal expenditures relative to what it paid in.

On the other hand, taking Mitch McConnell's Kentucky, that state received $63 billion more in payments from the federal government than its citizens paid in taxes to Washington. To break that down on an individual citizen basis, on average a New Yorker is paying $1,172 more to the federal government than is being spent by the federal government per person in the state; whereas, in Kentucky on a per capita basis they are getting $14,153 more per capita returned to the state than they are paying in federal taxes. This red state favorable balance of payments redistribution whereby the state gets more back than it pays in, benefits big and small red states alikefrom the biggest one like Texas, to midsize states like Louisiana, to smaller ones like North and South Dakota and Wyoming.

There is nothing new about this data. It has been true for a long time. What is remarkable is that even states like Texas with a huge economy get back more than they send to the federal coffers. Yet, Texas Senator Ted Cruz throws around the "socialist" attack on blue state Democrats as much as anybody. So, one can surmise the way Republicans see it, as long as you are redistributing income back to their state disproportionally it is not wealth redistribution socialism, but if it is money going to lower and middle-class citizens as part of a social safety net then it is.

This also raises the question why Democratic response to the use of the socialist attack has not been squarely aimed at pointing this out. That if Republicans were truly anti-socialistusing their own concept of socialism that redistribution of significant wealth subsidizing those who pay in far less to the governmentthen Republicans should be willing to readjust all kinds of federal expenditures, and become advocates for far more money being spent in states like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Minnesota and Colorado, the blue states that are on the short end of the balance of payments stick.

Democrats ought to be far better deflecting the all too often used "socialist" attack with the compelling argument that their party stands for fairness for working families, while red state Republicans are advocates of diverting federal funds under a socialist game plan. However, given that key swing states Democrats need are beneficiaries of how income tax revenue is currently redistributed, the argument would need to be put forward in a way which simply points out Republicans in fact support the very "socialist" practices they criticize. This disproportionate levying of taxes on blue states relative to what they get back is one of the key policy arguments in favor of allowing high tax blue states to get a federal tax deduction on their state and local taxes, though at this point that seems like a dead issue.

Red used to be a descriptor referring to communist states like Russia. Now, of course, red is a descriptor for that part of the country that supports Donald Trump, himself a great devotee of the Russian president. Red also represents the embarrassment Republicans should feel for their hypocrisy in actually being unabashed partisans for socialist redistribution.

If the "socialism" label is going to be thrown around in such a silly fashion and applied to federal policies that are intended to benefit those who need the most help, let's make sure socialism is called out everywhere it applies; and, that McConnell is clearly understood as being the biggest socialism advocate of all, and his state of Kentucky the number one balance of payments welfare recipient in the Union of Socialist States of Red.

While Democrats and Republicans appear largely united in expressing resistance to Putin in his attempts to bring Ukraine back into some USSR era zone of influencehow about Republicans also joining Democrats in tearing down the USSR in the USA, and abolishing this Union of Socialist States of Red, by advocating blue states getting back from the federal government as much as they pay in?

Tom Rogers is an editor-at-large for Newsweek, the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. He also established MSNBC, is the former CEO of TiVo, currently executive chair of Engine Media and is former senior counsel to a congressional committee.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Read more:
The New USSR: The Union of Socialist States of Red | Opinion - Newsweek

Resort areas have serious common problems, such as a low-wage housing (recently called workforce housing) shortage. I know. Even some families with adequate wages cant find a place to live. So, workforce is more encompassing a term. Most ideas for alleviating such issues are criticized as creeping socialism and are therefore un-American and unwanted, say the strict capitalists. Simply acknowledging that the makeup of a resort area requires more than the usual dose of socialism does not sit well with the purists.

Perhaps there is a solution after all. Suppose laws were passed to allow for an individual major resort area to opt to have a socialistic government, i.e., to be a socialistic enclave. The rest of the country would remain capitalistic, with all of the attributes of free enterprise. All of the typical coastline and mountainous resorts could qualify as socialistic enclaves.

Specifically, all businesses would have to sell out to the local government, which would provide cradle to grave everything to its residents. The system would work because it would have the key ingredient necessary to sustain itself. That ingredient is a constant influx of money from outside of the enclave, namely tourism. The size and growth of the enclave would be automatically controlled by the amount of the annual influx of tourist money. Even better would be if some natural resource or physical product is available and exported, such as mining products.

Just think how peaceful it would be if the capitalist and socialists could both have their desires in such a segmented manner. The capitalists could then concentrate on reversing socialistic programs in their domain. They could start with the carbon tax, the spending of taxes for wokeness programs, all the way back to FDRs New Deal. You think?

Read more from the original source:
Letter to the editor: Maybe socialistic enclaves in resort areas are the answer - Summit Daily

Over the past fortnight, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) has campaigned at a number of orientation events where it has student clubs, including Macquarie University in Sydney, Newcastle University in regional New South Wales and Victoria University in Melbourne.

The youth and student wing of the Socialist Equality Party won a strong response to the revolutionary, socialist and internationalist perspective it advanced. The IYSSE was the only club on the campuses raising opposition to the US-led war preparations against Russia and China, which are actively supported by the Australian political establishment, and the let it rip pandemic policies that subordinate health to private profit.

Students beginning university, aged only 17 or 18, were very receptive to the IYSSEs perspective. There was widespread opposition to the prospect of a major war, concern over the ongoing Omicron surge and a social crisis that afflicts increasingly broad layers of young people.

The IYSSE explained that all of these issues were a product of capitalism, an outmoded system in global crisis. Students and young people had to turn to the working class, the revolutionary force in society, and take up a fight for socialism based on the lessons of history.

The IYSSE is holding a major meeting, entitled As the pandemic rages onThe threat of World War looms: Take up the fight against imperialism and for international socialism! We urge students and youth to register for the meeting and take part on Saturday March 12 at 4 p.m. (AEDT). Promote it among your friends and join the IYSSE!

Below are interviews with some of the students the IYSSE spoke to at recent orientation weeks.

Ronan, a 17-year-old journalism student at University of Technology in Sydney, said: I think that the COVID response isnt actually dictated by the medical science. To a degree it is but for the most part its more determined by the economy. So, the governments are trying to reopen the country, reopen the borders. And I think that is generally just to stimulate the economy so they can continue their wealthy lifestyles.

Its not about the common good of the people. Its about the people on top, I would say politicians, wealthy billionaires. They always seem to be ahead of everyone else, even though the rest of the world is so far behind. They really should be helping to bring their fellow humans up but instead they exploit them for profit, all the time.

As a journalism student, our reporters asked for his opinion on the persecution and show-trial of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. I think he should be free. He needs to be free because he isnt in contempt of anything. Hes working for journalistic freedoms. So, if the government is keeping national secrets, then, if that is the national security, how secure is your nation if you are having to keep secrets from your own populace?

The United States has been militaristic for many, many years now. Its amazing to see how much they have continued that trend. We should try to unite people. We shouldnt be trying to kill them. It just saddens me almost. It just feels wrong in so many ways.

Asked what he thinks can be done to resolve social ills, Ronan answered: I genuinely think that equality and equality for the people would be definitely the right move. So, socialism is a good system, and it works, and its been proven to work in many cases. But it doesnt make people rich. It just brings up the entire populace. So, the 1 percent, or even smaller than the 1 percent dont want it. And if they dont want it, they have the power to throw around and stop it. As a populace we need to unite. We need to unite, and we need to make things happen. We need action. You can talk about it all you want, but there needs to be some form of action done.

Asked by a reporter what social force would do that, he said I would think, just the working class. The people who are always downtrodden, everybody who is just going through a rough time. If you are at work and you are just paid minimum wage by an employer who expects you to be doing every possible thing that you can. They expect maximum effort for minimum pay. How is that fair? It isnt.

Asked about Trotsky and his role, Ronan said: I did modern history in school, so I know at least a little bit about what he stood for. He stood for the working class. He stood for the same ideals that Lenin did, unlike his opposition, Stalin, who actually said he stood for Leninist ideals but instead was more a totalitarian dictatorship.

Youp spoke to the IYSSE at the University of Newcastle, in the regional industrial city north of Sydney.

Speaking of the let it rip policies, he said: Initially I understood why there was the argument for making it endemic, given the nature of COVID being very widespread. But in reality whats happening is a huge number of working people are getting sick, which is making things worse for the economy, and things are falling apart.

We dont need to infect everyone. Plus therell be a lot of deaths. I think that it could get to the point where it will become extremely challenging to come up with a vaccine against a constantly evolving virus that is allowed to spread. Its unsustainable.

Asked about his interest in socialism, Youp said, Capitalism has some very obvious flaws, the 1 percent getting richer at the expense of everyone else. You end up looking for an alternative, and socialism is very enticing. Having an interest in science and technology I recognise that a lot of scientific achievements occurred in the Soviet Union. To list just a couple they put the first man into space Yuri Gagarin, and Pyotr Ufimtsev who came up with the mathematics behind stealth aircraft.

I have ended up spending a lot of time researching the Soviet Union and the Russian Revolution online (you could call me a Wikipedia warrior of sorts!). We dont get any education about it in school, which is strange because its a massive thing that dominated peoples lives for an entire century. Its immensely important but I know next to nothing about it. I am interested in hearing other peoples perspectives so thats why I signed up.

Amelie, a psychological science student, also at the University of Newcastle, opposed the official pandemic policies: As soon as [Prime Minister] Scott Morrison put us into lockdown and then as soon as the economy started slowing down, it was like, I dont really care if Australian citizens are dying, we need the economy to start back up again.

Dominic Perrottet came straight in, he was so against the Delta wave lockdown. Then when he came in as the New South Wales state premier, straight away, he got rid of the lockdowns and then we saw the infections went up from hundreds a day all the way up to 80,000 plus cases a day, and having over 400,000 active cases at a given time recently. You can tell they just dont care about anyone, anything but money, capital, big business. It is so devastating to see that so many people had to suffer because the government does not care at all.

When told about the death toll in the past two months surpassing the total death toll of the past two years, she said: That is absolutely horrific, its like their whole attitude is like we can see that you are all dying, but we are making money so we dont care.

On the US-led drive to war with Russia over Ukraine, Amelie stated: There is such a lack of effort by so many governments to be diplomatic, even in Australia, Scott Morrison is like, well pull all our people in the embassy out [of Ukraine], lets hope nothing happens. This is on top of us putting so much money into defence. You have all your citizens struggling so much, they have got virtually no welfare support, were not getting free rapid antigen tests, tens of people are dying from COVID everyday here and you are putting that much wealth into the defence force?

Asked why she thinks governments are turning to war, Amelia responded: Money. Its all about what is in their best interests economically.

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IYSSE wins support at Australian university orientations from students opposed to war, herd immunity policies - WSWS