Right now, in the United States, there are concentration camps holding immigrants for no reason other than that they showed up at the border. These immigrants, most of them, fled horrific conditions created mostly by the actions and power of U.S. capitalists.

Whether their social programs and support were stripped away by austerity measures imposed by the World Bank, IMF, or "foreign aid" from the U.S. or if a right-wing, repressive government took control in a U.S.-backed coup or sanctions have starved and deprived them of medical care or U.S.-made and -sold bombs are being dropped on them right now, or all or some of the above, the U.S. and the rich who run it are responsible.

For a brief moment, before the last election, it seemed like there might be an uprising to address it, but that was quashed alongside much of the left-wing movement here as the 2020 elections swept through and pacified people, the media stopped covering any form of resistance and ignored the concentration camps entirely, and movements were otherwise disbanded or dissolved.

So the concentration camps remain. Those of us who oppose them still speak out, take action, and otherwise denounce them, but there's not enough of a movement to get them closed. (For now. Some of us are trying to build, but you need to help us out.)

Meanwhile, the far-right in the U.S. is on the rise. The events of January 6th were a publicity stunt that gave the far-right free advertising for years as Congress trotted them out and gave them slaps on the wrist, and the U.S. media never stopped plastering their faces all over the news. They gave the far-right heroes and martyrs and victories galore. So the far-right grows stronger.

Eight years ago, the U.S., under Obama, Clinton, and Biden, installed a Nazi government in Ukraine. There are many bourgeois news sources covering this - it's not from Putin or Russia or whatever other excuse you want to latch onto to dismiss what I am saying. The U.S. backed Nazis in Ukraine. And those Nazis engaged in an eight-year war on those in the Donbass who rose up against them, killing 14,000 people. In the last six months, the U.S. escalated their antagonism of Russia in order to start a war there, glorifying those same Nazis. So now the Azov Battalion, a literal death squad wearing Wolfsangels and Sonnenrads, gets a lot of airtime, and the far-right in the U.S. gets more free advertising. On top of that, many of the far-right in the U.S. volunteered to go get trained by Azov, Right Sector, etc.

So now they'll be coming back with training and combat experience.

And to add to this the repression of LGBTQ people, women, people of color, Jewish people, Romani, disabled people, and the elderly, to name but a few, has gone very nearly unchecked. This has culminated in a pandemic that is being ignored - and thus killing over a million people, most of them elder and/or disabled - and the (potential) loss of abortion rights. It has led to the criminalization of trans youth (and their parents, cis or otherwise) and rising violence against all oppressed people.

Fascism is the capitalists' response to crisis. When their economic system trembles and they see 40 million people march in the street demanding an end to the police and police terror, they fear what might come next. So they pacify the movement and tell the far-right to "stand by" (literally). Fascism is a capitalist government under which all resistance, all left-wing forces, all unions and organized workers, and all oppressed people are repressed, murdered, and terrorized by state violence and state-endorsed stochastic violence. Fascism is the rich and powerful stamping out any chance of fightback.

They do it with the carrot and the stick.

The carrot is the promises they make to parts of the working class whom they lie to. They tell them they're the right people, the pure ones, the superior ones, even as they keep their boots on their necks. In the U.S., it's white cis straight male able-bodied, etc. people and the alleged "middle class". They make them think they're immune to the terror so that they will be part of enacting it. But when the time comes, they are also subject to it.

The stick is the terror itself. The stick is concentration camps, the death penalty for abortion or trans healthcare, mass incarceration, assaults on union organizers, loss of rights across the board, and no healthcare housing jobs education.

But they also use the "compromise". They use the social democrats, the liberals, and other non-fascists in government to appease the masses, thereby disenfranchising and disenchanting them and pushing them to the right by demonizing the left. As fascism rises in the U.S. Biden, AOC, Pelosi, and Sanders are playing their part to ensure it takes hold - just as German Social-Democrats did when they murdered Rosa Luxemburg and ended the German Revolution in 1919 while selling out the German working class to capitalists interests throughout the 20s.

They make billions from it. Every prisoner in the German concentration camps made the German capitalists 1,200 marks a piece, according to Triumph Over Violence. The Nazis were funded in part by American capitalists, including Prescott Bush. Yes, that Bush family.

Today, it will be Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (and George Bush). Today, it will be the Proud Boys instead of the Klan. Today, it will be ICE instead of the Gestapo. Today, it will be trans people and immigrants at the fore instead of Jewish people, though Jewish people are already facing rising attacks in the U.S.

The Holocaust was the intentional murder of tens of millions of Soviets, Jews, Romani people, LGBTQ people, labor organizers, communists and other anti-capitalists, Jehovah's Witnesses, disabled people, and anyone else the Nazis wanted to murder. What we face today has not reached that level, but the building blocks are all there, and genocide was not and is not unique to the Nazis.

In Japan, they had Unit 731. Italy had its own camps and atrocities. (And the capitalists amongst the Allies had their own war crimes and camps as well - whether Japanese "internment" or Thiaroye or every horror Churchill inflicted upon the world.) Only the Soviets did not attempt to exterminate anyone - though they sent war prisoners to prisons (imagine that! Nazis being imprisoned!), they never attempted to systemically wipe out anyone, no matter what western lies you've been reading.

It did not happen with the complete consent of the working class, however; millions rose up against it. In Italy, they ousted and killed Mussolini (the Italian people, led by communists, nearly had a revolution). In Germany, resistance fighters were heavily repressed and killed, but they kept fighting. Across Europe, there was resistance in many forms. But there was no unified front. It took the Soviet Red Army to end the Nazis - and even then, the U.S., Britain, and France saw to it that many Nazis were simply reinstalled in West Germany and NATO and CIA-backed programs like Operation Bloodstone or Gladio.

We need the left to unite against the rise of the right. If we don't act - and soon immediately yesterday - it will be... worse. Worse even than now. Which is terrifying.

You need to organize and take to the streets. Do not go peacefully. There are already people in camps. The time is past to get started, so get started today.