United States: Socialist Horizon Statement on the Far Right Offensive

Unite and Resist the Far-Right Attacks on Free Speech and the Left

By Socialist Horizon

The far-right forces at the helm of the highest echelons of the capitalist state are on the march, crushing free speech, due process rights, fundamental civil liberties, and threatening to dismantle oppositional political organizations. Trump, along with his racist and fascist entourage, are aligning with a growing cast of far-right billionaire oligarchs who are coalescing and mobilizing to shut down all forms of criticism, dissent, and opposition to their project to impose a far-right authoritarian capitalist regime.

These leading sections of a recomposed far-right ruling class are instrumentalizing the assassination of Charlie Kirk to manufacture a new “9/11” that can galvanize far right and fascist forces into a top-down and no-holds-barred clampdown on all sectors of society they are calling “the left”. This manufactured campaign of mass political repression is designed to instill terror and fear in the liberal and left academia, the media, in unions, non-profits, left political organizations–and in the populace as a whole.

The Trump regime and aligned reactionary and neo-fascist groupings are no longer pretending to work within a framework of legality to achieve their goals of taking total control to advance their agenda. They are now endeavoring to consolidate absolute authority and are laying the groundwork for a type of dictatorship that will attempt to squash political enemies, destroy the social economy, and reassert capitalist and imperialist supremacy through generational economic and military warfare.

But they cannot impose this plan without first defeating the working people, who will put up a fight. In 2001, a large majority of the US population felt 9-11 as an attack on itself, and the resulting massive ideological shift to the right provided support for the administration of George W. Bush for its reactionary agenda. Today, it is only a small minority that takes the Kirk assassination as an attack to be avenged. This consolidated and emboldened minority far right is on the offensive with the backing of the most powerful state in the world, which should not be underestimated—but understood for what it is. A majority of the US population opposes Trump and the MAGA agenda, and within it there is a significant minority radicalizing to the left. We should therefore anticipate and prepare for a real resistance and bitter struggles that will determine whether Trump and the far right ultimately prevail or are defeated by the class struggle that lies ahead.

With the current undisguised turn toward authoritarianism, the US government is abandoning its decades long mantle of “defenders of the free world”. The drift of the ruling class and its political parties toward supporting or normalizing that turn will progressively leave socialists—once again—as the only defenders of freedom and democracy. This is why, once again, the socialist left is the first to be attacked.

Recycling McCarthyism and COINTELPRO

The state attack on free speech against the left reflects a long tradition of deeply-rooted anti-socialist and anti-communist reaction inside the US ruling class, which is recycled during periods of class polarization, rising political unrest, political dissidence, and plummeting standards of living. It is also reminiscent of the deployment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover and his “Red Scare” and “Counter-Intelligence Program” (COINTELPRO), in which the agency deployed networks of agents and operations to surveil, infiltrate, dismantle, and repress communist, socialist, civil rights, antiwar, and other leftwing organizations deemed “Un-American” and “enemies of the state”. The emergence of the current wave of McCarthyist and COINTELPRO-like repression begins with the coordinated state and institutional repression of Pro-Palestinian activism and voices, which while historic and on-going, reached an unprecedented scale under Biden and has continued under Trump.

By mid-2024, a published report indicated that more than 3,100 people were arrested at Pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on college campuses. Professors at universities around the country have faced dismissals or other disciplinary actions in response to their support for the pro-Palestine movement and their students holding protests or joining encampments on college campuses.

Over 37 states have laws punishing individuals, companies, or universities that participate in or support the Pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Recent federal and state bills have introduced new penalties for Pro-Palestinian protest participants, including proposals to block student protesters from federal loans or to revoke visas for non-citizens participants. In early 2025, Trump signed executive orders directing government agencies to target non-citizens who participate in pro-Palestinian protests for deportation to punish activists who do not hold citizenship. More recently it has been revealed that colleges and universities like Columbia University and the University of California have been handing over lists of students and faculty who have participated in Pro-Palestinian events and actions.

The new wave of Trump’s attacks represents a continuation and ramping up of repression of Palestinian voices. The regime worked with the ‘Canary Mission’, a shadowy “anonymous” rightwing Zionist operation that doxes (publishes) lists of names and personal information of students and faculty in higher education that have criticized Israel for its apartheid and genocide. Trump colluded with this political hit squad to identify and target Pro-Palestinian students for deportation.

The Trump regime has also plowed forward with even more far-reaching attacks on free speech and political opponents. They have torn down and ripped away the veneer of legal and judicial protocol and due process and are actively squashing basic democratic and constitutional rights once believed “inalienable”.

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, for instance, the regime mobilized the FBI to investigate people making public comments or social media posts against the far right and racist agitator and provocateur aligned with Trumpism. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced she would target protesters engaging in “hate speech”, even claiming she would investigate businesses that refused to post memorial vigil posters in honor of Kirk.

This tyrannical declaration of war against critics of a patented bigot and hatemonger, along with the bullying threat to compel respect and admiration from the general public, has encouraged and empowered far right capitalists and bureaucrats to go after and fire people accused of disrespecting Kirk or not sufficiently complying with an order to adulate the widely despised Trump minion. From the White House, J.D. Vance also made a rallying cry to national networks of far-right groups and fascist followers to begin going after people, doxing them, and doing anything in their power to get them fired: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out…And, hell, call their employer.”

The New York Times has identified more than 145 cases of people being targeted and fired, including college professors, health care workers, lawyers, journalists, restaurant workers, and airline employees. The Chronicle of Higher Education has also documented at least 40 higher education faculty, staff, and students have been terminated, suspended, or expelled for commentary alleged as “insufficiently respectful towards Kirk following his death”. Trump and his far-right echo chamber have escalated this campaign into a full-fledged declaration of war against his “political opponents” and more broadly against the left which now includes the media, higher education, nonprofits and non-governmental organizations, labor unions, and leftwing political organizations.

Silencing Critics in the Media

The Trump regime has pushed for corporate media capitalists to pull the plug on television shows that have even mildly criticized him or his actions. Stephen Colbert’s Late Show on CBS (Paramount division) was first to be canceled. Colbert had become one of Trump’s most prominent and persistent late-night critics, and Trump pushed for Colbert’s firing three days after he criticized a $16 million dollar settlement conceded by CBS to Trump over allegations that a “60 Minutes” show aired in fall of 2024 “edited” an election interview with Kamala Harris that Trump claimed gave her more favorability.

An otherwise baseless lawsuit that would have likely been dismissed, the decision by CBS to settle with Trump was seen as a way to ensure his approval through the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) for a plan by CBS to sell off Paramount to Hollywood studio Skydance. Skydance is owned by David Ellison, son of Oracle founder and multibillionaire Trump ally and fervent pro-Zionist Larry Ellison. According to one report, some CBS executives viewed Trump’s lawsuit as a concession that had to be met for the $8 billion dollar sale to move forward, with Skydance more than willing to terminate Colbert’s late Show to appease Trump. The firing of Colbert was a consolation prize for Trump, handing him a first high-profile success in publicly toppling a prominent media critic.

After Colbert, Trump made it known that he wanted to see Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers all get the boot. Trump then used the killing of Charlie Kirk as a justification to go on the offensive. In his September 10 opening monologue, Jimmy Kimmel rightfully criticized Trump for blaming “radical leftists” for Kirk’s killing, stating “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk” and that “the MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”

In response, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Brendan Carr, ordered the suspension of the program and threatened investigations, to cancel licenses, issue fines, and take other regulatory action against licensed broadcasters who did not comply. Carr is a right wing ideologue who was promoted up the ranks of the FCC for his right-wing views and for being a Trump loyalist.

Carr is a contributor to the far right Project 2025, a wish list of extreme rightwing goals to radically “remake” US government and pave the way for authoritarianism which was especially developed for Trump’s 2024 election campaign. Carr wrote the FCC chapter for Project 2025, which includes a critique of “woke censorship” carried out by big tech firms. Ironically, the first words of Carr’s chapter are that “[t]he FCC should promote freedom of speech.”

After Carr’s unprecedented threats against ABC, Kimmel was suspended within hours.

Trump triumphantly posted on social media that Kimmel’s suspension was “great news for America,” and called for the other late-night hosts to be fired in succession.

In response to the apparent firing of Jimmy Kimmel, many figures in Hollywood and that work within the industry pushed back. A popular campaign for mass cancellation of Disney-affiliated channels and streaming services quickly spread, with an estimated 1.7 million paid subscribers cancelling their memberships of Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN within days. As a result, Jimmy Kimmel Live was restored within six days. Despite this important victory, the Trumpian war on free speech, against political opponents, and against the left has continued unabated.

Stifling Free Speech in the Academy

The targeting of academics for firing due to political speech that began with the Palestinian movement has now swept outward to encompass other forms of political dissent. Most explicitly the state is using the Charlie Kirk killing to criminalize all forms of public speech which name not just Kirk but the racist, sexist, homophobic reaction he embodied as a punishable threat including suspension and firing. The most visible sphere of this repression as with the Palestine movement has been academic, with University employees at Clemson University, Florida Atlantic University, the University of South Dakota, Iowa State University, Ball State University and have been fired or suspended, generally for social media posts criticizing Kirk or people who defend him.

The most important case of repression for those on the revolutionary Left is Socialist Horizon member Tom Alter’s summary firing from Texas State University. Alter is a tenured historian who spoke on the need to build a revolutionary party at the Revolutionary Socialism on-line conference. An openly fascist on-line troll and doxxer secretly recorded Alter and shared a doctored recording. Texas State University President Damphousse fired Alter without due process, in direct violation of Texas state policy and Texas state law.

Alter is fighting back.

The Texas State Employees Union (TSEU), Communication Workers of America (CWA), American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and the Socialist Horizon branch Alter is a part of at Texas State have been in the forefront of a large public campaign to get Alter his job back. Alter was fired only because he spoke as a socialist against capitalism. He is a victim of the new “Red Scare” that is a subject of the New McCarthyism. Alter has blatantly called out his University President, right-wingers in Texas and his own University administration for undermining his free speech, academic freedom, and promoting the most reactionary ideas about the U.S. and the world.

Alter’s case is crucial to win not just for socialists but for everyone. If Alter can be fired, then any of us can be fired. Alter’s supporters are also showing how to organize a broad, united campaign with socialist politics at the center.

Alter’s case also represents an important opportunity for the left to fight back against the massive, ongoing wave of repression against a broader left that includes people of color, trans people, the differently abled, immigrants, Palestinians. The far right and the Trump state are seeking to use the Charlie Kirk killing to stigmatize and smash all of these groups as “enemies of the state”.

Trump is also now trying to strong arm universities to implement far right political changes in their policies in order to be eligible to receive federal funding. Universities across the country are now being told to sign the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which would require that they restrict and exclude trans students on campus and that campuses eliminate any programs that take race, gender, and a wide range of other student demographics into consideration for their admissions process. Furthermore, schools would have to protect and promote far-right student groups and their ideas, and “abolish institutional units” that are critical of rightwing ideas—presumably classes, departments, programs, or student clubs or organizations investigated and declared as such by far right monitors. Trump and his cronies are also taking the crusade across other segments of society in an all-out campaign of suppression.

Declaration of War on the Left

In the aftermath of the Kirk killing, Trump and aligned far right forces staged a large gathering and spectacle in Arizona to memorialize Kirk–but what in reality became a platform to declare a sweeping and coordinated offensive against a broad category of “political enemies” and the political Left.

This was followed shortly by another gathering at the White House led by J.D. Vance, with Trump’s inner circle taking turns declaring a relentless crusade to repress left-wing organizations. Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, and devout racist and petty mastermind of cruelty and violence towards Latinos and immigrants, ghoulishly vowed to bring “the resources of the federal government to bear against” a “vast domestic terror movement” of left-wing political organizations.

This political mustering of the far right culminated with Trump then issuing an executive memo called “National Security Presidential Memorandum-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence”. This directs the mobilization of multiple federal agencies and state agencies to “investigate and prosecute individuals and organizations involved in political violence and intimidation.”

This includes deploying the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) to “coordinate and supervise a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation designed to suppress lawful political activity or obstruct the rule of law.” It also targets non-governmental organizations deemed responsible for aiding, sponsoring, or funding “principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct” and U.S. citizens abroad with “close ties to foreign governments, agents, citizens, foundations, or influence networks” alleged to be “engaged in violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”

Furthermore, it establishes extreme rightwing ideological categories that determine the range of political viewpoints for which one can be targeted. These include “animating violent conduct” by promoting ideas that are “anti-American”, “anti-capitalist”, or “anti-Christian”, by “promoting the overthrow of the United States government”, and by promoting “extremism” on gender, race and migration, and hostility toward individuals who hold “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” The open-ended attack on the left has also been directed at “liberal” and “progressive” groups, with the identification of potential targets including the Nation Magazine, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, and others.

The attack on the left is a cover for the fact that the far right and fascists aligned with Trump are those responsible for the overwhelming majority of acts of political violence, are the perpetrators of racist, sexist, and transphobic attacks, and that inspire mass shootings.

Trump also signed and announced a new executive order designating “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization. He declared Antifa a “militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law”. The order would allow US government agencies to “investigate, disrupt and dismantle any and all illegal operations” by the group. Trump’s targeting the antifascist movement as a threat, reflects a devious recognition that antifascists are trying to actively resist the mass state violence of ICE, the MAGA movement in all of its violent forms, and a growing list of far right and fascist groups being activated by Trump and his cabal of far-rightists, reactionaries, and fascists wielding state power. The attack on the left is a cover for the fact that the far right and fascists aligned with Trump are those responsible for the overwhelming majority of acts of political violence, are the perpetrators of racist, sexist, and transphobic attacks, and that inspire mass shootings.

Trump’s class war on the left requires organized resistance

The authoritarian class war being waged by Trump, the far-right Republican Party, and a growing alignment of rightwing capitalist billionaires, is an onslaught coming from the top-down of a capitalist society in crisis. Trumpian McCarthyism is manifesting as an authoritarian impulse to a deepening political crisis of capitalism. It can be understood as the waging of class war on an unprecedented scale, as it is against all of the working class, and large segments of the rest of society, leaving no group untouched. Even the far-right base of MAGA loyalists are taking it on the chin. The ruling capitalist class is moving farther to the right, and with Trump as their champion, is preparing the soil for a historic clampdown to assert its power and control against an approaching epoch of rising class struggle and potential revolt.

More people are becoming disillusioned with rising inequality, collapsing living standards, ongoing economic distress, the widescale dismantling of social welfare, and attacks on public education and health care. A growing proportion of the working class is becoming disillusioned with the failures of the capitalist economy and the two capitalist parties, rapidly deteriorating living conditions, and the collapse of any remnants of a social welfare state. The current government shutdown is for many people a sign of their abandonment by the ruling political class.

The most recent state attack on the US left occurs in the context of a significant political crisis of US capitalism. The US is the richest country in the world, yet has the highest rate of wealth inequality among the “developed” capitalist nations. As of September 2025, 62 percent of Americans aged 18-29 said they held a “favorable view” of socialism. And while Trump and his allies are waging unmitigated class war against all sectors of the working class at home, they are also expanding imperialist warfare across four continents (Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia, and preparing for a next potential war in South America).

Trump’s dream of a nation of gulags, detention centers, deportations, and a terrorized and impoverished working class will only come true if we don’t offer an effective resistance and build a clear revolutionary socialist alternative.

This means building a broad united front of the left with other people and organizations committed to fighting the new authoritarian challenge. This is the basis of a new Left Unity front that includes Socialist Horizon and other groups working both to defend victims of the New McCarthyism like Tom Alter and work to build a mutual defense alliance of the Left. The group has already created materials to defend Alter and is organizing nation-wide protests to defend him.

And it means building a revolutionary organization that can be the basis of a durable revolutionary party. Both the Democrats and Republicans are equally complicit in the massive repression campaigns we are witnessing. Attacks on workers—their right to join unions, to organize, so to speak–will continue unless the working class recognizes and acts on its power to challenge capitalism and authoritarianism. It was Trotsky who insisted that only a strong working-class with revolutionary organization could defeat authoritarianism. We do this by using the most valuable power we have—our labor power—to stop the war machine, the authoritarian machine, and the attacks on us all. We have seen this disillusionment expressed elsewhere in the general strikes and “Block Everything” movements in Italy and France. Similar rage exists in the US. A new revolutionary organization can both express it and give it shape.

Only through the formation of a new revolutionary organization and broad left movement of resistance can we advance the interests of the working-class and of revolutionary ideas. The time is now. We have a world to win.