Rev Left Radio - Uprising in LA: ICE, Mass Deportations, and American Fascism

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Recorded on June 8th: Alyson and Breht record an emergency podcast on the current riots in LA, and resistance across the country, to mass deportations. Together they highlight recent events, discuss the function of mass deporations in a decaying capitalist system, analyze the spontaneous and militant community response, how terrorizing undocumented workers is a form of labor discipline, the fascist tactic of scapegoating the powerless for the crimes and chaos of the powerful, the role of AI in both displacing labor as well as bolstering the repressive state apparatus, and much more. Learn more about Red Menace and Rev Left Radio: www.revleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Red Menace. All right. Today we're doing basically a last minute emergency episode, Alice and texted me this morning and said, you know, can we jump on a, on a recording really quick and get some stuff out because, you know, there's an, as anybody listening, will probably know, a dynamic ongoing situation happening around the country, really, but specifically a flashpoint is happening currently in L.A. if you've been online at all in the last couple of days, you've seen the footage coming out of Los Angeles, the mass deportation attempts, the ICE and FBI formations, and the, you know, relentless resistance.

by the people of L.A. more broadly. So I figure we can come on here. Allison obviously lives and organizes in L.A. can give us a summary of what's going on, talk about some of the specific dynamics in Los Angeles, even though, again, this is a nationwide thing that's occurring currently. But I think L.A. is a particularly, you know, intense flashpoint to focus on. And then we'll kind of just give, we'll go into an organic sort of an analysis section where we give our takes on this, analyze this, and kind of, you know, test where this is going to go from here because this is a really, you know, hot button issue right now, and it could take many different directions from here. So, Allison, I guess the first thing is, if you want to get into the

summary right away, go ahead. But if you have any other opening thoughts or, or things you want to set the table with first, feel free to do that as well. Yeah. No, I mean, I think I'll go ahead and get into the events and then we can frame it from there, you know, so I live in Los Angeles and so obviously I've been pretty close to what's happening right now. To broadly summarize what happened was on Friday morning, we got reports. I think basically everyone in any organizational group chat got reports about ice raids that were happening downtown. I'll talk a little bit later about how that reporting got out because I think there's

some interesting stuff there. But the news broke that there were ice raids happening downtown. It appears that ice showed up at some workplaces in the downtown L.A. area locked employees in there and then started making arrests and detainments. There was a very quick community response to the area. People got out there and started protesting and, you know, I think you could accurately use the word rioting. We saw the deployment of federal forces.

I believe people believe that there were FBI counterterror, basically riot squads that were out. And also we saw the deployment of the LAPD. Now, Los Angeles is technically supposed to be a. sanctuary city. It is supposed to me that LAPD will not help with immigration enforcements. The line that they're trying to walk is saying, well, we're not coming out to help with immigration enforcement. We're just coming out to like put down a riot, right? Even though de facto that is helping with the immigration enforcement. And there is also

footage that shows that LAPD may have been present at the time that the raid occurred, which would be an even more like de jure violation of the sanctuary city policy that has existed there. So that went late into the night on Friday. And then yesterday we saw a similar situation occur where ice was deployed for a mass raid at a Home Depot. It looks like in Paramount, which is like a very working class area of Los Angeles. And once again, the community responded in Paramount. The response was intense. People managed to block the road, lighting fires in the road to try to stop cars from getting through. People who were throwing rocks at ice vehicles. There was just a massive amount of less lethal munitions unleashed as well. As the night went on,

that particular event kind of got pushed out of Paramount and into Compton, where a car was lit on fire at one of the intersections in Compton. A huge, you know, kind of protest continued. And in the wake of all that, over the last two days, some stuff happened last night, which is that Trump indicated that he was going to mobilize the National Guard. And Pete Pegseth made a tweet that was saying that if the National Guard is not able to put into the violence, then Marines from Camp Pendleton, which is a Southern California Marine base, will be deployed. You know, it's always hard to know, like, how much this is fascist bluffing and how much of this is what they're going to actually do. But based on the reports that we're seeing, last night,

National Guard were deployed in Los Angeles, maybe about 300 of them at the moment, although Trump's order calls for 2000. And I believe as the BBC, I was raised. earlier, has reported that Marines have received preparatory orders to be ready to deploy if necessary. So that may be a further escalation, which is taking place here. It's worth noting that it does not appear that Trump has invoked the Insurrection Act or any of the other kind of laws that make it possible for him to federalize the National Guard. He has invoked a specific federal statute, Article 10, which says that the President can deploy the National guards, but it also says that all orders have to go through the governors of the states,

and Newsom is not complying. So it's not really clear what the legal basis for the current situation is. But National Guard do seem to be on the ground. Today, Sunday, and as far as I have seen, there have not been new raids that have taken place today yet, although like 10 minutes before we started this recording, I saw that ICE has been seen in Pasadena at a hotel, but it looks like maybe that's where they have some troops that are staying at the hotel. So it's a little unclear what's going on there. And I'm sure that will develop throughout the day. The only other thing that I will add is that the Trump administration has seen to indicate

that they are not backing down and has, we've heard from several people now, including Democratic politicians who said they heard this from the federal government, that there will be 30 days of these raids taking place in Los Angeles. Obviously, these raids had this very intense response this weekend. Well, people were not working. We'll see what the next 30 days look like as, you know, as things develop and people have to work and go into the work week. And if they really are going to do those 30 days.

But this is kind of where we're at. So in Los Angeles right now, I think there's some very intense feelings of tension. Untocumented communities are remarkably scared for understandable reason. The left is trying to figure out how to relate to this deployment of troops that is occurring and this idea of like 30 days of this continuing, which really feels like an action just designed to crush the morale and spirit of resistance that's developing in this city. So the situation is probably in its infancy at the moment if the feds are not lying about what their plans are. And so we'll see where things go, but that's kind of

where things are at right now. Online we've seen things like helicopters being deployed for what seems like arms refilling for the ice agents and FBI agents on the ground. I saw today a report that an Israeli-affiliated Boeing war plane is flying off the coast of L.A. I haven't confirmed that or, you know, that's not a substantial claim necessarily, but one that I saw come across my screen. I'm wondering if you can give us any insight into that. And also, you know, coming from a Midwestern smaller city, how common that is for helicopters. and planes to be operating in that manner in this way in unison with the FBI and ice. And then also what you mentioned, Governor Newsom's refusal to comply, what has been the level of

resistance insofar as we can call it that from the local and state governments? Yeah, those are all good questions. So, yeah, with the helicopter, what appears to have happened is that, you know, people were saying it's a black hawk. I don't know enough about how to identify a helicopter, but it sure looks like one to me that touchdown at a DHS site in Compton, and yeah, it appears it was unloading munitions and weaponry, presumably to resupply the federal agents that are deployed there. I haven't seen something like that before, right?

Obviously, living in a big city, you see police helicopters all the time, you see all that kind of activity, but what appears like a military helicopter doing those kind of resupplies is certainly unique. I mean, Los Angeles did see a Federal Guard deployment that occurred during the 2020 George Floyd uprisings. Long Beach, which saw some of the more intense rioting, had a curfew imposed. There were national guards on the street. So we have seen this kind of militarized mobilization in 2020, for sure, when things got very extreme. But obviously in 2020, the intensity of the uprising was much higher than this at this point. Like, this is just two days

of a kind of uprising taking place. So it does feel like there's this attempt to kind of crush things early and prevent them from developing further, whether or not that will work or not. In terms of the state and local response, yeah, I mean, you know, California Democrats are sliny pieces of shit in the way they always are. Yeah. So, you know, with these Democrats, you know, it's the standard California Democrat type. Gavin Newsom has condemned the deployment of the federal troops. He doesn't want to see the National Guard deployed. He says he's seen seeing it as inflammatory in making the situation worse. And he has, broadly gestured towards a condemnation of the raids. But, you know, as you would expect, it's not

clear that there's any, like, real opposition besides statements being made. Newsom has really been pivoting to the right, actually, in a lot of ways recently. So that makes it, you know, a little hard to have any faith in him. I think beyond Newsom, though, the more important thing is within Los Angeles. We have a Democratic mayor, Karen Bass. And Bass has kind of made contradictory statements. She, on the initial day, condemned the raids, basically. said that they shouldn't be happening and that LAPD would not cooperate with the enforcement actions. And since then, she shifted to condemning the people uprising and condemning the actions that they're taking. And so, you know, you get the kind of both sidesism that one expects

from democratic politicians. I think what's clear is that, you know, for all the language about LA being a sanctuary city and about the Democratic Party here, caring about undocumented populations and immigrant communities, at the end of the day, they're going to participate in the quelling of any uprising, right? Whatever, you know, rhetorical contradictions there may be between them in the federal government, when it comes to actual resistance to this, they are on the same side as part of the same colonialist, bourgeois, imperialist state, right? And so you're hearing both sides from the Democrats at the moment, and that is, to me, I think, largely very unsurprising. As with the Democrats always, the quote unquote, resistance is merely marketing

and PR schemes, and as always, they never have enough power to do really anything. They're just trying to take a stand for the cameras and for social media, but their impotence is often feigned. And I think we're seeing that, again, of course, it's no surprise. I'm wondering if you can now move on to the dynamics in Los Angeles. I'm interested in what segments of the population are being mobilized, various organizations that might be involved. This is another, I mean, you talked about 2020. this is another spontaneous uprising of the masses in the face of another crisis of our society,

of capitalism, of imperialism, of this fascist Trump administration. So I'm wondering if you can talk about that. And also, I mean, highlight the human elements, right? Because this is not just their whole thing in the beginning was, you know, we're going after the criminals, the pedophiles, the human traffickers. And now it's just like ripping toddlers out of mother's arms and, showing up at work sites and disappearing people, etc. So take that question in whatever direction you would like. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, there's a couple of things about Los Angeles I think

are worth considering, right? Los Angeles is an interesting country or a city within the country because it has a very specific relationship to immigration and colonialism in the U.S. I think almost all of our listeners probably know enough about history to know that Los Angeles used to be a part of Mexico, right? Like, it has not always historically been a part of the United States. And Los Angeles, I would say there are still resentments about some of that history that actually do exist within the population of the city. Los Angeles is a city that has a really huge Latino population and a really large part of that population are also immigrants. I was trying to get the exact numbers and it's something like 4.4 million immigrants live in L.A., which makes up 33% of the

total population, which is a very high number, right? So a good chunk of this city are immigrants of varying levels of legality and documentation, obviously. But I think that really plays out in what's going on here. And so, you know, really it's hard to under-emphasize the level of fear that exists within immigrant communities, right? People here, even if they come from families where, like, they are documented and a lot of their family is, will often have family members who are undocumented. Like, I know I do, right? Like, this is just a reality for immigrant families living in L.A. And there is real concern and fear about what's going on there. And I think what we're seeing, if I really want to try to like conceptualize what it is, is ordinary people

in Los Angeles, basically saying, no, I am not going to tolerate you kidnapping my neighbors. I am not going to tolerate you disappearing people in my community. I am going to go out and do something about it and try to stop it. That's really what I think is happening here. And I think, you know, you got it something that I think is important, which is that in a lot of ways this does seem like a spontaneous uprising in the way that the George Floyd uprisings were, right? Where really the George Floyd uprisings, I think, the left was really caught off guard in a lot of ways how quickly they came up and was scrambling to catch up and to figure out how to relate to the events as they were developing. And there is some of that here, right? I think when you look at a lot of

of the people in the streets, especially yesterday in Paramount, a lot of it is not leftists or activists who are out there on the streets. It's community members who are just coming out to try to stop people from being kidnapped and shipped off to another country. And I think that's a very heartening thing to see. But one of the things that I did want to hit on in terms of the actual dynamics that are at play here is that since the election, essentially, there has been a lot of work to get infrastructure in place to be able to respond to these kind of things. Right. So one of the groups in Los Angeles, this very large historic organization, Union Del Barrio, has done really good work leading a community self-defense coalition, which is training people how to go out and patrol around parts of L.A. to watch for ice raids and be able to notify the community that an ice raid is taking place in a certain spot. And that's a kind of infrastructure that isn't organic, right? That's a thing that organizations on the left within Los Angeles are taking the time to build as a coalition. And in a lot of ways, the fact that there was the ability to respond so quickly to these raids, I think, is reflective of the fact that the left in Los Angeles is in a slightly stronger position than it has been historically because of the development of infrastructure like that.

And obviously, of course, that infrastructure is still playing defense, right, in a way that I think many on the left might find frustrating. But it does change the dynamic a little bit from 2020, I think, in that really there is more of a network through which, the left can respond. So that's one thing that I think is important to point out about how we got here. And then I think the other thing that I really want to like hit at and, you know, I'll shout out Dylan Saba on Twitter really made a post about this that got me thinking about it. That is true. Is that it really feels at this exact moment like both the LAPD and the federal agents and the National Guard feel like occupying forces in Los Angeles. And like that's how they're being viewed by the segment of the populace who are actually mobilizing.

There is this real sense that, no, no, no, this isn't like our government who is coming in here to do this. This is an occupying colonial force who is enacting colonial violence on the population of this city. And again, L.A.'s unique history in relation to American expansionism and colonialism plays a really big part of that. You will still hear in Latino organizations within Los Angeles this notion of like, we didn't cross the border.

The border crossed us, right? And I think, you know, it's a catchy. slogan, but it also gets at these particular colonial dynamics that exist in Los Angeles that are really underlying what's rearing its head right now. So I think for me, pointing to that history of colonialism, the way it plays out in the present, how much of this city are immigrants, the tight interconnected communities that exist within a lot of those immigrant communities all are contributing to this moment. Plus, the left actually doing some work to builds on community defense infrastructure. So all of those things are taking place right now

and all of them are being tested to see whether or not they can withstand this. If the federal government is telling the truth about 30 days of this, it's hard to express the level of human damage that that is going to do to the souls and spirits of the people of this city, right? That is basically talking about 30 days of state terrorism enacted against the most marginalized and, you know, kind of vulnerable communities within this city. And I think the question that we'll have to see is, does the city respond to that by giving up, by being demoralized, by capitulating, or respond to that by even stronger resistance? And if I had to guess, honestly, I think it's probably going to be the latter based on everything that we've seen

in the last couple of days. Yeah, absolutely. And when I say spontaneous, you know, in these little silos of the Marxist left. We can see that as a pejorative. I see it as heartening and inspiring that, you know, with, I mean, there has been some foundation laid and there has been some preparation, you know, laid the foundations of responses laid down because we knew this was coming. This is what Trump campaigned on. His first term, this is what he campaigned on again. We know who Stephen Miller is. We knew that this was inevitable. So it's not totally spontaneous, but the communal nature, the fact that it's just regular people willing to put up so much is heartening, is inspiring. And just like COVID, just like George Floyd, just like all these

other, just like Palestine in a lot of ways, just like the first Trump administration and they're cracked down on dissent in the wake of that election. It's testing the masses. It's like how far can we push you? How much death can you withstand? How many during COVID of your neighbors can you watch die before you get upset in the right ways? How many people can we make disappear from your community before you throw rocks through our windshield or escalate to violence? You know, how much resources do we have to pour into just defending the the apparatus itself as it goes in and tries to carry out these actions? And with Mahmoud Khalil and the others who have been detained and locked away in ICE and ICE detention centers, it's like how much protests will this

generate? You know, how long will these protests last? And so every single escalation on this on behalf of this fascist state is also a test to see how easy it is for them to come in and do these things to us and these aren't going away like the crisis is only mounting and these fascist state responses are going to be more and more necessary to maintain this system in the face of mounting crises so you know all of these i see as tests and time and time again we do see people even without the organization that we'd love to see rise to the challenge and push the fuck back which is which is inspiring and heartening and it shows us that the energy the revolutionary energy is there. It's in the masses. It's always been in the masses. And it's just a matter of how

much that can sustain itself. And that requires, of course, organization. And then ultimately, can we shift from defense to offense? And that, in addition, also requires organization. Yeah. No, I mean, I think all of that's spot on. And yeah, you know, I think you're right. We shouldn't see spontaneity as purely a negative thing, right? Spontaneity reflects negatively on the left in many ways, but not negatively on the masses, right? It is very heartening to see people out who are not members of our organizations, right, who just really won't tolerate this happening. And so I do think that is like a really good thing. And it's, you know, I'll say this goes from more than Los Angeles, right? We are seeing this in New York as well. And over the last month, we've seen this even in some

Midwest cities where people really have shown up and just said, no, you are not taking people from my community, which I think does show that this attitude does exist in larger parts of the populace than we might think. It's really fascinating, right? Because, like, deportation is actually one of the things that Trump polls best on, right? Like, he polls really well around deportation and immigration. But I think this shows the way that there can be a disconnect between the masses themselves and what polling reveals in this very interesting way. Well, sure, the people that they're polling think this is popular, but the masses who live in these cities, who live in working class neighborhoods that are being affected by this are not reflective of the

values that are shown in those polls. They actually are not only just horrified by this, but are willing to go out, be arrested, be brutalized, be subjected to less lethal weaponry in order to prevent this. And so I think that's a very interesting thing. But you're right. There's the organizational question that cannot be missed, right? One of the things that I think about a lot when I think about 2020 is the extent to which 2020 didn't solidify into clear organizational structures. It was a massive uprising. Again, the National Guard was deployed. Then Trump had to go hide in a bunker under the White House.

Like, it is hard to overemphasize the scale of 2020. And I also don't want to pretend like 2020 was for nothing, right? I think a lot of lessons were learned in 2020. I think a lot of people did end up entering left wing organizing on the whole as a result of 2020, and I think we can understand this moment now better because of our experiences that we had in 2020. But at the same time, 2020 was a revolt that was largely defeated. Counterinsurgency was very successful against it. The gains that were made in terms of reforms around defunding have by and large been eliminated, right? And we more or less, I think, live in sort of the

counter-revolutionary reaction to those uprisings at this very moment. And so one of the questions that we're going to be faced with is if there is another organic uprising that is occurring again, what can be done to take the gains that it's going to make and make them sustainable in a way that wasn't done in 2020? And I don't have like the magic bullet answer for that, right? But I do want to frame that as basically the question for the left right now because I think a lot of you listening probably participated in what happened five years ago and have probably also seen slowly whatever gains were made, be rolled back and really overturned, not just in the last, you know, however many months that Trump has been president again, but also during the Biden

administration by the Democrats. And so, yes, resistance to Trump is good. This is one of the things that is maybe a progressive aspect of having someone like Trump empowers, that people will rebel in a way that they often won't against Democrats. But how does that get turned from something more than just transient, temporary, spontaneous rebellion into something that actually gains wins over the long term. That's the thing that we need to wrestle with. And, you know, I won't go into details, but I will tell you all across the city, there are organizations that are trying to wrestle with exactly that question right now. So those conversations are certainly happening, which gives me a lot of hope, at least. We'll see

where the situation goes, but people are having these discussions. Yeah. And every iteration of these uprisings, of these revolts, even though they're around different issues, from standing Rock to Occupy to George Floyd to this current anti-ice sentiment to the anti-ice movements that happened to first Trump administration. These are all militancy

exacerbators for the people. These are all learning experiences. But time and time again, I think what we see is a radical revolutionary energy seeking a structural outlet, right? It's seeking a container to organize and express

itself in a more long you know long term and sustainable way and you know ostensibly within the confines of this system that would be something like the democratic party but the democratic party itself as we all know is a part of the counterinsurgency it's precisely a crucial aspect of that co-optive apparatus that that that misdirects weakens dilutes and drains and in 2020 we saw them wear the kente cloth and we saw them take the knee and we saw all the murals being painted And we saw, you know, the Democrats throw up their fist in solidarity and nothing material was changed. And by the next election, all of them were saying we went too far. The defunded the police stuff was a little too crazy.

You know, maybe we are too soft on the on the border, you know. Trump's getting a lot of support on the border. Maybe we should also be border hawks. And so you can see that that will lead nowhere. But if there was an organized institutional, national level organization that spoke to the material needs, of these uprisings and had plans and policies to actually address the underlying crises causing the need for these uprisings. There's no doubt that there's huge constituency for that across the country.

And so that's what I'm reminded again and again by these uprisings. And I also wanted to address the gap between a policy that pulls a certain way and the reality of enforcing it. When Trump's talking about deportation, it's very abstract. And, you know, there's all the ideology involved, all the nationalism and people's heads evolved, all the, the stupid ideas that somehow by terrorizing immigrant families, that the good jobs will come to us finally. And so you can see why there might be, well, technically in this one poll, there was a majority of people who support tightening up the border, right? and then, or, you know, we support people with criminal records being deported back to their country of origin. And then look at the actual reality of what that looks like. In the first few weeks,

yeah, maybe you go through the low-hanging fruit, the guy with like three felonies that nobody's going to come out to the streets for, whatever. But then very quickly, you're just, then we'll get right back to, yeah, splitting up families, terrorizing people, disappearing people on work sites, stuffing community members into vans and not hearing back from them. We've seen the imprecision that this state enforces these deportations with right in in many cases where somebody is in prison taken away on false pretenses it's it's it's then revealed like kilmar garcia right a brago garcia um revealed that they'd committed no crime or that this was an accident and then there's no mechanism for redressing that there's no attempt to take accountability or reverse that

so people have also seen that and as these images come out of l.A. in New York and around the country of, as I've seen, you know, kids crying, screaming as their parents are being dragged off, little toddlers being ripped out of their mother's hands. Yeah, the polling is one thing. The reality is quite another. And the final point, I'll toss it back over to Allison, is what, actually, maybe I'll let you speak on anything I just addressed there. And then we'll get to what this is at, what, what.

function this is serving for the state apparatus and the system as a whole. But I'll hold off on that for a second and just take your thoughts on what it was already put out there. Yeah, it's interesting because I think my thoughts actually do relate to that state apparatus part. But yeah, I'll touch broadly on. I think you're right. Like people have not considered what mass deportation means practically, right? When it's treated as this abstract political thing, people might get on board with it. But the reality of it is extremely ugly, right? And I think it's worth noting that these levels of deportation really are not necessarily unique to the Trump administration, right? I mean, fucking Tom Homan, who's the first person who broke the news about the mobilization

of the National Guard, was first appointed by Obama, right? Like, this guy is this basically, I would say, the face of fascism in the United States at the moment, and he comes from a Democratic administration that had record high levels of deportation. So it's not that this is unique, but I do think one of the things that we see with Trump, is this lack of concern for optics whatsoever, right? Like, there's this change in how right-wing politics has worked, where it makes no appeal to respectability. They're fine looking like jackbooted thugs,

and in fact, they think that's a good thing. And so you get these very ugly optics of some of these raids that are taking place, and it does provoke a response like this. And those optics, I think, do shatter a lot of people's abstractions about what mass deportation means. So I do think that is certainly true. is part of what's at play here. And hopefully, more and more people will have that kind of abstract ideological understanding of it shattered as time goes on, and we will see more people

absolutely refuse this. I think it's been really, again, very heartening to see this level of resistance happening on that kind of organic level, right? That is something very meaningful. I think, you know, to gesture towards your question of like the state function of this real quick, because I think this is the other relevant part of this, is that I do think that more or less, the expansion of the enforcement wing of the immigration state really is one of the two places that a more fascistic approach to executive power is being integrated, right? The other one, obviously, being the quelling of domestic dissent around Palestine. That's kind of the one that we've seen a lot.

But I do think this mobilization of ICE, this mobilization of federal agents around this, is also a technique for suppression of more than just immigration. communities within the United States. Yesterday, one of the people that was arrested in downtown L.A. was the president of SEIU, California, who was thrown to the ground by ICE officers, had his face shoved into a curb as they arrested him, and is still being detained with the DOJ kind of hinting that they are going to seek federal prosecution against him. This is someone who is a part of mainstream progressive politics in the U.S.

as a part of the SEIU, who's in leadership of that, who now is facing this level of repression precisely through this expansion of immigration enforcement. And so one of the things that I am hoping Americans will come to understand is even if you think this whole mechanism applies only to people who are undocumented or only to permanent residents, the entire infrastructure being built can instantly, in a second, as it was yesterday, be turned on any citizen to come for them too, right? And I really hope that is a message that is getting through to people because even if their understanding of what deportation means isn't being shattered by these horrific interests, hopefully at least base self-interest will be enough for them to see what's going on and, you know,

want to be opposed to this. Absolutely. And we don't even have to think about it in abstract terms. Like, oh, the state apparatus being weaponized against immigrants will one day be weaponized against you because it's the exact same force that was shutting down violently the encampments. That was shutting down the George Floyd protest with extreme violence. that we've seen time and time again in the anti-fascist first fascist riots that popped off in the wake of the first Trump administration, Charlottesville, the unrest that came and really lasted for a long time. We sometimes forget about it because it doesn't feel like an acute event. Well, you know, we have the George Floyd, we have the encampments, we have Standing Rock, we have Occupy. But post the first Trump election at 2017, there were protests all over the country, mass protest in every major city.

There were clashes in the streets between the left and the right, between fascist, and anti-fascist between the state and left-wing forces and organizations. And that kind of set the stage for what erupted again in 2020. But this is an ongoing thing. And yeah, the very aspects of the state being mobilized here have been and will continue to be mobilized against any and all threats to the system. It's very much worth pointing out, as you did, the Democratic and liberal hypocrisy on this front. Once again, like on Palestine, like on all of these issues, Democrats,

go to brunch during their administrations, they look away from the horrors perpetuated by their own party, they wash their hands of the blood that's soaking their hands as they go into vote for another Democrat to do the exact same things. It just really is a shift in the optics and a shift in liberal America's attention. So instead of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party, you know, ideologically mystifying what's happening and covering it up and making it sound all nice, they're revealing it because for them, it's the opposition party doing it. So then they can pull back the

curtain and say, look how horrible this is. And then if in four years a Democrat comes in, it all be shushed up again. The detention centers will still be there. AOC will not be there crying in front of them. You won't hear about, you know, how terrible Israel is or the Netanyahu regime or any of this.

And they'll go right back to supporting in a lot of ways these same exact policies. There are some differences in the ramping up. I mean, I think Trump has always run on this deportation thing. And And he's really investing it with a lot of resources in a way that is kind of not really new or not unprecedented, but it's just kind of a shift and the intensity of it. So, you know, that does play a little bit of a role.

But ultimately, this is a singular state with a singular interest in maintaining the dominant system and both parties play a role in that, which we don't have to tell our audience, but is always worth remembering because, you know, we can cut sometimes people can talk this stuff as if it's new. Oh, you know, go to any liberal and watch how they talk about this. Oh, this Trump administration. It's terrible. This is fascism as if they're separate from it, you know, as if they've not been contributing to it by voting for Democrats that got us here in the first place. But the main thing I wanted to say, and it echoes your sentiments, is what function do these mass deportations play? And I think fundamentally they play, as I said

on my Instagram story, they play as a pressure release valve. It's a classic form of fascist scapegoating, a capitalist system in crisis, unable to provide a decent life for more and more and more of its people every year, housing through the roof, health care through the roof, inequality through the roof. We're living in a second gilded age as our country also perpetuates genocides and endless wars across the world and has and sells bombs and, and, and, sells bombs and death all around the planet um you know so so what this is doing is that there's a deep unhappiness in the country and you know across the western capitalist world and instead of dealing with that crisis in any material way instead of focusing on how do we get people health care how do we

spread the resources around to meet people's actual material needs it's it's a classic scapegoating technique it's the immigrants are why your housing costs are so high if we didn't have so many immigrants the housing um supply demand would go down supply would go up and prices would go down um you know the reason you don't have a good job is not because of greedy billionaires or inequality or a rotten economic system it's because immigrants are taking your job oh you don't have health care that sucks but guess what did you know illegal immigrants get free health care no they don't but you can make a bunch of people believe that and then all of a sudden now it's not the insurance companies that are the problem it's not the capitalist incentive system in health care that's the problem

now we're shifting to talking about immigrants and the idea sold to trump supporters is literally your life sucks you don't see a future for you and your family unless you're already rich the problem is immigrants if we get rid of them all the sudden and and we we we we stomp down on trans people and put women in their place etc etc if we scapegoat and punish all these other populations that have no power and you know no concentrated sources of wealth magically somehow that will create the openings for you, MAGA supporter, to finally have a good job, to be able to provide for your family, and to have a future for you and your kids. It's a classic tactic. And it also, what it does for Trump supporters is it gives the illusion that something's being done. Be like,

yeah, it's ugly. You know, it's not always pretty, but at least he's doing, what did Biden do? At least he's doing something to solve these problems. And meanwhile, not a single problem gets solved. Nobody benefits. You're not getting any better quality of life out of this. In fact, your quality of life will go down. And that apparatus you see being used as a stick to smash into the skulls of immigrants will be smashed into your skull if you get uppity in any way about this system. But functionally, it acts as a pressure release valve. It soaks up all the oxygen in the room with regards to the media. It makes Trump look like he's an effective president for his base. And ultimately, it solves no issue. So we'll be right back here in a million different ways. We'll be right back here again and again and again. The crises will mount and get worse and worse and worse and nothing will come of it. And that's how fascism works. So I think that's the basic function of what's going on now. And it fundamentally takes your view off of the economic elites, puts it on to powerless people, punishes those powerless people, and gives the right-wing constituency a sense that's

something productive is being done. Some problem is getting solved, but that's fundamentally an illusion. Yeah. No, I mean, I think that is absolutely the use of it. And I think their necessity for that pressure release valve is only going to go up. You know, I think the question in my mind is for how long that can be functional, right? How long can people believe that the reason for their emissuration is actually immigrants, right? You know, this is like a parallel topic, but that's one I'll throw out there. There are, like, multiple people I know in my life right now who have lost their jobs to AI, and more and more people are going to lose their jobs to AI in the coming years. And Trump has thrown billions of dollars at AI development, which will ultimately lead to

this kind of emissuration and unemployment among the working class. And so one of the questions that I kind of have in my head is, like, at what point are people going to realize that, like, no, it's not your undocumented to neighbor who put you out of work. It's fucking Sam, Altman, right? Like, I would hope that at some point that would start to become obvious. But in order to obscure that, there will be the need for more and more and more ideology in order to scapegoat, you know, on behalf of the government. So we will likely see an intensification of this. Now, there's room for despair and there's room for hope in that, right? Obviously, as the population becomes more emiserated and the government turns to using more, more fascist ideology in order to have

that pressure release. There's the real fear of mass mobilizations of the sort of deindustrialized working class being mobilized by reactionaries. But on the other hand, if that ideology can be pushed back against, if we can really cut through that and give a better explanation that people can understand and provide the organizational tools for people to fight back against the systems that are making their lives worse and pushing them into precarity and poverty, that's a real opening as well, right? And it's a potential real opening to build solidarity between immigrant communities and non-immigrant working communities. But obviously that means, as we've gestured this whole time, the task falls in the left to be able to create that, to be able to create the conditions for

people to fight across those lines of difference, and to be able to penetrate the ideological justifications that the government is giving that obscure the actual economic causes of people's emissuration. So things are going to get worse in a sense, right? But things getting worse is also the opening for possibility, for transformation, for things to actually change. And so when things get worse, we may be tempted to feel paralyzed and hopeless in the face of that. But I would hope that what we can understand is those moments are actually precisely when we should feel the most hopeful in some ways. Because with every new shift in repression, there's also an opening that occurs there and the room for response. And that's really what becomes necessary for those who

consider themselves to be part of the left, whatever the fuck that means. Yeah. The way, the way I see it is we have to get organized. We have to educate, do all this stuff. Not because I really think that we're going to be able to stop the inevitable collapse that's coming. I think there's so much momentum in the system. There's such a lack of a structural, organized institutional resistance to it the working class has been decimated labor unions have been deradicalized and decimated organizations are roughshod and scattered across the country that i think what's ultimately going to bring this serious cycle this increasing cycle of of crisis and repression to a culmination is going to just have to be a collapse and in some in some ways organizing and educating is more important than

never not because i personally believe we're going to be able to stop what's coming i think there's something inevitable baked in and particularly in the united states about this overreaching system that's been out over its skis for a long long fucking time and is going to hit the is going to hit a brick wall and there's nothing really we can do to stop that what we're doing is preparing for that and being ready to direct out of the ruins of that collapse and that collapse is probably going to be multifaceted but will almost certainly be economic at its core, right? This is an economic system that we have a materialist analysis. This capitalist system in the U.S. in particular, but globally, more broadly, is running into a cliff. It's

fundamentally unsustainable. It will hit that brick wall. And so I think that's coming. And in fact, you meant, you know, another function that this serves is pitting workers against workers, right? The ideology of neoliberalism has always been, hey, you know, you earn just enough money, not to be able to get something like Medicaid, right? But you don't make enough money to be able to afford health insurance. Aim your hatred at the poor person who gets Medicaid. Why should they get a handout? Not at the rich asshole who's making billions of dollars denying you and your family health care and racking up premium charges and making it just unaccessible. So this is another way of doing that. When you can pit the domestic working class against the so-called undocumented

and illegal workers taking your job. It's a mystification of actual contradictions in our society. And it's another way at which you take the middle, whatever's left of it, or you could just say the domestic working class, and aim their hatred, their gaze downward towards those below them instead of upward. And so this is another way that they do this. And I think there is, this connects really well to the AI discussion because this is, this is in if I follow my thought this is a disciplining of the labor force in a lot of ways and if the idea of the the elite is that AI is here it's going to be super disruptive it's going to be able to radically transform the labor market increase profits for business owners as they can cut you know costs labor costs and on board AI to do jobs that otherwise have to pay salaries or wages for for a human business.

being to do, then there is some broader sense in which mass deportations make sense because there's a certain strata of the labor force that becomes superfluous to a new AI-driven labor market, right? We're already going to have mass unemployment, mass disruptions, incredible chaos. And so if you can go after that lowest, most powerless strata of the labor force, decimate it, destroy it, terrorize it, dismantle it. It makes way for the increasing disruptions in the labor force and the downward pressure that's going to happen to all workers as that bottom strata is deported. The strata just above it and just above that are going to be pushed down into it by AI. And so I think there is a broader sense in which this overall

disciplining of the labor force is, whether it's fully conscious or just a structural output of the system, in some sense, clearing the way for what they see AI as being able to bring forward. Yeah, no, I think that's a very astute observation, right? Which is like, you know, a pretty terrifying thought that, you know, that that is what is happening there. But I do think, like, the automation is coming. Again, I'm seeing it happen to people that I know now. And you're right, that downward space has to be cleared out for people to fall down there in that kind of system, which obviously should be horrific. I think, like the other. thing too is that AI is eliminating a lot of jobs that traditionally were kind of petty

bouchois or at least cushy working class jobs, right? A lot of white collar work can just be automated by AI. And so I think you are going to see a lot of people who are doing pretty well within the United States basically get declassed as a result of that and face downward class movement that is going to be quite destabilizing and horrifying for them. And, you know, those are forces that become declass that often can become full. forces of reaction, right? That is a thing that has taken place historically. The petty bourgeoisie, you know, go listen to our episode we just did on Trotsky's text, can be very, very easily manipulated and deployed in these kind of instances of crisis for the ends of

fascism. So, you know, we really need to be on guard about that, I think. And again, we really need to be able to push through this idea that, like, the enemy is some external population or enemy internally population. That is the issue and show people that, no, it's the fucking ghouls that run all of these giant AI companies that are going to be the source of your emissuration and the source of your declassing and make sure that anger is directed in the correct, you know, direction, because that is the entire thing that fascism is trying to avoid. And I think, you know, the thing that we're both getting back to is like, the crisis is going to get worse, right? This is all interconnected. Immigration and immigration enforcement is not

just some side thing within capitalist society. What we are seeing right now is actually at the core of a broader economic transformation that is taking place and the various kind of state and ideological maneuverings developing around that, which is why, as always, it's necessary to have a Marxist outlook on the world that can tie these things together and help us understand how they are part of a unified struggle. Absolutely. And quickly, I just want to address, because there's some confusion or just distortions and revisionism coming around that you see on the right deviationist sectors of the so-called socialist left where there's this idea that for the working class we should be in favor of deportations because they take American jobs

and if we deport a bunch of other working class people terrorize their family, split them up and we side with the U.S. fascist state apparatus that somehow it'll clear the way for us to have more bargaining power with our employers. This is delusional, reactionary nonsense, masquerading as communism. it's fascism, masquerading as socialism, and it needs to be called out and rejected wholeheartedly. This is a division of the working class, and the real Marxist work is to cut through the pitting of the working class against the working class, embrace proletarian internationalism, understand that this system is global, and that our enemies, and our job is to point out to

others who the real enemies are, are the economic elites of the capitalist society, the owning class, the bourgeoisie. Our problem or our solution or our position is not to side with the fascist capitalist U.S. state in terrorizing low-income poor, displaced or undocumented workers in order to clear the room so that we might have some more goodies. And anybody arguing for that line and pretending to be a Marxist or a socialist or a communist why doing it should get our utmost and direct confrontation and aggression, dismantle it, tear it apart, don't look away from it because that is completely grotesque and

toxic and it is part and parcel of fascism. When fascism arises, it arises across the political spectrum, it distorts reality, and there are always opportunists and chauvinists and reactionaries pretending to be on the left, pretending to educate other people about Marxism, while arguing for a line that is fascist in nature. And so, you know, we have to clean house on our side in that respect. And I think that's crucial. This is not a huge line in the United States or anything, but it is there.

It's been bubbling up in the form of patriotic socialism and maga-communism or the last several years. Again, it's often very online. It doesn't really have any purchase among the working class more broadly. It's not a real material threat in any way. but it does create and sow the seeds of ideological confusion, particularly among young people coming up who could otherwise be interested in these ideas and are being led astray by these assholes. And so we have to be responsible agents and step up and confront that. Yeah, no, I think that's completely correct. And I think if you look at the history of the development of fascism, and you see this most clearly in Italian fascism, a little bit more than in German fascism, one of the fucking uncomfortable truths that you have to recognize is that a,

lot of the early fascists had been revolutionary socialists at some point, right? A lot of the early base of that movement came from people who were part of communist movements and switched sides to the fascist movement. So when you hear people, even people who have a history of socialist organizing, who have a history of being principled communists, falling in line with this national chauvinism as the solution to the working class, they should be understood as black shirts, right? I think that's really how you should understand them. And the contradiction that existed between black shirts and the communist movement ought to be understood to exist between us and those people. They are forming a base of fascism just as one happened in Italy. And the

fact that someone comes out of the left does not mean that they are not a fascist. Historically, in fact, we saw that a strange amount. So I think, you know, I just want to second that and say a historical study of fascism shows that phenomena as well. Yeah. And one hallmark is class collaborationism, right? This idea that there are segments of the capital class that we should team up with or work against their segments of the working class we can turn against um you know these are all these this has happened over and over and over again and everybody that we love that we look back over in the communist marxist tradition they dealt with these versions in their time and they dealt with them harshly you know um i think of so many examples of these sorts of

revisionists or right deviationists or social chauvinists um that appeared alongside every socialist and communist movement throughout history they always act like they're rediscovering this new line for the first time but it's been iterated again and again and again and principled communists have always fought against it and we have that responsibility again um alison i have one more question for you before we wrap up if you if you're cool moving into the a i just a tad i think we should uh probably do a whole you know episode on this i mean people really loved our our last episode on artificial intelligence and silicon valley we did like a year or so ago.

And I think, you know, we might be due for having one again. But you have said in the past that you've kind of been, you know, you've argued that you're kind of deflationary on LLMs in particular and maybe AI something broader than that. I'm wondering if you're, if you can maybe restate that position just to make that clear and then see if you've changed positions or if there's a nuance to that position because I'm increasingly sort of increasingly concerned that AI really is going to be impactful. And I see when the governments of China and the United States in particular are dumping so much resource, so many resources and they're deregulating and taking the, in the U.S., taking the guardrails off of AI development, there seems to be a structural belief among many, many countries that this is going to be absolutely huge. And so that kind of, you know, gives me pause as well. So I'm wondering if you could just give me your opinion, because I'm genuinely, just personally interested in it. Yeah, I mean, I think my stance on AI is pretty similar to what it's been historically. So, like, broadly, one, I still maintain that the concept of AGI artificial general intelligence is basically hype, right?

Like, if you go listen to our previous episode, I stand by my position that I articulated there, that we don't know enough about what either consciousness or intelligence is to have any confidence that the things we're building are moving towards that. I think it is a misunderstanding of what LLMs are and what we know about consciousness to believe that, there's a bridge that we are gapping with just making them more complex. So I would stand by that. At the same time, I don't think that means LLMs and AI, which is this much more imprecise term, are not, you know, dangerous and destabilizing and massively shaking things up and changing things, right? They obviously are. I think that is very clear. And I think we are seeing massive economic impacts and social transformation coming from them. At the same time, I also just, you know, I do think there's a bit of a bubble, right?

Like these companies that are running this are not running at profits. They are not charging the amount of money that would be necessary to actually sustain this technology in terms of the cost of keeping it running. And so as a result of that, what is still kind of keeping them afloat is investment and finance capital. And obviously the state investment has really increased both in the U.S. and in other countries in a way that might just keep them afloat until they saw, some of the profitability problems, but it also might be creating an even bigger bubble that

could have massive destructive impacts on society if it were to burst someday. It's a little unclear to me, honestly, what the future holds in relation to AI. But I do think, you know, I would not want to downplay the transformative effects of it. I think all the AGI stuff is mostly bullshit and it's mostly hype and it's mostly marketing. But I also think AGI is not what we have to be scared of, you know, whether or not the models have actual generalized intelligence is a separate question from whether or not they can take millions of jobs. And I think that is a reality we're probably moving towards now. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I think that's a really nuanced and sober analysis of the situation. I totally agree with you. AGI and ASI artificial superintelligence. This is a lot of hype. But I think the crucial thing is that it doesn't need to get there, right? We don't really need to understand consciousness. We don't need AGI as it's presented to be massively disruptive. and disruptive across the entire spectrum of jobs, you know, blue collar, white collar, and everything in between, to have huge massive economic pressures on this system and to create real problems for many, many people.

And then there's this element of the arms race, the way that AI is being integrated by Israel, by the United States, into their colonial and imperialist apparatuses. that is incredibly concerning. And we've seen in previous iterations of this thing happening, arms races leading to massive developments in technology, which are used in brutal conflict, and then become, you know, tossed down into the broader consumer economy, trickle down into the broader consumer economy after during such an arms race. So I think there's a lot of destabilization coming regardless of whether, you know, this is overhyped or underhyped.

I think the disruption is already here. in a lot of ways and it's going to be really interesting to see. And I think it also is a core contradiction of the capitalist system, right? The Marxist understanding is that radical changes in the productive forces create cause conflict and social tumult. And whether this is underhyped or overhyped, the fact that it's going to be disruptive at all in a really, I think, serious, in a serious way is a noticeable and significant shift in the productive forces that puts pressure on the relations of production. Because if you have a couple companies owning AI and AI even comes up to 40% of what these companies are hyping it to be, you have enough displacement to cause

10, 20%, 30% unemployment. And at the same time, you see the world's first trillionaires emerge as the owners of these companies. I think that's going to put enormous pressure on like the core logic of capitalism itself that that is that is going to create again crises collapses and opportunities along the way and and i i i see this as being a really scary tumultuous time but a time when the capitalist system will be i think increasingly fighting fighting for its life and more than that fighting for its legitimacy in the eyes of most people yeah yeah no i agree with that I think it will be, and I think the massive amount of declassing and unemployment that this technology can create, you know, it's the classic thing that I keep asking myself where I'm

like, what's the long-term game that these capitalists are playing? If everyone's out of a job, they're not going to have income to consume and consumption has become the core of so much of the American economy. Like, how do they think this ends? And I'm reminded of a thing that Marx and Ingalls say over and over again, which is that markets under capitalism are anarchy, right? Like people aren't making those long-term considerations. They're not wrestling with the contradictions that are at play that could lead to the entire collapse of the thing that they're trying to build. And as Marxist, we have a methodology that allows us to see those contradictions, that

allows us to understand how they're developing. And so I think you're right, we need to be very attentive to how these shifts are coming and what the economic changes are because I think the anarchy of the market kind of fucking reigns right now with this technology. And no one is making decisions about how civilization is going to continue necessarily. They're just short-term profit grabbing as quickly as they can. Yeah, and I think that really proves the superiority of the Chinese system,

regardless of what it actually is in its nature of socialism or capitalism, this superiority of the concerted long-term ability for a state apparatus with widespread mass support to be able to plan ahead, complete projects, have a five-year plan, a 10-year plan, a 20-year plan. I mean, this is rational planning, right? This is centralized planning, which is a core socialist concept, which is a superior model to even the U.S. capitalist system, right, even if you take out the critique of capitalism, even if you take out the corruption inherent in the system, and you just take it for face value fifth grade social studies class, we have checks and balances, we have a constitution, we have two parties that switch positions every four years. in the context of broader crises, this ping-pong effect back and forth disallows the system and the checks and balances themselves, disallow the system, the adaptability and flexibility required of it to navigate the exponential growing threats of things like AI, climate change,

etc. It's supposed to slow everything down because we're thinking of a constitution constructed in the 1700s when the pace of life and technological development, was radically different. You add on top of that already creaky, old, outdated, slow by purpose system, add on top of it the anarchy of the market. You add on top of it the insane corruption. You add on top of it the delegitimization crisis among the public. And you're, like I said, you're in for a collapse. The momentum of this system is heading right into a brick wall. And I think this is another inflection point where you see rational organization of the economy by the Chinese communist. party in the state apparatus as a much more responsible, flexible, interestingly and ironically, more flexible and adaptable because the pretense of liberal democracy is this is a system that is in constant dialogue with the masses and is responsive. And, you know, this Chinese system is authoritarian and dictatorial. And it's like people are scared to tell Xi what's really happening. It's like that's so the opposite of the truth. Actually, ironically,

central planning gives that system much more adaptability and flexibility and precision in its short, medium, and long-term goals than the political system, which in a lot of ways is a political reflection of the anarchy of the market, right? Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I think that is the reality of it. And yeah, any level of central planning, whether or not one conceptualizes it as capitalist central planning, is going to avoid the problems that, like, the massively hands-off system that we see in the United States has. I think that all, you know, makes sense.

Definitely. Absolutely. And just the irony of the Chinese system actually having much more widespread popular support than the U.S. system, which is supposed to be democratic versus authoritarian, like this, all the ideological mystifications that this system has built itself and perpetuated itself on are falling apart in a very, very short amount of time. And it's fascinating to watch it happen. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, the situation in L.A. is developing. Obviously, I think if things take a crazy turn or just in due time, Allison and I will revisit the topic. We'll keep a close eye on it. Obviously, our hearts and our sympathies and our solidarity goes out to anybody and everybody across the country, fighting this fascist state and this deportation machine, standing up against ICE and the FBI and this brutal, militarized state apparatus that is defending this system and scapegoating. powerless people. And yeah, we'll definitely keep our eyes on it. And thank you to everybody that supports the show. And Allison, do you want to have any last words before we wrap up? Yeah, no, I mean, all I got to say is like, you know, I think as we've expressed, this is a time of tension. But what I'm seeing makes me hopeful. I have nothing but solidarity to people who are saying no to their

neighbors being kidnapped, who are saying no to this rise of repressive fascism in the United States. And the fact that we're seeing that resistance is a real sign of promise, right? And so I hope. that as scary as everything is, we can also feel some hope there in a way that is motivating and can cause us to go out and do the work that's necessary now. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.