A Walmart spokesman gave the following statement regarding the closures:

The decision to close these stores was made after a careful review of their overall performance. We consider many factors, including current and projected financial performance, location, population, customer needs, and the proximity of other nearby stores when making these difficult decisions

This is a perfectly normal decision for any capitalist firm to make; it is the inevitable logic of the capitalist firm put into action.

Like all capitalist firms, Walmart Inc. exists for one reason, and one reason alone: to generate profits for its shareholders, especially the monopolist families who own the largest stakes. If one of its locations is “underperforming,” if it is failing to generate profits at an acceptably high rate, then the firm will dispassionately cut its losses and shutter its less-profitable stores — no matter how many workers are left jobless in the process,; no matter how the poorest and most vulnerable consumers in the surrounding community are affected. Such retreats are individually of little consequence to a massive firm: Walmart Inc. owns around 5,000 locations within the U.S. alone. Closing a few “underperforming” stores is nearly insignificant to the corporation’s monopolist major shareholders. And so, Walmart’s executives, as the dutiful servants of these monopolists, will reflexively amputate their “excess” properties without a second thought, the same way a millipede might instinctively amputate one of its own multitudinous legs.

All of this is straightforward enough. But the U.S. corporate media has an odd way of “interpreting” Walmart’s closures.

In a December 2022, interview with CNBC, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, made the following remark:

Theft is an issue. It’s higher than it’s historically been. [McMillon cites no evidence for this claim, because there is no evidence.] And we’ve got safety measures, security measures, that we put in place by store location. I think local law enforcement being staffed, and being a good partner, is part of that equation… It’s really city by city, location by location. It’s store managers working with local law enforcement. And we’ve got great relationships there, for the most part. That’s the way we approach it.

Note that McMillon regards the U.S. Empire’s police forces not merely as a public “service,” but as a “good partner” to the capitalists. His characterization is absolutely correct: the police in this country, as in all capitalist countries, exist not to “protect and serve” the people, but to protect the private property, and thus the profits, of the capitalists, and to serve the capitalists by repressing, through everyday brutality and terror, the poor and the racially oppressed masses — the so-called “criminal elements.”

When asked if it “matters” that police sometimes neglect to arrest shoplifters “below certain levels” — as if anyone should care that someone walks out of a Walmart with a few unpaid-for cans of food, or a pack of socks, or a handful of school supplies — McMillon replied with a warning: “If that’s not corrected over time, prices will be higher, and/or stores will close.”

McMillon’s warning is at best a half-truth. Shoplifting is an infinitesimally small component of that determination. But exactly how small?

Lost merchandise is known as “shrinkage.” According to reliable reports in the capitalist press — that is, by the capitalists’ own admission — Walmart’s shrinkage amounts to approximately $3 billion per year, against a nearly $300 billion in total annual revenue (or, a loss of about 1% of its annual revenue). Of this shrinkage, about one-third is due to normal accidental breakage, another third to “employee theft,” and the last third to shoplifting. Thus, in sum, shoplifting costs Walmart about 0.3% of its total yearly revenue — a drop in the bucket, and a drop that every retailer, from mega-corporations down to the corner stores and street vendors, accounts for ahead of time, in the form of insurance. In other words, practically speaking, shoplifting costs Walmart Inc. absolutely nothing whatsoever.

When Walmart and other retailers raise prices, the underlying reason is not shoplifting. Prices rise, generally speaking, as a “normal” adaptation to inflation. At certain moments, prices may also rise when certain capitalists gain a momentary advantage in the market — for example, when they’ve rooted out competitors and cornered the market, when they’ve formed trusts and achieved a local monopoly, or during moments of acute crisis, when demand spikes and it becomes possible to price-gouge consumers.

Why, then, do Walmart’s corporate executives and spokespersons claim that petty theft is to blame for rising prices? In order to cast blame away from their firm, as an actor within a capitalist market; in order to fool its consumer base into blaming the public at large, and especially the poor — those most likely, owing to the desperation of poverty, to commit petty theft. This scapegoating of the poor appeals to reactionaries, especially to middle-class “small business owners,” professionals, and wealthy homeowners, who share with the capitalists an interest in exploiting and repressing the working-poor.

Some corporate media outlets have latched onto McMillon’s “old news” December 2022 interview with CNBC. These outlets are now spinning a narrative that Walmart’s Portland closures were forced by purportedly “rampant” shoplifting and “record-breaking retail theft” — that the mega-corporation has been so horribly bullied, abused, and taken advantage of by local poor people that it now has no other choice but to abandon Portland. Apparently, we are supposed to believe that Portland has descended into a kind of hellish anarchy, with hordes of bandits roaming the streets, mercilessly driving retailers out of business — one stolen can of soda and bag of chips at a time.

The fascist Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, even went so far as to allege on Twitter: “This is what happens when cities refuse to enforce the rule of law. It allows the mob to take over. Businesses can’t operate in that environment.” Liberals, including Portland’s Democrat mayor, Ted Wheeler, quickly pointed out to Governor Abbott that several Walmart locations across Texas have closed in recent years — but this is beside the point.

Needless to say, this hellscape-Portland narrative is nonsense, and only the most gullible, slack-jawed, dead-eyed, corporate-media-poisoned dolts will buy it for a second.

Actually, there is nothing exceptional about circumstances surrounding the Portland closures. Portland has not, in fact, descended into a hellish chaos of roving bandit mobs, like something out of a post-apocalyptic action film.

In fact, Walmart’s announcements of closures in February included ten locations across several states, including Arkansas, D.C., Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin; only two of those listed were in Portland. At the time, the company announced that the closures were due, simply and straightforwardly, to “underperformance.”

Even some liberal economists — those who aren’t out for blood, for expanded police militarization against poor and racially oppressed communities, at least — have acknowledged the unlikelihood that Walmart is closing its Portland stores due to shoplifting. A better explanation is that Walmart simply failed to corner the market in Portland; its overall market share was smaller and less competitive, and thus less profitable, than it wanted, so it packed up and left to find more fruitful territory. In one article, a market analyst is quoted as follows: “Walmart typically needs to be where they can be a big player and capture all the shares. There are some locations where they’ve struggled to gain a strong foothold, and they’ve left those places.” This explanation, straight from the mouth of a liberal professional whose very job is to advise capitalists on profiteering strategy, is straightforwardly correct.

Why, then, is the U.S. corporate media shamelessly lying about a purported Portland “crime wave” forcing retailers out of business?

Because the U.S. corporate media, in all its shades, is the loyal mouthpiece of the ruling monopoly-capitalist class.

That’s why even an event as mundane as an enormous retail firm closing a few of its less profitable stores must be twisted by “our” corporate media into a Poor Law narrative about the rapacious, self-destructive greed of the stupid, unwashed, savage poor, who must be reigned in by “our” military-dictatorship police, lest these animalistic masses tear apart “our” country’s very social fabric by a thousand cuts of petty theft.

The U.S. corporate media’s hatred of and contempt for the poor masses knows no bounds, and its propensity to demonize these masses with clumsily spun narratives and outright lies is untempered by any sense of human decency, journalistic integrity, or shame. But this wretched profession serves a purpose: in broadcasting their hatred and contempt for the vast majority of this country’s, and the world’s, human beings, for the poor and the dispossessed, the corporate media talking-heads serve, day by day, to normalize the misanthropic ideology of the capitalists. Our rulers will gladly watch as we starve, as we succumb to plague by the millions, as we suffer daily state-terror at the hands of the fascist police — so long as they can stave off a decline in their rate of profit, just a little longer. But the rate of profit is declining all the same, for this decline is a process built-in to the capitalist mode of production; it is a fundamental law of capitalism, and it will bring even the biggest firms crumbling down, just as erosion flattens even the tallest mountains.

On the night of February 21st 2022 in Providence, Rhode Island, the Red Ink Community Library’s “Red Book Day,” which gathered anti-capitalist forces from around the state in the form of anarchists, socialists, and Communists for a celebration of the anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, was cut short by shrieked racist slurs and sieg heils. It was only forty-five minutes into the reading when a bloc of fascists, adorned with sonnenrads and SS symbols, arrived to bait the Communists and fellow travelers into a physical confrontation. The assembled leftists showed more bravery and self control than the neo-Nazis had anticipated, and when the incident was said and done everybody walked away unharmed. Even so, the boldness and belligerence of the neo-Nazi attack and the fact that they were were not only prepared for, but hoping to provoke an exchange of street violence, reveals the danger their formations pose to organizers in Rhode Island.

It is critical to understand that this is not an isolated incident. Openly-fascist organizing is not new to Rhode Island, just as it isn’t new to any other state in the U.S. Empire. The attack on Red Ink fits neatly not only into the deeply reactionary, blood-soaked history of this settler-republic, but also tracks with an observed uptick in violent right-wing and paramilitary activity in New England generally, and Rhode Island specifically.

Two organizations, Patriot Front, which is a broad fascist organization headquartered in Texas, and NSC-131, a self declared neo-Nazi organization, are responsible for the bulk of fascist activity in Rhode Island. Both are a product of a milieu of new fascist organization that bubbles up from, and finds fertile soil in, a white suburban petit-bourgeoisie that finds itself increasingly subject to downward pressure and proletarianization. On the national stage, Patriot Front has launched a campaign of violent terror and reactionary propaganda against left-wing organizations and marginalized groups across the country. An accounting of all of Patriot Front’s vile acts is beyond the scope of this piece, but notably the organization recently found national attention after 31 of its masked and uniformed members, armed with bludgeoning weapons, knives, and handguns, were arrested in Washington State on their way to attack a local Pride parade. NSC-131 (“Nationalist Social Club,” an intentional nod to National Socialism, and 131 for ACA: Anti-Communist-Action) has a smaller, more regional footprint, operating in New England and based mainly in New Hampshire.

Between them and their partners the Proud Boys, as well as various presumably unorganized fascist elements in the area, a major intensification of fascist activity is sweeping the state. According to the Anti-Defamation League (a liberal organization with dubious politics which nevertheless offers systemic tracking of certain types of fascist activity), Rhode Island saw an increase of 384% in terms of incidents of white supremacist activity as measured by propaganda actions between 2019 and 2021. Propaganda depicting NSC as a white vanguard defending New England against a Black and Jewish “assault” has been distributed in several Providence suburbs and the city itself. According to the Providence Journal, in July members of NSC-131 were apprehended by East Providence police having just posted their racist flyers at the Gordon School on Maxfield Avenue, an institution that teaches children as young as five and as old as thirteen, and which touts itself as a leader in progressive and inclusive education in the state. It should be noted that the local police did not arrest the fascists because of an objection to the content of their propaganda, but rather because East Providence has a law against stapling paper to light posts and because the fascists refused to identify themselves when asked.

The attack on Red Ink is not alone; the local office of Black Lives Matter Providence was also attacked by fascists in December of 2021.

All the evidence points towards a steady increase in right-fascist numbers, determination, and organizational strength. Their campaign of terror and repression against the nationally oppressed, and against LGBT persons and persons of oppressed genders, in Rhode Island demonstrates conclusively that the most violent reactionaries have entered a new phase in the past few years, one in which their forces strengthen themselves and coalesce with ever increasing ferocity and speed.

As Communists, we understand that fascism is but the most naked, most brutal expression of the bourgeois dictatorship. We understand that American fascism traces its roots back not just to the legacy of Hitler and Mussolini, but back further, through the history of the Ku Klux Klan and the genocidal slave regime of the old south; through the settler militias which raped, murdered, and expropriated their way across an entire continent of indigenous peoples. We know that Patriot Front and NSC-131 and all the rest are the inheritors of the legacy of those who, by force of arms and fire and terror, brought down Reconstruction and foreclosed the possibility of a democratic revolution in the Black Belt, plunging millions of ex-slaves back into the most inhuman living conditions and ensuring that the centuries-old regime of white supremacy would continue to rule over the land unthreatened. These forces, working with the support, sometimes open, sometimes cloaked, of the imperialist ruling class, draw their foot soldiers from among the dissatisfied white male suburbanites and put them to work suppressing any movement which threatens the dictatorship of capital and the reign of white supremacy. The more conditions in North America worsen, the more profits dry up, the more the internal contradictions of capitalist society sharpen, the more emboldened these most reactionary of capital’s defenders will become; and, indeed, the more the capitalist bourgeoisie will rely on them to do their dirty work.

The workers, the nationally oppressed, LGBT persons, non-men, and everyone who stands on the side of progress and liberty must stand firm and stand together in the face of the fascist terror. We must turn to community self-defense and self-organization to turn capital’s foot soldiers away from our neighborhoods, our cities, and our childrens’ schools. We must be clear that antifascist street tactics can and do work when deployed by a determined, organized community. This does not mean seeking out and violently engaging the organized fascist right at the first opportunity. Launching ourselves ill-prepared against Patriot Front or NSC-131, challenging them on an individual basis in the streets, or allowing them to bait us into a confrontation that can only happen on their terms, things might satisfy our sense of justice or our immediate desire to engage in the struggle in a real and visceral way, but a rejection of studied tactics won’t make our communities any safer. Worse, when we are unprepared or unorganized and we engage on the terms set by the right fascists, it merely strengthens their resolve and increases their numbers. It is only through superior organization that we can carry the day.

Obviously, we cannot rely on the police to defend us. They support the American white supremacist status quo and many — a great many — individual officers are sympathetic to (or are actually members of) fascist organizations. We must rely on each other, instead. 

Talk to your neighbors, organize open and frank public conversations among those in your neighborhood who reject the encroachment of white supremacists into their streets. Develop plans for neighborhood watches in areas targeted by the fascists for propagandizing and recruitment. Educate yourself and your neighbors about self-defense and first aid. Prepare to send defenders to the Planned Parenthoods and mosques and synagogues and protests and marches and anywhere else the fascists dare to show their faces. Strengthen your connections with your community so that you can stand up against the enemy and teach them that the oppressed masses of this country will not be cowed by the fascist terror. 

New England neo-Nazi organization on the march in CT

In the past several weeks, the openly neo-Nazi organization “NSC-131” has stepped up its activities in Connecticut. The organization appears to have recently initiated a recruitment, visibility, and terror campaign across the state. Its members have so far flyered around Bristol, Hartford, West Hartford, and Southington, spreading their Nazi propaganda and seeking like-minded fascist militants.

Connecticut, as with other states in New England, has become a breeding ground for a new wave of fascist recruitment. For instance, one of the leaders of the Patriot Front, Alex Beilman, is a Meriden resident originally from Wallingford. And this isn’t the first time that NSC-131 has taken action in Connecticut: In May, for instance, NSC-131 members hung a Nazi banner from a Hartford overpass. The organization was founded in Massachusetts in 2019 and has been rapidly growing in numbers, expanding into new states and counties, and forming connections with other fascist organizations since then.

The basis of NSC-131’s ideology is white supremacy, with particular emphases on anti-blackness and antisemitism. The organization absurdly claims that white settlers in New England and the U.S. generally are “under attack” and must be “defended” from such “threats” as civil rights organizations (they name Black Lives Matter), Black and Latino street gangs, anti-fascists in general and Communists in particular, an elaborate (and fictitious) Jewish conspiracy, and the other usual targets of Nazi conspiracy theories and violence. “NSC” stands for “National Social Club”, which refers to the “National Socialism” of the Nazi Party, while 131 is a code for “Anti-Communist Action” (ACA).

NSC-131’s leader, a man named Chris Hood, came out of the “libertarian” fascist Three Percenter and Patriot Front organizations and is widely suspected by anti-fascist activists to be an FBI informant, as are many leading figures in civilian-fascist movements across the U.S. Other known members of NSC-131, whose identities were revealed in a doxxing campaign carried out by anti-fascist activists, include men by the names of Liam MacNeil, Andrew Hazelton, Harrison Fournier, Jeremiah Shivers, and Tyler Moody.

The forces of fascism at work in America

Who is Hood and who are his Nazi followers? White suburbanite psychopaths; the spoiled, dead-eyed sons of wealthy small business owners, landlords, real estate developers, white-collar professionals, and cops; silver spoon-fed university students at UMass Lowell; “security experts”, NRA-certified firearms instructors, members and ex-members of white-power militias, such as the III%ers; undercover cops and undisguised klansmen. NSC-131 is a club for future mass-shooters and fascist insurrectionists of the type who carried out last year’s January 6th pro-Trump coup attempt. These neo-Nazi civilian fascists are the shock troops, the unofficial brownshirts, and the state-sanctioned terrorists of the settler-capitalist ruling classes, and they will only become more violent and better organized as the accelerating periodic crises of capitalism jolt the imperialists and lesser capitalists into heightened panic and frenzied reaction against the oppressed masses.

Nazism is not new or foreign to this country, nor is it an aberration in American history. American neo-Nazism is nothing but the U.S. Empire’s founding principles taken to their extreme, yet logical, conclusions. This not-so-unique variety of fascism is the purest expression, unbridled by “liberal” sensibility and decorum, of the class interests of our propertied-settler enemies. In past decades, this American-made fascism has been taken up by Know-Nothings, Klansmen, Eugenicists, and Hitlerites, and represented by such captains of American expansion as Andrew Jackson, Henry Ford, and Ronald Reagan. A manifestly fascist America — the America represented by a president like Donald Trump, a ruthless billionaire like Jeff Bezos, and a reactionary jurist like Clarence Thomas — is the inevitable result of economic processes that began with the landing of English settlers in New England, their genocidal extirpation of the Native peoples, their enslavement of Africans in the Carolinas, and their militant expansion west. This is America.

Anti-fascist tactics and fascist reaction

Unfortunately, some of our anti-fascist comrades (and some long-time grifters operating in online anti-fascist spaces) have “taken the bait” and retaliated against this fascist upsurge from a weak and unprepared position. Uncensored images of NSC-131’s posters, flyers, and other promotional materials circulated online, going viral thanks to (rightfully) angry shares, effectively providing our enemies with free advertising. Without carefully censoring contact info, well-meaning but unthinking anti-fascist activists have all but ensured that NSC-131 will reach its intended audience of “disaffected” neo-Nazi youths. Meanwhile, the recent doxxing campaign against NSC-131 has, very predictably, provoked a violent reaction, against which we are unprepared to defend ourselves and oppressed communities in New England.

While we of course support any and all effective anti-fascist action, we implore our comrades to think as strategists, not as adventurists. Exposing, inconveniencing, intimidating, and street-fighting with fascists might offer catharsis to some, but such actions must be planned to inflict maximum damage with minimum repercussions, and self-defense against the inevitable fascist reaction must be prepared ahead of time. We must strike only once we can achieve a total, decisive, conclusive victory over our enemies, only once we can effectively end them. We must utterly destroy our enemies without getting destroyed in turn, and without allowing the oppressed masses to suffer the brunt of fascist reaction. We cannot sacrifice the safety of our comrades, our allies, and vulnerable persons among the oppressed masses for the fleeting dopamine rush provided by the sort of ephemeral, ultimately meaningless “victories” against a handful of opponents we saw this week.

Community self-defense urgently needed!

Fascist violence is almost never punished by the state. In fact, FBI operatives often groom and set loose mass shooters; the horrific mass shooting carried out in Buffalo this May is the most recent example of such operations. Aside from this, warning signs of violence from angry, anti-social white men are routinely “overlooked” and “ignored”, if not actively fostered, by the police and other agents of the State. That’s one of many reasons why we can’t trust the government, local or federal, to end the problem of rising fascism. And this is a problem — one that’s not going away.

So, what’s the alternative?

Community self-defense. The State will not defend oppressed communities; it is up to us to keep ourselves, our loved ones, our neighbors, and our communities safe from fascist violence. We must organize and defend one another.

So, what should you do?

Talk to your friends and family today. Talk about what’s happening with your neighbors tomorrow, and promise to look out for one another. Hold a community meeting this week. Go to your community centers, churches, mosques, synagogues; meet in libraries, public parks, and people’s homes. Learn self-defense and first-aid skills with your loved ones and neighbors. Organize a neighborhood watch and carry out patrols to keep the most vulnerable folks in your community safe. Calmly follow and intimidate civilian fascists and cops until they leave your streets.

Do not trust the police. Do not talk to the police. Do not rely on the police. The police support fascist violence. Cops and klan go hand-in-hand.

To our anti-fascist comrades:

We call on all anti-fascists in New England to go out and serve the oppressed communities targeted by the forces of fascism — civilian and State alike. Bring the masses education, raise their consciousness, hold mass meetings, learn from them and attempt to meet their needs, and organize and equip them with skills and tools in preparation for practicing community self-defense. Create the conditions that will allow us to victoriously and permanently expel NSC-131, Patriot Front, and all other civilian fascist organizations from our cities and counties.

We cannot win through superior arms — not yet. We cannot win through superior violence. Early clashes and confrontations, amateurishly instigated from a position of weakness, will only embolden, harden, and serve to expand NSC-131 and their larger network of fascist organizations; do not make the most vulnerable persons among the oppressed masses suffer the wrath of fascist reaction at this stage, when we lack the means to fight back and win. We can only win, long-term, through superior organization and superior strategy.

Update!

Since the writing of this article but before its publication, a local committee of concerned persons has formed in Bristol, Connecticut. This is the Bristol Anti-Racism Brigade (BARB), which has begun discussions about how to counter this open Nazi action.