As Marxists warned last year and the year before that, the crisis in the housing market, so long suppressed by the last-ditch stabilizing measures  of the U.S. government, has finally broken out into the open. The contradiction was unsustainable: the working classes have been deprived of their income by death, disease, and economic manipulation, and are now being forced to pay back rent that the government suspended — rent that they can’t afford. Now that this larcenous manipulation — the issuing of what are essentially interest-free loans to banks and investors, billed in the presses as “relief” — has increased the cost of staple goods and threatens hyper-inflation, the political lackeys of the U.S. real estate capitalists are preparing to give the economy a strong dose of “shock therapy.” The real costs of the so-called “relief” are becoming more and more apparent.

In Connecticut alone, hundreds of working class families have been thrown onto the streets. A smoldering fire of evictions threatens to explode into a full-blown conflagration of houselessness far beyond the capacity of the meager resources allotted by the capitalist state to combat it.

This particular housing crisis was created by the COVID pandemic and the bungled half-measures taken by the government in response. Even as investors line their pockets, the working people sink deeper into misery. This stop-and-start “protection” has merely given the illusion of safety while allowing the capitalists to plunder the public coffers and leave growing numbers unhoused, food-insecure, and unemployed.

“I haven’t seen this in my 20 years working in Connecticut,” said David Rich of the Housing Collective in Fairfield County. Housing advocates are calling it the “perfect storm” for the working classes. The state reports a shortfall of more than 85,000 units of rental housing. As of late August 2022, only about 2% of the state’s rental units were available, which gives Connecticut the lowest vacancy rate in the U.S. Empire.

“The people who are coming into the shelter now were housed and [lost housing] either through evictions or being priced out of their housing,” said Michele Conderino of the Open Doors Community.

ACT CT, a bourgeois NGO operating in Connecticut to “address the root causes of poverty, addiction, and health,” released a report on the state of houselessness in Connecticut from data gathered on Tuesday, January 25, 2022. They identified 2,930 people who were unhoused in Connecticut on that date. Last year the same report identified 2,594 houseless persons. The very first wave of the crisis has seen an increase in houselessness by 13%, which is a reversal of a decade of decreases.

And it’s not only that there is insufficient shelter for rent — the protections for tenants introduced at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic have since been lifted and evictions are now being processed at an increasing pace. Those protections were still in place in January of this year, when the study was conducted, but in March there was a 70% increase in eviction filings — from an average of 1,469 each March to 2,490 in March of this year. The effects of this dramatic increase have not yet been seen.

What’s more, landlords have taken this crisis as an opportunity to drive rents up. Average rents across Connecticut are up 12% over the last 18 months and are projected  to continue rising.

Inflation caused by the capitalist printing of “free money” to the banks throughout 2020, 2021, and early 2022 has pushed many working class families already on the brink of poverty over the edge. Compounded with the lifting of eviction protection and the predatory housing purchases by huge investment firms like BlackRock, Mandy Properties, and Farnam Realty, the capitalists appear to be conspiring to drive working class people out of their homes.

There’s no sign this crisis will let up any time soon. In fact, every law of capitalist development points firmly to its intensification as the investment markets suffer contractions and the U.S. Federal Reserve withdraws its offerings of what was essentially, until now, free credit to the banks and investors. All this adds up to a worsening crisis for working class families in Connecticut and across the U.S. Empire. 

Houses and apartments are “withdrawn” from the market for a “more profitable” resale or investment. There are 700,000 unoccupied units of housing in Connecticut. The owners of these properties refuse to rent them, for the selfish reason that they can make more money by waiting and using their real estate holding sas passive investments to sell as they “appreciate” in value than they can by renting them. In other words, under capitalism, housing is often more profitable when it isn’t actually used for housing. These landlords buy up all the property, wait for desperation and misery to increase, and then sell them at huge profits.

But why is all this happening? The greed of a few is the dispossession of many.

Let’s step back to the beginning of the COVID pandemic: To save the lives of millions, measures were implemented to keep many from going to work. Clumsy half-measures at alleviating pandemic-induced poverty were adopted by the government. But the government’s policies weren’t stringent enough to burn out the disease (unlike the zero-COVID plan in China) and weren’t liberal enough to keep the markets functioning.

While “essential” industries (from food processing to restaurants) were kept open and the workers there were subject to sickness and death, other workers, especially the labor aristocrats and petit-bourgeoisie, were protected under stay-at-home orders. COVID-19 was permitted to rage among the poorest strata of the laboring classes, resulting in government-sanctioned social mass murder.

But, for the capitalist economy to function, for money to circulate, for stocks to stay high, for banks to remain solvent, eventually even those labor aristocrats and petit-bourgeoisie had to go back to work. To support capital during the initial period, the Federal Reserve began issuing what were essentially interest-free loans to banks and investors. Then, under immense pressure from their capitalist masters, the government declared the pandemic was “over” and forced everyone back to work by removing all the protections it had extended: rent and eviction protection, mandatory or free COVID tests, free vaccinations and boosters, school closures, work closures.

The capitalists and their lackeys in government have the tools to alleviate the misery they’re creating. The unhoused merely have to seize this property or have it ordered available by the government; that this is unthinkable speaks to the power of the bourgeoisie to command not only the police force, but the very halls of government.

The pandemic has not ended. The capitalist government did not provide long-term solutions for anything. Neither the disease, which continues to ravage and kill, nor the economic problems, which were shifted from the ruling class onto the working classes, have been addressed. We shouldn’t be surprised by any of this.

The government has worked tirelessly to do what is best for the capitalists. When the capitalists were afraid they might be infected, a limited amount of protections were put in place. After they’d had enough time to develop suitable defenses, like monoclonal antibodies or increased security and temperature screening in their walled gardens, they told everyone “Hey! Get back to work! And by the way, you still owe me a year’s rent.”

This is a stark example of the contradictions at the heart of the capitalist system. The government, composed of the representatives not of the renters, but the landowning classes, can’t order the forgiveness of the overdue rents (doing so is actually constitutionally forbidden, because that would be considered a “taking”), nor can it afford to pay those overdue rents itself.

Where are public funds being spent? Not on the unhoused, those with marginal housing, or those working people being forced out of their longtime homes. Rather, the State of Connecticut just held a lavish state funeral for two Bristol police officers, costing tens of thousands of dollars, diverting millions in state resources, and drawing tens of thousands of fascist fellow-officers and fascist cop supporters from across the country. Indeed, every city in Connecticut is increasing funding for the police across the board.

Thousands of evictions are expected each month going forward. The dreaded “cliff” is still ahead of us: the sharp and sudden explosion of litigation and summary process that will drive thousands of working-poor people onto the streets across the U.S. Empire.

With this crisis now coming to a long-anticipated head, the subterranean contradictions of capitalism, its sometimes-hidden brutality, stands revealed and unveiled for all to see. In response, tenants unions are springing up across the state, but this will not alone stem the tide. Only a united coalition  of unhoused councils, unemployed committees, and housing justice activists, led by a strong Communist movement, can bring the capitalists to heel and force them to concede ground.

Last weekend, for the first time, the Cuban Mission to the United Nations was permitted to send delegates to the state of Connecticut to meet directly with the U.S. people. This visit comes at a time when the island of Cuba is in dire need. The Trump government reversed gains won by the working classes of the U.S. Empire under Obama, not only undoing the steps the Obama government had been forced to take, but instituting 243 new, choking, sanctions rules, denying the Cuban people critical supplies and trade.

The delegation was led by Cuba’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta. Ambassador Pedroso was accompanied by the Deputy Representative, Yuri A. Gala Lopéz, Minister Counsellor Roberto Hernández de Alba Fuentes and Second Secretary Ernesto Sierra Pérez. Normally, members of the Cuban mission to the UN are not permitted to leave the ten-block area around the United Nations building in New York; the U.S. Empire does not have relations with the country of Cuba and does not recognize its diplomats. This was highlighted by a story Ambassador Pedroso told — he once tried to test the boundary by walking beyond the ten blocks. FBI agents sprang out of the ground and escorted him back, informing him that he “had to step back to the other side of the street.”

For two years, Connecticut’s José Oro has been working on bringing the Cuban mission to Connecticut. José is a Havana-born Cuban engineer who lives in North Haven, Connecticut and writes extensively for the website Cubadebate. He’s spent the past two years lobbying interest groups and state officials to permit the delegates from the Cuban mission to come to Connecticut in the hopes of building solidarity between the U.S. people and economically embattled Cubans. Enlisting the aid of the Greater Hartford Cuba Solidarity Committee and Connecticut State Assemblyman and Deputy Speaker for the Connecticut Hout Edwin Vargas, his efforts have borne fruit.

State Department approval was required to permit the embassy to leave its ten-block confines. It was through the efforts of Assemblyman Vargas that the Biden regime’s Secretary of State finally approved the visit. The ambassadors came to Connecticut for two days, 9 and 10 September, and made stops in Hamden, Hartford, and New Haven. They spoke at Quinnipiac University, the SEIU headquarters, and the New Haven public library before returning to the embassy in New York.

While we waited for the ambassadors to arrive at the SEIU headquarters (they had been delayed by late state department clearance), José recounted what Cuba had been like before the revolution: “They say it was flourishing. That’s a lie. It was flourishing… if you had money, were white, were Christian.” He told the gathered audience, consisting of delegates from the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America, the New Britain Racial Justice Coalition, the Connecticut Green Party, and other activist organizations, that he had grown up in an upper middle-class family in Havana. The island was heavily divided by class — and, as a result, race. José described the Catholic school in Havana he attended, run primarily by Quebecois priests. There were no Black Cubans there. Later, after the revolution, José asked the priests, “You taught us that we were all children of God… why didn’t you let Black children in?”

“It wasn’t up to us,” the priests told him. “If we had let a single Black student into the school, your parents would have pulled you out, just like that.”

This is the pre-revolutionary legacy that still lives on in Miami. “Most of the Cuban descendants in America don’t want to strangle Cuba,” he said. “That position belongs to an ultra-right group who live in Miami mansions. Unfortunately, they are very powerful. It is up to us to counteract them.”

Deputy Speaker Vargas inveigled against the powerful interests in the Democratic party that forced it to bow to the Miami rightists. “They’ll never be on our side, no matter what we do,” he cautioned. Nevertheless, he warned that the jackals of the Biden administration have abandoned their campaign promises to normalize relations with the island of Cuba precisely to appease this group of wealthy Cuban exiles. “They’re ultra-right racists,” he thundered, “And if the United States can have normal relations with the most repressive countries in the world — Saudi Arabia, which oppresses women and gay people, for example — then we should be able to have normal relations with this little island that’s only ninety miles away.”

The ambassadors arrived to a standing ovation. Ambassador Pedroso began with a summary of the current relations of the U.S. Empire and Cuba. The 243 new economic measures put in place by Trump he characterized as a “strategy of maximum pressure.” As Trump fled office, in his last days, he added Cuba to the U.S. list of sponsors of state terrorism. Biden failed to review the sanctions — worse, the Biden regime has adopted new actions with the aim of enforcing the embargo. It was Biden who refused to permit Cuba to purchase oxygen during the COVID pandemic, Biden who maintains the economic stranglehold that threatens Cuba.

“It is important,” said Ambassador Pedroso, “that there are people who are working for change, and equally important that there are people who believe change can come. There is nothing in Cuba against the U.S. people. You are welcome in Cuba with open arms. Still, we are here; and we will be there. We have the right, and we have the determination to resist. We are not going to yield.”

The ambassador thanked Connecticut especially for starting the car caravans to protest the U.S. blockade, which have become a staple of pro-Cuba demonstrations across the country. They know, he told us, back in Cuba what we’re doing to try to put pressure on our bourgeois politicians. International solidarity is a keystone not only of good morality, but of Cuban policy.

He went on to describe the ways that Cuba lived up to its moral obligation of solidarity. “We send aid and, unlike the U.S. aid, the World Bank, and so forth, we take nothing back when we go.” The Cuban soldiers in Angola, he reminded us, were not there for imperialist plunder, but to end apartheid. When they left, the only things they took with them were the bodies of the Cubans who had died fighting that evil regime.

The Cuban medical cooperation missions are a point of pride. “We do not force those doctors to go abroad. They read the contract and they have the choice. And if they do go, they still get their salary at home while they’re gone,” he explained, to dispel the pernicious myths constantly repeated in the bourgeois press by figures like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Even when Cuba really didn’t have doctors to spare, during the pandemic, they sent doctors to Italy and the colonized periphery. Ambassador Gala added, “We do not say ‘here, have our leftovers,’ we say please, take some of the little resources we have because we want to share.”

The COVID pandemic, Ambassador Pedroso said, had marked the point of reversal from the victories the working people of the U.S. had won against the blockade. It was an opportunity for the rapacious business interests in the U.S. to turn back the clock. Capitalist crises were striking, exacerbated by the COVID crisis. U.S. businesses want to minimize their exposure. But, the ambassador warned, even under the logic of capitalism, the embargo is “a non-sense.” Cuba would pay for the commodities it needs, would help the capitalists in the short term. Their natural desire for markets is being overridden by the ultra-right elements in Miami.

Then, he pointed to Cuba’s incredible achievements, even under the embargo. Only three countries were able to manufacture COVID vaccines: the U.S., biotechnological center of the world, business and corporate center of the world; the Russian Federation; the PRC; and Cuba. Out of these four countries, Cuba is the only one that had not two, but three different vaccines. “Why is this? What is behind this?” he asked. Cuban investment not in imperialist missions, but in the people. Education. Empowerment. The rugged self-reliance of a free people; he did not say as much, but the rugged self-reliance of a Communist people.

Afterwards, José approached me and greeted me warmly. We’ve only met a few times, through other activist circles, but he was as warm as if I were a long-lost comrade. He told me that, although he was born in Havana, he loves New England, and that he was working on getting Governor Sununu to invite the Cuban ambassadors to New Hampshire. He pumped my hand as he said, “His grandfather was an American soldier stationed in Havana during the Spanish-American War. Imagine, a Republican governor meeting with the ambassador. There is a saying in Spanish: whatever hole or crack, the water must get in the coconut.”

Whatever way, we will end this blockade.

The Connecticut regulatory agency, Public Utilities Regulation Authority (PURA), ordered a moratorium on stopping gas, electric, and water services to residential customers for non-payment on March 12, 2020. Connecticut is the last state with an energy payment moratorium. Now, energy companies Eversource and Avangrid are asking PURA to end the shutoff moratorium and permit them to turn off power to over 20,000 residents of Connecticut in the middle of August, following a record-breaking heat wave and before the onset of what is predicted to be an exceptionally cold winter.

More than 20,000 of the poorest families in Connecticut are now threatened with shutoffs that could last until November 1st when this year’s Winter Moratorium goes into effect. The Winter Moratorium may restore service for those families come November, but it requires residential customers of power and heat to know and apply to prevent utility shutoff during Connecticut’s coldest months. This would leave houses without heating during the Connecticut winter which can be killingly cold. Worse, if PURA lifts the shutoff moratorium, families that are already struggling to make ends meet will see their refrigerators turned off and food they can’t afford to replace will rot and life saving medicines such as insulin to expire. If another heat wave arrives before November, these families will be trapped in overheating homes. With functioning air conditioning, Connecticut averages one heat-related indoor death a year.

Eversource and Avangrid claim $171 million dollars in bills overdue by more than sixty days. Many of these residents will never be able to pay off the back bills, which can amount to over $2,000. “When people who have a $1,500 back bill think their service is going to be shut off, and they call the company and someone says, ‘If you pay $200 a month, we won’t shut you off,’ – in my experience, they’re gonna say, ‘Sure, I’ll pay the $200.’ They’re so relieved they won’t have their service shut off, but the reality is, they can’t afford it,” said Bonnie Roswig, an attorney at the Children’s Center for Advocacy, which provides legal services for low-income residents. That’s the goal. Energy prices are at all-time highs thanks to the imperialist war between US proxy Ukraine and the Russian Federation. Euro-American sanctions have interrupted the global oil and gas supply, which is highly reliant on imports from Russia, to try to bring the Russian state back into the orbit of Europe and NATO. To date, the sanctions have only managed to increase the causes of inflation and to increase energy costs. While Avangrid and Eversource are reaping untold profits from this imperialist war, they have the audacity to stand before the Connecticut regulators and beg poverty so they can squeeze another few million dollars from the most impoverished people in Connecticut.

What can you do?

If you’re in Connecticut, you need to talk to other residents. Keep an eye on the developing news. If PURA agrees to resume power shutoffs, you need to be prepared to help. Households with no power will need more food assistance—and food pantries around the state are already at a historically depleted level. You should talk to other radicals in your community and prepare for the crisis that appears to be developing.

PURA is a regulatory agency, which means it’s less susceptible to class power—that is, to marches and demonstrations—then, for example, elected officials like mayors, city councilors, and the state legislature. That doesn’t mean PURA will ignore pressure from the mobilized working classes. Marches are not likely to affect PURA, but pickets around their offices at 10 Franklin Square in New Britain won’t go unnoticed. Plan your actions now and exert pressure before PURA makes the decision to reinstate power shutoffs.

Only together, as the mobilized and active elements of the working classes, can we stop the monopolists at Avangrid and Eversource, who already prey on the poorest among us, from further exploiting the working people of Connecticut. Stand fast, and stand together, against the big bosses and their political agents!

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.