Racist Threats Force Historically Black Colleges and Universities to Go on Lockdown 

On the morning of September 11, multiple historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) across the South received racist threats against their campuses. The threats caused the schools to go on lockdown and call on students, faculty and school workers to stay away from the campuses. The lockdowns were lifted later in the day, but a number of campuses cancelled classes for the rest of the week out of caution.

The schools reporting receiving threats were Alabama State University, Hampton University (Virginia), Virginia State University, Southern University and A&M College (Louisiana), Bethune-Cookman University (Florida), and Clark Atlanta University. A number of HBCUs that did not directly receive threats, including Spelman College in Atlanta, also locked down or increased security measures out of caution. 

The exact content of the threats made against the HBCUs has not been made public. But according to the Washington Post, the threatening letter sent to Southern University “reportedly contained racist language and a reference to the recent fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte [North Carolina]. A homeless Black man with a history of severe mental illness has been charged with her murder.” A threat received by another HBCU had almost the same wording. The murder of the Ukrainian woman, which took place in August, has been seized on by Trump as further justification for fascist crackdowns across the country in the name of “fighting crime” and “restoring law and order.”

These threats against HBCUs—clearly intended to stoke fear and terror—came just a few hours after Donald Trump went on national TV from the White House to blame the “radical left” for the assassination of fascist agitator Charlie Kirk. As the statement at revcom.us on Kirk’s assassination and Trump’s distortions points out: “Trump has been joined in this stance by a unified chorus coming out from the fascist ranks—with major fascist spokespeople like Steve Bannon, Fox News host Jesse Watters, and Alex Jones all calling this ‘war.’ It is clear that, at this point, the assassination of Charlie Kirk is being seized on by the fascists to put all those who oppose them on the political defensive; to rally the MAGA-fascist troops to their banner; and to create the basis to do far worse highly repressive moves.”

One of the key things at the core of Trump/MAGA fascism (including what Charlie Kirk spread on campuses and the media) is undisguised racism and white supremacy. Under the banner of getting rid of “wokeness” and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), the Trump fascist regime has moved quickly from day one to demolish any and all attempts to reform the blatant discrimination, segregation, exclusion and erasure of Black and other oppressed people in this country, and bring back the overt racism and harsh and open discrimination that characterized all aspects of life in the U.S. until just 60 years ago. Kirk himself took blatantly racist stands such as denouncing the 1964 Civil Rights Act—which addressed some of the glaring inequalities against Black and other oppressed people—as a “mistake” and an “anti-white weapon.” He mocked Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as a “diversity hire” and made depraved statements belittling Black people such as, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

In the context of everything we have described above, these threats are ominous attacks and need to be taken very seriously.

New Facts About U.S. Sinking of Venezuelan Boat Expose Even More Clearly the Lawless, Murderous and Fascist Nature of This Mass Murder

Since our initial article on the September 2 attack (Trump Orders Assassination of 11 Venezuelan People in International Waters), new revelations and developments have underscored what we wrote then. ¹ 

• The New York Times reported that the boat—which Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed was an “immediate threat” to the U.S.—“had altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it.” This “turnaround” was edited out of the video the Trump regime released to the public. The Times quoted a rear admiral and retired top judge advocate for the Navy²: “If someone is retreating, where’s the ‘imminent threat’ then? Where’s the ‘self-defense’? [The threats are] gone if they ever existed—which I don’t think they did.”
• The Times article also reported that the U.S. continued “making repeated strikes on the vessel even after disabling it.” This too was edited out of the public video. 

Both of these revelations drive home that the U.S. attack was an act of terrorism, aimed at establishing U.S. dominance over a region one thousand miles away from U.S. shores (and against Venezuela in particular). 

A few days after the attack, Trump and his defense secretary Pete Hegseth, along with other top fascists, were in the Oval Office celebrating Trump’s executive order to change the name of the Defense Department to “Department of War.” To make it clear as day, Hegseth declared that this signified a new orientation for the military: “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.” 

Laws of war are supposed to protect children and other civilian noncombatants from being targeted, ban the torture or murder of captured prisoners, and so on. So think about what it means for these fascist leaders to explicitly say, “The law be damned, we’ll kill, maim or torture whoever the hell we want to”!

As days went by after the September 2 attack without the U.S. publicly presenting any evidence of their allegations about “narco-terrorists,” with the façade of “self-defense” shredded, and with no coherent legal theory that could justify the cold-blooded murder on the high seas, legal experts became more and more alarmed. As an example, three attorneys who had previously worked for the U.S. State Department on these questions spoke about the incident on a September 9 Just Security podcast. All agreed that what the U.S. had done was “murder” and a dangerous precedent. Host Tess Bridgeman summed up: 

Murder, extra-judicial killing. And I think it’s helpful if we think about the upshot here. If he can do it here, he can do it anywhere…. The president has claimed the authority to engage in premeditated murder of suspected criminals, without due process, trial or even an attempt to arrest or interdict.

Bridgeman went on to make another very important point that has come up from others as well: “And, the military has carried out that order.” 

In other words, in this “trial run” of Hegseth’s “lethality not legality,” a thoroughly illegal and immoral order—which U.S. soldiers are legally as well as morally bound to disobey—came all the way down the chain of command from Trump, and—at least as far as we know—everyone in that chain “did their part”… and became complicit in a fascist war crime. 

At the time of the September 2 attack, Secretary of State Rubio had boasted that “it’ll happen again.” And the U.S. has been building up massive air, sea, and land military forces in the Caribbean region. Propaganda and demonization directed at Venezuela’s president Maduro has escalated, and fears that the U.S. may attack Venezuela itself in some fashion loom larger and larger. Venezuela says that it too is mobilizing military defense forces around the country.

On September 13, Venezuela reported that a Venezuelan tuna boat in that country’s territorial waters was “illegally and hostilely boarded by a United States Navy destroyer” and that 18 armed personnel remained on the vessel for eight hours, preventing communication and the fishermen’s normal activities. They were then released under escort by the Venezuelan navy. 

Trump’s aggression against Venezuela is blatant, lawless, dangerous and utterly illegitimate in a half-dozen different ways. It sets an extremely dangerous precedent.

Brazilian Fascist Leader Bolsonaro Found Guilty of Coup-Plotting; Trump Fascist Regime Leaps to His Defense.

On Thursday, September 11, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro—along with seven of his top supporters—was found guilty of plotting an attempted coup, and sentenced to 27 years in prison. Brazil, with a population of over 200 million, is by far the most populous country in Central and South America, and it has a well-established judicial system. But Bolsonaro is a close ally of Trump, and the Trump regime has already responded, rejecting the judicial verdict of a sovereign nation with angry threats.

Bolsonaro built and led a powerful fascist movement in Brazil that looked back fondly on the 21-year-long military dictatorship that came to power in a U.S.-backed coup in 1964. By the time the military was driven from power in 1985, close to a thousand political dissidents had been murdered or “disappeared,” and more than 30,000 subjected to torture. (See “American Crime Case #86: 1964 Brazil Coup and Rise of Brutal Military Dictatorship.”)

Elected president in 2018, Bolsonaro was known as the “Trump of the Tropics,” and the two fascists strongly supported each other. Bolsonaro supporters sometimes wave U.S. flags to manifest their unity with Trump. 

Bolsonaro’s regime was characterized by extreme persecution of indigenous people and other minorities; and whole other level of plundering and destruction of the environment, including deforesting the vast and lush Amazon River Basin—known as “the lungs of the world"—to clear a path for wealthy landowners and mining companies; and refusing to respond to the COVID 19 epidemic, leading to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. 

Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is considered a “leftist.” Bolsonaro and his backers, following in Trump’s footsteps, went into overdrive, claiming the election had been “stolen” and preparing to seize power in a coup. This culminated—as it had with Trump—in an assault by thousands of his supporters on government buildings in the capital city, Brasilia, which was defeated by Brazilian police and armed forces.

Bolsonaro’s role in this was investigated and he was subsequently arrested and charged for plotting the coup. The Trump regime, on coming back to power, denounced these charges and blatantly tried to bully Brazil into letting Bolsonaro loose. The Trump regime imposed its highest tariffs—50 percent—on Brazil. It also imposed severe sanctions on supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes, who was hearing the case. 

Brazil responded defiantly, continuing the trial to its conclusion. President Lula stated, “The U.S. needs to know it’s not dealing with a banana republic.” 

The U.S. response to the verdict has been belligerent, and ominously vague. Secretary of State Rubio immediately tweeted: “The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “The president is unafraid to use the economic might, the military might of the United States of America…” in support of Bolsonaro. 

Another U.S. official said, “As long as Brazil leaves the fate of our relationship in Justice Moraes’ hands, I see no resolution to this crisis.”

The aggression against Venezuela and the threats against Brazil are sharp illustrations of this important truth from Bob Avakian's social media message @BobAvakianOfficial REVOLUTION #114, “Defeating Trump/MAGA fascism: Looking to some future elections... or working now to mobilize millions around this powerful unifying demand: The Trump fascist regime must go!”:

Trump fascism is a regime that openly and aggressively strips away basic rights and blatantly declares that there is no rule of law and due process of law other than what it dictates, and that raw destructive power is what must rule in the international arena, without even the pretense of adherence to international law or concern about the sovereignty, or even the right to exist, of less powerful peoples and countries.

Trump Now Says He's Sending National Guard Troops to Memphis

On September 12 Trump announced that he will send National Guard troops “and anybody else we need” (including regular military) to take over Memphis, Tennessee, in the name of “fighting crime.” He told Fox News that “the mayor is happy” and “the governor is happy” about the planned occupation.

It is true that the governor is happy. Unlike Chicago, which is a Democratic Party stronghold where a showdown was looming for the past several week, Tennessee is a bastion of Republi-fascists who have a supermajority in the state legislature. And its governor is a Trump loyalist who was already talking to Trump and figuring out “the best role for the National Guard alongside the FBI, state Highway Patrol, city police and other law enforcement agencies.” And he is one of the governors who sent National Guard troops to Washington, DC to support the occupation there.

However, the Memphis Mayor Paul Young, who is Black, is not happy. And neither are many other elected state officials. Following the announcement, Young said, “I did not ask for the National Guard and I don’t think it’s the way to drive down crime.” And the mayor of Shelby County, where Memphis is located, who is also Black, called Trump's plan “anti-democratic.”

Memphis fits Trump's overall racist strategy of using “crime” as justification to target and bring down more brutal repression on cities with large Black populations. Memphis is the second largest city in Tennessee, and one of the largest majority-Black cities in the country.

Tennessee State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, another Black official who represents parts of Memphis, said in an MSNBC interview: “It's no coincidence that we are a majority-Black city with Black people in positions of power here. It is nothing more than using our city as a white supremacist ploy to ensure that his base stays riled up. It is the presence of a military force in our city that is trying to send a message that we do not have the right or ability to self-govern, and that we, as Black folks, need to be managed by a white-supremacist president of the U.S. That's immoral, unjust, and un-American.”

Pearson also said that “Memphis will fight for itself” and “stand up against authoritarianism, a wanna-be dictator, and anyone who tries to do anything harmful to us.” Outrage is also growing again in Memphis over a judge's decision to grant new trials for three of the pigs convicted in the murder of Tyre Nichols in January, 2023 (see box).

In his social media message REVOLUTION #130, “Blatant racism, overall fascism—not ‘fighting crime’—is the basic reason why Trump is illegally using the military to occupy cities and terrorize people,” Bob Avakian (BA) makes this very important point:

Talk of “fighting crime,” to “justify” the use of the military to occupy cities, is just a means of carrying out even more blatant repression, unrestrained brutality and murder to which Black people, and others, have been subjected throughout the history of this country—and which the Trump fascist regime is determined to enforce without regard to, and in flagrant violation of, the Constitution and the rights of people that are supposed to be guaranteed in the Constitution.