EDITORIAL
Resist Trump’s Wave of Repression
—or All Workers Will Pay a Price

Sep 21, 2025

Bowing to demands made by the Trump administration, Disney indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel. The popular late-night host may be the target, but his suspension shows that anyone can lose their job. And that is exactly the point.

What was the terrible thing that Kimmel said? He dared to accuse Trump of cynically using the assassination of Charlie Kirk to justify new attacks on Trump’s critics.

Well, isn’t that’s exactly what Trump is doing? Within hours of the murder, Trump’s department heads rushed to attack anyone who had said anything against Kirk, or anyone who was on what Trump called his “enemies list.”

A teacher made a comment in a private chat room—only to discover he was fired. Hundreds of workers were axed or disciplined—by airlines, restaurants, schools, universities, law firms; by an NFL football team and a print shop, even by the Secret Service and army regiments.

Newspapers were threatened with lawsuits; TV networks, with loss of licenses; universities and school systems, with loss of funds. Small shopkeepers were threatened by thugs who demanded they put up posters praising Kirk.

Vice-President JD Vance called on his supporters to report people they heard saying anything negative about Kirk. Extreme-right activists trolled through social media to find comments, and identify the people who made them. One of those trolls bragged to the Wall Street Journal that she had reported 471 people to their employers in just two days’ time.

In reality, many people had negative things to say about Kirk, since he had tried to cement white-supremacist ideas on parts of the working class. He denigrated women’s capacities and denied their right to make their own decisions. This self- proclaimed advocate of “Christianity” and “family values” said that the death of a few children is the price we have to pay to protect the Second Amendment and the “right to bear arms.”

So, we face a campaign of repression, and not just about Kirk. From the beginning, it was also about Trump, targeting those who criticized him. But it’s not just Trump. acting like the gold-plated autocrat he always aspired to be.

This is Trump being a two-bit figurehead for some of the wealthiest people in the country. They want more tax cuts like the trillion-dollar cut that Trump just gifted them. They want more tariffs that favor their businesses. They want the U.S. military sent to defend their profits overseas. And they want the working class kept in check so they can squeeze everything they can get out of its labor.

Trump may have expected everyone to jump when he launched his latter-day witch hunt. Some people wouldn’t jump. Good!

But, repression won’t be stopped only by people who resist as individuals, no matter how courageous they are. Repression will be stopped by force. And it’s the working class that can have the necessary force—when it organizes itself.

Today, the working class doesn’t seem prepared to take that step. In many cases, it is divided—and people like Trump and Kirk have been working to drive wedges into the working class, splitting it to pieces that fight over crumbs.

But the working class has overcome its divisions before. Sometimes its most desperate, driven-down parts found the way to start the fight that pulled the rest of the class behind them.

We don’t seem to be there, you say? Maybe not. But we could be there. The working class can rush onto the scene ready to fight, faster than anyone realizes. It can build its own organizations from the ground up, sweeping away anything that would handcuff it, whether Turning Point USA or the unions as they are today. In any case, we have no other choice. Either the working class will organize itself or barbarians like Trump will impose repression, economic catastrophe and war.