LA riots and the Musk/Trump feud | AGAINST THE STREAM

This week, thousands of workers flooded onto the streets of LA in response to ICE agents raiding workplaces and neighbourhoods. Since then, Trump has tried to crush the movement by calling in the Marines and the National Guard. But in so doing, he risks provoking a mass movement similar to Black Lives Matter, which forced him into hiding in the White House bunker five years ago.

The democrats have attempted to attach themselves to this wave of protests. Posing as the ‘resistance’ and a friend to immigrants, they are attempting to direct it into safe channels. But the truth is, they are just as much enemies of immigrants as Trump’s republicans. Like all capitalist politicians, they use immigrants as scapegoats while exploiting them as extremely vulnerable labourers.

Trump is not only facing opposition from workers. The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, this week entered into a public feud with Trump over the ‘big beautiful bill’. With the American economy stagnating and debt piling up, this spat reveals the fact that Trump is in an impossible position: he cannot fulfil the promises he has made to American workers and their bosses at the same time.

To break down how communists should approach these problems, Jorge Martín and Hamid Alizadeh from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International sat down to discuss world perspectives on a special episode of Against the Stream, the weekly podcast of the RCI, giving you a Marxist analysis of world affairs.

Against the Stream premieres weekly on YouTube. Tune in every Thursday at 6pm London time, or catch up on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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0:00 Intro
1:07 LA protests against ICE
28:10 Immigration: a threat to the working class?
55:13 Musk/Trump feud