Many have expressed astonishment at how readily universities, law firms and state governments capitulated to the Trump administration. We believe that not only did these entities surrender because they are highly dependent on federal funds, but they are all, at heart, defenders of capitalism – even if said to be liberal. The trajectory has many similarities to that in Europe in the 1930s.
American institutions
First to completely capitulate among the universities was Columbia, by agreeing to severely limit protest and discipline protestors with arrests, suspensions and expulsions; define antisemitism as any critique of Israel; ban masks; hire 36 security officers empowered to arrest students; appoint a provost to oversee the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies departments; and review diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. They also forced out at least one prominent professor who supported student protests. All this was done under threat of losing $400 million in federal grants, and for their surrender they were promised only further negotiations with the Trump administration. Columbia leaders have not protested the arrest and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, the graduate student it had chosen to bargain with during the protests in 2023, nor of Mohsen Mahdawi, another moderate protest leader.
Subsequently, other universities have been similarly threatened by the Trump administration. Northwestern, Brown, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, Princeton, and the State Universities of California and Minnesota have all been told they may lose millions of dollars.1
The vulnerability of all these institutions results from their dependence on $60 billion in federal money for research and development in 2023 alone.2
Harvard, the nation’s richest university, has been lauded for standing up to Trump’s demands, even threatening a law suit, but it didn’t start out that way. When Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first black and second woman president, was attacked by right wing Congresspeople in 2023 for supposedly not calling out antisemitism, she was pressured to resign.3 After Harvard’s April, 2024 student encampment to oppose Israel’s war on Gaza ended peaceably, the University suspended the Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, and more than 20 students were placed on involuntary leave or had their degrees delayed by a year.4 In October, Harvard temporarily banned 60 law students and two professors from the library after a silent sit- in.5 In January, 2025, Harvard agreed to the 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism that calls any targeting of the state of Israel antisemitic, that Trump has made official Civil Rights Policy.6
Only after Trump demanded that Harvard accept a “White House-approved external body to ‘to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity’, and that [it] immediately shutter all DEI programs’” did Harvard say no. Of course, given its endowment of $53.2 billion, Harvard is best positioned to resist the freezing of $2.2 billion, but now Trump is also threatening to reverse its tax-exempt status and perhaps raise the endowment tax. Even Harvard may not be able to hold out.7
In addition, nine law firms, some of whom had prosecuted cases against Trump, have now signed deals with him, even agreeing to supply the administration with nearly $1 billion in pro bono work.8 They fear the loss of corporate clients or security clearances. The liberal media, such as National Public Radio(NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System(PBS), have also come under threat. All fifty states have been informed that they must end DEI policies in public schools, and only 12 have refused to sign on.9 The administration also wishes to reshape public libraries’ priorities to promote American exceptionalism and cultivate patriotism. But even in 2023, over 4000 books were censored, mostly those involving LBGTG, black or other minority voices.10
Many have been horrified by the readiness with which these institutions have complied with the Trump administration, and they tend to forget that it all started under Biden. However, if we look back at how liberals responded as fascism came to power in previous times, we will find striking parallels. In some instances, as in Pinochet’s US-sponsored coup in Chile in 1973, all progressives were suddenly forcibly quieted. But in Italy and Germany before World War II, the liberals in those countries and in the West allowed or were even complicit in the move to the right.
Germany
After being defeated in World War I, Germany became a republic under a social democratic government known as the Weimar Republic. However, the Social Democrat Party (SPD), allied with the old economic and military elites of pre-war imperial Germany, seeing its priority as the maintenance of capitalism even while making some social reforms. Von Hindenburg, an aristocrat and former soldier became President in 1925. The postwar constitution also contained some provisions, such as Article 48, which allowed the president to rule by decree in emergency situations. As Rosa Luxemburg said in 1918, “what has been pasted together and called a socialist government, is nothing but a government representing the bourgeois counter-revolution.”11 She was assassinated the next year with the collusion of the SPD.
As the global economic depression of the late 1920’s took hold. Germany could no longer pay its debt stipulated by the Versailles Treaty that ended the war. By 1928, unemployment had risen fourfold, including virtually all young people, inflation was high, production decreased by 41% and poverty was widespread. From 1930-32, the increasingly rightwing government instituted austerity and deflation, tax increases and wage decreases. The SPD went along with this policy and refused to engage in workplace or non-parliamentary struggles.
Adolf Hitler founded the German National Socialist Workers’ Party (NSDAP) in 1920, which had nothing to do with socialism but espoused extreme nationalism and antisemitism. In 1923 Hitler made an unsuccessful coup attempt and was put in jail, where he wrote Mein Kampf. The Nazis blamed “money-grubbing financial capital,” the parliamentary system and Jews and Marxists for Germany’s problems. In 1928, the Nazis won 2.8% of the vote and had 100,000 members, by 1930 they had over 22% of the vote then 37.4% in 1932. Nazi membership expanded to 850,000 by 1933, as their violent armed forces, the SA, grew from 60,000 to 400,000. The Nazis courted favor with large industrialists and bankers, who provided the financing that allowed the Nazi movement to grow.
The German capitalist class feared a social revolution and hoped to use the Nazis to smash the labor movement, which was in large part led by communists. Nazi thugs had been attacking union workers without government interference for several years. In 1933, Von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor, as conservatives thought they could use him to form a majority cabinet. Meanwhile SDP persisted in its alliance with the bourgeois and conservative parties and limited itself to parliamentary struggle, refusing to ally with the communist party (KPD).
On January 30, 1933, terror was made legal and trade unions outlawed. Parliament was set on fire by Nazi forces and blamed on the communists. The KPD headquarters was closed and thousands of members arrested, and by May the SPD was also banned. The KPD continued organizing against the Nazis even through much of World War II.12,13
Where Were the Academic Liberals?
By 1933, German universities had emptied most universities of any faculty not committed to teaching and research promoting the superiority of the Aryan race. Frankfurt had been the first university to be attacked precisely because it was known as the most liberal. When the new Nazi Commissar showed up in 1933, he fired all Jewish and leftist faculty, and only a few others walked out with them. By that year 15% of faculty members were fired nationwide either because of their views or because they were Jewish.14 960 prominent educators signed a public vow of support for Nazism, including the renowned philosopher, Martin Heidegger.15
In 1936, Heidelberg University planned a huge international celebration of its 550 year anniversary. That campus was already decorated with a huge swastika, and students wearing brown uniforms marched beside Nazi soldiers. The rector publicly stated, “We do not know of or recognize truth for truth’s sake or science for science’s sake. We now seek a science… in accordance with the great racial and political task before us.” Universities in England, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and Canada refused to attend. In the US, Columbia readily accepted; there was some debate at the University of Michigan, but they did send a delegation.16
The Nazis also succeeded in changing the philosophy of the medical profession, replacing the doctors’ credo of caring for the sick to being responsible “for the promotion and perfection of the health of the German people.” Eugenics, originated by the British Sir Francis Galton in 1883, became the basis for widespread sterilization in the US by the 1920s. This concept of the genetically inferior weakening the stock of humanity was then applied by the Nazis to the sick and disabled as well as Jews. Over 45% of the medical community joined the Nazi Party as opposed to 1% of the general population. The Catholic church disapproved but only requested that Catholic doctors and judges be exempt.15
The Munich Agreement of 1934, which allowed Hitler to invade and colonize part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, was signed by England, France and Italy. As documented in a previous article on this blog – https://multiracialunity.org/2023/05/09/us-capitalists-supported-nazis-to-stop-communism-and-earn-millions/ – American capitalists heavily financed production under Nazism.
Like all the western democracies, the US saw Hitler as the spear to weaken the Soviet Union and was very slow to engage in the war. The USSR waged the deadliest and most pivotal battles against Hitler, at the cost of 24 million lives.17
And in Italy
Mussolini also came to power within the parliamentary system and also relied on wealthy financial supporters. His program of austerity and control of the labor movement was enthusiastically supported by those anxious to preserve profits. In 1922, the national Fascist party, the Liberal Party and the People’s Party (predecessor of Christian Democrats) introduced the “period of full powers” in Parliament, granting unprecedented powers to Mussolini’s Minister of Finance. In 1925, Mussolini was officially installed as dictator.
The British embassy and the international press gave full support to Mussolini. The well-known British liberal Montagu Norman, decried fascism in general, but as to Italian fascism, he said “this state of affairs is suitable at present and may provide for the moment the administration best adapted for Italy.”18
Liberal or Fascist, It’s Still Capitalism
As Berthold Brecht said
“The intellectuals cast a veil over the dictatorial character of bourgeois democracy not least by presenting democracy as the absolute opposite of fascism, not as just another natural phase of it where the bourgeois dictatorship is revealed in a more open form.”
So, as Marx and Brecht and many other critics of capitalism have made clear, capitalism is, in essence, a dictatorship of owners over workers. The political system is dedicated to maximizing profits, markets and resources, for if these fall then not only do individual producers, but the power of the state faces a decline. It is not a moral or a malleable process – it is the modus operandi of capitalism. Of course, workers have organized mass struggles and unions to improve working conditions and benefits, but there is a constant effort to limit or reverse these victories. In the US, only about ten percent of workers are now unionized, down by two thirds from the 1950s. The most heavily unionized are public employees, who are most often forbidden by law from using their most potent weapon, the strike.
Racism is a constant underlying principle of capitalism. It is the primary tool to keep workers divided and lower wages, benefits and social services for all. By preserving high unemployment, lower wages, poorer schools, housing and education for dark-skinned workers, immigrant, indigenous or religious minority workers the standards for all are lowered. Most important, workers are inundated with the idea that their problems are caused by workers of a different ethnicity, and separation in housing, school and workplaces allows these ideas to stay in place. Thus it was not difficult for Americans to accept slavery or Jim Crow or ongoing racial disparities or for Germans and Italians to embrace antisemitism.
When a capitalist society is powerful and highly profitable, as was the US after WWII, it is possible to pay higher wages and benefits and allow unions to grow. But when a capitalist society is declining in wealth and power, the true dictatorial nature of the capitalist class becomes more evident. Thus it is not surprising that the US ruling class and many liberals in the West saw fascism in Germany and Italy as a necessary response to desperate economic woes. They also feared that the revolutionary working class victory in the USSR would inspire similar revolts at home. Fascism could not only suppress domestic revolt, it could best defeat communism worldwide.
We Can’t Rely on Liberals to Fight Back
Many Americans are unhappy with the rule of Trump. He isn’t even lowering the cost of living, as many had hoped he would. Instead, his tariff policies are making everything more expensive. Although many citizens have been led to believe that immigrants are stealing jobs or committing crimes, a rising number are horrified to watch productive workers and students who have committed no crime being arrested and deported. Some are most horrified at Trump’s willingness to ignore judicial rulings and others at the massive layoffs and service cuts or his glee at continuing the genocide in Gaza.
But what frightens the liberals the most is that this discontent should express itself as mass rebellions, like strikes of workers or students, or that it should question capitalism itself. Hoping that workers will forget that Biden and other Democratic presidents restricted immigration, encouraged deportations, gave billions to enable Israel’s genocide, among other sins, liberal politicians have taken the anti-Trump movement’s leadership into their own hands. The huge demonstrations on April 5 and April 19 were orchestrated by Democratic party leaders and groups they control, like Indivisible, founded by former Democratic congressional staffers. Their message was to rely on elections and influencing congress to bring change. Whereas an estimated 3-5 million people demonstrated on April 5, they were called upon to protect US democracy rather than question the system of capitalism. They weren’t even encouraged to use their mass power to shut down any institutions to actually reverse fascist policies, but only to wait for almost two years and vote.
The farthest left of these politicians are Democratic Socialists Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour events have attracted huge audiences as they promote the illusion that capitalism can cease enriching the wealthy owning class and redistribute benefits to workers, if only we elect progressive Democrats. Despite the confusion of many young members, a founding principle of DSA was anticommunism.19 And despite the acceleration of Israel’s war on Gaza toward total annihilation, pro-Palestine protestors were evicted from Sander’s rally on April 14.20
No End to Fascism Without an End to Capitalism
Democracy under capitalism means that workers get to choose which individual capitalists hold political office. Liberal and conservative and socialist capitalists all believe in the same system and that all policy changes must arise within the parliamentary setting. Liberals and democratic socialists tend to favor whatever reforms the system can afford and purport a goal of equality, while conservatives openly favor the wealthy and espouse racism and sexism. But when the going gets tough, they mostly agree. Whether it is to invade Iraq and Afghanistan or support Israel, limit the right to strike or bail out the banks, liberals too want to preserve the economic system, and US military supremacy, and access to resources and cheap labor.
Since fascist repression is needed when capitalism can afford fewer benefits for workers, we cannot rely on liberal or progressive capitalists to lead us away from fascism. Our only power is to educate and organize ourselves – for workers to withhold their labor, for soldiers to refuse to fight, for students to refuse to imbibe capitalist teaching and teachers to refuse to teach fascist ideas. We can also take action, like response teams to protect undocumented neighbors or coworkers, build marches we lead combining issues like cuts and genocide, and support the actions of students and unions.
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Ultimately, we must destroy capitalism with a workers’ revolution and build a society we run in our own interests, a communist society. We must analyze the pitfalls that led previous revolutions to devolve back to capitalism, such as nationalism and making alliances with liberals, and move again towards the goal of a communist world.
Ellen Isaacs is a retired physician, anti-racist and anti-capitalist activist, and co-editor of multiracialunity.org. She can be reached at [email protected]
1. https://www.nytimes.com/article/trump-university-college.html
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/us/trump-universities.html
3. https://abcnews.go.com/US/forces-harvard-president-claudine-gays-resignation/story?id=106071191
7. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/18/miller-harvard-endowment-funding-trump/
8. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/law-firms-deals-trump.html
9. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/us/dei-public-schools-trump-administration-lawsuit.html
10.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/21/trump-attack-libraries-devastating
11. https://alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic/rosa-luxemburg-condemns-spd/
12. https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/germany-1933-democracy-dictatorship/
13. https://isj.org.uk/divided-they-fell-the-german-left-and-the-rise-of-hitler/
14. https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/controlling-universities
15. Lifton, Robert Jay, The Nazi Doctors
16. https://heritage.umich.edu/stories/in-the-face-of-fascists/
17. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
18. https://jacobin.com/2022/10/mussolini-fascism-liberalism-austerity
19. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/03/dsoc-a03.html
20. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/17/lkom-a17.html
