Interview with Bill Fletcher Jr., former president of TransAfrica Forum and a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, conducted by Scott Harris for Counterpoint on Between the Lines.
Bill Fletcher discusses the critical issues examined in his recent In These Times magazine article, “The Labor Movement Is in a Fight for Its Existence Against a Neofascist Threat.” Fletcher is also the author of They’re Bankrupting Us!: And 20 Other Myths about Unions. His latest novel is titled, “The Man Who Changed Colors.”
SCOTT HARRIS: We begin our program this evening by welcoming back to our program, our good friend Bill Fletcher Jr. Bill is a longtime labor and social justice activist, former president of TransAfrica Forum senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and author of books, including They’re Bankrupting Us: And 20 Other Myths about Unions and his latest novel titled, The Man Who Changed Colors. Bill, thank you so much for making time to talk with us on this Labor Day 2025.
BILL FLETCHER JR: It’s a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.
SCOTT HARRIS: And Happy Labor Day. There’s been over a thousand protests at all kinds of events all over the country, not just celebrating the traditional Labor Day, but the theme of many of the protests around the country was Workers Over Billionaires, and it’s a sign of some activism that I know we’ll be getting to in our discussion this evening, Bill Fletcher, that we haven’t seen among unions for quite some time.
And we’ll be talking about your article titled, “The Labor Movement is in a Fight for Its Existence Against a Neofascist Threat,” that was published earlier this month In These Times magazine. And Bill, before we get to the article and some of those really critical issues, I just wanted to get your response to what we’ve seen unfold these past seven months. I think it’s widely viewed now that the U.S. is now in the midst of the most serious attack on the nation’s democratic institution’s rule of law, and checks and balances on executive power in modern history, at least in my lifetime. Every day it seems Donald Trump and his authoritarian regime are violating constitutional norms, civil and human rights as he embraces dictatorial powers and threatens to use political violence against his perceived enemies.
We’ve seen masked ICE agents brutalize non-citizens and citizens alike. There’s rampant corruption and massive cuts to social safety net programs. The CDC and NIH are issuing disinformation as fact, endangering millions of people. And of course there’s a censorship of history targeting communities of color. And the Trump regime in terms of its white supremacist character, not surprisingly just restored Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s portrait to the West Point U.S. Military Academy.
So all that’s going on, and we could go on for you and I could probably trade facts about all these past seven months. But Bill, what’s your impression of what we’re living through right now where certainly Project 2025 has served as an authoritarian playbook for all these acts we’ve seen implemented over these past months?
BILL FLETCHER JR.: The problem we face is not that they’re moving quickly, but that they told us that they would be moving quickly and most people didn’t believe them. And including many people on the left, many progressives who basically thought that the 2024 election was going to be a Tweedle-dee, Tweedle-dumb election, the outcome would not make that much of a difference. That Trump was stopped in his first term and would be stopped again. And there was a failure to understand the strategy that the other side had, which was very different than during the 2017 to 2021 presidency.
So they’re moving very quickly, I said after his election that on Jan. 20th, 2025, Operation Barbarosa would start. Operation Barbarosa was the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, and it was done at lightning speed. And the Soviet regime at the time under Stalin had refused to believe their own intelligence networks that the invasion was going to happen and where, etc. etc.
That is what we have faced. And so many people who were pooh-poohing the idea of a fascist movement of an authoritarian government, now they have nothing to say. I mean they’re just mumbling. It’s nonsensical, some of the people that were essentially trying to discourage resistance to this regime.
So the critical thing to keep in mind is that we have the majority against the MAGA forces and that what will need to happen is continuous mobilization and non-cooperation—that trying to cut deals with this administration continue to fail. That’s what we should learn from what happened with Columbia University, that there really is no separate peace with this administration. We are dealing with a political bully and so you basically have to draw the line. So I think that that’s where we are. I refer to him as President Caligula because I think that that’s the closest historical analogy in terms of the corruption, the narcissism, the insane decisions that are being made that just really defy the explanation.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well said. Yeah, I think you’re dead on with a Caligula example, Bill. in your recent article, again, the title of which is “The Labor Movement is in a Fight for Its Existence against a Neofascist Threat,” published in In These Times magazine, you discussed the urgent need for the U.S. labor movement to confront and resist the ascendant U.S. fascist movement that views labor unions as an implacable enemy that they target for destruction.
And I wonder if you’d tell us maybe some lessons of history of labor movements and how they have been co-opted or not responded in time to authoritarian regimes that not only threaten labor unions, of course, but threaten democracies in an entire civil society.
BILL FLETCHER JR.: If you look at the rise of fascism in Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s, one consistent error was the assumption by the labor movements that they could fight and defeat fascism by not talking about fascism, but instead engaging in economic or trade union militancy.
And so the idea was that you would build unity among workers by focusing on issues that they have in common, particularly on an economic front and that would create a sufficient block to stop the fascist. It failed. It failed. And we have people that believe that in the United States today, and I’ve dealt with some leaders that will basically say that. They’ll say, Bill, we don’t need an anti-fascist project. We just need to carry out a strong fight against neoliberalism. And that will prove to people that there’s an alternative to the fascist. And I’m just saying historically, this is not founded.
I mean, you can believe it in the same way you can believe the earth is flat, but it’s simply not founded that what is an interesting example, a counter to that is in the period 1941-’45. Franklin Roosevelt had signed an executive order opening up the war industries to the employment of black workers and racial discrimination had kept black workers out. And under the pressure from Franklin, from a Philip Randolph who threatened a march on Washington, Roosevelt blinked, signed an executive order. From 1941-’45. There were continuous hate strikes by white racists against the employment of black workers. Even when the outcome of World War II was in question, these hate strikes were going on. I mean, just think about it for a second. Up until the battle of Stalingrad and to some extent the battle of Midway in the Pacific, it was far from clear who would win the war, but these hate strikes were going on, often carried out by union members against the employment of black workers.
And it was courageous union leaders that stood up and said, “You may be our members, but we’re going against you. We’re going to block this. We’re not going to support this. This is not going to be accepted. We’re not going to be neutral either.” That’s the kind of courage that we need right now. I’ve heard union leaders tell me, they said, Bill, Bill, we agree with you. There’s a project that helps start called Standing for Democracy, which is this anti-fascist project.
And they’ll say, Bill, we agree. The problem is we got MAGA members in our ranks, and so we’ve got to be really careful about what we say. And I say, “Why?” I mean you treat it like an organizing problem. If you go into a non-union workplace and you’re trying to organize the workers, there’ll be workers that will be anti-union. There will be workers, that will be pro-union. There will be workers that are uncertain. And any good organizer will tell you, you focus on consolidating the pro-union workers to win over the ones that are uncertain and you isolate the anti-union ones.
You don’t spend a lot of time talking to them because when you do, it’s both a waste of time and it often energizes them. That’s the way we’ve got to think about it. I mean, some of these, there’s a long history of like in the South of KKK members, Ku Klux Klan members who were members of unions. And often, and this may sound very ironic to people, would be very militant on trade union issues. But when you started talking about the union supporting voter registration, when you started talking about the union fighting against racial discrimination in the workplace, “no, no, no,” they wouldn’t support that. So there’s a long history to that. The question is where will our leaders stand and will they take a stand against MAGA? MAGA is not a neutral issue and it’s also not an issue that is irrelevant to the rest of the workforce.
I mean, there’s a long history in the United States to segments of the union movement being really ambivalent. When it came to taking a stand on what was right before the Civil War, the trade union movement split three ways on the question of slavery. There was the opposition of slavery, there was a segment that supported it, and then there was a middle group that said it wasn’t the union issue. So we have a long history and we’ve got to be on the side of those. We are following the legacy of those that said, “Opposition to slavery is a union issue. Opposition to the hate strikes in the 1940s was a union issue, opposition to fascism in the 1930s and today is a union issue.”
SCOTT HARRIS: We’re speaking with Bill Fletcher Jr. here on Counterpoint this evening, longtime labor and social justice activist, former president of TransAfrica Forum and author of books including, They’re Bankrupting Us: And 20 Other Myths About Unions and his latest novel titled, The Men Who Changed Colors. Bill, how has the labor movement responded to these first seven months of the Trump regime and its authoritarian agenda in your view, given that labor unions have been specifically targeted and attacked, particularly federal employees unions?
BILL FLETCHER JR.: That’s right. So the initial response broke down sort of three ways. And so you had those unions that thought despite MAGA, despite Trump’s rhetoric and actions, that they could cut a deal with Trump and they could save themselves. That’s a minority. You have then the ostrich wing of the movement that basically doesn’t really want to talk about it and is hoping, praying that they can survive the next four years. And then you have the resisters. Now, what’s been happening over the last several months is that there’s been a shift. So more unions are entering the camp of resistance, but in entering it, they’re entering it very cautiously. So they are reluctant. Most of them that are entering are reluctant to actually talk about the fascist danger. So in the beginning, they talked about we have to oppose the attacks. Then some of them started talking about and have continued to talk about the authoritarian danger.
But what they’re missing, which is really important to talk with our members about, is that our opponents are not a small group. It’s not just President Caligula. It’s not just (Elon) Musk and (Peter) Thiel and the other oligarchs — that what had been a right-wing populous movement — has now consolidated into a fascist movement, and that fascist movement represents about a third of the population.
And that changes everything because see, it’s not like we’re we are fighting the policies of George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, or even Richard Nixon. We’re not facing an amorphous enemy. We’re facing an enemy that actually has a social base and within that social base, there’s an armed wing and there’s actually now two armed wings, I would say ICE and the paramilitaries. And there’s an overlap now between ICE and the paramilitaries. And so what we can see through what’s going on is a willingness and an interest on the part of this administration to provoke violence, a reliance on various sorts of extrajudicial force and the assumption that the base will support this.
And I think that that’s a reasonable assumption, that a good chunk of the base will support whatever measures the president orders. That changes how you think about strategy. And that’s one of the reasons it’s critically important that in the union movement, we’re talking with our members about what’s really going on and talking about why you can’t stay neutral in the face of this. None of this is to say that people should be hoping for some sort of return to the past. There is no return. This was one of the big problems of Clinton, Obama and Biden. They kept thinking that they could be the adult in the room and humiliate the Republicans and their allies into being adults. It doesn’t work that way. The far right is way past that and have decided “No,” they’re not interested in normality. And so we’ve got to understand that we need to introduce a different kind of future for this country in order for us to survive. I mean, you were mentioning in the lead up this ridiculous decision by the administration to shut down these wind farms in the Atlantic — the wind farms, right?
SCOTT HARRIS: Yeah, that’s right here off the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island.
BILL FLETCHER JR.: Exactly. Almost completed. Why? Because ideologically these folks believe, I mean, they really do believe that there is no environmental catastrophe, that it’s not something for us to worry about, that it’s all shenanigans. This administration is trying to convince other countries to stop investing in programs to save the environment. And instead, and this was just reported this past week, instead to continue pumping oil and relying on fossil fuel. They have lost their minds. They’re completely trapped in some sort of delusional bubble. So we have to understand this is the nature of our opponent. They’re not people that are going to be convinced to righteousness. They have to be driven out politically.
SCOTT HARRIS: Bill, just one more example along the lines of shutting down this 80 percent complete wind farm that would supply electricity to 350,000 homes. I recently did a program where we talked about how the Trump regime is going to shut down or destroy two satellites that report on all the makeup of carbon and emissions around the world, which is an aid to farmers in agriculture beyond the issue of climate change that they, as you said, delusionally think doesn’t exist, but they’re going to destroy these satellites because it’s providing information that they don’t want to hear. It’s insane, but …
BILL FLETCHER JR.: Exactly.
SCOTT HARRIS: I do have one of the things specifically on labor unions I wanted to get to and that is after the United Auto Workers won their new contract with the Big Three automakers in 2023, UAW, President Shawn Fain proposed that labor unions all across the country synchronize their contracts to expire on the same date, May 1st Mayday International Workers’ Day, Mayday in 2028 and call for a general strike on that date. What’s your assessment for the call for a general strike three years from now and the urgency to use a tactic such as a general strike much, much sooner to confront and economically attack the Trump regime’s fascist agenda?
BILL FLETCHER JR.: So I have multiple feelings about this. One is that there is no one alive today who’s active in the trade union movement, who has ever experienced in the United States a general strike. Because the last general strike in the United States was in 1946 and it was Oakland and one of the place where there was a general strike, I’m drawing a blank. So we have lost touch with what it means to actually organize a general strike. So I think people first of all have to be very careful about language. The second thing is this old saying, you don’t beat your drums before you go hunting tigers. So you have to be very careful about what you threaten to do against an opponent that you know is going to try to take you down. The third thing is that there may not be a 2028. And therefore we need to be thinking about what we’re going to be doing over the next 18 months and what is our strategy to block the further offensive by the far right. That’s what I think people should focus on. If we can get to 2028, God bless us, but we may not. I mean, you were mentioning before we started, the threat to the 2026 elections.
And while I believe that we can overcome that threat, we can only overcome that threat if we are properly organized, if we defend the election process, if we have people mobilized to block electoral voter suppression. That’s what I think that we need to be focusing on right now. And I fear that some people’s obsession with 2028 will distract them from this. Look, I’m not opposed to the idea that was being raised by Shawn Fain and under a different presidency and a different political situation, I could see us really focusing much more on that. But right now, strategy over the next 18 months. Recognizing we’re in an asymmetric battle, but we can win. But we cannot win by fighting in the same way that the other side does. And we can’t win by thinking that we will replicate what was done years ago. This is a whole new ballgame.
SCOTT HARRIS: Bill, in your article, you mentioned labor unions around the world and their response and actions to really confront the rising international fascist movement, particularly in Europe. Maybe tell us about those efforts and what, if anything, the U.S. labor movement can learn and implement here in America to confront the Trump regime.
BILL FLETCHER JR.: Well, I think that the examples to learn from both South Korea and South Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s in opposition to apartheid, what’s happened in Europe is that there are major educational efforts that are being conducted by European unions and European Union federations. What I don’t see much of is action of anything ranging from collective major contract battles around issues that are dividing workers.
And also, I’m unclear about the actual mobilizations when it comes to the fascists. But it’s interesting in South Korea when a president attempted a coup, there was a massive mobilization that the union movement played a major role in turning people out. I mean, people showed up in the hundreds of thousands to block an effort at a coup. That’s what we’ve got to be thinking about when we have these mobilizations of National Guard and ICE. What we need to do is counter mobilization and be careful because the enemy are not the National Guardsmen and National Guardswomen.
But ICE on the other hand is a different matter because ICE is being morphed into kind of a 21st century SS. The National Guards folks — what I can tell driving around Washington, D.C. — low-level of morale. People can’t quite figure out why they’re doing this, wasting their time away from their families. And that’s really important. Those guys are not our enemy. With ICE, which seems to be recruiting by the way, fascists into their ranks. This becomes a different ball of wax. And so that’s what we have to be really thinking about in preparation for what they may attempt to do. And keeping in mind that with the Supreme Court that has given Trump so much latitude, he is going to continue to push the envelope until we stop them.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, those are good words, to end on this evening. Bill, thank you for joining us and leave our listeners with your website or any other sites you want to recommend, and I’ll certainly mention the article and where they can find it at In These Times as well.
BILL FLETCHER JR.: Yes, so my website is billfletcherjr.com. I’m on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Blue Sky, and you can find me @BillFletcherJr. And yeah, so I’m actually pretty easy to reach and my publisher of my first two novels, the Man Who Fell From the Sky and the Man Who Changed Colors is Hardball Press out of New York, and hopefully the third in the series will be out later this year, early 2026.
SCOTT HARRIS: Congratulations on that.
BILL FLETCHER JR.: Thank you.
SCOTT HARRIS: And Bill, it’s always great to talk with you and learn so much and gain some hope too. That’s Bill Fletcher Jr., longtime labor and social justice activist.
Originally published by Between the Lines. Republished with permission of the interviewee. Listen to the broadcast here.
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