CIVIL WAR USA: International Cafe Friday the 13th Special

Civil war in the US: is it about to begin? Some experts think so: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/21/ice-minnesota-trump

Five years on from the nationwide uprising against white supremacy and the US police state triggered by the murder of George Floyd and sustained by the further killing of Breonna Taylor and many others, Minnesota - where Floyd was killed - has once again seen events that, according to many, have drawn the great American settler-colony closer towards another violent civil conflict.

Against a backdrop of Trump-loyal National Guard units being sent in like occupying armies to cities across the US, from Chicago to Portland, Oregon, recent months have seen huge mobilisations against deployments of the Department of Homeland Security's ICE agency in its war to re-establish America's increasingly tenuous "white" identity. All immigrants, documented or undocumented, have become the targets of ICE stormtroopers as the President announces plans to strip naturalised citizens of their citizenship under blatantly racist pretexts. Bullets have begun to fly this way and that as political violence - with the killing of Charlie Kirk a spectacular example - becomes increasingly normalised in what was already one of the world's most violent societies. People, including many of the MAGA movement's own loyalists, are increasingly fed up with a government and political economy that transparently serves the rich and offers the poor nothing but spectacular distractions (war with Iran, Venezuela, Denmark, whoever).

As most are now aware, it was amid all this that, just blocks from where George Floyd was murdered in 2020, two brave martyrs for the cause of freedom were made: Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The backlash to the unprovoked murder of these two protestors has galvanised millions more to demand the end of ICE. Perhaps most notably, Minnesota has been on the verge of complete social and economic shutdown as anti-ICE forces dust off that oldest, most powerful tool in the peoples' arsenal, the general strike.

Trump may have withdrawn National Guard units from Portland and has made noises about "de-escalating a bit" in Minnesota. But what does the future hold? Trump has suggested he may soon invoke the Insurrection Act to bypass laws forbidding the deployment of regular US military forces within the borders of the country in order to achieve his aims. Were he to do so, an official state of civil war could be said to exist. All this amid increasing tensions with Canada to the north of the border, with Trump threatening that US F-35s could be sent to control Canadian airspace.

North America appears to be on a precipice - what is real and what is bluster? How can the people of the US and the world prepare to take advantage of the situation and advance the class struggle to a higher level? One thing is clear from all this: the old grey forces of liberalism and right-wing reaction that brought us to this impasse won't get us past it. What's a worker to do?

Join us from anywhere for this open-ended online discussion! We'll have an official meeting link posted very soon. Take care and watch your back!