Challenge Radio

Progressive Labor Party
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Challenge Radio

Challenge Radio is the official podcast of Progressive Labor Party (PLP). PLP is a mass international antiracist, antisexist organization fighting to destroy capitalism. We organize workers, students, and soldiers worldwide to build for a communist revolution. See www.plp.org and follow us @PlpChallenge on Twitter and Instagram.

  1. Editorial: Capitalist healthcare kills!

    5 DAYS AGO

    Editorial: Capitalist healthcare kills!

    A reading and discussion of a recent editorial in Challenge. On December 4, in New York City, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered on his way into a shareholders’ meeting. No tears should be shed for Thompson. He was struck down by bullets engraved with the principles he lived by: to maximize his insurance company’s profits by delaying care, denying life saving treatments, and condemning untold thousands to needless suffering and death. Gut-wrenching stories of loved ones lost to insurance denials flooded social media. Doctors confirmed the company’s cruelty. A condolence post for Thompson received more than 70,000 laughing reactions. As one worker wrote: “Sorry, my sympathy is out of network.” The capitalist media outrage at posts “devaluing” Thompson’s life rings hollow. It’s capitalism—and its accomplices in the healthcare industry—that have cheapened life. In 2023, UnitedHealth Group raked in $22 billion in profits (Forbes.com, 1/12/24). Thompson was richly rewarded for playing his part to ration healthcare, with an annual compensation package of more than $10 million. Under his leadership, his company denied as much as 49 percent of medically necessary care (Forbes.com, 12/6/24). The bosses call this good business; we call it mass murder. The overwhelming support for Thompson’s apparent shooter, Luigi Mangione, reflects the raw rage of millions of workers who navigate a healthcare system designed not to heal, but to profit. Globally, capitalism condemns countless people to early graves through racist and sexist inequality, hunger and poor nutrition, environmental poisons, and preventable disease. It kills countless more through healthcare systems that put the profits of hospital, pharmaceutical, and insurance capitalists over human lives. Workers’ fury at Thompson and his ilk is righteous anger. But vigilante violence and assassinations are not solutions; the bosses can always find another ruthless executive to fill an open slot. What’s needed is organized revolutionary violence, rooted in communist politics. What the ruling class fears most is an international, multiracial, class-conscious working class led into battle by a revolutionary communist party. We need a mass communist movement that will smash all of the bloodsucking bosses and replace the nightmare profit system with a communist world that abolishes money and private property. Only then can our class build a society where good healthcare is a basic human right, not a product to be sold to those who can afford it. Join Progressive Labor Party, and fight for a world where our lives can be lived to their healthiest and fullest!

    52 min
  2. Kentucky: Shut down slumlords & liberal racists

    12/23/2024

    Kentucky: Shut down slumlords & liberal racists

    A discussion and reading of a recent struggle article in Challenge. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members from Kentucky organized a protest in downtown Corbin on Friday, August 30th to bring attention to rising rents and record evictions in the state. We also wanted to call out HB5, a bill which criminalizes homelessness, as an anti-worker bill supported by both Democrat and Republican legislators. The protest was sparked when local PL’ers noticed that a particular group of landlords, known as the Freeman Brothers, were notoriously infamous in Corbin for charging high rents and doing very little maintenance or upkeep on the properties they manage. The brothers are not just landlords, but also lawyers who own a property management business, a real estate brokerage, and have their own podcast. They have been known to make posts on social media websites such as Facebook, where they gloat about the negative attention that they receive from workers online who have seen their own rents go up as a result of the Freeman Brother’s influence on the market. Freeman Brother’s posts are often littered with comments from working-class tenants complaining and attacking the landlords for their disgusting behavior.

    36 min
  3. Editorial: Trump’s win exposes failure of liberal Big Fascists

    12/13/2024

    Editorial: Trump’s win exposes failure of liberal Big Fascists

    A discussion and reading of a recent editorial in Challenge. In a lose-lose election for workers, Donald Trump’s victory marks the toxic divisions within the U.S. working class and a massive defeat for finance capital, the main wing of the U.S. capitalist ruling class. Trump’s “America First” platform to pull back from NATO and the war in Ukraine will undermine the Big Fascists of finance capital as they lurch toward war with their imperialist rivals in China and Russia. For workers, the dark night of capitalism in decay—with no mass communist movement to fight back-- The next four years will expose the limits of liberal democracy, where the brutal reality of capitalist dictatorship is veiled by mythical “rights” and “the rule of law.” Regardless of who’d won the election, the worldwide crisis of capitalism would force the U.S. bosses to move faster toward full-blown fascism. A President Kamala Harris would have spelled disaster for the international working class, from Gaza to the U.S.-Mexico border. What Trump’s victory reveals is the bosses’ ability to win tens of millions of workers to open racism and sexism and to scapegoat immigrants, the most vulnerable sections of our class. It shows just how much struggle lies before us. In this period of extreme instability, the role of Progressive Labor Party becomes even more crucial. The history of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan tells us that communism is the only way to smash fascism. We can’t rely on the bosses’ politicians or media or courts to protect us. Only communist revolution can secure an antiracist, anti-sexist society that serves workers’ needs.

    45 min
  4. March on the DNC: Don’t vote, Organize!

    10/13/2024

    March on the DNC: Don’t vote, Organize!

    A reading and discussion of a recent article in Challenge. CHICAGO, August 23 – Dozens of members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) wrapped up a powerful summer project this afternoon, after nearly five straight days and nights in action against the capitalist bosses’ system of genocide, fascism and war. PLP comrades, ranging from the newly recruited to veteran members with decades of experience, traveled from across the country to directly challenge the liberal Big Fascist U.S. bosses as they held their Democratic National Convention (DNC) here. Our revolutionary, pro-worker efforts contrasted completely with those of the liberal racists and their pro-genocide spectacle. The deadly Democrats trotted out international war criminals from the Clintons to the Obamas, all endorsing the nomination of Killer Kamala Harris for president in a desperate bid to save their declining U.S. empire in the face of fierce competition from imperialist rivals. Meanwhile, those of us in the summer project showed egalitarian communism in action: workers and students of all ages and genders striving to give leadership and act collectively. Summer projects like these are the perfect opportunity to expand our revolutionary movement, our base in the working class, and our limits as a Party. While the bosses in the U.S. and around the world can only offer different brands of fascism to the working class, PLP remains YOUR international Party for a future free of racism, sexism, and world war!

    47 min
  5. Special: Summer Project at the RNC

    07/30/2024

    Special: Summer Project at the RNC

    This special episode was recorded during our summer project in Milwaukee, where members of PLP from across the country gathered to denounce the gutter racist Trump and provide revolutionary leadership in the fight against the Big and Small Fascists. Stay tuned to the end of the episode for a discussion in Spanish.

    59 min
  6. Editorial: Appearance & essence of liberal fascists call for ceasefire

    04/11/2024

    Editorial: Appearance & essence of liberal fascists call for ceasefire

    A discussion and reading of a recent editorial in Challenge The latest response to the state terror in Gaza from Genocide Joe Biden and Top KKKop Kamala Harris is a classic case of appearance and essence. Between Biden’s announcement of “aid” drops and Harris’ phony call for a ceasefire, the main wing of the U.S. ruling class wants it to appear that they care about the mass slaughter and starvation in Palestine. But the essence is that the liberal rulers are terrified of international fightback and of isolationist Donald Trump recapturing the White House. Despite the desperate efforts of the capitalist media to mislead and confuse us, more and more workers are seeing the Democrats’ true colors. In a period of nine days, hundreds of thousands of workers—including 19 percent of the total vote in Minnesota and 13 percent in Michigan and North Carolina—slapped Biden by voting “uncommitted” or “no preference” in the presidential primaries. Once-loyal liberal voters are disgusted and appalled by the Democrats’ complicity in arming Israel and enabling the racist mass murder in Gaza. On the international stage, a declining U.S. has little influence over events in the Middle East, or even over Israel, increasing the risk of a wider war in the region. Intermission music "I'm a human, right?" by A, Rob

    41 min
  7. Editorial: Argentina: Imperialist Rivalry Means Workers’ Misery

    03/12/2024

    Editorial: Argentina: Imperialist Rivalry Means Workers’ Misery

    A reading and discussion of a recent editorial in Challenge. In late January, in another sign of the international crisis of capitalism, masses of workers handed U.S.-friendly Argentinian President Javier Milei a humiliating defeat. More than 1.5 million workers joined a national strike against Milei’s “omnibus” austerity reform bill, a vicious attack on the working class. After four days of militant fightback in the streets, Milei’s administration was forced to withdraw the bill (Truthout, 2/7). As Argentina continues to whiplash between rightwing and fake-left misleaders, the third largest economy in Latin America is a vivid illustration of how voting and reforms will never bring workers the world we need. Only a revolutionary mass communist party—Progressive Labor Party—will finally put an end to the terrors of capitalism.

    49 min
  8. EDITORIAL: IMPERIALIST PROFIT DRIVES GENOCIDE & WIDER WARS

    01/25/2024

    EDITORIAL: IMPERIALIST PROFIT DRIVES GENOCIDE & WIDER WARS

    A reading and discussion of a recent editorial in Challenge. As the Israeli rulers’ bloodbath in Gaza reaches new depths, it’s no accident that inter-imperialist conflict is widening around the world’s largest strategic reserves of oil and gas. The latest capitalist disaster began with a ruthless, anti-worker terror attack by Hamas and a genocidal response by the state terrorist Israeli “Defense” Forces (IDF). Now it has spread into IDF violence in the occupied West Bank and bloody fights in at least four neighboring countries: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen (Guardian, 12/26/23). This knife’s-edge volatility marks the snowballing decline of the old U.S.-led world order and the rise of competing imperialist bosses in China and Russia. Along with Ukraine, Taiwan, and the South and East China Seas, the Middle East is a prime potential flashpoint for World War III. Worldwide, the imperialists’ battle for supremacy is reshaping alliances and escalating their struggle to control markets, resources, and labor—a struggle at the hideous heart of the capitalist profit system. According to the Carter Doctrine, as proclaimed in 1980 by U.S. President Jimmy Carter: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests” of the U.S., and “will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” More than forty years later, we are witnessing the legacy of the president who supposedly championed “human rights”: the horrific suffering in Gaza.

    39 min
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Ratings & Reviews

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About

Challenge Radio is the official podcast of Progressive Labor Party (PLP). PLP is a mass international antiracist, antisexist organization fighting to destroy capitalism. We organize workers, students, and soldiers worldwide to build for a communist revolution. See www.plp.org and follow us @PlpChallenge on Twitter and Instagram.

Information

  • Creator
    Progressive Labor Party
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © PLP 2023
  • Show Website
    Challenge Radio

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