February 3, 2026

Will January 2026 be remembered as the month when U.S. imperialism’s Big Lies crumbled? Workers World and other anti-imperialist and pro-socialist forums must wrestle with this question to devise a plan of action to collapse them further.

There’s no doubt that the White House’s Big Lies about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) storm troopers in Minnesota have failed for now. But other big lies — meaning those repeated so often in the ruling class’s propaganda machine that they are imposed on society — still prevail. Let’s examine the crises of January and how they played out so far.

(1) ICE thugs occupying Minneapolis murdered Renee Good on Jan. 7 and abducted 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos on Jan. 20 to use as a hostage. These crimes fueled an unprecedented Jan. 23 general political strike and mass demonstration of over 50,000 people who shut down Minneapolis and affected hundreds of cities. The next day, after Customs and Border Protection killers murdered Alex Pretti, the      people called another strike for Jan. 30.

(2) A U.S. warfleet in the Caribbean Sea, after sinking 25 small boats and killing over 100 sailors over a period of four months, on Jan. 3 bombed Caracas, Venezuela. U.S. Special Forces kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and former head of the national assembly and revolutionary combatant Cilia Flores. The U.S. now holds the two Venezuelan political leaders hostage in a Brooklyn, New York, prison.

(3) The White House ordered a U.S. aircraft carrier fleet to sail toward Iran, threatening a super-destructive bombing raid and possible commando landing. A regional war is possible.

(4) The White House said the U.S. would impose tariffs and otherwise punish any country delivering petroleum or other fuel to Cuba. This, in addition to the already 60-year-plus economic blockade, threatens to strangle the Cuban economy.

These reactionary acts and threats all rely on military force and / or economic strangulation. As polls show, they clash with most people’s wishes to avoid wars. What support they get — or hostility they avoid — depends on drowning the population in a Niagara of big lies aimed at deceiving them.

The events in Minneapolis and its residents’ reaction disrupted the usual Big Lie process. Everyone who follows the news saw videos or otherwise learned that top U.S. government officials tell blatant lies. They do it even when they know they are lying, and they know everyone else knows it.

What aided the demise of the lies was the open conflict among ruling-class politicians and in the corporate media. Even Democratic Party politicians in Minnesota publicly rejected the arguments of the administration and demanded ICE get out. The section of the corporate media that opposes the MAGA regime’s tactics disseminated at least part of the truth.

The people of Minneapolis, with organizational support from labor unions and encouraged by media criticism of ICE, confronted the threats and held a successful general political strike on Jan. 23. The next day, after Pretti was murdered, mass reaction was even more vehement and forced the MAGA regime to at least make a cosmetic retreat. This gave a big morale boost to the anti-fascist, anti-ICE movement.

To summarize: The administration lied about Minneapolis and was unable to hide its lies. The Trumpites are sure to lie even more about Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, where it is harder to expose their lies. It’s harder, because the corporate media and the Democratic Party repeat all the MAGA criminals’ lies about Venezuela, Cuba and Iran.

U.S. imperialism uses sanctions to deprive the people of Venezuela, Cuba and Iran of food and income with the goal of strangling the independent governments of those countries. Since sanctions alone failed to overthrow those governments, U.S. imperialism turned to war. The government invents whatever pretext its propagandists believe might work.

At this moment, the anti-ICE attitude is so widespread that many artists at the Grammy awards ceremony Feb. 1 condemned ICE. The experience of Minneapolis enables people to challenge the lies of the big liars of this administration (and don’t forget their co-imperialists in the leadership of the Democratic Party) and the corporate media.

Right now the antiwar and anti-imperialist movement has an opening to expose their Big Lies — that they use as a pretext for whatever war they start. Consider the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 for Vietnam or the non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq in 2003.

These are slogans anti-imperialists can bring to any protests against ICE or against MAGA: They lied about Minneapolis. They lie about Venezuela. They lie about Cuba. They lie about Iran.

Abolish ICE!  Feed the people, not the Pentagon! Stop the U.S. war drive!