“In Texas, a socialist professor is now in the fight of his life against MAGA’s New McCarthyism,” scholar and author Bill V. Mullen writes in Jacobin. “Tom Alter, a labor historian and tenured professor of history at Texas State University, was fired from his job on September 10 after a far-right troll doctored a videotape of Alter speaking at a virtual Revolutionary Socialism conference. After viewing the video, university president Kelly Damphousse fired Alter on September 10 with what Alter and his supporters say was no due process.” While Alter was provisionally reinstated on Sept. 26, he and his family remain in limbo as they wait for a final decision from Texas State University regarding his firing. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with Professor Alter himself about the sequence of events that have made his case a flashpoint in the MAGA right’s all-out assault on free speech, higher education, and the people who live, work, and study there.
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. The show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and as promised, we are back with our regular programming and we’ve got a lot of important new episodes coming your way. And today we are going back to the front lines of the MAGA rights All Out assault on free speech, higher education, and the people who live, work and study there. And we are speaking today with Tom Alter, a tenured history professor at Texas State University who has become a target of that assault and has had his life turned upside down because of it over the past month.
As scholar and author Bill Mullen recently wrote in Jacobin quote in Texas, a socialist professor is now in the fight of his life against MA’s New McCarthyism. Tom Alter a labor historian intended professor of history at Texas State University was fired from his job on September 10th after a far right trolled doctor to videotape of alter speaking at a virtual revolutionary socialism conference. After viewing the video university President Kelly Damp house fired altar on September 10th with what Alter and his supporters say was no due process. In his conference talk, Al Alter called for independent working class political action and the need for working class people to organize in a socialist party. In his remarks alter also explicitly criticized tactics like spontaneous violence sometimes associated with anarchist groups. Yet the right wing activist doctored the video to make it appear that alter was in fact endorsing those tactics.
A wide scale grassroots campaign for alter led by unions students and activists won a significant but temporary victory on September 26th when a judge ordered alter temporarily reinstated, but the fight is not over under the reinstatement alter is not allowed to teach classes. The university will now begin a formal process that could result in alter being fired permanently. Now, unlike far right and outright fascist propaganda machines from influencer channels like those of Carolyn Borko and Laura Loomer to Fox News itself, we don’t rely on lies doctored footage and doxing to make our point. They do. So we bring you the real news and we are committed to the actual no bullshit truth. So in that spirit, we’re actually going to play an extended uninterrupted clip of Professor Alter’s speech for you right now so you can hear it for yourself. And we have linked to a video of the full speech in the show notes for this episode if you want to listen to the whole thing. But for right now, take a listen to this extended clip.
Tom Alter:
Say it again. My name is Tom Alter. I’m a member of Socialist Horizon in San Marcos, Texas and also a member of the Texas State Employees Union affiliated with the CWA. So as many of the speakers and participants in this conference have stated US Capitalism is in crisis, a crisis faced also by capitalists and nations across the earth. Capitalists unquenchable thirst for profit has led them to attack workers’ standards of living at home and put them in conflict with rival capitalist abroad. The working class in the United States feels this in our daily lives, the high price of groceries, soaring rents and mortgages, lack of healthcare, crumbling public infrastructure, an education system that despite the efforts of teachers serves more as daycare for workers’, children fostering learning and environmental destruction. All these conditions contribute to a growing mental health crisis. Globally, we see US capital coming into increasingly conflict with rival imperial powers also seeking to maintain their profits, not just by exploiting the working class they rule over, but by seeking additional markets, resources and labor pools beyond their national borders.
Crisis is a regular feature of capitalism. What makes the current crisis an extra problem for capitalists is the willingness of people to fight back. You could argue that we have been in a prolonged period of resistance dating back to December of 2010 with the overlapping protests of the pro-democracy movement of the Arab Spring, the Wisconsin protest of 2011 going into Occupy Wall Street, the 2012 teachers, Chicago Teachers Union strike, followed by more teachers strikes across the country, the indigenous peoples fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, black Lives Matter, trans liberation Cop city, the protest against it, and a general uptick in labor union struggles. We see this resistance currently in the hotel workers on strike in Houston, the United Auto Workers on strike against GE Aerospace in Ohio, and the ongoing resistance of the Palestinian people Through these struggles, more and more people seek capitalism to blame and our open to socialist ideas.
Despite the continued resistance of working people and confronting racism, sexism, transphobia and increasing wealth and the basic underpinnings of capitalism have not been broken and facing the crisis of capitalism. What the working class is dealing with is a crisis of organization and confidence. While there is a willingness to fight, knowing the most effective ways to fight and having confidence in ourselves and the working class as a whole is vital. Using a democratic ballot line, you are being used to provide left cover for a party of mass incarceration at home and genocide abroad. Seeing the limits and pitfalls of electoral politics, some socialists have turned to more local community-based projects engaging in what they call mutual aid. Mutual aid has a long tradition within the labor movement when workers primarily in unions assisted fellow members while sick and paying and helping pay for funerals. However, with most activists today are calling mutual aid is actually charity.
This is seen in food drives, disaster assistance in blankets for the homeless. This is all noble work and I will never discourage someone from helping those in need. But charity cloaked as mutual aid is not going to end capitalism. Another strain of anarchism gaining ground recently is that of Insurrectionary anarchism primarily coming out of those that were involved in the Cop City protest. These groups and individuals have grown rightfully frustrated with symbolic protests that do not disrupt the normal functioning of government and business. They call for more direct action and shutting down the military industrial complex and preventing ice from kidnapping members of their communities. Many insurrectionary anarchists are also serving jail time, lost jobs, and face expulsion from school. They have truly put their bodies on the line while their actions are laudable. It should be asked to what purpose do they serve as anarchists?
These insurrectionists explicitly reject the formation of a revolutionary party capable of leading the working class to power without organization. How can anyone expect to overthrow the most blood thirsty, profit-driven, mad organization in the history of the world that of the US government? Two minutes comrade. Thank you. So as Steve mentioned, a revolutionary party needs a revolutionary situation for the working class to win power. We are not in that situation now, though it may be coming soon as the crisis of capitalism only continues to deepen and capitalists look to war and fascism to save their profit system if we do not build a revolutionary party. Now, this is surely our future. What we do now is incredibly important. We must educate ourselves and others and Marxism and the history of class struggle. We are by no means just a reading club. Our tasks are laid out in the communist manifesto.
We must participate in the struggles of our class, whatever they may be, from joining Union picket lines to defending trans people. And then as communists connect these numerous struggles of our class into a fight against the source of our oppression capitalism through struggle. We can win reforms along the way, giving confidence to our class. This is how we build a mass party. Reforms are not enough though. If the working class is not in power, those reforms can be lost as we have seen in recent times. We must build a revolutionary socialist party now so that when a revolutionary situation arises the working class as the tools and organization it needs to take power to conclude, have confidence, build workers’ power, be a firebrand for a socialist horizon. Thank you.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Now again, you can watch Professor Tom alter’s full speech using the link that we provided in the show notes, but right now here on working people in the Real News Network, we’re going to talk to Professor Alter himself. Professor, thank you so much for joining me today, especially with everything going on in your life right now. I want to start with how you and your family are doing at this moment and where things actually stand in your case as of this conversation, which we’re recording on Saturday, October 11th.
Tom Alter:
Yes. Thank you so much for having me on your show. Yeah, so how this has been for my family, as you can imagine, it’s been quite jarring, turning our world upside down. We made a home for ourselves in the community here of San Marcos, Texas. That’s just right in between Austin and San Antonio. My wife has longer roots going back to this community. So finding out just unceremoniously that my immediate termination through online posting through the university president has been quite disrupting to my family. I’ve got a daughter in high school and a son in middle school, so it’s been really turning our world upside down where things stand. So I was reinstated on the 26th through a court ordered district judge. They saw that I was fired with no due process. And so now the university is starting that process, but this process is very much controlled by the university president.
There’s very little faculty and the president has the ultimate authority. He had a hearing this past Monday on October 6th where he heard that they were still charging me with saying they had grounds for my immediate termination saying I was engaging in partisan political activity. That’s the latest charge against me, been switching it as they go along. Initially it was inciting violence and then I was a danger to the public health and safety of the Texas state community, which is ludicrous. I mean, I have family here. I would do nothing to that would endanger the health and safety of this community that we love here in central Texas. And so now saying that engaging in partisan political activity, but that largely refers to someone engaged if a faculty member is running for office that I’m not doing. So we had the hearing on Monday. He said he’d have a decision by the end of the week, but as you said, here we are on Saturday and I’ve heard nothing. And so going to say that’s unprofessional at the very least that here you had supposed to have a decision by the end of the week, but we’ve heard nothing.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, just to break the fourth wall here for a second, we scheduled this interview for today expecting that you would actually have the promised news from your university, the news upon which your entire life and your family’s life is hanging. And they just said, ah, no, we’re going to keep you waiting a little bit longer. We’re going to keep you in limbo. That’s insane.
Tom Alter:
Yes. Yeah, I mean just personalizing a little bit. I mean there’s a broader political fight, but yes, there is this personal aspect to it as well. I’ve got my 11-year-old son every day when I’m picking up for school saying, Hey dad, you still have your job. Do we have to move? And so there’s that real human aspect of it as well and just radio silence from them. So there’s an aspect of cruelty to this as well, besides unprofessionalism.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, yeah, I mean given everything you’ve been going through, I would say that’s putting it as mildly as one can possibly put it. And let’s give listeners more of a sense of just what exactly you have been going through and how your case has become this flashpoint of the new MAGA rights all out assault on higher education, free speech, academic freedom, workers’ rights, all of that is wrapped up in your case among so many others that we’re seeing in the world of higher ed right now. And that became explicitly clear on the day of your firing, which was of course also the day that Charlie Kirk founder of Turning Point USA was assassinated in Utah. And so we want to be clear that those two things happen on the same day. So I think first and foremost, some people have sort of maybe jumped to the conclusion that you were a casualty of that initial wave of repression after Kirk’s assassination, but of course the events leading to your firing predate that. And so I wanted to ask just to sort of lay things out for folks, if you could walk us through the timeline of events here from you speaking at this conference to now.
Tom Alter:
Yes. So I spoke at a revolutionary socialism conference on, it was a two day online conference again on Saturday, September 6th. My particular talk as part of this revolutionary socialism conference was on a Sunday morning my time in central Texas. I gave the talk on my own time from my home office here in San Marcos again on a Sunday morning through Zoom. My particular session that I was speaking on was building revolutionary organization. Today, this is a question that much of us in the left are grappling with. How do we organize ourselves in the face of all these attacks that are occurring on working class people? And a question of organization is very key. Again, how are we going to fight back? So I gave the talk. It was again building revolutionary organization. I was critiquing different forms of organizing, whether that be more top down socialism, working within the Democratic party and also critiquing some forms of anarchist type of organizing.
Gave the talk, didn’t identify myself as part of Texas State University in any way. I was going in my own private capacity again from my free time, from my home via Zoom, not on campus. It did come out later on during a break session of the conference because there were different sessions that were occurring. Someone that knew me, recognized me from a previous conference, asked me what it was like teaching at Texas State. Again, this was during the break, not during at all during the conference session, not during the q and a or the conference wrap up. So that came out then that I was employed at Texas State University. Well, unbeknownst to myself and conference organizers, this kind of wannabe social media grifter, self-described fascist, Boris Sanko filmed my conference talk and then edited that section of where I was asked during the break about me being at Texas State to make it seem like that was during the conference talk.
And so here then she’s like, Hey, look, here’s this Texas State University professor advocating for overthrowing the government. And the campaign started on Monday the day after I talked on a Sunday morning. We were like, myself and other people that participated in the conference were aware of this online campaign, but we decided just not to give it any air. It wasn’t getting many views after all. This is self-described fascist, horribly antisemitic person who said that Jews chose to die in the Holocaust and Hitler went to heaven, has even said that child rape in some instances is okay. So it’s like this person is just, who’s going to listen to this person? A self-described fascist calls herself an anti-communist cult leader. So it’s like who’s going to listen to this person with this doctored video of me at this conference? Well, turns out a few days later, the Texas State University President Kelly DPAs appears to have listened to it.
I was at my son’s soccer practice. All of a sudden I received a group text from local San Marcos community activists. I’m involved in different activism and my local community, again in my own private capacity, not as a professor at Texas State University. And they were calling for an emergency meeting to defend me. And I was thinking, oh, nevermind that online fascist, it’s no big deal. And then they saw the announcement that I had been ly terminated for inciting violence and that I was a danger to the health and safety of the Texas state community. And that just threw things for a loop. This was without due process. I was a tenured professor. Tenure is something that takes about six years to earn, and it’s a form of a contract. I mean, it’s meant that you have academic freedom and tenure. It’s not a guaranteed job for life.
I mean you can be fired, but there is a process. And this process was not followed whatsoever. So it was very jarring to numerous types of people. I mean those concerned with free speech and academic freedom concerns with due process and also tenure if you get into the academic world, this immediately became like a flash point for all different numerous people that have the concern about academic freedom, free speech, democratic rights and union rights as well. It was my unions that came immediately to my defense, the Texas State Employees Union, which is affiliated with the Communication Workers of America nationally. The union represents all state employees of the state of Texas. And also I’m a member of the American Association of University Professors. So it’s really been a great partnership with the two unions working together. The A UP has provided a lawyer and the Texas State Employees Union has its roots in East Texas as a civil rights and economic justice union.
So I’ve kind of got the ground game and got with the grassroots activist union. And then the a UP with all of its the connections and different resources to provide the lawyer. But foremost it’s been the students at Texas State University. I was fired on a Wednesday night and Thursday morning they were out protesting, like spontaneous protesting, and they protested for five days straight, five school days straight. There was a weekend involved. There are not many people on campus. So for five school days, straight students protested on campus. And then the internal organizing began. Academic associations have all sent, all the major historical academic associations have sent in letters of support denouncing the actions of President DPAs and my termination without any due process as well as not honoring academic freedom.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And then all of that like temporarily culminating in your reinstatement at the end of the month. Correct?
Tom Alter:
Correct. Yes. So a judge, I mean, I believe correctly ruled that my due process had been violated, had not been honored. The process that Texas State own policies to go through removal of a tenured faculty member and as well as state law. A couple years ago the Texas legislature passed what should rightly be seen as an anti tenure law because state governments should not be the place where tenure is determined it should be universities. So there was a state law put into effect, which basically is very similar to the policies that Texas State had and they didn’t even honor that. So Texas state policy was violated, state law was violated, and then of course federal constitutional rights were violated as well. And so the judge seeing that the due process was violated, ordered my reinstatement, but it wasn’t reinstatement back into the classroom. I still don’t have access to my email.
I still don’t have to. My Texas State email don’t have access to my office. And so I’ve just been totally cut off. So I’ve been reinstated back on the payroll healthcare for my family to get personal things that are very important for and people just getting by. You know what I mean? The paycheck by paycheck. Healthcare is extremely important to have that many working peoples working without healthcare, it’s not a good situation to be in. So I’ve got reinstated back on the payroll for now and then since they began the hearing process now, and we’re waiting to see what happens next.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and none of this of course is happening in a vacuum. I mean, we’re having our conversation just days after the kind of tense, terrifying saga of Professor Mark Bray and his family fleeing the country. That is a journalistically and factually accurate description of what Professor Bray and his family just went through this week needing to flee the country because Bray has written books, scholarly books, articles given talks on the history of anti-fascism, which is apparently cause for being doxed, vilified, fired, chased out of the country, all manner of things that people are calling for. And this is serious stuff. This is people’s addresses being posted online visible to people who are explicitly calling for violence against them, death upon them. I mean, this isn’t just your average online mudslinging.
So this is really serious stuff. And I wanted to ask if we could kind of put your case in the battle over the battle that you’ve been fighting with your unions with a UP, with the university, with the students helping. All of that is happening at a time when the pressure is mounting from the Trump administration on down to go all out on higher education and root out this leftist scourge, this anti-American scourge on campuses. So I wanted to ask, taking your corner of higher ed right now, what has the past month taught you about where we are in this country?
Tom Alter:
Yeah, these assaults on higher education and free speech and democratic rights have been ongoing for a few years. We saw with the students protesting for ending the genocide and for a free Palestine, you had to crack down the began under the Biden administration. But what we are seeing now in this past month, you could say is almost like an all out assault. And I don’t think necessarily it’s something that we were expecting. People knew that the second Trump administration was going to be bad, but just how quickly this assault has come on, so many fronts I think has been jarring even though there’s been lots of great response back and fight back.
I think even when we look back on the civil rights movement, we look back at very large historic events of the labor movement. It’s hard to say if people knew at that time, they knew they were in the midst of something big that was happening because you’re just in the moment, you’re dealing with what’s happening, you’re just responding to what’s in front of you. We are very much in one of those moments now. History has been thrust upon us rather quickly. And so we see this assault that’s happening on higher education and universities. Universities are with all their flaws and maybe we can get into critiquing what’s happened to universities and the business models that they have followed in recent decades. The incredible amount of student debt that working people have to get into just to try to get a college education. But still, universities are one of those a basic institution of a democratic society.
They’re kind of those classical liberal institution meaning the full gamut of free speech, freedom of the press where you can have debate and have ideas. They’re not indoctrinating institutions. It’s where you go to discuss and innovate and debate and have ideas and have those free exchange of ideas. And when you then under attack that and underwrote the foundations of these basic liberal institutions where it’s supposed to be open discussion and debate, you’re really eroding the foundations of a democratic society as a whole. I mean, this is where it began in Italy in the 1920s. I mean you go after the universities and then after the unions, we’ve seen an ongoing attack on the unions. And so if we lose this space of openness and debate and diversity and dialogue, we’re going to lose a lot. I mean, we have other spaces than universities. Of course we’re having a discussion right now.
I mean we’re using our free speech freedom of the press right now. But when you lose places, especially public universities, I mean it says a lot about what’s happening and what’s coming. And this is why I think so many people have come to my defense and the defense of other professors that are under attack across the country because they see this as not an attack on an individual professor, even though of course it affects us as individuals, but they see this as a broader assault on democratic rights. And that’s why I’ve seen so many trade unions, free speech activists, academic organizations coming to rallying around this fight. And like I said, we’ve seen it all over. I mean it’s University of North Carolina, university of South Dakota, the Rutgers professor, Michael Bray. I mean literally having to leave the country for his feeling, his family’s safety and for writing about fascism and anti-fascist politics. This is something I teach in my classroom when we get to World War ii and I show a picture of Mussolini hanging upside down and I was saying this is what happened to fascists, and this was not controversial, this was kind of an accepted basic American ideology, was anti-fascist. There was a whole generation that went to World War II to go fight fascist.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I have a poster in my office of Donald Duck throwing a tomato in Hitler’s face. There was a whole American campaign of fuck fascism. Yes,
Tom Alter:
Yes. This used to unite all Americans from conservatives all the way to anarchist. I mean the whole left except for the fascists themselves. But otherwise, this is something that united all Americans now all of a sudden being anti-fascist is controversial. Someone has to flee the country with his family because I mean that says a lot right there. We used to be like, yes, Democrat, Republican, independent libertarian, I mean even Marxist, I mean socialist anarchist, communist being anti-fascist was the one thing that united us all. And now we actually have the defense of fascists where fascists are able to get a professor fired that you don’t have universities immune to an online fascist grifter. That’s frightening. That’s what we were thinking. It was like, okay, this is just some online unhinged person. You should be safe. Is a university really going to listen to that? Well, here they have. And then here what’s happened at Rutgers where it’s like, okay, he’s is teaching at anti-fascist tradition. I mean some way not supposed to be any more American than that. At least recent American history, it shouldn’t be any more American than that. And yet here you have turning point USA is able to largely force the flee for their own safety. And then what’s happened to myself and others across the country students as well.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And again, it needs to be said because it’s true
That this is what turning point USA is and always has been. I mean, I remember talking to T-P-U-S-A young T-P-U-S-A organizers on the campuses of University of Michigan and other campuses that I would go to when I was a graduate student during the first Trump administration. What everybody knew about T-P-U-S-A was that they were not defenders of free speech and open debate and conservative values. They were a mercenary operation designed to intimidate and docs professors that they thought were ideologically biased. And hence the tip of the spear of T-P-U-S-A when I was still on college campuses was the professor watch list. And you had this sort of half grassroots, half astro turfed effort where you would have students going into classes, videotaping professors without their consent and then doing what happened to you, Tom, where you get these sort of selective clips or doctored videos that then make their way through the right wing outrage machine.
Maybe something would get picked up by Breitbart, then maybe it would get picked up by Fox News and then the outrage machine would be in full force. And I knew plenty of people who were subject to this and had their identities revealed, their addresses posted online death threats, attempted firings, successful firings, like you said, none of that is actually new, but it is very much gained a terrifyingly new power behind it from the Trump administration on down. So we’re very much seeing a 2.0 version of something that was already there out in the open. And so I don’t think anyone in this country, whatever your ideological makeup is, no one has the ability to pretend that isn’t on the historical record. This isn’t what T-P-U-S-A and its acolytes have been trying to do openly for years. So I want to make that point very, very clear.
But I also want to, within that, I want to try to as best model the good faith that these fascists and free speech antagonists, we will never show to others, but we actually stand for truth. We stand for open debate and free inquiry. And so I want to try to model that here and put on, give the most good faith that we possibly can here. Because I know that for fascist right wing influencers like Laura Loomer or Boes Sanko, they have no interest in telling the truth. And people who are kind so far gone down the internet rabbit hole as they are, we’re never going to be able to reach them frankly. But there are still plenty of people, regular working people who we can reach and who may believe that, okay, this video that I’m seeing of this professor, it feels like what I’ve been told, that universities are bastions of whatever brainwashing professors who are teaching our kids to hate America, we hear this a lot. You’re in Texas, you must hear it all the time. So for anyone who is thinking that and seeing this speech that you give, and they’re saying, is he calling for the overthrow of the American government? Is this a violent call for insurrection? Is the anti-capitalism in this speech something that should be outlawed? Is this a perfect example of why tenure shouldn’t exist because it protects these brainwashing professors, yada, yada, yada. You get the point. So for someone who’s still kind of in that swimming in those waters, what would you say that your case actually shows contrary to that conception that they have?
Tom Alter:
Yeah, I mean, our side largely has the truth on it, and we try to be factually accurate. I mean, that’s a little bit longer process to it rather than just kind of gaining inflammatory rhetoric, showing a doctor video, not letting people come to their own conclusions with having everything in front of it. And so that’s why it doesn’t always fit into a nice soundbite. And I’ve seen, I’ve largely tried to stay away from social media posts, especially the comment section where just we know the toxic culture that exists in many online spaces, but this seemed like a few comments like, oh yeah, fire that commi trying to indoctrinate the students. I mean, that just goes against everything that I value both as not only a political activist but also just an educator. I don’t bring my politics into the classroom. I mean, if you teach the history enough as it is, it speaks to itself both.
If you’re teaching history and it’s all great and happy and kumbaya, then you’re not teaching history correctly. There’s a lot of ugly, dark, horrific moments in US history. There’s also a lot of moments of triumph and celebration and winning of rights. And so that’s something to celebrate. There is a lot of celebratory history in the United States to go along with its dark aspects as well. And so it seems like what lot people have a problem with is just off just telling the truth and telling the whole entire picture. And I’ve had quite a few self-identifying conservative students tell me that they appreciated my class. I don’t necessarily agree with some things you might say, even though I’m kind of curious about what those are because I try to just stick with the facts and I’m not putting anything out there, but they’re like, yeah, at least I know where you’re coming from.
I get the perspective and I learned from it. It’s like I don’t always agree with it, but I appreciate that you’re also critical of liberalism and conservatism and also critical of socialists at times, critical of anarchists, even though I’m a self-identifying socialists, being critical at mistakes that are made because that’s how I feel students need to learn that critical thinking and analytical thinking skills. And so that was something that’s very much needed and often missing. And our very high turnover news cycle, we don’t have many spaces where we have these long discussions we’re having now we can discuss and go back and forth. So that’s why programs like this are so important as well as classrooms are important as well, that classrooms don’t get turned into these politicized spaces where you can just students, Hey, this is what happened. Analyze it, think for yourself. That’s what I had.
I mean, I didn’t always agree with my professors as an undergrad at all, but I learned from them. And if I had a disagreement with them, that was actually good. It helped. It meant I had to come up with a counter argument. And if I was going to have that kind argument, I better back it up with facts. And that’s what I encourage in my classroom. I’ve had students that had come and I think capitalism’s great, and this is in my labor history classes, upper level labor history classes and the giant surveys. I don’t get into that too much, but when we’re in the upper level labor history classes and everything, I think capitalism’s great for working class people. And I’m like, okay, let’s dig into it. Let’s give your evidence, let’s provide this. Let’s say what it is. I mean, let’s go through that and you got to back it up.
So that’s what it is with any argument. And so that’s when we are having universities come under attack where that type of debate and that discussion, I mean it hurts everybody. I mean here it is saying it’s hurting those conservative students. They’re actually looking to boer their arguments on why they believe that capitalism is good. And so it’s like they don’t have that counter, you know what I mean? Yeah. You counter that Marxist professor who’s going to challenge you on that. I encountered my own professors that I was like, okay, this is a challenge. Now I got to do this if I’m going to do this right and make sense, you can’t just throw out something. Oh, I said this. Okay, back it up.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah.
Tom Alter:
And so that’s what it is, and that’s what we need. And I think that’s part of what society should be, where you have those different debates you encounter, the libertarian, the Marxist, the liberal conservative, the unaffiliated, more of those spiritual beliefs that have influenced their world out view. That’s part of it. Let’s do that. Let’s discuss that. Let’s have it all be a mix. But when you limit and cut it down, that’s when it really becomes dangerous to society.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, I think that’s powerfully and chillingly put. And I think there’s, as you said, this is not some coming era of repression. We’re in it
And what happens next? What we write about this era depends on what people of conscience do right now to defend those rights or let them die. Frankly, that applies as much to academic freedom and free speech on college campuses as it does to free speech in general journalism, the ability of people like myself to report the truth of what’s happening in a country where policy is being decided on explicit untruth, like the fact that Portland’s a war zone. No, it ain’t. My wife’s there right now sending me pictures. It ain’t a damn war zone. And yet we’re sending National Guard troops there on the false premise that it is a war zone. And so you’ve got to defend truth even when the forces of untruth lies, obfuscation, propaganda are pushing as hard as they can in the opposite direction. And that’s where we are right now.
And doing so, being part of that fight requires being very disciplined, careful, measured, intentional with what we say, and having the ability and backbone to back up what we say, what we report as true like Professor Alter was saying. It’s like, yeah, make your claim and then back it up. That is the standard to which everyone should be holding themselves and others right now. And I wanted to just sort of hover on that question for a second professor and ask, given everything that we’re talking about here, given the incredibly high stakes of this battle over the future of higher education, given the amplified viciousness and even violence of the forces that want to silence people like you and students like those that were camping out on their campuses all across the country last year, given that that is the reality in our country in the year of our Lord 2025 right now, I guess what sort of lessons about how to carry oneself still with, again, leaning forward with truth, conviction, but also openness and a healthy culture of debate and inquiry, what lessons would you want to offer for folks out there who are determined to keep fighting for their rights to speak freely, but also lessons that they should learn about how to not step into the bear traps that these bad faith, right wing influencers, politicians, and so on, are laying for everybody?
Because there is, and I’m speaking for myself here, I’m not speaking for you or anybody else, but I will just say as a lefty grad student who was involved in organizing and public writing and getting into labor, all that kind of stuff, I was as guilty as anybody else in the left academic world of making. Sometimes you get a little overextended and you make more maximalist statements about the coming revolution or the need to overthrow capitalism. And again, what we’re describing about the effects of capitalism, the history of the American imperialist estate, all of that is true, but still the terms with which we talk about it can be taken out of context and can be weaponized against you if you’re not careful. So yeah, you get the point. I just wanted to kind of open that space for a minute to ask if there are any lessons that you’ve taken away from this about how to maintain the fight for the things that we are fighting for while being cautious, protective, and intentional about how we proceed in these very dangerous times.
Tom Alter:
Yeah, that’s a lot of good points there. I’ve always kind of gone with be yourself, speak to the truth and let the other side kind of do themselves in, you don’t need to put any words in anyone else’s mouth. I don’t know what, I honestly don’t know what President dams was thinking. I don’t know. I mean, it happened to happen. My termination happened a few hours after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I don’t know if those are directly tied in his mind. I don’t know. We can speak to that fact that this is what’s going on. And so right now we very much have this on our side. What we say is we can point to those things. My termination happened around with Charlie Kirk don’t need to imply anything else. It comes in this context. I’ve again always been the advocate of you use your rights or you lose them.
Once you start self-censoring, you put yourself in a weaker position. Now, I used my rights and still got terminated, but I think because I was using my rights and people knew who I was and know who I am, I was known as a Palestinian activist fighting for a Palestinian liberation. There was a point in the last school year where I was being quoted every other week in the student newspaper. I was kind of wishing they would quote some other people. I was like, okay. I mean, I was fine with being in there, but it was like, no, that was who I am. So I was always making sure, so if something would happen to me, which I was not trying to provoke, I enjoyed being in the classroom. I liked having a paycheck on these things. I wanted to continue activism, not have the struggle be about me directly.
I wanted to fight for immigrant rights. I wanted to fight for Palestinians, not having to wage a personal fight for myself, which is a part of a broader fight. Of course, it’s not just about me. So I’ve always been advocating for that, just you have to use your rights or lose them, be firm of who you are. There’s really not a need to go over the edge and come with inflammatory rhetoric. Now that being said, I use this term revolutionary socialism. The term revolution I gets used a lot can mean a lot of different things. You’ll hear it like a tire company revolutionary new tire. It’s like, okay, I don’t think a tire is that tire overthrowing capitalism, but you hear revolution.
Maximillian Alvarez:
We’ve revolutionized laundry detergent.
Tom Alter:
Exactly. Yes, exactly. So the term revolution right there, and I’m saying revolutionary socialism mindset. So I mean it becomes a little bit, how do you explain that and what it means? And I’ve had to go through that. I mean, I’ve got a book where I use the term revolutionary socialist looking at Texas socialists from the early 19 hundreds, and their interactions with Mexican revolutionaries and these kind of Eugene Debs era socialists refer to themselves as revolutionary socialists. That’s not always clear for the general public, it must admit. I mean, I was using that term during a socialism conference with revolutionary socialism. So I was at that point speaking to a particular audience and not in my capacity as a university professor, but what that revolution means as a revolution to get rid of the economic system of capitalism and replace it with socialism. It’s not necessarily a violent call, an armed struggle.
Even the communist manifesto, I said in my talk, our lessons are laid out, our tasks are laid out in the Communist manifesto. Most people are like, oh, communist manifesto. Marx and Angles in the Communist manifesto are not calling for an armed uprising. I mean, they’re calling for working class people to engage in struggle. Then with the role of communists, let’s connect all those different struggles together to make it one united struggle, the working class. And so yeah, these are good questions. How do we address this now without getting, because yeah, you say our tasks are laid out in the communist manifesto. It’s going to be scary stuff for probably a lot of people. But then what Marx and Engels were talking about, were hooking up with the Chartists in England. That was the struggle from the 1830s to 1850s for universal male suffrage. So working class men could have the vote, and they’re talking about hooking up with the agrarian in the United States.
Well, those are the anti-slavery people. I’m talking about people going for land reform and for women having the right to vote. So these are pretty basic things, but when you say communist manifesto, all kinds of images come to mind. And so yes, and so that is the difficult question because I am a socialist and that means a lot of things to a lot of different people. And that is our task, I mean, of where you be true to yourself and to what your politics are. But at the same time, trying to figure out what that means to a lot of different people. One of the things I said in my conference talk, just kind of laying with this political climate that we’re in right now, I was referring to comedians that have gone to Trump rallies and try to get Trump supporters in these gotcha moments more to laugh at ’em.
I mean, a lot of those, not all Trump supporters, I mean, Trump draws a lot of his support from the middle class, but there’s a lot of working class people that support Trump as well. He uses that populous rhetoric. It taps into the deep economic anxieties that are felt by a lot of working class Americans. So he see this reporter, he is this comedian slash reporter going up to a Trump supporter and they say, why do you support Trump? And he goes, oh, because he’s fighting the communist. And they’re like, okay, who are the communists? And he goes, the big pharmaceutical companies that control the government. And the comedians meeting is like a ha, look how stupid these Trump supporters are. I was like, well, actually, that’s good that this Trump supporter, he is against the big pharmaceutical companies controlling the government. He’s seeing that, but then he is not understanding what actually he’s describing as capitalism, not communism.
So that’s the challenge that we have. I mean, ours is much more of the slower education. We’re trying to actually educate people and to not indoctrinate them or play to their base fears or divide people along race or ethnicity or sexuality. We’re trying to unite people around our common things that we should in common as working class people. And then of course, everyone has their individual different struggles. A transgender person is facing different struggles as a working person than kind of a straight identifying working class person. And so it’s acknowledging all that. It’s not easy. It is not easy and all this, a lot of this depending on what your background is and where you’re coming from, but it’s just being patient with people as well. Instead of getting like, oh no, that stupid Trump supporter, it’s like, okay, where are they coming from? And then if they’re coming from a place where white supremacy is where they’re coming from, nevermind, move on type of thing.
But if where they’re coming from is like, oh, the big pharmaceutical companies that are controlling the government, we’ve got a starting point right there. And so yes, that is the challenge where you’re true to yourself, true to your political tradition as is like a Marxist and as a socialist, but then realizing those are really loaded terms for a lot of people. And so that’s a really good discussion. I don’t honestly have the exact answers to that. I mean, yeah, it is a difficult question, but it means slowly explaining. That’s what I really, this has been opportunity right here for It was my case. I’ve been using it as an opportunity to explain these things. What did you mean by that? What does that mean? What does revolutionary socialism mean? What does tenure even get to the academic side? What does tenure mean?
What do all these things mean? So it’s the discussing them. And I found it’s also, I mean, yeah, in my talk I talked a lot about, I critiqued a lot of different aspects of things, but people have still, they’ve come together and this forming realizing this is a fight against democratic rights and this is what we can fight around together. And so my talk was one that was kind of critical of different aspects of the left. It was meant for particular audience right here has been actually become a unifying moment. And so that’s what I think this has been kind of the more real promising thing that’s happening. It’s given us a space. I think it wasn’t intentional by the university president to actually explain these things. What do they mean? And to get that, I don’t think he was, he platformed a fascist by Boris Sanko by firing me, but he is also ended up platforming a socialist as well because my profile has risen a little bit more than it was. That was just the simple as teaching Texas history and labor history and small town in central Texas. And then now here, I’m on your show. Here we are.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah. We call that the Streisand effect baby. Well, and I couldn’t help but think back to my former self as I was listening to you talk because as listeners this show, no, I grew up deeply conservative. I grew up believing so many of the deeply entrenched principles that my parents raised us with. And I can recall many times giving the knee jerk conservative refrain of the nineties and early aughts of saying, I disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death. You’re right to say it. That used to be one of our stakes of our identity. That’s what made us defenders of free speech and real patriots was having that belief. And over the course of my lifetime, I have seen the right that I grew up in thoroughly abandon that and in fact, embrace and adopt. It’s polar opposite. And so any MAGA person or the president himself can tell me that they are not doing that.
But I’m like, I know my own experience. I know the world I grew up in. I know what you guys all used to say because I grew up watching you. So don’t tell me that it’s sunny outside when it’s raining. I know the truth and I’m not going to let you convince me that your lies are true. I’m sorry, I’m just not. And sometimes it needs to just be as basic as that to anyone listening to anyone watching. If you’re wondering how to navigate this, at most at base, you have to be able to say, I know what the fuck is true. I trust my eyes. I trust my ability to determine fact from fiction. I’m going to look into claims and sources and make that determination to the best of my abilities. But don’t let a bunch of bullies convince you that the obvious lie is true because then so much more is going to die in the course of that struggle than just the truth that’s right in front of you.
Like all the sort of democratic principles, institutions, traditions that rely upon a shared sense of truth to work. Those go out the window too. If we don’t have a sense of shared truth, if we don’t have an agreed upon method of determining what’s true and what’s not, and if we don’t have the basic ability and backbone to defend what we know to be true against those who we know to be lying, then more and more will be lost and it’ll be harder and harder to stop it. So we don’t need to have all the answers here, but I want to at least put in a plug for that. Don’t go quietly into the night. Don’t just let the very existence of truth and the ability to say what’s true and what’s not die. Because you don’t want to live in a world where that is gone completely.
I know, I don’t. And so there’s so much more that we could could be talking about for the next hour, but I know I’ve got to let you go, man. And I really, really appreciate you taking all this time with us. And I wanted to just round out by sort of bringing us back to where we started, where your case stands. Now, you and your family are still in administrative limbo, as it were, as of today, October 11th. So we’re going to get this episode out as quickly as we can. And it’s very possible by the time you guys who are listening to this hear it that things may have changed in Professor Alter’s case. And so I wanted to just sort of end on this note by asking if you could tell listeners what may happen in the coming days, what they can do to support you, your family, your students, and join the fight to defend free speech and academic freedom before both are gone completely.
Tom Alter:
Yes. So in the next day or couple days, we could be either celebrating a victory that do a lot of this grassroots community support and also support from around the country in my not being permanently fired or with me being permanently fired. We could be looking at it all out, basically all out war fighting because so many supporters have said, just told me we cannot lose this fight because here, if they were able to fire someone for their socialist politics, engaging in socialist politics in their own free time, that sets an incredibly dangerous precedent. And this is why we get so many supporters behind it. I mean, the people are telling me, thank you for fighting. And I say, I’m not just fighting for you. I’m not just fighting for myself. I’m fighting for all of us. And that’s where it’s really resonated. So we could be celebrating a victory or we could be looking at a protracted fight around my case, but even if hopefully my case comes out positive that we are celebrating a victory soon, the fight doesn’t stop.
Because what we did here at Texas State with the support of the unions, students, academic associations, supporters of free speech, this is what we need to be replicating across the country and all, but not all of our universities within our communities on campus and off campus as well, and especially here in Texas where unions don’t have as much power as they do in other places, it’s shown what a union can do. So yes, here at Texas as public employees, we do not have collective bargaining or the right to strike, but people have seen firsthand what a union can do, how it becomes that basic defensive organization of the working class. So I encourage everyone to join your union, become active in your union as well. A lot of people just you’re part of the union but aren’t necessarily active in it. Now’s the time to not only join your union, but if you’re in a union, it’s time to become active in it as well.
Also join or even thinking about whether joining that particular political organization that meant something to you, join it. Now’s the time to do it. It’s been time to do it for a little while, but now it is really coming down to this do or die moment and take power in that. Take power in that. I mean, it is take power in from each other that it’s really empowering when you’re out there and the fellow working people and fighting for your rights. It’s something that really is empowering and you see the power of the working class. So again, it tell people, just keep fighting, whether it’s around my case, hopefully it’s a victory. If not, can be fighting still.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. I want to thank our guest, Tom Alter, tenured history professor at Texas State University who is currently fighting for his job and for academic freedom as such. And of course, I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you guys, it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.