Pride 2025 will be framed as a defiant stand against Trump—and rightly so. The Trump administration, with its multipronged efforts to divide and distract the working class, has doubled down on the reactionary “culture war,” issuing a series of executive orders intended to whip up hysteria against trans people.

It’s no wonder the ruling class puts so much effort into fomenting these divisions. For decades, we’ve seen skyrocketing inequality and worsening living standards for the majority. Class anger is brewing in all corners of US society.

As of April, the top 10% holds 69% of the wealth in US society, while the bottom 50% holds just 3%. For decades, real wages have been stagnant for large sections of the working class. Almost 25% of the workforce is either unemployed, unable to find anything but part-time work, or living on a poverty wage. All of this provides fertile ground for the growth of the class struggle in the coming years.

Faced with this reality, the ruling class is using anything and everything to keep us divided and distracted. This explains the capitalists’ tireless scapegoating of immigrants, trans people, and other marginalized groups.

Democrats just as guilty

We can be sure the Democrats will gleefully pounce on the opportunity to brand themselves as heroic fighters for LGBTQ rights. Let’s be clear: they’re not. Liberal politicians merely hope to profit politically—just like a money-hungry corporation rolling out a rainbow marketing campaign.

For years, both parties have used cultural conflict as a way to score cheap political points. The Democrats are not the “lesser evil,” and they didn’t “fail to defend” trans rights—because they never really cared about trans people or any other marginalized group in the first place. Their party exists to defend the capitalist system, and its leaders only care about winning elections to maintain their power and privileges, by any means necessary.

The Democrats have benefited from portraying the Republicans as a unique threat to the rights of the oppressed. That’s why they never codified Roe v. Wade. Why deprive themselves of a convenient sword of Damocles they can point to every election year? “You have no choice but to vote for us—or the Republicans will take away your rights!”

“Progressive” virtue signaling transformed women’s and LGBTQ rights into a political football. Meanwhile, the American right wing has fed off the amorphous idea of “wokeness” and the widespread backlash it has provoked. That’s why “woke” theatrics are not merely ineffective—they’re reactionary. In other words, both wings of the ruling class are equally responsible for the oppression of LGBTQ people, because the whole establishment is in on the same cynical political game.

The death of “woke”

The backlash against “wokeness” is not a sign that society is “swinging to the right” or that the mass of the working class are rabid reactionaries. It just shows that people are sick of identity politics—and for good reason. 

For years, ordinary working people have been lectured by well-to-do liberals about their “complicity” in oppression. Workers struggling to make ends meet have endured sermons on the “privilege” conferred upon them by their sex, skin color, or other biological features.

Instead of pointing to the power of the ruling class as the real source of inequality, intersectionality invested every individual with a small share of “social power,” making everyone responsible for the crimes of class society. The right wing has tapped into healthy frustration with these views, mixing demagogic pro-worker rhetoric with reactionary scapegoating of immigrants and trans people.

The Democrats and their side of the culture war is neither “left” nor “radical.” The major parties are merely two wings of the ruling class, using the culture war as a smokescreen and attempting to divert class anger away from its rightful target—the capitalist class—to pit workers against each other instead.

A class approach to LGBTQ liberation

Communists stand for militant class struggle against all forms of oppression, discrimination, and prejudice, which only serve to divide the working class. We fight for full democratic rights and equality for all—including the right of trans people to freely identify and express their gender as they please. And the only way to make this a reality is through class-war against the capitalists.

The struggle to change society demands a correct strategy, and this starts with asking the right questions. Too often, activists resign themselves to the immediate reality in front of them and fixate on short-term problems, like deciding which electoral candidate is the “lesser evil.” The question that should occupy the mind of every fighter for LGBTQ rights is simple: what is the endgame? What will it take to fundamentally transform society?

The way to end the oppression and victimization of trans people—who are a small minority of the population and cannot win against the capitalists on their own—is to unite the vast majority of the working population in a class war against the 1% at the top of society. This can only be achieved through class politics, not identity politics.

What does this mean? It begins with depriving our class enemy of its ability to divide the working class with culture war distractions. The ruling class frames the “debate” over trans issues around sports, prisons, and toilets, to distract from the fact that they’re robbing the entire working class—regardless of gender—of access to quality healthcare, affordable housing, and a decent job.

Anti-trans sentiment is fomented for political gain, just like national chauvinism or anti-immigrant poison. Despite the fire and fury, these prejudices and animosities don’t actually run very deep, and can be broken down in the course of united class struggle. By exposing the class interests behind the culture war, by showing how to fight collectively for the material demands that concern all workers, communists can help overcome the superficial cultural barriers that divide our class and redirect all manifestations of discontent against the class enemy.

We’re all being plunged into misery and crushed by this system. Instead of fighting over the crumbs, we should unite and fight for the whole pie—by expropriating the billionaires and building a world free from oppression and exploitation.