Sean O’Brien striding to the podium at the Republican convention. He channeled Nazi Gregor Strasser.

Gregor Strasser returned to life at the Republican Convention yesterday. He returned in the body of Teamsters president and “reform” union leader Sean O’Brien. Strasser, let us remember, was the German Nazi leader who did so much to build the Nazi party in the 1920s and early ‘30s by using left-sounding rhetoric to give the Nazis an anti-capitalist image. “Strasserism”, as it has become known, has been around ever since, and on Tuesday it returned in full form through the 17 minute speech of O’Brien. Below is a transcript of some of his remarks, but you really have to watch the speech in order to hear/see the hypocritical cheers from the delegates. Here are O’Brien’s opening remarks:

O’Brien  0:05
Greetings, delegates and guests. I’m Sean O’Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

[Cheers]

O’Brien  0:21
I’d like to give my peeps from the greatest state in the nation, Massachusetts, some props. What’s up? First, I want to thank the hardworking Teamsters and union members here in Milwaukee who played vital roles in the building and operations of this convention.

[cheers]

O’Brien 1  0:46
I also want to thank President Donald Trump for opening the RNC doors for the teamsters union and invited me to speak before you tonight.

[cheers]

O’Brien  1:02
I travel all across this country and meet with my members every week. You know what? I see? An American worker being taken for granted, workers being sold out to big banks, big tech, corporates and the elite. And I’m not the only one who sees this. Everyday families see it. The American people aren’t stupid. They know the system is broken. We all know how Washington is run. Working people have no chance of winning this fight. That’s why I’m here today, because I refuse to keep doing the same things my predecessors did

[cheers]

O’Brien  1:50
today. Today, the Teamsters are here to say we are not beholden to anyone or any party. You

[cheers]

O’Brien  2:04
we will create an agenda and work with a bipartisan coalition ready to accomplish something real for the American worker.

[cheers]

O’Brien 1 6:34
We started talking. Senator Hawley changed his position on national right to work. Then we started walking. Senator Hawley walked up to picket line in St Louis and a UAW picking line in Wentzville, Missouri. More than that, I want to recognize Senator Hawley for his direct, relentless and pointed questioning of corporate Talking Heads, lawyers, CEOs and apologists. He has shown he is not willing to accept their pillaging of work in people’s pocketbooks. I know from a career in negotiating that you get nowhere by slamming your fist on the table, the first step is to listen the Teamsters and the GOP may not agree on many issues, but a growing group has shown the courage to sit down and consider points of view that aren’t funded by big money think tanks. You us, senators like JD Vance, Roger Marshall and representatives Nicole Malliotakis, Mike Lawler and Brian Fitzpatrick are among elected officials who truly care about working people, and this group is expanding and is putting fear into those who have monopolized our very broken system….

[cheers]

Read full speech here: Transcript O’Brien speech to Republican convention

O’Brien, of course, basked in the cheers that interrupted him every 30 seconds or so for his entire speech. By doing so, he enabled the extreme right wing – and in some cases outright fascist – Republican delegates to take on a pro-worker mantle. 

Gorsuch ruled that this truck driver should have frozen to death rather than break a company order.

O’Brien forgot to mention, however, the extreme anti-worker Republican Supreme Court (in)Justices, first and foremost of which is John Gorsuch, who should be infamous for his “frozen trucker” ruling. As an appeals court judge, Gorsuch had ruled that Alphonse Maddin should have stayed with his truck and frozen to death rather than unhitch the trailer and seek help. As a leader who represents truckers (among others) one would think that O’Brien should be concerned, but not a peep from this demagogue from the Republican platform. Instead, he went on and on preaching about workers’ rights and interests, to be interrupted time and again by the fascistic delegates who pretended to have workers’ interests at heart.

But it was these MAGA Republicans who put the pro-corporate (and increasingly important) Gorsuch and the other five MAGA (in)Justices on the Supreme Court.

That is the least of it. Workers’ lives are not governed only by relations with the boss on the job, and like every other union, the Teamsters have women members, they have lgbtq+ members, they have members of color, they have members who are immigrants or are from immigrant families, some of whom are undocumented. All of these workers will be disastrously affected by a Trump/Vance administration. Women will be unable to get an abortion (never mind being subjected to sexual harassment at work without any government protection); LGBTQ people will find their rights – in fact, their very lives – increasingly under attack; people of color will find increasing racist harassment; and as for immigrants and people from families of immigrants, Trump has announced that he plans to round up “millions” of undocumented immigrants, put them in detention camps and ship them out of the country. All of this will not only directly affect thousands of Teamster members that O’Brien claims to represent; it will affect all the workers in the US, whom O’Brien and company claim to represent. Nor is it only a matter of workers. The working class must stand up for all the oppressed, no matter what class they are in.

O’Brien-Trump history
O’Brien has a history of flirting with Trump, going back to the January, 2024 friendly meeting  between the two. He engineered a $45,000 donation to the Republican convention (along with an equal donation to the Democratic convention).

When O’Brien met with Trump in January, some local Teamster leaders spoke out against him. Richard Hooker Jr., secretary treasurer of Teamsters local 623 in Philadelphia, explained part of the problem. “As leaders, we have to do a better job of explaining to our members that a vote for Trump is a vote against your pension, a vote for Trump is a vote against organizing workers, a vote for Trump is another vote against the working class,” he said. He was acknowledging the fact that thousands of Teamsters, and other workers – union and non-union alike – support Trump and MAGA. But even what Hooker said only hits at part of the issue.  Another Teamster member, Jess Lister, who is a member of the LGBTQ caucus of the Teamsters called the meeting between O’Brien and Trump “a slap in the face.” She continued: “[Trump] has a longstanding history of racism, of hate towards women, towards minorities, towards the LGTBQ community – he is not accepting of other people. Our union president shouldn’t even entertain the idea of a meeting. That shouldn’t have even been on the table.”. Lister was closer to the point. It’s not just that Trump and MAGA will decimate the economic interests of workers; they will vastly step up all forms of oppression and if the labor movement is silent this will also increase the divisions in the working class.

Along with UAW president Sean Fain, O’Brien was elected as a “reform” candidate, with the unstinting praise of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union. At that time, Oaklandsocialist published an article explaining some of the problems. Since then, TDU has been silent about O’Brien’s meeting with Trump. So was the union reform group Labor Notes. Leaders of the union reform trend Dan La Botz and Bill Fletcher jr. heaped unstinting praise on O’Brien (and Fain) in a forum which was held after that O’Brien/Trump meeting. They didn’t mention it. Of course, the AFL-CIO will be silent on this. We cannot expect anything better from them. But we will see if any of these reform forces speak out against this latest betrayal by O’Brien. We don’t use the word “betrayal” lightly. That is exactly what O’Brien has done: Betray the U.S. labor movement and the working class as a whole. He is helping pave the way for the election of the most right wing US president since pre-Civil War days and for the overt attacks on democratic rights as well as vastly stepped up attacks on women, LGBTQ people, people of color, immigrants, and anybody else that Trump/Vance think convenient to attack. If paving the way for this is not a betrayal of all workers, both at home and around the world, then nothing is.

Update: The Washington Post is reporting criticism of O’Brien’s speech from both the White House and several union leaders. These include John Palmer of the Teamsters executive board, AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Matthew Biggs, and Painters Union president Jimmy Williams jr. Typical of their comments is this from Biggs: “Make no mistake

Comment from official site of Teamsters rapidly removed.

about it, their intent is to crush federal unions and have mass firings of federal employees and turn the government into an at-will employer where people are hired and fired based on their political leanings.” They all miss the point: As the only mass organizations of the US working class, the unions have the obligation to stand against oppression and bigotry. O’Brien did exactly the opposite. More to the point was a comment on X/Twitter from the official account of the Teamsters. See screen shot on left. According to the Post, that comment was quickly removed.