This new section of Crime and Social Justice is necessitated by the new wave of political repression that is an expression of the world capitalist crisis in the 1980s. In the United States, there are already many indications of a political shift to the right. The Reagan administration and Congress are quickly moving to unshackle the FBI and CIA, to severely restrict the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, to pass a very conservative version of the federal criminal code (originally S.B. 1), and to revive political witch-hunting via the Senate's new Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism. Reminiscent of McCarthyism -- but potentially more insidious and dangerous -- the Reagan administration is systematically generating a new Cold War ideology to justify military intervention abroad and political repression at home. Side by side with these new forms of state repression, we are witnessing the rapid growth of the New Right in all its legal (e.g., Moral Majority) and paramilitary (e.g., Ku Klux Klan) forms. In most cases, these New Right organizations enjoy the financial support, political backing, or covert complicity of the state and the conservative wing of the ruling class.

In this section of CSJ, we plan to include commentaries and updates on political and legislative developments, as well as in-depth research reports on specific right-wing organizations. In this issue of CSJ, we present an overview by a representative of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (NCARL) of current developments in Congress; plus a preliminary investigation of the U.S. Labor Party, a powerful neofascist organization that recently targeted Crime and Social Justice for "destabilization."