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  • Electoral setback in Colombia opens a new phase of struggle

    Electoral setback in Colombia opens a new phase of struggle

    The razor thin loss of the left in the presidential election in Peru and the left’s rejection of the legitimacy of the election of US citizen and ultra-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia have set the stage for a new period of social and class conflict in Latin America.

    The political temperature in Colombia continues to rise following the contested official election results that have made extreme-right wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella the presumptive president elect.

    President Gustavo Petro has rejected the electoral results and called for national demonstrations on July 20 th , the day the new congress is to be seated. He wrote on X,

    “The president of Colombia does not recognize the legitimacy of the incoming government. Abelardo did not win the elections.

    “The national majority is called upon this July 20th to raise the cry of national independence in all public squares.”

    Since the elections

    On June 24, three days after the final round of Colombia’s presidential election, Senator Ivan Cepeda, the presidential candidate of the left-wing Pacto Historico and Alianza por la Vida, conceded the presidential race to Abelardo de la Espriella, the right-wing candidate and now the presumptive president elect of Colombia.

    Cepeda said, “At this stage of the scrutiny of the ballots and voting, I have decided to accept the results of that process. They indicate that Abelardo de la Espriella is the new president of the Republic. I do it as an act of democratic responsibility… However, acceptance of the electoral result does not mean giving up the truth or remaining silent in the face of events that we consider serious and that marked this presidential campaign.”

    Then, just six days later, Cepeda demanded that de la Espriella renounce his US citizenship and his ties to US intelligence and police agencies as a condition of assuming the presidency of Colombia. De la Espriella is a citizen of Colombia by birth, a naturalized citizen of the United States who has sworn to renounce all allegiances to all other countries, and also a citizen of Italy.

    Cepeda called on the judicial authorities to act to protect Colombian sovereignty and called on the people of the country to engage in peaceful civil disobedience if de la Espriella does not renounce his ties to the USA.

    President Gustavo Petro’s rejection of the election results and call for demonstrations began with the statement that,

    “We have all the information regarding the IP server located in Los Angeles, California, owned by the Bautista brothers, which was integrated into the vote counting operation. Algorithms were used that substantially altered the vote count in favor of Abelardo. The algorithms that rigged the election results were used with the voter registration lists of those who never vote, replacing them with voters who could vote multiple times or with no registered voters at the polling stations.

    “The polling stations abroad where Abelardo obtained 177,000 more votes than Cepeda had poll workers from Colombia who were not residents of the US or Spain, which is illegal. These polling stations also included voters brought in for the World Cup who were able to vote seven times using the names of those who never vote.

    “The same thing happened in several regions of Antioquia and Medellín, in Norte de Santander, and at polling stations in northern Bogotá…. “The company that supplied the Bautista brothers with flawed algorithms and other support is an Israeli private intelligence firm called BlackCube.”

    The opaque vote collection and counting software is owned by a private firm known as Thomas Greg and Sons. The company is owned by the Bautista family, Colombians now based in the United States. They have close ties to right-wing establishment politicians in both the United States and Colombia, and some of them have been convicted of financial crimes in the USA.

    Separately, Petro announced that the government has uncovered evidence that a prominent Trump supporter in the United States named Dan Newlin had illegally donated $1.8 million to de la Espriella’s campaign. Newlin is a criminal defense attorney who has offices in Florida, Illinois, and in Medellin, Colombia. Trump had nominated him to be US ambassador to Colombia, but the nomination was rejected by the GOP dominated Senate Foreign Relations committee.

    De la Espriella’s political position is rapidly deteriorating before he can even take office. Now, he says that his first action in office will be to issue a decree to establish an “urban defense force” reminiscent of Convivir, the legal cover used in the past by the Colombian paramilitary militias and death squads.

    Although the situation in the country is very fluid and uncertain, tensions are rapidly rising between the left and right in Colombia, and between Latin American countries and the United States.

    Who really won the election?

    The National Election Council’s official vote count gave Abelardo de la Espriella 12,959,542 votes, less than 1% more than the 12,708,712 votes of Senator Ivan Cepeda. The voter turnout of 63.6 % was a record for this country.

    The final complete official results were announced even though there had already been more than 57,000 challenges to irregularities such as vote buying and electronic fraud before Petro’s own announcement.

    The widespread incidents of various types of fraud and irregularities had already led many supporters of the Pacto Historico to question Cepeda’s concession.

    Luis Guillermo Perez Casas, a leader of the Pacto Historico, is heading the effort to collect evidence throughout the country at acciondenulidad2026@gmail.com. Casas is a human rights lawyer who served as Secretary General for the Americas of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). So far, nearly 200,000 Colombians have signed up to help the effort.

    A wide variety of irregularities and frauds have been recorded in addition to those related directly to US intervention. They include votes cast by dead people and children, photos of votes used to collect payments from vote buyers, officials of the registrar of voters preventing poll watchers from doing their jobs, and changes made to vote certifications after they had been filed.

    If the vote count is not overturned, de la Espriella will take office on August 7. Until then, the current leftwing president, Gustavo Petro, will remain in office although he has already begun the transitional process of handing over the government to de la Espriella.

    Under Colombia’s constitution, the losing candidate of the final round of voting for president automatically becomes a member of the country’s newly elected Senate. Nevertheless, the right is now talking about trying to block Cepeda from taking his seat in the senate if Cepeda does not recognize the official election results. If seated, Cepeda will become the President of the Senate (with powers similar to the Senate majority leader in the USA) since the Pacto Historico has the largest block in the Senate. The members of the newly elected Senate and Chamber of Representatives will be seated on July 20.

    A Polarized and Divided Country

    This election continued trends apparent in the last election: while the multiparty system lives on in the legislative branch and in departmental and municipal governments, Colombia’s multiparty system is collapsing towards a new two-party system in presidential elections and the center is disappearing.

    The new binary system is not a repeat of the old system of the Liberal Party and Conservative Party. Those old parties were led by different sections of the ruling class which had evolved from before the country’s struggle for independence. Their corrupt but violence plagued rule was transformed with the inauguration of the country’s 1991 constitution.

    Instead, those two old parties and the various factions and machines of which they had been composed are now coalescing into one new right wing ruling class conglomeration.

    They still hate each other as much as ever, but more than they hate each other, they fear the growing power of the working class and the oppressed. That power is coalescing into the new political party called the Pacto Historico.

    The Pacto Historico is the current incarnation of a series of electoral coalitions of the left which formed for reasons more closely related to electoral law requirements and a drive to elect leaders of the left than from any serious desire to create a unified party of the working class and the oppressed. Despite its often reactive, haphazard, and improvised history, the Pacto has become a very close approximation to a mass party of the working class and oppressed. Its voter base consists mostly of the urban working class, and the organizations which support it include the country’s unions, much of its indigenous and Afro-descendant populations, and large parts of the feminist, LGBTQ+ and environmentalist movements.

    A good approximation of the ascendant growth curve of the left in Colombia is found in its presidential election results which you can see in the chart below.

    Year Candidate Party First Round Second Round
    votes % votes %
    2002 Luis Eduardo Garzon Polo Democratico Independiente 680,000 6.16%
    2006 Carlos Gaviria Polo Democratico Alternativa 2,613,000 22.03%
    2010 Gustavo Petro Polo Democratico Alternativa 1,331,000 9.14%
    2014 Clara Lopez Polo Democratico Alternativa 1,958.5180 15.22%
    2018 Gustavo Petro Colombia Humana 4,855,069 25.09% 8,040,449 41.77%
    2022 Gustavo Petro Colombia Humana/Pacto Historico 8,542,020 40.34% 11,292,758 50.42%
    2026 Ivan Cepeda Pacto Historico/Alianz a por la Vida 9,688,361 40.90% 12,708,712 48.70%

    It’s worth noting that in 2010 and 2014, the Green Party ran presidential candidates which took votes away from the candidates of the Polo Democratico (In 2010 Antanas Mockus received 3,134,000 votes or 21.51%, and in 2014 Enrique Peñalosa received 1,064,000 votes or 8.27%.) Those were the only elections in which the Greens ran presidential campaigns in this country.

    The Cabinet of Los que Siempre (Those who have always)

    Much has been made of de la Espriella’s slickly packaged campaign, use of social media and artificial intelligence, and clever campaign slogans. Although all of this is true, the keys to his victory lay in the fact that he was an unknown quantity who appeared to be conservative and on the right. Unofficially and behind the scenes, his campaign united the political machinery of the right-wing parties to mobilize the conservative layers of Colombia’s middle class.

    He campaigned as a political outsider, using the campaigns of Donald Trump in the USA, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Javier Milei in Argentina, and Rodolfo Hernandez here in Colombia (the candidate of the Colombian right who lost the 2022 presidential election) as his templates. As in those campaigns, de la Espriella is far from being an outsider, but he was a blank slate to the public. His dark past as a front man for the paramilitary AUC, as an attorney for drug dealers, money launderers and corrupt politicians, and as a close collaborator of the DEA and FBI, only began to become public as the campaign neared its end.

    His campaign was built on lies. A man who had professed to be an atheist, he embraced religion and appealed especially to the growing evangelical churches of the country. He has placed two of their leaders in his new cabinet.

    Knowing that the conservative petty bourgeoisie of the country had turned their backs on the traditional right-wing leadership, he promised he would make no deals with the traditional political parties and form a government of “los que nunca” (‘Those who never’ which means something like “the have nots” in English.) The slogan was a promise to rid the country of the corrupt right-wing politicians while remaining true to conservative values.

    His choice of a vice president should have told his voters that this was a lie.

    The new Vice President, Jose Manuel Restrepo, is a Colombian blue blood who is the descendant of three presidents and who was Minister of Finance in the scandal ridden government of Ivan Duque. Restrepo appears to be the de facto leader of the new government. Since the election, de la Espriella has disappeared from public view while Restrepo is constantly in the news and is leading the transition team of the new government.

    If the choice of Restrepo did not alert de la Espriella’s voter base to his bait and switch game, his cabinet appointments have. His newly minted ministers mostly served in the right-wing governments of Alvaro Uribe and Ivan Duque, and key members are drawn from the elite of two of the most corrupt family dynasties of Colombia’s right: the Char family of Barranquilla which now controls the party known as Cambio Radical, and the Pastrana family which dominates the Conservative Party. That party’s patriarch is former President Andrés Pastrana who is famous for his 33 entries in the Epstein files.

    The Cabinet of Los que Siempre (Those who have always)

    Faction Name Ministry Notes
    Char Family Elsa Noguera Minister of Transportation Husband is a convicted drug dealer
    Char Family Rodrigo Lara Restrepo Minister of the Interior His father was a Minister of Justice who was assassinated at the orders of Pablo Escobar.
    Char Family Mauricio Gómez Minister of Foreign Commerce
    Pastrana Family Miguel Gómez Martínez Minister of Finance Grandson of Laureano Gomez, the most extreme right wing President in the history of Colombia.
    Uribe Machine Iván Cancino González Minister of Justice (Uribe, Gilinski, Odebrecht)
    Uribe Machine Lorena Angarita Minister of Technology, Information and Communications internet activist and senatorial candidate with no apparent education or qualifications
    Uribe Machine Paloma Valencia Mines and Energy Official Presidential candidate of Alvaro Uribe’s Centro Democratico
    Evangelicals Viviane Morales Minister of Education Former Procurador
    Evangelicals Jaime Andres Beltran Minister of Housing Former Mayor of Bucaramanga removed from office for violating election laws.
    National Salvation Party Retired General Jorge Eduardo Mora López Minister of Defense Career military officer closely connected to DEA. Removed by Petro from chain of command after he was investigated, but not convicted, for corruption. Senatorial candidate for the extreme right wing National Salvation Party
    Unaffiliated Fabio Alberto Arjona Hincapié Minister of the Environment A supposed environmentalist who supports fracking as well as strip mining of sensitive environments in the Andes

    Plans and Threats

    De la Espriella has made many promises and threats which involve aggressively using executive decrees rather than going through the legislative processes beginning with his attempt to use the transition process to witch hunt members of the current government.

    Much of what he wants to do requires legislative action under the Colombian constitution, and other goals are flatly unconstitutional. While his campaign claims that all of the parties in the legislative branch except the Pacto Historico and the Alianza Verde have agreed to support the new government, this has not been confirmed by all of the party leaders, and even if they do, it is unlikely that they will be able to control all of their own parties’ legislators.

    De la Espriella says he wants to diminish the size of the state, transfer powers and revenue from the central government to the notoriously corrupt departmental and municipal governments; encourage private investment, mining and fossil fuel; and launch a major offensive against armed groups and drug-trafficking organizations. All in the first 100 days of his government.

    He also plans to resume aerial coca eradication using bioherbicides, build 10 Bukele style mega-prisons, revoke decrees against the use of the armed forces against civilian populations, subsidize the private health care system with an additional 10 trillion Colombian pesos, and launch a witch hunt against Gustavo Petro, officials who have served in his government, and the Pacto Historico.

    More than these publicly advertised measures, de la Espriella has proposed to roll back the pension and land reforms of the Petro government, and despite his public pronouncements to the contrary, is expected to try to roll back the major gains in the minimum salary made under Petro’s government and improvements made to public education.

    Where did the votes come from?

    Regardless of whether de la Espriella’s election is legitimate and regardless of how many votes were falsely attributed to de la Espriella, Colombia is clearly divided into four major political sectors: the approximately 16,000,000 people who were eligible to vote but did not, the almost 10,000,000 politically active working class and oppressed voters of the Pacto Historico in the first round of voting, the 12,000,000 politically active middle-class and upper middle-class voters who voted for the right in the first round of the elections, and about 2,000,000 politically active swing voters.

    A close look at the statistics and maps reveals that the Pacto Historico’s votes came from the poor and working-class neighborhoods of the big cities and from the Afro-Colombian and Indigenous regions of the country. In contrast, the votes of the right come from the middle class and upper middle-class neighborhoods of the big cities, and from the small cities and towns in the Andean region of the country which are still dominated by the old political machines. These same areas also account for much of the politically inactive population. Swing voters can be found everywhere but are mostly concentrated in the middle-class neighborhoods of the big cities.

    This election revealed two big changes in the electorate. First, a large number of people who had never voted turned out at the polls, and most of these new voters supported the Pacto Historico. Second, the middle classes shifted to the right. The Pacto Historico’s winning margins decreased in some cities including Bogotá and in middle-class and upper middle-class precincts throughout the country.

    This shift can be attributed to several factors. First, despite falling crime rates, the mainstream media has spent four years amplifying every crime committed in every city of the country and blaming Petro’s government for them. Second, Petro’s program of Paz Total (Total Peace) has failed to bring about the disarmament and demobilization of the armed groups that control the illegal drug trade and some isolated rural areas of the county. Third, the conflict between Petro’s government and the private health care industry has resulted in delays and denials of health care among patients who pay for premium health care services, and this has angered much of the
    middle classes.

    Fourth, the large increase in the minimum salary has caused the monthly administration fees in condominium complexes to go up and has increased the pay for the millions of women who work as maids and house cleaners. This has infuriated these voters even when they would be embarrassed to say so.

    From 1970 to 2026 This election echoes the tumultuous election theft of 1970 but is very different in many, many respects. From 1958 to 1974, the two traditional parties of the Colombian ruling class, the Conservatives and Liberals, ruled the country in a more or less friendly power sharing agreement. Each party agreed to let the other party rule and take the lion’s share of the spoils of office for four years, and to then take over for their own turn at stealing from the public trough.

    This agreement was called the National Front. In 1970, it was the Conservative Party’s turn to win the presidential election, so the Liberal Party did not run a presidential candidate. Unfortunately for the two parties, the former military dictator, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, who had been turned out of power by the National Front agreement, decided to run against the Conservative Party candidate, Misael Pastrana.

    Pinilla was winning the election when the government stopped reporting results, then declared a state of emergency, and then declared that Pastrana had won the election. For days after the election, there was fighting in the streets, and schools and business were closed.
    Three years later, a new guerrilla movement, the April 19 Movement (Movimiento del 19 de abril, M-19), was formed in reaction to the election theft. Its most important aim was to fight for the simple democratic right of one person one vote. As a youth, Gustavo Petro joined M-19, and not much later, Ivan Cepeda joined the legal political party that it became after it demobilized in 1990. Both the Pacto Historico and the Alianza Verde are in important ways descended from M-19.

    This time around, the right-wing will have a much more difficult time stealing the election. For one thing, Gustavo Petro is still president and commander in chief of the Colombian military, police and intelligence agencies. Even though the right wing maintains a powerful network within the miliary, police and government bureaucracy, it is far from having the control it exercised in 1970.

    On the other hand, the Colombian left now has a mass party which did not exist in 1970, and most of the left has come in from the cold from its terrible detour into guerrillerismo.

  • Understanding the rise of Afrophobia in South Africa — and how we resist it

    Understanding the rise of Afrophobia in South Africa — and how we resist it

    A man is attacked with a sjambok at an anti-immigrant March and protest in Jeppestown in May 2026. (Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee/GroundUp.)

    Afrophobia in South Africa is often presented as a problem of ‘foreigners versus locals’, as though it emerges naturally from cultural hostility or competition between poor people. But this explanation hides the deeper political and economic realities that produce anti-immigrant violence and xenophobic mobilisation. The rise of Afrophobia in South Africa cannot be understood outside the context of deep inequality, unemployment, dispossession, political manipulation, and the failures of post-apartheid transformation.

    It is not simply about prejudice. It is about how social anger is redirected away from systems of exploitation and towards vulnerable people who are themselves victims of those same systems.

    South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world. Decades after the end of apartheid, ownership of land and wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a small minority. Approximately 72% of arable land is owned by a very small, predominantly white section of society. In such a context, millions of people struggle daily to secure livelihoods, housing, healthcare, and employment. Yet, instead of addressing these structural inequalities, political elites and sections of capital often channel public frustration towards migrants and refugees.

    The politics of attacking migrants

    Afrophobia, therefore, functions as a political diversion. Rather than confronting the state’s failures to transform property relations, create decent work, or provide social security, migrants become scapegoats for broader crises produced by capitalism and neoliberalism. The unemployed South African worker is encouraged to blame the Zimbabwean street vendor, the Ethiopian spaza shop owner, or the Somali trader, instead of asking why wealth remains concentrated, why services collapse, and why economic opportunities are so scarce.

    The timing of anti-immigrant violence reveals this political dimension clearly: xenophobic attacks often intensify around local and national elections; political factions mobilise communities by promising to remove ‘foreigners’ and redistribute shops or opportunities to locals. In some cases, communities themselves threaten politicians with ‘doing xenophobia’ if promised removals are not carried out. Xenophobia thus becomes a political weapon—a bargaining tool used in struggles over local power and patronage.

    Groups such as Operation Dudula and political formations like the Patriotic Alliance have built support by exploiting this anger. But these movements are not spontaneous expressions of working-class frustration; they are carefully cultivated campaigns, tied to broader right-wing networks and funded by sections of capital and elite interests. Their purpose is to redirect legitimate social discontent away from the economic system itself and towards migrants.

    Accordingly, Afrophobia is not simply produced ‘from below’. Anti-immigrant politics is often driven by middle-class and elite actors. Universities, media organisations, politicians, and commentators play a crucial role in constructing the migrant as a threat. The media repeatedly associates migrants with crime, illegality, and disorder. Once nationality is constantly highlighted in reports about crime or social problems, an association forms in the public imagination: migrant equals criminal; foreigner equals danger.

    Migrants are not outsiders 

    A destroyed tuck shop run by an Ethiopian family in Rosettenville. (Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee/GroundUp)

    This discourse obscures the reality that many migrants are deeply embedded in local communities and economies. Migrant-owned spaza shops, for example, often thrive because they meet social needs ignored by larger corporations and formal retailers. They sell affordable goods close to where people live, extend credit to struggling families, and develop relationships of trust and mutual support with township residents. In places like Hermanus, communities often viewed Ethiopian shopkeepers as assets because they provided accessible and affordable food and services.

    At the same time, big business frequently perceives these small-scale migrant traders as competitors. Local authorities and large commercial interests in Hermanus allegedly collaborated to harass and criminalise migrant traders. This demonstrates another important truth: Afrophobia is not only about culture or identity. It is also about economic competition and the defence of entrenched interests.

    The issue of “illegality” is central to this politics of exclusion. Anti-immigrant campaigns frequently portray migrants as undocumented criminals flooding the country. Yet many migrants initially entered South Africa legally and later became undocumented because of the dysfunction and hostility of the Department of Home Affairs. Applications are lost, permits are delayed, and people are effectively rendered illegal through bureaucratic exclusion. The category of the ‘illegal immigrant’ is therefore often politically manufactured.

    Despite the intensity of xenophobic rhetoric, everyday life in working-class communities is more complex and contradictory than media narratives suggest. There are tensions, certainly, but there are also countless acts of solidarity and cooperation between South Africans and migrants. In many townships, locals protect migrants from attacks, organise together for housing and services, and build relationships rooted in shared survival.

    An example of this solidarity is the story of Ethiopian traders protected by South African women during periods of anti-immigrant violence. These women risked their own safety to shelter and disguise a migrant trader because he had become part of their community. He had sold them blankets on credit, built relationships with them, and become woven into their everyday lives. This story reveals that solidarity is not abstract. It grows through shared struggles, mutual care, and human connection.

    How we can resist

    What, then, can be done to push back against Afrophobia?

    First, we must reject nationalist retaliation and cycles of revenge. Responding to xenophobia by attacking South African businesses elsewhere on the continent is reactionary. Such reactions only reinforce the divisions that right-wing forces seek to cultivate. Afrophobia can only be defeated through deeper continental solidarity, not reciprocal hostility.

    Second, organising must begin where ordinary people actually are. Rather than lecturing communities abstractly about Pan-Africanism, cosmopolitanism and humanism, activists must connect anti-xenophobic politics to people’s immediate struggles—for jobs, housing, healthcare, education, and dignity. Migrants and locals often face the same structural conditions of poverty, unemployment, and dispossession. Effective organising must reveal these shared interests and common enemies.

    This means ‘fusing struggles’. Campaigns against evictions, unemployment, environmental destruction, and austerity must consciously include migrants, rather than treating them as separate categories. International NGOs sometimes reinforce divisions by isolating migrants as special humanitarian subjects, instead of integrating them into broader community struggles. This can unintentionally deepen resentment rather than solidarity.

    Third, there is a need for cross-border organising across Africa. Capital already operates across borders, exploiting workers and resources throughout the continent. Communities resisting displacement, environmental destruction, and neoliberal restructuring must also build transnational alliances. Pan-African solidarity cannot remain rhetorical; it must be grounded in shared political struggle.

    From colonial borders to Pan-African solidarity

    Such a struggle will have to confront the contradiction at the heart of African governments’ approach to migration. While many states have signed the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCT), very few have ratified protocols guaranteeing free movement for African people. Capital is allowed to move freely, but workers and poor people are criminalised for crossing borders. Challenging Afrophobia, therefore, also requires demanding freedom of movement and opposing the hardening of borders inherited from colonial rule.

    Underlying all of this is a broader political vision. Afrophobia is rooted in exclusionary ideas of citizenship and belonging that were shaped by colonialism and reproduced by postcolonial states. To resist it requires imagining African identity differently—not as something fixed by borders or passports, but as an open and evolving process rooted in shared humanity and collective struggle.

    Finally, young people are central to building this alternative future. Thus, political education and cultural work among African youth is crucial. If Afrophobia is learned through media, politics, and everyday narratives, then solidarity must also be taught and cultivated. Young people need opportunities to think critically about migration, identity, inequality, and Pan-Africanism from an early age.

    The struggle against Afrophobia is therefore inseparable from the struggle for social transformation itself. It is a struggle against inequality, exploitation, dispossession, and political manipulation. It demands that we refuse the false divisions imposed between ‘locals’ and ‘foreigners’ and instead recognise the shared conditions shaping working-class lives across the continent.

    In the end, the real question is not whether migrants belong in South Africa. The real question is whether we will allow elites and political opportunists to divide ordinary people, while the structures that produce poverty and inequality remain intact. The answer to Afrophobia lies not in stronger borders or harsher exclusion, but in solidarity, justice, and a genuinely emancipatory Pan-African politics.

    First published by Amandla.

  • Video of Webinar on How to Be Anti-War in a Multipolar World

    Video of Webinar on How to Be Anti-War in a Multipolar World

    The Northeast Los Angeles Alliance for Democracy held this webinar on June 21, 2026 with Iranian American, Cuban, Ukrainian American socialist feminist speakers.  It was moderated by MaryLinda Moss of the NELA Alliance for Democracy.
    (more…)

  • Fourth of July at 250: The On-Going Struggle for Equality, Democracy, and Justice

    Fourth of July at 250: The On-Going Struggle for Equality, Democracy, and Justice

    I have written this essay because I have been irked by the media’s discussion of whether or not our country has fulfilled the ideals of its founding fathers. So, I wished to clarify just what their ideals were.

    The United States has been from the beginning the site of an enormous, long-drawn-out struggle between the wealthy property-owning ruling classes and the working classes. The ruling elite sought to expand its wealth and power and its control over other social classes, especially the laboring classes, and over time it built a powerful capitalist state and a vast empire. The laboring classes sought to gain economic and political power to improve their well-being and the prospects for their families. The conflict has been long, uneven, and intermittent, with periodic outbursts of struggle from below and episodes of reactionary repression from above. On July 4, our 250th birthday as a nation, we should celebrate the underdogs, the dissidents, the rebellious who fought and continue to fight against exploitation and oppression, and stand for equality, democracy, and justice.

    Why the American Revolution?

    The wealthy classes in the British North American colonies decided in the late eighteenth century that they no longer wished to share with Great Britain’s monarch, nobility, and capitalist class the wealth that the colonial elites accrued from the exploitation of slaves and wage laborers and from the seizure of indigenous lands. The wealthy colonists objected to British political control of the colonies, to paying British taxes, and to British prohibition of colonial expansion into Indian territories to the West. The colonial ruling classes wanted to exploit the land and working peoples for their own benefit and didn’t want to have to share that wealth with the British elite any longer. The time had come, the American wealthy classes believed to take it all for themselves. It was that avaricious desire that led to the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. They couched their demands in terms of freedom, of liberty, rhetoric that appealed to many people in the colonies, but those words meant freedom for themselves and their enterprises, the freedom to exploit and accrue profit.

    The United States was born as twins that grew to be rivals like Cain and Abel. In the North, the rulers were capitalist farmers employing wage labor, commercial classes of merchants and traders, and already the very first industrial enterprises, textile mills employing women, children, and immigrants. In the South the rulers were the owners of plantations and slaves, a seigneurial class that dominated the system of plantation slavery dependent on English and American bankers and merchants both for investment and the sale of their product and the realization of a profit, but a distinct economic and social system. The two wealthy elites, representing the two systems, capitalism and slavery, struggled for control of the state from 1789 to 1861, when the Civil War broke out to determine who could control North America. Capitalism proved victorious and slavery was abolished. But we have gotten ahead of our story.

    The colonial elites before the Revolution and while still under British rule had the experience in their respective colonies of republican forms of government, local assemblies and legislatures dominated by wealthy farmers and businessmen or slave owners, so it was relatively easy for them to envision a post-revolutionary government that would have similar characteristics. The revolutionaries, dominated by the wealthy property owners and their lieutenants, lawyers and journalists, created a series of such a national republican government, first the As the Continental Congress (1776-1761), then the Confederation (1781-1789) and finally the United States government established by the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, a federal republic, representing a compromise between the capitalists and the slaveocracy.

    The Founders’ Struggle against Democracy

    The American “Founding Fathers” worked to prevent the rise of democracy which they feared and loathed. Alexander Hamilton argued that democracy meant “mob rule;” it was “a disease.” He wrote that, “The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.” Elbridge Thomas Gerry, a merchant who was one of the Founding Fathers, stated that, “democracy was the worst of all political evils.” James Madison, one of the key intellectuals and political leaders, wrote in the Federalist, No. 10 that pure democracies have historically been “spectacles of turbulence and contention,” so a form of government to be avoided at all cost.

    The anti-democratic views of the founders were embodied in the U.S. Constitution which ignored or excluded more than half the population. Women, who made up almost half of the population (48.8%) were politically non-existent, with virtually no rights whatsoever. The Black slaves who comprised almost one-fifth of the population (18.8%) had no rights either. Nor did the Indians who made up 7% of the population. That is, the vast majority of the population were not really citizens. At the time of the establishment of the United States, he states, which determined who would be allowed to vote, generally established property requirements based either on landownership or wealth. Only Vermont had no such requirements. The wealthy white men who founded the country not surprisingly made it a wealthy, white man’s republic.

    The Constitution theoretically established three co-equal branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—from the beginning the presidents played a dominant role. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and others in the early republic usurped power in the interests of expanding the authority of their class and the power of the state. Andrew Jackson, for example, defied the Supreme Court and supported Georgia in expelling the Cherokee Indians. In the legislative branch, the Senate was not initially democratically elected by the people but rather senators were chosen by state legislatures. The Supreme Court, whose members were appointed for life by the president and confirmed by the Senate, wielded enormous power. Only the House of Representatives was directly elected by “the people,” which at the time meant by white men who had property.

    The People’s Fight for Equality, Democracy and Justice

    While the capitalist and slavocracy ruling classes strove to keep all power in their own hands, from the beginning working people, and those oppressed because of their race or because of their female sex, fought for equality, democracy, and justice. We cannot even begin to mention all of the battles between the country’s founding and today, but it is worth mentioning one of the first because it set the pattern. In its first years, the U.S. government imposed a tax on whiskey to pay the costs of the revolutionary war. In 1791-94, farmers in Western Pennsylvania refused to pay the tax and some 500 of them armed themselves and revolted against the tax collectors. President George Washington and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, to make clear the power and the purpose of the new government, personally lead an army of 2,000 troops to crush the farmers’ rebellion. In the South, slave rebellions, Gabriel Prosser’s conspiracy of 1800, Denmark Vesey’s Conspiracy (1822), Nat Turner’s Rebellion (1831), were violently suppressed, their leaders and many participants executed.

    American history subsequently became a history of petitions, protests, and rebellions to which we owe whatever limited equality, democracy, and justice that we have achieved. The first wave feminists of Seneca Falls (1848) and the women’s suffrage movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, won political and economic rights for women, including the right to vote in 1920. The abolitionist movement and the Civil War (1862-65), the brief period of Black Reconstruction (1867-77), and the civil rights movement of the 1950s-60 finally won political rights in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And the great labor strike wave of the 1930s won for workers the rights to union recognition, to bargain collectively, to negotiate labor union contracts in the National Labor Relations Act (1935). None of these rights were won fully, completely, or permanently, but the passage of laws embodying them represented a step forward. The persistence of the capitalist system, entwined with racism and sexism, prevented us from fully achieving those goals of equality, democracy and justice.  So, we must also struggle for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of democratic socialism.

    The Struggle Continues Today

    On July 4, 2026 working people and the oppressed still face a capitalist ruling class, but one that evolved, posing new threats. Our country has become an oligarchy with an authoritarian political system. Fascism, some sort of neofascism, has become a real possibility.

    Today’s leading capitalists come from the high-tech industries developed in Silicon Valley and now spread throughout the country. The latest development, Artificial Intelligence (AI), threatens to reorganize our economy, our military, and our political system. Climate change, particularly global warming, driven by the coal and petroleum industries, threaten both agriculture and industry, and the lives of millions on this hottest Fourth of July ever. And America’s imperial adventures in Iran may lead to other conflicts, which could bring about the use of nuclear weapons by nuclear powers such as Israel, Russia, China or the United States. All of this on top of the continuing exploitation of working people and the oppression of people of color and women in our own country.

    We should on this July Fourth be proud of the No Kings demonstrations, of the Fighting Oligarchy rallies, but also of every small civic protest, every little strike, every group small or large that stands up against the corporations, against the government, and thus fights for themselves and for all of us below. If we see things this way, then I think we can say, Happy Fourth of July.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • How to Respond to the June 2026 U.S. Agreement with Iran

    How to Respond to the June 2026 U.S. Agreement with Iran

    Below are excerpts from Frieda Afary’s presentation to a webinar entitled “How to Be Anti-War in a Multipolar World” sponsored by the Northeast Los Angeles Alliance for Democracy. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rgz456NfSV9WEQmMTNojgZk_vrUaQvap/view

    (more…)

  • Extreme 30-Year Prison Sentence for Artist Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada in the Prairieland Case (TX) Highlights Federal Attack on Freedom to Dissent

    Extreme 30-Year Prison Sentence for Artist Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada in the Prairieland Case (TX) Highlights Federal Attack on Freedom to Dissent

    Fort Worth, Texas – Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee to the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, today sentenced immigrant and artist Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada to 30 years in federal prison over possessing and moving a box of zines—politically expressive pamphlets. His case, informally known as “Prairieland,” has attracted extreme skepticism from civil rights organizations including the Freedom of the Press Foundation and National Lawyers Guild, and is part of a growing number of cases in which federal prosecutors are pointing to the possession of First Amendment–protected materials as evidence of criminal support for terrorism.

    Speaking prior to sentencing in the courtroom, Sanchez Estrada stated, “I worked really hard every day in this country, and I believe in human rights and helping others in need. I donate money and art to help animals and other people… I’m a father, a husband, and a teacher. But I’m not a terrorist.”

    In sentencing Sanchez Estrada, Judge O’Connor rejected motions for acquittal or a new trial filed by Sanchez Estrada’s public defender, Christopher J. Weinbel, that highlighted the state’s failure to identify how the literature in question constituted evidence or prove that Sanzhez Estrada intended to conceal it. Writing in the rejected motion, Weinbel noted plainly that prosecutors “relied entirely on stacked inferences and speculation, which the Fifth Circuit consistently rejects as proof. [T]he Government’s own admissions highlight that the object of the offense was unknown, leaving the jury to speculate about what constituted the alleged evidence.”

    Reacting to Sanchez Estrada’s sentencing, attorney Moira Meltzer-Cohen, who represents people arrested in the course of First Amendment activities, asserted, “This entire prosecution has been calculated to test the state’s ability to quell dissent. But the way forward is not silence, it is courageous solidarity with those who are being punished on the basis of their protected beliefs, associations, and activities. And as devastating as this has been for those affected, I do believe their rights will be vindicated in the post-conviction process.”

    Seven other Prairieland codefendants received sentences as well, ranging from 50 to 100 years in federal prison. One of them was Sanchez Estrada’s wife, Maricela Rueda, who received an astounding sentence of 70 years, exacerbating the strain on their family and leaving their teenage daughter in the care of relatives. According to court observers, Judge O’Conner acknowledged the court’s political agenda in handing down maximum sentences to “send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology.”

    Background 

    Sanchez Estrada, a 39-year-old artist, was found guilty on March 13, 2026, alongside eight codefendants who participated in an anti-ICE protest at the controversial Alvarado ICE detention facility. Under the auspices of “National Security Presidential Memorandum-7,” which was issued after the killing of Christian nationalist influencer Charlie Kirk, Sanchez Estrada was federally charged with “corruptly concealing a document or record” for moving a box of zines the day after the protest. Although he was not present at the protest, nor did he know about it, prosecutors argued that the content of the literature made it evidence of the defendants’ material support for terrorism, and shockingly alleged that the decision to move the box was a conspiracy between Sanchez Estrada and his wife.

    Following his arrest, Sanchez Estrada, a former DACA recipient and current green card holder, was singled out by ICE, doxxed by DHS, and threatened with deportation. He has received support from numerous advocacy organizations, including the National Lawyers Guild, Abolitionist Law Center, Immigration Legal Resource Center, Texas Civil Rights Project, Houston Leads, and Texas Jail Project.

    As stated by Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, “Being guilty of possessing literature is a concept fundamentally incompatible with a free society. We don’t need a constitutional right to publish (or possess) only what the government likes, and the ‘anti-government’ literature in Sanchez’s box of zines is exactly what the First Amendment protects.”

    ***

    Members of the Free Des Support Committee are enraged and heartbroken by Sanchez Estrada’s sentence and continued imprisonment, and the ramifications of the Prairieland case for the First Amendment in particular and dissent in general. They urge people to continue to support him and the other Prairieland defendants, through letters, donations, and advocacy—until all are free.

    Donations to Sanchez Estrada’s defense and support fund can be made at https://freedes.net.

     

  • After Cuban Communism

    After Cuban Communism

    Samuel Farber originally published this article in Spanish on his Facebook page on June 19, 2026, just as Cuba announced a new economic policy. Farber had written the article before those changes were announced. – Editors

    Recently several articles have appeared on Facebook regarding the political program that should be adopted in a post-Communist Cuba. These articles focused primarily on the future of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), specifically on the question of whether the PCC should be banned once it has been removed from power.

    However, this question cannot be resolved without first considering the process whereby the PCC was ousted, and the position that we should adopt with respect to that event. Was this process mainly the product of a democratic revolution in the island? Or was it the product of a successful invasion organized by the U.S. government that concluded in a military occupation of the country, or of the establishment of a protectorate in the Venezuelan style? Like Venezuela, a U.S. protectorate of Cuba could be compatible with the creation of a new variety of state capitalism privatizing important sectors of the economy. Should the US succeed, in one way or another, to regain the control of Cuba after more than 65 years, we Cubans who advocate for democracy and national self-determination, must continue to oppose the CCP (no matter if it ends up in the political margins); but our focus must be the democratic struggle against foreign  domination. We cannot allow ourselves to become advisors of the empire on how to govern Cuba, including what to do with the survivors of the PCC.

    At the same time, we should prepare ourselves to the likely division that such a situation might generate among the Cuban people. The U.S. rulers would count with the active support of the Cuban American extreme right in Southern Florida and their equivalents inside the island, as well as of other significant sectors of Cubans. But the democratic forces inside the island that genuinely support national self-determination would oppose the foreign power as well as those who support it. Such political divisions are not new to Cuba. The fighters for Cuban independence in the late nineteenth century were not the only political option for Cubans. There were also Cubans who supported autonomy but not independence from Spain, as well as sympathizers of the Spanish “volunteers” and even with the so-called “guerrilleros” who very actively fought on behalf of Spanish colonialism.

    Let us suppose, however, that the Cuban government is overthrown from below by a genuinely democratic revolution in the island. That could politically create a much more complex situation vis a vis the status of the PCC. Thus, for example, a split could develop in the PCC if part of its base and even the party bureaucracy supported a democratic revolution. That was the case of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, when the Communist leader Imre Nagy became the Prime Minister at the head of the revolutionary forces. No wonder that Imre Nagy was executed by the USSR shortly after its invasion and counterrevolution that invaded the country. That was also the case of Czechoslovakia in 1968, where the Communist leader Alexander Dubcek played a role similar to Nagy, with a similar denouement, although less bloody than in Hungary.

    The support of members, and even the hierarchy of the PCC for a democratic revolution in Cuba could also affect that revolution in the sense of making it less bloody. It would create other problems with respect to how to deal with the support of PCC elements compromised with their record as an antidemocratic and repressive organization. Nevertheless, none of it would justify forbidding the continuing existence of the PCC after having lost its power, provided that:

    First, all the properties owned by the PCC, physical as well as financial, are confiscated and returned to the public purse at the expense of which they were originally obtained.

    Second, all members and especially high functionaries of the PCC that committed crimes, whether common or political, who utilized their membership or more probably their high position in the PCC to obtain impunity must be brought to court to stand trial for their offenses just like any other Cuban citizen.

    Third, a new Constituent Assembly is elected to revoke all the powers conferred to the PCC under the current constitution. Such an Assembly would of course have to discuss and decide on even more fundamental issues such as the status of the principal elements of the Cuban economy, and of the educational, health and social security systems, among others. Are they going to have a primarily public and democratic nature emerging from below instead of private and capitalist? Even if only a minority supported a socialist and democratic constitution, it is most important that these issues were discussed by the Assembly in public. Regarding the PCC specifically: once deprived by the Assembly of its powers and privileges, the PCC should have the same rights and obligations as any other political party. That means that it would only be able to gather support based on its ideas and practices, and not on its privileged powers. It should be clearly established that no group or party will be declared illegal based on its ideas, no matter how undemocratic they are, but may be so excluded based on their actions, especially those that attack the physical integrity and the democratic rights of the people.

     

  • Marjane Satrapi: A Voice of Freedom Through Art and Storytelling

    Marjane Satrapi: A Voice of Freedom Through Art and Storytelling

    Marjane Satrapi, the acclaimed French-Iranian author, artist, and filmmaker whose groundbreaking graphic memoir Persepolis transformed the world’s understanding of Iran and its people, has died at the age of 56.

    (more…)

  • Hunger Strike & Protest at Delaney Hall Immigrant Detention Center

    Hunger Strike & Protest at Delaney Hall Immigrant Detention Center

    Protests in support of a hunger and labor strike by immigrant inmates at Delaney Hall, a detention center in Newark, New Jersey have been militant.  There have been conflicts between protestors and various police agencies. Dozens have been arrested. Activists held up large signs reading, “NO CONCENTRATION CAMPS.’

    The immigrants in detention are protesting maggot-infested food, overcrowding, lack of blankets, and inadequate medical services. The neo-Nazi Proud Boys have shown up to support ICE and to confront the immigrants’ allies. After issuing an order to disperse, state troopers on horseback and in riot gear have rushed protestors. ICE has roughed up protestors, fired tear gas and arrested many anti-ICE activists. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, sent the state police to the site, she said, to keep order and reduce tensions as ICE withdrew. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka imposed a curfew and then lifted it.

    Members of Indivisible, the Democratic Party caucus that has organized the No Kings protests, have criticized Sherril for saying that protestors had become violent. They held up signs reading, “Gov Sherrill, stop lying about Delaney Hall” and “NJ Staties were the aggressors.”

    The protests continue with activists blocking vehicles trying to enter the facility.

    Below is the link to an open letter from the detained hunger strikers.

    https://www.lahuelga.com/elgrito

     

  • Rethinking the 1965 Revolution in the Dominican Republic 

    Rethinking the 1965 Revolution in the Dominican Republic 

    Members of a comando popular or people’s militia. Source: AGN

    The April 1965 revolution in the Dominican Republic was part of a broader trend of worldwide revolutions and anti-colonialist revolts that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, placing it alongside the epochal turning points embodied by the anti-colonialist struggle in Vietnam, the Cuban Revolution and the Algerian War of Independence. 

    The Dominican revolution, with its mix of spontaneity and politico-military planning, left an enduring legacy despite its tragic defeat by the US hegemon. One of the consequences of the defeat was the return of right-wing and anti-communist forces under Washington’s tutelage, paving the way for a twelve-year dictatorship under Joaquín Balaguer. Balaguer’s counter-revolutionary regime imprisoned, tortured and murdered thousands of revolutionaries, unionists and peasants; opened up the country to extractivist mining; and strengthened the Dominican state’s anti-democratic and pro-imperialist character to this day. 

    As far-right dominance continues to prevail in Dominican society there is an urgent need for international solidarity to confront President Luis Abinader (a Washington lackey) and his ultra-reactionary agenda. By looking back at the 1965 revolution, we can find valuable insights that offer guidance to navigate the current political moment. The points presented here aim to expand the discussion on the Dominican revolution and provide a re-evaluation of its radical legacy six decades later. 

    At first, the April revolution led by young, radicalized military officers, had a democratic character whose only political demand was the return of the constitutional order interrupted by the US-backed military coup that overthrew the democratically elected reformist government of President Juan Bosch in September of 1963. But the character of the democratic revolution soon changed into an anti-imperialist, popular revolution after the United States invaded the country on April 28, four days after the revolution broke out. The fast pace of events transformed the initial democratic slogan of “Return President Bosch and Restore the 1963 Constitution!” into a loud and resolute popular cry: “Yankee Go Home!”. 

    Washington’s aggression shifted the situation on the ground by turning the democratic revolution into a war of anti-imperialist resistance in defense of Dominican sovereignty, and in the process, it unified the popular sectors and some segments of the middle-class, reawakened political consciousness and ultimately, intensified anti-imperialist sentiment beyond Latin America and the Caribbean region. 

    The 1965 revolution was the culmination of a brief but tumultuous period marked by mass struggle that began in 1961 after the fall of the Trujillo dictatorship. From 1961 to 1964, waves of labor and student mobilizations emerged. In addition, the failed November 1963 guerilla uprising, spearheaded by the 14 of June Movement with the aim of overthrowing the coup regime, proved the validity of mass mobilization over guerrilla warfare and tactics detached from concrete reality (foquismo). 

    For the first time in three decades, the Dominican people entered the stage of history in full force. The revolution created democratic spaces for marginalized and oppressed sectors of society who quickly became full-fledged political actors in the making of history. Among some of the most combative layers of society who participated in the revolution were different sectors of the working-class: women, people of Afro-Dominican descent, LGBTQ people, students and chiriperos (informal workers). 

    The April Revolution cracked open the old Trujillo army created by US occupying troops during the first military occupation (1916-1924). The sudden irruption of popular power and subsequent military defeats led to an unprecedented political scenario which created deep internal divisions within the military and the police. One wing of the military, for example, sided with the revolutionary cause while the other openly sided with US imperialism. This new development dealt a heavy blow to the remnants of the Trujillo regime whose army was on the brink of collapse, raising alarms in Washington where President Lyndon B. Johnson, of the Democratic Party, ordered the US military invasion to prevent the emergence of “another Cuba”.

    One of the most significant weaknesses of the revolution was its inability to spread beyond the capital city of Santo Domingo. Although there were some attempts to extend the revolution to the Northern regions, for instance to San Francisco de Macorís where pro-coup forces quickly repelled the insurrectionary efforts, the revolutionaries failed to spread the revolution to the rest of the country, and in particular, to the countryside. One of the reasons why the revolution did not spread was the political backwardness of rural areas which lacked the political experience of urban dwellers. Further, in some rural areas like San Juan de la Maguana, the population feared reprisals as the memories of the 1962 Palma Sola massacre, carried out by the provisional Council of State government, were still fresh in people’s minds. 

    Unlike the Cuban Revolution, workers in key sectors of the economy such as the sugar industry played no role at all. The reason was twofold: a lack of unionization among workers, and the political weakness of the labor movement due to state repression during the proto-fascist regime (1930-1961) of Dictator Rafael Trujillo. Additionally, the system of racial and labor segregation installed by the sugar barons in the early twenty-century, in complicity with US occupying troops and the Trujillo regime, contributed to the isolation of sugar cane workers of Haitian origin which represented a large segment of the Dominican working class. 

    However, the formation of people’s militias (comandos populares) was key to sustaining the revolution. In fact, the comandos populares played a crucial role in providing military training to civilians, distributing weapons, feeding people, taking care of the wounded, disseminating revolutionary propaganda, maintaining local control, and encouraging democratic participation. People’s militias brought together civilians, soldiers, artists, students, intellectuals and workers. In fact, one of the most prominent people’s militias was that of POASI, or Sindicato de Trabajadores Portuarios de Arrimo (the Dock Workers Union). The comandos populares were organs of popular self-government, an expression of the dual revolutionary power created by the revolution.

    The revolution and this anti-imperialist resistance revealed the potential of solidarity between Haitians and Dominicans who to this day share an island that was divided two-hundred and fifty years ago by the European imperialist powers of Spain and France. For a moment, the revolution put a brake on the virulent nationalism and anti-Haitian racism espoused by the brutal Trujillo regime. 

     

    Revolutionary fighter in Santo Domingo. Photo by Milvio Pérez

     

    After the fall of the Trujillo dictatorship, a considerable number of Haitian exiles opposed to Dictator François Duvalier entered Dominican territory. At the onset of the 1965 revolution, these Haitian political exiles joined the revolutionary cause and formed a people’s militia. Hoping to spread the revolution to Haiti and topple the Duvalier regime, Haitian internationalist fighters became legendary for their military skills and bravery. 

    Although the revolutionary Left and working class played a significant role during the revolution, the main leaders of the revolution hailed from the middle class sectors of society. Such as Col. Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deñó, the military leader of the revolt, and democratic sectors of the populist Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) as well as radicalized elements from the social-Christian milieu. 

    Widespread international solidarity with the Dominican people was vital to lifting morale among revolutionary fighters and halting Washington’s imperialist campaign. In 1965, anti-imperialist protests reached every corner of the world: in Mexico City, New York, Buenos Aires, Caracas and Paris, millions of people mobilized to express their anger and opposition to the criminal imperialist violence unleashed on both Vietnam and the Dominican Republic. 

    Military tank captured by the people. Photo by Juan Pérez Terrero.

     

    The author is grateful to Simón Rodríguez for his comments and revisions. 











     

     

  • Consequential Elections in Colombia

    Consequential Elections in Colombia

    While the eyes of the world are fixed on the Strait of Hormuz, China, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and sometimes on the US created crisis in Cuba, Colombia is in the middle of a very close, tense and consequential election. The results will have repercussions throughout Latin America.

    The Pacto Historico (Historic Pact), the rising left wing party here, is poised to win a historic second presidential election. By doing so, it can stop the tide of losses by the left in important elections from Chile to Ecuador.

    Legislative elections on March 8 made the Pacto the biggest party in Colombia in every respect. The first round of the presidential elections is scheduled for May 31, but every poll indicates that a second round between the top two first round vote getters will take place on June 21st.

    The front runner is the Pacto’s Ivan Cepeda, but two right wing candidates, Senator Paloma Valencia of the Centro Democratico, and an attorney named Abelardo de la Espriella,  are engaged in a bitter fight for second place.

    The Centro Democratico is the extreme right wing party of former President Alvaro Uribe.

    Uribe has maintained tight control of Colombia’s right wing through his personal control of the Centro Democratico. A politician who had been on the USA’s list of drug dealers and who had been close to Pablo Escobar during his career in Medellin and Antioquia where he and his family are major landowners, Uribe was President of Colombia from 2002 to 2010. He was responsible for rolling back workers’ rights and for building up Colombian paramilitary organizations. He was also a close ally of US President Clinton and his Plan Colomba.

    A Multi-Party Presidential Race

    The president is elected in a two round system. Although the race began with several dozen candidates, there are now only twelve. Some of the others were eliminated in the primaries of parties, the primaries of coalitions of parties, or failure to gather enough signatures to appear on the ballot. Still other candidates left the race to support one or another candidate.

    More importantly, the race has resolved itself into two parts: the left versus the right, and the right versus the right.

    Most of the left has united in and around the Pacto Historico and its candidate Ivan Cepeda.

    From Petro to Cepeda

    Four years ago, Colombia elected its first ever leftist president, Gustavo Petro. Since then, Petro has struggled to implement his reform agenda despite the fact that the left did not have a legislative majority.

    Using a combination of mass demonstrations, presidential decrees, and a spellbinding array of deals with centrist parties and politicians, and even occasionally with members of right wing parties, Petro managed to accomplish significant land reform, a major increase in the minimum monthly salary, a historic extension of pension coverage, significant improvements in public education and university access, and a general rollback of the take aways of workers’ rights that were imposed during the presidency of Alvaro Uribe.

    Nevertheless, Petro failed to implement most of his ambitious environmental agenda and fought a bitter and inconclusive battle over health reform with the private health care industry.

    Petro is limited to one term in office by the Colombian constitution, so the Pacto Historico nominated Senator Ivan Cepeda as its presidential candidate in this year’s election. Cepeda’s nomination has put to rest most of the slanders that Petro was interested in becoming a president for life in the mold of Maduro in Venezuela or Ortega in Nicaragua.

    Senator Cepeda has literally been in the struggle against paramilitarism, oppression and imperialism for all of his life. His father, Manuel Cepeda was a leader of the Unión Patriótica and the Colombian Communist Party who was assassinated in 1994 while campaigning for a seat in the Colombian congress. He was one of more than 6,000 UP leaders, militants and supporters assassinated by the right wing government of the time and its paramilitary arm.

    Ivan Cepeda is known as the most fearless defender of human rights and the scourge of ex-President Uribe here in Colombia. As a member of the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate, he has led the struggle to uncover the links of Uribe and other members of the Colombian elite to the paramilitaries, dig up the links between the paramilitaries and the military, and investigate the thousands of murders, false positives, people tortured, and the tens of thousands displaced.

    When Uribe tried to use the court system against Cepeda, Cepeda turned the tables resulting in Uribe’s conviction for some of his many crimes (The conviction was reversed on appeal, but may still be reinstated.).

    Cepeda has also been a central figure in most of the Colombian government’s peace negotiations with various armed groups for more than a decade.

    His political style is a sharp contrast to that of Petro who is a brash, longwinded, and aggressive speaker. Cepeda is careful, thoughtful, and measured but is also a forceful speaker.

    The Right is Divided

    Colombia’s right wing is sharply divided by personal animosity, jealousy, hatred, and ambition. The divisions are so deep that there have been threats of violence by officials in the campaign of Abeleardo de la Espriella against prominent supports of Paloma Valencia. The assassination of Miguel Uribe (no family relation to Alvaro Uribe), an early leader in the race for the nomination of the Centro Democratico, remains unsolved.

    Abelardo de la Espriella, an attorney who has represented major drug dealers as well as the Venezuelan PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) is Colombia’s wannabe version of El Salvador’s dictatorial ruler Nayib Bukele. De la Espriella is a close friend of Alvaro Uribe’s and seems to have unlimited campaign funds from unknown sources. His emulation of Bukele includes trying to dress like Bukele and wearing exactly the same style of facial hair as his idol.

    At the start of the campaign, it was not clear whether de la Espriella or Valencia had Uribe’s support, but he finally came down on the side of Valencia.

    Both of these candidates rely on amplifying the fears of the middle class of crime and violence. The persistence of the illicit drug trade and armed drug gangs, including remnants of the FARC and the ELN, plays into their hands. Occasionally, they have made plays to win over sectors of working class voters, as in Valencia’s recent proposal for the government to pay for the insurance of motorcyclists (A proposal she would finance by abolishing the Ministry of Equality.)

    Divided Government

    Cepeda has vowed to continue fighting for the program of the Pacto that Petro began to implement, but even if he wins, Cepeda will face a continuation of the divided Chamber of Representatives and Senate that has hampered Petro.

    In the legislative elections held on March 8, the Pacto won 36 seats in the 183 seat Chamber, and 25 in the 103 seat Senate. These results are a significant improvement over the Pacto’s 2022 results in which they won 32 seats in the Chamber and 20 seats in the Senate. The Pacto’s percentage of the vote increased from 15.5% in 2022 to 23.8% this year,

    Once upon a time, Colombia had a Tweedledee, Tweedledum two party system with a strong president much like the system in the United States, but it was abolished by the 1991 Constitution which introduced a complicated system based on proportional representation and other democratic measures.

    The result was destruction of the traditional two party system and the rise of a complex multiparty system.

    There are currently 28 parties represented in either the Senate or Chamber or both. Seven of those parties did not obtain the required vote percentages to win seats, but gained seats because they represent indigenous people or ethnic minorities. Six ballot qualified parties failed to gain any representatives.

    Besides the Pacto Historico, the largest and most important parties are the Centro Democratico, the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, Cambio Radical, the Partido de la U, and the Green Alliance.

    The Centro Democratico is the machine controlled by aging right wing strongman, ex-president Alvaro Uribe. The Liberal and Conservative Parties are the still powerful surviving machines of the old Tweedledee and Tweedledum parties (with the help of the Catholic Church in the case of the Conservatives). Cambio Radical and the Partido de la U are based on the machines of powerful political dynasties that were once part of the Liberal Party.

    In this system, there is still a strong president and no prime minister, but the two houses of the legislative branch can overrule presidential initiatives, and a plethora of unelected government bodies including the several supreme courts and various independent prosecutorial, administrative and oversight agencies all have the power to block laws passed by the legislative branch and presidential initiatives and policies in many ways and at many levels.

    In any case, passing legislation depends on cobbling together coalitions of parties, individuals and factions.

    Polling and Trolling

    According to the polls, Valencia and de la Espriella are running neck and neck for second place in the first round of voting. Depending on which poll you look at, Cepeda has around 40% of the votes, and Valencia and de la Espriella each has about 20% of the votes.

    The traditional polls, notoriously imprecise and skewed to the right, show Cepeda winning the first round, and running neck and neck with either Valancia or de la Espriella in the second round. La Silla Vacía (The Empty Seat), an online and media investigative news source,  ranks the performance of the main polling companies here on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a perfect score, and 1 being catastrophically bad. The top poll, GAD3, has a score of 6.2, and the bottom poll, Guaramo, has a score of 5.1.

    Nevertheless, the difference between polling and trolling here is sometimes difficult to discern. Polymarket, the online betting platform is now being used as a stand-in for election polls by the right wing media in Colombia. It now shows de la Espriella leading Ivan Cepeda in the betting race by 43% to 41%.

    In other words, flipping a coin is almost as good a predictor as are Colombian polls.

    The Pacto, the working class, and the left

    The social base of the Pacto Historico is the urban working class, especially the organized labor movement. Together the membership of the three union federations, the CUT, CGT and CTC, amounts to only about 850,000 workers out of a working age population of about 35,000,000. Nevertheless, the unions have a huge following beyond their membership because the unions negotiate with the government every year to determine the next year’s annual minimum salary.

    In brief, Cepeda and the Pacto’s campaign could be summarized as defend and extend the gains made during Petro’s presidency. However, Cepeda is proposing to do this by creating a National Accord to bring together all sectors of Colombian society, from big businesses to the poorest farmers, around the progressive reform program of the Pacto.

    Officially, most of the unions support the Pacto, but this year the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) and the Unión Sindical Obrera de la Industria Petróleo (USO) are officially supporting Roy Barreras in the first round of voting. Barreras has become the vehicle for the CUT and USO to make public their differences with Petro and Cepeda on energy policy, and especially their displeasure with the current ban on fracking and drilling for oil and natural gas.

    Almost all of the organized left in Colombia including the various communist and socialist organizations, the feminists, the indigenous movements, Afro-Colombianos, the LGBTQ+ movement and the environmentalist movement are either inside of the Pacto Historico or are supporting the candidacy of Cepeda. While the anarchist movement is anti-electoralist, most if its sympathizers are also likely to vote for Cepeda.

    The key question mark on the left had been the Alianza Verde which has significant support among voters and has a large block of votes in the Senate and the Chamber. It portrays itself as center-left.

    While it had not nominated its own candidate for president, it also had not endorsed any other candidate. Two of its most important leaders, Claudia Lopez (former Mayor of Bogotá) and her wife, Angelica Lozano (former Senator) recently split from the Greens to mount an independent presidential campaign with Lopez as the candidate. She is languishing in fourth or fifth place in the polls with less than 5% of the voters supporting her.

    At the end of April, the Green Alliance ended the suspense when its leaders voted 34 to 3 (with one abstention) to support the Pacto Historico’s candidate in the first round of the presidential election.

    Throughout the race there have also been three minor candidates who had been in Petro’s government: Roy Barreras, Luis Gilberto Murillo, and Mauricio Lizcano

    Murillo, who is one of the most prominent leaders of the Afro-Colombian community and had been Governor of Choco and Petro’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, has withdrawn his candidacy and thrown his support to Cepeda.

    Barreras, a medical doctor, has been a key but controversial supporter of Gustavo Petro. He began his political career in the Liberal Party, moved to Cambio Radical, was elected Senator as a candidate of the Partido de la U, and then switched to Petro and the Pacto in 2022. He has been an outspoken supporter of Paz Total, Petro’s attempt to negotiate peace with all armed groups in Colombia including criminal gangs.

    Lizcano, was an important figure in the Partido de la U but became Petro’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology.

    According to the polls, both of these candidates have less than 1% of the voters behind them.

    Project Jupiter, Hondurasgate and Fake News

    Most of the media in Colombia is controlled by five very wealthy family groups: Organización Ardila Lülle, Grupo Santo Domingo, Grupo Gilinski, Organización Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo and Grupo Prisa. The same groups control the country’s most important industries, banks, commerce, and health care and are enormously influential in all of the main political parties except the Pacto, which they all work overtime to defeat.

    In this election, Project Jupiter has emerged as the Uribista hothouse for disinformation and fake news directed against Cepeda and the Pacto. The project is led by Uribe’s former Foreign Minister, Jaime Bermudez. Bermudez is currently president of the Colombian branch of the multinational bank, Lazard.

    The template for the Jupiter campaign appears to be the “Hondurasgate” operation which used an international network composed of the United States, Israeli and Argentine governments to produce and disseminate slanderous fake news against the left in Honduras.

    Most recently, a fake audio linking Cepeda to an armed FARC dissident faction has been released. The audio has been featured in all of the right wing national media and  reposted in the social media of Alvaro Uribe, Paloma Valencia, Abelardo de la Espriella, Claudia Lopez and many other right and center political leaders.

    Soon after becoming the headline story of the right, the national police tracked the audio to its origins in a prison in Ibagué rather than to anyone related to the FARC dissidents.

    Constituent Assembly

    Parallel to the election campaign, Petro and part of the Pacto Historico are campaigning for the convocation of a constituent assembly to radically amend the Constitution of 1991. Ivan Cepeda has distanced himself from the campaign but not repudiated it.

    A major constitutional change is the greatest fear of the right and the center which use the many checks on democracy embedded in the current constitution to thwart progressive reforms. El Tiempo, the country’s most important newspaper, even featured a front page headline screaming, “Today, a constituent assembly would be a political civil war.”

    This issue was alsoat the heart of the split in the Green Alliance when Lopez, Lozano and their supporters left.

    Petro used the threat of convocation of an assembly plus mass demonstrations to help pass his labor law reform last year. Now, some commentators speculate that the campaign for a constitutional change is his Plan B in case Cepeda is not elected.

    The campaign needs more than 2 million signatures to put a referendum on the ballot. The organizing committee is shooting for 5,000,000 signatures to guarantee that the Registrar places the measure on the ballot. So far, it has collected more than 900,000.

    On the left, the timing of the campaign is an issue of concern especially due to the failure of the Chilean left’s efforts to radically change that country’s constitution.

    The International Situation

    Colombia is surrounded on three sides by countries that are controlled by, or very close to, the Trump administration: Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador.  Despite withdrawing most of the military forces it used to kidnap Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela, the United States continues to attack boats alleged to be carrying drugs in the Caribbean and Pacific, a continuous threat against Colombian’s fishing and tourist industries and a warning to the Colombian government.

    Ecuador’s government, now controlled by Trump ally President Daniel Noboa, is engaged in a US instigated trade war against Colombia. Noboa imposed tariffs of up to 100% on Colombian goods. Colombia reciprocated and then cut off its electricity exports to Ecuador. Noboa’s family banana company has been implicated in cocaine exports but he portrays his trade war as a crusade against Colombian cocaine exports.

    Meanwhile, Cuba is facing an existential crisis created deliberately by the Trump administration of the USA. It is preparing its defense in case of a US invasion, most likely on hold due to the failure of the United States to anticipate Iran’s resistance to its attacks on that country.

    Seemingly, the pendulum in South America has swung to the right in recent elections in Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, and Uruguay. A victory by the Pacto Historico here in Colombia could end that appearance and bolster the left throughout the region.

    Prognoses

    With Cepeda likely to win the first round of voting by a wide margin, a great deal of attention is now focused on who will come in second, Valencia or de la Espriella. According to the pundits and the polls, Valencia will be a stronger challenger in the second round of voting.

    No matter who wins the second round, the next four years are likely to witness a significant increase in class conflict, social strife, and the political crisis here. A US invasion of Cuba would upset the entire region.

    Global warming is also an unpredictable factor. Later this year, the weather phenomenon of El Niño is supposed to begin again. It will bring with it drought conditions and possible electric energy shortages in this hydroelectric dependent country.

    A Cepeda victory will strengthen the hand of the working class, the social movements, and the oppressed whereas a victory of the right will place all of the repressive apparatus of the state firmly in the hands of the forces of reaction.

  • The Test That Cannot Be Passed

    The Test That Cannot Be Passed

    Peter Burka, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

    The article “Abolition for Affordability” by Hegde, Thomas, and Durham in New Politics, April 29, 2026, argues that any socialism not calling for police abolition is “white socialism,” incoherent, self-defeating, and fake.

    The article’s main arguments are as follows: First, it claims that capitalism in the United States is fundamentally inseparable from settler colonialism and white supremacy, and so any socialist movement that does not center the abolition of the police is missing the core of the problem. Second, it argues that the origins and practice of policing are rooted in the enforcement of racial hierarchy, making police abolition the true litmus test of anti-capitalist politics. Third, it criticizes left-wing elected officials—specifically Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson—for not campaigning on defunding the police, suggesting that their focus on broader economic reforms betrays the abolitionist cause. The article cites Ruth Wilson Gilmore but lacks substantive analysis. It simultaneously wishes the new mayors well while accusing them of betraying abolitionist values. This type of argument is common; it matters not for its logic but because its structure is harming the left right now.

    I want to break down three main arguments from the piece: its mistake about capitalism, its view of policing’s history, and its use of a litmus test. After that, I’ll discuss what kind of politics leads to this approach and what it leaves out.

    Capitalism is not “the economic way of talking about” settler colonialism.

    Let’s start with the main claim: “capitalism is the economic way of talking about settler colonialism.” While this sounds serious, it oversimplifies. Capitalism is a social system based on producing goods for sale and extracting surplus value from workers’ labor. Over time, it has used many types of forced labor—like slavery, indentured servitude, debt peonage, sharecropping, and prison labor—and various means of land and resource expropriation, including but not limited to settler colonialism, to grow and spread. Workers in Manchester, Bengali peasants whose industries were destroyed by British rule, enslaved Africans in Mississippi, mill workers in Lancashire, and Irish laborers were all tied into the same global system. (Stallard and Mohdin 2023) What connected them was the flow of capital, not just land seizure.

    This matters because reducing capitalism to settler colonialism puts race before class, so the politics that follow focus on moral support for racially oppressed groups instead of looking at real conflicts and power. It’s clear that the original piece hardly mentions the working class—workers only appear once, as victims of tariffs. For example, there is little discussion of issues such as wage theft, unsafe workplaces, the lack of affordable health care, housing insecurity, or the erosion of union rights—the everyday realities that shape the lives of millions of working people. Problems such as stagnant wages, rising living costs, and barriers to union organizing are absent from the analysis, even though they are urgent concerns raised by workers themselves. The real focus of socialist politics, the multiracial working class organizing for its own freedom, is left out. The ruling class is described as “overwhelmingly white” instead of as the group that owns the tools and resources for production. (Braverman 1974) When whiteness replaces ownership as the main issue, the politics that follow can’t address the real needs of working-class people, because they don’t see those needs apart from race.

    This confusion isn’t new on the left: replacing a political-economic idea with a moral one weakens socialist analysis. For example, Max Shachtman did this with bureaucracy, separating it from class and leading to poor political approaches. (Shachtman 1953) The point isn’t that race is irrelevant—it is that race gains meaning through its connection to class. When the left reverses that relationship, it ends up embracing a type of politics that doesn’t work. Next, we see a similar pattern in how the history of policing is misunderstood.

    Slave patrols, Pinkertons, and the Battle of Blair Mountain

    The piece treats the idea that American policing comes from slave patrols as if it’s the whole story. But that’s only one part of a mixed history. Police forces in the North, like the NYPD and Boston Police, were modeled on the London Metropolitan Police and were created to control unrest among immigrant workers. (“The Mapping Project, Entity: Boston Police” 2021) Groups like the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the Coal and Iron Police, and private armies used against strikes didn’t come from slave patrols. (“Coal and Iron Police” n.d.) They stemmed from the broader role of the armed forces in capitalist society: protecting property and controlling workers. (Dahlberg and Dalgaard-Nielsen 2020)

    Reducing policing to just its slave-patrol roots is bad history and leads to bad politics. If we see the police mainly as a racial institution, then only Black and Indigenous communities and their allies are seen as the ones who can challenge them. These groups are important and have fought bravely, but they aren’t large enough on their own to take down the prison system. Focusing only on them leaves out the multiracial working class, who are also policed as a class. Latino warehouse workers in Joliet, white Amazon drivers in Bessemer, Black nurses in Detroit, and Vietnamese line cooks in Houston all face police watching, arrest, eviction, and punishment for poverty because they are workers, not just because of their race. (Logan and Oakley 2017) If politics can’t see this, it can’t organize these workers.

    But there are practical ways to bridge abolitionist and class-based organizing. Campaigns can connect demands for decarceration, police budget cuts, and community-based crisis response directly to workplace struggles for higher wages, union rights, and dignified conditions. Joint coalitions can demand both an end to racialized policing and expanded public services in working-class neighborhoods, building alliances across labor unions, tenant associations, and groups advocating for criminal justice reform. Strikes and workplace actions can highlight how policing is used against organizing efforts and link workplace safety to freedom from police violence. By aligning abolitionist and class demands in local campaigns, town halls, and political programs, the left can unite the broadest possible coalition—one that recognizes the full picture of who is targeted and why, and that is actually capable of winning transformative change.

    The Black radical tradition recognized this point. C.L.R. James wrote about it. Du Bois discussed it in Black Reconstruction. The founders of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers also wrote about it. In the 1930s, the Communist Party in Alabama organized both Black sharecroppers and white industrial workers, understanding that the police were tools of the bosses and that the way to fight back was to build a strong, united working class. (Bogues 2011, 484-499) This approach fits with abolitionism—it’s what abolitionism looks like when it’s connected to real class politics.

    The litmus test is a form of organized failure.

    The key move in the piece is the litmus test: police abolition becomes the sole standard of true socialism versus white socialism. Mamdani and Wilson fail this test. The author both offers them good wishes and brands them inconsistent. This contradiction defines political paralysis. The litmus test is not a real strategy—it is a tool for moral posturing when winning feels out of reach. Anyone building real worker coalitions or winning office cannot pass, because the goal is not success but the claim to a true socialist identity. Thus, real organizing is sidelined while moral certitude dominates.

    Instead of relying on exclusionary litmus tests, socialist organizing can be more effective by embracing criteria that advance collective power and measurable change. For instance, a positive framework could include: building durable, multiracial working-class coalitions; winning concrete improvements in living standards, such as better housing, healthcare, or wages; democratizing economic and political institutions; and expanding participation, leadership, and political education among people who have historically been excluded. Strategic standards like these do not abandon moral vision, but connect it to building broad alliances, sustaining momentum, and actually shifting power. When movements evaluate their efforts by whether they build strength, win victories, and involve more people in collective action, they move beyond purity tests toward the kind of organizing that can win lasting change.

    Mamdani won by running on rent control, free buses, and universal childcare in a city where high rent is the biggest problem for working people. Wilson won in Seattle by supporting social housing. (Higham 2025) These are real demands from the working class, achieved through real organizing, even though the political establishment saw them as radical and risky. They aren’t everything socialism stands for, but they are the kind of wins that make bigger victories possible. Calling these efforts white socialism just because they didn’t also campaign on defunding the police shows a misunderstanding of strategy—so much that it seems like understanding strategy was never the goal. Universal childcare is a reform that changes the system. So is social housing. So is free public transit, because it reduces the police’s control over poor people’s daily lives. So, possibly, is unarmed crisis response paid for by cutting police budgets, which is closer to what the new administrations have actually proposed than the original piece allows. (Levin 2021) The mayors are working on the strategic ground Gilmore described. Their critics are working on the moral ground that lets them criticize anyone working on the strategic one.

    What “white socialism” forecloses

    Calling something “white socialism” actually weakens the left. It treats the multiracial working class as just a social problem, not as a group that can act politically. It focuses on moral identity rather than on working together. This leads to a kind of politics where the left cares more about staying pure than about winning. As a result, the left can’t respond to the current moment, because it has lost the tools it needs to understand what’s happening.

    The path to socialism has never depended solely on abolitionists. It was laid by abolitionists, IWW organizers who united Black and white workers in Louisiana in 1912. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Communist Party efforts in Birmingham during the 1930s, Detroit autoworkers who formed DRUM and FRUM in 1968, Lordstown strike committees in 1972, and postal workers who struck in 1970. (Salter 2007) These movements recognized that while race divides and shapes the working class, socialism’s force comes from uniting workers against those who own everything. Abolitionism is one important part of this broader struggle—not a substitute for it. Recognizing this connection is essential for addressing current challenges.

    If the left can’t say this, it will keep losing. It will lose loudly, using fancy words, and claim that losing proves it is right. It will criticize those who actually win, keep records of disagreements, and focus on fighting so-called white socialists. Meanwhile, bosses, police, landlords, and the carceral state will keep doing what they always do, unaffected by a left that mistakes moral boundaries for real political struggle.

    The mayors will either succeed or fail in their goals. We can work to push them further left, organize the people who elected them into independent working-class groups, and build the strength needed for future battles. Or we can just keep writing more articles about white socialism. The first choice is harder. The second is easier. But it’s easier for a reason, and that’s why it’s the wrong choice.

    If we choose the first path, there are direct ways to start. Organize listening sessions in neighborhoods most affected by both policing and economic injustice to find urgent needs and build relationships. Form coalitions among tenant associations, labor unions, and criminal justice reform groups to develop unified demands, such as reallocating police funds to social housing, public health, and free transit. Support candidates by volunteering for campaigns that center material needs alongside abolitionist policies, and hold them accountable after elections with regular public assemblies. Build organizers’ skills—door-knocking, digital outreach, and political education workshops—so more people can join the fight no matter their background. Plan targeted campaigns: for example, press city councils to expand unarmed crisis response and link that demand to jobs programs or expanded tenant protections. By taking these steps, activists can turn broad principles into concrete action, creating momentum that lasts beyond any single mayor’s term and building a movement that is strong enough to win real change.

    References

    Stallard, Matthew, and Aamna Mohdin. “Cotton Capital: how slavery made Manchester the world’s first industrial city.” The Guardian, April 2, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/apr/03/cotton-capital-how-slavery-made-manchester-the-worlds-first-industrial-city

    Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. Monthly Review Press. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_and_Monopoly_Capital

    Shachtman, Max. Max Shachtman: Bureaucratic Collectivism – Two Eras (1953). The Donald Press. https://www.marxists.org/archive/shachtma/1953/xx/burcoll.html

    “The Mapping Project, Entity: Boston Police.” Mapping Project. 2021. https://mapliberation.org/plain/entities/BostonPolice.html Accessed May 1, 2026

    “Coal and Iron Police.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Coal-and-Iron-Police Accessed May 1, 2026

    Dahlberg, Rasmus, and Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen. “The Roles of Military and Civilian Forces in Domestic Security.” Handbook of Military Sciences (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02866-4_33-1 Accessed May 1, 2026

    Logan, John R., and Deirdre Oakley. “Black Lives and Policing: The Larger Context of Ghettoization.” Journal of Urban Affairs 39, no. 8 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1328977 Accessed May 1, 2026

    Bogues, Anthony. “C.L.R. James, Pan-Africanism and the Black Radical Tradition.” Critical Arts 25, no. 4 (2011): 484-499. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2011.639957 Accessed May 1, 2026

    Higham, Aliss. “Mamdani’s Plan For Universal Child Care In NYC.” Newsweek, November 25, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/mamdani-plan-universal-child-care-in-nyc-11098439

    Levin, Sam. “These US cities defunded police: ‘We’re transferring money to the community’.” The Guardian, March 10, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-transferring-money-community

    Salter, Daren. “Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (1925-1978).” BlackPast.org. 2007. https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/brotherhood-sleeping-car-porters-1925-1978/ Accessed May 1, 2026

  • Interview with an American Volunteer Fighting in Myanmar’s Civil War

    Interview with an American Volunteer Fighting in Myanmar’s Civil War

    Members of allied anti-junta militias pose following their victory in the battle of Falam in Spring 2025. From left to right, the displayed flags represent (top row) People’s Defense Force – Zoland, Chin National Organization, Chin Defense Force – Mindat, Chin National Defense Force, (bottom row) Anti-Fascist Internationalist Front, and Anti-Fascist Action.

     

    Since a 2021 military coup initiated by the Tatmadaw (state armed forces) shattered a short and historically unprecedented period of civilian rule in Myanmar, the country has been embroiled in a bloody civil war. Nearly 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict so far and more than 3 million have experienced displacement.

    Armed groups opposing the new military junta, ranging from ethnic militias to student and worker organizations, have largely consolidated under the People’s Defense Force (PDF) and align with the National Unity Government (NUG), the latter being composed of exiled members of the Myanmar parliament.

    Enter into the fray a small but dedicated cadre of self-described revolutionary internationalists operating as the Anti-fascist Internationalist Front (AIF). These foreign fighters are not mercenaries but politically committed freelancers who cut their teeth on the battlefield in North East Syria (in Kurdish: Rojava) serving in the militias of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

    Though I maintain my own political and strategic differences with the AIF, I am hopeful that the analysis and rationale presented here might serve as a provocation for an international socialist left that has so far remarked little on the civil war in Myanmar.

     

    1. First, could you tell me about yourself?

    I am H., a member of Anti-Fascist International Front (AIF) from California. I have previously participated in the revolution in Rojava and now find myself in the works of the revolution in Myanmar. My primary responsibility in the AIF is in the political commission.

    2. The civil war and revolution in Myanmar has received relatively little attention when compared to other recent conflicts, why do you think this is?

    It is not surprising that our comrades in Myanmar remain neglected by the global mainstream in each of its colors. Myanmar has been pressed to the very bottom of international consideration throughout its history. The region is on the periphery of the global periphery, tucked between the marginalized extremities of northeast India and the isolated frontiers of Laos and Thailand, sharing just enough of a border with the Chinese state to get occasional attention from its oligarchy. Following World War II, the last colonial gaze at the eastern edge of British occupation gave way to failed CIA anti-communist operations in the north of the country, desperately scrambling for a new puppet regime which never manifested.

    In recent times, Western eyes have been drawn north of the Andaman Sea mostly for the political plight of imprisoned Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and the profitable trauma porn of the Rohingya genocide. Aside from brief mentions of the coup and youth-driven uprising dominated by the occasional article from BBC or al-Jazeera, the Western sphere has seen little use in acknowledging Myanmar.

    The current phase of the revolution in Myanmar began after the coup d’etat in 2021, during which the Burmese military overthrew the preeminent National League for Democracy after many years of grappling for political power within the state. While this phase of the resistance has been its most intense and decisive in decades, the war for liberation from the Burmese military has existed in many areas of Myanmar ever since the state’s independence, and even previous to this, frequent wars of self-defense from the communities of the margin against the coercive Burmese kingdoms of the lowlands for centuries. So we see in this stage of the revolution not just a fight against a coup, but the manifestation of centuries of self-defense against the central power structures of the Burmese state. This revolution thus has an unprecedented opportunity to completely overhaul the state’s coercive foundations, and in it there exists a basis for internationalist praxis. I will not repeat so much of what has already been spoken by many comrades from Myanmar already, as any understanding of the revolution’s timeline and preconditions can and should be sourced from the many local perspectives that are not our own.

    3. The AIF is a recent formation, announcing its presence in Myanmar in late 2024. What is the AIF? What are its aims? Where does it have a presence and what activities does it undertake?

    The Anti-Fascist Internationalist Front was formed just before the Battle of Falam by international comrades in cooperation with our allies in the Chin Hills to directly support revolutionary developments in Myanmar, and also as an internationalist structure inspired by the paradigm of democratic modernity and the Kurdish freedom movement.

    The AIF operates in multiple regions of Myanmar and our comrades go where their responsibilities are most needed. Since its foundation, the structure has played a role in the liberation of Falam, maintaining a militant presence both on the frontlines and in the rear lines, while also holding trainings for our allies.

    We are antifascist, but to us this is something that goes beyond just confronting fascism. All of our practical work is predicated on communal development and ideological struggle. We see little meaning in handling a weapon without this social and political foundation in our work. We would not and cannot exist without it. So, while we are a military structure, our daily works are not exclusively military. Our work is equally political, diplomatic, social, and our program is organized accordingly.

    We fight alongside our comrades here for a world free of domination, and that is what our struggle is predicated upon. Working together not just with the existing organizations but also with local women in their pursuit of autonomy and liberation is a major part of our responsibilities here as internationalists. Our struggle is thus not just an externalized object that comes out of a gun, it is something that begins in each comrade’s heart. Liberation struggles both within and around us, from the individual to the constellations of global society.

    So, the future of the organization will flow with this collective struggle and operate according to the necessities of the revolution. Our energy will continue to be exacted against the prevailing domination of the junta until its demise. Meanwhile, our struggle of revolutionary development continues regardless of the surrounding conditions, both in Myanmar and abroad.

    4. As a U.S. citizen, what motivated your decision to travel to Myanmar and take up arms?

    For me personally, I was organizing with comrades of the Myanmar diaspora for some time, and comrades in the community encouraged me to go forth in joining the struggle at the source. So when it became possible for me to do so, I did. Having engaged with revolutionary movements and struggles across the international front, comrades have found an opportunity for me to bridge further solidarity with other comrades and communities in the world. It made a lot of sense to contribute to the revolution here in this way.

    In my perspective, the revolution in Myanmar takes on a number of internationalist responsibilities. One of them is owed to my generation, Gen Z, which has initiated much of the current phase of this revolution. Our Gen Z comrades here have found no time to waste in seizing revolutionary responsibility, and they have done so very well. Any internationalist must not neglect the sacrifices our Gen Z comrades in Myanmar make to realize liberation. For internationalist comrades of Gen Z, there is a particular global urgency that ought to be known and internalized by the inspiration our comrades here are creating. It is your responsibility to carry this fire as well, dear comrade.

    Another major factor for any internationalist to consider, which also holds a role in my decision to struggle here, is the Israeli state’s deep and longstanding investment in the junta. The Israeli state designed the Burmese military’s weapons, supplies parts for its aircraft, and maintains a not-so-visible economic partnership. Though it may not be obvious, this struggle is absolutely a major front against Israeli imperialism in Asia.

    Nonetheless, our presence here does not have to be justified by how close or how distant our immediate enemy is to Israel, as the struggle of internationalism is not simply a game of power structures. The global resistance against genocide is just as political and social as it is material, and this entails a vast range of internationalist responsibilities. While the genocide in Palestine has been the primary driver of internationalist organizing recently and very rightly so, it is important to consider that Israel is not the only state actor committing genocide in the world right now.

    5. How do you conceptualize internationalism? Why, for you, does it necessitate participating as an armed combatant?

    It is a reality that the spectacle of war gains attraction from the consuming and extracting forces of the neoliberal order, and even so, there is so much marginalization of Myanmar from global power systems that even war is not enough of a spectacle for much of the neoliberal order to bat an eye.

    Yet, our presence here is also an immediate defense against the opportunism of the states that we were born under. The scramble to control the jade mines of Kachin region, for example, is an active flashpoint in which the US and Chinese state are competing with one another, far away from the global spotlight. There are lobbies connected to both respective ruling classes whose full time responsibility is to monitor and act upon opportunities to extract from Myanmar, almost exclusively through cooperation with the junta.

    Our relationship with war intends to dispel and subvert the liberal hypothesis of simply going and helping because people are suffering, and then to feel morally validated. There is no transaction to our work here. I would argue that our practical work is hardly even deployed here because of war, but rather because of the immediate necessity of defense against genocide. The interconnectedness of this revolution with the realities of many other communities in self-defense, as well as the intersecting powers of the global system that allow a broader force of the enemy to develop here, necessitate an active internationalist consciousness for and within this revolution.

    The paradigm of democratic modernity teaches us a significant concept as it pertains to revolutionary people’s war: the wextê alozî (chaos interval). This is a volatile period in any society within which there is a finite window of opportunity for a high degree of revolutionary change. The 2021 coup created this wextê alozî for the communities of Myanmar in which we are currently struggling, and it is directly connected to how we approach internationalism.

    As a structure, we have been invited here by local revolutionary movements with whom we work closely, and it is on this basis of direct cooperation that we engage in revolutionary work. Within this wextê alozî, we are guided by the immediate needs of local comrades here, and we do not intend to insert ourselves into an environment that we predefine from the outside. We navigate it through struggle and adjustment, not self-validation.

    It is crucial to consider that the revolution in Myanmar is not a political monolith. Some may confuse liberal forces for being the primary political force because they have been able to communicate most conveniently and effectively with bourgeois power systems in the Global North. The political reality on the ground here is more complex and messy. No political force has a real hegemony in the revolution, which means it is broadly decentralized.

    As anti-fascists, it is easy for our eyes to look directly toward the leftmost formations in the revolution, but only looking where our eyes move most easily denies us of understanding the broader picture. Our communist comrades in the Communist Party of Burma hold their own umbrella of revolutionary forces while socialist-adjacent groups such as Bamar People’s Liberation Army and Buffalo Soldier Freedom Force all frequently cooperate on the basis of shared principles. But, this does not stop them nor does it stop us from fighting alongside more populistic forces like the National Unity Government or Kachin Independence Organization. In Myanmar the revolution takes the form of a united front against the fascist junta, and it is for a future where communities can determine their own realities without the immediate threat of genocide. What that future looks like is not for us to determine, but we are willing to give our lives to defend the opportunity for communities here to determine it themselves.

    A Kurdish comrade in the People’s Protection Units once said during the defense of the Tişrîn Dam: “If the PKM doesn’t work, the BBC won’t talk about us, friends! You need to understand — if this doesn’t work, no one will even acknowledge us. If this fails, our language will vanish. Our traditions will be erased. If this fails, our cemeteries will be desecrated. If this fails, our mothers will be left defenseless. But if we have this, we have everything. Without it, I swear to you — nothing will remain. Ourselves won’t remain. They will take us out one by one.”

    6. What is your relationship to the citizens of Myanmar who you’ve embedded alongside? Do they share your internationalist perspective?

    Until the AIF, most foreigners in the Chin Hills had either an overtly transactional or extractive relationship with local communities. We come here asking for nothing, and this is a strange thing to see for a community that has been subjected to a cocktail of British colonization and American evangelism.

    We don’t barge into the hills acting like we own the place. Our internationalist praxis here begins in asking what we can do as internationalists to deepen the defense against the junta and expand connection with other comrades in struggle across the world. Internationalists in AIF hold a particular responsibility in bridging solidarity with the communication we have developed on the international front, this is a major piece of our political work.

    It is worth noting that this solidarity has also already been expressed in the revolution without our help in various ways. Karenni National Defense Forces comrades in the east of the country have expressed solidarity with the revolution in Rojava, for example. Women comrades of the Chin National Defense Forces, on their own initiative, have exchanged messages of solidarity with the autonomous women’s forces of Rojava. We work to initiate more cooperation with democratic forces in the world to deepen and expand this kind of

    solidarity on a more practical basis.

    Crucially, internationalism is in the struggle for women’s liberation and does not exist without it. The struggle against 10,000 years of patriarchy is just as real in the Chin Hills as it is anywhere else in the world, from the subtleties of established gender roles within the revolution to the overt patriarchal violence committed by the junta. In international connection between women’s movements there exists a new seed for women’s liberation to blossom. We are thus here to facilitate a broader people’s diplomacy that actively allows space for the local women’s struggle to deepen.

    How we struggle against patriarchy within our structure directly relates with how we interact with patriarchy in internationalism, within local society, and the structures of our allies. We have, for example, created a program for men in the unit to deconstruct patriarchal tendencies and apply this deconstruction in our interactions with society. As an integral praxis of internationalism, we intend to contest in our daily life the patriarchal norms legitimized here by imperialistic forces, whether coming from Yangon or London or Ohio.

    7. Where can people learn more about the situation in Myanmar and the AIF?

    Organize with local Myanmar diaspora communities and simply include Myanmar in your internationalist praxis, whatever that may look like in your locale. We encourage comrades to organize solidarity events involving the revolution in Myanmar and the AIF. We are happy to support these events and participate in Q & As. Do not let our revolutionary comrades in Myanmar be silenced.

    You can find the AIF’s blog here: https://aifmyanmar.noblogs.org/

    You can also find more regular updates from AIF on our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aifmyanmar/

  • Does Confronting ‘Techno-Feudalism’ Require Aligning with Pre-Feudal Forces?

    Does Confronting ‘Techno-Feudalism’ Require Aligning with Pre-Feudal Forces?

    Seventeen years ago, in the wake of the Green Movement’s uprising and its suppression — when Iran had once again drawn the attention of right- and left-wing analysts worldwide — I wrote an article titled “The Tragedy of Left Discourse on Iran,” in which I critiqued the mistaken views of several prominent left theorists, including James Petras, Azmi Bishara, Slavoj Žižek, and contributors to MRZine, the Monthly Review-affiliated website, all of whom had, in various ways, sided with the Islamic Republic. I noted there that “the voices we hear today from parts of the left are tragically reactionary. Siding with religious fundamentalists on the wrong assumptions that they are anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist is aligning with the most reactionary forces in history. This is a reactionary left, different from the progressive left, which has always been on the side of the forces of progress.”

    “Which Side Are You On?”

    Now, seventeen years later — following the December/January massacre of tens of thousands of demonstrators across Iranian cities by the Islamic regime, and the joint US/Israeli military attack on Iran — we are witnessing the same responses. I will not address the “leftist axis of resistance” within Iran here — those who, oblivious to their own historical errors and those of the former socialist camp, continue to repeat lines from nearly half a century ago that dealt the greatest blow to the credibility of the Iranian left. The position of right-wing and non-left analysts who openly defend the US and Israeli stance and blame all problems on the Islamic regime is equally clear. For instance, Jack Cunningham, writing in an article titled “Is War with Iran ‘Legal’? And How Much Does It Matter?” in Open Canada, argues that “Iran has been effectively waging aggressive war with both the US and Israel at least since the mid-1980s, and their actions, including the current attacks on Iranian targets, are best understood as acts of self-defense, not aggression.” In an earlier article on the same site, he had declared that “Iran has been the greatest threat to Israel and the most disruptive regional actor in the Middle East.” Regardless of how familiar such analysts are with Middle Eastern and Iranian affairs — or whether they know but conceal it — this reflects the binary worldview prevailing in the West: that America and Israel are champions of peace and democracy fighting warmongering elements in the region. Right-wing currents among the Iranian diaspora, especially the monarchist circles around Reza Pahlavi — with their extensive media networks built with foreign support and their skillful exploitation of Iran’s cultural, political, economic, and environmental disarray under clerical rule — advance exactly these positions.

    We witness a similar one-sided view in the camp of critics of US policy: it is solely American imperialism and global Zionism that are responsible, and the Islamic Republic is being attacked without cause. Here we have, on one hand, staunch supporters of the Islamic Republic’s positions, figures like Trita Parsi. The internet is also full of interviews and analyses by prominent figures such as John Mearsheimer, who — despite his extensive knowledge and rightly addressing imperialist aggression — makes not the slightest mention of the Islamic Republic’s destructive policies. The same is true of numerous talks by Ben Norton, Jeffrey Sachs, and others.

    The focus here is on the socialist left, which also addresses only one side of the conflict — American imperialism. Gary Wilson, in the article “Iran Today, China Tomorrow: The Strategy Behind the War” on Monthly Review Online, correctly describes the war with Iran as “…the outcome of global class war — the drive of monopoly capital to maintain control over the world’s resources, markets, and labor at any cost,” and addresses various issues including the killing of schoolgirls in Minab, the confrontation between low-tech resistance and high-tech military force, and the role of finance capital in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Yet he makes not the slightest mention of the Islamic Republic’s role and destructive policies. Part of the article addresses the damage this war has inflicted on the working class across different continents. Still, there is no mention of the misery of Iranian workers — including the majority of oil and petrochemical workers who, due to Islamic Republic policies, worked without any security in contractor companies and, with the outbreak of war, lost even those precarious, unstable jobs. Around a hundred thousand workers at various tiers of oil contracting companies — companies created and sold to the cronies of the regime, subject to no oversight — have been left without protection. The National Iranian Oil Company has outsourced most of its operations to these companies to avoid responsibility for workers’ conditions. The regime even invented the term “third-pillar workers” to make clear it bears no responsibility for these workers’ conditions.

    Wilson concludes his article: “The war was planned. The suffering was predictable. Which side are you on?” The real question, however, is this: if we rightly condemn American imperialism (and of course the Israeli right-wing coalition’s aggression), must we therefore stand on the side of the obscurantist fundamentalists ruling Iran?

    An example of more direct left support for the Islamic Republic is Radhika Desai of Geopolitical Economy’s interview with Dimitri Lascaris, a journalist with the Reason2Resist channel. Returning from a ten-day trip to Iran, Lascaris claims that of approximately a hundred people he interviewed in various Iranian cities, he “…didn’t find a single person criticizing the government,” and that he was deeply impressed by the “near unanimity” of anti-war sentiment and support for the regime. Regarding war damage, he says that, contrary to Western propaganda claiming the war caused widespread destruction, he saw very little ruin. In a situation where not only independent foreign journalists, but even non-regime-affiliated domestic journalists cannot report freely from Iran — and where many young people have been arrested, tortured, and in some cases executed merely for forwarding a photograph on social media — Lascaris may have apparently not realized he was conducting his reporting on a regime-guided tour. He needed only to have glanced at Iranian news and asked himself: why, just before the war, did the regime gun down tens of thousands of Iranians in the streets of various cities? Why are there so many political prisoners, including prominent women such as Narges Mohammadi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Nasrin Sotoudeh, and many others, still behind bars? Why, according to the UN Human Rights Office, has the Islamic regime already executed 21 people and arrested more than four thousand during this very war? As for not seeing much destruction, did his guides take him to Mobarakeh Steel in Isfahan, the largest steel plant in the Middle East, where around 20,000 workers are directly employed and around 100,000 indirectly through supply and value chains, which Israel forced into shutdown through repeated attacks? Did he visit the massive chemical and petrochemical plants bombed by Israel? Did he see the results of the bombardment of the Pasteur Institute, one of the oldest and globally recognized pharmaceutical research institutions? Instead of confronting these realities, he concludes that the war produced results for Iran that were the opposite of what the US and Israel expected, and actually elevated Iran’s standing in the world. Desai also conducts an interview with Mohammad Marandi, a staunch pro-regime academic and effectively a regime spokesperson, on “Iran’s Historical Role in the Decline of Imperialism,” which requires no further comment.

    Most important of all, however, is Yanis Varoufakis — the prominent theorist and founder of Greece’s radical socialist party SYRIZA and the European Realistic Disobedience Front, and author of the influential book Techno-feudalism: What Killed Capitalism — who announced on his X account that he and another leader of the party had visited the Iranian embassy in Greece. This news came as a great surprise to Iranian leftists who respect Varoufakis and whose works have been widely translated into Persian. In this post, Varoufakis states, among other things, that “We are here because of the 180 girls whom the United States and Israel killed in Minab. We are here because the U.S. president has declared a cultural war against one of the oldest civilizations of humanity.” By doing so, Varoufakis — regardless of his stated opposition to a theocratic system — has, unfortunately, taken the side of the Islamic Republic. Expressing solidarity with the crime of killing innocent girls by imperialist and Zionist forces is certainly a worthy act. But when the government that this ambassador represents gunned down protesters in the streets of Iranian cities, did Varoufakis protest at the Iranian embassy? It is also true that Trump made those absurd remarks about Iranian civilization — but is the Islamic Republic really the representative of “one of humanity’s oldest civilizations”? The truth is that through its reactionary and destructive policies, this regime has been one of the greatest enemies of that very civilization. I am aware of the polemical nature of the title I have chosen for this piece, and perhaps it is unfair to Yanis Varoufakis, for whom I have genuine respect. But what he did was also unfair to the left and to Iran’s progressive forces.

    Background to the Three-Sided War

    In contrast to these one-sided approaches and the tendency to take sides in this terrible war — which has set back and continues to set back Iran, the region, and the world — one must attend to its roots and to the role of each of the main actors. This war has three interrelated dimensions, and without entering into historical detail, a brief overview is in order.

    With the Iranian Revolution of February 1979, the US and Israel lost their most important regional ally: Iran. Although the Shah of Iran lacked the nerve to maintain a formal ambassadorial relationship with Israel, Israel’s unofficial “embassy without a nameplate” in Iran was highly active; the Mossad and CIA were the primary supporters of the regime’s apparatus of repression, and Iran was the largest purchaser of military equipment from both countries. Even when the Shah tried to create some distance in this dependent relationship — as when he attacked the Israeli lobby in America in a 1976 interview with Mike Wallace — he had no choice but to submit to those who had restored him to power through the 1953 CIA coup against Mossadegh’s democratically elected government.

    Washington’s primary focus in the Middle East during the Cold War was directed against the Soviet Union and left-wing movements, and toward strengthening Islamist currents and creating a “Green Belt.” SAVAK, the Shah’s brutal security apparatus, with help from the Mossad and CIA, was mainly focused on leftist and nationalist progressive movements and paid little attention to the growth of Islamism. The 1979 Revolution and the subsequent hostage-taking at the US Embassy occurred in this anti-American/Israeli atmosphere. Khomeini, in line with his reactionary beliefs and the hope of bringing the Palestinian movement under control, raised the slogan of Israel’s destruction from the very beginning.

    Then, during the Iran-Iraq War, the United States — especially after Ronald Reagan came to power — provided extensive financial, technical, intelligence, and military support to Saddam’s regime. Israel, however, which at that time feared the Arabs more, secretly provided Iran with arms and intelligence in various ways during this war. American sources have estimated Israel’s arms sales to Iran during the 1980s at close to two billion dollars per year, part of which was paid through the delivery of Iranian oil to Israel.

    Then, in 1982, when Israel had occupied southern Lebanon, the Iranian regime established Hezbollah in Lebanon with the help of part of the Shia population there. In 1983, Iranian regime agents in Lebanon bombed the US Marines headquarters in retaliation for American support of Iraq, killing more than 240 Americans and wounding over a hundred. During the Lebanese civil war, especially after 1982, the Islamic Republic, through its agents, carried out numerous hostage-takings — primarily of Americans — which led to arms-for-hostages exchanges and the notorious Iran-Contra affair.

    Over the years, Iran was subjected to the most severe economic sanctions. The Islamic Republic, in pursuit of its ideological and expansionist goals and the dream of leading the Shia and Islamic world, adopted a three-pronged strategy: building proxy forces in the region, developing missile capability, and pursuing nuclear capacity. It simultaneously continued its anti-Israeli and anti-American rhetoric and its financial and military support to its proxies.

    Saddam’s folly in invading Kuwait in 1991, and more importantly, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, strengthened the Islamic Republic’s regional position. Later, the JCPOA agreement in 2015, while severely limiting Iranian nuclear program, placed vast financial resources at the regime’s disposal, and the Islamic Republic continued its adventurist regional policies.

    Israel, throughout this process, greatly benefited from the Islamic Republic’s adventurism. The Israeli right, to advance Zionist policies — which can be summarized in two main objectives: territorial expansion and population displacement — has always claimed to be faced with existential danger. After neutralizing neighboring Arab states — Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon — the Islamic Republic of Iran and its affiliated proxies provided the best pretext for advancing Israel’s right-wing policies while simultaneously striking at the Palestinian movement.

    A very important turning point was Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Although it was a blind radical reaction to 75 years of displacement, 56 years of occupation, and 17 years of complete land and sea blockade, it provided the greatest opportunity to Israel’s extreme right, which proceeded recklessly and with American backing to launch broad regional offensives. After the destruction of Gaza and the genocide of Gaza’s Palestinians, and increased assault on the West Bank, Israel dealt its greatest blows to Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

    With the proxies weakened, Israel moved directly against the Islamic Republic itself. To provoke the Iranian regime, Israel attacked Iran’s consulate in Damascus in April 2024 (exactly two years ago) and killed several senior IRGC commanders. In response, the Islamic Republic launched a barrage of missiles and drones against Israel. This was what Israel was looking for, preparing for the war against Iran. There was also a bitter irony: Iran had built its proxies to protect itself, and now it was the regime itself trying to protect them in return. The fall of Assad’s regime in Syria deprived the Iranian regime of its last serious support base.

    With the proxies lost or severely weakened, Israel found itself in a position — coinciding with the rise to power of one of America’s most reactionary presidents — to conclude that it could eliminate the Iranian regime. Netanyahu and his religious right-wing coterie’s first hope was regime change in Iran; together with their Iranian monarchist allies, they hoped that within days the people would take to the streets and topple the regime. When they realized this was not achievable, they decided to turn Iran’s regime into a failed state, dreaming of reducing it to the fate of Somalia, Yemen, and Ethiopia that I have discussed elsewhere. The attacks on infrastructure, and especially on intermediate industries such as steel and petrochemicals, on research institutions and the scientific departments of major Iranian universities, were carried out for exactly this reason. Had it not been for pressure and threats from the Trump administration — in hopes of imposing some sort of agreement with the Islamic regime — Israel would have destroyed the main electricity grid, water networks and refineries as well, and even now it awaits the resumption of war to advance this savage policy.

    Unlike Netanyahu, Trump, who has dispensed with the customary niceties of international relations and is openly advancing an imperialist domination agenda in the region and the world, harbored the illusion that he could pursue a “leader change” similar to Venezuela, rather than a “regime change” policy in Iran, which I have discussed elsewhere. But he and his advisors failed to account for two factors: first, Iran’s ability to regionalize and globalize the conflict by closing the Strait of Hormuz; second, the regime’s resilience, which itself has several dimensions. One is its ideological/religious structure, which, despite losing several tiers of its most important leaders, did not collapse. A second factor in this resilience is its prioritization of self-preservation at any cost — even at the expense of Iran and its people. Like Hamas in Gaza, the regime is less concerned with whatever damage the country sustains in this war. A related factor is that in the event of defeat, the clerical/military/economic oligarchy, with its vast webs of family and marital connections, has nowhere to flee, and thus has no choice but to fight on.

    Meanwhile, the conflict increasingly took on religious and fundamentalist dimensions: American Christian Zionist evangelicals — seeking to hasten the return of the Christian messiah — joined with Jewish fundamentalists awaiting the coming of the Jewish messiah, in confrontation with Shia fundamentalists awaiting the Shia messiah, the Mahdi.

    In summary, the 12-day and 39-day wars against Iran, and whatever further military confrontations may lie ahead, are the product of three interrelated historical currents, each bearing a degree of responsibility: American imperialism in its drive to maintain and extend global hegemony; Israel and global Zionism in its pursuit of a Greater Israel; and the clerical/military/economic oligarchy of the Islamic Republic in its drive to maintain and expand its own religious dominance.

    This war has not been, in any respect, a just war. The aggression by the US and Israel is clear: they had no “right” to go to war, and they showed no “just conduct” in war — their war crimes require no elaboration. But though the US and Israel have not been fighting a just war, this doesn’t mean that Iran has justice on its side. For the regime bore its own responsibility for bringing it about, and its conduct — both toward the Iranian people and toward neighbouring countries — has not been righteous. More importantly, despite the nature of the imperialist aggression, the Iranian people do not see this as a patriotic or liberatory war; they see it as the war of a governing apparatus that does not belong to them. Some analysts of Iranian affairs in the West, and the overt or closeted supporters of the regime, have mistakenly attributed the absence of a large anti-regime movement during the war to patriotism and popular support for the regime. As was mentioned earlier, this is a government that gunned down its own people to terrorize them and prevent another mass uprising. Some have wrongly compared this war to the Vietnam War as a war of liberation. In the Vietnam War, American (and before them, French) soldiers were baffled by how ordinary Vietnamese people fought the invaders with great determination. In the war against Iran, a genuine portion of the population actually hoped for further blows to be dealt against the regime.

    In contrast to the reactionary left — which, by solely condemning US/Israeli military aggression, took the side of the backward-looking and anti-popular Islamic Republic regime — Iran’s progressive left, along with many progressive lefts from different countries, have both condemned the Islamic Republic, not only for its adventurist and expansionist policies, but also for its anti-popular policies and political and cultural repression, and at the same time categorically condemned imperialist and Zionist aggression. One example is an open letter signed by more than one hundred prominent left-wing figures, from around the world, following a letter signed by over three hundred Iranian academics, lawyers, journalists, and artists.

    The Islamic Regime vs. the Iranian People

    Setting aside those segments of the population that support the regime for religious reasons or financial dependency upon it, and the confused so-called “leftist axis of resistance” who defend it; and setting aside the monarchists who dream of an Israeli/American victory in this war to bring Reza Pahlavi to power — the majority of the people of Iran see this war as a devastating blow to their own authentic movement, and are searching for a path to overthrow this regime and transition beyond it.

    One of the most critical issues facing the regime is the ever-widening gap between civil society and the political society, where neither has the slightest trust in the other. The situation within the power bloc is also uncertain: will the more hardline fundamentalists maintain the upper hand, or the oligarchs who have discovered paradise on earth? In any case, one can predict that in the first instance, civil society and social movements will not consciously enter the arena, because the wounded regime will not hesitate to intensify repression. One can see the regime’s fear and terror in the fact that during the war, it filled the streets with armed Basiji and Hezbollahi thugs, and at night, they continue their religious gatherings in different neighbourhoods to prevent any anti-regime demonstration. Simultaneously, it continues its mass arrests and executions, and despite the catastrophic economic cost, continues its devastating internet blackout out of fear of the people.

    Economic problems will be among the regime’s greatest challenges. Inflation, unemployment, the costs of rebuilding damaged infrastructure and industries, shortfalls in foreign currency and export revenues, and so on. If sanctions continue, the ability to circumvent them — which had primarily been done through various shell companies in the UAE, especially in Dubai — will be vastly more difficult, due to the souring of that relationship after drone and missile strikes on UAE installations. Rebuilding infrastructure, industries, and residential units in cities will require billions of dollars that the regime does not have. Moreover, since the regime will certainly prioritize the restoration of its military capacity, it will allocate even fewer resources to improving citizens’ living conditions, resulting in even greater anger and discontent.

    As noted earlier, one of the greatest economic damages of the war has been to industry. Contrary to various theories that either deny that Iran’s economic system is capitalist or qualify it with various adjectives, or characterize it solely by plunder and destruction, Iran is a relatively advanced industrial capitalist country. No one disputes the corruption, theft, and oligarchic control of these industries, but whatever they are, they are capitalist industries based on the exploitation of labor, combining neoliberalism with state intervention. The industrial sector accounts for roughly 35% of GDP, and 33% of the labour force works in industry. Iran’s top 100 companies (of which roughly 10% are banks) account for 11% of GDP and 91% of non-oil exports. Iran’s non-oil exports in 2025 were approximately $32 billion, while oil exports for that year were projected at around $43 billion.

    Rising unemployment will be a major burden for the regime. Tens of thousands of insured workers have become unemployed. The Social Security Organization, which was already facing serious problems before the war, will have lower revenues with more workers unemployed while simultaneously facing higher expenses, including unemployment insurance. Approximately 14 million households are covered by this organization, and it has had and will continue to have difficulty. The government also has large unpaid debts to the organization. And these are only the workers covered by social security. All employees of workplaces with fewer than ten workers — which account for more than 80% of industrial units — are excluded from this coverage. The fifty-plus-day internet blackout has bankrupted tens of thousands of small businesses. The Deputy Minister of Labor has referred to the loss of more than one million jobs, though precise figures are not yet available. Added to this, we also have the drastic situation of the so-called “third-pillar workers,” mentioned earlier.

    The war has dealt a severe blow to Iran’s working class and impoverished. In addition to unemployment and rising prices, the work environment during and immediately after the war has become far more securitized, making it much harder to advance even trade union demands, let alone political ones. Organizing in the workplace — always among the most difficult tasks — has become vastly more difficult. However, one must hope that organizing at the neighborhood level in working-class areas can proceed with the necessary precautions.

    The most important blow has fallen on popular movements. Without doubt, had the war not occurred — and had the neo-fascist monarchist intervention, with the open support of Israel and Mossad, not driven the regime into a panic and provided it the pretext for savage repression and mass killing — the continuation of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2023 and the December 2025 and January 2026 movements would have been certain. Under current conditions, it is entirely understandable that the movements have retreated sharply. Yet there is no doubt that if Iran is not destroyed, the Islamic Republic and the problems and crises that lie ahead of it will face further major movements from civil society. It is true that the Iranian people and the toiling classes are the greatest losers of this war. But the Islamic Republic will no longer be the same, and civil society will be able, by linking together the quadripartite arenas of social movement: the street, the workplace, the place of education, and the marketplace, to ultimately bring down the regime. No regime devoid of legitimacy can long endure.

  • Rutgers Labor Center to Celebrate Life and Legacy of Tony Mazzocchi

    Rutgers Labor Center to Celebrate Life and Legacy of Tony Mazzocchi

    In the 1960s and 70s, conservative leaders of the AFL-CIO and many national unions viewed militant activists in the civil rights, anti-war, environmental, and women’s movements with alarm. When student radicals started migrating from campus and  community organizing to unionized workplaces, the labor officialdom did not welcome them.

    But a World War II veteran from Brooklyn named Tony Mazzocchi did. Mazzocchi had risen through the ranks of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW), a CIO union which had a strong tradition of rank-and-file activism and internal democracy. He welcomed Sixties’ radicals into the ranks of labor and went on to personally mentor them. Many of these unofficial Mazzocchi students became effective organizers, grievance handlers, contract negotiators, strike leaders, and movement builders.

    Mazzocchi was a role model and catalyst for activism on issues ranging from civil rights to labor-based environmentalism, job safety reform, single-payer health care, nuclear disarmament, and union democracy. His story is recounted well in Les Leopold’s 2007 biography, The Man Who  Hated Work and Loved Labor. As an OCAW local officer in New York, legislative director in Washington, and later the union’s national secretary-treasurer, Mazzocchi managed to juggle day-to-day union responsibilities with a tireless commitment to building workers’ political power.

    A hundred years after Mazzocchi’s birth, and nearly a quarter century after his death in 2002, several hundred of his friends and allies, new and old, are gathering at the Rutgers University Labor Center on June 4-5, for an in-depth discussion of his life and legacy.

    Tony’s path was unusual. After combat duty in the Army, he went to work in a Queens cosmetics factory and joined OCAW Local 149. As a union shop steward, organizer, and eventually president, he helped triple his local’s size. He built a strong cadre of shop floor leaders, started a book club and credit union, and, according to his biographer, sponsored a “vast array of social activities” that “combined to create a remarkable new spirit at work.” Even though Local 149’s membership was 95 percent white, it allied itself with the rising civil rights movement.

    In 1957, Mazzocchi helped launch the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) to oppose atom bomb testing. His longtime involvement with SANE put him in touch with leading scientists, environmentalists, and activists who later joined him in building a new movement for occupational safety and health.

    Within the 200,000-member OCAW, Mazzocchi helped elect a new national union president in 1965, after a bitter struggle with top OCAW officials linked to CIA meddling in foreign labor movements. He became the union’s national legislative/political director.

    The Labor-Environment Connection

    In this Washington, D.C. role, Mazzocchi linked emerging public concern about environmental pollution to the source of the problem—workplaces where workers were exposed to toxic chemicals at much higher levels than anyone in surrounding communities. At his initiative, organized labor began to shift from a traditional emphasis on job safety ( protection against injuries) to dealing with the causes and long-term health effects of occupational hazards. A high-school dropout himself, Tony recruited a high-powered network of medical researchers to provide documentation for lawsuits, reports, press releases, hearing testimony, and investigative reporting. He regularly dispatched these allies to probe for the causes of members’ illnesses. He also organized non-stop “road shows” that brought workers together with those experts—and forced lawmakers to listen to both.

    Mazzocchi’s drive to pass the Occupational Health and Safety Act in 1970 is a case study in building effective labor clout. (His critical role in OSHA’s passage was even noted by President Nixon.) From MassCOSH in Boston to Work Safe in the Bay Area, the local occupational safety and health coalitions that Mazzocchi helped create are still fighting for job safety and health.

    Political Setbacks

    Mazzocchi ran twice to become president of OCAW. But in hotly contested convention elections in 1979 and 1981, members in the nuclear industry proved to be his Achilles heel. Conservative opponents critical of his “anti-nuke” politics and “incessant boat-rocking” mobilized against him, and he suffered narrow defeats.

    But Tony confounded his foes, per usual, by making an unexpected political comeback. In 1988, he returned to OCAW leadership as national secretary-treasurer. He used that post to promote worker education initiatives, like the Labor Institute, and to fight for a new labor-based political party.

    The Labor Party got off to a promising start in 1996 amid growing rank-and-file disillusionment with the Clinton Administration. Its founding convention in Cleveland drew 1400 delegates, including rank-and-file activists, local officers, some national union officials, and labor-oriented academics.

    During the LP’s early years, Mazzocchi’s relentless personal barnstorming around the country helped generate much of its labor funding and support. Unfortunately, dreary and divisive left sectarian squabbles soon paralyzed some chapters. The election of President George Bush in 2000 and resulting Republican attacks on labor drove almost all unions back into the Democratic Party fold.

    Mazzocchi’s Legacy

    Two key Labor Party demands—single payer health coverage and “Free Higher Ed”—the latter inspired by Mazzocchi’s own experience with the original GI Bill became centerpieces of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020.

    As Les Leopold, a Rutgers conference organizer and Labor Institute founder, points out,  Mazzocchi always raised hopes and expectations by “conjuring up a labor movement that… would be militant and green. It would bring about radical changes that would stop global warming. It would give workers real control over the quality and pace of work and over corporate investment decisions. It would champion the fight against militarism and for peace and equality. It would win free health care. It would dare to create a new political party to counter the corporate domination of the two major parties.”

    In a period of declining union density, many union leaders are now in a Trump-inspired defensive crouch. Few project anything like Mazzocchi’s expansive vision. But among working people, there’s evidence that support for working-class-centered politics is building.

    The two-day event in New Jersey will begin with panels and workshops featuring speakers who worked with Mazzocchi or whose current organizing was inspired by him. Organizers say it will also include a more “interactive, worker-centered, action-centered day of strategizing, learning from the lessons of the past and applying them to the present and future.”

    The conference will officially unveil the Tony Mazzocchi Archive, to be permanently housed at the Rutgers Labor Center. It will feature not just OCAW-related documents but a wide-ranging oral history project, capturing the voices of workers influenced by the visionary leadership and pragmatic radicalism that Brother Tony embodied.

    (For schedule and registration information, see here.)

     

  • Review: Colonizing Kashmir

    Review: Colonizing Kashmir

    Colonizing Kashmir: State-Building Under Indian Occupation

    By: Hafsa Kanjwal

    Stanford University Press, 2023

    This is an excellent book by historian Hafsa Kanjwal about the colonization of Kashmir that the Indian State has carried out since gaining independence from the British Empire and undergoing the tragedy of Partition. As the British overlords withdrew in August 1947, the subcontinent was split into India and Pakistan according to senseless imperial design—a tumultuous event that exploded in sectarian mass-violence, with an estimated million people killed. The Partition crisis immediately gripped the princely northern state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), too, which had been dominated for a century by the Hindu Dogra dynasty operating under indirect British rule.

    Professor Kanjwal explains that, prior to the Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh’s infamous decision to accede to India rather than Pakistan in October 1947—despite the fact that J&K was majority-Muslim—his army joined forces with militants from the Hindu-nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and troops from another princely state to kill an estimated 250,000 Muslims in Jammu, displacing several hundred thousand more to Pakistan in the process. These oppressive policies of the maharaja sparked the first India-Pakistan War (1947–48), which established the “line of control” that currently divides Kashmir between the hostile neighbors.

    Aptly defying the simplistic scholarly narrative that “see[s] colonialism as emerging only from the West to the Global South,” Professor Kanjwal in Colonizing Kashmir chronicles the “third world imperialism” that has been practiced by the Indian ruling class in this mountainous occupied territory over the past eighty years (13–14 [emphasis in original], 22). The unwilling host to up to 750,000 Indian troops who have been engaged in “massacres, human rights violations, and war crimes” for decades, Kashmir has widely been considered the world’s most-militarized region since an indigenous armed uprising began in the late 1980’s (273). To date, the Indian State continues to systematically deny millions of Kashmiris—the majority of whom are Muslim—their right to self-determination. As such, it is in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 47 (1948), which mandates a plebiscite to decide the territory’s fate: namely, whether it is to become independent, merge with Pakistan, or remain with India.

    Besides the devastating effects this unresolved international crisis has on healthcare access and women’s rights in Kashmir, it has led to multiple wars between India and Pakistan since decolonization. One of these conflicts—the Kargil War (1999)—broke out after both countries had acquired nuclear weapons, thus coming dangerously close to the nuclear threshold. The threat of regional escalation to nuclear war is ever-present now, as the brief armed conflict that broke out between the neighboring countries in May 2025 after a militant attack on Hindu pilgrims in occupied Kashmir—a war that President Trump has wrongly credited himself with ending—reminds us.

    In this sense, Colonizing Kashmir is a courageous challenge to “the sovereignty claims of the (post)colonial nation-state,” and to the triumphalist idea that decolonization has necessarily been a liberatory process (22). It is a call “for the creation of a historiography of states that do not exist, have not been allowed to exist, and peoples who have been denied self-determination and the right to exercise their sovereignty” (20). Beyond Kashmir and Kashmiris, these include “Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Palestine, Hong Kong, Tibet, East Turkestan, Chechnya, and Western Sahara,” indigenous peoples of the U.S., Canada, and Australia, plus “the Kurds, Papuans, and Oromo and Tigray people” (20). Likely as retaliation to its author’s principled truth-telling and apt criticisms, the Indian State outright banned the book in August 2025, mandating all its possessors to forfeit their copies!

    In this review, we will examine Professor Kanjwal’s brilliant elucidation of state-building in Kashmir, before concluding by considering some of the parallels between Kashmir and Palestine.

    Colonizing Kashmir

    During the initial rule of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah (1947–53), the first prime minister of occupied J&K, Articles 35A and 370 were added to the Indian Constitution. These articles authorized local authorities to restrict land ownership to Kashmiris, and granted them uniquely autonomous powers, respectively. However, by ordering the ouster of Sheikh Abdullah over concerns about his loyalty and replacing him with a client regime led by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister and leader of the Congress Party, showed his true interest in intensifying India’s colonization of Kashmir. It is on Bakshi’s controversial rule (1953–63), which advanced capitalist modernization, normalization of relations with India, and “emotional integration” to distract Kashmiris from their right to self-determination, that Professor Kanjwal focuses her book (9, 32, 130–1).

    Despite Nehru’s proclamation of a secular-democratic political orientation (while hailing from a Kashmiri Pandit [Brahmin, or upper-caste Hindu] background), his centralist subjugation of Muslim-majority Kashmir arguably anticipated the current Hindu-fascist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s brazen 2019 abrogation of Kashmir’s constitutional autonomy. (Modi is a long-term member of the RSS, and as Chief Minister of Gujarat, he oversaw pogroms orchestrated by Hindu mobs in 2002 that killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Indian Muslims.) As Professor Kanjwal notes in an article written after the sudden cancellation of Articles 35A and 370, not only does Modi’s unilateral action effectively serve to annex Kashmir, but it also “enables people from India to buy land and property in Kashmir,” thus raising fears that direct rule by New Delhi will “change the demographics of the Muslim-majority region.”

    As Colonizing Kashmir elucidates, Naya (“New”) Kashmir refers to a progressive manifesto written in 1944 by leaders of Kashmir’s National Conference about the region’s post-independence future. Affiliated with the Congress Party, the National Conference was a political formation to which both Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi belonged. By contrast with the despotism of contemporary Dogra rule (and of Hindu nationalism), Naya Kashmir envisioned a voice for J&K’s Muslim majority, pluralistic respect for its religious minorities (Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and Buddhists), equality before the law, decentralized parliamentary governance, the abolition of feudalism, and cooperativism.

    In this vein, Sheikh Abdullah actually avoided forging closer ties with Pakistan after Partition, partly out of fear that its feudal elites would block the implementation of Naya Kashmir, and he opted for continued accession to India instead. (While not necessarily committed to Naya Kashmir, the Communist Party of India and the Soviet Union appear to have shared similar views about the feudal character of Pakistan, which soon became a close U.S. Cold-War ally.) In 1950, Sheikh Abdullah’s government successfully passed reforms that redistributed lands without compensation to their former owners, in a move that empowered Kashmiri Muslim peasants while antagonizing Hindu landlords.

    In their leadership style, both Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi were authoritarian: they banned opposition parties and wielded a great deal of control over press and radio coverage in and about Kashmir. Foreign journalists exaggerated Kashmiri Muslims’ support of Bakshi, in line with the local and central governments’ self-presentation as advancing secular and pluralistic politics. Tourism revolving around Kashmir’s natural beauty and supposed exoticism, the promotion of Hindu pilgrimages, the production of superficial films, large-scale infrastructure projects, economic modernization, and corruption were all utilized by Bakshi to further bind occupied Kashmir to India. Moreover, Bakshi personally directed Kashmir’s police and associated paramilitaries while clamping down on dissent.

    Furthermore, Sheikh Abdullah and Bakshi’s regimes mobilized an artistic vanguard to promote Kashmiri cultural nationalism and deepen ties with the Indian State. This ended up being a dialectical process that backfired to some extent, given the call’s resonance among Indian and Kashmiri leftists alike, together with its indirect encouragement of satirical and subversive commentary. For instance, Kashmiri literature entered a “decade of despair” following Sheikh Abdullah’s ouster, and several Kashmiri writers focused on “themes of corruption, greed, obsession with money, loss of moral values, and lack of loyalty” during Bakshi’s reign (210, 222).

    While the vision of Naya Kashmir and the implementation of land reforms may have been progressive, they ultimately served to integrate Kashmir into India and derail fundamental questions about popular self-determination. In fact, Sheikh Abdullah conspired with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 to drop his demand for a plebiscite, in return for his being re-installed as Kashmir’s political boss.1 This fraught history set the stage for the present.

    Parallels with Palestine

    Tragically, the ongoing genocide carried out in Gaza by Israel and the U.S. since October 2023 may preview the fate of Kashmiri and Indian Muslims at the hands of the Hindu-fascist State. Especially following the revocation of J&K’s special status in 2019, the risk of genocide in Kashmir has been escalating, as Professor Kanjwal and Farhan Mujahid Chak have warned. Indeed, in the context of Hindu-supremacists wantonly lynching Muslims in Indian cities, many of Kashmir’s Pandits have welcomed the abrogation of Articles 35A and 370, while many Muslims have opposed it—in an alarming dynamic that ominously recalls Partition. As Azad Essa explains, the cancellation of Article 370 has been a long-term goal of the now-hegemonic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Modi.2

    In 2019, the Indian diplomat Sandeep Chakravorty blatantly called for the implementation of the “Israeli model” in Kashmir, by which he presumably meant dispossessing and ethnically cleansing Kashmiri Muslims to make way for settlement by India’s Hindu majority. Moreover, in 2021, Hindu nationalists publicly endorsed the genocide of Rohingya Muslims carried out in 2016 by the Burmese military and affiliated paramilitaries as inspirational.3

    On its own, then, Hindu nationalism is toxic enough: its main theorist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) openly supported Nazism, and sought to rid post-independence India entirely of its Muslim minority.4 Yet, when India, which has long been Israel’s largest arms importer, is emboldened by the utter disregard evinced by its ally for international humanitarian law in its prosecution of genocide against Muslim-majority Palestinians (as well as its success to date in ensuring impunity for the same), the stage is set for a synergistic effect that could prepare the ground for genocide against Kashmiris—just as the unjust settlement of the Russo-Ukrainian War being pushed by the Trump and Putin regimes arguably encourages Xi Jinping to invade Taiwan.

     

    1Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance between India and Israel (London: Pluto, 2023), 150–1.

    2Ibid 98.

    3Ibid 141.

    4Ibid 74–83.

  • Abolition for Affordability

    Abolition for Affordability

    Peter Burka, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia

    Socialism is having a moment. The most prominent examples, whose campaigns we supported, mayoral victories in New York and Seattle provided a glimmer of light in the darkness for anyone who scorns the capitalist duopoly. The organizing efforts that landed Mayors Mamdani and Wilson in office were herculean for many reasons, chief among them that they openly associated themselves with democratic socialism, electoral faux pas heretofore.

    It is perhaps the variety of socialism or its framing that proved effective. Now famously, Mamdani campaigned on rent stabilization, free buses, and universal childcare, all relatively modest goals that would meaningfully help New Yorkers survive this economic nightmare. On the opposite coast, what inspired Wilson to enter the mayoral race was to safeguard Seattleites’ commitment to social housing. In the weeks since, mainstream liberals capitalized on the success of these campaigns by coining the “affordability crisis” and touting corresponding “affordability agendas,” as if to take credit for the organizing that produced these wins, as if they were allies all along. (They weren’t.)

    The affordability crisis is simply racial capitalism operating as intended. That people cannot afford their lives is the designed outcome of an economic system that hoards resources for billionaires, exploiting workers to insulate the overwhelmingly white ruling class. Tariffs and stock-market declines were only ever going to harm workers and renters, not the corporations themselves. It is because they refuse to confront the capitalist contributors to expensive eggs, much less exorbitant rents and for-profit healthcare, that so-called affordability agendas are doomed to fail. And it is socialism, in turn, that would render affordability for all.

    New York DSA poster child, Mamdani delivered an impressive performance on the debate stage in June last year during which he sanitized his candidacy by promising, “I will not defund the police.” In Seattle, Wilson, too, has committed to expanding unarmed crisis response and community safety, but, mirroring Mamdani, insists on enabling police forces to persist according to their training, especially in the context of a growing homelessness crisis. It may now be politically tenable to run on socialism, it seems, but abolition remains a step too far. If only we understood that the first requires the second.

    Abolitionists do. In a sense, capitalism is the economic way of talking about settler colonialism, the propagation of which required the stolen labor of enslaved Africans and stolen lands of Indigenous people through erasure and genocide. Slavery is a colonial enterprise. It is not sheer cruelty that inspired the capitalist state to enslave but its economic function to grow and uphold white property. And the more resources the capitalist state accumulated, the more it sought to protect it through violent means: a steadily formalized and militarized police force.

    A major precursor to American policing is the slave patrols: the weapon by which the ruling class exacts its anti-Blackness for the purpose of ensuring exploitable labor to maximize profits. The contemporary movement to abolish the police (and all carceral systems of state violence and social control), therefore, constitutes the punctuated but unbroken continuation of the historical movement to abolish slavery. One might expect, then, that anyone who denounces slavery would reject the battalions assembled to sustain it.

    No one owns the definition of socialism, of course, but its elevation in the popular consciousness relies on an antithesis to capitalism. Everyday people may not comprehend the nuances of assembling socialist governance, but, increasingly, they understand that capitalism is why their rents are too high, quality healthcare is reserved for the affluent, and a college degree is no longer worth it. If capitalism explains the affordability crisis, socialism is the antidote. Due to law enforcement’s function of protecting capital and exacting social control, however, to insist on a socialism that keeps the police state intact is logically inconsistent. “[A]ny strain of the socialist movement that does not hold as central the general politics of antiracism and police abolition is incoherent and self-defeating,” says brian bean. Moreover, it reinforces the stereotype about the DSA you would think they hope to avoid: a predominantly white institution more comfortable for Ivy-League philosophy bros than Black and Indigenous revolutionaries. This pro-police left may be a socialism, but it is a white socialism if so.

    As intimated above, we are unsurprised that Mamdani and Wilson have shied away from even “defund” talking points and sincerely wish their administrations well. We want them to succeed. What really deserves the Left’s attention is the ideological rift represented by those who assert a socialism that will cozy up to mass incarceration versus those who understand socialism as an anticapitalist, anticolonial, abolitionist struggle for collective liberation better suited for the lineage of Black revolt. Such is the movement tradition with which we identify. If anyone really does seek success for Mamdani and Wilson, we must remember that the road to socialism was paved by abolitionists.

    Fortunately, those same abolitionists offer us guidance that would benefit any mayor who listens. Take, for example, the notion of “nonreformist reforms” discussed by Ruth Wilson Gilmore. Sure, many of us believe the world would be better off if we disappeared law enforcement tomorrow even if we had not yet cultivated the conditions for genuine community safety today. But nobody expects that to happen. Instead, we must take steps in the direction of liberation; some steps reinforce the carceral state while others undermine it. Socialists can expand the police state by repurposing some as pretend social workers under the guise of community safety and betray their abolitionists forebearers – they can choose white socialism. Or we can robin-hood police budgets to invest in what people actually need to be safe: to afford their lives.

  • Stand with Kali Akuno

    Stand with Kali Akuno

    Reposted from Chuffed

    Kali Akuno—co-founder of Cooperation Jackson and a lifelong movement builder—is facing a serious and urgent health crisis. He needs immediate access to specialized cardiac care that he simply cannot get in Mississippi.

    For decades, Kali has shown up for our movements. It’s our turn to show up for him!

    The Situation

    Kali is currently facing urgent new health challenges. Many of you know that he has struggled with significant health issues for years. He has a serious blood clotting disorder and has had 3 heart attacks between 2008 and 2011.

    He now has a blood clot in his left ventricle—a potential ticking time bomb that requires constant monitoring. He is facing chronic heart failure and a significant decline in heart function.

    Sadly, it has become clear that he cannot get the care he needs in Mississippi, and must travel to access the specialized care needed to stabilize his condition and begin recovery. Decisions about next steps are happening now.

    Kali is not just a public figure—he is a father, friend, mentor, and comrade to so many of us. His loss or long-term disability would be profound across the communities he has helped build.

    The Ask

    We are asking his friends, allies, and everyone inspired by his work to promote our effort to secure the funds he needs for the care he needs.

    We are setting an initial goal of $80,000 to support Kali’s medical and holistic care and recovery, knowing the full need may exceed this.

    These funds will cover urgent travel to specialized cardiac centers, the cost of privately paid for advanced testing and treatment, and the living expenses he will face while focusing fully on recovery.

    How Funds will be Used

    • Immediate specialized medical care and advanced testing
    • Ongoing treatment and monitoring
    • Rehabilitation and long-term recovery
    • Travel and related living expenses during recovery

    All funds raised will go to Kali directly, and will be managed by him. 

    Kali in his own Words

    This is hard for me to write, and I am grateful to my friends and comrades who encouraged me to make this public appeal. 

    I’ve always believed that our strength comes from how we show up for one another.I’m deeply appreciative of the care, love, and solidarity people have already shown. I’m committed to doing everything I can to slow down, focus on healing, strengthening my body and recovery—and your support makes that possible.

    Call to action

    If you’ve been impacted by Kali’s work—or believe in the world he has fought to build—this is the moment to show your support.

    Please donate what you can today, and share this campaign widely.

    Thank you from the Support Team:

    Ajamu Baraka 

    Blair Evans 

    Boots Riley 

    Brian Drolet 

    Brooke Lehman 

    Cindy Weisner 

    David Cobb

    Emily Kawano 

    Firoze Manji 

    Hakima Abbass

    Joshua Dedmond 

    Kamau Franklin 

    Matt Meyer

    Michelle Eddleman McCormick

    Monadel Herzallah 

    Nadine Naber

    Rick Wolff

    Sara Kershnar 

    Tom Goldtooth

  • Israel, Apartheid and the Death Penalty, Codifying War on Palestinian Life

    Israel, Apartheid and the Death Penalty, Codifying War on Palestinian Life

    Israel, Apartheid and the Death Penalty, Codifying War on Palestinian Life

    Rezgar Akrawi

    On March 30, 2026, the Israeli Knesset passed a law imposing death by hanging on Palestinian prisoners and detainees convicted by military courts in cases involving lethal attacks, with the sentence to be carried out within ninety days of conviction. This is not a criminal law. It is a codified tool of ethnic cleansing operating within a documented apartheid system.

    What distinguishes this law is not that it significantly increases the number of victims; extrajudicial killing has been an entrenched Israeli practice for decades. What is new is that the state has elevated killing from a concealed practice into a declared policy, codified with a parliamentary stamp. The significance lies in the brazenness of public normalization, not in the invention of new mechanisms of execution.

    Apartheid here is not a rhetorical description or a poetic exaggeration. It is a precise legal term defined in international law as a system of systematic institutional domination by one national group over another, based on discrimination in rights, movement, and legal existence. This system enjoys unprecedented American political cover.

    To understand what has happened, we cannot begin with the law alone. We must begin with the entire structure that produced it, the capitalist system that protects it, and the organized Western hypocrisy that prolongs its life.

    1. The Death Penalty, The Cheapest Solution for a Failed State

    From my principled and human position, I reject the death penalty completely and categorically. The right to life is an inherent right, inseparable from a person’s humanity, and no state, no matter what legitimacy it claims, has the right to take it away. This rejection does not waver when the law comes from a state that presents itself as democratic, nor does it waver when it comes from a state that practices vile national oppression in full view of the world and with its implicit blessing.

    No one is born a criminal or violent. Every human being is born in a state of complete innocence. It is certain conditions and circumstances that turn a person into a criminal: poverty, unemployment, the absence of social protection, tyranny, in addition to national, religious, and class discrimination and oppression. The death penalty provides failed governments with a ready-made pretext to evade their real responsibility in addressing the underlying roots of crime and violence.

    In the context of vile national discrimination, it goes even further: it is a tool for liquidating resistance, criminalizing the victim, and turning a people subjected to oppression into defendants before the very courts of their oppressors, in a scene where the absence of justice reaches its absolute extreme.

    It is the easiest and least costly solution, while addressing the roots of crime and violence is costly and requires serious and genuine work, something corrupt and incapable authorities do not seem interested in undertaking.

    When that authority is founded on injustice and national discrimination, the question of the roots of violence becomes an eminently political question, because the answer is already known in advance: the root of violence is oppression itself, the poverty it creates, the displacement it produces, and the daily humiliation it feeds.

    The death penalty is, in its essence, a violent, retaliatory, and inhuman punishment, based on the logic of revenge, not on the logic of rehabilitation and reform. It is also, by its very nature, a class-based and discriminatory punishment everywhere and at all times.

    The overwhelming majority of those sentenced to death in the world belong to working-class people, marginalized communities, and national and religious minorities, those who cannot afford lawyers and have no connection to centers of power and influence.

    We rarely hear of a wealthy person or someone with political weight being executed for a criminal offense. This is not a coincidence. It is the very essence of the system itself, which protects the privileged and punishes the dispossessed.

    Moreover, it is an irreversible punishment in a world where courts are tainted by grave judicial errors, and where the majority of confessions are extracted under coercion, torture, and psychological and physical pressure. When the death penalty is carried out against an innocent person, there is no possible return and no compensation, and this alone is enough to reject this punishment at its root.

    How much worse is the situation when the court is not independent to begin with, but is itself part of the machinery of national oppression and one of its instruments.

    The societies that are most humane in their treatment of crime and most just in the distribution of wealth are the ones most capable of reducing violence. Killing in the name of the law does not produce security. It produces a state that masters revenge and fails at reform, a state that entrenches through execution a culture of death and killing and spreads it throughout society.

    When such a state is founded on injustice and vile national discrimination, this culture of killing does not remain confined within its borders. It becomes a model exported, legitimized, and emulated by every system of domination searching for legal cover for its crimes.

    This position is not limited to Israel. The death penalty is widespread across the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Asia. Saudi Arabia is among the world’s leading executioners, with a striking proportion of death sentences falling on impoverished migrant workers from Asia and Africa, as well as political opponents and anyone deemed a threat to the ruling order.

    Palestinian factions also apply this punishment, most notably Hamas, which has carried out field executions on various charges. All of this makes the rejection of the death penalty a comprehensive humanitarian principle, not a selective political stance directed at one party over another. The right to life is indivisible regardless of who violates it.

    2. The New Law, From Practiced Killing to Codified Killing

    The current Israeli government is the most right-wing, most extreme, and most racist in the entire history of Israel. Its cabinet includes ministers who describe Palestinians in language that explicitly strips them of their humanity, and who openly defend forced displacement, annexation, and physical extermination as official state policies.

    These ministers do not hide their intentions, nor do they soften their rhetoric, and yet they sit at international conference tables and are received in certain Western capitals. This glaring contradiction between most Western capitalist discourse on human rights and its actual practice is the true face of international politics when it collides with strategic interests.

    This government was not born in a vacuum, nor did it rule in isolation. It has reached this level of audacity in codified crime because it knows that it is protected to a large extent at the international level, and that the price it will pay will not, so far, be high enough to alter its calculations.

    The most important political cover today comes from Washington. The Trump administration, which expresses American national-populist right-wing politics in its most unrestrained form, provides Israel with unconditional strategic support that surpasses everything previous American administrations granted it. Historical honesty, however, requires stressing that this support is not a Trumpian invention.

    It has been nurtured by Democratic and Republican administrations alike, even if its degrees and forms have varied. What Trump has done is raise the ceiling of this support to a new level of shamelessness and publicity, stripping it of every diplomatic fig leaf that had previously softened its impact.

    This support is not merely a diplomatic stance. It is an organic ideological alliance between two racist right-wing movements that are closely aligned at their core: both regard national domination as a source of legitimacy, both use the discourse of security and terrorism to justify crimes against oppressed peoples, both work to dismantle international oversight institutions that might hold them accountable, and both represent different expressions of a single capitalist order that places the interests of domination above every human or legal consideration.

    Washington and Tel Aviv appear here as two inseparable expressions of one system that makes force into law, national injustice into civilization, and resistance into terrorism.

    This alliance gives the Israeli right everything it needs to escalate its violations: protection in the Security Council through the repeated and systematic American veto, media cover through the digital machinery of the American right that reframes genocide as self-defense, and international support that presents vile national discrimination as legitimate defense and apartheid as a security necessity, and that treats an explicit racist law as part of the system of international governance.

    What is new here does not lie in the act itself. Israel has for decades practiced extrajudicial execution through assassinations, field liquidations, and the direct bombardment of civilian populations. Many of these operations killed dozens of civilians surrounding their alleged targets, turning them into a form of mass execution wrapped in the language of security and deterrence.

    The most blatant and outrageous model of all is what has been taking place in Gaza since October 2023, where the number of direct victims exceeded seventy thousand according to initial documented figures for the first year alone, while peer-reviewed scientific studies including those published in The Lancet estimate the overall toll, when indirect deaths from the collapse of the healthcare system, famine, and disease are counted, to be many times higher. The overwhelming majority of the victims are civilians, in a scene explicitly described by UN officials and international law experts as genocide.

    What makes this scene even more horrifying is that many targeting operations were carried out through artificial intelligence systems and pre-programmed algorithms that choose targets and issue kill orders without real human intervention, in an unprecedented development in which mass execution was turned into an automated decision carried out at the press of a button. This is not a military operation.

    It is a fascist form of mass extrajudicial execution without any trial, carried out before the eyes of the world.

    What is new today is that the state no longer confines itself to killing in secret. It now does so openly, granting it legislative legitimacy and incorporating it into its declared legal arsenal. This is not courage in admitting what is happening on the ground. It is audacity in normalizing and legalizing crimes in their filthiest forms.

    3. The Settlement Movement, From the Margins to the Heart of Decision-Making

    This escalation cannot be separated from the growing role of the racist settlement movement in the West Bank, which over the decades has transformed from clusters on the margins of the political map into an influential political force within the very structure of the Israeli state. This movement did not reach this pivotal position in isolation from the international context.

    It grew and flourished under continuous American funding, uninterrupted economic partnerships, and normal diplomatic relations that were never severed even in the worst and most aggressive phases of settlement expansion. This movement now pushes toward more extreme policies, and drives the expansion of tools of repression and punishment, including harsher legislation such as the law recently passed.

    This transformation is the product of a systematic strategy to build a demographic and political presence in Palestinian territory, accompanied by ongoing government funding and permanent military protection.

    Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories constitute a clear and documented violation of international law, and this is an unambiguous legal judgment. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring its citizens into the territory it occupies.

    The International Court of Justice confirmed in its advisory opinion of 2024 that the continuing Israeli occupation and the establishment of settlements are unlawful under international law, and called for their termination. UN Security Council Resolution 2334, issued in 2016, unanimously affirms that the settlements have no legal validity and constitute a major obstacle to peace.

    On the ground, the number of settlers today exceeds seven hundred thousand people, in a situation that fragments Palestinian geographic continuity and turns the West Bank into isolated islands. Despite all this, many Western states continue to import settlement goods, finance companies operating there, and conclude trade agreements with Israel, proving that their verbal condemnation of settlement expansion is not worth the ink with which it was written.

    Representatives of this movement today hold key ministerial portfolios, and what used to be considered a marginal extremist agenda has become, to a large extent, official state policy translated into binding laws that directly affect the lives and rights of Palestinians.

    4. The Dual Legal Structure, Two Paths to Execution

    This law does not emerge in a legal vacuum. It falls within a dual legal structure that has existed for years, based on two different tracks that may lead to death sentences. The civil track inside Israel defines certain acts within the framework of terrorism and sets special legal conditions that may theoretically open the way to applying the penalty.

    This track may include some Palestinian Arabs inside Israel, or prisoners and detainees held in connection with events such as October 7, 2023, according to some analyses. The military track, meanwhile, is applied in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to Palestinians subjected to a system of vile national discrimination, within a completely separate judicial order that is governed neither by the standards of civil justice nor by its elementary guarantees.

    This legal dualism reflects a deliberate repressive structure that places two human groups under two radically different legal systems: one system for the settler and another for the oppressed, one system for the person with full rights and another for the one who has been turned into a security threat merely by existing on the land of his ancestors.

    The death penalty in Israel is not entirely new, but historically it was nearly frozen and rarely applied, and was used only in extremely limited exceptional cases, most notably the execution of Adolf Eichmann in 1962. The current transformation does not consist merely in reactivating it.

    It goes further, expanding its scope, facilitating its application, and stripping its victims of every procedural guarantee, within a political and repressive context that leaves no room for interpretation as to its true intentions.

    What this abhorrent law criminalizes is not crime in its true legal sense. It criminalizes resistance itself in all its forms. Those who fall into captivity should be treated under international humanitarian law as prisoners of war, not as criminal offenders, and this is a status guaranteed by the Third Geneva Convention, one that the occupying power deliberately ignores in order to transform a liberation struggle into a crime warranting execution.

    The Palestinian in the territories under Israeli occupation is not tried before a system of legal equality. He is tried before a military court operating within a structure of vile national oppression, stripped of the most basic guarantees of a fair trial, with conviction rates approaching totality according to Israeli and international human rights organizations, and with the majority of confessions extracted under coercion and psychological and physical pressure.

    These courts are not justice in any real sense of the word. They are a bureaucratic procedure that gives a false legal appearance to decisions taken in advance in other rooms.

    5. Details of the Law, Brutal Execution Without Guarantees

    What distinguishes this law from other criminal legislation is not just the punishment in itself. It is the systematic and deliberate design to remove every legal guarantee that might prevent its implementation. The public prosecutor does not need to request the application of the death penalty, and a simple approval from a panel of three military officers is enough to issue a death sentence.

    Judges are required to record exceptional justifications if they wish to replace execution with life imprisonment, which turns the logic of justice upside down in a way that reveals the true nature of this law: execution has become the default and mercy the exception, meaning that the judge must justify why not to kill, not why to kill.

    The avenues of appeal and review are severely restricted, with any possibility of pardon eliminated, while those convicted are held in near-total isolation with harsh restrictions on the right to legal representation, as the lawyer is allowed to communicate with the client only through a video call, in a flagrant mockery of the principle of confidentiality between the accused and counsel.

    Alongside this enacted law, there is another bill still under preparation before the Knesset, known as the law on prosecuting participants in the events of October 7. It creates exceptional military courts with retroactive powers to prosecute those accused of participating in the attacks of October 7, 2023. These courts are authorized to depart from standard rules of evidence and procedure, and to impose the death penalty by simple majority without the public prosecutor requesting it.

    Taken together, the two laws constitute an unprecedented expansion in the scope of execution, remove some of the procedural guarantees that had constrained its application for decades, and represent as a whole a qualitative leap in the path of entrenching legal extermination in its most fascist forms.

    Conviction is nearly predetermined before the trial even begins. By contrast, the Jewish Israeli citizen who commits documented crimes against Palestinians, including killing, displacement, and the burning of villages, is tried within a completely different legal system, or is not tried at all, as investigations into most settler crimes frequently end in files being shelved and closed without accountability.

    This discrimination is not a flaw that can be corrected by amending a text. It is the essence of a legal structure that divides human beings into unequal categories of life and rights, which constitutes at its core the precise legal definition of apartheid.

    When such a system is given the authority to execute a person within ninety days on the basis of a military trial with near-automatic conviction rates, we are not dealing with a criminal law. We are confronting a codified tool of ethnic cleansing bearing the parliament’s signature and the state’s seal.

    6. Apartheid, A Legal Characterization from the Ground of Reality

    Describing Israel as a system of racial segregation is no longer merely a political discourse. It has become a documented legal characterization supported by major international human rights organizations. In its 2022 report, Amnesty International concluded that Israel practices a system of apartheid against Palestinians based on systematic oppression and institutional discrimination, extending across the Palestinian territories and within Palestinian communities inside Israel itself. Human Rights Watch also confirmed in its 2021 report that the Israeli authorities are committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution through policies aimed at entrenching the domination of one national group over another.

    In 2024, the International Court of Justice issued a historic advisory opinion affirming that the continuing Israeli occupation is unlawful under international law and calling for its immediate end, in an international legal precedent that has not yet found its way into any enforcement measure.

    These conclusions come from reputable international organizations and recognized international courts, working according to rigorous legal methodologies and precise field documentation. They are not ideological publications by pressure groups.

    They can only be rejected by invoking the same defensive logic once used by the architects of apartheid in South Africa when they described international criticism as interference in internal affairs and as a failure to understand the particularity of their security situation. History judged those people, and it will judge these as well.

    On the ground, this system is manifested in an integrated set of tools: laws under which Palestinian land is granted to settlers and confiscated under the pretext of absentee property and other devices, a permit regime that tightens its grip on Palestinian movement between their cities, villages, and workplaces, a separation wall whose illegality was confirmed by international justice itself, Jerusalem neighborhoods whose homes are demolished in order to replace them with settlers, and the siege of Gaza, which has turned the Strip into an open prison where two million people live in conditions documented internationally as a deliberate humanitarian catastrophe. This is not a temporary security policy. It is a permanent structure designed to entrench national and racial domination.

    The bitter irony is that most Western governments that acknowledge these reports and praise their methodology continue their diplomatic and economic relations with the state they describe as apartheid, in a double standard that can only be explained by the logic of naked capitalist strategic interest. When the new death penalty law is placed within this context, it becomes clear that it is a logical link within an integrated system of domination that controls land, movement, and identity, and that today adds direct control over the right to life itself. Apartheid does not merely suppress the other.

    It works to undermine his human value to the point of making him fit for subjugation and extermination, without provoking a proportionate moral response from most of the major powers that sponsor this system, fund it, arm it, and content themselves with weak verbal condemnation whenever its brutality intensifies and exceeds the limits of what can be overlooked in the media sphere.

    7. Comprehensive Global Isolation, The Weapon the Apartheid System Fears

    The apartheid system in South Africa did not fall because of a sudden awakening among its ruling elites, nor did it fall because of the verbal condemnations issued by many Western capitals with one hand while economic relations with Pretoria continued with the other.

    It fell under the weight of accumulated pressures coming from multiple directions: comprehensive international isolation, political, economic, academic, and cultural, when that isolation was real rather than rhetorical, a long and costly internal struggle, and a gradual erosion of the regime’s legitimacy when the costs of isolation began to affect expanding sections of white society itself.

    This is the historical lesson that cannot be ignored, and current experience proves that the West knows it well and deliberately ignores it when it comes to Israel.

    Today, every state in the world is called upon to impose comprehensive international isolation on the Israeli apartheid state. This is not a call for symbolic solidarity or quickly forgotten rhetorical declarations.

    It is not a demand for more written statements and condemnations that have proven utterly incapable of changing anything on the ground. It is the description of a binding political and moral obligation for every state that claims to respect international law and human rights.

    Severing diplomatic relations, imposing economic sanctions, freezing arms agreements, withdrawing investments, imposing academic, cultural, and sports boycotts, and prosecuting officials before international courts are all available, necessary, and lawful tools.

    The current international situation reveals that there is a real and tangible shift worthy of note and appreciation: many European states have begun moving beyond the limits of verbal statements toward bolder and more effective positions, taking concrete steps in the direction of recognizing Palestinian rights and pressuring Israel.

    In Latin America, a wide wave of courageous positions has emerged, leading the world in rejecting the Israeli apartheid system and demanding accountability. This shift in public opinion and in the international mood proves that accumulated popular pressure produces real results, and that balances of power are not fixed.

    By contrast, many Western states, and even some Arab states, continue to strengthen their relations with Israel and mute their practical criticism out of fear of right-wing American pressure and out of dread of accusations of anti-Semitism, which have become a political weapon for silencing every legitimate criticism.

    That is why popular pressure in these countries, through social movements, forces of the left and progress, human rights organizations, and labor and mass unions, remains the necessary tool to break this complicit silence and compel governments to move from verbally condemning the apartheid system to actually demanding its isolation and dismantlement.

    At the same time, external pressure alone is not enough. Any radical change requires the struggle of all those living on this land, Arabs and Jews and all other nationalities and religions, against the system itself.

    The voices of the left and of progressives among the inhabitants of the country who reject this path do exist, and they pay a heavy price in their own society for opposing it. These are voices that deserve support, solidarity, and joint work.

    8. The State of Citizenship, Neutralizing Nationalism and Religion from the State

    The struggle against this racist death penalty law is not an isolated legal battle. It is part of a broader and deeper struggle aimed at dismantling the entire structure of national-religious discrimination and domination, and at searching for a real alternative that places the human being, not identity, at the center of the state and the law.

    Building a genuine and equal state of citizenship is not a romantic slogan or a utopian wish. It is the most realistic and just political option for those who truly want to get out of this historical impasse rather than merely manage it and reproduce it generation after generation.

    A democratic secular state in which Arab, Jew, Christian, Muslim, secular, atheist, and others are equal citizens before one law, in which nationalism and religion are neutralized from authority and transferred to the sphere of personal freedom and cultural life.

    Nationalism is a cultural identity, and religion is a personal conviction. Every human being has the right to carry them and take pride in them, but they stop at that point and do not become a source of legal privilege or a justification for rights above the rights of others.

    A state that derives its legitimacy from one particular religious or national identity inevitably turns into an instrument of exclusion against everyone who does not belong to it, and this is exactly what produced the Israeli apartheid system and continues to nourish it to this day. This is a lesson taught not only by ideas, but also by long authoritarian nationalist experiences in the same region.

    This approach does not imply any equivalence between occupier and displaced person, nor any moral equality between a state practicing apartheid and a people resisting under siege, repression, and occupation.

    The issue is in truth immensely complex, with intertwined historical, geographical, demographic, and legal dimensions, and it allows for multiple serious perspectives even within the ranks of the left itself. Yet I am inclined, on the basis of a reading of geographical and demographic reality, toward the view that a one-state solution under another name, based on equal citizenship, is the most just and realistic over the historical horizon, and that the two-state project on an ethnic basis as currently circulated deprives the Palestinian people of their rights and creates new problems instead of solving the existing ones.

    The deep demographic intertwining between Palestinians and Jews on this land, the existence of more than two million Palestinians inside Israel who suffer documented institutional discrimination in their civil, political, and economic rights and for whom no partition-based solution offers a just answer, and the Palestinian geographic fragmentation produced by decades of forced displacement, which has shattered any geographic contiguity and makes the idea of a viable Palestinian state closer to illusion — all push toward this option.

    At the center of all these considerations lies the right of return, that deeply rooted human and legal right guaranteed by UN Resolution 194, the right of millions of displaced Palestinians and their sons and daughters scattered in a forced diaspora extending from the camps of Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria to the far corners of the world. The state of equal citizenship is the only framework that allows genuine recognition of this right, because its reference point is citizenship, not ethnic majority.

    Any serious approach must also acknowledge the broad and historically understandable Palestinian opposition to integration with settlers who occupied their land and continue to practice violence against them. This opposition is a legitimate political position rooted in lived experience. Nor can the comparison with South Africa be taken as straightforward: the proportion of non-indigenous residents in historic Palestine is far higher, and the depth of religious and nationalist extremism on both sides makes coexistence considerably more difficult. These obstacles must be acknowledged plainly, not glossed over.

    And yet the question of what the real alternative is remains entirely legitimate. The two-state project has been made impossible by continuous settlement policies. The state of equal citizenship is not an easy path — it is arduous and long-term — but it remains the only framework capable of genuinely accommodating all the people of this land on the basis of real equality.

    The debate over the optimal form of this state is legitimate and open, whether it takes the shape of a unified state under a new name with broad administrative decentralization guaranteeing the rights of all its components, or a federal entity guaranteeing self-rule for its components while preserving unity of citizenship and rights, or a confederal union between two entities equal in rights and sovereignty, or any other formula agreed upon by the people of this land through free will.

    The only fixed standard in all these formulas is full equal citizenship and human rights, not national or religious identity. Religion is a private matter, not a matter of state, and nationalism is a cultural heritage celebrated in the social sphere.

    This alternative is not a utopian dream detached from reality. It is today being discussed with growing seriousness among left and progressive forces worldwide, after the Israeli apartheid system has sabotaged the two-state project through its continuous settlement and aggressive policies.

    Whoever says that this project is utopian should remember that no one once imagined that the apartheid system in South Africa would collapse despite all the enormous political, military, and economic power it possessed.

    Yet local and global popular struggle, together with accumulated international pressure, proved that collapse is possible when real will and genuine solidarity exist. History does not move in a straight line, and systems that seem entrenched begin to crack when the cost of their continuation exceeds what can be borne.

    9. Against a Logic, Not Only Against a Punishment

    The discourse of the left and of liberation must be grounded in honest criticism, even in the harshest moments. Resistance to occupation and national injustice is a moral and legal duty beyond dispute, but this does not remove a parallel duty: frank criticism within the same camp.

    The Palestinian experience itself offers two clear examples: one movement that sank into corruption and managed security coordination with the apartheid system until it lost its liberatory compass, and another that established a one-party order that imposed a form of religious guardianship over public life, while international human rights organizations documented the systematic violations of human rights committed by both sides.

    Their internal fighting led to a political disaster that deepened Palestinian fragmentation and weakened the alternative project in the face of an enemy that fully exploits this division.

    Movements that carry within their discourse the seeds of religious-national and political closure and authoritarianism, and that throw the masses into unequal wars in which innocent lives pay the highest price, do not build a genuine liberation project. Rather, at best, they may produce a reversed version of their enemy under another name.

    Among the practices that demand explicit condemnation in this context are the field executions carried out by Hamas outside the bounds of any genuine judicial process, targeting Palestinians on charges of collaboration with the enemy, political opposition to the movement, or moral and religious pretexts, publicly documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

    Beyond executions, there is a systematic pattern of violations encompassing torture, arbitrary detention, suppression of freedom of expression, and restrictions imposed on women and minorities.

    These violations do not in any way diminish the brutality of the occupation’s crimes or reduce the justice of the liberation cause, but they constitute a betrayal of the very humanitarian principle on which that cause should stand, and they hand the apartheid system free ammunition to discredit the entire liberation project. Honest criticism therefore requires condemning them by name, with the same clarity and the same standard applied to the crimes of the occupier.

    This criticism is not a retreat from the Palestinian right, nor is it any kind of questioning of the justice of the cause. It is a call to develop it toward alternatives that are more just, more humane, more rational, and open to socialist horizons, alternatives capable of building a genuine liberation project on the ground.

    Hence comes the role of left and progressive forces in all their factions in putting forward the alternative of a secular state of citizenship, which cannot be built except on the shoulders of a liberation project grounded in neutralizing nationalism and religion from the state, and in equal citizenship, freedom, equality, and social justice as the standard for all without exception.

    Justice is not achieved through killing or revenge. Crime and violence are social phenomena deeply rooted in injustice, poverty, displacement, and oppression accumulated across generations. When a state practicing vile national discrimination resorts to the death penalty against a people crushed under oppression, it is not addressing violence. It is inflaming it, reproducing it, and adding a new layer of injustice and grievance.

    The true responsibility lies with the structure of national discrimination and oppression that produces violence and feeds it generation after generation.

    The genuine struggle is not confined to one particular legal punishment, no matter how grave it may be. It targets an entire logic that turns the state into a tool of killing, the law into a cover for discrimination, and national belonging into a criterion for the value of life.

    Those who feed this logic and protect it, whether through direct support or through timid condemnation that conceals actual complicity, bear their full historical and moral responsibility, whether they sit in Tel Aviv, Washington, Brussels, London, Paris, or in Arab capitals.

    The struggle for the abolition of the death penalty, the dismantling of the Israeli system of discrimination and national injustice, and the isolation of the global alliance that protects it are not separate battles. They are multiple expressions of one liberation struggle that places every human being, without exception, at the center of value, right, and equality.

    In this context, the abolition of the Israeli death penalty law issued on March 30, 2026 becomes an immediate and urgent demand, because it is a brutal and racist law, a codified tool of ethnic cleansing, a war crime, and a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. Demanding its repeal is a moral and legal duty that falls upon all left, progressive, and human rights forces, and upon every state that claims to respect international law and human rights, alongside the duty to provide protection for Palestinian prisoners in the prisons of the Israeli system of national oppression.

    Let us bring down the apartheid system in Israel, and let us execute the death penalty itself, not only in Israel but in every country of the region and the whole world. Let the death penalty itself be the last victim from which there is no return.

    ________________________________________

    Related links

    I. The New Israeli Death Penalty Law

    Amnesty International (March 30, 2026). Israel – Occupied Palestinian Territories: Newly Adopted Death Penalty Law Must Be Repealed. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/03/israel-opt-newly-adopted-death-penalty-law-must-be-repealed/

    II. Israeli Apartheid

    Amnesty International (February 2022). Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/

    Human Rights Watch (April 2021). A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/04/27/abusive-israeli-policies-constitute-crimes-apartheid-persecution

    III. Gaza Death Toll

    Khatib, L., McKee, M., & Yusuf, S. (July 2024). Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult but Essential. The Lancet, 404(10449), 2088–2089. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext

    Jamaluddine, Z., et al. (January 2025). Traumatic Injury Mortality in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024: A Capture–Recapture Analysis. The Lancet, 405(10474), 243–253. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02678-3/fulltext

    IV. Genocide in Gaza — UN Reports

    United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied since 1967 (October 20, 2025). Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime (A/80/492). https://www.un.org/unispal/document/special-rapporteur-report-gaza-genocide-a-collective-crime-20oct25/

    V. Violations by Palestinian Armed Groups

    Amnesty International (December 2025). Targeting Civilians: Murder, Hostage-Taking and Other Violations by Palestinian Armed Groups in Israel and Gaza (MDE 15/0282/2025). https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/0282/2025/en/

     

  • Trump’s War and its Consequences for the People of Iran and Ukraine

    Trump’s War and its Consequences for the People of Iran and Ukraine

    Recording of webinar sponsored by Haymarket Books & Ukraine Solidarity Network (U.S.).  (more…)

  • The U.S. War on Iran Hurts Ukraine and Helps Russia

    The U.S. War on Iran Hurts Ukraine and Helps Russia

    The U.S. government spent more money attacking Iran in the first two weeks than it did on military aid to Ukraine over four years.

    The United States is estimated to have spent $100 billion bombing Iran in the war’s first two weeks. Over the first four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine received $70 billion in U.S. military aid.

    Incidentally, ninety percent of that $70 billion in aid was spent within the United States, paying for U.S. factories and workers to produce weapons that were either shipped to Ukraine or used to replenish stocks of U.S. weapons the Pentagon sent to Ukraine.

    An additional $59 billion in military aid to Ukraine remains technically in the pipeline from five congressional appropriations under the Biden administration between 2022 and 2024. But the Trump administration has cut military aid deliveries to Ukraine by 99 percent since taking office.

    The U.S. war on Iran hurts Ukraine and helps Russia in three ways.

    • Military resources that could have aided Ukraine’s self-defense are being diverted to the war against Iran.
    • Surging oil and gas prices are refilling the coffers of Russia’s war machine.
    • International solidarity with Ukraine is being countered by a Kremlin geopolitical narrative that portrays Ukraine as supporting the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

    Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky knows the war on Iran is not good for his country. He told Axios on March 30, “I am sure Russia wants [a] long war. They have benefits: The U.S. is focusing on the Middle East and may decrease military help to Ukraine. Sanctions are partially lifted. I see only benefits for Russia from the war with Iran continuing.”

    Military Aid Diverted from Ukraine to the Middle East

    The world supply of Patriot interceptor missiles that Ukraine desperately needs to shoot down incoming Russian missiles is being rapidly depleted in the Iran war. The United States, Israel, and the Gulf States fired off 800 Patriot missiles in the first three days of the Iran war. The United States produces only 750 a year. Ukraine has received only 600 over four years.

    Ukraine’s air defense needs are immense. Ukraine’s military command reported in August 2025 that since its full-scale invasion started in February 2022, Russia had fired at Ukraine more than 9,600 ballistic and cruise missiles, nearly 5,200 of which were targeted at civilians and civilian infrastructure— residential buildings, hospitals, schools, power plants, transportation, and other non-military infrastructure. Over the same period, Russia hit Ukraine with nearly 14,000 kamikaze drones and 33,000 precision-guided glide bombs fired from long distance by aircraft over Russian territory. The numbers of Russian air strikes have increased at an accelerating rate over the last two years.

    Military morons that they are, President Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and their minions are overspending their military budget and depleting their stocks of weapons, particularly air defense missiles and precision-guided offensive munitions. They have been firing high-priced interceptor missiles — $4 million Patriots and $13 million THAADs — to shoot down cheap $20,000-$50,000 Iranian Shahed drones when much cheaper $1,000-$2,500 Ukrainian interceptor drones could do the job.

    The Trump administration is asking Congress for another $200 billion supplemental appropriation for the war on Iran. On top of that, Trump is asking Congress to increase military spending by 40 percent in fiscal year 2027 to $1.5 trillion. Nothing in these proposed appropriations is for Ukraine.

    The Ukrainians have developed the world’s most effective system for defending against the thousands of Iranian Shahed drones and their licensed Russian jet-powered upgrades called Gerans that have been fired at Ukraine over the last four years. This system is multi-faceted and multi-layered, with sophisticated radar detection networks, electronic warfare, command-and-control software, interceptor drones, and experienced battlefield operators who have used the system under constant attack, along with ground-level machine gun batteries for close-range low-altitude defense.

    Ukraine offered to send its interceptor drones and know-how to the United States last August in exchange for more Patriot air defense missiles in a power point presentation inside the White House. Washington rejected the proposal. Ten days into the Iraq war, the United States turned around and asked for Ukraine’s help countering Iranian drones. But then a few days later, Trump, the vain fool that he is, told Fox News on March 14, “No, we don’t need [Ukraine’s] help in drone defense. We know more about drones than anybody. We have the best drones in the world, actually.” Later that day, he told NBC News, “The last person we need help from is Zelensky.”

    Meanwhile, Gulf States are signing 10-year deals with Ukraine for interceptor drone systems, maritime drones to defend the Strait of Hormuz, and the expertise to use them in exchange for Patriot interceptor missiles, fossil fuels, and joint production and investments in Ukraine. With Washington showing itself to be inept and unreliable for its traditional allies in Europe and the Middle East, Gulf States are turning to Ukraine and Ukraine to the Gulf States for more reliable allies.

    That no doubt irritates the hell out of Trump whose animosity toward Ukraine and Zelensky in particular has been displayed many times since Trump first ran for president. That may explain why Trump insulted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) in Miami on March 28 in front of a room full of 1,500 elite Saudis, wealthy international investors, and sovereign wealth fund managers. Trump said because of the restoration of U.S. power under his reign, “[MbS] didn’t think he would be kissing my ass. He really didn’t. And now he has to be nice to me. You tell him he’d better be nice to me. He’s got to be.”

    Trump did not help himself with these insults in keeping the Saudis and other Gulf States in his corner. They are furious at Trump for thoughtlessly not anticipating that his war on Iran would bring the Gulf States under Iranian bombardment and close the Strait of Hormuz, the pathway for their oil and gas to get to market.

    What U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine?

    One of the unintended consequences for Trump in starting the war on Iran may help Ukraine. With the drone defense deals with Gulf States, Ukraine may have acquired new extremely wealthy allies in the Middle East whose fuels and investments could replace the help Ukraine no longer gets from the Washington, as miserly and slow as that aid has been. These new allies reduce the leverage the Trump administration has had over Ukraine in negotiations where it has threatened to eliminate all support for Ukraine unless it capitulates to Russia’s demands for more Ukrainian territory, limits to size of Ukraine’s military, and no security guarantees from international allies.

    The Trump administration is planning to divert weapons already bought and in the pipeline for delivery to Ukraine and redirect them to the war on Iran and replenishing the Pentagon’s depleted stocks. The United States no longer supplies military aid directly to Ukraine, but the Trump administration has agreed to sell weapons to European nations who then pass them on to Ukraine through a program called Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL). Now Trump may delay these shipments to Ukraine, divert them permanently even though they have been paid for, or kill the PURL program completely.

    This is not the first time weapons intended for Ukraine were diverted to a war in the Middle East. In October 2023, when Ukrainian artillery was being outshelled by Russian artillery by a 10 to 1 margin, the Biden administration diverted tens of thousands of 155 mm artillery shells intended for Ukraine to Israel for its ground invasion of Gaza.

    During the Obama, the first Trump, and the Biden administrations, Washington was slow to provide Ukraine with the weapons it requested in the quantities they needed. Biden’s policy of “escalation management” since 2022 has been seen by many analysts in the United States, Europe, and Ukraine as “giving Ukraine enough military aid to survive, but not enough to win,” as a Newsweek analysis reported. “[Washington] fears that a strategic Kremlin defeat in Ukraine could prompt chaos within Russian borders, perhaps the unseating of President Vladimir Putin, and a vicious regional struggle to fill a power vacuum littered with weapons of mass destruction.”

    The reluctance to aid Ukraine goes back to the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014. The Obama/Biden administration refused to send weapons to Ukraine after Russian forces intervened to support pro-Russian coups in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk and attempted coups in Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odesa oblasts. Obama would justify this policy with a classical imperialist spheres-of-influence rationale: “Putin acted in Ukraine in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp….The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” In 2019, Trump was impeached for a protection racket kind of attempt at extorting Zelensky for dirt on Biden before he would release a congressionally-mandated weapons package to Ukraine featuring shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank missiles.

    In the months leading up to Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, as Russian troops amassed on Ukraine’s borders, the Biden administration only provided body bags and light arms. Biden’s team anticipated a quick successful regime change operation by Russia. So it provided supplies suitable for a post-coup guerrilla resistance by Ukrainians. But popular outrage at Russia’s invasion compelled the Washington to provide heavier arms, especially after Ukraine defied both Putin’s and Biden’s expectations by defeating the Russian attack on the capital of Kyiv and stopping and substantially reversing Russian advances elsewhere. However, Biden repeatedly resisted for months or years before finally relenting on providing the advanced weapons systems requested by Ukraine, including Patriot air defense systems, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Abrams battle tanks, HIMARS rocket artillery, ATACMS rockets, and F-16 fighter jets. Even after finally agreeing to provide these systems. the United States was slow on delivering them. Many Ukrainian and European officials say these weapons arrived “too little too late” to enable Ukraine to defeat the Russian army in Ukraine.

    While Ukraine received $70 billion in U.S. military aid in the three years from 2022 to 2024 and virtually none in 2025, Israel has received up to $34 billion for two years of its military operations between October 2023 and October 2025 against Gaza, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. $22 billion was direct provision of U.S. weapons. Another up to $12 billion was spent supporting Israel with air strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025.

    Rising Oil and Gas Prices Bail Out Russia’s War Machine

    Oil and gas revenues have funded 30 to 50 percent of Russia’s national budget over the last decade. Russia is spending about 40 percent of its national budget on its military. Thus it is clear that oil and gas revenues have been funding Russia’s war on Ukraine.

    In 2025, however, Russia’s oil and gas revenues dropped by 24 percent from 2024 due to low oil prices, partial international sanctions, and Ukraine’s increasingly effective “kinetic sanctions” of drone and missile strikes on Russian oil refineries, pipelines, storage tanks, depots, ports, and tankers. The decline in oil and gas revenues for the Russian petro-state accelerated as 2025 moved into 2026, with oil and gas revenues down by about 50 percent in December, January, and February year-on-year. Russia went into 2026 with a fiscal crisis in a stressed economy that jeopardized funding for its military budget. Russia’s declining oil and gas revenues combined with already deep deficit spending, inflation, and a fast-depleting sovereign wealth fund was making it harder to fund its war on Ukraine.

    But since the February 28 launch of the war on Iran, oil and gas prices and Russia state revenues surged in March. They are estimated to rise to $12.8 billion in April from $5.35 billion in February. The windfall in revenues for Russia could be as much as $252 billion in 2026, far more than its $162 billion military budget for 2026, which is four times larger than it was in 2021 before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia just reversed its planned 10 percent budget cuts for 2026. Funding may not be a restraint on Russia’s war against Ukraine if the Iran war is drawn out. In an impotent attempt to lower oil prices after his war on Iran started, Trump dropped sanctions on shadow tankers at sea carrying Russian oil, making it easier for Russia to get its oil to market.

    In response, Ukraine has stepped up its “kinetic sanctions” on Russia fossil fuel export revenues. On the night of March 25, long-range Ukrainian kamikaze drones struck Russia’s two major oil exporting ports on the Baltic Sea, incapacitating at least 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity.

    Russia’s oil revenues come from taxes on extraction, not oil sales. “Kinetic sanctions” on Russia’s oil export capacity immediately affects companies that ship and sell the oil, but their reduction of Russian state revenues will likely take longer to develop. To the extent Russia cannot get its oil to market, drilling may be reduced because Russia’s oil storage capacity is limited and also under Ukrainian attack.

    Another factor affecting Russian oil and gas revenues is whether Western governments and energy companies use the high fossil fuel prices as an excuse to ease sanctions on Russian fossil fuels, which many of them have wanted to do all along. The European Union has spent more on fossil fuel imports from Russia than it has given in aid to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

    Geopolitics vs. International Solidarity

    For Ukraine, Iran is an enemy aggressor that participates in Russia’s invasion. Iran provided Shahed drones to Russia and sent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Force specialists to the front lines in the southern and eastern Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, where they participated in targeting and controlling the flight paths of drones aimed at Ukraine in the course of training Russians how to use them. It is therefore not surprising that Ukraine has agreed to provide the anti-drone systems that it has developed against Iranian drones to several Gulf States and offered them to the United States.

    Sending anti-drone defense systems to the Gulf is not Ukraine’s first military action against Russia and its allies outside of Ukraine. Ukraine has already been fighting a shadow war in Africa against Russia’s mercenary Africa Corps, the nationalized and rebranded Wagner Group, the state-funded private military company that was notorious for its white-supremacist neo-Nazi leaders and units. Ukrainian special forces have fought Wagner Group/Africa Corps in Libya, Sudan, and Mali.

    Russia and its defenders have jumped on these Gulf State drone deals to portray Ukraine as part of the U.S./Israeli war of aggression even though Ukraine is only providing defensive systems against Iranian drones, not supporting offensive operations against Iran. Nonetheless, the war on Iran has become a new war front for both Russia and Ukraine in their conflict using both military means and propaganda narratives.

    This situation makes it difficult for Ukraine to appeal for solidarity from those who are horrified by the U.S.-backed Israeli war of genocide against Gaza, land seizures in the West Bank, Syria, and Lebanon, and the war on Iran. Despite themselves being the victims of aggression, despite their intervention in the Middle East providing only defensive systems, Ukraine finds it difficult to distinguish its values and objectives from those of the United States and Israel in this war. Ukrainian leaders are walking a tightrope diplomatically, trying not to alienate U.S. and Western support on the one side and, on the other side, appealing for the solidarity it would hope to get from the Global South that has been the victim of centuries of Western imperialism just as Ukraine has been the victim of centuries of Russian imperialism.

    Trump has used the Iran war to put forward his own anti-Ukraine threats. On April 1, he demanded that European countries intervene militarily to open up the Strait of Hormuz or else he would stop selling the weapons that Europe is buying for Ukraine.

    Those of us who are consistent anti-imperialists and socialist internationalists should listen to and support the popular movements and progressive forces on the ground in these conflicts. Geopolitical analyses of state interests that rationalize support for one bloc of capitalist states against another will not end imperialist wars. We should not pick sides in inter-imperialist conflicts. We should side with peoples, not states.

    To counter the pro-Russian propaganda narratives we should provide concrete analyses of complex conflicts and listen to what the progressive voices on the ground want in solidarity from us, from Ukraine to Palestine to Iran. This will not be easy when so many people in the anti-war movement settle for simple timeless formulas, like the enemy of my enemy (U.S./Western/Israeli imperialism) is necessarily my friend (the militarist fascists ruling imperial Russia, the clerical fascists ruling theocratic Iran).

    That simple formula often yields the correct answer on who to oppose because U.S./Western/Israeli imperialism has been so vicious in the lifetimes of living generations, from Vietnam to Iraq to Gaza. But it does not give the correct answer in every case, such as Ukraine where U.S. military aid, as limited as it was under Obama and Biden and as absent as it is under Trump, was what the progressive democratic movements in Ukraine called for. The simple formula does not give the correct answer for Iran where we should oppose the U.S./Israeli war on Iran without supporting the brutally repressive Iranian government.

    An important part of countering pro-Russia propaganda will be explaining that Ukraine is not allied with Israel on Palestine or Iran. Ukraine has consistently supported UN resolutions against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories since its independence. Ukraine first recognized Palestine as a sovereign state in February 1992 just two months after its own independence was confirmed in a December referendum that received 92 percent support. Although President Zelensky supported Israel’s right to self-defense in the immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023 of the Hamas attack, his message changed as the Israeli invasion of Gaza proceeded and the massive slaughter and infrastructure annihilation was clearly not self-defense. On June 2, 2024 Zelensky declared, “Ukraine recognizes two states, both Israel and Palestine, and will do everything it can to convince Israel to stop, to end this conflict and prevent the suffering of civilians.” Israel, on the other hand, took a posture of neutrality on Russia’s war on Ukraine. It never provided military aid to Ukraine and did not grant legal residency to Ukrainian war refugees. On February 24, 2025, the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Israel joined Russia and Trump’s USA in voting no on a UN General Assembly resolution demanding that Russia stop its military operations in Ukraine and withdraw its forces back to Russia.

    We should argue for a consistent anti-imperialism that opposes both Russia’s war on Ukraine and the U.S./Israeli war on Iran. We should call for a consistent socialist internationalism that supports progressive forces in Ukraine fighting both Russian aggression and the Western-backed neoliberal policies of the Ukrainian state and that supports progressive pro-democracy movements in Iran that oppose both the U.S./Israeli bombing of Iran and the oppressive government that rules over them.

    Trump has been repeatedly threatening in recent weeks to do to Iran in mere days what Putin has been trying to do to Ukraine for years, and what Israel has been doing to Gaza and now Lebanon for more than two years. Targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure are indisputably war crimes. Trump has been threatening to destroy power plants, bridges, and even desalination plants that provide life-giving water to millions of Iranians who depend on them for drinking water and crop irrigation in an arid country. Putin has been hitting power plants that are essential in Ukraine for heating to survive the cold winters as well as bombing civilian residences, schools, hospitals, buses, and passenger trains. The only difference is that Trump has much more firepower at his disposal. Ukrainian air defenses have made it too risky for Russian jet bombers to rain death from the skies directly over Ukraine while Palestinians and Lebanese people have virtually no air defenses against Israel’s war crimes that are being committed with the full backing and criminal liability of the U.S. government.

    Our job is to do all we can to stop Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu from continuing their war crime sprees while giving moral, political, and material support to the progressive democratic movements in every country under assault.