International Viewpoint, the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International, is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.
A different view on the DSA convention.
read article...“The challenge for revolutionary Marxists is to build a Marxist center of DSA that can lead in the direction of principled mass work and national visibility of DSA in broader movements against Trump, in labor, and in social movements.”
read article...“Hypocritical cries of condemnation have risen, warning Netanyahu that this project will lead to massive displacement and a large number of deaths, as if the genocide and displacement perpetrated by the Zionist army over the past 22 months, and supported during several months by the same Western governments that are blaming Netanyahu today, were not already worse than what he is promising now.”
read article...“Some of those arrested were in their nineties and could barely walk to the police vans. Some were in wheelchairs and one was blind. All you had to do to get arrested was to write on a blank placard: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”. The location of the protest was well chosen. It took place in Parliament Square, in front of the statues of Gandhi and the suffragist Millicent Fawcett who took forms of non-violent direct action.”
read article...“The last bus awaits in the camp’s parking lot. Young people, most of whom didn’t know each other a week before, exchange phone numbers, social media, and hugs. Here and there, tears flow, as if to prolong the downpours that punctuated the week.”
read article...Bernie Sanders has so far received little attention for his internationalist positions, even though he spoke out and voted against the war in Iraq, proposed a drastic reduction in US military spending, strongly criticised the coups d’état organised in Latin America by the CIA and opposed US support for the Saudi offensive in Yemen. The US left generally considers that in foreign policy he has not deviated from the consensus between Democrats and Republicans, criticizes him for his lack of involvement in the BDS movement (boycott, disinvestment, sanctions) and recalls that during the decades he has been in the Senate he has sometimes voted in favour of military intervention or spoken of the need to preserve US power. Even if in his youth he applied to be a conscientious objector during the war in Vietnam, he went to Cuba after the revolution and organized diplomatic meetings with the Sandinist revolutionaries, since he has been in the Senate his dissent in the Democratic Party has been limited to domestic political issues, with few exceptions.
It is also true that since the end of the Vietnam war, there has not been a strong left-wing internationalist current in the United States and that many of those who, on the margins, within the radical left, identify as such, are at the same time bogged down in an alignment with so-called "socialist states" or at least with the "enemies" of American imperialism. Bernie Sanders was therefore not isolated by not promoting internationalist solidarity.
Since his campaign for the Democratic primaries two years ago - during which he also abstained taking any notable internationalist positions - and with the resurgence of a new left, however, the construction of mass internationalism in the United States seems necessary. Especially since Donald Trump is taking a caricatural chauvinism forward at a great rate. And that on a global scale the dangerous resident of the White House serves as an example for the resurgence of state authoritarianism and a kind of neo-fascism. Bolsonaro’s victory in Brazil is only the most recent example of this danger.
It was precisely in the aftermath of the neo-fascist candidate’s success in the first round of the Brazilian presidential election that Bernie Sanders delivered a speech in Washington calling for "building a global democratic movement against authoritarianism". He picked up and built on what he wrote on 13 September 2018 in an editorial published by the Guardian, where he stated that "It should be clear by now that Donald Trump and the rightwing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States," and that "All around the world, in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle East, in Asia and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who exploit people’s fears, prejudices and grievances to achieve and hold on to power."
Sanders’ proposal to the global left deserves to be taken seriously. Today, internationalism is not on the rise and the fact that a world-renowned personality is calling for the reconstruction of bonds of solidarity to fight authoritarianism together can have an impact. Faced with the multiplication of authoritarian regimes and the rise of extreme right-wing movements, the resurgence of an internationalist movement is the task of the moment. As Bernie Sanders says in his speech "We need a movement that unites people all over the world who don’t just seek to return to a romanticized past, a past that did not work for so many, but who strive for something better,"; that it is not enough to defend what has been achieved but that we must "reconceptualize a genuinely progressive global order based on human solidarity," and "reach out to those in every corner of the world who share these values, and who are fighting for a better world." It is a good basis for opening the discussion on how to build an international movement. Jan Malewski
The violent repression against demonstrators protesting brutal neoliberal policies, which has resulted in more than 300 people being killed by regime forces since April 2018, is just one of the reasons why different leftist social movements have condemned the Nicaraguan regime led by President Daniel Ortega and Vice-president Rosario Murillo. The Left has many more reasons to denounce the policies of the regime. To understand this, we must go back to 1979.
Demonstrations erupted on the streets of Budapest after the Hungarian parliament—controlled by the fourth consecutive super majority of Fidesz government—had just passed three crucial laws in a rapid parliamentary voting on 12th December, which oppositional parties claimed unlawful. The three major elements in the government’s package were the Overtime Act, which quickly became better known as the “Slave law”, the centralization of the courts nomination procedure, and educational amendments, which permit the privatization of public universities.
Helena died on September 8, 2018 at the age of 69, after a life dedicated to socialism. In the early 1970s, she was in Lisbon one of the few activists of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), the party that led the armed struggle against the Portuguese colonial regime. She also joined the International Communist League (ICL), which became the Portuguese section of the Fourth International (after 1979 the LCI took the name Revolutionary Socialist Party, PSR).
A unique event took place at the Kryvyi Rih branch of the Social Movement NGO — we had the honour of welcoming special guests: Senator Tanya Vyhovsky from Vermont, USA, and Nico Dix, representative of the French New Anti-Capitalist Party-l’Anticapitaliste (NPA-A). It was an inspiring meeting, filled with valuable experiences and sincere conversations!
- read article...Despite the war, despite the risks, people are taking to the streets. Because they have had enough. On 22 July, in the streets of Kyiv and most cities across Ukraine, hundreds of people took to the streets to protest against the adoption of Law 12414.
- read article...“we call on international antifascist forces to open a dialogue capable of confronting the destruction being carried out by ultraliberal conservatism – placing unity in the streets against the far right as our top priority.”
- read article...While the skies over the Middle East are once again ablaze with smoke and flames, and the media are inundated with talk of ‘Israeli precision strikes’ and the ‘promise of token vengeance of the Islamic Republic’, what is once again left out is the fate of those who do not take decisions in command rooms or hide in underground bunkers.
- read article...The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, a member of the International Trade Union Solidarity and Struggle Network, is transmitting this text, signed with other independent organisations in Iran:
- read article...International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
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