International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

• Brazil
  

  Dispute in the Supreme Court disrupts elections in Brazil

  17 September, by Luís Leiria

  On one side is Alexandre de Moraes, the judge who led the investigation into and prosecution of the Bolsonaro-led coup against President Lula; on the other is Judge André Mendonça, appointed during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency. Both are suspected of having ties to the banker responsible for the biggest financial fraud in Brazil’s history.
  With less than a month to go before the presidential elections on 4 October, Brazil finds itself plunged into a crisis that, for the first time, has (…)

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• Democratic Republic of Congo
  

  Constitutional tampering in DRC

  16 September, by Paul Martial

  Officially, the second and final term of Félix Tshisekedi, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), ends at the end of 2028. But the latter, in several of his statements, has said he is ready to run for a third term if “the people want it”. The opposition is calling for a large demonstration on 15 September 2026 against a third term for Tshisekedi, who is retaliating with a tailor-made national dialogue.

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• Turkey
  

  ‘My family is safe’: the Turkish regime’s crackdown on LGBTI+ people

  15 September, by Uraz Aydin

  A new milestone was reached in the Erdoğan regime’s homophobic crackdown on Sunday 13 September. Police forces launched a large-scale operation against LGBTI+ organisations and activists, as well as organisations campaigning against HIV/AIDS. Raids were carried out in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, amongst other places. The Ministry of Justice states that the operation, dubbed “My family is safe”, involves a total of 162 people, nine organisations and thirteen premises across fifteen provinces.

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• New Zealand/Aotearoa
  

  Beyond the Labour Machine: Aotearoa, the Alliance, and the Question of Working Class Independence

  14 September, by Kyle Barrett

  On October 23, 2025, more than 100,000 workers walked off the job in Aotearoa (the Māori-language name for New Zealand): 60,000 teachers, 30,000 nurses, 5,000 doctors, 20,000 allied health workers, firefighters, and public servants. It was the largest day of industrial action since the 1979 general strike—a forty-six year interregnum finally broken. 56 percent of New Zealanders told pollsters they backed the strikers.
  By the end of the year, that energy had been buried. The Post Primary (…)

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• Latin America
  

  Latin America: Patterns and Pendulum

  13 September, by Marc Becker

  RECENT ELECTIONS ACROSS across Latin America appear to have placed the hard right firmly back in power. While the landscape may appear to be dim for the left, other factors signal glimmers of hope.

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...and the rest of the current issue

• Situation in East Asia and Japanese Politics/Economy

  Oppose the Takaichi Administration’s Military Expansion and Constitutional Revision

• “War on Terror”

  9/11: A Quarter Century of Imperial War

• Germany: regional elections in Sachsen-Anhalt

  The AfD just short of an absolute majority

• USA

  Gloria Steinem, prominent American feminist, 1934-2026

• Germany

  Eastern elections and Die Linke: anything but an all-party government

Recently posted Features

• International

  Building A Global Democratic Movement to Counter Authoritarianism

  11 January 2019, by Jan Malewski

  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

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• Nicaragua

  Nicaragua: The other revolution betrayed

  6 January 2019, by Nathan Legrand, Éric Toussaint

  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.

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• Hungary

  The Political Economy of Hungary’s New “Slave Law”

  5 January 2019, by Ágnes Gagyi, Tamás Gerőcs

  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.

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• Obituary

  Helena Lopes da Silva (1949-2018)

  31 December 2018, by Mariana Carneiro

  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).

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