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Fascism

Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance

On the hot summer morning of Aug. 2, 1980 a massive explosion ripped apart the main waiting room of the Bologna railway station. Eighty-five people were killed and hundreds more injured. Though at first blamed on Italy’s legendary urban guerrillas, The Red Brigades, it soon emerged that the attack had, in fact, originated from within the ‘deep state’ of the Italian government itself. The full nature of this secret parallel state would only come to light a decade later when the Italian premier, Giulio Andreotti, under questioning from a special commission of inquiry...

Two Populisms, Not One

Two very different “populisms” that have arisen in response to neoliberal capitalism in the West. A left-leaning social-democratic “progressive populism” targets the capitalist concentration of wealth and power and the unbridled pursuit of private profit as enemies of the people and the common good.  This populism is egalitarian and radically democratic.  It tends towards socialism.  Its attractive policy agenda, supported by working-class majorities, includes the downward distribution of wealth, the expansion of the social safety net, university quality health care, increased minimum wages and union power, public jobs programs, and the protection of livable ecology (a Green New Deal). 

United In Exile

With about eight dynasties now possessing as much money as half the entire world's population combined, it is impossible to ignore the fact that extreme wealth inequality is antithetical to the health and future of humanity and every other living thing on earth.  Despite the dystopian title - American Nightmare - of his latest book, cultural critic and prolific author Henry Giroux thinks that with a combined regimen of education and organization, we might still overthrow neoliberal fascism, of which the Donald Trump administration is only the most recent and most noxious end-product.

Ukraine – Poroshenko Launched Clash With Russia To Gain Dictatorial Powers – He Failed

The gun boats of the Gurza-M class were built on a shipyard that Poroshenko owned at that time. He profited from ordering them. They may be useful for river policing but do not belong at sea. The Russian coast guard had no problem to disable the ships and to capture their crews. A Crimean court ordered that the sailors will be held for two more month while they face charges over border violations. In 1988 the U.S. tried to pull up a similar stunt in the Black Sea. Two U.S. Navy ships with spying equipment crossed into Soviet territorial water near Crimea. They got rammed (vid) by Soviet ships and were smart enough to move out before the situation escalated further.

Understanding U.S. Fascism: Past And Present

People often think that fascism began with Hitler and Mussolini, but fascism actually has its roots in the United States

What Recent London Demos Say About The State Of The British Left

Demonstrations on successive weekends in London last month shone a spotlight on major political rifts — in the major parties and in the political left. On October 13, an extreme right-wing Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) march was out-mobilised and disrupted by anti-fascist demonstrators. One week later, about 670,000 people turned out for a “People’s Vote” demonstration. The People’s Vote march was ostensibly to call for a referendum on the terms of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. In reality, it was an attempt to re-run the 2016 referendum that narrowly voted in favour of leaving the EU. Both demonstrations highlighted fault lines on the left. The huge People's Vote demonstration was dominated politically by the right-wing, pro-EU trend in the Labour Party, as well as the Liberal Democrats.

Colombia Suggests Alliance With Brazil’s Bolsonaro To Overthrow Venezuela’s Maduro

A top Colombian official told Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo that its government will support Brazilian’s far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro if he wants to overthrow the socialist government of Venezuela. According to Folha, a top diplomatic official said that “if [President-elect] Bolsonaro wants to help overthrow Maduro with a military intervention, he will have the support of Colombia.” According to the anonymous source, Colombian President Ivan Duque and his political patron, the hard-right former President Alvaro Uribe, would agree with a military intervention. “If it is [United States President Donald] Trump or Bolsonaro are the first to set foot in Venezuela, Colombia will follow suit without hesitation,” the diplomat told Folha.

Trump’s Rules Of Engagement For Troops At US-Mexico Border Mirror Those Used By The IDF In Gaza

WASHINGTON  — Since President Donald Trump first directed the outrage of his supporters at a Central American migrant caravan making its way towards the United States a little over a week ago, his plan to deploy between 5,200 and 15,000 active-duty U.S. soldiers to the border has provoked mixed reactions within the United States. However, Trump’s more recent announcement that armed U.S. soldiers have been instructed to target any migrants who resort to throwing stones as though they were firing rifles has evoked an even wider range of reactions. On Thursday afternoon, Trump detailed in a speech that “Anybody [in the caravan] throwing stones, rocks, like they did to Mexico and the Mexican military, Mexican police, where they badly hurt police and soldiers of Mexico, we will consider that a firearm.”

Financial Press Cheers Election Of Fascist In Brazil

Brazil’s controversial elections pitted far-right Jair Bolsonaro against the center-left Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad. But it was clear which candidate international markets—and therefore the financial press—wanted. Bolsonaro was elected with 55.5 percent of the vote in an election that saw former leftist President Lula da Silva, by far the most popular candidate, jailed and barred from running on highly questionable charges. Bolsonaro was an army officer during Brazil’s fascist military dictatorship (1964–85), which he defends, maintaining that its only error was not killing enough people. An incendiary character with a long history of racist and sexist outbursts, he told a female federal deputy that she was not worthy of being raped by him...

Fascism Is Real, But The “Resistance” Is Mostly Fake

With last weekend’s election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, white men’s parties now lead governments that preside over the two largest concentrations of Black people outside Africa. Both Bolsonaro and Donald Trump are widely described as fascists -- which is correct. But it does not follow that everyone who calls such men “fascists” is a friend of Black and other oppressed people and, therefore, worthy allies in a “united front” of “resistance.” Who are the fascists, and where do they come from? More precisely, what are they defending? It is generally understood among the Left that fascists are the political products of capitalism in crisis, reactionaries that promise to restore order by purging the society of unwanted peoples and ideologies.

Fascists Are Good For Stocks

Investors are looking forward to the inauguration of the terrifying fascist Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil on January 1. And they look to dreading the inauguration of the moderate social democrat Andrés Manuel López Obrador (aka AMLO) as president of Mexico on December 1. Graphed below are indexes representing the two countries’ stock markets—or, more specifically, shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange designed to mimic those indexes. (The history of the Mexico index is here; of Brazil, here.) The top graph is a long-term view. It shows that the two countries’ stock markets moved pretty much together from the indexes’ inception through 2011. They parted ways in 2011, as Brazil drifted into a profound economic and political crisis.

It’s Time To Go On The Offensive Against Racism

When I read this in the morning paper, my heart stopped: Just 40 minutes away from me, the white mother of black children in New Jersey was repeatedly harassed via Facebook by a stranger, who told her that her children should be hung. Kentucky police arrested the young white man on Oct. 18, as he was backing out of his driveway with weapons, 200 rounds of ammunition and plans for shooting up a nearby school. The authorities thanked the mom — Koeberle Bull of Lumberton, New Jersey — for alerting them. I’m the white grandfather of a family of mostly black children. Someone armed and active is so offended by a mixed-race family that he wants to kill children like mine.

The Cult Of Trump

Cult leaders arise from decayed communities and societies in which people have been shorn of political, social and economic power. The disempowered, infantilized by a world they cannot control, gravitate to cult leaders who appear omnipotent and promise a return to a mythical golden age. The cult leaders vow to crush the forces, embodied in demonized groups and individuals, that are blamed for their misery. The more outrageous the cult leaders become, the more they flout law and social conventions, the more they gain in popularity. Cult leaders are immune to the norms of established society. This is their appeal. Cult leaders demand a God-like power. Those who follow them grant them this power in the hope that the cult leaders will save them.

Brazil: The Indispensable Need For Resistance

The die is cast. There are no longer any polls that can be used to draw un provable results. The truth is that a fascist has come to the presidency of Brazil by a vote of millions. The fact is serious from any point of view, and not only for Brazilians, but this vote will undoubtedly have an unpredictable impact on the rest of the continent and beyond. The Nazi Bolsonaro won by nearly a ten point advantage thanks to many factors that will have to be analyzed starting from this very moment. One of them, the fundamental one, is this insistence from many popular sectors of not taking into account that in the framework of these bourgeois democracies that they are absolutely controlled by the enemies of the peoples.

Brazil: How Could A Far-Right Demagogue Win The Election?

Bolsonaro won the second round of the Brazilian presidential election with 55 percent of the vote, defeating Haddad – the Workers’ Party (PT) candidate – who received 45 percent. Any hopes of a last-minute rally were dashed. This result is a setback for the working class and the poor. We need to understand what it means, what led to this situation and what strategy the workers’ movement should follow, faced with this reactionary government. The second round of the presidential campaign was extremely polarised. There was a mobilisation from below on the part of the left in an attempt to stop Bolsonaro, and tens of thousands turned up at big rallies for Haddad in Sao Paulo, San Salvador de Bahía, etc.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.