The struggle against fascism is the common and urgent task of the progressive forces all over the world

Appeal of the Second International Anti-Fascist Forum

We, the participants in the Second Anti-Fascist Forum in Moscow, reaffirm and support the Manifesto for the uniting of the world’s peoples “Safeguard Humanity Against  Fascism” adopted on April 22 2023 in Minsk by the I International Anti-Fascist Forum.
The course of events has indicated the proposition that the cause of imperialist aggressiveness in the modern world is the aggravation of the general crisis of capitalism. At the end of the 20th century the counter-revolution in the USSR and in the countries of Eastern Europe temporarily weakened the planet’s socialist pole and untied the hands of reaction. Fully in accordance with the Leninist theory of imperialism, the USA and the other capitalist predators are making a bid for world hegemony by the most heinous of methods, including the fostering of neo-Fascist regimes.
In accordance with the Fascist ideology of enslavement of the peoples the imperialist regimes have stained their reputations by barbaric aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, supported the Israeli Zionists who have unleashed the slaughter in Palestine which has practically developed into a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Threatening a new world war, international imperialism is stoking up tensions in various regions of the world and igniting new conflicts.
NATO countries  set the task of demonizing Russia, defeating it militarily and dismembering it in the same fashion as the Soviet Union. To achieve this goal an aggressive bridgehead was being created in Ukraine.  Banderovism, a form of Nazism which has formed the basis of Russophobia and the spread of Fascist ideology, was being nurtured there. By February of 2022 the US-led anti-Russian policy of the NATO military involved nearly 50 satellite countries. The economic, political and military resources of the world capital, including war mercenaries, were committed to the attack against Russia. Further strengthening of the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev and pumping it full of weapons must be prevented. The Bandera thugs and their principals in the West must be justly condemned and the Fascist regime in Kiev must be fully liquidated.
Revanchist motives are increasingly evident in the ideology and policy of the Western bloc. They are being instigated by the same forces which suffered a defeat at the hands of the Soviet Union and its Red Army in 1945. Anti-communism is one of the main signs of the resurgence of Fascism in Ukraine, the Baltics and other Western countries. This is totally in line with the practice of Hitler’s Fascists who created an Anti-Comintern Pact. Everything that is happening in the European Union is essentially a prelude to the creation of the Fourth Reich.
The peoples of the world must stem any attempts of a Nazi revenge. We demand total renunciaton of all forms of de-communisation in state ideology and policies. The struggle against neo-Nazism is the task of all the thinking, courageous and decent people of the planet. It cannot be put off until later. It must be waged here and now by all available means and by bringing together all possible allies!
On the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory over Hitler’s Nazism and Japanese militarism in the Second World War we declare: a final end to Fascism and the threat of world wars can be put only by putting an end to imperialism. We support without reservations the transformation of the struggle against Fascism into the struggle for the socialist renewal of all the countries on the planet.

The battle against Fascism cannot tolerate pauses and armistices!
Join the ranks of the fighters against Neo-Fascism, for social progress and socialism!
We will not allow the world to be blown up!
¡No pasarán! They shall not pass!
Long live the united front of the progressive forces!

Moscow
23 April 2025

Victory Day 2025

 This year marks the 80th anniversary of  the end of the Second World War. The war, which cost over 61 million lives, began with the Nazi German invasion of Poland on 1st September 1939 and ended on 2nd September 1945 when the Japanese Emperor Hirohito surrendered following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American atom bombs. 
Announcing the news of the German surrender on 8th May 1945 the old king, George VI, said “We shall have failed, and the blood of our dearest will have flowed in vain, if the victory which they died to win does not lead to a lasting peace, founded on justice and established in good will. To that, then, let us turn our thoughts on this day of just triumph and proud sorrow; and then take up our work again, resolved as a people to do nothing unworthy of those who died for us and to make the world such a world as they would have desired, for their children and for ours”. That world, sadly, has not happened.
It would be quite impossible, of course, to write all that should be said about the Second World War. But there are three key points that must never be forgotten.
The first is the imperialist nature of the conflict which was launched by German finance capital which saw territorial expansion as necessary to break free of the constraints placed on Germany after the first world war.
The second is the impact of fascist ideas which led to the most barbarous treatment of many people, especially Jews and other minorities, under the Nazi heel. Slave labour and super exploitation soon became murder by brutality and starvation and ultimately it became mass slaughter in the gas chambers of the Nazi death camps.
The third aspect was the war against the USSR. This was more than an attack against a state, it was a direct attack on socialism. The Nazis even used this fact to try and lure other capitalist leaderships to support its anti-communist crusade against the Soviet Union.
Donald Trump can, perhaps, be forgiven for believing the Hollywood myth that the Americans, almost single-handedly, won the war. To be fair, he did acknowledge that Russia “lost millions of people, and that was absolutely an important factor” while nevertheless adding that there was “no factor as important as us”. 
 Still that’s more than some European politicians would say these days as the Soviet role in the victory is air-brushed out of history by those who choose to forget those who made the greatest sacrifice in the struggle against Nazi Germany. 
Winston Churchill said that the RAF’s battle with the Luftwaffe in 1940 was the “finest hour” in what would later be called the Battle of Britain. It certainly was, but the finest hour for the world communist movement was undoubtedly the Battle for Europe.
The Soviet people, led by Joseph Stalin and the Bolsheviks, liberated half of Europe and smashed Nazi Germany while Josef Broz Tito’s guerrilla army and Enver Hoxha’s partisans drove the fascists out of the Balkans. Communist-led resistance forces had the fascists on the run in Greece, France and Italy while Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung and Ho Chi Minh led the fight for freedom against the Empire of Japan.
If it wasn’t for the communists Germany and Japan would have won the war. What that would have meant can easily be seen by their actions during the conflict – the extermination of millions of Jews and others deemed unfit to live by the Nazis; concentration camps, mass slavery and dictatorial rule by industrialists, landowners, war-lords and degenerates of every kind. This was the world ruled by Hitler and Hirohito – a world that would have set back civilisation hundreds of years had it succeeded.
The Soviet Union is now sadly no more but nothing can take away its achievements. The Soviet victory will be remembered by working people for ever.

The first civilisation

 by Ben Soton

Between Two Rivers a History of Mesopotamia and the birth of History by Moudhy Al-Rashid. Hardback 336 pp, Hachette, London 2025 Hbk £25, Pbk £12.99

When we look at history, we tend to view things in terms of BC or AD; or before or after the birth of Christ.  Sometimes we need reminding that there is more recorded history covering the years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth than since.  To put this in perspective we are closer chronologically to the Roman conquest of Britain than Julius Caesar was to the earliest historical records. What we refer to as the “historical era” originated in Mesopotamia, the land between and around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers somewhere around the fourth millennia BC.  
It is to this period in ancient Mesopotamia that Moudhy Al-Rashid devotes her debut book Between Two Rivers a History of Mesopotamia and the birth of History.  The basis of her study is a discovery of a range of primary artefacts in 1920 which include; a clay drum, a mace head, a statue, school tablets, a brick and a cone. The author uses her in-depth knowledge combined with the study of the items to construct a period of what was probably the world’s first civilisation.
Much of the work is based on a study of cuneiform, probably the world’s first form of writing.  Cuneiform was used by the Sumerian. Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian empires.  Al-Rashid points out that writing was not invented by poets, authors, playwrights or even journalists. It was simply a means of recording grain transactions, inventories and rations.  In other words, without the need for bureaucrats to keep records there would be no Dickens, Shakespeare or for the that matter the New Worker. It is from these essentially mundane records that “history” emanates.   
What makes Mesopotamia special is that it was the world’s first region to develop agriculture. From agriculture came cities, trade, warfare and most important of all class society.  In early class society payment for work was given out in the form of rations rather than cash and a considerable amount of work was done by slaves. 
Although probably not a Marxist herself, Al-Rashid’s book confirms this view.  She goes on to point out that much of history is told from the point of view of those at the top of society with the rest of us often ignored.  
In her own words the author views the artefacts as a handshake with a long dead person from the past. Her knowledge of the very ancient world and its languages comes through in the book. Her work is well worth reading for anyone interested in the period that even the Romans would have considered as ancient history.          
          

80th anniversary of the defeat of fascism

 

Red Line TV Moscow Anti-Fascist Forum video with English sub-titles...

Bad news on the doorstep…

Reform’s sweeping gains in this week’s regional elections were bad news for the Conservatives. Nigel Farage’s going round saying this is the beginning of the end for the Tories telling people “you’re witnessing the end of a party that’s been around since 1832, they are disappearing”. And while that may be a trifle optimistic there’s no doubt that the Faragist advance has plunged the Conservatives, and their lacklustre leader, into another crisis of confidence. But it wasn’t good for Labour either. Though the Tories were hammered in the local elections Reform also took one of Labour’s  safest seats in the country at the by-election in Runcorn & Helsby. Can any of us be surprised at this?
The Starmer government, led by the clapped-out old Blairites that run the Labour Party these days, differs little from the Conservatives they beat at the general election last year. The Starmer government’s decision to continue Tory austerity offers no real change to the millions of working people that once traditionally looked to Labour as the legitimate alternative to Tory rule. It’s no wonder that some of them are now turning to the Faragists who blame the asylum-seekers and immigrants for all our woes and whose only answer to the economic crisis that has plunged the country into the doldrums is to become an American protectorate and merge the British economy into that of the United States. 
Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, will doubtless come under fire from those who already covet her job. But the clamour for her departure is of no interest to working people who have no say in the matter one way or another.
For over a hundred years the Tory party has been the chosen political instrument of the ruling class. The capitalists, industrialists and land-owners who pull the strings, will not lightly change horses – least of all for Reform whose anti-European Union platform is anathema to the City of London.
Labour, on the other hand, was founded by the unions to give workers their own voice in Parliament. But the Parliamentary Party leadership has been dominated by the middle class intelligentsia since the days of Ramsay McDonald. Nevertheless the working class element within the party remained strong until the 1980s with figures like Nye Bevan and even Harold Wilson giving it credibility among the working class.
Though the Labour Party is dominated by the class‑collaborating right wing in the parliamentary party the possibility of their defeat exists as long as Labour retains its organisational links with the trade unions that fund it. The defeat of the right‑wing factions in most of the major unions in recent years demonstrates this possibility – though it has to be said that the bogus “broad left” factions that run the bureaucrats’ gravy train do very little for the rank and file these days.
In the unions we must struggle to elect genuine working-class leaderships who are prepared to represent and fight for the membership against the employers and against the right-wing within the movement. At the same time we must build the revolutionary party and campaign for revolutionary change. Social democracy remains social democracy whatever trend is dominant within it and, as we know, it has never led to socialism.
But for a start we must campaign for a democratic Labour Party controlled by its affiliates. A Labour Party whose policies reflected those of a democratic union movement would become a powerful instrument for progressive reforms that would strengthen organised labour and benefit the working class.