No to Fascism!

 

The NCP joined other communists throughout the world for a keynote anti-fascist conference in Moscow in May. A 180 delegations from over 100 countries took part in the Third International Anti-Fascist Forum that was organised by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) with the aim of bringing together communist and workers’ parties from around the world to co-ordinate the increasing challenges they face from wars, economic crises, attacks on basic democratic rights, the rise of the far-right and fascism and the growing use of terrorist groups by the imperialists. This is Theo Russell’s contribution.

by Theo Russell

Dear KPRF comrades, I thank you on behalf of the New Communist Party of Britain for organising this important conference, for your wonderful hospitality, and bring you warm greetings from our comrades and activists in Britain.
In the past five years the danger of a return to the events of the 1930s has become widely recognised, with the rapid rise right wing populist movements in the rich capitalist states. 
We believe this is the result of capitalist globalisation, neo-liberal austerity policies, and the relentless decline in real wages and public social spending.
The relocation of factories overseas and closure of mines removed the basis for a stable family life and strong communities in many areas, and the number of union members with a basic political education and class consciousness declined.
The secure long-term jobs of old have been replaced by low-paid short term or “zero hours” contracts, and while ordinary workers pay ever more for basic utilities and taxes, the super-rich rapidly multiply.
The ruthless neo-liberal policies, regime changes, sanctions and wars by imperialism – which have caused the deaths of millions of people –created unprecedented migration from the poor south to the rich north.
We don’t believe the simplistic left liberal slogan “All migrants are welcome” is a realistic solution to the multiple multiple complex problems thrown up by this enormous migration. Instead, we advocate a mass struggle against these imperialist policies and massive economic support for the developing states.
In 2004 when the European Union expanded to the east, Britain was the only country to immediately open its borders to countries with wages many times lower, countries which were still recovering from the effects of the collapse of socialism. 
Since 2000 several million new citizens have arrived in Britain per decade, but instead of building new housing, health and other services for them, public funding was cut year after year.
Over 90 per cent of these migrants arrived legally because of labour shortages, but of course the far right foment the fear of hordes of “boat people “.
Most of these migrants moved to poorer areas where local councils were already struggling financially, and while local residents can wait decades for state subsidised housing, they have to house migrants seeking asylum by law. 
They also face are high levels of crime, addictions and mental health problems, and widespread despair and misery. In these areas schools, housing and health, and even the availability of places to buy healthy food, are extremely poor, where schools have to provide breakfast because their pupils get no breakfast at home and many people rely on so-called “food banks”.
According to the UN 30 per cent of children in the UK are living in poverty, almost two million people suffer from undernourishment, and we read in our media that many parents to go without food for days before payday so they can feed their children. And in 2024 this was the world’s fifth richest country in total wealth!
These communities quite rightly view the political and media classes in London with absolute hatred. 
The housing of over 12O,000 asylum claims was handed to private contractors, who placed them in the poorest districts with cheap accommodation, and didn’t even warn the local authorities of their arrival. In these areas, according to media reports, many residents can’t even dream of staying in a hotel!
It would be hard to imagine policies better designed to create anger and resentment, and the perfect conditions for fascist groups to step in and mobilise the most backward, unorganised working class elements. But we shouldn’t over-estimate the far right danger in Britain.
Last year far right gangs attacked refugees, Muslims and the police for a week across England, but in every locality far greater numbers from local communities mobilised against them. But for the police presence, the fascists would undoubtedly have suffered a crushing defeat. 
In the USA, a year after the storming of the US Capitol building in January 2021, the far right could only muster a few hundred activists in most state capitals, but recently five million people protested against Donald Trump.
While in the USA the police and national guard often defend the white racists, in Britain the far right constantly attack the police, and as a result in 2024 the far right mobs were strongly condemned by the Starmer government.
Even in the USA, where two citizens were shot dead in Minneapolis by the racist ICE police, the popular resistance movement and political backlash forced Trump to withdraw them.
While parties seeking a return to the 1930s are undoubtedly growing in many European countries, the only country where fascists have actually seized power is in Ukraine.
In the 1980s our party formulated the concept of “creeping fascism” after Margaret Thatcher launched an all-out offensive against trade union rights and the “welfare state”, and then moved to smash the coal miners. The attempts to roll back the gains of the labour movement over the past hundred years have continued relentlessly since then. 
Today there are growing attacks on basic democratic rights across Europe, particularly  aimed at the mass movement against Israeli genocide. 
However we don’t believe that  our ruling classes are considering doing away with their limited bourgeois democracy in the foreseeable future. 
In Italy, the far right government of Giorgia Meloni, once a member of a neo-fascist party, has attempted to limit the number of migrants arriving. But there has been no move to suspend basic democratic rights, nor have the fascist parties been unleashed against their political enemies.
We believe the only genuine fascist dictatorship in the world is in Ukraine, where all democratic opposition and media have been smashed, and over a million people have died to serve NATO’s plans to surround and subvert the Russian Federation.
For us the main priorities for communists today are freedom and justice for the Palestinian people, and the complete eradication of resurgent Nazism in Ukraine. If Nazism is allowed to succeed in Ukraine, its scourge will inevitably spread. We remember the watchwords of past and present struggles: No Pasaran! Sie werden nicht durchkommen! Nyet Fascismu!

Communists gather in Moscow to co-ordinate tactics

 

by New Worker correspondent

Theo Russell from the NCP joined other communists throughout the world for a keynote anti-fascist conference in Moscow last month. In spite of the increasing difficulties in travelling to the Russian Federation, and the strongest imperialist sanctions ever imposed on a state, 180 delegations from over 100 countries attended the event, which took place at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, only a couple of blocks away from Red Square.
The Third International Anti-Fascist Forum, entitled The Fight Against International Terrorism, Arbitrariness, and Aggression. For Peace and Security, was organised by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) with the aim of bringing together communist and workers’ parties from around the world to co-ordinate the increasing challenges they face from wars, economic crises, attacks on basic democratic rights, the rise of the far-right and fascism and the growing use of terrorist groups by Western imperialist states.
As well as strong delegations from the existing socialist states – People’s China, DPR Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba – countries under attack from US-led imperialism, including Palestine, Iran, Lebanon and Venezuela, were also represented.
In his opening speech to a packed hall in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, CPRF general secretary Gennady Zyuganov said: “We have gathered at the Third International Anti-Fascist Forum to discuss our shared goals in the struggle for peace and security, friendship among peoples and social justice.
“This multifaceted activity of leftist forces cannot be conducted in isolation from the fight against imperialism and state terrorism, military aggression and neocolonialism, reaction and neo-fascism. The global expansion of capital continues. It achieves its goals by relying on two main pillars: physical force and the manipulation of consciousness.
"This forum is another step towards unity in the fight against global reaction. Imperialism has shed the last vestiges of its peace-making veneer. On our stunningly beautiful planet, it sows terrible poverty and state terrorism, war and death. Our shared task is to boldly expose the essence of big capital's policies. Unite leftist forces, put forward our alternative and persistently pursue our goals."
The conference was also addressed by the last leader of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Egon Krenz, who was awarded the Lenin Prize during the conference.
Greetings to the conference were received from Russian president Vladimir Putin, prime minister Mikhail Mishustin, and Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko. In his message, Putin said: "Today, as we face serious challenges, regional conflicts and growing global instability, it is essential to unite the work of all constructive forces to build a just, democratic and multipolar world. We must work together to counter the spread of destructive ideologies across the planet: xenophobia, neo-Nazism, anti-Semitism and Russophobia. We must defend the historical truth about the Second World War and the true heroes who saved the peoples of Europe from extermination and enslavement. This is our duty to future generations, a solid foundation for genuine partnerships between nations."

Anti-fascists rally in Moscow!

Zyuganov opens conference

 by Theo Russell

The Third International Anti-Fascist Forum, held in Moscow from 24th  to 26th May was a remarkable event, bringing together 180 delegations from almost 100 countries, and members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) from across that vast country. One delegate was Egon Krenz, the last leader of the German Democratic Republic, who addressed the forum and was presented with the Lenin Prize while he was there.
Dozens of members of the CPRF from Moscow and elsewhere worked hard to ensure the smooth running of the conference. By organising this event the CPRF did a great service to the international communist and workers movement.
Opening the forum CPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov said that the West “has achieved great success in combining various methods of domination”, allowing it to become the leading global power. “To maintain its hegemony, it has made extensive use of mass consciousness manipulation. With the development of new technologies, this system has become truly global”.
Zyuganov reaffirmed that “ownership of the means of production is the key to economic and political dominance. And it doesn't matter whether we're talking about material or information production”. He said artificial intelligence was “another resource in the hands of those who own capital”, saying “capitalists will use it to enrich themselves and strengthen their dominance”.
“Without recognising itself as a class”, he said, “the proletariat will be a plaything in the hands of capital. It will be forced to accept alien ideas and values. 
“As Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, wrote, the working people must acquire a new world view. The duty of communists is to help the proletariat acquire class consciousness and develop a new concept of life”.
In an interview with the national TV channel Russia 1 during the conference, Yuri Afonin, the deputy chairman of the CPRF, described the killing of 21 students in a Ukrainian mass drone attack at a college in Starobelsk, Lugansk, most of them girls aged 14-18, as a war crime.
He said that although Italian and Japanese journalists had visited the site “nothing was shown on their TV channels”. The BBC dutifully recycled the Banderite Kiev puppet regime’s lies, claiming the target was a college training elite Russian drone pilots. However later BBC reports acknowledged that the college may have been for training future teachers.
Afonin also made the extremely important point that the Russian leadership is not opposed to Ukraine joining the European Union, a fact which has definitely not been reported by the British capitalist mass media.
He said “President Putin had repeatedly stated this”, adding that “Russia is simply categorically opposed to Ukraine joining NATO, and becoming a military base against Russia". But he also warned that “the EU itself could become a military alliance, they're already talking about their own army”.
Afonin also reminded Russia-1’s viewers that the Western plan to destroy Belarus as an independent state, depriving Russia of an ally, “is clearly still on the agenda”. But he reaffirmed that “Belarus is not just an ally of Russia, but part of our Union State, and Russia will defend its territory as if it were its own”.
An unforgettable concert, Art against hatred, was held as part of the Forum with performances by children and teenage arts students, dances from different regions of Russia and artists and dancers from other countries like Dominica and Chile. The delegates also watched the documentary Imperialism and Terror made by the CPRF’s  Red Line TV Channel, which has also been circulated to comrades here in Britain.
At the end of the Forum Gennady Zyuganov thanked the international delegates for their “very friendly, effective and interesting collaboration” saying “we saw many familiar faces among the participants, and we are very pleased that all our friends share a common vision for the fight against Nazism and fascism, for peace and justice”.
Closing the conference Zyuganov recalled the two “systemic crises” of the last century, the two world wars “which culminated in the Great October Socialist Revolution and the great Victory of 1945”. He said that “the nuclear missile parity established by the Soviet Union saved the world from a major nuclear war”.
Zyuganov outlined the CPRF’s Victory Programme “for the Russian Federation's recovery from the crisis”, which includes nationalisation of mineral resources, a return to a normal eight-hour working day, high quality care for women, children and the elderly, and the restoration of the universal right to free education and medical care “even if a private, parallel system exists”.
In addition the Party called for “specific proposals for developing the latest technologies and harnessing the full potential of modern science, to ensure that society is educated, literate and able to live in peace and dignity.”
The appeal issued at the end of the forum For justice and global development and without fascism, terrorism and wars! recalled that “in the harsh winter days of 1941, the Soviet people proved to the world that fascism is not omnipotent”.
It said “imperialist reaction is once again seeking to unleash its broadest possible attack on the rights of working people. Its constant companions remain militarism and colonialism, fascism and anti-communism.
“Before our very eyes, capitalism has essentially cast aside the veneer of liberal demagogy. It speaks less and less about freedom and human rights. Reaction increasingly turns to dictatorship, terror, chauvinism, and war.
The appeal warns that “various forms of fascism are being revived. The heirs of Hitler and Mussolini, Franco and Salazar, Horthy and Antonescu, are raising their heads. Aggressive military blocs are increasing their activity. 
“The imperialists are increasingly trying to pressure entire peoples, cynically using political terror, religious extremism, ethnic hatred, the noose of sanctions, and the cudgel of war.
“We declare: the fight against fascism is inseparable from the fight against anti-communism and Russophobia. 
“We resolutely condemn attempts to equate the Soviet Union with Hitler's Reich, to declare its liberators ‘occupiers’, to tear down monuments to Red Army soldiers, to ban communist symbols and to justify Nazi collaborators. 
“All these steps are nothing less than political preparation for a fascist revanche. These reactionaries seek to deprive the peoples of their memories of history, to cut the bonds between generations, and to slander the heroism of the USSR and the entire resistance movement against fascism.
“The fight against terrorism occupies a special place in our common struggle. We resolutely condemn terror in all its manifestations - whether carried out by individuals, groups, with state backing, voluntary or mercenary, military, economic, or psychological. 
“Terrorism brings death and destruction, cripples lives, breeds fear and hatred, and sows pain and suffering.
Terrorism cannot be explained solely by the fanaticism of rabid groups or the criminal intent of individuals. The breeding ground for terrorism is a world of social inequality, lawlessness and poverty, humiliation and unemployment, interventions and genocide, dictatorship and neo-colonial practices, arbitrary sanctions and cynical blockades.
“Imperialism has destroyed entire countries and created zones of chaos, all the while pretending to be ‘liberating’ them. And this  same imperialism organises and arms mercenaries and orchestrates coups d'état.
“We emphasise: not only is capitalism incapable of eradicating terrorism, it constantly reproduces its social, economic, and political preconditions. The fight against terrorism cannot simply be reduced to police operations or military campaigns. 
“Life demands the elimination of its causes: the exploitation of man by man, neo-colonial plunder, and social inequality. The dissolution of imperialist blocs and the end of the dominance of transnational capital are the imperative of our times.
The appeal confirmed that the participants in the Third International Anti-Fascist Forum “express their support for Russia's anti-fascist and anti-terrorist activities within the framework of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. 
“We view this struggle as part of the overall resistance to Western global diktat, state terror, militarism, and neo-Nazism. We strongly condemn attempts to use Ukrainian territory as a springboard for the expansion of imperialist influence.
“We emphasise: our fight against neo-Nazism and terrorism is fundamental. There is no room for compromise. 
“It is directed against forces seeking to revise the results of World War II, rehabilitate Nazi collaborators, and destroy the memory of the heroism of anti-fascists. 
“We will never reconcile ourselves to those who sow terror and fear, seeking to subjugate the world to the dictates of capitalism. We wage our struggle for the right of peoples to security and historical truth, sovereignty and comprehensive development, social justice, and the choice of a socialist path.
“We resolutely demand that the United States cease its attempts to dictate its will to the Republic of Cuba. For decades, Cuba has remained a symbol of dignity and fidelity to its chosen path. 
“We demand that the monstrous sanctions against the Island of Freedom, and Washington's arbitrary charges against the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Raúl Castro Ruz, must end immediately. The embargo against Cuba is an act of state terrorism against an entire people.
“The pathological desire to punish entire countries for their chosen path of development is an example of irresponsible and criminal policy.
“We express solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. We demand an end to all political and military pressure on the Venezuelan people, and an end to economic sanctions. 
“We insist on the immediate release of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores. The repeated US attempts to crush the Venezuelan people and appropriate their natural resources reflect exactly the same neo-colonialist policies that fuel fascism, terrorism, and military intervention.
“We demand an end to the genocide of the Palestinian people. The Israeli military must cease its crimes in the Gaza Strip, and its aggression against the people of Lebanon. We insist on the realisation of the right of the Palestinian people to their own state.
“Washington must end its support for Israel's aggressive actions, and immediately end its military operations against Iran. We call on the international community to condemn the United States’ interventionist ambitions, and demand compensation for the damage and suffering it has inflicted on the people of Iran.
“We call upon all people of goodwill to join the united front of progressive, leftist, communist, patriotic, anti-colonialist, and anti-fascist forces. We must join forces in our just struggle. 
“Acting as a united front, we must expose anti-communism, anti-Sovietism, and Russophobia, defend workers' rights and fight for a just world which can bring peace and security for all.
“We appeal to all the peoples of the world: do not be deceived! Do not trust those who spout false slogans about freedom, but who actually practice enslavement. Those who talk about democracy but cultivate the dictatorship of capitalism. Those who preach security but foment war. Those who promise to fight terrorism but instead sow discord and violence.
“Only a world of equal peoples, social justice and the brotherhood of workers will protect humanity from fascism, terrorism and war.
No to imperialism, neo-Nazism, anti-communism and terrorism! We won't let them blow up the world! No pasarán! They won't pass! Let the world of labour, socialism and friendship of peoples triumph!
Long live international workers' solidarity!”.
Among the many prominent representatives of the international communist movement from every continent, the contributions by two speakers, Petro Symonenko and Boris Litvinov – leaders of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Donetsk branch of the CPRF respectively – are of particular interest to our readers.
In his speech Symonenko said  “As events in Ukraine, and other states targeted by ‘colour revolutions’, show – which were in reality coups – we saw organised penetration into public, government political, economic and security structures, the creation of extensive networks of centres and bases for training militants, and a network of companies, banks and funds, all of which were used to hide the true goals of the project.
“To provide propaganda cover for these aggressive policies and the horrific crimes which led to an untold loss of human lives since 2014” Symonenko said “the imperialists adopted the slogans of a national liberation struggle with an ethnic and pseudo-democratic basis”.
Boris Litvinov recalled that “a vital part of the anti-fascist struggle in WW2 began in Donbas, the land of anti-fascist workers”, and said that today “our army includes representatives from around the world, even from Israel, Poland and Cuba”.
He also called for the creation of a new communist and workers international organisation. “We invite them to come to Donbas –  this is the home of the anti-fascist struggle! If we can break Ukrainian fascism, we will break one of the main points of international imperialism!”
Addressing the forum, the delegate from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela said that Russia was “playing a decisive role in guaranteeing peace in Europe and Latin America. The people of Venezuela are still fighting for the release of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores, and working to strengthen people’s power. Our people want to create socialism. We are fighting against imperialism, just as Bolivar and Chavez fought against imperialism, and ours is a revolution  which will survive any attempt to crush it”.
The delegate from the Communist Party of China reaffirmed that “our foreign policy is based on global dialogue, mutual wellbeing and the observation of international law. We are working to develop Russian-Chinese cooperation and partnership, and we emphasise that the current world order must continue to be based on the outcome of World War Two”.

The video Imperialism and Terror, with English subtitles, is available to watch on the YouTube channel IUAFS2026.

Reminisces on Professor Vijay Singh

 

by Theo Russell

 
Comrade Vijay Singh had a close and friendly relationship with the New Communist Party for over 45 years. 
Vijay became a friend of the NCPB when our former general secretary Eric Trevett, visited India in conjunction with a visit to Kabul to meet leaders of the Afghan Saur Revolution. During that visit Eric struck up a lasting connection with Vijay. In those days Vijay spent much more time in London than in recent years, and he frequently spoke at NCPB social and political events. He was always extremely courteous and easy to get on with, and completely lacking in self-importance. Such modesty stands out even more in India, where self-importance, especially amongst men and especially among political men, is not uncommon.
Vijay spent much of his early life in London where his father was a senior diplomat at the Indian High Commission. We will always respect him for choosing to return and to live in India for most of his life in order to teach and to further the cause of socialism, rather than enjoying a comfortable middle-class life in the UK, perhaps as an academic, an option which would have been easily available to him.
Vijay Singh was for many years a highly respected and popular professor at Delhi University. He also made connections and organisational links with socialist and communist parties and trade unions throughout South Asia. As is well known, his daughter Atishi Marlena went on to become a cabinet minister and then Chief Minister of the Delhi administration in 2023-25, where she put many of Vijay's principles into practice, representing the Aam Admi (Common Man) Party.  In the past 20 years or so Aam Admi has attempted to return to the traditions of the left-socialist wing of the Congress Party in the 1950s and 1960s. 
I met Vijay many many times in London, in Delhi (I have a family connection in India), and in Moscow, which he used to visit regularly to carry out research at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism's library. This research was mainly focussed on the Stalin period and Stalin's relations with communist and workers’ parties and socialist governments from around the world. That research revealed many extremely useful examples of Stalin's advice and guidance to foreign parties, including the old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
The relationship between communist parties and the Labour Party has been intensely debated in Britain since Lenin's day, and still is at the present time. Vijay discovered and made public a large amount of extremely valuable historical documents. From our viewpoint the most important dealt with the roles of Stalin and Nikita Krushchev, and Stalin’s discussions with CPGB leader Harry Pollitt on the British Road to Socialism, the “parliamentary road” and the role of the Labour Party which was the basis of the CPGB's electoral policy and its ultimate decline and dissolution.
But Vijay will probably be mostly remembered for creating the journal Revolutionary Democracy (RD), which has continued publication for many decades. RD became an important forum for parties and individuals around the world to debate the issues of the day, and published many detailed historical and economic articles. It was distributed internationally and widely respected as an academic journal around the world. At the same time it was a unique avenue for Indian socialists, communists and academics to publish material and engage in debates. The NCP reviewed almost every edition of RD, and organised its sale in Britain by post and in leftist bookshops. But RD was more than a discussion magazine, Vijay used it to bring comrades together to educate and develop them as journalists.
Vijay was a controversial and sometimes dogmatic figure. Over the years the NCP had significant political differences with him over the divisions in the world communist movement following the collapse of the USSR and the people’s democracies of eastern Europe – and, above all, over the role of the Communist Party of China and the reforms that followed the end of the Mao era and the stand of the Russian communists in the wake of the counter-revolution that led to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Vijay opposed the Russian intervention in Ukraine. And he distorted the role of Korean communist leader Kim Il Sung, who led the Korean people in the fight to defeat Japanese colonialism and US-led imperialism to build a modern socialist republic in the northern part of the Korean peninsula. But those differences did not affect our friendship or our great respect for him.
 I personally shared many cultural interests with Vijay, especially relating to Indian and Soviet art and cinema, and music from around the world. He even developed friendly contacts with the Institute of Russian Realist Art, and arranged free entry for me when I was in Moscow.
Vijay was extremely well known and widely respected in India. During the Covid pandemic, despite having significant health problems himself, he used his influence and contacts to assist comrades from many different organisations, including those he had political differences with, in getting access to hospital treatment which was under huge pressure at the time.
In recent years Vijay was unable to travel to London, where he still had close family members, but we spoke regularly by phone. I can't forget that on every occasion he never failed to ask after other NCP comrades by name.
Vijay Singh will be deeply missed by members of the NCP as a friend and comrade, and by his many admirers on every continent. His legacy and contribution will be remembered far into the future, above all in India. 

Hands off Venezuela!

 

By New Worker correspondent

Last Saturday Theo Russell represented the New Communist Party at a rally in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin demanding “Hands off Venezuela”, organised by the Coop Anti-war Café.
Speakers at the rally included Nancy Larenas from the Communist Party of Chile, Maren Crosnest and Renate Döhring from the United Front for Latin America, Heinrich Buecker from the Anti-war Café, and Cornelia Praetorius from Mothers against War.
In his contribution Theo Russell said that “Five or ten years ago, some people were comparing the current world situation with the 1930s, but it is now clear that the capitalist system is now in a deep and very dangerous crisis”.
He noted that across Western Europe the old political order was crumbling with new right wing parties gaining millions of votes, but said “we also need to be positive, last year we saw the far-right anti-migrant, anti-Muslim rioters in Britain vastly outnumbered by people from the local communities, we have seen millions marching on solidarity with the people of Palestine, and two weeks ago over five million people protesting in cities across the United States against Donald Trump’s repressive and autocratic policies”.
The Coop Anti-war Café  runs a café, gallery, shop and meeting venue two blocks from the Alexanderplatz at 3 Rochstrasse and it is usually open from Monday to Saturday from 5.30 pm to 2 am, however it’s best to confirm before visiting by emailing: info@hbuecker.net or calling 0049 15154 161869. It has been a centre for organising anti war and political action for 25 years.

The Nazi revival and the threat of war

by Theo Russell

the forum begins

The Second International Anti-Fascist Forum which took place last month in Moscow was a very timely gathering of the best elements of the world’s communist and workers parties.
To be at this event it wasn’t enough simply to be aware of the resurgence of the far right and fascism in the advanced capitalist countries; in practice the parties present had to have good relations with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), the Forum organisers, and also be prepared to attend an event in Moscow. This in turn means a correct analysis of the war in Ukraine since February 2014 and of the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) which began in February 2022.
Like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 and the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-40, a correct Marxist Leninist assessment of the Russian intervention in Ukraine requires a sufficient knowledge of the events leading up to it and the overall strategy of Western imperialism in the world today.
Unfortunately, some of the world’s largest communist parties have, in fact, failed this test. Led by the French communists and the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), many parties declared the SMO an ‘imperialist’ operation.
This was an abject failure to understand how the Nato alliance had deliberately created a situation which effectively forced Russia to act. 
First, by 2022 fascist and specifically anti-Russian Banderite thinking had spread throughout Ukraine including the armed forces and police. Ukraine had become a living example of a 1930s-style fascist state, and in practice only an external military intervention could eradicate the resulting dictatorship.
Second, this dictatorship unleashed horrific atrocities and caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, especially in the Russian-speaking regions, long before February 2022.
Third, Nato blatantly used the Minsk peace talks to pump weapons into Ukraine and train an entirely new ‘Nato standard’ military, all the while falsely claiming that the Donbas forces and Russia were breaking the agreed ceasefires. When it became clear that the placing of long-range missiles in Ukraine was the next step, the puppet regime became a mortal threat to Russia. In other words, Nato’s plan all along was to force the Russian Federation into a war.
Thus, a Marxist-Leninist analysis shows the current war in Ukraine is not between Russia and Ukraine. It is a war directed against Russia, and backed by 55 Nato and allied states.
From a Marxist-Leninist position, the Russian intervention, and the war fought before that by the Donbas People’s Republics, is a just war. It is in fact a war of liberation from the tyranny of a fascist dictatorship.
For these reasons, the Moscow Forum was an opportunity for the best elements of the world communist movement to gather and prepare tactics for the inevitable future clashes with the rising fascist tide and the threat of new wars – the products of the deepening capitalist crisis.
Leading members of the CPRF themselves made major theoretical contributions to the Forum, including general secretary Gennady Zyuganov as well as Dmitry Novikov and Yuri Afonin from the Central Committee.
During the Forum discussion on Nazism and Fascism as a Natural Continuation of Colonial Capitalism, Afonin described how fascism first arose as capitalism's reaction to the Great October Socialist Revolution, which he said “resulted in a colossal strengthening of the communist and labour movement across the planet. Capitalism found itself on the brink of historical collapse. Its response was fascism”.
He argued that the bourgeoisie of the richest capitalist countries such as the USA, Britain, France and the Netherlands, were able to maintain their rule without abandoning bourgeois democracy, due to the enormous financial resources available to them. “But in the poorer countries of the semi-periphery, the capitalists began to solve this problem with the help of fascism” – a reference to Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal.
“After 1945” he continued “fascist practice and fascist regimes became the lot of the periphery of the world capitalist system. The Western imperialist powers in suppressing national liberation movements in the colonies was practically no different from the practice of mass terror that Hitler's Reich conducted in the occupied territories”. 
Afonin said the Western powers established a kind of "export" of fascism to the countries of the Third World, now known as the Global South. “In the Third World they contributed to the establishment of fascist regimes dozens of times, and supported them for decades”.
He described the ‘special structures’ which were created, such as the USA’s ‘School of the Americas’ created in 1946 to train military and police officers from Latin American countries in large numbers. “Graduates of this ‘school’ took part in many coups d'état, after which fascist regimes were established” with the creation of  “death squads, mass kidnappings, torture and murder”.
“In 1965-66, during the establishment of the fascist regime in Indonesia, according to various estimates, between one and two million people were exterminated. And in Guatemala, the fascist regime, supported by the United States, exterminated about 10 per cent of the country's Indian population in the 1980s, with Indian villages being destroyed along with all their inhabitants and burned.
Afonin paid tribute to Cuba’s outstanding role in the fight against fascism in the second half of the 20th century. “Cuba gave every possible support to Latin American liberation movements that fought against fascist regimes. And this was one of the reasons why Latin American fascist dictators were eventually either overthrown by rebels or forced to resign and give way to democratic governments. 
“And in Africa, Cuban internationalist warriors helped the peoples of Angola and Mozambique defend their independence in the face of aggression from the racists of South Africa, whose regime pursued a truly fascist policy towards black Africans”.
“In the modern world”, Afonin continued, “fascism is a form of neo-colonialism used by Western imperialism. The closest example to us geographically is Ukraine. After the collapse of the USSR, it effectively fell into neo-colonial dependence on the West.
“Today, the form of this Western domination is the Zelensky regime, which meets all the signs of a fascist one. Now this regime is busy preparing to transfer all the natural resources and all the most profitable assets of its country to the United States. It is difficult to find a more obvious example of outright neocolonialism”.
He then turned to the Middle East. “Here the State of Israel is pursuing a policy towards the Palestinian people that is confusingly similar to the policy of Hitler's Reich towards the peoples it declared ‘inferior’.
“It is also worth taking a closer look at armed radical Islamism. These groups usually say they want to return society to the times of the first caliphs. But we understand that this is impossible. It is impossible to revive the social order that existed almost one and a half thousand years ago. 
“Behind this reactionary utopia lies a completely different reality. We must not forget that radical Islamism in its current form was created by Western intelligence services in the 1980s to use against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. And now we see signs that Western imperialism is using radical Islamism against its opponents. 
“The economy of ISIS territories continued to be integrated into the system of global capitalism. Oil extracted in ISIS territories somehow ended up in Western tankers, which transported it around the world. In the territories where radical Islamists established their power, polygamy, marriages with little girls and slavery were legalised. Ancient cultural monuments were barbarously destroyed and mass terror was unleashed”.
Dmitry Novikov, Deputy Chair of the CPRF Central Committee spoke at the section "Lenin's teaching on imperialism and fascism". He emphasised the new aggressive approach of the collective West in the form of the war against Russia unleashed by the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazis, adding other examples such as Israel's bombing of Palestine, the use of Taiwan in the fight against People’s China, and the new American trade war. He warned of the danger of economic conflicts escalating into military ones. 
He recalled that the capitalist crisis after 1918 led to a powerful struggle by the labour movement. In Italy Mussolini banned strikes and reduced workers' wages, while the ‘democratic’ countries supported the regime. In Germany the Nazi party was “turned into a fist of the bourgeoisie to strike blows at the communists and the labour movement”, while American and British monopolies helped the Third Reich to rebuild military production.
Today, he said “Nato has put the supply of various types of weapons to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime on stream. Thus, the imperialists play a key role in the formation of fascist regimes”.
Novikov pointed out that “Lenin was the first and most outstanding anti-fascist. He saw the threat of fascism back in the early 1920s and warned the European workers about it. He revealed the essence of imperialism, which is the progenitor of fascism.
“Vladimir Lenin created a party that, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, became the grave-digger of fascism and created the Comintern, whose parties took up the first battle against the brown plague”.
He recalled that after the Soviet victory over the Third Reich, many Nazis went on to serve in government structures and intelligence services of the ‘democratic’ countries, while the West supported the power of the colonels in Greece, the Pinochet junta in Chile, and other reactionary regimes.
Novikov spoke of the latest ‘innovations’ of global capital, such as using global social networks to suppress dissent (what the Cuban Communist Party calls “digital colonialism”). “In the US and Europe, people who criticise the policies of the ruling circles are subjected to moral terror by the authorities, fired from work, and banned from professions and publication in the media”.
“At present world capitalism is reviving Nazism. The threat of a new world war is growing. In these conditions, the duty of progressive forces, honest people, is to consolidate in the fight against dangerous tendencies.”
Novikov referred to the fascist tactic of “playing on the social moods of the people, to exploit the workers' desire for justice, their rejection of corruption, and the dictates of capitalist monopolies. As a result, many workers become victims of Nazi demagogy”. 
Viktor Tyulkin, leader of the Russian Communist Workers' Party, declared his party’s support for the special operation in Ukraine.
He described the collective West, led by the United States, as “the most predatory imperialist force in the world. To achieve its goal of world hegemony, the Western imperialists are striving to dismember Russia. All this began not in 2022, but in 1991,” he said 
“We should not remain silent about Nato approaching the borders of our country, about the imperialists cultivating Banderites in Ukraine. Repeating the fate of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya in Russia is contrary to the interests of the working class of our country and the whole world”.
Tyulkin also mentioned the responsibility of the Russian ruling class, since the roots of the current situation lie in the liquidation of socialism. “The abolition of Soviet power put Russia in a vulnerable position, and the unleashing of anti-communism continues to this day. Only under socialism will it be possible to completely eliminate the threat of fascism”.
Tyulkin also spoke of “a campaign in our country to rename settlements, squares, streets, and to glorify reactionaries, including fascist philosophers.”
Many other speakers condemned the US and Nato for the Ukrainian Nazi regime, Israeli aggression against Palestine, and American pressure on China and Cuba, and said it was unacceptable for countries which took an independent position to be branded "sponsors of terrorism" and "enemies of democracy".
The representative of the People's Socialist Party of Mexico declared that socialist and genuinely democratic forces should create a World Anti-Fascist Front. 
I N Makarov, of the Russian Scientists for Socialism movement, spoke of the struggle against bourgeois counter-revolution in Russia in the 1990s, and “the unleashing of fascist terror in Russia” in October 1993. “After tanks fired on the House of Soviets” he said, “the Yeltsinites killed hundreds of protesters defending the USSR Constitution at the Krasnaya Presnya stadium and the Ostankino TV Tower”. 
Makarov referred to the work of Gennady Zyuganov, Russia under the Gun of Globalism, which he said “asserts that the phenomenon called ‘globalism’ is simply a new form of imperialism, but has not changed its essence in the slightest. Consequently, Lenin's definition of imperialism remains relevant.”
He said that today “Russia has the mission of defeating fascism for the second time in the past 80 years. He predicted that “if the USSR's victory over Hitlerism in 1945 was followed by the collapse of colonialism, then the current defeat of Banderism will serve as a prologue to the fall of the imperialist system”.
Speakers in the section Fascism – a threat to security and cooperation in Europe spoke of the resurgence of fascism in Europe today, arguing that the European Union has, to some extent, become “the forerunner of the Fourth Reich” in which the renewed fascist movements actively use the difficult situation that has often developed in the sphere of migration policy in different countries. 
Many speakers expressed alarm over the ongoing distortion of historical truth and called for a complete rejection of all forms of decommunisation in state ideology and policy.
Emilio Lasada Garcia, head of the International Department of the Communist Party of Cuba, said “fascism in Latin America has not gone away. With its subversive actions against Venezuela, Washington today seeks to establish a fascist regime in this country, betting on the ultra-right, fascist forces.
“In the United States itself, very disturbing processes are also underway. The slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ is reminiscent of the fascist slogans of the past. In today's USA, concentration camps have been revived, where many thousands of migrants are thrown.”
Marcelo Rodriguez of the Communist Party of Argentina, said that the right-wing Argentine president Miley’s ideology –  “anti-communism, racism, and open hatred of the indigenous Indian peoples actually make it neo-fascist”.
Delegates from several Middle Eastern parties said the Zionist regime is pursuing a fascist policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, where every thirtieth resident of the Gaza Strip has already been killed and 20 per cent of residents have been expelled from their homes, most of which have simply been destroyed.
Benedict Martins of the South African Communist Party noted that the armed struggle in the Donbas did not begin in 2022, but eight years earlier. And the root of this conflict is that neo-fascism has once again raised its ugly head in Ukraine in the form of an openly Nazi Bandera ideology.
This view was echoed by Konstantina Kartsioti, a Greek communist in the Anti Imperialist Front, who said the huge Western imperialist propaganda machine was now spreading lies about Russia around the world, but that thanks to the activities of progressive forces, more and more people are beginning to understand the essence and roots of the conflict in Ukraine.

No British arms for Ukraine!

by New Worker correspondent

Anti-fascist activists held court in the heart of Birmingham for over an hour and a half last weekend with placards, banners and flags calling for the British government to end weapons supplies to the puppet government in Ukraine and warning of the danger of an all-out NATO-Russia war. They also carried placards pointing out the financial costs to millions of British citizens of the billions of pounds sent to Ukraine, higher energy charges, and the extreme levels of corruption in Ukraine itself.
Theo Russell, secretary of International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS), spoke about Britain's aggressive role in Ukraine: “A top secret British military and intelligence group, Project Alchemy, has been set up with the aim of prolonging the war in Ukraine war at all costs. The Grayzone website has revealed that Britain’s true goal in Ukraine is to cause a “palace coup” – read “regime change” - in Moscow, plans for an underground army to conduct terrorism in Ukraine and Russia, and to “dismantle” independent media outlets reporting the truth about Ukraine.
Many people joined discussions with the protestors and it was clear that they are aware of the higher prices they are paying for everything, the danger of a world war, and the contrast between Western countries condemning Russian military actions in Ukraine while sending more and more bombs and missiles to Israel to kill civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria. This was the first protest held by IUAFS outside London but it certainly won’t be the last!

Palestinian flag over UK town halls

by Theo Russell

 
Sheffield City Council, along with several other cities in England and Scotland, marked the UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on 29th November by flying the Palestinian flag, following a request by the PCS Yorkshire & Northeast Home Office branch.
Branch secretary Lawrence Barfoot said “we are delighted that Sheffield City Council has agreed to fly the Palestinian flag in solidarity with the people of Gaza and the West Bank, who are currently enduring a vicious assault by Israel.”
The branch supports the Sheffield Palestine Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, a local, multi-faith organisation with the aim of making Sheffield an apartheid-free zone through boycotting, divestment, and sanctions.
Three other South Yorkshire local authorities including Barnsley, along with Glasgow, Newbury and Rochdale city councils, also flew the Palestinian flag on 29th  November, while Liverpool's city council refused.
Barnsley recently made a declaration of friendship with the Palestinian West Bank city of Nablus, and said in a statement that the council was "exploring ways to strengthen its cultural, educational and young people’s links" between the two cities.
The council's Chief Executive met with political and community leaders and "gathered professional opinions from stakeholders across the city" before approving the decision.
Councillors from Sheffield’s Green Party said the decision was the result of tireless campaigning by the people of Sheffield in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and called on the Labour government to impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel, and end negotiations for a free-trade agreement with Israel.
They also asked the UK to "cease aiding and assisting in the commission of violations of international law through diplomatic support for Israel, the use of the UK Akrotiri military base in Cyprus, and intelligence sharing, reconnaissance and all other military support", and to "investigate the Israeli ambassador to the UK, and dual-nationals returning from service with the IDF, as potential perpetrators of international crimes and grave human rights violations, including the crime of incitement to genocide".
Unfortunately, The London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which has one of England's largest Muslim communities, decided to remove Palestinian flags from council buildings last March, after receiving a letter from UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) that claimed that the council's officers and managers, including the mayor Lutfur Rahman, were personally guilty of criminal offences under the 1990 Town and Country Planning Act. Lutfur Rahman approved the removal of Palestinian flags on council-owned buildings, on advice from the council's chief executive.
The flying of Palestinian flags over public buildings clearly reflects the feelings of the overwhelming majority of the British people. According to an Ipsos poll in October, 73 per cent of people in Britain wanted an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and 60 per cent believed that Israel’s actions in Gaza have "gone too far".
The Ukrainian flag has been flown on hundreds of public buildings since the Russian intervention began in February 2022, in support of the criminal, illegitimate Banderite Nazi junta in Kiev. To see the Palestinian flag being flown on a handful of public buildings in Britain is a very welcome change, and a definite step in the right direction.

Peace Call in Berlin!

by New Worker correspondent

Around sixty peace activists gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin last Saturday, which happens to be exactly adjacent to the United States embassy.
The rally called for solidarity with Venezuela and Cuba and the Global South, Peace with China and Russia, and Palestinian freedom, with speakers from the United Front for Latin America, Cuba Si, and the Communist Party of Chile.
Theo Russell spoke about the history of the current war in Ukraine on behalf of the International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity campaign, saying “the war in Ukraine started in 2014, and not with the Russian military intervention in 2022. The NATO-backed coup on February 22nd 2014 ushered in a tragedy for all the people of Ukraine.
"Over 6 million Ukrainians went into exile, with 4 million finding a home in Russia.
The forces that allied with NATO in Ukraine have started two wars in Ukraine. The first was the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) which was launched on 15th April 2014 with the full support of NATO, which claimed that Russia had invaded Ukraine.
"That claim was a barefaced lie based on satellite images and old pictures of Russian tanks on exercise. But Kiev’s army was defeated by the Donbas anti-fascist militias in 2015.
"Since 2014 we have the Western media collectively censored all reports on the deaths of thousands of civilians in the Donbas Republics at the hands of Ukraine's forces and the Nazi military battalions.
"We now know that the 8 year-long Minsk peace talks were used by NATO to secretly re-arm Kiev’s army, and even while the peace talks continued, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky declared in 2021 ‘We will re-occupy the Donbas’.
"NATO used the talks to secretly re-arm and train Ukraine's military, with the participation of the US, Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Canada.
"The US military expert Scott Ritter has described how these countries brought the fascist battalions into Ukraine's armed forces, and trained them to use NATO military equipment.
"Several days before the Russian intervention on February 24th 2022 a 60,000-strong Ukrainian force launched the second all-out military offensive against the Donbas People's Republics, the first being in 2014.
"In February-March 2022 the Russia and Ukraine negotiated a deal to end the war, but the NATO Council met and decided that Ukraine must continue fighting with NATO weapons and money.
"This was the second great tragedy for Ukraine. About 180,000 Ukrainians have died since then as NATO’S cannon fodder. Their deaths could so easily have been prevented.
"After this war ends, perhaps in 6 months or a year, a new government will emerge, with the participation of Ukrainian anti-fascists and democrats. But our media will then tell us that this new government is a Russian colony, worse than Nazi Germany, and will no doubt label it a "Stalinist dictatorship".
"Even now they are very likely laying preparations for future terrorist attacks and sanctions to destabilise and isolate a new Ukraine. So a genuinely democratic Ukraine may need our solidarity for many more years to come. I want to end with the words: No Pasaran! Sie werden nicht durchkommen! Nyet fascismu!”

Stop arming Ukrainian fascists!

In London...

by Theo Russell

Activists protested last week in London, Glasgow and Dublin, calling on Britain and NATO to stop sending weapons to the illegitimate Banderite junta in Kiev. They demanded “No More British Challengers, Storm Shadows and Depleted Uranium for Ukraine!”, “No More British Weapons for Ukrainian Nazis”, and “Zelensky - Your mandate expired on 29th  March 2024 - Step aside and stop blocking peace talks!” 
The protests on 15th August coincided with the Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Kursk province, where the British government has given permission to the Kiev junta to use British weapons on Russian territory, including Challenger 2 tanks which use depleted uranium shells. 
These shells don’t pose an immediate radiation threat, but the particles from their use go into the soil and water table, remaining radioactive for 4.5 billion years. They have led to a surge in cancer cases affecting people of all ages in Serbia and Iraq, and no-one knows how the DU can be removed from the environment.
But the biggest controversy concerns permission for Kiev to use its Storm Shadow missiles for long range strikes into Russia. Less than a week after Labour took power, Keir Starmer suggested that Britain would give Zelensky the green light, but the next day Downing Street changed its mind.

...Glasgow

The problem for the fanatical war lobby at the Daily Telegraph and at the top of the British military is that the Storm Shadow is a joint project and its use requires the permission of France, but also from the Americans as they are the dominant force in NATO’s military support for Ukraine.
The UK has repeatedly pressed Washington for permission for long range strikes, but last week a Pentagon spokesman told a briefing that the USA is concerned about the potential for escalation.
The Kremlin has repeatedly warned that such strikes would lead to NATO bases anywhere in the world becoming targets of the Russians and states and armed groups allied to Russia. 
Such NATO strikes would be incredibly reckless and another step towards a possible all out NATO-Russia conflict – and yet Britain continues to push for them!
Former UK ambassador to Moscow Tony Brenton said on BBC Radio last year that "Britain is the most aggressive of all the NATO members in Ukraine” and has “more special forces in Ukraine than any other NATO country”. 
A senior aide to President Putin, Nikolay Patrushev, says that NATO countries – primarily the USA and the UK – had masterminded the Ukrainian foray in Kursk province, which he said was “planned with the participation of NATO and Western special services".
In that operation a video has emerged of Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk wearing Second World War German helmets sporting the emblem of the Waffen SS and taunting a Russian prisoner.
The International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) campaign to expose the countless crimes of the Banderite Nazis in Ukraine – NATO’s proxies whose ancestors created their own fascist ideology in the 1930s – is operating in a very difficult and hostile environment in Britain. 
The murders, torture and imprisonment of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been totally hidden by the British media, which since the NATO coup in 2014 has reported only from one side of the war which started that year.

and Dublin...

But we know from ten years of protests on the streets, and our experience of working class communities, that very many people in Britain don’t believe the daily lies of the Banderite-London-Washington propaganda network, but they do know that Nazis are running wild in Ukraine. 
At every protest we have held the number of people showing support for our demands has been 20 to 30 higher than those who have attacked us.
At our London protest many people showed their support, some (including one who looked like a senior military officer) were very unhappy. The only person to launch an aggressive verbal attack was a Ukrainian Banderite, who is presumably on an extended holiday in Britain. He was met with an equally strong response and didn’t stick around for long.
Despite the difficulties we face we will continue our solidarity with all those resisting the return of Nazism to Ukraine, defending the rights of all of Ukraine’s national communities, and the millions living in exile.
Since 2014 we have warned that what is happening in Ukraine is “a warning to Europe and the world”. After recent events in Britain, it is now clear to everyone that the fascist threat is growing rapidly in the rich and powerful capitalist states on both sides of the Atlantic.

What is behind the wave of far-right violence?

By Theo Russell

Serious rioting has taken place in English cities across the country, with scenes more familiar to Belfast: bricks and bottles thrown at police and police vehicles, and a police station wrecked. And the groups involved do in fact have connections and common views with Loyalist organisations in Northern Ireland – the only other part of the UK where major violence broke out. 
These disturbances are not the usual localised friction between police and Muslim or poor white communities, they are being coordinated by a resurgent right wing populist group led by the maverick Tommy Robinson, and still known as the English Defence League (EDL) despite various name changes.
The rioters, apart from attacking the police, targeted mosques and hostels for asylum seekers. 
A neo-Nazi group which sprang up during the Covid pandemic, the Patriotic Alternative, is also playing a major role in inciting the violence.
The new Labour prime minister Keir Starmer quickly declared that these riots were crimes and "not protest".
These events are unprecedented in the history of far right violence in Britain since 1945. Until recently the EDL seemed to be gradually fading away after a wave of protests against immigration and Muslim influence in the 2005-15, with their eccentric leader Tommy Robinson facing a growing string of various criminal charges.
Robinson now faces arrest after fleeing the country last Monday, the day before he was due to appear at the High Court in London.
Only two days earlier he had led possibly the largest far-right rally in England since Sir Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirt movement in the 1930s. 25-30,000 of his supporters packed Trafalgar Square in the heart of London waving English and British flags.
The current wave of violence followed the horrific attack on a community centre in Liverpool in which a mentally ill teenager killed three children last Monday. After claims that the attacker was a Muslim terrorist who had arrived on a migrant boat went viral on X and Telegram, the violence began the next day in Southport, near Liverpool, before spreading throughout England. 
The EDL supporters and agitators have taken advantage of a totally uncontrolled online environment, to stoke lies, rumours, provocations and bigotry.
Ironically the website which released the fake “Islamic terrorist” report which triggered the wave of violence, Channel3 Now, is a small American news outlet whose main coverage is of murders and deaths across the USA with contributors in America, Britain, India and Pakistan. It quickly removed the story and issued an apology.
But Elon Musk's X platform (formerly Twitter) stands out as a major instigator of the violence. Since he bought Twitter and created the sinister sounding X, Musk has restored the accounts of Trump and other right wing populists under the “libertarian” banner much loved in the USA – complete freedom of expression regardless of content.
In the midst of the violence Musk posted a shocking statement that “civil war is inevitable” in Britain. He then recycled accusations by Nigel Farage that the new Labour prime minister Keir Starmer was operating “two-tier policing” - being soft on ethnic minority criminals and "terrorist" (read “Palestinian”) supporters, while cracking down hard on right wing anti-migrants. 
Under Musk’s control ‘X’ has become a factory for churning out lies and fake rumours. The 100 top X posts promoting fake conspiracy theories about the Trump assassination attempt reached 215 million people, and only five per cent of these posts underwent a token X "community fact-check".
It is important to understand that American internet giants almost totally dominate Britain's web space and are massively reshaping our politics and economy.
Other far right online influencers include the "Europe Invasion" X hashtag #enoughisenough, and a wave of YouTube videos warning of an Islamist takeover of Britain.
Many other organisations have created the political space for the growth of right-wing extremism. The GB News TV and radio channel, and online TV channels Talk (previously Talk TV), have stoked the ‘soft’ far-right views which flourished in the Conservative government under Rishi Sunak.
The right-wing populist Unity News Network (UNN) website led by David Clews is linked with the openly fascist Patriotic Alternative, led by antisemitic conspiracy theorist and former BNP director of publicity Mark Collett.
Clearly considerable sums of money have gone into these entities, we know some of it from right-wing business millionaires.
There are now widespread calls for online social media platforms to be properly policed considering the role they have played in this crisis. Ofcom, the British regulator for the broadcasting and telecommunications industry, sent an open letter to UK online service providers on 4th August demanding that they “protect their users from videos likely to incite violence or hatred”, warning that after a new Online Safety Act is passed later this year, these services will have three months to stop such videos appearing or act quickly to remove them.
Such calls have been made for many years. but for the past 14 years the Conservative government’s business policy has been effectively dictated by lobbyists and wealthy donors representing major business interests, resulting in an online free for all.
Limitations of the Far Right
But it is important to realise that despite their ability to create chaos and violence, the far-right organisations are extremely small in size and represent a tiny proportion of the population.
This became clear on 6th  and 7th  August when counter protestors came onto the streets across England in huge numbers, dwarfing the EDL protests. Videos show that there were also considerable numbers of younger people clearly ready to use physical force against the rightists. In many places the racists were only saved from a beating by the police keeping the different groups separate to avoid violence getting out of control.
But the causes of the deep class divisions in Britain are far more complex. While the EDL clearly involves actual fascist agitators, it has successfully mobilised a mainly poor white section of the working class.
Many of these supporters insist they are not racist and claim there are a considerable number of ethnic minority EDL supporters. Their main targets are the alleged growing Muslim influence in Britain and illegal immigrants. These are communities which over the past 40-50 years have seen local industries shut down or relocated overseas, and the disappearance of secure, long-term, well-paid jobs which have been replaced by far fewer, very low paid, short term and ‘zero hour’ contracts. In parallel the total number of union members declined, reducing the proportion of working people with at least some class consciousness and political education.
These are areas where local councils cannot cope with local demand for services, particularly housing, with large numbers facing waiting years or even decades for affordable housing, and hundreds of thousands of families in extremely poor quality temporary housing across the country.
These areas also have very high crime levels and are riddled with extremely violent gangs linked to the drug trade.
Professionals such as doctors and dentists are in no hurry to move to such areas, so what practices there are can't cope with the demand. They are also shunned by national retail chains meaning that local people are dependent on small, expensive shops offering poor quality, unhealthy food, and cheap, unhealthy fried chicken and pizza joints.
Poverty in Britain has reached such shocking levels that it has been the subject of several UN reports. 30 per cent of UK children are now classed as living in poverty, there are almost two million people suffering undernourishment, and food banks (to which only people on benefits are sent) are quite possibly our fastest growing ‘industry’.
Wages in Britain are so low that over a third (35 per cent) of people who have jobs are also claiming social benefits. But even with top ups it is common for families to run out of money before payday, with parents going without food for days in order to feed their children.
Added to all this is the surge in energy costs - a basic necessity for all - caused by the sanctions on Russian oil and gas. 
In large parts of Britain schools have to provide breakfast to the children because so many of them get no breakfast at home.
To save on accommodation costs, asylum seekers have been housed in hotels near long-neglected poor communities. One commentator pointed out that many in these areas “can’t even dream of staying in a hotel”.
A particularly sore point is that local councils have a duty to house asylum seekers, not only putting a huge strain on their finances, but angering many who can’t obtain affordable social housing themselves.
Under the Conservatives hardly any new house building took place, and the perfect conditions were created for landlord and property developer exploiters to flourish.
This explains precisely why the focus of the recent violence was on migrant hotels and hostels in former industrial towns and cities.
The poor working class communities have seen a staggering increase in wealth in the UK for the middle and upper classes in the past 14 years, a Tory party rife with nepotism and corruption, and see the mainstream political and media classes – ‘Westminster’ - as inhabiting a different planet from their own.
Fundamental economic problems 
We also need to take into account the fundamental weaknesses of Britain’s economy, which is based on a generally low skilled workforce, a massive lack of infrastructure investment and training, and an overwhelming focus on the service and consumer sector which doesn’t actually create anything. This is an economy incapable of anything more than slow or zero growth.
From around 2000 onwards there has been inward migration on an unprecedented scale which can’t be ignored. When the European Union introduced freedom of movement, the UK (under a Labour government) was the only EU member to approve immediate movement from any EU member state.
At that time the EU had just expanded into Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Baltics, so the UK became a magnet for workers in countries where wages were 20 or 30 times lower, which were themselves suffering the effects of the collapse of socialism, and there was little social provision or job protection.
A separate wave of migration has been triggered by the devastation of economies in the global south after the collapse of the Soviet Union and some other people’s democracies through unequal trade, debt bondage, regime changes and ‘colour revolutions’, wars, sanctions and climate change.
This led to the emergence of a large network of purely criminal people-smuggling gangs, facilitating the mass movement of purely economic migrants from parts of Africa as well as genuine refugees from countries like Syria and Iraq.
The numbers arriving on illegal small boat crossings is a very small proportion, but  they lie behind the EDL chants of “Stop the Boats“. In the last recorded year 12,800 migrants arrived illegally compared to 685,000 legally.
This legal migration is due to post-Brexit labour shortages, mainly in the NHS and hospitality sector.
This very large influx of people is not a problem in itself, but the extreme neo-liberal and austerity policies of the Conservative government meant that instead of providing extra services for them, there were severe cuts to spending on schools, hospitals, local councils, housing, policing and transport.
The British state has also encouraged and in some cases made special provision for asylum seekers from countries (Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Ukraine) where British imperialism was deeply involved in regime change and wars.
It has poured huge resources into reactionary proxies such as Wahabi Muslim extremists in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya and the Banderite Nazi gangs in Ukraine. These groups in turn carried out a series of horrific terrorist attacks in Britain itself which were a godsend to the far right.
In the 2010s major scandals erupted over claims that Muslim gangs organised the sexual exploitation of teenage girls in Rotherham and Rochdale in the north of England. These claims lie behind the EDL chants of “Save Our Children” and “paedo Muslims off our street”.
These claims certainly had some credibility, however research has shown that such exploitation is widespread across England and that, according to a Home Office report, the offenders “are most commonly White (people)”.
Blame the Russians!
One of the most despicable episodes in this crisis has been the attempt by reactionary elements to blame the riots on hordes of Russian bots and trolls.
This was started by a former security minister, Stephen McPartland, with support from MI6, former BBC journalist asset Paul Mason, and the increasingly rabidly right wing Daily Telegraph, who accused Vladimir Putin of mounting a “disinformation operation” to foment violence in Britain, describing it as "part of the Russian playbook".
Under the recently defeated Conservative government wild accusations of hacking and political interference by Russia and China reached ever more hysterical levels.
The real reason for these claims is the desperate attempts by the most reactionary, warmongering elements of the ruling class to uphold Britain's rapidly declining ‘global role’, who even dream of regaining parts of their old empire, by collaborating with the Americans in wars, sanctions and attempted regime changes around the world.
Let us remember that these imperialist interventions have resulted in the deaths of several million people. 
A former head of MI6 claimed in an interview with the Telegraph that the Channel3 Now website, which picked up and spread the lies that the Liverpool attacker was a Muslim terrorist and illegal immigrant, was a Russian disinformation outlet. 
In fact Channel3 Now’s only Russian connection is that it bought a Russian-language YouTube car rallies channel years ago as a platform. Unfortunately the Channel3 Now story was reposted by RT News, and some pro-Russian Telegram channels, but none of this amounts to a genuine disinformation operation, and the Channel3 Now claims turned out to be a desperate ploy which was full of holes.
In fact far from having any Russian connections, the original ‘Muslim terrorist’ lie was a post on X by a woman in the North of England – who had also been temporarily removed by Twitter in 2021 for spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccines. She has since admitted to creating the post and apologised for the horrific consequences.
The Daily Telegraph also claimed recently that Russia and China were working to boost the following of the popular rapper Lowkey, an opponent of Britain’s wars, to manipulate public opinion in Britain in favour of the Palestinians through fake accounts.
But the Telegraph forgot to mention that its source for these claims was an agency led by Israeli military veterans, with 40 of its employees reserves in the Israeli military who were called up to fight in Gaza.
So claims that Russia tried to encourage the riots are actually part of a “British playbook” to justify spending £16.6 billion in military and economic support for Ukraine (official government figures from July 2024), backing Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza, and its continued participation in the killing of untold numbers of Yemenis – a war which the Western media has almost totally ignored.
The Zionist Hand
One final element in the anti-migrant violence is the role of Israel. Professor David Miller, who was sacked in 0ctober 2021 by Bristol University for his comments about Israel (later ruled wrongfully dismissed), said “the recent Islamophobic riots in the UK should be seen as the latest phase of Israel's war on British Muslims”. 
He says “Tommy Robinson… has been working for Israel since 2009 as part of the so-called 'counter-jihad' Islamophobia established by Israel” and is “paid as part of Israel’s Online Influencers Programme in response to Operation Al-Aqsa Storm”. 
Miller says that Israel’s “assets and operatives in the British political and media class such as Suella Braverman and Michael Gove” failed to close down pro-Palestinian protests. So “now the State of Israel is weaponising its cannon fodder on the white nationalist far-right, who have greater numbers than either Zionist street thugs or Iranian secularist extremists”. 
By 7th August the EDL violence effectively ended with a far bigger mass movement of anti-racists taking to the streets, but also with an extraordinary display of national unity against the right-wing violence. Police chiefs, national newspapers and almost all politicians praised the mobilisation of communities, and it was this, rather than fast track courts and heavy sentences for the rioters, which led the EDL supporters to give up their anti-migrant campaign. 
The reality is that without the presence of police the EDL rioters would have been met with overwhelming physical force against them.
However there are elements attempting to justify the protests, led by Nigel Farage and other Reform party leaders, along with some right-wing Conservatives MPs and former ministers alleging “two-tier policing”.
These are exactly the same elements who last autumn accused the police of being hard on right wing protesters and soft on the allegedly pro-terrorist “hate mobs” Palestine protests. Faced with bullying from Conservative ministers, London’s police chief, Mark Rowley, refused to accept that these protests were violent and staunchly defended their democratic right to peaceful protest. The pro-Israel Zionist counter protests at both national and local Palestine protests failed and in June were effectively abandoned. 
At the same time the disgusting campaign alleging a wave of antisemitic incidents, including violence, with claims that large parts of British cities were “no-go areas for Jews”, which was widely amplified across the mass media, faded away. If these claims were true, where is the epidemic of antisemitism now? 
The truth is that apart from a handful of incidents this “wave” was actually an Israeli-inspired disinformation operation.
The British ruling class has failed to close down the mass pro Palestinian protest movement (supported by 70 per cent of the population). This, along with the defeat of the anti-migrant protests has revealed the mass strength of progressive, anti-racist forces. 
During the latest violence the police response has been almost entirely directed against the far right. But we also have to recognise that the deepening crisis of capitalism in Britain has created the conditions for mass discontent and alienation. This involves much larger numbers of working people than the small racist groups who took to the streets last week.
These deep-seated problems have created the conditions for far-right groups to flourish, not only in Britain but in Western Europe and the USA, and the far right has temporarily taken advantage of them to stage an attempted uprising.
The weakness of Britain’s economy and the failure to provide decent incomes and basic, affordable services necessary for a civilised life, have not gone away, and with a ruling class which has set the financial conditions so that money can’t be found to fix those problems, there is no sign of any real solutions to the problems facing working people in Britain anytime soon.

Ukraine: NATO in deep crisis as the dangers to Zelensky grow

IUAFS solidarity with Donbas

 by Theo Russell

The current direction of the war in Ukraine has created an acute crisis in Western capitals, above all in Washington, and the position of Vladimir Zelensky, the president elected on a promise to end the war in Eastern Ukraine, now hangs by a thread.
We must make clear here that this is not a war between Ukraine and Russia; this is a war forced on Russia by the NATO alliance. Ukraine is merely a proxy for NATO and is paying a horrific price for this war.
The weaknesses of the once mighty NATO alliance have been exposed: after decades of relocating factories to developing countries they have now discovered that they are no longer able to produce sufficient weapons for a major sustained war.
In contrast Russia, which Western experts love to claim has a GDP the size of Italy, has proved to be a manufacturing superpower with a highly skilled workforce and mighty technological and scientific resources.
Russia has not only increased arms production, from bullets to hypersonic missiles, by several times, but has developed and improved those weapons during the fighting in Ukraine, while maintaining growth at 3.2 per cent, according to the IMF.
Ukraine’s military have discovered that Soviet-era arms, whose designs date back to the 1980s, have proved more effective on the battlefield than the vast amounts of Western weapons supplied since 2022.
Zelensky’s presidential term officially ended on 25th  March, and Russian officials have now declared that under Ukraine’s constitution he has been replaced by the speaker of the Kiev Rada as Ukraine’s highest representative.
Zelensky has become increasingly erratic and unstable as the direction of the war has turned sharply against him. By ruling out any talks with the Russian Federation, and continuing to insist on totally unrealistic terms for peace negotiations, he has clearly become an obstacle to Washington’s requirements.
His constant demands for weapons which NATO has actually run out of, and frequent attacks on his most important allies, have done nothing to improve his chances of survival.
The growing dangers for Zelensky have now been spelt out in an extraordinary article in the Financial Times (FT) on 30 May, “US to offer Ukraine security pact as tensions rise between allies”. The FT has been a leading source of inside news on Ukraine, and is believed to have very high level contacts in Washington.
The article reports detailed and open criticism of Zelensky’s actions from “more than a dozen current and former Ukrainian officials and G7 country diplomats in Kyiv”.
The high level group of officials and diplomats questioned “the removal of top government and military officials the US had worked closely with”, including the firing of commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny in February and infrastructure minister Alexander Kubrakov, both of whom “… enjoyed close working relationships with US and EU officials”. The FT reveals that “G7 ambassadors have warned Zelensky’s government about what they see as disruptive and inexplicable moves.”
It goes on: “A senior Ukrainian official said Zelensky has grown more ‘emotional and nervous’ over the situation on the battlefield and what they say the president sees as Washington’s eagerness to start negotiations with Russia”.
Another Ukrainian official raised Zelensky’s obsession with the US-inspired “peace summit” in Switzerland on 15-16 June, which has already been abandoned by all the major players.
Zelensky is desperately clinging to the futile hope that presidents Biden and Xi will attend the summit, and asking his officials to put pressure on them. But after hearing that Biden has decided that a Democrat fund-raising dinner is more important, Zelensky publicly criticised him.
“Several members of Zelensky’s own government,” the article says, “expressed worries about Zelensky’s attacks on US officials – including Secretary of State Antony Blinken after his recent visit to Kiev. One of them spelt it out: “What do you say in America? Do not bite the hand that feeds you.”
Such veiled criticisms by very senior Ukrainian politicians do not bode well for Zelensky’s immediate future. In fact this effective group denunciation of Zelensky suggests the he has effectively outlived his usefulness to his masters in Washington.
Evidence of Zelensky’s growing instability has also come from Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who says that in late April in meetings with foreign ambassadors “he spent most of the time improvising hectically and almost hysterically to demand support for his 'peace formula' as a means of forcing Russia to its knees".
US media reports describe Zelensky screaming at his generals –  convinced he was being lied to about the fighting near Kharkov – conjuring up images of Hitler in his Berlin bunker.
Meanwhile Beijing, which has played a major neutral role in encouraging Ukraine peace talks, has explained China’s decision not to join the Swiss summit.
On 31st  May Mao Ning, a senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official, said that although China “attaches great importance to Switzerland organizing the first summit on peace in Ukraine,” the conference “needs to meet the three important elements: recognition from both Russia and Ukraine, equal participation of all parties, and fair discussion of all peace plans, otherwise the peace conference can hardly play a substantive role for restoring peace”.
Mao said this was the position “Jointly issued by China and Brazil recently, and reflects the universal concern of the international community, especially the vast developing countries based on what we have heard from various parties.
She said China “Will continue to promote talks for peace in our own way, and maintain communication with all parties.”
In March Sergey Lavrov said that president Putin “has repeatedly spoken about our readiness to start serious talks”. However both Putin and Lavrov have made it clear that any negotiations must be based on realistic proposals, and above all must recognise Russia’s fundamental security interests.
The truth is that ever since February 2014 Western leaders have blatantly lied about Ukraine and sabotaged every opportunity for peace.
They lied about a “Russian invasion” in 2014, they pushed Ukraine into starting the war by launching the Anti-Terrorist Operation, a huge military offensive to crush the anti-Maidan uprisings in eastern Ukraine, and they used the Minsk peace process to deceive Russia while arming and training Ukrainian forces.
Five days before the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation, Ukraine launched another massive offensive against the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Then in late March 2022 NATO wrecked the Ukraine-Russia peace plan, since then over 100,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or injured.
Incredibly, these talks were initiated by Zelensky himself, who asked the then Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to contact Vladimir Putin, backed by Turkish President Erdogan and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
Schröder later told the media: “The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed. My impression was that nothing could happen because everything was decided in Washington.”
According to senior UN official Michael von der Schulenburg, “NATO had already decided at a special summit on March 24 2022, not to support these peace negotiations”.
On April 5  2022 the Washington Post reported: “For some in NATO, it’s better for Ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too soon or at too high a price for Kiev and the rest of Europe.”
The truth is that the Russian Federation did everything possible to avoid a full-scale war in Ukraine, spending eight years supporting the Minsk process plan, involving simple autonomy for the then Donetsk and Lugansk Republics, while Ukraine, with NATO’s support, broke ceasefire after ceasefire and thousands of civilians in those republics died in constant Ukrainian attacks.
The aim of the NATO alliance all along has been to force war on the Russian Federation, and now the whole world can see the terrible price which has been paid for a war which could so easily have been avoided.