It’s still the same old story…

...from the likes of Nigel Farage who’ve been stoking up the flames of racist violence in Southampton following the trial and conviction of the young Sikh responsible for the death of a teenager in a fight last December.
That's not to say there aren't serious questions to be answered about the way the Southampton police handled the incident, or indeed about their training and their general policy in dealing with violence of this nature. 
But there’s no doubt that the enraged mob on Southampton’s streets, headed by Tommy Robinson and urged on from afar by Nigel Farage and the American hi-tech tycoon Elon Musk, exploited genuine anger at the conduct of the local police at the incident that led to the death of  the student. These people, to be sure, are not fascists or Nazis in the conventional sense (though some fascists and neo-nazis were amongst the mob that attacked the police). But they are certainly racists, trying to incite a pogrom in Southampton. The ring-leaders deliberately ignore the fact that the fatal incident was not racially motivated (the killer's claim that he had been racially abused was rejected at his trial) not to mention the calls from the victim's family and those of the killer for calm.
None of them care about the victim. Nothing is said about root cause of the spike in violence on the street – the alienation of the youth and the decadence of capitalism in its final days.  No, as far as these people are concerned it’s all down to immigrants and asylum seekers. Kick them out and it’ll all be better – like the never-never land of the 1950s they talk about when there was full employment and everyone knew their place. Or so they say...
The NCP doesn’t support "open borders". We accept that all states, including the UK, have the right to control immigration and emigration in accordance with their resources and    economic needs.
But we are opposed to any controls based on ethnic or religious grounds. Asylum-seekers are different. The UK is bound by international agreements to receive those claiming asylum regardless of their countries of origin. Asylum seekers must be treated humanely and their claims dealt with swiftly. They should be allowed to work to help to pay their own way while their status is being reviewed (a right that was revoked by the Blair government) which is also a demand of the TUC. 
 The ruling class tries to confine the political arena to endless debates on law and order, immigration and the European Union. We have to break the bourgeois consensus that uses immigration to divert working people from the real issues that affect their lives. We must put socialism back on the working class agenda!

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.

They shall not pass

By New Worker correspondent

 
On 4 October 1936 the working people of East London, inspired by communists and other left-wing movements, clashed with Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts in Cable Street, Stepney.  They were able to halt and force back the fascists. Pogroms in Europe had forced many Jews to flee to London. The fascist legions which had previously been supported by the Daily Mail with headlines such as 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' were opposed by the Daily Worker with calls for people to come out onto the streets to block the Mosleyites.
Those events of the past century may be remembered as today's right-wing extremists again play the race card to stir up hatred and fear.  In violent protests they abused minorities damaging their property and provoking confrontations with the police.  As was the case in the 1930s local people have turned out, supported by trade unions, left and centre political parties and organisations such as Say No to Racism, to send a clear message of opposition to fascism. Anti-fascist rallies have been held in many large British cities. People gathered in parts of London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Southampton, Newcastle, Liverpool, Bristol and many other places up and down the country.
Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service said "we put thousands of officers on the street and I think that the show of unity from communities, together defeated the challenges we have seen”.
Three young girls were killed in a horrific stabbing in Southport.  A 17 year old teenager has been charged with their murder. The fascists saw this as an ideal opportunity to begin their campaign of attacks by spreading lies on social media that a Muslim immigrant was involved. In fact the accused is a British born Christian. The ultra-right are motivated by race hatred. They are generally poorly educated people who consider other races to be inferior. At various times and places they must always have someone to hate, either people with a different skin colour or culture, gays or those they consider to be political opponents such as communists or socialists. Behind them are the men in smart suits who are the real promoters of fascism.
Capitalism is in crisis which is reflected by increasing authoritarian and reactionary trends.  Racism and fascism are actively fostered by the ruling class and its supporters when capitalism and imperialism are in trouble. Their strategy aims to divide the working class, to curtail long term rights and at all cost to prevent socialism.  The common characteristics of fascism outlined by R Palme-Dutt in his work Fascism and Social Revolution were as follows: 

1. To maintain capitalism in the face of revolution
2. Increase capitalist dictatorship
3. The destruction of working class movements 
4. To suppress parliamentary democracy
5. The extension of state monopolistic organisation of finance, industry and commerce
6. A closer concentration of each imperialist group into a single economic-political unit
7. The resolution of conflict by means of war

Racist ideology insists that that some races, their own, are born superior and others inferior.  Racism may take the form of discrimination, segregation, prejudice or genocide. It may be imposed by apartheid but is not confined just to the question of colour as shown by Zionism and Nazism. The ideology was adopted by the capitalist class to justify colonialism. Indigenous peoples were portrayed as lower order human beings in a physical, cultural and moral sense.  It is an established and deliberate practice of imperialism to promote conflict between different ethnic groups and to then divide and rule for their own selfish interest. 
The New Communist Party of Britain has repeatedly warned of the dangers of advancing fascism both at home and overseas. In its ultimate form it represents the direct rule of the most reactionary and ruthless sections of the ruling class. Western, so called Democracies, have powerful military industrial complexes who control policy, making a parliamentary road to socialism all but impossible.  Involvement of the private sector in state administration is having the effect of marginalising the domestic process.  As the capitalist crisis deepens and Imperialism becomes more desperate fascists have been allowed to play a major role in Ukraine.  In Britain sinister forces lurk in the wings as the public start to lose faith in the parliamentary process. 
In order to distract attention from an appallingly bad record of governance and economic incompetence successive power holders in Britain, with the full support of the mass media, use the issue of immigration to transfer blame to others. Irrational hatred and fear have been created.  Against a background of never-ending austerity, spreading poverty, failing public services and crumbling infrastructure the extreme right-wing has attempted to harness the discontent to support their hideous agenda. Social issues such as housing shortages have exacerbated tensions, all of which has led to a witch hunt by people seeking someone to blame, other than the government whose fault it is. Unthinkingly a few have been drawn into organised, violent thuggery. 

We can beat the racists!

Thousands of people have taken to the streets to counter the racist mobs who terrorised asylum seekers, members of the Muslim community, and other ethnic minorities in a wave of violence that swept through a number of towns in the north of England last week.

The bourgeois media that routinely scapegoats immigrants, asylum-seekers and ethnic minorities goes into top gear whenever there’s a Labour government while some politicians will always court the extremists  when there’s a leadership contest in the offing. And summer always brings out the football thugs who’ve nothing to do when their team’s not playing.

 But though egged on by the likes of Nigel Farage and the man who calls himself “Tommy Robinson” the riots were clearly organised by a hidden hand that spread the lies on social media about the murder of three young girls in Southport that sparked off the violence. 

The fact that racist attacks continued even after it was confirmed that the Southport murderer was neither a Muslim or an asylum-seeker shows that covert forces were at work – though whether they are far-right extremists, maverick intelligence officers or cynical politicians seeking to exploit the genuine grievances of white workers remains to be seen.   

The direct hand of the state can be ruled out on this occasion. The bourgeoisie don’t like random violence. Torching cars, looting shops and burning libraries is not in their play-book. They know it can easily spread to the homes of the well-to-do if not immediately curbed. So the Tory media has closed ranks with the Starmer government in support of the police and the judiciary. Hundreds of rioters have been arrested. Trials are being fast-tracked and three men have already been jailed for violent disorder.

The New Communist Party recognises the need for any sovereign state to set an immigration policy in accordance with its resources. But we firmly oppose any immigration policy that discriminates, either directly or indirectly, on the basis of race, creed, colour or gender.

We call for the repeal of the Immigration and Asylum Acts of the 1990s, passed by both Tory and Labour governments, which make it very difficult for many genuine asylum seekers to establish their claims.

Asylum seekers must be treated humanely and their claims dealt with swiftly. While this process takes place they must be given decent accommodation and welfare benefits to survive. No asylum seekers should be locked up unless there is good reason, with evidence, to believe they are criminals and no child asylum seeker should ever be locked up.

Scapegoating minorities is an old trick the ruling class use to divert working people away from their real problems. In the old days it was the Jews – now its the immigrants and the refugees. The real problem is capitalism itself – a system that enables a handful of parasites to live the lives of Roman emperors on the backs of the millions upon millions of working people.

Long-standing anti-fascist movements like Stand Up to Racism mobilised tens of thousands of people this week to defend their communities from racist attacks. That’s all right as far as it goes. But we have to build an even bigger movement to tackle the underlying causes of violence and drive the racists off our streets. 

Calm returns to Kazakhstan

getting ready to leave

by New Worker correspondent

An uneasy calm has returned to the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan following a week of riots that pushed the country to the brink of civil war. The draconian price hikes have been suspended for six months. The hastily despatched Russian-led peace-keeping force is preparing to leave, and the government is trying to pick up the pieces following days of looting and violence that ended with 18 law enforcement officers and hundreds of civilians dead.
    Some 10,000 people have been detained amidst the unrest that began when the government doubled the price for liquefied petroleum gas and bumped up the tariffs on water supply, sanitation and heating at the beginning of the new year. But the mass street protests supported by the independent unions and the underground socialist movements soon turned ugly after an angry mob torched the presidential palace in the former capital, Almaty, whilst gunmen emerged to confront the police and security forces in the new capital, Nur Sultan, and many other cities in Kazakhstan.
    Who’s behind it nobody knows. A former Kazakh minister living in Paris has offered to lead the protest movement. Mukhtar Ablyazov, who fled the country after being accused of stealing $6 million from a Kazakh bank, sees himself as the "leader" of the ongoing protests and claims that he has routinely consulted people on the ground in Almaty on tactical issues. He says he’s ready to return to his homeland and lead a “provisional government” once the protests reach the right magnitude.
    The Russia media say the rapid descent into bloodshed shows the hidden hand of the Western powers trying to orchestrate regime-change in this strategic, oil-rich Central Asian republic, whilst the Tokayev government openly accuses sectarian Muslim movements of being behind some of the violence.
    ISIS and Al-Qaeda are said to be operating in the south of the country, and a man from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan who was arrested in Almaty told the police he was paid $200 to cross the border and take part in the protests.
    When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the corrupt Kazakh communist government of Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev carried on Yeltsin-style to plunder the country in the name of the ‘free market’ for nearly three decades. Whilst most Kazakhs were reduced to near-poverty, these former communists amassed untold riches and spent millions more on ludicrous vanity projects designed to boost the international image of the Nazarbayev clan.
    Although the “Leader of the Nation” stepped down in 2019, Nazarbayev kept his seat on the powerful State Security Committee until now. Many now believe that his successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has taken advantage of the chaos to finally shunt the old man into political oblivion.
    In Moscow the decision to send peace-keeping troops to Kazakhstan has divided the communist forces. All of them support the basic demands of the protesters. But the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) says the intervention was an “adequate and timely measure” to prevent an imperialist “colour revolution” whereas the much smaller Russian Communist Workers Party gives full support to the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, which is calling for “organised resistance to military-police terror” in their country.
    The Union of Communist Parties – CPSU, however, warns that: “Having unleashed the bloody massacres in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, global imperialism, led by the United States, is getting closer and closer to the borders of Russia and Belarus. Hybrid war against them is already being waged on the territories of Ukraine, Moldova and the Transcaucasian states. Now the Central Asian republics are on the line. Today, it is especially important not to allow the state sovereignty of the largest of them-Kazakhstan-to be undermined. Terrorist centres that are generously financed from abroad have been active there for a long time. It is they who play a key role in fomenting pogroms, destabilising the system of government, and brutal massacres of law enforcement officers and soldiers…we support those political forces of the Republic which, defending social justice, are now resolutely fighting against the looting and lawlessness which prevailed in these days of January.”