Against the Current

HISTORIAN VAN GOSSE writes: “The many forms of despotism crowding in around us… represent a fundamental counter-revolution whose only counterpart would be the decades-long ‘Redemption’ that overturned Reconstruction’s biracial democracy in the former Confederacy and locked in White Supremacy for three-quarters of a century.” ("Red Scares — and a Blue Scare? A Brief History of Repression in the United States")

That specter of enormous rollbacks in the long struggle for racial justice will be our focus here, even though it’s hard to see past the headlines of the Trump regime’s nonstop atrocities and swirling chaos....

José Antonio Kast, the far-right candidate won decisvely against Jeanette Jara.

WITH THE SECOND round of the Chilean election, José Antonio Kast won a decisive victory over the progressive candidate Jeanette Jara (58% to 42%). When Kast is sworn in as president on March 11, he will be the first far right-wing president since 1990....

DONALD TRUMP’S GIANT back hoes have knocked down the east wing of the White House to construct a ballroom in his own honor....

We, the Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist–Leninist) and Radical Socialist (India), condemn in the strongest terms the current wave of communal violence, religious fundamentalism, and attacks on democratic and secular spaces in South Asia, particularly in Bangladesh, and the dangerous political repercussions these developments are producing in India…

Trump on a racist tirade again.

ONCE AGAIN, THE white nationalist U.S. president blames immigrants from “Third World” countries for the decline of “Western civilization.”

Trump’s new target are people from Somalia living in the United States. He slams all Somali people in the country as “garbage” that should be removed. Trump especially despises people from Black Africa.

Before this latest rant, a week earlier Trump viciously attacked the Afghan community after a CIA-trained gunman attacked two white West Virginia National Guardsmen in Washington,...

The Moragahakanda Laggala Bridge on the Moragahakanda–Hettipola Road has been washed away by powerful floodwaters. The bridge was an important connection linking the Matale, Polonnaruwa, and Kurunegala districts, facilitating agricultural transport and access to the Moragahakanda Reservoir -— the largest in the Mahaweli Development Project. Heavy rains continue to trigger extensive flooding across multiple areas of the country.

CYCLONE DITWAH RIPPED through Sri Lanka between 27 and 29 November. The toll is devastating. Seven days later, the official count is 486 deaths and 341 missing. To which should be added five navy and one air-force officer killed in rescue operations; and an electricity board technician electrocuted while repairing a power line. As search teams reach previously inaccessible areas this week, the fatality count has grown exponentially, and some fear it will climb into four digits. We may never know the true number.

Hundreds of thousands are sheltering in state, community, and private facilities, as well as with family and friends. More than 41,000 homes have been fully or partially destroyed. As many as 108 roads are currently impassable; 247 km of road are damaged; 40 bridges are destroyed, isolating homes and hamlets, and hampering rescue and relief efforts. Electricity, water supply, internet, telephone, and transport services have been disrupted in all 25 districts. Over 1.5 million people....

Sotsialnyi Rukh

UKRAINE's SOCIAL MOVEMENT (Sotsialnyi Rukh) published this resolution, adopted at their annual conference, on their website September 28, 2025. This is a Google translation of their resolution. The first paragraph presciently identifies the problem of corruption that broke out in media with the charges against top officials for a $100 million kickback scheme. The body of the resolution expands the analysis and proposes remedies....

Russian invasion of Ukraine, Viewsridge, CC BY-SA 4.0

IMPERIALIST BULLYING IS rarely so open and brazen. Donald Trump demanded last week that Ukraine accept his surrender plan for Ukraine by Thanksgiving Day, November 27, or lose what little remains of U.S. support for Ukraine, which is the sharing of satellite intelligence about Russian military positions and the sale of arms to Ukraine....

Auricelia Arapiun

“We don't sell our land because it is like our mother. Our territory is our body. And we don't sell our body. We don't sell our mother. We wouldn't sell it, because it is sacred.

“And we start suffering pressures of invasion, pressure from mining, from agribusiness, which has expanded a lot, pressure from logging companies, which are deforesting our territories. And we have been resisting.” —Auricelia Arapiun, Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB).

Second Ecosocialist Meeting, Belém, Brazil, November 2025.
(Participation included 99 organizations and more than 350 people, including a strong presence of organizations representing Indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants.)

WE GATHER AT moment of profound capitalist attacks on life,...

Milei’s far-right party's success in local elections is part of a broader reorganization of global capital.

Despite allegations of corruption and financial problems, Argentinian president Javier Milei’s party pulled off a mid-term victory.

THE MIDTERM ELECTION results in Argentina handed a political victory to Javier Milei’s far-right government of Javier Milei, despite recent economic and political problems.

Indeed, there were currency runs and financial turmoil amid a decline in consumer spending and recessionary trends in production, with a resurgence of price increases and significant limits on productive recovery. At the same time, there was an increase in allegations of corruption, political scandals involving figures with links to drug trafficking, and fractures within the ruling party.

Despite the turbulence and critical forecasts, more than 40 percent....

Boris Kagarlitsky is serving a five-year sentence while suffering from high blood pressure.

“Stop speaking out or even worse can happen to you”

November 12, 2025 Media Statement from the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign

The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign is pleased to announce that Boris Kagarlitsky was....

Symbol of U.S. imperialism, Udo Keppler, cover of Puck magazine, June 29, 1904.

DURING ITS FIRST nine months, the Trump administration has deployed warships and military infrastructure to the Caribbean, blown up small boats accused of drug trafficking, imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian products — in opposition to the outcome of the democratic trial against former President Jair Bolsonaro and other coup plotters — and exerted extreme pressure on the Mexican government to force it to reduce the flow of Latin American migrants across the border and combat local drug cartels.

These are just a few elements of the brewing storm, whose explanation cannot be reduced to the strident and unstable personality of the neo-fascist president in the United States. The heinous televised murder of those on the small boats in Caribbean waters....

Global Battlefields:
Memoir of a Legendary Public Intellectual from the Global South,
Walden Bello
Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2025. 321 pp $30.95 ?978 1963892109

AT ONCE INTIMATE and wide-ranging, Walden Bello’s Global Battlefields begins with a discussion of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, a celebrated Indonesian intellectual jailed in 1948-9 for revolutionary activities against Dutch occupying forces. In 1959-60, Toer publicly defended the Chinese minority and became a beacon of the Indonesian left.

This was during the period when independent Indonesia gave birth to the largest independent mass socialist movement in the world, some 20 million strong,...

Tom Alter

Contact the Committee to Defend Tom Alter for more information and to get involved in this important defense work.

On October 12 Suzi Weissman interviewed Professor Tom Alter, a tenured professor at Texas State University and author of Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth the Transplanted Roots of Farmer Labor Radicalism in Texas for KPFK's "Beneath the Surface" program. A popular professor, he was fired on the basis of a well-known neo-fascist's filming of an online conference where he was discussing different methods of movement organizing.

Suzi Weissman: Welcome to "Beneath the Surface." I'm Suzi Weissman. Professor Tom Alter, a tenured historian at Texas State University, was fired on September 10th after he was accused of inciting violence in a video of him speaking at a socialist conference. His remarks about organizing and defending workers was secretly recorded....