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....

Eleni Varikas speaking in Paris in 2017.

This article, written by Alan Wald, is on behalf of the Against the Current editorial board.

ELENI VARIKAS, A revolutionary Marxist-Feminist French-Greek professor of political philosophy, best known for her pioneering use of the concept of gender in French research, died of heart failure in Paris in early January 2026. She was 76 years old and the life partner of Michael Löwy, the French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. Both were contributors to ATC and good friends of its sponsoring organization, Solidarity.

For those of us who knew Eleni personally, our memories are like precious gemstones. Who can....

January 10, Houston, TX: One of 60 demonstrations DSA held as part of a National Day of Action. (Folko Mueller)

RAGE HAS ERUPTED across the United States following the cold-blooded execution of Renee Nicole Good, 37, by Immigrant and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross on January 7 as masked ICE gangs roamed the cold streets of Minneapolis looking for suspected immigrants to snatch.

The fury of demonstrators marching in their hundreds, or thousands, in dozens of cities was inflamed by the immediate announcements of Trump officials that the shooting was a “justified self-defense” provoked by an “act of domestic terrorism.”

As other cars drove unimpeded around her vehicle, two agents approached Renee Good’s SUV. She had just dropped her six-year old son at school....

1. Chronicle of an Announced Attack

THE UNITED STATES’ military intervention against Venezuela, culminating in Nicolás Maduro’s kidnapping on January 3, 2026, has been in preparation for a long time. In an article published in February 2019, entitled “Donald Trump, the End of Globalism, and the Crisis in Venezuela,”(1) I argued that the then-president revealed with unprecedented candor the true objectives of U.S. imperialism: not the defense of democracy or human rights, nor the (selective) respect for international treaties based on liberal ideology, but control over resources with strategic and economic value. Already at that time, Trump openly criticized his predecessors for not having “taken the oil” from Venezuela or Iraq, or the rare minerals from Afghanistan, making explicit a predatory logic that liberal discourse traditionally concealed....

Teachers struck for several weeks, demanding permanent employment, reinstatement of those sacked and salaries to match soaring prices.

LARGE RALLIES IN support of Syria’s ruling authorities were organised last month across various cities controlled by Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government. Whilst they were presented as demonstrations ‘against division’ and for the unity of the country, sectarian slogans were heard amongst protesters.

It was a similar case for the massive demonstrations celebrating the first anniversary of the Assad regime’s fall. These events highlight....

Trump began his military operation by targeting boats, then moved on to capturing oil tankers in preparation for kidnapping Maduro and his wife the morning of January 3. (venezuelanalysis,com)

We reproduce an article expressing the initial reaction of the Ukrainian left-wing organization Sotsialny Rukh (Social Movement). The article was written in the hours following the announcement of the attacks by the United States armed forces against Venezuela. Edited machine translation.

The morning of 3 January marks the beginning of a widespread attack on democracy and the relative peace of the peoples of Latin America -- and far beyond....

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…

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....

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,...

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....