International Viewpoint

International Viewpoint

Austria: Elections to the national parliament

1 day 14 hours ago

The right-wing extremist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) under Herbert Kickl received 29% of the vote and was elected by 1.4 million, almost twice as many voters as five years ago. This is the best result for the FPÖ since its founding in 1955; in 2019, it was 770,000. Compared to the last election for the National Council (the parliament of the Federal Republic of Austria), where did the voters come from? 76% voted for the FPÖ again, 443,000 came from the conservative party ÖVP and 258,000 from non-voters.

- IV597 - October 2024 / Austria
EF, WH and PS

Harris and Trump Campaign Amidst Strikes and Protests

3 days 18 hours ago

Former president Donald Trump and Vice-president Kamala Harris continue to campaign in a neck-and-neck race, both holding large rallies in swing states in an attempt to pull ahead. Trump continues his racist rants against immigrants, whom he calls “stone-cold killers,” and his vicious insults against Harris, now calling her “mentally disabled.” He has blamed immigrants, released from other countries' prisons and mental hospitals, for an invasion of the country that has “poisoned our blood” and destroyed the economy, taking jobs from American Blacks and Latinos. “And if you think about it,” says Trump, “only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

- IV597 - October 2024 / United States (USA)
Dan La Botz

Comrade President? Change and Continuity in Sri Lanka

4 days 18 hours ago

Anura Kumara Dissanayake's (AKD) victory on 21 September as the candidate of the centre-left National People's Power (NPP) coalition is highly significant for symbolic and substantive reasons. His predecessors have been from the social and political elite that has mis-ruled Sri Lanka since independence from Britain in 1948. Some were born into that elite, while a couple (Ranasinghe Premadasa, Maithripala Sirisena) made their way into it through the business of politics before they occupied the presidency. In contrast, Dissanayaka's political life has been as an outsider and critic of that elite.

- IV596-September 2024 / Sri Lanka
B. Skanthakumar

Gender and sexualities: the reactionary offensive of the far right

5 days 18 hours ago

The French publishing house Editions Amsterdam has just published the first book from the La Boétie Institute , entitled Extrême droite: la résistible ascension. Coordinated by Ugo Palheta , with a preface by the historian Johann Chapoutot and an afterword by Clémence Guetté, this work aims to provide intellectual weapons, rooted in contemporary research ,on the far right, in order to understand and combat the rise of the FN/RN (National Front/National Rally).

- IV596-September 2024 / France, Women, LGBT, Far Right
Cassandre Begous , Fanny Gallot

Ukraine under Russian occupation

6 days 18 hours ago

Since the fall of President Yanukovych in 2014, all Russian interventions in Ukraine - from the annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war in the Donbass to the February 2022 invasion - have been presented by Putin as responses to an ‘anti-Russian, NATO-backed fascist coup'. A part of the international left has embraced this narrative, unlike the small Ukrainian left in the making.

- IV596-September 2024 / Russia, Ukraine
Catherine Samary

The Ukrainian left is building on several fronts

1 week ago

“The aim here is to shed light on the specific profile of this young left, based on its activist practice at the heart of Ukrainian society and breaking with the dominant contradictory interpretations of the ‘Euro-Maidan' (2013-2014) that divide the left and are exploited by Putin.”

- Features / Ukraine
Catherine Samary

The Populist Threat and the Response of the Left

1 week ago

The need is greater than ever for a consolidated voice of the working class and the poor. On the one hand, daily community protests seem to indicate a population that is not by any means apathetic. But when it comes to elections, the majority don't participate. No political party has been able to capture the imagination of the mass of people who experience unemployment, sewage in the street, erratic water supply, unaffordable electricity and intolerable levels of gender-based violence. Yet enough of those people are desperate and sufficiently concerned to protest.

There are a number of candidates vying to capture this imagination. The field is becoming crowded. But they are by no means genuine supporters of the interests of the working class and the poor.

- IV596-September 2024 / South Africa
Amandla!

Strategic Reflections on the Escalation of Israeli Intimidation in Lebanon

1 week 1 day ago

Not even an hour had passed after I wrote my article of a week ago (“Lebanon and the Israeli Strategy of Intimidation”) when the Israeli intelligence agencies launched a mass terror operation in Lebanon by blowing up individual communication devices in two successive waves over two days, killing more than 40 people and wounding more than 3,500.

- IV596-September 2024 / Israel, Lebanon
Gilbert Achcar

Brandenburg elections - a black eye?

1 week 2 days ago

The 2024 cycle of German regional elections finished with the elections to the Brandenburg Landtag on 21 September. As was the case on 1 September in Saxony and Thuringia, the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) party achieved historic results and can feel a winner. Co-president Alice Weidel can be jubilant: ‘The East is blue' (the AfD's colour scheme).

- IV596-September 2024 / Germany
Manuel Kellner

Portugal: Deadly forest fires

1 week 4 days ago

Seven people have died and 118 have been injured in the fires that have been raging since September 15 in the north and centre of the country. In just three days, 2024 has become the year with the fourth-largest area burned in the last decade.

- IV596-September 2024 / Portugal
Bloco de Esquerda

Winter Fuel Allowance: ecosocialism versus ageism, austerity and poverty

1 week 6 days ago

On 10 September 2024 348 MPs (overwhelmingly Labour MPs) voted through regulations to cut the winter fuel allowance for all pensioners except those in receipt of means-tested benefits such as pension credit. In this article Liz Lawrence explores what this suggests for the direction of the Labour government and what remains of the Labour Left. She also discusses pensioners' poverty and resistance and how ecosocialists respond.

- IV596-September 2024 / Britain
Liz Lawrence

Brazil is burning

2 weeks ago

The fires and air pollution across the country demonstrate the insufficiency of government measures and demand popular mobilization for the climate emergency

- IV596-September 2024 / Brazil, Climate
Israel Dutra, Roberto Robaina

The Summer ‘Uni', a barricade against the political right and social demobilisation

2 weeks 1 day ago

The last days of August saw the 14th edition of the Summer University of Anticapitalistas with the slogan ‘A new internationalism in the face of war and climate barbarism' with the just over 750 people attending. This year there was a significant increase in the number of young people as a result of the work to establish the student movement, the role played in promoting solidarity with Palestine and the intervention around the queer question.

- News from around the world / Spanish state, Fourth International
Manuel Garí

Macron scorns popular vote...and puts himself in the hands of the RN

2 weeks 1 day ago

‘The people have, through their own fault, lost the confidence of the government...Wouldn't it then be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?' Bertolt Brecht, ‘The Solution', 1953

- IV596-September 2024 / France
Léon Crémieux

Workers Strike Boeing, Stopping Production of the 737

2 weeks 3 days ago

In an angry, determined, yet festive action, with music blaring, airhorns blasting, and fireworks shooting into the sky, 33,000 Boeing workers walked out on strike at plants in Washington, Oregon, and California on September 13, stopping production of the Boeing 737 plane and other aircraft. The Boeing strike by the International Association of Machinists (IAM), the biggest strike of this year so far, is principally over wages and pensions.

- IV596-September 2024 / United States (USA), Trade unions/workplace organizing
Dan La Botz

The Algerian people reiterate their rejection of military rule

2 weeks 4 days ago

Despite the confusion that accompanied the announcement of the recent presidential elections' results in Algeria, one thing is clear and certain: the Algerian people overwhelmingly reject military rule, after having devoted their Hirak [movement] five years ago to demanding an end to this rule and its replacement with a democratic civilian authority. Indeed, the confusion itself is a direct result of this fact, which emerged through what were the real stakes in these elections, as no one could have the slightest doubt about the victory of the military establishment's candidate, Abdelmadjid Tebboune.

- IV596-September 2024 / Algeria
Gilbert Achcar
Checked
3 hours 29 minutes ago
International Viewpoint
International Viewpoint, the monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International, is a window to radical alternatives world-wide, carrying reports, analysis and debates from all corners of the globe. Correspondents in over 50 countries report on popular struggles, and the debates that are shaping the left of tomorrow.
Subscribe to International Viewpoint feed
Langue