Alternatives International Journal

Reimagining the World

Catherine Pappas* — 2026-11-06T18:14:00Z

When I was asked to write about Alternatives' contribution to international solidarity in Quebec, I spent a long time going in circles, desperately thinking where to begin. But stories always have more than one beginning.

Last year, we invited organizations and activists from different parts of the world to help build a new transnational network: Global Solidarity Against Fascism. Faced with the worst, we felt compelled to collectively imagine another vision of the world. The idea may not yet have been fully formed, and it was certainly audacious. But no one hesitated. The urgency was simply too compelling.

This year in June, members of the network gathered in Montreal for the first time. We came together to take stock of the political moment, explore possibilities for collective action, and think strategically about how we might begin to envision the world that will emerge after fascism.

There were people from Sudan, the United States, India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, as well as Toronto, Brazil, Ecuador, Morocco, Jordan and Palestine. Together, we agreed on one thing: despair is not an option. The genocide in Palestine and the advance of fascism-in all its different forms-may have shattered some of our illusions, but the need for solidarity has never been greater.

It is from this beginning, then, that I have chosen to tell the story of Alternatives. At a time when crises are multiplying and converging, pushing us toward ever more critical tipping points, this new chapter-still filled with the excitement and anticipation that come with a first encounter-allows us to reaffirm that another world is still possible.

The Formative Years

In 1994, visionary activists from a range of groups, unions and social movements came together to create a left-wing, progressive organization committed to social change. Like the era itself, Alternatives was born with a desire to shake things up and work to build a better world.

At the beginning of the decade, the victory over apartheid in South Africa had sparked tremendous hope for justice and freedom. At the same time, the deregulation of financial markets and the privatization of public services were pushing the existing system into crisis and creating new generations of people left behind.

Alternatives emerged in a world in profound upheaval-one marked by war, genocide and occupation, and swept up in a wave of free-trade agreements that promised prosperity while deepening inequality, undermining public services and weakening social rights.

Yet the mid-1990s were also years of extraordinary social and political ferment. Around the world, people and movements-alter-globalists, feminists, trade unionists and environmentalists-were organizing to resist injustice and dispossession, patriarchal structures, apartheid, militarization and colonization. From social forums to counter-summits, struggles for peace, social justice, rights and equality were taking shape in South Africa and Chiapas, Palestine and India, Brazil and Argentina. These movements laid the foundations for Alternatives and would shape its political direction for years to come.

Three organizations formed its initial core: the Centre d'études et de ressources sur l'Asie du Sud (CERAS), the Centre d'études arabes pour le développement (CEAD), and the Centre d'information et de documentation sur le Mozambique et l'Afrique australe (CIDMAA). Around them gathered scores of activists, associations and networks, expanding the organization's reach and influence.

Some of the founding members had spent years in solidarity movement fighting apartheid in South Africa. Others were active in Palestine solidarity struggles and across the Arab world. Still others were involved in people-to-people peace movements in South Asia. Long before Alternatives officially existed, it already carried with it a history of political activism, partnerships and collective mobilization-experiences that would continue to shape its work.

In March 1996, Alternatives' general assembly declared:

“Popular civil society organizations-trade unions, groups defending the unemployed, women, youth, the environment and human rights-are essential not only to the search for another future for the majority of humanity, but also to the defence of the most basic social rights. [-] Thus, in this global context, Alternatives can only reaffirm its character as an international solidarity movement that sees itself at the same time as an active component of the social movement here in Quebec.”

The statement placed the interconnectedness of struggles at the centre of Alternatives' political vision and established the distinctive way it would approach international solidarity.

A Network for Action and Communication

Through major conferences, educational workshops, information campaigns and annual study camps held at the end of each summer, Alternatives quickly became an important hub for analysis, a space for reflection and debate-often addressing issues that were sensitive and controversial, overlooked or deliberately kept out of sight.

The year 1994 also saw the launch of Alternatives Journal, greatly expanding the reach of the organization's analysis and political work.

The first issue appeared as a four-page supplement in the November 10-16, 1994 edition of the French weekly VOIR. With a print run of 90,000 copies, it reached a broad and diverse readership and quickly established a place for itself in Quebec's media landscape. At a time when the media were increasingly shaped by commercial interests and concentrated power, the monthly publication offered a different perspective on international affairs and gave sustained attention to struggles led by social movements all over the world.

In the years that followed, Alternatives Journal was distributed through another French weekly Voir-QuÈbec and in the colleges and universities across the Quebec province. By the late 1990s, an English-language edition started publishing in the weekly Hour. The newspaper later moved to the weekly ICI and, in September 2003, to the French daily Le Devoir. In 2009, as resources dwindled, the monthly publication moved entirely online, with a print edition produced four times a year.

Issue after issue, the newspaper relied on a remarkable network of volunteer contributors. Rather than pretending to an artificial notion of journalistic objectivity, they tackled subjects that traditional media too often ignored or avoided and explored how seemingly isolated problems were rooted in deeper systems of exploitation and inequality. Journalists and writers from both the Global North and Global South contributed regularly.

The newspaper was only one part of a growing communications ecosystem. Alternatives developed a website and related platforms to amplify different initiatives; weekly radio programs on Radio Basse-Ville and CKIA 96.1 FM in Quebec City; a monthly program on CIBL 101.5 FM; the quarterly magazine Points de repËre; occasional and thematic publications; and hundreds of reports, press kits and policy papers. In January 2016, a monthly column in the French daily Journal Metro, later picked up by the Huffington Post, offered a platform.

It Was Like Yesterday

In 1994, I was 20 years old. I no longer remember exactly how I came across it, but one day my attention was caught by a small notice on student billboard at my university. It invited young people to take part in an international solidarity internship program.

Of course, I was captivated by the destinations-South Africa, Brazil, India and Palestine-and by the history of struggles and resistance they represented. But what stayed with me even more, despite the few hazy memories I retain, was the feeling conveyed by the poster itself. It seemed like a promise to something radical: a visceral rejection of inequality and a genuine desire to build something better.

It felt like an invitation to reimagine and remake the world.

On October 24, 1995, a solar eclipse crossed part of northern India. For the All India People Science Network-the People's Science Movement in India-the eclipse became an opportunity for a vast campaign of popular education. Thousands of volunteers set up observation stations across the country and organized hundreds of workshops, as well as artistic and cultural activities, using the simple mechanics of an eclipse to counter misinformation and strengthen scientific literacy.

During those few months as interns, we travelled from northern to southern India, learning about the strategies of social movements confronting fundamentalism, inequality and injustice in all their forms. I was discovering the struggles and resistance movements of India, while other young interns were interacting with Brazil's landless workers' movement, the Palestinian liberation struggle and the fight for equality in South Africa.

The experience was, above all, an exercise in humility. It forced us to confront the complexity, depth and scale of collective struggles unfolding across the world. At an age when we still felt that time stretched endlessly before us, we crossed one border after another, moved from one experience to the next, and rarely stopped to consider just how fortunate and privileged we were.

The youth internship program, which became part of Alternatives' DNA from its earliest days, would go on to train generations of activists and professionals. Many of them remain politically engaged and committed today.

An Organization Is Not an Island

From the beginning, Alternatives worked in partnership with associations, collectives and social movements in different parts of the world, developing projects focused on social and environmental justice, human rights and human dignity.

As an active member of numerous coalitions, it became involved in a wide range of issues: the environment, food sovereignty, urban agriculture, education, communication, workers' rights and many others. At the same time, it participated in broader mobilizations grounded in a vision of international solidarity in which struggles for social, economic, ecological and racial justice are inseparable.

Over the years, this work of partnership and networking would give rise to major collective campaigns, create new connections among large social movements-the labour movement, women's organizations, the cooperative sector and others-and contribute to the emergence of the alter-globalization movement.

As the organization grew, so did the debates surrounding it. Some were measured; others were heated. They revolved around strategies, language and methods, funding, the professionalization of organizations, and questions of autonomy in relation to political and public authorities.

Together with its members, Alternatives continually revisited its approaches and searched for the right language to speak about solidarity. What words and expressions must we abandon if we are serious about dismantling power relations inherited from colonialism?

It would be impossible to try to list all the groups and individuals who have contributed, in one way or another, to building Alternatives. Successive directors and staff teams, board members, activists, interns, volunteers, partners and allies have all left their mark.

But let us allow ourselves one exception: Pierre Beaudet, whom the Quebec's Leftwing magazine Nouveaux cahiers du socialisme honoured with a special issue in spring 2023.

A co-founder and Alternatives' first director, Pierre was an indefatigable activist and a leader. He occupied a unique place in what he liked to call the Quebec left's ‘village of Asterix'-a small community stubbornly holding out against the dominant order. His death in March 2022 left a profound void, but also a precious legacy: a vision of international solidarity that, with humility, takes shape through the struggles of social movements in both the Global South and the Global North.

We have a reason to Rebel

In 2001, the Summit of the Americas came to Quebec City. The summit was a major venue for negotiations toward the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). In response, Alternatives and the Réseau québécois sur l'intégration continentale (RQIC) organized the Peoples' Summit, a counter-summit that brought together social movements and activists from 34 countries from across the Americas, united through the Hemispheric Social Alliance.

In the lead-up to the gathering, activists and progressive media organizations came together to create the Centre des médias alternatifs du Québec (CMAQ), a web-based platform offering independent analysis of the social, political, economic and environmental consequences of free trade.

This was a moment when the internet-and what were then called 'new information and communication technologies'-still carried enormous promise. Alternatives' youth internship program had already helped develop websites and online portals for partner networks in South Africa, Palestine, India and elsewhere. These digital spaces became bridges connecting social movements at national, regional and international levels.

The internet was also giving rise to an entirely new vocabulary, one that was simultaneously political and technical. Its ethical foundations drew heavily on the alter-globalization movement. To strengthen its work in this area, Alternatives became involved with the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), a global network of organizations and activists using digital technologies to advance human rights, social justice and the common good.

As digital technologies became increasingly powerful tools for surveillance, repression and the targeting of protest movements, Alternatives and its partners developed initiatives to circumvent censorship and cyber-surveillance, particularly in the Maghreb and Mashreq, as well as in Quebec.

In 2021, Alternatives and the UniversitÈ de MontrÈal created LabDelta, a research and action laboratory focused on the intersection of technology, political activism and critical thought.

Another World Is Possible

From the very beginning, Alternatives drew inspiration from the rise of left-wing movements in Latin America. It forged relationships with organizations, movements and trade unions experimenting with more direct forms of democracy, helping build progressive political parties, and creating cooperatives and other social and solidarity economy initiatives designed to improve people's lives.

As a progressive wave swept across parts of the region, new political possibilities seemed to emerge. People began imagining spaces capable of transforming relationships of power, overturning the dominant system-or at the very least shaking it to its foundations.

In 2001, Porto Alegre, Brazil, hosted the first World Social Forum (WSF). Some 15,000 activists from around the world gathered in a space dedicated to debate and political imagination, offering an alternative to the World Economic Forum.

'Another World Is Possible' became the rallying cry of this great alter-globalization gathering, directly challenging the famous declaration made by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s: 'There Is No Alternative.'

Quebec delegations participated in successive editions of the WSF, inspiring similar initiatives in Montreal in 2007 and 2009 and, later, in Ottawa in 2014, where the Peoples' Social Forum brought together numerous Indigenous organizations and movements.

As a member of the WSF International Council, Alternatives helped mobilize financial resources and took part in discussions about the forum's political direction, development and long-term sustainability.

Out of this same dynamic came the idea of creating an international federation, Alternatives International (AlterInter). This global network of non-governmental organizations headquartered in Montreal brought together roughly a dozen organizations from the Global South and North in an effort to deepen collective analysis and reflection on how to build alternatives to the dominant system.

As its relationships with Latin American social movements deepened, Alternatives established important partnerships with Argentina's cooperative sector, organizations and networks fighting for the right to education, groups defending the rights of nature and living systems against extractivism, and unions organizing among the most precarious workers-particularly those employed in maquiladoras and the informal economy.

This work also strengthened relationships with several major trade union organizations: Quebec's ConfÈdÈration des syndicats nationaux (CSN); Honduras's ConfederaciÛn Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUTH); Nicaragua's Central Sandinista de Trabajadores (CST); the Basque union Eusko Langileen Alkartasuna (ELA); UNIFOR in Canada; and Brazil's Central ⁄nica dos Trabalhadores (CUT).

The Ecological Imperative

In 2003, working with Santropol Roulant, Alternatives developed a soil-less farming technique that would lead to Montreal's first collective rooftop gardens.

For years, the 'Rooftop Gardens' team worked alongside agronomists, academics, community organizations and dozens of interns and volunteers to develop new approaches to urban agriculture, share knowledge and skills, expand citizen-led growing initiatives and reconnect people with the food system.

The work generated a wave of enthusiasm for urban gardens and helped establish urban agriculture as a legitimate part of municipal policy and the broader socio-ecological transition.

In India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, it supported coastal communities fighting industrial fishing and the destruction of fish stocks and marine ecosystems. In Tunisia, it contributed to efforts to protect the Bay of Monastir from industrial pollution. Across Latin America, it built relationships with peasant movements and collectives opposing mining projects. In Bamako, Casablanca, Havana, Port-au-Prince and YaoundÈ, it helped establish community, school and municipal gardens. In Indonesia, it worked with local organizations to support sustainable agriculture in villages across South Sulawesi.

From Cochabamba +1 to mobilizations against fossil fuels in Canada and the massive climate march of April 22, 2012, Alternatives joined a broader movement calling for a fundamental rethinking of the system. It understood that the environmental crisis could not be separated from structures of power. Climate justice therefore became one of the central pillars of its work.

Continuing to Resist in the Belly of the Beast

As alter-globalization movements developed new political visions and the international community slowly began to recognize the urgency of the ecological crisis and its consequences for communities around the world, neoliberalism took on an increasingly militaristic and imperial form-backed by uncompromising politics and a rhetoric steeped in racism and Islamophobia.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the United States and its allies launched an open-ended 'war on terror' that stretched from Afghanistan to Libya, and through Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Over the following two decades, the war would unleash enormous chaos across the region, producing more than 4.5 million direct and indirect victims.

Alternatives responded by supporting movements fighting for rights, peace, justice and democracy: human rights commissions in Pakistan and Afghanistan; civil society networks, feminist organizations and journalists in Iraq; women journalists, youth groups and human rights organizations in Sudan, Morocco, Yemen and Tunisia. In the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011, it also supported the development of E-joussour, a broad network connecting social movements across the Arab world.

The struggle for Palestinian liberation and the rights of the Palestinian people has always occupied a distinctive place in Alternatives' work, even when taking a position on Palestine cost the organization funding and political support.

From its first collaboration with the Teacher Creativity Center (TCC) in 1995, to its work with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), the publication of hundreds of analyses and reports, speaking tours and conferences, and the 2010 Social Forum on Education in Ramallah, Palestine became a point of convergence for different movements for social justice.

Today, that work extends to the mobile schools established in Gaza in response to scholasticide.

And Now?

Alternatives has always played an important role in education, analysis, organizing, and convergence—an essential role in building a progressive and internationalist organization. A role that provided a platform to bring together various progressive sections from institutions like the trade unions, community and rights based groups, even left political parties.

Alternatives was founded by people who emerged from progressive movements and therefore the efforts have always been to function as a movement based organization. It is registered officially as an NGO under Canadian law, but in reality it has worked as a group of activists playing different roles, be it that of a member of Board, staff, volunteers or members, allies and sympathisers. It is easier said than done. It carries with it the related tensions and contradictions.

Add to that the changing nature of the capitalist state and Canadian complicity in imperialist wars and geopolitical strategies. The years of neoliberalism, which brought about the deregulation of the state and gradually undermined our public institutions, have put pressure on the sector and created tensions between commitment and performance, sometimes requiring difficult trade-offs to ensure the organization's survival. Sometimes described as the black sheep of international solidarity, Alternatives has nevertheless managed to navigate scarce resources and take the risks that its positions entail.

With the significant decline in funding devoted to civil society efforts towards international development and solidarity, in favor of unprecedented militarization, it is clear that practicing solidarity against the prevailing tide will become increasingly difficult. To continue building the movement, we will need to redouble our efforts, rethink our strategies, and continue to rely on the commitment of our staff, board of directors, members,allies and sympathisers.

In this period of apparent retreat, the time has come to rebuild, take action, and reorganize our movements. Thinking about what comes next means learning to ask difficult questions about our practices and strategies, engaging in dialogue with other currents, and articulating our solidarities from genuinely decolonial and transnational perspectives.

If the victories are still difficult to discern and the setbacks we have suffered seem irreversible, there are still far too many struggles to wage and victories to win.

From one end of the world to the other, groups and movements continue to resist and fight for freedom and rights, justice, equality, and dignity. In India the youth are rising up to confront the government that is a political wing of the largest and oldest fascist network in the world, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In Brazil, associations are defending the right to education against attacks from the far right. In Argentina, the recovered-enterprises movement provides a powerful bulwark against market fascism. In Palestine, civil society continues to resist, despite the ongoing genocide.

These are all movements that we must continue to support and celebrate. These, and so many others: in Morocco, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Nepal, Haiti, Colombia, the Philippines, Venezuela… Even if the gains we have made seem fragile, they continue to inspire new mobilizations and to help us imagine the contours of a more just world.

We must also reach out to younger generation, because preparing the next generation of activists is itself an act of resistance. It is with these young people that we will create the conditions necessary to build a better world.

It is through the spirit and practice of solidarity that we must continue moving forward, each time taking paths that have not yet been charted. This is how we have made our way for the past 32 years.

* I would like to acknowledge the valuable advice and feedback provided by Feroz Mehdi, co-founder of Alternatives, a friend and mentor of mine for nearly 32 years now. Feroz also translated to English the original French version of this text.

Catherine Pappas started as an intern with Alternatives in 1995 and has been working with it since 1997. She is also a co-founder of Mosaïque des résistances a coalition of social movements in Québec and is presently co-coordinating an international platform launched this year, the Global Solidarity Against Fascism (GSAF).

Photo caption: Kabul, Afghanistan 2002; Photo by: Catherine Pappas

The Implications of the USA Midterm Elections

Bill Fletcher, Jr. — 2026-11-06T18:12:00Z

The historic 3 November 2026 midterm elections have to be understood as a massive victory of the "rejectionist front" over the Trump administration and the MAGA movement. It was not, however, a victory for the politics of the Democratic Party establishment, nor was it the victory of a consolidated antifascist front. That said, the dramatic defeat of the Republican Party represents a great advance for pro-democracy forces.

The Republican Party knew that the elections were going to be trouble for them, but they did not anticipate the extent of the trouble. The gerrymandering that had taken place in order to secure Republican-controlled districts in Congress largely failed as strategy. The anger of the electorate became overwhelming, if not irresistible. This raises several questions:

What was the basis for the rejectionist rising?
Why has there not been more of a pushback by MAGA in the immediate aftermath of the elections?
Is the neofascist threat defeated?

Firstly, the rejectionist front was not based on the quite obvious and growing economic hardships alone. The economic hardships, however, may have been a catalyst to a series of underlying, explosive issues. These include the attacks on immigrants and the transformation of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) into a modern day Schuzstaffel (SS); the destruction of the Voting Rights Act; the full-blown assault on Black America; corruption like one has never seen before; the politicization of misogyny; weaponized homophobia; and, of course the US/Israeli war of aggression against Iran. The "rejectionist front" was united in its anger, if not hatred of the Trump administration, but it was not united in its analysis of the Trump administration or neofascism. Specifically, large chunks of the rejectionist front recognized the neofascist/authoritarian threat, but it is far from clear that this was a consensus view within the entirety of the "front." Raising it to the level of a consensus, and clarifying that the neofascist threat is not just about Trump, will be a task of the antifascist Left.

Our second point. While it is too early to suggest that Trump, et.al. have given in to the massive loss they have suffered, it is noteworthy that the election disruption that many of us anticipated, largely did not happen...at least so far. There are a number of possibilities with one being the size of the "Blue"/Democratic tsunami made it far more difficult for MAGA to argue that the election had been stolen. The extent of the Republican defeat was so dramatic that only a few MAGA commentators have tried to argue that there was election theft.

Yet, there is probably an additional reason. There is trouble within MAGA. The trouble started when the war started, and MAGA began to fragment, losing such iconic figures as former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green. There was no consensus in favor of the war of aggression including that Vice President Vance had serious reservations about the war. It appears, at least at this moment, that growing frustration with Trump and his corruption, irrationality, and failure to build consensus-instead, relishing the bully role-has resulted in something quite interesting: as of November 6th, no significant section of the Republican Party has been calling upon Trump to militarize the situation, e.g., send in troops, rallying the paramilitary Right. To be clear, this could turn on a dime, but at the moment Trump appears to have accepted the election loss. He is probably plotting his revenge, however, and now that Stephen Miller is his chief of staff, one can put good money on that.

Which leads to point #3. The neofascist threat has not been about one administration alone. There is a mass social movement, represented by MAGA, that seeks to undo constitutional democracy by any means necessary. Trump has been the instrument for this, but his own weaknesses, e.g., corruption, malignant narcissism, are getting in the way. What had been a rightwing populist movement evolved and consolidated around the neofascist MAGA, and the battle for the future of MAGA could play out in ways that move more in the direction of a sort of Strasserist politics, i.e., the section of the German Nazi Party that sought to base the party in the working class and middle strata, eliminate the Jews and overthrow monopoly capital through what they saw as a "national revolution." In 21st century terms, this is probably represented by individuals such as Steve Bannon.

our fight against neofascism is not a fight to return to the days of "democratic neoliberalism," but instead a fight to supersede neoliberalism in its "democratic" and authoritarian forms, and to crush neofascism as a whole

This last point is very important because the Left must understand that MAGA is not monolithic, nor is it an instrument of the billionaires. There is a mass, rightwing, revanchist social movement that includes sections of the billionaires-particularly in tech, fossil fuel, finance, and real estate-and these billionaires seek to utilize this mass social movement for their own ends. But they do not completely control it, that is, the social movement is not simply an instrument in the hands of the billionaires. White Christian nationalism, Christian Zionism, support for Putin, politicized misogyny, among other things are not simple creatures of the billionaires. There is a coincidence of interests, and these interests may clash.

The implications for the antifascist Left are considerable. First, we cannot believe that MAGA has been defeated. They have not. They have been blunted; the difference is fundamental. Second, the necessity for a broad front to oppose MAGA remains, but that front must carry out two very critical tasks: (a)battle and disrupt the strategy of MAGA and, (b)advance antifascist, progressive politics to extend democracy in all fields, something that some of us call, fighting for a "Third Reconstruction," the first being 1865-1877; the second is a reference to the period from 1950-roughly 1975. In other words, our fight against neofascism is not a fight to return to the days of "democratic neoliberalism," but instead a fight to supersede neoliberalism in its "democratic" and authoritarian forms, and to crush neofascism as a whole.

Many people seemed to think that the midterm elections signalled the beginning of the end of the Trump era. Perhaps. A better framework is to look at the midterms as a particularly important battle in the struggle against neofascism. In that sense, and to borrow from Winston Churchill, we are not at the beginning of the end. We are quite possibly at the end of the beginning.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a USA-based activist and writer. He is a cofounder of standing4democracy.org, a co-coordinator of the US Campaign for Western Sahara, a longtime trade unionist, and a writer of fiction and nonfiction. He is a founder member of the Global Solidarity Against Fascism (GSAF).

Photo: This caricature of Donald Trump was adapted from a Creative Commons licensed photo by Gage Skidmore's Flickr photostream.

To Defeat Fascism in Brazil, Young People Had to Carry Us Into the Twenty-First Century

Daniel Cara and Andressa Pellanda* — 2026-10-27T22:53:03Z

On October 4, 2026, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, candidate of the Liberal Party (PL) and its far-right coalition, finished the first round of Brazil's presidential election with 47.03 per cent of the valid votes. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, candidate of the Workers' Party (PT) and its centre-left coalition, received 45.16 per cent, according to the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the branch of the judiciary that runs Brazilian elections. In the run-off on October 25, Lula was re-elected with 51.79 per cent of the valid votes: 64,256,232 against 59,826,041. We write with joy, and we write to contest the explanation of this victory, because the use the democratic camp makes of the next four years depends on it.

Arithmetic and electoral history pointed to a Flávio Bolsonaro victory. Since 1989, when Brazil returned to electing its president by direct vote in two rounds, no candidate who finished second in the first round had ever won the run-off. On that same October 4, the PL and its far-right coalition emerged from the polls with the largest caucuses in the National Congress and in the state legislative assemblies, (the Brazilian counterparts of Canada's provincial legislatures), as well as with the largest number of governorships. The PL alone won 121 of the 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 24 more than in 2022, and will hold 28 of the 81 seats in the Senate from 2027, the largest caucus in both houses. It also elected 212 state and Federal District legislators, forming the largest caucus in nine state assemblies and in the Legislative Chamber of the Federal District, among them those of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro. It won six of the 27 governorships, more than any other party. The PT won four.

Arithmetic and electoral history pointed to a Flávio Bolsonaro victory.

We hold that the Bolsonaro family, at the head of the PL and its far-right coalition, is the Brazilian embodiment of twenty-first-century fascism. Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio's father, governed the country from 2019 to 2022 and is now serving a prison sentence for attempting a coup d'état. This fascism does not reproduce the single party or the mass militias of the interwar years. It works inside democratic institutions in order to hollow them out, organizes itself through digital networks and preserves the old core: the cult of the leader, the manufacture of internal enemies and the legitimation of violence. In an interview with the Uruguayan newspaper la diaria, published on October 21, one of us argued that attacks on Brazilian schools are organized by right-wing extremism and that their victims are invariably women. On election night, Flávio Bolsonaro declared it impossible to recognize the result. In 2022, Jair Bolsonaro never explicitly conceded defeat, and on January 8, 2023, his supporters stormed and vandalized the buildings of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court in Brasília. The script remains in force.

Lula, the PT and its centre-left coalition are children of the twentieth century. Lula rose to prominence through the workers' strikes in São Paulo's industrial belt in the late 1970s, the PT was founded in 1980, and the repertoire of Brazil's democratic camp took shape in the struggle against the military dictatorship (1964-1985) and in the National Constituent Assembly: the mass party, the trade union, the organized movement, the winning of rights through institutional channels. That repertoire defeated the dictatorship and wrote the 1988 Constitution. The far right, however, reached the twenty-first century before we did. While the PL and its coalition were learning to mobilize emotion in real time, through digital communities without a centre, the PT and its centre-left coalition went on campaigning with the tools of the twentieth century: a leadership that decides from above what activists will repeat, the campaign office with fixed hours, the bet on television airtime.

The first round exacted its price. In Brazil, voting is compulsory between the ages of 18 and 70, and optional for 16- and 17-year-olds and for those over 70 (Federal Constitution, art. 14, § 1). Abstention reached 21.08 per cent of the electorate, the highest since 1998. The president of the TSE, Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, reported that among voters for whom voting is optional, absence was close to 50 per cent among those over 70 and around 20 per cent among 16- and 17-year-olds. The young had gone to the polls. Their grandparents, for the most part, had stayed home.

In the three weeks that followed, young people opened the doors of the twenty-first century for us. In our view, they wrested control of the electoral campaign from the bureaucratic leadership of the PT and its centre-left coalition: they set the language, chose the terrain and treated voting as a family undertaking. The decisive terrain was the kitchen table, the family group chat and the neighbourhood sidewalk, where granddaughters and grandsons persuaded their grandparents that this election belonged to them too. The leadership followed behind.

Young people carried us to victory. A battle of capital importance has been won, but we are far from winning the war against fascism

Sunday's figures are consistent with this reading. Abstention fell to 19.22 per cent, a drop of 1.86 percentage points. In 2022, the decline between rounds had been 0.36 points, from 20.95 to 20.59 per cent. Lula gained 10.4 million votes between the two rounds and Flávio Bolsonaro 3.7 million, according to calculations by Genial Investimentos based on TSE data. The political scientist Rodrigo Mahlmeister, of Duke University, attributed the reversal to the campaign's wager on mobilizing older voters, including people who had not voted in many years (BBC News Brasil, October 26, 2026). In his victory speech, Lula thanked the young people who took to the streets and acknowledged the determination of older voters to cast their ballots. The TSE has not yet published second-round turnout by age group, and definitive proof of the mechanism we describe depends on those figures.

PT leaders attribute the victory to fear of Flávio Bolsonaro. The fear was real: in January 2026, a Genial/Quaest poll found that 46 per cent of voters were more afraid of the Bolsonaro family's return to power, against 40 per cent who were more afraid of a continued Lula government. That fear was already present on October 4, and it did not prevent defeat in the first round. What changed between the rounds was the presence of someone willing to turn a grandfather's fear into a ballot cast. Fear without mobilization produces abstention.

Young people carried us to victory. A battle of capital importance has been won, but we are far from winning the war against fascism: from 2027, the PL and its far-right coalition will hold the largest caucuses in the National Congress and in nine state assemblies, along with the largest number of governorships. Democratic forces must become less institutionalist, because twenty-first-century fascism grew inside the institutions, and rules, courts and agreements among elites proved insufficient to contain it. They must stop managing neoliberalism. As long as Brazil's fiscal rule (Complementary Law 200/2023) caps the real growth of federal primary spending at 70 per cent of real revenue growth, governments led by the PT and its centre-left coalition will go on administering the scarcity that the far right converts into resentment. And they must build new alternatives with those who opened the doors of the twenty-first century, giving young people a seat in the bodies that set the course of the democratic camp.

Fear without mobilization produces abstention.

Young people are also carrying the French left into the twenty-first century. In the snap legislative elections of 2024, called after the Rassemblement National's victory in the European elections, 48 per cent of voters aged 18 to 24 backed the Nouveau Front Populaire, the alliance of the left, in the first round, compared with 18 per cent of those over 70, according to Ipsos Talan. If bureaucratic leadership regains control, in Brazil or in France, we will slide back into the twentieth century, and our adversary will be waiting for us in the twenty-first.

* Daniel Cara , 48, is a professor at the University of São Paulo (USP) School of Education. He ran for the Brazilian Federal Senate in 2018, receiving 440,118 votes, and is a member of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL). He is the Honorary Coordinator of the Brazilian Campaign for the Right to Education.

Andressa Pellanda , 36, holds a PhD in International Relations and is the General Coordinator of the Brazilian Campaign for the Right to Education. She is a feminist and a full member of Brazil's National Education Forum.

Both authors are founding members of the recently established Global Solidarity Against Fascism (GSAF), whose secretariat is in Montreal, Canada.

26 October 2026

Photo credit

What Post-Election Strategy for Québec Solidaire?

Roger Rashi — 2026-10-27T22:24:00Z

The Quebec election of October 5th delivered highly unusual results, courtesy of the current fragmentation of the political landscape and the archaic first-past-the-post electoral system.

With only 28% of the vote, the Parti Québécois (PQ) won 59 seats and will form a minority government in the 127 members National Assembly (Quebec Parliament). It's a bittersweet victory, since polls last December projected 39% of the vote and a likely majority of seats. Its shift to the right and its anti-immigration rhetoric, in competition with the Conservatives, contributed to making the PQ "the most poorly elected government in Quebec's history." The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), the party in power from 2018 to 2026, is the big loser in this election: it has been completely wiped out, losing all 90 seats it won in 2022 albeit maintaining 13.35% of the vote. The Quebec Liberal Party, with a modest 24%, wins 40 seats and will form the official opposition. The clear winner is the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ), a hard-right party, which enters the National Assembly for the first time with a remarkable 19 seats and 20.6% of the vote. As for the left-wing party Québec Solidaire (QS), it avoided the rout that so many observers predicted, retaining 9 of its 11 seats and winning 12.43% of the vote.

Becoming the Parliamentary and Extra-Parliamentary Bulwark Against Austerity

As the only left-wing party in the National Assembly - the other three embracing, to varying degrees, right-wing platforms and austerity policies - Quebec Solidaire sees itself as the sole representative of peoples interests in Parliament and the bulwark against austerity. How will it play its cards in a minority Parliament where it could hold the balance of power?

Already, some are advising it to form a 'pro Quebec independence and progressive alliance' with the governing Parti Québécois; others believe it should shift even further toward the center to increase its support and avoid the decline that looms ahead. Yet these are precisely the path QS must absolutely avoid, as they stem from a flawed analysis of the situation and could sink it for good. The PQ is no longer a partially social-democratic party, nor even vaguely progressive one. Under its current leader it has clearly shifted to the right and has adopted an openly austerity-oriented platform (downsizing the government, cuts to the civil service, and a return to a balanced budget within two years) and a fiercely anti-immigration stance, which will inevitably lead it to form an alliance with the Conservatives on these issues. The PQ needs to secure additional electoral support and, to do so, will seek to tap into the 13% of right-wing voters who supported the CAQ. Furthermore, it has postponed its promised referendum on Quebec independence from Canada until the year following Trump's departure, which puts it no earlier than 2029. However, a minority government lasts on an average 18 to 24 months, and the PQ will want to obtain a majority mandate in the next election. It will have neither the time nor the interest, with support for independence languishing at 29% in the polls, to launch a referendum campaign during his shortened mandate.

QS's shift towards electoralism and centralized control, which began in 2021, has been a failure, both at the ballot box and within the party

For all these reasons, Quebec Solidaire must reject these flawed strategies and adopt a sharp and strong opposition role in Parliament, as well as a combative and dynamic stance outside the Parliament. Nine out of 127 members cannot, on their own, block an austerity program. But, in alliance with community, tenant, labour, anti-racist, feminist, and environmental movements - all the social forces that austerity is already arousing - a real bulwark can be erected against reactionary forces. Quebec Solidaire must no longer limit itself to representing the social opposition in Parliament. It must also see itself and act as a party of social mobilization and class struggle.

Becoming a Party of the Working Class

While demonstrating remarkable resilience in retaining six of its nine seats in Montreal, as well as its representation outside Montreal, QS has nonetheless experienced a slow and gradual decline since the 2018 election, when it achieved its best result with 16.10% of the vote and ten seats. In 2022, the decline in the popular vote (0.60%) was minimal and somewhat covered up by increasing its seat tally by one, taking it to 11 seats. However, in 2026, the decline is now clear and undeniable: a loss of 3%, or more than 100,000 votes compared to the two previous elections. A clear-eyed and sober assessment is necessary: QS's shift towards electoralism and centralized control, which began in 2021, has been a failure, both at the ballot box and within the party. This shift, described as "pragmatic," triggered multiple internal crises, all stemming from conflicts originating within its parliamentary wing. It has seriously weakened internal mobilization and, ultimately, electoral support for the party.

However, the recently concluded campaign sparked a resurgence of activism and mobilization around QS, something unseen for quite some time. How can this progress be consolidated?

Firstly, the party must absolutely return to the practice of launching political campaigns outside of election cycles, to maintain member mobilization and broaden its recruitment base. The coming period will see heightened social mobilizations. This will be the perfect opportunity to bring social movements' activists back into the fold and make our party a true party of 'the ballot box and the streets'.

Secondly, we must strengthen QS's identity as the party of the working classes. We said it and affirmed it during the election campaign: we are the only party fighting against austerity, seeking to tax wealth, and defending social and labour rights. We must push this logic further and assert that we are a party of the working class and working people, then back up this call with sustained work in all regions of Quebec, in urban and rural areas, as well as on the major economic, social, and environmental issues that affect people: affordable housing, cost of living, improved public services, climate change, working conditions, and equal rights.

To reverse its decline, our party must adopt a policy that gives it a clear identity and strong social roots.

Becoming a Radical Left Party (A Left of Rupture)

In 2011, Quebec Solidaire included in its platform a call to move beyond capitalism and, ultimately, establish a socialized economy. This was followed by a series of policy proposals concerning the nationalization of strategic natural resources, national and democratic planning, worker self-management, the establishment of a state-owned bank, and so on.

In this era of acute capitalist crises and the rise of the right, it is the unapologetic and self-assured left-wing formations that are gaining ground

Unfortunately, these orientations were not explored in depth and remained largely unimplemented until the program review process, launched at the end of 2024, that regrettably resulted in a weakening of the anti-capitalist proposals and ended up adopting a clearly reformist platform. This moderated vision has underpinned the positions of the QS leadership since the previous election campaign of 2022.

Yet the left-wing parties that are succeeding in this era of rising right-wing politics are those that have adopted a program of structural break with the current system and that often define themselves as socialist, democratic, environmentalist, and anti-imperialist parties. This is the case with Die Linke in Germany, which recently won the Berlin mayoral election, or with Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who was victorious in New York. Not to mention La France Insoumise, led by Jean-Luc Melenchon, which openly identifies as a radical left-wing movement or, in their own words, ìa left of ruptureî.

In this era of acute capitalist crises and the rise of the right, it is the unapologetic and self-assured left-wing formations that are gaining ground, while social-democratic reformism is in crisis everywhere. It is their anti-systemic program that lends momentum and mobilizing power to the immediate proposals of radical left-wing parties, while also giving hope to the working classes and the social movements that support them.

To establish itself as a true bulwark against austerity and the rise of the right, Quebec Solidaire will need to further develop its anti-systemic positions. The guidelines of its 2011 platform must be updated and reinforced in light of recent upheavals in order to lead to a proposal for profound social transformation.

Montreal, 22 October 2026

Photo Caption: Dans la rue pour le Québec, manifestation d'une alliance syndicale, Montréal, 25 novembre 2025
Photo Credit: Dominic Morissette

Manufacturing Fascism in India

Dipankar Bhattacharya — 2026-10-27T22:22:00Z

The right to vote and the right to protest are the soul of democracy

The Modi-Shah regime is coercing activists to sign so-called 'peace bonds' and give up their constitutional right to express democratic dissent and organise peaceful protest. Leaders of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) were tricked into signing this bond and now the bond is being invoked to stop them from exercising their right to protest. A similar order to sign a peace bond has also been served by a Special Executive Magistrate to Comrade Neha, President of the All India Students Association. It has been duly challenged in the legal arena, but this 'peace bond ploy' against peaceful protests must be exposed and rejected in the court of the people.

An Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) issuing a notice on the basis of reports received from a police constable itself violates the very principle of separation of powers. What is even more hypocritical is that when Comrade Neha and her lawyer appeared before the concerned ACP turned Special Executive Magistrate (SEM) at the Mandir Marg Police Station they found a noisy violent group of slogan-shouting middle-aged rightwing Sanghi men at the gate. The ACP-turned-SEM did not consider this violent assembly a 'breach of peace'! In fact, it may not at all be a surprise if the crowd had gathered with the help of inside information from the police station.

This synchronisation of state-led persecution and state-sponsored street violence is a defining feature of fascism. The Modi-Shah regime has been deploying this strategy to counter every popular agitation for the last decade. Demonisation of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and assault on its then student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar in 2016, violent attacks on equal citizenship campaign protesters in 2019-20, vilification of the historic farmers' movement and the mowing down of protesting farmers in Lakhimpur, in the province of Uttar Pradesh in 2020-21, brutal attacks on exam paper leak protesters in Delhi in July this year and subsequent attacks on CJP activists in various parts of the country and now this ongoing campaign of hate and violence against 'right to vote' campaigners across the country, all conform to the textbook pattern of fascist terror.

The organised mob at Mandir Marg Police Station gate gives us a glimpse of the kind of violent mass hysteria the Sangh brigade is planning to whip up across the country in the name of its 'crush anarchy' campaign. By disrupting public transport, blocking roads and turning the whole of central Delhi into a veritable war zone, it was the Modi government which sought to push the capital into a state of anarchy. The burning of books and bulldozing of book stalls during the festive season in Kolkata gave us another glimpse of the Sangh brigade's campaign of violence and anarchy. The idea is to derail the 'right to vote' movement by creating chaos and unleashing widespread mob violence.

Stopping peaceful protests by weaponising so-called 'peace bonds', spreading anarchy by giving a call for abolishing anarchy, stealing elections and manufacturing mandates and yet accusing the opposition of subverting democracy - the state of the Indian republic in 2026 very much resembles the dystopian order sketched by George Orwell in his classic last novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In Orwell's surveillance state, under the constant watch of Big Brother, the ministry of propaganda becomes the ministry of truth, the war ministry becomes the ministry of peace, the interior or home affairs ministry christens itself as the ministry of love and the economy is administered by the ministry of plenty. The official language Newspeak turns every word upside down - war becomes peace, freedom turns into slavery and ignorance celebrated as strength - and the thought police (Thinkpol in Newspeak) works overtime to uncover and punish thoughtcrime! Compare the lexicon of Modi's India - from the ‘Jumla of Achchhe Din' to the nomenclature of peace bonds and ‘Dimagi' Naxals and we will find the Indian version of Nineteen Eighty-Four in the land of Orwell's birth (Orwell was born in Motihari of Bihar as Eric Arthur Blair in 1903).

Today, once again we see a renewed rise of far-right fascists across the world, and also a renewed intensification of anti-fascist resistance spearheaded by a whole range of Left, progressive and anti-imperialist forces. Hungary witnessed the defeat of the far-right Viktor Orban regime in April 2026, and now Lula has won the presidential election for a record fourth time defeating his US-backed far-right challenger Flavio Bolsonaro and in Serbia a two-year-old student upsurge has ended the twelve-year-old authoritarian reign of Aleksandar Vucic.

In France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Albania and beyond, popular student and working class struggles and progressive political streams are challenging neoliberal policies of privatisation and austerity, far-right aggression, and their governments' support for the US-Israel axis on the streets. The famous 1968 chant "Paris, London, Rome, Berlin - We shall fight, we shall win" has come back as a renewed roar and this time, with the children of migrants from the ex-colonies at the forefront, it is not only anti-war but explicitly anti-imperialist. A rattled Trump has rushed to his favourite Islamophobic and xenophobic scare mongering rant to stop the echo of Europe in his beleaguered home ground. He has suddenly become worried about the future of France and its culture, raising the bogey of an Islamic takeover of Paris. Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the fascist outfit the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Narendra Modi have as ever parroted the same line, hoping to paint India's own growing Gen Z disillusionment, anger and passionate desire for change as a 'foreign conspiracy'. But the people of India know their turn is coming soon to give a long awaited rebuff to India's own fascists.

Dipankar Bhattacharya is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (ML) Liberation.

Elections in a Genocidal State Are Not Democratic

Raz Segal — 2026-10-27T22:20:00Z

The defining feature of Israeli "democracy," including its elections last week, is its operation according to a Jewish supremacist logic, intensifying the discrimination, oppression, apartheid, mass violence, and genocide against Palestinians.

The recent Israeli elections are a grotesque spectacle. They are grotesque because Israel is a state perpetrating genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, cheered on by most of its Jewish citizens. They are grotesque because they peddle the lie of democracy in a state subjecting millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to a brutal military occupation for nearly six decades, without basic rights, dispossessing them to settle more than 750,000 Jews in crude violation of basic international law. And they are grotesque because they promote the illusion, both within and outside Israel, that nearly two million Palestinian citizens of Israel somehow hold the key to saving the state from itself. A genocide state and society, however, will do what a genocide state and society does: destroy the people it considers its enemies, especially those it sees as the enemy within.

These elections, in other words, should trigger alarm and open our eyes: we have not seen the worst of Israel's genocidal assault against Palestinians, against all Palestinians under Israeli rule.

Instead we are drowned in reporting about the Israeli election results as a divide between a bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against a bloc opposing him, averting our gaze from the obvious and overwhelming majority bloc of ninety-three mandates (out of 120) that support Jewish supremacy and genocide. That very real majority includes the opposition party Yachad (in English: "Together") that two former Israeli prime ministers lead, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, the latter of whom on October 12, 2023, shouted at a Sky News anchor: "Are you seriously asking me about Palestinian civilians? What is wrong with you? We're fighting Nazis."

Supporters of Jewish supremacy and genocide on the anti-Netanyahu side also include Avigdor Lieberman, a far-right politician and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel Is Our Home") party who, as defense minister in April 2018, praised an Israeli sniper who had shot an unarmed Palestinian man during the Great March of Return in Gaza. A soldier nearby caught the sniper's war crime on video. As the Palestinian man falls to the ground, either the shooter or the soldier recording the act says in Hebrew, "Wow. What a video! Yes! That son of a b-tch." Lieberman had this to say about the sniper: "He deserves a medal."

So much change awaits us with Bennet and Lieberman. But the greatest promise for something new comes from Gadi Eisenkot, former Israeli army chief of staff and leader of Yashar (in English: "Straight"), the main opposition party. Yes, the same Eisenkot who in 2008, as a general and chief of Northern Command, explained the Dahiya Doctrine, his method of mass murder of civilians in Beirut two years earlier:

“What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on...We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases...This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.”

Planned, approved, and implemented - and then, also morphed into the Gaza doctrine, already well before October 2023, and back again to Lebanon in the last two years for more of that "great damage and destruction" that we can expect in the unlikely event of an Eisenkot-led, post-Netanyahu Israel.

It is, however, that longtime leader of Israel's opposition, Yair Lapid, the poster boy of Israeli secular liberalism, who perhaps most signifies the danger of Israel's genocide now escalating further. Lapid rose to political prominence in Israel's elections in January 2013. Palestinian political parties then received eleven mandates, significantly less than the unprecedented success in the form of nineteen mandates that they won in the recent elections. Netanyahu was the sitting prime minister then too, and his Likud party gained thirty-one mandates in 2013 (it secured twenty-seven now). Lapid's party then, Yesh Atid (in English: "There is a Future"), trailed behind with nineteen.

It was thus clear that any challenge to Netanyahu would require a coalition with Palestinian parties. But Lapid quickly clarified that such a scenario is "off the table." Lapid proceeded to delegitimize all Palestinian political parties and, by implication, more than 1.6 million Palestinian citizens of Israel then, 20 percent of the state's citizens. Lapid had promised his voters, in the name of his party then, a future, a different future. Clearly he assumed that all his voters were Jews, and that the Israeli future he envisioned belonged to them and them alone.

All Israeli governments since then, including the one led by Lapid in 2022, operated according to this Jewish supremacist logic, intensifying the discrimination, oppression, apartheid, mass violence, and, after October 2023, genocide against Palestinians. This is the defining feature of the charade of Israeli democracy: the extremely violent urge to eliminate Palestinians that Netanyahu, Lapid, Bennet, Eisenkot, and Lieberman share, together with the vast majority of Israeli Jews who voted for them in the past and now.

Par for the Course

This should surprise no one who knows anything about the Israeli state. In 2018, the Knesset (Israeli parliament) passed the Jewish Nation-State Law - one of the state's basic laws, which function as a de facto constitution - that relegates Palestinian citizens to second-class status. Then, in May 2021, as many Israeli Palestinians came out to protest an attack on Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and a related Israeli attack on Gaza, the Israeli police responded with massive repression and violence, arresting hundreds. The situation deteriorated quickly, as Jewish and Palestinian citizens clashed across Israel - in some places, as in Haifa, with Jewish citizens attacking Palestinian citizens on the streets and, aided by the police, breaking into houses of Palestinians and attacking them there.

The attack on Israeli Palestinians intensified significantly in the weeks following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Israel's subsequent genocidal assault on Gaza: Israeli police arrested over 250 Israeli Palestinian for any expression of identification with Palestinians in Gaza, with then-Israeli Police Commissioner Yaakov "Kobi" Shabtai threatening to expel them to Gaza. A large-scale poll among Israeli Jews a year and a half later, in March 2025, confirmed that many of them would approve of such action: 56 percent supported the expulsion of all Israeli Palestinians. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right settler who serves as Israeli minister of national security, compounded Shabtai's threat by distributing thousands of weapons to Israeli Jews to form hundreds of civilian "self-defense" units within Israel and in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli media and society added fuel to this fire, with Israeli journalists calling for large-scale killing and destruction in Gaza, as David Mizrahi Wertheim did already on October 7 when he suggested on social media to "turn the [Gaza] Strip into a slaughterhouse... we are facing human animals." As Israeli American Pennsylvania State University sociologist Tamir Sorek has shown, this crude dehumanization and bloodlust persisted well beyond the days following October 7. A bit more than two months later, on December 26, 2023, former soccer star and TV commentator Danny Neuman said that "in Gaza, without exception, they are all terrorists, sons of dogs. They must be exterminated, all of them killed." On February 8, 2025, to take another example, Kinneret Barashi, a lawyer and a television host, tweeted that "every trace of the murderous mutations in Gaza must be erased, from the delivery rooms to the last elderly person in Gaza." The list goes on and on.

The Israeli elections, in other words, took place in the context of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, in an Israeli society immersed in genocidal discourse, and with Palestinian citizens considered second-class and suspected as dangerous. Netanyahu amplified this discourse on election day when he raised the false charge that Palestinian political parties are "stealing the elections." As the success of Palestinian political parties became clear, he said that they were plotting the destruction of the Jewish state and, without evidence, that Qatar and Turkey somehow bribed Palestinians to vote.

While many Israeli Jewish politicians in the anti-Netanyahu camp reject these accusations, they nevertheless reproduce their rationale by calling to create a Zionist government without Palestinian political parties. It may happen that the Jewish religious Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox parties agree to join a coalition led by Eisenkot, even though they fiercely oppose his plan to recruit them into the Israeli army. Alternatively, a "unity government" with both Eisenkot and Netanyahu might emerge, even though Eisenkot has promised he would not go down that path.

What is highly unlikely to happen, in any case, is a government that would challenge Netanyahu's dangerous anti-Palestinian discourse by including Palestinian politicians as equals, not to mention that Eisenkot is committed to continue Israel's violent occupation and settler policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

An exclusionary political discourse depicting millions of citizens as essentially disloyal should raise alarm wherever and whenever it emerges. In the case of the Israeli state that is perpetrating genocide in Gaza, such a discourse, advanced by the prime minister, points both to the abysmal failure of governments, the United Nations, and the international legal system to stop Israel's ongoing genocide and to the acute danger of its looming escalation and spread beyond Gaza.

Looking at the history of twentieth-century genocides gives a horrific indication of what might await Israeli Palestinians. The Ottoman Empire destroyed Armenian communities and murdered around a million and a half Armenian citizens during World War I on the baseless charge that their loyalty lay with the Russian enemy. In 1994, the Hutu-controlled Rwanda state murdered about eight hundred thousand Tutsis and their Hutu supporters following the invasion in 1990 of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, a Tutsi armed force that sought to topple the government.

Israel's genocide in Gaza has already led to a murderous and destructive escalation of Israeli state and settler violence in the occupied West Bank, with Israeli leaders now speaking explicitly about treating Palestinians in the West Bank like Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, for instance, referred to the killing and injuring of Israeli soldiers by two Palestinian gunmen outside Hebron on October 23, saying that "every clan neighborhood in Hebron from which the terrorists emerged today will be evacuated of its residents.. . . . Just like in Gaza, just like in Lebanon." Netanyahu spoke even more directly: "We will act to destroy this place," also announcing plans for the largest Israeli military operation in the entire West Bank since 1967. "The [Israel Defense Forces are] prepared to carry it out, and we will determine the timing, but it is on the way."

Israel's election results in the context of the genocide in Gaza, the intent of Israeli leaders to expand it to the occupied West Bank, and the widespread genocidal discourse among Israeli Jews together place all Palestinians under Israeli rule, including Israeli Palestinians, in great danger. The record performance of Palestinian political parties has rendered them, in the eyes of many Israeli Jews in both blocs, particularly problematic in the way they undermine, if not outright threaten, the dominance of Jews in the Israeli state.

The sixteen years of the Israeli siege on Gaza before 2023 - the longest siege in modern history - provided clear indications of the impending genocide. To paraphrase Netanyahu, it was on its way. Those who recognize and oppose genocide when the perpetrators declare it openly, in our faces, should resist the temptation to treat the Israeli elections - election in a genocide state - as anything other than a warning sign of even worse to come.

Source: https://jacobin.com/2026/11/israel-palestine-knesset-democracy-genocide

Photo: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

High Schools in France: The Spark That Ignited a National Political Crisis

Enzo Richard — 2026-10-27T22:15:00Z

In May 1968, the occupation of the Sorbonne and the barricades of the Latin Quarter turned the student population into the catalyst for a national political crisis. Fifty-eight years later, it is no longer ideological debates that are driving students into the streets, but material neglect, democratic contempt, and the management of scarcity. Beginning at a school in Créteil on September 21, the movement has spread to more than 400 high schools across the country. Faced with a collapsing education system and a state that refuses to listen, an entire generation has chosen rupture over resignation.

Manufacturing Riots to Conceal a Refusal to Listen

From the very first demonstrations, dominant media coverage locked the debate into an alarmist framework. News cameras flooded reports with images of burned-out trash bins and dramatic clashes, such as the fire in the entrance hall of Nelson Mandela High School in Nantes, reducing a mass protest to a narrative of urban violence.

By playing up the convenient figure of the ‘rioter', these media narratives render invisible the root cause of the anger: years of government deafness. Petitions signed by tens of thousands, repeated union warnings, and peaceful demonstrations in the spring were all ignored by the government leadership. Faced with a government that responds only when its operations are disrupted, blockades are not a violent whim but the last democratic lever available to young people who have been denied a voice.

The Republican Mirage: From Critical Thinking to Civic Indoctrination

This institutional hypocrisy recalls the incisive analysis of philosopher Bertrand Russell, who argued that state education serves less to awaken people's consciences than to produce obedient citizens. The French republican school system embodies this paradox perfectly: it teaches students to read the Enlightenment philosophers, celebrates the Revolution of 1789, and explains that revolt against injustice lies at the heart of the national narrative. Yet it labels those same ideals ‘uncivil behavior' and a threat to public order as soon as they are applied to its own reforms.

In the ultimate irony, the state names certain high schools after Nelson Mandela while watering down his political ideas. Mandela reminded his judges during the Rivonia Trial in 1964:

“It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle. The government left us no other choice.”

Faced with state contempt, high school students are simply putting into practice what official history claims to teach them.

Schools in Ruins

This revolt has its roots in the budgetary austerity that is systematically draining all of France's public services. Within the national education system, the lack of resources has become unbearable: according to parliamentary reports, approximately 7.5% of class hours go untaught because no substitute teachers are available. Classrooms regularly overflow with 30 or 35 students, while thousands of positions in healthcare, social services, and support for students with disabilities remain vacant. School buildings are crumbling, and during heat waves, temperatures in some classrooms reach 39 degrees Celsius.

While the state pours tens of millions of euros into symbols of authority such as the Universal National Service program and school uniforms, essential investments have been frozen-just as they have in overcrowded public hospitals and neglected transportation networks.

Parcoursup and the Locking Down of the Future

This material deterioration is compounded by the constant anxiety of normalized social sorting. On October 5, the inter-union coalition representing high school and university students called for the creation and funding of an additional 250,000 places in higher education to put an end to Parcoursup. This selection system, which allocates places in universities and other higher education institutions, left nearly 120,000 applicants without a place as recently as last July.

It is an opaque algorithm that entrenches social determinism based on geography, disadvantaging schools in the suburbs and working-class communities while favoring the private sector. The ministry's refusal to open up university programs, dismissing the proposal as ‘demagoguery', confirms that the republican promise of social mobility is broken.

Batons Against Minors: The Failure of Rule by Force

In response to these demands, the state has chosen brute force. The figures from October 1 alone illustrate this escalation: 1,948 arrests aimed at clearing the sidewalks. Police violence and misconduct reached a breaking point in Lens, where a high school student's hand was blown off by a GM2L stun and tear-gas grenade, forcing the ministry to hastily suspend the use of these munitions.

But physical trauma does not end there. During several demonstrations, direct shots from LBD 40 rubber-bullet launchers caused jaw fractures and tooth loss among teenagers, while the widespread use of tear gas immediately outside school grounds led to severe respiratory distress.

On the streets, footage filmed by students also documents violent prone restraints, chokeholds, and neck restraints applied to minors. This police brutality is all the more severe because it reproduces patterns of systemic racial profiling: racist insults, targeted humiliation, and abusive identity checks disproportionately affect racialized young people and demonstrators from working-class suburbs.

In response to these assaults, students have been transformed into organizing teams of street medics to treat their classmates. Between abusive police kettling lasting several hours and mass detentions that are subsequently dismissed without further action, the authorities are using judicial intimidation and physical terror to subdue a generation they have abandoned.

An Uprising That Crosses Borders

This anger no longer stops at the borders of metropolitan France. From Rome to Brussels, from Madrid to Athens, and also in Santiago and Montreal, high school and university student committees are expressing solidarity with French youth, both on their campuses and in the streets. Everywhere, the message denounces the same budget cuts, the same sacrifice of public services, and the same authoritarian suppression of young people's futures.

By choosing to answer pens with grenades, the authorities have not extinguished the fire. They have fueled a blaze that can now be seen far beyond France.

Source: https://alter.quebec/les-lycees-en-france-letincelle-dune-crise-politique-nationale/
Photo: Patxi Beltzaitz, Berria, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Fifteen Years Later

Javier Moreno Zacarés — 2026-10-27T22:10:00Z

Fifteen years after the indignados occupied the Puerta del Sol, Madrid's central plaza is once again the locus of a mass movement that has brought Spain to a political impasse. How are we back here again? The immediate trigger was the eviction of an elderly tenant. Maricarmen Abascal, who had occupied her rent-capped apartment in central Madrid since 1956, was expelled from her home on 23 September after the investment fund Urbagestión acquired the property and exploited a legal loophole to quintuple her rent. Maricarmen's age and vulnerability - the 87-year-old was removed on a hospital bed and has since died - made it a particularly egregious breach of the moral economy. The case struck a nerve, prompting a political storm; the government has now announced a snap election. As protests spread nationwide, the encampment at Puerta del Sol consolidated under the leadership of the Sindicato de Inquilinas, Madrid's tenant union. Media outlets are reporting on the motions passed at the open-air general assembly. One decision has been of particular public interest: a general strike for the right to housing, announced for 11 November, a few weeks before the election.

The political elite faces a reckoning. At the outset of the current parliamentary term in 2023, the progressive coalition headed by Sánchez's centre-left Socialist Party (PSOE) placed housing at the top of the agenda. The promises were ambitious: the provision of mass social housing, the imposition of rent controls, the reassertion of the public interest against rentier logics. Yet these commitments yielded little. This was partly due to the obstruction of the right, both in parliament and in the regional governments under its control. But a share of the blame lies in the ambivalence of the Socialist Party itself, whose ministers have repeatedly expressed discomfort with what they regard as excessive regulation of housing. The junior coalition partner Sumar, a nebulous alliance of progressive parties, has proven feeble in holding the Socialists to account. They are now also a target of the protests, who charge the entire governing alliance of complicity with the rentiers. Amid the fury in the streets, Sumar's cabinet members hastened to pressure the Socialist housing minister, Isabel RodrÌguez - herself a landlord who owns multiple properties - to approve emergency measures to block evictions and institute permanent rolling contracts, both key demands of the tenant unions. Last Friday, both measures were struck down in parliament, to the anger of the masses gathered outside.

That a recalcitrant right-wing opposition - comprising the conservative People's Party (PP) and the far-right Vox - would block the measures was entirely predictable. What was less so was that the deciding vote would be cast by an ally of the government: the centre-right Junts, party of the Catalan-nationalist bourgeoisie. The vote revealed a peculiarity of the Spanish conjuncture. Though the right-wing bloc is the largest in parliament, it is divided along nationalist lines, fractures the government has exploited - drawing support from the Catalan right to keep the Spanish unionist right out of power. It was always an unstable arrangement, premised on nation trumping class. On the housing question, the plurinational right voted in alignment with its shared interests (Junts has the largest proportion of landlords in parliament).

The Spanish right now enjoys a comfortable lead in the polls, which point to a PP-Vox coalition if elections were held tomorrow. But the wind is blowing in an uncomfortable direction for them. Over the past week, public opinion has swung massively in favour of regulating house prices, even among a slim majority of right-wing voters. In a matter of days, the protests have shifted the national conversation away from the right's preferred talking points of crime and migration, overwriting a summer of hysteria around the border crisis in Ceuta. They have also deflected attention from the corruption scandals afflicting PSOE: only last June, a former minister in Sánchez's cabinet was sentenced to twenty-four years in prison for influence-peddling related to substandard Covid-19 face masks. Ever the survivor, Sánchez has seized the moment with a characteristically audacious move. He has framed the election on 29 November as a plebiscite on the housing question, shifting the blame for it onto the right and boldly appealing to the electorate to 'subdue the elites', hoping to ride the wave of unrest that is also aimed against him.

Housing has been a political flashpoint in Spain ever since a giant real estate bubble crashed the economy between 2007-14. The circumstances in many ways paralleled those that led to the Great Recession: financial liberalization; easy credit supercharged by cross-border flows; homeowners mortgaged to the hilt; skyrocketing house prices stoked by reckless speculation. What stood out in the Spanish case was the extent to which growth and employment came to depend on a hypertrophied construction sector, rendering broad sections of the economy highly exposed to the inevitable crash. In the 2000s, as rapid population growth and the arrival of Eurozone capital accelerated house-price increases, Spain built more homes than the UK, Italy and Germany combined. At the peak of the boom in 2006, when annual housing construction reached 700,000 units, reports from the property sector estimated that ‘structural demand' - that is, demand for housing to live in - was only 400,000 homes a year. The resulting surplus, built on a purely self-referential, speculative demand, was the substance of the bubble. When household indebtedness hit its ceiling in 2007 and transactions slowed, it burst: prices stagnated and then plummeted. Speculative developers ceased building, grinding the engine of the economy to a halt and releasing shockwaves of job destruction. At the height of the crisis in 2013, unemployment reached a historic high of 26 per cent (56 per cent among the young). Developers, banks and the state rushed to expel families who could not meet rent or mortgage payments. Between 2008 and 2015 there were roughly half a million evictions, half of them foreclosures. The bitter irony was that hundreds of thousands lost their homes because there were hundreds of thousands of homes too many.

In a series of costly bailouts, the state absorbed the losses of the property-financial complex, bringing it to the edge of insolvency. Successive administrations - of both the PSOE and the PP - passed the cost to the masses, inflicting punitive austerity under the watchful eye of Europe's fiscal hawks. The usual sanctimony about belt-tightening and living beyond one's means fell flat. Political parties were plagued by relentless corruption scandals, the majority involving dealings with developers and builders no less. Bankers, meanwhile, flaunted their rapacity by paying themselves obscene bonuses as their banks were being nationalized, leaving the state to foot the bill.

The ensuing crisis of legitimacy set the scene for the rise of the indignados, or the 15-M movement as it is more often referred to in Spain. On 15 May 2011, a series of mass protests descended on city squares, taking aim at austerity measures and the oligarchic bent of the political system. The movement radiated out from Puerta del Sol, where protesters emulated the camp then ongoing in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Though the social composition of the protest was broad, it was led by downwardly mobile middle-class youths, many of whom became politicized for the first time at the movement's assemblies. The memorable yellow T-shirts of the activist group Juventud Sin Futuro captured the feeling with a defiant slogan: ‘no home, no job, no pension, no fear'. Eventually, the 15-M's occupations dispersed into neighbourhood councils, where a wave of radicalized youngsters flooded into a myriad of militant groups. A cycle of mass unrest and civil disobedience followed. The most prominent organization was the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), whose activists acted as the shock troops of the anti-austerity movement. Sabotaging eviction procedures was their staple practice: they confronted bailiffs and their riot police escorts on arrival, barricaded themselves with the families being expelled, occupied repossessed homes, or squatted entire tower blocks to provide accommodation for the dispossessed. The extra-parliamentary struggles of these years proved extremely successful in repoliticizing questions previously regarded as shameful personal failures - unemployment, debt, eviction - turning them into vectors of mass resistance.

Yet they were much less successful in bringing the state to heel. Ironically, the first major electoral outcome of the 15-M protests was a crushing landslide for the right in November 2011. Though the movement had wide public support, its injunction to abstain from voting for the neoliberal uniparty - ‘PPSOE' - was followed more by the left than the right. PSOE's vote collapsed while PP's remained stable, translating into an absolute parliamentary majority for the neoliberal conservatives of Mariano Rajoy, who proceeded to further slash public spending, introduce a draconian labour market reform, and sell off the real estate assets acquired from the banks to global corporate landlords. With its dominance in parliament, the new administration was able to invoke the support of a 'silent majority' to rule by decree while cracking down on protest. At the behest of its Interior Minister, Jorge Fernández DÌaz - an ultra-Catholic in the habit of praying in Franco's mausoleum - the government introduced the notorious 'Gag Law' tailored to the new social movements, which included punitively high fines for blocking evictions. Meanwhile, in a perfect visual metaphor for the dissociation of the elite from the masses, parliament was fenced off from the public and fortified with a permanent detachment of riot police.

After years of being stonewalled, street-fighting fatigue began to set in around 2014. The gigantic March for Dignity that year - demanding 'bread, work and a roof' and culminating in riots in Madrid - was the final flashpoint of this insurrectionary cycle. Seeing the tide turning, activists previously committed to the extra-parliamentary ethos of the 15-M began to form political parties, and probe strategic entry points into the state. One approach was to capitalize on the anti-establishment mood to mount a broad, left-populist offensive aimed at capturing state power 'from above'; the path taken by Podemos, founded in 2014 with the priority of 'storming the heavens' in a general election. Another was the formation of electoral coalitions between urban activists and pre-existing left-wing parties to wrest state power at the local level; a route explored by the multitude of municipalist platforms that in 2015 won office in the country's largest cities, including C·diz, Santiago, Zaragoza, Valencia, Madrid and of course, Barcelona, where PAH's charismatic spokeswoman, Ada Colau, was elected mayor with housing at the top of her agenda.

Both strategies ran into the trouble of operating in the inhospitable terrain of the state. Barcelona's Right to Housing Plan of 2016 was fairly successful in blocking evictions and expanding the social housing stock through a combination of public construction, aggressive acquisition campaigns and the imposition of social housing quotas on developers. But this was the most advanced expression of a municipalist strategy that faced severe challenges from the start. Local reformers ran up against the austerity imposed by the central government; encountered entrenched resistance at all levels of the state bureaucracy; and were forced to water down their policy proposals to navigate the political fragmentation of local councils and/or of their own electoral alliances. Frustration set in among activists and voters as the grinding pace of reform failed to live up to the revolutionary rhetoric. Most of the administrations in the 'cities of change' proved short-lived, voted out of office in 2019. Barcelona followed suit in 2023.

Podemos faced a different set of challenges. Upon its founding, the party quickly drew in hundreds of thousands, swelling new branches in what promised to be a participatory party-movement. However, the leadership - a group of academics sceptical of the potential of grassroots activism - quickly centralized power and reduced internal democracy to a plebiscitary exercise in which the membership merely ratified decisions handed down from above. Such behaviour followed logically from a left-populist strategy that soon became familiar in Europe and North America, one that revolved around charismatic leadership and disciplined media messaging. This strategy did not require a vibrant, independent grassroots layer, but rather the subordination of the whole organization to an 'electoral war machine' commanded from the top. The party's branches withered away as its members were largely reduced to passive clicktivists. What the party gained in short-term agility from this strategy, it lost in long-term resilience: without organized cadres, it became vulnerable to media attacks and personality-driven factionalism.

Meanwhile, Podemos's appeal waned as its electoral assaults on the central state were successively repealed. However, in the general elections of 2019 it was able to clinch enough seats to enter coalition with a reluctant PSOE, locking both parties into a fraught partnership. Podemos's main legislative achievement was the Housing Law of 2023, which introduced a nationwide framework for rent controls. Passed as the municipalist wave died out, it seemed to confirm that the strategic entry point into the state was 'from above'. Yet the gap between law and practice became apparent soon enough. In control of most regional administrations, the People's Party and their far-right allies Vox have simply refused to implement it. To this day, the law is only in force in Catalonia and in areas of the Basque Country. The bill also left a glaring loophole around short-term tourist rentals, letting the hollowing out of cities through platforms like Airbnb continue unabated.

That rent controls have become a burning issue in a society in which 73.3 per cent of households are owner-occupiers reflects the permutations of the Spanish housing system since the crash. When the bubble burst, the state nationalized a huge pool of 'toxic assets'. This devalued property could have been used to create a public housing system, badly needed at a time of rampant evictions. Instead, starting in 2013, the state opted to sell them off at fire-sale prices to investment funds. Blackstone became the country's biggest landlord. In order to relaunch the property market as quickly as possible the state incentivized the business of the 'mega-landlords' with tax advantages and tailored regulations, which also benefited a broader swathe of middle-class landlords. Meanwhile, the share of the tenant population has increased for the first time since the 1950s (+7 per cent of households since 2011). Those homeowners expelled from their homes during the crisis returned to the market as tenants. There, they were joined by a new generation excluded from the mortgage market, more strictly regulated in the wake of the crisis. Credit restrictions have suppressed the leveraged purchases of the 2000s, which allowed many to ride the bubble by borrowing against the rising value of their homes or 'flip' them for profit.

Meanwhile, residential accumulation has reoriented itself around squeezing the growing captive market of tenants or, failing that, the exploitation of tourist rentals. Economically, the new housing regime is more stable than the previous one. Rents rise more or less in line with wages, devouring the disposable income of tenants, but without the debt-fuelled speculative excesses of the bubble. Politically, however, the present arrangement is far more unstable and more prone to social explosions, owing to the greater prominence of rent tenure, where the conflict between the residential and rent-bearing functions of housing is more transparent than in a mass market of 'petty-rentier' speculative homeowners.

Since 2017, Spain has witnessed the emergence of militant tenant unions, which have gained prominence for defeating Blackstone in court and for employing an old tactic of working-class struggle: the rent strike. Although tenants remain a small minority (17 per cent of households), they are demonstrating a capacity to punch far above their weight politically, as their demands mobilize broader strata around the right to housing. A rentier bloc has been taking shape in opposition, headed by large investment funds but sustained by a substantial layer of middle-class landlords, who act as its electoral base. The political frontier of this bloc is difficult to determine, but it clearly runs through the heart of the coalition government. This has been demonstrated by successive PSOE ministers, whose reluctance to regulate rents or openly support the right to housing has repeatedly given them away. With Podemos diminished, since 2023 the Socialists have governed alongside its more cooperative successor, Sumar; an entente cordiale that has failed to bear fruit on housing matters. (Perhaps for this reason Sumar is now floating Colau, former mayor of Barcelona, as a presidential candidate.)

As the left-populist wave recedes, a younger generation of activists is coming to terms with the limits of the electoral experiments of the previous decade - as well as the horizontalism that immediately preceded them. In Puerta del Sol today, formal similarities with 15-M conceal differences of substance. The encampment is once again a plural space - it is populated by three dozen organizations - where successive generations converge and where previously apolitical youngsters are acquiring a new radical consciousness. But in the assemblies there is less blue-sky philosophizing and more strategic discussion; less spontaneity and more coordination of an agreed calendar of escalation. The festive mood of the first iteration has given way to one of discipline, reflecting the maturing of a radical civil society with organizational memory and political experience. The initiative for a general strike came from the Sindicato de Inquilinas; the anarcho-syndicalist unions, which have a presence in the square, promptly joined. The major trade unions - otherwise docile and cooperative with the government - have followed suit. In recent days, the Sindicato has gradually shifted its activity away from the square toward its 'nodes' or neighbourhood councils, in preparation for the strike. The vacuum has been increasingly filled by the Movimiento Socialista, a Marxist youth movement highly sceptical of reformist politics, upon which a number of political currents have converged in recent years.

If Sánchez pulls off a comeback in the November election and manages to cobble together another progressive coalition, the balance of parliamentary forces will likely resemble that of today, as will the pace and scale of reform - which is increasingly intolerable to swathes of the population. But if the election plays out as it did almost fifteen years ago, and the right wins a comfortable majority, we can expect a replay of brutal austerity and police crackdown. Only this time, a government more overt in its fascist sympathies will have to face down a hardened and more disciplined extra-parliamentary left - one that will have to come to terms, sooner or later, with how to influence the state and find a fresh synthesis of the dialectic between revolution and reform. Whether this takes the form of new political vehicles contesting state power directly, or of an antagonistic yet tacit division of labour with reformist forces, remains a critical question.

09 October 2026

Source: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/fifteen-years-later?pc=1795

Photo Caption : A cardboard sign hangs from a tent at the housing camp in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Spain, in the afternoon of October 1, 2026. It reads "NI MI CASA ES YA MI CASA" ("Nor is my house now my house") and is marked "F.G. LORCA".
Photo Credit

Tribute to Our Comrade Youssef Habash…

Forum des Alternatives Maroc — 2026-10-27T22:05:00Z

It is with profound sadness and immense grief that we announce the passing of our comrade and friend, Palestinian activist and journalist Youssef Habash, who left us on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, after a battle with illness.

The passing of our comrade Youssef is an immense loss, not only for the Palestinian cause, which he tirelessly defended by bringing the suffering of the Palestinian people to the attention of the world through his media work, civic engagement and activism, particularly within the framework of the World Social Forum process, but also for all those who stand up for justice, freedom and human dignity.

Youssef was the coordinator of the Palestinian Social Forum and a constant presence at social movement gatherings and events across the five continents. A committed advocate, he was a source of proposals, initiative and mobilisation, contributing with all his strength to their success. His presence was never merely a matter of attendance; it reflected a sincere commitment to activism and a sustained contribution to building spaces of solidarity, bringing struggles closer together and strengthening their convergence in pursuit of a more just and equitable world.

Youssef was a determined activist and a steadfast defender of the Palestinian cause, the rights of the Palestinian people, and their right to their land, freedom and dignity. He was also committed to the struggle for climate justice and firmly believed in the need to ensure justice for the Palestinian people on their own land, in the face of the relentless attacks of the Zionist occupation and the injustice and suffering it inflicts upon them.

The loss of Youssef Habash is irreparable. We have lost a devoted human being and an activist who never ceased defending human causes wherever they arose, standing alongside all those who aspire to freedom, justice and dignity.

Youssef constantly reminded us that defending Palestine means more than defending a people and a land. At its very core, it means defending universal human values and the right of every human being to live a life of freedom and dignity.

Today, we bid you farewell, dear “Zouzo,” as you loved being called by your comrades. Our hearts are heavy with grief, but our conviction remains unshaken: the path of struggle you embodied will live on, and the values of solidarity, resistance and hope that you sowed will remain alive in the hearts of your fellow activists, women and men alike, and of all those with whom you shared the paths of struggle and the dreams of a better world.

We shall live, we shall love, we shall resist, we shall return to be… free!

On behalf of the Executive Office of the Forum des Alternatives Maroc (FMAS) and its Steering Council, we extend our heartfelt condolences and deepest sympathies to your life partner, your children, your family, your comrades, your friends, and all those who shared with you the paths of struggle for Palestine and for humanity.

Peace be upon your soul, dear Youssef. May we all find the strength, patience and courage to face this immense sorrow.

Kamal Chenoy Taught Me the Art of Losing Gracefully and Living Generously

Rajeev Bhargava — 2026-10-27T22:00:00Z

There was no malice in his wit and no self-righteousness in his politics. He never looked down at others or sanctimoniously assumed a position of superiority. Living as an equal, among equals, was the right way to be for him.

Kamal Chenoy and I first met 50 years ago in 1976, but it was only four years later that we drew closer, while competing for the same job at the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

Selections are always uncertain affairs and positions do not always go to those who most deserve them. Many people, and I among them, believed that Kamal was a strong favourite but the job came to me, a pretty unknown aspirant, a dark horse who was not even a student of JNU. Among competitors invariably something lingers: a trace of rancour, a sense of having been wronged, a coolness towards the one who won.

Kamal's response was the very opposite. He congratulated me warmly. It takes a rare largeness of spirit to turn a loss into a gift for the person who vanquished you. It was the first, and definitely not the last lesson, Kamal taught me. Losing well with grace and dignity is an art, one that can evoke admiration.

From August 1980 onwards, we spent more and more time together and developed a growing respect for each other that only flourished with time - mine for his political understanding and extraordinary moral qualities, and his, I think, for whatever ability he saw in me.

Kamal and Anu, and Tani and I, through thick and thin, became participants not merely in each other's political lives, but were also always there for each other at the most crucial moments in every aspect of our personal lives. Together, we learnt that friendship, too, is a moral achievement, built with generosity, honesty and shared joy and sorrow. We are poorer without Kamal and immeasurably richer for having known him.

Kamal was a communist but his communism was never a creed. He was unwavering and committed without being dogmatic. His convictions were held as something precious and alive, kept close, but never gripped so tightly that they lost their breath. A democrat to the core, he was a fierce defender of civil liberties, passionately secular and an unflinching anti-imperialist.

What was most striking was that he did not need to bind all this into a tight, closed system. Sure, these commitments were interdependent, but none had absolute priority over the others. Balancing them, he lived by them all.

He carried his politics lightly

He had a sharp political sense. Incisive and quick, a formidable debater, he mercilessly mocked the powerful and, in the very next moment, could be warm and friendly to the very people he had skewered. Most can manage either the mockery or the friendliness, but seldom both together. That is a rare gift.

Kamal managed it because there was no malice in his wit and no self-righteousness in his politics. He never looked down at others or sanctimoniously assumed a position of superiority. He never lived even as a first among equals. Living as an equal, among equals, was the right way to be for him.

He carried his politics lightly, with style and without the heavy, funereal air that the left once mistook for seriousness. His student-hood carried into his teaching and his qualities as a student leader into his role as the president of the JNU Teachers' Association. He infused a seductive youthfulness into his leadership roles in party politics. I think he was a quintessential Gen-Z politician, a leader before his time, for he did his political activism with wit and charm.

Indeed, with swagger, with dignified insouciance and with unsentimental compassion. Swagger that never turned into vanity, dignity that was never boring or stiff, insouciance that never degenerated into immaturity and compassion that never melted into sentimental pity. He had enough respect for people to not feel sorry for them.

His politics was remarkable for its generosity and he belonged, in a sense, to every party, every faction and splinter of the communist movement, and even to a non-existent, utopian party of the entire progressive left. He was not factional, because his partisanship was to causes, not to cliques or narrow ideologies. His foremost instinct was for solidarity, for a broader progressive alliance.

He had multiple allegiances and attachments, and he saw no contradiction in that. His attitude, if I may put it this way, was: you hold sacred the values as you see them; I hold them sacred as I interpret them, because they are all manifestations of the same cause, of a higher good which we all serve. He did not abandon one commitment in order to take up another. He added, widened and included.

So he stood with several political movements and with all forms of progressive political actors. A resolute defender of the Palestinian cause, a supporter of democracy in Russia and those hungry for freedom in China, he was devoted to anti-imperialisms of every hue. Whether or not you were broadly on his side, he always found a way to engage. He was, in the truest sense, non-sectarian.

I have only once seen him shaken out of his youthfulness, when he set out with many deeply committed civil society activists on a journey of 51 days across this country to discover India. He came back a changed man, more solemn and quieter, never quite the same after those two months on the road. After this experience, he plunged deeper into social movements, making his political world wider still.

An atheist and a fierce anti-Zionist

Let me return to Kamal the individual. He was an unusually public person without an inner fortress to retreat into. What you saw was what he was - a kind of transparency often mistaken for simplicity, but in Kamal it was a hard-won clarity.

Kamal had a way with children, as I saw when he interacted with his own grandchildren as well as with my grandson. He also had a way with dogs - all kinds of dogs, of all ages and sizes, those he had known for a long time and those that had never met him before. They all took to him at once, as if they knew something about him before we did. Children and dogs are the most reliable judges of character. They cannot be argued with and they cannot be charmed by position. They recognised in Kamal what we all came to recognise: an openness, an absence of guile and a heart that did not keep a ledger.

I want to also mention something about his heritage, which he quietly cherished. Marx and Lenin were not part of it. To be a Marxist and a member of the Communist Party of India was a choice he made entirely on his own. But through his mother and grandmother, he was a Baghdadi Jew and he carried that inheritance with pride.

How could an atheist and a fierce anti-Zionist do so? The ‘Aaron' in his complete name was important to him because it had been bequeathed to him by his mother, Shanta, and his grandmother, Hannah. Jewishness was not part of the outward shape of his life, and yet it sat somewhere in him, not as religious doctrine or a political claim, but as a loving bond with them. He loved them, therefore, he was a bit Jewish.

Indeed, if anything, the political inheritance from his mother and grandmother was their association with Gandhi and Nehru, amply established in family albums and photographs on the walls of his home.

The boy in Connaught Place and the man we knew

I conclude with an anecdote. When his mother was remarrying, she was at Connaught Place in Delhi to buy herself a wedding saree, accompanied by an 11-year-old Kamal. When Shanta hesitated over a saree she felt was far too loud or expensive, and picked a rather simple one instead, Kamal encouraged her and quipped, "Come on mom, take the one you liked, the brighter, more expensive one. After all, you only get married once."

The wit, the timing, the cheek, the warmth were all there already. The boy in Connaught Place and the man we knew were the same person.

We have lost a comrade, a teacher, a debater, a leader and a friend. But Kamal would not want us to leave a conversation heavy-hearted. He would want to argue a little, laugh a lot and then return to social and political work.

So we should remember him with seriousness, but without gravity. We should carry on his politics of solidarity over sectarianism and his commitment without dogma. And let us try, if we can, to bring a little of his swagger, humour and dignity to our politics.

Rajeev Bhargava is the director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies' Institute of Indian Thought. He has been a professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Delhi.

13 October 2026

Source: https://m.thewire.in/article/education/how-kamal-chenoy-taught-me-the-art-of-losing-gracefully-and-living-generously/amp