The hard right is making serious ground globally. But, while increasingly powerful, their ideas are not hegemonic. Now is not the time to despair, but to fight for a better world.
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There’s an undeniable sense that a right-wing vibe shift has taken place over the last eighteen months. Bashing migrants, trans people and women’s rights is “in”, as is climate denialism and the unfettered right of billionaires to accumulate as much money as possible. The hard right have become normalised; they are the mainstream in politics.
Donald Trump’s re-election and his rapid-fire assault on the oppressed and regulatory departments are the pinnacle of this new political era. He campaigned on assertions that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of US society and eating pet cats and dogs in Ohio. He celebrated his success in appointing Supreme Court judges who overturned national abortion protections. He vowed to abolish the Department of Education and Environmental Protection Authority. And now that he’s taken office, he’s holding good on many promises, while threatening US territorial expansion.
But it’s not just the US. The far right is on the march across Europe, surging in France, the United Kingdom and Germany, on the verge of taking power in Austria, and ruling Italy and several Central European countries. Many trace historical links to 1930s fascist parties. In Australia, Liberal leader Peter Dutton has borrowed elements of the MAGA playbook, lashing out at the “woke agenda”, lamenting that young men are “disenfranchised and ostracised” by diversity initiatives and setting up his own DOGE-inspired shadow minister for government efficiency. 
Unsurprisingly, corporate America is also going MAGA. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has inserted himself into the heart of the Trump administration, while using his control of X to promote far-right parties internationally. In a speech to the fascist Alternative for Germany party, Musk encouraged Germans to move beyond “a focus on past guilt” less than a week after performing a Nazi salute during Trump’s inauguration. 
The titans of Silicon Valley—where many of the richest men in the world made their billions—have embraced Trump. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg now sports a gold chain, encourages companies to embrace “masculine energy” and recently dropped diversity initiatives. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is spending $40 million for the right to make a documentary about first lady Melania Trump, live streamed Trump’s inauguration and, along with many other tech billionaires, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. There was a revolving door of corporate leaders bending the knee at Mar-a-Lago in the months before Trump took office.
It’s unsurprising, because these are the people set to benefit the most from an administration that is gutting regulations seen as impediments to the rich making money. In a world that feels more unstable (economies are stuttering, climate change is wreaking havoc and the threat of global war is looming), Trump promises a more ruthless administration focused only on “making America win”. Be under no illusion: it’s corporate America he is referring to. 
Diversity, equity and inclusion programs fitted the vibe of the 2010s and early 2020s, when millions of people mobilised to demand racial justice and the #MeToo movement excoriated misogynistic corporate culture. Companies adapted to try to maintain relevance amongst their consumer base. But that moment has passed, and the naked pursuit of profit and power, the preferred state of affairs for the billionaires, is making a comeback. “I feel liberated”, a top banker told the Financial Times. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled ... It’s a new dawn.”
Right-wing politics also feels ascendant in broader society and popular culture. Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson have infected a growing section of young men with their noxious brand of hyper-misogyny and hustle culture. Trump received loud cheers during the Super Bowl live stream. Joe Rogan rules the airwaves. #YourBodyMyChoice trended immediately after Trump’s election. UFC fighter Bryce Mitchell received barely a slap on the wrist for a pro-Hitler rant that called the Nazi leader “a good guy”.
This all amounts to a dangerous new normal in world politics. For anyone who cares about the plight of the oppressed, this is serious cause for concern. It also raises a few important questions: How did we get here? And what can we do about it?
The first thing to note is that it’s not the case that everyone is now a bigot. Trump did not win by a large margin—at 1.8 percent, it’s the smallest since 1968—and nearly 90 million eligible voters stayed home. Only one newly elected president has had a lower approval rating than Trump since the end of World War II: himself, in 2017. Across Western Europe and the UK, a majority of voters still reject the far right. If Dutton wins the upcoming federal election, it will be because of the ALP’s failure to help ordinary people during the cost-of-living crisis: every Australian poll conducted in the last twelve months shows more than two-thirds of respondents do not support Trump.
Polling also indicates that many of the key right-wing talking points are not very popular. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support legal access to abortion in most or all cases (which has increased since the Dobbs decision), according to the Pew Research Center. In June last year, Gallop found that more than six in ten Americans opposed banning access to gender-affirming care for minors. Only 37 percent of US adults support Trump’s call to deport all undocumented migrants, according to a survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
In the cultural sphere, Chappell Roan, who loudly promotes LGBTI rights and supports Palestine, is the pop star of the moment. And apparently Trump’s cheers at the Super Bowl were challenged by loud jeers—Fox sport just edited those bits out.
The next thing to understand is that the right has not risen to power because the masses turned fascist. The story of electoral politics in 2024 was the crisis of incumbency: parties that have overseen the rising cost of living of recent years were booted out of office. For instance, in the United Kingdom the Labour Party defeated the Conservatives, but now that they’re just dishing out more of the same, the far-right Reform UK party has surged in the polls. Politicians of all stripes are being punished for rising inequality.
In addition to that, official politics has for years been shifting to a harsher, more racist edge. For the last fifteen years, everyone from the traditional conservatives to the social democratic parties has tried to deflect anger away from themselves and on to migrants—it’s a classic case of divide and rule. Fortress Europe—the decade-long effort to keep migrants out of Europe by building barbed wire fences and letting at least 25,000 refugees drown in the Mediterranean—was not constructed by the fascists, but the political “centre”. Last year, deportations under Biden surpassed Trump’s record. When all we are hearing from politicians and the mainstream media is that we can’t afford a house because migrants are flooding the borders, is it any wonder that people start to believe this?
Popular consciousness is not only hardening to the right, but polarising to the left as well. There are countless examples of this: from young people demanding action on climate change, growing acceptance of trans people and outrage over attacks on abortion rights, not to mention the popular response to Luigi Mangione assassinating a health insurance CEO in New York last year. As the world becomes a nastier place, many are looking for a progressive alternative. 
So how do you square this circle with the rise of the right? For one thing, it’s easier for the right. Despite their anti-establishment rhetoric, they fit much more neatly into the system, venerating hierarchies, national divisions, racist scapegoating and profit making. They’re not trying to overthrow capitalism and create a society of genuine equality—quite the opposite. When it comes to electoral politics, the right has the advantage: for instance, the left doesn’t have the support of the richest person on the planet (and nor would we want it).
But mistakes have also been made by the left. Many have tried to transform the centre left parties into a weapon for economic and social justice. This means that organising efforts are wasted on hopeless projects like the Democrats or Labor-type parties. When these parties continue to betray their hopeful supporters, people become demoralised and withdraw from politics entirely. We saw this with Bernie Sanders in the US, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and even more left-wing, but limited, electoral projects in Europe. 
The other mistake is thinking that the bosses can be compelled to right society’s wrongs. “Woke capitalism” and diversity programs still gave us soaring inequality, accelerating climate change and the genocide in Gaza. 
Left-wing people feel defeated while the right is ascendant, which has a broader impact on society. The right-wing trolls who were hiding in subreddits five years ago are now brimming with confidence.
Instead, we need to look towards forms of organising that history has shown can push back against the right and the ills of capitalism more broadly. Protests are an essential part of that strategy. At the start of last year, support for the German far right fell after mass protests swept the country. The Black Lives Matter uprising—the largest protests in US history—helped put the final nail in the coffin of the first Trump administration. They’re also a way to gather those who share a common outrage and vision for society, cutting against the atomisation and demoralisation that the system relies on. 
Working-class power is the other necessary element. Imagine if every teacher in the US stopped work to stop Trump from gutting the Education Department. Or if every doctor and nurse went on strike against cuts to public health or the health insurance vultures. Without the labour of ordinary people, their system would come to a standstill.
But we also need a political alternative: socialist parties that fight this shitty system, instead of capitulating to or compromising with it. Politics that fights for workers, for migrants, for trans people and women’s rights, against war and genocide and greenhouse-gas-emitting corporate criminals. 
We’re living in an increasingly dangerous world. The rich want to stamp down harder on workers, the oppressed are having hard-fought rights stripped away, and the threats of war and climate catastrophe loom large. Standing on the sidelines is not an option for anyone with a shred of decency. It’s time to join the fight.

Eleanor Morley

Resisting the right-wing vibe shift

The promise of mass deportations. Pardons for fascist militia leaders. Nazi salutes. Turning Guantánamo Bay torture camp into a migrant prison. A war on federal anti-discrimination provisions. On and on it goes, in US President Donald Trump’s shock and awe campaign to remould US politics decisively.
His right-hand man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, is charged with making swingeing cuts to government expenditure. But he is just as focused on building support for jailed British fascist Tommy Robinson and for the Alternative for Germany, a fascist party that, with Musk’s backing, is now polling second in the lead-up to a federal election later this month. 
Far-right parties are in government in seven EU member states—Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia—and are surging in France and Britain, among other places. Austria’s Freedom Party, founded by an SS-Brigadeführer and former member of the Nazi Reichstag, is on the cusp of forming a government. 
None of this is coincidental. The new right is building a global movement. A victory for one is viewed as a victory for all. And no victory has been celebrated as much as Trump’s return. There could have been no greater boost to the forces of global fascism than having a far-right figure running the world’s most powerful country. At fascist and far-right rallies everywhere, people wear the distinctive Make America Great Again caps and hold pictures of the bigoted billionaire while cheering their local equivalents.
Capitalists and establishment politicians are not only doing little to impede the growth of this toxic new far right; in many cases, they are cosying up to and encouraging it. 
During his first term, Trump faced significant resistance from many quarters and mass protests from the public. Indeed, his administration turned out to be weak and somewhat ineffective, embroiled in turmoil from one week to the next and with a revolving door of staff, one day praised by the president, the next derided as dumb as rocks. 
This time around, so far, it has been different. Since 5 November, establishment arse kissers have lined up to visit Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to ingratiate themselves with a man who has basically promised to carry out mass human rights violations across the country. The financial pages have been a sea of articles about “the Trump trade” as all attention turns to money making, to hell with humanity.
After Trump entered office in 2017, the Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, changed its masthead motto to “Democracy dies in darkness”. This time, Bezos forbade any election editorial against Trump (a “hypocritical, chicken shit move”, according to one former US diplomat) and was a guest at the presidential inauguration, along with a who’s who of America’s most influential and wealthy people.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong also attended, personifying Australia’s imperial cringe: a hack basking in the glow of power. More than that, Wong exemplified the useful idiocy of the political centre left. While the far right coordinates globally, all the ALP can offer is smiles and photo ops that help normalise the brewing reaction. 
Not a peep of opposition can be heard from this so-called party of labour, just the sound of it sucking up to the rich and powerful here and abroad. Indeed, if Trump had strolled over and taken a crap at Wong’s feet, we’d probably have gotten a bumbling DFAT media release about the president’s attention to Australia’s representative being yet another indication of the two countries’ “enduring mateship”. 
So what’s left? And what can we do?
“No-one saves us but ourselves.” That saying is attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to Buddha. A few years ago, the global climate movement adopted it. Hundreds of thousands of young people started to recognise that lobbying was a dead end. Clearly, those in power—politicians and capitalists—have zero intention of doing what’s required to avert environmental catastrophe. In fact, pursuing profits, they continue to green-light destructive coal and oil extraction projects worldwide. 
It’s also clear that the established political forces will not save us from the far right. If gaining office means adopting parts of the far-right program or capitulating to far-right leaders, they will do it. If being close to power means being close to and friendly with fascists, then they will dress for the occasion. 
They are scum.
No-one will save us but ourselves. We have to build a socialist alternative to this global horror show and a socialist alternative to the useless ALP. We need a party willing to fight, not capitulate—a party that fights for workers, not billionaires; a party that fights against bigotry and racism; a party that fights against war and imperialism; a party that fights against the whole rotten system of capitalism, and for a society run according to Karl Marx’s maxim, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”.
If you want to resist the far right, and build a better, socialist society, join Socialist Alternative. We have a world to win.

‘No-one saves us but ourselves’: we have to resist the far right

Capitalism’s new era of brutality found no greater expression this week than in the world’s richest man, Elon Musk—a supporter of European fascist organisations—openly and emphatically invoking the most reactionary of political doctrines. 
At an event celebrating Donald Trump’s swearing-in as the 47th president of the United States, the multi-billionaire unmistakably performed Nazi salutes. Yet this provoked little consternation among the mouthpieces of capitalism—the media that relentlessly smear anti-war protesters as antisemites. 
“Standing ovation for Elon Musk”, observed news anchor Erin Burnett during CNN’s live coverage. “You saw him come out with that odd-looking salute.” The New York Times
adopted the posture of a media establishment utterly unperturbed, with a headline that conjured a shrug: “Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture”. 
For many years, the global ruling classes’ only defence against Trump’s right-wing electoral populism took the form of repeated warnings about the danger of fascism. Now, presented with the most culturally recognisable symbol of fascist politics from a member of Trump’s administration, they feign ignorance. 
This is no mistake. It is the wilful legitimisation of far-right filth by a system built on exploitation, oppression and militarism.
Big bank CEOs, industrialists, politicians and diplomats have brushed off Musk’s obscenity as they flock to embrace Trump. Salivating over the promise of tax cuts, deregulation and renewed imperial might, the profit-seekers are kneeling before their new master like so many Pavlovian dogs. 
On ABC News, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong congratulated the president and described the “honour” of attending his inauguration as “such an important event, the peaceful transfer of power in our democracy”. The Hitler salutes that featured in the celebrations—not to mention the reactionary programme of the incoming administration—weren’t worth mentioning, let alone condemning. 
Defenders of the status quo might try to deny reality. But the far right fully grasps the facts. Australian neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell posted a video of Musk’s salute, declaring it a “Donald Trump White Power Moment”. Right-wing US political commentator Evan Kilgore <a href="https://x.com/EvanAKilgore/status/1881431216181985720">wrote on X</a>: “Did @elonmusk just Heil Hitler at the Trump Inauguration Rally ... We are so back”. 
Among the global leaders of the parliamentary far right, Argentina’s President Javier Milei was first in line to stand with Musk. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Milei claimed that the Tesla CEO “has been unjustly vilified by wokeism ideology of recent days for an innocent gesture that simply reflects his enthusiasm and gratitude for people”. On X, Milei was <a href="https://x.com/JMilei/status/1881887233516482610">more forthright</a>: “Tremble, leftist motherfuckers”.
One of the most disgraceful defences of Musk came from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a US-based nonprofit that presents itself as an antisemitism watchdog. As footage of the rally circulated, the organisation offered <a href="https://x.com/ADL/status/1881474892022919403">an instant apology for it</a>:
“It seems that [Musk] made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute ... In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt ... Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.”
The ADL, of course, has been unwilling to extend the same level of understanding to activists opposing genocide. Even Jewish opponents of Israeli war crimes have been labelled antisemites by the group. Mondoweiss, a US news website, reported last June that ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt had stated at a corporate panel event: “Saying ‘free Palestine’ to a Jewish person out of context is antisemitism, plain and simple”. In a previous address to an ADL leadership summit, Greenblatt insisted: “When campus organisations like SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] interrupt speeches, disrupt events ... that is extremism”. 
If there’s one thing that should be simple to identify as extremism, it’s a Hitler salute by a man who recently wrote on X: “Only the AfD can save Germany”. (The AfD­—Alternative for Germany—is a fascist party led by a man <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-69012813">convicted for knowingly using a Nazi slogan</a> at a public rally.)
Musk himself clarified the situation by <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1882406209187409976">posting a sequence of puns</a> containing the names of high-ranking Nazi officials, capped off with, “Bet you did nazi that coming”. This is from a man who thinks UK far-right leader Nigel Farage ought to be <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/1/6/musk-turns-on-uk-politician-farage-over-jailed-far-right-activist">replaced by fascist street agitator Tommy Robinson</a>.
Yet Musk escapes official rebuke because of the power bestowed on him by wealth and his proximity to the incoming US president. Almost every institution of Western capitalism has declared its eagerness to work with Trump’s team. 
Nazi sympathies were no barrier to lucrative partnerships earlier in the twentieth century, as the <a href="https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/hitlers-american-friends-henry-ford-and-nazism/">compatriots of Henry Ford knew well</a>. The US ruling class seems to be returning to the sensibilities of those times. Reservations are being voiced in some establishment circles—but the desire to make money is trumping the idea of putting up any serious resistance to the reactionary political tide. 
This episode is a grave forewarning about what our current rulers will tolerate. Our only hope in pushing back the far-right surge is to build radical opposition against the system that created this monstrosity in the first place.

Ruby Healer

The salute that was

On 11 January, 15,000 people travelled from across Germany in at least 200 buses and more sold-out trains to protest the conference of the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is polling second in the run-up to national elections next month. 
After its conference in Essen last year was met with 70,000 anti-fascist demonstrators, the AfD this year moved its meeting to the regional town of Riesa, in Saxony, where the party received 38 percent of the vote in the 2024 state elections.
Fascists lead the AfD. Its unofficial “führer”, Björn Höcke, who has been convicted for using Nazi slogans at rallies, has long won the fight for control over the party. Research last year by Bavarian Broadcasting, a media company, <a href="https://www.br.de/presse/inhalt/pressemitteilungen/afd-recherche-bundestag-mitarbeitende-rechtsextrem-100.html">found</a>
that the AfD employs more than 100 hardcore Nazis in the German parliament, including activists and organisers of street fighting groups.
The AfD dreams of a German ethnostate, to be realised through mass deportations of non-ethnic Germans. This plan to “return millions of foreigners to their homeland is no secret”, admitted AfD Brandenburg chair René Springer last year. “It is a promise.” 
Indeed, Höcke boasts of projecting a “politics of well-tempered cruelty”.
Two anti-fascist campaigns organised the blockades in Riesa under the slogan “Prevent the AfD conference!” Stand Up to Racism is a historic campaign formally supported by the Social Democrats, Greens and trade unions; Resist was formed last year to organise the blockades of the AfD conference in Essen.
An important development this year was the formation of Students Against the Right, which recently called mass student general meetings to oppose the AfD and mobilise for Riesa. Waiting for one of the dozens of buses from Berlin organised by the students, Phil Butland, a member of Socialism from Below and a contributor to the Left Berlin, told Red Flag:
“There were meetings at three Berlin universities where there were 4,000 at them [in total]. They were just student union meetings, but they were the biggest student union meetings in years.” 
Similar meetings across the country attracted thousands more.
“Most, if not all, also passed a motion on Palestine at the same meeting”, Butland said. “I think people were mainly there for the AfD thing, but it shows how much things have shifted at German universities that people who weren’t there for Palestine voted for a pro-Palestine motion.”
Once its fleet of buses arrived, the Berlin “finger” was stopped by the police for over an hour. As dawn broke, it finally began its march toward Riesa. A young, first-time protester told Red Flag that he knew he had to go when he saw the blockades advertised: “[The AfD] stand against everything that I stand for ... I’m scared of fascists, and even more scared of fascists that are successful with what they do”.
Amid economic stagnation, politics in Germany—and across Europe—has shifted sharply to the right. Racism has been used to paint refugees and immigrants, rather than bosses and landlords, as responsible for rising unemployment and rents.
It is not just the far right that is fuelling this shift. In 2023, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz argued for Germany to “finally deport on a mass scale”, and since his ruling coalition collapsed, all major parties apart from the crisis-ridden left-wing Die Linke (The Left) have begun a racist election campaign of which the AfD could be the primary beneficiaries. Prioritising campaigning for February’s snap election, however, Die Linke had a notably small presence in Riesa.
On the other hand, the trade unions were very visible. Germany’s second-largest union, ver.di, refunded half the cost of its members’ bus tickets and publicly promoted the blockades. There was even a small group called Tesla Auto Workers Against Fascism. 
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been promoting the AfD, but while he shared a livestream from inside the conference hall to his X account, outside, the Tesla workers who generate his wealth staffed the barricades.
After a couple of hours, sub-zero temperatures began to wear down the blockaders, but photos of a near-completely empty conference hall generated a triumphant mood. Unfortunately, this did not last long. Blockaders were cleared by police, who attacked with truncheons, pepper spray and dogs, Berlin’s Daily Newspaper <a href="https://taz.de/Protest-gegen-AfD-Parteitag/!6058447/">reported</a>. Nam Duy Nguyen, a Die Linke parliamentary observer, was beaten unconscious.
Protesters then marched through the town, carrying signs that read, “Björn Höcke is a Nazi” and “Stop the AfD-Nazis!” Red Flag spoke to Ahmed Shah, a member of Socialism from Below and a longstanding anti-fascist campaigner. “If Nazis march, and you don’t do anything, they grow”, he said. “So you have to act.”
With the fascist Freedom Party forming a government in neighbouring Austria and Donald Trump stepping into the White House, the far right is on the march. Days after its conference, the emboldened AfD distributed election flyers in the form of deportation tickets. 
The blockades in Riesa were important, but more actions will be needed.

Leon Whitehead

Inside an anti-fascist blockade in Germany

More than 250 refugees and their supporters chased away 25 neo-Nazis who tried to crash a protest at Melbourne’s Home Affairs Department on 16 August. 
After the Nazis slunk off down an alley, Tamil kids rushed around the demonstration, laughing and shouting. Refugees who came to Australia by boat hugged each other, cheered and shouted: “Refugees are welcome, Nazis are not!” 
The refugees have been camping outside the Home Affairs Department for more than a month, demanding permanent visas. The federal Labor government has left roughly 12,000 refugees in limbo. Most participating in the encampment arrived in Australia by boat before 2013 and have been through a combination of offshore detention, onshore detention and years of living on six-month bridging visas.
Not long after the protest began, members of the National Socialist Network (a Hitler-supporting white supremacist group) arrived in black shirts and combat boots to hold a counter-protest. They carried a banner reading, “Fuck off, we’re full”. They covered their faces with balaclavas and dark sunglasses. 
Refugee organisers, socialists, activists from the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, unionists from the United Workers Union and Palestine solidarity campaigners established a picket to defend the camp. The crowd outnumbered the Nazis ten to one, filling the footpath and the road, drowning out the Nazis with chants of “Justice for refugees!” 
The Nazis tried to march around the picket to get into the camp, but the protesters cut them off and, keeping together in a large bloc, followed them as they looked for an opening. 
When the Nazis gave up and retreated down a back alley, there was a deafening cheer. It was the perfect picture: a group of supposedly tough guys who dream of driving non-whites out of Australia, forced to back down in the face of a united group of Iranian, Tamil, Afghan, Palestinian and other anti-racist activists. 
“The refugees were determined to chase them away”, Aran Mylvaganam told Red Flag at a Palestine rally the following Sunday, which the refugees led in a march through the city. Mylvaganam is one of the organisers of the encampment, a member of Socialist Alternative and a founder of the Tamil Refugee Council. “After twenty minutes of them throwing racist lines at the protest, they just walked away like cowards. It felt really good.”
Australia’s politicians have done everything in their power to demoralise the 12,000 refugees. Many don’t get access to Medicare, and private health insurance companies won’t give them coverage. Universities will let their children attend only if they pay full fees as international students. 
Many of the refugees involved in the encampment work in factories and recycling plants run by bosses who pay them below the minimum wage and use the threat of deportation to force them to accept deplorable working conditions. 
But when they chased the Nazis away, the atmosphere was anything but demoralised. The thrill of defeating a group of gym-junkie white supremacists kept everyone awake until late into the night, telling stories, joking around, playing chess and organising the next demonstration. 
Kids gathered around a six-week-old puppy to help his owner name him: “Freddo”, for Free Da Refugees. One Tamil refugee commented that sitting at the camp was like being on a train in India: you couldn’t go five minutes without someone offering you ginger tea or a snack. 
“The refugees don’t feel intimidated”, Mylvaganam said. “They’re not worried about the possibility of the Nazis coming back because they can see that they’ve got the community support needed to chase them away again.”

Jasmine Duff

Refugees push back Nazis in Melbourne

<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/night-britain-uk-fight-back-riots-southport-immigration/">Reports of the anti-racist demonstrations</a> sweeping Britain on the evening of Wednesday, 7 August, were a sight for sore eyes. Quite literally—those of us watching the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/7/mapping-far-right-riots-in-the-uk">racialised thuggery</a> unfold across the UK since July have genuinely had to hold back tears. If the threat posed by the far right in Britain is to be successfully pushed back, much more anti-racist protest will be needed.
Britain hasn’t seen this level of coordinated far-right terror since the late 1970s. It’s <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/beating-the-nazis-in-the-1970s-we-did-it-before-and-we-ll-do-it-again/">reminiscent of the dark days</a> of jackbooted skinheads and the rise of the far-right National Front: days many believed were long gone. But almost 50 years later, anti-racists have once again found themselves having to organise emergency counter-protests against an onslaught of targeted attacks on refugees and migrants. 
The turnouts for the 7 August rallies in major cities were large. In East London, 10,000 took to the streets; there were 7,000 in Bristol, 1,500 in Liverpool and the same number in Sheffield. In one west London neighbourhood, around 400 protesters faced down a pathetic showing of four or five far-right thugs, protected and spirited to safety by the Metropolitan Police. The crowd took up a <a href="https://x.com/deborahfinding/status/1821266059141455880">chant</a> both poignant and to the point: “There are many, many more of us than you!”.
Reports also suggest that Muslim youth have organised themselves to defend physically their mosques and community centres—an echo of the <a href="https://irr.org.uk/article/recollections-on-the-asian-youth-movements-that-emerged-in-the-1970s/">Asian Youth Movements</a> of the late 1970s. 
Back then, migrant communities could also rely on mass anti-fascist mobilisations of workers and young people cohered around the <a href="https://redflag.podbean.com/e/lessons-from-the-anti-nazi-league-with-moira-leahy/">Anti-Nazi League</a> (ANL). After a <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/08/remembering-the-battle-of-lewisham-2">victorious march</a> against police and fascists in south-east London in 1977, the ANL chased the National Front off the streets wherever it was active. The radical socialists who organised the ANL also galvanised support from the most militant sections of the trade union movement; in 1979 the National Union of Mineworkers hosted a “Miners Against the Nazis” conference in collaboration with ANL activists. 
Today, unions are the only official institutions endorsing anti-racist demonstrations, union flags and contingents being present at many rallies. While left-pitching <a href="https://www.hastings.gov.uk/news/latest/joint-statement/">Greens</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-V3tffo79c/">Labour</a> representatives shamefully warned their constituents against attending protests, many local union branches are trying to mobilise. One activist from the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers—which spearheaded a <a href="https://cms.redflag.org.au/article/britains-historic-strike-wave">strike wave</a> in 2022—told <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/anti-racism/7-august-fear-changes-sides-as-massive-protests-defy-the-far-right/">Socialist Worker</a> that a union conference held on 7 August had voted to attend a nearby anti-fascist protest en bloc. 
What the anti-fascist movement faces is a broad revival of serious and organised neo-Nazi street politics. The mainstream media have adopted terms like “rioting” or “disturbances”, but what we’ve seen are orchestrated physical attacks on mosques, immigration centres and refugee housing. According to UK anti-fascist research group Hope Not Hate, <a href="https://hopenothate.org.uk/2024/07/31/the-far-right-and-the-southport-riot-what-we-know-so-far/">flyers and social media posts</a> have been used to coordinate attacks at specific times and places.
On 27 July a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce4qd4e4e1vo">huge nationalist and anti-Muslim rally</a> of around 40,000 people was held in Trafalgar Square, London. Headed by notorious hate-monger Tommy Robinson, this mass mobilisation took place before the Southport stabbing that ostensibly triggered the wave of far-right violence across the country. And Robinson already had a follow-on <a href="https://www.thenational.scot/news/24490711.glaswegians-urged-stand-firm-tommy-robinson-promoted/">demonstration planned</a> for Glasgow’s George Square in September. This will be a major test for anti-racist counter-protesters to face down.
Hitler once wrote that mass rallies and street-level confrontations helped build the hardened core of Nazism because they “burn into the little man’s soul the conviction that, though a little worm, he is part of a great dragon”. 
Sinister <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq4c-Wiazw&amp;rco=1">speeches</a> at Robinson’s event echoed this sentiment and delivered clear incitements to racist violence. “There is no political solution to this problem [of Muslim immigration]”, one speaker proclaimed. “The mass of you, the sea of you ... you are the solution. Defend your home ... take back your country and unite the Kingdom—God bless the king!” Another, dressed in full military garb, <a href="https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1818239415040221667">declared</a> to rapturous applause, “I will keep fighting until I’m lying on the streets, choking on my own blood”.
The establishment politicians, the police and media outlets now decrying “disorder” have done nothing to denounce the rhetoric spewing from Robinson’s brothers-in-arms. Indeed, they’ve pushed a hard-right racist agenda of their own in recent years. Former Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tried to establish <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/how-australia-taught-britain-torture-refugees">offshore refugee detention</a> camps in Rwanda. His successor, Labour’s Keir Starmer, promises instead new counter-terror powers and faster deportations of asylum seekers directly back to their home countries. 
Establishment parties have given fuel to the far right by whipping up anger against migrants. Almost 17 per cent of voters in the recent British general election <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/">voted for</a> openly far-right candidates running with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK or as ex-Conservative independents.
When mass industrial action <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/britains-summer-industrial-discontent">broke out</a> in 2022, the British labour movement had an opportunity to impose a different narrative about rising inflation and falling living standards. Instead of scapegoating migrants and refugees, striking workers laid the blame squarely on the capitalist class gorging itself on the profits of the crisis. 
Keir Starmer condemned those strikes, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/27/sam-tarry-sacked-labour-frontbench-rail-strike-picket-line-keir-starmer">sacked</a> a Labour shadow minister for visiting a picket line. The Labour Party has actively engaged in racist fearmongering and undermined serious class resistance and solidarity. The chickens are now coming home to roost.
The ruling class is cohering around a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/riots-starmer-turning-point-police-b2593477.html">“law and order” response</a> to the so-called disturbances of the past few weeks. British anti-fascists are well aware of the role police played in <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/eyewitnesses-to-the-battle-of-cable-street-fascists-did-not-pass/">defending far-right marches</a> in the 1930s and ’70s. The police daily enact their <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/24/outrage-after-british-police-officer-filmed-kicking-man-in-the-head">own racist violence</a> against Muslims and enforce the “order” of a perpetually unjust system. 
That’s why any movement against the far right must be imbued with a radical and unforgiving critique of the system that breeds fascist thugs. They are the political spawn of equally criminal bosses, media moguls and establishment politicians. Against all of them—all these fascist worms and their capitalist enablers—our side must respond decisively: “There are many, many more of us than you”.

‘There are many, many more of us than you’: British anti-racists mobilise against far right onslaught

Who’s it going to be: me or the fascists? That’s the question Emmanuel Macron asked the French electorate a few weeks ago when he dissolved the parliament and called a snap election. On 7 July, he got his answer: neither. 
It was the most important electoral defeat for the French far right in decades. The National Rally (RN) has lost national elections before—indeed, every single one. But, since 2002, the party has steadily advanced in what began to look like an inevitable progression towards power. It has come to be seen as the government in waiting, prepared for office by the fiascos of the Macron presidency. 
Vincent Bolloré, France’s Rupert Murdoch, cultivated the RN, promoted it and finally helped negotiate a breakthrough electoral deal with a faction of the centre-right Republicans. The party even rented an apartment in Paris to conduct negotiations with bosses and prepare for government. The RN seemed to have it all: the blessing of important parts of the French ruling class and the aura of an authentic outsider party representing a clean break with rotten traditions. 
“We’ve never tried them” became a cliché supposedly expressing the national mood of openness to an RN government. This was meant to be the far right’s turn. 
The disappointment has inflicted a psychological blow on the fascists, who think power is their birthright. You could see it in the face of Jordan Bardella, the party’s prime ministerial hopeful, who spoke to supporters using the same tone and expressions with which he might explain his internet browser history to his mother. 
It was even more apparent in the <a href="https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/1810044783693287894">reaction from the RN election night party</a>, which was undoubtedly the worst social event of the season. Watch the young woman who, knowing the cameras are rolling, uses every ounce of her Will to Power to maintain a smile and not down her glass of white wine in one gulp. The activists were crying. “What a joke”, <a href="https://www.francetvinfo.fr/elections/reportage-legislatives-2024-au-qg-du-rassemblement-natioanal-les-militants-sont-passes-de-la-joie-a-la-desillusion-en-dix-secondes_6651807.html">one of them told France Info</a>, suddenly contemptuous of French voters. “They’ve behaved like sheep. A historic choice was offered to them, and they’ve done this nonsense.” 
The people let down the party. What will happen now?
The apparently inexorable rise of RN developed its own momentum. It was like a steam train smashing through its right-wing rivals—from the ultra-right Reconquete to the “respectable” Republicans—and causing splits everywhere as more and more ambitious conservative politicians jumped on board the RN express. Let us hope that this setback creates demoralisation, confusion, internal blame and paralysis.
The supporters of France Unbowed—the most left-wing and dominant force in the broad left coalition that claimed victory in the elections—gathered, appropriately, in Place Stalingrad in northern Paris. They cried too—in relief, and also with justifiable pride. They had been bracing for an electoral result that would express a triumphant wave of reactionary hatred, especially against migrants, and most especially against Arabs and Muslims, but generally directed at anyone who believed in social equality and progress. Instead of having to console each other and prepare to fight a fascist government, they celebrated a victory over both the fascists and Macron’s authoritarian liberals.
They campaigned against racism, for solidarity with Palestine, for taxing the rich and for increasing wages. They forced the cringing establishment left—the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Greens—into the position of resentful junior partners in their coalition. They were relentlessly slandered as antisemites and terrorist sympathisers, in practically every media interview, by the fascists and even by some of their own coalition partners. But, as party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon crowed in his election-night speech, their program had mobilised the youth and the quartiers populaires, the poor and working-class neighbourhoods, to beat back the right wing and provide a victory to the left on a historically high turnout.
American voters might be wishing they lived in France right now. Every institution in US politics is designed to prevent such a thing from happening. “Progressive” politics is trapped inside the capitalist Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party itself is structured to make its capitalist leadership unassailable—even more tightly so since the two failed candidacies of Bernie Sanders. The top minds in the US political establishment are currently trying to push out a candidate who has all of Macron’s flaws and none of his virtues: a babbling, genocide-enabling pillar of the neoliberal establishment. How desperately the United States needs an independent, socialist political alternative that renounces the moral blackmail of the Democrats and fights the far right on a working-class, socialist program.
Important lessons should be drawn from the French victory. When far-right politics becomes a mass phenomenon, it can be blocked without capitulating to its racism. Sticking to leftist principles—whether on economics, immigration or Palestine—will attract scorn and slander from powerful institutions. But this can be challenged and overcome. A powerful political coalition of the oppressed—young progressives, migrants and workers—can be constructed.
But the victory is not total, and it is not permanent. It is a reprieve.
France Unbowed is a reformist party, which means it is pro-state and pro-capitalist, with all the limits that entails. Mélenchon has demanded the right to form a left government and insisted that they will not trade away their coalition's program: they will take power only to implement “the program, the whole program, and nothing but the program”. 
We have heard that before. It sounds great compared to the prevailing standards of the centre-left, in which compromises are upheld as virtuous. The history of social democracy is full of such stirring declarations. They often come on the eve of a catastrophic sell-out. Manuel Bompard, a senior official in France Unbowed, called for the activists to continue protesting and organising, to defend and pressure a left-wing government. 
Both pressure and defence may be necessary, but Bompard’s call still operates within a framework that reduces the masses to supporting and cheering on a set of politicians rather than reshaping society themselves. The fundamental rules of capitalist politics remain unchallenged: power remains in the hands of big business; the people exist to support politicians. 
While that is the case, even the most radical left government will find its program circumscribed in practice. The Socialist Party and the Communist Party have been discredited over the course of a century, not only because they sold people out, but because they did so despite having such lovely programs. Even if France Unbowed could form government independently, it would still be beholden to the system that produced the present political crisis.
But, of course, it cannot form government independently. Its electoral coalition with the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Greens has been a lifeline for those parties, particularly the shrivelled Socialists, who have more than doubled their parliamentary representation. France Unbowed makes up less than half of the overall left bloc, and that bloc makes up less than half of the new parliament. 
The right-wing socialists and Greens have rebelled against the notion that the combative followers of Mélenchon could lead an emerging left-wing government. Many view France Unbowed as their biggest threat, and will repeat the red-baiting slurs that fuel the growth of the far right if they think they can improve their bargaining position by doing so. They are being tempted by the prospect of a “rainbow coalition” with Macron’s group. To form a bloc with the followers of Macron would be a propaganda gift to the fascists. They would declare that the whole project was ultimately nothing but a trick to keep the old order in power. They would claim that the fascists are, as they have repeated over and over, the “real opposition”.
The RN is already rehearsing this argument. In the 1980s, party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen denounced the domination of the “gang of four”: the Socialist Party, Communist Party, and the two-right wing parties of the day. Now, the RN talks about Macron constructing a parti unique, a one-party state made up of fraudulent front parties ranging from left to right, to which only the fascists represent an authentic alternative. 
The National Rally is the smallest bloc in the new parliament, but it got the most votes of any party. Its people may be demoralised, but they have not disappeared. They will await betrayals and failures by any emerging coalition. “The tide is coming in”, Marine Le Pen said. “It didn’t swell enough this time, but it keeps growing, and thus our victory has only been delayed.”
The left’s victory shows that France’s most important political actors—urban workers and young people—want to fight against both fascism and neoliberalism, and for a left-wing program based on the principles of solidarity and equality. But it is plain to see that more battles are ahead. To use their energy solely as a basis for parliamentary manoeuvres will be to disperse it and aid future fascist breakthroughs. The enormous latent power of this left-wing resistance must be converted into class struggles outside the parliament—into a force that can drive the fascist influence out of politics and change the world for the better regardless of who forms government.

D. Taylor

Victory for the left in France

Has the political centre held off the far right, or are the fascists surging? 
According to Britain’s Economist magazine, a weekly diary of establishment opinion, the “political centre has been dented but it still holds”. Yet parties of the centre lost to the far right in the continent’s biggest countries. In Germany, the centre-left Social Democratic Party, which leads the ruling coalition federally, came in third place—behind both the right-wing Christian Democrats and the far-right Alternative for Germany. In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition received less than half the vote of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.
Contrary to the Economist’s take, the results confirm that the overall trajectory of European politics has shifted decisively to the right.
To start with, the political “centre” has become more right wing, more authoritarian, more racist and more anti-worker in recent years. 
When Macron was elected in 2017, he was presented as a liberal statesman who would modernise the country and stop the advance of Le Pen’s fascists. In the seven years since, the French president has ruled by decree, unleashed the riot police on striking workers and protesters, and banned demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine. Despite being a secular liberal, Macron has flirted with conservative Catholic identity politics, telling a conference of bishops in 2018 that striking workers were motivated by an anti-Christian “nihilism”. 
Macron has denounced “Islamo-leftism”, threatened to ban environmental groups that he claims support “violence against property”, made it illegal for French citizens to post social media videos of police, and frozen the bank accounts of pro-Palestine charities. Finally, despite years of protest and strikes, in April 2023 he did what previous centre-left and centre-right governments had failed to do and raised the pension age from 62 to 64. 
Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, Le Pen has continued to grow in popularity. 
When a coalition government of the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party was formed in Germany three years ago, there was hope that it would take the country in a more progressive direction. But in office, the coalition has expanded the German military, increased the number of refugee deportations and positioned the German government as the most hardline supporter of Israel in the world. Faced with a cost-of-living crisis, the German government has ruled out any serious measures to combat poverty. No wonder the Social Democrats were punished by voters.
The decline of the German Greens, who lost nine seats and whose Europe-wide bloc declined, is also notable. 
The centre-right Christian Democrats did well in the European elections, but they have shed what remained of former leader Angela Merkel’s soft conservatism and espoused increasingly far-right-sounding anti-migrant rhetoric. As in many countries, the centre-right in Germany has radicalised in the era of Trump. The latest expression of this is the leader of the Bavarian Social Union, the more right-wing coalition partner of the Christian Democrats, flagging that he is open to working with the Alternative for Germany in the future. 
Across Europe, the centre has driven things further to the right. In February, a meeting of economy ministers passed the New Migration and Asylum Pact, increasing the ability of EU countries to deport refugees and asylum seekers, including children.
Another important expression of the shift to the right is the incorporation of sections of the far right into the centre itself. This is most notable with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. After the initial shock of this far-right figure winning government, there has been a substantial softening towards her by the political centre. 
For her part, Meloni has been willing to break with other sections of the far right by stridently supporting NATO, military aid to Ukraine and the project of European political and economic integration. She has formed her own bloc in the European parliament, separate from that of the French far right and hostile to the more openly fascistic parties such as Alternative for Germany. Despite Meloni’s vile views on LGBTI rights, abortion and migration, her distancing efforts led one Guardian columnist to go so far as to ask: “Macron and Meloni appear poles apart—but what if they joined forces to save Europe?”
Sometimes the differentiation of the European far right is presented in a positive light— a sign that sections of the far right are moderating. But current developments should be treated with alarm, not complacency. 
To start with, the public shifts of leaders such as Meloni are an expression of the fact that far-right parties in several countries are within striking distance of forming government. Second, there is more overlap than is commonly thought between the policies of the far right and the centre in Europe. Finally, the space is being opened for even more hardline far-right groups to gain a following—as has occurred with Eric Zemmour in France and the Lega in Italy. It was particularly shocking to see the Alternative for Germany do so well despite becoming more and more openly fascist in recent years. 
The centre has created a Europe of appalling inequalities, rampant racism, violent policing and hard borders ruled over by an extravagantly wealthy elite. This is the not-so-secret key to the rise of the far right. 
European far-right parties drift along with the right-wing flow of European politics and while positioning themselves against the grain of European elites. As they do, the centre squirms and adapts to the far right’s electoral gains and increasingly extreme policies, taking a hard stand against them only on issues such as support for NATO and the European Union, which are core to the interests of the European capitalist class.
Missing is a resurgent socialist left that could fight the centre and expose the fake populism of the far right. This seems further away than ever. Outside of France, the parties of the left went backwards in country after country. Long gone are the days when the threat to the European centre seemed to be Podemos and Syriza, the occupation of city squares and general strikes against austerity. Emblematic in this regard is Die Linke, the German left-wing party, which has fallen apart after years of collaboration with centre parties and a recent split. 
France at least has a more recent history of social protest. The EU election results led to sizeable demonstrations against Le Pen. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of left-wing party France Unbowed, increased his vote and has formed an electoral alliance with the Socialist Party and the Greens to challenge both Macron and Le Pen in the upcoming French elections. But questions abound about the political expediency of an alliance with parties such as the Socialists, which ran a neoliberal centre government that attacked workers and helped Le Pen grow in the first place, let alone the Greens.
Key to breaking the right-wing trajectory of European politics will be a renewal of grassroots struggles by workers, students and the oppressed against not just the far right but the centrist political set-up that has made fascism respectable again.

Resisting the right-wing vibe shift

‘No-one saves us but ourselves’: we have to resist the far right

The salute that was

Inside an anti-fascist blockade in Germany

Refugees push back Nazis in Melbourne

‘There are many, many more of us than you’: British anti-racists mobilise against far right onslaught

Victory for the left in France

In Europe, the centre faces a strengthened far right—which it helped create

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