So this is “peace”. 
Seven days after the ceasefire came into effect, a family of 11 were blown up by an Israeli tank shell. On 19 October, Israel bombed a Gazan school, a makeshift coffee house and the area around Al-Ahli soccer club. The International Court of Justice has just confirmed that Israel is still forcibly starving people in Gaza by refusing to allow in enough aid. Israeli troops occupy 60 percent of Gaza, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has explicitly argued for soldiers to “shoot children and donkeys” on sight if they are deemed to be in the occupied area. This, they tell us, is peace. 
There can be no peace for Palestinians while Israel exists. Israel is an expansionist state committed to ethnic cleansing. The Gaza genocide is merely the latest—and particularly brutal—phase of annexations and forced displacement. Israel can do this with impunity because it is a crucial linchpin in Western domination of the Middle East and North Africa. 
In 2023, then US President Joe Biden repeated a line he first said in 1986: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one”. The Middle East and North African region is oil-rich, home to important trade routes and geopolitically vital. Without Israel, the US would have to maintain a significant—and unwelcome—military presence in the region to guarantee its interests. Instead, in Israel, it has a loyal ally that is well armed and belligerent. 
Israel has carried out a twofold process of ethnic cleansing since its creation in 1948. On the one hand, through intense, devastating wars that fundamentally alter the region’s balance of forces and geographic boundaries. The Gaza genocide has been one of these. Before, it was the 1948 Nakba, the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and others. 
These wars are coupled with a continuous strategy of annexation, imprisonment, displacement and periodic massacres. In the words of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, “No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land of Israel. A Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning”. 
Ben-Gurion’s vision included all of occupied Palestine, as well as sections of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In its brutal 1967 war, Israeli forces took Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights at the same time as occupying the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East and West Jerusalem. 
Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, continue to argue for this expansionist vision, and have used this war to expand further into Lebanese and Syrian territory. In January, Israel began a new invasion of the West Bank and has carried out the largest expulsions there since 1967. More than 40,000 people have so far been expelled in Operation Iron Wall. Israel sent snipers into Jenin refugee camp, conducted home raids and mass arrests, and carried out aerial strikes. The Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur al-Shams camps have been almost emptied. Hundreds of homes have been demolished, and the IDF has outlined a strategy to prevent destroyed roads and homes from being rebuilt. 
In late October, the Knesset passed a bill to annex the entirety of the West Bank, which even the Trump administration is not willing to support. But plenty in Israel do, which means Israeli encroachment in the West Bank could well accelerate in the near future. 
Our leaders talk of peace. In reality, we are witnessing the beginning of the brutality that is to come if the capitalists are allowed to blast their way through in the coming decades. 
Yet a different world is possible. The proof of this is every student who has protested, every grandparent arrested on terror charges to defend Palestine Action, and each of the Italian and Spanish workers who shut their countries down. We know that a radical workers’ movement can be rebuilt. The task of the resistance is to throw themselves into that project. We have to fight like hell with what we have, with a vision for a mass movement that can defeat imperialism and capitalism for good.

Jasmine Duff

The fight for Palestine continues as long as Israel and Western imperialism exist

While the grieving of Israelis has been a media spectacle over the past two years—revisited again and again each time Israeli hostages’ remains have returned to their families—the trauma of Palestinians now returning to their destroyed homes receives relatively little attention.
UNICEF estimates that over the past two years of Israel’s genocide, 28 children have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces every day on average. Let that sink in: a classroom of kids murdered each day.
You won’t hear much about the tens of thousands of grieving Palestinian families in the corporate media. Yet you will hear, again and again, about Israeli trauma, even as Palestinians continued to be killed in their dozens.
US President Donald Trump, addressing the Israeli Knesset on 13 October, claimed that the ceasefire deal he brokered will open a new “golden age” for the Middle East and end some 3,000 years of conflict. It was laughable.
Yet a largely uncritical Western media seriously pondered whether the Trump administration—which, like the Biden administration before it, provided the finance and weaponry to Israel as it carried out genocide—really was some great peacemaker.
The reality for Palestinians, however, is that the war is far from over. 
Israel continues to occupy 53 percent of Gaza, after withdrawing behind an invisible “yellow line”, and continues to prevent vital aid and recovery equipment from entering Gaza. In the first week of the so-called ceasefire, the Israeli army committed 80 violations, killing 97 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. 
Imagine if it had been 97 Israelis killed. There would be no handwringing about the ceasefire holding. It would be wall-to-wall condemnations of Hamas and justifications for Israel to continue the genocide. In the Western media, Palestinian lives don’t matter.
Israel has returned the remains of 1,718 living and 150 deceased Palestinians from Gaza, along with 250 Palestinian political prisoners. However, 154 of these political prisoners were immediately deported to Egypt by Israel, according to Hamas, denying them reunification with their families. 
According to the director of Gaza’s Health Ministry, Dr Munir al-Bursh, documents that accompanied 135 mutilated bodies of Palestinians returned to Gaza reveal that they were held in the notorious Sde Teiman, a military base in the Negev desert. According to photos and testimonies <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/23/whistleblowers-allege-widespread-abuses-at-israeli-detention-camp-sde-teiman">published in the Guardian</a> last year, Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman were held in cages, blindfolded and handcuffed, shackled to hospital beds and forced to wear nappies. 
On 20 October, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/20/mutilated-bodies-palestinians-held-notorious-israeli-jail-gaza-officials">the Guardian reported</a> that several of the recently returned victims were blindfolded, with their hands tied behind their backs. In one photo, a rope is fastened around a man’s neck. No identification accompanied the victims’ bodies, adding to their families’ grief and trauma.
Imagine for a moment the media reporting if Israeli hostages had been returned like this. The images should have provoked the kind of outrage generated by the revelations of torture by US troops of prisoners at <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/abu-ghraib-twenty-years-on">Abu Ghraib prison</a> in Baghdad in 2004. Yet these crimes received little reporting.
The reunification of 1,718 Palestinian detainees with their families in Gaza was news for a day. Many told their families of brutal treatment in Israeli prisons, including beatings and torture. But those are the “lucky” ones. Some 9,000 West Bank Palestinians remain in Israeli custody, having been kidnapped and transferred to Israel in breach of international law. More than 3,500 are “administrative detainees”, who have never been charged with any crime, while 2,763 are deemed “unlawful combatants” by the Israeli military, according to <a href="https://hamoked.org/prisoners-charts.php">Israel Prison Service data</a>.
Their families’ separation from loved ones—in many cases for years—and their encirclement and harassment by an increasingly aggressive and violent settler movement, is not considered worthy of the media attention given to Israeli families whose loved ones were taken hostage on 7 October.
American journalist Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times, is the latest to fall foul of the conservative media establishment. After being scheduled to address Australia’s National Press Club on 20 October, Hedges was informed that the event was cancelled. Everyone knows why: Hedges reports the truth, and the truth is embarrassing to Israel, Australia, and the corporate media.
In a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/chris-hedges-national-press-club/105913174">Late Night Live interview</a>, the ABC’s David Marr took Hedges to task for accepting an invitation from the Australian Friends of Palestine Association to deliver the annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture, “Requiem for Gaza”. He claimed Hedges had compromised his credibility as a journalist by accepting such an invitation. 
This isn’t just a disgraceful slur against Hedges, but a racist attack on the Palestinians. If reporting the truth about what they face under the boot of Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide is a mark against any reporter, the insinuation is that Palestinian oppression itself is some lie. In the Said Memorial Lecture, Hedges hit back:
 “October 7 marked the dividing line between an Israeli policy that advocated the brutalisation and subjugation of the Palestinians and a policy that calls for their extermination and removal from historic Palestine.
“The genocide in Gaza is the culmination of an historical process. It is not an isolated act. The genocide is the predictable denouement of Israel’s settler colonial project. It is coded within the DNA of the Israeli apartheid state.”
The obfuscation and lies of Western politicians and their media mouthpieces have enabled and emboldened Israel, Hedges argued:
“The funding and arming of Israel by the US and European nations, as it carries out genocide, has imploded the post-World War Two international legal order. It no longer has credibility. The West cannot lecture anyone now about democracy, human rights or the supposed virtues of Western civilisation.”
This loss of credibility—the exposure of the hypocrisy of the capitalists and their institutions—is perhaps the greatest achievement of our solidarity movement over the past two years. It should give us the strength to continue the fight for Palestine.
Nick Everett is the secretary of Friends of Palestine WA.

Nick Everett

Racist dehumanisation of Palestinians continues

More than 100,000 essential workers, including nurses, teachers, and firefighters participated in a “mega strike” on 23 October, in New Zealand’s most significant industrial action in 40 years. More than 3.5 percent of the country’s working population struck, demanding higher wages and better working conditions. Workers were also protesting against ongoing cuts to public services by the right-wing government led by Prime Minister Christopher Luxson. 
Workers gathered in towns and cities across the North Island, tens of thousands protesting in Auckland and around 10,000 in Hamilton. Desiree Davis, a teacher at Whangārei Primary School, told RNZ
that the current pay offer for primary teachers from the government is “absolutely atrocious”. “$1 extra an hour over a period of three years. Like, let that sink in. 60 cents one year, maybe 25 cents the following and 15 cents the following year. How does that keep up with the rate of inflation?”, she asked. 
Others pointed to collapsing health, education and emergency services as reasons for marching. While severe weather meant many could not gather outdoors in the rest of the country, those at home displayed their protest signs in their windows and on social media. 
In the lead-up to the strike, the government attacked unions and workers. The minister for public services, Judith Collins, published an <a href="https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/open-letter-people-new-zealand">open letter</a> in which she attempted to discredit the strike by portraying it as “politically motivated by the unions”, as well as whining that the government was “simply not earning enough to meet all these calls” (for wage increases). Collins penned this attack while <a href="https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360863664/trump-administration-happy-new-zealand-stepping-defence-minister-judith-collins">schmoozing with</a> top figures in the Trump administration, including tea with her “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1MeqVK9m2U/?mibextid=wwXIfr">good friend” US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem</a>. 
The government announced <a href="https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/national-security-brings-economic-benefits">plans</a> to spend an additional $9 billion on defence earlier this year, bringing spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2032. It has also found billions for police, tax cuts for landlords, the wealthy, and corporations.
Collins also claimed the unions were more interested in discussing Palestine than working conditions. Chris Abercrombie, president of the post-primary teachers associations (NZPPTA), clarified this was a reference to a motion moved at the last NZPPTA conference condemning the genocide in Gaza and stating that “peace is union business”.
While the government’s comments were meant to discredit the strike, they nevertheless reflect something positive about the political climate. Many workers in New Zealand have been politicised and some radicalised by Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the government’s attacks on Māori, workers and the poor. This could be seen in the signs at various rallies, including “Toitū te Tiriti” (referencing a recent mass protest movement for Māori rights). Māori and Palestinian flags were also visible. 
David Phillips, station officer for Fire and Emergency NZ, responded to this attack when speaking to the rally in Auckland, saying; “Make no mistake, this is absolutely political. Last time we were on strike, it was a Labour government. It’s not about you ... This is about all politicians”, he said. “Your systems are broken.” 
Decades of attacks on unions from both sides of the political spectrum have undoubtedly led to this crisis, but many view this government’s viciousness as the last straw. Since being elected in 2023, the Luxson government has repealed fair pay laws, extended 90-day trial periods across more workplaces, introduced punitive measures for welfare recipients and cut spending on social services. 
The most recent <a href="https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/work-programmes/community/social-cohesion/2024-social-cohesion-indicator-report-final.pdf">Social Cohesion Report</a> from the Ministry of Social Development found that the number of people cutting back on fresh fruit and vegetables had increased from 23 percent in 2018 to nearly 48 percent in 2023; a quarter of people went hungry sometimes or often because of a lack of money. Just under 30 percent said they had put off or delayed visits to the doctor because of financial considerations, up from 25 percent in 2018 and 14 percent in 2014. 
More people are leaving the country than entering every year, overwhelmingly to Australia, where salaries are higher. The <a href="https://academically.com/blogs/nurse-salary-in-new-zealand/amp/">average salary</a> of a nurse in New Zealand is A$73,652, while in Victoria, Australia, the <a href="https://au.indeed.com/career/registered-nurse/salaries/Victoria">average</a> is $90,745. The 2024 OECD Teaching and Learning International <a href="https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/results-from-talis-2024-country-notes_e127f9e2-en/new-zealand_0906a779-en.html">Survey</a> found that teachers in New Zealand worked the second-most hours in the world, behind only Japan. Many feel that public services will not function in a generation’s time as people either move overseas or into the private sector.
Workers in New Zealand are refusing to sacrifice their quality of life while corporate profits and defence spending soar. The mega strike showed their potential power and sent a message to those in power that they can’t rely on business as usual so long as workers’ lives and the services they rely on are trashed.

Elliott Shaw

‘This is absolutely political’: New Zealand rocked by mega strike

CHICAGO—More than 200,000 people turned out in downtown Chicago on 18 October to join the “No Kings” demonstration against the Trump regime. At one point, the march from the gathering spot through the Chicago Loop (downtown) stretched two and a half miles (4km).
The Chicago protest was part of a national effort, organised by a coalition of liberal groups, that brought as many as 7 million people—one in 50 Americans—into the street to protest Trump. Protests occurred everywhere, from the largest cities to small towns in conservative parts of the country.
Democratic politicians boosted the national effort, and the liberal MSNBC network promoted it. This was a departure from earlier national “No Kings” (in June) and “Hands Off” protests (in April), when leading Democrats kept their distance. But protesters in Chicago didn’t need prodding. The Trump administration’s attack on the city and its surrounding suburbs, beginning in September, was more than enough motivation for hundreds of thousands.
Trump ordered “Operation Midway Blitz”, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other militarised federal police forces descending on Chicago on 9 September. Trump’s racist crackdown on immigrants picked Chicago because it is a Democratic Party-dominated city, in a Democratic-dominated state, <a href="https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2025/09/12/chicago-immigrant-population-growth-trump-immigration-enforcement">where more than one in five residents was born outside the US</a>.
Since 9 September, Chicago has been on high alert. Each day, a battle with marauding federal agents unfolds. ICE, Border Patrol and other masked agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) drive through neighbourhoods in unmarked SUVs and arrest immigrants (and many citizens) going about their daily business.
Parents dropping off their kids at school. Construction and landscape workers on job sites. Day labourers looking for work at Home Depots and Menard’s (“big box” hardware stores where contractors pick up building supplies and hire casual labour). People attending church services. Individual tamaleros/as (people who make and sell tamales from street carts) or vendors at neighbourhood swap meets (a flea market for multiple vendors). Even, seemingly, random people walking down the street or waiting at bus stops. 
Since the Supreme Court essentially <a href="https://eji.org/news/supreme-court-allows-stops-based-on-race-to-continue/">legalised racial profiling</a> at the Trump administration’s request, federal agents are making warrantless arrests each day. Apparently, having brown skin or speaking Spanish are the main pretexts that ICE is using for its stops and arrests. This, of course, gives the lie to Trump and his apologists who claim that they are focusing on criminals and dangerous individuals. As of 8 October, ICE <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/operation-midway-blitz-arrests-ice-crackdown-chicago-data-other-states/">had reportedly arrested 1,500 people in its Operation Midway Blitz</a>. Even <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&amp;source=web&amp;rct=j&amp;url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3Dq5IR_piZRT0%23:~:text%3DICE%2520says%2520at%2520least%252013%2520people%2520with,32%2520Chicago%2520Live:%2520https://www.fox32chicago.com/live%2520FOX%252032%2520Chicago&amp;ved=2ahUKEwi655zU7L2QAxX_GzQIHc2GBOIQ1fkOegQIAxAG&amp;opi=89978449&amp;cd&amp;psig=AOvVaw3dWlwP95KgYMFAB2fbraW1&amp;ust=1761430116144000">ICE admits that only about 1 percent of them</a> have violent criminal records.
ICE agents have already killed one man, who they tried to arrest after he dropped his son off at school. ICE and its mouthpieces at the Department of Homeland Security—one node of the Trump Administration’s “Ministry of Truth”—accused Silverio Villegas González of trying to run into ICE agents with his vehicle. Subsequently, video, including body camera footage <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;ved=2ahUKEwihider7b2QAxVQFDQIHZjCG-wQFnoECBkQAQ&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Fnews%2Fus-news%2Fice-fatal-shooting-chicago-bodycam-footage-villegas-gonzalez-rcna233484&amp;usg=AOvVaw3rb4QZ9R6IV_iIBYHQOA2V&amp;opi=89978449">from local police department officers</a>, exposed DHS’s story as a fabrication. 
Another Border Patrol agent shot Marimar Martínez five times while she was sitting in her car behind the agent’s vehicle in the Latino working-class neighbourhood of Brighton Park. Miraculously, she escaped life-threatening injury. But, again, video footage of the incident showed that the Border Patrol—which claimed Martínez had rammed the feds’ vehicle and threatened them with a weapon—<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/bodycam-footage-conflicts-with-dhs-account-chicago-womans-shooting-by-border-2025-10-08/">was lying about the confrontation</a>. It’s becoming conventional wisdom among many in Chicago—activists, journalists and many everyday folks—that DHS’s statements are lying cover stories that unravel within a few hours.
Perhaps the pinnacle (so far) of the ICE theatre of cruelty was the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/us/chicago-south-shores-border-patrol-raid.html">30 September early morning commando raid</a> on an apartment building in the city’s South Shore neighbourhood. ICE and other federal agents stormed the building, some of them rappelling down its five stories from helicopters hovering overhead. DHS was treating a dilapidated apartment housing poor African Americans and Venezuelan migrants as a militia stronghold in wartime Iraq. And DHS filmed the assault to provide the likes of Fox News and MAGA influencers with images of “heroic agents” taking on what they said was a den for Tren de Aragua gang members.
The ICE agents marched dozens of people, in handcuffs, out of the building. They included barefoot children and adults in various states of undress. Agents racially segregated the detainees (Black people in one group, Latinos in another) before processing them. They arrested 37 people, only one of whom ICE alleges in court has any connection to a gang. And when people returned to their apartments, they found them ransacked, with doors torn off their hinges.
Because of these terror tactics, the ICE processing centre in Broadview, a small suburban town to the west of Chicago, has become a flashpoint for face-offs between protesters and federal agents. In previous periods of immigrant rights activism, the Broadview facility was a focal point for often symbolic civil disobedience actions, including politicians and clergy. With Operation Midway Blitz, hundreds have turned out regularly to protest and resist.
In response, federal agents have brutalised and tear-gassed crowds of unarmed people. In <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwixpoeH9r2QAxXvOjQIHWagJhwQtwJ6BAgHEAI&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D_SbX0UbBFaY&amp;usg=AOvVaw27ufvJe-2NjumY3kvNdQ2O&amp;opi=89978449">one incident that went viral</a>, an ICE agent standing on the roof of the building fired a pepper ball into the head of Reverend David Black, a Presbyterian pastor, who was making a moral appeal to the ICE agents. This was yet another example of DHS’s gratuitous violence, as anyone watching the video could see that Black posed no threat to—indeed wasn’t even near—the agent who inflicted severe injury on him.
These repressive actions, and similar ones in city and suburban neighbourhoods, against unarmed civilians have prompted a series of federal lawsuits from immigrant rights advocates and the media against these tactics. Federal Judge Sara Ellis has issued rulings barring federal agents from using tear gas and other violent measures against demonstrators and the press. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/24/us/gregory-bovino-chicago-immigration-tear-gas-hnk">ICE has already flouted the judge’s orders</a>.
Yet the most important story in Chicago is one of resistance. Chicago was a centre of <a href="http://socialistworker.org/2016/03/28/immigrants-marching-out-of-the-shadows">mass protests for immigrant rights in the mid-2000s</a>. Although the movement subsided, it produced thousands of activists and dozens of immigrant rights organisations rooted in communities across the region. As Chicago-based socialist <a href="https://internationalsocialism.net/resistance-breeds-solidarity-a-report-from-chicago/">Sharon Smith wrote about the thousands</a> who attended the Chicago “No Kings” event:
“The demonstrations drew large numbers of people who had never attended a protest before, but also many who have already joined one of the ‘Rapid Response Networks’ that have been organized by immigrants’ rights activists, neighborhood by neighborhood, across the city and suburbs.
“These neighborhood-based networks have been around as long as ICE, but they have mushroomed since Trump took office in January—to serve the many needs of the fearful migrant population. People volunteer to help distribute copies of ‘Know your rights’ brochures in immigrant communities. They set up phone and internet hotlines to notify the network of a suspected ICE sighting; once they have verified it, they then broadcast it to the entire neighborhood. They also hand out whistle kits to everyone in the neighborhood, along with the different types of signals to use when ICE has been spotted in the area versus when ICE is attacking someone in the immediate vicinity. Those driving cars beep their horns if they see ICE goons in the area.
“Many migrants are too afraid to leave their homes to go grocery shopping, or to bring their children to school, so the network assigns volunteers to individual families to go and buy groceries, accompany their kids, and help with the other basic necessities of life.”
The activism in neighbourhoods around the city is yet another example of the fact that thousands of working people are willing to stand against the authoritarianism coming from the Trump administration in ways that elites at institutions like universities, corporations and the Democratic Party have not. 
For many liberals, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire scion of the family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain, is something of an exception to this elite capitulation. Pritzker has denounced Trump and his “lackey” Stephen Miller, the white supremacist White House domestic adviser who is thought to be the main architect of the anti-immigrant assault. Pritzker has warned federal agents of consequences if they violate Illinoisans’ civil rights.
But Pritzker’s image is mostly based on talk, rather than action. In fact, Pritzker has ordered the Illinois State Police to set up a “free speech zone” at some distance from the Broadview facility’s driveway. The state police themselves have already beaten and arrested protesters in multiple confrontations there. In other words, while Pritzker touts his support for peaceful protests against ICE, his police force is performing crowd control for ICE—allowing it to maraud throughout the Chicago area. The Democrats’ commitment to uphold the status quo renders them accomplices to Trump, rather than serious opponents.
At the time of writing, the Supreme Court is reviewing <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&amp;&amp;p=c9b1f1883d48acc275630ae224deb6ca6d8e6f5a734fd2ae86e3df47d3f34176JmltdHM9MTc2MTI2NDAwMA&amp;ptn=3&amp;ver=2&amp;hsh=4&amp;fclid=10f13388-b905-653b-2029-26d3b8816423&amp;psq=trump+appeal+to+supreme+court+illinois+national+guard&amp;u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy8yMDI1LzEwLzE3L254LXMxLTU1NzgyNjYvdHJ1bXAtc3VwcmVtZS1jb3VydC1uYXRpb25hbC1ndWFyZC1pbGxpbm9pcw">the Trump administration’s emergency appeal</a> of a district court ruling barring the federal deployment of the National Guard to Illinois. <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/posse-comitatus-act-explained">Under a 150-year-old law</a>, the federal government is barred from using the military for domestic law enforcement. But Trump’s order to deploy the National Guard in Illinois, following a similar deployment in Los Angeles earlier this year, is intended to usurp that authority. 
By law, Illinois’ claim that Trump’s order is illegal should be a clear-cut case. But the Supreme Court has been one of chief enablers of Trump’s effort to crown himself king. So, we shouldn’t expect that the court will stand in his way. A National Guard deployment into the streets of Chicago would mark another dangerous escalation. It would require the resistance to broaden and deepen.

Lance Selfa

Chicago rises against Trump’s deportation regime

Hundreds of thousands of workers and students across Spain walked out of workplaces and schools on 15 October in opposition to the genocide in Gaza. Organised by the main trade union federations, student organisations and pro-Palestine groups, more than 200 full or partial strikes, pickets, rallies and demonstrations took place throughout the day, rejecting the “peace deal” brokered by US President Donald Trump and demanding that the Spanish government sever ties with Israel.
The largest strikes took place in the autonomous northern region of the Basque Country, where 40 percent of public-school teachers and 5.3 percent of healthcare workers went on strike. Due to work stoppages, public transport across the region was paralysed in the early hours of the morning. In Bilbao, an estimated 15,000 people marched through the city, staging mass sit-ins outside companies denounced as complicit with Israel, including clothes retailer Zara and Banco Sabadell. In Vitoria-Gasteiz (the capital), 25,000 people marched out of a population of 250,000.
Significant strikes were also held in other autonomous regions. 
In Zaragoza (capital of the northeastern Aragón region), hundreds of healthcare workers joined students who walked out of the University Clinical Hospital, holding a joint worker-student rally in the Plaza de Aragón. In Galicia (north-west), nearly 9 percent of workers in the legal sector and around 2 percent in the general administration, education and healthcare sectors went on strike. The Balearic islands off the eastern coast reported 563 teachers on strike—around 4 percent of the total.
Protests and pickets took place in more than 40 cities throughout the day, including Léon, Logroño, Vigo, Córdoba, Málaga, Murcia, Valencia, Seville and regional centres with little living memory of struggle. In Pamplona (capital of the northern Navarre region), around 10,000 joined a midday march headed by a tractor draped in the Palestinian flag.
Barcelona saw the most concerted efforts by young people to disrupt economic activity through pickets. In the morning, student-led contingents of thousands blockaded the central square of Plaça Universitat, the Gran Via central business district and key transport hubs, such as the main logistics area in the city, Zona Franca, and the port of Barcelona (where the boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla departed in September).
The Catalan Transport Service reported that road closures and bottlenecks persisted as spontaneous protests of young people broke out throughout the rest of the day. The University of Barcelona suspended all academic activities due to “absenteeism”. In the evening, an estimated 30,000 people took to the streets, intense clashes breaking out between youths and Catalan riot police.
In Madrid, pickets of students and workers sprouted across the city at strategic locations, such as metro stations, Airbus factories and the Telefónica headquarters. Huge numbers of university and high school students walked out of their classes. More than 25,000 predominantly young workers and students flooded Puerta del Sol under the slogans “Stop everything to stop the genocide” and “Peace with genociders is a farce”.
Strike action by workers represents a significant step forward for the Palestine movement because it offers a glimpse of the immense potential power that workers can wield—the power to halt production and stop the flow of profits to the capitalist ruling class. 
Although these were partial work stoppages by a significant minority of workers rather than a concerted national shutdown, the predominance of students and young workers in the mobilisations reflects deep and ongoing opposition among these social layers to the genocide and the complicity of Spain’s centre-left Socialist Party-Sumar government. Everywhere, students and young workers were at the forefront of the actions: the first in the streets, taking over railways and roads, shutting down schools and universities. 
“The Spanish government has tried since the beginning of the genocide to have a pro-Palestine public position, but one that would not have any practical consequences against the rules of capitalism, of which they are organically part”, Ánxel Testas of Anticapitalistas, the largest Marxist organisation in the Spanish state, told Red Flag. 
This has included recognising Palestinian statehood and announcing a largely symbolic arms embargo on Israel, which leaves the bulk of Spain’s military collaboration with the Zionist state untouched, permits ongoing contracts with the Israeli defence industry and establishes no inspection mechanism for Israeli vessels docking in Spanish ports. 
Since October 2023, the Spanish government has purchased more than €1 billion worth of arms from Israel; between June and August this year, the Spanish government sold arms to Israel worth at least €1 million. 
The call for a national day of strikes and demonstrations began in early October, when an estimated 2 million people mobilised across the country in four days of unceasing demonstrations. Beginning in response to Israel’s attacks on the Global Sumud Flotilla, the massive pressure from below, combined with the explosive 3 October general strike across Italy, forced the major trade union federations to call for work stoppages.
The Workers Commissions (CCOO) linked to Podemos and Sumar, and the social-democratic General Union of Workers (UGT), with nearly a million members each, called for two-hour work stoppages in each shift, covering morning, afternoon and night. 
The anarcho-syndicalist General Confederation of Labour (CGT), with around 100,000 members, called a 24-hour general strike across all sectors and territories. In the Basque Country, the pro-separatist trade unions, including LAB, ELA, Etxalde and HIRU, called for three-hour stoppages and demonstrations in the main cities.
The Student Union (Sindicato de Estudiantes), various youth organisations, pro-Palestine groups and the radical left joined in the calls for a general strike, agitating for a student strike in high schools and universities, alongside joint pickets with striking workers.
“The call for a general strike on 15 October took place at a time of the movement’s rise and reflects both the immense pressure exerted by the movement and, paradoxically, an attempt at demobilisation”, explained Ánxel. “The majority unions [CCOO and UGT] had no intention that the partial stoppages they called would have force because the trade union leaders hoped a ceasefire deal would take the wind out of the sails of the movement. The minority unions, including the CGT, are too weak to achieve a successful general strike alone.
“Although it is true that the rank and file are to the left of their leaderships and eager to mobilise on the Palestinian question, there is no situation of effective overflow from below as in Italy, nor does the fact that the big unions call for an effective mobilisation of the workers. The leaderships of these unions sought to prevent what happened in Italy.”
With the notable exception of the Basque Country, where a more combative left has greater roots in workplaces and unions, Ánxel said, “the low participation in the strikes elsewhere is a clear indication that without strength in the workplaces the movement is very fragile when the peak moments of mobilisation pass”.
Ánxel said that this illustrates the need to build a revolutionary socialist movement with roots among workers and students that can lead people in a radical direction and ultimately overthrow the entire capitalist system.
“Although the ceasefire may slow down the size of the mobilisations, it is necessary to organise and educate the entire activist vanguard that has been born out of these mobilisations with internationalist and socialist politics”, he said. “It must become the engine of growth for both revolutionary and movement organisations to prepare for the coming phases in the ongoing struggle to liberate Palestine.”

Robert Narai

‘Peace with genociders is a farce’: students and workers strike across Spain

Jordan Humphreys

A new international political situation

For going on 50 years, the left and workers’ movement has been in retreat. There have been important upsurges and small victories, but there has not been a revival of working-class power and radical politics equivalent to that of the 1960s and ’70s in the decades since. Many of the 1960s radicals moved to the right and were absorbed into the system, whether via academia, the media, NGOs or mainstream politics, while countless others have quietly given up on the hope of radical social transformation. The governments and institutions that briefly seemed vulnerable to challenge by mass movements have reasserted their dominance, to terrible effect.
This shift has been reflected at an ideological level. As the possibility of radical change has retreated, so too has confidence in the ideas that underpin it. What was self-evident in the 1960s and ’70s—that the working class has the power to transform society and solidarity is possible and powerful—today seems implausible and, to some, like nothing more than apologetics for those who are part of the problem. Unsurprisingly, then, contemporary progressive sensibility is often characterised by a sense of powerlessness, scepticism and suspicion towards attempts at solidarity, and bitterness at the world’s injustices rather than a confidence they can be challenged and changed. 
This is reflected in a number of what have come to be seen as truisms among progressives in the West. These include that movements against oppression are legitimate only if they are led by the oppressed and informed by “lived experience”; that people who don’t experience oppression are inherently privileged and therefore cannot be reliable allies; that the integrity of movements depends on “centring” or “elevating” the right voices; and that expressions of solidarity are at best paternalistic and at worst do more to perpetuate oppression than ameliorate it. From suffering, in other words, comes truth, and those who don’t suffer are part of the problem. 
In an article written at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, British writer Sam Kriss highlights the paralysing nature of this approach, characterising the movement leaders’ contradictory commandments to would-be supporters this way:
“DO the important work of interrogating your own biases and prejudices. DON’T obsess over your white guilt—this isn’t about you! 
“DO use your white privilege as a shield by standing between black folx and the police. DON’T stand at the front of marches—it’s time for you to take a back seat. 
“DO speak out against racism—never expect activists of colour to always perform the emotional labour. DON’T crowd the conversation with your voice—shut up, stay in your lane. 
“DO educate your white community by providing an example of white allyship. DON’T post selfies from a protest—our struggle isn’t a photo-op.”
There is on the one hand an acknowledgement that wider support is needed—after all, no oppressed group other than the working class is capable of liberating itself—but at the same time a dogged insistence that such support is insincere or a threat. 
The movement in solidarity with Palestine, which has been one of the most prolonged and widespread in recent history, blows all of this nonsense out of the water. 
It has overwhelmingly not been led by those with lived experience of Israel’s genocide, and nor has it been strongest where Palestinians are the most concentrated. 
Palestinians in Gaza have understandably been focused on survival rather than taking responsibility for an international protest movement. But it is not as though the countries that have mobilised the most for Palestine are countries with a large or particularly well-organised Palestinian populations. Of the ten countries which have had the most “large-scale” protests for Palestine since October 2023 according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, only one—Yemen—is even in the Middle East. Australia is second, and the rest are in Europe. 
The country that organised a historic general strike in support of Palestine—Italy—does not have a particularly large Palestinian population (0.002 percent of the population), and nor does Spain, where the strike has now spread. Likewise, the many hundreds of people involved in the various flotillas to Gaza, which provided an important focal point for the movement, were drawn from all over the world. 
The movement’s success therefore cannot be explained by reference to the prevalence of those with lived experience, although undoubtedly many Palestinians have been involved. Millions, if not tens of millions, of people with no direct experience of Israel’s violence have mobilised for Gaza—they’ve given up their weekends, foregone pay and, in some cases, risked their jobs and freedom to make a stand. They have decidedly not stayed in their “lane” or taken a “back seat”. 
Needless to say, this has not been to the detriment of the Palestinian cause. There has been no unnecessary burden of emotional labour placed on Palestinians, it has not crowded out their voices and it has not made the struggle about white people. Instead, it has helped bring the issue of Palestine to the fore everywhere, has made Western government military and political support for Israel more difficult and it has solidified a new generation behind the Palestinian struggle. 
The movement also demonstrates in living colour the underlying premise of solidarity: that an attack on one is an attack on all. Of course, the scale of the horror inflicted on Gaza is a major factor compelling people to act. But so too is a recognition that we all face a common enemy: the same governments lining up to cheer on Israel impose austerity and wage cuts at home. And their willingness to accept atrocities in Gaza when it is politically expedient indicate a degree of callousness that can just as readily be applied domestically. Solidarity is not and has never been about “taking over” struggles. It is about identifying and fighting a common enemy.
Much more than insights gleaned from lived experience then, the movement’s strengths have been drawn from the political culture and traditions that already existed among workers in different parts of the world: the level of union organisation, the political history of the working class, the degree of repression faced and the size and nature of the political organisations on the ground. 
In other words, political consciousness and organisation, rather than personal experience, have proved decisive to building movements that can make an impact. In Italy, the existence of more radical unions independent of the established and conservative union leadership was a key factor in bringing about the momentous and historic general strike in support of Palestine, which has now spread elsewhere in Europe. Here in Australia, the presence of Socialist Alternative clubs on a critical mass of university campuses enabled the Gaza solidarity encampment initiative at the University of Sydney to become a national phenomenon and, later, mass student meetings in support of Palestine. As did the existence of off-campus campaign collectives committed to regular and continued street demonstrations, which have proved important in past campaigns. 
These organisations, and the political activists who constitute them, don’t all exist for the sole purpose of liberating Palestine. But they were nevertheless able to mobilise and make an impact when needed. The strength and organisation of our side, therefore, are crucial to liberating the oppressed and resisting injustice whenever and wherever it emerges.
Of course, the political content of these traditions and organisations matters. Slavish loyalty to the Labor Party on the part of the mainstream union movement here meant the pro-Palestine mobilisations weren’t as strong or as workplace-based as they had the potential to be. On the other hand, this enabled the sort of smaller political forces that weren’t going to be placated by the government’s empty gestures—most importantly its bleating about recognising a Palestinian state once Israel had made it patently unviable—to wield more influence, which was positive. 
Revealingly, those subscribing most strongly to the idea that movements are best led by those affected (Hamas-aligned Palestinians in Gaza) tended to promote the most self-defeating positions, including illusions in the “axis of resistance” (which did precious little to actually resist the genocide) and that the Palestinians were likely to emerge stronger from the supposed tactical masterstroke that was Hamas’ 7 October attack (self-evidently untrue). This is in effect a continuation of the sort of thinking that has long proved disastrous to the Palestinian cause: that fellow Arabs—whether they’re the king of Jordan or a textile worker—will act to liberate the Palestinians. Illusions in solidarity around an Arab identity, rather than a class one, have let down the Palestinian movement repeatedly, from the Black September 1970, when the Jordanian regime drove the Palestine Liberation Organisation out of the country, to the complete inaction in the face of genocide today. 
The flip side of this argument—that privilege creates a conscious or unconscious bias towards the oppressor rather than the oppressed—is likewise not borne out by events. In the US, it has ironically been Jews who have disproportionately been at the forefront of Palestine solidarity actions—the very people in whose name Israel’s war has ostensibly been waged. Jewish Voice for Peace, for example, has organised more than 1,000 protest actions in the US and doubled its dues-paying membership since the genocide began. 
Supposed “privilege” in this particular case is the very thing that has politicised a new generation, understandably horrified at their religion being invoked to justify genocide. This again contradicts a core tenet of modern progressivism: that the division is between the oppressed—whose suffering automatically endows them with unique political insights that must be deferred to—and the non-oppressed, whose privilege automatically ties them into the status quo and the supposed benefits it brings them. 
If we are serious about changing the world and ending oppression, we need to learn from this experience and draw the appropriate conclusions about what actually makes a successful movement, not what makes us feel morally superior or momentarily powerful in a society that systematically disempowers us. 
Part of that is recognising that a perfect level of consciousness about oppression is not actually a precondition for resistance. A far-reaching and nuanced understanding of oppression is of course desirable, but what really makes a difference is having a sense of what side you are on, and our side being organised. 
The millions of people around the world who have marched for Palestine are not experts on the political dynamics or history of Gaza. What sets them apart is their refusal to look away when genocide is going on with Western backing, to keep coming out week after week, to not be intimidated by disingenuous denunciations of antisemitism and their willingness to see Palestinians as fellow human beings, not nameless, faceless terrorism sympathisers, as they have long been portrayed.
The politics on our side will not always be perfect, but this doesn’t mean successful movements can’t or shouldn’t be built. The progressive obsession with policing the ideas, language and actions of people attempting to show solidarity, however imperfectly, gets us nowhere. We need to focus our fire on the powerful: the governments and bosses who run the world. We need to understand what makes them tick, and how they can be stopped.
For all its strengths, the Palestine solidarity movement did not stop Israel’s genocide. To achieve that would have taken a threat to the imperial order and capitalist system on a much more significant scale. But the awesome gains it did make—opening the eyes of a new generation to the brutality and hypocrisy of Western imperial power, discrediting some important tenets of ruling-class ideology and making it clear that, although weakened, our side of politics still has the potential to mobilise and resist—are profoundly important. And, like all struggles whether they win or lose, the movement has been a testing ground for ideas and organisations, with important lessons to teach us. They are lessons we need to learn if we want to have a better chance of winning next time.

Louise O'Shea

How the Palestine solidarity movement discredits identity politics

The term “new world order” (not the conspiracy version) generally refers to a major shift in world politics, in which the old economic, political and social structures are reshaped to fit the demands of a new era. 2025 is shaping up to produce precisely this—a more violent, authoritarian, hierarchical alternative.
The United States under Donald Trump’s regime is the prime case in point. Trump has unleashed ICE agents pumped up on unbridled power, deployed National Guard troops to the streets of major cities, weaponised the Department of Justice against his personal enemies, enacted the largest cuts to health care in US history, attempted to scrub trans people from public life, imposed steep tariffs on dozens of countries, rebranded the Department of Defense the Department of War and much more. It is possibly the most rapid political transformation the world has ever seen outside of a major war.
But it’s not just the United States. The far right is in power in Italy, Hungary and Finland, is the main opposition party in France, Germany, Portugal, Austria and Belgium, and is an established part of the political furniture everywhere else. In the United Kingdom, polls indicate that Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK would win a general election if it was held today. 
The situation is admittedly less severe in Australia, although there is clearly a coterie of wannabe führers waiting in the wings, from the ragtag group of March for Australia organisers to One Nation’s Pauline Hanson (who is rising in the polls) and Liberal MPs Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
Politics is happening at a much faster rate than normal. A major new policy or directive is announced almost every day in the United States alone. Trump’s fascist former chief strategist Steve Bannon calls it “flooding the zone”: a deliberate strategy of overwhelming the media and public with a constant barrage of announcements and controversies, making it difficult to focus on any single issue or broader strategy. It’s like being punched repeatedly in the face so badly that it’s impossible to string together a coherent thought or exit strategy.
But there is a method amongst the madness. Conservatism is driven by a reverence for capitalism and its foundational inequalities between the rich and the poor. They rule over us on a macro level by wielding state power, and on a micro level in every workplace. Conservative ideologies are derived as a defence of this status quo. That is why they so strongly venerate hierarchies in all social spaces—bosses rule over workers in the economy, powerful countries rule over the weak geopolitically and men rule over women in the home. One of the best ways of naturalising a historically specific social phenomenon is by reproducing it in all walks of life, thus making it feel eternal. 
Capitalism is also an extraordinarily violent society, from the everyday violence of poverty through to the violence of the police and imperialist war. Conservatives, again, venerate this state of being—there’s the stereotypical tough guy protecting his weak, fragile woman; the ICE agent bashing down doors and pelting with rubber bullets anyone who tries to get in his (occasionally her) way; and the warped world of the UFC.
You might have noticed I’m talking about conservatives, rather than singling out the far right. The latter exist in the world of the former, and the lines between traditional conservatives and the new far right are murky. There’s a tendency to look at the conservatives of yesterday (pre-Trump) as though they were more palatable (pretty outrageous if you’re old enough to remember George Bush, the butcher of the Middle East). 
While it’s the case that some modern far-right parties and leaders were previously fascists on the margins, there’s also a general shift within conservatism further to the right—like the Republicans of old who have fallen in behind Trump. There’s also a through line between the generations, brilliantly depicted in Ali Abbasi and Gabriel Sherman’s 2024 film The Apprentice, which chronicled how Donald Trump was mentored and moulded by conservative lawyer Roy Cohn, who famously prosecuted the Rosenbergs during the height of McCarthyism.
Conservatism is shifting in this direction because of a series of political, social and economic ruptures that have engulfed the globe over the last fifteen years. Every period of capitalist crisis has produced a new political form as the system tries to stabilise itself and adapt to new conditions. Out of the Great Depression and Second World War came an era of greater state intervention into the economy and increased social spending—all based on the new riches flowing from the postwar boom. The economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s produced the neoliberal era, as states and bosses privatised public assets, cut social welfare, intensified the exploitation of workers and opened the global South to even greater plunder.
The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 heralded a new, prolonged period of instability. The state bailed out the wealthy and paid for it through waves of austerity that slashed workers’ living standards. Consequently, the traditional parties of the political centre were discredited across much of Europe and took a beating in the US (hence Hillary Clinton’s failure and Trump’s ease in sweeping away the mainstream Republicans). Out of the ensuing polarisation emerged the far-right politics that dominate today, and waves of progressive social movements and new left-wing parties.
A series of further crises compounded all this. The COVID years produced a new anti-lockdown, anti-vax conspiratorial audience for the right and the radicalisation of billionaires like Elon Musk, and was followed by years of steep inflation. Catastrophic climate change is no longer a concern for the distant future, but a reality bearing down on the world right now. As temperatures keep rising, a new series of crises will emerge as millions—and then billions—are forced to relocate, supply chains break down and crops fail. Even as our rulers fail to act on any of this, they are no doubt anxious about what it will mean for their system in the future.
But the major global development is the rising imperialist conflict between China and the US and its Western allies. To put it simply, all things being equal, China is on track to overtake the United States economically, including in the most innovative high-tech industries. Economic might creates military might, and together they create global domination. That’s how the US rose to the top of the imperialist pecking order. This is a serious long-term crisis for the US ruling class, and every other country still betting on and benefiting from the Western alliance. 
The old order is no longer working for those who created it. Hence, a new world order is necessary. It’s impossible to understand anything about the political chaos of today without this context. 
Take Trump’s tariffs, which have been imposed on friends and foes alike, and decried by many as economic irrationalism. It’s an attempt to force companies to bring production back on shore. Why is this necessary? Here’s one pertinent example: shipbuilding has all but disappeared from the US, but naval power will be crucial in any future conflict in the Asia Pacific. There’s a method to the madness.
Then there’s the crackdown on undocumented migrants, who compose a key part of many low-wage US workforces. To prepare a civilian population for war is to imbue them with a vicious nationalism and hatred towards perceived foreign enemies. Endless headlines and speeches about “a war on US borders” and “illegal aliens invading the US” are part of that ideological conditioning.
There’s also the broader “war on woke”, which is a major offensive against the rights of the oppressed. Basic notions of fairness, equality, diversity and acceptance might be tolerated when the ruling class is trying to convince us that the entire world is fair and equal. But it’s antithetical to the conservative belief that “might is right”. 
It’s been obvious for years that the chaos of modern capitalism would produce a new (if partially reheated) form of politics. But 2025 has made that form a whole lot clearer. It includes rising militarism, the fortification of borders, state authoritarianism and the junking of progressive liberal values. To caveat this a little—it’s still early days, and we don’t have a crystal ball. But it would be wrong to ignore the reality unfolding around us. To change the world effectively, we must understand what is happening.
One counter to the notion that we’re living in a new world order is that it is purely a product of the Trumpified Republican Party and its international allies: if Trump is booted in three years, then this will all be over. There are a few things that suggest the situation is not so simple.
First is that when Joe Biden was president, he attempted to chart a different course. He used subsidies to entice industry to reshore, proposed a major spending package to rebuild America’s decaying infrastructure (both of which, it was argued, would create well-paying jobs to alleviate trashed living standards and social chaos), and imposed targeted tariffs on China and other adversaries, while putting serious effort into strengthening economic and political bonds with US allies. It too was a plan to strengthen US imperialism, but with more carrots and fewer sticks. It bombed. Much of the spending was blocked by Congress (including some Democrats) and the US capitalists made no serious attempt to discipline the detractors into supporting it. The “other way” failed.
Second, aspects of the new approach are being adopted by parties not of the right, most notably UK Labour, which has imposed a harsh new border policy, cut social spending, designated Palestine Action as a proscribed terrorist organisation (which has led to the arrest of thousands of supporters) and continued the Tories’ fight against trans people.
Third, the wheels Trump has set in motion will not necessarily just stop spinning when he leaves the White House. Some aspects of his program will probably be dropped, such as the open hostility to traditional allies. But some things can be so utterly transformed, or destroyed, that they are not easily reinstated. Take USAID: it could take years to rebuild the structures and networks of international aid distribution that have been obliterated by Trump, and there’s no certainty that any future administration would see this as a priority. Not to mention that we have no idea what will happen at the next election; Trump might seek an unconstitutional third term or successfully pass the crown to J.D. Vance. 
Finally, moments in which liberal centrism has stabilised in the past fifteen years have done nothing to stave off the radicalisation of conservatives and their quest for power. Joe Biden, after all, was followed by Trump 2.0 and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is warming the seat for Nigel Farage. 
More importantly, we should not desire to return to the old order. That one sucked too. It was an order in which Wall Street was bailed out while the poor were evicted, the US enforced its supremacy by dropping bombs on the Middle East, historic numbers of immigrants were deported and billionaires bought super yachts while millions went hungry. 
There is, however, another way, one that does not rely on bankrupt politicians and parties. We can instead look to the power of workers and the oppressed to fight the right, overthrow the billionaires and build a genuinely new world order based on equality and human liberation. 
There has been no shortage of mass struggles in recent years. More people protested in the 2010s than any other decade in human history. In just the last month, Gen Z protesters have overthrown governments in Nepal and Madagascar, and mobilised in Indonesia, Morocco, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and Peru.
And in the last few weeks, mass workers’ struggle has returned to the streets and workplaces of Europe, with the Italian general strike in solidarity with Palestine, a similar general strike scheduled for Spain and general strikes against austerity in France. 
The people are furious, and rightly so. What we need is a politics that can draw together all these struggles, direct them against the rich and powerful and fight for a socialist society that replaces hierarchy with equality and violence with peace.

Eleanor Morley

Are we living in a new world order?

Morocco is one of the latest countries to erupt under the “Gen Z” banner. Young people, organised largely through anonymous social media channels, have taken to the streets to demand an end to corruption and inequality. The hashtag #freekoulchi (free everyone) has also been a rallying cry for the release of political prisoners.
The government in Morocco is made up almost entirely of wealthy capitalists, while most of the population increasingly struggles to survive. The president, Aziz Akhannouch, has a net worth of US$2 billion, and is the current CEO of the Akwa conglomerate, owned by the Akhannouch family, which is a major player in several key sectors of the economy. As agricultural minister from 2007 to 2021, Akhannouch allegedly stole $2.2 billion of public funds. Akwa has colluded with other corporations to keep the prices of fuel and other essential goods extortionately high, and the company was one of the targets of a 2018 boycott organised to protest these practices.
Morocco has the largest wealth inequality in North Africa. The government maintains control by criminalising dissent, controlling the media and arresting journalists who criticise the government. While social services have been pushed to the brink of collapse by insufficient funding, the government is spending $3.3 billion on lavish stadiums and beautifying tourist areas of major cities in preparation for the African World Cup later this year and the FIFA World Cup in 2030. A primary school in Benslimane, a city in the country’s west, was recently demolished to make way for a stadium. The former pupils were left without access to education.
The national unemployment rate was <a href="https://sonofgao.substack.com/p/stadiums-are-cool-but-where-are-the">13.3 percent last year</a>, but among 15 to 24-year-olds it was 36.7 percent and as high as 48.4 percent in cities. This age group makes up a quarter of Morocco’s total population (in Australia, it is half that). <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS?locations=MA">There are only 7.7 doctors for every 100,000 people</a>, according to the World Bank, and in poorer areas like Agadir, on the southern Atlantic coast, it drops to 4.4, well below the World Health Organisation’s recommendation of 25.
Neglect of public services has deadly consequences, especially in the most deprived cities. Last month, eight women died in a maternity ward in a public hospital in Agadir. After the deaths, residents held a small protest outside the hospital, unfurling a banner that read “Hospital of death”. The image and story spread across the country. On 29 September, an anonymous collective on social media called for protests across the country under the banner of GenZ 212 (+212 is Morocco’s country code), inspired by similar youth rebellions in places like Nepal.
Protests began in the largest cities—Casablanca, Marrakech and Rabat—but soon spread. Young people gathered and marched, chanting, “The people demand the end of corruption!” and “The stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals?” In Agadir, protesters blocked the central highway, and in smaller rural cities, riots broke out. In Ait Amira, just south of Agadir, a bank branch was set on fire and police cars were overturned.
The government’s response was severe. More than 500 protesters were arrested; many were beaten by police. But this only inflamed the anger. Protests and riots continued nightly, even after a 19-year-old student in Oudja, a town near the Algerian border, had his leg amputated after a police car drove into a crowd.
On 1 October, three young men were shot and killed in Lqliaa after allegedly trying to storm a police station. The victims’ families have denied the allegation, pointing out that one of the victims—24-year-old Abdessamade—was a filmmaker documenting the movement to share with the world.
A 22-year-old protester who is facing up to six months in prison <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/oct/14/this-generation-is-defiant-gen-z-protests-set-to-resume-in-morocco-despite-deaths-and-arrests">described</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/oct/14/this-generation-is-defiant-gen-z-protests-set-to-resume-in-morocco-despite-deaths-and-arrests"></a>his motivations to the Guardian: “I went to protest because I’ve seen government violence all my life; not physical, but psychological. In hospitals, there are no doctors. In schools, classrooms are packed with over 50 students”.
The GenZ 212 Discord channel, launched on 18 September, now has more than 200,000 people in it. Members discuss religion, key demands, and tactics and strategy. There is a main announcements server, on which only the anonymous admins can post, a general chat where anyone can message, groups for localities and districts, press videos, resources and much more. Decisions on whether to protest, and the time and location of the protests, are decided in real time through voting in the general chat. There is a heavy emphasis from the anonymous admins on peaceful tactics and on rallying rather than rioting.
I attended a rally in the north-western city of Tangier on 2 October. It was in a park in the middle of the city, and police and military personnel, in uniform and plain clothes, were everywhere. Small groups of young people were scattered around, but, initially, there was no obvious congregation. In the Discord chat, people began to ask where the rally was going to be, and, if people were in the park, who was going to start it. Other messages, probably government and police bots, argued that there was no point rallying, that the king would listen to young people, that the movement was over, along with other generally derailing efforts. An hour and a half passed like this, with messages getting more frustrated and urgent.
Eventually, five young men in their late 20s stood up in the square and began to chant. Instantly, twenty or so of us surrounded them and formed a circle, clapping and chanting. More people joined, mostly young men and boys, some who looked no older than four.
The chants were themed around the movement’s demands: “The people demand the end of corruption!”, “The people demand Alhannouch leave!”, “The people want the king’s intervention!”. The rally slowly grew to a couple of hundred, all encircling the initial leaders and almost all young. A woman also arrived and led the chanting, and more young women joined. Some people wore Palestinian scarves.
The police watched on, surrounding the action and likely outnumbering the protesters even at the rally’s peak. There were no arrests.
At midnight on the Discord channel, a meeting discussed the demands the movement should make to the king. The next day, the admins shared a draft, and debates about the demands began. While there were disagreements about emphasis (many people wanted health care to be the focus), most people seemed to agree that dismissing the current government and implementing some reforms would be enough to resolve Morocco’s crises.
There were also suggestions to create an organising committee and an electoral political party. However, these were not taken up, and the general mood was strongly in favour of a leaderless, anonymous movement. Political parties were banned from participating.
Notably, there was no criticism of the king, which may be because such criticism can result in fifteen years’ imprisonment. However, it is a shift from earlier protest movements that called for an end to the monarchy. King Hassan is the fifth richest monarch in the world, and the richest in Africa, with a net worth of US$8.2 billion, according to Forbes. He is Morocco’s leading businessman, the Moroccan royal family holding the majority of stakes in <a href="https://businessempires.africa/king-mohammed-vi-moroccos-reclusive-ruler-with-6-billion-deep-pockets/">Al Mada</a>, a previously state-owned conglomerate with holdings in almost every major part of the economy, from mining and banking to food processing.
King Hassan has long been suspected of corruption. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/239525">WikiLeaks cables</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/239525"></a>previously revealed that he used his power to solicit bribes, especially in the real estate sector. To say the least, he is an unlikely ally in the fight against inequality and corruption, but his ability to dismiss the government seems like the easiest way forward from the point of view of many protesters.
A rally the following evening started in the same way as the 2 October protest, but in a more prominent place close to the tourist area around the medina. Again, police and military personnel swarmed surrounding streets. The same five men from the night before began the chanting. It grew more quickly this time, and people were more confident.
A woman in her 20s arrived halfway through. It was her first time at a protest, because her mother hadn’t let her attend initially because of the violent police response. But once the rallies seemed safe, she felt she had to come.“No one is going to help us, we have to fight for ourselves”, she said.
The rally was bigger this time, although still less than a thousand, and much more visible to cars and pedestrians, which meant it attracted many honks of support, curious tourists and locals, and a significant media presence. There were also many more women than the previous night, making up probably half the demonstration, and they again led chants.
At one point, a flag of the Berbers (an oppressed indigenous group in the region) was raised alongside the Moroccan flag. Protesters broke out into wild cheers. More people were wearing and waving Palestinian scarves. People had placards calling for the president to step down, for an end to corruption and to free all the political prisoners. After a couple of hours, people dispersed without any arrests or confrontations with police.
On 3 October, an <a href="https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2025/10/261456/moroccan-gen-z-212-issues-open-letter-to-king-mohammed-vi-demanding-accountability-and-reform/">open letter</a> <a href="https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2025/10/261456/moroccan-gen-z-212-issues-open-letter-to-king-mohammed-vi-demanding-accountability-and-reform/"></a> to the king from the GenZ movement was released. It asked him to use his power to dismiss the government, and for decent health and education for all, an end to corruption and the release of all political prisoners. <a href="https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2025/10/262656/genz212-over-60-intellectuals-artists-and-activists-address-open-letter-to-moroccos-king/">An open letter from 60 journalists, artists and other key figures in Moroccan society</a> was also released in solidarity with the movement, calling for a complete overhaul of government practices and priorities.
A boycott of corporations linked to the president was also initiated through social media. King Hassan’s annual <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251010-morocco-king-calls-for-social-reforms-amid-youth-led-protests">address</a> <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251010-morocco-king-calls-for-social-reforms-amid-youth-led-protests"></a>on 10 October reflected the pressure he was under. He called for more investment in social services and announced an initiative to create rural jobs, although he did not address any of the movement’s demands specifically.
Through discussion and voting in the Discord channel, the protests then moved from nightly to specific dates. The next was called for 18 October, with a call out for everyone, not just young people, to attend. There were also calls to expand the resistance into other areas, like deepening the boycott movement.
The GenZ212 movement is a beacon of hope for workers and young people around the world struggling under capitalism. The global Gen Z movement shows that many young people are prepared to resist in the face of deepening crises.

Protesting with Gen Z in Morocco

The ceasefire in Gaza is bringing blessed relief to 2 million Palestinians whose lives have been made a living hell by Israel’s genocidal war. For now, Palestinians can wake without dreading imminent bombing. 
But nothing guarantees that Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will not resume attacks as it did when it broke a previous truce in March. Supporters of Palestine must demand complete withdrawal of the Israeli military from Palestinian territory and an end to military, economic and diplomatic relations with Israel. This is no time to be easing up on our demands.
Halting the violence is only the beginning. Western and Arab governments need to deliver large-scale humanitarian aid—food, water, medicine and housing supplies. They certainly have the resources: the United States has spent at least $18 billion arming Israel since the war began.
An end to the war demands more than only peace. US President Donald Trump’s twenty-point plan keeps Gaza under Israeli control. The IDF may be “withdrawing” but still controls 60 percent of the territory, with no schedule for final departure. Even if fully enacted, this plan leaves a buffer zone in Israeli hands, granting control over supplies, movement and military incursions. Gaza remains the world’s largest open-air prison.
Under Trump’s plan, Palestinians lose any prospect of democracy. It installs a committee of unelected Palestinian technocrats and “international experts”, overseen by a “board of peace” chaired by Trump. No part of this scenario allows Palestinians to freely choose their future.
Even as Gaza’s ceasefire stands, Israel’s annexation of the West Bank proceeds unchecked. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to intensify this process to keep far-right coalition partners happy, meaning further dispossession for Palestinians.
Given the appalling nature of Trump’s plan, the support of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong is no surprise. They lavish praise on Trump for “leadership” and “the biggest contribution to peace in the Middle East for a generation or more”. These are the same leaders who have stood behind Israel since the start. Satirical website the Onion sums up the result: “Israel agrees to go back to killing Palestinians on less frequent basis”.
Justice also means that those responsible for this genocidal war should pay for their crimes. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. ICC member states must arrest them if they enter their territory.
Israeli leaders were supported by many, not just the United States and its allies, but also by governments in Russia, China, Arab and Muslim countries—whether supplying weapons, providing diplomatic cover or simply doing nothing. If Netanyahu belongs in The Hague, so do fellow war criminals Trump, President Joe Biden, British Labour leader Keir Starmer, Prime Minister Albanese and the complicit Arab and Muslim leaders.
The widespread complicity of governments with Israel reveals much about capitalist priorities. Capitalism breeds wars, tramples on human rights and destroys livelihoods. Trillions are wasted on weapons, while millions go hungry.
Governments backing Israel include democracies, dictatorships and military regimes—liberal, conservative and social democratic. Even supposed democracies have used Israel’s war as an excuse to curtail civil liberties at home. 
The genocide in Gaza exposes the reality of capitalism. Yet global resistance to the war has also pointed to an alternative. The mass antiwar marches since October 2023 show that millions of people will not simply sit back and watch as a genocide takes place. They have learned the power of solidarity on the streets. 
In recent weeks, workers’ power has come to the fore. Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla in early October has been the catalyst for mass strikes. In Italy, millions of workers and students took part in four days of mobilisations, including a 2 million-strong general strike and a million marching in the streets. On 14 October, Greek workers will be out in their millions; the day after that it’s the turn of workers in Spain. In every case, they are demanding, and through direct action halting, the movement of weapons for Israel.
These strikes arose from years of mass demonstrations against the war but also rising anger at government austerity.
Workers see the connection: the same forces behind war in Gaza are those cutting wages and services at home. A Greek socialist explained: “An Italian striker sent us a message and said, ‘The hand that bombs the Palestinians, is the hand that exploits us in our workplaces’, and that is really felt here”. This is why anti-austerity demonstrations in France that began on 10 September under the slogan “block everything” featured Palestinian flags alongside union banners. Struggle on each front helps the other: the Greek strike for Palestine on 14 October builds on big strikes against government plans to lengthen the working week.
Collective working-class power can stop wars and austerity. But lasting change requires much bigger socialist organisations, forging ties between progressive causes and putting workers at the centre. Protest matters, but strikes can grind the system to a halt—and ultimately, lead to its overthrow. That is what’s needed as capitalism drags society ever deeper into barbarism.

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‘Peace with genociders is a farce’: students and workers strike across Spain

A new international political situation

How the Palestine solidarity movement discredits identity politics

Are we living in a new world order?

Protesting with Gen Z in Morocco

Ceasefire in Gaza: relief, but not enough

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