Antifascist Former Resistance Fighters Netherlands (AFVN)
This is an edited and expanded version of the original FIR article titled “The world in turmoil?―Trump’s ‘visions’”.
In recent days, the new American “National Security Strategy” has been made public. FIR typically does not concern itself with documents on national foreign policy. However, this document sheds new light on many issues concerning war and peace and domestic political developments in Europe, and is expected to have a massive impact on our work.
This strategy is reflected in the current military escalation in the Caribbean, where the US attacks and even kills people outside its own territory whom it accuses of criminal activities. Destroying ships on the high seas and killing crews for alleged drug smuggling may seem populist in the United States, but it violates international law and international shipping agreements on all fronts. Now the US military has gone a step further. In an act of piracy, a Venezuelan oil tanker was seized on international waters. The US, which as part of its “security strategy” has declared the Caribbean and all of Latin America as its direct sphere of influence in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine, claims that Venezuela itself is involved in drug smuggling, even though it has been known for years that it is Colombian cartels that dominate the US drug trade. But for the US, the Bolivarian Republic and its oil reserves are the coveted object for which it would even risk a war. The US government’s announcement that Venezuelan airspace is closed to international airlines shows how arrogantly US policy is being conducted. This action finds no justification in UN Security Council resolutions, but all airlines that want to remain present on the US market must obey this economic blackmail by the US government. It is a repetition of the US sanctions policy against Cuba, which has been condemned by a large majority in the UN General Assembly for years. However, US politics pays no heed to this; on the contrary, it puts pressure on all economic partners who want to operate on the US market to bow to these sanctions―at the expense of the Cuban civilian population, who are denied basic medical technology and other supplies. All US governments, both Republican and Democratic, have practiced this inhumane behavior over the past decades.
What is new about the US government’s “National Security Strategy” is an altered vision of Europe. While the US remains interested in cooperation, it looks with concern at the state of the continent, which is threatened by “the real and even more threatening prospect of the extinction of civilization” due to its migration policy, “which transforms the continent and sows discord.” Regarding domestic policy in European countries, the administration complains about the “suppression of political opposition” and the “loss of national identities and self-confidence.” Whereas it was previously the “privilege of the West” to denounce “human rights violations” around the world, the US now uses similar arguments to support far-right forces (referred to by Trump as “patriotic parties”) and their room for maneuver in Europe. This criticism of the suppression of political opposition is not in itself unjustified, but it testifies to boundless cynicism when it comes from a government that itself is preparing a war against Venezuela, and remains silent about the ongoing intimidation and criminalization of left-wing, anti-imperialist movements in Europe, such as AFVN and its partner organizations. Washington wants to “help Europe correct its current course.” Europe must “remain European.”
Therefore, it will “encourage its political allies in Europe” to re-strengthen the “individual character” of “European nations.” In this narrative, “the growing influence of patriotic parties in Europe” already provides “reason for great optimism.”
What this ideological and political influence will look like became clear this year. Elon Musk not only campaigned for the AfD during the German elections but also sent a video message to the largest racist march in London a few weeks ago. The outrage of the European liberal establishment about this is as hypocritical as it is predictable. They themselves support transatlantic campaigns. Their criticism is not aimed at international reactionary cooperation per se, but solely at the fact that it now undermines their own geopolitical agenda. Honorary guests of various far-right parties in Europe, including Fratelli d’Italia, the Rassemblement National, the AfD and others, were invited to Trump’s inauguration. And the CPAC-Hungary (Conservative Political Action Conference) held this summer in Budapest, where representatives of various European far-right parties spoke, was supported at the highest level of the US government. The theses on Europe formulated there were a blueprint for the new American “National Security Strategy.”
While European government representatives now adapt to this strategy of transatlantic cooperation, through which they continue their own military expansion and imperialist interventions via NATO, there can be only one strategy for democratic civil society: to resist both American interference and the European establishment which, in the name of ‘democratic values’, itself paves the way for militarism, social dismantling and the erosion of democratic rights that form the breeding ground for the far right. This aggressive turn in American policy is no coincidence or personal whim. It is the logical outcome of late capitalist imperialism in deep crisis.
1. Attack on Venezuela: The Logic of Monopoly Capital
The piracy, sanctions and threat of war against Venezuela are driven by the concrete interests of US financial monopoly capital. Control over Venezuelan oil, gold and strategic minerals is essential for profit maximization. But more importantly: the Bolivarian model of sovereign development sets a dangerous precedent. It shows that a country can escape the grip of multinationals and the IMF. This example must be destroyed so that no other country in Latin America or beyond dares to pursue an independent course. The “economic war” via sanctions is the preferred weapon of 21st-century imperialism: it uses the financial dominance of the dollar to strangle peoples who refuse to submit.
2. Support for European Fascism: Capital Seeks Its Emergency Brake
The US establishment’s flirtation with European far-right parties is not an ideological curiosity. It is a conscious class politics of capital in distress. The traditional so-called centrist parties are losing their ability to mislead the population about the consequences of capitalism: ever deeper austerity, rising cost of living, imperialist wars and environmental issues. The legitimacy crisis of the system is growing.
These parties themselves, under their ‘democratic’ facade, have already pursued a fundamentally proto-fascist course: they built up the repressive state apparatus, brought social rights to an end and waged economic war via sanctions. They thus created the material and legal conditions for fascism. Therefore, big capital―both in the US and in Europe―now openly cultivates and finances its fascist auxiliary troops, as the logical next step on a continuum of capitalist crisis management. Parties like the AfD, RN and Fratelli d’Italia serve a dual purpose:
• Divide: Channel the anger of the working class into racist and nationalist hatred, away from the real enemy: the capitalist system and the ruling class. They provide the crisis created by liberalism with a toxic, mobilizing ideology. This seamlessly aligns with Georgi Dimitrov’s analysis, who described fascist demagogy as “speculating on the fierce hatred of the workers against the predatory bourgeoisie” to mislead them with enticing slogans.
• Repress: Further build up and legitimize an authoritarian state apparatus that can ruthlessly crush trade unions, left-wing parties and social movements. This is the core of Dimitrov’s definition of fascism as “the organization of the terrorist reckoning with the working class.”
• Mobilize: Forge a hyper-militaristic, ethnically homogeneous “Fortress Europe” as a united front in the desperate struggle of the old imperialism against the rise of the multipolar world (e.g., China, Russia, BRICS). In Dimitrov’s terms, these parties thus form the potential “shock troops of international counter-
revolution” for a new, authoritarian imperialist bloc.
Trump’s “patriotic” rhetoric and support for European fascists are therefore not a break with capitalism, but a radicalization of it. It is capital’s attempt, now that the democratic facade has been cracked by the actions of liberalism itself, to pull the fascist emergency brake and switch to an openly terrorist dictatorship to maintain its rule.
As President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela analyzed in speeches at the International Anti-Fascist Congress: modern fascism is essentially a violent reaction of the old, crisis-ridden imperialist bloc to the unstoppable rise of a multipolar world. The economic and political rise of countries like China, Russia, India, Iran and the BRICS alliance is breaking the monopoly of Western capital. Dollar hegemony is faltering, raw materials no longer automatically end up in Western hands, and sovereign development models outside neoliberalism demonstrate their success.
Current fascism is the desperate response to this. Because the capitalist West can no longer reverse this power shift economically and politically, it is switching to open aggression: economic warfare (sanctions), hybrid warfare (coup attempts, disinformation) and, ultimately, direct military confrontation (proxy war in Ukraine, threats to China).
3. Conclusion: One War, Many Fronts
This crisis manifests itself in panic among the unpopular, warmongering governments of Germany, France and the EU clique around Von der Leyen. Their proxy army in Ukraine is morally and militarily exhausted, while the plan for the biggest bank robbery of the century―the seizure of Russian assets―is further tearing apart the European project. These are the death throes of the old imperialist bloc.
The contradiction between the weakening European and the aggressive American camp is real and temporarily weakens the imperialist front. This gives us breathing space, something we as a revolutionary movement must make full use of to win over as many people as possible, because only the revolutionary activity of the working class can overthrow the current system.
The struggle against American imperialism is inextricably linked to the struggle against rising fascism in Europe. They are two sides of the same coin: the desperate reaction of a global capitalist system in decline.
Our solidarity with Venezuela, our resistance to NATO as the core of the imperialist war machine, and our fight against the AfD and its ilk―these are not separate battles. It is one and the same class struggle.
This historical breathing space, created by the crisis and anti-imperialist perseverance of countries like Russia, China and Venezuela offers a crucial opportunity to build an independent, class-conscious popular front from below.
The task of the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist movement is to expose this systemic link and build an international, solidary counter-power from below. A power that capital cannot divide, and that can respond to the aggression of imperialism both at the frontline (as in Venezuela) and in the heart of the beast (Europe, the US). This defensive struggle finds its historical perspective and only real way out in the construction of a socialist alternative. Only a movement that understands that this is a systemic struggle can truly organize resistance.