Youth vanguards should be on the front lines and bring a new era of anti-imperialist struggle

Looking at the history, youth have always been sensitive to the new, searching for truth, and bravely practicing it. Marx and Lenin had devoted themselves to the communist movement since they were young, and through fierce practice, they revealed the truth of the revolution. Under the influence of the victory of the October Revolution in 1917, Korean youth vanguard rejected the bogus Marxists, fought against sectarianism, and paved the way for the anti-imperialist national liberation and socialist movements. Throughout the history of world revolutions, including Korea’s, youth communists have always been active as vanguards in the party, in the armed forces, and in the united fronts.

Today, we are on the brink of a new upsurge in world revolution. Human history will mark 2022 as the year when the Third World War began. In 2022, the war in Ukraine became in full swing, by which World War III broke out, and in 2023, the war in Palestine began and immediately expanded into the war in the Middle East, accelerating the Third World War. If the wars in Taiwan and South Korea break out in 2024, it will be the culmination of the Third World War. The First World War was an inter-imperialist war, and the Second World War was a world antifascist war. The Third World War is a world anti-imperialist war. The Third World War, in which a world anti-imperialist front is formed, and it is conducting a world anti-imperialist war, will be a decisive blow to the imperialist powers and a milestone for global independence.

The war in Ukraine is an anti-imperialist, antifascist war, and liberation war, and a preventive war; the war in the Middle East, including the war in Palestine, is an anti-imperialist, anti-zionist, and liberation war; and the imminent wars in Taiwan and South Korea are anti-imperialist, national liberation wars, and reunification wars. In the situation of the Third World War, one front is the anti-imperialist front, and the common character of each war is anti-imperialist liberation war.

We, youth must be convinced of the scientific analysis of the situation and, along the revolutionary line revealed by it, become the vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle. 

Fascism in the Second World War was a variant of imperialism that threatened the hegemony of the imperialist powers, but in the present Third World War, fascism is a stooge of imperialism, which is a neocolonial instrument of imperialist domination or a cannon fodder in proxy war. The imperialist forces manipulated the neo-Nazi Zelensky government in Ukraine and the zionist Netanyahu government in Israel to provoke wars. Both neo-Nazism and zionism are fascism, and imperialist forces have utilized this fascism to increase their influence in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Youth around the world have played a vanguard role in the fight against imperialism and its vassal fascism in each country and region. This is why the imperialist forces and fascist forces preferentially and savagely suppress the youth movement. In the anti-imperialist mass struggle, which is the first task of the world communist and anti-imperialist forces in the present era, the youth fighters must continue to play a vanguard role without wavering. 

However, in the current situation, the Communist Youth of Greece, the KNE, defining Russia and China as imperialists, opposes the war in Ukraine as the anti-imperialist and antifascist war, and follows the imperialist forces including the US imperialism. Right after February 2022, the war in Ukraine was escalated, the KNE held the demonstration in front of the Russian Embassy. This is a prime example of how the KNE has confused the main enemy in the anti-imperialist movement and created confusion in anti-imperialist and communist movements around the world. Why it happened. 

In 1956, by the notorious renegade, Nikita Khrushchev, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union stated the revisionist line. It was resolutely opposed by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (the KKE) at that time, Nikos Zachariadis and the other communists, who were expelled from the party. After then, the leadership of the KKE has taken the revisionist line and betrayed the revolutionary principle all the time.

It is no coincidence that the leadership of the KKE, trapped in the mire of revisionism, made the left and right opportunist mistakes in the strategy and tactics of the revolution and betrayed the workers and the people. From the 1980s, the right-biased problem, which it entered the European Parliament and indulged in Eurocommunism, and the left-biased problem, which failed to lead the struggle and shouted ultra-revolutionary slogans when the people rose up in protest in 2009 due to the severe economic crisis, are two sides of the same coin, typical of opportunism.

The Khrushchev’s revisionist Communist Party of the Soviet Union intervened the internal affairs of the communist parties in other countries, and established the revisionist leadership. This international sectarianist maneuvers are repeated in present days by the KKE. 

The KKE is meddling in the internal affairs of the communist parties in other countries, and forcing the revisionist line, but if the party refuses to accept the line, the KKE manipulates some party members and youth and splits the party. 

Unfortunately, in these international sectarian maneuvers, the KNE is acting as an assault force. The erroneous line and sectarian behavior of the leaderships of the KKE and the KNE have prevented the World Federation of Democratic Youth (the WFDY) and Meeting of European Communist Youth Organizations (MECYO) from achieving their vanguard role in the world revolution and European revolution. The leaderships of the KKE and the KNE are inciting members of the youth leagues of the countries linked to these international organizations to impose their false line on the communist parties and youth organizations and, if they refuse, to divide the parties, mainly the youth, to create pro-KKE party.

We, the youth of the World Anti-imperialist Platform, must fight against the incorrect line and sectarian activities of the KNE and prevent the division of the international communist movement. Young communists in each country should arm themselves with the revolutionary and scientific line and wage an unwavering, uncompromising, and principled ideological struggle with the highest alertness against the pro-imperialist revisionist line and the international sectarian activities of the KNE leadership.

The leadership of the KKE has created the absurd “imperialist pyramid” theory, which defines all capitalist countries as imperialist, and spread it mainly through the KNE. In order to see through the essence of revisionism, opportunism, and sectarianism, which are the main targets of the contemporary battle of ideas, we must study scientific revolutionary idea and theory in depth. The true youth revolutionaries of our time should dialectically combine ideological study with practical struggle and confidently confront the pro-imperialist revisionist line and international sectarianism.

The Comintern was founded in March 1919 and the young communists of the world founded the Youth Communist International in November of that year. In the historic period of the creation of the first socialist countries after the First World War and the strengthening of the socialist camp around the world before and after the Second World War, the youth were able to stand with the Comintern and follow the right path to fulfill the mission of the times.  

Today, as we face a new phase of the Third World War, we stand with the World Anti-imperialist Platform to clarify the correct path of the anti-imperialist struggle through scientific analysis of the situation and revolutionary strategy, to reject revisionism, opportunism, and sectarianism, and to consolidate international communist forces. 

The three goals of the World Anti-imperialist Platform—promoting the world anti-imperialist struggle, intensifying the ideological warfare against revisionism, opportunism and sectarianism, and consolidating international communist forces—are the first priority tasks of the world anti-imperialist and international communist forces. 

I am confident that we, the youth fighters will always be the vanguard and fighters on the glorious way to fulfill the task of justice given by the times by following the correct line with the World Anti-imperialist Platform. Holding high the slogans “The workers of the world, unite!” and “The people united will never be defeated!”, let us struggle bravely to advance the victory of the anti-imperialist struggle and the destruction of imperialism! The final victory of the workers’ and people’s independent task, and revolutionary task is certain!