Global Left Midweek – January 24, 2024
- Germany: Left and Center Rage Against Far Right
- Argentina General Strike
- Arab Regimes Ignore Grassroots Palestine Support
- India: Left Parties Gear Up in Bihar
- More on Italy’s Mass Upsurge Against Femicide
- The Enigma of the Egyptian Left
- Bulgaria’s Past and Present
- Iranian Workers Demand Their Rights
- News From Sudan
- Reclaiming Lenin
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Germany: Left and Center Rage Against Far Right
Kate Brady / The Washington Post
Demonstrations against the far-right Alternative for Germany party swept the country this weekend, strengthening calls to ban the party, after a report that AfD members had discussed plans for mass deportations. The report was a wake-up call for Germans opposed to AfD, whose popularity has surged in recent months. An estimated 1.4 million people hit the streets with anti-fascist demands.
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Argentina General Strike
Tom Phillips and Facundo Iglesia / The Guardian (London)
Argentine demonstrators have staged their biggest-yet show of opposition to Javier Milei’s radical attempt to reshape the South American country with a nationwide strike that shuttered schools and businesses, grounded hundreds of flights, and saw tens of thousands of marchers hit the streets.
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Arab Regimes Ignore Grassroots Palestine Support
Mohamad Elmasry / Middle East Eye (London)
Going forward, the question for Arab regimes will revolve around the extent to which they are willing to ignore popular sentiments. Pushing ahead with Israel normalisation against the will of their citizens could prove risky. Indeed, Arab publics appear united in anger. The last time anger was this palpable on the Arab streets was during the Arab Spring era.
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India: Left Parties Gear Up in Bihar
Mohd. Imran Khan / NewsClick (New Delhi)
Left parties, crucial allies of Bihar’s ruling Mahagathbandhan coalition, a part of the opposition alliance Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), are aiming to contest 12 seats in the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar. Leaders of the Left parties have called for a fair share in seat allocation to effectively challenge the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance.
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More on Italy’s Mass Upsurge Against Femicide
Luca Celada and Shendi Veli / il manifesto Global (Rome)
A wide movement protesting patriarchy culminated in November in nationwide public demonstrations, notably a 500,000 strong march and rally in Rome. The intense focus has driven a wedge in Italian society. Beyond politics, the case has laid bare a systemic issue that concerns all of Italian society — and all men.
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The Enigma of the Egyptian Left
Hesham Sallam / Orient XXI (Paris)
Although the Egyptian street has always seemed to favor the emergence of left-wing power, this political current has been losing the battle to the Islamists and to the government for several decades now. A lack of autonomy was fostered by the regimes of presidents Nasser and Sadat, as well as a tendency to emphasize “identity” debates to the detriment of socio-economic problems.
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Bulgaria’s Past and Present
Ognian Kassabov / Jacobin (New York)
Bulgarian authorities have begun dismantling the capital city’s main memorial to the Red Army. Celebrated as a move to bury the Communist past, the obsession with symbolic score-settling in fact reflects an inability to talk about this history seriously. Revisionism equating Nazi and Soviet rule often tends to sanitize the Nazi affiliations of some local anti-communist actors.
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Iranian Workers Demand Their Rights
Steve Bishop / Morning Star (London)
The level of discontent in Iran can be measured in part by the wide range of strike action which is affecting all parts of the economy. Protests and strikes directed against the government by steelworkers, nurses and retirees are continuing across Iran, citing plunging living standards, government corruption and state oppression as the main areas of concern.
- Communist Editor Abducted by Paramilitary Pavan Kulkarni / Peoples Dispatch (New Delhi)
- Intermilitary War and Peace Nadia Awad / London Review of Books
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Reclaiming Lenin
Paweł Wargan / Verso (London)
Lenin passed away a century ago — before the nation he helped found brought fascist colonialism to its knees, and before the inheritors of the colonial project defeated that nation. The banishing of Lenin from the surface of our lives also banished him from its depths. Lenin was, above all, a student of a world measured in heartbeats — not profit.