A Year in Review
With this issue, we close a momentous year for the international working class and our International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP).
Some moments are highlights.
In March, our small Tel Aviv collective gathered its courage. It brought communism to masses protesting the continuing Gaza genocide. Now meetings overflow with new friends and recruits who are spreading Red Flag further.
A high school student in Kariega (South Africa) organized 250 classmates to fight for a math teacher. She brough 18 of them to ICWP’s May Day event. She joined the party and continues to give powerful leadership to our work.
The ICWP garment collective in Bengaluru (India) mobilized Hindu and Muslim workers, including undocumented Bangladeshi workers, to join the May Day celebration. Defying the ruling party’s anti-Muslim fascists, they wore red Sari and red Hijab to show that “the colour of communism unites people of different cultures.”
Younger comrades took charge of the ICWP website. New friends in Los Angeles are gathering with us to discuss communism. Some write for Red Flag and help with articles.
We happily welcomed comrades’ babies into our global communist community.
Other moments have been profoundly sad.
We have lost so many class siblings to imperialist bombs, bullets, disease, and starvation in Palestine, the Caribbean, Sudan, Congo. So many lost to floods, fires, poisoned air, and other environmental disasters caused by capitalism’s ruthless drive for maximum profits.
Over a thousand migrants died crossing the central Mediterranean this year. Two hundred fifty died in Latin America from January to June, trying to reach the US. In the USA we see neighbors kidnapped and deported. Dozens have died in custody.
Many of us are mourning the deaths of treasured ICWP comrades and friends in Gqeberha (South Africa), California (USA), and elsewhere.
How can we best characterize this momentous year?
One aspect is the rapid intensification and consolidation of international fascism. We call it “fascism” when rotten, decaying capitalist governments expose their system’s true nature as a violently racist and viciously sexist class dictatorship.
Previous US presidents, from Obama to Biden, implemented fascist policies on the downlow. Mass deportations, drone strikes, expanded executive power, and more. Trump does more of the same, but loudly and proudly, to build a mass fascist base.
Trump embraces open fascists like the Zionist Netanyahu, Argentina’s Milei, Hungary’s Orban, India’s Modi, and Russia’s Putin. His administration eggs on western Europe’s most racist neo-Nazi parties in the name of “preserving [white] European culture.” He rants appallingly against African workers. He mocks white workers with populist rhetoric while slashing benefits they need like food stamps and health insurance.
But it is in apartheid Occupied Palestine that the stark reality of genocide has most exposed the essentially fascist character of capitalism and imperialism. It’s the “Gaza Effect.” What we see in Gaza is what capitalists are prepared to do to us all.
Because the main aspect of 2025 was a massive upsurge of outrage against that genocide. In Great Britain and Europe, in Asia and Africa and the Americas. On college campuses and in the streets. Most significantly, the Gaza genocide galvanized large groups of industrial workers into political strikes. These sparked general strikes with political and economic demands and slogans.
In Great Britain, older workers were arrested for opposing genocide by holding signs supporting Palestine Action. That kind of repression exposed more capitalist rulers and stimulated broader protests. The “Gaza Effect” has politicized many workers and youth who hadn’t previously paid much attention.
Inter-imperialist conflicts continue to intensify. The war in Ukraine is increasingly deadly. One third of the US Navy is in the Caribbean. Trump threatens all-out war on Venezuela. Armed conflicts still rage in Myanmar, Kashmir, Ethiopia, Syria, and more.
When the masses are in motion, what communists do (or fail to do) matters more than ever. Our party made modest advances this year. We must prepare to do even better in fighting for communism in 2026, especially among industrial workers and soldiers.
Read Genocide in Palestine Demands Communist Revolution here