My weekly column in the daily Plymouth Herald (10.12.24), keeping-up with the fast moving historic situation. Linking the global and local is a challenge, but we are all affected by international events, and should learn from them.

Collective Freedoms Must be Fought For

It is good to see so many are thinking about human rights, political agency and personal integrity. There is much debate about the future of democracy. The driving force for this anxiety is the accelerating instability at home and across the world.

The fall of the dictatorship of Assad in Syria has encouraged talk of universal rights, women’s suffrage and protections of minorities. With at least nine military forces vying for power in Syria, including the country’s working class who started the revolution in 2011, collective freedoms are going to have to be fought for.

Amnesty International’s decision, however late, that Israel’s destruction of Gaza represents genocide is another demand for protection of human rights. The bombing of schools and hospitals and entire civilian populations is against international law and has to be challenged for any of us to feel safe. Mass extermination is beyond all concepts of political balance and social justice.

The same bombing of Ukrainian towns by Russia is damned across our news media, but the hypocrisy of condemning Putin and not Netanyahu completely outrageous. If some groups of people are expendable then we are all at risk.

When the Prime Minister of South Korea declared martial law last week, placing the entire country under curfew policed by armed soldiers, workers amassed on the streets to reinstate democracy.

When the President of France imposed a Prime Minister from a minority party, ignoring the majority vote of the people, mass protest and industrial strikes defied the imposition and kicked out the usurper.

There is a class war for workers rights and agency happening parallel to the wars between nations. Economically, global Capitalism is in crisis, the poor immersed in debt.

In this accelerating war of competition for resources, there are battles between ideologies as well as armies.

We now see a fast-growing and organised global far-Right movement, winning elections across the globe from Argentina to Poland. The threat in the UK is real, the ultra-nationalists organised politically with promises of millions in funding from American billionaire Elon Musk. This year we have seen white power pogroms in which acts of attempted murder were committed against refugees, racist riots in town centres, meetings attacked and mosques firebombed.

Our government is pandering to the far-Right, Labour courting Reform UK, toughening Tory laws against protest and manipulating the Courts into the levels of sentencing they condemn when seen in Russia or China. Authoritarianism at home is another manifestation of deepening war abroad.

Behind all are the same forces operating on many fronts. Billionaires are funding propaganda aimed at scapegoating migrants and minorities, weaponising racism in order to hide their hideous wealth derived from our exploitation and oppression.

The level of disinformation paid for by wealthy elites mirrors their new investment in arms manufacturing and artificial intelligence, all aimed at distracting and confusing us into acquiescence. Wars make money for the few.

The Trade Unions have a key role in challenging the drive towards fascism and war. We need a strong anti-racist movement to defend the rights of minorities in order to advance the rights of the entire working class. And that means offering refuge to those scorched by war or climate change, alongside challenging the profiteers making billions from death and environmental destruction.

Bringing the human race together is the historic role of ordinary people, we, the majority working class. Our history proves that nothing is given to us without collective demands and organised challenge to those in power. Blame the billionaires not the refugees. We who want peace with social justice are going to have to fight for it.