Caracas, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, September 11, 2024
The event was attended by more than 1,200 participants from 97 countries, especially from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
With four keynote speeches and eight panels, the event featured more than 30 speakers.
Social, feminist, youth and cultural movements, intellectuals and academics, trade unions and political parties, personalities, indigenous organisations, human rights groups, organisations of the peoples of the world. Internationalism in defence of human life and the planet cannot be separated from the struggle for peace, social justice and human rights, nor from the anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-patriarchal and anti-imperialist struggle, based on the principles of 21st Century Socialism.
20th Century Fascism
Fascism in the 20th century emerged as a response to a series of economic, social and political crises that shook Europe after the First World War. In this context of despair and disillusionment with liberal democracies, authoritarian movements such as Italian fascism and German Nazism found fertile ground to emerge. Both movements shared a visceral hatred of communism and socialism, and used fear of the ‘enemy within’ to consolidate their power.
The fascist movements of the 20th century shared common characteristics: exacerbated nationalism, authoritarianism, anti-communism, anti-liberalism, militarism, violence, propaganda and media control, racial supremacism and anti-intellectualism. These elements allowed the consolidation of absolute power, using censorship, propaganda and repression as key tools.
21st century digital neo-fascism
We are witnessing a profound transformation in the structure of global capitalism, a phase that can be called digital capitalism. A new neo-fascist capitalist phase marked by the increasing concentration of power in the hands of a new financial and technological aristocracy which control vast economic resources and dominate information and communication technologies.
In 2022, the 10 richest men in the world will own more wealth than the 3.1 billion poorest people. The richest 10% of the world’s population receives 52% of global income, while the poorest half receives only 8.5%. The poorest half of the world’s population owns 2% of the world’s total wealth, while the richest 10% own 76%.
According to Forbes there are 141 more billionaires in 2024 than in 2023 and 26 more than the record set in 2021. In addition, billionaires are richer than ever, with an aggregate value of $14.2 trillion.
Rise of Digital Neofascism:
This context of the development of a new capitalist phase, has given rise to the emergence of extremist Ideologies linked to the interests of this new financial and technological aristocracy, represented by figures such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos who operate alongside think tanks, multilateral bodies, NGOs, military corporations (Academi, Erick Prince), paramilitaries and drug trafficking cartels, linked to networks of right-wing and ultra-right political parties.
Financial and Technological Aristocracy:
According to the Forbes ranking: Bernard Arnault: owner of LVMH, with 75 brands in the fashion and cosmetics industry (Louis Vuitton, Sephora, others). Wealth of 233 billion dollars. Elon Musk: co-founded six companies, including automotive company Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX, and bought social network Twitter (renamed X) in October 2022. Wealth of $195 billion.
Jeff Bezos: founder of e-commerce giant Amazon, owner of The Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company that develops rockets. Wealth of 194 billion dollars. Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta (where he merged the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, among others). Wealth of 177 billion dollars.
Larry Ellison, chairman, chief technology officer and co-founder of software giant Oracle. Wealth of $141 billion
New Phase and Neo-Fascism
This neo-fascism differs from its previous stages in the centrality of the control of advanced technologies, which are reshaping social, political and economic relations. Technologies such as internet, artificial intelligence, 5G and 6G networks, the metaverse, nanotechnology and robotics have turned digital platforms into ‘new factories’, where capital exploits leisure and rest time, turning it into production time.
This technological revolution has colonised every aspect of our lives, radically transforming the way we work, relate to each other and participate politically.
Extremist ideologies
The rise of neo-fascist figures around the world, articulated in the self-styled Global Alt-Right Movement and in the self-described neo-reactionary ideology (NRX). Here they pay tribute to such figures as Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel), Donald Trump (USA), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), Santiago Abascal (Spain), Javier Milei (Argentina), Maria Corina Machado (Venezuela), Nayib Bukele (El Salvador), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Volodimir Zelensky (Ukraine), Marine Le Pen (France).
These leaders use populist discourses to legitimise regimes that promote the repression of social movements, xenophobia, racism, political violence and the violation of human rights, appealing to fear, terror and insecurity as a means of legitimising a justification for coup plans and anti-democratic policies and repressive policies, while widening the gap in economic inequality and ensure the plundering of resources.
Intolerance and hate speech:
Neo-fascism, as a new phase of fascism, perpetuates and deepens multiple violences against women and diversities, exacerbating structural inequalities generated by capitalism, racism and patriarchy. This system of oppression is reflected in the forced disappearance of political leaders and feminist activists, as well as in the high rates of feminicide, strategies that seek to discipline and silence those who fight for social justice. The feminisation of the right and the use of female figures by fascisms and neo-fascisms are tactics designed to manipulate and legitimise reactionary policies.
Against this background, it is crucial to globally articulate a popular, revolutionary, anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-colonialist, anti-Zionist and anti-fascist programme. Only in this way is it possible to reject policies that promote exclusion, racism and xenophobia as tools of domination.
Social networks and cognitive warfare:
We live in a time where digital technologies play a central role. Social networks and media platforms are the central arena for the manipulation of perceptions and social alienation.
The so-called ‘fourth industrial revolution’ promotes the appropriation and use of scientific and technological developments for the fragmentation of societies and cognitive warfare, through algorithms that seek to perpetuate the domination of a global elite with its epicentre in the ‘West’.
Online life, marked by emotional dissociation, facilitates disengagement from the effects of one’s actions, often serving as a bridge to violence in reality.
Think tanks and research centres, organised in global networks, use digital devices to conduct influence campaigns, with segmented messages that affect individual and collective subjectivity.
The need to make visible and address the aggravation of mental health problems. Incidence of anxiety and depressive disorders, addictions, apathy and youth suicide.
Importance of the construction and articulation of tools so that young people can confront the manipulation of digital platforms, encouraging critical reflection and collective struggle.
Youth and Cognitive Warfare:
Digital neo-fascism seeks to depoliticise the younger generations through the use of screens, promoting individualism and social hyper-fragmentation, irrational consumerism, meritocracy and denying historicity.
New technologies are used for propaganda and mass disinformation, and for the construction of an internal enemy that becomes an ‘us against ‘us versus them’, exploiting fear and the dehumanisation of the fellow human beings It attempts to disengage them from their cultural and patriotic identities, from community values and the community values and care for life. The aim is to fragment the social fabric and alienate young people from collective struggles, weakening their ability to respond to injustices and capacity to respond to the injustices of the system.
Neo-colonialism 2.0:
The model of death that deepens capitalism in this new phase, is reflected is starkly reflected in the Zionist and fascist genocide against Gaza. This has escalated the conflict in the Middle East, with an ‘axis of resistance’ that in a protagonist manner protagonist in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Day after day, the Palestinian people resist, sustained by bonds of international solidarity in the face of the fascist regime that seeks international solidarity in the face of the fascist regime that seeks to crush their dignity and erase their existence, embodied in the figure of Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is crucial to understand and make visible the connections between Zionism and fascism, identifying its new fascism, identifying its new expressions, as part of the recognition of the common enemy of the peoples of the world.
NATO’ s imperialist intervention in Ukraine, with the support of Western powers, has turned the country into a geopolitical battleground. In this scenario, Volodymir Zelensky has emerged as a pawn of imperialism.
In Africa , European neo-colonialism is experiencing a time of heavy defeats. The Peoples of the world see with enthusiasm the emergence of the Confederation of Sahel states between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the attacks directed against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, together with the recent coup attempts in the sister republics of Honduras, Colombia and Bolivia, are evidence of a neo-fascist and neo-colonial offensive in the region.
Economic warfare inflicts violence in several countries, especially Cuba and Venezuela. In Argentina, Javier Milei’s abrupt rise to the presidency is a neo-reactionary phenomenon within the new global economic and political structure.
Irregular armies, linked to drug trafficking, are a real drama in some regions of Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and in the so-called ‘northern triangle’ of Central America – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. However, the whole region is suffering from the increase in drug trafficking violence.
The Anti-Fascist International (AI)
Need to create an Anti-Fascist International to coordinate the efforts of social and political movements in defence of popular and protagonist democracy, social justice and human rights on a global level.
This collective front of struggle must not only confront neo-fascism in the political, street and ideological spheres, but must also use the digital space and technological tools to counter information manipulation and multidimensional and cognitive warfare.
The Anti-Fascist International as a space of articulation of anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-patriarchal and anti-racist struggles.
To consolidate a coordinated offensive that promotes the values of social justice, peace, sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples.
Global solidarity and territorial struggles:
The proposal to build an Anti-Fascist International includes the creation of sectoral agendas, regional and national chapters, as well as multiple global solidarity networks to confront the resurgence of fascism.
This implies an international articulation of strategies of struggle, involving all political, social, cultural, feminist, trade union and cultural organisations throughout the world.
It is central to understand this digital capitalism and its new forms of exploitation of labour and human knowledge. Common leisure time is now a new field of surplus value extraction.
Chapters by region and country: building concrete agendas in the five continents to confront the threat of fascism.
