People’s Response to APEC: Breakdown or Breakthrough?

by Tricontinental Asia / December 4th, 2025

The Doomsday Clock advances 10 seconds closer to midnight. Global temperatures rise beyond 1.5°C. Forests burn. Hurricanes intensify. Meanwhile, countries produce bombs and bullets, the New Cold War inches us closer to nuclear annihilation, and US President Donald Trump extorts the world.

The response of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is to draw from the same tired capitalist playbook that created today’s polycrisis. Thus, APEC perpetuates a global order that makes democracy a farce and concentrates production in the hands of corporations. For most of us, to live our lives, we become insensate to these realities. The International People’s Response to APEC 2025 and Trump (People’s Response) was created because we refuse to watch the world being destroyed from the sidelines. While we denounce Trump’s tariff extortion, we also refuse to settle for APEC’s nostalgic yearning for a pre-Trump globalised world that never was.

Lee Ungno (South Korea), People, 1985.

APEC’s structure and origins expose its corporate-centric economic cooperation. All 20 official meetings throughout the year, from food sovereignty to AI regulation, are carried out with corporations behind closed doors. Moreover, the only non-governmental body with an official meeting with APEC leaders is the APEC Business Advisory Council. Its ubiquitous interventions are evident in its letters to APEC’s thematic and working groups. This structure reflects APEC’s original intent and function of serving as a forum for business to access governments. Its corporate-centric economic cooperation traces back to 1966, with a Japanese economist’s proposal for a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). While rejected, this FTAAP remains APEC’s guiding vision. In fact, the progenitor to today’s global value chains emerged within this context: the Toyota Manufacturing System’s regional value chain across Southeast Asia stood in contrast to the Ford-inspired vertically integrated mass production that was then prevalent in the United States.

To represent the voices of people from the region and the world, the International Strategy Center, together with the International Peoples’ Assembly (IPA) and other progressive groups, hosted a series of People’s Response from 29 October to 1 November. International delegates were invited to join the struggle and exchange experiences.

Yoan Choe (South Korea), Stand Up With Your Fist Clenched, n.d.

On 29 October, we harnessed Korean public discontent and outrage to protest Trump’s visit to Gyeongju. Trump’s reciprocal tariffs were particularly egregious to South Korea as the latter’s zero tariffs were achieved after conceding to the US’ toxic provisions (i.e., investor state dispute settlement systems) in the US-ROK Free Trade Agreement. Today, in exchange for 15% tariffs, the Lee Jae-myung administration has to hand over $350 billion of Korea’s money (over 80% of its dollar reserves) to the Trump administration. As Vijay Prashad stated in the Gyeongju People’s Summit, ‘Trump just put his hand in your pocket and took your money’. Infuriatingly, excepting the few that stood up to Trump, this is an all-too-common scene around the world: presidents smiling and thanking Trump as they get robbed. And while these investments might yield profits for Korean companies, they do nothing for jobs and welfare for Korea while abetting in the US’s reckless scramble to maintain its dominance. After all, $150 billion will ‘Make American Shipbuilding Great Again’, thus expanding US naval capacity. The rest of the $200 billion will be used for investments (with Trump having final say) on extracting fossil fuels and further embedding South Korea in the US’s semiconductor industry. Trump’s tariff extortion portends US decline and retrenchment. Yet, rather than a rebalancing in foreign relations, South Korea is becoming more structurally dependent on the United States.

On 30 October, the People’s Response hosted a conference on the theme ‘An Economy For All’, exploring capitalist globalisation, the shifting global order, and alternatives to APEC. In the first panel (‘Globalization, Trump’s Tariff War, and APEC’), Walden Bello, co-chair of the board of Focus on the Global South, spoke about how capitalist globalisation has enriched multinational corporations from the Global North while destabilising countries in the Global South and increasing global inequality. Bello called for a deglobalisation based on people’s needs, development, plurality, and social control. Dr. Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj, chairman of the Socialist Party of Malaysia, proposed an ASEAN-centred regional economy for Malaysia, based on higher wages, corporate taxes, and import substitution. Solong Senohe, general secretary of Lesotho’s United Textile Employees Union, spoke on how Trump’s tariffs wrecked the textile industry, leaving countless unemployed (80% of them being young women). Kim Deok-su, general secretary of the Korean Peasants League of Gangwon Province, spoke about how Korean peasants were being sacrificed for export-oriented production and called for food sovereignty. Kim Seong-hyeok, director of the Korean Confederation of Trade Union’s Korea Labor and Society Institute, criticised Trump’s ‘America First’ policy while rejecting APEC’s capital-centred globalisation – he echoed calls for democratic and people-centred alternatives. Kim Jong-min, co-president of Together Seoul, called out Trump’s predatory neoliberalism while seeing the current moment as an opportunity to build international solidarity against Trump and for peace, sustainability, and development.

Jiha Moon (South Korea), The Letter Shin 2, 2011.

In the second panel (‘Multipolarity, the New Cold War, and Neo-Fascism’), Vijay Prashad, executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, presented on the growing confidence and assertiveness of the Global South (through processes such as BRICS+) which was provoked by the Global North’s inability to solve the world’s problems following the 2008 Financial crisis. Tings Chak, an organiser of the Shanghai-based Global South Academic Forum and co-editor of the international edition of the journal Wenhua Zongheng, explored China’s socialist path and its vision of peaceful co-existence based on national sovereignty. Corazon Fabros, co-president of the International Peace Bureau, proposed the idea of ‘common security’ as the ‘path to a peaceful multipolar world’, including in the South China Sea. Cathi Choi, executive director of Women Cross DMZ, called for developing a ‘people-centred economy’ and a ‘regional demilitarisation dialogue’ based on diplomacy. Dyung YaPing, of the Urgent Action by South Korean Civil Society in Solidarity with Palestine, called on Korean labour unions to actively participate in the solidarity struggle to end the genocide in Palestine. Myeong-Suk of Human Rights Network BARAM called for greater international solidarity (regardless of one’s positions on China) amidst the openings created by the seismic shifts to a multipolar world. Finally, Ahn Kim, Jeong-ae, president of Women Making Peace, presented on the specific impact of war on women and called for a feminist approach towards peace based on ‘care, life, peace, and co-existence’.

In the third panel (‘Alternatives, Social Movements, and Progressive Parties’), Stephanie Weatherbee, coordinator of the IPA, explored the potential and limitations of multipolarity given its heterogeneity and called for building organisations that can lead ‘sustained struggle’ towards ‘liberation and constructing a new world’. Peter Mertens, Secretary General of the Workers’ Party of Belgium shared the importance of a principled, flexible party rooted in the working class and explicitly committed to overcoming capitalism. Raphael Kaplinsky, professor at the University of Sussex, spoke on the end of deep globalisation and the need to add directionality towards sustainability and equality to the new emerging information technology and techno-economic paradigm. Layan Fuleihan, education director at the People’s Forum, emphasised the need to build social alternatives to Trump and the importance of political education and culture. Moon Jeong-eun, vice-chair of the Justice Party, Lee Sang-hyun, co-president of the Green Party, and Jang Hye-Kyoung, policy committee chair of the Labor Party, all spoke on the need for rebuilding left political parties through unity within Korean and internationally by constructing a vision of expanding public goods, rights, and sustainability. Miryu, chair of the organising committee for System Change Movement and Hwang Jeong-eun, general secretary of the International Strategy Center called for movements to move beyond isolation and towards solidarity.

Lee Kun-Yong, Logic of Hand, 1975/2018.

On 1 November, we gathered for the People’s Summit in Gyeongju which ran parallel to the last day of the APEC Leaders Summit. Hundreds of people gathered at the People’s Summit to read and sign on to the Gyeongju People’s Declaration. Soon after, the 2025 APEC Leaders’ Gyeongju Declaration was adopted, which sure enough repeated the same mantra around corporate led global value chains followed by a litany of corporate centred recommendations. While the weekend of solidarity and struggle against APEC ended with a rally and march through the streets of Gyeongju, our struggle continues. We call on the world to lift up banners and pickets on 20 January 2026, the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, to fight for a world of peace and dignity that we need and deserve.

Written by Dae-Han Song, a part of the International Strategy Center and the No Cold War collective. He is an associate at the Korea Policy Institute.

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research seeks to build a bridge between academic production and political and social movements to promote critical critical thinking and stimulate debates. Read other articles by Tricontinental Asia.

Echoes of Hitler and Pinochet: How Trump’s Policies Resurrect State Terror

By Henry A. Giroux

December 4, 2025

Source: LA Progressive

America’s fascist dress rehearsal including torture, dehumanization, and the collapse of democratic norms are no longer theoretical—they’re preparing for the opening act.

We inhabit a historical moment that resurrects, with chilling familiarity, the state terrorism once made visible under Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Pinochet, and other dictators who transformed cruelty into a governing philosophy. Central to such regimes lies a single, devastating truth: the law collapses the moment violence becomes its substitute. In this descent, due process evaporates, political opponents are rebranded as “terrorists,” and violence becomes the organizing principle of power. Independent media are smeared or silenced, universities are targeted for their critical capacities, and the spectacle of brown-shirted, goose-stepping thugs hunting down racialized others slips back into public view as a normalized, even celebrated, form of civic life.

Policies soaked in blood are repackaged as entertainment, folded into a culture industry that echoes the aestheticized fascism of Leni Riefenstahl, spectacles designed to numb, seduce, and train the public in the pleasures of violence. The brutality unleashed by the Trump administration against critics, immigrants, cities, political enemies, and so-called terrorists is more than an echo of fascism’s mobilizing passions; it is a signal of what is to come. Its endpoint can be found in the concentration camps and gulags of the 20th century. And the road to the camps always begins the same way: with the brutalization of the innocent in modern-day torture chambers.

This is the central lesson of the illegal abduction and exile of Venezuelans to one of the most notorious prisons in El Salvador—a maximum-security torture chamber run by Nayib Bukele. It is a canary in the coal mine, a rehearsal for the next stage of violence that will be unleashed on Americans. More than 200 Venezuelan migrants were seized and sent to a notorious maximum-security torture dungeon in El Salvador run by Nayib Bukele, a ruthless dictator, punished not for crimes, but for the ink on their skin. Their tattoos were read as threats, their bodies as evidence. Later, they were deported to Venezuela as part of a large-scale prisoner exchange among the United States, Venezuela, and El Salvador, an arrangement that saw ten Americans held in Venezuela freed in return for the Venezuelan deportees.

As reported in The New York Times, many of the men testified that while imprisoned “they were shackled, beaten, shot with rubber bullets and tear gassed until they passed out. They said they were punished in a dark room called the island, where they were trampled, kicked and forced to kneel for hours. One man said officers thrust his head into a tank of water to simulate drowning. Another said he was forced to perform oral sex on guards wearing hoods.” What emerges here is not simply a catalogue of human-rights abuses, nor merely the grotesque suspension of due process; it is the language of barbarism made policy, brutality elevated to the level of governance. These acts, carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism, reveal themselves for what they are: the state-sanctioned machinery of a racialized war, a campaign of terror unleashed by the Trump regime against immigrants. Such violence does more than break bodies, it shreds the very fabric of a democratic society–teaching a lesson no nation should ever teach: that some lives can be debased with impunity.

The dreams of annihilation extend from the genocidal slaughter of indigenous populations to its updated colonial and racialized version in American slavery, Hitler’s dreams of racial purity, and Trump and Miller’s embrace of the delusions of white nationalism and white supremacy are back. The Mein Kampf dream-world of masters and servants no longer parade as a fixed repository of history; they have become the present modeled after history.

We live in a world in which stupidity and cowardice no longer hide in the shadows, it now thrives in a culture of massive inequality, precarity, racism, misogyny, and moral collapse. The vans of death are designed not just for immigrants, trans people, and Black and brown people, they are eager to come for anyone who does not surrender to fascist cult led by Trump and his barbaric ilk. The horror inflicted on more than 200 Venezuelans in Bukele’s torture chamber was not an endpoint but a prelude, an experiment in something far more expansive and deadly.

History offers echoes and warnings, and writers who lived through earlier dictatorships remind us of their enduring lessons. Ariel Dorfman, writing about the barbarous Pinochet regime, reminds us that the lessons of history matter as both a form of moral witnessing and a source of collective resistance. He makes clear with a sense of urgency that “that ordinary men and women can find at the most dire and dangerous moments in their lives, the courage and wisdom to resist injustice, so that the crimes of their day—and, alas, of ours—need not be endlessly repeated tomorrow.” We can only hope that in such dark times his words represent more than a warning but also a call to action.Email

Henry A. Giroux

Henry Giroux (born 1943) is an internationally renowned writer and cultural critic, Professor Henry Giroux has authored, or co-authored over 65 books, written several hundred scholarly articles, delivered more than 250 public lectures, been a regular contributor to print, television, and radio news media outlets, and is one of the most cited Canadian academics working in any area of Humanities research. In 2002, he was named as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period in Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present as part of Routledge’s Key Guides Publication Series.

Imagining the Merger of “Refuse Fascism” and “The General Strike”

By Phil Wilson

December 2, 2025

Source: Nobody's Voice

Image by Paul Goyette, Creative Commons 2.0

This is the time when everyone has a choice to make – actually a series of choices all premised on a single decision. Every US adult will consider whether or not to resist fascism. Some of us may be in better position to act – those with vulnerable immigration status, or with connections to those labeled as state enemies may be at risk for Draconian retaliation, while many of us can engage in substantial resistance with little immediate likelihood of state retaliation.

Once the fight to bring an end to US fascism becomes a personal cause, the subsequent choice involves the means of resistance. Does one conceive of the current white supremacist, saber rattling, misogynistic, oligarchic-capitalist, genocidal regime as a mere blip in the electoral cycle to be parried with a few extra dollars to reelect Chuck Schumer, or does one see the present US predicament as requiring civil disobedience at a pitch never previously imagined? This ought to be a no brainer to anyone who accepts the label of fascism as the accurate way to understand Trump and his regime of billionaires, predators and stooges. Fascism, by definition, seeks to install ongoing repression, to mutilate government bureaucracies and replace officials with grotesque replicas in an act of unacknowledged parody. The sycophantic SCOTUS, the appointment of RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health, the deployment of Pete Hegseth atop the military and Kristi Noem as the head of Homeland Security all together reflect the aura of a screaming nightmare. The first step toward national redemption requires a cold hard gaze.

Perhaps another way to unpack the particular character of US fascism involves seeing it as a manifestation of collapsing empire – fascism has become the default for the longstanding practice of war and colonial extraction. As US global control slides into ruins before the more capable Chinese economic expansion and the BRICS Alliance, the corporate gaze turns inward with the aspiration to squeeze the wealth, once acquired abroad, from its own citizenry. Picture an ordinary person during a critical food shortage whose famished eyes alight upon its own cats and dogs. Our citizens have historically been blind to the corporate policies of war and extraction upon which our collective prosperity has been built, but now it is our medical insurance, our schools, our food, our rent being ransacked for profit. If the US supported fascist regimes abroad who engaged in cruel atrocities, now it comes home in the guise of border security or “replacement theory” rhetoric. We, the ordinary citizens of this terrible predatory empire have abruptly been transformed into the Vietnamese villagers of long ago. This is not indulgent metaphor – the troops march into our neighborhoods, and we have a brand new sense of identity – “the enemy within.”

The people of Vietnam unknowingly instructed future US generations about the tactics of resistance. US power proved a half century ago to be a mirage – the resolve and ferocity of a poor nation exposed the vulnerabilities of a corrupt empire. The lesson was reenacted in Iraq and Afghanistan and may ultimately be reshaped to include the collapse of Israel and Ukraine. The last battle to close down the US Empire will, if I am correct, be centered in New York, Chicago and LA. I am not yet fantasizing about armed guerrilla warfare in downtown DC – the sensible first step involves non-violent civil disobedience.

In previous pieces I have honed in on the organization named after its tactics – “The General Strike.” This group aspires to accumulate some eleven million workers to engage in work stoppages. The number, eleven-million, is not a random figure, but the quantity of opposition that conforms to the 3.5% rule. Social science researchers believe that massive resistance has a precise threshold to upend an oppressive regime.

There are enough different organizations opposed to the Trump regime to confuse many of us – we have “Indivisible,” “No Kings Day,” “Refuse Fascism,” “Democracy Forward,” and a number of other groups. For me, “Refuse Fascism” has the most concise and clear aspiration – the immediate removal of Donald Trump and his regime. Refuse Fascism ticks most boxes for me – the use of non-violent tactics, the aspiration to flood US streets with millions of protesters and the intention to bring together a diverse assortment of factions, all riveted on the single minded goal of getting rid of Trump and his fascist movement.

Perhaps it matters little which organizations provides the inspiration and organizational resolve to fill the streets with protestors, but The General Strike held a webinar last week that struck me as revealing unique and compelling characteristics. Noam Chomsky, in his short pamphlet on “The Occupy Movement,” quoted Howard Zinn’s call to focus “on the countless small actions of unknown people.” Of course, “Occupy” succeeded, albeit too briefly, to create a popular groundswell of passionate resistance with a young, anonymous base.

“The General Strike” webinar seemed to rather consciously court the same constituents as did “Occupy” – young, “unknown” people – but offers a more specific means of resistance. One webinar presenter, introduced simply as, “Ben,” gave a history of the general strike as a time honored tool of the US labor rights struggle. As an elderly, retired worker, I wondered what role I might have. Fortunately, the GS website specifically defines the purpose of retired workers as:

“During the strike, retirees can contribute by boycotting big corporations, providing mutual aid and financial support to striking workers, and doing everything possible to spread the word in the meantime.”

My own chosen role thus becomes – at least for now – “to spread the word.”

The idea that 11 million anonymous folks can bring down the monstrosity of US fascism – a cult of celebrity, of autocratic predators wielding vast sums of money – reprises the David and Goliath narrative. Across the left it has been (ironically) almost impossible to toss off the straight jacket of individualism, and its evil shadow – celebrity. Thus, ones thoughts of the US leftist movement, however vague and fractured it might be, automatically leads us to a hall of names – Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, AOC, Noem Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Michael Moore, etc. but “The General Strike” heroically refuses to either coopt or create celebrities. We will not be saved by famous heroes, they implicitly tell us. There are, astonishingly, no names promoted on “The General Strike” website. Their “leaders,” appearing on the webinar last Saturday, November, 22, go only by their first names. One of the founders, who hosted the event, identified herself only as “Eliza from upstate New York.” The General Strike Website provides even less detail:

“Two friends living in New York City made this website after Roe V. Wade was overturned in 2022, but the concept of a General Strike dates back centuries.

The General Strike is a decentralized network of people and organizations committed to striking once we reach 3.5% of the U.S. population, or 11 million people. We don’t have a traditional “leader” or hierarchical structure, and no one gets paid to do this work. Instead we have an ever shifting network of organizers, all building towards the General Strike in their own ways.”

I had written several months ago that I wished that this organization would embrace “direct democracy” as a stated goal, but upon my updated reflection, it appears that the revised website consciously strives to promote the egalitarian values that one associates with direct democracy – a system of government in which decisions are made by public referendum or by “citizen’s assemblies” made up of ordinary people chosen via “sortition.” Neither The General Strike website, or its affiliated Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) convey any explicit, unequivocal aspiration to employ direct democracy as the vehicle to manifest equalitarian, socialist governance, but the decision to imagine leaders as nameless, common people rather intuitively evokes that vibe for me. There is also this quote from the PSL website defining the nature of a new socialist government that aims to sever the themes of narcissism and self-promotion from the act of political administration:

• Elected officials of the new workers’ government will be paid an average worker’s salary and will receive no special privileges.

Direct Democracy, according to South African Marxist sociologist Michelle Williams, has become a new point of interest among Marxists, and I have written that worker run cooperatives, as proposed by Marxist economist, Richard Wolff, situates direct democracy within the structures of workplace decision making.

For the record, since my last piece on The General Strike, the organization has released a much more detailed set of demands:

“Specific demands will come from leaders and experts of existing fights for racial, economic, gender and environmental justice once we have reached 6M Strike Cards. Stay tuned for updates and submit your input below in the meantime. The broad list includes, but is not limited to:

 Affordable housing

 Climate action

 Constitutional convention

 Criminal justice reform

 Disability rights

 End military aid for occupations and/or ethnic cleansing

 Gun safety

 Immigration reform

 Indigenous rights

 Labor rights & living wages”

 LGBTQIA+ rights

 Paid family & medical leave

 Racial justice

 Repeal Citizens United

 Repeal Right to Work laws

 Reproductive rights

 Student debt reform

 Tax the rich

 Universal healthcare

 Voting rights

 Welfare & child support reform

While some of these demands, such as “repeal citizens united,” and the rather vague, “Constitutional convention,” address the concept of a reimagined political system freed from the control of corporate money, almost all of the other demands focus on basic human rights. We have become so dehumanized that demands for universal health care, an end to military aid for occupation and ethnic cleansing and paid family and medical leave strike us as radical and utopian concepts.

Many of the speakers at The General Strike Webinar identified themselves as members of the above referenced PSL – one of several Marxist factions emerging as key organizational players in the fight against fascism. Like “Refuse Fascism” that gathers a number of diverse members and organizations under the leadership of the “Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP),” The General Strike features an unprecedented collection of perspectives and organizations willing to come together under the organizational leadership of those identifying as Marxists. Socialism has incrementally made its way, despite decades of media propaganda, into mainstream awareness. It is however, not enough to merely give Marxists a grudging seat at the table of public discourse. War, climate/environmental destruction, poverty and fascism have inevitable roots in capitalist greed. Who has more qualifications to lead the battle against fascism than socialist movements?

The General Strike lists a number of partners, including – SEIU 503 sub-local 581 representing Oregon teachers. Indivisible, the children’s rights organization, LATINX Parenting, the environmental group, Troublemakers, and the above mentioned, PSL. This eclectic gathering of organizations reflects the same diversity apparent in Refuse Fascism, a group under the leadership of Bob Avakian’s RCP, whose website now features photos of George Conway, Rachel Maddow, Alex Padilla and JB Pritzker – figures far removed from any association with Marxism. As I have stated already, there are no celebrities, no familiar photos, and no famous people promoted at The General Strike, a seemingly small point, but a very meaningful one for me. I imagined, as I signed my “strike card” for this organization, that my voice will be no less heard than anyone else’s.

Some people will obviously cringe at the thought of allying themselves with an organization in which Marxists have a prominent role. A lifetime of capitalist propaganda has left us broken and confused. However, for me, this is essential. If a movement becomes powerful enough to remove the fascist regime, what then? Do we return to neoliberal democracy and its environmental ruin? The climate/environmental apocalypse cannot, according to Degrowth advocate, Jason Hickel, be addressed under capitalism. The very second demand on The General Strike website is “Climate action.” The PSL website prioritizes ending all fossil fuel and nuclear energy. This is not naïve idealism, but a critical matter of survival.

The General Strike, for me, offers a vision for action – a strategy of civil disobedience as a necessary step to bring an end to US fascism. The General Strike also recognizes the priority of alliances between people with different political views. You don’t have to be a Marxist to engage in a general strike, but the reflexive US tendency to view Marxism through the lens of cold war ideology now becomes a dead weight impeding the task before us. Having explored both “Refuse Fascism” and “The General Strike,” I am impressed that both have embraced a philosophy of coalition building. I am uncertain if either or both factions have attempted to merge together in some way. If not, I hope that sectarianism can be set aside toward our nation’s most critical task.Email

Phil Wilson

Phil Wilson is a retired mental health worker and union member. His writing has been published in ZNetwork.org, Current Affairs, Counterpunch, Resilience, Mother Pelican, Common Dreams, The Hampshire Gazette, The Common Ground Review, The Future Fire and other publications. Phil's writings are posted regularly at Nobody's Voice (https://philmeow.substack.com/).

The Angry Tide of the Latin American Far Right

Vijay Prashad

 December 2, 2025

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Photograph Source: Mediabanco Agencia – CC BY 2.0

The far right in Latin America is angry. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Argentina’s Javier Milei always look furious, and they always speak loudly and aggressively. Testosterone leaks from their pores, a toxic sweat that has spread across the region. It would be easy to say that this is the impact of Donald Trump’s own brand of neo-fascism, but this is not true. The far right has much deeper pedigrees, linked to the defence of the oligarchical families that have roots in the colonial era across the virreinatos (viceroyalties) from New Spain to Rio de la Plata. Certainly, these far right men and women are inspired by Trump’s aggressiveness and by the entry of Marco Rubio, a furious defender of the far right in Latin America, to the position of US Secretary of State. This inspiration and support are important but not the reason for the return of the far right, an angry tide that has been growing across Latin America.

On the surface, it looks as if the far right has suffered some defeats. Jair Bolsonaro is in prison for a very long time because of his role in the failed coup d’état on January 8, 2023 (inspired by Trump’s own failed coup attempt on January 6, 2021). In the first round of the presidential election in Chile, the candidate of the Communist Party, Jeannette Jara won the most votes and will lead the centre-left bloc into the second round (December 14). Despite every attempt to overthrow the government of Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro remains in charge and has mobilised large sections of the population to defend the Bolivarian Revolution against any threats. And, in late October 2025, most of the world’s countries voted for a UN General Assembly resolution that demands an end to the blockade on Cuba. These indicators —from Bolsonaro’s imprisonment to the vote on Cuba— suggest that the far right has not been able to move its agenda in every place and through every channel.

However, beneath the surface, there are indications that Latin America is not seeing the resurgence of what had been called the Pink Tide (after the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998) but is experiencing the emergence of an angry tide that slowly has begun to sweep the region from Central America down to the Southern Cone.

Elections in South America

The first round of the Chilean presidential election produced a worrying result. While Jara of the Communist Party won 26.85 percent of an 85.26 percent turnout, the far right’s José Antonio Kast came in second with 23.92 percent. Evelyn Matthei of the traditional Right won 12.5 percent, while the extreme right candidate who was once with Kast and now to his right, Johannes Kaiser, won 14 percent. It is likely that Jara will pick up some of the votes of the centre, but not enough to overcome the advantage of the far right which looks to have at least more than 50 percent of the voters on its side. The so-called social liberal, Franco Parisi, who came in third, endorsed Kast in 2021 and will likely endorse him again. That means that in Chile, the presidency will be in the hands of a man of the far right whose ancestry is rooted in German Nazism (his father was a member of the Nazi Party who escaped justice through the intercession of the Vatican) and who believes that the dictatorship in Chile from 1973 to 1990 was on balance a good idea.

North of Chile, in Bolivia, the new president Rodrigo Paz Pereria, son of a former president, beat the far right’s Jorge Tuto Quiroga (a former president) in the second round of the election that had no candidate of the left (this after the Movement for Socialism governed Bolivia continuously from 2006 to 2025). Paz’ own party has a minority position in the legislature and he will therefore have to align himself with the Quiroga’s Libre coalition and he will likely adopt a pro-US foreign policy and a libertarian economic policy. Peru will have its own election in April, where the former mayor of Lima —Rafael López Aliaga— is expected to win. He rejects the label far right but adopts all the generic policies of the far right (ultra-conservative Catholic, advocate for harsh security measures, and favours a libertarian economic agenda). Iván Cepeda of Colombia is the left’s likely candidate in their presidential election in May 2026, since Colombia does not permit second terms (so President Gustavo Petro cannot run again). Cepeda will face strong opposition from Colombia’s oligarchy which will want to return the country to their rule. It is too early to say who Cepeda will face, but it might be journalist Vicky Dávila, whose far right opposition to Petro is finding traction in unexpected parts of Colombian society. It is likely that by the middle of 2026, most of the states along the western edge of South America (from Chile to Colombia) will be governed by the far right.

Even as Bolsonaro is in prison, his party, the PL (or Liberal Party), is the largest bloc in Brazil’s National Congress. It is likely that Lula will be re-elected to the presidency next year due to his immense personal connection with the electorate. The far right’s candidate – who will be either Tarcísio de Freitas, the governor of São Paulo state, or one of the Bolsonaro’s (wife Michelle or son Flavio) – will struggle against him. But the PL will make inroads into the Senate. Their control over the legislature has already tightened the reins on the government (at COP30, Lula’s representative made no proposals to confront the climate catastrophe), and a Senate win will further their control over the country.

Common Agenda of the Angry Tide

The Angry Tide politicians who are making waves have many things in common. Most of them are now in their fifties —Kast (born 1966), Paz (born 1967), Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado (born 1967), and Milei (born 1970). They came of age in the post-dictatorship period in Latin America (the last dictatorship to end was in Chile in 1990). The decade of the 1990s continued the economic stagnation that characterised the 1980s —The Lost Decade (La Década Perdida) that convulsed these countries with low growth rates and with poorly developed comparative advantages forced into globalisation. It was in this context that these politicians of the Angry Tide developed their common agenda:

Anti-Communism. The far right in Latin America is shaped by an anti-left agenda that it inherits from the Cold War, which means that its political formations typically endorse the era of US-backed military dictatorships. The ideas of the left, whether from the Cuban Revolution (1959) or from the era of the Pink Tide (after 1998), are anathema to these political forces; these ideas include agrarian reform, state-led finance for industrialisation, state sovereignty, and the importance of trade unions for all workers and peasants. The anti-communism of this Angry Tide is rudimentary, mother’s milk to the politicians and used cleverly to turn sections of society against others.

Libertarian Economic policies. The economic ideas of the Angry Tide are shaped by the Chilean “Chicago Boys” (including Kast’s brother Miguel who was the head of General Augusto Pinochet’s Planning Commission, his Minister of Labour, and his head of the Central Bank). They directly take their tradition from the libertarian Austrian School (Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard as well as Milton Friedman). The ideas were cultivated in well-funded think tanks, such as the Centro de Estudios Macroeconómicos de Argentina (founded in 1978) and the Chilean Centro de Estudios Públicos (founded in 1980). They believe the State should be a force to discipline the workers and citizens, and that the economy must be in the hands of private interests. Milei’s famous antics with a chainsaw illuminate this politics not only of cutting social welfare (the work of neoliberalism) but of destroying the capacity of the State itself.

Culture Wars. Drawing on the wave of anti-gender ideology and anti-migration rhetoric, the Angry Tide has been able to appeal to conservative evangelical Christians and to large sections of the working class that has been disoriented by changes seen to come from above. The far right argues that the violence in working class neighbourhoods created by the drug industry is fostered by ‘liberalism’ and that only tough violence (as demonstrated by El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele) can be the solution; for this reason, they want to strengthen the military and police and set aside constitutional limitations on use of force (on October 28, the government of Bolsonaro ally Cláudio Castro in Rio de Janeiro sent in the police who killed at least 121 people in Operation Containment). It helps the far right that it adopted various conspiracy theories about how the ‘elites’ have spread ‘globalised’ ideas to damage and destroy the ‘culture’ of their nations. This is a ludicrous idea coming from far right and traditional right political forces that champion full-scale entry of US corporations into their society and culture, and that have no respect for the histories of struggle of the working class and peasantry to build their own national and regional cultural worlds. But the Angry Tide has been able to construct the idea that they are cultural warriors out to defend their heritage against the malignancies of ‘globalisation’. Part of this culture war is the promotion of the individual entrepreneur as the subject of history and the denigration of the necessity of social reproduction.

It is these three elements (anti-communism, libertarian economic policies, and the culture wars) that brings together the far right across Latin America. It provides them with a robust ideological framework to galvanise sections of the population to believe that they are the saviours of the hemisphere. This Latin American far right is backed by Trump and the international network of the Spanish far right (the Foro Madrid, created in 2020 by Fundación Disenso, the think tank of the far right Vox party). It is heavily funded by the old elite social classes, who have slowly abandoned the traditional Right for these new, aggressive far right parties.

Crisis of the Left

The Left is yet to develop a proper assessment of the emergence of these parties and has not been able to drive an agenda that sparkles with vitality. A deep ideological crisis grips the Left, which cannot properly decide whether to build a united front with the traditional right and with liberals to contest elections or to build a popular front across the working class and peasantry to build social power as a prelude to a proper electoral push. The example of the former strategy (the electoral alliance) comes from Chile, where first the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (Concertación) formed in 1988 to keep out the parties of the dictatorship from power and second the Apruebo Dignidad formed in 2021 that brought Gabriel Boric of the centrist Broad Front to the presidency. But outside Chile, there is little evidence that this strategy works. The latter has become harder as unionisation rates have collapsed, and as uberisation individualises the working class to erode working class culture.

It is telling that Bolivia’s former socialist Vice President Álvaro García Linera looked northwards to New York City for inspiration. When Zohran Mamdani won the mayor’s race, García Linera said, “Mamdani’s victory shows that the left must commit to boldness and a new future”. It is hard to disagree with this statement; although, Mamdani’s own proposed agenda is mostly to salvage a worn-out New York infrastructure rather than to advance the city to socialism. García Linera did not mention his own time in Bolivia, when he tried with former president Evo Morales to build a socialist alternative. The left will have to be bold, and it will have to articulate a new future, but it will have to be one that emerges from its own histories of building struggles and building socialism.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power (New Press, August 2022).