On this day in 1986, Chilean US-backed Dictator Augusto Pinochet was almost killed in a heroic assassination attempt by communist guerrillas of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), in what was the only attempt to assassinate Pinochet.
After months of planning, the guerrillas launched Operation '20th Century',
ambushing Pinochet's motorcade as he returned from a weekend trip to Cajón del Maipo. They carefully selected a narrow road along the mountainous terrain near Santiago.
The revolutionaries were heavily armed with rifles, machine guns, grenades and rocket-propelled grenades. At 6:35 pm, they struck. They blocked the road with a heavy vehicle and opened fire. Pinochet's security fired back and the ensuing battle lasted for several minutes. Eventually, the FPMR fighters thought they had killed the dictator and retreated. However, Pinochet survived, only suffering minor injuries from a grenade that failed to explode.
He used the attack as an excuse to unleash a new wave of terror against leftists, re-imposing a state of emergency he had lifted a year earlier.
Numerous FPMR members and sympathizers were arrested, tortured, and killed, despite having nothing to do with the attack. Despite the onslaught, the FPMR continued its armed struggle until the 90s, until then they were listed as a terrorist organization by the CIA.
The FPMR are considered heroes of the democratic resistance by the Chilean left, however, current centrist President Gabriel Boric said that he regrets old comments he made in support of the FPMR's legacy.
#Pinochet #Communist #Chile
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Peruvian courts have ordered the demolition of a wall in Lima that separates the rich and mostly white districts from working class indigenous ones.
It's been one of the most powerful symbols of the class and racial apartheid in Latin America ever since it was first built in the 80s, at the height of the mass migration to the cities and armed struggle led by Shining Path. Though the wall is being torn down, neoliberalism and the severe poverty on the outskirts of Lima remain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwWKkWCoheg
#ClassWar #Apartheid #AntiCapitalism
What is neo-colonialism? We interviewed the Vice Chairperson of the Communist Party of Kenya, Booker Ngesa Omole, who argues that "neo-colonialism basically means that the colonizers never left." The East African country has been hit by several protest waves in recent months against the government of William Ruto, which according to the CPK is controlled by Western interests. Watch Booker breakdown the various aspects of neo-colonialism, whose roots are anchored in military, economic, and political relations.
A Chadian soldier was shot at point-blank range and killed by a French military medic in the Borkou region, sparking massive protests. Chadian soldiers fired at the protesters with live ammunition as they tried to enter the French military base.
The French medic opened fire on Mahamat Dakou Hamid after an allegedly tense situation where the local soldier wounded the Frenchman with a scalpel. There is still no official statement from Paris, whose troops have been in Chad, a French colony until 1960, for over 40 years.
Amid growing anti-French sentiment and protests calling for the withdrawal of French troops regionally, the government indefinitely imposed a regional ban on protests. Several injuries were reported following the initial unrest.
https://void.cat/d/T93v73v9uCpYXg3cpwFbQu.mp4
#AfricaPolitics #PanAfrican #FranceDégage
Today marks the 84th birthday of civil rights icon Claudette Colvin, who, at the age of 15, refused to yield her seat on a bus to a white person, a defiant act that occurred nine months before Rosa Parks' similar stand. After advocating for the expungement of her juvenile record, it was only recently that Claudette Colvin's legal record was ultimately cleared.
#BlackHistory #CivilRights #Racism
It's been one year today since UK police fatally shot 24-year-old father to be, Chris Kaba, in the head. The UK's prosecution service, the CPS, still hasn't charged a police officer, despite having the file of evidence since March on the killing in London last September.
Kaba's family have called a demonstration this Saturday at Scotland Yard, the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police. Their lawyer said: "In what other comparable suspected homicide case involving firearms discharged by a civilian does the CPS consider it appropriate to take so long to make a charging decision?"
Since 1990, a staggering 1,833 individuals have lost their lives while in UK police custody or following police contact. Only one police officer has been convicted since then. British police are four times more likely to use force against Black individuals who are also seven times more likely to die after police restraint.
In the wake of Kaba's killing red. media released our first ever documentary, featuring his and other families who have lost loved ones due to racist police violence.
Watch "Armed and Dangerous: Britain's Racist Police" now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0af6-Ooumf8
#BlackHistory #CivilRights #Racism
The German communist urban guerrilla group known as the Red Army Faction (RAF) kidnapped the German businessman Hanns Martin Schleyer on this day in 1977. But did you know that Schleyer was a former SS officer? A fact often ignored in the historical narrative.
Schleyer’s aggressive anti-communist views, his history with the Nazi Party, and later his position as a prominent member of the right-wing Christian Democratic Union made him one of the main enemies of the 1968 student movement and a target for the RAF’s kidnapping operation. The RAF used Schleyer to blackmail the West German government into releasing imprisoned RAF members, including two of its founders, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. After all the imprisoned members were found dead in their jail cells, Schleyer was killed by the RAF.
Early in his life, Schleyer became an enthusiastic Nazi follower and quickly rose in the ranks of the Nazi Party. After being held as a prisoner of war following the defeat of Nazi Germany, Schleyer was released in 1948 and became one of the most influential German businessmen. He was simultaneously president of the Confederation of German Employers’ Association and the Federation of German Industries.
The RAF was a West German communist, anti-imperialist urban guerrilla group that emerged from the 1968 student movement. It was founded in 1970 and remained active until 1998. Due to the RAF’s numerous activities against the West German state and its NATO allies, it became one of the leading communist urban guerrilla groups in Europe. The infamous picture of Schleyer being held by the RAF, taken 20 days into his capture, has since become one of the most iconic pictures of the 20th century.
#ColdWar #OnThisDayInHistory #Communism
Nigeriens broke through barricades at the French military base in the capital, Niamey, as tens of thousands protested for the withdrawal of the 1,500 foreign troops. France's President Emmanuel Macron has refused to pull out soldiers from the former French colony, causing the protests to intensify.
Video footage captured the moment protesters jumped the barriers while Niger's soldiers stood by, overwhelmed by the massive crowds. Protesters displayed coffins covered with the flag of the former colonial power and signs reading, "France is a leech that sucks the blood of Nigeriens."
Niger's coup leaders sent military reinforcements to prevent protesters from storming the base. After the coup that overthrew the government of Mohamed Bazoum, a close ally of the West, a month ago, Paris refused to recognize the authority of the coup leaders, threatening, "The French army is ready to react."
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kfoP1FFvQGw
#NigerCoup #NigerProtests #ECOWAS
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How it started ➡️ How it's going
#SOSHaiti #AntiImperialism #Portauprince
On this day 25 years ago, the Lebanese communist resistance fighter Soha Bechara was released from captivity at the El-Khiam torture and interrogation center where she had been detained for ten years, six years of those years were spent in isolation detention.
She was jailed for an attempt to assassinate Antoine Lahad in 1988, the head of the South Lebanon Army – an Israeli-backed proxy militia that terrorized South Lebanon during the Israeli occupation. Bechara is a Lebanese icon and posters featuring her were seen all around downtown Beirut in the early 1990s.
Bechara joined the Lebanese Communist Party in 1982 when she was 15 – the year that Israel invaded Lebanon – and was involved in various resistance activities. Bechara shot Lahad twice with a 5.45 mm revolver, once in the chest and once in the shoulder.
Bechara was released from El-Khiam in 1998, following international pressure. Two years after her release, the Israeli occupation of Lebanon ended and El-Khiam was turned into a museum.
#IsraeliOccupation #Israel #Revolution
On this day in 1940, one of South America’s most influential revolutionary thinkers and writers, Eduardo Galeano, was born in Uruguay.
What made him one of the continent’s most influential figures to this day?
Galeano started work at 14, taking jobs as a factory worker, messenger, bank cashier, and typist.
He also started making political cartoons for the weekly column for the weekly newspaper column of future Tupamaros guerrilla leader Raúl Sendic.
Galeano’s genuine passion for writing soon emerged, and he taught himself to become a journalist. Aged only 26 he founded his own independent left-wing newspaper, Época.
He interviewed notable figures like Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Salvador Allende.
Throughout his career spanning fiction, art, poetry, journalism, political analysis, and history, Galeano dedicated his work to the struggles of South America’s working-class peasants and indigenous populations.
In his groundbreaking work “Open Veins of Latin America,” Galeano pioneered a distinctive style that interwove myth, fact, and the experiences of the oppressed.
Simultaneously, the book exposed the exploitative practices of the US and Europe: “Our wealth has perpetually generated our poverty by nurturing the prosperity of others.”
In 1973, Galeano faced imprisonment and later fled to Argentina when a US-backed coup brought Juan María Bordaberry Arocena to power.
His work was suppressed in Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile.
A mere three years later, Galeano found himself added to a death-squad hitlist in Argentina, which another US-backed dictator, Jorge Videla, then ruled.
This forced him into another exile, this time to Spain, shortly after the end of the fascist Franco regime.
#Socialismo #Revolucionario #Marxismo
On this day in 1945 legendary communist and anti-imperialist Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam's independence from France following the formal end of the Second World War and a successful rebellion against Vichy French and Japanese forces. On 2 September 1945, Japanese representatives signed the instrument of surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, ending the most destructive conflict in human history. At the same time, Ho Chi Minh signed a proclamation of independence based on the principles of liberty and equality as the national anthem was sung by a crowd of 400,000 in Hanoi.
Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam in 1941 to lead the Việt Minh independence movement. He oversaw military operations against the Vichy French and Japanese colonial occupation of Vietnam. In the 1945 August Revolution, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh called on the Vietnamese to rebel against the French and Japanese. By August 19 they had captured Hanoi and declared a provisional administration on 24 August. Ho Chi Minh became Chairman of the Provisional Government and convinced Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate leading to the establishment of a republic.
However, despite the joyous scenes in Hanoi on 2 September 1945, there was trouble ahead. US President Harry Truman refused to recognize Ho Chi Minh's declaration of independence the French refused to leave and Vietnam was divided by the victorious allies. It would take decades and millions of deaths following wars against the French, Americans, and Chinese for the Vietnamese to win their true independence. Vietnam's Independence Day has since been celebrated with annual parades honoring the resistance forces in Hanoi.
#VietnamWar #HoChiMinh #Communism
Vietnamese revolutionary and national liberation leader Ho Chi Minh passed away on this day 54 years ago. As a leader of the resistance that would liberate Vietnam from French colonialism and defeat US imperialism, Ho Chi Minh gave hope to oppressed people worldwide.
At age 21, Ho Chi Minh left his country to become a revolutionary, traveling through Harlem, London, and Paris and getting involved in the international socialist movement. In France, he became a founding member of the French Communist Party.
Later, he lived in the Soviet Union and China, studying and working in various governmental institutions. He also served as a senior Comintern agent throughout Southeast Asia and, eventually, in the late 1930s, went to China to serve as an advisor to the Communist armed forces.
After returning to Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh played a major role in uniting leftist factions and forging the party, leading the region's liberation movement. By the 1960s, his name was chanted by protesters worldwide, becoming a symbol of anti-imperialist resistance.
#Vietnam #Communism #HoChiMinh
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Today in 1939, WWII began with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland and went on to claim over 60 million lives. While German fascism was finally defeated in 1945, there was no "final settlement" on reparations for its victims, a legacy that's shaped vast inequality within Europe until today.
By the end of WWII, 5.2 million people in Poland were killed and afterwards the country's population decreased by 11.4 million. On this anniversary last year, Poland demanded €1.5 trillion in reparations which Germany rejected saying the issue is "closed".
This year Poland has sought an alliance with Greece, whose government demands €290 billion in reparations which although it excludes the value of antiquities stolen by the Nazis, amounts to more than half of Greece's ever-growing external debt.
Outside of Eastern Europe, the occupation of Greece was Nazi Germany's bloodiest. Over 7 per cent of the population was wiped out and the economy collapsed under Germany's catastrophic mismanagement, causing Greece to lose 97 per cent of its exports.
In the post-war years, Britain sparked the Cold War when it sponsored right-wing forces in Greece to crush communists who had led the resistance to the Nazis. This, and the legacy of the Nazi occupation, meant hunger, poverty and economic catastrophe plagued Greece for decades.
Meanwhile, Germany was on the road to becoming an economic giant thanks to the 1953 London Debt Agreement whereby the UK, US and France cancelled over 60 per cent of Germany's external debt to enable it to become a powerful ally in their Cold War against the Soviet Union.
The agreement also postponed any decision on reparations until a peace treaty was concluded. That peace treaty never came and Germany continues insisting that no country has a legal claim to reparations.
Experts are divided on Germany's obligation under international law but almost unanimously agree it has a moral responsibility to pay up. But for Germany, Europe's largest economy and the fifth largest in the world, reparations threaten its domination of the continent.
Last year Greece's GDP was more than 18 times lower than Germany's. While Germany blames Greece for its economic struggles, notwithstanding how Germany enforced more crushing debt and austerity on Greece via the EU in 2015, the fact remains that Germany's post-war prosperity and the poverty of the countries it occupied was by design.
German historian Karl Heinz Roth calculates the total amount of damages caused by Nazi Germany across Europe amounts to €7.5 trillion in today's money, equal to more than half of the Eurozone's debt. It's a sum that would cripple Germany and transform Europe's power balance.
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#SecondWorldWar #NeverAgain #NoJusticeNoPeace
Happy Birthday Leslie Feinberg, one of the first Marxists theorizing trans liberation. Did you know about Feinberg’s legacy as a writer, anti-imperialist, union activist, and LGBTQ organizer?
Leslie Feinberg is known to many as the author of Stone Butch Blues, the first mainstream novel to directly address the struggles of transgender people in the US, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The book is a semi-autobiography about growing up as a queer working-class lesbian in 50s & 60s New York and the intersection between LGBTQ liberation and the labor movement.
Leslie Feinberg met the communist Workers World Party in her early twenties, becoming a key organizer soon after, becoming a member of the National Committee of the Party. After moving to New York, Feinberg organized numerous mass campaigns over the years, including many anti-war, and pro-labor rallies.
Feinberg passed away on November 15, 2014, from complications caused by multiple tick-borne infections. Feinberg’s last words were, “Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”
#LGTBQ #LeslieFeinberg #StonewallWasARiot
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Dozens of Palestinians were injured after IDF stormed the eastern areas of Nablus close to Qaber Youssef while they were protecting Israeli settlers storming Joseph's Tomb.
Local Palestinians defended themselves with rocks and stones, while the Palestinian resistance was firing gunshots at the occupying forces.
Yasser Antar, an emergency worker, said at least 43 people sustained injuries as a result of the tear gas, while two people were injured by bullets. 'Casualties and confrontations are present in Balata camp, Al-Balad camp, the new camp, and many areas that the Israeli army and Israeli forces raided. The confrontations are present in many locations,' he said.
According to the United Nations, so far this year, at least 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, making 2023 the deadliest year for Palestinians since 2006.
#Palestine #Nablus #Resistance
As African countries are increasingly divided following the recent coup in Niger, watch this speech by pan-African leader Thomas Sankara 40 years ago criticizing the way that Western media aims to divide Africans.
Sankara, President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987, argued that the imperialist attacks had two phases a nonviolent phase followed by a violent one. The nonviolent phase will seek to discredit countries that oppose imperialism before eventually launching violent attacks to overthrow anyone who dares to oppose them. He said it was vital to oppose these "attacks" on what was then Upper Volta.
Sankara's words have a tragic resonance as he became a victim of imperialism. He was murdered during a coup widely believed to have been backed by France which overthrew his government in 1987. Africa hasn't seen an inspirational anti-imperialist socialist like him since that tragic day.
#PanAfricanism #BlackHistory #ThomasSankara
Fifty-six years ago today, German communist guerrilla Tamara Bunke, also known by her nom de guerre Tania, was shot dead by CIA-backed Bolivian military forces on the banks of the Río Grande while en route to meet up with Che Guevara's revolutionary troops.
She began her career as a Spanish translator in East Germany, where she met several Latin American revolutionaries, including Che Guevara. Later, she traveled to Latin America and participated in Cuban-led operations aimed at liberating the region from U.S. imperialism.
In Bolivia, she initially worked as a spy in the capital before joining Che Guevara's revolutionary guerrilla army. At the age of 29, she was killed in an ambush by the CIA-backed Bolivian army on August 31, 1967, while crossing a river with eight of her comrades-in-arms. After her death, Fidel Castro posthumously declared her a heroine of the Cuban Revolution.
https://void.cat/d/JqiRdVnRe3f8CaBc1LxUzG.webp
#CheGuevara #CubanRevolution #WomensHistory
Watch then Egyptian President and Arab nationalist hero Gamal Abdel Nasser explain the importance of international solidarity in the struggle against colonialism. During the 1967 speech, Nasser said that although Egypt has "successfully expelled colonialism" Egyptians will continue to oppose colonialism in "every Arab nation". He argued that Egypt was engaged in the global fight against colonialism even if this was limited to "moral solidarity" with those who were struggling to free their nations from colonial domination.
In 1956 Nasser and Egypt defeated British, French, and Israeli imperialism following his decision to nationalize the Suez Canal. In response, Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt in an attempt to regain access to the canal. Thousands of Egyptian soldiers were killed but the imperialist forces were eventually forced into a humiliating retreat.
Today following the coup in Niger and calls from France and US for military intervention to overthrow the new government, Nasser's words seem more important than ever. However, the West African states that have joined imperialist calls for intervention in Niger aren't demonstrating the solidarity that Nasser talked about.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fKNwCptfzfk
#AntiImperialism #PanArab #Nasser
Happy birthday to legendary Black Panther and revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Fred Hampton! Born in Chicago in 1948 Hampton became deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. He was one of the most prominent anti-racists of his era, fighting not only against white supremacy but also through multicultural organizing. Hampton helped found the Young Patriots, which organized poor whites, and the Young Lords, which involved organizing Hispanics.
In December 1969 he was brutally murdered by police who drugged and then shot in his bed during a pre-dawn raid. 100 gunshots were fired into the apartment.
Watch Fred Hampton explain how those in power in capitalist societies use racism to maintain their rule by dividing the working class and oppressed people. At a time of massive inequality and the increasing rise of far-right racism, his message is still incredibly important.
#BlackHistory #BlackPantherParty #BlankPanther