We are experiencing a new historical phase of the renewed trends toward crises, wars, and revolutions, which are being seen through the genocide in Palestine; the rearmament of European powers (which has been expressed most acutely by the NATO countries that have pledged to increase their military spending to 5 percent of GDP); the strengthening of the Far Right amid greater polarization; and the return of wars like the war between Ukraine and Russia, the clashes between India and Pakistan, and the 12-Day War between Iran and Israel. 

Imperialist escalation is intensifying, as Israel wages genocide in Gaza and seeks to dominate the entire Middle East—dragging the U.S. further into regional wars. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is pushing to extend his imperialist spheres of influence, particularly as part of its competition with China. Alongside its military campaigns, the U.S. exerts economic domination through institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Their oppression abroad is combined with intense repression at home – with the brutal repression against immigrants and students and workers at universities, resulting in thousands of deportations, arrests, expulsions, and dismissals. Within this framework, capitalists and their governments around the world are demonstrating that they have nothing to offer us but misery and environmental destruction.

Shortly after the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, social media was flooded with posts warning of a potential “third world war” and the risk of conflicts in the Middle East escalating on a global scale. At the same time, images of the genocide in Gaza carried out by Israel and Netanyahu have begun to break through the media blackout. This increased visibility is tied to the flotilla that traveled to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid—joined by activists from around the world, including Greta Thunberg—and to the Global March for Gaza—which mobilized thousands of young people internationally.

Due to this increasing international recognition of the genocide, imperialist and pro-Israel governments want to attack the international solidarity with the Palestinian people. In Germany, for example, political organizations have even been outlawed, and a trial recently began against our comrade Baki. This persecution of political figures, accused of “terrorism” for the sole reason of supporting Palestine, also occurs in various countries around the world, such as France and Argentina. 

To justify repression, imperialist governments have spread slanderous claims that showing solidarity with Palestine is anti-Semitic—that is, an attack on Jewish people. Meanwhile, Arab bourgeois governments have played a complementary role in suppressing solidarity—not through the same discourse, but through direct repression, as in Egypt, where the government deported, imprisoned, and attacked activists attempting to carry out the Global March for Gaza. All these mechanisms are designed to suppress the growing expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Yet despite repression, slander, and criminalization, they have failed to silence the youth rising up against the genocide. The “Not in Our Name” movement reflects a clear rejection of the use of Judaism to justify the genocide of the Palestinian people—affirming that denouncing Israel’s crimes is not anti-Semitism. At the same time, international struggles against political persecution are growing. This is seen in the recent victory securing the release of Mahmoud Khalil in the United States, and in the campaign to defend Anasse Kazib—targeted for his support of Palestine—which gathered thousands of signatures and statements of solidarity from public figures and political organizations across the globe.

In this context, we are witnessing the emergence of a new generation forged in the struggle against imperialist aggression. University takeovers in defense of Palestine challenged military giants and their centers of knowledge—institutions that for decades have invested in companies profiting from the genocide in Gaza. University workers also rose up,  organizing historic political strikes at the University of California and the City University of New York against the repression of the pro-Palestine movement. Mass mobilizations have erupted in The Hague, the United Kingdom, Paris, Madrid, New York, and Berlin—where 50,000 people demanded “an immediate end to German support for genocide, apartheid, and occupation.”

In the United Kingdom, empathy and solidarity with Palestine dominated the Glastonbury Festival. In Argentina, student occupations in defense of public education put Milei and the IMF under national and international scrutiny. In Los Angeles, migrants and multiracial youth confronted the immigration police and raised Palestinian flags—an act of internationalist solidarity against imperialist oppression. Serbian youth began the year in struggle, calling on youth around the world to make history: “The only way is to take control and change the course of the world,” they wrote in a public letter. These actions have also resonated with sectors of the working class, as seen in pickets outside arms factories and port union blockades of weapons shipments—actions carried out in countries like Chile, France, and the United States.

There is no shortage of examples. With the Palestinian flag in hand, young people have built one of the largest international solidarity movements of our century—shining an international spotlight on the war crimes committed by the colonialist state of Israel.  At the same time, they have exposed the complicity of governments such as Brazil, the United States, and those of the European Union, which continue to maintain diplomatic ties with Israel and supply its war machine.

This is the power of youth—something we in the Trotskyist Fraction seek to deepen in every country where we are active. We draw inspiration from the French youth who led the May 1968 uprising, and from the young people in the United States who rose up against the Vietnam War. In that tradition, we are fighting today in the universities to build an internationalist, anti-imperialist student movement allied with the working class. That is why we joined the Global March for Gaza through the International Network of La Izquierda Diario, alongside our comrades Bruno from Brazil, Pablo and Salva from Spain, and Pato del Corro and Luca Bonfante from Argentina. At the same time, we are actively participating in mobilizations and helping to build solidarity committees for Palestine around the world.

Against all resignation, skepticism, and attempts to tie our dreams to the logic of the lesser evil, a socialist alternative grows more urgent by the day. The international pro-Palestine movement, together with broad sectors of this new generation, holds the potential to fuse its fight against imperialism and war with the struggle to overthrow the capitalist system—a system that condemns us to misery, exploitation, and oppression. In other words, to give rise to new anti-capitalist and socialist horizons among youth.

Therefore, we call on all who share this perspective to join and build the Internationalist Revolutionary Socialist Youth, part of the Trotskyist Fraction—Fourth International (TF-FI). We fight to defeat the Far Right in an alliance with the working class, without illusions in class conciliation or any trust in the degraded institutions of bourgeois democracy. If the capitalists are reviving the most brutal features of imperialism—defined by Lenin as a stage of crisis, war, and domination—then it is our task to make revolution once again the center of international politics. Against capitalist barbarism, the youth, the working class, and the oppressed of the world must unite to fight for a socialist future without exploitation or oppression.

• Stop the genocide in Gaza! For a free, working-class, and socialist Palestine.
• Not in our name—break all diplomatic ties between governments and the State of Israel.
• We reject the militarism of the great powers and the repression against those who fight for Palestine.
• Our knowledge must not serve a colonialist, Zionist state—cut all ties between universities and Israeli companies and institutions. 
• Imperialism out of the Middle East—no to imperialist military attacks on Iran!
• Imperialism out of Latin America—no to the IMF and the debts used to subjugate oppressed countries!