The following paper was delivered by our vice-chair Daniel O’Brien on behalf of the CPGB-ML at the recent international conference of the World Anti-imperialist Platform, held in Caracas on 21 October 2025.
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It is no secret that the imperialist nations, the USA in particular, face drastically deepening economic crises. The current economic bubble, driven by the growth of AI infrastructure and technology, threatens to be several times larger than the bubble that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
The respite that the imperialist economies gained from the destruction and subsequent plundering of the socialist nations of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was short-lived. The continued cannibalisation of social welfare and the public sector in the imperialist nations cannot save monopoly capitalism, any more than a sieve can bail out a sinking ship.
It is because of these deepening crises that the bourgeoisie in the imperialist nations begin to openly look again to fascism to save them from the masses of workers at home and the forces of national liberation fighting against neocolonial exploitation abroad. It is of vital importance that we understand our class enemy, the bourgeoisie, and the forces it brings to bear against the working class in our struggle for emancipation, and to understand how to mobilise the masses for the cause of humanity rather than capital.
The rehabilitation of Nazi fascism
While WW2 pitted the dominant imperialist nations against German, Italian and Japanese fascism, there is no doubt that the bourgeoisie of those same imperialist nations would have preferred fascism rather than socialist revolutions at home. Indeed, those bourgeois and their officials had hoped that German fascism would break the back of the Soviet Union and destroy the great example, as well as material support, that the Soviet Union gave to revolutionary struggles and wars for national liberation all over the world.
After the war, many Nazi officials were integrated into the west German government and military – for example Reinhard Gehlen (founder of the BND), Hans Speidel (commander-in-chief of Nato in central Europe) and Adolf Heusinger (chairman of the Nato military committee).
Furthermore, Operation Gladio saw Nato, the CIA and MI6 establish clandestine networks of fascists across Europe to combat socialism, which targeted socialists and trade unionists and conducted false-flag terrorist attacks. (Operation Gladio: How CIA/Nato carried out terrorist attacks in Italy, 20 January 2025)
In east Asia, the USA continually plotted to use the remnants of the Japanese imperial military in a war against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the People’s Republic of China. (Wilfred G Burchett, Again Korea, 1968)
Imperialist designs on Ukraine have seen the most recent rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators and neo-nazi organisations, who were kept in reserve in the west, and underground in Ukraine, until the destruction of socialism and the creation of an ‘independent’ Ukraine (independent as long as it served imperialist interests and was not too friendly to Russia). Brigades of far-right and fascist soldiers, policemen and political activists were unleashed during the US-backed Maidan coup in 2014.
Such was the extent of their involvement in the coup, and later integration into the official political, civil and military structures of Ukraine, that even western news organisations occasionally raised the question of Ukraine’s “neo-nazi problem”. (Commentary: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem by Josh Cohen, Reuters, 20 March 2018)
Britain’s first arms delivery to Ukraine went to the Azov brigade, which was subject to a US ban on arms until 2024 due to its neo-nazi ideology. These fascist organisations do not, and cannot, represent the ordinary people of Ukraine. They are mercenary forces hired by the imperialists to provoke and continue the fight against Russia at all costs.
Wahhabist and zionist fascism
Imperialism primarily sponsors two kinds of fascism in the middle east: wahhabism and zionism.
Wahhabi fundamentalists have long been used as frontline proxies to assault socialist movements and nations that have gained their independence from the imperialists, from Afghanistan to Mali.
For example, Britain allowed operatives from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an ally of al-Qaeda, to travel freely between Britain and Libya to assist in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi,6 some of whom would later then travel to Syria to fight against the secular government of President Bashar al-Assad. It was one of these same terrorists who carried out the atrocity of bombing the Manchester arena during a pop concert. (Libya and the Manchester connection by Alastair Sloan, Al Jazeera, 29 May 2017)
In 2012 Jake Sullivan, then an official in the US department of state, later the national security advisor to US president Joe Biden, told Hillary Clinton that “AQ [al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.” Much like in Libya, the Nato imperialists supported the most backward, reactionary forces of the ‘Free Syria Army’, a mishmash of constantly rebranded terrorist groups, with western PR and arms deliveries.
After the fall of the secular Syrian government, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, has taken over the majority of the country. Despite being officially proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK, the United Nations and the USA, HTS has been warmly welcomed by the imperialists, with British foreign minister David Lammy rushing to shake the bloody hand of unelected dictator Ahmad al-Sharaa, also known as ‘Abu Mohammad al-Julani’.
This new regime showed its true colours immediately by failing to oppose or even condemn further Israeli invasion of the Golan Heights, strikes against targets across the country, and the use of Syrian airspace to strike Iran. In addition, it began targeting Palestinian and Lebanese resistance forces while conducting sectarian pogroms against the minority alawite and christian populations. (Syrian forces massacred 1,500 Alawites. The chain of command led to Damascus by Maggie Michael, Reuters, 30 June 2025)
Zionism has been the favoured form of fascism in the middle east because it is entirely dependent on imperialist sponsorship for its survival. It is therefore more effective and dependable than islamic fundamentalism, which has had to compete with popular nationalist and socialist movements for followers, and which also has to (albeit superficially) present itself as being in opposition to the western imperialist cultures. This in turn makes it incredibly unpopular in the imperialist nations that nevertheless sponsor it.
Settler-colonial zionism, on the other hand, functions as “a little loyal jewish ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism” as Ronald Storrs, British governor of Jerusalem from 1917-26, succinctly put it on behalf of the imperialists. (Ronald Storrs, Orientationshttps://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.174934, 1937)
The criminality and brutality of the zionist regime is undeniable to anyone willing to see it, and to many who do not want to. The relentless propaganda of the imperialists in favour of zionism cannot hide the reality of the situation – that Israel is a fascist settler-colonial state that inculcates its citizens with the belief in jewish supremacy so they will be prepared to oppress, rape, expel and murder Palestinians on a mass scale.
This supremacist ideology is now causing issues for imperialist propagandists. While they try to claim that Israel is the only free, secular democracy in the middle east, the zionists pass laws proclaiming Israel as an exclusively jewish state, defend torture and rape in the parliament and encourage illegal settlements. A significant proportion of the jewish Israeli population supports the expulsion of the entire remaining population of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of the whole of historic Palestine.
Fascism in the imperialist countries
In both the USA and Britain, governments have been eroding the veneer of freedom and democracy they claim to uphold, preparing the state apparatus to be more effective at directly repressing their own citizenry on the one hand, and on the other to be completely ineffective at protecting their citizens from attack. In other words, while this may not be fascism yet, it is setting the stage for “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital”. (The fascist offensive and the tasks of the Communist International by Georgi Dimitrov, 2 August 1935)
A notable milestone to achieving this in Britain was the anti-terror legislation passed in 2000. This law has been used to detain and harass journalists, academics and citizens for daring to question or oppose Britain’s role in coups, wars and genocides all over the world. Labour and Tory governments alike have worked hard to suspend habeas corpus and trial by jury, and to implement draconian censorship through official policy rather than laws (adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism in state institutions, for example). Increasingly, organisations or groups that threaten the war machine are being persecuted as ‘terrorists’.
Much of this is being done to suppress the growing dissent against Britain’s support of, and direct involvement in, the genocidal zionist project. The current Labour government sold £127m of military equipment to Israel in the last three months of 2024,18 and is currently considering Israeli weapons firm Elbit for a £2bn contract to train the British armed forces.19 Palestine Action, which Labour proscribed as a terrorist organisation earlier this year, primarily targeted Elbit Systems facilities in the UK.
In the USA, lawmakers have approved legislation to outlaw criticism of Israel as ‘antisemitic’ as per the IHRA definition, and have introduced bills to prevent boycotts or sanctions of Israel by companies and international governmental organisations.
To misdirect workers from their class enemy, all of the western imperialist countries are increasingly scapegoating migrants, legal or illegal, as well as other groups of workers based on ethnicity, race, or any number of cultural differences. The current US government has increased the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s annual budget from $8.7bn to $27.7bn.
If ICE were a nation’s military, it would have the 17th-largest budget in the world. This budget has been used to build bigger detention centres (concentration camps) and hire more enforcers to raid workplaces and homes across the country.
The imperialists also need pretexts for foreign intervention and invasions, coups and direct military action. For much of the 20th century, owing to the influence of the Soviet Union and other socialist nations, these were carried out under an (albeit feeble) pretext of spreading ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’. Now that the old lies are wearing thin, the imperialists are exposing themselves more and more often by dropping the facade and revealing the truth: they intervene to control resources and markets, and to defend their monopolies.
Recently the USA has ramped up its aggression toward Venezuela, ordering extrajudicial executions of people on boats that they claimed (with no evidence) were smuggling drugs. Echoing the usage of anti-terror legislation in Britain, Trump has ordered that criminal gangs be classified as terrorist organisations. In a clearly imperialist-directed event, the Nobel peace prize was awarded to María Corina Machado, who has had links with the USA for decades via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organisation that funds and promotes US imperialist interests (and regime-change operations) around the world.
The USA is clearly still working hand-in-glove with Machado, as she hopes the renewed aggression based on the false claims of fighting drug trafficking (including ludicrous propaganda such as president Nicolás Maduro being the leader of a gang) will help her instigate a coup in the country. It is no coincidence that she is also a supporter not just of Israel generally, but specifically of the Likud party and its war criminal leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Just one week after receiving her ‘peace’ prize, she called Netanyahu to congratulate him on his “achievements in war”.
Thanks to the mass mobilisation of Venezuelan workers and peasants, the USA’s regime-change plans are unlikely to succeed. If such reactionary forces were to gain control of part or all of the country, however, what would follow would certainly be murderous fascism in the vein of Pinochet’s Chile, and the complete subordination of Venezuela to US imperialism.
As Trump orders the CIA to target President Maduro and the Venezuelan government, we should all remember his clumsy words regarding the Syrian oil fields: “We want to keep the oil.”
The tasks of anti-imperialists
Fascism is the last resort of the bourgeoisie in crisis as it strives to maintain its dictatorship over the working class. While our exploiters would no doubt prefer to live in peaceful societies where obedient workers toil, live and die quietly, the intensification of the general economic crisis of capitalism compels them to resort to uglier and more brutal methods to preserve their class rule in the face of growing instability and unrest from the working class.
To quote Georgi Dimitrov again: “Before the establishment of a fascist dictatorship, bourgeois governments usually pass through a number of preliminary stages and adopt a number of reactionary measures which directly facilitate the accession to power of fascism.
“Whoever does not fight the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie and the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages is not in a position to prevent the victory of fascism, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory.”
When the situation reaches a breaking point, workers will either turn towards the fascists, who promise to solve the economic crisis by eliminating immigrants, muslims or other targets of fascist propaganda, or the socialists, who can actually solve the economic crisis by overthrowing the moribund system of imperialism.
As anti-imperialists we must redouble our efforts to recruit workers to their own side as the class struggle intensifies. We must join in with, and involve as many people and organisations as possible in, campaigns against the repressive and reactionary laws and actions taken by our imperialist governments.
We must raise class consciousness so that the workers understand their real interests in this struggle. We must educate workers on the treacherous nature of social democracy, which is an agent of the enemy class within their movement. We must combat national chauvinism and promote proletarian internationalism.
Imperialists have been sponsoring fascism across the world to overthrow socialist and independent nations. Now they are preparing the ground for fascism at home.
Despite how powerful the imperialists may seem to be, they are in a deep crisis. Their economics, politics, philosophy, art and culture are all in a dead end. They have nothing real to offer the working class, except misery and war.
Despite how weak we anti-imperialists may seem in some parts of the world, we are part of a global movement that is winning. A progressive movement that is outstripping the imperialist world in every way, and we have everything to offer the working class.
The struggle against fascism is today inseparable from the struggle against imperialism, and, like the struggle against imperialism, we must be united to be successful.
Patria o muerte!
Socialisme ou barbarie!
