We Need an Uprising From Below—Join Us

We are told to carry on as if any of what we are living through these days is normal. We are repressed in the streets and in our homes. The objective is to repress our emotions, our histories, our backgrounds and our very minds. There is a war being waged on humanity by the elites that today hold a power comparable to the absolutist monarchies, including in what today are formal democracies. On the 18th and 19th of January we first joined to begin a push back, taking to the streets in The Surge in thirty three different cities across Europe and also in Bolivia and Uganda.

The fronts of the war led by elites on humanity are manifold: the ongoing climate onslaught, now a deliberate decision by governments and companies to drive humanity and the species that live in this planet towards collapse, the fascist bonanza paid for by economic power to maintain business as usual through the solidification of social classes, the hatred of ethnic, sexual and religious difference, and the direct war and genocide that we see happening in Palestine, with direct threats of a new all-out war between the so called world powers.

We see, on the eve of the inauguration of the embodiment of these existential threats, the direct connection between the deepening climate crisis, the rise of authoritarianism and fascism and the outbreak of extreme violence, war and genocide. Societies are burning through their deepest frailties. The cultural war by the far-right and its Tech Lords on any notion of equality, dignity and basic conviviality is an absolute war, waged inside societies in all countries, in all institutions, every smartphone, every family. The far-right is pushing societies as a whole towards the acceptance of barbarism and survival of the fittest. They are winning. The Trump-Musk presidency, which started on the 20th of January, is the latest battle that they won in this absolute war. They have recruited many more generals on their side: beyond the Tech Lords like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, they count on the far-right, conservatives, liberals and centrists to normalize barbarism and collapse. Yet, none of them are causes, all of them are consequences. The economic system in which we live was designed to exploit not only the working classes and the poor, but everything that can be turned into a commodity. The crumbling of the environment is a necessary consequence of capitalism and we see it in the atmosphere but also in the mines of Congo, the salt flats of Bolivia and many other places. When scarcity begins to loom, there are immediate direct consequences: the rise of authoritarianism, fascism and violence as the ultimate political tools, to repress any responses from the people and the working classes.

The genocide in Palestine by the Israeli state is a new model of conflict, adapted to these increasingly violent times. It is the proposal by a fascist government to other fascist governments on how to act in future conflicts. The Palestinian people, in all its dignity and resistance in the last decades, now suffers more than ever, under an internationally articulated offensive that counts on the support of all ancient slave masters and colonialists, that overtly revise their past with longing for a similar future. The freedom of the Palestinian people is not merely symbolic, it is decisive for the future of all.

What are we to do? In a moment of simplification and intellectual degradation of politics and society, we must embrace the diversity of our movements and the complexity of our world and our struggles. Most importantly, we must embrace their interconnectedness and articulate the need for an international struggle that unites peoples and movements across the world. We are activists and organizers from the antifascist, Palestine liberation, climate justice and peace movements and we acknowledge that none of our struggles can be won if the other is defeated. Moreover, we acknowledge that none of our struggles can be won in any one of our countries by themselves. We are internationalists and today say that without an internationalist movement we can have no expectation of winning. We acknowledge that we are all affected by these manifold crises in different ways and articulate the need to help each other. The rise of fascism, the climate crisis and the war path of the great powers can not be explained by any isolated national context, as isolated contexts simply do not exist. Global capitalism is in a structural crisis that is leading Humanity as a whole to its demise. We will not stand idle and watch it happen as if we were mere spectators of a show. We will act decisively, and urgently. We are living in a manifest historical emergency, with multiple crisis befalling our planet and its peoples. We can’t get stuck on procedural, sectarian, or movement-as-usual obstacles. There is nothing ordinary about the times we are living. We need to do extraordinary things to stop this war.

On the 18th and 19th of January we marched in Amsterdam, Angra do Heroísmo, Barcelona, Bergen, Bilbao, Brussels, Bucharest, Cochabamba, Faro, Granada, Hamburg, Ibiza, Innsbruck, Kampala, La Paz, Lisboa, London, Lugo, Luxembourg, Madrid, Málaga, Malmö, Murcia, Oslo, Palma de Mallorca, Saint-Étienne, Sevilla, Sofia, Soria, Stockholm, Villach, Valencia, Zaragozawill march, in at least nineteen cities across Europe - Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bilbao, Brussels, Bucharest, Faro, Granada, Hamburg, Ibiza, Innsbruck, Lisbon, London, Oslo, Sofia, Stockholm, València, Villach and Zaragoza, signalling the first moment in which these three movements came together.

We acknowledge other movements are missing here, and welcome a deepening of our analysis and its transformation into action. The march was the first moment. This April, in Brussels, we will hold a Congress to create a common political program. We urge others, from around the world, to join us. The Surge, a popular surge, an uprising from below, now begins.

Albert Henzler
Alex Considine
Amina Daschil
Britney Goméz
Cuca Esteves
Daniela Subtil
Diana Castro
João Camargo
Judith Pape
Karen Killeen
Kim Lê Quang
Leonor Canadas
Maria Bendler
Nell Crow
Sophia Pankenier
Willy Dreesen