Activists, progressive politicians unite in global call to strengthen anti-fascist action

Over 200 activists and progressive politicians from nearly 50 countries have called for strengthening collective action against “fascist forces” across the world.

In a statement issued by the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) — an international network of activists and researchers campaigning against unjust public debt—the signatories, including British politician Jeremy Corbyn, Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, leftist scholars and activists Nancy Fraser, Achin Vanaik, and Vijay Prashad, Jacobin founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara, and CADTM spokesperson Éric Toussaint, said that “the extreme right and neo-fascist forces are advancing on every continent.”

“The desire to accumulate wealth in the hands of capital and the relentless pursuit of maximum profit that underpins far-right policies are also manifested by the intensification of imperialist aggressions aimed at seizing resources and exploiting populations,” the statement said, adding that “this phenomenon is intertwined with the perpetuation of colonial situations, exemplified by the case of Palestine, where it takes the form of a genocide orchestrated by the State of Israel with the complicity of its imperialist allies.”

File picture of Eric Toussaint
| Photo Credit:
Meera Srinivasan

Dated January 20, 2026, the statement said that while the threat of fascism manifests differently depending on the country or region, its common elements are “readily identifiable.” It pointed to the goal of annihilating labor rights and protections; suppressing workers’ organisations; dismantling social security; imposing precarious conditions on employed and unemployed workers; privatising public services; denying climate change; using high public debt as an excuse for austerity; dispossessing peasants for agribusiness; displacing indigenous peoples for extractive projects; tightening restrictive migration policies; and increasing military spending.

The statement further pointed out that rulers enforcing such policies often curb civil liberties, including the right to dissent and strike, and freedom of expression, association, and assembly. It called for a coordinated international struggle that includes all forces willing to defend the working class, farmers, migrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, racialised communities, oppressed national or religious minorities and indigenous peoples.

Such convergence, the statement — issued ahead of an ‘International Antifascist and Anti-imperialist’ conference in Brazil in March 2026 — said is necessary to defend nature against ecocidal capitalism, combat imperialist and colonial aggression regardless of origin, and support the struggles of peoples who resist oppression.