0 A Laboratory internationalist for a Left of Resistance and Solidarity We turn to you who feel anger for this world in flames. A world of new imperialisms, systemic racisms, transphobic machismo and religious obscurantism, retreating democracies, and a planet suffocating under the weight of climate injustice. We talk to you, who look at the Left and feel only disappointment for its impotence, its dogmas, and its betrayals. This is not yet another manifesto to be signed. It is not a new party to join. We have seen too many impotent rituals, too many public protests that absolve the aggressors and blame the victims. We have seen the twentieth - century Left become toxic, incapable of recognizing oppression if the executioner is not the " right" one from its limited catalog. A Left that betrayed the so - called Arab revolutions, that is, those in North Africa and Southwest Asia, and that today turns its back on the Ukrainian Resistance, denying entire peoples the right to exist and to struggl e. This Left is dead inside. We will not go to its funeral. We want to build something else. WHAT DO WE PROPOSE? A PROCESS, NOT A PRE - WRITTEN PROJECT. We propose to launch a COLLECTIVE LABORATORY . An open process where your active participation is the onl y thing that matters. We are not asking you to adhere to a doctrine, but to bring your intelligence, your experience, and your anger to jointly define a project to face the 21st century. A project that is equal to the challenges we face. In the name of the principles of solidarity and struggle, international and intersectional, that should distinguish the Left. We want to create a platform to answer the question "WHAT IS TO BE DONE?" with concrete, collective actions, learning from those who are already res isting, and creating a platform to decide the next steps together. Our foundation is not an abstract pacifism, but RESISTANCE Our laboratory will focus on practices of Solidarity and Active Resistance: 1. SOLIDARITY WITHOUT IFS OR BUTS. Supporting the self - determination of all oppressed peoples, from Palestine to the Democratic Republic of Congo, from Sudan, to Western Sahara, to Ukraine, to the democratic and liberation movements in Syria, Russia, and Iran . Enough with double standards: anti - imperialism is practiced against all empires, with no discounts for anyone. 2. BUILD CONCRETE NETWORKS. Create and strengthen mutual aid networks in our communities and secure digital platforms to protect ourselves from control and repression. From neighborhood chats to cybersecurity to emergency preparedness. 3. FIGHT DISINFORMATION. Actively counter false narratives, especially those that arise from the Left to justify dictators and aggressors, denying the reality of t he facts. 4. CLARITY ON WEAPONS. No to imperialist and nationalist rearmament. Yes to support, including military support, for peoples resisting an invasion and an occupation. Denying weapons to those who defend themselves is not peace; it is a condemnatio n to surrender and massacre. 5. RECLAIM THE STREETS. Be present in mobilizations with our clear and recognizable identity. Never again tolerate aggression or censorship against those who carry the flag of a resisting people. To participate in the process and read the full document, continue reading the next pages. Contacts: Facebook: Sinistra per l’Ucraina Instagram: sinistraperlucraina Telegram: Sinistra per l’Ucraina Email: sinistraucraina@gmail.com From Saturday 29 November : www.laboratorio - internazionalista.weebly.com 1 A Laboratory I nternationalist for the 21st CENTURY LEFT PREMISE What follows does NOT intend to be yet another manifesto for which to gather signatures: we have seen many in recent decades, based on statements of principle, on more or less indignant declarations, on hopes for a better world. In most cases, they have remained on paper, impotent and incapable of achieving material change — often ignored in their content. This text is the proposal for a LABORATORY , to activate a dynamic and collective PROCESS that leads us to determine shared content for a practical PROJECT , to build a Left that is equal to the enormous challenges tha t this first quarter of a century presents to us in all its shocking, terrible, and violent dimension. Important note: We are NOT proposing a new political entity , we do not feel the need for yet another container among the many that already exist. Our pu rpose is to connect with those who find themselves in the analyses and proposals we present. To connect in order to unite: what we ask for is individual participation in a phase of laboratory - style construction and design, regardless of party or movement affiliations. The purpose is to undertake a collective process in which every human and political individuality continues to maintain its full autonomy. In order to determine the contents of this laboratory, we will try to outline its conceptual framework, dividing the document into three steps: ● The global SCENARIO in which we are embedded; ● The ANALYSIS by which we think that the Left and the current movements are responding ineffectively to the historical developments of these years. We believe this Left to be heading, if unsteered, towards a defeat that could mark an epoch in blood; ● The PROPOSAL , the most important part: the laboratory idea that starts from these analyses to lead us to the development of a shared project. IF YOU HAVE NO TIME: GO DIRECTLY TO THE PROPOSAL ON PAGE 8. THE SCENARIO: The failure of the Left These first decades of the 21st century have brought about rapid changes that make it difficult to analyze all the variables at play and predict the evolution of the global situation. There are, however, some fixed points from which to start and on which to build a common vision. We are facing a return of imperialist practices on a global level: neoliberal globalization is rapidly transforming not into a multipolar system, but an oligarchic one, at the political, social, cultural, and economic levels. This mutation of the global system shows some specific characteristics:3 1. A substantial ideological convergence: beyond some differences , that are at times more formal than substantial, the twentieth - century ideological divisions have materially collapsed, presenting a rather homogeneous picture attributable to the current evolutionary phase of the capitalist system. 2. A return not only to imperialism but a lso to direct neocolonialism. While "indirect" colonialism continues denying the self - determination of peoples in political and economic terms, today we witness a return of territorial conquests. Systematic expansionism, the practice of invasion, occupatio n, and genocide are recovering their full status as acceptable "geopolitical" tools, objects of exchanges, concessions, and agreements between empires. 3. A progressive demolition of international law and the authority of its supporting structures, startin g from the United Nations: the current imperialist trend is making 2 explicit the will to demolish international law to free itself from legal "shackles" that interfere, albeit in an ineffective and hypocritical way, with the right of the strongest. In this context, the mobilization against the genocide of the Palestinian people takes on a meaning that goes even beyond solidarity: it opposes the definitive brutalization of international relations and of our own social life, the contempt for international and humanitarian law, and the imposition of the law of the strongest as the sole means of regulating conflicts. 4. A global attack on the self - determination of women, trans, LGBTQIA+, racialized, and disabled people, in the name of supposed "traditional values" and unfounded scientific beliefs brought up to prepare the ground for new and old segregations. 5. A generalized retreat of democracy on a global scale: although each cultural, geographical, institutional, and political context has dif ferent characteristics and different starting points in terms of democratic development, we are witnessing a generalized retreat of peoples' rights, of human rights, and of individual rights on a planetary scale. We are in the presence of a process with a precise direction towards a system that is revealing a very dangerous historical convergence towards a kind of global a - democracy. A return to a world of particularisms, after the universalist parenthesis that, despite many contradictions and abuses, had brought hopes of justice, peace, and decolonization after the Second World War. 6. In this political and social retreat, the capitalist economic system is also changing. The unprecedented concentration of wealth, the de - structuring of the world of labor, non - productive financial wealth, the development of mechanisms more tied to passive income than to profit: these changes require a new analysis to define what capitalism really is in the 21st century and, consequently, what it means to be anti - capi talist. 7. The changes of recent years have marked not only a setback but also an explicit regression regarding the process towards a planetary project of sustainability and ecological survival: the new imperialist course is very heedless of the environmen tal disaster, or it aims for interventions oriented by profit according to the logic of the crudest social Darwinism. The race to conquer new deposits of raw materials has regained vigor4 precisely in the face of progressive climate change, totally disrega rding the survival of the planet and the peoples who inhabit it, while the search for alternative materials and energy sources follows the same extractivist equations on which colonialism has always been founded. THE ANALYSIS: The reasons for the Left's failure. In the upheavals of recent decades, the Left's capacity for strategic vision has been practically absent from a historical perspective, or, in any case, ineffective in altering the trajectory of events. To understand the reasons for the st ate of impotence in which the Left finds itself, globally and locally, we can outline at least three phases that reveal the roots of this failure: 1. The end and the failure of the twentieth - century experience of "Real Socialism" and the betrayal of socia list ideals by its global protagonists — from the USSR to the Nicaraguan dictatorship, to the Chinese experience — are the main historical conditions for which the socialist alternative appears ever less credible to the majority of the population. The support for this socialist alternative is reduced to meager minorities who can at best congratulate themselves for the sporadic election of some local leader, but who certainly cannot, today, propose themselves as a project and an agent capable of making a true systemic and structural alternative credible. 2. Facing the collapse of the historical and material achievements of the "Short Twentieth Century," at the end of the 1990s, the need and possibility of an alternative were revitalized in the alter - global ization movement, in search of a representation of another possible world. From Seattle to Genoa, this movement seemed to give new life to alternative projects, and the level of repression to which it was subjected indicates it was sufficiently dangerous t o the system it opposed. Starting from September 11, 2001, things began to change: the possibility of war in Europe had already been normalized 3 with the destruction and fragmentation of Yugoslavia, and the United States brought its war to Southwest Asia and the African continent, at almost all latitudes. The pacifist movement played an extremely important role in attempting to counter this normalization, culminating in the great global demonstration of February 2003 against the start of the second Gulf War. This demonstration took place without substantial repressive activities at a global level, yet it was not able to delay the start of the war by a single second. If you will, that was the moment the defeat of the entire movement became app arent, but it was followed by a failure to reflect on the situation with the seriousness it deserved. 3. If, on one hand, both the practice and the representation of a systemic alternative had failed at the turn of the new millennium, the Left and its move ments still seemed to hold a primacy in terms of the correctness of their analysis and their reading of the world. The great crisis of 2007/2008 proved that the readings of the Left and the movements were substantially correct, but being able to prove they were right in terms of analysis did not produce adherence in terms of militancy and movement, thus certifying the impotence of what remained of those movements.5 So, primacy in theory was the only basis for the Left and the movements to hope for a new st art after a multi - decade series of defeats. It certified not so much a cultural hegemony but a widespread, public, and recognized intellectual correctness and respectability. This primacy entered a deep crisis in the second decade of the 21st century and s hattered completely at the beginning of the third. There are two key moments on which to focus our attention: The so - called Arab Spring between late 2010 and 2011, which affected many countries in North Africa and Southwest Asia: from Tunisia to Egypt, from Libya to Syria, from Yemen to Bahrain, from Algeria to Morocco. Faced with an impact of this magnitude, with the possibility of concrete change in a substantial slice of the world - that could have spread that change even beyond the Arabic - speak ing space, the Left, especially the Western Left, entered in a crisis. There was no real political and public support to these struggles; there was no will to understand fully what was happening and why; there was none of the support seen in other times for Chile, Vietnam, or the Zapatista cause. In practice, the Arab Spring revealed a hidden side of the Left, that had been maturing in the shadows in recent decades. The North African and Southwest Asian revolutions were met with extreme distrust be cause a large component of the movements that animated them did not clearly identify as "Left", did not enjoy the defunct Soviet support, nor held the badge of a politically abstract "global south." These segments of the Left did not know how to approach revolutions, popular uprisings, that did not appear sufficiently socialist, or Marxist, or located in a recognizable and acceptable "camp." For this international Left, it was inconceivable to transform this confusion into a work of reconstruction and reth inking, after decades of failures that offered nothing to the young generations fighting on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. Even worse, from the Libyan to the Syrian context, the Left focused exclusively on its (most worthy) opposition to US impe rialism. This focus, while necessary, was not sufficient in the face of the brutal and inhuman repression of multitudes by the Assads and Gaddafis of this world, hidden behind the fig leaf of an "unreal" socialism. Too many on the Left spent their efforts defending the heads of state involved: the anti - imperialist declarations in favor of Assad, the regime flags waved in leftist streets, remain to this day an unforgivable, incredible shame, born from a political narrow - mindedness and ignorance borde ring on the inhuman. Faced with all this, many Arab activists found themselves abandoned and betrayed precisely by those who should have been fighting the same struggles, as comrades. Unfortunately, a part of the international Left — particularly the Radi cal Left — has rejected 4 solidarity. It gave no voice to the activists, the victims, and the survivors in the media or in international forums. On the contrary, it continued to ignore or defame those who, in one way or another, were trying to concretely and materially change history, starting from real grassroots movements. Worse still, it continued to cultivate infected channels, torrents of disinformation whose sole purpose was to delegitimize entire peoples and facilitate their oppression in favor of large economic interests. On the other hand, the Left gave more visibility to other movements, like Occupy Wall Street, which were more orthodox and palatable, and had the added value of weakly destabilizing the American empire. These movements, however, were concretely and materially incapable of changing anything, not even of disturbing Wall Street itself, which continued its work undeterred. With the Arab Spring, the Left lost a historic opportunity to relaunch itself, but the complete collapse was to occur a few years later and has a precise date: February 24, 2022. The full - scale invasion of Ukraine definitively blew up the Western Left, shattering it. It is difficult to say how conscious the actors involved were of how much dust had accumulated and been hidden under the rug, but that dust could no longer remain concealed and, above all, it was highly explosive. In the fourth year of the war, despite every dialectical attempt, positions have crystallized and remained unchanged, proceeding along a divergent and irreconcilable bifurcation in the reading of history. The central lesson of these years is that when fractures are axiomatic in nature, dialectics can do nothing. In politics, the axiom transforms into dogma, the dogma has the nature of reli gious belief, and religion has nothing to do with the materiality of history. What were, and still are, very briefly, the main dogmas of a large part of the Left, especially (but not only) the Western Left, in its reading of the war in Ukraine, or rather, the war ON Ukraine? ● The war was triggered by NATO's expansion and threat to Russia. ● Ukraine was about to join NATO. ● In Ukraine, there was a civil war that began in 2014 due to the oppression of Russian - speakers by Ukrainians. ● Euromaidan was a coup. ● The war in Ukraine is a proxy war. It is obvious that NONE of these assertions holds up, or ever will, to any real attempt at a serious historical analysis. Everything listed above has led us to a terrible realization that we had not yet fully assimilated: the fall of Real Socialism and its entanglement with Russian colonialism are still an unresolved trauma, something the Left has never truly reckoned with. The resentment, conscious or unconscious, towards the peoples of the East — guilty of decolonizing themselves from a Russian empire that cannot be admitted to be colonial — has been grafted onto an almost total historical and cultural ignorance regarding those same people. This resentment was demonstrated by the Left that, imme diately after the Russian invasion, hastened to discredit the Ukrainian people and to justify the invader. For the Western Left, these peoples had broken the toy; they had strengthened the global capitalist enemy simply by existing as peoples endowed with their own identity and will.7 The Western Left, deep down, never understood, or never accepted, that other empires existed beyond the derivatives of perfidious Albion. Likewise, it has never accepted a colonial reading of the relationship between Russia an d its so - called "satellite states," or between Moscow/St. Petersburg and the Russian peripheries. It never understood that liberation from imperialism 5 and colonialism had also occurred in the East; the Western Left, orphaned by Real Socialism, has always a ccused these peoples of having thrown the baby out with the bathwater, without having the courage to admit that the dirty bathwater had overflown and drowned the baby, long ago. Even the pacifist movements, including those with Catholic roots, when faced with the invasion, the torture, and the mass graves in Ukraine, was often unable to begin any discourse on so - called "peace" without first launching attacks on the Ukrainian agency, instead of demanding Russia's withdrawal from the occupied territories. E ven less common were demands of respect for international law — and for this, we must thank the demolition work carried out by Israel and the USA with European complacency. This all demonstrates that solidarity with revolts against oppression is not an unsh akable principle for the Left, but rather depends on a simple catalog of acceptable oppressed and oppressors, mirroring white liberal hypochrisy. We are not, therefore, talking about a merely “tankie ”, "red - brown" approach to the issue: in our view, the so - called "red - browns" are totally indistinguishable from fascists, in theory as in practice, and should be treated as such. Instead, we are talking about a cultural approach common to the whole of th e Left, which is for us unacceptable. One of the most terrible aspects is the uncritical distribution and analysis of labels like "proxy war" and (used with contempt) "Orange Revolution." With these labels, and with great carelessness, one denies that more than one imperialism can exist, one denies that one can be a victim if the executioner is not Western, and above all, one denies the peoples of the East any autonomy of thought, action, or self - determination. With this inhuman perspective, people can be r educed to mere pawns, automatons always moved by someone else, ready to be killed "by proxy." This vision — substantially colonialist and politically racist, and still normalized today, carefully cultivated by Russia — is a vision and a judgment that is never applied to peoples revolting against a western oppressor. It reaches a specular paradox with the Central African coup plotters armed by Wagner's Nazi mercenaries in search of gold, who are often presented as new anti - imperialists, debasing the complexity o f the issue of imperialism in Central Africa to a struggle between opposing blocs in which the freedom, demands, and even survival of the people remain in the background. The question we must ask ourselves is: if such a cultural and political approach was reserved for the Arab peoples yesterday and, in an even more ferocious manner, for the Ukrainian people today, whose turn will it be tomorrow?8 The problem to be solved goes beyond the Arab and Ukrainian questions and has the characteristics of a profoundly structural problem, rooted in the chronic inability of this Left to process and overcome the traumas and manipulations suffered in the last century. What can we say about a Left that has done nothing but pursue its slow sui cide in terms of historical incisiveness and credibility, that constantly adopts the ritual of double standards from the very system it claims to fight? What to do with a Left that sits at the feet of oppressors, launching its arrows at the oppressed? Wh at to do with a Left that, by choosing a camp, de facto renounces to class analysis and struggle, which is more necessary today than ever in an internationalist and global key? For us, a Left of this kind is useless, it is toxic, it is harmful, and it is destined to be swallowed by the right. It is no longer the Left. We must distance ourselves from it, save the time spent on useless discussions to use it in building another, one that is more necessary than ever. 6 THE PROPOSAL: The Left of Resistance and Solidarity. First, a brief overview of the current state of affairs. The recent demonstrations in favor of so - called "peace" are characterized by a concrete inability to achieve the goals they set for themselves. There is a problem concerni ng the effectiveness of our forms of mobilization: in a system that has passed in a few decades from post - democracy to a - democracy, and is heading towards the twilight of democracy itself, any civil demonstration of dissent can be safely ignored, without e ven the effort of repression. If the powerful do not feel the cold steel of the guillotine on their neck they can safely ignore the noise and continue to rage against the weak. Furthermore, in this context, a part of the pacifist movement has fully embraced the thinking of the Radical Left. An example is the inversion of cause and effect in the relationship between the war and the supply of arms to the resisting Ukrainian people, the idea that "if I stop arming the Ukrainians, the war will end." Thi s prevents an understanding that in this upside - down world denying weapons to Ukraine does not mean peace, but prisons, mass graves, deportations, and torture chambers from the Donbas to Kyiv. Upside - down and in bad faith, since such a denial was rarely se en for Russian weapons to Vietnam or Palestine, or for American weapons to Italian partisan or Kurds. Regardless of the irrationality of this approach, the failure to demand disarmament and/or withdrawal from the aggressor explicitly demonstrates its own impotence: the demand is considered unachievable, and the hope remains to be able to influence the disarmament of the attacked, as they are the weaker party.9 How is it possible to partake in such an aberration and still call oneself “Left”? In this regard, the Italian Radical Left has held only one demonstration in front of the Russian embassy to call for peace and respecting the violated international law. This is all based on a way of thinking that should have nothing to do with the Left: a mindse t halfway between a call to surrender and a metaphysical, messianic, and religious hope that "peace" will realize itself simply by invoking it or, at most, by counting the meager numbers at periodic demonstrations. Unfortunately, the times we live in and will live in demand much more in terms of effectiveness! This is why we consider the following principle to be decisive: WE CAN CONSIDER PEACE AS AN ABSOLUTE VALUE, A VALUE TO BE PURSUED, THE GOAL TO BE REACHED THAT STANDS ON THE HORIZON. A GOAL TO FI GHT FOR WITH ALL NECESSARY MEANS. PACIFISM, HOWEVER, CANNOT BE THAT VALUE! IT CANNOT BECAUSE IT IS A TOOL, WHOSE EFFECTIVENESS IS RELATIVE TO THE REAL CONTEXT. With this premise, here are the points in which we can summarize our proposal, both in terms of its foundational principles and its practices: The Project's Foundation: 1. Our proposal is fueled by the values of Resistance. The global situation we described in the first part of our shared scenario demands a concrete approach, aimed at materially countering the historical trajectory of this early century. 2. This struggle must manifest in support for anti - imperialist Resistance both outside and inside the empires themselves, in the Resistance against nationalism, and, above all, in the R esistance against the rising tide of global fascism. 3. We are aware that we are facing the largest and most global dismantling of international 7 law since the post - World War II era: it is highly unlikely that simple, orderly, democratic, and sporadic demonstrations will be able to even slow down this process. 4. We are therefore aware that a Left that does not transform itself into a practice of the alternative, that does not actively participate in the ongoing historical processes, that does not fight the fascist drift on a global scale, can only succumb in its entirety, throwing the doors wide open to the global projects of the worst of the right. 5. Only through the concrete attempt to achieve change in the materiality of history can we move away from that ritualistic and impotent approach, that quicksand in which the global Left is about to be swallowed. 6. A future in which the Left has been excluded from historical processes is a future without hope for social or civil progress, the tomb f or an entire historical cycle of over two10 centuries that is coming to a close, but also the end of any hope for any attempt at structural ecological change to save the planet from environmental disaster. 7. The common foundations of this thinking are the most complete and radical anti - imperialism possible, anti - colonialism, and support for the self - determination of peoples, including through active Resistance in all its forms. We absolutely do not accept a selective anti - imperialism or any double standar ds from anyone in supporting popular Resistances. Our Practices: 1. Work to build a shared project of Resistance and Solidarity. This project must be directed towards concrete applications, in particular: a. Local networks for mutual aid and emergency prep aredness, and practices for their development from pre - existing communities. b. Digital cybersecurity networks against espionage and control by Russian, American, European, Israeli, etc., systems of repression and manipulation. 2. Spread this project not only in Italy but also in Europe and around the world: we are confident and aware that on every continent we can find fellow travelers who can give us their contribution. 3. Coordinate nationally and internationally in communication, cultural e ducation, and presence in the streets, making our project clear and recognizable. 4. Oppose any kind of imperialist and capitalist rearmament, but not the provision of weapons useful for the defense and Resistance of attacked and occupied peoples, to whom our support goes. 5. Respect all those who coherently practice nonviolence, but demand at the same time reciprocity of respect towards us. 6. Support and coordinate as much as possible with humanitarian aid organizations active in conflict areas. 7. Contin uously develop and disseminate our project on an international scale, making the most of existing technologies to overcome linguistic, geographical, cultural, and contextual barriers, and deepen our knowledge of those same contexts through the words and pr actices of the Lefts that belong to them. 8. We must therefore unequivocally condemn that segment of the Western Left — particularly the Italian Left — which, since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, has spoken about and on behalf of the Ukrainian p eople without making the slightest effort to engage meaningfully with the Ukrainian Left, or even with the Russian dissident Left. These individuals, together with a significant part of the pacifist movement, avoid facing the factual reality in order to pr eserve their flawed narrative — a narrative often based on analyses that may be well - intentioned but are nonetheless mistaken and narrow in scope. We believe that the condemnation of this segment of the Western Left should also be extended to its failure to engage with Arab Leftist movements over a decade ago. 9. Banish and ostracize every form of campism and any ethnocentric framing of conflicts. Our practice distinguishes only between the oppressed and the oppressors, and the shared construction of a different world through an equal relationship with the Lefts of the oppressed and the dissident and resistant Leftist figures within the oppressor states. 10. Help fill the streets that aim to fight imperialist, colonialist, and nationalist warmongeri ng 8 drifts, with our own precise and recognizable identity.11 11. No longer tolerate the discrimination and the "selective" choices of the self - proclaimed "pacifists”. In the latest national demonstrations in Italy, not a single word was spent in favor of t he Ukrainian Resistance. On the contrary, there were several episodes in which the simultaneous support for both the Palestinian and Ukrainian causes resulted in insults, threats, and attempts to seize banners and Ukrainian flags by the less tolerant demon strators. We are no longer willing to tolerate this state of affairs, neither the hypocrisy nor the fascist - style aggression. To any fascist - style aggression, regardless of the political color the aggressor believes to be wearing, we will react as one must react to a fascist attack. 12. Denounce the cowardice, the total indifference, and the culpable ignorance on the part of the organized and unorganized Left regarding the Ukrainian issue today, as with the Syrian one yesterday, so as never to repeat th ese mistakes again. To all those who share our intent, we say that it is time to coordinate, to begin, to build together. Time is slipping from our hands.