The candidate of Apruebro Dignidad, Gabriel Boric has won the presidential election with 56% of the votes. In absolute terms, this is a record majority, with some 4.6 million votes cast for Boric, putting him almost 1 million votes ahead of the pro-Pinochet candidate, Juan Antonio Kast, who obtained 44%.

The question of violence is often posed as an abstract theoretical one. Pacifists cordon off the concept of ‘violence’ and treat it apart from every other aspect of human relations. But as the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said: “war is the continuation of politics by other means”. Declaring opposition to violence ‘in general’ is as meaningless and utopian as declaring opposition to politics ‘in general’. We must be concrete. What kind of violence are we opposed to? And how do we struggle against it?

Big demonstrations broke out in Brussels in November and December. In the former, 35,000 protested efforts by the government to blame the people for the course of the pandemic crisis, and impose stricter control measures. Sentiments of disgust, and distrust towards the establishment, underpin these protests, following intermittent lockdowns and a host of broken promises by the government, combined with the double standards of the measures taken thus far. All of this has caused disorientation, perplexity and anger that has pushed people onto the streets. Meanwhile, the threat to fire unvaccinated staff in healthcare and other sectors has led to strike action being called by the

Over the past period, a conflict has been brewing between the Polish government and the European Union, manifesting itself in multiple incidents. For example, the recent refusal by the Polish authorities to deploy the EU’s Forex border guards during the crisis at the Polish border with Belarus, or the open threat to suspend funding to the EU, advanced by members of the Polish government. This led to retaliation from the EU, which threatened to withdraw COVID-19 related relief funding.

In the post-war period, MI5 (the British state’s internal security agency) paid little attention to the activities of Trotskyists in Britain, regarding the threat that they posed to be minimal. But the rise of the Militant in the 1970s and 1980s – a tightly organised, professional and theoretically trained organisation founded by Ted Grant – completely transformed the Secret Services’ perception of Trotskyism.

Journalist and founder of the whistleblower organisation WikiLeaks Julian Assange can now be extradited to the US to face charges of espionage, ruled Her Majesty's High Court on 10 December. This ruling was in favour of an appeal by the US government to overturn the previous decision by the Westminster Magistrates' Court from January, which denied the extradition on the grounds that the harsh and restrictive prison conditions that Assange may face could worsen his mental wellbeing, creating a real risk of suicide.

After nearly 19 years in power, the strongman image of Turkey’s longest-sitting head of state, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is rapidly deteriorating. The world economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has delivered another, severe blow to his crisis-ridden regime.

Over the past several days, a massive tornado outbreak in the US has led to a series of deaths in workplaces, due to the bosses’ refusal to take even minimum steps to keep employees safe. Tragedies such as these amount to corporate murder. They expose the callousness inherent to capitalism, which sacrifices workers’ lives on the altar of profit on a daily basis.

Less than 24 hours after South African scientists announced the discovery of the new Omicron COVID-19 variant, rich countries in Europe, as well as Canada and the United States, slapped highly damaging, blanket travel bans on a swathe of southern African countries. The imperialists are reacting in a haphazard fashion to the discovery of this new strain, whose emergence they facilitated to begin with through hoarding the world’s vaccine supply.

On 27 November, protests broke out against amendments to the Referendum Law – eliminating the need for a 50 percent turnout of adult citizens to ensure the validity of the referendum – as well as against the Expropriation Law – making it easier for the state to expropriate the private property of ordinary working class people. All this is being declared as “in the public interest” – by which, of course, are meant the interests of big business.

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The most powerful deformed workers’ state was collapsing into chaos as supposed communists were looting the state and its assets, cheered on by the imperialists of the west. Capitalism reared its ugly head, and the workers of the Soviet Union had to pay the price.

A row over an alleged Downing Street Christmas party held during lockdown has added further fuel to the fire for Boris Johnson and his scandal-ridden government. The labour movement must mobilise to kick out these crooks and charlatans.

In 1965, reactionary military generals in Indonesia began an anti-communist massacre, slaughtering up to two million members and supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in one of the twentieth century’s worst mass murders. This year – after six decades of cover up – documents have been released that show the pivotal role played by the British secret services in moulding public opinion in preparation for the slaughter, through a series of propaganda leaflets disguised as the writings of concerned Indonesian emigres.

On 4 December, hundreds of workers both from the public and private sector; as well as trade union representatives, students and peasant leaders, gathered in Lahore from all over Pakistan to attend the central workers’ convention hosted by the Red Workers’ Front. The convention was held in the Bakhtiar Labour Hall, which belongs to the Hydro Union for WAPDA (the state electricity department), the largest public sector union in Pakistan. This was the conclusion of a long series of conventions held in dozens of cities across the country in November.

There is a growing demand for revolutionary ideas as more and more Canadians realize that capitalism has failed. A recent study showed that 35 per cent of the population support moving away from this system, and in the current context it is not hard to see why. It is with this in mind that Fightback magazine recently went fortnightly, meaning we doubled our rate of publication to provide a Marxist analysis on current events every two weeks!