By Stephen Sefton

The overwhelming majority of government speakers at the 80th United Nations General Assembly this week championed peace. They called for cooperation, mutual respect, and dialogue among nations. In contrast, representatives of the collective West defended their usual arrogant and imposing positions and policies, even though they clearly violate the UN's fundamental principles of self-determination of peoples, non-aggression, and non-intervention. US President Donald Trump once again revealed himself to be a malevolent ignoramus with a sense of Yankee superiority derived from the odious cult of Manifest Destiny and the illusion of invincibility following the end of the Cold War.

In a recent interview, the prominent economist Michael Hudson observed that in 1945, Western powers rescued fascism at the very moment they defeated it. In 1943, the philosopher Simone Weil had denounced the European fascism of that time as applying to countries with white populations the same colonial methods of conquest and domination used against the peoples of the majority world. Thus, the renewed contemporary Western fascism not only has its origins in the terrible crimes of European and North American genocide and slavery, but was also reinforced in 1945 by the recruitment of large personnel from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to aid future Western aggressions against the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

It is necessary to recall this history to understand the apparent contradiction of contemporary fascism, now deployed by the same Western powers that defeated German, Italian, and Japanese fascism in 1945. From that moment on, under the pretext of anti-communism, the US government and its allies supported bloody dictatorships around the world and carried out coups against independent sovereign governments from Iran to Guatemala, from Congo to Ghana, from Indonesia to Chile. To defend their racist system of global domination, they unleashed major war after war, in Korea, Algeria, and Vietnam, with millions of civilian deaths.

Now, the fascist elites of the collective West are facilitating the Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people and the criminal Zionist attacks against tens of thousands of civilians in Lebanon. They are facilitating similar, smaller-scale criminal attacks against the civilian population in Russia by the Nazi-sympathizing regime in Ukraine. Now, too, the US government is threatening to bomb Venezuela under the pretext of attacking sources of drug production and trade. This is merely another big lie, constantly repeated in the typical style of fascist governments determined to attack another people and government that resists their greed.

Amidst all this genocide, aggression, and harassment, more and more governments in the majority world are willing to denounce the criminality of the collective West, which, apart from its support for the Zionist genocide in Palestine, is also evident in its continued support for the NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. Furthermore, there is increasingly less tolerance in the majority world for the constant abuse by Western governments of tariffs and unilateral coercive measures as repressive tools of blackmail and coercion. The intense and constant psychological warfare waged by the Western media against governments and leaders who defend the sovereignty and national dignity of their nations is no longer convincing.

In the case of Cuba, the entire world continues to denounce the injustice of the genocidal Yankee blockade and recognizes the solidarity and unparalleled humanitarian practices of the Cuban Revolution. Everyone sees that the collective West aspires to steal Venezuela's fabulous natural resources and also covets control of Nicaragua's strategic location in the heart of the Central American isthmus. Even social-democratic governments, such as Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, have been economically attacked for defending their national interests and undertaking truly democratic transformation processes.

The fascist aggression of the collective West and its allies reflects the class war unleashed by Western ruling elites against their own populations. Since the end of the Cold War, these elites have acted to eliminate unions, slash rights to healthcare, education, and welfare, and have effected massive transfers of wealth to themselves through repeated financial bailouts at taxpayer expense. But, internationally, the elites are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain their historic extortionist practices due to the growing global influence of China and Russia and the development of genuinely multilateral organizations such as the BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The Trump administration's attempts to coerce the Indian government by increasing tariffs and applying coercive measures against the use of the Chabahar port, jointly managed by India and Iran, appear to have failed miserably. The proliferation of new trade routes across the Eurasian region has relegated traditional routes through the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca to a lesser extent. Domestically, the neoliberal policies implemented by their governments have destroyed the productive capacity of the economies of North American and European countries. In important technological sectors, such as green technologies and electric vehicles, Western countries have been unable to compete with their Asian commercial rivals.

The fascist Western ruling elites have repeatedly demonstrated that they will not tolerate, without an aggressive and violent reaction, the successful development of independent countries that defend their sovereignty. They have demonstrated this against Russia and Iran, against Democratic Korea and China, against Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. At this point, it remains to be seen whether the aggressive Yankee military harassment of Venezuela will truly escalate into open war. In any case, in Latin America, another reason for the US government's aggressive regional policy is indicated by the Trump administration's promise of unconditional support to sustain the Argentine economy.

The corrupt neoliberal fascist policies in Argentina have collapsed public finances. Production in industries such as construction and manufacturing has fallen to 2020 levels during the drastic economic slowdown caused by COVID-19 measures. The country's GDP has contracted by more than 3% since President Milei and his accomplices took power. Thus, just weeks before important legislative elections in Argentina and a presidential vote in Chile, the supposed star model of neoliberal fascism in the region has completely failed.

Instead, Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution has overcome a decade of ruthless economic aggression from the collective West, comparable only to the US government's blockade of the Cuban Revolution. Venezuela is practically self-sufficient in food production and continues to guarantee millions of social housing units for its population. Its national economic activity continues to recover rapidly, with more than four years of steady GDP growth, currently estimated at over 6% for the current year, and a sustained recovery in oil production.

In Cuba this month, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez revealed the latest figures on the damage caused by the more than sixty-year-long U.S. blockade. The total cost to Cuban society and economy now totals more than US$2.1 trillion. Even in the face of this unprecedented, ruthless economic aggression, Cuba continues to guarantee its people healthcare and education systems that are among the best in the world. Similarly, the Sandinista Revolution has guaranteed the Nicaraguan people the best healthcare system, the best highway system, the greatest citizen security, and the most innovative education system in all of Central America.

The successful overcoming by our revolutionary countries of the respective economic aggressions imposed by successive North American governments, with the complicity of their European allies, highlights our countries' revolutionary focus on the development of the human person and the flourishing potential of families, without excluding anyone. It also demonstrates the essential cooperation of global powers such as China, Russia, and Iran, which recognize the value of our countries as exemplary revolutionary allies in promoting a true democratization of international relations based on solidarity and tenderness among peoples.

These relations are expressed in the constant strengthening of all kinds of infrastructure, international diplomatic support, defense and security capabilities, and cutting-edge medical technology. As our Co-President Rosario has said, "International Solidarity is not only a Duty, it is a Right and a reality, which advances in a world that advances against the enemies of Peace, against the enemies of Solidarity, of Fraternity... those who are seeking to continue destroying the World, and to continue capitalizing on the Heritage that belongs to the Peoples of the World... the Peoples on Paths that are of Glory, of Victories, of Liberation."