EUROPE’S streets remain aflame with a population angry about how their war economies have utterly ignored their own people. Across the Atlantic, a fierce mobilisation in Brazil and the United States produced election results that favour the good side of history, without their own potential being exaggerated. The reaction of people in the Americas and Europe at present is that the abysmal growth rates due to the low investment in their own countries result in households cutting meals, in young people postponing independent lives, and in workers earning wages that cannot meet their Strait of Hormuz inflation expenses. Even if a lower rate of inflation eventually slows the price rise, the accumulated rise in prices remains; a lower rate of inflation does not restore the purchasing power already taken from working people. That is why they are mobilised onto the streets and into the voting booth. India’s farmers’ revolt and the cockroach movement of large parts of society are very much part of this shift in the needle of history toward justice and away from the ugliness of decades of counter-revolutionary policies (which are euphemistically otherwise called neoliberalism).

A DEFEAT FOR TRUMP

The November midterm elections in the United States have deprived US President Donald Trump’s Republicans of control of both houses of Congress. Anger over living costs and the war against Iran helped break their support for Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) coalition. The day before the election, Trump gave a press conference to speak about how he had authorised the clean-up of the Reflecting Pool in Washington, and the day after the election, he told the press about his plans for a White House ballroom and signed an Executive Order to protect his decorations of the Oval Office. It appears that Trump has become the Interior Decorator-in-Chief with this defeat rather than the fierce MAGA leader that he had been. But this is misleading. Trump is capable of further aggression abroad and of cruelty at home to show that he is strong. The midterm election has exposed the weakened appeal of the MAGA bargain: workers are asked to finance military adventures while accepting insecurity as their personal responsibility. This is no longer of interest, but Trump must thump against popular opinion with his gargantuan ego operating with the belief that the MAGA constituency will never abandon him ultimately even if they turn against the Republican politicians.

Democratic control of the US Congress creates opportunities for their largely unimaginative leadership to obstruct legislation, investigate the administration, and contest funding for Trump’s projects. Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Hakeem Jeffries are like middle-management imperialists, unwilling to move against the status quo, so willing to continue imperialist policies and at the same time to appear as if they care about the popular distress. Previous Democratic administrations helped to construct the machinery of US imperialism and have repeatedly defended it. Trump continues to command the armed forces, and so if he wishes to bomb Iran again, for instance, it is unlikely that a Democratic leadership, deferential to Israel, would object.

There are now eight Democratic Socialist of America backed representatives in the US House, and there are several people who have openly opposed the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians and the US illegal war on Iran. They will need robust popular movements to draw upon the distress and anger of the population to turn an electoral rebuke into pressure against war, deportations, and attacks on social provision. Without such sustained pressure, the political establishment in the United States is very capable of absorbing the anger and continuing with much of the same policy.

ETERNAL LULA

Brazil offers the clearest defensive victory against the international far right of a special type. On October 25, Lula defeated Flávio Bolsonaro with 51.79 per cent of valid votes, winning his fourth presidential term, while Bolsonaro fled by private plane from Brazil to Miami in the United States. Lula’s victory blocks the return of the Bolsonaro family to the presidency and preserves space for struggles over wages, hunger, public investment, and national sovereignty. Internationally, it keeps Brazil available as an important voice against unilateral coercion and for cooperation among developing countries. A Bolsonaro victory would have strengthened the forces seeking to subordinate the region to Washington.

The narrow mandate and the far right’s capture of the legislature reveals the depth of Brazil’s political division. The reactionary far right retains a substantial popular base, and an electoral victory – as Lula found the previous three times – cannot dissolve the power of agribusiness, conservative institutions, finance, and the harsh media. The far right having consolidated across the Americas leaves Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba as islands amid an ugly storm. That is why Lula’s renewed mandate cannot be judged merely by the election results but must be seen considering the material improvements in people’s lives. Defending democracy requires an economic programme that gives workers reasons to defend it. If the poor are asked only to protect institutions while their own needs remain postponed, the right will return to exploit their disappointment and redirect it against the left.

AFRICA ON THE MOVE

Across Africa, where the median age is very low, mass protests of young people have consolidated into some important victories: the Gen Z uprising in Kenya (2024, 2025, 2026), the #EndBadGovernance protest in Nigeria (2024), the march to Parliament in Uganda (2024), the #StopGalamseyNow in Ghana (2024), the post-election protests in Mozambique (2024-25), the youth protests in Togo (2025), the GenZ 212 in Morocco (2025), and the Gen Z Mada in Madagascar (2025) express the rhythm of the protest wave. These uprisings have faced twin reactions, meagre concessions and harsh repression, including long-term imprisonment for the leaders. The failure of the uprising in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 hangs heavily over the youth, who protest but worry about the impossibility of change. The fulfilment of popular aspirations requires organisations able to resist both external financial discipline and the domestic concentration of power. That much is known, but from where will this organisation emerge?

South Africa’s Communist Party (SACP) is the most important left force on the continent, which is why its decision to contest the November 4 municipal election independently offers a new possibility for the African left. For the first time since the democratic breakthrough of 1994, the SACP sought votes under its own name, giving working-class discontent a distinct electoral expression. The Party has won over 700,000 votes, 2.38% of the total, and has won 261 seats (with high support in the Eastern Cape – 97 seats – and in Limpopo – 54 seats). The campaign asserted that workers and the poor must exercise their own political initiative within the unfinished struggle for national liberation, unfinished because of the dry taps, the unreliable electricity, the high rate of unemployment, and municipal decay.

To build these electoral gains into durable popular power will require sustain mass work, including an expansion of the People’ Red Caravan, a form of cooperative building across the country. General Secretary Solly Afrika Mapaila has proposed bringing together left formations to discuss a common agenda, recognising that electoral representation must strengthen a wider movement. Popular forces need organisations capable of connecting immediate grievances to a programme that challenges the power of capital. Communist councillors will be judged by their ability to strengthen those struggles and make working people participants in the decisions that shape their lives. A renewed SACP will provide the leadership necessary across Africa for the consolidation of an African left to guide the popular uprisings against both exploitation and demoralisation.

EUROPE’S BURNING STREETS

France’s renewed mobilisation, building on the Yellow Vest movement of 2018 and the student struggles in intervening years, shows a route by which the working class is converging around the issue of wages, education, public services and the right to protest (including for Palestine). The energy has been infectious, moving to Italy’s October 30 strike and rolling unrest in Germany over conscription. Governments of Macron, Mertz, and Meloni quickly find money for armaments while insisting that schools and hospitals must accept scarcity.  For now, all eyes are on the French presidential election, when the left will likely coalesce to challenge both the far right and the less far right.

That is precisely the picture in Serbia, where the Student Lists’ won in the parliamentary elections with 140 of 250 seats against 103 for the list led by incumbent president Aleksandar Vučić. The movement grew after the deadly collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy in November 2024, which became a symbol of corruption and official impunity. Speculation about who backs this movement fails to see that it is built out of genuine grievances that have gathered wider anger into a sustained challenge to entrenched authority. The Serbian movement now faces the question confronting many youth uprisings: how to build durable democratic organisation and meet social needs after the exhilaration of mobilisation. Its victory nevertheless supplies encouragement to those told that powerful governments, protected by patronage and intimidation, cannot be removed through collective action. Protest led to parliament and now sets the Student List a serious task of driving a genuine social democratic agenda in a country cannibalised by European Union fiscal rules and by the corruption of its domestic elite.

ISRAEL’S PALESTINIAN TRAP

Israel’s October 27 election delivered a serious setback to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. His bloc won 53 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, below the 61 required for a majority. Other Jewish parties have won 48 seats, also unable to build a stable government. The real surprise was delivered by the 900,000 Palestinian voters, who gave the Arab List groups 19 seats. The Palestinians voted against the genocide and now hold an opening against their political marginalisation in Israel. To form a stable government of the opposition would require their support, which then would mean that Palestinian issues are on the table.

The election punished Netanyahu. It did not change the structure that benefits from the occupation of the Palestinian lands, the apartheid conditions of life for Palestinians, and the genocide in Gaza. The progressive potential in the election depends on whether pressure inside and outside Israel can secure Palestinian rights and halt the machinery of destruction. For that, there needs to be a global demand – as the International Peoples Assembly has said – for the Palestinians to have a right to political activity. The slogan will have to be extended from ‘end the genocide’ to ‘allow Palestinians to be political’.

OPENINGS

The crisis of our times does not choose its political outcomes. Insecurity amongst billions of people has indeed created the space for reactionary ideas and the movements of the far right of a special type. But this insecurity can also produce solidarity and resistance, indeed it can provide a start for social transformation. Electoral setbacks for dangerous governments create these openings that popular organisation must widen.

The needle of history has moved because people have acted. Its further movement will depend on whether they can turn scattered refusals into sustained power over the decisions that govern their lives.