Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

The event will open with a large demonstration in the streets of the capital of Rio Grande do Sul. Over three days, eleven thematic plenary sessions and 150 self-organised activities will be held. Discussions will focus on strengthening social, feminist, and trade union movements, as well as international solidarity in the struggle against fascism—but also on the possibilities and limits of institutional action. Solidarity with Gaza, struggles against climate denialism and for agrarian reform, and the situation in the Americas will also feature prominently. By defeating Jair Bolsonaro in 2022, the Brazilian left demonstrated that it is possible to halt the advance of the neo-fascist threat: political parties—from the social-democratic PT to the radical-left PSOL and the Communist Party—alongside popular movements and trade unions, overcame their differences to secure Lula’s victory. These forces are now part of the united committee organising the conference.

While many speakers will come from the Americas, a wide range of organisations and movements will be represented in Porto Alegre, which hosted the first World Social Forum in 2001 and was the birthplace of one of Latin America’s major social movements, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), in the 1980s. More than 1,800 signatories from all five continents have endorsed the international call launched by CADTM, calling for participation in the conference.

These include leaders of popular and political organisations from Latin America, including MST leader João Pedro Stédile; feminist authors and activists Nancy Fraser and Tithi Bhattacharya; Marxist scholars Boris Kagarlitsky, Achin Vanaik, Vijay Prashad and Vivek Chibber; Andreas Malm, Swedish ecologist and an editorial board member of Historical Materialism journal; Frei Betto, Brazilian writer and figure of liberation theology; German parliamentarian Violetta Bock; French MEP (La France Insoumise) Rima Hassan and Thiago Ávila, participants in the Global Sumud Flotilla for Gaza; Penelope Duggan editor of international Viewpoint and member of Fourth international leadership; Éric Toussaint, spokesperson of the CADTM international network and Sushovan Dhar from CADTM Asia; Ada Colau, former mayor of Barcelona; Annie Ernaux, Nobel Prize in Literature laureate in 2022; former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn; La France Insoumise leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, alongside parliamentarians from Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Germany, and Turkey, as well as the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York, is a member.

Signatories also include Yanis Varoufakis, initiator of the Progressive International; Zoe Konstantopoulou (former speaker of the Greek parliament in 2015); Manon Aubry (LFI); Olivier Besancenot (NPA); Raymonde Ponce (Green senator); Denis Robert, founder of the media outlet Blast, and many others.

 Neo-fascist International

A neo-fascist international is taking shape, driven in part by the United States under Donald Trump, while the far right is advancing toward power in most European countries. In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s regime shares many characteristics with Trump’s; India is led by a radical Hindu nationalist and Islamophobic leader, Narendra Modi; and in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s neo-fascist government has been carrying out a genocide in Gaza for more than two and a half years.

Beyond ideological alignment and public statements, the European far right is now integrated into transnational networks of political coordination directly linked to Trumpism.
The main point of convergence is the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the main annual gathering of the American far right, which has gradually become internationalised. Since the early 2020s, leaders and organisers from AfD, Vox, Rassemblement National, Fidesz, Fratelli d’Italia, Chega, Vlaams Belang, and Romania’s AUR have regularly participated, alongside Donald Trump, his close allies (Steve Bannon, J.D. Vance, and Mike Flynn), and Latin American far-right leaders.

CPAC functions as a global ideological platform where the core themes of Trumpism are spread and aligned: civilisational war, rejection of multilateralism, hostility toward the EU, obsession with migration, attacks on the rights of women and minorities, climate scepticism, and the criminalisation of the left and social movements.

CPAC meetings held outside the United States (in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Hungary) point to the existence of a transatlantic and transcontinental axis linking Washington to European capitals and the Latin American right. These are not symbolic exchanges alone: they organise the circulation of funding, electoral strategies, digital communication techniques, and methods of social polarisation inspired by the MAGA movement.

Alongside CPAC, in Spain, the Vox party plays a central role in organising this international network, particularly through Foro Madrid, launched in 2020. Presented as a “patriotic” alternative to international progressive forums, Foro Madrid brings together far-right parties and leaders from Europe and Latin America, including figures such as Milei, Bolsonaro, and Kast, as well as representatives of the RN, Chega, Fratelli d’Italia, and parties from Central Europe.

Foro Madrid and Vox’s initiatives serve as a bridge between Trumpism, the European far right, and the Latin American radical right, articulating a discourse explicitly opposed to the left, feminism, environmentalism, human rights, and any form of popular sovereignty outside authoritarian frameworks.

 Imperialist Aggressions

In January 2026, after launching a military attack on Venezuela and abducting the Venezuelan president and his wife, Trump threatened Petro, warning that he would be next. These threats were reported by several media outlets.

Since August 2025, the U.S. military has attacked dozens of vessels in international waters in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific in the name of combating drug trafficking. The occupants—more than 130 people in total between 2 September 2025 and mid-February 2026—were killed without any public evidence of guilt and without any form of judicial process. On Trump’s orders, the U.S. military did not attempt to board these vessels but destroyed them along with their occupants. No charges, no adversarial process, no judicial decision: a single decision by Trump was enough for his military to carry out executions without trial, thereby committing outright crimes.

Emboldened by the military success of his operation and in the face of muted official international protests despite the gravity of his actions against Venezuela, Trump decided to sharply escalate the policy pursued toward Cuba since his first term. Since late January 2026, his objective has been to strangle the island’s economy by cutting off almost all fuel supplies essential for electricity generation.

The “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine marks a significant shift, both in its explicit character and in the central role assigned to military power. Whereas previous administrations generally relied on economic, diplomatic, or covert mechanisms—destabilisation, the training and funding of mercenaries, deniable assassinations—the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS 2025) and the National Defense Strategy (NDS 2026) openly assert the use of armed force as a normalised tool of regional control.

The operation against Venezuela in January 2026, along with the public threats directed at other governments—Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil—illustrates this strategy of intimidation. This has been followed, since February 2026, by a major attack on Iran carried out jointly with Israel, as well as Israel’s assault on Lebanon.

 A necessary international antifascist and anti-imperialist response

On the left, the response remains insufficiently internationalised. The forces fighting fascism and imperialist aggression are numerous and diverse, and these differences cannot and should not be erased. What is required is the construction of a broad front on a global scale against increasingly dangerous adversaries. This convergence must bring together all forces committed to defending the working class, the peasantry, migrants, women, LGBTQIA+ people, racialised communities, oppressed minorities, and Indigenous peoples—while defending nature and advancing anti-imperialist struggles.

The Porto Alegre conference will aim to provide the beginnings of a response to this challenge. What follows will be crucial: building effective, united antifascist and anti-imperialist initiatives across the world’s major regions—Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

CADTM representatives will take part as panellists in several plenary sessions and in nine self-organised activities, the details of which are published below.

You can still sign the International Call to strengthen antifascist and anti-imperialist action by clicking here.