Around the world, far-right and fascist groups are gaining strength, underscoring the need for an internationalist response to stop their advance.
In this context, grassroots activists in Brazil are organising the 1st International Antifascist Conference over March 26–28 next year in Porto Alegre — the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state — which will welcome delegations from around the world.
Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) in Porto Alegre proposed the conference, in collaboration with social movements and other leftist parties.
The conference, with 1500 attendees from more than 30 countries, was originally poised to go ahead in May last year, but catastrophic floods in Rio Grande do Sul forced organisers to postpone the event. The climate disaster affected millions of people, left at least 200 dead and displaced more than 600,000.
Israel Dutra — sociologist, PSOL’s Secretary for Social Movements and a member of the conference organising committee — told Green Left that the floods were “a climatic and environmental tragedy caused by the environmental imbalance driven by the predatory vision of agribusiness [and] landowners”.
Porto Alegre mayor Sebastião Melo — aligned with former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro and with strong ties to the Brazilian far right — added to the crisis by ignoring warnings from engineers and technicians about the need to maintain the city’s flood protection system and his response to the tragedy was not “solidarity-driven or democratic”, Dutra said.
Events like the Rio Grande do Sul floods show that “the climate catastrophe cannot be separated from far-right and neo-fascist climate denialism”.
“It was a traumatic experience for us, and we were left angry and upset by what happened, but we are now organising a new response.”
The reasons for organising the conference — a call to action to confront the far right and fascism — are even more pressing today, Dutra said.
“Since then, [far-right Argentine President Javier] Milei has continued imposing harsh adjustments on the people ... [while] Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are attempting to create lawless spaces with Big Tech on social media.
Musk travelled to Britain and Europe this year to support far-right parties and urged Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany in the recent elections. He also lent his support to imprisoned British fascist Tommy Robinson.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide against Palestinians represents “the worst of the far right” and “one of the darkest phases in world history,” Dutra said.
“Right now, Gaza continues being attacked by the far-right Israeli government.
“This motivates us to pursue international coordination against the far right and its devastating impacts.”
Dutra highlighted the need for an internationalist focus in organising to confront the far right and fascism.
“Achieving unity is essential,” Dutra said. “But this can only be accomplished with a social majority.”
“This is why the work of Green Left, LINKS and the comrades in Australia is so important — you are an advanced part of the international solidarity with peoples and their struggles.”
The host city of Porto Alegre holds important symbolism as a site of democratic struggle in the 20th and 21st centuries, Dutra said.
“We chose Porto Alegre for its history,” Dutra said. “It had a strong leftist presence, which won the mayoralty, and large grassroots movements in the 1980s.
“Between 2001 and 2005, it was the international capital of the World Social Forum, which was important in the framework of the anti-globalisation and alter-globalisation movement that initially succeeded in bringing together various social movements.”
[Follow Green Left for further updates on the conference.]