IN EARLY January 2025, over 2,000 international delegates gathered in Caracas, Venezuela for the first ever World Anti-fascist Festival. The festival was one of the major directives of the first International Antifascist Congresses held just months prior.

Guests included government ministers and leaders of the Cuban and South African communist parties. The platform was an opportunity for Venezuela’s re-elected president, Nicolas Maduro, to place the country’s Bolivarian revolution in the context of the global fight against fascism, racism and imperialism.
 
The leaders of the Bolivarian Revolution have correctly identified fascism as the next great battle to win and have mobilised key activists and influencers in the joint struggles against imperialism, colonialism, and fascism from Africa, Asia, Latin America and even Europe.

In bringing these groups together in Venezuela against all the odds of sanctions, it is an act of defiance against the northern hegemon of the US.

Whether it’s finding ways for Brazilian and Honduran delegates to circumvent the limited flight routes by travelling to Caracas via Lisbon, Portugal or welcoming delegates from countries still fighting for sovereignty from their new-old colonial masters in the Sahel region of Africa, such an initiative gives anti-fascists of the world an opportunity like no other to forge new internationalist friendships and exchange experiences on building a better world.

The power of such an intervention cannot be understated especially within the context of Venezuelan history.    
 
At the heart of the empire, British schoolchildren rarely learn about the anti-colonial revolutionaries in world history. The names Toussaint l’Ouverture (Haiti), Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), or Patrice Lumumba (DR of Congo) go unacknowledged in the national curriculum so it would come as a surprise if any adult Brit would even recognise the name Simon Bolivar, let alone be aware of the Bolivarian Revolution.

To the masses of Latin America, it is the revolutionary process initiated by Hugo Chavez and inspired by the fight against Spanish colonial rule led by Simon Bolivar in which the emancipation of enslaved Africans and the freedom of Indigenous people played an integral part.

Chavez’s new constitution was founded on a socialist economy and social policies, which in turn were funded by the country's oil revenue. These also included the redistribution of land and wealth; the nationalisation of energy sectors; and the prioritisation of the poor, disenfranchised, and Afro-Indigenous peoples of Venezuela.

In 1989 the neoliberal president Carlos Andres Perez imposed IMF recommended reforms that saw the prices of groceries tripling overnight. This led to mass civil unrest led by the poor Afrodescendent communities.

The rebellions were quashed by the police and military, leading to the murder of thousands — events that would help to shape Chavez’s and Venezuelan politics to this day.
 
Policies and practices aimed at lifting Afrodescedents from poverty gradually increased particularly after the post-2002 coup period as Chavez connected the class struggle with the anti-colonial and black liberation struggles.

The 2011 census indicated that approximately 54 per cent of the population have African ancestry – with 1 per cent identifying as black and 4 per cent identifying as Afro.

Under Chavez and later Maduro, blackness and the celebration of blackness has become synonymous with all the tenets of the Bolivarian Revolution. So much so that the tragic 2017 lynching of a dark-skinned Afro-Venezuelan grocery worker Orlando Figuera by the opposition thugs was entirely predilected on the typecasting of him as a Chavista because he was black.
 
Black liberation has been at the forefront of Venezuela’s approach to foreign policy and international affairs. Its solidarity with the global South cannot be understated.

As Minister of Foreign Affairs under Chavez, Nicolas Maduro spearheaded the establishment of diplomatic ties with Palestine and 15 African countries; supported Libya under Muammar Gadaffi and severed diplomatic ties with Israel.

At the World Antifascist Congress of 2024 and again at the World Antifascist Festival in January 2025, Maduro explicitly voiced his support for Russia and China. He called on delegates to study their revolutionary histories and emphasised China’s unshakable solidarity with Venezuela and Cuba.
 
This is why Maduro’s recent presidential inauguration signalled a resounding win against US imperialism and a defeat of the fascist spectre that had been plaguing the country over the past year.

The Venezuelans came out in their thousands to support of the anti-fascist, pro-peace manifesto of the Maduro presidency.

Two thousand international delegates witnessed first-hand the unity and solidarity on display at the World Anti-fascist Festival which incorporated the swearing-in celebrations on the streets of Caracas.
 
Trump’s inauguration could not be more of a contrast. The second-term president featured his very own Famous Five (Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai) as guests of honour at the inauguration. This strategic mobilisation of the billionaire-class was a consolidation of his power in the Oval Office and a warning to all daring to challenge his presidency.

With the backing of the US billionaire tech moguls, Trump’s new era signals a monopoly over one of the key propaganda arms of the US empire: media and communications.

Meta has removed its fact-checking facility and TikTok has come back online in the US with a personalised thank-you to President Trump.

Promises to strengthen ties with Israel through the rebuilding of the Iron Dome and reversal of funding cancellation to the settler-colonial state have been paired with directives to start mass deportations of migrants on day one of his presidency.

With each new Executive Order being signed, we are witnessing the very real emboldenment of fascist ideology and the normalisation of fascist policies in the US that will impact on the rest of the world.

The effect Trump’s second presidency will have on the global South is yet to be fully realised but Venezuela has already been preparing for the eventuality of a full-scale attack on what America considers its “backyard.”   
 
The resurgence of fascist ideology is rippling, in politically seismic waves, across the globe, North and South. In recent years in Venezuela, fascist is the rhetoric synonymous with opposition.

The lives of immigrants, Afro-Venezuelans, Chavistas, and the indigenous population have become dispensable in the eyes of the the opposition. Disinformation about marginalised populations has spread vociferously on social media such as TikTok and Twitter, inciting unprecedented violence during the election period in July 2024.

In Britain, refugees and those profiled as Muslims bear the brunt of the repercussions from the now-defunct Trump-Farage friendship of Trump's first term.

In the summer of 2024, the comeback and valorisation of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, as an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim nationalist figurehead for the far right devolved into nationwide riots and a renewed appetite for populist, racist politics.
 
One can only hope Venezuela’s efforts in mobilising internationalists and anti-fascists will not go to waste. Venezuela is to be a significant force against fascism and the US imperialism in the coming years of the Trump administration.

Ultimately, the hope is in all the people of conscience around the world to stand up against fascism and stand for black liberation. From Palestine to Panama, Senegal to Sudan, freedom waits at the end of a long a struggle that must be waged every waking hour of every day in every corner of the world.