13 April 2022 marked 80 years since the Dutch revolutionary socialist Henk Sneevliet, along with six of his comrades, were executed by the Nazi German occupiers. Sneevliet devoted his whole life to fighting for the interests of the working class of the Netherlands, as well as the oppressed in Indonesia and China.

On 9 April, a group called Stand With Ukraine held a small demonstration in London. Despite receiving support from a number of trade unions, only a few hundred people took part. In true Orwellian fashion, this so-called anti-war solidarity demonstration was filled with hair-raising, warmongering rhetoric. Slogans included: “arm, arm, arm Ukraine!”, and participants were reportedly inviting NATO to “call Putin’s bluff”, i.e. to launch a full-blown military intervention and spark World War III.

In a shock announcement, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has told Russian state media: “NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy.” In an uncharacteristically angry tone, he accused NATO of fighting a proxy war by supplying military aid to Ukraine, just at a time when western defence ministers have gathered in Germany for US-hosted talks on supporting Ukraine through what one US general called a “very critical” few weeks.

Quel spectacle! What a show we had yesterday as the exit polls indicated that Macron had won the presidential elections. He walked through the streets of Paris hand in hand with his wife, and accompanied by a group of young people, apparently an indication of the generations that will support him in the future. And in his speech, he announced that he was no longer “le candidat” but the “President of all the French”. How hollow all this must sound to the huge majority of French workers and youth who did not vote for him and hate him with a passion.

The re-election of Emmanuel Macron marks a new stage in the crisis of French capitalism. In the second round, taking into account abstentions and blank or invalid ballots, the ‘Jupitarian President’ won the votes of only 38.5 percent of registered voters. That's 5 percent and 2 million fewer votes than in 2017. Moreover, almost half of his 18.8 million voters have absolutely no confidence in him. All in all, Macron won amidst a sea of bitterness, mistrust and hatred. It is these conditions of social tension and class hatred that give rise to revolutions.

The final round of the French presidential elections will be held on Sunday 24 April. The French electorate will be called upon to chose between Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen – two sides of the same pro-boss, viciously anti-worker and reactionary capitalist coin! While the so-called leaders of the French left and trade union bureaucrats have capitulated to bourgeois pressure, calling for workers and youth to form a ‘Republican Front’ behind Macron to beat Le Pen, we say: neither one, nor the other!

Parliamentary elections were held in Hungary on 3 April 2022. Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party has won a supermajority for the fourth consecutive time. On this occasion, they won against an opposition that united a whole range of parties, from the right-wing Jobbik to the supposedly left-wing Socialist Party. While the opposition lost more than 800,000 voters compared to their combined vote in 2018, the far-right Mi Hazánk, founded in 2018 by former Jobbik politicians, entered parliament.

The comrades of the International Marxist Tendency are following with enormous interest and sympathy the Socialist Movement in the Basque Country, which promotes the emergence of a mass communist movement, and defends the international character of socialism. We publish here a brief article on the characteristics of this extraordinary occurrence, and its current development.

The second round of the French presidential elections will take place on 24 April. All the parties of the left and trade union leaders are pressuring their supporters to get behind a ‘Republican Front’ to beat Marine Le Pen who they believe is a fascist – by voting for Macron’s government of the rich. This rotten class collaboration is already being rejected by thousands of young people, who have occupied their universities and demonstrated with the slogan: neither Macron, nor Le Pen!

This article was produced several months ago by our Italian comrades of Sinistra, Classe, Rivoluzione in response to a polemic by Francesco Ricci concerning the counter-revolutionary demonstration in Cuba last year, which he supported. Ricci’s organisation (the PDAC) inherits the tradition of Nahuel Moreno, a leader of the Argentine Trotskyist movement who historically swung back and forth between ultra leftism and opportunism.

Note from the editorial board: Today we are reproducing a pair of very important articles that blow sky high all the lying western propaganda that has surrounded the war in Ukraine from day one up to the present. The author of these remarkable documents is not a Marxist. Far from it. He is Jacques Baud, a former colonel in the Swiss army and ex-member of the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service. He also worked for NATO, during and after the 2014 Ukraine crisis, following which he participated in programmes related to Ukraine. 

The first round of the French presidential elections represented a watershed moment in the political situation. Above all, we saw a tremendous rejection of the establishment. The traditional parties were decimated, and so-called ‘extremist’ candidates received over 50 percent of the vote. Left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon was denied a place in the final round by barely one percentage point, thanks largely to the wrecking behaviour of other left parties. The ‘centrist’ incumbent Emmanuel Macron now faces a knife-edge race in round two against Marine Le Pen of National Rally (RN).

Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak has become embroiled in scandal over revelations that he and his family have utilised shady legal loopholes to dodge UK taxes. The establishment is living on a different planet. Their system must be overthrown.

On Wednesday 6 April, hundreds of thousands of workers from all over Greece responded to the call of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) and the Civil Servants' Confederation (ADEDY) to join a 24-hour general strike. Tens of thousands of workers, along with unemployed citizens and youth, participated in strike rallies organised in over 70 cities.

The first round of the French presidential election has turned out as Macron had hoped, and as he had prepared for a long time. In 2017, Macron won 66% of the vote against Le Pen in the second round. Millions of voters who had voted for Mélenchon or Hamon at that time in the first round, mobilised to “block the far right” in the second round. For five years, the Head of State has been aiming for the repetition of this scenario.