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Performative Imagining of Something New

On Symbols and Gestures in Contemporary Serbia


23/04/2025

The Serbian flag is ours again! Students have cleansed it from the awkward performative tears at the UN General Assembly, and similar political follies. We are obviously collectively unlearning from the war and healing from nationalism. It stands in solidarity with the flags of various Serbian universities and faculties. Absent, however, are the flags of the European Union (as well as those of Russia, or China), which comes as no surprise, considering the hypocritical stance on supporting a lithium-rich stabilocracy. At the same time, Georgia fights a similar battle, albeit with a different dynamic concerning EU and Russia. It seems we have grown exhausted from waiting to join and disillusioned with the EU altogether, so we have decided to achieve the rule of law on our own, refusing to be yet another Krastev’s (2019) copycat. The West has taken far too long to direct meaningful attention toward this movement and publish relevant, multipolar, truth-based reports. Ironically, the pioneering gesture of support from the West came from Madonna.

Today, the primary Serbian identity is that of a protester, be it a student, or a supporter of students. Perhaps for that reason rainbow flags are not there, but members of the LGBTQIA+ community are. These flags are not prohibited. Their absence likely reflects an intelligent sensitivity to the delicate broader context and understanding that the students’ democratic demands implicitly include the protection of everyone’s rights. This is still a much better option than the display of joint rainbow and Israeli flags expressing gratitude to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the March 8th protest in Berlin. Meanwhile, flags representing Kosovo and Metohija as part of Serbia are seen, which I can understand, as the question of territorial integrity is still a core identity value for a large part of the population. It stands for a reminder of the repeated re-election of destructive politicians and of the multidimensional trauma related to the NATO bombing from 1999  that is collectively not yet dealt with. 

The Montenegrin flag was also present, which finally feels natural due to the longstanding ties between the two countries that have been politically exploited by each other in the meantime. Additionally, it was encouraging and heartwarming to see Roma people taking part under their flag.

Religious iconography remains prominent, especially on the Day of the Republic of Serbia (15th of February). It could have been perceived as problematic, given its past instrumentalization such as the church-backed protests in Belgrade against the Pride Parade, absurdified by a portrait of Putin, as well as the political position and moral ambiguity of the Patriarch. However, the existing atmosphere seems more aligned with the fundamental values of Orthodoxy. since the students from the Sandžak region, which has a majority Muslim Bosniak population, spoke of never having felt like citizens of Serbia before. Yet, on this occasion of emotional encounter they did, in togetherness and mutual respect for all flags and faiths. Ethnic insignia and traditional customs, once divisive, became symbols of peace in Novi Pazar, embodied in the act of joint carrying of a placard saying “Some uphold tradition, while others uphold corruption”. They wore both Serbian and Sandžak traditional attire on a safe non-distance. Students succeeded in shifting Serbia’s dominant religion from exclusion and hatred, inscribing it within the ethos of “Love thy neighbor”. Paradoxically, reclaiming religious symbols seems to be a necessary step toward achieving a truly secular state.

The Serbian anthem is regularly performed as a communal song in our collective struggle for a country we wish to remain in or return to. After all, such a place is not so undesirable when measured by human-oriented values (not to be confused with anthropocentrism). I once overheard a girl from Germany dismiss Serbian students as mere nationalists for carrying “nationalistic” emblems and performing “nationalistic” musical content. Like many others, she failed to step outside a narrow, and rather ahistorical framework of political “correctness” which often imposes an one-size-fits-all moral judgment.

In the meantime, the Serbian president continues to claim that “foreign services” are behind the students’ blockades, framing it as a co-funded attempt to stage a “colour revolution.” In response, the students reclaimed the narrative, renaming it the “children’s revolution”, and performing a children’s song about a bumblebee who decides to bring order to his meadow, infantilizing themselves in power, honesty, and subversive wit.

Students incorporate traditional music, such as ‘tamburitza’ songs typical of Vojvodina, often adapting the lyrics to reflect the current moment. They also perform national folk dances, something many had distanced themselves from, perceiving them as retrograde. An interesting twist occurred when a cultural and artistic society performed one of these dances while chanting the most popular protest slogan—pumpaj! (explained in more detail below). Connections are forged across all musical genres, in collaboration with the songs’ authors, all allied around a shared goal to change the system. Students have prompted us to reconsider our identity and all that binds us culturally and historically.

In a similar line, choirs, especially children’s ones, play a significant role in most of the protests. This recalls not only the traditions of ancient theatre and Brecht, but also contemporary Germany, where the choir remains one of the core elements of theatrical practice. It invites both audiences and participants to engage with ideas of community, individuality, and collective expression, while advancing the plot and providing background and summary information to aid in grasping (governmental and presidential) performances. One powerful example was a ten-minute collaborative choral performance of Oskar Davičo’s poem Serbia, created by students from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade and the Art Collective Beton Kunst, who explored the right to freedom of speech and the phenomenon of (self-)censorship. Nevertheless, it was absurdly interpreted by pro-regime tabloids as a “satanic cult.” 

A key visual motif are red-painted (bloody) hands/gloves, which are the first widely recognized symbol of the protests, intended to signify political corruption and responsibility for social harm. This even resonates, particularly in its violent gestures, with Macbeth and his Lady, who wore long red gloves in a recent staging of the play at the Berliner Ensemble. Nonsensically enough, yet calculated in accordance with international concerns, the government wanted to discredit this symbol, interpreting it as terroristic, appropriated from Hamas (!??), and therefore antisemitic. The protestors’ response was: We are not Hamas, but angry mamas!

Touching upon this topic, Palestinian flags are on the streets of Serbia, especially in Novi Pazar and Belgrade. Their visibility reflects, among other things, a shared resistance to neo-imperial and neo-colonial dynamics, specifically when these are driven by the interests of a privileged few in positions of global power. What unites these movements is a collective demand for freedom and sovereignty, rather than top-down interventions disguised as development. In Belgrade, this sentiment is crystallised in public outrage over the intention to transform the NATO-bombed Yugoslav Ministry of Defence building into a Trump’s hotel. That is yet another of the president’s dirty arrangements against the Law on Cultural Heritage, and an open disrespect of its recent inclusion on the list of Europe’s seven most endangered heritage sites for 2025. This approach to cultural policy supports a dissonant memory that ignores social wounds and the urban fabric of the city. Likewise, Palestinians do not need luxury resorts for the rich built atop sacred ancestral land. There are, luckily, still people with the values above the monetary one who do rise.

The current landscape of global affairs, marked by a tightly interwoven network of oppressors, only strengthens our disruptive resolve. We can do this better, healthier, as organically joyous fighters for shared democratic values evolving this historical momentum into a transnational movement. As it was sung in Belgrade, “You can call me a dreamer, but I am not the only one”, there are Greeks, Georgians, Turks, North Macedonians, Slovaks, Hungarians, even Americans, who not only exchange messages of solidarity, gathering in front of the embassies, but also become co-authors of the dramaturgies of protests. This is intelligently embodied in Pikachu, who hilariously transitions between the streets of Istanbul and Belgrade, occasionally transforming into Dinsta-chu (Srb. dinstaću, meaning I will stew), which is a version of the newest performative word dinstanje (stewing), introduced by a university professor and political activist, to describe what is to be done with a chewy 13-year old “beef” in order to finally change the regime and the system. The other one is pohovanje (battering) due to the manifestation of civil disobedience in throwing eggs on corrupted politicians, their properties, and relevant institutions all over Serbia. It is certainly our specificity to even politically move around food-related verbs. The book students used to organise their plenums and blockades is titled Blockade Cookbook, which echoes the elevated significance of cooking in the Balkans. An important gestus to mention here is pumpanje (pumping). Students and citizens are determined that there must be no deescalation of tensions – change demands much more pressure. As a result, the bicycle pump became a political object, an object of performative resistance in Serbia, and Pumpa-chu (Srb. I will pump) also emerged.

Students employ humor, irony, and cross-genre creativity to generate new energy. They respond to violence with non-violence, to stupidity and lies with their opposites, radically transforming the ethical architecture of Serbia. They move their thoughts and bodies across borders. They do not put issues under the carpet. Having grown up without relying on the state, they neither expect nor easily accept its offerings. This makes them difficult to corrupt. They are patient in their struggle for democracy, of which so little remains globally. They do not fight against the president, as even some foreign media have inaccurately implied, but for the rule of law. They must be the children Maya Angelou spoke of: “To be that thing in your heart, you have to have courage (…) The truth is no one of us can be free until everybody’s free, and every one of us needs to say to our children: Children, this is your world! Come out, stand out, earn it!” And they did! 

Written in February as part of an analysis of the performativity of the students-led protests in Serbia.

The Students Blockade were initiated on 25th of November at The Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, after a violent reaction from “random” passersby in an “extreme rush” towards students and citizens who were silently protesting for 15 minutes to honour 15 people (today 16) killed by the state-based corruption in Novi Sad, just in front of their Faculty in the Boulevard of Arts. It triggered a social turn propelled by students’ determination to stop the brain drain and stay in Serbia, with one catch: to change the country instead of changing the country. A way to that destination is envisioned through the fulfilment of their Since April 6th their non-negotiable demands are:

  1. Complete documentation and accountability for the collapse of the canopy
  2. Dismissal of unfounded charges against arrested and detained students and other co-protesters.
  3. Identification and prosecution of those who attacked students and citizens
  4. Increased budget allocations for universities
  5. A thorough investigation to determine all the circumstances and responsibilities related to the incident that caused fear and panic on March 15.
  6. Accountability and protection of medical patients

In other words, the public institutions need to be depoliticised to fulfil their roles according to the Constitution of Serbia. This would immediately proclaim the president as “not authorised” for most of the roles in state and foreign affairs he has been nonchalantly taken over for shamelessly long. The students are organised in plenums operating as a plurality, without a leader. All decisions are made through direct democratic practices of voting on their daily meetings facilitated by rotating moderators.

Meanwhile, the university blockade spread across Serbia. As  Žižek has noted, they evolved into the greatest students movement in Europe since 1968. Today it is more accurately framed as a students-led citizens’ protest.

How the TU Berlin is Manufacturing Consent for Anti-Palestinian racism on campus

Statement by students and staff at the TU


The Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) published a resource page titled Nahostkonflikt und Hochschule (Middle East Conflict and Higher Education), in which it claims to have compiled a selection of materials and background information for university teaching on “how to deal with the consequences of the Hamas attack on Israel and the Middle East conflict”. But what it actually promotes is a narrow, politically charged narrative that is not only academically unsound but deeply racist and, at points, even antisemitic.

One of the central documents still available on the site is “Israelbezogener Antisemitismus” (Antisemitism related to Israel), published by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education). The document, which claims to clarify the distinction between legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and antisemitic rhetoric, includes statements such as “selbstverständlich können auch Juden unter Bezug auf Israel Antisemitismus verbreiten” (Of course Jews can also spread antisemitism with reference to Israel), a claim that ignores the long history and identities of Jewish people who have spoken out against Zionism. The document also equates Israel with Judaism, thereby singularising which opinions by Jewish people are acceptable. It promotes the idea that the only “good” Jew is one who aligns with the state’s definition, a dangerous precedent, especially in Germany, where the state has a history of imposing narrow, exclusive definitions of Jewish identity with horrific consequences.

It goes even further, suggesting that advocating for Palestinians’ right to return, is inherently antisemitic, even though it is protected under international and human rights law, and has been reaffirmed in many UN resolutions since 1948. The document also labels “Kindermörder Israel” (Child Killer Israel) as inherently antisemitic, despite the fact that, according to UNICEF at least 15,000 children were killed by Israel during the ongoing genocide, and that, between 2015 and 2022, the United Nations attributed more than 8,700 child casualties to Israeli forces — a figure cited by Human Rights Watch when the UN secretary-general officially added the Israeli military to the “list of shame” in 2024 for grave violations against children in armed conflict. Finally, terms like “apartheid” or “colonial state” are also labeled antisemitic, even though these are widely used in international human rights reporting, as well as the UN and the ICJ. To dismiss these terms as antisemitic outright not only ignores this international consensus, it shuts down legitimate human rights and legal criticism altogether, denying Palestinians the ability to call for justice, or even to express grief and anger over the brutality and oppression they face.

Taken together, these examples show that by promoting this material for university teaching, the TU Berlin is encouraging lecturers to completely suppress any expression of solidarity with Palestinians, who are currently experiencing genocide in Palestine. Rarely have we seen such complete disregard for students’ dignity and freedom, and it is hard not to notice that this treatment seems to apply only when the students in question are Palestinian or supportive of them.

What makes this even more outrageousis that TU Berlin is home to the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (ZfA), a globally respected center for the study of antisemitism and, according to its own mission, of “other manifestations of hatred such as antiziganism, hostility towards Muslims and Islam.” The university has direct access to scholars trained to recognize racism, exclusion, and the political misuse of antisemitism discourse. And yet, over six months after we clearly pointed out how harmful some of the documents are, including directly referencing the document “Israelbezogener Antisemitismus”, nothing has changed.

In an email we received on 21st August 2024, Vice President of TU Berlin Christian Schröder wrote in an official answer to our requests that TU Berlin had taken action and was working with full commitment to improve the page. But the same problematic texts are still online. The content has not been fixed, and no new perspectives have been added.

Even more confusing is that the page is called “Middle East Conflict and Higher Education”, but it only talks about Israel, and only from one perspective. The overwhelming majority of people in the region, who are Arab and/or Muslim, are not represented. The only document that mentions Muslims is about Islamism, which treats Muslim identity as a security threat. This singular representation of Arab and/or Muslim people reinforces the harmful Islamophobic idea of the “violent Arab”, therefore not only failing to address the discrimination they face, but amplifying it. Unsurprisingly, given this context, there’s nothing about Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, or the daily reality Palestinians face under occupation, even six months after we specifically requested it from them, and more importantly, after 18 months of genocide.

This is not education. This is a dangerous and discriminatory political ideology, disguised as academic discourse. The university may point to events like Palestine Week or film screenings to claim that Palestinian narratives are tolerated. But these have been organized entirely by students, in student spaces, using student funds with no institutional support, and in spite of active barriers. And when approval was required, it was granted reluctantly or only as a legal obligation. Meanwhile, Palestinian students and allies face smear campaigns, surveillance, and police presence on campus, with no meaningful protection or response from the administration.

If the university now or in the future tries to use these student-led efforts to claim inclusivity or openness, it would be dishonest at best. And through its continued inaction, TU Berlin is not only passively overlooking all this, it is actively complicit in the erasure of Palestinian history, voices, and rights on campus. It is encouraging an environment of silencing, censorship, and fear, while giving these ideas the appearance of academic legitimacy. In doing so, it sends a message to both students and staff: speaking openly about Palestinian life and struggle is not supported, not protected, and ultimately, not welcome here.

That this is happening at a university that hosts the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung (ZfA), a center that claims to stand against all forms of hatred, including anti-Muslim racism, makes the silence even more disturbing. To date, we have seen no public response, no effort to intervene, no defense of the very values ZfA aims to uphold.

To us, and especially to Palestinian students on this campus, the message is clear: Palestinians are not seen as equally human, equally grievable, or equally worthy of protection.

We Are the Resistance

The UK Supreme Court does not change the reality of trans and non-binary people


22/04/2025

On 16th April 2025, five crusty old judges in the UK Supreme Court decided what a woman is (in the context of the Equality Act 2010). Hard luck, fellow women, it seems that our biology is our destiny. The Supreme Court ruled that the definition of a woman is based on ‘biological sex’ (an unclear term in itself) and therefore excludes trans women. How bloody depressing. The court didn’t hear from a single trans person during its deliberations. The case was brought by an organisation called For Women Scotland, a self-described ‘gender critical’ group, against the Scottish government. Their success is a boost for bigots and the far-right and will do nothing to help protect the rights of women.

Mould-addled multi-millionaire, JK Rowling, celebrated this attack on trans rights—and the rights of all women not to be defined by their anatomy—by sipping cocktails on her £150 million yacht. Woman of the People, Rowling, donated £70,000 towards the court case as she is a committed transphobe who spends a lot of time bullying trans people on social media, including trans TV presenter India Willoughby.

The dregs of UK society hailed it as a victory for their anti-trans views, despite the judges stating that it should not be seen as such. A bigot named Jess Gill, described on X/Twitter as founder of an organisation called Women Safety UK, hailed the ruling as winning “the battle against trans ideology”, and then went on to make a racist assertion about the supposed dangers of immigrants to UK women.

The odious Allison Pearson who writes for the Daily Telegraph newspaper is now arguing that “anti-white racism has been embedded into the public sector in the same way as trans rights”, pushing her bigoted advantage. This is how it goes. There will always be another enemy threatening our safety, an enemy decided by the real antagonists that hold power in our society. We need to reject this divisive ruling class tactic. Women are oppressed, but not by trans people or migrants. Attacking trans people does nothing to resolve women’s oppression. Women and trans people both face oppression under capitalism and we must unite to fight our joint oppression.

The state getting to define who you are, for the purposes of excluding a vilified minority from public life, is not a good or progressive thing. I don’t want oppressed minorities to face further oppression, and as a cisgender woman, I don’t want to be judged on how stereotypically feminine I look whenever I need to piss in public. I don’t want my trans sisters to be judged like that, or made to feel that they aren’t safe or welcome in public spaces because of who they are.

The law now appears to legitimise the harassment of trans and non-gender conforming people. We have already seen cases of butch women thrown out of women’s toilets for not adhering to feminine stereotypes. Leading ‘gender critical’ activist, Maya Forstater, has posted on X/Twitter that if women “make extreme efforts to look like a man” as part of their “life choices” then it is their own fault if they are excluded from women’s toilets. The idea that women should conform to sexist stereotypes is hardly feminist or progressive. The people who decide to police women’s spaces on the basis of feminine stereotypes are going to be bigots, for who else would bother? I am not looking forward to ‘proving’ my ‘biological femaleness’ to the bigoted toilet police. Do I flash them, or what?

This policing of gender is set to intensify. The British Transport Police were very quick to announce that trans women will now be searched by male officers. In effect, women deemed ‘not feminine enough’ will be at the mercy of male police officers, who do not have a great track record on protecting women’s rights. I can imagine the excuse “I thought she was trans” being used as justification for the mistreatment of cis women, as well as our trans sisters. Gender policing does not help cis women. No one has won any rights due to this ruling.

Biology is Not Destiny

Feminists have long fought against the idea that our biology is our destiny. Narrowly defining womanhood by a person’s reproductive functions is regressive and paves the way for further regressive reforms that affect all women. If women are defined by our biology then we are baby-makers and child-rearers first and foremost, with a sideline in household drudgery. These crude biological essentialist definitions of womanhood underpin our historic oppression under capitalism. Women as subordinate bodies to make and raise the next generation of workers. It is no coincidence that some of those pushing biological definitions of womanhood are also scaremongering about declining birth rates, and advocating that women return to the home.

This is one reason why the bigots hate trans people and want to legislate them out of existence. Trans people do not, and cannot, conform to their baby-making machine stereotypes. The increased recognition and acceptance of trans people in society is contributing to the breakdown of the ideology of the bourgeois family. This is something that we should celebrate. The bourgeois family is oppressive to women. The best way to fight for women’s rights is to fight just as strongly for trans rights; our rights are not in conflict.

The right to decide who we are in our own lives is under attack. Transphobes have already attacked the principle of Gillick Competence, as it relates to trans youths, through the courts. The Cass Review (an “independent” review of gender-related care for trans and gender questioning kids commissioned by NHS England) has led to the banning of puberty blockers for trans kids. When they’re done with trans people, who will be next? That some on the British left support this regressive shit is deeply depressing. If only all that energy spent attacking trans people was spent on fighting against austerity, against the exploitation of low-paid migrant women workers, or for socialised childcare. 

Unpleasant Transphobic Bedfellows

This legal attack on trans rights has to be seen in the wider global context. In the USA, Trump has repeatedly targeted transgender and non-binary people with a series of executive orders since he returned to office. In one executive order, Trump asserted that “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex.” The fact that this is not remotely true has not been a problem for him. It is the rhetoric of moral panic that is important.

Trans people in the USA are being portrayed as a threat to children and legislated against on that basis. Republican-led states have continued to roll back trans rights, banning trans kids from playing sports and removing their right to gender-affirming health care. Schools have been banned from supporting children who are socially transitioning and some states have banned teachers from discussing LGBTQ+ identities, history or healthcare.

Billionaire owner of social media site X/Twitter, Elon Musk, has referred to transness as a “mind virus” that needs “to die”, despite having a trans daughter. Musk has disgustingly said that this ‘virus’ has ‘killed’ his very-much-alive daughter. Musk also likes to opine about the declining birth rate, and is listened to on account of being revoltingly rich.

In Hungary, legislators backed by the far-right prime minister Viktor Orban have voted to ban LGBTQ+ gatherings, as well as legally recognising only two sexes. Again, the justification for this is to “prioritise the protection of children’s physical, mental and moral development”. Orban’s government has also blocked same-sex couples from adopting children and banned the mention of LGBTQ+ issues in schools. This is not progressive. This doesn’t advance women’s rights. Does the fact that this is being done to LGBTQ+ people by far-right politicians not cause some discomfort to the ostensibly more liberal UK anti trans brigade? Does the “we must protect the children from these deviants” argument not ring any alarm bells? The dehumanization of trans people as a ‘virus’?

We Are The Resistance

In response to the Supreme Court ruling, trans people and their many supporters have taken to the streets in their thousands. 25-30,000 people marched in London, 2,000 in Edinburgh and thousands more in towns and cities across the UK. I attended a protest of 500 in Manchester with my daughter and the mood was militant and defiant. National trade unions issued statements expressing solidarity and urged their members to join the demonstrations.

UNISON, one of the biggest public sector unions in the UK, recently passed a motion unopposed at its Women’s Conference affirming that trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary people exist. The motion explained that “trans issues are union issues, because UNISON has always fought for marginalised workers”. Organised workers will be important in resisting the oppressive implementation of this legislation in workplaces, and supporting our trans colleagues facing harassment and discrimination.

The Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) is leading a fightback against LGBTQ+ discrimination in US schools, recently ratifying a new contract with Chicago Public Schools which codifies LGBTQ+ protections. The new provisions, voted for by 97% of voting union members, include gender-affirming healthcare for staff, a trained Gender Support Coordinator in every school, codified protections for chosen names and pronouns and a mandate that every school upholds inclusive curriculum standards and supports any student-led Gender and Sexuality Alliances. “We are the counterbalance, we are the resistance,” said CTU President Stacy Davis Gates. This union action is an important blueprint for how we can resist attacks on trans rights in the UK.

A handful of posh judges don’t get to tell us who we are. A multimillionaire bigot on her yacht can’t decide where people piss. Populist right wing leaders can’t stop us playing sports or gathering to fight back against them. The working class, which includes the vast majority of trans people, has the power to defend trans rights. We must do this through our unions, in our workplaces, on the streets and in our communities and make our voices heard. The massive protests over Easter Weekend are a very good start. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people exist. No Supreme Court bastard can change that reality.

Is the USA Dragging the Philippines Into a War against China?

On the United States’ Pivot to Asia policy and its impact on the Philippines


21/04/2025

The United States avers that its focal pivot to Asia was triggered by China’s ambition to rule the world.  The goal of constructing this China bogey is justifying  Washington’s aim to regain global hegemony from the current reality of a multi-polar world.  In doing so, the USA takes off its imperialist “champion of democracy” mask and lays bare its hegemonist policy, in line with the vain attempt to reverse the strategic decline of the American empire and re-establish itself as the world’s sole superpower. 

The USA expected that in the aftermath of the dissolution of the socialist camp, with China joining the WTO in 2001 and the Russian Federation following in 2012, it would dominate the capitalist world with the two former socialist states in its pocket. But in the years to come, China and Russia would challenge US dominance in the global capitalist competition.

US pivot to Asia

President Barack Obama‘s East Asia Strategy (2009–2017), also known as the  “Pivot to Asia”, represented a significant shift in United States’ foreign policy. It shifted the country’s focus away from the Middle Eastern and European sphere and allowed for heavy investingy and building relationships in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, especially countries in close proximity to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) either economically, geographically or politically to counter its rise as a rival potential superpower.

The Trump 1.0 administration readjusted policy toward China through FOIP (Free and Open Indo-Pacific) with the “Indo-Pacific strategy”.

The Trump 1.0 presidency did not make significant use  of the Pivot to Asia policy as it was mired in the Covid 19 pandemic. Nonetheless, the number of American troops deployed to Afghanistan decreased significantly during Trump’s presidency. By the end of Trump’s term, troop levels in Afghanistan were at their lowest since the beginning of the war in 2001.

Biden declared that the USA needs to “get tough” on China and build “a united front with its partners to confront their rival. He described China as the “most serious competitor” that poses challenges to the “prosperity, security, and democratic values” of the USA.

On 18 September 2022, Joe Biden said US-American forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, drawing an angry response from China that said it sent the wrong signal to those seeking an independent Taiwan. This ended decades of strategic ambiguity on the part of the United States..

This was followed by a visit from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the highest-ranking American official in 25 years to visit the island. This marked a clear departure from recognition of a “one China” policy.

US war preparation against China

The United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) is the unified combatant command of the United States Armed Forces responsible for the Indo-Pacific region.

It is the oldest and largest of the unified combatant commands. Its commander, the most senior military officer in the Pacific, is responsible for more than 375,000 service members as well as an area that encompasses more than 100 million square miles (260,000,000 km2), or roughly 52 percent of the Earth’s surface, stretching from the pacific west coast of the United States to the waters bordering India’s east coast at the meridian 66° longitude east of Greenwich and from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Formerly known as United States Pacific Command (USPACOM), in 2018, the command was renamed to “United States Indo-Pacific Command” in response to the increasing connectivity between the Indian and Pacific oceans.

US military forces in the Pacific are deploying large numbers of drone weapons and increasing overall force readiness in preparation for a potential 2027 war with China, according to the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command.

The strategic guidance plan calls on the Navy to increase its warfighting power “in the fastest time,” according to a Navy fact sheet, with the key goal of preparing “for the possibility of war with the People’s Republic of China by 2027.”

Trump 2.0 aggravates geopolitical conflict

In a desperate move to arrest the decline of the United States, Trump declared a world-wide trade war through import tariffs in what he hyped as “Liberation Day” on April 2, 2025.  This triggered reciprocal adverse reactions from other countries, friends and foes alike, against the US. 

The Yale Budget Lab estimates that Trump’s tariffs will reduce the USA economic growth – which was 2.8% in 2024 — by 0.9 percentage points this year.

Trump’s tariff offensive is unprecedented in scope and scale. It will increase the weighted average import tariff by 23 percentage points, lifting it above the level of the 1930s. 

This sharp protectionist turn in trade policy will certainly trigger retaliation by many countries targeted by the import levies. All of this signals an end to the multilateral global trading system built largely under American leadership in the decades following the Second World War. This system has been under stress for some time,  resting on three key pillars: respect for relatively open markets, a desire to encourage and expand international commerce, and a commitment to “non-discrimination” among trading partners embodied in the “most-favoured-nation” principle. 

Today, the USA seeks to accelerate a trend toward “de-globalization and regional fragmentation” that gathered force in the wake of the 2008-09 global financial crisis. 

The USA Island Chain Strategy to contain China

The  “island chain strategy” is a maritime containment plan first conceived by former US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1951 during the Korean War. It proposed surrounding the Soviet Union and China with naval bases in the West Pacific to project power and restrict sea access.

The “island chain” concept, however, did not become a major theme in American foreign policy during the Cold War, but after the dissolution of the Soviet Union has remained a major focus of both American and Chinese geopolitical and military analysts to this day. For the United States, the island chain strategy is a significant part of the force projection of the United States military in the Far East. For China, the concept is integral to its maritime security and fears of strategic encirclement by US armed forces. For both sides, the island chain strategy emphasizes the geographical and strategic importance of Taiwan.

Taiwan has a very high potential of becoming a US proxy battleground against China in Asia. It could trigger not only a war between the US and China, but probably a global war.

Over the past two decades, a trend has emerged where United States partners and allies look outside of their bilateral relationship with the United States and pre-existing multilateral bodies to join ad-hoc networks.  This includes the revived Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) consisting of Japan, India, Australia, and the United States, encompassing two separate US treaty alliances. Similarly, the tripartite pact AUKUS connects the US-UK transatlantic alliance to the US-Australia alliance in the Indo-Pacific. This could be the beginning of an Asian version of NATO.

US EDCA bases in the Philippines

This year marks a decade of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), a treaty that allowed the re-establishment of US military bases in the country. Like the earlier lopsided Military Bases Agreement, it gives US forces the freedom to build bases and facilities in the Philippines to station troops and store arms.

At present, the USA maintains 9 EDCA  military bases within the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) military bases, in strategic locations in the Philippines facing Taiwan and the South China Sea.

EDCA is a circumvention of the Philippine ban on foreign military bases in the country—on September 16, 1991, the Philippine Senate decided to end years of foreign military presence in the Philippines.

The outright re-establishment of US military bases in the country and its relentless and escalating war games on land, in the sea and air are flagrant manifestations of US imperialist domination of the Philippines. This further tightens the grip of US imperialism on the Philippine neocolonial state, especially on the puppet Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

Imminent threat to the Philippines of being dragged into a hot war between the US and China

 On April 1, 2025 AFP Chief of Staff Romeo S. Brawner, Jr. instructed military forces in northern Philippines to start “planning for action” in the event of an invasion of neighboring Taiwan, as China started infantry, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan as a “stern warning” against separatism.

The AFP is expanding its strategic plan to include Taipei in anticipation of a potential invasion that could inadvertently involve the Philippines, declared the AFP Chief of Staff on the anniversary of the military’s Northern Luzon Command.

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth flew to Tokyo from Manila, where he announced that the US intends to send additional capabilities to the Philippine military, including the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, or NMESIS. First announced in 2021, NMESIS is a system of mobile precision strike batteries, missiles mounted on the chassis of a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle tent annual military exercise between the USA and the Philippines.

The Marcos regime portrays itself as defender of Philippine sovereignty, even as it allows unrestricted US military presence in the country through lopsided agreements such as the Visiting Forces Agreement and EDCA. It has tied Philippine foreign policy to US foreign policy, with the false claim that the country’s interests are identical to American imperialist interests. It has allowed the Philippines to be used as a tool of the US to escalate tensions with China, instead of aggressively pushing for a diplomatic solution to the dispute in the West Philippine Sea by upholding the arbitral ruling under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The Filipino people oppose China’s aggressive actions and illegal claim to 90% of the South China Sea. Nonetheless, it is in the best interest of Filipinos to oppose the United States of America using the country’s legitimate dispute with China as pretext for greater military intervention in the region, pushing the Philippines away from a peaceful resolution of the dispute through diplomatic means and closer to armed confrontation in sevice of imperialist goals. Then and especially now, Washington is the main driver of conflict in the region.

Imperialism, primarily US imperialism, should be exposed and opposed in the struggle for genuine freedom and democracy in the Philippines. Filipinos should stand in solidarity with the peoples of the world who fight the US war machine—from Palestine to the Philippines.

Red Flag: Is This Fascism? Not Yet

This week in ‘Red Flag’, Nathaniel Flakin’s column for The Left Berlin: What fascism is—and how to stop it


It’s a constant drumbeat on social media; an image of police repression is followed by the comment: “This is fascism.” Is it, though?

The sentiment is easy to understand. In the United States, we see the Trump administration breaking laws and defying courts to send immigrants to a concentration camp in El Salvador. People are getting fired, assaulted, and even deported for voicing opposition to the genocide in Gaza. The same thing is happening in Germany.

Clearly, these are attacks on democratic rights. And isn’t fascism the opposite of democracy?

To start, we should be clear about what “democracy” is. We could also refer to it as the democratic form of a bourgeoisie dictatorship. Even if most people get to vote, society’s wealth remains in the hands of an infinitesimally small minority—the capitalist class. Every capitalist state exists to protect the bourgeoisie’s interests, using a plethora of tools. From police to media to schools, every state employs some mixture of consent and violence. 

In other words, every bourgeois state, even the most democratic one, relies on repression. The term fascism refers to something very specific—it’s not a catch-all term for every right-wing, authoritarian government.

Trotsky’s Definitions

I am in a reading group that has been discussing a 1932 pamphlet by Leon Trotsky: What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat. Trotsky highlights that fascism is based on mass mobilization of the middle classes against the working class: “At the moment that the ‘normal’ police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium—the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat—all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.”

In other words, fascism relies on paramilitary forces that supplement the “normal” violence of the bourgeois state by terrorizing workers and oppressed people. The goal is the complete annihilation of any form of working-class self-organization, and the atomization of the oppressed. To once more quote Trotsky, “After fascism is victorious, finance capital gathers into its hands […] all the organs and institutions of sovereignty, the executive, administrative, and educational powers of the state: […] When a state turns fascist, […] it means, primarily and above all, that the workers’ organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state.”

This distinction is important, as Trotsky continues, “Fascism is not merely a system of reprisals, of brutal force, and of police terror. Fascism is a particular governmental system based on the uprooting of all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society.”

There are fascist gangs in the U.S., and they are growing, as there are in Germany. These gangs are part of Trump’s coalition, just as Germany’s far-right party AfD has myriad links to Nazis. Yet the Far Right internationally is building its power primarily via electoral parties, mobilizing supporters as voters, not as soldiers of counter-revolution.

The current situation, with Trump in the U.S. and the new right-wing chancellor Friedrich Merz in Germany, cannot really be compared to fascism as it was established in 1933. It has a lot more in common with the “presidential cabinets” that ruled Germany from 1930 to 1933. The right-wing chancellors that preceded Hitler—Brüning, Papen, and Schleicher—circumvented parliament to apply brutal austerity measures combined with equally brutal repression. They paved the way for Hitler—but relied on the capitalist state apparatus to implement their policies, and not on fascist private armies. 

Fascism is not the bourgeoisie’s preferred form of government—a parliament or a congress are genuinely useful tools for the capitalists to hash out the differences among themselves, and an all-powerful Führer is usually too erratic. It’s only when the bourgeoisie faces a truly existential crisis that it is willing to consider handing over power to fascist thugs. For one final quote from Trotsky: “The big bourgeoisie likes fascism as little as a man with aching molars likes to have his teeth pulled.”

Why It Matters

Some might find this whole column pedantic. Who cares if we are under fascism proper, or under governments paving the way for fascists?

We should care, because the establishment of fascist dictatorships by paramilitary gangs would be a crushing defeat. It would make it impossible for us to discuss and organize openly—this website would not exist openly, nor would Marxist reading groups.

But we haven’t been defeated yet. To claim that we have lost the battle before the fighting has really gotten going can only disorient and demoralize us. A misdiagnosis makes it impossible to treat a disease.

This happened Back in the early 1930s, when the Stalinist leadership of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) declared that fascism was already in power. What difference would it make if Brüning’s fascism was replaced by Hitler’s fascism, they asked, as both stood for starvation and unemployment.

This prevented the KPD from developing a strategy to stop the Nazis’ rise — and it turned out that it made a huge difference whether the KPD could work with certain legal rights under a bourgeois-democratic system, or whether the Nazis imprisoned all communists in concentration camps.

Centrists Help the Right

Today, the excessive use of the term fascism is often a justification for an alliance with a supposedly “anti-fascist” wing of the bourgeoisie. We are told to vote for the Democrats (or for the conservative CDU in Germany) because, despite their right-wing policies, they are at least not fascist.

This lesser-evilism ignores the fact that the Dems (and the CDU) have already adopted and implemented many of Trump’s (and the AfD’s) policies. It was centrists like Obama who built up the deportation machine that Trump is using.

Leftists, including politicians like Bernie and AOC, who campaign for status quo in order to “stop fascism,” end up justifying racist policies and austerity measures. This ultimately drives even more people into the arms of the Far Right, since the Right appears to be the only alternative to a hated neoliberal establishment.

Finally, if we are already living under fascism, it means that all workers’ organizations have become fascist as well. We see the millionaire bureaucrats that run our unions failing to stand up for the interests of our class—which means opposing every deportation and the entire far-right agenda. Yet despite their bureaucratic leaderships, unions still form a foundation of working-class power, and a potential starting point for real struggles. Fascism would aim to destroy unions—and we need to fight to mobilize unions against the Right, instead of writing them off.

Right-wing governments and fascist gangs are a concrete threat to immigrants, queer folks, and other oppressed groups. We need organized self-defense against this terror. Just like in the 1930s, we cannot rely on bourgeois courts or police. 

To really stop fascism in its tracks, though, we need all working-class organizations to form a united front. This must start with a defense of democratic and social rights, but cannot stop there. We need to fight against the capitalist system with its inevitable crises, which forms the social basis of fascism. This means fighting for a program to guarantee jobs, housing, healthcare, and education for all, regardless of their “legal” status.

Fascism remains a mortal threat as capitalism slides ever deeper into crisis. But we cannot confront that threat if we don’t have a scientific understanding of it. If we define Trump or Merz as fascist, we would need to apply the same label to their predecessors, Biden and Scholz, who ruled under the same bourgeois-democratic regimes and were equally eager to repress and deport people. If they are also fascists, then every capitalist government in history would be fascist as well. And that would rob the term of any meaning, and us of any clarity about the situation we face.

Red Flag is a weekly column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel Flakin has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears on Friday at The Left Berlin.