This week, after claiming victory in the German election, Friedrich Merz declared that Germany would now stand up to the USA, Russia and China and make the EU into a ‘great power’.

This week, Trump went over the heads of Zelensky and the European leaders to embark on peace talks with Russia. At a stroke, the western order that has prevailed for over half a century has fractured.

Lenin once said that there are decades where weeks happen, and weeks where decades happen. We are living through the latter. A new era has begun, one characterised by capitalist crisis, imperialist war, immense turbulence in world relations and revolutionary upheavals.

Trump has been in power for just over two weeks and already he has started to upend the liberal world order. With tariffs, deportations, the halting of all foreign aid, and his plan to turn Gaza into a “Rivera of the Middle East”, ‘allies’ and rivals alike have been thrown into panic.

Storm clouds are gathering over the world economy. Already, it is faced with slowing growth, rising interest and inflation rates, and astronomical debts. Now Trump’s ‘America First’ policy and his promise of tariffs threaten to make all of that worse.

This week’s episode of Against the Stream was recorded just days after Trump was inaugurated as US president. For some, this represents the triumph of fascism, a fear that was stoked by Elon Musk’s Nazi salute at the inauguration ceremony.

With just two weeks before Trump re-enters the White House, the outgoing Democrats are doing everything they can to undermine the next president. In Ukraine in particular, where they fear a drastic change of course in the policy of US imperialism, they are funnelling in as much money as they can get away with, as well as escalating the war by allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with US bombs.

Defined by political crises all over the world, spiralling tensions between the imperialist powers, and revolutions in Bangladesh and Kenya, 2024 was an historic year in the crisis of the capitalist system. But now, with Trump days away from power, Ukraine headed unavoidably towards a humiliating and bloody defeat, and with no end in sight to the complete destabilisation of the Middle East, this new year looks to be even more explosive.

2024 has been a year of war, revolution and crisis on every continent. From the horrors of the Gaza genocide, to the revolutionary summer in Kenya and Bangladesh; from viral assassinations, to to the re-election of Donald Trump. The communists have been offering analysis and perspective at every step of the way, and now: it’s time to put this dramatic twelve months in review with 2024 WRAPPED!

Once again, this week has been defined by sharp turns in world politics. In Syria, the Assad regime collapsed after a sudden offensive by Islamist groups, taking the whole world by surprise. In the US, the assassination of a US healthcare CEO was met with an enormous outpouring of sympathy for the killer, in a clear expression of the simmering class rage beneath the surface. In Ukraine, it is becoming increasingly clear that Zelensky – darling of the West – is becoming hated by the population.

This week has been full of sharp and sudden turns. The Syrian civil war has suddenly reignited due to the shock advance of a Turkey-backed rebel group. The French prime minister was forced to resign after trying to force through an austerity budget. Joe Biden has used his last few weeks in power to pardon his corrupt son. And, to top things off, the president of South Korea declared martial law, only to be quickly defeated by opposition from the whole of parliament and mass mobilisations. 

This week, the Middle East has once again dominated the news, with the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as the announcement of a supposedly ‘lasting’ ceasefire in Lebanon. In Europe, meanwhile, explosive events are being prepared in France, as the tottering National Assembly is set to face off against a rising tide of class struggle.

In this episode of Against the Stream, Hamid Alizadeh and Niklas Albin Svensson, from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International, discussed the reckless escalation of the Ukraine war by Biden, Trump’s controversial picks for his administration, and the death of the American Dream.

This week on Against the Stream, Hamid Alizadeh and Jorge Martin from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International sat down once again to discuss the implications of Trump's victory on the class struggle in America, the Ukraine war, and the floods in Valencia, Spain, which have led to protests of hundreds of thousands of people against the regime.

Closely following our special episode with Alan Woods covering Trump’s victory in the US election, Against the Stream went live again this week for another discussion. This time, Hamid Alizadeh and Fred Weston from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International met to talk about the devastating floods in Spain and the resulting rage of the masses against the ruling class, the abrupt collapse of the German government, and more on the implications of Trump’s victory.