Far-right forces are rising across Latin America and the Caribbean, armed with a common agenda of anti-communism, the culture war, and neoliberal economics, writes VIJAY PRASHAD
SINCE the fall of the Warsaw Pact, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) has been among the most electorally successful of Europe’s Communist parties — consistently finishing in the top five slots in the Czech Republic’s legislative elections.
All that changed last month — when for the first time since the Nazi-aligned protectorate of 1939 to 1945, the territory which makes up the modern-day Czech Republic found itself with no Communists in Parliament. In the October elections, both the KSCM and the Czech Social Democatic Party (CSSD) finished below the threshold required to enter the Chamber of Deputies.
“It was not only a setback: it’s generally accepted within the party that it was a historical debacle,” says Jaroslav Roman, the head of the KSCM’s international department. “Frankly speaking, people are shocked. We had not expected such a heavy defeat.”
JOHN CALLOW examines what went wrong for the Czech communist party in the recent parliamentary elections, where it failed to meet the threshold to return deputies and some now talk of the party abandoning its commitment to socialism
As the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia rebuilds support through anti-cuts campaigns, the government seeks to silence it before October’s parliamentary elections through liberal totalitarianism, reports JOHN CALLOW
Sixty Red-Green seats in a hung parliament could force Labour to choose between the death of centrism or accommodation with the left — but only if enough of us join the Greens by July 31 and support Zack Polanski’s leadership, writes JAMES MEADWAY



