BY Geraldina COLOTTI

Ignacio Ramonet, journalist, essayist, and international analyst, was the long-time editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique. In his book, "The Age of Conspiracy," he analyzed the mechanisms of "Trumpism," which we are now seeing spread to other latitudes, from Latin America to Europe. We discussed the political crisis in the European Union and the renewed tensions between the United States and the socialist countries of Latin America.

GC: We are living in a time of profound and dramatic transformations affecting all levels of a model—dominant capitalism—in systemic crisis, but with the clear intention of inflicting its agony on all of humanity. From your perspective, that of a seasoned and refined political analyst, how do you interpret this crisis?

IR: We are not facing a one-off crisis of capitalism, but a crisis of civilization. The system, in its neoliberal and financialized incarnation, has reached a point where it can no longer reproduce itself without destroying its very foundations: work, nature, social ties, and even the very idea of ​​political community. Capital transforms collapse into a strategy, makes precariousness the norm, and manages catastrophe as if it were a natural state of affairs. Its death throes are long and violent, and it intends to drag all of humanity down with it. What is being heralded is not just the exhaustion of an economic model, but the end of a historical rationality: the one that identified progress with infinite accumulation.

And what countermeasures do you see in what many see as the emergence of a multicentric and multipolar world, from which, however, a clear vision of the future does not emerge, as happened in the last century, when a large part of the world believed in the hope of communism?

The multipolar world is already a fact, but it is not yet a reality. Multipolarity signifies the diversification of centers of power, the weakening of the absolute hegemony of the United States, and the emergence of actors like China, India, and Russia. But it does not mean emancipation. In the 20th century, even amidst wars and contradictions, communist hope offered a narrative for the future, a collective compass. Today, multipolarity appears more as a negotiation between powers than as a project for humanity. That said, on the margins, in social movements in the Global South, in feminist, indigenous, and environmental resistance, another logic is creeping in: that of a life measured not by profit, but by care. Herein lies a perspective of hope, still in its infancy.

Let's talk about the European crisis, starting with the French political system, now plunged into a probable new government collapse. What is your analysis of the forces at play and possible solutions?

France is a particularly striking embodiment of the European political crisis. The Fifth Republic, designed to ensure stability, has become a stalled regime, incapable of generating legitimacy. Macron governs with technocratic arrogance, but also with a lack of vision: he addresses himself not to society, but to the markets and Brussels. This disconnect explains the social anger, the fragmentation of the left, and the rise of the far right. Europe is seeing its mirror shattered in France: institutions that no longer represent them, people who feel ignored, societies seeking solutions through protest or protest voting. The real solution would require a democratic overhaul from the ground up, but this vision has not yet been politically organized.

France is the driving force behind European rearmament, the country carrying out the largest number of projects financed by the European Defense Fund (EDF). Giorgia Meloni's Italy is following the same path, Germany is rearming, and the Baltic states are no exception. Can the European Union simply be the military-industrial complex, eternally subordinate to the United States? And what consequences could this have in the context of current conflicts?

European rearmament is the most obvious symptom of the continent's subordination to the strategic interests of the United States. France, Germany, Italy, and the Baltic states are not rearming to pursue their own agenda, but to strengthen the military-industrial complex under NATO tutelage. Europe invests in armaments that it refuses to invest in social cohesion, education, or the ecological transition. This imbalance reveals a historical choice: to be a battlefield and not an agent of peace. Thus, Europe is not only becoming militarized, but is also losing its relevance as a civilizational project. By abdicating an autonomous foreign policy, it is renouncing its ability to offer the world a logic other than that of war.

The crisis of Western democracies reveals two growing phenomena: voter disenchantment (especially on the left) and the rise of xenophobic and far-right parties, seemingly the least inclined to resort to "strong tactics" at the geopolitical level. How did this short circuit occur, and how can we escape such a trap?

The short circuit of Western democracies has deep roots. For decades, social democracy and a large part of the left accepted neoliberalism as an inevitable framework. At that moment, a betrayal occurred: millions of workers, young people, and the popular classes felt deprived of genuine representation. The far right has thus established itself as the only narrative of rupture, proposing closed identities, fictitious sovereignties, and illusory security. It is a poor and exclusive narrative, but it is in tune with the social suffering of those whose rights have been violated. The solution cannot lie in imitating this narrative, but in rebuilding a horizon of emancipation: radical redistribution of wealth, participatory democracy, internationalism, social and ecological justice. In other words, restoring to politics the capacity to define the future.

As the possibility of an anti-capitalist alternative, or an advanced democracy (what was called the "Latin American Renaissance" after Chávez's victory in the Venezuelan presidential elections), is crumbling, the threat of a new fascist international is emerging, with various variants. Is the European "model" also gaining ground in Latin America?

The Latin American progressive cycle, which some called a "renaissance" after Chávez's victory in 1998, opened up an unexpected horizon in the midst of the neoliberal regime: the possibility of an advanced, popular, and inclusive democracy, sovereign and founded on social justice. However, this initial momentum quickly encountered limits and resistance: economic sabotage, soft coups, media warfare, and even internal contradictions within the processes themselves. In this vacuum, a danger thought to have been eradicated has resurfaced: a multifaceted fascist international—religious, neoliberal, militarist—operating in networks and strongly inspired by Europe. Latin America, which has so often been a laboratory of emancipation, also runs the risk of becoming the scene of new forms of authoritarianism. The current battle is to prevent this exclusive rationality from becoming the norm and to regain the audacity to imagine a single historical project.

What is your analysis of the "Venezuelan laboratory" in light of the new imperialist attacks against the Bolivarian revolution, but also from the perspective of the forces of transformation? How does this "experience" fit into the history of Marxism?

Venezuela remains the great political laboratory of our time. There, attempts are being made to achieve what the global system cannot tolerate: combining participatory democracy, national sovereignty, and social redistribution within a socialist framework. This is why the attacks continue: blockades, sanctions, economic suffocation, and delegitimization campaigns. But even there, the most creative forms of popular resistance have been observed: communes, self-management, and the idea of ​​power from below. In the history of Marxism, the Bolivarian experience represents an attempt at updating it: not by repeating dogmas, but by grafting the emancipatory tradition onto Latin American realities, with Bolívar, Chávez, the indigenous peoples, and the continent's insurrectionary memory. It is an unfinished process, fraught with tensions, but it is also proof that Marxism is not dead: it mutates, reincarnates, and seeks new syntheses.

Ideological control apparatuses are increasingly sophisticated. Fourth- and fifth-generation warfare is accompanied by cognitive warfare, as evidenced by the genocide in Palestine—the most televised yet the most hidden—as well as the aggression against Venezuela. Yet, with the arrival of Trump, the attack on popular sectors and the visions that represented them in the last century (socialism and communism) is direct and frontal. How should we interpret all this?

We live in an era where domination is no longer exercised solely through weapons and armies, but through narratives and mind-control devices. Fourth- and fifth-generation warfare, known as "cognitive warfare," consists of shaping perceptions, manufacturing consensus, and naturalizing injustices. Palestine is the most brutal case: a genocide broadcast live but concealed under layers of media manipulation. The same is true for Venezuela and any process that challenges the imperial order. Trumpism and similar phenomena elsewhere only reveal this logic: a frontal attack on popular sectors and the memories of emancipation (socialism, communism, workers', feminist, or anti-colonial struggles). The goal is to eradicate the very idea of ​​an alternative. Our task is precisely the opposite: to preserve memory, support resistance, and maintain the political imagination of another possible world.

One hundred years after the birth of Fanon, Malcolm X, and Lumumba, do the Global South, Palestine, and Africa in particular (I'm thinking particularly of the Sahel) still need their message? Is Bolivarian socialism right to focus on the possibility of building a new man and woman today without destroying what hinders it? Or must we return to the machete?

A century after the birth of Franz Fanon, Malcolm X, and Lumumba, their message remains essential. Fanon taught us that colonization occupies not only territories, but also consciousnesses, and that liberation must be both material and psychological. Malcolm X embodied radical dignity in the face of structural racism. Lumumba symbolized African sovereignty in a world divided into blocs. Today, in Palestine, Africa, and the Global South, these lessons are essential: without cultural emancipation, there is no political emancipation. Bolivarian socialism, speaking of the “new man and woman,” takes up this tradition: that of transforming the human being in the very process of struggle, and not after the fact. It is not a question of “returning to the machete” as pure violence, but of recognizing that no emancipatory project can flourish without dismantling the mechanisms of oppression that stifle it. The challenge remains the same: to liberate the human being in their entirety.

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Geraldina Colotti was born in Ventimiglia, lived in Paris for a long time, and now lives and works in Rome. After spending many years in prison for her activism in the Red Brigades, she is a journalist and expert on Latin America. She edits the Italian edition of the international politics monthly Le Monde diplomatique. With a background in philosophy, she has published children's books, collections of short stories and poems, novels, and essays. With Marie-José Hoyet, she translated two books by Édouard Glissant from French, Tutto-mondo (Edizioni lavoro) and La Lézarde (Jaca Book). Her book on Venezuela, Des taupes à Caracas (Jaca Book), has been translated into several languages. For Éditions Clichy, she published Oscar Arnulfo Romero, béni parmi les pauvres. In the book Louis Massignon, European Refugees and International Migrations (Animal Editions - www.edizionideglianimali.it, 2017) you can find her text "No Border". She has a fb page with her name.

https://www.legrandsoir.info/le-venezuela-est-le-grand-laboratoire-politique-de-notre-epoque-entretien-exclusif-avec-ignacio-ramonet.html

TRANSLATION BY JULES LETAMBOUR.

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