A Sparkle Is Growing Across Europe: European Imperialism Is Not The Answer

There is a sparkle in this room, and I'm glad to be part of it here in London –  which is not just the sparkle of London, but an internationalist sparkle.

In Belgium, every ministry is under austerity. Public education, healthcare, public transport: there are cuts everywhere. But there is one exception: one ministry that is not cutting but receiving more money than ever, and that is of course the Ministry of Defense. They will have 34 billion euros to spend in the coming years. It’s party time in the Ministry of Defense.

So we asked the Minister: can we see your shopping list? You have 34 billion to spend – show us what you're buying. And we got the list, and checked it. They were not ordering material to defend Belgium. That was not on the list. They are ordering killer drones, F-35s, frigates, all kinds of material to intervene in the Congo, in the Sahel.

They are not building a defence in Europe. They are building a new imperialist army with our money. And we have to say no: European imperialism is not the answer to US imperialism.

It is a robbery. It is a scam.

And there is a second robbery underway: the robbery of our democratic space. They are doing it through a great reversal. Everything that is normal is being abnormalised and criminalised. And everything that should not be normal is presented as normal.

Instead of stopping the genocide in Gaza and halting arms deliveries to Israel, they prosecute Palestine activists. Instead of doing everything to stop the war hysteria in Europe, they call peace activists the fifth column. Instead of condemning the far-right terror spreading pogroms – as in Belfast – and stopping the hate networks of Elon Musk, they prosecute anti-fascists.

That is the great reversal. And we say: stop.

We are here to put the world back on its feet. It is normal to demand an end to the genocide. It is normal to stand up against fascism. It is normal to fight for our jobs, to fight against war, to demand our future.

We are entering a new era – the beginning of the decline of imperialism. Not the full decline yet, just the beginning. There is no new balance yet, and so yes, it is a messy time. In stable periods, the balance of power seems fixed: the big stays big, the small stays small. But in a turmoil like today, everything can shift rapidly. What seems untouchable can melt away. What seems small today can grow very fast.

We are that sparkle. We are the small thing that will grow all over Europe – saying no to warfare, and yes to welfare.

A word on hope. There is a lot of talk about hope. But hope is not a word floating out there somewhere. Hope is not a promise for the future. Hope is not a word in a book. Hope is something we build actively. Hope is mobilisation. Hope is organisation. Hope is struggle.

Look around: there is a sparkle here in London. There was a sparkle last week in Brussels, when 12,000 people took to the streets against the war. We are building something across Europe. We can be proud of ourselves.

We are not here to change capitalism. We are not here to change imperialism. We are here to change everything, and to build socialism.