Delivered at the International Anti-Fascist Forum, Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of Victory in the Second World War, Moscow

22 April 2025

Red salute, comrades,

I bring revolutionary greetings from the Communist Party Marxist, Kenya to this important occasion, the International Anti-Fascist Forum. This land is sacred, the land of the heroic Red Army that defeated fascism at the close of the Second World War. As we mark the 80th anniversary of this historic victory, we must honour the martyred soldiers whose blood continues to nourish the ongoing struggle against the re-emergence of neo-fascism worldwide.

Our hope is that this conference will not be a mere political gathering, but reminiscent of the Comintern, the Third International. We must formulate strategies, develop political programmes, and ensure that attending organisations commit to implementing the resolutions in their respective countries. This was the lifeblood of the seven congresses and thirteen plenums of the Comintern, which served as a torchbearer for the working class and all oppressed peoples of the world.

Allow me to give a brief report on the history and manifestations of fascism in Kenya, in line with the theme we have chosen. The question of whether Kenya has become a fascist dictatorship has arisen both within our Party and among the so-called progressive forces. The ensuing ideological debates are healthy and timely. They prove that our Party is alive. Ideological unity is not imposed, it is a product of principled ideological struggle, a synthesis born from contending views.

Without ideological struggle, the Party ceases to exist. We must therefore carry out these struggles to their logical conclusions. However, we must guard against dogmatism and pedantry. All principled debate must emerge from a revolutionary ideological standpoint. Our aim is to clarify and unify theory so as to inform unified revolutionary action.

Our ideas stem from social practice and interaction with nature. Only idealists place ideas before material reality. For idealists, knowledge precedes experience, priori. For us materialists, knowledge is born out of experience, afterwards, posteriori.

Idealist analysis obscures reality, because it begins with abstractions and then bends facts to fit pre-conceived conclusions. In contrast, we analyse from the standpoint of our social experience in Kenya. This is the only valid test of our knowledge.

Our Party views ideological differences not as irreconcilable contradictions, but as part of the unity of opposites that defines all objective phenomena. Dialectical materialism shattered dualistic thinking and affirmed materialist monism as the scientific method for understanding reality.

We are not theorising for the sake of theory. Revolutionary theory must inform revolutionary practice. If we cling to abstract theorising disconnected from concrete social conditions, we risk descending into obscurantism and serving the class enemy. Our theorising must yield a concrete political programme to be carried out collectively by the Party. If our programme proves mistaken, our practice must correct it; this dialectical process must remain grounded in ever-changing material conditions.

What, then, is fascism?

We must look at the essence of fascism, not merely its form. History does not repeat itself identically. Classical fascism exhibited different features across countries: Germany under Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, Spain under Franco, Portugal under Salazar, France under Pétain, Romania under Antonescu, Hungary under Horthy. But general features allow us to analyse contemporary manifestations of fascism in Kenya.

Classical Fascism

Fascism is the reaction of the ruling class to manage the crisis of the capitalist system and defend its exploitative property relations. It is, in essence, a counter-revolutionary tactic, a desperate attempt to suppress the working people’s threat of revolution. Fascism emerges as class contradictions sharpen under monopoly capitalism, the decadent stage of capitalism that succeeded the era of free competition.

Marx and Engels may not have lived through fascism, but they left us with the scientific tools to analyse its development. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx studies how Louis Napoleon consolidated power through militarism and authoritarian rule, a form that resembles fascism but remains historically distinct.

Marxism is a living science. The working-class organisations of the Comintern era had to confront fascism head-on. Using Marxist methods, they developed revolutionary programmes to defeat it. The major ideological split at that time was between the camps of Stalin and Trotsky. Though they shared many positions, key differences emerged in strategy.

Trotsky argued that finance capital could no longer accommodate parliamentary democracy and resorted to fascism to maintain control. He contended that both social democracy and fascism were modes used by finance capital, depending on the circumstances.

Stalin rejected this dualism. He maintained that the bourgeoisie does not freely choose modes of rule, but is forced by the sharpening contradictions of class struggle. According to Stalin, fascism is the armed fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie, often supported by social democracy. Social democracy, he argued correctly, is the moderate wing of fascism; not its negation, but its supplement.

Stalin warned that pacifism and social democracy are not antidotes to fascism, but enablers. He dismissed the false dualism that suggests a strict opposition between fascism and liberalism. Fascism and its moderate wing co-exist and support each other when required to suppress proletarian revolution.

This historical dialectic is crucial. In Kenya, we must resist efforts to divide fascism and liberal democracy into opposing camps. They are two faces of the same enemy, finance capital.

Neo-Fascism in Kenya

To analyse fascism in the Kenyan context, we examine four key elements:

         1.      Paramilitary tactics

         2.      Class character

         3.      Fascist ideology

         4.      The annihilation of workers’ organisations

Fascism in Kenya manifests itself in historically specific forms, but with clear structural similarities to classical fascism.

1. Paramilitary Tactics:

Kenya has long used state and informal militias to uphold the interests of finance capital. From colonial-era forces like the Kenya Police Reserve and Home Guards to Kenyatta’s post-independence Ngoroko militia, to Moi’s Jeshi la Mzee and YK92 youth wing, and later, Mungiki, Taliban, Kamjesh, and others, the state has always relied on paramilitary repression to enforce bourgeois order.

Even Uhuru Kenyatta suspended constitutional rule in Nairobi and handed control to the military. The Kenya Meat Commission was militarised. Security was privatised, with firms like G4S and KK Security policing the poor on behalf of capital. Ruto’s regime has followed suit, expanding military control while unleashing police brutality on civilians.

2. Class Character:

Fascist organisations in Kenya, past and present, recruit from the petty bourgeoisie and lumpen proletariat. Mungiki, for example, drew from the rural Kikuyu lumpen, displaced from land and production. These organisations serve to defend finance capital, even if their actions sometimes escape elite control.

3. Fascist Ideology:

Kenyan fascist tendencies are cloaked in ethnic chauvinism. Mungiki advanced Kikuyu supremacy. The Taliban defended Luo settlements. Sungu Sungu, Chinkororo, and the Mombasa Republican Council all mobilised reactionary ethnic politics. These ideologies mask the real class character of fascism and pit the masses against one another.

4. Annihilation of Workers’ Organisations:

Fascism aims to destroy the organised working class. From colonial-era repression of trade unions and the banning of the Kenya People’s Union in 1969, to the incorporation of COTU and repression of radical movements like Mwakenya, to the current assault on union leaders like Davji Attellah, the goal has remained the same: prevent a proletarian revolution.

Recent examples include violent attacks on union meetings, obstruction of new union formations, and the repression of the Communist Party’s efforts to organise warehouse workers. The state’s fear of workers’ power is clear.

In conclusion, fascism has long existed alongside its “moderate” wing; bourgeois democracy. Ruto’s regime marks a sharpening of this contradiction. State terrorism, police abductions and killings, and the revival of Mungiki tactics all point to fascism in full expression. Ruto lacks a mass fascist movement, but he wields both the brutal and the moderate wings of finance capital’s dictatorship as needed.

Our task is to build and defend working-class and peasant organisations, trade unions, cooperatives, political formations. The aim of neo-fascism is to annihilate these organisations and neutralise their revolutionary potential. To counter this, we must raise revolutionary class consciousness, militancy, and unity.

Our Party must forge alliances even with non-party organisations rooted in the working class. Revolutionary purity is no substitute for revolutionary pragmatism. We must not abandon the masses; finance capital certainly will not.

The international anti-fascist front will only be strong if the working class is strong in every nation. Let us honour the martyrs of the Red Army not with words, but with revolutionary action.

Long live Red Army!

Long live the Great October Socialist Revolution!

Long live the Communist Party of the Russian Federation!

Long live the Communist Party of Kenya Marxists!

Long live internationalism and Solidarity!

…END