Booker Omole, General Secretary, Communist Party Marxist Kenya
Prepared for the International Theoretical Conference on Fascism and Imperialism in the 21st Century in the Neocolonies
Kathmandu, Nepal
22 to 23 May 2026

Imperialism in Crisis and the Return of Fascism

 

The Communist Party Marxist Kenya extends militant proletarian greetings to all revolutionary organisations, communist parties, anti-imperialist formations, workers movements, youth organisations, and progressive intellectuals gathered at this important international theoretical conference in Kathmandu, Nepal.

 

This conference takes place under conditions of sharpening global contradictions. Across the world, the imperialist system enters an increasingly turbulent and unstable period characterised by economic stagnation, financial crisis, endless war, ecological destruction, deepening inequality, debt dependency, mass displacement, and intensifying political reaction.

 

The crisis confronting world capitalism today is not cyclical or temporary. It is structural. It is rooted in the contradictions of monopoly capitalism itself. The concentration of wealth within the hands of finance capital has reached historically unprecedented levels while billions confront unemployment, hunger, precarious labour, collapsing social services, and permanent insecurity.

 

The global financial collapse of 2008 exposed profoundly the bankruptcy of neoliberal capitalism. Financial institutions and monopoly corporations whose reckless speculation plunged millions into misery were rescued through enormous state interventions while the burden of crisis was transferred directly onto workers and oppressed peoples through austerity, privatisation, unemployment, inflation, and intensified exploitation.

 

Under these conditions, the legitimacy of bourgeois liberal democracy increasingly deteriorates. Governments speak endlessly of democracy and human rights while simultaneously expanding militarisation, surveillance, censorship, anti-protest legislation, border repression, and ideological warfare against dissenting forces.

 

The contemporary resurgence of fascist tendencies must therefore be understood scientifically as a product of the deepening crisis of imperialism and the structural contradictions of neocolonial capitalism. The struggle against fascism cannot be separated from the struggle against imperialism, neocolonialism, and capitalism itself.

The Correct Understanding of Fascism

The scientific analysis of fascism must begin from the most correct understanding of the state itself. Fascism cannot be understood merely as authoritarian personalities or extremist rhetoric detached from material conditions. Fascism is fundamentally a question of class rule.

 

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels established correctly that the state is not a neutral institution standing above society. It is an instrument through which one class organises its domination over another. Under capitalism, the state exists fundamentally to preserve bourgeois property relations and defend the domination of capital over labour.

 

Vladimir Lenin deepened this understanding by exposing the class dictatorship concealed beneath bourgeois democracy. Liberal democracy proclaims equality while preserving systems of economic domination through which a tiny minority controls finance, production, communication, and political power.

 

Georgi Dimitrov scientifically defined fascism as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist, and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” This definition remains indispensable because it exposes fascism not as an irrational deviation from capitalism, but as one of the political forms through which monopoly capital preserves its domination during periods of crisis.

 

Fascism seeks above all to crush communist parties, militant workers organisations, anti-imperialist movements, and revolutionary consciousness among the masses. Anti-communism therefore remains central to fascist politics historically and in the contemporary period.

Imperialist Crisis and the Fascisation of the World Order

The contemporary resurgence of fascist tendencies internationally cannot be understood outside the deepening structural crisis of global imperialism. Global capitalism has entered a prolonged period of instability marked by economic stagnation, speculative financial expansion, debt dependency, ecological destruction, and deepening inequality.

 

The global financial crisis of 2008 exposed the bankruptcy of neoliberal capitalism. States intervened massively to rescue banks and monopoly corporations while workers and oppressed peoples absorbed the costs through austerity and unemployment.

 

At the same time, imperialism intensified militarisation globally. Endless war became central to the reproduction of imperialist power. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the destruction of Libya, the destabilisation of Syria, proxy wars, sanctions regimes, and military occupations reflected the growing inability of imperialism to preserve domination through economic mechanisms alone.

The destruction of Libya in 2011 remains one of the clearest examples of imperialist barbarism against Africa. Under the language of humanitarian intervention, NATO powers destroyed the Libyan state and destabilised the wider region.

 

The anti-terrorism framework has become one of the principal ideological instruments through which fascist tendencies are normalised internationally. Under the language of combating extremism, entire populations become subject to surveillance, militarisation, and ideological control.

The African Neocolonial State and the Structural Roots of Fascism

The origins of the modern African state lie not in democratic social development, but in colonial conquest and imperialist violence. The partition of Africa formalised during the Berlin Conference represented one of the most brutal reorganisations of human society in modern history.

 

The colonial state was constructed fundamentally as an instrument of extraction and repression. Its purpose was not to develop Africa for the benefit of its peoples, but to facilitate imperialist accumulation through control over land, labour, minerals, trade routes, and agricultural production.

 

Formal independence did not dismantle these coercive structures. Instead, colonial state machinery was inherited largely intact by sections of the African petty bourgeoisie and comprador elites integrated politically and economically into imperialist networks.

Kwame Nkrumah explained that neocolonialism represents the continuation of imperialist domination through formally independent states subordinated economically, politically, and militarily to foreign monopoly capital.

 

The neoliberal restructuring imposed across Africa by the IMF and World Bank intensified these contradictions dramatically. Structural adjustment programs dismantled public services, privatised state industries, weakened labour protections, and subordinated national economies more deeply to global finance capital.

Kenya: Anti-Terror Doctrine, Anti-Communism, and the Fascisation of the Neocolonial Security State

The Kenyan neocolonial state represents one of the clearest contemporary expressions of the growing fascisation of governance within the African neocolonies under conditions of deepening imperialist crisis.

 

The contemporary Ruto regime increasingly reveals the desperation of a neocolonial ruling class seeking to institutionalise fascistic rule through law, securitisation, and expanded coercive powers under conditions of deepening capitalist crisis and mass discontent. This trajectory possesses deep historical continuity with the anti-communist repression of the Moi one party dictatorship, where detention without trial, torture chambers, censorship, and ideological persecution were systematically deployed against Marxists, trade unionists, progressive intellectuals, and revolutionary patriots. 

 

The banning of communist organisation and the imprisonment of revolutionaries such as Maina wa Kinyatti exposed clearly the class character of the neocolonial state as an instrument for defending comprador rule and imperialist interests against the organised masses. Today, under the language of national security, anti-terrorism, and public order, the same coercive logic re-emerges in new juridical forms as the ruling bloc attempts to criminalise dissent, suppress militant organisation, and prevent the emergence of revolutionary class consciousness among workers and youth.

 

Following September 11, 2001, the Kenyan neocolonial state became increasingly integrated into the strategic security architecture of United States imperialism and its Western allies. Under the ideological language of counterterrorism, regional stability, and national security, the coercive capacities of the state expanded significantly through anti-terrorism legislation, intelligence restructuring, surveillance systems, biometric registration, digital monitoring, and militarisation of public life.

 

The Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2012 and the Security Laws Amendment Act of 2014 represented important moments within this process. Formally these laws were presented as defensive mechanisms against violent extremism. Yet from a Marxist-Leninist standpoint, the decisive question concerns the concrete class function of these laws within the totality of neocolonial capitalist relations.

 

Under conditions of sharpening capitalist crisis, the bourgeois state increasingly governs through permanent securitisation. Contradictions rooted fundamentally in imperialist exploitation, unemployment, inequality, landlessness, debt dependency, and youth marginalisation are displaced from the sphere of political economy into the sphere of security management.

 

Social crisis becomes depoliticised.
Class contradiction becomes criminalised.
The suffering masses are encouraged to interpret instability not as the consequence of imperialism and neocolonial capitalism, but as the product of extremists, radicals, terrorists, and destabilising actors. Thus, anti-terrorism doctrine increasingly functions as ideological warfare against revolutionary consciousness itself.

 

The ideological construction of revolutionary struggle as terrorism possesses deep roots within the colonial experience. British colonialism in Kenya systematically represented the Mau Mau liberation struggle and Dedan Kimathi not as legitimate anti colonial resistance, but as irrational barbarism, tribal violence, fanaticism, and terrorism.

 

The category of terrorism therefore historically functioned to delegitimise anti colonial struggle, justify emergency repression, and sever revolutionary movements from the masses through fear and ideological confusion. This historical continuity remains essential for understanding contemporary neocolonial counterterrorism doctrine. The terminology changes. The class essence remains fundamentally continuous.

 

Anti-communism remains one of the fundamental ideological requirements for the reproduction of neocolonial capitalism. Marxism Leninism threatens the system because it exposes scientifically imperialist exploitation, comprador accumulation, neoliberal restructuring, and the dictatorship of finance capital.

 

Consequently, revolutionary movements are increasingly represented as extremist, destabilising, foreign influenced, and threats to national unity and development. This ideological inversion represents a defining feature of fascisation within the neocolonies.

The revolutionary becomes the criminal.
The communist becomes the extremist.
The organiser becomes the security threat.

Meanwhile exploitation, debt slavery, militarisation, unemployment, and repression are normalised as order, stability, and development.

Technology, Surveillance, and the New Instruments of Fascist Control

The contemporary phase of imperialism has transformed technology into one of the principal instruments through which monopoly capital consolidates economic domination, ideological manipulation, and political repression.

 

Data has become one of the most valuable strategic resources of contemporary capitalism. Through smartphones, telecommunications systems, social media platforms, biometric programs, and digital payment infrastructures, monopoly corporations continuously harvest immense quantities of personal and behavioural information.

 

Artificial intelligence increasingly integrates into policing systems, border control, military technologies, predictive surveillance, and social monitoring infrastructures. Under monopoly capitalism, technological systems become subordinated to profit maximisation and social control.

 

In Kenya and across Africa, digital finance capitalism has advanced significantly through mobile money monopolies, digital lending platforms, and overdraft systems. Millions increasingly rely upon debt not for productive investment, but for survival itself.

 

Modern fascism therefore increasingly governs not only through the prison and the rifle, but through algorithms, surveillance systems, digital debt, data extraction, and psychological fragmentation integrated into the structures of imperialist capitalism.

Workers Organisations, Tribalism, Religious Fundamentalism, and Lumpenisation

Historically, fascistic systems fear above all the independent political organisation of workers and oppressed peoples. Workers organisations possess the capacity to transcend ethnic fragmentation, expose capitalist exploitation, disrupt accumulation, generate revolutionary consciousness, and challenge bourgeois ideological hegemony.

 

For this reason, militant strikes become framed as threats to economic stability, student movements become securitised, youth mobilisation becomes criminalised, and trade union activity becomes monitored through intelligence structures.

 

At the same time, imperialism and comprador elites continuously manipulate tribalism and religious fundamentalism to fragment class consciousness among the masses. Ethnic chauvinism and sectarian politics divert attention away from class exploitation and redirect popular anger horizontally against other oppressed communities rather than vertically against imperialism and comprador rule.

 

Lumpenisation under conditions of mass unemployment, urban poverty, narcotics proliferation, and social disintegration also creates fertile conditions for fascistic mobilisation. Sections of the lumpenised youth become vulnerable to manipulation by reactionary political forces, criminal networks, militia structures, and imperialist destabilisation projects.

 

The struggle against fascism therefore requires revolutionary political education capable of transforming social anger into disciplined anti-imperialist and proletarian consciousness.

Revisionism, Liberalism, and the Crisis of Anti-Fascist Struggle

The intensification of fascist tendencies internationally has once again exposed the profound weaknesses of liberalism, reformism, and revisionism in confronting the structural crisis of capitalism.

 

Liberal anti fascism portrays fascism as an irrational deviation from democratic norms rather than as a political expression of monopoly capitalism in crisis. It condemns authoritarian rhetoric while defending the capitalist order responsible for austerity, imperialist war, militarisation, and social collapse.

 

Across the neocolonies, NGOisation fragmented social struggle into isolated issue-based campaigns disconnected from broader anti-imperialist and proletarian politics. The struggle against fascism therefore demands ideological struggle against liberalism, opportunism, and revisionism while rebuilding militant anti-imperialist and proletarian revolutionary movements.

Revolutionary Tasks of Marxist-Leninist Parties

The deepening crisis of imperialism and the intensification of fascist tendencies place urgent historical responsibilities upon Marxist Leninist parties throughout the world.

The proletariat remains the principal revolutionary force capable of leading the struggle against fascism and imperialism. Industrial workers, informal workers, agricultural labourers, precarious labourers, digital platform workers, unemployed youth, and migrant workers all remain integrated into systems of capitalist exploitation dominated increasingly by monopoly finance capital.

 

In the African neocolonies, revolutionary transformation requires the alliance of workers and peasants under proletarian leadership. The struggle against fascism cannot be separated from the struggle for land, agrarian transformation, national sovereignty, and liberation from imperialist extraction.

 

Marxist Leninist parties must prioritise systematic political education, cadre formation, anti-imperialist consciousness, and disciplined revolutionary practice. The struggle against fascism ultimately becomes a struggle for political power. Only through revolutionary transformation and socialism can humanity abolish permanently the conditions reproducing fascism, imperialist war, exploitation, and oppression.

Conclusion: Let the Masses Rise Against Imperialism and Fascism

The contemporary resurgence of fascist tendencies reflects the deepening historical crisis of imperialism itself. Fascism is the political expression of monopoly capital in decay.

The African neocolonial order confronts a severe crisis of legitimacy. Workers remain exploited. Peasants remain dispossessed. Youth confront unemployment, precarity, debt dependency, and social exclusion despite the immense wealth of the continent.

 

Yet the same contradictions producing fascism also generate the objective conditions for revolutionary resistance. Throughout Africa and the world, workers continue to organise, youth continue to rebel, and oppressed peoples continue to struggle against imperialist domination.

 

The struggle against fascism cannot be separated from the struggle against imperialism, neocolonialism, and capitalism itself. Let the workers, peasants, youth, women, and oppressed peoples of Africa and the world unite against imperialism and fascism.

For only through national liberation, socialism, and the victory of the organised masses can humanity abolish exploitation, oppression, war, and fascism forever.

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