Welcome to the briefing of the Reactionary International research consortium.
Each month, we will bring you updates on the activities and entities of the vast global network that conspires to rob our rights, erode our democracies, and advance a vision of hate and exclusion across the world.
This month, we bring you three snapshots from across the Reactionary International.
ARGENTINA
Earlier this month — on 6 September 2024 — the “Madrid Forum” gathered in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Madrid Forum is a global network of reactionary forces established in 2020 by the Disenso Foundation of the Spanish extreme-right party Vox. The Madrid Charter, the founding document of the forum — which calls to ‘raise awareness against the extreme-left’ and crack down on its ‘narcosocialism’ — has been signed by 400 parliamentarians and leading political figures of the far right, including the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni; the president of the Republican Party of Chile, José Antonio Kast; the architect of Bolivia’s 2019 coup, Arturo Murillo; and the son of Brazil’s former president, Eduardo Bolsonaro.
On stage at the Madrid Forum in Buenos Aires, Santiago Abascal, leader of the Vox party, praised Donald Trump in his pursuit of the US presidency and proclaimed the Forum’s ‘unwavering solidarity with Israel and its right to defend itself,’ accusing the Progressive International of 'collaboration with terrorism in all its forms.’ In the audience sat Mike González and Andrew Olivastro, the senior researcher and development director of The Heritage Foundation, who later led a debate about how to use legal weapons to dismantle the left across the region.
The outcome of the event was clear: a commitment to strengthen the coordination among the Forum’s forces in order to advance a common agenda of exclusion. "The Madrid Forum implies that we good guys are starting to be organized and united," said Abascal, to "take back all the spaces of freedom that have been taken away from us long ago."
UNITED STATES
8,000 kilometres away — in the capital of the United States — the Madrid Forum’s Heritage Foundation was busy advancing its 800-page platform for a renewed and radicalized right-wing government in the United States known as the “Mandate for 2025”.
The Mandate, colloquially known as Project 2025, aims to guide the incoming Republican administration with a slew of policy proposals ranging from reproductive restrictions to executive power consolidation.
The Project has become the centre of Donald Trump's reelection campaign in the United States, cited by his closest allies and campaign surrogates alike. But what does it actually say?
To answer this question, we have partnered with the newest member of our consortium — the Autonomy Institute of the United Kingdom — to present the Project 2025 Index. This index allows anyone to parse through this 800-page document, to read and investigate how the far-right forces are cracking-down on down on labour unions, reproductive rights, poverty programs, and the so-called “climate agenda.”
We invite you to review the Index as the presidential campaign heats up: to see not only the vision that is guiding Donald Trump and his allies on their way to Washington but also — through groups like the Madrid Forum — the guiding ideas of the Reactionary International at large.
INDIA
From Buenos Aires to Washington DC, one of the guiding lights of the Reactionary International is Israel — both through its aligned government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and as a laboratory for technologies of violence and control.
In April 2024, the Borkum, a German vessel carrying arms and armament to Israel was loaded in Chennai, India and departed for Ashdod, Israel, bringing into focus India’s explicit role in the ongoing assault on Gaza.
This arms trade gained attention in 2018 when business mogul Gautam Adani’s Adani Defence & Aerospace and Israel’s Elbit Systems inaugurated the Adani Elbit Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Complex (UAV) in Hyderabad. Since October 7 2023, India has walked a diplomatic tightrope as the conflict has escalated across the region; calling for negotiations and dialogue, yet supporting Israel through the supply of missiles and drones.
This month, PI council members Jean Dreze, Harsh Mander and Nikhil Dey filed a petition in the Supreme Court demanding the end of the Indian weapons trade with Israel, citing that this trade violates the Genocide Convention. Article III of the Genocide Convention makes State complicity in Genocide a punishable offence. As a signatory and ratifier of the Geneva Conventions, India has also signed and ratified Article 1 which prohibits the supply of weapons to possible war criminals.
However, the Supreme Court dismissed this petition with a statement that Indian businesses exporting arms to Israel, such as Adani, may be sued for breach of contract if they stop exporting. In India, as elsewhere, institutional capture presents one of the strongest vectors for the rise of reaction, spreading out from the executive and into the corridors of media, technology, and the law.
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These examples represent pieces of a broader puzzle. From transnational business associations and powerful tech platforms to digital media outlets and their allied politicians, a global network has formed to act in concert toward the erosion of our rights.
That is why we are building the Reactionary International research consortium: to educate, organise, map and shed light on these illicit connections that today remain hidden in the shadows.
Sign up today and help build our research consortium.
Art: The first flag of Argentina presented to the revolutionary army by General Belgrano on February 27, 1812.
