Progressive International is an organization created in December 2018 by the Sanders Institute (belonging to the U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders) and by the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DIEM25). According to its own website, which is published in 27 different languages, “Our mission is to build a planetary front of progressive forces. We define progressive as the aspiration to a world that is: democratic, decolonised, just, egalitarian, liberated, feminist, ecological, peaceful, post-capitalist, prosperous, plural, and bound by radical love.”
In its declaration of principles, Progressive International affirms that the most harmful ‘virus’ afflicting humanity is none other than capitalism, an incredible assertion coming from an organization founded by a U.S. senator: “We aspire to eradicate capitalism everywhere. We believe that exploitation, dispossession, and environmental destruction are written into the genetic code of capitalism.”
In addition, the PI openly proposes the dismantling of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, arguing—together with DIEM25—that NATO is “a killing machine largely responsible for the devastation in Gaza and many other places, and must be stopped!” It is not necessary to read all the documents posted on its website to understand its ideological commitments, because its X (formerly Twitter) timeline praises Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Karl Marx, Lenin, the Black Panthers, and even Black Lives Matter (BLM).
In 2020, during the violent protests organized by BLM in dozens of U.S. cities, Progressive International openly stated that its true objective was to promote a world revolution. PI members were euphoric regarding these protests, and while hundreds of stores where being looted, they announced:
From Los Angeles to Sao Paulo, Minneapolis to London, “Black Lives Matter” is a cry and a demand heard around the world. … Protest movements around the world are rising up and reaching out. …protestors are demonstrating against widespread conditions of poverty, precarity, and police brutality. … And yet, there is something exceptional about these protests … Our challenge, now as always, is to organize: to turn these spontaneous expressions of solidarity into an enduring international movement to dismantle and discard the institutions of racist state violence … The task of our Progressive International is take stock [sic] of this international infrastructure—to listen to activists who have dedicated their lives to this fight—and to work with them to dismantle it: brick by brick, dollar by dollar, police department by police department.
This is a truly scandalous statement coming from an organization linked to the Democratic Party.
After reading a list of the members of Progressive International Council, everything becomes clearer. The roll call includes the executive secretary of the Sao Paulo Forum, Monica Valente, together with Baltasar Garzón, who leads a team of lawyers working for the Puebla Group.
The Council includes other well-known leaders of the Sao Paulo Forum (SPF) and the Puebla Group (PG), such as the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro; the former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa; and the former Vice-President of Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera, among others. But unlike the SPF (whose field of action is Latin America) and the PG (which also incorporates Spain and Portugal), the PI operates on all five continents, giving it much greater reach. Given that Bernie Sanders belongs to the governing party of the United States, Progressive International provides the Sao Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group with a direct channel of communication with the U.S. State Department and the White House itself.
Recently, the PI invented the Reactionary International, a web site dedicated to attack and discredit right-wing persons and movements. The project started by publishing a video in Progressive International’s X account, informing readers about its intentions. The post announces the debut of: “‘The Reactionary International,’ the new research consortium on the illicit global network undermining our democracies … Click, read, and join the fight to defeat the rising far-right.”
What they call an “illicit global network” is none other than prime ministers, elected by the people of their countries, like Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán; former presidents, like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro; and members of parliaments, like Santiago Abascal and Hermann Tertsch, among many other leaders who appear at the end of the video in a photo. The true objective of the Reactionary International is clear: radical political polarization and revolution, attacks upon anyone who defends capitalism or conservative ideas, and an insistence that ideas from their opponents should be dismissed without consideration, to the now-obvious detriment of society as a whole.
What Is Progressive International?
Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash
Progressive International is an organization created in December 2018 by the Sanders Institute (belonging to the U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders) and by the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DIEM25). According to its own website, which is published in 27 different languages, “Our mission is to build a planetary front of progressive forces. We define progressive as the aspiration to a world that is: democratic, decolonised, just, egalitarian, liberated, feminist, ecological, peaceful, post-capitalist, prosperous, plural, and bound by radical love.”
In its declaration of principles, Progressive International affirms that the most harmful ‘virus’ afflicting humanity is none other than capitalism, an incredible assertion coming from an organization founded by a U.S. senator: “We aspire to eradicate capitalism everywhere. We believe that exploitation, dispossession, and environmental destruction are written into the genetic code of capitalism.”
In addition, the PI openly proposes the dismantling of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, arguing—together with DIEM25—that NATO is “a killing machine largely responsible for the devastation in Gaza and many other places, and must be stopped!” It is not necessary to read all the documents posted on its website to understand its ideological commitments, because its X (formerly Twitter) timeline praises Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Karl Marx, Lenin, the Black Panthers, and even Black Lives Matter (BLM).
In 2020, during the violent protests organized by BLM in dozens of U.S. cities, Progressive International openly stated that its true objective was to promote a world revolution. PI members were euphoric regarding these protests, and while hundreds of stores where being looted, they announced:
This is a truly scandalous statement coming from an organization linked to the Democratic Party.
After reading a list of the members of Progressive International Council, everything becomes clearer. The roll call includes the executive secretary of the Sao Paulo Forum, Monica Valente, together with Baltasar Garzón, who leads a team of lawyers working for the Puebla Group.
The Council includes other well-known leaders of the Sao Paulo Forum (SPF) and the Puebla Group (PG), such as the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro; the former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa; and the former Vice-President of Bolivia, Álvaro García Linera, among others. But unlike the SPF (whose field of action is Latin America) and the PG (which also incorporates Spain and Portugal), the PI operates on all five continents, giving it much greater reach. Given that Bernie Sanders belongs to the governing party of the United States, Progressive International provides the Sao Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group with a direct channel of communication with the U.S. State Department and the White House itself.
Recently, the PI invented the Reactionary International, a web site dedicated to attack and discredit right-wing persons and movements. The project started by publishing a video in Progressive International’s X account, informing readers about its intentions. The post announces the debut of: “‘The Reactionary International,’ the new research consortium on the illicit global network undermining our democracies … Click, read, and join the fight to defeat the rising far-right.”
What they call an “illicit global network” is none other than prime ministers, elected by the people of their countries, like Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán; former presidents, like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro; and members of parliaments, like Santiago Abascal and Hermann Tertsch, among many other leaders who appear at the end of the video in a photo. The true objective of the Reactionary International is clear: radical political polarization and revolution, attacks upon anyone who defends capitalism or conservative ideas, and an insistence that ideas from their opponents should be dismissed without consideration, to the now-obvious detriment of society as a whole.
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