The Brighter Nations in Solidarity: Even in the Midst of a Genocide, a New World Is Being Born

The Colonial West is in decay, losing its economic grip on the world and its control over our minds. The birth of a new world is neither clear nor easy. This talk envisions that horizon, forged through the solidarity of past and present anticolonial struggles, and heralds its inevitable arrival. 

It draws on the framework of The Darker Nations, a book by Vijay Prashad, to speak to the unbearable clarity of our present: we are witnessing a genocide in Palestine, and the so-called democratic world – the very architects of the postwar international order – stand by in silence, or worse applaud it. What does this tell us about the moral architecture of the West? These are states built on colonialism, slavery and expropriation. Their silence is not accidental—it is structural. 

We should turn our gaze to the forgotten dreams of the Third World Project – Bandung, Belgrade, Havana – not with nostalgia but as a necessary exercise of memory. A time when leaders and movements from Asia, Africa and Latin America gathered not to beg for space within the imperial system, but to imagine a world beyond it. A world anchored in sovereignty, dignity and socialist possibility. This was tricontinentalism: a revolutionary commitment to unity across borders, forged in the furnaces of anticolonial struggle. 

participant

Vijay Prashad

An Indian historian and journalist, Prashad is the author of forty books, among them Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations (2020), Red Star Over the Third World (2022), The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (2022), and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (2013). His books The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power (2022) and On Cuba: Reflection on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle, were written in collaboration with Noam Chomsky. Prashad serves as Director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and as Chief Correspondent for Globetrotter. He is also an editor with LeftWord Books (New Delhi), Inkani Books (Johannesburg), and La Trocha (Chile). He has featured in two films: Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

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_{Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.}