After years of monotonous two-party ping-pong, American politics has started to get interesting. Just a few months ago, the presidential election was shaping up to be a snoozefest between yet another Bush and another Clinton. However, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump—and above all, the American electorate—had other ideas.

The current refugee crisis has brought out some of the horrors of capitalist society, as well as the contrast between the basic human solidarity of ordinary working people and the cold calculation and callousness of capitalist rulers in Europe and elsewhere, as this statement from the International Marxist Tendency explains.

We publish here an article by Emanuel Tomaselli of the Austrian Marxists Der Funke, who looks at the imperialist forces behind the refugee crisis, as thousands of victims of war and poverty flee their homes. Despite the reactionary racist rhetoric of the right-wing parties and press, workers and youth across Europe are protesting against attempts to ban these refugees.