What Is Progressive International?
14th May 2024
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).