The new US socialist movement that sprang from the 2016 presidential campaign was, in a certain sense, an “America First” left. Not because it was nationalistic, xenophobic, or isolationist but because it focused largely on domestic political questions: Medicare for All, student debt cancellation, and police racism and violence, among others.

October 7 changed this overnight. Since last fall, the overwhelming focus of the US left has been on protesting the US government’s deep complicity in Israel’s murderous retaliation against Palestinians. One of the biggest stories in American politics today is the wave of protest and repression that has swept university campuses and that seems poised to affect the outcome of this fall’s presidential election. Commencement day has already arrived for many students, but one thing seems clear — summer vacation will not end the movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The Palestine solidarity movement raises a set of larger questions that the new left has yet to address. What is the meaning of internationalism today? What should socialist internationalism look like in an increasingly multipolar era? Would a multipolar world be more peaceful and progressive or just the latest version of great-power geopolitics? Jacobin contributing editor Chris Maisano recently spoke with three leading practitioners of internationalism on the US left — Phyllis Bennis, Bill Fletcher Jr, and Van Gosse — about their experiences in this field and their views of what it means to be an internationalist in the twenty-first century.