Author: Keith Preston What the map of the world looked like before the rise of imperial states although a lot of groups are obviously missing as this is a map of the groups that survive to the present. My vision of the future is a world of millions of micro-cultures, ranging from reclaimed ancient identities to newly invented ones spread across all continents, with colonies in the Arctic, in the subterranean, on the oceans, and in space.
Historically, the main sources of conflict other than economics and statecraft have been religion and ethno-tribal identity. In modernity, religion eventually gave way to ideology as the primary mode of thinking, in late modernity ethno-tribal identity is giving way to social identity. For example, LGBTQs essentially have the same status as an ethnic group or religion, even though they are neither. A more complex and diverse society generates an increasing number of identities, as the emergence of polyamorists, transracials, transables, otherkins, incels, etc. indicates. In the USA, the once-dominant/hegemonic WASP identity is now a cultural minority as well, and all of the different forms of identity label “reactionary” are now essentially just another kind of minority group in terms of political/cultural/social identity.
Fetishists of historic Americana, Protestant evangelicals, Confederate nostalgists, and white supremacists are increasingly just another subculture like football fans, Mormons, medieval cosplayers, or the Crips. Instead of having a society with a dominant/hegemonic culture, we are increasingly developing a society of microcultures, albeit one that is dominated by an imperial state that functions as an administrative apparatus in order to maintain an economic oligarchy. A realistic political strategy for North America should be based on the idea that today’s culture wars are merely a passing phase, and that the future of North America will be a collection of an infinite number of micro-identities under a Roman-like imperium (but with Latin American-like levels of class disparities and civil dysfunction).
A somewhat interesting review of Abimael Guzman’s autobiography. For quite some time, I have held the view that the Shining Path developed what is arguable the most advanced critique of imperialism on the Marxist “far-left,” although it’s not substantially different from what anarchist anti-imperialists were saying in the 19th century. Marxists still held to a generally pro-imperialist line at the time. Marxist anti-imperialism really begins with Lenin (at least as far as major theorists). It’s also interesting how the Shining Path’s emphasis on recapturing a supposedly glorious Inca past resembles the primordialism found in aspects of fascist thinking. Pol Pot’s emphasis on reclaiming Angkar was similar.
By Frank Beyer
“Mao Zedong Thought” was a major global ideology at a time when China didn’t have much to offer the world economically. Chairman Mao influenced a wide range of groups, such as the Black Panthers in the United States and revolutionary movements in Nepal, India, and the Philippines. Mao was also a guiding light for one particular Peruvian revolutionary: Abimael Guzman. This acolyte’s revolution caused radical waves long after Mao’s death in 1976 – and ultimately ended in failure.
In 1965, a philosophy professor at Peru’s University of Huamanga named Abimael Guzman — also known as “Chairman Gonzalo” — travelled to China with seven other Peruvian communists; he would return to become the most famous Maoist in Latin American guerrilla history. While in Beijing, Guzman got to see Chairman Mao, but only from afar.
No, they wouldn’t. It just couldn’t be. LOL
LOL. An African-American Marxist is attacked by totalitarian humanist DSA as a “class reductionist.”
Keith Preston and Todd Lewis interview Agir Cudi a Kurdish anarchist and pacifist who has resists the tyranny of the Turkish regime.
The peasants vote for their favorite manor. This is a pretty slick work of corporate propaganda. Even Raytheon is included in this, lol.
By Joel Anderson
Sometimes a company is more than just a business. At times, a particular brand might start as a way to capture one particular corner of a business only to grow into something that represents the essence of a city, state or even a region. From the satisfied customers happy to have a name they can trust, to the employees working there for decades, some companies can just build a relationship with their surroundings that others never will.
The worst thing about the upcoming election is that someone is going to win.
By Martha C. White
NBC News
As jobs vanish, incomes drop and food prices rise, more Americans are going to bed hungry — and advocates warn that without intervention from Congress, those numbers could rise to a level unseen in modern times.
“People who never thought they’d experience food insecurity are now seeking food assistance,” said Luis Guardia, president of the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center.
A study from Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Studies found that the pandemic roughly doubled food insecurity in the United States. Food assistance nonprofit Feeding America estimates that with household finances decimated by the coronavirus, around 40 percent of people visiting food banks are first-time recipients of food assistance.
By Jackson Lears
It is hard to give up something you claim you never had. That is the difficulty Americans face with respect to their country’s empire. Since the era of Theodore Roosevelt, politicians, journalists, and even some historians have deployed euphemisms—“expansionism,” “the large policy,” “internationalism,” “global leadership”—to disguise America’s imperial ambitions. According to the exceptionalist creed embraced by both political parties and most of the press, imperialism was a European venture that involved seizing territories, extracting their resources, and dominating their (invariably dark-skinned) populations. Americans, we have been told, do things differently: they bestow self-determination on backward peoples who yearn for it.
By Zoë Jackson
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Minneapolis couple Lex and Celina Berndt did not expect to marry after just a four-month engagement.
Celina, 24, popped the question on Valentine’s Day, with an idyllic backdrop of a beach in Puerto Rico.
A pretty good overview of the sociological relationship between race, class, and crime.
This reminds of a lot of pamphlets I used to see circulating in the 70s and 80s: “How to Keep Your Kids Off Drugs,” “How to Know if Your Kid is Dabbling in the Occult,” “How to Witness to Your Neighbor Who Doesn’t Know Jesus,” “Communism’s Plan for American Youth,” etc. etc. etc.
As crazy as Noam has gotten in his old age, he still stands up to the new clerisy. Kudos.
Will Trump’s legacy be that of the president who was such a dumbass he couldn’t win reelection against a dementia patient?
A Biden regime will consolidate the “neoliberalism in economics/neoconservatism in foreign policy” ruling class paradigm while coopting the left by strengthening totalitarian humanism through all kind of woke legislation and policy initiatives while continuing Barr’s initiatives toward enacting greater repression against authentic enemies of the system.
Defund the military.
Krystal and Saagar discuss the murder of Vanessa Guillen, a soldier who went missing from Fort Hood in April, whose remains were found in Texas.
Once again, the Babylon Bee stands as one of the last bastions of honest journalism, along with The Onion and Hard Times.
Babylon Bee
WASHINGTON, D.C.—There has been much talk about renaming the Washington Redskins, since their offensive name has no place in our modern, enlightened society that has done away with all other immorality and sin.
Our system is not capitalism, communism, or fascism (whatever one thinks of any of these) but neo-feudalism.
