Author: Keith Preston By Tommy Beer
Forbes
In a wide-ranging speech at a campaign rally Saturday night, President Donald Trump ramped up attacks against his opponent, Joe Biden, calling Biden the “dumbest of all candidates,” and went so far as to declare, “maybe I’ll sign an executive order that you cannot have him as your president.”
By Troy Southgate
None of us should be surprised to see the plastic hypocrites of the American Left mourn the recent passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Whilst this female equivalent of Judge Roughneck is being celebrated for having implemented a series of laws designed to provide the misleading impression that we are living in the midst of an unprecedented social revolution, few of her admirers seem to care that this formidable old battle-axe was nonetheless enforcing the laws of the most brutal regime on the planet.
By Keith Preston
An Overview of Marxist Theory
During the middle part of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels outlined a comprehensive theory concerning how human societies evolve over time, and the factors that shape the character of particular societies. According to Marxist theory, human history is the history of the rise and fall of different kinds of economic systems, and it is the economic relationships that human beings enter into that determine every other aspect of their society at any particular time. A new economic system emerges when an older system has exceeded its historical purpose. New economic systems (“modes of production”) develop within the context of the system they eventually replace. Feudalism developed out of primitive societies, and capitalism developed out of feudalism. Marx and Engels believed that communism would develop out of the conditions created by capitalism.
The emergence of each new economic system, or mode of production, comes about as a result of conflict. The conditions of the older economic system give rise to the newer one, and the two systems eventually come into conflict with one another with the rising economic forces supplanting the declining ones. However, this conflict is not something that human beings deliberately choose to engage in. Instead, human consciousness and thought is shaped by the material conditions human beings find themselves in. The ideas that dominate the intellectual life of a particular period in history are determined by the existing set of economic relationships, and the dominant mode of production. Marx and Engels believed that culture is an outgrowth of the material forces that shape the economy.
Translated from the French Wikipedia:
Right-wing anarchism is a philosophical and political sensibility, deeply anti-liberal, characterized by a refusal to join a society or a system based on parliamentary democracy, the power of money, received ideas in matters of social order, and more generally any form of authority claiming to them.
This way of thinking, however, retains ideals and values considered politically, morally, and ideologically right-wing. Otherwise, the term anarchism is used.
However, there are several anarchisms, and it is extremely difficult to classify a person claiming to be anarchist as a right-wing or left-wing anarchist. The actors associated with this article should be taken with all the necessary reserve.
Foundations of Right-Wing Anarchism
At the basis of right-wing anarchism, we find first of all a rather violent criticism of the power of a minority of intellectuals. This criticism paradoxically relates both to the ineffectiveness of this power and to its dangers. Intellectuals, subject to the dominant ideology of democracies, are supposed to reinforce the intellectual conformism which is inherent in this type of government (Marcel Aymé has devoted a book to Intellectual Comfort and Louis Pauwels has made a lot of talk about him by speaking of mental AIDS ). These intellectuals then become the main architects of these democracies, because parliamentary democracies base their authority on the expression of a majority which can be influenced, and which must be influenced to keep the population “whole” in their cage. This is where, according to right-wing anarchists, lies the foundation of political power and, by extension, of political tyranny. According to them, intellectuals are not a force of resistance against political power; at best they would have no impact on him, at worst they would strengthen him and receive their reward from the ruling classes.
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
Is it just me or do white people kind of suck lately? I mean more than usual. That’s not racist, I use to be one. I sort of still am, I guess. More on that later. It kind of seems like white folk have fallen into two equally obnoxious sub-species. There’s the White Alpha Douche, bitching like a 13 year old emo kid that he’s the real victim because everybody else is playing the fucking victim card and that’s his card. Then there’s the equally tiresome Squishy White Apology Addict, who’s just terribly terribly sorry about all the savagery his ancestors have dished out to minorities, but now he looks to the Noble Savages and Magical Negroes to show him how to walk and talk and censor people like me for not stepping in line. He’s probably banning me again from Facebook as we speak for self-identifying as a tranny and patting himself on the back for being part of the solution.
Both of these unbearable archetypes are offensively one dimensional and, lets face it, downright racist in their shallow world view. The first one blames all the world’s woes on people of color, and the second relies completely on this same coalition of minorities to save him from his ancestral evil ways. Black folks have enough trouble getting home from the grocery store without getting shot full of ketamine and chucked in the back of a police cruiser without having to choose between smacking us or holding our hand. Why can’t we just get our shit together? Well, believe it or not, it’s not all our fault. Not exactly anyway.
By Martin Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Even with all of the massive economic problems that the United States is facing, if the government would just get off our backs most of us would do okay. In America today, it is rapidly getting to the point where it is nearly impossible to start or to operate a small business.
The federal government, the state governments and local governments are cramming thousands upon thousands of new ridiculous regulations down our throats each year. It would take a full team of lawyers just to even try to stay informed about all of these new regulations.
Small business in the United States is literally being suffocated by red tape. We like to think that we live in “the land of the free”, but the truth is that our lives and our businesses are actually tightly constrained by millions of rules and regulations. Today there is a “license” for just about every business activity. In fact, in some areas of the country today you need a “degree” and multiple “licenses” before you can even submit an application for permission to start certain businesses. And if you want to actually hire some people for your business, the paperwork nightmare gets far worse. It is a wonder that anyone in America is still willing to start a business from scratch and hire employees. The truth is that the business environment in the United States is now so incredibly toxic that millions of Americans have simply given up and don’t even try to work within the system anymore.
Today, the U.S. government has an “alphabet agency” for just about everything. The nanny state feels like it has to watch, track and tightly control virtually everything that we do. The Federal Register is the main source of regulations for U.S. government agencies. In 1936, the number of pages in the Federal Register was about 2,600. Today, the Federal Register is over 80,000 pages long. That is just one example of how bad things have gotten.
But it is not just the federal government that is ramming thousands of ridiculous regulations down our throats. The truth is that in many cases state and local governments are far worse. We have become a nation that is run and dominated by bureaucrats. Yes, there always must be rules in a society, but we have gotten to the point where there are so many millions of rules that the game has become unplayable.
The following are 12 examples of ridiculous regulations that are almost too bizarre to believe….
I tend to agree with this assessment from the “Sovereign Counties” site.
Anarcho-capitalism is a contradiction in terms. The system presumes a state enforcing exclusive entitlement to productive means. Competing security agencies, enforcing these entitlements and only these entitlements, constitute a state.
Anarcho-communism as usually described is not stateless either.
County sovereignty, or free association through local autonomy, does not claim to be strictly stateless, but it is closer to anarcho-communism than anarcho-capitalism. Inalienable self-ownership assumes a state enforcing the right. County boundaries and non-aggression between counties also assume a state, but the powers of this state can be distributed among the counties.
County sovereignty permits as much or as little capitalism as free people want. Anarcho-capitalism coercively stacks the deck in favor of capitalists with hereditary title in perpetuity. The capitalists are vassals of a state, and their state invariably expands their privilege through rent-seeking.
I don’t have any problem with people calling themselves “anarcho-capitalist” but political decentralization automatically implies economic decentralization. Bye, bye central banking, currency monopolies, patents/intellectual property/copyrights, land monopolies, corporate personhood, corporate welfare, “public-private partnerships,” limited liability laws, subsidies, government contracts, loans, guarantees, bailouts, purchases of goods, price controls, regulatory privilege, grants of monopolies, protectionist tariffs and trade policies, bankruptcy laws, military intervention to gain access to international markets and protect foreign investments, regulating or prohibiting organized labor activity, eminent domain, discriminatory taxation, ignoring corporate crimes and countless other forms of state-imposed favors and privileges. Even on the local level, many of these kinds of features exist which have the collective effect of centralization control over wealth, property, and resources.
Todd Lewis is joined by Keith Preston, Swithun Dobson and Terminal Philosophy to discuss what the lockdowns tell us about the nature and power of the Western Elites.
Of course, he quickly adds a list of qualifiers. “Don’t worry. I’m still an idiot.”
The people who run this site are just as much of a “cult” as all of the groups they hate. However, any one of the groups on this list could likewise be the basis for intentional communities for folks who share common beliefs and values.
Watchman Fellowship
This Index contains brief definitions, descriptions or cross references on over 1,200 religious organizations and beliefs, as well as world religions (including Christianity) and related doctrines. Watchman Fellowship is a Christian apologetics and discernment ministry; thus, many references (“Jesus,” “Gospel,” “Christianity,” etc.) contain definitions that reflect the beliefs of Watchman’s staff. While Watchman Fellowship does not hold to the beliefs of non-Christian religions and doctrines, we also attempt to describe these beliefs factually, fairly and accurately. Readers are asked to assist in this effort by suggesting corrections or improvements.
This is by no means a complete list of cults and religions. Watchman Fellowship maintains over 10,000 files and a research library of over 25,000 books and periodicals on religions, cults, new religious movements and related teachings. The absence of a religious movement from this index does not mean that Watchman Fellowship endorses the organization.
By its primary dictionary definition, the term cult just means a system of religious beliefs or rituals. It is based on a farming term in Latin meaning cultivation. Sociologists and anthropologists sometimes use the term cult to describe religious structure or belief patterns with meanings (usually non-pejorative) unique to their disciplines. In modern usage, the term cult is often used by the general public to describe any religious group they view as strange or dangerous. Thus, cult can describe religious leaders or organizations that employ abusive, manipulative, or illegal control over their followers’ lives.
I agree with Domhoff’s analysis of the party system, and why third parties can’t win, though I disagree with his solutions. None of the minor parties are qualified to run the state because no one is qualified the state. The purpose of minor parties should be merely propagandistic, i.e. running electoral campaigns merely to spread ideas and not to “win.” However, any one of the minor parties might be a basis for an intentional communities, startup societies, or radical decentralist movement, which does not require ideological uniformity. Actual political activism should only have two purposes, devolving power and repealing laws.
By G. William Domhoff
This document first explains why third parties cannot work in the United States. Then it explains how and why it would now be possible to transform the Democratic Party into a nationwide liberal-labor-left coalition, thanks to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, which forced the southern white racists who previously controlled the party into the Republican Party.
To understand how the electoral rules shape the number of parties, consider this brief example from a different country in a different century:
In the late nineteenth century, Belgium elected its parliament from geographical districts and had two stable political parties, with the Catholic Party usually defeating the Liberal Party. But in the 1890s a Socialist Party came on strong, and the Liberal Party was in danger of extinction. The Catholic Party quickly changed the electoral system because it did not want to end up in a one-on-one battle with the socialists.
A pretty good overview fo the state of the far-right from a far-left perspective.
WORT Community Radio
The far-right movement isn’t monolithic—it’s a complex spectrum of organizations and ideologies. To help us break it down, today Allen is joined by Matthew N. Lyons, co-author of the landmark book Right-Wing Populism in America, to discuss the evolution of rightist trends and the rise of fascism in the U.S.
With the help of listener callers, they discuss white nationalism, the far right’s relationship to the Constitution, the politics that paved the way for Trump, the meaning of fascism, and the interplay between right-wing movements and systems of oppression.
Matthew N. Lyons is a writer and longtime observer of right-wing politics. He is the author of Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire (PM Press, 2018) and co-author with Chip Berlet of Right-Wing Populism in America (Guilford Press, 2000). He writes regularly for the radical antifascist blog Three Way Fight.
Black Rose Anarchist Federation
Author and independent writer William C. Anderson interviews veteran organizer and former Black Panther and political prisoner Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin on the current political crisis, fascism and rising relevance of Black anarchism. We also urge you to generously contribute towards a fundraising campaign organized by William to support Lorenzo and his partner JoNina Ervin. Both are movement elders who’ve inspired generations of rebels and are in need of support with their living and medical expenses.
Introduction and Interview by William C. Anderson
The novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has highlighted the daily disasters of capitalism. A lack of healthcare, a safe environment, housing, and food are an everyday question for a growing segment of vulnerable people. This has brought about a noticeable interest in anarchism for many. The failures of the state were made plain by ineffective solutions, willful neglect, and utter disregard for human life.
How Ernst Jünger predicted the ubiquity of masks.
By Thomas Crew
The Critic
Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) has Alphas, Betas, and Epsilon Semi-Morons – genetically engineered classes with uniform clothing and uniform opinions. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948) has the Thought Police and Newspeak. While Zamyatin’s We (1921) has numbers instead of people – D-503, I-330, O-90: vowels for females, consonants for males.
If there is a single defining characteristic of dystopian literature, it is the eradication of all individuality. “Self-consciousness”, Zamyatin writes, “is just a disease”. For this reason, dystopias are invariably told by tormented outsiders: those who are well aware of the commodity-like standardisation of their fellow humans, yet either fear the consequences of speaking out or resent their own sense of self. After all, “no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour”, as Huxley writes.
Given their tyrannical preoccupation with uniformity, it is little wonder that, as a literary form, dystopias emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century. The totalitarian regimes of Russia and Germany as well as their technocratic Western counterparts, inspired by the likes of F. W. Taylor and Henry Ford, were central sources of inspiration. For all their apparent differences, these competing ideologies are united by the utopian attempt to redraw not just society, but the human being himself. The increasing power of science and technology gave rise to the idea that nature itself, in all its messy complexity, could be finally put straight.
Besides these three canonical authors, however, this generation produced another equally impressive, if much less well known, dystopian writer: the enigmatic German, Ernst Jünger. Known primarily for his First World War diaries and steadfast opposition to Weimar liberalism, Jünger went on to live until the age of 103, writing on topics from entomology and psychedelics to nihilism and photography. In the second half of his career he produced three principal works of dystopian fiction: Heliopolis (1949), Eumeswil (1977), and, perhaps his finest, The Glass Bees (1957).
Fourth-generation warfare is growing in America.
By William S. Lind
Traditional Right
The September 2020 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette announced a series of articles titled The Maneuverist Papers and offers the first, “Marine Corps Maneuver Warfare: The Historical Context,” by “Marinus”, whose initials I suspect are J.S. The history it discusses and its analysis of the maneuver warfare movement’s “success” is generally accurate and thoughtful. I put “success” in quotes because, while maneuver warfare was adopted as official Marine Corps doctrine, the Corps left its personnel system, education, and training largely unchanged, which means it can talk about maneuver warfare but not do it. The Italian Army did the same thing in the late 1930s; hopefully, the Marine Corps’ results will be happier.
Marinus’s article concludes by asking,
Will there need to emerge another Gray, Boyd, Wyly, or Lind? Should or how should maneuver warfare adapt to recent and emerging changes in warfare? Or, more fundamentally, has warfare changed sufficiently that the Marine Corps should reconsider its basic doctrine? Most Marines would instinctively and emphatically say, “No!”–but does that mean the question should not be asked?
I appreciate his acknowledgement–I did after all start the debate over maneuver warfare with a piece I wrote in 1976- and I would also note that with the exception of John Boyd, the rest of us (including Jeff Grelson, whom the article forgot) are still alive, functioning, and probably have one last campaign in us.
But war is evolving in such a way that the situation is wholly different. In the 1970s through the early 1990s, the Marine Corps could choose whether to stick with Second Generation (firepower/attrition) warfare or shift to the Third Generation (maneuver warfare). Fourth Generation war offers no such choice, because it moves in next door.
It’s Going Down
There is a growing consensus across mainstream political and media circles that Trump will contest the upcoming 2020 election and throw the United States into a Constitutional – and potentially violent crisis – in order to hold on to power.
But what does this potential chaos mean for working-class and poor communities? While non-profits and organizations tied to the Democratic Party are already organizing, what do everyday people do in the face of such uncertainty? The following editorial offers some ideas as to what we may expect to see play out over the coming weeks and months.
It has become increasingly clear, even to the ruling elite, that the November election will present the American political system with its most serious crisis in well over a century. The choices presented―Donald Trump and his fascist clique versus right-wing neoliberal Joe Biden―offer essentially nothing to either autonomous social movements or the working-class caught up in the hellscape that is 2020. Nevertheless, this spat between two factions of billionaires threatens to devolve into a blood feud. In this environment, people must be organized to keep themselves and their communities safe from both the looming threat of dictatorship and paramilitary violence.
The tribal civil war is about to intensify. Btw, if anyone thinks Old Hag Ruthie was a friend of freedom, liberty, rights, etc, then check out the Bennis v. Michigan case.
By Russell Berman
The Atlantic
A furious battle over a Supreme Court vacancy is arguably the last thing the United States needs right now.
The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg today represents a devastating loss for feminists who held up the 87-year-old as an icon of women’s rights, and as a bulwark protecting abortion rights and a wide range of other progressive ideals on a conservative Supreme Court. The Brooklyn-born jurist became one of the nation’s foremost advocates against gender discrimination as a lawyer for the ACLU, decades before President Bill Clinton appointed her to be the second woman to sit on the high court.
But her passing less than two months before the presidential election also tosses one more lit match into the tinderbox of national politics in 2020: It will surely inflame a deeply polarized country already riven by a deadly pandemic, a steep economic downturn, and civil unrest in its major cities.
Leftists who favor censorship are ultimately digging their own grave. Look for the Western elites to increasingly try to impose the Chinese model of Internet censorship in the future.
That Jerry. Still the same party animal he was 40 years ago. You haven’t seen wild living until you’ve been an evangelical.
People
Becki Falwell reportedly told police that her husband Jerry Falwell Jr. said he fell down the stairs and was bleeding “a lot.”
Associated Press
![[object Object]](https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tbt/O63BGZG3NBEQHN6MCXTYUIXDFQ.jpg)
ALTO RIO GUAMA INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil — A bit after sunrise, dozens of Indigenous Tembé men began preparing for the important day ahead. They danced, chanted and donned matching black T-shirts before setting off on motorbikes into Brazil’s Amazon forest.
Self-declared “forest guardians,” their aim was to find and expel illegal loggers and miners within their territory on the eastern edge of Brazil’s Para state. Emblazoned on their T-shirts was their group’s name — Ka’Azar, which in their language means “Owners of the Forest.”
“For a long time, since I was born, I heard my father and the elders talk about the need to fight the loggers in our lands,” said Ronaldo Tembé, a 21-year-old member of the 40-man patrol. “We are trying to combat deforestation within our reserve, which is becoming increasingly precarious.”
