By Jason Wilson
The Guardian
Lately on the right, a sense has been developing that the American project is heading for a profound, perhaps bloody crisis. More and more, we hear talk of “civil war” – some say we have already embarked on a “cold” one.
Category Archives: Culture Wars/Current Controversies
Some Reflections on Anti-Zionism Reply
By Keith Preston
It is fashionable in many of the political circles that I travel in to attribute a range of problems involving international relations, along with other concerns, to “Zionism.” Used in these contexts, Zionism has two meanings, i.e. the state-nationalism of the Israeli regime itself, and the network of Jewish ethno-nationalist supporters of Israel throughout the Jewish diaspora. At times, the critiques of Zionist power represented by these perspectives overlap with traditional anti-Semitic views concerning a supposed “Jewish conspiracy” to undermine civilization by doing all kinds of bad things (The Daily Stormer, Stormfront, and, more articulately, Counter-Currents perspective).
Left, Right And The Russian Connection: An Interview With Alexander Reid Ross And Eric Draitser Reply
It’s interesting to compare this article with the Caleb Maupin piece. Maupin represents the authoritarian Stalinist Left, while Draister and Reid-Ross represent the authoritarian neo-Marxist/SJW/Antifa Left that is presently being coopted by hammer and sicklers (predominantly Maoists and Trotskyists). The principal different between the two camps seems to be that the Maupin circle continues to hold to the pro-Russian line of Western Communists during the Cold War, which means they have largely and ironically adopted the Duginist narrative regarding international relations, and have maintained a more authentically pro-working class orientation, which means they are less dismissive of the concerns raised by the populist right. The neo-Marxists have adopted an anti-Russian line, which puts them in the middle between neoliberalism and Eurasianism, and continues to emphasize identity politics in opposition to working class populism.
By Yoav Mitvin
Mint Press News
NEW YORK (Interview) —Neoliberal capitalism has failed the vast majority of Americans. It has increased inequality, fostered austerity, destroyed the environment and fomented wars.
Reactionary right-wing politics have largely succeeded in filling this ideological vacuum, embodied by the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America.
National-Anarchist Movement Conference 2017: A Summary Reply
By Keith Preston
Special thanks to Peter Topfer, Adam Ormes, Thom Forester, and Sean Jobst for their assistance in the writing of this summary.
On June 17 and 18, the first ever conference of the National-Anarchist Movement (N-AM) took place in Madrid. The process of arranging this conference was certainly not without its difficulties, and the organizers deserve much praise for their diligence in this regard. Originally, the conference was supposed to be hosted by the Madrid section of N-AM, who dropped out of the project shortly (and out of N-AM altogether) before the conference took place. This led to the irony of a conference being held in Spain where no actual Spanish people were among the attendees. Because National-Anarchists are widely despised by leftists who mistakenly regard N-A as a “fascist” tendency, security was a paramount concern.
Iran and the Left: Why They Supported Islamic Reaction 2
An old Trotskyist article from the 1970s on the relationship between Left and Islamic fundamentalism during the Iranian Revolution.
Spartacist League
When mullah rule was established in Iran in early 1979, the vast bulk of the Western left actively supported Ayatollah Khomeini’s seizure of power. Virtually the only group that refused to bow to the Islamic reactionaries was the Spartacist League, to which the League for the Fourth International traces its origin and from which founding cadres of the LFI came. At that time, when the SL stood on the program of revolutionary Trotskyism, its newspaper, Workers Vanguard, published the following important article.
In one sense it is now very easy to polemicize against those leftists, especially ostensible Trotskyists, who supported the Islamic opposition to the shah. We said Khomeini in power would seek to reimpose the veil, restore barbaric punishments (flogging, amputation), suppress the national minorities and crush the left and workers movement as ruthlessly as did the shah. Imperialist propaganda, they shouted, Khomeini is leading a great progressive struggle! Thus one self-proclaimed Trotskyist group in Britain charged:
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- “The Spartacists make a series of charges against the Mullah-led opposition as a result of which they characterize the movement as one of ‘clerical reaction.’ A number of these charges amount to uncritical retailing of the chauvinist rubbish which filled the American press throughout the Autumn. The Mullahs they claim wish to restore Iran to the 7th century AD…. They wish to introduce savage Islamic law punishments; stoning, public hanging and whipping etc. They wish to enforce the wearing of the veil and the removal of the rights given to women by the Shah.”
–Workers Power
- , February 1979
Well?
Now every piece of news out of Iran proves the international Spartacist tendency (iSt) was obviously, indisputably 100 percent right. The streets of Teheran are filled with the anguished cries of those, from middle-class liberal women to Guevarist guerrillas, who claim they were taken in by Khomeini’s revolution. Tragically, the voice of the revolutionists who warned of the reactionary clericalist aims of the mullahs was drowned in the clamor of opportunists singing the praises of the “anti-imperialist” ayatollah. It is the Iranian masses who will pay the price.
Anni Cyrus on Sharia Reply
Anni Cyrus and Steven Crowder talk all Sharia and Islamization while covering Women’s Right as feminist are fighting for or not??? … Nothing to learn but the truth! Aired 06/19/2017
Linda Sarsour: The Enemy of the State. Reply
Enemy of this state, perhaps. But obviously not all states.
How Fake News Almost Got Me Killed At The G20 Reply
In this video, Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange gives you the latest breaking news on the ground at the G20 in Hamburg Germany. Where a left fake news reporter decided to take photos of myself, Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Max Bachmann and Marcus of Heavy.com. Labeling all of us fascists and identitarians while sending the photos of our faces to antifa and other radical protests groups. Then the following happened.
Getting Stalked at #G20 2
Tim Pool and Lauren Southern discussing what wonderful, peace-loving, humanitarians leftists are.
Spencer Sunshine’s NYC Ford Foundation funded Lecture (June 28th, 2017) 1
The Far Right Today in the US and New York City
Verso Books
Brooklyn, New York
At 7 p.m. on June 28th, 2017, at the Verso Book Store in Brooklyn, New York, Spencer Sunshine a known prominent figure of the Anti-Fascist Action (Antifa), and also paid contributing writer for Political Research Associates (PRA) gave a grossly exaggerated and poorly researched inaccurate lecture about a variety of movements, groups, individuals characterizing everyone collectively as fascists, national socialists, racist and phobics of various kinds. What Spencer Sunshine failed to incorporate into his lecture is that Political Research Associates of which sponsored his lecture is a $12 Billion Dollar known as the Ford Foundation. This tax-exempt Foundation named after the late Henry Ford, a man who during his life time was accused of being an Anti-Semite and a man who was also said to have been praised by Adolf Hitler of the National Socialist regime of Germany during 1933 until 1945 sponsors’ money to PRA.
More…
No, It’s Not about “Globalism vs. Nationalism” 1
It’s about globalism/globalization vs non-state actors.
Some thoughts on the present political polarization, geopolitical rivalries, the G20, and “populist-nationalism.”
The present political polarization represents an effort by the various factions of the ruling class attempting to create constituencies for themselves. Most of the mainstream media represents the dominant centrist and center-left factions, academia represents the furthest left faction of the elite, FOX/GOP/talk radio represents the right-wing of the ruling class. I actually think the Trumpians represent yet another faction that wishes to pursue a new geopolitical strategy devised by Kissinger, but is being thwarted by the dominant faction and the Deep State in the process. https://www.the-american-interest.com/…/donald-trumps…/
One of the many problems with these populist-nationalist tendencies that have emerged in various Western nations is that they are not revolutionaries or even radicals, but reactionaries who resist globalization in the same manner that the anti-modernist movements of the19th century resisted industrialization. The populist-nationalists simply want to turn back the clock to the 20th century model of relatively autonomous nation-states that are middle-class oriented and ethnically, culturally, and religiously homogeneous. They’re not going to be any more successful at this than the Luddites were at blocking the Industrial Revolution, or the throne and altar traditionalists were at blocking the rise of liberal bourgeois republicanism.
Do Fascists and Marxists Actually Exist? Reply
No, says Paul Gottfried.
By Paul Gottfried
The American Conservative
Women’s March, March 2017. Photo by Mark Dixon/Flickr/Creative Commons
During last year’s election season, we were treated to multiple comments about how Donald J. Trump was no Edmund Burke. As a historian and political observer I find such put-downs ridiculous. No Western politician today is following in the footsteps of Edmund Burke; nor can he.
His associates didn’t care what his views were on “women’s issues,” gay marriage or transgendered restrooms; and he developed a reputation as a reformer because he favored home rule under the Crown for Ireland, a gradual emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, and an end to the mercantile policies supported by his Tory opposition. Burke held extremely critical views about democracy and ridiculed the notion of “human rights,” which has become a pillar of American liberal internationalism. I for one agree with much of what Burke said on many subjects, particularly the French Revolution, but then I’m a septuagenarian political dinosaur who doesn’t belong to any significant political movement or party.
Of course it is possible to claim Burke, Aristotle, Kant or anyone whom a journalist or politician cares to invoke for any cause. One can attribute moderation or favorable intentions to anyone who is no longer on Earth and then maintain that if so-and-so were around, he’d be for Hillary, Obamacare, John Kasich, or sending weapons to Israel or Poland. People in the public eye do this all the time; and when they do, I find myself reciting the biblical passage about letting the dead bury the dead.
A related bad habit that I pound mercilessly in my anthology, Revisions and Dissents, is attaching obsolete labels and associations to contemporary movements and personalities. “Fascism,” “conservative,” and “liberal” are three terms that I would like to retire, since I don’t think they apply any longer to our politics. “Right” and “left” may still have relevance since they seem to me to be existential reference points that can exist independently of passing parties and movements. “Conservative” and “liberal” came out of the nineteenth-century and were centered on the struggle between the landed classes and the rising urban bourgeoisie. (A similar dialectic played itself out in this country in the clash between the Union and Confederacy in the Civil War.)
By contrast Right and Left can be easily recognized even if the social and political battles of nineteenth-century Europe are no longer with us. The Deplorables who backed Trump or the French ploucs who supported the FN, clearly represent the Right. They are rooted in a particular place, oppose globalist ventures and what we in the US call the deep state, and hold relatively traditional views about gender and family relations. The globalist, pro-immigration class, which is situated mostly in large cities, and which energetically backs progressive lifestyles, exemplifies our version of the Left. Describing the current Left as “socialist” or “Marxist” is ridiculous and usually dishonest, because the lines of division between Right and Left are now found elsewhere.
I’ve noticed that our authorized conservatives don’t say much about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s cultural radicalism. Instead they berate her and former president Obama as “socialists” and even “Marxists.” What such figures once in power did or would do in pursuing feminist, gay, or transgendered agendas hardly rates a mention from our Republican spokespersons and Fox News All Stars. Far more worrisome for them is how a Democratic president might affect the GNP, or whether Senator Warren if she became president would have the government pay more toward college tuitions.
Although I’m by no means in favor of these policies, they hardly fit the classical criteria of socialism, like nationalizing the forces of production. A really intrusive side of the current (post-Marxist) Left, namely, their drastic social engineering projects intended to overcome “prejudice,” makes little impression on most of the authorized Right. Could it be that these critics are at least partly in agreement with or mostly indifferent to this undertaking? Perhaps they also sense that the Left has already won the cultural battle, and it might be best to limit partisan campaigning to pocketbook issues.
This is Going to Ruffle Some Feathers… Reply
The ever expanding political polarization in the United States appears to be splitting off into four basic factions. The two largest factions are the Red Tribe represented by the Republicans and the Blue Tribe represented by the Democrats, and this conflict between the mainstream tribes is now turning violent as evidenced by the assassination attempt against Steven Scalise and other Congressmen. The two smaller factions are the fractious alliance between the various far right tendencies as evidenced by the poster below, and the SJW/Antifa/neo-Marxist/Communist configuration on the far left.
I do not share the ideals of any of these four factions (or collections of factions). Here’s a brief and incomplete rundown of where I think each is insufficient.
-The Republicans are the party of plutocratic, imperialist, police statism, and I have said for nearly thirty years that if everything the Republicans tend to favor were put into practice the United States would have the economy of the traditional Latin American oligarchies (see the Kochs), the civil liberties of the Soviet Union (see Jeff Sessions), and the foreign policy of Nazi Germany (see the neocons). Trumpist pretensions about trying to move the GOP in a more paleoconservative direction are a demonstrable failure, and Trump has become clearly subordinated to the interests of the wider ruling class oligarchy. Noam Chomsky’s claim that the Republicans are the most dangerous organization in history might be hyperbole, but one that is closer to the truth than one might think.
-The Democrats are likewise the party of plutocratic, imperialist, police statism, although one that prefers to have a greater diversity of skin colors, genitalia, and sexual habits within the ranks of the ruling class. The persistent Russia-baiting of the Democrats indicates that they have arguably moved to the right of the Republicans on foreign policy (if such a thing is possible), their economics represent the left-wing of the plutocracy, and they have contributed to the growth of the police state every bit as much as the Republicans.
-The far right is increasingly abandoning any libertarian inclinations it may have ever had, and instead orienting itself towards authoritarian rightism of the Pinochet-Franco-Salazar-Mussolini model, and given state power would likely create a society that was at least as bad as that of the Republicans.
-The far left is becoming increasingly contemptuous of liberal values of any kind such as those outlined in the US Bill of Rights, and is instead adopting the Marxist critique of liberalism as merely a mask for class rule, and supplementing this with the Marcusean notion of “repressive tolerance.” Not coincidentally, the presence of hammer and sickle Communists (“tankies”) among the ranks of the far left is also growing, and the anarchist contingent among the far left is once again being overrun by Marxists as has been the historical norm. The far left would create a society that would be at least as bad as that of their far right opponents.
The best possible outcome of this conflict would be one where an equilibrium is maintained, where the various factions remain pitted against once another, with none of these being able to monopolize power, and where the state eventually fractures into enclaves for different factions while avoiding a full blown civil war.
The Revolutionary Potential of Illegal Immigrants 1
by Derrick Broze and John Vibes
Since the issue of borders and immigration continues to be a hot topic of debate among “libertarians” I figured I would share a quote from my recent book. Please feel free to respond regarding your thoughts on our take and tag your closed border friends. As you will see, John and I argue that the language around “open” and “closed” borders is a part of the problem.
“Traditionally, libertarian and anarchist positions on borders have favored an “open border” solution. This would be in contrast to a “closed border” with immigration controls. This is naturally in line with anarchism considering the fact that governments implement and control borders, and anarchists seek to abolish governments. However, recently some anarcho-capitalists and libertarians have argued for closed borders. They believe private property norms justify forcibly restricting the movement of other free humans, even beyond the borders of their own property. The Alt-Right takes it a step further and argues that the State may even be a necessary evil in order to save “western civilization” and “traditional values” from an ”invasion” of immigrants.
Sound of Social Justice 1
Does the Left Hate Free Speech? Reply
One of the best defenses of the far left’s views on “free speech” I’ve seen to date.
Chris Rock Explains Some of How Racism (White Supremacy) Works Reply
Racism Is Real Reply
White Privilege: The New Frontier of White Guilt Reply
Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, discusses the concept of “white privilege”–where it came from, what it means, and why it’s absurd.
Deported Phoenix Mom Speaks Out: ‘This Is The Face Of Deportation’ | Reply
NBC News correspondent Gadi Schwartz traveled to Nogales, Mexico, to talk with a mother whose deportation was protested Wednesday in Phoenix, and her kids about that this means for their family.
Why I Don’t Want to Become a Minority Reply
Lana Lokteff argues that every white country is being forced to “diversify” by importing millions of non-Europeans into their nation. Lana tells why she doesn’t want to become a White minority.
Antonia Okafor and Dave Rubin on Guns, Abortion, and Conservatism Reply
Antonia Okafor (Campus Carry Activist) joins Dave Rubin to discuss being black and conservative, racism on the right vs on the left, her political awakening, gun control, the abortion debate and much more.
