An interesting essay on economic history from Kevin Carson. I’ve found that it’s possible to make interesting comparisons and find interesting parallels between different public intellectuals. I’ve said before that Noam Chomsky is the Bertrand Russell of our time, the elder left-liberal icon whose ideas range from the […]
A somewhat interesting discussion of different perspectives on both Trump and historic fascism from a hard-left perspective. The debate still churns among scholars and political commentators: “is this fascism?” Trump has ignited public interest in the decades-long and unresolved historical debate about the specific characteristics of fascism as […]
Another interesting trend I’ve noticed lately is a “progressive to Republican” trajectory where folks with “progressive” leanings expressing sympathy for populist figures on the right. A parallel trend is the “walk away” movement which tends to be made of former liberals and leftists who became disgusted with SJWs […]
This is great stuff here. Dore takes down some Trotskyist moron from some creepy vanguard party. In the past year or so, I have noticed the emergence of folks in the left-anarchist milieu who are willing to embrace, or least entertain, a position not unlike the one that […]
On Jacobin’s original series Weekends, guest Noam Chomsky discusses where the US left goes after the pandemic and the Trump years.
I don’t know enough about these boogaloo people to have a comprehensive assessment of them. What the guy Dore interviewed was saying was on the money, assuming he is stating his views honestly and is reasonably representative of his movement. The main criteria with which I evaluate all […]
This is hilarious. Weenie social democrats at TYT saying, “Hey, we don’t want to overthrow the government or anything!” “But muh government!”
Jimmy Dore has been getting a lot of shit from the usual suspects over this. This is Fred Hampton-level stuff here.
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley January 6th was a day that will live on in infamy, or at least so I’m told. Maybe I’ve just become too jaded in my young age, but three weeks later and I still don’t see it. The […]
I strongly disagree that the Trump administration was “fascist,” as opposed to “neo-Nixonian.” But that’s just me. By Darian Worden, Center for a Stateless Society A victory over fascism deserves celebration. The fascists lost their hold on the most powerful political office. Their leader is disgraced and isolated. […]
There is an interesting new piece from the leftist “antifascist” writer Matthew Lyons. He could be considered a “Blue Tribe fundamentalist” (similar to Chomsky and Carson, but not as sleazy as Reid-Ross or crazy as Gillis) so his work is often ideologically tunnel-visioned but he has an encyclopedic […]
The term “totalitarian humanism” is the one I use for the self-legitimating ideological superstructure of the ruling classes, states, and power elites of developed (“First World”) countries. Totalitarian humanism’s core features would be the following: -masking imperialism under the guise of “human rights,” “collective security,” “duty to protect,” […]
Bill Lind, a staunch paleoconservative and leading theoretician of fourth-generation warfare, calls for massive civil disobedience from the Right. I suspect that as the right-wing continues to shrink in size and lose power politically, it will increasingly adopt tactics like the 1960s radicals, including civil disobedience, mass demonstrations, […]
The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 14 We are witnessing the birth of a new national mythology in America, and it is not good news. Imperfect as it was, the old one was better, warts and all, and it needs to be fought for. This new […]
By C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout Even as the Biden administration takes the reins of power, the fact remains that authoritarianism and a fascist strain of political thinking have taken firm root on U.S. soil among a large proportion of its citizens. This utterly disturbing development will, according to Noam […]
Freddie Sayers meets American social psychologist and NYU professor Jonathan Haidt to discuss how the Right and Left positions have evolved over the past few years. (1) Harm/care, (2) Fairness/reciprocity, (3) In-group/loyalty, (4) Authority/respect, (5) Purity/sanctity. Those are the five moral ‘foundations’ on which, according to moral psychologist […]
Andrew Yang interviews Jonathan Haidt. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt joins the podcast to talk about moral foundations theory, human-centered capitalism, and how we can bridge today’s political divide.
Kyle discusses how the ruling class’s “divide and conquer” strategy is working.
Fracture, fracture, fracture… The Blue Tribe and Red Tribe both want total hegemony and the ruling class maintains its position by playing the two off against each other. Krystal Ball discusses how the media has turned Americans against each other.
Back to Obamaism. Boring, boring, boring… Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti discuss Joe Biden’s plans for his presidency including executive actions, coronavirus vaccine rollout, and immigration.
At no point in the last 50 years has there been as much political conflict in the US as there is today. And while the conflicts of the 1960s/1970s may have been just as intense, or more intense in some instances, the situation then was qualitatively different because […]
Derick Varn and Douglas Lain discuss last week’s riot at the Capitol Building and the AOC vs. Jimmy Dore debate. Along the way the topics of standpoint epistemology, class consciousness, and the difference between a coup and a revolution will be explored.
I always thought that as the “right-wing” in its various forms continued to shrink in size and lose power politically, it would move in two directions. Some would be co-opted by totalitarian humanism (like the neocons, corporate Republicans, and Never Trumpers). Others would become more militant and even […]
My general take on this question, which is completely unscientific and based merely on observation, is that police are more likely to use violence against the Left than the Right at demonstrations, although the Left is also more likely to engage in violence. However, left-wing violence tends to […]
By Andrew Korybko, One World The Trump-inspired “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement must either rehabilitate or purge the QAnon cultists in its ranks because they’re discrediting and potentially even dangerous, to say nothing of the fact that their very association with MAGA provides the “deep state” with […]
Crimethinc Politicians have come together across the aisle to decry the storming of the Capitol on January 6 as “lawless,” “anti-democratic,” and “extremist,” going so far as to misrepresent the result as “anarchy.” But the problem with the invasion of the Capitol was not that it was unlawful, […]
It’s Going Down A critical anarchist analysis and critique of the recent events in Washington DC and the response from the political Center and mass media. So much could be said about the spectacle recently witnessed at Washington, DC’s federal capitol building, however we will write a quick […]
It’s only been a week so it’s still a bit early to fully assess what the long-term effects of the “Beer Belly Putsch” are going to be, but so far it’s looking like these will be among the outcomes. The legitimacy of the present state will be undermined. […]
By Mike Giglio, The Intercept I spent the last year talking with people from militant groups on the American right and always driving toward the same question: And then what? You’re armed and trained and linked up with your outfit. And then what? You’re ready to stand up […]
Listen here. On this edition of Parallax Views, C. Derick Varn of Zero Books makes his triumphant return to the program by providing a history lesson on the idea that “politics is downstream from culture” from the idea of cultural hegemony by the Italian Communist thinker Antonio Gramsci […]
So maybe the “new normal” will be that the summer season is for baseball and left-wing riots, and the winter season is for basketball and right-wing riots. Fair enough. By Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams
By Juan Dal Mosa and Warren Montag, Left Voices Some people argue that the far Right is small. Should we be reassured that “only” 45 percent of Republicans, that is, 30 million people, support the riot at the Capitol? We must reject facile economism to understand the Trump […]
A fairly interesting analysis of the split between the pigs and the “far-right” from a semi-far-left perspective. By Jarrod Shanahan, Hard Crackers On January 6th a determined mob from across the United States descended on Washington, D.C. They rumbled with police, overturned barricades, breached the perimeter of the […]
Keith, Emma & RJ 01/09/21 – Mob assault on the Capital, 5 dead, nice photo op, police weren’t prepared, political assassinations, most were peaceful, two-party existential crisis, American Democracy, the Five Crises of the American Regime, “why the wealthiest Americans should prepare for revolt against unprecedented inequality,” Rothbard […]
Crimethinc As a consequence of Donald Trump’s supporters occupying the Capitol building in Washington, DC after a rally promoting his baseless claims of election fraud, the Republican Party is fracturing, setting the stage for the consolidation of a new bipartisan political center—albeit much further to the right than […]
Increasingly, the Trump diehards resemble something more like Scientology than a political movement. I started noticing back in the 90s that there was a cultural undercurrent that was combining anti-establishment politics with conspiracies, religion, the occult, pseudo-science, science fiction, pseudo-history, mythology, crank economic and legal theories, crank medicine, […]
Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski interview the founder of The Jacobin. These folks’ politics sound pretty milquetoast for people who claim the Jacobin tradition. It’s like calling your magazine The Bolshevik and then placing all your emphasis on expanding welfare as opposed to full-blown terrorism, which is what […]
The Little League Falange wannabes make their move. I generally favor anti-system violence regardless of where it comes from or what foolish cause it’s attached to. Decades ago, I predicted that while the struggle against the US state/ruling class/power elite would cut across ordinary ideological, cultural, and class […]
Excellent. I generally have a favorable view of all who fight pigs in the street, irrespective of who they are or how idiotic their cause is. By Sinead Baker, Business Insider Supporters of President Trump clashed with police and at least six were arrested on Tuesday night. The […]
Hahahaha. Good one.
By Nick Hardinges, LBC Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio has been arrested in Washington DC on suspicion of burning a Black Lives Matter (BLM) flag last month. The banner was torn down from a historic church in downtown Washington during a pro-Trump rally that ended in violent […]
By Jordan Alexander Hill, Quillette In mid-November, just two weeks after one of the most contentious elections in American history, Democratic National Committee member David Atkins took to Twitter. “No seriously… how *do* you deprogram 75 million people?” he wondered, sounding more like a member of the Politburo […]
This is the Wikipedia description of the Powell Memorandum described in the Sam Sedar video in the post adjacent to this one. It is particularly interesting to compare the Powell Memorandum with the Dutton Strategy that was developed at precisely the same time. In many ways, Powell defined […]
Some fairly interesting commentary on modern American cultural history in this. One thing I often find interesting is the way in which the rhetoric of the socially conservative “right” and the progressive liberal “left” frequently mirror each other. Social conservatives tend to be nostalgic for the social mores […]
By Paul Gottfried, Chronicles In this issue we present two views of the “conservative” news media giant Fox News. The essay by Douglas Burton verges on the celebratory and recounts the merits of the Fox News enterprise and the bold vision of Rupert Murdoch, the Australian press baron, who […]
By Spencer Sunshine, Truthout This year was quite active for the far right in the United States, especially after its relative downturn in 2019 as a violent street movement compared to the recent past. Although the far right may not have committed as many high-profile massacres as previous […]
By Youssef Shawky Magdy, Hampton Think After Donald Trump won 2016 elections, many theorizations emerged about the rise of the right in the capitalist West. This was exacerbated by Boris Johnson’s victory in Britain, and the vision became clear that there would be a tug of war between […]
Some pretty good class analysis in this, which describes a key aspect of US electoral politics as class conflict between the rising urban, suburban, professional-managerial upper-middle class, and the sinking rural, small-town, heartland working to middle class. Of course, like most left and/right class analysis, it ignores the […]
Keith, Emma & RJ 01/01/21 – We’re back in business, historic spike in drug overdose deaths under COVID-19, governor Sisolak shut down Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the least sober place on the planet, Carl Jung and the origins of mental illness, Don Wells just died of […]
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson
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