Category Archives: Uncategorized

When Conservatives Become Outcasts Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized • Tags:

The Southern Poverty Law Center now attacks religious conservatives and mainstream political conservatives in the same way it attacks white supremacist organizations. The further leftward the wider society, government and culture drift, the more people and groups with “conservative” values will be on the receiving end of such attacks. It will be interesting to see if these groups retain their traditional patriotism the more they are regarded as outcasts, or whether they will (hopefully) embrace “anti-Americanism.”

By Carol Swain

First Things

Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and pro-family organizations have a common adversary, one that is virulent and relentless. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a powerful progressive advocacy group that says its primary mission is to fight hatred, teach tolerance, and seek justice. Despite its noble beginnings in the years following the civil rights movement, during which it fought white supremacist groups resisting social change and the rule of law, the SPLC now works to advance the agenda of the cultural left. Ironically, given the deeply Christian character of the civil rights movement, the SPLC now equates traditional Christian and pro-family organizations with hate groups such as the Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan, and neo-Nazis. What makes these religious groups an SPLC target? A shared biblical worldview that condemns homosexuality and transgenderism.

More…

The Ugly Coded Critique of Chick-Fil-A’s Christianity Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized • Tags:

Liberal and left hysteria over “Chick-Fil-A” coming to town is reminiscent of the way the religious right would react to the opening of an adult bookstore or a gay bar back in the day. This article also makes an interesting point about demographics.

By Stephen Carter

Bloomberg.Com

The New Yorker has been taking it on the chin lately for its essay about Chick-fil-A’s “infiltration” of New York City. Although most of the piece is about the evils of fast food and the chain’s ubiquitous “Eat Mor Chikin” advertising campaign, the essay has been excoriated for its anti-Christian tone. “The brand’s arrival here feels like an infiltration, in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism,” we’re told. Not just that: “Its headquarters, in Atlanta, are adorned with Bible verses and a statue of Jesus washing a disciple’s feet. Its stores close on Sundays.” And lest we forget: “The restaurant’s corporate purpose still begins with the words ‘to glorify God.’”

What the author really seems angry about is that the company’s CEO opposes same-sex marriage. But the framing of the piece made Christianity the villain, and the headline — “Chick-fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York City” — was sufficiently troubling that Nate Silver quickly tweeted “This is why Trump won.” Fair point. Religious bigotry is always dangerous. But there’s a deeper problem here, a difficulty endemic to today’s secular left: an all-too-frequent weird refusal to acknowledge the demographics of Christianity. When you mock Christians, you’re not mocking who you think you are.

READ MORE

The Green Panthers: The Bong and the Rifle Reply

by • Uncategorized • Tags:

This is an old article from 20 years ago about the Green Panthers, a group of militant stoners that advocated armed resistance to the “war on drugs,” and the creation of a “stoner homeland” in northern California. This article first appeared around the time that I was starting to develop the idea of an “alliance of separatists” as a tactical paradigm for anarchists. I remember circulating this article, and even a lot of hard-core radicals thought this group was a joke. But guess what? They won.

BI Graphics_legal marijuana map 2018

By Cletus Nelson

The Bong and the Rifle

Not all stoners are passive in their loathing of the War on Drugs–the pot-loving Green Panthers are preparing for armed struggle and the possibility of a seperate stoner nation. Sound like the plot of Kurt Russel’s next post-apocalyptic flick? Read on

By Cletus Nelson

The tactics used by activists to voice their dissent against the prohibition of marijuana have changed very little since the 1960s. Despite the fact that the drive to legalize cannabis began in an environment that spawned such violent, armed groups as the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), today’s hemp advocates are firm adherents to the peaceful protest.

Each year a myriad of non-threatening marches, candle-light vigils, demonstrations, and sit-ins are held in the hope of ending the herb’s illegal status. Although the tireless efforts of these many tie-dyed warriors are to be commended, the war against America’s pot smokers keeps escalating.

Casualties of war

More…

“Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners, saints” Reply

by • Law/Justice, Uncategorized • Tags:

This Larry Krasner guy sounds too good to be true. But if he’s for real, I suppose it would be an illustration of the possibility of “reform within the system.” The idea that virtually any jurisdiction in the United States comes even remotely close to being “soft on crime” is nonsense. The USA has the distinction of being a First World nation with a Third World “criminal justice system” (a misnomer), and that’s being charitable. The legal systems of plenty of underdeveloped countries are no worse than those of the USA.

By Larry Platt

The Philadelphia Citizen

Make no mistake about it: We’re ground zero in a revolution, an epochal moment that asks—without necessarily answering—big questions: What is crime? What is punishment? What makes up our social contract? Throughout the country, funded by billionaire George Soros, a new breed of District Attorney has been taking the reins of power; when former public defender Mark Gonzalez, who has the words “Not Guilty” tattooed across his chest, was elected District Attorney in 2016 in Nueces County, Texas, it was a harbinger of sweeping change. The lines in our adversarial justice system were blurring. You could see it in our D.A. race last year, when ultimate victor Larry Krasner swung the debate leftward and suddenly those running to be our chief law enforcement officer sounded like they were seeking to become our Public Defender In Chief.

Now that Krasner, a lifelong defense and civil rights attorney who sued the Philadelphia police force some 75 times, is three months into his rocky tenure, it’s become clear that the revolution is upon us and that Krasner has become its poster boy. I’ve spent a good part of the last few weeks talking to former and current prosecutors, as well as police and victims. And let me tell you: They’re freaking out. They see Krasner as an existential threat; he’d say he is a threat—to the status quo of an unjust system. They counter that he’s ultimately a threat to safety on our streets.

READ MORE

International Journalist Tells The Truth About Syria Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: , ,

A must watch.

A relevant post from a YouTube commentor:

“The Assad government may not be all roses and sunshine (And I dare anyone to find me a squeaky clean government, any government), but it is a secular and moderate government. Shiites, Sunnis, Alawites etc. and Christians all lived there peacefully, way more peacefully than ethnic groups do in the US. Women enjoy a great deal of rights, they are not required to cover their hair or face, the universities actually had more female students than male. Assad is by no means a dictator, if you look at the region, he is a rainbow farting unicorn in comparison to some of the murderous psychos on US payroll.”

 

Former UK Ambassador Reveals Truth About Syria – With Special Guest Peter Ford Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: , ,

A must watch.

Former UK Ambassador to Syria Peter Ford joins today’s Liberty Report to share his vast experience in the region. He has notably deviated from the government/media narrative about the alleged Assad gas attack. How likely is it that Assad used gas? Why are inspectors being prevented from visiting the site? How is the “official narrative” holding up to increasing scrutiny?

The Spectrum of Opinion on Syria Reply

by • Uncategorized

Surveying the range of opinion that has been expressed on Syria, the positions of various ideological factions seem to be breaking down along these lines.

The entire spectrum of the “mainstream media” seems to be cheerleading for the attacks on Syria. Of course, the spectrum from MSNBC to FOX is not that wide of a spectrum. A couple of happy exceptions among the FOX crowd have been Tucker Carlson and Tomi Lahren.

On the question of Syria, I’ve noticed that centrist-liberals (the Rachel Maddow fans that Caleb Maupin, and I, bemoan) are generally pro-war, while the actual left (generally) is not (from what I can tell so far). However, I’ve noticed that a lot of the “antifascist” types are more concerned about “far right entryism” and “red/brown alliances” than actual imperialism. A lot of other leftists tend to treat imperialism as just another laundry list issue along among the spectrum of conventional “social justice” interests (which I think is a mistake). There are still others that may be against the war in theory, but are more worried about “microagressions.”

I think the Left has had two major problems when it comes to this question. First, co-optation by the neoliberal center (Democrats) and subordinating issues of these kinds to idpol on the far left. Obviously, there are exceptions (Counterpunch, Black Agenda Report, Jill Stein, Dissident Voice, Jimmie Dore, Abby Martin, etc). but those have been the exceptions rather than the rule.

Of course, the Rothbardian libertarians are good on foreign policy generally, and consistently oppose all US imperialist wars. Libertarians, with some exceptions, are generally pretty good on foreign policy, although like the Left they often treat foreign policy as “just another issue” along with “school choice” and “tax cuts.” The paleoconservatives, the “far right,” and the Alt-Right have likewise stepped up to the plate on Syria, largely on isolationist, pro-Assad, anti-Israel or Eurasianist grounds. The “far right” in all of its configurations has emerged as the most consistently anti-intervention milieu in the last 15 years or so, although these sectors also treat foreign policy as “just another issue,” and secondary to opposition to immigration, and other standard “far right” issues.

Against NATO’s Imperialist Attacks in Syria Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Internationalist Commune of Rojava

It’s Going Down

The following statement comes from the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, and denounces the recent bombings carried out by NATO forces in Syria, which have been being planned for weeks, and carried out under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention.’

From the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, we denounce the bombings carried out this early morning by the NATO forces against the Syrian territory. These imperialist attacks led by the USA, with the collaboration of France and the UK, are a new example of the brutality and the imperialist thirst of the NATO forces in the Middle East.

The global powers make a display of their military industry, testing their weapons without considering the consequences of their actions on the civil population. The launch of high tech missiles under the pretext of a chemical attack which has not been proven abuses the instability in Syria making it testing grounds for the latest weaponry advances. The increase in market value of the companies building the missiles, which have increased their capital in over 5 billion dollars in a matter of hours, lays bare what war means for capitalism: profit.

READ MORE

The Coup is Complete – Trump is Done 1

by • Uncategorized • Tags: ,

This assessment seems fairly on target.

By Tom Luongo

If there is one thing the last 48 hours have proved to me, it’s this.  Donald Trump is no longer acting President.  The coup against Trump has been completed.

I’m going to keep this simple.  Follow the dots and try to keep up.

  1. The Deep State’s lies are being unraveled in real time thanks to the collective intelligence of the ‘internet’ and our ability to synthesize data in real time.
  2. The Skripal poisoning and the latest Syrian “chemical weapons” attack share the same thing — both set government officials off rushing to judgment and action before any official investigation could debunk them.

More…

Keith Preston: Syria Strikes Show Trump Is under Neocons’ Thumb Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags:
 An interview with the Tasnim News Agency.
Syria Strikes Show Trump Is under Neocons’ Thumb: US Analyst

“The attack on Syria indicates that the Trump administration is now fully under the control of the neoconservative-controlled foreign policy establishment, and that any inclination the Trump administration may have ever had toward altering US foreign policy has been abandoned…,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told Tasnim in an interview.

The following is the full text of the interview.

 

More…

All the Good Anti-Imperialists are on the Right Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Left and Right, Uncategorized • Tags:

Some refreshing comments from socialist and Russia Today commentator Caleb Maupin. While Maupin is a socialist and I am an anarchist, this was more or less the same position I began taking in the 1990s and 2000s during the anti-globalization and antiwar eras, i.e. that the revolutionary left needed to reach out and build bridges to the populist and antiwar right. It’s interesting to see the anti-imperialist left actually developing such an outlook today, and being denounced as “fascist” for doing so (as I was back in the day). I have since moved away from advocating left/right hybrid movements (which I don’t consider to be viable given the level of polarization that exists at present) in favor of a “revolutionary centrist” approach (i.e. opposing the establishment center while rejecting the extremes of Left and Right, such as anarcho-leftoids and Communists or alt-right and neo-fascists), but I wish the anti-imperialist left good luck with their efforts.

The rallies against bombing Syria are saying: “Stop Trump’s War” & “March to Trump Tower.”

Do these people live under a rock? There is widespread opposition to this war among the broad masses of people, but not among “Stop Trumpers.”

Do they not see that Tucker Carlson is challenging the narratives for bombing Syria, while Democrats are accusing Trump of not being hard enough against Russia and Assad?

Average Americans have isolationist and populist sentiments more than ever. However, the people who run the anti-war movement and dominate the socialist and communist organizations have no interest in recruiting them. Instead, they hope to convince the Rachel Maddow fans! Its so sad to watch.

Tom Woods on Syria Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags:

Some relevant comments from leading Rothbardian libertarian Tom Woods on Syria:

“Well, Woods’s Law is on full display these days:

No matter whom you vote for, you always wind up with John McCain.

It’s as if the President, in his scramble to imitate Jeb! and Graham, forgot that he’s the one who spared us those dolts.

What drives me especially bonkers is to hear conservatives, of all people, cheering for war in Syria.

Here are people who (are supposed to) believe in the fallen condition of humanity, have finite political goals (not “an end to evil,” in David Frum’s preposterous, anti-conservative formulation), and leave the utopianism to the Left.

They are likewise supposed to understand how precarious is the human condition, and be appalled at the hubris of the wise planner who thinks societies can be taken apart and reassembled like Tinkertoys.

And if they’re going to pretend that they just want to respond to a “gas attack” — come on.

Even if such an attack had been perpetrated by Assad, how can I be morally lectured to by people who have connived at the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen? First Obama supporters, then Trump himself, aided or turned a blind eye to Saudi outrages there. (Trump’s belated, feckless objection amounted to nothing.)

More…

The ‘anti-imperialism’ of idiots 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Left and Right, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

This is an interesting blog with an extensive amount of commentary about Syria. This blogger seems to hold to some kind of anti-Assad, Syrian leftist opposition perspective, and seems a bit soft on Western intervention. One thing I am not getting from this blog is an explanation of how the overthrow of Assad would not result in anything other than the coming to power of a Salafist regime, which is clearly what the Western powers, and their allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, want. When the Iraq War began in 2003, there were some pro-intervention liberals and leftists making the argument that the war was a “war against fascism” or whatever, and we know how that turned out.

By Leila Al-Shami

Once more the western ‘anti-war’ movement has awoken to mobilise around Syria. This is the third time since 2011. The first was when Obama contemplated striking the Syrian regime’s military capability (but didn’t) following chemical attacks on the Ghouta in 2013, considered a ‘red line’. The second time was when Donald Trump ordered a strike which hit an empty regime military base in response to chemical attacks on Khan Sheikhoun in 2017. And today, as the US, UK and France take limited military action (targeted strikes on regime military assets and chemical weapons facilities) following a chemical weapons attack in Douma which killed at least 34 people, including many children who were sheltering in basements from bombing.

The first thing to note from the three major mobilisations of the western ‘anti-war’ left is that they have little to do with ending the war. More than half a million Syrians have been killed since 2011. The vast majority of civilian deaths have been through the use of conventional weapons and 94 per cent of these victims were killed by the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance. There is no outrage or concern feigned for this war, which followed the regime’s brutal crackdown on peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators. There’s no outrage when barrel bombs, chemical weapons and napalm are dropped on democratically self-organized communities or target hospitals and rescue workers. Civilians are expendable; the military capabilities of a genocidal, fascist regime are not. In fact the slogan ‘Hands off Syria’ really means ‘Hands off Assad’ and support is often given for Russia’s military intervention. This was evident yesterday at a demonstration organized by Stop the War UK where a number of regime and Russian flags were shamefully on display.

READ MORE

Why is the far right so against US intervention in Syria? Reply

by • Arts & Entertainment, Left and Right, Uncategorized

The Left dropped the ball and the “far right” picked it up and ran with it. Now the Left is pissed. What did they expect? In the past, I have heard leftists (mostly the “anti-hater” types) talk about how the far right threatened to “take the game away from the left” (by actually talking about real issues like international conflict, class conflict, and state repression as opposed to nonsense like “microagressions”). Now, it’s happening.

By Jason Wilson

The Guardian

Despite Iraq the left has mounted no serious opposition to Syrian involvement – so why is the right now filling those shoes?

The conservative commentator Tomi Lahren warned Donald Trump to ‘remember that it’s America first’.
The conservative commentator Tomi Lahren warned Donald Trump to ‘remember that it’s America first’. Photograph: Latour/Variety/Rex/Shutterstock

In 2002 and 2003, millions of left-leaning demonstrators crowded cities around the world to protest against the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. All the while, conservative media, along with large segments of the liberal press, beat the war drums, encouraging the Bush administration in its project of regime change.

But 15 years later, as the US edges towards a greater involvement in Syria, there is as yet no progressive, mass anti-war movement. For now, the most prominent opponents of Middle East intervention are all on the right, while leading Democrats are entirely on board with military intervention in the Middle East.

READ MORE

Keith Preston: Syria strike would escalate US-Russia hostilities Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Press TV. Listen here.

If the United Sates were to launch an airstrike on Syria, it would certainly escalate the hostilities between Washington and Moscow and even could develop into a direct military confrontation between the two powers, says Keith Preston, an American political analyst in Virginia.

Russia has said that threats by the US and France to launch a military aggression against Syria violate the UN Charter, calling on the West to “seriously consider” the consequences of such intimidation.

“At the highest level, the presidents of the United States and France threatened a tough reaction, with the use of force against Syria. I would like to note that the threat of using force against a UN member state is a gross violation of the charter of this organization,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

The US and its allies have been threatening Damascus with military action since April 7, when a suspected chemical attack on the Syrian town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, reportedly killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.

The possibility of an attack grew larger on Wednesday, after Trump warned Russia, Syria’s key supporters in the fight against foreign-backed militancy, to “get ready” to shoot down American missiles over Syria soon.

But Trump tempered those remarks on Thursday, saying the US response could be “very soon or not so soon at all!”

 

More…

Senator Ted Cruz’s Bill to Remove the Inflation Tax from Capital Gains Addresses a Symptom but Not the Cause Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations, Uncategorized • Tags:

Washington, DC (April 13, 2018) – U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has just announced he will introduce a bill to end taxes on capital “gains” that are simply a result of inflation.

Cruz’s inflation-indexing bill seeks to “expand economic growth and encourage more investment into the economy, helping create more opportunities for hardworking Americans.”

“If you invest a thousand dollars, and then ten years later you sell whatever you have invested in for two thousand dollars, right now, you are taxed on that full gain, ignoring inflation, and ignoring the fact that inflation has eaten away a big chunk of that gain,” Sen. Cruz said.

The Sound Money Defense League lauded the measure for acknowledging the problem created by the official policy of devaluing the purchasing power of the Federal Reserve Note “dollar” and for taking a reasonable first step to addressing it.

“Because of inflation, much of what is taxed as capital gains is not a real gain, but rather a nominal gain created by the Federal Reserve System through its policy of serial devaluation,” said Jp Cortez, Policy Director at the Sound Money Defense League.

“We praise Senator Cruz for advancing a bill that addresses a symptom of Federal Reserve currency debasement,” continued Cortez. “However, the fundamental solution is a return to sound money in America, i.e. gold and silver, as intended by our nation’s Founding Fathers.

“Until we strip central bankers of their abusive power to create money out of thin air, our nation’s investors, savers, pensioners, and wage-earners will be robbed of their assets through the insidious inflation tax.”

The Sound Money Defense League is an Idaho-based public policy group working nationally to bring back gold and silver as America’s constitutional money. Visit Soundmoneydefense.org for more information.

Hezbollah does not see all-out war over Syria: Deputy head Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: , ,

Press TV.

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem (File photo)
Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem (File photo)

Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement downplays threats of a military action against Syria, ruling out a potential direct confrontation between the US and Russia or a wider war in the Arab country.

“We rule out the situation developing into a direct American-Russian clash or a wide state of war,” Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem told Lebanese daily al-Joumhouria in an interview published on Friday.

“The conditions do not point to a total war happening … unless (US President Donald) Trump and (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu completely lose their minds,” he said.

Hezbollah, along with Russia and Iran, has been helping the Syrian army in its battles against terrorists.

The US and its allies have been threatening Damascus with military action since April 7, when a suspected chemical attack on the Syrian town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, reportedly killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.

The possibility of an attack grew larger on Wednesday, after Trump warned Russia, one of Syria’s key supporters in the fight against foreign-backed militancy, to “get ready” to shoot down American missiles over Syria soon.

The US, however, later muddied the threats as a number of its major European allies, including Germany, said they would not join such a military action.

Syria has firmly denied any links to the chemical attack. Both Moscow and Damascus have invited the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to send a fact-finding mission to Douma and investigate the alleged use of chemical weapons there.

Damascus has destroyed its entire chemical weapons stockpile under a UN-brokered program overseen by the OPCW.

Syrians shrug off US threats

On Thursday, some Syrians in the capital Damascus shrugged off the possibility of a US strike against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

A Damascus resident said “Russia will respond” and another one dismissed the idea of missile attack saying US is “afraid of Russia and China.”

“They are only threats. They always threaten us. It is not the first time. It is not something new. We got used to it. Russia will respond,” said Eugenie Saadeh.

US seeking to escalate war in Syria to pressure Assad Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags:

This interview is from 2016 but it’s highly relevant to what is going on now.

Press TV. Listen here.

The US is seeking to further escalate the years-long conflict in Syria through its so-called “Plan B,” in a bid to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power as his government does not bend to America and Israel’s will, says a Virginia-based author and political commentator.

Floated for the first time by US Secretary of State John Kerry in February, US officials are advocating a so-called “Plan B” which seeks to provide vetted “moderate” militants with necessary weapons to launch attacks against Syrian government aircraft and artillery positions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Speaking to Press TV on Wednesday, Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of AttacktheSystem.com, said such reports signal Washington’s appetite for more destruction in the war-torn country.

“It looks like that the American government is now trying to escalate the war in Syria,” Preston said.

He said the ongoing truce in Syria that was mediated by Russia and the US and went into effect on February 27, has eased the conflict to a degree but Washington seems to be unhappy with this.

Preston said there is no such thing as “moderate rebels” in Syria and Washington is in fact seeking to escalate the conflict by providing anti-government groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with heavier weaponry.

“Looks like the motivation for this is that the United States really is bent on overthrowing the government of President Assad,” he argued.

“The Assad government is an independent government that is not integrated into the system of American client-states and puppet states in the region and that is the real issue that the Americans have with President Assad,” he explained.

The analyst said Syria’s non-recognition of Israel is another major reason for Washington’s hostility towards the Damascus government.

Preston also referred to the ongoing parliamentary elections in Syria, saying it is interesting to hear these reports at such critical times when a political solution to the years-long conflict seems closest than ever.

More than 7,300 polling stations have been set up across the government-held regions in the country. Syrian voters are electing members of the 250-seat parliament out of some 3,500 candidates.

The preparations for the “Plan B” were discussed at a secret gathering of intelligence chiefs in the Middle East before the ceasefire went into effect and in exchanges between intelligence services, the newspaper said.

During those sessions, the CIA gave assurances to allies that they would be given approval to expand arms shipments to Syria’s “moderate” militants.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. According to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 270,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Some reports, however, put the death toll at as high as 470,000

Insurgent Supremacists – a new book about the U.S. far right 4

by • Uncategorized

This looks to be an interesting new book from a leading antifascist writer (and critic of yours truly).

Cover of Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right's Challenge to State and Empire, by Matthew N. Lyons

A few of the comments in the description of this book highlight the basis of the ongoing conflict between myself and the anarcho-left/antifa milieu.

Disloyalty to the state is a key dividing line within the U.S. right…That includes white nationalists who advocate replacing the United States with one or more racially defined “ethno-states.” But it also includes the hardline wing of the Christian right, which wants to replace secular forms of government with a full-blown theocracy; Patriot movement activists who reject the federal government’s legitimacy based on conspiracy theories and a kind of militant libertarianism; and some smaller ideological currents.

More…

An Inside Look at How Pro-Russia Trolls Got the SPLC to Censor a Commie Reply

by • Left and Right, Uncategorized

An interesting article from the antifascist side describing the growing split between the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist factions of the Left.

By Charles Davis

NewPol.Com

“An Orwellian destruction of meaning and words — so many absurdities; absurdities stacked on absurdities,” Alexander Reid Ross told me. Fox News had just declared him the leader of a nasty smear campaign, aided by the “far-left Southern Poverty Law Center,” that aimed to make television personality Tucker Carlson and his guests out to be “fascists.” So far, so normal, but it was the specific charge that shocked and awed the communist author who once lived in Russia: “McCarthyism,” with white nationalists’ favorite host, and those who come on his show to agree with him, the victims.

Ross’s ironic sin, which he spoke to me about in an hour-long phone call, was writing a series of articles about a topic he wrote the book on: fascist entryism, or efforts to normalize far-right politics and infiltrate left-wing discourse. In particular, he noted the shared affinity for the Kremlin and its talking points among the fringe right and a subsection of leftists, and he detailed how Russian state media was facilitating a popular,  “anti-establishment” front against the foreign and domestic enemies of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, platforming right-wing nationalists alongside those who self-identify as progressive internationalists.

READ MORE

Tucker Carlson on Syria 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Thus far, Tucker Carlson has been, to my knowledge, the only mainstream media figure to challenge the System’s narrative on Syria.

It’s interesting how the Republican Senator being interviewed said, “If you care about Israel…” the first time he opened his mouth. What if you don’t care about Israel?

It also seems to be the case that Syria has exacerbated the already deep rift between the anti-imperialist left and the anti-fascist left. The anti-imperialist left are primarily interested in opposing imperialist attacks on nations that refuse to be incorporated into the Anglo-American-Zionist-Wahhabi axis, opposing the escalation of hostilities with Russia and China, preventing war with Iran and Syria, opposing the Saudi genocide in Yemen, opposing Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, etc. However, the anti-fascist left has has largely adopted the anti-Russian narrative of the CIA-neocon-DNC-MSM axis, regards Russia as the de facto headquarters of world fascism, takes what amounts to the State Department line on Syria, hesitates to criticize Israel out of fear of fueling anti-Semitism, and is mostly worried about “red-brown alliances,” “left-right crossovers,” and “fascist entryism.” Yes, I am oversimplifying a bit, but this seems to be the general pattern that is evolving.

Looking over the Twitter feeds of leading antifa and/or anarcho-leftoids, I see that Spencer Sunshine and Kevin Carson apparently have had nothing to say about Syria, while Goofy Gillis has merely retweeted an Alexander Reid-Ross tweet crying about “red-brown alliances” and another tweet lambasting Tucker Carlson. Also in circulation in antifascist circles now is this lengthy piece by an anarcho-leftoid/antifa essentially accusing anyone among the Western left that takes anti-imperialism seriously of being a partner in fascism. For instance, this article has been reposted on the Three Way Fight blog. Reminds me of all those conspiracy charts purporting to show the link between Jewish bankers, satanists in the Vatican, lizard people, chemtrails, 9/11and the flat earth.

It appears that on international relations, a neoconservative-liberal internationalist-antifascist axis is brewing.

The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right, Uncategorized

I agree with the author of this article that there’s likely no compromise in the Red/Blue tribal civil war, and that it will likely the Blue tribe that wins with the US increasingly becoming a one-party state under the Democrats. Although I don’t share his optimism about the outcome of all that given that his preferred model, California, is developing a Third World class system (see Joel Kotkin here and here).

By Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira

Medium

he next time you call for bipartisan cooperation in America and long for Republicans and Democrats to work side by side, stop it. Remember the great lesson of California, the harbinger of America’s political future, and realize that today such bipartisan cooperation simply can’t get done.

In this current period of American politics, at this juncture in our history, there’s no way that a bipartisan path provides the way forward. The way forward is on the path California blazed about 15 years ago.

In the early 2000s, California faced a similar situation to the one America faces today. Its state politics were severely polarized, and state government was largely paralyzed. The Republican Party was trapped in the brain-dead orthodoxies of an ideology stuck in the past. The party was controlled by zealous activists and corrupt special interests who refused to face up to the reality of the new century. It was a party that refused to work with the Democrats in good faith or compromise in any way.

The solution for the people of California was to reconfigure the political landscape and shift a supermajority of citizens — and by extension their elected officials — under the Democratic Party’s big tent. The natural continuum of more progressive to more moderate solutions then got worked out within the context of the only remaining functioning party. The California Democrats actually cared about average citizens, embraced the inevitable diversity of 21st-century society, weren’t afraid of real innovation, and were ready to start solving the many challenges of our time, including climate change.

READ MORE