Initial date (it’s an ongoing list/resource): 03.01.2023. By definition RedBrown politics, or confusionism (a similar term I know from/used in France), is an amorphous and creeping tendency rather than a clearly delimitated political current. There are therefore multiple things that can be said to constitute it, although I don’t think we need to care too […]
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12 Rules for WHAT – Post-Internet Far Right [PDF]
Hi comrades, here’s a re-composed PDF version of Post-Internet Far Right: Fascism in the age of the internet, by the authors of the 12 Rules for WHAT podcast – Sam Moore and Alex Roberts. post-internet-far-right Note: illustrations and original formatting (e.g. italics or uppercase note numbers) aren’t included, but if someone find the original ebook […]
Sociology & Liberation: Children, Adult Domination & Incest
Initial date (it’s an ongoing list/resource): 27.08.2022. In a way that is only paralleled by things like violence against disabled folks, the brutalization and dehumanization of children in modern society is one of the most overlooked forms of social domination and hierarchy, including in radical (left/anarchist/etc) circles. Moreover, it’s possibly the foremost type of oppression […]
The “Tragedy of the Commons” Myth
Date: 11.08.2022. The so-called “Tragedy of the Commons” is one of capitalism’s “just-so stories”, in the words of Kevin Carson. As he wrote in 2016: Every system of class domination relies on a collection of myths — “just-so stories” — to present itself as natural and inevitable to those living under it, and to defend […]
Best Resources for Understanding The Capitalist System
Karl Marx wrote in 1848: Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by […]
Postcolonial Racism(s) & the Mainstreaming of Far Right Ideology
Originally written: 10.02.2022. The ideology and actions of the far right are often portrayed as an anomaly that is the very antithesis of liberal democracy or general nationalist conceptions: in many countries the authorities, political actors and the media claim that these ‘extremists’ have nothing to do with ‘us’, with ‘our’ values, with ‘good’ patriotism […]
Totalitarian Violence & Policing: From Counter-Insurgency to “Terror Capitalism”
Originally written: 11.02.2022. In the early hours of November 9, 2020, Austrian police raided the house of Salzburg University scholar Farid Hafez, pointing their guns at him and his family. Their warrant accused him of “terrorist” allegiances, wanting to “destroy Israel” and “establish a worldwide califate”, and supporting the toppling of Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah […]
Punching the Left and the Flat-Earthers of Political Ideology; & Why We Can’t ‘Give Passes’ to Any and All Anti-Authoritarian Critics
Originally written: 01.02.2022. According to some people who spend a lot of time denouncing the pitfalls of certain parts of the contemporary left, politics is basically like a circle in which one “extreme” on one pole leads to the other(s), thereby making the circle’s center the only space of reasonable ideas, discussion and principles. Not […]
Chomsky’s Long Career of Bullshit: A Guide/Resource
Originally written: 09.01.2022. **note: I wrote this before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the [at time of writing this note – september 2022 – ongoing] war. Chomsky – very unsurprisingly, if you look at what is documented on this page – has peddled some crappy pseudo-anti-imperialist talking points about the whole situation. I haven’t […]
Marx’s Conception of Surplus Population and the Lumpenproletariat
Originally written: 27.01.2021. After having reviewed Marx’s conception of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the landowning class, and the ‘intermediate classes’ – notably the petty-bourgeoisie and the peasantry, we now come to two last specific categories or concepts that contributed to his understanding of modern capitalist society: the lumpenproletariat and the relative surplus population. Relative Surplus […]