Saturday, September 29, 2018
Steve Bannon's Brussels plans threaten Europe's liberal legacy
The American far right has
spotted a gap in the European market, as the continent buckles from the fallout
of mass migration and austerity. For liberals to maintain control, they must
ally themselves with the radical left.
Recently, it has been widely
reported that Steve Bannon plans to establish a group to coordinate right-wing
nationalist populists all around Europe. Based in Brussels, "The
Movement," as the body is called, will research and write policy
proposals, commission polling, and share expertise on messaging and data
targeting. It already employs 80 people and its ultimate goal is nothing less
than to radically change the political landscape of Europe, by sidelining the
liberal consensus and replacing it with my-country-first anti-immigrant nationalism.
Right now, US public opinion
is obsessed with alleged Russian meddling into their electoral process – but
just imagine if Putin were to send someone to Washington to act like Bannon in
Brussels. Thus, here we encounter the old paradox: the separatist forces of
disunity are better at establishing their transnational unity than the forces
of international solidarity. No wonder liberal Europe is in a panic.
We are bombarded by the idea
that today, in the early 21st century, the precious liberal legacy of human
rights, democracy and individual freedoms is threatened by the explosive rise
of "fascist" populism, and that we should gather all our
strength to keep at bay this threat. This idea should be resolutely rejected on
two levels. First, populism didn't hit Earth like a comet (as Joschka Fischer
wrote about Donald Trump): its rise is more like a crack in the earth, a flow
of lava streaming out – and it is the result of the disintegration of the
liberal consensus and the inability of the Left to offer a viable alternative.
The first step in fighting populism is, therefore, to cast a critical glance at
the weaknesses of the liberal project itself – because populism is a symptom of
this weakness.
Illusory free will
Second and more important, the
real danger resides elsewhere. The most dangerous threat to freedom does not
come from an openly authoritarian power, it takes place when our unfreedom
itself is experienced as freedom. Since permissiveness and free choice are
elevated into a supreme value, social control and domination can no longer
appear as infringing on subject's freedom: it has to appear as (and be
sustained by) the very self-experience of individuals as free.
There are a multitude of forms
where unfreedom appears in the guise of its opposite: when we are deprived of
universal healthcare, we are told that we are given a new freedom of choice (to
choose our healthcare provider); when we no longer can rely on a long-term
employment and are compelled to search for new precarious work every couple of
years, we are told that we are given the opportunity to re-invent ourselves and
discover unexpected creative potential that lurks in our personality; when we
have to pay for the education of our children, we are told that we become "entrepreneurs
of the self," acting like a capitalist who has to choose freely how
he will invest the resources he possesses (or borrowed) – into education,
health, travel.
Constantly bombarded by
imposed "free choices," forced to make decisions for which
we are mostly not even properly qualified (or possess enough information
about), we more and more experience freedom as a burden that causes unbearable
anxiety.
Furthermore, most of our
activities (and passivities) are now registered in some digital cloud which
also permanently evaluates us, tracing not only our acts but also our emotional
states; when we experience ourselves as free to the utmost (surfing the web
where everything is available), we are totally "externalized" and
subtly manipulated.
The digital network gives new
meaning to the old slogan "personal is political." And it's
not only the control of our intimate lives that is at stake: everything is
today regulated by some digital oversight, from transport to health, from
electricity to water. That's why the web is our most important commons today,
and the struggle for its control is THE struggle today. Albeit an underreported
battle.
Off the shelf
The enemy is the combination
of privatized and state-controlled commons, corporations (Google, Facebook) and
state security agencies (NSA). This fact alone renders insufficient the
traditional liberal notion of representative power: citizens transfer part of
their power to the state, but on precise terms (this power is constrained by
law and limited to very precise conditions in the way it is exercised, since
the people remain the ultimate source of sovereignty and can repeal power if
they so decide. In short, the state with its power is the minor partner in a
contract which the major partner (the people) can at any point repeal or change,
basically in the same way each of us can change the supermarket where we buy
our provisions.
Liberalism and its great
opponent, classical Marxism, both tend to reduce the state to a secondary
mechanism which obeys the needs of the reproduction of capital. So, they both
thereby underestimate the active role played by state apparatuses in economic
processes. Today (perhaps more than ever) one should not fetishize capitalism
as the Big Bad Wolf that is controlling states: state apparatuses are active in
the very heart of economic processes, doing much more than just guaranteeing
legal and other (educational, ecological…) conditions of the reproduction of
capital.
In many different forms, the
state is more active as a direct economic agent – it helps failing banks, it
supports selected industries, it orders defense and other equipment – in the US
today than ever before. Around 50 percent of production is mediated by the
state, while a century ago, this percentage was between five percent and 10
percent.
Old rope
One has to be more specific
here: the digital network that sustains the functioning of our societies as
well as their control mechanisms is the ultimate figure of the technical grid
that sustains power today – and does this not confer a new power to the old
Trotsky idea that the key to the State lies, not in its political and
secretarial organizations, but in its technical services? Consequently, in the
same way that, for Trotsky, taking control of the post, electricity, railways,
etc., was the key moment of the revolutionary seizure of power, is it not that
today, the "occupation" of the digital grid is absolutely
crucial if we are to break the power of the state and capital?
In the same way as Trotsky
required the mobilization of a narrow, well-trained "storming party,
of technical experts and gangs of armed men led by engineers" to
resolve this "question of technique," the lesson of the
last decades is that neither massive grassroots protests (as we have seen in
Spain and Greece) nor well-organized political movements (parties with
elaborate political visions) are enough. Instead, we also need a narrow strike
force of dedicated "engineers"(hackers, whistle-blowers…)
organized as a disciplined conspiratorial group. Its task will be to "take
over" the digital grid, and to rip it from the hands of corporations
and state agencies which now de facto control it.
WikiLeaks was just the
beginning, and our motto should be a Maoist one: let a hundred of WikiLeaks
blossom. The panic and fury with which those in power, those who control our
digital commons, reacted to Assange is a proof that such an activity hits the
nerve. There will be many blows below the belt in this fight – our side will be
accused of playing the enemy's hands (like the campaign against Assange for
being in the service of Putin), but we should get used to it and learn to
strike back with interest, ruthlessly playing one side against the other in
order to bring them all down. Were Lenin and Trotsky also not accused of being
paid by Germans and/or by the Jewish bankers? As for the scare that such an
activity will disturb the functioning of our societies and thus threaten
millions of lives, we should bear in mind that it is those in power who are
ready to selectively shut down the digital grid to isolate and contain
protests. Indeed, when massive public dissatisfaction explodes, the first move
is always to disconnect the internet and cell phones.
Or, to put it in the
well-known terms from 1968, in order for its key legacy to survive, liberalism
needs the brotherly help of the radical Left.
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Saturday, September 22, 2018
Prager U Makes HORRIBLE Video Defending Repeal Of Net Neutrality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr95uVHPNPM
Trailer "Love Express" by Kuba Mikurda | Int. Filmfest Oldenburg 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSBlP_DYpLY
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: It is Outrageous that The US is Supporting a Genocidal War in Yemen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy_Y_N8DpYQ
Trump Asks Why Kavanaugh Accuser Didn’t Just Immediately Request Hush Money
WASHINGTON—Questioning the
actions taken by Christine Blasey Ford in the 1980s following the alleged
sexual abuse of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh while they were in high
school, President Donald Trump reportedly asked Friday why she didn’t just
immediately request hush money.
“If this thing actually happened, why didn’t
she come forward 30 years ago with a demand for secret payments to keep quiet?”
said Trump, adding that a decades-old allegation of sexual abuse that wasn’t
instantly followed by her threatening to go public unless Kavanaugh and his
family paid her off totally lacked credibility.
“If the attack on Dr. Ford was
as bad as she says, surely she has a copy of the demands she sent to Brett
Kavanaugh or bank documents showing the transfer of a six-figure sum into her
account during the ’80s that she could show us. It’s baffling—if he really did
something illegal, why didn’t she just demand money for her role in covering up
the crime? That’s what any normal person would do.”
The president acknowledged
that he could see how someone might have difficulty remembering the exact
details of their involvement in a six-figure hush money payment made back in
the 1980s.
Message to the new Left International
Dear Progressives,
Earlier this week I wrote to
you – I pleaded with you – to wake up, get mad, and raise hell. I know I'm
about as subtle as a kick to the groin, but when I said that we're screwed if
we don't mobilize the grassroots, I meant it.
Why? Because when reporters ask
me if I think we can beat President Donald Trump in 2020, here's what I tell
them: If we don't radically fix our democracy right now, we may not get to
2020.
If you don't believe the most
important fight of our lives needs to happen right now, over the next six
weeks, you must be on a different planet. Can you chip in, right now, to help
hundreds of Our Revolution groups elect real progressives this November?
DONATE to Our Revolution at:
Do you know who the biggest voting bloc in 2016 was? It was the 100 million voters who stayed at home and didn't vote. If that isn't a national emergency, I don't know what is.
I'll be honest, if we think
for one second that we can win this November using the same incremental
strategy used by establishment campaigns, we don't stand a chance in hell. The
only way we're going to win is through grassroots organizing, neighborhood by
neighborhood, door to door. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not rocket
science.
My new movie – Fahrenheit 11/9
– comes out in theaters today. I know it'll make you angry – with Trump, with
Wall Street, with multinational corporate criminals, and with the political
establishment. But it should also give you the motivation you need to DO
something about it before November.
It will be opening in more
than 1,700 theaters across the country, the largest ever opening for a
non-fiction film. I encourage you all to use this film as an organizing tool –
register voters, connect with your neighbors, collect email addresses, or go
canvassing straight from the theater!
You haven't shied away from
the fights people said were impossible. Instead, you've made them reachable:
Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, getting big money out of
politics, getting serious about our climate – these are all things we can make
happen together.
The political revolution is
within reach, but it isn't going to trickle down from the top. The revolution
has to come from right here – the people.
One way you can help right now
is by giving directly to support Our Revolution's grassroots organizing.
Hope to see you at the theater
this weekend!
In solidarity,
Michael Moore
Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9” Aims Not at Trump But at Those Who Created the Conditions That Led to His Rise
September 21 2018,
12:08 p.m.
“FAHRENHEIT 11/9,” the
title of Michael Moore’s new film that opens today in theaters, is an obvious
play on the title of his wildly profitable Bush-era “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but also
a reference to the date of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 election victory. Despite
that, Trump himself is a secondary figure in Moore’s film, which is far
more focused on the far more relevant and interesting questions of what –
and, critically, who – created the climate in which someone like Trump
could occupy the Oval Office.
For that reason alone, Moore’s
film is highly worthwhile regardless of where one falls on the political
spectrum. The single most significant defect in U.S. political discourse is the
monomaniacal focus on Trump himself, as though he is the cause – rather than
the by-product and symptom – of decades-old systemic American pathologies.
Personalizing and isolating
Trump as the principal, even singular, source of political evil is
obfuscating and thus deceitful. By effect, if not design, it distracts the
population’s attention away from the actual architects of their plight.
This now-dominant
framework misleads people into the nationalistic myth – at once
both frightening and comforting – that prior to 2016’s “Fahrenheit 11/9,”
the U.S., though quite imperfect and saddled with “flaws,” was nonetheless a
fundamentally kind, benevolent, equitable and healthy democracy, one
which, by aspiration if not always in action, welcomed immigrants, embraced
diversity, strove for greater economic equality, sought to defend human rights
against assaults by the world’s tyrants, was governed by the sturdy rule
of law rather than the arbitrary whims of rulers, elected fundamentally decent
even if ideologically misguided men to the White House, and gradually expanded
rather than sadistically abolished opportunity for the world’s neediest.
But suddenly, teaches this
fairy tale as ominous music plays in the background, a villain unlike any we
had previously known invaded our idyllic land, vandalized our sacred
public spaces, degraded our admired halls of power, threatened our
collective values. It was only upon Trump’s assumption of power that
the nation’s noble aspirations were repudiated in favor of a far
darker and more sinister vision, one wholly alien to “Who We Are”: a profoundly
“un-American” tapestry of plutocracy, kleptocracy, autocracy,
xenophobia, racism, elite lawlessness, indifference and even aggressive cruelty
toward the most vulnerable and marginalized.
This myth is not just false but
self-evidently so. Yet it persists, and thrives, because it serves so many
powerful interests at once. Most importantly, it exonerates, empowers, and
elevates the pre-Trump ruling class, now recast as heroic leaders of the
#Resistance and nostalgic symbols of America’s pre-11/9 Goodness.
Screenshot: The Intercept
The lie-fueled destruction of
Vietnam and Iraq, the worldwide torture regime, the 2008 financial collapse and
subsequent bailout and protection of those responsible for it, the foreign
kidnapping and domestic rounding up of Muslims, the record-setting Obama-era
deportations and whistleblower prosecutions, the obliteration of
Yemen and Libya, the embrace of Mubarak, Sisi, and Saudi despots, the years
of bipartisan subservience to Wall Street at everyone else’s expense, the
full-scale immunity vested on all the elites responsible for all those crimes –
it’s all blissfully washed away as we unite to commemorate the core
decency of America as George Bush gently hands a piece of candy to
Michelle Obama at the funeral of the American War Hero and
Trump-opponent-in-words John S. McCain, or as hundreds of thousands of us
re-tweet the latest bromide of Americana from the leaders of America’s most
insidious security state, spy and police agencies.
In NYC to meet with my
publisher. Hope leadership book will be useful. Reassuring to see Lady Liberty
standing tall even in rough weather.
Beyond nationalistic
myth-building, there are substantial commercial, political and reputational
benefits to this Trump-centered mythology. An obsessive fixation on Trump has
single-handedly saved
an entire partisan cable news network from extinction, converting
its once ratings-starved, close-to-being-fired prime-time hosts into major
celebrities with contracts so
obscenely lucrative as to produce envy among most professional
athletes or Hollywood stars.
Resistance grifters exploit
fears of Trump to build massive social media followings that are easily
converted into profit from well-meaning, manipulated dupes.
One rickety, unhinged, rant-filled, speculation-driven Trump
book after the next dominates the best-seller lists, enriching charlatans
and publishing companies alike: the
more conspiratorial, the better. Anti-Trump mania is big business, and
– as the record-shattering
first-week sales of Bob Woodward’s new Trump book demonstrates – there
is no end in sight to this profiteering.
All of this is historical
revisionism in its crudest and most malevolent form. It’s intended to heap most
if not all blame for systemic, enduring, entrenched suffering across the
country onto a single personality who wielded no political power until 18
months ago. In doing so, it averts everyone’s eyes away from the real
culprits: the governors, both titled and untitled, of the establishment ruling
class, who for decades have exercised largely unchecked power – immune even
from election outcomes – and, in many senses, still do.
WATCH: Full speech: "We
gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness -- the real thing, not
cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so
willingly,” or those who lived lives of comfort as he served. https://on.msnbc.com/2C6eNW6
WATCH: Bipartisanship: Laura
Bush, via President Bush, hands a piece of candy to Michelle Obama during the
memorial service for John McCain. pic.twitter.com/PhKPYCOiUz
The message is as clear as the
beneficial outcomes: Just look only at Trump. Keep your eyes fixated on
him. Direct all your suffering, deprivations, fears, resentments, anger and
energy to him and him alone. By doing so, you’ll forget about us – except that
we’ll join you in your Trump-centered crusade, even lead you in it, and you
will learn again to love us: the real authors of your misery.
THE OVERRIDING VALUE OF
“FAHRENHEIT 11/9″ is that it avoids – in fact, aggressively rejects – this
ahistorical manipulation. Moore dutifully devotes a few minutes at the start of
his film to Trump’s rise, and then asks the question that dominates the rest of
it, the one the political and media establishment has steadfastly avoided
examining except in the most superficial and self-protective ways: “how the
fuck did this happen”?
Knowing that no political work
can be commercially successful on a large-scale
without affirming Resistance clichés, Moore
dutifully complies, but only with the most cursory and
fleeting gestures: literally 5 seconds in the film are devoted to
assigning blame for Hillary’s loss to Putin and Comey. With
that duty discharged, he sets his sights on his real targets: the U.S. political
establishment that is ensconced within both parties, along with the
financial elites who own and control both of them for their own ends.
Moore quickly escapes the
dreary and misleading “Democrat v. GOP” framework that dominates cable news
by trumpeting “the largest political party in America”: those who refuse
to vote. He uses this powerful graphic to tell that story:
It’s remarkable how little
attention is paid to non-voters given that, as Moore rightly notes, they form
America’s largest political faction. Part of why they’re ignored is moralism: those
who don’t vote deserve no attention as they have only themselves to blame.
But the much more
consequential factor is the danger for both parties from delving too deeply
into this subject. After all, voter apathy arises when people conclude
that their votes don’t change their lives, that election outcomes improve
nothing, that the small amount of time spent waiting in line at a voting booth
isn’t worth the effort because of how inconsequential it is. What greater
indictment of the two political parties can one imagine than that?
One of the most illuminating
pieces of reporting about the 2016 election is also, not coincidentally, one of
the most ignored: interviews
by the New York Times with white and African-American working-class
voters in Milwaukee who refused to vote and – even knowing that Trump won
Wisconsin, and thus the presidency, largely because of their decision – don’t
regret it. “Milwaukee is tired. Both of them were terrible. They never do
anything for us anyway,” the article quotes an African-American barber,
justifying his decision not to vote in 2016 after voting twice for Obama.
Moore develops the same point,
even more powerfully, about his home state of Michigan, which – like Wisconsin
– Trump also won after Obama won it twice. In one of the most powerful and
devastating passages from the film – indeed, of any political
documentary seen in quite some time – “Fahrenheit 11/9″ takes us in
real-time through the indescribably shameful water crisis of Flint,
the criminal cover-up of it by GOP Governor Rick Snyder, and the physical and
emotional suffering endured by its poor, voiceless, and overwhelmingly black residents.
After many months of
abuse, of being lied to, of being poisoned, Flint residents, in May, 2016,
finally had a cause for hope: President Obama announced that he would visit
Flint to address the water crisis. As Air Force One majestically lands, Flint
residents rejoice, believing that genuine concern, political salvation,
and drinkable water had finally arrived.
Exactly the opposite happened.
Obama delivered a speech in which he not only appeared to minimize, but to
mock, concerns of Flint residents over the lead levels in their water, capped
off by a grotesquely cynical political stunt where he flamboyantly
insisted on having a glass of filtered tap water that he then pretended to
drink, but in fact only used to wet his lips, ingesting none of it.
A friendly meeting with Gov.
Snyder after that – during which Obama repeated the same water stunt
– provided the GOP state administration in Michigan with ample Obama
quotes to exploit to prove the problem was fixed, and for Flint residents, it
was the final insult. “When President Obama came here,” an African-American
community leader in Flint tells Moore, “he was my President. When he left, he
wasn’t.”
Like
the unregretful non-voters of Milwaukee, the collapsed hope Obama
left in his wake as he departed Flint becomes a key metaphor in Moore’s hands
for understanding Trump’s rise. Moore suggests to John Podesta, who seems to
agree, that Hillary lost Michigan because, as in Wisconsin, voters, in part
after seeing what Obama did in Flint, concluded it was no longer worth voting.
As Moore narrates:
The autocrat, the strongman,
only succeeds when the vast majority of the population decides they’ve seen
enough, and give up. . . . . The worst thing that President Obama did was
pave the way for Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump did not just fall from the
sky. The road to him was decades in the making.
The long, painful,
extraordinarily compelling journey through Flint is accompanied by an equally
illuminating immersion in West Virginia, one that brings into further vivid
clarity the misery, deprivation, and repression that drove so many people – for
good reason – away from the political establishment and into the arms of anyone
promising to destroy it: from the 2008 version of Obama to Bernie Sanders to
Jill Stein to Donald Trump to abstaining entirely from voting.
We meet the teachers who led
the inspiring state-wide strike, some of whom are paid so little that they are
on food stamps. We hear how their own union leaders tried (and failed) first to
prevent the strike, then prematurely tried (and failed) to end it with trivial
concessions.
We meet Richard Ojeda,
an Iraq and Afghanistan War veteran, Democratic State Senator, and
current Congressional candidate, who tells Moore: “Our town is dying. One
out of every four homes is in a dilapidated state . . . . I can take you five
minutes from here and show you where our kids have it worse than the kids I saw
in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Needless to say, all of that began and took root long
before Donald Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator in 2015.
To Moore’s credit,
virtually no powerful U.S. factions escape indictment in “Fahrenheit 11/9.” The
villains of Flint and West Virginia are two Republican governors. But their
accomplices, every step of the way, are Democrats. This, Moore ultimately
argues, is precisely why people had lost faith in the ability of elections
generally, and the Democratic Party specifically, to improve their lives.
And in stark and impressive
contrast to the endless intra-Democrat war over the primacy of race versus
class, Moore adeptly demonstrates that the overwhelmingly African-American
population of Flint and the largely white impoverished West Virginians have far
more in common than they have differences: from the methods of their repression
to those responsible for it. “Fahrenheit 11/9″ does not shy away from, but
unflinchingly confronts, the questions of race and class in America and
ultimately concludes – and proves – that they are inextricably intertwined,
that a discussion of (and solution to) one is impossible without a discussion
of (and solution to) the other.
No examination of
voter apathy and the perceived irrelevance of elections would be complete
without an ample study of the 2016 Democratic Party primary process that
led to Hillary Clinton’s ultimately doomed nomination. And this is another area
where Moore excels. Focusing on one little-known but amazing fact – that Bernie
Sanders won all
55 counties over Clinton in the West Virginia primary, beating her by 16 points
in a state where she crushed Obama in 2008, yet, at the Democratic Convention,
somehow ended
up with fewer delegates than she received – Moore interviews a Sanders
supporter in West Virginia about the message this bizarre discrepancy sent.
Moore asks: “This just tells
people to stay home?” The voter replies: “I think so.” Moore offers his
own conclusion through narration: “When the people are continually told that
their vote doesn’t count, that it doesn’t matter, and they end up believing
that, the loss of faith in our democracy becomes our deathknell.”
With all of this harrowing and
depressing evidence compiled, it becomes easier and easier to understand
why Americans are either receptive to anyone vowing to dismantle
rather than uphold the system they have rightly come to despise, or just
abstain altogether. And it becomes even easier to understand why the
guardians of that system view Trump as the most valuable weapon they could have
ever imagined wielding: one that allows them to direct everyone’s attention
away from the systemic damage they have wrought for decades.
BROADLY SPEAKING, there
are three kinds of political films. There are those whose filmmaker fully
shares your political outlook, mentality and ideology, and thus produces a film
that, in each scene, validates and strengthens your views. There are those by
filmmakers whose politics are so anathema to yours that you find no value in
the film and are only repelled by it. Then there are those that do a
combination of all those things, causing you to love parts, hate other parts,
and feel unsure about the rest.
Without doubt, “Fahrenheit
11/9″ falls into the latter category. It’s literally impossible to imagine
someone who would love, or hate, all of the scenes and messages of this film.
Indeed, for all the praise I
just heaped on it, there were several parts I found banal,
meandering, misguided and, in one case, downright loathsome: a lurid,
pointless, reckless, and deeply offensive digression into the
long-standing, adolescent #Resistance theme that Trump wants to have sex
with, if he has not in fact already had sex with, his own daughter,
Ivanka. What makes the inclusion of this trash all the more tragic is that it
comes very near the beginning of the film, and thus will almost certainly repel
– for good reasons – large numbers of people, including more reluctant and
open-minded Trump supporters, who would be otherwise quite receptive to the
important parts of the film that constitute its crux.
Then there is the last 20
minutes, devoted to a direct comparison between Trump and Hitler. I am not
someone who opposes the use of Nazism as a window for understanding
contemporary political developments. To the contrary, I’ve written previously about
how anti-intellectual and dangerous is the now-standard internet decree
(inaccurately referred to as Godwin’s Law) that Nazi comparisons are and should
be off-limits.
As the Nuremberg prosecutors
(one of whom appears in the film) themselves pointed out during the post-war
trial of Nazis: those tribunals were not primarily about punishing war
criminals but about establishing principles to prevent future occurrences.
There are real and substantive lessons to be drawn from the rise of Hitler
when it comes to understanding the ascension of contemporary global movements
of authoritarianism, and this last part of “Fahrenheit 11/9″ features some
of those in a reasonably responsible and informative manner.
Ultimately, though, this last
part of the film is marred by cheap and manipulative stunts, the worst of which
is combining video of a Hitler speech overlaid with audio of a Trump speech,
with no real effort made to justify this equation. Comparing any political
figure to someone who oversaw the genocide of millions of human beings requires
great care, sensitivity, and intellectual sophistication, and there is sadly
little of that in Moore’s invocation (which at times feels like exploitation)
of Nazism.
There are, without doubt,
people who will most love the exact parts of the film I most disliked. And
those same people will likely hate many of the parts I found most compelling.
But that’s precisely why Moore’s film is so worth your time no matter your
ideology, so worth enduring even the parts that you will find disagreeable or
even infuriating.
Because – in contrast to the
endless armies of cable news hosts, Twitter pundits, #Resistance grifters, and
party operatives, all of whom are vested due to self-interest in
perpetuating the same deceitful, simple-minded and obfuscating narrative –
Moore, for most of this film, is at least trying. And what he’s trying is of
unparalleled importance: not to take the cheap route of exclusively denouncing
Trump but to take the more complicated, challenging, and productive route of
understanding who and what created the climate in which Trump could thrive.
Embedded in
the instruction of those who want to you focus exclusively on
Trump is an insidious and toxic message: namely, removing Trump will cure,
or at least mitigate, the acute threats he poses. That is a fraud, and Moore
knows it. Unless and until the roots of these pathologies are identified and
addressed, we are certain to have more Trumps: in fact, more effective and more
dangerous Trumps, along with more potent Dutertes, and more Brexits, and more
Bolsonaros and more LePens.
Moore could have easily made a
film that just channeled and fueled standard anti-Trump fears and animus and –
like the others who are doing that – made lots of money, been widely hailed,
and won lots of accolades. He chose instead to dig deeper, to be more honest,
to take the harder route, and deserves real credit for that.
He did that, it seems clear,
because he knows that the only way to move forward is not just to reject
right-wing demagoguery but also the sham that masquerades as its
#Resistance. As Moore himself put it: “sometimes it takes a Donald Trump
to get us to realize that we have to get rid of the whole rotten system that
gave us Trump.”
That’s exactly the truth that
the guardians of that “whole rotten system” want most to conceal. Moore’s film
is devoted, at its core, to unearthing it. That’s why, despite its flaws, some
of them serious ones, the film deserves wide attention and discussion
among everyone across the political spectrum.
Israel’s best hope lies in a single state
In East Jerusalem, vigilantes
prowl, hunting for Jewish girls who consort with Arab men.
BY SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
In Israel, there is a growing
number of initiatives - from official bodies and rabbis to private
organisations and groups of local residents - to prevent interracial dating and
marriage. In East Jerusalem, vigilante-style patrols work to stop Arab men from
mixing with local Jewish girls. Two years ago, the city of Petah Tikva created
a hotline that parents and friends can use to inform on Jewish women who mix
with Arab men; the women are then treated as pathological cases and sent to a
psychologist.
In 2008, the southern city of
Kiryat Gat launched a programme in its schools to warn Jewish girls about the
dangers of dating local Bedouin men. The girls were shown a video called
Sleeping With the Enemy, which describes mixed couples as an "unnatural
phenomenon". Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu once told a local newspaper that the
"seducing" of Jewish girls is “another form of war" and a
religious organisation called Yad L'Achim conducts military-style rescues of
women from "hostile" Arab villages, in co-ordination with the police
and army. In 2009, a government-backed television advertising campaign, later
withdrawn, urged Israeli Jews to report relatives abroad who were in danger of
marrying non-Jews.
It is no wonder that,
according to a poll from 2007, more than half of all Israeli Jews believe that
intermarriage should be equated with "national treason". Adding a
note of ridicule late last year, Rabbi Ari Shvat, an expert on Jewish law,
allowed for an exception: Jewish women are permitted to sleep with Arabs if it
is in order to gather information about anti-Israel activity - but it is more
appropriate to use unmarried women for this purpose.
The first thing that strikes
one here is the gender asymmetry. The guardians of Jewish purity are bothered
that Jewish girls are being seduced by Palestinian men. The head of Kiryat
Gat's welfare unit said: "The girls, in their innocence, go with the
exploitative Arab." What makes these campaigns so depressing is that they
are flourishing at a time of relative calm, at least in the West Bank. Any
party interested in peace should welcome the socialising of Palestinian and
Jewish youth, as it would ease tensions and contribute to a shared daily life.
Until recently, Israel was
often hit by terror attacks and liberal, peace-loving Jews repeated the mantra
that, while they recognised the injustice of the occupation of the West Bank,
the other side had to stop the bombings before proper negotiations could begin.
Now that the attacks have fallen greatly in number, the main form that terror takes
is continuous, low-level pressure on the West Bank (water poisonings, crop
burnings and arson attacks on mosques). Shall we conclude that, though violence
doesn't work, renouncing it works even less well?
If there is a lesson to be
learned from the protracted negotiations, it is that the greatest obstacle to
peace is what is offered as the realistic solution - the creation of two
separate states. Although neither side wants it (Israel would probably prefer
the areas of the West Bank that it is ready to cede to become a part of Jordan,
while the Palestinians consider the land that has fallen to Israel since 1967
to be theirs), the establishment of two states is somehow accepted as the only
feasible solution, a position backed up by the embarrassing leak of Palestinian
negotiation documents in January.
What both sides exclude as an
impossible dream is the simplest and most obvious solution: a binational
secular state, comprising all of Israel plus the occupied territories and Gaza.
Many will dismiss this as a utopian dream, disqualified by the history of
hatred and violence. But far from being a utopia, the binational state is
already a reality: Israel and the West Bank are one state. The entire territory
is under the de facto control of one sovereign power - Israel - and divided by
internal borders. So let's abolish the apartheid that exists and transform this
land into a secular, democratic state.
Losing faith
None of this implies sympathy
for terrorist acts. Rather, it provides the only ground from which one can
condemn terrorism without hypocrisy. I am more than aware of the immense
suffering to which Jews have been exposed for thousands of years. What is
saddening is that many Israelis seem to be doing all they can to transform the
unique Jewish nation into just another nation.
A century ago, the writer G K
Chesterton identified the fundamental paradox facing critics of religion:
"Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity
end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church . .
. The secularists have not wrecked divine things but the secularists have
wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them." Does the same not
hold for the advocates of religion? How many defenders of religion started by
attacking contemporary secular culture and ended up forsaking any meaningful
religious experience?
Similarly, many liberal
warriors are so eager to fight anti-democratic fundamentalism that they will
throw away freedom and democracy if only they may fight terror. Some love human
dignity so much that they are ready to legalise torture - the ultimate
degradation of human dignity - to defend it. As for the Israeli defenders of
Jewish purity: they want to protect it so much that they are ready to forsake
the very core of Jewish identity.
Friday, September 21, 2018
Interview on Capitalism, Conservatives, Narratives, the Left, PC Culture, Hollywood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiUlBtAGJLk
Four dead in workplace shooting in Maryland, the third mass shooting in the US in 24 hours
By Adam Mclean
21 September 2018
On Thursday morning, a gunman
opened fire at a Rite Aid distribution center in Aberdeen, Maryland, killing
three people and injuring three more. The suspected shooter, Snochia Moseley,
was found dead at the scene and is believed to have fatally shot herself.
According to accounts of
coworkers given to police, Moseley was a disgruntled employee at the
distribution center. Previously a security guard at the facility, she was
working as a temporary worker at the same location at the time of the shooting.
Her exact motives remain unclear.
The Rite Aid distribution
center is a large warehouse, sitting next to an Amazon warehouse of similar
size. While the conditions at Amazon warehouses are particularly egregious, the
same exploitation, in different degree, exists in other warehouses.
Politicians responded by
piously lamenting the tragedy without providing any explanation of the
regularity of mass violence in the United States. Republican Governor Larry
Hogan tweeted “Our prayers are with all those impacted, including our first
responders. The State stands ready to offer any support.”
Democratic Senator Ben Cardin
echoed this in his own tweet, saying “Details are still emerging, but I've met
with the Harford County Executive and Sheriff to offer my sincere condolences.
I wanted to be there in person to thank them, as well as the many first
responders and federal law enforcement on the scene for their swift responses.”
He also put forward gun
control as a palliative for these shootings. Cardin continued, “There is no
rational reason we should not close the loophole that allows some gun purchases
to occur without a background check or reinstate the assault weapons ban,” but
had no other ideas for combating gun violence.
Images and video of police
raiding the warehouse with shotguns and assault weapons and of police
individually patting down employees appeared on the Washington Post.
Shootings also occurred this
week in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, software developer Anthony
Tong shot four people at his office on Wednesday, seriously wounding three,
before being killed himself in a shootout with police. He had worked at WTS
Paradigm, and his motive remains unknown. A nearby shopping center was placed
on lockdown at the request of the police.
The Middleton police chief
responding to the shooting said, “I think a lot less people were injured or
killed because police officers went in and neutralized the shooter.”
In Pennsylvania, Patrick
Dowdell shot three people at a courthouse where he was due to appear for domestic
violence charges on Wednesday. He was shot and killed by police at the scene as
well.
These recent episodes of gun
violence are only the latest in a long line of mass shootings in America. That
three separate shootings occurred in the space of two days is not exceptionally
rare is a testament to the frequency of gun violence in the US.
According to the Gun Violence
Archive, “There have been 262 American mass shootings (4+ shot or killed in the
same incident, not including the shooter) in the 263 days of 2018.” There have
been 1,800 mass shootings in the US since 2013.
That mass shootings have
become a near-daily phenomenon is a symptom of a society in deep crisis.
Political figures issue the standard laments after each tragedy, accompanied by
inevitable calls for increasing the powers of the state. These eruptions of
violence, however, cannot be separated from the glorification of militarism and
the general brutalization of social relations in America, promoted by the
entire political establishment.
In the most unequal country in
the world, the most psychologically fragile snap and erupt in violence. Mass
shootings are only one of the more palpable consequences of this larger trend.
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