This Is Not a Coup

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cross-posted from Afflict the Comfortable

The Treachery of (Words and) Images

Wednesday’s events were horrible, dangerous, infuriating, and predictable.  People with weapons easily breached the Capitol, gallows were hung (perhaps performative, perhaps not), and people were attacked and some died.  The country was stunned, and both establishment and social media have been deeming this Trump’s “coup” or an “insurrection” from the first.  It’s hard to talk about this. Trump is horrid, detestable, and dangerous, and any time you try to reel the rhetoric back, you can be accused of being an apologist for a cruel, racist, inhuman bigot who happens to be president—which all makes sense. But doing awful things doesn’t mean we have fascism, and vandals and thugs breaking into a sacred public building doesn’t mean we’ve had a coup. There’s no saving grace to any of this, but it needs to be viewed clearheaded and coldblooded.

Swipe Left on the Democrats and Electoral Politics

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cross-posted from Afflict the Comfortable

They’re Just Not That Into You

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There are currently two feuds dominating the Left—Jimmy Dore vs. AOC  in “The Brawl Over Medicare-for-All” and various segments of the Left vs. The Squad on its vote to re-elect Pelosi as Speaker of the House.

If you want/need better evidence of the futility of the Left, it would be hard to find.  There’s a huge ongoing dispute over whether “The Squad,” a group of about 6 elected officials (hell, throw Sanders and Markey in there and make it 8) out of 535, should force Congress to have a vote on socialized medicine to put everyone on the record, and another argument over whether to vote against the incumbent (and politically inept) speaker of the house.  Social media is still in in an uproar over these issues with “support AOC” and “The Squad is dead to me” opinions seeming to alternate in frequency and intensity.

Marx on the immiseration of humanity

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Prof. Bob Buzzanco with Karl Marx on “the immiseration of humanity,” from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844.

Video below text of the quote.

“By reducing the worker’s need to the barest and most miserable level of physical subsistence, and by reducing his activity to the most abstract mechanical movement; thus he says: Man has no other need either of activity or of enjoyment. For he declares that this life, too, is human life and existence.

Hope Among the Ruins of 2020

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Happy New Year, Tender Comrades! In our last episode of 2020, we talk about the past year.

Listen in: http://bit.ly/HopeRuins2020GandR

We discuss what we’ve learned, the worsening precarity, the absence of community and a rewarding life, the barriers posed by the Professional Left (NGO Industrial Complex, labor leadership, etc), the often-unhinged, conspiratorial left, but also the inspiring moral courage and bold action we saw in the streets, the role of organizers and activists, and what we can do moving forward.

The Myths of JFK!

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In this episode, we go myth busting. Our target is “Camelot” itself.

It’s the 60th anniversary of the election of John F. Kennedy and since his untimely death in 1963, he has been elevated to liberal sainthood by all parts of the establishment. We discuss JFK’s legacy, and debunk the many enduring lies that people–from Oliver Stone to QAnon to today’s liberal scholars and media– still believe about John Kennedy’s saintly acts, whose politics have lived on in Clinton, Obama, and now Joe Biden.

Listen in: https://bit.ly/MythsofJFKGandR

We get into John and Robert Kennedy’s relationship with the red-baiting Joe McCarthy; and JFK’s role as a  civil rights “hero” (while simultaneously wire-tapping Martin Luther King).  We also pierce the myth, perpetuated by Oliver Stone’s film “JFK”,  that Kennedy wanted to withdraw troops from Vietnam and end the Cold  War.

December 20th is also the 29th anniversary of the release of Oliver Stone’s film and we take particular aim at its falsehoods.

Challenging Nancy Pelosi with Shahid Buttar

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In this episode, we talk with progressive congressional candidate Shahid Buttar about his challenging of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the 2020 election. We discuss the history of Pelosi’s rise, the San Francisco “progressive prevention” coalition of San Francisco and the recent attacks on the “Squad” by centrist Democrats. We then talk about Shahid’s other work as a constitutional lawyer around digital liberties and dangers we’re all facing from the surveillance state.

Listen here:https://bit.ly/ShahidGandR

#TDIH: The Wobblies Start the First-Ever Sit-Down Strike in 1906

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In 1906, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) began the first ever sit down strike at the General Electric plant in Schenectady, New York

Three thousand IWW members stopped work at a General Electric plant by remaining seated in the building. This action was taken in response to the firing of three IWW members and the company’s refusal to rehire them. This is the first record of a sit-down strike of the 20th Century. When management called in scabs, the striking workers stood in place and took control of the machinery, making it impossible for the plant to be run by scabs.

One of the principal organizers of the action was the famous Irish Marxist, James Connolly.

An IWW leaflet retorted, “…the question of numbers does not enter into the matter. For the simple reason that if discrimination is permitted in one case. Who then can feel protected? The principle of organization is that protection reaches down to the last man.”

#TDIH: UK Police Evict First Ever Anti-Roads Protest Camp in Twyford Down

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cross-posted from G&R’s Facebook page

pics via the Guardian UK
On December 9th in 1992, protestors were evicted from the first anti-roads camp in Twyford Down, UK.
Twyford Down is an area of chalk downland lying directly to the southeast of Winchester, Hampshire, England next to St. Catherine’s Hill and close to the South Downs National Park.
In 1991, the down was the site of a major anti-road protests against a section of the M3 motorway from London to the south coast of England. There had been plans since the 1970s to replace the 1930s Winchester bypass which was regularly congested. There had been environmental resistance to those plans since the 1970s as well.
The principal arguments of the protesters were their concern about making wildlife species, such as the Chalkhill Blue butterfly, extinct, putting a highly visible scar on the landscape, and that they believed the new motorway would not adequately resolve traffic problems.

Alternative Radio’s David Barsamian on the New Media Landscape, ReTargeting Iran and Noam Chomsky

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Before the internet was a thing, before social media ruled our lives and before there were a million podcasts talking about about left politics, David Barsamian through Alternative Radio brought the voices of radical thinkers like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zimm and Arundhati Roy into our lives through Alternative Radio.

Listen: https://bit.ly/BarsamianGandR

In this episode, we’re over-the-moon excited to talk to Alternative Radio’s founder David Barsamian about his new book ReTargeting Iran, building Alternative Radio over the past 30+ years and working with Noam Chomsky. We discuss the importance of independent media and he tells us that Green and Red is “welcome intervention into the media landscape.” We also talk about the politics around Iran, the middle east and his new book. And since it is the week of Noam Chomsky’s 92nd birthday, we ask David to share some of his favorite recollections of the world’s top public intellectual.