[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Videos]
Conversation with Masha Gessen, recipient of the Hannah Arendt Prize 2023 – “Recording of the conversation with Masha Gessen, recipient of the Hannah Arendt Prize 2023 – December 18th, 2023 in Berlin.” This was the replacement discussion with Masha Gessen after the usual discussion was cancelled by the Böll-Stiftung, a green party institution. This video contains Germans shouting at a Jewish intellectual for not corresponding to the philosemitic view of what a good Jew ought to be. The synchronous translation is atrocious. Candice Breitz asking a question at around 1:05.
NEGOTIATING JEWISHNESS IN THE ANTI-/PHILOSEMITIC GERMAN CLIMATE – “On 9 December 2023, three inconvenient Jews—Emilia Roig, Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus and Candice Breitz—engaged in a public conversation titled, “Negotiating Jewishness in the Anti-/Philosemitic German Climate.” The discussion was hosted by KOW in Berlin, with the support of the Goethe-Institut Hamburg. Comical local efforts were made in advance of the event (largely by non-Jewish individuals), to have the Goethe-Institut cancel the event, on the basis that the three speakers were “antisemitic.”” More on the theme of Germans calling left-wing jews antisemitic, and placing themselves on the wrong side of history. But with Candice (and Emilia) they “messed with the wrong Jews” as Candice wrote on her instagram.
Gut feelings: Can we optimize lifestyle, diet and medication according to our respective microbiota? | Sofia Kirke Forslund-Startceva – CW: Features a scientist not wearing a mask during a global pandemic, but she does make some interesting points.
ITMWTOTY2023 – Riot porn, sure, and no longer as exiting as it was for some time.
[Music]
World Music: l’année 2023 en musique et en images
[Podcasts]
If Books Could Kill: The Identity Trap [apple podcasts] – “There are two kinds of political scientists: The types who deal with noisy data and post on Twitter with a bunch of caveats. And then there are the types who write books about identity politics.” Michael Hobbes deconstructing that awful and fucking boring book by Yascha Mounk against “political correctness” in its umpteen’s edition
The Kindness of Strangers | Lynne Segal & Loree Erickson [.soundcloud] – “On the last episode The Verso Podcast before the new year, Eleanor Penny is joined by Lynne Segal and Loree Erickson to discuss the myth of total independence, disability as a social construct, and the politics of care. In a conversation that ranges from the gendering, racialisation, and devaluation of caring labour, to abolitionism and disability activism, Loree and Lynne unpack the deep connections between autonomy and dependence, whilst suggesting ways to reimagine care outside of institutions that want to make it all about control.” Nuanced discussion on inclusiveness, care-work and anti-ableism in leftist spaces. Or the lack thereof.
Boxe et lutte des classes [lundi.am] – “Dans cette enquête, le journaliste nous emmène à la rencontre de boxeurs et de boxeuses en France pour essayer de comprendre le rapport de classe à la fois complexe et évident qui traverse ce sport, ceux qui le pratiquent, ceux qui se passionnent pour lui devant leur écran. Dans cet entretien, Selim Derkaoui raconte l’expérience charnelle et la douleur de la rencontre entre deux corps, ce que cette pratique dit des rapports de domination et comment les politiques publiques tentent de la récupérer afin de calmer les nerfs et canaliser les rages.” An exploration of the political and cultural implications of boxing in the suburbs of Paris.
[Toot Threads]
[Pandemic Roundup]
Pandemic Roundup: December 28, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: December 21, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: December 14, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: December 7, 2023
Thank you, thank you, thank you Violet Blue! And there’s even a:
Pandemic Roundup: 2023 year in review
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
How the press manufactured consent for never-ending COVID reinfections | The Gauntlet [substack] – “The key to the success of the “new normal” narrative was in burying, denying, and othering Long COVID patients and post-COVID health effects, creating significant public doubt about whether Long COVID existed at all. Leftish outlets like The New Republic even got in on the game, publishing a long meandering “just asking questions” piece about whether tens of millions of patients reporting significant post-COVID health issues are suffering from psychological problems. Jacobin recently posited that Sweden’s notoriously cruel COVID response was the better pandemic approach; Sweden euthanized elderly people with COVID instead of treating them when their hospitals were overwhelmed.” A look at some key moments in the normalization process of COVID-19, focused on the US, but i did recognize much of it.
Harmony is More Beautiful Than Unison | Margaret Killjoy [substack] – “The synthesis of chaos and order is, well, chaotic order. Or dynamic organization. Organic structuring. Anarchism. Whatever you want to call it. Anarchism learns from chaos–the ever-shifting circumstances of the world, our individual and collective passions and excesses–and it learns from order–that only through structure can we build anything. We build structures when they suit us, and we hold onto them as long as they suit us–whether that be a matter of weeks, a matter of generations, or a matter of eons.” I am still pondering that triangle she proposes. But this is a beautiful essay.
Manifesto [mediaactivist.com] – “The continuing crises caused by capitalism leave ordinary people feeling powerless in the face of powerful interests when, instead, communities could be organised by and for the people who live in them. This may seem obvious to us, but such a system of “direct democracy” would threaten those concentrations of power protected by the nation state, with its “representative democracy” of careerist professional politicians claiming to solely speak for thousands or even millions of people until the next ballot box election cycle where we choose between one suit or another, red or blue, like Coke and Pepsi; both options bad for us.
“Power corrupts and those who spend their entire lives seeking power are the very last people who should have it.” – David Graeber” All i can say this month, is, please read this manifesto. And then let us start the radical communal care collective revolution.
Going Gently | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “But also, what will we have lived for, at that moment of turning, what charm against regret will we have enchanted, if we do not spend our lives raging against the dying of beings and of places taken away before their time or in the most grotesque of manners? Who are we, if we don’t stand up for our places of magic and memory? If we let real estate developers and progressive politicians price us out of our neighborhood? If we look the other way when cops kill, if we look the other way when drug companies kill, if we make polite conversation with someone whose job is to push buttons that kill people with missiles from the sky?” Vulnerability is such a powerful stance that can be turned into healthy rage for change.
[Articles English]
How to hide a pandemic [substack] – “A closer look at the techniques used by the Public Relations exercise that passes for Public Health strategy these days” The manual.
Impact of Long COVID on productivity and informal caregiving [the european journal of health economics] – “51.7% reduced paid work hours relative to the pre-infection period. Mean monthly work income declined by 24.5%. The average aggregate value of productivity loss since incident infection was £10,929 (95% bootstrap confidence interval £8,844-£13,014) and £5.7 billion (£3.8-£7.6 billion) extrapolated nationally. The corresponding values for informal caregiving were £8,726 (£6,247-£11,204) and £4.8 billion (£2.6-£7.0 billion).” Well here’s how this is done, you gaslighting fucks. And most important here, informal care-giving costs need to be accounted for when talking about the cost of LongCOVID.
A Palestinian Poet’s Perilous Journey Out of Gaza [thenewyorker] – “Following Hamas’s October 7th attack and Israel’s invasion, Mosab Abu Toha fled his home with his wife and three children. Then I.D.F. soldiers took him into custody.” A shocking first person account of the casual humiliation by Israeli soldiers that Palestinians in Gaza are forced to endure.
Foragers. How Israel is using environmental laws to further enforce its politics of dispossession [wmmna] – “Some of the most devious tactics deployed by settler colonialism consists in alienating local communities from their histories, land and traditions.” Similar phenomenon to the cutting down of olive trees this hits the cultural core of the ethnic cleansing efforts that keep happening against the Palestinian people.
Germany’s fierce policy on antisemitism smothers the arts, critics say [wapo] – “If the current political climate continues, the filmmaker and Palestine Speaks activist warned, artists and academics may choose to no longer work in Germany because the atmosphere is so “repressive and so controlling.”” Seriously, too many people in Germany are standing on the wrong side of history. Yet again?! And how, just tell me HOW, can they not see this?
Worldbuilding as a Political Weapon | Laurie Penny [substack] – “Worldbuilding is political, always, and in speculative fiction and game design, the worlds you build are designed specifically to contain the characters and stories you plan to tell. Carl Sagan tells us that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you first need to invent the universe. But when you invent a universe from scratch, every piece of pie is potentially political.” Long time not read anything from Penny, they still got it. This piece takes the gender debates surrounding games as its starting point.
The Free-Speech Debate Is a Trap [nymag] – “We do not protest the war on Gaza because we have an abstract right to do so; we protest it because it is one of the great moral atrocities of our lifetimes and because the widespread refusal to admit this in America is an atrocity in its own right. We are not just speaking; we are fighting with words. And we are fighting to win.” Important distinction, what is happening now is not the result of cancel culture as some now claim. Looking at you, again, Yosha Mounk.
Untangling Threads [erinkissane] – “I don’t think the people who are genuinely psyched about Threads on fedi are monsters or fascists, and I don’t think those kinds of characterizations—which show up a lot in my replies—are helping. And I understand that our theories of change just don’t overlap as much as I’d initially hoped. But for me, knowing what I do about the hundreds of opportunities to reduce actual-dead-kids harm that Meta has repeatedly and explicitly turned down, the most triumphant announcements feel like a celebration on a mass grave.” It’s Meta, means, try to avoid it (says the guy who still has an instagram account, argh).
Vermeer exhibition Rijksmuseum – For those who could not get a ticket (or travel to Amsterdam in the middle of a pandemic), here’s the virtual tour.
Covid: It’s That Bad [okdoomer.io] – “The most blunt, honest assessment of your Covid risk now exists in the terms and conditions section. You can find it buried somewhere in the legalese of every event you attend, every trip you take, and every restaurant you walk into. Our politicians lost no time passing Covid liability shields in virtually every state. They’ve always cared most about protecting businesses, not ordinary people like us. Meanwhile, these same politicians and corporations have pressured our media outlets to lie to us or deliver mixed messages, reporting on Covid’s long-term threat while also dismissing it.” How fucking cynical is this. Ticketmasters now selling tickets with a COVID disclaimer.
Twentieth and Last Part: The Common and Non-Property [enlace zapatista] – “And all, women, men and ‘otroas’ are people from below. Why? Because those at the top preach death because that gives them profits. Those at the top want things to change, but for their benefit, although it is getting worse and worse. That is why it is those below who are going to fight and are already fighting for life. If the system is one of death, then the fight for life is the fight against the system.” I loved to read this series of articles and i believe the Zapatistas are heading in the right direction.
Coco Fusco’s Fight to Rebalance Power [hyperallergic] – “Throughout her decades-long career, Fusco has laid bare the many mechanisms through which subjugated bodies are stripped of their agency.” One of my favorite artists ever. On instagram you can find a conversation between Fusco and Candice Breitz, but you’ll get no link from me.
How to navigate a chronic illness [vox] – “We tend to associate grief with death and bereavement, but chronic conditions also come with loss and grieving. “You might lose all sorts of things through illness,” said Emily Bazalgette, who suddenly came down with unexplained, debilitating fatigue at the age of 28 and was eventually diagnosed with a host of chronic diseases including long Covid. “You might lose your identity, your career, relationships, hobbies, your lifestyle. Your sense of safety, your sense of trust in your body, and also the futures that you had imagined for yourself. That’s a lot.”” We have not even grieved the dead, keep killing and disabling more. What a collective nightmare.
It’s All-Out War On the Vulnerable | Nate Bear [substack] – “In the past, fascist governments disappeared inconvenient people by abducting them and killing them. Now they just write them out of society with a check mark. These are the actions of cruel people dedicated to a cruel system. And it’s hard to escape the conclusion these changes are happening because, not despite, the increase in the number of people with a post-covid disability. What long covid is doing, and will continue to do to our societies is not a secret. It’s naïve to believe governments don’t know. That they haven’t been briefed.” It’s all happening in plain sight now.
Building Communities of Care and Liberation [reshaping reality] – “It feels like the Left is so caught up with reacting to the Right’s evils, that we’ve forgotten how to build up communities of solidarity and liberation. We should be engaging in collective community care. We should be building that together and not eating up the isolating consumerist culture that late-stage-capitalism throws at us. We need more media networks focused on building up communities of care and communities based on liberation.” The right has hacked us, flooding the zone with shit and forcing us into a reactive stance. But let us build a pre-figurative practice based on solidarity and inclusion, where the right won’t be capable of following us. And we got this.
Anselm’s Sweeping Vision Obscures the Political [hyperallergic] – “Thus it’s unfortunate that Wenders does not acknowledge the continuing relevance of the themes Kiefer probes — collective memory, the willful erasure of traumatic history, the culpability of the German people and, by extension, Whiteness itself. As much as Kiefer and Wenders are still contemplating the ethnic and cultural myths that undergirded the rise of National Socialism and laid the groundwork for the Holocaust, why not relate these myths to the more recent rise of fascism and alt-right extremism throughout the world?” Geniekult in Reinkultur. I could not despise any movie more than this one. And i used to love both of these artists.
The Global Economy Is A Pandemic Factory | Nate Bear [substack] – “The researchers identified the reasons why pandemics now emerge at warp speed: global travel, intensive agriculture, deforestation, climate change. It’s not uncommon to see these factors pinpointed in the mainstream media. People like Bill Gates often blithely mention them. But rarely is the bigger truth noted: these factors do not emerge organically. They are products not accidents of our global economic system, a system designed primarily to satisfy ruling class power and greed. And this economic system is a pandemic factory.” More zoonotic pandemics will happen because we changed none of the conditions making them possible in the first place.
Masha Gessen’s Hannah Arendt Prize has been canceled because of their essay on Gaza. [lithub] – “The German Green Party-affiliated Heinrich Böll Foundation, “in agreement with the Bremen Senate,” is withdrawing from awarding the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought to the Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, citing Gessen’s recent New Yorker essay “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” as the reason for the decision.” Masha Gessen was accused of antisemitism because of this essay:
In the Shadow of the Holocaust [the new yorker] – “Another half century later, in Berlin, the philosopher Susan Neiman, who leads a research institute named for Einstein, spoke at the opening of a conference called “Hijacking Memory: The Holocaust and the New Right.” She suggested that she might face repercussions for challenging the ways in which Germany now wields its memory culture. Neiman is an Israeli citizen and a scholar of memory and morals. One of her books is called “Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil.” In the past couple of years, Neiman said, memory culture had “gone haywire.”” It’s such an outrage. And also so laughable. Suddenly Germans claim to be the leading antisemites. Check your history and your present, please.
Hitler’s Nazis And How Germany Became Good Again [znetwork] – “Worse, Germany believes itself to have dealt with the crimes of the past. With this self-assessment, it is “mission accomplished,” “case closed.” Yet, more than any other social class in Nazi Germany, the industrialists were the ones who profited from the economic boom and rearmament. They also collected the fruits from the plunder of the Jews. Some of those fruits – as illustrated in the book Nazis All The Way Down – are used in a very particular way.” Oh no no no, that case is not closed. In Germany they keep inventing new forms of antisemitism. Like when they essentialize Jews and accuse left-wing Jews of antisemitism, that is antisemitic.
November 2023 Global Climate Report [ncei] – “The November global surface temperature was 1.44°C (2.59°F) above the 20th-century average of 12.9°C (55.2°F), making it the warmest November on record. This was 0.38°C (0.68°F) above the previous record from November 2015. November 2023 marked the 47th-consecutive November and the 537th-consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average.” This is fine?!
Cough and sputum in long COVID are associated with severe acute COVID-19: a Japanese cohort study [respiratory research] – “frequency and characteristics of coughing and sputum in long COVID. Importantly, both symptoms were highly associated with the severity and risk factors of severe COVID-19. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize that severe infections can cause sequelae of cough and sputum in clinical settings. In addition, these findings emphasize that a preventive approach including appropriate vaccination and contact precaution and further development of therapeutic drugs for COVID-19 should be highly recommended for patients with risk factors for severe infection. Long-term persistent cough and sputum are burdens on patients after recovery from acute COVID-19.” In those moments of nagging doubt, do i have it or don’t i?, articles like this one that make me sure again, i do.
The religion of techno-optimism | Paris Marx [substack] – “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto is an extension of a wider effort by the Silicon Valley elite to convince the public that they deserve the power and wealth they gained during the industry’s boom. They’ve revived eugenics to argue they’re intellectually superior, but that isn’t enough. They know that their positions are in jeopardy if the public starts to question whether they can ever deliver on their promises, so they’re drawing a hard line: you’re either with us or you’re against us. And if you’re against us, that will have consequences.” And what’s with all these new labels for the same longtermist crap? I think this is also meant to flood the zone with shit, so we ignore to address the pressing issues.
Losing the Plot: The “Leftists” Who Turn Right – In These Times [inthesetimes] – “Maybe there’s a kind of gravity to the slide, the black hole of fascism sucking toward it all the loose particles of those whose commitments were never complex or whose convictions were snapped by despair. And the accusation that arises with almost every left-to-right slider, that they’re sell-outs, just doing it for the money? Yes, some are. Yes, and—because even when it starts that way, the transaction is transformational.” The article starts pretty messy, where the author is pretty much name dropping, but towards the end they manage to explain some of the dynamics behind these left to right renegades in more depth.
This Far-Right Israeli Soccer Fan Club Provides a Window Into Israel’s Evolving Extremism [jacobin]
““La Familia” is a group of fans that supports Beitar Jerusalem, one of Israel’s most popular football clubs. The quasi-criminal, virulently anti-Arab group has fashioned themselves into political street fighters for the Israeli far right.” Fuck all right wing football hooligans.
The year Twitter died: a special series [the verge] – ““When Elon Musk took over, it was like the mask slipped,” said an engineer who left just before the billionaire’s arrival. “We realized we worked under capitalism.” This is a quote from one of the articles. The illustrations are also wonderful.
We can hold all of this | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “I think, that new variety is getting even worse as the cyborg variant becomes predominant. They no longer inhabit the embodied world – you have to get on their screen to get their recognition, on the safety of a screen where all they have to do is swipe you away to make you disappear, the wet dream of this entire civilization, to make inconveniences disappear without having to dirty one’s hands with the blood and viscera…” Swipe right if you approve.
Ed Yong: Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me to Be a Better Journalist [nyt] – “Covering long Covid solidified my view that science is not the objective, neutral force it is often misconstrued as. It is instead a human endeavor, relentlessly buffeted by our culture, values and politics. As energy-depleting illnesses that disproportionately affect women, long Covid and M.E./C.F.S. are easily belittled by a sexist society that trivializes women’s pain, and a capitalist one that values people according to their productivity.” But remember, it does not make the NYT a better newspaper when they finally feature LongCOVID in some of their articles, after having been on the forefront of the normalizing effort.
An open letter to our anarchist, socialist and radical leftist comrades [freedom news] – “Inclusion and solidarity are not empty words. They call for practice. Without practical implications, they are buzzwords made up of hot air.” Our open letter was re-posted on Freedom. And on the anarchist library. We are so very happy about this.
Anarchist Zines & Pamphlets Published in November 2023 [sprout distro] – “Welcome to our mostly monthly round-up of new zines published in the anarchist space. We aim to highlight a broad range of anarchist thought. Inclusion here doesn’t imply endorsement. Please spread what interests you to others in the physical world.” And again, our zine was featured. Again, so happy.
Congress Is Absolutely Wrong to Equate Anti-Zionism With Antisemitism | Ben Burgis [jacobin] – “The US Congress has passed an absurd resolution proclaiming that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” It ignores the many Jewish Americans who oppose Israel’s apartheid state and slanders advocates for universal democratic rights as antisemites.” Another attempt to essentialize Jews into a homogeneous mass, which is antisemitic in and off itself.
Activists are voicing concerns over Atlanta’s proposed ski-mask ban [igd] – “Report from the Atlanta Community Press Collective on recent proposal by a member of the Atlanta City Council to prohibit the wearing of ski masks “or other items that conceal the identity of the wearer.”” We have had this ban for years here in Switzerland. It does suck.
One Week After Milei’s Victory: What’s Next For Argentina? [roar news] – “Finally, while environmental challenges were a consistent blindspot in most electoral programmes, Milei’s party has stated that: “all these policies blaming humans for climate change are false and only serve to raise funds to finance lazy socialists“. As a result, the Elected Administration will take no measures to tackle the climate crisis. Instead, the elected party pretends to rely on the market to solve this problem: “Why are whales on the brink of extinction while chickens or cows are not? […] When there is an owner, there is economical use, and this protects the fauna”.” What a scary fucker.
“Cabal of Oil Producers”: Climate Scientist Kevin Anderson Slams Corporate Capture of COP28 [democracy now!] – “Sometimes I’m quite reluctant to talk about my own lifestyle, but, yeah, I’ve tried to make some changes as a climate academic. So I stopped flying in 2004. I live in a very nice flat, but it’s a two-bedroom flat, or apartment. I’ve cut my driving by about 70%. I’ve been vegetarian since 1987. So I’ve made some changes. But let’s be clear: Those changes are — in isolation, those changes are irrelevant. The only merit of individuals making changes is that when we speak to others, we can talk from a position of some understanding of how difficult that is or how easy that is. And we know from repeated psychological evidence that that improves or increases the credibility of our arguments. So, by making the changes ourselves, that allows us much more scope and potential for changing the system. And that’s the important — they’re two sides of the same coin: System change also requires personal change. They are the same thing.” This is why it still does matter that we start with the change in our own lives.
‘A frenzy of judgement’: artist Candice Breitz on her German show being pulled over Gaza [the guardian] – “Many progressive Jews in this country have come to believe that Germany’s increasingly entrenched habit of weaponising false charges of antisemitism against intellectuals and cultural workers of various descriptions, in the absence of credible evidence, has little to do with a genuine concern for the safety of Jewish lives, and can best be understood as serving to promote Germany’s image of itself as a forward-looking country that has managed to overcome its own deeply antisemitic and genocidal past. Hollowed-out accusations of antisemitism are commonly deployed to silence, stigmatise, sideline and de-platform not only progressive Jews but also Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs and others who are “other” to white Germany.” I so love this artist. What a brave person.
Anarchism and Violence: A Tale of Two Bombers | Margaret Killjoy [substack] – “We live in a world in which discussions of violence are dangerously oversimplified. I don’t say “dangerously” hyperbolically. The oversimplification of our discussions of violence has a body count. One side says “violence is never the answer” and the other side says “well, since that’s obviously not true, violence must be fine.” When all violence is treated the same, all violence becomes justifiable.” Anarchist violence examined.
Fourteenth Part and Second Approach Alert: The (other) Rule of the Excluded Third [enlace zapatista] – “Balanced coexistence between humans and nature is now impossible. In the confrontation, the one who has the most time will win: nature. Capital has turned the relationship with nature into a confrontation, a war of plunder and destruction. The objective of this war is the annihilation of the opponent, nature in this case (humanity included). With the criterion of “planned obsolescence” (or “expected expiration”), the commodity “human beings” expires in each war. The logic of capital is that of greater profit at maximum speed. This causes the system to become a gigantic waste machine, including human beings. In the storm, social relations are disrupted and unproductive capital throws millions into unemployment and, from there, into “alternative employment” in crime, and into migration. The destruction of territories includes depopulation. The “phenomenon” of migration is not the prelude to the catastrophe, it is its confirmation. Migration produces the effect of “nations within nations”, large migratory caravans colliding with walls made of concrete, of police, military walls; criminal walls, bureaucratic walls, racial and economic walls.” Walls have turned into such a symbol for fascism.
‘Immunity debt’ is a misguided and dangerous concept [ft] – “The immunity debt theory holds broad appeal because it can be employed in so many ways. It seems to intuitively explain the current wave of respiratory illness. It is attractive to those who would downplay disease in children, and those who advocate for infection over vaccination. It provides a post-hoc justification for opposing measures such as masking, even though evidence suggests that such measures curbed Covid and virtually banished flu. Immunity debt also plays to the idea that the ebb and flow of childhood illnesses are best left to nature — until one remembers that the entire childhood vaccination schedule is about keeping the worst of nature at bay.” Immunity debt, another one of the fairy tales in the normalization of COVID-19, used as a justification for this mass disabling event.
“Never Again” After October 7th [jewishcurrents] – “Holocaust memory has also served to absolve some European countries of responsibility for their own past atrocities during the colonial period. Germany, for example, has developed a self-congratulatory national pride in how uniquely well it dealt with its criminal legacies. This has fueled almost a new form of German nationalism, a sense of superiority that manifests as a kind of memory championship. But it has not forced a reckoning with German colonialism or its problem with Islamophobia today. This approach has shut down any debate about the complexity of both the Holocaust itself and Israel, and led to a flattening view whereby criticism of Israel is taken as antisemitic by default. We now see the blunt force with which all sorts of speech and action—political, cultural, academic, artistic—has been policed in Germany.” I seriously hate to live in a german-speaking part of the world at the moment. What a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
[Articles German/French/Italian]
Antisemitismus-Debatte in Deutschland: »Deutsche Befindlichkeiten stehen wie immer im Mittelpunkt [nd-aktuell.de] – “Die jüdische Identität bleibt in deutschen Vorstellungen gefangen. Ich sehe darin eine Fortsetzung des tief verwurzelten deutschen Antisemitismus, der jüdische Stimmen einkapselt und kontrolliert und ihnen die Vielfalt und Heterogenität der jüdischen Identität abspricht und unterbindet, um sie zu politischen und ideologischen Zwecken zu instrumentalisieren. Der jüdischen Gemeinschaft wird in Deutschland nicht gestattet, eine plurale, heterogene Gemeinschaft mit ihren eigenen Spannungen und Meinungsverschiedenheiten zu sein, die nicht von einer einzigen politischen Stimme vertreten wird. Das ist antisemitisch.” This is a partial German transcript of above video.
Why we need to take climate conspiracy fantasies seriously | Wu Ming 1 [internazionale]
“Second-generation climate conspiracy myths, even as they get distorted in various ways, speak to us of these risks. They should not be confused with denialism, nor should they get diminished as nothing more than hoaxes: we must know how to read and listen to them. Without pandering to them, because they remain harmful on several levels. By failing to indicate [the actual] causes and culprits, they deflect the attention – the most fuzzy resource today –and as such represent a divisive function. At the same time, their blows put those in difficulty, who deal with the same themes with more [scientific] rigor.” Translation mine. Part 2 here.
Il “doppio” di Doppelgänger di Naomi Klein: disavventure di una traduzione [wuming] – “The book entitled Double is just a pale imitation, or a mutilated relative, of Doppelganger. It is precisely the doppelganger, the reflection in a deforming mirror. The umpteenth joke of the fate that Klein has to suffer, after those of which he tells in the book itself.” I would feel so duped if i was Naomi Klein. This sounds no longer like the same book.
Die Schweiz und ihre blühende Rape Culture [daslamm] – “Ich bin so wütend, dass ich kaum weiss, wie ich es in Worte fassen soll. Und ich versuche es dennoch. Auch wenn sich so eine Kolumne lächerlich zahm anfühlt, wenn ich doch eigentlich einfach alles anzünden will. Dieses Urteil ist ein Schlag ins Gesicht aller Überlebenden sexualisierter Gewalt und ein gefährliches Signal an alle (potenziellen) Tatpersonen.” More reasons to hate the country i live in. Abolish all nations, by the way.
Zürich, Basel, Bern und die Frage nach den Grundrechten [republik] – “Seit dem Krieg im Nahen Osten ist ein alter Bekannter aus der Corona-Pandemie zurück: das Demonstrationsverbot. In Zürich, Basel und Bern schränkten die Behörden damit Grundrechte ein. Dabei begeben sie sich auf heikles Terrain. Und verstricken sich in Widersprüche.” Shock doctrine.
Aktionskunst: Bundesregierung nutzt Zensurheberrecht gegen unerwünschtes Kanzler-Video [netzpolitik.org] – “„Der Einsatz des Urheberrechts gegen dieses Video ist Quatsch.“ Das Urheberrecht diene ja normalerweise dazu, dass Künstlerinnen und Autoren für ihre Werke angemessen vergütet werde. Es werde im Fall des Videos zu einem Vehikel: „Hier wird das Urheberrecht nun vom Staat als Zensurinstrument genutzt.“” Full disclaimer, i do not trust this artist group. But this is a relevant development.
[Older articles, still great]
We Need to Talk About Reactionary Centrists [aaronhuertas] – “Sympathizing with the right while punching left is not the neutral position pundits seem to think it is” The horse shoe theory, debunked!
Interview über Diskriminierungen – «Schwarze Männer und weisse Frauen haben Mühe, ihre Privilegien anzuerkennen» [tamedia] – “Was ist wichtiger: Die Bekämpfung von Sexismus, Rassismus oder sozialer Ungerechtigkeit? Es gibt das eine nicht ohne das andere, sagt die Politologin Emilia Roig. Der Begriff dafür lautet Intersektionalität.” Interview about intersectionality and white feminism.
Nazi Billionaires [c-span] – “Journalist David de Jong talked about the German business dynasties behind companies like BMW, Porsche, and Volkswagen that made fortunes during the Third Reich by collaborating with the Nazis. This virtual event was hosted by Yale University’s Program for the Study of Antisemitism” This video is proof that Germany never actually dealt with their nazi problem. Nazi money still at the basis of the richest entrepreneurs in the country. Instead they now go around and accuse everyone else of antisemitism. Do not buy this shit.
2023 CBC Massey Lectures: Astra Taylor [cbc] – “Taylor takes a deep dive into the history of capitalism and explores how, paradoxically, the ways that we’ve been encouraged to achieve security — purchasing health and wellness products, buying life insurance, acquiring property — actually work against us.” I love her approach and agree that insecurity can serve as common ground for mobilization. But in the solutions Astra is to democratic socialist.
Ursula K. Le Guin: A Rant about “Techonolgy” – “Technology is the active human interface with the material world. But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources. This is not an acceptable use of the word. “Technology” and “hi tech” are not synonymous, and a technology that isn’t “hi,” isn’t necessarily ‘“low” in any meaningful sense.” She nailed it.
The Sickening, Orwellian, Anti-Semitic Weaponisation of Anti-Semitism [mediaactivist] – “This is the crux. We have to stop thinking of “Jews” as just one mass of the same type of people, when they themselves are an extremely diverse group, with wide and varied opinions. Jews aren’t just making Hollywood movies – and they’re not all Zionists, any more than they are all liberal. This shouldn’t really need explaining, but Jews are across the full spectrum of society – and that means some will be supportive of democratic socialism, and therefore Jeremy Corbyn, while others will be conservative or even significantly right-wing in their viewpoint.” This article from a few years back suddenly holds a lot of relevance again.
R.I.P.
Antonio Negri [wikipedia]
Benjamin Zephaniah 1958-2023 [freedom news]
#sgtpepper2023 [b3ta.com] – Photoshop showing many of the famous people who died in 2023.
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Header Photo: A table with all the medication, supplements and gadgets i need to fight my illness, it is expensive