We Need To Talk About...
Sometimes it feels like there are so many unaddressed elephants in the room that there is scarcely room for oxygen. I want to deal with basic matters that affect everyday political culture, but that we take for granted or feel unable to discuss. I am doing this in the most raw, bare bones way possible. It is just me speaking from notes.
Episodes
Everything happening in Gaza is linked to what was done by the US and UK to Iraq. Technologies and techniques of urban warfare, of occupation, of psychological warfare, of oppression, of destruction, of torture and of propaganda were developed and shared between Israeli and the Coalition forces occupying Iraq. Each was used as a training ground and laboratory for the other.
Like Gaza the nature of the violence in Iraq was genoci...
I speak here off the cuff about the centrality and culpability of the US in the Gaza Holocaust. I start by explaining why I use "Gaza Holocaust" as terminology.
The US is not merely supporting Israel's genocidal slaughter in Gaza, it is a direct participant.
In this video I depart from my usual format and the result is much briefer. "Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people ...
In this episode I build on and take a different approach to things that I have written and spoke about in the past. Our vision of Nazis as the ultimate expression of political evil is not wrong in that Nazism is morally unsupportable, but exceptionalist views of Nazism blind us to dangers of Nazism returning. Obviously as a particular movement of a particular time it is unlikely (though unfortunately not impossible) that an overt s...
In which I discuss Kenneth Roth's return to form as a military interventionist who loves the idea of US military involvement as a way of solving problems. Despite everything this implies he still gets treated as a humanitarian hero by the likes of Democracy Now!
I stuffed up the video capture so that my face is covering Roth most of the time. I am new to the software and had preview screen showing a very different view. Sorry :-...
In the second of two parts I discuss how contemporary fascism doesn't announce itself; how creeping fascism has come to predominate in the West and other countries; and how once fascism becomes normal normal people become fascists. Eventually society will be one in which the only people who aren't fascist are the conscious antifascists. Liberals and conservatives, for example, are by no means immune from being fascists.
In the first of two parts I discuss how contemporary fascism doesn't announce itself; how creeping fascism has come to predominate in the West and other countries; and how once fascism becomes normal normal people become fascists. Eventually society will be one in which the only people who aren't fascist are the conscious antifascists. Liberals and conservatives, for example, are by no means immune from being fascists.
[NOTE: This was originally delivered as a speech at a vigil in Wakatū/Nelson but footage of the speech was lost so I re-recorded it and appended text below]
What is genocide? Legally it is described in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which tells us “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or re...
The fall of the Assad regime has been widely celebrated but there are already signs that it may lead to an even worse future for the people of Syria and the region.
The experiences of those who suffered under the Assad regime are real and their pain and loss should be honoured but we should not do so by ignoring the crimes of others. The people who have suffered and those who will suffer at the hands of Islamists, US client force...
In the second part of Part 2 of "We Need to Talk About That F*****g Election that Just Happened" I finally get to the bit about wrestling.
World Wrestling Entertainment makes content that is a form of melodramatic theatre centred around partially improvised but largely scripted "wrestling". Over the last few decades, though, the content occurring outside of the ring has become more complex, with ever more convoluted storylines.
...
In this episode I forget the name of Henry Wallace and tentatively refer to him as George Wallace (who was a famous segregationist Governor of Alabama). Sorry Henry :-(
I discuss the fact that the Democrats clearly did not campaign to win the 2024 presidential election, and what circumstances contribute to that behaviour. I talk about the increasingly fraudulent nature of politics at the highest levels and express how much I hate ...
In a different approach to a postmortem of the US 2024 Presidential Election I try to avoid focusing on the campaigning choices of each party and look instead at the systemic constraints that have made US presidential elections into a spectacle - a spectacle almost devoid of actual politics. The history of US presidential politics has been dominated by public sentiments about their policies on issues of war and peace, but the elect...
In Episode 2 I follow thematically from episode one to explore generalisation and "othering". I continue some focus on antisemitism but shift more to the use of wilful bigotry against Palestinians which serves to paint the victims as being the agents of their own destruction.
Links:
Indi.ca: "How 'Israel' Is Used To Divide And Conquer The Middle East" https://indi.ca/how-israel-is-used-to-divide-and-conquer-the-middle-east/
Me:...
Antisemitism is on the rise, but so is the misuse of allegations of antisemitism to police political speech. How do we balance these increasingly urgent concerns? How do we distinguish what is and is not antisemitism?
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