CounterPunch, 3.18.2022 *This essay is an updated version and partial reconfiguration of a presentation I gave online to the Chicago chapter of the national organization Refuse Fascism last Monday night. Thanks to the war in Ukraine, we are now closer to nuclear holocaust than any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. To quote Bob Dylan, “let [...]
CounterPunch, 3.11.2022 Is it inherently wrong to ask, “what about” X’s crimes and evil when confronted with Y’s crimes and evil? Is that “what about-ist” rationalization of Y’s crimes and evil? Not necessarily. Not when: one does not cite X’s crimes and evil to excuse Y’s crimes and evil; X’s crimes and evil are relevant [...]
CounterPunch, 3.9.2022 Try Harder I would encourage many online “leftists” to try a lot harder not to come off as Vladimir Putin bootlickers indifferent to the plight of ordinary Ukrainians (and for that matter of everyday Russians who are losing access to non-state media and who face 15 years in prison for even calling Putin’s [...]
CounterPunch, 3.7.2022 The following is cut and pasted from interactions with fellow antiwar lefties on so-called social media. Statements preceded by a plus sign (+) were written by me. Statements preceded by a cross hatch (#) are written by online correspondents. Quote marks are used for all statements by others but not for the author’s [...]
CounterPunch, 3.4.2022 The war continues, putting humanity in peril. You might think that statement refers to the war in Ukraine. That’s understandable: the Ukraine Crisis raises the specter of World War III more menacingly than any geopolitical conflict of the post-Cold War era. Here, however, I’m writing about the capitalist war on livable ecology – [...]
CounterPunch, 2.28.2022 Especially when deepened by the fog of war, stupidity comes in many mutually reinforcing forms. Let’s examine and get past some stupid thinking on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But first, let’s proclaim some basic principles. The Ukraine Crisis is a good focus for pracisting the art of detesting two things at the same [...]
CounterPunch+ 2.27.2022 Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism (London: Verso, 2021) We live in a dangerous time when a far-right more powerful than at any time since 1945 is doing all it can to accelerate the capitalist project to turn our planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas [...]
CounterPunch, 2.25.2022 *This essay, like my forthcoming CounterPunch+ review of Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective’s book White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism, was written before the news cycle was taken over by the imperial “Ukraine Crisis.” One of the functions of war hysteria is to create a giant atavistic and nationalist fog [...]
CounterPunch, 2.11.2022 The United States’ descent into pandemicist and neofascist Hell (something I have been documenting for some time here at CounterPunch and recently in a new book titled This Happened Here) under the eco-cidal command of capital continues apace. Stupid and Selective Censorship Concerns The comments sections of mainstream US news Websites are abuzz with angry Amerikaners’ hatred of [...]
CounterPunch, 2.8.2022 Last week I wrote a CounterPunch piece about some dark sides of US-American history and the nightmarish fascisation process underway in the USA today. It’s one of the harshest and most alarming essays I’ve ever penned. Here are some of the disturbing things that have taken place in “the world’s greatest country” since I started [...]