We celebrate today the birth of the labor movement and the anniversary of the September 28 1864 founding of the First International. The principles of labor organization which it forged have become foundational for any revolutionary struggle; class solidarity and international unity of action foremost among them.
In this time of Nazi revivalism and nationalist identity politics which has recaptured Hungary, Italy, and Austria, with significant threats to democracy in Germany, France, The Netherlands (not the one with Beetlejuice), Belgium, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Portugal and well as in America where democracy has fallen and been captured by Trump’s kleptocracy of theocratic patriarchal sexual terror and white supremacist terror, the idea of Internationalism and the solidarity of a United Humankind offers an alternative vision of humankind and civilization.
For those of us with a multigenerational heritage of labor unionism, this is a special day of family remembrance of the great sacrifices with which our more fair and equal partnerships in society were won, and of re-evaluations of what remains to be achieved and forging strategies and plans of action for the struggles ahead.
In this great project of the transformation of humankind and the systems and structures of our social, political, and economic relations, I invite you all to share; let us seize our power to shape ourselves and our own destiny from those who would enslave us.
Writing in Socialist Worker, Elizabeth Schulte describes the purpose and significance of the First International; “Karl Marx made sure there was no confusion on where he thought socialists should want their story to go. When he drafted the rules for the International Workingman’s Association in 1864, he started with the statement: “That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.”
No other class could do the work of liberating the working class, only the working class itself, Marx believed. This stood in sharp distinction to other ideas about achieving full human liberation and equality at the time.”
“By studying the historical development of capitalism and its inner workings, Marx identified the potential revolutionary role of the working class in winning a socialist society.
By the nature of workers’ role under capitalism — forced to sell their labor power in workplaces where they neither own nor control the means of production — workers came into conflict with the existing system and the bosses who own and control these workplaces.
The Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs explained this relationship in a 1905 speech, focusing in on a famous member of the ruling class, industrialist Andrew Carnegie; “The capitalists own the tools they do not use, and the workers use the tools they do not own. The capitalists, who own the tools that the working class use, appropriate to themselves what the working class produce, and this accounts for the fact that a few capitalists become fabulously rich while the toiling millions remain in poverty, ignorance and dependence…
Andrew Carnegie, who owns these tools, has absolutely nothing to do with the production of steel…His mills at Pittsburgh, Duquesne and Homestead, where these tools are located, are thronged with thousands of toolless wage workers, who work day and night, in winter’s cold and summer’s heat, who endure all the privations and make all the sacrifices of health and limb and life, producing thousands upon thousands of tons of steel, yet not having an interest, even the slightest, in the product.
Carnegie, who owns the tools, appropriates the product, and the workers, in exchange for their labor power, receive a wage that serves to keep them in producing order; and the more industrious they are, and the more they produce, the worse off they are; for when they have produced more than Carnegie can get rid of in the markets, the tool houses are shut down and the workers are locked out in the cold.
This is a beautiful arrangement for Mr. Carnegie; he does not want a change…and he is doing what he can to induce you to think that this ideal relation ought to be maintained forever.”
As Debs pointed out, this conflict between those who work and those who rule isn’t always obvious. In fact, capitalism does its best to obscure it. But nonetheless, these contradictions are ever present.”
“On any average day, workers feel powerless in their workplaces. It can seem like the last place where they could have their voices heard — and for good reason. In most workplaces, you check your opinions and your rights at the door in exchange for employment, and you are forced to bend to the rules laid out by your employer.
It hardly feels like a place, as Marx argued, where workers have the most power. This is why — though there has been an increase in strikes, including the explosive teachers’ strikes of last spring and this fall — the workplace is still not the epicenter of most working-class struggle today.
Plus, it’s important to point out that workers have been involved in struggles that aren’t at their workplaces — such as the Women’s Marches, the #MeToo movement, protests against the Trump administration’s family detention policies and more.
These are important points of struggle where class issues are fought out. But it’s the potential power that workers have at work which Marx believed made them the prime force for change.
In ways that are unlike any other group in society, workers are brought together by capitalism into a common situation and usually a common location — and by being subject to a common discipline, they have an interest in taking action collectively. This is why Marx said capitalism created its own “gravedigger.”
Of course, many factors keep the underlying contradictions from turning into outright revolt. They often are specifically designed to keep workers’ eyes trained on one another rather than the bosses — such as competition for jobs or sexism and racism.
But when workplace struggles do break out, not only are the contradictions laid bare, but so is workers’ potential power as workers. Strikes can play the role of demonstrating to workers their collective power to shut down a workplace, and even a city and more.
The more the struggle is able to challenge the status quo, the more questions come up about who should be making the decisions about our everyday lives — inside and outside the workplace.
During the Seattle General Strike of 1919, which was inspired by the Russian Revolution, workers demonstrated a high level of organization — both so they could have the strongest impact on the bosses and to make sure that their families received the food and milk they needed, and much more.
The General Strike Committee became the real government of the city, as First World War veterans replaced the police, and radical literature was passed from hand to hand to provide the news that the bosses’ newspapers refused to report.
In the process of this kind of struggle, one that grows beyond individual workplaces and begins to challenge the existing governments and social structures, history shows that workers see that they have to reorganize society if they are going to win against those who would like to keep the status quo.
Marx learned this through the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871. He concluded that while many democratic changes could happen quite quickly, a complete transformation of society is necessary if workers’ power is going to prevail.”
As Marcello Musto writes in Jacobin; “After its first meeting, on September 28, 1864, the International Workingmen’s Association (better known as the “First International”) quickly aroused passions all over Europe. It made class solidarity a shared ideal and inspired large numbers of women and men to struggle against exploitation. Thanks to its activity, workers were able to gain a clearer understanding of the mechanisms of the capitalist mode of production, to become more aware of their own strength, and to develop new, more advanced forms of struggle for their rights.
In the beginning, the International was an organization containing various political traditions, the majority of which were reformist rather than revolutionary. Originally, the central driving force was British trade unionism, the leaders of which were mainly interested in economic questions. They fought to improve the workers’ conditions, but without calling capitalism into question. Hence, they conceived of the International primarily as an instrument to prevent the import of workers from abroad in the event of strikes.
The second most important group were the mutualists, long dominant in France. In keeping with the theories of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, they opposed any working-class involvement in politics and the strike as a weapon of struggle.
Then there were the Communists who opposed the very system of capitalist production and argued for the necessity of overthrowing it. At its founding, the ranks of the International also included a number of workers inspired by utopian theories and exiles having vaguely democratic ideas and cross-class conception who considered the International as an instrument for the issuing of general appeals for the liberation of oppressed peoples.
It was Karl Marx who gave a clear purpose to the International and who achieved a non-exclusionary, yet firmly working-class-based political program that won it mass support. Rejecting sectarianism, he worked to bring the International’s various strands together. Marx was the political soul of its General Council (the body that worked out a unifying synthesis of the various tendencies and issued guidelines for the organization as a whole). He drafted all its main resolutions and prepared almost all its congress reports.
But the International was, of course, much more than Marx, brilliant a leader as he was. It was not, as has often been written, the “creation of Marx.” Rather it was a vast social and political movement for the emancipation of the working classes. The International was made possible first of all by the labor movement’s struggles in the 1860s. One of its basic rules — and the fundamental distinction from previous labor organizations — was that “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.”
“The late 1860s and early 1870s were a period rife with social conflicts in Europe. Many workers who took part in protest actions decided to make contact with the International, whose reputation quickly spread widely. From 1866 on, strikes intensified in many countries and formed the core of a new and important wave of mobilizations. The International was essential in struggles that were won by workers in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. The scenario was the same in many of these conflicts: workers in other countries raised funds in support of the strikers and agreed not to accept work that would have turned them into industrial mercenaries. As a result, the bosses were forced to compromise on many of the strikers’ demands. These advances were supported by the diffusion of newspapers that either sympathized with the ideas of the International or were veritable organs of the General Council. Both contributed to the development of class consciousness and to the rapid circulation of news concerning the activity of the International.
Across Europe, the association developed an efficient organizational structure and increased the number of its members (150,000 at the peak moment). For all the difficulties bound up with a diversity of nationalities, languages, and political cultures, the International managed to achieve unity and coordination across a wide range of organizations and spontaneous struggles. Its greatest merit was to demonstrate the crucial importance of class solidarity and international cooperation.
The International was the locus of some of the most famous debates of the labor movement, such as that between communism and anarchy. The congresses of the International were also where, for the first time, a major transnational organization came to decisions about crucial issues, which had been discussed before its foundation, that subsequently became strategic points in the political programs of socialist movements across the world. Among these were the indispensable function of trade unions, the socialization of land and means of production, the importance of participating in elections and doing this through independent parties of the working class, women’s emancipation, and the conception of war as an inevitable product of the capitalist system.”
“The 156th anniversary of the First International takes place in a very different context. An abyss separates the hopes of those times from the mistrust so characteristic of our own, the anti-systemic spirit and solidarity of the age of the International from the ideological subordination and individualism of a world reshaped by neoliberal competition and privatization.
The world of labor has suffered an epochal defeat, and the Left is still in the midst of deep crisis. After decades of neoliberal policies, we’ve returned to an exploitative system, similar to that of the nineteenth century. Labor market “reforms” — a term now shed of its original progressive meaning — have introduced more and more “flexibility” with each passing year, creating deeper inequalities. Other major political and economic shifts have succeeded one another, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Among them, there have been the social changes generated by globalization, the ecological disasters produced by the present mode of production, the growing gulf between the wealthy exploitative few and the huge impoverished majority, one of the biggest economic crises of capitalism (the one erupted in 2008) in history, the blustery winds of war, racism and chauvinism, and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a context such as this, class solidarity is all the more indispensable. It was Marx himself who emphasized that the confrontation between workers — including between local and migrant workers (who are moreover discriminated) — is an essential element of the domination of the ruling classes. New ways of organizing social conflict, political parties, and trade unions must certainly be invented, as we cannot reproduce schemes used 150 years ago. But the old lesson of the International that workers are defeated if they do not organize a common front of the exploited is still valid. Without that, our only horizon is a war between the poor and unbridled competition between individuals.
The barbarism of today’s world order imposes upon the contemporary workers’ movement the urgent need to reorganize itself on the basis of two key characteristics of the International: the multiplicity of its structure and radicalism in objectives. The aims of the organization founded in London in 1864 are today more timely than ever. To rise to the challenges of the present, however, the new International cannot evade the twin requirements of pluralism and anticapitalism”.
What did Marx intend when he handed humankind the Promethean Fire of liberation and revolutionary struggle that was the International?
Here is my reply in a celebration of his birthday and of the Communist Manifesto in my post of May 5 2022, Let us Dream a New Post-Capitalist Society: Karl Marx, on his birthday; Karl Marx transformed the history and evolution of humankind with a unique primary insight, simple to tell though it has many layers; we humans are self created beings, whose souls are artifacts of our civilization as historical and social constructions, interdependent with those of others, and if we change how we relate to each other as systems, narratives of identity, informing, motivating, and shaping forces, if we change the nature of our relationships, we also change the nature of humankind.
Are we not made of the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves and to each other?
Always there remains the struggle between the masks that others make for us, and those we make for ourselves.
This is the first revolution in which we all must fight; the struggle for self-ownership.
“The bourgeoisie has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self- interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.” So wrote Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, which remains the most impactful revisioning of human relations, being, meaning, and values in the history of civilization.
Celebrate with me today the birthday of Karl Marx, who shaped from the Humanist tradition of the Enlightenment a toolkit for the realization of our potential humanity, of the limitless possibilities of becoming human, and of the liberation of humankind from systems of unequal power, from elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege, from divisions and hierarchies of belonging and exclusionary otherness, from fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, and from the tyranny and carceral states of those who would enslave us.
An enduring legacy of Karl Marx is his instrumentalization of Socratic method via Hegel as a tool of understanding unequal power as dialectical process, which can be generally applied in human sciences. This he demonstrated at length in the example of economics because he wanted to place it on a footing as science, much as Freud insisted on defining his new psychology as medical science to confer authority on it.
Marx helped me process two defining moments of my life, traumas which were transformational both to my identity and to my understanding of the human condition.
I first read his works as a teenager in the wake of a trip to Brazil the summer between eighth grade and high school in 1974, training with a friend as a sabre fencer for the Pan American Games, during which I became aware of the horrific gulf between social classes and races in the wealth disparity between my aristocratic hosts and the vast Black slums beyond their walls. At fourteen I had read Plato and Nietzsche, but never seen poverty or racism, though the brutal tyranny of a city under siege by its police had been enacted before me years earlier in the spectacle of Bloody Thursday, May 15 1969, in Berkeley at People’s Park. This was the Defining Moment of my Awakening to the brokenness of the world and the lies and illusions of the gilded cage of my privilege.
My response to this first reading, like my second and third part of a round of reading through the entire Great Books of the Western World series and the guidebooks by Mortimer J. Adler which collect his famous course at the University of Chicago, was that Marx had reimagined sin as the profit motive in a myth of Exile and Return, in an allegorical fable in which the new Adamic Man free of the profit motive would be restored to an Edenic state, being immediately captivated by the multitudes of Biblical symbolism which permeates Das Capital.
My second reading of Marx was eight years later as a university student after a culinary tour of the Mediterranean ended with the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and Siege of Beirut, and my exposure to the brutalities of war and Imperialist-Colonialist conquest as a nation fell to ruins around me, a civilization shattered by Occupation and savage tyranny. This was the Defining Moment of my calling, in which I was sworn to the Oath of the Resistance by Jean Genet.
During this second engagement with Marx, I laughed all the way through it; the first time I didn’t understand the literary references well enough to get the jokes. This time I saw his delightfully wicked Swiftian satire, and realized his true achievement; like Nicholaus of Cusa and Kurt Godel, and with prefigural echoes of Kafka and Samuel Beckett, Marx demonstrates the limits of reason in an Absurd universe. This interpretation owes something to my changing understanding of the world; after Beirut all was illusion and the lies of those who would dehumanize and enslave us.
The third time I read Marx was over a decade after my baptism by fire in Beirut, and during a sabbatical from my Great Trek after the revolution in Nepal, the resistance to the Indian conquest of Kashmir, and the Siege of Sarajevo, this time as a counselor seeking to better understand and help my clients. I remain as I was then, a scholar of the intersection of literature, psychology, history, and philosophy, whose primary field is the origin of human evil and its consequences as violence, tyranny, systems of oppression, and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, though of course I have been greatly changed by my life experience, and my understanding of human being, meaning, and value has changed with me.
My third reading of Marx coincides with my Defining Moment of understanding the Wagnerian ring of fear, power, and force from which evil, violence, and fascist tyranny arise, a Ring of Power which requires the renunciation of love to wield, and a pathology which can be healed by the redemptive power of love. Love is a madness, but like hope it is one which may grant us power, resilience, and the ability to adapt and survive. Here Marx helps us to understand the dynamics of unequal power as a system of oppression, a model which can be applied generally to issues including those of gender, race, and class.
We often have difficulty envisioning a therapeutic model of finding balance and harmony in society rather than a coercive one; we may align ourselves on the side of freedom against tyranny and the force and control of the carceral state, but how can we abolish the police and throw open the gates of the prisons, abolish borders and the counterinsurgency model of policing which enforces white supremacist and patriarchal terror and elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege, renounce the social use of force and abandon violence and war, cast down law and order from their thrones and forge a civilization of liberty and chaos in its place?
Let me provide you with an example of what that might look like. On my return from adventures abroad, I took a job as a counselor in a program called Vision Quest run through a Native American tribe for court mandated youth, under the flags of the 9th and 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers with the Army’s permission, and with gorgeous Union Army blues parade uniforms glittering with gold buttons in which one may feel like a prince.
As described to me, I would lead a group of boys through the program from a three month boot camp in Arizona near the historic Fort, then ride horses to Denver and Philadelphia, sleeping in a tipi as one of several such teams while they learned riding and parade horse drill, and finish the program on a tall ship in the Florida Keys teaching them to sail. They would earn their GED high school equivalency certificate, and graduates would have served their sentences and be provided with jobs and transitional supervised community based housing. There was no lockdown; just men learning to live together without violence.
This sounded like a grand adventure, and for most of my life if you told me something was going to be an adventure, or as Obi-Wan says in the first Star Wars film “some damn fool idealistic crusade”, I’d likely do it. It’s the part they leave out of the pitch you need to worry about with this kind of quasi-official military outfit; what no one told me was that the clients were mainly violent felons with four or five year sentences that would eventually land them in adult prisons if they washed out, with issues like psychotic rage and often highly trained and indoctrinated gang soldiers, cult zealots, and fanatics of political terror as well. It turned out to be both much tougher and much more interesting than I thought it was going to be, and became my entry point into working as a counselor.
They were some of the toughest and most unreachable boys in our nation, mainly Black and from the vast ghettos of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, with issues of abuse, abandonment, and addiction as consequences of structural and systemic inequalities and injustices, internalized oppression, and the legacy of slavery. And they were boys our nation had thrown away.
This is what is wrong inherently with prisons as a cure for systemic inequalities; not only does prison cause more harm rather than heal it, we are throwing our children away.
We had a three percent recidivism rate from that program; 97% of our clients had no further contact with the law after completion. This amazing success with teenagers our society had pronounced violent and unreformable criminals began with an awareness that perpetrators are also victims, and was won by providing a constructive way for them to earn honor and membership; so far like many other programs based on military models of identity construction.
But it was the horses, wild mustangs given to each new client as their own personal mount who had to break and learn to ride them, that allowed them to forge the ability to bond with others, because you can trust a horse and it will never betray you. Teambuilding exercises did the rest, as in the military but without the purpose of violence.
So it was, with The Communist Manifesto in my saddlebag and dreaming with serenity between a seventeen year old former gang enforcer and cult extremist of Louis Farrakhan’s racial separatist theocratic-fascist Nation of Islam who had been shot six times in six different gunfights with rival gangs and whose joy was to recite poetry from my copy of Rumi, and on the other side a fifteen year old former Jamaican Posse drug lord from Philadelphia who had two million dollars in cash in his pockets when his reign of terror, which included skinning alive people who owed him money and ordering his recruits to set a member of their families on fire as a loyalty test, ended in betrayal and arrest and who had discovered a genius for choreography in adapting reggae to parade drill, that I had a primary insight and realization of the nature of violence as a disease of power, of addiction to power and of unequal power, which operates multigenerationally as epigenetic trauma and historical legacies of slavery and racism, and often a result of secret power.
Dehumanization is the end result of commodification; Jean Genet famously called the quest for wealth and power necrophilia in his May Day speech to the Black Panthers for this reason. William S. Burroughs coined the term The Algebra of Need as a metaphor of Capitalism; Malcolm X references Burroughs’ metaphor of capitalism as possession when he speaks of heroin addiction as a white man who must be exorcised and cast out of one’s body. And with his invention of the philosophy of Existentialism, Jean Paul Sartre explored the implications of Marx’s primary insights as both Existentialist philosophy and a Humanist psychology of the consequences of unequal power relations and the mechanical failures of our civilization’s internal contradictions as alienation, falsification, commodification, internalized oppression, and the disfigurement and theft of the soul by hierarchies of elite wealth, power, and privilege and the hegemonic forces of those who would enslave us.
As a systemic and pervasive means of transforming persons into things, capitalism is an enabler which acts as a force multiplier for a host of evils, inequalities of racism and patriarchy, caste and class, theocracy and authorized national identities, and other divisions of exclusionary otherness, touching every aspect of our lives including our identity and social relations and confronting individuals with enormous and weaponized forces with which we must wrestle.
And our best response to these threats is solidarity in refusal to submit or be isolated by our modern pathology of disconnectedness, divided by otherness and identitarian categories of exclusion and privilege and by fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, and subjugated by authorized identities and through abjection and despair by the weaponization of overwhelming and generalized fear in service to power; to unite as a band of brothers, sisters, and others and to shelter and protect our humanity and viability through and with others as a United Humankind.
In our revolutionary struggle for our souls, for autonomy and self ownership, for liberty and our uniqueness as self created beings, and for the liberation of humankind, we are each other’s best resource of action.
We are not designed to survive alone, and it can be difficult to get people in crisis to reach out for help, and for our institutions of caregiving to find where help is needed before things spiral downwards into violence, nor can violence be cured with violence or state repression. But this is the great mission of our humanity; to unite across the boundaries of our differences in revolutionary struggle to become better.
Let us defy the malign forces that would divide and enslave us and consume our souls. So I say with Karl Marx, the great visionary of liberty and the limitless possibilities of becoming human; People of the world, unite; we have nothing to lose but our chains.
The Emancipation of Labor: A History of the First International, Henryk Katz
In a war crime designed to sabotage the peace process and drive both Lebanon and her ally Iran onto a war footing, the loathsome Israeli settler regime of Netanyahu assassinated the co-founder and leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, hero and now martyr of liberty and anti-colonial liberation struggle Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah has elements of theocratic-sectarian and ethnic identity politics with which no friend of democracy should be comfortable, especially in light of their relationship with Iran and arguably part of the Iranian Dominion which includes control of Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and until we liberated it last December Syria; but Hezbollah is also the most viable, stable, and possibly the longest running stateless and transnational anarchist collective and Autonomous Zone in modern history, which serves many of the social welfare, healthcare, education, and hunger relief functions of a government which in Lebanon has been hollowed out and rendered powerless due to the history of Israeli Occupation and the imposed conditions of struggle, and the revolutionary vanguard of a new kind of human society free from carceral states of force and control, and forged in glorious and heroic struggle against imperial conquest and dominion as the mirror of light to Israel’s darkness.
All of this is largely due to the genius and vision of one man, Hassan Nasrallah, who stood with us in Beirut 1982, and it will survive him as an ideal beyond national identity, unbounded and shining with Solidarity so long as humankind remembers.
My own idea of Living Autonomous Zones comprised not of free territories which must be barricaded and defended but of free people as a distributed commune invisible to police and other state forces of repression owes something to my relationship with Hassan Nasrallah and others who built Hezbollah as a stateless collective in a space where no viable and functioning state provided services for the people nor represented them; with noting to belong to, and only the Occupation by Israel and its collaborators as an imposed ground of struggle.
Hezbollah and her leaders including Hassan Nasrallah and many others assassinated by Israel in the recent mass terror against the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon, like those of so many other Resistance networks of alliance, were born and forged with me in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the Siege of Beirut and in forty three years of liberation struggle since.
Hasan Nasrallah in person had the gift of sympatico; he was kind, funny, and ferocious only when his people were threatened.
Any who stand with me and place their lives in the balance with those of the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased, all whom Frantz Fanon called The Wretched of the Earth are my brothers, and shall remain so til the end of time.
Regardless of our differences, and bearing in mind the dangers of ideological fracture to liberation struggle and of fascist divisions of blood, faith, and soil and hierarchies of belonging and otherness which benefit only those who would enslave us, for our diversity is our strength.
And diverse we are, all who love liberty both throughout the world and history and in Lebanon and Palestine, both living in the shadows of Israeli terror and imperial conquest and dominion purchased with American tax dollars; I am an American Revolutionary and a direct patrilineal descendent of a veteran of the revolution that founded our nation, committed to the principles of our founding documents and the idea of the state as embodied liberty and equality, as opposed to the state as embodied violence, derived from the philosophy of the Enlightenment, mainly from Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, and committed also to the idea of The Rights of Man and to the mission of Napoleon to set all human beings free, everywhere. I am also profoundly influenced by the Soviet advisors and comrades who taught me the art of revolution, and my ideological home in Lebanon and Palestine was always with the Marxist secularists of the PFLP founded by George Habash and the democracy activists such as those with whom I opened the Gates of Damascus rather than the sectarian opponents Hamas or Hezbollah, which embody the historic Sunni-Shia division as well as represent influences of the Gulf States opposition to the ruling Arab-American Alliance and the Iranian Dominion respectively; but all this and much more stood with us against Israeli conquest and dominion in 1982 Beirut and remain so still, Ansar Allah in Yemen notable among them, and they ever were and always shall be my brothers.
Hassan Nasrallah was among them, and a beloved comrade. Gone now as a we all must one day be, our lives like the dragons teeth sown in the earth by the Phoenician prince Cadmus, from which multitudes arise.
We will fight on for forty years more, or forty thousand.
That tyrants and states of terror like Netanyahu and Israel can kill us is without meaning; that we can Resist and refuse to submit to our dehumanization and our enslavement means everything.
And our victory is inevitable if we disobey and disbelieve authority, if we run amok and be ungovernable, if we make mischief for tyrants and those who would enslave us whenever opportunity arises, if, as the Oath of the Resistance goes, we surrender not and abandon not our fellows.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
As written on MSN’s website in an article entitled Thousands in Beirut mark first anniversary of Nasrallah’s killing; “A year after the assassination of Hezbollah’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah, thousands of the Iran-backed militia’s supporters flooded the streets of Beirut on Saturday to commemorate the anniversary.
Men, women and children draped in black marched through the Lebanese capital toward Nasrallah’s burial site, carrying portraits of the slain leader and chanting pledges of loyalty to his successor, Naim Qassem.
“We came here to tell everyone in Lebanon that Hezbollah is still strong,” said Fatima, whose husband was killed in war with Israel last September.
At exactly 6 pm (1500 GMT), Hezbollah called on followers across Lebanon and abroad to stop their cars and observe a minute of silence in Nasrallah’s memory.
Nasrallah was killed on September 27, 2024 in a massive Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs. Days later, his designated successor, Hashem Safieddine, was also assassinated in a similar attack.
Among the crowd at Saturday’s rally were survivors of last year’s pager explosions, which injured scores of Hezbollah members. Israeli media has reported that Israel orchestrated the operation.
Mohammed, who lost both his eyes, told dpa the group is still steadfast despite the setbacks.
“We lost our eyes, but our allegiance remains with the resistance and its leadership,” he said.
Tehran signals support
The event drew regional dignitaries, including Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, underscoring Tehran’s continuing support for Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s opponents argue the movement has been weakened militarily and politically since Nasrallah’s killing, eroding its long-standing dominance over Lebanon’s fractured political landscape.
“No one will ever disarm us — even in their dreams,” declared Nasrallah’s son, Jawad.
Calls for unity
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun marked the anniversary with a statement urging Lebanese unity under “one state, one army, and one sovereignty.”
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, called civil peace “the best weapon against the ultimate evil, Israel.”
Rallies also unfolded in towns across eastern and southern Lebanon, but the largest gathering remained in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the heartland of Hezbollah’s support.”
What happens next? As written in Ahram, in an article entitled Hezbollah supporters honor Nasrallah, vow to resist Israeli pressure to disarm; “Thousands of Hezbollah supporters gathered Saturday at the tomb of the group’s former chief, Hassan Nasrallah, to mark the first anniversary of Israel’s assassination of their longtime leader, vowing to defy mounting US-backed pressure on the movement to hand over its weapons.
Waving the group’s yellow banner as well as Lebanese, Palestinian and Iranian flags, Hezbollah supporters gathered at the leader’s mausoleum, near Beirut airport, while partisan and religious songs blared from loudspeakers, an AFP journalist reported.
The charismatic leader, a major figure in the wider region, was killed in a massive Israeli air strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 27, 2024.
In October 2023, as Israel waged its war on Gaza, Hezbollah started a campain of solidairy against Israel. In September 2024, Israel escalated tensions into an all out war with the systematic targeting of Hezbollah leadership claiming the lives of the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and his chosen successor Hashem Safieddine among numerous others.
A US-brokered ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel was announced in late November 2024 after more than a year of fighting.
While both sides formally agreed to halt hostilities, Israel has continued its air raids across southern Lebanon and Beirut, killing at least 83 people, a third of them women and children, and maintaining its occupation of five sites in the south.
Lebanon’s army says Israel has violated the deal over 4,500 times.
In the face of heavy US pressure and fears of expanded Israeli strikes, the Lebanese government is seeking to disarm Hezbollah.
Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi has said the army will complete the disarmament of the group in the south border area with Israel within three months.
For many of the supporters gathered for the anniversary, that should not be allowed to happen.
Wisam Hodroj, a 51-year-old working in Iraq, arrived early at the commemorations, where the new leader Naim Qassem was due to speak in the presence of Iranian security chief Ali Larijani.
He said: “What has happened since the last war has only increased our enthusiasm and strength. Today, we have a new cause — we will not compromise on our weapons, and we will not hand them over.”
Nearby, Ali Jaafar, a 21-year-old university student, told AFP: “Handing over the weapons is the dream of the enemies, the internal and external ones — but it will remain just a dream.”
Hezbollah was the only major armed group allowed to keep its weapons following Lebanon’s civil war, because it was fighting continued Israeli occupation of the south.”
Who was Hassam Nasrallah, and what does his assassination mean?
As written by Jason Burke in The Guardian, in an article entitled Hassan Nasrallah: Hezbollah’s leader inspired adulation and bitter enmity – they will find him very hard to replace; “The killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the veteran leader of Hezbollah, on Friday marks a turning point in the conflict in the Middle East. Both Nasrallah and the organisation he led were hardened by successive decades of conflict within Lebanon, against Israel and, latterly, in Syria. Both were powerful political and social forces with very significant regional and local influence.
Through more than three decades in charge of Hezbollah, Nasrallah built up a fervent personal following, steering the Shia Muslim movement through a number of transitions, balancing the demands of its military role with those of its expansive social welfare systems, building a political wing and negotiating the various crises that broke across the region. He earned adulation from supporters and bitter personal enmity from foes.
Nasrallah was born in about 1960, the son of a Shia vegetable seller in a poor, mixed neighbourhood of Beirut. Despite their growing numbers, Lebanon’s Shia people had long been marginalised politically and economically. Nasrallah was inspired by the new Islamist ideologies spreading across the Middle East and by a moderate Iranian-born cleric, Musa al-Sadr, who sought to mobilise Lebanon’s Shia to win greater representation and more resources. He joined Amal, a Shia militia formed shortly before the brutal civil war that broke out in Lebanon in 1975.
Four years later, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power following the Iranian revolution. This seismic event sent a wave of energy coursing through Shia communities everywhere in the Middle East. Nasrallah had became close to Khomeini when studying in a seminary in Najaf, the Iraqi holy city, where the radical cleric had been exiled. In about 1981, like many other young recruits, Nasrallah left Amal to seek more radical alternatives.
When Israel sent an army into Lebanon in 1982 in response to cross-border attacks by Palestinian militants, a coalition of Islamist groups was formed with Iranian sponsorship and direction. Nasrallah was an enthusiastic early recruit. Under the name “Islamic Jihad”, this coalition went on to launch massive suicide bombings against the invaders and then against US and French peacekeepers, killing hundreds. Three years later, the coalition had been melded by Iran into an organisation called Hezbollah, the party of God. In 1985, Hezbollah published its main manifesto, lambasting the US, the USSR and calling for the destruction of Israel.
A qualified Islamic scholar, effective public speaker and competent organiser, Nasrallah gained leadership experience during the long battle against Israeli troops and their local auxiliaries in the south of Lebanon. In 1992, he was chosen as the movement’s new secretary-general after Israel assassinated his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi. Months later, Iran used Hezbollah networks and operatives to execute a massive bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina, killing 29.
In 2000, Israel’s humiliating and chaotic withdrawal from Lebanon’s south brought Hezbollah and Nasrallah acclaim in the Middle East and broader Islamic world, despite historic sectarian animosity between majority Sunnis Muslims and the minority Shia. The victory came at personal cost to Nasrallah: a son was killed in a clash with Israeli troops.
Six years later, Nasrallah led Hezbollah into a new confrontation with Israel, when he ordered an attack across the contested border that killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two. This war was less conclusive, and Nasrallah turned his attention to a more political strategy, emphasising his movement’s Lebanese nationalist credentials and building a portfolio of businesses, many illicit. Any residual project of creating a Khomeini-style Islamic regime had long been shelved. Imposition of conservative codes in the swaths of Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah was, on the whole, lax.
Reconciling this new role with the demands of Iran, Hezbollah’s principal sponsor, was a complex task and Nasrallah only reluctantly agreed in 2013 to send thousands of his fighters into Syria at Tehran’s behest to bolster the regime of Bashar al-Assad. This helped tip the balance in the brutal civil war in the neighbouring country, but hurt Hezbollah at home. So too did Nasrallah’s fierce resistance to political reform in Lebanon.
There is no evidence that Nasrallah knew what Hamas had planned for 7 October, but he reacted to the bloody raids on Israel with what must have seemed fine judgment. Hezbollah did not launch a major offensive but began firing some of its vast stocks of rockets and missiles into Israel in a bid to maintain its “resistance” credentials. Nasrallah probably believed the conflict would be short and he could avoid further escalation. On both counts, he was fatally wrong.
The consequences of the killing of Nasrallah are hard to gauge. Pessimists will predict massive escalation, as Iran seeks to reassert its power and avenge the death of a leader who was one of its most important overseas assets. Optimists may argue that it has effectively removed a key player from the conflict, deterring Tehran and opening a way to some kind of diminution of, if not an end to, hostilities.
Finding any replacement will be very difficult for Hezbollah and Iran. Even without the elimination of key lieutenants by Israel over recent months, there is no one in the movement who has anywhere near Nasrallah’s regional stature, experience or influence. It is now clear that Israel is capable of gathering critical, timely intelligence from the very heart of Hezbollah, and of acting on it effectively. The life expectancy of any new secretary-general is likely to be extremely short.”
As written by Peter Beaumont in The Guardian, in an article entitled Hassan Nasrallah: the man who has led Hezbollah to the brink of war with Israel; “Twenty-four years ago, on 26 May 2000, Hezbollah’s general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, arrived in the small Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil a few kilometres from the Israeli border.
The day before, Israel had withdrawn its forces from southern Lebanon after a years-long occupation in which it was harried by Hezbollah and other groups. Thousands of supporters gathered there under Hezbollah’s yellow banners.
The cleric, then 39 and wearing his familiar black turban and a brown robe, gave one of the most famous speeches of his career.
Addressing the Arab world and the “oppressed people of Palestine”, Nasrallah claimed that Israel was “weak as spider’s web” despite its nuclear weapons. The themes in his speech that day would come to define Nasrallah’s worldview in the decades that followed, fusing notions of Shia theology and liberation rhetoric, and founded on the belief that authentic resistance can overcome a far superior military force.
Since then Hezbollah has been transformed, both as a fighting force and in its relationship with the fragile Lebanese state, becoming a political and social powerhouse. But while Nasrallah’s rhetoric may have remained unchanged, his appreciation of the fragility of power, even for the world’s most powerfully armed non-state actor, has mutated and he has led Hezbollah to the brink of its potentially most serious conflict. It has sent rockets and drones into Israel, as Israel hits Lebanon and Hezbollah targets with airstrikes.
When Nasrallah makes a speech these days, it is not before the huge crowds that once greeted him, arriving in buses from Lebanon’s Shia heartlands. At carefully choreographed events, including memorial services for fallen Hezbollah commanders, Nasrallah appears not in person, but on a television screen. At one such event earlier this year, Hezbollah MPs in attendance explained to the Guardian, as they declined to comment, that Nasrallah’s words were not to be interpreted by them. For everyone else, however, Nasrallah’s long and often repetitive speeches have become the subject of endless exegesis in the past eight months of war in the Middle East.
While often painted as Iranian proxies, Nasrallah and Hezbollah are more than that. They are important regional players in their own right, despite the deep connection to Tehran.
And as Israel and Hezbollah have drawn ever closer to all-out conflict, two questions have collided: what does Nasrallah want, and how far is he in control of any outcome?
Nasrallah’s policy in the first weeks of the cross-border clashes that began on 8 October, a day after Hamas’s surprise attack on southern Israel, was ostensibly designed to relieve pressure on the Palestinian armed group in Gaza, a strategy that appears to have been more significant on the diplomatic than on the military front.
By explicitly making any demand to stop firing on Israel’s north contingent on an end to Israeli hostilities in Gaza, Nasrallah has woven in outstanding territorial issues on the Lebanese border including over the Israeli-occupied Shebaa farms, which Syria also claims, while framing the fighting in terms of a wider rejection of US-led policies in the Middle East.
The reality on the ground has created a far more complicated picture.
In casting aside the status quo between Israel and Hezbollah that held since the end of the month-long second Lebanon war in 2006 that brought huge destruction to Lebanon, Nasrallah has rolled a dice. It belies the deliberate ambiguity of his statements, which hover between threats to Israeli cities and the insistence that his group does not want all-out war.
“To some extent, what Hezbollah has been doing,” Heiko Wimmen, the director of the International Crisis Group’s Iraq, Syria, Lebanon project, told the New Arab in the first weeks of the war, “is to underline that they are ready to pay a price.
“But are they ready to pay the ultimate price? Nobody knows that because this is part of the constructive ambiguity mentioned by Nasrallah.”
In the subsequent months the escalating dynamics of the war have stretched the considerations that saw Nasrallah enter the conflict, to breaking point. A “managed conflict” has become increasingly unmanageable as Israel has targeted senior Hezbollah officials and Hezbollah has fired on Israeli military and civilian targets, and more recently threatened Haifa and other cities.
“It’s important to understand Hezbollah’s worldview,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and north Africa programme at Chatham House. “What many actors like this are good at is understanding adversaries through quiet repeated and deliberate observation … strategic patience is part of their outlook: knowing that adversaries have different pressures in democratic societies.”
Nasrallah has cited US opinion polling on Israel’s war in Gaza as evidence of the success of his broader strategy. “I think it is also key to understand that while Nasrallah’s leadership is very personal, the effectiveness of the organisation is that it’s not run as a personal fiefdom,” Vakil said, suggesting it would survive his removal.
She also expressed doubt that assumptions prior to the current conflict about Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s appetite for conflict held true as the war has reduced the room for both sides to exit an escalation. “We are making a lot of guesses and assumptions, but we’re not accessing the inner network to understand the decision-making processes.”
Nasrallah’s ideological origins
What is clearer is how Nasrallah’s worldview has been shaped by his personal history. A teenager amid the sectarian violence of the Lebanese civil war, he briefly joined the Shia Amal militia at 15 before going to study at a seminary in Najaf, Iraq from where he was expelled with other Lebanese students by Saddam Hussein in 1978.
Under the influence of his mentor, the prominent cleric and co-founder of Hezbollah Abbas al-Musawi, who he first met in Iraq, he joined Hezbollah in 1982 after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, when the group split away from Amal. When Israel assassinated Musawi in 1992, he replaced him as Hezbollah’s general secretary.
In an interview in 2006 with Robin Wright of the Washington Post, Nasrallah described how his beliefs had been forged as he and his peers watched “what happened in Palestine, in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, in the Golan, in Sinai”, teaching them that “we cannot rely on the Arab League states, nor on the United Nations … The only way that we have is to take up arms and fight the occupation forces.”
What is often unspoken is that Nasrallah’s ideological and much reiterated attachment to “resistance” requires conflict with Israel – or the threat of it – to give it meaning and to justify Hezbollah’s existence and the power it has accumulated in Lebanon. Conventional wisdom has suggested that Nasrallah would be constrained by Lebanon’s dire economic circumstances to resist behaviour that could invite full-scale war and undermine its own support. But in recent months Hezbollah – like Israel – has shifted its understanding of where that threshold is.
In an essay for the Atlantic Council earlier this month, David Daoud and Ahmad Sharawi described the dynamic. “The group believes this threshold is not fixed. Instead, it rises as Israeli operations in Gaza deepen, which prompts Hezbollah to act while Israel’s attention and resources are concentrated elsewhere,” they wrote. “But when these Israeli operations create growing US dissatisfaction which uniquely restrains Israel … Hezbollah feels it has more freedom of action, and thus increases the depth and lethality of its attacks.”
All of which suggests that space on either side to reverse out of the crisis is diminishing.”
What does this mean? As written by Patrick Wintour in The Guardian, in an article entitled The killing of Hassan Nasrallah leaves Iran with a fateful choice and the US humiliated; “When Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, told reporters in New York on Friday that the coming days will determine the future path of the Middle East, he could not have been more prescient, even if at the time he was hoping that Hezbollah and Israel could be persuaded to step back from the brink.
Now, with the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah confirmed killed, the region, after 11 months, has finally stepped over the brink and into a place it has truly never been before.
All eyes will turn to the response by Tehran. It faces the fateful choice it has always sought to avoid and one its new reformist leadership in particular did not wish to make.
If it simply angrily condemns Israel for the destruction of the centrepiece of the axis of resistance that it has laboriously built up over so many years, or calls on others to take unspecified action, Iran’s credibility is in jeopardy.
But pragmatism may lead Iran to advise Hezbollah to absorb the losses and accept a ceasefire that does not also bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, Hezbollah’s stated objective.
If on the other hand Iran instead launches a direct military reprisal against Israel, it has to be meaningful. It knows it will be going into battle against a military that has proved the deadly value of its vastly superior technological and intelligence capabilities. Israel’s intelligence has clearly penetrated deep inside Hezbollah and may have done the same in Tehran.
For the new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, elected on a ticket of lifting economic sanctions partly by building better relations with the west, Nasrallah’s death could not come at a worse time.
His foreign minister, Sayeed Abbas Araghchi, had just spent a full week in New York on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, meeting European politicians such as Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock and the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, in an attempt to persuade them to reopen talks to restore the nuclear deal that was sealed in 2015 – and Donald Trump tore up in 2018.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN nuclear inspectorate, had been impressed by what he heard from the meetings, saying: “I think this is the moment when it is possible to do something about the nuclear issue. The advantage of Mr Araghchi is that he knows everything about this process so he allows it to move faster”. Nasrallah’s killing makes it that much harder for the reformists to persuade the Iranian military that an olive branch still makes any sense.
Pezeshkian had already been complaining that he had received little in return for listening to western-inspired pleas not to seek immediate revenge for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader assassinated by Israel in Tehran.
Pezeshkian said he had been promised that a Gaza ceasefire deal that would see the release of hostages and Palestinian political prisoners was only a week or two away. The deal never materialised because, in Iran’s eyes, the US refused to put the pressure required on Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire terms.
Let down once, Pezeshkian is hardly inclined to believe US vows that it had no prior knowledge of the plan to kill Nasrallah – and, anyway, Netanyahu might have sanctioned his death from a hotel bedroom in New York, but it was US-supplied bombs that exploded in Beirut.
In what is likely to be a holding statement, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on Muslims on Saturday “to stand by the people of Lebanon and the proud Hezbollah with whatever means they have and assist them in confronting the … wicked regime [of Israel]”.
For Washington, this is a diplomatic humiliation and a display of its inability, or refusal, to control its troublesome ally.
Netanyahu hopes to have played American diplomats for fools in New York. The US state department insists it had a clear understanding on the basis of conversations with Ron Dermer, Israel’s strategic affairs minister, and Netanyahu that Israel would accept a 21-day ceasefire, and yet as soon as the plan was announced, Netanyahu reneged on the deal.
In some ways, it is the culmination of nearly 12 months of an American strategy that now lies in ruins. Time after time since the 7 October attacks by Hamas, the US has asked Israel to adopt a different strategy over the delivery of food into Gaza, protection zones, a ground offensive in Rafah, the terms of a ceasefire and, above all, over avoiding conflict escalation.
Each time, Netanyahu acknowledged the US position, sidestepped a clear response and then ultimately ignored Washington. Each time, the US – vexed and frustrated – has expressed misgivings about Netanyahu’s strategy, but each time it has continued to pass the ammunition.
With a presidential election near and Netanyahu enjoying a surge in domestic popularity – as well as few Arab states shedding tears about Nasrallah’s demise – the US appears to have few options available. Netanyahu insists he is winning and on course for total victory.
At the moment, unless Iran proves to be more decisive than it has been so far, it is Netanyahu the great survivor who is in the driving seat.”
Of my origins in the Siege of Beirut I have written in my post of In my post of July 31 2020, A Useful Past: What is Antifa? I wrote; I offer you the Oath of the Resistance as it was given to me in Beirut in 1982 by Jean Genet; here is the story of how it happened, and of my true origin.
During the summer before my senior year of university in San Francisco, I had set out on a culinary Grand Tour of the Mediterranean, learning to cook the food I loved, and was in Beirut when Israel invaded Lebanon and trapped me in a city under siege. Feral bands of soldiers were roaming the streets like packs of savage dogs, committing atrocities; one such unit of the Israeli Defense Forces set some children on fire, laughing and making bets on how far they could run screaming before they fell into pools of blackened ruin and their screams became silent. I found myself fighting them; others joined me, and more joined us as we joined those fighting already. From that day forward I was part of the defense of Beirut against the siege.
A fabulous café that had the best strawberry crepes in the world lay on the far side of a sniper alley, which my friends and I made an extreme sport of dashing across to reach breakfast while the occasional bullet impacted the wall behind us. One day we arrived in our usual high spirits when an elegant gentleman sat at my table, and speaking in French began a conversation with, “I’m told you do this every day, race against death for breakfast.”
To which I replied, “Moments stolen from death belong to us, and set us free. It’s a poor man who has no pleasures worth dying for.”
He smiled and said, “I agree”, and so began our conversations at breakfast in the last days before his capture, unforgettable days for this is where he set me on my life’s path of struggle for liberty against tyranny and autocracies of state force and control, for equality against racist violence and injustice, and against the fascism which combines both state tyranny and racist terror.
He introduced himself as a former Legionnaire by the name of Jean, was mischievous, wise, immensely learned in classical scholarship and possibly had once been educated as a priest, and filled with wild stories about the luminaries of modern European culture. I was stunned when I discovered days later that my strange new friend was one of the greatest literary figures of the century. I had quoted The Thief’s Journal in refutation of something he said, which he found hilarious, while we were discussing Maurice Blanchot’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra as compared to that of Jung, a conversation which remained unfinished as he couldn’t stop laughing. Eventually he sputtered, “I myself am Jean Genet.” To me he remains a Trickster figure and part of my historical identity and personal mythology.
There came a day when the barricades were overrun and our neighborhood along with it, one of our last days together. With the streets suddenly filled with Israeli soldiers running amok in a sack of murder, arson, and other vileness of terror and inhumanity, our building set on fire by soldiers who were calling for people to come out and surrender and were stealing the children of those who did to use as hostages and human shields, and the discovery of our only weapon being the bottle of champagne we had just finished with our strawberry crepes, I asked my breakfast companion if he had any ideas. To this he replied with an apologetic shrug and another question, “Fix bayonets?”
We laughed, and he elaborated; “When all hope is lost, we are free to do impossible things, glorious things.” This advice I find necessary to recall from time to time, and which I recommend to you all.
Then he asked, “Will you surrender?’
To which I replied, “No.”
“Nor I,” he said, standing. “As I share with you now, pass to others at need; this is an oath I devised in 1940 from the one I took as a Legionnaire, for the resistance to the Nazi occupation. It may be the finest thing I ever stole.”
And so I offer to all of you the Oath of the Resistance as it was given to me by the great Jean Genet in a burning house, in a lost cause, in a time of force and darkness, in a last stand and an act of defiance beyond hope of victory or survival; “We swear our loyalty to each other, who answer tyranny with Liberty and fascism with Equality. We shall resist and yield not, and abandon not our fellows.”
To fascism and the idea that some of us are better than others by condition of our birth there can be but one reply; Never Again.
We escaped capture that day because we were led through the checkpoints of the encirclement by an unlikely ally, a figure who materialized out of the background at the far end of the alley and walked over to us grinning. This was the sniper whom my friends and I had been playing our games with for two weeks, who had been utterly invisible and had outwitted every attempt to track, trap, ambush, or identify him, and who had in fact besieged the city from within.
He held out his hand to me and I shook it as he said, “Well played, sir. I’ve tried to kill you every day for fourteen days now, but the Israelis being inside the city changes everything. We have a common enemy, but they don’t know that, so I’m in a position to help you though I can’t fight them alone. Maybe we could help each other. Want a partner?”
So began a great adventure and friendship, which I share with you now in the context of the nature of antifascist resistance because it illustrates something which can never be forgotten by anyone who does this kind of work; human beings are not monsters, are deserving of human doubt, and are never beyond redemption.
The struggle between good and evil in the human heart often pivots and balances on the differences between the purpose of the use of force; to punish transgression when inflicted by authority as an act of subjugation and repression against the powerless, or to seize power and to protect the powerless as a duty of care.
Be very sure you know which cause your actions serve.
Finally, I cannot now imagine Beirut under the Israeli rain of death and terror without remembering the cataclysm of the port explosion years ago. As I wrote in my post of August 4 2024, Madness Death Illumination Transcendence: A Song of Beirut; O my brothers and sisters, our universe is not always rational or meaningful from our perspective; it is chaotic, absurd, and often hostile. We need meaning and value, but all we have is the meaning and value which we create and impose on our nothingness. The Infinite mocks us, but also beckons and challenges us to become better.
As I wrote on this day five years ago in my post of August 4 2020; A horror beyond imagining has transpired in Beirut, which lies in ruins. Civilization dispersed throughout the Mediterranean from here thousands of years ago, uniting Europe, Asia, and Africa in a community of humankind which resonates through our consciousness today.
We seek meaning in the catastrophes and life disruptive events which flesh is heir to, yet as in the disaster in Beirut such causes are often beyond our understanding.
Herein I refer now to Sura 18 of the Holy Quran, called The Cave, verses 60-82, an allegory wherein Khidr, the Islamic Trickster figure who is an immortal and is symbolized as green as an embodiment of the Garden of Paradise, who acts as a guide of the soul through the puzzles of the labyrinth of life which leads toward it, and who speaks to us through dreams, visions, and signs.
I consider it a narrative form of Godel’s Theorem; a proof of the necessity of faith and of the existence of the Infinite, of the limits of human knowledge and the Absurdity of the human condition. Such an interpretation aligns with that of the great scholar and translator Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
As with the foundational thought experiment of one of Plato’s contemporaries, the Spear of Archytas, which defines the horizon of the known as it is thrown and marks a boundary in landing, which we repeat endlessly in scientific revolutions, the unknown remains as vast as before, conserving ignorance. This is the first principle of epistemology; the Conservation of Ignorance.
The canonical story recapitulates themes of the Sacrifice of Ibrahim which I would say forms the basis of Islamic faith, and in the streets of Beirut long ago I saw it unfold once again.
In this story the Green Man instructs Moses by doing three things which are criminal and nonsensical, things which can be understood only through the foreknowledge of prophecy which is not ours. As with justice, foresight does not belong to man, for the universe is nondeterministic, limitless, and our possible futures are always in play.
The relevant passage is this; فَأَرَدْنَا أَن يُبْدِلَهُمَا رَبُّهُمَا خَيْرًا مِّنْهُ زَكَاةً وَأَقْرَبَ رُحْمًا, or “So we intended that their Lord should substitute for them a better son than him in purity and nearer to mercy,” a classic changeling substitution. It also represents a point of bifurcation on which possible futures turn.
I have hope for the future of humankind because of what I witnessed when this primary story was played out before me forty years ago, and because of it I have never despaired.
Such a gate stands or once stood in Beirut, like Rashomon Gate or a gate to the Infinite and to limitless possibilities of human becoming. It may now be dust and memories, or like Schrodinger’s Cat both exist and not exist at once; this I cannot answer for you.
But I can speak as the witness of history that something remarkable happened there in its shadow, which like Khidr exchanging the young man for another to prevent a greater evil from occurring in the future, a time travel paradox if ever there was one, struck me with the force of revelation.
It was an insignificant thing in the scope of the Siege of Beirut, one atrocity among many which was averted by the innate goodness of a single man whose name remains unknown, a tragic hero whom I will never forget, an unwilling conscript in the service of his government like so many others, who said no to authority and to the seduction of evil. The existence of humankind pivots on the balance of such individuals, and they are very few.
This Israeli soldier refused to commit violations and depravities upon the person of a Palestinian girl, about twelve years old, who had been captured for this purpose by the lieutenant of his platoon, a common Israel Defense Forces loyalty test and initiation. He blushed at the first demand of his officer to the tauntings of his fellows, there in the street before the Gate of Decision we must all face, then became angry in refusal when he realized it was not a joke, that the Occupation was about terror and plunder and not as he had been told. His commanding officer murdered him where he stood with a single shot to the head as the girl escaped.
I have returned to this spot throughout my life to touch the stones stained with his blood, for I am reminded that we are not beyond redemption, and that so long as we resist unjust authority we are free, and there is hope.
A Map of My Beirut, what remains of it and the ghosts of what it was
Where the Two Seas Meet: Al-Khidr and Moses—The Qur’anic Story of al-Khidr and Moses in Sufi Commentaries as a Model for Spiritual Guidance, by Hugh Talat Halman
27 سبتمبر 2025 شهيد الحرية والنضال ضد الاستعمار: في ذكرى
في جريمة حرب مصممة لتخريب عملية السلام ودفع لبنان وحليفتها إيران إلى حالة حرب، اغتال نظام نتنياهو الاستيطاني الإسرائيلي البغيض مؤسس وزعيم حزب الله في لبنان، البطل والشهيد الآن من أجل الحرية والنضال ضد الاستعمار حسن نصر الله.
إن حزب الله لديه عناصر من سياسات الهوية الطائفية والعرقية التي لا ينبغي لأي صديق للديمقراطية أن يشعر بالارتياح معها، خاصة في ضوء علاقته بإيران وربما جزء من الهيمنة الإيرانية التي تشمل السيطرة على لبنان وسوريا والعراق واليمن؛ ولكن حزب الله هو أيضاً الجماعة الأناركية عديمة الجنسية العابرة للحدود الوطنية الأكثر قابلية للحياة، والأكثر استقراراً، وربما الأطول عمراً في التاريخ الحديث، والتي تخدم العديد من وظائف الرعاية الاجتماعية، والرعاية الصحية، والتعليم، وتخفيف الجوع التي تقوم بها حكومة تم تفريغها في لبنان وإضعافها بسبب تاريخ الاحتلال والظروف المفروضة للنضال، والطليعة الثورية لنوع جديد من المجتمع البشري الخالي من دول القوة والسيطرة، والذي تم تشكيله في نضال مجيد وبطولي ضد الغزو والهيمنة الإمبريالية كمرآة للنور لظلام إسرائيل.
كل هذا يرجع إلى حد كبير إلى عبقرية ورؤية رجل واحد، حسن نصر الله، وسوف يبقى بعده كمثال أعلى يتجاوز الهوية الوطنية، بلا حدود ومشرق بالتضامن طالما أن البشرية تتذكر.
إن حزب الله وقادته بمن فيهم حسن نصر الله والعديد من الآخرين الذين اغتالتهم إسرائيل في الإرهاب الجماعي الأخير ضد شعبي فلسطين ولبنان، مثلهم كمثل العديد من شبكات المقاومة الأخرى، وُلدوا وتشكلوا معي في غزو لبنان عام 1982 وحصار بيروت وفي اثنين وأربعين عامًا من النضال من أجل التحرير منذ ذلك الحين.
سنواصل القتال لمدة أربعين عامًا أخرى، أو أربعين ألفًا.
إن قدرة الطغاة ودول الإرهاب مثل نتنياهو وإسرائيل على قتلنا أمر لا معنى له؛ إن قدرتنا على المقاومة ورفض الخضوع لنزع إنسانيتنا واستعبادنا يعني كل شيء.
إن انتصارنا حتمي إذا عصينا السلطة وكفرنا بها، وإذا انطلقنا في فوضى وأصبحنا غير قابلين للحكم، وإذا ألحقنا الأذى بالطغاة وأولئك الذين يريدون استعبادنا كلما سنحت الفرصة، وإذا لم نستسلم ولم نتخلى عن رفاقنا كما يقول قسم المقاومة.
لأننا كثيرون، ونحن نراقب، ونحن المستقبل.
Hebrew
27 בספטמבר 2024 קדוש מעונה של חירות ומאבק אנטי-קולוניאלי: לזכר
בפשע מלחמה שנועד לחבל בתהליך השלום ולהעלות גם את לבנון וגם את בעלת בריתה איראן לבסיס מלחמה, משטר המתנחלים הישראלי המתועב של נתניהו התנקש בחייו של מייסד ומנהיג חיזבאללה בלבנון, גיבור וכיום מעונה של חירות ואנטי-קולוניאלי. מאבק השחרור חסן נסראללה.
לחיזבאללה יש אלמנטים של פוליטיקת זהות תיאוקרטית-כתתית ואתנית שאף ידיד דמוקרטי לא צריך להרגיש איתם בנוח, במיוחד לאור יחסיו עם איראן וללא ספק חלק מהדומיניון האיראני הכולל שליטה בלבנון, סוריה, עיראק ותימן; אבל חיזבאללה הוא גם הקולקטיב והאזור האוטונומי האנרכיסטי חסר האזרחות והטרנס-לאומי הכי קיימא, היציב ואולי הכי ארוך בהיסטוריה המודרנית, המשרת רבים מתפקידי הרווחה, הבריאות, החינוך וההקלה ברעב של ממשלה שבלבנון יש נחלל והפך חסר אונים בשל ההיסטוריה של הכיבוש ותנאי המאבק שנכפו, והחלוץ המהפכני של סוג חדש של חברה אנושית משוחררת ממצבים קרסראליים של כוח ושליטה, ומחושלת במאבק מפואר והירואי נגד כיבוש אימפריאלי. שלטון כראי האור לחושך ישראל.
כל זה נובע במידה רבה מהגאונות והחזון של אדם אחד, חסן נסראללה, והוא ישרוד אותו כאידיאל מעבר לזהות הלאומית, בלתי מוגבל וזוהר עם סולידריות כל עוד האנושות זוכרת.
חיזבאללה ומנהיגיה, כולל חסן נסראללה ורבים אחרים שנרצחו על ידי ישראל בטרור ההמוני האחרון נגד עמי פלסטין ולבנון, כמו אלה של כל כך הרבה רשתות התנגדות אחרות של ברית, נולדו ונרקמו איתי בפלישה ללבנון ב-1982. המצור על ביירות ובארבעים ושתיים שנות מאבק לשחרור מאז.
נילחם עוד ארבעים שנה, או ארבעים אלף.
זה שרודנים ומדינות טרור כמו נתניהו וישראל יכולים להרוג אותנו חסר משמעות; שנוכל להתנגד ולסרב להיכנע לדה-הומניזציה שלנו והשעבוד שלנו אומר הכל.
והניצחון שלנו הוא בלתי נמנע אם אנו לא מצייתים ולא מאמינים לסמכות, אם אנו משתוללים ונהיה בלתי ניתנים לשליטה, אם אנו עושים רע לרודנים ולמי שישעבדו אותנו בכל פעם שתצוץ הזדמנות, אם, כפי שאומרת שבועת ההתנגדות, לא נכנע. ולא לנטוש את חברינו.
We celebrate this weekend eleven years of Resistance in Hong Kong to the Occupation by the Chinese Communist Party, the loss of liberty and the equality of all human souls, especially the rights of voting for their own leaders and those of a free press and free speech, and the theft by Chinese Communist Party imperial conquest and dominion in collaboration with the British state of what should have become an independent and sovereign nation and a free society of equals.
Hong Kong may yet achieve the dream of democracy, for though she is Occupied she is unbroken and unbowed. Who resists and refuses to submit becomes Unconquered, and is free; and as such is also a bearer of the Promethean Fire of Liberty and able to set others free as Living Autonomous Zones.
What must be done, as Lenin asked in the essay that ignited the Russian Revolution? First America and the free world must recognize the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong; second we and our allies must enact a total Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanction of all trade and manufacture with mainland China until the forces of Occupation withdraw.
Shall we be collaborators and profiteers of slave labor, or shall we stand in solidarity to cast down from their thrones all those who would enslave us?
In the lyrics of the Chinese national anthem, “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves.”
As written by Helen Davidson in The Guardian, in an article entitled ‘I was so naive’: 10 years after Umbrella protests, Hongkongers remember China’s crackdown: Anniversary of pro-democracy demonstration takes place in city where protest has been largely criminalised and activists silenced; “A decade ago today Hong Kong’s Central district filled with protesters, angry at Chinese government plans to renege on a promise of a fully democratic vote. What became known as Occupy Central, or the Umbrella protests, paralysed the city’s financial centre and galvanised a generation of young people.
Today Hong Kong’s streets are quiet. Protest has been largely criminalised, and many of the leaders of the Umbrella movement have been exiled, jailed or otherwise silenced.
Looking back, Wendy* remembers the feeling of that first day of Occupy. She was 25 and believed in Hong Kong’s Basic Law, and its promise to deliver universal suffrage to the people now that the territory had been returned from British to Chinese control. But instead, China’s government announced that in elections people would only be able to choose from a few candidates handpicked by a mostly pro-Beijing committee.
“It seemed that the government wanted to break their promise,” Wendy tells the Guardian from Hong Kong. “So I went out.”
Protest action against Beijing’s plan had long been in the works. Three activists known as the Occupy Trio – academics Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man, and reverend Chu Yiu-ming – had for months been training a few thousand people in non-violent resistance to occupy Hong Kong’s finance district as a last resort if demands weren’t met. But student protests earlier that week had escalated to the storming of a public square, and the Occupy start date was brought forward. Thousands more joined.
It was 28 September. Wendy thought it would be peaceful, but stayed clear of the frontlines just in case. Then at 5:58pm, police fired teargas into the peaceful crowd.
“I smelled some strange scents and my eyes got uncomfortable,” Wendy says. “I looked up to the bridge over me, seeing a group of police holding shields and stepping forward to the protesters. The scene was frightening. I just kept asking in my mind ‘Why do they treat us in that way?’.”
Emily Lau, a veteran pro-democracy advocate and then a sitting legislator, had gone to speak to police earlier that day about bringing in some equipment for the Occupy Trio. Instead, they arrested her. By the time she was released later that night “the whole world had changed”.
Lau and a colleague took a taxi from the police station to the top of a hill overlooking Central.
“When we looked down, we were shocked because the roads were blocked and there were people just everywhere occupying Connaught Road,” she says.
‘The first step in a bigger war’
The police force’s decision to use teargas on day one against a peaceful crowd had just brought more people to the streets. Soon a vast self-sufficient tent city took over the Admiralty district. Other camps formed in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay. Volunteer groups took care of provisions, sanitation, and tutoring of students, while calling for Beijing to reverse its plans and for Hong Kong’s chief executive, CY Leung, to step down.
Tony*, then a “regular office worker”, joined the camp in his lunch breaks and evenings. He describes what he saw as “astonishing”.
“It was a completely new Hong Kong, a beautiful Hong Kong that I had never seen before. We saw Hong Kong people were really passionate about democracy, about their future and having a say in how the city is run.”
Thomas*, a Hong Kong writer now based in London, says a lot of people got engaged in the movement for the first time because of how government and authorities had responded to their concerns.
“There wasn’t any attempt [by Beijing] to just sort of say: I understand this isn’t quite what you want, but this is the best we can get … It was literally: thank us and love us for it, aren’t we wonderful,” he says.
But as Occupy stretched on, the public’s tolerance waned and divisions deepened among protesters. The government remained unmoved, and police became more aggressive. Court injunctions ordered sections of the camps to clear, and Joshua Wong, a leader of the student protesters, ended his hunger strike. Numbers dwindled as the Trio urged people to leave, but the more radical student groups were determined to stay.
“T[he trio] didn’t think the whole thing should drag on for so long,” says Lau. “I supported ending it because it doesn’t mean ending the whole thing. You just go home and prepare to fight another day.”
It ended on 15 December after 79 days, without having achieved its stated aims and with deep fissures between pro-democracy factions, but still with a sense of hope.
“There was a big banner that said ‘We will be back’,” recalls Tony. “People were hugging each other and saying farewells. There was a sense that the battle hadn’t succeeded but it might be the first step in a bigger war.”
In an editorial one year later, the South China Morning Post said the outcome of the Occupy protests “proved that Beijing will not yield to confrontational tactics”. Protest leaders from both the older and student cohorts, including Tai, Chan and Wong, were eventually convicted and jailed.
But, Lau says, “the protests had woken up the young people”. New political parties and activist groups emerged. In June 2019, millions took to the streets again in massive pro-democracy protests. Participants used tactics and strategies fine-tuned during Occupy.
But there was less of the hope and fight of 2014. Instead, the 2019 protests felt like a defiant “last cry of an animal that was dying”, says Thomas. Again Beijing did not yield, launching a crackdown that shocked even the most pessimistic observers.
“The atmosphere and political reality today are totally different [to 2014],” says Willy Lam, a senior non-resident fellow and China specialist at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington.
Wendy looks back at how she felt in 2014 and laughs a little.
“I thought 2014 was shit at that time, but compared to 2019 it was just a piece of cake,” she says. “I was so naive, believing the government would be sensible, respect people’s voice, and abide by the promise in the Basic Law. But now I can say I was totally wrong.”
Tony, now a lawyer based in the UK, says the Occupy protests left an important legacy, strengthening Hongkongers self-identity and their aspirations for democracy, human rights, and rule of law.
“Now I see that as part of the diaspora … and I hope people in the free world don’t forget Hong Kong. There is still something to be fought for.”
As written in the Hong Kong Free Press, in an article entitled 10 years on, where are the leaders of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement now? ; “Saturday marks the 10th anniversary of the start of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, which saw protesters occupy major thoroughfares in key districts to call for the right to elect their own leader.
The 79-day civil disobedience campaign was launched in response to a ruling from Beijing that would allow Hongkongers to vote for their chief executive, but only from among candidates vetted by the central government.
The occupation of major roads was largely peaceful and leaders of the movement received relatively light sentences for the 2014 offences. Their political demands were not met. Huge protests which swept the city almost five years later, resulting in widespread damage and mass arrests and injuries, resulted in more than 10,000 arrests and saw hundreds sent to jail.
In 2020 a Beijing-imposed national security law came into force, prescribing penalties of up to life imprisonment and effectively ending public displays of dissent.
The movement began on September 28, 2014, when police fired tear gas at protesters who had gathered on Harcourt Road in Admiralty. It was the first time the chemical agent had been used on Hongkongers since the leftist riots in 1967. By the next day, protesters had occupied sites in Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok, where they would stay for weeks. The Umbrella Movement ended that December, after public transport companies affected by road closures obtained injunctions.
A number of protest leaders emerged during the civil disobedience campaign, some becoming household names in the city and beyond. Of the 12 activists charged in two high-profile trials in the years after the movement, two have spent the past few years in detention.
Others have left Hong Kong for places such as Taiwan and the US, and some appear to have withdrawn from politics entirely.
HKFP looks at the their involvement in one of Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy movements, where they are today, and their thoughts on how the city has changed.
Joshua Wong
Joshua Wong, in secondary school at the time and a leader of student group Scholarism, led a class boycott in the lead-up to the protests. He was arrested on September 24, 2014, after he and others stormed Civic Square outside the government headquarters.
Conviction and sentence: Wong was in July 2016 found guilty of taking part in an unlawful assembly at Civic Square and handed an 80-hour community service order. He was found not guilty of inciting others to take part in an unlawful assembly. The government then challenged the sentence in the Court of Appeal, with a Department of Justice (DOJ) representative arguing for the immediate imprisonment of the activists. The DOJ won and Wong was handed a six-month jail term in August 2017, but it was quashed in February 2018, when the Court of Final Appeal reinstated the original non-custodial sentences.
Where is he now? Wong has been detained since November 2020, when he was denied bail ahead of sentencing for a 2019 protest charge. In March 2021, he was charged with conspiring to commit subversion under the national security law imposed by Beijing in June 2020. He has since served prison terms for other protest-related offences, and is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to the subversion charge as part of the city’s largest national security case.
Nathan Law
A university student in 2014, Nathan Law was also a member of the Hong Kong Federation of Students. He was arrested over the storming of Civic Square.
Conviction and sentence: Law was in 2016 found guilty of inciting others to take part in an unlawful assembly over events at Civic Square and handed a 120-hour community service order. Following a government appeal, he was given an eight-month jail term, though that was quashed by the Court of Final Appeal.
Where is he now? Law announced in July 2020, days after Beijing imposed its national security law, that he had moved to the UK. Last year, the city’s national security police issued arrest warrants for Law and 12 other overseas pro-democracy figures for alleged violations of the security legislation, placing bounties of HK$1 million on each of their heads. He continues to be involved in activism, though in August the Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC) – a Washington DC-based advocacy group which he co-founded – cut ties with Law. Media outlets reported that the development was related to allegations of sexual harassment made against Law, which he has denied.
Alex Chow
Alex Chow was a University of Hong Kong student and secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students during the Umbrella Movement, and like Wong and Law was arrested over the Civic Square storming. He told HKFP he spent the early weeks of the protests sleeping outside the Legislative Council and meeting pro-democracy lawmakers, activists and other civil society groups.
Conviction and sentence: Chow was found guilty of taking part in an unlawful assembly and given a three-week jail term suspended for one year. Upon a government appeal, the Court of Appeal handed him a seven-month jail term, which was later overturned by the city’s top court, ruling that the original suspended term was sufficient.
Where is he now? The 34-year-old lives in the US, where he researches Hong Kong’s civil society for a doctorate degree in geography, and sits on the board of the Hong Kong Democracy Council.
Chow told HKFP earlier this month it was “devastating” that there had been no large-scale protests in Hong Kong since national security laws came into effect. In 2014, there remained room to debate the possibility of democratic reform under Hong Kong’s governing One Country, Two Systems framework. Now, Chow said, that room had disappeared.
Chow added that he had no plans to return to the city as he did not think it would be safe for him to do so.
Benny Tai
Benny Tai, then a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, headed the Occupy Central With Love and Peace campaign, which advocated non-violent civil disobedience. A well-known pro-democracy activist, he was one of the most recognisable faces of the 79-day movement.
Conviction and sentence: Tai was charged with conspiring to commit public nuisance, “incitement to commit public nuisance” and “incitement to incite public nuisance,” and tried alongside eight others – known as the Occupy Nine – over their roles in the Umbrella Movement. In April 2019, Tai was found guilty of the first two charges and sentenced to one year and four months in jail.
Where is he now? Tai was among 47 pro-democracy figures charged with conspiring to commit subversion in the city’s largest national security case. He has been detained since being taken into police custody on February 28, 2021, ahead of a marathon bail hearing in early March that year. He pleaded guilty to the charge, and was described by prosecutors as the “mastermind” of the conspiracy to subvert state power. Like all the 45 convicted in the case, Tai faces up to life imprisonment.
Chan Kin-man
Chan Kin-man, then a sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, led the Occupy Central campaign with Tai and Chu Yiu-ming.
Conviction and sentence: Chan faced the same three charges as Tai, and was also convicted of the first two, receiving a 16-month jail term. The only one of the campaign’s three leaders to personally testify during the trial, Chan said in court that the Occupy trio had lost control of the movement after it escalated into a full-blown street occupation.
Where is he now? Chan moved to Taiwan in 2021 to take up a visiting professor position at the National Chengchi University in Taipei, where he taught courses on social movements and China. Last month, he said in a Facebook post that his stint had ended, and that he was joining the sociology department of Academia Sinica, a research school in Taipei.
Chu Yiu-ming
Chu Yiu-ming was a pastor with a long history of working with the underprivileged in society. A veteran activist, he helped pro-democracy supporters in China flee amid Beijing’s crackdown in 1989, as part of Operation Yellowbird.
Conviction and sentence: Chu faced the same three charges as Tai and Chan, but was found guilty only of conspiracy to commit public nuisance. The pastor, who was 75 at the time, was handed a 16-month jail term suspended for two years. The judge said he was impressed by Chu’s commitment to social justice, adding that he opted for leniency due to his age, health and contributions to society that spanned three decades.
Where is he now? The reverend left Hong Kong for Taiwan in December 2020, according to media reports. Earlier this month, Chu and Chan hosted a sharing and book signing in Taipei for a collection of essays they contributed to. The book was published in August to mark 10 years since the movement.
Raphael Wong
Activist Raphael Wong was a vice-chairperson of pro-democracy party the League of Social Democrats (LSD) during the Umbrella Movement. During his trial, he was said to have called on protesters to block roads near the government headquarters on the first day of the protests.
Conviction and sentence: Wong was found guilty of incitement to commit public nuisance and incitement to incite public nuisance. He was the only one of the Occupy Nine to have a criminal record, having been jailed for protest-related offences before, but the judge said he would not impose a heavier sentence on account of that. Wong was jailed for eight months.
Where is he now? Wong is still in Hong Kong and still a member of the LSD, continuing to take part in small scale protests staged by the group. In May, he and other LSD activists were arrested outside the court building where the verdict in the 47 democrats case was being handed down. They were released without charge.
Wong told HKFP in September that he could never have imagined the political developments seen in Hong Kong in recent years – that the protests and unrest in 2019 would happen the way they did, or that such demonstrations would essentially be made illegal. Looking back at the Umbrella Movement, Wong said it had been neither a success nor a failure, but “had its own significance.”
Shiu Ka-chun
Shiu Ka-chun was a social work lecturer at the Hong Kong Baptist University during the Umbrella Movement. According to the judgement in the Occupy Nine case, he was among the activists to call on protesters to occupy roads near the government headquarters on the first day of the Umbrella Movement.
Conviction and sentence: Shiu was found guilty of inciting others to commit public nuisance and “incitement to incite public nuisance.” He was jailed for eight months.
Where is he now? Shiu was elected as a lawmaker as a representative of the social welfare sector in 2016. He later founded a prisoners’ rights support group focused on helping those jailed over the protests in 2019, but which shut down in the wake of Beijing’s national security law. Shiu is still in Hong Kong and continues to support prisoners’ rights. He declined to comment on the Umbrella Movement.
Tommy Cheung Sau-yin
When the 2014 protests began, Tommy Cheung Sau-yin was a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was president of the student union. He was also one of the leaders of the Hong Kong Federation of Students.
Conviction and sentence: Cheung was found guilty of “incitement to commit public nuisance” and “incitement to incite public nuisance,” and was jailed for eight months.
Where is he now? The former student activist was elected as a district councillor in Yuen Long in 2019 but resigned in October 2021. Last year, journalists reported that Cheung had written an article in a patriotic publication, which said he was affiliated with the Basic Law Student Centre, under pro-Beijing company the Hong Kong Basic Law Foundation.
Cheung has also made headlines due to racking up debt and was declared bankrupt by the High Court in July.
Eason Chung
Eason Chung was a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong during the Umbrella Movement. He was also a member of the Hong Kong Federation of Students.
Conviction and sentence: Chung was found guilty of “incitement to commit public nuisance” and “incitement to incite public nuisance.” He was jailed for eight months but sentence was suspended for two years, with the judge citing his motivation behind the offence, his age and “lack of experience in life.”
Where is he now? Chung moved to Taiwan in 2021, and to the UK in 2022, according to an essay he wrote for Taiwan media outlet The Reporter. Since March, the former student activist has been sharing his writing on social media under the handle “Yiuwa.is.writing,” where he explores topics such as travel and books.
Lee Wing-tat
A former Democratic Party lawmaker, Lee Wing-tat was a research officer during the Umbrella Movement.
Conviction and sentence: Lee was found guilty of “incitement to commit public nuisance” and jailed for eight months. The judge noted that Lee had served Hong Kong through “various public offices he held for over 30 years.”
Where is he now? Lee moved to the UK in 2021, according to Points Media, a UK-based news outlet covering Hong Kong. Having retired some years ago, he supports advocacy campaigns founded by Hongkongers in the UK, including one that called on people to vote for politicians who supported Hong Kong’s pro-democracy cause during the recent UK general election. In mid-September, Lee attended a birthday gathering of Hong Kong’s last British governor Chris Patten, which was organised by NGO Hong Kong Watch.
Tanya Chan
Tanya Chan was a lawmaker with the Civic Party when the Umbrella Movement began. She is also a barrister.
Conviction and sentence: Chan was found guilty of “incitement to commit public nuisance” and “incitement to incite public nuisance.” Her sentencing came about a month after the other eight in the Occupy Nine trial because she had to undergo surgery to remove a brain tumour. The judge handed Chan an eight-month jail term, suspended for two years in light of her health condition.
Where is she now? Chan announced in September 2020 that she would withdraw from politics and quit the Civic Party. Media outlets reported that she moved to Taiwan in 2021 and has taken up cooking as a hobby. Last April, a restaurant in Taipei announced that she was doing a one-day shift as a guest chef.”
As I wrote in my post of July 1 2024, This July, the 27th Anniversary of the Abandonment of Hong Kong to China and of Democracy to Tyranny; We mourn and organize resistance for the liberation of Hong Kong as a sovereign and independent nation from the imperial conquest and dominion of the loathsome Chinese Communist Party, throughout this July the twenty seventh anniversary of the abandonment of Hong Kong by Britain to a carceral state of force and control which was never a legitimate successor to the China with whom the original lease of 1898 was made, and the iconic fall of democracy to tyranny and state terror which it signifies.
On the first of July last year the despicable tyrant and criminal of violations of human rights Xi Jinping walked the streets of Hong Kong, an ambush predator wearing the face of a man which cannot conceal his intent to conquer and enslave the world, beginning with Hong Kong as a launching pad for the conquest of the Pacific Rim.
Why had he come to hold a triumphal march in imitation of Hitler in his 1940 visit to Paris; to terrify the people into submission, to claim it personally as a conqueror and imperial occupied territory, to reinforce an illusory legitimacy when all China has is fear and force? All of these things, and one thing more; this is also a marketing stunt aimed at the one partner in tyranny which can bring his regime down and liberate the peoples of both Hong Kong and China, the international business community. Send us your manufacturing jobs, he offers; we have slaves.
If we do not free Hong Kong from his talons, we will be fighting for our survival in the streets of San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle, in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Manila, Kolkata, Bangkok, in Sydney and Melbourne, Tokyo and Yokohama, any city which is home to a community of Overseas Chinese, which the government of the Chinese Communist Party considers their own citizens, whether or not they consent to be governed by Beijing. The CCP is uninterested in consent; for a vision of the world they would bequeath to humankind, we need only look at the vast prison and slave labor camp of Xinjiang. Or to the regimes of their partners and allies, such as Pol Pot, North Korea, and the ruling junta of Myanmar.
When our tiny community of Sonoma was sent a wave of Cambodian refugees in the 1980’s, my mother who like myself taught English at the high school was assigned to acculturate them. When the whole group vanished for weeks during an election, returning only after a scouting pair had determined it was safe, she asked where they all went. “To the hills” he was informed. “New President, soldiers come now.”
“That can’t happen here,” she said.
“That’s what we thought, before Pol Pot” was the reply. It’s what Hong Kong thought before the Great Abandonment and Occupation, and what we all thought about America, before Trump.
Let us stand in solidarity with the people of Hong Kong and of China in the cause of Liberty and a free society of equals.
When will the free nations of the world recognize the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong and take action shoulder to shoulder with its people to throw off the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party?
The Black Flag flies from the barricades in Hong Kong, and its primary meaning has not changed since its use by the First International and the veterans of the Paris Commune; freedom versus tyranny, the abolition of state terror, surveillance, and control, resistance to nationalisms of blood, faith, and soil, and abandonment of the social use of force.
With this bold signal the people declare: we shall be ruled by ourselves and no other.
Shall we be collaborators and profiteers of slave labor, or shall we stand in solidarity to cast down from their thrones all those who would enslave us?
In the lyrics of the Chinese national anthem, “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves.”
As I wrote in my post of February 15 2022, Monsters, Freaks, Transgression of the Forbidden, the Sacred Wildness of Nature and the Wildness of Ourselves: On Chaos as Love and Desire; Watching the sunrise overlooking Hong Kong from Lion Rock, seized many times in recent years by democracy protesters and revolutionaries in the struggle for liberation and independence from China, in the wake of the last celebrations of Chinese New Year and several nearly sleepless nights of making mischief for tyrants under cover of the festival, my thoughts turn to the nature of freedom and the freedom of nature, of ourselves as wild and glorious things, of love and desire as anarchic forces of liberation, of transgression of the boundaries of the Forbidden and the violation of norms as seizures of power from the tyranny of other people’s ideas of virtue and the refusal to submit to authority.
Freedom, and all that comes with it; above all freedom as the wildness of nature and the wildness of ourselves, as defiance of authorized identities and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, of love and desire as liberating forces of Chaos, and all of this as sacred acts of reimagination and transformation of ourselves and the possibilities of human being, meaning, and value.
And of our myriad possible futures, sorting themselves out in our daily lives like a hurricane governed by the flight of a hummingbird; tyranny or liberty, extinction or survival.
Order and its forms as authority, power, capital, and hegemonic elites of patriarchy and racism, class and caste, which arise from the Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force, which appropriates and subjugates us through falsification, commodification, and dehumanization and weaponizes hierarchies of otherness and belonging and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, and creates states as embodied violence, tyrannies of force and control, carceral states of police and military terror, and dominions of imperial conquest and colonial assimilation and exploitation; all of these systems and structures are born in fear, overwhelming and generalized fear weaponized in service to power and submission to authority, have a key weakness without which they cannot arise and perpetuate unequal power, for this requires the renunciation of love.
Chaos has as its champion the totalizing and uncontrollable divine madness of love, which leaps across all boundaries to unite us in solidarity of action against those who would enslave us.
Love exalts us beyond the limits of ourselves and the flags of our skin, disrupts authorized identities and narratives as imposed conditions of struggle, seizes power as ownership of ourselves, and reveals the embodied truth of others.
Once we have a definition of democracy as a free society of equals and a praxis of love, there are some principles which can be derived as an art of revolution and seizures of power.
Order appropriates; Chaos autonomizes.
Order is unequal power and systemic violence; Chaos is liberty, equality, interdependence, and harmony.
Order subjugates through division and hierarchy; Chaos liberates through equality and solidarity.
Authority falsifies; speaking truth to power or parrhesia as Foucault called truth telling and performing the witness of history confers authenticity to us in the sacred calling to pursue the truth, and delegitimizes tyrants.
Always pay attention to the man behind the curtain. As Dorothy says to Oz, he’s just an old humbug.
The four primary Duties of a Citizen are Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority.
There is no just Authority.
Law serves power and authority; transgression and refusal to submit confer freedom and self-ownership as primary acts of becoming human and Unconquered.
Always go through the Forbidden Door. As Max Stirner wrote; “Freedom cannot be granted; it must be seized.”
Such is my art of revolution and democracy as love; there remains poetic vision and the reimagination and transformation of ourselves and our limitless possibilities of becoming human, and love and desire as unconquerable informing, motivating, and shaping forces and innate human realms of being and powers which cannot be taken from us as truths immanent in nature and written in our flesh, anarchic and ungovernable as the tides, and it is love and desire as forms of wildness and embodied truth which offer us a definition of freedom as the wildness of nature and the wildness of ourselves.
As I wrote in my post of February 12 2022, Genocide Games: the Case of Hong Kong; I do not like thee, Xi Jinping; and unlike Dr Fell in the beloved poem of 1680 by Tom Brown, I both know and can tell why as a truthteller and witness of history; state terror and tyranny, carceral states of force and thought control, disappearance and torture by police, universal surveillance, and the falsification of propaganda and alternate histories, imperial conquest and colonial exploitation, slave labor and genocidal ethnic cleansing, and fascisms of blood, ideology as a faith, and soil; of all this I accuse Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.
These things I am able to say because of the freedom of access to information which I enjoy as an American citizen, because the transparency of the state in America and the legal protection and heroic stature in our society of whistleblowers and truthtellers is a firewall against secret power, and because the sacred calling to pursue the truth as both a right of citizens and a universal human right are among those parallel and interdependent sets of rights of which the common defense is the primary purpose of the state.
So are legitimacy, trust, and representation conferred to any state which is a guarantor of the rights of its citizens; the corollary of this is that any state whose primary purpose is not to guarantee the rights of individuals has no such legitimacy.
We must be a democracy and a free society of equals, or the slaves of tyrants.
And this we must resist.
Why we fight: the stakes of the Hong Kong liberation struggle can be seen in the corpses of political prisoners which toured the world as the CCP’s threat of terror and atrocities to silence global dissent.
They are coming for us and for all democracy protestors with teams of assassins throughout the world, and we must come for them first and bring regime change to the Chinese Communist Party.
As written by Helen Davidson in The Guardian, in an article entitled Hong Kong: Stand News journalists given jail terms for ‘sedition’; “The former editor-in-chief of Hong Kong’s Stand News has been sentenced to jail on sedition charges for the publication of news reports and other articles that prosecutors said tried to promote “illegal ideologies”.
Chung Pui-kuen, 55, the former editor-in-chief and the former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam, 36, were found guilty of conspiring to publish seditious materials in late August after almost a year of delays. The parent company of the now-defunct Stand News, Best Pencil Ltd, was also convicted.
The pair have been on bail since the conviction but both spent almost a year in jail since they were arrested.
On Thursday, the district court sentenced Chung to 21 months in prison, meaning he will have to serve another 10 months. Lam was released after the judge said he had factored in his poor health and other mitigating factors, including his short time in the role overseeing the outlet. Lam’s defence team had told the court earlier that a deteriorating kidney condition meant “any mistakes or delay in treatment could endanger his life”, according to the Hong Kong Free Press.
The judge, who was more than two hours late to proceedings, ordered Lam to be released immediately.
Chung and Lam were first arrested on 29 December 2021 after police raided the outlet’s newsroom. In October 2022, they pleaded not guilty. Chung chose to testify in court and spent 36 of the trial’s 57 days in the witness box and defended Stand News and its commitment to press freedom.
“The media should not self-censor but report,” Chung said. “Freedom of speech should not be restricted on the grounds of eradicating dangerous ideas, but rather it should be used to eradicate dangerous ideas.”
However, the court had found 11 articles – mostly opinion pieces – published by Stand News to be seditious. The 11 were drawn from 17 that prosecutors had said sought to promote “illegal ideologies” and to incite hatred against the governments in Hong Kong and China and the 2020 national security law. The judge found Chung responsible for publishing 10 of the offending pieces, and Lam one.
The Stand News case has been seen as a bellwether for Hong Kong’s diminishing media freedoms, and the increasing risk for journalists continuing to operate in the city. The sentencing comes a week after revelations that dozens of journalists had been harassed in a “systemic and organised attack” that included death threats and threatening letters sent to their employers, families, and landlords.
Stand News was raided six months after authorities raided and shut down the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily, and arrested its founder, the media mogul and activist Jimmy Lai, as well as several executives and editors including his son. In the wake of the raids on Stand News, which also targeted the home of its news editor, Ronson Chan, the outlet removed its content from online and shut down.
The raid on Stand News prompted the independent outlet Citizen News to announce within days that it would cease operations, citing the increasingly risky media environment.
Launched in 2014, Stand News had been a significant source of news about the 2019 pro-democracy protests and the harsh crackdown by authorities, and was seen by Hongkongers as one of the city’s most credible outlets, according to surveys. Its reporters had been on the frontline of reporting protests including those that turned violent.
Its then-reporter Gwyneth Ho livestreamed her reporting from Yuen Long station as gangs attacked protesters and commuters and then the reporter herself. In 2020 Ho announced herself as a candidate for Hong Kong’s legislative elections but was later disqualified. In 2021 she was jailed for taking part in an “unofficial assembly” at a Tiananmen Square massacre vigil, and this year was convicted as one of the “Hong Kong 47” for running unofficial pre-election primaries in 2020.
A profile of Ho as an election candidate was among the 11 articles deemed seditious by the court. Others included a feature on student protests, three commentaries by the self-exiled former legislator and pro-democracy campaigner Nathan Law, and four others by veteran journalist and journalism teacher Allan Au. Au’s subjects included a piece on “new words in 2020” relating to the national security crackdown, and criticisms of the national security law and a related trial. Another article by Au accusing authorities of using the sedition law – under which the Stand News editors were convicted – as “lawfare”.
The sedition law dates back to the British colonial era and had been little used until authorities began charging pro-democracy figures with its crimes after the 2019 protests. It was repealed in March after Hong Kong introduced its own domestic national security law.”
‘I was so naive’: 10 years after Umbrella protests, Hongkongers remember China’s crackdown
Here follow some of my essays on the subject of the Fall of Hong Kong:
July 2 2019 Riots on Anniversary of the Fall of Hong Kong to the Chinese Communists
As over half a million citizens of Hong Kong flooded the streets Monday on the anniversary of the sale of their nation by Britain to the Chinese Communist Party, and to the cruelty and brutal terror with which the Communist forces of occupation have met demands for democracy and independence, including the horrific organ harvesting of political prisoners, Trump shook hands on a trade deal with the tyrant of Beijing and signaled clearly that in the fight for freedom and the Rights of Man the people of Hong Kong are on their own.
Trump’s policy of appeasement to tyranny cannot succeed in the long run, any more than it did to safeguard Europe from Hitler. Of course, his is not the cause of freedom.
The figment of China as a Great Lie of the Chinese Communist Party, claiming both legitimacy and domination over its historical peoples and territories as a fictive illusion, including what they call Overseas Chinese, which means all persons of Chinese ancestry everywhere, a fascist regime of blood and soil no different from that of the Axis powers, this nightmare of an evil and predatory China, the dark mirror of bright Hong Kong as a shining beacon of hope, must not be allowed to consume the world.
We must liberate and defend the freedom of Hong Kong, and deny the Communists their first victory in the conquest of the Pacific and its sovereign nations. For Hong Kong is the gateway to the civilizations of the Pacific Rim, the Philippine Islands (I know our leaders have had their differences, but my uncle is a Bataan Death March survivor and I would honor his service by standing with you in defence of freedom) and then Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, until we are fighting in the streets of San Francisco. We must stop the conquest in Hong Kong, where the people are in revolt for independence, and while our allies yet stand.
Liberate Hong Kong, and the conquest of the Pacific by the Chinese Communist Party vanishes from our future history like the distorted images in funhouse mirrors.
August 19 2019, Weekend Eleven of Hong Kong’s Democracy Revolution: a Quarter of the City Defy the Imperial Conquest of Beijing
In a stunning display of fearlessness and solidarity, a quarter of the people of Hong Kong, one million seven hundred thousand of its citizens, defy the communists and the brutal totalitarian police state of Beijing to march for democracy, freedom, and the universal rights to which every human being is entitled.
The revolution against communism and the struggle to liberate Hong Kong from the unjust and imperialist rule of the mainland government and the torture, surveillance, and xenophobic racist ethnic cleansing which the Chinese Communist Party and its tyranny of faceless bureaucrats represents is now too large to crush through its usual means of abductions, secret trials, re-education camps, and the use of criminal gangs as enforcers.
A quarter of the population cannot be murdered and terrorized in secret, without the true nature of the Communist Party being revealed; a vast system of slave labor for the benefit of a plutocratic elite no different from the aristocratic mandarinate the communists themselves rebelled against a hundred years ago.
The true origin of the Chinese Communist Party which now exists is the Loyalty Purge and Massacre of the Jiangxi Soviet of 1930-31, in which Mao killed three out of four of the communists, some one hundred thousand people, all who were not personally loyal to him, and seized absolute control.
Then of course there was World War Two, during which the CCP used the Japanese army as a proxy force against their own pro-democracy enemies and fellow Chinese, and against bastions of freedom protected by foreigners such as Hong Kong.
After 90 years of tyranny, the people of China are fighting back; it’s time for the free nations of the world to help them liberate themselves, and to recognize the independence of Hong Kong.
October 1 2019 China’s Bloody Day: the liberation of Hong Kong has its first martyr in Tsang Chi-kin
On the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s seizure of power, the forces of state terror were once again loosed upon its citizens in a brutal repression of mass democracy protests, resulting in the police shooting of a teenager, Tsang Chi-kin.
History will remember him as the first martyr of the liberation of Hong Kong from the imperialism and tyranny of communism. From this day forward the first of October will be known as China’s Bloody Day.
The CCP is following the playbook of their former proxy forces against democracy and human rights, which they used to defeat the democratic government of China and successor state to that of the visionary Sun Yat-sen, the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek which escaped to Taiwan, and to isolate Chinese democracy from support by driving out the British and other foreign guarantors of liberty and the rights of man; that proxy and plan being the Imperial Japanese conquest of Asia and the Pacific.
After Hong Kong, Singapore and control of the South China Sea will be the next front, and then Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia, where they will enact a campaign of de-Islamification and ethnic cleansing of non-Chinese populations as being tested now in Xinjiang. They already control a third of India, waging a long Maoist revolution whose goal is dominion of the subcontinent; if you don’t think they can do it, just look at Nepal.
Any government which has gamed this out to its logical conclusion about fifty years from now should be terrified; the CCP has long insisted that all Overseas Chinese, persons of Chinese ancestry everywhere, are subject to their military draft, and in matters of law the CCP has first claim on them over any other government. When the communists have the power to annex and occupy any city with a Chinatown, they will do exactly that.
The liberation of Hong Kong will guarantee freedom and universal human rights not only for itself, but for the whole world as a balance point of history. We must help Hong Kong win free of communist imperialism, and reverse the tides of time which are driving forward the Chinese Communist Party’s conquest of the world
October 6 2019 Vendetta lives: Hong Kong Defies the Occupation
In a bold and united rebuke of the authoritarian imperialism of the Chinese Communist Party, the people of Hong Kong defy the mask ban wearing a new symbol of their revolution, the mask of the figure of the rebel Vendetta from the great film. It is a provocative image for the freedom fighters of Hong Kong, with a long history of use by the Anonymous network in combating tyranny and state control and surveillance.
The next step will or may be to break that power through direct attack of the control systems employed by the government in Beijing to dehumanize and subjugate their peoples, including massive and pervasive face recognition and the social credit system. If Hong Kong can defeat the means of control being tested against the Uighur minority of Xinjiang and stop the campaign of ethnic cleansing, they may liberate China as well as themselves and stop the communist party’s conquest of the Pacific and South Asia and their dominion over the world.
And the free nations of the world can help by recognition of the sovereignty of Hong Kong and safeguarding her independence from the force and influence of the CCP.
I am one man, of limited understanding, though I have worn many masks in many places, and not all of my causes have been lost; through all my forlorn hopes and a lifetime of last stands I yet remain to defy and defend.
Of our many possible futures I can only say this; all is not yet lost, nor is anything past redemption when the will to resist and to become can be found.
So I leave you with the words of Alan Moore from V for Vendetta; “Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.”
December 16 2019 Hong Kong’s democracy revolution: a Children’s Crusade
Hear the voices and testimony of the innocent in Hong Kong’s struggle for independence; a Children’s Crusade which opposes evil with a fearless and united voice declaiming; No!
This is the crucible in which nations are born; in the dreams of liberty of its children and of those with nothing left to lose, willing to risk their lives to reach for a better future. Hong Kong is discovering its identity as a nation and a people under the occupation of a Chinese Communist Party no less terrible than that of Imperial Japan from December 25 1941 until liberation on August 30 1945.
In many ways the methods of state terror and control are parallel between Fascist Japan and Communist China and suggestive of a master-disciple relationship as with serial killers. For example, the Japanese Imperial Army had mobile processing factories whereby Chinese persons killed in the conquest were cannibalized, which accounts for the speed with which the Imperial Army could move without outrunning its supply lines, a terror operation which became the model for the Chinese Communist Party, which used Imperial Japan as a tool for ridding themselves of the British and pro-democracy Chinese Nationalists, in the use of organ harvesting of democracy activists which they employ today.
As with the cannibalism of their former secret partners against democracy, the horrific terror and refined social control of the Chinese Communist Party, whether directed against the economic prize of Hong Kong or ethnic minorities such as those in Tibet and Xinjiang, methods of repression, force, and intimidation fail to convince, and in fact recruit membership for the resistance. China should have learned this from the Rape of Nanking; far from being brutalized into passivity, survivors of terror will gladly die if in doing so they can claim vengeance on an enemy.
And the family and friends of every person in Hong Kong whom the Communists in Beijing abduct and imprison, shoot or beat to death in the streets, torture, and assassinate, will awaken to a new day with solidarity in the common cause of liberty and a vast network of alliances forged by the inhumanity of a violent and evil authoritarian enemy.
In the long run, resistance and revolution always win because tyranny creates its own counterforce and downfall.
As Verna Yu writes in The Guardian; “Officials said as of 5 December, of the 5,980 people arrested since the movement started in June, 2,383 or 40% were students and 367 of them have been charged. Among them, 939 were under 18, with the youngest being only 11, and 106 have been charged. Suspects have been arrested for a range of offences including rioting, unlawful assembly, assaulting police officers and possessing offensive weapons.”
How wonderful that someone somewhere has an education system teaching its next generation of leaders how to question and challenge unjust authority.
“James, 13, and Roderick, 16, from elite schools and middle-class families, are among the youngest people to have been charged over the protests. They were arrested in a protest shortly after others had thrown molotov cocktails – a scene that would be defined as a “riot” under Hong Kong law.”
“They said an incident on 21 July when thugs indiscriminately attacked passengers at the out-of-town metro station while police were nowhere to be seen had led to a breakdown of their trust in the authorities. After that, they went to the frontline of the protests, braving teargas and confrontations with police.”
“The teenagers said the police’s escalating use of force – including more than 16,000 canisters of teargas, water cannon, 10,000 rubber bullets and live rounds – and the authorities’ refusal to investigate police’s abuse of power were what prompted them to take part in the increasingly violent protests. They see protesters’ attacks on riot police as justified because they can no longer trust the police to deliver justice.
“We don’t attack unless we’re attacked,” James, a 13 year old said. “We can’t just stand there and not do a thing.”
“Both boys carried wills when they went out to protest. “I was always scared – whether I would get shot, get arrested or even lose my life. But if we don’t come out because we’re afraid, there would be even fewer people out there,” James said.
“I really want to give all I have to Hong Kong,” the 13-year-old said, his eyes welling up in tears. “When you pursue freedom, sacrifices are unavoidable. “We are halfway into the gate of hell. We’ve put our future and career on a line, but it is worth it.”
January 8 2020 Let Anarchy Reign: Waves of liberation actions hammer the communist occupation of Hong Kong: massive freedom protests on Christmas and New Year’s Days
Sustained and relentless waves of liberation actions continue to hammer the Communist occupation of Hong Kong with massive protests on Christmas and New Year’s Day.
When will the free nations of the world recognize the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong and take action shoulder to shoulder with its people to throw off the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party?
The Black Flag flies from the barricades in Hong Kong, and its primary meaning has not changed since its use by the First International and the veterans of the Paris Commune; freedom versus tyranny, the abolition of state terror, surveillance, and control, resistance to nationalisms of blood, faith, and soil, and abandonment of the social use of force.
With this bold signal the people declare: we shall be ruled by none.
January 18 2020 Hong Kong’s often imprisoned democracy activist Joshua Wong speaks
How we must cherish and defend the principle of free speech, without which there is no liberty.
In Hong Kong under the heel of the Chinese Communist Party’s occupation of state terror and control, as in so many tyrannies throughout our world, thought crimes are punished more severely than any other, for no tyranny can abide defiance. Xi Jinping, tyrant of Beijing, can permit challenge to his authority no more than any other, for truth is not on his side nor can his regime long survive where it flourishes.
Tyranny may have horrific instruments of terror and repression at its command; in China today this includes the abduction of its critics and dissenters, the harvesting of their organs and immurement in concentration camps, torture and genocide and universal constant surveillance, but such force is brittle and hollow. It may be shattered and proven meaningless by anyone willing to defy it regardless of the costs.
And so heroes like Joshua Wong are vital rallying points and examples, for he has called out the emperor who has no clothes, withstood his punishments and returned unconquered to fight again. The fact that China dared not torture or kill him while in prison is a sign that the occupation is weakening; only two years ago the Chinese Communist Party paraded before the world the carcasses of its victims on a world tour of the Real Bodies Exhibition, which you can read further about here:
We have come far from this provocation and arrogance by the government of Beijing, from this brazen display of power intended to dehumanize and humiliate its political opponents and openly threaten America and Europe into submission as it seeks a stranglehold on the Pacific Rim and South Asia.
And for the recessive tide of its cruelty and barbarism before the eyes of the world we offer thanks and celebrate the courageous and unconquerable people of Hong Kong, and champions of liberty like Joshua Wong.
May 23 2020 We Must Bring the Fight for the Liberation of Hong Kong to the Streets of Beijing
Now is the moment to seize the initiative, when the naked greed and brutal tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party is revealed before the world, while the legitimacy of Xi Jinping’s regime of xenophobic ethnic cleansing and bureaucratic culture of silence has been discredited by loosing the Doom of Man Pandemic on us all to destabilize our global economic and political structures and systems and to prepare the way for the CCP’s conquest and dominion of the world, while their true intentions and plans toward us all lay revealed in the state terror and control of minorities in Xinjiang and their disregard of law in Hong Kong.
How may we help the people of Hong Kong resist occupation and brutal repression? We must fight the occupation of Hong Kong on three fronts:
On the diplomatic front by recognizing the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong and aiding its people to fully seize control of their own destiny through the establishment of a democracy wherein the autonomy of individuals and the sacrosanct status of universal human rights is paramount.
On the economic front through a policy of isolation of the Chinese Communist Party to include Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanction of all trade and manufacture with mainland China, and the suspension of all debt, until the CCP recognizes the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong and other occupied foreign nations and subject peoples and withdraws all official and military presence from these and from the archipelago of artificial islands they have constructed as military bases in the South China Sea which threaten free shipping and their neighboring states.
On the third front of any revolutionary struggle, that of direct action which is internal to and wholly owned by the people themselves and their legitimate representatives, as distinct from the actions of free sister governments as guarantors of universal human rights, we must act in solidarity as a united front of humankind and do everything in our power to help them secure their freedom and put into their hands the resources necessary to liberate themselves.
Let all those who love liberty join together to resist tyranny wherever it may arise to enslave us through state force and control.
We must bring the fight for the Liberation of Hong Kong to the streets of Beijing.
As the iron talons of the Chinese Communist Party close upon their prize conquest of Hong Kong, eager to batten onto the legacy of wealth and influence generations of freedom has built, they begin to kill the thing they most desire, hammering dissent and a free market of ideas which they cannot swallow and survive with brutal repression, revealed before the world as a tyranny of state terror and thought control; for this is a golden egg which cannot be extracted from its goose without destroying it.
The unrivaled trading and financial power of Hong Kong emerges from its innovation and traditions of open intellectual research and debate; democracy and universal human rights, among them being the sacrosanct nature of pursuit of the truth and of scientific and academic discovery. Send forces of occupation and political control to repress freedom of thought and the self-ownership of autonomous individuals, and the state annihilates the conditions which made their conquest valuable. Let them continue, and that conquest will utterly transform its conqueror with its alien Enlightenment values and ideals. Such is the dilemma which now confronts the CCP; the one which confronts the world is that we must intervene to liberate Hong Kong now while our options still include those other than war.
Xi Jinping’s Communist government, which squats upon mainland China like a miasma of contagion and darkness, as xenophobic as any fascist military dictatorship, as authoritarian as any feudal monarchy of the divine right of kings, and eyeing its neighbors hungrily as an imperial power with designs upon the liberty of any Chinese person anywhere and on the cities which they inhabit as future conquests, remains a threat not only to Hong Kong, but to all humankind.
As I wrote in my post of February 3; “In this the Chinese Communist Party follows the First Rule of Tyranny; When the state’s absolute monopoly on power is in doubt, kill everyone not personally loyal to you. This aphorism, not included in the public version of the Red Book, was put into practice by Mao when he seized totalitarian control of the CCP during the Jiangxi Soviet Massacre in 1935 by killing three out of four of its members, the true origin of the Chinese Communist Party as it exists today as a structure of state terror and thought control.”
What then can we do? First America and the free world must recognize the independence and sovereignty of Hong Kong; second we and our allies must enact a total Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanction of all trade and manufacture with mainland China.
Shall we be collaborators and profiteers of slave labor, or shall we stand in solidarity to cast down from their thrones all those who would enslave us?
In the lyrics of the Chinese national anthem, “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves.”
As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates one hundred year anniversary of in founding in Shanghai in 1921 with military displays and belligerent threats to her neighbors, Hong Kong mourns the twenty fourth anniversary of her abandonment by Britain to China and the second anniversary of its democracy movement born of Xi Jinping’s rapacious and brutal conquest and repression of liberty.
I swear this now before the world and on the stage of history; I will never abandon the people of Hong Kong, nor of China. If this sounds personal, its because it is.
I am a bicultural person in my origins, raised from the age of nine to that of nineteen in part within traditional Chinese culture, and these were the first people whom I recognized as my extended family, though as languages are a hobby of mine and I have lived as a member of many different cultures in the years since my sense of continuity through others has broadened to include all humankind on principle. Yet I feel a kinship with Chinese peoples as a legacy of my childhood, and I owe them for their laughter and inclusion when I was young and needed a space of belonging, and I will restore that balance as I am able.
The Black Flag still flies from the barricades in Hong Kong where we raised it on New Year’s Day in 2020, and its primary meaning has not changed since its use by the First International and the veterans of the Paris Commune; freedom versus tyranny, the abolition of state terror, surveillance, and control, and resistance to fascisms of blood, faith, and soil,
With this bold signal the people declare: We have no masters; we shall be ruled by none.
As written in the Washington Post by David Crawshaw, Alicia Chen and Claire Parker; “China warns enemies of ‘heads bashed bloody’ on Chinese Communist Party’s centenary.
Xi Jinping has changed his tone. China’s leader, just weeks after urging his nationalistic “wolf warrior” diplomats to play nice, hit out Thursday at unspecified “foreign forces” and said any external attempts to subjugate the country would result in “heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.”
In a speech to thousands of people in Beijing to mark 100 years since the Chinese Communist Party’s founding, Xi hailed the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” under the party’s guidance. He declared that the party had achieved its centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society and solved the problem of absolute poverty, adding that nothing could divide the party and the nation.
The speech comes as Xi’s China finds itself locked in an intensifying rivalry with the United States and facing pushback against its assertive actions in the region and beyond. In a blunt message to Taiwan and its allies, Xi underscored China’s commitment to one day bring the island under Beijing’s control and vowed “resolute action” against any efforts toward what he called “Taiwan independence.”
At the same time, Beijing has faced escalating criticism over its human rights abuses, especially against Uyghur Muslims in its far-western Xinjiang region, and its dismantling of freedoms in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong also marked two anniversaries this week. Thursday was the 24th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule. But the occasion, normally a day of protest, was conspicuously muted. A year ago on Wednesday, China passed a sweeping national security law that gave Beijing the legal ammunition to effectively criminalize dissent in the territory. Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, who is now in jail, described it at the time as “the end of Hong Kong that the world knew before.”
In the year since, its critics have seen their fears materialize as China used the threat of punishment under the law to further cement its grip on the territory.
Since Xi took over the CCP’s top job in 2012, he has repeatedly meddled with Hong Kong’s special status. After opposition to an extradition bill birthed a major protest movement in the territory in 2019, Chinese and Hong Kong authorities argued the national security law was necessary to return “stability.”
If quashing protests was the goal, it has largely succeeded. Under the new rules, a maximum life sentence can be handed out to anyone found guilty of “separatism,” “subversion,” “terrorism” or “collusion with foreign forces.” Acts previously protected as free speech could now fall under these categories. And the legislation has allowed Chinese authorities to increase their control over Hong Kong institutions and law enforcement.
More than 100 people have been arrested under the law over the past year. Some were detained for helping to facilitate a primary vote in July 2020 to pick pro-democracy candidates to run in elections scheduled for September. The elections were ultimately postponed, and many of the pro-democracy candidates were barred from running. Journalists and publishers, meanwhile, have found themselves and their work under threat. Under pressure, the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily shut down operations last week.
“From politics to culture, education to media, the law has infected every part of Hong Kong society and fomented a climate of fear that forces residents to think twice about what they say, what they tweet and how they live their lives,” Yamini Mishra, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Regional Director, said in a press release this week.
The draconian rules have fueled an exodus of Hong Kong people to Britain, Canada, Taiwan and elsewhere. For those who remain, Beijing is using the law to rewrite history and push for a new generation of obedient subjects.
A Pew Research Center survey published this week revealed overwhelmingly unfavorable opinions of China among developed countries. But Xi, 68, indicated he would not be swayed.
“The Chinese people have never bullied, oppressed, or enslaved the people of other countries,” he said. “At the same time, the Chinese people will never allow any foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us. Anyone who dares try to do that will have their heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
“Heads bashed bloody” became a trending topic on the social media platform Weibo on Thursday, with more than 900 million views.
Thursday’s celebration at Tiananmen Square, which included a military flyover, 100-gun salute and patriotic songs, capped weeks of pageantry and nationalistic displays in the lead-up to the ruling party’s 100th anniversary.
The Communist Party was founded in Shanghai in 1921. It won victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 — ousting the nationalist Kuomintang, which fled to Taiwan — and has ruled the country ever since, often with an iron fist.
In the speech, Xi reiterated that it was the party’s “historic mission” to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control. China has sharply ramped up military incursions into Taiwanese airspace in recent months, leading some analysts to warn of the potential for military conflict, perhaps even a Chinese invasion of the democratic island. Along with Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, the Taiwan dispute is a major flash point in the region.
Xi, who has eliminated limits on his time in office, has presided over steady economic growth and a rise in living standards since he took power. But his tenure has been marked by the rollout of a vast surveillance state in which citizens are tracked closely by the government and dissent is crushed.
The country’s economy — the world’s second-largest — has rebounded quickly from the coronavirus outbreak, with the World Bank forecasting growth of 8.5 percent this year. But China also faces many challenges, not least the demographic dual hit of a low birthrate and an aging population.
China’s diplomats have been increasingly aggressive in pushing back at Western criticism, often via social media platforms that Beijing blocks its citizens from using. But this forceful “wolf warrior” approach — named after a patriotic Chinese action film franchise — has rankled outsiders and has been cited as a key factor in Beijing’s diminished global image.
In a free society of equals, only we ourselves have the right to choose who we will become, and no one may authorize or limit our possible identities, for this is falsification, enslavement, and theft of the soul.
When subversive organizations of white supremacist terror, patriarchal theocratic sexual terror, and tyranny as the centralization of power to a carceral state of force and control with all its attendant evils and paraphernalia of thought control, surveillance, and repression of dissent infiltrate our institutions to enact book bans and other censorship, let us expose and challenge them for what they are; attempts to pervert education from the teaching of questioning to produce citizens who are co owners of the state and guarantors of each others rights into obedience to authority.
And remember children; they only ban books that can give you the power to see through the lies of those who would enslave us, and to free yourself from systems of oppression, elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege, and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil.
For an example of how theocratic and fascist organizations pursue the subversion of democracy through book bans as part of a broad assault on our liberties and freedoms, we may look to the odious Moms For Liberty.
As written by Mark Romano in MSN, in an article entitled 10 Examples of How Moms for Liberty are the Real Threats to our Freedoms; “Moms for Liberty has positioned itself as a champion for parental rights and freedom in education, but their actions often tell a different story. This group, while claiming to advocate for liberty, promotes policies that restrict personal choice and challenge diverse perspectives in schools. Many parents and educators question how a movement that rallies against certain books and ideas can truly call itself a defender of freedom.
With chapters across 45 states, Moms for Liberty has gained visibility in education politics. Their push for influence in school districts raises concerns about the limits they want to place on curriculum and expression. This blog post explores ten notable examples that highlight how their agenda can contradict the very values of liberty and freedom they purport to support.
As this discussion unfolds, it becomes clear that the issues at stake go beyond educational choices. They touch upon broader themes of inclusivity, freedom of speech, and the diverse fabric of American society.
Defining ‘Liberty’ and ‘Freedom’
Liberty and freedom are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings.
Liberty refers to the protection of individual rights and the absence of oppression. It’s about having the legal and social space to make choices.
Freedom, on the other hand, can mean the power to act, speak, or think without hindrance. It’s more about the ability to pursue personal desires.
In a democratic society, both are essential for human dignity.
Moms for Liberty positions itself as a champion of parents’ rights. Yet, their actions often contradict their claims about supporting true liberty and freedom for all.
By limiting access to certain books or topics in schools, they restrict the freedom of students to learn and explore. This creates a tension between their stated goals and the actual impact of their actions.
Understanding these terms helps clarify the debate around organizations like Moms for Liberty. It shows how their belief system can shape policies that may not align with broader definitions of liberty and freedom.
Educational Censorship
Educational censorship is a growing concern as different groups push to control what students learn. This movement often focuses on banning books and shaping classroom discussions, which can limit students’ exposure to diverse ideas.
Banning Books
Banning books has become a notable strategy. Groups like Moms for Liberty often target specific titles that address topics like race, gender, and sexuality. They argue that these subjects are inappropriate for students.
Many schools have faced pressure to remove certain books from libraries and reading lists. This action creates gaps in education. Students miss out on important discussions about society and history. For instance, classics that tackle civil rights issues may get pulled. This not only limits freedom of choice but also diminishes critical thinking skills in young readers.
Controlling Classroom Content
Controlling classroom content is another tactic used by Moms for Liberty. They advocate for removing lessons that introduce concepts related to social justice and identity. Their focus is often on ensuring that political views align with specific ideologies.
Teachers may find themselves restricted in how they address topics in class. This can lead to a watered-down curriculum that avoids important issues. For example, discussions about historical injustices might get minimized or skipped altogether. When educators cannot discuss various perspectives, students lose the chance to develop a well-rounded understanding of the world around them.
Opposition to Inclusive Policies
Moms for Liberty often challenges inclusive policies, focusing on LGBTQ+ rights and racial equity. Their stance leads to heated debates within communities, limiting the support for diversity in schools.
Resistance to LGBTQ+ Rights in Schools
Moms for Liberty has actively opposed policies that support LGBTQ+ students. This includes pushing back against discussions about gender identity and sexual orientation in classrooms.
They argue that these topics should not be part of school curriculums. Their campaigns often focus on banning certain books or materials that include LGBTQ+ narratives.
Many school board meetings see strong vocal opposition from Moms for Liberty members. Their influence raises concerns about students feeling safe and represented, as they push for a more traditional approach to education.
Challenging Racial Equity Initiatives
Moms for Liberty also opposes racial equity initiatives in schools. They argue that these programs create division.
Members often claim that teaching about systemic racism is anti-American or promotes “critical race theory,” even when such teachings are not part of the curriculum.
This opposition can lead to the rejection of programs aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion. They seek to eliminate discussions that highlight historical injustices, which can prevent students from understanding different perspectives.
This resistance can limit resources meant to support marginalized students, impacting overall school culture.
Parental Rights Overreach
Moms for Liberty often advocates for parental rights in ways that some see as overstepping boundaries. This can affect health and safety measures in schools and infringe upon the choices of other families. The implications of these actions are significant and raise questions about individual freedoms.
Health and Safety Measures
In their push for parental control, Moms for Liberty has challenged essential health and safety protocols in schools. One notable example is their opposition to mask mandates during health crises. They argue that parents should decide whether their children wear masks, but this stance can compromise the safety of the entire student body.
Additionally, this group has pushed back against vaccination requirements. By questioning established health guidelines, they risk creating environments where preventable diseases could spread. Their actions often ignore the broader public health implications, focusing solely on individual parental choice.
Infringing on Other Parents’ Choices
Moms for Liberty’s focus on parental rights can inadvertently affect other families’ rights. For instance, when advocating for book bans in schools, they impose their values on all students. This limits access to diverse perspectives and important topics, which can help shape young minds.
Moreover, their initiatives can place undue pressure on educators. Teachers may feel forced to avoid certain subjects to comply with parental demands, impacting the quality of education. In this way, the push for expanded parental rights can lead to a narrowing of educational content, which can harm all students.
Interference with Curriculum Development
Moms for Liberty often challenges curriculum decisions in schools. Their actions raise concerns about how their involvement affects educational choices.
Critique of Curriculum Experts
Moms for Liberty has taken steps to question the expertise of curriculum designers. They believe that parents should have a strong say in what children learn. This point of view often leads to dismissing input from educational professionals.
For example, when schools adopt certain materials, these parents might push back, labeling them as inappropriate. This can create tension between educators and parents.
The result? Educators may feel pressured to alter lesson plans to appease concerned parents. This interferes with the educational process.
Limiting Teacher Autonomy
Teacher autonomy can take a hit when groups like Moms for Liberty get involved. Teachers typically select materials and methods to suit their students’ needs. When parental groups pressure schools, it can limit educators’ choices.
For instance, teachers may shy away from diverse perspectives in literature or science due to fear of backlash. Instead of encouraging open discussions, they might stick to safer, less controversial topics.
This restricts students’ learning experiences. A narrow focus on certain viewpoints can limit critical thinking and understanding. It affects the overall educational environment, making it harder for students to explore complex issues.
Advocacy Against Evidence-Based Education
Moms for Liberty actively challenges the principles of evidence-based education. Their actions raise concerns about the reliance on established research and factual history in schools. Here’s a closer look at two significant aspects of this advocacy.
Rejecting Scientific Consensus
Moms for Liberty has been known to oppose scientific findings, especially those related to health and education. They tend to favor personal beliefs over the conclusions supported by experts.
For example, this group often questions the importance of mental health initiatives that rely on data-driven approaches. They argue against programs that highlight the impact of social and emotional learning, dismissing them as unnecessary. This kind of rejection can limit students’ understanding of crucial topics like mental health and wellness.
Promotion of Historical Misrepresentations
The group also promotes selective versions of history that misrepresent facts. In efforts to influence school curriculums, Moms for Liberty pushes for bans on teaching slavery and civil rights topics. They believe these subjects create discomfort for students and parents alike.
This advocacy can lead to an incomplete education. Omitting such key historical events prevents students from understanding the complexities of race and society. Instead, students may be presented with a sanitized view of history that ignores significant struggles and achievements.
Political Maneuvering
Moms for Liberty actively engages in political strategies to influence local education. They focus on targeting school boards and use emotional tactics to push policy changes.
Electioneering School Board Campaigns
Moms for Liberty aims to place their candidates on school boards across the country. They have launched campaigns to support candidates who align with their conservative values.
Their strategy involves grassroots efforts in communities, mobilizing parents and like-minded individuals. They organize events to drive voter turnout and raise awareness about school issues. This focus on local elections has made them a notable player in education politics.
With over 275 chapters in 45 states, they work to ensure representation that echoes their vision. This approach creates a network that can effectively challenge opposing views.
Policy-Making Through Fear
Another tactic employed by Moms for Liberty is using fear to influence policy decisions. They often highlight issues such as critical race theory and gender identity in schools. These topics can evoke strong emotions among parents.
Moms for Liberty calls for book bans and strict policies regarding curriculum content. By framing these actions as necessary for children’s safety, they gain support from concerned parents. This fear-based strategy is effective in achieving their goals.
Their messaging resonates with many who feel anxious about modern education. By capitalizing on these fears, they seek to reshape public education to fit their ideals.
Undermining Professional Educators
Moms for Liberty has been criticized for actions that challenge the authority and expertise of teachers. This approach can create a hostile environment for educators and diminish the quality of education students receive.
Dismissal of Teacher Expertise
Moms for Liberty often questions the qualifications and methods of professional educators. They argue that teachers are not to be trusted with sensitive topics, claiming these professionals push certain ideologies.
Teachers spend years studying and training to understand how to educate their students effectively. By undermining this expertise, the group can create a divide between parents and educators. This can lead to conflicts at school board meetings and an atmosphere of suspicion.
Such actions might result in teachers feeling unappreciated and undervalued. When teachers worry about their job security or reputation, it can lead to less effective teaching practices.
Encouraging Distrust in Educators
Moms for Liberty advocates for transparency in schools. While this sounds good, it often breeds distrust among parents towards educators.
By promoting ideas that teachers are responsible for indoctrinating students, they create fear and concern among parents. This makes parents more likely to challenge teachers’ decisions or methods without a clear understanding.
Such distrust can harm the classroom environment. Educators might feel the need to look over their shoulders, impacting their teaching style. Instead of focusing on learning, teachers may spend time justifying their choices to parents and school boards.
This breakdown in trust not only affects teachers but can also create a negative atmosphere for students trying to learn.
Stifling Student Expression
Moms for Liberty has faced criticism for actions that seem to limit student expression in schools. This includes restricting student speech and discouraging critical thinking. These actions raise concerns about how students engage with different ideas and perspectives.
Limiting Student’s Speech and Clubs
Moms for Liberty has been linked to efforts that restrict student speech. This includes challenges to student-organized clubs that promote diversity and inclusion.
For example, some schools have seen pushback against clubs that focus on LGBTQ+ issues. Members of these clubs often face strong opposition, limiting their ability to create a supportive environment.
Parents have voiced concerns about these clubs, saying they conflict with their values. Consequently, school administrators sometimes feel pressured to remove or limit these clubs.
This creates an environment where students may feel unsafe expressing their identities and beliefs. Many students cherish these clubs as their safe spaces to discuss important topics.
Discouraging Critical Thinking
Another concern is the trend of discouraging critical thinking in classrooms. Moms for Liberty promotes a certain viewpoint on various issues, often pushing back against curricula that include diverse perspectives.
For instance, they have challenged books and educational materials that present different historical viewpoints or explore complex social issues.
This can lead to a narrow understanding of important topics for students. It limits their ability to engage in discussions and form their own opinions.
When students are not exposed to a wide range of ideas, they miss out on essential skills needed for critical thinking. Encouraging curiosity and questioning is crucial for their development.
Promotion of Homogeneous Ideology
Moms for Liberty’s actions often reflect a consistent pattern of promoting a narrow set of beliefs. This approach can lead to a lack of diverse educational experiences for students. Here are two key areas where this ideology is evident.
Advocating for ‘One-Sided’ Learning
Moms for Liberty pushes for educational policies that favor specific viewpoints. This often means supporting curricula that highlight conservative perspectives while sidelining alternative ideas. For example, they have opposed lessons that include topics like critical race theory and sexual orientation.
This focus can create a limited view of history and social issues. When students only learn about one perspective, they might struggle to understand broader societal dynamics. Effective education thrives on presenting a variety of viewpoints.
Opposing Diverse Perspectives
The organization frequently challenges programs that aim to include diverse voices. They argue that introducing concepts related to race, gender, and LGBTQ+ identities threatens traditional values. For instance, Moms for Liberty has taken steps to block LGBTQ+ protections in schools, claiming these measures infringe on free speech.
Such actions can lead to an environment where students feel excluded or marginalized. By opposing a rich tapestry of perspectives, they limit students’ ability to engage with the world around them. This stance raises concerns about inclusivity and understanding in educational settings.”
As I wrote in my post of September 8 2024, International Literacy Day: What is a Library For?; In our current moment of book burnings and bans, rewritten histories and authorized identities, silencing and erasure of the witness of history and the repression of dissent, thought control and the electoral infiltration, subversion, and capture of public institutions crucial to the mission of democracy and the manufacture of an informed electorate able to question authority as co-owners of the state, our interdependent public schools and libraries have become a frontline in the struggle between tyranny and liberty.
What is a library for?
Libraries share with public schools the purpose of creating citizens, of education in its original Greek meaning to bring out the truth of ourselves, together with two other primary and crucial functions in a democracy; to provide free access to learning as both rights of information and a free press, which also parallel equality as annihilation of class and access to opportunity as a seizure of power, and to provide inclusive and diverse representations of self as revolutionary struggle against authorized identities, divisions and hierarchies of elite belonging and exclusionary otherness, and fascisms of race, gender, faith, and nationality.
At the heart of this process of identity construction lies the curation of reading lists and a personal library which represents and defines us in ways we have chosen for ourselves.
Are we not the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves and to others?
Memory, history, identity; the selves we choose among the limitless possibilities of becoming human. Here is a central problem of both libraries and the construction of ourselves as assemblages of stories; how shall we taxonomize, structure, and assign relative value to the texts we gather, in our personae and in our libraries as memory palaces? And in a realm of ideas and their consequences which is chaotic, shifting, ephemeral, impermanent, and full of dyadic opposites, relative truths, mutual interdependence and change?
Before all else, who decides? Public libraries and schools confront us with all of the issues about how to be human together which create, inform, motivate, and shape human societies, and democracies most especially as negotiated meaning and value.
This is why the curation of personal libraries and unauthorized reading lists are revolutionary acts, and a praxis of the values of democracy.
As I wrote in my post of December 14 2021, Subversion of Democracy: Case of the Texas Book Ban; Remaining on the Texas Public School Required Reading List:
Lynchings and Other Family Gatherings: the Joy of Community
Keep Your Pimp Hand Strong: Negotiating Gender Roles
Only Our Kind Are Truly Human: Why Values and Morals Only Apply To Us
Texas bans books from public schools and libraries in subversion of democracy and our values of freedom and equality of all humankind in an attempt to enforce imperiled hegemonies of elite wealth, power, and privilege historically and systemically constructed along divisions of race and gender and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil.
The multifront assault on freedom of information and expression is about patriarchal sexual terror and white supremacist terror under the fig leaves of Gideonite fundamentalist Christian Identity sectarianism and jingoistic nationalism, as it has always been.
The last time the state had the right to control its slave populations through access to learning civilization collapsed and was lost for a thousand years while the Church burned books which threated elite power, and we must be vigilant lest we give those who would enslave us the right and power to do so yet again, and cast the world into a Dark Age from which we may never recover.
As written by Ryan Cooper in The Week, in an article entitled The forgotten history of Republican book banning; “A conservative stock character is making a comeback: the book banner. For the past few years, Republicans have pretended they’re defending free speech and free inquiry in schools against censorious liberals with their safe spaces and trigger warnings. In reality, conservatives have a mile-long history of trying to suppress the teaching of books they find uncomfortable.
That record has resurfaced in the Virginia gubernatorial race, where Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin recently ran an ad in which a woman named Laura Murphy complained about not being able to dictate what was taught at her local high school. Murphy describes the issue as explicit material being shown to children without parental sign-off, but there’s much more to the story than the ad let on: Back in 2013, Murphy told The Washington Post that her son Blake (now an associate general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee) had night terrors after being required to read Toni Morrison’s book Pulitzer Prize-winning classic Beloved.
Murphy isn’t the only Republican with this censorious impulse. The American Library Association maintains an incomplete list of attempted book-banning events in recent history, and in the large majority of cases for which a motivation is explained, it is conservative: Right-wing parents in Columbus, Ohio, tried to ban Catcher in the Rye in schools in 1963 because it was “anti-white.” Other parents challenged The Grapes of Wrath in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1991 because it invoked God and Jesus in a “vain and profane manner.” Slaughterhouse-Five was suppressed in Oakland County, Michigan, in 1972, in a case in which a circuit judge called the book “depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar, and anti-Christian.” Those are just three of dozens of examples.
Now, liberals have done the same thing on occasion, typically targeting books which contain racial slurs, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But the bulk of book banning incidents — parents complaining about sexual content, violence, skepticism of Christianity, cursing, or the history of racism and slavery — are straight out of the Moral Majority politics of the 1980s and 1990s. That habit seemed to vanish for awhile when Republicans nominated a thrice-divorced, credibly accused rapist for president. Now it’s coming back.
In recent months, Republican legislatures have passed de facto prohibitions of teaching the history of racism across the country. As a result, a Tennessee teacher was fired for assigning Ta-Nehisi Coates, while a Texas school board recently apologized for instructing teachers to present “opposing” views on the Holocaust while trying to obey a Republican law on curriculum content. Don’t let the brief reprieve fool you: They were always like this.”
As written by Amy Brady in Lithub, The History (and Present) of Banning Books in America: On the Ongoing Fight Against the Censorship of Ideas; “Like small pox and vinyl records, book banning is something many Americans like to think of as history. But according to the American Booksellers for Free Expression (ABFE), the practice persists. ABFE, which from its headquarters in White Plains fights book banning across the country, keeps a list of books challenged each year by American public libraries and schools. In 2016, that list includes Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Emily M. Danworth’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Most of the titles are by LGBTQ authors and authors of color who write about life beyond white, straight, middle-class America.
One way ABFE fights book banning is to partner with other organizations in the publishing industry (including their parent organization, the American Booksellers Association) to host Banned Books Week, a seven-day celebration that takes place in bookstores and libraries all over the United States. This year, the event runs from September 25th to October 1st with a focus on “diversity,” a factor behind many book challenges. “There were over 300 book challenges in 2015,” said Chris Finan, Director of ABFE, in an interview. “And themes of race, ethnicity, and sexual preference have been a large part of why those books got challenged.”
On its website, ABFE acknowledges that diversity is difficult to define. One definition that has informed their thinking comes from the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom: Diversity includes “non-white main and/or secondary characters; LGBT main and/or secondary characters; disabled main and/or secondary characters; issues about race or racism; LGBT issues; issues about religion, which encompass in this situation the Holocaust and terrorism; issues about disability and/or mental illness; non-Western settings, in which the West is North America and Europe.”
Historically, other reasons for banning books include: sexual imagery, violence, and any content considered obscene. Indeed, arguments over obscenity—how its defined and how that definition relates to the First Amendment—have been at the heart of banned-book controversies throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Many historians point to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the first book in the United States to experience a ban on a national scale. The Confederacy barred the book from stores not only for its pro-abolitionist agenda, but because it aroused heated debates about slavery (some historians argue that the book catalyzed the Civil War).
A decade after the war, a carping moralist government official named Anthony Comstock convinced the United States Congress to pass a law prohibiting the mailing of “pornographic” materials. His definition of the term was murky at best. Anatomy textbooks, doctors’ pamphlets about reproduction, anything by Oscar Wilde, and even The Canterbury Tales were deemed too sexy to send through the mail.
These bans, or “comstockery,” as the practice became known, continued into the new century. But by the 1920s, shifts in politics and social mores led booksellers to see themselves as advocates for people’s right to read whatever they wanted. Then, in 1933, an influential court case—The United States v. One Book Called Ulysses—helped usher in a new era of legal interpretation of the First Amendment.
In that court case, Judge John M. Woolsey overturned a federal ban of James Joyce’s Ulysses—the ban had been in effect since 1922, and court transcripts reveal that the judge who banned the book also remarked that it was “the work of a disordered mind.” Woolsey, who admitted to not liking the novel, found legal cause to challenge the previous judge’s definition of pornography—and by extension, his definition of art. He ultimately ruled that the depiction of sex, even if unpleasant, should be allowed in serious literature. His final edict is at once hilarious and evident of a mind capable of separating legal philosophy from personal preference: “[W]hilst in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.”
The case set an important precedent. However, Comstock Law remained on the books until 1957, when the Supreme Court tried Roth vs. The United States. The plaintiff was Samuel Roth, a writer and bookseller convicted for mailing pornographic magazines to subscribers. His trial forced the American legal system to once again reconsider its definition of obscenity. The Court’s final decision was bad for Roth: his conviction was upheld, and he remained in prison until 1961. But it was great for lovers of books: the definition was narrowed to apply to only that which is “utterly without redeeming social importance.” That narrowing made room for books depicting sex and violence. Even Judge Woolsey had found Ulysses to have social importance.
In the decades that followed, public officials would continue to challenge the Court’s 1957 definition of obscenity, including Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, whose personal definition famously began and ended with the declaration “I know it when I see it.” But in general, the 1960s and 70s witnessed a simultaneous drop in instances of book bans and rise in more explicit art. Artists and authors felt freer than ever to experiment. Consumers were more willing than ever to un-clutch their pearls and engage with racy material. Sex was mainstream in the novels of John Updike and Erica Jong. Then America elected Ronald Reagan.
“Reagan didn’t run on a campaign of anti-pornography,” Finan clarifies. “But he nevertheless ran an election that depowered those who fought for First Amendment freedoms. [His] election encouraged challenges by people who were unhappy with books in schools and libraries that were increasingly realistic in their depiction of life.” The number of challenges to books made by school boards and libraries rose dramatically: “Suddenly we were facing 700-800 challenges a year,” says Finan. In 1982, the ALA responded to this renewed culture of censorship with Banned Books Week. “The point of the event was to get people to understand that these books weren’t pornographic or excessively violent, but simply depicting the real world…and that many were classics of American literature,” Finan says. “Banned Books Week was the first real [American] celebration of the freedom to read.”
In those early days, Banned Books Week consisted almost entirely of libraries and bookstores hanging posters and displaying banned books. “Those displays were enormously effective communication tools,” says Finan, “because people would wander over and find out that the books they love had been challenged. Suddenly they understood that censorship isn’t just about fringe literature.” Today, those displays remain a centerpiece of Banned Books Week, but partnering sponsors are also seeking to involve readers in other ways. The Washington, DC Public Library, for example, hosts a city-wide scavenger hunt of banned books that began on September 1st and will continue until the end of the month. The books, which have been wrapped in black paper printed with words like “SMUT” or “FILTHY,” have been hidden on shelves in libraries and bookstores all over DC.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), another sponsor of Banned Books Week, has published a handbook that lists which comic books have been censored and outlines what readers can do to fight censorship. “Since 2011, at least one graphic novel has been included on ALA’s annual list of the ten most frequently challenged books,” said Betsy Gomez, Editorial Director of CBLDF, in an interview. “In 2015, CBLDF fought more than 24 attempts to ban books, including the comics Drama, This One Summer, The Sandman, Fun Home, Persepolis, Palomar. So far, in 2016, CBLDF has defended a dozen books.” The handbook includes programming ideas for educators and libraries to engage their communities in discussions about banned books throughout the year.
Organizations with no official connection to Banned Books Week are also getting involved. Wordier Than Thou, an open mic storytelling group in Pinellas Park, Florida, began presenting last year an annual burlesque show inspired by selected banned books. “[The show] definitely gets people talking about literature,” wrote Tiffany Razzano, founder of Wordier Than Thou, in an email. “[Last year], throughout the night people would come up to me and tell me about their favorite banned book.” The show, which features area burlesque favorite Mayven Missbehavin’, makes thematic sense: “It’s supposedly offensive material [interpreted by] scantily clad women performing classic burlesque stripteases,” she writes. For the sake of surprise, Razzano wouldn’t disclose which books would be featured this year. But last year’s performance included Gone with the Wind, 1984, and The Scarlet Letter.
It’s rare today for a book banning case to make it to the federal courts, but many challenges to books are still taking place on the state and local levels. At the time of this writing, ABFE has joined a protest against the Chesterfield County Public Schools in Virginia, which seeks to remove Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park and other titles from students’ voluntary summer reading lists. The proposed removal is “particularly outrageous,” says Finan, because the books aren’t a part of the school’s required curriculum.
If school administrators are attempting to limit even elective reading, what does the future hold for students who want access to all books, classic and contemporary—books that might broaden their understanding of the world? “The problem of book banning hasn’t gone away, and it probably won’t,” Finan laments. “There are always going to be struggles over the proper limits to free speech.”
As I wrote in my post of October 4 2021 What is the True Purpose of Public Education in a Democracy?
In The Addams Family Goes to School, wherein the truant officer is dispatched to bring Pugsley and Wednesday, aged 6 and 8 who have never been to school, our introduction to this family of glorious misfits, monsters, and forgotten gods, we are presented with a morality play of revolutionary struggle and a recurring theme of the series in which individuals and society are locked in a titanic battle for ownership of identity, with the stakes being autonomy or theft of the soul.
What is the true purpose of public education?
School is the forge of normality, authorized identities of sex and gender, the tyranny of other people’s ideas of virtue, the institutionalization of nationalist values and narratives of exclusivity, valorization of competition, violence, militarism, and the apologetics of capitalist elitism as meritocracy, and of hierarchies of membership and exclusionary otherness and divisions of race. Here we sort future masters from those who will serve them.
Public education is also our one chance to reimagine and transform our civilization through its members, to produce citizens of a free society of equals who can fulfill the four primary duties of a citizen; Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority.
Tyranny cannot withstand exposure, truthtelling, and the witness of history.
Can democracy function as diversity and inclusion, or does throwing all the children in a pen together to sort themselves out always result in assimilation and hierarchies of exclusionary division or making everyone the same?
The politization of public education has become national news recently with violent and disruptive confrontations during school board meetings, but this is nothing new. Education is a ground of struggle; who is chosen to succeed and take their place among our elite and who will clean their houses, serve their food, produce the goods and material basis of their survival. At stake here is nothing less than the definition of our humanity, of freedom and equality, of who will manage systems, process symbols, ideas, and information, create and have the power to change civilization, and who will service them.
Every aspect of education as a social system, textbooks and the canon of literature, how history is taught, tests and success filters for access to power and wealth, class stratification or mobility, patriarchy, racial divisions, language, all of it is volatile and of crucial importance to the project of democracy.
As written by Sherman Dorn in The Washington Post; “Chaos and violence seem to be the themes of the first month of school. To many observers, these may appear to be exceptional, unprecedented times. But there’s a long history of public schools serving as ideological and physical battlegrounds, particularly when it comes to conflicts over citizenship and civil rights.
The violent response this fall by some Americans to public health measures and teaching our history of racism is an echo of violent responses in the past to efforts to broaden the reach and mission of schools. And this history also shows that how government reacts is not foreordained, and that the choice of responses will play a major role in determining the long-term consequences of this violence.
In the 1830s and 1840s, industrialization in Massachusetts triggered civil disorder, including the Boston riots between Protestants and immigrant Catholics. State Secretary of Education Horace Mann thought he had a solution to this strife, arguing for educating all children together in what he called common schools designed to foster a background that all children would share.
But this concept proved fractious from the start.
No sooner did common schools emerge than violence engulfed them. In 1844, Catholic families in Philadelphia sought representation in the schools. Yet many White Protestants saw Catholic immigrants as a threat to a burgeoning national identity, and nowhere was that assault clearer than in their supposed attempts to take over the public schools. So nativists spread false rumors that Catholic immigrants were pushing local public schools to remove Bibles.
These rumors, fear and anger spread and neighbors took to the streets. Multi-day riots in May and July resulted in the burning of multiple Catholic churches and the deaths of more than two dozen people.
Violence at and around schools became even more widespread after the Civil War. As newly elected Black politicians joined with community members to create a system of public schooling in the South, they fused schooling and citizenship. All the Reconstruction-era state constitutions that Congress approved had education embedded as a right. The appearance of public schools for Black children and the promise of access to all aspects of society enraged some White Southerners who feared the erosion of a social order that gave them privilege and power. Those fears translated to direct attacks.
Because of the central role of public education in the new definition of American citizenship, Southern racists targeted schools as part of an explicit counterrevolution to undermine Reconstruction and civil rights. The Ku Klux Klan regularly attacked schools, and being a teacher in a Black community was one of the most vulnerable occupations throughout the late 19th century.
For a brief period in the early 20th century, school violence dissipated, but for the worst of reasons. Across the South, White elites imposed systems of disfranchisement and segregation; systematically and structurally disadvantaged, Black schools became less of a visible threat to White supremacy and reigning power arrangements.
But schooling became the center of widespread community conflict and violence again in the early 1940s. When two Jehovah’s Witness children, Lillian and William Gobitas, refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in their Minersville, Pa., public school classroom, they were expelled. Their case wound through the federal courts, finally reaching the Supreme Court, which decided in favor of the school district.
In the wake of that decision, Jehovah’s Witnesses were assaulted in communities across the country, often with members of the American Legion as leading local vigilantes. Coming to the schools with a mob mentality, Legionnaires and others identified the pledge in public schools as fundamental to American identity and those who refused to say it as national threats. In wartime, the mobs — and many other Americans — viewed dissent as suspicious and unpatriotic.
From Litchfield, Ill., to Kennebunk, Maine, entire towns were wracked by anti-Witness mobs. Children who refused to say the pledge for any number of reasons faced expulsion and threats of incarceration, as did their parents for encouraging juvenile delinquency.
In part shamed by the violence following their earlier decision, the majority of the court reversed itself three years later. As Justice Robert Jackson explained in his majority decision, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
Despite this shift and the protection of students’ right to dissent, public schools remained figurative and literal battlegrounds in the fight over American identity and rights.
In the fall of 1957, White mobs in Little Rock, Ark., turned out in protest of the nine Black students desegregating Central High School. As Melba Pattillo Beals described in her memoir, on the first day of school her classmate Elizabeth Eckford was sandwiched between Arkansas National Guard members refusing to let her enter the school and “a huge crowd of white people screeching at her back … [having] closed in like diving vultures … [who] shouted, stomped, and whistled as though her awful predicament were a triumph for them.” The mobs dispersed only after President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to enforce federal court orders to desegregate.
In Nashville the same month, a violent opponent of desegregation bombed Hattie Cotton Elementary School. No one was hurt in the late-night bombing, but as historian Sonya Ramsey explained, the single Black student in the school stopped attending.
In the 1970s, White mobs attacked buses carrying Black students as they arrived at South Boston High School.
Across American history, schools have been vulnerable to periodic violence that surrounds debates about citizenship and equal rights in education, including the role of schools in fostering shared childhood experiences, in building citizenship and equal education regardless of race, and in allowing principled dissent from rituals.
The strife this year fits into that broader pattern. To the parents and politicians angry or confused about critical race theory, like the parents and politicians angry or confused about mask mandates and health policies, the public schools are a key front in a battle for their rights and standing as citizens.
Debate over the role and purposes of public schools is a healthy sign of a functioning democracy. But violence around schooling is fundamentally at odds with the give-and-take of democratic decision-making. And it demands a strong response from authorities.
In 1943, the Supreme Court reversed the decision that had triggered mob violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses. In 1957, Eisenhower responded to the resistance to desegregation in Arkansas by dispatching federal troops.
Yet when the government has failed to confront violence, the consequences have been severe. In 1833, abolitionist Prudence Crandall opened her Canterbury, Conn., boarding school to Sarah Harris and other Black girls and women. Public officials responded by making it illegal for her to admit students from out of state without town permission, prosecuted her and stood by while a mob destroyed much of her school in 1834. Crandall moved to Illinois the next year, costing Connecticut a dedicated educational leader and beginning two centuries of a long troubled history of school segregation in New England.
The history of education teaches us that violence surrounding democratic schooling is part of a recurring pattern and that we have a choice to passively accept or assertively confront violent impulses.”
As I wrote in my post of March 22 2020, The Subversion of our Education System and Democracy; The suspension of our national standardized testing has revealed a failure of our education system; the commodification and privatization of learning and the modeling of our schools on factory production has produced a generation of Americans who can follow orders, perform routine tasks, and parrot facts, but whose abilities to create, invent, reason, and analyze and interpret facts have been crippled. This is intentional.
Educatus, the Greek word origin of education, means to bring out rather than to stuff facts in. It is an idea bound together with that of citizens as co-owners of their own government in a democracy, and equally responsible for one another and for the stewardship of its four pillars of freedom, equality, truth, and justice.
Our civilization is founded and premised on its ability to question itself; this capacity for adaptation and transformation sets democracy apart from the tyrannies of priest-kings which had come before. From our origin in the Forum of Athens, the dialectics of Socratic method has been the forge of our identity as an anti-hierarchical culture, a free society of equals in which the greatest duty of a citizen is to question, expose, mock, and challenge authority, to incite, provoke, and disturb, and we must return this process to its central role in education if liberty is to survive and flourish in this age of state terror and control.
We have permitted the subversion of our education system and democracy by those who would enslave us. And we must take it back.
As I wrote in my post of July 8 2021, Truth, Lies, and History as a Ground of Struggle; the Case of Critical Race Theory Repression; We are confronted today with the realization of a nightmare and prophetic vision written by George Orwell in 1984, the classic novel of unequal power and the authoritarian nature of government which rendered in the chiaroscuro of a newsreel depicting the liberation of concentration camps a fictional interrogation of totalitarianism as a companion volume to Hannah Arendt’s nonfictional The Origins of Totalitarianism.
The remnants of the Fourth Reich and the organizations of white supremacist treason and terror within our government who remain loyal to Trump’s vision of a white ethnostate want the government to control what is taught as history in our schools, which would be the death knell of freedom and equality in America, and are enacting a furious assault on our values and on public education as a guarantor of an informed electorate in order to render meaningless the idea of citizenship, the co-ownership of the state by its members, in parallel with vote suppression legislation.
As I wrote in my post of June 22 2021, Our History Swallows Us Like An Infinite Moebius Loop and We Become Prisoners of Its Gordian Knot: the Case of Kurdistan; History becomes a wilderness of mirrors; of lies and illusions, distorted and captured images endlessly reflected which violate our uniqueness, falsify us, limit and entrap us in authorized identities and narratives which serve the interests of elite power and not our own.
Our histories and memories are the anchorages of our identity and the wellspring of our becoming, networks of connectedness which sustain our harmony and wholeness; but such nets can ensnare us as well, and become atavisms we drag behind us like an invisible reptilian tail.
Our history swallows us like an infinite Moebius Loop, and we become prisoners of its Gordian Knot; the case of Critical Race Theory repression illumines the vicious cycle of fear, power, and force as racism and fascist tyranny overlap and intermingle hideously, consuming its most vulnerable population as sacrifices on the altar of wealth and power.
As I wrote in my post of December 5 2020, Whose Story Is This?; We are the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves and one another. So it becomes important to ask of our stories and representations, whose story is this?
I call this the Narrative Theory of Identity, and my intention is that it serves as a lever for changing the balance of power in the world. Our idea of self derives from the persona, the ancient Greek theatrical mask through which characters speak, and the possibilities of becoming human are a function of the struggle between authorized identities and the self- ownership of autonomous individuals.
We have one problem in common as we grow up and create ourselves; each of us must reinvent how to be human. Our informing, motivating, and shaping forces, modeled and communicated to us by others, are necessary to our processes of growth and individuation, but also integral to the dialectics of self and others.
The struggle between the masks that others make for us and those we make for ourselves is the first revolution in which we all must fight.
As I wrote in my post of June 19 2020, Liberation, Memory, History, and Human Being: a Narrative Theory of Identity; On this Juneteenth we celebrate the final Emancipation of the Black peoples of America from slavery, and also the Liberation of Humankind from all forms of ownership by others. The first kind of freedom was won in the Civil War and is particular to our unique history; the second kind of freedom is universal and is yet to the achieved.
There has been much insightful and relevant discussion of our history of slavery and racial inequality and violence during the Black Lives Matter protests in the weeks before this holiday, of the silencing and erasure of people of color from our historical memory and of the divisions of exclusionary otherness and defense of unequal power in our society through state control of our identity and relations with others at every level of human interaction.
Beyond the state terror of racist police violence, this is the primary means of repression and power asymmetry perpetrated against us by the ruling class; not the secret prisons and assassinations, not the racist death squads or the dehumanization and commodification of the working class by the cabal of plutocratic capitalists, Gideonite fundamentalist patriarchs, and white supremacist terrorists who together comprise the fascist Republican conspiracy of atavistic barbarism, but their theft of the possibilities of human meaning and being through control of our educational system and rewritten history.
Why are we taught to revere Independence Day on the Fourth of July, but not Emancipation Day on June 19?
Much of our history has been stolen from us. Its time to take it back.
Why is this of vital importance? How is our liberty determined by our history and the quality of our humanity by our memory?
Whose stories shall we teach to future generations? Will it be songs of resistance and survival, of the unconquered freedom and glory of our humanity and the triumph of our seizures of power over who we are and may become? Or will it be elegies of our dehumanization and enslavement, or submission to tyrannical authorities and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil?
America is a free society of equals, wherein no one is better than any other by reason of birth or condition, in which we are co-owners of our government. This new American humanity was intended to be a society of autonomous individuals, in which we are free from the ideas of other people and from the force and control of the state.
Free to dream new possibilities of becoming human, to create ourselves as we choose with a free will and conscience in which no government stands between us and the limits of our imagination, and in which relations between persons are unmediated by the state so long as none are harmed and no other boundaries are authorized by law; a society which renounces the social use of force in the performance of our identities and in which we send no armies to enforce virtue.
We must seize our stories as informing and motivating sources through which we shape ourselves, authorize identities, and create Others for whom we are negative spaces and through whom we define ourselves.
Always there remains the creative dynamism and revolutionary struggle between the masks that others make for us and those we make for ourselves. This is the first revolution in which we all must fight; the struggle to create ourselves.
Which future will we choose, America? Resistance or submission?
Whose story is this? This question must be the beginning of a new pedagogy of education in history, and remain central to the project of its study. True education in the discipline of history asks Socratic questions and teaches methods of research, analysis, interpretation, and the publishing and presentation of insights and discoveries; education in general teaches us to interrogate and test claims of truth.
Trump has proclaimed the triumph of propaganda in authorizing an official state version of historical truth, whose purpose is to institutionalize the Mayflower Puritan/Pilgrim mythos as a competing narrative of national origins to the 1619 hypothesis. This seems to me an excellent idea, if we ignore the authorization of identity and government disinformation facets and instead make this interrogation of competing narratives itself the heart of our national story and curriculum.
Myths of colonialism, fictive inventions of national origin, and the roots of fascisms of blood, faith, and soil in our triumphalist narratives of Pilgrim and Puritan founders of America. Though the Mayflower Compact was signed November 21, celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the voyage began last week with its departure for America, which are being promoted by our government as a reply to the 1619 Project. This I cannot abide, so say I in paraphrase of the hero in the film Inglorious Basterds; can you abide it?
As we learn from John Cage in music, Harold Pinter in theatre, and Piet Mondrian in art, it is the blank spaces which define and order meaning; and in history it is the silenced and erased voices to which we must listen most carefully, for here the emptiness speaks to us of secret power and of the key functions and relationships which authority must conceal to maintain its hegemony over us.
Always pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
We must ask ourselves as we raise our children to become citizens and as we ourselves continue to learn throughout our lives, Whose story is this?
Fahrenheit 451 1966 Trailer | Oskar Werner
US public schools banned 10,000 books in most recent academic year
Survey by PEN America suggests bans nearly tripled nationwide from previous year’s figure
Banned Books in US Tripled to at Least 10,000 Last Year Under GOP State Laws: Iowa and Florida alone banned around 8,000 titles in libraries and public schools during the 2023-2024 school year.
Book bans use ‘parental rights’ as cover to attack civil liberties, Democrat warns: Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, who introduced Fight Banned Books Act, says bans are ‘baseless attack on our civil rights’
August 12 2024 A Sacred Calling to Pursue the Truth: the Case of Salman Rushdie, Champion of Our Liberty In Writing As A Sacred Calling to Pursue the Truth
First before all must be the true names of things.
Words matter. They can divide us, and they can unite us. Words can exalt and defile; they can shape our images and possibilities of becoming human and create or limit the worlds to which we can aspire, they can replace stones we hurl at one another and heal the pathology of our disconnectedness.
Always treasure words, for they represent the kinds of thoughts we are able to have and harbour imaginal creative power. We bear them forward as memories, histories, identities, like the shells of fantastic sea creatures; so also do they bear us forward, and await their moment of wakefulness as seeds of becoming.
On this day five years ago the people of the New York, Portland, and Seattle Autonomous Zones were victorious over the federal government of the United States and the forces of occupation which attempted to seize our cities using an illegal secret army of Homeland Security and their deniable forces among white supremacist terrorist organizations including the Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers, Patriot Prayer, and others created as fronts or acting under Homeland Security command and control to disrupt the Black Lives Matter protests for racial justice and equality through random abduction, torture, and assassination to repress dissent, and a national campaign of arson, looting, and violence to capture the narrative of the protests and discredit the cause of equality and the abolition of racist police violence and state terror. Over these brutal and criminal attempts to impose racist tyranny on our nation by the Fourth Reich, the people of America emerged triumphant as the federal government formally and publicly ceded control of these three key cities to the people as Autonomous Zones.
In accord with Trump’s Directive of Surrender, the US Department of Justice has designated three cities, including Seattle, Portland, and New York City, as “anarchist” jurisdictions, officially ceding control to the free peoples who have seized their birthright and returned private and state property to the commons from which it was stolen and legitimacy from the government which has squandered it.
Henceforth let us call those cities for which power and ownership has been transferred to us by the Triumvirs of the American Fourth Reich, the President of the United States, Attorney General William Barr, and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, by their true names; the New York, Portland, and Seattle Autonomous Zones.
May they be the first of many, throughout America and the world.
Let us honor all those who have made the liberation of America from the grip of the Fourth Reich possible, both in their successes and in their sacrifices for the cause of democracy and humankind. Especially our hope for a better world owes a tremendous debt to the people of these Autonomous Zones which have led the charge into the future, to the largely anonymous and wonderfully diverse and nonhierarchical networks of alliance and mutual aid, resistance and revolution, including those like myself who identify as Antifa and the network of which my publication Torch of Liberty is a voice, and the visionary and transformational leaders of the New York Democratic Socialists of America including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Julia Salazar, Alessandra Biaggi, Jamaal Bowman, Jabari Brisport, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Marcela Mitaynes, and Zohran Mamdani.
Here is my initial response posted on September 21 2020; Thanks for official recognition of public ownership of our areas of control, federal government. Now get out of our cities and leave us in peace.
We need nothing from you, nothing but a Reckoning for the inequalities and injustices of a history from which we must emerge.
A motto from our antiquity surfaces in this context, originally a call to action of the general strike of the armed forces which allied with the mass civilian peace movement at universities and ended the Vietnam War; We are coming for you, Uncle Sam.
Our next step should be establishing international community and Living Autonomous Zones, waging revolutionary and liberation struggle for democracy and our universal human rights and resistance against fascism and tyranny, and conducting independent local, national, and foreign policy and diplomacy.
For this next part I have edited my original essay of 2020 to reflect new developments which include the Abraham Lincoln Brigades of Ukraine and Palestine which I founded and the many International Brigades which others founded in my wake independently and beyond my knowledge or control, all of which hearken and render homage to those of the Spanish Civil War. Also I have clarified the structure of the system which I hope one day will emerge as a United Humankind and a successor to the United Nations; a dyadic polity of Autonomous Zones and their praxis or action, on three orders of scale.
Herein I envision a system of liberation struggle without hierarchy, which respects and fosters the equality, liberty, sovereignty, and independence of all human beings, and as a temporary stage of struggle.
Three parallel and interdependent spheres of action, local, national, and global, suggest themselves.
Locally as city Autonomous Zones and the direct action teams which defend the people such as Lilac City Autonomous Zone which was originally established in 1930 in Spokane by John F. McKay, protégé and friend of Eugene V. Debs and Industrial Workers of the World labor organizer, and grandfather of my partner Dolly, as a free market and people’s collective of the Socialist Party and his local All Worker’s Party, and in alliance with the anarchist communes of Seattle’s Red Coast, and Lilac City Antifa of which I am the founder.
Nationally as Communes of Autonomous Zones functioning as congresses of political, economic, and social action and their networks of mass and direct action teams, as for example here in America the Commune of the American Autonomous Zones and the Abraham Lincoln Brigades.
Globally as a United Humankind in its forms and constituencies as the Antifascist International Directorate for sharing resources and providing policy guidance and strategic intelligence, a World Commune of Autonomous Zones for ideology and praxis on a global scale, and networks of alliance between International Brigades, which in the wake of the two I founded, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of Ukraine and the ALB of Palestine, have spontaneously arisen and proliferated in wonderful and strange ways everywhere.
Yes, we are a long way from a United Humankind and a world government in which we are all of us co owners of the state and guarantors of each others universal human rights, but I have now attended a number of annual Antifascist World Congresses, this year in Berlin, and we are making progress. A key speech at an allied event was made by UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, with whom I flirted outrageously.
Because I live and write in accord with Virginia Woolf’s principle; “If you cannot tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about others”, I digress now in memories of Berlin, once home to the most wicked and transgressive clubs on earth on one side of the Wall and a regime of tyranny and darkness on another. Here was where I made mischief for tyrants with Bluey’s crew of gypsies posing as a circus, during Putin’s reign as kingpin of the East Berlin black market, and loved a strange and wild girl among them, named Khelipe e Correnca, Dances With Crows. We were lost to each other when fate trapped us on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall during a firefight with the KGB, though we triumphed in the end when we brought down the Wall to set her and all its captive peoples free.
Later, having returned from Europe and driving to work in San Francisco from my home in Sonoma, I realized I was going to have the same day as I had lived more times than I could recall, that I was trapped in Nietzsche’s Hell of Eternal Recurrence, and took a wrong turn to the airport.
That’s when like the Grinch I had a wonderful, terrible thought; why not bring down all the Walls, everywhere, my own most especially?
At the airport the ticket agent asked where I wanted to go, and I said the other side of the earth. So began my Great Trek, and I did not return on a permanent basis for ten years, during which I developed a vision of a best possible future humankind and a path of least resistance in becoming human.
This I have articulated for you here as an Art of Revolution and a system of Living Autonomous Zones, communes of mutual aid, and networks of alliance in the realization of a United Humankind.
All of this has an immediate and special purpose as well as long range goals; to counterbalance the nationalist and imperialist militarism, capitalist plutocracy, and most especially the racist fascism and white supremacist terror of the United States as Vichy America, a captured state of the Fourth Reich of which the Trump regime is the current figurehead.
We Antifa liberators of New York, Seattle, and Portland are the only force to have defeated the federal government of the United States in open battle on American ground since Little Bighorn in 1876; people who may need us will listen when we speak.
We must become fulcrums of change, our lives like the dragon’s teeth sown into the earth by the Phoenician prince Cadmus from which multitudes arise.
Each of us who in refusal to submit has become Unconquered and free is a Living Autonomous Zone, able to bring change as a bearer of Liberty, and this is a power which no one can take from us.
And I personally want a full partnership with Cuba, and one day America with Cuba and all the peoples of the world as brothers, sisters, and others in a United Humankind and free society of equals, a day I now look forward to with greater hope that I may live to see it realized. This February’s Antifascist World Congress in Berlin reminded me of a Congress of the Joint Revolutionary Council I once attended in Cuba, Raul Castro presiding, during the 1983 fight against the Mayan Genocide in Guatemala versus America and her proxy forces. I recall with fondness a day much like today when I had opportunity to enjoy one of those marvelous Cuban cigars, during the celebrations for our victory over the South African and American forces of Apartheid at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola 1988, and this is another such moment, to be savored with utter joy.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
This in reaction to the article written by Alan Smith of NBC News; “The Justice Department released a list of cities Monday that it has deemed “anarchist jurisdictions” under President Donald Trump’s instructions this month to review federal funding for local governments in places where violence or vandalism has occurred during protests.
That memo directed Attorney General William Barr, in consultation with Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, to identify jurisdictions “that have permitted violence and the destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract these criminal activities (anarchist jurisdictions).”
On Monday, the Justice Department labeled New York City, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle as such areas. It said it was still working to identify other jurisdictions that meet the criteria outlined in Trump’s memo. The president has made ridicule of those cities a regular feature of his campaign appearances, and he has mocked their top officials for their responses to the violence that has taken place during the protests.
Barr said in a statement accompanying the announcement: “We cannot allow federal tax dollars to be wasted when the safety of the citizenry hangs in the balance. It is my hope that the cities identified by the Department of Justice today will reverse course and become serious about performing the basic function of government and start protecting their own citizens.”
As part of its rationale for labeling the cities, the Justice Department cited city councils’ voting to cut police funding, the refusal to prosecute protesters on charges like disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly, the rejection of federal intervention, and injuries suffered by law enforcement officials during violent outbursts.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan issued a joint statement calling the administration’s move “thoroughly political and unconstitutional,” adding that “the president is playing cheap political games with congressionally directed funds.”
“Our cities are bringing communities together; our cities are pushing forward after fighting back a pandemic and facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, all despite recklessness and partisanship from the White House,” the mayors said. “What the Trump administration is engaging in now is more of what we’ve seen all along: shirking responsibility and placing blame elsewhere to cover its failure.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Monday that Trump is “using the last few months of his presidency to sow more chaos, more hatred, and more fear,” and she pledged to defeat the administration in court over any such withholding of funding to the city and the state.
“This designation is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to scare Americans into voting for a commander-in-chief who is actually incapable of commanding our nation,” she said, adding that Trump “should be prepared to defend this illegal order in court, which hypocritically lays the groundwork to defund New York and the very types of law enforcement President Trump pretends to care about.”
Democratic mayors and governors this month bashed Trump over his latest effort aimed at what he calls “Democrat-run” cities and states. They said that it was illegal for the executive branch to unilaterally withhold funding from their jurisdictions and that Trump was merely seeking another distraction from the U.S. coronavirus death toll, which has topped 200,000.
“It is another attempt to kill New York City,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters during a late-night conference call this month, adding that Trump “better have an army if he thinks he’s going to walk down the streets in New York.”
Of course, an army of Occupation was exactly what Trump thought he commanded, and which he later used in the failed coup of the January 6 Insurrection.
Yet there is truth in this wild allegation of anarchy, for in these and some fifty other cities throughout America protests for equality and racial justice have triumphed over brutal repression and state terror and tyranny to seize actual control of key government administrative landmarks and business districts for over one hundred days now. And the federal government has been powerless before the solidarity and united will of the American people, and admitted defeat in their efforts to take our cities from us.
Therefore I declare victory, and celebrate the triumph of autonomous individuals as citizens of a free society of equals, each of us a Living Autonomous Zone, wild and ungovernable as the tides like a force of nature.
As I wrote in my post of June 8 2021, Anniversary of the Liberation of the Seattle Autonomous Zone and the Birth of a Global Autonomous Zones Movement; A year ago today we launched one of the greatest experiments in liberty the world has seen since the founding of America itself in liberation from the British Empire; the Seattle Autonomous Zone. We seized and held from those who would enslave us and their police forces of tyranny and state terror six blocks of Capitol Hill.
These were days of glory and of freedom, of luminous transgressions and the exaltation of the unconquerable human spirit, of truthtelling and revelation, of the performance of unauthorized identities as guerilla theatre and of communal celebrations of our diversity and the limitless possibilities of human being, meaning, and value, of the ecstatic rapture and vision of living beyond all boundaries, in which nothing is Forbidden.
Within a fleeting moment of joy Autonomous Zones sprang up in Washington DC encircling the White House, Portland, Minneapolis, Atlanta, New York, Austin, and throughout the fifty cities across America where the Black Lives Matter protests had taken control from the government through mass action, and then throughout the world as the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased, all those whom Franz Fanon named the Wretched of the Earth arose in solidarity and for a glorious moment spoke to Authority with one voice, a voice that said; We refuse to submit, and we are free.
Let us question, expose, mock, and challenge authority; let us incite, provoke, and disturb; let us run amok and be ungovernable.
Let us be bringers of chaos, joy, transformation, and revolution.
Here is a journal entry of mine speaking as a witness of history to that time of revolutionary struggle and liberation; as I wrote in my post of June 11 2020, Utopia Now: Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone; Marvels and jubilation in the streets, a carnival of transgressions of the Forbidden and masquerades of possible identities and futures of becoming human, anarchy and chaos and joy, running amok and being ungovernable, and the frightening of the horses; come and dance with us, America. Come find your heart and be free.
Whosoever remains unconquered is free. For each of us who defies injustice and tyranny, who resists subjugation, dehumanization, and enslavement, who questions, mocks, and challenges authority, becomes an agent of Liberty who cannot be silenced, and who passes the torch of freedom as an uncontrollable catalyst of change to everyone with whom we interact, and thereby can never be truly defeated.
Each of us who in resistance becomes Unconquered and a bearer of Liberty are a Living Autonomous Zone, and this is the key to our inevitable victory. We ourselves are the power which state terror and tyranny cannot conquer.
The people of Seattle have answered brutal repression and police violence, an attempt to break the rebellion against racial injustice and hate crime enacted by the police throughout America and the world led by Trump and his white supremacist terrorists both within the police as a fifth column and operating in coordination with deniable forces like the gun-toting militias now visible everywhere, by storming the citadel of city government with waves of thousands of citizens demanding the right to life and liberty regardless of the color of our skin.
The people have seized control of six city blocks, including the police precinct and City Hall, and established the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, a name which rings with history as a development of the Occupy Wall Street movement and reflects both the Paris Commune and the Italian Anarcho-Syndicalists of the 1920s. For a brilliant alternate history which reimagines and illuminates the latter, and possibly the goals and motives of the young revolutionaries of CHAZ today, see Bruce Sterling’s novel Pirate Utopia.
Such beautiful resistance by those who will not go quietly to their deaths. To all those who tilt at windmills; I salute you.
Let us take back our government from our betrayers, and our democracy from the fascist tyranny of blood, faith, and soil which has attempted to steal our liberty and enslave us with divisions of exclusionary otherness.
When the people have reclaimed the government of which they are co-owners and this new phase of protest, a movement to Occupy City Hall in defiance of tyranny, has seized every seat of power in the nation and restored democracy to America, we can begin the reforging of our society on the foundation of equality and racial justice, and of our universal human rights.
Let us join together in solidarity and restore America as a free society of equals, and liberate all the nations of the world now held captive by the Fourth Reich.
There can be but one reply to fascism and state terror; Never Again.
As written by Robert Evans in New Lines, in an article entitled How Portland Stopped the Proud Boys: Portland, Oregon, witnessed early versions of the Proud Boys events that culminated in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; years of anti-fascist organizing and the belated intervention of law enforcement halted their activities in the city; “his was the first summer since 2019 that I have not needed to don armor, strap on a gun or load up a first aid kit to go and report in downtown Portland, Oregon. Since 2017, the Rose City has hosted regular gatherings of far-right militant groups, like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, that degenerate into mass brawls with anti-fascist activists. Violence has been regular enough that some local left-wing activists refer to summer as the “fighting season.” But this year, there were no protests or rallies of note.
While the Pacific Northwest, true to its reputation, has an assortment of bespoke local fascist groups, the Proud Boys, a far-right gang that has been labeled a “terrorist entity” in Canada and New Zealand, have been present at nearly every event.
Their absence from Portland this summer is noteworthy. The opposite has been true for much of the rest of the country. There are more Proud Boys chapters now in the United States than there were on Jan. 6, 2021. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project has tracked more than 200 of their public events around the country since they stormed the U.S. Capitol.
And these events have only grown more violent. In 2020, only 18% of Proud Boy-involved events ended in violence. In 2021, 25% ended in blood and beatings. The range of acceptable targets has broadened as far-right political violence has become normalized. The Proud Boys and other right-wing paramilitary groups have disrupted school board meetings in at least 12 states. They have crashed LGBTQ-oriented book readings at libraries and harassed pride rallies.
But in 2022, they didn’t show up in Portland. It’s worth looking into why. But if you want a quick answer, here it is: Portland fought back.
The Rose City has a long history as a hotbed of radical activism amid one of the most conservative parts of the country. Portland is the city where local police officers deputized for the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and that President George H.W. Bush nicknamed “Little Beirut” after intense protests against his visit following the Gulf War. In the 1990s, it was a breeding ground for fascist violence following the murder in 1988 of Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian immigrant, by members of the White Aryan Resistance. Tom Metzger, the group’s founder and a famous Nazi organizer from California, recruited heavily from disaffected young men in Portland. Anti-racist skinheads started organizing in opposition, and over the course of several bloody years, far-right groups were prevented from rallying openly in the city.
This started to change in 2016 with the founding of Patriot Prayer by Washington State native Joey Gibson. Gibson lived in Vancouver, Washington, which is across the river from Portland and effectively a suburb of the city. Like most of non-urban Oregon, it is extremely conservative. At first, Gibson claimed that his organization’s purpose was to “liberate conservatives” from oppression in liberal-dominated cities by hosting prayer vigils, free speech marches and pro-Second Amendment rallies.
The first Patriot Prayer event was a rally in the wealthy neighborhood of Lake Oswego in March 2017. It followed a series of left-wing and liberal protests that were held on Inauguration Day and Presidents Day, which ended in police violence against demonstrators. The Oswego rally ended with lots of yelling but no violence. In April 2017, Gibson organized the “Rally for Trump and Freedom,” attended by roughly 300 people. The Three Percenters, a right-wing militia that played a major role on Jan. 6, provided “security” for the conservatives in an early example of the sort of intergroup organizing that characterized the Capitol insurrection.
Fistfights and mass brawls became more common at every event that followed. When I’ve talked to anti-fascist activists in Portland, there’s one fight from these days that comes up more than any other: the Aug. 6, 2017, mass brawl at the waterfront. Members of recognized Nazi groups fought alongside those from Patriot Prayer, and members of the Three Percenters again handled security as hundreds of people exchanged strikes with fists, batons and mace.
The left-wing response to these rallies escalated after May 2017, when former Patriot Prayer marcher and white supremacist Jeremy Christian stabbed two men to death on a train. The attack started with Christian hurling racial epithets at two teenage girls, one of whom was a Somali Muslim wearing a hijab.
To Portland’s anti-fascists, the attack was evidence of everything they’d been saying for months: Patriot Prayer rallies were breeding grounds for racist violence. More people started donning black hoodies and crafting makeshift weapons. (“Black bloc,” initially a tactic to protect activists’ identity by wearing identical all-black outfits, became something of a uniform for Portland’s anti-fascists.)
From the end of 2017, livestreams and tweeted video clips from Portland street fights became a reliable content stream for local journalists and right-wing media figures. Many people made an excellent living from simply filming violence and letting the money roll in from various crowdfunding sites. (By 2020, left-wing livestreamers grew more common as well.) The spectacle around these events was a draw for right-wing activists around the country. Portland “antifa” became the boogeymen of the right-wing media, and for some activists loyal to then President Donald Trump, it was de rigueur to be seen opposing them.
Nothing embodied this stage more clearly than an August 2019 Proud Boys rally. The city government decided to wall both sides off from each other using huge numbers of police officers. This effectively meant that the police acted as an escort while several hundred Proud Boys and their allies marched across a bridge. There were still several clashes that day, but it was less violent than past rallies. The whole mess cost the city of Portland at least $3 million. Joe Biggs, an influential leader of the Proud Boys, called the event a success and gloated about costing the city money. He threatened to hold follow-up events with the goal of eventually bankrupting Portland.
It was around this time that I moved to town. I’d attended a few of the earlier protests, but by late 2019, what struck me most was the fatalism so many of Portland’s left-wing protesters seemed to feel. There was a strong belief that the national media was constantly on the lookout for evidence of “antifa” violence, which the police and the federal government would use as a pretext for a crackdown.
Black bloc anarchists, often filmed in direct combat with far-right brawlers, made the news. But Portland’s anti-fascist community was much deeper than that. At their large rallies, between 10% and 15% of the crowd would be actively prepared, if not eager, for a fight. This core of militant activists was supported by a larger community that engaged in nonviolent organizing. There were people who showed up as medics, and others who brought food and water. Some activists would show up with bubble-wrap screens to block the cameras of livestreaming right-wingers. Others came with musical instruments, dressed as bananas or clowns to distract attention and drown out right-wing speakers on megaphones.
Portland protest moments constantly went viral, but one fact that never quite made it outside the local media bubble was how many anti-fascists were older — parents, even grandparents. Several of my sources among the anti-fascists were former Republicans, frightened of what people like Biggs and Gibson might represent. In interview after interview people expressed variants of the same fear: They won’t stop in Portland.
They didn’t. Biggs was indicted for seditious conspiracy earlier this year, along with four other Proud Boys, for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Three out of five of the Proud Boys charged with sedition had attended multiple Portland protests and rallies. Before they tried to overturn a democratic election, they were fighting in downtown Portland next to Gibson.
Portland was the first wave, the test case. Oregon fascists even breached the state Capitol building in Salem roughly two weeks before Jan. 6. The escalating attacks on school boards and LGBTQ events, the integration of Proud Boys into local parties in multiple states and the growing “political marriage” between the Republican Party and militias mean it’s an open question as to whether individuals like Biggs will go down as simple criminals or harbingers of future doom. But as more cities experience the violence and threats Portland lived with for years, it’s worth asking why it stopped happening there.
Veteran anti-fascist activists are extremely cagey with the media. You don’t have to look far to find cases of them attacking cameras and sometimes the people with the cameras. Many anti-fascists are also cagey with each other, and the anti-fascist community in Portland has more schisms and divisions than is possible to describe here. But if you get any of the folks who’ve been around a while to open up and answer when the tide turned, they’ll say Aug. 22, 2020.
Portland’s response to the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 received extensive news coverage. There were more than 100 consecutive nights of protest, most of which ended with the use of tear gas and horrific police violence. Again, the right grew obsessed with Portland. Trump took to constantly threatening anti-fascist protesters. Federal agents were called in. I can remember a moment during the second night of the protests, looking across the street and seeing two men in body armor, with rifles and American flag gaiters covering their faces, standing outside a local business.
Yet through most of it, groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys stayed away. I think they were temporarily awed by the sheer weight of public support behind the first protests.
In time, the conservative media ironed out their angle. Portland’s racial justice protesters were dangerous anarchists and domestic terrorists who had hijacked legitimate protests, the argument went. Many of the most dedicated protesters were, in fact, anarchists. They responded joyfully when Trump declared Portland a “beehive of terrorism.” Bee-themed costumes and shields filled the streets the next night.
The protests got smaller and smaller over time and, by August, local far-right organizers decided it was safe to move in.
It had been a long, frustrating summer for them, cooped up inside and watching the left march through the streets. Everyone from the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer to the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and active neo-Nazis rallied their people to action. Most attendees showed up for the “Trump 2020 Cruise Rally,” but there was also a “No Marxism in America Rally” at the same place and time. As we would see again on Jan. 6, the division between these groups was academic at this point.
Hundreds of right-wing street fighters showed up bright and early on Aug. 22, armed with clubs, knives, firearms, hundreds of cans of mace and paintball guns loaded with frozen paintballs. Portland anti-fascists were initially caught off guard by the size of the rally. When I arrived on scene, they were badly outnumbered. But within two hours, more than 1,000 anti-fascists had flooded the square. A summer fighting the police and federal agents had given Portland a sizable base of people who were used to violence and had access to good defensive gear.
Right-wing brawlers had spent years using mace as an offensive weapon. Once they were outnumbered and the fight turned against them, they started spraying madly in all directions around them. Few had thought to bring gas masks, which most anti-fascists had. After blinding themselves with mace, they broke and ran. My strongest memory of that day is a crowd of terrified right-wing activists, waving Gadsden flags, running to the nearby IRS building to beg federal agents for protection.
The police didn’t show up to the 1,000-person street fight taking place at their front door. That was fine with most people: In retrospect, the day had a sense of inevitability. We had all spent the past few years bracing for impact. Now it had come, and we had won the fight.
It’s hard for me not to use “we” at this point. My hand was broken that day by a far-right protester holding a baton and a shield with “God Bless America” painted on it. Journalistic detachment is all well and good but see how far it gets you with the crowd who built gallows on the Capitol lawn.
The very next week, the right came through in larger numbers. A caravan of thousands of cars locked down the streets. Right-wing demonstrators shot at activists and random passersby with paintball guns, carried real guns and sprayed mace as their cars gridlocked downtown. And, just as things seemed to ebb, anti-fascist Michael Reinoehl shot and killed Patriot Prayer member Aaron Danielson.
When you boil out everything but the facts, the story is pretty simple. Danielson and Chandler Pappas (currently doing time for assaulting multiple police officers at an attack on the Oregon Capitol) were both armed with mace and batons and carried loaded handguns on their hips. Reinoehl was carrying a concealed handgun. The shooting occurred outside a downtown parking garage that was a regular scene of street fights. Reinoehl, who claimed self-defense, drew and fired a concealed handgun, killing Danielson. He then fled the scene.
The shooting sent shockwaves through the Portland protest community. Everyone was certain reprisals were coming. And they came: Trump himself bragged about having federal marshals kill Reinoehl a week later. But despite widely publicized outrage by his fellow brawlers, there was no further right-wing counterattack in Portland that year.
This was not for lack of effort.
With the national spotlight back on Portland, the Proud Boys’ chairperson, Enrique Tarrio, ever the media junkie, put out the call for every Proud Boy he could gather. The event, which was to be held at Delta Park, was billed as revenge for Aug. 22 and the killing of Danielson. There were credible fears that it might be a bloodbath. Large numbers of people on both sides would be carrying firearms.
And then, for the first time since 2017, the state of Oregon intervened.
This may have had something to do with the fact that a local anti-fascist collective leaked chats related to planning for this event from a group called Patriot Coalition. This group included a number of Proud Boys and people who had fought alongside them in various rallies. The leaked chats included threats to attack Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and kidnap Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. For the first time in four years of violence, Brown declared a state of emergency over what she called a “white supremacist” rally. Police surrounded the Proud Boys event, arresting several.
By all accounts this was an extremely mild “crackdown,” but it occurred alongside a whole raft of felony charges for Alan Swinney, a right-wing demonstrator who had shot bystanders in the face with paintballs and menaced a crowd with a firearm on Aug. 22. Prior to this, Portland police had often colluded with the far right, even allowing a member of the Oath Keepers militia to assist with an arrest. In 2018, they nearly killed an anti-fascist demonstrator by hitting him in the back of the head with a tear gas grenade.
The long, friendly relationship between police and the far right allowed the fascist street movement to establish itself in Portland. But it also meant that when the police finally turned on them, it came as a titanic shock. The fact that right-wing brawlers were being charged with felonies made Portland a less desirable place to rally. It is, however, worth noting that police and local governments intervened against members of the far right only when elected leaders were threatened.
Exactly one year later, the Proud Boys came back again. Wheeler asked the city to “choose love” ahead of the anniversary rally planned by the Proud Boys and their allies. Portlanders chose to strap on their body armor, load fire extinguishers with paint and head into battle one more time. Again, about 1,000 people rallied to support the anti-fascist cause downtown.
Traditionally, the rallies in which the right has been outnumbered have involved the least violence. They tend to attack only if they think they have an advantage. So at the last minute, the Proud Boys changed the location of their rally from the heart of downtown to an abandoned Kmart in North Portland.
Most anti-fascists remained downtown. But a few traveled to Kmart, where a vicious street fight ensued. There was no clear victory in the resulting brawl. But the violence that day, particularly the destruction of two vehicles by far-right fighters, was well documented. And after being criticized for their “hands-off” approach on the day of the rally, Oregon law enforcement again dropped a range of felony charges on the most prominent attendees.
While the Proud Boys refused to go downtown, one individual with a handgun opened fire on left-wing protesters. They shot back, and the shooter fled before being intercepted by police. Since the killing of Danielson, gunfire has been a regular feature of protests in the Pacific Northwest.
But at the same time, the far right has been notably reluctant recently to attack the Rose City. There have been rallies nearby, in Olympia, Washington, and in Oregon City and Salem. But no meaningful right-wing protest has taken over downtown Portland in over a year. On the second anniversary, nothing happened.
There’s one other data point here. It’s horrible and tragic, but it’s crucial if you want to understand why the right wing’s street movement is scared to act in this city.
In 2018, Patrick Kimmons, a Black Portlander, was shot in the back nine times while fleeing from the Portland Police. Ever since, his mother has hosted near-weekly justice marches in North Portland. Because of their consistency, the events have developed their own protest culture; medics show up each week, “corkers” handle traffic safety, and armed security open-carry firearms in compliance with state laws.
This made them a target for far-right provocateur Andy Ngo, who highlighted the group regularly in his tweets. One of his followers, Benjamin Smith, lived nearby. An avowed fan of Kyle Rittenhouse (who was found not guilty of homicide in 2021 after fatally shooting two men during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin), Smith verbally accosted and then opened fire on several unarmed people doing traffic security for the justice march. June Knightly, 60, known as T-Rex in the Normandale protest community, died from Smith’s gunfire. Four other protesters were injured. One woman is still paralyzed from the neck down.
Before Smith could reload his .45-caliber handgun, an activist armed with a semi-automatic weapon stopped him by shooting him twice in the hip. It was, and remains, a searing and traumatic night for the entire Portland protest community. Few people I know can talk about it without crying.
But it was also part of a pattern of effective, forceful resistance. The story the right took from Normandale was not easy to propagandize. One of their own had committed murder, and he had been shot by a leftist using the same Second Amendment they had rallied to support. After the 2017 train murders by Christian, Gibson had hosted a “free speech rally.” In 2022, neither Gibson nor anyone else was willing to rally in Portland.
Historically, fascists win when they decide to go for it, to throttle democracies, believing that no one is organized enough to fight them. They take advantage of the fact that most people fear confrontation and that the police tend to tolerate their activism. In Portland, people stood up and opted to call their bluff.
Diligent research, nonviolent organizing and the eventual acquiescence of the state and federal government to enforce the law against right-wing agitators were all factors in the success we see now. But none of it would have happened if an awful lot of people hadn’t shown up, for five years straight, ready to fight.
If the rest of America wants to get through the present crisis, they might learn something from that.”
September 3 2025 Anniversary of the Assassination of Antifascist Comrade Michael Reinoehl: Violence, Responsibility, the Social Use of Force, and Our Duty of Care For Others
Herein I offer my own story of how I became motivated to rejoin local political action as part of the biggest and most powerful lever I could find to grab hold of, the Democratic Party, as an example of the principle think globally, act locally. My hope is that it may inspire others to do what can be done to turn the tide of fascism which has captured our nation and threatens the viability of civilization throughout the world based on the idea that each of us bears an equal share of human value and universal human rights, which no state may legislate away nor subjugate us by force and control, nor by means of falsification, commodification, and dehumanization enslave us and steal our souls.
It’s a story with a villain named Matt Shea, a fascist and white supremacist terrorist who typifies the degenerate thugs and perverse and dishonorable Republican freak show led by Trump, and whose loathsome, criminal, and treasonous actions drew me once again into the work of hunting Nazis, Resistance to tyranny and terror, and other antifascist action.
This is the fellow who used to represent my district- Spokane County 4th Legislative District in Washington State- till the Republicans threw him out for distributing a hit list of police and federal officers home addresses to death squads, to be killed in their sleep with their families during the secession to a White ethnostate. Yes, I write of the Patriot Movement leader involved in three armed rebellions including the Malheur standoff, possibly connected to several terrorist organizations including The Base, Atomwafffen Division, the Christchurch and Las Vegas shooters, abortion clinic protests and possibly the assassinations of doctors, and possibly assassinations of antifascists in Europe; all mere suspicions as strangely he has been neither tried nor convicted of any of this. Just a very bad man, with very bad co conspirators, formerly with the backing of the entire Republican Party.
I became a Precinct Captain of the Democratic Party as his direct opposition in the 4th LD, claiming the space of counterforce which all use of social force creates according to Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
It’s not the first time I’ve done what I could to help the Democratic Party, which I joined at the invitation of my Forensics students including Chrissy Georgiades at Sonoma Valley High School in the 1980’s, having previously been a member of my mother’s lifelong political party, the Peace and Freedom Party.
I’ve been a useful counterweight; founder of Lilac City Antifa and a flying squad for national and global antifascist action which first fought in Portland, as well as an Antifascist International Directorate to share resources and coordinate the work among networks of alliance, a global network of Living Autonomous Zones in the wake of Seattle’s CHAZ, and the independent military forces of American volunteers who named ourselves the Abraham Lincoln Brigades after the original force of the Spanish Civil War, sworn to no nation but to one another like the Jesuits and the French Foreign Legion who were among my models for intelligence and direct action forces, which I founded in Mariupol as the ALB of Ukraine and later refounded in Warsaw with those who escaped with me as an element of a force of international volunteers to take the fight to Russia on her own ground whose signal achievement was the division of our opposing force the mercenary and criminal Wagner Group from the Russian military and Putin regime and the assassination of its leader Prigozhin, then did something similar with the ALB of Palestine, forces which have independently and unpredictably cloned themselves in interesting ways globally in the last few years, among many other actions of Solidarity and liberation struggle.
All of this I did in the last seven years; one man, with a vision but on my own dime and with no resources beyond my own, and therefore beholden to no one nor under any kind of control. When events unfold which may be decisive or influential to the fate of humankind, open a space of play for change in ways wherein I may be helpful, or are otherwise of interest, I travel to disrupt my own expectations and biases and make my own independent evaluations, analyses, and interpretations of the situation on the ground of struggle, and only then choose how best to place my life in the balance with those of the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased, to become a fulcrum and change the balance of power in the world and the legacies of our history.
And I report all of this here, everything that I can without compromising anyone else or any ongoing operations, publicly and without cost to anyone, in my publication Torch of Liberty which I founded in October of 2018.
In my sixties I fought Last Stands at Mariupol in Ukraine versus Russia, Panjshir in Afghanistan versus the Taliban, al Aqsa and throughout Palestine versus Israel, last December I opened the gates of Damascus for the army of liberation to avenge Mariupol and to take Syria, Putin’s fortress state in the Middle East, away from him, and this year in Los Angeles versus the ICE white supremacist terror force.
And if I can do this, anyone can place their lives in the balance with those of the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased, all whom Frantz Fanon called The Wretched of the Earth, and help change the course of history and the possibilities of becoming human.
Let us write, speak, teach, and organize democracy and liberation struggle. Regardless of who you are, there is always something you can do.
If the world is imperfect, we must ask ourselves, What can be done to bring change? May we all become a fulcrum, and help to change the balance of power in the world.
As I wrote in my post of May 16 2020, Matt Shea Purged From Office; Jubilation and dancing in the streets, champagne and running amok; this I write in celebration as Lilac City Antifa, as a voice of progressive democracy, and a Precinct Captain of the Democratic Party, but also as an American citizen, for all loyal Americans may rejoice in this; Representative Matt Shea of the Fourth Legislative District of Washington State, who used his position in our government to organize and direct armed rebellion and treason against the United States and conspired to lead a war of white supremacist terror and a crusade against Muslims and others in violation of our fundamental right of freedom of religion, and including plans for the assassination of police and federal officers, has been shunned and cast out as the monster he is by his own party.
Mad Matt has been purged from office; I hope this signals a turning of the tides and a realignment within the Republican Party against the harboring of treasonous and racist criminals within its ranks. Among my greatest wishes has been that the Republicans awaken to the fact that they too are Americans, and heirs to our traditions of freedom, equality, truth, and justice, values that true conservatives would support and defend with us against the foreign and intrusive disruptive forces of fascist racism and tyranny. We may disagree on many things, but not on those truths we hold to be self-evident; not and call ourselves Americans.
I welcome a future Republican Party which has returned to its origins as the party of Lincoln as partners in just governance. To adapt and meet the existential threats we face, we need a conserving force which buffers our identity, values, and traditions from the shock of change, as well as a revolutionary force of transformational agility which looks beyond the boundaries of our horizon.
It is a long journey from here down the yellow brick road to our long range goal of the restoration of democracy in America and throughout the world, and of our local and immediate objectives of electing Democrats to replace Republicans in 2020, but this is a fine beginning, and I shall rejoice and savour it.
Long have we awaited an end to his reign of terror here in Eastern Washington, but for those unfamiliar with his misdeeds here below is a summary of the principal crimes and threats to public safety of Mad Matt.
As written by Austin Jenkins in an article of December 2019 for NW News Network; “15 easily missed details from deep inside the Rep. Matt Shea report,
WA state Rep. Matt Shea has been ejected from the House Republican Caucus in response to a report that found he is a leader in the Patriot Movement and helped plan the 2016 armed takeover of a federal wildlife refuge.
The recently released 108-page investigation detailing Washington state Rep. Matt Shea’s connections to militia groups and extremist activities has prompted his own caucus to exile him and the House Republican leader to call for Shea’s resignation.
In response, Shea took to Facebook to denounce the investigation as a “sham” and declare: “I will not back down, I will not give in, I will not resign.” Shea has also said that all of his communications have been lawful.
The top-line conclusions of the investigation are that Shea is a prominent leader in the Patriot Movement, played a role in planning three armed conflicts in the American West, including the 2016 takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, and that his actions have put law enforcement officers in danger of political violence.
Buried in the report are a number of details and revelations that give readers an inside look at how Shea reportedly operates behind the scenes. It’s a world of code names, encrypted communications and military-style directives.
Here are 15 easily-missed excerpts:
Role in armed standoffs
“Between April 12-14, 2014, Representative Shea met with other elected officials from Washington, Idaho, Nevada and Arizona at Bunkerville, Nevada, who gathered in support of the Bundy family’s resistance to a federal court order and developed a strategy for leadership over future Patriot Movement armed resistance against the federal government by creating the Coalition of Western States (COWS).”
“Representative Shea in his leadership role as Chairman of the Coalition of Western States (COWS) along with [a] Washington militia leader and other members of COWS beginning around early November 2015 through January 2, 2016, engaged in conversations with Ammon Bundy and other militia members in the planning and preparation of the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon.”
Military-style plans and intelligence
“Representative Shea on or about January 3, 2016, created a detailed military styled operation plan Entitled ‘Operation Cold Reality’ that included roles and responsibilities of COWS members and militia leadership in support of the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County Oregon.”
“Representative Shea on January 4, 2016 through the use of email and using codename ‘Verumbellator,’ covertly disseminated information to … State Representatives from Washington, Idaho, and Nevada, and to Patriot Movement militia leaders and others, that detailed and warned of specific law enforcement operations and actions in response to the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County Oregon.”
Sensitive law enforcement information
“Representative Shea, via his private email account in the name of ‘Verumbellator’ sent a document … entitled, ‘Apparatus of Repression’ … The document attached to Representative Shea’s email detailed extensive law enforcement confidential information laying out the command and control structure of Washington state law enforcement agencies. The document was over 250 pages long and contained rosters of local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) agents, SWAT team member lists complete with names and badge numbers and the Joint Harbor Operations Command (JI-IOC) building schematics. The document also included the names and home information of FBI, DHS, and Washington State Patrol agents, photos of SWAT teams, street surveillance cameras, aircraft and communications equipment used by law enforcement in Washington. In Representative Shea’s email he said he dug deep on the web to find the document. The document, as stated by Representative Shea, was to be used ‘to validate and check out agents from law enforcement agencies who may attempt to contact us…’”
Role in Patriot Movement
“This investigation determined Representative Shea is an active and influential leader of the Patriot Movement in the US. He supports the movement and its causes and at times is an active participant in organizing and carrying out demonstrations against state and federal government activities. He has on occasion organized and directed armed confrontations with law enforcement officers.”
“Representative Shea is a self-professed member of the Patriot Movement and although Representative Shea is not believed to consider himself a member of a militia, he is closely associated with several militia groups, their activities, and prominent militia members. He is also closely associated with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) and Marble Community Fellowship; two organizations closely aligned with the Patriot Movement.”
Marble Country connection
“[Marble Community Fellowship] is a church founded by pastors and married couple Barry and Anne Byrd, who Representative Shea has publicly introduced as his spiritual advisors …Representative Shea is very closely connected to MCF and to Barry and Anne Byrd. The Byrds have been included in private meetings where attendees were invited by code names, and where Representative Shea unveiled the Biblical Basis for War that offered his view of God’s authorization for war. [At] the same meeting Representative Shea distributed the Restoration document which was his blueprint for rebuilding after the fall of the US Government.”
Power, fear, radicalization, intimidation
“Obtaining political power is a strategic objective of the Patriot Movement but it is also used tactically by Representative Shea … Encouraging individuals within the Patriot Movement to run for political office is a frequently discussed topic as reported by individuals formerly active in the Patriot Movement.”
“Fear is an often used tactic by Representative Shea to develop and grow his political support. He frequently warns people to stockpile weapons and ammunition and to prepare to defend your property. He makes frequent reference to Syrian immigrants, Antifa communists, and at times tells inaccurate stories that drive fear. Representative Shea spoke of Syrian refugee children raping another child in a restroom at knifepoint, a story that was later found to be completely inaccurate and did not involve rape, a weapon, or Syrian refugees according to news articles quoting Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs.”
“Representative Shea and the Patriot Movement rely on the radicalization of individuals to the point they are willing to take up arms against the United States to carry out their objectives … Each armed conflict serves as a radicalization node, enraging individuals with sympathetic views of the goals of the Patriot Movement. This serves to draw more people into the conflict and into the Patriot Movement, thus adding to Representative Shea’s influence and power.”
“Inherent in the act of dispatching armed militants into a conflict with government authorities is the presence of intimidation and the threat of use of force. Intimidation and the ever-present threat of the use of force are powerful tactics used by Representative Shea in the achievement of his political goals.”
Encrypted communications
“Representative Shea communicates securely with others using his code name ‘Verumbellator’ over secured communications systems such as Wickr, Signal and Protonmail. In October 2017, Representative Shea abandoned the use of email due to unspecified ‘security threats’ in favor of the Redoubt Emergency Network (REN Group) that communicates over the Signal App … Representative Shea and his associates have also been known to use what they call ‘Red Phones’ when engaged in a conflict. Red phones are understood to be pre-paid telephones that are untraceable.”
Paranoia
“Representative Shea told [witness 22] on many occasions through casual conversation that the ‘government’ tracks the phones of ‘people like us’ and feared that if two or more of ‘us–Patriots’ are gathered they (the Government) would turn on the mics on the phones and listen via stingray devices through warrantless wire taps.”
Conclusion
“Based on evidence obtained in this investigation, it is more probable than not that Representative Shea is likely to plan, direct and engage in additional future conflicts that could carry with them significant risk of bloodshed and loss of life. It is the professional opinion of the Investigators, that on a more probable than not basis, Representative Shea presents a present and growing threat of risk to others through political violence.”
As I wrote in my post of May 28 2019, Christian fundamentalists hope to use abortion issue to incite civil war and create white fascist ethnostate; Gideon, anyone?
That’s the dream of Christian fundamentalists and white supremacists like Matt Shea, who is the leading political figure of the secessionists in Washington State; a white ethnostate in the fortress-like mountains of its northeastern region inspired in parts by the Confederacy, Fourth Reich ideology, and the Charismatic-Pentecostal interpretation of Biblical law. It’s like a looney mashup of Margaret Atwood’s Gideon and S.M. Stirling’s Domination of the Draka.
It’s an alternate-history fantasy, but its not a joke; this is the same fundamentalist-white supremacist alliance that elected Donald Trump. They are using abortion as a wedge issue, their churches as centers of recruitment and organization, have the support of plutocrats and the cover of agents who have infiltrated our government, and outreach and influence operations throughout our nation and social media.
We need not parallel their structure, but we must counter their influence. Or, as Stirling predicts in his novels, we will witness the fall of western civilization, of secular democracy based on the values and ideals of the Enlightenment; truth, justice, liberty, equality, and the Rights of Man.
We must win a better future.
As I wrote in my post of January 24 2020, Victory in the War Against Fascism for the Soul of America and the Freedom of the World; We at Lilac City Antifa and Torch of Freedom celebrate victories in the War Against Fascism for the Soul of America and the Freedom of the World, in the unmasking and bringing to justice of Nazi terrorists.
Rinaldo Nazzaro, leader of Nazi terror group The Base which set up a training camp near the remote mining town of Republic, Washington this year has been exposed as a probable Russian spy.
Republic, like Spokane and much of our Pacific Northwest, is nothing like the imaginary white ethnostate called the Redoubt by white supremacists like State Representative Matt Shea or Nazis like Rinaldo Nazzaro. Republic is a wild west town whose main street still boasts a wooden boardwalk, nestled in a valley on the far side of the highest pass in the lower United States, Sherman Pass, a terrifying drive in winter snows, and a route pioneered like Hannibal through the Alps by the local legendary hero who later became famous in the Civil War when he burned out the diseased heart of the Confederacy on the triumphant March Through Georgia and accepted the surrender of the rebel slavers. We cherish and remember his example still; let there be no quarter for those who would enslave us.
Yet there is more, for Republic and the Pacific Northwest remain the home of descendants of some of the original Industrial Workers of the World unionists and Democratic Socialists, an older generation who proudly recall the fight against fascism in World War Two, and a younger generation who look to the future and a diverse and inclusive world, yet have not forgotten who they are as Americans nor the means by which our free society of equals was won.
We are a hard people with hard lives wrested from the wilderness, who meet the daily challenges of survival by helping our families and neighbors as a united front, regardless of our differences.
This is the true Pacific Northwest, and we are having none of any fascist nonsense or shenanigans.
So I wrote five years ago, during the Interregum between Trump regimes and the failed Restoration of America under the great and flawed Joe Biden, when actual Nazi revivalists, white supremacist terrorists, and other fascists were marginal outliers in our society and not in control of the federal government and the national state.
This has now changed horrifically, and Trump has issued a proclamation declaring Antifa a terrorist organization in the wake of the assassination of his apologist Charlie Kirk not by one of us but by a member of a rival alt-right faction, the Groypers.
If we are organized, when by design according to anarchist principles there is no leadership or command structure, no training cadre, no hierarchy of any kind and no imposed ideology, no central communications hub and no funding, in what way can Antifa be an organization?
And in what way is opposing fascist terror a form of terror rather than free speech and the performance of citizenship in a free society of equals?
We are a social and political movement and a form of action, in some ways a community of allies and a vector of ideologies and histories. But no one gives orders, there is no membership, and anyone can claim to be antifascist and mean by this whatever they wish.
And what we do is quite simple; we resist tyranny and state terror and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil as authorized national identities and systems of oppression.
If you find ways to do these things, you too are Antifa.
As our primary enemy the Trump regime has defamed us as terrorists on the basis of claims to patriotism, I offer refutation with this; If the American flag is on your uniform, you are one of us. This I say in recognition of two of the world’s most effective antifascist organizations, which like much of the West’s intelligence and special operations community historically developed specifically to liberate the world from Nazi tyranny and terror and remain crucial to that mission, the Central Intelligence Agency which originates in the Office of Strategic Services and the United States Special Forces or Green Berets which originates in the Jedburgh teams and the First Special Service Force called the Black Devils, and as an admirer of the Black Devils unit whose legendary exploits are fictionalized in the films The Devil’s Brigade and Inglorious Basterds. Nothing can be more American than antifascist action; in some ways it defines America and what it means to be American, both won with blood in the most terrible war the world has ever known.
When they come for one of us, as they always have and will, let them be met with all of us.
To my brothers. sisters, and others, I say Semper Fi; a motto of the United States Marines, but one which embodies the principle of solidarity and may be said of all Americans as a universal ideal and true national identity.
To fascist tyrants and those who would enslave us, I say Sic Semper Tyrannis, and Bella Ciao.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
Mirror, Mirror Star Trek Season 2, episode 4
The Devil’s Brigade official trailer
Inglorious Basterds official trailer
War to the Knife: History of the 1st Special Service Force, the Devil’s Brigade
Becky G – Bella Ciao (From the Netflix Series “Casa de Papel”)
February 11 2025 How To Be An Antifascist: Historical Sources and Contexts For The Resistance
June 12 2025 Why We Fight: Authorized Versus Chosen And Ambiguous National Identities As a Ground of Struggle, Symbolized By the Mexican Flag In the Battle of Los Angeles
April 20 2025 Anniversary of My Speech to the Volunteers At Warsaw, and of the Reorganization of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of Ukraine For Liberation Struggle in Russia in the Wake of Our Escape From Mariupol
May 29 2025 Anniversary of the Final Day of the Third Intifada of 2021: On The Origins of Evil in Fear, Power, and Force; Existential Questions In the Shadow of the Israeli Genocide of the Palestinians As the World Does Nothing to Silence the Rain of Death
A glorious victory for our universal human rights and for the sovereignty and independence of all peoples has this day ignited joyous celebrations throughout the world, where ever men hunger to be free, to be equals in the eyes of each other, and to become co-owners of the state which represents them; recognition of the state of Palestine.
The United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Portugal and Malta have already welcomed Palestine to the brotherhood of nations, Italy is totally shut down by mass demonstrations for Palestine, and many more nations will be joining the United Nations’ historic recognition.
Major voices for humanity and supporters of the successful UN resolution include France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Ireland, Luxembourg, Turkey, Malta, Canada, Andorra, Belgium, Eqypt, Jordan, Qatar, and the European Union, with a total of 153 out of 193 member nations in favor of recognition of Palestine.
This on the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations and Jewish New Year, as the Netanyahu regime wages genocide and unveils a vision of Israel as “a Middle Eastern Sparta”, and his collaborator Trump harangues the UN with lunatic policy advice based on the White Replacement Theory and proclaims Antifa an “organization of domestic terror” because we oppose fascism of which he is the current figurehead.
We live in interesting times, as the phrase coined by the father of Prime Minister Chamberlain, possibly paraphrasing from a short story by Feng Menglong, goes.
Among the many meanings of this historic event which redeems and defines the United Nations after seventy years of Israeli war crimes are the consequences for America as an outlier of no actual global influence; Trump has accomplished the mission set for him by his puppetmaster Vladimir Putin in sabotage of America’s imperial dominion of the world, for we no longer stand for liberty and equality, and like Trump our words mean nothing and we mean nothing.
The United Nations and Europe, however, seem to be learning from our example and rejecting fascist tyranny. So, hope remains.
As I wrote in my post of May 24 2024, In the Wake of the great Reckoning For the Crimes of Israel, Recognition of the Sovereignty and Independence of Palestine Raises the Question; Whose Palestine? What Will a Future Palestine and Israel Become?; In the wake of the great Reckoning, what will a future Israel and Palestine become?
One clear and immediate result of this historic act by the ICC in calling for the arrest of Netanyahu and his collaborators in genocide is the recognition of the state of Palestine by Ireland, Spain, and Norway, which leaves American and Britain among the primary refuseniks of the world. Curious now I am; which Palestinian government will be receiving this splendid recognition?
No united nation of Palestine yet exists; we now have a nation divided into Apartheid model Bantustans by Israeli conquest and American complicity; Hamas is the legitimate state of Gaza which it captured not from Israel but from Fatah in 2007, and again from al Qaeda in the 2009 Battle of Rafah in which I fought, versus PLO-Fatah’s state of the West Bank and East Jerusalem under nominal control by its inheritor government the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, which is compromised by cooperation with Israel and its status as a Vichy state as well as unwillingness to confront Israeli aggression and defend its people militarily.
These rivals, Hamas and the PA, represent the de facto Palestinian states on the ground as of now, from which any legitimate united Palestine must be constructed, but the situation is far more complex, with many factions and the interests of foreign powers involved. Considering the assassination of Iran’s leader this week, so deft not even the shadow of his assassin was left upon the tides of history, the integration of Hezbollah into any new Palestine remains problematic.
We will be very lucky indeed if the status of the Gaza War as a theatre of World War Three and Russia’s imperial conquest and dominion of the Middle East and the Mediterranean, which is interdependent with her ally Iran’s conflict versus the Arab-American Alliance, does not consume us all.
The realization of a Palestine whose security is guaranteed by the UN from brigandage, kleptocratic land grabs, quasi enslavement, and imperial conquest and dominion by the outlaw state of Israel has some distance yet to go to be achieved; but true parity and equality between the two nations will be far more swift and certain if the people of Israel reimagine and transform their nation as an institution of secular democracy wherein Jews and Muslims are equal under the law and a guarantor of our universal human rights including those of Palestinians rather than a nightmare of theocratic and racist tyranny and state terror as it is now.
The best solution to this conflict now of over seventy years originating in one people divided by history in service to those who would enslave them remains simple; the peoples of Israel and Palestine refuse to kill each other and unite in solidarity against the authoritarian regimes which claim without legitimacy to act in their names.
Simple, yes; but sadly never easy.
As written by Andrew Roth and Patrick Wintour in The Guardian, in an article entitled France recognises Palestine and calls for UN force in Gaza; “Emmanuel Macron has announced France’s official recognition of the State of Palestine, setting out a plan for a UN-mandated international stabilisation force in postwar Gaza that is expected to find support in many countries but not in Israel or the US.
“The time has come to end the war in Gaza, the massacres and the death,” Macron said during a speech opening a special summit in the United Nations general assembly hall on Monday evening. “The time has come to do justice for the Palestinian people and thus to recognise the State of Palestine in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem.”
The statements drew cheers and standing ovations from some in the hall, with the Palestinian Authority (PA) hailing France’s “historic and courageous” decision, but the session was not attended by the US and Israeli officials dismissed the initiative.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, called for a state of Palestine to be a full member of the UN, telling the general assembly: “This conference marks a milestone but it’s not the end of the road. It’s only the beginning.”
Meanwhile, Arab and Muslim leaders are set to meet Donald Trump in New York to discuss their separate plan for a stabilisation force in Gaza as France joined the UK, Canada and Australia in recognising Palestine as a state.
The recognition of Palestine by France and five other states played out in dramatic fashion later on the floor of the UN general assembly as France and Saudi Arabia co-chaired a summit to discuss the future of a two-state solution, a road map to peace that Benjamin Netanyahu has declared a dead-end.
On Monday night Monaco, Belgium, Andorra, Malta and Luxembourg all recognised Palestine, bringing the total number of recognitions to three-quarters of UN membership.
António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, said in a speech that statehood was a “right, not a reward” for Palestinians.
“Nothing can justify the horrific 7 October terror attacks by Hamas or the taking of hostages,” he said. “And nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, derided the session as an “embarrassing political circus” and the US has warned its allies that the recognition of Palestine could lead to a “reciprocal” Israeli reaction, setting the scene for a major diplomatic crisis as world leaders meet in New York for the 80th anniversary of the UN.
Israel has warned that it might respond to the recognition of Palestine by annexing the West Bank, citing claims from Hamas that recognition by allies of Israel was a victory for the terror group.
“Nothing can also excuse developments in the West Bank that pose an existential threat to a two-state solution,” said Guterres. “The relentless expansion of settlements, the creeping threat of annexation, the intensification of settler violence – all of it must stop.”
France has said the plan for a stabilisation force would marginalise Hamas by disarming the group and excluding it from power.
The proposal includes a UN-mandated force to provide security in Gaza as well as oversee the disarmament of Hamas and help train a PA police force.
The diplomatic scramble played out in New York as Israel intensified its assault on Gaza City on Monday, with reports of 37 Palestinians killed across the territory, including 30 in Gaza City. Israel launched an offensive in the city last week against what it said were 3,000 Hamas fighters hiding in the city, ignoring international humanitarian concerns.
The Arab League declared in July that Hamas must play no further role in governance, with power handed to a newly elected PA to govern Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Hamas would be required to hand over its weapons to the authority.
The Trump meeting, scheduled after his address to the UN’s general assembly, is the most direct engagement between the White House and Arab states on post-ceasefire plans for Gaza since he was elected president for a second time.
Trump is expected to deliver an aggressive speech decrying “globalist institutions” on Tuesday, which he will claim have “have significantly decayed the world order”, a White House spokesperson said in a briefing.
The US president is also expected to meet leaders from Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Nothing the president has done so far suggests that he shares the view held by the Gulf states that the PA is a viable alternative to Hamas, or should be considered a partner for peace. He has imposed sanctions on PA officials and banned Mahmoud Abbas, its 89-year-old leader, from coming to New York to speak to the UN. Abbas, addressing the summit virtually, commended the 149 nations that had already recognised a Palestinian state, and called on Hamas to surrender its weapons to the PA, adding: “We also condemn the killing and detention of civilians, including Hamas actions on October 7 2023.”
Arab leaders see the meeting as a chance to pin down Trump on whether he supports the Arab League’s proposals for Gaza’s future, or even a variation put to him by a working group led by Tony Blair, the former UK prime minister, and Jared Kushner, who is the president’s son-in-law. Neither of the reconstruction plans proposes the mass expulsion of Palestinians, a proposal that Trump at times has appeared to support. The Blair plan does not clearly endorse the PA as the long-term administrators for Gaza.
The Arab states are likely to insist they will not join any international force unless the reformed PA is given a future role. They also want a roadmap to a two-state future that excludes further Israeli settlements or annexation of the West Bank.
The UK on Sunday recognised a Palestinian state provisionally based on the 1949 armistice border, or “Green Line”, between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza before their 1967 capture.
The PA, which exercises limited civic rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and was forced out of Gaza by Hamas in 2007, has said it was ready to govern Gaza and the West Bank with international support.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has insisted that Israel must retain overall security control alongside an Arab-led civilian administration. However, others in his rightwing coalition want to annex Gaza. Israel has driven the PA close to bankruptcy by withholding monthly revenue transfers.
Lana Nusseibeh, a minister at the UAE foreign affairs ministry, said annexation would be a red line for the UAE since “it would strike at the heart of what the Abraham accords are trying to achieve”. The UAE signed the accords – deals brokered by Trump to normalise relations between Israel and the Arab states – in 2020 in return for Israel not annexing the West Bank.
UAE leaders, bidding to present themselves as the startup nation of the future, did not suggest they would leave the accords but instead said plans for greater regional integration would become a dead letter.
The UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, urged Israel not to respond to the new recognitions by annexing parts of the West Bank, saying “settler expansion threatens the very viability of a Palestinian state”.
Cooper condemned violence on both sides, citing “continued bloodshed, manmade famine, terrorism and hostage-taking, settlement expansion and settler violence” and warned that “the two-state solution risks disappearing beneath the rubble – that is what extremists on both sides want”.
She echoed others in saying Hamas could have no future in the governance of Palestine.
France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said the recognition of a Palestinian state was a disavowal of Hamas since the plan called for its exclusion from any future role in the governance of Gaza. He pointed out that the general assembly had already endorsed a seven-page declaration this month outlining “tangible, timebound, and irreversible steps” toward a two-state solution, while also condemning Hamas and calling for it to surrender and disarm.
The German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, said: “Any and all steps toward an illegal annexation of occupied territory also undermine the chances of resolving the conflict in a sustainable way. However distant it may seem at this moment, a negotiated two-state solution is the path that can enable both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace, security and dignity. Germany regards recognition of a Palestinian state as a step more at the end of the process. However, such a process must now begin.”
As I wrote in my post of August 3 2025, Tisha B’Av Tyranny and Resistance: A Song of al-Quds and Jerusalem; On this day in 586 B.C. the King of Babylon destroyed the Temple of Solomon; on this same day in 70 A.D. the Temple of Herod was burned by the Roman general and future emperor Titus, an event commemorated for nineteen centuries in the Tisha B’Av march encompassing the old walls of Jerusalem.
Yet these are not the only events to transpire on this day which heralded epochal changes in imperial dominion of these old walls, surrounding a city complex with multilayered histories and symbolism like no other. On this day in 1099 the crusaders left the walls of the city they had seized the month before to meet the army of the Fatimid Dynasty of Egypt at Ascalon two days later, a decisive battle of the First Crusade. On this day in 1920 Turkey renounced its claim on the territory; and on this day in 1922 the British Mandate of Palestine began.
For the Jewish peoples this march has always been about survival, resilience, identity, and historical continuity and social cohesion across vast epochs of time, a ritual reclaiming of the city as a mythic homeland. The story of the Jews is one of Exile, endlessly repeated; narratives of victimization easily co-opted in service to power as myths of national identity. From the perspective of liberated peoples emerging from the imposed conditions of anticolonial struggle and survival of the Holocaust, the celebration of a glorious Return from Exile is a necessary and wonderful thing.
All I ask is this, a simple question for your consideration as a nation’s public rite of mourning enacted for nearly two millennia begins yet again as a national claim of dominion which others, excludes, and marginalizes all else as provocation and symbolic violence; must the Return of one people mean the Exile of another?
The Roman, Ottoman, and British empires celebrated their conquests of the Holy City as well, a city which bears the dual identity of al Quds and Jerusalem.
Herein I offer a song of lamentation for both of these historical claims as shadows from which we must emerge before we can transcend the flags of our skin to truly see the truths of others.
Let us remember, and use our pain to open us to the pain of others, here in this land of derelict holiness and dreams become nightmares where one people have been divided by history in service to the power of those who would falsify and enslave us.
There are no Israelis, no Palestinians, only people like ourselves and the choices we make about how to welcome the Stranger and become human together.
Peace be upon us all.
Song of al Quds and Jerusalem
The stones here are old, and full of memories. Mostly they ring with the silenced screams of the dead, a vast and terrible silence, a gaping mouth which threatens to swallow us all in fathoms of endless darkness and despair, the lost histories of the erased.
How can we scream without a mouth? How can we clutch the stolen fragments of our humanity without hands? How can we accuse our murderers when we are ashes and nothing, without form or family to bear onward our truths written in their flesh? How can we be mourned when our names are lost to memory and to history?
Who will stand in our places and bear witness, whose voices are hollow like the windblown scuttling husks of cicadas which have sung themselves utterly away?
In this forlorn ruin of our dreams the tide of our humanity has broken against its limits, and from this shattering the City of the Infinite emerges not as one city but as two, shards of a broken mirror which reflect each other infinitely, the glittering palaces of our ideals and the chasms of their negation, spinning like the twin faces of a coin of probability.
The brokenness of the world begins and ends here in this place of truths and of lies, visions and illusions, miracles and madness, this shell of our memories which is named Jerusalem and al-Quds.
UN President of the General Assembly Addresses United Nations General Debate, 80th Session
Albanese formally recognises Palestine at the UN – Full Story podcast
Brazil’s president says in UN speech that democracy can prevail over ‘would-be autocrats’: South American leftist Lula takes indirect swipes at Trump in speech and warns that global threat of ‘anti-democratic forces’ persists
Trump calls for nations to close borders and expel foreigners in UN speech: ‘Your countries are being ruined’: US president accuses European countries specifically of ‘destroying your heritage’ by allowing migration
So very like the Netanyahu & Trump dream of a Riviera of casinos for elites where Gaza once was. But you never see the slaves, or the bones of the dead such palaces of decadence are built on.
22 בספטמבר 2025, במלאת 80 שנה לאו”ם, האו”ם והאיחוד האירופי מכירים בפלסטין, ולשנה טובה
ניצחון מפואר לזכויות האדם האוניברסליות שלנו ולריבונות ועצמאות כל העמים הצית היום חגיגות שמחות ברחבי העולם, בכל מקום בו אנשים כמהים להיות חופשיים, להיות שווים זה בעיני זה, ולהפוך לבעלים משותפים של המדינה המייצגת אותם; הכרה במדינת פלסטין.
בריטניה, צרפת, בלגיה, פורטוגל ומלטה כבר קיבלו את פני פלסטין לאחוות האומות, איטליה נסגרה לחלוטין על ידי הפגנות המוניות למען פלסטין, ומדינות רבות נוספות יצטרפו להכרה ההיסטורית של האו”ם.
קולות מרכזיים למען האנושות ותומכים בהחלטת האו”ם המוצלחת כוללים את צרפת, ספרד, בריטניה, אירלנד, ערב הסעודית, ברזיל, אירלנד, לוקסמבורג, טורקיה, מלטה, קנדה, אנדורה, בלגיה, מצרים, ירדן, קטאר והאיחוד האירופי, עם סך של 153 מתוך 193 מדינות חברות התומכות בהכרה בפלסטין.
זאת, ביום השנה ה-80 להקמת האומות המאוחדות ולראש השנה היהודי, כאשר משטר נתניהו מבצע רצח עם וחושף חזון של ישראל כ”ספרטה מזרח תיכונית”, ושותפו טראמפ נוזף באו”ם בעצות מדיניות מטורפות המבוססות על תיאוריית ההחלפה הלבנה ומכריז על אנטיפה כ”ארגון של טרור פנימי” משום שאנו מתנגדים לפשיזם שהוא כיום דמותו הבולטת.
אנו חיים בזמנים מעניינים, כפי שנאמר בביטוי שטבע אביו של ראש הממשלה צ’מברלין, אולי פרפרזה מסיפור קצר מאת פנג מנגלונג.
בין המשמעויות הרבות של אירוע היסטורי זה, אשר גואל ומגדיר את האומות המאוחדות לאחר שבעים שנות פשעי מלחמה ישראליים, נמצאות ההשלכות על אמריקה כחריג ללא השפעה עולמית ממשית; טראמפ השלים את המשימה שהציב לו אמן הבובות שלו, ולדימיר פוטין, בחבלה בשלטון האימפריאלי של אמריקה על העולם, שכן איננו עומדים עוד בעד חירות ושוויון, וכמו טראמפ, למילותינו אין משמעות ואנחנו לא מתכוונים לכלום.
עם זאת, נראה כי האומות המאוחדות ואירופה לומדים מהדוגמה שלנו ודוחים את הרודנות הפשיסטית. אז, התקווה נותרת בעינה.
3 באוגוסט 2025 תשעה באב, עריצות והתנגדות: שיר על אל-קודס וירושלים
. ביום זה בשנת 586 לפנה”ס, הרס מלך בבל את מקדש שלמה; באותו יום בשנת 70 לספירה, נשרף מקדש הורדוס על ידי המצביא הרומי והקיסר לעתיד טיטוס, אירוע שצוין במשך תשע עשרה מאות שנים בצעדת תשעה באב שהקיפה את חומות ירושלים העתיקות.
אך אלה אינם האירועים היחידים שהתרחשו ביום זה אשר בישרו שינויים תקופתיים בשלטון האימפריאלי של חומות ישנות אלה, המקיפות קומפלקס עירוני בעל היסטוריות רב-שכבתיות וסמליות שאין שני לה. ביום זה בשנת 1099 עזבו הצלבנים את חומות העיר שכבשו חודש קודם לכן כדי לפגוש את צבא שושלת הפאטימית של מצרים באשקלון יומיים לאחר מכן, קרב מכריע במסע הצלב הראשון. ביום זה בשנת 1920 ויתרה טורקיה על תביעתה על השטח; וביום זה בשנת 1922 החל המנדט הבריטי על פלסטין.
עבור העם היהודי, צעדה זו תמיד עסקה בהישרדות, בחוסן, בזהות, בהמשכיות היסטורית ובלכידות חברתית על פני תקופות עצומות של זמן, טקס של החזרה מחדש של העיר כמולדת מיתית. סיפורם של היהודים הוא סיפור של גלות, החוזר על עצמו ללא סוף; נרטיבים של קורבנות שנאספים בקלות לשירות הכוח כמיתוסים של זהות לאומית. מנקודת מבטם של עמים משוחררים היוצאים מתנאי המאבק האנטי-קולוניאלי והישרדות השואה, חגיגת השיבה המפוארת מהגלות היא דבר הכרחי ונפלא.
כל שאני שואל הוא שאלה פשוטה לשיקולכם, שכן טקס אבל ציבורי של אומה, שננקט במשך כמעט אלפיים שנה, מתחיל שוב כתביעה לאומית לשליטה, שאחרים מדירים ודוחקים כל דבר אחר כפרובוקציה ואלימות סמלית; האם שיבתו של עם אחד חייבת להיות גלותו של אחר?
האימפריות הרומית, העות’מאנית והבריטית חגגו גם הן את כיבושיהן של העיר הקדושה, עיר הנושאת את הזהות הכפולה של אל-קודס וירושלים.
כאן אני מציע שיר קינה על שתי הטענות ההיסטוריות הללו, כצללים שמהם עלינו לצאת לפני שנוכל להתעלות מעל דגלי עורנו כדי לראות באמת את האמיתות של אחרים. הבה נזכור, ונשתמש בכאבנו כדי לפתוח אותנו לכאבם של אחרים, כאן בארץ הקדושה והנטושה הזו, וחלומות הופכים לסיוטים, שבהם עם אחד חולק על ידי ההיסטוריה בשירות כוחם של אלה שרוצים לזייף ולשעבד אותנו. אין יהודים, אין פלסטינים, רק אנשים כמונו והבחירות שאנו עושים לגבי איך לקבל את פני הזר ולהפוך לבני אדם יחד. שלום עלינו.
שיר אל-קודס וירושלים האבנים כאן ישנות ומלאות זיכרונות. לרוב הן מהדהדות בצרחותיהם המושתקות של המתים, דממה עצומה ונוראית, פה פעור המאיים לבלוע את כולנו במעמקים של חושך וייאוש אינסופיים, ההיסטוריות האבודות של הנמחקים. איך נוכל לצרוח בלי פה? איך נוכל לאחוז בשברי האנושיות שלנו שנגנבו בלי ידיים? כיצד נוכל להאשים את רוצחינו כשאנו אפר וכלום, ללא צורה או משפחה לשאת הלאה את אמיתותינו הכתובות בבשרן? כיצד נוכל להתאבל עלינו כששמותינו אובדים מהזיכרון ומההיסטוריה? מי יעמוד במקומותינו ויעיד, שקולם חלול כמו קליפות ציקדות מתרוצצות ברוח אשר שרו את עצמן לחלוטין? בחורבן נטוש זה של חלומותינו, גל האנושיות שלנו נשבר כנגד גבולותיו, ומתוך התנפצות זו צצה עיר האינסוף לא כעיר אחת אלא כשתיים, רסיסים של מראה שבורה המשקפים זה את זה עד אין קץ, הארמונות הנוצצים של האידיאלים שלנו ותהומות שלילתם, מסתחררות כמו שני פאותיו התאומות של מטבע הסתברות. שבירות העולם מתחילה ומסתיימת כאן במקום הזה של אמיתות ושקרים, חזיונות ואשליות, ניסים וטירוף, קליפה זו של זיכרונותינו אשר נקראת ירושלים ואל-קודס.
Arabic
في ٢٢ سبتمبر ٢٠٢٥، في الذكرى الثمانين للأمم المتحدة، تعترف الأمم المتحدة والاتحاد الأوروبي بفلسطين، وبـ “لشاناه توفاه”.
بهذا النصر المجيد لحقوقنا الإنسانية العالمية، ولسيادة واستقلال جميع الشعوب، أشعل هذا اليوم احتفالاتٍ بهيجة في جميع أنحاء العالم، حيث يتوق البشر إلى الحرية، والمساواة في أعين بعضهم البعض، وأن يصبحوا شركاء في ملكية الدولة التي تمثلهم؛ اعترافٌ بدولة فلسطين.
رحبت المملكة المتحدة وفرنسا وبلجيكا والبرتغال ومالطا بانضمام فلسطين إلى رابطة الأمم، بينما تسود إيطاليا حالة من الجمود التام بسبب المظاهرات الحاشدة من أجل فلسطين، وستنضم دولٌ أخرى كثيرة إلى اعتراف الأمم المتحدة التاريخي.
من أبرز الأصوات المدافعة عن الإنسانية ومؤيدة قرار الأمم المتحدة الناجح: فرنسا، إسبانيا، المملكة المتحدة، أيرلندا، المملكة العربية السعودية، البرازيل، أيرلندا، لوكسمبورغ، تركيا، مالطا، كندا، أندورا، بلجيكا، مصر، الأردن، قطر، والاتحاد الأوروبي، بمجموع 153 دولة من أصل 193 دولة عضوًا تؤيد الاعتراف بفلسطين.
يتزامن هذا مع الذكرى الثمانين لتأسيس الأمم المتحدة ورأس السنة اليهودية، بينما يرتكب نظام نتنياهو إبادة جماعية ويكشف عن رؤية لإسرائيل على أنها “سبارتا الشرق الأوسط”، ويهاجم مساعده ترامب الأمم المتحدة بنصائح سياسية جنونية تستند إلى نظرية الاستبدال الأبيض، ويعلن أن أنتيفا “منظمة إرهاب محلي” لأننا نعارض الفاشية التي يمثلها حاليًا.
نعيش في أوقات مثيرة للاهتمام، كما يقول والد رئيس الوزراء تشامبرلين، ربما مقتبسًا من قصة قصيرة لفنغ مينجلونج. من بين المعاني العديدة لهذا الحدث التاريخي الذي يُعيد للأمم المتحدة تعريفها بعد سبعين عامًا من جرائم الحرب الإسرائيلية، عواقبُ أمريكا كدولةٍ شاذةٍ بلا أي تأثيرٍ عالميٍّ حقيقي؛ لقد أنجز ترامب المهمة التي كلفها بها مُحرِّكه فلاديمير بوتين في تقويض الهيمنة الإمبريالية الأمريكية على العالم، لأننا لم نعد ندافع عن الحرية والمساواة، ومثل ترامب، كلماتنا لا تعني شيئًا، ونحن لا نعني شيئًا.
مع ذلك، يبدو أن الأمم المتحدة وأوروبا تتعلمان من مثالنا وترفضان الاستبداد الفاشي. لذا، يبقى الأمل قائمًا.
٣ أغسطس ٢٠٢٥، تيشا بآف: الطغيان والمقاومة: أنشودة القدس والقدس
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام ٥٨٦ قبل الميلاد، دمر ملك بابل هيكل سليمان؛ وفي نفس اليوم من عام ٧٠ ميلاديًا، أُحرق هيكل هيرودس على يد القائد الروماني تيتوس، الإمبراطور المستقبلي، وهو حدثٌ خُلد لتسعة عشر قرنًا في مسيرة تيشا بآف التي شملت أسوار القدس القديمة.
ومع ذلك، لم تكن هذه هي الأحداث الوحيدة التي وقعت في هذا اليوم والتي بشّرت بتغييرات تاريخية في السيطرة الإمبراطورية على هذه الأسوار القديمة، المحيطة بمجمع مدينة ذي تاريخ ورمزية متعددي الطبقات لا مثيل لهما. في مثل هذا اليوم من عام ١٠٩٩، غادر الصليبيون أسوار المدينة التي استولوا عليها قبل شهر، لملاقاة جيش الدولة الفاطمية في مصر في عسقلان بعد يومين، في معركة حاسمة من الحملة الصليبية الأولى. في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1920 تخلت تركيا عن مطالبتها بالأرض؛ وفي مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1922 بدأ الانتداب البريطاني على فلسطين.
بالنسبة للشعوب اليهودية، كانت هذه المسيرة دائمًا تدور حول البقاء والمرونة والهوية والاستمرارية التاريخية والتماسك الاجتماعي عبر عصور شاسعة من الزمن، وهي طقس استعادة للمدينة كوطن أسطوري. قصة اليهود هي قصة منفى تتكرر بلا نهاية؛ سرديات الضحية التي يتم الاستيلاء عليها بسهولة في خدمة السلطة كأساطير للهوية الوطنية. من منظور الشعوب المحررة الخارجة من الظروف المفروضة للنضال ضد الاستعمار والبقاء على قيد الحياة بعد الهولوكوست، فإن الاحتفال بالعودة المجيدة من المنفى هو أمر ضروري ورائع.
كل ما أطلبه هو هذا، سؤال بسيط للنظر فيه حيث تبدأ طقوس الحداد العامة للأمة التي تم تنفيذها منذ ما يقرب من ألفي عام مرة أخرى كمطالبة وطنية بالسيادة والتي يستبعدها الآخرون ويهمش كل شيء آخر كاستفزاز وعنف رمزي؛ هل يعني عودة شعبٍ نفي شعبٍ آخر؟
احتفلت الإمبراطوريات الرومانية والعثمانية والبريطانية بغزواتها للمدينة المقدسة أيضًا، تلك المدينة التي تحمل الهوية المزدوجة للقدس والقدس.
هنا أُقدّم أغنية رثاءٍ لهذين الادعاءين التاريخيين، باعتبارهما ظلالًا يجب أن نخرج منها قبل أن نتجاوز قيود جلودنا لنرى حقائق الآخرين.
فلنتذكر، ولنستخدم ألمنا لننفتح على ألم الآخرين، هنا في هذه الأرض التي هُجرت قدسيتها، وأصبحت الأحلام كوابيس، حيث فرّق التاريخ شعبًا واحدًا في خدمة سلطة أولئك الذين يُزيّفوننا ويستعبدوننا.
لا يهود، ولا فلسطينيون، فقط أناسٌ مثلنا، والخيارات التي نتخذها حول كيفية الترحيب بالغريب ونصبح بشرًا معًا.
السلام علينا جميعًا.
أغنية القدس والقدس
الحجارة هنا قديمة، ومليئة بالذكريات. غالبًا ما تُدوّي صرخات الموتى المُكتمة، صمتٌ مُريعٌ مُرعب، وفمٌ فاغرٌ يُهدد بابتلاعنا جميعًا في أعماقِ ظلامٍ ويأسٍ لا نهاية لهما، وتواريخَ ضائعةٍ للمُمحَين.
كيف لنا أن نصرخ بلا فم؟ كيف لنا أن نتشبثَ بشظايا إنسانيتنا المسروقة بلا أيادٍ؟ كيف لنا أن نتهمَ قاتلينا ونحن رمادٌ لا شيء، بلا كيانٍ ولا عائلةٍ تحملُ حقائقنا المكتوبةَ في أجسادهم؟ كيف لنا أن نُحزنَ وقد ضاعت أسماؤنا من الذاكرةِ والتاريخ؟
من سيقفُ في أماكننا ويشهد، وأصواتُهم جوفاءٌ كقشورِ الزيزِ التي تُهبّ عليها الرياحُ، والتي غنّتْ بنفسها تمامًا؟ في خراب أحلامنا البائس هذا، انكسر تيار إنسانيتنا إلى حدوده، ومن هذا التحطيم، تنبثق مدينة اللانهائي لا كمدينة واحدة بل كمدينة اثنتين، شظايا مرآة مكسورة تعكس بعضها بعضًا بلا حدود، قصور مُثُلنا المُتلألئة وهوة نفيها، تدور كوجهي عملة الاحتمالات.
يبدأ كسر العالم وينتهي هنا في هذا المكان من الحقائق والأكاذيب، والرؤى والأوهام، والمعجزات والجنون، هذه القشرة من ذكرياتنا التي تُدعى القدس.
We wander lost in the Wilderness of Mirrors, lies and illusions, propaganda and repression of dissent, the silencing of witness and mockery, and sadly this is nothing new or unique.
What remains to be said?
Professor Levine, Administrator of the Face Book group All Along The Watchtower, has issued an instruction on the most recent of such events, which has provoked a torrent of backlash as all uses of social force creates its own Resistance. Possibly to the point where we have reached consensus within our totally siloed communities of political ideology, having become polarized beyond listening to each other much less public debate to seek the truth, rendering the scraps of our intellectual life as mere instruments of confirmation bias and drowning us all in the white noise of outrage and the trauma of empathy fatigue and despair.
The terms of the Directive: “Please no more posts on Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension. It is important, but the thread is filled with them. Other important issues are happening and need our attention. Thanks.”
To this I reply; OK. You know I was writing a scathing diatribe on this, but you’re right its not news in Trump’s America. So few of our normalities remain yet to be violated, one runs out of new horrors to unmask.
Maybe you’re right, and the time for us to speak in words and not actions is passed, on this and far too many other issues.
State control of the media is a watershed issue, and a line from which there is no retreat if we are to save our democracy.
I ride at moonrise, friends. And if our rights guaranteed by the Constitution mean anything to you, rights of free speech and of the press which I summarize as the Four Primary Duties of a Citizen: Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority, you too will find ways to Resist, to refuse to submit and remain Unconquered, to disbelieve and disobey. As the line from Tombstone goes, I say to all those who would dehumanize and enslave us, to fascists and to tyrants throughout history and the world; “I’m coming, and Hell’s coming with me.”
Let none stand alone, for the black tide of fascist tyranny and terror engulfs the world and threatens us all with dehumanization. We must join together in solidarity of action as a United Humankind and guarantors of each other’s humanity and universal human rights, wherever men hunger to be free.
In the words of Elie Wiesel, “Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe”.
But with America a captured state of the Fourth Reich, fascism has a force multiplier and sponsor state from which the Nazi revival and reconquest of the world may be launched, already begun in Ukraine and Palestine as the twin major fronts of the Third World War. So here we must begin, and draw a line against the dark.
As Picard’s line in Star Trek: First Contact goes; “We’ve made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far and no further! And I will make them pay for what they’ve done!”
The world should have learned long ago that any compromise with evil is a form of danegeld we cannot pay, and when a tyrant says “This is my last territorial demand”, the time has come to bring a Reckoning and purge our destroyers from among us.
First we must bring a public Reckoning with the criminality, monstrosity, and immoral degenerate cruelty of the subject whom our Jesters have been fired by their plutocrat toadies of fascist tyranny for mocking, Charlie Kirk. As written in his Substack newsletter by John Pavlovitz, in an article entitled The Shameful Christian Idolatry and Fraudulent Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk;
“• Kirk had claimed that passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a “huge mistake” that has now become an “anti-white weapon”.
• During a September 2024 episode of the debate show Surrounded, Kirk stated that even if his 10-year-old daughter became pregnant due to rape, she would be forced to carry the baby to term.
• On a January 3rd, 2024, episode of his show, Kirk continued his incessant verbal assaults on women of color, saying “If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder, is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?
• During an April 5, 2023, appearance at the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church, Kirk said, “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal.”
• In March of 2024, Kirk said on his show: The great replacement strategy, which is well underway every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.
• Kirk decried what he described as the “myth” of Martin Luther King Jr , calling him “awful” and “not a good person”, another time declaring him “a serial adulterer, an alleged rapist, a reparations proponent, and a race Marxist.”
• A fierce opponent of DEI initiatives designed to give underrepresented and marginalized communities equal opportunities, he “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.” (The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024)
• On an April 30th, 2025 episode of his show, Kirk reiterated his unapologetic Islamophobia, saying “large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.”
• In a 2024 episode of his show, Kirk quoted a Leviticus passage calling for gay people to be stoned to death, referring to it as “God’s perfect law,” and called for “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.”
• And though Jesus’ life and ministry overflowed with compassion for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, Kirk recently said, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new-age term that does a lot of damage.”
I’m left to wonder and to ask professed Christians posthumously elevating Charlie Kirk as some hero of their faith:
Is this what you think followers of Jesus do?
Is this what Christianity is to you?
How can you call any of this Christlike?”
With the true character and purpose of Charlie Kirk established as a propagandist of hate and theocratic terror, let us now interrogate and problematize the function of comedy as the unmasking of tyrants, the witness of history, free speech which is the keystone of democracy and hate speech as an instrument of its subversion, and the sacred calling to pursue the truth.
In this case, our mad King Lear has taken no counsel from his Jesters, leaving us all inmates of an asylum ruled by its most depraved lunatics.
As Robert Reich has written; “Friends, The one thing Trump can’t take is a joke, especially one at his expense.
Yesterday — one day after ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s show off the air “indefinitely,” after pressure from the chairman of Trump’s Federal Communications Commission — Trump said federal regulators should revoke broadcast licenses over late-night hosts who speak negatively about him.
“They’re giving me all this bad press, and they’re getting a license,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “I would think maybe their license should be taken away.”
It was bad enough in the early 1950s when the U.S. government criminalized certain speech during Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunts. Those witch hunts were directed at alleged members of the Communist Party who supposedly posed a threat to America (although the vast majority of them were loyal Americans).
Late-night comedians pose no conceivable threat to America. They make people laugh.
But they do pose a potential threat to Trump.
CBS’s cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” was announced just days after Colbert slammed CBS’s parent company, Paramount, for giving Trump $16 million to settle Trump’s defamation suit — which Colbert called a “big, fat bribe” to get the FCC to allow Paramount to merge with and be acquired by Skydance Media.
Colbert was correct, of course.
Trump’s response to Colbert’s cancellation? “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”
Kimmel was next, and it’s probably not coincidental that ABC has also been a target of Trump’s defamation ire, finally settling with him for the same amount, $16 million.
Trump’s response to Jimmy Kimmel’s cancellation this week? “Great news for America.” Trump then added, “[T]hat leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC.”
What does Trump have against late-night comedians?
For as long as anyone can remember, they’ve been a source of jokes about those in power. In the wake of Kimmel’s firing, David Letterman, the longtime late-night host, said he’d routinely beat up on president after president over the years, and “not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency. Everyone sort of understood [it was] in the name of humor.”
But Trump hates to be the object of humor. Some deep part of his reptilian brain understands that humor can be a more powerful antidote to tyranny than any other form of criticism.
Laughter doesn’t just entertain, it subverts. Humor undermines tyrannical power that relies on projecting an image of inevitability and invincibility, by making a tyrant appear weak and vulnerable. Check one against Trump.
Laughter also undermines fear, which is used by tyrants to maintain control. When the public laughs at a leader, his oppressive control weakens. Check two against Trump.
Finally, humor can remind people they’re not alone. When a joke is widely shared, it reveals that opposition is widespread, which can encourage and validate resistance. Check three against Trump.
At some level, Trump understands this.
It’s also true that Trump’s fragile ego can’t stand to be ridiculed.
Anyone who watched the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner got a glimpse of how much Trump hates being mocked. President Obama and Seth Meyers spent nearly five minutes roasting Trump over his promotion of the “birther” conspiracy theory. The audience roared. But Trump appeared to seethe. Some of his biographers have speculated that this event was a key factor in his decision to run for president in 2016.
Finally, Trump seems constitutionally unable to recognize humor.
Unlike John F. Kennedy, whose wit encouraged us to laugh with him, or Ronald Reagan, whose funny asides endeared him to many who disagreed with his politics, Trump is humorless.
He doesn’t laugh. He rarely smiles. He occasionally tells a humorous story at the expense of someone or some group he dislikes but he is incapable of self-deprecating humor.
We don’t laugh with Trump. We only laugh at him.
In 2018, during his speech at the United Nations, his claim that “in less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country” drew loud guffaws from world leaders. (Taken aback, Trump responded, “Didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s okay.”)
For all these reasons, Trump’s war on late-night comedians may be his undoing.
It’s one thing to declare war on crime or undocumented workers or even liberals. But everyone loves to laugh.
As Letterman said, “the institution of the President of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show, you know you can’t go around firing somebody because you’re fearful [that they’ll get a laugh]. That’s just not how this works.”
Therefore let us practice the Four Primary Duties of a Citizen; Question Authority, Expose Authority, Mock Authority, and Challenge Authority.
When they come for one of us, as they always have and will, let them be met with all of us. And when they come for the jesters who speak truths inconvenient to power and authority, let us all become jesters and give our naked emperors no space of legitimacy or hold upon us.
As written by Oliver Holmes in The Guardian, in an article entitled For comedians around the world, the laughs often end as democracy fades; “The exiled Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef has experienced firsthand how intolerant governments can silence political satire. And he had a short message this week for those living in an age of Donald Trump’s free speech clampdown: “My Fellow American Citizens,” he wrote on X. “Welcome to my world.”
In his attacks on the most prominent of American satirists, the US president has joined a cadre of illiberal and sensitive leaders around the world who will not tolerate a joke.
The latest target of what critics say is a campaign to silence dissenting voices was Jimmy Kimmel, who had his late-night ABC talkshow suspended after government pressure. The removal, weeks after the rival network CBS cancelled Stephen Colbert’s satirical show, follows other Trump-led crackdowns on media and academia.
Political foes of the US president say the diminishing space for free speech shows Trump’s America is moving towards authoritarianism. Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking to MSNBC, said the country was on a path towards becoming more like oppressive regimes in Russia and Saudi Arabia. “This is just another step forward,” he said.
From Egypt’s military ruler, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, to India’s populist prime minister, Narendra Modi, the laughs often end for comedians as democracy dwindles.
One of the most famous global comedians to have his life turned upside down by his political satire is Youssef, who first found fame with a TV show panning the Egyptian regime.
Known as the “Egyptian Jon Stewart” in reference to the US talkshow host whom he was inspired by (and looks like), Youssef is a former heart surgeon who became a household name.
But his satire made him the target of two opposing governments. He was first arrested in April 2013, accused of insulting Islam and Egypt’s then president. Months later, when Sisi took power by force, Youssef had to cancel his show and flee the country.
Youssef has said his struggle was as much against Egypt’s cloying, conservative culture as its repressive leaders. “We didn’t have a space for satire in Egypt. We carved out our own space. We had to fight for it,” he said in a 2015 interview.
“And because there’s no platform, no space or infrastructure for that kind of satire to be accepted, we were basically pushed out … We are up against generations of people who don’t have this kind of mindset. That’s why it was an uphill battle for us.”
Comedians elsewhere have often found themselves caught up in nationalist fervour.
In India, which has a history of a lively and relatively free public discourse, critics of Modi argue space to criticise the policies of his rightwing nationalist government is shrinking.
Comedians and comedy venues have increasingly been caught in the crosshairs since the rise of his Hindu Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which has ruled for more than a decade.
A Muslim comedian was detained by police for weeks in 2021 for allegedly vulgar jokes insulting Hindu gods – despite never having performed at the show. The comedian Vir Das faced a backlash later the same year and police reports filed by BJP officials after a monologue that dealt with the country’s contradictions on women’s rights and religion.
Police in Mumbai registered a criminal case against a comedian in 2017 over a tweet of a photo of Modi modified by Snapchat’s popular dog filter, giving him a canine nose and ears.
Similar cases have come out in Russia, including a standup of Azerbaijani origin and a citizen of Belarus, Idrak Mirzalizade, who was detained for 10 days and later banned from the country for a joke about open racism in Russia.
Comedy, it seems, can also be treated by some as a transnational crime.
The Turkish government asked for the prosecution of a German comedian in 2016 for performing a satirical poem about its president. In the late-night programme screened by the German state broadcaster ZDF, Jan Böhmermann sat in front of a Turkish flag beneath a small, framed portrait of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, reading out a poem that accused the president of repressing minorities and “kicking Kurds”.
Erdoğan’s lawyer Michael Hubertus von Sprenger wanted to enforce a complete ban on the poem, and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor at the time, was widely criticised for appearing to give in to Ankara’s demands.
Böhmermann said at the time he felt Merkel had “filleted me [and] served me up for tea” to Erdoğan, and that she risked damaging freedom of speech in Germany. Charges brought against him were later dropped and he was given police protection.”
Who do we want to become, we humans; slaves and tyrants or a free society of equals? And how much of our humanity are we willing to trade for the chance of such futures?
What of ourselves can we not afford to lose, without also losing who we are? How much of our humanity can we claw back from the darkness in refusal to submit to those who would enslave us, and in solidarity with each other?
We must each of us face our own Gate of Fire, as did the Spartans at Thermopylae, and choose.
What are we worth, if we permit ruthless bandit kings to commit atrocities, plunder, and enslave others?
What is western civilization worth, if we will not live up to our fine words? And fine words they remain, such as these written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, a synthesis and revisioning of ideas from Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau; “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
What is America, if not a guarantor of democracy and our universal human rights, and a beacon of hope to the world?
Let us reply with the words written by J.R.R. Tolkien between 1937 and 1955 in his luminous reimagination of the Second World War and the conflict of dominion which immediately followed it between tyranny and democracy, first against fascism and then between the allies who defeated it as spheres of dominion and systems of economic and political organization but both for different dreams of a free society of equals, in the iconic speech of Aragorn at the Black Gate in The Return of the King which unites ethos, logos, pathos, and kairos; “A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight.”
Join us.
Picard, Star Trek First Contact
“The line must be drawn here, and I will make them pay for what they’ve done.”
Tombstone “I’m coming, and Hell’s coming with me.”
This Day We Fight: Aragorn’s Speech at the Black Gate
Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Stephen Colbert, and now Jimmy Kimmel….
THANK YOU for your willingness to tell the truth, no matter the consequence.
Americans are ‘deer in the headlights’ in face of Trump assault on free speech, Maria Ressa tells Jon Stewart: Nobel prize winner says US institutions have collapsed much quicker than expected under the Trump administration
Late-night show hosts decry suspension of Kimmel’s show: ‘Blatant assault on freedom of speech’: Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and David Letterman criticize ABC’s parent company, Disney and FCC chief Brendan Carr
December 11 2023 What is Hate Speech? What is Anti-Semitism? Who Decides What Is Permitted, and How Shall We Enforce Limits On Each Other’s Freedoms? Case of the Repression of Dissent By Universities Beholden to Special Interest Money
February 26 2021 A Victory for Free Speech and Journalism as a Sacred Calling to Pursue the Truth: America Lays a Charge of Murder Against Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi
April 28 2023 Tucker Carlson, Voice of the Fourth Reich and Nazi Ideology in the Era of Traitor Trump, Is Disavowed by Fox and Now Free to Run For the Presidency
September 15 2025 A Crack In the MAGA Wall of Hate: Ideological Fracture Between Turning Point Christian Identity Theocratic Patriarchal Sexual Terrorists and Groyper White Supremacist Terrorists Produces the Assassination of Charlie Kirk, and a Letter to New Resistance Fighters
Let us celebrate and bear forward into the future the glorious hope of a free society of equals which has been renewed for us all in the Occupy movement which began ten years ago this week as Occupy Wall Street.
Why do we need leaders, rulers, masters? If we begin with the premises that no one is better than any other by reason of birth, and that the subjugation of some of us by others is always unjust, there is no justification for elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege, nor for hierarchies of membership and exclusionary otherness, nor identitarian divisions and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil which weaponize fear and hate in service to power, nor for the centralization of authority and power in the carceral state and its use of force and control by those who would enslave us.
Are humans good or bad by nature?
I believe that humans are primarily social constructions wherein our uniqueness is an unfolding of historical processes and the struggle to become human versus systems of oppression, that our souls are ephemera among a sea of universal being in ceaseless processes of change, and that the negative emotions such as grief are a biosocial tax on individuals whose purpose is to drive us together to meet threats collectively and distribute the costs of survival, that we are mutually interdependent and therefore by our nature each of us is our brothers keeper.
I do not believe in the theory of the innate depravity of man which is the basis of all law, derived from the doctrine of original sin, that without the restraining force of law we become degraded to a subhuman state driven by barbarian atavisms of instinct and the most ruthless becomes king. Nor is this a desirable or just end; for authority maximizes disparity and inevitably collapses, as our civilization did in World War One and is now falling and being recreated.
Masters are superfluous to the needs of the slaves who do the work; let us be done with them, and with their carceral states of police, prisons, borders, and laws; with the tyranny of other peoples ideas of virtue, the authorization of identities, the limits of normality, and the boundaries of the Forbidden. Let us renounce the use of social force and the praxis of law and order, for law serves power and order appropriates both power and freedom.
Order appropriates; Chaos autonomizes. As Guillermo del Toro wrote in Carnival Row; “Who is chaos good for? Chaos is good for us. Chaos is the great hope of the powerless.”
There is no just authority; it is nothing but a con game. Patriarchy, racism, and capitalism are a harmony of elite power which serves no interests but its own, and its lies and illusions are songs of enslavement, falsification, commodification, and dehumanization. As Dorothy spoke truth to the Wizard, “You’re just an old humbug.” Always pay attention to the man behind the curtain; he is lying, for he is the enemy.
In the words of Max Stirner; “Freedom cannot be granted; it must be seized.” As we reach toward the future possibilities of becoming human and a free society of equals, let us begin as we intend to end and achieve our vision of liberty and equality by practicing it in all that we do.
As written by Andrew Anthony in The Guardian in an article entitled We are the 99%; “Ten years ago that unifying slogan travelled around the world. Some attribute its origin to the economist Joseph Stiglitz, who first popularised the distinction between the 1% of people with great wealth and power and the rest of us. Others say that it was the late anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber who coined the phrase. But everyone agrees that it went global when it was voiced by demonstrators who gathered in lower Manhattan’s financial district on 17 September 2011.
What took place that day, and the two months to follow, would become known as Occupy Wall Street, a protest movement against economic inequality and injustice that spread to 28 other US cities, to European capitals and financial centres, including London, Paris and Berlin, as well as parts of South America and the far east. In total it’s said that there were more than 750 Occupy events around the world, featuring demonstrators ranging from a few tens in some places to many thousands in others.
Inspired by the Arab spring protests that had toppled several dictators in the Middle East, OWS was also a delayed reaction to the global financial crisis of 2008 that had ushered in an era of austerity.
“The one duty we owe to history,” said Oscar Wilde, anarchist and Irish rebel, “is to rewrite it.” In the limitless leisure of retrospect, any particular moment in time and space can become imbued with pivotal significance or be consigned to the dustbin of historical dead ends. A decade on, opinions about OWS remain starkly polarised among both observers and participants.”
For myself, the Occupy Movement is “a transformative event in contemporary US history, a popular uprising against the power of corporate America that helped shift the Democratic party leftwards, enable Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign and the election of self-proclaimed socialist politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. By this reckoning, it was also the original leaderless social media-organised movement on which #MeToo and Black Lives Matter would be modelled.”
Progenitor of nonhierarchical social movements whose object is the reimagination and transformation of whole systems, Occupy Wall Street was a watershed moment in human history which reframed public discourse as a Forum of Athens and centered that discourse in the context of a free society of equals.
Leaderless revolution also deauthorizes narratives of human being, meaning, and value and evades the central problem of revolution itself; the centralization of power under a charismatic authority figure and the reproduction of social force and control. The substitution of tyrants changes nothing in the nature of power itself; and this is what we must change if we are to become free.
Occupy Wall Street brought both ideological and organizational change to people’s liberation movements; became the M-15 movement in Spain and the anti-austerity movements in Greece, then throughout Europe and the world, and found new forms in the three successive movements which challenged elite power in its triadic forms as patriarchy, racist fascism, and capitalism in the #metoo, Black Lives Matter, and Extinction Rebellion- Fridays for Future green protests. It also revitalized global democracy as nonviolent anarchy in the Autonomous Zones movement and the call to Occupy City Hall.
As I wrote in my post of June 11 2020, Utopia Now: Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone; Marvels and jubilation in the streets, a carnival of transgressions of the Forbidden and masquerades of possible identities and futures of becoming human, anarchy and chaos and joy, running amok and being ungovernable, and the frightening of the horses; come and dance with us, America. Come find your heart and be free.
Whosoever remains unconquered is free. For each of us who defies injustice and tyranny, who resists subjugation, dehumanization, and enslavement, who questions, mocks, and challenges authority, becomes an agent of Liberty who cannot be silenced, and who passes the torch of freedom as an uncontrollable catalyst of change to everyone with whom we interact, and thereby can never be truly defeated.
Each of us who in resistance become Unconquered and a bearer of Liberty are an Autonomous Zone, and this is the key to our inevitable victory. We ourselves are the power which state terror and tyranny cannot conquer.
These were days of glory and of freedom, of luminous transgressions and the exaltation of the unconquerable human spirit, of truthtelling and revelation, of the performance of unauthorized identities as guerilla theatre and of communal celebrations of our diversity and the limitless possibilities of human being and meaning, of the ecstatic rapture and vision of living beyond all boundaries, in which nothing is Forbidden.
Such liberations are truly endless and without limit, unbounded in time and space, for in refusal to submit to authority we become Unconquered and free as self created beings and Living Autonomous Zones, each of us bearers of the Torch of Liberty and its Promethean Fire.
Let us question, expose, mock, and challenge authority; let us incite, provoke, and disturb; let us run amok and be ungovernable.
Let us be bringers of chaos, joy, transformation, and revolution.
As I wrote in my post of June 21 2021, The Hope of Humankind: On Becoming Living Autonomous Zones as Agents of Chaos and Transformative Change; A friend has written in despair of our significance and hope for the liberation of humankind, of the impactfulness of our lives and our struggles which balance the flaws of our humanity against the monstrous and vast forces of a system of dehumanization, falsification, and commodification; for to be human is to live in a state of existential crisis and struggle for the ownership of ourselves.
Today is the birthday of Jean Paul Sartre, and so this event finds me reading once again his magnificent reimagination of Jean Genet in Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr; Genet who set me on my life’s path with the Oath of the Resistance in Beirut during the summer of 1982.
Israeli soldiers had set fire to the houses on my street, and called for people to come out and surrender. They were blindfolding the children of those who did and using them as human shields.
We had no other weapon than the empty bottle of champagne we had just finished with our breakfast of strawberry crepes; I asked “Any ideas?”, at which he shrugged and said “Fix bayonets?”
And then he gave me a principle of action by which I have lived for thirty nine years now; “When there is no hope, one is free to do impossible things, glorious things.”
He asked me if I was going to surrender, and I said no; he smiled and replied, “Nor will I.” And so he swore me to the Oath he devised in 1940 in Paris at the beginning of the Occupation for such friends as he could gather, reworded from the oath he had taken as a Legionnaire, which France modeled on the oath of the Jesuits; not to a figure of authority like a pope or a king, not to a flag or any symbol or institution of government, but to each another and to an idea of solidarity in struggle. He said it was the finest thing he ever stole; “We swear our loyalty to each other, to resist and yield not, and abandon not our fellows.” So it was that I became the bearer of a tradition now over eighty years old and forged in the most fearsome and terrible conflict the world has ever known, shortly before I expected to be burned alive in the first of many Last Stands.
This was the moment of my forging, this decision to choose death over subjugation, and ever since being struck by it I have been a bell, ringing. And like the Liberty Bell, I am broken open to the suffering of others and the flaws of our humanity. This has been the greatest gift I have ever been given, this empathy borne of a sacred wound, and I shall never cease the call to liberty, nor hesitate to answer as I am able the call for solidarity with others.
This morning I awoke to a call to identify the body of a friend missing and believed killed in Gaza by Israeli terrorists in the savage street fighting which followed the rocket attacks of last week, which I was unable to do; I searched for my friend in this sad and ruined form, like the skin of a wild thing which has sung itself utterly away, and could recognize nothing.
Where is my friend, agile, lithe, mercurial, fearless, insightful, quick and quick witted, who always had four scenarios running and three escape routes, who survived against impossible odds through improvisation and leveraging chaos, whose vision could discern true motives within the secret chambers of the human heart and play them like an instrument as songs of rapture and terror, who chameleon-like and protean could shift identities as needed and behind their masks move among her enemies unseen?
I never knew her true name; perhaps she no longer had one, as is true for so many of us who play the Great Game of futures and the possibilities of becoming human. She first entered my orbit during the victorious struggle of Hamas against al Qaeda for dominion of Gaza in August of 2009 in Rafah, an Egyptian Palestinian drawn into the maelstrom of war like countless others by family duty and vendetta.
Yet she said no to authority at great peril when she could have said yes and with relative personal safety become a slave, stood in solidarity with others when she could have run; this was a choice, one which confers agency, autonomy, and self-ownership as a seizure of power in a limited and deterministic context. Refusal to submit is the primary human act, one which cannot be taken from us, wherein we become Unconquered and free, and able to liberate others.
So it is that we may escape the wilderness of mirrors in which we wander, a realm of lies and illusions, captured and distorted images, falsification and the theft of the soul. For the authentic self, the image which we seize and claim as our own, flies free of its mad circus of seductions and traps. Hence we achieve our true selves and form, in rapture and exaltation as beings of our own uniqueness.
Impossible that such grandeur could be reduced to its material form, like the abandoned shell of a fantastic sea creature which has moved on.
The lines spoken by Hamlet while holding the skull of his friend Yorick came unbidden to my thoughts; “Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning?”
For twelve years you danced with death, and danced away laughing, until today.
Farewell, my friend; I’ll see you in the eyes of the defiant ones, who bear your fire onward into the unknown, and with it I hope your laughter. Our successors will need both fire and laughter, if the future we win for them is to be equal to its price, and worth living in.
Our lives are like the dragon’s teeth sown in the earth by the Phoenician prince Cadmus from which warriors arise; from each, multitudes. For we live on as echoes and reflections in the lives of others, in the consequences and effects of our actions, in the good we can do for others which gathers force over time, and in the meaning, value, and possibilities we create.
How can choosing death and freedom be better than submission to authority and its weaponization of fear and force?
My experience of accepting death in confronting force and violence finds parallels in the mock executions of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Maurice Blanchot, and I’m not done challenging state terror and tyranny and forces of repression. I’m going to stand between people with guns and their victims in future, as I have many times in past, and here I find resilience among my motivating and informing sources; Sartre’s total freedom won by refusal to submit, and Camus’ rebellion against authority which renders force meaningless when met by disobedience, give me the ability to claw my way out of the ruins and make yet another Last Stand, beyond hope of victory or even survival.
And all who are mortal share these burdens with me.
We are all Nikolai Gogol’s hero in Diary of a Madman, caught in the wheels of a great machine he services, like Charlie Chaplin in his film Modern Times. But we know that we are trapped and enslaved, and we know how and why; we know the secrets of our condition which our masters would keep silent, and in refusing to be silent we can free ourselves and our fellows. This Michel Foucault called truth telling; a poetic vision of reimagination and sacred calling to pursue the truth which bears transformative power.
So here I offer all of you words of hope for moments of despair, the horror of meaninglessness, the grief of loss, and the guilt of survivorship.
Your voice has defied our nothingness, and resounds throughout the chasms of a hostile and dehumanizing world; gathering force and transformative power as it finds a thousand echoes, and begins to awaken refusal to submit to authority and to heal the pathology of our falsification and disconnectedness.
The voice of even one human being who bears a wound of humanity which opens him to the pain of others and who places his life in the balance with those of the wretched of the earth, the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased, who in resistance to tyranny and terror, force and control, becomes unconquered and free, such a voice of liberation is unstoppable as the tides, an agent of reimagination and transformation which seizes the gates of our prisons and frees the limitless possibilities of becoming human.
Despair not and be joyful, for we who are Living Autonomous Zones help others break the chains of their enslavement simply by condition of being as well as action; for we violate norms, transgress boundaries of the Forbidden, expose the lies and illusions of authority, and render the forces of repression powerless to compel obedience.
This is the primary revolutionary struggle which precedes and underlies all else; the seizure of ownership of ourselves from those who would enslave us.
Such is the hope of humankind.
Occupy Wall Street: the story behind seven months of protest, film
“In September last year, anti-corporate activists descended on a small park in lower Manhattan and Occupy Wall Street was born. As protesters ready for a spring resurgence, film-maker Kat Keene Hogue looks back at more than six months of Occupy, a movement that spread from Zuccotti Park to over 100 cities around the world”
Our leaders have betrayed us to the Nothing; the cruel and merciless racist genocide, ethnic cleansing, and terror of a theocratic and amoral regime designed for fiendish dual purposes; the imperial conquest and dominion of her neighbors and the Final Solution of the Palestinians.
This and this alone does Israel now represent, for the capture of the state by a settler regime to whom only their own fellow Jews are truly human and the subversion of democracy, our universal human rights, and the death of the dream of Israel as a refuge from fascism and hate crime is now total and nearly final. The dream of a new Sepharad dies, and in its place rises a carceral state of force and control called by Netanyahu “a Middle Eastern Sparta” based on Jewish Identity politics, the weaponization of faith in service to power, the centralization of power to tyranny, and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil.
With the Gaza War and its myriads of atrocities and crimes against humanity, directly modeled on Putin’s destruction of Mariupol and which both follow the doctrine of Total War as crafted by Hitler and Franco and tested at Guernica, Israel has become a mirror of the death camps her people once survived, a nation of walls and internal borders, quasi-slave labor enforced by a system of barricaded slums modeled on the Bantustans of Apartheid South Africa, the Nazi camps, and America’s Indian reservations in strange recursion, and have a permanent war economy which exports globally instruments of the repression of dissent and universal surveillance.
Israel has learned the wrong lessons from the Nazis. Here only fear, power, and force are real and have meaning, and we are all threatened by dehumanization and subjugation to a wicked and malign authority which has abandoned human being, meaning, and value for power enforced by terror, abjection, despair, and learned helplessness.
No matter where you begin with hierarchies and taxonomies of elite belonging and exclusionary otherness, you always end up at the gates of Auschwitz.
What must be done, as Tolstoy and Lenin asked with such different results; the ideology of nonviolent Resistance which Gandhi and Martin Luther King used in victorious seizures of power, and the Russian and all subsequent Revolutions of class struggle and socialist liberation?
In this horrific event of mass terror a great truth is revealed; the liberty and human rights of one people is identical to that of all people, especially those of an Occupied or colonized people and of the imperialist-colonialist people who claim ownership of them, for the imperials are also enslaved by their own empire.
Beware of those who claim to speak and act in your name, for this is a primary strategy of subjugation and the manufacture of consent; especially when coupled with unforgiveable acts committed in your name.
Israel has committed many such unforgiveable acts of dehumanization against the people of Palestine, because they worship the Infinite differently and are less white in the flags of their skins. Yet Israel was founded as a democracy, and the apologists of state terror both in Israel and in America are glad to behave as if this were still true and rally vast wealth and power to the Israeli state and war machine in the name of the Jewish people whom they no longer defend, but use the language of defense, security, and just cause to authorize and legitimate brutal repression and crimes against humanity.
This has all unfolded over seventy years, but one year ago this week something new has happened which changes everything; they have killed Americans, volunteer medics and famine relief workers, among their victims of mass random civilian terror.
We American are uniquely positioned to influence Israel and end this war of genocide and ethnic cleansing, for we are the primary sponsors of Israeli tyranny and terror. They are our colony and proxy state in America’s monopolization of oil as a strategic asset which confers us our global hegemony and dominion, and this is instrumental to the business of empire.
As I wrote last year of this Rashomon Gate event; As of this week our taxes not only buy the deaths of children in Palestine, but also the deaths of our fellow Americans.
Netanyahu believes he can commit any crime against humanity without losing American money, arms, and political cover, because we are caught on the horns of a dilemma in our elections; we must unite in solidarity to deny Trump the capture of the state lest we lose our democracy utterly and forever, but the Democratic Party thus far refuses to reign in our wayward vassal for fear of losing votes and money. Netanyahu and Trump almost certainly conspired together in the tragedy of Black Saturday to do exactly this, hand Trump the election together with manufacturing a casus belli for Netanyahu’s conquest and genocide of Palestine and the globalization of the conflict in which a Zionist Empire may arise.
There is but one rule in American politics; nobody messes with the grift.
What measures have we taken to bring peace and justice to the twin nations of Israel and Palestine? Genocide Joe refused to vote to charge Netanyahu with genocide, then armed him with the weapons to commit it; in all fairness, this is nothing new, and continues seventy years of American policy. We missed our best chance at defusing this war when we refused to enact Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanction against Israel; again nothing new, as this was what we were protesting for when Governor Reagan ordered the police to fire on the students on Bloody Thursday 1969 in People’s Park Berkeley, I a nine year old child holding my mothers hand when she offered a bouquet of flowers to a policeman who replied by cocking and aiming a shotgun at her. We were saved by a police grenade thrown into the crowd, as all devolved into death and chaos; fifty five years later our universities are still using police terror to repress dissent regarding our investment and arming of Israel versus Palestine.
America has no policy of regime change in Israel, has not brought Netanyahu and his regime to trial, has not used BDS to silence the bombs, and now allows the murder of American citizens with impunity.
Kamala laughs; but this time she is laughing at us. We need her to break the power of the fascists who plan to overthrow democracy, and she knows this and that at this point we cannot disavow her or fail to vote for her; but we can keep both democracy and our universal human rights if she and the Democratic Party change their policy of arming and funding Israel without accountability for how those weapons are used. We must bring this to the front of the election as its defining issue; Kamala must lead the change, for the principle of human rights is of equal importance with the preservation of democracy.
Biden failed this test, and abandoned the idea of human rights by refusing to change policy, use BDS, arrest Netanyahu, or stop sending weapons of mass destruction for purposes of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and we purged him from the election because of it, on the pretext of being an imbecile rather than a conspirator in genocide as he was. Yet the Democratic Party wants to ignore the elephant in the room, and makes no mention of the most crucial issue on the ballot other than democracy and abortion, our complicity in crimes against humanity; this is a mistake.
Trump of course is far worse, for he is an active partner and ally of Netanyahu, possibly a co-conspirator as well, who hopes to divide and conquer America by making us complicit in the unforgivable crimes of Israel. This we must resist and meet with solidarity and a United Humankind, but we must also recognize and acknowledge the complicity of the Democratic as well the Republican Parties in the crimes against humanity of the state of Israel.
Our lives count as nothing against the power offered by Zionist paymasters; we have not even declared AIPAC a terrorist organization.
Now is the moment to free ourselves from capture of the state by forces inimical to our humanity and our liberty. If we cannot do so now, rallying to the bloodied shirt of our fellow Americans, we never will.
Among the legacies of the past which we drag around behind us like an invisible reptilian tail, there are those which must be kept and those we must escape, and if we are very lucky they are not always the same.
As written in the Editorial of The Guardian, entitled The Guardian view on Israel’s booby-trap war: illegal and unacceptable; “In the second world war, guerrilla forces scattered large quantities of booby-trapped objects likely to be attractive to civilians. The idea was to cause widescale and indiscriminate death. The Japanese manufactured a tobacco pipe with a charge detonated by a spring-loaded striker. The Italians produced a headset that blew up when it was plugged in. More than half a century later, a global treaty came into force which “prohibited in all circumstances to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material”. Has anyone told Israel and its jubilant supporters that, as Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group points out, it is a signatory to the protocol?
On Tuesday, pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 12 people – including two children and four hospital workers – and wounding thousands more. This situation is directly analogous to the historical practices that current global arms treaties explicitly prohibit. US media say Israel was behind the attack, and the country has the motive and the means to target its Iran-backed enemies. Israel’s leaders have a long history of carrying out sophisticated remote operations, ranging from cyber-attacks, suicide drone attacks and remote-controlled weapons to assassinate Iranian scientists. On Wednesday it was reported that Israel blew up thousands of two-way personal radios used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, killing nine and wounding hundreds.
This week’s attacks were not, as Israel’s defenders claimed, “surgical” or a “precisely targeted anti-terrorist operation”. Israel and Hezbollah are sworn enemies. The current round of fighting has seen tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the Israel-Lebanon border because of the Shia militant group’s rocket and artillery attacks.
However, the pager bombs were clearly intended to target individual civilians – diplomats and politicians – who were not directly participating in hostilities. The plan appeared to produce what lawyers might call “excessive incidental civilian harm”. Both these arguments have been levelled at Russia to claim Moscow was committing war crimes in Ukraine. It’s hard to say why the same reasoning is not applied to Israel – apart from that it is a western ally.
Such disproportionate attacks, which seem illegal, are not only unprecedented but may also become normalised. If that is the case, the door is opened for other states to lethally test the laws of war. The US should step in and restrain its friend, but Joe Biden shows no sign of intervening to stop the bloodshed. The road to peace runs through Gaza, but Mr Biden’s ceasefire plan – and the release of hostages – has not found favour with either Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Hamas.
The worry is that Israel’s actions lead to a disastrous all-out conflict that would pull the US into a regional fight. The world stands on the edge of chaos because Mr Netanyahu’s continuing hold on power and consequent insulation from corruption charges depend largely on his nation being at war. None of this is possible without US complicity and assistance. Perhaps it is only after its presidential election that the US will be able to say that the price of saving Mr Netanyahu’s skin should not be paid in the streets of Lebanon or by Palestinians in the occupied territories. Until then, the rules-based international order will continue to be undermined by the very countries that created the system.”
As written by William Christou in The Guardian, in an article entitled ‘Sophisticated evil’: Beirut medics and civilians horrified by pager attacks
People describe panic when explosions started and ‘apocalyptic’ scenes inside hospitals overwhelmed by injured patients; “Two beeps and a pause was the only warning Yusuf got. He turned around to face the noise, thinking it was one of his medical instruments, but instead was met with an explosion, throwing shrapnel into his leg. His patient fared much worse.
“The patient lost consciousness; he started bleeding. His face, neck and lips were burned. He had knife-like cuts, as if he was hit by a rocket,” Yusuf, a doctor from Beirut speaking under a pseudonym, said while waiting for an injured friend outside a Beirut hospital on Tuesday night. He rolled up his trouser leg to show a small wound, the remnants of his patient’s exploded pager.
Tuesday’s attacks, which targeted pagers used by members of Hezbollah and have been attributed to Israel, left at least 2,800 injured and 12 dead, including two children and a healthcare worker. The scale was “far greater” than that of the Beirut port blast some four years earlier, the largest non-nuclear explosion in human history, which left more than 7,000 injured, Lebanon’s health minister, Firas Abiad, said. Two-thirds of those wounded in the Tuesday’s attacks needed hospitalisation, a greater proportion even than those hurt in the port explosion, the minister explained.
On Wednesday, walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members for communication began to explode across Lebanon in a similar fashion to the previous day’s attacks. A video showed a blast suddenly striking a Hezbollah member during a funeral in Beirut for a fighter killed on Tuesday, knocking him down and sending the crowd running. At least 14 people have been killed by the walkie-talkie detonations and hundreds injured.
The wide-ranging attacks extended all the way to Syria, where at least four Hezbollah members were injured by pager explosions in al-Qalamoun, Damascus and Seida Zeinab, according to Fadel Abdulghani, the founder of the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
News of Tuesday’s attack trickled in at first, starting with information regarding a security incident in Beirut, then the southern city of Tyre, and the Bekaa valley. Soon it was all over the news, with pictures of people with mangled limbs and bloodied faces emerging from all over the country. The sound of ambulance sirens started and would continue non-stop, deep into the night.
Abiad issued a call for all health workers to go to their stations, and Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces asked citizens to stay off the streets so that ambulances could reach hospitals.
“I didn’t understand what was happening; the first thing I thought was that it was a terrorist attack,” said Ali, a 22-year-old trader from the Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp, interviewed while waiting outside a Beirut hospital for an injured friend on Tuesday night. “People started throwing their phones on the ground out of fear; they thought they would explode.”
Ali was in a popular market in Burj al-Barajneh when the explosions started. Though he did not hear them, their aftermath became quickly apparent.
“I saw a man trying to hold his face together; it had completely split. His eyes had popped out of his skull and blood was pouring out,” Ali said.
Hours after Tuesday’s explosions, the wounded were still being transported to hospitals. At Rizk hospital in Beirut, dozens of families waiting outside the emergency room, eager for any news of their family and friends inside. People crowded the doors of arriving ambulances, peering into windows to see if any loved ones were inside.
A woman collapsed to the ground, wailing after first responders had no information on the whereabouts of her family member. Ya Ali!” she cried, a religious exhortation, as men tried to soothe her.
“You see that one? That one came all the way from Abbasiyeh,” Ali said, pointing to an arriving ambulance that had travelled more than two hours to find a hospital with available beds.
Doctors described “apocalyptic” scenes inside emergency rooms, where young men, women and children alike poured in nonstop.
“I was in my house when I heard what happened, so I came back [to the hospital]. People were crying, shouting ‘I can’t see!’” an anaesthesiologist who worked at the Beirut Hôtel-Dieu de France hospital said on Wednesday morning under the condition of anonymity, as they were not authorised to speak to the press.
The doctor said that the injuries were unlike anything they had seen before, mainly wounded eyes and hands, a result of patients looking at their pagers before they exploded.
“Never do you have eye emergencies at this frequency. It’s transforming 2,000 people into disabled [people] at the same time,” another doctor at the same hospital said.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday that the attack could be a violation of international humanitarian law, through its use of pagers as booby traps, and that it had put civilians at risk.
“The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate … and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction,” Lama Fakih, the Middle East and north Africa director at HRW, said.
As families waited outside the hospital, individual volunteers emerged to distribute water bottles and manakeesh, a Lebanese flatbread. A line of people formed outside the hospital as people came to donate blood.
“I’m horrified by the level of sophisticated evil. It’s completely crazy,” said Maliha Raydan, a 50-year-old mother of two, while distributing supplies outside Rizk hospital. “We were wondering what we could do, so we thought it would be a good thing to do.”
The apparently limitless suspected reach of Israeli intelligence had instilled anxiety in Raydan and others, some of whom refused to speak to the press for fear it would make them a future target for Israel.
“By doing this today, they can get to anyone. They can get to us in our bedrooms. They breach all laws of war and humanity. And no one is stopping them,” Raydan said.
For others, fear was pushed aside by a deep anger – mainly at the indiscriminate nature of the attack.
“I am a medical worker, but the grudge I have now … I will insist on teaching it to my great-great-grandson. I was neutral, but now I’m going to take a side,” Yusuf said, stressing, however, that his resistance would be non-violent.”
The Guardian view on Israel’s booby-trap war: illegal and unacceptable
Torch of Liberty 