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
In a three day massacre between September 16 and 18 1982, one of the most horrific genocidal mass murders in history was perpetrated in the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps against the people of Palestine, which marked the beginning of twenty years of brutal Israel occupation of Lebanon.
What is the meaning of this anniversary of state terror and tyranny, imperial conquest and colonial dominion, and crimes against humanity?
Here was an atrocity perpetrated by the mighty against the powerless and the dispossessed as an instrument of the disruption and fracture of history, a holocaust performed by survivors of a parallel Holocaust because of how power works in the origins of evil as a recursive process of fear, power, and force; but also a classic example of state terror and war as a moral failure and the collapse of the legitimacy and authority of the state which changes the narrative and becomes the forge of a nation as a primary trauma, for the use of social force obeys Newton’s Third Law of Motion and creates resistance as its own counterforce.
Hamas and the leadership of a diverse wave of Resistance and liberation struggle was born in the wake of the Israeli atrocities committed in the conquest and Occupation of Lebanon, crucible of many like myself who refused to abandon our humanity, liberty, and solidarity with each other under threat of death by an enemy to whom only fellow Jews are truly human, some nameless and forgotten to history as am I and others national heroes whose deeds will echo through all time, and some who like the great Mahmoud Darwish and myself have processed our shared public grief, witness of history, and vision of a better future through writing and poetic vision, and Genet who set me on my life’s path with the Oath of the Resistance.
On such anniversaries as today we remember the tragedies, and honor the resistance.
Let us honor our sacred dead and those who fought in resistance to state terror and crimes against humanity, but let us also never forget the names of its perpetrators nor rest in our vigilance to see them brought to justice.
There is a debt we owe to, and a responsibility we bear for, our fellow human beings, if we are to remain human and avoid degradation to an animal state of atavisms of instinct and become shadows, bereft of our dimensionality and the innate powers which may sustain and exalt us; hope, love, and faith as solidarity with and loyalty to each other.
We must remember, and we must not be silent.
This is called Tikkun Olam in Judaism, repair of the world, a duty which binds us together, both with those who are like and those who are unlike us across vast gulfs of human being, meaning, and value and hierarchies and taxonomies of belonging and otherness. Of this I will tell you a secret; boundaries can also become interfaces.
This terrible anniversary of state terror and imperial conquest and tyranny roughly coincides with the Jewish New Year celebrations of Rosh Hashanah, this year October 2 to 4, and just before the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, this year from sunset on the 11th of October through the 12th, approximate with the actions of the state of Israel which led to the Second Intifada.
Despite all the prayers and rituals during these high holy days, I doubt the state of Israel will be doing much reparations to the people of Palestine, and quite a lot of valorizing national identities of blood, faith, and soil. Yesterday Netanyahu referred to his vision of a future Israel as “a Middle Eastern Sparta”. Beware those who claim to speak and act in your name, for this is a primary fascist strategy of subjugation and manufacture of consent.
Why must faith define boundaries and not interfaces, walls and not bridges?
Among the endless litany of woes and exemplars of fear weaponized in service to power by authority, the Sabra and Shatila Massacres remain to challenge our ideas of the brotherhood of humankind.
For this we must truly bring a Reckoning and an Atonement; but not for the legacies of the past, which must be Remembered, nor for our complicity in silence against injustice, which may be redeemed through action. We can do nothing for the dead; it is the living who must be avenged, and the future which must be redeemed.
Who is responsible for this terrible crime?
Planned and directed in personal meetings by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon, Mossad Director Nahum Admoni, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Director of Military Intelligence Yehoshua Saguy, Division Commander Beirut Amos Yaron, US diplomat Morris Draper acting under orders from President Ronald Reagan, President of Lebanon Bashir Gemayel who was a Jesuit educated C.I.A. operative recruited when he was a lawyer working in Washington D.C., Chief of Lebanese Military Intelligence Johnny Abdu, and Phalange leader Elie Hobeika, along with other representatives of Israeli-American interests and the Phalange, a quasi-fascist Christian Maronite militia founded by the newly elected President of Lebanon’s father. Gemayel rose to leadership by murdering the families of Lebanon’s former Presidents, bankrolled by Ronald Reagan at the request of Ariel Sharon, and became President on August 23 as a result of the June 6 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Thus the stage was set for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians who had been driven from their homes by Israel into the wretched refugee camps in Lebanon, where the survivors remain today, a precariat no less oppressed than that of Victor Hugo’s magisterial novel Les Miserables, and no less exalted with revolutionary fire.
How long must the dead and their descendants wait for justice?
In Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo, Seth Anziska writes “Under the leadership of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon, the Israeli government launched an invasion in June of that year partly on the pretext of stopping Palestinian militant rocket fire on the Galilee region of northern Israel. After the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, Israeli leaders had also become increasingly anxious about the power of the PLO and the growing links between Palestinians inside the occupied territories and across the Arab diaspora. The main focus of their concern was on Lebanon, where the PLO had relocated its center of operations from Jordan after an armed confrontation with King Hussein’s army in 1970–1971. Israeli strategists believed that targeting the PLO in Lebanon and forcing its withdrawal would accomplish several objectives: the quashing of Palestinian national aspirations for a homeland, the expulsion of Syria’s troops from Lebanon and the elimination of Syrian influence there, and the establishment of a client Maronite Christian state as a close ally.
Instead of entrenching Israeli dominance over its northern neighbor, the Lebanon War morphed into what some have called “Israel’s Vietnam.” In the midst of an already brutal civil war, the Israeli intervention resulted in the deaths of more than 600 Israeli soldiers and at least 5,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians—over 19,000 by Lebanese estimates that counted combatants as well. Closely coordinated with Maronite forces, Israel’s invasion soon devolved from being a limited incursion to a summer-long siege against the PLO’s stronghold in West Beirut. Unlike the wars in 1948, 1967, or 1973, Israel was unequivocally engaged in what Begin called a “war of choice.” Combining military force with psychological operations, Israeli forces inflicted heavy casualties inside an Arab capital for the first time, bombarding Palestinian positions from land, sea, and air, while occupying Lebanon’s international airport.
President Ronald Reagan, disturbed by the images of destruction, pushed his administration to negotiate an end to the fighting and to facilitate a peaceful evacuation of PLO fighters from the city to neighboring Arab states. The PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, had signaled that he and his men were willing to withdraw provided that the PLO had the requisite American guarantees of security for Palestinian civilians and Lebanese supporters who remained behind. Sharing the draft of the withdrawal agreement with Shafiq al-Hout, Arafat sounded a wistful note about the departure: “Beirut has given Palestine what no other Arab capital has. It has given and given, without asking for anything in return. And it never would ask. Nor should we make it ask. We should pay it back of our own free will.”
The first contingent of PLO fighters left the city on August 21, with Arafat and leading PLO officials departing on a Greek shipping vessel to Tunisia on August 30. In all, some 10,000 fighters left Lebanon by sea and land routes, pushing the PLO into still deeper exile. Even after the heaviest fighting ended, a protracted Israeli occupation of the south of the country lasted until 2000, reshaping the politics of the region. Syrian influence over the country continued, but increasingly it was supplanted by Iranian power with the rise of Hezbollah. Far from cementing Israel’s regional hegemony, the 1982 War ultimately undercut Israeli and American influence in the Middle East, while transforming perceptions of both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism around the globe.”
As Nabil Mohamad of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee wrote in al Jazeerah in 2017; “A fourth generation is now growing up in the squalid refugee camps in Lebanon. In Sabra and Shatila, most living spaces consist of two very small rooms: a bedroom, where the entire family sleeps, and a living room of sorts. There is no ventilation, and hardly any electricity. Most families use battery-powered lighting. Drinking tap water is prohibited, as it is full of bacteria and very salty – it actually corrodes pipes. There are poor sanitary conditions. Medications for all illnesses are in short supply. Narrow alleyways – some with sewage running through – wind through the camps. When it rains these small paths become muddy. Electrical wires hang from dwellings. Young men connect and reconnect wires; from time to time, someone is electrocuted. Foul odours emanate from those crowded conditions. Illness is rampant. The Palestinian refugees in Lebanon long to return from exile to the homeland they were expelled from but are not permitted to do so by Israel, simply because they are not Jewish.
If the international community is obliged to remedy its moral responsibility to the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre by working to end Israel’s occupation and other abuses of Palestinian rights, then the lives of my family members and the others we remember on this 35th year will not have been lost in vain.”
Let me now append my own witness of history here, for the days of this anniversary immerse me in memories, both those of which I cannot speak and those which I cannot bear alone.
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 undergraduate 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. Soldiers were roaming the streets like packs of feral 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. 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. Possibly this is all we truly own. 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 interpretations of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra by C.G. Jung, Maurice Blanchot, Georges Bataille, and others, 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 and blindfolding them 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, once we had escaped the burning house itself and blended into the crowds, 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. But I can’t fight them alone. 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.
And in my post on the tragedy of the Beirut port explosion, August 5 2020 Madness Death Illumination Transcendence: A Song of Beirut; 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 which features Khidr, the Islamic Trickster figure who is an immortal and is symbolized as green as an embodiment of the Garden of Paradise to which he is a gateway, 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, no matter who much we learn the unknown remains as vast as before, conserving ignorance. As developed in the anonymous Middle English work The Cloud of Unknowing and by Nicholaus of Cusa in Of Learned 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 and possibly of all forms of Abrahamic 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; though we may envision our possible futures we cannot know which among them will be realized. Maimonides argues that this is because the universe is continually destroyed and recreated with each moment, which preserves free will. Frank Herbert’s Dune is an extended thought experiment and allegory which problematizes the themes and questions of the story of Khidr in Sura 18.
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 loyalty test and initiation. He blushed at the first demands of his officer to the taunting of his fellows like the raucous cries of crows about to feast, 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.
Histories, Memories, Identities
Beirut, My City film and script, by Jocelyne Saab & Roger Assaf
18 سبتمبر 2025 ذكرى مجزرة شاتيلا وصبرا عام 1982 في لبنان
في مذبحة استمرت ثلاثة أيام في الفترة ما بين 16 و18 سبتمبر 1982، تم ارتكاب واحدة من أفظع عمليات القتل الجماعي في التاريخ في مخيمي شاتيلا وصبرا للاجئين ضد الشعب الفلسطيني، والتي كانت بمثابة بداية عشرين عامًا من الاحتلال الإسرائيلي الوحشي للبنان. .
ما معنى هذه الذكرى السنوية لإرهاب الدولة وطغيانها، والغزو الإمبراطوري والسيطرة الاستعمارية، والجرائم ضد الإنسانية؟
هنا كانت الفظائع التي ارتكبها الأقوياء ضد الضعفاء والمحرومين كأداة لتعطيل التاريخ وكسره، محرقة ارتكبها الناجون من محرقة موازية بسبب كيفية عمل القوة في أصول الشر كعملية خوف متكررة والقوة والقوة. ولكنه أيضًا مثال كلاسيكي على إرهاب الدولة والحرب باعتبارها فشلًا أخلاقيًا وانهيار شرعية وسلطة الدولة مما يغير السرد ويصبح صياغة الأمة كصدمة أولية، لأن استخدام القوة الاجتماعية يطيع نظرية نيوتن الثالثة. قانون الحركة ويخلق المقاومة كقوة مضادة خاصة به.
في مثل هذه المناسبات، مثل اليوم، نستذكر المآسي، ونكرم المقاومة.
دعونا نكرم موتانا المقدسين وأولئك الذين قاتلوا في مقاومة إرهاب الدولة والجرائم ضد الإنسانية، ولكن دعونا أيضًا ألا ننسى أبدًا أسماء مرتكبي هذه الجرائم ولا نبقى في يقظتنا لرؤيتهم يقدمون إلى العدالة.
هناك دين ندين به لإخواننا من البشر، ومسؤولية نتحملها، إذا أردنا أن نبقى بشرًا ونتجنب الانحطاط إلى حالة حيوانية من النزعات الغريزية الرجعية ونصبح ظلالاً، مجردين من أبعادنا والقوى الفطرية التي قد يعضدنا ويرفعنا؛ الأمل والحب والإيمان كتضامن وولاء لبعضنا البعض.
وعلينا أن نتذكر، ويجب ألا نصمت.
وهذا ما يسمى تيكون أولام في اليهودية، إصلاح العالم، وهو واجب يربطنا معًا، سواء مع أولئك الذين يشبهوننا أو أولئك الذين لا يشبهوننا عبر خلجان واسعة من البشر والمعنى والقيمة والتسلسلات الهرمية وتصنيفات الانتماء و الآخر. سأخبرك بسر عن هذا. يمكن أن تصبح الحدود أيضًا واجهات.
تتزامن هذه الذكرى الرهيبة لإرهاب الدولة والغزو الإمبراطوري والطغيان تقريبًا مع احتفالات رأس السنة اليهودية في رأس السنة اليهودية، في الخامس عشر إلى السابع عشر من سبتمبر هذا العام، وقبل يوم الكفارة مباشرةً، يوم الغفران، هذا العام بدءًا من غروب الشمس في الرابع والعشرين من شهر سبتمبر. أيلول/سبتمبر إلى الخامس والعشرين من أيلول/سبتمبر، بالتزامن مع أعمال دولة إسرائيل التي أدت إلى الانتفاضة الثانية.
على الرغم من كل الصلوات والطقوس خلال هذه الأيام المقدسة، أشك في أن دولة إسرائيل ستقدم الكثير من التعويضات لشعب فلسطين، والكثير من تثمين الهويات الوطنية للدم والإيمان والتربة. احذر من أولئك الذين يدعون أنهم يتحدثون ويتصرفون باسمك، فهذه استراتيجية فاشية أساسية للإخضاع وتصنيع الرضا.
لماذا يجب على الإيمان أن يحدد الحدود وليس الواجهات، والجدران وليس الجسور؟
ومن بين سلسلة لا نهاية لها من الويلات ونماذج الخوف التي استخدمتها السلطة كسلاح لخدمة السلطة، تظل مذبحة صبرا وشاتيلا تتحدى أفكارنا حول أخوة البشرية.
ولهذا يجب علينا حقًا أن نأتي بالحساب والتكفير؛ ولكن ليس من أجل إرث الماضي الذي يجب أن نتذكره، ولا من أجل تواطؤنا في الصمت ضد الظلم، والذي يمكن تعويضه من خلال العمل. لا يمكننا أن نفعل شيئا للموتى. إن الأحياء هم الذين يجب أن ينتقموا، والمستقبل هو الذي يجب أن يفدى.
ومن المسؤول عن هذه الجريمة النكراء؟
تم التخطيط لها وتوجيهها في اجتماعات شخصية من قبل رئيس الوزراء الإسرائيلي مناحيم بيغن، ووزير الدفاع أرييل شارون، ومدير الموساد ناحوم أدموني، ووزير الخارجية اسحق شامير، ومدير المخابرات العسكرية يهوشوا ساغي، وقائد الفرقة بيروت عاموس يارون، والدبلوماسي الأمريكي موريس دريبر، الذين يعملون بموجب أوامر من الرئيس رونالد ريغان، ورئيس لبنان بشير الجميل الذي كان يسوعيًا تلقى تعليمه في وكالة المخابرات المركزية. تم تجنيد العميل عندما كان محامياً يعمل في واشنطن العاصمة، ورئيس المخابرات العسكرية اللبنانية جوني عبده، وزعيم الكتائب إيلي حبيقة، إلى جانب ممثلين آخرين عن المصالح الإسرائيلية الأمريكية وكتائب الكتائب، وهي ميليشيا مسيحية مارونية شبه فاشية أسسها الكتائب الجديدة. رئيساً منتخباً للبنان الأب. صعد الجميل إلى القيادة بقتل عائلات رؤساء لبنان السابقين، بتمويل من رونالد ريغان بناءً على طلب أرييل شارون، وأصبح رئيساً في 23 أغسطس نتيجة للغزو الإسرائيلي للبنان في 6 يونيو.
وهكذا تم إعداد المسرح للتطهير العرقي للفلسطينيين الذين طردتهم إسرائيل من منازلهم إلى مخيمات اللاجئين البائسة في لبنان، حيث لا يزال الناجون حتى اليوم، وهم في وضع محفوف بالمخاطر لا يقل اضطهاداً عن رواية فيكتور هوغو الرائعة البؤساء. ولا يقل تعالى عن التنوب الثوري
إلى متى يجب على الموتى وأحفادهم انتظار العدالة؟
في كتابه “منع فلسطين: تاريخ سياسي من كامب ديفيد إلى أوسلو”، كتب سيث أنزيسكا “تحت قيادة رئيس الوزراء مناحيم بيغن ووزير الدفاع أرييل شارون، شنت الحكومة الإسرائيلية غزوًا في يونيو من ذلك العام جزئيًا بحجة إيقاف الفلسطينيين”. إطلاق نار من قبل ناشطين مسلحين على منطقة الجليل شمال إسرائيل. وبعد معاهدة السلام مع مصر عام 1979، أصبح القادة الإسرائيليون قلقين بشكل متزايد بشأن قوة منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية والروابط المتنامية بين الفلسطينيين داخل الأراضي المحتلة وعبر الشتات العربي. وكان التركيز الرئيسي لقلقهم منصبًا على لبنان، حيث نقلت منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية مركز عملياتها من الأردن بعد مواجهة مسلحة مع جيش الملك حسين في الفترة 1970-1971. اعتقد الاستراتيجيون الإسرائيليون أن استهداف منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية في لبنان وإجبارها على الانسحاب من شأنه أن يحقق عدة أهداف: سحق التطلعات الوطنية الفلسطينية إلى وطن، وطرد القوات السورية من لبنان والقضاء على النفوذ السوري هناك، وتأسيس كيان ماروني عميل. الدولة المسيحية كحليف وثيق.
وبدلاً من ترسيخ الهيمنة الإسرائيلية على جارتها الشمالية، تحولت حرب لبنان إلى ما أطلق عليه البعض “فيتنام إسرائيل”. وفي خضم حرب أهلية وحشية بالفعل، أدى التدخل الإسرائيلي إلى مقتل أكثر من 600 جندي إسرائيلي وما لا يقل عن 5000 مدني لبناني وفلسطيني – أكثر من 19000 حسب التقديرات اللبنانية التي أحصت المقاتلين أيضًا. وبالتنسيق الوثيق مع القوات المارونية، سرعان ما تحول الغزو الإسرائيلي من توغل محدود إلى حصار دام الصيف ضد معقل منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية في بيروت الغربية. وخلافاً لحروب الأعوام 1948، أو 1967، أو 1973، كانت إسرائيل منخرطة بشكل لا لبس فيه في ما أسماه بيغن “حرب الاختيار”. ومن خلال الجمع بين القوة العسكرية والعمليات النفسية، ألحقت القوات الإسرائيلية خسائر فادحة داخل عاصمة عربية للمرة الأولى، حيث قصفت المواقع الفلسطينية من البر والبحر والجو، بينما احتلت مطار لبنان الدولي.
دفع الرئيس رونالد ريغان، الذي انزعج من صور الدمار، إدارته إلى التفاوض على إنهاء القتال وتسهيل الإخلاء السلمي لمقاتلي منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية من المدينة إلى الدول العربية المجاورة. وكان زعيم منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية، ياسر عرفات، قد أشار إلى أنه ورجاله على استعداد للانسحاب شريطة أن تحصل منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية على الضمانات الأمريكية المطلوبة لأمن المدنيين الفلسطينيين والمؤيدين اللبنانيين الذين بقوا في العراق. وأثناء مشاركته مسودة اتفاق الانسحاب مع شفيق الحوت، أطلق عرفات ملاحظة حزينة بشأن الرحيل: “لقد أعطت بيروت فلسطين ما لم تمنحه أي عاصمة عربية أخرى. لقد أعطى وأعطى دون أن يطلب أي شيء في المقابل. ولن يسأل أبدا. ولا ينبغي لنا أن نجعلها تسأل. يجب أن ندفعها بإرادتنا الحرة.
غادرت أول كتيبة من مقاتلي منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية المدينة في 21 أغسطس/آب، ثم غادر عرفات وكبار مسؤولي منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية على متن سفينة شحن يونانية إلى تونس في 30 أغسطس/آب. وفي المجمل، غادر نحو عشرة آلاف مقاتل لبنان عن طريق البحر والطرق البرية، مما دفع منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية إلى حالة من الجمود. منفى أعمق. وحتى بعد انتهاء القتال الأعنف، استمر الاحتلال الإسرائيلي الذي طال أمده لجنوب البلاد حتى عام 2000، مما أدى إلى إعادة تشكيل سياسة المنطقة. استمر النفوذ السوري على البلاد، لكن القوة الإيرانية حلت محله بشكل متزايد مع صعود حزب الله. وبعيدًا عن ترسيخ هيمنة إسرائيل الإقليمية، أدت حرب عام 1982 في نهاية المطاف إلى تقويض النفوذ الإسرائيلي والأمريكي في الشرق الأوسط، في حين غيرت المفاهيم حول كل من الصهيونية والقومية الفلسطينية في جميع أنحاء العالم.
وكما كتب نبيل محمد من اللجنة الأمريكية العربية لمكافحة التمييز في قناة الجزيرة عام 2017؛ “هناك جيل رابع ينشأ الآن في مخيمات اللاجئين البائسة في لبنان. في صبرا وشاتيلا، تتكون معظم مساحات المعيشة من غرفتين صغيرتين للغاية: غرفة نوم، حيث تنام جميع أفراد الأسرة، وغرفة معيشة من نوع ما. لا توجد تهوية، ولا يوجد كهرباء تقريبًا. تستخدم معظم العائلات الإضاءة التي تعمل بالبطارية. يحظر شرب مياه الصنبور، لأنها مليئة بالبكتيريا ومالحة جدًا – فهي في الواقع تؤدي إلى تآكل الأنابيب. هناك ظروف صحية سيئة. هناك نقص في الأدوية لجميع الأمراض. وتمتد الأزقة الضيقة – التي يمر بعضها بمياه الصرف الصحي – عبر المخيمات. وعندما يهطل المطر، تصبح هذه الممرات الصغيرة موحلة. الأسلاك الكهربائية تتدلى من المساكن. يقوم الشباب بتوصيل الأسلاك وإعادة توصيلها؛ ومن وقت لآخر، يتعرض شخص ما للصعق بالكهرباء. وتنبعث الروائح الكريهة من تلك الظروف المزدحمة. المرض متفشي. يتوق اللاجئون الفلسطينيون في لبنان إلى العودة من المنفى إلى وطنهم الذي طردوا منه، لكن إسرائيل لا تسمح لهم بذلك، وذلك ببساطة لأنهم ليسوا يهوداً.
إذا كان المجتمع الدولي ملزما بمعالجة مسؤوليته الأخلاقية تجاه ضحايا مجزرة صبرا وشاتيلا من خلال العمل على إنهاء الاحتلال الإسرائيلي وغيره من الانتهاكات.
لانتهاكات بحق الفلسطينيين، فإن حياة أفراد عائلتي والآخرين الذين نتذكرهم في هذا العام الخامس والثلاثين لن تذهب سدى”.
واسمحوا لي الآن أن ألحق شهادتي التاريخية هنا، لأن أيام هذه الذكرى تغمرني في الذكريات، سواء تلك التي لا أستطيع أن أتحدث عنها أو تلك التي لا أستطيع أن أتحملها وحدي.
في مقالتي بتاريخ 31 يوليو 2020، ماضي مفيد: ما هي أنتيفا؟ كتبت؛ “أقدم لكم قسم المقاومة كما أعطاني إياه جان جينيه في بيروت عام 1982؛ إليكم قصة كيف حدث ذلك، وأصلي الحقيقي.
خلال الصيف الذي سبق سنتي الأخيرة في الجامعة في سان فرانسيسكو، كنت قد انطلقت في جولة طهي كبرى في البحر الأبيض المتوسط، وتعلمت طهي الطعام الذي أحبه، وكنت في بيروت عندما غزت إسرائيل لبنان وحاصرتني في مدينة تحت الحصار. . كان الجنود يتجولون في الشوارع مثل مجموعات من الكلاب الضالة، يرتكبون الفظائع؛ قامت إحدى هذه الوحدات التابعة لقوات الدفاع الإسرائيلية بإشعال النار في بعض الأطفال، وهم يضحكون ويراهنون على المدى الذي يمكنهم الركض فيه وهم يصرخون قبل أن يسقطوا في برك من الخراب الأسود وتصمت صراخهم. وجدت نفسي أقاتلهم. انضم إليّ آخرون، وانضم إلينا المزيد. ومنذ ذلك اليوم فصاعدًا كنت جزءًا من الدفاع عن بيروت ضد الحصار.
يقع مقهى رائع يحتوي على أفضل كريب الفراولة في العالم على الجانب الآخر من زقاق القناصة، حيث قمنا أنا وأصدقائي برياضة شديدة من الاندفاع عبره للوصول إلى الإفطار بينما ارتطمت الرصاصة العرضية بالجدار خلفنا. في أحد الأيام وصلنا إلى معنوياتنا العالية المعتادة عندما جلس رجل أنيق على طاولتي، وبدأ الحديث بالفرنسية قائلاً: “لقد قيل لي إنك تفعل هذا كل يوم، تسابق ضد الموت لتناول الإفطار”.
فأجبته: اللحظات المسروقة من الموت ملك لنا، وتحررنا. ربما هذا هو كل ما نملكه حقًا. إنه رجل فقير ليس لديه متعة تستحق الموت من أجلها.
ابتسم وقال: “أنا موافق”، وهكذا بدأت محادثاتنا على الإفطار في الأيام الأخيرة التي سبقت أسره، أيام لا تنسى لأنها وضعتني على طريق حياتي من النضال من أجل الحرية ضد الطغيان واستبداد قوة الدولة و السيطرة، من أجل المساواة ضد العنف العنصري والظلم، وضد الفاشية التي تجمع بين استبداد الدولة والإرهاب العنصري.
قدم نفسه على أنه عضو سابق في الفيلق باسم جان، وكان مؤذًا وحكيمًا ومتعلمًا بشكل كبير في الدراسات الكلاسيكية وربما تلقى تعليمه في السابق ككاهن ومليء بالقصص الجامحة عن نجوم الثقافة الأوروبية الحديثة. لقد أذهلت عندما اكتشفت بعد أيام أن صديقي الجديد الغريب كان أحد أعظم الشخصيات الأدبية في القرن. كنت قد اقتبست من “مذكرات اللص” لدحض شيء قاله، والذي وجده مضحكا، بينما كنا نناقش تفسيرات كتاب “هكذا تكلم زرادشت” لنيتشه بقلم سي جي. يونج، وموريس بلانشو، وجورج باتاي، وآخرون، محادثة ظلت غير مكتملة لأنه لم يستطع التوقف عن الضحك. وأخيراً قال بغمغمة: “أنا نفسي جان جينيه”. بالنسبة لي، يظل شخصية محتالة وجزءًا من هويتي التاريخية وأسطورتي الشخصية.
لقد جاء يوم تم فيه اجتياح المتاريس وحينا معه، وهو أحد آخر أيامنا معًا. ومع امتلاء الشوارع فجأة بالجنود الإسرائيليين الذين يركضون بشكل مسعور في كيس من القتل والحرق العمد وغير ذلك من أعمال الإرهاب والوحشية الأخرى، أضرم الجنود النار في بنايتنا الذين كانوا يدعون الناس للخروج والاستسلام وكانوا يسرقون أطفال هؤلاء. من فعل ذلك وعصب أعينهم لاستخدامهم كرهائن ودروع بشرية، واكتشاف سلاحنا الوحيد وهو زجاجة الشمبانيا التي انتهينا منها للتو من كريب الفراولة، سألت رفيقي في الإفطار إذا كان لديه أي أفكار. وأجاب على ذلك بهز كتفيه اعتذاريًا وسؤالًا آخر: «أصلح الحراب؟»
ضحكنا، وأوضح؛ “عندما نفقد كل الأمل، نصبح أحرارًا في القيام بأشياء مستحيلة، أشياء مجيدة.” هذه النصيحة أجد من الضروري أن أذكرها بين الحين والآخر، وأوصيكم بها جميعًا.
ثم سأل: هل تستسلم؟
فأجبت: “لا”.
قال وهو واقف: «ولا أنا». “كما أشارككم الآن، مرِّروا للآخرين المحتاجين؛ هذا هو القسم الذي ابتكرته عام 1940 من القسم الذي أديته كجندي في مقاومة الاحتلال النازي. ربما يكون أفضل شيء سرقته على الإطلاق.”
ولذا فإنني أعرض عليكم جميعا قسم المقاومة كما أعطاه لي العظيم جان جينيه في منزل محترق، في قضية خاسرة، في زمن القوة والظلام، في الوقفة الأخيرة وعمل من أعمال الخير. التحدي الذي يفوق الأمل في النصر أو البقاء؛ “نقسم الولاء لبعضنا البعض، الذين يجيبون على الطغيان بالحرية والفاشية بالمساواة. سنقاوم ولن نستسلم، ولن نتخلى عن إخواننا”.
بالنسبة للفاشية وفكرة أن البعض منا أفضل من الآخرين بحكم ولادتهم، لا يمكن أن يكون هناك سوى رد واحد؛ لن يحدث مطلقا مرة اخري.
لقد أفلتنا من الاعتقال في ذلك اليوم لأنه تم اقتيادنا عبر حواجز الحصار ب
لقد كان حليفًا غير متوقع، وهو شخصية ظهرت من الخلفية في أقصى نهاية الزقاق ومشى نحونا مبتسمًا. كان هذا هو القناص الذي كنا نلعب معه أنا وأصدقائي لمدة أسبوعين، والذي كان غير مرئي تمامًا وتغلب على كل محاولة لتعقبه أو اصطياده أو نصب كمين له أو التعرف عليه، والذي كان في الواقع قد حاصر المدينة من الداخل. .
مد لي يده فصافحتها وهو يقول: “أحسنت اللعب يا سيدي. لقد حاولت قتلك كل يوم لمدة أربعة عشر يومًا، لكن وجود الإسرائيليين داخل المدينة يغير كل شيء. لدينا عدو مشترك، لكنهم لا يعرفون ذلك، لذلك أنا في وضع يسمح لي بمساعدتك. لكنني لا أستطيع قتالهم وحدي. هل تريد شريكًا؟”
وهكذا بدأت مغامرة وصداقة عظيمة، أشارككم إياها الآن في سياق طبيعة المقاومة ضد الفاشية لأنها توضح شيئًا لا يمكن لأي شخص يقوم بهذا النوع من العمل أن ينساه أبدًا؛ البشر ليسوا وحوشًا، ويستحقون الشك البشري، وليسوا أبدًا خارج نطاق الخلاص.
إن الصراع بين الخير والشر في قلب الإنسان غالباً ما يتمحور ويتوازن حول الاختلافات بين الغرض من استخدام القوة؛ لمعاقبة التجاوزات عندما ترتكبها السلطة كعمل من أعمال القهر والقمع ضد الضعفاء، أو الاستيلاء على السلطة وحماية الضعفاء كواجب رعاية.
كن متأكدًا جدًا من أنك تعرف السبب الذي يخدم أفعالك.
وفي تدوينتي عن فاجعة انفجار مرفأ بيروت، 5 أغسطس 2020، جنون الموت، إضاءة التعالي: أغنية بيروت؛ نحن نبحث عن معنى للكوارث والأحداث التي تعطل الحياة والتي يرثها الجسد، ولكن كما هو الحال في كارثة بيروت، غالبًا ما تكون هذه الأسباب خارج نطاق فهمنا.
أشير هنا الآن إلى السورة 18 من القرآن الكريم، المسماة الكهف، الآيات 60-82، وهي قصة رمزية تصور الخضر، الشخصية الإسلامية المحتالة التي هي خالدة ويرمز لها باللون الأخضر كتجسيد لجنة الجنة التي لها إنه البوابة، الذي يكون مرشدًا للنفس عبر ألغاز متاهة الحياة المؤدية إليها، ويتحدث إلينا بالأحلام والرؤى والإشارات.
أنا أعتبرها شكلاً سرديًا من نظرية جودل؛ دليل على ضرورة الإيمان ووجود اللانهائي، وحدود المعرفة الإنسانية وعبثية الحالة الإنسانية. ويتوافق هذا التفسير مع تفسير العلامة والمترجم الكبير عبد الله يوسف علي.
كما هو الحال مع التجربة الفكرية التأسيسية لأحد معاصري أفلاطون، وهي رمح أرخيتاس الذي يحدد أفق المعلوم إذ يُلقى ويرسم حدًا في الهبوط، وهو ما نكرره بلا نهاية في الثورات العلمية مهما تعلمنا كثيرًا. ويظل المجهول شاسعًا كما كان من قبل، مما يحافظ على الجهل. كما تم تطويره في العمل الإنجليزي الأوسط المجهول سحابة الجهل ونيكولاس كوزا في الجهل المتعلم، هذا هو المبدأ الأول لنظرية المعرفة؛ حفظ الجهل.
تلخص القصة الأساسية موضوعات تضحية إبراهيم والتي أود أن أقول أنها تشكل أساس الدين الإسلامي وربما جميع أشكال العقيدة الإبراهيمية، وفي شوارع بيروت منذ فترة طويلة رأيتها تتكشف مرة أخرى.
في هذه القصة، يأمر الرجل الأخضر موسى بالقيام بثلاثة أشياء إجرامية وغير منطقية، أشياء لا يمكن فهمها إلا من خلال المعرفة المسبقة للنبوة التي ليست لنا. كما هو الحال مع العدالة، فإن البصيرة لا تنتمي إلى الإنسان؛ على الرغم من أننا قد نتصور مستقبلنا المحتمل، إلا أننا لا نستطيع أن نعرف أي منهم سوف يتحقق. يجادل موسى بن ميمون بأن هذا يرجع إلى تدمير الكون وإعادة خلقه باستمرار في كل لحظة، مما يحافظ على الإرادة الحرة. “الكثيب” لفرانك هربرت عبارة عن تجربة فكرية موسعة واستعارة تثير إشكالية موضوعات وأسئلة قصة الخضر في السورة 18.
المقطع ذو الصلة هو هذا؛ فَأَرَدْنَا أَن يُبْدِلَهُمَا رَبُّهُمَا خَيْرًا مِّنْهُ زَكَاةً وَأَقْرَبَ رُحْمًا، أو “فأردنا أن يبدلهما ربهما ولدًا خيرًا منه زكاة وأقرب إلى الرحمة”، وهو تبديل كلاسيكي. كما أنه يمثل نقطة التشعب التي تتحول إليها العقود الآجلة المحتملة.
لدي أمل في مستقبل البشرية بسبب ما شهدته عندما تم عرض هذه القصة الأساسية أمامي قبل أربعين عامًا، وبسببها لم أشعر باليأس أبدًا.
مثل هذه البوابة تقف أو كانت موجودة في بيروت، مثل بوابة راشومون أو بوابة إلى اللانهائي وإلى الإمكانيات اللامحدودة للصيرورة الإنسانية. قد يكون الآن غبارًا وذكريات، أو مثل قطة شرودنجر كلاهما موجود وغير موجود في آن واحد؛ هذا لا أستطيع الإجابة عليه بالنسبة لك.
لكن يمكنني أن أتحدث كشاهد للتاريخ أن شيئًا رائعًا حدث هناك في ظله، وهو مثل قيام الخضر باستبدال الشاب بآخر لمنع حدوث شر أكبر في المستقبل، وهي مفارقة السفر عبر الزمن إن وجدت، أذهلتني. مع قوة الوحي.
لقد كان أمراً تافهاً في نطاق حصار بيروت
هذه الفظائع التي تم تجنبها من بين الكثيرين من خلال الطيبة الفطرية لرجل واحد لا يزال اسمه مجهولاً، وهو بطل مأساوي لن أنساه أبدًا، وهو مجند غير راغب في خدمة حكومته مثل كثيرين آخرين، الذين قالوا لا للسلطة وللحكومة. إغراء الشر. ووجود الإنسان يدور حول ميزان هؤلاء الأفراد، وهم قليلون جداً.
ورفض هذا الجندي الإسرائيلي ارتكاب انتهاكات وسفوح بحق فتاة فلسطينية تبلغ من العمر نحو اثني عشر عاماً، تم أسرها لهذا الغرض من قبل ملازم في فصيلته، في اختبار ولاء مشترك وبدء. احمر خجلا عند أول طلبات ضابطه أمام استهزاء زملائه مثل صرخات الغربان الصاخبة على وشك تناول وليمة، هناك في الشارع أمام باب القرار الذي يجب علينا جميعا أن نواجهه، ثم غضب من الرفض عندما أدرك أنه ليس كذلك مزحة، أن الاحتلال كان من أجل الإرهاب والنهب وليس كما قيل له. قتله قائده حيث كان واقفاً برصاصة واحدة في الرأس بينما كانت الفتاة تهرب.
لقد عدت إلى هذا المكان طوال حياتي لألمس الحجارة الملطخة بدمه، لأنني أتذكر أننا لسنا بعيدين عن الفداء، وأننا طالما نقاوم السلطة الظالمة فنحن أحرار، وهناك أمل.
Hebrew
18 בספטמבר 2023 יום השנה לטבח שתילה וסברה בלבנון ב-1982
.
מה המשמעות של יום השנה הזה של טרור ועריצות המדינה, כיבוש אימפריאלי ושליטה קולוניאלית ופשעים נגד האנושות?
כאן הייתה זוועה שבוצעה על ידי האדירים נגד חסרי הכוח והמנושלים כמכשיר לשיבוש ושבר ההיסטוריה, שואה שבוצעה על ידי ניצולי שואה מקבילה בגלל האופן שבו הכוח פועל במקורות הרוע כתהליך רקורסיבי של פחד , כוח וכוח; אלא גם דוגמה קלאסית של טרור ומלחמה של המדינה ככישלון מוסרי והתמוטטות הלגיטימיות והסמכות של המדינה שמשנה את הנרטיב והופכת למבנה של אומה כטראומה עיקרית, שכן השימוש בכוח חברתי מציית ל-Third של ניוטון חוק התנועה ויוצר התנגדות ככוח נגד של עצמו.
בימי השנה כמו היום אנו זוכרים את הטרגדיות, ומכבדים את ההתנגדות.
הבה נכבד את המתים הקדושים שלנו ואת אלה שלחמו בהתנגדות לטרור המדינה ולפשעים נגד האנושות, אך הבה גם לעולם לא נשכח את שמות מבצעיה ולא ננוח בדריכותנו לראותם מובאים לדין.
ישנו חוב שאנו חבים לו, ואחריות שאנו נושאים בעבור, בני האדם שלנו, אם ברצוננו להישאר אנושיים ולהימנע מהידרדרות למצב חייתי של אטאוויסטים של אינסטינקטים ולהיות צללים, חסרי הממדיות שלנו והכוחות המולדים אשר יכול לקיים ולרומם אותנו; תקווה, אהבה ואמונה כסולידריות ונאמנות זה לזה.
עלינו לזכור, ואסור לנו לשתוק.
זה נקרא ביהדות תיקון עולם, תיקון העולם, חובה שמחברת אותנו, הן עם הדומים והן עם אלה שאינם דומים לנו על פני מפרצים עצומים של ישות אנושית, משמעות וערך והיררכיות וטקסונומיות של שייכות ו. זוּלָתִיוּת. על זה אגלה לך סוד; גבולות יכולים גם להפוך לממשקים.
יום השנה הנורא הזה של טרור המדינה וכיבוש אימפריאלי ועריצות, חופף בערך את חגיגות השנה החדשה היהודית של ראש השנה, השנה חמישה עשר עד שבע עשרה בספטמבר בספטמבר, ורגע לפני יום הכיפורים, יום כיפור, השנה משקיעת החמה ב-24 בספטמבר. ספטמבר עד זה של העשרים וחמישה, בקירוב לפעולות מדינת ישראל שהובילו לאינתיפאדה השנייה.
היזהרו ממי שמתיימרים לדבר ולפעול בשמכם, כי זוהי אסטרטגיה פשיסטית ראשונית של הכנעה וייצור הסכמה.
מדוע האמונה חייבת להגדיר גבולות ולא ממשקים, חומות ולא גשרים?
בין האוסף האינסופי של צרות ומופתים של פחד שנעשה נשק בשירות לשלטון על ידי הסמכות, נותרו טבח סברה ושתילה כדי לערער על הרעיונות שלנו על אחוות המין האנושי.
לשם כך עלינו להביא באמת חשבון וכפרה; אך לא עבור מורשת העבר, שיש לזכור, ולא עבור שותפותנו בשתיקה נגד עוול, שניתן לגאול באמצעות פעולה. איננו יכולים לעשות דבר למען המתים; יש לנקום על החיים, ועל העתיד יש לגאול.
מי אחראי לפשע הנורא הזה?
מתוכנן ומנחה בפגישות אישיות של ראש ממשלת ישראל מנחם בגין, שר הביטחון אריאל שרון, ראש המוסד נחום אדמוני, שר החוץ יצחק שמיר, מנהל המודיעין הצבאי יהושע שגיא, מפקד האוגדה ביירות עמוס ירון, הדיפלומט האמריקני מוריס דרייפר הפועל לפי פקודות מאת הנשיא רונלד רייגן, נשיא לבנון בשיר גמאייל שהיה ישועי משכיל C.I.A. פעיל שגויס כשהיה עורך דין שעבד בוושינגטון הבירה, ראש המודיעין הצבאי הלבנוני ג’וני עבדו, ומנהיג הפלנגות אלי חוביקה, יחד עם נציגים נוספים של אינטרסים ישראלים-אמריקאים והפלנגה, מיליציה מעין-פאשיסטית נוצרית-מארונית שהוקמה על ידי הארגון החדש. אביו של נשיא לבנון נבחר. גמאייל עלה למנהיגות על ידי רצח משפחות הנשיאים לשעבר של לבנון, על ידי רונלד רייגן לבקשת אריאל שרון, והפך לנשיא ב-23 באוגוסט כתוצאה מהפלישה הישראלית ללבנון ב-6 ביוני.
כך הוכן הבמה לטיהור האתני של הפלסטינים שגורשו מבתיהם על ידי ישראל למחנות הפליטים האומללים בלבנון, שם נותרו הניצולים כיום, פרקריאט מדוכא לא פחות מזה של הרומן הקסום של ויקטור הוגו “עלובי החיים”. ולא פחות מרומם עם אשוח מהפכני
כמה זמן צריכים המתים וצאצאיהם לחכות לצדק?
ירי רקטות לוחמני לעבר אזור הגליל בצפון ישראל. לאחר הסכם השלום עם מצרים ב-1979, גם מנהיגים ישראלים נהיו חרדים יותר ויותר לגבי כוחו של אש”ף והקשרים ההולכים וגדלים בין פלסטינים בתוך השטחים הכבושים וברחבי הפזורה הערבית. עיקר דאגתם היה בלבנון, שם העביר אש”ף את מרכז הפעילות שלו מירדן לאחר עימות מזוין עם צבאו של המלך חוסיין בשנים 1970–1971. אסטרטגים ישראלים האמינו כי הכוונת אש”ף בלבנון וכפיית נסיגתו ישיגו מספר מטרות: סילוק השאיפות הלאומיות הפלסטיניות למולדת, גירוש חיילי סוריה מלבנון וחיסול ההשפעה הסורית שם, והקמת מרונית לקוחה. מדינה נוצרית כבעלת ברית קרובה.
במקום לבסס את הדומיננטיות הישראלית על שכנתה מצפון, מלחמת לבנון הפכה למה שכינו “וייטנאם של ישראל”. בעיצומה של מלחמת אזרחים אכזרית ממילא, ההתערבות הישראלית הביאה למותם של יותר מ-600 חיילים ישראלים ולפחות 5,000 אזרחים לבנונים ופלסטינים – יותר מ-19,000 לפי הערכות לבנוניות שספרו גם לוחמים. בתיאום הדוק עם הכוחות המארונים, הפלישה של ישראל הפכה במהרה מהיותה פלישה מוגבלת למצור של קיץ על מעוז אש”ף במערב ביירות. בניגוד למלחמות ב-1948, 1967 או 1973, ישראל הייתה מעורבת באופן חד משמעי במה שבגין כינה “מלחמת בחירה”. בשילוב כוח צבאי עם פעולות פסיכולוגיות, כוחות ישראליים גרמו לראשונה אבדות כבדות בתוך בירה ערבית, כשהם הפציצו עמדות פלסטיניות מהיבשה, מהים ומהאוויר, תוך כדי כיבוש שדה התעופה הבינלאומי של לבנון.
הנשיא רונלד רייגן, המוטרד מתמונות ההרס, דחף את ממשלו לנהל משא ומתן על סיום הלחימה ולהקל על פינוי של לוחמי אש”ף מהעיר למדינות ערב השכנות. מנהיג אש”ף, יאסר ערפאת, אותת שהוא ואנשיו מוכנים לסגת בתנאי שלאש”ף יהיו הערבויות האמריקניות הנדרשות לביטחון לאזרחים פלסטינים ותומכי לבנון שנותרו מאחור. ערפאת שיתף את טיוטת הסכם הנסיגה עם שפיק אל-הוט והשמיע הערה עגומה על העזיבה: “ביירות נתנה לפלסטין מה שאין לאף בירה ערבית אחרת. זה נתן ונתן, בלי לבקש שום דבר בתמורה. וזה לעולם לא יבקש. אנחנו גם לא צריכים לגרום לזה לשאול. אנחנו צריכים להחזיר את זה מרצוננו החופשי”.
המחלקה הראשונה של לוחמי אש”ף עזבה את העיר ב-21 באוגוסט, כאשר ערפאת ופקידי אש”ף מובילים יצאו על ספינת ספנות יוונית לתוניסיה ב-30 באוגוסט. בסך הכל, כ-10,000 לוחמים עזבו את לבנון בדרכי הים והיבשה, ודחפו את אש”ף למצב דומם. גלות עמוקה יותר. גם לאחר שהסתיימו הקרבות הקשים ביותר, כיבוש ישראלי ממושך בדרום המדינה נמשך עד שנת 2000, שעיצב מחדש את הפוליטיקה של האזור. ההשפעה הסורית על המדינה נמשכה, אך יותר ויותר היא נדחקה על ידי הכוח האיראני עם עליית חיזבאללה. הרחק מלחזק את ההגמוניה האזורית של ישראל, מלחמת 1982 חתרה בסופו של דבר את ההשפעה הישראלית והאמריקאית במזרח התיכון, תוך כדי שינוי תפיסות של ציונות ושל לאומיות פלסטינית ברחבי העולם”.
כפי שכתב נביל מוחמד מהוועדה האמריקאית-ערבית נגד אפליה באל-ג’זירה ב-2017; “דור רביעי גדל כעת במחנות הפליטים העלובים בלבנון. בסברה ושתילה רוב חללי המגורים מורכבים משני חדרים קטנים מאוד: חדר שינה, בו ישנה כל המשפחה וסלון מעין. אין אוורור, וכמעט אין חשמל. רוב המשפחות משתמשות בתאורה המופעלת על ידי סוללה. שתיית מי ברז אסורה, כיוון שהם מלאים בחיידקים ומלוחים מאוד – הם למעשה משחיתים צינורות. יש תנאים סניטריים גרועים. יש מחסור בתרופות לכל המחלות. סמטאות צרות – חלקן עם ביוב זורם – מתפתלות בין המחנות. כשיורד גשם השבילים הקטנים האלה הופכים לבוציים. חוטי חשמל תלויים מבתי מגורים. גברים צעירים מחברים ומחברים מחדש חוטים; מדי פעם מישהו מתחשמל. ריחות רעים בוקעים מאותם תנאים צפופים. המחלה משתוללת. הפליטים הפלסטינים בלבנון כמהים לחזור מהגלות למולדת ממנה גורשו, אך אינם רשאים לעשות זאת על ידי ישראל, פשוט כי הם אינם יהודים.
אם הקהילה הבינלאומית תהיה מחויבת לתקן את אחריותה המוסרית כלפי קורבנות הטבח בסברה ושתילה על ידי פעילות לסיום הכיבוש של ישראל ועוד.
הפרות של זכויות פלסטינים, אז חייהם של בני משפחתי ושל האחרים שאנו זוכרים בשנה ה-35 הזו לא יאבדו לשווא”.
הרשו לי כעת לצרף כאן את העדות שלי להיסטוריה, כי ימי יום השנה הזה מטביעים אותי בזיכרונות, גם אלה שאני לא יכול לדבר עליהם וגם אלה שאני לא יכול לשאת לבד.
בפוסט שלי מ-31 ביולי 2020, עבר שימושי: מהי אנטיפה? כתבתי; “אני מציע לך את שבועת ההתנגדות כפי שניתנה לי בביירות ב-1982 על ידי ז’אן ז’נה; הנה הסיפור של איך זה קרה, ושל המוצא האמיתי שלי.
בקיץ שלפני השנה האחרונה באוניברסיטה בסן פרנסיסקו, יצאתי לסיבוב הופעות קולינרי בים התיכון, למדתי לבשל את האוכל שאהבתי, והייתי בביירות כשישראל פלשה ללבנון ולכדה אותי בעיר תחת מצור. . חיילים הסתובבו ברחובות כמו להקות של כלבי פרא, מבצעים זוועות; יחידה אחת כזו של צה”ל הציתה כמה ילדים, צחקו והימורים על כמה רחוק יוכלו לרוץ בצרחות לפני שייפלו לתוך בריכות חורבה מושחרת וצרחותיהם ישתקו. מצאתי את עצמי נלחם בהם; אחרים הצטרפו אלי, ועוד הצטרפו אלינו. מאותו יום ואילך הייתי חלק מההגנה על ביירות מפני המצור.
בית קפה מדהים שהיה בו את קרפי התותים הטובים ביותר בעולם שכב בצד הרחוק של סמטת צלפים, שחבריי ואני עשינו ספורט אתגרי של לחצות להגיע לארוחת הבוקר בזמן שקליע מדי פעם פגע בקיר שמאחורינו. יום אחד הגענו במצב הרוח הרגיל שלנו, כאשר ג’נטלמן אלגנטי ישב לשולחני, ודיבר בצרפתית החל בשיחה עם, “אמרו לי שתעשה את זה כל יום, מירוץ נגד המוות לארוחת בוקר.”
על כך השבתי, “רגעים שנגנבו ממוות שייכים לנו, ומשחררים אותנו. אולי זה כל מה שיש לנו באמת. זה אדם עני שאין לו תענוגות ששווה למות עבורם.”
הוא חייך ואמר, “אני מסכים”, וכך התחילו שיחותינו בארוחת הבוקר בימים האחרונים שלפני לכידתו, ימים בלתי נשכחים שכן זה המקום שבו הוא הוביל אותי למסלול חיי של מאבק לחירות נגד עריצות ואוטוקרטיות של כוח המדינה ו שליטה, למען שוויון נגד אלימות ואי צדק גזעניים, ונגד הפשיזם המשלב גם עריצות מדינה וגם טרור גזעני.
הוא הציג את עצמו כלגיונר לשעבר בשם ז’אן, היה שובב, חכם, למד עצום בלימודים קלאסיים ואולי פעם התחנך ככומר, ומלא בסיפורים פראיים על מאורות התרבות האירופית המודרנית. הייתי המום כשגיליתי ימים לאחר מכן שהחבר החדש והמוזר שלי הוא אחת הדמויות הספרותיות הגדולות של המאה. ציטטתי את כתב העת הגנב בהפרכה של משהו שהוא אמר, שהוא מצא מצחיק, בזמן שדנו בפרשנויות ל”ככה אמר זרתוסטרה” של ניטשה מאת סי.ג. יונג, מוריס בלאנשו, ז’ורז’ בטאיל ואחרים, שיחה שלא הסתיימה כיוון שהוא לא יכול להפסיק לצחוק. בסופו של דבר הוא פלט, “אני בעצמי הוא ז’אן ז’נה.” בעיני הוא נשאר דמות טריקסטר וחלק מהזהות ההיסטורית ומהמיתולוגיה האישית שלי.
הגיע יום שהבריקדות נחרצו והשכונה שלנו יחד איתה, אחד הימים האחרונים שלנו ביחד. כשהרחובות התמלאו לפתע בחיילים ישראלים משתוללים בשק של רצח, הצתות ושאר שפל של טרור וחוסר אנושיות, הבניין שלנו הוצת על ידי חיילים שקראו לאנשים לצאת ולהיכנע וגונבו את ילדיהם של אלה. מי עשה את זה וכיסה את עיניהם כדי להשתמש בהם כבני ערובה ומגנים אנושיים, והגילוי של הנשק היחיד שלנו הוא בקבוק השמפניה שזה עתה סיימנו עם קרפ התותים שלנו, שאלתי את בן לוויתי לארוחת הבוקר אם יש לו רעיונות. על כך השיב במשיכת כתפיים מתנצלת ובשאלה נוספת, “לתקן כידונים?”
צחקנו, והוא פירט; “כאשר כל תקווה אבודה, אנו חופשיים לעשות דברים בלתי אפשריים, דברים מפוארים.” בעצה זו אני מוצא צורך לזכור מעת לעת, ושאני ממליץ לכולכם.
ואז הוא שאל: “האם תיכנע?’
ועל כך השבתי “לא”.
“גם אני,” הוא אמר בעמידה. “כפי שאני משתפת אתכם עכשיו, עברו לאחרים הזקוקים לכך; זו שבועה שהמצאתי ב-1940 מהשבועה שנשאתי כלגיונר, על ההתנגדות לכיבוש הנאצי. זה אולי הדבר הכי טוב שגנבתי אי פעם”.
ועל כן אני מציע לכולכם את שבועת ההתנגדות כפי שניתנה לי על ידי ז’אן ז’נה הגדול בבית בוער, במטרה אבודה, בזמן של כוח וחושך, בעמידה אחרונה ובמעשה של התרסה מעבר לתקווה לניצחון או הישרדות; “אנחנו נשבעים את נאמנותנו זה לזה, שעונים לעריצות עם חירות ופשיזם עם שוויון. נתנגד ולא נכנע, ולא נוטש את רעינו”.
לפשיזם ולרעיון שחלקנו טובים מאחרים בתנאי לידתנו יכולה להיות רק תשובה אחת; לעולם לא שוב.
נמלטנו מתפיסה באותו יום כי הובלנו דרך המחסומים של כיתור ב
אתה בעל ברית לא סביר, דמות שהתממשה מהרקע בקצה הסמטה וניגשה אלינו בחיוך. זה היה הצלף שחבריי ואני שיחקנו איתו במשחקים שלנו במשך שבועיים, שהיה בלתי נראה לחלוטין והערים על כל ניסיון לעקוב, ללכוד, לארוב או לזהות אותו, ולמעשה כיתר את העיר מבפנים .
הוא הושיט לי את ידו ולחצתי אותה כשהוא אמר, “שיחקתי טוב, אדוני. ניסיתי להרוג אותך כל יום כבר ארבעה עשר ימים, אבל הישראלים שנמצאים בתוך העיר משנה הכל. יש לנו אויב משותף, אבל הם לא יודעים את זה, אז אני בעמדה לעזור לך. אבל אני לא יכול להילחם בהם לבד. רוצה בן זוג?”
אז התחילה הרפתקה גדולה וידידות, שאני חולק איתכם כעת בהקשר של טבעה של ההתנגדות האנטי-פשיסטית, כי היא ממחישה משהו שלעולם לא יכול להישכח על ידי מי שעושה עבודה מסוג זה; בני אדם אינם מפלצות, הם ראויים לספק אנושי, ולעולם אינם מעבר לגאולה.
המאבק בין טוב לרע בלב האדם לרוב מסתובב ומתאזן על ההבדלים בין מטרת השימוש בכוח; להעניש עבירה כאשר היא מופעלת על ידי סמכות כאקט של הכנעה ודיכוי נגד חסרי הכוח, או לתפוס את השלטון ולהגן על חסרי הכוח כחובת זהירות.
תהיו בטוחים שאתם יודעים לאיזו סיבה משרתות הפעולות שלכם.
ובפוסט שלי על הטרגדיה של פיצוץ נמל ביירות, 5 באוגוסט 2020 Madness Death Illumination Transcendence: A Song of Beirut; אנו מחפשים משמעות באסונות ובאירועי החיים המשבשים שהבשר הוא יורש שלהם, אך כמו באסון בביירות, סיבות כאלה הן לרוב מעבר להבנתנו.
כאן אני מתייחס כעת לסורה 18 של הקוראן הקדוש, הנקראת המערה, פסוקים 60-82, אלגוריה הכוללת את Khidr, דמות הטריקסטר האסלאמית שהיא בן אלמוות ומסומלת כירוק כהתגלמות של גן גן העדן שאליו הוא שער, שפועל כמדריך של הנשמה דרך חידות מבוך החיים המוביל אליו, ומדבר אלינו דרך חלומות, חזיונות וסימנים.
אני רואה בזה צורה נרטיבית של משפט גודל; הוכחה לנחיצות האמונה ולקיומו של האינסוף, לגבולות הידע האנושי ולאבסורד המצב האנושי. פרשנות כזו מתיישרת עם זו של המלומד והמתרגם הגדול עבדאללה יוסף עלי.
כמו בניסוי המחשבתי הבסיסי של אחד מבני דורו של אפלטון, החנית של ארכיטאס, המגדירה את אופק הידוע כפי שהוא נזרק ומסמנת גבול בנחיתה, עליו אנו חוזרים בלי סוף במהפכות מדעיות, לא משנה כמה נלמד לא ידוע נשאר עצום כמו קודם, משמר בורות. כפי שפותח בעבודה האנונימית של Middle Englich The Cloud of Unknowing ועל ידי ניקולאוס מקוזה ב-Of Learned Ignorance, זהו העיקרון הראשון של האפיסטמולוגיה; שימור הבורות.
הסיפור הקנוני משחזר נושאים של קורבן איברהים שהייתי אומר מהווה את הבסיס לאסלאם ואולי לכל צורות האמונה האברהמית, וברחובות ביירות מזמן ראיתי את זה מתגלה שוב.
בסיפור זה האיש הירוק מורה למשה על ידי עשיית שלושה דברים שהם פליליים ושטויות, דברים שניתן להבין רק באמצעות ידיעה מוקדמת של נבואה שאינה שלנו. כמו בצדק, ראיית הנולד אינה שייכת לאדם; למרות שאנו עשויים לדמיין את העתיד האפשרי שלנו, איננו יכולים לדעת איזה מהם יתממש. הרמב”ם טוען שהסיבה לכך היא שהיקום מושמד ונברא בכל רגע מחדש, מה ששומר על הרצון החופשי. החולית של פרנק הרברט היא ניסוי מחשבתי ואלגוריה מורחבת אשר מעוררת בעייתיות בנושאים והשאלות של סיפורו של Khidr בסורה 18.
הקטע הרלוונטי הוא זה; הוא גם מייצג נקודת התפצלות שעליה מסתובבים עתידיים אפשריים.
יש לי תקווה לעתיד האנושות בגלל מה שראיתי כשהסיפור העיקרי הזה הוצג לפני ארבעים שנה, ובגללו מעולם לא התייאשתי.
שער כזה עומד או עמד פעם בביירות, כמו שער ראשומון או שער אל האינסוף ולאפשרויות בלתי מוגבלות של התהוות אנושית. זה יכול להיות עכשיו אבק וזיכרונות, או כמו החתול של שרדינגר שניהם קיימים ואינם קיימים בבת אחת; על זה אני לא יכול לענות לך.
אבל אני יכול לדבר כעדה של ההיסטוריה שמשהו מדהים קרה שם בצלו, שכמו חייד שהחליף את הצעיר באחר כדי למנוע מרע גדול יותר להתרחש בעתיד, פרדוקס מסע בזמן אם היה כזה, היכה בי. בכוח ההתגלות.
זה היה דבר לא משמעותי בהיקף המצור על ביירות, הלאה
זוועה בקרב רבים שנמנעה בזכות טובתו המולדת של אדם בודד ששמו נותר עלום, גיבור טרגי שלעולם לא אשכח, מתגייס לא מוכן בשירות ממשלתו כמו רבים אחרים, שאמר לא לסמכות ול הפיתוי של הרוע. קיומה של המין האנושי תלוי באיזון של אנשים כאלה, והם מעטים מאוד.
חייל ישראלי זה סירב לבצע הפרות וקללות בדמותה של נערה פלסטינית, כבת שתים עשרה, שנלכדה לשם כך על ידי סגן מחלקתו, מבחן נאמנות וחניכה נפוצה. הוא הסמיק למשמע הדרישות הראשונות של הקצין שלו להתגרות של חבריו כמו זעקות עורבים שעומדים לחגוג, שם ברחוב לפני שער ההכרעה שכולנו צריכים להתמודד, ואז כעס בסירוב כשהבין שזה לא בדיחה, שהכיבוש עוסק בטרור ובגזל ולא כפי שנאמר לו. המפקד שלו רצח אותו במקום שעמד עם ירייה אחת בראש כשהילדה נמלטה.
חזרתי למקום הזה במשך כל חיי כדי לגעת באבנים המוכתמות בדמו, כי אני נזכר שאנחנו לא מעבר לגאולה, ושכל עוד אנחנו מתנגדים לסמכות לא צודקת אנחנו חופשיים, ויש תקווה
To a Young Poet
By Mahmoud Darwish
Translated By Fady Joudah
Don’t believe our outlines, forget them
and begin from your own words.
As if you are the first to write poetry
or the last poet.
If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our airs,
but to correct our errs
in the book of agony.
Don’t ask anyone: Who am I?
You know who your mother is.
As for your father, be your own.
Truth is white, write over it
with a crow’s ink.
Truth is black, write over it
with a mirage’s light.
If you want to duel with a falcon
soar with the falcon.
If you fall in love with a woman,
be the one, not she,
who desires his end.
Life is less alive than we think but we don’t think
of the matter too much lest we hurt emotions’ health.
If you ponder a rose for too long
you won’t budge in a storm.
You are like me, but my abyss is clear.
And you have roads whose secrets never end.
They descend and ascend, descend and ascend.
You might call the end of youth
the maturity of talent
or wisdom. No doubt, it is wisdom,
the wisdom of a cool non-lyric.
One thousand birds in the hand
don’t equal one bird that wears a tree.
A poem in a difficult time
is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.
Example is not easy to attain
so be yourself and other than yourself
behind the borders of echo.
Ardor has an expiration date with extended range.
So fill up with fervor for your heart’s sake,
follow it before you reach your path.
Don’t tell the beloved, you are I
and I am you, say
the opposite of that: we are two guests
of an excess, fugitive cloud.
Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule.
Don’t place two stars in one utterance
and place the marginal next to the essential
to complete the rising rapture.
Don’t believe the accuracy of our instructions.
Believe only the caravan’s trace.
A moral is as a bullet in its poet’s heart
a deadly wisdom.
Be strong as a bull when you’re angry
weak as an almond blossom
when you love, and nothing, nothing
when you serenade yourself in a closed room.
The road is long like an ancient poet’s night:
plains and hills, rivers and valleys.
Walk according to your dream’s measure: either a lily
follows you or the gallows.
Your tasks are not what worry me about you.
I worry about you from those who dance
over their children’s graves,
and from the hidden cameras
in the singers’ navels.
You won’t disappoint me,
if you distance yourself from others, and from me.
What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful.
From now on, your only guardian is a neglected future.
Don’t think, when you melt in sorrow
like candle tears, of who will see you
or follow your intuition’s light.
Think of yourself: is this all of myself?
The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole.
No advice in love. It’s experience.
No advice in poetry. It’s talent.
And last but not least, Salaam.
Translator’s Note: “To a Young Poet” by Mahmoud Darwish
By Fady Joudah
Originally Published: February 28, 2010
Most people would think of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet as soon as they stumble on the title of this posthumously published Darwish poem. However, one difference is quickly evident. This is not sanctimonious advice. For one thing, it is written by a master poet at the height of his art, which also happens to be near the time of his recognition that his mortality had been staring him in the face, too close for comfort. Another thing about this “advice” is its reliance on paradox and contradiction. There is also the disinterest in emulation from a poet who has already left his mark on his language and on the language of poetry at large: “What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful.” If there is a return, it should be to the “errs” and not the “airs” of previous writers; a humble hope for originality whose “only guardian” for the young poet “is a neglected future,” and not a preoccupation with an industry’s “hidden cameras.”
There are many wonderful phrases in this poem that can be easily plucked for quotes, but it is the “cool non-lyric” of maturity that strikes me first, if only because Darwish is an intense master lyricist, even when conversational. This poem in Arabic, for example, has an irregular monorhyme (at stanza’s and not line’s end) that switches after a few stanzas to a new monorhyme for a few more stanzas, and so on. And while it is nearly impossible to sustain this irregular monorhyme pattern for the ends of stanzas without distorting the natural speech of the poem, I sought several scattered rhymes to shadow the sense.
Technicalities aside, it is the poetic vision here that matters most and that, indeed, is the principal definition of any poetry: what a moral is, or what a poem in difficult times becomes; what echo and butterflies, love and dream, mean to the poem and to the boundaries of the self. Mahmoud Darwish was always in search of the pure poem; not La Poésie pure, but the unattainable, the impossible, that which is de-historicized. It was this persistent search that always promised (and delivered) him constant renewal of his art.
Mahmoud Darwish, a reading list
In the Presence of Absence, Mahmoud Darwish, Sinan Antoon (Translator)
Here is an excerpt from Concerto al Quds by Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) translated by Khaled Mattawa, from the Kenyon Review:
“A. Questions
*Why is every atom of Palestine’s ash an open wound?
*How does this wound create life with the implements of death?
*Is Palestine’s history an autumn that has migrated beyond the seasons?
*Why does the face of humanity wrinkle in the language of Arab leaders? And why is this language clogged with trains that run only on dead-end tracks that never end? And why are those tracks built by leaders who wage battles on trees and water?
B. Letter to Ezekiel
Ezekiel, visionary and seer,
look again and again.
Ruin is still the daily bread of God’s earth. Will the prophecies also turn into a siege? Will tunnels be burrowed into their words? Will their visions splinter into missiles and bombs, into volcanoes of gas and phosphor? Is it true, dear Ezekiel, that you have befriended this dragon?
And I almost ask you, have you met Salome? Why is the beast of the ages masquerading as the angel of eternity? And that poor donkey foal in Matthew’s prophecy, why is it limping and falling?
And we, the concubine’s children, what must we do when the earth itself is a concubine in the grip of divine prophecies?
Iron gushes, rising and falling on the ladders of prayer.
Tumors and blubber are life’s Adam and her Eve. The day’s eyelashes burn and the minutes stone their origins.
Shall we save women’s bellies and stow away their embryos?
Shall we say to their breasts, “Find another universe”?
Will chains emerge in between our steps?
Are wombs graves from now on?
Ezekiel, dear seer,
nothing matches your prophecies except thunder.
Please allow me to shout out:
“Salome,
blood is spilling on thresholds, walls, and windows.
You know the hearts of these masters, these prophets and politicians. Tell me,
what do their hearts actually pump?
How do they soften and when, and what is their secret?”
A rose longs for no perfume but its own.
A bird never flies carrying its nest.
The earth is mercy—and dust is the first and the last.
Why do the books deceive?
Why is every letter of the alphabet chained,
every human mouth bridled?
Why can the sky not be seen except as
owned, branded, tattooed, guarded, and walled?
Is it a stockyard for language?
Is it a storage room for the gold of prophecies?
Salome-Herodias-Hero-shima!
As soon as your name is pronounced, all senses are extinguished.
No, you are not the dance, not the lover, not a woman at all.
Forgive me, Ezekiel, dear seer.
C. Considerations
—How can you face the rock of al-Quds stained with urine and excrement?
—Go, cleanse your feet with light, and repent.
“Fresh water and the pollen winds
issue from a rock below Bayt al-Maqdis.”
Prophecies slake the thirst of chaos
and toss their flowers in the streets
where the poets are wolves and mercenaries, and where we Arabs raid cities singing in unison:
On one bed, we conquer a hotel;
with one hotel, we make a continent.
No matter that our feet rise
higher than our prayers
even the sun envies us.
Praise to God who favored us!
How wretched the likes of me—
and I am no Job,
I am no golden mouth.
D. Omega (Palestinian-Jewish)
How lovely! Palestine’s stars stroll, wearing Jerusalemite denim! How lovely that an Arab planet skates on top of the Wailing Wall wearing a perforated veil!
How lovely that African cocoa sates Palestine’s desires!
Meanwhile atomic clouds glide above, and the veil is the fatwa of the hour.
Where do they come from, these swift fists pummeling the face of the unknown?
Are they angels’ heads? From a nuclear hell? From the Day of Judgment? From the Holy Basin?
The Holy Basin—Holy Uterus—the star of the past has ovulated and the future was burrowed inside her.
The clouds whispered in the poet’s ear:
“Do not believe this.
How could God need rest?
A god of the throne?
Is there a throne that would fit him?
Will he need mattresses and cushions?
Does he have a colt to ride?
Does he take the land of one son
and give it to the other?”
“Nothing leads to wisdom except the parable of the tree,” nature tells the poet. “Not Adam’s tree. But a tree neither in heaven nor hell, ‘neither from the East, nor from the West.’”
“But beware,” nature goes on, “of that winged creature behind you. His lips are a pair of lambs, but he flings a knife or a hatchet with every word. You are right, dear poet, to doubt that they are human, those creatures that don Adamic heads on their shoulders.”
“I will throw a rope for you to climb, or to dance on, from the ends of the earth to the beginning of the sky, from the ends of the sky to the beginnings of the earth,” said the wilderness to the poet.
“And you will distill your fragrance, your poetry, from a plant that grows around women’s waistlines.” Only lying will be truthfulness then. And you will exclaim, and without surprise, and others will echo your words:
What a slaughter the sky is!
What rot the earth has become!
And others will echo you your words.
E. A Hymn Bracing for the End
Many gray hairs on my head,
but in my insides only the down of childhood.
Take away your alchemy, dear Poetry, raise it, discipline it, and teach it to mingle our bodies with our dreams;
how time can earn a place among our days and nights,
how minutes grunt in our veins like wild horses.
In your name, I flee myself to be myself,
and in your name I become joy and sadness in one inhale,
and I clamp my lips on your secrets.
The sky hangs like a rare painting in the earth’s museum,
and each is fighting to prove he alone stole it.
Up high, the sky’s seventh ceiling bucks and shudders, about to fall.
Why are harlots and pimps given another great role to play?
And in the name of the sky, must we awaken Job, Jeremiah, and Isaiah to display their afflictions again in al-Quds, and to confess how happy and free they once were?
“The Desert includes selections from the poetic diary of Adonis during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 and the siege of Beirut. The poem is dated “June 4, 1982–Jan. 1, 1983.” It is made up of 35 numbered (but not dated) stanzas in the bilingual edition Victims of a Map. The poetic diary also appeared in a slightly different arrangement in Kitab al-Hisar: Huzayran 82–Huzayran 85 (The Book of Siege: June 82–June 85), under the titles of “Sahara I” and “Sahara II.” Kitab al-Hisar also includes prose passages about the siege, which help readers to understand the poetry with its references to shelters, power failure, and so on.
In Desert Adonis does not name the enemy, nor does he directly describe the carnage wrought by modern war. Instead, he creates a series of snapshots of what it is like to live under such conditions. Lacking a linear narrative thread, the stanzas express—in their very structure—the fragmentation of life in violent conflicts.
Adonis writes a poetic version of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica by depicting the disjointedness of everyday life in a war zone. In a compelling image the poetic persona describes his alienation from time itself—by becoming a shadow—and says: “Daylight is a thread / Snipped by my lungs to stitch the evening.” Such strange, almost surrealistic imagery matches the unspeakable horrors of war. With bombing and killing marking the cityscape, even smoke is identified with people’s breath, and “Death alone has become our meeting point.”
Adonis perceives the relationship between militarism and capitalism in stanza 15: “He wears Jihad uniform, struts in a mantle of ideas. / A merchant—he does not sell clothes, he sells people.” This state of violent strife changes the very fabric of self and home: “The houses leave their walls / And I am / Not I.” The observant eye of the poet captures beautifully and tragically how everything is touched and tarnished by war: “Only some holes known as stars / Remain in the sky.”
Repetition and use of brackets mark the longer stanzas. Repetition is used for emphasis, as in stanza 29, with its incantatory “The Night descends . . .” at the beginning of each line. Yet each nocturnal descent is followed by a different bracketed scene, thus offering a variety of moments: “The night descends on the bed (the bed of the lover who never came) / . . . / The night descends (the wind whispers to the windows).”
Despite the gloomy and horrific atmosphere of this poetic diary, an inkling of hope manifests itself timidly: “The cities break up / The earth is a train of dust / Only love / knows how to marry this space.” Finally, like the long night of mystics that ends in dawn, the poet wonders: “Or should I say: the road to the light begins in the forest of darkness?”
The politics of the poem—its denunciation of Israeli violence and civil war—remain a subtext. The poem itself paints the scene of physical destruction and spiritual loss that applies to all wastelands.”
Bibliography
Adonis. “The Desert: The Diary of Beirut Under Siege, 1982.” In Victims of a Map, translated by Abdullah al-Udhari, 135–165. London: Al Saqi Books, 1984.
———. Kitab al-Hisar: Huzayran 82–Huzayran 85 (The Book of Siege: June 82–June 85). Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1985.
Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said), a reading list
Victims of a Map: A Bilingual Anthology of Arabic Poetry, Mahmoud Darwish,
A mass revolt and revolution by young people enraged at the state’s total blackout of all social media has toppled the government in days and seized power, the fourth victorious democracy revolution in Nepal since 1954, and though each and every time the monarchy has recaptured the state, each and every revolution has advanced the cause of democracy in sudden cataclysms of change met with glacial ossification and realignment of hierarchical power, in an inevitable movement toward liberation.
It was my great privilege to be a witness and a fulcrum of change in the democracy revolution of 1990 which overthrew the monarchy and created the first Constitution of Nepal. As we sat in the hall of ministry we had seized, debated fine points of ideology with sly and fiery rhetoric and issued grand proclamations of social engineering few in the masses outside could read, as the famine, plagues of typhus and cholera, skirmishes between Indian refugees and Nepalese landowners and between Hindu and Buddhist mobs and militias raged unchecked in the streets, no one among us imagined the future which awaited; the persistence of bureaucracy and the caste system reinforced by feudal land ownership and social hierarchies that would six years later ignite a Maoist insurgency in a Chinese Great Game for the next ten years, ending with the restoration of monarchy and a year later with another democracy revolution in 2006 that again made things just a bit better, but not enough to make us all equals.
And now, this.
With the collapse of the government over the total social media blackout, everyone can talk to everyone else again, and freedom of information, of speech, and of the press, is crucial to democracy. If the Revolution of September 2025 has won nothing else, it can be celebrated as a victory.
But can the Revolution become permanent? And what else can be changed, not merely on paper or as institutions of the state but as ideas about how to be human together which live in the hearts of the people?
Caste, social position, the institution of arranged marriage and the equality of men and women, literacy and meaningfull citizenship, deference to authority and the interdependence of theocracy and aristocratic feudalism, land reform and the function of property as enforcement of inherited privilege; all of this remains to be imagined and transformed, and none if it is unique to Nepal.
The history of Nepal’s previous democracy revolutions in 1954,1990, and 2006 can illuminate the situation as it now stands; each has moved the nation nearer to true democracy, including the long period of Maoist insurgency which had broad social motives and goals including annihilation of the caste system as well as capitalism.
As written by Binod Ghimire in The Kathmandu Post in 2022, in an article entitled Nepal’s democracy revolutions, and achievements and failures; “The country has witnessed three revolutions for democracy in the past seven decades. The first was in 1950 when the people revolted to end the century-long autocratic Rana regime. The long protest of the people paid off when the country ushered in democracy in 1951.
It, however, was short-lived as King Mahendra hijacked it through a royal-military coup in 1960. He took direct control of the executive authority from the leaders who were elected for the first time by the people. It took 30 years to end the rule of the Palace until the Nepali people in 1990 launched a decisive protest to restore democracy in the country.
The country adopted a multiparty democracy with constitutional monarchy. Freedom of speech, right to equality and other civil and political rights were enshrined in the 1990 constitution. That, however, didn’t get translated into actions, fully. The parties elected to power failed to live up to the expectations of the people. They were more focused on petty partisan interests and leaders paid little attention to people and their concerns who yearned for development and prosperity.
Six years into democracy, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist waged an armed struggle against the state which it said was to establish the “rule of the people.” The non-performance of the mainstream political parties fueled the Maoist movement. As the country fell into deep uncertainties, King Gyanendra, following the path of his father, usurped power in 2005. He sabotaged the democratic institutions which prompted political parties, including the Maoists, and the people from different walks of life to unite together against Gyanedra’s absolute rule.
That movement against Gyanedra in 2006 lasted 19 days. Gyanedra finally capitulated. People’s power prevailed. Multiparty democracy was restored. The ground for turning Nepal into a federal republic was also created. The 2006 revolution also gave rise to the identity movement. The Madhes uprising in 2007, which took place on the foundation laid by the 2006 movement, prompted the country to become federal.
The country became a republic, the Hindu kingdom turned into a secular nation and transitioned into a federal set-up abandoning the decades long centralised system of governance. It is the contribution of the 2006 revolution that the country adopted the principles of inclusion in the state machinery though much needs to be done for them to be institutionalised.
Political analysts say the major achievement of the different revolutions is the shift in the political system.
“There have been paradigm changes in the political system. However, it hasn’t yielded expected results,” Rajendra Maharjan, a political analyst, told the Post. “It is because the same old faces continued to be in power despite changes in the political system.”
In his view, the same “dirty politics” that was dominant after the 1990 people’s revolution continues even to this day as the political behaviour and political culture of the parties remain the same. Democratisation of the existing parties and their leadership is a major challenge at present.
Analysts say despite contributions of the people from different communities in democratic movements in the country, there couldn’t be economic and cultural transformations. The marginalised communities continue to suffer economically and culturally. A large number of the people from the Dalit community, for instance, still don’t possess land, say analysts.
“Inequality is rife. Only a certain section is enjoying state benefits,” Daman Nath Dhungana, a former Speaker and a civil society member, told the Post. “Our leaders do not have any agenda for development. Nor are they committed to addressing the concerns of the people, especially those from the marginalised communities that have suffered oppression for long.”
Dhungana says the political transformation alone makes no sense unless every section of society feels that there is the state for the people to look after them.
The Constitution of Nepal promulgated in 2015 envisions an inclusive state. Article 42 states that representation in the state machinery should be based on the principles of inclusion. However, other than specified in the constitution and laws, the government and parties have always been hesitant in ensuring representation of women and other communities. Neither the Cabinet nor the constitutional and ambassadorial nominations, for instance, are inclusive.
According to experts, democracy can be strengthened only when the people are empowered.
“However, least has been done to empower the people as the parties have been constantly bickering for power,” Meena Vaidya Malla, a former professor of political science at the Tribhuvan University, told the Post. “History has provided several opportunities for the parties to perform but they have failed miserably.”
She says had the parties been committed to the country and the people, a lot could have been achieved after 1990 and 2006.
Observers say even though the country has gone through different revolutions and embraced different political systems, political parties are still unclear on what kind of security policy and foreign policy the country should adopt. “This is necessary because oftentimes external politics gets intertwined with domestic policies,” said Dhungana.
Some political experts believe there is a need for yet another revolution in the country as dissatisfaction among the people is rising.
Maharjan says discontent is brewing in society, but how and when it will erupt is difficult to predict.
“All the revolutions so far have been political. I believe the country is waiting for an economic or cultural revolution,” he said. “A new revolt is inevitable as only a certain section has benefitted from the changes so far.”
Dhunanga also says a new revolution may happen but he says that is not possible in the near future. According to him, no alternative force has emerged to pose a challenge to the existing parties.
“The existing parties aren’t changing because there is no powerful force to challenge them,” he said. “I think the country will continue to move ahead in the same fashion as it has been, at least for a while.”
Revolution and Counter-Revolution, tyranny and liberation struggle are counter forces of each other, whichever holds power serving as the force which creates its own resistance according to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, and comparing them can have great explanatory power.
I envision the mission of creating civilization and humankind as a game played by figures which represent conserving and revolutionary forces, as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot may serve as paragons of their sides of the board and reflect each other as partners in the great game of reimagining humankind, a result of the early influence of Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game and Yasunari Kawabata’s The Master of Go, which I read during seventh grade, and Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, which I read the following year. Each of us, as with every author, musician, artist, scientist, or public figure, plays the Great Game on one of these dyadic teams.
The function of conservatism is to buffer order from the shock of the new and withstand stresses and changing conditions without losing ourselves or undergoing morphogenic change, the loss of identity as structural form, or ruptures to our prochronism, the memory and history of our choices, successful adaptations and strategies of survival as expressed in our systemic form, the loss of our culture and traditions.
The function of revolution and innovation is to capitalize on chaos as adaptive potential in dynamically unstable conditions, to adapt and shape ourselves to future needs and to transform, create, and discover new forms, meanings, and values.
We need both conserving and revolutionary forces to envision and enact a thing of beauty, be it a person, story, song, film, theory, or any creative artifact of authentic human imagination and experience. A beautiful political structure may be judged by the same criterion as a beautiful poem; so also with humans and the values their actions embody.
As I wrote in my post of July 14 2025, A Legacy of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity for All Humankind: Bastille Day; When I describe and think of myself as a Jacobin in terms of political identity, I am thinking of the relationship between Marat and de Sade as negative spaces of each other in Weiss’ play, of our historical civilization as a game played between conserving and revolutionary forces which may change masks at times as codified in the trilogy of Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, Kawabata Yasunari’s The Master of Go, and Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, and of systemic unequal power as the origin of evil and the Wagnerian Ring of fear, power, and force which subverts revolutionary seizures of power as tyranny.
I bear it in mind as a cautionary tale throughout a life lived beyond the boundaries of the Forbidden and the limits of our maps of becoming human, in the unknown blank spaces marked Here Be Dragons, as I have upon occasion answered the question, Who are you?, with Napoleon’s “I am the Revolution.”
As causal sources of global revolution against the system of aristocratic monarchy and state religion, the American and French Revolutions are a tide of democracy and universal human rights which radically reimagined human social and political relations, being, meaning, and value, and continue to propagate throughout the world. It found echoes in the Russian Revolution, and as anticolonial struggle in India, South Africa, and nearly everywhere on earth as humankind awakened from its long darkness as tyrannies of masters and slaves.
Today its values and ideals manifest in revolutions and liberation movements throughout the world, in Hong Kong, Palestine, and Ukraine, among those places to which I have traveled in solidarity with the struggles of their peoples, those whom Franz Fanon called “The Wretched of the Earth”, and whom our Statue of Liberty proclaims the “huddled masses yearning to be free”.
What does Liberty mean for us today?
Memory, history, and identity; a process of becoming human and a ground of struggle between our anchorages and our aspirations, and one in constant motion and a state of change; impermanent, ephemeral, protean, shaped by the dynamism between authenticity and falsification as we wander in a wilderness of mirrors, lies and illusions of authority which seek to capture, distort, and subjugate us, to enslave us and steal our souls.
This is the primary revolution of all humankind; the struggle to create ourselves as autonomous beings, free of authorized identities and the tyranny of other people’s ideas of virtue, against the forces of dehumanization and elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege, divisions of exclusionary otherness and fascisms of blood, faith, and soil, and the inequalities and injustices of state terror, repression of dissent, institutional violence, force, and control.
To become ourselves is the first revolution in which we all must fight, of which other forms of revolutionary struggle are echoes and reflections, and they are united in the struggle for ownership and control of our identity as aspects of a common emergence of humankind.
To refuse to submit is the primary human act which confers freedom, for who cannot be controlled is free. In this moment of Resistance to authority and tyranny we become Unconquered, each of us Living Autonomous Zones and agents of Chaos, Liberty, and the reimagination and transformation of humankind.
Law serves power, order appropriates, and there is no just Authority.
Let us throw open the gates of our prisons, and be free.
As Guillermo del Toro teaches us in Carnival Row; “Chaos is the great hope of the powerless”. Let us seize our moment and bring change to systems of oppression and unequal power.
In this moment of decision, from the darkness of Vichy America, captured state of the Fourth Reich and the loathsome Trump regime, to the looming tide of fascist revivalism which shadows much of Europe and threatens to dismantle the Enlightenment, I say to all tyrants who meet protest not with redress of grievances but with brutal repression as a carceral state of force and control, both at home and in former colonies and emerging nations; in a free society of equals one must lead from the front of the masses as their champion, and not behind the walls of your palace as their tyrant.
In this moment when state tyranny and terror savages us in its jaws, let us bring the Chaos.
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, ou la Mort!
As I wrote in my post of January 8 2021, Anatomy of a Failure: Trumps January Coup; One of the comments was brilliantly satirical; ”Be kind. Who hasn’t helped instigate a fascist insurrection and then regretted it the next day.”
Actually, I once did exactly that; we seized Nepal’s Congress in a revolution against the monarchy, and while we issued proclamations and debated the nuances and praxis of theory and ideology, a scene very much like the situation faced by the victorious Arab forces after the capture of Damascus in the great film Lawrence of Arabia, the Gurkha regiment, which I had relied on as my principal allies, declared the Himalayas Gorkhaland and invaded Bhutan, where my monastic order the Kagyu Buddhists are based, having been an active political force as were the Buddhists during the Vietnam War or the Liberation Theology Catholic orders in Latin America, and then the military simultaneously declared war on India and China. Things became more confused from there.
The purge of the Bhutanese ethnic minority from Nepal is one lasting effect; they were driven into Bhutan which did not recognize them and tortured many in concentration camps, and those who escaped to America are now under threat of being sent back to Bhutan by Trump and his white supremacist terror force ICE.
Seizures of power are sacred acts of Chaos and Transformation, and as such are inherently beyond control. When there are multiple conflicted interests and powers involved, opening the door to change means riding the whirlwind, abandoning control and welcoming the unknown.
Chaos is a natural limit of power, and of the use of social force and control; another such limiting factor being that force and control become meaningless when met with disobedience.
Compulsion by force and violence also sacrifices legitimacy on the part of its perpetrator and the loyalty of those it seeks to subjugate. This is why authoritarian states couple force with control; surveillance, disinformation, and the falsification of their subjects with the lies and illusions of an alternate reality created through propaganda. The January 6 Insurrection is a splendid example of its operations, a false religion and a politics of atavistic barbarism which seized a mob of its true believers in mass hysteria at the command of a mad tyrant.
The parallels of Trumps regime and coup attempts with Nepal are manifold; the origins of the Revolution in Nepal included ethnic Nepalese-Indian and sectarian Hindu versus Buddhist nationalist conflicts, poverty, by which I mean the majority of people lived in the streets and scavenged garbage but for the few who survived by ruthlessness and guile in the vast criminal underworld of heroin and human trafficking, alongside aristocratic wealth and power, by which I mean that all property was ultimately owned by some two thousand members of the royal family, and a horrible famine and plagues including typhus and cholera.
The crisis of transformation originated in natural disaster leveraged by flawed social and political decisions and historical inequalities and injustices; sixty percent of India’s rice harvest having been lost to drought and hordes of rats in a nation which has inheritable debt to the third generation and produced legions of suddenly landless farmers who crossed the border into Nepal to escape debt slavery for their families, to a feudal nation of archaic tribes with no export products beyond wool rugs and other village handcrafts and no jobs available, limited social services, and which had already deforested and burned all the firewood in the midst of a brutal winter and were cooking over dried goat dung.
There are differences of scale; our streets are not ankle deep in blood and feces, nor littered with the dead; we have no open battle between landowners and waves of migrants, nor are we wedged between hungry empires and defended by a few thousand former British colonial soldiers whose independence from civil authority stems from their awareness of that power and hovers at becoming military rule. But the conditions are broadly similar to those which gave rise to fascism here in America.
Here too there was poverty, plague, a kleptocracy of elites and a hegemony of power and privilege, a militarized police regime of brutal force and control, prison labor as a legal form of chattel slavery and the legacies and epigenetic harms of historical slavery, and divisions of exclusionary otherness including those of race, gender, and class created through propaganda, especially the demonization of migrants, and its expression as fascisms of blood, faith, and soil.
In the figureheads of the government and the hegemonic elites which entertain us by making them dance and posture upon the public stage as the puppets of our distraction while behind the curtain they subjugate and enslave us as instruments of their power, here too we are similar; we have Trump, Giuliani, and a host of buffoons for our amusement, Nepal had a crown prince who was flamboyantly queer and a centerpiece of Kathmandu’s nightclub scene, but also a notorious heroin addict and gun nut, and who one day got hopped up and shot the rest of the royal family to avoid an arranged marriage; not a promising beginning for a reign of stability and public trust.
And Nepal? This month it has once again overthrown monarchy in favor of democracy, for the fourth time since World War Two; I’m hoping this time it sticks.
In this history of democracy in struggle with hierarchies of belonging and elite wealth, power, and privilege in Nepal I find analogy in Stephen Jay Gould’s evolutionary principle of punctuated equilibrium; a gradual but inevitable movement toward liberation, in fits and starts, threats and mutations, as conservative and revolutionary forces shape us over time into something better.
When you open the door to Chaos and Transformation, be prepared to reap the whirlwind. That the forces which are our allies obey no master is the great hope of the powerless; it is also what makes them dangerous to unleash and to wield.
Herein I wish to signpost that I bear no sentimental longings for the return either of the Hindu monarchy and the de facto theocracy of Buddhist monastic orders with which it has long been interdependent.
As I wrote in my post of May 7 2023, The Abjection of Faith as Sadism: Case of the Dalai Lama’s Command “Suck My Tongue”; Thousands of years of history speak to us with the voice of the Dalai Lama, and what it says is; “suck my tongue.”
I have heard the Dalai Lama speak when I was a Buddhist monk, during the revolution in Nepal when we overthrew the system of monarchy. I’m not sure what the topic was, because all I heard was this; “I am better than you, and I want to steal your power.”
Actually, this is always the true purpose and design of those who claim to speak for the Infinite, and of any faith weaponized in service to power and authority through exploitation of trust, falsification, and the Wilderness of Mirrors; lies, illusions, rewritten histories, alternate realities, and terminating in subjugation and narratives of belonging and exclusionary otherness as divisions of identitarian politics and theocratic elite hierarchies of the Elect.
“Suck my tongue.”
This is the sum of all wisdom which can be offered to us by such tyrants and theocracies as we go forward into the future and create new ways of being human together; authority and elite hegemonies of the elect and of wealth, power, and privilege serve themselves alone and the systems of unequal power of which they are apex predators, and all their apologetics are nothing more or less than the weaponization of faith and trust in service to power and the subjugation and falsification of those whom they seek to enslave.
There is no meaning or value in theocratic ideologies or autocratic societies, especially those of organized religions who field armies and enforcers of virtue, beyond this, and we may say with Diderot; “Humankind will be free when the last king has been strangled by the guts of the last priest.”
Who stands between each of us and the Infinite serves neither.
“Suck my tongue”; possibly this shocks only Westerners who embraced Buddhism as so many have in reaction to the vile history of imperialism, patriarchy, racism, and wars of religion of traditional European Christianity, in the naïve hope that beliefs outside its boundaries may reify humanistic values and offer real change even when they reinforce rather than challenge systems of patriarchal authority and theocratic dominion.
Traditional authoritarianism mixes poorly with Western permissiveness. Here I speak of the precise and unique ferocity of Orientalism, so well articulated as colonial apologetics by Edward Said, of which the Western embrace of exotic cultures including religions during periods of civilizational fracture, disruption, and collapse from its internal contradictions such as those of the 1960s is a form, embedded in the history of the counterculture and its aberrant New Age faiths both empowering as liberation struggle and dangerous as colonialist assimilation of alien cultures and submission to authority.
Something like this wave of disgust at the nihilistic moral vacuity and dehumanizing arrogance of power as sexual terror now ripples through the global Buddhist community exactly as it has the Catholic Church and the Shia dominion of Iran, whose democracy movements are in part driven by revulsion at the selling of temporary marriages which finances the theocratic regime. The Dalai Lama, the Pope, and the Ayatollah are different not in kind but merely by degree from other apex predators of unequal power as tyrannies of the Elect, figures of vast systems of harm and dehumanization and organizations of subjugation and imperial dominion as weaponized faith.
There is always someone in a gold robe who has tricked others into doing the hard and dirty work for him and his chosen co-conspirators. In the case of the Dalai Lama as the exiled ruler of Tibet and the leader of a faith organization authorized as national identity, we have an actual theocracy like the priest-kings of Pharaonic Egypt combined horrifically with fascist identity politics and nationalism.
The Buddhist magazine Lions Roar once had a long article about the pervasive and endemic sexual abuse of students by Buddhist teachers and priests; it began “Of course you must accept some authority”. This is where you lose me, and why I no longer live as a monk and Dream Navigator of the Kagyu Vajrayana order, for I say you must never accept a thing as true on the basis of authority, and anyone or any system of politics or faith that demands your obedience is an enemy which must be resisted to the last, a tyrant who has no legitimacy, a deceiver who must be questioned and disbelieved, and a system of lies and stolen power from which we must awake and emerge.
As Kazantzakus teaches us; “I believe nothing, I hope for nothing, I am free.”
The power and impunity of religious authority is a precondition of abuse and a corruptive force.
Treat a man as the voice of revealed truth and an intermediary and substitute for the Infinite long enough, and it will destroy both of you.
As written in Huffpost, in an article entitled Dalai Lama Apologizes After Video Shows Him Telling Boy, ‘Suck My Tongue’; “During a February event, the Dalai Lama asked a boy to kiss him on the lips and stuck out his tongue. “And suck my tongue,” he added, prompting laughter from audience; “Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama apologized Monday after a video showing him kissing a child on the lips triggered criticism.
A statement posted on his official website said the 87-year-old leader regretted the incident and wished to “apologize to the boy and his family, as well as his many friends across the world, for the hurt his words may have caused.”
The incident occurred at a public gathering in February at the Tsuglakhang temple in Dharamsala, where the exiled leader lives. He was taking questions from the audience when the boy asked if he could hug him.
The Dalai Lama invited the boy up toward the platform he was seated on. In the video, he gestured to his cheek, after which the child kissed him before giving him a hug.
The Dalai Lama then asked the boy to kiss him on the lips and stuck out his tongue. “And suck my tongue,” the Dalai Lama can be heard saying as the boy sticks out his own tongue and leans in, prompting laughter from the audience.
The footage triggered a backlash online with social media users condemning his behavior as inappropriate and disturbing.
“His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras,” the statement from the Dalai Lama read.”
As written by Slavoj Zizek in Project Syndicate, in an article entitled Suck My Tongue, Crush My Balls; “The controversy surrounding a recent video of the Dalai Lama greeting a seven-year-old boy was not merely a classic case of “lost in translation.” It also speaks to the deep, ineradicable abyss that can separate cultures, and invites reflection on the confusion surrounding intentions and desires that can occur within cultures.
In a recent viral video, the Dalai Lama can be seen asking a seven-year-old boy, at a widely attended public ceremony, to give him a hug and then, “Suck my tongue.” The immediate reaction from many in the West was to condemn the Dalai Lama for behaving inappropriately, with many speculating that he is senile, a pedophile, or both. Others, more charitably, noted that sticking out one’s tongue is a traditional practice in Tibetan culture – a sign of benevolence (demonstrating that one’s tongue is not dark, which indicates evil). Still, asking someone to suck it has no place in the tradition.
In fact, the correct Tibetan phrase is “Che le sa,” which translates roughly to “Eat my tongue.” Grandparents often use it lovingly to tease a grandchild, as if to say: “I’ve given you everything, so the only thing left is for you to eat my tongue.” Needless to say, the meaning was lost in translation. (Although English is the Dalai Lama’s second language, he does not possess native-level mastery.)
To be sure, the fact that something is part of a tradition does not necessarily preclude it from scrutiny or criticism. Clitoridectomy is also a part of ancient Tibetan tradition, but we certainly would not defend it today. And even sticking out one’s tongue has undergone a strange evolution in the last half-century. As Wang Lixiong and Tsering Shakya write in The Struggle for Tibet:
“During the Cultural Revolution, if an old landowner met emancipated serfs on the road he would stand to the side, at a distance, putting a sleeve over his shoulder, bowing down and sticking out his tongue – a courtesy paid by those of lower status to their superiors – and would only dare to resume his journey after the former serfs had passed by. Now [after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms] things have changed back: the former serfs stand at the side of the road, bow and stick out their tongues, making way for their old lords. This has been a subtle process, completely voluntary, neither imposed by anyone nor explained.”
Here, sticking out one’s tongue signals self-humiliation, not loving care. Following Deng’s “reforms,” ex-serfs understood that they were again at the bottom of the social scale. Even more interesting is the fact that the same ritual survived such tremendous social transformations.
Returning to the Dalai Lama, it is probable – and certainly plausible – that Chinese authorities orchestrated or facilitated the wide dissemination of a clip that could besmirch the figure who most embodies Tibetan resistance to Chinese domination.
In any case, we have all now gotten a glimpse of the Dalai Lama as our “neighbor” in the Lacanian sense of the term: an Other who cannot be reduced to someone like us, whose otherness represents an impenetrable abyss. Western observers’ highly sexualized interpretation of his antics reflects an unbridgeable gap in cultural understanding.
But similar cases of impenetrable otherness are easy to find within Western culture. Years ago, when I read about how the Nazis tortured prisoners, I was quite traumatized to learn that they even resorted to industrial testicle-crushers to cause unbearable pain.
Yet lo and behold, I recently came across the same product in an online advertisement:
“Pick your poison for pleasure … STAINLESS STEEL BALL CRUSHER, STAINLESS BALL CLAMP TORTURE DEVICE, BRUTAL COCK VICE TORTURE TOY, HARDCORE STAINLESS BALL TORTURE … So if you lie in bed with your partner, melancholic and tired of life, the time is right. Your slave’s nuts are ripe for crushing! It is the moment you have been waiting for – to find the right tool to brutalize his balls!”
Now, suppose I walked by a room where two men were enjoying this device. Hearing one of them moan and cry in pain, I would probably misread what was happening. Should I knock on the door and politely ask, at the risk of being an idiot, “Is this really consensual?” After all, if I just kept walking, I would be ignoring the possibility that it really was an act of torture.
Or, imagine a scenario where a man is doing something similar to a woman – torturing her consensually. In this age of political correctness, many people would automatically presume coercion, or they would conclude that the woman had internalized male repression and begun to identify with the enemy.
It is impossible to render this situation without ambiguity, uncertainty, or confusion, because there really are some men and women who genuinely enjoy some degree of torture, especially if it is enacted as if it was nonconsensual. In these sadomasochistic rituals, the act of punishment signals the presence of some underlying desire that warrants it. For example, in a culture where rape is punished by flogging, a man might ask his neighbor to flog him brutally, not as some kind of atonement, but because he harbors a deep-seated desire to rape women.
In one sense, the passage from Nazi ball crushers to the erotic kind used in sadomasochist games can be seen as a sign of historical progress. But it runs parallel to the “progress” that leads some people to purge classic works of art of any content that might hurt or offend somebody.
We are left with a culture in which it is okay to engage in consensual discomfort at the level of bodily pleasures, but not in the realm of words and ideas. The irony, of course, is that efforts to prohibit or suppress certain words and ideas will merely make them more attractive and powerful as secret, profane desires. The fact that some superego has enjoined them furnishes them with a pleasure – and pleasure-seekers – that they otherwise would not have had.
Why does increasing permissiveness seem to entail increasing impotence and fragility. And why, under certain conditions, can pleasure be enjoyed only through pain? Contrary to what Freud’s critics have long claimed, psychoanalysis’s moment has only just arrived, because it is the only framework that can render visible the big inconsistent mess that we call “sexuality.”
Yes, theocracy is vile and extravagantly evil, and must be answered with ax and torch and utterly destroyed. Systems of unequal power must find balance and a Reckoning without fear, pity, or remorse, for all Resistance is War to the Knife.
This is due to the imposed conditions of struggle, and in Nepal monarchy and theocracy, caste and capital, are systems of oppression and legacies of history from which we must emerge.
What matters is not authorized versions of good and evil; these serve only power.
Liberty, equality, and who holds power matter; the balance of forces between sovereign and free individuals as Living Autonomous Zones matters, citizenship and our universal human rights matter.
In the end all that matters is what we do with our fear, and how we use our power.
Nepal’s prime minister quits after deaths at protests sparked by social media ban – video
For those wishing to compare the 1990 Revolution and that of September 2025, here is an excellent political study of the fall of the monarchy to democracy 35 years ago.
Spring Awakening–account of the 1990 Revolution in Nepal by Raeper
Mass Protests in Iran and throughout the world on this anniversary of the martyrdom of Mahsa Ahmini in the cause of liberty and women’s rights of bodily autonomy.
The key question now is whether Iran is on the edge of real change, or yet another bloody cycle of executions and mass arrests.
After more than three years of revolutionary struggle in Iran against the rule of the mullahs, larger than anything seen since the 1979 overthrow of the Shah over forty years ago which brought the Shiite theocracy into power and includes massacres of hundreds of protestors but also open battle in Shiraz and other major cities between the government’s forces of repression and the people of Iran united in the cause of liberty, that no government may stand between man and God nor enforce compulsion in matters of faith, a re-energized democracy revolution brings the theocracy near its fall.
Massa Ahmini is all of us, and we may read our future in her fate should we fail to act in solidarity as guarantors of each other’s universal human rights. In Iran and in America and throughout the world, forces of change are gathering as we refuse to abandon each other.
Comes the whirlwind, and with it escape from the legacies of our history and a reimagination and transformation of the limitless possibilities of becoming human.
As written by Behnam Ben Taleblu and Richard Goldberg in The New York Post, in an article entitled Three years later, Iran’s freedom martyr Mahsa Amini inspires demands for change; “The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has tracked more than 2,500 protests over the past year — 186 in August, and another 43 these last two weeks.
These demonstrations range from small gatherings to large marches, spanning provinces and pulling in every demographic: students and shopkeepers, the secular and the religious, the rich and the poor.
Their persistence matters.
Iran’s rulers depend on the illusion that fear has crushed dissent.
But the ongoing rhythm of protest proves otherwise: The fire that Mahsa Amini lit has not burned out.
The hopeful case is that the Islamic Republic has never looked weaker, with its nuclear deterrent smashed, its economy a disaster and its legitimacy evaporated.
Women walk unveiled in defiance every day; young men chant against the Supreme Leader; minorities refuse to stay silent.
The people’s will for freedom is stronger than the regime’s claim to power.
The darker case is that the ayatollahs still command an enormous security machine — and have shown they will use it without hesitation.
Internet blackouts, prison torture, firing squads: These are not relics of the past, but tools of the present.
The likeliest outcome is a mix of both — cycles of protest and suppression, hope followed by horror.
But every cycle weakens the regime’s grip, erodes its legitimacy and emboldens its people.
America and its allies cannot dictate Iran’s future. But they can tilt the balance.
Consistent pressure on Tehran — through sanctions, accountability for human rights abuses and support for civil society — can amplify the voices of Iranians demanding change.
Looking away, by contrast, only guarantees more repression.
Mahsa Amini’s death exposed the cruelty of a regime built on fear.
On the third anniversary of her death, her name is still whispered in protests, chanted in underground meetings and written on walls.
She is not forgotten.
The world should be clear-eyed: Iran is either on the brink of liberation — or at risk of plunging into another wave of executions.
The difference may lie in whether the free world decides to stand with the Iranian people, or give the ayatollahs the benefit of time.
Mahsa Amini did not choose martyrdom. But in death, she has become the regime’s greatest threat: The immortal symbol of what freedom looks like when ordinary citizens demand it.”
As written on the third anniversary of her death in 2025 by Paul Trowbridge in ZNetwork/MSN, in an article entitled Portraits Of Resistance, Voices Of Dissent From the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi Movement; “September 16th, 2025 marks the 3rd anniversary of the state femicide of Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22 year old Kurdish-Iranian university student who died in a coma, after she was brutally beaten by Iranian security forces, over an alleged violation of the Islamic Republic’s strict veiling laws for women. Both Amnesty International and Iran International identified eye witness reports that confirm Jina Mahsa Amini was beaten while in police custody. Medical imaging and doctors reports confirmed she died as a result of being beaten. Her killing sparked the largest and most sustained protests in Iran, since the 1979 Revolution that established the Islamic Republic. This decentralized protest movement never had a single unanimously agreed upon name, and it has been variously referred to as the “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi movement”, and the “Jina Revolution.” The slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” is Kurdish and means “Woman, Life, Freedom” in English. The slogan itself has a long history in the Kurdish Freedom Movement. It was first articulated by Abdullah Öcalan, one of the founding members of the militant left-wing Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). And the slogan was used widely during the 2008 International Women’s Day protests in Turkey. While mass protests in Iran have since subsided, and international media attention shifted focus, issues concerning oppression of women and ethnic minorities, as well as class inequality remain significant issues in the daily lives of Iranians.
What follows contains an interview with one of the early organizers of the protests, and includes his not previously published account of how the protests were first organized and how the protest movement became the largest and most sustained social protest movement in the history of the Islamic Republic. I interviewed this organizer and activist in Sulaymaniyah, a city in Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq, after he fled persecution in Iran. The central feature that led to the mass mobilizations of Iranians is that the issues cut across ethnic lines, and mobilized all sectors of Iranian society. Whereas, in the past, the various ethnic groups within Iranian society did not join together in mass protests. It was the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi Movement that brought all Iranians together in one mass movement. “All of Iran spoke with one voice,” explained a leader of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), once one of the most militant insurgent organizations involved in armed struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran. But, since the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi movement, the KDPI advocates for non-violence and civil protest as a means of social and political change.
The following text comes from an interview I had with a 22 year veteran political activist and organizer in Iran, here referred to by the pseudonym Hasan. I met and interviewed Hasan in Sulaymaniyah, a city in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq, after he fled Iran. On the day of Jina Mahsa Amini’s funeral, Iranian authorities were already concerned about civil unrest, and they had refused to allow Jina to be buried in her hometown of Saqqez. The authorities sought to control the situation, by not publicizing the location of the funeral and burial ahead of time, in order to limit the potential for protest. However, political organizers were already at work developing their own plans. Hasan made arrangements with someone who had real-time access to the geolocation of the vehicle carrying Jina’s body to the funeral. Hasan then broadcast out the real-time location of the vehicle to his entire activist network. The first location for the funeral was Sanandaj, a Kurdish-majority town. But through the broadcast communication of the movement of the vehicle, more than one thousand people came out in the streets. So, the regime re-directed the vehicle to the city of Tabriz. Tabriz is not a Kurdish-majority city, and the authorities believed that by having the funeral in a non-Kurdish majority location would minimize protest potential. But, it was in Tabriz that the first indication of the multi-ethnic alliance that would become the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi movement first became apparent. The majority of Tabriz are ethnic Azerbaijanis, a Turkic ethnic group. And, in Tabriz, one of the largest cities in Iran, thousands of ethnic Azerbaijanis took to the streets. It was the first time that social protest crossed ethnic lines in this significant way in Iran and it was the first evidence that the protest over the killing of Jina Mahsa Amini would lead to a large-scale national movement. When thousands of protesters gathered in Tabriz, the regime again re-directed the vehicle. But, by that time, the regime was running out of time, and they re-directed the vehicle to Saqqez, Jina’s hometown, for the funeral. Hasan was present at her funeral, and estimates some five thousand people attended the funeral. He recalls people wrote “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” on her headstone. Following Jina Mahsa Amini’s funeral, protests erupted across Iran.
From interviews with participants and organizations directly involved in the movement, the most important aspect for mobilizing so many people was the fact that the grievances and issues motivating the protests were shared across all sectors of society. Whereas, in the past, issues mostly affected one group in society, and protests largely never cut across ethnic lines. But, in the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi movement the underlying issues were experienced by all components of Iranian society. The hijab laws were only popular among the most religious conservatives and many people opposed them. There was also a strong class-based component to the protests as well. Iran, and especially in Kurdish-majority regions experience extreme poverty. The confluence of class and social issues that affected Iranians across ethnic lines provided the grounds for the mass mobilization of protest.
In addition to the multi-ethnic participation in the protests, one of the other key factors was the mobilization of students by teachers. The national teachers union in Iran, the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations (CCITTA), called for an immediate strike. With students not going to school, they could get out and protest. In this way, students and teachers became the first major segment of Iranian society to create the mass protest movement. Once the Iranian regime students were the focal point in the new movement, the regime began targeting teachers. Hasan was arrested and held in solitary confinement for 50 days. After he was released from jail, he fled Iran.
The protests of the Jin, Jiyan Azadi movement stand as the largest nation-wide mass protest movement in Iran since the 1979 Revolution. While no official statistics exists, eye witness reports from participants indicate that as many as two million people took to the streets in Tehran alone during the protests. Protests occurred in over 150 cities across Iran. These widespread mass protests led to a severe and brutal crackdown by Iranian authorities. More than 19,000 people were arrested during the protests. The UN Fact Finding mission reported 551 people were killed by Iranian regime forces during the protests. The Iranian regime carried out mass public executions which were condemned by the international community. Amnesty International in its report found evidence of “grossly unfair trials.” Because of the extend of persecution and repression by the Iranian authorities, many protesters fled Iran. I interviewed a 19 year-old who joined the protests because he saw young people were leading the movement and he wanted to contribute his voice. This young man, here called Soran, was shot twice and lost one of his kidneys by Iranian security forces. He was arrested and beaten in prison so badly he was also rendered into a coma. Luckily, he survived and his friends and family smuggled him out of Iran. Like Hasan, I met and interviewed him in Sulaymaniyah. I also met and interviewed several young women who also fled Iran after facing persecution for their participation in the protests. When the fled Iran, they joined armed insurgency groups involved in armed struggle against the Islamic Republic.
Jina Mahsa Amini was posthumously awarded the European Union’s highest human rights recognition, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, in 2023. The prize was given to her and the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi movement she inspired. Iranian authorities confiscated the passports of Jina Mahsa Amini’s parents and brother and prevented them from traveling to France to receive the award. The family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht, was able to travel and received the award on their behalf.
The Jin, Jiyan, Azadi movement has forever changed the landscape of social protest movements in Iran. Now the entire people have seen that organizing can occur across ethnic lines and across all sectors of society. Organizations like the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan and the Komala of Iranian Kurdistan are already working with labor, women’s rights groups and all of Iran’s varied ethnic groups to create broad-based social, political and economic change in Iran.”
As written by Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on their website, in an article entitled 3 Years Since Mahsa Amini’s Death, More Protests Remain a Matter of When, not If; “Helen of Troy’s face may have launched a thousand ships, but Mahsa Jina Amini’s name unleashed thousands of protests.
September 16 marks three years since the death of Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman, at the hands of Iran’s dreaded “morality police” for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab — the mandatory head-covering for women in Iran. While Mahsa never intended to become an international symbol of resistance against the regime, pictures of her brutalized state in a Tehran hospital and news of her death touched the hearts of millions of Iranians, launching the largest wave of anti-regime demonstrations in the history of the Islamic Republic. Reportedly, over 500 were killed and 22,000 detained during what morphed from anti-hijab protests into a national uprising against clerical authority termed the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement from 2022-2023.
Three years on, Iranian society remains volatile. Since September 2022, there have been at least 9,300 acts of protest or civil disobedience according to an open-source tracker maintained by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
The Unhealed Chasm Between State and Society in Iran
The Women, Life, Freedom uprising did not emerge in a vacuum. It was not even the first nationwide act of protest in 2022. The Islamic Republic lost its legitimacy long ago, particularly among Iran’s younger, nationalist, and secular population. This means that Tehran’s aging clerics, oligarchs, and military men have increasingly looked to brute force and intimidation rather than social and political persuasion to keep their hold on power.
Specifically, the scale of the 2022-2023 demonstrations — engulfing over 150 different cities, towns, and villages across all of Iran’s 30 provinces at its peak — was brought about by a widely shared sense of national dissatisfaction and frustration with the Islamic Republic. This was made increasingly apparent in a crescendo of nationwide protests from 2017-2020, coupled with record-setting lows for turnout and even boycotts of electoral contests. By using every opportunity (read: crisis) to march against the regime, be it over environmental, economic, foreign policy, or socio-religious matters, the population signaled a sustained shift away from reform via the ballot box, as was tried in 2009, and towards change via the street.
Iran’s Controversial Hijab Law in the Background
While Iranian women have been protesting mandatory veiling since 1979, enforcement efforts by the regime’s repressive apparatus have ebbed and flowed. Nearly one year after the killing of Mahsa, for example, the parliament introduced a bill broadening the methods used to mandate the hijab and increasing the severity of punishments applicable to women and even girls as young as 12. Reportedly, implementation of the law in full has been blocked by Iranian authorities who are wary of the likely social reaction. While this has led to increased civil disobedience by Iranian women, including publicly appearing unveiled, the state has not stopped its pressure campaign. According to a UN Fact-Finding Mission, Tehran is increasingly relying on electronic surveillance through facial recognition, AI, as well as acts of “state-sponsored vigilantism” through a newly created mobile application called Nazer, or “Overseer,” encouraging citizens and businesses to report non-conformity with the law.
Independent UN experts have called for the law to be fully repealed.”
As written in Time by Danica Kirka, in an article entitled Activists Mark the Anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s Death in Iranian Police Custody; Hundreds gathered in central London on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in police custody in Iran last year, sparking worldwide protests against the country’s conservative Islamic theocracy.
Chanting “Women! Life! Freedom!,” the crowds held her portrait and rallied around the memory of a young woman who died on Sept. 16, 2022, after she was arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s mandatory headscarf law. Similar protests took place in Rome and Berlin.
In Iran, authorities sought to prevent the anniversary from reigniting the protests that gripped the country last year. Amini’s father was detained outside his home after the family indicated that they planned to gather at her grave for a traditional service of commemoration, the Kurdish rights group Hengaw said. People in downtown Tehran reported a heavy security presence, and security forces were seen in western Iran, where the Kurdish minority staged large protests last year.
Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman from the western region, died three days after she was arrested by morality police, allegedly for violating laws that require women to cover their hair in public. While authorities said that she suffered a heart attack, Amini’s supporters said she was beaten by police and died as a result of her injuries.
Her death triggered protests that spread across the country and rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of Iran’s four-decade-old Islamic theocracy.
Authorities responded with a violent crackdown in which more than 500 people were killed and in excess of 22,000 others were detained, according to rights groups. The demonstrations largely died down early this year, but there are still widespread signs of discontent. For several months, women could be seen openly flaunting the headscarf rule in Tehran and other cities, prompting a renewed crackdown over the summer.
Activists around the world sought to renew the protests on the anniversary of Amini’s death.
On Saturday, about 100 protesters gathered in front of the Iranian Embassy in Rome under the “Women, life, freedom,” banner.
“Now it is important that all the world start again to demonstrate in the streets, because what we want is to isolate this regime and in particular we want to push all the states not to have political and economic agreements with Iran,” protester Lucia Massi said.
Iran blamed last year’s protests on the United States and other foreign powers, without providing evidence, and has since tried to downplay the unrest even as it moves to prevent any resurgence.
The protests were partly fueled by the widespread economic pain Iranians have suffered since then-President Donald Trump withdrew from a nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran. But that suffering also may have made it difficult to sustain prolonged demonstrations, as many Iranians struggle to make ends meet.
President Joe Biden issued a lengthy statement on Friday acknowledging the anniversary of Amini’s death, and the United States announced new sanctions on Iranian officials and entities. U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also noted the anniversary and imposed new sanctions on Iranian officials.
Soheila Sokhanvari, an Iranian-British artist, moved to the U.K. to study a year before the 1979 revolution that brought Iran’s conservative Islamic leaders to power. She was in London preparing for a solo exhibition on pre-revolutionary feminist icons last year when she heard about Amini’s death.
The protests that followed marked the first time the world has seen “a revolution which is instigated by women,” she told The Associated Press earlier this month.
“But I think what’s really important about this protest is that Iranian men, for the first time in the history of Iran, they’re actually standing with women and they’re supporting the women and they’re showing respect for the women,” she said. “That’s very original and it’s never happened in the history of Iran.”
As I wrote in my post of September 20 2022, Revolt Against Patriarchy and Theocracy, Not In America This Time But In Iran; In glorious defiance of state sexual terror and patriarchal theocracy, the women of Iran have seized the streets in mass protests throughout the nation and challenged the fearsome and brutal Revolutionary Guards and morality police in several direct actions, a protest movement which may become a general revolt.
Iran is still shaken and destabilized by the echoes and reflections of the near-revolution in its vassal state of Iraq, and as in the chaos of the Battle of Shiraz in December of 2019 in which I fought, mass action provides windows of opportunity in which to bring a reckoning to police and other enforcers of tyranny and to the hegemonic elites whose wealth, power, and privilege they serve, but while we failed to cast those who would enslave us down from their thrones on that occasion three years ago, this time may be different.
For this time we have a martyr, and one who was a member of the Kurdish people, a semi-autonomous nation with vast oil wealth, American and other international support, a dream of independence and a modern army to win it with, and famous for her women warriors and the social equality of genders.
I hope this will be enough to tip the balance; from the moment of Mahsa Amini’s death, the democracy movement against theocracy and patriarchy in Iran has become linked with the independence struggle of Kurdistan as parallel and interdependent forms of liberation struggle.
Patriarchy cannot survive if half of humankind refuses to be unequal to and subjugated by the other half.
The secret of force and control is that it is hollow and brittle; authority loses its legitimacy simply by being disbelieved, and force finds its limit in disobedience and refusal to submit.
As I wrote on the occasion of a previous visit to Iran to make mischief for tyrants in my post of December 2 2019, Battle of Shiraz: the democratic revolution against theocracy in Iran is now an open war; For two weeks beginning Friday November 15 through Monday December 2, Iran’s major city of Shiraz was engulfed in open war as the democracy revolution against the theocratic rule of the mullahs moves into the stage of direct challenge of its military and other tools of state control.
By the count of the neighborhood militia leaders who have now organized themselves into a kind of rebel government, there are 52 or 53 dead among the citizens killed by the police and military throughout Shiraz, plus nine killed in the intense fighting in the Sadra district in which an elite revolutionary unit, myself embedded among them, directly attacked the fortress of the region’s chief mullah on Sunday November 17.
What began as a peaceful protest and a shutdown of the city by abandoning cars in the streets turned quickly to open battle after police shot and killed Mehdi Nekouyee, a 20 year old activist, without cause. Soon armed bands of laborers stormed the police station he was killed in front of, leaving it in flames and marching on other government strongpoints as their ranks swelled.
Throughout the next three days the luxury shopping district on Maliabad Boulevard was largely destroyed, some 80 bank branches and several gas stations set on fire. The Qashqai minority of Turkic nomads and weavers who in Shiraz are an important mercantile polity declared independence and repelled successive waves of attacks by heavy weapons units and helicopter assault cavalry against their outlying district of Golshan.
But the most important revolutionary action of November in Iran was the seizure of the chief mullah of Shiraz and his palace-fortress, of which I am a witness and participant. An action whose meaning is central to the motives and binding purpose of the secularists who are fighting for democracy and to liberate Iran from the autocratic regime of the mullahs, this was a glorious victory which exposes the hollowness of theocratic rule.
Widely regarded as corrupt, nepotistic, and xenophobic patriarchs, the mullahs, like Catholic priests, were once sacrosanct from personal responsibility and protected by a perceived mantle of piety; so a primary mission of the Revolution in Iran now as in France over two centuries ago is to expose their venality and the perversion and injustice of their rule. A task made hideously easy in this case by the pervasive network of pedophile sex trafficking authorized by the mullahs and a major source of trackable income in the form of licenses they sell for temporary “pleasure marriages” in which consent is an imprecise concept. And that’s just one visible part of the vast iceberg of greed and immorality of their regime.
In Iran, the fight for democracy and freedom is also a fight against the patriarchy.
As I wrote in my post of October 13 2022 Embrace What You Fear and Be Free: Case of the Resistance Against Patriarchy in Iran and America; A glorious resistance has swept the world as half of humankind refuses to submit to the authority and power of the other half, a revolt against Patriarchy and an evolutionary shift in consciousness which will transform our possibilities of becoming human; two stunning examples are the mass protests in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the face of brutal repression, murder, torture, and mind control in Soviet-model psychiatric prisons, and the electoral fight for bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and gender equality here in America.
The women of Iran and other theocratic patriarchies are fighting to free themselves from the same kinds of systemic dehumanization the Republicans are attempting to impose in America as subversion of democracy. We need only look to Iran and Afghanistan to see the fate which awaits us all if we do nothing to resist the weaponization of faith in service to power by those who would enslave us.
Here I question the use of fear by authority and how we may resist subjugation in revolutionary struggle through embrace of our fear as seizure of power.
Marina Warner explores the uses of fear in our topologies of authorized identities and their transgression as revolutionary struggle against internalized Patriarchal oppression in her marvelous and insightful No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock, which maps our Animus while its companion volume, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, does the same for our Anima; together some of the finest writing on the dyadic masculine and feminine forces of which human being is made.
Patriarchy is a system and structure of institutionalized sexual terror, one which authorizes identities of sex and gender. The intricacies and diabolical mechanisms of its operations and processes have been described in exhausting detail in the decades since Simone de Beauvoir’s founding work of 1949 The Second Sex; here I wish only to reference it as a system of fear with which all humankind must struggle for self-ownership, autonomy, and authenticity.
Our fears are signposts and anchorages of our shadow self, that which we must swallow but are loath to do, as Nietzsche said of the Toad which embodied his darkness, and which William S. Burroughs was cursed to bear as the avatar of a monstrous god. Feelings of disgust, revulsion, terror, violation, and seizure by the alien and the unclean; these are signs not of warning but of welcome to the secret truths of ourselves which we must discover and embrace.
Sometimes we must let our demons out to play.
As I wrote in my post of March 30 2020, Embracing Fear as Liberation from Authority and Control: Anarchy as a Path of Psychological and Social Freedom; Even more terrible than blaming the victim is when no one believes the victim; it is an erasure and silencing which is the particular horror of women, as the dread that no one is coming to help is that of the LGBT community.
What Matthew Jacobs calls The Ubiquity of Disbelief in his insightful criticism in Huffpost of The Invisible Man starring Elizabeth Moss, entitled Why Does No One In Horror Movies Believe The Female Protagonist?, and examines disbelief and the horror of disconnectedness as a disease of the rupture of trust and the fracture of social cohesion, points directly to the cathartic function of art, its ability to hold up a mirror to our darkness.
In her classic essay Powers of Horror: an Essay on Abjection, Julia Kristeva brilliantly interrogates the uses of fear to authority and power as Patriarchy in the control and manufacture of our identities of sex and gender, the uses of normality, idealizations of masculinity and femininity, and ideas of virtue in the falsification, dehumanization, and commodification of humans into slaves by elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege, and all of these processes interdependent with the weaponization of overwhelming and generalized fear in service to power through submission to authority, who by lies and illusions subjugate us with divisions of exclusionary otherness and hierarchies of belonging, including those of race, faith as encoded Patriarchal authority, and nationality as a figment conjured by all of these.
For the mechanism and pathology of fear is what drives patriarchy, unequal power, and inauthentic relationships, abstracts us from ourselves and one another as simulacra and creates aberrations of violence and sexual terror.
From fear are monsters born; yet it is our fear we must embrace to free ourselves of the tyranny of others and the spectre of authoritarian force and control.
We must not let fear define us; it is the degree to which we can embrace, learn from, and free ourselves from our fear which measures our freedom and enacts our liberation from the control of others.
For when we cannot be driven into submission by authority through fear and learned helplessness the use of force becomes meaningless as does its scale; thus do we reclaim our power and agency to define ourselves, and ownership of the performances of our identities.
Who cannot be compelled is free, autonomous, self-created and defined, and becomes Unconquered as a Living Autonomous Zone bearing forces of change which can set others free.
Order appropriates, law serves power, and there is no just authority.
How do we wage resistance and revolutionary struggle against authority, elite hegemonies of unequal power, and the carceral states which enforce their tyrannies as law and order?
First by refusal to submit, second by solidarity of action, and third by delegitimation through disbelief and disobedience.
By these three principles of action tyrants are cast down from their thrones and systems of unequal power are transformed, for the secret of power is that it is hollow and brittle and collapses into ruin when met with disbelief and disobedience.
In defiance of authority the women of Iran, America, and elsewhere have become free and in that moment victorious, for refusal to submit, to believe, and to obey is a victory within us which cannot be taken from us. Nor can the tide of change be stopped once it has begun.
As I wrote in my post of October 27 2022, Triumph of the Mahabad Autonomous Zone and the Free State of Kurdistan Over the State Terror of Iran’s Regime of Mullahs: the Iranian Revolution Against Theocracy and Patriarchy; We celebrate the triumph of the Mahabad Autonomous Zone and the Free State of Kurdistan, where the women of Kurdistan, Iran, and Iraq have together in solidarity against the Patriarchy and the state terror of theocracy won an island of liberty in a vast sea of darkness.
It is a darkness now being challenged in street fighting and open mass protests throughout Iran to overthrow the brutal regime and sexual terror of the mullahs in the restoration of a free society of equals, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan, a revolution of women as a slave caste which like America’s #metoo movement and the historic struggle for women’s rights of reproduction and bodily autonomy now being waged in our elections finds echoes and reflections worldwide as a tide of change.
It falls to each of us in this moment to choose a future for ourselves and for humankind, and stand in solidarity with the half of humanity enslaved and dehumanized by the other half; for men to abandon unequal power and the subjugation of women and to join their loved ones, mothers, sisters, partners, daughters, and friends in liberation struggle for a better future and a free society of equals, for the women of America and the women of Iran to unite in common cause and action with women everywhere, and for us all, wherever human beings hunger to be free, to act in solidarity as a United Humankind to free ourselves from the legacies of our history and from systems of oppression and unequal wealth, power, and privilege.
If we do this simple thing, act in solidarity for the liberty of us all, those who would enslave us will fail. Force and control are fragile when authority has no legitimacy and is disbelieved, and when orders are disobeyed. Disbelieve, disobey, and refuse to submit, and we become Unconquered and free.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
As written by Patrick Wintour in The Guardian, in an article entitled ‘It is not possible to organise in Iran’: jailed activist warns of totalitarianism after Mahsa Amini protests: Majid Tavakoli says protesters should have had more help from abroad but the west doesn’t understand what Iran has become; “The majority of Iranians wish for a “normal life and for a government similar to the governments based on the liberal democratic system”, one of Iran’s most prominent political activists has said, as he prepares to start a six-year jail sentence, leaving his wife and three-year-old daughter behind.
Majid Tavakoli’s incarceration is part of the extraordinary crackdown that the Iranian regime has imposed on dissent as a result of protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for wearing the hijab improperly. The first anniversary of Amini’s death falls on Saturday, and the regime is taking every step to prevent protests, including with patrols outside the Amini family home.
Tavakoli is unusual because he is critical of reformists working inside the system and the communist left. He has been in and out of prison since his 20s. Nazanin Boniadi, the British-Iranian actor and human rights campaigner, describes him as “a man of courage and conviction who has become an even more prominent voice inside the country over the past year”.
He is open about the pain of the imminent rupture from his family. “It is very distressing to be away from them. There is a lot of love in our family. We are very dependent and attached to each other. It is painful to remember this distance every moment.”
Asked if writing and speaking as he did was worth it, he says: “Without tangible results it is hard to say it is. Under normal circumstances, the government could only sentence me to one year in prison for my collection of writings and opinions. However, the special circumstances after the 2022 protests created an environment where they added the charge of collusion, which meant organised collective action with others.”
Authorities subsequently charged him, he says, “without considering the documents and evidence”, and the sentence is heavy.
“But my family and I are aware of the difficult choices we have made. We know that in this era sticking to the truth has many consequences,” he says.
“The text of the court order says that because I want to establish a liberal government and system, I will be punished. Liberals have been attacked many times before by the authorities, yet the general desire of Iranian society is for a normal life and for a government similar to the governments based on the liberal democratic system. The government does not want this thinking to have any representatives inside Iran.”
In recent years the Iranian public’s “perception of power and government has changed” he said. “The government’s inability to solve problems, persistent structural discriminations, the intensification of exploitation, the harmfulness of bad laws, has created a more progressive society.”
Now, the public are disillusioned with elections condemned by international observers as rigged and have “moved towards disobedience and various forms of civil struggle”.
But he admits the protests were flawed, given the difficulty of organising opposition movements in Iran, and suggests there should have been more momentum and help from abroad. “If a specific political change is to bear fruit, there needs to be some kind of organisation and leadership. I think it is not possible to organise inside Iran. Even creating an effective political solidarity is impossible. It is not possible to create such movements and organisations without the government’s knowledge.
“As a result the protests, based on the accumulation of anger and disgust in the society, lacked a political focus for change.
“Inside the country due to repression and censorship it was not possible to form this force, and it should have formed abroad.”
He says he feared that people “outside the country did not have a clear picture of the events inside the country and on the streets”.
“Part of the opposition has reduced the society’s demand to the struggle against the compulsory hijab. They didn’t even recognise the roots of the struggle with hijab and the direction of that struggle.”
No serious attempt was made to create divisions within government, he said. “There were even no resignations of government officials and agents at the provincial and district levels.”
Although technology in the form of satellite TV and social media has broadened access to information, it has also given a tool to the state. “Unfortunately, technology has also contributed to repression … Monitoring and control has become intense. They have the necessary financial resources and motivation. The government can now do far more with telecommunications monitoring and surveillance cameras. It can impose financial penalties – closing bank accounts and other transactions. The manipulation of truth and consciousness has also changed. In other words, this technology has led us to face more control and propaganda instead of suppression and censorship.”
He insists Iranian people want change “that does not require weapons”. “They expect the political elites and political forces to reduce and even eliminate the possibilities of such a risk,” he says.
Above all, he does not think the west understands what Iran has become. “A totalitarian government is established here. Maybe because this is a modern totalitarianism, it has not come to the attention of the west. That is to say, because the structures of repression and censorship have given way to the structures of control and propaganda, the observers do not notice it. Or maybe they are deceived because of the promotion of a permitted opposition within modern totalitarianism.”
He also questions whether the west has a viable strategy to promote a liberal movement in Iran, saying foreign officials say they are concerned about human rights, but in reality focus on restraining Iran on issues such as nuclear file, missiles and armed regional groups.
So is there any cause for hope a year after the protests? “The discourse of personal responsibility, which is a liberal theory for empowering individuals in an era of totalitarianism, has had an advance in the past years,” he says. This rise in people’s sense of personal duty, he says, has led to more Iranians concluding that they cannot ignore the blatant wrongs inflicted by the regime. “Society in general has become very sensitive to those that belittle, normalise or abet wrong doing. That is an advance.”
As written by Deepa Parent in The Guardian, in an article entitled ‘There’s no other option but to fight’: Iranian women defiant as ‘morality police’ return
Activists speak of their dismay at renewed patrols to enforce wearing of the hijab, but insist protests will continue ahead of the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death; “ The return of Iran’s infamous Gasht-e-Irshad (“morality police”) has been greeted with dismay, but protesters who spoke to the Guardian said they would not be dissuaded from taking to streets again.
A police spokesperson confirmed last week that they had started patrolling the streets to deal with civilians who “ignore the consequences of not wearing the proper hijab and insist on disobeying the norms”.
The announcement comes just two months ahead of the anniversary of the death in custody last September of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained for allegedly not properly wearing the Islamic headscarf. Her death led to the largest wave of popular unrest in years in Iran.
The Guardian spoke to women who took part in the nationwide protests after Amini’s death, who said they have already seen police harassing girls on the street for not wearing the hijab.
“I felt indifferent to the news that the ‘morality police’ have been reinstated. Western media insists on telling us Iranians that Gasht-e-Irshad was abolished, but I don’t know a single Iranian friend of mine who believed that,” says a 22-year-old from Rasht.
“They [the morality police] were never gone and were being deployed as security personnel in universities or as civilians in public places. What the world sees is a tiny glimpse of what’s happening here. Although everything looks normal to the ones who don’t care about us women, if you notice, they are everywhere.
“I have worn the headscarf all my life, by choice, and my sister doesn’t. I have always worn it halfway on my head. They killed Mahsa for showing less hair than I do and I know with this official announcement they have now been given a free hand to turn more violent.”
So many kids didn’t die so a year later we will go back to how we were. These are scare tactics and we won’t fall for this
In recent months, Iranian women and girls have been posting pictures and videos of themselves on social media defying the mandatory hijab law. “So many dozens of kids didn’t die [in vain] so a year later we will go back to how we were before September 2022,” says a university student from Tehran.
“Whether or not the regime wants to accept, we will hit the streets again and there’s no going back. We are already planning huge protests leading up to the one-year anniversary of Mahsa’s death. There will be more arrests or worse. These are scare tactics and we won’t fall for this.
“The morality police harassed me even before the protests began. The security forces shot me with a paint gun on my head. I don’t fear them. If we fear them and back off, what will be left of the sacrifices made by the protesters who lost their lives and their families? I am ready to continue the fight.”
Among those killed during protests after Amini’s death was Minoo Majidi, a 62-year-old mother who was shot with 167 pellets. She reportedly said to her family before attending protests in Kermanshah: ‘If I don’t go out and protest, who else will?’ Her daughter Mahsa Piraei said her mother always valued women’s rights and freedom.
“By intensifying repressions, arrests and harassment under the pretext of hijab law, the Islamic Republic sends a message to the Iranian people: that we will beat and kill, and if anyone protests, they will be killed too, just like they killed my mother. This circle will continue as [long as] this regime will remain in power, as its foundation is built upon violence and crimes.”
Although the morality police have existed in some form since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the current form, the Guidance Patrol, was formed as an arm of the police force in 2005. Since then, it has enforced strict hijab laws with multiple reports of violent arrests and detentions.
In 2014, Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and activist, launched My Stealthy Freedom, an online movement encouraging women to share pictures of themselves without a hijab. Alinejad continues to receive images and videos of defiant Iranian women and girls.
“The battle over the hijab became a powerful rallying [cry] against the gender apartheid regime in Iran and a sign of regime change,” said Alinejad, adding that, after Amini’s death, demonstrations quickly escalated into calls for the overthrow of Iran’s clerical regime.
“Women were burning their headscarves, cutting their hair and burning morality police vans. These women became the nightmare of the whole regime and that is why the government try to resume hijab laws to prevent another uprising on the anniversary. They know very well that the next wave of women-led revolution in Iran will be much heavier.”
University students have faced harassment, suspensions and expulsion for refusing to wear a hijab. News of morality police patrolling the streets has created more anxiety.
“I’m almost getting cold and numb with this news,” says one university student from a city in north-east Iran. “The events of last year are repeating themselves, even though my life is the same. Even simple things have become a dream for us. In this hot weather of 38 degrees do they expect us to go out in a chador?”
The student added that the move to reinstate the morality police was only to provoke women to go out in protest so they can be arrested as a warning to others.
A resident in Tehran said morality police had been noting down the car number plates of women spotted without a hijab. “They have been clicking pictures of me and my friends who have been stepping out without our headscarves. I fear they have already collected enough data to go after us, one by one,” she says.
“I got into an argument with one of them recently outside a court. The agents harshly ask women to wear a hijab and when we refuse, they take our pictures, videos and our ID cards. Then we are summoned to the court. I am still going out without a hijab despite the announcement, because we are too many of us who have now decided to defy the law and fight.
“If we fear, they will behave worse and torture more of my people. As an Iranian woman, I say that there’s no other option but to fight. We are not afraid of the morality police.”
Iran Protests: Mahsa Amini’s Death | Between Us Al Jazeera film
Three years later, Iran’s freedom martyr Mahsa Amini inspires demands for change
Mahsa Amini and a year of brutality and courage in Iran – in illustrations
This weekend marks the first anniversary of the death in custody of the 22-year-old, who was detained allegedly for not wearing a headscarf properly. Her killing led to the largest wave of popular unrest for years in Iran. Roshi Rouzbehani, an Iranian illustrator, tells the story in a series of powerful images
‘It is not possible to organise in Iran’: jailed activist warns of totalitarianism after Mahsa Amini protests: Majid Tavakoli says protesters should have had more help from abroad but the west doesn’t understand what Iran has become
‘There’s no other option but to fight’: Iranian women defiant as ‘morality police’ return: Activists speak of their dismay at renewed patrols to enforce wearing of the hijab, but insist protests will continue ahead of the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death
‘This generation is really brave’: Iranians on the protests over Mahsa Amini’s death: Four people describe the widespread protests marking 40 days since Amini’s death in custody
تظاهرات توده ای در ایران و سراسر جهان در این سالگرد شهادت مهسا احمینی در راه آزادی و حقوق زنان در استقلال بدنی
پس از بیش از سه سال مبارزه انقلابی در ایران علیه حکومت آخوندها، بزرگتر از هر چیزی که پس از سرنگونی شاه در سال 1979 بیش از چهل سال پیش که حکومت دینی شیعه را به قدرت رساند و شامل قتل عام صدها معترض و همچنین نبرد علنی شد، دیده شده است. در شیراز و دیگر شهرهای بزرگ بین نیروهای سرکوب دولت و مردم ایران متحد در راه آزادی، که هیچ دولتی نتواند بین انسان و خدا قرار گیرد و در مسائل اعتقادی اجباری را اعمال نکند، یک انقلاب دموکراسی تجدید قوا تئوکراسی را به ارمغان می آورد. در پی رسوایی قتل و پوشش ناموفق دولت، نزدیک به سقوط است.
ماسا احمینی همه ما هستیم و اگر نتوانیم در همبستگی به عنوان ضامن حقوق بشر جهانی یکدیگر عمل کنیم، ممکن است آینده خود را در سرنوشت او بخوانیم. در ایران و در آمریکا و در سراسر جهان، نیروهای تغییر در حال جمع شدن هستند زیرا ما از رها کردن یکدیگر خودداری می کنیم.
گردباد می آید و با آن فرار از میراث تاریخ ما و تخیل مجدد و دگرگونی امکانات بی حد و حصر انسان شدن.
همانطور که در تایم توسط دانیکا کرکا نوشته شده است، در مقاله ای با عنوان فعالان سالگرد مرگ مهسا امینی در بازداشت پلیس ایران را گرامی می دارند. صدها نفر روز شنبه در مرکز لندن تجمع کردند تا به مناسبت سالگرد درگذشت مهسا امینی، زن 22 ساله کرد ایرانی که سال گذشته در بازداشت پلیس در ایران جان باخت، اعتراضات جهانی را علیه حکومت دینی محافظه کار اسلامی در این کشور برانگیخت.
شعار «زنان! زندگی! آزادی!»، جمعیت پرتره او را در دست گرفتند و به یاد یک زن جوان که در 16 سپتامبر 2022 پس از دستگیری به اتهام نقض قانون حجاب اجباری در ایران درگذشت، تجمع کردند. تظاهرات مشابهی در رم و برلین برگزار شد.
در ایران، مقامات به دنبال جلوگیری از شعله ور شدن مجدد این سالگرد اعتراضاتی بودند که سال گذشته کشور را فراگرفت. گروه حقوق کرد هنگاو گفت که پدر امینی پس از اینکه خانواده نشان دادند که قصد دارند برای مراسم بزرگداشت سنتی بر سر مزار او جمع شوند، در خارج از خانه اش بازداشت شد. مردم در مرکز شهر تهران از حضور شدید امنیتی خبر دادند و نیروهای امنیتی در غرب ایران، جایی که اقلیت کرد سال گذشته تظاهرات بزرگی را برگزار کردند، دیده شدند.
امینی، یک زن کرد ایرانی اهل منطقه غرب، سه روز پس از دستگیری اش توسط پلیس اخلاق، به اتهام نقض قوانینی که زنان را ملزم به پوشاندن موهای خود در ملاء عام می کند، درگذشت. در حالی که مقامات می گویند که او دچار حمله قلبی شده است، هواداران امینی می گویند که او توسط پلیس مورد ضرب و شتم قرار گرفته و بر اثر جراحات وارده فوت کرده است.
مرگ او باعث اعتراضاتی شد که در سراسر کشور گسترش یافت و به سرعت به فراخوان هایی برای سرنگونی حکومت دینی اسلامی چهار دهه ای در ایران تبدیل شد.
به گفته گروه های حقوق بشر، مقامات با سرکوب خشونت آمیز پاسخ دادند که طی آن بیش از 500 نفر کشته و بیش از 22000 نفر دیگر بازداشت شدند. تظاهرات تا حد زیادی در اوایل سال جاری خاموش شد، اما هنوز نشانه های گسترده ای از نارضایتی وجود دارد. برای چندین ماه، زنان دیده میشدند که آشکارا قانون حجاب را در تهران و سایر شهرها به رخ میکشند، که باعث سرکوب مجدد در تابستان شد.
فعالان سراسر جهان به دنبال تجدید تظاهرات در سالگرد درگذشت امینی بودند.
روز شنبه حدود 100 معترض با شعار “زنان، زندگی، آزادی” مقابل سفارت ایران در رم تجمع کردند.
لوسیا ماسی، معترض، گفت: “اکنون مهم است که همه جهان دوباره شروع به تظاهرات در خیابان ها کنند، زیرا آنچه ما می خواهیم این است که این رژیم را منزوی کنیم و به ویژه می خواهیم همه دولت ها را وادار کنیم تا با ایران توافقات سیاسی و اقتصادی نداشته باشند.” گفت.
ایران بدون ارائه مدرک، اعتراضات سال گذشته را به گردن ایالات متحده و دیگر قدرتهای خارجی میاندازد و از آن زمان تلاش کرده است تا ناآرامیها را کم اهمیت جلوه دهد، حتی در حالی که برای جلوگیری از تجدید حیات تلاش میکند.
این اعتراضات تا حدی ناشی از درد اقتصادی گسترده ای بود که ایرانیان از زمان خروج دونالد ترامپ، رئیس جمهور وقت آمریکا از توافق هسته ای با قدرت های جهانی و اعمال مجدد تحریم های فلج کننده علیه ایران متحمل شده اند. اما این رنج ممکن است تداوم تظاهرات طولانی مدت را نیز دشوار کرده باشد، زیرا بسیاری از ایرانیان برای گذران زندگی خود تلاش می کنند.
رئیس جمهور جو بایدن روز جمعه با صدور بیانیه ای طولانی از سالگرد درگذشت امینی قدردانی کرد و ایالات متحده تحریم های جدیدی را علیه مقامات و نهادهای ایرانی اعلام کرد. جیمز کلورلی، وزیر امور خارجه بریتانیا نیز به این سالگرد اشاره کرد و تحریمهای جدیدی را علیه مقامات ایرانی اعمال کرد.
سهیلا سخنوری، هنرمند ایرانی-بریتانیایی، یک سال قبل از انقلاب 1979 برای تحصیل به انگلستان رفت..
هبران محافظه کار اسلامی ایران به قدرت رسیدند. او در لندن در حال تدارک یک نمایشگاه انفرادی درباره نمادهای فمینیستی قبل از انقلاب بود که در سال گذشته خبر مرگ امینی را شنید.
او در اوایل این ماه به آسوشیتدپرس گفت، تظاهراتهای پس از آن اولین باری بود که جهان شاهد «انقلابی است که توسط زنان تحریک میشود».
اما من فکر می کنم آنچه واقعاً در مورد این اعتراض مهم است این است که مردان ایرانی برای اولین بار در تاریخ ایران در واقع در کنار زنان ایستاده اند و از زنان حمایت می کنند و به زنان احترام می گذارند. او گفت. این بسیار بدیع است و در تاریخ ایران چنین اتفاقی نیفتاده است.»
همانطور که در پست خود در 20 سپتامبر 2022 نوشتم، شورش علیه پدرسالاری و تئوکراسی، این بار نه در آمریکا بلکه در ایران؛ زنان ایران در مخالفت باشکوه ترور جنسی دولتی و تئوکراسی مردسالارانه، خیابانها را در اعتراضات گسترده در سراسر کشور به تصرف خود درآوردهاند و در چندین اقدام مستقیم، پاسداران مخوف و خشن و پلیس اخلاق را به چالش کشیدهاند، جنبشی اعتراضی که ممکن است به یک شورش عمومی تبدیل شود. .
ایران هنوز تحت تأثیر پژواک و بازتاب انقلاب نزدیک به کشور خود در عراق متزلزل و بیثبات است و مانند هرج و مرج نبرد شیراز در دسامبر 2019 که من در آن جنگیدم، اقدام تودهای فرصتهایی را فراهم میکند که در آن برای محاسبه پلیس و دیگر مجریان استبداد و نخبگان هژمونی که به ثروت، قدرت و امتیازاتشان خدمت می کنند، اما در حالی که ما نتوانستیم کسانی را که سه سال پیش در آن مناسبت ما را به بردگی می کشند از تاج و تختشان بیرون کنیم. ممکن است متفاوت باشد
برای این زمان ما یک شهید داریم و یکی از مردم کرد، یک ملت نیمه خودمختار با ثروت عظیم نفتی، با حمایت آمریکا و سایر کشورها، آرزوی استقلال و ارتشی مدرن برای پیروزی در آن، و معروف. برای زنان جنگجو و برابری اجتماعی جنسیت ها.
امیدوارم این برای برهم زدن تعادل کافی باشد. از لحظه درگذشت مهسا امینی، جنبش دموکراسی علیه حکومت دینی و مردسالاری در ایران با مبارزات استقلال طلبانه کردستان به عنوان اشکال موازی و وابسته به هم از مبارزات آزادیبخش پیوند خورد.
اگر نیمی از نوع بشر از نابرابر بودن و تحت انقیاد گرفتن نیمی دیگر خودداری کنند، مردسالاری نمی تواند دوام بیاورد.
راز نیرو و کنترل در توخالی و شکننده بودن آن است. اقتدار صرفاً با ناباور شدن مشروعیت خود را از دست می دهد و زور حد خود را در نافرمانی و امتناع از تسلیم می یابد.
همانطور که به مناسبت سفر قبلی به ایران برای شیطنت برای مستبدان در پست خود در 2 دسامبر 2019، نبرد شیراز نوشتم: انقلاب دموکراتیک علیه حکومت دینی در ایران اکنون یک جنگ علنی است. به مدت دو هفته از جمعه 15 نوامبر تا دوشنبه 2 دسامبر، شهر بزرگ ایران شیراز در جنگ علنی غرق شد، زیرا انقلاب دموکراسی علیه حکومت مذهبی آخوندها وارد مرحله چالش مستقیم نظامی و سایر ابزارهای کنترل دولتی خود می شود.
بر اساس شمارش رهبران شبه نظامی محله ای که اکنون خود را به نوعی حکومت شورشی سازماندهی کرده اند، 52 یا 53 کشته در میان شهروندانی که توسط پلیس و ارتش در سراسر شیراز کشته شده اند، به علاوه 9 کشته در درگیری های شدید در منطقه صدرا در سال 2018 وجود دارد. که یک واحد انقلابی زبده در روز یکشنبه 17 نوامبر مستقیماً به قلعه ملای ارشد منطقه حمله کرد.
آنچه که به عنوان یک اعتراض مسالمت آمیز و تعطیلی شهر با رها کردن خودروها در خیابان ها آغاز شد، پس از تیراندازی پلیس به مهدی نکویی، یک فعال 20 ساله، به سرعت به نبردی علنی تبدیل شد. به زودی گروههای مسلح کارگر به پاسگاه پلیسی که او در مقابل آن کشته شد یورش بردند، آن را در شعلههای آتش رها کردند و با افزایش صفوفشان به سوی دیگر نقاط مستحکم دولت رفتند.
در طول سه روز بعد، منطقه خرید مجلل در بلوار مالی آباد تا حد زیادی تخریب شد، حدود 80 شعبه بانک و چندین پمپ بنزین به آتش کشیده شد. اقلیت قشقایی از عشایر و بافندگان ترک که در شیراز یک سیاست بازرگانی مهم به شمار میروند، اعلام استقلال کردند و امواج پیاپی حملات یگانهای تسلیحات سنگین و سوارهنظام هلیکوپتر را به منطقه دورافتادهشان گلشن دفع کردند. از آنجایی که آنها مردمی هستند که تقریباً برای دنیای بیرون ناشناخته هستند، من تعدادی عکس را اضافه کردم.
اما مهمترین اقدام انقلابی آبان ماه در ایران، تصرف آخوند اعظم شیراز و قصر قلعه او بود. اقدامی که معنای اصلی آن برای انگیزه ها و هدف الزام آور سکولاریست هایی است که برای دموکراسی و رهایی ایران از رژیم استبدادی آخوندها می جنگند، این پیروزی شکوهمندی بود که پوچی حکومت تئوکراتیک را آشکار می کند.
آخوندها که به طور گسترده به عنوان پدرسالاران فاسد، خویشاوند و بیگانه هراس تلقی می شدند، مانند کشیشان کاتولیک، زمانی از مسئولیت شخصی مقدس و با پوششی از تقوا محافظت می شدند. پس رسالت اولیه انقلاب افشاگری است
مت و انحراف و بی عدالتی حاکمیت آنها. کاری که در این مورد توسط شبکه فراگیر قاچاق جنسی پدوفیل که توسط آخوندها مجاز است و منبع اصلی درآمد قابل پیگیری در قالب مجوزهایی که آنها برای “ازدواج های لذت بخش” موقت می فروشند که در آن رضایت مفهومی نادقیق است، به طرز وحشتناکی آسان شده است. و این تنها بخشی قابل مشاهده از کوه یخ وسیع طمع و بی اخلاقی رژیم آنهاست.
در ایران مبارزه برای دموکراسی و آزادی نیز مبارزه با مردسالاری است.
همانطور که در پست خود در 13 اکتبر 2022 نوشتم: از آنچه می ترسید و آزاد باشید: مورد مقاومت در برابر پدرسالاری در ایران و آمریکا؛ یک مقاومت باشکوه جهان را فراگرفته است، زیرا نیمی از بشریت حاضر به تسلیم شدن در برابر اقتدار و قدرت نیمی دیگر نیست، شورش علیه پدرسالاری و تغییر تکاملی در آگاهی که امکان انسان شدن ما را دگرگون خواهد کرد. دو نمونه خیره کننده اعتراضات توده ای در ایران، عراق، افغانستان و جاهای دیگر در مواجهه با سرکوب وحشیانه، قتل، شکنجه و کنترل ذهن در زندان های روانپزشکی مدل شوروی و مبارزه انتخاباتی برای خودمختاری بدنی، حقوق باروری و جنسیت است. برابری اینجا در آمریکا
زنان ایران و دیگر حکومتهای پدرسالار مذهبی برای رهایی از همان نوع بیانسانسازی سیستمی که جمهوریخواهان تلاش میکنند در آمریکا بهعنوان براندازی دموکراسی تحمیل کنند، میجنگند. ما فقط باید به ایران و افغانستان نگاه کنیم تا ببینیم چه سرنوشتی در انتظار همه ماست، اگر برای مقاومت در برابر سلاح ایمان در خدمت به قدرت توسط کسانی که ما را به بردگی میکشند، مقاومت نکنیم.
در اینجا من استفاده از ترس توسط اقتدار را زیر سوال میبرم و اینکه چگونه میتوانیم در برابر انقیاد در مبارزات انقلابی از طریق پذیرش ترس خود به عنوان تصرف قدرت مقاومت کنیم.
مارینا وارنر کاربردهای ترس را در توپولوژیهای ما از هویتهای مجاز و تجاوز به آنها به عنوان مبارزه انقلابی علیه ستم پدرسالارانه درونی شده در کتاب شگفتانگیز و روشنفکر خود No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock را بررسی میکند که Animus ما را همزمان با حجم همراه آن ترسیم میکند. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers، همین کار را برای Anima ما انجام می دهد. در کنار هم برخی از بهترین نوشته ها بر روی نیروهای دوتایی مردانه و زنانه که انسان از آن ساخته شده است.
پدرسالاری یک سیستم و ساختار ترور جنسی نهادینه شده است که هویت جنسی و جنسیتی را مجاز می کند. پیچیدگیها و مکانیسمهای شیطانی عملیات و فرآیندهای آن در دهههای پس از اثر تأسیسی سیمون دوبوار در سال 1949، جنس دوم، با جزئیات طاقتفرسا توصیف شده است. در اینجا من فقط میخواهم به آن به عنوان یک سیستم ترس اشاره کنم که همه نوع بشر باید با آن برای مالکیت خود، خودمختاری و اصالت مبارزه کند.
ترسهای ما نشانهها و لنگرگاههای خود سایهمان هستند، چیزی که باید آنها را ببلعیم، اما از انجام آن بیزاریم، همانطور که نیچه در مورد وزغ که تجسم تاریکی او بود، و ویلیام اس. . احساس انزجار، انزجار، وحشت، تجاوز و تصرف توسط بیگانه و ناپاک؛ اینها نشانه های هشدار نیست، بلکه خوش آمدگویی به حقایق مخفی خودمان است که باید آنها را کشف کرده و در آغوش بگیریم.
گاهی باید به شیاطین خود اجازه بازی بدهیم.
همانطور که در پست خود در 30 مارس 2020 نوشتم، در آغوش کشیدن ترس به عنوان رهایی از اقتدار و کنترل: هرج و مرج به عنوان مسیر آزادی روانی و اجتماعی؛ حتی وحشتناک تر از سرزنش قربانی این است که هیچکس قربانی را باور نداشته باشد. این یک پاک کردن و خاموش کردن است که وحشت خاص زنان است، زیرا ترس از اینکه کسی به کمک نمی آید، ترس جامعه LGBT است.
چیزی که متیو جیکوبز در نقد ژرف نگر خود در Huffpost از مرد نامرئی با بازی الیزابت ماس با عنوان چرا هیچ کس در فیلم های ترسناک قهرمان زن را باور نمی کند؟ و ناباوری و وحشت ناشی از قطع ارتباط را به عنوان یک بیماری بررسی می کند، همه جا ناباوری می نامد. اعتماد و شکست انسجام اجتماعی، مستقیماً به کارکرد کاتارتیک هنر، یعنی توانایی آن در نگه داشتن آینه ای برای تاریکی ما اشاره دارد.
جولیا کریستوا در مقاله کلاسیک خود «قدرتهای وحشت: مقالهای در مورد تحقیر»، کاربرد ترس برای اقتدار و قدرت را بهعنوان پدرسالاری در کنترل و ساخت هویتهای جنسی و جنسیتی، استفاده از نرمال بودن، ایدهآلسازی مردانگی و زنانگی بهطور درخشان مورد بررسی قرار میدهد. و ایده های فضیلت در ابطال، غیرانسانی کردن، و کالایی کردن انسان ها به بردگان توسط سلطه های نخبگان ثروت، قدرت و امتیازات، و همه این فرآیندها وابسته به اسلحه سازی ترس فراگیر و عمومی در خدمت به قدرت از طریق تسلیم شدن به قدرت هستند. که با دروغها و توهمات ما را با تقسیمبندیهایی از غیریت و سلسلهمراتب تعلق، از جمله نژاد، ایمان بهعنوان اقتدار پدرسالارانه رمزگذاریشده، و ملیت بهعنوان نتیجهای که همه اینها تلقین کردهاند، مطیع خود میکنند.
زیرا مکانیسم و آسیب شناسی ترس چیست
” درسالاری، قدرت نابرابر، و روابط نامعتبر را به حرکت در می آورد، ما را از خودمان و یکدیگر به عنوان شبیه ساز انتزاع می کند و انحرافات خشونت و ترور جنسی را ایجاد می کند.
از ترس هیولاها متولد می شوند. با این حال این ترس ماست که باید بپذیریم تا خود را از ظلم و ستم دیگران و شبح قدرت و کنترل اقتدارگرا رها کنیم.
ما نباید اجازه دهیم ترس ما را تعریف کند. این میزانی است که میتوانیم ترس خود را در آغوش بگیریم، از آن بیاموزیم و خود را از آن رها کنیم که آزادی ما را اندازهگیری میکند و رهایی ما را از کنترل دیگران به اجرا در میآورد.
زیرا هنگامی که ما نتوانیم از طریق ترس و درماندگی آموخته شده توسط اقتدار به تسلیم سوق دهیم، استفاده از زور مانند مقیاس آن بی معنی می شود. بنابراین، ما قدرت و اختیار خود را برای تعریف خود و مالکیت عملکردهای هویت خود بازپس می گیریم.
کسی که نمی تواند مجبور شود آزاد، خودمختار، خود ساخته و تعریف شده است، و به عنوان یک منطقه خودمختار زنده که دارای نیروهای تغییر است که می تواند دیگران را آزاد کند، تسخیر نشده می شود.
نظم تخصیص می یابد، قانون در خدمت قدرت است و اقتدار عادلانه ای وجود ندارد.
چگونه مقاومت و مبارزه انقلابی را علیه اقتدار، هژمونی های نخبگان با قدرت نابرابر، و دولت های ظالمی که ظلم های خود را به عنوان قانون و نظم اجرا می کنند، به راه انداختیم؟
اول با امتناع از تسلیم، دوم با همبستگی در عمل، و سوم با مشروعیت زدایی از طریق کفر و نافرمانی.
با این سه اصل عمل، ستمگران از تاج و تخت خود رانده میشوند و نظامهای قدرت نابرابر دگرگون میشوند، زیرا راز قدرت در این است که توخالی و شکننده است و در صورت مواجهه با کفر و نافرمانی به تباهی فرو میرود.
زنان ایران و آمریکا و جاهای دیگر در سرپیچی از اقتدار آزاد و در آن لحظه پیروز شدهاند، زیرا سرپیچی کردن، ایمان نداشتن و اطاعت، پیروزی در درون ماست که نمیتوان آن را از ما گرفت. همچنین نمی توان موج تغییر را پس از شروع آن متوقف کرد.
همانطور که در پست خود در 27 اکتبر 2022 نوشتم، پیروزی منطقه خودمختار مهاباد و دولت آزاد کردستان بر ترور دولتی رژیم آخوندهای ایران: انقلاب ایران علیه تئوکراسی و پدرسالاری؛ ما پیروزی منطقه خودمختار مهاباد و دولت آزاد کردستان را جشن می گیریم، جایی که زنان کردستان، ایران و عراق با هم در همبستگی علیه پدرسالاری و ترور دولتی حکومت دینی جزیره ای از آزادی را در دریای وسیع تاریکی به دست آوردند. .
این تاریکی است که اکنون در مبارزات خیابانی و تظاهرات گسترده توده ای در سراسر ایران برای سرنگونی رژیم وحشیانه و ترور جنسی آخوندها در بازگرداندن جامعه آزاد برابر، بلکه در عراق و افغانستان، انقلاب زنان به عنوان یک انقلاب به چالش کشیده شده است. کاست برده ای که مانند جنبش #metoo آمریکا و مبارزه تاریخی برای حقوق زنان در تولید مثل و خودمختاری بدنی که اکنون در انتخابات ما به راه افتاده است، در سراسر جهان به عنوان جزر و مد تغییر بازتاب و بازتاب پیدا می کند.
در این لحظه بر هر یک از ماست که آینده ای را برای خود و نوع بشر انتخاب کنیم و با نیمی از بشریت که توسط نیمه دیگر برده شده و از انسانیت خارج شده اند، همبستگی کنیم. برای مردان که قدرت نابرابر و انقیاد زنان را رها کنند و به عزیزان، مادران، خواهران، شرکا، دختران و دوستان خود در مبارزه رهایی بخش برای آینده ای بهتر و جامعه ای آزاد و برابر، برای زنان آمریکا و زنان بپیوندند. ایران در همه جا در آرمان و عمل مشترک با زنان متحد شود و همه ما در هر کجا که انسان تشنه آزادی است در همبستگی به عنوان یک نوع بشر متحد عمل کنیم تا خود را از میراث تاریخ خود و از سیستم های ستم و نابرابر رهایی دهیم. ثروت، قدرت و امتیاز.
اگر ما این کار ساده را انجام دهیم، همبستگی برای آزادی همه ما عمل کنیم، کسانی که ما را به بردگی می گیرند شکست خواهند خورد. زور و کنترل زمانی شکننده است که اقتدار مشروعیت نداشته باشد و ناباور باشد و از دستورات سرپیچی شود. کافر شوید، نافرمانی کنید و از تسلیم امتناع کنید، و ما شکست ناپذیر و آزاد می شویم.
زیرا ما بسیار هستیم، تماشا می کنیم و آینده هستیم.
همانطور که پاتریک وینتور در گاردین در مقاله ای با عنوان “سازماندهی در ایران ممکن نیست” نوشته است: فعال زندانی نسبت به تمامیت خواهی پس از اعتراضات مهسا امینی هشدار می دهد: مجید توکلی می گوید معترضان باید کمک بیشتری از خارج می داشتند، اما غرب این کار را نمی کند. نمی فهمم ایران چه شده است. یکی از برجستهترین فعالان سیاسی ایران در حالی که خود را برای شروع حکم شش سال زندان آماده میکند، میگوید: «اکثریت ایرانیها آرزوی «زندگی عادی و دولتی شبیه به دولتهای مبتنی بر نظام لیبرال دمکراتیک» دارند. همسر و دختر سه ساله اش پشت سر.
حبس مجید توکلی بخشی از سرکوب فوقالعادهای است که رژیم ایران در نتیجه اعتراضات ناشی از مرگ مهسا امینی در بازداشت پلیس پس از دستگیری او به دلیل داشتن حجاب نامناسب، بر مخالفان تحمیل کرده است. اولین سالگرد درگذشت امینی روز شنبه است و رژیم تمام تلاش خود را برای جلوگیری از اعتراضات از جمله
ا گشت زنی خارج از خانه خانواده امینی.
توکلی غیرعادی است زیرا او از اصلاح طلبان فعال در داخل نظام و چپ کمونیستی انتقاد می کند. او از 20 سالگی در زندان بوده و از آن خارج شده است. نازنین بنیادی، بازیگر ایرانی-بریتانیایی و فعال حقوق بشر، او را مردی شجاع و قاطع توصیف میکند که در یک سال گذشته به صدای برجستهتری در داخل کشور تبدیل شده است.
او در مورد درد ناشی از جدایی قریب الوقوع از خانواده اش باز است. دوری از آنها بسیار ناراحت کننده است. در خانواده ما عشق زیادی وجود دارد. ما خیلی به هم وابسته و وابسته هستیم. یادآوری این فاصله هر لحظه دردناک است.»
او در پاسخ به این سوال که آیا نوشتن و صحبت کردن مثل او ارزشش را دارد، میگوید: «بدون نتایج ملموس، گفتن این کار سخت است. در شرایط عادی دولت فقط می توانست مرا به خاطر مجموعه نوشته ها و نظراتم به یک سال زندان محکوم کند. با این حال، شرایط خاص پس از اعتراضات سال 2022، فضایی را ایجاد کرد که در آن اتهام تبانی، که به معنای اقدام جمعی سازمان یافته با دیگران بود، اضافه شد.
او می گوید که مقامات متعاقباً او را «بدون در نظر گرفتن اسناد و مدارک» متهم کردند و این حکم سنگین است.
اما من و خانواده ام از انتخاب های دشواری که گرفته ایم آگاه هستیم. ما می دانیم که در این عصر پایبندی به حقیقت عواقب زیادی دارد.»
«متن حکم دادگاه میگوید چون میخواهم یک حکومت و نظام لیبرال ایجاد کنم، مجازات خواهم شد. لیبرال ها پیش از این بارها مورد هجمه مقامات قرار گرفته اند، با این حال میل عمومی جامعه ایران به یک زندگی عادی و دولتی شبیه به دولت های مبتنی بر نظام لیبرال دمکراتیک است. دولت نمی خواهد این تفکر در داخل ایران نماینده ای داشته باشد.»
او گفت در سالهای اخیر “درک مردم ایران از قدرت و دولت تغییر کرده است”. ناتوانی دولت در حل مشکلات، تبعیضهای ساختاری مستمر، تشدید استثمار، مضر بودن قوانین بد، جامعه مترقیتری را ایجاد کرده است.»
اکنون، افکار عمومی از انتخاباتی که ناظران بینالمللی آن را تقلب کردهاند، ناامید شدهاند و «به سمت نافرمانی و اشکال مختلف مبارزه مدنی پیش رفتهاند».
اما او اعتراف می کند که اعتراضات با توجه به دشواری سازماندهی جنبش های اپوزیسیون در ایران ناقص بوده اند و پیشنهاد می کند که باید حرکت و کمک بیشتری از خارج از کشور صورت می گرفت. «اگر قرار است یک تغییر سیاسی خاص به ثمر بنشیند، باید نوعی سازماندهی و رهبری وجود داشته باشد. من فکر می کنم نمی توان در داخل ایران سازماندهی کرد. حتی ایجاد یک همبستگی سیاسی مؤثر غیرممکن است. ایجاد چنین جنبش ها و تشکل هایی بدون اطلاع دولت ممکن نیست.
در نتیجه اعتراضات مبتنی بر انباشت خشم و انزجار در جامعه فاقد تمرکز سیاسی برای تغییر بود.
در داخل کشور به دلیل سرکوب و سانسور امکان تشکیل این نیرو وجود نداشت و باید در خارج از کشور تشکیل می شد.
او میگوید که میترسد مردم خارج از کشور تصویر روشنی از وقایع داخل کشور و خیابانها نداشته باشند.
بخشی از اپوزیسیون مطالبات جامعه را به مبارزه با حجاب اجباری تقلیل داده است. حتی ریشه مبارزه با حجاب و جهت آن مبارزه را هم نمیدانستند.»
او گفت که هیچ تلاش جدی برای ایجاد شکاف در دولت صورت نگرفت. حتی هیچ استعفای مقامات و کارگزاران دولتی در سطح استان و ولسوالی صورت نگرفت.
اگرچه فناوری در قالب تلویزیون های ماهواره ای و رسانه های اجتماعی دسترسی به اطلاعات را گسترش داده است، اما ابزاری نیز در اختیار دولت قرار داده است. متأسفانه، فناوری نیز به سرکوب کمک کرده است… نظارت و کنترل شدید شده است. منابع مالی و انگیزه لازم را دارند. دولت اکنون می تواند با نظارت بر مخابرات و دوربین های نظارتی بسیار بیشتر انجام دهد. می تواند جریمه های مالی – بستن حساب های بانکی و سایر معاملات را اعمال کند. دستکاری حقیقت و آگاهی نیز تغییر کرده است. به عبارت دیگر، این فناوری باعث شده است که به جای سرکوب و سانسور، با کنترل و تبلیغات بیشتری مواجه شویم.»
او اصرار دارد که مردم ایران خواهان تغییر هستند «که نیاز به سلاح ندارد». او می گوید: «آنها از نخبگان سیاسی و نیروهای سیاسی انتظار دارند که احتمال چنین خطری را کاهش دهند و حتی از بین ببرند.
مهمتر از همه، او فکر نمی کند که غرب بفهمد ایران چه شده است. «در اینجا یک حکومت تمامیت خواه برقرار است. شاید چون این یک توتالیتاریسم مدرن است، مورد توجه غرب قرار نگرفته است. یعنی چون ساختارهای سرکوب و سانسور جای خود را به ساختارهای کنترلی و تبلیغاتی داده است، ناظران متوجه آن نمی شوند. یا شاید به دلیل ترویج اپوزیسیون مجاز در درون توتالیتاریسم مدرن فریب خورده باشند.»
او همچنین این سوال را مطرح می کند که آیا غرب دارای یک
ستراتژی قابل اجرا برای ترویج جنبش لیبرال در ایران است و می گوید مقامات خارجی می گویند که آنها نگران حقوق بشر هستند، اما در واقع بر مهار ایران در موضوعاتی مانند پرونده هسته ای، موشک ها و گروه های مسلح منطقه ای تمرکز می کنند.
آیا پس از گذشت یک سال از اعتراضات، دلیلی برای امیدواری وجود دارد؟ او میگوید: «گفتمان مسئولیت شخصی، که یک نظریه لیبرال برای توانمندسازی افراد در دوران توتالیتاریسم است، در سالهای گذشته پیشرفت داشته است. او میگوید این افزایش احساس وظیفه شخصی مردم باعث شده است که تعداد بیشتری از ایرانیان به این نتیجه برسند که نمیتوانند اشتباهات آشکار رژیم را نادیده بگیرند. «جامعه به طور کلی نسبت به کسانی که کارهای نادرست را تحقیر می کنند، عادی می کنند یا از آنها حمایت می کنند بسیار حساس شده است. این یک پیشرفت است.»
همانطور که دیپا پرنت در گاردین در مقاله ای با عنوان «هیچ گزینه ای جز مبارزه وجود ندارد» نوشته است: زنان ایرانی سرکشی به عنوان «پلیس اخلاق» برمی گردند.
فعالان از ناامیدی خود از گشتهای مجدد برای اعمال حجاب میگویند، اما اصرار دارند که اعتراضات در آستانه سالگرد درگذشت مهسا امینی ادامه یابد. «بازگشت بدنام گشت ارشاد («پلیس اخلاق») ایران با ناراحتی مورد استقبال قرار گرفت، اما معترضانی که با گاردین صحبت کردند گفتند که دیگر از حضور در خیابان ها منصرف نخواهند شد.
یک سخنگوی پلیس هفته گذشته تأیید کرد که آنها گشت زنی در خیابان ها را برای برخورد با غیرنظامیانی که “عواقب بی حجابی مناسب را نادیده می گیرند و بر سرپیچی از هنجارها پافشاری می کنند” آغاز کرده اند.
این اطلاعیه درست دو ماه قبل از سالگرد مرگ مهسا امینی، 22 ساله در سپتامبر گذشته، که به اتهام عدم استفاده از حجاب اسلامی بازداشت شده بود، منتشر شد. مرگ او منجر به بزرگ ترین موج ناآرامی های مردمی در سال های اخیر در ایران شد.
گاردین با زنانی که پس از مرگ امینی در تظاهرات سراسری شرکت کرده بودند صحبت کرد و گفتند که قبلاً شاهد آزار و اذیت پلیس برای دختران در خیابان به دلیل بی حجابی بوده اند.
من نسبت به اخبار بازگرداندن «پلیس اخلاق» بی تفاوت بودم. رسانههای غربی اصرار دارند که به ما ایرانیها بگویند گشت ارشاد منسوخ شده است، اما من حتی یک دوست ایرانی خودم را نمیشناسم که این را باور داشته باشد.»
«آنها [پلیس اخلاق] هرگز نرفتند و به عنوان پرسنل امنیتی در دانشگاه ها یا غیرنظامیان در مکان های عمومی مستقر شدند. آنچه جهان می بیند نگاهی اجمالی از آنچه در اینجا اتفاق می افتد است. اگرچه همه چیز برای کسانی که به ما زن ها اهمیتی نمی دهند عادی به نظر می رسد، اگر متوجه شده باشید همه جا هستند.
«من در تمام عمرم به دلخواهم روسری سر کردهام و خواهرم این کار را نمیکند. من همیشه آن را تا نیمه روی سرم گذاشته ام. آنها مهسا را بهخاطر کمتر نشان دادن موی من کشتند و میدانم که با این اعلامیه رسمی، اکنون دستشان آزاد شده تا خشونتآمیزتر شوند.»
خیلی از بچه ها نمردند، بنابراین یک سال بعد ما به حالت قبلی خود برمی گردیم. اینها تاکتیک های ترساندن هستند و ما به این موضوع نمی افتیم
در ماههای اخیر، زنان و دختران ایرانی تصاویر و ویدئوهایی از خود در شبکههای اجتماعی منتشر میکنند که از قانون حجاب اجباری سرپیچی میکنند. یکی از دانشجویان دانشگاه تهران میگوید: «بسیاری از بچهها [بیهوده] نمردهاند، بنابراین یک سال بعد به وضعیت قبل از سپتامبر 2022 برمیگردیم».
رژیم بخواهد بپذیرد یا نپذیرد، ما دوباره به خیابان خواهیم آمد و دیگر راه برگشتی نیست. ما در حال برنامهریزی تظاهرات بزرگی است که تا یک سالگی درگذشت مهسا برگزار میشود. دستگیری بیشتر یا بدتر خواهد بود. اینها تاکتیک های ترساندن هستند و ما به این موضوع نمی افتیم.
پلیس اخلاق حتی قبل از شروع اعتراضات مرا مورد آزار و اذیت قرار داد. نیروهای امنیتی با اسلحه رنگ به سرم شلیک کردند. من از آنها نمی ترسم اگر از آنها بترسیم و عقب نشینی کنیم، از فداکاری های معترضانی که جان خود و خانواده هایشان را از دست دادند، چه چیزی باقی می ماند؟ من برای ادامه مبارزه آماده هستم.»
در میان کشته شدگان اعتراضات پس از مرگ امینی، مینو مجیدی، مادر 62 ساله ای بود که با 167 گلوله مورد اصابت گلوله قرار گرفت. او پیش از شرکت در تظاهرات در کرمانشاه به خانوادهاش گفته بود: «اگر من بیرون نروم و اعتراض کنم، چه کسی خواهد رفت؟» دخترش مهسا پیرایی گفت که مادرش همیشه برای حقوق و آزادی زنان ارزش قائل بوده است.
«جمهوری اسلامی با تشدید سرکوبها، دستگیریها و آزار و اذیتها به بهانه قانون حجاب، این پیام را به مردم ایران میدهد که میزنیم و میکشیم و اگر کسی اعتراض کرد، او را هم میکشند، همانطور که مادرم را کشتند. . این دایره تا زمانی ادامه خواهد داشت که این رژیم در قدرت باقی بماند، زیرا اساس آن بر خشونت و جنایات بنا شده است.»
اگرچه پلیس اخلاق به نوعی از زمان انقلاب اسلامی در سال 1357 وجود داشته است، اما شکل فعلی، گشت ارشاد، به عنوان بازوی نیروی انتظامی در سال 1384 تشکیل شد. از آن زمان تاکنون، قوانین سختگیرانه حجاب را با گزارش های متعدد از خشونت اجرا کرده است. دستگیری و بازداشت
در سال 2014، مسیح علینژاد، روزنامه نگار و فعال ایرانی، جنبشی آنلاین به نام آزادی مخفیانه من را راه اندازی کرد که به تشویق مردم می پردازد.
ال برای به اشتراک گذاشتن تصاویر بدون حجاب از خود. علینژاد همچنان تصاویر و فیلم هایی از زنان و دختران سرکش ایرانی دریافت می کند.
علینژاد گفت: «نبرد بر سر حجاب به تظاهراتی قدرتمند علیه رژیم آپارتاید جنسیتی در ایران و نشانه تغییر رژیم تبدیل شد» و افزود که پس از مرگ امینی، تظاهرات به سرعت به درخواست برای سرنگونی رژیم آخوندی تبدیل شد. .
«زنان روسریهای خود را میسوزانند، موهایشان را کوتاه میکردند و وانتهای پلیس اخلاق را به آتش میکشیدند. این زنان به کابوس کل رژیم تبدیل شدند و به همین دلیل است که دولت سعی می کند قوانین حجاب را از سر بگیرد تا از قیام دیگری در این سالگرد جلوگیری کند. آنها به خوبی می دانند که موج بعدی انقلاب تحت رهبری زنان در ایران بسیار سنگین تر خواهد بود.»
دانشجویان دانشگاه به دلیل امتناع از داشتن حجاب با آزار، تعلیق و اخراج مواجه شده اند. اخبار گشت زنی پلیس اخلاق در خیابان ها نگرانی بیشتری ایجاد کرده است.
یکی از دانشجویان دانشگاه از شهری در شمال شرق ایران میگوید: «تقریباً با این خبر سرد و بیحس شدهام. وقایع سال گذشته در حال تکرار هستند، هرچند زندگی من هم همینطور است. حتی چیزهای ساده برای ما تبدیل به یک رویا شده است. تو این هوای گرم 38 درجه توقع دارن چادری بریم بیرون؟»
این دانشجو افزود که اقدام برای بازگرداندن پلیس اخلاق فقط برای تحریک زنان به بیرون رفتن برای اعتراض بوده است تا به عنوان هشداری برای دیگران دستگیر شوند.
یکی از ساکنان تهران گفت که پلیس اخلاق پلاک خودروهای زنان بدون حجاب را یادداشت کرده است. «آنها روی عکسهای من و دوستانم که بدون روسری بیرون آمدهاند کلیک میکنند. من می ترسم که آنها قبلاً داده های کافی را جمع آوری کرده باشند تا یک به یک ما را دنبال کنند.”
من اخیراً در خارج از دادگاه با یکی از آنها درگیر شدم. ماموران به شدت از زنان می خواهند که حجاب داشته باشند و وقتی ما امتناع می کنیم عکس و فیلم و کارت شناسایی ما را می گیرند. سپس به دادگاه احضار می شویم. من با وجود اعلامیه همچنان بدون حجاب بیرون می روم، زیرا ما خیلی از ما هستیم که تصمیم گرفته ایم قانون را زیر پا بگذاریم و بجنگیم.
«اگر ما بترسیم، آنها بدتر رفتار خواهند کرد و بیشتر مردم من را شکنجه خواهند کرد. من به عنوان یک زن ایرانی می گویم که چاره ای جز مبارزه نیست. ما از پلیس اخلاق نمی ترسیم
A friend of mine has been seized and shaken by recent events and the possibility of complicity in the assassination of the fascist propagandist Charles Kirk by the C.I.A. and/or other government security services and at the orders of Kirk’s key ally Trump. Such speculations conjure visions of false flag operations, diversionary tactics and the sacrifice of chess pieces in the Great Game, plans so deeply layered and obscure as to be unreadable.
For myself, Charlie Kirk was an enemy of America as a free society of equals to whom a Reckoning was brought, simple and clear; and though I rejoice in his assassination and would delight in claiming it as a victory for Antifa I cannot, because when I learned of this event from news media I had no idea whatsoever who had killed him or why, things which should be established as unquestionable facts before any such claims, and because this was a consequence of ideological fracture and division in the MAGA Wall of Hate between the victim’s Turning Point organization of Christian Identity theocratic patriarchal sexual terror and the perpetrator’s Groyper network of white supremacist terrorists.
I rejoice in this event and the chance of a near future collapse of the Trump regime’s alliance of unlike parts. Though the shooter who turned himself in is a fanatical member of Nick Fuentes’ online gaming centered Groypers from a family of Trump loyalists embedded in law enforcement who wrote Bella Ciao on one of his bullets not in reference to the original Antifa in Italy founded to combat Mussolini, but in reference to a Groyper War playlist on Spotify and the Total Annihilation code word in the Helldiver 2 game, I celebrate the spectacle of Fourth Reich factions annihilating each other.
Though Trump and many of the apologists of his regime are attempting to divert attention from the motives of this murder in the internal factionalism within Trump’s own movement, to confuse the issue, smear the Left with it in general, and use it as a pretext for broad and more terrible repression of dissent, I believe that in this case the phantom of “a good enemy”, as the tyrant Oz says in the antifascist epic film Wicked, will fail to Unite The Right just as it did as Charlotteville when Trump met the murder of a Black girl by Nazi thugs with the words “there are good people on both sides”.
Even with Fuentes frantically attempting his disavow his longstanding orders to rape and kill his critics, even with the whitewashing of Kirk’s endless litanies of hate mongering and sanctification by the regime, even with supposed opposition figures of the Democratic Party minimizing the violence of the slaver and the hate speech of Charlie Kirk and condemning the violence used by the slave to break his chains in revolutionary struggle or promoting their moral equivalence, all the king’s men may not be able to put their coalition of unlike parts so very like the Frankenstein’s monster it resembles together again.
And the fingerprints of Trump and his regime at the highest levels of his inner circle are all over this one. Who was the second man on the roof, who escaped in a private jet, and why did the FBI keep the route to the airfield open? Who where the two men bracketing Charlie Kirk and directing others with hand signals, and was the Man in the Black Shirt truly the head of Trump’s security and identical as he appears with the man who staged managed Trump’s bogus shooting at his side? Did Trump order this assassination because Kirk like so many regime figures had begun to criticize Israel, or has the faction fighting within the MAGA ideosphere proliferated throughout the regime and its apparatus of state terror?
As I have long predicted, it is inevitable that the MAGA center cannot hold and will self destruct due to the mechanical failures of its internal contradictions, especially when the tech bro plutocrats who fund it have goals of capital freeing itself from its host political system and obsolescing human labor which are diametrically opposed to those of its voting base, social conservatives now also divided into starkly opposing camps of white and male privilege who simply want permission to rape and kill with impunity.
Therefore I say; Bella Ciao, Fascists. I’m having a t shirt made with this message; I care far less about motives and ideals than I do the actions which make them real. As the fascists who have captured the state as Vichy America begin to collapse, let us unite in solidarity to purge them from among us.
Yes, this is a crack in the MAGA Wall of Hate, and a window of opportunity to smash it utterly as a system of belief and oppression.
Friends, politics as normal and usual is no longer possible in this moment, and we must adapt to the imposed conditions of struggle.
Normal doesn’t live here anymore.
Becky G – Bella Ciao (From the Netflix Series “Casa de Papel”)
As written in the Holy Incongruence publication; “S4 EP 48 – DID A GROYPER KILL CHARLIE? The plot thickens considerably. White supremacist Nick Fuentes, who infamously clashed with late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, has reacted to his assassination. Fuentes, 27, who was prohibited from attending any of Kirk’s Turning Point USA events, went live on Thursday night and described his passing as a ‘tragedy’.
He said: ‘As I watched the chaos and tragedy unfold yesterday afternoon it didn’t feel real. People have been profoundly affected by this.’
‘It doesn’t feel real, it feels like a nightmare that we will never wake up from’, while making note of their long standing rivalry.
He added: ‘I say that as somebody who is not even a fan, not even a friend, and actually an adversary, a foe.’
Fuentes also addressed his supporters, known as Groypers, saying: ‘To all of my followers if you take up arms, I disavow you.’
‘I disown you. In the strongest possible terms. That is not what we’re about.’
His supporters are known to use the acronym ‘RKD4NJF’, which stands for ‘rape, kill and die for Nicholas Joseph Fuentes’. – Daily Mail.
EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED: Please tell me why Nick Fuentes would call on his followers to not take up arms, when one of them already had? More and more evidence is surfacing that Tyler Robinson was part of the Groyper Movement linked to Fuentes. This is a seismic development, as in one that could literally save the United States of America from itself.
Please do your own research as I want to keep this short in order for people to share it as widely as possible. I’ll give you a few key words. Groyper Movement, Pepe the Frog, Kekistan, Order of Nine Angels, 764 Network.
My focus has been on the Satanic Neo Nazis which I’ll still post about, and somehow I forgot to focus on Fuentes, although I’ve posted about him on a number of occasions. So the O9A, an extreme radical Satanic group, hunt and kill other Satanists they view as being insufficiently evil. Seriously.
And this is where the Groypers and O9A converge. Fuentes started the first Groyper Wars against Charlie Kirk in 2019, and the second Groyper War against Trump in 2023. Basically in a nutshell, Fuentes believes Kirk hijacked his youth movement by creating Turning Point USA.
Fuentes preaches that MAGA and conservatives Republicans are not extreme enough. He wants their Christianity to be even more radical than it already is. He wants everything about MAGA to be darker, more in alignment with Dark Gothic Maga and the Black Pillers I’ve been talking about.
BELLA CIAO: Don’t forget that Trump met Fuentes and Kanye at Mar-a-Lago, and that both Trump and Musk have sent out memes related to Pepe the Frog, a well known Groyper symbol.
Fuentes raged about Charlie Kirk doing his University tour a week ago, and told his followers to disrupt the event. Tyler Robinson took the command one step further. Words matter. The symbols inscribed on the bullets are not anti-fascist in the normal way the right is trying to spin it.
Apart from the memes and in-house jokes about gays and furries connected to this dark underground culture, the anti-fascist symbols inscribed on the ammo, carry the secret meaning that blows this whole thing wide open.
An astute observer posted that the words Bella Ciao, supposedly connected to the anti-fascist resistance in Italy during WWll, can be found on the Groyper War playlist on Spotify. Look it up.
It was this first war waged specifically against Charlie Kirk that was referenced on the bullet. Kirk was Enemy No 1 for the Groypers. The left didn’t like Charlie, some even hated him, but it was the very far Christian right that killed him, not the left.
CHRISTIANITY GONE MAD: Keep in mind that Tyler Robinson was a Mormon Christian from a staunchly pro-Trump gun loving family.
When family members say he didn’t agree with Kirk because he was a leftist, that’s not true. Kirk wasn’t extreme enough for Tyler and the Groypers. That’s also why he didn’t vote for Trump in 2024, none of the Groypers did. Fuentes forbid them to.
Do you see how this transforms everything. Kirk’s murder could and should be a game changer for anyone associated with MAGA. That’s why we must spread the word.
The Regime has not only enabled these groups to thrive, they’ve ignored the massive problem this underground culture of Satanic and Christian Neo Nazis pose to the well being of America. Now that the darkness they’ve nurtured has come to claim their favorite son, maybe just maybe, if we put enough pressure on them, they’ll crack down hard, very very hard. Because that’s what needs to happen. We have to blow this wide open.
They need to understand that Charlie was killed by one of their own. Fuentes, the Groypers, and networks like 764, need to feel their wrath, it must be directed at the people that are responsible for this cold blooded murder. Not at liberals and progressives.
These are the people that target the schools, they are 90% of the mass shooters. If the FBI and Homeland Security, can for once, stop fckng around, and use the tools at their disposal, instead of making this about some leftist NGO, trans kids, or whatever, massive changes can be implemented.
These groups corrupt our children, they poison their minds and exploit them. They must be stopped, but they can only be stopped if we demand, that it stops at the top.”
When news of the event hit, I had no idea whatsoever who actually killed him or why, things we must establish absolutely and beyond question before making any such claims which only serve to further muddy the waters and confuse investigation.
The shooter may be in custody, but his spotter or handler who escaped on a private jet remains a mystery, and all I can tell you is that it was not me. And the possibility of the man in the black shirt calling the plays with hand signals beside Charlie Kirk in the video record being identical with the man at Trump’s side during the staged shooting which nicked his ear is most suspicious. Was the shooter leveraged and run as an asset by the Trump regime?
Confusion to the enemy, friends. But while the ideological fracture and division of the MAGA terrorists is wonderful, this victory against a hate mongering fascist propagandist is also motivating new alignments and networks of Resistance from our side as Antifascists.
Like the heroic actions of Luigi Mangione, this incident is producing a wave of volunteers in Resistance and liberation struggle of all kinds, for the assassination of Charlie Kirk reveals the vulnerability of the Trump regime and the elite hegemonies of white male wealth, power, and privilege it serves and enforces.
This is also a shared public trauma, and like all traumatic events can destabilize identity and personality, totalize ideologies and paradigms, and provoke us into actions and modes of being with rage and fear, which are among the designed consequences of terror attacks.
How if everything we believe is a lie?
The Buddhist term for this is Lightning Bolt Realization, or the Awakening, which has come into popular culture as being Woke. It has from its origins in the story of the Buddha as The Prince in the Golden Cage had political meanings and implications, and I thought it might be useful to problematize and interrogate them today.
Well do I recognize the breaking point, when the illusion of a good and just world ordered by immutable laws and the claims of its reflection by states which ask for our obedience to authority are revealed to be lies, and the forces bound by them shatter into chaos like fireworks, like tumbling light cast by bits of stained glass from the broken holiness of things that never were in the cathedrals of our imagination, like Georg Trakl’s “Last Gold of Expired Stars”.
A moment of great peril as well as illumination, this event, which destroys and re-creates us like a tidal change; it bears its own momentum, and merits reverence and questioning.
For in order to use it as adaptation and change, reimagination and transformation of ourselves and our ideas of human being, meaning, and value, and to guide their praxis or action in Resistance and revolutionary struggle, we need to find a new vision of who we want to become.
Here is the progress of our conversation, with my friend whose trauma and outrage had coalesced into an idea of the C.I.A. as the iron fist within the glove of this assassination, and I think its obvious why I found it alarming and became concerned. It’s a place I’ve been before, and it births as many illusions as it does truths, and which is which we often cannot know.
In preface, the original post:
Myself in reply: I like the idea. But no one who does this would trust the CIA. As you point out, they have a history of leaving no loose ends.
Plus, like much of the intelligence and special operations community, they originate in antifascist forces and here in America are sworn not to a regime, but to the Constitution of our republic.
For example, the film Inglorious Basterds is based on the historical Black Devils, and Lt Aldo Raine is wearing their unit patch of crossed arrows.
Not that the world isn’t full of rogue black ops outfits, secret factions, lunatics and simple mercenaries.
He: “This is the moment Charles Kirk died. He doesn’t cry out. His shoulders hunch forward in death. Autonomic response.
His spinal cord had been severed.
Then he collapses like a rag doll.
Yes there was blood loss but not what you have seen if his heart was still beating which with such an insult to the spinal cord that he suffered the heart would stop. A white tee shirt makes the blood seem more.
This was a professional hit and only our government of this current president knows how to do this.
I am so damned angry! I AM BEYOND ANGRY. BEYOND EXHAUSTED. BEYOND FED UP.
All this talk of stopping violence, remember Melissa Hortman, when I accuse this administration of creating a Reichstag moment today in Utah, the gutting of the German parliament, to further their depraved political ends because Donald Trump must not be defied plus the victims of Trump and Epstein must be silenced. There is that also.
What private citizen receives flags at half mast? Trump didnt even want Senator McCain to have that; his by RIGHT.
And we all fall for it! Listen to the media! As if this administration couldn’t possibly do something so depraved to declare martial law and distract everyone from sexual abuse of minors as to murder anyone!
Really?
This disloyal and corrupt administration knows where I live, what car I drive, etc. I am fed up with this MAGA disgrace to our country. They and no one else are tearing us all to shreds!
Trump and MAGA are DEPRAVED MURDERERS.”
Me: We concur in this regard, with the exception of our government being the only party capable of this; at any one time there are dozens of governments able to field such teams and thousands of people with the skills to secretly intervene in history to shape it to their own ends, from global and national agencies and militaries and their former members down to police department intelligence units and SWAT teams, and as many non governmental organizations, mercenaries, crime syndicates, corporate espionage firms, ideological groups throughout the political spectrum including some of my own, and no shortage of madmen and terrorists who as is said of The Joker in the The Dark Knight, “just want to watch the world burn”, with endless motives.
Sorting the sheep from the wolves in games with limitless possible players and divergent goals is fiendishly complex, ambiguous, and relational, like our truths. This is the work Kipling called The Great Game in the novel Kim, a favorite of my youth, and it keeps lots of very clever people very busy.
I hear and deeply empathize with your outrage, fear, anger, despair, and the vertigo and Uncanny Valley Effect of such life disruptive events and shared public trauma as the falling of the veils of lies and illusions, falsifications and alternate realities with which our normalities are constructed and our nations and authorized identities conceal themselves, for the state as embodied violence legitimizes its force and control with narratives of law and order as security and necessary to the Good. It’s cheaper than hiring more overseers with clubs to keep the slaves at their work.
But security is an illusion, and cannot justify the social use of force, good and evil do not exist as absolutes and only become real by our actions toward others, law serves power, order appropriates, and there is no just Authority.
I have been where you are many times, my friend. And I must speak now to this place, a Gate of Decision like those I have so often written of.
If you are considering a disappearing act to create a free space of play, something with which I am very familiar, I must caution; when you go hunting monsters, be sure of your motives and goals, and be sure you know which of us are monsters and who is not, because there is no return from this. Be sure what you achieve is worth your life, because this path will transform you into a monster as well, and I speak from experience. You will never find the man you are now again.
For myself, I cannot stand aside when by action I may prevent harm, regardless of the cost; but that is me, and I know precisely what I’m getting into when I choose Last Stands. You may choose to enter the blank spaces of unknowns marked Here Be Dragons on our maps of becoming human, as have I; or you may remain as you are, and in either case I wish you well.
He: “Try this on for size jay…Okay, you’ve been to baseball games. Look at this clip of the Charlie Kirk assassination, immediately before he is shot.
Pay attention to the 2 guys standing behind him, the one on the left in the white shirt and white ball cap, and the one on the right in the black polo.
Tell me those are not baseball signals from base coaches, telling the guy at first to steal second, or telling the guy on second to steal third, or telling the guy on third to steal home.
Or the catcher telling the pitcher to fire a fast ball right down the pipe.
The guy in the white even touches the bill of his hat and adjusts his hat. That’s a baseball base coach signal.
And the guy in the black touching his forearm right at the elbow and then sliding his hand up his bicep. That is a base coach signal to a base runner.
They both would have been directly in the line of sight of the sniper.”
Me: Yes, clearly this is not a lone shooter but a whole team. Not simply a sniper team, and of the two men on the roof one escaped on a private jet to which the escape route was left open by the F.B.I., Secret Service, and Trump’s private Blackwater security who were all on site, but with a military Command, Communications, and Control group with forward observers placed with the target.
The trick with this kind of thing isn’t just the assassination; it’s leaving no traces.
First, the shot itself, and what kind of skill it requires. You need to be a good shot to hit a target within six inches at 200 yards, well within the skills of many hunters and club shooters. With my primary weapon when living off the land in the bush where Dangerous Game may be afoot, a Winchester Model 700 Safari Express chambered in .375 Holland & Holland, I can hit a target within two inches at that range. But this target was the size of a quarter, moving, and to me that’s impressive as hell.
I’d expect an actual military sniper to make that shot reliably at 800 to 1200 yards, with a special rifle. But this was almost certainly not a great shot but a poor one; if you aim at the Sniper’s Triangle from a nest above the target and miss, you will miss high. I’m guessing the shooter is not a professional but merely someone familiar with rifles who could be leveraged. It could very well be the man now in custody, a gun fanatic who grew up in a law enforcement family.
Here’s the analysis of this shot by former Navy SEAL sniper and instructor Brandon Webb; “As a former Navy SEAL sniper and instructor, I’ve spent a career studying the dynamics of precision shooting.
Every long-range shot comes down to a blend of physics, human control, and environmental awareness.
With the recent attention on a rooftop shot from Charlie Kirk’s killer from roughly 200 yards, many are asking: how does such a shot actually work?
Distance and the 200-Yard Mark
Two hundred yards is a very easy shot and a moderate distance for a trained sniper, and a relatively easy shot for someone with basic shooting skills.
I tend to agree with some reports by other snipers online that the shooter was not a trained sniper, and I’ll get to the why of that soon.
In military training, we routinely push past 1,000 yards. At 200 yards, the shot requires precision but is well within reach of a competent marksman.
At this range, the bullet’s trajectory is relatively flat. Most common rifle calibers will only drop an inch or two, meaning the shooter doesn’t need significant elevation adjustments.
Wind, however, can begin to play a role—especially crosswinds at rooftop height, and even a slight breeze can affect a bullet’s trajectory.
Then there’s the angle issue and temperature fluctuations, which most shooters, aside from experienced hunters or a trained sniper, would not understand.
In simple terms, shooting downward (with an angle) with the help of gravity requires the shooter to raise his sights higher to account for gravity.
If the rooftop were 6–8 stories high (roughly 60–80 feet), the angle of depression at 200 yards would be around 15–20 degrees.
Shooting at an angle changes bullet behavior slightly because of what’s known as the “cosine effect.” In short, bullets don’t drop as much when fired at a steep upward or downward angle. A sniper must account for this, adjusting the point of aim accordingly.
Caliber Considerations
Without recovered ballistics, we can’t state the exact caliber, but based on the video I saw online, here are some general observations:
High-powered rifle calibers (like .308 or 6.5 Creedmoor) are common for 200-yard precision shots. These rounds maintain lethal energy and stable flight.
Smaller calibers (like 5.56 NATO) can still be accurate at 200 yards, but their terminal effects are less dramatic compared to larger rounds.
From video evidence of penetration and physical reaction of the victim, it’s consistent with a medium-to-large caliber rifle round rather than a handgun or small carbine caliber.
Shooter’s Skill Requirements
Executing this type of shot requires more than just a good rifle.
The shooter must:
Control breathing and trigger squeeze under pressure.
Understand how angle and environmental factors affects trajectory.
Compensate for rooftop winds and thermal currents.
Maintain stealth and stability in an exposed elevated position.
Escape without detection.
It’s not just pulling the trigger; it’s executing a complete ballistic equation in real time.
The shooter likely has a military or law enforcement background because evading law enforcement afterwards requires this kind of training, unless luck factors in. The aftermath was chaos, and this creates a diversion in the shooter’s favor.
So my guess is that the shooter has some training, but is not a professional sniper.” I will defer to the expertise of our SEAL sniper here, and say the shot did not require a trained sniper, just someone who could be leveraged and was a reasonably experienced rifleman, but the teamwork was top shelf, and it does limit the possibilities. Many of America’s allies and enemies are among them, as well as several members of our intelligence and special operations community, and others. But why is Trump’s personal security chief beside Charlie Kirk signalling his sniper team?
The question is, who benefits?
Or, what did the target know that made him a threat to someone?
Always these are twin strings which bear pulling on in any such forensic investigation, and may unravel unknown webs of deceit which hide inconvenient truths.
And the fact remains that the target was a key member of the Trump regime who was complicit in its crimes.
Until I learn differently, I’m going to assume that this was either personal or politically motivated. Beyond the motives of the shooter, I mean; why was a team which coordinated the escape of the shooter’s handler with diverse elements of government agencies including Trump’s personal security in command of this operation?
This reminds me of the assassination of Prigozhin, a Reckoning for war crimes in Ukraine which required months of fiendishly complex and dangerous work, some of it in Russian uniform and working with the peace movement within the Russian Army to provoke the Wagner Group rebellion which opened the window of opportunity, and I hope never to come to the attention of anyone who can operate on this level.
Whomever did this, and whatever else may be true, did the cause of antifascism and bringing a Reckoning to those who would enslave us a great service.
While I did Numfar’s Dance of Joy upon hearing news of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the personal consequences for choosing to take direct action against the regime or otherwise transgressing the boundaries of the Forbidden in liberation struggle in the wake of being broken open by the trauma of this event is a subject for deep and careful consideration.
What does it mean for us, to destroy and re-create ourselves in the light of new horizons and understandings, to embrace the responsibilities of our freedom in a universe wherein we are the only makers of meaning and value, and the authors of our own humanity?
To emerge from the legacies of our history and become autonomous and self created beings, to forge new truths of our choosing and to embrace those truths immanent in nature and written in our flesh, we must abandon all illusions and embrace the terror of our nothingness as well as the joy of total freedom, the costs as well as the benefits of liberty and refusal to submit to authority, to serve systems of oppression, to remain silent in the face of injustice, or to stand aside when our duty of care for others requires action.
Such was the life path I chose in Beirut 1982 in Resistance and liberation struggle against the Siege, when Israeli soldiers set fire to children and were laughing and making bets with each other on how far they could run screaming before falling into pools of blackened ruin, and I found myself fighting them.
This was the third time the golden cage of my reality was broken open and a limitless one of great terror and great beauty revealed beyond the illusion. The first occurred when I was nine, Bloody Thursday 1969 at People’s Park Berkeley when Governor Reagan ordered the police to open fire on the students protesting the university system’s investments in Israel over the Occupation of Palestine, and a grenade thrown by a policeman hurled my consciousness from my body and in the moments I was Most Sincerely Dead I beheld a vision of our myriad possible futures, virtually all of which end in an Age of Tyrants which has now begun and human extinction after possibly eight centuries of wars of imperial conquest and dominion fought with weapons of unspeakable horror, a fate I have been trying and failing to avoid ever since.
The second such event occurred in 1974 Sao Paulo Brazil, where I was training as a saber fencer for the Pan American Games during the summer before I began high school, first of many Last Stands in which I fought a running street battle over several weeks against police death squads who were bounty hunting abandoned street children. During this time I was trapped in the open with a crippled boy whom I refused to abandon when the police demanded I step aside, and I was rescued from execution by rifle fire, very much like the mock executions of Dostoevsky by the Czar’s secret police and Maurice Blanchot’s by the SS, by the Matadors, something between vigilantes, revolutionaries, and criminals who brought a Reckoning to the wealthy and powerful beyond the law or who were the law, founded by the great and terrible Pedro Rodrigues Filho the year before, who welcomed me into their ferocious brotherhood with the words; “You are one of us; come with us. We can’t save everyone, but we can avenge.”
Then, eight years later, came Beirut.
There was a café on the far side of a sniper alley that served the best strawberry crepes in the world, and my friends and I made an extreme sport of dashing across it for breakfast. One morning an elegant gentleman sat at my table, and said in French; ”I am told you do this every day, steal breakfast from death.”
To this I replied; “Yes; moments stolen from death are all we truly own, and set us free. It’s a poor man who has no joys worth dying for.”
He smiled and said “I agree”; so began our conversations at breakfast, until the day came when Israel overran the barricades. The IDF were asking for surrender, blindfolding the children of those who came out and using them as human shields, and setting fire to the homes of those who refused. When they set fire to our house, and our discovery that our only weapon was the bottle of champagne we had just finished, he asked; Will you surrender?” and I said no.
“Neither will I” he replied, and stood. “As I offer you now, offer others at need; this is the Oath of the Resistance which I invented in Paris 1940 after spending much of the previous year spying on the Nazis in Berlin, reworded from my oath as a Legionnaire in 1918. It’s the finest thing I ever stole. Say with me; We swear our loyalty to each other, to resist and yield not, and abandon not our fellows.” Thus was I set on my life path by Jean Genet, in a burning house, in a lost cause, in a time of fear and horrors, with the Oath of the Resistance which I now offer all of you.
And he gave me a principle of action that day, by which I have lived now for over forty years, among the unknown spaces on our maps of becoming human marked Here Be Dragons, where there are no rules, and now recommend to you; “When there is no hope, one can do impossible things, glorious things.”
In our last moments together, before I returned to university in San Francisco, I asked him; “What do I do now, with the rest of my life?”
And he replied, paraphrasing his famous quote in Miracle of the Rose; “Live with grandeur.”
I have lived for forty three years now in the places beyond all laws and all limits, where human being, meaning, and value are forged from nothing, in the unknown spaces marked Here Be Dragons on our maps of becoming human, where we can claw back something of our humanity from the darkness and make yet another Last Stand beyond hope of victory or survival, and I say to you that we must live our lives as if every day were a Last Stand.
Live boldly, on your own terms and by your own rules, and love like you have laughed in the face of your executioner.
Live with grandeur, friends.
As I wrote in my post of August 16 2025, Beauty to Balance the Terror of Our Nothingness; When the Abyss looks back at me, Beauty can restore the balance. My thanks to Schopenhauer for solving the riddle Nietzsche posed for us in Beyond Good and Evil.
We cannot know the future, for the possibilities are limitless. But we know this; the universe cares nothing for us, there is no Great Plan, no reward for goodness nor punishment for evil, nor good or evil of any kind, for these are human words and cannot exist without human deeds to make them real.
This is the terror of our nothingness in a universe without imposed meaning or value, no Authority either beneficent or tyrannical to create and order ourselves and our lives. But the reverse is also true; in such a universe of total freedom, wherein the only human being, meaning, and value is what we ourselves create, we hold the only powers that exist, that of poetic vision in the reimagination and transformation of ourselves and our choices about how to be human together, of love to transcend the limits of our form, realize the truths of others, and to liberate us from hierarchies of belonging and otherness, of hope to free us from systems of oppression, from tyranny and terror, and from the state as embodied violence in the primary defining human act of refusal to submit and granting us the will to claw our way out of the ruins to make yet another Last Stand beyond hope of victory or even survival, and of faith in each other as solidarity of action and a United Humankind in a free society of equals in which we are guarantors of each other’s universal human rights.
On this day American patriots gathered in mass action and protest at our capitals and palaces of government throughout the nation, against the capture of the state by a fascist regime of tyranny and terror, the subversion of democracy and destruction of its values and institutions, against vote suppression and the theft of citizenship from Black Americans through gerrymandering, against the ethnic cleansing of Latin Americans by the ICE white supremacist terror force, and against the federal Occupation of our sanctuary cities and bastions of democracy.
This day we reached out to each other and held fast our line against the darkness. And with each such act of solidarity and refusal to submit to the force and control of an Authority of white supremacist terror and theocratic patriarchal sexual terror, we remain Unconquered.
This is the beauty of human beings.
What shall we do with our lives, whatever may remain of them, and how shall we live if we are to become human?
Live with grandeur, my friends.
Postscript
Thank you for sharing this journey with me; your friendship has brought me joy, as I hope mine has to you. These past days I was reminded of our mortality and the limits of our form as an imposed condition of struggle, of the flaws of our humanity and the ephemeral and impermanent nature of our lives.
I dreamed of a cat we once shared our home with named Bunny; we saw someone throw her out of a car window driving past the animal shelter near our home, and stopped. I opened my door and said; “Do you want to come home with us? We have lots of food” and she jumped right up into my lap and started purring. We had some lovely years together before she got sick, and after treatments she seemed to recover a bit, and spent a glorious day running in the park, chasing butterflies and climbing trees, but died in the night.
Sometimes you only get one good day, and you never know when that will be.
Make each of your days glorious, find your joy, and chase your dreams.
Grodek, by Georg Trakl
In the evening the autumn forests resound
With deadly weapons, the golden plains
And blue lakes above which the sun
Rolls more somberly; night embraces
Dying warriors, the wild lament
Of their broken mouths.
Yet silently in the meadow
A red cloud, in which an angry god dwells,
Gathers spilled blood, lunar coolness;
All roads end in black decay.
Under golden branches of night and stars
The sister’s shadow staggers through the silent grove
To greet the ghosts of heroes, the bleeding heads;
And quietly the dark autumn flutes resound in the reeds.
O prouder grief! You brazen altars
Today an enormous pain nourishes the hot flame of the spirit,
The unborn grandchildren.
Numfar’s Dance of Joy
Angel, season two episode 21 “Through the Looking-Glass”
Charlie Kirk was a big fan of political violence, like the January 6th insurrection, police brutality against protesters, ICE abuses of minorities, the murder of George Floyd and every other unarmed Black person killed by police, the massacre of Palestinians, including the tragic death of six-year-old child Hind Rajab, who was shot 355 times, and of course, the attack on Paul Pelosi.
He reveled in and joked about violence committed against not only the political left, but innocent children around the globe.
He used division and lied about it all to make a huge amount of money for himself.
He was a racist who said the Civil Rights Act was a mistake.
He was a misogynist who said that women should have babies, not careers, and let their men decide who to vote for.
He was a homophobe and transphobe who repeated every nasty lie about the LGBTQ+ community that you can imagine, and in 2023, he said publicly that trans people should be dealt with by men using violence like in the 1950s and 1960s.
He cheered on the separation of children from their parents in children’s cages at the border.
He celebrated the idea of animals eating immigrants at Alligator Alcatraz.
He saw families in tears, and he laughed.
He believed that giving unlimited guns to every crazy person was worth the deaths of some of our kids in their classrooms.
Really, he said that.
He believed in uncontrolled access to weapons of war, and to him it was worth the cost of some deaths.
He said this after a school shooting.
The oppressed are not, in fact, morally obligated to show grace, understanding, sadness, or unity when an oppressor is harmed, and yet, for some reason, we’re the only ones who are ever expected to do so.
And if you’re one of those people demanding respect from the disrespected, look inward, because you may not be the ally that you think you are.
Charlie Kirk’s death is a direct result of the worship of political violence that was his life.
His response to the question of empathy was that he didn’t believe in it, so you’ll forgive my indifference.”
Posted on Occupy Democrats “BREAKING: Journalist and college professor Stacey Patton goes viral by penning a stunningly powerful statement about how she was on Charlie Kirk’s “digital hit list” and recounting the horror that he inflicted on her.
We cannot allow this tragic assassination to whitewash Kirk’s legacy…
“I am on Charlie Kirk’s hit list,” Patton wrote to her 215,000 followers on Facebook. “His so-called ‘Professor Watchlist,’ run under the umbrella of Turning Point USA, is nothing more than a digital hit list for academics who dare to speak truth to power. I landed there in 2024 after writing commentary that inflamed the MAGA faithful. And once my name went up, the harassment machine roared to life.”
“For weeks my inbox and voicemail were deluged. Mostly white men spat venom through the phone: ‘bitch,’ ‘c*nt,’ ‘n****r.’ They threatened all manner of violence,” she continued.
“They overwhelmed the university’s PR lines and the president’s office with calls demanding that I be fired,” Patton wrote. “The flood was so relentless that the head of campus security reached out to offer me an escort, because they feared one of these keyboard soldiers might step out of his basement and come do me harm.”
“And I am not unique,” she added.
“Kirk’s Watchlist has terrorized legions of professors across this country. Women, Black faculty, queer scholars, basically anyone who challenged white supremacy, gun culture, or Christian nationalism suddenly found themselves targets of coordinated abuse,” Patton wrote.
“Some received death threats. Some had their jobs threatened. Some left academia entirely. Kirk sent the loud message to us: speak the truth and we will unleash the mob!” she continued.
“That is the culture of violence Charlie Kirk built. He normalized violence. He curated it, monetized it, and sicced it on anyone who dared to puncture his movement’s lies,” she wrote.
“And now, in the wake of his shooting, there’s all this national outpouring of mourning, moments of silence, yellow prayer hands, and tributes painting him as a civil debater,” Patton continued. “But the truth is that Kirk and his foot soldiers spent years terrorizing educators, trying to silence us with harassment and fear!”
“And now the same violence he unleashed on others has come full circle.”
“But what i find especially jarring is the dissonance in public mourning for a smug white man whose life work was actively hostile to certain groups,” she continued. “Kirk spent years demonizing LGBTQ people, mocking gun survivors, spewing racism about Black folks, and pushing policies that literally shorten lives.”
“It is so revolting to watch a bipartisan wave of grief sweep over this hateful racist as if he was a neutral community servant,” she concluded.
This is pure unvarnished truth from Patton. Charlie Kirk did not deserve what happened to him, but nor did his victims deserve the hell that he unleashed on them. If Americans are going to build a more peaceful future for ourselves we must condemn political violence while also condemning the hateful, bigoted rhetoric that made Kirk a multimillionaire.”
As written by Robin Snyder “Wednesday September 10, 2025
Well to say we’re in a perilous place is putting it mildly. The tragic killing of MAGA hero Charlie Kirk at a rally at Utah Valley University today is threatening to send our already incredibly vomitous political environment spiraling into toxic overdrive.
Democrat after Democrat, from Gavin Newsom to freaking JoJo in Jerz, immediately after the shooting, rightly, came out with statements condemning the shooting and all political violence in the strongest possible terms. This is – and sorry we need to go there but JFC let’s not live in a fantasy world – a 180 from the Republican reaction to violence against Democrats.
A few months ago, the head of the Minnesota House Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed by a right-wing extremist who left a long target list of other Democrats behind. I’m old enough to remember that the response to that horror show from Republicans was crickets. It wasn’t the only time. Wajahat Ali reminds that Trump and everyone on down the line mercilessly mocked Paul Pelosi when he was nearly beaten to death with a hammer by a crazed wingnut conspiracy theorist.
But of course it gets worse. With no suspect, no motive and no clue who killed Kirk, Republicans, from elected officials to the fanatical creeps who fund them, are all in on blaming Democrats and whipping their base into a frenzy, which will inevitably lead to more violence.
Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin rushed to Newsmax to fan the flames, asking “When are the Democrats going to stand up and apologize for the hatred and the lies that they have fed their base that has led to these actions?” This is unconscionable.
House Oversight Committee Chair Comer Pyle thundered of Democrats “There are consequences to their words.”
GrayDC News caught up with the repulsive phony South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace as she was leaving the Capitol today. The very first thing out of her mouth to reporters on the Charlie Kirk shooting were: “Democrats own what happened today.”
When a reporter followed up asking if that meant Republicans owned the shooting of the Minnesota lawmakers, Mace replied, dumbfounded, “Are you kidding me?” They are so used to the asymmetry of coverage they literally don’t know how to respond when called on their bullshit.
Never leaving an opportunity to foment civil war go to waste, Fox’s abhorrent Jesse Watters spit that “We’re gonna avenge Charlie’s death.” OMG
If there was ever a time to have a leader to turn down the temperature it is now, but instead we have Trump who, glowering menacingly under his bronze spackled makeup, released a video intended only to pour gas on the fire.
Trump: “For years those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges and law enforcement officials.” He called Kirk “a martyr for truth and freedom.”
This is dangerous, dangerous territory. Every decent person is appalled by Charlie Kirk’s killing and has the deepest sympathy for his family, wife and young children. At the same time, it’s okay to acknowledge that Kirk was a bigot, a racist, a sexist, and an antisemite who traipsed across the country fomenting hate. In a free country, Kirk was allowed to make tens of millions off spouting his heinous lies which demonized everyone who disagreed with him. It’s the American way! Likewise, Democrats are allowed to call him on his awful beliefs, and to question why in the world it is appropriate for the American flag to be lowered at half-staff, as ordered by Trump, for this partisan hack who openly hated half the country.
Well, the goons funding MAGA gave us some hints. They want to use this tragedy as a pretense to supercharge their authoritarian project.
If you think that sounds overwrought, check out these comments:
Blake Masters, the Peter Theil-funded freak who was the Republican candidate for Senate from Arizona and who fired off assault weapons in his campaign ads: “Left-wing violence is out of control, and it’s not random. Either we destroy the NGO/donor patronage network that enables and foments it, or it will destroy us.” Destroy????
Christopher Rufo: “The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years. It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”
As journalist Matty Yglegias pants-pissingly put it: “This may not be the incident that sparks it, but they are chomping at the bit for an act of violence that will serve as a pretext for shutting down all opposition politics.”
Given the unfortunate state of the mainstream media we all know there this is headed: Inevitably, while Republicans will continue to be given a free reign to vilify Democrats as Communist Socialist Sharia-law loving radical extremists, Democrats will be put on notice by the media to mind their Ps and Qs. God forbid, don’t call the fascists, uh, fascists.
To this demand, I encourage you to turn your attention to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren on CNN, who flicked away that stupid demand with this: “Oh, please. Why don’t you start with the president of the United States? And every ugly meme he’s posted and every ugly word.”
Extra Credit:
You know how Trump blathered inanely during the campaign about how the Russians never would have invaded Ukraine if he were president? And how he would end the war in 24 hours if re-elected? How’s that working out for him?
Last night, while Trump was getting jeered and called Hitler in a DC restaurant, Russia sent drones into Poland, making Trump the first president to ever have a NATO member attacked by an outside enemy under his watch. Prior to weak-ass Trump re-taking office, NATO countries had been free of Russian attack for 76 years. This particular immense F you from daddy Vlad comes several weeks after Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for him, clapped for him like a jackass, and then saw Putin repay the favor by bombing an American factory in Ukraine and mounting the most vicious attacks on Ukrainian civilians of the entire war. So. Much. Winning.
As Bill Kristol wrote in The Bulwark this morning “The United States, under Donald Trump, is now weaker than it has been in a very long time. And the world is more dangerous than it has been in a very long time.”
This is immensely serious stuff. A week after Trump hosted the Polish president in the Oval Office, Poland invoked Article 4 and NATO scrambled fighter jets to shoot down the drones. At least we have experienced and expert leadership. (Insert head into bowl of radioactive waste.) Hegseth may have to take a quick break from changing the signs to “War Department” and doing pull-ups with RFK Jr. and fire up that Signal chat to get some advice from his wife about what to do.
In typical fashion, the “president” followed up on this unprecedented strike in Poland in the most ludicrous way possible. After waiting more than 12 hours (!!!) he posted on his dumb personal social media site: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” Oh my Lord.
And no matter what else is happening, let’s not forget for a moment that the “president” and his faux sanctimonious party are engaged in a massive coverup to hide Trump’s antics with a notorious pedophile. They are still pushing the obvious blatant lie that Trump didn’t write the awful stuff in Epstein’s birthday book. Today Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern summed up how absurd this is: “So let me get this straight…20 years ago, Democrats forged Trump’s signature on a creepy birthday card to a pedophile…planted it in Epstein’s estate before Trump even ran…and then waited to release it until *after* Trump got reelected? Got it.
We’ve seen this movie before. As Piyush Mittal notes, here is a sampling of things Trump has vehemently denied doing only to have them be exposed as blatant lies: “Having sex with Stormy Daniels. Extorting Zelensky. Asking Georgia for 11, 780 votes. Inciting the insurrection. Stealing classified documents. Making a birthday card for Epstein.”
Thanks so much for reading and stay safe and healthy everyone!!! Remember we are not the crazy ones!!!”
The hand signals; yes, same guy from the fake Trump shooting calling the plays.
Yes, same guy calling the plays. This is not a lone shooter, but a team with a whole military Command, Communications, and Control group, with forward observers bracketing the target.
Beautifully done, and this teamwork limits the possible suspects to our own, our allies, our enemies, and nonstate intelligence and military.
The trick with assassinations is to leave no traces, and I never want to come to the attention of anyone who can pull this off. Like Prigozhin.
Charlie Kirk: When the Joke Writes Itself, Bruce Fanger
“There’s a line Charlie Kirk once delivered with the smug certainty of a man who never thought he’d be the punchline: “I think it’s worth 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.” He likened gun deaths to car crashes—an unfortunate toll we pay for the freedom of mobility, as if a school shooting were the same as a fender-bender.
The thing about dark irony is that it doesn’t wait for a satirist’s scalpel. Sometimes history itself leans forward with a wicked grin and says, “Watch this.” And so, at a Utah college, as Kirk was fielding a question about mass shootings, a bullet answered more decisively than he ever could. Cosmic timing doesn’t get darker.
Here was the man who preached that liberty comes with a “price,” suddenly forced to pay it in the most literal way. The philosopher’s stone of American conservatism—the Second Amendment as sacred scripture—turned on one of its own prophets. The self-appointed guardian of “God-given rights” discovered the fine print: those rights aren’t guaranteed to extend past the sound of gunfire.
Black comedy feeds on this kind of symmetry. It’s not that anyone deserves to be shot; it’s that a man who publicly discounted the horror of being shot was brought down by the very violence he waved away as the cost of doing business. It is irony so sharp it cuts through solemnity. Imagine Kirk himself, were he still alive, trying to spin it: “Yes, I got shot, but isn’t that worth it so you can keep your Glock in the glove box?” Even his most loyal audience would choke on the absurdity.
The American gun debate has always been staged like a tragic farce: politicians cashing NRA checks while children bleed in cafeterias, pundits intoning “thoughts and prayers” before pivoting to the next outrage. Kirk wanted us to believe that gun deaths were tolerable so long as they happened to someone else. The bullet that struck him was not partisan. It did not ask for his voter ID. It simply played its part in the theater of inevitability he defended.
If this were a novel, critics would sneer at the heavy-handed foreshadowing. A man lectures that death is the price of freedom, then dies in the very manner he dismissed. Too obvious. Too on the nose. But reality is less subtle than fiction, and far crueler.
In the end, Kirk’s death doesn’t change the argument—it embodies it. The man who claimed some must die so that others may feel free has joined the ledger he once tallied so casually.
And in the end, I can only say with the utmost sincerity: thoughts and prayers.”
We Must Not Posthumously Sanitize Charlie Kirk’s Hateful Life
Influential anti-LGBTQ+ activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Wednesday. While condemning violence is something most can get behind, sanitization of his hate has gone too far.
Erin Reed
Sep 11, 2025
“Yesterday, while giving a campus speech, far-right activist and anti-LGBTQ+ influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a gunman—another grim marker of how political violence has become a recurring feature of American life. Quickly, political figures and pundits rushed to denounce the killing, as they should. But some went further, valorizing and lionizing a man who built his career on contempt of people he viewed as lesser. Political violence is corrosive and we must not excuse it—killing Charlie Kirk was horrific. But we also must not sanitize the memory of a man who wished harm on those he disagreed with, and who spread a message of hate to anyone willing to listen or pay him to so. We can denounce the violent killing of Charlie Kirk without praising his abhorrent legacy.
Yesterday, Gavin Newsom tweeted that we should “continue the work” of Charlie Kirk and honor his memory. This morning, centrist columnist Ezra Klein published a column titled “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics The Right Way.” Both paint a portrait of an open-minded Kirk, a man of dialogue and principle. But this is not his legacy. To call for “continuing his work” or to praise how he “practiced politics” is to erase what that work actually was: a relentless campaign of hate directed at LGBTQ+ people, racial and ethnic minorities, and anyone who refused to fall in line.
I first reported on Charlie Kirk years ago, at the beginning of the modern anti-LGBTQ+ panic—back when Riley Gaines was rising to far-right fame and her fifth-place swim finish was weaponized against transgender people. In one interview with Gaines on Real America’s Voice, Kirk railed against “the decline of American men” and blamed it for transgender equality. Then he added that people should have “just took care of” transgender people “the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and 60s.” Let’s be clear about what that meant: the 1950s and 60s were not kind to transgender people. The “standard treatments” were lobotomy, shock therapy, and involuntary institutionalization. Police commissioners openly described queer people as “a cancer in the community” and promoted “vigilant detecting.” Violence was the norm. So when someone calls for “continuing his work” or praises him for “practicing politics the right way,” this is the work they are honoring.
Charlie Kirk’s violent rhetoric toward transgender people in that clip was not an aberration—it was his brand. He preached hate and violence as a matter of routine. In another interview, he mocked Christians who followed scripture about loving their neighbor, scoffing that God also “calls for the stoning of gay people,” which he described as “God’s perfect law.” This was not a slip of the tongue. Hate was and continued to be central to his message. So when people invoke Kirk’s “work” and urge us to carry it forward, when they valorize him as some open-minded political figure, this is what they are valorizing: praising violence, contempt for human dignity, and the politics of fear dressed up as principle.
Later in 2023, Kirk took the stage at a megachurch to unleash a tirade against transgender people. He called them an “abomination” and a “throbbing middle finger to God,” before turning his venom on swimmer Lia Thomas, citing scripture to brand her the same. It was the kind of hate-speech pulpitry we remember from the most virulent anti-LGBTQ+ preachers of the 1990s—rhetoric meant not to persuade but to dehumanize. This is Charlie Kirk’s legacy: a campaign to eradicate entire classes of people from public life. It is not dialogue, and it is certainly not something that deserves to be honored or continued.
Charlie Kirk’s hatred was hardly confined to transgender or queer people. In one interview, he said the first thing he thinks when he sees a Black pilot is, “Boy, I hope he’s qualified.” In another, he called for the man who assaulted Nancy Pelosi’s husband to be bailed out of jail. He denounced the Civil Rights Act of 1964—the very legislation that made possible the civic life so many now falsely lionize him for defending. He infamously said a few gun deaths were worth his second amendment rights in the aftermath of a school shooting. He even derided empathy itself as worthless, a sentiment that has since metastasized into a broader far-right project to strip empathy education from schools. This is not a man to be admired. This is his legacy.
Charlie Kirk was not “practicing politics the right way.” His work should never “be continued.” He embodied everything corrosive about American politics today. He turned the anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ panic of the 2024 election into the centerpiece of his message, fueling many of the political ads that blanketed the country—ads rooted in narratives he and his network of far-right allies manufactured. He called for Nuremburg trials of gender-affirming care providers. He started a “professor watchlist” which called on his followers to report “leftist propaganda” in the classroom, which reportedly led to the families of those on the list being terrorized with death threats. His model of politics was not dialogue, but trolling: hopping from campus to campus to bait students, churn out sound bites, and spread hate. And his rhetoric was not debate—it was violent, dehumanizing, and designed to put targets on people’s backs.
You can stand against political violence, as anyone with a conscience does. You can call for a politics rooted in kindness—something we desperately lack today, and something I know the absence of intimately as a transgender person who has lived under the weight of rhetoric like Kirk’s. You can and should condemn killing over speech. But to ask that people carry on Kirk’s “work” is a bridge too far. We must not valorize his life. We must not sanitize his hate. Not now. Not ever.”
“On where to pour our compassion:
“Okay, but let’s talk about the real cost of respectability politics from an historical and scholarly pov:
When you prioritize the comfort of oppressors, you clear the path for the right wing to rewrite death as proof of righteousness, rather than consequence of violence. That martyrdom will not stop with words. It will feed their hunger for control, and harden their grip on authoritarianism.
And the people who will pay for that comfort you extended to him are the same people who have always paid: the marginalized, the racialized, the queer, the Indigenous, the ones his politics targeted daily.
Scholars of political violence, like Ruth Ben-Ghiat, warn that authoritarian movements thrive on martyrdom narratives. They weaponize the downfall of their leaders to harden group identity and justify escalating repression.
Studies on far-right extremism show that after public figures of hate die violently, recruitment spikes: their deaths are reframed as evidence of persecution, fueling cycles of radicalization.
Psychologists studying collective behavior point out that grief in these cases is political currency that can either disrupt authoritarian myth-making or entrench it.
So yes, comforting an oppressor may feel like a small, humane gesture, but history and research show it is never without consequence.
It is an investment in the very systems that took so many lives. And the return on that investment is always extracted from the most vulnerable: Indigenous Peoples, Black communities, queer and trans people, immigrants, [dis]abled people, religious minorities—the same ones who were targeted in life by the man you now want me to mourn in death.
When you ask us to mourn an oppressor as if his hands weren’t already drenched in the harm he incited, you are asking us to betray ourselves, our kin.
Comforting the oppressor ALWAYS comes at a cost. The oppressed will continue to pay it.
But you do not have to add to that cost. You can choose differently.
Indigenous scholars like Leanne Betasamosake Simpson have long argued that solidarity requires us to redirect our energy away from preserving colonial hierarchies and toward affirming the lives colonial power seeks to erase.
Instead, pour compassion into the communities who were targeted.
Mourn with the mothers who buried their children because of the violence he normalized. Stand with the queer and trans youth who live with the scars of his rhetoric. Extend your compassion to the Indigenous, the Black, the immigrant, the [dis]abled, who were dehumanized.
Your grief can be medicine when you place it where it heals rather than where it harms. Let your mourning strengthen the living instead of sanctifying the oppressor.
Let your compassion be the seed of transformation, not the soil of authoritarianism.
May you do so with so much relentless love.”,
C. Linklater
Pardoned Insurrectionists Are Using Charlie Kirk’s Death to Call for Civil War
Torch of Liberty 