My long-form essay on the trajectory of the Greens since 2010 is now up at Overland Journal‘s website, and will be in the print edition due out next week. No comments option at Overland, so feel free to comment below. The rise of the Greens represented a historic realignment of the Left of Australian politics, [...]
01 Aug
Historical analogies can often be misleading, especially when a notable anniversary places them readily to hand. Mohamad Morsi is not Salvador Allende, overthrown in the seminal Chilean coup 40 years ago. But General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is Egypt’s Augusto Pinochet — complete with military regalia and sunglasses. The response of Western governments betrays all the [...]
22 Jul
One of the most striking things about the mainstream media coverage of Kevin Rudd’s “PNG solution” is how the discussion is mostly framed by ideas, policies and language that are increasingly relics of a past phase of the interminable “border security” debate. By outmanoeuvring opponents to both his Right and Left on this issue, Rudd [...]
27 Jun
In Capital, Karl Marx elucidates the inner workings of the capitalist mode of production by making certain assumptions about the behaviour of real people. He describes capitalists as mere “personifications” of capital and other social relations. But these assumptions are just that: assumptions for the sake of clarifying underlying social processes without having factors like [...]
20 Mar
Comments Off
By KEVIN OVENDEN My previous post was written early on Monday morning, London time. Since then events have proceeded rapidly and dramatically. They will continue to do so. This update is meant to highlight the political significance of some of those developments in a fast moving crisis. 1) Despite desperate protestations it is now clear, [...]
10 Mar
Comments Off
by KEVIN OVENDEN Below are the points, updated and a little amplified, I made in a contribution to the highly successful Unite Against Fascism conference in London on 2 March. The speech (and I’ve incorporated my summing up) was in a workshop with Petros Constantinou from Greece, Marwan Mohammed from France and Glyn Ford [...]
27 Feb
In the end the results of Italy’s general election were even more unsettling than the most pessimistic pro-Euro commentators had anticipated. As this post was being completed, the lower house counts were as follows: Pier Luigi Bersani’s centre-left coalition 29.5% Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition 29.1% Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement 25.5% Mario Monti’s Civic Choice [...]
22 Apr
Comments Off
Later this week Left Flank will be looking at the controversy over the reporting of Breivik’s trial in a post at our regular blog at Overland, asking if the media has handed him an effective platform for his fascist ideological arguments. In the meantime, today we post the second of two parts of an extract [...]
20 Apr
With Anders Breivik’s trial underway, Left Flank will be analysing the politics both here and at the Overland website. Below we reprint the first of two parts of an abridged extract from the e-book that Guy Rundle, Elizabeth Humphrys and I edited last year, On Utøya: Anders Breivik, Right Terror, Racism and Europe. The chapter [...]
19 Nov
Comments Off
‘Don’t forget who runs your economy now.’ For the 1 percent who rule society, democracy seems more than ever a hindrance to ensuring that the most calamitous economic crisis since the 1930s is paid for by the 99 percent below them. The most obvious expression of this is the installation of unelected technocrats as prime [...]
06 Sep
0 Comments