If you have a narrative about the Sydney siege, here are some facts you need to account for: The siege was carried out by a Muslim man who was a self-styled cleric and who had recently proclaimed his conversion from Shia to Sunni (an especially big deal in the current context in the Middle East) […]
02 Oct
I’ve written a piece on how no-one seems to want to come to terms with the homegrown nature of the current terrorist threat in Australia. It’s up today at New Matilda. When Sydney’s Daily Telegraph ran a front page on Numan Haider titled “Jihad Joey” it was not to agonise over what kind of country […]
21 Sep
I was inspired partly by an exchange of well-made points on my Facebook wall between two great friends Jay and Paddy. But the main reason for taking time out to write this on a sunny Sunday morning in east London is because a funny thing happened on my way home last night. I really hope […]
12 Jul
On July 22, 2011, Anders Breivik, a Right-wing writer and activist, killed more than sixty young members of the Norwegian Labour Party on Utøya island. Captured alive, Breivik was more than willing to explain his actions as a ‘necessary atrocity’ designed to ‘wake up’ Europe to its betrayal by the Left, and its impending destruction through […]
12 Jan
In the lead-up the international day of action against fascism on 22 March, THANASIS KAMPAGIANNIS, writes in the latest issue of Σοσιαλισμός από Κάτω (Socialism From Below), the theoretical journal of the Greek Socialist Workers Party (SEK), looks at the danger of a major far Right breakthrough in May’s European Parliament elections, and asks what strategy […]
08 Oct
By KEVIN OVENDEN This piece is a follow-up to “Greece, the state & anti-fascism”, which was subsequently also posted at Socialist Unity in the UK and Socialist Worker in the US. The anti-fascist conference in Athens last weekend hosted by the Greek anti-fascist/anti-racist coalition KEERFA was a major step forward. About 600 people, from a broad spectrum […]
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 […]
10 Mar
Comments Off on Europe: The persistence of racism & the fascist threat
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 […]
25 Aug
I have some pieces up responding to the Breivik verdict today (see below for links). I was also interviewed by New Scientist magazine, so watch out for that. Meanwhile, if you haven’t done so yet, you can still buy the e-book that Elizabeth Humphrys, Guy Rundle and I co-edited last year in response to the Norway Massacre, […]
08 Apr
Welcome to the first post of the new Left Flank. We’ve moved from Blogger to WordPress, hosted at the lovely http://nuttify.com/ As you can see we’re still working on porting all the old comments from Disqus to the new platform. Time to change your RSS feed or subscribe by email (see the sidebar on the […]
18 Dec
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