Forward #32 – Opposing Austerity
The new issue of Forward focuses on Austerity and its impact on communities, and how we can overcome this to build alternatives centred on dual power.
Read moreThe new issue of Forward focuses on Austerity and its impact on communities, and how we can overcome this to build alternatives centred on dual power.
Read more“This “White Knight” syndrome that runs rampant throughout leftist spaces is ridiculous and it needs to stop. Women and misogyny-affected people have come to expect misogyny from the right, yet when it comes from the left, from men they trust and call comrades, it is a painful reminder of how patriarchy and internalised misogyny is virtually inescapable”.
Read more“We encourage fans of local clubs to support the BDS call and boycott any of the clubs merchandise which is sponsored or supplied by Puma to put pressure on their local clubs to cut ties with the Israeli apartheid. It is the least we can do while the Israeli occupation and slaughter continues in Palestine, even when it is not reported by the news.”
Read more85 years ago today a war began that would result in the working men and women of the world leaving the comfort of their homes and travelling to the Iberian Peninsula where many sacrificed their lives in the fight to uphold the ideals of the Second Spanish Republic. The Spanish Civil War is often described as a warm-up for the Second World War; this is not only disingenuous but completely false. The conflict deserves its own place in history as a worker’s struggle, of solidarity and sacrifice against a foe whose interests lay at the antipode from that our class.
Read moreThe rise of racist attacks against East Asians in the West is not due to individual hatred or fringe populists like Donald Trump. In reality, this rise in racism is due to centuries of white supremacist ideology, which is perpetuated by Western hegemony and its imperialist interests. Reading this article, one may take away that only the far-right is to worry about, but when you look at how the majority of leftists, centrists, and centre-right individuals perpetuate these ideas about China, especially through the media, it is clear that liberals enable and accentuate the fascist narratives around China.
Read more“In Ireland, one cannot have socialism without republicanism. The socialist-republican cause is both the cause of labour and the cause of country. The liberation of the working people of this Island can only be achieved through anti-imperialism and active class struggle. But first we must analyse what is to be done, understand the flaws in non-republican socialism and pseudo-republicanism.”
Read more“Although Orange is the New Black is gripping, for a while, it paints a grim picture using humorous sub plots, stories, and characters of a prison system entirely unfit for purpose… Anybody who views the series should take the funny sections of the series with a pinch of salt, because what it really shows is an unrelenting anti-working-class industry that thrives from the locking up, starving and punishing of millions of non-violent offenders in a vicious cycle of violence and re-incarceration.”
Read moreAs Socialist Republicans the CYM strives for queer liberation through national liberation. We fight for a 32-county socialist republic in which queer people are not excluded from jobs and housing, where our experiences aren’t turned into diagnoses, where our identities aren’t porn categories and where we get the healthcare we deserve.
Read more“Capitalism has had a transformative effect on our society’s approach to health. To say that health is an unchanging aspect of all cultures or historical epochs is simply not true. For example, there is a lot to be said about how capitalism fosters and promotes physical health. Under capitalism, it is usually done for purely individualistic aesthetic purposes. In the hands of companies, these become powerful ideological forces which grant advertisers a worrying degree of influence over us, as they can essentially control the images we think we should have of ourselves. Health becomes almost domineering and transforms into its opposite, a sickness. Women are still generally promoted as sex objects for consumption and men are also presented by companies in the same narrow manner.”
Read more“Have you ever heard of the “Warm Bath Theory”? It was an idea published by Talcott Parsons, a sociologist who created this idea that the nuclear family prevents its adult members from behaving in dysfunctional ways and encourages them to conform to social norms. The warm bath theory suggests that a man could come home from a stressful day at work and relax into his family/wife, like a warm bath, relieving his stress.
However, as communists, we know that this theory is outdated and quite frankly, full of shit. Fran Ansley, a Marxist-Feminist rephrased it as women being “takers of shit”, in other words when men come home and try to relieve their stress from working in a capitalist system, they do so by taking their frustrations out on their wives.”
Read morePorn is not feminist, and no reforms or measures are ever going to change that. Not porn made by women, not porn that’s paid for, nothing. This is because nothing will ever change who is hurt by porn, and who benefits. Overwhelmingly women are the ones hurt by porn, either directly by starring in it, or indirectly by experiencing abuse that men have learned from excessive porn consumption and men benefit (sexually and financially). Content made to satisfy men at the expense of all women is not feminist, even if the women are smiling in the thumbnail.
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