M-L-M Mayhem!

In my previous post  I noted how the unfolding events in Gaza are a litmus test for those who identify as radical thinkers. Recently Seyla Benhabib failed this test by publishing a screed that, while claiming she was all for a ceasefire, distanced herself from an open letter signed by many of her former colleagues that was in support of Palestinian self-determination. Such distancing was accomplished by reminding readers of who she was and how she has in the past "supported the rights of the Palestinian people for self-determination," and then regurgitating Israeli state propaganda. Published by The Hannah Arendt Centre, it was immediately lionized by other "progressive" academics, mainly Arendtians: Samantha Rose Hill claimed it speaks to "the need for moral clarity," and Katerina Katarina Kolozova celebrated its critique of "anti-settler reasoning."  But Benhabib should be ashamed by this letter, and Hill and Kolozova should be ashamed for t

I've held off posting on the unfolding nightmare in Gaza because the horror show has filled me with great mourning. While the event of Al-Aqsa Flood and Israel's genocidal response provoked me to tweet and doom scroll at a feverish pace, my feelings about what was unfolding were too complex to write about in a sustained manner. (Also the level of mental exhaustion I've been feeling for the past few months have made it difficult for me to write anything substantial.) Besides, others did a better job of writing what needed to be written . This complexity of feelings was due to the fact that my political awakening was in the crucible of activist work around Palestinian solidarity. That is, Palestinian solidarity activism is what politicized me. And this politicization was personal because it was connected to the Palestinian activist I was dating at the time, who became the love of my life and my wife. And her family, like all Palestinian families, bears the weight of this long

As police budgets are increased by hundreds of millions of dollars, the Canadian state still deems that t he cost of searching the Winnipeg-area landfill for the remains of murdered Indigenous women remains too high. But they are willing to expend money on policing those involved in the #SearchTheLandfill protests. The same state has also claimed that it would be too costly to pay for excavations at multiple residential schools so as to locate the many bodies of those murdered in these colonial concentration camps––allowing numerous reactionary "journalists" like the Kays and Rex Murphy to write genocide denial opinion columns––while providing the typical "thoughts and prayers" bullshit when politically expedient. Recently the anniversary of Colten Boushie's execution passed, reminding everyone who cared about that case that Boushie's murderer, Gerald Stanley, walks free because Canada's repressive state apparatus was on his side from the beginning. The

 Back in 2014 I wrote in The Communist Necessity : "The act of making communism a necessity is generally unpleasant––but so is reality. If we have learned anything from the last two earth-shaking revolutions [Russia and China], it is that bringing communism into being is a messy business." Elsewhere in the same text I talked about the necessity of many of us having to be dragged down, losing our privilege, in order to make revolution. In his review of my first book, Gabriel Kuhn focused on this particular aspect of necessity and asked "when it comes to creating a better world, do you want to put your trust into the hands of someone who declares reality to be unpleasant no matter what?" Since that critical question was asked, and because this review was overall positive, I've had friendly relationship with Kuhn where we have discussed these points of critique. Because while, on the one hand I agree that this comment (and others like it in the text) did make the

 Jose Maria Sison, affectionately known as Joma, one of the great revolutionary figures of the latter half of the 20th Century, has just passed away. This death follows that of other revolutionaries of the same generation and camp: Comrade Zia in 2020 and Chairman Gonzalo in 2021 . Like them, Joma founded the contemporary revolutionary movement in his country, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) with its New People's Army (NPA). Like them, he was the principle theorist of this revolutionary movement––writing also under the names Amada Guerrero and Armando Liwanag . After the reestablishment of the CPP in 1968, and the First Great Rectification Movement, Joma's leading role in the CPP and its people's war, led to his arrest in 1977 by the Marcos regime. After years in prison and solitary confinement he was released only to be exiled to Utrecht. Meanwhile the CPP/NPA generated new leaderships (and eventually a Second Great Rectification Movement) and Joma, though n

One of the writing projects I've been working on for years––one that I've mentioned ever since Continuity and Rupture  was published––was a philosophical interrogation of the problematic of economism. Finally, after years of drafting and editing, it is being published by Foreign Languages Press . So much has changed since I first started working on this manuscript to its publication: the PCR-RCP, the vanguard project to which I was dedicated, went through various line struggles until ending in a unity process with other Maoist formations; the field of Maoism on the international level has been riven with its own line struggles (as I outlined in Critique of Maoist Reason ); bourgeois politics in the metropoles has gone through multiple shifts with reactionary elements becoming stronger leading up to a global pandemic where they became more endemic; and my posting here, which at one point of time was regular, has waned. But here we finally have it, Politics In Command , my philos