[Marxism] Turkish regime orders ‘mobilisation’ along the Syrian border
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Turkey has been threatening to invade northeastern Syria. Up to now the US has been discouraging such a move, fearing that it would lead to a revival of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. But Erdogan may do it anyway. * Turkish regime orders ‘mobilisation’ along the border: https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/turkish-regime-orders-mobilisation-along-the-border-36763 Security Zone as part of Turkish expansionist policy: https://anfenglishmobile.com/features/security-zone-as-part-of-turkish-expansionist-policy-36730 _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Point of No Return Seems to Have Been Passed in U.S.-China Cold War
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * *The Point of No Return Seems to Have Been Passed* */Intensified Global Trade War, currency war and arms race open a new stage in the U.S.-China Cold War/* /by Michael Pröbsting/ https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/point-of-no-return-in-u-s-china-cold-war/ -- Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG (Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net) www.rkob.net ak...@rkob.net Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314 --- Diese E-Mail wurde von Avast Antivirus-Software auf Viren geprüft. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Democratic Socialists of America Seize the Day
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://www.thenation.com/article/dsa-convention-sanders-atlanta-socialism/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Inhumanity of Academic Freedom - Steve Salaita
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * A transcript of the 2019 TB Davie Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town, delivered August 7, 2019. https://stevesalaita.com/the-inhumanity-of-academic-freedom/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] One Child Nation | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Nanfu Wang, the Chinese émigré who made “Hooligan Sparrow” and “I Am Another You”—two outstanding documentaries, has a new film that opens on Friday at the IFC Center in New York. Titled “One Child Nation”, it examines the draconian law that put a ceiling on births in China from 1979–2015. She was born in this period but her parents also were allowed to have a second child, her younger brother, because they were rural villagers. Now that she has become a mother of a young son herself, she was inspired to visit China and interview her parents, their neighbors, and urban dwellers to see how the policy impacted them. full: https://louisproyect.org/2019/08/07/one-child-nation/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Louis Proyect Shreds Bhaskar Sunkara’s “Manifesto” | Washington Babylon
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * My dear fellow, How many elections have we had where this threat of fascism wasn't deployed to encourage us to vote for an anti-labor, bought-and-sold corporate center to center-right Democrat? I can't think of a single one I didn't hear it. :-) Cheers, Mark L. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Louis Proyect Shreds Bhaskar Sunkara’s “Manifesto” | Washington Babylon
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Louis, thank you --- I hate to say this but you made it possible for me NOT to read the piece by Sunkara --- As you can guess -- you had me all the way to the end!! Because I see Trump as a fascist, I think a temporary class alliance is essential --- but I've said it so many times, even I[m bored with expresing my opinion! Let's just leave it with my "thank you" _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-LatAm]: Mehas on McArdle Stephens, 'In the Lands of Fire and Sun: Resistance and Accommodation in the Huichol Sierra, 1723-1930'
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * -- Forwarded message - From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW Date: Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 1:54 PM Subject: H-Net Review [H-LatAm]: Mehas on McArdle Stephens, 'In the Lands of Fire and Sun: Resistance and Accommodation in the Huichol Sierra, 1723-1930' To: Cc: H-Net Staff Michele McArdle Stephens. In the Lands of Fire and Sun: Resistance and Accommodation in the Huichol Sierra, 1723-1930. Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 2018. 222 pp. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8032-8858-4. Reviewed by Shayna Mehas (Elon University) Published on H-LatAm (August, 2019) Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz Residing in the Sierra Madre Occidental, the area where Jalisco, Durango, Zacatecas, and Nayarit intersect, the Huichols or Wixáritari have actively resisted and accommodated impinging circumstantial changes congruent with Spanish conquest, independence, and the Mexican Revolution. Through a close reading of priests' letters, travelers' accounts, and ethnographic reports, Michele McArdle Stephens attempts to reveal a previously unknown history of this culturally affiliated and politically nonaligned indigenous population, showing how they successfully maintained aspects of their identity, culture, and land in this "region of refuge," over the course of two hundred years (p. xx). The work consists of an introduction, conclusion, and six abbreviated chapters that seek to illustrate how the Huichol people modified, adapted, and thrived in their native areas, continuing to practice their traditional cultural beliefs and maintaining the core of their indigenous identity, despite the increasing presence of the state and international constituencies. Stephens introduces the region and its people by briefly explaining the complexity of the area and its numerous native inhabitants. Though noting that the people within this region most commonly refer to themselves as the Wixáritari, for the purposes of "semantic ease" and historical recognition, the term "Huichol" is used throughout the work (p. xxi). Stephens then moves thematically and temporally, paying particular attention to the Huichols' defense of religion and lands. In an effort to understand Huichol identity, the author attempts to fit these themes into major points in Mexican history. Herein lies the overarching challenges of the work. Because of the confines created by the temporal alignment of the chapters (the arrival of the Spanish, transition from colony to nation, the rise of Liberalism, including the separation of church and state and privatization of land, and the Mexican Revolution), and the limited nature of sources used, sufficient evidence to draw conclusions as they relate to the big picture of Mexican history is lacking. The dependency on more singular types of sources for individual chapters creates obvious voids in the ability to see the larger picture. Take, for instance, the first chapter, "From Native Neighbors to Spanish Conquerors," that predominately uses priests' letters. Although the author stipulates that the Huichols "had been in somewhat regular contact with Spanish missionaries," not only is the direct evidence of their correspondence, including what this regular contact looked like and how often and how thorough it was, unclear, but so are the reasons why some groups resisted missionization attempts while others accommodated these efforts (p. 9). Did it have to do with where exactly these priests were sent and how long they remained, or was it something else? A richer contextualization of the region, the documented movements by the Catholic Church, and the process of early conversion and assimilation efforts would have provided more clarity. Stephens is most successful in doing this in chapter 4, "In Defense of Lands." Stephens's examination of violent reactions to political and ideological threats, including the growing hacienda system and racism, illustrates Huichol resistance. Reminiscent of the other chapters, this chapter would have benefited from a more thorough contextualization of both the broader history of these political and ideological threats (National Land Law and Francisco Pimental and the "Indian problem") and specifics within the region (a more thorough investigation into the actual legal actions taken by the Huichols). Both despite and aligned with some if its shortcomings, this book contributes to the historiography of Mexican indigenous groups. Most obviously, this work sheds light on the Huichol people, as referenced by the author, "a small, heretofore obscure native group" (p. xxii). Stephens's work succeeds in showing the role that the Huichols' geographic location played in the
[Marxism] The El Paso Screed, and the Racist Doctrine Behind It
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Aug. 7, 2019 The El Paso Screed, and the Racist Doctrine Behind It By John Eligon From Pittsburgh to Christchurch, and now El Paso, white men accused of carrying out deadly mass shootings have cited the same paranoid fear: the extinction of the white race. The threat of the “great replacement,” or the idea that white people will be replaced by people of color, was cited directly in the four-page screed written by the man arrested in the killing of 22 people in El Paso over the weekend. The phrase was coined in 2012 by the French author Renaud Camus, whose writing on white genocide echoes at least a century of white supremacist views. But some experts now fear the doctrine of replacement is being embraced more readily by lone wolf white terrorists and even some politicians, producing a particularly dangerous climate. “These series of shootings all have an element of fear and anxiety created by this concept of being replaced,” said Oren Segal, the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “When you think your race is going to go extinct, you will do anything to protect that.” Mr. Camus has sought to distance himself from white supremacists, writing in an email to The New York Times that nonviolence was central to his philosophy. Yet he did not shy away from saying he believed that people of white European descent were at risk of being wiped out by immigrants and people of color. If white supremacists held those views, “Good for them,” he wrote. “That is indeed my belief.” The shooting in the immigrant-rich town of El Paso on Saturday was among the deadliest attacks in the United States motivated by white extremism since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, according to the A.D.L. About 56 percent of the extremist murders committed in the United States over the past decade were carried out by people espousing white supremacist ideology such as the great replacement, A.D.L. research shows. Mr. Camus disputed his role in inspiring the accused El Paso gunman, whose screed, posted online minutes before the massacre, said the attack was the result of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” Mr. Camus also denied influencing the man accused of killing 51 people in the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, who wrote a document using the same title as Mr. Camus’s book, “The Great Replacement,” before the vicious attack was carried out. Mr. Camus questioned whether either gunman could have read his book because it has not been translated into English, he said. The themes however have been repeated on far-right websites and by right-wing pundits. Analysts say Mr. Camus’s writing — and the idea of a great replacement — has undoubtedly influenced the conversation among American white nationalists. The ideas espoused in the great replacement build on the most popular white supremacist talking point — the false notion that white people are at risk of genocide, said Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. That is a shift in the narrative from 20 years ago, she said, when white supremacists mostly talked about their superiority as a race. Now, their discussions center on a belief that they are the victims of nonwhite invasions, Ms. Beirich said. “If you’re getting invaded, what do you need to do?” she asked, explaining the logic of white supremacists. “You need to repel the invaders.” People who have that mind-set — fueled by the belief that violently defending the white race is not only heroic but rational — can be particularly lethal in this moment, experts said. Ms. Beirich added that Mr. Camus’s writings lend an “academic veneer and sophisticatedness” to these racist views. “White nationalism isn’t new, but what we need to recognize is that from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh to Poway to El Paso, these aren’t outliers on a scatter plot,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. “These are data points on a trend line. And that’s a trend line that indicates clearly and unambiguously that white supremacy is a global threat.” Replacement theory also perpetuates the false and anti-Semitic view that the end of the white race is part of a Jewish conspiracy. During a march in Charlottesville two summers ago, white supremacists yelled, “Jews will not replace us,” while carrying tiki torches. The following day, one of them killed a woman when he rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters. In April, a gunman entered a synagogue in Poway, Calif., and began shooting. Authorities believe the
Re: [Marxism] The fascist manifesto | Richard Seymour on Patreon
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I disagree with Michael's reading of McVeigh. There was very little indication that he was motivated by the same factors as the El Paso shooter or other neo-Nazi terrorists (i.e. belief in a conspiratorial genocide against white people). The only indications that I could find were the fact that he had the Turner Diaries in his possession; that is unsurprising, given the plot of the book is about citizens carrying out an armed insurgency against the government, albeit they are all racists. I recall reading (though I can't find it for the life of me) how McVeigh thought of the book as a useful guide for carrying out terrorist plots against the government but rejected its race-related messaging. Likewise, he apparently bought a "White Power" shirt from the KKK during a protest and counter-protest when he was in the military, but from what I could find it is little more than shirt that says "Sic Semper Tyrannis" which a photo of Lincoln (as I'm sure you all know, those were the words that Booth stated before assassinating Lincoln). Given the lack of involvement with active Nazi militias at any point in his life and complete lack of any "race war"-related commentary in any statements he made prior to or after the bombing, I find it a stretch to throw him in with these other guys, though he clearly had some sort of flirtations with other people who had those views. The letters he wrote prior to his execution and other statements he made during his life would indicate that while he was very much a right-winger, the primary factors behind his violence were being desensitized to mass killings during his military service in Iraq and watching the heavily militarized response of the U.S. government to various groups in the United States, including Randy Weaver and the Branch Davidians. Those responses involved killing many people and, at least in the Weaver case, involved an ultimately successful entrapment defense (i.e. Weaver was acquitted). Weaver and his family were actually white nationalists but the outrage about the attack on that family was hardly limited to people who share their ideological views; indeed, it was an absolutely ridiculous use of force against a guy they had tried to get on a manufactured gun charge knowing that he had small children and a wife (who was killed) in the home. There is no evidence that the Branch Davidians practiced white supremacy at all (they were just a batshit crazy religious cult led by a maniacal abuser). IOW McVeigh realized that the U.S. government did not mind when he killed people under their orders and decided that the same ethical rules should apply when fighting the U.S. government, which was a fight that he justified by pointing to the police killings mentioned above. Beyond that there is nothing to suggest that he wanted to kill people because of their race, drive non-whites out of the country, etc. Given the quickness of people on the Left to jump at a neo-Nazi/racist angle whenever there is some kind of large attack (including Dayton, which, as I pointed out, was carried out by someone who identified as a Leftist) we should be careful not to sweep with a broad brush. The bigger issue that McVeigh brings out is not white supremacy; it is the dehumanizing and desensitizing effect of U.S. wars and the resultant effects when those aspects of war (including militarization of police) are launched domestically. Amith R. Gupta On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 1:00 PM Michael Meeropol via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > > I had the disgusting responsibility of reading THE TURNER DIARIES back in > the 1980s --- I was totally shocked by it but not surprised that Timothy > MacVeigh was a devoted reader and "lesson learner" from that horrible > genocidal fantasy book --- > > The fascist extremist need go no further than reading the TURNER DIARIES > and then setting out to "make it happen" -- that was what MacVeigh was > doing -- it was "propaganda by the deed" and all the right-wing extremists > from Ruby Ridge to El Paso are drinking the same kool aid --- > > Just as international law enforcement has figured out ways to disrupt (and > in some cases take down) Al Qaeda and other international terrorist > organizations --- they need to put their minds towards doing the same with > the "children of Timothy MacVeigh" --- > >
[Marxism] A Gathering of Comrades | Current Affairs
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * (I'd say it is more like Willy Wonka and Chef Boyardee.) "On the train to the convention, I run into Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin. He does not look nearly as pleased to see me as I am to see him. Bhaskar and I maintain comradely relations, and he has been tremendously helpful to Current Affairs, but there is no denying that we have very different dispositions. He is serious, professional, even somewhat quiet. I am frivolous, have trouble controlling my volume, and tend to bump into things. It is clear he means Business, while I barely know the meaning of Business. Throughout the weekend, Bhaskar will find himself inadvertently plunged into situations in which he has to make conversation with me against his will. Imagine Karl Marx and Willy Wonka trapped on a riverboat together trying to find topics of common interest, and you will get a rough sense of our strained chat." https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/08/a-gathering-of-comrades _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] (3) Charles Lister on Twitter: "Amid the ongoing conflict in NW #Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (#HTS) continues to evolve in intriguing ways - into a more politically mature
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[Marxism] Interesting comment on the El Paso killer's manifesto
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Louis, are you familiar with J. Sakai, the idiosyncratic Maoist best known for writing Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat? I’ve found his work on fascism to be incredibly prescient in light of the wave of white supremacist insurgency that we are now seeing—in the wake of Timothy McVeigh, Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc., he pioneered many of the same discussions that we are now having. He, more than any other leftist, understands that there is a genuine contradiction between the interests of the imperialism of transnational capitalism and that of white settler society. (It’s not unusual for the interests of empire and its settlers to conflict—South Africa and Rhodesia seceded from the British Empire to preserve white dominance, after all.) The reason why Patrick Crusius’ manifesto, as well as Brenton Tarrant’s, sounds like it could have been written by a leftist in parts is because the far Right violently hates the same transnational capitalist regime (i.e., “globalists” in their idiom) that the Left hates, and it is on this basis that red-brown alliances are being made. (Notice how Crusius and Tarrant are not specifically concerned with Jews, the usual scapegoat the far Right invokes to spare their friends in the national bourgeoisie. No, their hatred is for the bourgeoisie in its entirety.) Indeed, if anything, the far Right represents an even larger threat to the neoliberal order than the Left does—McVeigh singlehandedly struck a far greater blow against USG than all the left-wing insurgent groups combined. Imagine what a thousand McVeighs could accomplish (and you’d better believe that there are at least a thousand McVeighs in waiting). To quote Sakai: Obviously, rightist political views that touch on fascism are held by many white Americans. They’re conditionally loyal to the government (and in the government) only because their level of prosperity and privilege is so high that why should they lift their faces from the trough? But if the u.s. capitalist class left it to a “democratic” vote of its white citizens, known fascists like David Duke would be in the u.s. senate, there would be no W.T.O. but also no Civil Rights Act, and much of America would proudly fly the Confederate flag of the slavemasters. The imperialist State’s largest domestic security priority is not terrorism, the ghetto or the border as they pretend, but restraining and defusing white settler rebellion to the right. Those flocking to the far Right know that their way of life is giving way to rapid desettlerization, that they are economically superfluous in an age when the global reserve army of labor could do their jobs for far cheaper, and that neoliberal governments and corporations alike are policing national majorities to suppress their ability to mobilize in resistance to their ongoing demographic minoritization. Sakai again: That the u.s. was always an empire from day one. Always invading, colonizing, always occupying other peoples and nations. But we have to be careful that even with this valuable insight we don’t get misled by the past, that an old truth doesn’t accidentally obscure our vision of the new situation. The old white euro-settler society that was America is being ruthlessly torn down & remade, still stubbornly rooted in its stolen lands but no longer dominant on a world scale or even necessarily in North America. Like every other capitalist power, America is contributing its DNA to a world capitalism of a new type. Just as so many white farmers in the Northern Plains states know how to raise commercial crops, run complex farm machinery, juggle agricultural chemicals, negotiate government and bank loans in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for their own lands and business. But they really aren’t needed anymore as a small business class (and the State is tired of subsidizing them). Globalized transnational capitalism can get cattle and wheat much cheaper in other countries. Most of those rural white men forced off the land and out of small towns, losing their independence as producers, make the jump to cities and ordinary jobs. Others can’t adjust to losing their middle class feelings of independence (government subsidized, of course). However they manage to survive, in their hearts they are drifting to the far right as enemies of the State and the banks and corporations that destroyed them. Like at Ruby Ridge. Like the tax refusers. Like the very successful violent movement to reclaim federal lands for free local settler exploitation. And, as Arghiri Emmanuel has noted, imperialism is gradually abandoning its own kith
[Marxism] [UCE] The democratic socialist revolution comes to a crossroads - CNNPolitics
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/05/politics/democratic-socialists-of-america-convention-2019/index.html _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Fwd: H-Net Review [H-CivWar]: Rein on Mellott and Snell, 'The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War's Most Divided State'
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Best regards, Andrew Stewart - - - Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/ Begin forwarded message: > From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW > Date: August 7, 2019 at 12:31:16 PM EDT > To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org > Cc: H-Net Staff > Subject: H-Net Review [H-CivWar]: Rein on Mellott and Snell, 'The Seventh > West Virginia Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War's Most > Divided State' > Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org > > David W. Mellott, Mark A. Snell. The Seventh West Virginia Infantry: > An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War's Most Divided State. > Lawrence University Press of Kansas, 2019. pages cm. $34.95 > (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7006-2753-0. > > Reviewed by Christopher Rein (Air University Press, Maxwell AFB, AL) > Published on H-CivWar (August, 2019) > Commissioned by G. David Schieffler > > Rein Review of Mellott and Snell, _The Seventh West Virginia > Infantry: An Embattled Union Regiment from the Civil War's Most > Divided State_ > > David Mellott and Mark Snell's comprehensively researched work on the > Seventh West Virginia Infantry Regiment highlights the Civil War > service of soldiers from an understudied region of the war who fought > in the most significant campaigns in the eastern theater. Despite > hailing from a remote region of a new state, the soldiers of the > "Bloody Seventh" turned into something of a Forrest Gump of the Army > of the Potomac, assaulting Bloody Lane at Antietam, holding a portion > of Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg, and attacking the Mule Shoe at > Spotsylvania. Their participation in each of these engagements wore > the full regiment down to "a battalion of four companies" (p. 150), > but levies from West Virginia coupled with a veterans' furlough > sustained the unit through Appomattox, highlighting the Confederacy's > inability to do the same. While, on most levels, a standard unit > history of a somewhat atypical regiment (the regiment was the only > one from the state to be listed as one of William Fox's "Fighting > 300," with 14 percent of the soldiers losing their lives in the > conflict), _The Seventh West Virginia Infantry_ also sheds important > light on dissent within the Confederacy and the shifting demographics > in the new state of West Virginia. > > The book is organized chronologically, beginning with West Virginia's > opposition to secession and the Confederacy, and early efforts to > organize a new state from the western counties of old Virginia. It > moves rapidly into the early campaigns for control of the state, > setting the stage for the Seventh's recruitment and muster into > service. Union officials initially intended the regiment to protect > the vulnerable line of the vital Baltimore and Ohio Railroad as it > wound its way up the Potomac River toward the Ohio Valley, but events > pulled the unit into the contest for Virginia proper, first in the > Shenandoah Valley but eventually on the peninsula below Richmond. > After suffering significant casualties at Antietam, from which "the > Seventh would never fully recover" (p. 85), the regiment fought at > Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and throughout the 1864 Overland > Campaign, culminating with the Army of Northern Virginia's surrender > at Appomattox. A brief epilogue covers extant information from > veterans' postwar lives and efforts to commemorate the regiment's > significant service while suggesting that West Virginia was yet > another venue where, having won the war, the Union lost the peace, as > former Confederates migrated west into the Union state. > > Alongside the standard official sources, both authors use their > various talents to uncover personal stories from diaries, newspapers, > and letters to paint a detailed portrait of a number of members of > the regiment. Mellott, a descendant of several soldiers of the > regiment, applies his legal training to unearth long-forgotten > sources, while Snell leverages his considerable knowledge of the > state and the conflict to provide greater depth and context (and, > presumably, to smooth out the legal jargon, though one wishes the > editors had mirrored the soldiers' resolve in fighting against the > passive voice!). The partnership generally works effectively, > balancing detailed evidence with broader significance in telling the > regiment's story. But regimental history, to remain a useful format > for understanding the war, must tell us something larger about the > war itself, and the country as it endured the trial. The book begins > promisingly, detailing the
[Marxism] Louis Proyect Shreds Bhaskar Sunkara’s “Manifesto” | Washington Babylon
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Re: [Marxism] NYT on DSA convention
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I read the article --- What I think is often missed when people talk about "how close" the 2016 election was is that had CLINTON won, the left would NOT be as energized. Instead, the extreme right wing would be energized --- the HOUSE would have REMAINED Republican --- and there would have been a very good chance that the Clinton Administration would have been a one-term Presidency with someone like PENCE perhaps winning in 2020 --- Now --- the situation would have been better in terms of regulations and Court appointments but in foreign policy the US might have been MORE INVOLVED In making war all around the world --- and the left would have been much more marginalized --- as a bunch of "complainers" within the Democratic Party coalition instead of a "NECESSARY EVIL" to the DNC establishment as they are today --- they KNOW they need the Democratic left -- which is why the Dems have been pushed to at least give LIP SERVICE to progressive proposals --- Doesn't mean they aren't doing their dirty work to keep Bernie from the nomination We have the world that is as it is -- we have Trump -- But I am not sure how (in the long run) things would have been "better" had Clinton won -- Probably on balance it would have been (no separation of kids at the border -- less mass killings by fascists ) --- but who can tell for sure (no one!!) _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The fascist manifesto | Richard Seymour on Patreon
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I had the disgusting responsibility of reading THE TURNER DIARIES back in the 1980s --- I was totally shocked by it but not surprised that Timothy MacVeigh was a devoted reader and "lesson learner" from that horrible genocidal fantasy book --- The fascist extremist need go no further than reading the TURNER DIARIES and then setting out to "make it happen" -- that was what MacVeigh was doing -- it was "propaganda by the deed" and all the right-wing extremists from Ruby Ridge to El Paso are drinking the same kool aid --- Just as international law enforcement has figured out ways to disrupt (and in some cases take down) Al Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations --- they need to put their minds towards doing the same with the "children of Timothy MacVeigh" --- Unfortunately, given the desire of the capitalist ruling class --- this will be utilized by the establishment to further curtail civil liberties -- I am not sure there is a "sweet spot" for retaining liberties while fighting the extreme right wing murderers --- We either "accept" these mass killings like we "accept" the carnage on the highways or we give up even more freedom -- I am really at a loss The most important thing we can do however is to make sure that the average citizen knows that the DANGER is from these right-wing fascists, not immigrants seeking asylum or a better life for themselves and their families ... AT LEAST that part is a no-brainer ... _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] The Horror of Knowing: Catastrophe and Meaning in HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’
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[Marxism] Progress and its Discontents | New Internationalist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The world has never been better. From global poverty to inequality between nations, all the indicators are showing progress. This is a comforting narrative – popularized by the likes of Bill Gates and Steven Pinker. But is it true? Jason Hickel examines the rise of this so-called ‘New Optimism’ and finds a ‘battle cry for the status quo’. https://newint.org/features/2019/07/01/long-read-progress-and-its-discontents _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] NYT on DSA convention
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * NY Times, Aug. 7, 2019 Is ‘Bernie or Bust’ the Future of the Left? By Marc Tracy ATLANTA — Three years ago, the Democratic Socialists of America had 5,000 members. Just another booth at the campus activities fair, another three-initialed group an uncle might mention over lunch. Today, dues-paying D.S.A. members exceed 56,000. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a rising star of American politics, is one. So are a couple of dozen local elected officials across the country. Senator Bernie Sanders, a current presidential candidate, is not, but he may as well be: He identifies as a democratic socialist and enjoys a totemic status with the group’s members. Mr. Sanders’s popularity during his unsuccessful 2016 run for the Democratic presidential nomination helped swell D.S.A.’s ranks. But a very different figure is primarily responsible for the group’s staggering growth: President Trump, who recently associated “radical socialism” with the “destruction of the American dream.” In fact, the majority of current D.S.A. members signed up in the last two years. “Trump scared a lot of people,” said Maria Svart, the national director, in an interview. “So they joined.” Most of the roughly 1,000 D.S.A. delegates who gathered at the biennial convention last weekend to set organization policy doubtlessly share Ms. Svart’s resoundingly negative view of the president. And nearly as many would agree with her that Mr. Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, is the one to beat him. The group endorsed Mr. Sanders in March. But if Mr. Sanders is not the nominee? The group passed a resolution Friday afternoon saying that it will not officially endorse anyone else, regardless of what that might mean in a general election against Mr. Trump. For D.S.A., it is “Bernie or Bust.” The lopsided passage of the resolution, known by that pithy nickname, prompted happy whistles in the ballroom of the Westin Peachtree Plaza, one of Atlanta’s few union hotels. The silent, raised-arm, wiggling-hands of American Sign Language applause, which over the convention’s three days crested throughout the room like ocean waves, was unusually ecstatic. The vote could not help but flabbergast a certain kind of mainstream liberal, anxious that left-wing purity might detract from unseating President Trump next year. Mr. Sanders himself has said there are “no ifs, buts, or maybes” about the stakes in 2020, pledging in a recent interview, “If I lose this thing, I will be there doing everything I can to defeat Trump.” Charles Lenchner, a D.S.A. delegate who supports Mr. Sanders but opposed the Bernie-or-Bust resolution, concurred. “Defeating Trump is the most important priority for a progressive or leftist,” he said. The vote does not mean D.S.A. members cannot vote for a non-Sanders nominee in November 2020, of course, nor even that D.S.A. cannot mobilize swing-state votes for such a nominee, as it did in 2016 when it did not endorse Hillary Clinton. Yet the vote was a quintessential reflection of this charged moment for left-wing activists as well as the singular role Mr. Sanders plays in the minds of many members. “Bernie” — over the weekend, he was always referred to by just his first name — “is a uniquely unifying figure in D.S.A.,” said Thea Riofrancos, of the Providence chapter. Several D.S.A. members made the persuasive case that Mr. Sanders’s 2016 campaign fundamentally shifted the Democratic Party leftward, particularly on the signature issue of single-payer “Medicare for all.” And Winnie Wong, a Sanders campaign adviser who said she was attending the convention as a rank-and-file member and observer, not a delegate, in turn credited the D.S.A. for helping popularize Medicare for all, a policy it endorsed at its 2017 convention. “I am extremely happy that the activist base of the D.S.A. is energized around making sure we move the goal posts,” she said. Blame ‘zombie neoliberalism’ While no large signs or ubiquitous stickers actually stated that Bernie Would Have Won — the line is, perhaps, so very 2017 — there was no mistaking the undercurrent of continued bitterness around the 2016 race. It is a crucial part of D.S.A. ideology to treat the last general election less as President Trump’s victory and more as Mrs. Clinton’s loss. “The zombie neoliberalism of the Wall Street Democrats created this crisis with their free trade, their austerity budget cuts,” Ms. Svart said in her opening speech, “and they are complicit in Trump’s shock doctrine against our communities.” Councilman Khalid Kamau, of nearby South Fulton, Ga., recalled
[Marxism] Another professor under fire for using N-word in class while discussing James Baldwin
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[Marxism] As White Supremacists Try to Remake History, Scholars Seek to Preserve the Record
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Chronicle of Higher Education, AUGUST 05, 2019 PREMIUM As White Supremacists Try to Remake History, Scholars Seek to Preserve the Record By Emma Pettit In the wake of yet another mass shooting, committed by yet another radicalized young white man, scholars are repeating a call to action that has been issued during the Trump presidency: White supremacists are distorting history. It’s the job of experts, who know better, to push back. One of the most widely circulated historical claims, for example, was cited by the gunman in El Paso, Tex., before he opened fire on Saturday. In the first paragraph of a racist screed, which has been linked by law enforcement to the shooter, he references The Great Replacement, a book by the French writer Renaud Camus. Camus argues that white people in France, and in Europe in general, are being replaced by Muslim immigrants, in what he calls “genocide by substitution.” Without this book’s influence, the gunman wrote, he would not have targeted “the Hispanic community.” Such ideas have found eager support among white supremacists. In 2017, protesters at the Unite the Right Rally, in Charlottesville, Va., reportedly chanted, “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!” A shooter who, in March, killed at least 50 people attending two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, titled his manifesto “The Great Replacement” and was motivated by the conspiracy theory of white genocide. “As long as a white man still lives, they will NEVER conquer our lands and they will never replace our people,” the shooter allegedly wrote. (Camus, on his website, sought to distance himself from the two shooters. His book could not have provoked such acts, he wrote, because they run counter to what his book recommends and conform to that which it condemns.) Camus’s book is racist theory couched as academic analysis, says Sarah E. Bond, an associate professor of history at the University of Iowa. Though the alt-right says it despises so-called left-leaning academe, its followers gravitate toward the few academics who prop up their racist and xenophobic views, Bond notes. White nationalists’ hypotheses are bunk, she says, so they go searching for the faux legitimacy of scholarship to prop it up. ‘It’s Going to Take All of Us’ The ideology underpinning white power has a broader goal, Kathleen Belew, an assistant professor of U.S. history at the University of Chicago, wrote in The New York Times. It links events — killings at a synagogue, harassment of immigrants, racist attacks — that otherwise are often perceived as discrete. It is not enough to dismiss mass shootings as “horror beyond our comprehension,” says Belew. Rather, it is necessary to understand their meaning and “confront the movement that relies upon them.” Confronting harmful ideas head-on is “the only thing we really can do” as academics, Bond says. The job of scholars is not just to disseminate new ideas, she says, but also to dismantle dangerous ones. That’s what happened after World War II, when academics like Hannah Arendt worked to dispute and undercut Nazi ideology. A more recent example, Bond says, is that of scientists who discredit climate-change deniers. But there’s no such unified front in the humanities, she says. When white-supremacist theories gain traction, responses can be fractured. Scholarly organizations may issue a statement, but mostly, she says, it’s individual academics speaking out. Or not. “These are all individuals trying to dismantle this gigantic death star,” Bond says. But there’s no vulnerable soft spot that one person alone can reach. To be effective, she says, “it’s going to take all of us.” Scholars have a responsibility to make sure that students understand the past. The challenge of the current moment is that the past is being mobilized in “particularly political ways and particularly violent ways by these explicitly college-aged white men,” says Matthew Gabriele, a professor of medieval studies at Virginia Tech. RELATED CONTENT Inside an ‘Unprecedented’ Increase in Campus White-Supremacist Recruiting White-Supremacist Propaganda on Campuses Rose 77% Last Year For example, white nationalists have flocked to medieval studies to adopt the discipline’s iconography and to stake out a mistaken vision of medieval Europe as an all-white space. At the same time, Gabriele is clear about how much impact he and his fellow scholars can have. Aspiring mass shooters aren’t exactly filling up college classrooms, he says. And he acknowledges that taking one course is unlikely to convert someone from a hateful
Re: [Marxism] Eddie Glaude on racism in US
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Eddie Glaube is one of the only reasons to check who's going to be on MSNBC. On Wed, Aug 7, 2019, 1:56 AM Ken Hiebert via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > > Also scroll down to James Baldwin and Jane Elliott. > ken h > > https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1158569576168402945 < > https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1158569576168402945> > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/markalause%40gmail.com > _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Book Review: Marxism and the Philosophy of Science | Socialist Alternative
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[Marxism] America’s dependence on pesticides, especially neonics, is a war on nature | Opinion | The Guardian
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[Marxism] The Twittering Machine talk | Richard Seymour on Patreon
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[Marxism] Unless It Changes, Capitalism Will Starve Humanity By 2050
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[Marxism] Neither Intersectionality nor Economism: For a Genuine Class Politics - COSMONAUT
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[Marxism] [UCE] The Handbook of Karl Marx: profitability, crises and financialisation | Michael Roberts Blog
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, edited by Matt Vidal, Tomas Rotta, Tony Smith and Paul Prew, brings together a series of chapters by prominent Marxist scholars covering all aspects Marxist theory, from historical materialism, dialectics, political economy, social reproduction and post-capitalist models. The editors have done an excellent job in arranging the various contributions into sections on the foundations of Marxism, labour and class, the nature of capitalist crises, and post-capitalist alternatives. And in an introduction, the editors offer a succinct and informative account of Marx’s life and intellectual development, as well as summaries of the chapter contributions. https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/the-handbook-of-karl-marx-profitability-crises-and-financialisation/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
