Color drawing of smiling dog leaning on the letters "DOGE," with American flags, and with words "Department of Government Efficiency" arching above.

The DOGE and the neoreactionaries

Matthew N Lyons

While MAGA movement ideology centers on right-wing populism, DOGE’s attack on the administrative state is guided by neoreactionaries, whose ideology glorifies elites and rejects populist appeals in principle. And while the first Trump administration was backed by an unstable coalition of competing capitalist interests, now high technology capitalists closely aligned with neoreactionary politics are at the head of the pro-Trump business bloc. These changes have helped make the second Trump presidency more dangerous than the first, but they also point to potential divisions and conflicts within the Trump coalition.

Antifascist, business and politics, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, neoreaction, tech capitalists


No longer merely metaphor: Re-reading The Plague by Albert Camus

Three Way Fight

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Albert Camus, 1957 Albert Camus’ novel The Plague offers a portrait of a town under quarantine, ravaged by an epidemic. It tells us of life arbitrarily constrained and unjustly shortened, of human beings isolated by …

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Interview with Hilary Moore, co-author of No Fascist USA!

Three Way Fight

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I recently interviewed writer and anti-racist political educator Hilary Moore about the new book No Fascist USA! The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today’s Movements, which she co-authored with James Tracy. The book …

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Far rightists divided on coronavirus and Trump

Three Way Fight

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Julia DeCook has a good article outlining how right-wing media activists have been exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to spread xenophobia, conspiracy theories, and other forms of misinformation: The conspiracy theories about the virus range from …

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Comment on Foucault and the Iranian Revolution

Three Way Fight

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The Philosopher and the Ayatollah: “A Perplexing Affinity”  A comment on Foucault and the Iranian Revolution  by Kristian Williams If we want to defeat fascism, we need to understand its attraction. Sometimes an exceptional case …

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Trump, Iran, and the right-wing anti-interventionists

Three Way Fight

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[This commentary grew out of discussions among Three Way Fight supporters.] When Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, many people feared it would lead to full-scale war between the U.S. and …

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An antifascist guide to Patriot movement websites

Three Way Fight

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By Sebastian Porreca   As a window into the Patriot movement’s inner workings, here are brief profiles of many lesser-known Patriot websites and organizations. Editor’s note: The Patriot movement first exploded in the mid 1990s, …

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Notes on Trump/MAGA 2024

Matthew N Lyons

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Even more than in the past, Trump and the MAGA movement have brought key elements of fascist politics into the Republican Party, and a second Trump presidency is likely to be significantly more authoritarian than the first one.

Antifascist, Donald Trump, MAGA movement, US presidential elections

Who’s Afraid of Luigi Mangione? A Response to Alexander Reid Ross

3WF

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Luigi Mangione’s recent alleged killing of an insurance CEO touched a wedge issue that cuts across class and across the political spectrum—the massive corruption of the health insurance industry—and created an opening for the left. A recent article by ex-leftist Alexander Reid Ross, which dismisses Mangione as expressing an American proclivity for violence, represents a counterinsurgency action in defense of the state.

Alexander Reid Ross, Anti-capitalism, counter insurgency, health care, health insurance industry, liberal antifascism, Luigi Mangione

Reading Adam Shatz on the war in Gaza

Three Way Fight

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by Matthew N. Lyons How do we forcefully make the case to defend the Palestinian people in Gaza against Israel’s increasingly genocidal assault, and also honor the conflict’s heartbreaking contradictions? This is a question I’ve …

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Burn the foundation and all that it upholds: an antifascist review of “Tell Me I’m Worthless” by Alison Rumfitt

Three Way Fight

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“The House spreads. Its arteries run throughout the country. Its lifeblood flows into Westminster, into Scotland Yard, into every village and every city. It flows into you, and into your mother. It keeps you alive. …

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Trump’s Gospel: A Review of Jeff Sharlet’s The Undertow

Three Way Fight

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So much has been already said about Donald J. Trump, Trumpism, and the amorphous mass known as his “base” that it hardly seems worth revisiting the topic almost eight years after his fateful descent down Trump Tower’s golden excavator. Just as the 2016 election seemed to confirm everything that virtually everyone had already been saying about US politics for years, so too does Donald Trump today seem self-explanatory.

Book Review, Dave Ranney


Books

Scroll to see more and click on a book for more information about it and where to buy it.

How the alt-right is reshaping patriarchal politics

I have a new opinion piece in The Guardian under the title “The alt-right hates women as much as it hates people of color.” The article’s main focus is the contrast between the alt-right’s version

Militant Tactics in Anti-Fascist Organizing–Interview Transcript

“I think some folks, many folks… try to divide the concept of a mass response with a militant response. That it’s only possible to do one or the other. I think we really want to

How the Alt Right builds on earlier far right upsurges: teleSUR article

I have an opinion piece on teleSUR about “How the Alt Right Builds on Earlier Far-Right Upsurges.”  A lot of my work over the past couple of years has been based on a distinction between

Against the Grain interview: The Origins and Politics of the Alt-Right

The Pacifica Radio program Against the Grain recently broadcast an interview with me about the Alt Right. Here’s their description: “Until the last year or two, most people had never heard of the alt-right. But the

Ctrl-Alt-Delete: new report on the alternative right

A new in-depth report on the alt-right, by me, is now available on the Political Research Associates website, under the title “Ctrl-Alt-Delete: The origins and ideology of the Alternative Right.” This same report will also

It’s Going Down podcast: Matthew Lyons on the Insurgent Far Right, Trump, and #DisruptJ20

I was interviewed about the far right and the Trump administration for a podcast on the It’s Going Down website. The podcast opens with a long rap piece and a general introduction by the host.

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The DOGE and the neoreactionaries

While MAGA movement ideology centers on right-wing populism, DOGE’s attack on the administrative state is guided by neoreactionaries, whose ideology glorifies elites and rejects populist appeals in principle. And while the first Trump administration was backed by an unstable coalition of competing capitalist interests, now high technology capitalists closely aligned with neoreactionary politics are at the head of the pro-Trump business bloc. These changes have helped make the second Trump presidency more dangerous than the first, but they also point to potential divisions and conflicts within the Trump coalition.

Chaos or Revolution? It Depends on Us

The institutional far right is strong, while the far left is weak and disorganized. To develop the capacity to meaningfully intervene in the current crisis, far leftists need to engage with oppressed communities and work together with liberals in a united front.

Review of Alberto Toscano’s “Late Fascism”

Alberto Toscano’s book offers a helpful overview of antifascist writings with an emphasis on authors loosely associated with Critical Theory. Of particular value is Toscano’s discussion of the role of myth in fascist ideology, which focuses on contributions by Italian scholar Furio Jesi and has relevance for understanding Donald Trump’s speeches and far right online meme culture. Yet Toscano’s discussion of “racial fascism” exaggerates capitalists’ ability to control events, strips both fascists and antifascists of political agency, and reflects an obliviousness to antifascists’ strategic and tactical concerns.

Review of “Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism”

Shane Burley and Ben Lorber offer a thoughtful radical analysis of how antisemitism works, how it fuels supremacist politics more broadly, and how the charge of antisemitism is misused to attack Palestine solidarity and the left. To combat antisemitism they argue for a strategy based on mass mobilization, dialog, and an intersectional critique of oppressions.

Who’s Afraid of Luigi Mangione? A Response to Alexander Reid Ross

Luigi Mangione’s recent alleged killing of an insurance CEO touched a wedge issue that cuts across class and across the political spectrum—the massive corruption of the health insurance industry—and created an opening for the left. A recent article by ex-leftist Alexander Reid Ross, which dismisses Mangione as expressing an American proclivity for violence, represents a counterinsurgency action in defense of the state.