The Jeffrey Epstein scandal highlights that assessing conspiracy theories’ political meaning and significance can be complicated. While some conspiracies are real, conspiracism exaggerates the role of small groups in making politics and history, plays fast and loose with the facts, and diverts attention away from the real systems and movements that predominantly shape our world. All conspiracism involves scapegoating, but the motivation behind such scapegoating varies widely, from demonizing subversives in defense of entrenched power, to a well-meaning but misguided effort to challenge such power. Anti-elite conspiracism (often but by no means always rooted in antisemitism) has been a major vehicle with which far rightists repackage their ideology in progressive-sounding ways, and with which they try to manipulate or form alliances with the left.
anti-Chinese racism, Antifascist, antisemitism, conspiracism, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, MAGA movement
Our project has been slow to get a consistent level of participation and contributions, but don’t fret and think we have given up. We are going to be posting some info and articles here within …
by Matthew (Sources at bottom.) Gender politics has always been important to the political right, but in the current period it’s more important than ever before. To get a full sense of this, we need …
[Brian Holmes is offering the seminar “Continental Drift” in September and October, 2005 in New York City in conjunction with the 16 Beaver art group. Autonomedia will publish a collection of Holmes’ essays, Unleashing the …
Notes on Women and Right-Wing Movements – Part Oneby Matthew A “three-way-fight” approach to fascism challenges simplistic frames of analysis. In particular, it challenges (1) a dualistic “Oppressor-versus-Oppressed” model of struggle, (2) caricatures of far-right …
I received the following article from an email list I’m on. Normally, I would not have posted the story in it’s entirety, but it seems that it is a fresh report and not actually published …
I have been seeing various anarchist and far-Left online articles rejoicing in the shootings at cops and the National Guard in New Orleans. Some have even said (to paraphrase), “We should be figuring out ways …
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.
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.
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.
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 …
“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. …
two new posts from our friends at Gathering Forces:March 4th Student Strike Wrap Up &March Fourth Seattle by Mamos excerpts,“So what approach should we have to social democratic union and student government leaders in the
Below are reposts from an older exchange between Stan Goff and Don Hamerquist. The original discussion was posted on a version of the Bring The Ruckus!(BtR) website that is no longer in use. For reasons
Comments to Thinking and Acting in Real Time and A Real World Thanks, Don and TWF for this, and for the link to Kali Akuno’s piece. I do know Kali and value his work and
I wrote a draft of this in early December that had some limited circulation. This version moves the focus away from criticisms of the left responses to the Obama Afghanistan policy towards the policy itself.
01/14/09- A natural disaster has descended upon Haiti whose scope we only are seeing the surface of at this time. The Haitian people will be struggling to rebuild their lives and their home possibly for
from blog Imagine 2050By Joel Olson I recently reviewed The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan by Rory McVeigh (University of Minnesota Press 2009) for the academic journal American Studies. The book is a little
The Jeffrey Epstein scandal highlights that assessing conspiracy theories’ political meaning and significance can be complicated. While some conspiracies are real, conspiracism exaggerates the role of small groups in making politics and history, plays fast and loose with the facts, and diverts attention away from the real systems and movements that predominantly shape our world. All conspiracism involves scapegoating, but the motivation behind such scapegoating varies widely, from demonizing subversives in defense of entrenched power, to a well-meaning but misguided effort to challenge such power. Anti-elite conspiracism (often but by no means always rooted in antisemitism) has been a major vehicle with which far rightists repackage their ideology in progressive-sounding ways, and with which they try to manipulate or form alliances with the left.
This interview first appeared on Shane Burley’s website Maiseh Review. We appreciate Shane’s efforts over the years to help bring three way fight politics to a broader audience.
As the Trump administration attacks oppressed communities and dismantles social and environmental programs with breathtaking speed, it’s important that we understand our enemy’s strengths, weaknesses, and contradictions. The Trump movement encompasses at least five major components and multiple fault lines. A major point of potential conflict within the administration is between established capital’s socially conservative wing (represented by Project 2025 contributors such as Russell Vought, Peter Navarro, and Tom Homan) and big tech capital (represented by figures such as Elon Musk and JD Vance), a conflict that big tech is likely to win.
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.
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.