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
Goff’s positions are refreshing given what is often presented as radical. I agree with him that the war in Iraq is “…symptomatic of a much deeper global crisis”. I agree that the difficulties facing capital …
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. …
Goff’s positions are refreshing given what is often presented as radical. I agree with him that the war in Iraq is “…symptomatic of a much deeper global crisis”. I agree that the difficulties facing capital
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.
