Democracy, whether ancient or modern, lives always in terror of tyrants who are always imminent or thought by it to be imminent. (More…)
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Predictably, a lot of the talk these days on the American left has to do with dissecting how we came to be in such a horrible situation. With all three branches of government now firmly in the hands of the Republicans, there is a not unreasonable desire among their opponents to know how this happened and what can be done about it. (More…)
Kim Stanley Robinson is the most insightful speculative futurist writer active today. In novels like 2312, the Science in the Capital series, and The Mars Trilogy, Robinson has built his trade on looking forward at how the events and conditions of the present might play out over the course of years, decades, and centuries. (More…)
![Palestine, early twentieth century. [Library of Congress]](http://sc.joelschalit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/horse-copy.jpg)
My father had foreseen that Europe must ultimately fight its way to freedom through a great war; that the two irreconcilable forces (fairly represented by what France, England, Italy, and the United States stood for, on the one hand, and what Prussia and its satellites stood for on the other) made no other alternative possible. (More…)
The Germans had prepared in advance for “gas” cases, and the chances are that they pulled through a good many of us who might have died had we been taken back to our own hospitals, where they had, at that time, small facilities for handling that kind of trouble. (More…)
Since the United States is the most important country in the Americas, it is subject to special concentration by secret Nazi agents. One of the earliest of the secret agents sent to this country was an American, Colonel Edwin Emerson, soldier of fortune, mediocre author and fairly competent war correspondent. (More…)
Many years ago, at JFK airport, after returning from abroad, I was stopped by a Customs and Border Patrol agent, who inquired about the purpose of my trip, and then followed up by asking what my profession is. When I told him I was a reporter, he accused me of purposely putting out negative misinformation about law enforcement. (More…)
The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature – organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labor – originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. (More…)
Cultural theorist Mark Fisher died last week. He was just 48 years old. Ideologically committed to the ethos of Punk Rock, Mark Fisher was an influential music critic and blogger at K-Punk. Unlike liberal critics, Fisher did not engage with pop culture without recourse to critical theory and politics. And by politics, I mean radical politics. (More…)
If I had a dime for every time some knowledgeable pundit has declared Marxism to be dead, well, I could spend a lot less time writing about capital and a lot more time enjoying it. The frequency of assertions of the irrelevance of Marx’s work varies directly with periods of calm in the global economy such as the so-called Great Moderation of the quarter century before 2007. (More…)
The machine, the synonym for production at large, has refined and subtilized—even spiritualized itself to a degree almost inconceivable, nor is there any doubt but that the future has far greater surprises in store. (More…)