Propaganda dominates coverage of the Israeli military occupation, and its supporters are used to having the mainstream media repeat their talking points. Our actions aim to turn propaganda on its head, by “subvertising” the reality of the situation. (More…)
The light was fading fast when I spotted the truck out of the corner of my eye. I’d seen some good sets of bumper stickers over the years, but knew that few of them could compare with this one for sheer quantity. Turning my car around, though, I realized that I was in the sort of neighborhood in which strangers taking photographs are asking for trouble. (More…)
Journalism is where you find it. One of the maxims upon which Souciant was founded, the idea was as much about expressing the aesthetic considerations influencing the magazine’s editorial policy, as much as it was an attempt to stake out how different our content is from other online publications. (More…)
A glance at the photo inspires a tortuous quest for meaning. The handsome man, presumably of Middle Eastern descent, strikes a pose that would please the most severe proponent of Socialist Realism. And he has his mobile phone out to document it. Or does he? That’s the beauty of having both a rear and front-facing camera. Mobiles are the mirror-shades of our era. (More…)
At a time when the word “fascism” is being thrown around with increasing carelessness, on both the Right and Left, the fight against it is plagued by confusion. Most people, regardless of their ideological position, adhere to the belief that being a fascist requires some form of totalitarian behavior. But the role of the state in that behavior is no longer taken for granted. (More…)
When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the first lines of The Communist Manifesto, they turned the conventional notion of haunting on its head, conjuring the “ghost”, not of something that had passed away, but of something that had not yet come to pass. Since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, though, this has changed decisively. The world is haunted instead by the communism that was — and wasn’t. (More…)
The history of leftist politics is a history of bad habits. Whenever a goal is within reach, they return to wreak havoc: a fondness for drink, a fondness for drugs or a fondness for disputing precisely those questions that aren’t immediately pertinent. But of all the habits that have undermined the Left, the most pernicious may be the conviction that a devotion to purity is the solution. (More…)
Compared to other German cities or metropoles like Paris and London, Berlin has benefited from its lack of meaningful antiquity. Little more than a village prior to Prussia’s ascendancy in the 1700s and still not very impressive in Germany’s early years as a unified nation, it was free to develop as a fully modern city. Not only cartographically and architecturally, but ideologically. (More…)
Anti-Semitism in Europe has been growing for some time, most prominently in France, which not coincidentally has the continent’s largest Jewish population by a wide margin. Emigration to Israel is rising. But Germany is a notable exception, having become a destination for Jews in recent years. While there are several reasons for this, it’s hard to argue with the conclusion that education has played a key role. (More…)
The Left has confronted the same problem since it acquired that name, over 225 years ago: how to strike a balance between pragmatism and idealism, pursuing what people need to live better now without forgetting what they might want in a world less needy. It’s remarkable how little progress has been made towards achieving this goal. (More…)
It’s hard to believe that the American armed forces were once thought of as glorified vocational schools for men and women who had either finished high school or were finished with high school. Yet from the end of the Vietnam War until 9/11, the vast majority of volunteers could look forward to years of educational tedium, rather than armed struggle. This remains the case in Germany. (More…)
The AK-47 assault rifle and the state of Israel are almost exactly the same age. Although this is purely a coincidence, it provides a useful opportunity to ponder their relationship. Throughout the Cold War, the AK-47 signified resistance to the hegemony of the free-market West, both during the final decades of traditional colonialism and the confusing post-colonial period that followed it. (More…)