THE TRUMP REGIME’S SHOWY BID FOR VENEZUELAN OIL IS NOT SIMPLY REHASHING THE MONROE DOCTRINE—IT IS AN OPENLY FASCIST ASSERTION OF FLAGRANT POWER ~ Daniel Adediran ~ Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has been sworn in as the country’s new leader, sounding a conciliatory tone towards the United States after it abducted her predecessor Nicolas Maduro and his wife under “Narco-terrorism” and weapons charges. US President Donald Trump has publicly said that the operation was intended to increase access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, stating that his regime will “run” the country. This new phase of American global power games is not simply a warmed-up corpse of the Monroe Doctrine which rejected European involvement in Latin America and designated it as the United States’ backyard. Trump’s monstrous realpolitik of open disregard for the law is blatantly a fascist geopolitical doctrine, fully complementing the authoritarian creep at home. The US has been using violence to promote its interests as a ‘continental superpower’ for much of its history, whether it’s Panama, Chile, the Bay of Pigs, Haiti, or extra-judicial killings all over the Caribbean going back to the 19th Century. As was made plain in a statement by the Latin American Anarchist Coordination (CALA) and its sister organisations, even its meddling recently in Argentina’s sovereign affairs is part of this pattern. Neither is it surprising that the USA’s media class was in lock-step with the administration, seeing tried and true headlines and catchphrases from the last 30 years come back into vogue in political punditry. What is different today is that only the flimsiest vestiges, if any, of international or even domestic legality are being provided for the invasion. Trump’s cynical use of the language of the “War on Drugs” and “The War on Terror” was bound to ring hollow, after the failure of both adventures by the ‘World’s Policeman’. Only those entirely hypnotised by the powerful will cling on to such rhetoric after the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan. However, this flimsiness of legitimating rhetoric is actually what it’s all about: to a fascist regime, none of it matters any more. Trump is making a point of sidestepping even his own official legal parameters to uphold a twisted vision of flagrant, unlimited US power. This is an openly fascist policy—the brazen use of violence to further national interests, linked to a drummed-up external threat to unify the in-group and boost the regime’s woeful unpopularity at home. Nor is this the first time that America invasions to instigate regime change has been met with crickets by other Western states. The weak-willed calls from European nations to respect and uphold international law are thus predictable; they never recognised Maduro’s administration, and thus practically approve of the US operation. What remains astonishing is Prime Minister Keir Starmer ability to outdo even the most milquetoast responses of conservatives like Germany’s chancellor Merz or EU Commissioner von der Leyen—as he refused to even acknowledge that international law has been violated. As anarchists, we know that the rule of law—whether on the international or domestic level—is a complete farce meant to protect the powerful and their cronies. If anything, the genocide in Gaza has put its laughable hypocrisy on full display. With Israel facing hardly any official consequences for its murderous actions, the ground has been prepared for the American abduction of Maduro to appear ‘surgical’ in comparison.  The attacks on Caracas and the abduction of Maduro will do nothing to bring freedom to the Venezuelan people. But nor will they crush the people’s own resolve to achieve it. Venezuelans are more resilient now than they were in 2014, despite the switch of those in power from the wallet to the gun. Outstanding grassroots initiatives like CECOSESOLA have withstood over four decades of shocks, from government crackdowns and environmental strain to crippling economic sanctions, hyperinflation, countrywide mass exodus and food shortages. It has inspired literally thousands of other co-operative projects in Venezuela, which even with the blockade have been meeting the needs of over 100,000 families in seven different Venezuelan states. Whatever happens to the regime and its oil, horizontal self-organisation in the country will continue to be the people’s only hope for liberation. It will never roll over for a fascist. The post Surgical coup in the fascist backyard appeared first on Freedom News.

LIVING IN MINNEAPOLIS-SAINT PAUL, I LISTEN TO THE STORIES OF OTHER ABOLITIONISTS TO LEARN HOW THEY CAME TO THIS RADICAL APPROACH ~ Camille Tinnin ~ We are living in a time of increased authoritarianism around the globe, propped up by police and other forms of law enforcement. In the United States we see the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the National Guard, with police cooperation on various levels. Masked agents, refusing to provide names or identification, appear in workplaces, homes, roads, and businesses, snatching up neighbours. Fear abounds, as does resistance. As we fight this new onslaught and rollback of personal civil liberties, it is important to not only focus on what we are fighting against, but what we are fighting for. Police abolitionist organisers provide wisdom for this moment. Abolitionists are not only fighting against the police state, we are building alternative practices and institutions that push against assumptions about conflict, power, and interpersonal and community relationships. We are questioning our collective conception of power, considering accountability for harm over discipline and punishment, developing skills to better resolve conflicts in our neighbourhoods, families, organising spaces, and society. We are engaging in mutual aid and the creation of community spaces. We are building skills that generations of capitalist individualism have attempted to train out of us. Living in Minneapolis-Saint Paul (Twin Cities), Minnesota, I listen to the stories of other abolitionists to learn how they came to this radical approach, and about what people are doing to model and build the world we want to see. The Twin Cities have an array of organisations working toward abolition (and related movements) creatively. I see three main ways that abolitionists are engaging which go beyond obstructing injustice to creating prefigurative alternatives. The modelling of imagined future in the now, while fighting against present oppression. These works of what Sarah Lamble calls “everyday abolition” include: 1. the development of conflict skills and education around conflict transformation, 2. mutual aid, and 3. claimed and created spaces. CONFLICT SKILLS During my interviews, many abolitionists mentioned how we, as a society, need to build conflict skills. Collectively, we often outsource responsibility for managing conflict to the State, rather than addressing it ourselves. One way this occurs is through calling the police (or State institutions that do similar work). Abolitionists avoid doing so. One said, “if I have a problem with my neighbour and can talk to my neighbour about it, or if I can talk to another person who knows my neighbour, and get that solved, why would I ever have to go over here [to the police]?” Abolitionists talked about how, to not rely on the police, people need to be willing to step in and help neighbours-in-crisis, or diffuse disagreements. To respond, people need to have the skills to do so. By conflict skills, I mean approaches or tools to use in conflict that equip parties to respond to acute or ongoing situations with de-escalation, communication of disagreement, and collective problem solving. This can include listening skills, conflict mapping, understanding underlying needs and feelings, nonviolent communication, and collective problem-solving skills. These skills are relevant beyond avoiding the police. Abolitionists focus on the need to holistically respond to conflict, including in movement spaces. Conflict is neither good nor bad. Rather, it is something that can be positively or negatively engaged with, arising from disagreements, communication challenges, opposing interests, and so on. It can be interpersonal, or exist within a broader group. We must use conflict, and its transformation, as a way to identify harm, take accountability, repair relationships, grapple with complexity and differences of opinion or strategy, and ultimately determine how we can work together toward transformation. Often, people can be quick to sever ties during conflict. adrienne maree brown, in their book We Will Not Cancel Us, discusses how the disposability projected onto others uses similar carceral logic to the systems we are working to dismantle. Of course, when harm has occurred, people must be willing to acknowledge it and take accountability, and the safety needs for individuals and groups must be considered when navigating repair and transformative justice work. Abolitionists also discussed examples of groups helping people develop these skills, and the importance of education and training. REP, in South Minneapolis, is a local organisation with a crisis hotline that operates several nights a week, and offers ‘studios’ to build conflict skills and knowledge around abolitionist principles. REP’s studios have included ‘consent and abolition’, ‘self-de-escalation and regulation’, ‘community trauma and care’, and ‘solving problems ourselves’. One abolitionist involved in the project said: “We’re striving towards a deep cultural shift in how people assess a crisis and address the crisis, instead of having that knee-jerk response to call someone else.” This is key to the work of unlearning our existing social structures and learning how to face accountability without isolating ourselves, or choosing self-pity or self-flagellation rather than action and repair. There are other community education projects, reading circles, and so on, around the Twin Cities offering different ways for people to learn together. People are creating participatory education programs, sometimes in a certain career or sector, sometimes in certain identity groups, and often for people looking to develop certain skills. MUTUAL AID Several abolitionists interviewed mentioned how they engage in mutual aid work, particularly supporting unhoused neighbours, because many of the biggest challenges our communities face are connected to lack of resources. Mutual aid is when people work together to meet basic human needs because they recognise the capitalist system is not designed to do so. Multiple people discussed working with programs that support our unhoused neighbours. One said of unhoused encampment sweeps, which often result in people losing everything they have, that a lot of our ‘public safety’ interventions are more about preventing people from seeing the realities of capitalism than safety. Community members organise free distributions of clothing and food through Little Free Pantries in people’s front yards, the People’s Closet in George Floyd Square, neighbourhood-based “Buy Nothing” groups on Facebook, and cooked-meal distributions. Abolitionists discussed how people come together to meet collective and individual needs, often stepping in to fill gaps that could be filled by reallocation of government funds. George Floyd Square, the memorial and community space located in the intersection where he was murdered by the police, was a mutual aid hub during the 2020 uprisings, and continues to be where free clothing, books, and other supplies are distributed. An abolitionist explained: “In press conferences, [Governor] Tim Walz, Mayor Frey, [city council member] Andrea Jenkins and the crew, were all saying, ‘oh, that’s the best part of Minneapolis.’ You see it. You see it. You see the people coming together. You see the people forming groups to protect each other and their neighbourhoods. That’s the best Minneapolis, to which I respond, if that’s the best of Minneapolis, why aren’t you doing it?” While city officials continue to destroy encampments, state officials cut public health insurance for undocumented immigrants, and federal officials cut food, housing, and health programs, the needs of our communities will continue to grow. Mutual aid will become even more important. SPACE/ TAKING UP SPACE/ INTENTIONAL SPACES Abolitionists discussed the importance of taking up space and having intentional spaces. John Gaventa, in his piece Finding Spaces For Change: A Power Analysis, calls these spaces “claimed by less powerful actors from or against the power holders, or created more autonomously by them.” One such space is George Floyd Square, which one abolitionist described as “community-built systems of networking and safety doing a lot more to provide feelings of safety than policing does.” Others discussed student anti-war encampments pushing for their demands to be heard through getting in the way of business-as-usual, and providing space to try out alternatives. Abolitionists discussed the need for community spaces that foster imagination, like ‘third spaces’, where people can gather, without needing to spend money, to exchange ideas, host events, and build community. Several interview participants are working on creating such spaces. In this period of amplifying and expanding inhumanity by the State, people are working locally to meet our collective needs. We have the opportunity, amidst the intentional chaos created by those with formal power, to build ways-of-being in community that model a future worth fighting for. The abolition movement in the Twin Cities provides just one example of the prefigurative work happening around the globe. We may not live to see the future we prefigure, but as links in a chain, we continue this work, as Mariane Kaba says “until we free us.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was first published in the Winter 2025-6 issue of Freedom anarchist journal The post Everyday abolition in the Twin Cities appeared first on Freedom News.

US DESIGNATION AIMS TO NETWORK ANTI-FASCIST TRIALS IN GERMANY AND HUNGARY BY CRIMINAL ASSOCIATION ~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~ US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubin recently announced the long-awaited criminalisation of anti-fascism by designating “Antifa” a domestic terrorist organisation under National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7) and four groups in Europe labelled by the State Department as “specially designated global terrorists” and “foreign terrorist organisations.” As part of the Trump Administration’s “initiative to disrupt self-described “anti-fascism” networks, entities and organisations,” ‘Antifa-Ost’ (Antifa-East) was named with three other European groups as an organisation that was perceived as a threat to the United States by “conspiring to undermine the foundations of western civilisation through their brutal attacks.” Despite this show of force, presidential memorandums do not hold the power to designate ‘domestic terrorist organisations’ and, as it turns out, ‘Antifa’ is not an organisation at all. However, “a foreign organisation can be designated and there is almost no due process,” says Shane Kadidical from the Centre of Constitutional Rights. “Then, you go after the U.S. groups for supposedly coordinating their political messages with the messages of foreign groups.” Perhaps intentionally missing the point that anti-fascist groups are autonomous, Antifa-East also does not exist as an organisation. The State Department is in fact referring to the political repression in Hungary and Germany of a group of autonomous anti-fascists known in the German mainstream media as the “Hammerbande” (Hammer gang), accused of assaulting neo-Nazis and fascists in Germany between 2018-2020. In 2023, Victor Orbán launched a European wide hunt for anti-fascists who he claimed attacked those who attended Budapest’s yearly gathering of neo-Nazis and paramilitaries from across Europe. The ‘Day of Honor’ is a commemoration of the final resistance of the Waffen-SS against the Soviet Union in Budapest at the end of the second world war. Despite the event is banned by Hungarian authorities, the far-right continue to meet on February 11. Neo*Nazi march in Berlin, 1998 By weaponising the European Arrest Warrant, Orbán attempted to extradite multiple anti-fascists from Italy and Germany to face trial in Hungary for ‘criminal association’ as defined under Hungarian law (article 459) as “a group that consists of at least three persons, is established for a longer period of time… and operates in a conspiratorial manner to commit international criminal offences.” While most of the conditions for this law, including “organised hierarchically” do not apply to these anti-fascists, the only problem for Orbán was the “longer period of time” aspect which could not be proven based on the events of February 11. Fortunately for this dictator, he could always fall back on the authoritarian repression of a European federal republic. In the same year that Orbán launched his hunt for anti-fascists, a German court sentenced Lina E. and three other co-defendants to five years in prison each for assault and membership of a criminal gang. The attacks took place in Saxony and Thuringia in east Germany, and involved assaults on Enrico Böhm, a publisher and distributor of far-right literature and Leon R., a barkeeper of the far-right bar Bull’s Eye. After Hungary issued a European Arrest Warrant for Maja T. to face trial, Germany followed with a national arrest warrant. Now Orbán had his ‘evidence’ for criminal organisation based on the required “longer period of time” clause, as he could refer to the ‘Dresden left extremist trials’ to network anti-fascists across Europe. Maja was extradited to Hungary and went on hunger strike for 40 days in custody, where they remain in solitary confinement. Zaid is one of the only defendants to be released on bail in Nuremberg, although he has to report to a police station three times a week. As Zaid is Syrian and holds no citizenship in Germany, he faces the threat of deportation. Six more defendants were named by the prosecutor in Dusseldorf for charges like “attempted murder” and “membership in a criminal organisation.” Those who Orbán accuses of being part of a criminal organisation that “slapped peaceful people in the streets of Budapest with iron bars” are identified because they were in the crowd of anti-fascists, rather than specifically committing a crime. “All such investigate activity is absolutely absent in the trial file,” says Eugonio Losco, an Italian defense lawyer for one of the accused. “So there is an association because in Germany there were some similar events, and in Hungary there were some Germans. There is not much more,” Losco says. On December 13, Lina E was alleged to have stolen two hammers in a Leipzig hardware store. On the same night, Leon claims he was attacked for the second time as he was driving home from the Bull’s Eye bar. He told police that the assailants used hammers and that one of them had a female voice. It is on the testimony of a fascist that Lina E was sentenced to more than five years in prison.  “This spiral of radicalization and violence must not be allowed to continue,” former German interior minister Nancy Fraeser said, following the court verdict of Lina E. Yet both Leon R and Enrico Böhm have since been convicted of criminal association to the right-wing groups they belong to. Like in Hungary, the state is using far-right criminals to maintain its monopoly on violence. Alongside the seemingly arbitrary rounding up of political opponents are show trials and media narratives that seek to portray anti-fascism as a “left-wing extremism” and a threat to society. The role of intelligence agencies in confirming this ‘threat’ should not be understated.  Following the sentencing of Lina E, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) claimed that left-wing violence had risen from 700 to 10,300 incidents between 2020-21, contradicting Federal Police (BKA) statistics that have shown a drop of 31% in violence attributed to the left. In contrast, right-wing extremism rose by 16% between 2021-22. When debating the use of violence in our resistance to the far-right, we remember those who have been killed on the streets for confronting fascism, like the east German printer Silvio Meier. On Friday, anti-fascists marched down Silvio-Meier-Straße in Berlin for the memory of the Silvio, stabbed in the chest by 17-year-old youth fascist Sandro S. after a confrontation. He died of his injuries on an u-Bahn platform 33 years ago. Victims of fascist violence. Public domain Is the recent designation of anti-fascism a ‘strategy of tension’ where state actors and the far-right work together to protect their interests and oppose common enemies? What has become known as the Budapest Complex is perfect for a US Administration seeking control over the wide-spread domestic grassroots resistance against it’s own far-right policies. Like all ‘anti-terrorism’ state legislation, the state maintains power through the ‘crime of association’. Where will this authoritarian repression lead? In 1969, the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli was thrown out of a police station window in Milan and died from his injuries. He was interrogated on his role in the Piazza Fontana bombings that at the time were falsely attributed to Italian anarchists. In 2004, it was proven to be the fascist paramilitary organisation Ordine Nuovo found responsible for the attack.  The threat of far-right violence is ever present in both our communities and in the decaying halls of power. Its popularity is rising among the youth in Germany with the Deutsche Jugend Voran (DJV) and ‘Generation Deutschland’, the second attempt of the populist far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in creating a youth party. Never mind the blundering of ageing fascist tyrants, it is this future we must confront. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Top photo: White House, 7 November 2025   The post ‘Terror’ as a strategy of tension appeared first on Freedom News.

THIS MONTH SOMETHING DIFFERENT: A CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING WHY THE APPEAL OF SELFISHNESS GRIPS SO MANY PEOPLE SO FIERCELY ~ Louis Further ~ Right-wing beliefs are ultimately attempts to rationalise and justify selfishness. Fascism, ‘conservatism’, US Republicanism—call them what you will: the differences are essentially procedural. “My needs matter. Yours don’t”. But in order to explain much of what motivates those in the MAGA cult it’s necessary to understand the state which precedes selfishness. That is the primacy of the self devoid of empathy. Members of the MAGA cult thrive on the stark clarity of its identity and their adherence to it… badges, merchandise, flags, clothing. This applies less to other (far right) systems imposed on majorities in most other polities and other shades of élite, hierarchical, coercive political opinion—notably the Democrats in the US. But they too take what’s useful in selfishness. For that self (or selves) to be distinct first there have to be ‘others’, who are not the self. Secondly there has to be a qualitative comparison between the two entities. This drive to compare may originate in the psychology of their childhood wounds, in ongoing brainwashing, in fear, in ignorance, insecurity and so on. For cult members’ biographies (individual or collective) to make sense no two (or more) things can (co-)exist without being compared. Once the apparent ‘need’ to compare is admitted, it becomes inevitable and compelling. This adherence to the dogma of comparison for those in the MAGA cult often bypasses assertions of perceived ‘right’ vs ‘wrong’, ‘good’ vs ‘bad’. The very act of comparison (between races, sexes, classes, ideas of society etc) replaces rational analysis. Defining superiority-inferiority becomes an end in itself. This is much more than pragmatism: justifying selfishness and oppression becomes its own goal. Objectivity, tolerance, compassion, caring, empathising are all irrelevant and play no part in advancing such agendas as those which Trump/MAGA is now imposing on the US. The self (individual of collective) is the sole arbiter of such qualities as ‘strength’, ‘ruthlessness’, ‘bullying determination’; so they are more readily adopted when compared with such perceived opposites as ‘weakness’, being ‘soft on crime’ than for their innate qualities. If those in this camp subjected their perceived need to come out on top to logical or rational analysis, they would fail. So a spurious teleological element is (unconsciously) introduced: a wilful conviction that “history is on our side; we have the untrammelled right to impose”. This sense of historical inevitability both has its genesis in, and reinforces and encourages, the millenarian streak with which current US foreign ‘policy’ has been shot through at least since the élite upped its ‘war on terror’ a generation ago. It grew more harshly with the anti-Muslim fanaticism propagated by George W. Bush after the events of September 11 2001. It can still be found in establishment antisemitism and the Islamophobia of Trump and his fellow cultists. The need to capture, torture, and kill the ‘bomb-carrying Middle Easterner’ around every corner is readily satisfied by the élite’s assertion of white-male-American superiority over everyone else. Even when the hunts produce spurious results—or none—someone has to be punished. The same thing is happening now as ICE kidnaps and traffics many who fail to look ‘white’—in comparison with everyone else, especially the hunters. Such binary ‘decisions’ (“I belong. You don’t”) are endpoints. It’s easy to bask in the approbation which they receive—in propaganda outlets and legislative echo-chambers. After all, again, the ‘superior self’ is sole arbiter of what to subscribe to. CIRCULAR LOGIC Belief (as opposed to reason) also has its own circular justification. This is hardly surprising when you recall that fascism is a system which seeks to ‘solve’ a problem which it has itself created. Once the primacy—and so the perceived necessity—of binary comparisons has been accepted (as it is in fascist beliefs), then condemnation of the other is even more compelling and convincing to the likes of the MAGA/Trump cult: non-whites are undesirable because they are criminals (not even remotely true, of course). This means that they are criminals because they are non-white. Analogously “We whites are better than ‘illegal aliens’ because… we are not ‘illegal aliens’”. This horse-before-cart assertion of white superiority (currently, with ICE, towards all LatinX communities) uses such circular logic: “We kidnap them because they are immigrants. If they get kidnapped, they must deserve it because they are immigrants who have been kidnapped”. This is analogous to much back-and-forth, tit-for-tat threads on social media when attempts are made to denigrate all opinion which the right lumps together as ‘liberal’: “You are bad because you are socialist; but the reason why you hold socialist views is that you are ‘bad’; and—while we’re at it—you’re bad because you do not belong to or with us”. Then “‘Liberals’ (socialists) are bad and evil because they believe in taking away what we’ve striven so hard to accumulate; therefore believing in equality is bad because it’s what bad people like you socialists believe in”! But this is where it gets even more frightening: the immediacy of accepting and acting on selfishness also makes a nuisance of both facts and nuance. Who needs facts when what individuals say must always be right because it would be a breach of my freedom to stifle that. Once fascist dogma has (successfully) rendered decisions based on falsity and false ‘logic’ acceptable, popular even, the need to examine phenomena such as climate collapse and the efficacy of vaccines against verifiable facts is removed. The mere act of pronouncing on these issues is sufficient for what’s said to appear true to those who want it to be true. To hold a ‘position’ is itself a valid and worthy end. What’s more, fascist belief is both immature and simplistic. So it’s all too easy, for example, to justify climate denial by saying “Well, I can’t see evidence of the collapse that all of you keep saying is upon us; so it doesn’t exist.” Similarly, the White House issues reports almost daily about ‘necessary’ actions against immigrants and to combat crime, the rates of which are not rising. The unsophisticated fascist system accepts them at face value because to do otherwise would run counter to its anti-intellectual stances. Facts mean less than dogma. It seems likely that many cult members probably do know that much of what the cult stands for is based on sand. But shame and hero worship (the psychological aspect again) and the pressure to adhere are so far eclipsing any chance of their revising their views.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos: Los Angeles, June 2025 via Corazónegro Cerbatanero on Facebook The post Notes from the US: The MAGA war on empathy appeared first on Freedom News.

THE CO-PRODUCER OF THE LANDMARK DOCUMENTARY FILM REFLECTS ON ITS LEGACY AMID TODAY’S CHALLENGES ~ Joel Sucher ~ Anarchism in America is the title of a documentary produced way back in 1980; a time when the world was a far different place and the embers of the older strains of the movement —communist, individualist and syndicalist —were still alight. I was one of the producers of that documentary and was lucky enough to rub elbows with a variety of anarchists —Italians, Jews, Spaniards, Russians among others —who shared a common vision of a better world. They dreamed of a universal terrain without the shackles of authoritarian structures, governments and their corporate lackeys; churches, with their superstitions, and armed police to enforce the dictates of oligarchs and authoritarians.  The documentary was financed, ironically, by a liberal institution —National Endowment for the Humanities —established by Lyndon Johnson in 1965 when the idea of intellectual stimulation was still part and parcel of a democratic sensibility. Flawed, I’d reckon, because it was an ideal steeped in the belief of US exceptionalism. Propping up this notion these days has plunged America further down the bowels of a new dark age, replete with heaping helpings of stupidity, racism, white supremacy, hyper masculinity and racism. It’s a time for idiots to open mouths before engaging brains.  The original documentary was strung together with a questionable premise drawn from a 1978 book written by David DeLeon, titled The American as Anarchist, Reflections on Indigenous Radicalism. It postulated that there are those who explicitly tag themselves anarchists (like yours truly) but there are plenty more whose thinking embodies anti-authoritarian ideas without applying specific labels. Extended by DeLeon’s implication, these folks have inherited an anti-authoritarian DNA that’s become entwined and defined in the American character.  The film-makers The script was written by an old pal and comrade, Paul Berman, and was so good that for a few years the NEH staff waved it around as an example of what they would fund; that is, until Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. In the backwash of the election —presaging what’s happening today —the NEH staff bristling from the change in political sensibilities sheepishly asked us to take their names off the credits (we didn’t).  Well, many decades on I’m gazing through the looking glass and see the American-as-anarchist in a different guise: that is as a MAGA supporter. For instance, we interviewed an independent truck driver —“Lil John” —standing by his big rig and railing on about how government dos and don’ts had cut into his livelihood. “We’re not really independent because you talk about independent truck drivers and then you get into the political bureaucracy that run the United States government … mainly the rules and regulations. I mean, I don’t think a man in Washington, DC can dictate to me how to operate this truck, financially”. Touching a key point, he concluded “Just because you get elected to an office or you become a politician… don’t necessarily make you the big brother that’s got to oversee everything that’s under your domain … the people out there feel that they got to be the big brother, that we’re not smart enough down here to do our own thing”. Perhaps another fly in the American as anarchist ointment is the idea, espoused in the documentary by the late working-class anarchist poet, Philip Levine, about how Americans are “smart enough” to hate rules and conformity especially in places that have a sense of orderliness in their culture. “One of the things that struck me most when I went to Europe and lived there for a couple of years, was how fucking law abiding the people were, and how I broke all the laws. And I think I didn’t break the laws so much because I was an anarchist, it was just because I was an American. I mean, if I came to a traffic light, nobody was there. I went through the goddamn thing. It was just an attitude, you know, what’s the point of staying here? … I found that my European neighbors went crazy. stay in line, you know, it was sort of the stay in line, be this way, queue up in England, you know. And I’d say, fuck you, you know, the first one to the bus gets on, you know…. We are a people who are very smart, you know, that we got a lot of street smarts…I mean, we know what the law is all about. We know who made it and how it gets enforced. I mean, I think if you stop the average American say, what’s the law all about? Did God make it? He’d say, bullshit. He didn’t have anything to do with it.  John D Rockefeller made it”.  Interviewing CNT comrades In retrospect, this “truth” has embedded itself in the viscera of MAGA as a justification for releasing all that pent-up rage against the edicts of what they call the Washington swamp. Unfortunately, their goal is to create a new swamp overseen by a charismatic leader who has sold them a bill of goods about how he’ll make their lives better.  Obviously, as events in America unfold with deliberate shock and awe, it’s clear the confusion provides cover for rolling out a “brave new fascist world”. The blueprints are already out there (see my Covert Action piece on Curtis Yarvin). Anyone with even the slightest left of centre perspective will find themselves on hit lists with ambiguous outcomes. Handwriting is on the proverbial wall and the 2023 Cop City protests outside of Atlanta, where one activist was killed, provides more than enough evidence to highlight that the State has placed a target on the backs of the anti-authoritarian movement.  Will anarchists be the next group —after immigrants and pro-Palestinians —to be carted off? A definite possibility. You don’t have to be Nostradamus to guess what may be coming next. So, what to be done?  Well, mutual aid; that foundational anarchist theory-into-practice concept remains as alive and relevant today as it did and has given us the incentive —the power —to act in concert with like-minded folk for the benefit of our local communities. No need to wrap A’s in circles around our foreheads. It’s a demonstration of what is innate in the human character: an empathy that transcends greed and cruelty and one that infuses anarchist thought. Interviewing Mollie Steimer in Cuernavaca, Mexico Encouraging self-management in the small and medium business realm maintains credibility even now when Wall Street and its predatory banking buddies seek to control everything and anything.  Back in the day many of us were infatuated by the anarchist hue and cry, “don’t vote, it only encourages them”.  Times have changed severely and I, for one, believe that voting, primarily in local elections, where a vote counts for something—is an imperative that should be heeded. The old New England “town hall” ideal which we discussed in the documentary —gathering local citizens to discuss political affairs —remains a crucial exercise of power.  As the resistance starts to take root anarchists need to heed the pitfalls and traps set up in this new world of surveillance and AI. Welcome to “predictive policing” where science fiction meets science fact and where algorithms drive lead-generated police investigations. No longer are police gumshoes hiding in hotel rooms listening to bugs they have planted via crappy, old vacuum tube transmitters. The modern detective is fixed to a computer screen watching algorithms make —in essence —criminal predictions. We have turned a page; one Philip K Dick wrote about in his dystopian 1956 novel, Minority Report (later a compelling film starring Tom Cruise). The incompetent fools currently playing with the levers of US power take China as an example of how you can control an unruly population. It’s a true 1984 world where surveillance is translated into social control where, literally, points are deducted if you’re late to pay a bill or jaywalk; yes, it is a scheme to turn the population into good, obedient boys and girls. An awareness that you’re being watched needs to be just that and something that shouldn’t damp down activism. Having been involved in producing films like the 1970 documentary, Red Squad, I’m cognisant about the dangers posed by the surveillance State but there are plenty of counter-measures. Keep your circle of friends small (“affinity groups”, we used to call them); use secure platforms like Signal for communications and don’t invite all those you think may want to be on the down-low. If that means tamping down social media posts proclaiming support for Palestine, well, for the time being that should be considered. The other side will be monitoring and the threat is real. Anything is possible. I was born in a Displaced Persons camp outside of Lubeck, Germany, after the War and came over to the States and naturalised as a citizen. Could I, theoretically, be denaturalised? Sure. Anarchism, like the proverbial Seventh Wave, seems to engulf successive generations of young people eager to act on anti-authoritarian impulses and that’s a good thing, in my estimation, so long as they understand it’s a long-term commitment. It’s all too easy for the young kid waving around a black flag with an A in a circle to succumb to the seductive temptations of materialism, power-mongering and fame-whoring. While I believe that Anarchism in America is a deeply flawed film, I’d maintain that there are lessons to be learned and that after the authoritarians and capitalists melt down —which I’m sure they will —then anarchists can get back to the task of proffering the vision of a better world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was originally published in the Summer 2025 issue of Freedom anarchist journal The post Is there a future for Anarchism in America? appeared first on Freedom News.

FROM LA STREETS TO SALVADORIAN PRISONS, THE US ESCALATES ITS WAR ON MIGRANTS ~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~ On the streets of Los Angeles, California earlier this summer, several masked and armed men attempted to kidnap a street vendor in broad daylight. Despite the gang showing no identification to authority, the community knew who they were. Luis Hipolito arrived on 9th street and witnessed the attempted kidnapping. He pulled out his phone and hit record. The armed men ordered him to leave but Luis refused and continued to film. The community began to gather, as they do across the country to resist this fascist repression and support each other in standing up to violence and authority. Andrea Guadalupe Velez arrived with her 17-year-old sister. Her mother Margarita was dropping them both off. Andrea got out the car and immediately saw a man running directly towards her. “He thinks I am illegal”, Andrea thought to herself bracing for impact, “because of the color of my skin”. Holding her hands up, the man collided into her. Luis was then pepper sprayed by the masked men, later identified as agents from Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Department for Homeland Security (DHS). Now blinded, Luis attempts to steady himself with his arms. Federal agents threw him down to the curb and assaulted Luis until his body goes into convulsions. Both Andrea and Luis have been charged with assaulting a police officer, released on bonds between $5000 and $10,000. In the view of the Department Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin, the act of Luis filming the original abduction “kept ICE law enforcement from arresting the target illegal alien of their operation”. In other words, he was blamed for his own illegitimate arrest – based on his right to record an arrest. Over the next two weeks, 1,618 people were deported from Los Angeles and the surrounding area at a rate of around 95 a day. SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOUR ICE raids have been observed to feature heavily armed and aggressive officers—masked and wearing tactical gear—arresting people at their place of work or on the streets. “A systematic pattern”, according to an ACLU lawsuit, where “individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified Federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from”. At an immigration court in San Francisco, ten masked and armed Federal agents violently forced their way through a blockade of demonstrators to abduct a male detainee following his court hearing. One officer brandished a rifle and pointed it at both protesters and the press, as other agents from ICE used pepper spray and violently pushed people to the ground. After resistance from the crowd, agents threw the man into the back of a black unmarked SUV. As ICE agents speed through the crowd of protesters, a woman was thrown off the hood of the car and onto the streets. ICE agents and protesters clashing outside the San Francisco immigration courthouse at 100 Mongtomery St. on July 8, 2025. Photo by Frankie Solinsky Duryea/ Mission Local The community gathers at the immigration court on 100 Montgomery street every Tuesday to resist the multiple abductions by Federal agents to the nearby ICE field office. This tactic of waiting outside the courtroom and taking people had escalated from simply arresting those who had come to ICE voluntarily. On 5 June, 15 people were arrested at the ICE field office on Sansome street including at least four children, one of them as young as three years old. As repression escalated, protesters took to the streets and courtrooms as a response to the abduction of thousands of members of their community, detained without charge and separated from their families. Despite this systematic targeting of the migrant community however, few migrants rights organisations support the rights of sex workers and are suspiciously silent when it comes to their arrest, detention and deportation. “Police cars, plainclothes cars, we all hide when (we) see them”, a migrant massage worker told Red Canary Song, a NY-based collective of Asian and Migrant sex workers. “We’ll be arrested as soon as we go out”. Respectability politics is to blame, organisers have pointed out, as groups attempt to sanitise their message and divide those who are deserving of solidarity and those whose rights are disposable. This is not something new and ironically by excluding sex workers from the struggle for migrant rights, we suppress a collective memory of resistance. Between January and February there were nearly 1,000 arrests in Queens, New York that directly targeted immigrant sex workers. Police raids have focused on massage parlours, arresting women and creating a climate of fear across these under-represented workers. “I’m scared to go to work”, the migrant massage worker reported anonymously. Authorities have justified a number of repressive police and immigration tactics in the past, using surveillance, racial profiling, raids, detentions and deportations as anti-trafficking measures. Law enforcement have claimed these measures are designed to protect women and children, yet in reality only expose migrants to more systematic violence. DHS has now begun using artificial intelligence to profile those walking on the streets, using flawed patterns over evidence for “suspicious behaviour”. These patterns includes factors like “foreign accent” or “short skirt” as part of it’s evaluation of sex work through live-streaming public cameras. Palantir currently has a $30 million contract to build a “master database” of all of those targeted by ICE, and various government agencies have received their pay for the building of this architecture of hate. As these technologies are applied to the general population, including facial recognition, we will see as with all surveillance, the only purpose is to build cases for prosecution and deportation. Photograph taken by the El Salvadorian government press department at the Centro De Confinamento Del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison system, after the U.S. deportation of 261 men on March 16th 2025. MONSTER OR TERRORIST? Agustín was sixteen-years-old when a group of armed men came to take him away but this was not the first time he had faced organised violence. When he was younger, local gangs had attempted to recruit Agustín. When he refused they threatened to kill his mother. Together, they fled to San José Guayabal to start a new life. For the second time, there was a knock on the door. Agustín was taken from his home by the El Salvadorian army and driven to a deserted road. He was ordered out of the truck and the soldiers simulated Agustín’s execution, making him believe he would die on his knees facing the barrel of a gun. This mock execution of the teenager was followed by his detention in an overcrowded cell with 70 other children. Agustín was kicked virtually every day by the other detainees in front of the guards who did nothing but watch. Detainees would count up to thirteen while assaulting him, in reference to MS-13. There are now 3,000 children within the sprawling Centro De Confinamento Del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison system, as reported by Human Rights Watch in 2022 El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele has been in power since 2019 and for the last six years has radically eroded rights and freedoms through a repressive “war on gangs” that seeks to enrich the security sector at the expense of local communities. 40,000 people are now held within this prison system and an estimated 375 detainees have died in custody – all justified through a state of emergency or Bukele’s “state of exception”. In exchange for 261 men deported from the United States, El Salvador received $6 million to humiliate and warehouse them in this public theatre of dystopia. The men were escorted off three planes and taken through lines of heavily armoured and armed police officers. New inmates have their heads shaven upon arrival. Eighty men share a single cell. Most of those detained have no criminal record, inside or outside the United States. Yet they were convicted on the basis of administrative violence through intentional error and faulty symbolic criteria that categorised detainees as “monster”, “terrorist” or “gang member”. A point system that determines if tattoos, graffiti, hand signs or social media posts are ‘evidence’ of association to gangs. Most of those detained by ICE and DHS are taken to facilities within the United States. In Florida’s Everglades, a prison camp with the projected capacity for 5,000 people has been set up at the cost of $450 million. Testimonies reveal the typical state of the U.S. prison industrial complex. “They only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots”, Leamsy La Figura, a detainee at the prison said. “They never turned off the lights for 24 hours… we’re like rats in an experiment… I don’t know their motive for doing this, if it’s a form of torture. A lot of us have our residency documents and we don’t understand why we’re here”. MEMORY OF RESISTANCE “In terms of ICE detention”, Panagioti Tsolkas says in conversation with Max Granger, “we know the goal isn’t to remove every undocumented person; it’s to create a climate of fear and terror, to make people controllable, more scared to speak up or act in their own interests”. Tsolkas recommends looking into our collective memory and the political activism against ICE during Obama’s administration. In a documentary called The Infiltrators, young undocumented activists “intentionally got themselves arrested with the goal of organizing in prison centers”. By getting inside the prisons, the activists were able to document who was inside, taking down their names for their families to organise solidarity on the outside. A demonstrator marches with the community in the attempt of intercepting and preventing Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Chicago, June 10th 2025 “No-one dies but those who are forgotten”, Peter Gelderloos recalls an assertion from an armed group in the Chilean state who had taken over a street outside of a prison to show their solidarity. “In other words”, Gelderloos writes, “we all exist through our relations”. We resist through a collective memory of resistance. “When I was a boy”, the late anarchist Willem Van Spronsen once wrote, “in post-war Holland, later France, my head was filled with stories of the rise of fascism in the ’30s, I promised myself that I would not be one of those who stands by as neighbours are torn from their homes and imprisoned for somehow being perceived as lesser”. Willem was killed by police while taking direct action to sabotage a fleet of buses that served Northwest immigrant detention centre in Washington on July 13, 2019. His action in attempting to burn the buses coincided with the one year anniversary of a hunger strike from those detained inside, as well as over a decade of resistance from the community and La Resistencia, a grassroots organisation for undocumented migrants. “Anyone who is determined to carry out his or her deed is not a courageous person”, wrote Alfredo Bonanno. “They are simply a person who has clarified their ideas, who has realised that it is pointless to make such an effort to play the part assigned to them by capital in the performance… in doing so they realize themselves as human beings… the reign of death disappears before their eyes”. “You don’t have to burn the motherfucker down”, Willem wrote before his death, “but are you going to just stand by”? The post US: Community resistance to forced disappearances appeared first on Freedom News.

TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY IS STILL NOT WIDELY SEEN FOR THE FASCIST COUP THAT IT IS ~ Louis Further ~ Be honest and ignore your ‘scepticism’ about the ‘decency’ of politics in the United States: would you have believed it, had you been told ten years ago, that its president would be a twice impeached convicted felon, nevertheless elected with a healthy majority for a second term (and who is considering an illegal third term)? Would you have thought that a serial rapist, a failed businessperson notorious for not paying debts—a bankrupt even; an avowed white supremacist, misogynist, anti-Semite; a notorious liar; someone without a basic grasp of history and science—could become the most powerful person in the world?  Could a US president really build a fascist movement of such strength as to do what Trump/MAGA/Musk are doing: effectively (and illegally/unconstitutionally) dismantling multiple agencies of government, as this site chronicles; and potentially crashing the world economy because he has a fetish for half-understood tariffs? Education is a prime target of fascism. So perhaps—like climate denial—you foresaw universities being wrecked by defunding them (the latest huge withdrawals of funds (a total of US$1.8 million/£1.4 billion) from Northwestern and Cornell); their curricula steered to fall in line with far right dogma; and their accreditation procedures ‘interfered’ with. Incidentally, lawmakers in states like Oklahoma have a poor grasp of what constitutes good education: their latest exploit requires pupils to ‘learn’ that Trump unfailrly lost the 2020 election. Children in Maine will be worse off because some schools tolerate transgender pupils. In Florida teachers can now be sacked for respecting pupils’ identities. But were you ready to watch the removal of meteorological (for forecasting), geological and oceanic services—as well as of other scientific data? Would you ever have imagined that the staff and resources of authorities to ensure air traffic and airport safety would be depleted? Could you have seen a wholly unqualified anti-vaccine quack at the head of the equivalent of the NHS in the UK, Robert F Kennedy Jr Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services? Like all Trump’s appointments, he had the backing of a majority of Congresspeople. One of Kennedy’s first acts was to push Vitamin A as an effective and appropriate ‘solution’ to the growing measles epidemic in the US; it isn’t. This was endorsed by the once-venerable CDC (Centers of Disease Control), which last week became unable to help schools in Milwaukee deal with unsafe lead-levels on their sites… lack of resources due to DOGE’s cuts. Children are now being brought to A&E with liver failure caused by an excess of Vitamin A. Kennedy is also conniving in the closure and defunding of health authorities in—of all places—the very heart of that outbreak. Could you have expected thousands of staff sacked whose job is to oversee and promote public health—HIV prevention, the asthma and air quality team, environmental hazard response, gun violence prevention, worker safety, reproductive and disability health; TB prevention; blood disorder projects, national surveying of drug use and mental health; lead poisoning prevention and water safety; the tobacco control division?  All gone. In the US over a third of people say they are unable to meet their healthcare needs. Worldwide the number of children who will die because of cuts to foreign aid is estimated to be in the millions. Never mind, though: if you have $1,000 (£763), you can buy ‘supernatural blessings’ on the White House’s own website from Trump’s chief ‘faith adviser’. PROJECT 2025 You won’t be surprised by any of if you have read Project 2025, which made most of this clear well before the Trump/MAGA victory of November. This ‘tracker’ shows how quickly and comprehensively its objectives are being achieved. Less attention is so far being paid to what comes next after government agencies are destroyed.But it too was stated clearly and explicitly before the election; and by vice president Vance well before that: illegally dismissed staff in those agencies are to be replaced with MAGA loyalists. Amongst Project 2025’s most frightening plans is the crackdown on opponents of Trump; while anecdotal evidence has begun to appear of national book bans. INCOMPETENCE Professionals with hundreds of years of experience and expertise are being replaced with incompetent, dishonest and ignorant amateurs – for instance from a far right TV channel. Surprised? Maybe not: any government can be incompetent in carrying out its actions. The level of incompetence in this one, though is staggering. For instance, Pete Hegseth from Fox runs the ‘Defense’ Department—an arm of the élite fanatically praised and supported—not to mention disproportionately overfunded – by those who delight in maiming and slaughtering non-whites. But the error which has inevitably come to be called ‘Signalgate’ (but dismissed by Trump/MAGA/Musk) when members of the administration used semi-public and hackable systems on their phones to discuss the first of several illegal terrorist attacks on Yemen last month and invited a journalist antipathetic to MAGA in on their plotting. Other examples of this are legion. Many of the aforementioned Kennedy’s actions with healthcare show gross incompetence. As do many of the precipitate actions with deportations; in both these—and other—cases dismissed staff have had to be rehired; but no-one bothered to keep a record of their whereabouts, which is making that impossible. It took other cult members to point out to Trump the negative impacts on bonds (needed to keep the government financed) for him to reverse most of the tariffs imposed a few days earlier. It was the rather bilious Peter Navaro—another convict and long-time economic advisor to Trump—who ‘invented’ a source, the non-existent ‘Ron Vara’ (an anagram of his name), to advance the cause for economically unsound tariffs and push it Trump’s way – because the latter had long had a fetish for them. Even the fake ‘formula’ for how much to impose on other countries so that America could become ‘great again’—including on two islands inhabited only by penguins—was actually mathematical nonsense… two of the variables cancelled each other out. RACISM Supremacism continues to play a major part in the administration’s sadism. The process of removing references to non-Whites on public sites and in government communications continues; evidence of the role of Harriet Tubman in the Underground Railroad was removed from a page on the National Parks website. The world-renown Smithsonian Museum complex has been instructed to remove exhibits explaining racism and the very history of non-Whites in the United States. More disturbing, though, is the ‘rationale’ offered for this by Trump: what’s ‘wrong’ with those whose existence is being suppressed is their biological impurity. To underline ‘racial purity’ you must segregate: in the past companies could be targeted by Equal Opportunities agencies for discriminatory practices. In Trumpworld they are attacked because they are not discriminating. Covert until now, a recently-issued public memo from the General Services Administration (the body which sources and provides billions of dollars of products and services to and for the federal government – properties and equipment, for instance) specifically excludes any requirement in contracts and agreements with anyone providing such facilities to the government that they not segregate their own eating areas, waiting rooms, transportation and drinking fountains and so on. In other words it will no longer be illegal, say, for a firm renovating a federal property to bus its black and white workers to the site in separate vehicles and use segregated facilities while they work there.  Trump’s executive order ending racial toleration repeals a regulation dating from 1965 which sought to introduce equal opportunities. References to the Holocaust are to be removed from the Pentagon’s website; Trump attacked Senate minority leader Schumer along Jewish/gentile lines. Even the MAGA antisemitism gang seems confused. As long as what’s happening is still not seen for the fascist coup that it is, though, too many people will fail to see the hypocrisy and discrepancy of appearing to fight anti-semitism while at the same time Trump allies himself with, for instance, Charlie Kirk whose promotion on Fox ought to make Fox ‘News’ unwelcome in Trump/MAGA/Musk circles. Illegal deportations of non-whites continue (indeed, may be increasing in number) without the required due process – in contravention of judges’ orders and injunctions. Several of the kidnappings are obviously punishment for the views held by the deportees – despite the fact that they have committed no crime; unidentified government gangs are now snatching non-whites off the streets. And, of course, because of misidentifications – not so far put right. Also increasingly being punished are labour leaders while company after company is removing all traces of even the merest nods to equity from their annual reports and mission statements. LEGAL Many—though not all—now believe that the legal system represents the best, last and only block to the régime. But three things suggest that this is unlikely. In the first place rulings by the Supreme Court have begun to go Trump’s way (on deportations and re-instatement of illegally dismissed staff). Secondly, it seems likely that court rulings not in the MAGA/Trump/Musk cult’s favour will be ignored. Indeed, several already have—like this one on the retention of documents relating to the illegal ending of foreign aid; and this one on deportations. More and more law firms are giving way to Trump’s illegal extortion moves… “Drop cases which I disapprove of or I’ll slap you with an Executive Order”. Or arrest you. Lastly, legislation is passing through Congress which would make it easier for politicians to dismiss adverse judges and their rulings. What may have been the first use of physical violence happened this time last month when members of Musk’s so-called ‘department of government efficiency’ (DOGE) illegally forced their way into the US Institute of Peace (USIP, its website has been suppressed). This ought to please the discredited Erik Prince, who is back at the White House. ENVIRONMENT Frighteningly, Musk/Trump/MAGA has yet to turn its attention to large scale environmental destruction. But they have begun: general protections are going, water regulation is under attack (although you can now expect to use unlimited quantities of water when bathing because Mr Trump does) and coal-fired power stations are being encouraged. The man who is also in favour—when it suits him—of passing authority and decisions to the individual states recently issued an order preventing them from implementing measures to address the climate emergency. The post Notes from the US: Surprised? Maybe not appeared first on Freedom News.

“THERE’S A STRONG TRADITION OF FAR-RIGHT ACTIVISM IN UNIVERSITIES, ANTI-FASCISTS HAVE BEEN TRYING TO COMBAT THAT AND THEY’VE BEEN DEMONISED FOR IT” ~ Mike Finn joins us to talk about Austria’s targeting of anti-fascists barely a month after being forced into a three-party coalition to shut out the far-right, and how “liberal order” governments across Europe often still seem to think of the left as the greater threat. We also talk about the chaos of tariff imposition and its ideological underpinnings, especially in the context of a globalisation project we have never been huge fans of. Back at home, an attempt is being made to pile pressure on Israel-supporting companies with a revived boycott campaign alongside direct action from Youth Demand, and the government has unveiled its latest dystopian brain fart … The post Anarchist News Review: Anti-fascist crackdown, Stock market falls, new BDS and predicting murder appeared first on Freedom News.

CHATTING ABOUT WHAT’S HAPPENING IN ECONOMICS, TECH AND DIRECT ACTION WITH A US TWIST THANKS TO THIS WEEK’S GUEST, JAMES BIRMINGHAM. The death of Robert Paul Wolff earlier this month sees us lose a significant firgure in philosophical anarchism, and someone who inspired James as he refined his political views. The latest direct action in Glasgow reflects a non-linerar form of sabotage that has deep roots in Britain and fw direct parallels in the US, however violent acts are common in other circumstances and we talk a bit about how the methods of military recruitment and training produce people with fewer compunctions about killing. Heading into the back end of the discussion, we ponder the Labour government’s attempts to disinter the corpse of British AI in the face of US tech colonialism – a phenomenon which is as internally potent as it is a method of extracting wealth from client states. The post Anarchist News Review: Glasgow Gaza action, Wolff, soldiers and violent acts, Labour and AI appeared first on Freedom News.

ITEMS DISCUSSED IN THIS PROGRAM: UK FARMING PROTESTS • TRUMP’S DOMESTIC AND WORLD POLITICS • INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ ANTI-COP The post Freedom News Review – November 19 appeared first on Freedom News.