How do small groups of revolutionaries convince the majority of ordinary people of the need for revolution and persuade them to take the steps necessary to bring it about? It is the central question for every group that considers itself revolutionary. Answers vary among and often within the groups: some seek to gain the confidence […]
War Against War, Part II: The World is My Country
Long Live Peace–Richard Muller and the Revolutionary Shop Stewards There were already police informers at the dance-hall so they decamped to a pub in Sophienstrasse. There, a man with thick round glasses and a toothbrush moustache proposed that they take action the following day, when Karl Liebknecht – Germany’s most famous anti-war campaigner – would […]
War Against War
As I’ve written previously, 2018 is the hundredth anniversary of the end of the bloody First World War. It’s received a good deal of attention in the media. Not surprisingly, one aspect of the war has received little attention–the people and organizations that opposed the conflict and took actions to stop it. “Moreover, this history […]
Self-organized Yellow Vest Protest Movement Exposes Inequality and Hollowness of French Regime
Ignored by Macron, distorted by the media, courted by the Right, snubbed by the Left, the self-organized mass movement known as the Yellow Vests is seriously challenging the political and economic order in France. In Paris, on the morning of Saturday Dec. 1, as thousands of self-organized Yellow Vest protestors attempted to gather to express […]
Border Radios
With fears of an invasion which would cause disease outbreaks, school over-crowding, crime and wage deflation, the borders of California were sealed in 1936. In the preceding years of Depression California had already absorbed hundreds of thousands of migrants. Officers of the Los Anglese Police Department were deployed to reinforce state police at common points […]
The Infrapolitics of Voting in the South
Whatever the arguments against voting and participation in electoral politics – and they are sound arguments; the great sucking sound of the Democratic Party absorbing and digesting social movements is real – in certain circumstances struggles over voting reflect larger social tensions and conflicts beyond the act of voting itself. Such is the case in […]