A review of TO BEGIN THE WORLD OVER AGAIN: How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe (2019) by Matthew Lockwood. “He finds it at the root of a long list of ills, including increasing authoritarianism within Britain itself and the wider British Empire, the failure of Irish, Indian and Peruvian movements against imperialism, the Russian…
Category: terror
“Why the Turkish Invasion Matters”
“The invasion of Rojava is taking place against a global backdrop of intensifying nationalism, strife, and authoritarianism. We have to understand this as a single battle in a much larger conflict.”
Jeffrey Ostler: “The Great Fear of 1776”
“It may be unsettling to consider the creation of the United States as a genocidal project, but the experiences of many of eastern North America’s Indigenous people led them to think of it in precisely this way. Examining their reasons does not necessarily mandate agreement with their conclusion, but it does ask us to take…
Luis Hessel: “Women and a revolution betrayed: Nicaragua”
‘During the revolution we knew situations that we disapproved of, but we were not aware of the damage they would eventually cause by not correcting them in time. The “defence” of the Revolution, the early and fierce attack of the US, the economic and military blockade, the formation of the counterrevolution, the emotional commitment and…
Crimethinc: “Against the Logic of the Guillotine: Why the Paris Commune Burned the Guillotine—and we should too”
“Even when we are engaged in pitched physical struggle with our adversaries, we ought to maintain a profound faith in their potential, for we hope to live in different relations with them one day. As aspiring revolutionaries, this hope is our most precious resource, the foundation of everything we do. If revolutionary change is to…
Samuel Farber: “The Russian Revolution Reconsidered”
“S. A. Smith’s book Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis 1890-1928 … sets out to explain how the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, inspired by a radical democratic and egalitarian spirit, degenerated into the Stalinist totalitarian regime.”
Alain Badiou interviewed: “We are at a new beginning of Marxist thought”
“We can only fall back on Lenin’s maxim: ‘Either revolution – I would say, communist politics – will prevent war, or war will provoke revolution.’ Let’s hope for the first alternative, but time is pressing…”
“50 Years later, Troubles still Cast ‘Huge Shadow’ over Northern Ireland”
The Irish Troubles (1968-98)
The tragedy of revolution is that liberation conspires with terror.
Watching the other day Nicholas Hytner’s promenade staging of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, I heard Cassius say: “Men at some time were masters of their fates./The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars./But in ourselves, that we are underlings” (1.2.140-3). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToqgxNizM-I The reference to fate reminded me of a recently published essay. Since I have…
Miguel-Anxo Murado: “The End of ETA’s Era”
“ETA was not born as an armed resistance group that turned to terrorism, but as a cultural enterprise to save the Basque language and its people’s customs (its name is an acronym of the Basque words for “Basque Homeland and Liberty”). It was founded in 1958 by a group of dangerously idealistic students, many of…