Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The Brexiteers assert that the myth has been enacted (‘We killed the dragon!’). The Remainers deny the myth (‘You lied, there was no dragon!’). This makes it an argument about myth, and here the Brexiteers are on stronger ground. Every myth has two facets, the story that is told to make events or states of being comprehensible to people, and the underlying events or states that provide the material for the myth; a stylised, simplified dramatisation of change, and the change that demands dramatisation. Reckless, hypocritical, deluded, mendacious and chauvinist as they are, the Brexiteers found a real set of circumstances, and misapplied a popular, off-the-shelf folk myth to it. By simply rejecting the Brexiteer myth, without offering another, better one, the Remainers appear to deny the underlying changes. ‘Look,’ the Leave voter says to the Remainer. ‘Look at the abandoned coal mines, the demolished factories, the empty fishing harbours. Look at the old people lying sick on trolleys i...

Social progress! Homeless teens in England

Language oppression in France

 "The British bourgeoisie do not spare any money as far as this institution is concerned, and that is as it should be." — Lenin,  impressed by the British state's commitment to the British Museum library. London's role in the Russian revolution

By 1900 the Victorian empire upon which the sun never set included 11 million square miles and 390 million people. In the course of European expansion, the Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations were effectively eliminated, Indian and Islamic civilizations along with Africa were subjugated, and China was penetrated and subordinated to Western influence. Only Russian, Japanese, and Ethiopian civilizations, all three governed by highly centralized imperial authorities, were able to resist the onslaught of the West and maintain meaning­ful independent existence. For four hundred years intercivilizational relations consisted of the subordination of other societies to Western civilization. The causes of this unique and dramatic development included the social structure and class relations of the West, the rise of cities and commerce, the relative dispersion of power in Western societies between estates and monarchs and secular and religious authorities, the emerging sense of national cons...

Biographies and introductions to Marx Free to download

What imeprialism reproduces while dominating a local uncivilized population " Max Ginsburg painted Torture Abu Ghraib (oil, 46×32) from life, except for the dog, which came from one of the photographs of prisoners tortured by American soldiers. The models for the figures are wearing costumes from an Army-Navy store. Ginsburg was influenced, while he was working, by Caravaggio’s Flagellation of Christ. 2007. Iraqis will never forget. My students have no idea about this." — T. Swedenburg, November 2018

The limits of anti-racism

IS fighters in Iraqi prisons

On the 9th of March Noske ordered the Reichswehr to shoot on the spot anything that moved. Then the butchers set about their work. While the facades of houses collapsed under the fire of machine guns and mortars and whole families were buried under the rubble, the proletarians were herded with live fire and bayonets into the schoolyards and stables. Alone, by twos, by threes, in groups: against the wall and shot. At night on the river Spree, the revolvers touched workers’ temples and shot. For weeks the Spree washed up corpses onto the shore. Again and again: “A Spartacist nest has been dug up” and eight human beings shot, thirty shot, thirty four shot, and so it went hour by hour, day and night. The German revolution, 100 years ago

UK Those who now talk about the atrocities of the First World War and patriotism are the same people who would tell you "get over it" and "you have a chip on your shoulder" when you mention the British empire and neo-colonialism.

The First World War in Syria and Palestine