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Showing posts from November 29, 2020

The ‘Sobbing Superpower’

“ From the outside, it must seem strange to watch the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world choose its path by means of moral scolding and sanctimonious posturing, both positions washed in on millions of litres of high-octane American tears. This must be particularly annoying when you are also aware that whatever this country chooses to do will have enormous consequences for your nation and your life, and that your tears will count for nothing in our majestic deliberations. I feel your pain. Really, I do. I weep.” Make them cry

I Refuse to Condemn

A story that reminds me how I was brave under a police state, how I confronted it, got tortured, etc and became a coward in “liberal democracy.” “My mother taught me we are far from the rational creatures we think we are, and that a loaf of bread will bring two people closer than all the world's philosophies combined. She taught that community is not an intellectual construct, but a performative one. The refusal to condemn is not simply to refuse the ‘good Muslim’ label - it is a resistance of our yearning to be seen by Power. To refuse to condemn, then, is to face the fear of mobilising on our own terms. There is no bravery without cowardice, no strength without vulnerability, no wisdom without ignorance. Insofar as the two drives of the world stand at their strongest - that is, capitalism and nationalism - our intentions will always waver between our desire to please God and Power. Why I no longer play ‘the good Muslim’

Religion

This was written in 1909: We must  know how  to combat religion, and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith and religion among the masses  in a materialist way . The combating of religion cannot be confined to abstract ideological preaching, and it must not be reduced to such preaching. It must be linked up with the concrete practice of the class movement, which aims at eliminating the social roots of religion. Why does religion retain its hold on the backward sections of the town proletariat, on broad sections of the semi-proletariat, and on the mass of the peasantry? Because of the ignorance of the people, replies the bourgeois progressist, the radical or the bourgeois materialist. And so: “Down with religion and long live atheism; the dissemination of atheist views is our chief task!” The Marxist says that this is not true, that it is a superficial view, the view of narrow bourgeois uplifters. It does not explain the roots of religion profoundly enough; it explains th

The Market and Freedom of Expression

A few years ago I was told not to talk politics in class. I left my job. In my current job I am very cautious. I had lived under a police state, and in a “free market democracy” you don’t fear the state, but you fear loosing your job. You may be even hated by others for expressing your non-conformist views. “Social activism could cost you valuable career currency”