Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Contrasted Revolutions in Southeast Asia

Why we need to remember the dark chapters of US history  Related The most notorious war crime of the Vietnam era France’s ‘crisis with Islam: 200 years of colonial brutality

A reading list

“Syria is associated with war, terrorism and Islamist extremism. Is it possible to find another thread that links it to other diverse radical struggles in other regions and different times? Can Syria become a point of reference or inspiration for class, subaltern, post-colonialist and anti-liberal struggles around the world? For many people this would be almost unimaginable.” Leila al-Shami: “ It's unfortunate that people in general are unable to learn and study, or even be aware of the lessons from Syria because the presentation of Syria in the West has overwhelmingly been channeled through the discourses that Western culture is already comfortable with.” Land, Revolutions and Lessons from Syria

Five Covid-19 Vaccines

“ The domestication of dissent that NGOs encourage will always lead in a different direction, which is the reaffirmation of the status quo.” NGOism Serves the Status Quo

1% own 45% of the world’s personal wealth while nearly 3bn people have little or no wealth at all Related The Great Lockdown hits the Third World

The Slippery Domain of Integration

“What relevance does it have for you or me that a long-dead French thinker believed neoliberalism offered a possible escape hatch from the particular problems of normative power? “Do Not Ask me Who I am”

How Germany’s remembrance culture ignores [is complicit in] war crimes German publisher tells Palestinian staff to quit The hypocrisy of Jürgen Habermas

“[Frantz]  Fanon urged us to invent and make new discoveries and not blindly imitate Europe. The struggle of decolonisation, Fanon tells us, must challenge the dominance of European culture and its claims of universalism without being trapped in a romanticized and fixed past. It is these two alienations that colonised people must overcome in their cultural struggle. Decolonising the mind also means deconstructing Western notions of ‘development’, ‘civilisation’, ‘progress’, ‘universalism’ and ‘modernity’. Such concepts represent what is called a  coloniality of power and knowledge , which means that ideas of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ were conceived in Europe and North America and then implanted in our continents (Africa, Asia and Latin America) in a context of coloniality (Mignolo, 2012). These Eurocentric ideas and culture have reinforced the colonial heritage of land confiscations, resource plunder, as well as domination of ‘other’ peoples in order to ‘civilise’ them.” Generals to t

Race, Labour and Citizenship

Individual or institutional subscription is required to access the article. “The Tutsi notables, who had come to believe in the superiority the Belgians attributed to them, became tools of the colonial administration, responsible for assigning forced labour and punishments. Only Tutsi children had access to education. The colonisers and missionaries unpicked the fabric of the Rwandan nation, even issuing identity cards that recorded the bearer’s ‘ethnicity’. A revolt by smallholder farmers, directed not against the Belgian colonial administration but against Tutsi notables and officials. This ‘social revolution’ was supported by the colonial regime’s top-ranking official. Independence, declared in 1962, was presented as a victory for ordinary people. The Tutsis’ huts were burned, and 300,000 fled into exile. Until 1990 the Belgians supported the Hutus, in the belief that the ethnic majority was also the political majority.  When war broke out on the Ugandan border in October 1990, Belg

The ‘astronomical level of abstention’ is good news! Let’s hope it continues. Marine Le Pen described the record-low voter turnout - a projected 66% abstention - as a "civic disaster". She blamed the results on the government's inability to inspire faith in political institutions. "Let's face it, the results were marked by a torrential and also historic abstention of nearly 70% due to the mistrust of an electoral system, which leaves voters with the feeling that nothing can change, that everything has been confiscated," she said .

The US Never Interferes in Other Countries’ Elections? Related Joe, here is a book on the CIA website Killing Hope - US Military & CIA Interventions Since WWII

Very good and insightful. Euphoria of the Rentier?

A homage to the inspirational women of Raqqa

 تخبط الإصلاحي الذي يحكي انتفاخا صولة الثوري

Two strands of anti-authoritarianism and the legacy of the Gezi uprising

Stigmatised but not silenced

A reading of Vasily Grossman’s two novels

 This is a great article. And it happens that I am in the middle of Charles Tilly’s book  Coercion, Capital and European States - 990-1992. Has China rescued the West?

R.I.P. America, America

Is this shift sufficient to tackle the century’s social and ecological crises? Not nearly. Does it alter essential class relations? On the contrary: it strives to re-legitimize the social order. Is it unambiguous? No: while private finance has been kept out of new domestic infrastructure projects, the US is still driving privatization and deregulation in the global south and intensifying its new Cold War on China. Will it propel a new phase of economic expansion? I doubt it, due to the sheer scale of global overaccumulation and the fade-out of the industrialization bonanza. 1979 in Reverse

Riz Ahmed on ‘toxic portrayal’ of Muslims on screen

Is he really trying to redistribute wealth to workers? ‘Redistribute’, not ‘distribute’ implies that wealth was once distributed to workers. No, what happened between 1945 until the ascent of the neoliberal form of capitalism was a social contract based on compromise between the state, capital and trade unions.  Are the profits too high? I don’t think so. One of the reasons we are in an “era of anaemic economic growth” is that the low rate of profit/of return to capital is not high enough to incentivise the capitalists to invest. Thus some governments are intervening and pouring money into the economy and corporations as well as giving financial support to families and individuals, especially because of the pandemic. As Cédric Duran put it: “  Is this shift sufficient to tackle the century’s social and ecological crises? Not nearly. Does it alter essential class relations? On the contrary: it strives to re-legitimize the social order. Is it unambiguous? No: while private finance has be

The Erasure of Anti-Colonial Resistance and Social Theory

Showcasing the Best of Working-Class Cinema

Hyper-capitalist development, privatisation, affordable housing, “surprising poverty.” That’s the opinion the Financial Times nowadays publishes from time to time. You don’t find such a language on the FT a few years ago. When I started reading the paper in early 2000s it was all about “liberal democracy” and “free market democracy.” Even after 2008/09 crisis columnists such Martin Wolf continued his defence of “free market liberal democracy” while other pages of FT were evoking Karl Marx. The word ‘capitalism’ is now everywhere. Now some, the FT for example, think that such a form of capitalism has to be put on a leash, especially after the pandemic and the disaster, the cronyism, the corruption, etc. that have become too obvious and even worrying for some liberals. London’s Sky Pool Related Here is what the  Financial Times , a supporter of neoliberal capitalism of last 40 years is suggesting to reform a system in a deep crisis and thus preserve it: "Radical reforms — reversing

These Muslims coming to our country, provoking us in killing them. These Muslims really hate us, for they want to take what is ours: our property, freedom, values and culture.  Will four Muslims living in a Western city get at least the same media coverage of one white person from France? Muslim family killed in premeditated truck attack

Via Michael Roberts Notice that the two leading states of the neoliberal form of capitalism, US and UK, have the lowest corporate income tax.

Google search results suggest Palestinian keffiyeh ‘a symbol of terrorism’

The German philosopher Jürgen  Habermas is right to reject the UAE’s prize. But, like the German establishment – Merkel’s and Heiko Mass’ support of the last Israeli warfare on Gaza – Habermas has been complicit. It’s a German value, not different from the American or the British historical values. This article , for example, does  not refer to the hypocrisy of Habermas who has been  in Israel, spoke there publicly and kept silent on Israeli occupation and the state’s crimes .

New Atheism, Old Empire

The Women of Raqqa Are Building Their Future

“Because good causes do not sell themselves but rather have to be sold, aid agencies have developed considerable marketing prowess…they will advertise if not embellish the tragedy in order to tap into the guilt of the rich.”  Agency self-promotion is part of the humanitarian aid business model, although there is a fine line between utilitarianism and exploitation. Benefiting from the Misery of Others

“Foreign policy=imperialism” Foreign policy, who cares?