NM's blog

By Richard Seymour At the origin of modern political conspiracism lies a myth of subversive power, first fabricated in response to the French revolution. In 1797, two books appeared simultaneously. These were Abbé Barruel’s five-volume Mémoire pour servietterr à l’histoire du jacobinisme, and John Robison’s Proofs of a conspiracy against all the religions and governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati and Reading Societies. Both attributed the revolution to a centuries-old conspiracy of secret societies (from the Order of Templars to the Freemasons), responsible for an assault on religion and political authority. This theory of totalitarianism avanta la laettere is the template from which modern conspiracy narratives – from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the ‘New World Order’ – are cut. Conspiracy theory today, says Fredric Jameson, is an attempt to represent the ‘social totality’ at the level of fantasy in a way that evades ‘liberal an...

Against amnesia While many cheer and clap in and for the World Cup and while some were outraged by the ‘banning’ of alcoholic in stadiums, let’s not forget the criminal role of Qatar and Qatar-based media and business entrepreneurs in the destruction of Syria.  “Rather than using ‘static categories’ (Fujii, 2009, p. 8), such as ‘sectarianism’ and ‘militarism’, I examined processes of ‘sectarianisation’ and ‘militarisation’ to adequately analyse dynamic socio-political phenomena. In dynamic settings (such as genocide, social movement, revolution, and civil war), static categories cannot fully capture actors' shifting relations, behaviours, discourses, perspectives, motives and identifications, nor can they capture the endogenous sources of changes.” Boundary making and sectarianisation in Syria 2011-2013

Trump “was elected fair and square,” states Hamid Dabashi. I disagree. He was not. Neither were the ones before him. Leaving aside the electoral college’s role, how is it fair election when just to be a mayor of New York you need to be backed by millionaires and billionaires? The power of the different lobbies with heavy money, of individuals and corporations, and the corporate media shapes many outcomes. Money matters a great deal in elections,” Adam Bonica from Standford University said. It’s just that, he believes, when scientists go looking for its impacts, they tend to look in the wrong places. If you focus on general elections, he said, your view is going to be obscured by the fact that 80 to 90 percent of congressional races have outcomes that are effectively predetermined by the district’s partisan makeup — and the people that win those elections are still given (and then must spend) ridiculous sums of money because, again, big donors like to curry favor with candidates they k...