Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A bipartisan sampling of the world’s greatest perpetrators and enablers of political violence has rushed to condemn political violence following the   shooting attempt   on former President Donald Trump To say that “political violence” has “no place” in a society organized by political violence at home and abroad is to acquiesce to the normalization of that violence, so long as it is state and capitalist monopolized.

Marco D’Eramo is excellent as usual. ‘It’s been a good day; I never dine better, I never sleep so peacefully, as when I have sullied myself sufficiently with what idiots call crimes.’ —Marquis de Sade, La philosophie dans le boudoir We are growing habituated to the savagery, day by day. Then we wonder how the Germans could have ignored the genocide that was being perpetrated all round them. This is a close cousin of greenwashing: we supply the bombs and we feel sorry for their victims. Call it compassionate bombing. [See, for instance, David Cameron’s and Emmanuel Macron’s tears] It is little wonder that the global South finds the West hypocritical. Denial is exercised when actions can only be performed if we deny to ourselves that we are doing them. Hypocrisy becomes all the more necessary when it comes to public opinion – its growth has been a fruit of the formation of public opinion , and has become an indispensable tool of politics. Perhaps today Westerners, and not only Germans, s...

Fuelling political violence across the continent

The Syrian Revolution Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death