Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“The myth of ‘Western values’ died in Gaza. Myths do not die. They are debunked or refuted. They often persist for a long time and are adaped to new contexts; they are part of a belief system. I remember well after Iraq and Afghanistan how people invoked ‘democracy’ and ‘Western values’ in a way not dissimilar from what the Bushes and Blairs and later the Obamas and Bidens articulated them. Recently, a student at the ‘best’ European university in social sciences told me that the myth of sectarianism in the Middle Ast is still being repeated. A white liberal, ‘MeeToo’ English woman what Russia was doing in Ukraine was ‘a Russian thing. It's in their history’. Zelenskyy's recent rise in ‘popularity’ among many is built upon ‘the myth of Western values’ defending Ukraine against an authoritarian Russian regime. Myths are strentghned through amnesia. History is brushed aside and Pavlovian conditioning is enforced.  We should remember how the emergence of ISIS was analysed. How ...

“Inspired by critical postcolonial/decolonial studies and the interdisciplinary perspectives of social movement theories, gender studies, Islamic studies, and critical race theory, it problematizes and demystifies the many faces of the myth of ‘cultural exceptionalism’ in the context of contemporary MENA social movements.” Unfinished Social Movements

Domenico Losurdo’s new book I have read and I recommend Losurdo’s  Liberalism – A Counter-History . A book praised even by the Financial Times Related Losurdo on social-political struggle Interview on opendemocracy

“ Ms. Manthay and the other uninvited settlers are part of the Landless Workers Movement, perhaps the world’s largest Marxist-inspired movement operating within a democracy and, after 40 years of sometimes bloody land occupations, a major political, social and cultural force in Brazil. The movement, led by activists who call themselves militants, organizes hundreds of thousands of Brazil’s poor to take unused land from the rich, settle it and farm it, often as large collectives. They are reversing, they say, the deep inequality fed by Brazil’s historically uneven distribution of land. While leftists embrace the cause — the movement’s red hats depicting a couple holding a machete aloft have become commonplace at hipster bars — many Brazilians view it as communist and criminal. That has created a dilemma for the new leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a longtime movement supporter who is now trying to build bridges in Congress and the powerful agriculture industry. Across L...

A must read A Gramscian Perspective

  On Uprisings, Popular Protests, and Resistance

 The Power of the Fragile

To those interested in Marxism in the Arab countries East, and specifically Egypt. I would seminal works on the subject by Tareq Y. Ismael: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Iraq The Communist Movement in Egypt 1920-1988 The Arab Left The Sudanese Communist Party Essential Readings on Marxism and the Left in Egypt

‘Defund the Police,’Cancel Rent’ Related How Defund and Disband Became the Demands Books about the power of protest