Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“In most Western media coverage, there is a near-pathological tendency to portray him as a marginalized figure whose political resurrection reflects the ‘populist’ appeal of his brash and personalist style. But Prabowo’s ascent to the presidency can only be understood through a properly historicized analysis.” Line of succession

“  The single most important factor is the dramatic breakdown of upward social mobility in the UK .”

 I think this is worth watching. Ethos, a Turkish TV series

" Men  make  their  own history, but they do  not  make it as they please; they do  not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from  the  past." Almost the complete opposite of fascism

"Late in life, William F. Buckley made a confession to Corey Robin. Capitalism is "boring," said the founding father of the American right. "Devoting your life to it," as conservatives do, "is horrifying if only because it's so repetitious. It's like sex." With this unlikely conversation began Robin's decade-long foray into the conservative mind. What is conservatism, and what's truly at stake for its proponents? If capitalism bores them, what excites them? Tracing conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution, Robin argues that the right is fundamentally inspired by a hostility to emancipating the lower orders. Some conservatives endorse the free market, others oppose it. Some criticize the state, others celebrate it. Underlying these differences is the impulse to defend power and privilege against movements demanding freedom and equality. Despite their opposition to these movements, conservatives favor...

Iran 1979-2018 "The obvious difference between present-day populism in the United States and in Iran is that while the former is a threat to the whole planet, the latter is a detriment mostly to its own people." —Ervand Abrahamian, a historian Iran: Past and Present

 “They can now see that the reformist leaders are in benevolent accord with the bourgeoisie, and the worst of it is that these masses have now lost their faith not only in the reformist leaders, but in socialism as a whole. These masses of disappointed socialist sympathizers are joined by large circles of the proletariat, of workers who have given up their faith not only in socialism, but also in their own class.” — Clara Zetkin Is there fascism in Brazil?

Once it lost the PCF as the mediating force to represent its grievances, the French working class fulfilled Herbert Marcuse’s  1972 warning  that “The  immediate ex pression of the opinion and will of the workers, farmers, neighbors—in brief, the people—is not, per se, progressive and a force of social change: it may be the opposite.”  When The Communist Party stopped a French revolution

Should we vote?  "Fundamentally, we should be indifferent to this demand, coming from the state and its organisations. By now, we should all know that to vote is but to reinforce one of the conservative orientations of the existing system. Brought back to its real contents, the vote is a ceremony that depoliticises peoples..." — Alain Badieu

What the American Left Doesn't Understand About Fascism

This is an  edited extract from Neil Davidson's forthcoming book  Peregrine Worsthorne, then associate editor and columnist with the ultraconservative London Daily Telegraph wrote in response to a survey conducted on the centenary of Marx’s death: “Being very conscious of the existence of the class-war, I have to admit to being very influenced by Marx without whose writings this idea would never have become so all pervasive. ... I am a Tory-Marxist, in the sense of accepting the need to take sides in the class war, even if, so to speak, on the other side.” More recently, Niall Ferguson has commented in an interview: “Something that’s seldom appreciated about me...is that I am in sympathy with a great deal of what Marx wrote, except that I’m on the side of the bourgeoisie.” However–and where conservatism becomes interesting–in so far as it supports the existence of capitalism, it embodies a contradiction which has from time to time produced intellectually fruitful result...

Erdogan is not Chavez, but one should remember how a few of the Guardian columnists vilified Chavez using the same jargon of populism and authoritarianism .

Turkey coup Background and context: Liberalized Islam, Post-Sufis, and the Military in Turkey   Coup Aftermath Between Neo-Fascism and Bonapartism