Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“There was this vagueness about the word that just seemed to be not just corruptible but almost inherently corrupt,” says the writer, film-maker and activist. “I was attracted to words like liberation, emancipation, equality, revolution, socialism. Any other word would get my pulse going more than democracy.” For her, democracy was a word imperial America used to sell free markets and push its agenda. Writer and film maker  Astra Taylor on US democracy, socialism and revolution

This piece suffers from some problems, in particular the narrow bourgeois definition of democracy in regards to the "Tunisian exception", but it is worth a read, especially the first part of it that deals with the historical background. Failed dream of political Islam 

Before the next attack Once examined, the terms 'British values' and 'Western values' unspool into a sequence of connotative links connecting territory, birth and culture in a roughly 'historicist' manner.  It is a given that 'the West', for example, is not a geographical entity so much as a historically produced caste of national states comprising Europe and its colonies, from North America to Australasia.  This white West is connected to its supposed values through the crucial vector of culture.  Thus, it just so happens that white people are the legatees of a particular level of civilizational and cultural development that give them these unique, priceless assets such as democracy.  This necessitates forgetting how passionately and often violently democracy was resisted within the social formations of 'the West', as well as how much modern democratic revolutions owed to the decidedly 'non-Western' Haiti.  But the link between terri

"We cannot ignore that war if we want to understand the end of this revolutionary democracy, and those who draw a straight line from October 1917 to Stalinism invariably ignore or downplay the impact of that bloody conflict." The Revolutionary Democracy of 1917

"The problem of pseudo-choice also demonstrates the limitations of the standard liberal attitude towards Muslim women who wear the veil: acceptable if it is their own free choice rather than imposed on them by husbands or family. However, the moment a woman dons the veil as the result of personal choice, its meaning changes completely: it is no longer a sign of belonging to the Muslim community, but an expression of idiosyncratic individuality. In other words, a choice is always a meta-choice, a choice of the modality of the choice itself: it is only the woman who does not choose to wear a veil that effectively chooses a choice. This is why, in our secular liberal democracies, people who maintain a substantial religious allegiance are in a subordinate position: their faith is ‘tolerated’ as their own personal choice, but the moment they present it publicly as what it is for them—a matter of substantial belonging—they stand accused of ‘fundamentalism’. Plainly, the ‘subject of fre

No one knows for certain how many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago. Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again. The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in the United States as a “blunder,” or even a “colossal mistake.” It was a crime. Those who perpetrated it are still at large. Some of them have even been rehabilitated thanks to the horrors of Trumpism and a mostly amnesiac citizenry. (A year ago, I watched Mr. Bush on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” dancing and talking about his paintings.) The pundits and “experts” who sold us the war still go on doing what they do. I never thought that Iraq could ever be worse than it was during Saddam’s reign, but that is what America’s war achieved and bequeathed to Iraqis. "Fifteen Year Ago, America Destroyed My Country" Sinaan Antoon in The New York Times

"Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but Democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit." Aldous Huxley,  Brave New World Revisited , published 1958

"Human rights concerns are fine when they can be used as an ideological weapon to undermine enemies or to restore popular faith in the nobility of the state. But they are not to interfere with serious matters, such as dispersing and crushing the rascal multitude forming associations against the interests of the men of best quality." Noam Chomsky,  Deterring Democracy  (1991)

Britain Michael Roberts reporting from a Labour Party conference Models of public ownership and   Why did Labour lose in 1983? "In a way, the myth that it was the 'hard Left' that cost Labour the election is an inverted form of Bennite optimism. It lays all the emphasis upon ideology, agency and leadership, albeit in a thin, polemical way that asks no searching questions of the Labour Right and Centre, long its dominant forces. But, then as now, agency and leadership turn out to depend on far bigger historical processes. And it's their obliviousness to those larger processes that leaves Corbyn's right-wing critics out in the cold, fantasising about re-staging the battles of the 1980s."

"European countries claim to be at Tunisia's side, yet for years have failed to deliver on that promise. Instead, they prioritise their own  national interests, securing access to Tunisia's lucrative market and  workforce without reciprocating in kind." What a discovery!  January 1978 a general strike was drowned in blood. In December-January 1983-4 the "Bread Riots" also brutally suppressed with more than 80 deaths. December 2010-January 2014 an uprising was met with the police more than 80 people.  Now we are in January 2018 and protests have erupted. The local bourgeoisie with International capital and financial institutions (imperialism's "peaceful" tools) keep countries like Tunisia under their heel. You're on your own

Assessing Trotsky

Lack of democracy, Lack of solidarity,  Lack of a bold approach to the capitalist state  From today’s perspective, it can easily be argued that Syriza’s attempt at achieving real change not only failed miserably; it also inflicted a major blow to the Left’s credibility on an international scale and " Despite election promises to end military cooperation with Israel, Tsipras maintained and even expanded this cooperation. Tsipras has referred to Jerusalem as “Israel’s capital”, something not even the United States have dared to do and, needless to say, a slap in the face of millions of Greeks in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. The architect of Syriza’s foreign policy, the “left nationalist” foreign minister Nikos Kotzias, is a true practitioner of Henry Kissinger’s  realpolitik , constructing strategic alliances with the Israel state, the Egyptian junta and any other regional player perceived to be against Turkey, no matter how vicious and ruthless..." "

Louis Proyect: "All me cynical but my take on the middle-class protests in Venezuela is that it is less interested in democracy than it is in ratcheting the Gini coefficient back towards one. I remain a committed Marxist but when it comes to Maduro versus Leopoldo Lopez, the opposition leader who was a key figure in the 2002 coup attempt, I’ll stick with Maduro—warts and all. Or I should say Boligarchs and all."  Yes, but also have to be very critical of Maduro.

" In the last twenty-five years (since when, in February 1991, a ship loaded with 26,000 Albanians entered the port of Brindisi) we have known that the great migration had began. Two paths were possible at that point. Opening its borders, starting a global distribution of resources, investing its wealth in a long lasting process of reception and integration of young people coming massively from the sea. This was the first path. The second was to reject, to dissuade, to make almost impossible the easy journey from Northern Africa to the coasts of Spain Italy and Greece. Europeans have chosen the second way, and they are daily drowning uncountable children and women and men. Auschwitz on the beach." Is Bifo being harsh on the "civilised Europeans"?

"Syria and the crisis of global liberal democracy"

The legacy of Vladimir Lenin

The liberals of the Guardian are in arms defending "democracy" and "liberties" against the state reaction. Simon Jenkins, for example, is right that deployment of tanks and soldiers will not prevent "terrorism", but he is, like most of the liberals, not to speak of the right-wing media in general, fails, intentionally or unintentionally, to tackle the real sources of acts of violence like the one which took place in Manchester a couple of days ago. Jenkins : " Terror bombing is the one foolproof weapon of the weak against the strong. We cannot screen every public space or search every pedestrian. There is nothing new to this. The car bomb and the terror grenade are as old as  Conrad’s secret agent , and his “pestilence” which stalks the street with death in its pocket." Agreed. Jenkins: "All we can hope to do is enter into the minds of the bombers and their associates to prevent them at source. That is essentially a covert activity, an

A BBC headline: " Who is to blame for violenec in the name of Islam?" (Episode 1: The Battle for Al-Azhar) Who is to blame for violence in the name of "democracy" and "freedom"?

The "unconditional solidarity" of the left with Chavismo

London I have received an email saying that the attack, which took place yesterday, was "an attack on the values of democracy and openess".  Theresa May, the PM, has said that "the attacker was inspired by the Islamic faith". The intellectual disability (or the fundamentalist discourse) of some people are just disgusting. Has the PM said something else? Yes, she spoke about "the oldest democracy", "freedom", "forces of evil", and some other things of that nature. The ones we heard after the previous attacks. Update: the Prime Minister also said that "we saw the worst of humanity." She is not pretending to be ignorant; she is just a representative of an imperialist and chauvinistic regime for which the rhetoric of "humanity" is a PR for public comsumption. More than 200 people just drowned in the Miditerranean