How We Fight

Cards on the table time:  I am not a pacifist.  I don’t believe that violence is never an option.  I’m opposed to violence and cruelty on general principles, but I don’t think general principles really mean that much, especially when shit is starting to go down.  I always reject aggressive …

Detoxifying Fascism

Michael Shermer, in his book Why People Believe Weird Things, wrote about his workmanlike history of appearing on television chat shows to debate neo-Nazis and Holocaust revisionists. Some of his colleagues, he wrote — even ones with impeccable antifascist credentials — told him he was not just wasting his time, but …

Human Too

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice,” Bishop Desmond Tutu told us in 1984, the year I first manifested what might be called a political consciousness, “you have chosen the side of injustice.” Injustice, cruelty, oppression, and inequality refuse the position of neutrality; they will not recognize a central …

People of Every Land, How Can You Not Be Roused?

Today was the first day of the Democratic Socialists of America’s national convention.  It’s taking place in my own city of Chicago, and it’s the first convention since the DSA experienced unprecedented growth in the wake of the Bernie Sanders campaign and the election of Donald Trump.  In addition, it’s …