Johann Hari – Depressed? Anxious? Blame Neoliberalism.

Link to an article by Johann Hari:

“Depressed? Anxious? Blame Neoliberalism.”

 

I very much question why this writer singles out neoliberalism, specifically, rather than capitalism, generally.  There is nothing in the article to suggest that only neoliberalism — but no other forms of liberalism or capitalism — is problematic.  While he has established that eliminating neoliberalism is necessary, he has failed to establish that doing so is sufficient.

 

Bonus link: “Lacan  Between  Cultural  Studies  And  Cognitivism”

Torkil Lauesen & Gabriel Kuhn – Radical Theory and Academia

Link to an article by Torkil Lauesen & Gabriel Kuhn:

“Radical Theory and Academia: A Thorny Relationship”

 

Bonus links: The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men and “The Professor’s Literature of Protest” and “The Forms of Capital” and Crowds and Party and “Lacan  Between  Cultural  Studies  And  Cognitivism” and “Cracks in the Wall of Capitalism: The Zapatistas and the Struggle to Decolonize Science”

Rebecca Burns – The Troubled History of the Fund Tapped for Rahm’s Controversial Cop Academy

Link to an article by Rebecca Burns:

“INVESTIGATION: The Troubled History of the Fund Tapped for Rahm’s Controversial Cop Academy”

 

Bonus links: “The Left Hand and the Right Hand of the State” and “Why Are Police the Priority in Rahm’s Chicago?” and “Corporate Welfare Fails to Deliver the Jobs: The Sad Case of Start-Up NY” and The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation

William S. Burroughs Quote

“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”

William S. Burroughs, Painting & Guns

 

Bonus links: “The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights (Reprise)” (“The political principle at stake is simple: to deny the state the monopoly of armed force, and, obversely, to empower the citizenry, to distribute the power of armed force among the people.”) and Links to books about black armed resistance in freedom movements

Mike Beggs – The Keynesian Counterrevolution

Link to a book review by Mike Beggs of In the Long Run We Are All Dead: Keynesianism, Political Economy and Revolution by Geoff Mann:

“The Keynesian Counterrevolution”

 

Bonus links: “The Left in a Foxhole?” (excerpt from Mann’s book) and “Liberalism: An Ideology of Exclusion” (this article rebuts Begg’s discussion of classical and modern liberalism, indicating that the archetype of all forms of liberalism is a politics of exclusion; in this case, merely elevating “the bourgeois and the intelligentsia” above others) and War and Revolution. Rethinking the Twentieth Century and Domenico Losurdo on Two Epidemics and “The Class Struggle on Wall Street” (“The problem [with Keynesianism] is, the rentier doesn’t want to be euthanized. Capital is not going to say, ‘okay, our work here is done, goodbye.’ So to maintain the social position of money-owners, you have to create an artificial shortage of money, and that’s another way of looking at the job of the central bank.”)

 

Bonus quote:

“class struggle is ultimately the struggle for the meaning of society ‘as such’, the struggle for which of the two classes will impose itself as the stand-in for society ‘as such’, thereby degrading its other into the stand-in for the non-Social (the destruction of, the threat to, society).

“To simplify: Does the masses’ struggle for emancipation pose a threat to civilization as such, since civilization can thrive only in a hierarchical social order?  Or is it that the ruling class is a parasite threatening to drag society into self-destruction, so that the only alternative to socialism is barbarism?”  Slavoj Žižek, Afterword to Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin From 1917 (pp. 209-10).

Adam Johnson – DSA-Endorsed Judge’s Bail Reforms Prompt Media Attack

Link to an article by Adam Johnson:

“DSA-Endorsed Judge’s Bail Reforms Prompt Media Attack”

 

Bonus links: …And the Poor Get Prison, The Five Filters of the Mass Media Machine, “Liberal Philadelphia DA is Impeached by Pennsylvania House; What Are the Allegations?” and “Meet Larry Krasner”

Rob Urie – Why ‘Russian Meddling’ is a Trojan Horse

“A political Left with a brain would be busy thinking through strategy for when the internet becomes completely unusable for organizing and communication. The unifying factor in the initial ‘fake news’ purge was criticism of Hillary Clinton. Print media, a once viable alternative, has been all but destroyed by the move to the internet. This capability needs to be rebuilt.”

Rob Urie, “Why ‘Russian Meddling’ is a Trojan Horse”

Timothy Bryar – Preferring Zizek’s Bartleby Politics

Link to an article by Timothy Bryar:

“Preferring Zizek’s Bartleby Politics,” International Journal of Žižek Studies, Vol 12, No 1 (2018).

 

Bonus links: Crowds and Party“Rimbaud’s Systematic Derangement of the Senses” and “John Cage’s Queer Silence or How to Avoid Making Matters Worse”

Bonus quotes: “When the self ceases to exist, the world exists.” Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Finger and the Moon: Zen Teachings and Koans and “The Sunrise Movement seems much more positive to me. I love that [students] are not going to school and are calling for people to not go to school. I think that’s awesome. Because young people’s job . . . is to reproduce the society that exists. So if they say, ‘No, we’re not going to do that, we have to stop right now. Reproducing this society is the thing we can’t do…’ To step back and say, ‘No, we want to do something different’ — I think that’s really powerful and very smart on them.” Malcolm Harris, “The Millennial Condition: History, Revolution, and Generational Analysis”

George Eliason – Untying PropOrNot: Who They Are

Link to an article by George Eliason:

“Untying PropOrNot: Who They Are … and a Look at 2017’s Biggest Fake News Story”

 

This article is rather poorly written, full of self-congratulatory statements, gossipy digressions, and poor organization.  It also succumbs to the philosophically naive belief that “objective” journalism free from ideology is possible — as Rex Butler put it, “it is not simply a matter of seeing which account of reality best matches the ‘facts’, with the one that is closest being the least biased and therefore the best. As soon as the facts are determined, we have already — whether we know it or not — made our choice; we are already within one ideological system or another. The real dispute has already taken place over what is to count as the facts, which facts are relevant, and so on.”  But in spite of all that, the article does point to useful information about the likely source of this neo-McCarthyist campaign within the Clinton political camp.

Bonus links: “Washington Post Reporter Spreads Blacklist of Independent Journalist Sites” and “Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies” and “New York Times Cashes in on Facebook’s News Censorship” and “From Facebook to Policebook” and “The New Blacklist”