Med anledning av den av forskningen om CIA-vänstern mycket uppmärksammade Gloria Steinems bortgång gjorde viktiga kanalen Due Dissidence ett avsnitt om hur CIA enligt deras uppfattning fortsätter styra vänstern i USA idag. Diskussionen fokuserar på en bisarr socialismkonferens i Chicago, som de i rubriken betecknar som en “CIA-Coded Clown Show”.
Det kanske är litet oklart i vilken utsträckning och på vilket sätt just CIA ligger bakom och stöder även dagens märkliga, specifika former av kulturvänster; dess påverkan mer antas än bevisas. Man rör sig här inte på samma fasta historiska kallakrigsmark som Rockhill och hans brittiska föregångare, den nyligen bortgångna Frances Stonor Saunders.
Men avsnittet diskuterar också alternativet till denna vänster, representerat av en parallell konferens om marxism, även den i Chicago, men också, mer allmänt, av det ACP som utvecklades ur MAGA-kommunismen, och andra manifestationer av denna riktning.
En av presentatörerna omfattar Yanis Varoufakis teori om teknofeodalismen, och menar att den alternativa, paleosocialistiska och mer konservativa vänstern inte rätt uppfattat eller bedömt detta fenomen. Det system altvänstern vill störta har, hävdas det, i stället redan störtats av techoligarkin, som upprättat sin egen nya, långt mer svårövervinneliga och totalitära ordning. Mot detta bör, kan nämnas, Mckays kritik av Varoufakis ställas.
Due Dissidence gjorde i februari också ett intressant avsnitt (som jag bara delade på fb men glömde posta här; tack för tips till viktige politiske kommentatorn Joakim Eng) om förmodat samarbete mellan Bannon och Epstein i skapandet av populistnationalismen i syfte att lura, oskadliggöra och kontrollera de missnöjda klasserna.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fortunes of NATO – pronounced “braindead” only a few years prior – have been miraculously revived. The alliance, buoyed by surging European military budgets and inflows of combat-ready troops and cutting-edge hardware, looks forward to welcoming additional member states. Originally conceived as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, NATO has outlasted its ostensible foe by over three decades. Its geostrategic remit is limited to the North Atlantic in name only. Treaty obligations range from the Andes to the Gulf of Aden and the Khyber Pass, and allied commanders now prepare for battle in the South China Sea.
Natopolitanism takes an in-depth look at the evolution and aggrandizement of NATO since the turn of the 1990s. What purposes does NATO serve in the post-Cold War world? What is the balance sheet of a quarter century of alliance expansion, and what part did it play in the eruption of conflict on Europe’s eastern marches?
Contributors to the volume, including John J. Mearsheimer, Mary Elise Sarotte, Susan Watkins, Wolfgang Streeck, and Volodymyr Ishchenko, revisit this this history as it unfolded. Varying in viewpoint and judgment, all share a critical perspective at odds with wartime pieties.
Reviews:
“After Donald Trump brazenly doubted NATO’s necessity, the Ukraine war reanimated the zombie. This indispensable collection sets sanctimony to one side, gathering diverse reflections on the alliance’s functions and trajectory since the Cold War – including in the coming of the Ukraine war itself.”
Samuel Moyn, Yale University
“A bracing critical review of the ‘most successful alliance’ in history. An essential primer for the new era of Natopolitanism.”
Adam Tooze, author of Crashed
“This collection of essays and documents regarding NATO’s role as the military wing of US capitalism and its increasingly aggressive approach to that role is important and (obviously) timely.”
Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch
About the Editor:
Grey Anderson is the author of La Guerre civile en France, 1958-1962. He holds a doctorate in history from Yale University.
“For more than a thousand years, Istanbul has been regarded as a bridge between East and West at the junction of two continents, at the crossroads of the cultures. We wish to make use of this symbol to conduct an open dialogue between the different civilizations of the world.
Harici Media and the new European think tank ‘European Transcontinental Initiative’ (ETI) have launched the East-West Forum (EWF) in Istanbul – a high-level forum of international experts to discuss, analyse and shape this transition.
We want to offer those political thinkers and actors, who represent wisdom in a time of delusion and reason in a time of brinkmanship, a platform for the exchange of critical analysis, hopes and ideas. In doing so, we aim to create an opportunity to jointly develop alternative proposals for a reconfiguration of the global systems that would move beyond the prevailing doxa of a unipolar neoliberal order. Especially we want to prevent the establishment of new bloc confrontation between ‘the West’, the BRICS-countries and the Global South.
The East-West Forum will take place in Istanbul on 26 September 2026. We expect to welcome more than twenty distinguished speakers from over fifteen countries, representing a broad geography ranging from the United States and the Middle East to Asia and Europe.
To attend the East-West Forum, please register online via our website: east-west-forum.com”
En lång rad av de många talarna är sådana som figurerat frekvent här på min sida genom åren.
“The unipolar world order that emerged after the end of the Cold War has come to an end, and the world is now seeking a redesign of the global system.
The quest for a multipolar world and a balanced world system is accompanied by multiple paradigm shifts: resources shortage, climate stress, overpopulation, trade wars, global rearmament, the AI revolution, the rise of regional wars, the break-down of the UN-system, to just name a few.
The G7/ G20 world tries to find ‘classical’ answers to all of that. Progress is attached to technology only, power assigned exclusively to states and capitalism remains unquestioned.
The East-West Forum (EWF) wants to search for heterodox answers, find new solutions, develop alternative societal & political concepts and think differently. It wants to become, over time, the leading platform for innovative ideas for the global system, thinking the unthinkable and discussing the impossible. We think of citizens and humanity, of soul and history, of traditions and the future. We believe in an economy that serves man and respects nature. We value cultural heritage and the roots of history.
The EWF wants to design a realistic utopia for the world in the 21ˢᵗ century, lifting it outside of the paradigms of the 20ᵗʰ century: Join us in putting everything we know on the table! Help us in designing the peaceful & just world of tomorrow! Dare to leave the thought system…
The EWF brings together distinguished experts, intellectuals, and thought leaders. Istanbul, a city that has long symbolized the bridge between East and West, offers a unique vantage to contribute to a constructive reimagining of relations between the Western countries, the BRICS countries and the Global South. EWF is committed to advancing critical dialogue on an inclusive and sustainable international security architecture, one that complements existing structures while encouraging a broader, more balanced framework for international cooperation. In the long term, the EWF envisions a Europe beyond the EU that is more self-confident, strategically autonomous, and capable of assuming a mediating role within a multipolar world.
The EWF aspires to position itself as a forward-looking counterpart to traditional security conferences typically held in European capitals and sticking to a ‘Western-centric framework’ of interpretation of the world. The initiators of EWF draw inspiration from the oldest known map of Europe, dating to 1534, which looks toward the Orient while standing firmly on Eurasian ground, an emblem of the perspective the Forum seeks to revive and reinterpret for the present era.”
Thomas Fazi informerar om en ny tänktank, European Transcontinental Initiative, grundad av bl.a. Ulrike Guérot, och bjuder in till dess första konferens, East-West Forum:
“We are delighted to invite you to the first Europe-BRICS conference – the East-West Forum (EWF) – which will take place in Istanbul on September 26, organised by the newly founded think tank European Transcontinental Initiative and the Turkish media platform Harici (@haricinews).
The think tank was founded this year by the famous German political scientist Ulrike Guérot (@ulrikeguerot) and the German Philosopher Hauke Ritz together with a team of experts and actors form different spheres, representing crucial expressions of European society thinking Europe beyond the EU. We already serve as the outward face of a different, new Europe – one that upholds its foundational values of diplomacy. We work constructively and operationally in the real world, already acting as a point of contact for non-European partners regarding a new Europe that exists beyond the EU within a multipolar world.
We see Europe as pivotal in the transition to multipolarity, which will only be complete once it reaches Europe; otherwise, we risk merely having a divided world. Thus we plan to dedicate the first EWF to the theme of ‘Designing the 21st century: navigating the multi paradigm shift in the global system and the crucial role of old civilizations’. We strive to co-create a new and more just and balanced multipolar world order peacefully.
On the conference’s website you can find the mission statement and programme: https://east-west-forum.com. I will be speaking on a panel on ‘Europe Beyond the EU and its Philosophical Foundation – Atlanticism, Eurasia and Strategic Autonomy’.
Should our inaugural conference prove successful, it could serve as the starting point for an annual conference series – one that we hope will offer an alternative to the neoliberal, transatlantic agenda of the traditional conferences held in Davos and Munich.
“In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Swedish author Göran Rosenberg. They discuss messianism in Jewish history, the continuity from 1950s Tel Aviv to the settler movement Gush Emunim to the manifestation of the settlement movement today. They also look at questions of collective rights, framed in terms of ‘peoplehood,’ versus individual rights.”
Mckay när han är som bäst igen i ett avsnitt om den groteska och signifikativa Jason Arday-skandalen vid Cambridge, och ett uppföljande om yttrandefriheten, föranlett av vänsterns respons.
En nödvändigt fördjupande, komplexifierande och nyanserande analys från “the stance that alienates both racists and woke people”:
“In this special programme I look into the tragic case of Jason Arday. A man elevated by Cambridge University, feted in the bourgeois press and then destroyed by the institutions that had once elevated him.”
Strax efter sin intervju med Molly Crabapple i maj gjorde Simone Zimmerman i sitt program Beyond Israelism också en intervju med Hasan Piker, som är viktig även för dem som har problem med en del av hans uppfattningar; några som jag själv finner problematiska framskymtar och tangeras också här. Intervjun går dessutom ibland in på detaljer om amerikanska namn och händelser på senare tid som åtminstone för mig är mindre kända och därför mindre lätta att följa. Men den är värd att höra främst därför att Piker länge framstått som en mycket betydelsefull figur i den amerikanska debatten och opinionsbildningen när det gäller de frågor om sionismen och antisemitismen som Zimmerman fokuserar på.
Den bidrar därför till att ge en klarare bild av situationen på detta centrala område i det land där radikal förändring är allra mest nödvändig för västerlandets framtid och världens fred.
“On the latest episode of ‘Beyond Israelism’, Simone Zimmerman sits down with Twitch streamer and political commentator Hasan Piker – arguably one of the most influential left-wing voices in American media today. Seven days a week, eight to 10 hours a day, Piker talks to millions of young people about income inequality, capitalism, imperialism, and Palestine. Yet, rather than being celebrated by Democrats desperate to reach young voters (didn’t they want a ‘Joe Rogan of the left?’), he has become their most convenient target. Hasan has been smeared as an antisemite, allegedly subpoenaed by the Trump administration (he denies actually receiving a subpoena), and attacked relentlessly by the hasbara industry. Most recently, he was even barred from entering the UK for allegedly criticizing Israel.
Despite being called an antisemite on a near-daily basis, Piker remains one of the most consistent voices against antisemitism, tracing its roots in right-wing ideology with precision most commentators don’t bother with. His position is simple, and he states it plainly: no group is a monolith, and the fact that a multimillion-dollar industry exists to conflate Jewish identity with the State of Israel is proof enough of that. This is a conversation about independent media, political courage, and why the left cannot afford to silence its own …
CHAPTERS: 00:00 – Intro 5:04 – Hasan wears suits now 6:40 – Hasan’s background 10:10 – Islamophobia 13:03 – How are U.S. politics shifting? 20:02 – Attacks on free speech 31:12 – Jonathan Greenblatt is obsessed 33:35 – Criticisms of Zionism 36:55 – Antisemitism accusations 41:18 – Why is Zionism faltering? 44:01 – Tucker Carlson & Nick Fuentes 50:23 – The Democrats”
