And then there was a ray of light. In the wake of the May 2012 race riot in Tel Aviv, the mainstream media was suddenly paying attention to African refugees in the Jewish state. My agent called to say that we might be able to ride the wave of violence to sell my book about migrants in Israel. (More…)
For a moment, I thought I was in Israel. “Why are there Palestinian flags here?” I wondered, as I approached city hall. Its website had said that an event to commemorate the Holocaust would be held here, facing its entrance. I’d expected there would be Israeli flags instead, with bearded Jewish men davening for good measure. (More…)
Death is in vogue. Since the Taliban-led insurgency against NATO‘s occupation of Afghanistan began, Pakistan has fallen victim to a desperate security situation. Over the last decade, 15, 503 civilians have been killed in terrorist violence in addition to 4, 884 security personnel and 25, 347 insurgent fighters. (More…)
While there are good reasons why the denunciation of “fascists” has hardened into a reflex on the Left, there are also good reasons for restraining it. The relentless negativity of this fixation makes it difficult to articulate an alternative to capitalism free of fundamentalism and other reactionary discourses. Although visually all over the place, this poster takes a more positive approach, with significant implications. (More…)
Warren Ellis’s latest novel Gun Machine is like a cop thriller set in a fever dream, twisted genre fiction that employs the conventions of a primetime police drama to investigate a series of brutal crimes, but also the bloody history of New York City itself. (More…)
Did Israel step into the Syrian civil war, as a grim headline in Ha’aretz declared? At the time of this article’s writing, it doesn’t seem so, despite a good deal of bluster coming from Lebanon, Iran, and Syria itself. Still, by launching an unprovoked attack against a Syrian target, there can be little doubt that Israel has made the situation more sensitive. Further Israeli operations run an increasing risk of sparking a regional war. (More…)
“Fascisti Carogne,” (Fascist Bastards) the graffiti read, in bold blood red. An anarchist A placed to its right, it wasn’t hard to surmise its source. Situated underneath four municipal billboards designated for political posters, the slogan is a denunciation of Italy’s political class. Left or right, they’re all the same, including Unione del Centro party chief Pier Ferdinando Casini, whose advert takes up three of the spaces. (More…)
Britain’s eternally uneasy political relationship with Europe is fast deteriorating, a rueful fact that Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech last week in Bloomberg’s London HQ will confirm. From the inescapable symbolism of the corporate setting to Cameron’s awkward affectations of sincerity, this was a particularly painful piece of theatre. (More…)
What does it mean to be an anti-fascist? Never easy to answer, today this question can seem like a Zen koan. First you have to decide what constitutes fascism. Then you have to figure out how to oppose it. Beyond those groups that deliberately invoke the iconography of brown and black shirts — a small number, relatively speaking — there is a wealth of potential enemies. The challenge is to choose them well. (More…)
Food is not what you normally think of while being tear gassed. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite, since the reaction your body has to the gas is to retch. If you had anything in your stomach, watch out because it might not be there anymore. I know I wasn’t thinking about food the last time I was gassed. Well, not any more than usual. (More…)
The Israeli elections are being hailed by foreign media as a triumph for the political “center,” when it is nothing of the kind. That definition depends on a simplistic reading of the political map that dictates that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rebuked, which he surely was, then it must mean the right lost. But in Israel, there are many different kinds of “right wing.” (More…)
State repression. Leftwing violence. The dialectic is familiar, worse, discomfiting. There is something decidedly crude about it all, as though such scenarios ought to be a thing of the past, replaced, as it were, by less harmful modes of conflict. What happened to culture jamming? Isn’t alternative consumption enough? (More…)