Wednesday 27 January 2010

Three quick links

Dashing hither and thither this week, so I only have time to recommend posts from elsewhere:

The Plump writes about the dangers of creating a false equivalence between Nazism and Communism, and on the other hand his problems with the notion of a ‘post left’, as if antisemitism and totalitarianism among progressives were recent phenomena and ‘the left was pure and innocent before the Stop the War Coalition came along.’

Mick responds to the collective madness surrounding Chilcot and the 'outpouring of hatred' against Tony Blair, including George Monbiot's absurd call for the ex-PM's arrest for 'mass murder', and challenges 'the assumption that had we not got rid of Saddam everything would somehow have turned out just fine: the internal divisions within Iraqi society would have healed themselves by magic and Saddam himself would have turned to Sufi mysticism'.

Finally, Minnie marks Holocaust Memorial Day with a poem by Primo Levi.

3 comments:

Minnie said...

Thank you, Martin. Interestingly, the post was picked up by an extensive Italian media sweep: http://arcadellamemoria.blogpost.com/2010/01/271-giorno-della-memoria-mai-piu.html.

TNC said...

I have never heard of the term "post left" used in this sense before. Will provide a comment at the Plump One's blog when I have a chance. In the meantime, here's how I have seen the term used:

http://infoshop.org/page/Anarchy-After-Leftism

"Anarchy after leftism? With the rise of the anti-capitalist movement and the death of authoritarian Left project in the former Soviet Union, anarchists face a future where the traditional Left is no longer a player on the chessboard of politics. With the freedom to articulate our vision and its practice in everyday resistance, anarchists need to figure out what is next.

What are post-Left anarchists? In the words of Jason McQuinn: 'Post-left anarchists want to see anarchists define their own autonomous movement, theory and activities free from the deadweight of overidentification with the left.'"

ModernityBlog said...

Off topic, but I thought you'd like to be updated:

Seismic Shock the Video is out.

http://modernityblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/seismic-shock-the-video/

Please do embed it and pass it along.

Cheers :)