We are publishing a book! Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism is forthcoming from PM Press and Kersplebedeb Publishing in May 2024. The book is edited by Xtn Alexander and Matthew N. Lyons, with a foreword by Janeen Porter and an afterword by Michael Staudenmaier. Here’s the description from the publishers’ websites: What’s the relationship between combating the far right and working for systemic change? What does it mean when fascists intensify racial oppression and patriarchy but also call for the downfall of economic elites or even take up arms against the state? Three ..read more

Jeff Sharlet, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War New York: W. W. Norton Company, 2023 363 pages; ISBN: 978-1-324-07451-9 Review by Jarrod Shanahan So much has been already said about Donald J. Trump, Trumpism, and the amorphous mass known as his “base” that it hardly seems worth revisiting the topic almost eight years after his fateful descent down Trump Tower’s golden excavator. Just as the 2016 election seemed to confirm everything that virtually everyone had already been saying about US politics for years, so too does Donald Trump today seem self-explanatory. A living Rorschach tes ..read more

By Xtn Alexander   SHUT IT DOWN! For Palestine, hundreds of people took over the California State Capital on January 3, 2024. The first day of the state’s legislature for the new year, or should we say, the attempted first day. The takeover forced the cancelation of the legislature’s session. NO BUSINESS AS USUAL! A coalition, organized in large part by Jewish folks saying #NotInOurName and #ShutItDown4Palestine brought together a determined and diverse mass of people to escalate the efforts to stop the attacks and genocide on Palestinians. MAKE IT UNGOVERNABLE! The takeover was a ..read more

By Xtn Alexander First, it’s gotta be said that the masses taking to the streets against the war on Gaza and the Palestinians is righteous. It is an angry and determined righteousness. Lockdowns and street blockades. Walkouts and strikes. All are happening on a global level. New layers of folks, largely youth from a wide and varied background, have made it a priority to disrupt and resist this war and to challenge the narratives of the U.S and Israeli ruling classes. Supporting this new movement, being a part of it, and helping it develop confidence and capacity to become a broader resistan ..read more

By Shane Burley This essay is adapted from a talk delivered at the Territories of White Supremacy: Opposing the Far Right in the Pacific Northwest and Beyond conference in Eugene, Oregon on October 13th, 2023. Before I talk about major updates that are happening for antifascists in the Pacific Northwest, I want to introduce three questions to help guide not only that discussion but all broad discussions of the future of antifascist organizing. The first question is what actually stops the far right, presuming that is our goal. There are a lot of tactics and strategies whose proponents say that ..read more

“The House spreads. Its arteries run throughout the country. Its lifeblood flows into Westminster, into Scotland Yard, into every village and every city. It flows into you, and into your mother. It keeps you alive. It makes you feel safe. Those same arteries tangle you up at night and make it hard for you to breathe. But come morning, you thank it for what it has done for you, and you sip from its golden cup, and kiss its perfect feet, and you know that all will be right in this godforsaken world as long as it is there to watch over you.” —Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless Alison Rumfitt ..read more

by Matthew N. Lyons How do we forcefully make the case to defend the Palestinian people in Gaza against Israel’s increasingly genocidal assault, and also honor the conflict’s heartbreaking contradictions? This is a question I’ve been grappling with for the past month. Adam Shatz’s essay “Vengeful Pathologies” gets at the challenge better and more fully than anything else I’ve read so far. In this post I will use short excerpts from Shatz’s essay to highlight some of his key points, in many cases pairing them with links to related articles and other resources. (Unless otherwise indicated, all q ..read more

Guest post by Plotnikov Editors’ Note: The following guest post is intended to offer some helpful context for understanding and discussing the current war between Israel and Hamas—and the broader war between Israel and the people of Gaza. We believe our primary responsibility in this situation is to oppose the forced displacement and mass killing of the Palestinian people. At the same time, we also have a responsibility to attempt an honest assessment of the conflict overall. We reject efforts (by both supporters and opponents) to equate the Palestinian people with Hamas; we also reject claims ..read more

Tammy Kovich, Antifascism Against Machismo With an introduction by El Jones and commentary by Butch Lee and Veronica L. Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2023 153pp.; ISBN: 9781989701232 Review by D. Z. Shaw In 2019, Tammy Kovich published, under the pseudonym of Petronella Lee, the short pamphlet Anti-Fascism Against Machismo: Gender, Politics, and the Struggle Against Fascism. Her essay is an important contribution to antifascist literature, which highlights how misogyny is a “fundamental pillar” of contemporary fascist movements, while making a compelling argument that gender liberation must be “a no ..read more

Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2022 160 pages; paperback $19.95, ISBN 9781509545384; hardback $59.95, ISBN 9781509545377 Review by Matthew N. Lyons How are far rightists responding to the global climate crisis? Denial of climate change has long been an ingrained reflex among rightists far beyond the reach of fossil fuel industry propaganda. This is starting to shift as devastating heat waves, draughts, fires, and floods make the reality of global warming increasingly obvious–not as an impending danger but as a catast ..read more