Published on The Commoner, 15 February 2024 Your book, Invertidos y Rompepatrias (“Queers Wreck the State,” 2019), presents an impressive panorama of sexual and gender dissent in the Spanish State during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although you cover LGBTQ+ history during the Second Republic (1931–9), the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), and the Franquist dictatorship (1939–1975), the majority of the book’s chapters have to do with the “Transition” to formal democracy (1976–1982) following Francisco Franco’s death. There are also additional chapters available on your blog about more re ..read more

Boris Kustodiev, May Day demonstration in Putilov (1906) I am excited to share two new interviews about Queer Tolstoy: the first, a written dialogue about the book with John P. Clark published on Oct. 31 in the Capitalism, Nature, Socialism journal, and the second, a spoken interview in Spanish from with the comrades from TOFUria, recorded on Nov. 12. TOFUria is a program dedicated to anti-speciesism and sexual dissidence on Radio Malva (104.9FM) in Valencia, Spain. Please find links and abstracts below. 1. The Quest for Revolutionary Love: John P. Clark Interviews Javier Sethness about Queer ..read more

I’m pleased to share a recording I made of part of the introduction to Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography (Routledge Mental Health, 2023) as one of the “Anarchist Essays” hosted by the Anarchism Research Group, based at Loughborough University in the UK. See below. The introduction to Queer Tolstoy (chapter 2) is available open-access for reading here ..read more

Check out my recent conversation on Thomas Wilson Jardine’s podcast Ideologica Obscura about my review of Mohamed Abdou’s Islam and Anarchism on The Commoner ..read more

Please find below the audio-visual recordings of five workshops, panels, and book presentations from the 8th LA Anarchist Book Fair. I moderated the presentation from Solidarity Collectives and the panel on Ukraine and Anarchist Internationalism. Presentation from Solidarity Collectives (Ukraine) (audio only) Support Solidarity Collectives! Anti-Fascism and ¡No Pasarán! Get a copy of No Pasarán here! Panel: Tenants’ Right Organizing in Los Angeles (audio only) Visit the LA Tenants’ Union website here!Discussion of Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century Ge ..read more

Join us this Saturday at Art Share LA for the 8th LA Anarchist Book Fair! Our schedule is now available, as is our list of vendors and tablers. Don’t miss this opportunity to get some great literature and engage in radical political discussions ..read more

Over a century ago, the Russian anarchist prince Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) challenged Charles Darwin’s emphasis on the centrality of competition in the “struggle for existence,” which Darwin defined as natural selection. In Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), Kropotkin defies this Victorian biologist’s ideas, which gave rise to a social Darwinism that naturalized strife, individual gain, and common ruin. Famously, the Russian scientist argued instead that cooperation is equally, if not more, important than competition in “the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and ..read more

Originally published on The Commoner, 30 June 2023. Shared using Creative Commons license. Feel free to support The Commoner via their Patreon here. While this review of Cyberpunk 2077 will include some spoilers about the start of the game, it will exclude much of the later plot, especially the ending(s). Still, I will examine some parallels between the game and the real world. Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), produced by the Polish company CD Projekt Red (with a market value of over $3 billion), is an enjoyable and incisive role-playing game (RPG) set in a deeply dystopian future. As its title suggest ..read more

You’re invited to the 8th Los Angeles Anarchist Book Fair! It will take place on Saturday, August 12, 2023, at Art Share LA. We are now taking applications for tablers and vendors, as well as for speakers and panelists! The deadline for tablers is July 4th, and for workshops and panels, it will be on July 8th. Contact us at laabf@proton.me, and check out the website for more details! Thanks ..read more

“Fighters on the Aragón front, 1937” by Kati Horna (International Institute of Social History/Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte. Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica) First published on New Politics, 26 April 2023 In The Politics of Unreason (2017), Lars Rensmann poses an important question about fascism and anti-Semitism: namely, are these oppressive phenomena “specific to German or European culture—or rather universal, the byproduct of universal authoritarian phenomena, susceptibilities, and tendencies in modern society […?].”1 This book review essay seeks to answer this question and expl ..read more