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The thing some US empire managers dislike about him is the only thing I like about him: that he makes the US empire a less effective evil because of how much less hidden he keeps the inner workings of the machine. The hood stays popped open the entire time, showing the whole world how the imperial sausage gets made.

A lot of people view this rise of fascism as a some as a sort of fundamental opposition or reaction to the liberal or neoliberal order under which we're living. You know, it's like do you want fascist Trump or neoliberal Kamala? That sort of thinking […] seems to me to be both individualizing—like making fascism into something fascist ideologues do rather than like a constellation of features which make up a fascist society—but also kind of undermines the various continuities between neoliberal societies (and liberal ones) and fascist ones. And it's in this context that Clara Mattei offers a really important intervention which clarifies these important continuities.

Specifically, Mattei highlights how austerity as a form of authoritarian state practice functions to rebalance the capital relation in favour of capital, and in doing so paves the way to Fascism in the early 20th century.

The book: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html

• The Atlantic: That’s Not How Constitutional Amendments Work
• NYT: Can He Do That? Here’s What Biden’s Move on the Equal Rights Amendment Means.
• Vanity Fair: Biden Proclaims That The Equal Rights Amendment Is The Law Of The Land—But What Does That Mean?
• NPR: Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment is law. What happens next is unclear
• WaPo: Biden reaffirms belief that the Equal Rights Amendment is the law

• Web: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/
• Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xingin.xhs&hl=en-US
• iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/%E5%B0%8F%E7%BA%A2%E4%B9%A6/id741292507
• Mao’s Little Red Book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_Tse-tung

Paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/79BtW

Rolling Stone yesterday: More Women Accuse Author Neil Gaiman of Sexual Assault

I’ve given Amanda Palmer the slant eye ever since her The Art of Asking TED talk. It seemed to me that she either doesn’t understand or pretends not to understand power dynamics in relationships.

Trump has promoted a number of plans to make America strong – at other countries’ expense. Given his “we win; you lose” motto, some of his plans would produce the opposite effect of what he imagines.

That would not be much of a change in U.S. policy. But I suggest that Hudson’s Law may be peaking under Trump: Every U.S. action attacking other countries tends to backfire and end up costing American policy at least twice as much.

A few observations on Mark Zuckerberg’s astonishing volte face today, declaring that he will end the crushing climate of censorship on his Meta platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, in time for Donald Trump's arrival in the White House.

It should not have taken a video admission from Zuckerberg for us to appreciate the degree to which we have been living for many years under a regime of political censorship on social media, with Meta leading the pack.

In his grovelling video message to Trump – I mean, to Meta users – Zuckerberg effectively settles the question of whether his globe-spanning corporation has been aggressively corralling its 3 billion users away from political content. He admits it has.

What he has not admitted, and won’t, is that Meta has not even been trying to enforce that censorship evenhandedly or neutrally. We know, for example, that Meta’s algorithms were carefully engineered for many long months during Israel’s genocide in Gaza to keep Palestinian news sources out of public view, while the same algorithms left Israeli news sources unharmed.

For years, Zuckerberg’s goal – his business plan – has been to keep the main power-block of the western establishment happy: that is, the Biden administration, the three-letter agencies, the war industries, the “legacy media”, and the billionaire class to which he belongs.

None of them wanted voters thinking too deeply about politics – all the more so populist kinds of politics, whether of the left or right, that risked disturbing their smooth ride on the neoliberal gravy train and the forever wars from which they profit so handsomely.

Zuckerberg must now recalibrate his algorithms to keep the Trump team happy, and not stray too far from the “free speech” mantra of fellow billionaire and social media mogul Elon Musk. Zuckerberg must ensure his own platforms don’t end up getting treated like a US equivalent of Tiktok, under risk of a ban for supposedly posing a “national security” threat.

The reality is no one in the establishment cares about free speech, least of all yours or mine. They care about power. They care about staying billionaires and, ideally, becoming trillionaires. What Zuckerberg has made clear is that free speech is not a principle. It is a toy, a plaything to be dangled in front of us, the people, who respond like grateful, credulous, open-mouthed babes.

We will be allowed free speech only in so far as it assists the powerful to stay powerful.

In recent months, a remarkable development in the Empire’s decline has gone almost entirely unnoticed. The National Endowment for Democracy’s grant database has been removed from the web. Until recently, a searchable interface allowed visitors to view detailed records of Washington-funded NGOs, civil society, and media projects in particular countries - covering most of the world - the sums involved, and entities responsible for delivering them. This resource has now inexplicably vanished, and with it, enormous amounts of incontrovertible, self-incriminating evidence of destructive US skullduggery abroad.

Take for example NED grant records for Georgia, the site of recent repeated colour revolution efforts, at the forefront of which were Endowment-bankrolled organizations. While still accessible via internet archives, they were deleted during the summer. Today, visitors to associated URLs are redirected to a brief entry simply titled “Eurasia”. The accompanying text describes in very broad terms the Endowment’s aims regionally and the total being spent, but the crucial questions of where and on what aren’t clarified. In a comic hypocrisy too, the blurb boldly states:

“The heart of NED’s work in the region is the need to maintain access to objective information for local populations. Across the region, government actors are attempting to limit the space for citizens to distribute information and communicate freely online.”

Resultantly, independent academics, activists, researchers, and journalists have been deprived of an invaluable resource for tracking and exposing the Empire’s machinations. Yet, the Endowment incinerating its public paper trail can only be considered a significant victory for these same actors. NED’s explicit and avowed raison d’être was to do publicly what US intelligence did - and in many cases still does - covertly. Now, after 40 years of wreaking havoc worldwide in service of the Empire, the CIA front has been forced underground, defeating its entire purpose.

This mass [Western media] omertà, which has intensified since, may be attributable to ever-rising hostility towards NED by foreign governments and populations, and associated efforts to restrict or outright proscribe the organization. The reality of the Endowment’s raison d’être and modus operandi has thus not only become unsayable but must be vehemently denied by Western journalists. Representatively, a July 2015 Guardian report on Russia banning NED quite unbelievably relied on a brief quote from the organization’s own website to describe its operations.

While the mainstream media may have remained silent on the NED’s mephitic influence overseas over the past decade, the same is not true of independent academics, activists, researchers, and journalists. The Endowment grant database served as an invaluable tool for keeping a close eye on Washington’s international intrigues and mapping the personal and organizational connections of agents and entities of influence. Meanwhile, NED’s status as a CIA front could be simply proven, via multiple public admissions of its own leaders.

Of course, despite NED brazenly purging evidence of its vast operations from the web, that conniving continues apace regardless, covertly. One might even argue the Endowment’s chicanery is all the more dangerous now, given individuals and organizations can conceal their funding sources. But the move amply shows NED today cannot withstand the slightest public scrutiny, which its existence was intended to exemplify. It also demonstrates that “overt operations” with open US funding are now the very “kiss of death” the Endowment was meant to replace. The Empire is on the run.

In the wake of Kamala Harris's defeat, the Left's association with identity politics has been a major focus of public debate. But what identity politics is or who primarily benefits from it remains contested.

In this episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber discusses the Democrats’ long-standing attachment to identity politics, why this form of politics can't fight oppression, and the real history behind struggles for justice.