Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The democratic petty bourgeois, far from desiring to overturn the whole of society for the revolutionary proletarian, strives for a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as endurable and comfortable as possible for him. —Karl Marx  The bourgeois ... is tolerant. His love for people as they are stems from his hatred of what they might be. —Theodor Adorno

To put it bluntly, I don’t think hope is a scientific category. And I don’t think that people fight or stay the course because of hope, I think people do it out of love and anger. Everybody always wants to know: Aren’t you hopeful? Don’t you believe in hope? To me, this is not a rational conversation. I try and write as honestly and realistically as I can. And you know, I see bad stuff. I see a city decaying from the bottom up. I see the landscapes that are so important to me as a Californian dying, irrevocably changed. I see fascism. I’m writing because I’m hoping the people who read it don’t need dollops of hope or good endings but are reading so that they’ll know what to fight, and fight even when the fight seems hopeless. — Mike Davis, Los Angeles Times, 2022

The pink left has also gained ‘power’ in Chile. Unlike Honduras , the country is the richest in Latin America. Will Boric’s government fare better than the previous leftist governments in the region? I doubt it . “It  is worth remembering the  experiences of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in the Spanish State . Both these parties, with some of the same ideological foundations as the Broad Front in Chile, promised an end to neoliberalism via elections. But once they arrived in government, they implemented many of the  neoliberal policies demanded by the institutions of the ruling class. 

 

 Written in June: The candidate who emerged from this jumble of discontent was the man who promised to do the least. His party is now preparing to give us a national election that will be little more than a referendum on the hated Donald Trump. Finally we have a climate in which the American public would unquestionably choose dramatic change were it offered to them, and the party of change has contrived to ensure that it will not be offered. Instead our choice is between two elderly and conservative white men, both with a history of stretching the truth, both with sexual harassment accusations hanging over them, and neither representing any possibility of energetic democratic reform. The old order has been miraculously rescued once again. Such is the climate of opinion in America that, with the right leader, remarkable things would be possible. Instead we are presented with Joe Biden, an affable DC veteran with a hand in many of the defining disasters of the last 30 years: worker-crush

 ‘No change for thirty years’

Nesrine Malik : The pandemic exposed our failing healthcare systems; the disparity between the  perception of immigrants as a drain  and the reality of them as pillars of our communities; the gulf between races and classes; the incompetence of our politicians; the fatal consequences of diminishing public services. There is a naivety in the hope that once ideas are discussed and made popular, they will permeate policymaking and bring about change. History shows us that, during a period of economic upheaval, this is unlikely. The 2008 financial crisis is the clearest cautionary tale. If the loss of life is at a level deemed acceptable by big business and government, the focus will shift to moving on while minimising the need for change. The old order – that some are already writing eulogies for – will surge back rather than retreating. History shows us that whatever horrors a crisis exposes, they can be covered up in the shattered aftermath."

A good piece. We can't go back to normal

The article was written on 24 of March. A couple of figures are not up-to-date. Covid-19 Pandemic will change everything—for better or worse

The sixth anniversary of the start of the Arab uprisings

Why Corbyn so terrifies the Guardian and A free ebook by Richard Seymour

Latin America "The End of Post-neoliberalism"

40 Year-Old Classic Remains Influential: Sadiq Jalal al-Azm’s ‘The Critique of Religious Thought’

Sociology Professor Asef Bayat taks about his recently published book, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East , where he focuses on the diverse ways in which ordinary people, the subaltern- the urban dispossessed, women, the globalizing youth, and other urban grass roots- strive to affect the contours of change in their societies. Sunday on 1014.4 FM between noon and 1 or streamed on www.esonancefm.com The interview is taken from Voices of the Middle East and North Africa and was first broadcast on KPFA Radio, Berkeley, US.