Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 4h

According to Haaretz, this is "day 746" of "Israel at war".

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 14h

A government in the hands of a party which has been reconstituted by merging empty careerist ambitions into the urgent political project of dismantling any possibility of any actual Left influence on government which might be viewed as a potential threat to existing patterns of power and privilege.

1 2

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 18h

Excerpt from John Graham Brooks, 'The Future Problem of Charity and the Unemployed', in the July 1894 issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 18h

Is she really pretending to believe that decisions of the Iranian state are determined by whether people in Melbourne are able to gather for peaceful public protests?

www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/pen...

www.foreignminister.gov.au

Reposted by Ben Rosenzweig

Andy Fleming @slackbastard.bsky.social · 19h

1/ Hard to believe that anTEEfa have been keeping an eye on these meatheads since like, forever.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Western intelligence agencies eye neo-fascist fight clubs: ‘an international white supremacist movement’

Security services are monitoring ‘active clubs’ as they move across borders to spread their extremist ideology

www.theguardian.com

1 17 56

Reposted by Ben Rosenzweig

Andy Fleming @slackbastard.bsky.social · 19h

6/ 'This excerpt addresses the place of Active Clubs in global neo-Nazi and accelerationist political strategy, emphasising Australia's role and contributions to its success.'

CW: includes extreme references to racist hatred and sexual violence.

thewhiterosesociety.writeas.com/active-clubs...

Active Clubs & Accelerationists - Neo-Nazi tactics and strategies in Australia

Excerpt from our submission to the Senate inquiry Right wing extremist movements in Australia. On July 24, 2024, at the Senate Committee...

thewhiterosesociety.writeas.com

1 5 15

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 19h

A video from not that long ago by Kat Abughazaleh, on 'How Chicago Labor History Teaches Us To Fight Fascism Today'.

Oh, and she's running a serious and impressive campaign for Congress.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=9EYC...

@katmabu.bsky.social

How Chicago Labor History Teaches Us To Fight Fascism Today | Kat Abughazaleh For Illinois

YouTube video by Kat Abughazaleh

m.youtube.com

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 19h

Before his death, Bernard Stiegler was an interesting observer of contemporary politics, but I don't think anyone has translated into English either his book on the French National Front, or his book about why Greta Thunberg is important and admirable... Am I right?

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 19h

In some countries, 'disrespect for the state' or to its officials can join the ideas of 'being a criminal' and 'supporting terrorism' to become a politico-legal category so vague that entire political oppositions, indeed whole ethnicities, can be made to fit through sheer repetitive assertion.

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 19h

But here's an excerpt about 2021 from H. Samy Alim, Casey Philip Wong, and Jeff Chang's 'Making Freedom Move(s): Hip Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures', in the 2023 University of California Press collection, Freedom Moves: Hip Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures.

1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 19h

And of course you can't read too much about the lead-up to the French Revolution without coming across people subject to repression by the monarchical state on the basis of having allegedly 'insulted the king', which could be a quite broad category when the state felt that that was useful.

1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 20h

I suppose this is the kind of legal system people might expect from an 18th century European absolute monarchy, some drunk aristocrat in 1772 getting in trouble after a palace masquerade ball, being charged with lèsemajesté (i.e. insulting the king of Denmark) and sentenced to death.

1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 20h

But back in the late 1930s, when such laws existed in Thailand but were perhaps more flexible...well, a footnote from David Streckfuss, 'Kings in the Age of Nations: The Paradox of Lèse-Majesté as Political Crime in Thailand', in the July 1995 issue of Comparative Studies in Society and History.

1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 20h

Morocco and Thailand are both countries notorious for not just having inherited such laws to have them sitting ignored on the books, but actively prosecuting people under them, occasionally making such laws harsher, and using them as ways to threaten and punish the media.

1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 20h

Clare Dyer's article, 'Bahraini doctor detained for Tweets needs legal and medical support, says BMA', posted on the BMJ: British Medical Journal site on 15 January 2016.

BMA = 'British Medical Association'

@bmj.com

1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 20h

Like just over a decade ago the cabinet in Bahrain supported amending the penal code to increase the maximum penalty for "insulting the king" from two to five years.

The dominant tendencies in both major US parties helped Saudi Arabia to violently crush opposition to the dictatorship over Bahrain.

1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 20h

Marxism is rude.

Wealth is concentrated in so few hands, the world's resources are controlled by such a tiny number of people, that concretely talking about the 'ruling class' always comes across as a personal attack.

Like a regime calling any opposition to dictatorship 'insulting the President'.

1 1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 1d

And once again I'm reminded of this section in Philip M. Hauser's 1975 book, Social Statistics in Use, though it's the ABS contesting fascist propaganda instead of the second Trump administration destroying any equivalent capacity to contest.

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 1d

In any case, this is an excerpt from Konrad Heiden's 1934 book, A History of National Socialism Volume 2, quoting a May 1930 letter from Hitler to Otto Strasser explaining his lack of interest in seriously pretending to take the 'socialist' bit seriously in 'national socialism'.

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 1d

The journalist and early historian of fascism Konrad Heiden famously worked with Albert Einstein, Heinrich Mann and Thomas Mann to try to get Carl von Ossietzky out of the Esterwegen concentration camp, in part through a campaign to have him awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize.

1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 1d

People have sometimes attempted to put the symbolic value of the Nobel Peace Prize to good use, instead of using it to try to add a greater appearance of prestige to existing reactionary authority.

1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 1d

Interesting excerpt on understanding the source of fascist threats in the UK, and notably the footnotes to that excerpt, from E. P. Chase's 'British Political Parties in 1933', in the February 1934 issue of The American Political Science Review.

doi.org/10.2307/1946...

@apsrjournal.bsky.social

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 1d

"The repression cuts across ideological boundaries. To succeed the resistance must do likewise."

What that imperative means now, and how struggles can and should relate to the divisions the state seeks to impose, will only be determined in practice.

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 1d

But the other aspect of the terms of struggle at time which Davis and Aptheker thought reflected a promising development was a significant part of the peace movement, "and some significant sections of the labour movement, have embraced the struggle to free political prisoners".

1

Ben Rosenzweig @benrosenzweig.bsky.social · 1d

And Davis and Aptheker argued that there was evidence of such a Front emerging in the way that "Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano communities are responding with ever greater force to official repression".

1