History

The Rise And Coming Demise Of The Israel Lobby With Ilan Pappe

August 22, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheerpost. Resistance Report History, Israel, Palestine, US Imperialism

The Israel lobby wields as much or more influence over American politics than any lobbying group in Washington. As Ilan Pappé, the Israeli historian, professor and author, and host Chris Hedges detail in this latest episode of The Chris Hedges Report, the lobby’s rise to power consisted of diverging ideological factions uniting in pursuit of their shared interests in controlling the land of historic Palestine. The history and manifestation of this systemic corruption of the Zionist lobby, hyper-dependent on coercion and total control, is thoroughly described in Pappé’s new book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic.

As DNC Kicks Off, Palestine Solidarity Activists Look To 1964 For Inspiration

August 20, 2024 Derek Seidman, Truthout. Strategize! Democrats, DNC, History, Jim Crow, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

As the Democratic National Convention (DNC) begins, and with Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza fracturing the party’s coalition, the echoes of 1968 are hard to miss. That year, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, protests erupted outside the DNC in Chicago, while tensions flared inside the convention. The nation saw a Democratic party in disarray. With mass protests occurring over Gaza at this year’s DNC — again, held in Chicago — the 1968 comparisons are apt. But there is another historical example also worth remembering. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the 1964 DNC in Atlantic City where, famously, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), a grassroots party fighting for racial justice, sent a delegation to demand that they, not the all-white “regular” delegation, be seated as Mississippi’s true representatives.

The Past Is Not Always Our Guide

August 18, 2024 David Rosenburg, Morning Star. Strategize! Far Right, Fascism, History, Racism

As far-right hate and violence sweep across Britain, exploiting the Southport murders as a pretext but especially targeting Muslim communities, anti-fascists of a certain vintage are taking to social media and posting defiant images of an Anti-Nazi League (ANL) badge. It’s a way of saying: “We have seen this before, and we will stand up to it again.” The ANL, launched in autumn 1977, credits itself, with much justification, for defeating the National Front (NF) in that period. With 20,000 members nationally organised into local branches, and with a large hinterland of sympathisers, the NF terrorised inner-city migrant communities with incendiary racist propaganda and provocative marches.

Ten Theses On The Far Right Of A Special Type

August 16, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Donald Trump, Elections, Far Right, Fascism, History

There has been widespread consternation about how to understand Donald Trump’s emergence as a serious candidate for US president since 2016. Far from an isolated phenomenon, Trump rose to power alongside other strongmen such as Viktor Orbán (prime minister of Hungary since 2010), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (president of Turkey since 2014), and Narendra Modi (prime minister of India since 2014). People like this, who came to power and cemented their rule through liberal institutions, seem to be impossible to permanently remove through the ballot box. It has become clear that a rightward shift is taking place in liberal democratic states, whose constitutions emphasise multi-party elections while allowing the space for one-party rule to be gradually established.

How San Francisco Longshoremen Made Their Union A Powerhouse

August 13, 2024 Peter Cole, Jacobin. Strategize! California, History, Longshoremen, San Francisco, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University and the author of Dockworker Power: Race & Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press, 2018). In this interview, Cole and Jacobin’s Benjamin Y. Fong discussed the dedication and success of the longshore workers in the 1930s and ’40s in overcoming racial division on the docks. Clips from this interview are included in Episode 6 of Organize the Unorganized (among others), which also includes archival interviews with the first International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) president, Harry Bridges, and the first black president of ILWU Local 10, Cleophas Williams.

The 90th Anniversary Of The 1934 Truckers’ Strike

August 12, 2024 Isabela Escalona, Unicorn Riot. Educate! History, Labor Movement, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

Minneapolis, MN — On July 27, workers, descendants of the strikers, and the local labor community came together at Wabun Park in Minneapolis to honor the 90th anniversary of the 1934 Truckers’ Strike that brought Minneapolis to a standstill and served as a spark for radical and militant labor struggle across the country. The strike lasted about three months, as Teamsters Local 574 truckers demanded a fair wage and official recognition of the union. The trucking companies had the support of the Citizens Alliance, an anti-trade union organization that sought to break the strike. The strike’s impact reverberated throughout the city, bringing much of the Minneapolis economy to a halt.

How To Make Sure Your Disruptive Protest Helps Your Cause

August 11, 2024 Mark Engler and Paul Engler, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Direct Action, History, Media, Polarization

In one of the most famous protest speeches of the 20th century, Berkeley Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio stood before a crowd of several thousand on Dec. 2, 1964, and delivered an impassioned defense of disobedience: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part,” Savio insisted. “You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop.” Perhaps now more than ever, recognizing the grave and even existential challenges we face in the world around us, people are following Savio’s advice and putting their bodies upon the gears.

Kamala Harris’s Environmental Deceptions

August 10, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Environment, Environmental racism, History, Kamala Harris, San Francisco

Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and the strongest environmental protections the US had ever seen in response to the mass movements of the 1960s. After Nixon, environmental laws gradually improved until Bill Clinton’s administration started rolling them back, especially through global “free trade” deals like NAFTA and those of the WTO, putting the environmental movement on the defensive. Every president since Clinton, Democrat or Republican, has successively worsened environmental protections. Obama expanded fossil fuel production more than any other president in US history, and Biden continued to expand it even more than Trump had. There’s little reason to think that Kamala Harris would be different, and she’s already reversed her opposition to fracking.

US And UK To Boycott Nagasaki Memorial After Israel Disinvited

August 8, 2024 Imran Mulla, Middle East Eye. Educate! Hiroshima, History, Israel, Japan, Nagasaki, Palestine, US Imperialism

The American and British ambassadors to Japan have announced they will skip an upcoming ceremony commemorating the victims of the US’s 1945 atomic bombing because the city’s mayor did not invite the Israeli ambassador. The Russian and Belarusian ambassadors have also been excluded from the event this Friday by Japanese authorities. The Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony is intended to mark the 79th anniversary of the US atomic bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that killed tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, with many more later dying from radiation poisoning. The attacks in August 1945 preceded Japan’s unconditional surrender to the US and the end of the Second World War.

Decay, Decrepitude, Deceit In Journalism

August 8, 2024 Ray McGovern, Consortium News. Educate! History, Journalism, RussiaGate

Russiagate continues to survive like a science fiction monster resilient to bullets. The latest effort at rehabilitating it is an interview by Adam Rawnsley in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine of one Michael van Landingham, an intelligence analyst who is proud of having written the first draft of the cornerstone “analysis” of Russiagate, the so-called Intelligence Community Assessment. The ICA blamed the Russians for helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. It was released two weeks before Trump assumed office. The thoroughly politicized assessment was an embarrassment to the profession of intelligence. Worse, it was consequential in emasculating Trump to prevent him from working for a more decent relationship with Russia.

US Atomic Bombing Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki Remembered

August 8, 2024 Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch. Educate! Hiroshima, Hiroshima Day, History, Japan, Nagasaki, Nuclear Disarmament, Nuclear War, Nuclear Weapons, Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), UN, Wars and Militarism

Over 50,000 people, including representatives from 109 countries, joined an event marking the 79th anniversary of the US’s bombing of Hiroshima. The main ceremony was held at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park on Tuesday, August 6. A total of 344,306 people were killed during the bombing as well as in the aftermath. Despite knowing the widespread destruction and irreversible losses caused by the attack, the US dropped another nuclear bomb on Nagasaki just three days later on August 9, killing 40,000 people immediately. The number of people killed in Nagasaki would double that figure in most estimates.

Schools For Struggle: For A Workers’ Education Movement

August 6, 2024 Daniel Judt, Portside. Organize! Education, History, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

In December of 1936, a day into their historic sit-down strike at a General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, autoworkers set up a school. Surrounded by idle machines, freed from the foreman's gaze, they took classes in public speaking and labor journalism, in political economy, in the history of the labor movement. This was not a spontaneous idea. Some of the key players in the strikes—the nascent United Auto Workers (UAW) union's education director and several rank-and-file organizers, as well as its future president, Walter Reuther, and his brother, Roy—had spent time at Brookwood Labor College, a small independent school for workers who wanted to radicalize the labor movement.

The Victims’ Pact: Rwanda And Israel

August 4, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Africa, DR Congo, Gaza, Genocide, History, Israel, Palestine, Rwanda

Rwanda is the Israel of Africa. The two nations reinforce one another in a longstanding victims’ pact, while the West reinforces both. The three commonly join forces to promote Western “humanitarian interventions” like those in Libya and Syria, which are in fact wars of aggression. The foundation of Israel and Rwanda’s victims’ pact was laid a year after then General Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) won the 1990-1994 Rwandan Civil War and seized power in July 1994. Robin Philpot, in his book Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa, from Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction writes: Two specific events that often go unnoticed contributed to the official sanctioning of the use of the word “genocide” to describe the entire Rwandan tragedy.

Suicide Squad

August 1, 2024 Nick Turse, Consortium News. Educate! 9/11, Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Bin Laden, Health Care, History, Iraq, Iraq War, Saudi Arabia, Suicides, Wars and Militarism

At the end of the last century, hoping to drive the United States from Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden sought to draw in the American military. He reportedly wanted to “bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil,” provoking savage asymmetric conflicts that would send home a stream of “wooden boxes and coffins” and weaken American resolve. As lethal as those Islamist fighters have been, however, another “enemy” has proven far more deadly for American forces: themselves. A recent Pentagon study found suicide to be the leading cause of death among active-duty U.S. Army personnel.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources