Day: September 14, 2020

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Charlie Kirk = Horst Wessel

Charlie Kirk was not just a “conservative” but a white supremacist who denigrated the advances of the Civil Rights era and sought to impose patriarchical subjugation of all but white men. Yet he was opposed as insufficiently “pro-white” by the so-called “Groyper Army” of Nick Fuentes. This raises the possibility that the anti-fascist rhetoric of Kirk’s accused shooter, Tyler Robinson, was actually fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. In any case, those who are making the analogy to the early martyr of the Nazi cause Horst Wessel are all too likely to be vindicated: Kirk’s death could similarly be exploited to consolidate fascist rule in the United States. In Episode 295 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg breaks it down. (Image mash-up: CounterVortex)

The Caucasus

‘Cleansing’ of Armenian culture in Azerbaijan exclave

New clashes broke out on the border of Armenia and Azerbaijan, with each side accusing the other of violating the ceasefire. Fighting was first reported near the Lachin Corrdior, which connects Armenia to the autonomous ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh. But attacks on Armenia have also been launched from the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, which is cut off from the rest of Azerbaijan by Armenian territory. A land corridor through Armenia to Nakhchivan is one of Azerbaijan’s outstanding demands in the conflict. Days before the fighting erupted, a report was released by the group Caucasus Heritage Watch at New York’s Cornell University, accusing Azerbaijan of “a systematic, state-sponsored program of cultural erasure” targeting Armenian heritage sites in Nakhchivan. (Photo: CHW)

Afghanistan

Afghan protests continue despite repression

Protests broke out in the traditional Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, as the city’s new administrators issued an order that the families of soldiers in the vanquished Afghan army vacate a military-owned housing complex where they had been living for years. In a demonstration led by women, thousands took to the streets and marched on the provincial governor’s house to protest the eviction order. The some 3,000 families, many of whom have lived in the complex for 20 years, were given three days to vacate. The demonstration came days after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released a statement condemning the Taliban’s mounting violence against peaceful protestors in Afghanistan. (Photo: Khaama)

TWO FACES OF FASCISM

In his latest contribution to the anarchist journal Fifth Estate, Bill Weinberg explores the twin threats of a totalitarian order that the United States faces at this history-making moment: Trump-fascism, perhaps to be lubricated by a “Reichstag Fire” scenario ahead of the November election, and a post-pandemic “new normality” of complete surveillance and social control. Eerily predictive of these twin dystopias are two works of “future fiction” from the 20th century—It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis and The Machine Stops by EM Forster. With the Black Lives Matter uprising deepening the ugly backlash from the Trump camp and a COVID-19 “second wave” looming, the US is poised on a razor’s edge between long-overdue leaps of social progress and descent into some kind of updated American variant of fascism.

Africa

Nigeria: Biafra headed for new genocide?

Up to 20 were reported killed when Nigerian army troops raided the home of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The raid follows deadly clashes between Igbo IPOB militants and ethnic Hausa and Fulani residents in several areas across Nigeria's southeast. President Buhari accuses the IPOB of a "deliberate and sinister agenda to provoke soldiers into killing innocent people."

Watching the Shadows

Bill Weinberg: against the left-right convergence

In his latest vlog, Bill Weinberg rants about the current left-right convergence, and how the politics of the Hitler-Stalin Pact are being revived in the age of Trump and Putin.

North Africa

ISIS complains about jihadist rivals in Libya

The latest edition of the English-language ISIS magazine Dabiq includes a tirade against Qaeda-aligned forces in Libya, amid an internecine war of jihadist factions.

WHY U.N. CLIMATE TALKS CONTINUE TO FAIL

by Chris Williams, The Indypendent

World leaders from government, business and civil society will gather in New York on September 23 for a United Nations climate summit. After two decades of failed talks, it will be the latest attempt to make progress on a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This time, legions of protesters will be on hand to press for meaningful solutions to the climate crisis to be implemented.

Resolving the climate crisis requires the world's leading industrial nations to collectively agree to legally binding cuts in their emissions and to forego the short-term benefits to their economies of continuing to burn more fossil fuels. To look back on the history of the failed UN climate talks is to understand how maddeningly elusive this goal is and to come face to face with a global economic order that is incapable of making the kind of deep systemic changes needed to adequately address the climate crisis.

Best hope to destroy ISIS: indigenous resistance?

The independent Kurdish news agency Rojava reports that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Kurdish People's Defense Units (YPG) have formed a joint operations force to fight ISIS in the Euphrates Valley region of northern Syria. The YPG is aligned… Read moreBest hope to destroy ISIS: indigenous resistance?

Greater Middle East

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