Bill Weinberg

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Satanic techno-fascism (yes, really)

Peter Thiel of Palantir, most aggressively reactionary of the Trump-linked nexus of fascist tech bros, now openly invokes the Faust story, in which a scientist sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and power—and not as a warning against hubris, but as a positive example, in defense of the notion that “evil can be good.” In Episode 350 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg turns to the 1940s dialogue between rationalist JBS Haldane and moralist CS Lewis to explore how technology and politics—and especially the intersection of the two—can become Satanic, in a metaphorical if not literal sense. (Image: Comedy Central via The Guardian)

Planet Watch

CounterVortex on one-week hiatus

The CounterVortex is going to be on hiatus for the next week, while chief ranter, blogger and editor Bill Weinberg is traveling abroad on a secret mission. We will resume our didactic blogging and ranting activities the week after. We also hope to have fully restored the website by then, following the attack we suffered from Chinese state-sponsored hackers in August. Immediately after this, we will have to deal with the dilemma of Verizon cutting off the home internet access that we depend on, as discussed here. More than ever, we need you support. Please give what you can. Every little bit helps….

Palestine

Podcast: West Bank at genocidal threshold

The three-year commemoration of the October 7 attacks saw ugly manifestations around the world of the growing atmosphere of polarization and dogmatism on the Israel-Palestine dilemma. There is, alas, the grave potential for everything to get much worse. Benjamin Netanyahu, under siege politically within Israel, is seeking not only a re-occupation of Gaza, but to extend the eliminationist project to the West Bank. In Episode 349 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes stock. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: RJA1988 via Jurist)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: #ResistRobotRule

CounterVortex editor and ranter Bill Weinberg faces imminent cancelation of his landline service by corporate oppressor Verizon. As fiber-optic is not available in his building, this makes cable the only alternative—which means drilling through exterior walls, threatening the structural integrity of the 19th century tenement. This as the Countervortex website remains debilitated following an attack by Chinese state-sponsored hackers. With this dissident voice in danger of being silenced, the system of corporate rule is increasingly replaced by worse-still actual robot rule. Trump and the fascist tech bros are putting in place the architecture for direct robot control over the military-security apparatus, and even of imperial decision-making. Robo-propaganda has already thoroughly colonized the political process, both in the US and elsewhere. All this as the ecological impacts of the technology contiue to propel the apocalypse. In Episode 348 of the CounterVortex podcast, Weinberg looks for glimmers of hope in municipal pushback, and popular refusal of aritifical intelligence and the entire digital leviathan. (Image: Darrin Grimwood via Goodreads)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: whither the Butlerian Jihad?

Protests happily continue to mount against the rapid encroachment of Artificial Intelligence over all spheres of society—and have met with some victories. Other responses, however, appear to have succumbed to desperation and counter-productive adventurism. But even the United Nations human rights commissioner has taken note amid repeated incidents of AI programs "going rogue," and more industry insiders coming forward to warn of catastrophic risks to humanity. Bernie Sanders has called for legislating a pause on "superintelligent" AI. Meanwhile, in a virtually regulation-free environment, so-called "biological data centers" are pioneering the neural-digital interface—portending the actual abolition of humanity. In Episode 347 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes how the predicament now facing humanity was predicted by dystopian prophets—from Samuel Butler in the 1860s, to Frank Herbert a century later. (Image via Instagram)

Inner Asia

Tibetans march on Washington to oppose Xi

As Trump prepares to meet with Xi Jinping at the White House, a small group of exiled Tibetans has departed from New York City for a cross-country march on Washington, to join a demonstration planned there against the Chinese dictator. The group departed from the gates of the United Nations, where Lobga Rangzen, a longtime New York Tibetan activist, self-immolated on July 2. After a stop at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall—clearly chosen for its symbolic value—the "Independence Walk" will arrive in DC Sept. 24, the date of both the rally against Xi and the dinner honoring him at the White House (also to be attended by giants of the tech industry). (Photo: Ella Krivova)

New York City

9-11, fascism & the #PostTruth pathology

Amid the politicized ugliness and street skirmishes around the 25th anniversary of 9-11 in New York City, a conspiracy-theory confab convenes, glorifying MAGA martyr Charlie Kirk and headlining such high-profile dictator-propagandists and reactionary charlatans as Roger Waters, Jimmy Dore and Ben Swann—indicating that a significant swath of the ostensible "left" has surrendered to the lure of fascism. In Episode 345 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again dissects the emerging Red-Brown alliance. (Photo: BG On The Scene)

New York City

Hindutva, Zionism and the Brad Lander incident

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), pillar of India's ruling fascistic ideology of Hindutva, held a rally in New York City—which was happily met with a large protest outside Madison Square Garden. Some protesters drew a parallel between Kashmir and Palestine, an obvious connection given the Zionist-Hindutva anti-Muslim axis. However, progressive Congressional candidate Brad Lander—an opponent of military aid to Israel and a supporter of Israel's anti-war opposition—was accosted at the protest for being a "Zionist." This is mirrored in a similar incident in San Francisco, when another Jewish Democratic candidate, Scott Wiener, was driven from a Trans Pride event in Dolores Park. In Episode 344 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg attempts to cut through the propaganda and provide some clarity on the issues at play here. (Photo: Yashica Dutt via Facebook)

New York City

Podcast: In defense of real life

With the CounterVortex website debilitated by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, chief blogger and ranter Bill Weinberg takes heart in the vibrant scene unfolding this summer in the Lower East Side's Tompkins Square Park—which was kicked off with the anti-tech fest Summer of Ludd. In an historical comparison, Weinberg reads from the December 1966 issue of Paul Krassner's The Realist, in which Robert Anton Wilson wrote on the "cybercultural revolution," and from the Winter 2025 issue of Berkeley anarchist zine Slingshot, in which Anthony Moser rants against Artificial Intelligence. Moser notes how Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki dissed AI-generated anime as "an insult to life itself"—only to have ChatGPT retaliate by targeting his Studio Ghibli for appropriation. In Episode 343, the CounterVortex podcast offers a vigorous defense of authentic human culture, the material world, and real life. (Photo: CounterVortex)

New York City

NYC: ‘die-in’ against automotive terror

New York City street safety advocates staged a "die-in" outside City Hall, demanding that the city take action amid a spike in bicyclist and pedestrian deaths. Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets are calling for a plan to protect New Yorkers from reckless motorists. The protest was called after four people were killed in hit-and-run "collisions" (sic) in the span of five days, three of them on bikes. (Photo: NYC Public Advocate via Facebook)

New York City

Podcast: politics of the NYC synagogue attack

Following the attack on Manhattan's historic Central Synagogue, Jewish establishment voices are calling for stepped up surveillance and policing. But the threat, alas, is real. The assailant spewing the "fake Jews" epithet indicates either that he has been indoctrinated by the Neturei Karta cult, which holds all Jews outside their micro-schism to be apostate, or the "Khazar thesis"—just barely laundered anti-Semitism, inevitably linked to ugly stereotyped images of evil Jews and wacky conspiracy theories. Cynical attempts to blame Mayor Mamdani for the attack are predictable. Alas, some figures on the political left really have traded in denialism about the reality that the attack was, in fact, an anti-Semitic attack. This is linked to a more general denialism on much of the "left" about the very existence of Jewish ethnicity. Efforts to weaponize anti-Semitism to silence pro-Palestinian voices are to be opposed, but do not mean anti-Semitism doesn't exist—or change the reality that any legitimate anti-Zionism must be committed to fighting anti-Semitism in the diaspora. In Episode 342 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again breaks it down. (Image: Wikipedia)

Greater Middle East

Podcast: geopolitics of The Odyssey

The righties are apoplectic that Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey famously portrays a Black Helen—displaying their ignorance of the actual intercourse between Africa and the ancient Greek world. But apart from the cultural politics of the movie, the geopolitics of the Trojan War have all too much to say about the contemporary world crisis. Then, the Bosphorus and Dardanelles constituted the strategic chokepoints at issue, just as the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb do today. And the Bosphorus & Dardanelles could suddenly become critically strategic if Turkey becomes embroiled in either the Middle East war or the Ukraine war—or both. The current world crisis could bring about a civilization collapse far more decisive and complete than the Bronze Age Collapse that followed the Trojan War. In Episode 341 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg breaks it down. (Map: BestQuest)