anarchists

Syria

Continuing fallout of Syria’s forgotten war

News of Syria’s war often makes it seem like the conflict is in the past. Take the announcement that US officials in Los Angeles had arrested Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, a Syrian military official who ran Adra prison outside Damascus, infamous for torture, and later served as governor of Deir ez-Zor province, where he oversaw a violent crackdown on protesters after the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad broke out in 2011. Al-Sheikh was arrested for immigration violations, and has not been charged with war crimes. But the war is ongoing, and rights groups report ongoing reprisals and collective punishment against people who oppose (or once opposed) Assad in recaptured areas. (Map: PCL)

New York City

Podcast: Bill Weinberg’s neo-Yippie memoir

In Episode 233 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg recalls his days as a young neo-Yippie in the 1980s. A remnant faction of the 1960s counterculture group adopted a punk aesthetic for the Reagan era, launched the US branch of the Rock Against Racism movement, brought chaos to the streets at Republican and Democratic political conventions, defied the police in open cannabis “smoke-ins”—and won a landmark Supreme Court ruling for free speech. The Yippie clubhouse at 9 Bleecker Street, the hub for all these activities, has long since succumbed to the gentrification of the East Village, but it survived long enough to provide inspiration to a new generation of radical youth during Occupy Wall Street. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo from the CounterVortex collection)

Planet Watch

Podcast: further thoughts on the common toad

In Episode 221 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues the Spring ritual from his old WBAI program, the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade (which he lost due to his political dissent), of reading the George Orwell essay “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad“—which brilliantly predicted ecological politics when it was published way back in April 1946. The Social Ecology of Murray Bookchin today informs a radical response to the global climate crisis, emphasizing self-organized action at the local and municipal levels as world leaders dither, proffer techno-fix solutions, or consciously obstruct progress. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: National Wildlife Federation)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Reformation, Remonstrance, Reaction

In Episode 210 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg traces the paradoxical trajectory from medieval heresies to the Protestant Reformation, proto-anarchist movements of the English Civil War, fights for religious freedom in colonial America (with an emphasis on the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657), Abolitionism and the Underground Railroad (e.g. at the Quaker homestead of Bowne House in Flushing, NY)—to evangelical Protestantism as a pillar of Christian fascism in the impending MAGA order. How did we get here, and what elements of American political culture can we look to as a source of resistance today? Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: 1957 postage stamp commemorating Flushing Remonstrance via Wikipedia)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: liberatory legacy of heresy

Raoul Vaneigem, famous as a key figure in the Situationist International and author of The Revolution of Everyday Life, a tract associated with the May 1968 uprising in Paris, traces Gnostic and millenarian movements of ancient and medieval times as critical precursors of the revolutions of the modern age. In Episode 208 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses his book Resistance to Christianity: A Chronological Encyclopaedia of Heresy from the Beginning to the Eighteenth Century, newly translated from the French by Bill Brown and released by Eris imprint of Columbia University Press. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

Southern Cone

Argentina gets an anarchist president? Not!

English-language media accounts are calling Argentina’s far-right president-elect Javier Milei a “self-described anarcho-capitalist,” but this appears to be a translation error. In Episode 202 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg sets the record straight, exposing “anarcho-capitalism” as an oxymoron and the fascistic Milei as antithetical to everything that Argentina’s proud anarchist tradition ever stood for. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Anarcho-capitalist flag via Wikimedia Commons, defaced by CounterVortex)

Europe

Ukrainian anti-fascist sentenced to prison in Russia

An appeals court in Moscow upheld the 13-year sentence imposed on Ukrainian human rights defender Maksym Butkevych, in what Amnesty International called “a grave miscarriage of justice.” Butkevych had been convicted in a “sham trial” by a de facto court in the Russian-occupied “Luhansk People’s Republic” in Ukraine, which Moscow has unilaterally declared annexed territory. A platoon leader in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Butkevych was taken captive in March and charged with war crimes. Amnesty dismisses the case as “a reprisal by Russia for his civic activism and his prominent human rights work.” Before the invasion, Butkevych led a Ukrainian NGO helping refugees find asylum in the country, and had long been a frontline opponent of the militant right in both Ukraine and Russia. (Image: Ukraine Solidarity Campaign)

Europe

Solidarity with imprisoned anti-fascists in Russia

In Episode 190 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the cases of Azat Miftakhov, Darya Polyudova, Aleksandra Skochilenko, Yelena Milashina, Larysa Schchyrakova, Maksym Butkevych and other Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian anti-fascist activists imprisoned by the dictatorships of Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko. These courageous women and men recognize these twin allied regimes as now actually having crossed the line into fascism—despite the paradoxical fascist pseudo-anti-fascism of their propaganda. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: caseazatmiftakhov.org)

Europe

Russian anti-fascist released from prison, promptly re-arrested

Russian anti-fascist activist Azat Miftakhov was arrested by FSB agents immediately upon his release from a prison colony in Omutninsk. Azat had been in detention since February 2019, convicted in connection with the breaking of a window at a Moscow protest outside an office of the ruling United Russia party. At that time of that arrest Miftakhov was a mathematics graduate student at Moscow State University. Miftakhov endured torture, threats, and other mistreatment at the hands of authorities while imprisoned. After a trial marked by widespread judicial abuses and the use of “secret witnesses,” in January 2021 he was convicted of “hooliganism” and sentenced to five years. He was released on parole two days after an International Day for the Liberation of Azat Miftakhov was held in cities around the world. But just as he exited the prison to meet his family, he was taken into custody again—this time on charges of “publicly justifying terrorism.” (Photo: caseazatmiftakhov.org)

Europe

Podcast: Ukraine and anarchist internationalism

In Episode 187, the CounterVortex podcast presents audio from the panel “Ukraine and Anarchist Internationalism” at the Los Angeles Anarchist Book Fair. Bill Weinberg urges solidarity with the Ukrainian anarchist units fighting the Russians—and calls out the American left for essentially supporting the wrong side in the war. For instance, the perennially problematic Democracy Now ignores the heroic Russian left-dissidents who have sacrificed their freedom or even lives to resist Putin’s war effort, such as Darya Polyudova, Aleksandra Skochilenko and Dmitry Petrov. But it gives splashy coverage to Yurii Sheliazhenko, the Ukrainian pacifist just arrested in Kyiv for “justifying Russian aggression.” Also: Yevgeny Lerner speaks on the national liberation struggle of the Crimean Tatars. Introduction by Javier Sethness, author of Eros & Revolution: The Critical Philosophy of Herbert Marcuse and the upcoming Queer Tolstoy. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Ukrainian anarchist football hooligan militia via The Resistance Committee)

Europe

Solitary confinement for Russian anti-war dissident

Imprisoned Russian anti-war activist Darya Polyudova has been placed in punitive solitary confinement after guards said they found a razor-blade in her belongings, which is considered a major violation at the penal colony in the North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria where she is incarcerated. Polyudova’s mother told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that her daughter said guards had planted the blade in her belongings to frame her, adding that the activist is starting a hunger strike to protest the move. Polyudova, affiliated with the Left Resistance dissident network, was sentenced to nine years in prison in December on “extremism” charges related to her nonviolent opposition to the Russian war in Ukraine. (Photo: Polyudova with sign calling for release of Ukrainians detained by Russia, including filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and Crimean anarchist Oleksandr Kolchenko. Via RFE/RL)

Europe

France: far-right parties invoke ‘civil war’

French police have arrested more than 3,000 protesters in unrest that has spread since the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old delivery worker Nahel Merzouk, the son of North African immigrants, during a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. The Ministry of the Interior has mobilized some 45,000 police troops and gendarmes, as fierce clashes with police have spread across the country. The French far right is meanwhile baiting President Emmanuel Macron for what they portray as a weak response to the uprising. Marine Le Pen issued an inflammatory video statement warning of “anarchy” and calling for a state of emergency to be declared. Marion Maréchal, Le Pen’s niece and a former National Front parliamentarian, has called for armed vigilantism and repeatedly invoked “civil war.” (Photo via Crimethinc)