Identity is politics
(Or: How the activist left learned to stop worrying and love identity politics.) Here and elsewhere I spend much time railing against the notion that “identity” is somehow distinct from “politics”, or...
View ArticleWhose Team New Zealand?
As much as anybody I enjoy sports and competition, so much so that I enjoy watching top level competition in sports that I am unfamiliar with. I have therefore enjoyed watching the America’s Cup...
View ArticleWhy Does Class Matter? Contemplating Left praxis in a po-mo age.
My posts on the demise of the political Left in NZ have elicited a fair bit of debate, which is good. However, there are two main areas of misunderstanding in the debate that need to be corrected. The...
View ArticleDarkness at heart.
Lets consider a hypothetical scenario. A group of women appear to be well on their way to intoxication at a polite venue on an island known to cater to the affluent. They are not caucasian. A...
View ArticleStill think it is all about postmodern identity?
Long term readers may recall something I wrote a few years ago about the issue of Left praxis and the need for a class line above all other strategic perspectives. That post was done in part because of...
View ArticleLetters from America, take three: a scab got picked.
Donald Trump picked a scab during his campaign for the presidency and now the pus is draining out. It will be a while before the wound is cleansed. The pus is racism, xenophobia and bigotry. When I...
View ArticleMedia Link: Culture Wars and more reasons to wonder about the Trump agenda...
This week Mitch Harris and I talked about Trump’s attacks on the so-called “take a knee movement,” his lack of compassion for the Puerto Rican victims of two hurricans and the increasingly risky...
View ArticleDo the Greens have a candidate vetting problem?
12 weeks after the election the Green Party’s 14th ranked candidate in 2017 opts out of politics and joins a morning television program. Shortly after the election it is discovered that one of their...
View ArticlePebbles under the mattress.
The structure of capitalism can be likened to that of a bed. The productive apparatus serves as the bed frame. Although there is plenty of variance to the exact configuration of the frame, its...
View ArticleMedia Link: “AVFA” on electoral politics in Brazil, US and Israel.
This week Selwyn Manning and I do a post-mortem on Brazil’s election and a preview of the US midterms under the general banner of “it is about the movement, not the man,” then turn to the tactical and...
View Article