[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] The word prefigurative has been used in a radical political context for around half a century, but I’ve been encountering it more and more recently. As a sometime design professional it occurred to me that if prefigurative design is…

[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] The human rights of transgender people, and specifically of vulnerable transgender youth, are being systematically denied and dismantled all over the United States. To advance this violent oppression, the states and politicians in question use more than merely legislation…

When we think of propaganda we tend to think of that associated with the worst totalitarian regimes of the 20th century; and the impression we then have is of a sort of Orwellian slogan-bombing which operates on the principle of getting people to assent, by threats of violence, to overtly admitted falsehoods so frequently and…

I’ve admitted before and will admit again that “I am not particularly tech-savvy. I am a cheerleader for open-source, peer-to-peer, decentralized, appropriate, etc. technology, but, otherwise, I am only about as knowledgeable about this stuff as your average zoomer.” However, I have observed that with the rise of cryptocurrencies and blockchain there has emerged a line…

Last week, The Gay Times reported that—based on “a leaked letter sent on 20 February to Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations’ (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights”—U.S. officials claim there is an official Russian list of “‘journalists, activists and gay rights advocates’ to punish in the event it invades Ukraine.” Would this be in line…

If one’s goal is to have productive exchanges when the word capitalism is thrown into play, they must stop doing two things: naively assuming people are more or less on the same page when the term is used; and suggesting that one or another meaning of the word is completely wrong. Some use the term…

Dersim Massacre is the name given to the events that took place in Dersim between 1937-1938 due to the disagreements between the central Turkish government and Kurdish tribes in Dersim regarding the dominance of the region. The city’s current name, whose former name was Dersim, is Tunceli. In the process of the massacre, exile, and…

American Incompetence, not Afghan Corruption: A Post-Mortem of Good Intentions Like most children in Palestine, many of the first foreigners I met were well-intentioned volunteers and academics working for, and funded by, international non-profits and institutions. I idolized these young, lively, and worldly supporters of the Palestinian cause throughout my childhood. However, with adolescence comes…

It’s never been easy to know what to make of self-styled free-marketers who see global capitalism as a real-life instantiation of their values. Given the deep and decisive role of state violence in the creation of global capitalism, they’re either unaware of the basic facts, and so unqualified for their positions, or engaged in a…

Back on March 14, 2020, I began a series on the Coronavirus, which continued through 35 installments (the most recent of which was posted on November 10, 2021). This is not technically an installment of that series, but it addresses another kind of infection, which persists to this day among a certain brand of “libertarians”—who exhibited symptoms of it way back…

On February 16, 1967, NBC aired the twenty-second episode in Season 1 of “Star Trek“; it was called “Space Seed,” known to Trekkies as the episode that introduced the world to the character Khan Noonien Singh, he who would come back with fury in the 1982 film, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” For those who aren’t familiar with…

One of the central claims of capitalism is that it is the best system to bring supply and demand together; when people need a good or service, the capitalist market will provide. However, the reality of the situation can be quite the opposite. An excellent example of this—from my perspective as a lay person whose…

Over the last several weeks, it has been difficult to ignore the whining that has been going on throughout much of the so-called “online left” — and even some in the mainstream press — over the utter collapse of the Build Back Better bill, mostly due to opposition to said bill by extremely conservative Democrats…

As an anarchist prisoner, it has been said many times that one can learn a great deal about society by looking towards its prisons. Look towards its dungeons and there you will see in concentrated and microcosmic form the sickness of the entire system. And today there is something that is particularly revealing about the…

An Abolitionist Approach to Reactionary Violence: Lessons from the Kyle Rittenhouse Case On August 25th, 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse shot two people dead and injured one at a protest against the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Though this event (and the trial proceedings that follow) will be the main focus of this article, my analysis and…

From the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to today (and likely to continue with the sudden rise of Omicron), we—speaking particularly of the U.S.—have seen a massive disruption in global supply chains. The obvious (and correct) answer to ‘why?’  is that labor is the basis of society, and when it—particularly that part involved in moving…

When people think of totalitarianism they think of an all-controlling leader who dictates their wishes to bureaucrats and prefects, which are then carried out with ruthless efficiency. One thinks of the Nazis, the Stalinist Soviets, or many representations in popular culture like the Star Wars Empire. Certainly, this model is what we have understood as…

This essay is an English translation of On Turkish “Libertarians” I will explain my perspective towards individuals who have reached a large audience on platforms such as Twitter in Turkey and yet support statist-nationalist views on immigration despite their self-promotion as liberal/libertarian. It was subsequent to a Turkish person being heard on national television saying,…

The concepts of political realism and apoliticism are often conflated, but merit owed to the former is often incorrectly assigned to the latter. Generally, political realists maintain a practical attitude toward the politicians, governments, institutions and other political factors that create laws, and regulate societies and economies. Instead of keeping a faith in people in…

[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] There is an odd side to the American Dream. One deemed worthless long ago, by the Soviets, by the Maoists, by the BPP. There exists a culture of greed. Though most people lack an in-depth understanding of economic terms…