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You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Archive for category Bruce Thompson
On May 11, 2018, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel discussion, The Second Amendment and the Left, at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). Speaking at the event were Evan Hetland, member of Platypus; Mike Rotkin, former lecturer at UCSC and ex-mayor of Santa Cruz; Bruce Thompson, lecturer of history at UCSC; and Dayton Andrews, representing Redneck Revolt. The panel was moderated by Duyminh Tran. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Held May 11, 2018 at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Panelists:

Evan Hetland - Platypus Affiliated Society
Mike Rotkin - former editor of Socialist Review, former mayor of Santa Cruz
Bruce Thompson - Professor of History at UCSC
Dave Andrews - Redneck Revolt
Jasmine - Redneck Revolt

Description:

Recent school shootings and the ever-recurring instances of police brutality pose acutely the question of gun control today. Should the Left take up the demand for gun control, and if so, how? If not, why not? How is gun control related to the struggle for socialism?

Held November 15, 2017 at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Speakers:

Mike Rotkin, former editor of Socialist Review
Larry Cafiero, Democratic Socialists of America
Keith McHenry, Food Not Bombs
Bruce Thompson, Professor of History at UCSC

Description:

Since the Nazi seizure of power eighty years ago anti-fascism has been integral to left-wing politics. The struggle against fascists and Nazis is morally self-evident, so that political anti-fascism seems to be similarly self-evident. Yet in past periods of history, the politics of anti-fascism was completely different, as was the understanding of what it contributed to leftist politics more generally. Still certain continuity can be discerned in anti-fascism’s retention of anti-capitalist claims. Where does this come from? What was anti-fascism and how has it changed? How do the category and concept of anti-fascism help us to understand both historical and contemporary political realities? What does anti-fascism mean today in the absence of fascism as a mass movement?