THE RECENT COINAGE OF “THE ANTHROPOCENE” as a technical term of art presents an intriguing intellectual and political puzzle. Arguments for accepting the Anthropocene as a fundamental change in all hitherto experienced human history appear driven less by the hopes to chronicle accurately natural history, than by designs for redirecting how human beings ought to act now.
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The “anti-imperialist Left” considers itself opposed to all U.S. government action as “imperialist” on principle. But, as Trotsky wrote to his followers in 1938, “Learn to think!” while one may oppose the government politically, to oppose the government putting out a fire, especially when there is no alternative agency for doing so, is nonsense.
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On May 28th, 2013, a group of environmental activists gathered to protest the demolition of Gezi Park, a small, urban park in central Istanbul. As the municipal authorities intensified their efforts to evict the activists, the number of demonstrators began to grow. On the morning of the 31th, police raided the demonstrators’ camp and resorted to violence, resulting in more than 100 civilian injuries.
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"Think of us like the psychoanalysts of the Left." - This was one of the descriptions that a member of the Platypus Affiliated Society offered after I had made some probing, perhaps doubtful, remarks about the intentions of their organization. As someone who identified with the radical Left and psychoanalysis, I found this statement to be rather instructive and, really, born out of a genuine insight into the current state of the Left.
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LEADING PUBLIC MEMBER of the Socialist Workers Party of the United Kingdom, Richard Seymour, who made a name for himself with the book The Liberal Defense of Murder (2008), polemicizing against campaigns of “humanitarian” military intervention such as the Iraq War, recently released his book on the late Christopher Hitchens, Unhitched, demonstrating that Hitchens remains an enduring and indeed indispensable phenomenon in the present system of thinking on the “Left.”
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