On June 2, 2023, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel on decolonization and the Left at Cambridge University. The speakers were James Heartfield (former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (UK), author of The Aborigines’ Protection Society and Britain’s Empires, Ralph Leonard (writer at unHerd), and Andrew Sanchez (Professor of Social Anthropology at Cambridge, author of Criminal Capital.
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The authors of our volume consciously distance themselves from “fake” decolonization and “co-optation” into the status quo. Yet, their arguments exemplify tendencies that have contributed to the Left’s current helplessness. The book offers little beyond a synthesis of writings fashionable within the “academic” Left, and there are significant omissions in a text that seeks to open debate rather than foreclosing it. I shall argue that these follow from a one-sided view of modern history and its contradictions.
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On July 13, 2025, the Platypus Affiliated Society organized a panel discussion on reform, revolution, and resistance. The panelists were Pablo Abufom (Coordinator for Palestine in Chile; Solidarity Movement), Camilo Ernesto MejĂa (Sandinista and anti-war activist), Jorge MĂşjica (MORENA), and Antonio RosellĂł (Partido Obrero in Argentina).
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On February 22, 2025, Platypus Affiliated Society members Tobias Kohlberger and Michael McClelland interviewed Pablo Abufom, a philosopher, translator, and biologist living in Chile. Abufom has been involved in struggles against neoliberalism in Chile for almost 20 years, as a student organizer, an activist for a new pension system, former director of the political movement Solidaridad, and, more recently, spokesperson for the Coordinadora por Palestina, a coalition of social movements for Palestinian liberation. In 2019, Abufom was a community organizer during the Estallido Social (social outburst) in Chile.
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Yet, beneath this glittering ascent lies a more sinister narrative: the Trump administration’s so-called “crypto revolution,” a policy blitz that promises to crown America as the “crypto capital of the world” but risks inflating a colossal bubble at the expense of the working masses.
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