Welcome to The Critical Realist
Welcome, dear reader, to the newest iteration of my newsletter: The Critical Realist.
In it, you will find selected writings on politics, culture, and society, alongside updates on future plans, forthcoming projects, and works in progress.
First and foremost, I am pleased to announce that I have finally found a platform consistent with my values and my vision: that is, for a world without war, a life beyond capitalism, and a future without fascism. In the process, I am leaving Substack. I am making this move because its owners have shown they do not share these values or this vision.
In building this new platform, I am also making some necessary changes. As an offering to my community of readers, the basic version of this newsletter will remain free for all to access. Additionally, there will now be an option for those of you who wish to support my writing and research in a material way. Now you can:
a) become a supporter for $5/month,
b) become a sustainer for $18/month, or
c) kick in a few dollars for a one-time tip.
Any and all contributions will go towards sustaining the production, circulation, and liberation of knowledge, which has been, and continues to be, my life’s work.
Here's a sketch of what that work will look like in the coming year.
1. I have a new book project in the works, titled Resistance: Field Notes from the Frontlines, 2016-Present. Written for a popular audience, and illustrated with original art and photography, Resistance will reveal the inside story of the movement that tried — and failed — to stop the rise of authoritarianism in America. In retelling the history of the present, the book will retrace the origins of anti-fascist opposition, analyze the dynamics of direct action, and paint a critical portrait of the limits of conventional protest, while proposing alternative ways forward in the age of Trump 2.0. (Resistance is, in a sense, a sequel to my first book, The Occupiers. It is also a companion volume to Blood and Soil.)
2. Together with a few colleagues and comrades, I am involved in the formation of a new publication collective and workers' cooperative. In a time of blacklists, shadow bans, censorship, and the systematic suppression of dissident thought and practice, this cooperative will offer mutual aid to participating authors, artists, scholars, and other knowledge workers in exile. The coop will produce periodic reports, along with an eventual journal of politics, culture, and critique, aimed at supplying an alternative source of intel to the organic intellectual – that is, the one who seeks not merely to understand the world, but to change it. I look forward to sharing the fruits of this labor with you.
3. Lastly, I am pleased to announce that I will be returning to teaching in the coming year. I am in the process of preparing three different courses for three distinct audiences: one, for incarcerated students in two New York State prisons, will focus on the relations of power in 21st-century America; the second, for an activist audience, will be grounded in the theory and practice of direct action; the third, for a general audience, will center on the ethical and political lessons of the Jewish radical tradition in the face of global fascism. I am grateful for this opportunity to put the pedagogy of the oppressed into practice in the days ahead.
More writing to come in my next post. For now, here's hoping the new season now upon us brings a measure of peace to the people, freedom to the captive, and justice to the downtrodden. And here's wishing a healthy and a happy fall to you and yours.
PS: You are cordially invited to join me next Wednesday, September 17, from 6:30 - 8:30 pm EST, when I will be speaking at the People's Forum in New York City (following a premiere of the new film, Occupy Wall Street: An American Dream) on the history, the memory, and the legacy of the Occupy movement. To tune in to the livestream, follow this link.