Newsletter number 4.
This is fun. Another monthly roundup. I’ll start with yet another review posted here. Last month, I said that I’ll try to make this a feature, and one month into it, I’m still sticking to the plan. Hooray! Under the title “The iOS State”, I reviewed a new AK Press release, Eric Laursen’s The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State.
The very first review I posted on this blog was “Ecological Leninism: Friend or Foe?”, which looked at two new books on radical environmentalism by Andreas Malm. I was fairly critical of them, and there’ve been a few reviews since with similar sentiments. I particularly recommend “How to Write about Pipelines” by Sakshi Aravind and “How to Blow up a Movement” by James Wilt. Max Ajl’s take, published earlier in the Brooklyn Rail, is also very good.
It’s funny with translations. You would think that people would like to tell the author about them (not because of copyright or whatever, or at least I’m not very concerned about that, but because it’s nice to know that someone’s going through the effort), but it’s far from always the case. I only found out now that my long essay “Oppressor and Oppressed Nations: Sketching a Taxonomy of Imperialism” was translated into Spanish last summer. Even more strikingly, a Greek edition of the book Turning Money into Rebellion: The Unlikely Story of Denmark’s Revolutionary Bank Robbers came out a few months ago. I got to know via a friend. Sweet!
The folks from Hydra Bøger in Copenhagen did tell me that they were planning to bring out “Revolution Is More than a Word: 23 Theses on Anarchism” in Danish. It turned out to be a really nice little book!
A recent article, “What Happened to the Anarchist Century?”, is now available in Dutch. There was also a response to the article published on the Shores of Anarres blog.
In Sweden, the radio collective of the beautiful “cultural and social space” Cyklopen invited me to last week’s show. Under the topic “Popularize Antifascism”, I got to talk about the workers’ antifascist militias in Red Vienna in the 1920s and 30s (roughly minutes 44 to 55 – although you should, of course, listen to the entire three hours!). The interview was based on my book Antifascism, Sports, Sobriety: Forging a Militant Working-Class Culture.
I also joined a meeting of the Amnesty Sápmi reading group, where participants had read Liberating Sápmi: Indigenous Resistance in Europe’s Far North. It was a great! It’s rare to get such detailed feedback on top of many interesting questions. On the same topic, a May 8 online presentation of Liberating Sápmi hosted by Asheville’s Firestorm Books is open for registration. I will be joined by longtime activist Niillas Somby, which makes me recommend the event with good conscience. Niillas is fantastic!
I covered the winter sport season for the German socialist daily junge Welt until the very end. March brought articles about the Nordic Ski World Championships, the finals of the world cup in Alpine skiing (one and two), and an overall summary of the season. I’m sad the season has ended. One one occasion, I also ventured into junge Welt‘s international pages, reporting on Denmark’s ever stricter migration policies.
Inconceivably, I was featured in a great Instagram project, Straight Edge Interviews, whose makers were generous enough to invite me despite not having a single social media account. If I did, I’d be a follower!
Finally, if you won the lottery and feel like supporting worthwhile radical projects, you could channel the money to Belfast’s anarchist stalwarts at Just Books, who are now expanding into publishing, or to the Vienna Anarchist Library collective that seems to be building a location even nicer than the last one!
Next newsletter in a month. Stay safe!