March 2023

Welcome! Newsletter 27.

After three doubleheaders in a row, it’s back to one review per month. This time, “Did Antifascism Invent the Left?” looks at Joseph Fronczak’s Everything Is Possible: Antifascism and the Left in the Age of Fascism.

The month of February started in the far north. I went to the Sámi film festival Skábmagovat in Inari/Aanaar, Finland, and then to the winter market in Jokkmokk/Jåhkåmåhkke, Sweden, an important annual gathering for the Sámi community. Out of it came four articles: a report from the film festival and a piece about reindeer racing in German for junge Welt, as well as, in Swedish, an interview with documentary filmmaker Suvi West and a look at Sámi culture and labor history for Arbetaren.

The Sámi were back in the news at the end of February, when Sámi activists occupied the oil and energy ministry in Oslo in protest against the government’s inactivity concerning a Supreme Court ruling about the illegality of wind parks built on Sámi land on the peninsula of Fosen. I wrote about this for junge Welt. I also enjoyed seeing an article honoring Sámi national day on the German-language page of the Kurdish ANF News website, where my book Liberating Sápmi: Indigenous Resistance in Europe’s Far North was referenced.

More writing for junge Welt: paraskiing world championships, alpine skiing world championships (one and two), biathlon world championships (one and two), Nordic skiing world championships, no more skiing world championships (a.k.a. global warming and the future of winter sports), and a Nordic security/military summit in Sweden.

For analyse & kritik, I wrote about the right-wing Swedish government, NATO, and crime (yes, kinda like one and the same, but with slight differences).

For CounterPunch, I wrote the piece “Anti-Imperialism Is for Everyone”. Simple message: anti-imperialism doesn’t equal Leninism.

With my West Java buddy Frans Ari Prasetyo, I collaborated on two pieces: “Fans, Officials, and Police: Catastrophe Day in Indonesian Football”, looking at the cover-up involved in dealing with the Kanjuruhan Stadium tragedy of October 2022 (published on the PM Press blog), and “Keepin’ It Real in Indonesia: A Tribute to Manusia Buatan”, a shout out to one of Indonesia’s longest lasting straight edge bands (published by DIY Conspiracy).

Two old texts, written under pseudonyms, are included in a very Viennese publication (save the main title, but maybe that’s New Vienna), WAY EAR. Wegmarken, Subversionen, Gehörgänge. The publication is so underground that I don’t find a single trace of it online, but I swear it exists, I have a hard copy. The editor is no other than my old friend Thomas Raab. My contributions are German translations of excerpts from a philosophy piece and a short story from back in the day.

In the latest issue of Anarchist Studies (vol. 31/1) is a long interview with me conducted by Matt Wilson. Matt is the author of Rules Without Rulers: The Possibilities and Limits of Anarchism, one of the best books written on anarchism in the past twenty years. I enjoyed our exchange.

German publisher edition assemblage released the translation of a Swedish book about middle-class dominance within the left under the title Mit geballter Faust in der Tasche. Über Klasse, Normen und die Linke. They listed me as a translator, which, I suppose, is kind. All I did was grant the editors the right to use the translations I did for an earlier pamphlet called Mit geballter Faust in der Tasche, which included a selection of articles from the Swedish original.

Like many, I was devastated by the passing of Bay Area community organizer Jen Angel; there is a fundraiser to help the projects she left behind. There is also a Sweden-based insamling to support grassroots efforts in rebuilding the areas of Kurdistan hit by the magnitude 7.8 earthquake of February 6.

More next month. Stay safe!