Welcome! Newsletter 17.
New review: “The Sports-Industrial Complex”, about Craig Calcaterra’s Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game.
I’m glad I got this one in ’cause there wasn’t much other sports writing this month. Very busy with the German translation of Torkil Lauesen’s The Global Perspective. I’m glad I got to meet Torkil, though, for a talk about radical theory and academia (based on a Counterpunch article we co-authored), hosted by Copenhagen’s Institut for Marxistisk Analyse; there’s a summary and voice recording online (in Danish/Swedish).
I also got to speak about resistance in Sápmi and the disastrous decision by the Swedish government to proceed with the iron-ore mining project at Gállok – I was joined by Kerstin Andersson from Amnesty Sápmi for a “Climate Sunday” event at Stockholm’s legendary Kafé 44.
In May, I’ll be in Austria for four events: speaking about Soccer vs the State at the fifth anniversary party of Vienna’s “Wilde Liga”; presenting Die Linke in Schweden at Vienna’s Anarchist Library and at Radio Helsinki in Graz; and partaking in a discussion about alternative visions for the future of soccer at Vienna’s City Library, where I’ll serve as a sidekick to Alina Schwermer, author of the brilliant, newly-released Futopia: Ideen für eine bessere Fußballwelt, which I had the honor to be interviewed for. Very much looking forward to it all. Oh, the post-Covid world!
Do I have any other publications to show for in the month of April? Yes, a long-delayed Sápmi feature in neues deutschland. Well, actually not that much to show for here, as the feature is not online and I don’t have a suitable PDF, but it’s in the April 9/10 weekend edition, I promise! (Unfortunately, with a poor choice of images and headers. Always a risk.) Available online is the junge Welt article I wrote on the protests against the Quran burnings of Danish-Swedish right-winger Rasmus Paludan.
Considering the poor publication record this month, I’m glad that some of my writing has been featured in other texts, for example in a long, and very interesting (okay, I guess I have to say that), editorial by Strange Matters, titled “Socialism with an Anarchist Squint”. I am also glad that I can at least offer another audio recording. Graham Culbertson invited me to talk about pirates on his Everyday Anarchism podcast.
I opted for a one-off revival of Alpine Anarchist in order to post a text about the upcoming elections in the Philippines authored by a group of local anarchists. These are longstanding connections that I treasure. See also Pangayaw and Decolonizing Resistance: Anarchism in the Philippines.
Last but not least, there’s a new bookstore in Stockholm, Hornstulls bokhandel, which you should go and check out if you get the chance. It is run by the fine people behind Verbal forlag.
More next month. Stay safe!