Welcome! Newsletter number 45.
No new review on the blog this month, but there was one published in the German monthly ak about Martin Krauss’s Dabei sein wäre alles, kind of a lefty history of sports.
My reportage from the Riddu Riđđu Festival was published by the Swedish weekly Flamman, while the interview I did with the Polynesian metal band Shepherds Reign can be found on DIY Conspiracy. The interview with Jeremy Dutcher will be published in the upcoming issue of ak.
My article “Oppressor and Oppressed Nations: Sketching a Taxonomy of Imperialism” is now also available in German. Some comrades in Switzerland prompted me to translate it. In this context, I also went to look for the Arabic translation I had once heard about. I was able to locate it on the curiously named Boring Books blog.
Also belated is a reference to John Malkin’s Punk Revolution! An Oral History of Punk Rock Politics and Activism, which was published in 2023. It contains a few quotes by me, which I suppose I qualified for due to my unrelenting defense of straight edge. Nailed to the X!
In the journal Arbetaren, I was allowed to comment on the rise of membership numbers in the SAC, the union I am currently general secretary of. The rise is mainly due to Solidariska byggare, our construction workers’ branch in Stockholm, which Jacobin recently reported on in both English and German.
We received a prominent visit to the SAC offices in August. Marianne Enckell, who has for decades been running the fabulous Centre International de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme (CIRA) in Lausanne, the world’s biggest anarchist archive, stopped by while visiting family in the region. I’ve known Marianne for a long time and have fond memories of volunteering at CIRA in 2007.
On August 27, Dharana Favilla and I got to present our book Frihetens fönster: om kamp i Latinamerika och exil i Sverige at Mångkulturellt centrum in Stockholm. Mångkulturellt centrum, a research facility established in 1987, is under acute threat of losing the public funding necessary to maintain its operations, an expression of the political times we live in, also in Sweden. Shameful.
Finally, I’m happy to report that our friends at Warzone Distro in the Midwest of the USA not only continue to run a state-of-the-art zine distribution that confirms that some of the best features of the 1990s are still alive; no, they’ve also added a touch of the 2000s by introducing a YouTube channel with many a thought-provoking video. You don’t have to agree with everything, but don’t despair: they wouldn’t expect you to either.
More next month. Stay safe!