Author: icsswpadmin

Dr. Ranjeet Brar speaking on the campaign of persecution of prominent anti-Zionist campaigners in Britain.

Ranjeet Brar is a pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist activist, journalist, author, and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (ML). Dr. Brar is a Vascular Surgeon at the University of Sheffield Royal College of Surgeons of England, United Kingdom

According to the dominant ideology, fascism constitutes an exceptional break with the protocols of liberal democracy, which has only happened at rare moments in the history of the West, such as in Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany. Liberalism is thereby postulated as a bulwark against fascism, an idea that’s been consolidated through the massive perpetuation of a historical narrative regarding the supposed democratic defeat of Nazism in WWII. This presentation will critically interrogate these assumptions by re-examining the historical relationship between liberal democracy and fascism. Have they always been opposed to one another, or do they sometimes work in concert as two capitalist ideologies? Is it really the case that liberal democratic governments in the imperial core serve as safeguards against fascism? If so, what are we to make of their imperialist foreign policies, their colonial histories, their general tolerance toward fascists, and their current domestic practices of draconian policing, mass incarceration, the militarization of borders, and the empowerment of vigilante militias? In addressing these and parallel questions, this talk will seek to develop a refined dialectical understanding of fascism and liberalism as capitalist modes of governance that are often partners in crime, while also avoiding any simplistic, ultra-leftist conflation between them.

This event will be co-sponsored by the Critical Theory Workshop (https://criticaltheoryworkshop.com/)

Gabriel Rockhill  (https://gabrielrockhill.com) is the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier  de Théorie Critique (https://criticaltheoryworkshop.com/), Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, and the author or editor of nine books, as well as numerous scholarly and general public articles.

As we head into election 2024, the Biden administration, Democratic Party politicians, and media pundits have has launched an aggressive campaign touting the “accomplishments of Bidenomics.” Yet according to an AP News poll, only 34 percent of Americans say they approve of Biden’s handling of the economy. Democratic Party politicians and pundits echo the theme that the economy is doing great, decry unfounded pAs we head into election 2024, the Biden administration, Democratic Party politicians, and media pundits have has launched an aggressive campaign touting the “accomplishments of Bidenomics.” Yet according to an AP News poll, only 34 percent of Americans say they approve of Biden’s handling of the economy. Democratic Party politicians and pundits echo the theme that the economy is doing great, decry unfounded pessimism, and insist that expressions of discontent are reflections of misinformation and MAGA propaganda.

This Sunday, Economist Dr. Jack Rasmus will set the record straight for working people: what is going on in the economy in 2024? What is the basis in reality for peoples’ discontent with the economy?

Dr. Jack Rasmus (Twitter/X: @drjackrasmus), Ph.D Political Economy, teaches economics at St. Mary’s College of California, and is an Economist, radio show host, & author of The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy From Reagan to Bush, Clarity Press, October 2019; Alexander Hamilton & The Origins of the Fed, Lexington books, March 2019; Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression, Clarity Press, August 2018.

For more than a century, a trend within Western Marxism has been to retreat from endorsing actually existing socialist projects such as the Soviet Union and retheorizing their significance in relation to capitalism. In this context, these scholars have begun to, in effect, reject imperialism as a driving force of capitalism, while obscuring the central regressive role of the US in particular.

Such re-theorization downplays the historical significance of actually existing socialism and especially socialist projects in the Global South, often by reframing them as part of global capitalism or global modernity. Recent versions of Western Marxism often conflate capitalism and modernity. The presentation explores the source of Western Marxism’s antagonism to socialism, especially socialism in the Global South. Our speaker contends that a new shift occurred in the 1980s and 1990s as Western Marxists began to focus on global capitalism and globalization.

Our speaker, Immanuel Ness, is a professor of political science at Brooklyn College (CUNY) and a visiting professor of sociology at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. A trade union organizer in the US and labor activist in the Global South, Immanuel Ness is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Labor and Society. He is chair of the New York Peace Council and of the International Committee of the PSC/CUNY, a labor union representing faculty at CUNY. He recently returned from a US Peace Council delegation to meet with the Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament.

Helen Jaccard, project manager for the voyage of the Golden Rule and her partner Gerry Condon, former president of Veterans for Peace and current board member, will report on their just completed 15-month odyssey with the anti-nuclear sailboat, meeting people along the length of the Mississippi, across the Gulf Coast, on to Cuba, up the east coast, and back to the Midwest via inland waterways. They will also address organizing a peace movement and the peace in Ukraine coalition.