Following is how the book is described by its publisher, Macmillan.
End Times Fascism is a scathing investigation into the apocalyptic thinking of the Christian nationalists, tech-bro reactionaries, and populist survivalists who increasingly define the contemporary right – and a recipe for how to fight them.
As the planet burns and shared reality melts, a new iteration of the far right is on the march. How can we understand this dangerous new development, and what resources can we draw on to resist it? In their scathing assessment of the contemporary scene, the celebrated activists and authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor explore how the religious fundamentalists, Silicon Valley technologists, and ethno-nationalists who make up this apocalyptic alliance share more than one might think: they are united in their belief that some kind of cleansing cataclysm is coming, whether through the manifestation of messianic prophecy, the rampages of a resource- and job-consuming artificial intelligence, or the purported existential threat of immigration and cultural replacement. Rather than avoiding this conflagration, they welcome it, convinced they will be among the saved on the other side.
“End times fascism” is the ideology of the actors who strive to make the world unlivable and then seek to protect themselves from the fallout — whether by repairing to luxurious private islands, rocketing off to Mars, or bunkering the nation to keep their enemies at bay. The new survivalists have accumulated power, but they are far from impregnable. As Klein and Taylor show via original reporting and analysis, their many internal conflicts and contradictions and their nihilistic inability to envision a shared future, even for their ostensible allies, leave them vulnerable to a new kind of “pro-life” politics – rooted in reverence for our shared existence and regard for the earth we inhabit and must protect.
Here’s part of Goodman’s introduction to this hour-long segment, followed by the video of it.
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor launch their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World on Democracy Now! It examines how wealthy elites are preparing for “the end of the world,” even as they contribute to growing inequality, political instability and the climate crisis. The rise of modern-day fascism is “not simply a rerun,” explains Klein. “We don't believe that history repeats on a loop. We believe that we're in something more like a sequel, where the logics of fascism, which are the logics of dehumanization, of othering, of racial supremacy and hierarchy, are now being applied in a time of global existential crisis.” In response, says Taylor, the growing movement seeking to resist this fatalistic vision “fundamentally needs to be grounded in a desire to stay here on Earth, to commit to this place.”
Zohran Mamdani’s election in New York City is not simply a local upset. It is a breach in the ideological dam that has kept American politics safely contained for generations.
This victory is historic not because one office suddenly overturns entrenched power, but because it demonstrates that such power can be overturned at all.
For decades, political life in the United States has functioned as a managed marketplace in which both parties advertise different brands, yet deliver the same fundamental product: deference to private wealth, hostility to social investment, and a belief that the public should expect very little from its government beyond punishment and surveillance.
Tonight, that spell cracked.
Mamdani won not by courting the wealthy, not by flattering real-estate interests, not by running a campaign tailored to the comfort of cable-news pundits.
He won by naming the obvious: that the city belongs to its people, not to absentee landlords; that housing, transit, childcare, food, and dignity are fundamental rights, not privileges; that a budget is a statement of who matters in society – and it’s long past time a city as wealthy as New York put working people first instead of billionaires and real-estate developers.
The bipartisan establishment will attempt to minimize this moment. They will continue to fund hysterical hit pieces designed to make people afraid of those challenging their rule. But their real fear is that this victory might prove contagious.
If New Yorkers can elect someone who openly challenges concentrated power, asks the wealthy to pay their share, and speaks in plain moral terms about economic justice, then perhaps Chicago can. Perhaps Los Angeles can. Perhaps Cleveland, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Kansas City.
The danger, from the perspective of those who currently command the political economy, is that people elsewhere may decide to stop begging for crumbs and begin organizing for a real seat at the table.
Power relies on a population convinced of its own helplessness. The most consistent project of elite politics is to cultivate resignation: nothing can change, no one like you can win, best not to try. When that illusion breaks, even in a single city, it sends tremors outward.
Across the country, millions watching tonight saw something rare in American politics: proof that a campaign rooted in solidarity can beat one rooted in capital.
They saw a future in which the public is not a spectator to its own dispossession.
They saw permission to believe in their own power.
They saw that politics need not be reduced to a stage-managed rivalry between corporations wearing different campaign colors.
As someone who saw this possibility in the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders, who saw our movement defeated by this same bipartisan establishment, tonight gives me a renewed faith in America's capacity to fight back against oligarchy.
Zohran’s win feels like the beginning of the first meaningful challenge to the neoliberal consensus in a generation.
And that is why this victory matters. Not because one candidate triumphed, but because a barrier was crossed.
The belief that the public must endure austerity while wealth accumulates above it has lost its inevitability.
The idea that the mass media can manufacture consent for a Wall Street-approved candidate every time has shattered. The attacks on Mamdani were relentless these past few months. But their hollow and desperate efforts failed. The majority didn't buy it and they went to the polls to send Cuomo packing.
For the first time in a long time, the message is simple and electrifying:
The people can win. And if they can win here, they can win anywhere.
Zohran Mamdani won a majority – the first candidate to win more than one million votes since 1969. He did so despite an unrelenting racist smear campaign, vast sums spent by billionaires, and threats from Trump to strangle New York.
You’re seeing, in part, the political consequences of the Iraq war, the financial crash, and Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. All helped forge new politicised generations. And the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign reforged the U.S. left – which made Mamdani possible.
That Mamdani owes his victory to a broken economic system is undeniable. But fury at Israel’s genocide played a key role in him securing the Democratic nomination. The dramatic political consequences of the genocide have only just begun to be felt
.
In his victory speech, Mamdani quoted Eugene Debs, the U.S. socialist pioneer, because he firmly places himself in that historic tradition of the left.
He addressed Jewish people, Muslims, trans people – because the left is the antidote to a right embracing racism and hate. In an age of Islamophobia – which is mainstream, acceptable, respectable, normalised – for a Muslim candidate to triumph in New York matters. That an unapologetically socialist Muslim opposed to racism and bigotry in all its forms triumphed matters even more.
Donald Trump and the Democratic establishment want Mamdani to fail, and will do all they can to achieve their goal. How the huge numbers inspired by Mamdani’s campaign are mobilised will matter a lot in the coming fight. But we saw how Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign re-energised the U.S. left. Mamdani’s campaign will have an even bigger impact. So many leftist politicians and campaigns are going to emerge all over the U.S. because of his triumph.
In an age of darkness, Mamdani’s campaign offers hope.
The socialist left has now triumphed in New York. In New York!
Let’s hope that’s the beginning of the socialist left triumphing everywhere – and driving back the forces of fascism.
I’m levitating. This is such an incredible proof of concept of how to fight fascism. You know, Zohran, immediately after Trump’s election, went out and talked to Trump voters, people who had never voted for Trump before, Black and Brown people in working-class neighborhoods, didn’t vilify them, just listened to them.
I talked to Zohran for the first time a week after Trump’s election. And what he said to me was everything is broken for people. Like, the elevator in their public housing hasn’t been fixed for 10 months. Nothing is working. So it’s so easy for someone like Trump to come along and be like, “Blame the immigrant. Blame the unhoused person.” And his entire campaign was about proving that if you actually meet people’s real needs and raise the floor and say, “Okay, let’s freeze the rent. Let’s have free and fast buses. Let’s have universal child care. Let’s address that sense of scarcity and insecurity at its root,” that it can pull people back from the fascist abyss. And he won tonight. He proved that that is – that works. That message works.
This movement, this is anti-fascism, and it is also the antithesis of fascism, because fascists want everybody to be the same. They celebrate conformity, uniformity, sameness, hierarchy. Look in – New York is the most unruly city. The entire campaign was a love letter to the diversity, linguistic, faith, cultural diversity of the city, at a time when the Republicans never stop pouring hate onto cities and make people afraid of each other, right?
Since young men across the U.S. shifted right in the 2024 elections, with former Vice President Kamala Harris losing to President Donald Trump among men ages 18-29, the Democratic Party has searched for ways to win back the voting bloc – and on Tuesday night, progressives urged leaders to simply look to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s resounding success.
Exit polls showed Mamdani, a progressive state Assembly member who remained laser-focused on making the city more affordable for working people during his campaign, winning the support of 68% of male voters ages 18-29, while Cuomo won just 26% of them – a margin of 42 points.
The democratic socialist’s support among men under the age of 45 was also notable, with a margin of 39 points.
Young male voters swung left in other closely watched races as well, with Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger winning the group by 15 points and New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill winning by 12 points – but observers said Democratic leaders should pay special attention to the “blowout” in New York City as they seek answers about how to win over young men nationwide.
Housing campaigner Matthew Torbitt suggested that Mamdani appealed to young male New Yorkers by speaking clearly and emphatically about the need to make life for all working people more affordable – by establishing a network of city-run grocery stores to compete with private corporations, freezing the rent on rent-stabilized units, and expanding across the city’s bus system the pilot program he championed that made one bus line fare-free.
“Young men just need to feel like there is someone on their side,” Torbitt said.
This is how you run. This is how you win. This is the politics we need right now. Democratic socialist candidates can inspire people again, and fight the right effectively. . . . The history of socialist mayors in the United States shows that they can actually succeed. Socialist Daniel Hoan is considered one of the best mayors in the history of Milwaukee, having focused on rooting out corruption, establishing public buses, and keeping up the quality of city parks and public schools. He didn’t exactly overturn the basic economic order, but he did show that socialist principles are compatible with competent, honest government. Likewise, Bernie Sanders is regarded as having been a capable and effective mayor of Burlington, Vermont.
Mamdani faces an immense challenge now. After ten years of insisting that if handed power, the left can deliver for people, we don’t want to be like “the dog who caught the car.” Many eyes are on Mamdani to see what he will do next, whether he will crash and burn, sell out, or provide evidence that democratic socialism is the politics America needs. If he defies the skeptics and haters, and is the best mayor in the history of New York, delivering on his agenda, Mamdani may massively improve the political fortunes of the American left. If, on the other hand, he disappoints, he may discredit the left, and make it impossible to get socialists elected to office in the future. I hope he and his team know what they are doing—but if they govern as well as they campaigned, New York City is in good hands.
For the last ten years, Current Affairs has been relentlessly making the argument that democratic socialist politics can win, and need to be given a chance. We now have that chance, and it is probably the most exciting moment in the history of the U.S. left. The pressure is on. The fight is just beginning. But this is an incredible victory, and the hard-working New Yorkers who made it possible have a lot to be proud of.
In conclusion, here is former presidential candidate Jill Stein speaking to Joe Lauria of Consortium News about the election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City and what this means for the future of both the Democratic Party and U.S. politics in general.
Opening image: Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani delivers remarks at his election night watch party at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater on November 4, 2025 in the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
The following 6-minute video is an excerpt from a much lengthier interview that Yanis Varoufakis conducted with author Naomi Klein this past Friday, April 19, 2024.
As one Facebook viewer notes: “Naomi Klein's analysis is indispensable [and] thorough; it heals you at the same time as it informs you. She crystallizes history.”
Today I share a compilation of perspectives and voices on the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza. I consider all of these voices to be ones of both reason and compassion. I hope you do too.
I start with Democracy Now!’s October 17 interview with Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator.
[T]his choir of incitement . . . is the road to hell for everyone. If Israel is going to exist in that part of the world, then it has tied its fate to the Palestinians in that part of the world. And it cannot be zero-sum, because what we are doing is just creating more and more hatred. And [we need to] step back from that; not propel [ourselves] further into it.
. . . [We need to] step back from the brink in the immediate term, and then get to grips with the fact that Palestinians, who live without hope, rights, the ability to plan a future, are not going to succumb to that. It doesn’t justify anything, but we have been warning for years that this will explode, and it has. And now we need a different approach.
The violence in Gaza and Israel is bringing horrifying new levels of human suffering to both Israelis and Palestinians.
Both sides have committed heinous violations of international law, and all attacks on civilians must be condemned. But if we’re serious about preventing such horrors in the future, we have to go beyond condemnation.
A lesson we ignore at our peril is that oppression undermines not only the rights, dignity, and lives of the oppressed, but eventually the security of the oppressors as well. The apartheid system that’s been suffocating Palestinians for so long is now also undermining the safety of ordinary Israeli civilians. They’ve become victims of the same system.
We can’t understand how we got here – or how to end the crisis – until we grapple with the immensity of Palestinian suffering. And for us in the United States, it means confronting the role our government and tax dollars play in enabling that oppression to continue.
Explosions of violence never just happen. Since 2007, Gazans have lived under siege, prohibited from leaving their open air prison by a high-security militarized wall and platoons of Israeli soldiers.
Well before the latest escalation, the transit of most goods was banned. Gazans couldn’t get construction materials to repair the apartment blocks, power plants, water treatment facilities, hospitals, school, mosques, and churches that Israel bombed repeatedly – in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2021.
Emergency medical permits were often denied, leaving many Gazans to die without care.
Electricity was already limited. A 72-year-old woman in Gaza told a reporter last January, “It is hard to imagine, but we used to experience 24 hours of electricity each day in Gaza; now we are lucky if we get six.”
On October 9, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for a “total siege” of Gaza. “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed,” he said. For Gaza’s already impoverished and malnourished population, that’s not just collective punishment – it’s genocide.
. . . For decades, Palestinian resistance has taken overwhelmingly non-violent forms. But the world didn’t hear – or if it heard, it didn’t answer. When the UN warned in 2012 and 2015 that by 2020 Gaza would be “unlivable” without a “herculean effort” by the international community, the world didn’t respond.
This time the resistance took a violent form, including Hamas targeting civilians in horrifying and illegal ways. Those illegitimate acts must be condemned. But if we’re serious about preventing violence – all violence – we need to remember they didn’t come out of nowhere.
We need to change the conditions from which this brutality sprang.
The most immediate need right now is for a deescalation. World leaders, and specifically the U.S. and the Biden administration, need to understand that this is not a retaliation by Israel towards Hamas. What we are seeing now is the effort by Israel to pursue an ethnic cleansing campaign and to continue the Nakba, which began in 1948 and which has been ongoing since, in fits and starts, here and there. What we’re seeing is a massive rupture in the daily ethnic cleansing that Israeli authorities are going – are implementing against the Palestinians in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, as well as in the Gaza Strip. And now we’re seeing that rupture take the ethnic cleansing campaign from a daily continual basis into a significantly more focused attempt at getting rid of millions of Palestinians. We need to deescalate, and we need to ensure that humanitarian aid comes into the Gaza Strip, because this is impacting Gaza’s civilian population. This is a starting step.
The next step needs to be an acknowledgment that Israel is an apartheid regime that is maintaining a system of domination against millions of Palestinians. It’s the only sovereign power in the land of historic Palestine, and it allows rights only to Israeli Jewish citizens, not to Palestinians. What happened on October 7th is a testament to the fact that that reality cannot go on. And that overturned the assumption that the U.S. administration as well as regional powers have always had, which is that Israel can continue to act with impunity, without any cost to its citizens. And I believe we cannot go back to that paradigm anymore.
Marc Lamont Hill recently interviewed former Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. During this interview, Ayalon told Hill that Israel will stop blockading vital resources to Gaza only if and when Hamas surrenders. As Michael Walker of Novara Media points out in the video below, Hill responded by noting that what Ayalon outlined constitutes collective punishment, a violation of international law.
Humanitarian corridors must be established immediately. The siege must end, and power be restored immediately so hospitals can be more than graveyards. Gazan civilians and foreign nationals must be given safe passage. There are surely phone calls going back and forth among world leaders today – including Europeans and Arabs – seeking desperately to broker some kind of humanitarian solution, to create a ceasefire and restore delivery of water, food and medical supplies.
Hamas is not the Palestinian people; in fact, Hamas displays dictatorial power over their own people in Gaza. Yet innocent Palestinians as well as Israelis are already paying a terrible price for what has happened, and their safety must be as high a priority for the world as should the safety of innocent Israelis.
Hamas has announced it will start executing the 150 hostages one by one if Israel takes military action against Gaza, leaving the hostage’s loved ones and the entire nation of Israel in a state of horrifying trauma. No person of good will anywhere in the world wants those hostages executed. The hatred spawned by such insanity would only increase the hostility that already exists between far too many Israelis and Palestinians – two peoples who we should remember lived in peace for centuries, and hopefully will live in peace together again someday. One of the tragic consequences of this situation is how many Palestinians and Israelis have worked for years to forge a better way – only to see their dreams of peace be shattered by what has occurred.
As President, in the years leading up to this I would have been far more active on behalf of an effort to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Supporting Israel militarily yet not playing an active role in emphasizing the need for Palestinian justice was a failure of American leadership and a transgression against our own values. Once Trump was out of office, I would have moved the U.S. Embassy back to Tel Aviv. I would not have allowed the Abraham Accords to minimize the cause of justice for Palestinians. I would have demanded justice for Shireen Abu Akleh. I would have demanded that no military assistance provided to Israel – created by a Congressional Memorandum of Understanding that extends until 2028 – be used in a way that supports the occupation of the West Bank, the settlements, or the blockade of Gaza. I would have stated my opposition to all three. I would have worked assiduously with Middle East peace builders both there and here. I would have supported all efforts to create the resurrection of plans for a two-state solution. I would have used American power to side with our highest ally: humanity itself.
Above: Jewish-led protesters hold a "ceasefire" banner during an October 16, 2023 demonstration outside the White House in Washington, D.C. (Photo: IfNotNow/X)
Thank you all for being here. I have never seen anything like this in my history of Jewish anti-Zionist activism. It’s been decades. We used to be tiny. We are huge and growing.
We have a sacred responsibility to engage with our parents, our grandparents, our uncles, our brothers and sisters, and try to save their souls, to keep them from indulging in this quest for bloody vengeance. We are here because we will not let our fears of antisemitism be manipulated in this way, as cover for war crimes and colonial land grabs and to foreclose on the possibility of a political solution, which will only come with an end to occupation, with an end to apartheid, with true Palestinian freedom and self-determination. We will not use the fact that many of our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were refugees from genocide to justify making hundreds of thousands or even millions of new Palestinian refugees.
These are not our leaders, not in the Knesset, with its so-called unity government, and not here in Congress, which reconvenes now in part in order to approve new money and new weapons to send to Israel for its genocidal attack on Palestinians.
Israeli journalist Amira Hass (left), who has reported from the occupied West Bank and Gaza for over 30 years, was interviewed October 20 by Democracy Now! about her participation in the recent historic protest in Washington, D.C., led by American Jewish groups, calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Hass also spoke about the events leading up to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, the ongoing hostage situation, and what could come next.
[The Washington D.C. protest] was an expression of common grief and shock of people, of Jews, whose main two slogans were “Not in our name” and “Ceasefire immediately.” And for me, it was very important to be there. So I was there as a person, as an individual, as a Jew, not as a journalist. There were quite a few Israelis that I know that live or study these days in the States.
And it was also, you know, like, we all need some kind of – this kind of support, which, by the way, Palestinians are not allowed to hold. Jews are allowed to hold demonstrations. I understand that all over Europe there are places where Palestinians are not allowed to hold demonstrations in solidarity with their slain people in Palestine. So, here, again, we are privileged, the Jews, that we can do things that Palestinians are not allowed to, though I know that here there were some. In the States, there were some demonstrations of Palestinians. But Palestinians are being silenced . . . their sense of grief is not being respected. They are called supporters of terror, whatever. And I was in Boston just before, and I could tell that even the word “Palestinian” is not allowed to be used in all kind of official statements.
I can very much identify with a feeling of being ostracized by the whole world as a Jew, of being not listened to. . . . [T]his indifference that the world shows to Palestinians, Palestinians’ plight, Palestinians’ ordeal is so shocking. And I, as a Jew, I say, and [as] the child of survivors and the grandchild of Jews who were murdered by Nazi Germany – my anger and despair . . . grow larger by the day, by the minute.
Josh Paul (right) was Director of Congressional and Public Affairs at the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. Paul says he had made a promise to himself when he joined over a decade ago that he would stay “as long as I felt the harm I might do could be outweighed by the good I could do.”
Paul recently resigned from the bureau that oversees arms transfers to foreign nations, citing his objection to continued U.S. military assistance to Israel as its retaliatory bombardment and blockade of Gaza exacerbate a humanitarian crisis there.
Following is Paul’s October 19 appearance on PBS Newshour and an excerpt from Rachel Treisman’s NPR News story about Paul’s resignation.
“The difference here is that in all of those [other] cases [of arms transfers to a number of unsavory regimes] – when those within the department and the inter-agency with human rights concerns had done all the shaping they could – you knew the next step was for the sale to go to Congress where it would be held, debated, even voted against,” Josh Paul explained. “But with Israel, it’s a blank check from Congress. There’s no appetite for debate. There’s no real debate internal to the administration. And then there’s no one to hand the debate off to.”
Paul said the first thing he’d like the Biden administration to do is “simply follow their own public commitments.”
Paul explains that the administration’s new conventional arms transfer policy, enacted earlier this year, explicitly states that no transfers will be authorized under which the U.S. assesses that “it is more likely than not that the arms to be transferred will be used by the recipient to commit, facilitate the recipients’ commission of, or to aggravate risks that the recipient will commit: genocide; crimes against humanity; grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.”
Those include attacks directed against civilians and other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law, including acts of violence against children.
“So I think for us to look at the current situation and say the answer is as many bombs as Israel asks for, knowing that their use will lead in a direction exactly opposite to our stated policy goals . . . it’s disappointing, to say the least,” Paul said.
In the following Rising segment, hosts Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave respond to Egyptian comedian and TV talk show host Bassem Youssef’s recent appearance on Piers Morgan’s program in which he shared what he would say to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he was an Israeli citizen.
For Zionist believers (I’m not one of them), Jew-hatred is the central rationale for why Israel must exist as a nuclear-armed fortress. Within this worldview, anti-semitism is cast as a primordial force that cannot be weakened or confronted. The world will always turn away from us in our hour of need, Zionism tells us, just as it did during the Holocaust, which is why force alone is presented as the only conceivable response to any and all threats.
The Israeli state’s current murderous leveling of Gaza is the latest, unspeakably horrific manifestation of this ideology, and there will be more in the coming days. The responsibility for these crimes of collective punishment rests solely with their perpetrators and their financial and military backers abroad. But we all have to figure out how to make it stop.
So how do we confront this violent ideology? For one thing, we can recognize that when Israeli Jews are killed in their homes and it is celebrated by people who claim to be anti-racists and anti-fascists, that is experienced as antisemitism by a great many Jews. And antisemitism (besides being hateful) is the rocket fuel of militant Zionism.
What could lessen its power, drain it of some of that fuel? True solidarity. Humanism that unites people across ethnic and religious lines. Fierce opposition to all forms of identity-based hatred, including antisemitism. An international left rooted in values that side with the child over the gun every single time, no matter whose gun and no matter whose child. A left that is unshakably morally consistent, and does not mistake that consistency with moral equivalency between occupier and occupied. Love.
It’s certainly worth a try. In these difficult times, I’d like to be part of a left like that.
Amid the death and destruction from the shower of bombs dropping on Gaza like rain, truly the thing that has forever changed me is seeing how the world is turning into a hate mob against a civilian population, a majority of whom are refugees, the majority of whom are children, all of whom have been living besieged for 16 years. It is the media coverage priming the public to accept mass atrocities by using hateful and racist rhetoric that has left me feeling the most hopeless and scared. This incendiary and dehumanizing language used to describe Palestinians is going to contribute to genocide in Gaza and increasing violence against Muslims in the U.S., like the stabbing to death of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Palestinian 6-year-old in Illinois.
We need to change the trajectory now. We need to call for an immediate ceasefire and deescalation to prevent imminent genocide. The U.S. government is actively fueling violence by sending more weapons to Israel and this must stop. We need to open borders to allow medical aid, food and water into Gaza. We need to shatter the false premise that Israel can only exist for Jewish people at the expense of displacing, subjugating, controlling and killing Palestinians as it has for over 75 years. Everything possible needs to be done to condemn this indiscriminate violence against a trapped population of 2 million people who are now completely cut off from the world.
Our old and young are being killed, but we will never forget.
استودعتك غزةعائلتنا وأطفالنا يا الله، ربي رب السموات والارض
“I have entrusted my beloved Gaza, our family and our sweet children to God, creator of the world and the heavens.”
And finally, Maoz Inon is an Israeli peace activist who lost both of his parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon (right), on the first day of the Hamas attacks.
Maoz was interviewed October 18 by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman. Following is part of what he said.
I’m overwhelmed with what happened to me and to my family and to my community and classmates, friends in our community, Israeli communities around Gaza. Nothing prepared me for this moment that I would be here speaking with you about my tragedy. I wished I was speaking with you about the initiatives, the peace and shared society initiatives I’ve been taking part in in the last 20 years. And honestly, I’m overwhelmed with everything that’s going on.
My parents were loving people and an amazing couple, really adored and admired by their colleagues, their friends, their community, and of course by us, my five brothers and sisters and the 11 grandchildren. They didn’t want to harm anyone. They didn’t want to fight with anyone. We have close and very tight relationship – we call it even a family relationship – with the Bedouin in the Negev. I have many friends, colleagues, partners in Palestine, in Jordan, in Egypt. And what’s happening now is just devastating. It’s just devastating.
. . . Me and my family, we seek no revenge. We just seek peace. We seek for hope. We must change the terminology we are using to positive terminology, for reconciliation, for recognition, for partnership and for peace. I’m crying, and I’m begging you. Just will their wellness, not to blame anyone, just to stop the war and to build a different future, to break the cycle of blood, to break this game of blood and to build a new future with hope.
. . . Of course I’m against the occupation. But it’s irrelevant at the moment. . . . I’m afraid there will be many, many more victims. And what we all should be focusing now is to stop the war. Very simple message. And we must cry it. We must cry our message to everyone that has a heart and that can listen.
Above: U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota). Both women are outspoken progressives within the Democratic party and both experienced landslide victories in the 2020 U.S. general election. (Photo: Getty Images/Saul Loeb/AFP)
It’s well documented that in congressional districts across the United States, it was the progressive agenda – climate, healthcare, racial justice, and addressing income inequality and corporate power – that mobilized the Democratic party’s base and catalyzed Joe Biden’s victory. This agenda also ensured that numerous progressive Democratic candidates won their races, often by impressive margins. Yet moderates (or centrists) of the party have been quick to blame this same progressive agenda for their dismal showing in the election, as most of them lost their races or just scraped through. “Never Trumper” Republicans, such as John Kasich, who had attached themselves to the Biden-Harris ticket, have also been vocal in their criticism of progressives and the progressive agenda, claiming that “the far left . . . almost cost [Biden] this election.”
What are we to make of all of this? And how are progressives responding to the accusations being hurled against them?
Let’s start with some facts. The Fox News exit polls showed that, overwhelmingly, Medicare for All, government-provided health insurance, was popular with the American people. Florida, the same state which we lost in the presidential, voted for a $15 minimum wage, so, obviously, increased working wages is popular with the America people. Overwhelmingly, people showed a transition to a green economy, clean tech jobs, is popular with the American people. Free public college is popular with the American people. So the policies that we are advocating are not just for deeply blue districts. They are policies that will help people in the Midwest, in the South, across this country. . . . They’re popular policies, and they’re the correct policies.
. . . I believe we have to take the fight to the Senate. We have to have bold policies that are popular, and make it very clear that Mitch McConnell either has to do what the American people want or he is the person standing in the way. And if we are accommodationists and incrementalists and aren’t taking a bold agenda in the fight to the Senate, then we’re going to let down a lot of people, and we’re not going to be on the side of progress. I also think it’s bad politics.
. . . I don’t believe Joe Biden would have been president if it weren’t for the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd. Look at the turnout in Philadelphia, in Atlanta, in Milwaukee. I mean, Donald Trump had high turnout; we had even higher turnout. That started because of the Black Lives Matter movement. That started because of these people organizing. So, to blame the Black Lives Matter movement or activists, when, in my view, those are the – that is the mobilization that put Biden into the White House, is just flat-out wrong. I mean, I don’t see what data they’re looking at.
A memo to the Democratic Party from four progressive organizations outlines how through a number of unforced errors in an attempt to appeal to conservatives and moderates rather than the more forward-looking Democratic base, the party allowed the loss of a number of congressional seats – and now risks further alienating the racial justice organizers and working-class voters who helped deliver President-elect Joe Biden's victory.
The accusations set off a fierce debate between progressives including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and their centrist counterparts, with progressives attempting to redirect Democratic leaders’ attention away from broadly popular proposals and toward the party’s lack of organization and willingness to play into Republican attacks aimed at dividing and conquering.
“There is no denying Republicans levied salient rhetorical attacks against Democrats, but these will continue to happen as they do every cycle,” reads the memo unveiled on Tuesday. “We cannot let Republican narratives drive our party away from Democrats’ core base of support: young people, Black, Brown, working class,and social movements who are the present and future of the party.”
“Historic voter turnout by Black voters, Native voters, Latino voters, and young voters ensured victory for President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris,” the groups added. “Scapegoating progressives and Black activists for their demands and messaging is not the lesson to be learned here. It was their organizing efforts, energy, and calls for change needed in their communities that drove up voter turnout.”
Centrists in recent days have zeroed in on the rallying cry to “defund the police,” which came out of the racial justice uprising that began in May, and the term “socialism” as reasons behind their own losses and near-losses.
“Not a single Democrat – progressive or otherwise – argued that Democrats should run primarily on these themes,” the memo reads. “Moreover, these attacks will never go away, nor will demands for reform from social movements. The attacks are designed to stoke racial resentment, which is core to the GOP’s election strategy. Our party should not feed into it.”
The current anxiety about the phrase “defund the police” follows earlier Republican attacks in recent years regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and protests by Colin Kaepernick and other Black athletes, which Democrats distanced themselves from. Allowing the GOP to construct a narrative around “defund the police” – instead of reframing the debate around the specifics of the idea as outlined in the BREATHE Act, such as abolishing the Pentagon program which allows local law enforcement agencies to obtain military equipment – will only “demobilize our own base,” the memo suggests.
. . . The memo emphasizes the material damage that can be done in future elections if centrist Democrats don’t put to rest the notion that progressives and their demands are to blame for centrists’ own losses — even as progressives themselves were successful after embracing policies like Medicare for All.
The evident defeat of Donald Trump would not have been possible without the grassroots activism and hard work of countless progressives. Now, on vital issues – climate, healthcare, income inequality, militarism, the prison-industrial complex, corporate power and so much more – it’s time to engage with the battle that must happen inside the Democratic Party.
The realpolitik rationales for the left to make nice with the incoming Democratic president are bogus. All too many progressives gave the benefit of doubts to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, making it easier for them to service corporate America while leaving working-class Americans in the lurch. Two years later, in 1994 and 2010, Republicans came roaring back and took control of Congress.
From the outset, progressive organizations and individuals (whether they consider themselves to be “activists” or not) should confront Biden and other elected Democrats about profound matters. Officeholders are supposed to work for the public interest. And if they’re serving Wall Street instead of Main Street, we should show that we’re ready, willing and able to “primary” them.
Progressives would be wise to quickly follow up on Biden’s victory with a combative approach toward corporate Democrats. Powerful party leaders have already signaled their intentions to aggressively marginalize progressives.
. . . Biden almost lost this election. And while the Biden campaign poured in vast financial resources and vague flowery messaging that pandered to white suburban voters, relatively little was focused on those who most made it possible to overcome Trump’s election-night lead—people of color and the young. Constrained by his decades-long political mentality and record, Biden did not energize working-class voters as he lip-sunk populist tunes in unconvincing performances.
That's the kind of neoliberal approach that Bernie Sanders and so many of his supporters were warning about in 2016 and again this year. Both times there was a huge failure of the Democratic nominee to make a convincing case as an advocate for working people against the forces of wealthy avarice and corporate greed.
In fact, Clinton and Biden reeked of coziness with economic elites throughout their political careers. To many people, Clinton came off as a fake when she tried to sound populist, claiming to represent the little people against corporate giants. And to those who actually knew much about Biden's political record, his similar claims also were apt to seem phony.
It's clear from polling that Biden gained a large proportion of his votes due to animosity toward his opponent rather than enthusiasm for Biden. He hasn't inspired the Democratic base, and his appeal had much more to do with opposing the evils of Trumpism than embracing his own political approach.
More than ever, merely being anti-Trump or anti-Republican isn't going to move Democrats and the country in the vital directions we need. Without a strong progressive program as a rudder, the Biden presidency will be awash in much the same old rhetorical froth and status-quo positions that have so often caused Democratic incumbents to founder, bringing on GOP electoral triumphs.
There needs to be a strong opposition to corporatist moderates within the Democratic party, smug blowhards which they too often are, who'd now brush over the fact that in the final analysis the party has failed miserably. The election of 2020 has been a repudiation of both parties. The election of Biden has been more than anything else the rejection of a madman, and the abysmal showing of Democrats in the House and Senate races should bring with it the sober sounding of an alarm, not the self-satisfied clinking of champagne flutes.
Yes, we dodged a disaster. But more potential disasters are coming around the corner. Many mini-Trumps are lining up even now for 2022 and 2024. This is not a time to relax or go back to the conditions that paved the way for them to begin with. We need to give people more than a reality devoid of Trump. We need to give them a genuine alternative not only to his mendacity, but to the chronic despair that, under Democrats, as well as Republicans, became a feature of their daily lives.
Thankfully, we won a battle for the soul of our nation. But there are more ahead. Now a battle will rage for the soul of the Democratic Party. And well it should. It's been needing to happen for a very long time.
Defeating Trump is a really important popular victory. A great many people did not vote for Joe Biden, they voted against Trump, because they recognize the tremendous threat that he represents. And the fact that the movements that are behind so much of that political victory are not able to even just take a moment and feel that victory, because they are already under attack by the Democratic establishment, as it seeks once again to abdicate all responsibility for ending us in the mess that we are in, is really its own kind of crime. People should not have to be fighting off these attacks. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should not have to be on Twitter all day, making the point that it is not the fault of Democratic Socialists that the Democratic party has underperformed in the way that it has.
Biden was a risky candidate for the same reasons Hillary Clinton was a risky candidate. He was risky because of his swampy record, because he had so little to offer so many people in such deep crisis. It seems he has secured an electoral victory by the skin of his teeth but it was a high risk gamble from the start. And not only is the Left not to blame. We are largely responsible for the success that has taken place.
. . . This [election] should have been a sweep. It should have been the sweep that we were promised. And the fact is, the Democratic leadership bungled it up on every single front. It wasn’t just a mistake. They did not want to offer people what they needed. They are much more interested in appeasing the donor class than they are in meeting the needs of their constituents, who need them now more than ever.
There is some indication that the corporate centrists at the top of the Democratic Party realize the urgency of the moment, at least in word, if not deed. Biden has made vague gestures at an FDR-style presidency, and even Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the quintessential Wall Street Democrat, is talking about the need for an ambitious agenda surpassing past Democratic efforts.
It is now incontrovertible that, despite an alliance with plutocratic bigots like John Kasich during the campaign, Biden received a smaller share of the Republican vote this year than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. And, due to the Democrats’ failure to make a robust economic pitch countering Trump’s, Biden lost a chunk of voters from key groups of the former Obama coalition to the GOP, including some African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, LGBTQ voters and even Muslims, as well as lower- and middle-income households. But what put Biden over the top was the tireless work of grassroots progressive groups in key states and cities, and massive turnout by young people, particularly young people of color.
In other words, political success for the Democratic Party lies not in continuing to appeal to the Republican voters they’ve imagined in their heads, but by constructing a popular, bread-and-butter agenda that works for a broad swath of Americans, and by exciting their base. Stopping a far-right comeback in the years ahead means getting Democratic voters to turn out in similar numbers in the 2022 midterms, without the threat of Trump to motivate them.
In 2010, after failing to sufficiently respond to the pain felt around the country, Democrats spent the run-up to the midterms hectoring voters for not being more enthusiastic. “You can’t shape your future if you don’t participate,” Obama told voters, while Biden hit the trail and lectured their “base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives.” They were rewarded with a drubbing at the ballot box.
This approach didn’t cut it then, and it certainly won’t cut it this time. The party barely scraped through this year’s election under historically favorable conditions. To avoid this fate, Democrats will have to give voters something to actually turn out for. Even with an obstructionist Congress, there is more than enough President-elect Biden can do if he has the courage and the political will. The moment is his, to seize or squander.
The established and conventional line about Centrism and Centrist is that they are committed to incremental change. A movement that gained prominence in the 1990s as a vehicle to win elections against an established Conservative majority, has evolved into an entire worldview of its own. Like all ideologies, what this belief system is varies depending on the context and what is required of it in a given historical moment. However, it rests on two abiding bedrock principles above all others – that “moderate” market-based policies actually work and that any attempt to stray from them to the Left will invariably lose.
Ironically, this Centrist ideology has its roots in fighting off a Conservative Reaction to Liberal principles gaining traction from the 1950s onward. The rise of Reagan was a direct response to progressive social movements and cultural changes combined with increased pessimism regarding the ability of once accepted Liberal orthodoxy to provide for basic economic wellbeing. A decade later, Clinton won and continued to win politically by presenting a softer and kinder version of this neoliberal pro-market orthodoxy against seemingly “out of touch” Republic zealots.
The crimes and misdemeanors of this morally compromised “winning” strategy were multiple. It was an embrace and a willingness to take even further mass incarceration of minorities, the War on Drugs, US militarism with bloated defense budgets, and a refusal to even consider the merits of any ideas that had the stench of being “too left-wing”. When Clinton declared that “The era of big government is over”, he was proclaiming the defeat of progressive change for a generation, if not permanently.
This position of triumphant surrender has crystallized into a dangerous force of reaction. Two decades ago, there may have been credible arguments that such Centrism was the only bulwark the nation had against a full-scale hyper-capitalist and retrogressive Republican majority. Fast forward to the present, and the exact opposite is true. They are now the very thing helping to keep the Far Right, ironically, alive and well.
. . . The facts clearly and totally contradict claims the Left was to blame for Democratic defeats [in the 2020 general election]. Progressive policies such as “Medicaid for All” and raising the minimum wage are popular among both self-proclaimed Democrats and Republicans. They also consistently win when put on the ballot as referendums. In this election, progressives were the only candidates from the Centre to the Left who consistently won and the DSA claimed victory for 26 out of the 30 races they ran in. Further, it was high profile Centrists such as Amy McGrath in Kentucky and Jamie Harrison in South Carolina who went down to defeat despite massive war chests and DNC support. Meanwhile, progressives held strong across the board, even in swing districts in places like Oregon and California.
Perhaps ironically, it is Georgia that will ultimately deliver Biden the Presidency given that it serves as a playbook for how to actually bring down Trumpism. Rather than seek out the false mirage of “moderate Republican” voters or the fickle allegiance of middle to upper class “suburban” voters, activists on the ground inspired by Stacey Abrams sought to mobilize the real “silent majority” – a diverse cross-section of working-class and poor traditionally non-voters. They also put on the ballot a progressive candidate for Senate, Reverend Raphael Warnock, who offered the opportunity to bring real change if elected. And in one of the few real Left-wing upsets of the night, Georgia looks close to going Blue for the first time in a generation and even possibly bring two new Democratic Senators to Washington.
Over the past decade, as inequality has grown and the system has been revealed as corrupt and rigged for the rich, Centrists have told anyone who would listen that basic reforms such as single-payer healthcare or a reduced Defence budget or defunding the police were politically impossible and mere fantasies policy-wise. Even more worrying, by attacking movements like “defund the police,” they are giving in to the racist politics of Trump and seeking to gain political advantage by blaming non-whites for fighting for their lives and rights.
Centrists have positioned themselves as a “sensible” political oasis that can stave off the forces of Right and Left-wing extremism. In reality, their fear of progress is grounded in their concern that they will lose massive amounts of corporate funding. In the best of times, this would be a callous unwillingness to do any more than lip service to fighting economic, social, and political injustice. In our current era of Far-Right populism, it is a dangerous force aiding and abetting, however inadvertently, the rise of 21st-century fascism in the US and around the world.
There is an autopsy that clearly has to get done. You know, you’ll hear from people who will say, “Oh, it was the talk of socialism, and it was this, and it was that.” But many of the places that we lost seats in or Biden didn’t do so well in were places where Obama won, and they threw so much at him. I mean, he was [said to be] a secret Muslim, who was a socialist, who was going to destroy this country. But [in] places like Florida, [he] did really well. And that was because he believed, as an organizer, in investing in a ground game, having conversations, not shying away from the power of relation[ship]-building.
And we’ve seen that with candidates like Katie Porter, who [are in] swing districts. Katie’s race was the last to be called in 2018, and she’s done really well this time, because she understands her district, she puts in work, she has real conversations with real people about what’s really important to them. And so, I don’t know, I think people will make excuses about why we lost. But I think it always comes down to building trust, building relationships, and having conversations about what really matters to people and not buying into the narratives about what people care about, but actually asking them.
– Rep. Ilhan Omar Quoted in “What Happened?” The Intercept
November 6, 2020
The Democrats are struggling in these places for the same reason they’re beginning to get successfully primaried from the left, at the local, state, and federal level, in the urban centers they’ve ruled forever. They have not learned the lesson of why Bernie Sanders was such a force in the last two primaries even if he ultimately came up short, or the lesson of why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez resonates with so many people. They have not even learned the lesson of why conservative Democrats who run as far away from the national party as possible are often successful. People do not like them, and more often than not elections between Democrats and Republicans are decided based not on who has the better vision for America, but on who has a worse reputation in that particular place at that particular moment.
Opening image: U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota). Both women are outspoken progressives within the Democratic party and both experienced landslide victories in the 2020 U.S. general election. (Photo: Getty Images/Saul Loeb/AFP)
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
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