Black Feminism and the Rap/Hip-Hop Culture: I Don't Want the "D"

By Asha Layne

"I was born to flex (Yes)
Diamonds on my neck
I like boardin' jets, I like mornin' sex (Woo!)
But nothing in this world that I like more than checks (Money)
All I really wanna see is the (Money)
I don't really need the D, I need the (Money)
All a bad bitch need is the (Money)"

- Cardi B

With the advancement of technology, more specifically social media platforms, the plight of women of color has been widely discussed thanks to the Me Too and Say Her Name movements which challenged and revolutionized the thinking of dominant culture. Of profound importance, the inclusion of Black women and women of color in these social movements contested the sweeping generalizations of 'traditional' feminism. This would later lead to a widespread rejection of popular feminism ideologies, thus making way for a new wave of neo non-conservative ideologies on feminism.

This deviation between traditional and non-traditional feminism can be traced back to the Women's Liberation Movement in the late 1960s. During this period, the conditions and concerns of White middle-class women took center stage and addressed issues that inhibited their (White women) ability to live fully free lives rid from patriarchal oppression. This perspective would continue to serve as the backdrop on a series of feminine-related issues such as equal pay, sexual harassment, sexual violence, and violence against women. Not surprisingly, given the US's racially contentious history, it (Women's Liberation Movement) shamelessly ignored the different culturally-significant spaces that Black women (and women of color) occupied, leaving Black feminists to repeat Sojourner Truth's riveting question: "Ain't I a woman?" This essay explores the evolution of Black feminism through the lens of female rappers, who I argue add to the discourse of feminism, and more specifically Black feminism.

As a theoretical construct, feminist theory claims of being woman-centered historically has ignored the narratives and standpoints of women of color. Despite the popular question, "What about the women?" that has long served as the impetus behind the development of feminist theory, the answers to this question have traditionally focused their attention solely on the experiences of White women. Anchoring this sentiment is the emergence of Black feminism and Black feminist thought, which both sought to place the experiences of Black women at the center of its analysis, therefore offering a starkly different knowledge from that of mainstream feminism. According to Collins (2000), Black women in the United States can stimulate a distinctive consciousness concerning their own experiences. Collins, like other Black feminist scholars, understood that this knowledge produced by the narratives of Black women would transform how feminism is defined and understood by Black women (and women of color). Similarly, Kimberle Crenshaw also understood that the experiences of Black women could not be explained by race and gender alone but should also include the intersecting identities that shape their identity as a Black woman. This is best demonstrated by Black women (and women of color) in the rap/hip-hop industry.

Female rappers have (and continue) to take a melodic stance to verbally disseminate information on social issues and struggles that women of color face, such as: white supremacy, sexism, self-esteem, misogyny, patriarchy, sexual harassment, and gender-based violence. One can hear this in the music of both contemporary and non-contemporary female artists, who by applying Collins's theoretical framework share their narrative through standpoint theorizing. Standpoint theorizing is a sociological feminist framework which explains that knowledge of women's experiences is best understood from their social positions in society. In Yo-Yo's 1991 debut hit, You Can't Play with my Yo-Yo she explores what it means to be a woman in a male-dominated environment. She raps:

"If you touch, you livin in a coffin (word to mother)

I'm in the 90s, you're still in the 80s right

I rock the mic, they say I'm not lady like

But I'ma lady, who will pull a stunt though

I kill suckas, and even hit the block

So what you want to do?"

In listening to the words of female rap/hip-hop artists, the audience is able to recognize the nonconventional form of activism which has added to both the discourse of Black feminism and the music industry. In the above lyrics, Yo-Yo also explains that as a female in a male-dominated industry, gender often takes precedence over race and consequently adds to negative experiences Black female MCs in the industry often grapple with. Women of color in the rap/hip-hop industry have inarguably exemplify Collins's concepts of: standpoint theory, outsider-within, and matrix of domination, sidestepping any mention of scholastic sources or prominent experts in the field. One can easily identify these acts of black female activism in the rap/hip-hop industry in the work of contemporary artist, Cardi B. This is particularly well exemplified in Cardi B's debut album, Invasion of Privacy. In her song Be Careful, which explicitly examines infidelity and the double-standard concerns it raises, she raps, "I could've did what you did to me to you a few times. But if I did decide to slide, find a nigga fuck him, suck his dick, you would've been pissed." In Money, Cardi B colorfully explains that money and not a man's penis will meet her needs. She raps, "I got a baby, I need some money, yeah I need cheese for my egg." This album unapologetically proclaims that despite her (un)popular gender non-normative approach that she will be heard and respected regardless of anyone else's opinion. Therefore, demonstrating that, just like her female rap/hip-hop predecessors, she too unconventionally exemplifies black feminist activism.

Patricia Hill Collins's Black Feminist Thought explains that race, gender, and class are oppressive factors that are bound together. In relation to rappers, the commodification of female rappers in the industry and the hypersexual images of Black female rappers speaks to not only this intersection of race, class, and gender but also to the systemic cultural nature of exploitation that is inherent not only to the industry but also within dominant American culture. In both spaces (the industry and American culture), masculinity is directly related to power and violence, and reminds us of the pervasiveness of the White perspective in social institutions. In White-Washing Race, Brown et al. (2003) explains that the White perspective is not the product of salient characteristics, such as skin color, but of culture and experiences. The lyrical narratives shared by female rap/hip-hop artists demonstrates how women of color actively grapple with the many issues, concerns, and questions they experience culturally, socially, and politically.

Is the emergence of the outspoken, gender-bending, highly independent, and sexy female artist a new phenomenon for women of color? Collins highlights how the role of Black women always contradicted the traditional role of women in mainstream society. Collin states, "if women are allegedly passive and fragile, then why are Black women treated as "mules" and assigned heavy cleaning chores" (2000, p.11)? The placement of Black women as 'objects' and 'tools' for production under capitalism is intrinsic to the social, political, and economic arrangements of power in the United States. Black feminism deconstructs the established systems of knowledge and arrangements of power by showing the masculinist bias that frames these arrangements of power from a cultural lens.

The radical changes exhibited in the bodies of work of contemporary female rappers engenders the thesis of Black feminism through frequent displays of gender non-conforming behaviors while embracing the beauty of being uniquely deviant. No longer are women of color minimizing or editing their unique experiences, behaving in gender-conforming ways, or are ashamed of being labelled a 'bitch' for the sake of being accepted by mainstream culture and appeasing their male counterparts. Contemporary Black female rappers, similar to classic rappers such as MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, and Roxeanne Shante, continue to redefine not only gender identity but Black female identity in patriarchal structures.

Both gender identity and Black female identity are socially constructed through interaction and socialization. Following the tenets of symbolic interaction, gender and racial identities emerge out of social interactions which helps to define an individual's self. The formation of self is unique to women of color because of the location and situation they occupy in many faces of oppression. The marginalization, exploitation, and feelings of powerlessness are all too common in the tropes of women of color. Therefore, the gender-social identification of women of color does not examine solely "doing gender" but instead considers key factors that obfuscates women of color from "doing gender."

Women of color in the rap/hip-hop industry continue to demonstrate the spirit of Black feminism through nonconventional methods. Today, Black female artists (and women of color) have changed the way we define women's empowerment. The popularity of female MCs embodying androgenic characteristics through feminine appeal supports the narratives of many women who have mastered the proverbial quote, "think like a man." To condemn the hypersexual behaviors and language used by Black female artists is to ignore the historical truth that Black women (and women of color) were never defined by the traditional standards of being a 'woman.' Black female MCs have and will always continue to redefine what 'doing gender' is from a cultural standpoint, therefore adding to the Black feminism discourse.

Bibliography

B, Cardi. (2018). The invasion of privacy. CD. New York: New York. Atlantic Records.

Brown, Michael K., Carnoy, Martin, Currie, Elliott, Duster, Troy, Oppenheimer, David. B., Schultz, Marjorie, M., and Wellman, David. 2003. White-washing race: The myth of a color-blind society. Berkley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

Collins, Patricia Hill. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Yo-Yo. (1991). Make way for the Motherlode. CD. New York: New York. EastWest Records America.

Black Metamodernism: The Metapolitics of Economic Justice and Racial Equality

By Brent Cooper

I'd been thinking about this idea for a while before a redditor asked the very pointed question: Are there any black metamodernists? I didn't really have a complete answer yet, which is 'yes and no.' It's a complicated question, and it doesn't seem like many are rushing to answer it. Mostly no in the explicit sense like Hanzi , of developing the "metamodern" concept and advancing a program beyond the discourse of the Dutch school . But yes in many other ways, both explicit and implict.

Black to the Future

For starters, there is one obscure but direct source for 'black metamodernism,' in Transatlantic dialogue: contemporary art in and out of Africa , 1999 (limited to a snippet view). Art history professor Moyo Okediji described contemporary African-American art in terms of metamodernism as an "extension of and challenge to modernism and postmodernism." Without access I cannot offer a thorough review, but the point is clear; black metamodernism exists and was another one mostly missed.

The book jacket lists a number of black artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat. He is considered a type of black metamodernist described as 'returnee artists'; "African-American artists who return from Africa with a new awareness of their identiy that affects their work." (from Monni Adams book review ). This concept could certainly apply to Malcolm X or Dave Chappelle as well, who were forever changed and radicalized by their pilgrimages to Africa. I think metanoia, a fundamental change of mind, plays such a role in metamodern sensibility. All of this seems to align with metamodern critique, art, praxis, and values, and yet we do not hear much about a black metamodernism today.

Martin Luther King has already been accurately characterized as metamodern by Alexandra Dumitrescu, who thinks "he might have been a metamodernist avant la lettre ," and I couldn't agree more. King had a vision so progressive that it is only just being fully realized (actualized) today. The dream was cut short by his assassination, for which the white establishment is necessarily implicated. Even though he's gone and from a different era, his actions and ideas resonate now in a crucial way because they are still not achieved, so it's a battleground issue (conservatives try to co-opt and re-write MLK). And if we are going to mention MLK, perhaps we should also include Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Fred Hampton and countless other black activists ahead of their time, as implicitly metamodern.

Cornel West could be a metamodern thinker, pictured above, but he has never used the term, and this distinction matters, given its history at this point and his ability to wax on postmodernism. As I addressed in Gonzálezean Metamodernism, West is a good candidate to embrace the discourse, not only because he is invoked by González in that context, but because more broadly black theology is at the root of Hispanic liberation theology, and West is a cutting edge philosopher of sorts. Now is as good a time as any to (re-)introduce black metamodernism, as it builds on the turn González proposed for Hispanic Americans. Black people too are metamodern aliens in the postmodern promise land.

In Whose (Meta)modernism?: Metamodernism, Race, and the Politics of Failure (2018), James Brunton asks the right question, but also misses the source material I've mentioned. He draws his theory from Vermeulen and van den Akker, and David James and Urmila Seshagiri (2014), as well as many black poets, but he is yet another scholar 'missing metamodernism' in the broader sense I describe, and Okediji 's black metamodernism specifically.

This is a call to action to implicit black metamodernists, many of whom I discuss here, to cross over, to represent, and join the paradigm shift explicitly; my inspiration for metamodernism has in part already come from many of them. Wolfgenghis_Khan wants you; and so do we. I have written just two other articles about race/ black issues; one about black abstract art (where Basquiat is mentioned), and one about how racism is "abstracted " (made obscure), particularly by white racism against black people in the US. These are facets of my approach to metamodernism, and how abstraction can reveal or obscure the nature of racial politics and discourse. And in those I also have missed much of what I describe in this article, so it is all (re)combining into a broader black metamodernism.

Green Metamodernism

In terms of metamodern theory itself we can consider Nordic or Dutch as varieties of green metamodernism. The are green by being or having moved from the left beyond the liberal status-quo, but also green in the sense of being inexperienced or naive. To be sure, they are brilliant, but green (new, fresh) compared to their metamodern forebearers who have been missed. In the dominant Dutch School (art/ history/ culture) mode, the artist Reggie Watts is considered metamodern for his mind-boggling and heart-warming sincere absurdism. Donald Glover is metamodern too, as described here (2014), and here (2017), not least for his meta-humour in the metamodern show Community. Also, here is very comprehensive site, Metamodernity and Because the Internet , dedicated to the study of Donald Glover/ Childish Gambino and metamodernism. And this is all before his song/video " This is America " (2018) made a profound statement about race. After, we can understand him better through a lens of black metamodernism.

Green metamodernists generally do not theorize race directly or explicitly, although Hanzi has deconstructed the alt-right at some length . The general aversion is probably in part because the importance of the subject is generally implied as metamodernism is ostensibly about synthesizing and transcending both the postmodern critique (which includes the intersectionality of race, gender, class, etc) and its target, modernism. Race just becomes a smaller but still important detail in a broader context of meta-theory, planetary crisis, and metamorphosis (systems-change). But race theory is also peripheral in part because these metamodern epistemic communities are mostly white people who are tacit allies.

On the other hand, 'black metamodern' discourse has not been maintained or linked up with contemporary metamodern discourse. So the problem is two-way. This crossover should happen for two reasons: 1) by metamodernism not addressing it, it appears racialized, ignorant, or biased, and 2) by black discourses not combining with the broader paradigm shift, it remains disempowered and marginalized by the anti-postmodern and white nationalist political climate.

Metamodernism, from its Dutch and Nordic schools of origin, appears to have a eurocentric and white bias, though they have a global orientation and sensibility, as well as tacit understanding and concern about systemic racism. As we've seen in all versions, metamodernism doesn't ignorantly deny the merits of postmodern critique, or abandon social justice that conservatives and centrists have written off, nor does it embrace the full excesses of SJW culture and what has been termed 'grievance studies' literature by some determined IDW-adjacent academic hoaxers - The whole problem there is that they don't realize that all academia/ scholarship has similar problems (even their own fields, which aren't social science), but they are singling out and mocking social justice while social justice isn't being achieved in reality.

But metamodernism hasn't yet provided a clear or viral enough answer for the postmodern impasse. Or at least we've tried, and few have paid attention. Meanwhile, the new centrism of the Intellectual Dark Web has filled the void (or rather spoke over the Other) with anti-postmodern and anti-social justice diatribes that actually inflame systemic racism (which they deny exists). Those on the left who have already united against the IDW would do better to understand their moves as metamodern, and generate greater collective coherence as such.

The IDW would have you believe progressivism is a lost cause, yet they stand in the way, provide no alternative, and tune out the people actually working on those problems. The IDW remain do not engage with actual leftist politics, let alone black sociology. I offered a broad critique of the IDW over a year ago , trying to pre-emptively assuage the culture war, much of which still holds up. The IDW have gotten worse in some respects, have been critiqued harder, and now is quickly crumbing and becoming obsolscent, giving rise to a new emergent discourse.

There is also the odd (right-wing) person who is fond of metamodernism, but interprets it for their own ends without really understanding it. They support Trump. They like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt. They are against immigration for personal (identity) reasons. They have no interest in the thorough critiques of any of these things. They, of course, have also been missing the metamodernisms as I have described in this series, but also in the contemporary sense that comes from Dutch and Nordic versions, because there's nothing in those sources to inspire right-wing ideology. On the contrary, they demand a much closer read of history, theory, and social consciousness.

In general, metamodernism is post-political, beyond the left-right spectrum, and refers to the era we are in (and so does hypermodernity). But along a particular axis of issues, metamodernism as a movement and sociological theory is uniformly aligned with the leftist movement today, as it is expressed throughout this series (vis-a-vis technology, liberation theology, black socialism), and some of my other writings. This doesn't mean conservatives aren't welcome to participate and contribute - they are - but it means zero tolerance for ignorance about what postmodernism actually means, and regressive dogmas about climate change or social justice. In the Dutch and Nordic versions, metamodernism assumes the viability of a socialist steady state, not surprisingly because they are from successful ones, and are relatively successful in such societies. The idea is to provide that to everyone, and it's not a pipedream.

Metamodernism, by all available standards, reflects a progressive culture towards a cosmopolitan post-capitalist demilitarized vision of society that will mitigate climate risk, not an ethnonationalist hyper-capitalist militarist denialist prophecy of social control that will accelerate and exacerbate collapse. The choice is starkly contrasted, and the latter is called hypermodernism, not metamodernism. With this in mind, I see no right-wing person actually theorizing metamodernity, coherently at least, but there is still a need for a course correction in green metamodernism by black metamodernism.

Back in Black Metamodernism

My role here is not to be an expert on black metamodernism per se, but to defer to the real experts in their fields and to help widen the space of the new discourse. Outstanding black scholars are not in short supply, but are still fighting an uphill battle against a white-privileged status-quo. Many are immensely wise, strong willed, and influential, and yet lack the clout they truly deserve. Their critiques have not reached far enough to affect the needed change. And the lack of convergence through metamodernism has not helped either.

Notable black thinkers/ activists/ leaders include Cornel West, Charles W. Mills , Tressie Mcmillan Cottom, Michelle Alexander, Ta-nehisi Coates, Michael Eric Dyson, Benjamin Dixon, Mansa Keita, Bill Fletcher Jr., Wosny Lambre, Briahna Joy Grey, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, Kwame Anthony Appiah , Patricia Hill Collins , Kimberlé W. Crenshaw , Angela Y. Davis , Henry Louis Gates, Jr. , and many more . Could this be a cross section of black metamodern thought? Many of them have theorized or criticized postmodernism as well, so it would not be a stretch to entertain metamodernism, especially with these added perspectives (Borgmann, González, black, in addition to Dutch and Nordic strands).

This negligence of black metamodernism is part of the wider pattern of Missing Metamodernism  - even amongst black scholars. They could perhaps be forgiven for not dropping everything and devoting themselves to Dutch or Nordic metamodern developments, but they also have a precedent with 'black metamodernism,' so we hope they will learn and develop it with us and speak up. Take up this meta- mantle and converge with metamodernism more broadly, to develop a new paradigm.

Much of the public discourse is not lacking in racial awareness, evidenced by the following TED talks, but it's a broader question of some (white) people's interests and attention spans. And the mainstream media is still deeply filtered and divisive over race issues. My purpose here is just to share some of what's out there, so that it can't be ignored or missed by those interested in metamodernism. And so it can't be denied by the centrists and right-wingers that want to preserve some mythical abstraction of white Western civilization. The point is that black culture was metamodern before some industrious white people rediscovered metamodernism.

In The Dangers of Whitewashing Black History, David Ikard recounts the story of his son in Grade 4, who was taught that Rosa Parks was frail old black women, diminishing her life-long struggle and the story of social justice behind her. David wanted to confront the teacher, but because of his experience with the "white fragility" of some people, he knew that might be a bad idea. So he instructed his son to learn the true history, which he did, and his son gave a speech debunking the myth. The teacher apologized to student, and subsequently retaught the Rosa Parks lecture. This is why Rosa Parks wrote her autobiography, so she could tell her own story, David said, but it still so easily becomes whitewashed. In 1950s, lynching was normal. MLK's house was bombed twice. Rosa parks was not an 'accidental activist.' These facts are often submerged by a more sanitized narrative.

Then there was a book draft David reviewed for his brilliant white professor "Fred" (not his real name) while he was a graduate student. Fred was writing a history of the civil rights movement, David explains, "specifically about a moment that happened to him in North Carolina when this white man shot this black man in cold blood in a wide-open space and was never convicted." David saw a problem in a particular personal story of how Fred talked with his black maid (which already has racial undertones in itself).

1968, MLK had just been assassinated, Fred is 8 years old, and his maid is crying and he asks why. "It'll be okay" he says… "Didn't Jesus die on the cross for our sins?" and 'maybe things will work out.' The maid, despondent as she was, tempered herself and gave little Fred a hug and a cold Pepsi. For Fred, it was proof people could cross racial lines to overcome adversity; that love could conquer all; he did a good thing. David called bullshit. The story wasn't about the maid, it was a selfish story about Fred naively thinking he was helping. The whole episode was clouded by the fact Fred was technically her employer, so she couldn't get mad at him. After being called out, Fred then realized that he misread the moment.

And there is many more TEDx that challenge basic misconceptions and expose systemic racism: Black Self / White World - lessons on internalized racism | Jabari Lyles | TEDxTysonsSalon (2017); White Men: Time to Discover Your Cultural Blind Spots | Michael Welp | TEDxBend (2017); Let's get to the root of racial injustice | Megan Ming Francis (2016). Not to mention the ample books and documentaries out there.

From the Intellectual White Web to Black Lives Matter

The more you know, the less ignorant you are, but some people can't be bothered. From the current smorgasbord of trashy thought leaders, Jordan Peterson is probably the most obtuse white person one can picture. He is tacitly against identity politics and racism, white supremacy, and white nationalism, while not having a clue how they actually operate in the world and through his own discourse. The Peterson paradox is being able to unironically praise MLK in one sentence and condemn his core values (like democratic socialism ) in another without an inkling of cognitive dissonance.

Imagine being so functionally ignorant of systemic racism that you lecture about how 'white privilege is a marxist lie' at Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC (2018), behind a picture of Abe Lincoln, as if that means something in this context. It is scholarly dereliction to be so ignorant about those concepts, to say the very least. And then to cry crocodile tears when Michael Eric Dyson calls you out as a "mean mad white man." And then for your demagogic bile and self-help slop to fuel the xenophobic incel rage of white nationalist shooters. And then to get even angrier that you have incessant critics, as if don't they have something important to explain to you. And then you give a high school book report of The Communist Manifesto to Zizek. But at least you've made over $1M in the past year and are now doing a business scam thing with Kobe Bryant and George W. Bush , and chumming with far right politicians who want to purge humanities teachers. So much for classical liberalism. Fear not mean white man, have a cold Pepsi, we know you're doing your best, just like "Fred" was with his maid.

At the end of the day black metamodernism is not just about the 'black' modifier; it's not self-interested minorities with narrow identitarian priorities, like their white majority racist counterparts. Many black scholars do not dwell on race, they are well rounded, but rather race is forced upon them because of their skin color and place in society. Some become experts by choice, others by circumstance. The dream is for racial equality and economic solidarity, not black supremacy, but white anxiety keeps murdering this dream, keeping the nightmare (whitemare?) alive and well in America.

"Black Lives Matter" (BLM) is actually a proportional response to the criminalization of drugs, profiling of minorities, and being incarcerated or killed by racist or paranoid cops. Whether the cops are overtly racist or subconsciously is beside the point, because they are still racist in effect and consequence. Opponents of BLM generally miss the point, only seeing a black power grab, but that itself is a racist interpretation based on ignorance, fear, and (social) media distortion and polarization. The reality is, as Brunton described it;

"The Black Lives Matter movement argues that we need to recognize precisely the opposite of what the movement's hashtag declares that is, historically, white patriarchy has failed to treat black lives as though they matter. American liberal democracy has failed to provide the rights and privileges of citizenship to a large portion of the citizenry, and the election of a black president has failed to usher in a post-racial society." - Brunton, Whose (Meta)modernism?: Metamodernism, Race, and the Politics of Failure (2018)

Like with MLK, this progressive (black) metamodernism includes the racial struggle, but is about the larger quest for socio-economic and even environmental justice. As such, black metamodernism is not reducible to a shallow form of identity politics. To avoid this caricature, the first task is to consolidate the new subfield as metamodern, as could be done for each path in (ie. Borgmann, González, etc…). The second task is to re-integrate back into a broader more inclusive notion of metamodernism to address the meta-crisis of hyper-capitalism. This series tries to advance both tasks in a small way.

Furthermore, it's all about climate change now, the anthropocene, and (quite certain) global existential risks that humanity are creating. There is this overriding sentiment that if 'we're all going to die' then might as well do the right thing now. And as you can see (below), black metamodernists are already ahead of this curve, which is why we should already be united under one paradigmatic umbrella.

The Black Socialists of America were on the podcast New Models - Episode 12: BLACK SOCIALISTS (Z, Busta, Keller, @LILINTERNET ). They describe how they founded it response to how Cornel West was attacked by "black liberals" for critiquing Ta-nehisi Coates, and realized there wasn't a real platform for Black American socialists, anti-capitalists, leftists, etc. At 7:30, they start to get into it;"I don't want to slam postmodernism too hard here but…" Needless to say, they are beyond postmodernism, and have a thoughtful critique that could be described as metamodern.

The Michael Brooks Show (TMBS) invokes black sociology often (consider the work of the Association of Black Sociologists on twitter too), especially with the frequent guest Bill Fletcher Jr . Brooks is so committed his twitter bio says "Member of the Yacubian Left," a nod to the theory that an ancient 'black scientist' created white people through eugenics. On TMBS 91 " Wonkery Won't Save Us & Green Imperialism ," Brandon Sutton (The Discourse podcast) was recently on to brilliantly break down systemic racism and the neoliberal agenda (May 21, 2019). Sutton is also cautious about cancel culture and performative wokeness that run the risk of undermining their goals. TMBS has been critical of Kanye's politics and black activism (vis-a-vis Trump), from black perspectives. Briahna Joy Gray (former Intercept editor and now Bernie's press secretary) is a regular guest too.

Michael Brooks and guests have been the most incisive critics of the IDW, because they already have this implicit metamodern awareness, as noted in Gonzálezean metamodernism. To be sure, black metamodernists would go after the mostly white Intellectual Dark Web, not join it like Candace Owens, Coleman Hughes, or Thomas Sowell to be instruments for a racist status-quo. See ' Coleman Hughes is bad for the discourse ', and this vid , and James B. Stewart, Thomas Sowell's Quixotic Quest to Denigrate African American Culture (2006). Hughes and Sowell, despite whatever intellectual merits, are truly not grounded in racial reality, and are certainly not metamodernists, but reactionary modernists.

Last Light on Black

There is still so much more to explore in this potential subfield than I have not covered here. I have just scratched the surface of black metamodernism, as with the other articles in Missing Metamodernism. Afrofuturism seems pretty metamodern. The movie Black Panther was a critical and commercial success; perhaps a black metamodern film in a metamodern franchise. A black writer named Germane Marvel has authored a couple Medium posts on metamodernism which seem to offer fresh philosophical musings about it; Meta Something? , followed by Meta Nothing? Research in Black Feminist Science explores how "the intellectual endeavors of marginalized black women have historically represented radical challenges to structures of knowledge and systems of oppression."

Some more artefacts of black metamodernism to consider include Get Out , The Legacy of Black Reconstruction, by Robert Greene II , Bernie's Plan for Racial Justice, by Meagan Day , The Boondocks (TV series) , and Into the Spiderverse . And through the internet over the past couple years I have connected with a few black people in Africa and elsewhere interested in metamodernism, but without having a proper African version of it. I think now it is safe to say there is one, and it can be developed more.

Conclusion

I hope I have established a solid precedent for what I suggest by a broad 'black metamodernism'; a shrewd awakening and reality check for what Charles W. Mills calls 'white ignorance,' among many other things, that metamodernism has not hitherto immunized against. Social justice still demands resolution, despite what the (pseudo-)intellectual posturing against it would tell you. The ample literature on structural racism may seem to shout through the matrix of postmodernism, incomprehensible to the new center, but we are listening. In a time when racial tensions are still high and systemic racism persists around the world, particularly against people of color in the United States, not to mention the scourge of white nationalism and dastardly race/IQ pseudoscience, we cannot make excuses for the absence or negation of a black metamodernism that was always present.

Furthermore, postmodernism and social justice are under constant attack for the wrong reasons, while questionable postmodern (gibberish) scholarship is still being produced, normatively for the right reasons, but at the limits of critique. For many of us in the culture war, this is the whole point of a metamodern intervention; to cut through the bullshit and end the culture war itself (along with actual war), while also reforming the research and education paradigm towards these ends. Who but (black) metamodernists could most aptly advocate for this?

→ Read Part 1: Missing Metamodernism
→ Read Part 2: Borgmannian Metamodernism
→ Read Part 3: Gonzálezean Metamodernism

Brent Cooper is founder and Executive Director at The Abs-Tract Organization , a Canadian think tank.

Decade of the Animals: Eco-Horror and the Cinematic Lessons of the 1970s

By Sean Posey

When Michael Myers donned the Captain Kirk mask in the 1978 classic Halloween (yes, that's a mask of William Shatner) he helped change horror movies forever. For most of the next decade and beyond, the horror subgenre of the slasher film dominated drive-ins, multiplexes and video store shelves.

But before Halloween surged at the box office, another now almost forgotten horror genre made waves by combining the environmental anxieties of the era with giant, murderous rabbits, vengeful dogs and bloodthirsty frogs, among other angry critters. The "Nature Strikes Back!" films of the 1970s ran the gamut from schlock masterpieces and haunting classics to the downright unwatchable. However, these films are also part of a time capsule - giving us a glimpse into an era when a building environmental crisis seemed to provoke real soul searching. What were we doing to animals and the natural world? What might they in turn do to us?

In the opening of her seminal 1962 book "Silent Spring," Rachel Carson describes an idealized American town where nature and man are still in balance, at least for a time. Foxes and deer frolic amidst orchards and fields of grain, and a general bucolic feeling pervades. But soon "a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community," Carson writes. In particular, the birds disappeared. "It was a spring without voices."

She was writing about the chemical industry and the destructive effects of pesticides on animals and the environment. "Silent Spring" played a key role in ushering in the environmental movement, which gained strength as the 1960s progressed. But in the film world, in an unplanned coincidence, Alfred Hitchcock answered Carlson's question: "The birds... where had they gone?"

The Birds hit theaters less than a year after "Silent Spring" debuted, and it quickly captured the nation's imagination. The site of something so benign as the common avian viciously turning on man terrified audiences and helped redefine horror. But it wouldn't be until the 1970s that the "eco-horror" film fully blossomed.

The 1972 cult classic Frogs, which ushered in the era's eco-horror films, replaces Hitchcock's birds with an unlikely assortment of reptiles and amphibians - all bent on extracting revenge on a polluting Florida patriarch and his unlikeable family. In the film, Jason Crockett (Ray Milland) is a cranky millionaire intent on wiping out the frog population in and around his private island so that he and his clan can properly celebrate the Fourth of July.

A wildlife photographer named Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott), who is working on a story in the area and encounters the rampant pollution, tries to dissuade him from launching his own private war on the local frog population, to no avail. "I still believe man is master of the world," Crockett tells him.

But the amphibians and reptiles are one step ahead of the game. Guided by the omnipresent frogs, which never seem to directly attack anyone themselves, a bevy of snakes, lizards and even an alligator snapping turtle wreak death and destruction on the dullard cast members. Smith leads a small contingent off the island, where it appears that a mass animal uprising is under way. Crockett refuses to leave and is trapped in his mansion as hordes of frogs - in all of their croaking wrath - descend on him.

Frogs was released the same year DDT - which was applied over Florida for years in a quest to eliminate fresh and saltwater mosquitoes - was banned. The first Earth Day had been held two years previous. "Environmentalism, much like the anti-war subculture, started to influence not only activists and the newfound socially aware, but also the style and consciousness of the new eco-horror films," writes Lee Gambin.

After Frogs, the eco-horror genre gathered steam. Perhaps the most unintentionally funny film to follow was Night of the Lepus, which premiered only months after Frogs. It opens with a news broadcast reminiscent of the TV segments from Night of the Living Dead. But instead of warning of the walking dead, the broadcaster informs the audience of the growing problem of invasive species in Australia and the American Southwest - namely the rabbit. This was a real-life problem, and the issue of invasive species was one of the most readily recognizable environmental topics of the time. Interestingly enough, the broadcaster compares rapidly multiplying rabbits to the human population explosion, a popular intellectual to subjects after Paul R. Ehrlich's 1968 book "The Population Bomb" debuted.

As the film opens, a beleaguered rancher (Rory Calhoun) enlists a group of scientists to help tame a scourge of rabbits in Arizona. They attempt to use an experimental serum in order to scramble the animals' breeding cycle, but one of the scientific team's children switches an injected rabbit she's fond of with one in the control group. When the rabbit makes it back to the wild, it helps breed a group of oversized killer bunnies.

The director used close-ups scenes to depict "giant rabbits" in miniature sets, and in scenes where they attack up close, actors in fuzzy bunny costumes were used. Never again will you hear rabbits referred to being "as big as wolves and just as vicious." And never again will you see a character grimacing in horror as he watches a caravan of adorable but murderous rabbits appear in his rearview mirror. But beneath the bargain-basement special effects is a message about humanity's harmful tampering with ecosystems and the deleterious effects of introducing invasive species.

Oddly enough, despite featuring a fearsome animal munching on unsuspecting bathers, Jaws, released in 1975, isn't much of an eco-horror film. As entertaining and suspenseful as it is, there's a never a concrete reason given for the great white's assault on Amity Island. If anything, Jaws is more about masculinity and the relationships between men than it's about man's relationship with animals and the environment. Nevertheless, it helped spawn numerous '70s films about how tampering with animals and the natural world will bring down nature's wrath, including Piranha (Then... you were shocked by the great white shark - Now... you are at the mercy of 1000 jaws!), Tentacles (It's turning the beach ... into a buffet! ) and Grizzly (Not since JAWS has the terror been like this!).

So many eco-horror films were made in the '70s that sub-genres soon emerged, including films dedicated to deadly domestic animals. Before Cujo became a household word, 1977's The Pack introduced man's best friend as a murderous foe. In the film, a swift tourist trade is part of the backbone of a small fishing island during season, but well-heeled visitors from the city have a bad habit of leaving their recently adopted dogs behind when it's time to return to their regular lives.

The film follows one such canine that's abandoned by a departing family before joining a pack of wild dogs living in a derelict building. When a readily available food supply runs out, the dogs come for the island's human population. The Pack shows that humanity's disregard for animal life doesn't stop at wild fauna.

A group of trapped tourists who are part of the main cast are depicted as either clueless or venal. It's left to a scientist, played by Joe Don Baker, to save the group. However, Baker's character also sympathizes with the attacking animals, and at the film's end, after the main pack has been destroyed, he saves the helpless abandoned dog we've been following throughout the movie from being killed by a vengeful tourist. In The Pack, man's carelessness and disregard for the animal world extends even to a subspecies that's been his companion for at least 14,000 years.

In 1974, F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina of the University of California found that chlorinated fluorocarbon gases, then found in everything from aerosol spray cans to refrigeration units, were seriously damaging the ozone layer, which helps block ultraviolet light from the sun. That environmental emergency was used as the central conceit in the 1977 film Day of the Animals, which incorporated a real-life environmental emergency to a greater degree than most eco-horror films.

The central plot involves a group of hikers ascending a mountain in Northern California just as a mysterious psychosis begins to effect wild animals in the area. The higher the altitude they ascend to, the more animals begin to act strangely, until finally, they attack. What's driving them? The hole in the ozone layer is allowing in ultraviolet radiation that in turn is causing the animals to kill, though in a karmic twist, they only target humans.

The cast consists of an assemblage of telling archetypes: a Navajo Indian who is the first to sense the rift in the natural world, a racist and misogynistic advertising executive (Leslie Nielsen) who himself goes crazy, and a New York socialite (with no love for nature) who berates her put-upon son. In the town below, news reports reveal the connection between the ozone hole and attacking animals. "God sent a plague down on us because we're just a bunch of no-good fellers," one of the yokels exclaims.

Mountain lions, bears, wolves and snakes (left over from Frogs?) proceed to chomp, tear and dismember the hiking expedition and the nearby town as martial law is declared and troops in environmental suits move in. But the animals themselves also soon die and the "shift in the ozone level" normalizes, according to news reports.

The film's pre-credit sequence announces that this is a scenario that "COULD" actually happen. As silly as it is (and as awesome as a shirtless Leslie Nielsen challenging a bear to a wrestling match is), Day of the Animals is an earnest film that's a time capsule from an era when a pending environmental crisis could be counted on to at least inspire some political action. CFCs were ultimately phased out under the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

Probably the best of the many '70s eco-horror movies is the Australian classic The Long Weekend. Focusing on an estranged couple seeking to rekindle their relationship over a weekend getaway to an isolated seashore in the bush, the film is much more of a psychological horror picture where the danger is never fully shown. The screenwriter gradually reveals the deep rifts that have eaten away at the couple's relationship as the tension builds, one that is echoed by the rifts between man and the natural world. As the two fight, litter, spray insecticide and, in the case of the husband, shoot a dugong (a kind of sea cow), animals and the landscape around them begin to grow hostile.

"My premise was that Mother Nature has her own autoimmune system, so when humans start behaving like cancer cells, she attacks," screenwriter Everett De Roche said in a 2012 interview. No one animal (a mutated bear in 1979's The Prophecy or worms in the case of 1976's Squirm) is responsible for the mayhem that ensues.

It's as if the environment itself wants to do away with the couple. In a way that few other films of its kind succeed in doing, The Long Weekend gives the viewer the sense that the ecosystem and all the animals it supports are attempting to strike back against humans.

This is reflected in the atmospheric soundtrack. A long, slow death rattle punctuates parts of the film, almost as if nature itself were crying out in agony and outrage. The Long Weekend is not only one of the best eco-horror films of any age, it's also a grim warning from the end of a decade where the environment, albeit briefly, seemed to take center stage in the cultural and political world.

By the 1980s, eco-horror films were on the wane. Dystopian productions such as the Mad Max series - also classics of Australian cinema, like The Long Weekend - figured strongly in a cinematic decade more concerned with nuclear annihilation and urban collapse than ecological crises. Films such as Escape From New York, Blade Runner,The Running Man, The Quiet Earth and Night of the Comet cashed in on the new trend. In more recent years, The Day After Tomorrow and The Road have been among a spate of films with an even grimmer outlook than the '70s eco-horror genre.

The idea of animals taking revenge against man now seems quaint. Indeed, we are currently going through what scientists call the Sixth extinction or the Holocene extinction. Approximately 20 percent of all species on Earth face extinction - a number that could increase to 50 percent by the end of the century. It wouldn't make much sense to produce a film like Frogs today as amphibian populations have been in decline for the past 20 years, according to Science magazine. A third of amphibian species are currently at risk of extinction with chemical pollution being a large contributor to their plight. Perhaps the Jason Crocketts of the world won in the end?

The eco-horror films of the future might feature poisonous jellyfish, sea snakes and other creatures that could expand their natural ranges as ecosystems change due to global warming. Or perhaps now we've come to realize that man is the most dangerous and terrifying animal of all. Rising seas, desertification, chemical pollution, scorching temperatures and other disasters (e.g. California wildfires) - all linked to manmade climate change - now seem to be nature's way of dealing with us. And that's a reality more horrifying than any screenplay.

"A Free Palestine from the River to the Sea": The Nine Dirty Words You Can't Say (on TV or Anywhere Else)

By Bryant William Sculos

No Justice, No Peace

It is not uncommon for a mainstream media commentator to be fired for a bigoted or violent comment on air-or off air. As far as I know, there was never a person specifically fired for advocating non-violence and the equal treatment of a group of people. I'm sure untold thousands have never been hired in the first place because of these views-but that's not the same as having those kinds of views being known and then later fired for articulating them for the hundredth if not thousandth time. That was until November 29, 2018, when CNN fired paid commentator (and Temple University Full Professor) Marc Lamont Hill for articulating a nuanced position of peace and justice through non-violence in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Hill called for the equal freedom and dignity of the Palestinian people, a people long violently oppressed and attacked by a colonizing power.

These facts are not in question. What is in question is whether Hill, at the end of the invited speech delivered at the United Nations to commemorate the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, also invoked a dog whistle for the extermination of Jews and the eradication of Israel. Despite the complete inconsistency of this interpretation with the previous twenty minutes of Hill's speech (and everything he has probably ever said and done), this was hardly enough to prevent the far-right wing media circus and pro-Israel/Zionist lobby, which dominates the U.S. media landscape and the whole of the two major political parties and their pundits, from unleashing on Hill. Within hours, it was widely believed that Hill was a virulent anti-Semite. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Hill has repeatedly stated and explained in multiple statements since.

A rigorous and righteous critique of Zionism is not identical to a hatred or even criticism of Jews or Jewishness. There is plenty of evidence and argumentation from Jews themselves that unquestioning support for Israel itself does a disservice to the Jewish tradition and Jews worldwide, as well as those in Israel. This argument was made most recently by Cornel West in his defense of Marc Lamont Hill.

The words in question are "a free Palestine from the river to the sea"-the latter four ostensibly being the genocidal dog whistle, a phrasing used by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas (both organizations have been previously criticized by Hill for their use of violence in various contexts). If Hill's detractors had displayed any knowledge of anything about his politics, activism, or even the previous 99.9% of the U.N. speech, their outrage would be less disingenuous. If his detractors could show why his final statement, interpreted as a call for mass violence, was in any way consistent with any part of the rest of the speech or Hill's political or intellectual perspectives, they could be taken seriously, at least on a superficial level. This simply is not the case.

Furthermore, I contend, it was not the last four words that people had a problem with; it was the first three: a free Palestine. A free Palestine for a free Palestinian people. Free and equal Palestinian people. This is the true source of the grievances, which led to Hill being fired from CNN-and since, Hill has been targeted by Temple University for possible censure and/or firing, despite the fact that Hill has an endowed chair and the ostensible protection of tenure (to say nothing for comprehensive free speech rights, which since Temple is a public university, are fully guaranteed by the oft-referenced and little-read U.S. Constitution).

While it is unlikely that Hill will be fired or forced out, the relatively recent cases of George Ciccariello-Maher (formerly) at Drexel University and Steven Salaita (formerly) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign show that there are no guarantees for public critics of white supremacy, global capitalism, U.S. imperialism, and Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid. The most critical topics in need of vociferous dissent are the ones being most aggressively censored.

I'm less specifically worried about Prof. Hill losing one of his side jobs than I am about the multitude of others who share and express his views who will never be given a job, either on cable news or in academia. The chilling effects-especially for early-career scholars, teachers, and journalists, who are the most vulnerable to sanction-are palpable and devastating, the results of which will surely harm millions if not billions around the world, not least of all the Palestinian people.

Apples, Bananas, and the Last Human Voice

The tragedy of Prof. Marc Lamont Hill's firing from CNN is worse for its broader implications. Hill was the only consistently leftist voice on cable news - yes, ALL of cable news. He has been a long-time critic of police violence, structural racism, U.S. imperialism, and economic injustices in the U.S. and around the world. He has accepted both the label socialist and Marxist at times, and his arguments on TV and in his books are broadly consistent with those traditions-though they rarely involve the jargon typically associated with those traditions. He chooses his words carefully, but his meanings are rarely unclear. He has stood for working people, the poor, the oppressed, the colonized, the degraded, and the murdered.

He was the only cable commentator to oppose Hillary Clinton from the left. He was browbeaten by other CNN commentators and analysts. His appearances weirdly were fewer and further in-between. Hill refused to change his position on U.S. imperialism, and if one is a critic of U.S. imperialism, one cannot go on TV and call for people to vote for her. Putting aside debates about lesser-evilism and its dangerous pitfalls, going on TV to advocate for an imperialist would have ingratiated Hill with CNN and his Democratic Party consultant colleagues. More people have complied than haven't. He refused.

CNN has always been a network that turns war, death, murder, and injustice into spectator sports for profit. It has always been a network more comfortable paying neo-fascists, bigots, and regressive morons than it is with paying thoughtful left critics. CNN claims to be a "facts first" network. They run ads equating bananas with falsehood and apples with truth. Some are clever; most are not. Marketing criticisms aside, CNN continues to disgrace and debase itself with this decision. As I write this, Rick Santorum, a man who believes that gay and transgender people are inherently mentally-ill and criminals, that climate change is a hoax, that women should not have reproductive rights, and that none of us deserve affordable quality healthcare, is still employed at CNN, appearing regularly on its prime-time shows. But Marc Lamont Hill called for violence (in a speech about non-violence)? He must be purged! Talk about being fucking bananas.

It was already a tragedy nearing its end that there was merely one regular left voice on cable news. With the firing of Marc Lamont Hill, the process of recessing all the truly radical critics from regular appearances on mainstream airwaves is complete. While young people tend to get their news and information from "non-traditional" media, where there are thankfully far more left voices, what happens in the mainstream media, which is still consumed by the majority of Americans, still matters a great deal.

CNN didn't make this choice out of principle. Hill's appearances were seemingly increasingly irregular as he refused to play into the dominant narratives that hyper-focused on President Trump, so it was easy calculus for them. Avoid any semblance of anti-Israel (and by some perverse twist of illogic, anti-American) sentiment and fire Marc Lamont Hill. They did it for PR reasons. They did it for profit. I'm sure they are satisfied with their decision.

Though perhaps they should rethink that: Fox News' host, and rat sphincter wearing human skin, Sean Hannity, was giddy discussing Hill's firing-and of course took several moments to connect an egregiously mischaracterized version of Hill's comments to the entire "insanity" of CNN and its unprofessional anchors who are "too opinionated." The irony was lost on him completely, and the meaning of Hannity's and Fox News' celebration of Hill's firing was likely lost on CNN as well.

Sorry, Not Sorry

With all of that said, despite his righteous and radical declaration of freedom, equality, peace, and justice for the Palestinian people, Marc Lamont Hill penned an apology for The Inquirer. He apologized not for standing with the Palestinian people. He apologized not for opposing Israeli-Zionist settler colonialism. He apologized not for suggesting that the violence of the colonized was not equivalent to the violence of the colonizer. Instead, he apologized for triggering the misinterpretations of his comments that led to the outrage and subsequent firing.

There is one crucial flaw in this apology however, beyond it being completely unnecessary and equally understandable for all those familiar with Marc Lamont Hill. He has a profoundly generous and magnanimous reputation. The problem with the apology is that it is articulated with a factual inaccuracy baked into Hill's words (a factual inaccuracy he is no doubt aware of): the outrage that led to his firing and the now-informal inquiry by the Board of Trustees at Temple was not a good faith misinterpretation. It was not accidental. It was not a "natural" reaction to his supposedly genocidal words at the U.N. The misinterpretation was intentional from the start, and the outrage was exaggerated for political purposes. The people attacking Marc Lamont Hill-including CNN-are not rightly offended by a scholar and activist's "poor choice of words." His choice of words was perfectly fine. The outrage that Hill's words spawned were because of their normative content; because of whom they were delivered to defend and support: the Palestinian people-as well as the entity they were deployed to criticize: the Israeli state.

Any genuine offense that was created by Hill's words were undoubtedly not from Hill's words themselves, but rather from the feigned offense of others intentionally mischaracterizing Hill's words for political effect. His most recent book Nobody is a testament to his scholar-activist credentials and deeply felt compassion and care for the oppressed and exploited in the world. No one-nobody-could read the actual words in that book and genuinely think that this author would ever defend the extermination of a people (not even cops). There are undoubtedly millions of people who could intentionally misread what he wrote, and he has no need to apologize for those intentional misinterpretations any more than he should have apologized for the intentional misconstruing of his comments on Israel and a free Palestinian people.

By apologizing as he did, while certainly representative of Hill's humility and selflessness and certainly clarifying for those on the left who may not have heard the original speech, I fear some of this ill-motivated criticism may have been unintentionally legitimized. The accusations of anti-Semitism were not offered in good faith in any way and treating them as good-faith misinterpretations threatens to offer a glean of honesty that neo-fascist Zionism will continue to abuse. Marc Lamont Hill shouldn't be blamed for this possible outgrowth of his apology; he was responding to an existential threat to his ability to make a living-and perhaps some perceived genuine misinterpretation that I simply refuse to believe exists.

For Palestinians, Not Palestine

This is just one contribution to an ongoing and undoubtedly continuing discussion about the Palestinian people's right to exist as living beings with dignity, respect, and equaliberty, but it is important to emphasize here that there should be no defense of nationalism implied, interfered, or articulated. While anti-colonial nationalism is preferable to imperial bourgeois nationalism, it is a political dead end nonetheless. In the context of Israel-Palestine, while the discursive move of asserting the right of the Palestinian people to be citizens of a democratic nation-state is assuredly a positive and productive move insofar as it challenges US and Israeli capitalist imperial power, the liberation of the Palestinian people (and the working class people of Israel, many of whom do not support the far-Right Likud Party or the heinous war crimes of the Israeli state) will only be accomplished with aggressively solidaristic internationalism. Demanding political, economic, cultural, and social equality and freedom within all relevant political structures that affect the lives of Palestinians is not inconsistent with a ruthless critique of the modern state system and all of its attendant injustices.

This speaks to the final tragedy of the firing and ongoing assault of Marc Lamont Hill. It was precisely for his passionate, thoughtful, informed words of solidarity and support for the freedom of all people, especially the Palestinians, that he is being punished. While we must match his act(s) of solidarity with the Palestinians with our own words and deeds of solidarity with him and against his detractors, I don't think it is too bold of me to suggest that Marc would want us to put doubly more energy into supporting the cause of peace with justice and freedom for all peoples, which his own passionate support of has precipitated this absurd circumstance.

Bryant William Sculos, Ph.D. is the Mellon-Sawyer Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and, beginning in January 2019, will be Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Worcester State University teaching in a variety of areas of global politics. Bryant is also an occasional adjunct professor in political theory at Florida International University. He is a member of Socialist Alternative-CWI in the U.S. and regular contributor to The Hampton Institute, New Politics, Public Seminar, and Class, Race and Corporate Power - where he also serves as Politics of Culture section editor.

The Rising Wave of Fascist Terror: Notes on Its Organization and Disruption

By Josh Sturman

The week of October 21st saw three high profile, fascist terrorist attacks. The first of these was an unsuccessful attack on (purportedly) liberal political leaders: pipe bombs were sent to several prominent Democratic Party politicians , including former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The next two were more successful and explicitly racist in nature. On October 24, a terrorist failed to gain access to a Black church near Louisville, KY, then crossed the street to a grocery store and murdered two Black shoppers . The following Saturday, October 27, a terrorist entered a synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA and opened fire, killing eleven Jewish worshipers . This week of terror was followed by a high-profile attack the following week in Tallahassee, FL, when a misogynistic attacker murdered two women in a yoga studio on November 3.

We must not doubt that all of these attacks were fascist in nature. Each attack targeted a type of person on which fascist, extralegal violence is traditionally inflicted: the perceived left, subordinated races, and women. At least one of the terrorists, the Pittsburgh shooter, was tied to the fascistic social media site Gab , a refuge for right-wing extremists banned from Twitter and Facebook.

These four attacks, like all acts of terrorism, served a double function. On the one hand, they serve to inflict immediate harm on the "enemies" of fascism, whether these enemies be political opponents, such as "left-wing" politicians, or people whose free existence is a fundamental threat to the fascist project, such as Black people, Jews, and women. On the other hand, the attacks serve to create a climate of fear, a climate eventually intended to scare opponents of fascism out of exercising their freedom.

Students of the American fascist movement will recognize that all four of these attacks fit into the long-time white supremacist strategy of "leaderless resistance." First proposed by Louis Beam in 1983 , the strategy marked a departure from the attempt to build popular institutions such as the Ku Klux Klan towards the reconstitution of the movement into one in which "all individuals and groups operate independently of each other, and never report to a central headquarters or single leader for direction or instruction." The adoption of leaderless resistance as a key organizing principle encouraged fascist activists to act without directly consulting one another, instead interpreting the public proclamations of fascist leaders by themselves and acting as they see fit. It took and continues to take advantage of the widespread authoritarianism, racism, and misogyny embedded in American culture, gambling that these ideas can be activated in independent activists through the piecemeal diffusion of fascist propaganda, thereby creating a general social attitude of support for and fear of fascists without relying on the establishment of a major institutional presence dedicated to supporting the fascist cause.

To date, the largest successful act of terrorism carried out on the basis of leaderless resistance was Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols' bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 , which killed 168 people, including many children. Other high profile terrorist attacks carried out on the basis of this strategy other than those mentioned above include Frazier Glenn Miller's attack on a Kansas Jewish Community Center in April, 2014 , Elliot Rodger's rampage through Isla Vista, CA the following month , and Dylann Roof's massacre of Black churchgoers in July, 2015 .

One major advantage of this strategy for fascist organizing (which is emphasized by Beam) is that the decentralization of activism keeps movement leaders safe from activist criminality. Popular institutions are easy targets of government suppression because such institutions link everyone from foot soldiers to the institutions' upper echelons through the institutional hierarchy. As a result, taking down someone at any level of the hierarchy can lead to the imprisonment of all members on conspiracy and collaboration charges and a resultant disorganization. By keeping white-supremacist cells as small as possible, the leaderless resistance is able to avoid large-scale suppression by either the government or anti-racist and anti-fascist movements through a separation of propagandists and theorists from terrorist activists. Strategies developed publicly by fascist ideologues can be taken up by individuals or small cadres who serve as martyrs without the ideologues facing repercussions greater than public censure.

Another advantage of leaderless resistance (which goes unmentioned by Beam) is that very few of those engaged in the strategy need to be cognizant of their participation. Only a handful of ideologues need to be intentionally focused on shifting the Overton window - the limits of acceptable discourse - for efforts to be successful. A small but dedicated group of theorists and propagandists making a concerted effort can move fascist concepts into the mainstream. Once this is accomplished, mainstream politicians and media outlets are able to whip up racist, misogynistic, anti-leftist, and anti-liberal hysteria to the point where lone-wolf terrorists are bound to emerge. Knowledge of this phenomenon helps explain why aforementioned terrorist Frazier Glenn Miller , who previously maintained ties to the white supremacist terrorist cell The Order , spent the first several decades of his life propagandizing through the KKK before picking up guns, as well as why former terrorist Don Black has abandoned his paramilitary activities in favor of running the influential white-supremacist website, Stormfront. When fascist ideologies penetrate mainstream society, some number of people will be brought to the point of "leaderless" violence regardless of their familiarity with white-supremacist tactics.

In light of the above, it is clear that fascist media platforms like Gab and Stormfront, as well as "fellow-traveler" forums like 4chan and 8chan and offline institutions like Stormfront book clubs, are crucial aspects of the success of leaderless resistance. These platforms and others like them play several roles. First, they serve as spaces for the development of fascist theory, locations where committed activists can further fascist doctrines and where inductees can receive indoctrination. Second, they serve as repositories for mainstream figures to draw ideas from, either directly or through layers of distillation as concepts are taken up and filtered through mainstream platforms like Twitter, once the Overton window has moved. Third, they serve as vehicles for the highest levels of agitation, pushing those on the edge of terrorism to engaging in leaderless resistance.

Despite the importance of these right-wing spaces, explicitly and implicitly fascist forums are not a sufficient environment for the production of lone-wolf fascist terrorists in and of themselves. As indicated above, they remain reliant on fascist ideology mainstreaming itself through public figures for the strategy to be fully successful. Wittingly or not, these public figures make their own contribution to acts of terror carried out in the name of leaderless resistance. Most obviously and as previously noted, anti-democratic, racist, and misogynistic statements from prominent politicians and media personalities contribute to fascist agitation. They also both create and reflect public support for terrorist activities. Racist statements from Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson therefore contribute to the spread of racist propaganda and indicate to fascist theorists that large segments of the public are supportive of (aspects of) the fascist cause. Even more crucial than statements are actions of material support. Presidential pardons like those given to prominent racists Dinesh D'Souza and Joe Arpaio demonstrate that elites and the public are willing to support them (to a degree) not only rhetorically, but concretely. Media narratives downplaying or dismissing the threat of fascism, such as the widespread claim that the bombs sent to Democrats were an elaborate hoax designed to discredit the Republican Party , provide space for fascists to move in public without fear of social exclusion, let alone retribution.

What is most important to note throughout in an examination of leaderless resistance is that while the strategy has led to a relatively non-institutional fascist movement, it has not led to an unorganized one. Fascist leaders, theorists, and propagandists are linked to fascist activists, including terrorist activists, through formal, predictably operating channels. Fascist ideology, tactics, strategies, and "commands" are declared in explicitly fascist venues such as Stormfront, Radix Journal, or the National Policy Institute Forum. They are then conveyed to larger, "fellow-traveler" locations like 4chan, where they are picked up and placed on larger, politically neutral sites like Facebook and Twitter, and then heard from the mouths of politicians like Donald Trump, media figures like Tucker Carlson, and celebrities like Kanye West. At each stage of transmission, the ideology and commands are available to be heard by activists, at louder and louder volumes at each stage, some of whom inevitably begin leaderless resistance, thereby reliably producing the results sought by those who initiate the process. Additionally, each stage provides the initiators of the process with feedback on methods of refining the content and distribution techniques of their propaganda as they can see which ideas are and are not transferred and the degree to which ideas are distorted as they pass from one place to another. What ultimately links all the locations is the shared epistemological framework the concepts produce and maintain as they are transmitted, a fascist framework initiated by a small cadre of fascist activists for the purpose of agitating leaderless acts of reactionary violence.

The threat of fascist insurgency must be taken seriously. The recent attacks prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that fascist violence is both immanent and rising. Moreover, the above analysis demonstrates it is a highly organized movement. It must be challenged. There are several areas of social existence in which this can be done.

First, fascist space in the range of acceptable discourse must be eliminated. Allowing any space for fascist propaganda is, as discussed above, a key hinge of the fascist leaderless resistance strategy, without which the production of fascist terrorists and activists cannot operate. Actions taken by major corporations and private citizens alike to remove fascist media platforms from the web, as well as successful struggles to prevent fascists from propagandizing on college campuses , mark the most significant contributions of recent vintage to this effort. Unfortunately, it is likely that such actions are too little, too late. Now that mainstream, widely-followed political figures and media outlets have adopted fascistic rhetoric, fascist discourse has probably saturated mainstream culture to a point where simple "no-platforming" is no longer a viable strategy. At present it seems the far-right has opened the Overton window for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, such actions demonstrate widespread disapproval of fascism, racism, and misogyny that may serve to demoralize and demobilize fascist activists in the long term. Such actions may also serve to disrupt fascist organization in ways that cannot be accurately valued at the present moment.

More important than closing the discursive space in which fascists operate is taking away the material base of fascist activists. Since the base of dedicated fascist activists is relatively small, crippling that base is both simpler than closing the Overton window and an effective way to smash the beating heart of fascism. Several strategies have been successfully employed to this end. Once again, major corporations have reluctantly, and perhaps ironically, played a part in the fight, with prominent payment processing and fundraising companies taking adverse actions against major fascist organizations , though they have often not gone far enough. Other effective actions have seen fascists lose their jobs and face difficulty at their universities . Attacking the material base of fascist operations disrupts fascists' ability to participate in activism by increasing the cost of such participation or simply overwhelming them with the difficulty of maintaining their everyday existence. Additionally, it can serve to prevent the process of fascist organization from beginning when it is the originators of fascist theory who are attacked. This said, assaults on the material base have limited effectiveness in combating fascist terror carried out by already radicalized activists. The leaderless resistance strategy intentionally relies on terrorists to commit to, plan, and carry out attacks over relatively brief time periods, thereby avoiding detection (and consequently resistance) until the time of the attack. Furthermore, because most terrorists die or go to jail in the course of their action, attacking their economic base is of limited effectiveness even if their motives are suspected ahead of time. It takes few resources to stage a terror attack when the attacker does not intend to live after the fact. For these reasons, depriving key fascists of a material base does more to stunt the movement over a longer period of time than to prevent bloodshed in the near future.

Another, and possibly the most, effective means of fighting fascism is to socially isolate fascists. Isolation destroys fascists ability to evangelize. It prevents the transmission of fascist ideology from one part of the leaderless organization to another, thereby limiting fascists' numbers and preventing the spread of radicalization. Moreover, disrupting social ties among fascist activists using methods like infiltration creates paranoia and lack of trust in the fascist community, effectively preventing inter-fascist solidarity. These strategies can even disrupt leaderless resistance, since confidence in community support and the agitation of friends can lead to individuals undertaking terrorist actions. Yet even attacks on the social lives of fascists face obstacles. The biggest of these challenges is the internet, which serves as a space for geographically and physically isolated and communally shunned fascists to come together. Moreover, fascist internet spaces are easily reconstituted after disruptions . Even more importantly, anti-fascist organizers must be cognizant their efforts serve to isolate only the most committed fascists. Isolating members of the general public with some authoritarian, racist, or misogynistic tendencies is both impracticable given the reach of these tendencies in American culture and risks stigmatizing the naive who would, if treated with care, abandon fascist leanings in favor of liberal and leftist positions.

Fascism must also be fought through a transformation of left and liberal institutions. Activist organizations must add a function of machine politics to themselves at the same time that the machine political operations in existence must begin to organize direct actions. The fascist right has already perfected this strategy through organizations such as Focus on the Family and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). These organizations keep activists mobilized and furthering the fascist agenda in periods between election cycles, while ensuring a base for right-wing politicians in election periods. The role of far-right mainstream politicians in promoting fascist terrorism and agitating the fascist base, and the government's ability to suppress both fascist and left-wing movements as it likes, is too important to cede in the anti-fascist struggle. However, mobilizing simply for elections requires enormous effort and resources to reestablish electoral organizations every two to four years. By adding machine aspects to anti-fascist organizations and activist aspects to machine organizations, the most important work, that is, direct action, can be accomplished while a grip on the formal levers of political power is maintained.

A broad-based coalition of leftists and liberals must agree on common terms for fighting the fascist threat. Fascism is able to gain power quickly in a fractured political environment, where factionalism and infighting keep anti-fascists of all varieties fighting with each other and away from anti-fascist organizing. While a revolutionary left consensus may be the ideal tool for mobilizing against fascism, it is not a necessary one. Common terms enable different tendencies in the anti-fascist struggle to fight a common enemy how they see fit while remaining in solidarity with those with whom they are not in total agreement. "We must," above all and in the words of Assata Shakur, "love each other and support each other." We must help each other grow and stand in solidarity, instead of indulging in petty personal disputes in the face of growing fascism. We must resolve differences with respect for one another and without forcing our comrades to abandon deeply held beliefs that, while contrary to ours, do not harm the anti-fascist struggle. The fascists are well organized and "we have nothing to lose but our chains."

Josh is a bike messenger living in Appalachia. He received his MA in philosophy from Duquesne University and is a member of the IWW and DSA. He has been active in the labor, anti-racist, and anti-fascist movements since he was 18.

Trump's Lost Sons

By Sean Posey

Accused mail bomber Cesar Sayoc reportedly spent much of the past 10 years living in a van in southern Florida. According to those who knew him, he drifted through life - working odd jobs at a pizza shop and a strip club. He seemed to have made little impression on the world.

On the day of his arrest, cable news and social media lit up with images taken of his van. Festooned with the stickers depicting images of President Trump - and his political opponents, who appeared with gun sights superimposed on their faces - the vehicle served as a seemingly made-to-order meme. But who is Sayoc?

During an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Sayoc's family lawyer, Ron Lowy, provided some revealing insight into the man. Sayoc had apparently never been political before Donald Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy in June 2015. After that seminal moment, Sayoc gave himself over to the Trump movement.

Trump has been "reaching out," in Lowy's words, to "outsiders" just like Sayoc, "people who don't fit in, people who are angry at America." Trump is telling these people they "have a place at the table," Lowy explained. "This was someone lost," he said of Sayoc. "He was looking for anything, and he found a father in Trump."

Sayoc is not alone. Most famously, Kanye West adopted Trump as a kind of father figure. In October, West travelled to the Oval Office to meet the President. During a rambling speech to the press, he explained his attraction to Trump and the "Make America Great Again" slogan that so memorably defined the President's campaign.

"I love Hillary," West said. "I love everyone. Right. But the campaign, 'I'm with Her' just didn't make me feel, as a guy, that didn't get to see my dad all the time. Like a guy that could play catch with his son. It was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman," he told Trump.

Many depicted West as a lost soul for having to find a father figure in someone like Trump. But America today is filled with lost boys and men. Most of them, however, are not multi-millionaire rappers.

In previous decades, these are men who would have been working in factories, serving in voluntary associations, starting families or going off to college. Many are, like Sayoc, (described as "a 14-year old in man's body" by Lowy) only marginally attached to the work world.

Since the early 2000s, the labor force participation rate of you men without a bachelor's degree has declined more than any other group . Other disturbing statistics about the plight of American males are a regular feature of articles with headlines like "We're Losing a Whole Generation of Men to Video Games."

These are males who are moving from what should have been a place in mainstream America to the very margins. The decline in church attendance, the disappearance of civic life and the splintering of the family has left many men seeking something beyond even the material. The number of children living with two parents, for example, has declined over 20 percent since 1960. Yet in the past two years stand-in father figures have emerged.

Jordan Peterson, previously an obscure Canadian psychologist, recently rose to fame as a kind of guru for struggling men. He estimates that 90 percent of his 1.5 million YouTube subscribers are male. Part of Peterson's appeal is his broadside against what he terms "cultural Marxism" and politically-correct, postmodern society, which he says ignores the needs of young men. Yet he also mixes the kind of critical guidance that one would expect from a father or a mentor, but it's directed at an audience that perhaps has never heard anyone who they felt really spoke to them. This is also something you can hear from those who identify with Trump and feel he speaks to them.

It's not just Kanye West who has adopted the MAGA hat as a kind of warrior's helmet or mark of American traditionalism. A group known as the Proud Boys, which formed as Trump's campaign took off in 2016, has adopted the MAGA cause. They're causing growing consternation among many on the left as their members engage in street brawls across the country with liberal protesters and members of antifa, a loosely organized group of leftist militants.

The Proud Boys bill themselves as a modern day version of the kinds of clubs and fraternal organizations whose decline Robert Putnam documented in his book Bowling Alone. The Proud Boys are a "men's club," according to founder Gavin McInnes. They have two hard and fast rules for membership: you have to be biologically male and you have to declare yourself a "Western chauvinist."

"I think the Proud Boys, and I think Donald Trump, for the most part, drives people who have been disenfranchised by the public because they don't fit in," said Proud Boy Andrew Bell Ramos during an NBC Left Field story on the group in 2017.

"Most guys my age are basically just interested in sitting at home, masturbating, eating Cheerios and playing video games, smoking weed and trying to avoid responsibility," Ramos explained in another segment on SBS Dateline. The NBC segment shows the Proud Boys bonding over a bonfire, getting tattoos, venerating the role of the housewife, and expounding upon the superiority of the Western world. It isn't your average Knights of Columbus meeting.

"What's it like to be a male chauvinist in 2017? Probably a lot less lonely thanks to these guys," NBC journalist Aurora Almendral somewhat naively explained. They almost assuredly do provide a sense of belonging for some alienated men, but at what cost?

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the Proud Boys a "hate group." Founder Gavin McInnes has been involved with alt-right websites such as Vdare.com, and a skinhead group called the 211 Bootboys joined the Proud Boys in assaulting protesters after McInnes spoke at the Metropolitan Republican Club in October. "I cannot recommend violence enough," he has said . "It is a really effective way to solve problems."

The Proud Boys are an outgrowth of the alt-right and the land of the "red-pilled." The expression "red-pilled" is borrowed from the imagery of the 1999 film The Matrix. In the film, Neo, the putative hero, is offered the choice of taking either a blue pill or a red pill by the mysterious figure, Morpheus. Though he isn't aware of it, Neo is trapped in a simulation called the matrix.

"You're here because you know something," Morpheus explains. "What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." If Neo takes the blue pill, he returns to his virtual reality life. If he takes the red pill, as Morpheus explains, he'll discover "how deep the rabbit hole goes."

In the film, the matrix is "the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." Not long after the onslaught the Great Recession, the term "red-pilled" began to be adopted by a very loosely organized group of white nationalists, "men's rights" activists, reactionary conservatives, antifeminists and a host of other groups coalescing in far-right circles on the internet who became collectively known as the alt-right.

To them, the liberal order is the world that has been pulled over their eyes. And for many, it's Trump who is red-pilling more and more of the "normies" among the general public.

A recent analysis of 30,000 Twitter accounts of users who "self-identified as alt-right, or who followed someone who did," found that Trump is "the glue that binds the far right together." And young men (including the Proud Boys) are now an increasing presence at Trump rallies.

"Identity has become the coin of the realm in American culture," writes Angela Nagle , "but one that's not accessible to the heirs of white male hegemony." Although it isn't only white males , as Sayoc, West and others confirm. This is something Trump seems to recognize. His word and deeds are attracting the lost, the damaged and the economically disenfranchised men in America.

These men are searching for meaning and belonging in a country that has long been "Bowling Alone." Some might stop at Jordan Peterson; others will take the red pill. And it's likely that Trump, not Morpheus, will be the one who guides them down the rabbit hole.

The Lonely American

By Sean Posey

In 2015, psychotherapist Traci Ruble started a "community listening project" in San Francisco dubbed "Sidewalk Talk." The project sends trained volunteers to meet strangers on the street and listen to them discuss their problems and concerns. In a promotional video, Ruble is shown with her fellow volunteers, asking people if they'd like to sit for a talk. "You want to be listened to? It feels good!" Sidewalk Talk has apparently caught on and is now in 29 cities across the country.

Are there large numbers of Americans so bereft of friends and confidants that they have only strangers in the street to confide in? There apparently are. New studies are showing that Americans are increasingly lonely, isolated, and unhappy. Unmoored from one another and from a (fading) sense of community. More and more of our fellow citizens are going through life alone. This has devastating consequences for individual health and portends a troubled future for the American experiment.

According to a recent Cigna study involving 20,000 adults, loneliness in America has reached "epidemic proportions." "Most Americans," the report states, "are now considered lonely." When asked how often they feel like no one knows them well, 54 percent responded that they sometimes or always feel that way. Nearly half of respondents report feeling sometimes or always alone. The numbers are even more disturbing when broken down:

"We also see that roughly one in four respondents rarely/never feel as though there are people who really understand them (27%), that they belong to a group of friends (27%), can find companionship when they want it (24%), or again feel as though they have a lot in common with others (25%)." Only 53 percent of American have daily "meaningful in-person social interactions," according to Cigna.

Loneliness and social isolation, both "actual and perceived," have direct consequences on one's health, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. The effects of loneliness on mortality are the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, which makes prolonged loneliness a bigger individual health risk than obesity.

Loneliness is also connected, perhaps not surprisingly, to mental disorders. According to the National Institute of Mental Health , nearly one in five adults have a mental health condition. Mental health issues are now one of the fastest growing causes of long-term absences from work. More disturbing still is the connection between loneliness and suicide, which recently hit a 30-year high in America. Even the opioid crisis, a main contributor to the country's declining life expectancy, has been connected to the loneliness epidemic. These deaths are increasingly classified by researchers and the media as "deaths of despair."

The World Happiness Report 2017, compiled by a group of independent experts for the United Nations, recently delivered even more bad news for Americans. The introduction to the report (written by John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs) states "Happiness is increasingly considered the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy."

The top countries on the list rank highly on six key factors, the report explains: "healthy years of life expectancy, social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble), trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business), perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity (as measured by recent donations)." Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland are the happiest nations. The US, on the other hand, finished in 19th place. Rising levels of corruption and "declining social support" are listed among the primary reasons for America's dismal placing.

While the phenomena of decreasing happiness and increasing loneliness are finally getting notice, much of the blame is often placed on recent developments in the country's history, including the rise of neoliberalism (understandable) and the election of Donald Trump as president (equally understandable). However, historical roots and recent developments alike seem to constitute important elements of the country's failure to develop a meaningful sense of community and attachment among its citizenry.

American culture is often described - rightly - as highly individualistic. Despite the Puritans and their quest for " a city upon a hill," as John Winthrop so memorably put it, the first immigrants to the New World often arrived seeking material, not spiritual, prosperity. "Even in the sixteenth century," writes historian Leo Marx, "the American countryside was the object of something like a calculated real estate promotion." This was a "business civilization," as historian Morris Berman refers to it (something Calvin Coolidge echoed during the 1920s when he said, "The business of America is business").

The peerless observer Alexis de Tocqueville saw this during his travels through the country in 1831. While de Tocqueville admired much of the American character, he understood the downside of the relentless individualism that permeated every aspect of social and cultural life: "They owe nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the habits of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands."

Americans proved to be relentless seekers; first moving beyond the Royal Proclamation line that the British issued to separate their colonies from Indian lands; and then, finally, fulfilling "Manifest Destiny" and closing the frontier in the 19th century. The existence of the frontier in American life nurtured a "dominant individualism," according to historian Frederick Jackson Turner - one that failed to disappear with the frontier itself.

War, however, proved to be a force for increasing civic mindedness, and it provided a boon for voluntary associations - trends that no doubt helped combat the social isolation which certainly accompanied the settling of the country. According to historian Theda Skocpol, the five largest civic associations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries formed between 1864 and 1868.

Robert Putnam found similar evidence for an increase in civic mindedness among the generation shaped by World War II. In the seminal book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Putnam calls the generation that fought the war the "long civic generation," also known as the "Greatest Generation." According to the Cigna study, they're the generation least affected by the epidemic of loneliness. On the other hand, Generation Z (those born between 1995 and 2010) reported the highest levels of loneliness. The civic connectedness and civic mindedness of the Greatest Generation simply did not last. "The [generational] changes are probably part of a larger societal shift toward individual and material values and away from communal values," Putnam writes in Bowling Alone.

There's evidence to support his assertion. In Bowling Alone, Putnam cites a Roper study from 1972 that asked adults to identify essential elements of "the good life." Approximately 38 percent chose "a lot of money," but an equal percentage chose "a job that contributes to the welfare of society." By 1996, the percentage of people who chose making a lot of money had risen to 63 percent. According to current research, 71 percent of millennials place a similar emphasis on making money.

But much like other Americans, outcomes for the wealthy compare poorly to those of their peers in other countries. For example, according to a 2007 study in the Journal of the American Psychological Association, the "richest, healthiest Americans" are as a sick as the poorest citizens in Britain. What's the reason? The study's author, Sir Michael Marmot of University College London Medical School, gives two reasons: Americans worker longer hours, are more stressed than their counterparts in other wealthy democracies, and Americans are apparently more likely to feel "friendless and isolated."

This pervading sense of loneliness and disconnection, while felt particularly by the young, cuts across class, gender and race, according to Cigna. The rise of social media is sometimes blamed for an increase in feelings of loneliness and isolation, but its use did not figure as a major cause of loneliness in the study.

For much of the past century, some American artists and intellectuals have pointed fingers at the country's culture - or what passes for culture - as being at the root of societal anomie. In 1950, playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder stated that a lack of a codification of ideals was making American life difficult to process. Americans, he said, were always on the move - a "very un-European" manner of life.

Famed sociologist Philip Slater delivered perhaps one of the most pointed critiques of American life in his 1970 book, The Pursuit of Loneliness. He declared the human desire for engagement, community, and yes, dependence, were frustrated at every turn by American life. "Americans have created a society in which they are automatic nobodies," he writes, "since no one has any stable place or enduring connection."

And it hasn't only been liberals who have echoed such criticisms. Michael Hendrix writes in the National Review, "Americans conceive of themselves as individuals isolated from others in such a way that it becomes an imperative for them to form their own meaning for their own lives." Clearly, many Americans aren't forming a meaning for their own lives, at least not alone. The dismal statistics tell us as much. But as we have seen - with some exceptions - this is a problem as old as America itself. A country where individuals are adrift and leading lives without meaningful, connective and nourishing attachments is a country with a grim future indeed. And the problem is now accelerating, as levels of loneliness and disconnection rise among the millennials and Generation Z.

How will the country solve its most vexing problems when Americans are no longer capable of holding onto even the most elementary attachments to one another and their surrounding communities? We might find out, too late, that a society of atomized individuals is no society at all.

In Defense of Tenants: An Interview with Omaha Tenants United

By Devon Bowers

This is a transcript of a recent email interview I had with the organization Omaha Tenants United about their beginnings and the activism the group engages in. Catch them this month in Heartland News, which is running a front page story on OTU and allowing them to write monthly updates from then on out.

Talk about how the organization formed and the work that you all do.

A group of us were aware of housing issues like tenant mistreatment and gentrification, and were inspired by other socialist organizations that help tenants, like those in Seattle or Philadelphia. From initial meetings where we discussed housing issues and read the state tenant-landlord statute, we came up with potential items to organize around. We began to focus particularly around the issue of "slumlords," or low-rent, low-maintenance landlords who skirt legality and mistreat tenants, largely getting away with it due to non-existent local enforcement and a tenant population of marginalized and low-income people, like refugees or immigrants.

We met our first tenant through Feed the People, an organization devoted to food distribution some of us were members of at the time. Since he had moved in to his apartment six months earlier, he did not have hot water despite repeated maintenance requests, with the landlord saying it would cost thousands of dollars and weeks of work. We met with the tenant, and after we went over portions of the state tenant statute and discussed the tenant's options, he made the decision to take a more direct approach to resolving his dispute with the support of our organization. We drafted a demand letter citing the various parts of the statute that the landlord was infringing upon, and demanding that steps be taken to resolve the issues or face escalation. The tenant then signed the letter, and we went together to his landlord's office to deliver it. The landlord wasn't home, but after hearing about the large group who delivered the letter, he contacted the tenant, angrily demanding to know what was going on. The tenant sent him a picture of the letter and explained our involvement. Less than 24 hours later, a maintenance crew repaired what turned out to be only a broken gasket, and the tenant had hot water.

We built our approach on this experience. We try to establish contacts among the working-class people in our neighborhoods, and learn from them about the situation of tenants in the city, particularly tenants of slumlords. Through this process we identify situations we can help resolve through forming demands of landlords, and stepping in to back the tenant up in a confrontation or meeting. It's important to our mission that we serve to empower the tenant themselves rather than be seen as performing a charitable service. Our first tenant, mentioned above, was shocked when we proposed delivering the demand letter as a group with him. He had assumed that we would deliver the letter ourselves, and was delighted to take for himself the action of delivering his demands to his landlord with our support. Typically, non-profit organizations who work in working-class communities are seen as doing things for working-class people or on their behalf.(just to clarify, we're not a "non-profit" in the 501c3 sense, nor do we have any desire to be. We merely use that phrase to draw a line of demarcation between how we operate and how many other organizations do (especially 501c3 nonprofits) and the perceptions surrounding them) We want to work with tenants to support them in doing what they are already capable of doing, and through this process, we hope that the tenants will learn more about their own power and the power of an organized working-class community.

Recently, we helped a tenant win a big fight against one of Omaha's most notorious slumlords in which we occupied the slumlord's office with about 20 people and were able to get over $1,000 in made up move out fees waived and $500 of the tenant's deposit back. (Do you want us to go into greater detail about that here? We recently did a long write up on that story at our Medium which I highly recommend reading. Not sure if you want to just link that or if you'd like us to make additional comments on it here. Definitely the biggest victory we've been a part of so far.

What problems do many of the tenants deal with? Would you say that the legal system is biased in favor of landlords?

A recurring problem is a lack of proper maintenance in a tenant's home. A landlord will only put in to a building what they can get out in profit, and a slumlord, already working with crumbling buildings and tenants paying low rent, lacks motivation to make any repairs at all. Living in such a building often comes with the mentality that "well, at least the rent is cheap," and slumlords take advantage of the expectation that better maintenance is just something that one has to pay more for, rather than a housing right. As a result, many tenants are living in conditions that are not merely uncomfortable, but actively dangerous to their health.

The legal system is definitely biased in favor of landlords. While there is a state statute that outlines a tenant's rights and what a landlord owes them, the only enforcement to be found is in the courts, which tenants with low income and little time cannot afford. In addition, city housing laws were drafted essentially directly by the landlords themselves, and even the ensuing weak laws are not enforced. The statutes are also written in an obtuse, self-referential way that is not easy for a busy person to understand, much less take action based upon. As a result, after reaching some familiarity with the statute, our strategy has been to outline areas in which an offending landlord is in infringement of the statute, because while a tenant can't necessarily afford to go to court, the landlord knows that it is better for them to concede a small maintenance request than to go to court for a case they most likely know they will lose.

How do landlords utilize pricing for their own financial benefit (ie increasing prices in Silicon Valley to kick out current tenants and price gouge techies?)

Gentrification is a continual problem in the city. Landlords will redevelop housing, and/or demolish and build new housing, raising the prices, which cause working-class people to be kicked out of their own neighborhoods. Occasionally a slumlord will allow a property to deteriorate to the point that it is considered "blighted," attracting public funding for redevelopment. Slumlords have used the money they've drained from working-class tenants in dilapidated buildings to redevelop or bulldoze those buildings to make way for a higher-paying demographic.

How do you help people understand that landlord-tenant relationships are not alright and are predatory?

People we talk to already understand that they are being mistreated by their landlord, and that their friends and neighbors are too. But this is seen as the way things are. We don't need to show them that landlords are exploitative, but we can help them to fight back, showing them that it doesn't have to be that way.

It's a matter of class consciousness. The relationship between landlords, particularly slumlords, and tenants, is one of the most obvious examples of class struggle we have. These landlords are profiting by charging working-class people to live in places that they would never sleep in themselves, a property that they rarely maintain, for the most part receiving passive profit for owning a place where others take shelter. It brings up the question of private property. Anyone can see this is unfair, and we try to systematize it when we have conversations with tenants. We don't want to get caught up in individualizing the systemic injustices to a given landlord, focusing on how they are evil individually; rather, we try to have conversations in terms of landlords as a class, and us, the working people, as a class that can fight back through organizing together.

First and foremost, we are an anti-capitalist organization that believes the renter-landlord system, and more generally private property as a whole, should be abolished. In the meantime however, we recognize the need to help tenants get what they can under the current system. We hope these experiences empower our fellow tenants and other working class people to begin to fight back and get organized so that the way can be paved for more fundamental revolutionary change.

Explain the day in the life of someone who is battling their landlord.

For a tenant working with us, a large part of it is about just getting to know us. When we're essentially doing cold calls (knocking on doors of places we know have problems, there's a natural hesitancy from people when random strangers walk up to your door asking about your living conditions, let alone trying when they're trying to convince you to take a big step in actually confronting your landlord about them. So we make sure to take a lot of time attempting to build a relationship with the people we interact with. This helps us build trust in each other, and feel more confident working with each other. Ultimately, we of course want to get them confident enough that they're willing to take the steps needed to get their problems resolved.

Since OTU has kind of blown up, however, we've received a big influx of people reaching out to us with issues they're already having via our Facebook page, so this eliminates some of the initial awkwardness and need for agitation, since they're obviously already agitated enough to feel the need to reach out. At this point, we set up a time to meet in a semi-public place, and learn about their situation in greater detail. Here you sometimes sort of face the opposite issue that we do when cold calling. The people who reach out are typically already pissed off and wanting to do something fast. We really have to be careful to not over promise anything, or lead them to believe that we can just magically help them fix things.

We like to be sober and honest about what our odds are, and if it's something that we might not have the capacity to deal with, we have to be honest about that and be willing to say no to certain cases. In either situation - whether it be a cold call or someone who has reached out to us - we try to be sure to walk people through exactly step by step what all of their options are, so they aren't blindsided by anything later on. We try to explain some possible outcomes, and how we would respond from each one. Based on where the tenant is at in terms of willingness to act, and based on what the situation is, we try to formulate a plan and proceed from there. While many people would maybe like to go straight to the big confrontation method like we did in our story about notorious local slumlord Dave Paladino, we generally try to escalate as necessary.

This means first setting up a meeting with the landlord, the tenant, and maybe two OTU representatives max to read off the tenant's demands in a more low-key setting and seeing how the landlord responds. There's of course always pushback, but we give the landlord a deadline by which we expect these changes to be made. If they're not made in the amount of time given, we escalate things from there. The important part is that at all steps in the process, the tenant is taking the lead.

We don't want to get out ahead of the tenant and get them into a situation they don't feel comfortable with, and on the other hand, we don't want to hold back the tenant or discourage their own initiative, even when we may have to be frank about a situation or explain how being too rash might jeopardize the entire process. We take a lot of influence from Mao Zedong and movements inspired by him that apply what is known as "the mass line", which essentially means everything we do is informed and enacted in a way that is "from the masses, to the masses."

In what ways can people learn more about your organization?

You can find us on Facebook at Omaha Tenants United. We also have Medium, where we'll be publishing our longer-form material summarizing our work and stating our positions on things. We will have our Points of Unity out soon which explain our beliefs that we expect people to uphold in order to join. While we are a multi-tendency organization, we do ask that anti-capitalism be at the forefront of one's politics (amongst other things), and that people are willing to regularly commit time to disciplined work.

Women's Reproductive Rights in Cuba vs the United States: A Comparative Analysis

By Valerie Reynoso

Cuba is an island in the Caribbean governed by a socialist state that has made strides in numerous aspects, including but not limited to socioeconomic equality, redistribution of wealth to the masses, advocacy for the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the end of the colonial rule in Angola during the 1960s. Cuba has served as an inspiration for the overthrow of fascist dictators in other Latin American nations such as Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the neighboring Dominican Republic, along with an outstanding healthcare system that has even drawn attention from organizations such as the UN and UNICEF.

The United States, on the other hand, is a hegemonic Western nation with a capitalist-imperialist government that is rendered as the most superior in the world. The US is defined by the existence and persistence of systemic inequities, deepening class stratification, high rates of mass incarceration, homelessness, and poverty; as well as unique socioeconomic consequences faced by women, largely due to reproductive healthcare services not being universalized and not always covered by health insurance.

In comparison, Cuba outperforms the US in areas of women's reproductive rights and abortion access, given its complete legalization of abortion and other healthcare services to women for free. The US is unable and seemingly unwilling to meet the standards of Cuba, given primarily the Hyde Amendment and overall privatization ("profitization") of medical industries.

Cuba and Women's Health

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 brought radical change to the island in the form of new socialist socioeconomic and political structures, as well as a shift in the role of women in society and women's reproductive rights, distinct to pre-1959 Cuba. Cuban leader Fidel Castro believed that the liberation of women was vital to the socialist revolution. This idea stood in stark contrast to pre-revolutionary Cuba, which more closely resembled that of the United States, with regressive policies in terms of women's rights and reproductive care under General Fulgencio Batista. Prior to the rise of the Castro, abortion laws in Cuba were based on the 1870 Penal Code of Spain and had many restrictions, some of which were loosened in 1936 with the entry of the new Social Defense Code. This new penal code legalized abortion in the cases of endangerment of the life of the mother due to pregnancy, any form of rape, or serious medical complication of the fetus that would require the termination of pregnancy. During this time, Cubans who sought abortions due to health risks caused by pregnancy had to be granted permission from two physicians to get the procedure done.

Following the birth of the Cuban Revolution, Cuba became one of the first countries in the world to legalize abortion with full access in 1965, up to the tenth week of gestation, through their national health system. The Social Defense Code was replaced once again in 1979 with the adoption of a new penal code, which explicated what constituted as illegal abortion as well as punishments for those who conducted them. Illegal abortions were defined as those done under conditions that neglect health laws regarding abortion. Likewise, those caught in violation of said legal abortion regulations would potentially face three months to a year in prison. Abortions performed for profit, outside of accredited institutions, or by anyone other than a legitimate physician would result in culprits being subject to two to five years in prison. Abortions are also considered illegal in Cuba if executed without the consent of the pregnant patient and would result in two to five years of prison time for the executer of the procedure. If the non-consensual abortion is performed with force or violence, then the prison sentence is increased to up to eight years.

Likewise, menstrual regulation is implemented in the case that gestation is five weeks or less; women do not need to confirm their pregnancy, nor do minors need parental consent to receive menstrual regulation. Gestations of ten to twelve weeks would require confirmation of pregnancy to obtain an abortion and, along with that, the pregnant woman must be examined by a gynecologist as well as be given counseling from a social worker. For those who seek abortions services, parental consent is needed for women under eighteen, and permission from a medical committee is required for women under 16. A committee of obstetricians, psychologists, and social workers would have to approve a second trimester abortion in addition to the patient satisfying the regulations for a first trimester abortion. Moreover, in 1960, the Castro administration formed the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which was led by Vilma Espin, a revolutionary who resisted against the Batista regime and was also the partner of Raul Castro, Fidel Castro's brother. FMC has played a vital role in the advancement of gender equality and the enhancement of women's healthcare in Cuba.

The FMC has a membership that includes 85.2 percent of all eligible Cuban women and girls over 14 years of age. It is recognized as an NGO and as a national system for women, due to the overwhelming majority of Cuban women being participants, because the organization is not socioeconomically funded by the Cuban government, and because the federation has a hierarchy consisting of local, municipal, provincial, and national levels of representation and leadership. Along with endorsing the mass education of women, inclusion of women in the work force, and advocacy for legislative and social reform for gender equality, the FMC has also had a significant impact on the Cuban healthcare system and its regulations. One instance of the influence of the FMC on the Cuban healthcare regulations is their assistance in passing maternity leave laws in 1974, under which pregnant women are granted three months of paid leave. The FMC also played a role in the foundation of maternity homes for women to deliver their infants under the maintenance of primarily FMC volunteers who serve as trained attendants.

The FMC has proven to be successful in the mobilization and formation of solidarity amongst Cuban women, united under a common motivation to fight for women's rights to higher education, paid maternity leave, childcare provision, and free abortions and birth control.

The United States and Women's Health

In the US, the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v Wade was a victory for women's reproductive rights. However, the battle against women's rights are ongoing, with various conservative and right-wing interests, typically headed by men, continuing to mount a powerful opposition. Measures taken to diminish the impact of Roe v. Wade and strengthen anti-woman legislation like the Hyde Amendment have significantly changed abortion accessibility and affordability for women in the US.

Abortions were legal and frequently performed from the 18th century until approximately 1880 in the US. The idea that the fetus at conception and the early stages of pregnancy was a human life was not a conventional one held in US societies, nor the Catholic Church, for some time. The typical stance on this subject at the time was that it was centered on women's experiences and relations with their own bodies, rather than societal stances on what is considered immoral for women to do regarding abortion. The Catholic Church accepted early abortions before ensoulment; however, around 1869, began to denounce abortion, simultaneously when abortion became politicized in the US. In 1895, the church opposed therapeutic abortions, which were meant to save a woman's life. Abortions were outlawed in the US by 1880 due to pressure from medical groups, with the exception of cases involving medical complications that could endanger the woman's life.

Women in the US continued to seek abortions despite these newfound laws and those who could afford options often received services from practitioners in private homes. Those who could not afford private services were left with no other choice but to resort to near-lethal means out of desperation. Rates of women who obtained illegal abortions naturally increased with restrictions barring access to legal procedures. Between 200,000 and 1.2 million illegal abortions were conducted per year in the US in the 1950s and 1960s. Underground organizations that provided safe, illegal abortions were formed in the 1960s by individuals concerned about the well-being of the high number of women who dangerously sought to terminate their pregnancies. These organizations included the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion and The Abortion Counseling Center of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union, also known as Jane. The Rubella outbreak in the US, which lasted from 1964 to 1965, endangered fetuses and hence was a major factor in a rehashing of the abortion debate in the country. This outbreak and the ongoing debate led to the passage of Roe v Wade in 1973.

Roe v Wade was decided on January 22nd, 1973 and ruled that state-sanctioned restrictions of abortion are unconstitutional. It was concluded that the criminalization of abortion under Texas statutes (for the most part) infringes upon the constitutional right to privacy women have under the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. Numerous abortion rights activists wanted the case to be passed under the ninth amendment, so that it could be written in the constitution rather than malleable and subject to change. Although this case made legal abortion more available and safe for women in the US, barriers were still placed on them, including measures that were taken to restrict the effectiveness of Roe v Wade and socioeconomic disparities that made it more difficult for underclass women to receive services. Following Roe v Wade, several US states have enacted over 1,074 laws with the purpose of limiting access to abortion, with over a quarter of these legislations having been legalized between 2010 and 2015.

Part of the anti-woman crusade that was sparked by Roe v. Wade was the Hyde Amendment, which was passed in 1977 to prohibit the use of Medicaid to pay for abortions, excluding cases of rape, incest, or endangerment of the life of the mother. According to a study done in 1984 at the Guttmacher Institute, 44 percent of female Medicaid recipients who had abortions that year paid for them by using money they had initially saved for necessities, such as rent and food. Due to said women not being able to afford the costly prices of abortions, many were forced to save for a longer period of time for the procedure, which resulted in later, riskier, and more expensive abortions, or women being forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term due to an inability to afford an abortion. This statistic increased to 57 percent of abortion patients paying out of pocket by 2010. The Hyde Amendment resulted in Medicaid-funded abortions decreasing from 300,000 per year to only a few thousand per year. As of 2010, seventeen states finance abortion care for citizens with Medicaid coverage, and 20% of abortions conducted in the US were funded with Medicaid in 2008. Additional barriers are posed to women in need of abortions per individual state. For instance, as of 2008, fifteen of the seventeen states that fund abortion care for its people have also established obstacles such as low reimbursement rates and delays in enrollment, which make it more difficult for women and providers to use Medicaid for abortion services.

Comparing Cuba and the United States

The changes Cuba experienced in its transition from the Batista regime to the Castro administration, as well as the changes in abortion legislation the US experienced from the 18th and 19th centuries to the late 20th century, demonstrates that Cuba was making drastic improvements in the conditions of Cuban women. While the Cuban government made tremendous strides in forging women's rights, the accessibility of abortion declined for women in the US during the same period.

The radicalization of the Cuban government implemented by Fidel Castro set the foundation for the drastic modification of women's rights that would occur in the island throughout the latter half of the 20th century and 21st century. The FMC led by Vilma Espin was crucial to the development of universalized healthcare and inclusions of free abortions and other reproductive health services that overwhelmingly affect Cuban women. Contrarily, the Hyde Amendment, malleability of the Roe v Wade case, and constant pressure from a male-driven, conservative crusade have proven that the profits of US medical industries and artificial morals of fundamental Christianity are paramount to the reproductive rights of women in the US, especially given how expensive abortions are and that Medicaid cannot be used to pay for it in a majority of cases.

The capitalism system which dominates American life is a system driven by infinite profit extracted from the finite resources of the planet and exploitation of the labor of the working class. This exploitation is deepened when members of this working class are part of other marginalized groups as well, such as women, non-white people, and disabled people; all of which make up the overwhelming number of patients struggling to obtain legal abortions in the US. Many of these women have the misfortune of resorting to dangerous alternatives out of need. In comparison, the socialist system Cuba operates under has clearly succeeded in ensuring that Cubans of any racial or socioeconomic background have access to high quality, universalized healthcare and abortions without barriers of any kind.

Statistics prove that in terms of abortion access and reproductive healthcare, Cuba has a model that is more superior than that of the US. Chapter IV of the Cuban constitution contains articles that explicitly enforce the socioeconomic and political equality of all genders, as well as state-funding of financial support for pregnant women. Article 44 states that all genders enjoy equal rights in all aspects of society; women are guaranteed equal opportunities to men and will have an equal impact on the advancement of the island; and the state also manages institutions like child centers, boarding schools, and homes for the elderly with the purpose of helping working families. Article 40 dictates that the Cuban state provide working women with paid maternity leave before and after childbirth, as well as job options that would be suitable for pregnant people and mothers.

As of 2014, Cuba has a total expenditure on health per capita of $2,475 ; and a total expenditure on health as percent of GDP of 11.1 percent for a population of 11,147,407 as of July 2017. The Cuban government has no intervention concerning fertility level, allows abortions on request for any reason, and provides direct support on contraceptives for its citizens. As of 1987, 70 percent of married Cuban women between the ages 15 and 49 use modern contraception, which is available in all government health institutions and through one agency called the Sociedad Cientifica Cubana para el Desarrollo de la Familia (SOCUDEF) that receives full support from the government. Under these measures taken by the Cuban government, in accordance with the country's constitution, the amount of legal abortions quadrupled from 1968 to 1974 with a percent increase from 16.7 to 69.5 legal abortions per 1,000 fertile women. 85,445 abortions were conducted among women between the ages 12 and 49 in 2016, which totals to 41.9 abortions per 100 pregnant women, which is half of the figures from 12 years prior to that. Even more so, contraceptive use has caused a decline in abortion rates in Cuba over the past 15 years.

In contrast, despite the increase in healthcare spending and decline in legal abortion rates in the US, the spike in illegal abortions and barriers posed by the Hyde Amendment indicate that US women still do not have full access to reproductive healthcare. The total expenditure of health in the US rose by 4.3 percent in 2016, at a ratio of $10,348 per person, and made up 17.9 percent of the national GDP. In addition to this, the national abortion rate decreased by 2 percent between 2013 and 2014, where there was a rate of 12.1 abortions for every 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, or 186 abortions per 1,000 live births. Frequent Google searches for self-induced abortions in US regions with low access to health institutions imply a spike in the obtainment of illegal abortions, although an exact statistic for this is difficult to determine given that illegal procedures are not easy to keep track of. In 2015, the Guttmacher Institute found that there were 119,000 searches on how to have a miscarriage as well as other phrases of a similar nature, such as how to self-abort, etc. In total, there were over 700,000 Google searches that year on how to conduct a "self-induced abortion." There were also 3.4 million searches for abortion clinics, 160,000 for how to find abortion pills through unverified sources, tens of thousands on herbal remedies for abortions, 4,000 on instructions for coat hanger abortions and a few hundred on abortion methods through bleaching the uterus. It was found that a disproportionately large number of these Google searches were in the state of Mississippi, which only had one abortion clinic in 2016. For perspective, the Guttmacher Institute reported that there are approximately one million legal abortions per year in the US. Based on this research, a correlation between economic insecurity and abortion seems clear. Online searches related to "self-conducted abortions" surged towards the end of 2008, during the financial crisis and great recession at the time. Legislative barriers also seem clear, as these searches increased by 40 percent in 2011, the year when 92 laws that restrict abortions were passed in the US.

Conclusion

Cuban women have free reproductive care and are provided abortions at their request for free as well, under one of the statistically best healthcare systems in the world. In the US, a significant number of pregnant women cannot afford nor have access to legal abortions; therefore, being forced to endanger their lives through illegal procedures. The Cuban state operates under a socialist system that places the lives of its women citizens before corporate or private profit, to the point where it is illegal for abortions to be conducted for profit in the nation and prison terms are possible for violators of this policy. The fact that access to abortion clinics in the US has dwindled, causing legal abortions to decline while searches for illegal abortions have drastically spiked, is yet another failure of the capitalist healthcare system in the country. Specifically, the US for-profit system has failed the women it is meant to serve and will only continue to fail them as these dangerous statistics further grow.

In addition to operating for profit, US healthcare and medical industries remain beholden to patriarchal (and downright misogynistic) values that are tied to its economic system. Capitalism is a system founded on imperial conquests of Global South nations and the enforcement of patriarchy and class stratification on these matriarchal, communal societies by European Crowns. These structures have disproportionately affected women, and especially women who are oppressed in other aspects of their being. This has resulted in the devaluation of feminized labor, usage of women as domestic tools for the social reproduction of working men, and now high costs of abortions as well as barriers that prevent women from getting them. All of this leads to already underpaid and underprivileged women risking their lives to get their necessities out of despair because the system that governs them does not value them.

As maternal mortality rates are skyrocketing in the US, Cuba boasts one of the lowest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world. As of 2015, Cuba has a maternal mortality rate of 39 deaths for every 100,000 live births and an infant mortality rate of 4.2 deaths for every thousand births. The probability of children under the age of five dying in Cuba is 0 per 1,000 live births based on data from 2015. In addition to this, in June 2015, Cuba became the first nation in the world to be praised by the World Health Organization (WHO) for their achievement in eradicating mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis through medical innovation. The corollary benefit to this is enjoyed by pregnant women who may otherwise seek abortions due to them having HIV and not wanting to infect their baby. With this ability, and the expectation of a healthy baby, those mothers may now choose to carry full term. Since 2010, the WHO has been teaming up with Cuba and other nations in the Americas to execute a regional plan to get rid of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. As part of this program, Cuba has guaranteed early access to prenatal care, HIV and syphilis testing for pregnant women and their partners, treatment for women who test positive for the infections and their babies, caesarean deliveries and substitution of breastfeeding-all of which is provided under the universalized healthcare system of the island. These statistics make Cuba the country with the lowest infant mortality rate in the Americas, in the Global South as a whole, and one of the lowest in the world.

On the other hand, as of 2015, the US has a maternal mortality rate of 26.4 deaths per 100,000 live births, up from around 17 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1999. Other Western nations rank much lower in comparison to the US regarding maternal mortality, such as 9.2 for the UK and 7.8 for France per 100,000 live births respectively. According to a six-month long examination conducted by NPR and ProPublica on maternal mortality in the US, more women in the US are dying from complications due to pregnancy than any other Western nation, and the US is the only country where this rate is actually increasing. While the neglect of women's health is certainly predetermined by the for-profit system, it is also systematically neglected by the US government and its health agencies. Only 6 percent of block grants designated for maternal and child health end up being used for the health of the mothers, as revealed by federal and state funding. This is despite the increase in spending in overall healthcare in the US. The fact that only a minimum percent of block grants that are meant to be used for maternal and child health is utilized to help them further illustrates how the well-being of pregnant women and abortion patients is not paramount in the capitalist healthcare system of the US. Additionally, US hospitals that must worry about "bottom lines" (like any for-profit company) can be extremely unprepared for maternal emergencies such as self-induced abortions having gone wrong, even if the hospital has an intensive care unit for newborns and their mothers. Medical training in the US is also suspect. Some US doctors may specialize in maternal-fetal medicine without ever having to spend time in a labor-delivery unit that would further develop their specialties.

Cuba's healthcare system is world-renowned for many reasons: It was among the first of nations to fully legalize abortion; it has successfully eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis through medical innovation; it has implemented universalized healthcare such that all reproductive services are free for all citizens; it has scored low maternal and infant mortality rates; and it is a significant factor in creating one of the highest standards of living for women in the world. All of this is due to taking profit and personal interest out of healthcare by making it a social imperative and human right. In comparison, the US has systematically restricted women's reproductive rights, increased barriers for women who seek abortions, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the West, is forcing women who seek illegal abortions due to lack of access to legal services, and has implemented high costs for legal abortions and other basic services, therefore diminishing the quality of living for millions of marginalized women. All of this is due to putting profit above people while pushing patriarchal values that do not recognize women as human beings who should have full agency over their bodies.

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Last Five Years Account for More Than One-Quarter of All Abortion Restrictions Enacted Since Roe. Guttmacher Institute, 13 Jan. 2016.

Montagne, Renee, and Nina Martin. "U.S. Has The Worst Rate Of Maternal Deaths In The Developed World." Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality in the U.s., NPR, 12 May 2017.

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WHO Validates Elimination of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and Syphilis in Cuba. World Health Organization, 30 June 2015.

Jordan Peterson: Reactionary Guru and Accidental Incel Intellectual

By Matthew Dolezal

Jordan Peterson loves to talk about lobsters. I assume they are one of his favorite animals. In the 90-minute presentation I agreed to watch (after losing a bet), the best-selling author and former clinical psychologist recounted a cute little factoid about these crimson crustaceans.

"I was reading these articles on lobsters, and I came across this finding that lobsters govern their postural flexion with serotonin," said the gaunt middle-aged man in a crackling and nervous tone.

The anecdote was meant as an extension of Peterson's first "rule for life": Stand up straight.

"Fair enough," I thought, "That is interesting."

But shortly thereafter, mere minutes into his monologue, the "self-help" facade began to crumble. Peterson promptly advanced his discourse by using lobster "dominance hierarchies" as a vague metaphorical justification for hierarchies in human society.

This enigmatic notion got me thinking. First of all, if any behavior in nature should either be mimicked by humans or is "natural" when conducted by humans, then what about eating your babies ? Does Peterson advocate cannibalism? Secondly, if he's saying that human hierarchies are inherently justifiable simply because hierarchies exist in nature, then, in order to be logically consistent, he would have to say slavery, Jim Crow, apartheid, and other racial hierarchies were justifiable, as well as all other iterations of human dominance and coercion throughout history.

At this point I had more questions than answers. But I could surmise that Peterson was simply using the naturalistic fallacy in order to rationalize his pre-existing ideology. If I wanted to be really creative, I could defend one of my own beliefs in a similar fashion. For instance, abortions happen all the time in nature; they're called "miscarriages." Therefore, abortion is morally justifiable.

To be clear, I do think abortion is morally justifiable, but for other reasons (such as bodily integrity ). I'm not arrogant enough to claim that my specific moral views are warranted by some pseudo-pantheistic "order." Unfortunately, my entire moral outlook hinges on my ostensibly functional amygdala and subsequent experience of empathy. I am therefore entirely biased in my opposition to the systems and institutions that perpetuate unnecessary death and suffering worldwide. But apparently Jordan Peterson can just breeze through conservative moral platitudes as though they are simple math problems with but one empirical answer.

Continuing with anti-Marxist remarks and statements like, "smart, hardworking people are the most likely to succeed," Peterson asserted that individuals climb up social hierarchies based on their own competence (calling it a "competence hierarchy"). His related commentary made his support for the current class system (and economic hierarchies in general) crystal-clear. These sentiments seem perfectly delightful in a vacuum, but a glance at the reality on the ground (in the U.S., for instance) makes this meritocratic dogma look wildly delusional:

Three men own as much as half the population.

Half the population is living in or near poverty.

CEOs of large firms makes 300 times more than their average employee.

The vast majority of new income goes to the top 1 percent.

White families have nearly 10 times the net worth of black families.

Inheritance plays a huge role in determining individual wealth.

Your parents' income strongly predicts how much money you will make and whether or not you will go to college.

I continued watching and taking notes. But the rest of Peterson's performance followed suit; self-evident advice like "compare yourself to who you were yesterday" or "treat yourself like you're someone you care about" peppered with neo-McCarthyist rhetoric and social Darwinism. Toward the end, the man was ranting about the superiority of Western culture like some washed-up white nationalist . The entire presentation could be summarized by the following quote from journalist Nora Loreto :

"Peterson cloaks his anti-progressive opinions in folksy, common-sense advice. He is a master at inventing an enemy and offering young men a solution to various straw men. Peterson has perfectly tailored his self-help style to the individual, no doubt a holdover from his days as a clinical psychologist, which he mentions a lot when he talks."

To further clarify his reactionary worldview, Peterson has accused the Left of " weaponizing compassion ." Of course this is a doltish oxymoron straight out of The Onion, but it is also a bit hypocritical, since Peterson's androcentric language and influence could readily be used to weaponize male supremacy.

The general public became quickly aware of the term "incel" after Alek Minassian killed ten people in a terrorist attack in Toronto last April. The label is a portmanteau of "involuntary" and "celibate," and members of this movement have been described as "male supremacist[s][…]who believe women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights."

In a scathing New York Times exposé , Nellie Bowles interviewed Peterson in his Toronto home. When asked about the aforementioned atrocity, this highly credentialed academic said, "He was angry at God because women were rejecting him. The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That's actually why monogamy emerges."

In addition, during the same interview, Peterson stated, "The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don't want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence," and, in a Vice interview , waxed profound when asking, "Can men and women work together in the workplace?" He later added, "How about no makeup in the workplace?"

Upon discovering these statements I realized that, in addition to class hierarchies, Peterson espouses another hierarchical concept: patriarchy. He even seems to inadvertently side with the incels. I am left wondering about his views regarding racial hierarchies, but this (along with other observations ) was sufficient evidence that lobsters would be utterly ashamed of the psychologist in question.

Toxic masculinity is already an entrenched aspect of the Western culture this man holds in such high regard. For those who espouse this destructive outlook as a latent and unquestioned tendency, Peterson is preaching to the choir. He is simply telling them what they want to hear, dressing his message in the garb of academic jargon, redundant axioms (e.g. "Endless failure is not good."), and recycled, reactionary, anti-communism. As a public figure, his style, rhetoric, and avid fan base are comparable to a combination of Dr. Atkins, L. Ron Hubbard, and Joseph McCarthy. Despite his name-dropping of psychoanalysts of yore, these are his true predecessors. Jordan Peterson is simply a bitter and paranoid huckster, attempting to protect and maintain his position of privilege while selling as many books as possible. But, due to the particular ultra-traditionalist framing of his subject matter, this pursuit of fame and fortune might not be harmless.

This article was originally posted on Matthew's blog.