"Taking the Civil War as his starting point for this trenchant survey of the #AmericanLeft, Hartman offers us dozens of portraits of #Marxism’s main protagonists [...] and charts their triumphs and travails all the way up to the present."

Robin Blackburn reviews #AndrewHartman's #KarlMarxInAmerica

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/karl-marx-in-america-marxism-in-us/

#Marx #AmericanMarxism #USleft #UShistory #AmericanHistory #USpolitics #books @bookstodon

Chroniques de la #GaucheCanadienne, surtout anglophone mais pas que (suite - et espérons que ce soit mon dernier commentaire de la journée)

About this trend:
"This [colonised] society has different concepts of gender and sexual orientation, and we should not copy-paste our own western words on their communities."

I have news for you: among western countries and cultures, gender and sexual orientations are also difficult to copy-paste. This has been ignored in the mainstream queer movements because most influencers who create discourse around it only speak English, or are extremely English-oriented.

So.

There is no accurate translation in Québécois French for "queer". That's why we use the word "queer".

There are other examples. "Femme" is already a French word. So, to distinguish "femme" and "femme", we sometimes pronounce the "femme" that does not strictly mean "woman" "fémi".

It touches other topics than gender. Advocacy has no accurate translation in French. Neither does Valedictorian. In rare occasions, for the latter, you will hear "major de promotion", and "défense des droits" for the former. But I have never heard of a "major de promotion" in Québec. "Premier/ère de classe", by the way, is derogatory.

It does not mean that French has too few words. For example, we make a clear difference between a "river" and a "fleuve" and a "dromadaire" is never a "camel".

"Queer" simply does not have the same cultural relevance in French as a concept. As a reminder, in its origin, "queer" meant something like "weirdo" does today. And guess what: there is no accurate and widely used equivalent of "weirdo" in Québécois French that I am aware of*. The notion of weirdness is fuzzier in French, where it is violently clear in English, though Francophone cultures also practice exclusion based on weirdness (obviously).

When I was a teen, I was "efféminé, une fille manquée, une tapette, une fifi", not a "queer". "Fifis" are not weird, undefined or strange. They have a specific gender role, they enter in a specific category, they are included in our cultural framework, and were often negatively perceived - but not always or in every way.

(There are, I think, accurate equivalents in English for "fifi".)

Your concept of queerness is difficult to explain to my parents, who are westerners. The concept of Two-Spirit was way easier for them to grasp, even though a lot of people say "Two-Spirit" is quite a mysterious umbrella-term, hard to understand for non-Indigenous people.

The existence of different words with different connotations for a sort of similar concept does not mean full inclusion or acceptance. It can reveal a slightly different cultural reality, but it does not necessarily constitute a glimpse in a whimsical parallel and mysterious universe in which we are all spiritual beings made of pure energy.

Knowing that some words exist is not sufficient to understand a community. You actually need to listen to people, try and understand what they exactly mean by the words they use, learn about their culture. You need to put effort in it.

If you can see a difference between genderflux and genderfluid, your brain has the capacity to understand the difference between Ikwekaazo and Ininikaazo (way easier).

Refraining from drawing parallels (though nuanced) means that you have given up.

When you have put enough effort, then, you can evaluate if yes or no, and if yes, to which degree you are imposing a colonial reality over a colonised people.

This comes naturally in a multilingual world, in which most of us live.

#GaucheCanadienne #GaucheQuébécoise #CanadianLeft #AmericanLeft #Languages #Left

______
*Most of the words we would use to avoid directly using "weirdo" are adjectives, not substantives (étrange, bizarre), or will be rarely used (un-e hurluberlu, un-e excentrique)

»Can You Really #FightPopulism With Populism? The #Americanleft’s favorite double act hopes it has the key to rallying the anti-#Trump resistance—and timid #Democrats.« https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/bernie-sanders-aoc-rally/682430/?Populist.in #FactCrisis #Populism #Populist #Movement

#HaymarketBooks | #Trump's Hammer, Our Hope

"Join Naomi Klein, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Astra Taylor, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor for an emergency town hall on the continuing attacks on both marginalized communities and on #freeSpeech at the hands of the current administration."

https://youtu.be/9vP5p_oTmZU
#USpol #USpolitics #MAGA #stateRepression #civilLiberties #civilRights #USleft #AmericanLeft #activism #leftActivism #leftOrganizing #antifascism #antiracism

"From Elon #Musk’s hostile takeover of core government functions, to the #Trump family's vision for remaking #Gaza into another Dubai, we are witnessing the extension of corporate power across the globe at an unprecedented pace."

An emergency town hall via #HaymarketBooks w/ Naomi Klein, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Astra Taylor, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

https://youtu.be/iyLiNN_NMO4
#USpol #USpolitics #MAGA #oligarchy #droitisation #USleft #AmericanLeft #leftActivism #politicalActivism #antifascism

And to make matters worse, the arguments made on the Left that TikTok criticism is “just right-wing #AsianHate” is used to justify the continued use of TikTok globally

I mean, they’re probably not wrong that #racism is a motivation on the right

But I think the #AmericanLeft is missing the real danger of using a massive #Chinese #tech platform

"The weakness of the #AmericanLeft is increasingly a European problem because an imperial core without a proper #left opposition is going to let the US or the hegemon export destruction and regression across the globe."

Great interview w/ #AntonJäger on the #AmericanPrestige pod about the state of #USpolitics, #AmericanLiberalism, the #USleft, and the implications of the #2024election for mass movements and #geopolitics

https://americanprestige.supportingcast.fm/listen/american-prestige-1/e186-mass-politics-the-economy-and-the-us-election-w-anton-jager
#USpol #PoliticalTheory #TheEvilOfTwoLessers

"What strikes me most is just the slickness of the artifice, and I think they made a really kind of strange decision just from an affect perspective to go with "Joy" in a genocide and [as they] keep the genocide going..."

Beyond the Ballot: The #Left in a Time of #Polycrisis

A special conversation w/ Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor & Chenjerai Kumanyikaf

https://youtu.be/PN0O82HsP_g
#USLeft #AmericanLeft #USpol #USpolitics #2024election #TheEvilOfTwoLessers

"Today we speak with #RebeccaVilkomerson and Rabbi #AlissaWise about their foundational work in starting and growing #JewishVoiceForPeace. It’s a story captured in their new book, #SolidarityIsThePoliticalVersionOfLove: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing."

https://speakingoutofplace.com/2024/09/09/solidarity-is-the-political-version-of-love-lessons-from-jewish-anti-zionist-organizing-conversation-with-rebecca-vilkomerson-and-rabbi-alissa-wise/

#PalestineSolidarity #Palestine #IsraelPalestine #JVP #USpol #USpolitics #USLeft #AmericanLeft #JewishAmericanLeft #PeaceMovement #books @palestine

#MouinRabbani talks with historian #MarjorieNFeld about the history of Jewish American #antizionism and the efforts to combat and marginalise it.

Feld is the author of #TheThresholdOfDissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism

https://youtu.be/ndZqnyWZ6bc
#Palestine #PalestineQuestion #JewishAmericanPolitics #JewishAmericanHistory #JewishAmericanLeft #AmericanLeft #USleft #UShistory #USpol #USpolitics #books @palestine

"[A] famous movie, Exodus .. tells the story essentially as a US western, and so basically makes #Israel into a Gary Cooper film, where they're out in the desert taking on the indigenous people heroically.."

#BenjaminBalthaser discusses evolving Jewish American perceptions of Zionism & his new book #CitizensOfTheWholeWorld: The #AmericanJewishLeft and Cultures of #AntiZionism

https://youtu.be/sYvhWfiuFjg
#Palestine #PalestineQuestion #USLeft #AmericanLeft #CPUSA #NewLeft #USpol #books @palestine

"In this panel, members of the French and #AmericanLeft come together to discuss the ongoing movement in #SolidarityWithPalestine and its struggles against #Israel’s War in #Gaza, and the growing repression faced by this movement in #France and the United States."

The #FrenchLeft in Solidarity with #Palestine: A Conversation w/ #MathildePanot (#LFI)

https://youtu.be/jW5IeIrbGUg
#GaucheFr #GaucheFrançaise #SolidaritéAvecLaPalestine #PalestineSolidarity #JVP #DSA #PolFR #USPol #PolitiqueFrançaise

Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics by Jodi Dean

Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies is an impassioned call for the realization of a progressive left politics in the United States.

@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#America
#AmericanLeft
#capitalism
#politics

"I sat down with writers and editors at #JewishCurrents (Mari Cohen, David Klion, and Raphael Magarik) for a team-up of podcasts to talk about the movie. We discuss the way the movie portrays tensions within the Jewish community, its grappling with the history of the #AmericanLeft, its avoidance of direct portrayals of the effect of #NuclearWeapons, and its critique of the #MilitaryIndustrialComplex."

https://www.thenation.com/podcast/culture/ttom-jewish-oppenheimer/

#Oppenheimer #ManhattanProject #McCarthyism #cinema #biopics