FINAL STATEMENT: ANTICOP 2024

ANTICOP 2024 in Oaxaca, Mexico in November 2024I was fortunate in being able to attend ANTICOP 2024 in Oaxaca, Mexico a couple of weeks ago. Getting outside of the United States and being with other activists from around the world is always rejuvenating and renewing. Themes that were explored at ANTICOP included globalization, extractivism, militarism, land and water grabs, community displacement, government inaction towards climate change, and the commodification of nature. All this just before the 29th United Nations Climate Change conference, which will be recorded in the history books as one of the greatest ruses of all time.

Final conference statement (from the organizers)

I Have a Dream

I hope to live so long so as to see a comparable sign somewhere here in the USA having staked out territory free from the subjugating, precarious, dehumanizing, kleptocratic, capitalist, fascist, police state we are living in at present.

Functional Definition of Fascism

CPAC and the fascist international

With the ascendency once again of fascism in the world, it is important to have a clear definition for fascism. The following definition developed by historian Robert Paxton in 2004 is in my opinion the best one I’ve yet come across:
“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraint, goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

British Court Approves Julian Assange Extradition to the US

File:Julian Assange - 9060712888 (cropped).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

The British court’s ruling to extradite Julian Assange to the United States to face charges there, boosts fascism and state secrecy, sending a chilling message to the practice of journalism everywhere. The vendetta against Julian, pursued by deranged actors inside the US government seeking revenge for his exposing their ‘secrets’, is being carried out.

Today is a low point in the history of press freedom and democracy. Without a free press reporting on state actions, government can perpetrate atrocities in our name, without our consent, undermining our safety and security.

Once regarded as a paragon of  press freedom supporting democracy in the world, with this act, the United States government is following in the tradition of the worst of fascist states in their destruction of a free press. Long live the free and unfettered press!