Adele reviews ‘The Cult of Trump,’ whose author explains how so many people could support Trump for President in spite of his criminal activity, bullying personality, and nonsensical campaign speeches.
religious fundamentalism
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Lebanon: The Test Not Only of the PLO but the Whole Left
November 23, 2024It is crucial both to oppose Israel’s attacks on the Lebanese people and to confront the state of the resistance and its contradictions. To grapple with how the 1970s failed Lebanese revolution set the stage for today, we present this 1976 piece by Raya Dunayevskaya on the dialectic of developments, from regional rulers’ maneuvers, to the ambivalence of the Left, to the masses in motion.
Woman as Reason: A battle we must win
October 31, 2024The fundamentalist, sexist, anti-gay convictions of J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley and Harrison Butker reveal that their movement not only wants to end abortion but control what women think, what we feel, in fact who we are.
Review: ‘The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America’
August 28, 2024After Roe v Wade was overturned after nearly fifty years, what will it mean to be a woman in America and what kind of country is it becoming? This is what the book ‘The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America’ explores, reviewed by Adele.
Draft Perspectives, 2024-2025: Part Three, Russia’s war on Ukraine and the worldwide drive toward fascism
May 4, 2024Part III of the 2024-2025 Draft Perspectives. Takes up Putin’s war on Ukraine and its connection with fascism worldwide, especially seen on Israel’s war on Gaza, the ongoing genocide in Sudan and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s religious chauvinism.
Featured article: Rulers’ fear of revolution won’t stop Iranian masses
October 3, 2023In the weeks before the anniversary of Jina Mahsa Amini’s murder, the Iranian regime hardened its repression. None fear revolution more than it. But the people of Iran are letting the world know what they are fighting for on “the day after” the revolution. Their demands, if met, would transform Iran into one of the freest, most humane countries in the world.
World in View: Will Yemenis survive the proxy war?
May 19, 2022After seven years of war in Yemen, the UN estimates that almost 400,000 people, primarily civilians, have died, 60% from hunger and disease, with children being 70% of the deaths. The war has become a proxy for the Saudi Arabia-Iran Middle East conflict.
Review: #ChurchToo
May 8, 2021Author Emily Joy Allison created the hashtag #ChurchToo to share her story of an adult youth group leader’s attempt to groom her into being raped when she was a teenager. By the next morning, thousands had used #ChurchToo to tell their stories of abuse within the Church.
‘Power Worshippers’
July 1, 2020“The Power Worshippers” by Katherine Stewart explains the religious Right as a “Christian nationalist” movement. This is not a grassroots movement but one deliberately designed by ultra-rich businessmen and families to impose complete political, social, and economic control.
Women Worldwide, July-August 2019
June 27, 2019Women Worldwide column on femicide by “sex games gone wrong”; female genital mutilation in the U.S.; and the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls issues final report.
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Religion, racism and capitalist crisis
October 4, 2018With hate crimes, anti-Semitism, racism and anti-immigrant xenophobia on the rise, Israel’s “Jewish nation-state” law and fascism brewing globally, we excerpt two pieces addressing roots of these phenomena in capitalism’s crises.
Review: Nature’s God
November 26, 2016Review of Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic by Matthew Stewart, showing how the founders of the U.S. wanted democracy and not a theocracy.
Lead-Editorial: No to Trump’s counter-revolution! No to fascism! Fight for a new human society!
Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
No to Trump! No to fascism! Fight for a new human society!
November 12, 2016Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
Readers’ Views: July-August 2016, Part 1
July 7, 2016Readers’ Views on Hate: Orlando to Brexit; Black Lives Matter; Muhammad Ali and Dr. King; Duterte in the Philippines; News & Letters Readers Unite!; and Deadly Assault on Women From the U.S. to Israel.
Review: Out In The Union: A Labor History of Queer America
January 24, 2016Review of Review: Out In The Union: A Labor History of Queer America, by feminist anti-religious right activist Adele who writes an appreciative look at Miriam Frank’s important book.
In-person report: Yemenis battle war, famine, disease, sectarianism
November 22, 2015Economic problems are worsening crazily because of this war, but that is no longer the only major problem in Yemen. There are at least four major problems/risks being horribly worsened as the war continues. They are: famine, epidemics, the expansion of extremist groups, and sectarianism.
In-person report: Yemen, where dreams are impossible
June 17, 2015Under the control of religious armed militias, Yemenis live a humiliating life and die in insulting ways! Now death is the closest thing to Yemenis, whereas our dreams have become impossible.
Men Explain Things to Me — a review
January 28, 2015“Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit is a book of seven essays that eloquently describe how patriarchy attempts to distract us from the fact that seemingly isolated incidents and seemingly separate oppressions are part of a system of profound and devastating violence.
Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights — a review
November 22, 2014From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters
Pro by Katha Pollitt is a wake-up call to the pro-choice movement to reclaim abortion as a positive social good. Ever since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, we have allowed religious Right rhetoric to sneak into our own discussions so that even we now [=>]
Readers’ Views, September-October 2014, Part 2
August 31, 2014From the September-October 2014 News & Letters
THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT AND THE BLACK REVOLUTION
I am in the movement still because of the Free Speech Movement (FSM)—it turned my life around. I studied everything about the New Left. I came to Berkeley and decided this is where I needed to be. [=>]
‘Generation Roe’
July 7, 2014Review of “Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement” by Sarah Erdreich
Godless Americana
May 15, 2014Review by Adele of “Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels,” by Sikivu Hutchinson (Infidel Books, 2013).
India’s Modi: ‘free market’ authoritarian
May 14, 2014Narendra Modi states openly that his program will be to unleash “free market” reform coupled with authoritarianism in government. Modi’s history tells us what his authority portends: the massacre of 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat.
Tahrir three years later
February 7, 2014Three years ago, the Egyptian Revolution was fighting for its life in Tahrir Square. For 18 days and nights, the women and men of the Square faced off against President Hosni Mubarak’s security forces and thugs. In the end Mubarak was forced to follow Tunisia’s President-for-life, Ben Ali, into retirement and shame. The light of freedom spread–Square to Square, occupation to occupation. It was a historic turning point.
It was this global struggle that the military coup that ousted Morsi, and led to the massacre of over 800 of his supporters, was meant to stop short. Now, revolution continues, and the freedom idea lives, but the old world has tried hard to destroy it. Egypt’s newest new Constitution, passed Jan. 15 under the military rule of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, evokes only faint echoes of Tahrir. As artist Hanaa Safwat said, “The referendum is stained in innocent people’s blood. It has been built on the dead bodies of 800 people in Rabaa al-Adawiya.”
Christian Nation
November 26, 2013Review of “Christian Nation: a Novel” by Frederic C. Rich, a work of speculative fiction in which the religious Right takes over the U.S., turning it into a brutally totalitarian state.
Rise Up Texas
September 27, 2013An overflow crowd at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York City heard Hallie Boas speak on “Come and Take It: How the Fight to Protect Wom¬en’s Healthcare Is Launching a New Wave of Feminism in Texas.”
The Child Catchers
September 25, 2013Review of The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption by Kathryn Joyce, which explores the religious Right’s renewed enthusiasm for domestic and international adoption.
Review of No Snowflake in an Avalanche
February 28, 2013No Snowflake in an Avalanche, by Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein and Davin Seay (Vireo, 2012)
An extraordinary organization arose to combat an extraordinary threat. Lawyer Mikey Weinstein was a graduate of the Air Force Academy, located in the religious Right territory of Colorado Springs, Colo. In 2004, his son Casey, a freshman at the Academy, [=>]
France in Mali
February 11, 2013World in View
by Gerry Emmett
The long-simmering situation has exploded. French troops have begun attacking fundamentalist militias in northern Mali. It remains to be seen how effective French and African forces will be against the militias. Certainly many people want to be rid of the al-Qaeda-linked groups that have attacked women, destroyed historic Sufi Muslim [=>]
Now off the press: The Crossroads of History: Marxist-Humanist Writings on the Middle East by Raya Dunayevskaya
February 5, 2013Now off the press:
Excerpts from the Foreword:
Nobody, least of all Marxists, foresaw the great historic divide which would be opened by the Arab Spring beginning in 2010. When Mohammed Bouazizi and Hussein Nagi Felhi killed themselves to protest the miserable conditions of life for Tunisian youth, they set off a year of revolutionary struggle that [=>]
The Left and Malala Yousafzai
December 1, 2012Woman as Reason
Meredith Tax, a women’s liberationist and political activist since the late 1960s, author of The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880–1917, and now U.S. Director of the Centre for Secular Space, a think tank formed to oppose fundamentalism and promote universality in human rights, has recently written an important and [=>]
Obama’s re-election doesn’t end clash of two worlds
November 26, 2012by Franklin Dmitryev
The two worlds of the rulers and the ruled shone through the suffocating blanket of propaganda surrounding the election in which Barack Obama won a second term. A pronounced gender gap and long lines at the polls in African-American and Latino areas reflected the determination to defeat the reactionary Republicans and retain the [=>]
November-December 2012 issue of News & Letters is now available on the web
November 24, 2012Lead
Obama’s re-election doesn’t end clash of two worlds
The two worlds of the rulers and the ruled shone through the suffocating blanket of propaganda surrounding the election in which Barack Obama won a second term. A pronounced gender gap and long lines at the polls in African-American and Latino areas reflected the determination to defeat the [=>]
New attacks on women take fascistic turn
March 20, 2012Editorial
The depths of this society’s inhumanity have been laid bare by the intensity of the war on women’s bodies, minds and lives. Poor women are taking the brunt as those in power in state and federal governments mount an assault so reactionary that birth control, something considered a settled fact of life, is actually in [=>]
Women as Reason: No power for bishops or mullahs!
September 24, 2011by Terry Moon
The racist U.S. Right has used the specter of terrorism in attacking Muslim religious law, Sharia, as a way to build and deepen fear of all Muslims and forward their reactionary agenda of racism against all minorities, sexism, and anti-immigrationism. Genuine feminist organizations like the decades-old Women Living Under Muslim Laws and the [=>]
Review of Unplanned
August 4, 2011Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader’s Eye-Opening Journey across the Life Line by Abby Johnson with Cindy Lambert (SaltRiver, 2011).
The religious Right has hailed Unplanned as an anti-abortion classic for a new era. It signals more cooperation between ultra-conservative Catholics and evangelicals. The book claims that newer anti-abortion protesters are non-violent [=>]