Shutting Down

It’s been fun to have my own website for the past several years, but in order to pinch a few pennies, I’ll be shutting down it down around the end of 2020.

I do plan to continue blogging, from time to time, and my plan is to do that from my Medium page. You can go ahead and follow me there, and/or add my Medium RSS feed to your RSS reader: https://medium.com/feed/@andy.paul.phd

(Less important, but I’ve migrated my CV over to a Github page: bit.ly/andypaulphd)

And as always, you can follow me on twitter. Thanks for reading.

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Why Bernie is the Antifascist Candidate, Part Two

On Racism and Antisemitism

A few months after Bernie’s “democratic socialism” speech, he published an essay in the left wing journal Jewish Currents on antisemitism, where he picked up on some of the same antifascist themes. Antifascists famously call antisemitism “the socialism of fools,” indicating just what we’ve discussing—that rather than an “ancient hatred,” antisemitism is a historically specific narrative that is deployed in order to feed the ressentiment of an alienated populace with a story that might divert them from true justice.

Bernie didn’t speak about antisemitism via the language of liberal rights, but rather he used the language of solidarity:

Why Bernie is the Antifascist Candidate, Part One

An anti-Nazi rally in New York City, 1933.

In the past I’ve noted several times the way that Bernie Sanders reflects antifascist thought, and I’ve long thought I should write up something more substantial to flesh this out. Here’s an attempt at doing so.

Why I Support Bernie Sanders, Part Two

For my second Bernie-related post, here’s a FAQ. If the tone appears a little stiff or cheery, it’s because I originally wrote this content for canvassing literature.

Why I Support Bernie Sanders

I’ve been planning for a while to write an essay about Bernie Sanders, and why I support him. It was going to be a long piece, incorporating my thoughts on politics, my understanding of American history, and my recent research on the history and theory of fascism and anti-fascism. It was going to tell the story of my support through historical anecdotes, from the 1898 Wilmington Coup D’Etat and the Triangle Factory Fire to the assassination of Fred Hampton and the candidacy of Jesse Jackson.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure if what I was envisioning will actually get done, so I’m instead going to share a very short post, with the possibility that I might share more in the future.