Chris Hedges: This is a Class and a Generational Revolt

Image by Elvert Barnes via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Jun 18, 2020

The US “War on Drugs” has ramped up in the Caribbean Sea, with the United States targeting alleged cocaine trafficking into the United States. Meanwhile, the United Nations reports the amount of land being used to grow the coca plant has decreased in Colombia. RT America’s John Huddy reports. Then Chris Hedges, host of “On Contact,” breaks down the “War on Drugs,” and comments on the recent US uprisings against police brutality and capitalism.

Over the Rainbow: Paths of Resistance After George Floyd, by Jim Kavanagh

Image by Dan Gaken via Flickr

by Jim Kavanagh
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Polemicist
June 8, 2020

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” — Aristotle

It has been an extraordinary week. On the heels of a pandemic and months-long lockdown, a nationwide uprising erupted in response to the brutal killing of George Floyd. In some 75 cities across at least 16 states, and around the world, militant, multiracial gatherings of thousands of rightfully-enraged people overwhelmed police forces, prevented arrests, forced the evacuation of, and burned, a police precinct, and damaged and burned dozens of buildings. Mainstream news reporters from around the world were arrested and fired upon with rubber bullets on live television. Police SUVs drove into crowds of people. It has been the most extensive, and the most threatening, explosion of popular rage against the machine since the uprisings of 1967-8.

If The Capitalist State Isn’t Overthrown, Its Grip Will Tighten, by Rainer Shea

Image by Glenn Halog via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, June 3, 2020
June 4, 2020

The ruling class has more class consciousness than the lower classes do. They’re the ones who have to manage the relationship between the classes, and to keep this relationship in balance so that revolution is prevented. This makes them especially equipped to engage in what Marxists call dialectics—the practice of assessing material factors and opposing social forces. With this ability, they can adapt the power structure to be able to best respond to whatever threatens their interests.

Chris Hedges: How the Covid-19 Pandemic has Exposed the Weakness of American Society

Image by Daniel Arrhakis via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on May 30, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to John Ralston Saul, author and president emeritus of Pen International, about how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the weakness of American society, and accelerated the decline of the American Empire.

What U.S. Imperial Decline Means For the Future of Capitalism, by Rainer Shea

Image by d mw via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, May 24, 2020
May 26, 2020

In 2014, the CIA-tied media outlet the Washington Post published an article titled “In the long run, wars make us safer and richer.” Its author Ian Morris reasoned that wars have been necessary to carry out what it called the “civilizing process,” wherein the European empires have grown through conquest and the United States has been created through the seizing of indigenous lands. Its argument was racist and biased in favor of Western capitalist interests, and this was the point. It acknowledged that the wars which brought the U.S. empire to power, and which the U.S. empire continues to wage, are good for “us”—the people in the imperial core who benefit from imperialist wars.

The Memorial Day Massacre by Sharon Smith + Labor History: Chicago Memorial Day Massacre 1937

The Chicago Memorial Day Incident

Dandelion Salad

by Sharon Smith
SocialistWorker.org
Originally posted May 27, 2011, written in May 1989
May 25, 2020

The presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt changed the reputation of the Democratic Party from the party of the Southern slaveholders to that of “friend of the working people”—a reputation that the Democratic Party, undeservedly, continues to enjoy.

Chris Hedges: The Prospect and Need For Ecosocialism

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on May 23, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to writer, teacher and activist Victor Wallis about the prospect and need for Ecosocialism.

The Start Of The Great Meltdown For Industrial Civilization, by Rainer Shea

Image by Wayne Hsieh via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, May 17, 2020
May 20, 2020

Consumer society has tried to legitimize itself by making people believe that it represents a sustainable way of living. For those in the First World, all the evidence that a meltdown is coming—the deterioration of the climate, the decline of the biosphere, the diminishing of available resources—has usually existed outside of immediate view. Commercialism and the mass media, which have gained an unprecedented presence in our lives through the digital revolution, have distracted us from these realities while the machine of global capital has continued to run.

Beneath Conspiracy Theories: The Class War, by Aragorn Eloff

Image by duncan c via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

by Aragorn Eloff
New Frame, May 4, 2020
May 13, 2020

The danger of conspiracy theories is their ability to breed apathy and resignation, offering an easy narrative that makes people susceptible to influence and limits social change. There is another way.

Caleb Maupin: What is the Lumpenproletariat? + Will Griffin: What Are The Principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism?

by Caleb Maupin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Caleb Maupin (website)
Caleb Maupin (Facebook Page)
May 10, 2020

“Well also within the working-class, Marx talked about you have the lumpenproletariat and what the lumpenproletariat is, is people that are part of the working class but they’re never really allowed to be part of the working class. Their income comes from criminal activities mostly. They’re barely employed, they’re barely surviving, they’re desperately poor and they’re just completely locked out.” — Caleb Maupin

The Economic Collapse Is Going To Get A Lot Worse, by Rainer Shea

Image by themostinept via Flickr

by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, May 1, 2020
May 4, 2020

The United States and the other core imperialist countries haven’t had socialist revolutions because the masses within them have been kept complacent. They’ve directly or indirectly benefited from the exploitation of colonized peoples, enjoying relative economic advantages despite their being subordinate to the capitalist class. Even as inequality has increased in the last generation or so, this has let the system keep them from taking action. They’ve been told that they need to be loyal to their country, that they can get ahead if they try, that capitalism gives them a better lifestyle than socialism would.

Nothing Is Going Back To Normal — May Day 2020

Image by brent granby via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

sub.Media on Apr 30, 2020

This May Day finds us at an important historic crossroads. Amidst a global pandemic, this year the streets will be eerily silent as people forgo the marches, rallies and riots that are the annual rituals of international workers day.

The Incomplete and Wonderful History of May Day + Chris Smalls: Support May Day Strikers

Image by Annette Dubois via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
Updated: April 30, 2020
Originally published May 1, 2016

The Laura Flanders Show on Apr 26, 2016

Author and professor Peter Linebaugh discusses his new book, The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day. Later in the show filmmaker Avi Lewis discusses worker-owned factories in Argentina, and Laura focuses on the intersectional feminism of 19th Century Anarchist Lucy Parsons.

Chris Hedges: The History of Populism in America

Image by screenpunk via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Apr 25, 2020

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to D. D. Guttenplan, editor, The Nation, about the history of populism in America, its current rise and the problem of democracy.

When The Revolution Comes by Gaither Stewart

Image by Giorgia Colletti via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Previously published August 8, 2011
April 21, 2020

The Historical Gastonia Textile Mill Strikes Are Not Forgotten

When in the early part of this millennium I was writing a rather surrealistic novel, ASHEVILLE, about the town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina where I started out my life, I ran into the story of the Asheville-based self-professed Communist writer, Olive Tilford Dargan, of whom I had never heard before. Visiting then her gravesite in the little known Green Hills Cemetery in West Asheville and researching her and her activities I fell into a gossamer review of early 19th century labor struggles in the good old U.S. South.