How can we get beyond Trump-Putin barbarism?

The Trump-Putin post-truth world of Fox News and Russia Today, are kindred moments of a global capitalist order that has devolved into neo-fascism: scapegoating the “Other” and accepting genocide. Internal reactionaries and competing multiple regional and global powers have no regard for human life, as demonstrated most horribly by Assad's latest chemical gas assault on Khan Sheikhoun and Trump's terror against civilians in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. As a Syrian revolutionary recently put it, “After all this slaughter, we ask, do the Syrian people not belong to the human community?”

Multiple forms of resistance continue: the global women’s movement, Black Lives Matter and immigrants everywhere, including in the U.S. Mass demonstrations against Putin’s regime emerged anew across Russia last week, demanding end to official corruption.

Is this world of vile nationalism and permanent war a return to the horrors of so-called primitive accumulation through enslavement and conquest? Does Marx’s thought and revolutionary practice speak to this moment? Gerry Emmett’s essay, “Marx’s Marxism vs. Trump-Putin’s barbarism,” in the March/April News & Letters addresses these issues.

How can the mass outpourings go beyond opposition and give humanity a different future?

We hope to see you there and hear your thoughts.

Sunday, 4/9/2017, 6:30 p.m.
Niebyl-Proctor Library
6501 Telegraph Ave. (at Alcatraz)
Oakland. Ca.