Surrealist Revolution

“Revolution in the Service of the Marvelous”by Franklin Rosemont, 2003

I lived in Chicago for 13 years during the 1980s- early '90s and never met Rosemont at Left events – though I might have and didn't know it. So he might be a ghost. This book is about 'post-World War II' surrealism, which still saw itself as revolutionary and inspired by Marxism. Most of it seems written in the 1970s. Here is a taste: “Starting with the abolition of imaginative slavery and a thorough revaluation of all values, surrealism requires the overthrow of the bourgeois/christian order and the elaboration, on stateless communist foundations, of a non-repressive civilization governed by the watchword 'To each according to his/her desire.'” This is a riff off of Marx. I think they evolved towards IWW-style anarcho-communism.

Rosemont tries to write about the ineffable, as surrealism is not a mostly logical movement. It is a severe reaction to capitalist realism and 'normality' – to art schools and the 'art market;' to boring poetry, childish music, conventional wisdom and predictable cinema; to bourgeois conformity, to the confining strictures of capital, state and the church. Rosemont cristens these as aspects of 'miserablism.' He quotes poets Laurtrémont and André Breton frequently. The latter is one of the founders of surrealism who wrote the initial manifesto in 1924 and later joined with Rivera and Trotsky in 1938 to describe the nature of revolutionary art under socialism and before.

The text is a celebration of unschooled and outsider artists. One of the 'methods' Rosemont mentions frequently is 'automatism' – reaching below the conscious mind to create. Letting what is hidden, lurking beneath the surface, dreamlike, to come up and be 'freed.' Unleashing the imagination, the hand, the note, the words, the physical things, the ideas from rational control to combust something new. In a way the surrealists aimed to fully escape from alienation, even within an alienated society. He links automatism to the improvisation of jazz, especially be-bop and free jazz. In his text individual talent sometimes smells of genius, which is a false odor.

The book is a series of articles from Arsenal, Chicago Ink, Surrealist Subversion, The Heartland Journal, Race Traitor and the Black Swan Gallery booklet on the Exhibition. Rosemont discusses artists of post-war surrealism, many totally unknown to standard art aficionados. Many exhibited at the 1976 World Surrealist Exhibition at the Black Swan gallery in Chicago, which is now a celebrity restaurant, a typical fate in the capitalist U.S. Among the creators detailed are musicians Joe Jarman and Nicole Mitchell, dancer Alice Farley, artist Gerome Kamrowski, painters Tristan Meinecke, Schlechter Duvall, Shirley Voll, Henry Darger and Parisian Gustave Moreau and poet Samuel Greenberg. I hadn't heard of any of these people, some of whom lived in Chicago, Iowa or Michigan, though I was a fan of surrealism at one time and did read the Arsenal occasionally.

Charlie Parker's surreal jazzing

Rosemont, trying to correct Parisian Breton's tone deafness towards music, especially U.S. jazz, writes a long article praising Charlie Parker, Cecil Taylor, Coltrane and company. He wanted to broaden surrealism's reach into the music world based on be-bop, cool and free jazz improvisation. He does not insult or mention rock or jazz-rock improvisation or even the Chicago blues. He has an article on fellow Chicagoan Dave Roediger's book “Black on White.” The book excoriates 'whiteness' as a social and racial concept, based on the writings of many black writers. Roediger seems to be a friend of his. He's got an article on how humor is an ally of surrealism, as it punctures stupidity and reveals truths. He has references to the liberating role of Bugs Bunny, wolves, hysteria, H.P. Lovecraft, eroticism and aspects of pop culture. Rosemont uses references to left-wing causes and struggles of the times throughout his articles, including the P-9 meat worker's strike in Austin, Minnesota. This is an attempt by Rosemont to incorporate class struggle into surrealism's outsider groove too.

Rosemont crushes down on various prominent art movements, especially from New York critics and art houses. Post-impressionism, pop art, abstract art, conceptual art, John Cage, minimalism – all come in for insults as to their sterility and attempted marketability. He stands against the fascist idea of modern art as 'degenerate art' and 'Art Bolshevism' asserted by the Nazi state in 1938. Here he praises the Dadaists, surrealists, expressionists and other modernist painters denounced by the philistine fascists, who preferred kitsch.

If you are interested in art or the confluence of art and politics, this book might be interesting. Especially if you are an artist of any kind, it might liberate your method. Currently U.S. post-modernist art is mostly concerned with landscapes, decoration, abstract nothings, shock or kitsch. There is no art movement of note anymore, no radical edge trying to outgrow the constrictions of commercial bourgeois culture. As far as proletarian art is concerned, Rosemont comments on poetry, surrealism's lodestone. He asserts that: “Political poetry is poetry derived from politics: the politics always comes first. Surrealism, which has a way of upsetting established convention, reverse the priorities and derives its politics from poetry.” This, he continues, brings Hegel's poetic 'unfettered imagination' to the surface.

Prior blogsport reviews on this subject, use our search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “Surrealism – Inside the Magnetic Fields” (P. Rosemont); “surrealism,” “art museum,” “Frida Kahlo” or 'art.'

And I bought it at May Day Books excellent leftish art section!

Red Frog / January 17, 2025

Magic Internet Beans

 “Let Them Eat Crypto – The Blockchain Scam That's Ruining the World” by Peter Howson, 2023

This is an astonishing book that relates the most fictitious capital in history – crypto digital 'coins' or tokens – to a wide range of cyber-libertarian economic, social and environmental damage. It is a fitting tribute to 'holistic' investigations that don't treat issues as isolated one-offs. Howson used to be a crypto / blockchain enthusiast on the non-profit 'charity' side of the bugger. He gradually realized how destructive it was. What did Howson discover besides the fact that crypto is not a currency and is not even a real speculative asset for most, just a Ponzi / pyramid scheme?

Howson's contention is that it is a through-going Libertarian con. It is aimed at eliminating bourgeois democratic-style government, financial regulation and taxes. On the other hand it fuels money-laundering and many frauds. Just a list of the enthusiasts tells you something – Bankman-Fried, Musk, Thiel, Altman, Zuckerberg, Brin, Andreessen, Dorsey and Winkelvoss; air-headed A-list celebrities – Matt Damon, Reese Witherspoon, Drake, Jeffrey Epstein, Snoop Dog, Floyd Mayweather, Jay-Z and Kim Kardashian; hard-right politicians like Rishi Sunak, Alex Jones, Andrew Tate, Steve Bannon and the rest. It became the confluence of Silicon Valley, hard-right conservatives, science fiction and Hollywood. That fiction part is important.

Yet the 'establishment' was also tolerant. International charities, Davos and units of the U.N. got on-board with crypto. The SEC advocates a 'lite-touch' towards it. Groups at Oxford University led by Peter Singer and at M.I.T. promoted it. Post-modern philosophies were developed around it called 'longtermism,' 'effective altruism' (EA) and Web3. They changed the meaning of words, substituting the internet for reality, philosophically substituting idealism for materialism. That is significant.

Howson names nearly every failed crypto exchange, shitcoin, blockchain surveillance tool, dark web node, internet game and crypto fraud. He misses the Centra-Tech one which claimed to invent an ATM dispensing real money from your crypto 'wallet.' This is key, as crypto can only buy things from other crypto holders, it cannot transition back into real world money as yet. There are profitable gains for some big capitalists, hard-right reactionaries and many criminals when the rubes and marks use real cash to gamble in crypto, but not for the rest of society. Howson points out that its 'decentralization' claim is a farcical idea, as hidden capitalists or fraudsters are now the real 'centers.' And there is no recourse if you lose your money. Let's go through the points made by Howson.

Bankman-Fried.  Would You Trust Your Money to Him?

Unbanking

Unbanking is the claim by crypto bosses that they will replace real money with digital coins to help the underprivileged across the world – especially those not tied to a bank. It is similar to the exploitative 'microfinance' loans pushed by people like Hillary Clinton. Howson describes the 'pump and dump' scheme in crypto. Introduce a coin, wait for suckers to invest, then take the money at it's high-point 'value.' Or wait for 'critical mass' of investors to be reached, then 'pull the rug out' and run.  Even worse than a real bank.  

Crypto has no regulation, so it is a playground for fraud, not 'peer to peer' trust. 'Market values' yo-yo all over the place, as happened in the crashes of 2017 and 2022 due to its not being tied to anything. A majority of coins and NFTs have been discovered to be scams or spam. Sometimes big coin owners 'wash trade' their own crypto to pretend there is activity. Yet 'trading' includes a fee for the groundlings. Some people lost millions in crypto due to a keyboard accident, an accidental throwaway or a lost password. Christian missionaries pitched these “magic internet beans” to the poverty-stricken unbanked and immiserated, especially to African youth and students. There is no age limit for buying coins or tokens, but studies have shown a link to gambling addictions, depression and suicide. So buy up kids!

Colonialism

Crypto billionaires target 'under-served communities' and subprime poverty spots across the global South. They crusade for weak governments to adopt crypto, like El Salvador, even though local businesses, those without access to the internet and the vast majority of the Salvadorean population wanted no part of it. Isolated islands are favorite targets of 'govt. free' economic zones, like Vanuatu, Palau or Tigray, or if not that, imaginary places on the internet that the crypto bros can gambol in with pretend flags, buildings and laws. But these 'places' are not free of capitalists, tax avoiders, Russian hackers or drug money-launderers.

Green Washing

Crypto is used to greenwash and fund carbon credits, offsets and carbon capture – failed strategies to stop global warming. Bitcoin 'mining' involves thousands of dedicated ASIC computer boxes dedicated to discovering the password puzzle that is each hours-long Bitcoin transaction, sucking energy across the world. This process is called Proof of Work. They pick vulnerable places to plant these facilities like the Navajo Nation or Pine Ridge, Transnistria or Abkhazia. In the U.S. they reopen closed nuclear, oil, tire or coal plants or siphon-off megawatts from the Texas grid at a far smaller price than regular consumers pay. Yet they pretend they are saving the world from global climate change. Crypto alone uses as much energy as all world-wide data centers. The CO2 from just the Bitcoin ASIC decryption boxes amounts to that of Greece at 72 million tons per year, while the ewaste per year is another 37K tons. Ethereum crypto does not use the same 'proof' but Bitcoin cannot and will not change their method.

Bad Charity

Crypto promises NGO's and big name charities that donations will be tax free and secret. NFT's, a digital image, or at least a link to one that might disappear, are also for sale as fundraisers. According to Howson, instead of solving real problems, crypto-types invent a problem or fake solution, then congratulate themselves over it. Like giving too many mosquito nets for malaria prevention, even though the nets are not used and instead sold to fishermen. Venture capitalism for charity, called DAOs, allow givers to get voting rights but no ultimate control over their funds. Crypto also funded various right-wing causes like the Freedom Convoy in Canada that protested mask requirements, both Ukrainian and Russian war efforts and a host of other conservative causes.

Machismo

Howson explores the ties between the manosphere, misogyny, pick-up artists, polyamory, right-wing politics and crypto. Most crypto investors are white guys from 20-50 in the U.S. And, oh yes, a Dogecoin was a favorite of Elon Musk's until it plummeted in value. Sound familiar? Now we have a department in Trump's government named that.  The crypto industry was a heavy backer of Trump, giving more than many other businesses. Vegans, 'soy boys,' no-coiners and 'low testosterone' men were seen as the enemy by the carnivore bros. Women hold 13% of crypto, which is why there are efforts to 'pink-wash' this 'asset' as liberating.  On the other hand Pornhub decided to be paid in crypto, without any control over the violent or humiliating porn shown, but hey, it's a free market!

The Betaverse

The metaverse is already dead and VR headsets are not the new normal. AI has taken its place with Facebook and the rest of the financial class. Howson details the various versions, including a headset that you could program to kill yourself. Living a fake 'life' online seems not to be the draw they thought it was - even with gamers. And yes, crypto allowed you to buy an avatar's digital hat and shoes! There's also a tie to biometrics, where facial images, blood and other data are stored in blockchains to identify subjects in the 'metaverse,' especially for poverty programs.

Unlike leftists like Loretta Napoleoni or Richard Wolff, Howson opposes using blockchain as some kind of 'socialist' automation of record-keeping. He also thinks it does not liberate poor people or oppressed minorities, as pushed by some black capitalists. He debates various anarcho-communists and left libertarians like Julian Assange on crypto, which kept Wikileaks running for a time. He sees crypto as a last, false resort for the disinherited trying to buy into consumer society. Even in Cuba and Venezuela it has made desperate inroads due to official financial sanctions of those countries. A Spanish Catalan experiment in crypto as a 'return to the commons' and 'degrowth' ended in speculation and fraud. In a way, it is an 'opium' for most people and a rapacious profit-source for others.  In the world now it is part of the false neo-liberal solution to economic decay.

At any rate, Howson has no specific solution except to suggest that all the lies and scams promulgated by the techno-optimists are typical of capitalism. So it is up to us to figure out a cure.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “crypto,” “blockchain,” “technology,” “libertarian,” “Techno-Capitalism,” “New Dark Age,” “Scorched Earth,” “Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth?” “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” (Bastani); “Cypher-Punks” (Assange); “Kill All Normies,” “Bit Tyrants,” “Inconspicuous Consumption,” “Ponzi Factor,” “Off-Shore,” “Crack-up Capitalism.”

MAnd I bought this modern book at May Day Books!

Red Frog / January 14, 2025

Sado-Capitalism II

 “Squid Game,”directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, Season 2, 2024

This is a rough watch, even more difficult than Season 1 because we know what is coming (reviewed below). Squid Game is cut-throat capitalism as a series of deadly children's games. It is sado-capitalism and necro-capitalism combined. It's a reflection of South Korean society, but also the poverty and debt reigning in other bourgeois countries like the U.S. and the U.K. The only encouraging thing about this season is that the winner of the last game has come back to destroy the rich billionaires and murderers who have constructed it. At the same time his ally in the police and armed men he's collected are attempting to find the secretive island lair among the hundreds of islands that rim South Korea.

The early part of this series involves finding the subway man who recruits down-and-outs to the game; repeated boat trips searching for the game island; and the stories of the two men intent on ending this slaughter. There is a traitor in each revolutionary group and there might be a traitor among the armed guards. There are weaklings and good people among the players, per usual. There are the standard crude, lumpen morons thinking they are going to win billions of won in the game, along with one creepy seer. The players' debts, which explain their presence, involve crypto coin fraud, gambling losses and medical debts, all common in South Korea. All these debt 'losers' are considered by the game owners to be part of a useless, surplus population that deserves to die. Yet, oblivious, the players are still split in half on their attitude towards the bloody game, the most surprising thing of all. Half are blinded by all the dead people's cash flopping into the hamper at the top of the barrack's room.

This is the motivation for violence by design, including fratricidal violence.

Most of the games are different from the first season. At the end there is an attempted revolution by a semi-dedicated minority aimed at the control room. This revolution seeks not to 'reform' the game but its termination. I'm no expert in game theory but as the blog has pointed out before: “Marxists question ‘what game to play.’  Institutional theorists question ‘what rules to use’ in the already chosen game. Situational theorists like Grusky / Weeden look at the moves to use within the rules of the fixed game.” Here the rebels question the game itself for a change.

Democracy gets its comeuppance, as the 'democratic' votes during the game are driven by greed, manipulation and bracketed by automatic weapons. The monied rulers are hidden, protected by locks, walls, guards and secrecy. In fact, other than the masked Front Man, we never see them. We still see the secretive trade in body parts from injured participants, a trade that is widespread across the world. We still see the colorful, maze-like MC Escher stairs, the militarized barracks room, the various ominous game environments and the employees dressed in red with geometric symbols etched into their masks.

What is most disturbing about this season is the all-powerful nature of the game controllers and funders, even as they are being assailed. This island is perfect fascism, as if resistance is futile. The mainland police don't care and the frequent spike of missing civilians in reports don't seem to matter. The pursuers make a number of obvious mistakes, including the hero Seong Gi-hun. The anticipation of hostile action by the billionaires is almost perfect. This series will end at three seasons, which is intelligent considering the brutal and hard-to-watch nature of the subject matter. At any rate, Squid Game is a metaphor for capitalism in our times. Watch it if you dare.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “Squid Game,” “South Korea,” “debt,” “dystopia.”

The Cultural Marxist, January 11, 2025

Find Your Choke Point

 “Labor Power and Strategy” by John Womack Jr., edit by P. Olney and G. Perusek, 2023

Has your boss ever told you that, while he doesn't know what you do, you do a good or poor job of it? He has revealed that many bosses don't know what keeps a shop or business or factory running. Only 'their' workers do. This is a secret strength of labor. This book takes it a bit farther.

Womack is a Harvard historian of the Mexican Revolution who turned his attention to labor issues, most notably how to gain power in the work-place. His insight is to concentrate on 'strategic' areas and jobs within a business, a sector or even a nation. He doesn't think unionizing Burger Kings or Starbucks will lead to more labor power, much as that might help those specific workers. Nor does he endorse concentrating on 'the most oppressed' for the same reason. He also makes the point that community movements inevitably fade, something we have just seen around Gaza and before that, BLM.

These are shibboleths of reformists, ultra-lefts or anarcho-syndicalists, who'll go to the point of trying to organize tiny non-profits. He does think those with 'independent contractor' precariat jobs could be key too, as they are waged workers really. While mentioning the 'technical' side of any job, perhaps due to his age, he neglects to highlight the 'choke point' role of techies who run software systems in nearly every workplace. As Juan Gonzalez points out, the capitalists are aware of this pivotal role and pay high-end techies more, making them more resistant to unionization.

Womack's outlook is looking for various 'choke points' in a business, sector or nation, for key leverage, the weakest link, a bottleneck, a disruption, a node, the job or jobs that can shut it all down.

Womack mostly concentrates on logistics workers and mentions by name truckers, warehouse workers, dockers and crane operators – all blue-collar occupations, mostly connected to ports or retail like Amazon and Wal-Mart. He then goes on to describe how janitors in a building could bring a skyscraper or building to a halt; how teachers can disrupt a whole state or geographic area in the field of social reproduction, as they did in West Virginia. Womack looks carefully at the UAW's attempt in Canton, AL to unionize that plant, and points out 4 failures that go beyond these 'choke' point issues. So the clarity of his own view of 'strategic' unionism is muddied a bit. He discusses the ideas of sociologist Erik Olin Wright about the 'associational' power and 'structural power' of labor, leaning to the latter. The former relates to proletarian ties within and without the workplace, the latter the dominant position in the production or distribution system.

Womack is some kind of socialist or anti-capitalist, but nearly all of this book is relegated to unions and union power. He does not place unionism in the normal functioning of a capitalist welfare state, which it is. He has almost no political or organizational tack outside unions for the U.S., though once he mentions the need to work in either the Democratic Party or a new Party of unspecified nature. He clearly endorses Sanders but only as aside. He makes a weird crack about Trotskyists who talk about 'the point of production' in the singular - as if they meant that to be a granular statement. He considers the USSR to have been revolutionary until 1927 or 1933, so perhaps he is a Bukharinite or neo-CP in outlook.

THE TEN + TWO

After the interview by Olney, 10 prominent labor activists share their perspective on his idea of 'strategic' unionism. The introductions by Olney and Perusek say mostly common, anodyne points that are overly familiar and have yet to raise labor. Perusek even praises Ray Roger's 'corporate campaign' of consumer 'power' during the P9 strike here in Minnesota, which actually signaled the defeat of that strike. Most of these organizers have differences with Womack, which shows how the official labor movement is all over the map. At least they agree on some form of class struggle, of broad labor movementism over business unionism.

#1 – Bill Fletcher, Jr. (Former AFL-CIO organizer). After making a point about how Mao Zedong sought out the peasantry instead of the working class, Fletcher seems to say that work-places are only part of a broader community struggle, and that 'choke-points' could be outside them.

#2 – Dan DiMaggio (Labor Notes). DiMaggio puts an emphasis on 'reviving the strike' and emphasizes the point that seeing sources of real leverage outside of workers is a dead-end.

#3 – Katy Fox-Hodess (Sheffield professor). Fox-Hodess maintains that associational power is more important than strategic power, citing examples of dockers who were not able to leverage their position until they gained solidarity. She also mentions the role of the state in clearing 'key' bottlenecks.

#4 - Cary Dall (ILWU-BMW organizer). Dall supports a comprehensive strategy where port and rail workers meet, but cites the important role of socialist organizers among workers in the face of the backwardness of union officials.

#5 - Jack Metzgar (CP-Roosevelt U professor). Metzgar insists that the question of either 'associational' or 'structural' power is a non-starter, a non-dialectical approach, as both relate to power. He thinks 'non-strategic' workers should still organize and you can't really tell them not to.  Not sure that is what Womack is saying.

#6 – Joel Ochoa (DSA-Immigrant organizer). Ochoa supports labor forming alliances with immigrants, youth, women, minorities, as was done in LA by the ILGWU and Justice for Janitors, along with work in non-strategic sectors.

#7 – Rand Wilson (OCAW organizer). Wilson agrees with Womack on the vulnerability of capital when it reorganizes or introduces new tech. He especially highlights IT workers, who are excluded from many union bargaining units but are crucial to shutting down a business. This was a point made long ago by Hardt and Negri on the 'cyber proletariat.'

#8 – Jane McAlevey (Health worker organizer). McAlevey highlights the role of women workers and social reproduction 'choke-points' run by health workers and public sector teachers.

#9 - Melissa Shetler (Cornell Labor outreach director). Shetler puts the emphasis on education inside trade unions and as part of union campaigns.

#10 – Gene Bruskin (UFCW Organizer). Bruskin tells the story of how Smithfield Foods was unionized over years, highlighting the strike activity of 90 stockyard workers out of a total workforce of 5,000 that sparked victory.

Smithfield Foods in North Carolina

All these organizers seem to be drawing on their own particular sectoral experiences, without much references to theory or revolutionary ideas. Womack responds to some perhaps 'mulish' comments by restating a Marxist insight into capitalism, which is that surplus value created by labor is it's primal, motivating force. So an effective shut-off of production results in the most pain for capital. He does not address the point that capital will forgo profits sometimes to bully labor.  He references how his studies of the Mexican Revolution showed the proletarian power of key groups like electric, machine and rail workers, who then led broader working-class struggles. His point about 'technical' strengths relates to tools, not tech – though computers are also tools.

Womack repeats that not just any site or matrix will do. He links the peasants of Russia or China to the the urban U.S. 'peasants' of the precariat and 'self-employed' - though this stretchy analogy misses the fact that an urban and rural precariat has existed since capital developed. He looks at how the Bolsheviks organized key groups of workers, which was not the practice in China until later. His emphasis on revolutions – in Mexico, Russia and China – seems to be the dividing line between the small-bore reformism of most U.S. unionists and Womack's vision. However Womack ignores any transitional demands, any advocacy of a revolutionary party, a revolutionary front, a labor party or independent political action. He ignores the state but does mention 'workplace councils' several times, though with no content. So his singular emphasis on union power, useful as it is, is insufficient in a larger, revolutionary context – which seems to be his real focus.

Womack takes short shots at some of the contributions. Of note, Womack reminds us that the heroic but isolated Mexican EZLN guerrilla movement has essentially failed.  This is a useful book for unionists as to debates within labor, but ultimately it's pretty damn sad given the repetition of familiar tactics and strategies by most of the participants.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: "Erik Olin Wright," “labor movement,” “unions,” or 'strikes.'

And I bought it at May Day Books, which carries lots of labor books. 

FYI - the 20 year rift between the SEIU-led 'Change to Win' coalition and the AFL-CIO is over, as of 1/8.

Red Frog / January 8, 2025

"Bomb, bomb, bomb ... bomb Iran."

 “Inside Iran – the Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran” by Medea Benjamin, 2018

This is a straight-forward pocket history, culture and political primer about Iran by a prominent U.S. anti-war activist, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink. Benjamin is known for disrupting Congressional hearings with signs and shouts, a form of political theater that hints at another name - 'Media” Benjamin. But here she writes as a researcher into Iranian history, politics and economics. Once the Trump II administration starts, Iran will once again be in the enhanced cross-hairs of U.S. foreign policy. Trump's earlier administration scuttled the working Iranian nuclear agreement in 2015 negotiated by Obama.

Most of this information is already known to anti-war activists and a bit dated. Benjamin asserts that if only U.S. citizens 'knew more' about Iran, they would not be so susceptible to the government's hostility to Iran. The idea that the political elite or citizens will read this book and reject U.S. policy is somewhat naive - but then so is the U.S. anti-war movement's whole reformist approach. Benjamin herself is a left-liberal unconnected to Marxism. At the same time she rejects the reactionary 'geo-political' types who ignore class or democracy in favor of any group that opposes the U.S. The anti-working class Iranian mullahs style themselves as 'anti-imperialists' after all! Instead she looks to internal youth demographics to move Iran in a more democratic direction.

What can we learn from this book that is relatively unknown?

The first point Benjamin makes is that Iran has a long, long history of independent existence, in spite of the many invasions of Persia over the centuries. From Cyrus the Great in 550 B.C. it's been an enduring coherent area for 2,500 years. In the late 1800s the Russian Czar and the British Parliament both had their hands in controlling Iran. In 1906 it had a Constitutional Revolution, which was reversed. In recent times, the pivotal event was the CIA-MI6 coup against Mossadegh in 1953, which put the son of Shah Pahlavi in power. This protected U.S. and British (later called BP) oil interests in Iran, which Mossadegh had nationalized. The 1953 coup against a progressive nationalist backfired, first enabling a vicious dictatorial Shah and then the Iranian Right after he was gone. Since 1979 an Islamic theocracy has dominated the country when it took over leadership of the revolution after the overthrow of the Shah. A year before that overthrow the sainted Jimmy Carter praised the Shah as “an island of stability,” later inviting him to the U.S. for medical treatment. Since then hostile U.S. policy has played the biggest role in keeping the Shiite theocrats in power against their own labor movement, Azeri, Kurdish, Turkic or Baluchistani minorities, peasants, middle-class and the urban population.

Benjamin supported the Green Movement's mass demonstrations against the conservative Iranian ruling class and its economic policies in 2009-2010. She wrote this book before the mass demonstrations in 2022 against the regime's sexist hijab and women's policies that started after the death of Mahsa Amini. She has little to say about the labor movement strikes, unions and the like. Strikes in Iran are illegal but frequent; union leaders are jailed; labor is treated as an enemy by the state. She mentions the CP's Tudeh Party once. Being a socialist in Iran is illegal, so many went underground, were killed or have fled the country. Her only position is that U.S. citizens work against aggressive war moves by the U.S. - an incomplete, parochial platform. Benjamin blames Israel, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. weapons industry, AIPAC and domestic war hawks for the U.S. position on Iran. She seems to think U.S. policy doesn't have a geo-political, corporate and economic agenda of its own.

Economically, Iran is the second largest economy in the ME after Saudi Arabia. It is a petrostate dominated by large deposits of oil and gas, but has other sectors in its 80 million population. The Iranian ruling class consists of clerics, the Revolutionary Guard, the bazaar of urban small businessmen and merchants, the rural landlords and the big capitalists. After an initial spread of nationalizations, between 1988-2003 Iran began privatizing assets. The Shia clerics, religious foundations (bonyads) and the Guard now own large chunks of the economy and are invested in capitalist methods. The foundations are estimated to own 20-40% and the Guard's 30% percent.

The government itself, while having a parliament after the British model, is legally dominated by a Shia Supreme Leader, a Guardian Council and an 'Assembly of Experts.' There is direct clerical control of the voting process, the Sharia judiciary, the Basij morality police, the Revolutionary Guard, the intel services and the military. The hardliners can veto anything that is 'un-Islamic' coming out of the 'elected' unicameral parliament. Certain religious sects like the Baha'i are outlawed, along with many other un-Islamic practices too numerous to mention, but you can guess. Yet, as is well known, fewer and fewer inside Iran follow Islamic prayers or teachings.

Benjamin goes into Iran's relations with every country in the Middle East; countries like China and Russia, their allies in 'non-state' actors like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, PFLP and IJ. She goes into the many ups and downs of international diplomacy, including Iranian attempts to negotiate over crucial issues that were repeatedly ignored by the U.S. She describes the vile '80-'88 Iraq-Iran war, where the U.S. supplied both sides and the instability brought by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which later rebounded to Iran's benefit. Added to this are the various atrocities carried out by the U.S., including the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner in 1988 by Navy warships in the Persian Gulf. Sanctions, SWIFT blockage, seizure of assets and the like have been bipartisan moves from the Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and now Biden administrations. Like Cuba and Venezuela, sanctions have not 'worked' except to immiserate the populations.

Internally within Iran there is a constant see-saw between the clerical establishment and more democratic 'reformers.' It is clear that the 'reformers' can never bring more democracy without an overthrow of the entrenched Islamic ruling elite, which controls the economy. This will have to be the work of revolutionary organizations and a united front inside the country, which as yet has no large organized presence except as temporary electoral coalitions. As long as the U.S. government uses sanctions and violence to harass Iran, this will be more difficult. No one wants to be seen as the patsy of the U.S., as are the right-wing terrorists of the Mojahedin-E-Khlaq (MEK) backed by the U.S.

This primer will give you a short inside look into Iran as the war drums bang again.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms: “Iran,” “Islam,” “Lipstick Jihad,” “The Death of the Nation” (Prashad); “RFK Jr. The Libertarian,” “Argo,” “Libertarian Atheism versus Liberal Religionism,” “Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire,” “The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism” (Amin); “FGM.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / January 5, 2025

Anti-Fascist Series #15: Dominionism

 “American Fascists – The Christian Right and the War on America” by Chris Hedges, 2006

This is a seemingly prophetic book, peering into the soul of Christian Dominionists who seek a Biblical Kingdom in North America. And who better than divinity school dropout and son of a preacher-man pastor Chris Hedges to tell the story of 'Christo-fascism'? Since 2006 the story has gotten worse, adding aspects of authoritarianism that Hedges only hints at or ignores. In 2006 he was an anti-communist and as such skips the key material roots of fascism and authoritarianism under capitalism, concentrating on ideology. He does this by perhaps getting too close and personal with the Dominionists, describing their ideas to a clueless public of NYT readers. So what has he got to say?

Dominionism comes from a Bible quote that reads: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen1:28) You might note this justifies the current butchery of nature, which Dominionists think is inexhaustible.

Hedges defines fascist ideas by citing Italian author Umberto Eco's 14 points. Among them are tradition, a rejection of modernism, action for action's sake, an attack on reasoning, a frustrated middle-class, identity seeking, elitism, machismo, selective populism and making words mean nothing or changing their meaning. His own chapters concern the Book of Revelation, an apocalyptic book in the 'New' Testament which still inspires the Christian Right. It infuses their support for Israel, as the end-times battle between Christ and the Anti-Christ will supposedly take place there. This 'Day of Wrath' looks forward to the chosen being 'raptured, while the rest are drowned in a sea of blood, a revenge fantasy better than any violent U.S. movie.  For QAnon, it was turned into 'The Storm.'

The 'Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives' collects millions of tax dollars for religious social programs, a program started by G.W. Bush. It is to replace social programs and the Education Department with church charity, religious schools and home schooling. As you can see, these Dominionist visions inspire Trumpists, who will now control both houses of Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court. Hedges points out that even in 2006 fundie ministers were near 50% of the chaplains in the U.S. military –another key bastion of power. Hedges considered Erik Prince's Blackwater as a fundamentalist mercenary army, though he missed most of the other civilian militia's now dedicated to the hard right. Their goal is full government control.

Hedges interviews right-wing Christian anti-abortion activists who come from heavily dysfunctional families in the rust belt or southern states. He visits an Evangelical school for fundamentalist preachers that teaches them how to convert souls through being a false friend and cooking up a 'testimony.' Once brought into the flock, thinking, questioning, doubting or backsliding are 'sins.' They are told to go after vulnerable people in the middle of various crises. Hedges talks to women conned into virtual religious cults by male-centric preachers and ideology, though this is a weak chapter. They are anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-eroticism and pro corporal punishment, with women relegated to the home to have babies. Pleasure is not on the agenda, it is a sin. This has now turned into the trad-wife cult. Hedges attends a conclave of religious broadcasters, many rolling in money. He describes how wealth is the reward for following Jesus, the nut of the prosperity doctrine. Attending is Tim LeHaye, the author of the popular “Left Behind” series about the Rapture. LeHaye was also big on astrology at one time. He talks to leaders of conversion therapy for gays. He visits the bogus Creation Museum in Kentucky and it's pushing of intelligent design, which is the appearance of science, not its actuality. Persecution complexes are also part of their theology, as they think they will be deported on railroad cars to extermination camps.

Hedges shows the historic connections between this movement and the KKK and John Birch Society. As Sinclair Lewis pointed out in “It Can't Happen Here” U.S. fascism will come wrapped in patriotism, Christianity, sexism, whiteness and national intolerance, which Hedges agrees with. Whether Dominionists become full-on fascists is still to be determined, though Hedges thinks they already were in 2006.

Hedges points out the misuse of religious and secular language in their propaganda offensive. Changing words to fit religious meanings; mixing up definitions; making a hash of concepts. The basis is a very simple black and white, God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, good and evil outlook on a complex and nuanced world. These binary dyads substitute for a philosophic, historical, economic or scientific understanding of reality, substituting fantasy instead. Of course even Leftists and liberals are prone to simple-minded thinking. It reminds one of leftish conspiracy theorists who always make the facts, or a fact, fit their political outlook.

Hedges has written a sociology of the fundamentalist mindset from a liberal, secular-humanist and anti-fascist perspective. He has avoided the Dominionist's class connection with a faction of the capitalist class, the need for authoritarian or fascist functioning to prop up their profit rate and the use of domestic violence against dissidents of any kind.  He does include an attack on corporations though. Musk's role in the presidency is exposing part of that, as is the role of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, AP3%ers, the Patriot Front and the rest. It reflects a capitalist system in crisis. Now in 2025 the Dominionists are turbo-charged and closer to absolute power. Their hatred of 'the other' – be they Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, gays, communists, socialists, foreigners, Hindus, atheists, unionists, the U.N., the E.U., universities, science, most of the government – will become explicit foreign and domestic policy. To most politicals all of this is familiar and old school. If this is unfamiliar territory, this book might be valuable to you.

Alvin Toffler wrote that if you don't have a strategy, you will be part of someone else's strategy. The actual labor Left needs an anti-fascist or anti-authoritarian united front to start. Quite simply, the class struggle is going to heat up, which will bring recruits to the 'hard' Left.  However no single group will grow enough to gain sufficient clout to actually hinder the Right.

Prior reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 18 year archive, using these terms: “Anti-Fascist Series #,” or “Hedges.”

And I bought it at May Day's excellent cut-out and used section!

Red Frog / January 2, 2025

"John Barleycorn proved the strongest man at last."

 “John Barleycorn or Alcoholic Memoirs”by Jack London, 1913, re-pub. 1990

This is the story of London's great drunks, starting at ages 5, 7, 15 and 17 years old, which begins a tale told in rot-gut and later, cocktails. Beer, wine and whiskey, saloons and men, toil and the sea-life. He never had a child-hood from this narrative. At the age of 5 while hauling a pail of beer out to his father in the field he dipped his beak and passed out. At 7 he fearfully drank wine at the urging of swarthy Italian desperadoes and nearly died of alcohol poisoning. At 15 he communed with sailors on board a sloop and was sick for days. At 17 he participated in an electoral parade drunk fest and was again on the brink of death.

This was all in the pursuit of adventure, romance and the lure of growing up a real man, not, according to him, the physical taste for booze. Later the seamen of San Francisco Bay became his idols and their life, his. The real turning point towards drink came when he stood at the bar of one of Oakland's waterfront saloons with the most daring oyster pirate on the Bay, Nelson. Nelson stood him to 6 rounds of drinks as a gesture of companionship, but really as a test to see if he would reciprocate. He didn't due to his general and long run of poverty, then felt ashamed. He dug into the stash on his boat and returned to the saloon where he treated the pirate to drinks too, lying that he'd not had money on him. The lesson he learned is that these men drink to socialize and that if you don't respond, you are cast out and are a no-good fellow. As a 'prince' of this realm, the daring ship-master of the Razzle-Dazzle, he had to follow. The sorry result was that the whalers, sealers, oystermen and sailors all drank their earnings away toasting each other and never saved a dime. As he recounts, many Oakland rowdies and seamen he knew died, went to prison or disappeared due to demon alcohol.

These are the lessons of John Barleycorn in the late 1800s. It's a riveting read. The soon-to-be socialist writes a proletarian saga alternating between the Bay, the sea and boring, grueling jobs in jute mills and canneries that paid squat, hinging on drinking episodes. Saloon life is at it's center. The bar bolt-hole was a warm and welcoming refuge everywhere he goes in San Pedro Bay bucket shops, Japanese fishing villages and railroad tramps, full of companionship, drama and I guess you could call it 'love.' Saloon keepers were even bankers of sorts for the likes of him, loaning money at no interest. London went for long periods of time dry onboard or at land-side factory labor, as he insists he was a social drunk at first, not a real alcoholic. His wife thought otherwise. His real love was candy and reading.

A bar in Oakland mentioned many times in the book.

As you can see, women are missing in this tale. While working on-shore London discovers girls and a buddy who knows how to talk to girls. He experiences his first love, this hardened boy-man. And yet both friends end up in saloons to escape the cold and rain, pinching their pennies to stay warm in short bouts with John Barleycorn. London turns away from the sea and grueling factories to a 'career.' He's manipulated by a boss to do the exhausting work of two men for less pay at an electrical facility because he believes in the fairy tale of working his way up from the bottom. Finally he is told the truth, quits and takes another 'adventure path' on the train rails as a hobo, a familiar, liquored-up dead end. He resolves never to be destroyed by manual labor and starts on the 'brain path,' ignoring drink. He joins socialist clubs, debating societies, goes to high school and attends some University. He is becoming the Jack London we know - 'intellectually intoxicated' this time.

Punctuated by one drunk in the Bay town of Benicia due to his drained mental fatigue, he starts on a writing career. London tries to sell his fevered stories and thoughts, but has no takers. So he gets a job at a hot steam laundry, where he again experiences the desire for drink, a siren song now, the lady of the lake beckoning, yet he still resists. At 21 he throws it all up for the Klondike and the chesty adventurers of the barrooms. After a year and a half he brought nothing back from there but scurvy … and stories of course. Unemployed and in desperation he started sending short adventure stories to boy's magazines, journals and newspapers for $5 here and $10 there. This hard-luck memoir becomes a Horatio 'Hornblower' Alger story, which it was all along. He becomes the real Martin Eden.

London's circle of friends and acquaintances rose into the middle-class as he gained success as a writer and a socialist. They drank unknown, exotic liquors and 'cocktails' at home and expected him to do the same. The social bonding of the house parlor and then the ranch house replaced the working-man's saloon. He once got into a drinking bout with youngster 'revolutionaries' in London due to what he calls his 'man-pride.' As he says, he 'outswined the swine,' but he never did it again, as part of being a 'seasoned drinker.' He claimed he never drank when he was alone. Yet to fortify himself from increasingly boring social interactions, he called on John Barleycorn and grew to anticipate the enjoyment of the rush in company. He then descended to regular, heavy cocktail inebriation while drinking solo at his ranch – his extremist way of really 'living.' Even a long 'dry' trip on his ship the Snark ended in port-side rummies. What he calls the “White Logic” of depression and death raised its head.

It's a somewhat tragic story. London died at 40 of dysentery, late-stage alcoholism, renal colic and uremia, while using both morphine and opium for pain. He ends the book with support for Prohibition.  As the English rock band Traffic put it: “And little Sir John and the nut-brown bowl proved the strongest man at last.”

On a political note, a lot of leftists drink, but not quite to stupefaction. Some have become teetotalers because of that. One organization I was around had a bar in the headquarters, while the branch leader was a well-known 'dipsomaniac.' Marx distrusted anyone who wouldn't have a round, but that was in the mid-1800s. Some Austrian Marxists distrusted booze due to its debilitating effects on so many workers. The sodden trail of vodka among the Russian proletariat was evident too. John Barleycorn, indeed. Now drugs have replaced or accompanied booze in many a place. What to do?

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Quick Fixes,” “Antifascism, Sports, Sobriety,” “Red Baker,” “Indian Country Noir,” “The Marijuana Manifesto” (Ventura); “Hillybilly Elegy” (Vance); “Hollywood” and “Post Office” (both by Bukowski); “Bar None Rescue.”

Red Frog / December 28, 2024 / Happy New Year's!

Camel, Meet Needle - Again

 “Jesus – A Life in Class Conflict”by J. Crossley & R.J. Myles, 2023

This is a historical-materialist study of the Jesus movement in ancient Judea and Galilee.  It closely looks at writings about the material conditions of that time, in a land ruled by Rome and dominated by a local elite, both subsisting on taxes, tribute, slavery and corveé labor.  The authors contend, following the work of English historian Eric Hobsbawn, that Jesus was an artisan and leader of a movement against both Rome and the local Temple Pharisees, based on the grievances of the Jewish peasantry.  The struggle was cloaked in moralism, magic and ‘end times’ verbiage, as was common at the time, but the real issues were economic and political.  The authors call it ‘revolutionary millenarianism.’

Their work involves at least 28 sources, principally the 4 Gospels, the Synoptic tradition and the work of historians like Josephus. They are acutely aware of the historical weaknesses and contradictions in the Bible, along with the theological motivations of its various authors, none of whom were writing until long after Jesus’ execution. They make reasonable, grounded points, discard others and propose possible theories when they are not sure.  The authors carefully note when the Gospels insert later things into the past.  In 66-73 CE there was a violent mass rebellion against Rome by the Israelites, and it is logical that Jesus and other prophets laid the groundwork.  In 70 CE Jerusalem was surrounded and the Temple destroyed by the Roman legions. 2 other rebellions followed.  It was only later in the early 300s that Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of Rome – turning Christianity into an ideology of the ruling class.

If you want to understand what was going on at the time, this book is far more level-headed than the magical nonsense dished out in a Bible-study class at your typical church.  I myself have not read the Bible in toto, and I suspect many others have not done so either, so it’s an excellent historical introduction. It might also make the Christian socialists happy – all 8 of you.  Yet you will have to discard the idealist and moralistic baggage that you carry.  It also might make the Maoists happy – after all, this was a peasant movement.

The authors contradict various bourgeois historians that paint Judean social conditions as pleasant; or picture Jesus’ followers as passive ‘believers,’ or think that the movement was led by ‘middle-class’ fisherman.  There was no real middle-class at this time – the fisherman were not much different than local farmer living off subsistence crops. They point out that several mega-building projects, so beloved of those same historians, might have displaced residents, involved forced labor, increased taxes and were resented as bad attempts at ‘modernization.’  Freeway, corporate, mining, oil and stadium projects in our own day play the same role.

Organized & Organizer

The authors picture the disciples as ‘The Twelve’ - a ‘central committee’ of the movement.  They relate their artisanal and rural class backgrounds, with several fisherman, Jesus a carpenter, one a former tax-collector, and several women who had access to money.  They came from small rural villages like Nazareth. The movement was not fully male-centric, as you can see, with Mary Magdalene most prominent, but the authors discount it as feminist.  God was always a ‘Father,’ for instance, and there were strict prohibitions against divorce.  There were 12 tribes of Israel so ‘12’ was a magic number.  The leading members were depicted in the Da Vinci painting The Last Supper. Jesus actually aimed many of his sermons at the rich, telling them they should share their wealth or give it up, leading to repentance.  The authors call this a 'mission to the rich,' sort of like Millionaires for Taxation. This allowed him to gain money to fund the movement from either guilt or threats.  Left-wing groups with sugar-daddies might be familiar with this phenomenon. 

The authors go on to claim this was a ‘vanguard party’ with the goal of a ‘dictatorship of the peasantry,’ but led by new moral kings, really a moral theocracy.  Jesus was the leader of this party, a religious organizer if you will. ‘Vanguard party’ and “dictatorship of the peasantry’ is borrowed from 19^th and 20^th century Marxism and historically seems out of place, though it’s pretty clever.  The movement’s millenarianism, in which God comes down to ‘smite the wicked’ and overturn society, is absent from any Marxist concept of revolution.  Replacing one set of kings with another is against socialism too.  Indeed, the authority of God, miracles, healing and exorcism gave this group credibility, not just their class hostility to the monied elites, the line of Herod or the Roman praetorians.

The present Evangelical prosperity gospelites or the wealthy Catholic, Anglican and Mormon churches will not be happy remembering the Biblical quotes from Jesus about camels and needles, God and Mammon, how the last shall be first or sending the rich away empty. The fate of the poverty-stricken Lazarus in Heaven and the ordinary wealthy man in Hades are the divine rewards imagined by this movement. The Lazarus story explicitly rejects wealth itself…not behavior. The authors refute the idea that this class hostility was just the complaint of ‘out elites’ – scribes who resented their subservient role - as these ideas were also held by ‘crowds,’ ‘multitudes,’ 'mobs' and 'hundreds' of followers in rural areas.  The authors pay special attention to the power of crowds.

Wandering, Pacifism, Non-Jews

A curious question is why Jesus, at the age of about 30, would quit his trade as a carpenter and begin to wander from village to village.  He certainly had no land though he spoke Aramaic and was literate.  Most historians claim it was ‘voluntary,’ a life-style choice so to speak.  Yet why would former farmers and fishermen abandon their work and families to become virtually homeless as wandering cadre?  The authors cannot say definitely, but there might have been economic forces at work that made it the only option left – as it is for many migrants on our own borders. To this day religious street people accept donations as one way of surviving.  Even homeless people scrawl “God Bless” on their cardboard.

The authors refute the idea that Jesus was a pacifist.  The movement’s use of non-violence was a strictly practical tactic, saving violent retribution and judgment for the end times.  The Book of Revelation ending the New Testament tells you all you need to know about their ‘pacifism.’  The Jesus movement embraced the actions of prior ‘manly’ Jewish martyrs – the Maccabees, John the Baptist and the rebels executed by Herod the Great.  So it is no great surprise when Jesus was also martyred. 

The authors point to the movement’s strict adherence to Jewish tradition and law on subjects like circumcision, honoring the Sabbath, pork, purity laws and Jewish holy days so as to gain the confidence of conservative peasants.  For instance divorce was heavily sanctioned by Jesus, perhaps to keep peasant families whole, as children and wives where essential workers on most plots of land.  Child labor is still economically useful to small businessmen on farms and in small shops, as are intact families, both providing free labor for the business.  Hence the social conservatism.

Note that all of this rhetoric was aimed at Jews, not non-Jews like Gentiles, Samaritans, Romans and the like.  Non-Jews only became important as the movement spread out of Palestine's urban centers and began recruiting others.  

Passover

Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem for Passover is a crucial event in the Gospels.  Passover itself is full of political meaning against slavery and oppression – sort of the U.S. 4^th of July or Juneteenth; November 7 in the former USSR or the date of the storming of the Bastille in France.  Jerusalem was packed with Jews arriving from the villages.  Roman legionnaires stood guard at the Temple; volatile and unruly crowds filled the streets.  The Jesus group was in and around the city as revolutionary millenarians, led by a leader pursuing imminent liberation.  It’s not quite Lenin at the Finland Station but you see the setting. 

The key, plausible event that got Jesus arrested and executed was his entry into the Temple itself, where he supposedly overturned the money-changers tables and chased away traders using it as a commercial site, saying it had become a ‘den of bandits.’  The authors suggest that it was quite possible that Jesus’s disciples and followers also participated in shutting down the commercial activities in the Temple. At Jesus’ trial before Pilate there is a mention of an ‘insurrection’ that week involving Barabbas.  At any rate, this was performative politics, but behind it was a general and historical dislike of the corruption, wealth-seeking, idolatry and cruelty of the Temple priests and behind them, the local Jewish elite and their Roman allies. 

Jesus was later quietly arrested at Gethsemane with the help of a traitor in his own organization, Judas.  He was then quickly tried by the High Priest and then Pilate, and condemned to be crucified between two insurrectionists – the actual Greek translation according to the authors. The authors consider Jesus was executed as a ‘deranged insurrectionist’ too.  The Romans supposedly hung an insulting ethno-racialist notation ‘King of the Jews’ above his head.  Crucifixion was the normal Roman method used to punish the lower classes, slaves and foreigners with the most excruciating and shameful death.

Being buried in a ‘rock cut’ tomb was only for the rich – normally a condemned criminal would be thrown into a pit grave or left for feral dogs.  It is possible that his followers retrieved his body.  The story that a powerful and observant Jew, Joseph of Arimathea, asked Pilate if he could take the body to his own crypt is analyzed by the authors, who say it is possible.  At any rate, there is no reliable source as to what happened after Jesus’ crucifixion – the claims are all over the map.  The authors cite visions of Jesus after his death, which became a central element in the Jesus myth.

The Jesus class struggle revolution failed.  No apocalypse appeared from on high.  The 2nd Coming is still in abeyance and will be forever.  Jesus didn't even denounce slavery, so his emancipatory activity only went so far.  This is the real story from the authors point of view.

P.S. - Christian conservatives are now rejecting Jesus as 'too woke.'  How they are going to retain the moniker 'Christian' is beyond me.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1alx8lLGwrc

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Marx on Religion,” “Nonverts,” “Rise of the Nones,” “Libertarian Atheism and Liberal Religionism,” “Jude the Obscure” (Hardy); “Spiritual Snake Oil” "The Dark Side of Christian History,"  “The Great Evil” (Nunpa); “Godless – 150 Years of Unbelief” and “Astrology – (both by Bufe); American Theocracy” (Phillips); “Religulous” (Maher); “Go Tell It On The Mountain” (Baldwin); “The Da Vinci Code” (Brown); “To Serve God and Walmart,” “Marx and Human Nature,” "The Jesus Comics."

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / December 25, 2024 (A reprise of something published in June, 2023)