In what we hope will be a new way for members to communicate. We invite submissions of articles or ideas/links that members want to share with the Anti*Capitalist Resistance community. The comments section is open to site members, so please do critique/debate the ideas discussed.

Anti Capitalist Resistance Member Paul Crofts would like to share a recent article he discovered on the Salvage website. Salvage magazine is a journal of revolutionary arts and letters, committed to publishing the best radical essays, poems, art and fiction. The article in question is written by Richard Seymour and is called ‘Prepared for the Worst: Disaster Nationalism’

Paul writes, “This is a very interesting and challenging article, that’s well worth reading right through to the end. I have to admit getting a bit lost by the psychology stuff in the middle of the piece, which I think may be rather weak as explanatory theories of what I prefer to call “ethno-religious nationalism”, rather than “disaster nationalism”. 

I’m also a tad worried by the rather optimistic (complacent?) tone at the end of the article based, not on any possible successful political strategies from the Left (these appear currently to be rather thin on the ground), but rather a seemingly laissez faire approach – built on the back of the Covid pandemic and our alleged human response to cooperate in the face of such existential  threats.

I am more pessimistic I must say. There may be a great deal of “caring” going on in the face of the pandemic, but is it reserved for “us” rather then “them” (based on the fault lines identified in the article)? Don’t see much “caring” for refugees currently. 

The Left has a great deal of work to do to up its game and quickly develop some alternative narratives/strategies. 

Thank you to Paul for bringing this article to our attention. I hope you will find the time to read the article and engage with the ideas contained within it and also the review that Paul has offered.