Universalizing Resistance – serie

Drawing on historical cases of the American South before and after the Civil War, Europe – especially Germany – between the world wars, and the United States in Vietnam and its aftermath, this book takes a historical approach to explain the problems of capitalism and democratic leadership in western democracies today. Capitalist democracies proclaim equality, material prosperity and comfort but produce extreme differences in wealth and power. They promise security and peace, but deliver frequent wars. The promises broken, elites often turn to other visions- partially borrowed from feudalism- to win public support. Nations turn to honor, nobility and war as a way of winning over workers and legitimating the capitalist system itself. Capitalism’s contradictions often have produced a cultural divide. One side, "cosmopolitans" – urban, see themselves as citizens of the world, not one region or country – identify as secular, preach multi-culturalism, entertain state welfare systems, and are cautious about going to war. Their opponents, "traditionalists," breed among people who feel left behind, anxiousness and insecurity, often embracing community, tradition, God and family. The devastation of the world wars and the Third Reich led Europe to forgo visions of empire, militarism and glory and focus upon improving the quality of life for their own citizens. Although the United States does not need to experience comparable trauma, they should follow Europe’s example- forget glory and instead build a better life for the American people. The last chapter will consider how such a change could emerge in the US and who might help fight for it.

Drawing on historical cases of the American South before and after the Civil War, Europe – especially Germany – between the world wars, and the United States in Vietnam and its aftermath, this book takes a historical approach to explain the problems of capitalism and democratic leadership in western democracies today. Capitalist democracies proclaim equality, material prosperity and comfort but produce extreme differences in wealth and power. They promise security and peace, but deliver frequent wars. The promises broken, elites often turn to other visions- partially borrowed from feudalism- to win public support. Nations turn to honor, nobility and war as a way of winning over workers and legitimating the capitalist system itself. Capitalism’s contradictions often have produced a cultural divide. One side, "cosmopolitans" – urban, see themselves as citizens of the world, not one region or country – identify as secular, preach multi-culturalism, entertain state welfare systems, and are cautious about going to war. Their opponents, "traditionalists," breed among people who feel left behind, anxiousness and insecurity, often embracing community, tradition, God and family. The devastation of the world wars and the Third Reich led Europe to forgo visions of empire, militarism and glory and focus upon improving the quality of life for their own citizens. Although the United States does not need to experience comparable trauma, they should follow Europe’s example- forget glory and instead build a better life for the American people. The last chapter will consider how such a change could emerge in the US and who might help fight for it.

In his new book, Noam Chomsky writes cogently about the threats to planetary survival that are of growing alarm today. The prospect of human extinction emerged after World War II, the dawn of a new era scientists now term the Anthropocene. Chomsky uniquely traces the duality of existential threats from nuclear weapons and from climate change—including how the concerns emerged and evolved, and how the threats can interact with one another. The introduction and accompanying interviews place these dual threats in a framework of unprecedented corporate global power which has overtaken nation states’ ability to control the future and preserve the planet. Chomsky argues for the urgency of international climate and arms agreements, showing how global popular movements are mobilizing to force governments to meet this unprecedented challenge to civilization’s survival.

In his new book, Noam Chomsky writes cogently about the threats to planetary survival that are of growing alarm today. The prospect of human extinction emerged after World War II, the dawn of a new era scientists now term the Anthropocene. Chomsky uniquely traces the duality of existential threats from nuclear weapons and from climate change—including how the concerns emerged and evolved, and how the threats can interact with one another. The introduction and accompanying interviews place these dual threats in a framework of unprecedented corporate global power which has overtaken nation states’ ability to control the future and preserve the planet. Chomsky argues for the urgency of international climate and arms agreements, showing how global popular movements are mobilizing to force governments to meet this unprecedented challenge to civilization’s survival.

Turnout! offers strategies for "emergency elections," like the 2020 races, and addresses the nuts-and-bolts for civic groups and individuals to effectively turn out the vote. Indeed, few elections in recent history represent the kind of apocalyptic turning point for our planet and democracy as the present one. Turnout! is both a creative work of political vision combined with a detailed manual for turning out millions of new voters.Participation at local, state, and federal levels will have an outsized impact on the future of democracy and life itself. The elections also provide an opportunity to power-up social movements that can re-frame and re-define civic participation in an age of extreme inequality, climate change, and pandemics.Contributors include powerful movement leaders Maria Teresa Kumar (Voto Latino), Aimee Allison (She the People), Winona LaDuke (Honor the Earth), and Matt Nelson (Presente.org); leading public officials advocating greater voter engagement like Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, and councilors Helen Gym and Nikki Fortunato Bas. Turnout! reveals strategies and real-world tactics to mobilize millions of discouraged, apathetic, or suppressed voters, including women, low-income, Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, LGBTQIA+, student and youth, and working-class voters.

Turnout! offers strategies for "emergency elections," like the 2020 races, and addresses the nuts-and-bolts for civic groups and individuals to effectively turn out the vote. Indeed, few elections in recent history represent the kind of apocalyptic turning point for our planet and democracy as the present one. Turnout! is both a creative work of political vision combined with a detailed manual for turning out millions of new voters.Participation at local, state, and federal levels will have an outsized impact on the future of democracy and life itself. The elections also provide an opportunity to power-up social movements that can re-frame and re-define civic participation in an age of extreme inequality, climate change, and pandemics.Contributors include powerful movement leaders Maria Teresa Kumar (Voto Latino), Aimee Allison (She the People), Winona LaDuke (Honor the Earth), and Matt Nelson (Presente.org); leading public officials advocating greater voter engagement like Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, and councilors Helen Gym and Nikki Fortunato Bas. Turnout! reveals strategies and real-world tactics to mobilize millions of discouraged, apathetic, or suppressed voters, including women, low-income, Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, LGBTQIA+, student and youth, and working-class voters.

Those who regard him as a “doom and gloom” critic will find an unexpected Chomsky in these pages. Here the world-renowned author speaks for the first time in depth about his career in activism, and his views and tactics. Chomsky offers new and intimate details about his life-long experience as an activist, revealing him as a critic with deep convictions and many surprising insights about movement strategies. The book points to new directions for activists today, including how the crises of the Coronavirus and the economic meltdown are exploding in the critical 2020 US presidential election year. Readers will find hope and new pathways toward a sustainable, democratic world.

Those who regard him as a “doom and gloom” critic will find an unexpected Chomsky in these pages. Here the world-renowned author speaks for the first time in depth about his career in activism, and his views and tactics. Chomsky offers new and intimate details about his life-long experience as an activist, revealing him as a critic with deep convictions and many surprising insights about movement strategies. The book points to new directions for activists today, including how the crises of the Coronavirus and the economic meltdown are exploding in the critical 2020 US presidential election year. Readers will find hope and new pathways toward a sustainable, democratic world.

This is an original, accessible book for scholars, students, activists, and the general public on the greatest crisis the world has faced. The authors challenge the widespread notion that a green and peaceful set of technological reforms in the current economic and political system – perhaps a “green capitalism” – can prevent disaster. Dying for Capitalism analyzes the “triangle of extinction” that links capitalism, environmental destruction, and militarism as a system that cannot sustain life on the planet. The authors analyze how the extinction triangle evolved historically, how it functions globally as integral to the world capitalist order, and how the United States has become the dominant “extinction nation.” They also show how recent anti-democratic and anti-scientific cultural and political forces intensify denial of the threat and subordinate health and survival to profit and extreme concentrated power.The book offers a “slender path” of social and political transformation that can prevent catastrophe. The path requires moving beyond current ruling systems. But possibilities of survival arise from action at local, state, regional, and global levels through multiple strategies and movements that already exist. The authors draw on the history of abolitionism and emancipation from slavery in the United States to show how a system that appears unchangeable can be transformed, while describing organizations, movements, and practices that are models of hope and a shift from the triangle of extinction to the “circle of creation.”

This is an original, accessible book for scholars, students, activists, and the general public on the greatest crisis the world has faced. The authors challenge the widespread notion that a green and peaceful set of technological reforms in the current economic and political system – perhaps a “green capitalism” – can prevent disaster. Dying for Capitalism analyzes the “triangle of extinction” that links capitalism, environmental destruction, and militarism as a system that cannot sustain life on the planet. The authors analyze how the extinction triangle evolved historically, how it functions globally as integral to the world capitalist order, and how the United States has become the dominant “extinction nation.” They also show how recent anti-democratic and anti-scientific cultural and political forces intensify denial of the threat and subordinate health and survival to profit and extreme concentrated power.The book offers a “slender path” of social and political transformation that can prevent catastrophe. The path requires moving beyond current ruling systems. But possibilities of survival arise from action at local, state, regional, and global levels through multiple strategies and movements that already exist. The authors draw on the history of abolitionism and emancipation from slavery in the United States to show how a system that appears unchangeable can be transformed, while describing organizations, movements, and practices that are models of hope and a shift from the triangle of extinction to the “circle of creation.”

Charles Derber shows how the US is moving toward sociocide – the erosion of durable, positive social relations in the economy, family, politics, and civil society essential to sustaining society itself – while offering pragmatic solutions.Bonfire: American Sociocide, Broken Relations, and the Quest for Democracy examines how new technologies and financial strategies are part of broader economic, environment, cultural, and political shifts that create tipping points generating more competition, distrust, isolation, and violence. In doing so, Derber spells out the implications for democracy and social cohesion. Importantly, he explores options that could stop the spiral and reconstruct a sustainable and equitable community, civil society, and democracy via emerging movements against neoliberalism capitalism, climate change, war – and in favor of labor solidarity, human rights, and community.This book will be of interest to students, scholars and activists with an interest in political sociology, political economy, and social movements in the US.

Charles Derber shows how the US is moving toward sociocide – the erosion of durable, positive social relations in the economy, family, politics, and civil society essential to sustaining society itself – while offering pragmatic solutions.Bonfire: American Sociocide, Broken Relations, and the Quest for Democracy examines how new technologies and financial strategies are part of broader economic, environment, cultural, and political shifts that create tipping points generating more competition, distrust, isolation, and violence. In doing so, Derber spells out the implications for democracy and social cohesion. Importantly, he explores options that could stop the spiral and reconstruct a sustainable and equitable community, civil society, and democracy via emerging movements against neoliberalism capitalism, climate change, war – and in favor of labor solidarity, human rights, and community.This book will be of interest to students, scholars and activists with an interest in political sociology, political economy, and social movements in the US.

This book uniquely demonstrates how a new combination of communities, progressive visions, and strategies provide a path to defeat fascist machinations and strengthen social justice movements.Would-be change agents, be they first-time voters, freshly minted activists, impacted communities, or veteran strategists will find answers to questions of voting, organizing, and mobilization. In doing so, readers will find answers to activating their networks and communities not merely to vote, but how to build on their "Emergency Election" mobilizing and power-building efforts to win their agendas, regardless of who wins.This theoretically and empirically-informed handbook for activists, voters, their organizations, unions, and communities provides both mobilizing tools and talking points about the elections’ most vital and contested issues.

This book uniquely demonstrates how a new combination of communities, progressive visions, and strategies provides a path to defeat fascist machinations and strengthens social justice movements. Taking the incredible twists and turns of elections as a given, the book takes the issues, grievances and solutions of social movements as its grounding.Would-be change agents, be they first-time voters, freshly minted activists, impacted communities, or veteran strategists, will find answers to questions of voting, organizing, and mobilization. In doing so, readers will find answers to activating their networks and communities not merely to vote, but how to build on their “Emergency Election” mobilizing and power-building efforts to win their agendas, regardless of who holds office.This theoretically and empirically informed handbook for activists, voters, their organizations, unions, and communities provides both mobilizing tools and talking points about the elections’ most vital and contested issues.

This book offers a new analysis of why Trump’s Far Right populism helped him win the Presidency twice, and how it enshrined a corporate establishment that he claimed to run against. Charles Derber presents a counter history of positive left populism and argues that populist parties gain power in eras of hard times for working people while mainstream parties lose voter support as they defend the existing system.Fighting Oligarchy: How Positive Populism Can Reclaim America makes the unorthodox case that only a left-leaning positive populist movement is likely to defeat Trump and his corporate regime. Derber highlights the core principles of resistance to build a new and sustainable US democracy.

This book offers a new analysis of why Trump’s Far Right populism helped him win the Presidency twice, and how it enshrined a corporate establishment that he claimed to run against. Charles Derber presents a counter history of positive left populism and argues that populist parties gain power in eras of hard times for working people while mainstream parties lose voter support as they defend the existing system.Fighting Oligarchy: How Positive Populism Can Reclaim America makes the unorthodox case that only a left-leaning positive populist movement is likely to defeat Trump and his corporate regime. Derber highlights the core principles of resistance to build a new and sustainable US democracy.

In contrast to much of the current literature that treats Trump’s authoritarianism as new and singular, this book shows that authoritarianism in the United States instead has a long history that explains the extent to which authoritarianism has been embraced by large sections of US voters.Wired for Authoritarianism combines historical analysis with an innovative conceptual analysis of the “wiring” of power, drawing on the study of the power elite developed by the sociologist C. Wright Mills and neo‑Marxist literature. Connecting the social and political culture of the elite to the ideas of state and societal capture, as well as novel concepts of covert and overt wiring of power, this book argues that the Trump era has moved America from a long‑standing, mainly covert authoritarian structure toward a more dominant and overt authoritarianism—from a position in which oligarchs exercise power from outside of official government positions to one in which corporate oligarchs are directly in top government positions.This book offers original insights and sober hope for all those seeking deep and sustainable democracy in America, summarizing strategies drawn from history and current anti‑authoritarian movements to defeat this new turn and create a new democratic wiring of America for the people. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and activists with an interest in political sociology, political economy and social movements in the US, as well as to the general public in the US and around the world.

In contrast to much of the current literature that treats Trump’s authoritarianism as new and singular, this book shows that authoritarianism in the United States instead has a long history that explains the extent to which authoritarianism has been embraced by large sections of US voters.Wired for Authoritarianism combines historical analysis with an innovative conceptual analysis of the “wiring” of power, drawing on the study of the power elite developed by the sociologist C. Wright Mills and neo‑Marxist literature. Connecting the social and political culture of the elite to the ideas of state and societal capture, as well as novel concepts of covert and overt wiring of power, this book argues that the Trump era has moved America from a long‑standing, mainly covert authoritarian structure toward a more dominant and overt authoritarianism—from a position in which oligarchs exercise power from outside of official government positions to one in which corporate oligarchs are directly in top government positions.This book offers original insights and sober hope for all those seeking deep and sustainable democracy in America, summarizing strategies drawn from history and current anti‑authoritarian movements to defeat this new turn and create a new democratic wiring of America for the people. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and activists with an interest in political sociology, political economy and social movements in the US, as well as to the general public in the US and around the world.

Written in the form of letters to the people rallying in the “resistance” for freedom and democracy, Charles Derber details elements of popular action to defeat the authoritarianism of President Trump and his allied corporate oligarchs.Letters to the Resistance draws on Derber’s experience in the Civil Rights movement and mobilization against the war in Vietnam to offer lessons that help protesters sustain resistance. Each letter imparts essential lessons of resistance learned by previous generations, highlighting the necessity of building resistance networks, confronting capitalism, and the use of populism and electoralism – emphasising that true democracy cannot be created by returning to life before Trump.Addressed to students, activists, and the general public, these letters detail the fundamentals of resistance to not only defeat Trump but change the conditions that gave rise to fascism.

When the Women’s March gathered millions just one day after Trump’s inauguration, a new era of progressive action was born. Organizing on the far Right led to Trump’s election, bringing authoritarianism and the specter of neo-fascism, and intensifying corporate capitalism’s growing crises of inequality and injustices. Yet now we see a new universalizing resistance among progressive and left movements for truth, dignity, and a world based on democracy, equality, and sustainability. Derber ​offers the first comprehensive guide to this new era and an original vision and strategy for movement success. He convincingly shows how only a new ​universalizing​ wave, a ​progressive​ and revolutionary "movement of movements," can counter the world-universalizing economic and cultural forces of intensifying corporate and far-right power.Derber explores the crises and eroding legitimacy of the globalized​ capitalist system ​and the right wing movements​ that helped create the Trump era​​. He shows​ how​ left universalizing movements can--and must—converge ​ to propel a​ mass base that can prevent societal, economic, or ecological collapse, stop a resurgent Right, and build a democratic social alternative. He describes tactics and strategies for ​this​new progressive movement. Brief guest "interludes" by Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Bill Fletcher, Juliet Schor, Gar Alperovitz, Chuck Collins, Matt Nelson, Janet Wallace, and other prominent figures tell how to coalesce and universalize activism into a more powerful movement wave—at local, community, national, and international levels. Vivid and highly accessible, this​ book is for activists, students, and all ​citizens concerned about the erosion of justice and democracy. It thoroughly illuminates the rationale, theory, practice, ​humanism, love, ​and joy of ​the​ ​social transformation that we urgently need.

When the Women’s March gathered millions just one day after Trump’s inauguration, a new era of progressive action was born. Organizing on the far Right led to Trump’s election, bringing authoritarianism and the specter of neo-fascism, and intensifying corporate capitalism’s growing crises of inequality and injustices. Yet now we see a new universalizing resistance among progressive and left movements for truth, dignity, and a world based on democracy, equality, and sustainability. Derber ​offers the first comprehensive guide to this new era and an original vision and strategy for movement success. He convincingly shows how only a new ​universalizing​ wave, a ​progressive​ and revolutionary "movement of movements," can counter the world-universalizing economic and cultural forces of intensifying corporate and far-right power.Derber explores the crises and eroding legitimacy of the globalized​ capitalist system ​and the right wing movements​ that helped create the Trump era​​. He shows​ how​ left universalizing movements can--and must—converge ​ to propel a​ mass base that can prevent societal, economic, or ecological collapse, stop a resurgent Right, and build a democratic social alternative. He describes tactics and strategies for ​this​new progressive movement. Brief guest "interludes" by Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Bill Fletcher, Juliet Schor, Gar Alperovitz, Chuck Collins, Matt Nelson, Janet Wallace, and other prominent figures tell how to coalesce and universalize activism into a more powerful movement wave—at local, community, national, and international levels. Vivid and highly accessible, this​ book is for activists, students, and all ​citizens concerned about the erosion of justice and democracy. It thoroughly illuminates the rationale, theory, practice, ​humanism, love, ​and joy of ​the​ ​social transformation that we urgently need.

While security stories often point to real threats, the narratives of leaders are as much about legitimating the power of rulers and the political and economic system that brought them to power. Derber and Magrass offer a penetrating examination of this phenomenon across history and types of societies. Their analysis reveals the great irony about security stories: they historically increase insecurity, imperiling citizens and nation. In the US today, the contradiction is especially acute, as security stories told by Trump divide US citizens against one another.The book builds from an analysis of the extreme dangers of the prevailing security stories to a new paradigm of true security. The authors develop new approaches as our best hope for avoiding catastrophe and creating a socially just society based on real security for a nation and for humans across the planet.