A very excellent piece by a young activist, especially if you have curiosity about Wilfrid Bion's group relations stuff, failures in left activism and your own mind. TL;DR: fracturing in left-wing groups often happens because being in a group is *hard*, especially under capitalism.

Well damn. Assata Shakur died yesterday. These words of hers hold a big lesson for the left still, in a time when it's unfashionable to speak about love as a revolutionary force, mostly because we don't know what it is, or what that means.

List 3 things you can talk about for 3 hours without prep: 1. Play in babies & young children 2. Trauma response in CSA & women experiencing DV. 3. Life & work of Sylvia Townsend Warner. (Bonus content: Jacques Tati; Lyrics of Joe Strummer; life of Stephen Maturin; psychopathy in Oz politics)

Rubbish day. But I got onto this new book on one of the more mindbending Nag Hammadi texts via Lauren Piko, & came across a good doco on the composer Olivier Messiaen made when he was still alive. Kind of gave a weird religious vibe to the day, but I'll take it. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Az_T...

In FREUD (a good primer if you want to investigate psychoanalytic thinking) Lear writes about fascist fragility & mass killing & how they go together. I think about this passage a lot in relation to genocidal politics & other forms of patriarchal murder.

Well, fuck. Just saw Jonathan Lear, psychoanalyst & philosopher, has died. I was compiling a list of hopeful texts yesterday, & his RADICAL HOPE was on the list. Years ago I wrote about the dream of the child Plenty Coups which JL describes in that book. overland.org.au/2010/04/the-...

I’m sorry to learn that Jonathan Lear has died. His book Radical Hope is one of the deepest and wisest books I’ve read this decade. If you’ve not read it, I’d recommend it. It’s a book for the dark times we’re in.

Just a reminder, if anyone needed one, that transphobes are people with psychosis. The only thing that will shift their state of mind is an inevitable breakdown. In the meantime, removing their capacity to cause harm - deplatforming, full rights for trans people etc - is the best remedy.

Battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life: 1. Not doomscrolling. 2. Watching Jacques Tati movies 3. Having frequent naps 4. Talking to babies, children & cats 5. Baking cakes, eating them & repeating ‘I’d rather be a pig than a fascist’.

If every trans person in existence departed Earth for Transexual Transylvania, fascists & terfs (who are fascists) would still be frothing like rabid animals about the evils of being trans, and seeing trans people behind every crime. Solidarity & love to trans people everywhere.

Albo's petulant lying about protesters is a dead giveaway about how enraged he is by the huge marches for Gaza. Infuriated that his innate goodness should be questioned, he is resentful that he should do anything to prove it. A weird, scared, spineless little guy. www.newsbeep.com/au/145143/

Absolutely the latter. Collapsing capitalism's repression is identical with that of the abusive man: the more independent family members want to be the more coercive & controlling he becomes. It's a dangerous situation, as proximity to escape can bring lethal violence. But escape is on the cards.

There is something in this. I could write a book on how politicians, oligarchs, trigger-happy groypers, fascist grifters etc, all share structurally isomorphic similarities in damaged infant mental health, facilitated as they grow by class & gender under capitalism.

Symposium at Royal Melbourne on children in war has been cancelled. Zionists objected because Gaza would be discussed. Just astounding what reach these weirdos have & how quickly institutions cave to them. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

Or alternatively, they don't really believe climate chaos is coming & are consumed by magical thinking whose basic premise is that we proles are wimps who don't understand how things *really* work. They believe the Big Other of Manifest White Destiny will always make sure things are just dandy.

Very ordinary days can be so splendid. Gorgeous weather. Had lunch at local Ezidi caff, found 3 excellent 2nd hand books at op shop, planted a ton of natives while talking with my daughter about politics, anime, cats. She also gave me a small bust of Bianca Castafiore. Just a fab day all round.

Excellent detective work from indie publisher Tiny Owl Workshop with definitive proof that Meanjin's shuttering was very obviously not for 'financial reasons'. So, why was it closed down? 🤔

One of the funniest things about Kirk vacating the planet is that all the other US nazis are now obviously terrified that the same thing could happen to them. The violence was only ever supposed to be one way. Utterly fragile people, continually in the grip of primal terror.

Hard agree, except to say things can actually flow v quickly. Fountain pens changed the way I write & think. If you write a lot, they're easier on the hand, too. And an $800 Mont Blanc doesn't write 20 times better than a $40 Lamy.

This was excellent. Araluen clearly laid out how suss the whole deal with Meanjin is, how easily it could have been avoided, why Oz literary journals actually matter & how subscribing to them makes them less hostage to the whims of funding bodies who may have topics they'd prefer nobody talk about.

Yes, finally a piece by the great Kate Crawford whose ATLAS OF AI nailed the current slop nightmare very early. Using Marx's idea of metabolic disruption, Crawford shows how AI fills 'information ecosystems with torrents of shit, endless digital detritus which is never properly flushed out'.

This × one million. Reading a novel by an acclaimed Australian novelist is generally such a dispiriting experience. It's like everyone is cosplaying at being 'literary' and serious. It seems like an impossibly narcissistic & insular structure to break down.

Bessette also lived in Sydney for a year, worked at Colgate (in 1949) & wrote a novel about it, La Route Bleue. It's still untranslated I think, but apparently portrays Sydney (& Colgate) as sites of carefree happiness, land of smiles & so on.

Timeline cleanser for those with a minute. Grace Slick (Jazz Number 7) and the Pointer Sisters (Pinball No. 4) from Sesame Street’s great early animation shorts. www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...

'I'm just trying to have breakfast! Can you guys go & squabble somewhere else? I said I'll play with you later'.

Lifton interviewed many Nazi doctors at length in the 1980s, an extraordinary endeavour that produced the most harrowing book I've ever read - & the most informative in explaining how people are recruited as nazis & how they justify committing atrocities. Lifton's entire oeuvre is just incredible.

No 'formal' role. That's not how these things work. A few words over coffee or canapes is all it takes.

I don't give a shit if you a superstar are getting married, reissuing an old album, bringing out a new one, or headlining a blockbuster. Leaving the issue of your obscene amount of hoarded cash aside, have you spoken up for Palestine? If the answer is 'No' or 'It's complicated' then just go away.

Glad to see Eve Langley's ace 1942 novel get some love. Eve might ID as trans today. Sectioned by her husband in 1940s, Eve died in a shack in Blue Mtns in 1974. She believed herself to be the reincarnation of Oscar Wilde & who knows, maybe she was. We could all do with more fluid self-fashionings.

Tbh, I'm just about ready to take all my manuscripts & burn them on a ritual bonfire. And afterwards spend more time sleeping, drinking tea & insulting fascists. But while I'm doing that if you can't help Meanjin you can consider subscribing to Overland literary journal @overlandjournal.bsky.social

I kind of wonder what is the point of being a writer in this colony, whose arts culture is continually held hostage by troglodytes & the weirdest people on earth. Anyway, here's an open letter to Melbourne Uni about the shuttering of Meanjin that you can sign.

Anyone can shout it at him if they see him around. And even if you don't.

Bill Shorten could fund Meanjin out of his own VC salary & not even notice it.

Mary Jane Gold, who with Varian Fry helped Jews escape Europe, said that when the Jews in France were being rounded up & something urgently needed to be done, the US did virtually nothing. Only later, when almost nothing could be done, did the US decide to do something.

So, it really does look like it will come down to "socialism or barbarism", hey?

Well this looks optimistic. I've had a pretty good day & Trump having a stroke & needing intensive support is just the icing on the cake.

I very, very much doubt this. The trad media is dead in the water, the recent election rejected Trumpian rhetoric, and the liberal population is getting pushed left by the Gazan genocide & climate change. We don't have UK levels of transphobia or significant fascist figures like Farage either.

Yep. End to genocide & Trump dragged screaming into the Hellmouth will suit me fine. And some toast & tea please.

Spending the afternoon reading this very excellent anthology of First Nations spec-fic (from so-called Australia). Started reading it backwards and 1st up was a beaut little vignette by @kgt.bsky.social Hard recommend. For overseas people, maybe forget about Garner, Wood, Winton et al & try this.

And I wrote a kind of eulogy for Graeber, as his death really bothered me. (Rubbish timing Dave, by the way. We could really use your voice & activism now). overland.org.au/2020/09/vale...

Having a cuppa this morning in memory of David Graeber who died 5 years ago today. If you want some optimism about human politics in these tediously dreary & violent years, The Dawn of Everything is really worth your time.

Amazing what nazis can get away with. Gonna go & beat up some people at an ALP picnic & then yell abuse at the Premier. I'll be shouting 'Free Palestine' instead of 'White power', but that shouldn't be a problem for anyone.

Really feel this statement. I did counselling work with men who had experienced clerical abuse as children & suffocating, all-pervading sadness was a common theme. They had lost something they couldn't ever recover because they'd never had the chance to live it: the experience of being a child.

This is right on the money. Capitalist political orders are structurally identical to systems of oppression & exploitation created by abusers. And the ultimate message is always 'You can't escape; there's nowhere to go'. But one day we will. And maybe very soon.

🚢 The Global Sumud Flotilla—the largest civilian mission to break Gaza’s siege—launches today, with 50+ ships from 44 countries. Drop Site editor Alex Colston is on board and will be reporting live as it sails from Barcelona toward Gaza.

Looking forward to the appointment of the Special Envoy for Legitimate Concerns.

This is the core of 'legitimate concerns' - nazi violence against Blak women. This was the entire purpose of the 'march' because this is what nazis do: practice for pogroms.

A despicable party whose members should be abandoning them in droves. 'Legitimate concerns' is the phrase UK Labour squawks & look how that's working. Don't think it'll fly here the way it does there. It's the ALP's fascist leanings we have to address & media both-sidesing.