Fighting fascism in America during a genocide in Palestine

 

We must insist on drawing connections across time and place — from the Holocaust to Gaza, or ICE detention to Israeli prisons — to disrupt the normalization of authoritarianism at every turn.

“These times make me think of 1933,” my neighbor commented as our sons zoomed down a hill on their bikes. This was a common sentiment in the early months of President Donald Trump’s second term — how to stop a leader with fascist tendencies who had gained power through a democratic process. 

But it wasn’t our usual neighborhood conversation. Rümeysa Öztürk, a graduate student at Tufts University, where I teach, had recently been kidnapped by masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for writing an op-ed in our student newspaper in support of Palestinian rights and student governance. The alarming video of the incident had left us all shaken.

My neighbor explained that his great-grandparents had come to the United States from Europe in the decades before the Holocaust. But other branches of his Jewish family had stayed and were entirely wiped out. This time, he expected, my publicly Palestinian family was more at risk than his. I think I nodded blandly. For many months, my mind had been with Palestinians in Gaza, where a genocide was underway. His concern for my family seemed to me both alarming and abstract.

Another friend had been encouraging me, for the sake of my family’s security, to apply for a new citizenship. We were at the town pool when she quipped, “There are the people who left in 1933, and the people who left in 1939. The former left with their property.” Watching our sons dive off the boards in sync, splashing and circling underwater before reemerging, I thought to myself: The property values in our town are solid, so even if we must leave, we’ll get a good price.

Again, as I tried to respond, I faltered in the strange space between my uncertain fears about what might happen here and my horrified knowledge of outright genocide and ethnic cleansing there. In the last two years, Israel has destroyed or damaged 81 percent of all structures in Gaza, including more than 81,000 homes in Gaza City alone. Despite the so-called “ceasefire,” Israel has denied Palestinians access to materials necessary to make even temporary shelters for winter, and the cold and flooding has meant only more deprivation and death. At least 40,000 Palestinians in the northern West Bank have been made homeless due to Israeli forced displacement in Tulkarem and Jenin.  (more...)

Fighting fascism in America during a genocide in Palestine

Bearing witness to the gruesome end of Western liberalism

 

Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a searing indictment of Western liberalism. It especially exposes corporate journalism’s distortions, lies and incitement of a genocide – even while that genocide is being livestreamed to millions of people around the world for all to bear witness.

Written during the peak of Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza, El Akkad’s book is a kind of meditation on genocide that will have lasting significance. In the blurbs on the back of the book cover, it is described as “part elegy, part rallying cry” and “a landmark of truth telling and moral courage.”

Its impact may be greater because it avoids the detailed documentation of the atrocities and war crimes committed or the evidence of intent needed to meet the requirements of the United Nations genocide convention.

“This is not an account of [the] carnage,” El Akkad cautions early on. Rather it is “an account of a fracture, a breaking away from the notion that the polite, Western liberal ever stood for anything at all.”

It is also an “account of an ending,” he promises, “the moment millions of people looked at the West, the rules-based order, the shell of modern liberalism and the capitalistic thing it serves, and said: I want nothing to do with this.”  (more...)

Bearing witness to the gruesome end of Western liberalism

How Intelligence, Politics, and Foreign Interests Shaped America’s Religious Movements

 

Christianity is back at the centre of American life, but not necessarily in the way most believers imagine. Churches are fuller, Christian language saturates politics, and faith-based identity has become a mobilising force once again. Yet beneath this revival lies a more unsettling reality: for decades, U.S. government agencies have treated religion not as sacred ground, but as strategic terrain.

This is not theory. During the Cold War, the U.S. State Department and intelligence agencies, most notably the CIA, recognised theology, doctrine, and religious institutions as instruments of influence. Faith was studied, guided, and at times quietly reshaped to serve geopolitical aims. The goal was rarely to destroy belief outright; rather, it was to domesticate it, align it, and render it strategically useful.

Initiatives like the Doctrinal Warfare Program illustrate the scale of this engagement. Churches with mass followings, moral authority, and transnational reach were not simply tolerated; they were targeted for influence. Orthodox congregations in the U.S. and abroad were monitored to ensure alignment with Western interests. Catholic seminaries became conduits for doctrinal shaping, funding networks, and leadership development favourable to U.S. objectives. Even Protestant and Evangelical movements, decentralised and spontaneous, were quietly steered through cultural engagement, philanthropic networks, and selective amplification of certain voices.

Sincere people seeking truth, purpose, and transcendence found themselves caught in influence systems they neither designed nor understood. Their worship, community, and faith became tools in a broader psychological and cultural battle they never consented to.

The CIA’s Doctrinal Warfare Program, particularly its work with Roman Catholic institutions, offers a rare glimpse into how intelligence agencies approach faith. Unlike cinematic portrayals of spies manipulating events, this program operated through subtler, more effective channels.  (more...)

How Intelligence, Politics, and Foreign Interests Shaped America’s Religious Movements