Musings of an anarchist misfit
Published at 07:03 on 4 March 2026
If you want to have some idea how this war is likely to go, I recommend paying attention to what experts, experts with a lot of inside information, were saying about a dozen days ago. And the answer is “not likely to go well for the Western imperialists.”
Published at 17:11 on 28 February 2026
The more I think of it, the more it becomes clear to me that Carney’s sucking up to Trump on the Iran attacks shows incredibly bad judgement. The Trump regime has threatened Canada before, and will threaten Canada again. Sending a message to the rest of the world that this fascist regime’s aggression can at times be acceptable is not only morally repulsive, it undermines Canada’s national security.
The was against Iran has nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with upholding international norms. To think that the actions of lawless president who has flaunted norm after norm, both domestic and international, can be being taken for such ends is beyond naïve.
It also has absolutely nothing to do with promoting democracy. Just look at what happened in Venezuela. The same regime remains in power, now with US backing, just with a different, more subservient, leadership. It would not surprise me in the least to see an analogous outcome in Iran.
Published at 07:15 on 28 February 2026
This is just about the worst take on anything ever from this PM. To assume that two fascist governments flexing their muscles in an attempt to make a third sovereign nation submit to their will could have anything in the least to do with democracy, human rights, or international norms is simply beyond belief. And to assume that two nuclear powers, one of them a nuclear proliferator who helped arm the apartheid regime in South Africa, have anything in principle against nuclear weapons, simply boggles the mind.
No thinking person is a fan of the vile regime that currently rules Iran, but come on. This is exactly the sort of naïveté that led democracies to underestimate the growing global threat posed by Hitler, who got people to tolerate his initial exercises in military adventurism by mostly directing them eastward, towards the widely-disliked Soviet regime.
It looks a whole lot like Carney just put the sign back in Canada’s window.
Published at 08:12 on 27 February 2026
Many of Trump’s critics are rightly denouncing the efforts of the RFK-led Department of “Health,” but I think they are missing the true scale of the malice behind it.
My theory is much darker. It is merely part of American fascism’s project of creating a fact-free world, so that disease is no longer based on its actual causes, enabling a fascist government to scapegoat the groups it hates. Nazis decried the Jews (and homosexuals) as “unhygienic;” expect the Trump regime to do so in earnest for the nonwhite immigrant groups it despises (not to mention the LGBTQIA community) once a critical mass of its base is sufficiently distant from fact-and-science-based theories of health.
It’s not about increasing the market for quack cures, it’s about increasing the market for fascist measures. They are building concentration camps and they intend to use them.
Published at 09:48 on 26 February 2026
Canada is sending aid to Cuba in response to increasing efforts by the USA to strangle the regime there.
I am 100% in support of this, not because I am a big fan of the regime there (I am not, it is a dictatorship), but because freedom has absolutely nothing to do with anything any fascist regime does (and the Trump regime most definitely is a fascist one).
When dealing with a long list of things one does not like, often one must prioritize. As Churchill, long a proud conservative and ardent anti-communist, once said when asked about Stalin after the Nazis invaded the USSR: “I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. It Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”
So yes, supporting countries under US pressure right now is a good thing. The more fascism fails, and fails early, the better off the long-term prospects for the world as a whole.
And yes, I have been awfully quiet here recently. This is because I have been working on an involved software project, and have decided to mainly focus on that.
Published at 16:27 on 27 January 2026
Minneapolis might, just might, be the start of the sort of none-of-the-above grassroots opposition movement of which I have written.
Something is definitely happening there. A longtime anarchist activist who I trust (and whom I have worked with on some actions in years past) has noticed it. Even the staid old Atlantic seems to be noticing it.
The question is: what happens now? Trump is making feeble de-escalating noises. Will people fall for it, or will they realize that when something is wobbling a bit, that means it is time to give it a bigger shove?
Published at 08:22 on 20 January 2026
You promise an unflinching and united response should Trump decide to seize Greenland by force. Soon you will have to deliver one.
Because of course you will. Trump’s entire life, starting as a small child born into extreme wealth and privilege, has taught him that in a bourgeois society all men are not created equal, and that the children of privilege like himself can personally profit by being a liar, a bully, a cheat, and an overall scoundrel. And he has profited like few men in history have.
His entire life has taught him that he can seize Greenland and not only get away with it, but personally profit from it. So of course he will at least make a serious attempt at it. No other course of action is even remotely plausible. Sorry.
At that point, it becomes up to Europe to put up or shut up. If they choose the former, there is a chance — actually a fairly good chance — of engaging TACO mode, much like China did in response to Trump’s tariffs.
If they choose the latter, kiss Greenland goodbye. And then Canada comes next.
And you can spare me any thought of pushback from Republicans stopping this internally before the Europeans have to stop it externally. Rule No. 1 violation. Not gonna happen.
The world let Trump get away with Venezuela, and the lesson Trump took from this is that he can get away with subjugating Denmark and Greenland, too.
The proper reaction to what Trump did to Maduro would have been something along the lines of what Churchill alluded to when he once said, “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” But for the most part that didn’t happen so here we are.
Maybe it will matter more this time. Greenland is full of brown people but Denmark as a whole is a first-world country full of white people, so if it matters more this time, that, and not any lofty principles about national sovereignty, will be the real reason behind it all. But we have to take our resistance to fascism however we find it; it is an imperfect world.
Published at 06:34 on 16 January 2026
And this is fundamentally the reason why.
It was the correct decision in the overall context, as difficult as China’s dismal human rights record makes it. At least China can reasonably be expected to follow through on the deals it cuts, which is more than one can say for Trump’s USA. And it is not China that has been threatening to annex Canada.
Now the question is how the fascist regime south of the border takes the news of the obvious consequences of their behaviour.
Published at 08:56 on 14 December 2025
Yes, I know that Trump is not exactly doing too hot in the polls right now. Political strategist Rick Wilson is positively giddy about it.
I have argued recently that a blue wave or two is likely to be significantly less consequential, in the long run, than many people think. Now I wish to argue that the hypothetical blue wave might not happen at all.
The reason is simple: war. Americans are, on the whole, an astonishingly ignorant people when it comes to foreign policy. This ignorance is no accident; Establishment politics has carefully tended and nurtured it for many decades. All the better to help prevent democratic accountability from interfering with military adventurism. It is one of the natural consequences of being a superpower, and a key reason why superpower status is a threat to free society.
Any administration that starts a war historically gets an incredible amount of deferential treatment from the mainstream media, the purported opposition party (both parties are united in their support for empire), and the populace as a whole. Do not think for a minute that this cannot apply to a war against Venezuela.
Maybe it won’t. We’re not that far past getting burned by the consequences of past deferential treatment for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe this one will come too soon on the heels of the earlier ones.
But don’t be too sure about that. It is at least as plausible that Trump will succeed in selling his Venezuela war. The authoritarian regime that runs Venezuela is not precisely the sort of government to inspire sympathy. Advocates of war will be able to paint opponents of war as Maduro allies or sympathizers, a characterization made all the easier by the shameful reality that it is not very hard to find American leftists that are allies or sympathizers of the Maduro regime. The Establishment media, already in many cases cravenly capitulating to Trump, could very easily once more assume its historic role as propagandists for the ruling class’ latest war of choice.
If this happens, Trump could easily prevail in the next few electoral cycles. I am quite sure, in fact, that this is a huge part of why Trump seems eager for a war with Venezuela. I will give the man credit for one thing: he knows advanced state of moral decline of the nation he leads better than virtually anyone else in the halls of power, and he has used this knowledge to become what is already one of the most successful, effective, and consequential presidents in U.S. history.
Yes, successful and effective. He has made more change, more quickly, than any president since FDR and quite possibly any since Lincoln. It is now part of established political precedent that U.S. presidents may incite coups to attempt to stay in power, can lie about just about anything, can make law and policy by fiat with little or no input from Congress, engage in crass nepotism, receive bribes, and cannot and should not be held accountable under the law.
To assume that a war in Venezuela will fail to keep Trump in power is to assume a moral and informed American public that, by and large, simply does not exist. See Rule No. 3.
Published at 08:37 on 12 December 2025
One of the things that has been worrying me most about Canadian politics is the smug sense of complacency. There is just too much belief in the concept that being a separate country will somehow be a free ticket to escape many consequences of the ongoing transition to fascism south of the border.
In particular, I have been worried about the complacency on national defence. On the Left, I saw complacency about the mere need for defence. This is understandable, as military spending has often been sold under the guise of “defence” when in fact actual defence has little or nothing to do with it. On the Right, there is not so much problem with the very concept of defence, but there is a reluctance to see the USA having become the sort of threat it has actually become. This is also understandable, as acknowledging so means acknowledging no small amount of dirty laundry in the Right’s very own hamper.
That is why I find this to be extremely welcome news. Apparently the Canadian military has been quietly doing an honest assessment of the situation, and come to the obvious conclusion: that the cause of peace and freedom for Canada is now best served by pursuing a measure of military deterrence.
Better yet are the voices on the Left, such as Charlie Angus, who have traditionally been quite skeptical of military spending. Not so much any more, perhaps. Let’s hope so.
Armed struggle is indeed a highly unpleasant thing, but ultimately the world is complex and messy place that does not lend itself to any one simplistic rule (such as “war bad”). As John Stuart Mill once observed:
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
But it doesn’t have to be so dramatic as that. As the old saying goes, Si vis pacem, para bellum. The best possible use of a fighting force is the use that does not involve any actual fighting; the mere presence of such a force can serve to detract a would-be evildoer and aggressor, by underscoring that the costs of evildoing and aggression are unlikely to be cheap.
And yes, this can work against a significantly more powerful opponent. First, you have the asymmetry of sacrifice: a people are generally willing to sacrifice more to preserve their own freedom than they are to subjugate someone else’s. Then, you have the asymmetry of mission: in order to succeed at conquering a country, the conquerer has to achieve complete control over the conquered. In order to succeed at resisting a conqueror, one needs to do far less; one needs merely to deny the conqueror that control.
Make it clear to Trump that a forcible annexation will be more trouble than it is worth, and Trump will likely forget about the idea (or at least repeatedly postpone it, which accomplishes the same thing). Appealing to a fascist’s sense of justice and humanity is both pointless and foolish, as fascists are lacking in both. Appealing to a fascist’s sense of what is best for his personal power and prestige, however, offers a very real chance of being a successful appeal. And this is not merely theoretical; Finland for many years pursued such policies with respect to the red fascism just to its east, and thereby preserved its independence.
If Canada makes it clear to American fascism that the cause of American fascism is best served by seeking some form of coexistence with a democratic Canada, coexistence it is likely to be, which is far better than being a fascist vassal state.