Hey Gang,
For the past year or so, Nevermore has become increasingly focused on providing meta-commentary.
By meta-commentary, I mean commentary on the commentary of others. Let me explain.
Nevermore is not meant to provide news. Although we do sometimes comment on current events, we do not follow the news cycle.
Our goal is to help the reader make sense of the world.
What we aim to do is to provide commentary which we hope will assist the reader do so as easily as possible.
Sometimes, this means expressing our own views, but oftentimes other thinkers have already put into words what we wish to express.
If such is the case, it would be redundant for us to reiterate in our own words. In such cases, we would rather call the reader’s attention to the work of that thinker.
For instance, we have spoken very glowingly of Chris Hedges, Laura Dodsworth, and Daniel Pinchbeck.
In other cases, meta-commentary means criticizing the commentary of people whose analysis we disagree with.
For example, we have published harsh criticism of people that we think are leading the truth movement astray, such as Robert Malone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Aleksandr Dugin.
Anyway, I am planning to take a break on covering the War in the Holy Land, because although it’s absolutely horrible I don’t really know what I can add to the conversation at this point.
I’m happy to report that it does appear to me that we are winning the information war on this particular issue.
Even the liberals and leftists who have managed to get every other issue wrong since 2020 seem to be getting this one right.
To be fair, there have been some bumps along the road, but still…
Indeed, in some cases, my former comrades in the U.S. anarchist movement are absolutely knocking it out of the park.
The cause of Palestinian liberation has been one that Leftists have been passionate about since the heyday of the anti-globalization movement, and it seems that at least some people still remember what they stand for, at least on this issue.
I have often accused leftists of “losing the plot” but there are signs that some are getting their bearings again.
Anyway, in the spirit of meta-commentary, which our readers seem to appreciate, I will be offering a few profiles of writers I think are doing especially important work.
I plan to call this series “WRITERS TO WATCH” an the first instalment will focus on Caitlin Johnstone, who I have become a big fan of over the past six weeks.
WRITERS TO WATCH VOLUME ONE -Caitlin Johnstone
I only became aware of Caitlin’s work after the events of October 7th, and I have been very impressed.
She is an extremely prolific writer. At first, I thought that her output was so impressively high because she is passionate about the Palestinian cause, but it turns out that she’s been putting out an average of one article a day for years.
She is obviously very knowledgeable about geopolitics, and has been absolutely knocking it out of the park with her excellent coverage of the War in the Holy Land.
She is also very popular, with well over 30 thousand subscribers on Substack.
Her Substack has a clean, no-nonsense format, and she puts out audio versions of every article, which are read by her husband Tim Foley, who has a great voice.
It’s nice to see a husband-and-wife team producing such high quality content. Who doesn’t like to see a family business thrive?
Another thing that I like about Caitlin Johnstone is that she makes all of her work available for people to use as they see fit.
At the end of each article, she appends a blurb saying:
All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want.
I think that it says a lot about a writer when they are so willing to share the fruits of their labour. It means that their top priority is spreading their message, not padding their wallet.
Caitlin also puts out a monthly publication, which she describes as:
“A monthly magazine-style publication of essays, articles, poems, art and short stories about the end of illusions.”
So apparently she’s multi-talented, because apparently she’s an amazing painter as well! Impressive.
Anyway, this idea of a magazine is inspiring to me, because I believe that the truth movement will only become a force to be reckoned with in the real world when we get off the internet and into the streets.
Nevermore put out one volume of a print magazine before realizing that the costs of printing and shipping far exceeded our shoestring budget.
Since then, Nevermore has put considerable energy into producing ready-to-print PDF zines intended for IRL distribution.
Eventually, I hope that Nevermore grows to the point where it will make sense to produce a physical magazine, or at least a ready-to-print magazine that people can use to get our message out to people who might not otherwise come across it.
Some people, including Whitney Webb, Derrick Broze, Ramiro Romani, James Corbett, and James Evan Pilato, have been warning that the internet as we know it might not exist much longer, and I think we should take them seriously.
I refer people to a recent Unlimited Hangout article entitled 5 Ways To Prepare for the Online Privacy Crackdown if they’d like to learn more about this.
Alternatively, they could watch this interview:
The reason that Nevermore was producing zines was because they are analogue and can cheaply reproduced and distributed in the real world if censorship does worsen, which strikes me as very likely only a matter of time.
Personally, when I saw Rupert Murdoch’s resignation letter, which came out shortly before the October 7th attacks, I knew something big was brewing.
Anyway, I don’t know whether Caitlin Johnstone publishes a physical magazine in order to circumvent censorship or not, but I think that what she is doing is awesome on a bunch of different levels.
So who is this Caitlin Johnstone? What do we know about her? Should we trust her? If so, why?
Well, I think that her recent work really speaks for itself, so let’s start there.
I suppose a big part of the reason that Caitlin’s work stands out is because her conviction that she is on the right side of history comes through every single article she writes.
Honestly, she’s very convincing.
Everyone who advocates de-escalation and ceasefire is always accused of treacherous loyalism to the other side. Always, always, always. It happened with Ukraine, and it’s happening again with Gaza.
Ever since the war in Ukraine started those of us who called for peace talks were accused of being Putin lovers and Russian agents. Almost two years and mountains of human corpses later and the US is starting to push Kyiv to accept a peace deal that will almost certainly be worse than the one that was on offer at the beginning of the conflict.
All that death and destruction, for absolutely nothing. The only ones who benefitted from that nightmare were the war profiteers who raked in vast fortunes and the empire managers who used it to advance their geostrategic agendas in Eurasia. Those of us who called for peace negotiations were objectively correct, and those who shouted us down and accused us of treasonous Kremlin loyalism were objectively wrong.
Those calling you an anti-semitic baby-cooking terrorist lover for supporting a ceasefire are wrong in exactly the same way for exactly the same reasons. All the arguments being made against peace right now will only end up serving the rich and powerful, at the cost of unfathomable oceans of human suffering.
Caitlin Johnstone, like Chris Hedges, clearly sees the actions of the IDF in Gaza as a black-and-white issue.
Again, she’s very convincing:
They’re dropping bombs on a concentration camp full of children. THEY’RE DROPPING BOMBS ON A CONCENTRATION CAMP FULL OF CHILDREN.
Not in the past. Right now. They’re still doing it. They show no signs of stopping.
No part of opposing this should be remotely controversial.
❖
They’re dropping bombs on a concentration camp full of kids. Even shitlibs and pseudo-leftists who get every other foreign policy issue wrong are managing to get this one right, it’s that obvious. Anyone getting this issue wrong can be permanently dismissed without any real loss.
No matter how much you talk about October 7, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon a concentration camp full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.
No matter how much you talk about how evil and bad Hamas are, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon a concentration camp full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.
No matter how much you say the words “human shields”, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon a concentration camp full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.
No matter how much you accuse Israel’s critics of loving terrorists, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon a concentration camp full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.
No matter how much you accuse Israel’s critics of hating Jews, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon a concentration camp full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.
No matter how many words you use or how much narrative spin you try to put on it or how many ad hominems you throw at the people criticizing what Israel is doing, it will still be a fact that Israel is raining military explosives upon a concentration camp full of children, and that it urgently needs to stop.
In all of this, I agree wholeheartedly with Caitlin.
Likewise, I believe her when she speaks about how a lot of Israelis, including both members of the ruling class and ordinary citizens, hold shockingly racist beliefs.
To call Israel a fascist country doesn’t seem like much of an exaggeration, if it is an exaggeration at all.
It might be more accurate to characterize it as a country in the process of descending into fascism, but that might just be splitting hairs.
I’ve never been to Israel, and I’m not in a position to judge what the mood on the ground is, but there are no shortage of Israeli officials willing to say outrageously atrocious things.
We saw this illustrated in a recent New Yorker interview with Daniella Weiss, a leader of the push to build illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Weiss stated frankly and unapologetically that she supports apartheid, that she doesn’t believe Palestinians should have any sovereignty anywhere, that she doesn’t believe Palestinians should have voting rights, that she wants the population of Gaza to be replaced by Israeli settlements, and that she is untroubled by the killing of children in Gaza because she feels it’s being done in the interests of Israeli children.
Asked where the Palestinians in Gaza should go, Weiss replied, “To Sinai, to Egypt, to Turkey.” When the interviewer said the Palestinians are not Egyptian or Turkish, she contended that “The Ukrainians are not French, but when the war started they went to many countries.”
To the question “When you see Palestinian children dying, what’s your emotional reaction as a human being?”, Weiss answered, “I go by a very basic human law of nature. My children are prior to the children of the enemy, period. They are first. My children are first.”
Asked if she believes human rights are not universal and should not apply equally to everyone, Weiss replied “That’s right.” […]
This sort of thing has been happening for years. Israelis who’ve been marinating in a self-validating echo chamber of Zionist ideology which dehumanizes Palestinians and normalizes oppression and abuse don’t think twice about saying things that make Israel look bad on the world stage, because to them it’s just the standard status quo way of looking at things.
Occasionally, though, she goes farther than I’m willing to.
You can’t both-sides everything. You can’t live your life that way.
Yes it’s possible to see both sides of every contentious issue. You’re supposed to be able to do that; it’s a sign of intellectual maturity. If you can’t see both sides of an issue your relationship with abstract concepts is too rigid, and you’re probably lacking in empathy. It’s just a basic part of growing up to learn how to stand in other people’s shoes and see where they’re coming from.
But just because you can see both sides doesn’t mean you should live your life as though they’re both equally true, or as though they both have equal merit. If you want to have a truth-based relationship with reality it’s not enough to see both sides; you’ve got to grapple with it and figure out which side is more truthful, which side has more merit. You’re neglecting a whole dimensionality of understanding if you just leave it at “well I can see both sides so I have no responsibility to pick one”.
There’s a type of personality that has a strong attraction to feeling like it’s above the fray; like it’s detached from the disputes and dichotomies of the common riff raff, looking down at it all from a lofty place of transcendent understanding. Such people are, without exception, insufferable wankers.
If you want to be an authentic human being, you’ve got to get down in the muck where the humanness is happening. It’s good to understand that all concepts are relative and that none contain absolute truth, but this necessarily means that some concepts are more relatively truthful than others. And we need to be real with ourselves about that.
I generally agree with this, too, but I also think that there’s a case to be made that this entire conflict is meant to create enflame tribalistic “Us-Versus-Them” politics.
As a lifelong contrarian, I generally don’t like “You’re either with us or against us” arguments”, because my instinct is to do the opposite of whatever I’m told to do.
I agree with Margaret Anna Alice and Whitney Webb that not taking sides is a moral defensible position.
Not long ago, I announced that I was going to take a break from going so hard on criticizing Zionism, because I’m a little concerned that I have been taking the bait by taking sides in this conflict.
Think about it: if the Powers That Shouldn’t Be want to rule by the age old technique of “Divide-and-Conquer”, then what better way than to start a race war?
We should remember that ALL of the countries currently seemingly lining up for WWIII - China, Russia, Iran, the U.S. and Israel - all acted in lockstep during COVID. Even Hamas had a jab campaign. So are they really all independent actors? Or are nation-states now beholden to globalist forces?
Has this conflict been engineered as part of a deliberate effort on the part of globalists to lead us into a global conflict? It sure seems like a real possibility.
From what I’ve seen, I definitely agree with the vast majority of Caitlin Johnstone’s analysis, but I do want to bring up some differences between my views and hers, whilst acknowledging that she is clearly more knowledgeable than I am on her areas of expertise.
I’m a big believer in being up front with your biases, and she states them forthrightly in this piece, in which she frankly states where she stands on the major issues of our times:
She clearly clearly has her roots in the Left:
I’ve always called myself a socialist. Lately a lot of people have been calling me a communist, which I don’t mind either.
She also calls herself a “hardcore feminist” and has strong feelings on religion:
I’m critical of all religion and 99 percent of what people call spirituality, but that one percent of authentic spirituality just might be what ends up being what saves humanity.
I view authentic spirituality not as any set of beliefs but as a sincere investigation in our own experience into the nature of consciousness, self, mind, and perception. The discoveries this investigation turns up can be deeply transformative, and could solve all the world’s problems if realized at mass scale.
The biggest question mark that I have about Caitlin Johnstone is in regards to her position on China.
Personally, I tend to share Paul Cudenec’s view that “China is Globalist” and I’m not particularly enthusiastic about China taking over the world.
To be fair, China’s foreign policy has not been anywhere near as bad as the U.S.’s, but I think that it’s quite clear based on how they treat their own citizens that they are not on the side of a free humanity.
It seems to me that the people in charge of the Chinese state as every bit as a power-mad as the Americans, and they seem significantly better organized and more competent.
I’m not at all sure that the ascent of Chinese-style authoritarianism will be an improvement over U.S.-style imperialism. I sure wouldn’t bet on it.
There is a considerable segment of the alternative media that treats Chinese-style totalitarianism as somehow excusable.
Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate, for instance, who generally do amazing work, are loathe to criticize the Chinese regime.
The Gray Zone has displayed an activist zeal for pushing back on claims that China is committing cultural genocide against its Uyghur Muslim minority.
They even call the long-persecuted Falun Gong spiritual movement a “far-right cult”.
I know I’m not alone in finding this a little strange.
People like Matthew Ehret and Cynthia Chung of The Canadian Patriot Review also take a very black-and-white pro-China position.
Their basic message boils down to BRICS=Good, NATO=Bad, which to me is self-evidently disingenuous.
During the Cold War, the U.S. Empire overthrew tons of Latin American governments and committed atrocities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and tons of other places. But does that mean that the Soviet Union was any better? Of course not.
I think we’re in a similar situation now. The U.S. Empire is in freefall, but that doesn’t mean that the Chinese state, which is all-in on the U.N.’s “Sustainable Development” agenda, will be any better.
I think that we need to take seriously the possibility that the situation in Gaza has been engineered by globalists to serve the same Great Reset agenda that was kicked off with COVID.
That doesn’t mean that the War in Ukraine or the genocide in Palestine aren’t real. Obviously, real live human beings are dying in great numbers, and it’s tragic.
But that doesn’t change the fact that, unfortunately, some people want wars to happen.
What is the solution? I wish I knew. I think that the best thing that people in the West can do is to oppose Israel’s crimes against humanity, and I hope to see the growth of a populist peace movement which transcends the left-right political divide.
Honestly, I think Jews need to play a key part in this. I hope that American, Canadian, and European Jews turn against the Israeli state en masse. I hope that they stop identifying with an evil, genocidal regime simply because it claims to represent the them.
As Etienne de la Boetie2 put it in Government: The Biggest Scam in History:
You aren’t an “American” or a “Russian” or an “Israeli” just because you were born in one geographical area or another. You are a free and sentient human being who doesn’t owe your income or allegiance to any organized crime system using classical, textbook unethically manipulative cult- indoctrination techniques on an unsuspecting public.
Israel exists because of American support, and the U.S. supports Israel because Jews exert enormous power in the U.S.
It stands to reason, therefore, that American Jews are a key demographic in opposing American support for the Gazan Holocaust.
At the very least, a strong Jewish peace presence in the peace movement will help put an end to the silly accusations of antisemitism that critics of Israeli apartheid are always subjected to.
To be honest, though, I share Caitlin’s view that Israel Has Permanently Lost The Argument.
I don’t think don’t think that there’s any coming back from this. I think the world sees Israel for what it is now.
But I could be wrong. I live in Mexico and don't have my finger on the pulse of U.S. political culture.
But from what I can tell, a lot of people share Caitlin’s feelings that:
Israel apologists are the worst. The absolute worst. I’ve sparred with countless political factions over the years, and I’ve never encountered a group so profoundly morally bankrupt and psychologically malformed. They’re so awful that their apologia actually hurts Israel’s image. Nothing will reassure you of the moral correctness of your opposition to Israel faster than interacting with Israel apologists online.
It keeps surprising me that Israel apologists still expect to be taken seriously. Israel is massacring children by the thousands and turning Gaza into rubble and they still expect you to listen to them receptively when they defend its actions. It’s actually starting to get morbidly fascinating.
In the old days murderous thugs just grabbed whatever land they wanted and killed anyone who tried to stop them. That still happens today too, but now the thugs have to make up liberal-sounding, sympathy-pulling justifications for it, like “spreading freedom and democracy” or “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Israel has lost the argument. Permanently. There’s no coming back from this.
Caitlin also sends her love to the Jewish people who are on the right of history, saying:
I cannot adequately express the immensity of my respect for the many, many, many Jewish voices I’ve seen taking a firm and forceful stand against the Gaza massacre. I’m just over here getting yelled at by strangers online and I find it pretty intense; you’re having much harder arguments with family, with friends, with people you’ve known your whole lives, about something that probably feels a lot more personal for you. You’re out there protesting, taking action and moving the needle, typically with far more skill and incisiveness than anyone else in the world.
Big, big, big-hearted love to all of you. You amaze me.
Amen to that. Anyway, Israeli Jews are subjected to a higher level of propaganda than American Jews are, and now feel under attack. Hell, probably every single person in Israel has friends or family who are active duty members of the IDF.
I think that American Jews are more likely to choose the right side of history than Israeli Jews are. I know that there is a fair amount of opposition to Israeli apartheid from the international Jewish community, and I really think that this needs to grow.
But I digress. Back to the subject of this article.
Caitlin Johnston has been doing incredible work on the War in the Holy Land, and I encourage people to follow it.
I commend people like her who are doing the important work of covering something so awful and brutal.
I know that doing so can really take its toll, and so I will end with a quote from one of Caitlin’s articles, in which she speaks about the emotional impact that following the Gazan Holocaust has had on her.
Some nights I see dead kids when I close my eyes. There’s a phenomenon called the Tetris effect where if you play the classic puzzle video game a lot you start seeing the colorful digital blocks in your mind’s eye when the lights are out. For me it’s dead Palestinian kids. That’s just my life now.
As this horror drags on one seemingly endless day after another I find myself acutely aware not just of the unfathomable suffering in Gaza but of all the other millions of people around the world who are having the same experience I’m having, staring this nightmare dead in the eyes day after day, week after week, unable to look away in good conscience.
I saw an account with the handle @exomarxi say something on Twitter that I relate to so hard right now: “I don’t want to talk about anything else. I don’t want to do work. I don’t want to do chores or go to the gym or read a book. It reminds me of that feeling you get when a loved one is in intensive care: you feel every fucking second and your adrenaline won’t settle and you can’t sit still.”
It consumes you. It becomes your life. You take short breaks here and there to get some grass under your feet and feel the wind in your hair, but you’re only doing it so that you can jump back in and wade through this thing with the attention and reverence it deserves. You can’t let yourself burn out, because if you do you won’t be able to do your own teeny tiny almost-insignificant little part to help fight this thing in whatever way you can.
But it’s more than that really. It’s more than the fight. There’s also this acute awareness that even if it turns out nothing we do can stop the slaughter in Gaza, it’s still important to bear witness to it. You feel a responsibility, just as a human being on this planet, to keep your gaze fixed on what’s happening and to not look away.
It feels… sacred. The responsibility, I mean. I don’t even really know what that word means, but that’s the only word that clicks into place and feels appropriate when I describe this responsibility to witness the mass atrocity in Gaza with eyes wide open. It’s a sacred duty that we have to our species. To the universe even, maybe.
It could be as simple as an urge to resist the calls from the powerful to look away. All the world’s most powerful institutions want us to avert our gaze, to scroll on, to dissociate, to take our attention elsewhere. We’re all engaging in a very simple act of defiance by bringing attention and awareness to the very last thing the powerful want our attention and awareness on, one pair of eyes at a time.
So we keep our gaze fixed on Gaza. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how horrifying it gets. No matter how much we cry. No matter how often we slump over and feel like we can’t do it anymore. We keep our gaze fixed on Gaza. Because what else can we do? Nothing else feels right. Nothing else feels responsible.
I don’t know when this will end, or why. I don’t know if it will end because all the opposition made it politically untenable for Israel and its powerful western allies to continue, or because there was nothing left to bomb, or no one left to kill. It kind of feels like that’s none of my business. Because I’m in this with all of me no matter what. Come what may. My life doesn’t really feel like it belongs to me anymore.
Anyways that’s enough of that for the time being. Mainly I just wanted to let everyone who’s holding this same vigil know that I see you, and I appreciate you, and I value you, and you’re not alone, and you never will be. I raise my glass to you beautiful, beautiful souls.
Thank you so much for bearing witness.
Caitlin Johnstone is incredible!!!!
Caitlin and Hedges were useless when it came to the scamdemic. Both did not speakout against the mandated experimental mRNA toxic jabs, or the other irrational draconian protocols. And if they did say anything to oppose the security state COVID narrative they waited until it was relatively safe.