An Immigrant’s Month in Review #2
Here’s a recap of all the things I wrote over the previous month or so.
Say hello to my new Immigrants as a Weapon avatar. Art by Evgenia Kovda.
I know there’s no way you’ve been able to read all the Immigrants as a Weapon letters that I’ve been sending out over the last month. We’re all too inundated with info and never have enough time for anything in these days of slow imperial collapse. But if you want to catch up on what you might have missed — or if you only recently signed up and never got my letters in the first place — here’s a recap of all the things I wrote over the previous month or so.
I have a bunch of great stuff in the works for next month — including my thoughts on a recent trip to the West Bank.
—Yasha Levine
PS: See last month’s recap here. Thank you to all my subscribers. Sign up if you haven’t already!
Russophobia? What Russophobia? — For years our liberal media’s been bombarding readers and viewers with racist stereotypes and tropes about “the Russians” and the threat they pose to “our” society. Here’s the latest.
The Old Jewish World: From Leftists to Neocons to...Bernie Sanders — As a fresh-off-the-Boeing immigrant with no historical roots here, I had no clue that another type of Jewish culture had existed in America not that long ago — a culture that actually fought power rather than accept establishment and big business dogma.
Shtetl, Off-Broadway — A very off-brand post about Fiddler on the Roof.
Changemaker — Evgenia Kovda’s immigrant’s perspective on America’s indie documentary industry, inspired by her time in activist and “social change” doc circles in New York. And incredibly brutal and funny film.
Ukraine and Meddling in 2016 — Let’s start with a fact: Meddling in the 2016 election by Ukrainian politicians and government agencies happened. It is not Russian government propaganda, no matter what our political establishment would like you to think.
Salute the Diplomat! — For former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to be a hero would mean going against our rotten foreign policy — not slavishly carrying it out while doing Ukrainian “Sieg Heil” salutes.
Despite a Jewish President, Ukraine keeps honoring Nazi collabos (with a bit of help from America) — The latest Nazi news out of Ukraine is that Kiev’s city council voted to rename a couple of streets in honor of two Nazi collaborators and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Naturally, the CIA is involved.
Bolivia: Coups, Oligarchs, Nazis and American Spies — Good to remember just how rotten our empire is and how often old school fascists and Nazis still wind up as our allies against popular political movements.
Eastern Europe: An Ethno-Nationalist Utopia? — Eastern Europe’s “slide” to far-right nationalism — whether in Latvia, Poland, or Hungary — is not failure of democracy. It’s a failure by Western experts to understand what the independence politics of those countries were really about.
“Russian-spy hookers” and other Silicon Valley xenophobic national security propaganda — Silicon Valley is entering into a new phase of development: coming back into the fold, to the regressive and paranoid national security apparatus that spawned it.
The Next Freakout: Foreign Spies in Surveillance Valley! — “The nativist panic is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.”