With its flurry of perplexing and often contradictory initiatives and statements, Donald Trump’s second presidency is leaving traditional media outlets, along with their tired viewers, overwhelmed and incapacitated (qualities exacerbated by the media outlets’ oligarchic owners’ kowtowing to the new administration). There are still many good journalists doing important work. But there’s also a palpable sense, especially on the left, that media are failing at their critical task, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves.
This post considers the situation and shares a starting list of some writers and researchers sharing important analyses of what is unfolding. The list has grown since it was originally published; its last revision was on April 15. It can now be found, in shortened form, on the page called “Resistance,” available by clicking on the tab at the top of the Immanence home page.
In a matter of days, Donald Trump has accomplished for Vladimir Putin, and to a lesser degree for Xi Jinping, what neither of them would have imagined possible or at least likely. By withdrawing nearly all U.S. support for humanitarian and civil society initiatives around the world (except for Israel and Egypt), and by launching economic wars against the U.S.’s two closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and threatening former allies including Norway, Trump has signaled to the world that a new configuration is dawning: a multipolar, neo-imperial one in which oligarchic empires can dominate their “spheres of influence” in whatever way they like, and that democracy has nothing to do with it and power has everything. Ukraine and Taiwan, like Canada, Greenland, and Panama, are in this sense just starting points for this new global realignment.
Where the Americas were the meeting ground for a previous round of multipolar (as opposed to bipolar) inter-imperial conflict, the warming Arctic is poised to play that role for the coming one — hence, the attractiveness of Canada and Greenland, a tacit way to acknowledge the realities of climate change whilst continuing to deny them.
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