Appeal to Reason
This is my first post on An Appeal to Reason. The original Appeal to Reason was a socialist newspaper that was published from 1895 to 1922. It reached a peak circulation of almost 700,000 copies. Upton Sinclair, Eugene v Debs, Hellen Keller, Mother Jones, Joe Hill, and many other prominent socialists of the time wrote for it. After the Palmer raids in 1919 arrested over 10,000 suspected anarchists and communists, the Appeal for Reason steadily declined due to fear of state repression of the left and was sadly discontinued.
While I certainly cannot match the original, I want to pay tribute to the socialist movement of over a century ago. Without a strong socialist movement, it is likely that capitalism’s unbridled greed for profit will lead to extinction. A 2019 Gallup poll found that 39% of the US had a positive view of socialism. Yet in spite of these numbers, the capitalist class has a death grip on the political process as we saw with two rigged Democratic primaries. As Lenin wrote, “It would be unworthy of a genuine socialist who has suffered grave defeat either to bluster or to give way to despair.” The crushing and cooptation of the Bernie movement was a grave defeat for the socialist movement, yet we must not give in to despair.
In this newsletter, I will be updating you on when I release new content - primarily articles with Real Progressives and new podcast episodes with Crawdads and Taters. In addition to these updates, I also plan to write a general newsletter roughly twice a month with my own political ramblings. I started this Substack because I do not trust to Facebook algorithms to disseminate my updates to everyone who wants them, so thank you for being interested in following me more closely than Facebook will allow.
As I currently have no new articles out, I encourage you all to check out AFRICOM Plundering in Africa, an article I wrote two weeks ago that helps shed some light on neocolonialism and the dictatorship of transnational capitalism. I also hope that you get the chance to listen to Episode 0 and Episode 1 of Crawdads and Taters. Episode 0 will help give you some insight myself and my co-host, Erin, and why we started this podcast. Episode 1 delves into The Black Panthers and how the media fails to cover their truly revolutionary nature. If you haven’t watched Judas and the Black Messiah yet, I recommend it - though if you really want to do justice to the Black Panthers, a two hour film just isn’t enough. We are currently working on more episodes and would love to get more feedback from our listeners.
Thanks for your interest in socialism and advancing the cause of justice one newsletter at a time. Please feel free to reach out if you have questions or comments. Solidarity forever!