Nathaniel Flakin

3 weeks ago | leftvoice.org | Nathaniel Flakin

It's a constant drumbeat on social media; an image of police repression is followed by the comment: "This is fascism." Is it, though? The sentiment is easy to understand. In the United States, we see the Trump administration breaking laws and defying courts to send immigrants to a concentration camp in El Salvador. People are getting fired, assaulted, and even deported for voicing opposition to the genocide in Gaza. The same thing is happening in Germany.

4 weeks ago | leftvoice.org | Nathaniel Flakin

Attacks by the Far Right are on the rise: attacks on students in the cities of Albi, Nancy, and Nanterre; threats to a militant of the student union in Reims; and pillage at the Solidaire étudiants union office in Montpellier. From clashes during student elections and intimidation during mobilizations to hostile campaigns on social media, the Far Right has clearly identified the student movement as an adversary. But what is the Far Right's agenda for universities, and how can we confront it?

1 month ago | leftvoice.org | Nathaniel Flakin

On April 11, 1945, as U.S. troops approached Buchenwald, the resistance groups inside the concentration camp launched an insurrection. The secret leadership committee, made up of prisoners of different nationalities, handed out weapons to the inmates who proceeded to storm the gate house and the guard towers. Most of the SS guards had fled a few hours earlier - the rest were disarmed. When the U.S. army reached Buchenwald, they found a camp under the control of its prisoners.

1 month ago | leftvoice.org | Nathaniel Flakin

On March 18, Germany's Bundestag (parliament) held its first-ever trillion-euro-session. The emerging Grand Coalition of CDU and SPD, with the support of the Greens, got the two-thirds majority required to amend the constitution. Three days later, the Bundesrat (federal chamber), also approved the measure by a two-thirds majority. The changes will keep the constitutional "debt brake" in place, which has mandated austerity since 2009. Except now, military spending will be exempted.

1 month ago | leftvoice.org | Nathaniel Flakin |Tess Lowery

A jubilant " GUILTY" plastered over Marine Le Pen's face filled the cover of the French centre-left newspaper, Libération, on April 1. Such was the reaction by most left-leaning people to Monday's ruling by a criminal court in Paris that the leader of France's far-right wing party National Rally (RN) was guilty of embezzling European Union funds.