Ron Jacobs

Burlington

Freelance Contributor at Freelance

writer, retired library worker and stuff

Articles

FOXNews, the US Gestapo, and the Lies They Tell and Enforce

2 weeks ago | counterpunch.org | Ron Jacobs

Having just spent a weekend in a place where FOXNews was blaring every time I was in a common space, I was reminded of how easily people can be propagandized. The trigger for this recurring realization took place on Friday when I first heard that Kilmar Abrego Garcia had been returned to the United States from El Salvador to face charges. As I watched the report, it became clear that the charges he was facing were based on an absurdly fantastical interpretation of existing law.
Fascists, Migrants and Greece: An On-site Report

2 weeks ago | counterpunch.org | Ron Jacobs

In the capitalist world, immigration is an indicator of how capitalism is faring. It seems quite reasonable to write that in 2025 capitalism is not doing very well. In all honesty, this can be said about the last couple of decades. If capitalism isn’t doing well, that means the likelihood of war is increasing, the working class is faltering in terms of income and its ability to pay to live under capitalism, and immigrant workers are for the most part having the worst time of all workers.
Putting the Avant in Avant-Garde, New York in the Long Sixties

3 weeks ago | counterpunch.org | Ron Jacobs

Underground films, transvestites, hippies and freaks, businessmen and secretaries checking out the other side of life, plastic people and people wearing plastic clothes. Smoking the pin joints of Colombian weed sold illegally by a brother hanging on the corner. Go ahead and blush middle America, just don’t call the cops on the party. The Lower East Side loves you and so does the Village.
World War II: the genesis of modern imperialism

1 month ago | morningstaronline.co.uk | Ron Jacobs

PAUL THOMAS CHAMBERLIN, whose book The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order remains one of the best books on the Palestine Liberation Organizations’s meaning and impact in the years before Oslo, ends his recent tour de force on World War II with this statement: “We must come to terms with a basic, underlying truth: the war did not end imperialism; imperialism ended the war.” The book, titled Scorched Earth: A...
Two Murderous Regimes, Three Murdered Embassy Employees

1 month ago | counterpunch.org | Ron Jacobs

In November 1938, a seventeen year old refugee without papers named Herschel Grynzspan from Poland walked into the Nazi Embassy in Paris, France, asked to see a member of the diplomatic staff, and when Nazi diplomat Ernst von Rath appeared, shot him. Von Rath died not long afterwards, despite the efforts of Hitler’s doctors who were sent to Paris by Hitler. According to most sources, Grynzspan was angry at the Nazi regime for taking away his parents German citizenship and employment.
World War Two: The Genesis of Modern Imperialism

1 month ago | counterpunch.org | Ron Jacobs

Paul Thomas Chamberlin, whose book The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order remains one of the best books on the Palestine Liberation Organizations’s meaning and impact in the years before Oslo, ends his recent tour de force on World War Two with this statement: “we must come to terms with a basic, underlying truth: the war did not end imperialism; imperialism ended the war.” The book, titled Scorched Earth: A...
Killed by the Counterrevolutionary Coup: Chile 1973

1 month ago | morningstaronline.co.uk | Ron Jacobs

Chile in Their Hearts: The Untold Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing after the CoupJohn Dinges, University of California Press, £24AS they often did, the headlines in the New York Times brought more bad news the morning of September 12, 1973: “Allende Out, Reported Suicide. Marxist Regime in Chile Falls in Armed Forces Violent Coup.”I read the article while waiting for my professor to appear in the Fordham University classroom where my political science class was held.
Vanity on Parade

1 month ago | counterpunch.org | Ron Jacobs

Military parades are a joke, like an old man driving a convertible or marrying someone fifty years younger than them (or both). In other words, they are a false conceit and damn expensive. To be fair, I suppose an old woman marrying someone fifty years younger than them is also a false conceit and probably expensive. One difference between such marriages and military parades might be that such relationships may actually be mostly about some version of love that works for both participants.
Killed by the Counterrevolutionary Coup: Chile 1973

1 month ago | counterpunch.org | Ron Jacobs

As they often did, the headlines in the New York Times brought more bad news the morning of September 12, 1973: “Allende Out, Reported Suicide. Marxist Regime in Chile Falls in Armed Forces Violent Coup.” I read the article while waiting for my professor to appear in the Fordham University classroom where my Political Science class was held. The coup leader and new president of Chile was a military officer named Augusto Pinochet.
The Brutality of Fascism: A Personal and Political Witness

1 month ago | counterpunch.org | Ron Jacobs

Spanish antifascist Mercedes Núñez Targa’s memoir Bearing Witness: Prison Stories from a Woman’s Fight Against Fascism is a powerful and passionate read. Although essentially bereft of beauty because of the topic of its content, the book was recently released in English by Pluto Press. It was first published in fascist Spain by Ebro, the publishing house of the Spanish communist party in 1967. Targa died in 1986 and remained a lifelong fighter against fascism.