As Trump prepares to meet with Xi Jinping at the White House, Students for a Free Tibet prepares a protest in Washington against the Chinese dictator. Protests and civil disobedience actions by New York City's Tibetan community have been mounting since the July self-immolation of longtime activist Lobga Rangzen outside the United Nations building—the first in the wave of Tibetan self-immolations to take place on US soil. This comes amid heightening repression in Tibet following the passage of China's "Ethnic Unity" law. Rather than taking this opportunity to build bonds of solidarity with a local ethnic community by embracing its struggle, growing sectors of the "progressive" milieu—including figures associated with the Democratic Socialists of America—have joined those elements of the "left" looking to the oppressive Chinese state as a model and even a source of sponsorship. Happily, there are glimmers of dissent within the DSA to this consolidating dogma. In Episode 346 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again dissects and repudiates the global divide-and-rule racket that is the essence of the state system. 

Amid the politicized ugliness and street skirmishes around the 25th anniversary of 9-11 in New York City, a conspiracy-theory confab convenes, glorifying MAGA martyr Charlie Kirk and headlining such high-profile dictator-propagandists and reactionary charlatans as Roger Waters, Jimmy Dore and Ben Swann—indicating that a significant swath of the ostensible "left" has surrendered to the lure of fascism. In Episode 345 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again dissects the emerging Red-Brown alliance.

The administrative subpoenas issued for Hasan Piker and Medea Benjamin over their participation in the Cuba caravan are to be opposed—in part because the subpoenas will only give their sinister politics greater cachet among neophyte activists! Piker's shameless shilling for the dictatorships of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin invisibilizes the victims of their ethno-supremacist detention states—such as the Uyghurs of Xinjiang and the Crimean Tatars. This more critical point is obscured in the endless outrage over his supposed anti-Semitism. And with Xi and Putin joining with Trump to build a fascist world order, Piker's brand of campist pseudo-opposition (however overheated) is compromised from the start, mirroring what it ostensibly opposes—subpoenas notwithstanding. In Episode 330 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg breaks it down in his typically unsparing manner.

The Justice Department "Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism" has announced a national propaganda tour—as the DoJ is explicitly targeting anti-fascists for prosecution. The tour also comes as the question of Israel has emerged as the critical issue in the split within MAGA—with elements of the breakaway populist wing virtually gloating that the Israel Lobby's support for the Trump-loyal pro-war wing will result in a backlash against Jews. Both wings of MAGA are equally reactionary, yet elements of the supposed "left" are already in a dangerous flirtation with the populist wing—and it is a Democratic congressional hopeful, Maureen Galindo of Texas, who is openly calling for mass detention of "Zionists" in repurposed ICE camps. An incipient Red-Brown alliance can be seen, fueled by the Trump regime's ultra-cynical anti-Semitic pseudo-anti-anti-Semitism. In Episode 329 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes an unsparing look at the current sinister juncture.

US federal prosecutors on May 20 unsealed a superseding indictment charging former Cuban leader Raúl Castro and five former Cuban military pilots in the 1996 shoot-down of two civilian planes flown by the Miami exile group Brothers to the Rescue, an attack that killed four people over international waters.

The alarming reports that Nigeria has established "concentration camps" for the Fulani ethnic minority cast an ironic light on Nigeria's tension with the Sahel states of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso to the north. These three regimes have broken from the Western imperial camp (to embrace the nascent Russian imperial camp)—but are likewise subjecting their Fulani minorities to persecution and massacre. With the recent shock rebel offensive in Mali, the "terrorist" stigma that attaches to the Fulani and Tuareg peoples across the imperial camps makes their position more precarious than ever. Meanwhile, prominent voices on the both the right and the (supposed) "left" are spreading propaganda about the struggle in West Africa that is alarmingly wrong, because it exclusively views the crisis through a campist lens. In Episode 327 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg tries to provide some clarity on these fast-escalating and grossly under-reported conflicts.

As Trump and Netanyahu rain death down on Iran, the ayatollah regime paints any would-be protesters as pawns of the "enemy" and promises deadly repression. This positions the civil opposition poorly for any resumption of the uprising that the regime drowned in blood mere weeks ago—and points to the paradoxical reality that Trump and the regime are de facto (at least) collaborators against the Iranian people. In Episode 318 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg repudiates both those who would rally around the reactionary and criminal regime in the name of opposing the US-Israeli aggression and those who would rally around Trump's reckless and criminal war in the interest of opposing the regime. Instead, he offers statements from Iran's anarchist and dissident-left opposition that continue to advance an uncompromising neither/nor position.

The ideological enforcer of MAGA-fascism in American higher education (just met with craven capitulation by Columbia and Brown University) is the Trump regime's Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. Purporting to act on behalf of Jewish students, the Trump regime simultaneously attacks policies to promote campus diversity. This replicates the historical function of anti-Semitism—setting up Jews to take the hit for for the oppressive policies of (overwhelmingly) non-Jewish rulers. The perverse fascist pseudo-anti-fascism of the Trump regime has now become anti-Semitic pseudo-anti-anti-Semitism. This cynical feigned opposition to anti-Semitism is especially dangerous when actual anti-Semitism is very much in evidence—not least by the Trump regime itself, over and over! Yet the ever-more egregious manifestations of Jew-hatred are increasingly weaponized by the political right—and ignored or even normalized by the ostensible "left." In Episode 289 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes some encouragement from the growing ranks of Jewish voices breaking with the pro-Israel consensus to protest the Gaza genocide—while being clear in drawing the line against anti-Semitism.