The three-year commemoration of the October 7 attacks saw ugly manifestations around the world of the growing atmosphere of polarization and dogmatism on the Israel-Palestine dilemma. There is, alas, the grave potential for everything to get much worse. Benjamin Netanyahu, under siege politically within Israel, is seeking not only a re-occupation of Gaza, but to extend the eliminationist project to the West Bank. In Episode 349 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes stock. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

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 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), pillar of India's ruling fascistic ideology of Hindutva, held a rally in New York City—which was happily met with a large protest outside Madison Square Garden. Some protesters drew a parallel between Kashmir and Palestine, an obvious connection given the Zionist-Hindutva anti-Muslim axis. However, progressive Congressional candidate Brad Lander—an opponent of military aid to Israel and a supporter of Israel's anti-war opposition—was accosted at the protest for being a "Zionist." This is mirrored in a similar incident in San Francisco, when another Jewish Democratic candidate, Scott Wiener, was driven from a Trans Pride event in Dolores Park. In Episode 344 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg attempts to cut through the propaganda and provide some clarity on the issues at play here.

New York City street safety advocates staged a "die-in" outside City Hall on Aug. 26, demanding that the city take action amid a spike in bicyclist and pedestrian deaths. Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets are calling for a plan to protect New Yorkers from reckless motorists. The protest was called after four people were killed in hit-and-run "collisions" (sic) in the span of five days, three of them on bikes.

Following the attack on Manhattan's historic Central Synagogue, Jewish establishment voices are calling for stepped up surveillance and policing. But the threat, alas, is real. The assailant spewing the "fake Jews" epithet indicates either that he has been indoctrinated by the Neturei Karta cult, which holds all Jews outside their micro-schism to be apostate, or the "Khazar thesis"—just barely laundered anti-Semitism, inevitably linked to ugly stereotyped images of evil Jews and wacky conspiracy theories. Cynical attempts to blame Mayor Mamdani for the attack are predictable. Alas, some figures on the political left really have traded in denialism about the reality that the attack was, in fact, an anti-Semitic attack. This is linked to a more general denialism on much of the "left" about the very existence of Jewish ethnicity. Efforts to weaponize anti-Semitism to silence pro-Palestinian voices are to be opposed, but do not mean anti-Semitism doesn't exist—or change the reality that any legitimate anti-Zionism must be committed to fighting anti-Semitism in the diaspora.

Protesters clashed with security forces May 30 at the site of a planned luxury resort on Albania's Adriatic coast linked to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the daughter and son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. The site, at Zvërnec, is one of the last nearly pristine coastal zones in the entire Mediterranean, and is located within Albania's southern Greek-speaking region. The project has raised serious concerns among local ethnic Greek residents over the loss of their traditional lands.

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.