Brian Thompson, CEO of health insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, was fired upon by a masked assailant around 6:46 a.m. on December 4, 2024 outside the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel where the company was set to hold an investor meeting. The shooter stepped up behind Thompson with a handgun fitted with a silencer and fired three […]
Category: On Enemies
The Coercive Control of Israeli Settler Colonialism
Coercive control, a framework originally conceptualized in Evan Stark’s Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Everyday Life and widely utilized in domestic violence theory, is one that can be expanded to understand the tactics and underlying values of all forms of authoritarian control. I have argued for this in other essays and have alluded […]
“Anti-Sex” and the Real Sexual Politics of the Right
So common is the conceptualization of reactionaries as having “anti-sex” politics that it is hardly remarked upon. They hate sex workers, they hate it when women and other marginalized genders have a lot of sex, queer sex, or extramarital sex, they want to keep children from any form of sexual education, etc. What do these […]
Tactics for the Fight Against Abuse: Learning from Anti-Fascism
The Size of the Problem We live in a culture of abuse. With acknowledgement that these numbers are insufficient due to underreporting: more than 60% of adults in the so-called United States have experienced at least one ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) and a quarter of adults have experienced three or more ACEs. Over 33% of women […]
The Right-Wing Hates Children: The Weaponization Of “Groomer”
CW: This essay includes discussion of child sexual abuse and rape I grew up in a right-wing household in a rural, predominantly right-wing, community. I was groomed and eventually sexually assaulted by my right-wing Christian father who was highly regarded by everyone in the community who knew him. I was taken to purity balls every […]
Intimate Authoritarianism: The Ideology of Abuse
For far too long have radical communities and their discourses treated domestic violence and abuse as external from the considerations of revolutionary struggle. Abuse is seen as simply an interpersonal issue, springing from individual pathology which we must address by correcting certain behaviors and teaching better communication skills. The intervention tools of choice are frequently […]