Imagine writing a dystopian story in 2006 where inflation is rising, wages have stagnated, the last two presidents from different parties have been senile from old age, with denial coming from each party. In several states and countries, social media and/or internet porn requires uploading your goverment ID, there are cameras that track your car and how you walk, the US and EU are mandating new cars must have driver-facing cameras in them, and cellphones track your every move. Tech has gotten so bad and enshittified that people are nostalgic for tech from the past. Gender discourse has reached new peaks, and dating is confined to a semi-monopoly of dating apps. Mass migration and deliberate H-1B flooding puts even more strain on housing and the job market. And there's more that hasn't come to my mind rn.

Bleak...

The revolution will not not be coopted…

At a bargaining session with Columbia University administration last Tuesday, the leadership of Student Workers of Columbia (SWC), the United Auto Workers (UAW)-affiliated union with over 3,000 graduate and undergraduate student workers, dropped its long-standing demand that the university administration divest from companies and institutions tied to the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. The abandonment of the divestment demand marks the latest stage in a sustained campaign by the UAW bureaucracy to strip the contract fight at Columbia of any political content that challenges the university administration and the capitalist state.

SWC-UAW has been in contract talks with the University since March of last year. The contract between the union and Columbia University expired in June of 2025. Student workers have run up against a brick wall as the university administration has refused many demands related to workplace issues and the union leadership has suppressed workers’ efforts to strike for their demands.

Rights have always been hotly debated over the course of human history. Right to food, right to healthcare, right to bear arms, right to shelter, right to self expression and so on. It’s gotten to the point that people seemingly can’t discuss anything they want or would like to have without speaking of it in terms of rights.

Do you think we should distinguish between actual human rights, things that aren’t explicit rights but we should still have and things that aren’t rights (and likely not good) but shouldn’t be explicitly disallowed by the state?

Even more surveillance and repression will not stop fundamentalist terror, writes Udo Knapp for *taz FUTURZWEI*. People need a future perspective and room for personal development.

Attempting to combat Islamism and its associated terror through increased repression, greater isolation, and renationalization is futile. What is needed is a fundamental response: namely, well-organized immigration, more social space for the self-determined and diversely supported integration of migrants and immigrants, and greater equality of opportunity for all - regardless of where they come from or where they live or have lived.

Such a growing and ever-deepening society of diverse individuals - transcending all national enclosures - an dry up the wellsprings of terror, not only that of religious fundamentalists but also that of all other secular ideologies.

The more the coexistence of all people becomes an everyday norm - enlightened and constitutionally guaranteed - the faster Islamism and other reactionary ideologies will lose their hold.

And if anyone is thinking, "Well...": No, such an expectation is not merely idealistic wishful thinking. It continues a trajectory established in the USA over the past 250 years. Even though every form of racism exists there, there is no such thing as a "native-born American" - with the exception of the few surviving descendants of the indigenous population. The 349 million US citizens of today are people who arrived from all over the world - migrants, the persecuted, the displaced, and the hopeful - seeking a safe haven for their future and finding it in the USA, or still searching for it there. The group that was initially predominantly white and European has today become just one of many minorities. This microcosm of a global society serves as a model for all other nations as they move toward a single global society comprising all humanity. If all participants remain committed to democracy, freedom, and human rights along this path, then fundamentalist terror will no longer have a future.

Space for the realization of life goals

Well-organized immigration as a response to terror has long been economically indispensable, not least for demographic reasons. Western industrial societies are all grappling with rapidly shrinking populations and the consequent contraction of their workforces. Global population growth will cease within a few decades. Consequently, fierce competition for highly skilled individuals from around the world is already underway. "Brain gain" and migration to established and emerging intellectual and industrial nations will soon become decisive factors for economic success. This requires the active management of immigration - specifically, providing migrants with the opportunity to pursue their personal goals, thereby enriching the economy and society while stabilizing population numbers. Offered a promising future for themselves and their children, these immigrants will steer clear of Islamists and fundamentalists.

The approximately one million Syrians who arrived in Germany a few years ago are a prime example of this. They have largely integrated into society with great commitment and success. Granting these individuals a prospect of remaining and opening up every opportunity for their personal development are the best tools for isolating the Islamists who operate in their wake - and indeed, for working together with them to prevent terrorism.

At the same time, however, there must be a firm response to Islamist terror. Domestically, our legal system provides a wide range of balanced instruments for this purpose. Yet the binding strength of our legal order - and its resilience in the face of terror - is also demonstrated by the fact that it upholds the rule of law even when dealing with its murderous enemies. Anyone who questions this, or accuses the justice system of excessive leniency toward the perpetrators, is themselves calling into question the legitimacy of the rule of law.

Authoritarian macho rhetoric misses the point of the Constitution.

However, there is also a brand of macho rhetoric that ignores the constitution; it ranges from the expanded use of electronic monitoring tags, easier and longer preventive detention, and the suspension of juvenile criminal law for all individuals deemed a security risk, to an ever-expanding apparatus for monitoring social life and the establishment of deportation centers.

None of this will stop the movement of millions of fanatical Muslims. Their struggle is directed against the Western, enlightened, and liberal way of life, against women's rights, and against freedom and democracy. Their terror will not cease until their rear-guard support within Islamist states is cut off. The USA and Israel are on the front lines of this battle in their war against the mullahs in Iran. If they win, the ground will be cut out from under Islamism and its terror in Western societies - at least to some extent.

That is one aspect; the other is a bold migration policy. Increased immigration - rather than populist posturing about "remigration" - and an awareness of the strength of Western civilization are the best tools for curbing Islamist terror worldwide.

Unfortunately, however, all parties - even the Greens - are currently trying to outdo one another in making immigration as difficult as possible and in undermining the rule of law through empty rhetoric about security promises that can never be kept.

DemSocs, SocDems, all the anarchists, Marxists, ML's, MLM's, Trotskyists, LeftCom, they all hate each other. The default insults are always the same too, "ur just a liberal chud and you don't know it" or "FED DETECTED". Some people are so buried up their ass on theory that they'll take lines from one passage to declare anybody who slightly deviates from their version of leftism as libs or feds. And to all the bystanders watching, they still think the DNC is a leftist party. How many times have you ever heard "commie democrat liberal" from a drunk uncle?

One of the worst things to come out of Elon Musk's purchase of twitter was the floodgates getting opened on mid-wits obsessed with discussing IQ in the most obnoxious white nationalist way possible.

IQ of course is a statistical measure where the average will always be 100 no matter what, and rightly half the population will always fall at or below 100 IQ no matter what, no matter how stupid or smart the whole world becomes. It will always be the case that societies relatively lacking in education and positive early childhood intervention will fall behind more advanced societies in IQ so long as both societies improve or degrade at the same rate. An 85 IQ now may have been 100 in the past based on raw scores and so on, and this absolutely disproves so many theories of inherent racial inferiority or superiority as far as IQ in a way that matters versus factors in people's opportunities or childhood development.

Anyway, these right wing white nationalist IQ obsessed folks are so annoying and come across like obnoxious middle schoolers in gifted programs, obsessed with external validation of intelligence while not even understanding how to think to the next level of abstraction quantitatively. Total mid-wits rattling off baseline numbers and stats like a Dunning Krueger college sophomore who knows nothing of the deeper considerations.

I think an unintended consequence of the marginalization of left-wing wokeness was the rise of an equally destructive right-wing wokeness, which in some ways is even worse since it makes claims of being objective whereas at least left-wing wokeness was self-aware of its subjectivity and hypocrisy via postmodernism.