Gaither Stewart
Countercurrents.org
Contact Gaither
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Gaither:
From Pacifism To Violence and the Dialectic
I am trying to wrap my brain around the abyss between pacifism and violence as to the proper means to bring about socio-political change. And as to how to overcome that divide. Though not violent as a person, my basic impulse, my instinct in this regard, is belligerent: ultimately, I believe, it will be necessary to unleash a lethal war[Read More...] → Read More
Ahmed Ben Bella: Revolutionary Internationalist
Image via Wikipedia (Rome) Decades ago I, a young reporter, interviewed the legendary Ahmed Ben Bella (1916-2012), the man who ignited the Algerian War of Liberation against French colonial rule in 1954 and was chairman and animator of the FLN (Front de Liberation Nationale). In the interview Ben Bella repeatedly described himself as a revolutionary, not a theoretician, a man[Read More...] → Read More
Remembrances and Confessions
“Life is everywhere, life is in ourselves, not outside.” (Dostoevsky, just after his death sentence was commuted) Vision from the metal cubicle circling over the shores of southeastern Sicily seems to encompass the entire Mediterranean world, the spatial unity of which world atlases confirm: Sicily, now just beneath us and to the West, Africa fixed to the South, Greece and[Read More...] → Read More
Aspects of Russian Communism And Why Communism in the West Would Be Different
A civilization reveals itself as fruitful by its ability to incite others to imitate it: when it no longer dazzles them it is reduced to a mere collection of odds and ends and vestiges of former worldly greatness. The successive attempts of Napoleon and Hitler to create a world empire failed, as the United States of North[Read More...] → Read More
Remembrances of Meeting Cult Novelist Andrzej Kusniewicz in Warsaw
HERE I AM The Polish word, jestem—‘I am’, ‘here I am’, ‘present’—seems to define the life of the writer and cult figure for a generation, Andrzej Kusniewicz. On an overcast, pollution-infested Warsaw afternoon over thirty years ago in his crowded study in a surprisingly bourgeois apartment in a quiet residential area of the capital city, the poet-novelist insisted on the Polish word and the… → Read More
Rebellious Thoughts At The Café de Flore – Countercurrents
Whether revisionists and debunkers agree or not, the Café de Flore on Paris’ Boulevard Saint Germain is a living institution. Since its founding in 1870 it has existed as a café and a second home for French-speaking writers, artists and intellectuals of the likes of Apollinaire, Camus, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and frequented by Hemingway and Truman Capote.[Read More...] → Read More
On the Trail of Jorge Luis Borges in Buenos Aires – Countercurrents
I am uneasy writing about Jorge Luis Borges (b.1899, Buenos Aires, d. 1986, Geneva). Borges wrote so much that I have not read; yet his world of myth and fantasy and magic and metaphysics has so influenced me that since I am here in his city where I can feel Borges the man rather than only Borges the artist and[Read More...] → Read More
Walter Benjamin, the Jewish Question and Theses on the Philosophy of History – Countercurrents
Reading Hannah Arendt’s Introduction to Benjamin’s Illuminations German-Jewish intellectuals, the alienated hommes de lettres of early twentieth century German-speaking Central Europe, constituted a class within that complex and multi-layered Jewish society against which a few of them rebelled, a rebellion which however could not prevent the dark disaster awaiting[Read More...] → Read More
One Hundred Years: The Proletariat In Search of A Class – Countercurrents
The super-indoctrinated, Trump-voting American working class, dulled by the mass media and the “American dream”,has changed very little since the crushing of the great textile strikes that swept The United States in the 1920s. Not an iota of class-consciousness has it absorbed. (Nor has it been explained and offered to all wage earners in sufficient doses.)For also the middle[Read More...] → Read More
The Gehlen Org – Countercurrents
In February 2019 Germany opened a brand new intelligence complex in the city of Berlin. The new headquarters of the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst or Federal Intelligence Service) occupies a huge space—by the way, much as STASI or State Security Service once did in East Berlin the former German Democratic Republic—and supposedly employs a total of over six thousand persons. The move[Read More...] → Read More
Gladio - The Story of a Conspiracy – Countercurrents
Rome: Albert Camus in his essay “L’Exil d’Hélène” discusses contemporary disregard for the Greek value of limits. Camus writes that only the artist by his nature recognizes his limits, limits which the historic spirit disregards. The very idea of a super-secret organization like Gladio to remake the world in its own image reflects that same disregard for the Greek[Read More...] → Read More
War and Betrayal: Change and Transformation – Countercurrents
(Rome)I have wondered if the German Field-Marshal Friedrich Paulus after his defeat and capture by Russians at Stalingrad in February 1943 really changed when as a prisoner of war in Soviet Russia he joined the National Committee For A Free Germany and the anti-Fascist Union of German Officers. Were his words sincere when he broadcast anti-fascist messages to Germany over[Read More...] → Read More
Landslide…. To Totalitarianism – Countercurrents
I find surprising the detailed manner in which history repeats itself. The result of the landslide described here seems to have been replicated in the USA of our times in ways that all of us witness each day. The Germany of say 1939 seems like[Read More...] → Read More
Dirty Hands – Countercurrents
“You should therefore know that there are two ways to fight: one while abiding by the rules, the other by using force. The first approach is unique to Man; the second is that of beasts. But because in many cases the first method will not suffice, one must be prepared to resort to force. This is why a ruler needs[Read More...] → Read More
Yellow Vests, Class Struggle and Spontaneous Revolution – Countercurrents
(Rome) In What Is To Be Done of 1902 Lenin opposed revolutionary spontaneity because it “strips away the disciplined nature of the Marxists idea of revolution, leaving it arbitrary and ineffective.” True to himself, Lenin then returned to opposition to spontaneous revolution after WWI during the German Revolution of 1918-19 when in a spontaneous uprising against the post-WWI system Rosa… → Read More
War and Betrayal: Change and Transformation – Countercurrents
Rome: I have wondered if the German Field-Marshal Friedrich Paulus after his defeat and capture by Russians at Stalingrad in February 1943 really changed when as a prisoner of war in Soviet Russia he joined the National Committee For A Free Germany and the anti-Fascist Union of German Officers. Were his words sincere when he broadcast anti-fascist messages to Germany over Radio[Read More...] → Read More
No Man’s Land – Countercurrents
Get out your atlas. You will likely need it when you read farther here about the intriguing but little known story in a lesser known part of Alpine Europe: Italy’s northern territory of Alto Adige, better known as South Tyrol. I used an atlas for[Read More...] → Read More
A world in which Pinochet Is Better Than Communists! – Countercurrents
Premise: Reporting on the still unresolved abduction and murder of statesman, Aldo Moro, by the Red Brigades back in 1978—or in their name—the Rome sometimes left-wing investigative magazine, Espre… → Read More
Gianni Agnelli—The Grand Contradiction – Countercurrents
It was raining in Torino. A North European rain. The kind that lasts. Through the restaurant’s great windows the wide avenue lined by plane trees points in the direction of the whitened Alps on the… → Read More
Matteo Salvini, Italy’s New Strongman – Countercurrents
Rome: As shown in the permissive attitude of Italians toward Fascism last century, also contemporary Italians perceive of a strong and charismatic leader as a shield against disorder and their inherent inclination toward anarchy. Someone to protect them against their own nature. Promises of more police and more security are reassuring to those Italians who see today’s enemy in immigrants… → Read More