“Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the property system.”

- Walter Benjamin, 1936

About Meredith Tax

Meredith Tax has been a writer and political activist since the late 1960s. She was a member of Bread and Roses, and founding chair of International PEN’s Women Writers’ Committee. From 1994 to 2005 she was founding President of Women’s WORLD, a global free speech network that fought gender-based censorship. Meredith is currently the US Director of the Centre for Secular Space. She blogs at www.meredithtax.org.

Articles by Meredith Tax

Unpacking the idea of “Islamophobia”

Meredith Tax 20 May 2013

The term “Islamophobia” is everywhere, but its meanings work at cross purposes - to liberals, it refers to discrimination and hate crimes that can be addressed through existing laws, but to fundamentalists, it refers to offenses against religion that must be addressed through censorship or death.

Nude protests and political contradictions

Meredith Tax 22 April 2013

Femen’s April 4 protests in response to death threats against Tunisian nude blogger Amina Tyler have prompted much debate. How do we reconcile the need to defend free expression with the ambiguities of using nude women to market feminism?

Double Bind: tied up in knots on the left

Meredith Tax 5 February 2013

Instead of sanitizing the Muslim right as a way of fighting racism in the North, Meredith Tax argues that the left should develop a strategy of solidarity with democrats, trade unionists, religious and sexual minorities, and feminists struggling in the Global South against both neo-liberalism and fundamentalism.

The peace movement: debating alliances

Meredith Tax 12 November 2012

Meredith Tax responds to Rebecca Johnson and Pam Bailey: a movement must ensure that its short term tactical aims and alliances do not contradict its long term strategy.

Code Pink, the Taliban and Malala Yousafzai

Meredith Tax 13 October 2012

The US antiwar movement is failing to develop a politics that is critical of both US imperialism and fundamentalist movements like the Taliban.

The politics of provocation

Meredith Tax 18 September 2012

Feminists have been saying “Beware of fundamentalism” for the last twenty years, and we need to say it now louder than ever: anyone who whips up religious antagonisms to win political power is an enemy of human rights, says Meredith Tax

This week's editor

Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

Europe from the bottom up

European Union stars in Paris. Flickr/notarim. Some rights reserved.

A new Europe can only come from the bottom up
Etienne Balibar

A social Europe must be a political Europe
Bo Stråth

As Europe is provincialized: a reply to Etienne Balibar
Sandro Mezzadra

European debate

A republican call for a basic income
Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark

Nuclear non-proliferation

oDRussia at journalismfestival .com

Mali - the plot thickens

Remote control war

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