Critical Stack Reader Digest
A selection of my favorite articles and essays from the past year
Hi everyone,
At the time I’m writing this, I expect a busy week ahead and won’t have time to make a full-fledged post. (post update: I was right.)
Thankfully this should come back to normal for next week! But, for this week, this will have to be my post.
It’s been one year already since I started the Critical Stack, can you believe it? Some of you have been here since the beginning, and some of you have joined today (in this case this is your first post, hi, very happy to see you here!)
And of course, after one year of weekly publishing, we’ve made quite an archive of articles and essay.
As such for this week of February 10, I will do something a little bit different and make a list of recommendations from my previous articles. I’ve gone through my entire archive and categorized them by topics that I feel are important.
Happy reading and see you next week!
PS: While I have you here, there was a question I wanted to ask. How would you feel about sponsored messages appearing in this newsletter in the future? I’m purposely not giving too many details as I don’t want to prime you into an answer, but as you probably know the Critical Stack is entirely free to read (with paid subscriptions offering access to the community Discord server), and I recently found that it was actually totally possible to find sponsorships for newsletters. I thought that was only for Youtube videos. Anyway, let me know in the comments!
History and current events
Because history turns into current events, I see the latter as the continuation of the former. Here are some articles that are still as relevant as the day they were written:
The Blueprint of Regime Change Operations — the entire regime change apparatus of the U.S.A. explained layer by layer and with plenty of historical examples (this was one of my very first pieces, with some of the examples later explored in their own articles).
South Korea was created from thin air by U.S. Generals — a dive into the division of Korea into two, how and why that happened, and the current implications this division has in the modern day.
Understanding French Africa and the Alliance of Sahel States — The entire explanation behind the push for the Alliance of Sahel States that you may have been reading about, and how deeply Africa is still colonized by France. Includes the 14 points of the Francafrique treaty which these countries were forced to accept.
Haiti: The first free nation — a two-parter (part 2 is linked at the end of part 1) that goes firstly into the colonial history of Haiti and its subsequent liberation by the first successful slave rebellion in history, and then into its modern history of U.S. colonialism up to this day with the so-called “gangs”.
Don't get it wrong: Ukraine and "Israel" are both tools of US-EU imperialism — everything happening today is linked at the root, and this article helps understand what this root is and how deep the link is.
Essays
Some of my favorite essays for the Critical Stack.
Settler Psychology — I find myself quoting this one often. It explains how settlers (particularly “Israeli” settlers) think and how we can infer this, and what it means for any settler colony down the line.
Outlast 2 and the politics of non-violence — I imagine not everyone plays video games, but I really like this essay because of the juxtaposition between two very similar (horror) games that end up promoting very different politics — and one ultimately shows that their politics are flawed. I think the politics of violence need to be studied more, it’s basically something we live with but pretend doesn’t exist or somehow exists outside of society.
Lesson in media literacy #1 — I use media literacy to mean specifically mass media literacy. Reading newspapers between the lines, I mean. And to be honest, while I’ve written 4 lessons, I think #1 is still the best. We dissect a 3 minute video from CNN but there’s a lot to unpack. They really got fear-mongering down to a science.
Retrofitting capitalism onto the past: how ideas evolve and change — I’m not sure how to present this one, except that it goes into a lot of different ideas that all converge into a single point. I know an author shouldn’t praise their own work, but I really like what I was able to do with this one. It’s a fulfilling read.
Bill Maher slams singer Chappell Roan in unhinged sexist and queerphobic attack on his show; My response to Bill — This one was supposed to be a simple response to zionist Bill Maher, but it ended up being so much more. We take down his hasbara arguments but also offer our own counter-arguments, making it not only a response, but an argumentative piece on its own.
Bonus: some posts that I like
Some posts not written by me that I enjoyed and want to share.
is a Palestinian living in Gaza. She documents her life on Substack, sometimes in text, sometimes in video, picking up day by day. Please send her some love and check out her gofundme ❤️🩹
And that’s it for my selection! Thank you for following along, have a good weekend, and see you next week!
PS: I am currently out of a job as some of my readers may know, but I don’t charge for the Critical Stack. I don’t want to paywall any knowledge, and so this newsletter is entirely reader-supported. If you feel like it, I would appreciate it if you even just checked out the support links below!
Or upgrade your subscription here directly on Substack:
To be quite honest, I would feel a little weird to see sponsorships here. I'd have next to no judgment, well, because we all have to eat... but it would feel weird. Especially because of the deadly serious and anti-capitalist subject matters here. But yeah, I tend to have no moral judgement, just a little discomfort with sponsorship stuff.