6. Revolution or Ruin – the beginning of a new Fight the Fire format

At the time of writing, Israel is waging a genocidal onslaught on the occupied Gaza strip. Upwards of 18,000 Palestinians have been martyred. 1.9 million are displaced. 

The Northern powers, led by the US, maintain that Israel has a “right to defend itself.” It has a right, according to this imperialist bloc, to impose a total blockade of food, fuel, and water, to blow up hospitals, to torture civilians, to assassinate journalists. As long as Israel plays its role as client state for the geopolitical interests of Western capital, then no act of settler colonial violence goes too far. 

The same states greenlighting Gaza’s evisceration are funding Earth systems collapse. The Global North is responsible for 92% of emissions in excess of the safe planetary boundary, historic emissions which today mete out the droughts, wildfires, and floods immiserating hundreds of millions of people. As the overheated corpses pile up, capital opens new fields, ploughs more forests, slaughters more animals.  

Capitalism, imperialism, settler colonialism – these are the forces dragging humanity towards irreversible ruin. The pace of their destruction has entered a new phase of non-linearity, like the crescendo of a macabre orchestra. How can we orchestrate a revolutionary response?

In Revolution or Ruin, Fight the Fire unpacks this existential question. Moving from a diagnosis of the ruling class death drive to a continental strategy for ecosocialism and a materialist method to get there, this issue is a first attempt at forging a revolutionary answer to our ruinous descent. 

Noah Herfort

Fight the Fire will henceforth have regular articles published in its website and social networks, integrated in a general framework of editorials such as this one.