Maiseh Review

We’ve seen a flurry of new horror releases so far in 2023, particularly coming out of the world of TorDotCom and publications with a strong online footprint. What’s interesting is that this is leaning back into the direction of anthologies, chapbooks, and novellas, three formats that tend to

“Software is more than just a commodity, it replicates itself. When it is decentralized, it becomes a means of production all its own,” a friend of mine professed, with a slight drunken slur, amidst gulps of warm Pabst. He was an organizer who had been lured to socialism through open-source

We first learned about Black Metal Rainbows a few years ago when they did a Kickstarter campaign to fund their book. The volume is an anthology of writing on black metal that takes a decidedly antifascist, antiracist, radical, and, perhaps most of all, queer, claim on the black metal scene.

Like most things in Judaism, trees are rarely just imposing plants. The Jewish holiday Tu B'Shevat powerfully locates the pathway God takes through us, from this distant and unknowable force into the bittul, the transcendent materiality of our bodies and lives, taking root through Torah, wisdom, and, ultimately,

Part of the story of antifascism of the last decade is that it sits at the intersection not just of race, gender, identity, and oppression, but social movements themselves. The internal conversation between mass activist projects of different varieties is how modern antifascism is constantly evolving, thinking about what kinds

This month was a catch-up with some recently concluded mini-series and evaluating some recent cult favorites that had been appearing on “must read” lists. All things considered, folk horror remains a decisive trend, both in our reading lists and the widening horror film world. This speaks to the lasting hold

As 2015’s pre-political season became centered on the arrival of Trump and the public emergence of the alt-right, some peculiarities started to show up at rallies and online. Accusations were abounding that a secretive “cabal” of elites was exploiting our country’s youth for some type of blood ritual,

A while back I did a lengthy interview with socialist author and organizer Daniel Randall about his new book, Antisemitism on the Left: Arguments for Socialists [https://www.nopasaran.media/confronting-antisemitism-on-the-left-arguments-for-socialists/] , which is a series of interlocking essays confronting the issue of left-wing antisemitism from an organically left-wing perspective. The

To close out the year I collected a slightly larger list of titles to review, some of which are somewhat older yet still within the last decade, and others that are new releases from 2022. The year itself saw certain trends rise to the top of the horror pile, particularly

“So when do you think we might be able to get rid of the Christmas Tree? It’s taking up an entire shelf in the garage,” my wife gently pressed me, easily for the third time. It was December 10th and we had no plan for erecting our plastic imitation

To many, last month’s brutal attack on a queer nightclub in Colorado Springs, in which five people were killed and 25 were injured, was the logical [https://religiondispatches.org/colorado-springs-massacre-captures-the-christian-nationalist-monster-in-the-mirror/] conclusion [https://religiondispatches.org/when-violence-is-inevitable-club-q-and-the-success-of-the-system/] of the Right’s increasingly dehumanizing rhetoric against the LGBTQI+ community. This tragic event

Despite conservatives in America feigning their undying support for “free speech,” when it comes to Israel, those convictions often vanish when it comes to even mild criticism of Israel. A recent Texas state bill [https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/31/texas-boycott-israel-lawsuit/] was introduced that, among other things, barred any

If there’s one word I never want to hear in a major news story ever again, it’s “antifa.” Part of this is because of the massive conspiracy infrastructure the right has built around it [https://politicalresearch.org/2021/07/13/great-2020-antifa-scare]. It has created a new incarnation of

This was a particularly strong month, and we are going to return to this month’s top pic pick shortly as part of our series on Jewish horror. As with the rest of the year, horror comics continue to outpace particularly short horror fiction, part of the momentary popularity of

As the ballots cast on November 8th reveal, our entire political system has been cast into a catastrophic state of flux. This may be most true for the GOP, whose search for identity continues to walk further into the previously fringe elements of their base. Backing their star quarterback (Trump)

With Halloween closing out October (the day this is published), you'd think there would be a denser list of titles, but this is actually more of a list of books straddling the line between traditional horror and adjacent genres. It is also a comics heavy month, and we

As the pandemic ramped up early in 2020, it was the hasidim that really made people angry. Hasidic communities in Brooklyn and the rest of New York State were amongst the hardest hit by the pandemic, with thousands rapidly infected, making them amongst the most severely impacted in the U.

In reviewing new titles for September, we were able to check in on some great new releases from earlier this year and can highlight some especially notable releases. With the horror genres expanding so rapidly, and particularly sub-genres like New Lovecraftian and folk horror that were previously left to the

Halfway through August this year, something familiar happened. More than four hundred and twenty gallons of crude oil spread across Galveston Bay [https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/08/17/cleanup-efforts-underway-after-more-than-420-gallons-of-crude-oil-spills-into-tabbs-bay-near-houston-officials-say/] , a major water body close to Houston, which, while frightening, is still one of the smaller incidents in

While figures like Blake Masters are turning heads with their open nationalist agenda and Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to criminalize trans people on a nationwide scale [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/08/rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-wants-to-criminalizes-transgender-medical-care] , one far-right celebrity race has gotten lost in the shuffle. Internet personality and ultra-right candidate

The summer has seen such a density of horror releases that it has been hard to keep up, but I wanted to keep a log of some of the favorites we are closing out August with. In the coming months we know that even more genre titles will be coming

If anarchists know Jewish history at all, it is likely the role of Jewish radicalism in the political battles of the early 20th century. Jews made up huge portions of the anarchist and socialist movement as Ashkenazi immigrants flooded New York City’s Lower East Side or London’s East

In my time in and around radical politics, Francis Fukayama has always been the archetypal picture of an almost threatening level of stasis. His 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man [https://www.amazon.com/End-History-Last-Man/dp/B07GFPV7H1/1953813046/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=