As we send this issue to the printer, the ghastly Shit Show known as the 2016 American presidential election has not yet concluded, although it will be over when you read this.
While one of the candidates expressed definitively more openly bigoted and authoritarian ideas, neither challenged the basic equation of life within the state and capitalism. The horrors of war, racism, environmental collapse, and oppression will continue regardless of the electoral outcome.
However, even if the forces of white, Christian nationalism have been defeated at the polls, neo-liberal politics at home and abroad, with its hyper-aggressive confrontations in Eastern Europe and Asia, leave the world at a perilous point.
As we begin our 52nd year of continuous publication, the future looks fraught with both danger and promise. Since 1999, the North American anarchist movement has built a solid infrastructure and theoretical base for action. Just as our ideas helped to define Seattle and Occupy, our participation now is critical to the construction of autonomous movements of resistance and revolution.
This issue follows our Summer 2016 edition. It is impossible to list everyone who brought it into being. A big thank you to all who participated and to our readers.
Fifth Estate
Radical Publishing since 1965
Vol. 51, No. 2, #397 Winter 2017
The Fifth Estate is an anti-profit, anarchist project published by a volunteer collective of friends and comrades. www.FifthEstate.org
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