You read the headline right — this month, I’m celebrating my twenty-fifth year as a blogger. And I’ll put this right up top: if you haven’t already subscribed, this is the time to do it. During the month of November, I’m offering anyone who signs up subscriptions at 20% off for up to a full year!
Why subscribe to carlbeijer.com? Here’s what some of my readers have had to say:
“Whenever I feel confused about an issue or depressed about the state of things, I go to Carl Bejier's blog. Depression and confusion might seem like different problems, but in politics, they're connected and reinforce each other. Carl is the perfect antidote to both. Not because he cheers me up but because he clears things up. Obfuscation and idolatry are huge problems on the left, and Carl is the dedicated enemy of both. Fighting them, he gives me the clarity and confidence that I—we—need.” - Corey Robin, Brooklyn College / CUNY
“Mr. Beijer's commentary on socialism and the political discourse is indispensable reading for the modern left.” - Matt Bruenig, People’s Policy Project
“Carl Beijer has a rare skill for a Marxist in 2024: he can write quickly and write well on a range of topics that are of interest to non-academics. I used to wonder who on the Left had the ability to deliver a column for a daily newspaper without losing their politics and intellectual framework and I think I have my answer — Carl.” - Bhaskar Sunkara, Jacobin and The Nation
There was of course no Substack when I began blogging in 1999. At that point, in fact, there were hardly even content management systems; Blogger, for example, only launched near the end of that year, and WordPress was still 4 years away. So back then, I relied entirely on manually updating static Geocities pages whenever I had something new to say.
Sadly, those are lost to the mists of time. But here’s what my blog looked like just a few years later — that is, twenty years ago:
Back then, as you can see, I often used the blog to reprint things I’d written elsewhere. But two other points stand out. First, this was still an extremely primitive era of blogging. This site was a homebrew site that a friend and I had coded with PHP; we updated it by dropping .txt files into a folder on the server.
The second thing that stands out is this is, almost to the letter, the exact kind of thing that I am writing today. A lot has changed on the surface of our politics, but the underlying dynamics are still very similar. Voters are still caught in a lesser-evil voting predicament between a thoroughly unsatisfactory Democrat and a Republican who is generally regarded on the liberal-left as a fascist. Palestine is still under attack. And the hard work of politics, to this day, is still about fighting for someone you don’t know.
My fondest hope is that in 25 years I won’t be able to write the same post. For the love of God, please change our politics, if only so that I’ll be able to say something new.
Thanks for reading,
Carl