DK Renton

What’s going on when Rob Schenck is interviewed about Minneapolis? Earlier today, the good folks at Reveal (a public radio station linked to Mother Jones) ran an interview with Evangelical pastor Rob Schenk.

His story is like those accounts you read of the life-long Republican who’s now sitting on her household porch, in -20 degrees, a whistle round her neck, ready to make the loudest racket she can to stop the ICE army from kidnapping a kid...

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/whats-goin...

DK Renton (@davidkr.bsky.social) author of our forthcoming book on Comrade Delta, spoke to @acidhorizon.bsky.social about the 2013 crisis.

Goodby, Gerry Nick Griffin called him a “vicious old Communist and Zionist thug”, which Gerry Gable would have taken as a compliment.

Anti-fascists in the 1990s read the magazine, were shaped by it, all of us were, whatever tradition we belonged to. davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/goodby-gerry

Nothing systematic, but there’s a lot on law and bodies in Dean Spade’s work, eg here
www.deanspade.net/wp-content/u...

Not going to Camden for the SWP conference this year? Don't worry, you can get all the analysis you need, the discussion of what went wrong, and of how we build left-wing organisations without repeating the mistakes here...

With thanks to Adam for hosting and to my fellow guest Elane

Screenshot of text: The Supreme Court said that trans people without GRCs are still protected from harassment. In reality, they lost that years ago. Go into a workplace, use any insult, speak any slur term you like - and the state of UK discrimination law is that the harasser is protected. It's not too difficult to see where this is going. In America, Presidential orders already declare that anyone seeking to travel to that country using a passport with a sex other than the one on their birth certificate, should be treated as carrying out immigration fraudster. States are experimenting with ideas of legislation to carry forwards the criminalisation of trans people: jail for hairdressers who permit their client to have haircuts in the wrong sex.

I, maybe naively, think this won’t be permanent. But right now, I can’t imagine just how difficult it is to be trans (or enby) right now. @davidkr.bsky.social writes on one of the most shameful legal cases in UK history.

livesrunning.wordpress.com/2025/04/16/t...

Yes, agree about timing

When Conflict -is- Abuse [TW: discussion of intimate violence].

Shunning, Schulman writes, is arbitrary. Shunning prevents the departee from learning necessary valuable lessons. In this account, all departures are bad, even the victim of sustained physical violence, shunning the domestic home under threat of death.

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/when-confl...

"The apology says, “We were wrong in how we responded to the two cases”, how were you wrong? “The process we had in place at that time was entirely inadequate”, how was it inadequate? The SWP is willing to admit to the vaguest and most weightless of things – error – but can’t say what people did, or who was affected by their actions, or why they were so destructive." D K Renton Is it time to forgive the SWP? DAVIDRENTON590934.SUBSTACK.COM

Ahead of @davidkr.bsky.social's book Comrade Delta, on the 2013 scandal in the Socialist Workers Party, DK Renton assesses the recent changes at the top of the party, asking 'Is it time to forgive the SWP?'

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/is-it-time...

Is it time to forgive the SWP? The SWP has gone public with its plans to remove four people from its central committee: Alex Callinicos, Charlie Kimber, Weyman Bennett and Mark Thomas.

Of the critics who were mocked, humiliated, threatened with violence, spat on, lied about, or had to watched in horror as the SWP tried to drive them out of the labour movement – to which is the party now willing to admit it did wrong? davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/is-it-time...

Did Your Party's conference do enough to turn the tide of its disastrous beginnings? Corbyn and Sultana's new party is likely to benefit from factors for which it can claim no credit.

Corbyn and Sultana's new party is likely to benefit from factors for which it can claim no credit.

New from David Renton on The Lead as he considers what next for Your Party

Third Reich ’n’ Roll A new book reflects on the music industry’s disturbing obsession with Nazi aesthetics and ideology — ranging over unexpected examples of fascist fetishism, and celebrating those who challenged it.

Between 1965 and 1980, dozens of the best-known musicians in Britain were collectors of Nazi regalia…

tribunemag.co.uk/2025/12/thir...

In defence of jury trials rs21 - revolutionary socialism in the 21st century

DK Renton argues that David Lammy’s proposal to severely cut the number of jury trials is another authoritarian step by Labour.

revsoc21.uk/2025/11/30/i...

Here is a list of reasons why some of my hearings and trials this year have been delayed and kicked off into the long grass, stuck in our record court backlog. Serious allegations which will now be tried *years* after the event. 🧵👇

Yes, this weekend’s Conference is Your Party’s last chance – but don’t assume we’ll blow it This Saturday and Sunday, delegates will be gathering at Liverpool ACC’s conference centre to discuss the founding of a new party.

In a number of towns and cities, local activists have ignored the leadership contest and pressed on with local organising. Where people have done that – as we have in Islington – we’ve enjoyed the experience

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/yes-this-w...

Let’s put the politics back in: On a new history of the Anti-Nazi League

"...Telling the story of the Anti-Nazi League without giving equal weight to Rock Against Racism is like telling a version of Romeo and Juliet in which Romeo delivers his lines, while cutting Juliet’s words back to him..."

On a new history of the 70s

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/lets-put-t...

it would probably be sorta hard for just anyone to do it *this well* because it requires you to actually be normal about trans people, but still it feels important to state for the record that WE ARE NOT HARD TO STAND UP FOR AND ANY OF THEM COULD DO IT.

It comes as close as anything does to taking that side of fascism seriously: Saunders, Jenks, the infiltration of the NFU in the 40s and 50s…

Thanks for sharing. Did you ever read the Coupland book? Have often wondered how that generation felt, to people who actually farm.

Breaking the state rs21 - revolutionary socialism in the 21st century

In his final article on rs21’s key political ideas, DK Renton explains why we can’t take over the state – we need to smash it to create a new world of freedom.

revsoc21.uk/2025/10/10/b...

Splits, rows and even legal threats have dogged the first few months of what was supposed to be a new start for the left in Britain.

For The Lead, left-wing veteran David Renton dives into just what went wrong for Your Party🧵

Friends and comrades made a crowdfunding page for my family.

It’s really hard to post this. I know that there are a lot of other important issues asking for money but things have gotten to the point where we need to open ourselves up to your support.

Thank you for your consideration.

Rutgers professor moving to Europe after threats over antifa accusations Mark Bray says threats intensified after a Turning Point USA petition accused him of promoting political violence

One of many terrible parts of this is Rutgers' utter uselessness in helping Professor Bray. Rutgers isn't alone: universities are failing their community members—faculty, staff, and students alike—when it comes to doxxing and digital safety. And they've been failing them for years.

"...Of all Corbyn’s many controversial friendships, the one which has the potential to cause most damage to his legacy is Karie Murphy..."

Me for @theleaduk.bsky.social

"‘No Socialist looks on “outrages” as a virtue or thinks that violence can ever be anything but a miserable necessity,’ Eleanor Marx acknowledged. But whatever crime the Fenians had committed, there was ‘a greater criminal’: ‘the English Government’"

Me for @rs21.bsky.social on internationalism

Me for @truthout.org on the Pal Action protests

"Those arrested included nurses, Anglican priests, the former editor of the doctors’ magazine, the British Medical Journal. They waited without grumbling in the hot summer sun, ageing limbs made painful by the police’s slow processing of the crowd."

Out next May

"Renton rescues ‘forgiveness' from the pulpit and returns it, bloodied but lucid, to history. With a barrister’s intolerance for cant and a socialist’s contempt for vicarious absolution, he shows that forgiveness with justice is radical realpolitik"
—Richard Seymour

shorturl.at/WWeS5

Cover reveal:
Comrade Delta The 2013 Crisis in Britain’s Largest Far-Left Party

“An honest, balanced & well-documented account of an appalling episode” Ian Birchall

"An impeccably researched reckoning with the causes of a catastrophic betrayal" Sophie Lewis

Out in July 2026

shorturl.at/emntq

Anti-fascism needs culture West Runton punks, 1979 - Syd Shelton

How are you supposed to talk down your racist uncle if the only person he’ll listen to it’s the AI on his Android? Or the attention economy which cocoons our enemy – sending their cadres picures of crowds singing Allah is a Pedo?

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/anti-fasci...

The End of Chemo The picture was taken on Friday, it’s the last photograph of me in the chemo ward at UCLH.

"The worst was four weeks when it spread to my mouth. It was as if some torturer-antagonist was burning my jawbone with an oxyacetaline torch. The hospital recommended I drink salt water. “Just a placebo,” the consultant told me at our next appointment

davidrenton590934.substack.com/p/the-end-of...