Militant Humanist

Why “Militant”?
Because the world watches a genocide in real time and calls it “complex.” Because schadenfreude wears a suit and tie now. Because silence is complicity when mostly old men, women, and children continue to be blown apart and starved—an ancient culture erased.

“Humanist”?
Because under bombardment, human is where the world needs to meet.

December 28, 2025

Dear readers, contributors, friends, and those just finding us,

Militant Humanist was conceived as an activist literary human rights project in response to the October 7th Hamas-organized attack on Israel and the subsequent escalation of ethnic cleansing and genocide against Palestinians—from Gaza to the West Bank. Two years on, it has also become a case study in what it requires to undertake this work professionally rather than precariously.

The vision has never changed: to build a space for militant, humanist writing and art that confronts genocide, occupation, fascism, poverty, and dehumanization—beginning with Palestine and extending across interconnected struggles.

Today, that work is being suspended indefinitely.

This decision is not the result of a single event, but of compounding pressures: limited time and funding, the challenges of producing a professional-quality journal on volunteer labor, and the increasing marginalization of dissent in the public sphere.

Organizations such as PEN America have documented how a pattern of public threats, executive actions, and retaliatory rhetoric—especially during the Trump administration—has fostered a climate of self-censorship and ideological conformity across literary and media spaces. Militant Humanist has not encountered formal censorship. What we have faced instead are the quieter forms of constraint PEN identifies: diminished institutional support, heightened legal and reputational risk awareness among writers, and the pervasive sense that platforms centering Palestinian liberation and anti-fascist analysis operate under growing scrutiny and institutional precarity.

Combined with the everyday realities of exhaustion, limited capacity, and financial strain, these factors have made it impossible to prepare and publish a first issue at the standard originally envisioned.

If circumstances change—materially, politically, or both—this work may yet resume in the originally planned form or another. If it does, it will owe a great deal to all those who believed that militant humanist writing still has a place in public life, especially those who trusted us with their submissions, volunteers, and donors.

The site will remain online as an incomplete record—without surrender. We will continue to welcome correspondence and accept submissions for foundational pieces to be showcased here as soon as possible. May this project inspire others with more resources and capacity to join the struggle for the end of U.S. sponsored genocide, the liberation of Palestine, and peace with Israelis.

Peace,
Andrés