CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Virtues of Antigone

Apulian red figure amphora. Antigone, second from left with bound hands, is led to prison and death. ,Vase about 350-340 BCE. Berlin Altes Museum. Photo: ArchaiOptix, Wikipedia.

Antigone was the daughter of Oedipus, King of Thebes. After the dramatic end and disappearance of her father who had blinded himself, her uncle Creon succeeded to the throne. Antigone’s two brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, fought and killed each other. Creon issued an order forbidding the burial of Polynices because he fought against Thebes. Antigone rebelled against her uncle and his order. Her courage made her an iconic heroine with influence lasting to this day.

War and declining freedom

“In the first few months of 2026,” says Helen Shaw, theater critic for the New York Times, “Antigone is visiting New York four times, in four different stage adaptations. (Her omnipresence is like a rush of white blood cells — there’s an infection somewhere in the body politic.)… Sophocles was writing when both theater and democracy were young; the secrets of each are embedded in the play. At its deepest point, the tragedy warns us not to obey only a single ethos.”

True, the infection is that of the illegal war the US and Israel are fighting against Persia / Iran. Israel led Trump to this war. But the US has made war almost a business and industry. According to the journalist Patrick Strickland:

“Since 1776… the United States has intervened militarily in foreign countries nearly 400 times. Since September 11, 2001, U.S.-led counterterrorism operations have reached at least 78 countries. As of 2021, the U.S. had spent more than $8 trillion on its Global War on Terror, a series of conflicts that the Cost of........

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