Every so often I like to write out an explanation of who I am and what I’m trying to do here, for the benefit of new followers and for my own mental clarity.
The Caitlin Johnstone project is actually run by two people: myself and my husband Tim Foley, who co-authors all my written works. Tim and I fell in love in 2014, started writing together in 2016 after we got married, and in 2017 we launched the audience-funded platform you see today.
Everything we publish is unconditionally free to view without any paywalls or advertisements; all our funding comes from voluntary donations from readers and viewers who feel inspired to support what we do. All our work is copyright-free, so everyone is allowed to republish, reuse, reappropriate, translate, or outright copy anything we put out without asking permission or providing attribution, so you’ll see things we wrote pop up on all kinds of platforms all around the world in many different languages.
I’ve lived my whole life in Melbourne with some brief stays in the UK. I received a journalism degree from RMIT in 2003 but didn’t do any news media work because I’d learned that the legacy press was too corrupt to do actual journalism in. So instead I focused on raising my kids, healing my inner wounds, and becoming a conscious person.
Tim was born in Philadelphia and lived most of his life in California, where he worked in healthcare. We met in an online discussion forum about spiritual enlightenment in 2011, we fell in love in 2014, Tim moved to Australia in 2016, and we’ve been falling ever since.
This project is basically just an outgrowth of that ongoing romance. We don’t have kids together, so we spend our time making creativity babies in the form of essays, poetry, paintings and books. We are each other’s muse so we’re rarely at a loss for inspiration, which is why we’ve been able to write so prolifically all these years. Our ultimate goal is to help create a healthy world so that we can live extremely long lives together in a harmonious future.
We have long conversations every day about what’s going on in the world and where we’re headed as a species, and our daily articles are generally outgrowths of those conversations. I function as the editor-in-chief of our project, determining the shape, feel, and ideological direction of our work, and having the final say in whatever gets published. Tim does most of the readings and videos because he’s good at reading aloud and I dislike appearing on camera.
Ideologically I sit well to the left side of the political spectrum; I am frequently called a communist, which is fine by me. I want a world where everyone has what they need, where plutocrats can’t leverage obscene amounts of wealth to manipulate our society to their advantage, and where we live in harmony with the global south instead of enslaving its people using military violence and economic coercion. I oppose tyranny, war, militarism, capitalism, imperialism, Zionism, the western intelligence cartel, mass surveillance, government secrecy, police brutality, censorship, propaganda, and the suppression of journalism. I despise racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, western supremacism, and all prejudices which harm marginalized populations.
I believe we live in a tyrannical mind-controlled dystopia at the center of an empire that is fueled by human blood, and that we ordinary people can change this by using the power of our numbers to force the creation of a just system. Westerners are currently too propagandized to understand the urgent need for revolutionary change, but I see signs that we are beginning to awaken from that trance.
Ultimately what’s needed is a radical transformation of human consciousness away from our self-destructive egoic patterning. We know that this is possible on an individual scale in the process commonly known as spiritual enlightenment, so there exists within us the possibility of such a transformation on a collective level as well. Anyone who has ever had a spiritual awakening knows you can hear the same teaching or pointer a thousand times before it finally hits home and rips your mind wide open, so just because we haven’t yet become a conscious species doesn’t mean we can’t become one.
It’s all about helping humanity see through its various illusions and delusions so that we can wake up to reality and create a healthy world. Everything I publish is pointed at this in some way. That’s what this project is and will continue to be, and I am deeply honored that so many people have been eager to come along for the journey.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you feel inspired. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. No AI used in any works.
Caitlin. No words. If only we could clone you & Tim. ❤️❤️❤️💔
My elegy has brought many of you to tears, and I honestly do not know how to thank Allah enough for surrounding me with such beautiful, sensitive souls. I am especially proud of this piece because I did not write it simply as a poem; I wrote it because I could not bear the thought of those little lives disappearing into statistics and headlines.
Every baby and every child had a name, a face, a mother who loved them, and a future that should have unfolded before them. I wanted, in my small way, to sit with their grief, to mourn them as human beings, and to give them a few words of love when the world had failed to protect them.
Perhaps that is why this piece means so much to me. I wrote it with a broken heart, for children whose hearts should never have been broken. May Allah receive them with infinite mercy, grant patience to their families, and never allow us to forget them. 💔🤲
PLEASE READ AND SHARE.😭😭😭
A free verse elegy—written without rhyme to let natural breath and cadence carry the weight of witness.
How Did You I̶ Die?
A reflection on witness, loss, and the kites above Gaza.
Was Gaza still shaking when you closed your eyes?
Was your mother beside you, calling your name through the dust?
Did you still have your schoolbag, your pencil, and the little kite you flew above Gaza, its bright tail trembling in the Mediterranean wind?
When the walls came down, did you understand? Or were you still only a child, wondering why the sky had become so loud?
And when the earth covered you, did you call: Yā Allāh?
I wonder what happened then. Did the darkness become light? Did the angels come? Did you hear: Salāmun ʿalaykum— and lift your little head?
Perhaps you asked: Yā Rabb, where is my mother? Where is my home? Where is my kite?
And perhaps Allah showed you a place where nothing burns. Perhaps the wind was waiting. Perhaps your kite was waiting too.
Perhaps you took its string in your little hand and ran— higher, little one, higher than the smoke, higher than the walls. For in the kingdom of your Lord, no one would dare cut the string of your kite.
You died once. I lived on.
Tomorrow morning I will wake. I will make tea. I will teach my lessons. I will answer my messages.
Children will pass me with schoolbags on their backs. The sea will still touch the shore. The sun will still rise.
And somewhere in Gaza, your schoolbag will still be there. Your pencil lying where it fell. Your mother waking without you.
Shakespeare wrote: 'Cowards die many times before their deaths.'
Not the child beneath the rubble, but the man who sees and carries on. Who hears and carries on eating. Who says your name and returns to his ordinary life.
You were not a number. You were someone's child. Someone's joy, someone's whole universe. Someone's amānah.
And Allah knew you before the world knew your name.
So when I see a kite rising against our English sky, I will stop. I will watch until it disappears into the clouds. And I will imagine your little hands still holding the string.
Fly, little one. Spread your green wings where the sky does not fall.
Because tomorrow I will wake. Your mother will wake. The sun will rise.
And somewhere in the dust, a teddy bear will still be waiting for his little chum.
How am I supposed to live after knowing how you died?
Ibn-e-Khushnood