The GOP Says It’s a Working-Class Party. Last Night’s Debate Exposed That Charade.
Last night’s Republican presidential debate made a mockery of the idea that the GOP is anything other than the party of the boss.
178 Articles by: Ben Burgis
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Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast Give Them An Argument. He’s the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.
Did Thomas Friedman Forget About the Iraq War?
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was one of the loudest cheerleaders for the war in Iraq. His condemnation of Putin’s “war of choice” in Ukraine — a horrific act of aggression, like Bush’s war — could be a word-for-word rebuke of what he wrote then.
Marx Engaged in Rigorous Analysis — but He Was Driven by Moral Outrage
Karl Marx was an analytically rigorous theoretician. But his 1853 article “The Duchess of Sutherland and Slavery” is a good reminder that he was also motivated by white-hot outrage about injustice.
The Right Says to Hell With Equality
The political right is a diverse intellectual tradition and world-making project. But there’s one thing that unites every variant of right-wing ideology: the belief that society will improve if we give up on the dream of a world where people are equal.
To Fight the “Rich Men North of Richmond,” Organize a Union
Reactions to Oliver Anthony’s viral hit, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” have played out along drearily predictable culture-war lines. But Billy Bragg’s response, “Rich Men Earning North of a Million,” instructing Anthony to “join a union, brother,” perfectly cuts through the noise.
Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson Are Elites in Populist Clothing
Donald Trump skipped the first GOP debate to chat with his courtier Tucker Carlson. Their conversation revealed the utter insincerity of their branding as opponents of the elite and the military-industrial complex.
UFO Crashes Almost Certainly Aren’t Real. But the Government Itself Is Responsible for Public Distrust.
The hearings on unidentified aerial phenomena unearthed no public evidence that should make us take claims of crashed alien spacecrafts and recovered “nonhuman biologics” seriously. But the federal government has done plenty to earn public distrust.
Conservatives Think “Marxism” Is Anything That Scares Them
One of the leading lights of national conservatism, Yoram Hazony, devotes a chapter of his new book to the “Marxist challenge.” But like so many other conservatives, he seems to think Marxism means “anything conservatives find frightening.”
Donald Trump Being Prosecuted for His Crimes Is Good, Actually
Donald Trump’s apologists argue that his indictment for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election is overreach. They’re wrong. Presidents and ex-presidents shouldn’t be above the law.
The Pentagon Budget Is Obscene, Even Without the Right-Wing Culture-War Amendments
The House and Senate are fighting over the Pentagon budget — not because anyone objects to an obscene level of military spending but because it’s become yet another a proxy for the culture war. The Left should oppose the budget for the right reasons.
Socialists Really Do Have to Talk About Bananas
It’s easy to mock the “banana discourse” that’s materialized on left-wing Twitter in the last week. But there are important issues here about how production and consumption would work under a feasible and desirable form of socialism.
Conservative Free-Speech Crusaders Tried to Censor a Left-Wing Podcast
The left-wing podcast Know Your Enemy engages seriously with conservative thinkers. A deep-pocketed conservative foundation tried to destroy the podcast with a serious lawsuit. Which side is serious about the free exchange of ideas?
Talking About The Sopranos With Michael Brooks
In this previously unpublished conversation, Jacobin’s Ben Burgis and the late socialist podcaster Michael Brooks, who died three years ago today, talk about their shared love for The Sopranos.
The Tragic Failure of the Soviet Experiment Doesn’t Mean We Should Reject Socialism
Like many socialists around the world, G. A. Cohen invested the Soviet Union with his hopes for a more just and equal society. In time, he grew disillusioned with the USSR — but he never stopped fighting for a better world.
AOC Shouldn’t Have Endorsed Joe Biden
Leading left-wing politicians including Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar, and, most recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have already endorsed Joe Biden — even though primary voters haven’t yet had their say and most Democrats in polls don’t even want him to run.
Socialism Can Help Contain Humanity’s Worst Impulses and Encourage Our Best
Many critics of socialism claim that our nature as humans is too flawed and selfish for socialism to work. They’re getting things exactly backward. We need socialism to protect against human cruelty and encourage human kindness.
Biden Is Wrong. The Supreme Court Is Already “Politicized.”
President Biden said he won’t expand the Supreme Court because doing so would “politicize” the court in an unhealthy way. But it’s a political institution by its nature — and a disturbingly undemocratic one.
There’s No Such Thing as “Right-Wing Marxism”
The National Review frets that “populist” paleoconservatives are vessels of Marxist influence on the Right. That’s nonsense.
Why Are Liberals Constantly Fixated on “Competence” Instead of Politics?
Democrats for DeSantis? Seems hard to justify. William Cooper’s recent contrarian case for Ron DeSantis in the Orlando Sentinel is an unwittingly perfect satire of contemporary American liberalism’s technocratic obsessions.
Israelism Is a Powerful Indictment of Pro-Apartheid Indoctrination
A new documentary called Israelism tells the story of young American Jews coming to question the narrative they were taught about “the only democracy in the Middle East.”