Daniel Finn is the features editor at Jacobin. He is the author of One Man’s Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA.
June 23, 2016, has gone down as the day Britain departed from the mainstream by voting to leave the European Union. In reality, British politics was a few steps ahead of the curve, as the EU itself has become a vehicle for the anti-immigrant far right.
Keir Starmer marketed himself as a human rights lawyer who stood up for the downtrodden. As Britain’s prime minister, he showed nothing but contempt for human rights law, and he now leaves behind a disgraceful record of authoritarian policies.
After waging a destructive war at vast expense, Donald Trump has ended up in a weaker strategic position than when he started. His main achievement has been to battle-test Iran’s ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and disrupt the world economy.
The right-wing party Reform UK outperformed Labour in elections this month across Britain. Labour has mainly been shedding support on its left flank, but the party’s current leaders have no desire to win those voters back with left-wing policies.
Tony Blair’s capacity for malevolence appears to be without limit. Blair’s latest intervention in British politics is yet another bid to make the world an uglier, nastier place, brought to you in association with his tech billionaire sponsors.
Nayib Bukele swept to power in 2019 by presenting himself as an insurgent outsider who was going to clean up corruption in El Salvador. In reality he has waged war on democratic rights and turned his country into a MAGA prison camp.
Donald Trump has begun suggesting that his war on Iran may be over “very soon” as oil prices soar. Trump will proclaim victory no matter what happens, but he won’t be able to say what “victory” means, let alone persuade anyone else that he succeeded.
The US/Israeli attack on Iran has inflicted heavy damage on its command structure, but the Iranian system is designed to withstand such pressure. We should expect a more protracted war than last summer, with political factors key to the final outcome.
In the late sixteenth century, the Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule in a decades-long struggle that gave birth to the Dutch Republic. Although the initial spark for the revolt was religious, it helped pave the way for the rise of capitalism.
Since Donald Trump announced a ceasefire deal with great fanfare, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians while continuing to occupy Gaza and block aid. Now Trump and his entourage want to convert the site of genocide into a real estate opportunity.
Discontent over dire economic conditions lay behind the protest wave that rocked Iran earlier this month. A US attack will make things even worse for the Iranian people, whether or not it results in the regime change Donald Trump would like to see.
While Donald Trump fires off threats of military action against countries from Greenland to Iran, Latin America is the main focus for his strategy of imperial retrenchment. The Latin American left will have to build new alliances against US aggression.
There’s nothing Britain’s political class likes more than a mob of football hooligans, so long as they’re Israeli. Now the Starmer government has moved to punish police officers for declining to accommodate Maccabi Tel Aviv’s notoriously racist fans.
Like Renee Good’s murder in Minnesota, the Bloody Sunday massacre in Ireland was notable for both the blatancy of the crime, carried out in broad daylight, and the audacity of the lies pumped out from the highest levels of the state.
How discontent over housing, and not workplace struggle, made Paris’s suburbs hotbeds of communism.
Western states would like to move on as if the Gaza genocide never happened, even though Israel is still terrorizing the Palestinian people. But the legal cases holding Israel and its leaders accountable are going ahead despite their best efforts.
The Portuguese Socialist Party once seemed to be a model for Europe’s center left, gaining support while its sister parties were in decline. But this year’s election was a crushing defeat that saw the Socialists fall behind the far-right group Chega.
Ireland’s new president, Catherine Connolly, is an outspoken left-winger who champions the rights of the Palestinians and opposes Europe’s militarization drive. Her resounding victory came as a huge shock to the conservative political establishment.
Political fearmongering about the effects of immigration on the British economy doesn’t track with reality.
The people of Gaza are starving because of a man-made famine as Israel draws up plans for a full-scale military occupation. US government officials haven’t just turned a blind eye to the historic atrocities in Gaza — they’ve been cheering them on.