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Daniel Finn is the features editor at Jacobin. He is the author of One Man’s Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA.
Eritrea spent decades fighting for independence against enormous odds. Its people finally achieved their goal in the 1990s, but Eritrean leader Isaias Afwerki has since created one of the world’s bleakest dictatorships, prompting countless Eritreans to flee.
The classic show The X-Files celebrated and satirized America’s love of conspiracy theories before they became an all-consuming obsession. When the show returned to the air after a long gap, it had to confront a culture of paranoia that made Fox Mulder’s imagination look tame.
After years of moralizing rhetoric, Keir Starmer couldn’t find a single credible accusation of misconduct to block his predecessor from running as a Labour candidate. All that’s left is a shrill campaign to exclude socialist ideas from public life.
The US promised to bring freedom to Iraqis, but its eight-year occupation resulted in death and destruction on a horrifying scale. It left behind a corrupt, sectarian political order that has responded to popular protests with brutal repression.
Media pundits claim that British politics is experiencing a “great moderation” with the departures of Nicola Sturgeon and Jeremy Corbyn. What they really mean is that a decrepit model based on food banks and xenophobia no longer faces mainstream opposition.
Thatcherism and austerity have had a devastating impact on British society, with stagnant wages and declining life expectancy. There’s a crying need for radical change, but no mainstream political force is offering to deliver it.
Critics say Marxism can’t account for the popular appeal of nationalism. But the Marxist tradition contains some vital insights into the origins and future of national communities.
Anti-Muslim racism has become a central theme for right-wing demagogues in Europe and the US. Islamophobia isn’t just a bad set of ideas: it’s a product of imperialism and the destructive wars waged by the US and its allies in the Middle East.
Social theorists identify automation as both the main cause of unemployment and the future launchpad for a high-tech post-scarcity world. But, Aaron Benanav argues, the problem is the stagnation of global capitalism and its inability to generate enough jobs.
Sinn Féin has become the largest party on both sides of the Irish border. But the party’s effort to eliminate that border for good will have to overcome some powerful obstacles that stand in the way of a united Ireland.
The Israeli state and its allies have campaigned tirelessly to promote the misleading concept of the “new antisemitism.” This effort brands effective, well-documented criticism of Israel as antisemitic while sowing confusion about real anti-Jewish prejudice.
The new left in Europe and North America hasn’t made the transition from being a symptom of democratic crisis to offering an effective cure for it.
Walter Benjamin was one of the most influential cultural theorists of the last century. There have been many attempts to defang and deradicalize Benjamin’s work, but his Marxist commitments run right through his dazzling intellectual legacy.
Since the 1990s, no government has been able to control the whole of Somalia’s territory. Lurid news reports about piracy and terrorism obscure the fact that big powers like the US have repeatedly intervened in the country’s affairs and worsened its condition.
The BBC marked its centenary this week, but its long-term future is deeply uncertain. We should defend the idea of public-service broadcasting while sharply criticizing the BBC in its current form for its conservativism and deference to the British state.
The rise of trillion-dollar investment firms like BlackRock has resulted in a massive, unprecedented concentration of economic power. BlackRock’s Larry Fink may use green rhetoric, but his company won’t take real action to address the climate crisis.
Five years after their electoral breakthroughs, the projects led by Jeremy Corbyn and Jean-Luc Mélenchon have gone in opposite directions. The British left would be in a stronger position today if it had displayed some of Mélenchon’s confrontational grit.
Sinn Féin is now the leading party across Ireland. But its real test will happen in power.
After 1945, Italy had strong left-wing movements and an anti-fascist consensus that stemmed from the wartime resistance. Since the 1990s, however, a corrosive “anti-political” mood has displaced anti-fascism, and the far right has been the main beneficiary.
From Marx and Engels to the present day, socialists have been deeply engaged with the world of science. With the provision of lifesaving vaccines held hostage by corporate profiteering, the story of this relationship is more important than ever.