Enver Motala is an associate of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) at the University of Johannesburg and of the Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training at the Nelson Mandela University.
Lula began his third term as Brazil’s president this week while his predecessor scurried off to Florida. The new administration rests on a broad alliance of left-wing and centrist forces that faces a powerful hard-right opposition inspired by Jair Bolsonaro.
Nicos Poulantzas developed a highly original interpretation of fascism, seeing it as a potential that lurked within all capitalist states under conditions of crisis. His work can help us understand the danger posed by right-wing authoritarianism today.
Many low-income people invested in the now-disgraced crypto exchange FTX. That’s because the exchange allegedly targeted poor and underbanked people and convinced them that FTX was just as safe as a regular bank.
Leftist leader Lula da Silva was inaugurated on Sunday as Brazil’s president. It’s a huge win for the global left — I only wish the late Michael Brooks, who tirelessly agitated for Lula’s release from prison, would have lived to see his return to power.
The St Louis County prosecutor pursued a death sentence for Kevin Johnson before calling for a retrial due to the “unconstitutional racial bias” in the case. But Missouri executed him anyway — killing a black man without even a semblance of due process.
Tech companies like Amazon and Uber are creating a society divided between the served and their servants, where the “friction” of in-person interaction is eliminated. That friction is the stuff of social connection — a world without it is nightmarish.
STEM departments are some of the most abusive, inequitable, and inaccessible workplaces in academia. Student workers’ victorious 2021–22 strike at Columbia University shows how militant, bottom-up unionism can change that.
Juan Guaidó was supposed to be the appealing, human face of US-backed regime change in Venezuela. His ouster as “interim president” this week is another signal that those efforts have failed.
Pelé rose to fame during the height of Brazil’s military dictatorship. He matched his brilliant play on the field with a careful avoidance of crossing the powerful.
When it comes to foreign policy, Australia has long been in thrall to US interests. This isn’t because Australia is an American client state but because the Australian establishment knows that its own interests are best served by US empire.
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the American working class faced a paradox: workers were told they were “essential” and touted as “heroes,” yet they were often treated as sacrificial lambs.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rose to power on the promise of massive redistribution. In the last year, he has nationalized lithium stores and lifted the minimum wage by 20%. But to secure these reforms he’ll need to transform the power structures of the Mexican state and media.
After Southwest’s mass flight cancellations, liberal media refused to report on transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s failure to regulate the airlines — because media outlets now avoid journalism that could offend their audiences’ partisan loyalties.
It’s not really clear what Damien Chazelle is trying to accomplish in his latest, Babylon. The movie is so awful that he should probably be banished from Hollywood.
The Right has successfully framed “canceling” as something leftists do. But it’s the snowflakes on the Right who have typically led the charge to censor culture. Case in point: when Britain lost its mind over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
There aren’t enough films depicting runaway slaves fighting off Southern racists on the way to freedom. So when that premise is wasted on a terrible movie, as it is in Will Smith’s Emancipation, it’s a great tragedy.
Howard Brown Health Center is well known as an LGBTQ-focused health provider and a stalwart Chicago progressive institution. Workers say that on the heels of their recent unionization, management is laying off 60 workers.
Simone Weil combined a passionate commitment to socialism and anti-fascism with a heroic, Christian spirit of self-sacrifice. Her legacy continues to pose ethical and philosophical questions for the Left today.
The fascist-inspired government in Italy, like the far-right government in Hungary, is part of European neoliberalism, not an alternative to it.
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.