Jonathan Sas has worked in senior policy and political roles in government, think tanks, and the labor movement. He is an honorary witness to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. His writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, National Post, the Tyee, and Maisonneuve.
Donald Trump has long stoked the kind of abhorrent far-right action that we saw storm the Capitol today. But it’s not just Trump who deserves the blame: mainstream conservatives created this monster, too.
The far-right mob that took over the Capitol today never would have gotten past the front door if the federal police hadn’t allowed them to storm in. The simple fact is that left-wing protesters get treated with brutality, while right-wing protesters get coddled.
Julian Assange’s extradition to the US has been blocked thanks to a technicality, but he still faces the injustice of years in prison in the UK. While world leaders remain quiet, AMLO stands alone in speaking up for freedom of speech — and has offered Assange asylum in Mexico.
Big pharma firms like Pfizer are marketing COVID-19 vaccines for a profit, yet the research behind them would have been impossible without universities and public funding. The lack of an international public health response has placed capitalist profit over human need — and will leave billions of people unvaccinated.
Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress can rescind recently passed Trump administration rules that weaken protections for workers and the environment. Will Democrats use that power?
The exit polls from Georgia are clear: voters think Congress is doing too little to help them and too much for large corporations.
The lawless behavior of Donald Trump and Georgia’s GOP senators recently captured on tape is, like so much about Trump, appalling. But it reflects an American political culture in which the powerful are never held accountable for any kind of wrongdoing, no matter how blatant or evil.
Opponents of the $2,000 survival checks claim they’re poorly targeted. That’s nonsense. They would help the working class and poor far more than the rich.
Joe Biden is no friend to progressive politics of any kind. But after constant pressure, the president-elect has changed his stance on $2,000 survival checks if Georgia Democrats win.
Julian Assange’s defeat of extradition to the United States was a huge victory — one that couldn’t have been achieved without a public pressure campaign. That same public pressure will now be needed to free Assange from prison.
Why is there so much misery in a world of plenty? Why do private profit and wealth come before human needs and lives? Marxism has answers to these questions — answers that are actually easy to understand.
Workers in the restaurant industry are in dire straits all across the country. But the RESTAURANTS Act proposed in Congress is a $120 billion handout to industry owners with no substantive guarantees for the workers who are suffering immensely right now. We can’t trust celebrity chefs and CEOs with trickle-down relief.
The newly announced Google employees union, the Alphabet Workers Union, is the first union of white-collar workers at a major tech company. They’ll be tasked with figuring out how to wield power while only a minority of the workforce.
The socialist historian C. L. R. James was born 120 years ago today. His landmark text, The Black Jacobins, is a majestic account of the Haitian Revolution and is still the authoritative history of a heroic struggle for freedom and dignity.
Cold War stereotypes have blocked our understanding of European politics after 1945. On both sides of the future Iron Curtain, liberation from Nazism unleashed a spirit of radical democracy that might have led Europe down a very different path if not for superpower intervention.
One of Britain’s most influential twentieth-century socialists, R. H. Tawney, is often presented as a moralist opposed to Marxist notions of social change. In fact, his Christian socialism was deeply committed to political transformation — marrying a critique of “devilish” capitalism with the burning desire to create a new Jerusalem.
Companies like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup that paid speaking fees to Joe Biden’s Treasury and State nominees also have business before the departments they are set to run — potentially a serious conflict of interest.
The East German protests in the fall of 1989 included many who aspired for a democratic socialism. In the state’s final years, the young supporters of the Modern Socialism Project fought for an alternative to authoritarianism — promoting an ecological socialism rooted in democratic rights.
The Brazilian film Bacurau received international acclaim as one of the best films of 2020. In Brazil, however, it has unleashed the ire of a far-right government, intent on smashing the country’s film industry. Bacurau’s directors speak to Jacobin about the Lula government’s revitalization of the Brazilian cultural scene and what Bolsonaro has been doing since to destroy it.
Dave Barrett’s NDP government in British Columbia was one of the most impressive examples of social democracy in action during the twilight of the Keynesian era. But the BC NDP lacked a proper strategy to deal with the power of capital, which eventually forced it into retreat.