During the 1960s, the Japanese Communist Party faced a strong challenge from Japan’s New Left groups amid a wave of student radicalization. While the Communists’ staying power proved greater, neither old nor new lefts have succeeded in transforming Japan.
Revelations from the January 6 hearings and the recent spate of Supreme Court decisions show that the Right is ready to dispense with democracy. Democratic Party leaders seem ready to let them.
The Japanese Communist Party turns 100 today. Its activists challenged the authoritarian emperor system of prewar Japan, and it remains an important countervailing force in a deeply conservative and conformist political culture.
Ex-president Jeanine Áñez has been found guilty for helping to orchestrate the right-wing coup that brought her to power in 2019. The judgment is an essential step to protect the integrity of Bolivia’s democracy.
A newly created House district in Michigan is pitting the solidly pro-labor Democrat Representative Andy Levin against Representative Haley Stevens, a Democrat with a history of doing gig companies’ bidding and trying to smash worker protections.
In the ’80s and ’90s, the Democrats took a jackhammer to education, housing, and social welfare. This isn’t the story of a weak party unable to defend its earlier gains, but a transformed party demolishing them in service of a new neoliberal ideology.
States at war generally adopt interventionist economic policies to mobilize resources and manpower. Ukraine hasn’t followed suit, instead pursuing dogmatic free-marketeer measures that suit Western creditors more than its own population.
John Bolton bragged this week that he’s “someone who has helped plan coups.” It was a brazen display of antidemocratic imperial arrogance, making clear that antidemocratic meddling is par for the course in US foreign policy.
Salah Hamouri is a French-Palestinian lawyer imprisoned without charges by Israel. In an open letter to France’s president Emmanuel Macron, he denounces how Israel uses its “Bastilles” to crush Palestinians’ basic freedoms.
Trigger-happy behavior and racist practices have long been endemic in US policing — but as the new Uvalde video and other revelations of recent weeks have shown in gruesome detail, so are gross incompetence and violent extremism.
Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has pushed Sweden and Finland to crack down on Kurdish groups in exchange for NATO membership. He cites his country’s “legitimate security concerns” — but it’s the long-oppressed Kurds who have most to fear.
Moscow’s invasion has pushed Ukraine closer to defaulting on its foreign debt, imperiling its economy and any future reconstruction. It’s time Western governments canceled that debt.
Good union jobs built America’s blue-collar black middle class. But the percentage of black workers in manufacturing has been halved since the 1970s, yielding poverty and precarity. We can’t achieve racial justice without a movement to win those jobs back.
Over the weekend in Brazil, a leftist official backing Lula’s presidential bid was killed by a supporter of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. It’s a chilling reminder of the far right’s willingness to use violence to fight the Left.
The “Uber Files” leak reveals the power of the company’s multimillion-dollar lobbying effort — and how it worked with governments around the world to undercut workers’ rights.
In the labor movement, we are only as strong as the weakest among us. Revoking the right to abortion undercuts much of the workforce’s bargaining power — which means reproductive freedom is a cause the entire labor movement must champion.
Atlanta is constructing a massive police militarization complex on the site of a former prison farm. Residents are overwhelmingly opposed — but business interests, police, and city government are pushing ahead with the proposed “Cop City.”
Ron DeSantis, the right-wing Florida governor and potential presidential hopeful, has taken to branding himself as the leading defender of precious American freedoms. But throughout his administration, he’s been at war with the First Amendment.
Despite his pledge to fix the US’s “broken” immigration system, Barack Obama’s punitive policies made life more difficult for migrants — and unleashed untold horrors throughout the hemisphere.
Air travel is a Kafkaesque nightmare right now. To solve this crisis and avoid future issues, airlines and the government should listen to workers and finally give them what they deserve: better pay and working conditions.