Liza Featherstone is a columnist for Jacobin, a freelance journalist, and the author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart.
You might have thought the media’s Bush-era peddlers of Middle East death and mayhem would be too humiliated to show their faces in public. Nope, they’re still here — and now they want war with Iran.
Before 2019 comes to a close, let’s take one last look at the most obnoxious, appalling, and insidious personalities of the past twelve months. These are eight auld acquaintances we’d desperately like to forget — here’s hoping we’ve heard the last of them.
The 2010s were the decade when climate change stopped being an abstraction for millions of people in the rich countries. With extreme weather events presenting a grim picture of the future, suddenly politicians felt pressure to offer solutions — and young people started wondering how it would affect their own lives.
Judith Butler donating to Kamala Harris? Martha Nussbaum supporting John Hickenlooper? You can learn as much about a radical academic’s ideas by searching their campaign contributions as by reading their books.
Celebrity attorney Alan Dershowitz has done so many bad things during his life, joining Donald Trump’s impeachment legal team doesn’t even rank among the worst of them.
There are three things Pete Buttigieg wants you to know: He’s smarter than you. He’s allergic to any hint of a progressive agenda. And he’s smarter than you.
The roots of mindfulness as a spiritual practice go back thousands of years. But today, corporations like Facebook and Google are using it as a technique to extract more productivity and more profits from workers.
From Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, top Democrats have long been beholden to the predatory and socially useless private equity industry. This time, the finance bros are donating in droves to Biden, Buttigieg . . . and Deval Patrick (?). They just really want to stop Bernie Sanders.
Only to frightened elites.
Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick’s resume reads like a dystopian novel about the nihilism and brutality of contemporary capitalism. He should leave public life forever.
“Medicare for All isn’t politically viable” is the refrain from the pundits. But how many non-pundits have they actually talked to about Medicare for All? Democratic Socialists of America activists have been going door-to-door talking to thousands — here’s what they’ve been hearing.
For all the Democratic Party’s warnings about Trump’s far-right friends, it’s home to an alarming number of supporters of India’s quasi-fascist prime minister Narenda Modi. One of them is a top staffer to Joe Biden. That’s a big problem.
As we commemorate the many horrors of the Cold War, let’s not forget some of the good things it brought us — above all, a frightened ruling class scared into making concessions.
After years of retreat, we need to reject the approach of conservative NGOs and fight for abortion without apology.
AOC and Ilhan Omar’s inspiring victories and brave advocacy helped create a narrative about “fresh-faced insurgents.” But beware: young neoliberals will use the same rhetoric to oust veteran progressives and call them the “establishment.”
How should the Left view the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump? Are they a political opportunity or a distraction from the issues that leftists care about? A Jacobin roundtable.
Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager and climate activist, has grabbed the world’s attention and kept it focused on the threat of climate change. She’s an unlikely leader of a world movement — and yet uniquely suited for that role.
Class shapes our social world — not just through the economy, but through our personal networks. Whether it’s Kamala Harris’s corporate lawyer husband or Elizabeth Warren’s McKinsey alum daughter, it’s legitimate to ask how a politician’s class connections might influence the decisions they make in office.
The DNC has banned the Democratic presidential candidates from taking part in any debate on the most urgent issue of our time: climate change. The party’s fealty to plutocratic donors and centrist has-been politicians has never been more apparent.
It’s possible to elevate the working class without the jingoism.