Performative Politics Is a Dead End
Canada’s New Democratic Party once rallied workers around a bold social democratic vision. The leadership contest now unfolding shows a center left so busy virtue signaling it forgets how to build power.
19793 Articles by: Ryan Switzer
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Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
Hyundai’s US Auto Plants Are Rife With Labor Abuses
The raids at a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia earlier this month illustrate the impunity of Donald Trump’s brutal immigration crackdown. They also shine a spotlight on Hyundai’s labor practices, including exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers.
The Socialist Politics of Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur was murdered 29 years ago today. His status as a cultural icon is beyond dispute, but the legend that’s built up around his tragically short life has often overshadowed the radical political outlook that shaped his work.
Political Violence Is Wrong. Charlie Kirk Didn’t Think So.
The murder of Charlie Kirk was a moral travesty. We can recognize that without ignoring that he repeatedly fanned the flames of political violence himself.
Right-Wing Economics Courses Are Molding the US Judiciary
Nearly half of US federal judges took crash courses in economics at a conservative-leaning economics institute between 1976 and 1999. After attending the trainings, judges ruled against regulators more often and imposed harsher sentences on criminals.
New Yorkers Support Zohran Mamdani — and Palestine
Repression of Palestine activists on New York campuses like Brooklyn College is being done in the name of protecting Jewish students from antisemitism — even as polls show New Yorkers, including Jews, reject the idea that criticizing Israel is antisemitic.
Lobbyists Are Playing Both Sides of the PFAS Debate
PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” are linked to a range of health risks. In California, some lobbyists fighting a bill that would ban PFAS in consumer products are also lobbying for another bill that would help remove the chemicals from the water supply.
How Israel Succeeded Where South Africa Failed
Bantustans without borders, occupation without formal annexation, and a dual legal system that cements ethnic hierarchy. In Gaza and the West Bank, Israel has refined a model of enthonational control that apartheid-era South Africa struggled to sustain.
College Textbooks: Wall Street’s New Cash Cow
For years, textbook prices have burdened students already struggling with loans and sky-high tuition costs. Now Wall Street is taking over the market, tightening its grip on a staple campus institution: the college bookstore.
Gaza Flotilla Participant: “Gaza Can’t Wait”
We spoke to David Adler, a participant in the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza, about the recent alleged drone attack by Israel on the flotilla and why its participants are committed to continuing their journey despite the dangers.
Bordering on Insanity
Surveillance along the US-Mexico border reaches new extremes.
The Drugs Are Coming From Inside the Military Base
Seth Harp’s best-selling The Fort Bragg Cartel exposes the degree to which America’s drug trade and attendant violent crime are connected to its foreign wars. It’s a timely read as Donald Trump uses both to justify radical new expansions of military power.
Is a Trump Slump on the Way?
The American economy seems headed in the opposite direction of the “golden age” Donald Trump promised in his inaugural address.
The Chilean Communist Defending Democracy From the Far Right
More than 50 years after Augusto Pinochet’s coup, apologists for its neoliberal dictatorship are close to taking office. But Communist Jeannette Jara could block them from taking power.
Capital Is Degrading Connective Labor
Despite increasing automation, there are still occupations in which human interaction is a central component: those focused on connective labor. Yet capital’s drive to maximize control of the labor process is threatening to degrade these important jobs.
What Can We Do About Kathy Hochul?
Despite her anti-Trump posturing, New York governor Kathy Hochul is hardly a paragon of progressivism. But winning her over on at least some key issues is crucial for a socialist mayoralty’s success. Does the Left have any leverage over Hochul?
Charlie Kirk’s Murder Is a Tragedy and a Disaster
The assassination of Charlie Kirk threatens to embolden the far right and provide Donald Trump with a pretext for crushing dissent. Escalating political violence corrodes democratic norms and poses a unique threat to the Left.
Trump’s Foreign Policy Is Like Biden’s but Far Worse
After bitterly attacking Joe Biden’s foreign policy as incompetent, chaotic, and likely to leave the Middle East in flames, Donald Trump has continued everything that made Biden’s final year so disastrous — only dumber and more violent.
Walden Bello on the Age After Globalization
The era of US-led capitalist globalization seems to be coming to an end. For Filipino scholar and activist Walden Bello, it’s time to build a new, more equal distribution of power and resources around the globe.
$1-a-Day Jobs and the Logic of the New Immigrant Crackdown
Immigration raids and detention aren’t just political theater — they supply corporations with cheap, captive labor and help roll back protections for all workers. Behind the language of border security lies coerced labor that echoes the convict lease era.