Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
The South has long remained a nearly impenetrable citadel for labor. Fresh off of the success of its Big Three strike last year and looking to organize an Alabama Mercedes plant, the United Auto Workers wants to storm the castle.
On March 6, 1984, Britain’s coal miners began a strike against mass pit closures. Their yearlong struggle with Margaret Thatcher’s government was a defining moment in working-class history — and the miners’ eventual defeat left lasting scars.
Kamala Harris’s speech calling for a six-week cease-fire wasn’t a major shift in the White House’s position on Gaza. But it did suggest the administration knows its unflagging support of Israel is deeply unpopular.
Peru’s unelected president, Dina Boluarte, remains in office despite abysmal approval ratings and calls for elections. Authoritarianism and repression are all the government has left.
A “philanthropic venture fund” backed by elites is trying to remake Colorado’s electoral system to make it easier for the wealthy to buy up elections.
In the US, patients recovering from life-threatening illnesses often find that their first concern is not their health but the massive medical debts they’ve incurred. Right-wing politicians, insurers, and hospitals have worked to maintain this status quo.
UNRWA, the United Nations Palestinian refugee relief agency, has faced severe funding cuts after Israel dubiously accused the organization of ties to Hamas. We spoke with a director of UNRWA in Jordan about the impact of the cuts.
The world just watched a ten-year-old Palestinian boy, Yazan al-Kafarneh, starve to death in Gaza. Others like him have already died of hunger, and many more will if Israel does not stop its brutal starvation of Gaza’s civilian population.
The SNP has dominated Scottish politics for well over a decade, but Nicola Sturgeon left her successor, Humza Yousaf, with a dubious legacy. The party now risks being overtaken by Labour, even though support for Scottish independence remains solid.
Joe Biden hopes to eke out a reelection win by raising alarms about the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy. Yet on immigration, Biden has pointlessly moved closer than ever to Trump’s cruel border policy.
Finance’s dominance over the economy isn’t a deviant evolution of a “good” industrial capitalism. Finance and industry are interdependent — meaning solving problems like inequality and climate change will require a far-reaching democratization of the economy.
Fixing Britain’s housing crisis requires rebuilding the country’s publicly owned housing system — the opposite of the private developer–centered approach recently announced by Keir Starmer.
Germany’s political establishment strongly supports Israel’s war in Gaza, sending messages of “solidarity” as well as weapons. Nicole Gohlke, an MP for left-wing party Die Linke, writes for Jacobin on why Germany should instead be calling for a cease-fire.
With an activist background and a left-wing perspective, Sacramento mayoral candidate Flo Cofer bears the markers of an outsider candidate. But backed by big unions, sitting councilmembers, and the city paper, she’s giving the Sac elite a run for their money.
Modern European history is sometimes told as a story of growing secularization. But the Catholic Church played a central role in 20th-century Europe as one of the main purveyors of anti-communism and a frequent ally of far-right reaction.
Itamar Moses’s new play The Ally, about free speech and Israel, boldly broaches the topic of Palestine activism on US college campuses. But the play ultimately stays on the safe side, endorsing agnosticism and inaction in a time of massacres.
Rossana Rossanda represented the very best of the generation drawn to Italian communism in the 1940s. Rossanda insisted on the need for militant working-class politics throughout her life while much of the Italian left lost its political bearings.
Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele will extend the state of exception that has earned the country the world’s highest incarceration rate. Gang violence has been traded for arbitrary arrest and detention — with working-class people bearing the brunt.
Joe Biden has launched yet another US war in the Middle East with his air strikes on Yemen. The bombing campaign won’t stop attacks on Red Sea shipping — but an end to Israel’s war on Gaza will.
Both the Left and the Right used to articulate radically different visions of the future. Today the entire political spectrum looks backward, aiming to restore the past.