Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
In Canada, most citizens are indifferent to the British Crown — making the official Canadian spectacle of mass mourning for Queen Elizabeth II feel particularly ridiculous.
After being nonunion for more than 100 years, Minor League Baseball players just had their union recognized by Major League Baseball. We spoke with a former minor leaguer involved in the unionization drive about the players’ impressive victory.
In Britain, people are now being arrested just for saying things like “Who elected him?” about the newly crowned King Charles. It’s a shocking authoritarian clampdown — and it’s being applauded by the supposedly “pro-free-speech” right.
Between the 1920s and the 1950s, the German painter George Grosz went from being Vladimir Lenin’s favorite modern artist to a bitter illustrator in American exile. In between, he drew some of the fiercest caricatures of capitalist society ever seen.
Street protests have rocked Indonesia’s main cities since the country’s president, Jokowi, announced a cut to gasoline subsidies. With global energy prices soaring, the Indonesian protests are sure to be repeated elsewhere in the months to come.
The New York Times released a big story this week declaring that child poverty has plummeted over the last thirty years. But their numbers are misleading: unlike social democratic countries, the US is still plagued by sky-high child poverty.
For many years, Charles Windsor has foisted his opinions about urban design on the British public. The bizarre projects that the new monarch has sponsored, from Dorset to Transylvania, speak volumes about his cloistered and conservative worldview.
This day in 1929, anti-labor forces in North Carolina killed a millworker and pregnant mother named Ella May Wiggins during the Loray Mill strike. She became a working-class martyr — and a symbol of labor’s fight to democratize the anti-union South.
Right-wing pundit Chris Rufo is stoking fears about “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” across America. Who’s paying his bills? Wall Street billionaires, intent on provoking culture war to divert Americans’ attention from grotesque wealth inequality.
A proposed minimum wage for the European Union promises to end the race to the bottom on pay — and instantly improve 25 million workers’ conditions. Faced with a cost-of-living crisis, the move is a welcome step to support incomes.
The Iran deal could easily have been maintained had it not been for a series of perverse policy choices by Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Now, with the deal scrapped, Israel and the US are once again threatening to attack Iran.
Israel’s supporters have sought to redefine antisemitism so that the term primarily refers to criticism of the Israeli state. This effort has been a great boon for Israel’s diplomatic propaganda — but a disaster for anti-racist struggles in Europe and the US.
Chile’s new constitution would’ve replaced its Pinochet-era charter with one that guarantees social, economic, and environmental rights for all. Why, then, did Chileans overwhelmingly reject it?
“Longtermism” is often associated with billionaire philanthropy. But this idea in vogue among effective altruists is perfectly compatible with a socialist worldview.
Gutsy, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s new TV series, showcases courageous women from an array of fields. But the show’s narrow lens suggests approval of women who show spunk, but not those who challenge abusive state power or capitalism.
“Dark Brandon” memes are jokes, but they express a deeply felt wish that Joe Biden would turn out to be a firebrand progressive at heart. But Biden is Biden — at his core, he’ll always be a corporate-friendly centrist.
The EU has launched a discussion about transforming its basic constitutional framework. The Left should push for changes that expand democracy at the pan-European level and make it easier to carry out progressive social and environmental reforms.
Danielle Smith’s conspiracy theories and shock-jock populist messaging have made her the front-runner in Alberta’s Conservative Party leadership election. Her campaign is a preview of the challenges to Canada’s left from an emboldened post-pandemic right.
Unionized workers at Brazil’s largest company, the oil and biofuels giant Petrobras, are organizing to resist privatization and lead a clean energy transition on their terms.
The far-right Sweden Democrats were the big winners in yesterday’s general election, rising to second place. Rooted in neo-Nazism, the party is blatantly racist — but the established parties seem less determined than ever to confront it.