Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
In Sunday’s election, France’s neoliberalized Socialist Party slumped to a pathetic 2 percent support. Yet the overall left-wing vote increased — all thanks to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, whose transformative program inspired millions.
The threat of climate change has created a cleavage between workers in fossil fuel industries and the green left. To avert environmental catastrophe, socialists need to build a movement for a just and sustainable society that makes room for these workers.
Canadian conservatives present their animus toward social spending as nothing more than fiscal prudence. But a review of the think tanks’ arguments informing this frugality reveals a deeply misanthropic racism.
For years, Democrats have pledged to address the massive secret corporate spending that now dominates US politics. But they are poised to once again break their long-standing promise.
Washington’s long-standing hostility to the International Criminal Court undermines any future war crimes prosecutions over Ukraine. If for no other reason, the US must join the rest of the world in accepting the court’s jurisdiction.
Two and a half centuries after his birth, the insightful, outlandish, yet oddly practical ideas of the utopian socialist writer Charles Fourier still seem shockingly modern.
Last week, Blaise Compaoré was jailed for his role in the murder of Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara — but real justice can only be won by a movement that fights to bring Sankara’s socialist vision back to life.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon narrowly failed to make the runoff in France’s presidential election. But there are signs that the French left can come back stronger than ever.
Water is a basic resource for all human beings. Yet market forces are increasingly privatizing water provision — not only making water unaffordable to poor and working-class people but posing a serious threat to public health in the midst of the pandemic.
Bob Hawke wasn’t the last senior Australian Labor Party figure to act as an informant for the US. In 2010, when Kevin Rudd lost the leadership to Julia Gillard, the US embassy knew everything.
Éric Zemmour’s presidential campaign didn’t go well — but it helped Marine Le Pen project a moderate image, including by denouncing his Nazi supporters. Far from a spoiler, Zemmour helped to shepherd traditional right-wing voters to her.
The cost of living crisis is causing Britain’s biggest fall in living standards in decades. The only way to change this: wage increases across the economy.
Emmanuel Macron claimed that France was missing a “king figure” — then spent five years ruling it like a monarch. His record has fueled Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s pledge to get rid of the presidency entirely and rebuild French democracy from the bottom up.
Socialist philosopher G. A. Cohen was a brilliant thinker who subjected Marxism to the same scrutiny he would any other ideology. If you want to see Marxism at its most nondogmatic and precise, you should read G. A. Cohen.
France’s once mighty Socialist Party is polling at just 1 percent for today’s presidential election. With middle-class progressivism in a tailspin, only France Insoumise’s firm break with neoliberalism offers a path to recovery for the French left.
In Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador faces an uphill battle in getting his energy reforms through Congress. American interests, vehemently opposed to the idea of a public energy sector in Mexico, stand in the way.
At home, French politicians mainstream far-right conspiracies about the replacement of whites by African immigrants. Abroad, they continue to intervene militarily and economically in the continent. Both are signs of a nation unwilling to accept its decline.
With polls showing Marine Le Pen closer than ever to winning the French presidency, anti-fascists should use all possible means to stop her. Voting for Jean-Luc Mélenchon can block her path — and stop France’s decades-long slide toward far-right dominance.
The new documentary series Jeen-yuhs keeps Kanye’s recent tabloid absurdities out of the picture. But such turbulent antics and generalized disorder are an essential piece of the remarkable — and remarkably chaotic — career he has built.
Hungary’s election was always going to be an uphill battle in the face of incumbent Viktor Orbán’s overweening power. But the opposition’s lack of a clear alternative meant it ran simply as an anti-Orbán front — and it failed to mobilize voters.