Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
With his HBO documentary series Q: Into the Storm, filmmaker Cullen Hoback manages to demystify QAnon, exposing the mechanisms that underpin the right-wing conspiracy theory — above all, how it gives its followers a way of making sense of the spectacular failure of so many powerful institutions.
WeWork, the coworking start-up once valuated at $47 billion, was a cult masquerading as a company pretending to be a movement. Focusing on its “charismatic” CEO, Adam Neumann, a new Hulu documentary misses a chance to expose the irrationality and waste of an economic system that lets such charlatanism thrive.
In an interview, the lead organizer for the Amazon union campaign in Bessemer says that the drive has built momentum to unionize Amazon despite the defeat — and that “Bezos had better not get too cocky, because them folks are pretty fired up.”
The disgraceful European Super League is a disaster for football. But it’s just the last step in capitalists stripping away the beautiful game from the working-class communities that built it.
There’s no substitute for a national Medicare for All program. But with federal action shelved for now, states like Colorado and Washington are grappling with creating public health insurance alternatives in the face of industry opposition.
This year’s race for New York City mayor is off to a disappointing start as Andrew Yang hoovers up media attention while the Left lacks any unifying favorite in the race. But NYC socialists are honing their electoral skills and deepening their bench of candidates for the long haul.
Tech firms have been moving into New York since well before the pandemic. But over the course of the last year, that trend has only accelerated, with the biggest companies all significantly expanding their footprints across the city as retail businesses shutter.
A challenge to Canada’s carbon tax has failed, clearing the way for Justin Trudeau to press ahead with the policy. But carbon pricing is the brainchild of the fossil fuel industry — a green fig leaf put forward as an alternative to the ecological transformation we need.
Despite labor’s recent defeat at Amazon in Alabama, the current moment holds out cautious hope for the movement — not least because of a solid majority in favor of trade unionism in American public opinion.
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s PBS docuseries Hemingway sheds new light on writer Ernest Hemingway’s life. But it leaves out key details of his left-wing political convictions — including the FBI surveillance that haunted him until his suicide.
From Cuban solidarity with IRA hunger strikers to Irish support for the Nicaraguan Revolution, a shared anti-imperialist cause has forged a deep bond between Ireland and Latin America.
For Australia’s conservative government, keeping Myanmar open for businesses is more important than justice for massacred anti-coup protesters.
The recent NDP convention passed several important left-wing motions, and Canada’s conservative pundits lined up to ridicule the prospect of a left turn by Jagmeet Singh’s party. Beneath the bluster, they’re clearly worried that left ideas have the potential to gain wide support.
Anti-colonial revolutionary Thomas Sankara struggled to free his country, Burkina Faso, from the domination of foreign corporations and neoliberal economic institutions. And in 1987, he was assassinated for it.
Ongoing protests by Indian farmers are the biggest challenge Narendra Modi’s right-wing government has faced since coming to power. We can get a clearer picture of this movement and its prospects for success by comparing it to the major struggles of India’s past.
The last week has seen wall-to-wall praise for the royals across the British press, with Prince Philip painted as everything from a military genius to a trailblazing feminist. But the compulsory cap-doffing isn’t just a bit of ceremony inherited from the past — it’s part of a very modern deference to the wealthy and privileged.
Coupang is South Korea’s answer to Amazon. Just like the American retail behemoth, Coupang’s business model depends on abusing its workers.
The Mexican right knows it’s set to lose the upcoming midterm elections — that’s why it’s desperately trying to use the courts and the National Electoral Institute to wage war on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s MORENA party.
Read past the headlines, and it turns out Joe Biden’s supposed withdrawal from Afghanistan is nothing of the kind — it delays ending the war while envisioning continued “anti-terrorism” action in the future with no end in sight.
The Indian state under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meting out vicious repression against dissenters to his right-wing Hindu nationalist vision. Yet that constant need to crack down on protests also reveals something: his far-right project is undeniably brittle.