Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
Vivian Gornick’s recently reissued The Romance of American Communism is in high demand these days by young socialists grappling with the meaning of their activism. In an interview, Gornick is slightly skeptical of the reborn socialist movement — and even the book itself. But although she says “I wouldn’t have written that book today, I’m not sorry I did write it.”
The United States claimed to be fighting in defense of democracy in South Korea. In reality, however, it propped up a series of dictatorships. The people of South Korea only won their freedom decades after the war, through brave struggles against US-backed military strongmen, like the heroic Gwangju Uprising of 1980.
The Korean War, which began 70 years ago today, inflicted unimaginable horrors upon the people of Korea, north and south of the 38th parallel. From carpet-bombing to mass executions, the US and its South Korean allies were responsible for some of the worst atrocities.
Donald Trump’s satisfyingly disastrous rally in Tulsa last weekend has further cemented the consensus that Trump is toast in November. But liberal complacency allowed Trump to win in 2016 — and it could still do the same in 2020.
It’s been a tough few months in the wake of Bernie Sanders’s defeat. But after the recent explosions in the streets and ongoing down-ballot progressive electoral organizing in the last year, the Left came roaring back in last night’s primaries.
Unemployment in the US is skyrocketing, with the Federal Reserve predicting a long-term unemployment rate of 10 percent. Creating quality jobs for all who want it should be the chief concern of the federal government, not the bogeyman of inflation.
Robbing workers’ pension funds has long been central to Wall Street’s business model. In last week’s Supreme Court ruling, Brett Kavanaugh and his conservative cadre of justices opened the door for financial managers to take their looting of those pension funds even further.
The protesters tearing down monuments to slaveholders and perpetrators of genocide are often accused of “erasing the past.” But their actions are bringing closer scrutiny on the figures these monuments celebrate — allowing history to be retold from the viewpoint of their victims.
Corporations have embraced antiracist rhetoric, but they will not eradicate the economic insecurity and inequality the investor class requires — and wants the police to uphold.
The precarious, dangerous conditions immigrant workers face under coronavirus are an intensified version of the conditions workers face across the country. Rebuilding the labor movement today must include organizing undocumented workers.
A new paper finds that for white Americans, socioeconomic status is a major determining factor in susceptibility to fatal police violence, while for black Americans, class is critical but not decisive. The findings underscore the need to build a movement that stands against both racist police brutality and brutal class stratification.
The 2008 bailout was a giant giveaway to corporate America. 2020 is more of the same.
In the last week, simmering tensions on the Indian-Chinese border in the Himalayas have escalated to open conflict, with fatalities on both sides. India’s foreign policy, and not just China, deserves much blame for the escalation.
New Yorkers in the sixteenth congressional district will choose today between sixteen-term incumbent Eliot Engel and challenger Jamaal Bowman. The race offers a stark contrast between Bowman, who’s endorsed by Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the Democratic Socialists of America, and Engel, a longtime and steadfast warmonger.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has repeatedly defended the police even as they’ve brutalized protesters. It’s a reminder that his progressive reputation was always overblown — and that when push comes to shove, he’s always going to side with the real estate interests that cops protect.
The Bernie Sanders campaign advanced left politics in the US by leaps and bounds. But the campaign could have gone further if it had made the kind of organizing that won states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada central to the campaign’s operations throughout the country.
In an interview, Noam Chomsky talks about the “absolutely unprecedented scope and scale” of the protests against the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the importance of Lula’s presidency in Brazil, and why Donald Trump’s refusal to act to stop the impending catastrophe of climate change makes him “the worst criminal in human history.”
Google’s censure of right-wing outlets over repulsive racist content was pushed by the UK’s Center for Countering Digital Hate, an outfit with strong ties to the Labour right. As awful as outlets like the Federalist are, do we really want Blairites who claim Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite to decide what is and is not acceptable to publish?
When tenants organize against negligent, rent-gouging landlords, the deck is stacked against them. Marcela Mitaynes, a tenant organizer and Democratic Socialists of America–endorsed candidate for New York’s State Assembly, argues that’s not just because landlords are incredibly powerful in cities like New York, but also because they have the NYPD backing them up.
Liberal pundits in Sweden are quick to assert the country’s Black Lives Matter protests are an “import of American racial discourse,” at odds with local realities. Yet neoliberal welfare reforms and a racialized war on drugs are eroding the egalitarian policies that have long made Sweden so distinct.