Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
Canada isn’t the beacon of social democracy that many progressive Americans imagine. But when faced with the coronavirus crisis, the US’s inept political class and for-profit health system couldn’t even match a country with a moderate welfare state and functional government.
While many liberals agitate furiously against any boycott of Israeli universities, few pay attention to the ways in which academic freedom is already severely curtailed in Palestine.
The latest economic numbers are dismal: GDP is projected to be down 33 percent from the first to second quarter of 2020. Even if we see some recovery soon, the long-term damage — people unemployed, businesses shuttered, confidence hammered — will be massive and lingering.
The COVID-19 crisis has hit South Africa’s poor and working-class majority hard, with the government favoring the rich over the unemployed. Our friends at Africa Is a Country spoke with three South African organizers of the unemployed, who are fighting for decent public services — and a basic income.
Former president Rafael Correa is Ecuador’s most popular politician — yet Lenín Moreno’s government is trying to ban his party from standing in next year’s elections. Faced with a mass uprising against IMF-backed reforms and disgust at his mishandling of COVID-19, president Moreno is using phony lawsuits to thwart the democratic process.
The Galaksija computer was a craze in 1980s socialist Yugoslavia, inspiring thousands of people to build versions in their own homes. The idea behind them was simple — to make technology available to everyone.
Unconscious bias training has emerged as one of the key responses to racism in recent years. But racism is a structural problem that requires the redistribution of power and wealth to really confront.
Across England, the most successful businesses in world football grow ever richer — while long-established community clubs from Bury to Bolton and Wigan slowly die in their shadows. Big capitalists are transforming the sport we love for the worse.
The administration of former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was beset by corruption scandals from the beginning. With a host of new, even more shocking revelations, he might finally be held to account for his abuses.
Sixty years after his murder, Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba’s body has never been recovered — but some of his teeth were kept as “trophies” by Belgian police. In an open letter, his daughter demands that the Belgian state return them to his homeland.
We sat down with legendary rapper and New York icon Cormega to talk about his long career, battles with a brutal criminal justice system, the economics of the hip-hop industry, and why he decided to vote for Bernie Sanders.
After the overthrow of Portugal’s fascist regime in 1974, a radical movement arose to challenge the near-total lack of rights accorded to women. The violent breakup of the movement’s first protest showed how difficult their struggle would be — yet their activism helped bring about a lasting transformation.
Justin Trudeau is facing a conflict of interest scandal, in which the Canadian prime minister stands accused of steering public money towards a favored charity. But the details of the case lay bare the singularly hypocritical style of Canadian neoliberalism: a surface patina of progressivism covering up the cynical machinations of the corporate elite.
The Indian state has imprisoned the Dalit intellectual Anand Teltumbde on trumped-up charges of terrorism and subversion. His activism and writing on caste and class are needed more than ever in the struggle against both casteism and capitalism.
The Department of Homeland Security should have never existed in the first place. It’s time to get rid of it.
Forty-three New York billionaires have donated to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s political machine. Now he’s blocking attempts to tax his ultrarich friends.
Kamala Harris likes to portray herself as a progressive, but the California senator has said that tech giants like Google must be allowed to grow unimpeded.
When a road bridge in Genoa collapsed in August 2018, killing 43 people, reports soon exposed the negligence of its private managers. Today, the government is part-renationalizing the road maintenance firm in question — a tiny step away from neoliberalism that has sparked wild claims of a “Venezuela-style” attack on business.
The federal evictions moratorium has expired and rent is due in two days, leaving millions at risk of being thrown out of their homes. We need an eviction moratorium for the duration of the pandemic and bold policies that guarantee housing as a right, not a privilege.
Twenty years of a “war on terror” and centuries of elite fear of popular revolt led to the nightmare that played out on Portland’s streets. And your town could be next.