Ryan Switzer is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stockholm University. He researches right-wing politics in welfare states.
The liberal establishment is desperate to return a centrist to the White House in November and reestablish the country’s more stable military dominance of the world order, disrupted only briefly by Donald Trump. Joe Biden’s terrible track record on foreign policy — including his championing of war in Iraq — suggests a return to Obama-style strong military interventions abroad.
Argentina’s 1976–1983 military dictatorship relied on widespread torture and disappearances to eradicate all political opponents, real or imagined. Seeking to conceal the junta regime’s one-sided terror, the Right still refers to those years as a “dirty war.” But the only accurate way to describe the dictatorship is as a period of “state terrorism.”
The COVID-19 lockdown has resulted in a drastic short-term fall in carbon emissions. Without structural change, however, we’re still on a disastrous trajectory. To avoid calamity, we need to transform our economic system.
China’s response to the pandemic has sharply contrasted with Trump’s, with a far stronger public health response in China but little aid for the poorest. Both countries’ responses to the crisis show that a strong state doesn’t stand in contradiction with neoliberalism — rather, it’s a key element of it.
On the 76th anniversary of D-Day, to honor those who perished in the struggle against fascism, we could do little better than to combat imperial hubris wherever we find it, including at home.
After brutal police violence failed to stop huge protests against the murder of George Floyd, governments across the country imposed curfews in an attempt to curtail dissent. But protesters have defied the restrictions in mass numbers — and in some cities, forced elected leaders to repeal the curfews.
A Chicago bus driver alleges in a new lawsuit that when he tried to discuss opposing the transport of police to protests with his coworkers, the Chicago Transit Authority retaliated against him. If the allegations are true, they’re an attack on the First Amendment and the ability of workers to organize.
The May jobs report showing a drop in the unemployment rate shouldn’t have been a surprise, with many states having lifted their shutdowns. But if Congress uses the report to excuse not passing another stimulus — especially one that includes relief for state and local governments — the economy could face a collapse.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio claims he wants to change the most unjust policies of American life in the 21st century. The problem is, he is instinctively hostile to the protests and grassroots organizing necessary to win such change.
The reforms that have been pushed by presidents and police chiefs, mayors and city councils in response to the horrifying, unending stream of blatant police brutality and police murder have failed and will continue failing. The police aren’t going to get any nicer — we must defund them, full stop.
It’s a common refrain that socialists are naïve, unrealistic dreamers. But precisely the opposite is true: we know that power corrupts, so we want to democratize all spheres of society.
Bromides about a V-shaped economic recovery after the pandemic just distract us from the size of the task that we face. We were already headed for crisis before COVID-19 — only a far-reaching reorientation of the economy can stave off social collapse.
Donald Trump and other right-wing politicians like Sen. Tom Cotton are beating the drums to ramp up the authoritarian brutality already on display all across the country by staging an actual military invasion of American cities. If we don’t stop them, the results will be dire.
Activists and advocates in New York City have long called for the city to make sharp cuts to the NYPD, the nation’s largest police force. The uprising against police brutality, in New York and around the country, has suddenly put serious momentum behind those demands.
In the years after the defeat of Nazism, Britain’s fascist movement alarmingly began to rebuild. But a group of young British Jews sprung into action to beat the fascists off the streets.
Born on this day in 1868, the republican socialist James Connolly was Ireland’s most famous revolutionary. Over a century after he was killed by the British, his writings on imperial violence and the capitalist degradation of human life are more relevant than ever.
It’s hard to overstate the wickedness of Big Pharma’s lobbying efforts to ensure patent protection for COVID-19 drugs and potential vaccines. But the real architect of these crimes is not CEOs or shareholders, but the market.
Recently obtained documents show that in 2011, the US funded rock bands in Venezuela — through a group sympathetic to right-wing forces that later attempted a coup. Giving money to young musicians seems innocuous, but it’s part of a long history of US meddling in the democratic processes of countries to advance American interests.
A consensus is growing in the corporate world that working from home will be the new normal after coronavirus. Companies will sell it as a perk — but it will mean handing the boss even greater control over our lives.
At times of widespread misery, a single incident of blatant injustice can cause enormous, unexpected outrage — outrage that then fuels far wider protests and more radical demands. This is exactly what we’ve seen across the United States since George Floyd’s murder.