Tanner Howard is a freelance journalist and In These Times editorial intern. They’re also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
It’s tempting to turn the new reporting on Donald Trump’s tax shenanigans, paying only $750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017, into a story about Trump as a singular villain. He’s despicable, but he could only get away with it because we live under a system that allows the wealthy to rip off $266 billion from the country every single year.
Twenty years ago today, the second Palestinian intifada began in response to a provocation from Israel’s Ariel Sharon after the collapse of US-sponsored peace talks. The brutal Israeli response inaugurated a war on Palestinian society that continues to this day.
The International Working Men’s Association was launched in London on this day in 1864. As the “First International,” it cemented class solidarity across countries as a shared ideal and inspired large numbers to organize against capitalist exploitation.
Donald Trump says he expects the Supreme Court to decide the 2020 election, as it did in Bush v. Gore. If Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, the court will have three justices who worked directly on the case that undemocratically determined the 2000 election.
With the election campaign in its final stretch, Joe Biden has taken nearly a third of September off from campaigning. It’s an enormous strategic blunder that anyone hoping for Donald Trump’s defeat should be very worried about.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez displayed uncommon courage in withdrawing from an event celebrating Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli leader who instructed soldiers to break the bones of Palestinian demonstrators. It’s another sign that the tide is turning against defenders of Israel’s human rights abuses.
Fifty years after his death, the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser still casts a long shadow over Arab politics. A symbol of defiance in the age of decolonization, Nasser transformed his country but never gave its people control of the system that ruled them.
Two generations of Egyptian Marxists debated how they should respond to Nasser and the system he founded. Some were defeated, some were co-opted — and their failure still haunts the Egyptian left today, fifty years after Nasser’s death.
A deep commitment to democracy is at the heart of the socialist project. Anticommunists have historically claimed they oppose states like the Soviet Union out of a concern for democracy. But those anticommunists’ real project has nothing to do with democracy — and everything to do with smashing the Left.
Against all odds, for ten years Jacobin has survived, and thrived, as a forum for critique and debate, as a resource for people trying to make sense of the world around them. But we’ve only been able to do it with your help.
A new Netflix film, The Social Dilemma, would have us believe that increasing social division and polarized political rhetoric is the product of Facebook and Twitter, and not the fact that income inequality has returned to pre–Great Depression levels.
Means-testing makes social programs to help average people highly vulnerable to cuts and a bureaucratic nightmare to sign up for. We have to reject means-testing.
Suga Yoshihide, longtime aide to Abe Shinzo, has now replaced him as Japan’s prime minister. Suga will preserve the main features of Abe’s long stint in power: creeping militarism, subordination to the US, and a high-handed approach to political opposition.
In August, Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett delivered a key ruling blocking many gig workers from suing in court when tech companies deny them overtime pay. It’s just one in a long history of decisions that favored corporate interests.
As Melbourne’s October council elections approach, the Victorian Socialists are stepping up their fight against neoliberalism — by fielding an unprecedented slate of 19 candidates, across five municipalities.
In the lead-up to the November election, states like Florida are ramping up voter disenfranchisement. That disenfranchisement didn’t come out of nowhere — it’s the latest in decades of bipartisan disenfranchisement of poor and working-class voters and voters of color.
Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah was a postcolonial icon who tried to fight the forces of imperialism and capitalism to build a nation, continent, and world based on equality and self-government. That’s why, despite his faults, young people in Ghana today are resurrecting Nkrumah’s vision as a radical alternative to neoliberalism.
Bolivia is finally set to hold repeat presidential elections next month, with polls suggesting MAS candidate Luis Arce is set to restore the socialist government ousted in last November’s coup. His running mate David Choquehuanca told Jacobin about the repression MAS has faced and how the party intends to make sure that Bolivians’ democratic choice is upheld.
Before the resurgence of socialist activism in the United States, Jacobin Reading Groups provided a halfway house between passive, primarily intellectual engagement with the socialist project and full-fledged organizational commitment for thousands of people. They played a real role in resurrecting the US left.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, author of Decolonising the Mind, is one of the most important African intellectuals writing about the politics of post-colonialism today. He told Jacobin how the colonial legacy in Kenya shaped his politics — and why language remains a decisive political battleground.