Wouter van de Klippe is a freelance journalist and writer based in Europe. He is particularly interested in organized labor, social and environmental justice, and social welfare states.
Spanish deputy prime minister Yolanda Díaz has hailed a unity deal that will see the Left run together in July’s snap election. The deal hasn’t pleased everyone — but it could help keep the far right from power.
Barack Obama abandoned his commitments to unions, and many top staffers went to work for the gig economy. In his Netflix series Working, the former president bears witness to workers’ suffering as if it were immutable — and something he had nothing to do with.
There’s no substitute for building worker power and winning state power to change the world. But we also shouldn’t reject the utopian spirit that has long driven many to create egalitarian living and working arrangements.
Silvio Berlusconi, who died today at age 86, centered Italian politics on his TV empire and brought the far right to power. A predecessor to Donald Trump, he remains the ultimate icon of the sidelining of democracy by media power.
The highly hyped new crime series The Crowded Room could’ve been an unsparing take on extreme mental illness in a society that’s never been equipped to deal with it. Instead, it gives away its only source of suspense far too early.
France’s neofascist groups are on the rise, with a spate of recent attacks against their opponents. Their violence against migrants, left-wingers, and even state officials shows that the far-right advance isn’t just “populist” rhetoric — it’s a deadly danger.
The Bank of Canada’s incoherent stance on inflation and interest rates underscores the class conflict at play in shaping its decisions. As with previous hikes, the bank’s new rate increase will have terrible repercussions for workers.
The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci left behind a rich and complicated legacy of thought on socialist strategy for transforming the world. Historian Michael Denning guides us through the great — and misunderstood — thinker.
The Temecula Valley school board in Southern California wants to erase slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk from history, defaming him as a “pedophile” in the process. It’s precisely the type of ignorance and bigotry that Milk stood against in his lifetime.
For two years, centrists have mocked claims that profiteering is in part to blame for price hikes. But the history of food inflation during World War I, and the riots that halted it, show how capitalists take advantage of consumer expectations to price gouge.
The Reserve Bank of Australia has raised interest rates again, ostensibly to keep inflation in check. But the reality is that the move will only enrich banks and rich property investors — at the expense of renters and struggling mortgage holders.
As Toronto grapples with skyrocketing housing costs, tenant unions across the city are uniting against major corporate landlords in a massive rent strike. The strike is vitalizing the fight for housing justice in one of the world’s most expensive cities.
The state of democratic rights for journalists in some of the world’s leading Western powers is becoming increasingly worrisome.
Because of a Big Oil–backed exemption, federal air quality data won’t reflect this week’s wildfire smoke. The exemption allows states to ignore pollution from “exceptional events,” freeing polluters from reducing emissions to offset smoke impact.
Manchester City is the hot favorite to win tonight’s Champions League final with the best team that an oil-rich autocracy can buy. It’s the latest stage in a long-term process that has converted the people’s game into a plaything of wealthy elites.
Born in Trinidad, George Padmore became a key organizer of Pan-African anti-colonial networks. Strongly influenced by Marxism, Padmore always stressed that national independence should lead to social liberation instead of just replacing one flag with another.
Many commentators see the eccentric Robert F. Kennedy Jr as an “antiestablishment” alternative to Biden. But he doesn’t even support single-payer health care, the brightest line dividing the centrist Democratic Party from its base.
Greece’s general election handed a huge victory to the conservative New Democracy, as Syriza shed one-third of its support. With Alexis Tsipras’s party crushing any hope of an alternative to austerity, voters reached for right-wingers promising stability.
When we sort children into “proficient” and “failing” categories based on test scores, we’re not solving the opportunity gaps that show up in public education — we’re just creating new ones.
Thanks to the protest of climate activists, a recent Semafor event featuring Joe Manchin became a viral illustration of all that’s wrong with the corporate-sponsored media model.