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.
European authorities accuse Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko of mounting “hybrid warfare” by letting thousands of migrants amass at the Polish border. But Poland’s nationalist government is also using the crisis to crack down on migrants — with the EU’s blessing.
The film and TV workers’ union IATSE ratified a pair of contracts on Monday, despite a majority of ballots being cast against the larger of the two deals. Thanks to the union’s Electoral College–style voting system, that contract passed anyway.
This fall, Panama has seen large “pro-democracy” and “anti-corruption” protests, backed by mainstream media and much of the country’s business elite. But corruption isn’t owed to a few “bad apple” politicians — it’s rooted in Panama’s ultra-privatized economy.
The political and economic crises roiling countries like Sudan and Tunisia right now cannot be separated from the global institutions of capital and the cycles of indebtedness that they impose.
Buildings’ design communicates the values of a society. In contemporary American architecture, those values appear closer to control and surveillance than openness and enjoyment for all.
The South of slavery and Jim Crow is often cast as the major historical reason for the US’s stunted welfare state. But the most fanatical resistance to taxation and redistribution came from the Northern ruling class.
When Lula and the Workers’ Party took power in Brazil, they had a plan to take on crime and the power of the police. Their failure helped undermine their entire program.
Workers’ retirement savings are being used to bankroll oil and gas companies’ climate destruction.
From brands commissioning immersive installations at prestigious art fairs to hedge funds transforming artworks into stock-like financial instruments, the line between art and capital is blurrier than ever.
Throughout history, it’s been hard for agitators and troublemakers to hold down a good job. In the interwar decades, tens of thousands of them were hired by the Communist International — an employer with long hours, difficult bosses, and a lot of opportunities for travel.
Punk rock’s original radical spirit may have been co-opted by the culture industry long ago, but some of its progenitors still have fire in the belly. The most recent album of Canada’s Art Bergmann, Late Stage Empire Dementia, returns punk to its radical roots.
Jacobin contributor Max Zirngast, who was imprisoned in Turkey for his left-wing political writing, has now been elected to the municipal council of his home city of Graz, along with several other Communist Party of Austria members.
When British students demonstrated this week against a far-right Israeli politician, Tzipi Hotovely, the country’s politicians lined up to denounce them as violent antisemites. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has added its voice to this authoritarian chorus.
Gianni Rodari was Italy’s most important children’s author — and a Communist. Cherished by generations of readers, his irreverent fairy tales encouraged children to question authority and think for themselves.
Paranoia about Chinese influence in Australia is on the rise — and the Australian ruling class is stoking tensions between China and the United States. For the sake of world peace and prosperity, they have to be stopped.
Canada’s income supports helped avoid mass insolvencies during the pandemic, but widespread indebtedness continues to prop up the country’s ailing economy. Workers must fight to replace easy credit with living wages.
Oil giant Shell wrought devastation across Nigeria for years. In 1995, nine organizers from the Ogoni region were hanged after a campaign against the company.
This day in 1936, Italian socialist Carlo Rosselli made his famous Radio Barcelona appeal for anti-fascists to join the struggle “today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy.” He was murdered by fascists the following year, but Rosselli’s vision of a free and just society lives on.
Israel has been caught hacking the phones of six Palestinian human rights staffers. It’s the latest incident in Israel’s larger web of blatantly undemocratic mass surveillance practices.
It’s been two years since the right-wing coup against Evo Morales’s socialist government. One of his former ministers tells Jacobin about how the US war on drugs helped create a Bolivian military free from popular control.