Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire became a campus sensation because it offered a master theory for globalization at a moment when old Marxist categories seemed exhausted. But the capitalist internationalism they saw as permanent has now crashed and burned.
Intelligence agencies like the CIA have been cultivating ties with universities for decades. They use money and influence to co-opt research and foster a benign image of their role at the expense of academic independence and freedom.
It used to be that Americans turned to GoFundMe to pay off their medical bills in a dysfunctional, privatized health care system. Now they’re doing it just to afford groceries.
Recent weeks have seen a flurry of discussion over potential artificial intelligence doomsday scenarios. We shouldn’t forget that AI is already killing people, as it is increasingly used to direct weapons systems with minimal human oversight.
Instead of inspiring an awakening as filmmakers hope, The Uprising repeats tired liberal calls for “healing,” and, when those disappoint, turns to fantasies of individual violence. The real 1381 English Peasants’ Revolt, however, still inspires us centuries later.
Three years ago, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain called for American unions to line up contract expirations for May Day 2028 to set the stage for a potential mass strike. How are the prospects of this coordinated action looking now?
Plenty of contemporary comedy gazes upon American stupidity and concludes that Americans are stupid. The Chapo Trap House anthology Chunks suggests instead that people behave strangely because the world around them has become so strange.
The Caribbean of the 1970s was marked by major political and social upheaval. Cricket became a primary vehicle for asserting West Indian independence — and defeating England was paramount.
The primary in France’s Parti Socialiste will not likely pick the winner of the 2027 presidential election. But it will decide whether the party seeks compromise on the Left, or else directs its fire against rival left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Mitchell Abidor, author of Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary, responds to his critics.
The Christian right hasn’t always dominated Texas politics. While it claims to represent a deep regional tradition, the state’s modern right-wing evangelicalism is a newer invention — forged in the crucible of elite reaction to populist movements.
The historian Frances Stonor Saunders died recently at age 60. Her book Who Paid the Piper? pulled back the curtain on postwar CIA funding of Western cultural institutions — despite repeated attempts to censor it, including by her American publisher.