From Shadows in Paradise to Fallen Leaves, Aki Kaurismäki’s films show ordinary Finns in minimalist, near-timeless settings. But they’re also a response to changes in working-class life since the 1980s, as consumerist values edge out Finland’s social model.
In an interview, writer Thomas Frank discusses how populism brought together workers, farmers, and all those struggling against the wealthy for a more egalitarian society — and why that’s made it a dirty word for the elite, both in the 1890s and today.
Earlier this month, 19 Brown University students completed an eight-day hunger strike demanding the school divest from companies profiting from human rights abuses in Palestine. We talked to three of the hunger strikers about the protest.
Neoliberalism’s rise engendered a pessimism about historical progress. Geoff Eley’s History Made Conscious shows how cultural history flourished in this era of diminished class politics, while nonetheless continuing to pose valuable questions to the Left.
The federal government has taken some steps to lower the prices of drugs developed with public funds. Venture capital firms that have profited off of these sky-high prices are pushing back hard.
India is a major military partner for Israel, which is why port workers across India are refusing to handle weapons destined for Israel, insisting they want no part in the massacre in Gaza.
Largely set in occupied France during World War II, the new Apple TV+ series The New Look zeroes in on Christian Dior’s rivalry with Coco Chanel — but it falls flat when it tries to handle Chanel’s infamous Nazi sympathies.
Mass layoffs are tearing through US media. To preserve a functioning media ecosystem, we need three things: immediate aid to struggling journalists, public subsidies to smaller news outlets, and eventually industry transformation into a publicly funded system.
This month, incumbent Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele seemed poised to easily win reelection and sweep the legislature with his New Ideas party. But when his legislative supermajority appeared in doubt, Bukele and his supporters resorted to outright fraud.
Conservative business interests are backing arguments in a Supreme Court case that could open even long-finalized federal regulation to legal attacks, striking at safeguards that protect ordinary Americans.
This week in 1937, Italian Fascists and colonizers began a three-day massacre in Addis Ababa, killing up to 20,000 Ethiopians. The slaughter is all but ignored in today’s Italy, where public debate remains steeped in indulgent views of colonial rule.
Brazilian president Lula forcefully condemned Israel’s brutal war on Gaza on Sunday before expelling Israel’s ambassador to Brazil on Monday. These actions are part of his decades-long commitment to standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people.