
How the QAnon Cult Stormed the Capitol
Perhaps the strangest thing about the media coverage of the Capitol Hill rally was how little of it focused on the visible presence of QAnon. What’s behind the Q cult, and how can we confront it?

Perhaps the strangest thing about the media coverage of the Capitol Hill rally was how little of it focused on the visible presence of QAnon. What’s behind the Q cult, and how can we confront it?

Jabari Brisport is one of six socialists now in the New York State Legislature, the most in a century. We spoke to him about how he came to democratic socialism, how elected officials can help build working-class power, and why his top policy priority is to tax the rich.

As socialists, we’ve rallied against brunch for too long. What we should really be demanding is brunch for all. Consider this our apology.

For a moment, it seemed like the centrist think tank Third Way was abandoning its commitment to austerity. No longer: Third Way is now boosting a campaign to deny $1,400 COVID-19 survival checks to tens of millions of Americans and undermining the push to raise the minimum wage to $15.

The decisions made by the National Labor Relations Board have massive importance for workers’ ability to organize and unionize. So it’s no small development that the board’s terrible pro-management head attorney, Peter Robb, was unceremoniously canned this past week.

A wave of collective bargaining agreements are set to expire across the public and private sector this year. It will be a perfect opportunity to build class consciousness — and for labor to show the unorganized why it’s so important to have a union.

A collective wail of anguish went up after news broke that Dolly Parton's working-class anthem “9 to 5” has been repurposed for a Squarespace ad lauding “working, working, working.” Our grief is justified. But the song's deformation into a hollow jingle says more about capitalism than Dolly.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and has refused to wear a mask around other Congress members. Now, despite the CDC’s moratorium on evictions, his companies are trying to evict renters in the middle of the pandemic.

California’s post-Reagan drift into the welcome arms of the corporate-friendly Democratic Party has meant a politics that looks like an elite lifestyle brand. It’s a state where social liberalism reigns, but so does staggering poverty and inequality. The Democratic Party has failed California and unless things change, it will continue to fail our nation.

New research shows stay-at-home orders and eviction bans are key to stopping the spread of COVID-19. But Gov. Gavin Newsom is ignoring that research and reopening California with a weak eviction moratorium.

Democrats promised to provide a near-universal benefit of $2,000 checks. Billionaire-owned media is trying to convince them to ignore history and gut their proposal — a move that would be politically disastrous and worsen Americans’ already brutal suffering.

Australian Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese could be facing a leadership contest. Albanese’s record has been unimpressive, but changing leaders won’t be enough to turn the party’s fortunes around. Real party democracy and a break with neoliberal dogma are the only remedies for Labor’s malaise.

People are right to be disgusted by giant corporations. But the liberal “antitrust” response too often valorizes small-scale competition instead of solidarity and worker organization.

If Democrats subject the next round of survival checks to more means testing, Americans battered by the economic crisis will find it even more difficult to make ends meet.

From his new memoir, it’s clear that Barack Obama believes process is politics. But no amount of “process” will solve the problems that plague us — for that, we need the political will he could never muster as president.

The GameStop saga was more than a simple tale of upstart traders taking on big business. But it highlighted again how disconnected Wall Street is from ordinary workers — and new polling finds that even more Americans now resent Wall Street.

Don’t count right-wing populism out. While technocrats have seen their fortunes rise under lockdown, the sense of national decline and disarray that first brought leaders like Donald Trump to power still has a bright future.

The jaw-dropping speed of COVID-19 vaccine development is a glorious marvel of science, cooperation, and economic planning. But the lifeboat ethics of vaccine rollout is a horrifying display of the cruelty of capitalism.
The Left needs a revived labor movement, and a revived labor movement needs the Left.

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