
Sometimes the Severed Head Rolls Left
By creating a window into what scares us all, horror movies give us a way of examining society’s dirty underbelly — without it realizing it’s showing us its fleshy parts.

By creating a window into what scares us all, horror movies give us a way of examining society’s dirty underbelly — without it realizing it’s showing us its fleshy parts.

As we commemorate the many horrors of the Cold War, let’s not forget some of the good things it brought us — above all, a frightened ruling class scared into making concessions.

The University and College Union has called an eight-day strike across Britain’s universities starting on November 25. Inspired by teachers in the United States, British educators are fighting to save the education system — and put a stop to privatization.

On the politics of professional-class anxiety.

The PSOE-Podemos coalition set to form Spain’s next government will rely on Catalan support in parliament. Yet after an election polarized around national tensions, both parties are ignoring Catalans’ call for self-determination.

With its recent general strike and continued mobilizations, Colombia has joined the global wave of unrest. If the movement can resist right-wing president Iván Duque’s attempts at co-optation, it could lay the groundwork for the transformation of a society long characterized by inequality and militarized brutality.

Argentina’s Mauricio Macri officially steps down as president today, having overseen four years of neoliberal mismanagement, inflation, and a new IMF bailout program. The election of the Peronist Alberto Fernández is good news for the Left, but it faces an uphill battle in stabilizing a deeply indebted economy.

James Baldwin was many things: a brilliant writer, a trenchant social critic, a dogged activist. He was also an unapologetic radical.

Brazil’s 1988 post-dictatorship constitution enshrined a broad range of social rights and a modest welfare state. Since taking office a year ago, Jair Bolsonaro and his band of paranoid reactionaries have dedicated themselves to attacking and undermining those rights.

Upon its creation in 2014, Podemos insisted it was nothing like the political parties that had long dominated Spain. Today, Pablo Iglesias’s party looks like an ever-more institutionalized force — yet one whose activists continue to see themselves as belonging to a “social movement” from below.

Taiwanese voters are going to the polls tomorrow for presidential elections as protests continue to rage in Hong Kong. But in order to understand Taiwan, we have to understand the power of China — and the looming shadow of US imperialism.

The PSOE-Podemos coalition promises to roll back recent attacks on labor rights and provide a negotiated solution to the Catalan crisis. But the new government’s moderate tone hasn’t placated the business and institutional establishment — and they’re already working to thwart its plans.

Finland’s extreme right came a close second at the last election, and they’re baying for power next time around. Increasingly brash in their theatrics and dominating debates, they’re the dark and very real threat to Finland’s celebrated social democracy.

For nearly three weeks after it surfaced, Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden was ignored or downplayed in the media. A Jacobin analysis shows that she’s been covered unlike any other accuser in the post–Me Too era.

Margaret Thatcher rose to power in Britain during an age of economic crisis and political polarization, much like the country today. By defeating its opponents at home and abroad, her government helped kickstart the neoliberal era. We’re still living with the consequences.

Class struggle will shape how this crisis plays out, and the world that’s created in its wake.

Donald Trump is attempting to drum up hysteria about antifa to clamp down on protest and dissent in the United States. Don't let him.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country by far, may not have a political profile to match its size. But it has a powerful tradition of socialist theory and practice that deserves to be better understood by the international left. That tradition has helped shape the best features of Nigeria’s contemporary political scene.

In an interview with Jacobin, former Labour Party shadow chancellor John McDonnell discusses Boris Johnson’s handling of the COVID crisis, recalls the radical atmosphere of the 1980s Labour Party, and draws the lessons from Jeremy Corbyn’s five years as party leader.

The Indian state has imprisoned the Dalit intellectual Anand Teltumbde on trumped-up charges of terrorism and subversion. His activism and writing on caste and class are needed more than ever in the struggle against both casteism and capitalism.