The Big Tech Deep State
Digital technology was sold as a liberating tool that could free individuals from state power. Yet the state security apparatus always had a different view — and now it’s taking back control of its own creation.
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“Abundance” Against Organized Labor
A significant portion of the abundance movement views unions as a barrier that needs to be overcome in the name of efficiency.
Heat Kills. Trump Has Ensured There Will Be More Victims.
We should be slashing emissions and climate-proofing our cities. Instead, Republicans are turning up the carbon spew and stripping away heat protections — effectively condemning the poor to die under rising temperatures.
Kamala Harris Thinks Trump Is a “Communist.” That’s Insane.
Centrist Democrats like Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom seem to think the best way to disparage Donald Trump is to highlight his departures from free-market orthodoxy. Good luck with that.
Trump and Mamdani Agree on the State, Not on Whom It Serves
The cordial meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani wasn’t as strange as it looked; both reject the myth of a self-regulating market. The difference is that Trump uses the state to shore up wealth, Mamdani to expand rights and public provision.
Election 2024: How Billionaires Torpedoed Democracy
Both parties’ 2024 campaigns claimed to be about “saving democracy.” Yet both parties ended up bought and paid for by billionaires.
Trump’s Bailout Philosophy: Too Loyal to Fail
Donald Trump’s second term won’t bring smaller government as promised. Instead, it will replace regulations with a system of executive grace and favor. The old bailout standard of “too big to fail” will be supplanted by a new one: only the loyal survive.
El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele Is Yet Again Ramping Up His Authoritarian Violence
Nayib Bukele has overseen multiple violent crackdowns on basic civil liberties across El Salvador during his time as president. With his recent declaration of martial law against gangs, it’s only getting worse.
Anti-Corruption Politics May Be the Key to Beating Trumpism
The Trump administration’s cartoonish graft presents a unique opportunity for a populist anti-corruption platform. But for the Democrats to pull it off, they’d have to repudiate corruption within their own party first.
The Shock Doctrine Comes to Puerto Rico
An interview with Naomi Klein and Mercedes Martinez, president of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation.
Capitalists Are Escalating Their Shakedown of American Workers
Last year’s modest wage gains have been wiped out by inflation, and prices are up across the board. Meanwhile, the rich are living large on superyachts and private islands — and they’re coming for working Americans’ last scraps of wealth.
Coachella Is a Carnival for Capital
Coachella is less a music festival than a showcase for brands. You could even say that Coachella is at the bleeding edge of capitalist bullshit.
Andrew Tate Wants Everyone to Get in on the Grift
Online misogynist Andrew Tate doesn’t pretend that life under capitalism isn’t a scam. He readily acknowledges that it is, with success coming through coercion, exploitation, and predation — and he wants you to get in on the hustle with him.
The Political Afterlives of Yukio Mishima, Japan’s Most Controversial Intellectual And Global Icon Of The Far Right
The writer Yukio Mishima, who took his own life fifty years ago today, remains one of modern Japan’s most important cultural figures. Mishima’s eccentric and contradictory political stances have also gained him a devoted following on the international far right.
The CIA’s Secret Global War Against the Left
Forty-five years ago, under a cloak of secrecy, Operation Condor was officially launched: a global campaign of violent repression against the Latin American left by the region’s quasi-fascist military dictatorships. The US government not only knew about the program — it helped to engineer it.
Web3 Can’t Fix the Internet
Web3 is touted as the next generation of the internet, promising to break the grip of giants like Google and Facebook. But far from empowering ordinary users, its token-based model threatens to commodify our online lives even further.
The Democrats Didn’t Just Fail to Defend Social Programs. They Actively Undermined Them.
In the ’80s and ’90s, the Democrats took a jackhammer to education, housing, and social welfare. This isn’t the story of a weak party unable to defend its earlier gains, but a transformed party demolishing them in service of a new neoliberal ideology.
George Orwell Was a Temperamental Conservative and Ideological Radical
George Orwell managed to combine a conservative temperament with a socialist rejection of oppression. A lively new biography of the English radical explains how he held these contradictions together.
The Hidden Environmental Impact of AI
While the mass adoption of AI has transformed digital life seemingly overnight, regulators have fallen asleep on the job in curtailing AI data centers’ drain on energy and water resources.
Tech Turncoats
Elon Musk isn’t the only Silicon Valley somebody to leave the Dems in the dust.