Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015 as a veteran anti-war activist, only to have to spend the next five years apologizing for his supposed “racist allies” and “terrorist links.” The sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey shows how the space to criticize Israel has narrowed — but also how the Left has failed to defend its own right to call out injustice.
The “cancel culture” debate is stale. But there are real threats to civil liberties in society today. The Left must claim the mantle of free speech, broaden its scope, and bring in the dimension of class.
The roots of modern Zionism are in colonialism. This was the foundation of the Jewish left’s opposition to Zionism in the 1930s and ’40s, on the grounds that it is a form of right-wing nationalism and imperialism that is fundamentally opposed to working-class internationalism.
Israel is facing declining public support in the United States and sees the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign as a key threat to its legitimacy. That’s why Israel is enlisting the US government, American university administrators, and even tech companies like Zoom and Facebook to try to destroy the BDS movement.
Amid this summer’s massive protests, Benyamin Netanyahu’s grip on Israel’s political consciousness began to crack for the first time in a decade. But repairing the damage he’s done to the country’s political landscape will take years.
Transcription, Ben Lerner’s slim but layered new novel, is a penetrating meditation on fraudulence, fatherhood, and the fate of authentic experience in our digital age.
New York Democrats: stop trying to make “socialists are antisemitic” happen. It’s not going to happen.
Owen Jones’s This Land promises to tell the story of the movement behind Jeremy Corbyn and his ultimate failure. While it offers important comments on the obstacles Labour faced, its strategic proposals are less convincing — watering down some of the principles that allowed for Corbyn's initial victory.
When Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission announced it was investigating Labour’s treatment of its Jewish members, many of Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents claimed this as proof of his supposed antisemitism. But the inquiry is itself a political weapon — and as the Commission publishes its much-hyped, long-delayed report today, the attacks against the Left are only intensifying.
British journalist Robert Fisk, who died last week, produced decades of outstanding work, from Ireland to the Middle East. His greatest impact on public opinion came after 9/11, when he mounted a brave challenge to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A Joe Biden presidency will attempt to return to the hawkish Democratic status quo on Israel. Leftist activists and elected officials have to be prepared to stop him.
In 1952, West Germany paid reparations to Israel — not as compensation to Holocaust survivors, but in the form of supplies to the Israeli state. Coming at the same time as denazification reached its end, the move had little to do with moral atonement, and everything to do with whitewashing West Germany's international image.
Cornel West talks to Jacobin about what the Bernie Sanders campaign represented, what its failure means, and why Democrats think they can win over black and brown voters with just “symbolic decorative changes.”
A year after his election defeat, Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents are still pursuing a remorseless vendetta against the former Labour leader. This unprecedented effort to trash his reputation is a backhanded tribute to the challenge that Corbynism posed to the status quo.
As Noam Chomsky puts it in a recent interview, “unless working people take part in the class struggle, they're going to get it in the neck.”
Yesterday, the Biden administration took two long-overdue steps toward potentially ending the Saudi war on Yemen. But the president has to provide more clarity on what exactly his administration is willing to do to halt Saudi Arabia’s brutality and remove the boot from the neck of Yemenis.
The destruction of California’s once vast and magnificent redwood forests is entwined with American expansion westward, violent dispossession, and the ravenous commodification of nature. The remaining redwoods demand our protection.
Israel and its supporters are ramping up efforts to outlaw solidarity with Palestinians in the name of combating antisemitism. But these authoritarian maneuvers can’t hide the fact that Israel is losing the battle for public opinion over its denial of Palestinian rights.
The real choice is not between globalization and deglobalization, free trade and tariff walls, but between empowering capital and empowering workers.
Joe Sacco's iconic graphic novel Palestine turns twenty-five this year. Its depiction of life under occupation is in keeping with his life's work — telling the stories of the oppressed that the powerful would prefer to forget.