Nothing about Donald Trump’s brazenly illegal actions against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro suggests that the American ruling class has learned any lessons from US imperial overreach and failure in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Venezuela itself.
The seizure of two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil is a further escalation of Donald Trump’s war policy. While British prime minister Keir Starmer denied involvement in the earlier attack on Caracas, this time Britain actively joined the operation.
For years, US leaders struggled with botched efforts to bring the opposition to power in Venezuela. Talk of the War on Drugs provided a justification for a more direct US assault, imposing regime change without the trappings of democratic transition.
An overwhelming majority of American Historical Association members voted earlier this month to condemn scholasticide in Gaza. AHA leaders overruled members to block the measure, opting for cowardice over ethical clarity.
Africa is suffering from a continent-wide debt crisis, the result of decades of dependence on predatory international finance. Ghana is its latest victim.
The genocide in Gaza radicalizes Zionism’s long-standing colonial project. But Israeli leaders’ open rejection of any future possibility of a Palestinian state have undercut their own international legitimacy.
Right-wing influencers give Nazi salutes in limousines and peddle conspiracy theories about Jews to audiences of millions, while “moderate” Republicans dog-whistle about “authentic” American heritage. The GOP’s antisemitism problem is no longer fringe.
The Trump administration says it wants Greenland for its natural resources. But that’s largely fantasy: while the island has critical minerals and fossil fuels, there’s almost no infrastructure to extract them. The real motives are likely geopolitical.
While Donald Trump fires off threats of military action against countries from Greenland to Iran, Latin America is the main focus for his strategy of imperial retrenchment. The Latin American left will have to build new alliances against US aggression.
Iran’s rulers have managed to contain a wave of protest for now. But the nature of the unrest and the state’s lethal response make this an unprecedented moment since the 1979 revolution, with the threat of a US attack still hanging over the country.
An ideal society would equitably distribute the means of production, and that includes musical production. Universal music literacy would ensure everyone has the tools to take part in the collective human legacy of music.
Donald Trump’s push to acquire Greenland has alienated many longtime allies. But it has tantalized a cohort of tech billionaires who see the island as a potential laboratory for “freedom cities,” or privately governed zones without regulation or democracy.
The glue that holds Donald Trump’s coalition together is not ideological coherence but a volatile compound of empire, spectacle, and grievance. Understanding these tensions helps explain both MAGA’s successes and its weaknesses.
A radical middle-class insurgency has stormed the Republican Party.
Despite his later denial, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wanted to keep a line open to Jeffrey Epstein. Emails between the two suggest that the world of the Big Tech elite is less a back room of evil geniuses than rich dullards discussing goofy ideas.
Britain’s Labour prime minister is severely wounded by his disastrous appointment of a Jeffrey Epstein–associated US ambassador and could soon be ousted. But the party needs more than a makeover.
From the Americas to the Middle East, the US is deploying the crudest forms of imperial aggression to shore up its power. This is ultimately a sign of weakness rather than strength, as the foundations upon which the US empire rested are crumbling.
There’s something disingenuous about liberal Western media rediscovering that the term “imperialism” also applies to the US. Donald Trump is no radical departure from his predecessors; he simply abandons the pretense of exporting democracy.
The defining feature of the last decade was that everything, from food to music, was politicized. All the while, our capacity to act collectively only grew weaker. Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics sets out to explain why.
Today would have been the birthday of the late, great footballer Sócrates, who challenged the military dictatorship in his native Brazil — an example needed today on the eve of a World Cup designed to be a Trumpian propaganda showcase.