The Mexican Revolution inspired an extraordinary cultural efflorescence, with painting as its leading art form. The spectacular murals of Diego Rivera, inspired by Mexico’s popular history and culture, are the most remarkable legacy of that period.
Karl Marx developed his critique of capitalism by studying England’s “satanic mills.” But, as David Harvey writes, he understood capitalism as a global system. Were he alive today, he would insist that socialists focus on Silicon Valley as much as Shenzhen.
Framed as a strike on “evil,” Washington and Tel Aviv’s attacks leave Iran with few off-ramps. Tehran’s incentives now point toward escalation as a matter of survival.
For roughly half a century, a certain strain of American evangelical theology has taught millions of believers to read conflicts like Trump’s war with Iran not simply as geopolitics in action but as prophecy unfolding in real time. I was one of them.
Gilbert Achcar explains how oil, US power, and regional rivalries have shaped decades of conflict in the Middle East — and why the confrontation with Iran fits a long imperial pattern.
For a century, American wars were planned by think tankers drawn from the boards of Goldman Sachs and Chevron. It gave rise to horrors like Vietnam and Iraq. That era is over. What comes next is very likely worse.
Ireland’s taoiseach, Micheál Martin, will be paying homage to Donald Trump on St Patrick’s Day. Irish public opinion is strongly opposed to the US war on Iran and the Gaza genocide, but Martin and his allies are anxious to stay on Trump’s good side.
As Donald Trump launches a dangerous war on Iran, understanding what really drives US imperial aggression is more urgent than ever. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, which many critics wrongly claim was about oil, offers an illuminating case study.
Every country on earth has a national anthem. Some are clear international standouts.
In their heyday of radicalism in the 1980s, Germany’s Greens were a pacifist, ecological voice. Now the party backs higher military spending not just as a defense strategy but as the linchpin of Germany’s economic revival.
Europe’s far-right parties have long boasted about putting their own countries’ interests first but now slavishly support the latest US-Israeli war. While they opt for vassalage, antiwar forces have turned out to be the real defenders of sovereignty.
The Republican Party’s descent into chaos wasn’t Donald Trump’s doing. After successfully beating back the labor movement, the capitalist class became too disorganized to restrain the monster it created.
Donald Trump is weighing whether to make the Iran War even more of a disaster by sending in ground troops. It’s a terrible idea that almost everyone agrees won’t achieve anything but kill US troops and draw the United States deeper into war.
Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History ranges impressively over time and space, from medieval Yemen to modern-day Cambodia. But we need a clearer political economy of capitalism to make sense of the material that he provides us with.
In Iran and Lebanon, the US and Israeli militaries are bombing dense residential blocks, destroying civilian infrastructure, slaughtering children, and assassinating health workers. If it sounds familiar, it’s because this is the Gaza playbook.
Donald Trump is proposing to increase the defense budget by nearly half to wage war on Iran. How does he want to pay for it? Cut nearly everything that might help average Americans, from food, housing, and education programs to health care and childcare.
Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán combined talk of defending Hungary’s traditions with a promise of prosperity. When he stopped delivering workers good economic news, culture-war messaging wasn’t enough to save him.
In Hungary’s election, Péter Magyar rallied urban white-collar workers, business figures excluded from state patronage networks, intellectuals, and youth. It’s much less clear that his new government can satisfy all these groups’ expectations.
Japan’s conservative leader, Takaichi Sanae, won a supermajority of seats in this year’s general election. Takaichi and her allies are using this position of strength to advance a dangerous militarist agenda as part of Washington’s anti-China front.
War, and now a fragile ceasefire, is not bringing collapse in Iran but reinforcing and reorganizing its existing structures of power and inequality.