Who Teaches Politics Now? Universities, YouTube, and the Making of Common Sense
As unions, parties, and public institutions retreat from political education, platforms like YouTube increasingly colonize the space they leave behind. Individualistic explanations circulate widely and effortlessly, carried by algorithms designed to turn attention, outrage, and certainty into profit. Over time, inequality comes to be understood as the outcome of personal choices, while success reads as evidence of merit. Structural explanations, by contrast, are recast as ideological, excessive, or out of touch with ordinary life.
Rethinking Radicalization: American Parties and Movements in the 1960s and 1970s
Ultimately, this comparison problematizes the assumption that radicalization is inherently destructive and incompatible with American party politics. Hegemonic parties with robust resources can nurture radicals and substantively integrate their ideas, avoiding the process of dilution that is characteristic of the Democrats’ listless interest-group configuration.
Trump and Netanyahu’s Lurch into Iran: Imperial Hubris in the Wake of a People’s Uprising
Reeking of Imperial Hubris
Seizing upon what they consider to be a generational opportunity, with Iran’s theocratic dictatorship shaken by the January people’s uprising, Trump and Netanyahu launched a “prolonged” attack from the air on February 28. While the attacks are aimed, they say, at eliminating Iran’s nuclear and missile capacity, it clearly involves an effort at regime change. With their nefarious surprise attack – conducted in the middle of negotiations — and the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in his residence along with other regime leaders and members of his family, they have committed at least three major war crimes: launching a war of aggression, attacks on the civilian population, and assassination of the political and military leadership of sovereign nation. This is also a precedent for other imperialist and subimperialist powers everywhere.
Of course, it is not surprising that many sectors of the Iranian population have expressed joy at the demise of the murderous Khamenei, who in January gave the green light to the massacre of at least 7,000 of his fellow citizens who had dared to demand democracy and an end to 47 years of theocratic authoritarianism. But we must ask, as many Iranians also are doing, […]
Egypt’s Failed Democratic Transition: Why the Labour Movement Matters
A central lesson is that labour movements will be in a better position to shape political outcomes decisively if they build independent organisations with real strategic capacity. The absence of such organisational strength in Egypt was a key reason why the post-Mubarak order did not evolve in a more democratic direction.
Owning the Libs, One Survey at a Time: On the Attitudes of American Socialists
The evidence presented above suggests that not only do socialist identifiers differ significantly in their social and political beliefs from non-socialist identifiers in general, but they also differ significantly from those conventionally acknowledged as the beginning and end of the American ideological left: liberals.