The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolitionism by Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill Mullen is a thorough and engaging new history of Black struggle in the US. However, its central argument, that all historic anti-racist struggles fit under the umbrella of anti-fascism, is theoretically flawed, and leads to bad organizing strategy and political defeat.
Evangelical Christians are a dominant social force in the US, instigating culture wars and making or breaking presidential candidates. In recent years they have led a surge of reactionary politics into the mainstream, and are largely responsible for Trumpism as a movement. Understanding the origins and characteristics of Christian nationalism — especially how it relates to US capitalism and imperialism — is key to challenging its influence.
The global wave of Gaza solidarity encampments has reinvigorated the Palestine liberation movement and made undeniable ideological advances, but failed to win many material gains. A sober analysis of the student movement’s strengths and weaknesses provides important lessons for the struggle against Zionism, imperialism, and capitalism.
Karl Kautsky’s grandson John told a very revealing anecdote about attitudes towards his grandfather in the 1960s. He recalled a historian named Georges Haupt, who had many discussions among students about the history of the Second International. During those talks,...
In Marxist theory, primitive accumulation is, as Marx defined it in Capital Volume I, “the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production.” Occurring at different times in different regions around the world, primitive accumulation is the...
Auraria Campus, Denver Report by James Radek A protest encampment in solidarity with Palestine was established on Thursday, April 25 on Denver’s Auraria Campus, which is home to the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University, and Community College of...
On April 13, 2024, the President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state summarily dismissed Jodi Dean, professor of politics, from her teaching position at the institution. The dismissal is ostensibly temporary, pending an investigation into claims...
Fascism arose in the 20th century as a capitalist response to its own crises and the increased threat of the communist movement after the Russian Revolution. Fascism is a symptom of capitalism in decay, and is especially centered on the ruined petty bourgeoisie and...
According to the dominant view on the broad liberal-left, to achieve progressive change we must elect officials with progressive politics. Liberalism claims we can eliminate the problems inherent in capitalism without eliminating capitalism itself, and by using the...
Marxism represents a complete and vigorously materialistic world-view. A complete world-view differs from an eclectic one in that each of its aspects is connected in the closest way with all the others, and therefore one cannot with impunity eliminate one of them and...
My radicalization began with my time in the military. I served 10 years as an army infantryman. The simplest job description for an infantryman is someone who engages in ground combat. I grew up a poor trailer-trash kid from a small town in Wyoming. As soon as I...
Last Sunday, February 25, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old active-duty airman in the United States Air Force, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, in what he called “an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian...
A free Palestine from the river to the sea is the demand that has been taken up by the unprecedented global protest movement in the wake of Israel’s brutal war and genocide in Gaza. Most sincere supporters of the Palestinian cause can understand why the dismantling of...
The current debate in Tempest between Dan La Botz and Stephen R. Shalom on one side, and Jonah ben Avraham and Sean Larson on the other, is an important one for the left. La Botz and Shalom have claimed ben Avraham and Larson are too soft on October 7. The latter have...
Our comrades in Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists are facing outrageous repression from Ohio State University, who suspended their campus chapter in December on grounds that their activities in support of Palestine “pose a significant risk of substantial harm.”...
In March 2020, several longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America published an essay entitled “The Dangers of Factionalism in DSA,” warning about the dangers of entryism by organizations such as Socialist Alternative. Using the example of the “French...
In the wake of the events of October 7 and the genocidal aftermath, there is a growing divide on the left between those who unconditionally support the right of Palestinians to fight back against their oppressors, and their critics. Support on the left for resistance...
A political prisoner is typically defined as someone imprisoned for their political activity, or who is imprisoned on an official charge that is sometimes unrelated to their actual activity. While the exact meanings of the term are contested, conventionally it refers...
In October, inmates of the Zionist state’s de facto concentration camp in the Gaza Strip executed a desperate, yet powerfully courageous, escape. The scene shocked the world. Just four years prior, Palestinian protesters had tried week after week for nearly a year to...
The ongoing genocidal annihilation of Gaza and the racist pogroms in the West Bank, both conducted by the Israeli apartheid state with the full support of its imperial sponsor, the United States, have rightfully provoked the rage of tens of millions across the world....
As millions of people around the world flood the streets in support of Palestine and to condemn their governments’ complicity in Israel’s genocide, many are demanding a ceasefire. In New York City, hundreds of brave Jewish protesters occupied the Statue of Liberty...
Palestinians have been under siege, colonial occupation, expulsion, dispossession, oppression and repression for over 75 years. They have resisted Zionism and imperialism for even longer. Much of this resistance has been nonviolent or at most the hurling of rocks. On...
Stop the genocide Israel’s settler-colonial project has again shown its true nature. In retaliation for the new military phase of the Palestinian liberation movement that started on October 7th, the Zionist entity is committing open genocide against Gaza. Israeli...
Repression has always been a problem for people seeking social change. From direct physical attacks by police and vigilantes to the firing and evicting of union activists, the ruling class doesn’t make it easy to challenge their power. Contemporary methods of...