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Serbia Is a Showcase of Authoritarian Neoliberalism

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/serbia-vucic-milosevic-russia-neoliberalism/

Published: September 7, 2024 14:35

During the 1990s, the government of Slobodan Milošević led Serbia into a third Balkan war. His allies in Bosnia were responsible for a litany of war crimes, including the massacre at Srebrenica. The war left Serbia itself isolated and impoverished, and a…

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Is a Sweetly Satirical Delight

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/beetlejuice-tim-burton-horror-comedy/

Published: September 7, 2024 12:47

It’s so good to have the old gang back again that it seems petty to carp about any aspect of this long-awaited Beetlejuice Beetlejuice reunion. Seventy-three-year-old Michael Keaton is still magnificent as the rampant undead “freelance bioexorcist,” and if…

The Left Needs a Real Strategy for a Harris Presidency

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/harris-sanders-labor-dsa-strategy/

Published: September 7, 2024 10:38

It’s tempting to write off Bernie Sanders’s speeches and interviews as he campaigns for Kamala Harris this year as a “playing the hits” tour: The top 1 percent own lots of wealth. We have to take on Big Pharma. We need to finally guarantee everyone the…

How Former East Germany Became Home to the Far Right

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/east-germany-far-right-afd/

Published: September 7, 2024 08:59

When Quentin Tarantino chose the small eastern German town of Sebnitz for a scene in his Inglourious Basterds, he was likely drawn to its beautiful scenery, not to actual Nazis. Yet, along the road to Sebnitz across Saxony, a several-meter-high flagpole…

Israel Keeps Killing US Citizens. Joe Biden Doesn’t Care.

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/israel-west-bank-killing-american/

Published: September 6, 2024 17:03

Today Israeli forces killed Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-US citizen, in the West Bank, shooting her in the head as she protested one of the country’s growing and accelerating illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory. The US and Israeli governments…

In Rachel Kushner’s New Novel, a Spy Infiltrates the Left

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/rachel-kushner-creation-lake-review/

Published: September 6, 2024 15:38

In the late 1970s, when Michael Bettaney, a fascist sympathizer who made the familiar British journey from Oxford to MI5, was pulled over. Drunk and out of sorts, he is reported to have told officers: “You can’t arrest me, I’m a spy.” Drunkenness and…

A Thousand Tennessee Autoworkers Just Joined the UAW

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/ultium-ev-autoworkers-uaw-tennessee/

Published: September 6, 2024 11:09

This week, in Spring Hill, Tennessee, just south of Nashville, roughly one thousand workers at Ultium Cells LLC, an electric vehicle (EV) plant jointly run by General Motors and LG Energy Solution of Korea, joined the United Auto Workers (UAW) after a…

A Leftist Analysis of Antisemitism

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/left-antisemitism-israel-white-nationalism/

Published: September 6, 2024 10:30

The Republican Party is increasingly guided by white nationalist politics, which are in turn heavily influenced by long-standing conspiracy tropes involving hidden and powerful Jewish networks. Unfortunately, most of the public discourse about antisemitism…

Michel Barnier Is in Office, Marine Le Pen Will Hold Power

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/barnier-premier-france-le-pen/

Published: September 6, 2024 08:49

As results poured in from the first round of France’s elections on June 30, veteran Gaullist politician Michel Barnier sounded the alarm. His Les Républicains seemed faced for a debacle, with under 7 percent of the vote. Ahead of the election, the party…

Big Pharma Is a Big Menace to Global Health

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/big-pharma-global-health-patents/

Published: September 5, 2024 15:08

The role of the pharmaceutical industry has become a matter of sharp public controversy after scandals like the role of Purdue Pharma in fueling the US opioid epidemic. From the HIV/AIDS crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmaceutical corporations have…

Who Are New York City’s Worst Bosses?

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/nyc-comptroller-worst-employers-lander/

Published: September 5, 2024 13:16

During the golden age of the Village Voice, New York’s genre-defining alt-weekly, journalists Jack Newfield and Tom Robbins compiled annual lists of the city’s worst landlords to run in the paper. The feature’s popularity led Newfield to add a spin-off:…

Canada Is Ending Jewish National Fund’s Charitable Status

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/canada-jewish-national-fund-israel/

Published: September 5, 2024 11:26

The recent revocation of the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) charitable status may be the most important Palestine solidarity victory in Canadian history. The grassroots win is a boost to the global Stop the JNF campaign and efforts to disrupt Canadian…

The Constitution Gave Us This Mess

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/constitution-presidential-election-debate-democracy/

Published: September 5, 2024 10:00

The first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will be on September 10 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, an institution designed to “disseminate information about the U.S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis to increase…

Today’s Imperialist Clashes Are Driven by Economic Rivalry

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/imperialism-economic-policy-hegemony-rivalry/

Published: September 5, 2024 09:33

Global geopolitics is currently marked by extraordinary tensions and armed conflicts raising the threat of world war — above all, in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Taiwan. Since the early 2010s, the disposition of leading state powers has become steadily…

The Rise of Big Tech Is Generating Economic Stagnation

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/big-tech-economic-stagnation-exploitation/

Published: September 4, 2024 15:38

If the “new spirit of capitalism” analyzed by Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello had to be embodied in any one location, an obvious candidate would be the bright, modern buildings reserved for creatives at Silicon Valley’s tech giants. Google’s HQ sells us…

No Change in Gaza Policy? Really?

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/harris-gaza-israel-arms-embargo/

Published: September 4, 2024 13:58

In her first major interview since accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination, Kamala Harris said on Friday that her Israel policy will be no different than Joe Biden’s. After noting that Biden’s policy had failed to bring an end to Israel’s protracted…

Ernest Calloway Fused Civil Rights and Class Struggle

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/ernest-calloway-civil-rights-teamsters/

Published: September 4, 2024 12:30

On August 6, 1957, St Louis mayor Raymond R. Tucker, the quintessential technocrat, sourly watched the votes get tallied. His initiative, backed by the city’s business elite, to amend the city charter in order to blunt the power of local aldermen and…

Netanyahu Is Blocking a Hostage Deal

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/netanyahu-israel-hamas-hostage-deal/

Published: September 4, 2024 11:49

With six Israeli hostages dead, one of them a US citizen, and massive Israeli protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raging in the country, a very public game of finger-pointing has ensued. Asked on Monday if Netanyahu was doing enough to…

Families Are Paying Millions in School Lunch Junk Fees

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/myschoolbucks-school-lunch-junk-fees/

Published: September 4, 2024 10:22

Last fall, Emily Krieger, a mother in Bozeman, Montana, began to wonder about the unending fees she was paying to provide her two children lunch money at their local public school. A cafeteria lunch at Emily Dickinson Elementary School, where Krieger’s…

How European Integration Set the Stage for Viktor Orbán

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/viktor-orban-european-integration-globalization/

Published: September 4, 2024 08:37

Viktor Orbán had big ambitions for this June’s elections to the European Parliament. Running on a slogan of “no migration, no gender, no war,” the Hungarian premier called on his supporters to “Occupy Brussels.” Posters around the country depicted domestic…

A Call for Accountability From Kamala Harris on Gaza

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/biden-harris-gaza-uncommitted-democrats/

Published: September 3, 2024 16:03

For more than ten months, we have witnessed the unimaginable suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. By official estimates, over 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s incursion into the territory began. Some researchers estimate a much higher…

Socialism in the American Heartland

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/socialism-debs-milwaukee-chicago-midwest/

Published: September 3, 2024 14:17

On a midsummer afternoon in June 1918, Eugene Debs stepped into a gazebo nestled under the trees of Nimisilla Park in Canton, Ohio, to deliver the speech that would land him in prison. The Socialist Party leader looked out on a crowd of 1,200 gathered…

The New Labor Organizing Model of EWOC

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/ewoc-unions-labor-organizing-model/

Published: September 3, 2024 12:52

Tens of millions of workers in the United States want a union at their workplace, but do not have one. This unfortunate state of affairs is normally blamed on external obstacles such as our country’s broken labor law regime. But there are also significant…

Germany’s Far Right Is Exploiting a Broken Economic Model

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/germany-afd-immigration-economy-far-right/

Published: September 3, 2024 11:09

Sunday saw state elections in the eastern German states of Thuringia and Saxony — with the far right doing just as well as expected. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) scored 32.8 and 30.6 percent in each state, respectively, becoming the most popular…

How Fredric Jameson Remade Literary Criticism

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/fredric-jameson-marxism-literature-theory/

Published: September 3, 2024 10:52

For over five decades, Fredric Jameson has been the leading Marxist literary and cultural critic in the United States, if not the world. At ninety, he shows few signs of slowing down. His latest book, Inventions of a Present: The Novel in Its Crisis of…

How the “AFL-CIA” Undermined Labor Movements Abroad

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/afl-cio-cold-war-cia/

Published: September 2, 2024 15:25

In February, the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) called for a negotiated cease-fire to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Although this statement fell short of demanding an immediate cease-fire, as statements by…

Los Angeles Teachers’ Road to Durable Power, 2014–2016

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/utla-los-angeles-teachers-organizing/

Published: September 2, 2024 13:46

In a 2014 internal union election, Union Power caucus members won all the citywide officer positions in UTLA: Cecily Myart-Cruz as NEA vice president, Betty Forrester as AFT vice president, Juan Ramirez as elementary vice president, Colleen Schwab as…

US Labor Unions Still Need to Get Serious About Organizing

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/union-density-nlrb-law-harris/

Published: September 2, 2024 10:18

On Tuesday, the AFL-CIO hosted its second annual “State of the Unions” Labor Day event. According to AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler, unions are “on the rise,” “battle-tested,” and “building organizing capacity” like never before. What does the data really…

Just Today, $20 Print Subscriptions Worldwide

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/labor-day-2020-note/

Published: September 2, 2024 09:38

Labor Day isn’t the most exciting of holidays. It doesn’t quite have the verve or internationalism of May Day and its meaning is overshadowed by important things like superb discounts on flat screen TVs. But Labor Day was a real victory for the workers’…

Eugene Debs: “The Scab Is the Natural Born Foe of Labor”

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/eugene-debs-scabs-labor-day/

Published: September 2, 2024 09:09

Philosophers, particularly those who have sought to solve the simpler mysteries of creation, have always been greatly perplexed when endeavoring to find any plausible reason for the existence of certain insects and reptiles, which curse the earth, the air,…

How Indiana Kroger Workers Won a Groundbreaking Contract

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/indiana-kroger-teamsters-contract-immigration/

Published: September 1, 2024 15:13

Teamsters in an Indiana grocery warehouse scored big this year with a contract campaign like none before. They organized in five languages and sported a multilingual union button. They opened up bargaining sessions for any member to come observe — on the…

Learning From Italian Antifascism

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/italy-antifascism-rosselli-mussolini-risorgimento/

Published: September 1, 2024 09:03

The Italian antifascist movement Giustizia e Libertà (“Justice and Liberty”) reminds one of Brian Eno’s quip about the first Velvet Underground album: it sold just ten thousand copies at the time, but everyone who bought it started a band. It was not a…

Easington Under Occupation

https://jacobin.com/2024/09/easington-miners-strike-deindustrialization-police/

Published: September 1, 2024 08:56

Easington: a small, tight-knit community that stagnated after the closure of County Durham’s last pit in 1993. It’s a riches-to-rags tale familiar to anyone who lives in a former mining town — the state-mandated violence, police brutality, and community…