There is no question that “cancel culture” is a legitimate tool of a vibrant democratic culture, especially as it allows the powerless to redress the abuses and the offensive behavior directed at them by powerful public figures.
Category: Racism
review
The Life and Political Contributions of Hubert Harrison
With the completion of his biography of Hubert Harrison, Jeffrey B. Perry has made a monumental contribution to our understanding of one of Black history’s most important yet neglected figures. Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927) was the first Black figure in the . . .
Overcoming Left Antisemitism
An Anti-Zionist’s Review of Confronting Antisemitism on the Left
Left antisemitism is all too real, has especially strong roots in Stalinism, and functions as a dangerous frame for conspiratorial thinking.
Black Freedom & Land Insecurity in Baltimore
The time is now and never has it been more urgent for Black and Brown communities to own the land, produce their own food, and create wealth that circulates back into their communities.
Where Are We on Thanksgiving Day in America?
I give thanks that there’s a chance that in the coming year we can begin to build a mass working class movement and an independent working-class political party.
Verdict in Rittenhouse Vigilante Trial Leads to Protest by Left and Jubilation on Right
The Rittenhouse verdict has encouraged and emboldened America’s fascists—and they are taking advantage of it.
School Board Meetings Become Violent as Republicans Fight Over Health and Race
Local school board meetings in the United States have for the last three months become the site of intense arguments and even violence as parents fight over both health policies and teaching about race.
Are Tankie Politics Racist?
Ani White and Gayaal Iddamalgoda argue that so-called “tankie” politics, meaning support for “actually-existing socialist” and “anti-imperialist” states, erase struggles in the Global South.
Settler Colonialism, Not a Nation of Immigrants
Review of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion.
Three Authors Look at Work's Devastation of Life
How Work Is Killing Us
Three authors—Jamie McCallum, Sarah Jaffe, and Eyal Press– have published important books that examine work and its discontents, in pre-pandemic form.
Recovering the Dialectic of Race and Class Struggle in the USA
In Defense of Richard Wright & Cedric Johnson’s Actually Existing Black Marxism
Insights from Richard Wright and Cedric Robinson lend support to Cedric Johnson’s view of Black Marxism.
British Politics: Racism and the Tories
Culture wars are central to the Tory government’s current political strategy, not least because they cannot deliver material benefits to their voting base. Charlie Hore reports from Britain.
DSA’s Flawed International Outlook: The Appeal of the Mass Party and its Contradictions
There’s something contradictory in this position that needs to be pointed out. The parties that DSA has focused on weren’t always mass parties. Often, they began as just the kind of plebeian networks or far left grouplets that DSA eschews as irrelevant.
Right Campaigns to End Abortion in America
White Evangelical churches, which are the driving force of the anti-abortion movement, are also a core constituency of the Republican Party and the most fervent supporters of former president Trump.
review
Making Black Neighborhoods Matter
Lawrence Brown’s book, The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America looks at the long history of intentional harm and damage done to Black communities caused by white supremacist practices, policies, and budgets.
Beyond Atlanta: Contextualizing Anti-Asian Hate and Violence
We must broaden the contours of what is anti-Asian violence to also include Asian workers being exploited, or Asian women being sexually attacked, a pattern of misogyny and oppression linked to colonialism and white supremacy.
Pathways to Solidarity: Struggles against Police Brutality in the U.S., Myanmar, and Iran
Why is so little explicit connection being made by activists between the Black Lives Matter uprising in the U.S., the current mass uprising in Myanmar, and the ongoing struggles in Iran?
Chauvin’s Conviction and the Future of Policing
The Chauvin conviction was momentous, and could be a turning point, but police reform ultimately depends on building a popular movement for reform in education, health, housing, as well as ending police racism and violence.
The Only Treatment is Freedom: Mumia Abu-Jamal and COVID
The inextricable link between incarceration and standards of democracy in a country led the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky to observe that, “The degree of civilization in society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
Mumia Time or Sweeney Time
Dave Roediger wrote in 2000, “[T]he extent to which Abu-Jamal knows that he needs to identify with the labor movement, and that some in the labor movement know that they need to support him, signals what the working class movement is becoming and can be.”
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