Online Features
Desperado in the White House: Coup Fails, Trump Faces Impeachment
We have to call this a failed coup because the intent was to overturn the election of Joseph Biden by forcing vice-president Mike Pence and the Congress to declare Trump the president. It was an attempt to overthrow the incoming elected government by force.
Letter to Mass Peace Action and Peace Action NY State
Any group or entity that calls itself progressive must stand against oppression everywhere. An apologist for Assad’s genocidal regime and his Russian backers should not be normalized nor considered a valid source of information.
The Invasion of Capitol Hill
Decaying Institutions, Rightwing Insurrection, and the Need for a Mass Movement
The rise of the radical right is based on interrelated but distinct dynamics: market capitalism’s destructiveness; the Left’s failure to respond to market capitalism; and the Right’s ability to sustain the belief that the Left is still a threat.
In Defense of Kshama Sawant
The attempt to remove Kshama Sawant from her seat on Seattle’s City Council through a recall petition is a blatant attack on the democratic rights of constituents — and on the emergence of a new socialist left as a current in American politics.
Is it still fascism if it’s incompetent?
It would be devastatingly stupid, complacent beyond belief, to expect US democracy to remain sufficiently stable in the coming years to deny this incipient fascism more opportunities to congeal, and grow.
Reginald Wilson: A Black American Socialist (1927-2020)
Reginald Wilson, the prominent African American psychologist and educator, civil rights activist and socialist, and a member of the New Politics board, died on December 13, 2020 at the age of 93.
Venezuela
How did Chavismo win 92% of the National Assembly?
The high abstention indicates that the working majority understood the irrelevance of the election. Voting could not have any impact on the disastrous national situation because the parliament had been de facto deprived of all its functions for several years.
Our Most-Viewed Articles of 2020
Here are some of our most-viewed articles from the past year. They don’t represent the full-range of issues covered by New Politics or the full-range of perspectives that you will find on our website and in our pages, but they do give an idea of what was on the minds of our readers.
The empire strikes back: Joe Biden’s plan to restore U.S. hegemony
Biden is proposing to combine Obama’s muscular multilateralism with Trump’s focus on great power rivalry with China and Russia. This augurs not the peace that liberals hoped for, but a dangerous reassertion of U.S. imperial power.
Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution
“With this year’s worldwide renewal of the Black Lives Matter protests, readers could hardly ask for a better time to revisit the Haitian Revolution.” Review of Sudhir Hazareesingh, Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture.
In Appreciation of Leo Panitch
The sudden death our friend and comrade Leo Panitch has led to an extraordinary outpouring of sadness and appreciation across the world. Very few intellectuals on the left have had the intellectual impact on progressive thinkers and activists that Leo has had.
Structures of Fossil Feeling
In this easily accessible, passionately argued intervention, Dawson gives the reader both a valuable primer on contemporary struggles for energy justice and an entry into the theoretical debates whose outcome will inform and guide movement strategy going forward.
Biden’s pick for Secretary of Education: What to expect from Cardona?
We should let Miguel Cardona know we have his back if he defends what schools, teachers, students really need – while we simultaneously prepare for his not doing so.
The Pull of Communist Culture
Martin Comack reviews, The Pull of Politics: Steinbeck, Wright, Hemingway, and the Left in the Late 1930s—Milton Cohen’s account of how the CPUSA attempted to establish relationships with three major American writers.
Hong Kong’s Fight for Democracy
Anyone interested in getting a deeper understanding of how the 2019 Hong Kong rebellion fits into the bigger China picture and what might be coming around the corner, will do themselves a favor by reading Au Loong-Yu’s important new book.
Is socialism winning?
Though Trump lost the election, his base has been strengthened over the course of it. To say now that the Left is winning downplays—perhaps unintentionally—the growing relevance and threat of the Right.
Can We Achieve Justice On Planet Earth?
Can we imagine a future where the power of nations does not depend on their stores of “precious” material elements and the manifestation of power is not “enhanced” tools of violence and war?
Teachers unions and the pandemic: Fighting for life and facing neoliberalism’s new bipartisan push
Biden will endorse the old normal Obama handed to Trump, but he will also push profiteering and control of education through technology, a project supported by both Democrats and the GOP from the start of Trump’s administration.
Workers Will Have to Fight to Make Gains Under Biden Presidency
Historically, workers made gains economically and politically during periods of labor upheaval. When workers used their power to strike, they were able to force employers and governments to make concessions.
As Biden Restores A Malignant “Normalcy,” It’s High Time The Left Declared Its Independence From The Democrats
It is misleading to see the election as a victory of democracy over authoritarianism. Biden’s win is the triumph not of democracy but of an oligarchic status quo, itself an increasingly authoritarian system.
The 2020 Elections in the United States: A Socialist View from Afar
Many of us watching with envy from afar—“envy” because the destruction of democratic institutions has gone much further in our countries—have nothing but admiration for the way in which a would-be dictator has been peacefully overthrown.
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