The best fundraising appeals are predicated on hope. Certainly, throughout the years, we’ve used this back page to share a vision of socialism and the small role this publication could play in bringing it into being.

This message, however, doesn’t fit that mold. It invites you to envision a future without Jacobin as a publication — and, more generally, a future where the expansive horizons of socialism give way to the narrow realpolitik of liberalism.

The past quarter has been a reminder that there are forces gunning for our nascent socialist movement. India Walton’s November defeat in Buffalo, New York, was preceded by an establishment attack on not just the campaign but the moral character of a working-class candidate. Mainstream liberals of late have surveyed the vast failures of the United States’ pandemic response and decided to pin the blame on . . . progressive teachers’ unions. The Democratic Socialists of America have gone from receiving puff pieces in the mainstream press to being the target of slanderous attacks that label the organization antisemitic.