Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast Give Them An Argument. He’s the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.
In his new book, Ben Burgis argues that it’s a mistake for leftists to participate in moralistic “canceling” or retreat into a fringe subculture. We have to create an environment that feels welcoming to millions of people who want to change the world.
We’re often told that creating a single secular democratic state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians would violate Israel’s “right to exist.” But no nation-state has an inviolable right to exist — especially not an ethnostate based on exclusion and ethnic cleansing.
When state officials can murder ordinary citizens in plain sight and get away with it, our society is less democratic. The Derek Chauvins of the world need to be in prison.
Virginia recently became the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty. That’s a good step — we should end the barbaric punishment everywhere else too.
Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic love Britain’s monarchy because “royals” are emotionally potent mascots of extreme inequality and deference. There’s no reason this heinously undemocratic institution should exist.
Marco Rubio grabbed headlines today by offering a strange and half-hearted endorsement of the unionization drive in Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama. Don’t be fooled, though: Rubio’s absurd “right-wing economic populism” isn’t serious about fighting for the working class.
The notion that we can change the world by “voting with our dollars” has become popular among progressives. But it’s a fundamentally antidemocratic idea that has more in common with libertarianism than egalitarian politics.
Rush Limbaugh was a right-wing demagogue who also happened to have considerable talents as a broadcaster — and he used them to make the world a worse place for the ordinary people he claimed to speak for.
The Senate filibuster isn’t just an impediment to even mildly progressive legislation — it’s one of the most antidemocratic aspects of a deeply antidemocratic institution. It should be abolished immediately.
It’s easy for the Left to cheer when racists, fascists, and reactionaries are de-platformed by tech companies. But the censors aren’t our friends. We should champion free speech online — and argue that the best way to protect it is with a socialist program that brings privatized social media platforms into public control.
Joe Biden has long prized bipartisanship above all, and some of his early actions indicate he simply wants to restore the country to its pre-Trump form. That would be a disaster.
The departure of Donald Trump from the White House is cause for celebration. Our task now is to build a democratic socialist alternative to Joe Biden — and to oppose the Democratic establishment’s neoliberal agenda.
The violent attempt to stop the certification of the electoral vote shouldn’t be ignored. But fascism isn’t on the brink in America. Pretending we’re on the precipice of losing our democracy plays into the hands of those who want to give new, repressive powers to the security state.
Allowing wealth to accumulate from one generation to another is a recipe for unacceptable inequalities. We should abolish inherited wealth.
It’s good that we’re talking about the urgent need for Medicare for All. But democratic-socialist politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aren’t the ones standing in the way of an American welfare state. Let’s figure out how to actually build working-class power and win change.
“Polarization” isn’t intrinsically good or bad, but the kind we have now is a roadblock to progress. We need to find ways to depolarize along culture war lines and repolarize along class war lines.
After four years of having a xenophobic reality TV host in the White House, the desire to just “go back to normal” is understandable. But a return to normalcy would be disastrous, shoring up the plutocratic status quo that gave us Trump in the first place.
Judith Jarvis Thomson was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Her justly famous essay in defense of abortion rights is a model for how to combine philosophical rigor with political engagement in the real world.
The argument that we shouldn’t cancel student debt because it’s unfair to those who have paid off their loans doesn’t hold up. Don’t overthink it: we should cancel all student debt and make public universities, community colleges, and vocation schools tuition-free.
According to centrists, the “blue wave” didn’t materialize because of the Left. That’s nonsense — and in at least one crucial swing state, Joe Biden rode to victory because of the organizing of progressives and leftists.