Jonah Walters is a writer and postdoctoral fellow at UCLA.
Critics read Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription, as a commentary on smartphones. But with gothic style and a Victorian temperament, it meditates on a much older technology — the spectral quality of disembodied speech introduced at the dawn of telephonics.
Kathryn Bigelow’s new film, A House of Dynamite, captures the horror and insanity of nuclear war. But by portraying the US atomic arsenal as an inheritance from the past rather than a product of our own time, it lets our political leaders off the hook.
In the United States, one of the twentieth century’s most prolific butchers died as he lived — beloved by the rich and powerful, regardless of their partisan affiliation.
In Vietnam, Henry Kissinger had no principles whatsoever. There’s nothing to suggest that he had qualms about people dying or suffering.
American Fantastica is Tim O’Brien’s first novel in two decades. For years he wrote political satires raging against the American war machine, but his latest novel abandons the moral vision of his earlier works and strikes a pessimistic note.
The Mexican Revolution was a transnational explosion of resistance to grinding exploitation that kicked off a global epoch of anti-capitalist revolution.
Despite his pledge to fix the US’s “broken” immigration system, Barack Obama’s punitive policies made life more difficult for migrants — and unleashed untold horrors throughout the hemisphere.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a reminder that military conscription remains foundational to modern warfare. It is a reckless, self-defeating, and criminal practice that makes us all less safe — and it should have been abolished long ago.
Smedley Butler was born to privilege and power, becoming a powerful general in the most powerful military in the world. But he realized he was playing a key role in an evil system, US imperialism — and used his privilege and power to speak out against it.
The anti–Vietnam War movement cut across the civilian-military divide, with active-duty soldiers abroad and stateside defying their commanders and refusing to fight. Those soldiers played a key role in bringing the brutal war to an end.
The southern Mexican state of Oaxaca is known for its tradition of left political militancy. And its indigenous people have often been at the vanguard of that struggle.
Louis Proyect, who died this week, spent the 1980s organizing international delegations of technical workers to support the Nicaraguan revolution. In this previously unpublished interview, he reflects on Central American solidarity efforts and a life lived on the Left.
The pharmaceutical companies that fueled the opioid crisis must be held legally accountable. But to confront the social problems at the root of the addiction crisis, we’ll need political victories, not just courtroom ones.
The American warfare state’s upper reaches are filled with bloodthirsty megalomaniacs. But few have been as deranged as Donald Rumsfeld, whose appetite for imperial violence combined with free market zealotry produced one of the most spectacular failures in all of US military history.
Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who owns a $26 million apartment and a $13 million summerhouse, is using her wealth and connections to try to buy the Manhattan DA’s office — and thwart anti-incarceration candidates in Tuesday's primary.
During the twentieth century, Mexican leaders shaped international institutions by demanding economic redistribution from wealthy countries to the Global South. But the system that emerged ultimately impoverished Mexico — and thwarted the ambitions of the decolonizing world.
People behind bars have suffered enormously during the pandemic, with COVID-19 ripping through prisons. There’s no justification for not giving prisoners the vaccine immediately — both for their sake and for the broader society.
In the wake of last week’s attack on the Capitol, some are calling for the Armed Forces to prosecute pro-Trump rioters in military court. But relying on military courts won’t shore up American democracy — it will empower a punitive judicial system that is used to quash dissent within the ranks.
On this day in 1971, California correctional officers killed the black revolutionary George Jackson in San Quentin prison. In the decades since, the truth about his Black Guerilla Family has been distorted by lies and misinformation — but its legacy of black political militancy in American prisons lives on.
In 2016, Bernie won a major upset in Michigan, thanks in part to a groundswell of support in the state’s rural areas. In 2020, he lost every county in the state — and the numbers show he lost many of his rural supporters, too.