The enactment of Donald Trump’s horrendous Big Beautiful Bill is an indictment of the Democrats’ decision to split their agenda into two separate bills in 2021. It’s a reminder that Build Back Better’s failure wasn’t guaranteed — it was a political choice. Joe Biden...
Jacobin
In Shifty, Adam Curtis Charts the UK’s Unraveling
Director Adam Curtis’s latest BBC docuseries, Shifty, follows Britain’s late-20th-century retreat into make-believe as managed decline tears everything apart. It’s the familiar Curtis aesthetic, but still as powerful and haunting as ever. Then British prime minister...
In Finland, the Left Can Meme — and Win Elections
The online right loves to say the Left can’t meme. Alma Tuuva — a meme account admin recently elected in Finland — talked to Jacobin about why the libertarian right is so influential on social media and how she’s getting her anti-capitalist message across. In the...
Red-Baiting Zohran Mamdani Won’t Work
No one should be surprised that Zohran Mamdani supports democratic control over the economy, the end goal of socialism. But he won because he combined socialist politics with practical solutions to the cost-of-living crisis facing working people. Zohran Mamdani speaks...
America’s Brutal Capitalist Class Tamed Its Labor Movement
Across Europe, trade unions have a long history of making political demands for universal health care and benefits. The unique brutality of the US capitalist class bred a labor movement that has often limited itself to being a private insurance provider. Samuel...
Bipartisan Austerity Logic Set the Stage for the GOP Budget
Donald Trump’s budget is a particularly cruel manifestation of the bipartisan consensus of the preceding decades that has refused to treat health care and other basic necessities for a dignified life as public goods. President Donald Trump, joined by Republican...
Zohran Mamdani Can Learn From Paris’s Housing Victories
As Paris’s deputy mayor, Ian Brossat massively expanded the French capital’s public housing stock. He spoke to Jacobin about the left-wing city hall’s record and what lessons it might have for Zohran Mamdani in New York. Ian Brossat at the meeting of the Nouveau Front...
Sam Altman’s AI Empire Relies on Brutal Labor Exploitation
Artificial intelligence (AI) is quite possibly the most hyped technology in history. For well over half a century, the potential for AI to replace most or all human skills has crisscrossed in the public imagination between sci-fi fantasy and scientific mission. From...
Student Palestine Solidarity Activism Proves Hard to Squash
Donald Trump’s administration has cracked down hard on Palestine solidarity activism. But despite profound repression, many students on American campuses continue to demand that universities stop investing in companies that profit from the destruction of Gaza. A...
Albania’s for Sale, and Jared Kushner’s Buying
Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has sealed a $1.4 billion deal to redevelop Albania’s largest island. Long a protected area, now it’s set to be paved over to build a luxury resort. Jared Kushner at Turning Point USA’s Teen Student Action Summit, on July 23,...
Populism Was Born From a Rural-Urban Alliance
In 1880s Texas, farmers and factory workers discovered they had the same enemy: corporate capitalists. Their alliance birthed American populism and offers lessons for today's working class divided by false urban-rural antagonisms. An illustration of the citizens’...
The “Magabundance” Agenda Is Creating Strange Bedfellows
Supply-side progressivism is forging unexpected alliances between populist Democrats, business-friendly centrists, and MAGA Republicans around militarized growth. The result is a post-neoliberal politics that accommodates authoritarian populism. (Daniel Mekis /...