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Orientalism: Edward Said’s Groundbreaking Book Explained
Whether you’re conscious of it or not, you likely have a vivid mental image of what the Middle East looks and sounds like. You might envision a sparse landscape, the air warped by heat and yellowed...
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On Missing Dr. Strangelove
Bosley Crowther, chief film critic for the New York Times, didn’t quite know what to make of Dr. Strangelove at the time of its release in January 1964. Stanley Kubrick’s dark antiwar satire was...
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Radical Eco-Activists Have Made it into Mainstream Fiction. Is Reality Next?
It’s hard to think of something more wholesome than gardening. But the New Zealand gardening collective at the heart of Birnam Wood, a new political thriller by the Booker Prize-winning author Eleanor...
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The Radical Harry Belafonte
From the struggle for civil rights to opposing apartheid in South Africa and the war against Cuba, Harry Belafonte was a fighter for justice both at home and abroad. Harry Belafonte, the pioneering...
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Women Athletes and Macho Men. Who Should Teach Whom?
In the recent women’s college basketball tournament a fascinating conundrum arose. On the one hand the quality of play further opened many eyes, including my own, regarding the continued accelerated...
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Entertainment or Propaganda? Washington’s Insidious Grip on the Arts
An evil dictator is on the brink of making a nuclear bomb at a secret facility carved deep inside the Zagros mountains. With no option, the American military deploys jets and, against all odds,...
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We’ll Never Live in a World Without Tina Turner
Tina Turner didn’t just pull off the greatest comeback in music history — she invented the whole concept of the comeback as we know it. She became a solo superstar when she was 44. Things like that...
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Uncovering Ireland’s Communist History
When I speak of scientific socialism I speak in terms of bringing about a revolution, bringing about the workers’ republic which Connolly spoke to us about. A workers’ republic to us means one thing...
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The Radical Politics of Enter Shikari
On April 21, English rock band Enter Shikari released their seventh studio album, A Kiss for the Whole World. It debuted at number one on the U.K. Album Charts. For the lads from St. Albans in...
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From Illinois to Tennessee, Drag Performers are Resisting Anti-Trans Legislation
More than a thousand Chicagoans of all ages, genders and sexualities packed tightly into the Metro for its sold-out “Chicago Loves Drag!” show on April 14. The balconies overflowed with people dressed...
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Listening With Love: Father/Daughter Talks Across the Political Divide
This is my first Father’ Day without a father. My dad passed away about a month ago and, through tears, I’m reflecting on all he taught me. My dad was a Republican and my mother a Democrat. It’s a rare...
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Burn the Barbies, Pause the Pink
A few months ago, my two sons, aged 10 and 15, told me they were excited to see the new Barbie film. I was surprised. They are not interested in dolls, and, in spite of Barbie being the top-selling...
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I Will Rise and I Will Return: The Lucidity of Sinéad O’Connor
You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common-sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was...
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The Other Sinead O’Connor
Tragically, Sinead O’Connor is dead at 56. Many of the obituaries of Irish protest singer have been oddly thin, and have ignored key moments in her life. One was her contretemps with Israeli extremist...
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The Taylor Swift Exploitation Machine
She doesn’t love you, she doesn’t care for you, and she doesn’t know you. But does her team pretend to, confecting an image of faux empathy and interest, sorting out the wheat from the chaff. The...
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Sorry, but Barbie Is Still a Problem
When I was a little girl, my parents bought me a Barbie — a blonde, blue-eyed doll who I played with for years before I ever met a blond, blue-eyed person. My doll set the standard for beauty — one...
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Meet The Left Youtubers Blowing Up the Alt-Right Pipeline
If you are worried about whether the kids are alright, you should be. The Right has inundated social media with accessible misinformation, to put it charitably — and social media is exactly where teens...
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Star Trek Gave Us a Utopian Vision of an Egalitarian, Postcapitalist Future
It’s the year 2364 and a tatty old space shuttle containing former Wall Street capitalist Ralph Offenhouse, who was cryogenically frozen in 1994, has just been discovered floating through space by a...
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‘Barbie’: Marxism for Gen Z
‘Barbie stages in Barbieland the equivalent of the Protestant Reformation’ I finally got what director Greta Gerwig was up to in her movie Barbie, which features Margot Robbie as the adult doll Barbie....
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Rich Men Versus the Rest of Us
American conservatism has always been excellent at storytelling. Convincing people to back regressive policies isn’t easy and therefore stories generating fear and resentment in particular work quite...
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