How The World Went From Post-Politics To Hyper-Politics

Ten years and a decade of populist turmoil later, Ernaux’s testimony reads both familiar and unfamiliar. The rapid individualisation and decline of collective institutions she diagnosed has not been halted. Barring a few exceptions, political parties have not regained their members. Associations have not seen attendance rise. Churches have not filled their pews, and unions have not grown precipitously. Across the world, civil society is still mired in a deep and protracted crisis. On the other hand, the mixture of diffidence and apathy so characteristic of Ernaux’s 1990s hardly applies today. Biden was elected on a record turnout; the Brexit referendum was the largest democratic vote in Britain’s history. The Black Lives Matter protests were mass spectacles; many of the world’s biggest corporations took up the mantle of racial justice, adapting their brands to support the cause.

Continue reading

Loyalty

Whenever I wear one of my many shirts, necklaces, or buttons adorned with the faces of great leaders such as Hugo Chavez, Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, Che, or Evita, I will commonly get a comment in real life or on social media about how I am “worshipping” or engaging in a “cult of personality”. It’s not true, what I am exhibiting is loyalty, which is expressly different because of a simple fact; this political loyalty is a two way street.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, two time president of Argentina and current Vice President put it succinctly on the day of her inauguration as VP in 2019. She says that “Loyalty, that value that some do not understand and think that loyalty is only following a political leader. No! Loyalty between a politician and the people must be two points. The People are not stupid.

Continue reading

What Mike Gravel Meant

I first met Sen. Mike Gravel in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York in early 2006 after a mutual friend told me Gravel was contemplating running for president. 

Our Waldorf breakfast lasted four hours. I was surprised that such an American politician existed. He seemed to lack the expected self-importance. More incredibly, I agreed with him on every point of public policy–foreign and domestic. Having been a reporter for decades–I was a correspondent for The Boston Globe at the time–I’d surpassed the average citizen’s cynicism about people in government.   

But here was a former United States senator questioning the most fundamental and seemingly unshakeable myths that underpin a brutal status-quo.

Continue reading

Scheer Intelligence: The Political Cartoon Is Dead

Political cartoons have helped us make sense of the world in which we live since they first appeared in the 18th century–though some, like the iconic cartoonist Mr. Fish, argue the art predates even newspapers. Although it’s an art form that is in many ways dying out, there are a precious few political cartoonists out there that still understand the importance of speaking truth to power through insightful humor and visual commentary.

On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” the inimitable Dwayne Booth (AKA Mr. Fish) joins host Robert Scheer to talk about his life, his passion, his art, and…

Continue reading

Building Black Working Class Power In Maryland

The state of Maryland and Baltimore City in particular have been dominated by Democratic Party politics for decades, yet many residents struggle under a repressive police force, a lack of affordable housing, gentrification, inadequate investment in schools and in majority black communities, environmental pollution, and more. Black workers in the state have spent the past ten years building their own political structure, the Ujima People’s Progress Party, to challenge the Democrats and now having established a base of support, they are working to achieve ballot access. Clearing the FOG speaks with the state organizer, Nnamdi Lumumba, about building black worker power in the state by engaging with communities around the struggles they are facing, building self-sufficiency and providing political education. He explains why this is necessary at this moment in time and how it fits into the broader picture of building political power on the Left.

Continue reading

Assassination Strengthens Iranian Hardliners

Israel used all four years of Trump’s presidency to entrench its systems of occupation and apartheid. Now that Joe Biden has won the U.S. election, the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, likely by Israel with the go-ahead from the U.S. administration, is a desperate attempt to use Trump’s last days in office to sabotage Biden’s chances of successful diplomacy with Iran. Biden, Congress and the world community can’t let that happen.  

On Friday Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in the Iranian city of Absard outside of Tehran.

Continue reading

When The Invisible Hand Gives You The Finger

Since the days of Adam Smith, capitalists have been arguing that unfettered markets are the best way to organize the economy. Smith famously said that the rich are “led by an invisible hand” to, “without knowing it, advance the interest of the society.” The rise of the welfare state in the wake of the Great Depression tempered such magical thinking for a few decades, but the ascent of neoliberalism in the last half-century has brought a resurgence in market fundamentalism, in both theory (very much including the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post) as well as practice.

Yet none of the steady stream of articles from these outlets attesting to heartbreaking shortages of medical equipment in coronavirus-ravaged areas in the US—“A NY Nurse Dies. Angry Co-Workers Blame a Lack of Protective Gear” (New York Times, 3/26/20), “Unprotected and Unprepared: Home Health Aides Who Care for Sick, Elderly Brace for Covid-19” (Washington Post, 3/24/20), “NY May Need 18,000 Ventilators Very Soon. It Is Far Short of That” (New York Times, 3/17/20), or “The Hardest Questions Doctors May Face: Who Will Be Saved? Who Won’t? “ (New York Times, 3/21/20), for instance—have stopped to ask why the laws of supply and demand have so catastrophically failed in this crisis.

Continue reading

How Do You Blow The Whistle On A Whole Society?

Like perhaps most people who visit Los Angeles, I consider it my duty to offer a brilliant new idea for a film script. My idea is in the genre of science-fiction mafia, a genre that I think has not been sufficiently exploited. In this film, the protagonist wakes up to the fact that without knowing it, he has somehow joined the mafia. I expect people to be able to relate to the story because I believe that this entire country either has become aware or needs to become aware that it has joined the mafia.

Continue reading

The Centrist Delusion: ‘Middle Ground’ Politics Aren’t Moderate, They’re Dangerous

In eighteenth century Britain, centrists endorsed slavery, reformists called for improved working conditions for slaves and radicals demanded the abolition of the entire institution. As historian Adam Hochschild recounts, if in 1787 “you had stood on a London street corner and insisted slavery was morally wrong and should be stopped, nine out of ten listeners would have laughed you off as a crackpot. The tenth might have agreed with you in principle, but assured you ending slavery was wildly impractical.”

Continue reading

A Urinal In A Scottish Pub Reveals Why Toilets Matter In International Politics

If you wanted to see international politics in action, where would you go? Maybe the UN headquarters in New York to see diplomats debating resolutions of global import? Or drop in on one of the world’s many financial hubs, where trading shapes international markets and determines the success or failure of nations. But you probably wouldn’t visit a toilet in a Glasgow pub, would you? Our research analyses the political significance of the urinal in the Lismore—a traditional Scottish pub in the Partick area of Glasgow—and argues that mundane spaces like this are important for understanding contemporary international politics.

Continue reading

The Empty Radicalism Of The Climate Apocalypse

At a moment when advocates make a range of demands that are simultaneously vague and controversial, from ending capitalism and economic growth to rejecting materialism and consumption to reorganizing the entire global economy around intermittent sources of renewable energy, almost no one, in either electoral politics or nongovernmental organizations, seems willing to demand that governments take direct and obvious actions to slash emissions and replace fossil energy with clean.

By that, I don’t mean simply demanding that governments regulate emissions. Advocates and even many governments have been calling for and even committing to deep emissions cuts for decades now, to little effect. Rather, I mean actually offering specific proposals to rapidly build the infrastructure of a low carbon economy or restrict carbon-intensive activities woven into the fabric of Americans’ daily lives.

Continue reading

You Can Handle The Truth

Sometimes the truth is painful to hear, but if we don’t know what is going on or what we are up against, it’s impossible to change it. We speak with political comedian Lee Camp about how he began using humor to tell people the truth and his current one-hour special, “Super Patriotic Very Uncle Sam Comedy Special Not Allowed on American TV.” We also delve into his take on current issues and the state of resistance movements.  Subscribe to Clearing the FOG on Patreon and receive our bonus show, Thinking it Through, plus Clearing the FOG totes, water bottles and T shirts. Visit Patreon.com/ClearingtheFOG.

Continue reading

After Rahm’s Destruction, Can Chicago Creative A Cooperative Economy?

When Rahm Emanuel announced last month that he would not seek a third term as mayor of Chicago, he broke no hearts among people opposed to neoliberal privatization and the power of finance capital. In Chicago under Emanuel, as the editors of the 2016 anthology Neoliberal Chicago write, “neoliberalism led officials to privatize everything from parking meters to schools, gut regulations and social services, and promote gentrification wherever possible.” To take just one lurid example, Emanuel’s Chicago “privatized janitorial services for our schools,” organizer Amara Enyia told me, only to end up with rodent-infested schools, literally “rats and mice running around in classrooms. Those schools had to be closed and cleaned. This is what happens when you privatize services.”

Continue reading

Democratic Socialism And Political Power

Occasionally a phrase supports a wide range of political posturing while bearing little determinable relationship to actionable politics. ‘Income inequality’ is one of these phrases. Few using it are communists, a politics that recognizes concentrated economic power as both cause and effect in the skewed distribution of income and wealth. And the entire point of capitalism is the concentration of these that functions as (circular) proof of the social utility created by capitalists. As corollary to American democracy, the phrase ignores centuries of evidence that political power is determined by economic power. Of current relevance is its place in the programs of Democratic Socialism, a rebranding of New Deal type social welfare programs that proponents (I am one) apparently intend to fit into existing American political economy.

Continue reading