This autumn Italian workers down shut their country in opposition to the Gaza genocide. In the United States, in contrast, labor activists wanting to take a stand in solidarity with Palestinian workers are frequently chastised for trying to involve their unions in the affairs of other countries. Yet labor historian Jeff Schuhrke illustrates that U.S. unions have long been involved in Palestine — for almost a century supporting Zionism and then the state Israel.
National Labor Network for Ceasefire
Jeff Schuhrke, No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine Haymarket Books, 2025
Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash
The post Zionism and U.S. Unions appeared first on KPFA.
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The Populist-Fascist Hybrid
The global rise of the authoritarian right has confounded classification and led to contentious debates on the left. Do politicians like Modi, Bolsonaro, Orban, and Trump represent an extreme form of right-wing populism? Or are they fascists, as some claim? Historian and scholar of populism and fascism Federico Finchelstein argues that we’re seeing something new — a phenomenon that blurs the lines between the two.
Federico Finchelstein, The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy UC Press, 2024
The post The Populist-Fascist Hybrid appeared first on KPFA.
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Slavery, Capitalism, and the Brits
What did the trafficking and labor of enslaved Africans do to and for the British empire? What role did slavery in the Caribbean play in capitalism’s expansion in Britain? Steve Cushion weighs in on these and other matters, including key dimensions of British abolitionism and stances taken by British elites and workers toward the U.S. Civil War.
Steve Cushion, Slavery in the British Empire and its Legacy in the Modern World Monthly Review Press, 2025
The post Slavery, Capitalism, and the Brits appeared first on KPFA.
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Austerity: Guardian of Capitalism
Capitalism by its nature produces crises and, for the last century, states have responded by imposing austerity measures on the public. Governments claim it’s a bitter but necessary medicine to set economies back on track. But economist Clara Mattei argues that austerity is actually a bludgeon to entrench elite power and repress workers’ aspirations for a more egalitarian society. She looks at its origins — and that of modern economics — during the greatest existential threat to the Western capitalist order.
Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism University of Chicago Press, 2022
Forum for Real Economic Emancipation
Photo credit of Athens protest: Kotsolis
The post Austerity: Guardian of Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.
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Beyond Sanctuary
If sanctuary and asylum policies and practices don’t do enough to protect immigrants, how is justice achieved? Ananya Roy’s focus is on how poor and vulnerable migrants are viewed and treated, and on what migrant movements are doing in the face of border regimes, migrant crackdowns, and empty humanitarian rhetoric.
Ananya Roy and Veronika Zablotsky, eds., Beyond Sanctuary: The Humanism of a World in Motion Duke University Press, 2025
Sanctuary Spaces: Reworlding Humanism
UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy
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Acclaimed program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters—political, economic, social, and cultural—important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong.
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