Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Link to an article by Jeff Kao:
“More than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked”
See also: “Public Comments to the Federal Communications Commission About Net Neutrality Contain Many Inaccuracies and Duplicates” and “FCC Emails Show Agency Spread Lies to Bolster Dubious DDoS Attack Claims”
Bonus links: Rich People’s Movements and “It’s Time to Nationalize the Internet” and “How to Save the Internet”
Link to an article by Eric Toussaint:
Link to an article by William Blum:
Bonus link: “Undoing the New Deal: Truman’s Cold War Buries Wallace and the Left”
Link to an article by Matt Bruenig & Ryan Cooper:
“How Obama Destroyed Black Wealth”
As is typical for writing in Jacobin, this article includes a section at the end that draws conclusions unsupported by the body of the article. For example, the authors state, “No political obstacle stood between President Obama and a better housing policy.” The article does not address political factors at all, so this is a bald assertion without support. It also is questionable. While certain other studies have established how the Democrats during Obama’s era have courted Wall Street and other banking/finance donors, if you follow (for example) Thomas Ferguson‘s “Golden Rule” theory about “investment” in elections, which holds (in greatly simplified form) that politicians are vetted by moneyed interests and masses are too poor to be able to influence the choices offered in an election, then the authors would need to establish that Obama could have raised the same or more money elsewhere (Bernie Sanders’ small donor approach seems like the closest and easiest comparison point). This also requires an assumption that Obama and the Democrats care/cared about long-term consequences, rather than limiting themselves to short-term thinking (e.g., sacrificing the future for a near-term win) — which is normative. That criticism aside, the linked article does do a good job illustrating how the problem discussed is fundamentally political in character.
Link to an article by Rob Urie:
“Climate Crisis, ‘Smart’ Growth and the Logic of Calamity”
Bonus link: Review of Robert Pollin’s Back to Full Employment
Link to an article by Michael Hudson, excerpted from the 2017 edition of his essential Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire:
Link to an article by Slavoj Žižek:
Bonus quote:
“The fear not to make any compromises with the alt-right can muddy the degree to which we are already compromised by it. One should greet every sign of this self-critical reflection which is gradually emerging and which, while remaining thoroughly anti-fascist, casts also a critical glance on the weaknesses of the liberal left.
***
“The obscenity of the situation is breath-taking: global capitalism is now presenting itself as the last protection against fascism, and if you try to point this out you are accused of complicity with fascism.”
Bonus links: “15 Writers Confess the Worst Thing They Wrote in 2017” and “Why We All Love to Hate Haider”
Link to an interview of Peter Waldron, conducted by Paul Mitchell:
“Radical Russia: An Interview with Curator Peter Waldron”
Bonus link: “How the Bolshevik Revolution Saved Avant-garde Art”
Link to a report by Project Censored:
Link to an interview with Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump (2017), conducted by Daniel Denvir:
“Donald Trump’s Reactionary Mind”
Bonus links: Liberalism: A Counter History and War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century and The Theory of the Leisure Class and “The Left Hand and the Right Hand of the State” and “Slavoj Žižek on Law” and “Slavoj Žižek on Political Struggle”
Notice that basically all of the key points that Robin makes in the interview have already been made by others, going back over a hundred years. But Robin does simplify a lot of this, for better or worse. His most dubious claim is that the reactionary project began at the time of the French revolution. Historical figures/movements like the opponents of the Gracchi tend to indicate this stretches back to classical antiquity, though perhaps not in an unbroken chain.