A new generation of right-wing politicians have shifted from promoting deregulation to championing anti-migrant politics warns SOLOMON HUGHES
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Beware the anti-democratic liberal centre
Far from being the moderates they portray themselves as, ‘centrists’ are frequently elitists with a vehement opposition to public participation in a political realm they believe should be theirs alone, argues IAN SINCLAIR
by the Greater Manchester Workers’ and Tenants’ Association
The US relationship with Israel has evolved into a strategic liability, argues RAMZY BAROUD
A champion motorcyclist, trade union organiser and communist, Clem Beckett went from Britain’s speedway tracks to the battlefields of Spain, where he gave his life resisting Franco’s forces at Jarama. GEOFF BOTTOMS pays tribute to this remarkable anti-fascist
The greatest threat to democracy may no longer come from political parties but from unelected tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel and his powerful Silicon Valley network, argues JOHN GREEN
Claiming to ease a fertiliser shortage, the Trump administration has suspended tariffs on Moroccan phosphate imports – deepening US support for the Morocco’s control over Sahrawi territory, writes LUKE ROTELLO
IF YOU have read the seemingly endless work of US dissident Noam Chomsky you’ll know he regularly cites 20th century US intellectuals to highlight the elitist, anti-democratic thinking of the so-called liberal centre.
The public are “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” who should be “spectators, not participants in action,” while the “responsible men” govern. Therefore, the “bewildered herd” must be “put in their place” by “necessary illusions” and “emotionally potent oversimplifications.”
These quotes, Chomsky notes in the 2021 book The Precipice, are from influential progressive US thinkers like Walter Lippmann, Harold Laswell and Reinhold Niebuhr.
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Outrage greeted Donald Trump’s suggestion earlier this year that Britain stayed off the front lines. But evidence suggests our forces were at times pulled from the most dangerous fighting — not by military failure, but by pressure at home, says IAN SINCLAIR
On January 2 2014, PJ Harvey used her turn as guest editor of the Today programme to expose the realities of war, arms dealing and media complicity. The fury that followed showed how rare – and how threatening – such honesty is within Britain’s most Establishment broadcaster, says IAN SINCLAIR