KPFA - Against the Grain

The allegations are explosive: that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia set up a secret fund for Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, to finance proxy wars hidden from democratic oversight. Journalist Matthew Cole delineates his claims involving, among others, autocratic Gulf leaders, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and the disgraced mercenary Erik Prince.

Matthew Cole, Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2026

Photo by Ryan Johnson CC BY-SA 2.0

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It’s no mystery that the fortunes of the very rich have soared under this administration, but the concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few is a hallmark of capitalism itself. Economist Rob Larson returns to discuss wealth and power in the United States, as well as the massive build out of AI data centers.

World Inequality Database

Photo by Jingming Pan on Unsplash

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This month marks the 100th anniversary of the arrest of the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and his incarceration in a fascist prison. Jordan Camp argues that Gramsci’s writing on the so-called southern question was the kernel for an alternate tradition of anti-authoritarianism and anti-fascism, reformulated by thinkers like C.L.R James and Ruth First, Walter Rodney and Stuart Hall, which can help illuminate the present.

Jordan T. Camp, The Southern Question: Anti-Fascism and the Global Conjuncture UC Press, 2027

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The terrorizing and mass deportations of immigrants under the Trump administration may seem an unprecedented descent into an racist order where Constitutional protections no longer apply. But, as historian Kelly Lytle Hernández argues, from early on the U.S. immigration system was exempted from the guardrails of the Constitution. She illustrates how these laws were put in place first to protect enslavers — and then elites more broadly — from the insurgent radicalism of migrants, starting with the Haitian Revolution. (Full-length interview.)

Kelly Lytle Hernández, Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control W. W. Norton, 2026

Photo credit: Fibonacci Blue from Minnesota, USA, CC BY 2.0

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While Trump’s brand of reactionary politics is crude and often incoherent, a group of intellectuals have sought to legitimize his authoritarianism in the service of the greater good. Historian Hannah Gurman describes the ideas and influence of postliberalism, promulgated through publications like Compact and counting J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio as fellow travelers.

Hannah Gurman, The Opportunists: The Post-Liberals and the Reinvention of Reactionary Politics New Press, 2026

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0

The post Justifying Authoritarianism appeared first on KPFA.

Over the last decade, employees in the tech industry defied stereotypes — opposing contracts with ICE and the US military, even organizing to bargain collectively. Their employers, led by Elon Musk, responded by laying them off en masse and moving further to the right. Tech organizers J.S. Tan and Clarissa Redwine reflect on lessons from the flowering and then stifling of tech worker militancy.

Clarissa Redwine and J.S. Tan, Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry Haymarket Books, 2026

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There’s not a person on earth who does not have PFAS, or Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, in their blood. Mariah Blake reflects on the how these chemicals came to pollute the world and the remarkable grassroots movement — much of it coming from working class communities in red states — that has arisen to ban them.

Mariah Blake, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals Crown, 2025

Photo by Maria Baranova on Unsplash

The post Exposing Forever Chemicals appeared first on KPFA.

Our era is marked both by mass protest and the increasing criminalization of protest — driven by private interests, as well as states and the federal government. Annie Leonard, longtime activist, discusses the rich tradition of protest in this country and why we need to defend it, in the face of SLAPP suits, anti-protest bills, and diktats from the Trump administration.

Annie Leonard and Andre Carothers, Protest: Respect It Defend It Use It Patagonia, 2026

Photo credit: Angus McIntyre

The post Criminalizing Protest appeared first on KPFA.

We live in a time, says Brazilian political philosopher Rodrigo Nunes, where it feels like things cannot go on as they are — while at the same time, we can’t imagine anything else. Nunes discusses how such sentiments have fueled the ascendancy of the far right around the world and in Brazil, where the authoritarianism may return to power.

Rodrigo Nunes, Anatomy of Disintegration: What Brazil Reveals About the Global Far Right Haymarket, 2026

Photo by Tutz Dias on Unsplash

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Elites, especially in tech, in recent years have overtly espoused the repugnant idea that extreme social inequality is not only inevitable but desirable. Acclaimed historian Kim Phillips-Fein argues that there is a long US tradition promoting wealth inequality that has once again moved from the shadows into the mainstream. And historian Steve Fraser reflects on the class war of the Gilded Age. (Full-length presentation.)

Kim Phillips-Fein, Country of Lords: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight against Equality in America W. W. Norton, 2026

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