The journalist and essayist Rafael Barrett (1876-1910) inveighed against the array of injustices suffered by Paraguayans, including those working in the yerba mate forests. He also espoused political views that resonate today. William Costa talks about Barrett’s keen observations, blistering critiques, and anarchist politics.

William Costa, ed., Paraguayan Sorrow: Writings of Rafael Barrett, A Radical Voice in a Dispossessed Land Monthly Review Press, 2024

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Was the populist far right a reaction to neoliberal free market fundamentalism? Or, as historian Quinn Slobodian argues, did such rightwing currents come out of the ideas of neoliberalism itself? Slobodian reflects on neoliberal thinkers’ preoccupation with racist and misogynistic ideas of human nature and intelligence, borders and gold — all in service to their war on the left.

Quinn Slobodian, Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right Zone Books, 2025

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Critiques of conspiracy thinking abound — but what if our world needs a conspiracy, of people willing to confront their own participation in institutional injustices? Joseph Dumit explains why large corporations knowingly engage in antihuman activities; he also draws from Adrian Piper’s insights into bullying institutions, the impact of bystanding, and the importance of blowing the whistle when we notice harm being inflicted. (Encore presentation.)

Joseph Masco and Lisa Wedeen, eds., Conspiracy/Theory Duke University Press, 2024

Joseph Dumit, Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health Duke University Press, 2012

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As Trump sends troops into Los Angeles, a look at the U.S. Constitution — an object of great political veneration in this country. Legal scholar Aziz Rana examines the contradictions within it, which have allowed for the authoritarianism of the Trump administration.

Aziz Rana, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them University of Chicago Press, 2024

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What if humans acted with nature, not on it? What would farming look like if we stopped trying to master and dominate the environment? According to Andrew Pickering, the no-plowing, no-weeding form of farming developed by Masanobu Fukuoka is a shining example of poiesis, an acting-with that attunes human activity to the propensities of natural phenomena.

Andrew Pickering, Acting with the World: Agency in the Anthropocene Duke University Press, 2025

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In the decade of the 2010s, more people took to the streets than in any other time in history. And yet those horizontal protests, often spread through social media, were frequently co-opted by the right — and the decade ended with the rise of authoritarianism. Journalist Vincent Bevins spoke to activists around the world about the lessons they drew from the failed mass revolts, and discusses how democratic movements regained power in Brazil from the despotic Jair Bolsonaro.

Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution Public Affairs, 2023

Vincent Bevins, “This Land Is Our Land: How Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement Emerged from Right-wing Rule Stronger Than Ever” The Nation, April 8, 2025

Photo credit: Jonathan Rashad

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While we’re told by politicians that the ideas of Karl Marx are foreign and have no place in this country, history proves otherwise. Andrew Hartman shows that Marx and Marxism have had an a significant influence on the United States, from Marx’s journalistic writings for the New York Daily Tribune, on the mass politics of the Socialist and Communist Parties and the Wobblies, on the most radical edge of the New Deal and the New Left, and finally with the return to Marx’s ideas since the Global Financial Crisis.

Andrew Hartman, Karl Marx in America University of Chicago Press, 2025

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At the height of leftwing activism in the Sixties, conservatives funded tax-deducible rightwing groups on campuses to counter Black Power, demands for ethnic studies, and the New Left. As historian Lauren Shepherd illustrates, such groups like Young Americans for Freedom groomed future Republican leaders and influential conservatives, like Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich. There they learned to spin unpopular politics as popular.

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America University of North Carolina Press, 2023

American Campus Podcast

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Lasting contributions to radical political thought were made by Antonio Gramsci, the Italian thinker, writer, and politician who was imprisoned by Mussolini’s fascist regime. Andy Merrifield discusses Gramsci’s insights into political economy, everyday experience, social change, and the role of intellectuals.

Andy Merrifield, Roses for Gramsci Monthly Review Press, 2025

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The United States has often been celebrated as a nation of immigrants. Yet over the last century, the U.S. government expelled more people than were allowed to stay permanently. Historian Adam Goodman describes the U.S. state’s “deportation machine,” motivated by a shifting combination of bureaucratic self-interest, capitalist gain, and racism, which Trump has now put at the center of his presidency. He also discusses how immigrants and their allies have fought back over this long history of expulsion and terror.

Adam Goodman, The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants Princeton University Press, 2020

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