KPFA - Against the Grain

Recessions, trade wars, labor unrest — in moments of societal crisis in the United States, Asian-Americans have been perennially targeted, from the destruction of Chinatowns by white mobs, to the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2, to attacks against Asians during Covid. Historian Scott Kurashige reflects on more than 175 years of anti-Asian violence and its connection to U.S. empire abroad and a divided working class at home.

Scott Kurashige, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism UC Press, 2026

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

The post U.S. Capitalism, Empire, and Anti-Asian Violence appeared first on KPFA.

Sugar may seem like a natural, almost eternal substance, cultivated over thousands of years. But it was remade by capitalism and turned into a homogenized commodity. Enslaved labor was central to sugar production on vast plantations, which would then be discarded as sugar laid waste to both the lands and human bodies. And, as historian of science David Singerman illustrates, scientific techniques were utilized to standardize sugar, while attempting to replace the knowledge of the workers who labored in its refineries.

David Singerman, Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar University of Chicago Press, 2025

Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

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Fiction that imagines alternate futures is often associated with the left — with writers like Octavia Butler and Ursula LeGuin. But the tropes of science fiction are well-suited to the right and, as Jordan Carroll illustrates, far right authors and aficionados have populated the ranks of speculative fiction since its inception, like ardent science fiction fan and neo-Nazi party founder James Madole. Carroll discusses the right’s ongoing fight to claim the future.

Jordan S. Carroll, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right University of Minnesota Press, 2024

Photo by Robynne O on Unsplash

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The power the police wield on the streets of this country is plain to see. Less visible, but no less formidable, is the immense political power and influence that the police exercise. Historian Stuart Schrader describes how police unions amassed enormous power over the last fifty years.

Stuart Schrader, Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves Basic Books, 2026

The post The Political Power of the Police appeared first on KPFA.

The left has a long history of predicting the decline of US capitalism and empire. Some argue that Trump is a symptom of that decline — a strongman chosen by capital to set things right — and that the ill health of U.S. capitalism is paralleled by the decline of the dollar. Political economist Stephen Maher counters that U.S. capitalism is robust — to the detriment of most of us.

Gregory Albo and Stephen Maher, eds. Socialist Register 2026: Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins Monthly Review Press, 2025

The post The Decline of U.S. Capitalism? appeared first on KPFA.

Jews and the left have been closely associated with each other for well over a century, both in Europe where the Nazis genocidally linked one with the other, and in the United States. Scholar Benjamin Balthaser considers the history of American Jews and the left, including in opposition to Jewish nationalism, arguing that the recent florescence of Jewish anti-Zionism is a return to a much longer tradition. (Encore presentation.)

Benjamin Balthaser, Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left Verso, 2025

Photo credit: Bruce Emmerling

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We often are told there is no other way to organize society — that by our very nature, we’re destined to try to dominate each other. But are such assumptions merited? Primatologist Agustín Fuentes pulls apart the supposedly evolutionary case that humans are hardwired for war. And the late anthropologist David Graeber discusses the active cultivation of pessimism about our ability to organize society in a more egalitarian way.

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Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash

The post Fuentes on Aggression; Graeber on Egalitarianism appeared first on KPFA.

It’s widely recognized that vast amounts of wealth are now concentrated in the hands of the very few. But less well understood, scholar Ray Madoff argues, is how the U.S. tax code played a key role in that process. She delineates how progressive taxation and the estate tax — designed to tax the inherited wealth of the rich — have been eviscerated. And she also argues that philanthropy, perversely, has increased the wealth of the 1%.

Ray D. Madoff, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy University of Chicago Press, 2025

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

The post (Not) Taxing the Rich appeared first on KPFA.

Trump has not only threatened Iran’s civilian infrastructure, but the U.S. and Israel have systematically targeted it since the start of their attack. Historian Golnar Nikpour reflects on the human costs of the war.  And she discusses the Iranian state and prison system since the early 20th century and places recent mass protests — the largest in Iranian history — in the context of cycles of protest and repression in modern Iran.

Golnar Nikpour, The Incarcerated Modern: Prisons and Public Life in Iran Stanford University Press, 2024

Photo credit: Saeed Karimi

The post Infrastructures of War and Repression in Iran appeared first on KPFA.

Many in our society are struggling to provide care for their families or communities. Often they don’t have time to do it and can’t afford to pay for it. The right realizes this and has tried to woo women with a glorified vision of domestic life. Economist Nancy Folbre discusses the early fight for the recognition of unpaid care work as real work, while the economics profession has mainly ignored it, despite its crucial importance for capitalism.

Nancy Folbre, Making Care Work: Why Our Economy Should Put People First UC Press, 2026

Photo by Jill Brand on Unsplash

The post Counting Care Work appeared first on KPFA.