Subjects Archives: History

A labor historian traces the origins of the 2018 prison strike through a legacy of involuntary servitude.

Sorry to Bother You director and musician Boots Riley on Spike Lee’s, BlacKkKlansman: “It’s a made up story in which the false parts of it to try to make a cop the protagonist in the fight against racist oppression. It’s being put out while Black Lives Matter is a discussion—and that is not coincidental. There is a viewpoint behind it.”

“Increased awareness will not happen through successive adaptations to the requirements of capitalist accumulation, but through awareness of the necessity of breaking with those requirements.” —Samir Amin

In this episode, we speak with Fadhel Kaboub (@fadhelkaboub), associate professor of economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Fadhel outlines a new critical approach to postcolonial political economy, arguing that re-gaining financial sovereignty is a crucial next step for postcolonial nations hoping to achieve social, economic, and environmental justice.

As Indonesia commemorates 20 years since the fall of the New Order military dictatorship, the foundation myth of the regime (and, indeed, the post-New Order state as well) remains stubbornly in place.

This is a spot-on history of the birth of the American empire. But beyond recounting the regional and national events celebrated on the monument, re-viewing the Texas revolution in a world-historical perspective offers a far more insightful understanding of the conflict that occurred in northern Mexico in the 19^th century.

We need to remember that these protests aren’t about political views: they’re about government officials violating international law, U.S. treaty obligations, and basic human rights.

Thirty-eight years have passed since Walter Rodney was assassinated in Guyana on 13 June 1980 in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital city, but his legacy lives on beyond his home-country.

In this episode, Money on the Left cohost Maxximilian Seijo (@maxseijo) expands upon the argument made in his video essay, “Inglorious Basterds: Nazi Desire Fully Employed,” which takes a neochartalist lens to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2008).

Four decades ago Ed Sadlowski was the elected leader of 130,000 blue-collar workers, part of a United Steelworkers (USW) membership then totaling 1.4 million, about twice what it is today.

In our inaugural episode, we consider the recent resurgence of full employment politics in the United States from both a political and historical perspective with historian David Stein (@davidpstein).

A compilation of relevant historical notes reflecting upon the bombing of Syria on April 13, 2018 by the United States, United Kingdom, and France.

In Moscow there has been something like a revival of interest in the immortal Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, who called himself Gorky, the Bitter One. Even Gorky’s portrait, which had been removed from the title page of the influential literary magazine Literaturnaja Gazeta, is shining there again next to Pushkin’s.

Strict weapons’ laws in the old East Germany, undoubtedly a restriction of on freedom, meant that there were virtually no shooting deaths and never a single mass shooting, in schools or anywhere else.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz tells us about her new book,  Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment.

Then we talk with journalist Gregg Levine about his special investigation for The Nation Magazine into the deaths and illnesses afflicting U.S. sailors exposed to radiation from the Fukushima Daichi meltdown. It’s titled “Seven Years on, Sailors Exposed to Fukushima Radiation Seek Their Day in Court.”

It takes three days on the open sea to journey from the Marshall Islands capital to Enewetak Atoll. You can’t see the atoll until you’re just miles away as it’s only feet above sea level. As you get closer, the sun fades behind clouds and the islands are shrouded in mist. Beaches are fringed not by coconut palms but Australian pines, trees praised for soaking up salt-spray and airborne radionuclides.

The term “white working class” captured much of the media analysis which sought to explain Trump’s meteoric rise and subsequent victory to the highest office in the United States. The obsession with polling and voting trends based in demographics is certainly nothing new.

Every great historical epoch in the freedom struggle raises the question: what is a human? The answer changes, to quote Askia Muhammad Toure of the Revolutionary Action Movement, with “the Gong of History.” Amid all the confusing din of history, a note may sound that makes it audible and intelligible.

The story goes that Einstein’s theory of relativity began with a simple question: What if a person could sit on a beam of light? A single inquiry led to an entire field of study, and perhaps the world’s most famous scientific breakthrough.

The late Ed Herman’s questions were less playful. They were about war and death, lies and power politics, but they too created entire areas of study. If properly considered, they can even guide us through the perilous age in which we’re living.

Written largely by the most prestigious British scientist of his day, the “Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China” was effectively suppressed upon its release in 1952. Published now in text-searchable format, it includes hundreds of pages of evidence about the use of U.S. biological weapons during the Korean War, available for the first time to the general public.