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Media, Communications, and Literature
As far back as 1835, perhaps our nation’s earliest and most astute observer, Alexis de Tocqueville, understood the power of the media. He described the press as “the chief democratic instrument of freedom.” But today our “instrument of freedom” seems to mean the freedom to enrich oneself privately, whatever it takes. How did we get […]
Here’s an experiment for you-ask five people if they know where the “millennial” label came from. Chances are that none of them will know. In fact, not much is known about the meaning of the label, other than it being a synonym for “young people” or a catch-all term for those who are “x-to-x” years […]
Race/isms Book Forum is a new series aimed at bringing established and emerging voices together in conversation around recent work that critically engages our world’s racial scripts, past and present. The structure of the forum is straightforward. We invite three to four thinkers to grapple with a book, highlighting a section of it, and then provide […]
Even in a comic-book movie, black American men are relegated to the lowest rung of political regard. So low that the sole white leading character in the movie, the CIA operative Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), gets to be a hero who helps save Wakanda.
How does the rate of school shootings in the U.S. compare with countries where is more difficult to obtain guns?
The British conservative media and party establishment are renewing their attempts to paint Jeremy Corbyn as a traitor. But given the failure of this approach in the past, why would they attempt it again?
Let us slightly modify the question “who teaches the teacher?” and ask this of Marxism: If workers’ labor produces all the wealth in society, who then produces the worker? Put another way: What kinds of processes enable the worker to arrive at the doors of her place of work every day so that she can […]
With the Olympic Winter Games right around the corner, tension on the Korean Peninsula is again the focal point of international affairs. After months of increasing provocation between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump — highlighted by missile tests and sabre-rattling on both sides — signs of a rapprochement are emerging.
![The Young Karl Marx film screening @ 290 Danforth Ave, Toronto, ON M4K 1N6, Canada, Toronto [11 January]](https://mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/9106111ee5-200x200.jpg "Review of ‘The Young Marx’")
Scott McLemee reviews The Young Karl Marx, which, on the eve of 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, contains themes of economic crises and inequalities that remain relevant today.
The Washington, DC Public Charter School Board oversees some 120 public charter schools in the nation’s capitol, serving more than 43,000 students. And one member of that school board, John Goldman, is an MRA with clear white supremacist leanings. He has admitted to having an alter ego, “Jack Murphy,” under which he posted to websites […]
We all know that Hollywood movies are fictional, right? Even the ones “based on actual events”? But at some level, if a fictional film references actual history and includes stunning visuals, great acting, and a powerful musical score, it can become accepted and internalized as “the truth.”
“Congress Advances Bill to Renew NSA Surveillance Program After Trump Briefly Upstages Key Vote” was the headline on a Washington Post article. The lead described the bill as reauthorizing “the government’s authority to conduct foreign surveillance on U.S. soil.”
My view is that liberal critics of populism, standing on their heads, get it wrong. If made to stand on their feet, they’d have to admit that populism actually represents the failure of liberal democracy.
I had a friend who as a child wrote to Ursula Le Guin. He was feeling miserable, bad things had happened to him and he wanted to run away to Earthsea. He told her that he felt ashamed that he wasn’t facing up to life, felt it was a failing that he just wanted to […]
On Sunday, the international press agency EFE did not have enough words to praise the not-even-that-new initiative of a Mexican “seduction school”, lamenting that this kind of workshop remains largely “taboo” in the country.
I was afraid that The Post would give us a Hollywood film version of the publication of the Pentagon Papers and manage never to say what was in the Pentagon Papers. I was afraid it would be turned into a pro-war movie.
Today, the United States Congress struck a significant blow against the basic human right to read, write, learn, and associate free of government’s prying eyes.
When Amazon announced plans to locate a $5 billion, 50,000-employee complex as its second headquarters somewhere in North America, state governments and municipalities fell over themselves offering billions of dollars in tax abatements and corporate subsidies to secure the prize.
Noted journalist and filmmaker John Pilger’s collection of work has been archived by the British Library, but deep-rooted problems of Western media create an increasingly difficult landscape for ethical journalism, as Pilger explained in an interview with Dennis Bernstein and Randy Credico.
Behind the backs of the U.S. and world populations, social media companies have built up a massive censorship apparatus staffed by an army of “content reviewers” capable of seamlessly monitoring, tracking, and blocking millions of pieces of content.
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