New Future

There is so much off base in yesterday’s New York Times editorial on New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo. Let us count the ways.

Israel can inflict massive damage on targets in Iran thanks to its US-supplied technological advantages. But the old neocon fantasy of building a new Middle East through endless war is still as delusional as it is destructive of human life.

Concerned with increasing the supply of housing and improving infrastructure, some on the Left have come to embrace the “abundance agenda. ” But what capital needs is discipline, not deregulation.

It wasn’t just large, liberal cities but the heart of Trump country that formed the base of last Saturday’s “No Kings” protests. Together with his underwhelming military parade, they’re a warning of the softness of his support.

Drawing on a century-old theory about the inevitability of elite control, billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen champions Silicon Valley as a new ruling class. His worldview revives the reactionary dream of greatness unencumbered by the masses.

Novelist Joseph Conrad’s singular foray into sci-fi uncannily anticipates an unsettled world order in which Greenland, placed under the control of a clownish minor aristocrat, represents the new imperialist frontier.

Family abolitionists see the family as the beating heart of capitalist social reproduction. But this view of the family misunderstands both the structure of capitalist reproduction and the complexity of how people survive within it.

After many failed attempts to rein in vulture funds, New York lawmakers are trying an obscure medieval legal defense to stop them from profiting off the debt of poor nations. This last resort option faces stiff resistance from Wall Street’s lobbying machine.

New York City socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani says New Yorkers “are ready for a new generation of leadership that puts working people first. ”

From 1976 to 1989, Hai Fan was a guerrilla fighter in the ranks of the Malayan Communist Party. His short story collection, Delicious Hunger, humanizes his comrades — and artfully portrays the tragedy of their struggle.

As Zohran Mamdani mounts a surging campaign for NYC mayor, his bid is becoming a model to replicate for the next wave of the US left. Can he expand his appeal to working-class demographics the Left has so far struggled to reach?

Some European states have recently started using more critical language about Israel’s genocidal onslaught against Gaza, rhetorically distancing themselves from the US line. But their ongoing record of complicity speaks louder than their words.

Donald Trump is on the brink of a war with Iran that wouldn’t be good for Israel, the United States, civilians on all sides, or even his own political future. But because of his inability to stand up to Israel, it may not matter.

One of the most energetic factions of today’s Right flirts with monarchy, myth, and high-tech transcendence. Drawing on the anti-modern sensibility of the fin de siècle Decadents, they reject democracy and seek to use imagined pasts to shape the future.