Politics Archives - Page 2 of 105

Film

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, La Grazia

An interview with the Italian film director on ordinariness, doubt, and jealousy at the heart of his new film

December 8, 2025 • by Mitchell Abidor and Paolo Sorrentino

Editorial note: This interview contains spoilers. Paolo Sorrentino’s films are grand affairs, with elaborate camerawork and stunning settings underscored by memorable music. The plots match the grandeur of the mise-en-scène. In his new film, La Grazia, the purely cinematic elements of the film remain grand—and at times knowingly bizarre, like the ...

Paolo Sorrentino on his new movie, <em>La Grazia</em>

Education

The Words We Learn to Fear

How authoritarianism begins with the policing of language

December 4, 2025 • by Maria B. Olujic

The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz once wrote, “Language is the only homeland.” I didn’t understand that line until my own country broke apart. Now I see what he meant—when people learn to fear their own words, it is its own form of exile. Two of my uncles learned this early: ...

History

Honest Truths From Wrongful Deaths

In an excerpt from Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror, the author surveys how left-wing intellectuals responded to 9/11

December 3, 2025 • by Jeremy Varon

The first war the United States fought following 9/11, I argue, was a “war of interpretation” over the root causes and deep meaning of the attacks themselves. Below is a section from the first chapter of Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War (University of Chicago Press, 2025), in ...

Genocide

Attacks on Women’s Bodies Reveal the Logic of Genocide in Sudan

Sexual violence and the destruction of medical infrastructure are not separate catastrophes

December 2, 2025 • by Ayotunde Giwa

On October 28, 2025, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) overran the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El Fasher. Satellite images show what Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab identified as bodies scattered across the hospital grounds. Videos filmed by RSF fighters themselves show militia walking through ransacked wards, stepping over piles of dead ...

Attacks on Women’s Bodies Reveal the Logic of Genocide in Sudan

Politics

“Things Happen”

Staging sovereignty

November 19, 2025 • by Arthur Goldhammer

We have become accustomed to the Oval Office ritual by which Trump stages his pugnacious primacy. The protocol of the traditional press conference, in which the president stands and the press remains seated until recognized, is inverted. Trump sits as if enthroned on one of his gilded chairs, though not ...

History

From William Lloyd Garrison to Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

A brief genealogy of nonviolent resistance

November 18, 2025 • by Bennett Parten

In 1959, Martin Luther King Jr., then only 30 years old and fresh off leading the Montgomery bus boycotts, traveled to India to pay homage to one of his heroes, the late Mahatma Gandhi. Over the course of five weeks, King met with Indian heads of state, spoke with some ...

From William Lloyd Garrison to Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Economy

Goldbugs

An excerpt from Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right

November 17, 2025 • by Quinn Slobodian

People make bad money, and that money makes bad people.— Peter Boehringer Monetary issues have long divided neoliberals. Can you trust a central bank to manage currency? Can the growth of the money supply be made automatic? Should fixed or floating rates reign in global currency markets? Must money be backed ...

Genocide

Palestinians in Their Own Words, Their Own Genres

A review of Gaza: The Story of a Genocide

November 14, 2025 • by Coleson Smith

With the release of Gaza: The Story of a Genocide (Verso, October 2025), editors Fatima Bhutto and Sonia Faleiro bring us a powerful addition to a lamentable literary genre: the genocide anthology. Comprising more than 20 works of poetry, art, essays, and reportage by 23 contributors—many of them Palestinian—this volume ...

Palestinians in Their Own Words, Their Own Genres

Democracy

It May Be the Last Time

Lithuanian art and culture resisting a takeover at the height of hybrid warfare

November 10, 2025 • by Edvardas Šumila

Recent developments in Lithuanian politics have produced a decisive, immediate, and spontaneous resistance from culture workers in various fields. The formation of a new coalition government led to the populist political project Nemuno Aušra (NA)—headed by the antisemitic politician Remigijus Žemaitaitis—being given control of the Ministry of Culture. Žemaitaitis has ...

Democracy

A Republic, If We Can Afford It

Our Republic depends on both economic stability and civic participation

November 6, 2025 • by Larry Schwartz

When the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government the delegates had created. His reply—“A republic, if you can keep it”—was no mere quip from an aging sage. It was a warning that republics are fragile, rare, and never self-sustaining. What Franklin implied was that ...

New York City

What Makes Cities Go BANANA?

On zoning, New York City’s housing crisis, and Abundance

November 4, 2025 • by Achilles Kallergis

The nearly hundred-year-old Holland Tunnel, the first mechanically ventilated underwater vehicular tunnel, opened in 1927 after just seven years of work. By contrast, the humble subway station elevators unveiled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2020 took three years and approximately $80 million to realize. (The MTA, sensing commuter suspicion, even made ...

New York City

A Mayor Who Promises the Moon

Canvassing for Mamdani

October 29, 2025 • by Mitchell Abidor

In the run-up to this year’s election for New York City’s next mayor, I’ve spent several days canvassing for Zohran Mamdani. On every occasion I’ve been as much as a half-century older than the rest of my young, white comrades. Unlike most of them, I’m also a native New Yorker, ...