Against the Current

Strait of Hormuz: Nice oil shipping lane there. A real pity if something would happen to it...

PERHAPS DONALD TRUMP was misunderstood: He always promised that the war with Iran would end in “Unconditional Surrender,” but didn’t mention that it would be by him.

But seriously, Trump and some of his advisers are furious with Benjamin Netanyahu for suckering the U.S. president into launching the war on the absurd promises of instantaneous military victory, rapid Iranian regime collapse and installation of a client....

Like autoworkers, Starbucks baristas work for the same corporation across borders. Why not organize across them as well?

“TARIFF” MAY BE Trump’s the most delightful word in the English language, but for workers, it represents a danger. It’s like accepting a two-tier wage structure to keep one’s job. Been there, done that.

When Shawn Fain supported Trump’s auto tariffs, he made the mistake of thinking that a narcissistic businessman could develop a policy in workers’ interests. For Trump, tariffs....

THIS ARTICLE TAKES a look at striking features of the immigration system historically with a view towards its latest phase during Trump’s second presidential administration, and how we might respond by building rapid response networks rooted in local community.

The article begins with a “Historical Background” section. If you’d like to read that later, you can skip to Part II, “A Lower Public Profile?”

I. Historical Background

The grim continuity of Trump’s...

I VISITED CUBA over the 2026 May Day week with a delegation from Building Relations with Cuban Labor. The effects of the 65+ year U.S. embargo and recent blockade of oil were everywhere to be seen....

There will be no Gulag under the new socialism.

Introductory note by Mikhail Orlov, /Spichka (Matches): “There will be no Gulag under the new socialism” — an article by Boris Kagarlitsky.

It is time to arrive at a shared understanding of what kind of socialism we want to build — and how.

SPEAKING FROM THE Oval Office, Donald Trump hinted he could be the president who finally takes direct action against Havana after decades of failed destabilization efforts from Washington.

The imperial president of the United States made the declaration on May 22, two days after his Department of Justice filed a made-up charge against former President and Defense Minister Raul Castro, now 94.

“Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years,” Trump said. “It looks like I’ll be the one that does it.”....

February 8, 2024: Students at the University of Michigan led a demonstration in support of Palestinian rights through the Ann Arbor streets. (Kathleen Brown)

On May 2, the University of Michigan held its annual commencement ceremony. Nine thousand graduates and almost 60,000 attendees gathered at the Big House to hear a variety of notable speakers — former U-M basketball player Jalen Rose, athlete and Olympian Michael Phelps and U-M President Domenico Grasso. But it was the speech by outgoing Faculty Senate chair Derek R. Peterson that became the focus of national attention as he discussed historic campus events....

The following account is an activist's report of her experiences and frustrations in joining the immigrant rights defense network Hands Off New York City (HO NYC), where the Upper Eastside activity is apparently under the rather heavy-handed leadership of a local Democratic Party club. Perhaps -- at least we'd like to think -- in other areas the work might be less bureaucratically dominated. In any case we find this detailed chronicle to be useful and instructive. Most importantly of course, we applaud the efforts and dedication of everyone, from whatever perspective, willing to take to the streets and neighborhoods in defense of communities under ICE's reign of domestic terror....

ON APRIL 29, the far-right Supreme Court majority, in a 6-3 decision, declared that using race to limit inequality is unconstitutional. The argument discards 250 years of legal segregation and the struggle for equality. It guts the 1965 Voting Rights Act by outlawing electoral maps that provided minority representation, particularly in the states that carried out racial gerrymandering. It is the Court’s third attempt to neuter the Act, considered the crown jewel of the Civil Rights Movement....

Q&A:

STUDENT ACTIVISM ON American campuses in response to the war in Gaza has become a national debate over where to draw the line between political dissent and antisemitism.

Even as many universities have moved to restrict, disperse or discipline protest activity, demonstrations — and the arguments about how to describe them — have continued, raising questions about free speech, campus safety and whether criticism of Israel is being conflated with anti-Jewish hatred.

Alan Wald, the H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, is a historian of the 20th-century U.S. cultural Left. He discusses parallels to Cold War-era campus politics, Zionism and how debates over the meaning of antisemitism shape campus protests over Israel and Palestine....

Feyenoord v. Ajax — soccer fans' rivalry takes on "antisemitic" overtones in an ominous political climate.

LARGELY BY COINCIDENCE, my partner and I live a couple of blocks down the street from Rotterdam’s major synagogue (which is not that major; Rotterdam was never a big Jewish center, and most of its Jews were killed in the Holocaust).

During the night of March 19-20, this synagogue was the target of an attack. The attack on the Rotterdam synagogue ....

The cry for "Woman Life Freedom" is an emancipatory slogan. (Middle East Institute)

A REVOLUTIONARY FEMINIST position on Iran must refuse the false and damaging binary that demands choosing between defending the Islamic Republic and endorsing US-imperialist and Zionist intervention. This is a constructed choice designed to collapse political judgment into campism. It converts solidarity into a competition of moral allegiances and leaves ordinary people,...

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio

BY A REMARKABLE historical coincidence, the name of the present U.S. president can intuitively be abridged as Don, which is the equivalent of Sir or Lord, historically used in Sicily in designating powerful landowners and later applied to Mafia bosses. This designation became widely known in the United States and globally with Francis Ford Coppola’s film series The Godfather,...

KUNAL CHATTOPADHYAY IS a retired professor of comparative literature at Jadavpur University. He has been active as a Fourth Internationalist since 1980. He is a leader of Radical Socialist, the Indian section of the Fourth International (FI), and editor of its publication. Solidarity is the U.S. section.

Kunal has written many articles for Against the Current, the Solidarity Webzine, International Viewpoint, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières,...

Tom Alter

Contact the Committee to Defend Tom Alter for more information and to get involved in this important defense work.

On October 12 Suzi Weissman interviewed Professor Tom Alter, a tenured professor at Texas State University and author of Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth the Transplanted Roots of Farmer Labor Radicalism in Texas for KPFK's "Beneath the Surface" program. A popular professor, he was fired on the basis of a well-known neo-fascist's filming of an online conference where he was discussing different methods of movement organizing.

Suzi Weissman: Welcome to "Beneath the Surface." I'm Suzi Weissman. Professor Tom Alter, a tenured historian at Texas State University, was fired on September 10th after he was accused of inciting violence in a video of him speaking at a socialist conference. His remarks about organizing and defending workers was secretly recorded....