Once class recedes and the professional class sets the agenda, politics changes character. It becomes a contest over symbols rather than substance, over the words we use and the images we project rather than the distribution of power and resources. This is the most visible fault to ordinary people, who can sense when a movement is more exercised about terminology than about whether they can pay for insulin. More
Elon Musk is less an aberration than the grotesque byproduct of a capitalist order that converts inequality into virtue, exploitation into spectacle, and mistakes its own deepest failures for its greatest successes. The media frenzy surrounding the prospect of Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire is not a celebration of human progress or individual initiative. It is a symptom of a deeper social and political crisis, one that exposes the power of class privilege, the corrupting forces of gangster capitalism, and a culture increasingly incapable of distinguishing wealth from worth or exploitation from human flourishing. More
A few recent AI queries 1) I strained my back lifting a bag of potting soil. What now? 2) Is autarky possible in the U.K? 3) The gauge on our gas boiler is in the red zone. Will it blow up? 4) Did Fritz Lang like Joseph [ . . . ]
For generations after Black Texans—and later Black communities across the country, thanks to the Great Migration—marked the occasion with church services, family gatherings, and parades. At that point, it was not a natio [ . . . ]
Award-winning journalist and author Barrett Brown returns to CounterPunch Radio to discuss the critical period before 2016 when online activism emerged, fusing with political movements and bringing down regimes. During that time, Brown became the public face of Anonymous and the burgeoning transparency movement, which led to the US Government targeting him and his eventual imprisonment. Learn the inside story of the hacking efforts, which powerful individuals and entities were exposed, how Brown and his colleagues began to unravel the complex web of relationships at the heart of the modern private military-industrial-
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CounterPunch explores the upcoming UFC White House spectacle and the Hollywood, DC, and Gulf power brokers at the nexus of US politics, sports and entertainment. Host Eric Draitser welcomes veteran combat sports journalist Nate Wilcox, Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw, to the show to discuss the White House event, the mythology around Trump’s relationship with the UFC and Dana White, the role of Ari Emanuel and TKO Group in monopolizing combat sports and playing all sides of the power structure, the Gulf monarchies and their projection of soft power, the overlap between entertainment, finance, and geopolitics, and so much more.
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In this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt speaks with Dr. Nadine Ortega, co-founder of Tagnawa Hawai’i, about grassroots mutual aid disaster recovery. Dr. Ortega breaks down the socio-economic and historical conditions that have led to the recent Kona Low flooding on O’ahu and the 2023 Lahaina, Maui fires, which have disproportionately affected Native Hawaiian, Filipino, and other immigrant communities. She shares stories about the importance of cross-class and interethnic organizing when state-run disaster response fails.
Visit Tagnawa.org for more information.
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