Portside

In his omnibus review of these five books, reviewer Wald shows how these authors offer valuable insights into "how and why the abolition of both antisemitism and Zionism are presently intertwined."

Reviewer Wald praises this book's "grace," for the way its author "puts into conversation the deeply intertwined histories of what he calls 'straight, gay, or otherwise queer' people and the radical anti-capitalist movement."

Two books posit the BDS movement fighting Israeli aggression against Palestinians as the worthy extension of more than a century of opposition to white supremacy, colonialism, and the kindred pariah status Jews suffered under European fascism.

Shortly before his death, James Baldwin wrote that in the U.S., “White is a metaphor for power,” an observation that is deep background for much of the discussion in the masterly book under review, where race and class are intertwined, yet surface differences are used to split the labor force and maintain capital’s hegemony. The book can usefully inform debate on race and class and aid in reconstructing a revolutionary project in the context of Trumpworld.

For the author of the work under review--much heralded by the reviewer--Czech novelist Franz Kafka was no chronic pessimist or dour, fatalistic misbeliever in human emancipation, but a consistent partisan artist siding with the humiliated.

At first glance, modern art and contemporary imperialism make strange bedfellows. The book under review both charts the history of the CIA's work in promoting US corporate interests through its manipulation of culture--what was then called cultural diplomacy-- while also working to define modernism. The reviewer congratulates the author on his first task, but criticizes him on the second.

This new book by Enzo Traverso is "a master class in historical analysis," writes reviewer Alan Wald. This "full-on riveting reconceptualization of 1914-1945 as a 'European Civil War,"' he adds, "is a benchmark achievement in the flowering of socialist scholarship by the generation identifying with May 1968."