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Police are the Problem, Not the Solution

Michael Hirsch The Indypendent
With the mass outcry over the cop murders of George Floyd and so many other African Americans, it's worth reprising the review of a key 2017 book that sees even beyond defunding police to challenging the actual role of law enforcement in society.

The Soaring Writer Who Landed on His Feet

Michael Hirsch New Politics
A crime novel with a difference, this one centers on murders in a vacation town that appear to take on racial significance going back to World War Two and a segregated, elite military command.

Seymour Hersh: He Got the Story

Michael Hirsch Jacobin
Veteran journalist Seymour Hersh has gotten a few things wrong over his career. But his memoir shows a reporter with broad and brave consistency, exposing one atrocity and cover-up by the forces of American imperial power after another.

Taking on Dirty Power in Richmond, California

Michael Hirsch The Indypendent
A founding member of California's independent Richmond Progressive Alliance pens a memoir detailing how her fledgling group waged its successful electoral and community organizing effort against Chevron, the city’s largest, predatory employer.

New Eugene Debs Film Does the Socialist Proud

Michael Hirsch The Indypendent
Review of a bravura feature length documentary on the life and struggles of militant union leader, socialist orator, five-time presidential candidate against the two-party duopoly and class war prisoner for opposing America’s imperialist entry into World War 1.

Lou-Andres Salomé vs. The Patriarchy

Michael Hirsch The Indypendent
The German philosopher insisted on being the master of her own fate even as she inflamed the hearts and minds of some of the late 19th and earl 20th Century’s greatest thinkers. The real question posed by the film: what is freedom in a class-ridden society?

Review: When Karl Marx Was Young And Dashing

Michael Hirsch The Indypendent
Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx is the best buddy movie since George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969. It’s also among the most important films in decades, bringing to a mass audience not just the revolutionary ideas of Marx and his friend and collaborator Frederick Engels in the early days of modern capitalism, but an approach to politics and history that still has no peer.

Right Hooks: Trump and the Anatomy of the Alt-Right

Michael Hirsch The Indypendent
The book traces the myriad links between the far right, from Fox News, Tea Party activists, militia supporters, new media trolls, White Nationalists, resurgent Klan members and self-proclaimed Nazis to Donald Trump, where each piggybacks on the rest in honing messages and growing their influence. While the author spends little time referencing left and progressive forces opposing the right's resurgence, his work is exhaustive in researching the phenomena.