Portside

Rising inequality is largely to blame for this electoral upset. Continuing with business as usual is not an option. People have lost their sense of security, status and even identity. This result is the scream of an America desperate for radical change. People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs. Thomas Piketty and Naomi Klein offer up interesting analysis.

The battle lines are clear. Democracy is in peril and the left must take itself seriously electorally and politically. Ruth Potts speaks to Gary Younge, who was based in Muncie, Indiana, for the US election, about the implications of Donald Trump’s victory.

I am not suggesting that white racism alone explains Trump’s victory. Nor am I dismissing the white working class’s very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably, or as Kimberlé Crenshaw would say, intersectionally.

We should resist the temptation to over-interpret Trump’s election as an American Eighteenth Brumaire or 1933. Progressives who think they’ve woken up in another country should calm down, take a stiff draught, and reflect on the actual election results from the swing states.

Race and racism in the U.S. context have long served as some of the most significant guarantors of democratic structures and institutions. In short, U.S. democracy itself is a racial project whose fulcrum hinges on policies of inclusion and exclusion.

Leaders in Seattle, San Francisco and other so-called "sanctuary cities" say they won't change their stance on immigration despite President-elect Donald Trump's vows to withhold potentially millions of dollars in taxpayer money if they don't cooperate.

Victors’ spoils; Broken hearts, sticky notes; The peculiar Electoral College; Misogyny and militancy; Winning

In September 2002, Amr Moussa, then head of the Arab League, offered a warning I’ve never forgotten. The Bush administration’s intention to invade Iraq and topple its ruler, Saddam Hussein, was already obvious. Were they to take such a step, Moussa insisted, it would “open the gates of hell.” His prediction turned out to be anything but hyperbole -- and those gates have never again closed.

 Ross made his money collecting “distressed assets”—failing steel and textile mills in the midwest and south, and coal mines in Appalachia. Dubbed the “The King of Bankruptcy,” Ross cut jobs, wages, pensions, and health benefits at the companies he acquired, and reaped the profits.   So much for Trump’s supposed commitment to coalfield workers.

The selection of Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of the far-right website Breitbart News and the CEO of Trump’s presidential campaign, deepened the fears of liberal activists that the Trump administration would embolden and enable antisemites, racists and misogynists.