Portside

That the Nazis based their racist laws in large part on U.S. white supremacist law is a widely known fact. This new study is a contemporary and detailed look at the correspondences between the two legal regimes.

Food, housing, health—is what the revolution fought for. A drowsy old sugar island whose slaves’ descendants were now mostly farmers and fisher-folk became vibrant with people crowding revolutionary rallies to dance and chant slogans that sounded like reggae songs and were affixed to brightly colored signs around the island: “Forward Ever, Backward Never”; “It takes a revolution, to make a solution”; “Not a second, without the people.”

According to the findings of the International Food Information Council Foundation’s 12th Annual Food and Health Survey, Americans are consuming food information from more sources than ever before, yet our nutritional literacy is sorely lacking – and our health may be suffering as a result.

Netflix's Ozark brings capitalism's corrosive effects to middle america through the lens of a financial adviser and money laundering. Right from the opening monologue narrated by star Jason Bateman, Netflix’s new drama “Ozark” makes clear it doesn’t just want to depict a financial adviser up to his neck in danger. It’s out to convey profound truths about money.

"Even if the sea does not swallow you," writes the poet Esther Kamkar (herself a migrant to North America) about the experience of migration, "your heart will be broken."

On the centennial of the Russian Revolution, John Reed's first-hand look at the uprising of workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors is fit reading about a mass movement that overthrew the old aristocracy and then the bourgeois class itself. An exposition on ordinary people making history for themselves, the book is a gripping account of events in Petrograd, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks lead the various workers councils in finally seizing state power.

This new book, says Peter E. Gordon, argues that "ever since the fall of communism, a culture of defeat has characterized the left’s understanding of political history and theoretical critique." Gordon guides us through the intricacies of the case author Enzo Traverso makes in this volume.

Kathryn Bigelow's film about 1967 Detroit riots grapples with a harsh legacy of racism in America.

Olive oil fraud abounds: some producers blend cheap nut, seed, or other vegetable oils with just enough olive oil to lend the look, taste, and aroma of the real thing. Other perpetrators dilute extra-virgin olive oil with lower-grade olive oil, or mislabel lesser olive oil as extra-virgin. Last, though not nearly as appalling, packers intentionally mislabel the country of origin.

“Did South Park accidentally invent the alt-right?” Janan Ganesh asked recently in the Financial Times, articulating a theory that began gaining traction as an entire political movement seemed to crystallize around the show’s “anti-PC chic” and general fuck-your-feelings attitude.