Portside

Democracy and data centers

Duck and Cover (1952), Long Fight for School Integration (1951), U.S. Out of Vietnam! (1971), Springsteen Channels Seeger (2006), Take Your Blacklist and Shove It! (1951), Building US Prison Camps (1951), No Job’s Worth Dying For (1971)

Repression on campus is back in a big way, as readers far beyond the classroom know today. The saga of the Cold War years, once seemingly distant, now has lessons that we ignore to our peril.

His name might not be familiar to many, but his songs are sung by millions around the world. Today, we take a journey through the life and work of Yip Harburg, the Broadway lyricist.

If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here: McCarthyism.

Polarization Nation

Readers Comments: Trump Screwing Country, World, Climate, Gaza, Now Ready to Make Deal with Sex Trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell; McCarthyism and Its Victims: Here We Go Again; Keep ICE Out of MLB Stadiums; Israelis Call for Crippling Sanctions on Israel

Telling the story of a slave revolt in ancient Rome, the 1960 film Spartacus was penned by two blacklisted Communist writers. Its arrival in theaters was a middle finger to the McCarthyist witch hunt in Hollywood and publishing.