Portside

Pegida's so-called “extremism of the middle”: is an expression of the dominant capitalist ideology, with its legitimization of all forms of exclusion, being driven to its mostly extreme, racist form. The whole situation will get really dangerous when parts of the elites start to see this as a viable political option in order to preserve power.

Reader Comments - NAACP Bombing; Ferguson Grand Jury; Charlie Hebdo and the Religious Right; Ukraine, Russia and Nazi Revival; TPP Power Grab; 2014 Worker Victories; NYPD Insubordination = Drop in Crime; Thomas Piketty; Selma,Martin Luther King, LBJ and Reality; Gap Between Productivity and Pay; BDS, Palestine and Israel; Cheap Gas; Announcements - Cuba Five Book Signing; New Resource - Greece, Golden Dawn and Fascism

Statistics speak for themselves - revealing the New York Police Department has been needlessly arresting people who were not criminals at all. The NYPD has given Mayor Bill de Blasio proof that the department is indeed out of control, and not accountable to the people they are there to protect. The "broken windows" approach to law enforcement needs to be scrapped, and also the age-old trend of funding America's cities on the backs of the poor.

Did East Germany fall because it was totally foul? Was it given an outside push or two? And did that downfall represent simply the glorious revolution of a folk yearning for freedom - or is the matter more complicated? This is still very relevant, for many similar uprisings have since occurred - and are still occurring.

In Spain this past May, the elections to the European Parliament produced a shock. A two-month-old party led by a 35-year-old, pony-tailed political scientist appeared out of nowhere—but clearly from the Left—to win 8 percent of the votes and five seats, transforming the infant organization into the country’s 4th largest political force. One of the party's founders, political scientist Juan Carlos Monedero, spoke with us in late August.

Unemployment is growing throughout Europe. Sad to tell, rather than blame this on an economic model that puts profits before people, too many of Europe's "white" working class curse immigrants, people of color and others who are "different".

Unemployment is growing throughout Europe. Sad to tell, rather than blame this on an economic model that puts profits before people, too many of Europe's "white" working class curse immigrants, people of color and others who are "different".

Yesterday Portside ran Timothy Snyder's "The Battle in Ukraine Means Everything." Many readers responded (see today's Tidbits post). Anatol Lieven in the New York Review of Books and Roger Annis in an original Op-Ed for Truthout here present very different views.

Throughout the centuries, the history of Ukraine has revealed the turning points in the history of Europe. This seems still to be true today. Of course, which way things will turn still depends, at least for a little while, on the Europeans.

Most people know Charlie Chaplin, whose 125th birthday was April 16, as a giant figure in the history of film. Chaplin's films were as funny as they were deeply revelatory of the human condition. His raucous cinematic assault on fascism, discussed here, helps enrich our understanding about what made this clown one of our most sublime and important artists.