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This Week in People’s History, Nov 20–26

Portside
Image of a newsreel title: "Gen. Butler bares 'plot' by Fascists" Did Wall Street Want FDR’s Ouster? (1934), A first for Song’s First Lady (1934), Tamir Rice Would Be 22 (2014), Women Workers Stand Up (1909), AFL Jump-Starts the Cold War (1944), Standing Up for Press Freedom (1929), The Gap Just Gets Bigger (2019

Capitalism’s Fascist Temptation

Dave Anderson Boulder Weekly
MAGA mega-donor Peter Thiel, the leading Silicon Valley libertarian who promoted cryptocurrency and floating tax refuges beyond the reach of government, wrote in 2009 that democracy is no longer compatible with freedom

books

Whitewashing the Great Depression

Sarah Boxes The Atlantic
The preeminent photographic record of the period excluded people of color from the nation’s self-image. This collective portrait contributed to the misbegotten idea, still current, that the soul of America, the real American type, is rural and white

If Biden Wants to Be Like F.D.R., He Needs the Left

Jamelle Bouie New York Times
Radical agitation helped bring Social Security and much of the New Deal into being. Simply put, an ambitious, active left is one that widens the scope of reform. It’s a left that, even if you disagree with it, helps clear the pathways for action.

books

How Capitalist Economics Structures Inequality

Gregory Heires Portside
The world economy, to the degree it still works at all, serves to benefit the few at the expense of the many. The author of the book under review does an economic deep dive into ways that can reverse that antidemocratic equation.
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