Portside

War, peace, fascism and imperialism

The Lord of the Rings is a book obsessed with ruins, bloodlines, and the divine right of aristocrats. Why are so many on the left able to love it?

Whether in the past or present, imperialism that is reframed in patriotic language does not make it less brutal to those who lose their land, liberty, and lives—or have their identities folded into American conquest.

The director of the Oscar-nominated film 'Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat' reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently.

We are not talking about geography (Dakar is much further west than Rome), but race: the West we are talking about substantially coincides with the white race.

The world economy is going through some stuff

How to use Substack, and more media need-to-know

Brave new world order?

In 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the prime minister of newly independent Congo. His close ally Andrée Blouin describes how Belgium and the US conspired to oust Lumumba and impose Mobutu’s kleptocratic dictatorship on the Congolese people.

The fierce urgency of Now