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A man walks down the street dressed as Uncle Sam and carries a large baby Donald Trump doll.

Cracked, Costly Fantasies

The legacy of right-wing ideologies in California.
by Dan O’Sullivan via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 28, 2025
The Young Lords in New York, 1969-1976.

How New York City’s Radical Social Movements Gave Rise to Hip-Hop

The revolutionary history behind one of America’s main musical exports.
by Dean Van Nguyen via Literary Hub on May 6, 2025
Sen. Joe McCarthy confers with Roy Cohn during a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

A Not-So-Hostile Takeover

Long before the rise of Trump, the American conservative mainstream enjoyed a complex partnership with the Far Right.
by Gillis J. Harp via Commonweal on October 4, 2024
Untitled (Strike), Dox Thrash, c. 1940.

Hard Times

The radical art of the Depression years.
by Rachel Himes via The Nation on November 27, 2023
A researcher holds a magnifying glass to an archival photograph.

Looking for a Lineage in the Lusk Archive

The records of a New York surveillance committee from the time of the First Red Scare document a radical world—and its demise.
by Ben Nadler, Oksana Mironova via Jewish Currents on July 18, 2023
Jonathan Big next to cover of "King: A Life."

Restoring the Real, Radical Martin Luther King Jr. in “King: A Life”

A new biography of King emerges at a "critical juncture" for his legacy.
by Jonathan Eig, Steve Nathans-Kelly via Chicago Review of Books on May 23, 2023
Collage of various Republican faces and symbols.

The Long Unraveling of the Republican Party

Three books explore a history of fractious extremism that predates Donald Trump.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Atlantic on September 6, 2022
Meir Kahane

Is Kahane More Mainstream than American Jews will Admit?

A new biography explores the American roots of Meir Kahane's far-right ideology — and how the U.S. Jewish establishment embraced his beliefs.
by Hadas Binyamini via +972 Magazine on December 30, 2021
Young Lords Party demonstration

The Revolution That Wasn’t

Do we give the activist groups of the 1960s more credit than they deserve?
by Michael Kazin via The New Republic on July 30, 2021
Newt Gingrich and applauding Republicans

My Front Row Seat to the Radicalization of the Republican Party

As a political reporter, I've seen four Republican revolutions — Reagan’s, Gingrich’s, the Tea Party’s and Trump’s — each of which took the party farther right.
by Jackie Calmes via Los Angeles Times on June 13, 2021
Congresswomen Omar, Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez, and Tlaib.
partner

The Radical Roots of ‘the Squad’

How Mickey Leland and the Congressional Black Caucus paved the way for today's progressive politics.
by Benjamin Talton via Made By History on August 28, 2019

A Most Violent Year

The world that 1968 ushered in is a far cry from the one activists imagined.
by Alan Wolfe via The New Republic on May 18, 2018
White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' clash with counter-protesters at the Unite the Right rally August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, VA.

The Vietnam War and White Power

A conversation with the author of "Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America."
by Kathleen Belew, Sean Illing via Vox on April 13, 2018
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at podium giving "I Have A Dream" speech.

Martin Luther King Jr. Had a Much More Radical Message than a Dream of Racial Brotherhood

King Jr., remembered today for his non-violent resistance, was a radical reformer who called for fundamental redistribution of economic power and resources.
by Paul Harvey via The Conversation on March 30, 2018

Street Fighting Woman

A new biography of Lucy Parsons makes it clear that the activist deserves attention apart from her more well-known husband.
by Eric Foner via New York Review of Books on December 21, 2017
Young men show a reporter how to make molotov cocktails in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in July 1966. (Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Getty Images)

One of America's Smartest Magazines Published a Molotov Cocktail How-To in 1967

A riot represents people making history.
by Nina Renata Aron via Timeline on September 23, 2017
Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau: A Radical for All Seasons

The surprising persistence of Henry David Thoreau.
by Jedediah Britton-Purdy via The Nation on June 1, 2017

Race and the American Creed

Recovering black radicalism.
by Aziz Rana via n+1 on December 7, 2015
Martin Luther King, Jr. being arrested in Montgomery, 1958.

Martin Luther King Was a Law Breaker

On the second anniversary of MLK's assassination, political prisoner Martin Sostre wrote a tribute emphasizing his radical disobedience.
by Austin McCoy, Martin Sostre via Martin Sostre Institute on April 1, 1970
A crowd of Iranian protesters burns photos.

The Islamic Republic Was Never Inevitable

With Iran’s theocracy under strain, a new history shows that its rise was mainly a stroke of bad luck.
by Arash Azizi via The Atlantic on August 5, 2025
Mike Davis

The Marxism of Mike Davis

On the life, influences, and “sophisticated yet lucid brand of Marxism” of the late, great writer.
by Nelson Lichtenstein via Jacobin on July 31, 2025
“The Yellow Press,” a 1910 political cartoon that portrays William Randolph Hearst as a jester distributing sensational stories.

Scapegoating the Algorithm

America’s epistemic challenges run deeper than social media.
by Dan Williams via Asterisk on July 24, 2025
Mike Gold fading into a field of stars of David.

On the Decades-Long Erasure of Jewish Working-Class Anti-Zionism

Mike Gold, Alexander Bittelman, and the paradoxes of left-wing Zionism.
by Benjamin Balthaser via Literary Hub on July 23, 2025
The Communist National Convention at its first session on June 24, 1936, at the Manhattan Opera House in New York City.

The Long Anti-Zionist History of the American Jewish Left

Thousands of left-wing American Jews have protested Israel. They are taking part in a tradition of anti-Zionist Jewish radicalism.
by Benjamin Balthaser via Jacobin on July 21, 2025
Composite Curtis Yarvin, a crown, an atom diagram, and a cathedral.

Curtis Yarvin’s Cranky Yearnings

He didn’t give the tech right new ideas—not really. What he gave them was permission.
by Joshua Tait via The Bulwark on July 14, 2025
A Democratic donkey with its head cut off is surrounded by hands pointing at charts and graphs.

How Strategist Brain Took Over the Democratic Party

During the Reagan revolution, Democrats settled on a new way to win—and it’s destroying them now.
by Ben Mathis-Lilley via Slate on July 10, 2025
Japanese-American man in a military uniform.

He Spent His Life Trying to Prove That He Was a Loyal U.S. Citizen. It Wasn’t Enough.

How Joseph Kurihara lost his faith in America.
by Andrew Aoyama via The Atlantic on July 9, 2025
William Sentner address a crowd of union workers at a small arms plant

The Radical Midwest of Bill Sentner

St Louis organizer Bill Sentner led some of the most successful labor battles in Midwestern history by uniting workers across race and gender lines.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Jacobin on June 23, 2025
William Buckley stands behind a podium, surrounded by a throng of people, and waves.

The Real Bill Buckley

Even some liberals toasted William F. Buckley Jr. as a patrician gentleman. A long-awaited new biography corrects that record.
by Nicole Hemmer via Democracy Journal on June 17, 2025

Eco-Terrorists Aren't What They Used to Be

Fifty years on, "The Monkey Wrench Gang" remains a problematic text for environmental activists, who are inclined to endorse its violent tendencies.
by John Bicknell via Law & Liberty on June 13, 2025
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