Fate of the West
Where Western civilization is headed. History, demography, culture and power, with serious attention to both decline and renewal.
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This reading list brings together items from the sources selected for Fate of the West. Open each item at its original source for the complete article, episode or video. This is a selection of current coverage, not a complete archive.
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Climate Policies Can Bring Relief on Affordability and Beyond
As the US midterm elections approach, one word keeps coming up in campaign promises and headlines: “affordability.” That working people in the United States are struggling to afford basic necessities is a problem that many are willing to acknowledge, but there is very little agreement on what should be done to tackle a core driver of the affordability crisis: climate change.
Historian Eric Hobsbawm Was a “Communist Polymath”
Emile Chabal, author of a new biography of the massively popular and influential historian Eric Hobsbawm, explains how Hobsbawm’s Central European roots set him apart in Britain — and why he kept faith with communism through the devastation of his century.
How Bernie’s Campaigns Reorganized the Organized Left
Ten years ago, while socialist Bernie Sanders was making his historic run for the Democratic presidential nomination that drew millions of supporters and promised a “political revolution” to live long past his campaign, I was part of a small revolutionary organization that pooh-poohed him as a faux renegade.
Britain’s Military-Industrial Complex Is Promoting War Fever
War fever has gripped the European political establishment. War in Ukraine and rumors of continent-wide conflict with Russia are now the staple justification for rearmament, ballooning arms budgets, and the reintroduction of conscription across Europe.
The Problem With Homeownership
A few days from now, my adopted hometown of Vancouver in British Columbia is going to elect a new mayor and council. The low turnout in municipal elections here skews toward affluent owners of detached houses who pay the most property tax and grumble about it. Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC (“A Better City”) party, who won the 2022 election, understand their base: they froze property taxes this year after abolishing the living wage for city employees.
Student Protests Are Making Their Mark on Serbia’s Election
Sitting in the trashy garden of a café frequented by students near an iconic Belgrade market, we are, naturally, discussing the elections. A somewhat hippieish father of a friend complains that the situation is terrible, that he’s never seen such polarization, and that decades-old colleagues are barely on speaking terms. He tells me he tried to lighten the atmosphere, joking “Guys, I am neutral, you can relax, you can all be yourselves with me.” His remark didn’t sit well with either camp.
How Charles Manson Became a Hero of the American Far Right
The person most responsible for the recognition of Charles Manson as a quasi-icon of the twenty-first-century radical right is James Mason. Born in 1952, Mason is a lifelong white supremacist activist who joined George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party as a teen, then Joseph Tommasi’s more radical National Socialist Liberation Front, then became even more extreme after he took over that party’s newsletter, Siege (1980–86).
Joe Biden’s Team Is Rewriting Its History on Gaza
After three years of slaughter in Gaza, some leading officials of the Biden administration are trying to justify their record. Figures like Antony Blinken and Brett McGurk have been on media tours recently giving their version of the story. Meanwhile, Akbar Shahid Ahmed has been working to provide a serious account of what really happened.
Why Our Obsession With Extending Lifespans Is a Distraction
For just over five years, Bryan Johnson has been spending more than $2 million a year trying not to die. The American technology millionaire has turned his body into an elaborate — or, depending on your perspective, recklessly extravagant — experiment in human longevity, subjecting himself to extensive medical testing, controlled nutrition, rigid sleeping schedules, and experimental interventions. At forty-nine, he employs an entire medical team to scrutinize the smallest changes in his physiology.
The Wargame Is Wretched Propaganda
Politicians are often accused of playing toy soldiers. Rarely, however, do they actually do it. The Wargame is an exception. Sky TV’s new four-part docudrama, which features a cast of prominent former ministers and securocrats, follows the British government as it responds to an imminent attack from Russia.
Neukölln, the Berlin District Where the Left Broke Through
Amid resounding recent victories for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), on September 20 Germany’s socialist party Die Linke bucked the trend with a spectacular victory in Berlin. It dominated the campaign with its program of ending cuts, capping rents, and socializing housing companies, leaving other parties to respond to the popular demand that Berliners had confirmed in a 2021 referendum. The monster victory for the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt further galvanized Berlin’s diverse urban working class to express opposition to the fascists.
A Portrait of Eugene Debs for Today’s Left
You can tell the capitalist system is in trouble when Americans start talking about Eugene Debs. Although the popular image of the great labor and socialist leader has ebbed and flowed since his death a century ago this month, our New Gilded Age has placed him back in the spotlight. Progressive politicians and labor activists, including United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain and union organizer Jaz Brisack, quote his speeches with regularity.
In Russia’s Election, Nothing Happened, but Things Got Worse
Between September 18 and 20, Russians voted for a new State Duma, along with several regional parliaments and governors. According to the Central Election Commission, turnout reached 59.8 percent, up eight points since 2021. The result was the one everyone expected.
All Aboard Eugene Debs’s Red Special
In 1908, on one of his five presidential runs, legendary socialist organizer Eugene Debs embarked on a whirlwind tour across the country on his own train, the Red Special. His mission: spread the socialist gospel to any American who would hear him out.
AutoZone Workers Won a Union. Then the Company Fired Them
Speaking with members of the newly formed AutoZone Workers Union, you would never guess that one of them had just been fired — and that another would be the next morning. That’s what happened to Nathan DuCongé and then David Valencia after they won their union election. On a Zoom call with Jacobin, though, their joy was contagious. DuCongé and his coworkers were all smiles and banter as they talked about their union campaign, how it feels to win, and the unexpected boost they received from filmmaker Boots Riley.
Robert Kramer Is the New Left’s Great, Forgotten Filmmaker
When Robert Kramer’s 1968 film The Edge reached Los Angeles, its ad in the Free Press posed a provocative question: “Should we kill the President?” And while Lyndon Johnson survived that film’s alienated would-be assassin, Kramer’s next film left little question as to where he stood. Ice, shot in early 1969 and released in late 1970, imagined an armed leftist insurrection in New York City, taking the jolting documentary-like style of Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers (1966) and bringing its war home to the Big Apple.
Publishers Killed the Paperback, Then Blamed Readers
It seems every week a new piece about the decline and fall of the American reading habit goes viral. The idea that we’re entering a literary apocalypse that threatens to destabilize our democracy is perhaps overstated, but nobody is denying the book-reading trend is grim. In the most recent international assessment of adult skills, conducted in 2023, 28 percent of American adults scored at or below the lowest level of literacy — up from 19 percent just six years earlier.
The Philips Curve Is a Tool for Waging Class War on Workers
For nearly three-quarters of a century, central banks and policymakers have relied on the Phillips curve: the idea that inflation can be kept in check by disciplining worker power and putting restraints on employment levels. In 2026, does that theory, and the depoliticization of monetary policy that accompanies it, still make sense? Perhaps the real question isn’t whether every inflation spike has the same cause and cure, but whether central banks should use higher unemployment as their default tool to stabilize prices at all.
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