By Arun Gupta (February 21, 2018) I’m convinced the Russian state did/does have the intention to stir the pot in the U.S., sabotage elections, create chaos. But that is mainly because we destroyed their country during the shock therapy of the 1990s. There was a staggering decline in life expectancy on the scale of a full-blown invasion. Then Clinton lent…
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By Arun Gupta (February 10, 2018) If you care about what’s happening in the financial markets, now is the time to panic. But then again, if you care, you are probably in the top 10% in terms of wealth in America as they own 84% of the stock. On Monday, I shrugged at the 4% drop in the markets in…
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By Arun Gupta (February 6, 2018) If you are hoping capitalism is going to implode because the markets tanked today, don’t hold your breath. The drop on Monday, February 5, in percentage terms was far from historic. If you look at the first picture, a six-month chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, it looks like it fell off a…
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By Arun Gupta (February 4, 2018) This is an insightful report on how to organize against Trump’s deportation regime. Here are some important lessons. One: Immigration is as much about labor as about race. Trump won by racializing working-class conflict, stoking white nativism and resentment against all immigrant workers from farms to high tech. A few years ago I interviewed Ana…
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By Arun Gupta (January 17, 2018) Trump is a unique danger given everything from embracing neo-Nazis to threatening genocide, but his manners are in no way uniquely offensive for an American president. That great American president loved by liberals, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who oversaw passage of the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and implementation of the Great Society, makes…
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By Teka Lark and Arun Gupta (December 22, 2017) Teka Lark: We are celebrating people being acquitted of being charged with a crime for exercising their First Amendment rights against Trump?! We are celebrating that?! I am pissed! They should not have been charged in the first place. If anyone on the left think this is a win for…
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By Arun Gupta (December 13, 2017) It is a great relief that Roy Moore lost. If he had won that would have emboldened Bannon and Trump even more: “Hey, if they elected a child molester, who cares about a rapist president?” Meanwhile, the opportunism of Kirsten Gillibrand is helping channel the energy from the Pussy March and #Metoo movement into the…
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By Arun Gupta (November 20, 2017) The reason the American Right is so powerful is because it is fundamentally defined by whiteness, capitalism, and patriarchy, and these concepts are reproduced through three mutually reinforcing institutions: Property, Policing, and Protestantism. I am leaving aside many nuances because I am interested in why the right has such extraordinary ideological cohesion and…
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By Arun Gupta (October 3, 2017) I wrote this four years ago about the left’s relationship to violence and guns. It’s more relevant than ever. Leftists who think getting armed is a political strategy need to get over their love affair with violence. Now, in these increasingly dangerous times, there may be specific instances where guns are a reluctant necessity….
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By Arun Gupta (July 28, 2017) This is my take on Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military. It should be vigorously opposed, and that can be done without glorifying or supporting militarism and American Empire Trump is throwing red meat to his base. It’s meant to delegitimize and dehumanize transgender people. He is telling his base that transgender…
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By Arun Gupta (May 17, 2017) There is a lot of grief and anguish in Portland. The killings of the two men standing up to defend women of color were horrific and jarring to everyone in the city of what their sense of community is. But life and politics go on. Here are some principles you may find useful going…
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