- Against the Current
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 1986
Bi-monthly magazine oriented toward movements for social and economic justice; radical, socialist and feminist in orientation.
- Airbrushing Barbarity
The Warped Language of Public Policy
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2013
Couching moral/political matters in technocratic language helps us forget the unpleasantness of the underlying incivility and brutality of political measures. Political discourse is fundamentally dishonest in that it airbrushes barbarity.
- The Ambassador
Resource Type: Film/Video
Published: 2011
Danish journalist Mads Brügger goes undercover with a diplomatic passport to expose the blood diamond trade in Africa.
- Canada After Harper
His Ideology-fuelled Attack on Canadian Society and Values, and How We Can Resist and Create the Country We Want
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2015
Essays documenting the breadth and depth of the Harper government's attack on institutions, policies, and programs that embody values and principles shared by most Canadians: education, health care, women's rights, science and research, the economy, labour unions, water and natural resources, and Aboriginal affairs.
- The Case for Grassroots Archives
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2012
Grassroots archives play a valuable role in what has been called "the battle of memory". People's history projects such as grassroots archives preserve and share stories of resistance, hidden histories, and alternative visions.
- Contested Truths
Keywords in American Politics since Independence
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1988
- Counterpunch
Periodical profile
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Progressive U.S. website/newsletter.
- Culture Inc.
The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1989
Schiller defends democratic expression and free access to information while demonstrating the ways in which public expression, public space, and public access to information are becoming increasingly limited and controlled.
- Curiouser and curiouser
Tea Party members aren't foaming at the mouth racist bigots
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2010
A journalist travels to the first National Tea Party Convention in Tennessee as a delegate and finds the other delegates privately share his disdain for the racism and conspiracy theories the group fosters. He describes the delegates as average voters baffled by Obama's health care bill and economic policies.
- Eyes Like Blank Discs
The Guardian's Steven Poole On George Orwell's Politics And The English Language
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2014
Poole's review of Orwell is itself a textbook example of the kind of alienated response described by Orwell, Fromm and Schmidt. Whereas Orwell's essay is the work of an impassioned, outspoken individual opposing 'the machine society’, Poole's article is the work of a corporate professional operating ‘within the confines of an assigned ideology’.
- Flack Attack
Public relations is shaping public life in ways we're not supposed to notice
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1994
Public relations plays an important role in contemporary US politics. This essay follows the coopted grassroots organizing techniques of PR firms hired by industry lobbyists to undertake counteractivism campaigns. PR men mobilize citizens who may be opposed to new legislation, for example farmers may be opposed to clean air legislation that would impose taxes on small trucks, organize them and coach them to appeal to their congressman.
- Hardworking families
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia
Resource Type: Article
The phrase "hardworking families" or "working families" is an example of a glittering generality in contemporary political discourse. It is used in the politics of the United Kingdom and of the United States, and was heavily used by the political parties in the campaign of the United Kingdom general election, 2005 and the Australian federal election, 2007 where the Rudd Labor Party used the term extensively.
- Harper, Serial Abuser of Power: The Evidence Compiled
The Tyee's full, updated list of 70 Harper government assaults on democracy and the law.
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2015
Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have racked up dozens of serious abuses of power since forming government in 2006. From scams to smears, monkey-wrenching opponents to intimidating public servants like an Orwellian gorilla, some offences are criminal, others just offend human decency. Here are 70 instances of abuse of power by the Stephen Harper government.
- How the System Got Trumped: Cambridge Analytica's Electoral Psyops Campaign
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2018
Available from Cinema Libre Studios, "Trumping Democracy" provides the key to understanding how we have ended up with the most unpopular president in history.
- I'm Right and You're an Idiot
The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean it Up
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2016
- Introduction to the Red Menace
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1976
An introduction to, and the mission statement of, the libertarian socialist publication, The Red Menace.
- Just Report Balloon Trips Premier Asks
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1977
- Lies Rob Ford has told
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2011
- Marxists Internet Archive
Resource Type: Website
Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
- Mayhem, Murder and Manipulation - Mexico in Turmoil
Against The Current vol. 123
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2006
Mexican police attacked activists and residents in the town of San Salvador Atenco in the State of Mexico in early May, killing one, injuring scores, and jailing over 200. The police attack on Atenco followed a violent police assault on striking steelworkers in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán that left two dead and several severely injured. Local residents believe that the Fox government was taking revenge on Atenco activists for their success four years ago in blocking the construction of a new airport.
- News and Letters
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Articles from a Marxist-Humanist perspective.
- The No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2002
Ths book explores how democracy is constricted and deformed by economic power-brokers and a self-serving political class.
- Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - September 24, 2015
Voter Suppression
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 2015
Featuring information and articles related to the October 19, 2015 Canadian election. The topic of the week is Voter Suppression, with articles about voter suppression in Canada and the United States.
- Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - July 2, 2016
Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn, and Contempt for Democracy
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2016
Brexit, the British vote to leave the European Union, has thrown the political elites into turmoil and confusion. The referendum was supposed to be a safe political manoeuvre, a way to produce an appearance of democratic legitimacy for the profoundly undemocratic structures of the EU. The gambit turned out to be a spectacular miscalculation, as millions of people turned out to express their opposition to a state of affairs that is leaving the majority worse off while enriching a small minority. This issue of Other Voices looks at the Brexit referendum, elite loathing for democracy, and the related attempt to get rid of Labour's leftwing leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
- Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - November 11, 2017
Left Parties
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 2017
In recent years, there have been repeated attempts to build left political parties and coalitions, i.e. parties to the left of the established social democratic parties which have long become part of the neoliberal capitalist mainstream. Left parties have emerged out of mass movements in countries like Spain (Podemos), Germany (Die Linke), and Greece (Syriza). In Latin America, in the last two decades, left movements or parties have formed governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, and Uruguay. What these new left parties/movements have in common is a strategy of engaging in grassroots organizing and also running in elections. They all describe themselves as socialist, though in many cases their programs are more reminiscent of what social democrats used to advocate decades ago: reforms that would tame and manage capitalism rather than abolish it. Their ultimate vision may be a world without capitalism, but their immediate proposals are more modest and incremental, though still significantly to the left of the neo-liberal consensus.
- Political doubletalk
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1978
Perhaps the most striking thing about most politicians is that they seem completely incapable of giving a straight answer to anything, of talking in ordinary language, of communicating. Language for them isn’t a way of getting ideas across, but of confusing people so they won’t understand what’s really going on.
- Political Smears in U.S. Never Change: the NYT's 1967 Attack on MLK's Anti-War Speech
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2015
John Oliver's Monday night interview of Edward Snowden -- which in 24 hours has been viewed by 3 million people on YouTube alone -- renewed all the standard attacks in Democratic circles accusing Snowden of being a traitor in cahoots with the Kremlin.
- Politics of Communication
A Study in the Political Sociology of Language, Socialization, and Legitimation
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1973
- Politics of Illusion
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1980
Elections have become a contest to determine who is the best actor.
- The postmodern left and the success of neoliberalism
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2016
The rise of neoliberalism across the globe for decades, and its continued resilience since the 2007-2008 financial crisis in particular, forces us to ask why there has not been a more successful resistance against it.
- The Power of Persuasion
The Politics of the New Right in Ontario
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2007
Kozolanka looks at how the Mike Harris's new right conservative government came to power in Ontario Premier Mike Harris by using successful strategies from other countries to gain public accquiescence for its neo-conservative policies. Relying on evidence drawn from literature, interviews and content analysis, she argues that this trajectory was "neither haphazard nor narrowly constructed."
- Pretensions to Empire
Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2006
Delves into the perversion of America's democratic legacy under George W. Bush, and makes the case for impeachment.
- A pro-Israel group's plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2008
Electronic Intifada exposes a secret scheme by a pro-Israel pressure group to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.
- The Red Menace
A libertarian socialist newsletter
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 1980
Articles on topics such as socialism, Marxism, anarchism, work, popular education, organizing, wages for housework, Leninism, bureaucracy, hierarchy, jargon, prostitution, obscenity, science fiction, and terrorism.
- Rhetoric for Radicals
A Handbook for Twenty-first Century Activists
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2008
Activists often suffer from a credibility gap because of their lack of coherent message and strategic delivery. Rhetoric for Radicals addresses and helps solve these problems. It provides the tools to develop the all-important communication skills necessary to be effectively heard.
- SDS
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1974
The rise and development of the Students for a Democratic Society, the organization that became the major expression of the American left in the 1960s -- its passage from student protest to institutional resistance to revolutionary activism, and its ultimate impact on American politics and life.
- The Sixties
Years of Hope, Days of Rage
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1987
One of the best books on the Sixties in the U.S., bringing to life the political and cultural currents, including especially the music, which raged during that decade, and setting them in historical context.
- Slumming It At the Rodeo
The Cultural Roots of Canada's Right-Wing Revolution
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1998
Are the Federal Reform Party's Manning, Ontario's Harris and Alberta's Klein the struttin' cowboy champions of direct democracy? Or just sell- outs to the private sector? Laird tackles these questions.
- Some of my best comrades are friends
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1979
The left's sloppy use of language indicates sloppy thinking.
- Something has to give
Emotional issues are potent
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1980
One of the things that the recent civic election made clear is that left-leaning and reform candidates can be very vulnerable if right-wing groups are able to seize on emotional questions and make them issues during the an election campaign.
- The 10 Dumbest, Most Offensive Political Ads in Recent Memory
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2011
Not a single election cycle goes by without some attempt to use fear of the "other" to win votes. Sadly, the results are sometimes successful.
- Thoughtcrimes and Stupidspeak: Our Assault Against Words
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2016
We are tortured with repetitions. How many bloggers do we have in cyberspace, opining in a Duckspeak that gets a Bellyfeel response because those who have an opposing Bellyfeel response listen only to their Duckspeak bloggers. 152 million bloggers as of 2013. 500 million tweets per day. 1.71 billion active users on Facebook. 4 billion YouTube views per day. A Pandora’s Box opened that cannot be closed, perhaps because what cybertech installs can neither be abjured nor rejected. "It's all good" apparently. Perhaps not.
- Uncovering the Sixties
Life and Times of the Undergound Press
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1985
A book about the Sixties and how they were recorded by radical participants. It traces how movements and communities convinced that their news did not fit into the agenda of mainstream media covered themselves in print.
- We need popular participation, not populism
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2017
Wainright dissects the problems with liberal democracy and argues for real democratic self-government.
- What is Stephen Harper doing to Canada? How can we stop him?
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2015
The Harper regime has had a toxic effect on Canada. The wealthy are better off, but most Canadians are worse off, and rights and freedoms, democracy, access to information, and science have suffered. How can we stop him? Here is a factsheet which can be downloaded, printed, and distributed as a two-sided flyer.
- What's the Matter With That Union Boss?
The Real Yes Men
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2013
Why do the most right-wing politicians and corporate news outlets always use the term “union boss”? Because the worst thing they can think of is to say the leader of a labour organization acts like a capitalist? Or the capitalist’s lackey?
- Why Voters Aren't Motivated by a Laundry List of Positions on Issues
Resource Type: Article
An introduction to cognitive policy – the values, frames, and arguments that make sense of the political process.
- Words, words, words...
Diemer, Ulli
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1978
The misuse of language implies a failure to think clearly, to analyse correctly, to communicate with others.
|
AlterLinks
© 2021.
|