1. Against the Current
   Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
   First Published: 1986
   Bi-monthly magazine oriented toward movements for social and economic justice; radical, socialist and feminist in orientation.
2. Airbrushing Barbarity
   The Warped Language of Public Policy
   Resource Type: Article
   First 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.
3. Asian American Activism Stirring
   Against The Current vol. 91
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2001
   For a brief but wonderful moment in 2000, the Ralph Nader/Winona LaDuke Presidential campaign drew widespread public attention to its central theme of restoring democracy by challenging corporate power. Speaking to thousands of supporters at “super rallies” and millions of television viewers, Nader hammered home the three general points that corporate power has:
4. Bogus, Misdirected and Effective
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 2010
   The Tea Party movement is steeped in misinformation and denial. But it has a lot to teach the left.
5. 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
   First 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.
6. The Case for Grassroots Archives 
   Resource Type: Article
   First 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.
7. Contested Truths
   Keywords in American Politics since Independence
   Resource Type: Book
   First Published: 1988
   
8. Culture Inc.
   The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression
   Resource Type: Book
   First 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.
9. Democratic Revolution and Socialist Revolution: A Reply to Malik Miah
   Resource Type: Article
   First Published: 1998
   IN ATC 75 Malik Miah presents an analysis of events surrounding the fall of Indonesian President Suharto (“Indonesia's Democratic Revolution”). As a descriptive report of what has been happening in that country his effort is valuable to activists. However, as an analytical assessment of what is at stake the article falls short.
10. Eyes Like Blank Discs
    The Guardian's Steven Poole On George Orwell's Politics And The English Language
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2013   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’.
11. From PRI to Foxismo
    Against The Current vol. 88
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    Mexico on July 2 experienced an alternation of parties in power at the national level. But the more fundamental shift away from the one-party state had begun already with the Salinas administration (1988-1994), when he tried to replace the ruling PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) with his own political and patronage apparatus, "Solidarity."
12. 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
    First 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.
13. How the System Got Trumped: Cambridge Analytica's Electoral Psyops Campaign
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
14. How to End the Tea Party (and Scare Obama at the Same Time)
    A Black / Brown Coalition
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2010
    One of the reasons the left doesn't do better is because it tends to view the right's transgressions as a moral issue rather than as a pragmatic problem as, for example, a baseball coach would do if the Tea Party were the other team. In fact, calling someone a racist is not a particularly useful political move whereas figuring out why they're getting to first base all the time, and you're not, is. The right keeps it simple. It speaks plain talk, not bland abstractions devised by some third rate branding coach. There is hardly anyone in the country who doesn't know the right opposes gay marriage, abortion and illegal immigration. Now try describing three primary goals of liberals or the left and you see the problem.
15. How Ultraleftism Divided UNAM Strike
    Against The Current vol. 88
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2000
    MEXICO CITY -- Commandeered buses flying red and black flags and Che Guevara portraits sped through the city on October 2, ferrying students to a demonstration commemorating the 1968 student massacre at the Plaza of the Three Cultures. Led by veterans of the 1968 movement, 60,000 students and their supporters slogged the fifteen kilometers from the university campus up Insurgentes and Reforma, the world's longest urban avenues, to a torchlight ceremony in the plaza. Just five weeks before, on August 28, 30,000 students had marched in support of the electricity workers' struggle against privatization.
16. I'm Right and You're an Idiot
    The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean it Up
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2016
    
17. Introduction to the Red Menace
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1976
    An introduction to, and the mission statement of, the libertarian socialist publication, The Red Menace.
18. The Left and the Elections
    Against The Current vol. 110
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2004
    Two electoral paths will be taken by those left of center this year, and all the spilled ink in the world won't affect the choices.
19. Letter to a Progressive Democrat
    Against The Current vol. 110
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2004
    Dear Progressive Democrat: I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and I'm proud of it. You voted for Nader and you regret it (or, you voted for Gore, even though you liked Nader better).
20. Marxists Internet Archive 
    Resource Type: Website
    Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
21. Mayhem, Murder and Manipulation - Mexico in Turmoil
    Against The Current vol. 123
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
22. The No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2002
    Ths book explores how democracy is constricted and deformed by economic power-brokers and a self-serving political class.
23. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - September 24, 2015
    Voter Suppression
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First 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.
24. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - July 2, 2016
    Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn, and Contempt for Democracy
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
25. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - November 11, 2017
    Left Parties
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First 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.
26. Political Smears in U.S. Never Change: the NYT's 1967 Attack on MLK's Anti-War Speech
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
27. Politics of Illusion
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1980
    Elections have become a contest to determine who is the best actor.
28. The postmodern left and the success of neoliberalism
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
29. The Power of Persuasion
    The Politics of the New Right in Ontario
    Resource Type: Book
    First 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."
30. Pretensions to Empire
    Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2006
    Delves into the perversion of America's democratic legacy under George W. Bush, and makes the case for impeachment.
31. A pro-Israel group's plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
    
32. The Red Menace 
    A libertarian socialist newsletter
    Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
    First Published: 1975   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.
    
33. Rejoinder: The Dynamics of Revolution
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1998
    ONE COMMON ERROR socialists tend to make when discussing unfolding revolutions in other countries is to offer programmatic analysis that has little to do with the real situation on the ground. Comrade Steve Bloom makes that mistake in regards to “the relationship between the democratic and the socialist revolutions”in Indonesia.
34. Rhetoric for Radicals
    A Handbook for Twenty-first Century Activists
    Resource Type: Book
    First 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.
35. Right-Wing Harassment Strategy Against Dems Detailed In Memo
    'Yell,' 'Stand Up And Shout Out,' 'Rattle Him'
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2009
    
36. SDS 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1973   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.
37. The Sixties 
    Years of Hope, Days of Rage
    Resource Type: Book
    First 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.
38. Slumming It At the Rodeo
    The Cultural Roots of Canada's Right-Wing Revolution
    Resource Type: Book
    First 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.
    
39. Some of my best comrades are friends
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1979
    The left's sloppy use of language indicates sloppy thinking.
40. Something has to give
    Emotional issues are potent
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
41. The 10 Dumbest, Most Offensive Political Ads in Recent Memory
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
42. Thieving Sons of Bushes
    Against The Current vol. 91
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2001
    “Never Trust a Son of Bush” was one of many signs at George W. Bush's presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. on January 20. Some 25,000 marched in Washington and 15,000 rallied in San Francisco. The D.C. protest was the largest one at a presidential inauguration since 1973 -- at President Nixon's second term.
43. Thoughtcrimes and Stupidspeak: Our Assault Against Words
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
44. Uncovering the Sixties
    Life and Times of the Undergound Press
    Resource Type: Book
    First 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.
45. The Vogeler Senate Campaign
    Against The Current vol. 124
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    With just four months until the general election, Green Party candidate Rae Vogeler has established herself as the main opposition to millionaire incumbent Senator Herb Kohl. Vogeler's campaign took off last September when the mother of two decided that Wisconsin needed a Senator to stand up for working people, end the war, and fund good jobs, quality education and affordable health care.
46. We need popular participation, not populism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2017
    Wainright dissects the problems with liberal democracy and argues for real democratic self-government.
47. What is Stephen Harper doing to Canada? How can we stop him?
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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.
48. What's the Matter with Kansas? 
    How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 2004
    Explores the rise of conservative populism in the United States through the lens of Frank's native state of Kansas. According to his analysis, the political discourse of recent decades has dramatically shifted from the class animus of traditional leftism to one in which "explosive" cultural issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, are used to redirect anger towards "liberal elites."
49. What's the Matter With That Union Boss?
    The Real Yes Men
    Resource Type: Article
    First 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?
50. 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.
51. Wimps Can't Win
    The Sissy Left
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2010
    When did we on the left forget how to fight back in dark alleys?
52. Words, words, words...
    Diemer, Ulli
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1978
    The misuse of language implies a failure to think clearly, to analyse correctly, to communicate with others.
53. The Workers' Party and Political Crisis in Brazil: Lula at a Crossroads?
    Against The Current vol. 123
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 2006
    In June 2005, the first allegations of a rogue politician in a rightwing party in coalition with Brazil's governing Workers' Party (PT) seemed spurious enough. The politician himself, Roberto Jefferson, had a long history of allegations of corruption, and of narrowly escaping indictment in Brazil's last corruption crisis in 1993. According to celebrity magazines, he had had a makeover, including plastic surgery, before coming forward with the allegations of a "payment for votes" scheme in congress in which the ruling PT doled out a monthly allowance for sympathetic politicians in congress.

Experts on Politique/Rh‚torique/R‚alit‚ in the Sources Directory

1. Marxists Internet Archive