Historian Gerald Horne, author of several books, including the forthcoming The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, talks to Esha, host of Historic.ly, the web program that “decolonizes history and debunks myths and misinformation taught to you in school and on corporate media.” Much of Dr. Horne’s work, it turns out, is based on his question, “Why is there not a stronger left movement in the USA, the leading imperialist country?” | more…

Students at A-level are taught to back up their arguments with data obtained from reputable sources. Teachers guide them towards official institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. Donnelly in this book warns us to be cautious of the assumptions made when collecting data, and the argument which the data is supporting…. | more…

Professor Horne is under no illusions as to the reception which such bold, defiant assertions will be received by bourgeois and liberal historians, because every statement in the book is scrupulously footnoted, and indeed there are no less than two in the introductory paragraph quoted above. Professor Horne comes to the field of combative ‘history from below’ both well-armed and unwilling to take prisoners. This is an assertive position, which in the view of this reviewer, is well due admiration and applause…. | more…

Recently, commemorations took place across the country to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970. But often left out of the history books is the Jackson State massacre. Two students were killed and 12 wounded eleven days later when, on May 15, 75 state and local policemen opened fire on a dormitory at the predominantly Black Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi. Police said there was a sniper on the roof of the dorm. That turned out to be a lie…. | more…

Facing the Anthropocene describes a new geological epoch (the anthropocene) and its impacts on the earth system. The book further identifies the possible cause of the present crisis of the earth system (fossil capitalism) and discusses the effects of fossil capitalism on the earth system (environmental degradation, climate change)…. | more…

“The earth is dying and capitalism is to blame. Facing this, one can opt for hope, as Marxist ecosocialists do, or one can succumb to pessimism fed by dark thoughts on human nature and the intractable, deadly persistence of our economic system of exploitation. Human nature has a destructive and murderous side, while capitalism, expressing that side with its endless growth, endless greed, blights the planet like cancer…” | more…

Allen Ruff, host of A Public Affair, from community radio station WORT in Madison, Wisconsin, talks to Dr. Gerald Horne, historian and prolific author—whose book, The Dawning of the Apocalypse, is forthcoming this July. In their conversation, Horne explores the assertion that the arrival of COVID-19 has exposed inequities in our social system and continues to act as a catalyst for deep and simmering social and economic crises—all worsened by the current political system…. | more…

The first volume of Michael Heinrich’s biography of Karl Marx, if any indication of the two volumes yet to come, signals a genuine event in the understanding of Marx and his work. With it, the terrain for understanding all aspects of Marx’s life has likely changed fundamentally…. | more…

In this comprehensive study of the connections among capitalism, slavery and white supremacy, Gerald Horne, the Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of more than 30 scholarly books, takes a deep dive into the 17th century, revealing fallacies in what later ages have said about the earlier ones, showing the slow and steady consolidation of axes of differentiation in the service of capital, and ultimately connecting the choice in 2016 of “a vulgar billionaire” with the cross-class coalition that originated in the colonial settlements of the New World…. | more…

This book is expressive of a new wave of scholarly reassessments of China’s transition from its socialist past to capitalist present. From a Chinese perspective, it has not much in common with the canonical CCP narratives widely circulated in printed media and Party phone apps, as Zhun Xu employs a “betrayal of the revolution” rhetoric that pinpoints ruptures between a socialist China under Mao Zedong’s leadership and a capitalist China headed by Deng Xiaoping and afterwards … | more…

Despite Trump’s promises, this reduction of immigration will do nothing to slow the pandemic or to protect citizens’ jobs. Its only real effect will be to excite Trump’s base, disrupt the lives of tens of thousands of families, and expose the underlying hypocrisy of U.S. immigration policy…. | more…

Fighting fossil fuel companies can be dangerous business. The people of County Mayo, Ireland, found that out when they rose up against Shell Oil in the early 2000s. The uprising lasted 15 years. Protesters were beaten and jailed. But they delayed the refinery’s opening by 10 years, cost Shell billions of dollars and caused the company a public relations nightmare, as a new book by Fred Wilcox, Shamrocks and Oil Slicks, recounts…. | more…

This is a special book, bearing an almost sacred topic for all those interested in the history of the American labor and the Left. The vibrant, pre-1920 Socialist Party, waxing strong and confident until struck down for its resistance to the US entry into the First World War, stood for a larger and more diverse radicalism. including Wobblies, quasi-wobblies. labor and cultural radicals of no certain description and of several generations. They had in common the sense that dramatic change in society was possible, perhaps inevitable…. | more…