Back in 1941, the year of my birth, fascism stood on the brink of conquering the world. Fortunately, a titanic struggle turned the tide, producing a postwar international order committed to promoting democratic institutions, improving living and working conditions for all people, and, through the United Nations, saving future generations "from the scourge of war." But, in recent years, fascist movements and parties -- adopting the old Radical Right playback of racism, xenophobia, and militarism -- have made a dramatic revival in numerous nations.
Published Articles by Lawrence Wittner
Although today's public protests against nuclear weapons can't compare to the major antinuclear upheavals of past decades, there are clear indications that most Americans reject the Trump administration's nuclear weapons policies. These indications include public opinion polls on nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements, the administration's $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons buildup, and the use of nuclear weapons, as well as strong antinuclear resolutions recently adopted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and state and local governments.
A workers and their unions have learned over the centuries, a nonprofit employer is not necessarily a better boss than a profit-making one. That sad truth is reinforced by the experience of thousands of nurses at Albany Medical Center, who have been fighting for a fair contract since April 2018, when they voted for union representation.
This little satire -- in the form of a public relations statement -- celebrates how rulers of powerful countries are making their nations "great" again by improving the opportunities for mass death and destruction.
Amid what we are told is an "economic miracle," the gap between the super-rich and the rest of us is rapidly increasing. According to federal government data released this year, economic inequality in the United States has reached the highest level since the U.S. Census Bureau began measuring it five decades ago.
The meaning of democratic socialism -- a mixture of political and economic democracy -- should be no mystery to Americans, who appear happy enough with a wide range of democratic socialist institutions in the United States, including public schools, public parks, minimum wage laws, Social Security, public radio, Medicare, public libraries, and the U.S. postal service. Even so, a remarkable number of Americans mistakenly associate democratic socialism with dictatorship and oppression. For more than a century, communists and conservatives helped cause this confusion.
In recent years, internationalism -- cooperation among nations for promotion of the common good -- has acquired a bad reputation. But this loss of support for internationalism, especially among progressive thinkers and activists, is based upon a hijacking of the term by the leaders of the major powers, who have employed it to mask their struggles for world dominance. Cooperative internationalism is quite different, and could prevent international aggression, as well as address the climate catastrophe, the refugee crisis, the destructive policies of multinational corporations, and worldwide violations of human rights.
Although the pundits say the U.S. economy is booming -- and it certainly is for the country's billionaires -- it's doing very little for the incomes of American workers. And much of the responsibility for this situation lies with Republican officeholders, especially Donald Trump.
The Trump administration has unilaterally withdrawn from the Iran nuclear agreement, destroyed the INF Treaty, indicated its intention to scrap the New START Treaty and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, embarked on a massive nuclear arms race with Russia and other nuclear powers, and lowered the threshold for nuclear war. And so, dear presidential debate moderators, don't you -- as stand-ins for the American people -- think it might be worthwhile to ask the candidates some questions about U.S. preparations for nuclear war and how best to avert a global catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude?
Is the United States becoming a plutocracy? As American wealth becomes ever more concentrated in the hands of a small number of individuals, these billionaires have acquired a central role in American elections. The result has been a decisive shift rightward in U.S. politics and public policy.