SOLOMON HUGHES highlights a 1995 Sunday Times story about the disappearance of ‘defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist.’ Even though the story was debunked, it was widely repeated across the mainstream press, creating the false – and deadly – narrative of Iraqi WMD that eventually led to war
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You can't be a pacifist in the culture wars
The ideology of the ruling class will always clash with the ideals of the oppressed — the left cannot and should not stay out of the fight. However it must pick its battles wisely and not allow identity politics to get in the way of solidarity, writes JOHN GREEN
The Me Too movement alongside Black Lives Matter are challenging widely held belief systems and traditional hierarchies — at the same time these are being distrorted and dismissed by the ruling elite and its supporters
RUBY ALDEN GIBSON believes Scottish parliament has enough powers to curtail Westminster Labour’s savage attack on welfare
KEVIN DONNELLY reports from Monte Faudo and its annual remembrance of the region’s WWII partisan anti-fascist battles
The Trump government is seizing overseas students from their homes and campuses and even off the streets, with no legal grounds and no due process, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
As global fascism grows, ROGER McKENZIE urges the left to reclaim May Day’s revolutionary roots — not as an act of nostalgia, but as fuel for building a ‘community of resistance’ against exploitation and the rise of fascism
Our unions need to make a firm stand against so-called ‘defence spending’: the boss class say there’s no magic money tree — and there should be no magic mushroom cloud either, argues NATHAN HENNEBRY
KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations
THERE is much talk in the media these days about culture wars, being “woke” and the dangers of “cancel culture” — but they are concepts few people really understand.
In a Times Radio poll in February, respondents were asked what they think “culture war” means. Only 7 per cent came up with a relevant answer, 15 per cent got it wrong, and a whopping 76 per cent said they didn’t know. However, just because people don’t know what a culture war is doesn’t mean they’re not in one.
As long as you have a class system there will be culture wars: a conflict between the hegemonic culture of the elite and that of the oppressed classes. These simply reflect the conflict between class economic interests.
Today, with the sharpening of the class struggle and an increasing awareness of the bankruptcy of capitalism, the global ideological struggle also becomes more acute.
Faced as we are by existential problems, the struggle for ideological and cultural hegemony becomes increasingly significant — but also more acrimonious.
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