KPFA - Against the Grain

The far right has been on the march not only in the United States, but in Italy, Hungary, France and elsewhere, united by racist nationalism, authoritarian populist rhetoric, and a call for law and order. Jordan Camp reflects on the work of Antonio Gramsci, who analyzed the rise of fascism while languishing in Mussolini’s prisons, and considers why his emphasis on understanding the conjuncture is relevant today. Resources: Conjuncture Web Series and Podcast Jordan T. Camp, Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State University of California Press, 2016 The post Gramsci on Authoritarianism appeared first on KPFA.

Commercial sex and imperialism — army bases and brothels — have often gone hand in hand. But in the early 20th century an emergent U.S. empire defined itself as rooted in sexual purity. Historian Eva Payne describes how a heavy price for this notion of American exceptionalism was paid by women in the United States, who were policed and punished, along with those in U.S. colonies like the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. Resources: Eva Payne, Empire of Purity: The History of Americans’ Global War on Prostitution Princeton University Press, 2025 The post U.S. Empire and Sexual Morality appeared first on KPFA.

It’s an open secret that there’s an affinity between members of law enforcement and far right. White supremacist and fascist groups count police in their ranks, and many in law enforcement — from the federal down to the local level — turn a blind eye to the activities of the far right, while targeting anti-fascist and other left activists. Michael German discusses the relationship between the police and the far right. Resources: Michael German, Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within New Press, 2025 The post Police and the Far Right appeared first on KPFA.

U.S. imperialism has produced migration, sometimes to places you wouldn’t expect. According to Emily Mitchell-Eaton, the Marshall Islands and Arkansas are both central to the workings of empire. The perceptions of longtime residents of demographically transformed cities like Springdale, Arkansas reflect geographical imaginaries that occlude the fact of U.S. empire. Emily Mitchell-Eaton, New Destinations of Empire: Mobilities, Racial Geographies, and Citizenship in the Transpacific United States University of Georgia Press, 2024 The post Imperial Migration appeared first on KPFA.

Billions of dollars have been spent on Alzheimer’s research over many decades, yet no effective treatment exists. Investigative journalist Charles Piller has revealed one reason for the impasse: pivotal scientific research into Alzheimer’s disease — affirming the hypothesis that it’s caused by sticky amyloid plaques in the brain — was based on manipulated images. Resources: Charles Piller, Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s One Signal, 2025 The post Manipulating Alzheimer’s Research appeared first on KPFA.

Lawrence Grossberg explains what the cultural theorist Stuart Hall meant by a war of positions and a war of maneuvers. We also present portions of a talk Hall gave about the dynamics of media representation. And Yousuf Al-Bulushi examines certain political stances taken by South Africa’s shack dweller movement. Lawrence Grossberg, On the Way to Theory Duke University Press, 2024 Stuart Hall: Representation and the Media Yousuf Al-Bulushi, Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City Palgrave Macmillan, 2024 (Image on main page by SkepticalScience.) The post Terrains of Struggle appeared first on KPFA.

The union movement is suffering from a conundrum. While the U.S public overwhelmingly supports unions, labor lacks the capacity to help workers organize and unionize. Labor scholar and organizer Eric Blanc argues that there is a new and promising way of organizing from the bottom up, which emerged during Trump’s first term and flourished through Covid. He believes that with worker to worker organizing, unions could see explosive growth, even during Trump’s second term. Resources: Eric Blanc, We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big UC Press, 2025 Eric Blanc’s Labor Politics on Substack Photo credit: dblackadder The post Worker Organizing in the Time of Trump appeared first on KPFA.

How is the War on Terror playing out in a country like Kenya? What are its security forces doing at the U.S.’s behest, and how are ordinary Kenyans responding? Samar Al-Bulushi discusses the emergence of supranational forms of police power and their impact on human rights activism. Samar Al-Bulushi, War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror Stanford University Press, 2024 The post Counterterrorism in Context appeared first on KPFA.

Many assume the majority of people living on the streets struggle with mental illness or just need jobs — and that homelessness is unfortunate, but intractable. Longtime advocate for the unhoused, Mary Brosnahan, argues that these are myths, and that much of what we assume about homelessness is wrong. She posits that at its root is the capitalist commodification of housing, illustrated in the past by Bronx landlords getting rid of low income tenants by burning their buildings to the ground to the systemic shortage of affordable housing today. Resources: Mary Brosnahan, “They Just Need to Get a Job” 15 Myths on Homelessness Beacon Press, 2024 Invisible People Finland The post Getting Homelessness Wrong appeared first on KPFA.

What can – and can’t – you say and do as a Palestinian American teacher? Can you speak frankly about Palestine, about the occupation and oppression, about the Israel-U.S. relationship? Can you support student inquiry into matters that rankle Zionist colleagues? Social-studies educator Luma Hasan encountered intolerance and pushback while working at a reputedly liberal high school. Kevin L. Clay and Kevin Lawrence Henry Jr., eds., The Promise of Youth Anti-citizenship: Race and Revolt in Education University of Minnesota Press, 2024 Teach for Liberation The post Palestinian Teacher’s Travails appeared first on KPFA.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about race, segregation, poverty, militarism, and nonviolent resistance in two talks, one he gave in Hollywood, in March 1968, and the other in London, in December 1964. Pacifica Radio Archives (Image on main page by Wes Candela.) The post Two Talks by Dr. King appeared first on KPFA.

Against the Grain is preempted today by coverage of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the confirmation of Pam Bondi as U.S. Attorney General. The post Preempted by Congressional Hearings Coverage appeared first on KPFA.

A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. The post Against the Grain – January 14, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

In his new book, Lawrence Grossberg describes ways of thinking that have laid the foundation for the development of contemporary Western theory. Two of the thinkers he writes about are Friedrich Nietzsche, who “rejected the enlightenments,” and Stuart Hall, a pioneer in the field of cultural studies. Lawrence Grossberg, On the Way to Theory Duke University Press, 2024 (Image on main page by Nick Youngson/Alpha Stock Images.) The post Nietzsche, Hall, and “Theory” appeared first on KPFA.

It was the first of its kind program of mass surveillance: the surreal, and initially-secret, deployment of an unmanned plane flying in circles over the city of Baltimore. Sociologist Benjamin Snyder discusses the Baltimore Police Department’s short-lived experiment in spying on the city’s residents. He reflects on how technologies like the spy plane are both embraced and feared by the public –- without a deeper awareness of how flawed they often are. Resources: Benjamin H. Snyder, Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment UC Press, 2024 The post Baltimore’s Spy Plane appeared first on KPFA.

Classrooms are places where teaching happens. What if they were also places of healing and justice-seeking? Tessa Hicks Peterson describes educational approaches that foster well-being, empowerment, and critical thinking. She also emphasizes the need for trauma-informed pedagogical practices. Tessa Hicks Peterson, Liberating the Classroom: Healing and Justice in Higher Education Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025 The post Healing Higher Ed appeared first on KPFA.

It’s indisputably one of the most important works in history. Karl Marx’s Capital has been perennially embraced by those trying to understand and move beyond the capitalist system—and reviled in equal measure by those defending the established order. Yet, until now, English readers of the first volume of Marx’s magnum opus have not had access to the authoritative final version edited and approved by Marx himself. Paul Reitter and Paul North discuss their new translation, based on the last German edition of Capital. (Full-length presentation.) Resources: Karl Marx, Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 Princeton University Press, 2024 The post Marx’s Capital appeared first on KPFA.

In 1936, Nazi Germany hosted the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, amidst international calls to boycott. It was an enormously consequential event in the politics of the times, granting Hitler an international spotlight to promote the Third Reich. Much less known, as writer Michael Waters argues, is how Nazi eugenics and paranoia about transgender athletes gave rise to the gender surveillance that characterizes contemporary sports to this day. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Michael Waters, The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024 The post The Nazi Origins of Gender Surveillance in Sports appeared first on KPFA.

In a California women’s prison, domestic violence survivors who killed their abusers in self-defense came together to practice a politics of mutual care, solidarity, and resistance. Rachel Leah Klein details the origins, efforts, and achievements of Convicted Women Against Abuse, situating their activities within the charged political context of the tough-on-crime 1990s. (Encore presentation.) Rachel Leah Klein, “Surviving domestic and state violence: Women’s prison organising and the gendered politics of solidarity” Gender & History (open-access through August 2024) (Image on main page by Ryan McGrady.) The post Criminalized Survivors Mobilize appeared first on KPFA.

Why has the term complicity become so ubiquitous in recent years? Are we all complicit in the system that we live under? What use, or uses, does the notion serve? These are questions that legal scholar Francine Banner poses. She makes the argument that the term bears different meanings, sometimes holding the powerful to account and other times looking for someone to blame, rather than focusing on systemic change. She considers the shifting modern use of complicity — shaped in part by problematic scholarship on the uncaring bystander — and sees parallels in how the legal system severely penalizes those for even peripheral involvement in crimes. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Francine Banner, Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems UC Press, 2024 The post Interrogating Complicity appeared first on KPFA.