JULY 17, 2026

Platner’s collapse doesn’t mean we should reject outsiders in politics
Graham Platner is out of the Maine Senate race, burdened by controversies that include a troubling rape accusation, which he denies. His departure is no doubt a good thing that will make it easier for Democrats to win back the Senate. But progressives should pay attention to the discussion around Platner. His collapse is being turned into something larger, supposed proof that people from outside politics have no business being in it. We don’t need fewer amateurs running for office. We need far more of them, recruited seriously. The Guardian

How American Socialism Changed, and Stormed the Democratic Party
The movement was better at critiquing the system than reshaping it. But it has never had this much mainstream political power.

Socialists are used to losing in this country. Yet their movement has endured, because socialism — more of a spirit than a single ideology — adapts to each era. Socialists are astute critics of the status quo, always imagining other ways to live, whatever historical moment they happen to be in. Now their fortunes have turned, and they could be “on the verge of the political revolution we have fought for for such a long time,” as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said last week. NYT

The New World Climate Order
“The parameters of environmental politics have shifted radically in the last few years. Looking back, from the Rio Earth Summit through to the 2008 financial crisis, corporate carbon trading was the most salient mode of climate action, with renewable-energy projects a distant second—or perhaps third, behind the very active nuclear lobby. The failure of these policies saw renewed debate around eco-socialist policies in the 2010s and a new wave of youth climate activism, amid floods, fires and a fast-thawing tundra. After 2020, as China became the world’s leading manufacturer of solar panels and electric cars, the Biden Administration poured tax credits and subsidies into renewables and electrification projects. Just a few years later, not only has Trump [reversed these policies but elevated fossil power].” Our comrade Thea Riofrancos surveys the terrain in an extensive interview in New Left Review — via 5 Leftie Links

FILM: We’re All Trapped in Capitalism’s Backrooms
An internet urban legend, now a hit horror movie, shows the vast, meaningless maze behind modern life. “The Backrooms are not a haunted house, nor an abandoned ruin, a cursed forest, or any of the traditional thresholds through which the uncanny once entered human life. Instead, they are a vision of horror stripped of enchantment: an endless, fluorescent purgatory assembled from the leftover materials of capitalism. In the Backrooms, the mystery is not supernatural but infrastructural: a place where the hidden architecture of modern life, from its storage spaces to its industrial offices, swallows the individual whole.” Current Affairs via Portside

Property, ‘Sabotage,’ and the Origins of Anti-Left Repression
In order for the left to defend legitimate protest, the always bad faith question “so do you support vandalism?” needs a clear and principled answer. — “The language contained in these [1917-1922] criminal syndicalism laws laid out a formula for anti-left repression that has proven both durable and widely appealing: the limitation of political speech and organizing in the name of property protection. The language of “sabotage” contained in these statutes deserves our attention, as property destruction continues to demarcate the boundary of acceptable speech and action. Destruction of property, no matter how minor or incidental, is regularly used to signal that a protest has “gone too far.” Law and Political Economy Project blog via 5 Leftie Links

Speaking in Language Everyone Understands
As DSA grows and expands, we are confronted with the question of how to reach ever broader numbers of people without sacrificing principles — how do we organizationally speak in a language that resonates beyond the circles of the already radicalized? This is the question raised by Mehran Khalili in”Left Answers for Scared People” in Waging NonViolence. 

Populism: Left Variant
Jim Hightower — former Texas Agricultural Commissioner who comes out of that state’s left populist tradition — has consistently sought to remind us that left and progressive ideas are the property of the people. For decades he has posed the struggle for justice as a fight between the common good and the elite. An extensive interview in Barnraiser provides a great deal of food for thought.