Andrew Cuomo needed Republican votes to beat Zohran Mamdani. A super PAC (political action committee) backing him, funded partly by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, found the fastest way to get them. In late October, Defend NYC spent a quarter million dollars texting New York voters a quote from Donald Trump; this race was Cuomo or “communism coming to NYC.” Mamdani has never called himself a communist. Asked directly on “Meet the Press,” he said he isn’t one. The label went out anyway, because the label isn’t meant to be accurate. It’s meant to work.…

Joel Osteen fills a 16,800-seat former basketball arena in Houston on most Sundays. He is one face of a broader movement. This is commonly called the prosperity gospel, and has become one of the most contested intersections of faith and economics in American life. Its core claim, as summarised by Britannica, is straightforward: God wants believers to experience financial prosperity, physical health, and overall success in this life, achievable through positive confessions, faithful tithing, and unfaltering belief. Depending on who’s describing it, that claim is either liberating good news or a theology built to serve capital. Both sides present real…

Whilst the Soviet Union (USSR) collapsed, the United States (U.S.) never stopped needing it. For much of the twentieth century, the USSR gave the U.S. more than rivalry. The USSR’s existence gave the U.S. an opponent that could be milked for moral absolution, all the while making appearing as the patron saint of righteousness and the champion of ultimate evil. Against Soviet communism, the U.S proclaimed an unmoving stance of fighting for freedom against tyranny, capitalism against communism, faith against atheism, and democracy against dictatorship. The Cold War was not merely a geopolitical contention between two superpowers. Instead, the Cold…

It is easy to see capitalism as natural to humanity. The system seems so ordinary that hierarchy, ownership and competition look less like enforced societal conditions and more like the natural architecture of life. We work, we rent, we borrow and we compete our way through systems we rarely control. This mechanism is all too familiar to human civilization, and shares an eerie resemblance to capitalism’s predecessor. America’s present crisis is not only capitalist, but also Neo-feudal. Feudalism refers to a social and political structure that is built around land, hierarchy and obligation. Power was not concentrated as it is…

It is no mystery how the whisper of communism still sends shivers down Americans’ spines. This reaction has been long conditioned and refined since the initial wave of panic following the First World War, coined as the First Red Scare. This innate fear was triggered by two major events: the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in the USSR led by Vladimir Lenin as well as a surge in organised labour strikes and a nationwide bombing campaign led by anarchist groups in 1919. Both these events terrorised the public, perpetuating the idea that communism was indeed a poison—one that welcomed chaos and sought…

LinkedIn is easy to mock because it often feels ridiculous. Feeds are lined with posts of people claiming corporate prestige with saturated jargon that no one really understands. Layoffs become “new chapters”, and desperation is portrayed as being “open to new opportunities”. Ordinary employment is narrated as a moral awakening, with those who can’t follow the cryptic lexicon as simply not being on their level. The language is so polished it begins to feel inhuman, as if every post is passed through a motivational filter and carefully stripped of any real insight. But the absurdity of LinkedIn is not the…

America was the country of tomorrow, a place people would travel to live out their dreams, to replace their tomorrows with a better one. The country spoke of frontiers, pioneers, economic strength, civil rights and an abundance of promises. The future was not always fairly distributed, nor was it ever innocent. For many Americans, the old dream encompassed exclusion and violence. And yet there was still a public perception of progress. The politicians knew how to navigate change and shine a light on the path forward. Yet today, American politics seems less certain that tomorrow exists. Americans seem to sigh…

Everyone knows nothing is ever neutral. Neutrality seems like a critical routine in modern discourse. As distrust in the media surges, publications face disdain for bias, and people are looking elsewhere to understand the modern world. Yet beneath this distrust, there is a hidden third party that sits quietly but viciously playing with the masses and their personal politics: the algorithmic systems that shape not only what people see, but what they believe, resent and learn. Its invisibility lies not in common knowledge but in its complex abilities to carry the will of the capitalist and its creators. For most,…

The conflict with Iran continues to drive oil prices upward, yet American politicians talk about national security while the working class absorbs the economic consequences. Higher fuel costs never seriously affect the wealthy or the architects of the war in Washington. Instead, the ones who suffer are delivery drivers, commuters and workers already struggling under stagnant wages and spiraling inflation. For years, both parties have framed military escalation as a necessary step in protecting America from forces abroad, while ignoring the consequences back home. But war is never just a geopolitical battle of manpower. Every day that America is fighting…

American politics has since departed into the realm of personality politics. Increasingly, political figures are required not to advocate for policies or constitutional rights, but rather perform an identity in ways that are marketable and pocket-heavy. A facade that doesn’t have to earn respect, but earns a platform to influence. The emergence of figures like Erika Kirk illustrates how the face of politics is changing and personifies this shift with particular clarity. Erika Kirk is not significant because she represents coherent, revolutionary thought. Her platform was not bestowed upon her for anything remarkable, for she is just another conservative white…