Category: Left strategy

07 Jun

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Living the Dream Under the Accord (podcast)

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Last week I was interviewed on the wonderful ‘Living the Dream’ podcast. We discussed the Accord, neoliberalism and the ALP Hawke-Keating government. Our focus was on recent articles by Van Badham and Wayne Swan in The Guardian, and how the ALP and unions are attempting to understand and frame the experience of the Hawke-Keating government today. I discuss […]

16 Nov

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Anti-politics and social movements in the Age of Trump

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Guest post by JAMES ROBERTSON The general elections on 8 November 2016 were a massive vote of “no confidence” in the US political establishment. Whether measured in the active support for Trump’s populist campaign or in the passive refusal of millions of voters to turn out for Clinton, the message was clear: millions of Americans […]

18 Sep

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The plebiscite & the impasse on marriage equality

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As the Pet Shop Boys acutely observed, “love is a bourgeois construct,” so same-sex marriage (or “marriage equality”) has always seemed to me to be a bit of a double-edged sword — both the removal of one of the last legal forms of discrimination against LGBTIQ people and the integration of same-sex couples into a historically […]

02 Mar

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Why I’m not feeling The Bern

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GUEST POST BY SIMON COPLAND Last weekend dealt a blow to the Bernie Sanders juggernaut. Pipped at the post by rival Hillary Clinton in Nevada and crushed by her in South Carolina, Sanders’s route to the Democratic nomination is looking tougher than ever. Many will mourn this potential loss. Yet I am not feeling the […]

05 Oct

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What’s left after the Greek debacle? (Part 3 of an obituary)

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Following on from Part 1 and Part 2 of my analysis — which were first published in abridged form as a single article at Jacobin Magazine — I bring the Greek tragedy up to date with why the Syriza breakaway Popular Unity failed its first electoral test, as well as delving deeper into the dead-end of trying […]

02 Oct

Comments Off on Kevin Ovenden’s Syriza: Inside the Labyrinth out now

Kevin Ovenden’s Syriza: Inside the Labyrinth out now

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Left Flank’s Kevin Ovenden has just released his book on Syriza, and its rise as a key party of the European radical Left. Syriza: Inside the Labyrinth is a must-read for those interested in radical politics in Greece, and more broadly across Europe. Many of you will have followed Kevin’s posts on Greece through this blog. We were very pleased to work […]

21 Sep

Comments Off on Greece’s radical Left experiment: An obituary (Part 1)

Greece’s radical Left experiment: An obituary (Part 1)

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The results of the Greek election, with Syriza again able to rule with the help of the hard-right nationalists of ANEL (the Independent Greeks), represents a further blow to the radical Left political project in Europe. Syriza now has an electoral mandate to implement the austerity deal it agreed with the Eurogroup, and which saw […]

17 Sep

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The murder of Pavlos Fyssas: a political anatomy

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On the occasion of the second anniversary of the murder of Greek antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, we are publishing a detailed account and political analysis of the crime and the neo-Nazi organisation behind it, Golden Dawn, written by THANASIS KAMPAGIANNIS, one of the lawyers involved in the trial. Left Flank strongly encourages all our readers […]