This note introduces our Spring 2025 issue. Read the Table of Contents here. Subscribe to get a copy.

This issue is the first of Boston Review’s fiftieth anniversary year. You’ll find a forum on the constitutional crisis at the heart of this dangerous moment for the country and a bold new design. And in a special archival feature—the first of fifty to appear in print and online—John Ganz introduces our Summer 2000 essay “On Post-Fascism,” by the late philosopher and one-time member of Hungarian Parliament G. M. Tamás. It has proven “one of the most prescient and insightful political texts of the new century,” Ganz writes.

The first issue of BR appeared in June 1975. The magazine was then called New Boston Review, published by a small nonprofit and focused on literature and the arts. Vol. 1, No. 1 was 32 pages and sold for 75 cents, in tabloid format, with Susan Sontag in the front and classifieds in the back. In 1991, with New gone from the name, the magazine took a sharp editorial turn. Politics had always been in our pages—Sontag spoke frankly of Vietnam just months after the war ended—but we resolved that it would now be our beating heart. We were inspired by Noam Chomsky’s 1967 essay, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” Intellectuals are a privileged group, Chomsky argued, and with those privileges come large responsibilities—chief among them, “to speak the truth and expose lies.”

We embraced that responsibility and saw it as part of a broader commitment to a radically more democratic and egalitarian society. So we focused increasingly on political argument—examining imperial escapades that have done so much damage, addressing inequalities of class, race, and gender, and proposing paths to a better future. Our format shifted too. Because ideas grow stronger through dialogue, we brought people into conversation about what justice requires and how best to realize it. The result became our signature feature—the forum—which confronts seemingly intractable challenges with new ideas and perspectives.

We are proud of what we’ve accomplished over fifty years, but we will not be celebrating with a lavish gala. At a time of spiraling authoritarianism, our democratic purpose is more urgent than ever. We face an autocratic executive eroding basic liberties, usurping legislative and judicial power, targeting the most vulnerable in spectacular displays of cruelty—and hoping to crush independent institutions, free expression, and critical thought. We will celebrate by standing up for precisely those things, publishing work that keeps faith with the democratic commitments that serve as our north star.

That begins with this issue’s forum. Amid Trump’s brazen attacks, courts have played a leading role in resistance. Political scientist Lisa L. Miller warns that liberal hopes in such checks and balances are misplaced. Far from a safeguard of democracy, she argues, America’s constitutional order has always been at odds with it. Too many checks and balances are the problem, breeding the dysfunction that got us here. Powerful elites exploit our fragmented system of government to block desperately needed reforms, and only political movements that recognize these obstacles and mobilize large majorities can get us beyond the status quo. Respondents disagree about how to build a successful movement and the best way to make our political institutions more responsive to ordinary people. But all are clear that we face a serious crisis and must respond accordingly.

Elsewhere in the issue, Judith Levine reports on mutual aid as resistance, Troy Nahumko writes from Spain on the far right’s war on memory, and Debbie Nathan traces the insidious history of the national security exception fueling Trump’s deportation machine. Alex Gourevitch mounts a vigorous defense of the right to protest on campus. And Vietnam veteran David Cortright explains how the peace movement built broad-based support—changing the course of the Vietnam War in ways that they couldn’t predict.

Writing a quarter-century ago, Tamás foresaw the “post-totalitarian fascism” that now exists without stormtroopers or a one-party system. “Cutting the civic and human community in two,” he writes—“this is fascism.” With their calls for solidarity and a truly inclusive democracy, our contributors o!er a vision for a way forward.