Evil Empire
The Making of the American Gulag
During the Cold War, the “police apparatus” was held up as a prime example of Soviet repression. Yet the United States ended up with its own carceral state.
Quantifying Love
Reputational currency, like China’s Social Credit Score, rebrands repression as rational nudging. And these algorithmic governance models are spreading.
The End of the End of History
What does it mean to live in a world in which history has rusted under the monstrous weight of the permanent now?
Banking on the Cold War
The Cold War says more about how U.S. elites imagined their “freedom” than it does about enabling other people to be free.
How to Think About Empire
An interview with Arundhati Roy on censorship, storytelling, and her problem with the term “postcolonialism.”
Puerto Rico’s War on Its Poor
In the 1990s, Puerto Rico showed Washington how militarized policing and privatization can extract profits from poor people of color.
What White Supremacists Know
The violent theft of land and capital is at the core of the U.S. experiment: the U.S. military got its start in the wars against Native Americans.
Empire’s Racketeers
Wajahat Ali speaks with Pankaj Mishra on the devastating consequences of Western imperialism, globalization, and capitalism and the fate of liberal democracy.