Information is power. Our mission at Portside is to seek out and to provide information that empowers you -- that empowers the left. Every day we search hundreds of sources to connect you with the most interesting, striking and useful material. Just once a year we appeal to you to contribute to make it possible to continue this work. Please help.

 

Archives

For posts before June 2012, please follow these links to our archives.

Mark Zuckerberg and I

Brendan Walsh Rattle
“I’ve become obsessed,” writes the poet Branden Walsh, “with trying to understand the compulsions and sickness of a society that believes billionaires are a healthy/natural component of civilization.” He tries here to humanize just one.

Monopoly and Its Discontents

Gerald Berk The American Prospect
It's no Marxist critique of class power--would that it were--but Matt Stoller's Goliath, aimed at moving the Democratic Party off dead center, slams all the right enemies in urging the resuscitating of the anti-monopoly tradition of the 20th century

Racial Terror & Totalitarianism

Mary Helen Washington Solidarity
African American anti-fascist intellectuals sought to link colonialism and U.S.-style racism with European fascism using a variety of rhetorical and artistic means. This book offers a portrait of those efforts.

The Father of Our Country

Kim Roberts Southern Review
With tongue in cheek, Kim Roberts explores the patriarchal origins of our Thanksgiving holiday.

Suspicious: A Biography of Master Spy Richard Sorge

Tariq Ali London Review Of Books
Unlike Kim Philby, Cold War-era Soviet master spy Richard Sorge is not yet the subject of multiple novels, profiles and transatlantic espionage dramas. He, his exploits and his tragic end at the hands of Japanese militarism should be better known.